Pinkie smiled out at the clear sky, high above the cloud line.
She could smell it, feel it, taste it even. Adventure, the start of something new! It was in the air. It ran along her coat and in her wild mane like electricity, and she couldn’t help but grin. As a sudden gust battered at her pink mane, she remained undaunted. The sky was hers, today. The day was hers, and this morning was hers. All was right. She was going home, and that was the way of the world.
The sun was rising behind her. She could feel its warmth on her back, and took it as a sign. It was time!
“Pinkie?”
She turned.
The stallion who stood in the doorway was wrapped up tightly, his clothing conceling all but his face. A smile played around his lips. Pinkie trotted back to him for a moment, a bounce in her every step.
“Hey! I was wondering when you’d be up, Mr. Wizard!”
“I am hardly a wizard, Miss Pie,” the stallion said with a chuckle. “I’m only an old fellow. I just happen to inhabit... strange environs.” He gestured around. “The Tower is a lovely place, but it is sometimes a bit empty. I was glad for your company.”
“I know. I’m sorry I have to go! But Dashie will wanna see me.”
“It’s quite alright.” He paused. “The Tower... you know, I think it would be in better hands if there were two curators.”
Pinkie smiled. “You silly, you can just ask me.”
“We are on the edge of the world, my good friend.” He looked away from her, out towards the clouds that were catching the first nascent rays of dawn. "I have loved my home away from the world, but my days grow late. I think it is time for my journey to the Walls of the Morning. I’ll go through the gate, and be in the Far Country. But the Tower should have inhabitants to share it. Will you return?”
“Of course!” she replied brightly, and surprised the old stallion with a hug. “Dashie will love it!”
The stallion at the edge of forever smiled and patted Pinkie on the back before releasing her. “Then I am content,” he said softly. He coughed. “Will this contraption of yours fly? It seems a bit...”
When he failed to find a proper word, Pinkie laughed. “Of course it will! It’s a Pinkie contraption and that means it always works! Unless it not working would be funny... but me falling out of the sky wouldn’t be funny right now! So yes, it’ll work.”
“And you will fly then, through the morning?”
“And the day, and the night!”
He nodded. “You truly are a remarkable mare, Miss Pie. Goodness. You created that thing in roughly three hours, and you’re convinced of its utility already! To be young.”
“Mhm! I’ve got the fires of youth in my belly, Mr. Wizard, and that’s the truth! I don’t even know what that means! Twilight said it once, maybe.”
“It’s true, despite your lack of understanding.” He sighed. “Well... ready?”
“Mhm! All ready to go. I was going to wait for you to climb all those steps!”
The two ponies walked to the edge of the overhang, where Pinkie’s strange apparatus sat. She patted the metal frame, glancing at the little dials. Truth be told, it was easy to build things on the edge of Eternity, with the sea of mountains to your back and the sun so bright in the fiery morning.
“It’s called a helicopter,” she said happily.
“Hm?”
“It’s a helicopter, silly! That’s the name.”
She climbed aboard, taking the throttle in hoof with a grin that defied the heavens. It was infectious, irresistible, like the wind or the tide. It was a force of nature, and the stallion couldn’t help but join in.
“Good luck, Mr. Wizard!” Pinkie cried as she pumped at her bizarre machine’s primer pedals.
“I’m not a wizard!” he answered, laughing over the sound of the whirring blade.
“Only wizards live in towers!” Pinkie insisted, but it was swallowed up in the noise and she lifted off, waving to him as she left the tower behind.
It went on forever. The Tower, the Last Tower before the Sea of Mountains and the Land, the one beyond sleep itself, and there was Pinkie, a tiny dot above the bronze clouds that also stretched on forever, it seemed. It was breathtaking, and Pinkie loved it, yes, but it wasn’t truly hers. Not yet. It did not quite take her breath away. She had miles to go, places to be, dreams to transverse. After all, how else would she get home?
So Pinkie set off west, towards Canterlot and then on home, to her own dream and the mare who no doubt lay sleeping.