Flight School
Story by Oridian on SoFurry
Jarzyl makes her maiden flight.
This story is self-contained and can be read alone. (3,511 words)
“Ok. Ok, ok, ok. Finally after all this time, here we go…" Jarzyl Mintaka shifted her weight between her paws, and she fluttered her wings open and closed.
As the elevator continued climbing up the side of the building, the glass windowpanes provided a clear view of the cityscape, and Jarzyl felt like she'd never truly appreciated just how tall all the buildings were. She could see dragons soaring through the air outside, wings spread wide to catch the breeze as they flew. To fly was to be free, and it would mark the sudden transition from hatchling to fledgling, a momentous step on the long road to eventual adulthood.
Even as the elevator sped it way upwards, whizzing past countless floors, Jarzyl felt like she could count down the seconds she had left. These would be her last few moments of not being able to fly and thus of being a hatchling. How could she not be worried about that? She glanced around at her various schoolmates, all squeezed into the elevator car with her—almost everyone looked nervous or excited, but surely they couldn't be feeling quite as anxious as she was. Jarzyl unfurled her wings and wrapped them tightly around her body like a blanket, and her tail swished from side to side.
The elevator slowed quickly and came to a halt as they arrived at the highest floor. “Here we are. Welcome to flight school! Lesson one, basic aerial familiarization!" announced the flight instructor who was riding with them. The elevator doors opened, and the young dragons all scampered out into the elevator lobby.
Jarzyl was too nervous to rush. Instead she waited and ended up being the second last hatchling to leave the elevator. The very last hatchling was her friend, Atlas, who happened to be a three-legged dragon missing his left foreleg. Atlas trotted out, his gait asymmetric as he walked with Jarzyl. “Are you excited? We're finally going to fly!" he said.
Jarzyl flicked her neck frill up and down, feeling uncertain. “Mm, I'm excited. I think?"
“You don't sound very excited. You sound nervous," Atlas noted. Normally Jarzyl would have come up with some snappy retort, but now she was too nervous to do so immediately, which annoyingly proved her friend right.
Even though she and all the dragon hatchlings were now easily of fledgling age—and almost all of them were well into the growth spurt which came with this level of development—they were still significantly smaller than an adult dragon. Their flight instructor waved her wings, herding all the hatchlings out of the lift lobby. “Come on now, don't loiter. Everybody head over to the jump point."
As they walked down the corridor together, Jarzyl bumped her shoulder against Atlas's. “Don't judge me! I'll… I'll fly circles around you."
“Go ahead, if you can."
The sky was clouded but still, and it was an excellent day to fly. Yet Jarzyl didn't feel ready at all. Now they were out on the building's roof, and it seemed to her that they were absurdly high up.
“Why do we… Why do we have to start so high up?" she murmured. “Why don't we start with a lower building so we don't fall as far?"
Atlas was sitting beside her, and he was happy to answer that question. “The textbook explained that. It's easier to fly if you start higher up. We get lots of time to stabilize and pick up forward airspeed without needed to be worried about hitting the ground so soon."
Jarzyl took a deep breath. “Ok, but… but we're just going to jump off? Isn't it safer if we have some sort of… of rope system connected between our harnesses and this roof here, so we can't hit the ground too hard?" she asked, nervously toying around with the straps of her flight harness—a grid of straps and pouches which a dragon could wear to carry items while they walked or flew.
“You can't live life with safety ropes for everything. Drakken don't need safety ropes to fly," Atlas remarked. He was quiet for a moment, then he turned to glance at Jarzyl. “Are you actually that nervous? Just last month you were all crazy excited about becoming a fledgling! You climbed up that tree and threw yourself off just to try flying!"
“I didn't throw myself off! The branch broke and I fell, as you well know." Jarzyl couldn't meet her friend's gaze. “And then I crashed. That really hurt."
“But you're healed up now," Atlas countered. He tapped his lone forepaw against the floor. “Is that what's making you nervous? You're worried that you'll crash again?"
“Of course I'm worried! Aren't you worried? It really, really, really hurt when I broke my leg. Sure the healers were able to fix me, but what if this time I crash much harder and I get permanently injured? I don't want to be scarred, or horrifically injured, or crippled for life. That would be the worst… uh…" Jarzyl cut herself off, her neck frill drooping in embarrassment. “Um, no offense to you," she added, nodding to Atlas's missing foreleg.
“None taken," he replied instantly.
Jarzyl tucked her head under one wing. “I'm just… I'm not ready! I thought I was ready to fly, but I wasn't! And I crashed and I couldn't walk properly for a week, so what if it happens again?"
“You'll be fine," Atlas insisted.
Jarzyl quietened her voice, speaking softly so that only her friend would be able to hear her. “I can't do this! I should… I should drop out of the class. I'll go join Caden's class—she's in the later batch with Nerlin, and they won't be doing their first flights till next week. Maybe I'll be ready then."
“I don't think that would help."
“How do you know? You don't know me! After what happened last time, how can I just… just jump off this building, knowing that I'm going to fall so far and crash land?" Jarzyl furled her wings onto her back and shook her head. “And don't say flight school will help! Textbooks and classes and practicing on the ground is just… It's not the same!"
Atlas nodded. “Mm hmm."
“I'm not ready! I can't jump! But… but… my parents are down there… waiting to see me fly…" Jarzyl shook her head from side to side, making her neck frill flop about. “I can't jump! So I may need you to push me off the edge."
Atlas let out a soft chuckle. “Haha, you'll be fine. I'm not pushing you, but I will fly with you."
Before Jarzyl could worry anymore, the flight instructor who was overseeing their class spoke up. “Alright, everyone! Remember what you learned in your training sessions. Stay in control of your flight, try and maintain a safe separation from each other, and just have fun! No need for any fancy maneuverers for your first flight, just try a simple glide down to the ground. Does anyone have any last questions?"
Jarzyl felt like she had a thousand questions. She certainly hadn't read through all of the flight school textbook, but she'd skimmed through the pages and that had put a major dent in her previous confidence. Flying was supposed to be something so simple and instinctive that even birds and butterflies could do it, but that textbook had been so thick! So many chapters! Taking off, landings, stall recovery, soaring, efficient turns, gliding, navigation, ground reference manoeuvring, stunts and tricks, weather prediction, storm flying, night flying, long distance flying—there was really so much about flying that she didn't know! How could she fly now, when she knew nothing at all?
But Jarzyl was too nervous to speak up, and the moment passed. The flight instructor nodded encouragingly and gestured with her paw. “Alright then. Whenever you feel ready, just go! Fly!"
For a moment no one dared to move, and then suddenly a pair of hatchlings sprinted forward and leapt off the roof.
“Me first!"
“No, me!"
Throwing their wings open, they were suddenly just gone, and that was a signal to the rest of the two dozen young dragons. One by one, in pairs, or sometimes in groups of threes and fours, they all walked or ran up to the balcony to leap into the air, sometimes letting out excited yells or screams.
Jarzyl felt like she was paralyzed. She had to fly—of course she did. Every dragon flew, and she wasn't scared of something as fundamental as flying, except that she was. Because if she crashed again, she might end up injured or even killed. Yet her parents were waiting in the large grassy field located far below this tall building, and she couldn't let them down. But her fractured leg had been so very painful—sometimes she still had nightmares about a total loss of control leading to a violent impact and an unbearable stabbing pain, waking her up in the middle of the night…
Atlas interrupted her worrying. “Jarzyl? Let's go!" he said, standing up and taking a few steps forward before glancing back at her. “You can do it!"
Jarzyl got to her feet, but she didn't dare to run. “But I… I don't know…" she stammered. Both her hearts were pounding hard in her chest. She felt slightly dizzy, almost on the verge of panic.
By now almost all of the two dozen dragon hatchlings were gone. Including Jarzyl and Atlas, there were just five of them left up on the rooftop. Then four, then three, then just the two of them, standing there and not flying while the flight instructor waited patiently. “Jarzyl, Atlas? Ready to fly?" said the adult drakken in a kindly tone.
Jarzyl bounced up and down, hopping vertically on all four paws. “I'm not! I'm not ready! Arggggh!!!" She turned and head-butted Atlas, shoving her friend's shoulder. “I need you to be confident on my behalf, because I'm not! Ok let's go fly! I'm going to crash and die, but let's die together! You die first, please!"
Atlas didn't say anything, but he grinned and started running towards the roof edge, awkwardly skipping as he ran with his three legs. Jarzyl sprinted after him, opening up her wings and trying not to think about what she was about to do. She spread her wings wide open and flapped them as hard as she could, even as she kept running forward.
The edge of the roof got closer and closer, and Jarzyl kept thinking that she wanted to stop before she committed to that mad act of leaping off firm ground and into the air, but she distracted herself by screaming. “Ahhhhh—!"
Then suddenly the ground was gone, and she was dropping. The world was immense, and the air was all empty around her. There was nothing beneath her feet to stand up on, nothing at all to hold on to, no anchor point as she plummeted down.
Jarzyl wanted to be scared, but there wasn't even enough time to be scared. The air was rushing past her at an absurd rate, and all her thoughts were blown out of her head. Then suddenly the air was going just fast enough, and her wings caught the air and lifted her up.
Jarzyl screamed again, but this time from exhilaration instead of just fear. “Srrrkyaaahhhhh!" This wasn't really a triumphant roar, but dragons couldn't really roar until they reached adult age anyway.
As she swept through the air, Jarzyl felt like she was the most nervous and excited person alive. Her wings sliced through the air and redirected it so easily, pushing her upwards to counter the force of gravity. It felt totally natural and instinctive to alter the angle of her wings and her flight scales, gently rolling herself in one direction or the other to change course and circle around. “I'm flying! I'm flying! Ahhh, this is terrifying, but also amazing! Look at me!" she yelled.
“I told you that you could do it!"
Jarzyl glanced behind her to see Atlas trailing closely after her, riding in the wake created by her left wing. She flapped her wings excitedly. “Hey! Hey! Atlas! Hey! We're fledglings now!"
Atlas rocked his wings from side to side, turning quickly from left, to right, then back to level flight. “Yep!" he agreed.
Jarzyl tried to imitate his wing rocking manoeuvre, though she found it hard to have such a precise degree of control. “Oh… Oh yes… YEEESSS! I'm flying! We're flying!"
Down on the ground far below, a crowd of adult dragons were waiting near the base of the flight school's tower, looking upwards as the young dragons slowly glided downwards.
Zilarin squinted her eyes, trying to spot her daughter amongst the many fledglings. “Is that… is that Jarzyl? The one who just jumped? It looks like—no wait, that's not her. That one has red scales, not orange. Never mind."
Galon was sitting beside Zilarin, and his neck frill perked up in amusement. “After so many years, I would have thought you could recognize our daughter by now."
Zilarin snorted and poked Galon's side with her tail, then she entwined their tails as they sat side by side. “Was she not in this group? This is her group, right?"
“I think… Oh, there! There she is! Jarzyl just jumped! That's Atlas flying with her." Galon half-unfurled his wings and flapped them excitedly, then he wrapped one wing around his Zilarin's shoulders and hugged her close. “Can you see her? That's Jarzyl!"
Zilarin nodded, her gaze still locked skyward. “I see her. She's… she's flying! Our little hatchling is a hatchling no more. That's… She's beautiful. This is the literally the best moment of my entire life so far, seeing our daughter fly." Leaning against Galon's side, she let out a happy rumble. “Hmmrrr…
“Seems like just a few years ago she was cracking out of her egg, and now look at her go," Galon said.
They two drakken were quiet for a moment, then Zilarin spoke up. “Hmm, is she…? I think she's going to—"
Galon was quick to try reassuring her. “No, no, it just looks that way because of our perspective. They're probably at different altitudes."
Zilarin made a doubtful noise. “Uhh…"
Up in the sky, Jarzyl was still revelling in the glorious freedom provided by her own wings when Atlas tried to warn her. “Jarz? Jarz! Heads up!"
Jarzyl had been peering down at the ground, trying to see if she could spot her parents amongst the crowd of onlookers. On hearing Atlas, she glanced back up. “Huh? What? Oh! Oh, that's bad!" She was flying almost head on towards another young dragon named Knaster, and they were approaching quickly.
Jarzyl tried to turn her flight path to the left, but Knaster turned too, and so they still ended up on a collision course. “What are you doing?! Turn!" Knaster shouted at her.
“I am turning! You stop turning! Or turn the other way!" Jarzyl retorted. Simultaneously both young dragons tried to switch their turn directions, which meant they were still perfectly on an intercept course.
“Someone make a dive! Quick, before you hit each other!" Atlas shouted, but Jarzyl didn't dare to make that evasive manoeuvre. A dive would trade away some of her altitude for speed and it would let her fly under Knaster, but at the same time she was worried that he might try a dive too, and then they would just collide at high speed.
Knaster apparently had the same concern. Instead, the two of them just stared at each other as they slowly got closer and closer, both waiting for the other to dodge aside.
“Noooooooo!"
“Ahh!"
The two fledglings collided at low speed, bouncing off each other's sides. They both briefly stalled and lost some altitude before managing to recover and fly off in different directions. Jarzyl fluttered her wings as she tried to stabilize herself, then she turned her head to shout over her shoulder at Knaster. “I blame you!"
“Your fault!" Knaster shouted back, and then they were out of shouting distance as they kept flying their separate ways.
“Are you alright?" Atlas asked.
Jarzyl glanced in the other direction and realized that Atlas was still easily keeping pace with her, though now he was now flying just above her right shoulder. “What?! Of course I'm alright! Nothing can stop me!"
“Right." Atlas looked faintly amused, though Jarzyl found it hard to judge emotion while they were both gliding through the air. Her friend suddenly snapped his wings and did a quick spin, rolling his body completely without changing his flight heading. He dropped in altitude slightly, so he was now flying right beside her.
“What!! How did you do that?!" Jarzyl exclaimed. “How do you spin yourself without turning? That's… that's pitch without yaw, or something?"
Atlas flapped his wings to pick up a bit of speed, then he repeated the trick and did that same quick spin again. Jarzyl was very impressed. “It's easier than it looks. I can teach you, though I don't think we have much altitude to practice."
“What? Oh!" Jarzyl snapped her gaze away from her friend and back to her surroundings, which made her realize just how low they were getting. Whereas before the grass field had seemed so far away, now the ground seemed dangerously close. “Don't panic!" Jarzyl yelled, speaking mostly to herself. As they approached the ground, Jarzyl tried to remember what she needed to do. “Landing is easy, right? It's easier than taking off. That's what the flight school teacher said!"
“We should make a turn. We're landing with the wind, and we're running out of field," Atlas said, but Jarzyl shook her head.
“It's too late! I'm committed to landing! Ahhhhhh!" she screamed.
“There's still time to turn around and line up properly," Atlas replied.
“No, we're too close to the ground! Brace for impact! I mean landing!" Jarzyl yelled.
Right below the building the fledglings had just jumped off was a large rectangular field of grass, and they had been slowly circling around above the field as they descended. Now Jarzyl found herself coming up to the ground, but she was near the edge of the field and she was facing the wrong direction. Instead of heading towards a landing inside the grass field, she was headed away from it.
As the ground kept approaching, Jarzyl had a few seconds to realize that Atlas had been right. There had been enough time for her to turn around and line her landing up properly, though now there wasn't. She was close enough to see the blades of grass as they whizzed past just below her, and then suddenly the grass was gone and it was just concrete as she flew out of the field.
Jarzyl knew that she had to flare her landing—from her lessons, she knew that she needed to try and pull up at the last moment to minimize her speed, which would also allow her to land on her hindlegs first. But her estimation was off and she performed the landing flare too early. Instead of touching down nicely, Jarzyl swooped back upwards and gained a bit of altitude, then she stalled and ended up tumbling across the hard concrete ground. “Ooh! Ow! Ahhh!"
As she came to a stop, Jarzyl went completely limp. “Ok! Ok, touchdown. Perfect landing." Slowly she tried moving her limbs to make sure everything still worked—forelegs, hindlegs, tail, wings—and fortunately she seemed mostly uninjured. Some of the scales on her left side and flank had been scratched up and were bleeding lightly, but that tiny sting of pain didn't dampen her elation. “I'm amazing! I did it! I'm on the ground, and I didn't die!"
Dropping back onto her haunches, Jarzyl slowly caught her breath. Her scales hurt from where she'd hit the ground and her wing muscles felt sore even from this simple, short glide, but it was a good sort of pain. It was a tiredness that felt satisfying because of what she had achieved.
She turned around, just in time to Atlas perform a perfect landing. Unlike her, he didn't stall, stumble, or make the slightest mistake. Even with just three legs, his landing was softer and somehow more graceful than hers. “You did it too! Nice!" Jarzyl told him.
“Nice," Atlas agreed, which was all he managed to say before Jarzyl ran over and hugged him so aggressively it was more like a tackle.
“This is the best! We're fledglings! We can fly, and nothing will ever stop me!" She declared. Releasing her friend, Jarzyl repeatedly jumped up and down, throwing her wings open and perking her neck frill up victoriously. She could see her parents running over from the field, and she waved her wings at them excitedly. “This was worth it. This was worth everything! I can fly!"
END