In Your Dreamsby SamsaraChaptersPrologueLovebirdShed My Skin At LastPrologueThunder intermittently broke the white noise of heavy rain on Fluttershy's roof; first every few minutes and then every few seconds. The terrified little pegasus sat in her bed, holding the covers up above her head like a checkered shield against the storm as per the usual routine. Apart from the natural drumming and cymbal crash of the rainstorm, all that could be heard in the pale darkness was a chattering of teeth and the occasional whimper of an exhausted pony who had been kept up all night by it. Fluttershy's mind always wandered —usually to darker places— when the elements turned against her: rain was alright, but frequent lightning or high winds could set her to fits. This stormy night was no exception, even though she had been counting down to it for about a week. Rainbow Dash had taken the time to give her a warning of the next lightning storm, though it didn't help quite as much as she'd planned: poor Fluttershy just had nightmares about its arrival during the following six days. Fluttershy's animals, on the other hand, all slept like babies in their warm shelters during storms; Angel in his absurdly ornamented house, the rabbits in their warrens, the mice in their holes, the birds in their nests and the other critters snuggled together in their various dens, burrows, nooks, clusters, et cetera. Fluttershy cast her gaze over all of them and was able to pick out the pale blue and gray shapes of her friends' sleeping areas mostly by memory. She envied them; mostly for their ability to sleep through just about anything, but again for their mates. For as long as she'd been tending the edges of the forest, no one but the animals showed any particular interest in her, or she was just too oblivious to notice. As we all do, Fluttershy longed to feel comforting warmth around her and the gentle pulse of breath on the back of her neck. Just the thought brought a smile and blush to her cheeks, though only briefly enough for her to remember just how lonely she was. She sat in her bed, abandoned to consciousness even by her animals, and wrapped her forelegs around herself. Even though it was entirely simulated, the soft embrace she gave herself so often got her through nights like this one. After about five more minutes of trying unsuccessfully to sleep, Fluttershy let out a huff of frustration and threw her covers off of her body as aggressively as she could muster. As with all of her actions, though, these were gentle and kind; the heavy blanket was carefully aimed so as not to disturb any of the ferrets that had made their home under her footlocker, and the "huff" was more of a quiet sigh. The pegasus quietly trudged around animal beds and beneath cages with all the care of a jewel thief, and her ultimate goal was her bathroom. Apart from being one of the only places that animals weren't constantly occupying, Fluttershy had a stash of several different kinds of medicine hidden away in there, one in particular that was a new arrival. Twilight was concerned about Fluttershy's lack of sleep and recommended a preferred brand of sleeping pills. The pegasus stepped into her bathroom and silently shut the latch on the door, gave a sigh, and walked over to the counter top. She looked herself in the droopy, bloodshot eyes and had to fight a smile from the visage that looked back. Her hair was so messy from tossing and turning all night she looked almost like a yellow Pinkie Pie. Fluttershy reached out a hoof and opened up her medicine cabinet, which twisted her doppelganger out of view and replaced it with an eclectic assortment of differently colored pill bottles. She selected the one with the least amount of dust on it, Twilight's recommendation, and wrestled off the cap with her teeth. Before doing anything, Fluttershy held the bottle up to the light and read over the side effects. This was a common ritual of hers any time she used conventional medicine —she often preferred more holistic methods of healing, if possible— and, to no surprise, she found and read aloud the laundry list that followed. "Burning or tingling under the hooves, dizziness, drowsiness... Well I hope so... stomach pain, dry mouth, swelling of the face or tongue, changes in appetite, unusual dreams, thoughts of suicide, and occasional headaches..." Fluttershy looked up into the medicine cabinet once more and kept her face fixed in one position as she closed it again. "What do you think, Fluttershy? Worth it?" She asked herself with a smirk. The reflection of an exhausted pegasus shrugged and gave its reply, "Meh, roll the dice." With that decision, Fluttershy popped two of the small blue pills, reattached the foal-proof cap —with a small degree of frustration, of course— and headed back to bed just as carefully as she'd come in. Somehow her sheets felt warmer, her pillow felt softer, and she simply felt more relaxed. Time slipped past in a greater and greater distortion, and the little pegasus's mind drifted from barely conscious to a deep, unrivaled sleep. As she slipped into the medically induced coma, she remembered seeing the colors flash in from a bolt of lightening, which split in her window until she saw every color she knew existed. The bright flash of color, and the simple pleasure of falling down into the depths of unconsciousness painted Fluttershy's subconscious before she even arrived, and for the first time in weeks she fell asleep. Fluttershy sat in her fragmented reconstruction of a lovely meadow as her first dreams came to life. The plush turf of grass appeared just before she spotted it, and oh, of course, a smell to go with it, and dew sprinkled over the blades. It was dawn, still cool enough for her to see her breath, and behind her breath the world. Trees far taller than any buildings, even in Manehattan, and thick meadows of beautiful flowers, every size from tiny petals to barn door sized canvasses, spread out to the very borders of her view. In the sky sat pale, thin clouds gradually whittled down by the gentle breeze of chilly morning air which took its time to caress everything in the same valley as the dazed pegasus at the center of it all. The dream world was expansive and unfolding before her very eyes; everything she looked at had been just finished and formed, and that which she looked away from disappeared just as quickly. She stood, listening to birdsong that hadn't existed until that very moment, and stepped forth into the verdant painting that had become real for her. Fluttershy danced through the tall grass and the taller flowers surrounding her. Her mind flooded with positivity, and seemed almost to demand that she enjoy every possible second of this wonderful place that she could. Momentarily, she had forgotten her wings, and yet was not distressed in the least; she bounded over gaps and bushes, spotting every possible being in an ecosystem that she could think of. The insects, fish, frogs, weasels, rodents, higher order mammals, and frankly even the wind through the leaves seemed to harmonize into beautiful music as the ebullient pegasus minced by. In that isolated instance the very meaning of life was to enjoy the world, and the only thing that had any effect on its surroundings was whatever Fluttershy was immediately focused on, everything else either randomized or went away after she looked someplace else. The rapidly changing chaos of the dream kept Fluttershy enticed for what felt like hours, or perhaps minutes, though everything was broken through by a single, continuous sound. At first Fluttershy couldn't identify the sound; it started out as a drone, but seemed to have a little too much complexity for merely that. Then she thought it might be some kind of animal noise, but she'd never heard it before. The curious pegasus stepped forth into the forest of insanely tall flowers and shrubs in search of the drone. All the while the drone became gradually louder and more clear, and it was only when Fluttershy was just a little way away that she recognized it as melancholy humming. She followed the tune to a fan of gigantic verdant grass blades blocking her view. Her mind was abuzz with curiosity, but her actions were tentative as was typical for her. Eventually excitement won the battle over Fluttershy's emotions and she stepped forward. Beyond the blades of grass came a flourishing of butterflies whose wings were bright teal and tipped with dark purple. When the colorful explosion had cleared away, the pegasus finally saw the creature who had lured her there, and heard him more clearly as well. The colt was sitting upon a dense thicket of grass, patting some freshly turned earth with his hoof and continuing his song. His coat was forest green, but his mane and tail were a few shades darker, with the odd occasional streak of teal running through their robust verdure. Fluttershy noticed that a beautiful creeping ivy had grown up along his hind legs and had woven itself into his tail; though it had not quite reached his mane yet. As the pony finished his sombre humming and turned away, he showed his eyes for the very first time, heavy enough with sadness to make them glitter with tears not quite drawn yet. The large gems were the same teal that streaked through his hair, and though his eyes betrayed his depression, his snout cracked a gentle smile. "Sleep well, my friend." He said with a voice that only the ring of youth could create. He hadn't yet developed the harshness of an adult, and yet he appeared fully grown: almost ethereal in his unconventional attractiveness. The mysterious pony stood and began to walk away from the mound; his movements were graceful and practiced, as though he had the weight of a cloud. He trotted quickly on toward Fluttershy's general direction, which prompted the pegasus to instantly retreat back into the vegetation and hide herself. She stepped back, breathing heavily as the adrenaline of very nearly being busted brought up her heart rate, only to be startled even worse by the same soft voice behind her. "Hello, Miss Pegasus!" Fluttershy tried to wheel around and look at whomever had made the sound, but found herself in quite the quandary: her legs were tangled in something. The pegasus wrenched with all her might and let forth a scream, though she didn't realize that her movements in the dream had translated, upon her awakening, to her actual body. Once she finally got a hold of herself, she saw that she had somehow managed to hogtie all of her legs together with her quilt, and that her screams had woken up half of the critters in her bedroom. "Oh, I'm sorry about that everyone, I scared myself waking up..." Fluttershy said; she found an eerie familiarity in that particular explanation. Angel sat at the foot of her bed with his arms crossed and his foot angrily tapping. "Oh go back to sleep." Fluttershy said with a huff, and threw her blankets over herself; she wasn't in the mood for Angel's spoiled shenanigans. She tried herself to fall into a slumber, but her dozing only led to a rude awakening with her alarm three hours later. Upon waking, Fluttershy rubbed her temples and nearly destroyed her blaring clock. With a sigh, she heaved herself out of bed and into the beautiful rays of sunlight filtering in through her curtains. After she brushed her teeth, Fluttershy noticed that the grogginess had all but disappeared from her awakening, and she was as bright eyed and bushy tailed as most of her friends. She eyed the sleeping pill bottle on the edge of her sink and gave a smirk; they certainly worked, and even the "unusual dreams" weren't all that bad. LovebirdThe sun was shining on yet another beautiful spring morning. Fluttershy, perky as she could be, bounded from animal den to animal den and made sure her friends' comfort was at maximum. Her already enjoyable daily "chores" were made all the more lovely by an exceptionally saturated, blooming sun hanging overhead; the colors beneath it were so intense that Fluttershy could swear that she was still dreaming. Blue from the sky faded into babbling river water at her hooves, and as the otters thanked their neighborly pegasus for the fish she brought along every day she could spot the glistening of sunlight in every drop of water on their silky fur. The caregiver went about her duties whilst humming a happy tune for as long as her good mood stuck around. Come three o' clock, however, the excessively happy pony experienced the most horrendous crash in her lifetime. There was actually a noticeable moment of change in Fluttershy's world where time seemed to slow, the surrounding colors dimmed and shrank back, and the vibrancy and simple happiness of Equestria just drained away. Fluttershy finished her duties, luckily only having a few dens remaining by the time of the crash, but was begrudging all the way nonetheless. By the time everyone was fed, watered and generally catered to, Fluttershy wanted nothing more than to step into her home and fall asleep. She sloughed off her saddlebags and let them clatter to the floor, and fell into the somewhat musty smelling sofa face first. Instantly, or so it felt, Angel began drumming his foot on the couch to wake its occupant up; time for dinner and Celestia forbid it's one minute late. The world seemed to conspire against the exhausted pony as she worked to create just the perfect salad for the horribly picky rodent. All along the way her patience was tried. She spent the trip between refrigerator and cutting board having to break up a fight between two larger birds and a smaller one, halfway through chopping vegetables she was nearly knocked down by four or five weasels playing a rousing game of tag just beneath her hooves, and finally just as she brought the dish out to her pet, Fluttershy was knocked prone as her needy Great Dane friend barreled into her, baying in anguish at the presence of a splinter in the thickest part of his paw pad. Naturally, the salad went flying through the air and found itself upturned on her bedraggled head. After going through those motions again, as well as a similar set for every single animal that demanded her attention for dinner, Fluttershy had to heave herself up every single step toward her bedroom. She didn't even have the energy to keep her wings folded, so they dragged and clunked up the stairs almost as loudly as her hooves. By the time her bedroom had come into view, the desaturated canary yellow pony skipped her nightly ritual entirely and fell into bed. Though she sank into the comfortable mattress, and though the night outside was crystal clear and silent, she found herself staring at her eyelids. Her mind just wouldn't turn off; worries about specific animals plagued her to start with. What if Angel would hold dinner tonight against her tomorrow? What if Mr. Great Dane felt horrible about knocking her over and was also losing sleep? What if Mr. and Mrs. Otter still haven't worked out that love triangle fuss with Mrs. Mink? And so forth. Afterwards, thoughts of her own failings kept her up. I didn't brush my teeth tonight... She thought to herself, trying to ignore the steadily more noticeable presence of plaque in her mouth. She looked over at her clock and, with the starlight's help, was able to make out the time 10:34; she'd been in bed for nearly two hours without sleeping a wink. After releasing a pathetic whine, Fluttershy poured herself out of bed once more. This time she just hoped that brushing her teeth and hair would be familiar enough to trick her into falling asleep; any option seemed better than lying there uselessly. She clumsily went about getting the paste onto the brush; more difficult than it sounds with hooves and jaw only, and started to brush. The sound of soft scraping filled out Fluttershy's hearing as she worked and, with nothing to do with her eyes, she just glanced around the bathroom. She couldn't find her hairbrush just from glancing around, but she did spot the little brown bottle with a foal proof cap, emblazoned on the front with a crescent moon and a very happily sleeping pony, that she'd left there that morning. One glance and her mind instantly approved, but Fluttershy wrenched her gaze away, spat, rinsed and looked herself in the eye by way of the medicine cabinet mirror. "No. I took some last night, if I keep that up before I know it I'll have a habit. You've just gotta suck it up and get some sleep on your own, missy." She said to herself, trying to be as assertive as possible. As with all other times, however, Fluttershy's attempt backfired. After trying to coax herself back into her bedroom, the weary pegasus muttered an absent minded, "screw it..." and returned to the bottle. After gnawing open the cap with yet another comical display of -- as Twilight would call it -- "arcana deficient incompetence," Fluttershy poured the bottle into her hoof. Way more than she had intended fell out, so she dumped them back; three remained in her hoof afterwards. After attempting to separate one pill from the other two from her hoof with her other hoof, to absolutely no avail she gave up, popped them all and chased them with some water from the sink. Without thinking about the increased dose, Fluttershy stepped back into her bedroom and lay down in her bed. Before Fluttershy's clock got even a quarter of the way through a rotation, the curled and comfy pegasus was once again fast asleep; the pills had worked their magic. That night, Fluttershy dreamed of her "happy place" if you will. Any time she needed to think of an escape, she thought of a fictional valley somewhere in the wide wide world; so deep that water and sunlight and clouds all collected together and grew. A verdant cross between Cloudsdale and the surface world, with high mountain walls on either side for safety and a gentle, warm atmosphere for everything alive. As was per usual with Fluttershy's dreams, nopony else was present, though neither were her animal friends. She wandered alone through the mist, listening to the quiet rustle of thick, moist wind passing through delicately placed leaves all around; not a bird, squirrel nor insect to interrupt. The cloud-like mist flowed down the mountains like milk dropped into water and took its place all around the valley such that she couldn't see anything between ten feet in front of her, and the mountaintops beyond. Fluttershy's imagination took off. The topography of the land ceased to make any sense whatsoever, instead it took whatever shape would be the greatest combination of adventurous and secure as the jubilant pegasus frolicked in her dreamland. Crevasses formed whenever she walked around something, but none came close enough for her to be threatened with a fall, and the mountains coiled around on themselves into a near dome above her. The mountains on the horizon eventually joined together at one point, and circled around entirely such that it seemed, from Fluttershy's perspective, to be a teardrop shaped valley. The pegasus figured she ought to go see what's at the point and then explore down if it seemed like fun. The casual simplicity of a dream was so captivating that, while capable of it, Fluttershy did not ever bring herself to realize her world wasn't real. The peaceful misty valley itself caught Fluttershy in a solipsistic diversion and deliberate escape from real life. But the world felt so real to her; the grass beneath her hooves bent with the limpness of dewy fresh morning blades, the air was cool and rich with moisture, and even had the highland smell that one would expect such a place to have swam through her nostrils. The coniferous trees scattered sparsely about cast their mild perfume into the heavy air as well; it along with clover and orchids and berries and honey was absolutely intoxicating. When she looked around she saw the spray of colors hit her vision as each scent was given form. Sounds accompanied the new plants as bees, other insects, birds, and small mammals suddenly populated the bountiful scene of nature before her. Fluttershy meandered toward the conjunction of the little mountain valley and found the scent in the air beginning to pick up the very distinctive aroma of the ocean. Fluttershy had only seen the ocean once in her lifetime, but the blue currents were so rich with life of all varieties that it permanently impressed the vision of pure beauty into her mind. Fluttershy longed for the ocean again, and so she galloped through the tall grass and beautiful misty highland meadows until the air began to clear. The mist spilled out over the seawater lazily and constantly; the mist itself was so still that it looked as if a glacier had intruded into a tropical paradise and melted away into steam just at the water's edge. The striking sapphire of the ocean against the clear, bright blue of the sky bordered by mountains like castle turrets made Fluttershy's senses absolutely quiver in delight. She sat down on the warm, white sands and listened to the music of the waves hitting the shore, the wind in the trees and crags, and the living creatures busying themselves to and fro amongst the plants. This music brought a tear to Fluttershy's eyes, and she couldn't stop herself from falling back onto the sand and looking straight up into the cerulean hemisphere above her. The beach was just as soft as her bed, and the environment was a hundred times as wonderful as Equestria's, so she sank back and relaxed into the beach. The natural music of Fluttershy's surroundings eventually bled into real music; birdsong was slowly replaced by individually plucked notes, wind was replaced by background harmonies that the pegasus could scarcely follow, and the lapping of waves on the water was drowned out by the echoing vibrations from a heavy stringed instrument. Curious, Fluttershy sat up and looked around. The world was roughly the same, she was still on the beach at least. She did, however, see the source of her new music right away; it was the pony she had seen the night before in the woods. He was sitting on the water's edge, letting the waves bash over the big, black, shining harp as he played it. The numerous delicately tuned strings made their perfection beautifully apparent as the solid ebony instrument rang out with flawless pitch. The water colliding with it didn't hurt the harp's sound whatsoever, in fact it almost seemed to go naturally well with the music. Fluttershy was completely captivated by the music; so much so that she stood up and wandered slowly forward like a dazzled lark. Her hooves sank further into the damp sand the closer she got to the mysterious green pony, and the spray of ocean mist cast little drops of dew into her mane. She wanted to approach but didn't know what to say, or even how close to get before it was considered rude. "Hello again, Miss Pegasus!" The pony's voice rose easily over the sounds of strings and crashing waves, over the sound of birds and wind and leaves, insects, animals, and the slow grinding of water, rock, sand and time. Fluttershy opened her mouth to respond but couldn't think of anything to say; the only thing that happened was a gradual spreading of blush that radiated across her face. The green, vine laden stallion leaned back from his harp, the notes becoming gradually higher and higher on the scale he was playing as his reach pulled back toward the shorter strings. He tilted his head down and fell from his stool into the wet sand, but continued playing with his hind legs just as precisely as before, and with absolutely no interruption in the music. He crossed his forelegs beneath his head for support, smiled up at Fluttershy and took a quick breath as the tide washed up over him. "W-w-who are you?" Fluttershy stuttered out. She wasn't sure why she was stuttering, she usually only did that when she was afraid and he... Well. He didn't make her afraid. He was handsome, talented, and appeared as sweet as can be, not to mention innocent. His withers were narrower than the average stallion, as was his neck, and his flanks were generally wider. His body looked somewhere between mare and colt, but as he was on his back and playing a harp with his rear hooves it was abundantly clear that he was strictly male. "You know... I don't think I've ever been asked that question. Who are you?" He said in response. His voice made the harp sound almost ugly. "I'm F-Fluttershy. I uhm... I saw you in the forest, earlier. You don't have a name?" "Name? You want my name? But we just met!" "Huh?" Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion. "Haven't you ever had a name before? There's so much power in them!" Fluttershy, still blushing, stared confused into the eyes of the relaxed looking stallion. To which the green pony giggled and rolled onto his stomach. The harp stopped playing briefly, but resumed after seven enormous vines climbed the ebony frame; as the wind blew, their leaves plucked and swept across the strings to produce the exact same beautiful song. The colt was entirely clean, despite rolling in the sand, and only subtle drops of ocean water clung to his coat. He spoke up again, smiling into Fluttershy's eyes as he did so. "Here, let me demonstrate. Would you come with me, Fluttershy?" The colt smiled again, but this time it was irresistible. Fluttershy was captivated by the twinkle in his eyes and the vines in his mane, and with more confidence than she'd ever had before, she stepped forward. The stallion giggled again and began walking further down the beach. Fluttershy obediently stayed beside him. "See? All I had to do was ask and here you are." "But I..." Fluttershy wanted to protest, but she hadn't even noticed that she started walking. "Huh..." "You're really funny, miss Pegasus. I've never met someone who just gave their name away before." "Where I'm from that's the first thing we do." "You must live on the underside of the world, then, if everything's backwards like that!" The forest green pony looked over and enunciated "backwards" with what appeared to be every muscle in his face. "Hey," Fluttershy began, indignantly, "Things aren't so bad where I'm from. The sun comes up every day at the same time, things grow and live long lives, and nature is absolutely splendid no matter where you look." The stallion looked around at his surroundings and smirked, "Sounds weird. Long lives you say?" "Yes, most things live for dozens of years; a few can even survive--" Fluttershy was interrupted when the stallion pulled away rapidly to pick something up from the ground. She paused and glanced down just in time to spot him rising up with a tiny conch shell that he had inexplicably strung with a vine. The colt delicately placed the piece of jewelry around Fluttershy's neck. "There. That's pretty!" He smiled and continued along, and only paused when he realized that Fluttershy was dumbstruck. "Oh, sorry... Carry on." Fluttershy picked the shell up with her hoof and examined it. It really was beautiful; the conch seemed like it was made of coiled marble, and the inside shone with a glorious opalescent glitter. The vine it was strung with was still alive and growing rapidly. As if by nature alone, the vines grew and grew, and wove themselves into Fluttershy's mane. "I-it's gorgeous..." The stallion laughed and danced around in a giddy, somewhat girly fashion. "Oh I'm so glad you like it! You made it." "Huh?" His face contorted into laughter again, "This is your world, Fluttershy. Didn't you come here to get away from something?" She looked on with a blank stare. Her mind was tumultuous with hundreds of questions all rattling around at once, but none of them getting answered. "Is it so hard to believe? This place is almost as pretty as you, you know." The stallion said, another smirk painting his dimpled, green cheeks. "Where did you come from?" "Ponyville." Fluttershy looked ahead and kept walking alongside him, her face burning red with embarrassment. "Which way is that?" "Uhm..." Fluttershy blushed once more, embarrassed for walking into that verbal trap. She looked around and realized that she was, indeed, on an island. She had no memory of flying there, sailing there, or even getting there. Her worldview shattered before the prospect. "I'll give you a hint. You can go back any time you want, but you won't know how long you've been away." "Hints are your favorite way of speaking, aren't they?" The stallion laughed at this comment and even showed signs of blush under his thick, dark green coat. "Specificity is for sunshine, if you tell people what you want them to learn, how are they supposed to learn it?" "I guess that makes sense..." Fluttershy, at this point, was just going along with the things he said. He seemed insane, but insane enough to be the most intelligent pony she'd ever met. Fluttershy thought that she herself might even be insane for not understanding it, or perhaps, insane enough to want to understand. "Don't worry, Miss Pegasus, you clearly live somewhere constant, which means you have something that I don't. Time!" "Time?" It was 8:21 AM, and Fluttershy's eyes opened just in time to watch her clock tick over to 8:22. She was in her room, lying in her bed, and as the remnants of sleep and dream receded into her subconscious, Fluttershy remembered finally how she got there. It was all just an illusion, but she knew that she had made a real connection. The pegasus rolled over onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling, thinking, when she felt something on her chest. It was small, round and hard, and pressed up against her body just where something might be if it were hanging around her neck. Fluttershy sat up so quickly she might just as well have flown out of bed; was it real? The shape moved itself away from the realm of touch and burst into view. Fluttershy's quilt fell down and revealed a very distinct lovebird of hers that had snuggled itself into her embrace while she was sleeping, his beak pressed just where the shell had been. "Oh! Good morning, Smoochy." Fluttershy tried to hide her disappointment; secretly she wished the shell had been real, but she wasn't unhappy to see that particular feathered friend. He could always tell when she wasn't sleeping well and absolutely craved snuggling under Fluttershy's wing, so he did this whenever he worried. Fluttershy sat back and looked around her room, and the only thing that she could think about was how dull it seemed. The colors had lost their saturation, and the cries and claws of animals were no longer natural music, but nails on a chalkboard. She forced herself out of bed and into the shower to test the limits of her water heater's capacity; she had a long day ahead of her. Shed My Skin At LastThroughout the day Fluttershy's condition was absolutely woeful. Everything about her chores seemed to take three times the effort that it ought to have, and she wanted nothing other than to just fall asleep. Her duties always kept her from napping, of course, since most of the cushions, couches, beds, and other furniture was either occupied by her friends or reeked of them. She even started to notice just how musty and generally bad her home smelled, when every single other day it wouldn't have bothered her in the slightest. She tried to find a break for herself but, as usual, simply couldn't. Somepony, or some animal, kept bothering her. First it was Twilight at the door to ask how things were and to borrow a book about advanced Ferret wrangling, then a trio of seals couldn't make up their mind as to whom the single beach ball belonged to and came to Fluttershy for adjudication. She tried to meditate by the trees and promptly felt the wet splat of some inconsiderate avian on her withers, and even the quiet meadow that she frequented was crawling with distracting cicadas. The sounds, smells, and eventually even the fading light of late afternoon all pierced Fluttershy's throbbing head, the poor pegasus spent about half the day whimpering and trying various herbal remedies for the pain. Very nearly drugged into a stupor, Fluttershy stumbled around her kitchen, trying to find something to eat. She had spent so much time feeding her animals that she had completely forgotten about dinner, and her stomach decided to wait until almost nine in the evening to remind her. Her refrigerator was usually home to more vegetables than many farming families could ever keep, but she had forgotten to restock on food for the week, so all she had to choose from was a can of sliced carrots and some vegetarian chili mix (without the chili). Fluttershy sighed and pressed a hoof to her forehead. "Well that's just perfect..." The store would have to wait, but at least her stomach didn't. She decided to drain and quickly saute the carrots in a little garlic oil, which had managed to go stale in her cupboards, and ate them by themselves. Once finished, Fluttershy didn't even bother to clean her dishes or brush her teeth. She just went upstairs and collapsed into her bed. Unfortunately, the night couldn't possibly have been any worse. Their was a light breeze outside, which ruffled her wind chimes and other various facets of her home and kept her awake. By the time the clock struck midnight, Fluttershy lay exhausted in her bed, completely unable to find that happy divide between waking and dreaming. "This sucks..." The pegasus said to herself. She buried her face in the pillow and yelled (as much as Fluttershy was known for yelling), then stood up to head into her bathroom. Her goal was to check her face to make sure she wasn't looking sick, though the sight that greeted her in the mirror would beg to differ in that regard. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face drooped with exhaustion, and even her mane was so disheveled that the usual heart shape it held looked more like a kidney. She found it hard to stop herself from looking down, harder than usual at any rate, and once more spotted the little bottle of sleeping pills. "Fluttershy, if you keep taking those you're gonna get addicted." The face in the mirror told her. "I know that. It says so on the bottle." "So don't do it then." For some reason the reflection had more sense than she did. "But I can't sleep..." The physical pegasus whined, clearly at her wit's end. "Don't you think that's because you've been popping pills for three days?" "Wait... Why the hay am I talking to myself?" "That's not the po--" Fluttershy interrupted her mirror self by opening the medicine cabinet and forcing her out of view. She had played games like that and talked with herself since she was very young, seeing as how she had so few friends, and it occasionally resurfaced in her daily life whenever the stress was bad enough. She picked up the bottle of pills, poured two out into her hoof, and stared at them. The pills were such a pretty shade; like the blue hue in Rarity's eyes without the depth, or Rainbow Dash's matte blue streaks in her mane. Every so often as the light caressed them, a flash from a grain of sugar or whatever else crystalline was in the things would glimmer with a prismatic twinkle that made her smile. "Damn... These things are even starting to look good..." Fluttershy commented. Feeling like that said more about her developing dependency than anything, she dropped one back into the bottle and swallowed the remaining pill. She brought the bottle with her and set it next to her bed, figuring that once it was empty she could just drop the habit by lack of availability, and lay back down on her sheets. The edge to her exhaustion didn't ever quite go away, but Fluttershy did start to feel a little drowsier, though not to the degree that she had wanted. She still couldn't fall asleep; she was instead tormented by little sounds every which way, breaking her out of the trance that she continually approached, and making her even more frustrated. With yet another scream into her pillow, Fluttershy checked her clock and very nearly let her jaw hit the floor. It was 2:53 in the morning, and she still hadn't gotten a wink. "Alright fine, you win." She said softly to herself. By now she had become pretty good at opening this particular foal proof cap, which came off the bottle with three more pills arranged within it, conveniently placed such that they stuck inside by their shape alone. Fluttershy knocked the cap against her lips and dropped all three pills into her mouth, swallowed them without any water, and forcefully threw her head back down onto the pillow. She was fast asleep by 3:00. The world she entered wasn't a beautiful island or jungle, nor was it highland, mountain, forest or even Ponyville itself, but instead a vast, glittering ocean as deep and mysterious as she remembered it being. Fluttershy had quite literally 'fallen' asleep, and realized that she was moving only just before she hit the water. The spray wasn't salty, though, it was fresh, and as pure as clean spring water filtered by moss. Fluttershy tried to swim, but felt like she just couldn't tread water, and her wings had become useless the instant her feathers were soaked. She started to panic. She sank and held her breath, marveling in the clarity of the water, but simultaneously spinning into a chaotic fear, one so primal that she felt it to her very core. "Relax, Fluttershy." A voice said. It sounded like wind through trees, but there weren't any trees here. "Just let go. What are you afraid of." Fluttershy wanted to say "drowning" but she was desperately clinging onto the remaining breath in her lungs; the one she thought would truly be her last. She struggled and kicked, trying desperately to reach the surface, but it seemed that the glassy plane eluded her, no matter how quickly she swam upward. Eventually, from the strain of exercise and the time she had spent squeezing her airway shut, Fluttershy was forced to exhale. The breath of air escaped her burning lungs and bubbled to the surface, and she involuntarily inhaled to replace it. What entered her lungs wasn't the heavy, choking sensation of water, but instead a clean breeze that refreshed her frightened mind. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Said the voice again. This time, it had enough clarity to be recognized as the childish voice of her would-be dream companion, only he wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Dying is just like anything you do for the first time; it's scary at first, but you look back on it and laugh eventually." "You killed me?!" Fluttershy screamed; her voice had an unexpected clarity to it for being submerged in water. The voice laughed a happy, joyous laugh. "Oh no of course not! I had nothing to do with that, you just experienced what it's like. The fear, the struggle, and in the end the realization that the world goes on without you, even after your efforts are all for naught. Isn't it beautiful?" "I don't want to die..." Fluttershy was more scared by the apparent power that was being held over her than by the prospect of having just faced the end of her life. "But you will, at some point in time. Not wanting what you must have is worse than wanting what you can't have; someone else must suffer as a result." The source of the speech revealed itself when a cluster of kelp rotated about itself and produced the green maned colt. "Death, just like life, is a gift. You wouldn't refuse it if you knew what good it could do you." Fluttershy stared into his eyes as he approached her. The green pony, eyes the color of seafoam and hair as green as the deepest ocean algae floated so naturally among the undersea currents that she could swear he was a child of the water. "W-where are we?" The pegasus asked with a shudder in her voice. She was still scared, and the joviality and seeming lack of empathy from the other pony was only making her more uncomfortable, despite her impressions of him. "Still in your dreams, Fluttershy. We always have been and always will be. Tonight, you dream of water. Water that surrounds you, swallows you, and sends you forth with its mighty rush. Water is life, Fluttershy, and death. You cannot have a coin with only one side, or it wouldn't be worth the space it doesn't occupy." The pony swam around Fluttershy in a circle, clearly enjoying having the ocean sweep through his mane and tail. The ivy that was usually there had been replaced by intricately woven bands of seaweed and kelp, and diminutive fish and crustaceans followed in his wake, nibbling up the bits of edible debris that fell off of him. "But... What do I do?" Fluttershy needed a way to voice her confusion. She was utterly lost, and that too brought an even wider grin to the green pony's face. "You can do anything you want! But you strike me as someone who enjoys experience." The pony said, taking Fluttershy's hooves into his own. "Now that you've experienced death, would you like to experience life?" Fluttershy blinked, confused, and opened her mouth to speak, but she just couldn't talk. The ocean's waves and currents beneath the surface washed over her, and she could feel every strand of fur on her body move and sway with it. The other pony smiled and fell backward, bringing Fluttershy along with him into the abyss below. "Come with me, Fluttershy~ I promise I won't hurt you." The pegasus believed his genuine smile this time, utterly so, and went along. She followed his body language and melted into the sea, watched his hair trail upward as their bodies moved down. She felt as it brushed across her cheek and shoulders, caressed her lips and twined with her own mane. The warmth of the ocean, the feeling of being submerged and of drifting away, the feeling of every eddy and current moving her was divine. She felt the waves on the shore, up and down, forward and back, as though the earth was breathing. The tide was coming in, she felt a swelling, growing, the waves hit faster. Fluttershy closed her eyes and leaned back herself, falling down with the pony equally rather than being pulled, and gasped. Her breaths, they were the waves, and to exhale felt as though she could move the shores themselves. Her cheeks flushed, the ocean swelled around her, it touched her everywhere and she could feel it everywhere, warm, sensual, and loving. She was still in the womb, and yet she was very much adult; she could feel that to her core. Yet another wave passed through her body and made her heart jump. The pegasus was elevated somewhere, though she didn't know where. The water surrounding her was the fluid around her, and inside of her. It pulsed with her, and undulated more rapidly with her heartbeat. The tide spilled more and more out across beaches from far off worlds with each lungful. The deep's enormous pressure grew around her, first as a hug, and then as much much more. Tremors turned to quakes, she had power, the power of the tide between her arms, between her legs, and her every movement was taken into her very world, she gasped again. The pressure had grown around her, was it pleasure or pain? The waves clashed into her, were they resisting her? No, they were pushing, helping. She moved with them, writhed in them, breathed them into herself; she shared herself, her entire being just as the ocean had shared its. She felt a current brush her thigh, and then her cheek, and then every single hair in her mane. She felt it caress her lips, a kiss? It caressed everything — she could feel it touching everything — and breathed heavier. The swell clashed on the shores now; the tide had brought it over the sand and against cliffs, mountains, and walls. Does the ocean batter the shore, or does the shore batter the ocean? Fluttershy was the shore, the waves flowed into her, against her, onto her. They flowed around her as a landmass, and yet she was as the water; constant and flowing. All was moving into itself, becoming one, becoming more. She had joined together with something, a constant production and destruction, a primal force. As the sea extends, so is the shore destroyed, and as it recedes, further does land reach into what was once ocean. Life and death. Harmony. It was perfection. Fluttershy never stopped falling, but she did let go; she did fall away by her own power, and loved herself for it. She let her body wash away and dissolve, and she didn't want to go back into that prison again. She embraced her partner, and kissed him. She couldn't help herself, what she felt was beyond indescribable. The green pony kissed her back, returned everything she gave, and opened his teal eyes in the darkness of the abyss; the only source of light around. She leaned back and rested onto the ocean floor, her partner beside her, and looked up at the amorphous spot of light that tried its very best to penetrate all the way to where they were. She reached up to it, pawed at it with her hoof, such an ephemeral thing light was. She watched it burn away and fade into blackness just at the edge of her vision, as it does every single day. She turned her head to the left and caught a glimpse of what the last rays of light reflected off of, and they looked distinctively, disturbingly, like the teeth of an angler fish twisted into a smile just next to her face. The teeth opened and revealed themselves to have been her eyelashes filtering daylight. Fluttershy sat up and gasped for the last time that night, only it didn't come out like a frightened one. She looked down, felt the cool air flow over her cheeks to reveal a very familiar feeling of burning blush, and she saw another 'ocean' that had brought itself on at some point while she had been asleep. Her sheets around her thighs were soaked, and not from sweat, which just made her blush even more intensely. The pegasus, confused and uncomfortable looked over at her bedside table. The sleeping pony on the label of Twilight's bottle of sleeping pills taunted her. She reached out for the bottle and twisted the cap so hard it broke the child proof seal. Fluttershy didn't think; she just poured the entire bottle into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed the pills. She fell back onto her pillow and clutched her heart with a hoof; she wanted to go back, forever. Tears built in her eyes, and blurred her clock face, though she could see that it was nearly noon and she had slept all the way through her alarm; she didn't care. She didn't fall asleep as rapidly as she had expected, but after a few very uncomfortable convulsions, the darkness surrounding her vision crept in, overtook her, and drove her mind into a dangerous slumber.
PrologueThunder intermittently broke the white noise of heavy rain on Fluttershy's roof; first every few minutes and then every few seconds. The terrified little pegasus sat in her bed, holding the covers up above her head like a checkered shield against the storm as per the usual routine. Apart from the natural drumming and cymbal crash of the rainstorm, all that could be heard in the pale darkness was a chattering of teeth and the occasional whimper of an exhausted pony who had been kept up all night by it. Fluttershy's mind always wandered —usually to darker places— when the elements turned against her: rain was alright, but frequent lightning or high winds could set her to fits. This stormy night was no exception, even though she had been counting down to it for about a week. Rainbow Dash had taken the time to give her a warning of the next lightning storm, though it didn't help quite as much as she'd planned: poor Fluttershy just had nightmares about its arrival during the following six days. Fluttershy's animals, on the other hand, all slept like babies in their warm shelters during storms; Angel in his absurdly ornamented house, the rabbits in their warrens, the mice in their holes, the birds in their nests and the other critters snuggled together in their various dens, burrows, nooks, clusters, et cetera. Fluttershy cast her gaze over all of them and was able to pick out the pale blue and gray shapes of her friends' sleeping areas mostly by memory. She envied them; mostly for their ability to sleep through just about anything, but again for their mates. For as long as she'd been tending the edges of the forest, no one but the animals showed any particular interest in her, or she was just too oblivious to notice. As we all do, Fluttershy longed to feel comforting warmth around her and the gentle pulse of breath on the back of her neck. Just the thought brought a smile and blush to her cheeks, though only briefly enough for her to remember just how lonely she was. She sat in her bed, abandoned to consciousness even by her animals, and wrapped her forelegs around herself. Even though it was entirely simulated, the soft embrace she gave herself so often got her through nights like this one. After about five more minutes of trying unsuccessfully to sleep, Fluttershy let out a huff of frustration and threw her covers off of her body as aggressively as she could muster. As with all of her actions, though, these were gentle and kind; the heavy blanket was carefully aimed so as not to disturb any of the ferrets that had made their home under her footlocker, and the "huff" was more of a quiet sigh. The pegasus quietly trudged around animal beds and beneath cages with all the care of a jewel thief, and her ultimate goal was her bathroom. Apart from being one of the only places that animals weren't constantly occupying, Fluttershy had a stash of several different kinds of medicine hidden away in there, one in particular that was a new arrival. Twilight was concerned about Fluttershy's lack of sleep and recommended a preferred brand of sleeping pills. The pegasus stepped into her bathroom and silently shut the latch on the door, gave a sigh, and walked over to the counter top. She looked herself in the droopy, bloodshot eyes and had to fight a smile from the visage that looked back. Her hair was so messy from tossing and turning all night she looked almost like a yellow Pinkie Pie. Fluttershy reached out a hoof and opened up her medicine cabinet, which twisted her doppelganger out of view and replaced it with an eclectic assortment of differently colored pill bottles. She selected the one with the least amount of dust on it, Twilight's recommendation, and wrestled off the cap with her teeth. Before doing anything, Fluttershy held the bottle up to the light and read over the side effects. This was a common ritual of hers any time she used conventional medicine —she often preferred more holistic methods of healing, if possible— and, to no surprise, she found and read aloud the laundry list that followed. "Burning or tingling under the hooves, dizziness, drowsiness... Well I hope so... stomach pain, dry mouth, swelling of the face or tongue, changes in appetite, unusual dreams, thoughts of suicide, and occasional headaches..." Fluttershy looked up into the medicine cabinet once more and kept her face fixed in one position as she closed it again. "What do you think, Fluttershy? Worth it?" She asked herself with a smirk. The reflection of an exhausted pegasus shrugged and gave its reply, "Meh, roll the dice." With that decision, Fluttershy popped two of the small blue pills, reattached the foal-proof cap —with a small degree of frustration, of course— and headed back to bed just as carefully as she'd come in. Somehow her sheets felt warmer, her pillow felt softer, and she simply felt more relaxed. Time slipped past in a greater and greater distortion, and the little pegasus's mind drifted from barely conscious to a deep, unrivaled sleep. As she slipped into the medically induced coma, she remembered seeing the colors flash in from a bolt of lightening, which split in her window until she saw every color she knew existed. The bright flash of color, and the simple pleasure of falling down into the depths of unconsciousness painted Fluttershy's subconscious before she even arrived, and for the first time in weeks she fell asleep. Fluttershy sat in her fragmented reconstruction of a lovely meadow as her first dreams came to life. The plush turf of grass appeared just before she spotted it, and oh, of course, a smell to go with it, and dew sprinkled over the blades. It was dawn, still cool enough for her to see her breath, and behind her breath the world. Trees far taller than any buildings, even in Manehattan, and thick meadows of beautiful flowers, every size from tiny petals to barn door sized canvasses, spread out to the very borders of her view. In the sky sat pale, thin clouds gradually whittled down by the gentle breeze of chilly morning air which took its time to caress everything in the same valley as the dazed pegasus at the center of it all. The dream world was expansive and unfolding before her very eyes; everything she looked at had been just finished and formed, and that which she looked away from disappeared just as quickly. She stood, listening to birdsong that hadn't existed until that very moment, and stepped forth into the verdant painting that had become real for her. Fluttershy danced through the tall grass and the taller flowers surrounding her. Her mind flooded with positivity, and seemed almost to demand that she enjoy every possible second of this wonderful place that she could. Momentarily, she had forgotten her wings, and yet was not distressed in the least; she bounded over gaps and bushes, spotting every possible being in an ecosystem that she could think of. The insects, fish, frogs, weasels, rodents, higher order mammals, and frankly even the wind through the leaves seemed to harmonize into beautiful music as the ebullient pegasus minced by. In that isolated instance the very meaning of life was to enjoy the world, and the only thing that had any effect on its surroundings was whatever Fluttershy was immediately focused on, everything else either randomized or went away after she looked someplace else. The rapidly changing chaos of the dream kept Fluttershy enticed for what felt like hours, or perhaps minutes, though everything was broken through by a single, continuous sound. At first Fluttershy couldn't identify the sound; it started out as a drone, but seemed to have a little too much complexity for merely that. Then she thought it might be some kind of animal noise, but she'd never heard it before. The curious pegasus stepped forth into the forest of insanely tall flowers and shrubs in search of the drone. All the while the drone became gradually louder and more clear, and it was only when Fluttershy was just a little way away that she recognized it as melancholy humming. She followed the tune to a fan of gigantic verdant grass blades blocking her view. Her mind was abuzz with curiosity, but her actions were tentative as was typical for her. Eventually excitement won the battle over Fluttershy's emotions and she stepped forward. Beyond the blades of grass came a flourishing of butterflies whose wings were bright teal and tipped with dark purple. When the colorful explosion had cleared away, the pegasus finally saw the creature who had lured her there, and heard him more clearly as well. The colt was sitting upon a dense thicket of grass, patting some freshly turned earth with his hoof and continuing his song. His coat was forest green, but his mane and tail were a few shades darker, with the odd occasional streak of teal running through their robust verdure. Fluttershy noticed that a beautiful creeping ivy had grown up along his hind legs and had woven itself into his tail; though it had not quite reached his mane yet. As the pony finished his sombre humming and turned away, he showed his eyes for the very first time, heavy enough with sadness to make them glitter with tears not quite drawn yet. The large gems were the same teal that streaked through his hair, and though his eyes betrayed his depression, his snout cracked a gentle smile. "Sleep well, my friend." He said with a voice that only the ring of youth could create. He hadn't yet developed the harshness of an adult, and yet he appeared fully grown: almost ethereal in his unconventional attractiveness. The mysterious pony stood and began to walk away from the mound; his movements were graceful and practiced, as though he had the weight of a cloud. He trotted quickly on toward Fluttershy's general direction, which prompted the pegasus to instantly retreat back into the vegetation and hide herself. She stepped back, breathing heavily as the adrenaline of very nearly being busted brought up her heart rate, only to be startled even worse by the same soft voice behind her. "Hello, Miss Pegasus!" Fluttershy tried to wheel around and look at whomever had made the sound, but found herself in quite the quandary: her legs were tangled in something. The pegasus wrenched with all her might and let forth a scream, though she didn't realize that her movements in the dream had translated, upon her awakening, to her actual body. Once she finally got a hold of herself, she saw that she had somehow managed to hogtie all of her legs together with her quilt, and that her screams had woken up half of the critters in her bedroom. "Oh, I'm sorry about that everyone, I scared myself waking up..." Fluttershy said; she found an eerie familiarity in that particular explanation. Angel sat at the foot of her bed with his arms crossed and his foot angrily tapping. "Oh go back to sleep." Fluttershy said with a huff, and threw her blankets over herself; she wasn't in the mood for Angel's spoiled shenanigans. She tried herself to fall into a slumber, but her dozing only led to a rude awakening with her alarm three hours later. Upon waking, Fluttershy rubbed her temples and nearly destroyed her blaring clock. With a sigh, she heaved herself out of bed and into the beautiful rays of sunlight filtering in through her curtains. After she brushed her teeth, Fluttershy noticed that the grogginess had all but disappeared from her awakening, and she was as bright eyed and bushy tailed as most of her friends. She eyed the sleeping pill bottle on the edge of her sink and gave a smirk; they certainly worked, and even the "unusual dreams" weren't all that bad.
LovebirdThe sun was shining on yet another beautiful spring morning. Fluttershy, perky as she could be, bounded from animal den to animal den and made sure her friends' comfort was at maximum. Her already enjoyable daily "chores" were made all the more lovely by an exceptionally saturated, blooming sun hanging overhead; the colors beneath it were so intense that Fluttershy could swear that she was still dreaming. Blue from the sky faded into babbling river water at her hooves, and as the otters thanked their neighborly pegasus for the fish she brought along every day she could spot the glistening of sunlight in every drop of water on their silky fur. The caregiver went about her duties whilst humming a happy tune for as long as her good mood stuck around. Come three o' clock, however, the excessively happy pony experienced the most horrendous crash in her lifetime. There was actually a noticeable moment of change in Fluttershy's world where time seemed to slow, the surrounding colors dimmed and shrank back, and the vibrancy and simple happiness of Equestria just drained away. Fluttershy finished her duties, luckily only having a few dens remaining by the time of the crash, but was begrudging all the way nonetheless. By the time everyone was fed, watered and generally catered to, Fluttershy wanted nothing more than to step into her home and fall asleep. She sloughed off her saddlebags and let them clatter to the floor, and fell into the somewhat musty smelling sofa face first. Instantly, or so it felt, Angel began drumming his foot on the couch to wake its occupant up; time for dinner and Celestia forbid it's one minute late. The world seemed to conspire against the exhausted pony as she worked to create just the perfect salad for the horribly picky rodent. All along the way her patience was tried. She spent the trip between refrigerator and cutting board having to break up a fight between two larger birds and a smaller one, halfway through chopping vegetables she was nearly knocked down by four or five weasels playing a rousing game of tag just beneath her hooves, and finally just as she brought the dish out to her pet, Fluttershy was knocked prone as her needy Great Dane friend barreled into her, baying in anguish at the presence of a splinter in the thickest part of his paw pad. Naturally, the salad went flying through the air and found itself upturned on her bedraggled head. After going through those motions again, as well as a similar set for every single animal that demanded her attention for dinner, Fluttershy had to heave herself up every single step toward her bedroom. She didn't even have the energy to keep her wings folded, so they dragged and clunked up the stairs almost as loudly as her hooves. By the time her bedroom had come into view, the desaturated canary yellow pony skipped her nightly ritual entirely and fell into bed. Though she sank into the comfortable mattress, and though the night outside was crystal clear and silent, she found herself staring at her eyelids. Her mind just wouldn't turn off; worries about specific animals plagued her to start with. What if Angel would hold dinner tonight against her tomorrow? What if Mr. Great Dane felt horrible about knocking her over and was also losing sleep? What if Mr. and Mrs. Otter still haven't worked out that love triangle fuss with Mrs. Mink? And so forth. Afterwards, thoughts of her own failings kept her up. I didn't brush my teeth tonight... She thought to herself, trying to ignore the steadily more noticeable presence of plaque in her mouth. She looked over at her clock and, with the starlight's help, was able to make out the time 10:34; she'd been in bed for nearly two hours without sleeping a wink. After releasing a pathetic whine, Fluttershy poured herself out of bed once more. This time she just hoped that brushing her teeth and hair would be familiar enough to trick her into falling asleep; any option seemed better than lying there uselessly. She clumsily went about getting the paste onto the brush; more difficult than it sounds with hooves and jaw only, and started to brush. The sound of soft scraping filled out Fluttershy's hearing as she worked and, with nothing to do with her eyes, she just glanced around the bathroom. She couldn't find her hairbrush just from glancing around, but she did spot the little brown bottle with a foal proof cap, emblazoned on the front with a crescent moon and a very happily sleeping pony, that she'd left there that morning. One glance and her mind instantly approved, but Fluttershy wrenched her gaze away, spat, rinsed and looked herself in the eye by way of the medicine cabinet mirror. "No. I took some last night, if I keep that up before I know it I'll have a habit. You've just gotta suck it up and get some sleep on your own, missy." She said to herself, trying to be as assertive as possible. As with all other times, however, Fluttershy's attempt backfired. After trying to coax herself back into her bedroom, the weary pegasus muttered an absent minded, "screw it..." and returned to the bottle. After gnawing open the cap with yet another comical display of -- as Twilight would call it -- "arcana deficient incompetence," Fluttershy poured the bottle into her hoof. Way more than she had intended fell out, so she dumped them back; three remained in her hoof afterwards. After attempting to separate one pill from the other two from her hoof with her other hoof, to absolutely no avail she gave up, popped them all and chased them with some water from the sink. Without thinking about the increased dose, Fluttershy stepped back into her bedroom and lay down in her bed. Before Fluttershy's clock got even a quarter of the way through a rotation, the curled and comfy pegasus was once again fast asleep; the pills had worked their magic. That night, Fluttershy dreamed of her "happy place" if you will. Any time she needed to think of an escape, she thought of a fictional valley somewhere in the wide wide world; so deep that water and sunlight and clouds all collected together and grew. A verdant cross between Cloudsdale and the surface world, with high mountain walls on either side for safety and a gentle, warm atmosphere for everything alive. As was per usual with Fluttershy's dreams, nopony else was present, though neither were her animal friends. She wandered alone through the mist, listening to the quiet rustle of thick, moist wind passing through delicately placed leaves all around; not a bird, squirrel nor insect to interrupt. The cloud-like mist flowed down the mountains like milk dropped into water and took its place all around the valley such that she couldn't see anything between ten feet in front of her, and the mountaintops beyond. Fluttershy's imagination took off. The topography of the land ceased to make any sense whatsoever, instead it took whatever shape would be the greatest combination of adventurous and secure as the jubilant pegasus frolicked in her dreamland. Crevasses formed whenever she walked around something, but none came close enough for her to be threatened with a fall, and the mountains coiled around on themselves into a near dome above her. The mountains on the horizon eventually joined together at one point, and circled around entirely such that it seemed, from Fluttershy's perspective, to be a teardrop shaped valley. The pegasus figured she ought to go see what's at the point and then explore down if it seemed like fun. The casual simplicity of a dream was so captivating that, while capable of it, Fluttershy did not ever bring herself to realize her world wasn't real. The peaceful misty valley itself caught Fluttershy in a solipsistic diversion and deliberate escape from real life. But the world felt so real to her; the grass beneath her hooves bent with the limpness of dewy fresh morning blades, the air was cool and rich with moisture, and even had the highland smell that one would expect such a place to have swam through her nostrils. The coniferous trees scattered sparsely about cast their mild perfume into the heavy air as well; it along with clover and orchids and berries and honey was absolutely intoxicating. When she looked around she saw the spray of colors hit her vision as each scent was given form. Sounds accompanied the new plants as bees, other insects, birds, and small mammals suddenly populated the bountiful scene of nature before her. Fluttershy meandered toward the conjunction of the little mountain valley and found the scent in the air beginning to pick up the very distinctive aroma of the ocean. Fluttershy had only seen the ocean once in her lifetime, but the blue currents were so rich with life of all varieties that it permanently impressed the vision of pure beauty into her mind. Fluttershy longed for the ocean again, and so she galloped through the tall grass and beautiful misty highland meadows until the air began to clear. The mist spilled out over the seawater lazily and constantly; the mist itself was so still that it looked as if a glacier had intruded into a tropical paradise and melted away into steam just at the water's edge. The striking sapphire of the ocean against the clear, bright blue of the sky bordered by mountains like castle turrets made Fluttershy's senses absolutely quiver in delight. She sat down on the warm, white sands and listened to the music of the waves hitting the shore, the wind in the trees and crags, and the living creatures busying themselves to and fro amongst the plants. This music brought a tear to Fluttershy's eyes, and she couldn't stop herself from falling back onto the sand and looking straight up into the cerulean hemisphere above her. The beach was just as soft as her bed, and the environment was a hundred times as wonderful as Equestria's, so she sank back and relaxed into the beach. The natural music of Fluttershy's surroundings eventually bled into real music; birdsong was slowly replaced by individually plucked notes, wind was replaced by background harmonies that the pegasus could scarcely follow, and the lapping of waves on the water was drowned out by the echoing vibrations from a heavy stringed instrument. Curious, Fluttershy sat up and looked around. The world was roughly the same, she was still on the beach at least. She did, however, see the source of her new music right away; it was the pony she had seen the night before in the woods. He was sitting on the water's edge, letting the waves bash over the big, black, shining harp as he played it. The numerous delicately tuned strings made their perfection beautifully apparent as the solid ebony instrument rang out with flawless pitch. The water colliding with it didn't hurt the harp's sound whatsoever, in fact it almost seemed to go naturally well with the music. Fluttershy was completely captivated by the music; so much so that she stood up and wandered slowly forward like a dazzled lark. Her hooves sank further into the damp sand the closer she got to the mysterious green pony, and the spray of ocean mist cast little drops of dew into her mane. She wanted to approach but didn't know what to say, or even how close to get before it was considered rude. "Hello again, Miss Pegasus!" The pony's voice rose easily over the sounds of strings and crashing waves, over the sound of birds and wind and leaves, insects, animals, and the slow grinding of water, rock, sand and time. Fluttershy opened her mouth to respond but couldn't think of anything to say; the only thing that happened was a gradual spreading of blush that radiated across her face. The green, vine laden stallion leaned back from his harp, the notes becoming gradually higher and higher on the scale he was playing as his reach pulled back toward the shorter strings. He tilted his head down and fell from his stool into the wet sand, but continued playing with his hind legs just as precisely as before, and with absolutely no interruption in the music. He crossed his forelegs beneath his head for support, smiled up at Fluttershy and took a quick breath as the tide washed up over him. "W-w-who are you?" Fluttershy stuttered out. She wasn't sure why she was stuttering, she usually only did that when she was afraid and he... Well. He didn't make her afraid. He was handsome, talented, and appeared as sweet as can be, not to mention innocent. His withers were narrower than the average stallion, as was his neck, and his flanks were generally wider. His body looked somewhere between mare and colt, but as he was on his back and playing a harp with his rear hooves it was abundantly clear that he was strictly male. "You know... I don't think I've ever been asked that question. Who are you?" He said in response. His voice made the harp sound almost ugly. "I'm F-Fluttershy. I uhm... I saw you in the forest, earlier. You don't have a name?" "Name? You want my name? But we just met!" "Huh?" Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion. "Haven't you ever had a name before? There's so much power in them!" Fluttershy, still blushing, stared confused into the eyes of the relaxed looking stallion. To which the green pony giggled and rolled onto his stomach. The harp stopped playing briefly, but resumed after seven enormous vines climbed the ebony frame; as the wind blew, their leaves plucked and swept across the strings to produce the exact same beautiful song. The colt was entirely clean, despite rolling in the sand, and only subtle drops of ocean water clung to his coat. He spoke up again, smiling into Fluttershy's eyes as he did so. "Here, let me demonstrate. Would you come with me, Fluttershy?" The colt smiled again, but this time it was irresistible. Fluttershy was captivated by the twinkle in his eyes and the vines in his mane, and with more confidence than she'd ever had before, she stepped forward. The stallion giggled again and began walking further down the beach. Fluttershy obediently stayed beside him. "See? All I had to do was ask and here you are." "But I..." Fluttershy wanted to protest, but she hadn't even noticed that she started walking. "Huh..." "You're really funny, miss Pegasus. I've never met someone who just gave their name away before." "Where I'm from that's the first thing we do." "You must live on the underside of the world, then, if everything's backwards like that!" The forest green pony looked over and enunciated "backwards" with what appeared to be every muscle in his face. "Hey," Fluttershy began, indignantly, "Things aren't so bad where I'm from. The sun comes up every day at the same time, things grow and live long lives, and nature is absolutely splendid no matter where you look." The stallion looked around at his surroundings and smirked, "Sounds weird. Long lives you say?" "Yes, most things live for dozens of years; a few can even survive--" Fluttershy was interrupted when the stallion pulled away rapidly to pick something up from the ground. She paused and glanced down just in time to spot him rising up with a tiny conch shell that he had inexplicably strung with a vine. The colt delicately placed the piece of jewelry around Fluttershy's neck. "There. That's pretty!" He smiled and continued along, and only paused when he realized that Fluttershy was dumbstruck. "Oh, sorry... Carry on." Fluttershy picked the shell up with her hoof and examined it. It really was beautiful; the conch seemed like it was made of coiled marble, and the inside shone with a glorious opalescent glitter. The vine it was strung with was still alive and growing rapidly. As if by nature alone, the vines grew and grew, and wove themselves into Fluttershy's mane. "I-it's gorgeous..." The stallion laughed and danced around in a giddy, somewhat girly fashion. "Oh I'm so glad you like it! You made it." "Huh?" His face contorted into laughter again, "This is your world, Fluttershy. Didn't you come here to get away from something?" She looked on with a blank stare. Her mind was tumultuous with hundreds of questions all rattling around at once, but none of them getting answered. "Is it so hard to believe? This place is almost as pretty as you, you know." The stallion said, another smirk painting his dimpled, green cheeks. "Where did you come from?" "Ponyville." Fluttershy looked ahead and kept walking alongside him, her face burning red with embarrassment. "Which way is that?" "Uhm..." Fluttershy blushed once more, embarrassed for walking into that verbal trap. She looked around and realized that she was, indeed, on an island. She had no memory of flying there, sailing there, or even getting there. Her worldview shattered before the prospect. "I'll give you a hint. You can go back any time you want, but you won't know how long you've been away." "Hints are your favorite way of speaking, aren't they?" The stallion laughed at this comment and even showed signs of blush under his thick, dark green coat. "Specificity is for sunshine, if you tell people what you want them to learn, how are they supposed to learn it?" "I guess that makes sense..." Fluttershy, at this point, was just going along with the things he said. He seemed insane, but insane enough to be the most intelligent pony she'd ever met. Fluttershy thought that she herself might even be insane for not understanding it, or perhaps, insane enough to want to understand. "Don't worry, Miss Pegasus, you clearly live somewhere constant, which means you have something that I don't. Time!" "Time?" It was 8:21 AM, and Fluttershy's eyes opened just in time to watch her clock tick over to 8:22. She was in her room, lying in her bed, and as the remnants of sleep and dream receded into her subconscious, Fluttershy remembered finally how she got there. It was all just an illusion, but she knew that she had made a real connection. The pegasus rolled over onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling, thinking, when she felt something on her chest. It was small, round and hard, and pressed up against her body just where something might be if it were hanging around her neck. Fluttershy sat up so quickly she might just as well have flown out of bed; was it real? The shape moved itself away from the realm of touch and burst into view. Fluttershy's quilt fell down and revealed a very distinct lovebird of hers that had snuggled itself into her embrace while she was sleeping, his beak pressed just where the shell had been. "Oh! Good morning, Smoochy." Fluttershy tried to hide her disappointment; secretly she wished the shell had been real, but she wasn't unhappy to see that particular feathered friend. He could always tell when she wasn't sleeping well and absolutely craved snuggling under Fluttershy's wing, so he did this whenever he worried. Fluttershy sat back and looked around her room, and the only thing that she could think about was how dull it seemed. The colors had lost their saturation, and the cries and claws of animals were no longer natural music, but nails on a chalkboard. She forced herself out of bed and into the shower to test the limits of her water heater's capacity; she had a long day ahead of her.
Shed My Skin At LastThroughout the day Fluttershy's condition was absolutely woeful. Everything about her chores seemed to take three times the effort that it ought to have, and she wanted nothing other than to just fall asleep. Her duties always kept her from napping, of course, since most of the cushions, couches, beds, and other furniture was either occupied by her friends or reeked of them. She even started to notice just how musty and generally bad her home smelled, when every single other day it wouldn't have bothered her in the slightest. She tried to find a break for herself but, as usual, simply couldn't. Somepony, or some animal, kept bothering her. First it was Twilight at the door to ask how things were and to borrow a book about advanced Ferret wrangling, then a trio of seals couldn't make up their mind as to whom the single beach ball belonged to and came to Fluttershy for adjudication. She tried to meditate by the trees and promptly felt the wet splat of some inconsiderate avian on her withers, and even the quiet meadow that she frequented was crawling with distracting cicadas. The sounds, smells, and eventually even the fading light of late afternoon all pierced Fluttershy's throbbing head, the poor pegasus spent about half the day whimpering and trying various herbal remedies for the pain. Very nearly drugged into a stupor, Fluttershy stumbled around her kitchen, trying to find something to eat. She had spent so much time feeding her animals that she had completely forgotten about dinner, and her stomach decided to wait until almost nine in the evening to remind her. Her refrigerator was usually home to more vegetables than many farming families could ever keep, but she had forgotten to restock on food for the week, so all she had to choose from was a can of sliced carrots and some vegetarian chili mix (without the chili). Fluttershy sighed and pressed a hoof to her forehead. "Well that's just perfect..." The store would have to wait, but at least her stomach didn't. She decided to drain and quickly saute the carrots in a little garlic oil, which had managed to go stale in her cupboards, and ate them by themselves. Once finished, Fluttershy didn't even bother to clean her dishes or brush her teeth. She just went upstairs and collapsed into her bed. Unfortunately, the night couldn't possibly have been any worse. Their was a light breeze outside, which ruffled her wind chimes and other various facets of her home and kept her awake. By the time the clock struck midnight, Fluttershy lay exhausted in her bed, completely unable to find that happy divide between waking and dreaming. "This sucks..." The pegasus said to herself. She buried her face in the pillow and yelled (as much as Fluttershy was known for yelling), then stood up to head into her bathroom. Her goal was to check her face to make sure she wasn't looking sick, though the sight that greeted her in the mirror would beg to differ in that regard. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face drooped with exhaustion, and even her mane was so disheveled that the usual heart shape it held looked more like a kidney. She found it hard to stop herself from looking down, harder than usual at any rate, and once more spotted the little bottle of sleeping pills. "Fluttershy, if you keep taking those you're gonna get addicted." The face in the mirror told her. "I know that. It says so on the bottle." "So don't do it then." For some reason the reflection had more sense than she did. "But I can't sleep..." The physical pegasus whined, clearly at her wit's end. "Don't you think that's because you've been popping pills for three days?" "Wait... Why the hay am I talking to myself?" "That's not the po--" Fluttershy interrupted her mirror self by opening the medicine cabinet and forcing her out of view. She had played games like that and talked with herself since she was very young, seeing as how she had so few friends, and it occasionally resurfaced in her daily life whenever the stress was bad enough. She picked up the bottle of pills, poured two out into her hoof, and stared at them. The pills were such a pretty shade; like the blue hue in Rarity's eyes without the depth, or Rainbow Dash's matte blue streaks in her mane. Every so often as the light caressed them, a flash from a grain of sugar or whatever else crystalline was in the things would glimmer with a prismatic twinkle that made her smile. "Damn... These things are even starting to look good..." Fluttershy commented. Feeling like that said more about her developing dependency than anything, she dropped one back into the bottle and swallowed the remaining pill. She brought the bottle with her and set it next to her bed, figuring that once it was empty she could just drop the habit by lack of availability, and lay back down on her sheets. The edge to her exhaustion didn't ever quite go away, but Fluttershy did start to feel a little drowsier, though not to the degree that she had wanted. She still couldn't fall asleep; she was instead tormented by little sounds every which way, breaking her out of the trance that she continually approached, and making her even more frustrated. With yet another scream into her pillow, Fluttershy checked her clock and very nearly let her jaw hit the floor. It was 2:53 in the morning, and she still hadn't gotten a wink. "Alright fine, you win." She said softly to herself. By now she had become pretty good at opening this particular foal proof cap, which came off the bottle with three more pills arranged within it, conveniently placed such that they stuck inside by their shape alone. Fluttershy knocked the cap against her lips and dropped all three pills into her mouth, swallowed them without any water, and forcefully threw her head back down onto the pillow. She was fast asleep by 3:00. The world she entered wasn't a beautiful island or jungle, nor was it highland, mountain, forest or even Ponyville itself, but instead a vast, glittering ocean as deep and mysterious as she remembered it being. Fluttershy had quite literally 'fallen' asleep, and realized that she was moving only just before she hit the water. The spray wasn't salty, though, it was fresh, and as pure as clean spring water filtered by moss. Fluttershy tried to swim, but felt like she just couldn't tread water, and her wings had become useless the instant her feathers were soaked. She started to panic. She sank and held her breath, marveling in the clarity of the water, but simultaneously spinning into a chaotic fear, one so primal that she felt it to her very core. "Relax, Fluttershy." A voice said. It sounded like wind through trees, but there weren't any trees here. "Just let go. What are you afraid of." Fluttershy wanted to say "drowning" but she was desperately clinging onto the remaining breath in her lungs; the one she thought would truly be her last. She struggled and kicked, trying desperately to reach the surface, but it seemed that the glassy plane eluded her, no matter how quickly she swam upward. Eventually, from the strain of exercise and the time she had spent squeezing her airway shut, Fluttershy was forced to exhale. The breath of air escaped her burning lungs and bubbled to the surface, and she involuntarily inhaled to replace it. What entered her lungs wasn't the heavy, choking sensation of water, but instead a clean breeze that refreshed her frightened mind. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Said the voice again. This time, it had enough clarity to be recognized as the childish voice of her would-be dream companion, only he wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Dying is just like anything you do for the first time; it's scary at first, but you look back on it and laugh eventually." "You killed me?!" Fluttershy screamed; her voice had an unexpected clarity to it for being submerged in water. The voice laughed a happy, joyous laugh. "Oh no of course not! I had nothing to do with that, you just experienced what it's like. The fear, the struggle, and in the end the realization that the world goes on without you, even after your efforts are all for naught. Isn't it beautiful?" "I don't want to die..." Fluttershy was more scared by the apparent power that was being held over her than by the prospect of having just faced the end of her life. "But you will, at some point in time. Not wanting what you must have is worse than wanting what you can't have; someone else must suffer as a result." The source of the speech revealed itself when a cluster of kelp rotated about itself and produced the green maned colt. "Death, just like life, is a gift. You wouldn't refuse it if you knew what good it could do you." Fluttershy stared into his eyes as he approached her. The green pony, eyes the color of seafoam and hair as green as the deepest ocean algae floated so naturally among the undersea currents that she could swear he was a child of the water. "W-where are we?" The pegasus asked with a shudder in her voice. She was still scared, and the joviality and seeming lack of empathy from the other pony was only making her more uncomfortable, despite her impressions of him. "Still in your dreams, Fluttershy. We always have been and always will be. Tonight, you dream of water. Water that surrounds you, swallows you, and sends you forth with its mighty rush. Water is life, Fluttershy, and death. You cannot have a coin with only one side, or it wouldn't be worth the space it doesn't occupy." The pony swam around Fluttershy in a circle, clearly enjoying having the ocean sweep through his mane and tail. The ivy that was usually there had been replaced by intricately woven bands of seaweed and kelp, and diminutive fish and crustaceans followed in his wake, nibbling up the bits of edible debris that fell off of him. "But... What do I do?" Fluttershy needed a way to voice her confusion. She was utterly lost, and that too brought an even wider grin to the green pony's face. "You can do anything you want! But you strike me as someone who enjoys experience." The pony said, taking Fluttershy's hooves into his own. "Now that you've experienced death, would you like to experience life?" Fluttershy blinked, confused, and opened her mouth to speak, but she just couldn't talk. The ocean's waves and currents beneath the surface washed over her, and she could feel every strand of fur on her body move and sway with it. The other pony smiled and fell backward, bringing Fluttershy along with him into the abyss below. "Come with me, Fluttershy~ I promise I won't hurt you." The pegasus believed his genuine smile this time, utterly so, and went along. She followed his body language and melted into the sea, watched his hair trail upward as their bodies moved down. She felt as it brushed across her cheek and shoulders, caressed her lips and twined with her own mane. The warmth of the ocean, the feeling of being submerged and of drifting away, the feeling of every eddy and current moving her was divine. She felt the waves on the shore, up and down, forward and back, as though the earth was breathing. The tide was coming in, she felt a swelling, growing, the waves hit faster. Fluttershy closed her eyes and leaned back herself, falling down with the pony equally rather than being pulled, and gasped. Her breaths, they were the waves, and to exhale felt as though she could move the shores themselves. Her cheeks flushed, the ocean swelled around her, it touched her everywhere and she could feel it everywhere, warm, sensual, and loving. She was still in the womb, and yet she was very much adult; she could feel that to her core. Yet another wave passed through her body and made her heart jump. The pegasus was elevated somewhere, though she didn't know where. The water surrounding her was the fluid around her, and inside of her. It pulsed with her, and undulated more rapidly with her heartbeat. The tide spilled more and more out across beaches from far off worlds with each lungful. The deep's enormous pressure grew around her, first as a hug, and then as much much more. Tremors turned to quakes, she had power, the power of the tide between her arms, between her legs, and her every movement was taken into her very world, she gasped again. The pressure had grown around her, was it pleasure or pain? The waves clashed into her, were they resisting her? No, they were pushing, helping. She moved with them, writhed in them, breathed them into herself; she shared herself, her entire being just as the ocean had shared its. She felt a current brush her thigh, and then her cheek, and then every single hair in her mane. She felt it caress her lips, a kiss? It caressed everything — she could feel it touching everything — and breathed heavier. The swell clashed on the shores now; the tide had brought it over the sand and against cliffs, mountains, and walls. Does the ocean batter the shore, or does the shore batter the ocean? Fluttershy was the shore, the waves flowed into her, against her, onto her. They flowed around her as a landmass, and yet she was as the water; constant and flowing. All was moving into itself, becoming one, becoming more. She had joined together with something, a constant production and destruction, a primal force. As the sea extends, so is the shore destroyed, and as it recedes, further does land reach into what was once ocean. Life and death. Harmony. It was perfection. Fluttershy never stopped falling, but she did let go; she did fall away by her own power, and loved herself for it. She let her body wash away and dissolve, and she didn't want to go back into that prison again. She embraced her partner, and kissed him. She couldn't help herself, what she felt was beyond indescribable. The green pony kissed her back, returned everything she gave, and opened his teal eyes in the darkness of the abyss; the only source of light around. She leaned back and rested onto the ocean floor, her partner beside her, and looked up at the amorphous spot of light that tried its very best to penetrate all the way to where they were. She reached up to it, pawed at it with her hoof, such an ephemeral thing light was. She watched it burn away and fade into blackness just at the edge of her vision, as it does every single day. She turned her head to the left and caught a glimpse of what the last rays of light reflected off of, and they looked distinctively, disturbingly, like the teeth of an angler fish twisted into a smile just next to her face. The teeth opened and revealed themselves to have been her eyelashes filtering daylight. Fluttershy sat up and gasped for the last time that night, only it didn't come out like a frightened one. She looked down, felt the cool air flow over her cheeks to reveal a very familiar feeling of burning blush, and she saw another 'ocean' that had brought itself on at some point while she had been asleep. Her sheets around her thighs were soaked, and not from sweat, which just made her blush even more intensely. The pegasus, confused and uncomfortable looked over at her bedside table. The sleeping pony on the label of Twilight's bottle of sleeping pills taunted her. She reached out for the bottle and twisted the cap so hard it broke the child proof seal. Fluttershy didn't think; she just poured the entire bottle into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed the pills. She fell back onto her pillow and clutched her heart with a hoof; she wanted to go back, forever. Tears built in her eyes, and blurred her clock face, though she could see that it was nearly noon and she had slept all the way through her alarm; she didn't care. She didn't fall asleep as rapidly as she had expected, but after a few very uncomfortable convulsions, the darkness surrounding her vision crept in, overtook her, and drove her mind into a dangerous slumber.
