All the balconies in Zephyr Heights have nets on them.
Pegasi love balconies, and high bridges. That’s why Zephyr Heights was constructed the way it was. The loss of flight incentivized pegasi to develop the advanced steel and concrete construction technologies required to build tall buildings. These vertical mansions needed elevators, and for that electricity was needed. Shouting between floors became a hassle, which required a form of remote communication. Wires to aid in royal “flight” required careful understanding of lighting and flight dynamics.
Every detail of Zephyr Heights is carefully thought out by a league of urban planners. Many generations removed from the last fabled generation of pegasi who could fly.
You’ll never see the nets around Zephyr Heights. They’re cantilevered horizontally from the edge, just below the railing, such that it catches anything or anypony that may fall over the edge. The same lighting technology used to conceal our royal "flight" wires is used to camouflage the nets from public view. Most well-behaved citizens walk across the pedestrian bridge ten stories above, peer an inch over the railing, and see nothing but a sunlit expanse of blue sky and golden rooftops before them.
They stop to take selfies of the scenery, hooves and wings outstretched with smiles on their face like they are flying.
Darkness conceals all. But sometimes an alluring light can conceal even more.
All children in Zephyr Heights have a “I wish I could fly” phase.
Followed by crippling depression, once they realize they will never be able to fly. “The Airborne Blues”, or whatever euphemism the family magazines make up to sell more copies.
Then what are wings for!?
Then what ARE they for!?
(How many times have I heard those questions playing in my four-year-old head?)
Foals know that this is not how things should be. Grown-ups dismiss them as foalish.
Soaring in the sky, amongst the clouds.
Something that makes me so happy should not kill me.
As long as we have wings, we shall have the Urge. It’s something ingrained in the mind of every pegasus. An urge that, so you’ve been drilled into by your parents, is definitively fatal if acted upon. But you don’t know it for sure, you see, until you try, and then it’s too late.
Most pegasi suppress their Urge. They grow older and become distracted by my sister’s cheery livestreams, royal gossip about what hat Mom will wear to yet another gala. We give our citizens screens to occupy their minds with the harmless and mundane.
But some citizens stay stubbornly curious. They’re the ones with their noses pressed against the glass windows of their twentieth-story “cloud apartments” that they broke the bank to afford. They’re the ones who lean a little too far out on the railing of the ten-story high open “sky bridges”. The light catching at an unpredicted angle, making a few strands of the steel netting visible to their eyes.
Unlike royal "flight" wires, we make no effort to deny the nets' existence. If asked about them, we tell them they’re for protecting the public below from any phones or keys that get dropped over the railing, thereby protecting your devices and preventing head injuries down below.
And while that explanation satisfies pretty much anypony, nets do not contain the Urge.
For us pegasi, curiosity kills.
The nets stop the killing. But curiosity never dies.
When I was in my teens, I made a habit of going out for an early morning walk before light.
That’s when I saw the jumper.
I rushed in the direction of the building, bounding through the maze of streets towards the fifty-story condominium where it happened—one of the tallest, most luxurious condominiums in all of Zephyr Heights. I eventually reached the street, blocked off by a deck chair being used as a makeshift traffic cone.
“Princess Zipp!” The street sweeper hastily straightened himself to bow.
I motioned with my head for him to get up from that silly pose. “What happened here!?”
“…”
“As Crown Princess of Zephyr Heights, I order you to tell me.” Of course, at 16 years old, I didn’t have the same powers as my mother. But who bothers with that at 4:45 in the morning?
“Pen knife.” The street sweeper picked it up off the ground. “They landed on the net, and then cut it.”
Wedged in the hinge was a note on a torn corner of paper. All it read was,
stayed curious
In a barely legible script, next to brown stains that smelled like a mix of brandy and my sister’s new perfume line.
They jumped from so high, it took three street sweepers covering three blocks to clean up all the blood, stray feathers, and loose jewelry. Like I said, luxury condominium.
“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked.
The sweeper worked the night shift all his life. “Just nights like these…makes me think of my foals a lot.”
I nodded.
“My youngest is two. I yelled at her last week for trying to leap from the top of the dresser. I need to be more firm with her. Otherwise she’s gonna get herself hurt.”
Even with my help, the street sweepers could not scrub all the blood spatter before morning came.
When the sun illuminated every corner of the ground.
And their spatter became the Alluring Light.
The news quickly spread. On the TV, on our citizens’ little phone screens. Hundreds of ponies gathered on their balconies and on sky bridges to observe the commotion.
And while most ponies could not unglue their terrified eyes from the endless droplets below, I bet there was at least one pony in that crowd, maybe two, who wanted to add to the cleanup.
They did not want to die. They just had the Urge.
How could I tell?
Their eyes, although sad, had a tiny glimmer of hope as they stared into the Alluring Light. Just like me.
Curiosity shall kill us.
But the hope it gives us keeps us alive.
Author's Note
stay curious
