Colors

The heart beat, low and harmonious, a tender drum of both love and solitude. It's my favorite sound for it reminds me of an ancient thunderstorm that grows with each generation that listens to it, passing the power from one person to another.

The calming sensation that the heartbeat brings, however, can only be powered by someone of great passion for what they love, and each tune is different. Some warm and colorful, others cold and clouded. Most filled with dreams, while the rest drowned in pain. Whenever I listen to the latter, I cannot help but feel helpless. I want to help those filled with ice, to give them my own internal fire so that they feel like they are worth something. That they have something to be proud of, to have the passion for whatever make's them happy, but I can't, and most of the time. They won't let me even if I try.

I understand that they want to save themselves from their own fear's, that they must defeat their own demons, but not everyone has the strength to do so. It pains me to see those that have failed their fight with themselves and have given up an choose to drown their sorrows in whatever they could get their hands on, be it drugs, booze or rope. They will end it with even more sorrow.

Sometime's, I wish that I wasn't born blind. I wished that I could see the white clouds, the green trees and the gentle twilight of the night. The fluffy snow that dappled my nose in the winter, the blooming flowers of spring, and the colors of the autumn leaves. Even though I couldn't see the beauty around me.

I could always feel it.

The first moments of my life was black with endless amounts of others always fussing about my ability for constantly needing help, even though I didn't need any. My memory is foggy during my childhood. Only sounds, smell, and touch were the only sensations I could recall. The smell of mother's cooking, the pain of running into the bathroom door, and the music of a smooth violin. But all of that changed after the dragon attack..

I woke up like any other day. It was a warm spring morning in Equestria. Celestia's sun warmth through the window was slowly making its rise in the east. The sound of ponies moving about their day to their job or just to roam around and enjoy the beauty of our little town of Hallow Shades. It was so safely tucked away in a dense forest with only a train to take ponies in and out, that, it also made it impossible to escape when danger arisen.

"Hey, Transient Cloud. you up yet?" said my sister Midnight Aurora as the weight of her steps entered the room. I followed them with my ears till I was confident that I was staring at her, even though it was blank and lifeless.

"Yeah," I replied through a yawn.

"Mom wanted me to help you down the stairs. Do you need any help?"

"I'll be fine," I groaned. "You now that I have never needed help since I was five."

"Just grab my tail so mom doesn't have to worry so much," Aurora sighed.

"Fine," I sighed knowing how much my mom worries about my blindness, but she didn't have to fuss about it every day. I was perfectly fine on my own. I know every nook and cranny of my house. My sister knows's this or rather, figured it out whenever we played hide and seek when we were younger. Aurora always got mad at me every time I won claiming I had X-ray vision instead of regular vision, but when I told her that I could feel her every step throughout the house. She said that she would never play with me again because I always cheated. I didn't deny it. It was the only way I could find her.

Grabbing her tail with my mouth and tasting the nauseating taste of Hayfever conditioner. Aurora leads me out of my room and down the stairs to where our mom was waiting impatiently. I could tell while walking down the stairs that she wasn't happy with how long we were taking from the vibrant pulses of her hoof tapping a mile a minute.

I didn't really care anymore about her constant worrying after the billionth rant on how helpless she thinks I was. It was always the same thing: Cloud could trip down the stairs and break his neck, what if he slips in mud and stains his white fur, 'or my favorite one', what if he goes even blinder than he already is! I couldn't wait to hear what she has to say next.

At the bottom of the stairs, I followed my sister into the kitchen where our mom was waiting. I sat down at the table pretending that I didn't notice her heavy breathing or mechanical hoof twitch and began to eat the cold hay cereal in front of me. Using the tip of my wing, I felt the end of the spoon and clasped it firmly. With years worth of practice eating this way, I ate quite comfortably.

"What took you two so long?" Our mother said with immense irritation.

"Don't ask me, Cloud didn't want help," Aurora said sighing in front of me and began eating what I could tell from the smell, hay bacon, and eggs. The glare our mom was giving Aurora moved to me.

"Cloud, you should really not make a fuss when someone is trying to help you, especially your sister! Do you know how much time she spends making sure you are alright?!"

'Hardly ever,' I thought.

"So stop being so difficult, at least for today," our mother said.

"Why? Are you going somewhere?" I asked.

"I am heading to Cloudsdale for work this month. They need an extra hoof with cloud creation so Aurora will be in charge."

"Oooh! Mom, can you hi to Cloud Runner for me," Aurora flashed with slight embarrassment.

"Crush much?" I teased.

"Hey!" Aurora said with heat in her cheeks.

"Behave, both of you," mom said leaving the kitchen.

Aurora and I finished our breakfast after our mom left for Clousdale on the train. Finally free of my mom's babying, I left the house to go practice flying in the back yard while Aurora left for work at the clinic tent. Stepping outside, I felt the wind carefully with the tips of my wing's, feeling the direction of where the gale curved and curled from the various objects around me.

"This is how I see," I mumbled to myself with a smile on my face as I walked through the soft grass. With each step, I took to my practice spot, a shockwave of shapes filled my mind with a perception of where everything that was around me was. To the left was the garden, to the right the fence to our neighbors. Behind me was my house and in front was the forest.

Entering the forest was a different experience every time. The wind snaked through the trees in a different path every day. The smell of the leaves both giving me shade and a soft spot to walk on was enticing for adventure. The various creatures that walked moved through the forest either for food or a mate didn't notice me as I walked near. With each step I made was soft and soundless. My sister taught me this trick of bending the wind under your hoof so that you didn't make a sound. Though, when I think about it. I think she figured out how to do this after I told her that I could feel her every step. After that, I could never tell where she was whenever she was at home.

Once I got to my spot, a small clearing with an abandon well coated in vines at the center, I began to stretch my wings and muscles for flight practice.

"Hey, Aurora!" Cheered my best friend Scarlet Cross as I walked through the flaps into our villages makeshift medical clinic.

The clinic didn't have a name as it comes and goes whenever an epidemic of hyperlipemia set's in. The tent itself was not at all small. It could accommodate up to a hundred ponies at any given time, but there is usually never that amount at all. Scarlet sat at the fold up table we called the front desk at the center of the huge tent going through at the medical papers of our current patients who walked in last night. There was four of them, one a small filly who contracted hyperlipemia. The other three the common cold.

The common cold wasn't a problem for Scarlet and I to handle, but the filly with hyperlipemia will call for serious medical attention if it progresses too far from our own capabilities, but if that happens. I don't know if we can get her to Canterlot in time.

"Hey, Scarlet," I answered back. Looking towards the green filly in the corner of the tent lit up by a lantern that looked like it needed to be refilled. I put on a mask that I levitated from the front desk to check up on her.

"Good morning Emerald Heart. How are you feeling today?" I smiled sitting beside the cot.

The little filly looked at me with pain in her eyes wish that stomach pain would stop, but I knew it wouldn't stop without the insulin booster that Scarlet requested.

"Awful," she managed to squeak out. I softly placed a hoof on her forehead to check if her fever went down from last night and gave her a thermometer to suck on while I waited for Scarlet to bring her some food.

Happy that the fever went down, I pulled out the thermometer to see that she cooled off overnight. "Any need to use the bathroom anymore?" I asked.

"No," Emerald said.

"Vomiting?"

"No."

"Then once you start eating you should start feeling better, and hopefully your medicine should arrive later today," I smiled. Emerald Heat weakly smiled back.

"Steady," I though while gliding from one cloud to the next blind as a bat. Every day, I would practice, but it wasn't easy. If I wasn't careful, I could easily fall to my death from kilometers of freefall or blast into a nearby tree. Thankfully, my unique sensitivity helped me a lot and even saved me many time's when a rogue vacuum got too close for comfort.

Landing on the cloud I was aiming for, I decided to rest for a while and listen to the world around me. I laid down and closed my eyes, focusing on the well underneath me. Using the wind around me, I felt the shape of the old well, feeling the many vines that encased it, the moss that coated it like a jacket, the cracked stone and molding wooded. I wondered how old the well was. It must have been there for at least several hundred years. "How did it get there? Who used it?" were the question's that I always asked myself, but each time I tried to figure out an answer. Nothing came to mind.

I shifted my focus to the trees, then to a fox coming out of his hole with a very affectionate she fox. I moved my focus all over the forest using the wind as my eyes. There was always something interesting to feel. From the playful nature of the local wolves' to the venomous rage of a dragon . . . Wait, dragon?

Before my thought could process as to why a dragon was nearby. The dragon flew over me, leaving a heavy gust of the wind that destroyed my cloud and sending me crashing to the ground.

"Shit!" I shouted as I opened my wings as fast as I could, but not fast enough. I crashed into the well as the air around me erupted into a scorching heat which was replaced by ice cold water. Realizing the sudden danger, I tried to breath, only to suck in a gallon of water. Choking for breath in a struggle for air. I slowly became weaker and weaker until my limbs could no longer move. I let myself fall asleep knowing that I was finished.