'If I Fell'
"What's it like to fly?"
It's not the first time you've been asked this question. You live in a house firmly rooted in the ground and have been surrounded by ponies without wings for years. They're curious. They want to know. You've never asked Rarity what using her magic is like; you've never even really thought about it. But unicorns are different, their magic is different -- what they can do disappears as soon as it has arrived, hidden away like a secret. Even Twilight, who knows more spells than most unicorns could remember... if she's not actually casting one of them it's very easy to forget what the horn on her head can do.
But wings... wings are out and on display for the whole world to see, all the time. If pegasi could pack away their wings as easily as a unicorn releases their magic or use them with the same subtlety as an earth pony their never-ending well of strength... well, not all ponies might, but you certainly would. Wings are a license for non-winged ponies to ask all kinds of questions about flight and the weather and life up in the clouds that you just don't know the correct answers to, and it's a little embarrassing sometimes to say you don't know. Other ponies don't mean anything by it, of course -- they are curious -- but a pegasus who isn't sure of so many basic facts of pegasus living might even be stranger than a pegasus who chooses to live on the ground.
You turn your attention back to the pony who has just asked the question now, with his deep yet soft voice that you felt as well as heard as you lay against him. He's not asking for the same reasons other ponies do, because they want to fill in the silence in a conversation and have found a conversation starter: when he speaks, which is rarely, his words are always genuine, and when he listens as you speak it's always with thoughtful attention, which is appreciated. He's so different to most other ponies, and you think that most other ponies can't see just how different he is; on the surface perhaps all they see is somepony who's all body, maybe even a little slow or a little shy, but beneath that coat as red as one of the apples that grow in his field beats a heart with a size matching the rest of him. It's like a secret only the two of you share.
...You can fly. You're physically capable of flying. You fly all the time around your house, and just here and there in Ponyville. You know ponies say that you can't fly, or can't fly very well, but that's not completely true. You can -- you just don't. It might seem like a small difference on the outside, but to you it's enormous. If you couldn't fly you might be a little sad about it. You might wonder what it's like for your little bird friends, who soar and dip among the branches of the trees and fly straight in formation to warmer climates before winter rolls in. You might relish the pliant yet solid texture of clouds beneath your hooves. You might balloon places you didn't need to balloon to. If you couldn't fly, you might yearn for the sky. So you can see where the flightless ponies who ask what it's like to be up in the air are coming from.
What they think is that being so far from the ground is freedom. You could move any way you wanted to, as fast as you wanted to. You would have nothing tying you down, nothing standing in your way. All the ground you have to trudge over, all the trees and buildings and other ponies that surround you, there's none of that in the air. If there's a cloud in your way, then just barrel through it; even the most solid of cloud structures can be dispelled with a solid kick (although you risk upsetting its owner). Other ponies think they would take to the air like a fish takes to water, because birds and fish have a similar kind of grace. But that's not quite how it is.
If a fish stops swimming, it will stay in the water -- it might get pushed about a little by the current, but mostly it will stay put until it decides to move again. Fish are protected by the water; it's an all-encompassing embrace that forms an environment that always has boundaries. The sky is the opposite of a body of water: to fly in it, you have to fight against it. Wings reject gravity with every beat; every time a pegasus or a bird or a dragon takes to the air, it's a struggle, a battle. And if you lose that battle -- and there are hundreds of ways to lose it, from straying into a current to misjudging yaw on a turn to just thinking about something else for half a second and having your wings get the best of you -- then your enemy the sky becomes allies with the ground, and now you have to fight to best both of them.
"...Stressful," you say eventually. You feel him shift against you, turning his head as you speak. "I always think of everything that can go wrong, so I don't ever go too high up." You sigh. "Flying's not for me."
After a long pause, he speaks again: "I'm glad you like being on the ground."
You rest your head back against his barrel, and look up at the sky.
"Me too."
