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Streamline flies above the land that would one day become Equestria. A question sits in the back of his mind, teasing him with its seeming simplicity. “What is it like to fly?” He had been asked hours ago, but he still had no answer. He would not land until he had one, not that he minded it taking hours more; that would only mean more time in the sky.
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A lovely, short feelsy kind of story.
I definitely like where you went with that, and headcanon accepted as far as the final flight goes.
Another like and fave you have earned from me, q97. Keep it up.
3821898
Thanks! I actually had the idea for the final flight a while ago; there's a reference to it in Paradise Sundered in the chapter Perspective (I). I just couldn't go into the sort of detail about it there that I would have liked without breaking the flow of the story.
Wow. This is great. Beautiful, even. I like the idea of the "Final Flight," even if it does seem a bit far-fetched to me. (That is not a bad thing, of course.)
3825439
Thanks, Lonely. I'll say to you what I said to Cyne...
I wanted to craft a burial that was out there but relatable in some way. If I managed it, I did what I set out to do. They are, after all, what amounts to an alien society.
And thanks for the fav too!
3825468 You're quite welcome.
But that's why I like the idea... it's alien, but also familiar. It's vaguely reminiscent of ancient Scandinavian/Viking ship burials, in which the deceased (usually someone important, like a king) was put into a boat with their wealth and possessions, and the boat was set ablaze and shoved off out to the sea. Your idea of Final Flight seems not terribly different, in my opinion.
This was... nice. That may sound like it should have a but after it, but it really doesn't - this was very good. It was a pleasant read, introduced a very interesting idea (the cloud burial) seamlessly, and kind of thoughtful too. Reading it felt a lot like the picture used as your cover pic - kind of tranquil and separated. Have a upvote and a fave.
3852025
Thank you very much for your kind words. Maybe you'd like to check out its counterpart, Leaving the Ground Behind.
Alright, you wanted my comments, so I hope you're ready for it! I'm going to be honest here. I won't pander, I won't say things for the sake of it. But I'll cover most of my thoughts as I read through this.
Once again, I'd like to state that I in no way mean to be pretentious or sound like a knowledgeable fuck. Everything I say here is purely from a critical standpoint, and is from my own personal view of it. It certainly doesn't seem to reflect the majority of your other readers' views, so take what I say with a grain of salt!
Firstly, did I like it? Yeah. I kinda did. It's a short and sweet fic with a specific point to it, and you never really go out of that point. the point is, of course, to answer a rather unanswerable question, as the fic itself so elegantly states - what is flying? So everything about it is only of the opinion of our little pegasi up there. In that, I think you did a good job. You covered a lot of topics, you had some interesting things in there. But unfortunately, that lends itself to the main problem I had with it that prevented me from fully appreciating it.
There were too many things all over the place and just not enough room to work them up.
I felt primarily, there were a lot of ordering issues in this that prevented me from being able to get into the flow of the text and being lost in his thoughts. They leap back and forth, and they are interjected by a few choice paragraphs of how he felt as he was swept around. Normally, in a longer story, this wouldn't be too bad to keep and reinforce the tone. But in a story this short, it started to, well, distract me a little. Other things I noted that was odd was the way each piece of information was thrown in at what I personally would consider an odd place. The last 4/5ths of the story is not where I expect to find a rhetorical question, for example. Saying "I don't know how to explain it to these silly Earthicans" is not what I need RIGHT before the final closing chapter of the story. Stuff like that belongs at the start for the framing to set it, to let us know that he believes it is something unanswerable, and it's probably something more effectively just said once rather than multiple times.
Overall the story reads like as if I were reading an essay for school. It is structured somewhat in an argumentative fashion, whereby you present the issues one by one and then throw a lot of reasoning at it to explain it (or attempt to, in this case of 'I can't answer'). Things and concepts are repeated over and over to try to reinforce the point. This didn't really work for me, and doesn't necessarily work for the kind of story, in my opinion.
The framing you had with the idea of answering a question could have been glossed over as well. There was no need to bring up other names in a story like this. Not that you can't, but in this case I felt it was a bit of a clash because the focus never seemed to be his struggle WITH the answering of the question. It was just trying to work towards that last point of family, which would have been much more effective if it was a message shared between him and the reader, I feel. There's something personal in that that's nicer that us being eavesdroppers to someone else's curiosities, but it works both ways.
What I REALLY REALLY liked was just that one piece in the middle. The idea of the way Pegasi send their departed off is a very original and very creative concept, one that deserves to be expanded on and would work very well for a story such as this. When you try to answer an unanswerable question, you don't want to actually try to answer it. You might want to use stories to talk about things in parallel, or suggest moods or sensations through analogy. In fact, I can very easily see a VERY strong, very creative fic that ends up with the determination of 'it is impossible to answer' with nothing BUT a couple (2 - 3 at most) glimpses into the way flight is USED in Pegasi society. That way you can even show that it means something to them in a way that just means something without having to be 'a thing'. Landing on that final determination of 'it's like family' tends to weaken considerably when there's no thematic ties with whatever they'd just been talking about or going through. It certainly didn't have anything to do with the whole section of 'why earthicans won't get it!', and it's rather loose with the idea of the death and the first flight. What that speaks to me of is culture, and I preferred it if you had landed on that instead of 'it's family' which felt a bit out of nowhere by that point.
One example here is when you say "While griffins and dragons can fly, they just beat at the air with their wings. They move through the air, but they don’t fly." That is a set up for maybe one of these glimpses of the differences, but it doesn't really go anywhere. You leave it and then start to explain how the clouds and wind affects the pegasi in that moment, when actually what we are looking for is perhaps a comparison between the griffins and dragons and how it matters. Maybe something a bit more personal. Maybe if there wasn't even anything, you might have to search for something else. As I told Sai for his story, there's only so many times in one of these fics when you can explain how the winds feel against your wings before it starts to get old.
I think the part where you talk about the character's sister's first flight was also a great departure point too, but there was just not enough to really let me get a sign that it was anything SPECIAL. So I would have preferred fewer examples and exemplifications, but more time and more warmth spent within each to try to show what can't be explained.
As harsh as this assessment is, overall, as I said, I did quite enjoy it. Besides a few clinically-delivered lines that felt textbooky, and aforementioned niggles, the grammar (obviously) is perfect and some of the sentences are well structured and very clear and concise. There's no questioning the quality, but maybe just a little bit in how the information is used to best effect. There are a swirl of great ideas and very interesting concepts that I just wanted to see more of, and that glimpse into their life is the REASON, the ANSWER for them to fly.
And that is wot I think.
Please don't send assassins.
3969873
*sends assassins because I think I figured out how to fix it.
Dang it... now I want to try fixing it. Curse yoooooooou.
Welp, sucks to be an earth pony or unicorn. The story is honestly that good at making the feeling of flight feel so... euphoric?
Essential to living a satisfied life?
Enlightening?
Wright?
I expected to get high on rich sensory details and subtle cathartic cues, but the incorporation of little tangents like the idea of 'final flight' makes this piece ever richer!
4130193
What you did there... I see it.
From your comment, I am quite interested in what you think of my other story, Leaving the Ground Behind.
Finally, thanks for the watch!