Chen could fly perfectly well, thank you very much! Now sure, sword flight wasn't a high altitude sort of thing, but she could clear the treetops and she would take your bet if you offered her a sprint against Jessic. Sword flight was magical and direct. A simple spell could work slow levitation or a gentle glide, yes. But better execution and more complex magic might give you a dash or a sprint, the sword almost tugging you along, so fast did it want to sail. And if you became comfortable with it, you could relax into long stretches of overland flight riding atop the sword at moderate to high speed. It may not offer the sort of bird's eye view of a high flyer or access to the sky castle, but Chen had gotten used to her skills and that was how she could travel so far from home yet be expected to be responsive to her parents. Sword flight was freedom! It was the exhilaration of going fast, and the little knowledge of special places to gaze at the sunsets that only a skilled climber could reach on foot. Chen hadn't just taken up painting on a whim, she wanted to capture what she saw in these special spots around the world. 

But, never had Chen flown with a dragon or been carried by one. There was a vast power at play here. The curving, sinuous muscles pressing her tightly, and even greater the way that the wind rolled and twisted and Jessic rolled and twisted with it. The sound of the air was different, a dull roar like being immersed in water instead of the light sound of the wind rushing past from Chen's normal flying. The pressure was different too, a lurching, stomach dropping, who knows what topsy turvy sort of pressure rather than the growing resistance of going faster and faster. And as they started rising higher and higher, there was a prickling on Chen's skin and little bits of cold formed where her thick dress and luscious gems didn't protect her. 

This was a type of magic, but far different from the direct dash of the sword ignoring the world around it. This was in tune with the natural world. It was a trained magic so assured that it felt like it was natural and easy, the payoff of years of practice appearing simpy as the way the world ought to be. Yet it was simultaneously terrifying as the wind itself can be terrifying: fierce, wild, impossible to predict. 

The experience would have been more than perfect had Chen merely been able to concentrate on the ride, the pressure of Jessic's muscles and scales as she strove through the air. But on [i]top[/i] of that (or on bottom rather) was a humongous and blissful Rose pressed so tight into Chen that it was difficult to catch more than a few glimpses of the distant terrain. Instead, the rolling hills Chen saw were muscles and the mountains a chest, the mountains of Rose pressed right up against her by Jessic's talons keeping them safe against the rushing wind. 

Chen blushed and the blood rushed to her skin to warm her against the cold. Her dress, already thick with its hoop skirt and rolls of fabric was whipping, whirling, and whapping against her legs where it wasn't pressed thick and tight against her by Rose's bulk. She felt rather like a child, all wrapped up in rolls and rolls of blankets to stay warm, though it was just the twisting of her dress and the pressure of Rose's body and enthusiastic hugs and nudges. But, despite the ever-growing height laid out vast before them and the chill warring with the warming of her cheeks, Chen felt safe. S-she even buried her head a little deeper into Rose for a snuggle, w-which was just to help keep her skin warm, of course!