Quills and Sofa's Speedwriting Anthology

by Atom Smash

Falling With Style

“Uhm,” Scootaloo gulped while looking between her mentor and the very long way down to the ground. “Are you sure this will work?”

“Sure?” The rainbow maned mare replied, looking almost as offended as she did confident. “Absolutely! It’ll totally work.”

Scootaloo merely nodded in reply, she didn’t trust her voice to keep steady. This had been an insane idea to start with, but she had only herself to blame, and technically Rainbow Dash, but she’d known her honorary big sister would come up with some crazy plan, so it really was Scootaloo’s own fault for asking.

Oh why had she asked? Was not being able to fly really such a big deal? She’d gotten by for years not being able to fly. Earth Ponies and Unicorns spent their whole lives not being able to fly. Unless you were Princess Twilight of course, or Starlight Glimmer, and Pinkie had that weird helicopter thing…

“You’re stalling squirt,” Rainbow said with what Scootaloo determined to be an appropriate amount of enthusiasm.

“No,” Scootaloo lied, of course she was stalling. It wasn’t as if she didn’t trust her big sister but… she didn’t want to die either.

As she dared another look over the edge of the cloud she felt that dying might be preferable to falling. The sheer height they were standing on was mind boggling. Scootaloo could barely make out Ponyville beneath them, much less any of the ponies living there.

“Look,” Rainbow said, not buying Scootaloo’s brave face for one second, she was awesome like that. “If you jump off this cloud, what’s the worst that can happen?” she said, giving the younger mare a confident smirk.

“Uhm… I’ll fall for a really long time, then hit the ground hard and go to pony heaven?” Scootaloo tried to not let her fear show and grinned as she added, with a gesture of her hooves: “...splat.”

Rainbow Dash gave her an odd look, tilting her head as she did so. “No,” she said, putting on a much more confident smile than Scootaloo ever managed. “The worst thing that’ll happen is that you fall for a little bit, I pull off a heroic rescue and tease you about it for the rest of your life. But that’s the absolute worst case. I probably wouldn't tease you about it. Too much. At least not in front of Twilight.”

Scootaloo did feel reassured by that. “I guess it’s not really falling to your death if you have an awesome friend waiting to catch you.”

“Eyupp!” Dash exclaimed, mimicking Big Macintosh and motioning to the end of the cloud. “It’s just falling, but with style.” She waved her other wing at herself, clearly indicating that she, in all her rainbow resplendent glory, was style.

“Okay,” Scootaloo nodded, once more looking over the edge of the cloud. “I think I can do this.”

“Sure you can,” Rainbow said. “I promise nothing really bad is going to happen, and you'll be happy you tried. I mean, come on, if it does work, it means you were flying!” The older pegasus put some extra emphasis on those last few words, giving Scootaloo a warm feeling in her chest. She did want to fly.

“Here goes!” Scootaloo bit down and threw herself off the cloud, wings spread, feeling the wind against her face. Too much wind, entirely too much wind, she was losing height with an alarming rate.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” she screamed.

“That’s the spirit kiddo!” was Rainbow’s reply, before she realized she had better dive fast if she wanted to catch her little sister before she hit the ground.

Author's Note:

I believe the prompt was: Flying.