I decided to go with the latter half of this prompt, and have a chance to exposit a bit more on Blazewing's character. I do want to make a story out of this one of these days, and hopefully pieces like these will bring me a bit closer to knowing how to make it happen. All in all, though, Blaze is another pony who's found his life changed for the better by moving to Ponyville. =)
Coincidentally, Day 8's piece gave me a good starting point for putting this together, although I need to get better at drawing wing hands, lol