Love is in the air… that is, she's in the air. With you. Flying together, you soar the skies with a bubbly, cheerful griffoness holding a picnic basket and leading you out to a remote little valley outside of Ponyville. She's promised you up and down that she's found the absolute perfect spot for the perfect picnic, though you feel something else is probably perfect about the location on this particular day. You feel, at least, that it's no secret that you've expressed your feelings to her already. She's caught you staring at her… and even when she did, you didn't look away. No, your eyes locked together for a few brief moments, but it's like the world seemed to slow down and fade away around you. She smiled, blushed, looked away… looked back at you… and then you two became fast friends. Now, sailing down on the warm Spring currents, you land beside a river with a small waterfall nearby. The sound of the tumbling water is calming as it blends with the tweeting of all sorts of birds roundabout you, sharing their own love songs for one another. Despite being half-bird herself, Gabby's said before she doesn't understand what they're saying, but she agrees the calls are very pretty.

As you both land gracefully, you produce a small rose you had hidden in your tail; the thorns actually helped it stay in place almost a little too well. Gabby jumps for joy upon receiving it! She scoops you up in her arms and must have jumped a good 30 feet into the air with you pressed against her fluff. You feel like you're floating weightlessly back down to Earth in her tight embrace. When you land, she admits that she had something for you, too… after reaching into the picnic basket surreptitiously, she seems uncharacteristically nervous all of a sudden. Her face flushes as she spins about, looking as if she's trying to decide what to do. Covering her face, she stands up bipedal, unfurling her wings for balance. Her talons slide down her beak, resting over her heart. The arm from behind her back extends your way, holding a red card with a simple question: "Will (you) be my special somepony?"

As your pace quickens, you feel your own face heating up… how do you answer her affectionate gesture?
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Happy (belated) Hearts and Hooves Day, everypony! Funny enough, I have another reason for celebrating the date, but we had an artjam recently and I had to draw something with Gabby. The pose had all come together a few days earlier, but the BG didn't really start to take shape until I had found some really good show-accurate references of a beautiful location I wanted to try to emulate. I think it turned out pretty good, don't you? I wish I had some name for the artist behind the ref as I had found it unlabeled in a thread, but it really was a key ingredient for bringing this all together. Whoever you are, thank you so much for your inspired vision.

On another note, I discovered a really easy way to make checkerboard patterns in CSP using layer properties! If you use a "Divide" layer and just draw a few vector lines over a solid colored object, you can make this pattern in literal seconds. Some of the other options also allow for making flannel patterns nearly instantly too! It used to take me a painstakingly long time to make all the interior angles nice and sharp… manually… but this new method makes it a snap. Which, considering how often checkerboard patterns are used in FiM, this should really help.

Anyways, I hope you all had a great Hearts and Hooves Day out there with your special somepony, whether they be a flesh-and-blood real person or your dearest pony/griffon waifu. Until next we meet, I urge y'all to keep it classy, ponefriends ;)