This is not the first time you have flown, Yue. Your adventure started with you whisked off into the sky in the arms of a girl with the grace and power of the full moon. Your feet stepped upon empty air as though it was solid and you felt the wind run through your hair and dress and heart as though they were transparent. That was different from this; Hyra's flight was the magic of dreams. This is the machinery of muscle and fire. The forces involved in each flex of those mighty wings, each rush of air and rise and fall across those strokes of wings, it all contributes to a fearsome [i]respect[/i] for what flight is. Flight is not a game for Princess Jessic, not least when hauling three maidens bound together in a tangled net along with two riders. Gravity is not a trivial force to be disregarded. It takes not just the power of shining muscles to send a dragon aloft but hard-won skill, understanding of wind and momentum, when to climb and when to dive and when to glide and when to angle your course to catch the thermals emanating from long black roads crossing the land below like ribbons. Flight is natural for dragons, you may have thought! Well, running for days at a time is natural for human beings. 

To fly so long and strong over such a distance while carrying five humans - that's not something you can do just [i]because[/i] you're a dragon. That's something you can do because you're an athlete, because you train for it, because you're filled with passion and dedication and the desire to be the best you can be.

This might be the first time you have flown, Chen. Certainly, you glide regularly, and Sourcefall is an enormously vertical city with many brilliantly designed elevators and marvels of vertical transportation. But flight? Upon wings of fire, overland, from this altitude? This is a rare gift indeed. You might even find more time to appreciate it were you not somehow on the bottom of this pile, crushed beneath Rose from the River. Perhaps you would be able to appreciate the soaring rivers and valleys, the strange rectangle clusters of houses, the distant horizon where you can even see your home surrounded by clouds and mist, along with the glittering space elevators that ring the equator at regular intervals. If only you were not being so crushed by a girl too good to even say a harsh word to.

This is the first time you have flown, Rose. The ancient world had no use for the open sky, filled as it was by the feared and hated suns. Even when the suns had fallen they did not turn to flight in atmosphere, instead weaving mighty elevators all the way into outer space so that they could bypass this clear and blue sky entirely. The ancient world, for all its hubris, never dreamed of flight. If anything was to take to the air it was to be drones or demons.

And now here you are. In an open sky beneath a shining sun and a glittering orbital ring of sunshards, performing an action that your programming never conceived. The blockage of your cognitive functions emphasize rather than dampen this effect. You've got no way to rationalize this, no way to compress it into your worldview. You were born ten thousand miles below ground and the fires of the planet's core warmed the forge where your alloys were smelted, and now here you are above it.