Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Icebergs

Four hooves dropped onto the top of a floating iceberg and Rainbow Dash stared at the freezing ocean in front of her.

Lots of icebergs and smaller ice floes dotted the cold blue water, stretching out seemingly infinitely to the south. She knew it couldn’t be much longer before she reached the glacial shoreline of the south pole. For now though it was still the ocean she was traveling over, half-frozen as it was. The sky above was almost cloudless too but all the sunlight in the world wasn’t going to help melt these icebergs. Not with how cold things were down here.

Again she had to thank the special winter clothes she was wearing. It would have been truly miserable without them. How did she get through the True North with just her bare feathers?

Funnily enough though, despite being in a much colder and frozen place, there was way more wildlife around her too. Looking down at some of the larger ice floes she could see whole groups of sea lions and walruses, lazily lying about, their blubber protecting them from the cold. Rainbow wished she could lay down on ice like that as if it was normal. To think they even swam through this icy water and probably didn’t even feel it.

“And the cold’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better,” Rainbow Dash shook her head in annoyance.

She took the time to pop a biscuit into her mouth before gliding off the top of the iceberg. She still had to be thankful that the weather was overall good. No storms or heavy snowfall yet. It was probably as nice out as she could ask for to be flying over the frozen reaches of the ocean. She didn’t expect that to last—knowing her luck when it came to these things was the exact opposite of her luck with cards and gambling.

Rainbow Dash let herself glide fairly low to the water instead of staying high up in the sky. She wanted to get a closer look at the ice and the fat seals lounging around. There was a smell in the air the closer she got, no surprise there. The natural smell of saltwater mixed in with the stench coming from the sea lions and walruses and whatever else was around. Fish probably. She knew these big guys ate fish so there were probably huge schools underwater here.

When she had gotten close enough to the floes a lot of sea lions started to notice her and raise up a fuss. Loudly orking and braying at her while she glided by their floes in an attempt to scare her off—obviously a territorial group. Quite a few of them scrambled, waddling awkwardly, across the ice floe before diving into the water. She grinned at the display—they swam well but they were funny looking on land. When she passed by the biggest and most crowded floe of sea lions she got closer to one of the ones that had walruses on it. They were far more relaxed. The large, orange, animals with their big tusks only spared a passing glance or two at her. Unconcerned with the pegasus flying through the arctic sea.

Rainbow Dash smiled and waved to them—for all they cared.

Seeing an empty ice floe coming up, Rainbow dropped out of the air and landed on it, skidding across the surface with her boots. Instead of just flying around, why not have some fun before it got too cold? As soon as she got to the edge of the floe she jumped, right over the water to the next one. It wobbled in the water and she used her wings to propel herself forward, skating across it. The rubber soles of the boots were perfect to slide over the slick ice. The next ice floe was too far away for any normal jump so as soon as Rainbow Dash reached the edge again she flapped her wings once and used them to glide over quickly.

While the ice floes had been floating calmly before her arrival, now the ones she had jumped off of were careening through the arctic waters and bumping into each other. Loud bangs and cracks as the hard ice smashed into one another started erupting in the cold domain. It startled some of the sea lions and walruses and jostled their own large ice floes. Rainbow Dash paused after jumping to another new one and looked over her shoulder at the chaos she had left behind.

“Oops,” she winced.

She bit her lip and looked ahead—there were some larger icebergs directly south of here. No matter what she did to those she wouldn’t be able to budge them or change their course. Rainbow Dash nodded and flew up, heading towards the closest one.

It was shaped like the top of a big ice cream cone swirling out of the water. And big was an understatement, the visible part of the iceberg was probably a good fifty feet tall and very wide and blocky. Rainbow Dash didn’t know a ton about icebergs but she knew that below the water there had to be an even bigger part she wasn’t seeing.

She landed right on the very top of it and looked down the other side.

“Perfect,” Rainbow Dash grinned and jumped off.

Her boots hit the ice and she started zooming down the side of the iceberg, she kept her wings folded into her sides to stay as aerodynamic as possible while sliding at high speed on down. It wasn’t a single flat slope or anything, in fact it was pretty rugged with a lot of bumps and cracks everywhere, but Rainbow Dash enjoyed the challenge of hoof-skating down the iceberg. How many ponies could brag about doing something like this? Just one more awesome thing she could add to the book of her life.

Whenever she got Twilight to ghostwrite it.

She was getting close to the bottom of the iceberg and her eyes started searching for any sort of lip or ramp she could use to launch herself off it. Finding an edge right at the bottom that jutted out over the water, she grinned and tucked her head in, shooting right towards it. Rainbow Dash blasted off the iceberg and spread her wings to sail far over the water once more.

For a while she just glided along, not flapping her wings, wanting to see how much distance she could make before she’d hit the water.

After being carried on the wind for a couple hundred feet, her boots were about to dip into the cold water. Wanting to avoid that she finally flew up a little higher and resumed her normal flight.

There were more icebergs in the water ahead. Most not quite as big as the one she had just gone down but she could still have fun “hopping” from one to the other. She kept a smile on her face as she made her way to the next one. It was certainly a much more fun way to get across the arctic ocean than just flying straight ahead. Though not nearly as fast. Rainbow was fine with that. Since the weather here was still good enough where she could act care-free, since it still wasn’t as cold as the actual south pole would be, she might as well enjoy herself while she could.

Iceberg surfing, skiing, whatever it was to be called, she was having fun with it.

She hummed to herself as she jumped and glided along the wind from iceberg to iceberg. Below—in the middle of one of her jumps—something broke the surface of the ocean. Rainbow Dash looked down to see white water rushing out of the way as the humped back of a whale pushed out of the cold depths. It was visible for just a moment before the blue closed back in and the whale dove down once more.

“Not as big as Mother Ocean are you?” Rainbow Dash grinned down at it.

The biggest “normal” whale in the whole world wouldn’t have been as big as one of Mother Ocean’s flippers. Or Leviathan’s for that matter.

On the next iceberg she reached she had to pause as there were no more ahead. Just ice floes, so many that the ocean merely became a series of cracks and lines between them. Finally the ice outnumbered the water. Another day at most and she knew she’d be hitting the coast of the south pole. Rainbow Dash took the moment to stretch her muscles again on the flat top of the iceberg. Shaking her hooves, cracking her neck, briefly moving up her goggles and blinking, just doing anything to get limber before she got back to her usual long-range flying.

She looked over her shoulder at the icy ocean she’d been flying through—at the ocean even further back that she’d spent months in.

“Wonder when I’m going to be flying north again instead of south? Heh, shouldn’t be too long.”

She returned her gaze to the south and took off from the iceberg.

Comments

[redmar]

It probably won't take long before she has to deal with something. But whatever the next big event will be it's probably after having passed the south pole.