It has been a peaceful few years under the reign of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Ponies are happy. Equestria is progressing. New technologies have appeared, including the first fixed-wing planes. The first intercontinental flights now soar across Equestria, allowing long-distance friends and family to meet up for the first time without an arduous journey or fancy magic.

Earth Ponies are not meant to fly. Rind Watermelon knows this—and it terrifies him—but he will go with his fiancée Smoldering Ember to meet her family in Kiria, realm of the Kirins. It is only a twenty-hour flight away. He just has to look out the window, and ignore that he is in a metal tube hurtling through the sky on flimsy wings.

And there is something on the wing.