With silent, lifting mind
High Flight
Admiral Biscuit
Cherry Berry looked over her hoofwork and smiled. Every panel of silk taffeta cut and sewn together by her own hooves and mouth; every piece of rope measured and knotted just so, every stave and weaver of willow in the basket formed to her own design.
Now it stood proud over the center of Ponyville, the envelope filled with hot gasses, tugging at the tethers that still held it earthbound, pulling against the intractable force that kept her hooves on the ground and made her cherries fall from the trees in her orchard. Today, however—today she was going to spit in the eye of gravity, she was going to cast aside her earth-pony form and soar like a Pegasus.
She pulled her cap tightly on her head, and then reached a hoof up to make sure that her goggles were securely in place. One last check of the balloon—sandbags, grapple, rope, small bottle of swampgas to extend her range, pilot light lit on the burner—and she was ready to go. Without any fanfare, she stepped up the small boarding stairs, into the basket, and began pulling the belaying pins holding the anchor lines.
She did not notice the strange stillness that enveloped Ponyville. As her balloon had grown, ponies had begun to gather around, waiting to watch the spectacle. When the top of the envelope hung over the rooftops, even the market fell silent. Nopony was quite sure what her intentions were—although rumors had run rampant—but everypony wanted to see.
She stumbled as the lines came free, for with each line removed the basket swayed and rocked, and then she was free, shooting skyward in the calm morning air.
As the ground fell away, so too did the worries of the earth. She had no thought of her orchard, no concern for the loose floorboard in her kitchen, no memory of hauling carts of rubbish on the weekends to pay for yard upon yard of fabric. She was truly free, and it was everything she had imagined it would be.
A playful gust of wind buffeted the basket, causing her smile to grow. No more was she tethered to the solid ground; now she was the sky’s plaything. Her perspective of Ponyville shifted and changed as the balloon gained altitude. Streets and alleyways were revealed to have a certain organic logic. Homes were revealed to be closer to their neighbors than it seemed on the ground. Even at her fairly low altitude, Ponyville seemed almost insignificant. This was a pegasus-eye view of things.
She watched in amusement as a pair of them launched themselves from the square, flapping up next to the balloon. They didn’t speak, just flew around it in wonderment. Rumble looked like he was tempted to poke it, but a sharp glance from Flitter kept him in line. Suddenly, she looked up in alarm, and quickly shot ahead of the balloon to push a cloud out of its path.
Cherry hadn’t thought about clouds. She was fortunate that she had taken off on a mostly clear day. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she ran into one—would the balloon push the cloud out of its way, or would it just stop? She certainly didn’t have pegasus magic at her disposal to manage errant clouds.
Forehooves draped over the edge of the basket, she drank in the landscape slowly gliding below her. The wind was blowing her gently over Sweet Apple Acres, and she watched row upon row of apple tree drift past, so like her own orchard. She saw Big McIntosh look up in puzzlement. She leaned over the edge of the basket and waved a hoof at him; he returned the wave as the shadow of the balloon briefly covered him, before he went back to bucking the trees. A flock of sparrows darted up at her, chirping angrily at this intruder in their midst, before diving back away. All the while, her two pegasi chaperones flew silently alongside.
Her mind went back to her first experiments of flight—how she had seen embers float skyward above a fire, and wonder what made them fly when she could not; accidentally burning holes in pillowcases and then trying to explain to her mother how it had happened—and how each had been a lesson. None of the setbacks had dampened her enthusiasm, not even when her balloon had suffered a catastrophic failure of the parachute valve and sent her plummeting earthward. After all, if earth ponies had been meant to fly, they’d be pegasi; a bit of difficulty was to be expected.
Noticing that she was descending, Cherry released a bit of swampgas to the burner, smiling with satisfaction as it lit with a roar, while keeping a wary eye on the edge of the skirt. A few short pulses, and she was back at altitude.
Everypony had thought it strange as she started to build her full-sized balloon. Earth ponies had shunned her, pegasi mocked her, and unicorns just kept the same better-than-you indifference they showed everypony who wasn’t a unicorn, only more so. Of course, the smirks had died on their faces as her balloon actually carried her aloft, returned her safely to earth, and the mayor declared her an Equestrian hero.
The wind picked up a little bit, and she looked back at Ponyville in the distance, then checked the gauge on the tank. If it kept up, she’d float all the way to Canterlot, and have to take the train back in the morning, but that was just fine.
As the Equestrian landscape slipped by below her, she began to recite poem she’d read in a Wonderbolts program many years ago, one which she felt spoke to her heart:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of. . . .
