For a moment, looking at the gaunt figure of the cleric pony, his face a solemn grey mask with wisps of a thin gray mane brushing against his forehead, Fluttershy was able to tear her thoughts away from the dying husk of a pony laying in the next room, and instead tried to sort out the definition of irony. When your last rites are being delivered by a pony who not too distantly resembles Death itself, does that qualify as irony? Or is the transition from a pallid, gravel-voiced vicar to the cold clutches of nothingness just a logical progression?
If the priest could have heard her thoughts, he might have accused her of blasphemy, but the world that he and her grandfather occupied was simply one that she had never been able to grasp. She believed that the world was inherently a beautiful place, and that if there was a force behind the scenes, it only wanted all ponies to live in harmony with each other. Sad things happened to good ponies, but it was no indication of the malevolence of the world, just an unfortunate consequence of getting to live in a world that produced such beauty. And she enjoyed her simple life, spent administering to all the little creatures of Ponyville, because it brought joy to her and the animals in this life. Joy in life was important, because this would be the only one they would know.
Her grandfather and the priest didn't believe this. They believed the force wanted continued attrition for any wrongs committed in their lifetime. Bad things happened for a reason, often a lack of faith in that universal force, whom they persistently tried to find names for. And if a pony died with a clean record, without sins unforgiven, they would pass into a beautiful place where they would meet that universal force and creator, and live for eternity among their loved ones who had gone before. It was a beautiful idea, and it made many ponies strive to be better than they might otherwise be.
They also believed that Fluttershy's beliefs would doom to her to an eternity of pain and torment.
The priest loosened his collar with a hoof and nodded to the rest of the family. "It's done now. His soul is ready." Fluttershy could see tears in the eyes of her family members, most of whom she hadn't seen for years. Neither of her parents were in attendance, and it had fallen to her to represent the black sheep side of the family headed by her father.
For once, the murmurs this time were not about her, but about how pleased the family was that the priest had gotten there in time to perform the rites. Grandfather's slate had been wiped clean at the last moment, and there was nothing to prevent him from entering paradise. The priest interrupted the quiet celebration by clearing his throat.
"He does have one request." His eyes darted over to Fluttershy for a second before returning to the half dozen ponies on the other side of the room. "He wants to see his granddaughter." The murmurs began again, louder and somehow sharper.
Fluttershy felt herself unconsciously lower to the floor. "M-me?"
The priest nodded, his expression unreadable. "Yes, child."
"What does he want to talk to me about?"
He shook his head. "He would not say. I assume it is only for you to hear."
Fluttershy swallowed hard and looked at the open door. In the silence of the moment, she could hear his shallow, labored breathing. She felt paralyzed. She had lived this moment over and over again with her animals. She had been by their side with their loved ones as the life slowly slipped from their bodies. But she had always been there as support, as a crutch for the dying and those left behind. That her grandfather would single out his estranged grandchild in his last moments... it was too much. She began to shake her head, but immediately became aware of the scornful glances of her relatives. "Alright," she said, barely audible. She took a deep breath, and stepped inside the bedroom. The heavy oaken door closed behind her.
The first thing that struck her was the odor. The thick aroma of dried urine and vomit had only been partially masked by a nearly equally offensive smell of industrial disinfectant. High-grade alcohol being used to mask the extent of the ravages of a disease spurred on by the consumption of a slightly lower grade of the toxin. There was that irony again. She approached her grandfather, lying prone on the elegant four-poster bed, struggling with each breath.
"It's me, grandfather. It's... it's Fluttershy."
The next breath he took seemed to last forever, and she feared for his death before knowing the purpose of this last visit. But the breath segued into her name: "Fluttershy." There was a long pause. "I have no time left, child."
She shook her head. "No, grandfather, it's not -"
"Do not try to lie," he interjected, cutting her off. "I know where I am, and I will not be here for long." He sighed deeply, and his eyes opened to look at the ceiling. They were glassy and opaque, like cloud-colored marbles. Fluttershy hesitated, wondering if it was her place to ask him what he needed her for. As if reading her mind, the old stallion spoke up as best as he could. "I need to tell you something... important. Before I go."
The yellow pegasus slowly approached the bed, and stopped when she was able to reach out and softly take the weak hoof of the once strong pony into her own. She nodded solemnly. "I'm listening, grandfather."
He took another labored breath. "You... have always... been..." he sighed. "...a disappointment."
Fluttershy looked up. "What?"
The stallion continued. "Your entire side... has been a disappointment. My son has accomplished nothing in his life other than to bring me shame." He coughed, and small traces of blood arced through the air and landed, tarnishing the white of the bedsheets with small tears of red.
Fluttershy felt herself choking.
"Your mother... I don't have enough time to list her problems. But maybe my son could have been saved if she had stayed out of our lives."
She was trying to catch her breath, but her throat was slowly closing up. She couldn't even summon up the tears she knew had to be there. She wanted to just pass out and wake up when it was all over. She tried to pull her hoof away from his, but he managed to hold on with a strength she couldn't imagine in his state.
"And you." With this, the dying stallion turned his head to look at the gasping mare next to his bedside. "I rue the day that you were ever born. You were born of nothing, you have become nothing, and you will remain nothing. You are a waste."
With a small cry of anguish, Fluttershy wrenched her hoof out of his grasp. His hoof had left a deep imprint on her own, and it still hurt from the pressure. As she nursed her fetlock, the grip on her throat loosened, granting her small gasps of air as she fought back the tears. She wanted to yell at him, to tell him how wonderful her family was, how hard she worked for animals, and how he wouldn't understand. He couldn't possibly understand the first thing about love and caring. Nopony could understand and still be that cruel.
Before she could summon up the courage to unleash the full extent of her emotions on her grandfather, he turned back to his original position and gaped at the ceiling. "Why is this bedroom so cold," he asked, as if an icy wind had just ripped through the covers. The only sound was a tiny squeak from the back of his throat, followed immediately by the rumbling of the heavy bed on the wooden floor as the stallion went into violent seizures.
The door flung wide open as Fluttershy's relatives burst into the room in a panic. Most of them gathered around the bed, yelling instructions at each other. One of her aunts was trying, unsuccessfully, to get a large wooden spoon between the thrashing pony's teeth. In spite of her fear, Fluttershy's natural instincts gave her the courage to speak up: "Don't put anything in his mouth... he might choke." She was met with angry glares that caused her to shrink back towards the door. She would have been able to escape if one of her larger cousins hadn't grabbed her and pinned her against the wall by her wings.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?"
And Fluttershy responded the only way she could think of: she screamed.
• • •
Angel yawned. He really did want to get some sleep, but the rumbling in his stomach wasn't going to allow that to happen. When he'd found the clover around dinnertime, he'd shrugged off Fluttershy's warning about how insubstantial it was. He hadn't had clover in ages, and he was right about how delicious it was, but flash forward just a couple of hours and it felt like he hadn't eaten all day. Why couldn't he ever remember that? And why was Fluttershy always right about these things? Hmph.
He walked over to the pantry and opened the small wooden door. He smiled as he looked at the gorgeous orange vegetables which the pegasus kept stocked, mostly for his benefit. He couldn't be mad at her for anything. There was no pony in Ponyville as caring and as selfless as her, and coupled with her unique abilities, she was as good a companion as any rabbit could have. If only she spoke Lapine, Angel mused, biting down on a carrot.
Suddenly, from upstairs, he heard the sound of a scream.
He dropped the carrot and sprinted up towards her small bedroom. From the doorway, with the light of Inle coming through the window, he could see her form tangled up in her covers as she moaned and sobbed into her pillow.
Ever since the mailpony had arrived with that telegram from her parents last week, Fluttershy had increasing difficulty when sleeping. She had tried to keep Angel in the dark, but a couple of well-placed glares got her to open up to him. Apparently, her grandfather had passed away. They weren't close. In fact, they hadn't seen each other since she was a little filly visiting with her parents. Back then, he had been a healthy, if surly old stallion, who wasn't really a fan of the sort of life the trio of ponies had set up for themselves. And now he was gone without so much as a word.
Angel hopped up onto the bed, and made his way towards the pillow. He looked at the quivering pony, all cried out, and gasping for air. He thumped his foot on the pillow next to her head, startling her out of her nightmare.
She awoke with a start, eyes red and puffy. But when she caught sight of Angel she immediately wrapped her hooves around him. "Thank you so much! I couldn't stand that dream anymore!"
• • •
Angel understood family. Like many rabbits he had known, he was one of almost a dozen children stuffed into a warren with his parents one particularly cold winter. He was also no stranger to tragedy. At the beginning of that winter, he saw the white blindness strike one of his brothers right before they went underground. Instead of sleeping, he spent that winter watching the disease ravage his family. The lumps around the face got some of his brothers and sisters teased at first. It stopped being funny when those same brothers and sisters went blind. They stopped eating, they stopped running, and eventually they stopped moving. Before they realized what was going on, the warren was littered with corpses.
The snows had come heavy that year, and there was no burrowing out until Winter Wrap Up. So the remaining family did what it could: they slept. They slept as best as they could knowing that nearby their loved ones lay, festering with a disease that would spread in the night.
One day in the future, Angel stumbled upon a book of Twilight's that Fluttershy had been reading. The book listed diseases particular to various species of animals. It described the symptoms of the white blindness perfectly, only it called it another word: myxomatosis. Angel remembered being impressed with how well the word summed up the reality of the disease, a strange combination of the fanciful and death.
Angel awoke that winter to find himself untouched, and all but one of his family dead. His youngest sister still held on, but she was in the advanced stages of the disease, and didn't have much time. Holding her, as she called his name, asking when the snow would be melted... that was the last time he ever cried. He spent the rest of that day moving his family into the deepest rooms of the warren. By the time he was done, he was exhausted, and he laid down at the entrance, waiting for the snow to be lifted. Eventually he heard a voice on the other side of the snow, and after a long period of what sounded like digging, a set of yellow hooves burst through.
He didn't really know Fluttershy very well. His parents had communicated with her during previous years, but she had never known him as anything other than "sweetie" or "little guy". When she stuck her head in the warren, she was very surprised to see not just one of the animals, but one of the babies, already up.
"Oh my! You're awake awful early! Do you want to help me wake up your family?"
He just shook his head. If she spoke Lapine, he would have used the word "zorn". Destroyed.
She looked at him, confused. "Why not?"
He looked at the ground and dragged his paw across his throat.
"What..." she stopped. "You don't mean..."
He laid down on the ground and crossed his arms across his chest. When Fluttershy gasped, he looked up and nodded solemnly. Her eyes immediately started filling up with tears. She picked up the silver bell used to wake up the animals and started ringing it furiously.
"No no no no no," she cried, shaking the bell with such force that it flew out of her mouth and landed in a patch of unmelted snow. The rabbit ran out of his warren, grabbed the bell, and held it up to the sobbing pony. The newly restored sunlight made his white fur seem to shine. Fluttershy took the bell back, and sniffed. "Thank you. For all you've been through, you're an absolute angel." The name stuck.
It took a little pressuring, but Angel was eventually able to convince Fluttershy to do something she had never done before: she resealed the burrow. He knew all the structural weaknesses of the warren, and one well placed kick on a specific part of the hill sent the entrance collapsing into itself. His family was now safe, and the rest of the animals would be safe from the disease. He felt it was the least he could do.
• • •
Angel squeezed Fluttershy back. With time, her sobbing slowed, then stopped altogether. He heard her emit a loud sigh of contentment as the tension in her body left her. She gave him a soft nuzzle with her nose, and before long she was fast asleep again. Her dreams were pleasant this time, and Angel noticed a small smile on her lips form in between episodes of unusually loud snoring. He stayed with her until the sun crept over the horizon, and the light of the dawn came through the window and bounced off of his coat. If anypony had been in that room at that time, they would have seen a yellow pegasus, happily sleeping, while by her head a small creature bathed in light caressed the pink tresses of her mane.
