A stiff wind blew at Lightning Dust’s back, teasing the feathers of her good wing. She kept herself from slipping down the long, deep mountainside ahead of her, and asked one simple question.
“How the hay did you talk me into this?”
She felt clumsy, packed weirdly tight, in her black, padded bodysuit. Between that and her fur-lined weather team jacket, it kept the freezing winds from doing much more than tickle the back of Lightning Dust’s head. A helmet and scarf protected the rest of her fiery mane.
Glancing over to her side, she spotted Fiddlesticks, her wife, who smiled back at her. She wore a similar bodysuit, coloured bright, fluorescent green and a white helmet. She sideways shuffled over the pristine white snow, the two long, narrow skis leaving divots and scrapes in the powdered surface.
“It’ll be fun,” Fiddlesticks said, giving Lightning Dust a gentle bump with a hoof. “I tried this years ago and been itchin’ to give it another go. Loved every second of it.”
Lightning blew a raspberry, and turned her head to face back down the mountain. “Never took you for an adrenaline junkie. I thought that was meant to be my thing.”
“’Xactly! Besides, everypony’s got her vices.”
Lightning Dust curled her ankles around the ski poles attached to her gloves. It took her a little time to get used to using them just for moving around, and she wasn’t too sure about using them for what was staring back up at her.
“Are you having second thoughts, darling?” asked Fiddlesticks. A little more shuffling and crunching, and their flanks were touching. “We can take the lift back down if you want. Ain’t no shame there.”
With a sigh, Lightning Dust shook her head. “No, I… I want to do this.” She looked back at Fiddlesticks. “You’re excited, and I want you to be happy. I’ll be fine.” She threw a hoof out, and a stick wobbled in the air below it. “I’ve free-falled bigger distances than this. I’ll be fine.”
Though hard to see through the dark goggles, Lightning Dust was sure Fiddlesticks was squinting at her. “You sure?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.” Fiddlesticks then shuffled back on the relatively flat shelf they found themselves on. “Here’s how we’ll do this: I’ll set off first, then you follow me. We’ll stop where the hill gets steeper. Fer now, we’ll go slow. Holler at me if you want to go faster. Understand?”
Lightning Dust nodded, and gave her a brief salute with her wing. “Understood.”
Fiddlesticks grinned and pushed forward. She made the brief slalom over to Lightning look effortless, and she was surprised by the quick kiss on the lips.
Then she was off down the hill, and Lightning Dust followed, slipping her goggles down with her wing.
The start of their journey ran down a shallower incline, starting them off slow. Lightning knew how to stop herself quickly if she needed to, but for the first leg of their trip, she reckoned she could just plunge her sticks into the snow and stop herself dead with ease.
Sticking out of the snow every few dozen yards, there were bright red poles with triangular flags flapping in the wind. There the snow often levelled out, or they marked some long, sweeping turn. Each time, gravity and friction worked in tandem to slow both ponies down, though Lightning was fairly sure Fiddlesticks was consciously slowing herself more than she needed. In just the first few checkpoints, she wasn’t more than a few yards to the head and one side or another, letting Lightning see the turns up ahead.
It took Lightning more than a few turns to loosen herself up. Eventually, she was taking them at speed, slowing herself down enough so that she didn’t overshoot the bend and go face-first into a snow berm or tree, or slide right over the red lines occasionally sprayed onto the snow’s surface.
She also noticed that Fiddlesticks was letting herself loose, too. It took Lightning just as many turns to notice that her wife had been putting on the brakes quite a lot.
Tucking her legs in and crouching down, Lightning came up beside Fiddlesticks on one of the last straights before their second leg, a steeper hill.
She turned her head and smiled at Fiddlesticks, who responded with a stuck-out tongue and a push to keep herself in the lead.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” Lightning called out cheerfully.
Fiddlesticks spun around, and Lightning flared her wing and crossed her skis to slow herself down.
Fiddlesticks continued barrelling along backwards, her tongue still stuck out and a hoof tugging down her cheek.
“Show off!”
With a few quick and rough jabs in the ground, Lightning shoved herself back up to speed and tried to close the gap between them again.
Years of experience flying through the skies taught Lightning Dust plenty about aerodynamics. She crouched tight, ducked low, and pulled her forelegs in. While she couldn’t generate her own thrust, gravity did all that work for her. As Fiddlesticks only kept herself in a light crouch, catching up to her was a cinch.
Up ahead was another pair of flags, triangular as before but black instead of red. Fiddlesticks was near to them, but Lightning wasn’t going to let her wife get the better of her in speed now. With another quick series of shoves, she brought her head so low she had to crane her neck a little to see where she was going.
A braking fiddlesticks was all that Lightning saw as she flew past the flags, and over a small lip. The distant cry of her name barely registered as Lightning’s stomach dropped, and then so did the rest of her.
Fortunately, she landed skis first and kept on going. Lightning flailed and straightened herself up, staring at the route ahead of her wide-eyed.
The steepness of the hill in front of her made her heart pulse rapidly in her chest and roar in her ears. There were far more straights ahead of her, fewer turns. Maybe that meant plenty of space to break, to slow down, but…
Her name carried over on the wind behind her, and all Lightning wanted to do, did do, was call back, “Catch me if you can!”
The trim of her scarf whipped and cracked behind her as she picked up more speed, more inertia. The wide turns and open routes between the trees and mounds let her maintain it, to enjoy the feeling of practically flying down the face of a mountain.
The thudding in her ears wasn’t fear, it was pure, unfiltered joy. It was a response to the blissful weightlessness she was born for, that she had missed so dearly for years and years.
Hitting another straight, Lightning saw something other than white snow and dark green trees in the corner of her vision creep up alongside her. She glanced at it, then turned her whole, crud-eating grin at it.
Fiddlesticks gestured something back.
“Go faster?” Lightning yelled through the roaring wind.
The glare aimed back at her was more felt than heard. She laughed and turned back to the route ahead of her. Just in time, too, as she caught sight of a turn and skidded through it like she was a professional.
She didn’t see the branch leaning over more than it should at the outside edge.
Or the bush she tumbled through after being thrown flank-over-teakettle.
She definitely saw the snow she rolled through, eventually coming to a complete stop.
And the stars that swam in her vision.
“…Ow.”