Fluttershy does her level best to keep her eyes on Cloudsdale as the sparse city gradually grows closer and closer. Her wings burn, but the unfamiliar exertion is nothing compared to the dread she feels whenever Hedge pokes her scraggly tan mane out of the lightning bolt stamped saddlebags.

“Enjoying the view?” Rainbow Dash asks the second the curious filly peeks out from the loosely latched bag. “Is there anything better than this? The sun on your coat, the wind in your feathers!”

Fluttershy has to admit, when her gaze strays from their destination to the mountainous horizon and the lush green woodlands and sparkling blue lakes, that the view is pretty good. Not good enough to outweigh all the sights on the ground, but still pretty good. There’s a lot fewer critters one mile in the air, just the odd flock of geese honking their hellos, or a lonely hawk spiraling on a thermal, or a hungry roc scanning for intruders.

“What better way to feel alive?!” Rainbow Dash lets loose a loud ‘woohoo!’ as she raises her hooves in celebration, prompting Hedge to do the same and let loose her own cheer, before throwing in a quick aileron roll.

Hedge, dizzy from the spin, wobbles badly enough to nearly fall out of the saddlebag as she screeches, “Again!”

“Mm-!” Fluttershy has to bite her tongue to keep from screeching herself. “Umm,” she starts, pushing harder to catch up to her recalcitrant herdmate. She hopes Rainbow Dash doesn’t take the increased pace as encouragement to go faster. “M-maybe I can take her?”

“Aww,” Hedge moans quietly.

“You sure?” Rainbow Dash cracks a jovial, if worried, smile. “I don’t mind carrying her the rest of the way.”

Fluttershy shakes her head. Swapping Hedge from Rainbow Dash’s saddlebags to her own shouldn’t be so terrifying - her filly can hover, at least - yet she can’t rid herself of the memory of plummeting unnoticed through the clouds.

“Alright, then.” Rainbow Dash shrugs, slowing until she is steadily gliding just behind Fluttershy. She unbuckles the saddlebag on Fluttershy’s flanks and pulls out their bagged lunch, making room for the new occupant. But when she pushes forward to fly at her side, about to let Hedge leap the full wingspan separating one bag to the other, Fluttershy lets out a quiet ‘meep!’ and spins, catching the clambering filly just before she jumps.

“Hey!” Hedge cries.

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash exclaims as the sudden spin splits them apart, Fluttershy barely able to keep her hooves on Hedge. “Careful, ‘Shy! You gotta warn me before you pull a stunt like that!”

Fluttershy frowns, especially as the squirming filly in her hooves spreads her wings and tries to climb up her leg. “But she was going to jump!”

“I was fine,” Hedge says, her claim ignored by her dam.

“Well, yeah!” Rainbow Dash gives the hay fries and apple slices in her hooves a dubious look, ultimately deciding they aren’t worth the effort, and lets them fall to the forest below. “Here, let me help.”

Fluttershy yanks Hedge away as Rainbow Dash flits around her. “N-no, Rainbow, stop! It’s my filly, I have to do this myself!”

Rainbow Dash backs up, looking none too happy. “Alright, ‘Shy, but be careful.” She winces. “Watch your wings.”

“You think I don’t realize that?” Fluttershy again tries to maneuver the filly in her hooves to the saddlebags on her rump, but if she stops flapping she’ll fall, and she might not recover in time, and she doesn’t see any butterflies beneath them, and-

“Woah, ‘Shy! Eyes on the prize! Head up!” Rainbow Dash buzzes next to Fluttershy, startling the mare out of her inadvertent dive. “Hey. Want me to show you a cool trick? Me’n Scoots do this all the time! Watch!” She wriggles Hedge out of Fluttershy’s grasp, then tests the filly’s weight and glances back at Rainbow’s open saddlebag.

Fluttershy bites her lip, berating herself for not being competent enough, and here her herdmate is showing her up! In front of her filly, no less!

“Ready?” “Ready!” “And… Toss!”

Rainbow Dash chucks Hedge into the air, angled up and just behind. Hedge screeches as she climbs, and with a few corrective wing flaps drops straight into the open saddlebag.

“Pretty cool, right?” Rainbow Dash shakes her rump, sending Hedge swaying back and forth.

“Rainbow. Dash!”

Rainbow Dash blinks twice. “Err. Yeah?”

“Didn’t you hear her?” Fluttershy zips next to Hedge, but hesitates at grabbing the grinning filly - that would put her right back where she was before. “She’s terrified! What if you had dropped her?”

“That screech of joy?” Rainbow Dash snorts. “Hold on tight, Hedge! Here we go!”

The cerulean pegasus disappears in a blur, leaving a rainbow contrail and an oddly deep screech. In ten seconds she returns, bags of hay fries and apple slices in her hooves. “Come on, ‘Shy! Of course I got this! Remember when I caught Rarity during the Best Young Flier competition? Better yet, remember when you caught Sweetie Belle and Spike after he, well, rampaged around Ponyville?”

“That was different!” Fluttershy huffs. “I’m not intentionally dropping somepony just so I can go rescue them!”

“Well, there goes that idea for the relay race.” Rainbow Dash winks, entirely failing to lift Fluttershy’s spirits, instead sending her into a depressed tailspin. “Come on, ‘Shy. You’re a good flier, when you’re motivated.”

“And I’m a lousy one when I’m not.” Fluttershy sags, her wings slowing to the point where she might fall out of the sky. “If I wasn’t here you would’ve made it to Cloudsdale and back already.”

“That’s… that’s not what I meant at all!” Rainbow Dash gets in Fluttershy’s face, tilting her head up with one hoof and wrapping the other around her neck. “Sure, it’s slower than I normally fly, but that means I can practice control! Remember when I lost my magic, and you helped me train?”

“You hated training with me,” Fluttershy counters, tears threatening to shed just like they had after Rainbow Dash stopped training with her after one day together.

Rainbow Dash covers her muzzle with a hoof as she looks away, muzzle quivering, not expecting Fluttershy to call her out so harshly.

“I-I like flying with you,” Hedge says from behind Rainbow’s flapping wings. She carefully climbs out of the saddlebag and walks along Rainbow’s spine until she pokes through the blowing chromatic mane. Rainbow Dash gives the intrepid filly a wide grin. “Or am I a lousy flier, too?”

That wipes the grin off Rainbow’s face. Fluttershy gasps - she can’t believe her filly would say such a thing! - and barely keeps from shouting, “Don’t talk about yourself like that!”

“Well,” Rainbow Dash concedes, “it’s kinda true. She’s the worst flier I’ve seen. Ever.” Fluttershy whirls on Rainbow Dash, only for the cerulean grin to reassert itself with twice the intensity. “But she is a flier. And she’s got this.”

“Thanks.” Hedge gives Rainbow Dash a big hug, not at all what Fluttershy expected. “Ready, dam?”

Fluttershy’s eyes go wide as she realizes what her filly intends to do. “Oh, dear, um…” She gulps; it’s such a long way down if she misses the mark. Wouldn’t it be safer to do this any other way? “...Okay.”

Rainbow Dash raises her head as Fluttershy lowers hers, assisting Hedge as she leaps. Brown wings spread out, flapping once, before she parts the pink mane and trots down Fluttershy’s back to the open saddlebags. She plops inside, head sticking out to rest reassuringly on the butterfly-stamped flank.

“See?” Rainbow Dash tilts Fluttershy’s head up. “Nothing to it!” She rips open a bag of fries. “Hungry?” She shakes the bag when Fluttershy doesn’t go for it. “Come on, ‘Shy. We’re nearly there.”

Fluttershy eyes Cloudsdale, measuring the distance, then turns around to see if she can spot Ponyville. She can barely make out Mount Canterhorn on the horizon, Ponyville just on the other side.

“Oh, no. We are not flying for three hours just to turn around when we’re ten minutes away.” Rainbow Dash gently spins Fluttershy until she again faces Cloudsdale. “Please don’t prove those jokes about pink maned mares.”

“But I know that way is safe.” Fluttershy reluctantly takes the bag, but doesn’t eat. She lets out a heavy sigh. “I-I wish I had your confidence. Sometimes, I wonder if…”

Fluttershy does her best to avoid glancing backward at Hedge, but feels like Rainbow Dash knows what she is talking about, as her herdmate stops prodding her forward, ears flicking as she studies her every twitch. She doesn’t want Hedge to hear this, she doesn’t want to talk disparagingly about anypony.

“Sometimes,” Rainbow Dash prompts, hooves tracing her pregnant belly with a slight frown, “you wonder what it would be like if…”

Fluttershy grimaces at her herdmate’s prompting. “No, not if I herded with some stallion other than Doug.” She still doesn’t want to say it, but Hedge gently presses her head against her flank, encouraging her to go on. “But if I had pushed Hedge like you pushed Scootaloo. Would she be…” She closes her eyes. She knows her filly knows how poor a flier she is. How could she not? Yet her filly’s hoof stays where it is, not pulling away.

“Would she be a better flier?” Rainbow Dash’s muzzle pulls tight. “It’s tough to say. I trained with Scoots for three hours a day. Mostly wing exercises and endurance runs, with some strength training sprinkled in. And that was on top of whatever hoofball games she played with everypony else. I even…” Rainbow Dash blushes the red of her mane, “I even went to the library to look up flying techniques, optimum wing angles, that sort of thing.”

Fluttershy grins from ear to ear. “Twilight must be so proud of you.”

Rainbow Dash snorts. “And ruin my reputation? I’m not an egghead!” Her snort turns to a chuckle. “Hey, maybe I should. Especially if she can help this guy…” Her chuckle cuts off as she chokes up, legs wrapping tightly around herself. Fluttershy is amazed she keeps flying with how she locks herself up so tight.

Fluttershy wraps her hooves around Rainbow Dash, and isn’t surprised at all when Hedge comes bounding along her back to do the same. “You really want him to fly, don’t you?”

“More,” Rainbow Dash sobs, “more than anything in the world. More than being a Wonderbolt. Celestia, I hope and pray he can fly.” She blinks rapidly, trying to clear her eyes, sniffling, “But even if he can’t…”

She breaks down again, tears streaming as she buries her head in Fluttershy’s mane.

Fluttershy holds on tight, not caring how wet her mane gets. “We’ll still love her,” she consoles, gently rubbing a hoof along Rainbow’s back. “Just like we love Scootaloo.” She gives her filly a soft grin. “Just like we love you.”

“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash gives her a final hug and pulls away, wiping away the remaining tears. “We will.” She looks Hedge squarely in the eyes. “We do. Even though Scoots never got higher than level flight, or you go more than straight up and down. We still love you.”

“I love you, too,” Hedge returns, smiling at Rainbow Dash and hugging her dam.

“I love you,” Fluttershy says, a slight edge to her voice as she addresses her filly. “Now, back to your seat. We wouldn’t want you falling off, would we?”

“No, dam.”

Rainbow Dash glances at her cutie mark, then at Fluttershy’s. They aren’t glowing or looking at all out of the ordinary. “I guess we still have a mission to do, huh.”

“Yup!” Fluttershy points at one of the greener clumps of clouds. “We can start with my parents.”

Next Chapter: Ch. 167 - Natural Affinity, Part Two Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 44 Minutes