//------------------------------//
// Chapter 37 
// Story: Fine Print 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Tracy's world was a blur. He felt his hooves below him, scrabbling desperately at the grassy slope. One slip and he'd be sent tumbling, before he could get purchase in the air. There was no stopping now—the ground just kept getting steeper, slipping away below him faster than he could keep up.

Then one hoof slipped on a bit of loose gravel. He had three others—but while galloping, only one struck at a time. By the time the next hit the ground, it only kicked out at empty air.

A wall of force struck his wings, pulling at his back as he'd never felt before. But this was what Sable had warned him about during the entire climb, and he was ready for it. He fought with underdeveloped wing-muscles, keeping his wings extended. Nothing else mattered, so long as he didn't let go.

Tracy looked down, eyes widening as the ground fell away. He was still headed towards the river, but now his path was almost level, and the river's watery outline grew more distant along with the rest of the land. 

"Told you it was easy," Sable said, gliding in behind him and circling at a short distance. Now that he was watching her wings, he stared at her complex motions, opening and closing and flapping and arcing as though she'd been doing this her whole life. Which... she had, obviously. "You start with a glide, then everything is simple after that."

"This doesn't... feel simple," he panted. Tracy looked down again, as a few scraggly trees passed under his hooves. He tucked them up against his chest, shivering once. "Is this a bad time to mention I'm afraid of heights?" He began breathing rapidly, his wings rigid. It was no longer difficult to hold them that way, no matter the strain on his muscles. The hard part would be getting them to release again when he landed.

"Afraid of heights?" Sable repeated. She flew up in a high arc right in front of him, started stalling, then caught herself with her wings, gliding back to him. She wasn't so much flying as swimming through an invisible ocean, one that she could only push through with wings. 

"Being afraid of heights makes sense when they're dangerous to you. Once you can do this, not so dangerous anymore. Jumping off a building is just faster than taking the stairs, it's not dangerous. Canyons and mountains and hills are the same way."

Easy for you to say. You were born with wings. But he knew better than to bother trying to explain his own past again. For as eager as she'd been to help, she would probably just ignore him again. "I'm not sure I'm at that level yet!" he shouted. He didn't mean it to sound so terrified, but he also couldn't help himself. His legs were already tucked up as low as they could go, but it didn't help.

Actually, it was making things worse. His glide was gradual and gentle, but even so he was inclined slightly downward, picking up speed. He left the river behind, and soon was passing over fruit trees instead, fast enough that they started to blur. 

"That gliding part was great, but... maybe you should tell me how to stop? Or turn around, or... anything? Ground is getting closer, Sable!"

"Deep breaths," she said, keeping up with him with relative ease. How could he feel like the whole world was completely out of control, yet she basically held still beside him? "I'll show you. We'll pull up, okay? Your speed will get converted to altitude, so we can turn back towards town after. Gradual is better than dramatic, okay? Gradual angles, or else you'll lose all your lift and hit the ground like a rock."

That is not what I needed to hear right now! Still, with his heart pounding and adrenaline surging through his veins, Tracy could think of little else. He watched with laser focus as she tilted her wings, and seemed to shoot upward away from him. Good thing too—there was a little cluster of farmhouses up ahead, approaching with frightening speed.

Tracy strained, focusing on his wings. It took quite a bit of concentration to tilt them in such a gentle way, when all he'd really learned to do in all these months was open and close them. 

His back burned as he tilted upward, bowing out his wings in the middle and shooting him suddenly up, so fast that he flew past Sable and nearly smacked into her. He squealed, voice so high-pitched it was more like a squeak, echoing through the forest.

But as fast as he ascended, he began to decelerate, both forward and vertically. "Sable! What now?"





She zipped up beside him, yanking on one of his hooves and twisting him around to face Ponyville. "Same as before, silly! Glide back!"

You cheated! That wasn't teaching me how to turn! But with his heart racing and the world now even further than it had been before, Tracy didn't question her. What if Sable left him up here, to coast for miles and miles until he died in the first inter-universal self-propelled aeronautics accident?

"This is not easy," he said, frustration coming through despite his best efforts. "My back is on fire, feels like my wings are going to rip off... and we're only higher up than before!"

"That's not how conservation of energy works," Sable muttered, apparently unaffected. "But we'll be landing on the south side of Ponyville, which is downhill of where we started. I guess it might look like it."

"That's not the point!" He turned on her, his own teeth exposed. "I shouldn't be up this high! I could die here!"

"You could die walking through the cave," she countered, grinning back. "Never known when a stalactite is gonna fall and crush you. But you're up here living, right? Can't predict the future, but we can make the present awesome!"

"I'll settle for not dying when I try to land." Tracy lowered his legs slowly, as though by letting go he might start falling again. He didn't, of course. It wasn't that hard to keep his wings extended, though if he wanted to keep doing this, he was going to have to practice much more.

Are there gyms for wings? Maybe he could work out on the human side and cheat the transformation of the door somehow.

As he glided back towards Ponyville, Sable went on and on with various flying tips. All of them seemed useful, but she wasn't a terribly good teacher. Instead of sticking to the basics, she went from simple instructions for how to stop for a landing, then transitioned to a story about one time she'd ended up in a tropical storm with her family.

"Always fly up," she explained. "That's the only chance you have. Get above the storm, and you can wait for it to pass. Try to cut through it, and your wings will get torn to pieces. Pitch still has a wicked scar from a bit of wood that went right through his wing."

There was at least one good thing about their conversation: it gave him something else to focus on. The ground was getting closer, and this time there would be no returning to altitude to coast. 

"Sounds like your lives are... quite the adventure," he said. "I guess I kinda did the same thing for a while—living out of my car so I could get a job in San Jose. But the longer I kept at it, the worse it felt. I want a home, somewhere. Even if it's not the place I thought it would be."

"Most ponies do," she whispered, looking away from him for the first time in several minutes. "Even the bats. There's this stereotype that the day ponies are always saying—they expect us never to stay in one place. But most bats have a cave and they never move out. They just mistake a yearly migration for always being on the move. The ones who don't stick around... have our own reasons. Like my family. No clan means no cave. No cave, no home."

He fell silent, watching his flight carefully as the ground came rushing up to meet them. Tracy spread his wings wide for his best attempt at a breaking maneuver. He slowed, but this time the strain was too much for his back. His wings bent all the way, and he dropped abruptly, skidding and bumping and rolling.

He curled up, shielding his face with his forelegs while his wings folded. He still slid for several meters, before finally coming to a stop at the edge of a dirt road.

For a few seconds he just lay there, curled tight and breathing heavily. Was anything broken? It didn't feel like it. His legs stung, and a brief glimpse told him he'd been cut in a few places.

Finally he rose, shaking away the dirt and bits of grass. He half-expected most of Ponyville to be watching and laughing, but no. There was just a crude wooden fence, and a few dairy cows grazing in a pasture beyond. 

"Well that could've been worse. At least it was just the cows who saw that." And his teacher, but that might be for the best. Any impression that he was somehow exotic and interesting couldn't possibly survive contact with reality.

Apparently neither could his own ideas. One of the cows—a massive creature, easily twice as high as the fence, took a few lumbering steps towards him, its eyes somehow comprehending in a way no cow had ever looked before. "Maybe we're just too polite to laugh at a pony who doesn't know how to fly, don’t cha know," she said. 

"I..." Tracy backed away, his ears pressed flat. "I'm so sorry. I didn't..." know you were sapient. "I'm sorry." He turned, and nearly smacked into Sable. He dodged around her, hurrying to the dirt road and into a nervous trot. The cows did laugh now, though thankfully that was all they did. If they were smart, they could probably get through that fence without much effort. It might not even be there for them at all.

"Cows talk too?" he muttered. It seemed like such a small thing compared to everything else he'd been through that night, but also so fundamental. Ponies were easy to put into a separate box to earth animals—they looked and acted almost nothing like any horse he'd ever seen. But the cows... how many times had he seen them grazing in Ponyville’s pastures?

How many times have I had cheese in my omelets? Oh god, are the chickens smart too?

"Your landing didn't look that hard," Sable said, conversationally. "Did you hit something worse than I thought? You look... sick."

"No," he sighed, twisting one of his legs so she could see. "Cut myself, but it's nothing a little Neosporin and liquid bandage can't fix. I'll apply it on the Earth side and just assume that it translates correctly over here. Should have a little time before Rose wakes up."

He stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the road. The path into Ponyville was still deserted. But if the smoke rising from a few chimneys meant anything, it probably wouldn't be for long. There was no smog in the sky overhead, and even the homes produced only a faint trickle of woodsmoke. It smelled like family camping trips, not pollution. 

"Thanks for teaching me all that," he said. "It's more than I could've asked for. Even if..." He winced again, rubbing one injured foreleg against the other. "Well, the landing was my fault. I need more practice."

"You do." She sighed too, patting him on the shoulder. "But you'll get there, Tracy. One day, you might want some company on some flight somewhere. Us clanless bats have to stick together, you know? Even if..." She looked away, her voice breaking. Just for a second. "Rose, huh? You take good care of her. Is it her? I dunno how earth pony names work."

"Me neither," he said. "Maybe I'll see you at the Echo Caverns one day? If you pass through Ponyville again, stop by and say hi."

She nodded, touching him briefly on the shoulder. "Work on your landings. Lots of tight quarters in the Echo Caverns." Then she took off, leaving only a high-pitched squeaking on the air behind her.