Address Unknown – by Remedy
Chapter 1 – Doomed From the Start
Scattering from a darkened sky mottled with gray clouds, a myriad of white specks drifted downward, lazily blowing and swirling in the gentle breeze passing through Ponyville. An onlooker might have stopped to admire the sight, enjoying what could have been the beginnings of a crisp winter morning. Nopony, however, stopped in appreciation of the work of the weatherponies today. That it was the middle of summer, and no weatherponies were causing precipitation of any kind, was the main reason. The deluge of white was of a papery variety and unexpected by anypony on land or in air, except for those employed by the Cloudsdale Mail Delivery Service, who immediately knew the cause of the unannounced flurry of envelopes.
“Ditzy Doo!”
A furious voice cut through the air, reaching the ears of a gray pony who was trying desperately, but unsuccessfully, to blend in with the underside of an ashen colored cloud. The poorly hidden mare clenched her eyes shut, shuddering at the use of her proper name. Only those about to berate her used it, yelling like an angry mare does to her foal before threats of punishment begin to come out. Resigning herself to defeat, she abandoned her attempt to remain concealed. Slowly and with reservation, Derpy lowered herself from her hiding spot, her head drooped low and her empty mailbags slung haphazardly over her back.
She steeled herself for the onslaught to come and managed to gulp out a hesitant “I’m here, Boss."
Crafty Crate barreled toward her with raging, black eyes narrowed to pinpricks.
“What in Celestia’s name are you doing?” he demanded. He barely managed the restraint needed to hold back from cursing obscenities, succeeding only due to the audience that the outburst had gathered. “You already consistently mangle packages and misread addresses, and for the third time this month you’ve dropped your entire bag of deliveries!”
Without raising her head, she peered back at her fuming boss with apprehension.
“A side wind caught my bag while I was looking for my next stop…” she trailed off, meekly. This was only a half truth. She left out the part about how long she had been looking, carelessly ignoring the wind as she flitted this way and that, vainly trying to gather her bearings. Although she did not think it was possible, Crafty’s eyes narrowed more, burning her core as he delivered his own message.
“Once more, Ditzy. Just once more and you can find a new line of work to fail at.” Her eyes dropped, cringing once more at hearing her name. Crafty Crate barked orders to all mailponies in the area.
“Every single one of you! Quit gawking and get down there to collect that mail!” Glaring at Derpy he quietly growled, “And as for you, you will not stop working until every single envelope you dropped is accounted for and delivered - correctly this time.”
It felt like an eternity passed over the next several hours as Derpy scoured the area for any errant mail she could find, her mind wandering as much as her eyes tended to. She had earned the nickname ‘Derpy’ as a filly. Flight school in Cloudsdale had not been particularly kind to her, but oddly that was the one insult that she had been happy to earn. ‘Derpy’ exuded an aura of clumsiness, and it gave the impression that she was accident-prone and uncoordinated. This certainly was true of her as her severe case of strabismus caused her extremely impaired depth perception. The problem resulted in difficulty in almost all aspects of her life, from flying to simply walking straight.
As a filly it was not uncommon for her to walk directly into objects straight in front of her, and it had taken her years of adaptation to learn to function as close to normally as she could. Ditzy Doo, however… she shuddered again. Her real name always implied to her that she was stupid. Senseless. Irrational. “Featherbrain," she muttered to herself, as she picked up what seemed to be the last of her lost cargo.
“Featherbrain Ditzy! Featherbrain Ditzy!” echoed the voices she had heard so often before. She gladly accepted being called ‘Derpy’, as she was comfortable knowing that she was utterly lacking in grace and agility. To be immediately discounted as the village idiot, however, was the ultimate insult. Unfortunately, it was one she had grown all too familiar with.
It was past nightfall as Derpy made her way slowly home, exhausted from yet another disastrous day at work made worse by the extra hours she had endured gathering the errant letters. She was thankful that Raindrops had stayed to help her longer than most of the other mailponies had, even though much of the search had been in silence as Derpy quietly mulled over her past failures. Raindrops was one of the few ponies she could think of as a friend, though perhaps even that was a stretch of her imagination. They did not spend time together outside of work, and even during work they seldom talked. Derpy supposed that there must have been something about dropping an entire load of heavy items on Twilight Sparkle’s head the previous summer that had pulled them a little closer - the two butterhooves of the mailponies.
She managed a small, bitter smile recalling that day and the barrage of threats of personal injury Crafty had thrown at the pair. She had spent the rest of the day building up the courage to apologize to Twilight, but ultimately had decided that it was in her own best interest to wait until the damage she had inflicted on Twilight had healed. In hindsight, that had been a good decision, because she had heard some days later that Twilight and her friends had unwillingly spent some time with a hydra during that same day. Derpy was glad to have missed that particular event, but had spent the next week apologizing profusely to Twilight every chance she had.
At the very least she had expected a malicious glare, a jabbing insult, or a snide comment questioning her ability to fly right side up. Then, of course, the barrage of humiliation and mockery would start - crossed eyes in imitation and feigned absurdity that everypony knew would obviously accompany such a walleyed stare. It would be the same kind of derision every other pony she met had given her at some point or another. However, to her surprise, Twilight had laughed the event off and had forgiven her instantly. Derpy had not been expecting that kind of graciousness, not even remotely. Since then, she regarded the unicorn with a quiet sense of awe and wonder.
That was in the past, though, and in the present she was still the same clumsy pegasus, still butterhooved as ever, and still, thankfully, somehow, employed in the service of mail delivery. She sighed and hung her postal worker’s hat and CPS mailbags on the wall. She glanced at the logo on the bags. Cloudsdale Postal Service – We’re on our Wings to Deliver Your Things! It was a tasteless logo, really. Derpy sighed again and trotted wearily off to bed.
Sleep did not come quickly. Derpy lay in bed staring at the ceiling for seconds, or minutes... possibly hours, she wasn’t sure which. Her thoughts turned to past attempts to restore some semblance of normal eyesight. She had been to every optometrist that practiced in Ponyville and Cloudsdale alike. All of them easily identifying her problem, but were never able to offer a solution.
Exotropia, they had called it - a form of eye disorder that occasionally developed in foals. Caught early enough it could be treated with relative ease using eye exercises and glasses, and even if the condition progressed further it was relatively easy to treat. In her case, however, the problem had progressed more rapidly than anypony had seen before. She sighed softly to herself as she recalled the collective prognosis from every doctor she had seen: untreatable. Her condition had gone uncorrected for years and had manifested so quickly that there was virtually no chance of improvement. Even surgeons had refused operations, deeming them too likely to cause permanent damage or even complete loss of vision. The end result had always been the same: learn to live with it. She sighed again.
Her hoofsteps padded across her cloud floor as she made her way to bed, and her eyes strayed around the room. Most ponies had some sort of decoration adorning their bedrooms, and Derpy was no exception, although her choice of posters strayed from the usual selection of role models, favorite performers, or art. Her physicians had all assured her that any effort to improve her vision would be futile, but Derpy had insisted that she take something with her from each unsuccessful appointment. She lay on her bed, intensely concentrating on the eye charts used to test vision that she had obtained from every doctor’s office she had visited.
They were tiled across her ceiling and walls, papering almost every square inch of open space she could find. Every night she would stare, simply trying to clearly discern letters in the jumbled mess. Eventually she would drift off to sleep until work came the next morning, just as she had been doing for years. After all those years, staring every night, she still had not been able to clearly read any letter other than the giant ‘E’ adorning every chart.
Tonight was different though. Tonight she looked, but even the largest letters were blurred as she gazed through the haze of tears, silently trailing down her cheek and pooling on her mane. Once again she had made a mess of things, and everypony would add another tally mark to the list of catastrophes caused by ‘Featherbrain Ditzy’. Her solitude and isolation were ensured by every added mark. Her mind had created a small cell for herself, a prison that closed itself around her slowly with every mistake. Nopony would choose to stay by the side of an accident waiting to happen.
She wanted nothing more than to break out of her mental prison, to find somepony who could see past her walleyed look and frequent misfortune, but in all her years an exit from that penitentiary had never come. Her hope had constantly lingered though, refusing to give in completely to despair.
She blearily cast her eyes around the room, intent on making progress even though she knew deep down that it was a lost cause. Still, she practiced on. If she could improve her vision then just maybe she could break away from the cycle of disaster. It was the only hope she had left. Practice may not always make perfect, but sometimes practice makes acceptable.
****************
The sound of thunder echoing through the clouds greeted Derpy as she woke to what she expected to be just another day in the dull grind of work. She had forgotten that the weatherponies had a scheduled storm for the day, and was at least thankful that mail delivery in Cloudsdale usually meant little to worry about in the form of rain. After all, living on top of the clouds didn’t lead to much precipitation on their routes aside from the occasional lower level homes.
Her night’s sleep had been restful for once. She had feared that she would be plagued by nightmares, occasionally woken in an abysmal and terrifying semi-consciousness before plunging back into her horrific dreamland. She surmised that her exhaustion and anguish the night before had at least provided her with a rejuvenating rest, and grabbed her hat and mailbag before heading out to the post office for another routine day on the job.
The expectation of a routine day was short lived. It was shattered the moment she entered the office to find Crafty Crate waiting for her, an impatient and borderline malicious look on his face.
“Hope you’re ready for some rain, Derpy. After yesterday, I’m putting you on probation, or whatever you’d like to call it. You’re delivering in Ponyville today. Depending on how well you do, or in your case, how badly you screw up, you may end up being demoted to ground delivery indefinitely.”
He sneered as he watched the mare’s face change from a smile to a blank stare, and then to dejection and defeat as he laid down his ultimatum.
Delivering mail on the ground for a pegasus was extraordinarily embarrassing as it announced to the world in general that you had botched your job miserably in the air. Not only that, but she would be forced to work in the middle of a storm with the full knowledge that her superiors were watching her every move.
Derpy involuntarily shrank back as the implications sank in, much to the sadistic delight of Crafty. With a cruel grin, he tore the Cloudsdale mailbag from her hooves and stated simply and heartlessly, “Ponyville Mail Office. Get going.”
The terse command signaled an end to the one sided conversation, and Derpy slowly turned and trudged back out the door. Her gaze never deviated from the ground as she began her slow and wet descent into Ponyville. Behind her a callous voice called out from the receding post office. “Enjoy the weather, Derpy. I hear it’s a wonderful day down there.”
Derpy entered the building in a state of dishevelment, her pale yellow mane and tail drenched and sagging straight to the floor. She sheepishly looked up to find her temporary supervisor smiling over at her.
“Welcome to the Ponyville Postal Service!” Post Haste greeted warmly. “I had heard we’d be getting some additional help today. What’s your name, miss?”
“Derpy,” the ashen pegasus replied, somewhat dejectedly. She reflected that Post Haste obviously hadn’t been informed whom he was getting to help him, given his pleasant demeanor.
“Ah yes… I heard you had a bit of an accident yesterday. We found a few of your letters on our routes and returned them to some pegasi who were out looking for them.” He smiled again. It looked unsettlingly genuine. “Welcome to the Ponyville team, Miss Derpy.” At this warm reception the pegasus could barely muster a response.
“Derpy is fine, sir,” she mumbled, astonishment washing over her. He had heard of her… and he wasn’t angry to have her thrust into his staff, even though it was supposed to be a punishment for her.
“Come on now,” he continued. “Sir isn’t necessary here. You can just call me Post. Follow me, and I’ll show you your route and get you a mailbag.”
At least they seem nice enough, she thought to herself. Just keep out of trouble for the day, and maybe your coworkers will stay pleasant while you’re here.