//------------------------------// // 2 - A New World // Story: Ponies, Portals, and Physics: A Practical Study on Unscheduled Interplanetary Excursion // by superpurple //------------------------------// My heart pounded in my chest. My legs pumped under me as I dashed over the rough terrain. I struggled to find purchase in the loose soil of the forest floor. My feet kicked up dirt as I sprinted between the trees and leapt over boulders and fallen logs. They were gaining on me. I could hear several sets of hooves trampling through the woods behind me, accompanied by barking dogs. They were getting closer, I could feel it. I pushed harder, running as fast as I could. It didn’t help. Despite my best attempts to flee, I wasn’t making any progress distancing myself from them. They were catching up. They’d be on me any moment. I charged forward, not bothering to look where I was going. I broke through the trees and into a clearing. I slid forward through the dirt before I could stop myself. Before me were dozens of unicorns in blue uniforms and a line of parked police cruisers. Flashing red and blue lights filled my vision and the blare of a siren pierced my ears. The lead unicorn shouted and pointed a hoof at me. They all looked at me. I turned tail and darted back into the woods, heading off in another direction. Beams from flashlights washed back and forth around me as they gave chase. I ran, deep into the forest, now trying to escape from two parties who were closing in on all sides. A helicopter flew overhead, its spotlight pinpointing me through the dense canopy of leaves. I changed directions again, doubling back and zig-zagging at random angles. The circle of light followed me no matter what I did, or where I went. A voice came over the loudspeaker. It was Graywall. “You can’t get away! I won’t stop chasing you! It's hopeless! Give up now!” My boot snagged on a root and I came down hard on my hands and knees. I tried to get up but slipped, falling again. And I kept falling. I was rolling down a hill, tumbling head over heel, slamming into trees the whole way down until they gave way to the edge of a cliff. I fell uncontrollably through the open sky. I tried flapping my wings to stabilize my fall but it was of no use. The feathers flapped uselessly without any resistance as if I were in a vacuum. So, I fell. And kept falling. Falling… falling alone into the darkness, with no end in sight… I awoke. My breaths came rapid and heavy through my nostrils and I was soaked in a cold sweat. My eyes were open but I only saw darkness. My mouth was painfully dry. I lay there utterly still, hearing only the sound of the rushing air from my own erratic breathing. When my breathing and heart rate finally slowed to their resting states, I became aware of the muffled sounds of nature around me and how each intake of breath brought with it a dewy, earthen scent. I shifted positions slightly and a ray of dim light broke through above me, providing some slight illumination. I was curled up into a tight ball, head resting on my forearms, face filled with a spotted gray tail, and a wing draped loosely over my upper body and head. The light was peeking through the gaps in the large feathers. I blinked and stared up in confusion, trying to make sense of why I wasn’t in my bed. The chain of events leading up to how I’d gotten here trickled in and I remember where and what I was. I was still a griffon. That detail hadn’t changed. I exhaled heavily into the tuffs of tail fur laying across my face. I was kinda hoping all that had been just part of a bad dream. Speaking of bad dreams, that had been less-than-pleasant. Though the details were foggy and fading by the second, the feelings of dread and panic lingered. It had certainly been enough to prevent any kind of restful sleep. Though a glance at my watch told me it was nearing noon, and that I’d been out of it for close to eight hours, I couldn’t have gotten more than a single hour of proper rest. I liberated myself from the tangle of fluffy appendages and found the handle of my umbrella-tent. I took down my footwraps—now thoroughly dried—from where they hung and put them back on. Then I collapsed the umbrella. As soon as the canopy fell away, rays of sunlight washed over me and I was met with a warm breeze. Whatever chill may have been present last night was completely gone in the afternoon sun. I sat up and stretched, twisting my torso around to both sides as far as it went with a series of satisfying pops. Then I arched my back much like a cat—or maybe exactly like a cat. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn’t suffering from any of the undue soreness that I would have expected to come from my rough sleeping arrangements. Oh sure, I still ached from the crash and my shoulders were complaining about walking, but at least my back wasn’t trying to murder me. Looks like having a feline spine had some benefits. I wrapped the umbrella back up and stored it away in my bags. While I was tucking it into its place at the bottom, my water bottle caught my eye and I was immediately reminded of just how dry my mouth was. I unscrewed the cap and upended the container, taking long gulps of the cool, refreshing water. Before I knew it, I’d downed the contents in their entirety. I frowned at the empty bottle. That wasn’t good. I looked around. Maybe I could find a spring or stream or something. I recalled hearing running water, so there had to be something around here… A nearby patch of suitably untouched snow caught my eye. I went over to it, scooped a bit up in my hand, and put it in my mouth. It tasted like, well, nothing, so I bent down and packed my bottle full to the brim with it. It would melt and at least partially refill the bottle. That annoyingly paranoid part of my brain wasn’t quite sure about the safety of doing that. I had no clue what else might have been in the snow. Sure, it looked fine, but it could be host to god-knows-what kinds of alien bacterial pathogens or other nasties. It was a perfectly valid concern. And one that I promptly dismissed as I stowed the bottle in my bags. Not because I had any survival skills or chemistry knowledge or whatever confirming that it was safe, but because if it did turn out that the innocent looking patch of snow was actually toxic, infected, poisonous, contaminated, or not actually H2O at all, I was already so far beyond fucked and out of my depth that it hardly mattered. I picked my jacket up off the ground and gave it a shake to dislodge the bits of dirt that clung to it. The woolen fabric was a little moist. Whether it was moisture from the ground or from the same sweat that still clung to my fur, I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t exactly been washed recently so the smell wasn’t a useful indicator. I shrugged. Whatever. The sunlight and breeze were doing a good job of drying both it and my fur. I put on the jacket and my bags, leaving the jacket unzipped for now and letting the straps from the bags perform the brunt of the work holding my wings in place at my side. I was all packed up, dressed, and ready to go. … Right. Go where? When I’d fled blindly into the night, I hadn’t planned ahead much further than ‘get the fuck away from Graywall manor’. Now that I wasn’t panicking the fuck out or about to pass out, I could probably come up with something better. I mean, yeah, I could just keep creeping about in the woods, staying out of sight, and going in any direction that wasn’t back towards the manor, but for what purpose? Fleeing might be a solution to the problem of the angry lunatic trying to lock me in a small box, but it’d also prevent me from making any progress at all on the big problem. The problem of me still being a griffon, on an alien planet. The problem with that problem, though, was that it was so vague and nebulous that it was nearly impossible to formulate a plan of action to solve it beyond the equally vague ‘figure out how everything got so fucking fucked and what I need to do to unfuck it’. And I severely doubted that sort of information gathering was the kind I would accomplish by hiding in the woods like some kind of fugitive hermit. No, I’d probably have to find someone who knew anything and was willing to help me. It was a real shame I’d just fled from the one person so far who’d been interested in doing just that. If I’d known I was going to be sticking around here I probably would’ve done things differently yesterday. Like not severing all chances to keep getting help, for one. I huffed. If I were in this kind of situation back on Earth—that is to say, completely lost and clueless—I’d make my way to the police or something for assistance. But as the paranoid part of my brain was eager to point out, that had its own set of issues. This was a totally new land, which meant new rules. I didn’t know anything about this place, its culture or its laws beyond what I’d managed to glean from the few conversations I’d had or overheard. Which wasn’t much at all. I didn’t know if I was actually a criminal in the eyes of the law at large or just Graywall’s. Or even what the scope of the law was. Hell, for all I knew, I was an illegal alien—in all definitions of the word. At the very least, what’s-her-face had clearly said that Graywall held significant sway over the sheriff here. Avoiding the authorities was probably in my best interests until I learned more. I had no desire to get locked up again. There was no guarantee I’d be able to break out of the next cell so easily. So… I just needed to perform an investigation into a beyond-fucked-up situation that made no sense at all, while keeping a low profile so as to not get recaptured by Graywall, arrested, or institutionalized for asking too many questions. And I had to do it all while equipped with nothing but a bag of school supplies, and a masterfully-crafted-and-perfectly-masculine-kilt-toga-thing. It was going to be interesting, to say the least. I crept out from the trees and cracked my neck. I looked out over the road and the town beyond from my spot on the hillside. The alien pony town. I was going in there. Yep. I stood there on the hillside, enjoying the way the oncoming breeze ruffled the feathers on my face and neck. The air passed down my sides and over my bound wings, and I felt the long flight feathers flutter slightly. The bizarre sensation made my wings twitch and shift against their restraints. Huh, that was the first time the damn things had done anything beyond getting in the way. Intrigued, I stripped off my bags and jacket. The now-unrestrained wings fell loosely to the ground. I rolled my eyes and did a little shake so they would flop out away from my body. As soon as they had, there was a rush of sensations as the oncoming wind flowed over and around them. The rows of feathers caught the air and lifted slightly in the breeze. The muscles around my shoulder tensed instinctually, elevating the wings a little more. I tried to focus on them, to make them lift further. But each time I mentally reached out to the muscles, whatever grasp I had on them slipped away and my wings went limp once again. It was only when I directed my thoughts away from trying to move them that I got a reaction. By relaxing my mental grasp, and instead just feeling the air currents around the feathers, the wings gradually stretched outward of their own accord. The flight feathers spread like fingers, shifting reflexively to maximize surface area. The resulting lift generated was enough that the wings slowly rose up and were held aloft by the cushion of air alone. A stupid grin made its way to my face as I was struck with an idea. An admittedly moronic idea, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to test it out regardless. The incline down to the road was of a decently steep slope. I gauged it to be maybe thirty or thirty-five degrees. Thirty degrees… angle equals tangent equals slope… pi over six radians… little over point-five… take reciprocal… …A sustained glide ratio of at least two to one would be required to not hit the ground. If I recalled correctly, even a crappy glider like a wingsuit could achieve a glide ratio of three or something. Factor in the headwind and the sheer size of these stupid-ass wings… and it might not be completely infeasible. The dumb grin on my face widened. That was good enough justification for me to start experimental trials. I stepped backward—being sure to keep my mind off my wings, but still maintaining that little feeling in the back of my head so they stayed extended—and stopped when my tail bumped into a tree, “Kksshht. Griffon One, you are cleared for takeoff,” I said out of the corner of my mouth to no one in particular. Then I ran forward, taking huge bounds to gather as much speed as I could in the space I had. When I hit the start of the drop, I leapt off, giving my shoulders one last heave to ensure my wings were flung out to their fullest, most ridiculous, extent. For a moment I was weightless and my outstretched wings cut through the air without any resistance. I passed the apex of my jump and there came a pull at my shoulders as my wings caught the air and started to take up my weight. And then I kept accelerating downward and they buckled against the onrushing air. I went from ‘glider’ to ‘parachute malfunction’ and continued in a purely ballistic trajectory right into the hillside. I hit the ground, rolled uncontrollably down the snowy slope, and then came to rest at the bottom, laying on my back and staring up at the sky. I layed there for several moments, unmoving, in a tangled mess of limbs. Then I rolled rightside up and jumped back to my feet, pumping my fist and grinning wildly. “Woohooo!” I shook like a dog, sending snow flying everywhere. Hard to beat a morning snow bath to wake you up right. Now, what was I doing? Something about gathering info from aliens. Right. And maybe I could see if I couldn’t bum some breakfast off someone while I was at it. Or lunch, I suppose. Whatever.