Tales of a Cloud

by Cloud

Gentle Rain

Hello. I believe I have need to introduce myself. My name is Gentle Rain.

I don’t know who you are, or how you found these records of mine, but I do know I most likely will be gone by the time you do. I… Am the only one left on this solitary cloud. I have been for some time, but even as I record this, the ground seems farther away than it ever has. Even the clouds above seem colder.

Things are happening around me. Great changes are beginning to take place in the world I have always been content to merely watch, and I fear that they may even destroy my own private world. However, that is a story for another time, and I shall tell it one day… If I am to see its end.

The story I wish to record here is my own, however.

When the pegasi closed the cloud curtain over a dying Equestria, not all of them were of a singular goal. Most retreated to the remaining cities, a great many clustered around the Single Pegasus Project towers, as though the ivory towers themselves could save them from balefire. Some feared the stripes would continue destroying out cities, and split away from our own kind – taking small clouds as homesteads, hiding away from the world.

I was born on one such cloud – as were my parents, and their parents before. As time passed, many of these small communities vanished, or returned to the then-forming Enclave. But not ours. Our small cloud stay suspended between the twisted landscape below, and the impassive curtain above. Caught in limbo, the denizens of this cloud simply watched the world change around them. Watched – and wrote.

I was born in a small cloud shelter by the edge. By that time, my family was one of two that remained on the cloud. By the time I could fly, we were the only ones. I spent my youth peering at the ground below – the miniscule ponies going about their tiny lives below. Living, loving, dying, it was all a strange and wonderful puppet show in my eyes.

By the time I earned my cutie mark, I began exploring the abandoned homes on what was left of the cloud. I found many things that intrigued me – notes, recordings, even small books, all recording things that happened on the soil far below me. I recall the time I came across a stack of maps one time, carefully rolled and stack next to a set of binoculars. I consumed all of these notes with great voracity, obsessed by the world below, and the lives of those therein.

I realize these days, with much sorrow, I never did bring joy to my parents with this obsession. The only time I could remember my mother’s smile is when I received my cutie mark – accidentally coaxing rain out of a ball of cloud I had been playing with. As I descended into the past, they descended into a dark depression.

Unaware of my parents’ slow fading, I set myself to the task of recording the notes I had gathered into whole and comprehensible stories. My mother passed as I recorded the unfortunate last days of a young zebra. My father grew ill, descending into an old and pain-wracked wreck as I recorded the strange tale of a rusting ship.

When I recorded the tale of a stable, wrapped in darkness, I faced my most painful decision. To end the life of my father. It was to be a mercy kill – he was no longer able to eat or drink, and my home was filled with the moaning of the wind and my father’s constant pain. It was supposed to be quick, a broken neck… But something… Went wrong.
I’m sorry. It was a dark day in my past, and I can remember the rain mixing with my tears as I heard my father choking to death.

It is not a point I like to reminisce on, but it is my story, and it must be told.

I did not mourn him. Indeed, I had read and written the tales of so many that went unnoticed and unmourned, it seemed unusual if one were to be properly given their last rites. So, with the heartless flick of a knife, I cut the last pony I knew from the cloud, and retreated into my notes.

I was alone, caught in that eternal purgatory of the cloud. I saw the world, but I did not interact with it, nor did it affect my own life, as I continued to make my records.

But now, my tale comes to a close. I have run out of notes to compile and stories to record. So I leave this as a final note – an author’s biography, on the last page of a book – as I look to record the world around me. As I speak, Fillydelphia is being rebuilt. The pegasi are slowly gathering above. Power changes hooves in Dise as Hoofington’s unearthly glow gains a new, and dangerous, vibrancy.

Things are changing, and I intend to live out the rest of my life chronicling these final stories. Because that is what I was born to do.

My name is Gentle Rain, and this is my story.

Author's Note:

...And thus begins Tales of a Cloud. This should set the scene nicely, as most stories hereafter will be similar in tone. Short, personal tales of the wasteland - and almost always depressing. I take a very dark approach to the Wasteland, so happy endings are not to be expected.
I do not intend to reach FO:E: Project Horizons - level gore and sex, but following stories will not shy away from dark elements either, so take caution when reading if you are sensitive to the like.

The next chapter will be a personal favorite of mine; A quiet dialogue in a Stable, deep underground...