That night, when the stars lorded high over the restless cloud sea, she fell.

From her perch on the balcony made of paper-thin stratus that bounced under her hooves, she turned her face to the open air, squinting as the wind clawed at her cheeks to push her back up into the sky, refusing her passage with increasing ferocity the harder she tried to bat it aside. With defiant pumps of her wings she tore through the invisible barrier, plunging like a needle through the seamless white curtain below.

She crashed noiselessly through the many layers of the cloud city, tearing through a banner of some royal house made of cloud on the way and reveling in how it melted away around her. She coiled around icy columns and ripped into the thick slate-grey blocks of packed thunderheads and waterlogged cumulus that formed the foundation of several buildings. Swimming through such thick clouds felt strange and unnatural, but she had to make good time and couldn’t go around.

Her father used to tell her: Nothing in the world came late or early, only at its appointed time. That applied doubly so to little foals.

“Two weeks early,” the nursemaid had said as they tore her bedroom apart, collecting bandages and swaddling cloths. “It’s still two weeks early, Whisper.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she’d replied without looking up, throwing a blanket roll and saddlebags over her shoulders. “I’m leaving, now. This is when it has to happen. I’m not letting them drop him, Cirrus, so I’m taking the plunge before they get the chance.”

She stormed around the room, plucking up all the essentials and ignoring Cirrus until another contraction stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Whisper,” Cirrus whispered, putting a hoof on her shoulder. Whisper had looked up, saw Cirrus’ eyes catching what little moonlight came through the drapes.

“You don’t know that it’s an earth child,” Cirrus had said. “You don’t know. If… If it’s not—”

“Don’t,” Whisper hissed. “Not here, not now. I feel it, Cirrus. I carried him. We’ve shared each other’s blood. I know what my child is. I’m going right now. You know where to meet me.”

And then she had run to the balcony and dropped herself before the Commander found her, looking away from the magnificent city arches and the looming sight of the Acropolis, its wide open doors gaping at her like a monster waiting to swallow her whole. From the mighty towers of her youth to the gleaming bronze of watchponies that once fascinated her, a flick of her tail and a quiet disdainful sniff was all the farwell she gave to mighty Stratosa, the king of the southern skies. No flying formations fascinated her any longer, and no siren call of harps and imperial trumpets lured her back to the safety of the clouds. She turned her back on it all and felt no worse for it.

Soon, as another contraction ripped through her abdomen and made her flight path deviate just enough to tear a banner loose with her wing and leave it fluttering away on a strong thermal, she broke free of the cloud layer.

Alone with her child there was only the wind, rapidly growing thicker and more humid as she raced for the forest below. It stretched out in a great green carpet over the earth. The ancient pegasi had legends that the trees were the claws and teeth of Titans who were cast out of Elysium and buried beneath the earth to forever grasp at the heavens above, but it reminded her more of a blanket than that demonic shroud. No monster could bear fruits so sweet or make such wonderful music with the wind and the leaves. The city elders claimed that monsters and barbarians had roamed the surface world since time immemorial, preying on stupid earth ponies and preyed upon in turn by the rapacious unicorns, who built their silver spires tall to reach, beyond audacious, into a sky that was not theirs to claim.

But she saw the green overgrowth, smelled the rich brown earth beneath, and remembered what it all felt like. She remembered how the earth cushioned her hooves the first time she made landfall, and how she had partaken of such succulent grains and berries on their first nighttime raid. She remembered the weathered and noble faces of the Mustangians who trampled the grass and flowed over fields and among rocks, monsters, and other dangers like the pegasi soared between thunderheads. She even remembered the way the earth ponies scorned those who did not work hard

She remembered how the grass tickled her feathers when she lay upon it, and how it provided such an exquisite bed as she wrapped herself in the hooves of her lover, cushioning her against his powerful weight as they lay together, possessed of such need for one another she almost forgot that he was no pegasus.

What evil could possibly come from that place? How could what now grew inside her be anything but the fruit of divinely inspired labor?

She took care, though, not to rustle the trees too much as she descended, clutching her belly as another fearsome contraction took hold, very nearly seizing up her wings and sending her into the trunk of one of the old sentinels. She grasped one of the branches to slow herself down, listening to it creak and groan under her weight and making her ears perk and turn to the darkness enshrouding her. In one moment, the shadows under the trees could turn from a comforting blanket to a veil that offered no protection from the greater beasts. A pegasi needed their wits and their speed, and the earth ponies needed their awesome strength.

Her love was but a farmer as most earth ponies were, and yet she had seen him split boulders and crack trees in two with his bare hooves. She had watched from above as a teenager and burgeoning scout as earth pony militias mobilized and brought hoof and steel against the wyrms of the hills, the Stone Gods of the mountains, and the mighty buffalo of the fields. It was in watching one of these engagements, in fact, that she started down the traitor’s path and her eyes found the ground more than the sun and sky time and time again. They had just as much honor and bravery as any pegasus; even more so, since earth ponies who planted farms could not just run away from the myriad threats that assailed them. She had watched them spill their blood time and again, returning to the earth to be reclaimed and given up, in whatever small way, to the next generation of life.

Tonight, she would give a little blood herself.

Another contraction tore through her, quicker than before. She stifled a cry and hurried through the trees, gliding where she could to keep down the noise of her passing. Though there were many monsters in the woods, other hunters would be hounding her soon enough, and they were far more dangerous than any wyrm.

She reached the stone circle with good time and collapsed in the center of a ring of monoliths, each of them five times the height of a pony, yet no trouble for a team of surfacers to move if they worked in tandem. It had been erected by the ancients, perhaps earth ponies or caribou by the runes inscribed on the stone; pegasi and unicorns did not use such primitive symbols. Then again, she could barely even read the unicorns’ flowery letters.

This place was sacred, and it was here she and her sweet one had consummated their affair, rolling on the grass and bathing in the everpresent light of the sky.

Another contraction. Damn. The baby was coming quick.

“Be at peace, sweet one,” she whispered to her belly, crawling up to one of the great stones and laying herself against it, “this is where your ancestors gave thanks to the Sun and Sky.”

Even here, in the sacred places of the surface barbarians, they honored the sky. The clearing was well-tended and she could look straight up to the stars, watching them twinkle mirthfully at her audacity, her brazen defiance of the orders of things. She knew it was risky to bear a child here of all places, but she had no illusions about staying completely hidden. In all likelihood she would be found, but if she was she preferred it to be in a place of strength. Her love’s village did not patrol the woods in force, but she had her wing blades and the watchful eyes of the stars.

More contractions. More pain. More biting her hoof to keep things quiet, just in case the monsters were prowling and the scent of a mare giving birth attracted them. She quietly laid out the blanket and plucked out the sunstone to heat the water, watching the treeline for Cirrus, for her love, for monsters and for the hunters. Sweat began to pour down her mane as the pain grew greater and the pressure mounted until she thought she’d burst. The stars cooed and murmured to the would-be mother, scooting over to let the others in line have a peek as time crept on and the baby grew more restless.

Come quickly my darlings, she said to her foal and her love. I don’t think I’ll last the night otherwise.

There was a rustling on her left, and the first thing she looked for was her dagger. She grabbed it with her hoof and spread her wings, menacing the darkness with the sharp glint of wing blades glistening in the moonlight.

“Come forth,” she said, “and if you be a foe I will end you before my child even takes his first breath.”

“It’s me, Whisper Wind,” Cirrus’ whispered voice slithered to her over the grass. “It’s me!”

Whisper dropped back against the stone. “Hurry!” she snapped, all pretense of subtlety gone when she felt her insides quiver and the foal kick in earnest. “Hurry Cirrus! I feel him!”

“Take deep breaths. You are breathing, aren’t you?” Cirrus said, creeping out from the treeline while she towed a small cloud behind her on a rain leash. She kneeled down in front of Whisper and set down a small bronze basin she’d strapped to her back, and Whisper saw her heavy, ragged breaths at the weight she’d had to carry. A gentle kick of the cloud sent water gushing out until it sloshed around in the basin. Cirrus gave the sunstone a quick rub with her wings and winced as light and heat bloomed from within like a dragon suddenly woken. She dropped it in the bath and let it simmer.

“He’ll be nice and warm when he comes,” she said with a weak smile.

“Pegasi don’t fear the cold or the heat,” Whisper grunted, working her lungs like bellows, “it’s the middle that scares us. The ground that sits between—ahh!—the Abyss and the Everheights. Damn whoever cursed a mare with pain at birth!”

“Shall I recite the legends to you again, Whisper?” Cirrus muttered, spreading Whisper’s legs and whistling at what she found. “We got here just in time.”

“So did he,” Whisper said with a smile. “And so will they.”

“The Commander wouldn’t—”

“Others, Cirrus. Others.”

Cirrus glanced up curiously.

“Keep working,” said Whisper, who kept breathing.

It seemed ten eternities went by. Whisper felt the pain spike again and again, everpresent and unceasing. She moaned and bit down on the bit Cirrus placed in her mouth, squeezing the tears out and biting on the hardwood until she thought her teeth would crack, and when the bit cracked first she went back to biting her hoof until it bled.

“Breathe, Whisper,” Cirrus said through it all. “Breathe! He’ll be here soon. All right, now push! Push!”

Whisper pushed, and her senses exploded. She thought she’d been inured to pain. Once, a manticore stung her in the side and she lay in bed for three full days in utter agony as her nerves slowly strangled themselves to death. She had been saved only by the medicine of a unicorn. Another time, she had been sliced on the leg by the talons of a griffon and forced to endure stitching on the battlefield without painkilling herbs or magic. But this pain reached new heights, because it was not just a physical pain. It transcended what she knew as pain and gripped her spirit, shaking it and kicking it and breaking its back on the rocks behind her. It grew into a balloon that started in her gut and blew upwards through her throat, erupting like a geyser with a blast of hot rage and steaming away on the wind in small whimpers and hiccups.

She had screamed and now knew she was undone. He had still not come, and he had still not come, and now she knew there was no chance of being hidden. There was nothing for it now but to give her child to the world and let it stand on its own four hooves.

“Push!” she heard somepony say, and she reached deep down and grabbed the pain, wrestled it into submission and shoved it back down between her legs, determined to expel it with the child before it ripped back up through her throat again. It was like trying to resist a hurricane or buck a lightning bolt. It was that moment when she breached the storm wall, that instant where the sky's fury met her hooves, when she was a mountain and a paper sheet all at once, teetering between resisting and breaking.

She had killed griffons with less effort than this.

“Breathe. Breathe. Push!”

“Damn you!” she answered the voice, but push she did until her world was pushing and shoving, a constant tug-of-war between She couldn’t hear Cirrus’ words anymore, couldn’t hear anything anymore, not even the sounds of her own screaming as she let loose with the primal rage and expectation of a beast. Nature had given her this child, and she would curse the sky with her dying breath if it did not let her bring him through safely.

She thought of nothing but the push and pull, taking just one breath more before letting it go again fearful it might be her last. Push, breathe, brace, push, over and over and over until it was just one long cycle, an infinite pattern of moments bowling her over and running her under its ceaseless spokes again and again. She smelled her own blood and fluids and her rage rose to the occasion, and in that moment she was sure she could face a dragon without fear if it meant finally being done with the pain.

“River!” she screamed the name of her love, and suddenly it was done and not done.

She opened her eyes without realizing they’d been closed, and Cirrus was shouting not with joy but terror and there were dark shapes in the trees and the familiar sight of august headcrests and spear tips pointing gravely into the sky like headstones.

She heard a tiny voice cry in the dark and her world closed in again. Her hooves snapped out and reached for the bundle held in Cirrus’ hooves, bringing it to her chest and cradling it with all the gentleness an old fighter like her could muster. What she saw broke her heart and made all the love inside spill out and into those sweet gold eyes and dark green coat, and run in rivulets through the little hints of teal mane atop the fragile head. She shook so much she almost swooned, and the sweat in her disheveled mane and the cold rock behind her didn’t matter at all.

She glanced down quickly. A son, as she’d thought. She touched his sides and the baby squirmed, crying out for the sake of it, for the trouble of being alive and the violent dispersal of the warm comfort he’d known so far. His thin, trembling cry revitalized her, giving her strength in spite of all she’d lost and all she’d given away. Her hoof touched his flanks.

No wings.

As she’d expected.

“So the baby is a brute, then.”

Her eyes jumped up and dared the whole world to try and threaten her in that single instant.

“Thunderhead,” she said with a victorious grin. Triumph shuddered through her like a tide, so pleasant and calming she almost imagined herself in her love’s hooves again. “You couldn’t stop me.”

“I didn’t want to,” the looming pegasus at the head of the hunting pack said. He stepped into the clearing and the starlight danced off his burnished steel cuirass. “I came to see if the child was the beast I expected.” Angry blue eyes raked their gaze over the clearing.

“My baby is what he is,” Whisper said, lifting her head though she dearly much wanted to look at her child much more than Thunderhead. “And now nothing you say can change that.”

“You have defied everything that makes the sky sacred!” Thunderhead raged, and while Cirrus recoiled Whisper held her crying foal tighter, bundling him up against the cold night air. “You have done the unthinkable and made our people a laughingstock.”

“The world is changing,” Whisper shot back. “The winters grow longer every year. You insist our people can control it, but every pegasus in the world can’t stop the changing of the seasons! And you could not control where my heart flies.”

“You were one of my best!” Thunderhead snapped, stomping his hoof on the ground. A collective rustle ran through the feathers of the pegasus squadron with him, as if sensing his growing disapproval. “You had everything in the clouds. Everything! Position, power, authority, wealth—Stratosa straddles the greatest skyways of the world and you could have had a hoof in that. But here you cavort in the dirt and shame your people by licking the dust and eating the manure of lesser beings.”

“I found something our people have lost,” Whisper said, looking down at the foal, determined not to give Thunderhead the satisfaction of her gaze, and also mesmerized by the way her son’s eyes darted back and forth, amazed at everything he saw even as he cried. “I have found love and friendship in greater abundance than all the sky could hold. The earth ponies live and love and fight, and want for nothing while our people scratch a living off the mountaintops. Our legends cover us in glory, but we are leaving nothing for our children. For this one, I will leave a whole world to run in.”

“You could have had ten children, all with the greatest warriors who walk the clouds. They would have bowed at your hooves and each would bring the wealth of a whole household with them!”

“A miserable excuse for this sweet thing here. Now keep quiet, he needs his rest.”

Thunderhead snarled and swiped his wing over the ground, scratching a divot in the sacred earth with his wing blades.

“Stop this foolishness!” he raged, bowing into the crouch Whisper realized as a fighting position. “Come home, Whisper Wind, or I swear I will cut your wing tendons and drag you back myself!”

Whisper sighed as all the weariness of the past year came back to haunt her.

“Brother,” she whispered, “sweet brother, I would not come back for every pearl in the sea and every star in the sky.”

“You will be lost! You will be declared Wingless and killed on sight!”

“Only by warriors of Stratosa,” Whisper said with a shrug. “The other cities don’t care a whit about one renegade.”

“I will go to Pegasopolis,” she heard Thunderhead say, his voice thin and creaking with the impotent fury of those who knew their fate and railed against it anyway. “I will go to the Forum and tell all of your name and your face. I will make sure you never walk the clouds again.”

“You’d risk letting our house’s shame spread over the Twelve Airways? You’re more sensitive than I thought, brother.”

Thunderhead stamped his hoof again, less forceful this time. “You think your dirt lover will come for you? You think his family will take you in? You’ll be an outcast on earth and in sky, and the unicorns will laugh and make a fairy tale of you. Beware you don’t be like Whisper Winds and pervert the natures of all ponies! We are many and separate for good reasons, sister.”

“Because all of us bring different things to the Three Kingdoms,” Whisper murmured, feeling so very exhausted. She just wanted to curl up with her son and rest a while. “He taught me that. I’ve learned so much, brother. This world is cold enough already. Why taint it even more?”

“What of Cirrus, then?”

“She is my oldest friend. She may do as she please. And I think you are not cruel enough to let the world know of a serving girl’s folly, brother.”

“Perhaps not,” Thunderhead whispered, drawing himself up, his voice dull and dim. “But what I do next, I am honorbound to do.”

Whisper’s eyes snapped up once more, meeting her brother’s. Both of them looked tired, so tired. A pegasus needed rest, Whisper knew. They couldn’t fly forever, couldn’t stay atop their cloud cities and expect the earth to do whatever they wished just because they looked down on. She’d found her roost, and she would give it up for nothing now.

“And I am bound by friendship and love,” she whispered. “A far heavier yet kinder chain than honor could ever be, brother.”

“I am sorry,” said Thunderhead, broadcasting his next moves clearly with the angle of his wings and the position of his legs. Cirrus whimpered, unsure where to run.

Whisper knew exactly what to do. Covered in her own blood and ugly water, she staggered to her hooves and held the baby under her with one hoof.

Cirrus croaked out a sob. “Whisper, let me—”

Thunderhead’s wings snapped like whips, taking him forward. Whisper ducked underneath and lashed out with her wing blades, catching the cuirass and listening to the scrape of metal on metal. The baby gasped and sent up another cry, thin and weak, so weak, that Whisper knew she would die for him at the drop of a hat. Or in this case, a feather.

“I will erase our shame,” Thunderhead said as he kicked off the very rock her sister had given birth on, and launched himself at her again. The pegasi in the trees watched like griffons at a bloodsport, and it made Whisper sick to think of how far their race had fallen.

She dodged under another blow and another, keeping her wings spread out at her sides and in front, forming a protective shell. It was the standard stance of those who could not fly and fight at the same time. The rustle of her wing blades made her poor son cry all the more, even as she pressed him tight against her chest.

Thunderhead had full range of motion, jumping up and then lashing out with his spear at her legs. She jumped, twisted, kept herself between Thunderhead and the child, and reached out to Cirrus with the bundle in her hooves. Cirrus took the child, their eyes met, Whisper smiled and whispered something even she didn’t understand.

Another sharp, stabbing pain like the birth, but much more physical now.

Something jagged plunged into her side just above her left wing and ripped itself out again, like the jaws of a skyshark. It took something vital, something fragile and tender that snapped like a taut rope, and a piece of her soul went out through the gap.

“Oh,” Whisper whispered, and fell to earth at Cirrus’ hooves, who was too frightened to scream.

Her left wing flopped uselessly on the ground, never to fly again.

“Now,” growled Thunderhead, his spear dripping with Whisper’s blood, “I will end this forever. I cleanse you that our family is spared the cleansing.”

He reared up, and hesitated just a moment longer, his spear tip hovering with him, aimed between Whisper’s shoulders. She had exposed herself, she knew. She had left herself wide open. But she couldn’t risk a fight with a child in her arms, and she hadn’t thought her brother so monstrous as to literally stab his own sister in the back.

She closed her eyes, waiting, as another infinite cycle of moments played out around her. Her final breath shuddered in her lungs, Thunderhead eternally stretched up to gain power for the killing blow, Cirrus ready to scream and never quite getting there.

Something deep and growling rumbled through the sky, trailing off into a trumpeting bellow. Thunderhead reared back and his pegasi looked all around, stumbling and staggering in the dark like startled sparrows. All around them came the sound again, rising and falling and rising again. To the pegasi, it was a sound of terror. To Whisper, it was deliverance, for it was the ruckus of earth pony war horns.

“May the Thunderbird take you all!” Thunderhead screamed. “Take flight, brothers! They are too many for us this night!”

The pegasi in the trees needed no second bidding, launching into the sky through the clearing in the trees.

Thunderhead joined them an instant later, shooting upwards, knife-like, into the air.

He stopped at the treeline. He turned back. He looked down at Whisper, a picture of raw power and authority, his wings outstretched and his long spear held fast to his side. It was a life Whisper had left behind forever, and Thunderhead had placed the final lock on her past.

“Thank you,” she whispered to him, because even in the highest and emptiest reaches of the sky, her life was always the one thing her brother could spare. She thought she saw him nod, or perhaps she just wanted to see it, and then with a loud clap of wings and the rumble of a sonic boom, he was gone from her life forever.

“Cirrus,” she grunted, reaching up to her friend. “Cirrus, let me see my child. Rest me against a rock, my friend.”

She held her crying son close, shushing him gently, and looked up at the thundering of hooves. Her love ran at the head of the herd, coming to save her just after the nick of time. But that was all right. She knew everything would be all right now.

“Solstice,” she said to a shocked Cirrus, hefting her son. “He will be named Solstice. For the longest night of my life.”

She rested her head against the cool rock, and then it was finally, finally over.