Chapter 2
The first leg of the trios journey sends them straight north. The frustration of the unexpected storm causes Rainbow Dash to punch herself straight through the clouds layer. Twilight fights to keep her eyes open to the wind, however holding her head up proves to be too much and all she can make out is the strain on Rainbow Dash's wings. Twilight tries to protest the acceleration to such an extreme speed but Rainbow Dash is unable to hear anything but wind.
They reach, pass below, and leave behind Cloudsdale in less then an hour after they started flying and the mountain range beyond the floating city passes by nearly just as fast. It is at the edge of the mountain range that Rainbow Dash spots a small stream they had planed to land near.
Landing with her front hooves dipping in the water allows Rainbow Dash to drop her head in up to her ears. She takes a long draft of the cool river water as Twilight makes quick work of the harness straps around Spike then herself. Once her back legs are released Twilight jumps free from Rainbow Dash and immediately slips on the rocky ground.
Twilight smiles at the tingling sensation that jumps into her legs, "Rainbow, how do you get your legs use to not walking after so long?" she asks while studding the tremors coming from her hooves.
Pulling her head from the stream, Dash grins and forces herself not to laugh. "We only just started and you already lost your land legs? What are you going to do if you aren't able to stand when we get back to Ponyville tomorrow?" from that Rainbow Dash plunges her head back into the water and takes another draft.
Pulling her legs beneath herself, Twilight pulls open the saddle bag saying, "I'll just make sure that I'm use to this before we go home in the morning." Inside the bag sit the three books. She pulls the whole stack out and shuffles the together. "Alright Dash, we have one hour for rest before we pack up and head to our next stop."
Rainbow Dash's ears flip back and she pulls her head out of the water, turning to Twilight with a frown. "An hour! You want us to wait for an hour?"
"Of course, we planed everything out already, one hour here, then once we reach our next stop we will wait for an hour again, finally we'll make the last stretch of our track – once we land we do all the calibrations of my equipment and after all that the experiment can begin."
"But the storm, it threw everything off. We were late leaving and..."
"And I have already made adjustments for that. I set aside a three hour rest period once we reach our destination."
"The storm only made you thirty minutes late," Spike adds "and if you think of how dry my eyes got from flying here we might have actually passed up our planed time. I mean did any of you two see how fast we went under Cloudsdale?"
"Of course we did!" Rainbow Dash shouts while pumping her hoof at the chance to boast. She flings herself into the air, makes a powerful turn, and feels her tail being pulled backwards.
"This is a one hour rest stop Rainbow! That means no flying." Twilight's magic pulls at Rainbow Dash harder, forcing her to land. "You need all your energy to get us to our destination and preform the experiment, not show off while you wait." holding her friend down, Twilight pulls the bottom book from the stack and floats it over. "You can read this while letting your wings rest."
Rainbow Dash looks skeptically in Twilight's direction and reads the title, "Daring Do' – The Parasite's Lament and the Grown Fanatics." The illustration on the book cover is split between an angry swarm of rainbow colored Parasprites and an overgrown forest with glowing eyes.
"It's not officially been released yet. When I told Princess Celestia about our plan for today and if she had anything that might help it was in the mail the next day." Twilight's smile gleams brightly with an inward joy at the gift as she levitates the book closer to Rainbow Dash.
Without a word Rainbow Dash takes the book from the air and flips to the first chapter. "So, just one hour right?" she asks with a sedated tone before falling into the book. Twilight watches Rainbow Dash's eyes dart across the pages before turning back to the saddle bag and lifting up the top of the two books.
She opens to the table of continence of a book with the title of 'Aerial Physics' and turns to the page for high altitude flight. "Spike, will you make sure we only stay for an hour?" she says before falling into the pages.
The hour passes with both ponies deep into their books. Twilight is the first to come out of the restful period and when she looks over the group she feels a warm glow cross her face and smiles.
"Rainbow – Rainbow Dash, it's time to get ready," Twilight's voice slips into Rainbow Dash's imagination as a very quiet but very large stone Pegasus. The granite stone face she imagines causes Dash to jump back from the book and turn to Twilight expecting the same gray visage.
"You're not... what?" Dash stammers and shakes her head to get the image to fade away.
"We've stayed here long enough. It's time to get off the ground and on to our next stop." Twilight says. She uses her magic to lift the book from between Rainbow Dash's hooves, look at the page number, and send it over to the saddle bag. "Spike, are you ready to go."
For his part in resting, Spike was fast asleep and curled up under the shade of a rock. Twilight's excitement to get going keeps her from feeling any announce at him.
"Wasn't he supposed to be keeping track of the time!" Rainbow Dash shrieks as the idea of them losing time sinks into her mind. She scurries up to her feet then launches into the air, stretching her wings out before the next leg of the trip.
Twilight turns to her friend without a hint of concern and blushes lightly. "I kind of knew he might do this," she says, as she uses her magic to lift Spike out from under the rock and lowers him in front of herself. "but not to worry..."
"Not to worry? With Spike falling asleep like that we have no idea how long we've been here."
"Yes we do." is Twilight's rebuttal in Spikes defense. "I've been reading almost my whole life, and of course I memorized how many pages I can read in an hour and made sure to stop myself not one page late."
Rainbow Dash lands directly in front of Twilight and stairs at her in disbelieve. "But you read all kinds of books. You could have counted wrong or – or."
"Dash, I will stake our friendship on the fact that we have not over shot our stay." Twilight states while proudly holding a hoof to her chest. "Now we need to get ourselves together and go right away."
Twilight sets herself in the harness and takes all of five minuets to strap herself in, she gets Spike to wake up before cinching him up too. Once she has the saddle bag secured to her own back she gives a light tapping to Rainbow Dash's sides and readies her stomach for the lurch of take off.