“I don’t know…” Rainbow’s imprint trailed off. “I mean, she’s not done with her awesomeness training yet. It’s not a good idea to interrupt the process.”
“But she wouldn’t be quitting her training,” Rarity claimed. She tried not to shudder at the thought of her actually having brought Firefly back to the secret torture house that was Rainbow Industries, much less the fact that she was currently talking to the grand master torturer herself. “Think of it as an experience to further her… ‘awesomeness’… training. Seeing the world and, uh, learning how to be fast and cool under any conditions will be great preparation for becoming captain of The Wonderbolts.”
“I guess that makes sense,” the living memory mused. “But practicing speed and stunts is only half the preparation; Firefly still needs her regular magical shock therapy.”
Rarity struggled not to grind her teeth in rage. A small spark jumped off of her horn as she barely restrained herself from activating her weapons harness. The white unicorn cycled endlessly through a mantra in her mind of how useless the firearm would be against the imprint who was already lit up enough without a zap to the face. Still, it was hard to resist mindlessly blasting the destructive device just to vent her raw emotion.
“Magical shock therapy?” Rarity echoed through her gritted teeth. “Oh, I’m sure she can go without it for a while.” Her cheek twitched.
“I don’t think so,” Rainbow’s imprint disagreed, raising an eyebrow at Rarity’s clenched face. “Wait a minute! You could administer the therapy for me!”
“What?!” Rarity gasped.
“If I had somepony trustworthy administering the therapy at regular intervals, then travelling around the world really would be great for Firefly’s awesomeness training,” the imprint thought aloud. “And who could be more trustworthy with such a duty than a friend of my original? I’ll bring in the unicorn who regularly performs the treatment and have him teach you the spell.”
“I’m not sure—” the white unicorn began, but then stopped herself. Just because she was taught the spell didn’t mean she actually had to administer it. Rainbow’s imprint seemed to love the idea, and this would be a perfect way to get Firefly as far away from Rainbow Industries as possible. Once gone, the spell need never be cast again, nor Cloudsdale revisited. “Actually, that sounds like an… awesome idea.”
“Perfect!” The polychromatic president smiled. Then, glowing even brighter than normal, she announced “Shocking Results, would you come in here please?”
A few moments later the elevator doors opened and a startlingly familiar-looking pony trotted out. His coat was sky-blue, his mane and tail each streaked with the colors of the rainbow. Save for his lack of wings and noticeable horn, he looked just like a male Rainbow Dash!
“Doctor Shocking Results, meet Rarity! Shocking here is the best magical shock therapist I’ve ever had,” the multicolored memory introduced. “His dedication to his job is unparalleled, but I’m sure you’ll make a great substitute until you get back. This will be a well-deserved break for him; Shocking deserves a vacation, I think.”
“If you insist.” The unicorn frowned slightly. “Though I quite enjoy my job. It’s not every artist who gets to use a pony’s mind as his canvas. Though I suppose even the best of artists need time to reflect on their work.”
It took every bit of strength Rarity had not to telekinetically grab hold of the new unicorn and smash him on the floor repeatedly. Rarity cringed all the more when Shocking’s horn ignited with a multicolored glow and his magic reached out to touch her own horn. There was a rushing feeling and the white unicorn nearly stumbled in a fit of sudden dizziness.
“You now know the spell,” the colorful unicorn announced gruffly. “Cast it once a day, but you should also make use of it every time Firefly shows any signs of uncharacteristic relapse. The spell is self-perpetuating, so it grows within the subject’s mind whether daily doses reinforce the enchantment or not. However, doing so speeds up the process considerably. I shall expect a full report on how you used the spell upon your return.”
With that, the unicorn curtly exited the office.
Rarity felt as if she would need to bleach her brain after having such a vile enchantment stuffed down her horn and into her mind. She tried very hard to keep her bile in her stomach, where it belonged.
“Perfect!” Rainbow’s imprint said cheerily. She flashed brighter again for a moment before continuing. “There, I just arranged to have a sky carriage set up for you out front. Firefly can pull you to wherever you need to go.”
“Thank you.” Rarity strained a smile.
“I can’t wait to hear all about your trip when you get back!” the imprint called to the group as they trotted to the elevator.
. . .
The sky carriage was parked right outside Rainbow Industries’ front gates, just as promised. Firefly zoomed over to it and hitched herself to the front in the blink of an eye, casting nervous glances at the colossal light show that was the factory and furtive unspoken pleas at Rarity and Surprise. The carriage door opened unbidden before the two snow-colored ponies arrived and the vehicle sank ever so slightly into the clouds. Rarity and Surprise followed suit.
“Alright Firefly, take us to The Fluttershy Forests!” the white unicorn called through the front window.
The moment she finished her sentence, the light-blinds fell on the cabin’s windows one by one. Once they were concealed, a certain someone inside became visible for the first time since the group arrived at Rainbow Industries.
Rarity had debated whether they should go back to the factory at all rather than just leave, but Firefly had told her between coughing fits that unless she got permission to leave Cloudsdale, a part of her would’ve fought to stay here. Now that Rainbow’s imprint had okayed the excursion, both sides of the split pegasus were content to leave.
“I hate being invisible,” Megan complained, plopping down on one of the light-chairs, each of which was too small for her. “If only you ponies would open trade with us, I wouldn’t have to slink through your country like an outlaw.”
“But you are an outlaw, technically,” Rarity pointed out.
“Yes, but then I wouldn’t be one!” Megan argued. “All I want to do is explore. Is that so much to ask?”
The white unicorn had to admit that no, it wasn’t. But if the majority of ponies feared the two-legs for some alleged connection to The Fillydelphia Fire, then Rarity couldn’t fully blame them for not allowing the humans a free run of The ULE either.
The carriage began to jostle slightly as Firefly took off, and then lurched as she dashed into her regular speed. Or at least, what Rainbow’s imprint had forced her to adopt as her regular speed.
“This might take a while, even at top speeds,” Firefly called back through the shuttered windows. “We probably won’t be there until tomorrow morning at the earliest, so I’d suggest hunkering down for a long ride. I’m sure President Rainbow installed some inflight movies or something, so try working the picture-panel if you get bored.”
Rarity called back a thanks and sat down in a light-chair herself, Surprise hopping into the seat next to her.
“I hope we get to see something good!” the white pegasus wished. “Maybe some infomercials for hoof-cream or a documentary on the history of the nose-hair clipper!”
“I only wish I could’ve brought some of my own flicks when I left the compound,” Megan sighed. “Though my computer only allows so much data, and I had to pack the essentials for my great escape.”
“Computer?” Rarity echoed.
“All humans have a machine called a computer installed in their brain when they’re born,” the two-leg explained. “It holds all kinds of useful information, as well being able to emit shaped strings of energy. My computer is the only reason I can do—” Megan snapped her not-claws, and a glass bottle full of some strange glowing green goo appeared in her hand. “this, among other things.”
She took a swig, gulping down the liquid and letting out a satisfied belch of green cloud that sparked in the air.
“How can emitting strings of energy allow you to do that?” Rarity inquired, trying to ignore the belch. Belching in public was bad enough for Rarity’s refined sense of etiquette, but belching a green cloud that crackled with electricity was almost too much. “Or, for that matter, freeze time? And if the computer is in your brain, wouldn’t the energy just get stuck in your head?”
“There are two forms of existence in most universes,” the human answered. “Matter and energy. The two are interchangeable, though. If I tell my computer to emit the right amount of energy in the right pattern, it’ll form into one of the preprogrammed matter-blueprints. It works the other way too. If I want to store something new, I scan it and emit the right patterns of energy that will convert the object into more energy, and then store its newly-made blueprint in my computer. I can’t do it with living creatures, however — only objects. When I want to bring it back out, I just reconstruct it with the new blueprint. Flying or walking on clouds is even easier; all I have to do is continually emit energy downwards to float or propel myself through the air. My computer is even preset to do things unbidden if it’ll ensure my safety.
“As for freezing time,” Megan went on. “I have to send out a rather complex pattern that will ram into the fundamental particles that make up whatever or whoever I’m trying to freeze. This counteracts the movement of the particles and stops them, essentially halting their involvement in the greater temporal flow of the universe. If the particles aren’t moving, then the thing or person who is frozen isn’t affected by temporal passages. I can nullify sound waves in the same way by halting the vibrations in the air, though halting particles on any scale will wear off eventually. The natural unshaped energy from the rest of the universe continues to bombard the motionless particles, slowly pushing them into movement again. As for how I emit the energy if the computer is in my brain — the energy patterns are tailored to simply flow through my body rather than affect it.”
Rarity had to admit that that was quite impressive, if more than a little unnerving. Even if she had thought only the mystical energy of magic could actually do things to the world, Megan had proven natural energy could be just as effective. The system seemed so simple. If earth ponies had computers, then they could essentially become just as gifted as a unicorn — if not more so — at performing powerful non-physical tasks.
If the government under Princess Cadance was still mainly run by unicorns as the government under Celestia and Luna had been, then Rarity wondered if the reasons The ULE hadn’t opened up trade with the humans really were all based on the fear of another Fillydelphia Fire. Daybreak had wondered if forgotten virtues were one of the reasons The ULE wasn’t in the best shape despite all its advances. Based on what Rarity had seen, it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine the robot had been at least partially right, and that a desperate need to hang onto power they’d held for millennia was a key factor in the unicorn-based government keeping the country free of items such as computers.
. . .
For the first time since waking up, Rarity was… well, to be perfectly honest, she was bored.
And it was wonderful.
Other than Megan’s explanation of her odd non-magical powers, the ride through the sky had thus far proven to be beyond uneventful. The hours had passed by relatively free of anything remotely interesting. And if things weren’t interesting, then they were about as far from being horribly terrifying and dangerous as they could be. In The ULE, that was a welcome change.
Surprise had activated the picture-panel and shown Rarity what ‘movies’ were for a few hours. They were a lot like plays, save for the moving images being all recordings of ponies rather than anypony being there in the flesh. However, even if movies contained an overarching narrative, characters, and conflict like plays did, none of the stories on-screen reminded the white unicorn anything of the school plays or Hearth’s Warming Eve pageants she’d enjoyed watching back when Ponyville had still been Ponyville.
The plots made little sense to the white unicorn. Why would a lone unarmed pony investigate a spooky sound in the creepy woods at night when freaky stuff had been happening in the area? Why would the evil scientist create an elaborate death trap for the heroes and then not stick around to see if it actually worked, even when killing them in a much simpler way would’ve been so much faster and easier? And why oh why did nopony EVER look at the giant explosions happening in the background, especially if they were the ones who caused them?
Whether she understood them or not, though, Rarity did have to admit that movies were a good way to pass the time. When they had finally exhausted the prerecorded picture shows, it was late afternoon. With the movies to keep them semi-entertained, Rarity had forgotten about the light-blinds hiding Megan.
Standing up and stretching her stiff legs, the white unicorn trotted over to the window and peeked outside. She was met by a breathtaking expanse of seemingly endless ocean far below, stretching out to all horizons. There no longer being any need for Megan to hide out here, the white unicorn telekinetically lifted each of the blinds.
“Wow.” Megan whistled. “I’d always wondered why people treated the ocean like it was such a big deal. Now I know.”
“You’ve never seen the ocean before?” Rarity inquired, remembering the times her family had taken trips to the beach back when she’d been a filly. “Don’t they have oceans where humans are from?”
“They do,” Megan affirmed. “But I’ve never been there. I was born behind the walls of the compounds. I’ve only ever seen recordings or virtual reality simulations of oceans.”
The white unicorn hadn’t thought of that. What must it be like to have to live your life behind the walls of a prison constructed out of fear, especially if the beings keeping you there had no real power to stop you if you chose to escape?
“Wait a minute,” Rarity spoke up. “Where exactly are The Fluttershy Forests? I hadn’t expected we’d have to cross an ocean to reach them.”
“Why don’t you ask the zebras when we get there?” Surprise questioned.
“Zebras?” the white unicorn echoed. “You mean The Fluttershy Forests are in the old Zebra Empire?”
“Yes indeed!” Surprise nodded her head enthusiastically. “It’s The ULE’s most outlying Land. It makes shipping Fluttershy Fabrications’ products to the rest of the country a lot more expensive, but the real Fluttershy always thought that the jungles of The Zebra Empire would be the best place to manufacture stuff based on living things. It is the most biologically diverse location in the world, after all!”
Rarity gave the white pegasus an odd look. She was finding these seemingly random switches from unexpectedly intelligent and helpful to blubbering maniac almost, but not quite, as odd as Firefly’s two warring minds were downright disturbing. The white unicorn had a fleeting fear that maybe Firefly wasn’t the only pegasus who’d had a second mind stuffed into her brain, but dismissed just as quickly. Firefly was actually stuck with a domineering copy of Rainbow Dash’s imprint in her head, but Surprise’s sudden swings in intelligence never came close to the disconcertingly sober mindset that Pinkie Pie’s imprint sported.
“What exactly does Fluttershy Fabrications do?” the white unicorn inquired, hoping this period of knowledge would last long enough to finally shed some light on what had become of her dear shy friend. “I mean, I know they somehow make creatures out of other creatures, but why and how?”
“That’s not exactly how it works. However, I think how it does work would be best explained by one of Fluttershy Fabrications’ own products,” Surprise replied, looking past Rarity out the window. Turning, the white unicorn saw a pod of skywhales. They were so close that she didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed them already, even if they were high above the sky carriage.
“Firefly?” Rarity called out the front window. “Those skywhales won’t cause us any trouble, right?”
The white unicorn was more concerned about what would happen if the skywhales started singing than she was about them actually attacking. Megan’s computer might still emit the energy necessary to keep her aloft when she was indisposed, but if Rarity and the two pegasi became entranced by that hauntingly beautiful melody, then there would be nothing to stop them from plummeting to the ocean several thousands of feet below.
Rarity was glad she could take comfort in the fact that skywhales weren’t aggressive. At least, the ones flying between Pinkieville and New Canterlot hadn’t been, but if these organisms were made out of other beings, then how did she know the feral nature of a manticore or some other horrid monster hadn’t accidentally been added to the composite creatures? Then again, Surprise had said it didn’t work like that. The white unicorn had to agree that save for their green coloration, ability to fly, and huge size compared to regular whales, the airborne leviathans looked just like their oceangoing counterparts.
Rarity remembered Oscar the cart-pulling chimaera from right after she’d awoken. That odd animal definitely looked like it had been made out of other creatures, but she supposed that that didn’t mean everything coming out of Fluttershy Fabrications were all patchworks of other organisms. If they weren’t made out of other creatures, though, (which was a disturbing and confusing enough thought in itself) then how were the skywhales, uh… fabricated? Rarity had never heard of magic that simply altered a creature into something like a skywhale. Come to think of it, Rarity could almost understand why a useful transporter chimera like Oscar was made, but what was the purpose of the skywhales? Were they made only to sing their enchanting anthem?
“Nah, they’re keeping to the jet-stream,” Firefly called back. “They won’t bother us. We couldn’t even hear them if they started to sing; the airflow up there would snatch away any of the sounds. I only wish there was a nearby jet-stream going the other way that we could use. It’d sure make flying to The Forests a lot easier and quicker.”
Rarity sighed with relief.
“Though under other circumstances, I would like to get a chance to study them up close…” Firefly mused. “…Wait, no I wouldn’t! Studying is for eggheads! I was born for speed!”
Rarity’s relieved sigh dissolved into one of frustrated disgust. Getting Firefly away from Rainbow’s imprint only solved half the problem. It prevented her from being subjected to any more magical shock therapy that would further speed up the growth of a new mind in her brain at the expense of snuffing out the old one, but it didn’t remove the parts of Rainbow’s imprint that were already inside her and still slowly growing on their own. If the white unicorn was to truly help this victimized pegasus, then she knew she would have to be on the lookout for anything that could remove the alien persona without damaging the indigenous mind. If there was a spell that put a foreign mind into an already occupied head, then maybe there was a spell that could take the foreign mind back out? Rarity would have to keep a sharp eye out for any gifted unicorns.
“If you don’t prove you were born for speed, and fast, then it looks like you’ll be getting a chance to study those things up close after all,” Megan called to Firefly, breaking into Rarity’s thoughts and pointing a hand out the window. Puzzled, the white unicorn followed the pointed appendages to see that the entire pod had turned and begun descending towards them.
“What are they doing?” Rarity wondered, a bit of alarm creeping into her voice. “Surely they’re not coming after us, right? What interest would we be to them?”
“We’re about to find out!” Firefly called back. “They’re using the jet-stream to launch themselves at us. I won’t be able to avoid the pod entirely; we’ll just have to try and get through them without running into any of them until I can find an opening to get out! Buckle up; this is going to be a bumpy ride!”
Rarity hastily got back into her light-seat and complied, watching Surprise pull a rainbow-belt across her and tuck it into the seat. The white unicorn did the same, as did Megan.
“Three… two… one…” Firefly counted down. “Here we go!”
The sky-carriage lurched to the side before rebounding and almost tipping over. Rarity silently thanked whoever had invented these rainbow-restraint belts, as otherwise she and the rest of the passengers would’ve been thrown against the wall or out the window. That didn’t make it any less painful when the band of light bit into Rarity’s hide with each jerk of the carriage, but it was a far cry from having her whole body slammed into the hard light of the walls.
The white unicorn struggled to catch glimpses of Firefly out the front window between lurches, seeing the split pegasus swoop under and over and around the massive fliers. The pod swam about them in a river, not seeming to be actively trying to strike them but far from making any attempts to get out of the way. The split pegasus was getting dangerously closer and closer to the airborne leviathans as they drove further and further into the pod, and Rarity prayed that their pilot wouldn’t crash into one. Ramming into such a gargantuan creature at such high speeds would almost certainly be fatal.
“I don’t get it!” Firefly’s voice came between gusts of wind buffeted by the skywhales’ massive bodies and swimming flipper-wings. “Every time I try to break out of the pod one of them cuts me off!”
What? What in The ULE was going on? If the skywhales weren’t actively attacking them, then why were they bothering with them at all? A single one of them could have easily crushed the sky carriage with nothing but a bump against the cabin, but it seemed like they were staying just close enough to block them in without actually harming them. Of course, that didn’t mean one of the skywhales wouldn’t still crash into them at any moment. At least they weren’t singing…
Rarity’s myriad of rushing thoughts of fear and confusion were smashed to pieces when she heard Firefly cry out. Rarity looked up from where she’d been checking to make sure the rainbow-belt hadn’t drawn blood with that last lurch to see a skywhale charging right towards them.
The carriage instantly dipped into a nose dive, but Firefly hadn’t had nearly enough time to react. A screeching grate roared in the white unicorn’s ears as the top of the carriage shattered into a thousand shards to be scraped away by the skywhale’s underside. A bellow of horrific primal pain echoed out through the pod as the shards dug into the creature’s flesh, some of them raining down on the passengers.
Rarity telekinetically caught as many of the largest pieces as she could before they could impale her friends, but that didn’t stop some of the smaller shards from biting into their flesh. Rarity cried out and gritted her teeth, straining not to let her magic waver lest the smaller cuts be joined by far larger wounds. As soon as the skywhale had passed, the white unicorn thrust the fragments of rainbow tech into the sky.
Rarity was about to call out to ask if Firefly was alright, but she never got the chance. Before she could even open her mouth, the last pony—er, pony-like artificial being—she had expected to see came crashing down through the absence of ceiling.
“DAYBREAK?!” Rarity gasped as the android landed on all four hooves, cracking the floor.
“I’m sorry, great-auntie!” the android yelled over the rush of the wind screaming through the hole overhead. “But you don’t know what you’re doing! There’s no time to explain, but you’d thank me if you understood!”
The walking metal memory’s horn burst into life, her burning orange aura streaking out and into Rarity’s saddlebags before she could react. The white unicorn’s eyes went wide with horror as the robot pulled out not a gimmick but the one thing Rarity had been searching for since she awoke.
“What are you—give that back!” the white unicorn demanded, unleashing herself from her rainbow-belt without thinking. A blue glow wrapped itself around her, steadying herself against the still-dangerously wobbling cabin. If this kept up, the floor would shatter just as the ceiling had done. The spider-web of cracks was already expanding with Rarity’s added weight, regardless of her efforts to minimize it.
“I’m sorry, Rarity!” Daybreak apologized again over the raging wind. “If I knew then what I know now, I never would have let you go on your search, unless it was for the same reasons I’m searching!”
“What are you talking about?!” Rarity shouted.
“You can’t continue looking for the Disks!” Daybreak called back, something between a plea and a command in her voice. “You can’t find out what your friends wanted to tell you, much less what they left you! Please, you have to understand—your friends thought you could use their legacy to save the world, but using it will only bring about the opposite! If you use it, then you’ll only be unleashing the apocalypse!”
Rarity was beyond confused. In fact, little in this frightening new time had done anything BUT confuse her, when it wasn’t trying to maim, kill, or inflict a fate worse than death. The confusion had been building up to the breaking point since she had first awoken, and this was the final straw. This was the boiling point when that little blue flame inside her was going to explode whether Rarity wanted it to or not. Never mind that Daybreak had saved her from one of those fates worse than death. Right now, she was the source of the latest and perhaps most enraging confusion yet. Rarity had nearly died or worse to get that Disk, and that was now the only thought in her mind taking up any space not already filled with her burning anger.
In Rarity’s eyes, in that instant, Daybreak was the enemy. The android might just somehow be in the right here, but Rarity couldn’t possibly see how. And she was fed up with the baffling horrors enough that she wasn’t about to entertain the notion that there was some other impossibility she should be taking into account.
“GIVE. ME. BACK. THAT. DISK!!” Rarity roared, her magic doubling its ferocity as the aura keeping her steady on the throws of the still-cracking floor lashed out to latch onto the recording device.
“No!” Daybreak gasped, her own magic increasing its hold. The robot knew every spell ever created, had the experience of a thousand wakeful years, and was undoubtedly packed with more magic than any standard Sparkle-drone ever manufactured. She should’ve been strong enough to pull the Disk away in an instant, but what she didn’t have was the raw emotion of a real, living pony. Rarity did, and right now that raw emotion was pure, enraged determination. “Rarity, you have to listen to me! Your friends didn’t know what they were doing! They meant well, but if you use what they left you you’ll destroy the world! Please, you can’t view the Disks! They all have to be destroyed!”
Rarity said nothing, her eyes narrowing as a fresh wave of magic surged forth, driving her to yank back on the recording device with all of her might. If she had been thinking clearly, she would’ve marveled that the Disk hadn’t already broken from being the center of such a furious tug-of-war. If she had been thinking clearly, she also would’ve wondered why Daybreak didn’t just use her immense magic and knowledge of spells to destroy the Disk then and there, if she wanted to remove it from Rarity’s grasp so badly.
An enchanted inanimate object surviving a thousand years was one thing, but it was another thing entirely when a robot like Daybreak didn’t instantly smash it to pieces if she truly thought it had to be destroyed. Come to think of it, if Rarity had been thinking clearly then she would be a little more curious as to how Daybreak had managed to get out here in the middle of the sky and somehow gotten a pod of skywhales to help her reach the group.
But Rarity wasn’t thinking clearly. Any part of her mind not focused on desperately holding onto the Disk was preoccupied with pumping every iota of strength she had left into her magic.
The Disk swayed in the air between the two, each tugging at it with all their might. Megan, who had been trying to steady herself against the racking rocking of the carriage, finally managed to undo her rainbow-belt and leap into the air. She hovered, no longer hindered by the shakes of the cabin, yet now far more susceptible to the wall coming up to meet her even if she wouldn’t be thrown into it first.
Daybreak had surely noticed Megan the instant she dropped into the sky carriage, yet apparently her concern for the Disk was outweighing what might have amounted to a less-split version of Firefly’ initial reaction to the two-leg. If both of Firefly’s fear of the humans were any take on The ULE’s general consensus of the new species, then the fact that Daybreak was too absorbed in her attempt to take the Disk to even cast a worried glance at Megan spoke volumes. Whether the Disk really was more dangerous in the android’s mind than the two-legs were believed to be, though, didn’t mean Megan couldn’t prove just why some of those human-based fears weren’t entirely unfounded.
Flying over to Daybreak, Megan snapped her hand-appendages and Daybreak’s tug on the Disk instantly halted. Still pulling at the recording device with all her might, Rarity flew backwards as the Disk slammed into her, sending her soaring into—and then through—the back wall.
“Marshmallow!” Surprise cried, somehow slipping out of her rainbow-belt without undoing it and dashing after the white unicorn. Rarity fell, shaking her head vigorously to dispel the spots swimming behind her eyes and the throbbing in her horn. The pain on her chest was the worst though, the Disk having made a circular trace of blood upon its smashing impact. With her last conscious thought, Rarity pried it off her skin and slipped it into her saddlebag with a satisfied smirk.
Her overworked brain didn’t even have time to register the true lethality of the situation her body was in before she blacked out. The last thing she saw was Surprise zooming down towards her, before her body turned over in its tumbling fall and a the sight of a skywhale’s massive green hide came rushing up to meet her.
. . .