Snow Bolt’s wings were too sore to fly for the rest of that day, and the day after. When she woke up the third day, she noticed immediately that her wings felt different. The pain was now gone, they felt stronger, and if she wasn’t mistaken they had lengthened by at least an inch or two since last she checked.
I wonder. Snow Bolt spread her wings wide and high, then beat them downward once with all her strength. As she did so, she felt her hooves lift off the cave floor for just a split second. She gasped in surprise. She raised them again, then beat them down three times in quick succession, and her hooves lifted off the cave floor several inches before dropping again. She tried a third time, and this time resolved to beat her wings as hard as she could for as long as she could. She spread her wings wide, gritted her teeth, and flapped with all her strength. Her hooves lifted off the ground as before, and this time they stayed airborne. Snow Bolt was hovering under her own power.
The sensation was incredible, but Snow Bolt suspended her jubilation. She beat her wings as hard as she could for a full 20 seconds, grunting and breathing hard from the effort. Though she was flapping as hard as she could, she could not seem to get more than a foot off the ground. When her wings finally tired she relaxed and fell to the ground again.
“Ha ha!” She said triumphantly. She galloped outside to find Scarlet and show off her latest skill. She found the dragoness sweeping the night’s snowfall off of the ledge, as she did every morning.
“Scarlet, Scarlet!” Snow Bold cried. “Look what I can do!” She spread her wings wide, flapped hard, and again came to a hover a foot off the ground.
Scarlet smiled wide. “Oh my! Well done, my little pony! I must say, I had my doubts about you, but you’ve made remarkable progress.” Snow Bolt could hardly believe her ears. She wasn’t sure she had ever received any direct praise from Scarlet about anything. Snow Bolt’s heart swelled with pride. “Yes yes,” Scarlet continued, turning back to her sweeping, “It won’t be long now before you’re meaty enough to be eaten.”
Snow Bolt’s spirits quickly fell, and she dropped to the ground again. It had been quite some time since Scarlet had reminded Snow Bolt she was only keeping the little pegasus around so that she could be eaten when her flight muscles had developed enough. The elation Snow Bolt had felt in discovering she could now fly under her own power was immediately dampened by renewed awareness of her own imminent death.
Not knowing what else to do, Snow Bolt crossed the ledge to the face of the slope, her head hung low and her ears folded flat against her head. She heard a familiar squeaking noise as she approached the edge, and looked up to see Cheeky waving at her.
“Oh. Hey, Cheeky,” Snow Bolt said, her voice betraying her sadness.
Cheeky, sensing her gloominess, made several gestures in the sort of miming sign language that Snow Bolt was beginning to get the hang of. What’s wrong? The squirrel’s gestures said.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry,” Snow Bolt lied.
Cheeky scurried up Snow Bolt’s foreleg and onto her shoulder, then hugged the filly around the neck as best as her tiny arms would allow.
“Aww.” Snow Bolt smiled a little in spite of herself as she nuzzled the little squirrel. “Thanks, Cheeky.”
Cheeky smiled back, then made a zooming gesture with one claw. Snow Bolt shook off her melancholy and nodded. “You bet!” With that, Cheeky mounted Snow Bolt’s head and the two sped off into the wind.
* * *
Snow Bolt’s troubles were soon forgotten as she and Cheeky lost themselves in the excitement of soaring. They looped and dove back and forth across the mountain slope, alternately chasing each other and working on new maneuvers.
They were near the upper reaches of the mountain, and Snow Bolt was practicing chaining several wing-rolls together into one continuous maneuver, when she accidentally came out of a roll too late. She veered backwards behind the slope into the windless, leeward side of the mountain. Without the continuous stream of rising air to keep her aloft, she found herself in free-fall towards the mountain’s shadowy eastern slope.
Pony and squirrel both cried out in a sudden panic. Snow Bolt quickly pitched downwards into a dive to control her descent. Not knowing what else to do, she banked left and upwards, back up towards the ridgeline, hoping that she had enough momentum to carry her back to the windward side of the slope. She zoomed uncomfortably close to the snow-and-rock covered mountain for a few mane-raising seconds, but her course did indeed carry her up and over the ridgeline and back into the wind.
As Snow Bolt passed back over the ridgeline again, something strange happened. Snow Bolt had expected her wings to catch the wind and merely hold her aloft. Instead, the instant her wings met the wind she rocketed straight upward a full fifty feet, well above the ridgeline now.
“Whoa!” Snow Bolt said. Atop her head, Cheeky seemed equally surprised. Snow Bolt hovered for a moment, then glided her way down to the cave’s ledge.
When Snow Bold landed, Cheeky jumped down and looked up at Snow Bolt. Pony and squirrel stared at each other for a moment, then their gazes turned upwards to the top of the ridgeline, high above them. “Cheeky,” Snow Bolt said softly, her brow furrowed in concentration. “What the heck was that?”
“What is it, Pot Pie?” Snow Bolt jumped a little as she realized that she and Cheeky were not alone. Turning, Snow Bolt saw Scarlet in her usual spot, leaning against the slope to one side of the cave, a book in one hand and a handful of gems in the other. She was looking at the little pony boredly over the pages of her diminutive book.
Snow Bolt looked at the dragoness, then up at the ridgeline high above, then back again. “Well, I… we accidentally flew back behind the mountain, and when we came back over, it was almost like… I was going faster than I was before.”
“Ah yes,” Scarlet said around a great, toothy yawn. “That’s the Gra’aken tha’akets.”
“Graka–whatsis?” Snow Bolt said. The word Scarlet said used consonants and vowels Snow Bolt was entirely unfamiliar with.
Scarlet thought for a moment. “Let’s see – in your tongue, that translates to something like ‘wind-bouncing,’ and it works just as you say.” Scarlet popped another handful of emeralds into her mouth. “When you dive from the windward side of a slope to the windless side and back again, you gain a bit of speed each time. We dragons use it when migrating.”
Snow Bolt pondered this for a long moment. She heard the words Scarlet had said, but she could not wrap her idea around the idea. Her experience with slope soaring thus far had given her intuitive knowledge of wind and how the rising air worked to keep her aloft, but what Scarlet was saying seemed to fly in the face of everything she had learned so far. It seemed to defy the very laws of physics.
Eventually, Snow Bolt spoke. “How does that work?”
Scarlet looked annoyed. “How does it work? Why does it work?” Scarlet mocked, rolling her eyes. “Pot Pie, it is what it is because it is. If you’re so curious, go up there and find out yourself.”
Snow Bolt thought about this a moment longer, then decided that Scarlet was right. If she wanted to find out how this new mysterious wind energy worked, she was just going to have to find out herself. She looked down at Cheeky. “What do you say, little friend? It could be dangerous.” In response, Cheeky scurried up Snow Bolt’s leg and perched atop her head, pointing bravely at the ridgeline high above.
“Alright then. Let’s give it a go.”
* * *
It took Snow Bolt and Cheeky a few minutes of soaring back and forth across the slope to gain enough altitude to climb to the mountain’s saddle-shaped precipice. They continued climbing until they were about a hundred feet above it, then Snow Bolt turned into the wind and came to a hover. This was far higher than she had ever flown before. She took a moment to survey the mountain, the clouds, and the broad snow-covered valley impossibly far below her.
Snow Bolt gulped. “Last chance to change your mind, little friend.”
Cheeky chittered in the negative and gave her a reassuring pat between her eyebrows. Then the little squirrel positioned herself far back on Snow Bolt’s head, where she’d be largely out of the wind, and Snow Bolt felt her latch tightly onto her mane.
“Okay then, let’s try it,” Snow Bolt said. With that, Snow Bolt turned left, parallel to the ridgeline, and began a shallow dive to pick up a bit of speed.
“Alright, here we go!” She shouted back to Cheeky, who spurred in acknowledgement. Snow Bolt had reached the end of her run, where she would normally turn to the right. Instead she banked down and left, passing over the ridgeline and into the still air on eastern side of the mountain.
She felt a shudder she passed into the windless lee of the mountain, then she plummeted in near free-fall down the shadowy side of the slope. The tree where she and Snow Bolt had first met was rushing to meet her much faster than she was comfortable with, but at the last second her wings found purchase. She turned up and left, back up the slope and towards the ridgeline. She again felt her wings shudder as she passed back into the wind, and just as before she found herself rocketed upward at a speed that was altogether unexpected. When her upward momentum ceased she came to a hover, but she now had a full hundred feet more altitude than before.
“Wow,” Snow Bolt said incredulously. “That was…”
Atop her head, Cheeky was already spurring her excitedly.
“Alright, alright. We’ll go again. I was just thinking.” Snow Bolt surveyed the ridgeline below her for a moment. “If the first loop goes okay, you want to try to go straight into the second?” Cheeky chittered affirmative.
Snow Bolt dropped, soared south along the ridgeline a ways, then dove behind the ridgeline as before. Her wings shuddered, she accelerated, then turned back up and over the ridgeline. She again felt the sudden, unnatural acceleration as her wings met the wind. Instead of riding the extra energy upwards, Snow Bolt continued her turn without banking, more than halfway upside-down at the turn’s highest point. Her arc carried her back behind the ridge, and she again felt a shudder as she crossed the boundary layer, this time accompanied by a soft wump sound. She went down through the bottom of the arc, then up over the ridgeline and back into the wind, and there was a distinctive, somewhat more crisp crump sound as she did so.
Snow Bolt was now flying faster than she could have ever thought possible. She doubted she could have achieved such a speed even in a full dive. It was terrifying, yes; but it also exhilarating. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Her wings ached and threatened to be ripped from her body at every moment, but still she continued, completing a third, a fourth, and a fifth loop, gaining more and more speed each time. By the sixth loop, she could hear a distinct whistle her as her wings sliced through the air. Behind her, Cheeky was whooping in her high-pitched voice, but Snow Bolt remained reserved, completely focused in athletic concentration.
After ten revolutions, her wings could bear no more. Snow Bolt broke from her loop and shot straight up and away from the mountainside, higher than she had ever flown before. She glided around aimlessly for a few moments, just below the cloud base, but she seemed to be barely slowing down at all. Eventually, she discovered that by turning sharply and flying sideways, she could scrub off speed, like an ice skater performing a hockey stop. It took her a full thirty seconds to scrub off enough speed, and after that it took a full five minutes to fly back down to the mountain’s ledge. When she and Cheeky finally landed on the shelf, Scarlet was just where Snow Bolt had left her. This time she was making a big show of being interested only in her book and gems.
Snow Bolt beamed a grin at the dragoness. “Well, Scarlet? Aren’t you going to tell me how much worse my flying is than a dragon’s?”
Scarlet only glared at the young foal, then returned her attention to her book, muttering under her breath. Snow Bolt turned away from Scarlet to face Cheeky, and the two bumped hoof to paw in victory.