I Can Read Names in Clouds

by Yuu


Fly Me to the Moon

We went towards the outskirts of town. I was still walking slowly because of my injury, but I suspected I could at least fly normally.

“Alright girls, we should let Snowy Clothes fly around a bit first, to adapt to her new form,” Gloaming said to everyone, then turned and gazed intently at Rainbow.

“Agreed,” I said, and I watched Rainbow to see her reaction.

Finally she nodded to Gloaming.

“Wait a moment,” Medley said, suddenly appearing before my beak, “if you aren’t from our would, you might not have a flying helmet. Do you have one?”

“Well, we use head protection in the Coalition operations, but I don’t have anything like a helmet with me.”

“That’s too bad,” Medley said, frowning.

“You should use one,” Gloaming said. She turned to Rainbow. “And you too, don’t forget.”

“Sure, mom.” Rainbow grinned. “I’ll get a helmet from a friend who lives nearby. You go ahead, I’ll catch up soon.” She turned to the right and split up from us.

Curiosity gazed after her as she left. “I’m positively sure she can get another helmet from one friend or another, Snowy,” she said.

“I can get a spare one for you,” Medley stopped and put one of her hooves into her mane.

After some digging she took out a blue helmet. It looked similar to a motorcycle helmet, with a plate of a transparent material covering the eyes.

“Please try it,” she said, extending her foreleg with the helmet to me.

I stopped, took the helmet from Medley, and sat on the ground. But I couldn't put it on, possibly because it wasn’t designed for creatures with beaks.

“Oh, we need to adjust it.” Medley took it back.

She put the helmet on the ground. Switching her gaze several times between my head and the helmet, she eventually put her hooves on the visor. The bottom part of her hoof glowed like the telekinetic grip of Gloaming. But Gloaming’s was a purplish glow, and Medley’s was azure.

With her hoof, she touched and pushed the helmet in different directions, and its form changed slightly after each touch. Then she took a couple of steps back and examined it some more.

She gave the helmet to me. “Snowy Clothes, try it again.”

I tried it. The helmet almost fit on my head; the only obstacle was a sharp part of the visor sticking into my cheek. I showed it to Medley and she began sculpting the helmet again. She enlarged the part I showed her and slightly modified other parts. Then she put it on my head.

“How does it feel now?” she stood before me and watched for my reaction.

“Much better,” I told her, turning my head in different directions to check if the helmet obstructed any movements. “Let me wear it from now on, and I will tell you if I notice anything.”

“Great!” she said to me, nodding several times.

“But is it any less durable after your modifications?” I asked, after we started walking again.

“That is possible, but it should be within the bounds of the original parameters,” Medley said. “I also know this kind of composite, so I’ve weakened bonds only in one component of it to make it softer, it should be as good as new now. And it wouldn’t revert to the original shape any time soon.”

“That’s good, thank you.” Even a bad helmet was better than nothing at all, but it was good that she knew what she was doing.

Soon we reached outskirts of the town, and in a minute or so Rainbow came back to us. She had a similar helmet, but coloured with red and orange. It hung around her neck on a wide ribbon.

“You can make a few rounds around the town to warm up.” Gloaming looked at me intently. “And please be careful with your wings, we don't know how big your wingspan can be.”

“Yeah, our wings are dangerous.” Rainbow nodded to Gloaming and turned her muzzle to me. “Don't touch other ponies with them.”

That was interesting, I decided to ask them about it after the race. So I took several steps back and tried to produce wings. A strange sensation spread from my neck to my waist. I turned my head and saw two semi-transparent, wing-like appendages protruding from my back. I concentrated a bit more and commanded them to change to a more common bird's shape.

I also decided to lift them up to prevent collisions with ponies around me, before I could walk away a bit from others. The wings looked big enough for me, so I made several flaps to test them and jumped in the air.

They actually worked almost identically to the regular wings I used to have. And I didn't even have to contract muscles to fly, only to imagine the movements. Rainbow also took wing and circled around me. She now had nice cerulean wings, with approximately the same wingspan as mine. My wings appeared grey at first; only after watching them for a while, to compare my imagination with the real movements, could I distinguish a blue tint.

What if a pony had wings too small for her? I imagined she might fly like a hummingbird or a bumble-bee.

“Rainbow,” I said, moving closer to her, “fly ahead, I will follow you around the town.”

She did that, slowly at first and gradually gathering more speed. Other ponies looked at us from time to time, but didn't focus much attention on us. I didn't try to match my speed with Rainbow, I only wanted to practice different manoeuvres in the new form, like increasing and decreasing speed, and different kinds of turns.

Soon we flew back to Curiosity, Gloaming, and Medley.

“How do you feel?” Gloaming came closer to me and looked at my talon.

“Great,” I said. “Wings work fine. I can race now, I think.”

“Finally!” Rainbow exclaimed, and she pointed at something far away with her hoof. “We can fly to that hill and back, what do you think?”

I noticed a middle-sized hill in the distance, about twenty kilometres away.

“Sure,” I nodded. “Gloaming, could you command us to start and watch how we finish?”

“Fine, please stand here.” Gloaming showed us positions. “Ready?”

Rainbow and I nodded.

“Go!”

Rainbow started very fast, and I saw her flying like a blue blur past me. I pushed my wings to increase my speed, but Rainbow also accelerated and she was still ahead of me. I felt as my feathers were smoothed by the building air pressure around me, so it was time to form a smooth barrier around myself to reduce drag.

I called to my spiritual side and imagined an appropriate subsonic cocoon. It gradually formed around me and I felt wonderful when the drag reduced. I finally began to catch up with Rainbow. I also corrected my wings' strokes, which gave me another speed boost. We were almost above the hill.

I stopped flapping and extended my wings to negotiate the corner. Rainbow also slowed down, but she possibly miscalculated, and the radius of her turn was too big. So when I turned back towards the town, Rainbow was two or three hundred meters behind me.

I was in the lead for several seconds. Then I heard loud humming and Rainbow outran me at a great speed. I felt an unusual kind of turbulence—she had become supersonic.

I concentrated once more on my cocoon and altered it to speed up adjacent layers of air. And I began to change its shape gradually, to adapt to the increasing speed.

Could I change my new wings so they also sped up the air around them? I decided to try.

In only seconds I felt my drag drop and I quickly reduced the distance between us and then passed Rainbow. Soon I felt Rainbow catch up to me again, so I added more speed. We quickly approached the town.

I decreased the acceleration effect on the cocoon’s surface. Then I changed its shape to increase the drag and return to subsonic speed. Rainbow again passed me, but she also slowed down. In several seconds I would land near Gloaming, Medley and other ponies who came to watch, but I wondered how Rainbow was going to land. She was still flying too fast.

I made my cocoon smoother again, and flapped my wings several times. I looked at Rainbow as I flew nearby. She was clenching her teeth. I also felt too much turbulence around her. And the finish was less than two seconds away.

I manoeuvred to fly over Rainbow's head. I should catch her by her shoulders or hips and do something, before she dug a trench or crashed into the audience. I moved closer to her and grabbed her on the hips. Rainbow shuddered and tried to look at me, her right wing twitched and brushed on my right talon.

I felt a sharp pain. Rainbow turned her head towards me, but I wasn't sure that she saw and understood my manoeuvre. I grabbed her again, but my right talon was already numb, so she slipped away. Rainbow turned a bit and her wing brushed on my side. Pain came again and my left wing started to shake. Everything began turning around me. I tried to brake and saw as Rainbow collided with the ground, then—