The motel was located in a conglomerated cloud district that was strictly off the books. It was just far enough within the city limits to be designated as part of Cloudsdale, but city services were lacking in the outer-zone that the locals called Dawnyard. Suffice to say, the distance from Cloudsdale authorities was enough to dissuade tourists from approaching while allowing the more rugged of pegasi to ferment and fester; a place for the scum of the sky to make their deals and lay down low.

Nonetheless, it was a place surrounded in natural beauty.

Felt munched quietly on the breakfast that the motel-owner had brought out to them, but her heart remained pounding from the early morning flight that she’d taken; an urge had overtaken her when she’d awoken. Felt had slipped from the room that she and Brandish shared with nary a sound to take to the skies. The perky pegasus had been all too right about the thermals, and she realized with some trepidation that she was a thermal pegasus now, and flying would never be the same; that idea made her all the more excited about the prospect of traveling Equestria, seeking out the thermal passages to carry her with ease across the miles of land below.

Brandish slathered a hefty slab of butter onto his toast. “Feltie, I’m gonna say it again because it’s on my mind… but I’m not sure you should be having coffee.”

“Dad let me drink it all the time,” Felt pouted.

“Well, it’s not that I have a problem with you drinking coffee, it’s just that your body might decide to... have you take an impromptu nap.”

Felt blinked.

“Mid-flight.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, very much ‘oh.’ An ‘oh no,’ in fact.” He raised his mug. “That’s why I’ve got myself a good cup of orange juice; I’ll still end up needing to take a potty break, but that’s a whole lot better than dropping thousands of hooves up in the sky and breaking more than I want to. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover together, and I’d rather not have you face a near-death experience before noon.”

With a playful sigh, Felt set her forlorn drink to the side. “Okay, dad.”

Brandish fussed over her back with a wing before focusing on his own meal.

It had been a long time since she’d thought about him in that way, but Felt really could see herself calling Brandish ‘dad.’ She knew that he would always view her as a little sister, but after years of absorbing the world alongside him—no matter how miniscule the information she brought back from Brandish was—Felt was compelled to show her appreciation for the pegasus at every turn. Sitting there on the edge of the clouds that provided one of the legendary Dawnyard overlooks had been something she’d expected to be calming, but all Felt could think about was the fact that Brandish was going to take her to home. Words of thanks and affection for the pegasus breached her mind once more, but the filly chastised herself; she was an adventurer now, and there would be no time for reprieve once they left the Cloudsdale limits.

“Brandish, where are we going first?”

“Canterlot.”

Felt’s heart rate spiked in worry. “Wait, but my dad is—”

“We’ll only go try to see your dad if you want to. My thinking here is that your mom had to have put you down on the books at some point. That’s what I’m taking from what you’ve told me, assuming that your parents weren’t homeless before. So what we really to go to Canterlot for is to check some records out for you. ”

“But Cloudsdale has its own offices… and stuff.”

There was a rancorous laugh that shook Felt pretty. “Feltie, Cloudsdale bureaucrats can do a lot of things, but let me be the first to tell you that keeping track of their ponies is not their priority in the slightest. Now on the other hoof, keeping the Equestrian Weather Bureau’s coffers overflowing with bits? You bet your tail feathers they can do that.”

She couldn’t see much humor in the fact that the government couldn’t take care of their own ponies, but Felt smiled all the same.

“Do you think we could maybe… do a tour?”

“Anywhere. No matter where, no matter when, we can go around and explore. In fact, I’ll let you choose our flight plans when we leave Canterlot. How about that?”

Felt’s eyes widened. “Anywhere?”

“As long as we’re getting closer and closer to your mom, Feltie.” Brandish’s eyes softened. “I want to go see how the world’s been faring my own self, but I need you to keep your eyes on the prize. You’re still the bravest filly I know, but sometimes brave fillies have to make hard decisions.”

Felt mulled over the thought a moment. Brandish could visibly see the gears churning; the concentration on her features brought some sun to his heart.

“But… after we find my mom, you’ll go explore with me more, right?”

This was a conversation that Brandish had been dreading the appearance of. He swallowed his pride and toned up his optimism; there was a nagging feeling that he was going to need it.

“That… depends. I have a good feeling that your mom is going to be a nice mare, Feltie… you’d be better off with her than wandering with me.”

“So you’re just going to leave?”

“It’s… there’s more to it than that.”

“But we’ve lived in Cloudsdale all our life, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“So the moment you get to leave, you want to go right back?”

He froze; Felt had him there.

“I… I won’t lie to you, Felt.” A shuddering breath entered and left Brandish’s chest in one fluid motion. “That’s exactly what I’d do. I was born here and I know everything about this place. I’m comfortable here, and there’s no place... I’d rather... be.”

She crossed her hooves. “That sounds an awful lot more like you don’t know where else to go. You told me that, you know? That sometimes we’re where we are not because of what we’ve done, but because of how things turned out. I think you’re stuck in Cloudsdale because you want to be stuck here.”

“Feather…” Another sound left him, a whinny of sorts, but he couldn’t place his hoof on why he was unable to keep talking. His emotions told him that he was becoming irritated, but his body betrayed a more meek disposition.

“Dad said the same thing all the time; the thing about there ‘being more.’ Because you used to tell me about how much you wanted to leave Cloudsdale, and now you won’t tell me why you want to stay.” Felt sighed and uncrossed her hooves. “Please, Brandish… can’t you just tell me why?”

His mouth cracked open.

“And don’t tell me about how hard it is to talk about. Just… say it.”

A glob of hesitation slipped down Brandish’s throat. Once more he eyed up the filly, wondering just how much he’d underestimated her development over the years. Here she was before him, prodding at his defenses and seeing just how far she could go before he buckled under the pressure. It was a strange and nauseating feeling; usually, he was the one to convince ponies to open up, but all it had taken to bare his soul to the world was one Feather Felt and a basket full of truth.

With their breakfast long forgotten, Brandished Plumes spoke.

“I wasn’t too much older than you when I got my first job.” He shuffled from his awkward position on the cloud to a more comfortable posture. “I wanted to get better at styling, and I figured that if classes weren’t within reach, then the next best thing was getting some books to read. My first paycheck went towards those books… not the ones I have now, because I had to start selling most of the ones I’d read; I used to live in a small apartment with a few others from the orphanage, and while it was certainly better than living in an alley, rent was expensive. Those ponies I lived with… they weren’t very nice. I figured that I would be able to hold out, and eventually I’d get a better job over delivering baked goods and get a place of my own to live. A few months after living with them, they decided I’d worked my flank off enough, and decided to… do it.”

Memories came flooding back to Brandish, incandescently vivid, and unfortunately clear.

“Those ponies robbed me blind, Feather. Took everything I owned and just disappeared. I sat outside in the dark for hours until the sun rose, and when it finally did, the police had me hobble off with them. I thought they would help me, I really did. They put me in the holding cell, locked up for the night, and left me waiting. And I did. I spent two weeks in there—eventually they moved me to a cell—and told me they were still working things out; the place I had been working at had been robbed that night, and the owner had told the police that I was a primary suspect. It was a degrading month, and by the time they released me, I was a pony free of any charges, but everything wasn’t the same. Nopony would take my hooves after that, because every shop-pony had heard about the ‘colt who got away with the perfect crime.’ Nopony reached a hoof out to help me, so I turned my own back on them.”

He straightened himself, and peered down at Feather Felt.

“So if you wanted to know why I haven’t left Cloudsdale… it’s because I know what to expect from this place. I already know where to eat, drink, breathe, sleep. Life is routine, and I enjoy the routine. Even then, everypony’s forgotten about me and my past, and I could start over at any moment. I’ve had years to perfect life out here, and I’ve got it down to an art. I’m free in Cloudsdale.”

The filly’s eyes lit with a hot and unquenchable fire. “But… you’re not. You said it yourself; they put you in jail, and you stuck around your jailers even after they let you free. You’re not free, Brandished… you’re scared.” Felt licked her lips. “Scared that things might be worse out there. Remember when you told me about the griffons? Or the minotaurs? About the cows and the Saddle Arabians? You know so much about the world, but you don’t want to go see it.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to go see it, it’s that I refuse to live in it,” he strained.

“But you’re still here. We’re still on the same world, and we always have and will be. Can I just ask you to stay with me, please? We can live together: you, me, and mom.” Feather Felt gave Brandish a lingering smile and pressed her hoof gently to his chest. “You gave your trust to my mom, and I’m keeping my trust with you, okay?”

It had been an unfathomable amount of time, but Brandish once more found himself accepting the hoof of another pony.

“Okay,” he whispered. He wrapped his hoof tight around Felt’s own. “Okay…”

Felt squeezed his hoof in reply. “My dad taught me a trick to make a coffee that makes you ‘stronger, and lighter.’ Do you think maybe if I showed you how to make it, that I could persuade you to let me drink some coffee before we go?”

At this point, Brandish could only feel like Felt had just strong-armed him into letting her drink a mug of caffeine beyond a normal filly’s capacity. He let out a weak, yet guttural laugh.

“S-sure, Feltie. And you know what? Maybe I’ll have some, too.”

Author's Note

Time to hit the road.