Starting from the background.

Despite living my entire life in a country with the highest world population of the brown bear, I've never met one in the wilds before - the last sighting of one around the place I live was about the time my grandfather was born. So this one was either pretty far away from it's usual hunting grounds, or I was pretty far away from mine. It was quite an interesting thing to contemplate, but before I had a chance even to start formulating the problem, I already was halfway up the very same pine I've fallen through some time previous.

Now, the ones, who struggle with the alien appendages of an unfamiliar body, rejoice! There is a way to take away all your problems in one instant and make you more proficient with the use of the body, than it's original owner! And if you think, that the bear isn't working, you just not using enough of it.

"Impressive!" congratulated me a bit startled Strict. "Never thought I can climb the tree while not using my wings, but in this situation it looks like a faster way."

"Tha... that's a bear!" panted I in response.

"Indeed it is," agreed the armoured nuisance. "I fail to find the words to express my astonishment with your unnaturally keen observation skills.

"It's not funny!" My entire attention was still on the bear, that only now had recovered from the shock of my sudden departure and started to sniff around.

"On the contrary, it's hilarious. A noble Royal Guard covered in sap and pine needles,sitting on the branch, is always funny, especially if no one is around to inform the Commander."

"Even if that noble guard is yourself?" the bear was visibly losing interest in us, which is to be expected, the damn animal should be already peacefully hibernating by now.

"I blame it on you anyway, so yes. Also, I can't fail to note, that you are, seemingly, traded your fear of height for fear of bears, and that's very nice of you."

"F-f-fear of what?" Of course, he just had to remind me that! The moment he mentioned it, my old acrophobia immediately tried to kick in and made me shift around, kicking small branches and pine cones down on the bear. The bear roared in response and started to climb the tree. While it wasn't as fast, it was still progressing towards me, and the branch I was on looked strong enough to support a bear. On the positive, it looks like my acrophobia really do have an ursaphobia and don't hang around while the bear is present.

"Now may be a good time to fly away," hinted Strict, trying to hide concern in his voice.

"And how I'm supposed to do that?"

"Flap the wings, silly. And faster, it's getting closer!"

With no better ideas present, I spread the wings and gave it a try. Several flaps later (and about a meter closer to the bear) it became apparent, that the wings don't produce any lift at all, and do about the same for a flight, as if I was flailing the arms while being human. That surprised Strict into several seconds of shocked silence (and about two more meters for the bear).

"I think I know, what's wrong," he said finally. "You don't want to fly."

"I do want to fly! I want to fly as far away from that bear, as it is possible! And I'm very sad, that I can't teleport!" I screamed, which startled the bear a bit and it slid a couple of meters down.

"And to use pegasus flight magic you need to want to fly. Not from the bear, just to fly. It doesn't work another way."

"Well, forgive me for being scared of flight in general!"

"I can forgive you, but the bear wouldn't." The bear was closing to our branch and wasn't looking happy with the exercise.

"I don't want his forgiveness!" I suddenly felt the fear evaporating and being replaced with anger. I flapped the wings angrily and suddenly the air around us was filled with the extremely low sound, as if someone tried to use an enormous subwoofer to play a lowest possible note it can manage. Sudden gust of wind from above pressed me into the cracking branch nearly crashing my ribcage, and the bear fell tumbling to the ground. There it stood up, let off a pained roar and hastily retreated to the woods.

"And they said I wasn't suited for a weather duty!" the excitement in Strict's mind voice was palpable.

"What was... that?" While my eardrums was still ringing, the fact, that the bear was no longer around, was enough reason to forget about them, the pain in the ribs, and in all the other parts, that was injured during my descent from the cloud.

"That, my accidental friend, was about 12.4 wingpower concentrated in one fine downward gust. And if you will ever tell anyone, that pegasi magic is capable of that, I will have to kill you and whoever you spill it to. It's strictly confidential, Princess-eyes only. Even Commander Shining don't know about these combat techniques."

"How come every other winged horse don't know them then? Didn't look hard to me." Yes, I did remember about the branch up the pine situation, but this was so interesting! And the bear was gone anyway.

"That's because before I discovered the merge and blocked it, this information has already leaked to your side. This is an extremely advanced technique, I spent a year training for it. Mostly in hospital."

"Wait, what merge?" now, that was some relevant information, for a change. Unsettling, but the whole "transformed into abomination of nature" is unsettling, so what's new?

"Since the transformation some kind of magic is trying to merge our minds, as it did with our bodies. I've noticed it about a day ago. And since you are not cleared for any of the information that is contained in my memory, I cannot allow it, so I took some measures. Still, I'm afraid, some has already slipped to you, and my measures wouldn't last forever. It's very powerful magic. Yet, there is a chance we can resolve this before the merge will begin again and I'll be forced to destroy us to prevent the leak."

"Slow down a bit, please, I'm taking notes here," I hope no one in audience can tell, where did I get this quote. "You telling me, that something I still getting comfortable to believe is exist at all, is trying to make us into a some sort of brain cocktail, and you intend to kill us if it's succeed? While the first part is bad, the second is not making sense at all!"

"And that's exactly why you are not suited for my line of work, and, therefore, will never be cleared to most of that information. Especially considering your mastery on keeping secrets."

Well, I do tend to answer questions with, probably, a bit of disregard of secrecy and privacy, but I'm not THAT bad, honest!

"If I won't have any other way to prevent you from spreading royal secrets to the first pony, who bothers to ask, I will eliminate the risk physically. But I really hope we can solve that without commiting suicide."

"You and me both," and when I'll get my... hooves on the person responsible, his death will be fun to watch.

"Now, do you plan to keep everything locked away, or, maybe, there is some things I can know without the risk of you killing me if I talk about it? If you hadn't guessed yet, I'm kind of new to all this pony stuff, and there just have to be some harmless civilian knowledge in every pegasus life. Like, for example, some everyday tree climbing skills we can use to get off this branch?" Bears may heal the fear of heights, but not permanently and I felt, that the time I can be that high up without consequential freakout is running short.

"Up to this day I was pretty sure no pony can do that without magic, wings or some special equipment. At least, I never hear about anything like that," Strict "voice" was really apologetical this time. "We can always just glide down, if you let yourself just a little of..."

"!" Now that voice was new. At least, this one was not a bear.

This one was much, much worse. This one looked like a military. With the gun. And the dog. And with the scariest astonished smile I've ever seen.

"What a horse doing in tree? How do you think, Muhtar?" Now he was talking to his dog. Good time to run away, for someone who could.

"You understand him?" Strict sounded almost as surprised as the soldier down below.

"Of course I understand him! He's speaking my native language!" I decided not to say that aloud. Since Strict can think at me, I can think at him, no one can stop me.

"Hey, , !" the soldier called to someone else.

" yourself, ! here my ," was the response, and one more military man, this time a lot more dirty, arrived at the scene and looked up at me. "!"

"Now, if you excuse me..." I attempted to interrupt the stream of the infamous "we do not swear with it, we talk with it", but the military had other ideas.

"Hey, that horse can talk! !"

"!" Agreed his colleague. The dog barked something, that, probably, contained some in it somewhere. Well, in this case...

" horse can talk and will be to ask, if any of you know, where the this horse is."

"See, you just had to ask politely!" berated me the guy with the dog. "You are at the border of our beloved Motherland, and Finland. The border is about a hundred meters that way. If you intend to cross over to the - be my guest and their problem. If you are going the other way, we'll have to take you to the station, where everyone will be , as we are the border guards and we take our job seriously."

"You wasn't wasting time, wasn't you?" I thought to Strict, imagining the map with our approximate location and starting point.

"I got the intel, that the Princesses is in that direction," he thought back at me.

"The North Pole is in that direction, and it's winter there already. We'll have to go through..."

"Hey, horse, so where would you go? We have a patrol to finish!" It appears, that the guy without the dog was the less patient one.

"Thanks, , you were very helpful. I think I'll go to the , this horse have some business in USA, so I'll have to go too."

"! How many of you are there?"

"Two. But you can't see the second one. Now, if you excuse me, I have a national border to breach. So long, and safe," with that, and with no further thought, I jumped off the branch and glided between the trees in the direction soldiers pointed to. The last words I've heard before leaving the country for the first time in my life was:

"...and we never drinking that again!"

"Woof!"

I was about a kilometer into Finland, when my way of travel finally caught up to my brain.