//------------------------------// // Episode 2 – Wings // Story: Twilight Sparkle Investigates // by Bradel //------------------------------// The image blinked on. “Are you sure you wanna…” A rainbow-maned head blocked the camera’s view. “I mean, I’m not a lot of good with all the science-y stuff. I just know how to use ‘em.” Giggling, quickly stifled. “That’s, um, okay. I think I can handle the technical aspects.” Rainbow Dash turned and trotted away from the camera, revealing a green hilltop covered in patches of autumn leaves. “Yeah, I guess you’d be really good with that sort of stuff,” she said, though the camera barely caught her words. She turned and trotted to the left, moving out of frame. A few seconds later she trotted across the image in the opposite direction. She stopped with only half her cutie mark and her tail still in the camera’s field of view. “Rainbow,” the other voice called. “Rainbow!” Twilight Sparkle cantered out from behind the camera, taking a position in the middle of the image and waving Rainbow Dash over. “You ready to start? Okay, cool.” Dash walked back and stood near Twilight. “Can you, um, maybe get a little closer?” Twilight asked. “I want to make sure we’re both in the frame.” Dash moved in, but Twilight motioned for her to come closer still. After half a minute of awkward negotiation, Twilight had the pair of them standing wing-to-wing and flank-to-flank. “Do we really need to…” Dash’s voice trailed off as her cheeks reddened, and she turned her head away from Twilight to stare at one of the piles of leaves on the ground. “It’ll look much better on the video this way,” Twilight said, blushing. Her mouth quirked upward into a smile. “If you say so. I just need to be out of here by sunset. I got… stuff I’m supposed to do.” “Stuff?” “Yeah, um, Sweet Apple Acres stuff.” The smile slipped and fell from Twilight’s face. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then there was a pause, and the smile returned—even if it did look a little lopsided. “Hello, friends! This is Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Magic and Friendship, and I’d like to introduce you to my new video series, ‘Twilight Sparkle Investigates’. We’re going to start off by learning about wings!” “I thought Spike said you did one on—” Twilight continued as if Dash hadn’t spoken. “Today, I’m here outside Ponyville with my very good friend, Rainbow Dash. Rainbow is a pegasus pony like some of you, and she’s a really great flyer. She’s fast, and graceful, and bea…r in mind that sometimes she even trains with the Wonderbolts!” “That’s, uh… Thanks, Twilight, but maybe we should start talking about—” “Wings! Yeah. What can you tell us about wings, Rainbow?” Dash narrowed her eyes and glanced at Twilight. She opened her mouth to say something, paused for a few seconds, closed it again, and finally finished up by flexing her wings and nudging Twilight to give her more space. “Oh, yes.” Twilight blushed again and retreated out of frame, leaving Dash alone to spread her wings and show them off to the camera. Dash spent a few seconds posing with her wings outstretched. “Can you, um, tell the little colts and fillies about how they work, Rainbow?” “Huh? Oh. I dunno, I just kind of flap them and they take me places. How does your horn work?” “Sub-cellular structures that focus ambient magical energy in a way that allows for… Oh, but I think I see your point, yes.” “Well, I guess, they have feathers, right? And the feathers give them a big, what-do-you-call-it, surface area. That lets me catch a lot of air in them and… Hey, this is why pegasi with smaller wings can’t fly as well, isn’t it?” Dash paused to look at her wings, and she grinned. “I have awesome wings!” “Actually, it’s…” A grunt. “It’s more about aspect ratio and wing… hrrgh… loading.” Twilight moved back into frame, this time pushing a heavy-looking blackboard on wheels. The blackboard showed a large drawing of a wing. Once the blackboard was fully in frame, Twilight turned back toward the camera. “Okay, fillies and colts, it’s time to learn how pegasi fly!” Dash gave her own wings a couple experimental flaps, not paying much attention to Twilight. Twilight waved a hoof at the drawing on the blackboard. “This is a wing. Notice how it has three parts: the leading edge at the front of the wing, the the small feathers in the middle, and the big feathers at the back of the wing. The leading edge of the wing is just skin, bone, and muscle—like your hooves, everypony. Behind that, it’s all different kinds of feathers. Rainbow Dash, why don’t you show us your wings so the colts and fillies can see all the different parts?” “Oh, sure. I know those parts.” Rainbow Dash trotted toward the camera a little, staying mostly in frame, and stretched out one of her wings. “So yeah, like Twilight was saying, this bit in front, that’s… I dunno, what was that called again? It’s kind of like my legs, I mean it moves the same way and it feels about the same, only a little smaller. Anyway, that’s the front part. And then behind that—” she rotated her wing to expose the feathers on the underside “—are the coverts. Those are the feathers in the middle. They’re softer and smaller than the other feathers, and they’re where you get most of the air you catch with your wings. And then behind those, at the back of the wing, you’ve got bigger feathers. We call them primaries on the outside of the wing and secondaries when they’re close to your body. They’re stiffer, and you use them to get more control when you fly. But you’ve got to make sure to preen them, so they’re aligned right. Otherwise your control goes off and you can’t do anything cool like trick flying. But preening is a lot of fun—it feels kind of like when you get your hoov—I mean… you’ve got to do it, right, so… uh…” Dash folded her wing back against her body and turned to look at Twilight. “How’s that?” Twilight, wearing a distracted-looking smile, took a moment to respond. “Oh, um, great! That’s great, Rainbow. Okay, why don’t you come back over here with me?" As Dash trotted back toward the blackboard, a purple glow surrounded Twilight’s horn and the image of a wing on the blackboard began to move. “So those are the parts of the wing, but how do you use them to fly?” “I dunno, you just do.” Dash stopped on the opposite side of the blackboard from Twilight, turning to face the camera. “It was a rhetorical question, Rainbow. I wanted the audience to think about it, and then I was going to answer it myself.” “Ooh, okay.” Dash glanced at her wings again. “So how do you use them, anyway? Like, how do the mechanics work?” “They really didn’t teach you this at flight school?” Dash scratched at her mane with one hoof. “Well, maybe. Fluttershy paid a lot more attention than I did. I just wanted to do it; I didn’t care a whole lot about how it all worked.” Twilight turned away from the camera and toward Rainbow Dash, although her magic continued to animate the wing on the blackboard. “It’s pretty easy, really. You need to have enough speed to keep you up in the air. You do that by flapping, like you were talking about before. That gives you thrust, and then you fix your wings for a little while to grab the lift off that thrust. Then you flap again. And if you want to maneuver, you just…” Both ponies were quiet for a few moments. A breeze gusted by, swirling autumn leaves in front of the camera. “Twilight? Is everything okay?” “Yeah. I just realized I don’t really know how you maneuver.” Twilight extended her own wings, flexing them and staring at the feathers. Dash grinned. “Well, if you wanted, I could take you up and we could do some real flying so I can show you.” “That, um…” Twilight’s cheeks went crimson, and she shivered. “That sounds… Oh, but what about the video?” “You’re an alicorn, right? Just magic it off the tripod and bring it along.” Twilight giggled nervously. “Okay. Let’s give it a try!”