She perched on her salamence's shoulders, with one foot balanced at the base of each wing. She had a hold of one of the spines growing out of his skull in each hand. Her body was tense with anticipation.
She forced herself to relax when he swung his head around. Below them, her flygon charged off an outcrop of rock to fly down to the river that wound throughout the area. With his neck twisted around and down, the blood quickly started rushing to her head, but if she told him to bring his neck back up, she knew he wouldn't listen anyway.
He roared at the flygon, the volume of it thrumming up her legs and reverberating in her chest. It made it hard to breathe, which, when paired with her growing light-headedness, was not the most comfortable sensation in the world. Fortunately, the roar quickly subsided to a rumbling growl, mostly in annoyance that the flygon had ignored him.
Her flygon flew to whip up sandstorms and to escape. At any rate, she'd grown too big to ride him years ago.
She quickly tensed up again when he started moving underneath her, only just managing to get a sturdy enough hold before he threw himself off the edge of the cliff. She felt the bottom drop out of her stomach and let out an exhilarated whoop while she still could.
For a few glorious seconds, they fell.
The rock cliff rushed past them, barely a couple feet away from her salamence's belly. The wind tore at her hair, her clothes, her face, her breath, trying to pull her from the precarious safety of her perch on his shoulders. The ground below them was rapidly growing larger, and branches, flowers, and fruits started appearing in the forest canopy. Just when she could start to see some individual leaves, he pulled out from the dive; the sudden change in direction pushed her body down, and she cracked her jaw against his neck before she repositioned herself.
Her charizard flew from Point A to Point B. It took more effort than it was worth to get her to change that.
Not wanting to give up the speed from his dive with gliding, he started rapidly beating his wings. With a sharp flick of his tail and practically rolling on his side, he turned until he was flying with the wind, instead of against it. He roared again, but still didn't get a response from that stupid flygon.
Her skarmory flew to hunt and to chase. She was also rather pointy to sit on.
She quickly threw her weight to the left, both to help him make the turn and to stop herself from falling off. For a split second, her view was unimpeded by his neck. Admittedly, they were too low for there to be much of a view, but they were so close. She could see leaves, twigs, large branches, minuscule flowers, and round and spiky fruits. She just made out a flash of smooth blue and fluffy whiteness nestled under some large, thick leaves, before he flattened himself out of the turn.
Her thighs and abdomen quickly started to burn with the effort it took to keep up with his wing strokes. Sure, she could hold herself still and straight, but she'd rather feel the burn and keep herself parallel with his neck. Straight meant less pain, parallel meant less air resistance, which translated to more speed.
Her fearow flew through the forest, not above it. If he ever went above the canopy, it wasn't very high, or for very long.
The flygon was forgotten as he gained more height. This was what he had always wanted. Not to be powerful, or fierce, or to have a prime territory. Those were all nice things, but what he'd really wanted was to be able to soar above the world, though no one's power but his own.
He was quite high now, but not high enough. It was times like this that he cursed the constant clear blue skies that dominated this time of year; it was a lot easier to find the rising columns of warm air that he so loved when there was a big, poofy cloud above them. He banked to the right, there was a lake around here somewhere and there was usually a good thermal right above it.
Her tropius flew from tree to tree. They were short flights, and slow enough so that he could sniff out any hidden fruits below him.
She lay down along his neck when he gave up his frenzied pace in favour of circling round and round, letting the warm air push them upwards. The ever-present wind decreased, now that he wasn't forcing his way through the air, but with every foot they rose, the temperature dropped. Lying against his neck did provide some warmth, but if she wanted comfort, she would have stayed on the ground.
She shimmied forward until her chest was draped over his head and her legs were clenched just below his jaw. She knew she was now too far forward for him to easily compensate for her weight, but she'd done this before and knew that he still could. She let go of her salamence's spines, sat up, and lifted her arms into the air with a scream of defiance that was quickly whipped away by the wind.
The icy wind cut straight through her clothes to her skin. Each breath stung her nose and throat, and her fingers were quickly going numb.
Below her, Hoenn's tall, lush forests were nothing more than a verdant carpet, broken up by the occasional sapphire lake, or silvery city. To her left, the mountains rose up, with Mt. Chimney at the northern end of the range, belching out plumes of smoke as it always did.
Her salamence flew to fly. He was the only one who would take her to these heights, for no reason other than that he could.
He roared again, his bellow easily overpowering his trainer's puny squeals of joy. He shouldn't call her puny, though. After all, it was because of her that he got strong enough to force his body to change and grow his wings.
Content that his trainer was enjoying this just as much as he was, he folded in his wings.
The pair plummeted.