Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had just left, and I sat alone, staring at the hairpiece that I had created. "Just like it's supposed to," as Dash had provided. Yes, one little montage and everything was fine. I'd be expected to style fifty-thousand manes, and then what?
I sighed, and pulled a quill and paper from the desk. She deserved this much.
"Big Sis,
I appreciate what you and your friends tried to do. I really do, but you don't understand the problem. You say you can take one step, then walk, then run, then fly.
That first step is actually quite easy. I have taken the first step many times in life. I have taken several steps, but...
Let's begin with those jobs you tried to have me do. You tried to find jobs that any pony could do. I can't understand how any pony wouldn't get horribly bored trying to dye rolls of fabric. It is the same with washing windows, and I won't even go into what Rainbows wanted me to spend all day doing. Did you really think I could soar in the sky doing that kind of thing every single day?
You keep telling me I am smart and talented, and that is what you see in my future. Saying that I could do anything if I just tried is just a flight of fancy, and a sugar-coated lie. It was also cruel, even if I know you didn't mean it.
You saw the hairpiece I made. Do you really think I could have done that if I had no training in manestyling? The class was only a few weeks long. Even I can last a few weeks.
It isn't fear of failure. It is more a fear of success. Yes, you read that right, fear of success. I just couldn't take one more day of doing the same thing all the time. Mare walks in. She chooses a simple flower braid. She is the tenth mare that week who wanted a flower braid. I gave one pony a similar manestyle to Cloudchaser, and I was fired.
I knew I was going to be fired. I chose to be fired.
I am envious of the lot of you, well maybe not Applejack. Let's take Rainbows. She really enjoys flying. I mean REALLY enjoys it, and you know what? She is supremely talented at what she does. She also has a cutie mark in it. In your own ways, each of you are very special ponies.
You can talk about flying into the stratosphere, but the stratosphere is really really high, and very few ponies can occupy it.
Most ponies settle. They don't have the skills, the talent, the temperament, and the opportunity to soar.
I applaud you and your friends for not having to settle, but most ponies drudge out their days doing a job that while it needs doing, isn't very intellectually stimulating, and doesn't make much of a difference in the big picture.
Some have a cutie mark that helps ease their lives of quiet desperation. Very few ponies can be truly unhappy doing what their mark asks of them.
While ma and pa were very permissive, and unwittingly fostered the situation I find myself in, I suppose I only have myself to blame. I thought of things too philosophically, and drank too deeply from the cup of introspection.
I floated from task to task like a feather on the wind, and things never came into focus. The deal was sealed when I got my cutie mark. Now I don't blame the mark itself. If it wasn't a good representation of myself then I never could have earned it.
I observed other ponies, compared myself, and found myself wanting. Nothing within reach was worth doing, and nothing worth doing was within reach. So I found myself doing just that, nothing.
It is actually quite easy to do nothing. It is like doing something, but without the structure. The princesses take good care of those who are down on their luck, so at least in the cities, survival is not an issue, so I bounced from city to city. I only left when the perception of me started to go from seemingly down on my luck, to that of a worthless layabout.
You might think that I enjoy doing nothing. Nothing isn't exactly enjoyable. It might be less odious than doing something that you don't enjoy, but it creates its own set of problems. It certainly doesn't contribute to self-worth, but I abandoned any attempt at that a long time ago. It just kind of is, in the same way as the pony doing it, and as odd as it sounds, it also carries with it it's own kind of stress.
I needed a vacation from nothing, and I decided to try coming home, again. It was always easy to take advantage of our parents. A little bravado and they fall into line like a row of doormats. Whether you consider it fortunate or not, you just happened to visit at the same time. I put up as good a front as I could, but, well you saw how it worked out.
So I guess our parents can be safely taken off my extended safety net.
I don't know where to go to escape from a vacation from nothing, but that is what awaits me.
Maybe I'll see you there someday,
Zephyr."
I read the letter to myself aloud, and imagined it was Fluttershy reading it. She was sad, but not devastated in my mind's eye, so I pulled a ribbon from the desk, tied the letter neatly into a roll, then wrote Fluttershy in flowing script on the outside.
I carefully put everything back in place so, save from the letter, it looked like I was never even in the room, then I slowly climbed down the stairs, glancing at the pictures on the walls with each step I took.
"I'm off to get some milk," I lied to my parents as I walked past them and through the door.
Then I left Cloudsdale, vaguely in the direction of the Crystal Empire.