On wings of Glimmer

The six friends were once again collected.

Ponyville had been pretty calm in the recent past, so there had been little reason to assemble all six of them. There was now, though, so they all sat in the warm grass somewhere near Ponyville, yet private. There was a tree nearby, but nopony felt the need to avoid the sun. They all preferred to enjoy its warmth instead.

Everypony had their own special companion with them. Pinkie had Gummy attached to her head, Fluttershy had taken the opportunity to get Angel out of the house, Applejack played with Winona, Twilight had brought a slightly overweight Glimmer.

She had done that for more than the simple reason of being with her. When she cleared her throat, everypony looked up from their pet.

"Lemme get this straight. Y'all been foolin' 'round and now she's... with foal?" Applejack hadn't fully grasped the long and embarassing explanation yet. "How?"

The blush on Twilight's face intensified. "Erm, you know what they say about unicorns?"

"They're all fill..." Applejack spoke her mind freely, but was interrupted by Rainbow Dash. "That's just bad rumors, and we all know it."

"It's kind of true. When a unicorn loses control of their body, they may release bursts of energy. As it turns out, magic is so specific to one pony that it even carries their DNA."

"You... you..." Fluttershy was past her zone of comfort. As was Rarity, who backed up from the group a little from the revealed unicorn secret.

An awkward silence followed. Glimmer was fully hiding behind her wings. Rainbow Dash broke the silence.

"C'mon girls, don't act like that. You make it look like that was the first foal in centuries. My offer to help you lose those extra pounds still stands, by the way."

The months passed, with Glimmer showing ever increasing temper in any direction. Before too long, the mothers were together for a special moment, overwatched by a purple unicorn nurse.

"You can do this, Glimmer. You're the strongest mare I've ever seen, don't let such a tiny little thing get you down." Twilight attempted to encourage her love.

"Tiny little? How about you have the next one, I'll show you how tiny they are when they're ripping you apart from the inside. Or, better, why don't you just have this one?" The only thing that could make Glimmer sound more threatening would be if she had fangs for snapping after Twilight like she did vocally.

"Let's focus on what's ahead of us right now."

"Kinda hard to concentrate. Do you have any idea what this feels like?"

"No... But..." An idea came into Twilight's mind. It might work, but would mean a true test to her devotion to the pegasus mare. "Fetch me a good seat, now!" She adressed the nurse pony.

After sitting down, Twilight cast a complicated spell, hoping it would work as intended and not backfire, causing twice the pain to both of them.

Glimmer's mind was freed. All of her senses were still screaming out in overwhelming pain, but it had lessened for some reason. Looking to her side, she saw the unicorn clenching tightly in her seat, and understood.

"No! Don't do that, cancel it, I can do this on my own!"

"All... For you." Twilight had trouble speaking, not yet accomodated to what she was experiencing.

"Couldn't you just take the pain and push it somewhere nopony can feel it?"

Twilight slowly began to be able to repress the pain. "You tell me."

Glimmer was not at her height for obvious reasons, but she wasn't dumb that day either. "Fifth rule... Matter, energy and magic cannot be destroyed or created, they can only be moved. And since this is both energy and powerful magic, it could cause serious harm if not put into the same place in a new host."

"And thus, the only way to help a pony in pain..."

"Is to split what it's feeling and transfer a part of it over to another."

It came without complications or, thanks to Twilight's spell, serious pain for Glimmer. A beautiful, healthy pegasus foal. As a surprise visitor, the princess herself came in shortly afterwards, to catch a glimpse of her priced pupil's offspring. At least that was what she officially claimed, but she had much more important business with Twilight Sparkle.

Overflowing with joy from all that happened that day, Twilight came back into the room where her family was located. Only then, she remembered she hadn't dispelled the earlier spell, then her mind went blank.

"Looks like she's coming back. Nasty, that's what it is."

Twilight could barely make out her situation. It didn't feel like she was standing or sitting any more. The lower half of her vision was white. In the upper half, there were some figures in front of her.

She attempted to speak, but all that came out of her was a distant mumble.

"Sure thing she is! Who's the storyteller?"

"Applejack! She most likely can hear us, you'll worry her unnecessarily."

Twilight slowly opened her eyes fully. As she did that, the chatter continued.

"What's this fuss about?" An unknown voice called from the right.

"Looks like she over here's coming back to us."

"Looks like she's already here to me. Hey Twilight!" Pinkie Pie eagerly waved a hoof to welcome Twilight.

The new pony came into Twilight's view, carrying a small flashlight and shining it into her eyes. Even with the blinding light, she still recognised her as the same nurse as before.

"Whe..."

"Why do they always have to ask that. 'Where am I?' What happened?' 'Who are you?'. Why can't they ask stuff like, I don't know, 'How are you doing?'." The nurse quickly remembered her customs and continued with a friendly voice. "Aw, excuse me. Good morning dear, I'm nurse Midnight, you're still in the hospital, and for the what..."

She seemed to pick up something nopony else noticed.

"Come ON! As for the what, it seems like you'd best ask your friends. I'm sorry, but I have to go, everypony's just too busy around here." She rushed out the door as quickly as she had come in.

"...Yeah. Now, take it slow, dear. That hit was nothing to just walk off." Rarity picked up the conversation again after the unicorn had left.

"How's the baby?" Twilight wanted to jump to her hooves and search for Glimmer, but she was pushed back into her bed.

"Take it slow, I said. The little treasure's fine."

Twilight attempted to struggle, but was stopped by a throbbing headache. "Nnnngh. What happened to me?"

"When you came back after talking with the princess, you somehow lost balance and hit your head on one of the bars of the furniture. That's what the nurse told us when she brought us to you."

Her memories slowly came back to Twilight. "How long have I been out? Where's Glimmer?"

"Not too long. Glimmer's resting right now, but she looks pretty nice again already. Almost twice as good as you'd expect."

With her chain of memories nearly complete, Twilight explained to her friends what they couldn't know about what exactly had happened.

Nearing the end of her explanations, Twilight was interrupted by Pinkie. "Is this the part where you explain those?" She pointed a hoof at Twilight's side, which was completely concealed by a blanket.

Four ponies looked to where the hoof pointed, then up the foreleg to Pinkie, then to Twilight, all with a confused look on their faces.

It took much of Twilight's concentration, but she eventually managed to expand them. The blanket was pushed away from her as a pair of lavender wings took their deserved space.

They were not cheap, one-day wings like Rarity once had. They were made of flesh and feathers, nerves connecting them to Twilight's spine.

Needless to say, everypony in the room, including Pinkie Pie, despite the fact that she had seemingly known of the wings beforehand, was plainly stunned.

Twilight chuckled. "Aren't they lovely? Gift from the princess, since, you know, my family's made of pegasi now. And they say pegasi have some of the most amazing magic in Equestria, so I could research that too."

That didn't help the hanging jaws of the assembled ponies. Rarity regained her composure. "But you said earlier that magic couldn't create much more than my morning dew ones. How come you now have such real wings?"

"That's still the princess herself we're talking about. And... Well, she didn't actually cast that much of a spell. All she did was focus my desire to be together with Glimmer and the foal. So that it'd manifest and give me the power of flight."

"You can do that better! Spread 'em wide, and beat them like a hate.. I mean, dough." Rainbow Dash was giving Twilight flight lessons. She was progressing fairly quickly, but still had trouble with coordination. Fluttershy floated next to Dash, watching Twilight attempt to take to the air. Rainbow had foreseen her troubles and brought her to a spot some way out of Ponyville where the airspace was clear of any buildings she could crash into.

The only object nearby was a tree, which, upon closer inspection, looked very much like the one they had ignored during the announcement so many months back already.

Twilight focused, spreading her new wings as far as she could and then beating furiously. Once again, she took off a few feet above the ground, but lost balance, swung over and landed on the ground on her back, legs stretched high into the air.

"Better. But you still lose synch. Focus on beating both at the exact same time."

Twilight groaned. "Gah. That's like suddenly adding a third pair of legs. Just how am I supposed to control them?"

"You'll get used to it, I suppose. Is this really the farthest you can stretch?" Rainbow rubbed along the lavender wings with a hoof, extending them by a clear additional hoof length. "If you're having problems with the outward movement, try retracting them a bit and then going back out."

Twilight noticed that she could probably do much better with a proper start, then remembered the tips Glimmer had given Scootaloo. She decided to try it. Taking off properly was at least close to the hardest thing about flying, aside from keeping balance.

She took some momentum, brought herself to correct angle with a quick push from her forelegs, pushed off with all her might from her back legs, closed her eyes and took a heavy beat with the outstretched wings.

Twilight hadn't expected to stay airborne for more than a few seconds. When she opened her eyes again, Twilight was more than surprised to see herself on level with Rainbow Dash.

"Perfect! Now, easy does it. Keep up the rhythm for a bit. Imitate mine if you feel like you need to."

Next up were balance exercises. Twilight had gotten into the rhythm of beating her wings, but she still would eventually shift her weight incorrectly, try to compensate for it, and end up tumbling over in the opposite direction.

Needless to say, for a unicorn that was used to balance on no less than three legs for all of her life, it was extremely hard to keep her balance when reduced to a single axis and nothing but wings gained only recently to correct.

Twilight, after a long time of exercise, managed to keep her body orientation at last.

"Good. Now that you can fly without falling, let's fly."

"Huh?" Rainbow's choice of words was above Twilight, who still sacrificed a lot of her concentration to stay in the air.

"You know, like, tip forward and move?"

"Erm..." Twilight didn't feel nearly confident enough to start flying around already. An idea of how she'd get out of this situation until she could practice later sparked her mind. "... Sure!"

As discreetly as she could, she took herself into a magical grip and pushed forward slowly. It worked, but then, eyes closed, Twilight noticed that she had forgotten to keep her wings synchronised. Faster than she'd expected, she fell forward and onto the welcoming ground.

She looked up to see a satisfied-looking Rainbow Dash above her. Fluttershy helped Twilight up, then looked up to Rainbow with a confused look."What was that for?"

"When I say fly, I mean fly, and not magic. I didn't do anything but speed up the inevitable, anyway." Her eyes wandered to the horizon. "Not like anything could have happened. You were barely two ponies high above the ground, remember? Now, I see you want to practice, so I'll leave you. There's some work coming for me. On the other hoof... Stay here for a minute."

When she returned, Rainbow carried a small cloud from the Everfree forest. "Try landing on this. We should know if you can stand on clouds like us real pegasi before you come to Cloudsdale, drop right through the floor and never be seen again."

The cloud was out of reach for Twilight, so she jumped up into an unsteady flight and just so managed to land safely on the small cloud presented for her.

"Surprising how often things go right all of a sudden when you stop paying attention to them, huh?"

Twilight noticed that, in order to reach the cloud, she had obviously had to move while flying, something she hadn't expected to be able to do yet. The movements necessary had just happened subconsciously.

"Practice what you've learned today. Maybe... Maybe practice using magic while hovering. Then come see me again when you don't have problems staying in the air."

"Alright. Thanks for the lesson, Rainbow. Oh, one more thing."

"Anything, sweet. What's on your mind?"

Twilight's face formed a sinister grin. She flew just barely off the cloud she and Rainbow were standing on. "Revenge." Twilight kicked the cloud into small pieces. She barely managed to land on her hooves afterwards, but was satisfied when she saw that Rainbow had been taken completely by surprise and had landed on her side.

"That's for dropping me all the way from Cloudsdale that time."