“Where are we going?” Little Wing asked as she followed her sister down the stairway.
“Outside,” Rainbow Dash responded factually. “Where else? We need as much open sky as we can get!”
“But why?” Little Wing asked in slight frustration. “Saying what you said and then bolting isn’t as cool or dramatic as it is in your head!”
“Of course it is!” she rebuffed. “Besides, I think I made it pretty obvious, squirt.”
Rainbow Dash stopped just in front of the front door, turning around and looking Little Wing in the eyes. Little Wing took a moment to catch her breath from the sudden sprint, and then sat on her haunches as she awaited the explanation.
“Right, you listening kiddo?” Rainbow asked her little sister, Little Wing gave a nod in response. “Alright, good. Now I think you’re going to be a better flier than you give yourself credit for. You are MY little sister after all! And Celestia knows I am a great influence.”
Little Wing had no argument, holding her elder sister as dear as she did. Had any of Rainbow Dash’s friends been there, however, they might have held differing opinions on the matter.
“And talking from experience, it’s all about both determination and practice. Scootaloo has both in spades, and she’s really improving!” Rainbow Dash stated. “You just need to have some confidence in yourself, Little Wing, that’s all.”
“But-”
“Nope!” Rainbow interrupted with a shake of her head. “No buts! Besides, you don’t need to worry about your class, they’re not here. It’s just you and me, and you know you can trust me, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Little Wing responded with a hasty nod of her head. “Of course!”
“Then you know what I’m saying is true. And you know that I won’t let you get hurt, and that I will help you fly.”
“I know you will try but…” Little Wing sniffled. “But you’re a Wonderbolt! The coolest Wonderbolt! I’ll never be as good as you.”
Rainbow Dash sighed, walking up to her sister and draping a comforting wing around her back. “Wing, you shouldn’t think like that. What I am doesn’t matter, you don’t need to be me. You just need to be you. You’re special in your own way.”
Rainbow then blinked, considering her own words. “Wow. The girls have really rubbed off on me, haven’t they?”
“Huh?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she dismissed. “So how about it?”
Little Wing considered for a moment, before giving a cautious nod. “A-alright. Can you teach me?”
“Kid, I thought you’d never ask!” Rainbow Dash shouted enthusiastically, basically flipping Little Wing onto her back before launching the front door open.
Rainbow jumped out of the house, taking a moment to shut the door before giving an examination of their surroundings. The garden was plenty big enough for what she had planned, she wasn’t about to start her little sister off by throwing her into the deep end or, in that particular case, into the deep drop that came before the green fields below Cloudsdale.
“Where are we going?” Little Wing asked.
“Nowhere,” Dash explained. “We’re just getting the basics out today. Teaching you can’t be any harder than teaching Twilight.”
“You taught the Princess?” Little Wing asked in slight awe. “Did you know each other as foals?”
“Nah, Twi didn’t have wings when she was a kid,” Rainbow Dash stated to Little Wing’s confusion. “So, how far did you get before the crash?”
“I… got through a few rings,” she responded a little sheepishly.
“There were six right? Hang on.”
Rainbow Dash placed Little Wing back onto the ground before kicking off into the air. Faster than the filly could track, her elder sister got to work collecting a bunch of cloud together and morphing them into six rings akin to those Little Wing had seen at her kindergarten. She then finished by standing on the underside of one of them nonchalantly, her mane hanging due to the forces of gravity.
“Ta da! It was an easy ask,” Rainbow said in satisfaction. “Six rings set up in a complete circuit, and now you’ll see you can complete it just fine.”
“…How are you standing upside down?”
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash looked down, or rather up, apparently having not even noticed. “Oh right. Well we can stand on clouds, so we can also cling to their undersides, at least if your magic is strong enough.”
“Oh, so not me.”
“Yet,” Rainbow Dash made sure to add, releasing herself from the cloud and gliding back down to where her sister was sitting. “It’s not something most, if any, fillies and colts can actually do. Actually, most adults I’ve met can’t even do it. I know the other bolts can, and Twi can… most of the time.”
Little Wing nodded, standing up on all fours and looking up at the small course her elder sister had set up. She gave her wings an uncertain glance, the two appendages fluttering in anticipation. Could she truly do this? Was she unsuited for the task because of her… ‘ground trapped’ past? Those questions were plaguing the fillies mind, making her want to run away back to her room and barricade the door.
Rainbow Dash noticed Little Wing shaking a little, and so gave her a gentle nudge forwards with her muzzle, also shooting her a smile of encouragement when the filly looked back questioningly.
“I’ll be right behind you. And I won’t laugh if you don’t get it right the first time, I promise.”
That was relieving for Little Wing to hear. Not that she ever thought her sister would laugh at her, but it was nice to hear nevertheless.
Little Wing attempted to get her nerves under control and muster up some semblance of bravery. She still wasn’t sure whether she truly wanted to be doing it, but neither did she want to disappoint her elder sister and idol. That would sting far more than the laughing faces of her classmates ever could.
With a deep breath and following exhale, Little Wing pushed herself off of the ground and flapped her wings to bring herself into a simple hover to start with. The action was successful, the filly remaining stable in the air.
“That’s it,” Rainbow encouraged further. “Now bring it home!”
Little Wing looked up to the first ring in the circuit, and began to move up towards it. Rainbow Dash, never one to stay grounded, flew up alongside her. She stopped her flight right in front of the first ring, coming into a simple hover and looking at her sister worriedly.
Rainbow gave her a nod to boost her confidence. “Go on, I’m right beside you!”
Little Wing stared at her for a few moments more, before forcing the muscles in her neck to turn her head back towards the rings despite the protests of her very being. Fighting off her nerves, she once again began to flap her wings and move onwards with Rainbow Dash shadowing her every move. She moved through the first ring just fine, as she had done previously. The second and third came next, and with replays of her previous experiences in her mind she approached ring number four. She was going at a snail’s pace, but Rainbow Dash kept supporting her from the side and her encouragement prevented the filly from bailing on the exercise entirely.
She passed through the fourth ring. Her pace remained constant as the fifth followed suit, and then the sixth and final ring passed her by.
Little Wing stopped, heart rate slowing back to normal as the realisation of her success sunk in.
“Told you so!” Rainbow Dash announced both victoriously and happily. “So… how do you feel?”
Little Wing spun to face her sister, a happy grin spreading the width of her muzzle. It was plain to see that her spirits had soared high at the success, confidence renewed.
“I did it! I did it!” she cheered ecstatically
“Knew you could, squirt,” Rainbow stated. “A liiiittle slow mind you, but if you’re not up to the challenge…”
“Nuh-uh!” Little Wing dismissed in an adorable display of playful, fiery determination. “I can totally do better! Lemme try! Pleeeeeese?”
“Well I guess I could…” Rainbow Dash said in mock hesitation. “But only if you promise to try you best and NEVER give in! Especially when kids like Silver Breeze act like jerks!”
Little Wing nodded quickly and enthusiastically. “Yesyesyes! I will, I promise! So… can I?”
Rainbow laughed. “Race ya!”
The prismatic maned pegasus shot off through the first ring, but only at a speed a little above what she knew the filly could manage.
“Hey! No fair!” Little Wing whined in protest, bolting off after her elder sister. “You cheated!”
“You’ll just have to catch me!”
Little Wing took the challenge personally, and channelled everything into her wings.
As this was going on, Bow Hothoof and Windy Whistles were watching the sisters’ playful competition from their home’s front doorstep, Bow having a wing draped over his wife’s back. They had been watching since the moment Rainbow Dash had taken Little Wing outside, having overheard their conversation in the hallway. Both wore proud, and relieved, looks on their faces.
“See? Told you it would turn out fine,” Bow remarked.
“You were as worried as I was,” Windy rebuked. “But yes, it did turn out fine.”
Windy gave her husband a quick nuzzle, before then looking back up at the spectacle above. Little Wing had managed to increase her pace, almost catching up with her sister who was flying with her back facing the ground just to show off.
“I’ll get the ‘best sister flight instructor’ trophy ordered tonight,” Bow Hothoof promised. “And the ‘best sister flight student’ trophy for Little Wing.”
“Our room is running out of space,” Windy Whistles noted. “I think it’s high time we considered extending the house, like we did when making Dashie’s trophy room.”
“I can get on that too,” Bow replied. “I have a few door opening sound effects in mind.”
Back in the air, Little Wing had finally matched speeds with her elder sister, though the strain was obvious. As they were passing through the fifth ring, Rainbow Dash slowed ever so slightly and allowed Little Wing to take the lead, ensuring her victory during that lap.
“Aw, you beat me!” Rainbow Dash said in pretend disappointment. “Suppose I need more practice, huh?”
Little Wing looked ready to drop. “Heh. You… let me… win…”
Rainbow Dash positioned herself under Little Wing as her wings slackened, allowing the filly to harmlessly land on her back. However, instead of lowering herself and her sister to the ground the pegasus moved steadily on up in the air, leaving the house far behind. She moved on up past all the upper layers of clouds until it was pure unfiltered blue sky above them, all that was between them and the depths of space. The upper layer of clouds was spread out all around them, it in itself like a majestic kingdom high in the sky. Little Wing hadn’t been so high before, and she took it in with awe filled eyes.
“Wow…” Little Wing muttered. “And I thought the high up view of Ponyville was big…”
“You remember that, huh?” Rainbow Dash noted. “Yeah, I can’t get much higher than this, air’s way to thin. If I weren’t a pegasus, I’d be struggling even now.”
“There’s no way to get higher.”
“We’ll wait until spaceships are a real thing,” Rainbow joked. “Twi could probably get a little higher, but she’s some pseudo-goddess alicorn. It’s kinda cheating.”
“How far could she go?” Little Wing asked. “To the moon?”
“I doubt it, kiddo,” Rainbow said. “But if you asked Princess Luna, there’s not much to see. She’s probably the only pony in history to stand on the moon, but I’m sure you’ll learn about that in school.”
Little Wing hummed, looking back over the rolling landscape of clouds below them. She could just imagine a vast civilisation of pegasi rolling for as far as the eye could see.
“You know, there were old legends of an endless city of pegasi up here, unmatched in its power,” Rainbow Dash told Little Wing, as if reading her little sister’s thoughts. “Some pegasi, at least back in the three tribes era, thought it was the afterlife; they believed that our great heroes would greet them all on their passing. Well, I don’t see Commander Hurricane up here, so I don’t think they were quite on the mark with that.”
“Why haven’t we built up here?”
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “No idea. Probably not enough in the budget. But we have Cloudsdale, and then there’s Las Pegasus, not like we’re lacking places to live anyway.”
Rainbow Dash looked directly below them, to around about where she knew her parents’ house was.
“But anyway, we should probably get back down before Mum and Dad think we got lost up here.”
Little Wing pouted. “Aww, but it’s pretty up here.”
“Maybe another time, Wing,” Rainbow said apologetically as she began to lower both herself and Little Wing back down towards the ground.
Little Wing curled up on her sister’s back, a content smile on her face. Rainbow Dash was right, her classmates’ jeers meant nothing. The jeers of those two humans she knew once meant nothing, just like they meant nothing.
She was happy.