Cloudbound

“You did great, Felt!”

Feather Felt alighted huffing and puffing. Quick on the uptake, she rose to her hooves and let loose a weak, yet booming, whoop of joy.

“Take pride in it, Feltie, threading the Cloudsdale highways on your own like that is nothing to scoff at. You’ll get better at that in practice.” He couldn’t help but smile, and soon enough Brandish’s infectious grin wove its way onto Felt’s visage.

“Aw, come on! You were in front of me the whole time!”

“I really mean that, so don’t downplay it, or else!” he replied with a throaty laugh.

Brandish continued to lead the filly to his home. The alley was a cramped, but well-lit space, though there was much less to be said about the dampness emanating from the cloudwall of a neighboring restaurant. When he had been a wee colt, Brandish had struck out on his own in Cloudsdale to find himself a place to live, and while his homes—be it alleys like this one or quiet avenues by the weather factory—were always a bit of a stuffy place to live, he tried his hardest to make them as comfortable as possible. He took a corner and stopped before the entrance to his home.

Passing the fortress of scavenged tarpaulin—which he strategically employed to keep the heat in on the cooler Equestrian nights—the duo entered the alley-nook home of a vagrant. A glance behind him told Brandish that he’d made an impression, judging by the look of awe adorning Felt’s face.

“You live here?” she squeaked.

“Sure do.” Brandish sighed. “It isn’t much, but it’s home.”

“Are you kidding?” Felt rushed over to his cot and jumped up onto the worn mattress, her hooves gesturing all around. “It’s so much more roomy than the place that me and… and my dad have.”

“Alright Feltie, that’s enough. Buck up and stay with me, we have a mission to do, after all.”

Felt was back to her normal self at Brandish’s command. She puffed up and held a mock salute from her position by the ‘head’ of his ‘bed.’

“Aye aye, cap’n!” Her mimicry dropped with her hoof. “How can I help?”

“Grab my savings, if you would. They’re in my saddlebags over there. There are some other things too, actually… You know what? Forget what I said, just take the whole bag with you.”

His message got through, though he suspected most of his rambling had been ignored in favor a more exciting prospect.

“Oh my gosh, you do have saddlebags!”

“Ha, you know I’m not one to boast lightly, Feltie.”

Knowing that she would struggle to lift the bag—a few personal amenities were stashed away in their depths, just like he'd said—Brandish plodded over to a locker that he’d spent a long time hauling in his life.

After years of towing it around from cranny-to-nook, the battered antique had lost the red sheen it held from the time it had been his school locker, now adopting an existence as a dull grey box marred with scratches and weathering. He cracked it open, heart aching as he realized this would likely be the last time he saw it; he knew a few ‘friends’ that would be dropping by someday soon, and once they knew that he had left the city they would no doubt take claim to everything there. Just as quickly as the ache had come however, Brandish smirked; he realized he had no use for anything left behind, but others would. At least he would have some way to give back to the city he'd been born in… even if it was giving to ponies who shared his lifestyle.

“Hngh! Brandish, it’s too heavy!”

He risked losing concentration by peeling away to prod her onward.

“You can do it, Felt! I believe in you!”

“And I believe that this thing is too! Darn! Heavy!”

Once Felt had redoubled her attempts to pry the bags from the ground—her wings cutting viciously through the air—Brandish sped up his collection. A vast array of trinkets were retrieved and pocketed: a pocketknife he’d swindled from a bully at the orphanage, his lucky bit—incidentally the first bit he’d ever earned on his own—a dwindling pack of gum that a kind mare had given to him a month ago, and of course, the photos and the camera. Brandish swiftly distributed them among the six pockets on his vest, allowing the camera to rest around his neck.

A loud ‘woosh’ caused his ears to twitch.

“Pwah! Haha… pft… I did it!”

Brandish whirled around, eyes wide.

“You did!” he cried out just as enthusiastically. “Now quick, zip over here and plop those on my back. Don’t hurt yourself, now!”

The two met halfway, and with a pleasant laugh of relief, Felt added to the weight on Brandish’s back.

“I’m pooped,” she groaned.

Her moment was fleeting; in contrast to her previous display of exasperation, Felt popped up.

“Brandish, I have a question.”

He set her down on the ground with his wings. “Shoot!”

“Why do you have a book about the ‘Ana… tomy of Bird Wings?’ And this book about… mane styles? I think? I don’t know, it says ‘Manes, Tails, and You,’ so I guess it’s about all of them.”

Brandish raised a brow at the filly; he hadn’t expected her to go through his bags, but he couldn’t say he was too nonplussed… she was a filly, after all. The fact that she was eleven-years-old didn’t really matter. The subject matter had him brighten up in an instant.

“It has to do with my cutie mark, see?” He shifted to the side so she could see his cutie mark—a green violetear zipping through an open pair of cutting-shears. “I ended up getting my mark from doing the orphanage headmaster’s mane; she looked awful pretty with red ribbons, I’ll say that. I used to do the manes of the fillies when I went to school, and it was at that point I decided I really wanted to learn how to be a better mane stylist. Though, I never did get to do their tails… I don’t know why, they just never let me get close.”

Felt let out a giggle at Brandish’s ‘naivety.’ Brandish was all too glad to play the part.

“What about the bird wings book?”

“Well… you see, I was a pioneer.”

Felt made an ‘ooh’ and snuck closer.

“Not a lot of pegasi dress up their wings, we always slip ‘em through our clothes—” he flexed his wings from the vest “—and the like, but I felt it in myself that there was a need to 'get privy with wings!' So I went to studying, figuring out how I could optimally sparkle up a pony’s wings without getting in the way of flight. A few years later, I’d found a lot of ponies willing to try it, and for the opportunities I was given, I gathered myself a pretty little pile of experience on how best to work on wings.” A breathy sigh ended his tirade. “But ever since I dropped out of school and left the orphanage, I haven’t really had much of a chance to work with my cutie mark.”

Amused, Brandish’s audience-of-one clapped her hooves together cheerfully. “Wow! That’s so cool!” Felt dropped her forelegs as she diverted. “But I still say that dropping out was wrong. I don’t get to go to school… because of daddy. You always make it sound great.”

Brandish's stomach dropped; he hadn't intended to demotivate her, he just felt that inflating the school's ego was the best way to get the point across that going to school was more fun than loitering in the orphanage.

“When we find your mom, we can fix that right up.”

Felt returned Brandish’s beam with a much more diluted one.

Suddenly, inspiration was at hoof.

“Say, hold my thought for a second. Open up the right bag.”

Felt nodded and trot up to Brandish to fulfill the order.

“Check that bag-in-the-bag for me. And open it, too.”

A moment passed as she fumbled with the zipped velvet pouch. Undoing the seal, Felt’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she could shake herself from her trance. Sneaking a hoof into the bag, she fiddled out a selection from one of many choices; in her hooves, a tight spool of turquoise ribbon appeared. To her, it was a mystical artifact of immense value, but to Brandish, a sight for sore eyes.

“Can you… do me?”

Smiling, Brandish slid his bags from his back. “Of course, Feltie.”

Taking the spool from Felt, he had her sit down with her back to him. The pocketknife flicked open with a faint click as Brandish expertly cut a precise proportion for the filly. As he reached for her mane, she too reached, but with a hoof meant to stop him.

“Can you do my wings, Brandish?”

His heart pounded in his chest. “R-really? I haven’t done it in ages, Feltie. I might... not be so good…”

“You said it yourself,” she began with a broad smile. “You’re a pioneer. You’re the master of your field… I trust you.”

It was hard to focus with tear-filled eyes.

Wiping his face dry, Brandish shook the shakes from his hooves and reached for the spool once more.

“This blue is the perfect color for you, Feltie… You might as well be a master your own self.”

And the flash from her flanks told Brandish that somepony out there thought so, too.