Just Dropping In

by Gunsmith

Chapter 5

Birds are chirping merrily outside. I cannot hear them very well, but hear them nonetheless. The sound of a soft wind brushing against the cloud house interrupts them every so often. I take in a deep breath; the air feels crisp and slightly cold in my nose and throat as I inhale, but the rest of my body doesn't feel cold. I open my eyes a crack, and the late morning light let in through the windows slightly stings.

I blink a few times to clear my vision and adjust to the light. I begin leaning forward slowly, and then let gravity pull me off of the soft, soft couch. I land with a muffled whump upon all four of my legs simultaneously. Still not feeling very awake, I blink a bit more and bend my knees. I glance around my sleeping area, not seeing anything of interest, and trot around the table into a more open section of the living room.

I do not feel very well rested. I slept soundly, yes, but nightmares--no, memories, plagued my thoughts again. I relived the feeling of falling I had felt, that awful feeling of being unable to do anything but face my certain death as I plummeted towards the earth. I hope these don't become routine...

I decide to stretch some more before heading down to find some breakfast. Stretching feels kind of odd to me. I usually hold my breath for some reason, and when I stretch, my hearing starts ringing. They aren't bad sensations at all; combined with the feeling of loosening up stiff muscles, it feels pretty relaxing. I tense up and stretch my forelegs, then my legs. I twist my neck left and right, and feel a relieving pop. I attempt to tense up my back, but instead feel an odd stretching on my left back and a straining of muscle on the right. I glance behind me, to my left.

I see a fully outstretched matte black wing. All of the feathers seem to be spread apart, making the wing look enormous. I stop tensing up my back--or more, my shoulder blades, and see that the feathers return to their normal layering as the wing begins to lower and collapse in size. I then turn my head to my right side.

My right wing is still bandaged. I tense up my shoulder blades again, slightly anticipating a wave of pain beginning in my wing. However, no pain comes. All I feel is my wing straining to be free. How could it have possibly healed so fast...? I don't feel any pain coming from it, yet feel its presence and feel it flexing; I decide this is a good sign. I cease tensing up my shoulders and feel the pressure radiating from my right wing halt as well. Thinking over a decision in my mind for a few seconds, I begin trotting towards the staircase. Though my stomach doesn't seem to agree, I begin plodding up the spiral of stairs instead of down.

I reach Rainbow Dash's room in her cloud tower, the third and top floor. I turn to my left, heading for the only bathroom and mirror in the house. I push open the handle-less door with my nose and trot into the bathroom. I stand in front of the mirror, gazing at it. A black stallion with blue-gray eyes and a mane composed of two shades of gray stares back at me. I rotate my body a little so that more of my right side is facing the mirror. I look away from the mirror and at the wing covered in medical tape to my right.

I crane my neck towards the wing, and once I get close enough, I grab a strip of the bandages that sits atop the rest with my teeth. I slowly begin pulling my head away from the wing, bandages in my teeth. When the bandage is stretched out by about a foot, I lightly shake my head, trying to sever the strip of bandage in my jaws. It doesn't work very well, so I begin gnawing at the bandage. I find that ponies' herbivore-based teeth separate cloth fairly well. I begin to gnaw and pull at the bandage more aggressively, and eventually I hear a snap as one side slingshots harmlessly away, falling to rest under my wing. I release the other side of the bandage, and move my head in again.

I repeat this with layer after layer of white medical tape, splitting the strips through repeated biting and pulling. After around three minutes of doing this, I reach the final strip of white on my black wing. Rainbow Dash had certainly wrapped up my wing tight; she might not have made it as a surgeon, but she would have been an excellent field medic. Tired of meticulous abuse of stretchy bandage, I yank the last strip away from my wing with some force, and it tears off easily. It falls to the floor, following in the footsteps of the many other bandages that coated my right wing.

I look at the un-bandaged wing. The feathers look ruffled and out of place, but I can see no signs of injury. No bones, no blood, no deformed sections of the wing from broken bones or incorrect healing. I tense my shoulder blades up again, and the wing extends to its full length, the ruffled feathers spreading out with the others. I look in the mirror, still tense, and see that my left wing is fully extended and raised as well, mirroring the right wing perfectly. I suppose that pegasus wings are supposed to work in unison, instead of being able to be controlled separately. I can still make minor adjustments to each wing as they are tense, by further tensing or slightly relaxing one side of my upper back. My back is starting to hurt from being tense, and I relax. The two black wings contract and begin falling into place, eventually clasping themselves against my sides, folded.

I feel much more balanced now; not to mention, much more free. I can't even feel any pain from the wing any more; it seems to have fully healed. I attempt to imagine what it would be like to have those bandages or a cast on one of my wings again, and nearly shudder from discomfort from the thought. I turn down towards the pile of useless medical tape. I use my forelegs to push it into a tighter pile, and pick up the pile in my mouth. I trot out the door and head down to the first story, where I re-locate the trash can and dump the bandages in. I feel some guilt for not finding a more sanitary place to dispose of them, but a second glance at them shows that they appear to be pristine, like they had never made contact with my injury.

I feel...lighter. In both the physical and mental sense. I decide to have an apple for breakfast and grab one out of the small icebox. I set it down on the small table and sit down, leaning down to take a bite out of the apple every so often. The room, the house, is quiet, save for the sounds I heard upon waking and the sound of my own munching. It gives me some time to think.

About all I can think of right now is my right wing, and how much better it feels. It amazes me how fast injuries could heal in this world. I think back to Rainbow's comment on the speediness of pony recovery. She had said yesterday that she would see how my wing was doing today. I lean down and take a bite of apple, crunching on it for a while.

A thought clicks in my head. Since my wing is better now, I can fly away now, back to wherever I came from. But that was a problem, now wasn't it? Two problems, in fact, big problems. For one, I had no where to go. I was basically dumped on this world, on Rainbow Dash's doorstep. If worse came to worse, I could always find a cloud to drift on; I see why Dash lazes around on them a lot, they are mighty comfortable. Then there is the other problem, probably the larger of the two; my inability to fly.

A pegasus who can't fly. How pathetic.

No, I am being too hard on myself. There are others who can't fly, right? I know Scootaloo can't...but then again, she's just a filly, and her wings are too small to support flight. I seem to be a perfectly normal pegasus stallion. Save for the fact I have no clue how to fly. I go to take another bite of apple, but find that all that is left is the core. I pick up the core in my mouth and stand up, trotting over to the trash can and depositing the eaten apple.

I sit back down at the low cloud table. I rest my forelegs on top of it and stare out a window across from me.

I doubt I can learn to fly in a few hours. The only books Dash seemed to have on flying were those on more advanced techniques and the more technical aspects of flying; probably given to her by Twilight Sparkle. And there would be no Google-ing how to fly, either. I continue staring out the window, seeing only a blue sky framed by a cloud window.

What if she could teach me to fly?

My own thought takes me aback somewhat. She would never agree to that, would she? She would probably think I was joking, or just laugh at me. I didn't take her as that kind of pers--pony, but I couldn't be for sure. Flying was like breathing for pegasi. There couldn't be a pegasus who didn't know how to fly. And how would I explain how I had crash-landed at her house if I couldn't fly? You have to fly to land, right?

But what if there was a pegasus who forgot how to fly?

I ponder this for a minute, wondering if I'm asking "what if" too much. It could make sense. I seemed to have taken a pretty bad hit on the head when I landed...could I pass off having amnesia? That the hit to the head had eradicated my memory of something as basic as breathing? It seems unrealistic, even when I say it to myself. But who was to say she had ever encountered amnesia? Maybe she didn't know what it could make you forget? Amnesia could make people forget friends, family, memories...

Knowing how to fly required memories, though. Memories of instruction. So what if those were to disappear?

This sequence of thought leads me to another. Maybe I do know how to fly. Or at least, maybe my body knows how to fly. If that were true, wouldn't it mean I just needed a memory jog to be able to fly? That would produce the same results as curing amnesia, as if I really did forget how to fly. Wouldn't it?

I feel confused, unsure whether this could work or not. But what other choice do I have? I try to find one, to prove myself wrong, but I can't. I start to feel guilt already. Could I really lie to her like that?

Probably, yes.

I don't like it, not at all. I can't see another option, though. I set my mind to doing it, and that's that. I will tell her I have forgotten how to fly, explain my "theory" as to why, and hope for the best. I stand from the table and look away from the window, as if to finalize the idea within my head.

***

I spend the rest of my afternoon stretching out my wings, attempting to move muscles in them and find a way to control them. The day is extremely nice, despite being a bit cold; that would be expected from a winter day, though. I am outside, still shifting my wings around in front of Rainbow Dash's house when she flaps down next to me, settling on the cloud lawn.

"Hey, your wing is looking awesome!" She says, noticing it immediately.

"It feels awesome, too. Now I know how you felt when--" I cut myself off, realizing I have said too much, again. Fucking damn it! I feel my mental outrage showing on my face, and quickly contort it into a poker face. I hope to God, Celestia, and every other high being out there she didn't realize where I was going with that. I have been looking towards my wing as I replied, and I turn to face her again. I can't tell if she wears a poker face or if she is patiently waiting for me to continue. "--yeah, uh...how was the weather today?" I finish, trying to keep my voice steady and normal.

She takes a second to respond, seeming to come out of a trance. "Oh! It was pretty boring, nothing really happened. We did have this one pony who almost made himself fall after he kicked at a cloud and missed. He threw himself off balance. It was pretty funny." Dash finishes with that "true story" kind of look.

"Ha, bet he was embarrassed."

"Oh yeah, he turned, like, bright red."

We go through her front door and trot into the kitchen/dining room. Rainbow walks over to the cabinets, as she did the two previous days, and begins opening them to survey her inventory of food. I trot aimlessly around the kitchen. Still rummaging through the fluffy cabinets, she asks:

"So now that your wing's all good, you plan on heading home? You can stay a while longer if you want, I don't really care. I don't get visitors too often, heh."

Now or never, I guess. "Uhh, actually, Rainbow Dash, I wanted to talk to you about that."

She turns from the cabinets to look at me and sets down on the floor, wings folding at her sides. "Yeah, what's up, Ferrum? You sure your wing's okay?"

"Oh yeah, like I said, it feels excellent. I want to thank you again for patching me up. Anyways...you know how I smacked my head pretty hard, thought I got a concussion?"

"Mmhmm."

"Well, I think when I did, it caused some amnesia." Good so far, almost there...

"Am-what now?"

"Amnesia...it's where you forget something important because of an accident or something. Like your family, or your friends, or who you are."

She gives me a puzzled look. "Alright, so what did you forget?"

I glance down, lifting a hoof and pawing at the cloud floor, not at all feigning my nervousness or embarrassment. "I think I've forgotten how to...to fly." There, it's out. Let's see what happens.

Dash's puzzled look changes into a blank one. She begins to smirk a little, and raises her eyebrows. "You're joking, right?"

I stare at her as seriously as I can, and shake my head from side to side.

Her smirk disappears, replaced by a slight from, and her eyebrows remain raised. "But...how does..." She trails off, looking as if this is extremely hard to comprehend. It most likely is.

I decide to help the situation along as best I can. "Look, Rainbow Dash, I'm already in your debt. I don't want to ask you to help me again, but I don't know what to do." And I truly do not want to ask her, and truly do not know what to do.

"You want me to teach you how to fly?" I can't read her facial expression. It's something like confusion, sympathy, friendliness, and a few other emotions mixed in.

"Yes." My voice is a lot deeper than normal at this point. My voice has a tendency to get deeper the more quietly I talk.

She stares at me, into me for what feels like hours. I can't tell if she is doing that thing where she seems to decide how trustworthy I am, or if she has just zoned out while thinking about her decision.

"Okay."

What? "What?" I repeat from my mind.

"I'll do it, I'll teach you to fly again."

"Why?" I hear myself ask. Why am I pushing it? Stop while you're ahead!

She looks at me somewhat somberly. "Well, Twilight tells me I need to be more...uhh...'em-path-ic'. She says I should put myself in someone else's horseshoes, and think what I would feel like if I was them. So I did that. And it would be horrible to not know how to fly, especially when you even have wings. So I'm going to teach you to fly." She gives a small smile, and looks somewhat bashful.

I'm taken by surprise by her compassion. Maybe she had an epiphany after her Mare Do Well encounter. "Rainbow Dash, I...thank you." I can't think of anything else to say. I feel guilty for deceiving her, surprised at her show of empathy, and also tired from an interrupted sleep. I try to find more words to show my thanks, but my mind can't seem to find any.

"Yeah...whatever." She smiles at me, and I return it. "We can probably just do a some each day after I get home until you get the hang of it," She puffs out her chest and slightly narrows her eyes, smirking. "And with the best flier in all of Equestria as your trainer, you'll be flying in no time!"

I laugh. "I couldn't have picked a better place to lose my memory."

"Alright, you hungry?" she says, laughing.

We eat a dinner of carrot-and-various-flower sandwiches. Rainbow Dash talks about working out a schedule of some sort for teaching me to fly, to a mixture of herself and me, figuring out when would be best to teach certain aspects of flight. She tells me that I can continue to "crash at her place" as long as I don't eat all of the muffins, to which I respond that I'll make sure to save her at least one, and thank her. We finish our meal and clean up, then she lets me know we'll begin the basics of wings and flying tomorrow afternoon before heading off to her room for some shuteye.

I decide to follow suit. I've had a fairly long day, and it's still not sitting well with my conscience that I have twisted the truth to my hostess and heroine. I make my way to the cloud-made couch I have overtaken and flop down on my right side, which is much more comfortable now. I close my eyes, listening to the sound of the breezes running through the room and imagining myself coasting upon them.

Comments

[Gunsmith]

Chapter Five. One more functioning appendage and internal questioning. Sorry it turned out a bit shorter, I had no desire for it to, but I can't think of much else to add. Chapter Six coming hopefully early Wednesday morning (U.S. EST) or early Thursday morning.

[Shadowflash]

661994 I don't read any stories at FIM or EqD. I just don't like to read, I prefer writing. (Except books in real life.)
When I say "This is an exception", I mean that this has caught my eye well enough to make me read it. Which is a good thing.

[All American]

cdn.thatssotrue.com/2011/11/26/thatssotrue.com_655_1329514641.gif

An now I wait.

[Gunsmith]

Shadowflash: Glad I have held your attention with my story, I appreciate your reading of it.

All American: Beginning 6 tonight. Depending on how long it stretches, it will either be done tonight or tomorrow. Nice .gif, by the way.

[Rarelygood]

I await another chapter. Don't disappoint.. then again its had to disappoint me. So far I will give you my RD of approval

[silentsand9]

see no real flaws in this,it seem like you did do your best to make the main person/pony seem naturel