"What's it like to fl-AAAAAHHHH!"
Scootaloo hurdled at terminal velocity. She wanted to think she was hurdling down, but with her feet flying over her head and her tail whipping around one way and then the next, she may as well be heading to the moon for all she knew. Clouds swirled like a melted blue moon sundae caught in a tornado. Her screaming raced around her until she couldn't figure out if it was in fact her voice at all and not the wind.
It's quite an interesting space in time when you're spinning uncontrollably through the air. Rainbow Dash once tried to explain what it was like going through the Dizzitron at full tilt. It might have been like this.
The screaming and cursing whooshed out of her and something in her throat hitched and she couldn't breathe and she was drowning, drowning in nothing. Her legs thrashed and caught in her useless feathers while the wind burned over her fur and screeched in her ears. Her guts clenched but she couldn't throw up because the head-over-heels motion was endless. She jammed her eyes shut and the vortex inside her was still raging, spinning, circles of black and white that intensified in the darkness. Her eyelids snapped open to the vision of the whirlpool sky, now mixed in with a slice of green tumbling around.
A desperate gasp brought air into her lungs at the same time her heart slammed her chest and started to rise up her throat. It vaulted back and forth as she spun out.
Some part of her cracked into her wing while she struggled to recover. The pain came from everywhere and nowhere. It went straight to her head with the dizziness and she rocked with it, her head nodding at an odd angle like it would come off. No matter what she tried she couldn't regain control and a sickening feeling began to creep into her stomach.
Scootaloo fell completely limp in the blur of blue and green and orange and magenta, but her body wouldn't quit. Her legs started to tremble and suddenly every inch of her, every muscle, every fiber was shuddering on its own accord. Chattering snapped over her teeth and she nipped her tongue. Her mind racked with horror beyond the fear of death: the horror that she was trapped in her body. She had to stay and suffer going around and around and around and the constant physical urge to vomit and she was utterly powerless. Her breathing came in ragged upheavals between the slick strands of mane and tail caught around her face. The little hair whips lashed and poked her desert dry eyes that were forced to witness the world spin.
She was going to pass out. She wanted to pass out. She stayed awake. It was a nightmare. Her brain begged her to scream and cry but she could not.
The shaking finally stopped and she was left alone to tumble into eternity: one mind stuck in an empty, broken shell. Part of existence was shadowed gray by a woozy eyelid. The rest was a maelstrom of color starting to fade to black and white and the screaming red of the blood attempting to get where it was supposed to go in the chaotic, patternless motions of a pony tossed aside without a care.
White enveloped her and it was a blessing. Was she spinning? Was she falling? She couldn't tell. It was all white, all white except that one half-lidded dead space. Cold, wet droplets of cloud condensation stuck to her coat and far away a chill crept into her being.
It was hell again. The white heaven mixed in with everything else – trees, ground, ocean, houses, paths – she could only guess because it was all one huge unending smear.
Then there was heaven again. Cool blank bliss.
It was gone and the remorseless world tore at her eyes with its vicious claws.
All white welcomed her once more. It was so peaceful, so quiet, almost as if the cloud got in the way of the wind outside demanding to be heard.
The world stole the white away again.
The cycle kept repeating. It was torture to have those fractions of a second of freezing wet reprieve only to enter the glutted funnel of falling over and over, again and again with no break and no control. Sharp spikes of air turned the water into ice on her raw skin, burned away and exposed by the wind and her furtive thrashing hours ago. Months ago. Since forever.
Time didn't exist. Dizziness was the only thing.
Her leg twitched. It was an odd sensation, something happening on a part of her so far away. Dimly she was aware her tongue lolled out of her mouth but it was hard to notice because her body slammed full speed into the ground, crushing into tiny little pieces and she lived and experienced it all. Crunching bones and impossible dreams smashed into the dirt she'd been stuck on her whole life.
That death was only a wish. A horrible twinge wracked her chest, causing her legs to stretch out stiff and reminding her that she was still plunging through the air, watching herself spin, watching everything spin.
"Guh," she managed to blurt, as if her hallucinated, beautiful ending on the ground had somehow inspired her body to let her take the reins again. But it hadn't. Of course not. The seasick merry-go-round blur went past her eyes, imprinting itself into her memories forever. Her last memory wouldn't even be coherent. It'd be spinning. She'd be spinning into the afterlife. She would never escape it. She would stand on the ground and turn around in circles as fast as she could without stopping, ever. Even when her legs fell out from under her the world would keep on spinning for her.
Scootaloo was incapable of recognizing the blue-gray smudge next to her named Rumble, nor the fact she was no longer falling. In fact, she'd stopped falling quite a while ago.
Creases edged Rumble's face while he watched the dazed mare. Attempts to call her name were met with cringing and moaning, so he waited, pushing the cloud he'd caught her on toward Ponyville Hospital as smoothly as he could.
By some act of Celestia, Scootaloo regained her senses enough to see that she was not falling, and several mirror image ponies were pushing her somewhere. "Rumble...?"
The mirror images began to merge into one storm-coated pony. His eyes flicked down to her and back up to his task and he said nothing.
Scootaloo didn't have the strength to get up. "Hey, I'm talking to you," she grumbled into the cloud.
"Flipping feathers," Rumble exploded, "what in the Princess of the Night's name were you doing free falling like that Scootaloo? You can't even fly!"
"I," the pegasus began, taking a deep breath that brought some of her pride back with it, "was napping."
Rumble's outrage at the comment prevented him from speaking. Only Scootaloo would have somepony guide her up to a ludicrous height just so she could enjoy the feeling of a cloud nap close to the sun.
He bit back his temper. "It looked like you covered a lot of distance," he said, to which Scootaloo didn't reply.
Surely even when falling she must have discovered a little piece of what it was like to soar. After a few moments he was calm enough to ask, "What's it like to fly? Isn't it great?"
"No." Scootaloo underscored her thoughts on the matter with an irritated scowl. "It's Thundering awful."
