//------------------------------//
// Chapter 17: Night Flight 
// Story: The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers (Enhanced & Augmented) 
// by scifipony 
//------------------------------//

I think I screamed as Streak leaped over the fence, throwing herself and the wagon into the air. Heart racing, frightened beyond speech, my terrified rabbit brain took control. Fortunately, I didn't remain spooked for long. I neither peed myself nor bucked; I can't imagine how. A sudden sweat cooled me sufficiently, in the on-rushing wind, that I began to shiver.

The wagon remained aloft as Streak flapped her magnificent wings of white-peppered blue feathers, flapping strenuously, cord-like muscles pulling grand downstrokes, literally reaching into the air and heaving us upward. Even fully extended, her wings were each barely a pony-length. 

Now, more than ever, I realized how ridiculously inadequate the pegasus physique really was. Even a rudimentary knowledge of physics provided enough to understand that you just could not scale up a sparrow to pony size without making its wings disproportionately larger to its body, and there was that bit that a pony tail couldn't function as a rudder. As she gained altitude, she continued galloping in the air.

My horn insisted on handing me the calculations about how truly long pegasus wings needed to be, and insisted that even if Streak's wings were that long, the wagon would have fallen and ripped itself free from her harness.

That manifestly had not happened, of course. Streak laughed her flank off.

"You— You— punk!"

"Flattery will get you everywhere!" She snickered so hard, she snorted.

With my forelegs clamped tightly on the wagon rail, I pulled my eyes from Streak's athletic form to the world below. Princess Celestia had only just raised the moon; its wane light cast blue shadows across the landscape, emphasizing the roll of the land and making lone trees and farm buildings stand out on the Ponyville plain. I quickly realized that the dozen star-bright dots spread along a line toward Ponyville moved, and if I squinted, I could make out ant-sized ponies pulling wagons. As I calmed down and my eyes adjusted more, I could see apple orchards and orange groves below, the rows making a repeating pattern almost like a vibration in a glass of water as we glided downward. I saw a patchwork quilt of other agriculture, as well as a quarry with tailing hills beside it. Waves on the various lakes sparkled and glittered, as did the tributary flowing through Ponyville from its source at the Canterlot Cataract. It looked like stars fallen to earth huddling together.

"You're no longer a virgin."

Still collecting my wits, I blushed despite the double-entendre being old history in all senses. Streak smiled back at me. She held her wings rigidly outstretched with the vibrating feathers of her right wing up and her left wing down. 

"Wasn't one," I responded, as the realization dawned on me of how she ruddered. We banked in a gradual downward spiral.

"If ya say so." She faced forward. Speaking loudly so I could hear, she added, "Welcome to my world, Grimoire. This is the one thing that unicorns can't do."

"I know one that can."

She laughed. "Her Highness is an alicorn, not a unicorn."

I meant Sunburst. My soulmate. My one-time best friend. "I had an— acquaintance. I knew him when we were foals. I saw him self-levitate." The memory sucked the enthusiasm for flying right out of me. I suddenly felt the wind in my eyes drying them out, while causing a faint annoying whistle from the forward rail as we flew.

"Not the same experience, I'll bet."

"I wouldn't know. He left me."

"Jilted. Always sad."

I looked over the rail, gazing at the great forest that ran west and south of Ponyville. The irregular height of the trees, and the gorge that ran through it heading south, lent it the visual texture of a swatch of blue velvet with a rip down the center. Beautiful. I suddenly missed the trees of the forest surrounding Sire's Hollow. "I'm going to figure out that spell one day."

"I can always use a flying buddy. But, beware, I'm one of the strongest flyers around. Only the very strongest flyers can pull a rig like this. I'd be able to handle this tub with a load of iron ore."

Boasts much? "I forgot that pegasi could fly things other than what they carried on their body." I'd flown in air taxis in Las Pegasus, but they were enclosed carriages designed not to spook unicorn and earth pony fares.

"How'd ya expect we got things up to Vanhoover or the nomad city?"

Cloudsdale, I presumed.

"—Hauling is the one thing I'm special at. I volunteer for these missions whenever I can get them."

I gasped. "Your cutie mark is a yoke!" A donut with ball-head spikes.

"Yah. I take it back, you're not so dumb—just a bit slow. Average for a unicorn. A night flight is faster and safer than having an earth pony making the delivery. Less chance of running into a copperhead returning to Canterlot. Go ahead and change; I know you like to get into cos— uniform before a job. I haven't spotted our contact, yet, so we've five minutes at least."

I put all fours on the bed of the wagon. Though "the rig" was as firm a platform as the ground, I felt unbalanced. I took out my supplies, which I sorted in the lamplight. 

I asked, "Am I scaring some neigh-do-well or deadbeat? Hey, don't look!" 

I found her staring as I levitated my makeup compact, brush, and hairspray. I still didn't know where the convention of being embarrassed when somepony watched you came from.

She displayed a contrite expression that nonetheless included a smile and the tip of her tongue sticking out. I looked into her eyes and realized she wore brass-rimmed goggles. I glared.

"Sorry! No, I didn't lie about guard duty, a?  We meet in the Everfree Forest and it's full of monsters that'd be as happy to eat ya as see ya."

"Couldn't arrange a safer venue?"

"It's complicated. You'll see."

I became Grimoire on the outside, but didn't don the persona. Instead I watched the landscape wheel ever so closer below. When it finally grew monotonous, I looked at Streak, or more accurately at her withers and saddle area, where the strong muscles bunching there almost caused a hump where her wings connected to her torso. So unpony-like and mechanically amazing.

I knew that if Streak looked back, my stare would be a magnitude more rude than hers had been moments ago. Still, she didn't. I gasped when she fluttered a bit, gaining altitude and making a course correction. It wasn't her beauty, though I'd never look at her the same again, or the broken physics of pegasus flight.

No. I sensed a disturbance in the magic pulse, like a unicorn preparing a spell. There wasn't an aura.

There wasn't an aura!

No way wasn't there magic here! Logic dictated I was right. Reflexively, I cast the healing spell, modulating the Barthemule mathematics to project my aura into her spine. I had to refine the imaginary axis over and over—the tardiness of our Everfree contact helped in that—until I morphed the spell as if I were massaging her muscles. Perhaps because she ached and I suddenly sensed her fatigue and a buildup of lactic acid, or perhaps mere persistence, but my consciousness finally slipped into her.

A new red world of liquid, bone, and electrical impulse opened to my inner eye. I could taste lemon-sour fatigue and feel overtaxed fibers become angry and grimace in a meaty fashion. I smelled the scent of a lightning storm; saw a storm of pulses; blue flashing that ricocheted through channels that disappeared into the distance leagues away. So much moved! Sounds of rivers flowing and clay being roughly molded warred for my attention—blood pumping and joints moving, possibly.

I saw more.

At first it was hard to detect: a glowing mist, but once I caught a glimpse, I could focus on it and see it flow like the tides from the Celestia Sea into Horseshoe Bay, forward, slow, back a bit, then forward again. Bioluminescent plankton acted like this: they lit as pressure waves glided through the water. Concentrating harder, I began to sense the particles that appeared, briefly danced and pirouetted, then vanished.

Numbers!

The mist was a magic aura, as the same color as Streak's blue eyes: a tamed, terrifically complex rivulet of the magic pulse. Soon I saw the flaming digits themselves; I worked to decipher their pattern, seeking the equation that underlaid their generation. The skeleton of a spell. I could easily get lost.

Perhaps I already had.

I pulled back, trying to stabilize my consciousness by concentrating on the massage suggestion that had gained me entrance inside her in the first place. The angry fibers told me how to push out the build up of fluids. I did as instructed.

It was already too late. Captured inside the sensual warmth, and ebb and flow of Streak's body, I lost all sense of self and could do nothing as my world ceased to exist.

Nor did I want to.