Fluttershy’s Friends II
By the dobermans
Outside, dry, grainy snow billowed downward from unseen evening clouds, building on the dull violet sheet of frost that covered the ground. Fluttershy lay curled next to the window on her couch, quietly staring at a photograph of her friends. The cottage was silent except for the irregular inhale and exhale of the winter wind, and her own labored breathing.
“I told them. I told them again and again, and they ignored me. The poor things would have smothered if Twilight hadn’t shown up.” She lifted her head from the green pillows, looking around the room. “Angel, are you comfy? Let me know if you’re cold.”
Angel cooed in his basket, snoring softly beneath the lemon-yellow glow of a tall firefly lamp.
“All the creatures, all the poor ponies would have choked.” She turned back to the photograph, grinding her teeth as she stared.
The frame vibrated, then flew from the table onto the floor. A tree branch broke out in the storm and crashed onto the ice below.
“Oh! Oh my! I shouldn’t have done that. No, no, I shouldn’t have done that.” She climbed down from the couch and began to nudge the pieces into a pile. “Shouldn’t have done that.”
The glass had starred over Rainbow Dash’s face. The others in the photo, Twilight, Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie Pie, continued to smile, embracing each other and posing in poofy costumes. They had been joking while she had fumbled with the camera. She was no expert, after all.
“‘Hurry, Fluttershy, the clown brigade is waiting!’ I know, Twilight. I should have been quicker. I could have been, too. I should have…”
She looked out into the shifting darkness. The bare branches of the Everfree Forest whistled and clicked in a driving wind. If there were any lights lit in Ponyville, she couldn’t see them.
The animals had all gone to sleep, all snuggly in their dens. It would be months before she could visit them, to wake them up and show them the wonderful new spring sunshine. Months for her and Angel in the dry heat of the cottage. She checked the door, making sure it was shut and locked securely. The edges and bottom were cold where the warmth was escaping through the cracks, but that wasn’t anything to worry about. She sighed and looked around. The broken picture frame lay where it had fallen, next to the pile of glass. It was too bad her stare couldn’t fix it too.
The snow was piling up in layers on the windows, trapping more light in the room. It was kind of pretty, but she would have to clear them off soon. There might be a poor, freezing deer or crow out there, lost and scared and looking for something to eat. It was so difficult for animals in the winter. Angel’s brothers and sisters didn’t work together to keep themselves fed, and some of them were bound to come by. How could they find her if the windows were all blocked up?
But it was late, and no creature had visited her for hours. “It won’t hurt to take some private time, will it Angel? Mommy’s going to take a bath. Would you mind answering the door if you hear a knock, or a scratch?” Angel murmured in his sleep and turned over.
She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. Here she couldn’t hear the wind, and there was no broken glass. She turned her humidifier on, checked the flow of steam, then opened the valve all the way. It was good to be alone, to inhale the warm vapor in the stillness. She opened the hot water faucet above her bath tub, and sprinkled in a jar of vanilla-scented bath salts. When the tub was half full, she climbed in, settling with a slow smile on her back.
Memories and images began to surface as she rocked her head from side to side, letting the surface tension tickle her ears. She was back on the mountain, outside of the snoring dragon’s cave. They had all gotten behind her and pushed as hard as they could, desperate for her to tackle the beast she had pretended to be frightened of. She could almost feel Twilight’s snout digging into her back.
She giggled. “All that work on the farm and you still couldn’t budge me an inch, Applejack. What was the matter? And did you really expect to fight a fully grown dragon with apples? And what about you Rainbow Dash, Miss Iron Pony? Not as brave or as strong as we thought, now, were we? But, but I hope none of you felt bad. No, you were probably too distracted by the dragon to notice. But maybe…”
She sank deeper into the water, keeping just her muzzle above the surface. The hiss of the humidifier faded out as her ears submerged. “Oooh. Just right,” she whispered. The warmth of the sweet water soothed her tired eyes.
So tired. Every day brimmed over with birthing and dying and feeding, sicknesses and wounds, and never-ending giving and making other creatures give when they didn’t want to, when they wanted to keep living. Yet she coaxed them, nurtured and tended them so that they loved her, because she …
“Can’t. Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t.” Her lips curled into a bent smile. The word was the only thing she could hear beneath the water.
She rocked from side to side and began to sing.
With a swish of our tails
Away we will sail,
Look to the clouds little filly:
The whorls and the bumps
In the light of the sun
Have become a magnificent city!
In the end, when they recognized their fate, each of her creatures would look up at her. Their betrayer.
The bath had stopped being a comfort. She climbed out, shut off the humidifier, and gently toweled herself dry. She stood for a long time looking at the floor. Her mane and tail hung limp and dripped into tiny puddles.
“No, no, Fluttershy, think of your friends. Friends care about each other. Think of the times they stood up for you, or encouraged you, even if they don’t know the real you. They’re so … good to me.” She could let those tears fall.
It was chilly outside of the bathroom. “Angel bunny, is everything OK out here?” She sniveled as she walked to her closet and opened it. There were the Gala dresses, laundered and stiff from being pressed. She smiled, remembering the spices she had worked into them. “Rarity has such good ideas. She just has to work on her craft a little. Maybe I’ll take these to her some time so we can compare them with the originals. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the advice.”
Hovering above the floor, she took Twilight’s dress from the rack and draped it over her shoulders. She hugged the end of the starry cloak to her chest. “Twilight, you’re so smart and thoughtful. Why didn’t your magic save you from the cockatrice? What pony doesn’t know about their spell? That’s OK though. No pony has every type of magic. I was honored and very happy to save you.”
She returned Twilight’s dress to the rack. Next to it hung Rainbow Dash’s. Fluttershy glanced at it, then looked down as she lifted it with the utmost care. “You came back, Rainbow. You came back over the bridge and didn’t abandon us. Not even Nightmare Moon could get you to betray your friends. That really does take special bravery and …” The word almost didn’t come. “Courage?”
She closed her eyes, her mouth relaxing, opening as the cool rainbow silk slipped over her coat. Just like that, she was clasped tight in a smooth sheet of glory and color. She sobbed once, letting the purple beaded necklace slide to the base of her neck.
Trying to smile at her reflection in the mirror, she raised the golden laurels and pressed them into her thick mane.
“This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair…” She collapsed onto the floor and hid under the gown. “You were trying so hard to get away, on your little cloud. Discord, that brute, he tricked you. I wanted to let you win, but, but, Twilight, she knows just what to say.
“Why can’t any of you be better than I am? Why can’t any of you be special? Angel, are you hungry?” Angel’s nose twitched. He was lost in a dream.
Giving a soft wail, she grabbed her own Gala dress with her mouth and wrenched it from the hanger. She stepped down on the hem and pulled, crying louder as the soft green fabric began to rip. Squealing at the sound, she bit and pulled back again and again, tearing the butterfly and flower emblems and spitting the pieces to either side. A shred still hanging from her mouth, she trampled and ground what remained into the floor.
Realizing what she had done, she began shaking her head and backing away. The piece of fabric fell from her trembling lips next to the shattered picture frame.
She flung open the cottage door and galloped out into the bitter wind. Rainbow Dash’s dress whipped behind her, fraying and coming apart. After a few difficult paces she stopped and stood outside the orange-yellow light still glowing from the tops of the windows. The cutting snow began to saturate her disheveled mane.
“I’m sorry, oh no, I’m so sorry. Sorry … sorry …” Her voice broke and faded into the noise of the storm.
She faced Ponyville, divided from her by miles of darkness. The tears trailing from her sad, tired eyes froze at the corners of her mouth as she stared, enduring the empty embrace of the long winter.
Fluttershy’s Friends II
Chapter 2
By the dobermans
Some time had passed since she had left the cottage, but she couldn’t remember how much. A beautiful landscape was fading into view under the brightening sky, a soothing display of smooth, purple, rounded edges and lumps such as she loved to watch from her couch by the window. Clean and empty, like the face of a painted china dish. There was only one flaw.
The snow muffled things so nicely. The branches breaking and popping were not as startling as they had been during the storm. They were just playing along now, not trying to steal the show. So nice and quiet, and the snow felt like a cool, thick blanket that made her fall asleep all over. The wind had calmed, and the snowfall was thinning out. Flat-bottomed clouds were speeding across the horizon above the forest.
Where was the cottage? Somewhere behind her, maybe. Images began to overlap her vision. Poor mice panicking, running into glass walls, losing recognition of their own family. Her friends sharing a joke she didn’t understand. The enormous red dragon cowering and whimpering under her gaze. Rainbow Dash’s confident smile, hidden behind a silver-white web of cracks in a broken picture frame.
She was sleeping, and her eyes weren’t even closed. It was OK. She could just, just let Angel find the extra carrots she kept in the pantry by himself. He was such a good …
The clouds broke. Her eyes opened wide despite the bite of the dry air, and the crust of ice that weighed down on her lashes. There it was, perfect between the drifting gray mists, like a crystal ball that for once, after years of watching and wasted effort, for once had come to life. The moon was so much gentler than the sun, she had always thought. And it was prettier too, now that it was free of the shadowy mark of Nightmare Moon.
It seemed that she was still asleep, because a black shape was swirling, blossoming at the center of the pale circle. And there was a voice, clear and echoing from the bare glens and cliffs deep in the forest. She sighed and rested her head back down on her snowy hooves.
“Dame Fluttershy! Dame Fluttershy!” the voice was calling as it drew closer.
Fluttershy heard a soft rustle, then the grinding and crunching of snow that signaled approaching hoofsteps.
“Child, wherefore hast thou come to this inhospitable place?”
Of all the voices Fluttershy would have wanted or expected to hear, this was the last. Her blotted vision recovered somewhat as her heart skipped. She dared a quick glance upward.
Princess Luna stood but a few feet away, her impassive face backlit by the full, blazing moon.
“Oh no. Oh no.” Now she was the sick calf separated from the herd, the half-witted kitten that had ignored her mommy and fallen all the way down the watery well. Young or old, ugly or beautiful, she knew well that there were no favorites. She was no different.
“P-p-p-pr … Princess? I-is th-this the end f-f-for me?” she asked through chattering teeth.
Luna studied her for a few moments. “Yes, we think that it is.” She stepped forward.
Fluttershy mewed softly and tried to burrow her face under her frozen wing. She couldn’t bear to see it happening, not to her own self.
“Oh, dear child, thou canst hardly speak for the cold. And thine eyes, thou hast been weeping.”
The Princess had bent close, so that Fluttershy could hear her breathing. Luna had been unable to hurt her on Nightmare Night with so many ponies watching nearby. Now there was nothing to save her.
Her thoughts turned in a final panic to all of the animals she had wounded or put to sleep, all of the creatures she fed to other creatures so that they could live on a few more years, content to carry on in their instincts, perhaps becoming loyal to her, often not. Now her time had come, and her lifelong mistake had been laid bare. “I’m sorry, I’m, I’m…”
“No pony in our charge is sorry, gentle Fluttershy.”
Something in the Princess’s voice made Fluttershy abandon her apologies. She chanced one more look, expecting a cruel trick.
Luna was kneeling a tail’s length away, her diaphanous, dark blue mane floating and rippling as if suspended in a slow breeze. Fluttershy noticed how perfectly it blended with the sparkling night sky, as if all the heavens were woven within it. She noticed too that Luna’s eyes were the same aqua green as her own. Yet something moved within them, something difficult to believe, like the perfection and soft light of the moon.
“Here child, let us aid thee,” said Luna. A lock of her mane curled forward like smoke and touched Fluttershy’s face. It was hot, or rather, heat sparked from the tiny lights moving through it. The frozen streams of tears melted and were wiped away as the magical tresses passed over them.
Then light gathered at the tip of Luna’s horn, surrounding them both in an aura of steady warmth. The ice and snow that had encased Fluttershy evaporated with a hiss, and feeling began to return to her legs and wings. She even caught the hint of vanilla still lingering in her pink mane, a reminder of the bath she had taken at some forgotten hour before. Rainbow Dash’s Gala dress had disappeared.
She looked down at her bright yellow coat in amazement, then back into Luna’s eyes. This time, she understood what she saw there.
“Please, please, I, I can’t. I’m …” she stuttered as she stood, backing away from the Princess.
“Dame Fluttershy, wait! Please do not be frightened!”
Fluttershy had already taken flight, fleeing the shelter of Luna’s magic into the dark limbs of the trees.
***
Although the Princess had melted the ice and snow away, the winter air had chilled Fluttershy to the bone again as she’d retreated through the burdened branches of the forest. She could think of only one place to hide. Her Infirmary was dark, the dirty wooden floor littered with blackened bits of food, bones and the shells of insects fallen from the spiders’ webs covering the rafters. She was curled underneath one of the tables, just another piece of furniture, of interest to nopony.
The door opened, and a moment later the shadows scattered and rearranged as one; the moon had re-emerged from behind the clouds, and its light broke into the room from every window like a ring of searchlights. Fluttershy went as still and as silent as a frightened cat.
Luna’s hushed voice seemed to flow through the cluttered space, a night’s breeze in an impossible summertime, “Suffer thy Princess to approach thee, child. Thou knowest now that we have not come to harm thee.”
Fluttershy fought to keep hold of the sorrow that had always been with her, both her fortress and her prison. Her life’s entire comfort.
“We were flying abroad above our domain, as is our wont when we have again lifted the great moon from the shadows. We were not high above the storm when we sensed a … soul that was troubled. With all haste we caused for the storm to disperse! O child, our dear night is not a time for despair, but for rest and peace. Canst thou not tell us whence thy grief arises?”
Fluttershy remained facing the wall, but her tired green eyes rolled slowly towards Luna. “Please, Your Majesty, please, I don’t want to,” she whispered.
“Then wouldst thou but look upon us? Thy fear doth hurt our feelings.”
Fluttershy turned her blurry gaze upward, taking in the black ornamented breastplate, the inclined neck a few inches above the floor, the thin cloud of the starry purple mane, the hopeful smile. The ancient green eyes. Full of compassion and gentleness. She began to cry again, unable now to look away, and unable to run.
“Thou art yet troubled, but not, we believe, as before,” said Luna. Fluttershy nodded eagerly in the midst of her tears.
“Thou art alone, it seems, as we are alone. ‘We’? ‘Alone’? Those two words make not much sense together.” Luna’s voice faltered. Now a sparkling teardrop rounded her own cheek, shimmering in a line past her smile.
Fluttershy giggled despite herself, sitting up and brushing back her pink mane with her hoof.
Luna laughed. “Dame Fluttershy, let us leave off our weeping! It is clear that to us both something hath been revealed.”
“It must have been so terrible for you, all by yourself on the moon for so long,” Fluttershy managed to say.
“Terrible in many ways. We were not on the moon, child, but within it. We had embraced it, and were infused in its cold, cheerless stone. Embraced it like our envy of our sister, and the scorn we felt towards all ponies, in our utmost error. A thousand years of nothing. Nothing but hatred. It is not pleasant to hate.” Luna spied the shell of a dead spider, surrounded by wings and legs of flies, all still cocooned in silk. She blew at them, then cleared away what remained with her silver shod hoof.
Fluttershy nodded slowly. “Some ponies are cruel, or kind, to make things work for them, or because other ponies have been mean or nice to them. There’s always a reason. It’s part of being a thinking creature. I was kind to animals because, well, because they’re the only ones who could … could …”
“Thou needest not say the word. Not much time hath passed since we felt the power of the spark.”
“Spark?” asked Fluttershy.
“That which giveth meaning to the Elements of Harmony. So thou knowest, gentle Fluttershy, that mere animals cannot give thee what thou seekest.”
“Yes, I know. I always knew. I just didn’t know what else to do.” Fluttershy had become calm, her eyes huge and sparkling in the moonlight.
“It is given to us to know that, er, thinking creatures are not at peace with thinking. The pony mind is like unto a scepter swung as a mallet, the words as unwieldy in their mouths. Too many of our subjects are doomed to be divided for all of their short lives. Some even against themselves.”
Fluttershy bowed her head. “I’m not sure I understand, Princess, but I do feel better. I know at least why I tried to be kind.”
“And kind you shall be?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. It seems, to me, to be more cruel than kind to care for them. I mean, it hurts to see them in pain, when they’re so helpless. But, they never live for very long anyway, so …”
Luna smiled. “No, no they do not. Thou canst show them kindness as a trade no longer?”
“I, I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I still would like to ease their suffering,” said Fluttershy.
“Then be kind because it pleaseth thee to comfort them in their helplessness. Thou, the spark, needest no other reason.”
“Me? The spark?”
“Indeed. And thy friends in thy unity,” said Luna as she stood. Fluttershy crawled from under the table and rose with her.
Luna waited until Fluttershy was ready, watching the smaller pegasus take care to avoid bumping her head as she lifted it into the moonlight. “We wish to thank thee, gentle Fluttershy. Celestia saith that a Princess should be like unto a mother in dealings with her subjects. Only then shall their love be rightly given. To you, we shall be a sister. And already, we think, we are friends.”
“Thank you, Princess.”
They both moved, and embraced. Luna spoke downward, “O child, thou hast found peace.”
“It’s true, Princess. Thank you so much. It’s really true,” Fluttershy whispered into her companion’s dark grey shoulder.
“Please, we would have thee, of all ponies now, refer to us as Luna.”
Fluttershy smiled. “Of course, yes.”
They parted, and walked side by side to the door. Outside, Fluttershy stopped and turned to the Princess. “Luna, would it be OK if I took some time to think about everything we talked about? I don’t want to scare my friends by acting differently too quickly. I’d like to be able to explain it to them first, individually.”
“Thy compassion hath truly survived the night, sister Fluttershy. Let it so be done. Please, remember us at times, and visit us in Canterlot. Thou art always welcome.”
Luna unfurled her dusky wings with a broad smile, and leapt into the air. Her heart was full. Never before had she connected with one her subjects, her children, with such success. Upward she rose into the clear early morning sky, her joy bearing her towards the soaring white towers of her castle home and the breaking dawn. She looked up at the moon as she sped over the glistening fields and meadows, feeling as if only now had she been freed.
That’s when she heard hundreds of shrieking growls erupt from the direction of the Infirmary.
