At least Cloudsdale was always sunny.
Derpy shivered in the winter air, wrapping her wings around herself tighter. The patchy feathers did little to warm her up, but they cut the chill from the occasional high wind that raced through the alley. She shuffled backwards, pressing up against the wall behind her. The building sucked the heat from her spine but sheltered her from the wind, and so she stayed there until her bones throbbed in protest.
She looked up, out at the street beyond the alley, and then shook her head hard before trying again. She blinked rapidly, rapped her skull, and then finally managed to get one eye to come forward. Judging from the increased traffic, it was almost lunch time for the busy floating metropolis, meaning it was time to get to work.
She stood up and shook, knocking bits of icy cloud off of her hooves and preparing for the day. She flapped her wings and brought herself up into the air before cartwheeling and landing painfully on her neck.
While she lay on the alley ground, her meandering eyes floated up towards the sky before blurring with tears. There was the sun now, cresting over the tall shops of downtown Cloudsdale to bring some measure of warmth to the hidden lanes spread amongst the city. A fluffy cloud drifted by, and Derpy sobbed.
It looked so comfortable.
She longed to be able to chase it, wrangle it steady and nest in it down closer towards the warmer earth, but her vision had degraded too much. Every moment she spent in the air was a request for disaster. The wrong turn of her head, a moment of broken focus, even a blink could wrench her perspective away from right angles and lines to a melding world with no depth nor sense, and she would plummet and crash.
She had made it to Cloudsdale a few months back, desperate to get away from the rainy nights of the ground. That journey alone had almost been her last, but she managed short hops from stray cloud to stray cloud until she finally found herself on the main cumulonimbus. What would have taken a regular pegasus a casual half hour of flying had taken her two days. And now she was stranded here, out alone in the cold, bitless and blind.
She shivered again, realizing she was still staring at the sun through her hindlegs. With a flip she brought herself to all four hooves and then walked out, one leg dragging slightly, to the junction between alley and street.
A gust of wind blasted the grey mare when she stuck her head out past the shop she had been sleeping behind, and she recoiled. Back a bit, she decided. It wouldn’t be as effective for her as being in the other ponies’ way, but neither would losing all her bits to a rogue gale.
Derpy got to work, scratching a little divot in the cloud just where it met the sidewalk. She plopped down into it and dug one more little hole, and then placed a small, tattered, and faded saddlebag down into it. Normally there would be some ‘seed money’--a few spare bits designed to convince others to be a bit more charitable--shining in the bottom, but the other day she had spent the last of what she had on a bowl of carrot soup from a café across town.
“Stupid,” she muttered to herself. Why did she let her hunger get the best of her? She could have gone an extra day without eating. She wasn’t that gaunt yet, was she? She blinked, sending both eyes off and triggering a small wave of nausea. When was the last time she saw a mirror?
The bag stood open and empty, taunting her. In the back of her head, Derpy heard a vicious noise, a voice she recognized but didn’t know, hissing at her.
Useless. Stupid and useless. You don’t deserve carrot soup. Dirty clouds would be too good for you.
“Shut up,” she snapped, before clamping her hooves to her mouth. A pony had flown close to her with hoof outstretched, but had recoiled at her comment. Derpy stared at the stallion frozen before her, her eyes wide and glistening, her brow furrowed.
There was an ungodly long pause--at least to Derpy--before the stallion reached forward and, muttering “poor thing,” dropped a single bit into the bag and then flew off.
“T-thank you,” Derpy called after the stallion, but he was already gone. “...And sorry,” she whispered.
Blind and dumb.
She shook her head again and bit her lip, keeping herself from lashing out at this presence which berated her at every opportunity. A bit couldn’t buy her a plate of hay in Cloudsdale, but it might work as seed money. She shuffled forward a bit, leaning forward so her blonde mane caught the wind and whipped around her face. The cold stung her nose, but she stayed still, turning her head slowly, trying to catch an eye of one of the many passing pegasi.
“Charity?” she muttered. “Charity, please? Hello?”
For you?
“...Please stop,” she whispered.
A mare glanced Derpy’s way and then landed, walking up to her with a frown. Derpy looked up and, with the movement, lost focus on the mare. She shook her head vigorously again and then punched her temple hard once, twice, a third time, and finally one eye steadied, locking on the other pegasus’s gaze.
“Charity?”
The mare spit, the warm saliva catching Derpy’s cheek and sending her backwards with a shout.
“Nothing but a waste of Cloudsdale’s resources! Probably a cider hound…” she hissed, walking away as Derpy tried hard to wipe the fluid from her face before it froze there.
That, you deserve. Stupid useless blind dumb clumsy--
“Stop!! Stop it, please!”
She rolled around, clamping her hooves to her ears and kicking her legs wildly. Why did this voice hate her so much? Whose voice was it? Why did it come to her? She had already lost her job at the post office, lost her home to the bank, and lost her child to the state before the voice arrived. It moved in and set up office like a professional tenant in her brain. Every day, more of the same loathing lies seeped from it, cutting her deeper than the wind ever could.
It relented for a moment, and she dropped her limbs weakly to the ground, sobbing. What had she done so wrong? So many years ago, she could have been a junior flyer champion. She was fast and accurate and dexterous to boot. She even got her cutie mark during a bubble-popping speed trial! And then her eye started to shift, just a little, and all her plans for her future vanished like spilt liquid thunder. No matter; she accepted the hooves she had been dealt, and would continue to do so. When her esotropia got so bad she couldn’t do weather duty, she transferred to the post office. When her coltfriend left her pregnant and alone, she cared for Dinky with more love than two parents ever could have. When her corrective surgery failed, she smiled, said oh well, and went back to work. With every setback she would shrug, change direction, and carry on.
But now she was out of options. She had followed every avenue of maintaining a normal life, exhausted every sliver of a chance she had been given to take. Homeless, childless, a ghost amongst her kind. Forgotten by the world, she slept in alleyways and begged to earn enough for her to have a warming bowl of food once or twice a week, and all the while her wings grew weaker, her eye-turn grew greater, her skin grew more taut.
Just like everything, you made a mistake. Coming here was a mistake. You’re a mistake.
It was her voice this time, and she didn’t fight it. It was right. On the ground, at least for another month before the snow comes, she could at least forage for grass and flowers. The edge of the Everfree would maybe have enough shelter, and if she kept to green vegetation she could hopefully avoid being poisoned.
She sighed, and then rolled off of her now-numb back and looked forward.
Her saddlebag was gone; whether by wind or hoof she didn’t know. It didn’t really matter, anyways.
Just like you.
She stood up and turned around, then walked towards the end of the cloud bank behind the store. Craning her head around the edge, she identified one or two stray clouds she might be able to land on if she didn’t lose focus. Her wings stretched out, and ice slid off of some of the rear feathers. With a flick, she tested them.
Useless.
Hopefully not.
Derpy looked back at the street behind her and the dozens of ponies still racing by, occupied by all the tiny little busy details that come with working a job and supporting a family and making friends. She stared for a whole minute, waiting to see if even one of them would look down the alleyway and see her. When her eyes started drifting again and not one wayward glance reached her vision, she turned back to the plummeting drop before her and spread her stiff wings wide.
And then she jumped.
