The Tale of Scale

Chapter 3: Flying and Failing

Light, that most evil bane of sleeping ponies, dragons, and humans everywhere. It poured onto my closed eyelids and caused me to rouse from a good dream. What the dream was exactly? I can’t actually remember, but it was a good one. I would know, it was MY forgotten dream. Slowly my heavy eyes opened and I instantly regretted it. They closed tight and my black scaly arm shielded them from the burning light of the sun. Why did you have to raise the sun so early Celestia? Why? With a snort I worked my eyes open again. This time I managed to keep them open and I began to come back to my senses.

I sat up. My bed was a mess I noticed. Well, I guess some things never change whether human or dragon. Now don’t let me fool you, I still hadn’t quite gotten over the fact that I was a dragon. A fact that was not lost on me when I looked at myself in a golden mirror hanging on the wall and screamed at the image I saw. I even tried pinching myself to make sure that I really wasn’t dreaming, but do you know how hard it is to pinch through scales? No? I didn’t think so. Well, it’s really, really hard. Hope that answered someone’s burning question.

After finally accepting the fact that I truly was a dragon in Equestia and no longer a human being on earth…what am I saying? Yeah, accepting something like that doesn’t just come overnight. But I had no other choice than to live with the fact that I was, for all intents and purposes, a dragon. With this decision made up in my mind I reached over to the plate full of gems and stuffed some into my mouth. Man these things are tasty! Why don’t we have something like them on earth? I suppose potato chips might be about as addicting…and that’s when I looked at a small clock also mounted on the wall. You know, it’s amazing how many little fixtures you miss when you’re tired, and a dragon, and sleeping. But it was already noon! I mean I’m all for beauty rest, but sleeping for over 12 hours? That’s as bad as my sister!

A bit angry at myself I yanked my bedroom door open and stormed into the castle. Half a day wasted and I was going to learn how to fly today too! That is one thing that I didn’t want to miss. Granted I was still a bit wobbly on my legs, but who could resist the tempting allure of flight?

With these thoughts buzzing through my head I rounded many corners and traveled down many a corridor, getting plenty of odd looks from well to do ponies and guards, until I finally realized that I had absolutely no clue what I was doing or where I was going.

“Well, fancy that!” a stallion’s voice called from behind me. “Scale! I was just on my way outside for my lunch break.”

I knew that voice, it was truly unmistakable: Chip.

“Morning Chip,” I greeted with a bit of a toothy smile. A few of those nearby actually winced at my teeth…or was it my breath? But not good ole’ Chip. He was just as chipper as ever.

“Well, come on!” Chip walked right past me and waved me to follow him.

I followed after the brown stallion with as little wobbling as possible, but I’m sure that I scared a few passersby when I got precariously close to falling on them. After following Chip through a few more hallways and a couple of large rooms we had finally reached the palace grounds. You’d think it would be easy to navigate Canterlot Castle, but that place was a maze! Or maybe it’s just because I can’t read Equestrian. Whatever the matter, we were now standing out in the open.

Sunlight poured onto my face and it felt soothing. I had been stuck in that castle for almost two days. Fresh air was one of those things you don’t really think about until you don’t have it for a while. I took in some greedy gulps of the clean air and sighed contentedly. A few lazy clouds moved through the air. But one was moving really fast and it kind of looked like a pegasus. I squinted my eyes to get a better look. Holy snap! It was a pegasus and it was pile driving right at me!

Thankfully I managed to dodge to the side in time. Unthankfully, this knocked me off my balance. I careened to the side and then fell with a great crash into a clump of well watered trees. Why gravity? Do you enjoy it when I fall over? Do you get a kick out of making a dragon look stupid? But I wasn’t the only one on the floor. Nope, not this time. This time gravity had taken another victim, the pegasus.

I groaned and turned my head to where the pegasus had almost nailed me. The pony had slid across the ground and was currently eating a mouthful of dirt and grass. The flying pony was a bright yellow color with two toned blue hair and the symbol of three raindrops on her flank.

“Better than yesterday Stormchaser!” called Chip happily.

The pegasus, called Stormchaser, pumped her front hoof in victory even while her face was smashed into the ground. You know, I think Stormchaser might actually have been eating the grass? Then Chip moved over and helped the yellow pegasus up and helped to brush the pony off.

“Scale, come on over here!” Chip beckoned. “I want you to meet my friend Stormchaser.”

I picked myself up from the trees and dusted myself off before making my way over to Chip and his pegasus friend.

“Storm, meet Scale. He’s a dragon,” Chip motioned to me as he talked to the pegasus.

“Whoa! Dude! That’s so cool!” a feminine voice came from the pegasus. She must have been a mare. “Hey, sorry ‘bout almost crashing into ya’ a few seconds ago. Just practicing a new trick.”

“That was some trick,” I huffed.

“I know right?” she replied back. “But you should see it when it actually goes as planned.”

“I can only imagine,” I said with a cringe.

“So? Let’s see ‘em!” she prodded.

“What? See what?”

“Your wings of course! I’ve never seen dragon wings up close before.”

Were all of these ponies nuts?! I was a dragon for crying out loud! A fierce, flying, impenetrable, fire breathing fortress!

“Um…I guess,” I said. “But aren’t you scared of me or something?”

“Phft. Naw,” she waved a hoof through the air nonchalantly. “Dude, if the Princesses say that you’re chill, then you’re chill.”

She instantly took to the sky and came right up to where my folded wings attached to my torso. She gingerly placed her hooves onto their leathery surface and rubbed them. I think she was trying to get a feel for their texture. It was strange seeing this pony, so much smaller than I was, totally unafraid. She then began to slowly pull one of my wings open. I gave her what little help I could in unfurling it, but I was really still learning how to open them myself.

“Impressive wingspan,” she stated when the wing was fully outstretched. “Sturdy skin, lots of torque in those joints. Yep, just what I was expecting from a dragon.”

“Just what you were expecting?” I admit, I was shocked and a bit upset that this pegasus knew me better than I knew myself.

“Well sure, how else could a dragon even consider even getting off the ground? I mean with your weight.”

“Is that a fat joke?” I pressed. This pegasus was starting to rub me the wrong way.

“Whoa dude, chillax,” still she was clam despite my subtle threat. “Now if I could actually see you in flight…” her voice trailed off as she looked up toward the sky, deep in thought. A smile spread across her face. “Hey! I got it! How about a race?”

“No,” I stated curtly, partially because I didn’t like her attitude and partially because I really couldn’t fly.

“Come on dude. Scared that a measly old pegasus’ll beat you?”

I felt my blood begin to boil and I started to slowly unfold my massive black wings. I really shouldn’t be doing this. I can’t fly. Don’t do it!

“That’s the spirit tubby!” she taunted.

Oh no she didn’t! Able to fly or not, I had never been able to resist a challenge.

“Three quick laps around the castle and touch down here,” Stormchaser stated the rules and then firmly planted her front hoof on the ground. I swear she was smirking at me. “Chip, can you start us off?”

“Righty-o!” the stallion said as he walked up to the front of us both.

Stormchaser flung her wings wide open with one quick snap. I could actually feel a gust of powerful wind coming off of the sudden motion. What had I gotten myself into? Slowly and with a few soft grunts I opened my own wings to their full span. Stormchaser didn’t look frightened in the least, but instead was pawing at the ground. A strong determination was all that was written across her face. Oh great, an adrenalin junkie. Apparently they exist even in Equestria. With a nod of my head and trying to look as confident as possible, the race began.

“Annnnnddd…GO!” shouted Chip.

Stormchaser blasted into the sky with outrageous speed and took off around the palace. I, on the other hand, pumped my wings as hard as I could. Shockingly I found myself lifted off of the ground. Yes! I could fly! And in my first attempt too! Take that gravity! Take that! Of course, it also usually helps when you pump your wings again, something that I forgot to do.

Soon I found myself going from about five feet in the air to a solid face plant into a clump of bushes, which I managed to swallow in my massive jaws. So let’s recap the score: Gravity- Like a billion, Scale- About 0.05. Curse you gravity!

Chip broke out laughing. He literally fell to the ground and held his sides as he rolled around on the soft grass. Curious as to Chip’s laughing fit, Stormchaser looked down. This made her veer to the left and she crashed into a large oak tree, landing in a thicket of her own. Chip watched all this and somehow managed to laugh even harder. Tears were rolling off the brown stallion’s cheeks in bucketfuls. There was also very little I could say in my defense considering that my mouth was full of twigs and leaves.

Surprisingly, Stormchaser jumped to her feet like nothing had happened and brushed herself off without a second thought. She waltzed calmly over to Chip, who had finally stopped laughing, and the two looked into each other’s eyes. Slowly two pairs of smiles broke out onto the ponies’ faces until neither could hold back from their chuckling any longer. They both started laughing! I spit out the sticks and moodily stomped up to the two.

“What’s so funny?” I asked angrily.

This only made Chip laugh harder.

“S-Stop it!” the stallion hooted out. “Y-You’re gonna give me a heart attack!”

I growled and then sat down beside the two merry ponies. Slowly the laughter died down and they were both actually able to speak.

“THAT is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time,” chuckled Stormchaser as she wiped a tear from her eye.

“Yeah! Scale, what WAS that?” Chip giggled.

“I can’t fly,” I mumbled so quietly I might have even rivaled Fluttershy.

“What?” Chip prodded.

“I can’t fly,” I repeated barely louder than before.

“Huh?” Stormchaser queried.

“I. Can’t. Fly,” I stated clearly then lowered my head.

“Whoa dude! You’re serious?” the pegasus asked.

I nodded slowly.

“Oh Scale, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Chip apologized.

I sighed. “No, it-it’s fine. I’m just a failure of a dragon.”

“Whoa flyboy!” the mare declared. “You’re more of a dragon than I’ll ever be. Plus, how ‘bout this? I’ll teach you how to fly.”

I lifted my eyes to meet the pegasus’. I saw nothing but sincerity in them, well that and adrenalin.

“Plus, I need a flying buddy. So, I guess that’ll pay for the lessons.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeparoo, she really does need a flyin’ budy,” Chip pitched in his two cents. Even though that wasn’t what I was asking at all.

“Mister Coco!” crowed out an angry voice from the palace.

All our heads turned toward the sound.

“Oh no! Not again!” moaned Chip as he tried to hide behind my body.

“Ah tut tut tut! I see you Mister Coco. Now get up here before I come down there myself,” the voice was that of a female and had a bit of a thick accent.

Chip poked his head around my body and slowly plodded back up to the castle. Stormchaser and I followed behind. I was curious as to just who this was. As we came closer and closer to the palace I began to make out a form. It was another pony, big surprise there. This one was an older mare who had her hair done up in a bun and had a chef’s apron still on. Her tail was short for a female and was colored a rich blue. Her coat itself was a pale grey and her eyes were blue. She had the cutie mark of a chef’s hat.

“Mister Coco, how many times do I have to come and get you?” the mare huffed. “Now come on, we’ve got dinner to prepare.”

“But I-”

“No excuses this time,” she interrupted Chip and then looked up at me. “And you. You’re that dragon that’s going to eat Canterlot out of gems if I let you. You’ll get your dinner when everypony else gets there’s. Now Mister Coco you are coming with me.”

I was shocked at the sudden insult but didn’t have any time to reply. With a curt turn, the elderly mare turned toward the palace and walked inside with a practiced march. Chip followed closely behind with his head held a bit lower than usual. He also tended to drag his hooves. Then the door to the castle slammed shut, leaving me alone with Stormchaser.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“That was Chef Flour.”

“That’s the Royal Chef?”

“That’s right.”

“She didn’t really seem fond of me. I thought you said that if the Princesses gave me the ‘Ok’ that I’d be good.”

“Look dude, not everypony is up for having a dragon around. Sorry, that’s just how it works. Now we gonna get to flying or what?”

“Wait that’s it? What about Chip?”

“He actually had that coming for a while now. He’s been showing up late for work everyday for the past month or so. Now come on big guy! Let’s get you in the air!”

After being thoroughly flustered by my encounter with Chef Flour, perhaps some airtime might be nice. If I could figure out how to fly that is. With so many mixed emotions crossing my face I’m not even confident what I looked like, I trundled back out to the open palace grounds where I was instructed to once again open my wings to their full span.

“Good, now for starters, you’re not gonna push your wings as hard as possible. Trust me dude, I know how badly you want to taste that open sky but you’ve got to start with the basic motions or else you’ll wind up with another mouthful of dirt. So just flap your wings gently up and down until you get the basic feel for the motion.”

I did as instructed. My massive wings swished up and down slowly as my mind and muscles figured out how the basic motion worked. After a few minutes I pushed them a little faster and a little harder. As I moved my wings, so too did Stormchaser. It looked like she was the “Teach by Example” type, I could respect that.

“That’s it big guy! Now, flap only one wing at a time. Start with your left.”

I stopped my right wing from moving but kept my left wing going. Soon I was instructed to reverse the wings.

“Now, what you just did, don’t ever do it again.”

Wait. What?

“Excuse me?”

“That’s right. Doing something like flapping only one wing is a sure fire way to knock yourself clean out of the sky. When you turn you want to lean your body and tilt your wings. Do not only flap one, unless you’re trying a really dangerous stunt. Like this one.”

She burst into the sky and did some loop-de-loops as I sat and watched dumbstruck at her brashness. Then she flapped only one wing, exactly the thing she told me NOT to do which quickly propelled her into a corkscrew. And what a corkscrew it was! She spun straight down and collided with a tree, which helped to break her fall. I lunged toward the fallen pegasus and tried to help her to her hooves, but she was already up.

“Not again,” she groaned. “I thought I had it that time.”

“So, that’s why you never only flap one wing?” I asked.

“Pretty much. Look dude, this is one of those ‘do as I say, not as I do’ things.”

“Right,” I replied. “But are you hurt?”

“Pft, naw,” she replied as she brushed herself off. “Look, I’ve crashed so many times I can’t even feel the pain anymore. Now come on, we’ve got to get you into the air!”

She trotted away from the tree and back to a more open space where my wings wouldn’t damage anything. Of course, I was starting to have second thoughts about my flight instructor, but with no one else to turn to it was either her or gravity left to teach me.

“Ok, now you’ve hopefully got the basic motions down, so let’s try to get you in the air for a little while. We’re not going to do anything big, but try hopping and flapping your wings to give yourself a little extra airtime.”

I was a bit unsure about the whole jumping thing. I mean I still didn’t have the greatest balance, but still I tried. It was either fly or fail. I hopped into the sky and then, surprisingly, landed back on my feet with only the slightest of wobbles. Yeah! That’s right gravity! Boo-yah!

“Hey, uh, Scale,” Stormchaser’s voice interrupted my happy dance. “You know you actually need to flap your wings right?”

In my mind I could see myself slapping a hand into my forehead. Well played gravity, well played.

“Try again, but this time flap those suckers.”

I inhaled deeply and then focused on flying. With another leap I bounded into the wild blue and this time pushed down hard with my mighty wings. I felt myself boost a little toward the heavens. But wouldn’t you know it? I came down to the earth a bit sideways. I landed on one foot, jumped clumsily around, and then fell over.

“What did I do wrong?” I asked.

“You flapped your right wing harder than your left one, bro. That’s kind of what I was telling you not to do.”

I’ve seen birds fly, I’ve flown in planes, I’ve even seen THIS pegasus flying. You’d think it would be easy, but no. Nothing is ever easy is it?

“Come on, try again. Getting down the basics is the most vital and hardest part of learning to fly.”

As the afternoon wore on, I practiced. And I fell. And I practiced. And I fell. But sometimes I didn’t fall. Sometimes I actually got an extra flap or two in my jump. Sometimes I could almost taste the open air. It was these moments that pushed me to keep trying. Well, those moments and Stormchaser. Oddly enough, she was a good teacher and pretty funny too. But the afternoon somehow turned into evening and my flight lesson came to an end.

“Nice effort today Scale,” Stormchaser said. “Hey, I’ve got to get goin’ but if you want, I’ll come by again tomorrow.”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Sweet. Alright, catch ya’ later big guy!”

With those words the pegasus leaped into the sky and flew away, something that I would hopefully be doing myself soon. It was at this time that I actually looked around at my environment. I mean sure, I had noticed a few passing ponies pointing and watching the 80 something year old dragon learning to fly, but I hadn’t really looked. The sun was hovering over the horizon and would be setting soon. In the red glow of evening, the palace grounds looked amazing.

The grass was cool and the gardens were well cared for. The only thing that was off was the clump of brush I had managed to land in earlier. It did look nice though, before I accidentally wrecked it. With a contented sigh and feeling the soreness beginning to build in my muscles, I headed back to the castle.

As I neared the large entrance doors, they opened. A white alicorn walked gracefully through them. The guards at both sides of the doors bowed low. I decided to do the same.

“Ah Scale,” Celestia stated happily. “Just the dragon I was looking for.”

“For me your highness?”

“Yes. My sister and I were watching some of your progress today. Well, most of the palace was watching your progress from time to time. But it made us think of other essential skills you will need before we send you off to the Dragonlands.”

“Most of the palace was watching?” I was suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

“And so tomorrow, along with your continued practice in flight, I will be helping you learn how to breathe fire.”

She avoided my question entirely, but that’s ok because she said ‘learn how to breathe fire’. Finally, we were getting to the cool stuff!

“Meet me early tomorrow morning outside. I will be at the same place you were at today. You’ll want to get a good rest tonight because you’re going to have a busy few days ahead of you. Good night, Scale.”

“Good night Princess,” I bowed once again and this time there was a giddy grin plastered across my face.

The guards flung the door as wide as possible to allow my massive frame into the castle. Celestia had already headed back inside and was walking down a corridor. I went down the other, toward the Dragon Suite. At least I hoped it was toward the Dragon Suite. This time luck was finally on my side. I found my room and thoroughly enjoyed slumping into the gigantic sheets. As soon as my eyes closed I was out cold, but all that night I dreamed of battling massive dragons with fire.