Awkward would have best described the Apple Family table that night. Aside from the chattering fillies, very little sound came from the dining room; leaving Applejack and Big Macintosh to just look at this very strange sight as the oddity it was. Situated at the head of their dinner table, Princess Luna nibbled at the snacks provided for her and the other fillies while she listened to their discussions. It seemed just so out of place to Applejack as well as Big Mac to see a princess sitting down at a country-style table and eating 'snacks'. Albeit, Applejack did her best at fixing up 'fancy' snacks; like peanut butter crackers and warm fritters. Short notice, but she had to get something together. The two of them stayed in the next room, just poking their heads through the doorway to keep an eye on their special guest while she talked to the three little fillies.
"Alright, Luna," Scootaloo braved up to the princess after getting a mouth full of chunky peanut butter and recovering from the last story she heard, "Let's hear another story. Come on."
Luna cleaned her muzzle gently with a levitating napkin before looking amongst the Crusaders. Each one gave her an urging stare with their wide, bewildered eyes and fidgeting tails. The princess of the night hard swallowed a lump of peanut butter -a rather foreign taste to her by all regards- and smiled at her lot. "Indeed. A story dost seem rather in turn at this point," she may have lost the Crusaders on how she phrased that, but they kept attention to her all the same, "Now, see here... What story can I regale you with now..." she pondered the question, tapping her front hoof against the wooden table.
Luna looked about the dining room in the chance that some object would spark a story from her mind. That was when she looked to Applejack watching her from the next room. Applejack, the element of honesty. The spark of a muse came to Luna and set a light into her eyes. "I have just the tale to tell..." All three crusaders leaned in, eager to hear what this next story could be about. "Hear this for true... Look upon my wings," Luna stretched her wings out slightly, careful not to knock anything over in the house she was made a guest in, "Are they not a fine pair? Yet, I shall say, they nay have always been this way. Such a time before..." What Luna said next ripped into Scootaloo's ears and her attention was begged for more than her friends, "...They could never have lifted me off the ground. I had once been flightless."
It had been a particularly harsh winter that season. The snow was as unrelenting as the shard encrusted winds that blistered the body as much as the mind. The snow count have mounted up pass a fillies entire leg length; some had found that out the hardest of ways. A filly trudged through the unforgiving element, weighed down by freezing joints in her legs and her own withdrawing fatigue. The stretch of the endless white cancelled out any hopes of seeing the promise of salvation or warmth; even the trees had been coated in the mounds of snow until they looked like nothing more than snowdrifts blended against the land. No matter how cold or weak the filly had become, she had kept trekking along; for she was not alone.
Beside her, a massive form stretching as high as the mounds of snow and as wide as the snowdrifts themselves perhaps stomped through the snow along with her. That form belonged to the buffalo chief of that once lush region of the world...
"What was his name?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"Was he really that big?" Apple Bloom joined in the questioning.
Scootaloo shot her two friends a hot, silencing glare before returning to listening to Luna's story. Luna herself sighed and pondered on those questions. Her expression showed a lack of joy when she spoke once more. "Nay, young Sweetie Belle... I do not recall that elder's name. Yet I do recall that his form was truly imposing."
The filly and chief moved as one beside one another; though the young pony's steps were staggered and quicken to keep at the gait of the mighty buffalo. Tears would have shed from that weak filly's eyes if she had only the strength. However, much like her hoof prints long since left behind her with each step, her will to even cry had been brushed away by the endless howls of the winter winds. But it had been because of that inability to weep upon her how grief that her eyes yielded to her a welcoming sight upon the horizon. A distance away, she saw salvation in the form of the orange hue of a warming camp site. Hope, perhaps, fueled the filly to keep moving along.
Yet, as her steps became more freed against the snow, she felt her limbs also become beyond numb. It did not take long for the lack of feeling within her legs to send her toppling down against the cold snow and nearly bury herself against it. The buffalo moved along side her and looked upon her with eyes of great pity. The filly pleaded and pleaded as she struggled against the snow: "My legs can't move! Please! They can't move!"
When the chief had heard this, he continued on and left the princess alone in the snow. The last words she heard him say to her was a direction she could not understand at that moment: "Your legs aren't the one's keeping you from moving. You are."
She was baffled... Alone... and freezing. The snow threatened to swallow her up against its endless form. That was when she felt something. Against her sides... subtle, weak, and very small taps. Her eyes looked behind her and saw that her small wings, normally pressed at her sides, were now flapping against her form. It was her only chance, which she took without a moment's more of thought. Her body heaved, thrashed, and wormed in a ballistic wrath against the snow. Much like a fallen fledgling, she gave near crippled flaps of her wings like she had never done before.
Her lungs heaved and her eyes strained as they shut. Crystals of snow pelted against her face and she growled with the pain she endured. It felt to her like hours upon hours of flapping and frantically fighting against the snow. That was until she felt a new sensation... Nothingness followed by a soothing warmth enveloping her body.
The three fillies and even Applejack along with her brother listened intently in anticipation. For a moment, Luna paused on her story, looking around the attentive audience; seeing how they all held their breath for that final line. "...I had flown," such a simple statement from Luna started a chain of gasps and pent-up breathes from all her listeners at once.
"That's amazing, Luna! I bet it felt way cool!" Scootaloo urged for more from Luna as she pushed up onto the table with her front hooves.
"Just so. One never forgets their first flight..." Luna stood up from the table and rested her wing against Scootaloo's back, "One day, you shall regale me of your own first flight."
"Y-Yeah..." Scootaloo replied, unsure of how to respond.
From that point on, Luna and the rest around her enjoyed the company of one another, ignoring the storm rattling around outside the farm house and passing along story after story into the small hours of the drawing night.