Sierra
The 24th Pegasus
When I was born, I was born into poverty. My family owned a ranch near Whinnyapolis and ten acres of land. It was a small one by earth pony standards, because we weren’t earth ponies. We were pegasi stuck on the ground, trying to scrape out a life in the fields. I’m surprised I was even born; my parents had a tough enough time putting together the bits to support just the two of them, let alone a little filly. They named me Sierra, hoping that one day I’d fly as high as the mountains.
When I was one, Daddy took me on the first flight that I can actually remember. It was only a quick flight from the ranch to town to get some supplies, but I remember the feeling of being free, of defying gravity and feeling the wind in my face. Something clicked inside of me, and I always wanted somepony to carry me and fly. I didn’t belong on the dirt; I needed to be up there with the clouds.
When I was two, I’d gotten lost in the prairie grasses surrounding the house. I’d managed to slip out a closing door on unsteady legs and toddled my way into the fields. I didn’t even think about how far I was going until I was hungry, and that’s when I realized just how far from home I was. The feeling of rain, of being cold and alone, stands out sharper than any memory of that night. But my Daddy and some of the stallions from the nearby ranches heard my cries and found me, and Mommy carried me to bed with her and kept me wrapped in her forelegs while I slept.
When I was three, my parents pulled together enough bits to take me to a Wonderbolts exhibition rally in Whinnyapolis. It was the first time I’d ever seen just how much a pegasus could do with their wings. Pegasi in blue and yellow flight suits and clear goggles raced around a track, their wings beating so furiously that it felt like they were going to kick up a tornado. After we got home from the rally, I spent the next month running laps around the furniture, my tiny wings frantically buzzing as I willed myself to fly like those amazing ponies.
When I was four, Daddy patented a new shape of raincloud that could deliver rain to a prairie farm without blowing off target in the high winds of the Equestrian midwest. I didn’t understand what he did late at night when he was done working the fields, and I didn’t understand why he disappeared for days at a time, leaving Mommy and the neighbors to tend to the crops themselves. But I remember the look of pride and satisfaction on his face whenever he returned, and how he and Mommy talked in excited voices over the kitchen table when I was supposed to be asleep.
When I was five, I flew for the first time. My wings were nothing more than tawny feather dusters, short and stubby, but I’d grown sick of the ground. I wanted to fly through the air like Mommy and Daddy, to be free among the clouds. So I beat my wings, lopsided and flailing, and managed to heave my hooves off of the earth. I only managed a few inches before I fell back to the ground, but I was smiling. I’d done it, and I made sure Mommy knew.
When I was six, I started to become a real pain buzzing around the house and the fields nonstop. Mommy had to keep all the windows closed and the doors locked so I wouldn’t fly away from the house in my excitement after dark. Daddy went so far as to make a weighted vest to stick on me when I was at home so I wouldn’t be flying all the time. But the joke was on them in the end, because the rocks in that vest only helped me develop my wings faster, and soon I was too strong of a flier for them to keep me grounded for long.
When I was seven, Daddy’s business deal went through, and we left the ranch in Whinnyapolis behind to go to Cloudsdale. I was excited to move to the big city, the home of the pegasi, a mosaic of colors hung high in the clouds for all of ponykind to adore. There were so many other pegasi, too, and they flew everywhere. Nopony walked or used stairs when they could all fly! And now I was always in the clouds, and I’d never have to touch the earth again. I’d never been so free in my life!
When I was eight, I was alone. I’d tried to make friends with the other pegasus kids, but they didn’t like me all that much. They called me a ground pounder and made fun of me for being born on the dirt. They thought my Whinnyapolis accent was funny and mocked me constantly. They were jealous that I was a better flier than all of them. I cried to my parents and told them that I wanted to go back to the ranch. They told me that everything was going to be alright, and to not let the other kids bother me; they weren’t worth my time.
When I was nine, I met Jetstream. We were the top two students in flight school, and we pushed each other to be better. We ran the courses all day, even when we didn’t have to. We had popsicles and pop afterwards before heading home for the evening. He was the only one who didn’t care I wasn’t born in Cloudsdale, and he always wanted to know more about what it was like to live on the ground. I learned his mother was a Wonderbolt, and I begged him to let me meet her. She was the nicest pony I’d ever met, humble despite her fame. She told me that if I kept trying, I could be in the Wonderbolts just like her, someday.
When I was ten, I finally felt like I belonged. Jetstream introduced me to his friends, and we hit it off almost immediately. I entertained them with the stories of the ground and the kind of ponies that live there. I’d repeat an endless series of phrases they wanted me to say in my accent. We would play games together, and we’d practice our flying. Jetstream and I were nearly inseparable, and we spent more time together at one another’s house than we did apart. The other pegasi finally stopped teasing me about where I came from, and I quickly forgot about them. I could tell who was on the fast lane to becoming a Wonderbolt and who wasn’t, and I fought and practiced every day to make sure that one day I’d be worthy to don that blue and yellow flight suit.
When I was eleven, we moved to a bigger house farther from the city center. It made it a little more inconvenient to visit Jets, but we were the best fliers in our class, so the flying hardly made a difference to us other than the time taken. I started getting the feeling that Daddy was becoming important in Cloudsdale, because I started seeing more pegasi wearing suits showing up from time to time, and we always had these big and nice dinners for them. Daddy also began wearing a suit more often, and it was a little shocking to see the farmer who raised me dressing like a businesspony. At least I felt like Jets could relate to what I was going through with how famous his mom was, and he assured me that no matter what happened he’d still be my best friend.
When I was twelve, Daddy started taking me to his parties. They were so boring and dull. Ponies wearing stuffy suits crowded around each other and talked about their businesses while they ate imported vegetables and drank fancy wines. They made me wear a dress, and Mom started dolling me up in makeup. The filly in the mirror with her combed hair, subtle lipstick, and pearl necklace inside a red dress disgusted me. “You’re so pretty, Sierra,” Mom would say, and I’d just scowl at my reflection. I didn’t want to be inside socializing. I wanted to be outside, flying through thunderheads and dodging lightning bolts with Jetstream, whooping and hollering until I’d lost my voice.
When I was thirteen, I hurt my wing trying out for the school’s rally team. I misjudged my timing on a turn and ended up clipping my wing on a pole, fracturing my metacarpus, breaking my pollex, and sending me spinning out of control, unable to really steer myself through the pain. Thankfully, I hit a fluffy cloudbank instead of careening off of the course and plummeting to my death thousands of feet below, but it did mean I had to sit out the season while I waited for my wing to recover. Jets was nice enough to give me rides when he could so I could at least feel like I was flying. It hurt me more than the injury itself to have my freedom stolen from me, and I started flying and trying to pull stunts a full week before the doctor said I should even be back in the air. I was a teenager, I was invincible, and nopony was going to tell me what to do.
When I was fourteen, I had my first kiss. He was a colt named Westerly, one of Jetstream’s friends, and a bunch of us were up late one night at Jets’ house playing spin the bottle. It landed on me, I said ‘dare’, and Westerly dared me to kiss him. I wasn’t going to back down, so I gave him one right on the lips. Jets just glared at West while the rest of us broke down laughing at the stunned colt’s face. I had a feeling that Jets played the rest of the game trying to get me to say ‘dare’ again, but I wasn’t keen on kissing anypony else, so I just stuck with ‘truth’ for the rest of the night.
When I was fifteen, I’d gotten so used to going to Dad’s parties that I stopped paying attention to what was going on around me. Dad had made some new partners, and they all got together all the time to discuss their plans for the future of their company. I started hanging out with their kids, talking about what it was like to have wealthy parents. I realized for the first time just how far we’d come from the lonely ranch out in the middle of nowhere. I was the daughter of one of the wealthiest newcomers to the Cloudsdale Weather Control, whose ideas had revolutionized tornado control and the distribution of rainwater to vast stretches of the Equestrian prairies. And I didn’t recognize the down-to-earth stallion I once called Daddy anymore.
When I was sixteen, Jets got a serious marefriend for the first time. She was a pretty thing, with a pink coat, yellow mane, and crystal blue eyes. Her name was Affinity, but Jets and everypony else called her Fini. Whenever I saw the two of them together, I felt something burn inside of my chest. I felt sick, and I tried to avoid them altogether. And while Jets and Fini were doing things like going to Wonderbolts rallies and touring the academy training grounds, I burned through one stallion after another, just trying to find something that would make me feel as happy as Jets and Fini looked. I lost my virginity behind the bleachers, and the next week I tossed that colt away. Nothing made me feel as happy as I thought it was going to, and it didn’t seem like anything would. My grades slumped, and Mom and Dad started limiting how late I could be out, trying to get me to focus on my studies. It only made me long for the skies even more, the one thing that made me still feel like me. The skies that I flew alone.
When I was seventeen, I graduated from high school, barely managing to coast my way through my senior year. Jets graduated with honors, and his mom had brought the whole Wonderbolts team out to the ceremony. Dad didn’t show up because he had a business meeting in Las Pegasus. I don’t remember that night very well. I got my diploma, left as soon as I could, broke into Dad’s wine cooler, and got blackout drunk. When I woke up the next morning, I was lying on a cumulus drifting somewhere over Canterlot. It took me two hours to even get off the cloud because my head hurt so bad I couldn’t even fly, and when I got back home, I collapsed on my bed and passed the rest of the day in tears and fitful naps.
When I was eighteen, Jets and I started talking again. He’d broken up with Fini, and it was messy. I was surprised to see him on my doorstep, the hair of his cheeks matted with drying tears. I took him in, gave him a cider, and just listened like I used to. Fini had cheated on him, and when he confronted her about it, she tried to deny it. He caught her in bed with another stallion a month later, and that was it. I did my best to talk to him, but I was never good at words. I decided to take him flying, because that was the only thing that ever cheered me up when I felt like closing my eyes and jumping off a cloud to see how fast I’d fall before I hit the ground. And by the end of it, we were back to doing loops and racing from one cloud to the next in short little sprints, laughing like we’d never been driven apart.
When I was nineteen, Jets and I tried out for the Wonderbolts. Those were the happiest days of my life. We bunked together in the barracks at the academy and practiced on the courses even when Spitfire wasn’t drilling us. Jets was promoted to lead pony, and I was his wingmare. As much as I wanted to be lead pony, I knew he was a better flier than me, and it was an honor to be his number two. We graduated with high marks in every category, and we both got promoted to the Reserves a month later. We threw a big party to celebrate, and I ended up getting plastered. When I woke up, Jets was lying almost on top of me, my tawny body wrapped inside his blue forelegs. I pretended to be asleep for almost an hour until he woke up and carefully crawled out of bed to not wake me. We parted without ever bringing it up.
When I was twenty, my dreams fell apart in an instant. While testing for placements with the Wonderbolts Reserves, I felt something snap in my wing when I pulled too hard after a dive, harder than what I knew was safe. The pain was dizzying, and I lost control and ate dirt. The x-rays showed it was my metacarpal again, my old injury from school, except a hundred times worse. There were jagged little white splotches all around the wing, bone fragments from when it shattered. Pegasus bones are delicate, the doctor said, and incredibly brittle. They tend to shatter on impact, which was exactly what happened to me when I slammed into the ground. When I asked him if I’d ever fly again, he assured me that they could fix the worst of the damage with some time in a sling, some surgery, and a little unicorn magic, but I’d never be able to fly quite as well as I used to. And they were right; my wing felt heavy and sluggish, like it was wrapped in a cast that made it hard to move. I was honorably discharged from the Wonderbolts, and I didn’t talk to anypony for days, almost weeks afterwards. The only pony I really talked to was Jets, and he tried to be strong for me when I couldn’t do anything other than cry into his shoulder now that everything I’d worked for had just been taken from me. I felt like a cage was closing in around me, stealing my freedom, grounding me forever.
When I was twenty-one, Dad dropped a stack of papers on my bed and told me I was going to be productive with my life. I’d done nothing since leaving the Wonderbolts the year prior, only struggling to get my leaden wing to cooperate with me in the desperate hope that I’d somehow be good enough to get back into the Reserves as a third- or fourth-stringer. If I wasn’t going to fly for a living, Dad insisted that I learn how to run weather management and train to take over his branch of the Cloudsdale Weather Control when he retired. He’d just turned fifty-seven and was looking at the prospect of an early retirement, and wanted to make sure that the fortune he’d worked so hard to amass stayed within the family. And so I worked and studied, starting as a lowly weatherpony and climbing my way up the ranks, living in the shadow of the company Dad had helped revolutionize. When I closed my eyes on weather patrols and just let the winds take me, though, I could feel the stirrings in my heart, memories of a bright time in my life that’d been snuffed out too quickly. The ponies on my team called me Sunny Sierra, because nothing made me happier than flying under the sun, pretending that I was flying before a crowd of thousands.
When I was twenty-two, Jets became a full Wonderbolt. I’d screamed in excitement when he told me, and I tackled him in a big hug. He got me and a bunch of our friends tickets to see his first show, and I was one of the first ponies there just to watch him do his warmups. But when the show finally began, I started to cry. Too many emotions hit me all at once, and I couldn’t handle them all. There was Jets, living his dream, just like his mother. His formations were perfect and he flew like a veteran, despite it being his first show. He was happy, and I was happy for him, too. Thrilled, even. But it reminded me of what I’d lost. I’d never be in the sky with him when he flew those crazy stunts. I was always going to be trapped on the sidelines, unable to do anything but look on. And even though I followed him to every show and rally I could make it to, the pain and heartache never went away.
When I was twenty-three, I became a branch coordinator at the CWC. It was my job to make sure that the weather teams in different counties worked together to prevent stormfronts from building between their lines, causing unscheduled rainfall and wind damage. I also had to manage logistics between fifteen different weather teams, scheduling cloud orders and rainfall shipments with the production team at the factory. The work kept me trapped inside an office, wearing a dress that clung to me like a giant spider’s web, keeping me from spreading my wings and being free. Dad told me that he was proud of me for turning my life around whenever he was actually home from business trips and conferences across the country. Mom tried to encourage me to stick with it, because one day I’d be a chairpony like Dad and I could do whatever I wanted then. But I hated the work. This wasn’t flying. This wasn’t living. Though I had my own office, the glass walls were a cage, my boss a jailer. I started drinking more and more just to forget about my misery. And to make matters worse, Jets and I started drifting apart as his tours took him to the far corners of Equestria, while I was chained to Cloudsdale, shackled by a never-ending sheet of numbers.
When I was twenty-four, I collapsed while giving a presentation at work. The doctors said I’d had an ‘episode’ brought on by stress. Translation: I’d had a heart attack and I wasn’t even a quarter of a century old. As I lied in my hospital bed, waiting for the all-clear to be discharged, I had a revelation: my job was killing me. I was never meant to sit inside an office and play with numbers all day. I was meant to fly high and fly free, soaring above the clouds where nopony could touch me. I only returned to work long enough to figure out how to word my resignation letter, and then I slipped it under my boss’ door and left without a word. Dad was furious and Mom was upset, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to die in a dress behind a desk. I wanted to live free and die free. I wanted to fly, and nothing else could even come close.
When I was twenty-five, I read about a migratory pegasus’ life in a magazine. This pegasus had decided to sculpt their own cloud house and merely drift across Equestria with nothing but the essentials, simply riding where the wind took them. I’d heard about the drifters before, seen documentaries on their community and wandering lifestyle, but the idea had never stuck with me. Now I found it impossible to go to bed at night, just wondering what that would be like. After a few months of torment, I finally caved and withdrew all my bits from the bank. I used most of them to buy some construction-grade cloud and I made myself a simple house. Though I was by no means a skilled sculptor, I managed to make something with a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and porch that wasn’t going to fall apart in rough weather. I said goodbye to my family and friends, some more heartfelt than others, and I pushed off from Cloudsdale, letting the winds blow me south.
When I was twenty-six, I ran into Jets again at a show in Fillydelphia. So much had changed, but so much had stayed the same. He carried himself like a professional with four years on the tour under his belt. Like his mother, he’d remained humble, even though he was one of the best alongside Spitfire, Soarin’, and Rainbow Dash herself. He bought me drinks and offered me bits when I told him that I’d become an unemployed drifter who wrote nature articles and short stories for enough to scrape by. Though I accepted the drinks, I turned down the cash, not wanting to feel like I was mooching off of him to support myself. I showed him my house, which I’d continually expanded and modified since I first built it, and the two of us sat on the porch as we watched the sun go down. I felt my heart stutter, and I leaned against him, reminded of when I was nineteen. When his show finished and he finally had to move on, I spent that night alone on my porch, a bottle of whiskey at my side, and simply chased the memories lying at the bottom.
When I was twenty-seven, Jets retired from the Bolts. Both Spitfire and Soarin’ had left at the end of last year’s season, and Jets felt like it was time to move on, too. Though five years wasn’t long by Wonderbolts standards, the newcomers were always faster and more agile, and he’d realized that some other kid deserved a chance in the limelight. He knew they’d be fine under Captain Rainbow Dash’s leadership, and he didn’t want to get in her way. I’m not sure how, but he managed to find me drifting over Dodge Junction, and after explaining everything to me, I agreed to let him stay, at least for a little while. He’d amassed enough earnings to live comfortably for years if he wanted, and his mother made sure he invested it like she did when she was on the team. And even though he wasn’t on the team anymore, he could always count on merchandising and celebrity appearances to rake money in for a long time. As for me, I was perfectly fine being penniless, because I had the wind, I had the sun, and I had the sky. And when Jets stayed over that night, and then hung around the next day as well, I was sure he could feel that freedom in his blood, too.
When I was twenty-eight, Jets and I got married. It was one of the few times I stopped drifting for any real amount of time. We went back to Cloudsdale for two months just to get everything ready and to be with our families, and we managed to put on a decent ceremony with some of Jets’ Wonderbolt earnings. Though Dad may have never approved of my drifting, he teared up as he prepared to walk me down the aisle, seeing me standing in front of him in a Rarity that it felt like everypony had come together to help me afford. And when I walked down the aisle, knees shaking and wings trembling, I locked eyes with Jets, standing up there with Westerly as his best stallion. I remember every moment of the ceremony down to the finest detail, including the exact time when I finally got to kiss my husband: eleven fifty-eight in the morning.
When I was twenty-nine, Jets and I toured Equestria in our home, a young couple in love. We saw the sights at Rainbow Falls, visited the high towers of Canterlot, and sampled expensive wine in Roam. We kissed on top of the tower in Mareis, we toured the art galleries in Fillydelphia, and we watched so many musicals on Bridleway that we couldn’t stop singing them for a month afterward. And between all the stops, when the sun sat low on the western horizon and the hills of Equestria turned to pure gold beneath us, we’d take to the skies, flying and dancing and moving to memories of the past, much like we’d always done. And in those moments, I felt truly happy and free. I was flying with somepony I loved, and nothing else mattered. Out here, nothing could touch us. Out here, there was only the sky.
And when I turn thirty, I’ll tell our newborn daughter all about it while she sleeps soundly in her crib, dreaming of a world that’s as wild and free as she wants it to be.
