It was the dead of winter, and like so many other ponies out at night, Fluttershy’s hooves crunched over the snow as her breath fogged the air. Unlike most other ponies out for a stroll, Fluttershy was not on the road nor any beaten path as she galloped for her life; in the deepest recesses of her soul, she knew she was being hunted. Crunching snow, breaking branches, rustling bushes all told her where her hunter was nearby, but ever out of sight. If she stood still, it would keep away; if she ran, it chased her; if she tried to fly, it moved to the trees and cut her off. She was freezing and felt like she had been running for hours, but for the time being, her pursuer was out of earshot. Fluttershy skidded to a halt and looked around in a panic; she had seen this same clearing no less than four times.
Four trails of hoofprints ran in various directions across the loam, each slowly filling with snow. None of those paths led out,she knew that much, so she darted to the left and blazed a new one; as if one cue, the unseen monster started up, steps pounding on the ground as she tried to evade it. She flapped her wings and jumped on a rock, leaped to the next, and came to a stop on a small ledge; she wanted to look into the trees and see the monster, but she was just a bit higher up than her fears usually allowed. She shimmied against the rock wall, keeping her eyes on her hooves so she did not step into the air. She hazarded a look into the woods and froze up as she saw a shadow dart between the trees far faster than she could run; it was a smart predator, waiting until she was too tired to fight.
She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, lungs burning even as her face and hooves went numb; she barely even had the energy left to shiver as she slowly eased around the ledge. She stopped when her hip no longer rubbed against stone; she found a little hole in the cliff, a cave too small to belong to a bear and too high up to accessed by anything dangerous that could not climb or fly. Fluttershy looked inside before cautiously turning her back to the woods and entering. It was dark and deep, but there was no wind and it was narrow enough that Fluttershy would have to contort to turn around; she actually felt rather safe, and even the cold stopped bothering her overmuch. She heard claws scratching stone just behind her and all fatigue was forgotten; she sped into the darkness.
Her hoof caught on something and she fell forward. She hit face-first and slid, scraping her chin and chest against the rough ground; she winced and swiped at the painful abrasions as she tried to keep quiet. Slowly, she got back on her hooves and tried to navigate in the complete darkness; she was not ashamed to admit she bumped into a large wooden post that dug into the ground. Was this a mine? It seemed strange for there to be a mine this far from anywhere important. It must have been old then, very old for ponies to have ever been this deep in the wilds; the only thing anywhere nearby was the old castle, and that had not been inhabited for a thousand years. Maybe this was where they got the stone for it?
Fluttershy was aware that the only thing she heard was her own breathing, shuddering and shaky as if she had run a marathon. She felt hot and pressed against the cool stone to help, stripping off her scarf and coat as she walked along the cavern walls, bumping into what she guessed were support struts every dozen or so steps. She saw nothing, heard nothing other than her own steps, and as the tunnel widened out enough for her to really turn around and move, she felt more closed in than ever. She flapped her wings and tried to fly, but the still air made it hard; she did not like being underground any more than she like being high above it, but had she not climbed up to get to the cave? Would that not make her above the ground instead of under it? Had she even climbed at all? Her stuffy cap was making it hard to think, so she stripped it off and tried to recall what she had been doing.
She had been running, right? Running from something in the wilds? Or had she been running to something instead, like a race or one of her critters? Was she going the right way, in the cave to see Harry the Bear, or was she on her way out? She saw a little bit of light ahead, so she was not going towards Harry’s den, and must have been on her way home. Why was she running home? It must have been dark out, which explained why she could not see; silly Fluttershy, forgetting she had to be home to feed her animals soon. Oh, she would have to give everyone a nice, big hug when she saw them. Now she was closer to the light, peering through a little hole in the wall, a hole she was just the right size to squeeze through.
“I need a new door,” she muttered, wondering why she scraped her wings on her way to her front room. She knew she was home; there was a little fire blazing and her little animal friends all huddled around her. The fire was warm, and she had not realized how cold she had been. She nuzzled between them and basked in the warmth as she gently fell asleep.
She awoke some time later, groggy and sore. She was cold, terrifyingly so, as she laid upon cold stone in front of cold ashes amidst cold bones. “Bones?” she squeaked weakly, more concerned with shivering than speaking. “Bones!” she repeated in fright, looking at the scattered bits of skeleton she rested upon. There was a monster chasing her last night, so was she in its den? Some of the bones were broken and shattered like something had smashed them intentionally; Fluttershy screamed as hard as she could, as loudly as she could, as long as she could. The only answer she received was a dull roaring from the hole in the wall, thunderclaps as the stone around her trembled; the raging storm of earth rushed towards her, and without anywhere to go, Fluttershy quivered and waited for the end to come. The end, as she found, was little more than coarse grit and bits of gravel flying at her as the tunnel collapsed.
Despair set in, colder than the chill she was sure was giving her hypothermia, if she was not already suffering from it. Where were her winter clothes? Where were her bags? Where had she read about this before, because she knew she heard of it. “Para… paradoxical undressing?” she asked herself, jogging her own memory. She had been extremely cold last night, strangely cold for all her clothing. Ponies did not get severe hypothermia that quickly, nor did they recover so easily. Fluttershy may not have been certain she was fully aware, but she knew enough to understand that in all seriousness, she should have been dead from the chill. “The fire!’ she said suddenly, looking to the small pile of ashes in front of her. There had been a fire last night, which meant somepony had to have been around, but as she looked about, there were no means of entering the little room she was in, save a small pinprick of light from the ceiling.
The ashes were long cold, undisturbed for some time; Fluttershy could still see the remnants of ink on the curling bits of ash; it had been fueled entirely by paper, a lot of paper f her eyes were to be trusted. She looked up at the ceiling again; it had once been open, now grown over with roots until only the faintest of light could filter through, and with it, the chill in the air. Next, she looked at the… skeleton. She gagged as she looked at the skull, which sent her stomach turning as she even thought of the possibility, and found it had no horn and a blunt jaw. A stallion, either a pegasus or an earth pony, definitely. There were no teeth marks, or anything resembling teeth marks, anywhere that she could see, so that set her at ease a little. “See, Fluttershy, nothing is going to eat you,” she muttered to herself, forelegs hugged tightly as she wrapped her wings around her and tried to warm up. “You just have to wait until help arrives, wait… with a skeleton next to you!” she cried out, beset once again by the fear that had claimed her throughout her life.
She spent some time huddled against the wall, wailing for help that she feared would never arrive. Was this the end? Had she lived through so much only to die in some hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere? She kept screaming, but she knew most of the animals were hibernating or simply elsewhere this time of year, but maybe, just maybe, Zecora or somepony would hear, and come. She screamed until her throat went dry, and she had no water to quench it; she cried until her tears left icy trails on her face. She shivered, shook, and curled up in pain as her stomach gurgled; the light in the ceiling had faded quite a bit, and it was nearing dusk, meaning she had not eaten in a little over a day now. She squealed and kick her hind legs out, hitting something other than the walls or the bones.
A sack fell over; it probably belonged to the poor stallion whose bones were scattered around in here. A little metal object skittered over the floor and bumped into the skull. Fluttershy looked over at it; it was a large disk with a little spout, and after a moment’s wonder, she realized it was a canteen. It had not sounded empty when it clattered over the floor, and like a mare possessed, she ran over it it and unscrewed the cap. The water inside was icy cold, foul-tasting, and coppery, but she was in no mood to complain. She guzzled down every last drop and cast the canteen aside; part of her mourned the fact she now had no more water, and she kicked herself for not conserving it. She looked up and nearly cried as she saw the light had faded completely. She would have to wait until the day came around to do anything else.
The pile of ashes burst into flames, filling the chamber with dim light. Little shadows danced on the walls as the tiny flame flickered. Fluttershy, for all her despair and fear, smiled before realizing there was some sort of magic at work. But, the stallion had not been a unicorn, so how could there be magic involved? “Maybe the paper was magic and kept burning every night?” Fluttershy wondered to herself as she pulled the rest of the sack’s items out. The was a half-rotten coat, a sealed letter, a cozy for the canteen, and a little compass, which she found to be broken; there were also bit of discolored wax in the bag, so the paper ashes were likely also letters. The sealed letter was blank, and while she debated opening it, she felt it best to respect the privacy of the dead; the seal itself had the royal crest on it, so even if Fluttershy wanted to be a graverobber, and she reminded herself that she was not, it was wrong to read somepony’s letters.
Fluttershy laid out the sack and the coat, and made a makeshift bed for herself. Screaming would not help her tonight, and as she sat as close to the fire as she could, she allowed herself the respite of cold sleep. She did not dream, nor did she rest easy; she found herself constantly waking up, shivering, as the fire provided too little warmth and she needed the only insulating clothing she had to keep her off the ground. Her life was not overly pleasant at the moment, and she bitterly reminded herself that Harry the Bear had not needed her to check on him, but no, she had felt it was her duty to look after her friend. She felt stupid, useless, and utterly hopeless as she stared at the dark walls and drifted in and out of consciousness. She lost track of time in the dark.
When she woke up for the day, the fire was still going, stoked with little sticks that burned longer than the paper could. The bones were gone, the canteen was next to her makeshift bedroll, full again with the same foul, cold water. Of to the side, another bag rested against the wall, but it was closed by a small lock and Fluttershy could not open it.
“It’s good you’re awake,” said a voice she did not recognize. Fluttershy squeaked and jumped against the wall; a pair of green eyes stared at her from across the fire, their owner obscured by the light. The voice was masculine, but not gruffly so. There was no trace of any negative emotion, save perhaps worry, in it. “Please, do not fear. I just fell down here, same as you.”
“You fell?” she asked, looking up at the ceiling. The roots were still there, but the hole was larger, though still too small to fit a pony though. She looked around the chamber, and there was nowhere the stallion could have hidden for as long as he must have. “You don’t look too hurt.”
“I’ve healed up a bit, earth pony resilience and all that,” he replied, chuckling a bit. His accent was hard to place, but somewhat familiar. Fillydelphia? Manehatten? Canterlot? “You don’t seem too much worse for wear yourself, little miss.”
“Oh, I didn’t fall,” she said, hiding behind her mane. Her face and chest were a bit bruised from the floor and her tumble in the cave. She pointed over to the hole she came from, but only found solid rock; there was no sign of a mine tunnel or anything of the sort, nor any sign it had ever existed in the first place. “I’m actually not too sure how I got here.”
“This place plays trick on one’s mind,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the walls and ceiling. With his head reared back, Fluttershy saw his pale coat and mane, bland to the point she wondered if his eyes made up for the lack of decoration. His mane was unstyled and fell as it wished, splaying out and fading into his coat like they were the same shade. They were not very different colors, Fluttershy supposed, if he looked like a floating head when his body was hidden. “My name is Pale Pass, by the way.”
“I’m Fluttershy,” she responded, usual shyness eaten away from her isolation in peril. She felt Pale’s name suited him in some funny way, or at least a way she thought was funny; it was amazing how the fear of death made her so friendly and outgoing. “Is anypony looking for you?”
Pale looked pensive for a moment, before shaking his head. “Nopony knew I was out here at all the day I fell, so I doubt they’d know where to look.” He sounded a little sad, but mostly apathetic to his situation. Was he not worried about dying? Had he not seen the bones laying around yesterday? He must have been the one to hide them away since Fluttershy had no recollection of doing so. But she also remembered there being a hole in the wall, which there most certainly was not now. “Anypony looking for you?”
“Oh, I asked Rainbow Dash to feed my animals lunch while I went to check on Harry; he’s a bear who lives around here.” Fluttershy really hoped Rainbow had remembered everything, but then again, Rainbow was the dependable sort, usually.
Pale chuckled a bit, the good-natured chuckle friends had when one said something they could both relate to. “You’re friends with a bear?” he asked, half unbelieving. “That makes no sense at all, Miss Fluttershy.”
“Oh, Harry’s a good bear, not at all like those mean ones everypony hears about,” she explained, smiling despite herself. There she was, chatting up a complete stranger like they were old pals; would wonders never cease? “Oh, sorry, but I could talk all day about my animal friends.”
“Please do; it’ll help pass the time until help gets here,” Pale Pass amicably said with a grin. Fluttershy oh so hoped he meant it, that help would arrive at some point. She went on and on about her little critters, talking for as long as Pale listened in his seemingly infinite patience. No matter how much she talked, he smiled and nodded, completely enraptured by her words. Hours passed, the light in the ceiling faded into the blackness, and the fire never went out; the room never dropped below slightly chilly. Fluttershy talked and talked, with Pale chiming in when polite, until she quite literally collapsed, the world going dark as the cold, foodless days took their toll on her in this moment of relative luxury.
For the first time since the ordeal began, Fluttershy saw actual light when she woke, not dim lit of a fire or filter, dirty light form a hole in the ceiling, but actual sunlight. The roots were gone, and the hole was uncovered; the light hurt her eyes a bit, but was wholeheartedly welcomed. “Pale, the hole’s open!” she half-shouted, looking around for her new friend. Once again, she was alone; the fire was stoked, the canteen was full, the sack and bedroll were where they had been the previous night, but the pale stallion was gone. “Pale!?” she called out, looking around the small room for him, to no avail.
“Fluttershy?” a voice from outside called, a female voice, a voice she recognized.
“Rainbow, down here!” she yelled, hopping up and down to maximize her visibility. “I’m stuck in the hole!” She reared up on her hind legs and kept jumping, waving her forelegs around like a madmare. In a flash, a rainbow-maned pony was at the hole’s edge, quickly joined by four others; all of Fluttershy’s closest friends had turned out to find her. She nearly cried at how loved she felt, but now was not the time. “Have any of you seen a really pale stallion? He was down here with me earlier.”
“We haven’t seen anypony, darling; we’ve been too busy looking for you,” Rarity said.
“Let’s get you out of there, you need a doctor,” Twilight said, wings shuffling and she fired up her horn. With a pop, Fluttershy was out in the open again. In the next moment, her saddlebags appeared next to her, the very bags she was sure she lost in the cave-in she was no longer certain actually happened. “I don’t even know how you ended up in Whitetail Woods if Harry lives in the Everfree.”
Whitetail was a long way from Everfree, and separated by roads at every crossing; there was no way she could have walked to Whitetail at night without her winter clothes if that was true. “What about Pale Pass? Are you sure you haven’t seen him? He needs help too.”
“We haven’t seen anypony but you out here, Shy,” Rainbow said, putting a worried hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “You sure you didn’t dream this or something?”
“This isn't like the tunnels or the cave, I know I met Pale Pass, I know he’s real,” Fluttershy protested, pointing a hoof at the hole. “We shared a canteen and everything.” she reached into her saddlebag and pulled out the tin canteen, still full. “See?” she said, unscrewing the cap and pouring its contents out. When she was done, a small pile of sand was on the ground and her friends looked very worried. “Oh, oh! What about the letter I found in there, huh?” She knocked over the other saddlebag, spreading out a mound of bones and a single, severely-aged letter, still sealed. Fluttershy looked triumphant for a short moment, before she made eye contact with the skull. Her stomach turned, the world swam, and everything blurred as she retched, spewing foul water and bile onto the ground.
“It’s a miracle she’s even alive, let’s get ‘er to the hospital,” Applejack said, already moving to help Fluttershy along. “We’ll sort everythin’ out after she’s with a doc.”
“I have to bring these bones with us,” Twilight said, disgusted at the prospect of handling a cadaver, a very long-dead cadaver, but a cadaver nonetheless. “And I’ll look up this Pale Pass character when we get to town.”
Dehydration and hypothermia, mixed with hypoglycemia from lack of food, explained away all of Fluttershy’s experience, save of course for how she ended up in Whitetail to begin with, or how she did not die, or how in Celestia’s name she found that letter. The bones, she heard, had been looked over by a coroner, and while cause of death did not seem violent, insofar as one could determine such based on bones, the skeleton belonged to an earth pony stallion, somewhere around thirty years old. The shattered bones showed signs of healing, meaning they broke while he was still alive and he lived longer than a day or so after the fact; he likely died of exposure in that hole, a fate Fluttershy only narrowly avoided. It was a very good thing Pale Pass had stoked that fire when he did, or her stay in the hospital would have been a lot longer.
Speaking of the stallion, nothing in Ponyville’s birth records indicated a stallion by that name and coloration ever lived in town, nor did anything Twilight dug up mention him; the princess of friendship was looking into other cities for answers, seeing as he had been partially responsible for Fluttershy’s safety. It was most troubling, looking for a stallion who did not seem to be real, if just to put Fluttershy at ease. She had even contacted Celestia about it after sending off the letter that was found with the skeleton. The letter itself was addressed to the princess herself, so delivery had been mercifully easy; Princess Celestia, however, had not responded about what it contained. or if she had ever heard of Pale Pass. It was a frustrating situation.
Fluttershy stared at the ceiling in her room, lights dimmed to allow her eyes some rest. Visiting hours were over for the day, and all her friends were at their respective homes; she was alone, as she had probably been for the past three days. A gentle knocking sounded at her door, and she wondered who it could have been; very slowly, the door opened, and a smiling white pony stuck her head inside.
“It’s good you’re okay, Fluttershy,” Princess Celestia said in maternal tones. Philomena was perched on her horn, brought along because she knew how much Fluttershy liked the phoenix. “The doctors say you should be released soon, maybe even tomorrow if everything goes well.”
“I hope so.” The butter yellow pony’s tone was not entirely enthusiastic, but she was stressed and tired.
“I’m not keeping you awake, am I?” the princess asked in genuine concern. “I can come back tomorrow if that would be better.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine; I’ve slept plenty already,” the shy pony laughed weakly. “Is everything alright, Princess?”
“Everything is fine, my little pony.” Celestia walked over and sat next to Fluttershy's bed, scooting close to reach her hooves on the blankets. “I have a surprise for you, actually, some answers.” With a small smile, she pulled out the letter, seal broken, and presented it before Fluttershy’s curious eyes. The pegasus could not read the language it was written in. “You’re not crazy; this is written in Old Equestrian, the language we used until about three hundred years after my sister’s banishment.”
“It was there for a long time, then.” Fluttershy tried to avoid the idea of the stallion who was meant to deliver it falling into the hole and dying. “And it was the only letter I found.”
“He burned all the others for warmth,” Celestia said sadly, frowning as her eyes looked a little watery. “He destroyed every letter he had except the one meant for me; he held onto the idea of help coming for him, even until the end.”
“You knew him?” It made sense, of course, but it was still a hard pill to swallow. “I’m sorry if you did not know; don't like bringing bad news to ponies.”
“No, this is a happy day; he can finally get the burial he deserves.” Now Celestia smiled, though it still had some sorrow in it. She still lost a friend, and a wound had been reopened, but now she had her own closure. “He was my secretary, just like Raven is now.” She looked to the door and smiled fondly, before turning back to the one she was actually speaking to. “Fluttershy, the stallion you spoke to, Pale Pass, went missing seven hundred and fifty years ago. I fully believe you encountered his spirit, and that he used you to fulfill his final mission.”
“But Twilight said there’s no such thing as ghosts,” the mare protested, unwilling to believe that she met a spirit of any sort. There simply had to be some sort of mistake; maybe they just shared a name and the princess was confusing the two.
“Stranger things have happened in Equestria, Fluttershy; why can’t this just be one more thing we can’t really explain?”
