STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

"When in Risa..." Harry said, shrugging and then turning on his tricorder.

"Where is Risa?" Lyan asked.

Harry found several large lifesigns that were moving about in a way that suggested a herd to him. He walked that way, trying to explain Risa to Lyan in a way that wouldn't mortify him or break the Prime Directive any more than he was already...bending it. Of course, these people could build positronic brains. That was where his classes on the PD had always seriously broken down - warp drive was such an obvious demarcation point, but it was also so clearly arbitrary. Half the debates had been 'okay, but what if this civilization doesn't have warp drive, but does have...X' and then debating the merits and demerits of different kinds of contact, and how much contact could be allowed with civilizations that did have a warp drive, but...

He stepped over a hill mid sentence that had started with: "Well, uh, we have ships, but they're not really like sailing ships, they're-" and then almost walked straight into a bright, iridescent rainbow colored wing, emerging from the broad haunch of a pastel pink Terran style horse. Harry yelped, stumbled backwards, and landed on his ass. "It's a Pegasus!"

"Well, yeah," Lyan said, the 'no shit, idiot' left implied.

Harry stood up. The Pegasus was one of many - the rest of the herd were grazing, their wings folded against the sides. This one was among the smaller of the herd - and he huffed his nose as he looked down at Harry, who still felt rather tiny next to the beast. He'd never known horses were so...big. Before. Maybe it was the wings. Maybe it was the fact he wasn't seeing them on a screen or a book. He held out his palm. "Hey there, Pegasus...ey..." he said, slowly as the Pegasus leaned his head down, sniffing at his palm curiously.

"Well," Harry said, chuckling, petting the broad head gently. "They seem nice."

"That worked?" Lyan asked, blinking. "I...always heard that Pegasi were very flighty. Haughty even." She said, while Harry walked around, then gingerly put his hands on the creature's back. He didn't seem to mind as Harry swung himself up onto his back, settling home behind the wings, which spread, then fluttered. Harry smiled down at Lyan.

"All right," he said. "Though, I'm not sure this can-"

The Pegasus beat once and they shot into the air.

"-flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Harry clung to the neck of the beast, his fingers clutching to his fur as the pegasus shot towards the mountains - so fast that Harry was fairly sure that it was about to smash into the rocks out of sheer spite. At the last second, his wings flared, twisted, cupped the wind and they shot off to the left, whipping past a pass of glittering white snow. The wings beat again and again, driving them forward faster and faster, and the pegasus exploded through a cloudbank and towards another sheer cliff face. Harry screamed and tugged back slightly. "PULL UP!"

The Pegasus did - at the last second, his hooves prancing cheerfully against the snow as they banked up and up...and then flipped end over end, tail trailing in the air. Harry felt his body losing contact and he clenched his legs tighter, screaming even more as the Pegasus dove, then snapped his wings wide - catching a thermal and soaring above the world, which spread out as a glittering patchwork of forests, prairie, plains and hills, all of it under an infinite light blue sky, bisected by a thick band of pinkish light from the planetary ring system, the shepherding moons hanging like gemstones in the highest reaches of the heavens.

Harry panted, blinking as he looked down at the vastness. "Whoa..." He whispered.

He'd seen worlds from space and hadn't felt this high up.

Then he saw one of those patchwork ecologies shimmer and crackle, like a hologram fuzzing. For just a moment, the rolling yellow and gold grass turned into a more familiar expanse of black rubble and snorting, growling, mechanical monsters - the vast mining apparatus on the Vhorni homeworld. Then, between blinks, the world snapped back to normal in the region.

"Did you see that?" Harry asked, before remembering he was riding an animal.

The Pegasus snorted and flicked his ears in a way that seemed to mean yes.

Harry frowned. Was he...

Was he anthropomorphizing the winged horse? Did...

"...does that happen often?" he asked, feeling half like a fool and half like a Starfleet officer.

The Pegasus bobbed his head from side to side and kinda waggled his ears. Kinda like saying: Eh, kinda.

"More often than it used to, though?"

The Pegasus shrugged.

He shrugged.

Harry could feel it against his thighs.

Harry wasn't sure which was most shocking. The fact this creature could fly, since, scaling laws normally were a thing. And aerodynamics. And...mass? There were so many damn problems with this. Next to that, the fact he was sentient was actually LESS shocking, there were tons of uplifts in the Federation - even if no one had managed it on horses. One of his crewmates was a dolphin! But then he slapped his forehead and pulled out his tricorder. He was in a prime place to-

The Pegasus dove again. They streaked down towards the hills again, and Harry had to cling to the tricorder and the Pegasus at once to keep from being flung off. Those wings caught the air, beat once, and then they were landed, hooves thumping on the grass. They seemed to be a few miles off from the herd, landed near a copse of trees that provided some shade around a few small, pale white flowering plants that looked faintly sinister. Harry laughed, then yelped as the Pegasus bucked his hips, making a whickering noise that clearly communicated: Get off!

"Sorry, sorry," Harry said, then swung himself off, slightly bowlegged by his experiences. "That was amazing, you know, I...thank you, uh...uh..."

A pale white light glowed.

"Uh..."

"You're welcome," a husky, female voice spoke as the light faded and a slender, pink skinned, winged woman stood before him, her wings a glittering rainbow hue that caught and refracted the light like glittering, iridescent mirrors. She was completely and carelessly naked, her arms stretching above her head languidly as she opened her bright blue eyes and grinned at him. "You're a pretty good rider. But I thiiiiiink I need to make sure." She said, then walked forward, touching his chest. "What do you think?" Her finger prodded him backwards and Harry blinked as his back pressed against a tree.

"R-...Ri...rider?" Harry stammered, brain completely shorting out.

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CURRENT TRUTHS: "Dimensionally unstable world?"
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
Oh my...

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