Charcoal Line watched a shooting star leave a momentary streak of soft silver as it leapt across the night sky from her vantage point atop of a small hill outside Ponyville.
A voice spoke from beside her.
“Charcoal?”
“Yeah?”
“I have kind of a serious question.”
She smiled. Short-Circuit always had some kind of question, and they always made her think. They often spent hours and hours with him on top of this hill, talking until they fell asleep mid-sentence.
“What’s that?”
A pause between them before he spoke.
“This might seem kinda weird, and I’m sure you get this all the time...”
Charcoal waited for him to continue.
“What’s it like to fly?”
Charcoal furrowed her eyebrows. Once again, the unicorn was showing his ability to surprise her.
“Why do you ask?”
“I dunno.” He said. “I was just at the park the other day and I saw a couple of pegasi doing some tricks. I guess it just made me think about how cool it must be to fly.”
Charcoal was quiet again. Circuit took notice and spoke.
“I’m not trying to be ungrateful or anything, but I guess I’m a little jealous.”
“No, no, I get it. I know what you mean. A lot of times I wish I could use magic.”
Circuit smiled. “I’ll trade you.”
Charcoal smiled and rolled her eyes a little. “I’m not really sure how to explain it. Um, it’s really fast, and sometimes things happen before you realize what’s going on. And it’s really instinctive, too. You just kinda know what to do. It just... It feels really good.”
Silence for another moment before Circuit sighed. “You pegasi really don’t know how lucky you are. It must be the most wonderful feeling in the world.”
“It is. I mean, I guess. I know a lot of pegasi say that flight embodies freedom.”
“So that means I’m stuck down here in chains, huh?”
“Oh don’t be so melancholy.”
“Mm.”
More silence.
Charcoal was lost in her thoughts now. It was a strange thing, she couldn’t ever recall thinking that flight was all that unique. Of course, growing up in cloudsdale, it wasn’t. Literally everypony around her could fly just as well (and often better) as she. She had only lived in Ponyville for a few months, and hadn’t had much exposure to other pony races - Short-Circuit was her first non-pegasus friend. As a result, it had never occurred to her that the other races might envy her natural abilities a little.
Charcoal stretched her legs out in front of her like a cat, and stood up. “I guess I don’t have a real answer for you, Circuit. It’s just one of those things that you sort of take for granted until somepony points it out.”
There was no response.
Charcoal glanced to her right to find that Circuit was now taking long, even breaths. He had dozed off. Sheesh, that was quick.
His words came back to her “You pegasi really don’t know how lucky you are...”
How long had it been since she flew? Since she really flew? So often she simply thought of flight as a means of transportation better than walking, but less convenient than teleportation. An everyday tool, used by some pegasi for thrills, but for the rest mostly just to get around.
A gust of wind blew up from the hill base, and she let it catch her wings, filling them with air and lifting slightly at the base of her wing joints. She closed her eyes and slowly tilted her body and wings side to side, feeling the flow and pressure of the wind as it pushed against her feathers. The gust increased a bit in its intensity, and this time she felt the bones in her back shift upwards, pulled by the wind under her.
There is a feeling of relief in a pegasus’ muscles when they begin to fly, similar to the one a pony feels when lying down after a long day of work. The wind takes weight from the back and legs, and every movement becomes effortless. Charcoal had forgotten how wonderful it was to savor that feeling. The wind picked up once more, and this time Charcoal surrendered her will to it. She let her weight shift forward, and began to run down the hillside.
The pounding of her legs sharpened the peaceful drifting of her thoughts into a crystal-clear focus, and suddenly every blade of grass stood out as it rushed beneath her hooves. Every star above shone with brilliant clarity. Her eyes had narrowed, and raw adrenaline began to course through her system. The wind became a tangible thing, solid and everywhere at once, resisting her with a wild strength. It was not a strength that could be subdued.
But it could be followed. And she could be led.
The best moment for takeoff is difficult to define, but every pegasus knows when it is. They feel the moment coming, and leap upwards in with it, rather than as a reaction to it. Charcoal took two lone hoofsteps lower than she would have normally, and felt her wing and chest muscles bunch up. The adrenaline was now frozen throughout her being, keeping every muscle taut.
An explosion of perfectly coordinated movement. The back legs propelling the ground away from her. The front legs bucking up towards the neck, shifting her momentum upward. The wings driving downward together.
And this time, because she was searching for it, she felt the pegasus magic in her genetic code at work - a humming, vibrating sensation deep within the bones of her wings, moving her upwards faster than any earthbound creature could ever hope to move.
Charcoal rocketed skywards, her eyes squinted tight against the air currents, and beat her wings twice more. She was now travelling nearly straight up. There was a tickling sensation deep in her stomach, and her back hooves felt a little numb. The wind roared in her ears, and rushed all about her mane. Her tail whipped around violently in the wind, her wing joints pumped and swiveled in a bizarre dance. Charcoal then stopped flapping her wings, and instead flared them back ever so slightly.
And the world went silent.
She was suspended in space, slowly rotating over her back, a look of bliss on her face. The buzzing of magic in her wings was more noticeable now, in the stillness. Her body was utterly relaxed, all tension gone, lost in this world that defied gravity and set at ease the most fanciful nighttime dreams of ponykind.
And then the stars rolled over the length of her torso, and the inky blackness of the ground swallowed up her view. She did not begin her dive, for that would suggest that it was her creation. She instead offered herself up to the dive and allowed it to pull her downward through the air currents as fast as it pleased - that is to say, mind-bendingly fast. The speed she approached the earth was fast enough to tear away any last piece of conscious thought, enough to form small aches in her forehooves from the air pressure. It was fast enough to bend the space in front of her, to bend it, to change it into something much shorter.
Charcoal dipped one wing closer to her side as she fell, and the wind granted her wishes. It began to subject her to concentric spins, spiraling her form downward and pulling the blood to her wingtips. The wind was forming a path for her, and any deviation she made was met with resistance, keeping her within its boundaries. The path suddenly, though not startlingly, shifted upward. Charcoal complied and evened out her wings before flaring them back again.
Strange, invisible forces heaved at her frame, attempting to wrench her back towards the earth - the dive would not release her so easily. The magic and the wind were on her side this time, though. Her wing joints strained, and the edges of her vision grew a little dark. Then the heaving forces began to give up the fight, but not until she had almost leveled out entirely. Charcoal found herself traveling mere feet above the ground at the fastest glide she had ever known, carried by the parting momentum from the dive. The air was calm so close to the ground, and many of the air currents were absent, and yet Charcoal felt no fear. Her flight was smooth and controlled, and she silently hurtled over the grass.
Suddenly the rushing darkness beneath her changed. In an instant, she passed over grass and on to a star-filled lake. The reflected stars in the water were silver and beautiful, and had she not known it was a lake, she would have thought she was flying through a vast universe, with none but the distant stars and nebula all around her to witness her journey. There was no wind here over the water, no gusts to help her change her course, so she submitted herself to her flight path, and drifted through what seemed to be deep space. One hoof dipped down and touched the mirror that was the surface of the lake, and she felt the gel-like pressure of it resist and guide her hoof as she traveled. She gazed at the scene around her, content for now to be lost from her world, and to be carried away in this strange and wonderful plane of existence...
Charcoal touched down gently on the grass by where Short-Circuit lay asleep. He really was adorable, the way he tucked his hooves up like that while he slept, though he might kill Charcoal if she told him so.
The buzzing in her wings was fading pleasantly, her flight muscles aching in a similar manner. If she had known flight could be so... Wonderful, so meaningful, she might have spent less time sketching and more time flying as a filly.
She looked again at Circuit’s slumbering form. What could she say to him? She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to not be able to have such an experience. How could anything have any meaning compared to flight? Nothing else made one so vulnerable and so free all at once.
Circuit’s hoof twitched slightly in his sleep, and his mouth formed a snarl that would have been feral if it weren’t so blasted cute. Well, maybe there was something that he had, that each of the other races had that she didn’t. It would make sense. Unicorns learning how to wield power properly, and earth ponies learning how to care for something else, perhaps.
But for her part, Charcoal knew that flight would always be for her. As she lay down by Circuit’s side, a wry smile came to her face.
Poor Circuit would just die if he knew how wonderful that was.
Author's Note
My first fic! I always have loved flying, and dreaming of piloting airplanes since I was five.
Please leave critique! I always want to improve. (But be gentle, I implore you.)
