ECHIDNA

Eternity

She had had three more fits after leaving the badlands, that had left her in a sweaty mess like she had just wake up from a nightmare. She had been out of food and water for hours, and yet Fluttershy was slowly trotting across the razor plains, under the pale sun and the shivering moon.

She was now in a place where the normal rules that comforted ponykind didn't apply; the air was filled with encircling fog-like forms, and low howls of what might have been wind, but most likely wasn't, filled it from time to time, stretched like rubber bands.

Fluttershy panted, lips parched, chest heaving, wings hanging from her sides like two old rags that she had forgot to took from her back; she thought of Angel Bunny, and of her cottage. From some reason, she couldn't remember the flavour of hayseed, nor what colour Rarity's coat was.

Maybe it was grey? Or not?

Maybe it was something else.

Rarity who?

Under the sun, that vibrated and shifted in the sky following a strange pattern, and the moon, and feverish stars that looked down on her like eyes, following every step, in a land made of corners, in a landscape of thorns, dirty and spent, swaying left to right, Fluttershy kept going.

And she kept going until, on the horizon, she saw the familiar form of two thin towers, stretching to the heavens like mummified hands, their fingers filled with strange curved shapes, the sky bent towards them; and Fluttershy smiled, because she was almost there.

She felt a bit of ease caress her heart.

That was the moment when she had another fit; she collapsed on the ground, screaming, and the howl of the wind mocked her. Fluttershy curled in a ball, her dishevelled mane covering her face like a blanket, while she kept both hooves on her chest, and barrel, and the base of her throat.

She smelled dust and ashes, and she tasted iron and copper.

Slowly, like a dark lake shrinking, the pain went away, leaving her crying in a ball, her hooves and wing moving in twitches; it took her what seemed ages, but Fluttershy got up, and hobbled towards the two towers; step after step, the frame of a great gate, black as the mouth of a cave and old as time, showed itself.

Fluttershy smiled; almost there.

And an infinite time later, she came before the gate, and she looked up at a huge, three-headed dog, black itself, that looked down at her and sniffed her. Fluttershy smiled weakly at him, and the she scratched with her hoof on the surface of the gate. Once, twice, she tapped her hoof on the harsh metal, scattering leaves of rust. The third time, she even tried to push it.

Then her forces left her, and Fluttershy closed her eyes, slumping on the dirt.

Over her, the huge dog leaned in with his central head, and lapped gently at her with his tongue, raising her coat in a small tide; then, it took her gently between his fangs, as carefully as he might have done with a fragile piece of crystal, and opened the gate with his great paw, entering it.