Author's Note
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air… .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
— John Gillespie Magee, Jr
Up, up
My Flight
By Kris Overstreet
the surly bonds of Earth
“Well, there she is,” Applejack said, pointing to the back corner of the barn where a neglected, little-loved object rested on half-deflated rubber tires. “Th’ Flim-Flam Flivver 500. If I’d been around when they sold that hunk o’junk ta Granny Smith, I’d have stuck it up their-“
“What’s wrong with it?” asked the pink horse with the curly blonde mane.
“Well, there’s nothin’ wrong with th’ engine so far as I can tell,” Applejack admitted, “’cept it’s underpowered for pullin’ a load up a hill. Flim and Flam do know how to build an engine. But th’ rest of th’ thing is a piece of… well, jus’ look at it!” She pointed an orange hoof at the flaking pink paint, the cracked wooden rail around the bed, and the broken wheel spoke on one wheel. “It looked pretty when it was new, but it jus’ wasn’t built for work! An’ it doesn’t actually carry no more than our regular wagons do!”
“So I can have it?”
“Sure, Cherry,” Applejack nodded. “I owe your aunt Jubilee a lot of favors anyhow. I’ll jus’ be glad ta get th’ space in th’ barn back.”
“Thanks!” Cherry Berry opened the door of the truck. She paused as she was about to get in and start the engine, noticing something in the back. “What’s that?” she asked.
Applejack looked in the bed. “Huh… looks like some kinda project my sister and her friends cooked up.” She picked up the piece of colored cardboard. “Musta been sittin’ here a while. See, they didn’t draw wings on Twilight.”
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t use it,” Cherry Berry said. “Unless you want me to stop by the dump?”
“Cherry, don’t you drive that death-trap anywhere ‘cept straight home!” Applejack said. She lifted the Twilight Sparkle standee and laid it against the barn wall. “I’ll put it in the attic later. Might just be Apple Bloom will miss this if it gets thrown out.”
Cherry Berry shrugged, got into the truck, cranked the engine to life, and carefully, slowly, drove the wobbly-wheeled jalopy out of the barn. Once in the driveway she didn’t slow down or stop, not even when the body paneling on both sides of the truck fell off and landed in the ditches on either side of the road.
“An’ y’all come back tomorrow an’ pick that up!” Applejack shouted after her.
The tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds
“Sure you can have my ornithopter!” Pinkie Pie smiled. “I’m not using it anyway, no matter what those toy company executives think!”
Cherry Berry tried to figure that out, and couldn’t. “Come again?” she asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” Pinkie Pie giggle, waving it off. “Anyway, don’t you already have a helicopter and a balloon?”
“I’m working on a new project,” the other pink earth pony said. “Something faster than balloons or airships or even the helicopter.”
“Oh,” Pinkie Pie said. “So, all you really want is parts, then.”
“Specifically I need the propeller,” Cherry Berry said. “Buying a new one would take a couple months of odd-jobs bits.”
“Oh!” Pinkie Pie reached a hoof through the basement window of Sugar Cube Corner and fished out a long wooden propeller. “Then just take this! I keep them scattered around Ponyville in case of aircraft construction emergency!”
“Oh, thanks, Pinkie!” Cherry Berry wrapped her forehooves around the party pony and gave her a strong earth-pony hug. “You’re a real cherry!”
Pinkie blinked. “Don’t you mean a real peach?”
Cherry released the hug, her face screwed up with disgust. “Peach? Ugh, no! I hate peaches.”
And done a hundred things you have not dreamed of
“You know,” Bon-Bon grumbled, “the harness of this wagon always chafes my shoulders. I wish Mayor Mare would spend a little tax money on some fresh tack.”
“You know, Bon-Bon,” Cherry Berry said, ignoring the uncomfortable harness on her own shoulders, “you never told me why you do this. I mean, I’m taking every odd job I can for my projects, but I thought you already had a steady income.”
“Oh… well…” Clearly uncomfortable, Bon-Bon shied as far away as the double harness would allow. “I just like to walk around Ponyville, you know? This lets me keep an eye on things.” She stopped, forcing Cherry to stop as well, and glared down a side alley where a pegasus peered back at them from an open door. “Especially number 13 Doublecross Lane,” she grumbled.
“Er, sorry, what was that?” Cherry asked.
Bon-Bon’s eyes glared into those of the pegasus. She pointed a hoof at her eyes, then pointed it directly at the pony in the doorway.
The door slammed shut. For an instant Cherry thought she saw a flash of green flame.
“Bon-Bon, what’s that all about?” Cherry Berry asked.
“Nothing! Nothing at all!” Bon-Bon chirped brightly. “So, how’s your new project coming along?”
“Oh, wonderfully!” Cherry gushed. “I’ve already got the motor and propeller, and I’ve just finished the airframe. I just need some fabric for the airframe and wings, and the controls I’ll have to order from Canter- oh, good morning, Fluttershy!”
“Good morning, Cherry,” the quiet-voiced pegasus in front of them replied. “You are coming to help brush my animal friends, right? You don’t have to,” she added in a rush. “Only if you really want to. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I know how some ponies get nervous-“
“Are they scarier than a downdraft above Ghastly Gorge?” Cherry asked.
Fluttershy considered this. “Well,” she said, “Mr. Bear does get a little frightening when he disagrees with someone in our book club. He takes literary criticism very seriously.”
Cherry Berry sighed. “What I meant,” she said, “was I’ll be there right after lunch. We still have two loads of trash pickup to do, and then I have to clean up and eat, and then I’ll be there.”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said. “Well, I appreciate it very much. I know how important your time is to you.” She blinked. “Oh, I almost forgot. Doctor Time Turner asked me to remind you that tomorrow is clock-winding day at his shop.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Cherry said. “If you see him, tell him I’ll be there at eight AM sharp.” With a smirk she added, “Well, eight AM by my own clock. I don’t know about his.”
“I’ll tell him,” Fluttershy said. “I’ll see you later, then? Good morning, Bon-Bon, I hope you’re doing well?”
“I’m fine, Fluttershy,” Bon-Bon said, adding in a low mutter, “Except for standing still and smelling the sweet aroma of hundreds of pounds of garbage.”
Cherry Berry raised a hoof to rub at one ear. “I need to see the doctor,” she said. “Half the time I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bon-Bon sighed. “I get that a lot.” The two ponies waved goodbye to Fluttershy before getting the cart back in motion. “By the way,” the cream-colored pony added, “how many odd jobs do you have, anyway?”
“Seventeen last week,” Cherry Berry said. “Maybe only twelve this week, because I’ll be spending all day Thursday and Friday helping Golden Harvest pick carrots.”
Bon-Bon blinked. “That’s a lot of work,” she said at last. “If you’re going to work that much, why not get a regular job? It’d pay more bits.”
“Because,” Cherry Berry said firmly, “with a regular job I’d have no time for what I’m spending all those bits on.”
I've chased the shouting wind along
“No, no, NO!” Rainbow Dash grabbed the tow rope in her teeth and pulled the cobbled-together flight trainer up onto a nearby cloud. “You can’t correct a spin like that! Not with fixed wings!” She flew over to the trainer, where a certain pink earth pony in a flight helmet sat behind the control stick, obviously embarrassed. “Nose over right and down, stabilize your yaw, then null your roll, and pull out!”
Cherry Berry lifted up her goggles and leaned over the edge of the trainer’s cockpit. “This is a lot harder even than flying that helicopter,” she said. “To say nothing of the balloon.”
“You think you’ve got it hard?” Rainbow Dash snapped. “Think how much of pegasus flight leans on our magic! We can hover, remember. We can use clouds to slow down or land. And we can flex our wings to adjust our lift. This thing?” She pointed to the trainer. “It’s dead in the air! No magic, just air lift and a couple rudders on the tail!”
“Isn’t that all you need?” Cherry Berry asked.
“No, it’s not!” Rainbow Dash ran a hoof along one wing of the trainer, which was essentially a wooden plank stuck on a crate at right angles. “Your pitch rudders don’t have enough leverage to counter a bad roll. Plus you can’t curve the wings to gain lift or flatten them to reduce drag. I’m doing my best to teach you,” she added, “but honestly, this design is a crash waiting to happen. And believe me, I know from crashes.”
“What if I moved the pitch rudders onto the main wings?” Cherry Berry asked.
“No, no!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “There’s no way you can give a rigid wing the fine control a pegasus wing has, right? So you need the leverage of the airframe body to control your pitch. The wings are at the center of mass- put your pitch rudders there and the first steep dive you go into will be your last!”
Cherry Berry considered this. “So I’ll need both,” she said at last. “Maybe I can work the tail rudders by pedals.”
“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “We still have half an hour of this, and if you’re not qualified to pilot the thing, it doesn’t matter how it’s built! Now let’s do this again- level flight for two klicks, then a ninety degree right banking turn and recovery! This is simple! Let’s get it right this time!”
Cherry Berry nodded, pulling the goggles back over her eyes and placing her hooves on the flight stick. “Ready for tow,” she said, “I have control.”
Dash snorted. “That’s a likely story,” she said, checking that the tow rope was secured to her belt before slowly accelerating, pulling the trainer off the cloud and back into the open sky.
through footless halls of air
Twilight Sparkle turned the blueprint over, rotating left and right in her magic field. “This is really complicated stuff,” she said. “It looks all right to me, but I’d want to call in some ponies from the airship yards for consultation.”
“That’s all right,” Cherry Berry said, sliding another page of the designs for the control panel forward with one hoof. “I was going to have to have this built by the yards anyway. Time Turner says he hasn’t got the time to do it, and anyway I want the most experienced ponies working on this.”
“If that’s the case,” Twilight asked, “then what do you need me for?”
Cherry Berry pulled an enormous sack of bits out of her saddle bag. “I need you to keep the price down,” she said. “If I go direct to the yards, the ponies there will take every bit I’ve earned, poke and prod the designs, and say they’ll need twice as much again just to get the bugs out of the designs, never mind build the thing.” The blonde-maned pony looked up at Twilight and added, “But you’re a princess. You’ve got a castle and everything.” She gestured a hoof at the huge, mostly empty hall with its crystal walls. You can say, ‘Do it because I say so,’ and the yard ponies’ll fall over themselves to make it happen.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “You’ve never heard the phrase, ‘government contract cost overruns,’ have you?”
Cherry Berry continued to stare at her with wide, soulful eyes.
Twilight sighed, rubbing the base of her horn with one hoof. “Look, I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Are you sure this is really that important?”
“This is my life,” Cherry said simply.
“It certainly could be!” Twilight agreed. “Before I got these,” she said, spreading her wings, “I never really understood just how dangerous flying could be! Balloons are so safe, but these designs- I mean-“
“Speed,” Cherry Berry replied. “I don’t just want to float or hover in the air, or putter along slower than a duck. I want to fly like a Wonderbolt. And this will let me do that.”
“But this is dangerous!”
Cherry Berry nodded. “I know. That’s why all these controls need to work. I need to know altitude, wind speed, direction, orientation, all of it. I don’t have pegasus magic or pegasus instincts, so I need to make up for it with machines.” She stamped a hoof, the clop echoing through the crystal castle. “But I’m going to do it, one way or another. This is what I live for!”
Twilight Sparkle groaned. “I thought you lived for cherries,” she said. “Cherry cutie mark, after all.”
“I just really, really like cherries,” the pink pony replied. “That’s all the cutie mark means. I’m no good at actually growing them. And the last time I tried to help the family with a harvest I spent three days in the hospital with a bellyache. But what I’ve always wanted to do…” She pointed to the blueprints. “This.”
“What about the helicopter?”
“That too.”
“And my balloon?” Twilight asked. “Can I at least have my balloon back?”
“Not done with it yet,” Cherry Berry said. “You know I do good business on weekends with fair weather giving rides over Ponyville.”
“But why do you need them all?”
“Because,” Cherry said, “sometimes you want to float around and look at things. Sometimes you need to go certain places. And sometimes you just wanna go faster and higher than anypony else.” She tapped the designs again with her hoof. “Different tools for different jobs.”
Twilight rubbed her forehead a little harder. “All right,” she said at last. “I’ll make sure this is done properly. I’m not going to have anypony get hurt because some other pony didn’t do a job properly. And I have a feeling,” she said with a sad little smirk, “that you’re not going to be the last non-pegasus to do this.”
with easy grace
“I’m sorry, darling,” Rarity said, holding open a bolt of fabric with her magic, “but you really are better off with canvas. No lighter fabric is going to hold its shape under prolonged high pressure. Not even the strongest silk will do that.”
“Shoot!” Cherry Berry stamped her hoof. “I was hoping to save weight. Canvas is so much heavier than silk. More weight means less speed!”
“Yes, and also canvas is so inelegant,” Rarity agreed. “Perhaps some silk streamers as trim?”
Shaking her head, Cherry said, “Won’t work. The speed will rip streamers apart. Plus they’ll add to the drag, slowing me down. Think Wonderbolts suits.”
Rarity tapped her chin. “Their suit fabric isn’t actually any lighter than canvas,” she said, “and it’s far more expensive.”
“I meant,” Cherry said, “that their flight suits leave nothing hanging off except their manes. Just a streamlined body. No streamers at all.”
“Ah, quite.” Rarity nodded her understanding. “Still, I suppose we could at least paint some fetching designs on the canvas… I just hope Sweetie Belle left me something in the tubes.” She strolled over to an arts cabinet, leaving Cherry Berry to poke around the other projects scattered around Rarity’s work room.
A large feathered crest grabbed the pink earth pony’s attention. She reached up to the worktable and picked it up in her forehooves. To her surprise the whole thing came up as a unit, as rigid as a shield. The feathers didn’t move. The whole thing glinted slightly in the light of the boutique.
“Oh, do be careful with that!” Rarity cried out. Blue magic wrapped around the feathered crest, lifting it gingerly from Cherry Berry’s grip. “That’s part of a special costume for Sapphire Shores, and it might not be done curing yet!” With careful precision Rarity levitated the crest back on the mold where it had been resting before Cherry picked it up.
“How did you make that?” Cherry asked. “It’s hard, but so lightweight.”
“It’s only resin, darling,” Rarity said. “With my sister and her friends about, I’m never short of tree sap, so I heat it up a bit and brush it on pieces that need to retain their structure.” She gestured at the large plumes running up and down the front of the crest. “Those feathers are very hard to get and even harder to replace, and this costume needs to last at least a hundred shows. The resin dries and cures clear and hard. I hear they do similar things making kayaks for those daredevil ponies who go white-water rafting.”
Cherry Berry smiled. “Rarity,” she asked, “just how much resin do you have?”
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew
The snow had been carefully cleared from the meadow, but the winter weather had frozen the ground nice and hard. The old barn Cherry Berry rented for her hobby sat with its door open as Cherry carefully pushed out the machine she’d invested a year’s worth of income and labor into. The large reinforced wheels with their rubber tires left ruts in the loose top layer of soil, but the tail skid barely dragged into the earth behind. Sunlight gleamed and glittered across the composite-covered wings and body.
Rainbow Dash had promised to be wingmare for the craft’s first flight, and she hovered over the edge of the field, her closest friends gathered on the ground below her. Carrot Top and the rest of the Harvest family watched from the nearby farmhouse, while the Apple family watched from the other side of the field. A few clusters of curious ponies from town, having heard that today was the day, lingered here and there around the edges, wondering what was about to happen.
With the craft at the end of the field, propeller pointing more or less into the wind, Cherry Berry pulled on her helmet and goggles, sliding them over her eyes before climbing onto the craft’s lower wing and into the cockpit.
A tiny, emaciated-looking pegasus colt rushed up to the craft. “Wow! What is it?” he asked.
“Excuse me, er, whoever you are,” Cherry Berry called down from the pilot’s seat. “I need you to get out of the way, please. You might get hurt.”
“Oh, I’m Featherweight,” the colt said. “What is this? I’ve got to take a picture of it!”
“Well, I call it a biplane,” Cherry replied. “That comes from ancient Equestrian- ‘bi’ for two, ‘plane’ for ‘flat things.’”
Featherweight looked at the lower wing. “But it’s not flat at all!” he said. “It’s got a curve, and these strange flappy panel things-“
“Yes, yes,” Cherry said impatiently. “Now could you clear the area, please? Things are about to get noisy and dangerous.” She shuddered a bit; winter air was heavy and made lift easier, but it was also cold. She reached below the console and pulled out a scarf, which she wrapped around her neck.
Featherweight backed away, pulling out a camera and taking picture after picture. As Cherry Berry cranked the engine and the propeller roared to life, he got a perfect shot of the determined-looking helmeted pink pony looking forward, scarf flapping in the wind from the propeller.
The rudder and tail flaps waggled. The wing flaps pushed out and down, up and out, and back in. Cherry reached a hoof up and saluted Rainbow Dash, who nodded and returned the salute with a grin.
And then the engine roared to full power, and the biplane began bouncing along the field. Less than halfway down its length the wheels left ground for a full second, made one more light touch, and then parted from the ground for good.
With a simple-looking grace the craft rose up and away, banking left and aiming for the skies.
and touched the face of God
Pegasi had come and gone, looking over and even pacing Cherry Berry’s craft for brief periods, but only Rainbow Dash had stuck with her for longer than ten minutes. The flight had gone well over an hour by now, and the biplane’s engine still showed a strong magic charge good for at least as much more flying. Cherry was in no hurry to end the experience any sooner than necessary.
Granted, the biplane wasn’t nearly as fast as she’d hoped. Rainbow Dash could keep pace with it while flying backwards, and most of the other, less talented pegasi had been able to orbit the craft in flight. That said, it was still much faster than an airship or the helicopter she owned, and the feeling of flying it was totally different.
For the first time, Cherry Berry imagined she understood what it felt like to fly like a pegasus. She could imagine the wind under the wings, pushing them up, holding her above the clouds. She could turn in circles, bank, soar and dive, doing things the helicopter would have found difficult and the balloon impossible except under specific and fatal conditions.
And here she was, higher than the clouds, higher than Cloudsdale even, with Rainbow Dash a long way below and behind. Nothing, nothing in all Equestria flew higher in the sky than a pink earth pony with her blonde mane tucked under a helmet, and that knowledge gave Cherry Berry the most wonderful happy feeling.
Here and now, she was alive.
Which meant it was a perfect time for lunch.
Locking the controls in place, Cherry reached beneath the seat and brought out a small basket. Aunt Jubilee had sent a special selection of the most recent harvest in honor of today’s flight, and Cherry Berry had been looking forward to it all day. She opened the basket and picked out the first bunch of cherries with one hoof.
“Those look delicious,” a voice called out over the sound of the engine.
Cherry Berry nearly dropped the cherries. Setting them down, she looked over her right shoulder and saw Princess Celestia’s face. The sun princess had carefully slipped between the biplane’s wings, keeping pace with the plane with slow, careful flaps of her own. “G-g-good morning, Princess.”
“Good morning, my little pony,” Celestia said. “I was just enjoying a mid-morning snack when I noticed something unusual in the skies, and I just had to come see what it was.” Celestia looked the craft back and forth. “I must say, it’s certainly an ingenious device.”
“I had a lot of help,” Cherry said. “And it’s not the first aeroplane.”
“But they are quite rare,” Celestia said. “And you’ve made this one with a lot of love and devotion, and it shows.” She smiled at her subject and said, “It’s always good to see a pony follow her dreams.”
Cherry smiled… and then noticed something. “Er, princess, could you come a little closer?”
Celestia blinked. “Ah, certainly,” she said, adjusting her flight just enough to bring her barrel almost into contact with the biplane’s fuselage. Her head swang over the edge of the cockpit. “What for?”
Cherry Berry reached up and wiped something from the corner of Celestia’s mouth. “There you go,” she said. “You had a daub of frosting on your cheek.”
Princess Celestia blushed. “Er… well, thank you, Cherry Berry,” she said. “I suppose I’d better go finish my ca… er, my healthy and nutritious snack… and leave you to your own. Have fun!” With a flash of light the alicorn was gone, and Cherry Berry was alone again in the skies.
Cherries at ten thousand hooves above ground level tasted wonderful.
