Decaying Breeze

A few months after Zephyr wrote the letters and mailed them to Sunburst, they arrived. Each of them thankfully was in good condition, especially the ones addressed to Zebrica, but the information that they had wasn’t.

Because the information those letters had was the same even if they weren’t identical; Hippogriffia was slowly running out of shards to give to their children and they were rationing them out now with more than a few becoming precious family heirlooms. The vibrant flora and fauna of the Zebrica continent was becoming rarer with time as cities grew and the ambitions of their citizens and people did. All the while the freshwater lakes in Griffonia slowly shrank and the fish stocks of the coasts slowly decreased as well. The stepping stones for what Zephyr guessed to be an apocalyptic event in the making. The source of which he suspected was the factories and the industrial plants everyone was building nowadays.

However nothing truly bad was happening yet, only just a few events and promises that had to be kept for some and a change in prices in a few areas, but Zephyr could tell something terrible was going to happen eventually, something that he was afraid only he knew about.
“ It all just seems so…unreal,” he said to himself in his home, once his parents had passed down to him by being the only one willing to accept it. “How could this even happen in the first place?”

Well, maybe it just wasn’t in everyone's minds then. After all, we did the uhm…..you know, he thought to himself as he gestured out the window not wanting to discuss the past few decades that he had gone through in his early twenties. Yeah, maybe it just wasn’t in everyone's mind back then. We were all so busy with the war, with the revolutions, and you know what that it never even crossed our minds on how the factories and the weapons we were building now were slowly hurting us in the long term. After all, why should you worry about the future when you have to worry about today?

“But this is the future,” he found himself arguing with himself as he looked out the window and watched the rain slowly make its way down while the sour and acid smell pricked his nose. “It’s been over four decades since the world turned over and already I can feel its effects, not entirely, but it’s still there. The heat, the smell, the defects, and more. Will this be how it’ll always be when that time comes? Will the days always be hot? Will the rain always hurt my wings and feathers? Will there be a new generation of unicorns, pegasus's, and earth ponies like Sunburst? Ones who could never use magic even though they were surrounded by it all their lives?

But you won't be alive by then, the thought in his head, much younger than his, echoed back to him. It’ll take decades if not centuries for that to happen. Why should you care about that right now?
“Because I,” he found himself trying to word out. “Because I care?”

About what? the voice in his head told him as he looked around his empty home. About some trees that you’ll ever see, about some children that you’ll never be with, or a world that never did anything for you? Please, we both know how that’ll go between you and me. Let’s not argue about it here and now.
“I-I guess,” Zephyr found himself sighing before he looked at a letter confirming the minor occurrences of bleached coral in Hippogriffia, “but still. How long will this go on until it reaches the end? Will this…disease, if you can call it that, just keep going on until we face a global crisis that threatens to swallow the world whole? Will that be the end of it?”

Who knows, his thoughts told him as he looked at another letter outlining the occurrences of what was going on in Zebrica aside from the flourishing industrial market that slowly choked their skies and caused the spread of asthma whose writer never thought to link the two together. But whatever that'll be, it’s going to take a long time for it to happen.

“I suppose, “Zephyr agreed with himself as he began to sort them. “But the question on my mind is then, what now? Should I do something about this and get the word out to people? I might not know anyone these days, but maybe if I advocate it in public or talk to people about it they’ll listen. Maybe we can do something about it before it’s too late.”

Or, the other part of him said. We could just mail it to some college or some institution that’ll know better than us. They’ll probably know what to do with this. Maybe they could even give you an award or something if you were the first one to catch it.

“Yeah,” he agreed with a nod to do so at the very least, “yeah they would. The only question then is with that out of way is, what do I do about it personally?”

Both parts of him shrugged at that question. One leaned towards simply carrying on with his life as normal, the other advocated for action, but neither of them had the will to put up a fight with the other. They were just too tired, and too old, and their feelings on the matter came from the one person who could live their lives with utter neutrality and apathy. One that Zephyr knew would overpower him in time if he let it.

So knowing his feelings on the matter, Zephyr produced a small coin that he had in his room before holding it in his hooves.

“Alright,” he told himself as he held it in his hooves. “Heads yes, tails no. I feel like whatever we do here won’t amount to much, but it’ll at least give us something to do and maybe it’ll do someone some good. Hopefully, give whoever is on the receiving end of this mess some hope that we tried to fix things before they went so wrong.”

Right, the other part of him thought, and even if we don’t do anything. At least we can say that someone will know about this in the end, someone that isn’t just us. Someone who hopefully cares.

“Yeah,” he said as he held the coin in his hooves as he judged its weight, “hopefully.”

With a flick of his flick of his hooves, Zephyr sent the coin flying through the air. The golden bit came to a perfect arc as it flew flipping once, twice, thrice, seven, nine, ten, twelve, and more as it did so. Eventually landing on his desk on a letter that had a picture of a giant hole that he couldn't make any sense out of.

So ignoring the letter and focusing on the coin Zephyr peaked at it curiously and noted its result. Eventually nodding to himself so that he could gather some resolution and drive, and did what it told him to do, even if it didn’t seem like the best decision in the world.

“Hopefully, this at least mean something in the end,” he told himself as he got to work, hopefully.