The next few days went by rather quickly. It was all a blur of training and planning. Planning for what, you ask? Why, my “Spreading Your Wings Party” of course! What, you thought Pinkie was going to let me get away with growing wings and not have a party? Don’t be absurd!

For the first two days, I just stayed in mostly. I still needed a while to recover from the pain of the transformation. In that time, though, I was able to practice folding my wings in, which made life exponentially easier (seriously, for the first day, I moved entirely with my wings in full spread). As well, I got adjusted to how my body felt overall now that it had to accommodate for two wings on my back. They added a good ten pounds to my overall weight, actually (you know, given the bone structure and all).

When the proper adjustments had been finalized, I began my training. Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and I found a nice open space in town to practice at. Of course, the beginning stages of my flight capabilities were a complete and utter mess. At first, Dash would just have me hover in place. That I could accomplish easily enough. Hovering is as easy as jumping the air and flapping my wings as hard as possible. With time and practice, the task would be effortless.

Then, I was asked to hover over to a certain location, usually towards Dash or Fluttershy. On my first try, I wound up face-planting harshly onto the ground. It wasn’t pleasant in the slightest, as I’m sure you can imagine. Within a couple hours of training, I was able to perform a controlled hover. Ascending and descending were trivial as well, by that point. The following days, practice mostly consisted of increasing and decreasing my speed. And oh the joys of crashing and crashing, let me tell you!

At the end of four days of training, my face was covered in scars, I had sprained my right ankle, and if I had landed any differently on one occasion, I would have broken my arm. So, as you can imagine, flying is not as simple as birds and Pegasi make it out to be. What made it even stranger is that, when I had first met Fluttershy, we spent a while just practicing flying. I actually managed to teach her so much. Yet, now that I needed the practice, I could recollect none of my lessons. Twas a darn shame indeed.

However, the scars, bruises, and injuries were all well worth it, for by the end of the week, my camaraderie of friends and I were ready to celebrate in style! Twilight had spoken to Celestia about reserving the castle gardens in Canterlot for our small soirée. It was a modest little party, but Pinkie completely over-accentuated the ‘wing’ aspect of the party. Seriously, the cake (which was enormous) was in the shape of a pair of wings, the balloons were wings, everypony (even Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash) wore fake wings, and hell even the confetti was in the shape of wings! I was ambivalent at first sight of everything, but within minutes, I was all for it.

And we partied hard! There were shenanigans all around! As we started to eat the cake, I smacked Rainbow’s plate out of her hooves, to which she responded by picking up the fallen slice and slapping it in my face. While she (and Spike, obviously) were laughing, I in turn ate the cake on my face, savored it, and then promptly began a cake war.

“Fluttershy, the enemy has opened fire! Get down!” I shouted, flipping the table over on its side, with the cake falling behind it, giving us all the ammo. Fluttershy laughed and followed suit.

“Ah! The cake!” Pinkie shouted. Her cries were meaningless, as comical, cake-filled war had begun! We grabbed cake chunks and began chucking them at Rainbow and Spike. The rest of the gang took sides. Pinkie, on the other hand, decided to fight on her own. She attacked everypony, which was quite honestly the most unfair thing she could have done, as she dominated everypony.

By the end, everypony was on the floor laughing. I looked over at Fluttershy, who was completely covered in icing rather than cake chunks, and licked some of it off of her. This tickled her in the cutest ways, evidently by her giggling. As I made my way to her face, I gave her small kisses on her cheeks.

“See what you’ve done, silly,” she said to me.

“What, make this party twenty percent more fun?” I retorted, smiling giddily. And before I could react, Pinkie tackled me to the ground.

“You are gonna eat cake, and you are gonna like it, buster!” she cried out. I was dying of laughter as she tried to shove cake belligerently down my throat. Everypony else was laughing at my predicament, of course, as it seemed I was on my own to get out of this one. Eventually, I gave into the pressure and took my punishment; cake. Seriously, best cake ever!

By the end of the party, the gardens were bereft of cleanliness. Our jocular antics had left our party area a complete and utter mess. But nonetheless, we were all smiles and laughs because of them. Thanks to the magic of Twilight and Rarity, we, as well as the gardens, were all cleaned up in short time. We wrapped up the party with some dancing and small games. When the time came to wrap everything up, we were all quite torpid, void of all vim and vigor. But it we were not without joy and cheer, for we had one last special event planned.

As night had fallen upon Equestria, we gazed to the stars. The luminescent satellites had always interested me, and in Equestria, light pollution was nearly non-existent. You could see the stars perfectly. It was beautiful. We all laid out in the gardens, trying to spot different constellations. We all had to shush Twilight multiple times for consecutively pointing out different ones. Applejack had a knack for spotting them too, as it turned out. Spike fell asleep at one point, letting out echoing snores. We all shared a good laugh at his innocent nature.

I got lost in those stars, believe me. I was snapped out of my lunar trance when Fluttershy cuddled up with me. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, kissing her on her head a few times.

“This is just perfect,” she said.

“Ya got that right, Fluttershy,” Applejack agreed.

“Girls, I can most certainly say that this is one of the best parties I’ve ever had,” I said. We all turned our gazes to Pinkie as she coughed for attention.

“Thanks, Pinkie!” we all said collectively.

“Hehehe! You’re welcome!” she responded.

“Heh, we should have wars like that when winter comes around, girls!” Twilight added.

“It would be a lot cleaner, wouldn’t it?” I said. We all shared a laugh before returning our eyes to the night sky. I then fell into a pensive state. I was contemplating whether or not my flight capabilities were up for a little test. If I succeeded, the result would be a moment that would live on in my dreams for a life time. If I failed… well, I’d be hurt, to say the least.

I stood up and offered my hand to Fluttershy. She took it with her hoof and stood up with me.

“Wutcha doin?” Rainbow asked.

“I don’t know. What are we doing, Matthew?” Fluttershy asked me curiously. I smiled and began to hover.

“Follow me and find out,” I answered. I began to float up higher into the sky. Fluttershy looked back at her friends before following me up. As I continued to ascend, I looked higher into the sky and began to spin around, letting myself go and feeling freer than ever. I stopped myself at a reasonable height, allowing Fluttershy to catch up.

“We’re pretty high up, Matthew,” she said, the sound of worry in her voice, “are you sure we should be up here?”

“More sure than I’ve ever been.” I took her hoof in my hand and began to groggily move with her in tandem. We began to fly parallel to each other, gaining speed, which left me with a bit of concern, as I shook a couple of times trying to gain my balance. But luckily, I found it, and before we knew it, Fluttershy and I were flying through the night sky effortlessly. It was as magical as I imagined it would be, both in my dreams and the moments before actually taking action. The breeze in my face was comforting and serene, and the sense of flying was lost. It was as if I wasn’t even flying, really. It felt different than flying. It was living, but in totally different sense than what that actually means. The feelings I felt are hard to describe. But, when I looked over at Fluttershy, I knew she felt the same.

“Woohoo! Got Matt and Fluttershy!” Pinkie cheered for us from the ground. The rest of the girls, and the awoken Spike began to cheer for us as well. As they explained to us when we came down, our bodies were barely visible at all. Our shadows were more prominently visible, as they could be seen blocking out the stars. As Twilight described, it was as if the darkness of the night had come alive and was playing an intricate game in the sky.

As Fluttershy and I were flying together, I pulled her in closer. Soon enough, we locked lips. It was one of the most magical kisses we ever shared. We parted and gazed into each other’s eyes, caring not for where we were flying. In that moment, we had nothing to care about; nothing to fear.

“I love you, Matthew.”

“I love you too, Fluttershy.

Up in the dimly lit night sky, it was just Fluttershy and me.