Skyblaze

by Darkest Night

Griffons Have Bad Table Manners.

He’d told his family it would take a week for his feathers to grow back, and he was dead on with his prediction.

One week later, the gap in his wing feathers was gone, and he was back at full strength and full speed. He hadn’t lost much time to the lost feathers, either. He could still fly, he went out two other times over the week to make deliveries or pick up materials, it just affected his ability to control himself in extreme maneuvers. Once he practiced enough with the gap in his wings to get used to those feathers not being there, he got back some of his aerial agility and learned even more about how to recognize those tiny little telltale signals that he was about to go out of control and correct himself before it happened. So, in a way, losing those feathers had been a good thing. Granted, he didn’t do any practice on his routine for the week, not until his feathers had grown enough by yesterday afternoon to give him back his control, but he actually learned more about flying over that week for being impaired by his missing feathers, and that meant that it was not a week that was wasted. It was far from wasted.

He also spent that week working on his other endurance. He would fly down to the large open field at the base of the mountain and run, galloping in circles along the edge of the woods, and in a strange sort of way, he really enjoyed it. He just liked going fast, be it on his hooves or on his wings, and there was a similar feeling to flying as he ran around and around, the wind in his mane, the pounding of his hooves on the grassy earth…it rekindled feelings from his foalhood, before he could fly, when he would run almost everywhere he went because he would imagine that that might be what it felt like to fly, to go really fast and watch the streets of Canterlot race by under his muzzle. His legs rebuilt some of that lost endurance over the week, and he even practiced taking off from a run and landing into a run, much as he had when he landed to run with the buffalo.

But he now had ten days until the competition, and things were getting serious, both for him and for his family. Silverchain had told him the night before that he had the next ten days completely to himself, that he would have no deliveries, giving him time to dedicate himself to his dream. His entire family appreciated the sacrifice he’d made for the shop, and they returned the favor by arranging things so the time he needed the most, the days leading up to the competition, was time that he could devote completely to getting ready.

And he was going to do just that. He woke up and jumped out of bed eagerly, ready to tackle another day, checking himself in the mirror out of habit as he put his goggles on, then he was out and warming up. He raced along the familiar routes just over the heads of the ponies on the streets below, tugging at dresses and clothes and forcing them to hold their hats down as he streaked by over them as he worked a night of sleep’s inactivity out of his wings, then he landed in the large courtyard by the palace and galloped around the periphery, doing ten laps to get some burn in his legs before taking off again. The buffalo had taught him that ignoring one part of being an athlete had been dumb, and since the day he returned, he vowed that his legs would get a workout every day as well as his wings. He wouldn’t be running any long distance races anytime soon, but after a few months of adding in running to his usual training, he would be. He fully intended to match the buffalo stride for stride the next time he visited their range, and that was going to take some training. He picked himself up off the ground and flew in those same laps around the courtyard, taking sharp turns at each corner and going faster and faster, and he almost crashed when he saw Princess Celestia come out onto the balcony that overlooked the courtyard, very close to the gates and the double stairs that led up to the entry doors. She watched him fly ten more laps, then he tightened his turns and smoothed them into a circle, flying so fast that his red trail merged with itself and formed a shimmering red ring over the courtyard. Tight turns were his specialty, and now that he had his wing feathers fully regrown and properly preened, in top shape, he felt every bit of the control he’d had before giving them up for the turquoise. He spun ever tighter, starting to cause a rotating wind in the courtyard, until he stopped suddenly in the exact center of where his circle had been, wings outstretched and head up, then he gave a single powerful downstroke of his wings, as if he were bursting the cyclonic ring of the Tornado Twist, sending a strong gust down to the ground to shimmer across the courtyard. That wingstroke shot him up over the level of the balcony, spinning almost lazily in the air as he slowed to a stop and caught himself into a hover, then looked to Princess Celestia to see if she approved of his progress thus far. She gave him an encouraging smile, and he dared to fly over to her without invitation, coming up to the edge of the wall; he wouldn’t go past that without explicit permission…well, at least intentionally. He unintentionally crossed that line quite a bit. “Good morning, your Highness,” he called over the short distance between his position and her balcony.

She gave him a smile and waved him over, and he wasted no time obeying. He landed on the edge of the balcony, then bowed to her. “I see your wing feathers are back,” she said, looking down at him. “I heard how you lost them. That was very noble of you, Skyblaze.”

“They grew back, your Highness,” he shrugged his wings modestly. “And I’ll be ready for the competition. My parents have given me the rest of the time off until the competition so I can focus on my practice. I won’t let Canterlot down, I promise.”

She patted him fondly on the shoulder. “I never had any doubt that you would, my young pegasus,” she told him encouragingly. “I’ll root for you as much as I can. But I can’t show any favoritism, you know,” she smiled.

“I don’t expect any, your Highness. If I can’t win fair and square, then I don’t deserve to win.”

“Well said,” she agreed with a nod.

After a big breakfast to really fuel himself up, he flew down the mountainside and to the large clearing at the base of Mount Canterlot, his preferred practice area. He started by collecting up all the loose clouds, making his rings, then cutting the clouds that remained down so they were very small, which made a whole lot of them for him to use. Once he had all that ready, he randomly threw the rings out, letting them drift to a stop, then he landed, stretched his wings in preparation, then began. Through the morning, he practiced his entire routine from start to finish, from his starting point on the ground—which would be the stage of the arena, through the ring, up into the clouds, then back down to the do the Tornado Twist. Any time he screwed up, he continued on through the run so he could practice the other parts. He managed a successful Tornado Twist 12 out of 15 attempts over the morning, improving his success percentage by a tiny amount, then he flew back up to Canterlot to eat a big lunch. All that hard flying had burned through his entire breakfast. He wolfed down half a basket of apples, guzzled down an entire pitcher of fruit juice, then went straight back down to the base of the mountain. He was about to start another run when Rainsong descended down from the east, landing beside him with a smiled. “Hey Skyblaze, how goes practice?”

“Pretty well so far. You done?”

“I was done hours ago. I decided to go on a little trip,” she said, looking up meaningfully. He laughed when Gedwin and Gwendi descended along the mountainside and landed with them.

“Guys!” he said happily, bumping his hoof with Gedwin’s forepaw, then Gwendi. “What brings you by?”

“We’re gonna see if you’re worth our time, being our friend and all,” Gedwin said haughtily, though he had a grin on his beak. “So, show us this routine you’re gonna do for the competition.”

“Well, if you’re here, you can help,” he said.

“How?”

“We’ll put the rings up so he can’t see what order they’re in,” Rainsong told them. “And the harder we set them, the more he likes it. He’s a glutton for punishment,” she winked.

“Doing something that’s hard makes you better, win or lose,” he said easily, hunkering down on his front legs and wiggling his rump a little, almost like as if he were about to pounce. “So if you don’t mind, go ahead and rearrange the rings, make it as hard as possible for me to run them in numerical order. The only rule is you have to set the next ring so I can see the number from the last one,” he explained. “That way I know which way to go. Outside of that, knock yourself out.”

“Make things hard for Skyblaze, the most annoying pegasus this side of Manehattan? I’m in!” Gwendi grinned.

He kept his head down as his three friends rearranged the rings, and when Rainsong called out the countdown, he jerked his head up as his wings fanned, then as soon as he found the first ring, he rocketed off the grass, leaving a fiery red streak of light behind him. He saw the second ring as he raced for the first, then cut a turn so sharp through the first ring that it looked like he ricocheted off a wall. Blazing at full speed, he spied the third ring just as he went through the second, having to do a barrel roll around two other rings to reach it, and worked his way through the course. Every ring was either far away or partially hidden behind another ring, with lots of vertical distance between them, forcing him to ascend and descend, turn sharply, spending as much time with his back to the ground as his belly as he was forced to roll and spin and weave. It was indeed an extremely hard ring placement they’d worked out, and he loved every second of it. After he passed through ring 30, he shot high into the air, gaining speed his climb, feeling the wind blast against his face, whip through his mane and tail, feeling the absolute joy that came with flying, and flying fast. He pingponged through the ten clouds he’d put up for the run, always going to the most distant cloud with each move, busting the clouds in ten unique ways. After the last cloud, he descended in a spiral and then started his fast circling, preparing for the Tornado Twist.

A brief glance as he came around showed him that his friends were at minimum safe distance, so he abruptly dove out of his circle and began. He hit the desired altitude and immediately turned as tightly as he possibly could, the world wheeling and spinning and swirling before his eyes as he began to form the tornado, watching it from the corner of his eyes and feeling the winds play along the tips of the feathers of his left wing, the one facing the tornado, as it beat frantically to keep him up to speed and in that endless tight turn, rotating counterclockwise. The tornado spun to life, shivering and undulating as it stabilized under his careful ministration, and once it had enough juice to sustain itself without him for a few moments, he allowed his creation to swallow him when he reached the base of it. He turned upwards and allowed the winds to catapult him, which shot him out of the wide mouth of the tornado as if it were a cannon, his body spinning nearly as fast as the tornado was. But his vast experience in recovering from spinouts let him orient himself in the air as he ascended, and he pulled out of it and dove back on his creation so fast it was as if he’d been tied to it with a rubber band. He angled in and intercepted his tornado along its upper rim, and then he began the next phase, spiraling up and down around it, pushing in the top, relaxing the bottom to allow it to expand, causing the column of whipping, rotating winds to take shape. He held it in that shape for several long seconds, allowing his friends to appreciate what he’d done, then he spiraled down to the bottom and started phase three. He started to turn the tornado’s base by pulling at it with his air wake, spiraling up to push the middle of it back into place, forcing the tornado to bend. It followed his air wake upwards, upwards, upwards, then he lanced up to the top and started pulling it towards the curling base of the column. Once he got the top angled so its mouth was horizontal in relation to the ground, he returned to the bottom and stabilized it when it started to unravel, got it back into rotation, then pulled it up, up, up, pulling it until it joined to the top at the very top, creating a continuous ring, a circle of tightly spiraling, spinning, cyclonic wind. He orbited his creation’s arcing lines a few times and then swung up and around to hover inside of it, the showy presentation, then he used his wings to turn the circle horizontal. He let it stay like that for just a moment, then he caused it to explode with a powerful blast of air from his wings. The visible shockwave of air rushed away at high speed and a roar of wind. The wingbeat drove him upward, above the rushing blast of wind, dust, and cloud, then he descended down to the ground quickly, in a controlled fall that he arrested just before his hooves hit the ground.

Gedwin and Gwendi soared over and landed with big grins on their beaks, Rainsong right behind. “Okay, that wasn’t too pathetic,” Gedwin told him.

“Thanks. The problem is, I can’t do it every time,” he admitted.

“You pull that off, you have the competition in the bag, Skyblaze,” Gwendi told him approvingly.

“It’s gonna take that to beat Scootaloo,” he said honestly as he opened and closed his wings a few times. “But that’s what’s gonna make it all worth it,” he grinned eagerly. “I want to face the best. It’s the only way you ever get better.”

“You should just go challenge the Wonderbolts,” Gedwin grinned.

“Someday I will,” Skyblaze said lightly in return. “Okay, let’s set up the rings and clouds again. Lemme do another full run.”

With the help of three of his four best friends, Skyblaze had a really good day of practice. When he wasn’t flying at breakneck speed, he was resting, trading stories with the griffons and Rainsong, as the three of them got to know each other better. After 16 more runs, in which 12 were successful Tornado Twists, they flew back up to Canterlot and Skyblaze treated his friends to dinner at their favorite diner down at the corner. His parents were still working in the shop, so he didn’t want to make his friends wait after going so long without a meal. As he expected, the less than cultured nature of the griffons caused a few turned heads and some whispers, but he honestly didn’t care. Gedwin and Gwendi were his friends, and that meant taking the fact that both were a little loud and obnoxious in stride with the fact that they were smart, funny, brave, adventurous, kind under the gruff griffon veneer, and dependable. He knew that if he ever had a problem, Gedwin and Gwendi would have his back.

“So, you have the rest of the time til the competition to get your trick down,” Gwendi said as she devoured a large green apple, then licked her beak and gave Gedwin’s larger pile of apples a cunning little look. Gedwin wrapped his wing around his meal and stared her down.

“I have to say, when it goes bad, it goes bad spectacularly,:” Gedwin chuckled. “I’ve never seen you spin so far before, at least without recovering.”

“Yeah, but when it works, it works well,” he replied with a grin.

“Stormbuck explained the way the competition works yesterday,” Gwendi said as she lobbed an apple into the air, then snapped her beak shut on it, sending a few pieces of apple flying. “He said he’s a little nervous about going first.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame him for that,” Skyblaze agreed. Stormbuck had drawn the first slot, so he had to go first. While it meant he didn’t have to wait long, it also meant that by the time the other competitors had their turn, his performance was buried under all the other performances. It would be easy to forget if he didn’t wow the judges. Skyblaze was of the opinion that it was best to go close to last in a competition like that…and he’d drawn number four. That was close to the beginning. Scootaloo had one of the best placements, number nine out of 15, close to the end without being the last couple of performances, when the crowd and the judges would be getting a bit antsy.

“What are you lookin’ at?” Gwendi challenged to a pair of well-dressed unicorns that were staring at her. Both of them put their noses in the air and marched on down the street. “Darn groundbounders,” Gwendi snorted. “You’d think they’d never seen a griffon before.”

“It’s not who you are, it’s what you’re doing,” Skyblaze winked. “I told you, Canterlot unicorns don’t cotton much to being a messy eater,” he said, pointedly brushing some bits of apple off the table.

“I can’t believe you two grew up here and managed to stay cool,” Gedwin grunted, which made both of the pegasi laugh.

“It wasn’t easy,” Rainsong grinned. “We sure got into enough trouble when we were foals,” she added with a laugh.

“This place is all about appearances,” Skyblaze told them. “It’s not who you are, it’s who you pretend to be that counts. That’s why I’ll take you two over most of the unicorns in Canterlot any day. You know who you are, and you show the world who you are. Around here, you never know what the real unicorn is like under all the manners and civility.”

“Just more proof that griffons are far more awesome than ponies,” Gwendi said lightly.

“Only unicorns. Pegasus ponies are clearly superior,” Skyblaze taunted with a grin.

“That sounds like a challenge to me, brother,” Gwendi said, glancing at him.

“It does indeed, sis,” Gedwin said with a look at Skyblaze.

“It is so on. At least after dinner,” he said.

After eating, they gathered at Overlook Park, which was built on the very edge of the supporting arc of stone that formed the plateau clinging to the mountainside on which Canterlot was built. Shaped and supported by powerful unicorn magic long ago, the low wall dropped to a vast abyss that went down thousands of feet before the steep slope of the mountain came into view. Skyblaze stood on the edge of that wall as several unicorns watched on in curiosity. “Alright, it’s time to fly back to Twintalon in style,” Skyblaze said eagerly, almost prancing on the wall as he lowered his goggles, a clear sign that he intended to go very, very fast. “Think you can keep up?”

“Pshaw, bring it,” Gedwin said, jumping up on the wall himself.

“Then let’s rock,” Skyblaze said, then he intentionally turned and stepped back off the wall, and tumbled down out of sight. Gedwin jumped after him, the girls right on their tails, but Skyblaze didn’t open his wings, he simply fell in a spiraling tumble for a moment before orienting himself with his legs back and to his sides, a sleek missile that rocketed towards the deadly rocks below. Gedwin inched up beside him in a similar diving pose, the two of the grinning at each other as they fearlessly plummeted towards the rocky slope. At the last possible instant, both of them opened their wings and pulled up just enough, their hooves and paws just barely missing the steep rocky slope, the two of them weaving and rocking to avoid boulders and outcroppings that threatened to totally ruin their day. They pulled level just over the treetops, their air wakes pulling at the tree limbs and leaves, then they dropped down so low when they reached the large field at the base of the mountain that their wingtips brushed the grass with each downstroke. They ascended up over the trees on the far side of the field and turned easterly, his wings flapping so hard and so fast that it almost felt like they were slapping on water, but both his griffon friends and Rainsong were right with him, turning with him, the four of them in a two by two formation. Gwendi and Rainsong inched up until they were all abreast, flying in formation, and they looked at each other with eager grins. He wasn’t surprised that Gedwin and Gwendi could keep up, but he was honestly surprised that Rainsong was holding her own. She was a good flyer, but she wasn’t a competitive flyer. Clearly she’d been holding out a little bit, he had no idea she could fly so fast.

It was one of the best afternoons he’d ever had. With the sun behind them, the four of them streaked through the warm summer air just over the treetops, flying so fast, so fast, so fast that the trees were a blur of green and breaks in them whizzed by so fast that it was a blink of the eyes. The mountains rose to their left when they reached the edge of the range, and the ground below them started to roll like gigantic tree-covered waves frozen in time. Rainsong began to falter after a while, proving that she didn’t have the endurance to hold her speed, so the others slowed down to match her rather than leave her behind, sharing the simple, unbridled joy that came with the honor and privilege of having wings. None of them talked. None of them needed to, and to do so would have ruined the perfection of that golden afternoon where the four of them reveled in the great joy that was their unmatched luck and honor to receive, the gift of flight.

He was almost disappointed when the tiny village of Twoshoes came into view at the foot of the mountains. The four of them landed on its single street and said nothing, just stood there for a moment, then he and Rainsong turned towards Gedwin and Gwendi, and they offered out their hooves, touching them together. Two griffon forepaws laid over them, and the four of them spent a brief moment to enjoy the bonds of friendship, smiling at each other. Finally, though, the moment had to end, and his griffon friends backed up a step. “Awesome day, Skyblaze,” Gedwin said.

“Thanks for the help today, guys. I’ll be busy til the competition, so if you wanna see me, come to Canterlot. Or that field where I was practicing.”

“Sure thing,” Gwendi said.

“It was great to hang out with you guys. Afraid you’re stuck with another pegasus that’s gonna call you a friend,” Rainsong grinned.

“That’s no problem, Rainsong, you’re not a complete dweeb,” Gedwin said airily, which made her laugh.

“I hang out with him, it does stain my reputation,” she said, pointing her wing at Skyblaze.

“Your life would be boring without me,” he said blandly, which made the griffons grin impishly.

They split up, the griffons heading back to Twintalon—they weren’t about to take Rainsong there until both she and the griffons were ready for it—while Skyblaze and Rainsong started back for Canterlot. “You little sneak,” Skyblaze said lightly as they started climbing, aiming for an altitude that would give them an easy flight back home.

“What?”

“I had no idea you could fly that fast.”

She laughed. “I don’t just manage the weather over the woods,” she winked. “I do practice a little. I can’t fly that fast for that long, though. I don’t fly all over Equestria the way you do.”

“Just fly in circles around the forest.”

“And look like I’ve lost my mind? That’ll make the other pegasi talk.”

“None of their business, and besides, why worry about what they think? And anyway, it’s too late. You lost your mind a long time ago,” he teased.

She laughed. “Yeah, the day I met you,” she retorted.

“Corrupting innocent pegasi isn’t all that hard when they’re you,” he said grandly, which made her laugh helplessly.

“Speaking of losing our minds, tomorrow you’re gonna show me how you made it snow. I wanna see how you did it.”

“You’re getting in trouble with me,” he warned, which made her grin eagerly.

“That’s half the fun.”