A Lyre's Tale

Lyra gazed into the creature awakening before her. Her green eyes pierced the darkness.  She blinked and looked up. Lyra glanced at the ceiling. The human’s head tilted foreward, leaning off the table, and looking down her long, slender body. She -again if it was a she- struggled against the ropes holding her down. After a few seconds, realizing that she was trapped, threw her head back onto the table like it was before. Lyra, standing on the human’s left, saw her throw her face towards her. Then away. ‘What happened?’ Lyra thought. ‘Can she see me? Was she paying attention? Could she be able to see ponies at all? Was she blind?’ The human threw her face thwards her again. Their eyes met.

It felt like an eternity.

Lyra and the human memorized each others’ souls. Nopony spoke.

An odd, steady voice emmitted from before her after what felt like a long, long time. Compared to most ponies’ voices, it was smooth, almost seductive, but full of emotion.

“Lyra?” She gasped and fell back. Her head pounded into a jar and a table fell over behind her. There was a clanking of glass.  She knew her name! How could it be? The human then said something that she didn’t understand. The same steady voice made a smooth poem of grunts and articulations and sometimes moans. Lyra panicked. She ran up the stairs.

Lyra burst out of the basement. ‘How is this possible?’ her mind screamed within her head. ‘I can’t understand her? What am I going to do? If I can’t talk to this creature, who could? Nopony could understand that strange babbling!’ she paused, her panicked breath suddenly very calm. “Or could they?” she said under her breath.

Lyra grabbed a pen off the counter and a bit of paper, and began to scribble.

BonBon:

I’ve gotten up early to take care of some unfinished business.

~Lyra

BonBon wouldn’t question it, Lyra reasoned, nor remember to ask about that evening.

If there was one pony who could talk to this creature, it was Fluttershy.

Lyra knocked on the small wooden door. “Um-- Ms. Fluttershy? Are you there?” Silence. “Fluttershy? Are you there? Please answer, I need your help.”

A cliddly-op cliddly-op of her hoofsteps grew louder as Fluttershy rushed over to the door.

“Oh- I- am sorry to keep you waiting,” came the soft, airy voice as the door opened.  She averted her eyes in an embarrased manner. She had obviously been hoping that whoever was at the door would assume that she wasn’t home and would give up. Lyra didn’t care.

“Fluttershy, there’s something important I have to show you-- you- you can’t tell anypony!”

“Huh?”

“Shh! I can’t explain now that we’re outside,” said Lyra, suddenly looking around. “Just follow me, and promise—no. Pinkie Promise that you will not tell anypony.”

Once the coast was clear, Lyra and the confused Fluttershy went into the house. Though at first terrified of the dark, damp basement, Fluttershy, hearing about an exotic creature that Lyra had discovered, trotted right in. Lyra shut the door behind herself with a large, echoey clang.

“Where is this li’l guy you’re talking about?” she asked, preparing to see an adorable little rodent skittering across the floor. Lyra struck a match.

She saw. She gasped. She stopped in her tracks. Lyra began to panic again.

“Look. I know what you’re thinking, but I really did. You probably thought that it was just a foal’s tale, but I did it, yes. I managed to summon—“

“Ropes!”, she wailed through tears. She immediately ran to the table and began gnawing and ripping ferociously at the coils that bound the confused human to the table, who was now turning her head, straining to see what was happening. Within seconds, Fluttershy’s teary, outraged voice began. “How dare you? How dare you tie this poor, innocent creature in ropes like some prisoner! How dare you! How dare you!!” Tears fell from the yellow coated mare’s eyes as fast as the perspiration from her brow for tearing at the ropes, which lay in tatters on the ground. Suddenly, from behing her, the human’s faint, dazed voice spoke again. “Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy screamed. The sound resounded through the stone walled basement, making a half-second yipe draw out into two seconds. The scream was one of pure surprise and terror, and with all the throat and neigh fluttershy had ever produced in her life.

The human stared, her frightened green eyes seemed to retreat back into their sockets as she rolled onto her belly; they said, ‘What have I done?’ Lyra stared as the human’s long, slender body repositioned itself, to her what seemed almost like some huge spider. The human sat onto the table and and turned her elegant head towards Lyra. “Fluttershy,” the smooth voice said again, which said other inaudible things in its beautiful speech. Fluttershy’s ears perked up. She ran over to the human and “Aww- this poor little guy. He must be so confused!”

“He?” blurted Lyra.

“Of course it’s a he!” said Fluttershy with her last edge of patience.

After a few seconds of Fluttershy talking to the human, Fluttershy in common speech and the human in her- his smoothened language, Fluttershy stepped back, wrapped in her thoughts.

“A Human? You summoned a human? Ohh, he must be so far away from home!” She paused.  “He seems to know a lot about us,” she said to Lyra, who was behind her.

Lyra suddenly noticed, since she was distracted by Fluttershy’s outrage and frustration, as well as her ease in talking with this creature, that the human was now standing at his full height. The little pony’s withers reached to his waist.

Fluttershy walked upside the human, tilting her head affectionately in his direction. “I don’t think he’s fully grown.  Not an adult, but not a foal, or in this case—“

After thinking about it, Lyra said, “I think a human foal is called a child.  They call this age group the Teenagers because they are in their late teens.”

Fluttershy was barely listening. All anger vanished like smoke, she gazed into his green eyes; she almost looked entranced. She fell under a spell and began nuzzling him affectionately. This happened so fast, Lyra didn’t know what to think. She stroked the side of her face into the human’s waist and around his arms inside and out. The human was just as surprised as Lyra was, but after a few seconds, he put his arms areound her neck, knelt down, and hugged her.

Lyra grew jealous. She didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the human’s spell.  She, not Fluttershy after all, had brought him into this world. She had stared into his eyes the first, and he said her name first. And now, right in front of her, he was hugging and cuddling with Fluttershy, and not her. She grew irritated, but didn’t want to come off as such. She inwardly schemed that if she kept her cool, she would look better than Fluttershy, since it was she who screamed at her in the first place about the ropes. She wanted to see the human reject Fluttershy and begin cuddling her instead. She caught herself. Why was she being so petty? She hadn’t thought up anything so foalish before. She seemed to want him so much that she was getting worked up. She figured that either way, she had to say something.

“Ms. Fluttershy,” she said timidly, “Can you help me?”

“Mmm?” Fluttershy’s attention only went half way to her. This irritated her even more.

“How-“ she swallowed her pride. “How can I speak with him?” she said as clearly as possible. Fluttershy stopped and stood erect.

“I guess—the same way I do it,” she said slowly and unsurely. Lyra gave Fluttershy a critical look that said, ‘And that is?’

Fluttershy was lost for words. Before she could gather her thoughts together, they were interrupted.

“You,” said Lyra so quickly as to make her gasp, “have been able to speak to animals—for years now—and you don’t know how you do it?” Fluttershy, with a teary strained expression on her face, sprang to attention with an enlightened look on her face.

“Understanding!”

“What?”

“You have to understand what the creature is feeling and why,” She said, her mood working with Lyra instead of against her. Lyra considered the idea, and made an unspoken agreement with Fluttershy not to be at odds with one another anymore.

“Can you show me?”

“For this human?”

“I guess,” she said, “I doubt I’d need it for anypony else.

“Of course,” said Fluttershy, with her joyful, shy demenor returning. “To start with,”she began, “I do believe he’s rather confused. He’s in a place he says he’s seen before but has never been to before, I think. You ought to explain to him how he got here: you owe him that in the least.”

She looked over towards the spellbooks and jars, and walked over to them, deciding to make her exit as Lyra was presumedly trying to buff up her courage. Fluttershy knew she could do it. Lyra had a strong will even if she was obsessive and panicky. She stepped towards the human, eyes downcast. The human collapsed on the floor before anything could happen.