Dinky Doo: The Scion of Wind

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch-crunch.

Along the sand the fillies marched.

Crunch, crunch.

Crunch, crunch.

On the grassy hill they set their sights.

Wary of the forest's growls they huddled close and tight.

Faster on the sand they hurried more and more.

Crunch, crunch, crunch-crunch-crunch.

Then a sheet of ocean found them. "I think we better hurry," Scootaloo said, lifting her left hoof to shake the water off it.

She made to catch up with Applebloom.

The sand Scootaloo was galloping on was different. The trees were different; even the air smelt different. The more of it the group trodded, the clearer it felt that they were on foreign soil. Their spirits were down, their gait sluggish. Most of them had only acquiesced to making the rest of the journey.

"Even if we could," Sweetie Belle had sighed before disembarking, "we wouldn't feel right just leaving you here all by yourself."

The trip that had followed had been silent for the most part.

Nopony, least of all Sweetie Belle herself, seemed to notice Dinky marching to the tune of Sweetie's cover of Hush Now, Quiet Now. Dispirited, Dinky marched normally, relatively speaking, since the rest of the group traipsed their way to the agreed-upon itinerary, which was agreed upon only arbitrarily, since none of them actually knew the way.

"Oh, if only we ended up on the same beach as last time!" Scootaloo had said. "Maybe we would have run into Zoccolo again!"

Everypony still had mixed feelings upon the shifty unicorn rogue, whom they had encountered the last time they arrived on the coastline of Stirrope.

"Come on, y'all," Applebloom called over, with Scootaloo waiting beside her. "We oughtta hurry while it's still light out."

"Coming!" Dinky called back, a hoof up. "Sweetie Belle — "

But she was already scampering fast after her oldest filly friends. Once the Cutie Mark Crusaders were together again, they marched pointedly onward, their hoofsteps in tandem.

Head slumped, Dinky, the only non-Crusader member of the group, went on.

The vibrant dawn had started blending into daylight almost two hours ago. The air was fresh and cool; a little salty on the tongue, too. The surf raked over the dark beach and receded, leaving behind foamy bubbles, which latched onto the unfamiliar grains. Rejoicing in the summer heat, the foam and bubbles fizzed apart, sounding a little like the inside of one's ears after they were done popping.

Another growl came from the forest, startling Dinky enough to send her veering closer to the tide.

Not long after, she regrouped with the others, with Sweetie Belle being too pre-occupied to take notice of her fur standing on-end.

In silence the four trudged on.

Although once or twice, Scootaloo shot the top of Dinky's back a sulky glare, as though she were blaming the book that Dinky had strapped to it for the mess her fellow Crusaders were now in. Still dangling from Dinky's neck was her flute case, which was probably a bad idea to open, given her earlier success with her pseudo-lullabic march.

It was Applebloom who broke the silence. "So, Crusaders. Y'all think we're gonna get our Cutie Marks by helping Dinky get to Haissan?"

The other two offered noncommittal shrugs.

"I mean, we didn't get our Cutie Marks the last time we did that," Scootaloo said.

"True, true," Applebloom said, nodding. "But this time's different."

Sweetie raised an eyebrow. "Really? How so?"

"Because this time," Applebloom said, rocketing her hoof up, "we're doing it so that she can learn to use her alicorn powers!"

And then her hoof squelched into a particular wet pit of sand; it looked sticky and sounded suction-y. Applebloom pulled herself out and shook off the muck.

"But she doesn't have alicorn powers," Sweetie Belle reminded Applebloom.

"But her dad's an alicorn," Applebloom maintained.

"Does that really make Dinky an alicorn?" Scootaloo said. "She's got no wings."

"Yeah," said Dinky.

"But that don't mean she got no alicorn magic on 'er, right?" Applebloom said, appealing to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo specifically.

Again they both shrugged.

As the bottom of her hoof was getting damper, Dinky shifted away, causing the Crusaders to veer closer to the forest and Sweetie Belle to pout disapprovingly at her.

"I mean," Scootaloo said to her fellow founding members, "Mr. and Mrs. Cake are earth ponies. Does that make Pound and Pumpkin Cake earth ponies?"

"No, they're a pegasus and unicorn," Applebloom said.

"Respectively," Sweetie Belle added succinctly.

"Mm-hm," Applebloom said with a wise nod. "But it's still weird how her magic don't come out like the rest, innit?"

As she said this, she watched green winds cyclone about Dinky's nub of a horn; so did Sweetie and Scootaloo. It was true that Dinky could manifest alicorn wind magic, in addition to her own unicorn magic.

"Isn't she technically an alicorn, though?" Scootaloo said with an eyebrow quirked and a hoof half-raised.

"Ugh, Scootaloo, we just went over this," Applebloom said, eyes lowered at her.

"Not my point," Scootaloo said quickly. "My point is that Dinky sort of started out an alicorn."

Dinky was starting to get self-conscious at this point.

"She was a unicorn at birth, Scootaloo," Sweetie reminded her.

"No, no. Don't you remember what she told us?" Scootaloo said, pausing for any sign of affirmation. "She has the soul of an alicorn. So technically…"

Dinky remembered what her mom had told her: News of an alicorn foal would have attracted too much unwanted attention. Ditzy had therefore elected to circumvent that by appealing to the aid of the Alicorn of Earth. The alicorn agreed to magically split Ditzy's yet-unborn alicorn foal into an unborn pegasus and an unborn unicorn. But some things, the alicorn had maintained, could not be partitioned, even by the strongest of magicks. The soul of an alicorn was one of them. And now that soul lay within Dinky — no, it was Dinky.

"I see your point," Sweetie Belle said, nodding.

"Ya do?" Applebloom said, confused. "So which is it? Is she, or is she not an alicorn?"

"Yes and no," Scootaloo and Sweetie said.

"Wha…?"

"Oh!" Dinky said, "we're here!"

The shininess of the grass was overwhelming, almost as much as the sun that bore down so intensely upon it. The hill looked like it was radiating a glow not unlike that of either Sweetie Belle's or Dinky's horn.

Turning their attention from the conversation, the Crusaders climbed. Each of them was visoring her pained eyes, trusting her hooves to feel their way up the slope. "Wait," Scootaloo said, turning, "what are you doing, Dinky?"

Dinky was wiping the sand off the foot of the hill like it was a small shoe-rug in an unfamiliar pony's home. "Sorry," she chuckled nervously, "force of habit, I guess."

Scootaloo clicked her tongue. "Weirdo," she said, letting Dinky catch up with her.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, went their trek uphill, without beat or rhythm.

Sweat was dampening their necks. The incline was steepening; their panting growing as the air thinned. The rise in temperature was coinciding with the slow ascent of the sun, whose rays seemed to shine accusatorily upon their backs. It was getting humid. Wind visited them in only a few strands, sparse and sporadic, without offering more than two seconds' succor.

Hairs were popping loose from Sweetie Belle's curls; Applebloom had to stop to refasten the big signature bow atop her head; Dinky learnt there was a right way and a wrong way to mess up Scootaloo's manecut. Dinky's own mane had been getting longer; so much had been happening with the Doo family that there had been no time to arrange a visit with the stylist. And maybe that wasn't a bad thing, since Rarity had implicitly shared the opinion that her mane wasn't in need of trimming. Right now, it was loose, wild, and had lots of cowlicks, which Dinky usually straightened into place using her wind magic.

This time was no different.

She gave a toot without tone, a toot that looped around to tend to the stray hairs, caressing them into line with the rest. The toot that followed reached Sweetie Belle, who only then noticed her hair being put back in much the same manner. "Oh," she said, faintly surprised as she turned. "Thanks."

Coldly, she turned away.

Disheartened, Dinky paused; to the distant ocean she seemed to speak. "Am I doing the right thing?" she asked, without really knowing whom she was asking. For reasons that she couldn't quite explain, she knew that she wasn't talking to nopony.

Nopony answered.

The ocean continued to swish idly by, oblivious and uncaring.

Dinky heaved a sigh that was heavy with sorrow and fatigue, then moved on.

As she regrouped with the Crusaders near the top of the hill, stomachs began to growl, hers included.

"You think there's a town nearby?" Scootaloo moaned.

Without realizing it, she and the others had reached the end of her slanted trek, where there was no longer any need to answer that question. Atop that hill, they stood side by side, the fillies four. No further words were spoken. It was as though a pact of silence had been made. Nopony had needed to make it. Nopony had needed to speak up, or to even acknowledge it. It simply was, and there it simply loomed, just like the cool of the breeze now steady on their necks. Bangs swayed, Applebloom's and Scootaloo's; curls bobbed from side to side, Sweetie Belle's; a mullet billowed up and down, uncannily like the mane of a certain Alicorn of the Sun, Dinky's.

An encore from the Growl of the Stomachs killed the moment, and Scootaloo wasn't happy about it. "Aww…! Applebloom…!"

"Wasn't me," Applebloom said with a shrug.

Sweetie Belle and Dinky Doo also shrugged.

It wasn't the Growl of the Stomachs at all, but the debut of the Growl of the Forest.

"What the…?" Sweetie said, about to turn around.

But before she could, either the force or frightful power of the growl sent her off the hilltop.

She screamed — nor was she the only one, for all her friends had been sent tumbling down the hill.

Tufts of grass flew up in their wake, offended.

Grinding against the slope with her forehooves was Applebloom, whose teeth were gritted; sliding down the hot mud beneath her belly was Dinky; rolling down the hill was the log that was Sweetie Belle; Scootaloo was trying to scramble and thrash back up like a swimmer in the Equestria Games who would lose points for lack of grace and finesse.

A barrier of sand encircled the foot of the hill, and it was as tall as a speedbump.

When the fillies crashed into it, the slope of it sent them ricocheting feet into the air, where they continued their screams and wriggled their legs helplessly, trying in vain to control their trajectory. Once more they hit the ground, and it was greener but no less bouncy than the sandy speedbump.

The dust, clouds of sand, the grassy vapors didn't have time to thin to reveal Dinky and the Crusaders, lying in a painful heap.

Getting off a balding patch of grass, Scootaloo spotted it. "Incoming!"

A seaside plateau had been waiting patiently below for them, offering to them a full view of the ocean, endless and blue. The push and pull of the tide were distant. Rolls of ocean came for the plateau's tall ledge; some were assimilated back into the sea before they could reach it; others ramped up the cliff, cresting skyward in a parade of fleeting rainbows. A tall wall guarded against such maritime intrusions, protecting a village from the seaside. Meanwhile, thick wooden stakes protected the village from enemies who would approach on land. A sandy road wound from the wooden gate of the village, disappearing into the stony bridge of a river and then reappearing to sneak its way between tall crowns of grass.

An acre of such grass was shivering. Kneeling on it were long-snouted ponies, who lifted their heads up from their bowing. They could only watch, too far away to help.

The ground was quaking more and more.

Still crumpled on it were the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Horror grew in their eyes. Their legs were paralyzed with fear; they may as well have been clamped down.

It was coming.

They were screaming.

It was roaring.

Parting the dust, it snorted, the groans that followed aching terribly. Each of its tusks was as long as the length of a filly; the curve of each was a scythe, ready to reap, to steal what had been sown. It was twice as wide as Applebloom's brother, and thrice as tall. It easily could have been mistaken for a black hairy hill. The beetle-like dots that were its eyes reflected the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who were huddling together. A strange tongue poked out of its panting mouth and licked what little could be seen of its lips. Its breath was so bad that it could be wretched at it from over half a mile away.

A quarter of a mile.

An eighth.

To the sky, Sweetie Belle screamed, "Help!"

Teeth gnashed, Dinky slid in front of her and Applebloom and Scootaloo; her horn was lowered.

The thing, the wild boar kept charging, despite the fact that it was doing so in-place now. That it was getting no closer to its prey did not become apparent to it immediately. Noticing the translucent swirls of grass-green raging against it, it snorted and dug its hooves into the sand to stop itself from getting pushed back. As though it were a warrior braving the extremes of a snowstorm, it stalked forward, insistent upon sating its long-deserved hunger. Its beady eyes now reflected not three, but just one filly.

Her coat was periwinkle. Scratches marred the scowl on her face, upon which a freshly bloodied slash lay. One of her eyes was twitching; still, she persevered and increased the energy being pumped into her blast: A tornado that spun violently out of her horn.

So there they were, predator and pony, each standing their ground, many meters away with, a magical green cyclone between them.

The boar didn't give up.

Neither did she.

The boar was still putting one hoof in front of the other.

No matter what, Dinky would not let it come one step closer.

The boar lifted its hoof to find its next hoofhold, then paused; it couldn't.

Eventually, all its hooves left the ground. It squealed, it tried to thrash all its weight against its unlikely prison. A spherical cage held it tight, spun together by the green strands that had been accumulated from the wind tunnel it was still struggling against. Now all it could do was wriggle its tiny limbs helplessly as the battle was lost. It was lifted higher into the air, ready to be shown the exit; it cast one final leer at her adversary: a small periwinkle pony.

Mane whipping about, Dinky roared.

With that, the last of her magic unwove itself from her smoking horn, compressing like a spring into a shining ball of energy that floated, hesitant, before disappearing from its place with a boom.

It was the last thing that the boar saw before ball and foe connected.

Now, both were just a glittering speck that disappeared into sunlight's stare before re-emerging once more to besmirch the otherwise spotless canvas of sky.

In the distance, leaves poofed up like confetti; it could have been that a falling star had just struck the forest.

It could have also been like a cannon had just gone off in Dinky's ears.

Dinky was panting, her fur wet with heat and fatigue.

And then she collapsed.

"Dinky!" cried a trio of voices.

"That was, like, the coolest thing I've ever seen!"

"Yeah! For a second there, I thought our oats were gonna get fried!"

"But she showed that overgrown bully of a pig what's what! Wait, Dinky. Are you okay?"

Opening her eyes by way of a response, Dinky nodded with a weak groan.

And she was about to drift back into sleep again — until the distinct scent of fried seaweed wandered into her nostrils from a basket that was suddenly sitting in front of her face. Her stomach growled loudly enough for the Crusaders to jump and turn around, thinking the beast had returned. Dinky had no energy to chuckle at them.

But she did have enough to watch the ponies deposit colorful baskets within hoof's reach.

"Oh?" Applebloom said, turning around to find a fruitful basket in front of her, one of many that now surrounded the group. "Offerings? For us?"

The pony who nodded evidently spoke no Ponish; but Applebloom's meaning was clear enough for them to respond to it. After that pony shifted out of line, another came to deposit another basketful of offerings. Like his fellow villager before him, he also had a long snout. Fabrics hung loosely from his body, the better to sway in the renewed wind. Dinky silently compared his dress to that of the Regent, who wore garments that might have been more regal.

The procession came and went, its appeal lost to the Crusaders, whose eyes were drawn to an acre of grass.

That acre was shorter, more crumpled because it was evidently often knelt on.

On it now knelt ponies local to the peninsula. They were filing into a rectangular formation. From afar, it looked seven ponies wide and eight ponies long, with a few meaner rows tucked closer in to preserve the symmetry. Watching it reminded Dinky of a checkerboard that her mom had showed her once after the finer intricacies of chess had failed to interest her. The ponies were all facing the same direction; each of their muzzles was close to the grass; on each of their backs sat a colorful basket, a symbolic offering, by the looks of it.

The eighth-to-last pony set her offerings before Applebloom, who asked, "Hey, what are they doing now?"

"Bowing, I think," Scootaloo said, squinting alongside Dinky.

"Oh, to Dinky's — to Alula, I mean," said Sweetie, joining Scootaloo and Dinky.

"Oh, yeah," Scootaloo said. "I see the dude on their funny shirts that they're not even wearing."

The dude in question was a crudely stitched alicorn floating on his hindlegs. A lighter shade of blue was painted on the tip of his horn. He wore his wings over his body; from their folds protruded a hoof, as though to direct the three waves of wind before him to go forth.

"There are Haissanians?" said Scootaloo; she stopped angling her body to peek at the Haissanians. "All the way out here?"

"Technically, no," Sweetie answered. "We're not in Haissan yet. But these ponies do seem to worship Alula, which is why they've bestowed their offerings unto his daughter. Or maybe it's because he used to be the Element of Generosity. Or maybe, they're honoring his memory by manifesting that Generosity, you know, since it's only a day until his funeral. Or maybe — "

"Can we please skip the lecture, Sweetie Belle!?" Dinky moaned.

As it transpired, the crops of the foreign peninsula were more edible than anticipated.

Applebloom was munching on a foreign apple. Swallowing it, she remarked that she's had better, to the snicker of her friends. Sinking her teeth into one, Dinky silently remarked that it definitely tasted different from the ones back home; not sweeter, but saltier and more sour. Turning it over, she wondered if it really was an apple, since apples typically weren't supposed to be an unusual mix of blue and yellow. Ultimately, she shrugged and continued eating, deciding it wise to not question the apple expert of the group.

Ponyville was a landlocked village, meaning that all its seaweed was dried and imported from far-off lands. Haissanian seaweed was prepared dried and fried; it was twisted into a well-knotted stalk the length of a cornstalk. Salts and seasoning decorated it like ornaments on a pencil-thin Hearthswarming tree. After turning it over in her levitation, Dinky crunched on it. Between her tongue and the roof of her mouth was where she could usually absorb all the different flavors at once. She could definitely taste the freshness of the salt; it was hard to not lose herself in the spices and sauces that decorated the tightly bound films of flavor. Her eyes were lost, dream-like as the mix of flavors stung her happy mouth. It was only after so many minutes when she decided she had absorbed all she could. She had to joust at the flavor-drained seaweed with her tongue's tip, since it was stuck to the roof of her mouth, like it usually was. When she finally did get it, she ceremoniously rolled it up like a red carpet, and gulped it down.

The topmost treasures of one basket hid bumpy berries, which were greeted with a chorus of "Ooh's". The berries were crunchier than any berry had a right to be; they were also sweet albeit tinged with a sourness not unlike that of lemons. Juices exploded from where the berries were bitten; everypony was soon laughing at each other's stained faces.

Everypony except for stubborn Applebloom, who was circling her hoof around the berry trove. "Ain't no way, no how, none of these is sweeter than any apple we Apples grow! Hmph!" she said, turning her snout away from it, not deigning to even consider it. She uncrossed one of her forelegs, though, to pick up, scrutinize, and likely criticize the blackness of the oat she was turning over in her hoof.

"Suit yourself," Dinky said, pressing her mouth to the wonderful juices again.

"More for us," Scootaloo added, taking another.

Nopony really paid much attention to the wrinkly lettuce or to the funny-colored hay; many more delicacies waited to be explored, and their full impact could not be appreciated the fuller their stomachs got.

Applebloom found roots that smelt bitter and funny; nopony tasted these.

Yams were among the assortment, as well. They were bright orange and sweet to boot. Licking up the starchy sweetness into a pile on her tongue reminded Dinky a bit like the Nightmare Night pumpkins that Pinkie Pie had once decorated with cake frosting 'for their dental hygiene'.

A pang of longing struck Dinky then; she longed for home.

To be honest, she still had mixed feelings about it; she still had mixed feelings about going to Haissan. If she had to be honest with herself, she sort of wanted this. What she did not want, was the Crusaders, having to abandon their lives just so she wouldn't need to be scared on this journey. Guilt was returning to weigh her stomach down, alongside the shameless amounts of food.

It had not been this full since her birthday party, which felt like so long ago now. The offering baskets were about halfway empty when the Crusaders had had their fill. Sometime during that big lunch, troughs of water had appeared without their knowing to complement the happy feast; they had been completely full then.

Now, they were completely empty — well, almost empty, since Sweetie Belle was still draining the last of hers. She exhaled, satisfied. "Thanks for the food!" she called over at the still-bowing ponies.

They did not answer; nor did they make any indication of having heard her.

"Do they even speak Ponish?" Scootaloo asked.

"Dun' look like it, no," Applebloom said with a head-shake.

"Hmph!" Sweetie said, crossing her forelegs before slouching on the ground. "Well, it wouldn't be very good manners if we didn't tha — !"

Her last syllable elongated into a belch, one that she seemed unable to help. Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Dinky sat staring at her for many moments. All the while, Sweetie was still belching; now she was darting her eyes, mortified, to each of their theirs. Dinky wished she had learnt how to cast a spell functioned as a stopwatch, because she could have sworn that she lasted for at least a full minute.

Realizing what had happened, she covered her mouth with a small squeak.

Laughter exploded, thanks to Applebloom and Scootaloo, who were pointing at her.

"Now, now, Sweetie Belle," Scootaloo said in a bad imitation of Rarity, "such uncouth behavior is most unbecoming of a proper mare."

Sweetie narrowed her eyes to slits, her face as red as that of somepony who had sampled the hot chili peppers. The hooves covering her mouth came undone as Applebloom gave her a playful pat on the back. She appealed to Dinky for help, but found none. "Aw, you too, Dinky?" she whined.

The sun was coursing slowly across the sky.

Laughter was had; so were seconds; as was a fun afternoon. It was a welcome reprieve from the strife that had hung over their heads for barely a week. They were now on foreign soil with no means of navigating to Haissan. But this was a matter that was pushed all-too willingly to the back of their minds. For the time being, at least. Once she sobered up, Dinky felt it was ready to be broached.

"Zoccolo?" she chanced; Applebloom was crossing her forelegs in an X over her body.

"Nuh-uh," she said, flinging her forelegs apart. "Absolutely not. No way. Negatory. Nosirree, see."

Sweetie's cheeks flushed again, but not with embarrassment. "Last time we trusted that low-life crook, he almost got all of us in big trouble," she said, pushing herself off the grass. "Personally, I think we should never try to find him again. If we see him, we run."

Dinky got up too. "So how else are we supposed to get to Haissan?" she said. "We don't know the way. Unlike last time, nopony speaks enough Ponish to show us."

"And we'd better hurry soon," Applebloom said, "or else that Equestrian warship'll find us."

Dinky couldn't help but detect a tinge of hopefulness in her tone; but she had no right to be angry at her.

Sweetie Belle was pacing, thinking aloud as Dinky, standing up, and Applebloom and Scootaloo, leaning back against the grass on their forehooves, watched. "It is strange," she said, more to herself. "You would think it would be here by now. But it's not. It took off just before we did. It should be here, searching for us. But it isn't."

"Maybe it's searching other beaches for where we could be," Applebloom offered.

"Maybe," Scootaloo said, "but it is a big coastline. They're not going to be able to find us in an afternoon." Then her eyes wandered elsewhere. "Wait. Are they still praying?" she asked incredulously, jabbing a hoof in the direction of the foreign ponies.

"It's a Haissanian tradition," Sweetie expounded, stopping her pacing to do so. "Every morning, they pray to Alula; they're probably doing it for longer than usual today, since it's so close to his funeral and all. One important thing about Haissanian prayer is that they have to always be facing the capital of Haissan."

She resumed pacing.

Applebloom stood up. "C'mon, Crusaders. There's got to be a way to get Dinky to Haissan!"

'Tenacity'. Twilight Sparkle had taught Dinky that word during the former's eponymous time. In words that Scootaloo had said were like, twenty percent cooler, it meant, 'a stick-to-it-ive-ness', 'a never give up, can-do attitude that's the mark of a real winner'.

Desperation hung heavy over the group.

The circle of baskets and food was just a distraction.

No matter how much they tried to hide it, the Crusaders wanted nothing more than to go home. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Dinky, who imagined Daring running off to try her hoof at adventuring solo; she had always loudly complained to her niece about having lost her edge since being domesticated. The Crusaders wouldn't feel right just leaving Dinky alone on foreign soil without the comfort of her friends; Dinky didn't feel right dragging them on this journey.

The truth was, Dinky was really scared. She was scared of going on her own. She didn't know what she would face. She didn't know when she would be done. As selfish as it was, she wanted her friends with her through it all. Deep down, she knew that this was a journey she had to face alone, if she couldn't admit it to herself yet. Every moment spent on that plateau added to her guilt; the right thing to do was right in front of her.

Just then, something familiar passed over her shoulder. Wincing, she chased after it with her eyes. "That can't be right," she said in less than a breath: The airy streams were flying off into the blue unknown. She was still staring at where the wind, or whatever it was, had dissipated. She had the feeling that she alone had felt it; the Crusaders were still brainstorming; the praying ponies were heading to the river to welcome somepony who had just arrived by canoe.

Something was coming to life inside Dinky. She didn't know what it was, but she did know that she didn't exactly care. Her only instinct, then and there, was to follow it. Within her it burnt bright; she trusted it to guide her next footsteps.

"Dinky…?" came Sweetie's voice from faraway.

Above a sea of billowing grass stood a green dune. There was nothing particularly special about it; it just felt like the place to be. So on it Dinky stood, holding her head up proudly, all the better to look upon the sky, endless and free. The crook of her hoof was lifted to chest-level. In that moment, she knew where her next step was going to take her, and it was nowhere on the ground.

She heard the Crusaders walk up to her.

"Dinky, are y'all alright?" said Applebloom.

"Sh! Applebloom. Can't you see she's having a moment?"

Their eyes were on her; this was her spotlight, but that didn't mean they couldn't share it with her.

"I have a plan," said Dinky before turning around. "That Haissanian who ponynapped me told me Alula couldn't use his magic to fly all the way to Haissan."

Well, it wasn't exactly what he had said, she quietly admitted.

Sweetie and Applebloom were staring at Dinky like she had just grown a second head. Fear had widened their eyes; the two fillies were shaking their heads frantically. Widening Scootaloo's was not fear at all; this filly was nodding goadingly.

"We oughtta wait for the Equestrian warship to come back for us," Applebloom said. "Maybe if we ask, we can explain to them what happened. Maybe we can even get them to take Dinky to Haissan without any fuss."

Scootaloo scoffed. "You want to wait for them to finish searching an entire continent for us? Get real!"

"Says the pony who wants to fly all the way to Haissan!" Sweetie shot back; she addressed Dinky. "Even with wind magic, there are still a bunch of things that could go wrong."

"So you'd rather wait here," Scootaloo continued, "and wait for an airship that might not even come?"

Sweetie sighed, rubbing her brow. "I'm just saying," she said, "that for all of us fillies to fly all the way to Haissan all on our own — "

"Better than just standing around than doing nothing."

An orange hoof stomped, rousing the grass.

A white hoof stomped back. "Seriously, Scootaloo. Dinky. We have to wait."

"Don't worry, Sweetie Belle," said Dinky, "I did this like fifty times before."

"All the way across a continent, Dinky?" she asked incredulously.

Dinky dipped her head.

"Oh?" Scootaloo said, her voice rising in pitch and sass, "so it's about how you feel, not what Dinky feels now? Weren't you the pony who said this was her journey, not ours? Didn't you also say we should support her in any way we can?"

"Scootaloo."

"We could be the first fillies to fly all the way from the edge of Stirrope to a continent. Imagine how cool that'd be!" Scootaloo said, fluttering.

"Maybe we'll even get our Cutie Marks in it!" Applebloom chimed in.

"Not helping," Sweetie grumbled.

"Weren't you also the one who said we shouldn't be stopping Dinky from broadening her horizons?"

Lowering her gaze, Sweetie glanced her guilt at Dinky. "Yes," she muttered.

Silently, she acquiesced.

"I still think going to Haissan's a bad idea," Applebloom said. "There're dangerous ponies there! Remember?"

"Applebloom," Scootaloo said, "all the dangerous ponies we needed to worry about aren't a problem anymore. Now shh."

Now Sweetie had somepony to empathize with.

Everypony was turning to Dinky now, waiting with various levels of enthusiasm for her direction.

Pacing back and forth, Dinky was trying to think.

In theory, her plan was simple. In Haissan, she would just show off her magic. The ponies there would recognize it and welcome her as a friend. As a friendly favor, she would have no problem obtaining an airship to send the Crusaders back to Equestria. What would happen to her afterward was not worth thinking about right now. Right now, she had to focus on actually getting to Haissan, first and foremost. That was the hardest part.

The previous afternoon, she had combed through the book given to her. Unfortunately, she had not gotten far when the night had eventually overtaken day. She had been looking forward to reading at night. The thought of reading on a cozy seat in tune to the gentle rush of sea and oddly comforting hum of the submarine engine was a thought that had appealed to her. And it would have been all the more serene, with everypony asleep, and with the moonlight upon the pages. But no moon had appeared to lend her extra reading time, nor to breach the black of the ocean's watery surface.

Cycles of pages began flipping through her mind. She did remember reading two spells, that in conjunction, could solve her transportation problems.

But she had to double-check her spellbook just in case. Yanking it off the strap, which she had found in the submarine, she laid it open before her nose, oblivious to Sweetie Belle looking over her shoulder. "Uh, Dinky," Sweetie said, a hoof in a crucial part of the bookmarked spell. "Since when did you learn to read Haissanian?"

Sweetie withdrew her hoof to let Dinky magically close the book and resettle it into the strap on her back.

"Sorry, Sweetie Belle," Dinky said, "I'll explain later."

She charged her horn and inhaled at the same time.

As she did so, the pieces of the puzzle were fitting together in her mind. It took all her strength to restrain her excitement. There were unknowns; she could iron those out as they came. Of one thing Dinky was certain, though: She could not do this alone.

Magical specks appeared, fading in from the leylines that Dinky harnessed.

"Visualization," Twilight had said during one of the first Twilight Times. "That's the key to targeting an object of your magic."

The target in question did not exist yet. But according to Alula's spellbook, visualizing it was the first step to materializing it.

Dinky remembered the old raft she had inflated out of boredom, and it was precisely that which her magic was forming an outline of. The blinking lights on the raft yet-to-be might have suggested that she had put one half of a set of Hearthswarming lights on it.

Dinky blew.

Her breath did not come fast or abrupt, like when she had soared thousands of miles into the air. Her breath was slow and measured. She tried to make the air denser before it came, and it worked. Cloudy white-green snakes slithered into the magical outline that she had laid out. They slowly entered, inch by inch, inflating the magical blueprint; they were spreading, expanding to fill each unoccupied nook and cranny.

And then she was done. She stopped her horn; the breath that followed was of not of effort, but of relief.

"Hey, Dinky," Applebloom asked, prodding it. "What in tarnation is this?"

"Our ride," Dinky panted, tired but steady on her feet.

Shrugging, Applebloom gave it one last prod before jumping on. "Whuh, whoa!" The surface was undulating beneath her hooves; that was normal. Then she started jumping on it. "Hey, look," she said to Sweetie Belle, laughing, "you don't even need to be a pegasus to be on this thang!" She jumped up and landed, the raft of clouds bouncing beneath her hooves. "Solid as a rock."

Tiny orange wings buzzed as Scootaloo belly-flopped onto it, sending cloud puffs flying up. "And it's soft like a bed, too," she said, pulling her face out of the fluff of the cloud. Then she noticed Applebloom. Cloud puffs covered her like she was a snowpony; she spat a puff out. "I mean," she added, helping scrape the puffs off, "it's been forever since we had a real bed to lay on."

"Scootaloo, it's been two days," Sweetie said as she climbed in after Dinky; once aboard, she looked up and prodded some invisible calculations. "But technically, it's actually a little bit more than that, since we're in an entirely different timezone and all. So it's a little closer to two days and five hours since this time two days ago; it'll be two days and six hours once we reach Haissan."

Scootaloo was making a face. "What are you, an atlas?" And just like, that Sweetie Belle's face was just as unamused, weary, and as statue-like as Applebloom's. "What?"

Excitement hung thick in the air.

The day was waiting to be seized.

Dinky had her aunt Daring to thank for teaching her about the word 'scion', and what it means.

What Cutie Mark Crusaders and the Scion of Wind were about to do was many things:

It was stupid.

It was crazy.

It was never going to work.

But they were going to do it, anyway.

Hearts were thumping: some with apprehension; one with excitement; and at least one with burning tenacity.

Peering over the edge of her raft, Dinky closed her eyes. Imagining herself back at the Ponyville marketplace, she started to suck in a really, really big breath; it was hardly hard to picture Scootaloo as Dinky's lungs filled. And it really took a long time for them to do so, way longer than the time it took for Sweetie Belle's legendary belch to finally end; Dinky knew that the memory of it would give her comfort for years to come.

She blew.