Even with my eyes shut tight I feel the wind in every cell of my body, roaring in my ears, tearing at my mane, pushing and pulling and shaking me about, threatening to throw me into oblivion. I focus on maintaining my trajectory - too tight and I'll lose control, too wide and I'll blunder into somepony else's flight path and bring this whole cyclone tumbling down again. My muscles tighten in fear at the thought of crashing, and I force the idea to the back of my mind. Flight is work, every wingbeat more grueling than the one before, and I can't afford to slow down now.
I grit my teeth against the burning sensation spreading across my back as I push my protesting wings to flap harder. The faster I go, the deeper the wind presses my goggles into my fur until they begin to dig into my skin. Flight is war, and gravity is a relentless foe. It's wearing down my defenses little by little, waiting for my resolve to waver, waiting for me to tire so it can pluck me out of the sky and into its leaden embrace. I want to give in, to let it take me back to the ground so I can rest, but there's no going back now. As long as the tornado is raging there's no such thing as a safe landing. I can see this through, or I can surrender my fragile body to the fury of the storm. That's the price for defying one force of nature: you put your life at the mercy of others. Wind, rain, lightning, heat, cold - on the ground they're dangerous, but when there's nothing between you and a hundred foot plunge but your own two wings they're deadly. Everypony tells me that it's silly for a pegasus to be afraid of flying, but it's not the flying that scares me. Throwing yourself hundreds of feet into the air is crazy, wings or no. After all, a couple of feathery appendages pinned to your back won't do you much good when you're too weak or petrified to move them, and all ponies fall the same.
Whether it's weakness, fear or both, I don't know, but my body is failing me again. Flight is wearing me down, and I can't take much more. My flapping slows while my heart races, and I don't have to look to know the cyclone is growing unstable. The circling currents feel ragged and uneven, and I hear the ponies on either side of me groaning and puffing with exhaustion. We didn't make it this long last time before it all fell apart, and it looks like we're destined for failure again. We just don't have enough wing power. I remember the last time - the overwhelming exhaustion, the terror of losing control, the spinning whirling wheeling jumble of ponies reduced to a kaleidoscopic blur of streaking color before my fear-widened eyes as I plunged into the pool below.
In the eyes-clamped-shut darkness the thought of another inevitable and agonizing tumble to earth threatens to paralyze me. I force my eyes open to escape the images assaulting my mind, and as my vision adjusts to the misty darkness I can't believe what I see. A light yellow pegasus is flying alongside me, her bright fur and pink mane standing out like a beacon against the shifting, misty grey of swirling clouds around us. I recognize her in an instant - Fluttershy, the mare so skittish that she hadn't even dared to take off with the rest of us. I thought she'd run off home, and yet here she is, her wings straining, her eyes fierce, giving everything. Behind her, a spinning, snaking column of water is writhing its way into the sky, gaining size and speed as it approaches the mouth of the cyclone.
My mouth drops and I can't help but stare at the incredible scene around me. A hundred other pegasi in every color of the spectrum soar all around me, each one beating their wings in time with mine, each one throwing all of themselves into this intricate display of power and grace. The glistening column of water in the center of our twirling dance throws off a fine spray of droplets that dissolves into rainbows and mist before my eyes. My mind releases its gruesome fixation on all the ways this could go wrong, and wide-eyed awe rushes in to take its place. I'm suddenly aware of the order in all these chaotic currents, the places where the wind flows around and beneath me with a steady, gentle strength, holding me up and urging me through each wheeling repetition. I hold my wings steady and glide for a moment, surrendering to the might of the tempest, and I close my eyes and savor the sensations pouring over me.
The cool, soothing mist drips from my wingtips and settles into my fur, filling my nostrils with the pure, heady scent of rain with every breath. The wind ruffles my mane and tickles my belly like a playful embrace, and the roar of the cyclone combines with the swishing, splashing sound of the water to form a sibilant symphony that fills me with wonder. My body feels insubstantial, no heavier than a leaf swept up in a summer storm. I don't think I could fall if I wanted to, I would just float in place forever like a star suspended in space, serene and luminous.
The air around me is moving faster now, steadier and stronger. This is it, the final push. We're doing it. I open my eyes and push my wings into motion, pumping them as hard as I can. I surge forward and the mist parts before me, spattering against my goggles and dissolving into eddying whorls in my wake. I race around the towering pillar of water once, twice, gaining speed, adrenaline filling my veins with vigor and a strange, shivering joy. Flight is wonderful, and I can hardly remember what it was that held me in fear of it for so long.
From above me a sound like a cannon firing shudders through the air, and I look up to see a glittering arc of water bursting out of the top of the tornado and stretching out into the distance. My lips part in an irrepressible smile, and I let out a joyful shout as I watch the last drops rising from the lake below, rushing past me to join the rest of this year's rainwater supply in Cloudsdale.
Pegasi begin to break away from the cyclone in a mesmerizing helix formation, and I follow them up into the clear summer sky. The world spreads out below me, bright and vivid and unspeakably beautiful, and my heart matches up with the rhythm of my wings as I wheel around to take it all in. Flight may not be safe, but from up here I understand what all my cautious calculations could never predict - I was made for this. Flight is risk and reward, work and wages, war and victory. Flight is freeing and fulfilling in ways I had never imagined, and it took the courage of another to show me that, more than anything else I've done in my life, flight is worth it.