EQ2: A Wish for Wings that Work

The very first creature Scatterfall talked to on her very first trip to the Overrealm was an annoying owl creature named Jabber who admonished her for her lack of wings, a real impediment in the Kingdom of Sky.
But, I immediately protested, Scatterfall DOES have wings!
They aren’t working wings, though. All they can do is let her hover slightly and glide a little.
In this pass through EverQuest 2, I took the path of a crafter. It just made sense, since I had to train up a skill for the Wurmslayer and, soon, for the Coldain Prayer Shawl. (Scatterfall became a level 90 carpenter last night). At level 85, all Fae and Arasai can do a quest, starting in the Great Divide, for the power to make faerie wings work and give the gift of true flight.

The Fae researcher in the Great Divide had been making a study of air elementals, trying to divine their means of movement. Sure, Faefolk wings are too small for their bodies, but griffons can fly, dragons can fly, these creatures are much larger and have no trouble staying aloft. Why are Fae different?
Talking with a priestess of Xegony in Barren Sky revealed a comedy of divine error. When the Shattering drove the elves and others of Tunare’s (Tunare = Nature) creations off of Faydwer, she uplifted some small faerie creatures into sentience. Made them larger, more intelligent — too big for their wings. The Goddess of Air, Xegony (= Oxygen), saw this as a refusal of her gift of flight, and declined to grant the gift to the new breed of Fae.
Once a sufficient offering is made to Xegony, she is willing to grant her gift of flight once more to deserving faefolk… but her blessing brings with it a bit of a curse as well. A return to the smaller size of the ancestral faerie. Norrath’s smallest player race shrinks to half its size.

It’s a small price to pay for flight. Why deal with the teleporters around Paineel when you can just fly from place to place? Moving aggro-free wherever you want, just dashing in from the skies to harvest that node or take on that named?

Freedom to go where you really should not be, like the Tower of Frozen Shadow in Great Divide. I darted through its defenses and flew inside; the bottom level, from what I could see without going all the way inside, looks so much as it did in EQ1. Much nostalgia.
Hitting level 85 crafter meant I could also use the free mount that came with the Velious expansion, but why? When Fae ride flying mounts, their wings beat in time with the wings of the mount, as if aching to take flight on their own.
Seems a rotten shame not to use her own wings.