The panorama of the scene unfolded before her. It had changed so much in 17 years, and in all that time she hadn’t dared allow herself to believe this day would finally arrive. Ponyville sprawled out beneath her, looking for all the world very much like a child’s model toy. The wind swept her mane, still golden but lately shot through with streaks of dull gray and exposed her face. She gazed at the sky briefly, the creases in her muzzle and the wrinkles forming beneath her eyes producing shadows in the bare sunlight.
She gazed over Ponyville once more, searching out landmarks. The town hall was the second largest structure in the town, and had been that way for some 12 years ever since that castle popped out of the ground one day. Well, it had been one of those days when the fate of the world seemed to fall into the hooves of six mares. She never knew why they’d been chosen, but she’d been glad they’d been up to the task. Every time.
The town hall had been the location of something else. Ponyville had collectively held its breath waiting for the day when either Lyra or Bon-Bon would finally confess their love to the other. The day they were married was close to the day of Princess Twilight’s coronation, it was such a spectacle it actually made the town’s newspaper. Cherry Berry remembered crying that day, glad she’d been alone in her balloon.
Of course, Ponyville had been the central nexus for so many pivotal moments of Equestria history it was hard not to feel pride as she looked down across the townscape, following it to the edge of town and Sweet Apple Acres. She’d been sad to hear the news about Granny Smith. She had at least been around to meet her first great-grandfoal, for a few weeks, and then she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Cherry Berry had been at the funeral, had paid Applejack and Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom her respects before returning to her home to continue working on her project.
The greater expanse of Equestria stretched out before her, Canterlot reconstructed on the side of the mountain, somewhere in a garden there was a statue. She dearly wished never to look at it again. Princess Twilight was capable, she knew that. She’d never question it.
The Everfree cut across the landscape like a great blanket, but it no longer seemed quite as threatening as it once had. Nothing about anything seemed like that anymore, but she felt something deep inside her stirring. She had to move, to get up and find her way to new places. Sitting idly in Ponyville had been okay, for a while, so long as she took to the air now and again so she didn’t stagnate. Today was a day she had marked on her calendar more than a decade earlier, when she was younger and in better health.
In the distance, she could make out the glistening blue of the Lunar Bay, and beyond that was the Lunar Ocean. The mountains had grown so small beneath her that she almost giggled at them. Size, she realized very early on, became something quite relative when she gained altitude. She didn’t feel all that small once she got up in her balloon, in fact she started to feel quite large. As though she could hold all of Ponyville, or Equestria really, in the cups of her forehooves.
It was so strange, to think that a rainbow had changed the direction of her life so completely. She had been happy at work on that farm, her Aunt Jubilee was an exceptional pony who had hired her without hesitation and never once stated any regret. Still, one morning as she prepared to harvest the north field’s cherries, the sky erupted in a ring of coruscating light and color that mesmerized her. Cherry Berry’s jaw hung slack as colors filled her vision, then those faded away and left her staring at the sky sketched in tans and brilliant blues all at once, and she knew then that she had to go up there to meet that sky.
What else could she do? The invitation was too vivid, too perfect, to ever consider ignoring. So she resumed her day’s work, and by the end she tendered her resignation to her Aunt Jubilee and within a month she had found a new home in Ponyville where she had the room to build her first balloon basket and balloon.
It all seemed like ancient history to her. She rested her muzzle on her crossed forelegs as she leaned against the edge of the basket of her newest balloon and watched the world shrinking and shuffling past beneath her. She didn’t look back, that would serve no purpose. She felt the air growing cooler as the world grew smaller.
Instead, she kept her gaze forward. The waters of the Lunar Bay approached, and soon she’d be out over the water. Until then she watched the image of the sun reflected in the glassy surface of that same bay, it shifted and shimmered with her approach. She noticed there were some boats out in the bay, Hippogriff fishing vessels? She wasn’t sure, they were too minute from this altitude to clearly identify.
The beaches weren’t occupied, the weather was too cool for it. At least, for most ponies. She supposed there might be somepony down there that she simply couldn’t make out. She took a deep breath through her nostrils, closing her eyes and feeling the chill of the thin air as she reached behind herself with her tail and released the valve on the burner, the envelope swelling slightly from the increase in heat.
In this way she continued, the quiet of the altitude her only companion aside from her own thoughts. She opened her eyes and looked down, smiling as she caught sight of several pegasi at play in the air. They were, themselves, so far down they resembled tiny flies at play. Clouds crossed the path of her view of them, and they too seemed insignificant, even lit brilliant gold as they were by the sun’s dwindling rays.
In this moment she had a thought and turned her gaze to look for Cloudsdale. Where was it positioned this evening? It was far in the distance, and below her, interposed between herself and distant Vanhoofer on the shore, and it was rendered like a scale model. Had she seen her rainbow from somewhere in Cloudsdale that fateful day? She wondered, oh she wondered.
She took a deep breath, heaved it out in a delicate sigh, and resumed resting her forelegs on the brim of the gondola and her chin on her legs. She closed her eyes and felt the chill continue to increase as her altitude did. The air was thinning, becoming chaotic. She felt it rattle her balloon and didn’t mind it at all.
She felt her mane and tail whipping wildly behind her as she remained sedate. Gold and grey intermingled but did not blend, the chilled air produced tiny bits of ice on her coat, but she paid this no mind. It was too wonderful to move so high, she dared not interfere. She had waited too long for this.
The bluster and intensity of the air current increased, the cold became more bitter, she ignored all of it. She kept her eyes closed, and her mind clear. She no longer needed to see below; she had been up here so often she could have illustrated the entire map of Equestria from memory now. The pink of her coat was pale, marred by flakes of frost and disturbed by the intense air current that also rattled the gondola of her balloon and whipped the envelope to and fro. She simply didn’t react to any of it, holding herself as the edge of the gondola and thriving in the sensations rather than being terrified.
She could visualize the great Everfree Forest appearing as no more than a minor stain on the surface of a teacup, easily wiped away with a rag in hoof. She pictured Canterlot’s new castle, stretched above the mountaintop, envying how tall she was now. She thought of everypony she left behind, of the mares and stallions she called friends and in whose joys she had been able to share.
The balloon whipped around terribly, but she remained steadfastly at the edge of the gondola and still safely within. The burner had cut out long ago, the balloon now simply carried by the fierce current of air. She paid no attention to where she was going, simply visualizing the landmarks beneath.
Now she saw the Manehattan skyline like a foal’s dollhouse set, the Statue of Neighberty hardly the size of one of their collectable action figures. Now it was Las Pegasus, shrunken like a city in miniature inside of a bottle. She smiled at the thought, feeling like a titan among ants. She swelled with a small amount of pride before she exhaled, her breath crystalizing in the chaotic air and being ripped to shreds.
She felt nothing more than serenity here, in this place too high for ponies to climb, in the chaos of the frozen air swirling around like the legends of Windigoes she had grown up with. She had waited for this. The cherry orchard seemed like forever ago, like telling her Aunt Jubilee she had dreams to pursue and needed to spread her wings, was little more than a distant memory.
The ring of rainbow light played vividly in her mind’s eye. The sheen of the clouds in the morning sky that day played as vividly as if she were standing in that orchard, gawking at it all over again. The cherries shimmering in the varicolored light hadn’t been noticed, she stayed in the sky and could think of nothing else. She cursed her earth pony body, and then she left.
The sun glared down at the balloon lost high above the clouds. Cherry Berry kept her eyes closed and took one final breath. It crystalized in the air and was lost to the chaos of the air currents. The pink envelope covered in stars and swirls was dragged to and fro through the air, the golden bordered, pink-painted straw gondola rattled horrendously, but her forelegs remained glued to its side.
And she was at peace.
