Decaying Breeze

They said it was because he was old, slow, and at his age, over sixty, that the amount of magic that a pegasus could have was lower than it was during their youth. It was expected for a pegasus of his age to have a bit of trouble flying, using magic, and all sorts of things that they could do when they were a child or a young adult. That he should just accept it and to move on with what he had left.

But Zephyr knew different. Unlike many others his age he kept himself somewhat in shape, he walked, he ran, he did his presses, his stretches, and the usual things that someone of his age could do to keep himself in shape. It worked well and he could run laps around the average late sixty-year-old, but even then he felt something was wrong in the air, terribly wrong.

He didn’t know how to describe it, but if he had to he would say that it felt like a sort of invisible decay. A noxious smell or a faint odor that you could never really tell was there unless you started to pay attention to it and focused on it. Because if you didn’t, then the world felt like it was telling you that things were alright; that everything was calm, the weather was clean and cool, and all was right with the world.

But it wasn’t, it just wasn’t, because he could tell that things were wrong. The weather didn’t feel right anymore, the wind felt hard to move, the gusts that he could do as a child felt stiff now, and things overall…just felt wrong. Was the late fall weather as warm as it once was when he was a kid? Did kids no longer play around in the skies and instead walk or drive everywhere they could? Didn't they used to just fly from place to place when they needed to? He didn’t know because of how often he stayed inside these days, but a part of him told him that if they weren't then things were wrong.

“Maybe,” he said to himself as he walked around on his usual morning trips, “maybe I’m just imagining things. Yeah, yeah, maybe I’m just imagining it.” Running a hoof through his hair, which was thankfully still intact, he hummed to himself as he looked around at the factories and the power generators around Cloudsdale, and watched as they burned through what he could guess to be thousands of pounds of gems and fuel a day to make the modern things that a person needed today: TVs, radios, cars, medication, toys, and nearly everything that a person could imagine. Each of them pumping out columns of odd-colored smoke and ash into the surrounding air that if he smelled made his lungs cough and wheeze.

And watching them slowly dissipate into nothing Zephyr watched the skies slowly grow dark as a team of pegasus came in to bring Cloudsdale its share of water and air from the National Weather Bureau. A fact that he took with a mixture of light scorn and dread.

“Should probably head home soon,” he said as he watched the team slowly begin their work while dressed in their rubber suits. “It’ll be raining soon and last time I got caught in the rain my feathers hurt for a week and a day. Hmph, should have paid attention to those warnings from the news on not staying outside.”

So making his way home on hoof Zephyr watched as cars, trucks, and every vehicle that he could imagine made their way through the streets. Each of them filled the air with noise, smoke, and the acrid taste in his tongue that could never go away now. In time, his former thoughts died away as he looked forward to a vacation that he had been planning for a while, a trip to the Crystal Empire.

I wonder what I'll see when I get there, he thought to himself as he passed by a puddle and looked at his old complexion as he collected his thoughts, probably snow, snow, and more snow. I haven’t seen any good snow for a while so it’ll be nice to see some for once in my life.