the Urge
All the balconies in Zephyr Heights have nets on them.
Pegasi love balconies, and high bridges. That’s why Zephyr Heights was constructed the way it was. The loss of flight incentivized pegasi to develop the advanced steel and concrete construction technologies required to build tall buildings. These vertical mansions needed elevators, and for that electricity was needed. Shouting between floors became a hassle, which required a form of remote communication. Wires to aid in royal “flight” required careful understanding of lighting and flight dynamics.
Every detail of Zephyr Heights is carefully thought out by a league of urban planners. Many generations removed from the last fabled generation of pegasi who could fly.
You’ll never see the nets around Zephyr Heights. They’re cantilevered horizontally from the edge, just below the railing, such that it catches anything or anypony that may fall over the edge. The same lighting technology used to conceal our royal "flight" wires is used to camouflage the nets from public view. Most well-behaved citizens walk across the pedestrian bridge ten stories above, peer an inch over the railing, and see nothing but a sunlit expanse of blue sky and golden rooftops before them.
They stop to take selfies of the scenery, hooves and wings outstretched with smiles on their face like they are flying.
Darkness conceals all. But sometimes an alluring light can conceal even more.
All children in Zephyr Heights have a “I wish I could fly” phase.
Followed by crippling depression, once they realize they will never be able to fly. “The Airborne Blues”, or whatever euphemism the family magazines make up to sell more copies.
Then what are wings for!?
Then what ARE they for!?
(How many times have I heard those questions playing in my four-year-old head?)
Foals know that this is not how things should be. Grown-ups dismiss them as foalish.
Soaring in the sky, amongst the clouds.
Something that makes me so happy should not kill me.
As long as we have wings, we shall have the Urge. It’s something ingrained in the mind of every pegasus. An urge that, so you’ve been drilled into by your parents, is definitively fatal if acted upon. But you don’t know it for sure, you see, until you try, and then it’s too late.
Most pegasi suppress their Urge. They grow older and become distracted by my sister’s cheery livestreams, royal gossip about what hat Mom will wear to yet another gala. We give our citizens screens to occupy their minds with the harmless and mundane.
But some citizens stay stubbornly curious. They’re the ones with their noses pressed against the glass windows of their twentieth-story “cloud apartments” that they broke the bank to afford. They’re the ones who lean a little too far out on the railing of the ten-story high open “sky bridges”. The light catching at an unpredicted angle, making a few strands of the steel netting visible to their eyes.
Unlike royal "flight" wires, we make no effort to deny the nets' existence. If asked about them, we tell them they’re for protecting the public below from any phones or keys that get dropped over the railing, thereby protecting your devices and preventing head injuries down below.
And while that explanation satisfies pretty much anypony, nets do not contain the Urge.
For us pegasi, curiosity kills.
The nets stop the killing. But curiosity never dies.
When I was in my teens, I made a habit of going out for an early morning walk before light.
That’s when I saw the jumper.
I rushed in the direction of the building, bounding through the maze of streets towards the fifty-story condominium where it happened—one of the tallest, most luxurious condominiums in all of Zephyr Heights. I eventually reached the street, blocked off by a deck chair being used as a makeshift traffic cone.
“Princess Zipp!” The street sweeper hastily straightened himself to bow.
I motioned with my head for him to get up from that silly pose. “What happened here!?”
“…”
“As Crown Princess of Zephyr Heights, I order you to tell me.” Of course, at 16 years old, I didn’t have the same powers as my mother. But who bothers with that at 4:45 in the morning?
“Pen knife.” The street sweeper picked it up off the ground. “They landed on the net, and then cut it.”
Wedged in the hinge was a note on a torn corner of paper. All it read was,
stayed curious
In a barely legible script, next to brown stains that smelled like a mix of brandy and my sister’s new perfume line.
They jumped from so high, it took three street sweepers covering three blocks to clean up all the blood, stray feathers, and loose jewelry. Like I said, luxury condominium.
“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked.
The sweeper worked the night shift all his life. “Just nights like these…makes me think of my foals a lot.”
I nodded.
“My youngest is two. I yelled at her last week for trying to leap from the top of the dresser. I need to be more firm with her. Otherwise she’s gonna get herself hurt.”
Even with my help, the street sweepers could not scrub all the blood spatter before morning came.
When the sun illuminated every corner of the ground.
And their spatter became the Alluring Light.
The news quickly spread. On the TV, on our citizens’ little phone screens. Hundreds of ponies gathered on their balconies and on sky bridges to observe the commotion.
And while most ponies could not unglue their terrified eyes from the endless droplets below, I bet there was at least one pony in that crowd, maybe two, who wanted to add to the cleanup.
They did not want to die. They just had the Urge.
How could I tell?
Their eyes, although sad, had a tiny glimmer of hope as they stared into the Alluring Light. Just like me.
Curiosity shall kill us.
But the hope it gives us keeps us alive.
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well that "indefinite hiatus" didn't last long
splat
Second paragraph: that is some bucking serious worldbuilding right there. I would applaud, but I don't want to interrupt and risk breaking the spell.
...
Motherbucking bucking buck here's my well-earned upvote.
btw I don't know what you were doing with that 1001 word length, but I assume you knew what you were doing and why, whether you might have simply missed an event deadline and said, 'what the heck,' or if it's deeply symbolic.
11256378
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for leaving a comment!
Not sure what this means.
I figured Bicylette already had their hooves full with the shiitake-ton of submissions, and my last-minute story would just add to the mountain. Also because when I'm depressed I can barely finish a story to the Fimfiction minimum of 1000 words.
11256394
I was just imagining if I was watching someone tell this as a story. I would be afraid to applaud and risk interrupting or 'breaking the spell.'
I'm HOPING the contest's exact 1000 word length rule was intentionally chosen to make wrangling a large number of entries somewhat easier.
As for what I meant, I was imagining that perhaps the 1001 word length, by barely missing the 1000 word target for the "A Thousand Words Contest," was symbolic of somepony wanting to do something but coming up a little short (or just a little too heavy to fly) partway through.
Woah.
11256732
Woah is me
Yet Zipp was the only pony we ever saw studying aerodynamics. I had always thought it odd that the pegasi managed to invent smart phones, but not even the most primitive of heavier-than-air flight technology.
Can’t imagine how long it would take to cut through steel netting with a pen knife. Hell of an amount of determination required either way.
It takes a lot for me to even glance inside a story with this many red tags, because grimdark, tragedy, and sad times and I are not friends in writing. But, as others here have said you have some really interesting world building here that should be applauded.
I don't like dark themes for the sake of dark themes, and this isn't that—it's perfectly realistic (to real life, anyway) that intelligent creatures born with non-functional wings would encounter depression and other hurdles with mental health, self-esteem, etc. I myself have lightly depicted this with Zipp in my own writing. So, well done!
Hm that seems to be counterintuitive... Getting a solid whack on the floor from dresser height is surely healthier than trying it from the tenth floor... AND it is a firmly teaching moment. ^^;;
This story makes sense. That’s really the best way I can put it.
It’s just so immensely captivating, I want more, but at the same time, don’t really see more as necessary. I heard someone say while describing The Beatles Rock Band, “If my only complaint with your game is that I want more of it, then you’ve done a pretty good job.”
That’s how I’d describe this story, it’s so interesting, so well-put together, and the worldbuilding is done so succinctly that that’s my only complaint. The rest of the story is really good, and I greatly enjoyed every bit of it.
Good job on this one.
11329313
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Fucking hell that was amazing. Gave chills down my spine.
Howdy, hi!
This was absolutely sublime. Love how you build up on the core premise of deadly curiosity. Beautiful prose to sell on a fantastic concept. Loved this story to pieces. Thanks!
This is a good story.
On a positive note: Those nets will have to be removed as flight hazards now!... actually, I MIGHT MAYBE write a sequel to this if you don't mind?
11257424
Very thin wires that have to balance mechanical strength with the right reflectivity or whatever to be hard to see, so it might be easier than one might think...
Just the intuition of a guy with a Mechanical Engineering degree... don't actually know if that is correct...
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!