//------------------------------// // Chapter 19 // Story: Ghost Lights // by Winston //------------------------------// Ghost Lights Chapter 19 For the next two weeks, Azure and I trained on the schedule I'd set. Every other day she would turn herself into a pegasus for a few hours and I would instruct her and keep drilling her on technique. Azure really threw herself into flight training - literally. She learned to glide by ascending to the top of the Seawall, landing on it, and jumping off at a rapid gallop with her wings extended horizontally outwards. She'd catch the air on them and cover as much distance as she could before she landed on the sand. At first I only let her do this while I flew immediately next to her, in case she needed to be caught to keep from crashing. After a few days of practice she had enough of a grasp on it that I started letting her go alone. I thought that a little bit of being on her own would help her confidence and give her impetus to cultivate a careful approach. When it came to anything more advanced, though, she still needed metaphorical training wheels. I didn't think it would be smart yet to trust her completely on her own with powered flight at any altitude greater than the height of the wall. Banking and steering, in particular, are skills that take a fair amount of experience to learn, ironically partly because a pegasus is so maneuverable. I'm sure that any pegasi reading this know it well, but for the benefit of earth ponies and unicorns, I suppose it bears some explaining. With the entire wing able to tilt, pitch, and bend to articulate different shapes, a pegasus who knows what they're doing can turn on a one-bit coin. A pegasus still just starting to learn, however, often has a tendency to oversteer and careen off course or out of control. The situation we faced was unusual in that regard. Most fillies and colts learn to fly while their wings are proportionally much smaller compared to their body than an adult pegasus. The lower amount of area for control surfaces makes them less maneuverable, so childish over exaggeration of motions usually doesn't have severe consequences. As they grow up and their wings get larger, they learn the appropriate subtlety and finesse more or less automatically in response to continual feedback from firsthoof experience as they keep flying. Still, even on the small wings of a filly it's tricky for some pegasi, and as Azure had pointed out to me, she didn't have the luxury of starting young. She was learning on wings that were already full sized. There was no easing into this. Her abilities started at full blast, including the ability to screw up. Because of this, caution was demanded. I made sure to stay close by her while she learned to fly actively and maneuver in the air in a meaningful way beyond just hovering, the same way my father had been there with me at first. There were close calls early on. I had to catch her and correct her in the air or help guide her down to the ground for a safe landing several times. During one session in which I felt like she'd been doing well so far that day, I set up a short course of a few small clouds to weave her way through. She was negotiating them just fine until she made a mistake, turning too sharply and then overcorrecting again in the other direction, one wing wavering uncertainly as she struggled but couldn't stay steady. She started to tumble and spin out of control. When I could tell she was in trouble, I grabbed her around the barrel with my forelegs and brought her back downward at a glide to deposit her on the sand as gently as I could. "Sorry," Azure said, flushing with embarrassment once we'd caught our breath on the beach. "Don't worry about it," I said. "Every pegasus parent has to catch their foal at least a couple times. I know my dad did." "I don't think you're old enough to be my parent," Azure commented. "Big sister, then." I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Siblings help too. Point is, you're doing fine." "Alright, yeah," Azure sort of half-smiled at me. We'd been flying for a while by then. "You getting tired out yet?" I asked. "A little, but no pain, no gain!" Azure declared brashly, with a grin. "So says Captain Dash. I'm gonna go back up and do it again, without trying to crash and burn this time." "Alright, you're on," I agreed. We prepared to take off for another run. "Just one more though, okay?" "Fine..." I had to give her an A+ for effort. She'd never quit if I didn't make her. I've found that the things I dream about out here at the Seawall have a way of becoming raw and intense. In this isolation from the rest of the world, there's more primal things, the pieces of myself that are sometimes buried and hidden away, that tend to gradually come into more prominence the longer I'm here. In the night of day fifty-one at the Seawall, I had a dream I hadn't had in a long time. Orange, that's how this dream starts. The sky is always bright intensely glowing orange, on fire with the colors poured forth by the sun that evening in that last half hour before sunset. It matches my yellow coat and fire-orange mane, falling somewhere a shade in between the two. I'm always flying above the little garden that sprawls across the backyard of my mother's house, flying in slow easy circles above it, staying slightly to one side opposite the direction of the sun so that the intense orange light makes me hard to see. There's a thing I'm watching for, down in the plants. I can't quite find it yet, but I know it's there. I hang idly in the air on slow, quiet wingbeats, waiting. Suddenly my sharp eyes see it. It's quiet, trying to avoid attention by not making any of the distinctive noises of its kind, but the crow doesn't have to caw, it gives itself away when it moves down there in the garden. It's a black shape moving in characteristic awkward little bird-hops while it forages. I stop flapping. On steady wings, I start gliding downwards, closing in with as much stealth as I can. The crow is picking at something, a vegetable already partially broken open. I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't really matter. I keep getting closer. Seconds drift by and I glide as quietly as I can. Finally the light can't hide me any more, and I'm spotted. The crow looks up at me, staring in the wall-eyed way that birds do. In a split-second instinct, it jumps and flaps, taking to the air and twisting its body to face away from me as it takes off and flees. Seeing it trying to escape instantly triggers something instinctive and I start flapping. I'm already building up speed as I descend by using my height advantage. Now that the stealth phase is over, beating my wings with a fury adds a burst of power to close the gap. The crow runs and I run after it. We level out and it becomes a dead heat against each other, and in a few moments it's clear that I'm winning. Crows are quick but not quite built for the kind of speed I've been training myself for. In a flat race, I'm better. She - somehow, I sense that this crow is a she - knows it. I can see it in the fear in her eye when she turns her head ever so slightly for a split second and glances back at me to check the distance that remains between us. Agility instead of power might be better, she decides. Her wings angle and twist for precise, expert acrobatics. I see her veer off sharp right and dive. Well, nice try, but I can do that too. I'm still on her and I see her begin to twist and roll to change directions again, trying to win some space by throwing me off. It almost works, because I'm heavier and inertia isn't quite as much on my side, but it's not too difficult a trick for me. I twist my back, throw my hind legs around in an arc, use the momentum to reorient myself, and push off strong with a few more furious flaps. I'm still following her. She's running out of distance. A few more seconds and I'll be on her. She's desperate, pumping her wings as frantically as they'll go. Not enough, little bird. Not enough. The best you've got isn't enough to escape what you've done, what you've stolen from my mother, what I feel a fierce and driving fire inside to protect. You've stolen from me, too. I'm not the gardener but I did my part, I had my own hoof in the effort. You've stolen from all of us. I have to defend my family and all the ponies I care about. This is my purpose, an urge I feel more intensely than anything else. Something deep and primal and wild courses in my veins and through the pegasus heart that pounds in my chest. It burns in my lungs and in the hot breath that torrents in and out through my nostrils and between my teeth. Nothing ever felt as right as it does there in that moment. Nothing is as exhilarating as this chase. I'm a pure and unrestrained animal, and the conscious part of me that's still left likes the taste of it. I can see that searing orange light of the sun reflecting dully off the crow's semi-glossy black feathers, bright flashes of it caught in split-second flares as her wings beat the air. It reflects off the surface of her deep dark eyes like mirror-polished hematite. Terror wells up from them because she knows what's coming. She knows what the fire of a pegasus means. It means that I'm a warrior who won't have mercy. I don't have the least bit of sympathy for her. It's almost over. In the middle of the night I woke up from that dream with a gasp and a start, my legs kicking and my whole body twitching. My wings had flared in my sleep as I dreamed so intensely of flying, and now they were stiff and uncomfortable - the embarrassing phenomenon pegasi sometimes experience that's crudely referred to as a 'wing-boner'. I had to very self-consciously force them to work loose and fold back up at my sides. Light from what I knew was a full moon was shining in the narrow windows, dim and diffused through the cloudcover. Azure was sound asleep, looking comfortable under her blanket. That light settled on her, glowing pale blue and silver, ethereal and ghostly. As it always had during her midnight wanderings back in Princess Twilight's palace, it cast her in an eerie phantasmal illumination. Now, though, what I noticed more was that it wasn't just her. It was everything. It was the barracks building, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It was everything in here, Azure's books, our bags, the gear we'd brought with. It was the clouded sky outside. Right now, it was the whole world that felt that way. It was me, especially so. I lifted my head and looked down at the blanket I was covered by. The pale yellow sun of my cutie mark sewn onto it and the deeper bright yellow background that matched my coat color were gone. They looked silver and blue-gray instead. I kicked that blanket off silently. I didn't need it right now. I felt hot from the rapid adrenaline-fueled heartbeat that the dream had brought on. I looked down at myself. My body, now that it was no longer covered, was revealed to be colored in the same dim ghostlit moonlight monochrome. I looked away and put my head back down on my pillow. I stared across the room. Over there on the opposite side, Azure stirred for a moment, just slightly, shifting under her blanket and then settling back into stillness. I watched her for a little while. My dream still had me riled up, but there was something calming about the soft slow rise and fall of her chest in a long even rhythm while she was breathing serenely in her sleep. That brought a great sense of peacefulness over me to watch. Still, it wasn't enough to soothe me completely. I laid there but my eyes wouldn't shut. Thoughts of intense orange light, and the depth of how much it contrasted with the soft dark silver-blue that covered everything now, kept me conscious. I couldn't get the memory of the chase out of my head and I felt a vague anxiety about the chance that I might see it again if that dream repeated itself. Finally, I gave up and accepted being awake for the time being. I pushed myself up and off my bed, standing next to it. I turned toward the doorway and walked outside, silently moving aside the heavy cloth that covered it and then pulling it shut again behind myself. The Seawall is very dark at night, with no artificial illumination here in the wilderness. If the unicorns who had originally garrisoned this wall had any magical lights to keep watch by, they'd taken them with when they'd abandoned it a thousand years ago. The stones don't care, though. They don't need them. Light or dark, orange, blue, gray, whatever color the sky is, the wall stands just as strong. I admired the way it couldn't be perturbed by anything so trivial. I wished I could say the same about myself. The eternal sound of the ocean drifted over the wall softly, and what lay on the far side called to me. I spread my wings and took flight, crossing it and approaching the beach. I landed on a small low-hanging cloud I found a few hundred feet up directly above the line where the water meets the sand. It served well as a soft fluffy cushion with a good vantage point. I stared out at the ocean and what I saw from up there took my breath away. Midnight in a place like this is beautiful beyond compare. The waves lapping on the shore seemed more gentle somehow than during the day. It reminded me of watching Azure in her peaceful sleep, except this... this was the soft breath of the entire world. Out on the water, as if that world was dreaming a surreal dream, I could see patches, vast areas, where the ocean was emitting a soft, sparkling blue-green light. It was like somepony had cut open a billion glowsticks and poured the liquid inside them into the sea, except that instead of the garish chemical green of the raver's accessory, it was more blue, more alive and natural. This seemed exactly as it should be, since I knew that it was life itself that created that glow: bioluminescent plankton drifting in the waves. They come to the surface sometimes when the world grows dark, if the weather and the season happen to be right. Apparently, tonight they were. I've always been more inclined to gravitate towards Celestia and the sunlight of the day, but never let it be said that Luna's night doesn't have just as much wonder to offer. It's softer and more subtle than the boldness of daylight, but that's part of what makes it so special and wonderous. I watched in awe as the sea set aglow below me moved in its constant rhythm. Still, though... as beautiful as it was... something about it... It had the same feel and created the same atmosphere of ephemerality as those other lights, in the marsh - the haunt of ghosts and the stories about them. I couldn't keep myself from feeling like maybe there was some kind of a message in it that I was supposed to be listening to. I could feel something in it, and it was something close to home. It was the same kind that was in the orange light that filled the sky of the dream that had woken me up. It was something in Rainbow Dash, something in me, something innate in the deepest fabric of being that kind of a pegasus. It was imitated in that attitude Azure had about flying, almost an eagerness to accept the pain and the hazards that she'd encountered in trying to learn and trying to prove she could do it. When that recognition of what I was seeing really hit me, I was surprised by the way it was suddenly more significant than I'd understood before. It was true. There was no real mistaking that Azure Sky was adopting and reflecting pieces of the attitude that Rainbow Dash brings to flight training, the attitude that stems from Dash's most essential nature as the kind of pony that she is. But why should that be? Now that I was paying attention, I could suddenly see the inconsistency. It didn't make sense, when Azure's always been so much more intellectual and methodical, a student of science. There was only one reason I could find for why that would be, and so I wondered... is... is that departure from the usual part of the point in itself? Is that what Azure is really after, on some level, then? Not just to merely learn how to fly, but to learn how to be a pegasus like that? Or maybe she just didn't fully realize that those weren't necessarily the same thing. It sort of raised the interesting issue that I couldn't tell how much I really knew the difference myself, for that matter. I've only ever been a pegasus and that's the lens I learned how to fly through. It's all I really understand. I sat there and I thought about it. There were unanswered questions it had never even occurred to me to ask, I was disturbed to realize. What am I really supposed to do? Do I keep her a separate thing and approach her as just a unicorn with wings? Or is she a pegasus when she's a pegasus, with all the good and the bad that comes with it? And if that's where she's headed, is that a good thing for her? How much do I teach her, how much of it do I let her try to become? Some part of me said I was being silly to get ahead of myself with worries. This was all hopelessly premature, because after all, she was really sort of barely even off the ground at all at this point. Why was it any kind of concern yet? How could I even speculate when there was so much more to go just for her to get the basics of flight under control - if she ever even made it that far in the time we had - let alone truly understand and start to fully absorb that kind of pegasus attitude and work it down into the core of herself? Deal with it then, not before, I told myself. Yet, at the same moment, something else in me couldn't help but think toward that far future and wonder what could happen. I wondered how much it would change who she is if she saw that orange sky, and if she tasted what it's like to fly in the frenzied grip of a wild pegasus heart filling her with animal fire. Maybe most importantly, what would that mean during the rest of the time when her wings disappeared and she went back to being a unicorn? Two identities somehow putting her on a crash course with herself was a disturbing thought. I realized it was something I was going to really have to watch the situation and search my heart for to figure out. The answers weren't going to be easy. Above all, it was frightening, because of what could go wrong - what I felt like I could do to her without realizing it. I didn't want to be a will-o-the-wisp, a pale blue light in the darkness to pull her off a truer path. I didn't want to unwittingly lure her away to an orange sky full of things that might not be right for her. I thought about the way that, as heart-achingly beautiful as those lights in the water were, that beauty came with distance, and if I flew out and tried to touch them, most likely I'd end up drowning. They belong in the water, but I don't. I like to look at them, but I'm not one of them. It all gave me pause while I sat there staring out at that ghostly luminous sea for a long time. I found that I had a lot of thinking to do.