//------------------------------// // Fly Day // Story: The Growing Years // by Goldfur //------------------------------// The alarm barely went off before Epiphany and Lucida sprang out of their beds, squealing in excitement. Lucida was six and Pif only four, so both their voices were loud and piercing as only young children seem to be, but the adults of the house were still nowhere near being awake yet. The hippogriff and ponyling scampered into their parents’ room and looked at the over-sized bed. It seemed to be mostly a pile of blankets, but there was a grey muzzle sticking out of one side, and a beak out of the other. Pif wrapped her mouth around the beak and blew as hard as she could, while Lucida let out a screech that no living thing should ever make. Two pair of eyes flew open as Free coughed and flailed a bit. Path sprung up out of the covers and looked around still shaking. “What?! Are we under attack?!” Path frantically looked around before he was tackled by his daughter who was giggling. Path let out a tired groan as the two other bodies stirred. Twilight and Rose woke up and yawned softly. “They always seem to attack you two first,” Rose said. “At least it gives us more time to wake up,” Twilight mumbled as she slowly stood up and opened her wings wide, flapping them a few times before she folded them back up. Path and Free had slumped back onto the bed and almost managed to go back to sleep before the two little ones started up again. “FLY DAY! FLY DAY! IT’S FLY DAY!” The two raced around the tired husbands, making the bed bounce annoyingly. “Nngh!” Free groaned and dragged himself out of bed. “Come on, let’s get some breakfast. Then we can talk about Fly Day.” “Rainbow Dash should be arriving before noon,” Path said as he joined Free. “The air becomes perfect for training as the afternoon wind moves up over the land, making a steady breeze that’s perfect for lessons.” The rest of the morning was very trying for Free and Path. They kept trying to get work done, but the two who were eagerly awaiting their flying lessons made it their day to get under their skin. The afternoon could not come soon enough. The children were outside when a loud rainboom signaled the approach of their instructor. The kids had finally calmed down, but they erupted in squealing and cheers as they ran out onto the middle of the lawn to greet the pegasus who circled around the castle’s grounds and came in for a landing. Lucida was already running around in circles, her wings flapping randomly. Pif however was still running around in her normal earth pony form. “Okay – so who are the two that are going to learn how to fly awesomely today?” Rainbow asked with a grin as she lifted the goggles off of her face. Rainbow may have been expecting a verbal answer, but what she got instead was excited screaming and two small bodies tackling her to the ground. The pegasus started laughing as she moved back up into the sitting position. “Okay, let’s go to the training hill!” Rose walked over to the excitement. “Path and Free will join us shortly, as well as Blue.” Lucida was already at the top of the hill with her wings open to their maximum extent. Pif was also on top of the hill, but she was having trouble figuring out what form to be in. She kept shifting, but the form was not coming out right. Blue and Path arrived shortly after, both of them outfitted with magitek wings. “Why are wings so hard?” Pif whined as she shifted again and again. Each time the wings were coming out wrong. “Pif, why don’t you shift into somebody you know really well who has wings?” Path suggested. The changeling’s eyes widened and she laughed as she exploded in green fire. When it cleared, Luna was standing there, or rather a Luna scaled down by more than half. Her wings flared open as she giggled. Free, Roseclaw and Twilight arrived in time to see the transformation. Free broke down laughing while Twilight and Rose rolled their eyes. Rainbow Dash just grinned and walked up to the top of the hill. “Okay, let’s start with the basics before we get onto the main lesson. Step one: open your wings as far open as they will go, and feel the wind moving over and under them, like this.” Rainbow demonstrated for them. Pif and Lucida opened their wings. However, Pif was way too light for how big her wings were, so she was already starting to lift off the ground as she squealed. Rainbow went over and grabbed her front hooves as she floated in the air. “Okay, now tilt your wings down slowly to drop down and speed up. And up to soar up and slow down.” Pif started to pivot her wings as instructed, and Rainbow slowly let go of the changeling. She wasn’t very steady in the air, but soon she was hovering about ten feet in the air, the lift and drag in near perfect balance. She slowly moved forward and then backward as she tested how the air moved and how it affected her wings. Rainbow went over to Lucida and smiled. “You won’t lift off the ground with your wings angled that far down. Come on – tilt them up for me!” Rainbow smiled encouragingly as Lucida started to open up her wings more and tilted them up. She only lifted up a few inches before she angled them back down as nerves got the better of her, and she landed again. “I can do this. I can do this.” Lucida took a few deep breaths as she tilted her wings up and slowly started to rise into the air. She started to giggle as she floated in the air, although not quite as high up as Pif. “Hah! If they can do that, then I can do so much better!” Blue boasted. He crouched down low as his magitek wings flared open rather aggressively. Twilight looked at Blue with a little concern as he started to draw magic from the ground as earth ponies do, but he held it in his body and in his wings without using any of it. A kind of self-amplifying feedback was starting to form as mana sparks jumped from the feather tips to ground out. All of the micro capacitors started to glow from being overcharged. Blue started to laugh; he was going to show them all! “Blue – what are you doing? Release the magic!” Twilight shouted before she put her hoof to her mouth, realizing she phrased it wrong. “BLUE STREAK ONE IS READY FOR LIFT OFF!” Blue yelled as he released all the magic into the wings in one hard push. He launched himself off the ground and angled himself into a steep climb, screaming in joy. The violent wind wake caused from his lift-off sent his younger sisters flying, and Rose and Twilight dived in to catch them. Rainbow blinked in surprise with her jaw dropped as she watched Blue climb higher and higher, his excited yells diminishing with the rapidly growing altitude until a sonic boom thundered down to the watchers. “No way…” she said with awe. Path went up to Rainbow and said urgently, “You need to go up and get him. He’s rapidly burning up all the mana with no way of replenishing it. By the time he reaches the stall point, he won’t have the magic in him to power the wings until it’s too late!” “What?! Why would you even design those wings like that?!” Rainbow screamed. “They’re prototypes!” Path yelled as Rainbow shot up into the air. “He wasn’t supposed to do that!” Unlike a pegasus that was adapted to breathe the rarefied air at that height, Blue Streak was rapidly losing consciousness. The last thing that he remembered before he blacked out from the lack of oxygen was the beauty of the landscape beneath him, and a rainbow-colored streak headed his way. “Told you….” # # #