Butterflush

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“…y. Fluttershy. Yo, Flutters. You alright?” Rainbow Dash leaned over her worriedly, shaking her wearily. Fluttershy jerked back to consciousness, rubbing her aching head and cracking her back in the process.

“W-what?” she blinked lightheadedly. “What, what happened?”

“You, uh… you fainted,” the pegasus said with a hint of relief, still straddling her. “Kind of scared me there for a second. If I hadn’t caught you in time, ya probably would have hit your head pretty hard.” Dash snickered.

“You – oh, my goodness!” Fluttershy blushed deeply, desperately wishing to shimmy out from beneath her but locked in place by Dash’s hooves on either side of her. “You-you saved me?”

“Ah, it’s nothin’,” Dash helped her to her feet, and Fluttershy hid the heat blossoming mysteriously in her cheeks behind her curtain of pink mane. “I just didn’t think you’d be that surprised.”

“Surprised?” she breathed, shaking her head swiftly. Fluttershy still felt a little woozy.

“Uh, yeah?” the pegasus snorted, ruffling her wings. “About Butterflush?”

“Oh – oh! My-I mean, him,” Fluttershy nodded quickly.

“Well, yeah,” Dash half frowned as if it were the most obvious thing in the world before extending a hoof to help her up. “You sure you’re feeling okay, Flutters?”

“Fine!” Fluttershy stated far too loudly. “I-I just, um… I have to go now!”

“Oh. Uh, what for?”

“A thing!” she nearly shrieked, her face burning. “I have to go find a-a thing!”

“Why, still in heat?”

Fluttershy really did try to answer, but couldn’t seem to form words with her tongue fighting her every step of the way. Instead, she bolted at top speed with her wings tucked tightly to her sides, all the way back to her cottage before locking herself firmly inside.

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“I want to quit writing.”

Polychrome Print simply blinked at her behind her desk, sheets held loosely in her hooves as she stared at the flustered pegasus.

“… ‘Kay.”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Print,” Fluttershy sobbed, burying her face in her hooves as the ability to even look at the mare waned. “I can’t do it anymore, I just can’t!”

The older mare gave a quiet sigh through her nostrils, rifling through the sheets and straightening them before placing them silently on her desk.

“Look, kid. Nopony’s expecting you to crank out books left and right,” she put out her cigar with a puff in her glass ashtray. “Heck, take a break or something, it ain’t like it’s all that serious.”

“But-but…!” Fluttershy strained to speak. “It’s not that, I-I mean, I just can’t! I think my friend is falling in love with me!”

“… ‘Kay.”

Polychrome really did seem to want to be sympathetic, but in truth, the elder mare was more thoroughly baffled than anything else.

“I just can’t write anymore,” Fluttershy blew her nose with the tissue passed to her. “Not if it could upset my relationship with my friends.”

“So… your friend, the… one that’s supposedly falling in love with you or something, wants you to, uh, stop writing?”

“Hmm?” Fluttershy looked up, wiping her eyes. “Oh, good gracious, no. She’s expecting the next in the series any day now.”

“She?”

Fluttershy turned a vibrant shade of pink, and hid abashedly behind her curtain of pink mane.

“Aw, I didn’t mean it like that,” Polychrome chortled good naturedly, and passed her another tissue. The poor thing looked like she was ready to start crying again at the drop of a hat. “Besides, I don’t got all the details, and I ain’t about to go prying. Best advice I can give ya is to talk things out with your marefriend, don’t let nothing get muddled.”

Fluttershy resisted the surprisingly powerful urge to point out the double negative in her words, but instead shook her head fiercely.

“Thanks, Miss Print,” she sniffled miserably. “I really do hope that I haven’t inconvenienced anypony because of the delay.”

“Delay, shmelay. Baybay, you need vay-cay.”

“… Er, sorry, what?”

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Fluttershy sat in a mixture of dim candlelight and mingling shadow, stewing bitterly in nearly scalding water and her own turmoil.

As the steaming, bubbling bathwater rose over her lips and touched her muzzle, Fluttershy let out a long sigh. She didn’t think that attempting to relax would prove quite so stressful. Why did it have to be so difficult?

Her thoughts turned once again as the hot water sank soothingly into her, caressing her as she fell limply against the side of the tub in dismay, careful not to move too quickly. Perhaps she should have changed the names of her story characters after all. It would have made things so much easier. But no, she just had to use her friends’ likenesses. And all because she wanted something dirty.

Fluttershy certainly felt dirty, even though it was her third bath of the night. The heat was long gone, but the itch remained; one that was only assuaged by losing herself in a story. A small twitch of anger arose, directed solely at herself.

Stupid, stupid Fluttershy.

Stupid Butterflush.

What Rainbow Dash must have been going through only made her feel even worse, especially after her most recent publications. She blushed even at the thought of her friend discovering Bucking Apples, and even more so at the memory of Ramming Rainbow. Now, that one had been one of her guilty pleasures.

Fluttershy consciously shifted her hooves away from her nether regions, knowing full well what kind of mood she had been in writing that one. And Rainbow Dash was probably still waiting expectantly for the latest one, forming all sorts of unwanted thoughts about ‘Butterflush’. Poor Rainbow Dash would probably be even more embarrassed that she was at the next one.

What was she going to do?

Fluttershy let out another miserable, bubbly sigh under the water and closed her eyes, drifting away. If she relaxed just enough, she could almost picture that she was flying on a very hot day. Powerful rays shining down over her back as she sailed with open wings overhead, updrafts of heat billowing her higher and higher as she stretched to her full extent. Freedom ringing in her ears as she sailed above the ground, birds chirruping in her ears-

Fluttershy shook herself awake, the cold water making her shiver even more violently.

She hadn’t realized at what point she had fallen asleep with her head on the side of the tub, and instantly regretted sitting up sharply. Her neck and back twinged painfully as the icy water sloshed around before being slowly drained, the morning sunlight filtering in brightly through the bathroom window.

And just like that, it clicked.

“Need to write,” Fluttershy mumbled to no one in particular, dragging herself wetly out of the tub like a sopping zombie. Her mind, however, was fully intact and her determination was bolstered like never before. “Write. Need write, need – coming through, Angel, mommy needs her typewriter!”

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What does it mean to be a mare?

One’s thoughts, or feelings, or misconceptions of the world are all meaningless before the stunning realization that we are all the same. Every colt and filly, every mare and stallion, each with beautiful minds that the body can only compare weakly to. We are all subject to wonderment and fear, to embarrassment and courage.

To be alive is to be a slave.

Chained as we all are, bound beneath layer upon layer of our secrets and dreams, seeing only our thoughts instead of others around us. This is what it means to be equine, to be subject to the whims of nature.

The entire library was dead silent as Fluttershy breathlessly finished reading aloud her manuscript, looking around at her stunned friends in terror.

“… I called it,” Pinkie Pie held up a hoof eventually, grin growing wide.

“You’re Butterflush,” Rainbow Dash only continued to gape at her. “You. You are. You’re Butterflush.”

“I really am sorry about deceiving everypony…” Fluttershy hanged her head miserably, shifting in her seat as they stared at the pegasus hiding behind her papers. “I’m so sorry. I just…”

“Well,” Twilight cleared her throat with some level of discomfort, but smiled nonetheless. “Fluttershy, I’m glad that you felt that you could trust us enough to let us know. Although that does bring up some rather personal matters that I would like to discuss with you privately,” she said with a hint of agitation.

“Oh, wow. Oh, wow,” Applejack ran a hoof through her messy mane, unsure of whether to laugh aloud or shudder. “Oh, geez. Fluttershy – Flutters, you? Really?”

“Well, I can’t say that I’m entirely unsurprised,” Rarity inspected the bookshelf nonchalantly. “A lady’s urges cannot be forever restrained.”

“It’s true,” she bowed her head quietly. “But I was so embarrassed that I just couldn’t bring myself to tell anypony.”

“You can’t stop now!” Rainbow Dash grappled her shoulders, making her squeak with fear and absolute terror. “You can’t just quit, Fluttershy!”

“But-but why not?” she cringed at her friend’s stare, desperate to hide again as the heat began growing more brightly in her cheeks.

“Fluttershy,” Dash said seriously. “You can’t just give me a manuscript for Fifty Shades of Rainbow and then tell me you aren’t actually going to write it! That’s – that’s just sick!”

“But-but-but…!” Fluttershy gasped as Rainbow Dash dragged her to her hooves and toward the door. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! Ra-Rainbow Dash, I don’t know the first thing about that level of intimacy!”

“Malarkey!” Dash kicked open the door with a smirk, nudging out a quietly giggling Fluttershy. “I’ve read the rest of your intimate stuff, ‘Butters’, you can totally do it!”

“But-but-”

“But what?” Dash paused, throwing a hoof over her shoulder as they trotted at a slow and uneven pace.

“I-I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy winced. “But I just don’t think that I know enough for that kind of story…”

“Don’t worry,” she grinned. “I’d be more than happy to teach you. Firsthoof.”

And as her blush deepened once again, Fluttershy found that she really didn’t mind the company.

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