Flight of Fancy

Nothing engaged Giselle’s interest quite like the sight of her best friend and flight partner Natalya bobbing and weaving through the clouds above her head.

There was nothing Natalya could do that Giselle didn’t feel confident she couldn’t, either, with a bit of practice, but that somehow did not take away from the awe inspiring way her wings carried her through the air.

Flight, for flight’s sake.

Technically, they were practicing. The qualifying flight race in the Crystal Empire was coming up, after all. They weren’t exactly ill-prepared, yet both knew that the competing pegasi, hippogriffs, and griffons were all practicing at least as hard as they were to take home the gold. Giselle had been over the moon when Natalya had requested her as a partner for the two-flier relay race.

It had been predictable to every griffon besides Giselle, it seemed, but she herself had been riding the metaphoric high for days at the idea of flying next to Nat. It wasn’t as though it was the first time--hardly, no, they’d been wing-buddies since flight school--but this marked the first time they were the solo representatives for Griffonstone in an event.

And Nat had chosen her specifically.

Giselle watched Nat drop down into a free fall--eyes closed just to show off. She flew with confidence that no other griffon in their flight team had. The sky was hers, and she asserted her dominance within it with every flap of her wings.

She opened her eyes less than twenty feet before the ground, clipped her wings, and recovered from the dive at a breakneck speed, her flight taking her back around to Giselle and swirling around her in circles.

“Just gonna watch, Giselle?” Natalya chirped teasingly, flapping her wings to keep her circling flight going.

“I’d be birdbrained not to,” she returned, smirking.

“Yeah, well. They won’t be giving points to fliers too shy to leave the ground,” Natalya said. “Competition’s in two weeks. Or have you forgotten?”

“Just figured I’d learn just as much watching you. You are the flight leader, after all.”

Natalya smirked at that. She angled out of the swirling flight, only to corkscrew around and land with a dull THUD! on the dirt next to Giselle. “Right, I guess I am. So why aren’t you up there showin’ me some loops, Rookie?”

Giselle smirked, too. ‘Rookie’ had been her affectionate nickname for as long as she could remember, going all the way back to her months-late admittance to flight-camp after Nat. A junior by three months was still a junior in Nat’s books, and the nickname had somehow stuck.

She rose, outstretching her wings in a quick pre-flight stretch. “On your lead, then?”

“No no, Rookie. Your turn. I lead every routine. Show me some of that impressive solo flying I know you can do.”

Giselle complied with a fraction of the confidence that Natalya radiated, but she took to the skies all the same. Her talons digging into the dirt, her wings outstretching. Feeling the thickness of the air, the direction of the wind. Behind her, Natalya had positioned herself directly behind Giselle to watch her take-off.

The take-off was, in many aspects, as important as the flight itself. It was one of the earliest lessons in flight-school, and it made or broke a successful stunt display. Her front talons arced inwards, gripping the dirt beneath them. Her head angled downwards, until she was practically cradling it against the fronts of her talons, while her hind legs bent down.

Giselle didn't know it, but Nat wasn't exactly ignoring the sight of her flight partners rump stretching in pre-flight prep before her.

A strong push, and her wings--pressed against her body until the last moment--angled up to catch the momentum of her upwards leap. She churned the air furiously, fighting Old Mare Gravity in a vicious battle to gain as much altitude as quickly as she could. She afforded herself only one downwards glance to gauge how much airspace above the ground she’d given herself to work with. Fifty feet. Enough to have some fun.

The wind wasn’t exactly helping Giselle’s ascent, but she figured that the name of the game now wasn’t a game of speed and height. She just wanted to show off, as Natalya had. She twisted her body around, and let her wings catch the wind. Flecks of rain from the gray wispy clouds above greeted them, while the wing took her and angled her around. She drifted along, her body moving through the sky at a harsh diagonal guided only by the wind, and then she clipped her wings ever so slightly to alter her trajectory into a backwards roll resolving into a harsh downwards dive.

She’d put gravity in the driver’s spot of her routine, letting it pull her down while she angled her only one wing out, pressing the other to her side, her body twisting in a series of tight corkscrews. Out her wings came, at the last moment, flapping once, twice, thrice, then steadily as she once more ascended, her nose pointed straight up at the clouds high above.

This was the hardest sort of ascent. The straight 90, the bane of any weak fliers wings. One had to angle them in a slight twist, which made the already strenuous movement even harder on the muscles. Even Giselle’s were quaking a little, but she kept going nonetheless, until she’d regained the height of her initial ascent in mere moments and then continued to go beyond.

Then, stillness. She outstretched them, and stopped flapping. The wind took her again, and she let it. Her vertical entry complete, she angled down, her wings perpendicular with the ground below. Her vertical exit was delayed by the wind by a few moments, but when she started to fall, she kept her wings out, and twisted her back instead. She cartwheeled down the vertical descent axis in a dizzying series of rapid turns. She couldn’t even gauge her descent’s distance with the ground spinning all around her, but she’d been in the stunt flying business enough that she knew the rate of her own descent by feel alone.

A single strong flap pulled her out of the rapid hammerhead descent. She’d been conserving her wing energy the entire fall, saving it all for one conclusive flap that made the collective Gs of her entire dive hit her all at once.

Then, her talons touched down gently on the dirt, a mere several feet from where she’d taken off to begin with.

Exhaustion hit her all at once, but Natalya’s chirruping cheering rewarded her ears and made it all worth it.

“Still got it!” Natalya cried out, stretching out her wing to strike Giselle’s excitedly. “That rocked, Rookie!”

Giselle blushed, and accepted the feather-five with a warm grin. “Thanks, Nat.”

“We’re gonna rock their worlds!” Natalya continued. She wrapped a talon around Giselle, hugging her in close.

Giselle let out a surprised squawk, her chest feathers floofing out and her beating heart skipping a beat. Nat hugged her tight, and punctuated the breathtaking embrace by nuzzling her beak into that floofed up bit of breast feathers.

Nat had always been the warm, hugging type, but she seemed to be more so around Giselle than anyone else. She chalked it up to their history; they spent so much time together that they might be mistaken for a pair beyond flying partners.

Besides, Giselle had seen Nat flirting with griffon roosters before. They were close friends, sure, but that was likely where it began and ended.

Still, there was something distinctly intimate about the way Natalya held onto Giselle, especially after the two shared in a particularly exhilarating stunt-routine or high-stakes race.

To say nothing of that one time in Rainbow Falls, when they’d taken the first bronze medal in a decade for Griffonstone...

“Ready to get back up there?” Nat asked, cutting through Giselle’s thoughts and letting her go, regarding her flustered look with a mischievous smirk. “This time, I’m joinin’ ya.”

Giselle’s grin became more playful. “I’ll try and keep up.”

“You’ll do better than keep up. You really gotta get that confidence up there, Rookie.”

“I know, I know,” Giselle said, waving with a wing. “Ready when you are.”

Natalya took into the air at that. To Giselle, her ascent seemed so effortless and simple, compared to the calculated and deliberate one that she’d attempted. Maybe that was the result of confidence. Or maybe, Natalya was just the better flier.

Giselle hit the air right behind her. Together they gained altitude, Natalya taking them higher and higher gradually, the ground sinking down beneath them. The rain had started to pick up a little, but for the griffons it was a refreshing addition to their flight.

At a hundred feet up, Natalya suddenly swooped around, soaring over top of Giselle.

“Alright! Come and catch me, Rookie!” she goaded, winking as she dropped into a dive to gain speed.

With that, the game was on. Giselle folded her wings, twisted herself around, and dove after Natalya, her heart beating. Griffons were always a competitive sort, even amongst friends and partners, and Giselle and Nat were no exceptions.

For Natalya, she’d found that competition presented the best counter to Giselle’s confidence issues. The griffon was an excellent flier, but she almost always saw herself as the weakest link to any team she was flying in. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, she figured, especially when she knew that Giselle had the skill to back up any level of boasting--if she’d had the confidence to do so.

On the ground, she was the weakest griffon stunt flier she knew that could be qualified as good.

But get her competing? Goad her into giving chase, or outperforming her? And suddenly, the edge was on. The need to prove herself took center stage, and a different griffon took the skies with her wings.

And when that happened, Nat’s heart started to race like never before. The thrill of competition took over her, too, especially when she looked back and saw that Giselle had effortlessly closed the distance and was gaining it with a few furious flaps of her wings to accelerate her already breakneck downwards dive.

And besides the thrill, it filled Natalya with a strong warmness. Letting the skittish, self doubting griffon become the apex predator she really was deep inside. Showing her that she was as skilled a flier as the griffon she seemed to worship.

I wasn’t that Nat didn’t appreciate Giselle’s unambiguous admiration of her, she did. But twisting Giselle’s admiration back towards herself? Now that was a wonderful feeling.

Natalya had to start flapping herself rather quickly, when it became obvious that she’d be outpaced by Giselle otherwise. She wasn’t ready to lose height quite yet, and with Giselle so close to her tail she had to think twice to try and break her approach. Suddenly, Nat clipped her wings and jerked out of the dive, flying off to the side while Giselle kept on flying forwards for a short distance.

Nat chuckled as she heard Giselle’s indignant squawk at being deked out. She was quick to correct her flight, though, arcing out of the dive more gradually than Natalya but managing to conserve some of her momentum as a reward for her more patient flight. A few powerful flaps and she was back on the tail of her competition.

“Nice try!” Giselle called out. “But you can’t shake me that easily!”

Natalya snickered, and responded by quickly corkscrewing away once again, maintaining the same vertical altitude once it became clear she wasn’t gonna shake Giselle through speed alone. Her next best bet was to try and tire out the other griffon.

Both of their hearts were beating rapidly now. Giselle seemingly had forgotten any sense of hero worship--or perhaps it was the very thing motivating her. To out-fly the griffon she looked up to the most... Well, every-griff needed the ego-boost once and awhile.

Natalya, meanwhile, was trying her damnedest to shake off Giselle, but she didn’t for an instant regret challenging her, either. No, she was having an absolute blast, and part of her knew that being outflown by Giselle might just end up being the best part of their practice so far. After all, it spoke volumes of their abilities as flight-partners if the ‘weakest-link’ was actually the best flier amongst them.

Every twisting loop or corkscrew Natalya made was matched in an instant by Giselle. Years of mutual flight, of memorizing the same patterns and stunts and routines, meant that Giselle could read Natalya’s body language as though it were a picture book for chicks.

Nat’s only choice, she figured, was to try and tire Giselle out. As such, her flight took on a steady rhythm of rising up as rapidly as she could, and then suddenly ceasing her flapping and letting gravity take her and ease her down into a swooping descent. She repeated the move, again and again, but to her dismay it did not seem to be slowing Giselle down at all.

It was, however, tiring the both of them out pretty quickly. Both of their hearts beating in their chests, their wing muscles quaking, their adrenaline pumping. Natalya realized that she simply wasn’t going to outfly her flying partner. Giselle might see herself as the inferior flier, but more and more she was proving that that simply wasn’t true.

Natalya eased down into a dive one last time, and then flapped her wings suddenly, subverting the last few swoops and instead gaining even more speed on her descent. Giselle matched it, but instead of the rapid wing beats that Nat was attempting, Giselle’s were slow, strong, and powerful.

In mid-air, ten meters above the ground, Giselle crashed into Natalya, gripping her mentor possessively in her claws. The two griffons came to a violent halt on the grass, tumbling over one another in a series of (relatively painless) cartwheels until finally they came to a rest, Giselle’s back on the grass and Natalya now hanging over top of her.

The two lay there on the ground for what seemed like forever, Giselle’s heart thumping and her eyes widened as they looked back up at Natalya standing over her, half-pinning her to the ground where they’d both landed in a mess of upturned dirt and grass.

Then, Natalya leaned closer. Giselle felt Nat’s talons hook around her own forearms, pulling them up and above her head.

With agonizingly deliberate slowness, Natalya brought her beak down, only to bang it lightly against Giselle's. Once, and then several more times. Giselle's eyes shot open and her cheeks began to blush.

Any onlooking pony might not have thought twice about the beak banging, but every griffon knew the gesture quite well. It wasn't exactly one commonly done between griffons that were not actively courting.

And here was Nat doing just that.

Natalya let herself down, her body weight pressing Giselle down onto the grass, pinning her down further. Natalya had slowed her beaking, content to push her beak gently into and against Giselle's, again and again.

Finally, she paused. Giselle felt a talon brush her plumage feathers softly, and she let out a lengthy gasping exhale. “N-Nat...?”

Her mind was in a frenzy. She was suddenly back in Rainbow Falls, still sweaty and exhausted after winning that medal with Nat, the latter griffon abruptly hugging her and delivering a pecking kiss directly to her beak.

They were celebrating, then. It had meant nothing, then. That's what she'd told herself, and she had believed it.

But this time, it was longer, warmer, and more passionate. And certainly not a mere spur of the moment thing, as Giselle had foolishly assumed it’d been.

“Mmm... I’ve been wanting that for a long time, Rookie,” Natalya cooed out. "You knew that, didn't you?"

“I didn’t... I didn’t think you...”

“Liked hens?”

Giselle looked down a little, her cheeks blushing and her feathers fluffing out again. “Liked hens. Liked, well. Me. In that kinda way.”

“But you liked me in that kinda way?” Natalya ventured. She released Giselle from the pinning embrace, but still remained laying beside her, holding her in closer with a talon. “I’ve seen the way you watch me fly. I’ve heard the way you talk about me to other griffons, when you don’t think I’m listening...”

Giselle’s blush grew even deeper. She surely must have increased ten-fold in size by sheer volume of feathers fluffed out in humiliation. “Y-you did?”

“It was killing me, waiting for you to work up the confidence to say something,” Natalya admitted, nibbling playfully at the scruff of Giselle’s neck. “But I’ve always kinda had a crush on you, too.”

It was like a tidal wave, the sudden relief and warmness that swept over Giselle. It was like her worries, building and building over the months and years, suddenly had been washed away and discarded as the silly paranoid nonsense it’d always been.

“I wanted to tell you,” Giselle admitted. “After, well. After Rainbow Falls. But then there was the whole medal ceremony, and then we were both so busy, and I... Just thought you could do better anyways.”

“Well. I think you just proved today you’re the best I’ve got,” Natalya returned with a smirk. Jerking her beak up, she pointed up to the sky. “Ready to prove me right again?”