“Um, hello?”
It would be a mistake to say that Fluttershy opened the door to ask the question. Indeed, a pony would be hard pressed to even find the narrow crack through which a single blue eye could be seen.
“Is anypony there?”
The moon’s light flittered across the surface of the stream that passed her house, and the gentle lapping of water against the banks blended into the ubiquitous nighttime ambience formed from chirping crickets and whispering winds.
But she received no answer.
Fluttershy gulped. She was certain she had heard somepony knocking, but maybe it was just the breeze? Or a prank? Rainbow Dash would be so disappointed if she didn’t notice it, though.
She pushed the door just a teensy weensy bit wider. She eeped and scurried backwards when the motion made something on the ground squeak.
A little red colt stared at her.
“H-hi?” Fluttershy tentatively greeted. He was cute in that way all little foals are, from what little she could make out through the darkness, but being stared at like that made her want to hide behind her couch. It was like modeling for Photo Finish again, but with the embarrassing presence of the entire audience condensed into a single pony.
She opened her mouth to speak—well, to incoherently mumble something, but there wasn’t that much difference between the two—when the pony spun around and bolted down the road.
Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion.
The colt came back the next night, only to run away when she opened the door. He came again the next night, and the next.
It was distressing, and if Fluttershy weren’t so busy wondering what she did wrong she might have realized that this was how other ponies felt when she cowered in fear of them.
“What do you think I should do, Angel? I’m starting to get worried,” she admitted to her longtime friend. “Why do you think he runs away? I-I’m not that scary, am I?”
Angel Bunny gave her a flat stare.
“Not at all? Oh, that’s good. I was worried for a moment.”
Angel rolled his eyes, but obediently brought his cutesy-wutesy paw to his chin in thought. Fluttershy waited patiently. Angel Bunny was very smart, when he wanted to be.
His eyes brightened as he came up with a plan, and Fluttershy paid close attention as he chittered and pantomimed his intentions. But every noise he made only sent Fluttershy closer and closer to a panic attack.
“No! No, Angel Bunny, we can’t ambush him with rope and sticks! That’s awful! I mean, we would figure out who he is, but it would be really mean.”
Angel Bunny lifted an eyebrow, but Fluttershy was as oblivious to the meaning behind this as she was to the evil and demonic nature of the vicious, ironically named monster she fed carrots to. But the white bunny only sighed, and resignedly gave Fluttershy a less cruel suggestion.
Fluttershy was rather proud of Angel Bunny. His idea was so beautifully straightforward that she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it.
Actually, she probably hadn’t thought of it because her normal reaction to finding strangers at the door was to hide behind the couch and hope that they left, not spy on them from the upstairs window.
She cast a glance outside, careful to keep as much of herself hidden behind the curtains as possible. Considering that she hid from so many things, she was quite good at it. Her shoulders drooped as the tension left them at the sight of the empty path.
She shifted back into a more comfortable position on the large pillow she set by the window, returning to stroking Mrs. Tibble Bumpkin’s silky fur. The strange pony had so far only approached at night, but Fluttershy couldn’t remember a more specific time. That was so clumsy of her! She was certain Rarity or Twilight would have thought to check the time if it had happened to them.
Mrs. Tibble Bumpkin purred contentedly under Fluttershy’s brush. She was one of those loud cats, though, and Fluttershy almost didn’t hear the hoofsteps that crunched through the dried leaves she had scattered over the bridge to her home.
‘Almost’ being the key word. The kitty continued to purr as it drifted off to sleep, freeing Fluttershy’s hoof to support her as she rose to peek out through the window.
It was the colt, and Fluttershy let loose a sigh of apprehensive relief. She was sort of hoping he wouldn’t come. He was a little creepy.
Under the illumination of the light that she had left out on the porch, Fluttershy was able to get a good look at the little pony for the first time.
His coat was a darker red than she had thought, now that she could take her time to examine him. His mane was black, falling down his neck almost as though he had been splashed with oil. Next to such a dark mane, even that deep maroon would look brighter. His cutie mark was a flower-shaped black splotch.
The pony’s approach to the house was slow—not so much because he was trying to be quiet, as Fluttershy would have expected, but because he kept stopping to argue with himself. At least, she thought that was what he was doing. His head would drop low enough that his mane brushed the ground and he’d take a lot of deep breaths before raising his head and marching forward again.
The tip of his curiously wet black tail (had he taken a bath before coming? He should have dried off better) dragged on the ground as he stopped in front of her door. A hoof—with horseshoes that looked much more ornate than she would expect of a foal—rose to rap on her door.
It got within an inch of the wood before dropping back to the ground. When the colt raised it again, it barely moved at all.
“Th-that was practice. Just practicing.”
Fluttershy let out a tiny squeak when she heard him talk and ducked below the windowsill. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t very quietly yelling at her for spying on him.
It was difficult to hear him, but like many children he had yet to learn how to whisper without being clearly heard ten feet away. His voice was raspy and high-pitched as he coached himself through knocking on the door.
By the time she heard the soft rap of hoof on wood, she had gotten bored and went downstairs to make a cup of tea.
Setting the cup aside after a last sip, Fluttershy answered the door. She only got a brief glimpse of green eyes before a piece of paper, wrapped in the grey-green aura from his horn, slapped into her face.
Fluttershy recoiled with wildly flailing limbs and only a little bit of screaming, which was a marked improvement over the last time somepony had shoved something into her face and was something she felt rather proud about.
The paper slipped from her face in time for her to see the colt, now galloping away, unfurl his wings and… well, he didn’t so much fly away as he did flap his wings while he was running, which didn’t do much other than make him look silly.
She giggled at the—wait.
Horn? Wings!?
“Oh. Oh my.”
___________________________________________________________
“… but Sweetie Belle just won’t stop talking about him. I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t tell if she likes Button Mash or wants to shove his cap down his throat.”
Fluttershy nodded in time to the gaps and expectant glances Rarity sent her way, knowing that she wouldn’t get a word in edgewise until Rarity let out the pressure from the growing mass of gossip that welled within her over the course of the week.
She sighed and sunk deeper into the massage table as Aloe’s hooves worked over her knotted muscles. Panicking was very stressful and involved a great deal of muscle tension.
“But enough about me, darling, how has the week treated you? Have you been able to end that silly feud between the squirrels and otters yet?” Rarity asked from her hooficure one table over.
“I-it was the squirrels and beavers, actually,” she politely corrected, “And I’m afraid I haven’t. The beavers really upset the squirrels when they chewed down that tree. But something has happened, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
The fashionista’s ears drooped in worry. “What’s wrong”
“Oh, well…”
As Fluttershy spoke of her experiences with the foal, Rarity’s brow scrunched more and more, but the worry on her face was matched by the growing sparkle of intrigue in her eyes.
“An alicorn? If it were anypony but you, I’d think they were trying to spin a tall tale. Perhaps Twilight would be able to tell us about him. I do hope he’s the same age he looks, though. A centuries-old adult that looks like a child following you would be… disturbing.”
That implied that it wasn’t already disturbing, but Fluttershy wasn’t going to contradict her over something so small.
“You said he gave you a note, do you remember what it said?”
“Oh. Um, yes, I do… but because I intended to talk with you anyways, I-I thought it would be a good idea to bring it along. It’s inside my saddlebags, if you would like to look at it. I mean, I’m not trying to tell you that you must, but it might be… well, helpful.”
Rarity rolled her eyes but was silent when her magic pulled out the simple sheet of paper.
Dear Flutershy
You are realy prety and graseful.
You have beautaful eyes and I realy laik your mane.
And you are very nice.
Which is why I like you a lot.
-Petrol Pansy
Underneath the name was a crude drawing of what was either a pony holding a flower in its mouth, or an octopus with a hernia wearing a beanie.
A giggle escaped Rarity’s lips despite herself. “Alicorn or not, it looks like he has at least a little bit in common with other foals… if Pansy is a ‘he’ at all. Are you certain it was a colt?”
Fluttershy nodded meekly, feeling embarrassed on the foal’s behalf.
Who would give their colt the name ‘Pansy’? Or give that name to any kind of foal at all?
The remainder of their spa treatment passed with small talk and gossip, serious matters forgotten under the pleasant ministrations of the day spa staff.
Their attention was only pulled back to the subject of Petrol Pansy when they sat down at the pastaria. Fluttershy didn’t see him, of course, as she was busy hiding in her mane and not looking at anypony else in the outdoors restaurant, all of whom were definitely staring at and judging her.
But an exclamation of surprise from Rarity pulled her eyes up. The unicorn pulled out a compact mirror and held it open in front of Fluttershy. At first she couldn’t figure out what Rarity was trying to tell her, but then she noticed what her friend had seen.
Pansy was trying to hide behind a street sign, occasionally peeking up to stare at her before returning to his intense scrutiny of the road.
“Oh dear.”
When the server arrived with their food, they noticed that a red rose had somehow snuck onto the table with them.
“Oh dear.”
This was getting out of hoof.
_____________________________________________________________________
“But he ran away when we tried to talk to him. Pansy… um, he was very good at running. Better than us. He disappeared after we chased him into a dead end, but he left another rose behind.”
Spike’s stare was incredulous. “A foal managed to escape a unicorn and pegasus working together?”
Fluttershy retreated into her mane. If they hadn’t been in the middle of the library, she would have hidden behind something more solid. “I… um… IforgotIcouldfly.”
“Could you repeat that? You’re way too quiet.”
“I-I-IforgotIcouldfly!”
“You forgot how t—*sigh*. Why am I even surprised?” Palm met face as Spike tried to massage the exasperation out of his head. Fluttershy didn’t mind—she was certain she’d get frustrated too, if she had to listen to herself.
“So how did you end up covered in tree sap?”
Rarity’s scream fell down the steps from shower. “WHY ISN’T IT WORKING?! WAAAAAHUUUEEEEHAAAA IT WON’T COME OOO-OOO-OOOOFFF!”
“Cutie Mark Crusaders Timber Wolf Midwives.”
“…”
“…”
“I honestly have no idea how I’m supposed to respond to that. Are they all right?”
Fluttershy shook her head hard enough to make her mane fan out like she was in a wind funnel. “No, there are a lot fewer of them now and they’re suffering from severe trauma. I think the timber wolves are abandoning this territory to go deeper into the Everfree.”
“… I was actually talking about the Crusaders.”
“Oh. Um, they’re fine. Although I think they might be a little traumatized, too.”
“WAAAAAAAAAAAHH! *sniffle* WAAAAAHAAAAWAAAA *sob*!!!”
“I think Rarity is the worst off, though,” Fluttershy added.
Spike nodded, wincing at a particular high-pitched note from the despairing Rarity. “Seems like it. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Twilight took a trip to Canterlot to see her family and the Princess. I suppose you could keep trying to chase him away, but your best bet for getting rid of him would probably be to wait until Twilight gets back in a couple days.”
“Right,” Fluttershy sighed. It had been too much to hope that this could be easily resolved, but it had been nice to imagine. She rose to her hooves. “I’ll be going then. Thank you for listening, Spike.”
The baby dragon puffed up like a prideful cat. “What’re friends for, right? Here, let me get the door for you.”
The helpful dragon raced ahead of her to pull open the library door and was subsequently buried under the thousands of roses Petrol Pansy had propped up outside it.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Fluttershy suspected that Pansy didn’t know very much about flower symbolism, which was a little strange for a pony with a flowery cutie mark. Red roses for love, black for hate, yellow for friendship, pink for gratitude, white for sorrow… he either knew nothing about flower meanings, or he was a very confused pony who needed help. Possibly both.
There were colors of rose that Fluttershy hadn’t even known existed, like chartreuse, silver, sarcoline, and even one that was transparent. And then there was… she didn’t know how to begin describing it. It was a color that was similar to both blue and red, but wasn’t like purple at all. Looking at it gave her a headache, so she ate it.
It tasted better than expected.
A rose had been waiting on her porch when she arrived home, and another had been in her mailbox. Some were in the animal’s homes, some of the chairs, and one on her pillow. She actually saw a bouquet of the flowers pop into existence about a foot above her dining room table before it fell onto the middle.
A heartfelt sigh of relief (and a nap) had followed. She hadn’t been able to rest when she thought that Petrol Pansy had snuck into her house, so had spent most of the night staring at her front door.
Thumping on her pillow dragged the yellow pegasus into the waking world. Her eyelids were heavy with the tiredness that followed an insufficient sleep, but Fluttershy managed to force them open in a monumental act of will.
Angel Bunny glared at her and pointed at the clock with his fuzzy-wuzzy paw.
It took her sleep-addled mind a moment to understand what he wanted, but the thought struck her like lightning when it did. “Oh my gosh! I-I’m so sorry, Angel. I didn’t mean to miss your lunch like that! Just give me a moment and I’ll make you a delicious salad, and then go tend to everypony else. Alright?”
Angel glared at her suspiciously, but nodded his acquiescence.
Fluttershy groggily moved down to the kitchen and pulled all the necessary ingredients out of the fridge. Long practice kept her stomach from rebelling as she put some frozen meat into a pot to thaw—not all of her animal friends could hunt for herself, especially when they had to worry about making sure the wild mouse they were eyeing was actually a wild mouse, and not one of Mr. Cheeseworthy’s family.
Unpleasant task aside, she took knife in mouth and started in on the lettuce, carrots, almonds, cherries, strawberries, blueberries, radishes, rutabagas, cabbage, spinach, broccoli, pecans, peanuts, Brayzil nuts, tomatoes, cauliflower, sunflower seeds, mysterious glowing unnamed Everfree Forest fruits, and cucumbers that were necessary to make a modest lunch suitable for a rabbit like Angel Bunny.
Except she didn’t actually have half of those ingredients. Fluttershy swallowed as she looked at the meager salad. The rabbit-whipped pony was certain to get it if she tried to feed him something like that.
As she paced, trying to figure out what to do to bring it up to Angel’s standards, she caught a glimpse of a quickly-disappearing red-and-black foal outside. She was struck by a moment of brilliance.
Why not put those flowers to good use?
Roses were a rare treat, and although Fluttershy didn’t actually know if Angel liked them, she knew he liked that they were considered fancy and would relish eating them just because of that. Angel Bunny could be shallow sometimes.
Just a tiny, eensy-weensy bit, though.
Day transitioned into night without further mischief. She attended to the rest of her duties with diligence in hopes of making up for her earlier slight, but her animal friends kindly forgave her. She still found roses, though—and it looked like Pansy had moved on into poetry, which Fluttershy sincerely wished she could forget ever having read.
The ability to write something enjoyable was not amongst the many gifts of alicornhood.
She was ready for the knock this time, and Petrol Pansy had barely struck the door once before Fluttershy pulled it open. The colt’s eyes widened with the horror of a schoolfoal forced to actually talk to their crush, and he turned in panic—but Fluttershy had expected this.
Although she could wait until she got Twilight’s help, she was certain this could all be resolved peacefully if they could just talk about it first. Reading him make a fool of himself in words had stolen a lot of the worry she had felt when he had first appeared, and Fluttershy was feeling optimistic about her chances of having a conversation without being reduced to incoherent mumbling.
Pansy’s wheel about to run away—as seemed to be his default reaction to someone paying attention to him—only resulted in his face bomfing into Fluttershy’s outstretched wing. “Do you have to run away? I-I think it would be nicer if you could sit down and we could, um, talk about this?”
Pansy slumped to the floor, shaking his head. When his mane and tail pooled on the ground, it looked like black puddles connected to his head. Fluttershy didn’t know if he was answering her first or second question. “Do you want to come in? I have tea on the stove, if you would like any.”
The colt pawed at the ground with his hoof, not looking directly at her, but did not say anything in response.
“Perhaps you could—aah!” Fluttershy screamed as Petrol Pansy shoved an envelope in her face. She backed away and put a hoof to her chest to calm her heart and its demands to ‘hidehidehide RIGHTNOW!’. “You shouldn’t push things into ponies’ faces, Pansy,” she scolded.
Petrol Pansy’s eyes were screwed shut and his neck bent. It looked like he was trying to headbutt something (which was actually a little intimidating when one has a horn) as he held out the envelope. The maroon of his face graduated into a brighter shade of red.
Fluttershy hesitantly took hold of the letter and tore it open. About a hundred flowers burst out of the ordinary-looking, flat envelope. She spat out a stem that had landed on her mouth, but something about the flavor felt… off. A quick glance told her that the colt had, for once, not given roses. Instead, her hair and the ground around her was covered in dozens of colors of pansies.
Dear Flutershy,
I realy laik you.
Would you be my filyfriend?
-Petrol Pansy
A large but lopsided heart design dominated the rest of the letter, the names ‘Flutershy’ and ‘Pansy’ written within smaller hearts inside of it.
“Um. Oh… um, oh dear,” Fluttershy murmured as she tried to figure out what to say. ‘Yes’ was obviously out, but what was she supposed to say that wouldn’t hurt his feelings?
She desperately wanted Rarity’s help, but the magic of friendship did not include the magic of telepathy or teleportation to uncomfortable conversations.
“I am so, so sorry, Petrol Pansy, but I don’t feel that way about you.”
Water built up in the foal’s large eyes, the pansy he held in his mouth quivering along with his lips. Pansy took a couple steps back, huddling into himself at her words.
“Please don’t cry,” Fluttershy begged. She hated seeing sad ponies, and it broke her heart to see him look so sad. “You can still—”
Fluttershy didn’t get a chance to finish before Pansy turned and ran away with choked sobs, hiding his face behind his wings as he galloped as far from her as he could go.
The hoof she had held out to stop him dropped to the ground as she fell to her haunches. “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” she whispered into the night.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, imagining over and over again what she might have done to let Pansy down more gently. She had only just dragged herself to her hooves when her ears were assaulted with a voice that sounded like a bazillion trumpets.
"WHERE ART THOU, FOALISH CHILD!?"
Fluttershy prostrated herself on the ground with her hooves over her head. After an appropriate period of shivering in uncontrolled terror, she managed to raise her head to look towards Canterlot. What could have gotten Princess Luna so… oh.
All the stars of the night sky had been dragged out of their places. Instead of the constellations of the brilliant backdrop of the night that Fluttershy had always seen, the stars had been brought together to form the outline of three butterflies, splayed across the heavens for everypony to see.
“Oh dear.”
______________________________________________________________________________
“We cannot apologize enough for the torments Our cousin hath put thee through, Fluttershy. Thy patience surely shameth that of angels. We will provide thee whatever recompense thou deemest befitting.”
Princess Luna sent a dark glare towards the tiny alicorn floating behind her, wrapped tightly enough in Luna’s magic that he couldn’t escape.
“Oh, no, Your Highness, that isn’t necessary. I am, um… well, I’m just glad nothing bad happened.” Fluttershy gave a quick glance to the still-recovering sky and corrected herself. “Well, nothing that couldn’t be fixed.”
“We shall repay thee despite thy objections. The benefits of princesshood are manifold,” Luna said with a dismissive wave of her hoof, “And the right to bestow gifts as we see fit numbereth amongst the greatest of these.”
Fluttershy blushed and looked away. “It-it really isn’t necessary, though. Oh, and your speech is sort of… I mean…” She struggled to find a way to say it without being rude.
“Doth there be fault in our—oh.” Luna gave an awkward cough. “Our—my apologies. Changing one’s method of speech is more difficult than I had anticipated.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. But, um, at least you aren’t always yelling. That—um, that’s good. And your voice sounds more natural.”
Although still just a little stilted, though. Just a little. But she did sound a lot less scary. Not yelling helped with that.
“Does it truly? I am most relieved to hear your words,” Luna said, unable to control the goofy smile growing across her face. Fluttershy was reminded of Twilight when she became excited. “I have endeavored to converse more with my guards and the castle staff, but We are afraid it has been difficult to convince them to correct Us when We err—no, that is incorrect; to correct me when I err.”
“I’m glad,” Fluttershy answered. It was sweet that the princess was finally able to make some friends! She couldn’t imagine how scary it would be to come home after a thousand years and not know anypony. Just thinking about it made her shiver.
“But… um, Pansy—is that Prince Pansy?” Luna nodded, although she certainly looked reluctant to admit it. “You… you aren’t going to punish Prince Pansy badly, are you? He didn’t mean to upset anypony… I think…”
Petrol Pansy squirmed uncomfortably at that, his head briefly rising to meet Fluttershy’s gaze with tearful eyes before slumping in Luna’s telekinetic grip.
The princess shook her head, a small, soft smile on her face. “You are an incredible pony, Fluttershy, to so easily dismiss his behavior. But you have a point—no harm has come from this, despite its unseemliness and the difficulties he has brought to you. Worry not, my little pony; my cousin’s penance will be in accord to his misbehavior and its results, and no harsher.”
“Oh, thank you. I was worried for a moment. You sounded… um, very angry earlier.”
She gave an amused snort. “I was angry earlier, but the flight from Canterlot allowed me time to cool my temper. Again, I am sorry about the trouble he has caused you. We had not thought to look for him in Ponyville.”
Luna looked to the stars before returning her attention to Fluttershy. “I’m afraid I must leave. The time for me to set the moon and stars to rest approaches, and I shall need to secure Pansy before I do so.”
So with final farewells, the two alicorns returned to Canterlot.
____________________________________________________________________
Months Later
Scootaloo curled into a tighter ball in her bed, doing all she could to ignore the light of the malevolent, filly-waking sun. But the sound of other ponies beginning the day was impossible to ignore forever, and with a frustrated and sleepy groan the little pegasus rolled herself out of bed.
She fumbled around on the shelves for her homework (which she had completed an entire five questions of! Out of thirty…), when a splash of color on her windowsill caught her attention.
Glazed in the frost of a winter’s morning sat a red rose.
Author's Note
Not what I anticipated putting up as my first story on the site.
Hopefully this is a sufficiently new spin on the red & black alicorn OC that it won't induce vomiting.
