Chapters “When I was younger, the world was bright, and full of imaginary scenarios that felt real to me. That’s the worst part of growing up, leaving that behind. So while I age physically, I don’t think I’ll ever grow up mentally. I don’t want to lose what little magic I have left.”
There was a bright explosion of light, and Pound Cake blinked a few times. The large hole in the house that was covered in a hard material to keep him from escaping into the wider world.
The prison that held him every night was no match for his wingpower. Buzzing up, Pound Cake looked down to see his sister still slumbering. Bah, she could wait. She was mostly boring, anyway.
The rambunctious colt flew up to the window, where he observed a hoof painted sky change colors as Celestia caused the sun to rise. Birds, or rather, large winged monsters from some of the ponytales that his parents and Pinkie Pie would read him, flew to and fro. Pound Cake envied them. How they could be free.
“But you can come with us, you know.” The little pegasus almost fell off the windowsill in shock as one of the purple and black feathered beasts landed outside the window, and unlatched it for him.
The windowsill broke into a cliff, and the drop below would plunge him deep into a ravine, where return was not possible. However, he knew he must brave it. The little foal psyched himself, and lept from the ledge.
The plunge was fast, but he stretched out his wings and began to pump them at full speed, bringing Pound Cake up in a sharp arc. His momentum carried him into a nearby tree, where a colony of strange yellow beings greeted him. The crawled about him, their irritated buzzing making it clear that they did not want him to invade their homeland. Pound Cake saluted, as he had seen Rainbow Dash do before, and dropped from the tree, once again pulling out of the fall at the last moment before being dashed across the treacherous rocks below.
A large breeze carried the curious colt off towards a large tree with a house built into it. Everypony was still sleeping, as it was a Sunday, but an odd looking scaly creature that Pound Cake had encountered only a few time before seemed to be staring off into the sunrise from a platform on the tree. The pegasus flew over to get a better look at the purple and green curiosity. He believed that such beings were called “Spikes.”
The Spike was still staring into the sunrise, as though trying to locate something. Pound Cake buzzed up beside him, looking off to where the Spike was looking. There was nothing significant at all about-
Wait. Yes, there was. The clouds... there was something beyond the clouds. He could almost see it, but he would need to get closer. What was it? It wasn’t the sun, it wasn’t the stars which shone like billions of tiny lighthouses at night, no... it was like there was another world, just sitting on the tops of the clouds... But he would have to get closer to see it.
Beginning his ascent up towards the clouds, he heard a surprised noise, like a cross between a grunt and a squeal of fear.
“What are you doing here?” The voice cut through the silence like a knife did through a piece of freshly cut cake. Pound Cake was able to make this simile as he had seen his parents cut cake, among other pastries, multiple times, and the voice of the Spike seemed to do just that to the previous aura of silence.
Cold claws grabbed his back hooves, and Pound Cake strained harder to try and fly up to the clouds. He needed to get to the clouds, he absolutely needed to find out what was up there...
“Geez, for a little colt, you sure are strong. Nearly took me up with you!” the Spike pulled Pound Cake down. The baby pegasi’s wings were tired. Talented as he was in both flight and imagination, neither of those two could stop the inevitability of his exhaustion. Glowering up at the Spike in disdain, he tried to find away to escape from the multi-colored reptile’s grasp. The Spike held firm against him, and carried him into the tree.
Inside, it opened up into a house. It was a bedroom, like the one Pound Cake was supposed to be occupying at the moment, but the shelves were filled with books instead of toys, and the bed was akin to the one his parents slept in.
Slumbering peacefully inside the bed was a purple mare. Upon her head was a horn, just like his sister’s. He had seen this pony before, but could not remember the name that was given to her. The Spike gently shook the mare awake.
“Twilight... wake up, Twilight...”
Ah, so this was a “Twilight” then.
The “Twilight” turned over in her sleep, and grumbled something about the moon, that large orb that hung in the night sky, lazily drifting across it though the night per Princess Luna’s will. The Spike shook the unconscious unicorn once more, and this time she lazily blinked herself awake.
“Spike, what is- why do you have one of the Cake’s children?” the mare looked confused, as well as shocked and sleepy, all at the same time. Pound Cake couldn’t help but giggle. The expression was very amusing.
“Well,” the Spike began to tell her “I was out on the balcony when-”
“Spike, I thought you were over this. I didn’t know you were still abducting foals to use in an army to overtake Equestria!”
The Spike was very confused by this. “What? That never happened!”
The Twilight shook her head, and yawned sleepily. “Sorry, I’m not fully awake yet... still, why do you have one of the Cake’s children?”
The Spike explained as to why he was currently in possession of the Cake’s colt. After the overview of what had happened, the mare deduced it would be best to return the colt to its creators, that is, his parents. After a brief walk to Sugarcube Corner, the Cakes were relieved to see their foal to be ok.
“Thank goodness you found him! When he wasn’t in his crib, we... panicked!” the reassuring voice of his mother thanked the Twilight and Spike. Pound Cake was hoofed over to his two parents, and he was put back in his room, where Pumpkin Cake was chewing on the edge of a building block.
Pound Cake wanted to convey what had happened to him to his sister, but not knowing the art of speech hindered this process. It was torture, being able to understand most of what adult ponies, or really anypony who could talk, said and yet unable to articulate those words to tell back at them.
So, Pound Cake headed over to the wall of toys and other things that Pinkie Pie, their pink playmate, had been sure they were well stocked on, and pulled up a piece of paper. He then headed over to the paints (foal safe, of course), and opened them with his mouth, dipping his hooves, and tail into, and spread it all about the paper.
In the end, due to his relatively poor motor skills, the painting was far from a masterpiece. But the pigment tainted paper held a feeling of... emotion. The left side was blue, mixed with a black, that faded over to purple and orange, which gave way to the bright yellow of the sun. The colors blended together, making it seem messy at points, but a good messy. A beautiful messy.
Still, it was a foal’s painting... it left much to be desired, and in no way was perfect. Still, an emotion could be felt behind it. Pound Cake brought his sister over to show her the painting. She stared at it for a few moments, as if in awe. Then, she giggled, and topped the orange paint all over the work of art. Pound Cake stared in dismay at his ruined art. His sister was obviously not one for the finer things in life.
“You picked the insects off plants... no time to think of consequences...” - MGMT
“Oh, grow up! You’ll never go anywhere if you stare up into the clouds, wishing you were up there!” -Anon
Time slipped on. Funny, how it works, spinning its way all around you, always making more of itself to make sure you’re never left behind from its consequences and rewards.
So was it that six years later, Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake were walking home from Ponyville Elementary when the following events occurred.
“Ever since Cheerilee got together with Big Macintosh, she’s seemed... distant,” Pumpkin Cake remarked. Pound Cake preferred not to busy himself with things that his sister was worried in. They seemed trivial.
He knew he was something special, something different. Ever since he was a little baby, ever since he could remember, something about the clouds always struck him as... fascinating. He was very artistic, and showed much wisdom, insight, and creativity than most seven year olds. His parents were proud of this, until his “creativity” began to affect his grades. He wasn't learning as fast as the other fillies and colts, and he was very spacey, as if his head were elsewhere.
“Well, he has certainly changed much since he was a baby, hasn't he?” was Mrs. Cake’s only remark to her child. Pound Cake always managed to keep up with the group, academically, at least, sometimes if only just barely.
However, during art is when he true colors shined. Sugarcube Corner was covered in various drawings and paintings of his, made during art and class time alike. Some were abstract colors, blended together to make an aesthetically pleasing piece, and other more concrete, and real. There was always one thing that they had in common. They had to deal with the clouds in some way. Sometimes simply a cloudy sunrise, other times a world of clouds, a whole city, like Cloudsdale.
When Cheerilee was telling her students about the other towns of Equestria, and Cloudsdale was brought up, Pound Cake immediately started paying more attention than he ever had in class. Cheerilee had noted his talk of “a city in the clouds” before, so she knew this would catch his attention.
When shown a picture of what Cloudsdale looked like, Pound Cake did something out of the ordinary. He simply shook his head and told his teacher “I feel like I always needed to go there... but that’s not what it’s supposed to look like at all!” After this, Cheerilee and the Cakes wrote off the colts obsession with clouds as a part of his pegasi instincts to go to the hometown of most pegasi. Pound Cake knew there was something else to this.
So now we return to the afternoon in which the Cake twins traveled home from school. Pound Cake had been recently given a blank journal to him from Twilight Sparkle.
“I know how much you like to draw and paint, so why not give writing a try?” Pound Cake had been scribbling in the thing all day. When Cheerilee took it away from him during math, she noticed it was all either drawings of cloud cities that were drastically different looking than Cloudsdale, or poems about clouds. Short, little lines about their fluffiness, or their ever-present allure.
“Anyway, Cheerilee seems... happier than before! I guess Big Mac was really her very special somepony after all, how romantic.” Pumpkin Cake sighed dreamily, and Pound Cake knew she was recalling the story that Scootaloo, Applebloom, and Sweetie Belle, some of their older friends, told every Hearts and Hooves Day. Indeed, it had become sort of a town legend, amongst other things Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, and several other mares that frequented Sugarcube Corner were involved in.
Pound Cake ignored Pumpkin's dreamy wanderings, even though he often had many a day himself, and examined a long flower that grew aberrantly from the side of the path. It was a sunflower, Celestia’s own favored plant, and it stretched its petals upward, soaking in every ray of solar energy it could.
A butterfly alighted the center of the flower, and Pound Cake stared into the glorious sight. For he did not see a simple butterfly on a sunflower. He saw a faerie warrior, resting on a Flowered Castle, simply taking a breather while waiting to push onward in his quest. Pound Cake was so enamored by this, that he had to write it down in his journal. He sketched the warrior, complete with a sword and bark-and-acorn armour. he drew the organic castle, giving it its own staff to attend to it. He wrote small details about how the castle came to be, and about the faerie warrior’s personality.
The faerie warrior took flight as a colossus decimated the castle. Pound Cake glared at his sister, who was now covered in dirt from falling into the patch of soil where the sunflower used to grow.
“Oops. I slipped. Now the sunflower’s gone...” Pumpkin grinned sheepishly. “Oh well. Another one will grow!”
Pound Cake gritted his teeth in frustration and annoyance, his eyes narrowing as he followed his sister. Did she not have any respect for the history of the place she had just ruined? Three generations of Ladybug nobility alone were lost due to her actions!
Pound Cake recorded this tragedy on a new page in his journal, and trotted off after his sister back to their home.
“Your memories fade, like looking through a fogged mirror...” -MGMT
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” -Carl Sagan
“But why though? Why should I leave them behind? Even though they’re in my head, they’re real to me!” -Anon
The sky knight rode his trusty cloud dragon stead as they clashed against the smoke fiend. A large gash was torn into the sky as the knight’s sword slashed. The smoke fiend lashed out at them, but they were quick. The cloud dragon dodged the raking claws of the smoke fiend. Then, the whole scene was decimated by a hoofball clonking Pound Cake in the head.
“Hey, Pound, watch it! Stay off the field while we’re playing!” Pound Cake didn’t find it fair that he was the one who had to leave. He had been their since earlier that Saturday morning, staring at the clouds, imagining the battles all day. Then, they showed up to play a late afternoon hoofball game, and forced him off of his favorite imagining place. That wasn’t fair to him...
The pegasus was now thirteen years old, and in Middle School. He would be off to Highschool next year. Whoopy.
His parents had been disappointed in his disinterest in athletics. That’s what pegasi were supposed to do. they were supposed to be all rough-and-tumble, preparing themselves for a life as a weather controller, or some other job focused heavily in flying. They were not supposed to be writers, poets, painters, or dreamers. Pound Cake guessed he had let his parents down there.
Heading back home, he recorded the events of what happened in the sky throughout the day in his journal. This wasn’t the original that Twilight had given him so long ago, but rather the thirteenth one he had gone through. He embellished some points, and downtuned others. Finally, after a few minutes of viscous scribblings, he was ready to work on paints.
Taking a brush in his mouth, he got ready to paint the scene of the sky battle. just as his brush touched the paper, something most peculiar happened.
His inspiration vanished.
He blinked, confused. What had just happened? The image was so clear in his mind, but now, it was murky, tainted, lost... he tried desperately to recall what had been there just moments earlier...
It was gone. Pound Cake ran, terrified, to his journal. He scanned through it, reading over the details. But he just couldn’t manage to bring back up the image of what he had before.
The confused and lost pegasus had never encountered this before... his own world, the one he saw... it was slowly draining from him, everywhere he looked. Where he used to see whole civilizations, a garden merely filled its place. Old manors with sinister characters simply became rundown, empty houses. The clouds...
Oh no. Not the clouds too. He took flight, soaring into the clouds, frantically searching for what had been their before.
It began to rain, as though the world itself knew that his inspiration was gone, its twin imagined by the pegasus dying and fading. At the back of his mind, he knew the weather ponies were making it rain, because they were on a schedule, not because he was losing his world. Pound Cake alighted atop of a cloud, and cried himself to sleep.
He awoke to be still on the same cloud, but he wasn’t alone any longer. A grey pegasus with a cockeye was staring down at him. Pound Cake recognized her as the mailmare. She had been showing up at Sugarcube Corner every Sunday to deliver the mail, even though the post was supposed to come on Saturdays.
“What do you want?” The pegasus didn’t answer his question. Instead, she kept looking him over, observing him. Pound Cake felt a bit awkward.
“Right, um, so I’ll just-”
“You’re different.” The mare’s voice was soft, like somepony blowing bubbles, if that was even possible. It was calming, and soothing. It seemed to have an undertone too, like somepony had changed it from something else.
Pound Cake didn’t know how to react to this. All he could do was stare back into her derped expression. He could see sadness, happiness, and a mishmash of countless other emotions in those eyes.
She opened her mouth, and spoke. “Even when you think your world has ended, it hasn’t. It’s just hiding, like the sun does behind the clouds during a rainstorm. Don’t let anypony try to change you from what you really are, Pound Cake. It’s great to be different.”
The mare put her hoof on Pound Cake’s shoulder, and he could feel a surge of energy as the word seemed to brighten, and change. He looked down, not to see Ponyville, but instead a volcano just about to erupt, which changed to an arctic tundra, then to a tropical beach. Best of all, when he looked back at the clouds off in the east where the sun rose, he could see it again. The beauty which lay beyond, somehow out of reach. The colt looked back at the mailmare, who smiled.
“Everything’s magic.” The grey mare flew away, off to deliver some mail, Pound Cake assumed. Looking back down, he saw Sugarcube Corner, but he could feel the inspiration coursing through him. He swooped down into a window of his room.
He had a painting to make.
“There’s only one way for my imagination to truly prosper: As a writer. So, give me a pen and paper, and I’ll write you a whole world!”
“Come on Hobbes, let’s go exploring!” -Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes
“Sure, one day we’ll meet up again, on the moon!” -Johnny, To the Moon
“The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.” -Kurt Cobain
“And that, Mares and Gentlecolts, is why you should visit beautiful Cloudsdale!” The ponies in the room all clopped their hooves. It was a room full of pegasi, waiting to be let out of school.
It had been three years since Pound Cake had nearly lost his inspiration. Since then, he had never let it go, and his grades showed that. Often times, he would hand in a test with nothing on it but a storyboard of doodles. Pumpkin Cake had decided to pursue a career in the hoofbeats of her parents, decorating cakes and baking pastries, but still attended high school as to not be thought of as a dropout. Pound Cake did not find that path to suit his needs, but neither did High School. But, he didn’t want to disappoint his parents even further than he assumed he already had by not attending high school.
The bell rang, and the pegasi all filed out. The teacher put a hoof on Pound Cake’s shoulder. “Mr. Cake, Principal Chalk would like to see you.”
Principal Chalk was a ruthless old stallion, whose mindset was still one of all. Unicorns were to pursue the higher things in life, earth ponies the more demanding jobs, and pegasi the athletic ones. Dreading every step he took closer to the old unicorn’s office, Pound Cake thought of what caused this. Obviously it was his failing grades, what else could it be?
Heaving a sigh, he knocked on the Principal's door. “Come in,” came the curt voice of the old curmudgeon.
Pound Cake walked in, trying to avoid the hawk-like glare of the Principal.
“Sit,” he commanded, as though Pound Cake were a disobedient dog. Pound Cake refused, and instead responded.
“Why did you call me up here, sir? Is it about my grades?”
The old unicorn sighed. “No, Pound Cake, although they leave something to be desired. No, what this is about is your career choice.”
Pound Cake stared at the Principal, uncomprehending. Chalk went on.
“You see, as a pegasus, you really must take a path as a weather pony, or a hoofball player, not a poet or an artist, like you seem to want to do now.” Principal Chalk spat the words poet and artist as though they were poisonous.
“Woah, woah, woah. You’re saying just because I have wings, I shouldn’t be able to follow my dreams?”
The Principal snorted disgustingly as old ponies tend to do. “No, what I’m saying is, find different dreams more appropriate for your species-”
Pound Cake turned his back to Chalk. “I don’t have to take this. I’ll become whatever I damn well please.”
Chalk’s face turned red. “Not in my school, you won’t! I’ll have you expelled!”
“Fine! Do it! I don’t give a crap about your stupid school, anyway! I’ll go on to become something great, something better than an old bigoty unicorn who spends his time huddled behind a desk in his rank office!”
Chalk’s face had passed into magenta. “Get out of my school.”
Pound Cake opened the office window, and flew out, stopping by the second floor to pick up his stuff where he left it. What would his parents think? Getting kicked out of school like this?
The pegasus looked back at the clouds. What was there that had enticed him so much? He had forgotten recently about the mysteries of the clouds. Sure, it still sometimes appeared in his works, but all in all, clouds had drifted to the back of his mind.
What was there, in the clouds, beyond Cloudsdale? What wonders could he find? Thunder Worms, cloud dragons, sky knights, all of his fantasies?
There was only one way to find out.
***
The next morning, Mrs. Cake woke up to notice most of her son’s painting’s were missing from their spots on the wall. When she went to open the shop she found a letter on one of the tables. She wasn’t concerned about her son yet, who often disappeared for days without explanation, but at the end of the note, her disposition to this changed.
Dear mother and father, and Pumpkin, and Pinkie, and whomever may find this- I’m gone already. Don’t try to follow me out. I’ve left for the clouds. What’s out there? What’s waiting for me? I have to find out. Thanks for all the loving care and nurturing over the years. My finale parting words are, as a great mare once told me-
It’s great to be different.
-Your son, Pound Cake
Mrs. Cake’s eyes filled with tears, and she ran outside, looking out, already knowing he was long gone. Why had he done such a thing?
Breathing heavily, she went back inside and cried at one of the tables. Her son, her only son... gone. Potential customers took one look at the grieving mare and decided it would be best to come back another time.
As Mrs. Cake continued to sob, Pumpkin Cake showed up. “Mom? What happened?”
Mrs. Cake sorrowfully handed her daughter the letter. Pumpkin Cake read over it, then scowled.
“Mom, Pound was always crazy. It was just a matter of time before he did something like this.” Seeing how this just made her mother cry harder, she patted Mrs. Cake on the back. “Hey, now. Come on. This is what makes him happy! Who knows, maybe he’ll become a famous writer, and return here one day!”
Far off, somewhere in the clouds above Cloudsdale, a pegasus landed lightly on a cloud. He looked around, Thunder Worms, cloud dragons, and sky knights all beaming down at him. He set down his various journals and paintings, and took a pen in his mouth, and began to write.
Chapter one...
