"S-now! Sn-ow! Snow! Wallk-k-k! Walk-k! Sn-n-ow walk-k! Hunt! Cr-r-rops!"
"Honored Ancestor, and what about the hamsters?"
"Cr-rops! Pr-rey! Ham... ham... SQUAWK!"
"I mean, I know that it sounds silly, but..."
It was only the second day of the journey to the Nomads, and Vsevolod was already fully prepared to murder someone. He had a good reason, two good reasons to be exact. While at first he enjoyed the company, it was rather nice to have someone to talk to for once, the amount of talking was wearing him down.
First came Helga, who was so happy with her newfound ability to speak, she never stopped talking. She even mumbled something in her sleep. The fact that she had an extremely small vocabulary in her disposal, and hadn't understood half of the words from it, wasn't making it any better. But that he could remedy, after all, teaching a language was his field of study once, if not the second part of his company for the journey. Kurgash Irte was a nice horse-girl if a bit grumpy in the morning. She was polite, rarely addressed Vsevolod with less than Honorable Ancestor, but she also wished to know everything about the world before the magic. And by everything she meant literally everything. From the basic human anatomy to the principles of the nuclear fission reactors. The last one was really surprising to Vsevolod, he wasn't expecting that knowledge in the backwards-looking society of the modern day, but in the end it turned out that Kurgash knew about the issue more than he did. When he asked her, how it's possible, she waved a hoof and told him that she liked to visit the library in Sarai and that she liked to study the past.
The constant stream of questions from one side and the unrelenting torrent of random words repetitions from the other was a bit too much for the small griffon. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that Helga still looked at Kurgash as at walking emergency food supply, and Kurgash being very well aware of it. Sleeping arrangements became a real chore, especially considering they now were deep into the area that became the Wild Field once more. There were no more trees, no hills with caves, nothing but the great flat expanse of the white snow. They dug a hole in it every night, and it was warm with them three, but the only way to stop Helga from absentmindedly chewing the closest body part of Kurgash in her sleep was to settle between them. While that was the warmest place, it was also rather uncomfortable, since both of his companions acted like he was some kind of plush toy made for hugging. He didn't mind hugs that much, but the inevitable tug-of-war was not pleasant to say the least. It also added to his increasingly foul mood.
As if that wasn't enough, he felt the weight of his own many questions. Despite the lessons with the good doctor, he knew pathetically little about the world around him. Even Helga could probably provide some insights. At least she could help him with his flying since, despite all the lack of practice, he felt the streams in the air stronger than ever. So strong that he felt that a single flap of his wings might send him into the clouds.
So, when he felt his self-control slipping, he flapped them.
Next thing he noticed was that he's about ten meters off the ground, lazily gliding above the streams of sounds that irritated him so much. The feeling of the wind gently carrying him over the great plains was so pleasant that it took him a few moments to realize, that he left both Hel and Kurgash together, unattended. Banking hard to the right, he turned his glide, expecting to see the griffon already preparing the pegasus for the feast, but instead, found Kurgash shaking poor catbird and screaming something at her ear. Hel looked intimidated and just weakly tried to push the aggressive pony off herself. Vsevolod quickly landed nearby, only to hear the end of the Kurgash's scream.
"...and you know I won't stop, so you better tell me... oh, Honored Ancestor, you're back!" she immediately dropped dazed Helga and turned to him, with very large and very creepy smile. "I was just asking our friend here if she can teach me how to fly."
"Right." Vsevolod wasn't sure if she was honest but decided not to press the issue. "Helga isn't that bad at teaching that, actually. But why her? Aren't there other pegasi where you are from? Couldn't they teach you?"
Kurgash deflated a bit, looking sad. "Weak blood. The herdsmates don't fly."
"What do you mean 'weak blood'?" asked Vsevolod, resuming the walk.
The pegasus was silent for a few moments, looking sad and lost. She spread her wings and gave them a flap, making the snow around swirl a bit, then sighed and started slowly talking.
"Honored Ancestor, you know that your kind Returning was the beginning of our kind. In the cities of west and north, that's the only Ancestors they have. Their earth ponies are strong, their unicorns have magic, their pegasi fly in the sky, and their dreamwalkers guard the night. We... we are different. We had other Ancestors, too. The ones who were always of this world. The ones who served your kind when you only had two legs. They had short lives and no magic, but they were many, and they were always there. When Returns started to appear, they went to the herds of those Ancestors and became guides, teachers, rulers. Parents. Some of their magic went into their children, but less than they had. The children had short lives, they had no mark of the destiny. They had some of the gifts of magic. They lived longer, they were stronger, some even had wings or horns, but no pegasi could fly and no unicorn could lift even a pebble with their horns. In time, with more Returning Ancestors coming, the magic got stronger. We found our own ways of it, not like in the books that Archive ponies teach. Yet, the gift of flight is still out of our reach."
She looked up, where the sun was peeking through the holes in the clouds, and Vsevolod noticed tears, glittering in her eyes. Kurgash blinked and raised a hoof to the sky.
"I hear it calling for me. All the time. I belong up there, I know it. But every time I try, I can't go there. You are lucky, Honored Ancestor, you are pure. Your blood doesn't hold you down. You can rule the skies. I might sound mad... but when you flew just now I felt like I can, too. I felt a great river that flows in the air, tugging at my feathers, making me light as a snowflake... but then it was gone. Tell me, Honored Ancestor, what is the secret? It was something you did, but what was it?"
"Hel! Hel! Heel-ha!" was the helpful advice of Helga, who had regained her composition and spent the time Kurgash used to tell the story closely inspecting the pegasus wings. She was obviously not impressed with what she had seen, so she forced one wing to open and started noisily preening it. It was sudden enough for Kurgash to allow it for a full minute before she tried to snap it shut. It was to no avail, the griffon held it tight. Half of the primaries were mercilessly discarded on the snow, and most of the rest had suffered a similar fate. In the end, the wing looked like it was half-plucked, but Vsevolod had noticed that the remaining feathers looked healthy, and in the place of the discarded ones, the new ones were already growing. Finishing with one wing, Helga went to the other, with about the same respect for Kurgash's opinion about it.
"Honored Ancestor, please, stop her! She'll leave me with no wings!" pleaded the pony, looking in horror at how her feathers fell to the ground.
"Trust me on this, she knows what she's doing," answered Vsevolod. "I might be no expert with wings, seeing I had none three months ago, but even I can see that you had been neglecting yours. Had you been preening them at all?"
"Pree... what?"
"Preening. It's when you keep your feathers clean, remove the ones that are loose to make the room for the new ones, lubricate them so they don't get sick... you really don't know?" the sudden lapse of knowledge left Vsevolod puzzled. He thought that such things would be a common knowledge in a society where a significant part had wings. He himself had learned the procedure from an earth pony, after all. If those knew... how had pegasi had managed to miss it?
"We don't touch the wings!" answered Kurgash hastily. "You can go blind if you touch them too much! Wise mares all say that!"
Vsevolod felt a headache returning. The whole horse culture with superstitions that big and insane was feeling less and less welcoming to him.
"All right, I will teach you what I know, and Helga..."
"Heel-ha!"
"...yes, you are. She'll show you how it's done. But first I'll have to show you how to preen, and you'll need several days to grow in some feathers before you could try it. So, first, you need to learn how to use your tongue..."
==Same place, two days later.==
"My prince! We found the tracks again! Looks like they had a fight! Look at all those feathers!"
The huge griffon looked at the tracks on the ground and frowned. The place indeed looked like a place of a fight, with feathers scattered everywhere and a few drops of blood on the snow. It was hard to say what exactly happened, the snow was already starting to melt from the coming spring, but from the looks of it, the small group they've been tracking for the last day since they've found the tracks, was ambushed and then carried away by a larger group of Nomads. If he wanted to have a chance to save the cubs, he had to act fast.
"Call the city. I need the second squad here by the dawn."