Saffron Ree

A full two weeks since Commander Spitfire had started in on us. After the first four days, it no longer seemed odd to get up so early anymore. Clark was pretty awesome about it, even when I couldn't do a quarter of the amount of wing-ups he did.

Dad always told me it wasn't what the other guy was doing about fitness, but what you did about it. Well, I had to work twice as hard to reach the same level, Clark was, and he put up with getting ribbing from the other guys about constantly poking at his wings.

We were a team.

When we reported in—same as always—the sergeant at the gate waved us through.

All the exercise with my wings had done a great job of making them very distinct in my head from my forelegs. Not only could I keep them nicely tucked at my sides, but I could reach and use them without tripping or even twitching my legs.

The sound of droning reached us from overhead. When I looked up, I saw Commander Spitfire and two other Wonderbolts speed past us with the distinctive noise coming from their flight suits. Sudden Turn was one of the pegasi with Spitfire, while the other I didn't recognize. Like three missiles they aimed themselves and shot toward us.

Spitfire, Sudden, and the unknown pegasus practically crashed into the ground, but rather than looking harmed by the impact, all three were standing proud and looking at us.

"These're the two newbies you told me about? C'mon, Commander, give 'em another year and they might be worth looking at." The third pony was a mare with a bright yellow mane showing through her uniform and had pale fur. She shrugged and started to turn.

"Maybe for the Wonderbolts, Slowpoke, but these two have never flown at all before." Spitfire waited for her companion to turn back. "You're our best trainer for the Young Fliers, you've gotten foals I'd have given up on into the air and doing stunts. I want your honest opinion."

"I gave you my honest opinion." Slowpoke looked over us again, then walked up and used her wing to grab mine. I thought she was going to pull it or twist it, but she seemed to know exactly how a wing unfolds as she extended my limb to its full length. "Push down." When I didn't do it enough for her, she grunted. "Harder. Like you're doing wing-ups."

Okay, that much force I knew. Shoving down as hard as I could, I heard a soft, surprised sound come from her.

"Yeah. What about your friend?" Slowpoke let my wing go and walked over to Clark's other side to repeat the test with him. "Alright, you should be in the air already."

"Wait!" I glared at her. "So I don't get to fly? That sucks! I've been working my ass off every bit as much as—" I faltered in my anger at the snort of laughter Slowpoke made. "What?!"

"You'll be flying by the end of the day if all it took was guts. Come over to the edge and lets see how you do." Turning and walking, Slowpoke made her way (with all of us following) to the edge of the training ground—which was also the edge of the huge plate that Canterlot sat on. "Okay, Tough Guy, if you think you can fly, walk off the edge."

I turned to look at Spitfire and Sudden, but both offered nothing but neutral expressions. Clark was my last refuge, and he shrugged at me. "Just walk off?"

"You've got wings. You think you can fly." Slowpoke took a step off the edge and spread her wings as she did.

It looked so easy.

"This is crazy." Snapping my wings out, I stepped forward.

Okay, it was easy—falling was really easy. All I had to do was not think about what would happen when I hit the ground at the end.

"Open your wings! Catch the air!" Slowpoke shouted.

Sure. Just open my wings again. The pressure and weight of my fall hit my shoulder joints as I did what she said. Memories of that day when the mare tossed me into the air hit me, and with my wings spread wide and catching air—I flew.

"I'm flying!" Joy hit me harder than the air had hit my wings. There was a million things I was feeling through my feathers, all of it I had Fluttershy to thank for. I felt little breezes that tried to push me aside, lift me up, shove me down—I didn't know what to do with the information, but I knew it!

Slowpoke was coasting along at my side. "Flap!"

We'd gotten lessons in flapping. Flapping involved lifting the wing while twisting flight feathers, straightening the feathers out, and pumping your wings down hard. We'd practiced it, and I'd felt some lift, but this was kinda different. My wings—my feathers—were what stopped me falling to my death. Simply twisting my feathers would stop all the lift my wings gave me.

So I did it anyway, because I'm the kind of pony who steps off cliffs.

"FASTER!"

She sounded like Spitfire. My second flap was faster than the first, and I felt something boil up inside me at the feel of my wings pumping. Excitement, raw and wild, poured through my body and into my wings.

"Go! Go! Go! FLY!"

I didn't need Slowpoke's encouragement, but it was good to know she thought I was doing it right. Each pump of my wings shot me faster and higher. I closed my eyes and trusted my wings to feel the air around me, which is how I managed not to hit the underside of Canterlot.

The air around me twitched and moved with everything nearby that affected it. I wanted to do all kinds of stupid stuff, but the possibility of falling to my death was still strong enough in my—Fuck it!

Tipping forward, I drew my wings in a little and was in a dive. Faster and faster, I shot toward the ground below so quickly that the whole world seemed to slow down to watch what I'd do. Snapping my wings out fully, I angled my feathers to use that speed to send me into an arc upward.

Just as I was getting what I thought was enough speed to roll over and finish my first loop, I stopped. All my speed and all the air that had been guiding me was gone. My human instinct was to scream and fall—but I'd learned how useless that was.

Feathers tilted, wings up, feathers straight, flap.

"Ha! There you go. You learned the first important lessons of flying!" Hovering beside me, Slowpoke looked like she was barely even trying to fly. "Let's head back up so your friend can see if he needs his plot saved."

Looking up, I groaned at how far it was before actually laughing at myself. Dad said this day would come—when I would realized how stupid-lucky I was. Here I was able to fly, and I was already thinking about complaining at having to fly up.

"Race you!" I shouted, and began pumping my wings hard to give gravity the middle fing—feather. Slowpoke, despite her name, kicked my ass, but I was laughing at how awesome it felt to really fly.

Landing on the field beside Spitfire and Sudden, I folded my wings at my sides and only then realized how sore they were. Not really hurting, but like the time I'd gone from jogging each day to running. "Flying is amazing!"

Behind me, Slowpoke walked off the edge with Clark.

"How're your wings, newbie?" If Spitfire recognized personal space, she didn't show it. She walked up to me and used one of her wings to grab my left and unfold it. "As I thought. Keep them unfolded and hit the showers. Cold shower. "Strip, make sure he follows orders. Damn stallions thinking they're indestructible and——" Spitfire kept grumbling as she walked away.

That she'd called me a stallion, on top everything, made me want to strut beside Sudden Turn on the way to the showers. I couldn't help but catch glances at her—pony eyes were good for that, since they were kinda turned sideways a little.

The tight bodysuit clung to all the right parts, parts I wouldn't have considered could be right parts a few months back. She was lithe and slim, and each step Sudden took was like a dancer.

"You checking me out?" The words cut through my daydreaming like a knife. Sudden, however, had a smile rather than the angry expression I was expecting.

I'd dealt with this before. Puberty had been behind me and I was searching for the deeper meanings of life before I got sucked along on this ride. "Yeah. Hard to forget what it was like back home."

"Yeah, I heard about that. Look all you want—I'm not one of those prudish townies." She pranced with her steps, showing off for sure. "But you're a bit young for me, Saf. Nothing personal."

"I'm a bit young for me too. Don't sweat it, I don't even know if this tackle works yet. Being this young is so messed up." It might not be working yet, but if there was ever a time it might—in a pony my age—it would be now. "Do you have a guy—err, stallion. I mean, are you seeing somepony?" Their words were creeping into my head, but I suddenly didn't care so much.

"Nope. Too focused on being the best flier I can be to want to settle down with some stallion who probably wants to fill my belly so full I can't fly. I was born to fly, Saf, and I intend to keep doing it." Sudden Turn had led me to a building with just a single door. She flicked it open with a wing and—walking in first—gave me a view that would probably stick with me even when I was home. Human girls don't tend to let you see everything until you've been on at least a date.

Following her into the showers, I found the inside consisted of… showers. Nothing but showers. Nothing between the showers, either. "I gotta ask, though I swore to myself I wouldn't. How old are you?"

"I turn eighty-three this year."

The words weren't as much a hammer blow as they could be, mostly because Sudden was peeling off her flight suit. And here was I thinking that ponies being naked most of the time would make undressing completely uninteresting, but watching her strip the tight suit off was struggling against the lack of urges my body had.

"By your lack of words I figure either your brain futzed at the number or your attention is focused on something else." She turned—now naked—and looked at me. "Oh, the latter."

"When I found out how old Celestia is, I kinda got a little perspective. But yeah, eighty years is oooolllllllddddd for humans. We're normally adult at seventeen." I almost said twenty-one, but she said she knew all about me, so I figured I might as well toss in that at least I considered me adult.

"I heard eighteen, but that doesn't matter. You thought you're an adult up here—" Sudden walked up and tapped the side of my head, "—and that's all that matters to you, right?"

She was bigger than me. Taller, heavier muscled, and even longer-limbed. "Yeah. And you're totally out of my league. A foal my age would be what, playing at finding a girlfriend and kissing where adults can't see us?"

"I take it you've gone a little further than that? Back home, I mean."

I snorted and then yelped as the cold water hit me. Jumping from hoof to hoof, I was about to make a run for it when firm feathers grabbed each of my wings and stretched them out to the sides—Sudden only managed that because she was standing directly behind me and over me.

As the icy chill soaked through my feathers and into my muscles, it stole the soreness from my wings Sudden Turn's presence had made me forget I even had. "Oooohhh…"

"Out of all the pegasi you'll ever meet, Saf, I'm the only one who'll know that feeling." She held my wings out for me, though she didn't need to. Cold water didn't really have the same ache it would back on Earth, and the way it soothed my muscles would have left me standing with my wings out anyway. "I wasn't able to fly until I was almost forty-five."

The admission was startling enough that I turned to look at her out of one eye. "Forty-five? You were—"

"About seventeen in your years, Saf."

Damn. Now if that didn't put her friendship in a new light, nothing would—and it definitely did. I hadn't even known what I was missing, but Sudden would have seen all the other pegasi flying. "That would have fucking sucked."

Her snort wasn't forced. "Eloquent, Rarity would say as she looks down her nose at you. Ponies don't swear a lot, Saf."

"Yeah, I know that. I was just surprised."

"No one ever says that word, and only Crash says sucked." She let go of my wings and backed off to her own shower.

"Actually there's one pony I've heard say that word, but I can't tell you who." I wanted to tell her, I wanted to tell her so much, but I said I wouldn't, and I don't think ratting out Fluttershy'd be something I could live with. "But she heard it from a whole bunch of places."

"'She'?" Sudden broke into a laugh when I groaned. "Don't sweat it, Saf, her secret's safe with me—whoever she is."

What stung the most, I think, was how much I liked Sudden Turn without the sex appeal affecting me. She was a nice pony, and we'd somehow already shared something nopony and no one else ever would. "You really don't care if I stare, do you?"

"What? I wouldn't put on a tight flight suit and flash everypony my underbelly if I wasn't okay with being looked at, Saf." Sudden was enjoying her hot shower by the look of it, fluffing her wings out and preening her feathers under it.

My feathers were totally soaked, but that didn't mean I couldn't preen them. I nibbled at one that had gotten a crimp in it from something I'd done, before I replied, "That's not what I meant and you know it."

"Saf, I got a full briefing from Princess Celestia—along with Commander Spitfire. She told us both that you're only going to be here for a few years. A few years that you won't be mature by. The way I figure it, Saf, you're going to get to look at a lot of ponies, but you're only going to take home the image of one burned into your retina. Am I right?"

I blew out a long sigh after my mind chased through her logic. "Yeah. You are."

"And you'll remember flying."

"Fuck yeah." I didn't care about swearing taboos, flying was better than anything. "She had to yell at me a lot, but Slowpoke really knew what she was doing. I tried to do a loop."

"Did you make it?"

Starting to shiver, I decided I was done with the cool shower and stepped out from under it. "Nope. Thought I had it, but I stopped—"

"Stalled. When your forward speed doesn't overpower the drag of gravity and wind resistance, and you stop."

"Right. I stalled, panicked for a second, and then just flapped my wings." I stretched, arching my back and reaching far out to each side with my wings, and then I shook myself dry like a dog. It felt great.

The sound of both showers stopped. "Good instincts. Some pegasi'd do that, panic, and then need to be caught."

"When I was little, I was scared of heights. I don't think it really applies here, though. I mean, no matter how high up I am, all I need to do is spread my wings." An annoying feeling in my right wing made me lift it forward and turn it so I could get at the feather that wasn't sitting right. I used my teeth to straighten it and then flicked the wing to make sure it was sitting right.

"Right," Sudden said. "The higher you are, the safer you are. You'd get more injured falling off a ladder than falling off Canterlot. Nice work with that preening, by the way. You're getting the hang of this stuff quickly."

Okay, now I felt like preening more, but not because my feathers might be out of place. Sudden Turn's age seemed insane to even contemplate. I wasn't even twenty yet—she's over four times my age. Well, like she said, I've probably got a few more years here, and I wanted to make those years where I spend as much time in the air as I can. Right now, however, my wings were still a little sore.

"They're still a little tight," I said. "Guess flying really uses those muscles?"

"Yeah, but there's one other thing you need to work out." Sudden walked over to me and, when I didn't move, leaned in so she was touching me down our sides. Setting her wing over my back, she hugged me closer.

A little uncomfortable with it, I opened my mouth to ask what was going on when I felt the first rush of magic. "What the—?" Another pulse of it halted my words. The next wave made me push against it, and I felt magic of my own flow.

"Now push that into your wings."

"How?"

"Just imagine it. It's magic—it knows what you want it to do."

Okay, magic, go into my—

My thoughts derailed as my magic—my magic—rushed along to my wings. The soreness was washed away and I felt ready to fly again. "Fuck."

Sudden stepped away from me and left me to stand on my own. It was hard to focus on anything but—My wings were flapping. I looked down and realized I was hovering a few feet off the ground. "Figured this'd be the case. You're in the body of a little foal, but you have the magic of an adult pegasus. Chalk it up to magic being magic. How's it feel?"

I looked from one wing to the other. Neither felt strained, and flapping them was easier than ever. "Amazing! How am I doing this? It should be harder to fly than this."

"The easy answer is that it is harder to fly than what you're doing. Even the slightest trickle of magic to your wings makes everything easier, but it costs you your magic reserve," Sudden Turn said. "Go on, ask the next question I know you're dying to ask."

The way she'd said it implied that my next question should be a smart one. Right. Smart. I was fishing around for what to say when it hit me. "Why didn't you teach me this first?"

"Bingo! We have a flier that can think." Walking to the exit, Sudden beckoned me. "You see, we could have taught you to just burn magic to fly, but there's a great reason not to—it's a crutch. A while ago—twice actually—all the magic was getting sucked out of Equestria. Now, we got it all fixed, but could you imagine how nasty that would be if all you could do was use your magic to fly?"

"That'd only affect the ponies actually flying at the time, right?" I had a feeling I knew the answer to this. Flying was the defining thing about pegasi.

"You haven't been to Cloudsdale yet, have you?" When I shook my head, Sudden lifted her wing and pointed one of her primary feathers nearly straight up. A huge cloud bank was looming over Canterlot. "That's Cloudsdale. C'mon, I'll tell the commander we're going to take a look at Wonderbolt H.Q." She grabbed her uniform out and held it in one hoof.

"Isn't this where you practice?" I followed her until Sudden spread her wings and practically bounced into the air as if her being on the ground was the wrong part. Planes, helicopters, rockets—Everything I'd ever seen fly that people'd built looked like it struggled to get into the air. Not so for Sudden.

"Sometimes. But Wonderbolt's H.Q. is in Cloudsdale." She turned toward the figure of Spitfire—who was looking over the edge of Canterlot with a grin. "Commander! Permission to show the newbie Wonderbolt H.Q.!"

Spitfire turned to look at me, and one of her eyebrows raised. "Using flight magic already? Tell you what, kid, if you can make it to Cloudsdale proper today, I'll invite you to join the Young Fliers Program."

So much of my attention was on Spitfire I didn't notice that Sudden Turn was putting her flight suit back on. When I noticed her, she was pulling her wings through and had her back arched and—This was another etched in my mind moment. Thanks, Sudden, for making my eventual return to Earth and the first time I get off the most awkward moment of my life in advance.

"Well?" Spitfire asked. "What are you two waiting for, your nanny to fly back up here?!"

My brain took a few seconds to catch up with my wings. When Spitfire shouted something, you did it first and asked questions after—which was exactly when I realized that she'd literally just given me the chance to slip away from Clark and have the day to myself.

With my wings pumping hard, however, I couldn't very well fly back down to thank her. "Remind me I owe Commander Spitfire a big one."

"If I know the commander at all, she'll never call it in." Sudden didn't seem to be working half as hard as me, but she didn't make a show of it. "It's how she operates. Like you're going to disobey the orders of somepony you owe a big favor to. Or twenty.

"Over here, Saf. Stop pumping your wings and just cup the air… HERE!"

We reached the spot practically at the same time, and it was like a huge pair of hands grabbed my wings and shoved upward. A warm breeze caused all my feathers to twitch as it carried us upward faster than we could have flown.

"This is awesome!" The thought of curbing the enthusiasm I felt for flying, like I would have back home, came and went. How the fuck can I possibly not be excited to fly?! "Is this a thermal?"

"You got it. Warm air finds its way through the colder air like the opening of a balloon. You gotta be a bit careful, but most of them are fairly calm like this one. Swing out this way and I'll show you how to feel for them." Sudden led me out of the thermal in a slow arc, but she didn't set about flapping anymore. "Okay, so you can only feel the air temperature around you, right?"

"Yeah. So how do I feel the heat?"

"You don't. That's the trick. You literally can't feel the temperature of the thermal on our right, so what can you feel for instead?"

I closed my eyes, keeping the sensation of Sudden's movement through the air beside me, and focused on my feathers. The slight disruption of the air Sudden made barely registered, probably something to do with her fancy flight suit, but it was there. My feathers told me I was slowly going down, since there was air going up, but they also told me there was a constant flow along the edge of the thermal—almost like it was a pillar in the middle of the air.

Snapping my eyes open, I couldn't keep a grin off my face. "The cold air flows around the thermal like it's an object. I can feel it bulging and shifting."

"That bulging is the best warning you'll ever get about a whole bunch of things. If something big is moving really fast or if you want to learn to blind-fly, that's your go-to feeling to know when you're going somewhere bad. Since we can't see anything huge and there's no wall, that means it's a thermal." When Sudden finished, she dipped her right wing just a little and we slid back into the rush of warm air.

Letting out a shout, I watched the clouds above fall down to meet us and, when we were above them, I saw Cloudsdale. "Holy shitballs."

The city of Cloudsdale was insane. It was literally clouds with houses and buildings and factories built on it. If Canterlot was an insane place because it couldn't stand out as it did without magic, then Cloudsdale was that on steroids.

"Why isn't everything falling through the clouds?!"

Sudden snorted and aimed us toward a nearby cloud bank. "Fly over here and I'll show you." And that's when she did the next insane thing—Sudden Turn landed on the fluffy cloud and sat down. "Come over here and aim some of your magic to your hooves."

I did that, and lost the strength in my wings. Gliding I could still do, so I came down slowly onto the cloud with my magic buzzing around my hooves. Then I landed on the cloud. Opening my mouth only resulted in Sudden jamming her hoof in there.

"Lay off the swearing before we get into Cloudsdale, okay?" She asked.

Nodding, I waited for her to remove her hoof before simply saying, "Wow."

"Cloud walking. It's another things mostly unique to pegasi. Unicorns can do a spell that works a bit like it, but it only does half the work. You see, while our pegasus magic lets us stand on clouds, we can also buck 'em." Lifting her back hooves up, Sudden turned around on her forehooves while using her wings to balance, and then she kicked down.

The cloud snapped in half like a cheap bit of wood. One half went flying downward while our part just stayed level. I rushed over to the edge and watched the falling cloud disappear to sight. I was about to shout something, but remembered the hoof. "Cloud bucking?"

"Cloud bucking. Unlike cloud walking, you need to give a shove to your magic to get it working."

"So I don't need to keep using magic on my hooves?"

"Nah. A little zap to them every day or so is enough, but I'd suggest giving your hooves a little jolt every hour or so. Come on, let me show you Wonderbolt H.Q.!"

Author's Note

Ree Family: when the time comes how do you think you'll answer the offer to stay in equestria?

"If I get a choice? I'm staying," Saffron said.

"If he gets to stay, I wanna stay!" Riley said.

"Riley, Saffron's an adult, by our standards." Philip looked from his daughter to his son. "We'll discuss this."

Clair cleared her throat. "Well, as you can see, we're a little divided. What will have to happen, however, is I must go back from time to time to report in person to our president. When my duty here is over, I'll likely have to write a large report on it—and if you think for a second I'll do that by holding a pen in my mouth, you have another thing coming."

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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