Chapters He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
— Samuel Johnson
The rippling of the brook and the evening chorus of spring peepers grow louder as you approach. Still, the clearing and the cottage at its center seem unnaturally quiet. The untrimmed grasses on the roof have lowered green curtains over the door and windows. A stand of cattails has escaped from the stream and marched halfway across the strip of shorter, browner grasses that used to be a path. The land is slowly remembering its distant past, groping its way back to wild.
Inside, roots from above have found their way in, sending twisted dripping columns to the floor. Vines creep in through the windows you opened to let in air and light. The floorboards are already warped and covered with mold.
What you came for is in the entranceway closet, but you push past it, through the kitchen where she washed and peeled carrots, cucumber-roots, and lily shoots, past the oven where she baked bread made with flour from cattail pollen, into the bedroom. The ivy climbing over the window filters the sunlight outside into moonlight across the bed. The mattress has burst like a corpse, sawdust dripping to the floor where small creatures have torn out chunks of the cotton batting, and you remember:
You lie beside her in the moonlight, and run your hand slowly up her forehead, scratching backwards over the poll and down her crest . Then, more carefully, trying not to wake her, you stroke the softer fur under her throat. She opens an eye. It traces a leisurely path up your hand and arm, to your face.
“Take me to your world,” she whispers dreamily. You draw back your hand.
Never.
You spin on one heel and hurry out of the bedroom. The spare change bucket is just where she left it, on the second shelf in the entrance closet, ready to deal with a sudden shortage of seeds or vegetables. You grab a handful of bits from it and reach for your pockets. Of course you have none, so you take the bucket with you and push your way out through the grass overhanging the front door, coins clinking as the bucket swings.
One lone bird pecks hopefully at a spot on the hard ground in front of the empty henhouse. A late returnee who hasn't yet heard. You throw a few golden bits onto the ground. It jumps forward, cocks its head at them, and stares back at you, and you remember:
In the morning, you do the rounds together, scattering seed for the hens, grains for the mice, greens for the rabbits . Angel Bunny glares, angry at being demoted to outdoor rabbit, but still dashes forward for his carrot. It was his own fault. You have the scars to prove it. Human skin is more fragile than a pony’s.
You sense, as always, the strange mix of bliss and despair in your companion. Bliss when they take the food from her hooves, despair when they immediately carry it away. You’ve seen her lower her head to the grass beside her offerings, to eat alongside them. They stop and stare, bewildered, then place tiny paws on tiny hips. Rabbit feet thump the ground in impatience at her display, her attempt to be one of them.
“Take me to your world,” she'd said for the first time inside her cottage, where you both had retreated for breakfast after one such incident.
“You wouldn’t like it,” you'd told her. “Ponies are just animals there.”
She'd stared at you with those big liquid eyes and said, “I know.”
You'd frowned, and would have lectured her, but her nearness and her scent flashed images to your mind of what you did to her, with her, the night before. What she picked Angel Bunny up with her teeth, his legs flailing, and flung him out the door into the night for. You feel again your fingers digging into her withers, arms straining as you pull back and lunge forward, feathers brushing under your naked arms. And you ask yourself what the hell kind of man are you , to shy away from your own kind and spend yourself in something with four feet?
You’re like her. Hiding.
You wonder whether it even matters to you that it is this pony, or if any sufficiently-large mammal would have done.
It does matter. You understand each other because you both want the same thing. But only one of you can have it. A strange variation on the old question: Your place or mine?
“Take me to your world,” she asks you again in the evening, as you sit together in the solitude of the rabbitless cottage.
“Try this first,” you tell her. You grab her mane gently but forcefully, and half-push, half-pull her into the bedroom. There is no leather in Ponyville, but you think the green, woody vines you have collected will be both strong and pliant enough. Without a word, you lay her her face-down and tie one leg to each of the four posts of the double bed. You pull the vines tighter, spreading her wide. She looks like a deer or a turkey hung up to drain.
You walk around the bed, tickling her with a foot-long black feather that a raven or crow left in the yard the day before. Her nose, the insides of her forelegs, her belly. The hind ankle and fetlocks are especially sensitive.
You set the feather down and begin exploring her with hands and mouth, not paying any one part of her any more attention than any other at first. The tips of her ears, the downy barbs on the ends of her feathers—primaries, secondaries, and coverts—even the strange hard pit and mound on the underside of each hoof, fascinate you. You draw your fingers through her long, strong, hair, from her scalp to its tips, over and over, separating the tangles until the pink strands lie neatly parallel.
Some of these parts—not always the ones someone unfamiliar with her might assume—elicit a stronger response than others. A fingernail drawn up the small of her back, against the grain of the fur, causes shivers and makes her clench her hips. Gently sucking at the base of her ears makes her flail against the constraining vines with her left hind leg; her mouth opens in an “O” and spills out short bursts of surprise in time with the jerking of her body.
As a gentleman, you obligingly return to such spots more frequently. She draws in quick startled breaths, and lets out muffled cries and gasps. You bend over her and work faster. You find yourself breathing hard, in sync with her cries, but you hold back. You take her to the brink in one spot, switch at the last moment, escalate, switch again. You allow her no release.
The pitch of her cries tells you she has gone past the point where pleasure can be told from pain. You add a pinch here, a twist there, leave an impression of your teeth somewhere else. You slap her hindquarters harder than human skin could bear. Then you mount and inflict the final violation in one sudden thrust, and the two of you groan to each other roughly, in words so old they are known to all the two- and four-footed races, until you cry out together.
“Thank you,” she says when you finally clumsily untie her, your fingers slick with sweat, “but that’s not it, exactly.”
And it isn't, exactly, but it's close enough for now. The requests to take her to your world stop, and Fluttershy gathers fresh vines once a week.
Author's Note
I divided the story into tiny chapters to make it clear where the flashbacks end. It's 4 chapters & 4000 words total.
You walk into Ponyville, naked but for the bucket and its jingling contents. You explain to the blacksmith what you need. He flicks his ears uneasily, but takes your measurements and your bits, and tells you to return in two days.
You walk back towards the edge of town. You've never walked here before without her, and you remember:
With Fluttershy leading the way, the townsfolk are strangely accepting of you . A few stares at first, a few glancing, indirect questions, and you are friends. They talk a lot about the weather, with the sincere interest of farmers. It tortures you. Every time you see a pony, all you want to do is throw your arms around its neck, gurgle baby-talk at it, and scratch it between its ears. Every time. Like a terrible itch that you may never scratch.
Letting on that you could talk was your mistake, you realized after a few days. If you had followed Fluttershy mutely, like a pet, you could’ve gotten away with anything. You did not ask for their opinions about the proper number of inches of rain and the right kind of soybean for this soil and climate. You had more than enough conversation on Earth.
She, likewise, already has enough pets. She has friends, too, and the pressure of their expectations is already great. So the two of you contend fiercely yet gently for the position of pet. During the day, doing the rounds among the animals, or walking through the town, you’re winning. On her turf, in her world, she must walk before you. At night, her impotent need forces you into the role of master.
You wonder what injuries she's sustained that make even the light brush of a friendly gaze painful, and whether they’re like your own. You don't ask, and don't tell. You stand side-by-side, not so close as do the ponies in town, each secure in the knowledge that the other won't press too hard on old wounds, won't tear off the bandages to see what's underneath. You each bask in the uncomplicated companionship of one who doesn't know what they're expected to expect from you. She is your terrycloth bathrobe, you are her fuzzy slippers. If this isn't love, it’s a comfortable compromise.
The weeks and months with Fluttershy mute the bright colors and drain the novelty until it’s your new normality. Something you could’ve been grateful for, if it had come at the right time. You wonder if this is what people mean by a happy ending.
You make a private trip into town and endure the questioning gaze of the purple librarian in order to consult the dictionary:
happy (adj): Sense of "very glad" first recorded late 4c. Old Equine eadig (from ead "wealth, riches") and gesælig , which has become silly . Meaning "greatly pleased and content" is from 520s. Old Equine bliðe "happy" survives as blithe . From Hipponian to Neighrish, a great majority of the equine words for "happy" at first meant "lucky." An exception is Zebrican, where the word used first meant "wise."
You aren’t a zebra, so you conclude that you are happy. Content seems closest. But there’s something contained, contracted, contrived about that word. Blithe sounds more free.
The rabbit is back, many nights, a quivering, unsleeping white bundle at the foot of the bed. Fluttershy smiles at you more in friendship than in wonder. This, you realize, is also normal. Mature. Halfway to responsible. Happy .
You hurry out back and rummage through the tool shed until you find some scraps of lumber and a can of black paint. You hammer the scraps together into the shape of a sign, then pause. How many years does paint last on a sign?
You shrug to yourself. You sand the sign's front surface smooth, then carve the letters out with a gouge before painting them, to give them a few more years. The barn will last. You made sure of that. That's all that matters. You remember:
She stares at the grass at her feet, every blade distinct and covered with a fine lattice of veins . At the dappled shadows of the cherry tree that dance at her hooves. At herself, not quite so colorful, but every hair and every feather’s vein sharp with detail. At you, now strangely alien again.
“So this is your world?”
You nod.
She looks again at the open field of grass, seven acres in a remote valley in eastern Kentucky, with a new barn from which you have removed the doors, and a spring fed pond near the middle. You had to sell your house to purchase this place and arrange for the taxes to be paid in perpetuity and the barn to be repaired and stocked with hay every winter. You won’t be needing the house anymore anyway.
There is a wide black paint stripe over top of the barn door, and smaller black stripes on the walls inside, everywhere the builders or the former owners had written something. This place will be free of words. There's a wide black paint splotch on one wall marking a spot where you had almost compromised again. Under the paint is a heart drawn in marker, surrounding two rows of letters: your initials, and "FS".
“So this is goodbye?” you say.
She looks away, sighs, looks back, nods. She has also had enough of conversation.
You don’t like to part this way, but you know it’s what she wants. So you throw your arms around her neck, scratch her between the ears, and tell her she’s a good girl, in a baby-talk voice that implies she cannot understand. She does not break the illusion as you pull away. You don't ask her not to forget you. That would defeat the purpose.
You go to the barn and open the door to a stable where a Shetland pony stallion stands, placidly ignoring his bales of hay. You would not deny her any part of being an animal. His mane is long and blows in the wind like hers. “Be good to her,” you whisper in his ear, before unclipping his harness and pulling it off of his head.
He walks unhurriedly out of the barn. They see each other. He raises his head and looks, then moves towards her, stopping some distance away, and like her bends his head to the fine Kentucky bluegrass. You cannot tell if the wings disturb him. They watch each other out of the corners of their eyes. You hope the grass is as tasty as it looks.
You continue half-heartedly passing out seeds and vegetables to the animals around her empty cottage for several weeks, but less and less regularly. You aren’t sure if you do it less regularly because there are fewer animals, or if there are fewer animals because you do it less regularly. They drift away. They seem to know what to do on their own. It was never them who needed her .
In town, you sit in cafés at a table by yourself, and order by pointing at the menu, or simply sitting and waiting for the serving pony to give you your usual. Still, ponies interrupt and expect conversation. Sometimes one or more of her friends come in, look at you, and leave.
She had explained everything to them beforehand, in an awkward library meeting. Some of them had tried to talk her out of it calmly. Two shouted, one blue, one purple and green, angry and hurt. One just stared in uncharacteristic silence, smiled, and shed a single tear. Fluttershy trembled under your hands as she spoke. You reached across her shoulder and stroked her flank, and she was able to look them in the eye.
The one who was the librarian hushed the others and wrote something on a scroll. The purple-and-green one breathed green fire on it and burnt it to nothing, but instead of getting angry at him, they just watched him and waited expectantly. Eventually he burped, and the scroll, or one like it, appeared in another burst of flame. The librarian picked it up and read it out loud:
"Your elements are what you need as much as what you are."
The strange words made all the ponies look away from each other. You sensed they'd start hugging each other soon, so you gave Fluttershy a squeeze around her neck and told her you'd wait outside.
Whatever happened that day was enough for them to let her go, though not enough for them to forgive you. Like many other things between you, you never asked, and she never explained.
You move to the outdoor cafés, where you seem more like background. Finally, you resort to bag lunches that you eat by yourself, on a bench in the square in the center of town. You give up wearing clothes. No one seems to notice. Foals who have not seen you before stare in wonder. If you are careful not to speak, they may come close, and scratch behind your ears, or experimentally hold out an apple.
But many ponies remember you, and say hello, or ask questions about Fluttershy that you answer evasively. Her friends keep what they know, or think they know, to themselves, and it isn't the sort of thing you can easily explain to a strange pony under a hot sun in the middle of the town square.
So one day you simply walk away, picking a road at random, until you come to another town much like it, with another town square. This one has a fountain in the center, a steady water supply. You quietly settle down there, staying off the benches, not letting on this time that you can talk. Ponies bring you small offerings of fruit and vegetables, and scratch you on the head, and you lean against them and rub your head against their furry necks without shame.
Still, it's not quite enough. You start awake, leaping up from your muddy sleeping hole in a burst of inspiration, and trek back to Ponyville for what you need.
You leave Ponyville and its memories the next day, the chain over your shoulder, the sign carried in the other arm. You return to the other town's central square at night, and use the sign as a mallet to drive the spike on one end of the chain into the ground. You set up the sign: “Caution: Hairless Albino Earth Monkey”. Then you close the clasp on the other end of the chain around your ankle, and lie down in the mud and wait for the the ponies, whom you know will now attend to your every need, in exchange for nothing more than being allowed to scratch your head or run their hooves over your strange smooth skin.
Author's Note
Thanks to GhostOfHeraclitus for the Samuel Johnson quote, to bookplayer for reading, to Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body for inspiration, and to Fiddlebottoms for suggesting the flashback structure and for showing what the "dark" tag really means.
After two days you visit the blacksmith and quickly return to the cottage, a long metal chain with an iron spike on one end rattling over your shoulder. You set it on the floor inside the cottage and return the bucket to its closet. There's still just enough daylight to finish and leave tonight, but instead you look into the kitchen and remember:
“Take me to your world,” she asks you again in the evening, as you sit together in the kitchen, you peeling cattail tubers after she rinses them.
You jerk your head towards the bedroom, and she puts down her bowl of tubers and goes meekly to the bedroom. You set the peeler on the counter and sigh, knowing she is already obligingly tying her hindlegs to the lower bedposts.
You find yourself grinding your teeth. Her easy assumption of submission irritates you more each day. Does she think she's more damaged than you?
You meant to help her, to give her a place where she would not have to lead, not have to think, not have to speak. Why couldn't that be enough?
As you wash your hands of tuber peelings you think: Somewhere in her, she still has a will. You must prove it to her. For her own good. She needs you to break her fantasy, prove to her that she doesn't want to surrender herself completely. You're not thinking of your own needs at all.
Liar.
You follow her into the bedroom and tie the vines she was unable to. Then you fold her yellow silk handkerchief twice and gently tie it around her eyes. You tighten the vines further, until she whimpers once. You leave her there to search the yard for a stick just the right size. You return to the bedroom and hold it in front of her face, close enough that she can feel it with her whiskers.
"No talking," you tell her. "Bite down on this. We're going to play a little harder this time. When it gets too real for you, spit it out. But when you do, our game is finished."
She clamps her jaws around the stick like a puppy. You begin tickling her. But this time, you don't stop when she begins whining and jerking away from the feather. You continue until her muscles spasm at each touch. You stop and start, stop and start, unpredictably. The blindfold prevents her from anticipating the feather's touch. You continue until she is thrashing in her bonds and begins to sweat from the effort. Still she grips the stick tenaciously.
You climb onto her and stroke front-to-back, with the fur, from the hollow under her wing, over her hip, down the curve of her thigh and buttock, all seemingly one giant muscle. Her scent reminds you of dust and honey. You feel the softness of her hair and watch her face, and soon you are ready. But still you hold back.
You focus on the feel of her fur, summoning something ancient from within yourself. When it rises inside you to the level of your eyes you let go and it lurches to the front, shoving the rest of you roughly out of the way, setting urgently, violently to its business. You are carried along, grunting, forgetting words, forgetting yourself, forgetting her, not even looking at her. You don't need to: You are her, she is you, neither of you are anyone, you are both empty shells that open each other wide for a moment and let the ancient spirit that is life roar through the point where you meet.
Even when she stretches her neck toward the ceiling and a wail rises in her throat and whistles out around the stick like steam in a teapot brought to a boil, somehow she keeps her grip on it.
Some time later you find yourself clinging to her back, soaked in sweat. There are hairs on the ropes, and feathers, and fragments of feathers, on the bed. She groans softly when your movements shift her. The stick remains between her teeth.
You pause and wipe the sweat from your forehead. She still wears the same gentle smile. A pleasant sight, in ordinary circumstances, but now it only means you haven't pushed her nearly far enough.
You snort once, push thoughts of Fluttershy the pony from your head, and focus on the bright sweet-corn yellow of her body, the cotton-candy pink of her mane, the raw juicy texture of her flesh. You begin working over her body again, visiting all the same places but less in love, more in hunger, until you draw blood with your teeth and red welts beneath her fur with your fingernails. Tears leak from under her blindfold, but the stick remains firmly clenched between her teeth, muffling her cries.
You stop, take a deep breath, and think of doing other things to her, things you've heard about but never wanted to try. Things that disgust you. Maybe, if you did, you could find her limit, the border where reality dispels her fantasy. If you did that every day, maybe someday she would have had enough, and remember how to want to be in control. Maybe even soon enough that you wouldn't have to.
But you can't. Her weakness is stronger than yours.
She still grips the stick desperately, hopefully. You have to pry it from between her teeth, with your arms shaking and starting to cramp up. She doesn't know she's already won.
