The clouds were in no rush to cloak the mountains, where snow and fog still veiled each summit. A fleck of blue dances among them, a brief flash of color accompanies this and it too is gone, vanishing into the chilly thin air. These mountains had names once. They were taller, their great peaks spearing the sky and towering high above the defiant pegasi who dared to surpass them. The wings of the creatures not fit to attempt to brave the heavens where many said they could truly breathe never reached what was even higher. This is where only the best could soar, right between wherever it was that one's coat began to freeze, becoming streaked with ice crystals and the arias of the wind were replaced by the sparse gasps of one's own breath only for the wails to resume in a heartbeat. Its size rivaled a dozen islands. The mortals of present times could not construct sixteen scale replicas of Manehattan on the largest cloud-state and even come close to capturing half of its surfaces.
Silvers, pinks, grays, oranges, purples, and blues came before white was even thought of. The city roared and rumbled, held together by the work of millions of pegasi and their gods. They laughed at the griffins in the mountain ranges below, whose homes were built upon the rocky veins pulsing with magic. The pegasi may need certain food from below, but to live there? They scoffed at the notion.
It was in times like these that a winged warrior like them could fight seven wars in the sky without ever knowing the feeling of the earth below one's hooves.
The mare who comes here today hardly resembles many of the veterans that lived then. Only her spirit is the same. She has come close enough to the mountains to taste rock in the air. Snow tries to cling to her form, but her speed brings only oblivion to the small flakes. Her coat is not bitten by them, only the wind knows her fur.
The powerful magic of these pegasus ponies of the past was bitter and brutal. Trails of color streaked across the sky and it would be laughable to call them ribbons for there was no delicacy to this ability. Colors whizzed across the sky then, and the ones at the front of such comet-like occurrences transported weather to all the lands as well as clashed in a territory that belonged to none but them. Even the dragons and most of the gods preferred frequenting other areas in the sky. Never did they live there like the pegasi, who had even managed to grow quite a few staples up there in the sky. Such knowledge is lost today.
The pegasi, loud, brash, and loyal were the ones who shepherded the weather on long tours across a level where only they lingered. Those of their kind who wished not to follow the more military life did not have to. Some left for the ground, the more artistic of these warriors tried their hooves at crafting weapons, words, and weather. Others became criminals, battling against their brethren as bandits.
It wasn't a life for everypony, but for those who chose it, nothing could be better.
She flies down among the mountains she saw. This particular range, a blur of silver and white was halved in the fall. The stone beneath her hooves is almost smooth at points, like the shades of an oil painting, with very little texture to be found.
Of course, she won't remember, if any do it all.
A great fire burned, and the city-states were no more, for a Collapse swallowed the Old World. Each column was lost to destruction and every one of the Alicorn gods of the sky wished they fell there with Aerogard, not in the harrowing aftermath. Ponies were lost as well, and those who were left forgot the fire of strange colors that managed to burn the clouds and bring a dead silence to the sky.
As it fell, soaring to the ground below the mountains not broken by the gods' battle, it hit the land where the rainbow mare now stands. It crumbled and sliced, wearing the rocks smooth.
Rainbow Dash is closer to the summit's shadow now, and here she finds a chunk of cloud scarred deathly gray. This rubble is made in the ways of old, which are not even fairy tales to her generation. It was petrified by time and fire. She holds it in her forehoof. A faint pattern is on it and while it faintly reminds her of Cloudsdale she cannot accurately place the pattern. She knows only that this feels like a sculpted cloud even if the method is not known to her.
There are others like it here, buried beneath it all.
They all had names: the ponies, the cities, the tales, the art. Every one of them had a name.
And now they are gone.