Rainbow followed the highway as it wound through the rugged hills and tree topped rocks that passed for mountains in Appalachia. The road wound back and forth so often that she started to fall into a rhythm; left, right, left, right. Occasionally, the highway would disappear into a tunnel under a particularly troublesome mountain and reemerge on the other side. When they did, Rainbow simply flapped her wings a few times and fluttered over the mountains before dropping back down and following the road again.
She did try to fly through one of the tunnels just once. Nothing more awesome than dodging trucks and vans while flying at a hundred miles per hour, right?
She was just proud that she didn’t slam into the side of the Taylor truck she was racing when she finally reached the exit and the sun on the other side momentarily blinded her.
On the other side of the tunnel it was mostly clouds, so Rainbow stayed low to navigate. On her left, to the south, the mountains rose up again, but to the north, they fell low into open plains and gently rolling hills. She slowed her flight just enough to take it all in as she passed. Farmland covered everything she could see, with a few small roads connecting them together. Mountains rose again a fair bit to the north, but the valley was a nice change of scenery from the hills and highway she’d been staring at for the past hour.
Ahead of her was one last tunnel, and then everything began to open up. Most of the mountains were behind her now, and out ahead, they slowly declined into broad hills and uneven terrain. Beyond that was a city, somewhat hidden in the midday haze. But there were tall buildings there, and where there were skyscrapers, there was food and a place to rest. She’d need that; a brief look at her map showed that she wouldn’t be stopping until she was in the next state over, at least.
The highway devolved into a complicated mess of branching roads, toll lanes, and mergers, so Rainbow decided to just fly straight toward the buildings in front of her. It was much easier that way; she didn’t have to mimic the contours of the land to the follow the roads. After passing over a few more hills, she finally found herself over buildings and houses; over real civilization.
She sought out a place to rest her wings for a moment, and there was no better place she could see than the building in front of her. It was a tower of concrete sculpted and molded to mimic stone and the gothic cathedrals of Europe—or so she’d heard, at least. She was pretty sure that cathedrals were shaped like crosses, not squares, and she knew that they weren’t supposed to be forty stories tall. But she wasn’t going to complain; she’d have some peace and seclusion for as long as she wanted it, and she could see all of the city beneath her from way up there.
She actually had to flutter up a little bit as she got close to the tower; she’d been drifting and gliding since coming off the highway, and she’d lost more altitude than she expected. But once Rainbow got to the top of the tower, the view was impressive, even with the dreary overcast overhead. She could tell she was on a college campus of sorts; three round buildings that looked like dorm buildings stood clustered next to each other not too far away, and the squat concrete buildings all around her had people with backpacks walking in and out almost constantly. Back to the east, a wide open lawn surrounded by Baroque buildings must’ve been the center of another campus. Even more buildings loomed to the west and east, adding to the overall feeling of eggheaded-ness.
Twilight would’ve loved it here.
Something fluttered up after her and began squawking at her, and Rainbow shuffled to the side a bit as a peregrine falcon landed on the railing next to her, hissing and squawking. Rainbow noticed a big nest jammed into the crook of the crenellations and decorations on the building, holding two large eggs—obviously she was intruding on the mother’s territory. “Alright, alright, I’ll leave, sheesh,” Rainbow said, holding her hooves up in a placating manner and spreading her wings. The falcon hissed at her once more, and shaking her head, Rainbow leapt off of the tower, spreading her wings and gliding across the city.
Her stomach rumbled at her, and she realized just how late it must’ve been getting. Food was the new priority number one, so she landed on a busy street, looking for something to eat. She got a few surprised looks from college students, and several of them pulled out their phones to take a few pictures or videos of her. While Rainbow normally loved the attention, she was a mare on a mission, and that mission was finding something good to eat.
A nearby door opened and she smelled something good cooking inside, so she trotted up to a building with a green awning in front that said “Primanti Bros.” up top. She stepped inside and looked around, but there wasn’t a waitress or anybody to take her to a table. There was an upper level, though, so she simply flew up to the balcony overlooking the bar below and found a seat. After a minute or so, a waitress came up and passed her a menu, and she looked over it before ordering a cheese-combo sandwich. Normally cheese sandwiches would be kind of lean eating, but all of their sandwiches came stuffed with coleslaw and french fries, so she figured that’d be enough to last her for the night at least.
Maybe two nights, once she saw how enormous the sandwich was. It was way too much for her to eat in one sitting, even after a day’s flight, so she ate half of it and stuck the other half in a box. It’d make a good lunch tomorrow, at least; she didn’t need to worry about it keeping that long. Even only half of the sandwich was a lot for her to eat; she felt stuffed afterwards, so flying fast was out of the question. At this point, she figured that she might as well find someplace to stay the night.
She payed for her sandwich and left, then spread her wings and took to the air again before she had to stop and talk to any college students. She had a reputation as the fastest pegasus alive, and she definitely wasn’t going to be able to live up to that moniker after the feast she just had. So she continued west, flying over the city, looking for someplace to crash for the night. Unfortunately, most of the trees here were kind of sickly and thin, and the further toward the rivers she got, the dirtier everything felt. All the old buildings were stained black with soot and ash; it looked like a dragon had come by a long time ago, but as far as she knew, Earth didn’t have any dragons. But they had myths about them, so maybe they were out there and just didn’t show their faces. Or maybe they’d killed them all long ago; that was sad to think about, but a lot of human fairy tales had to do with knights slaying dragons and rescuing princesses.
Which was absurd. Celestia or Luna would be able to beat a dragon with one hoof tied behind their back.
In front of her, two rivers joined together before flowing further off to the west. It was strange to watch them mix; one was brown and muddy, while the other was blue, so she could clearly see where the two rivers became one, where the smaller brown river disappeared into the bigger blue river.
She realized that the whole city had been built all around these rivers. It would explain why there were so many bridges everywhere, but couldn’t the humans have just chosen someplace more convenient to settle down?
She followed the river for a little bit, not wanting to sleep near the city. The noise of the traffic and the lights of the buildings would keep her up way too late, and the light pollution meant that she wouldn’t even see the stars at all. So she flew and flew until she came to a complex of old buildings along the river. Curious, she flew down closer to get a better look, and hovered over them as she made sense of what she saw.
There were a lot of old, long buildings, with rusted roofs and roads overgrown with vegetation. Tall brick smokestacks stood silent, dead, and a few vehicles had been abandoned near the buildings, their sides collecting rust. At one end of the complex, just inside the barbed wire intended to keep people out, a massive pile of twisted and rusted slag dominated everything around it. The piers reaching out into the river like fingers were decaying, collapsing, no longer receiving shipments off of huge boats or sending their product down the waterways to where it was needed most.
The slag and the furnaces told Rainbow that this must’ve been an abandoned steel mill. The city was once legendary for its steel output, but all the mills had packed up and gone overseas long ago, leaving it a shadow of its former self. It would explain to Rainbow why the city felt so dead and dirty, like it too was falling apart just like the mills on its rivers.
Pony cities were much happier, she decided. They weren’t always overcast, and the colors of their denizens helped brighten the streets.
The sun was going down now, and yawning, Rainbow descended to the mill. As much as she would’ve liked to have slept on a cloud, the wind was blowing west to east; she would’ve lost her entire day’s progress in a night of sleeping and have to start over again. At least the mill was abandoned and quiet. She could get all the rest she wanted to here.
She snooped around some administrator’s office for a bit before finding someplace mostly dry and clean to sleep for the night. Plus it had windows and skylights; she could easily bolt it out of there if she absolutely needed to. Though really, what would she have to fly from? About the nastiest thing in the mill was probably the rats. She didn’t see any herself, but the droppings lying around told her that they had to be pretty big.
But she couldn’t keep herself awake any longer. Yawning, she threw her supplies down and curled up on top of them, using them like a makeshift mattress. It certainly wasn’t the best bed she’d slept on, but it wasn’t the worst, either. So, closing her eyes and dreaming of a magical, far-off place, she finally drifted off to sleep.
And in the morning, she took wing again and flew off with the sun on her back, casting long shadows on the river beneath her.