“Welcome!”
“Welcome!”
“Welcome!”
“Welcome!”
Fluttershy paused in trotting down the gauntlet of pastel ponies and bright smiles to turn around and coo: “Gosh, you really are the nicest ponies I've ever met.”
“Come,” chirped Starlight Glimmer, leading the new initiate to the end of the narrow row of drab, identical buildings. “All the new friends stay with me until their cottage is completed.” At last, they reached the threshold to her tiny two-story house, and she opened the front door with glowing aquamarine magic. “Let's get you settled, and then you can enjoy all that our little village has to offer.”
Fluttershy stared at the quaint desert neighborhood, a sight that was full of bright mirth and smiles—aside from the two blemishing expressions belonging to Sugar Belle and Night Glider a few feet away. Fluttershy winced for as long as she could afford it, and then she twirled about to bestow Starlight an innocent grin.
Unfazed, Starlight led Fluttershy into the front room of her home. Only once the door was completely shut behind them did Fluttershy realize just how fragrant the place smelled. The flowery aroma was pungent, almost laughably so. It partially reminded the mare of public restaurants going to extraordinary lengths to mask the odor of their restrooms, and the other half just smelled of... grandmother. It didn't help that the couch pillows and curtains were extra fluffy, and meticulously sewn doilies accompanied every coaster and lamp.
“Please. Do make yourself at home.” Starlight's musical, youthful tone shook Fluttershy out of her daze. “Kick your horseshoes off.” She paused to giggle—a very foalish thing—and then sashayed over to a broom closet. “I have fresh blankets and plenty of woolly linens in case you get cold.” She raised a dainty hoof, her lavender eyes twinkling. “It certainly gets chilly in the desert at night! Brrrrrr!”
“So that's why you have a fireplace!” Fluttershy wheezed. “And for a moment there, I was wondering why anypony in her right mind would build a chimney in the desert!” She was feeling breathless all of the sudden. Instead of dwelling on the reason why, she simply gulped the annoying lump down her throat and approached the nearest piece of furniture to her on tender cat-hooves. “Well, I don't know about you, but spending the whole night with my friends locked up in a shack while stubbornly fighting the notion of socially-perfected equality has exhausted me. If you don't mind, I think I will be getting some shuteye now, so that way I'll have a long... long night of dreaming about... uhm... n-never having dreams ever again.”
“Oh, there'll be no sleeping here,” Starlight matter-of-factly said with a matter-of-fact grin.
“Erm...” Fluttershy fidgeted, her ears folding back. “There won't?”
“Mmm-mmm! Not at all, new friend!” The village founder spun about with a flick of her streaked mane. “Now... follow me up the stairs, and I will show you where you are meant to acclimate.”
“Uhm... 'acclimate,' huh?” Fluttershy couldn't avoid the dainty percussion of her teeth chattering. Nevertheless, with legs like rainsticks, she pattered after the authoritative unicorn, following her up a flight of steep, steep steps. “That's a fourth grade vocabulary word if I recall. I tried to memorize the definition of it... eheheheh... b-but... uhm...” Fluttershy's shoulders hunched as she watched the thick shadows double and triple in intensity the further she ascended the stairs. “...I-I was too busy being bullied to remember much of anything but bruises.”
“That's because you were unjustly forced to endure an elitist educational system that favored a carnivore mentality.” A pair of beady specks flickered from the top of the stairs, accompanied by Starlight's crescent moon of a grin. “In fact, thinking of the past as 'foalhood,' is an injustice, because it assumes that you are any better grown up than you were when you were little!”
“Oh. I... uh... I-I never thought of it that way—” Fluttershy stopped speaking, only because Starlight's caressing hoof had clamped her yellow lips shut by the time she reached the second floor.
“My little pony...” The mare leaned in, grinning lovingly at Fluttershy's trembling muzzle. “Up until now, you have never thought at all. But now that you have chosen to embrace the light, I shall proceed to illuminate the even corners of your soul that you've willfully left dirtied by the ignorant whims of the world. You'll realize that your only nemesis is yourself, but you needn't worry.” She winked. “In this stageplay called 'Life,' we are about to write ourselves a 'comedy,' and the first Act begins here...”
With agile grace, Starlight side-stepped two feet, only to open a door and immediately flip on a switch, casting light across a tiny room with an even tinier bed.
“Ta-daaaaa!” She pointed at the drab curtains, gray wall, and plush brown duvet of the twin-sized mattress. “Isn't it lovely?”
“Wow...” Fluttershy smiled, shuffling quietly past Starlight until she entered the room. “It's just so... so...” She fought the urge to grimace. “... uninspiring.”
“I know!” Starlight took a deep, proud breath. “If you keep quiet and pay close attention, you can almost hear the ambition melting right off of you like the crackling embers of a warm bonfire!”
“My ambition, huh?” Fluttershy pawed at the floorboards. “Must be a dim bonfire...”
“Well, Fluttershy, new friend, we're about to turn your wasteful inferno into a slow burn for justice, and our town full of happy ponyfolk are ready and willing to assist you in every step of the way!”
“I very much appreciate it,” Fluttershy said, trotting over and pressing her fetlock against the squishy comforter of the bed. “And soon as I'm well-rested, I'll be sure to teach myself every single line of your peaceful and charming doctrine—”
Th-Thap! The door shut tightly behind them.
Fluttershy's pupils shrunk. She spun about.
Starlight Glimmer stood with her flank against the doorframe, bearing an icy-smooth grin.
“Uhm...” Fluttershy's voice rolled up to the base of her throat, only to slide right back down with the fragile sound of cracked bells. “Starlight... uhhh... founder... is there something on your mind?”
“You could say that, yes.” Starlight strolled forward like a looming panther. She even purred as she said, “I'm sorry to spring this on you, my beloved new initiate, but now that you are being inducted into our little fold...”
Fluttershy couldn't help but tremble at the sound of the word “fold.” Her body trembled, backing up. “Uhm... yes?”
Starlight came closer... closer. “...I do believe that there is an important first step in the conversion process that you must be made to partake in...”
Fluttershy backed up into the side of the bed. The tiny room swayed around her, coated with sweat and chills. “Y-yes...?”
Starlight's eyelids hung heavy across a rosy expression. “...a ritual that is important in... solidifying your resolve as a new and trusted resident of this village.”
“And... that is?”
Starlight braced Fluttershy's shoulders with her hooves.
The pegasus clenched her eyes shut, flinching away—
And then Starlight moved Fluttershy aside, did a twirl, and flopped backwards onto the bed. She laid sprawled across the mattress, her hoofsies curled up to her chest while she stuck the very tip of her tongue out of a silly grin.
“My belly.”
“Your... belly...?” Fluttershy barely breathed, squinting at her.
“Yes.” Starlight pointed, eyes a-sparkle. “You must rub it.”
“Rub it?”
“Gently... yet thoroughly.” Starlight took a breath, and her voice came out raspy. “Especially on the fuzzy soft part of it.”
“Oh... uhm...” Fluttershy fidgeted. “I... I-I did not expect this...”
“You did not expect a lot of things,” Starlight droned. “But, as part of your mind being illuminated to the benefits of sameness and equality, you are learning new and wondrous things every day, starting this very second. Now...” She squirmed, wriggling her pink flanks deeper into the plush bed. “The belly. It requests your hoof-rubs.”
“But... b-but...” Fluttershy chewed on the edge of her lip, glancing momentarily out the window at the nearby row of drab rooftops. “Would we not benefit more from... I dunno... discussing the merits of autocracy over individualistic meritocracy or—”
“Hey...!” Starlight bore a look of horror as she craned her ear towards nothing in particular. “Do... do you hear that? It sounds... it sounds exactly like your friends screaming to death in the bubbling maw of a nearby desert geyser...” The unicorn's eyes burned like plasma jets as she clenched her teeth. “Instead of the nice, safe, and totally-not-boiling shack where I mercifully chose to leave them!”
“Oh! Look!” Fluttershy thrust her hoof forward, making gentle contact with Starlight's chest. “The fuzzy part!” She rubbed in concentric circles, smiling sweatily. “I do believe I have found it!”
“Mmmmmmm...” Starlight cooed. Her tail instantly wagged as she leaned her head back on the mattress. “...your hoof is so soffffft...”
“Well, that's what most of my friends tell m-me,” Fluttershy stammered. “And by 'most of my friends,' I-I guess I mean the seldom few who have actually let me rub their bellies... which have been none of them... until now... uh... 'new friend.'” She gulped, a few pink strands of her mane poking loose as she put on a brave grin. “So, thank you, friend, for telling me!”
“Heeheee...” Starlight's left leg shook a little as goosebumps formed across her pastel coat. “My tummy toooooo...”
“Erm...” Fluttershy fidgeted, stroking her hoof left and right in wide swaths. “Where exactly does your 'belly' end and your 'tummy' begin?”
“Just use your imaginationnnnnnn...” Starlight exhaled long and hard. “...what's left of it anyway. Phwuuguuu! We're going to exorcise your fuzzy creativityyyyy... through the belly rubs.”
“Oh. I understand, founder.” Fluttershy went briefly cross-eyed. “I think...”
“Belly rubs have been hoarded for far too long,” Starlight drunkenly rambled, squirming like a happy equine worm into the pliable surfaces of the bed. She broke into errant giggles with each side-swipe of Fluttershy's caressing hoof. “They do not belong to the one percent, but must instead be equally distributed to the common populace, so that belly rubs can be had by allllll...”
“You... uh...” Fluttershy gulped an even bigger lump down her throat. “You d-don't want me to go lower, do you?”
A pair of eyes glared up at her. “What are you, a pervert?”
“Oh, yes, founder—I... I-I mean no, founder! I mean...”
“Mmmmm...” Starlight's next breath came out in a stifled whimper as she tilted her neck back. “N-now... now the chest fluff.”
“Chest fluff?” Curious, Fluttershy snaked her hoof up, encountering a few inches of downy pink fur. “Oh! So it is! Fluffy... I-I mean...”
“Hmmmmm... it's all so simple...” Starlight squeaked, sniffling. “So very simple... if only I could make everypony see...”
“Erm...” Fluttershy reached in, using both hooves now to stroke and caress the mare's sternum. “What's that, founder?”
“Harmony. And belly rubs. And all of the ponies.” Starlight's mouth hung open and a tiny sliver of drool rivered out. “And I don't know why I can't get my eyes off of you.”
Fluttershy's muzzle hung agape. “I beg your pardon...?”
“Say it, Mommy...” Starlight whimpered, her tail curling up to her thigh like a chameleon's. “Say I'm a pretty princess pony of harmony...”
“You're... uhm...” Fluttershy fought the bile back down her throat. “You're a pretty princess pony of harmony...” She squinted out one eye. “Starlighty...?”
“Heeeeeeeee...” Starlight teetered, teetered again, and was out like a light. “Shnorrrrrrrr...”
Fluttershy slowed her hoof-strokes until they were featherlight brush-by's at best. She released her grip of the village founder's tummy and leaned back, bright eyes a'blinking.
Starlight curled up in a fuzzy ball, smiling as she snored persistently into the bed covers.
“Hmmmm...” Fluttershy exhaled softly. “You know, maybe you're not really a brazen manifestation of oligarchical villainy after all.” She bore a gentle, sweet smile, cocking her head to the side with a loving gaze. “Besides, a pony with a coat as pink as yours couldn't possibly be villainous.”
“Hmmmmmmm...” Starlight bunched up a clump of bedsheets and nuzzled it like a kitten. “Zzzzzzz... Slit the foals' throats in their sleep... zzzzzzz... sell their kidneys to the black market...”
Fluttershy winced, slowly backing out of the room. “Then again...”
Quiet as a mouse, she closed the door, then briskly spun toward the stairs. After galloping down the steps, she paced across the front room, breath panting.
“Okay... okay...” She squeaked, dancing lightly in place as she looked in every direction. “I just need to make a quiet exit and recover the cutie marks.” Her eyes locked on a window pane. “Of course! Silly Fluttershy!” She ran over, parted the drapes, and swung it open.
“Hi!” Double Diamond stuck his head in, grinning ecstatically in the mare's face. “Did the founder ask for belly rubs?!”
“EEEK!” Fluttershy shrieked.
“Did she call you 'Mommy' too?!?” He inhaled.
THUD! Fluttershy slammed the window shut and spun around, shivering. “Erm... then again...” She gulped, glancing towards the distant fireplace. “Maybe the chimney instead.”
Then, wings twitching, Fluttershy leapt into action.
