Fluttershy awoke and knew, immediately, that it was a mistake. The din of her alarm clock melted her eardrums and sizzled her brain, like water in hot oil, and came at it with the force of a nuclear shockwave that slammed, smashed, bashed, battered, pounded, pummelled, and clobbered it into porridge. The roof of her mouth and the backs of her gums were a desert, but her tongue was like a fat, soggy, moldy dish sponge. Also, for some reason, breathing was gross.
Thusly was Fluttershy reminded of why she avoided drink.
She swung a hoof over her eyes, moaned in agony, and reached the other out from the heap of blanket and quilt within which she had buried herself. The leg flailed until it found the clock. She tried to turn it off and ended up knocking it off the nightstand, where it carried on ringing, clattering across the floor.
The leg fell and hung off the edge of her bed, then withdrew back into the fabric cocoon, which tightened as Fluttershy curled up and tried to ignore the noise.
After a few minutes, the alarm stopped. In its place came an angry chitter.
“Mgvb,” said Fluttershy.
Now the chitter was louder.
“Go away,” said Fluttershy. She’d meant it to sound commanding, but it came out as a peevish whine.
Chitter chatter yammer bicker chirp!
Fluttershy peeled blanket off her head and found herself confronted by a small, white haze.
She squinted.
It didn’t help.
She carried on squinting until she was nearly looking up her own nostrils. The haze resolved into Angel Bunny. Well, one-and-a-half Angel Bunnies, at any rate.
Rabbit glared at pegasus and squeaked at length.
Fluttershy hung her head and cuddled a pillow.
“Loogh,” she said, “Idnknw wha--uuungh!”
She tried to squirm out of her sheets and rolled onto the floor. When she managed to untangle herself, she clutched a fetlock to her lips, scrambled to her hooves, bolted, and made it to the bathroom just in time.
Angel stood by the bathroom door, tapping a foot and glowering at Fluttershy until it was over.
Then he harangued her some more.
“I know,” said Fluttershy, wretchedly. “I don’t know why I let Dashie--aumfgh!”
Once the tide finally ebbed for good, Fluttershy slumped onto the floor outside the bathroom, curled up into a tight ball, and whimpered. She really should not have let herself go so far. Well, what she should have done was say no, in the first place, but it was her birthday, everybody was having a good time, and Rainbow Dash had insisted, and, after all, she did like coconut, and . . .
There was a hammering at the front door. It was insistent.
“Coming,” Fluttershy croaked, forcing herself upright to weave slowly, very slowly, back across her cottage to her front door, where she paused until the floor stopped trying to run away.
She opened the top half of the double-hung door and found herself nose-to-nose with a gray and hay-blond apparition breathing aniseed at her. It wore a blanket, boots, a scarf, an enormous, fuzzy wool hat with ear-flaps and a big, round bauble, and a smile that not only carried on to the eyes, but bathed the whole body.
“Hi!” it said.
It took Fluttershy a moment to sift through the squishy fog that was currently passing for memory.
“Oh, hi, Ditzy,” she said.
The whole-body smile became a whole-body frown.
“Are you sick? Lousy bad weather to be sick. I gots some lickrish for coughs if you’s sick.”
“I’ll be fine, thank you, Ditzy. What can I do for you?”
The smile came back. Ditzy Doo held out a little bundle of post.
“I gots your mail right here, Ms Fluttershy,” she said.
So she was a “mizz”, then, noted Fluttershy. It was technically true, of course, and manners were important, but honorifics always scraped at her ears like a honing steel if they came anywhere near her own name.
“Oh, thank you, Ditzy, but, please, it’s just ‘Fluttershy’,” she said.
“No,” said Ditzy, “I gots to do it proper, since you’s a customer right now, but I’ll remember for when I see you in public like.”
That, at least, got a queasy smile from Fluttershy.
“Okay,” she said, “but why did you need to--”
Ditzy Doo craned her head so far over the bottom half of the door that Fluttershy had to bend back the other way, if only to get away from the fug of aniseed. Did they really make throat sweets that strong?
Tongue snapped off palate as Ditzy sucked on the sweet in her mouth, and then she said, in the gleeful, conspiratorial whisper of one who has just got hold of a fresh, juicy rumor, and cannot wait to spread it:
“Your mailbox were stuck. All frozed up.”
“Oh, uh--”
“So I brung your mail to you.”
“Right.”
Ditzy Doo leaned back out of the door and beamed with an enthusiasm that left Fluttershy staring at her, bewildered and thinking, she looks so proud.
Ditzy Doo waved the little bundle until it got Fluttershy’s attention, again.
“Oh! Right,” said Fluttershy, taking it. “Sorry. Um, don’t you normally leave a note if you can’t deliver?”
“Yep!”
And that was that.
From what little Fluttershy knew of her, it was probably as good an answer as any.
Ditzy Doo fluttered her wings and smiled.
Fluttershy looked at her.
Ditzy Doo kept on smiling, content.
Already the conversation had stretched on for longer than any the two had ever shared, before, and Fluttershy found herself at a loss.
The silence began to decompose and develop an awkward stink.
“So, uh, it’s awfully cold out,” said Fluttershy, with a nervous laugh. “Can I get you something hot? Tea?”
“I gots some soup!” announced Ditzy Doo. She pulled a vacuum flask out of her saddlebag and waggled it in front of Fluttershy, in case this helped. “Lots of vetagables. Except the ones that’s fruit. There's lots of fruits ponies call vetagables, you know. Tomato, zucchini, squash, eggplant, cucumber--”
“Oh! I see. That’s good. Very healthy,” said Fluttershy, speaking quickly as she felt her belly lurch. “Um. Well. The door’s open if you need to warm up. I’ll have a fire going.”
Ditzy squinted at Fluttershy, then put the vacuum flask back in her saddlebag and rummaged.
“Better get it going quick, so’s you don’t really gets sick,” she said.
“Yes, Ditzy,” said Fluttershy, “I will. Now--”
A small sack came out of the saddlebag. It was held in front of Fluttershy and jiggled up and down. There was a rustling of paper. The fug of aniseed intensified.
“Have some,” said Ditzy. “I make’em meself. All natural and things. Stops your coughs.”
Fluttershy believed it. In fact, she doubted any orifice would be able to stand up to them. Her eyes watered and she thought she could feel her ear wax melting. She took a few of the little lozenges, wrapped in wax paper, for the look of the thing.
“Thank you, Ditzy,” she said, and took a vague stab at how she thought the postal service worked. “Now, it’s awfully cold. Maybe you should go finish your shift? Get back in the warm?”
Ditzy Doo opened her mouth to reply. Her eyes shifted focus to somewhere above and behind Fluttershy, and her expression lost a scintilla of warmth.
Then she beamed again, unfurled her wings, rose into the air, and whipped off her hat in what she probably thought was a kind of salute.
“Right you are, Ms Fluttershy!” she said, replacing the hat.
She turned and flapped back down the path before Fluttershy could respond. It should not be possible to prance in mid-air, but Ditzy Doo was managing it.
Fluttershy squinted after the other pegasus, then set the mail and throat sweets on a desk and closed the door.
The air shifted. It came with enough force to rattle the door against its bolts. Then there was a click of hoof on floor, and a raspy voice behind her said:
“What was that all about?”
It took Rainbow Dash a minute or two to bring Fluttershy back down from the cloud she’d bolted to, but when she did, she kicked the door shut again and repeated herself:
“What was that all about?”
Fluttershy slumped.
“Just the mail,” she said. “Sorry, I forgot you were--”
Her eyes shot open.
“What did we do last night?”
Rainbow Dash laughed.
“What, you blacked out?” she said. “Wow, you really are a lightweight!”
Now Fluttershy’s voice was quick, urgent.
“What did we do last night?” she said again.
“Well, we found out that you like piña coladas.”
“Right, but did we--”
“Then you did that thing with the rubber bands,” said Rainbow Dash, laughing until she had to wipe tears. “Oh, man, that was hilarious. I think you about broke Pinkie Pie.”
Fluttershy stamped a hoof and glared at Rainbow Dash.
“Hey! Easy!” said Rainbow Dash.
“Did we--”
“No! We didn’t!”
“Oh.”
"Twilight talked to me as everypony was leaving and we agreed that I should stay the night to make sure you were okay," said Rainbow Dash. "I mean, yeah, you were pretty hammered, but you’d remember if we'd actually done anything. Trust me.”
Fluttershy blew out her cheeks in relief.
Rainbow Dash grinned and nudged her.
“Come on, you could at least sound disappointed,” she teased.
“Dashie--”
“I mean, I’m awesome, yeah? Like I said, you’d remember.”
“Not now. Please,” said Fluttershy, rubbing her aching forehead.
“And, frankly, I’m insulted you think I’d take advantage. That was a long time ago, and just because I--”
"I know! I know. I'm sorry."
Okay, thought Rainbow Dash, as Fluttershy hung her head, that was probably a bit much. She swung a hoof around Fluttershy’s withers, dragged her in close, and noogied her.
“D’aww, you know I’m just kidding, Flutters!” she said, her gleeful voice soaring above Fluttershy’s protests and the scrabble of hoof against floor. Then, when Fluttershy twisted away, and Rainbow Dash had a proper look at her, she said, “Actually, you do look pretty bad. Eaten anything yet?”
“No,” said Fluttershy. Her belly protested at the very idea.
“Right,” said Dash, turning toward the kitchen. “This your first hangover?”
It wasn’t, but the actual number could have been counted on four hooves. Fluttershy whimpered and curled up.
“Right,” said Dash, again. There was the hollow clatter of metal against porcelain. “Don’t you worry. Coming right up.”
It didn’t take very long at all before Rainbow Dash trotted back into the front room and presented Fluttershy with a mug.
Fluttershy looked into it.
The contents were, generally, a greyish dark brown, with a few suspiciously oeufoid yellow streaks. There was no smell to speak of, but, on the whole, it did not look much better than what she’d brought up a few minutes before.
“What--”
“Just drink it,” said Rainbow Dash. “One big slurp. Get it over with.”
Fluttershy frowned. “But what--”
“Look,” said Dash, “it’s best you just chug it, and if you really wanna know, I’ll tell you after the room stops spinning, okay? It’s not more booze, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Fluttershy looked, helpless, into Rainbow Dash’s eyes, searching for anything, anything at all, that hinted at insincerity. As close as they were, as far back as they went, there was still that dangerous sense of humor that you always had to watch out for.
Rainbow Dash sighed, rolled her eyes, and, as if reading Fluttershy’s mind, said: “Flutters, there’s pranks, and then there’s just being mean. I don’t do mean. Drink it. It’ll help.”
Fluttershy took the drink and downed it in one quick swallow. The tongue didn’t get enough time to taste properly, but, in the moment before it went down her gullet, she registered salt, the chemical heat of dried capsicums, and a gross, thick, slimy texture, like a dollop of mucus during a cold, but it went down far more easily than she had expected.
And it would be nice to say that Fluttershy then went through a series of amusingly painful facial contortions, or that smoke poured out of her ears with a humorous whistling noise, or that she ran outside and buried her head in the snow, but this is what actually happened:
She rolled her tongue around her mouth.
She looked at the mug.
She looked at Rainbow Dash.
Repeat a few times, twist Fluttershy’s expression into a suspicious squint, and that was pretty much it. If you like, you can also imagine the confused surprise of someone who has just found out about the dada movement, but the fact was, she really did feel better.
“So what--”
“Later. Now let’s get you hydrated,” said Rainbow Dash, smiling.
