I took my first breath of air, it was painful but not enough to stop me from laughing, well, all I can say is that it's a refreshing feeling, the air is pure and yet filled with scents unfamiliar to me, my mind explained for me how I was able to smell things, my nose, it was apparently one of the last organs to be created on my body, thus explaining my prior lack of sense of smell
My eyes darted around and saw many fairies flying all around, getting down to gently grab one of my sisters and then flying off in a direction, it wasn't long until one came to get me too.
She was kind looking with emerald eyes and hair, her pair of wings were lush green and looking like wing-shaped leaves, she was clothed with a long bark brown dress going down to under her knees, the seams of which were golden, she also wore gloves of the same color as her wings going to her elbows.
While I was busy looking at her she already scooped me up in her arms and began to fly in the same direction as the others.
From up here I had a much better view of the lake and it's surroundings and could now see all the magic beings around, I have no idea what their proper names are so let's invent!
I've gotta be quick though, the fairy carrying me is starting to pick up speed.
So, let's see, some nice-looking plant ladies over there, walking trees that way, humanoids with grey bodies and a red and white cap on their heads here, big birds with four legs already flying away and finally some wolves.
Well, I say "finally" but it's not like I could see everything with how quick I am being carried away.
I don't feel like the journey will take long seeing how fast we are going but being held with care like this made me sleepy.
No use fighting it I guess, my eyelids close on their own and I am soon embraced by Morpheus.
***
When I wake up, I can feel the soft grass under me and the sun shining upon me, I try to open my eyes but soon close them again due to the sun being right above me and blinding me.
Ouch, that hurt.
I move my head a bit and then open my eyes again, revealing the blue sky of the day to me, I lower my head a bit again to see my own body, lying in a field of grass, looking left and right also made me realise that I wasn't alone, the same green-haired fairy who carried me last night was sitting at my right and looking at me.
"Oh, you're awake, it usually takes longer for newborns to wake up from their first rest, that's not really a problem though, it only means I have less time to look at your cuteness."
"Now for your first 'lesson', move and come to me" she said while moving a bit back from me.
***
What? how the hell am I supposed to do that? I can barely move my head and she's asking me to move my whole body? No way it's happening.
"And before you think it's impossible, what I'm pretty sure you just did judging by your eyes. Of course I'm not asking to get on your legs and walk to me, even if fairies grow quickly you're not even a day old yet. What I'm asking of you is to use those adorable little wings and fly to me, it should be easy to do seeing as you're quite perceptive."
Wings? I have those? now that I think about it, of course I do! I'm a fairy, and fairies always have wings. Well, now remains the problem of how i'm supposed to move them, welp, maybe if I just want it really hard it will work.
***
Nope, that's not working, there must be something I'm missing about how they work, I don't even feel anything on my back, and she even said it should be easy because I'm perceptive... wait a moment, maybe I'm doing it wrong from the beginning, now that I think about it, her wings don't look really suited for flight and yet she was able to fly with them, so maybe they're more magical in nature than physical?
At least it's worth a try I guess? I look upon myself but with the magical sense I honed inside this damn flower and see...nothing? there's absolutely nothing on my back, no wings at all. I turn and look towards the fairy with a shocked face.
"hehe" She laughed
"It happens all the time with the newborns, the look on their face when they don't see wings on their back is priceless." she laughed for a moment after that and then became serious again.
"You can already feel mana, this is normally the first step to create wings so you're on the good path, the second step is to listen to what I have to say. The wings of each fairy are unique because they are essentially a manifestation of their soul through mana thus making the wings unique. The way to forming your wings is to pull mana inside you, dye it your own color and then attach it to your back, don't worry about doing it quickly though, it can take a bit of time to dye mana correctly and it's NOT something that should be rushed."
Ooohh, that somehow makes sense, well let's start with trying to move mana around, after all, I can't pull it inside me without being able to move it.
I focus once again on my magical view, closing my eyes to be less overwhelmed with information, instead of trying to look far like usual, I focus on a small sphere around me, attempting to grasp the mana flowing around with my mind.
At the beginning, I didn't manage to do anything else than cause myself a headache but after a moment, I started to understand what to do.
To make it simple, the mana in the air has some sort of instinct, it wants to stay where it is and my job in order to move it is to impose my "will" over the mana, the more I try to take control of at once, the harder it is but still, once I understood the way ambient mana worked, it became way more easy to move.
For now I am following the advice of the older fairy and taking my time to practice, once I reached the limits of how much mana I can take control of for now, something seemingly limited by my growth, I started to work on dyeing the mana in my own color.
It was actually way easier than learning how to move mana with my will, all I had to do was to grab some mana, pull it inside me near my heart, wait for a bit, pull the mana out of me and voilà!
The color of my mana was a dark magenta, the same as inside the flower, which is convenient because I liked this color very much.
Having managed to dye my mana, I once again opened my eyes to tell the older fairy that I was ready for the next step.
With a slight look of surprise on her face after she confirmed through her own manasense that I succeeded, she began to explain the last step.
"What you need to do now is to create and shape your wings, you will actually not do the the shaping, you will only move the dyed mana to your mana and it will automatically style itself in the best way according to your soul, now I know this might seem easy after learning to pull mana to youself and dyeing it but beware not to pull more mana than you feel comfortable with, it could backfire horribly and cause you great pain."
After this piece of advice, she didn't say anything more.
Welp, I only need to grab a chunk of mana, dye it and then bring it to my back, it should be fairly simple.
Let's begin then, first, I look at the mana around and gather as much as I can safely hold, then I pull it inside me and leave my soul to do it's work, a few moments later, all the mana is this beautiful shade of purple as I begin to move it towards my back.
Once it reaches my back, I feel some tingling sensations on my back and the mana escaping my control to shape my wings.
It went smoothly and I can now feel my newly formed wings and look at them by flexing them, they look like butterfly wings, very large butterfly wings, they are easily twice as large as I am.
"Oh, that's a bit of a problem, wings too large for you won't do, you must've pulled too much mana when you formed them, well don't worry about that, they're now a magical part of you, you can control their size however you want."
That's nice to know, I was getting worried about having wings twice my size for all my life.
I focus a little to manipulate the mana in them and "will" them to reduce to half their current size.
Great, now I have wings and can fly when I can't even talk or walk.
But that's not important right now, I look at her again as if to ask what do we do now that I've made my wings.