It was yet another sunny summer day in Ponyville. There wasn’t a cloud in sight and the life of the town was evident everywhere. Ponies moved out on the streets in their masses, conversing and enjoying the sunshine.
Somewhere, high above, the pegasi flew freely through the skies, creating their aerial displays for the unicorns and earth ponies far below. The fastest of which flew circles around her fellows, leaving a trail of Rainbows behind her as she looped, spun and twisted gracefully through the air without a care in the world.
Further above the non-existent clouds and dancing pegasi, a lone unicorn watched, perched high on her carpet of magic and obscurity. She watched them all with longing and envy as they laughed and smiled, free to enjoy the unlimited potential of the sky.
No-one knew she was there, she’d been careful to make sure of that, hiding herself carefully so that a pony looking for her would only see the sun directly above her, not her silhouette against the skyline.
She’d made a promise to herself long ago, that she’d stop doing this, that she’d stop watching her friends and neighbours with envy as they flew freely through the sky, that she’d stop searching for a spell to give her wings and let her soar.
She’d succeeded in half of that promise anyway. One part of her desire was a pipe dream; there were no spells, no potions or ancient magical rituals, that could abate her desire. She’d turned to science, flicking through several journals on the genetics of pegasi and unicorns, looking for a treatment for her aching heart.
She’d turned to her friends, two of which were pegasi and one of which flew below her at this very moment, turning circles around the rest of her race and leaving her tell-tale trail of many colours. She’d not told them what she was doing of course, she’d done that once before, talking to a pony she’d considered a friend.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Unicorns are not meant to have wings, you were born with magic inside you, some of the most powerful magic I’ve ever seen in a unicorn, and you want to give it up? For what? A chance to fly and perform tricks in the air?
He hadn’t liked her answer all those years ago; she doubted he’d have changed his mind since. But she’d never told another soul again. She’d never trusted her mentor enough to spill her secrets and dreams, one secret among many. Her friends had no idea, how she secretly envied two of them for something which she could never have.
And she planned to keep it that way. She’d invited the fasted flier in Equestria and the kindest pony she knew into her house, asking to examine their birthrights for a project. They’d never suspected a thing. Anatomical drawings, the constituent parts of a feather and numerous x-rays and measurements could not help her.
They were somewhere below her now, hidden deep within the archives of her house. Somewhere that no-one would ever know about. They wouldn’t understand anyway, they’d just be like that other unicorn, they’d question her and call her wrong, a freak, for wanting something that she could never have.
But what did it matter? There hadn’t been a single possibility; she was stuck, a pegasus, born a unicorn and trapped on the ground far below. What good was her magic if she couldn’t do what she wanted to do with it?
But again… it didn’t matter. She’d been careful to hide her longing and her envy from everypony, allowing herself these small breaks where she’d indulge in her desires and grasp her own slice of the sky. She knew that she was the most powerful unicorn in centuries to appear in Equestria, she knew she was a national asset, that if she gave up her affinity for magic through a horn, she’d be gambling with the elements of harmony.
Born as the most magical unicorn in decades, born a bearer of an element of harmony. It wasn’t fair. If she hadn’t been either of those, no-one would have given a damn as to what she perused. It was a farce; she’d never been given the choice of whether she wanted to be a bearer or not, but it’d happened, and her dream was further from her reach than ever before.
And again, it boiled down to the elements of harmony. She’d studied each individual characteristic in detail after she’d first encountered them, looking at each individual trait and how they all represented a particular slice of harmony within ponies.
Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity and Loyalty. Five of the six elements that kept harmony across Equestria, borne by five friends which had stood by her through thick and thin. She wondered what they would have said, to the bearer of Magic as she gave up her horn for two wings.
Would they have encouraged her? It was somewhat likely, she could hardly imagine that the flier of their group would have been disappointed with another friend to share the limitless skies with.
Or would they have shook their heads at her and called her wrong, abnormal and stupid for wanting to be something she wasn’t. Well… maybe they wouldn’t have gone that far, but the stakes were too high.
Another glance down showed her that the display was coming to a close as the pegasi all fell towards the ground, landing to the cheers of the audience below, audible even from all the way up here. She almost thought that she could see one of them puff her cerulean chest out as her ego swelled.
Almost.
The sun had moved in the time she’d been up there, but she wasn’t worried about being spotted, she was too high in the darkening sky for them to see her without careful searching. Not that they’d look up and search for her anyway, but she was getting off-topic.
She stood on weary legs and looked around herself. She was so high up; she’d had to be to make sure that none of the aerial stunt team below would find her. She shivered in the cold air and smiled self-consciously. There was always this to look forward to though. At the end of every week, she’d make her way up here, using a specialised teleport to a carefully concealed cloud.
She’d wait for night to fall, as it had started to do now, when the sun was far, far away from her. That would be when she’d jump into oblivion and fall, down, down, down, before her wings of light and magic would unfold and twist her into flight, high above the ground below and cloaked in the shadowy dusk of twilight.