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// CDC: Sky's Call 
// Story: 255: The Aegis Collection 
// by AegisExemplar 
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She could feel it, that all-consuming pull of the earth at her hooves. She’d always felt it, so badly that to be without it, to step above it, even upon a bed to sleep at night, would drive her mad.

Her name was Ancile, and she suffered from geomagicka addiction.

It wasn’t her fault, it couldn’t be. She was ‘born’ when she was cast off of her ‘brother’ when he was turned male again after a lab mishap during a job had reversed his gender. She was an earth pony, as he was, but she was a new soul. She hadn’t the capacity of an adult earth pony with regards to their connection to the earth, yet her connection was just as strong.

Mostly, it wasn’t a problem. Being separated from the ground for very long would drive her mad, however. Her dear friend, very nearly a sister, had learned that the hard way trying to take Ancile for a flight.

That same pony this very day had introduced Ancile to an alchemical powder she’d created. Ocean Breeze called it ‘pegapowder’ and it had changed Ancile’s life. During that brief hour, Ancile had known freedom from the binding earth, had felt clouds beneath her hooves. She knew that she could, in fact, be happy. She hadn’t been meant to be an earth pony. Her brother’s father, and her father by default, was a pegasus. She had been meant to be a pegasus as well!

And now, thanks to Ocean’s alchemical expertise, she would be one for the rest of her life. She glanced once more at the bag of perma-pegapowder, took a deep breath, and doused herself.

The wind whipped through red feathers as joyous laughter echoed through the clouds above, the pull of the earth once more denied by the call of the sky.