Chapter 13

"You…do not know how to fly?" Luna looks at me funny.

"No. It's kind of your sister's fault. She gave me these wings and I haven't had time to learn how to use them." I rub my arm with my hoof in nervousness. "Especially since I kind of broke them that night, and they're only now healed…Somehow."

"I shall have to teach you. Come." Luna turns her head up and begins to trot away. I tip my head to the side. Then I shrug and follow with a smile.

We're out in the gardens, and Luna is staring me down. She's standing there, just observing me. I'm a little unnerved by it.

"The first thing to learning how to fly is understanding how your wings work. Flight is not merely up and down flapping motion, a common misconception made by foals and those with no knowledge of wings. Flight is moving the wings in a circular motion, up and down, yes, but to move forward you must push are behind you, hence the circular motion. Feel your wings. They are strong, they are wide; you must know you can rely on them to carry you. Your wings are flexible and powerful and air catches in them naturally, as it is what they are made to do. Stretch your wings." I do as she says. I lift my wings up and move them about, stretching them and pulling them. They're pretty much healed now. I feel them, become hyper aware of them.

"Now flap them. To get off the ground, the up and down motion can be utilized. Bend at the legs, jump, and flap." As she speaks, I do what she says. Bend legs, jump, flap wings. They move at my command, but not nearly neither fast enough nor powerful enough. I try again. I get a little higher. Luna observes, nodding. I play with the feather positioning before trying again. I do much better this time. "Good. Now, to build up strength in your wings, you can climb something, and jump from it, and attempt to fly. My father taught my sister and I by taking us to hills and having us leap from the crests. Sadly, the smallest hill around here is Canterlot Mountain itself, and I do not think you wish to be leaping from there." Luna giggles softly at her joke, and I laugh in response as well. I stretch my head around, looking around for something to climb. The only things here are trees. I shrug to myself. Better than nothing. I climb a tall and branchy oak tree, and try not to look down as I make my way out from a branch. I wobble a little. Time for a jump of faith, my wings. I close my eyes and leap.

My wings flap and I find that I am resisting the downward pull of gravity. I'm still descending, but I'm off the ground and I'm staying that way for an extended period of time. This is hovering, right? I observe the speed of my wings. They're going faster than they were before, but they still feel slow, hindered. It must be the disuse, or perhaps the fact that they're grafted onto me magically, and therefore it'll just take me longer to learn how to use them. I don't know, really. I push myself to rise, will my wings to flap harder and I actually rise slightly. Luna calls out encouragement.

"Good! Now to move forward, as you pull your wings up, simultaneously pull them back to front. When you push down, push them front to back. This should produce forward movement." I listen as I hover, struggling. I try to do what she says but all I manage to do is drop like a rock out of the sky. I don't think I moved them fast enough. Luna walks over to where I am on the ground.

"You made too wide a circle with your wings. Try again." Luna looks down on me. I stand and nod. I eagerly climb the tree again. Then I jump from a higher branch and work my way to a hover again. This time, I try to get myself higher, so that if I fall, I have some time to try and catch myself. I look down and see Luna watching me with an unreadable face. I try to cycle my wings, like Luna said. Small circles, not as big as the ones I was just trying. The problem with the circles is that the extra motion causes me to lose some air when I bring my wings forward. Because of this, I have to compensate for the up flap with a stronger down flap, but I am starting to progress forward. I'm going so slowly, though. How do I fly any faster than this?

"You are doing well, Knights. Your wings are still new and therefore weak. It will take time for you to become fast and for this to be easy. Keep practicing. Experiment. You will learn on your own how best to use your own body." Luna calls up to me. I nod. If I try to talk I'll lose my concentration and fall. I begin to think. If I can recreate what happened at the tower, the falling, maybe I can gain some speed. Momentum, right? I begin to fly up. This part is getting easier. Vertical ascension is no problem. I'm really high now. Luna is a small dot on the ground. Okay, I'm not that high, but it's certainly higher than any of the trees. Okay… so how do I nose dive? I'm facing down now, but only with my head. How do I rotate my entire body to face down? I make a powerful downward flap forward and lean forward hard. It works and I find myself in a nose dive, just as I'd wanted. I'm more in control of my body this way. There's wind that I can catch onto easier than standstill air. I wait a few meters before I pull up. I grunt as I feel my wings trying to bend to the force of the air, but I manage to hold them steady and pull up tightly.

Wow! I'm going pretty fast. I'm gliding, which means I'll start to lose height as I lose my momentum. I start to flap, and while I'm not gaining any speed, I think I'm keeping up what my dive gave me. I observe the motion of my wings. I'm using the up and down flap, which is all I really know at this point, but watching them, I see that they're making that circle cycle Luna was telling me about. Once I gain speed, that cycle is natural. Now my only problem is how to gain speed in an easier way than hovering, diving and pulling up. How do I do gain this movement from the ground? I know it's possible, lots of pegasi do it, after all.

I shake my head. For now, this is pretty fun. I tip my wings from one side to the other and find that I turn in a leaning kind of way. I turn my body around to the right so that I can make my way back to Luna, but I find she's already taking to the air. I push myself towards her, smiling. She's smiling back. Her face looks so soft when she's not serious. I slow myself down to a hover as we near each other.

"Very well done. Perhaps you have been practicing?"

"I was trying to make my wings stronger, but I can't believe I'm actually flying." I hover higher in excitement.

"At the moment, you are only hovering. Let us see how fast you can go without diving?" Luna winks at me and begins to fly back the other way. I flap after her, going terribly slowly. But as my momentum builds I go faster and faster. Luna is barely trying to fly, and she's going quite fast. She is an alicorn, and she has a different kind of wing type. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? Regardless, I pump my normal-sized wings as hard as I can. As I near her, I fly under her and to her right. I poke her with my hoof. She turns to me in surprise. I smile. She smiles back at me, but her eyebrows are snaking down. Her smile widens as she pumps her wings once and shoots far ahead of me. I try to edge more power into my wings strokes but I think I've reached my limit. I frown a moment.

But then I smile. I hurtle myself upwards. I'm not so good at moving forward, but getting altitude seems to be easy enough. I look at the stars above me and think to myself. It feels like I'm racing to the stars. I hear wings behind me then I see Luna overtake me, flying higher and faster than me. I look up at her. Not supposed to have fun, my ass. She's obviously enjoying this. I giggle.

Luna slows down and we pan out so that we're flying horizontally again. Playfully I circle around her in the air. She begins to dive, with that challenging look on her face. I continue to circle around her as we fall. It's quite peaceful. The fact that we are falling at a high rate towards solid ground barely even registers in my mind. All I can think of is how fun this is. How naturally we're reacting to each other. Luna begins to arch back towards the sky, and as she does so, she begins to spin slightly. I even out with her, so that we are always in front of each other. But we're both looking up as we spin. I close my eyes. An image plays out in my mind. Something similar to this. But the image is strange. It feels like a memory. My hair is longer, and whipping in my face as we fly. I look at Luna. She's full grown, but not that much bigger than me. I hear her voice say something….three painful words…

I open my eyes in shock. I hear Luna gasp as well. I fall out of the air immediately, all strength in my wings gone. My heart aches and throbs at something I know I just heard but cannot seem to remember. I nearly black out but the touch of Luna's magic around me brings me back to full consciousness. I take up the burden of my own weight, but I struggle to get my balance back. I've slowed myself down to a hover as I pant and think about what just happened. Heat course through my body, painfully. It is distracting, and making it very difficult to fly.

"What just happened?" I say aloud. I manage to gasp, really.

"That….that was a memory of mine." Luna nearly whispers.

"But I saw it from another pony's point of view. It felt like me only older and a little different." Our thought patterns were damn near identical. If I didn't know better, I'd think he and I were the same, just from that quick glimpse.

"How… I never told anypony about that night.." She shakes her head. "Only Dark Knights should have known.."

"And I have never been near you before, in any way." I shake my head.

"That memory is more than a thousand years old." Her voice signals that she's getting upset. Any other situation, and I'd likely be trying to calm her down, but I'm right with her on this.

"Luna, what's going on? This is too weird. That memory, that we just experienced, at the same time, from different views, and what I said earlier in the night, and how you reacted when you were changed back….These coincidences are too moon-damned convenient!" I am so confused right now. My heart is hurting like I'm trying to remember something and I can't. Like there's something I should know and I don't.

"More than that, the way you look and the way you act, your name and your great appeal to the night; it is all tied into that. This cannot be possible. If I am right….there is only one pony who would know." She angrily darts her eyes towards the castle.

"Your sister. She knows. She knows something." Luna nods. She looks the way I feel; on the verge of tears.

"Let us go. I do not care if we are waking her up. If she is withholding information like I think she is, there will be problems."

"If something is going on, between you and me and the old Knights, we need to know." I agree. My tears are uncontrollable. They begin to spill over and my heart feels like it's exploding. I'm confused and angry and I feel like two people. Luna's tears flow as we begin to fly back towards Celestia's tower.

I think of what I heard in the memory. The words she said to who I presume is Dark Knights.

They hurt me so much. I don't even remember them and they hurt so much.