ECHIDNA

Solitude

Given how worse her fit had been in comparison to the precedent occurrences, Fluttershy had decided to take the train sooner, and she had not waited to take rest in Dodge City; she just walked to the room-renter Pony and said to him that she had changed plans.

He had just nodded, had traced a long black line in a register on his deck and had wished her well.

All in all, that had been almost a pleasure: to act as assertive as she had made her feel better. The fact that she had anyway paid full price for the room she had booked and not used was just a minor detail. She had been so assertive and she had put her hoof down; in a good way, this time.

And who cared for a few bits.

What was important was to take with her food and water to spare, so she headed to the emporium, and she took with her the necessary; when asked why she was buying provision for three days, Fluttershy felt like crying, but she steadied herself – she had done so good just a moment before! - and mumbled something about throwing a party. It looked like, in a way, Pinkie was helping her, at distance. The thought felt both sweet and sour.

She came out of the emporium with her saddlebags filled to the brim, and then, with her hat and shades on, Fluttershy traversed the town, aiming for the south.

A few ponies raised their eyebrows when they saw her passing the outskirts of the city, directed toward the hills, and apparently towards what was behind the hills; a few even recognized the strange yellow pegasus who periodically passed through those streets.

Nopony ever stopped her from going into the Badlands.

And, Fluttershy thought the day after, when she arrived in the barren, ochre wasteland, where the soil was crumbling with thirst and the air thin with boiling heat by day and heavy with lingering cold by night, it wasn't such a bad place all in all.

The Rocs, who were considered such a grave threat by the ponies in Dodge City, were in fact real sweethearts when one took her time to know them; they might look spooky with their curved beaks and tangerine eyes and big claws, and wings that were larger than Ponyville's Town Hall, but they were... peachy.

But for that first time, when one of them had tried to eat her... but it had been swiftly resolved with a quick explanation, and the giant bird had even offered to make her travel on its back. How sweet of him, Fluttershy thought smiling at the thought.

The arrow-lizards living in the cracks in the floor, instead, weren't nearly as nice. And the glass scorpions, carved by sand and heat in the depressions where the sunlight came at absurd temperatures, were... naughty.

And yet, for all its adverse weather and temperamental critters, the Badlands were Fluttershy's favourite way to her destination. Because she was alone, miles and miles away from everypony.

That way, when she felt the pain come back – two times - the seizures taking over from her chest to her shoulders and barrel, grinding under her skin like sheets of glass-paper against each other, there was no one that could see her, worry for her, think that, maybe, just maybe, could help her with this, and thus, soon or late, get hurt.

Oh, and being alone, she could also let go and scream and scream and scream to the top of her lungs.