She stood at the edge of the cloud, looking down. Far below, the ground was nothing but an indistinct smudge of greens and browns. She spent a moment just feeling the breeze rustling her mane and reveling in anticipation. By all rights, she should be nervous, but instead she found herself strangely calm. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, leaned forward, and jumped.
The gentle breeze was quickly replaced by a howling gale that seized at her short mane as she fell. Instinct told her to fold her legs to streamline her body, and how to manipulate the air flowing around her with subtle movements to keep her dive from turning into a tumble. Instinct also told her to open her wings, or at least her eyes, so she didn’t splatter all over the picturesque landscape, but she was ignoring that bit of advice. It was quite exhilarating. It was also very dangerous, but such concerns had never held her back from anything before.
Finally, she could wait no more, and she opened her wings. The shock as they suddenly caught the air and began to pull her towards level flight felt like meeting an old friend for the first time. The wind in her primaries was almost unbelievably right. No prior experience was needed to know that the sky was where she belonged. It was her birthright as a pegasus, which she had finally come to claim. She opened her eyes to look down upon the ground blurring past a couple hundred feet below, faster than she had ever seen it move before, and this too was right. For the first time in her life, she was truly free.
So enraptured was she that she completely forgot to flap. Eventually, though, she noticed that the blur below was starting to resolve into individual objects as she dropped lower and slowed down, and she realized she was only gliding. She gave a few wingbeats and was surprised to find herself slowing down more rapidly as she threw herself off-balance. In her excitement, she had fallen back on bad habits, and she was giving short, fast, uncoordinated strokes: exactly the opposite of everything she had been taught. Her natural magic, which should have been amplifying the air moved by her wings to propel her forward, was instead firing off in random directions and accomplishing nothing. It was a wonder she didn’t take out her ability to generate lift entirely and fall out of the sky.
So she returned to gliding, closed her eyes again, and visualized her flight instructor. “Long, even flaps,” she recited. “Start slow. Synchronization over power.” As she spoke, so did she do, and while at first her wings were moving so lethargically as to accomplish nothing, before long she had stepped up the pace enough to start accelerating. Once she was sure the rhythm no longer needed her conscious attention, she was free to relax from her concentration, and she opened her eyes. To see a mountain!
She chuckled at her private joke. The Crystal Mountains were indeed in the direction she was flying, but she had a good hundred miles at a minimum before she was in any danger of crashing. Still, now seemed like as good a time as any to liven up her flight, so she started dodging imaginary obstacles. Juking left and right, and up and down, she tested the limits of her agility until her joints ached from the strain. For a beginner, her turns were actually quite sharp, though they bled more speed than she’d like.
Looking behind her, home was barely visible, so she figured she probably ought to head back. After a leisurely about-face to give her wings a moment to rest, she decided to test how fast she could go. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears and her muscles burned as she pumped her wings like an angry dragon was on her tail. Her breath became labored as much by the need to breathe through the hundreds-of-miles-per-hour wind as by her exorbitant demand for oxygen. Her eyes were forced shut by what felt like a thousand tiny needles as she wished she had remembered to wear goggles. Her world became nothing but a pair of flapping wings, a racing heart, and a hurricane all around; anything else was beyond her ability to sense.
This speed was only brief, however, as she was forced to slow down before her wings locked up in exhaustion. Still unwilling to simply take it easy, she decided she would try some tricks.
The loop went easily; she still had more than enough speed to go through without even noticing she was ever upside down. The corkscrew not so much; she attempted the spin entirely too quickly for the fact that her wings remained extended, and all it got her was an extremely graceless tumble; a guarantee that if she hadn’t yet strained her wings enough to be quite sore tomorrow, she had now; and a face full of cloud as she plowed straight through a small cumulus.
Spitting out a puff that had gotten into her mouth, she stabilized herself into a hover and looked around. She was surrounded by stray clouds (though no longer the one she had dispersed with her face). This seemed like a good place to have one last bit of fun before she went home. How quickly could she clear all of these?
“Three, two, one, GO!” She rocketed towards the nearest cloud on her own signal and began counting seconds.
“One.” She was almost at the cloud.
“Two.” She spun around and kicked. Her form was hardly impressive, but she still hit the cloud solidly enough to break it up.
“Three.” She went for the next cloud.
“Four.” A second buck, and a second target down.
“Five. Six.” The next cloud was farther away.
“Seven.” This time, she used her kick to propel herself towards her fourth victim.
“Eight.” With that boost, she had already almost connected with the cloud by that count, and a moment later she was heading towards the sole remaining cloud.
“Nine.” It was the furthest out of the group. She wasn’t sure she was going to make it.
“Ten.” She was so close. Instead of slowing down to buck, she accelerated straight through the cloud (making sure to keep her mouth closed this time), scattering it much like the cloud that had broken her fall.
Total time: about ten a one-third seconds. Not quite as fast as she was aiming for, and certainly not nearly the area some ponies could clear quickly, but she decided it was satisfactory for a first attempt. Now, it was time to go home and rest.
As the sun rose, Scootaloo unconsciously turned away from the window and dug her head into her pillow. Later, she would get up, and ride her scooter to the CMC clubhouse, and do all the sorts of real things she does on weekends. But for now, she was not ready to leave her fantasy.
