Facing Fears
It was just the average morning in my quiet cottage near the Everfree. It was just a standard day, animals ranging from mice to bears coming and going as the day went by. It was just another day, yet at the same time, it was far from it.
Just two days before, I'd asked Twilight to come to The Teapot for Poetry Night. Of course, one might view it as a friend asking a friend to an event as friends, simply to spend time together. To many, that would be the case. But for me, it was three months in the making. I'd been working up the courage for three months because to me, it wasn't just a friendly get-together. Nay, I was asking her out, hoping that the end result would be us getting together. I'd dreamt of it, both sweet dreams and terrifying nightmares plaguing me about it until I finally did work up the courage to ask the incredibly beautiful mare.
I sat at my desk, staring at the piece of paper before me. It was the neatest mouth-writing I could muster that adorned the page, my name scrawled in my finest calligraphy at the bottom. I read and re-read each and every word, nit-picking them until they were perfect. To be honest, I felt more obsessive-compulsive than the very mare I was trying to woo. I giggled at the thought.
The more I stared at it, the more a word or two would seem out of place. I scratched out an 'even through' and quickly replaced it with 'despite'. I yawned. I hadn't slept in more than a day, and my last cup of green tea was starting to wear off. I resolved to set another kettle to boil when I finished revising the first paragraph for the seventh time.
Just as I was about to get up to fulfill my resolution of making more tea, Angel poked my leg a few times, looking at me with almost pleading eyes. When I looked to where he pointed, I saw a bear cub munching on one of the carrots I'd placed in Angel's bowl. I sighed, and hovered over to the young bear that was about as big as the Cutie Mark Crusaders. He looked up at me, chewing a large bite of a carrot. I looked at him. He stared back. I continued watching. He shrunk a little bit. I turned slightly to one side, opening my leading eye just a bit more.
With a whimper, the bear set the carrot down, and stood up, backing off of the carrots he'd been laying on. I smiled at him, before turning and walking to my kitchen to set a kettle of water to boil.
--
I took several glances around the café, nervously waiting for Twilight to show up. The clock on the wall behind the barista's counter read a firm five fifty-eight, the second hand casually ticking on at its easy, unstrained pace. There were multiple ponies around, many of them looking over their own works. I sighed nervously, having seen a new couple giggling and kissing each other affectionately in their own little corner. The cup of lavender tea did nothing to help me relax, as evident by my hind-hooves still tapping the slate-tile floor just loudly enough to be heard. There was a slight bustle about the candle-and-sunset lit café that was only present on Poetry Night.
At exactly six, the lavender unicorn that I'd fallen for showed up. I stared for a second, unable to look away from her sunset-lit coat that glowed like a candle. The door swung open, nudging the bell just enough to elicit a ring. She looked around, eventually settling her gaze on me. She immediately ambled towards me, lighting up the room with a bright smile. My already racing heart sped up and skipped a beat. The room spun slowly around me.
The instant she arrived, the pony on the small stage in the humble café tapped the microphone. I didn't pay much attention to what he said. All I really noticed was that he was a black unicorn stallion, and had an almost perpetual growling baritone voice. I didn't notice his cutie mark.
"Miss Fluttershy, you're up first this week," the stallion finished, teleporting offstage with a flash of black.
I swallowed hard, trying to loosen the knot in my throat. It was a dry swallow that just didn't feel right on the way down, and only served to do the opposite of what I intended it to do. But I stood anyway. A few ponies clapped lightly, if only to encourage me.
I stepped onstage, my heart deafening me with its loud thumping. It took me twenty seconds to move the five meters from the ramp to the microphone. And when I finally did, Twilight's eyes were firmly locked on me. I felt as though her gaze were burning a hole through me, melting away everything until she could see my heart pounding away like a blacksmith. If she can see my heart, I mused, then she has no clue I'm about to tell her that it beats for her.
"This one, I've been editing for about three months now..." I began, near choking on the lump in my throat. "You regulars know how nervous I usually am..."
A few murmurs of encouraging words gave me a chance to breathe.
"I'm even more nervous today because the pony it's about and for is here among you," I continued, breathing as deeply and rhythmically as possible to calm my fraying nerves. "This is a spoken-word poem I've entitled 'Jump'."
I took a breath and held it, thinking back to when I'd first realized I fell in love with Twilight. As the memory passed, I let go of my breath, the long sigh audible through the microphone.
"I'm afraid of falling. Afraid of heights from which I can fall. I don't live at high altitude like the others, because unlike them, I'm afraid of heights."
I earned a chuckle from a few pegasi in the small crowd.
"But I'm afraid of more than just heights. I'm afraid of fights because no one needs to hurt, and I'm afraid of the dark, so I still have a night light. I'm timid and meek, and while everyone else calls me weak, I prove them wrong. I've shown I'm strong despite my fears, and even through teary eyes, I wrestle bears to the ground, and stare dragons to stone. So how am I so strong, yet at the same time so weak with fear?"
I closed my eyes, looking where Twilight was, though I didn't have enough courage to continue should I see her reaction to the next few lines.
"I'm afraid of heights because I'm afraid of falling for you. I'm scared that by loving you I'll tarnish our sterling silver friendship. So I've tried to play alchemist, to change the silver to gold. To change like into love so that one day, we'll wake up holding each other. So one day we'll realize we've grown old together, but still find each other beautiful. And I'm not sure if it's working or not, and it's irking me that I can't see my results, so I'll blow my cork first. I love you. There is no way around it anymore. The air is a solution of one-quarter silence, and three-quarters undying confessions into a microphone that amplifies my voice tenfold, and remains too quiet because the fact remains that I'm terrified that I've fallen for you. The fact remains that I think I'm insane for counting how many times my heart has near thumped out of my chest, or how many times the blood pumped from my heart has stained my cheeks in a blush. But today..."
I paused for a breath.
"...I didn't fall."
I smirked into the microphone, opening my eyes to stare into Twilight's shocked-open eyes.
"I jumped."
Within moments, the once silent crowd burst into approving cheers and thunderous applause. I blushed, staining my cheeks red beneath my smile. I shrunk back a little, still reeling from the fact that I'd just confessed my romantic feelings for the mare to whom they were directed with a café full of spectators and observers. I felt light as air in my chest, but my hooves felt heavy as lead. All I could do was watch the blush on Twilight's face darken in accordance with my own. I bowed once, forcing my wings to stay down at my sides, lest they fling me into the sky to make my own sonic rainboom. I whispered a timid 'Thank you,' into the microphone, and stepped offstage, the violet eyes of Twilight Sparkle following my every move.
"...I... I-I d-didn't..." she stammered, tripping on her own words.
"Know? I know," I said, finishing what I knew she was trying to say.
"B-but... Three months...!" she half shouted, half whispered, barely keeping her words straight. "Three months!"
"Three months, two days, ten hours, and forty one minutes," I replied, "but who's counting?"
She simply stared at me for a moment, her mind and heart most likely at war within her. I smiled lightly, waving to the barista to bring another cup of lavender tea to our table. Within moments, the orange earth pony with a leaf cutie mark and a red mane delivered another cup filled with scalding water, a bag of lavender tea mix inside the permeable paper. The scent alone caught my nose, slowing my heart enough to be noticed.
We sat in silence, listening to other ponies go onstage with their own poems, some happy, others sad. But I didn't really hear them, and I doubted Twilight did either. It was my firm belief that both of us were still reeling from my poem, her possibly more so than I. The only things I really heard was the applause at the end of a poem, and my own heart beating away in my ears.
She stood up after finishing her tea, which she'd slowly drained over the course of twenty minutes. With both of our teacups empty, I set down a few bits on the table as I stood up as well. With an unspoken agreement, we turned around and left the café.
Outside, the sun had yielded to the moon, the stars painting constellations into the darkening sky. The moon lit up the streets, bathing everything in a pale, almost chalky, silvery glow. In the crisp night air, our breaths fogged up a little bit, the moon exposing it with its radiance. I cast an askance glance towards her, observing the way her coat shone in the moonlight, and the way her eyes were slowly losing the glaze of shock. I listened to her hoofsteps, the light tock-tock of her hooves on compacted dirt echoing in the stillness of the young night. It felt incredibly romantic. There were no ponies on the streets, and the ones we could still see were but silhouettes in the windows of their homes. It was just us, alone on the tranquil streets of Ponyville at night, walking side-by-side. It took all of my self control to not wrap my wing around her like I so desperately wanted to until I'd been given a proper response.
We reached the Golden Oaks Library in less time than I had expected, but that may be due to the fact that I was walking next to the smartest, strongest, most beautiful mare I'd ever met. I felt a light blush form on my cheeks as we stopped in front of her home. She turned to face me, her eyes closed.
"I definitely was not expecting that," she started. "When you asked me to come to this event the other day, I just thought you were asking as a friend. But this..." She paused as though to listen to my heart squirming in my chest. "This was beyond expectations. As much as I like you, Fluttershy..."
I felt my smile falter. I saw where this was going. The seriousness in her expression and the tone of her words were exactly how I'd heard them in my nightmares. Tears started to pressurize behind my eyes. My heart felt like a crack was tearing it open, and the lump in my throat froze my verbal protests cold before they could be spoken.
Soft...
For the lingering second that I felt anything, I remembered that they were soft and warm. My eyes shot wide open as though branded by her lips. I stared wide-eyed through her, trying to process it.
Oh my...
"I think I might love you too," she said with a smile, melting my heart a little more. "Good night, Fluttershy, and thank you for this wonderful evening."
Author's Note
That poem I had Fluttershy tell is my spoken-word poem, 'Jump' (in underlines), which I wrote for the sole purpose of this story. This story is a bit of an experiment for combining verse and prose in a manner that actually blends the two more than I did in Pony Poetry Vol. 1 & 2. Let me know if this was a success or failure. I definitely would like to be able to combine verse and prose in a manner that actually blends the two in a manner that everyone can understand and enjoy.
<3 DarqFox