Chapter 1: Before Her Doom
Once upon a time, in the heroic Mandate of the Pegasi, proud Pegasus Commanders ruled all, subject only to the wise advice of the Ephors. The Commanders were brave and strong, and imposed Harmony upon all Ponies, including those cursed to dwell upon the land. To do this, they led their invincible legions down upon any who dared oppose them, and wrought such work upon the rebels that soon none dared oppose them, and all were happy under their wise dominion.
But evil creatures from out of the Cosmos looked down upon and were jealous of Pony happiness. They took chimeric forms, like unto that of Monsters made of the mismatched parts of other creatures, or worse of creatures partaking of all three Pony Kinds, winged unicorn Ponies with the noble flight of Pegasi, the devious magic of Unicorns, and the brute force of Earth Ponies. They contended over Earth and Sea and Sky, and there was great suffering, during which the world writhed in Chaos.
In the end, only two of the Chimerae remained -- two monstrous Sisters who together subdued all the world. To do this, the eldest used her unnatural Unicorn powers to dominate the Sun, so that she might bring scorching heat upon any who opposed her. The younger likewise controlled the Powers of the Moon, and all the terrors of the Night, tormenting the Pegasi until they bowed to her as their Commander. Thus, the Sisters imposed their rule upon the Pegasi, and humbled them until they were forced to pretend to equality with the lesser Kinds of Ponies.
But in time, the younger Sister became aware that she was unwanted. The Ponies admired and loved the eldest for her deceitful shining beauty, while the younger was not as beautiful, and was feared for the dark horrors of her domain. She Twisted some Ponies into bat-winged creatures who worshiped her, making them in mockery of the Pegasi, but the love of Monsters did not satisfy her evil lust for domination. More and more, she hated her elder Sister, and yearned to rule the world alone.
One day, the younger Sister defied her sibling, refusing to relinquish control of the heavens when it came time for the day. The older Sister admonished and threatened her, pointing out that if they quarreled, the true Ponies might take heart and overthrow them.
But the bitterness in the younger one's heart was such that her disguise slipped, and she stood revealed in something closer to her true form -- a horrible monster of Darkness -- Nightmare Moon! She declared that she would never let the Sun rise again!
Forced now to turn on she who had been her most valued ally, the older Sister used the most powerful weapon she possessed -- the Elements of Harmony. Employing this magic, she defeated her younger Sister, and banished her to the Moon. But in doing this, the Elements rejected the Sun Tyrant, leaving her might greatly diminished.
The Sun Tyrant now controlled both Sun and Moon, and ruled the world unchecked by her false claim to Harmony. And so her tyrannical rule has been maintained in Equestria for generations since, for none now remain strong enough to successfully oppose her. But there is a legend that one day a Pegasus will appear who shall gain strength like unto her own, and then that Pegasus shall stand before her unafraid.
(from The True Traditions of the High Mandate)
Fluttershy Wind wondered why she should think of that old, hateful legend on such a lovely morning. She knew the story only too well. Uncle Windvane would bring out and solemnly-intone it to the whole family, on the appropriate ritual occasions, and sometimes simply because he took pleasure in reading it aloud -- to remind everypony that the Pegasi should rightly rule, that they owed no allegiance to Princess Celestia for any reason save survival . And, as everypony knew, and would have known even had he not drummed it into them all, again and again, no true Pegasus ever submitted more than tactically and temporarily for any reason so craven.
No true Pegasus ...
In the end, Windvane had angrily told her that she was no true Pegasus, that she was a disgrace to the ancient and noble Wind Clan, unfit to openly claim connection to a line which stretched back, in the dim mists of antiquity, to that of Wind Whistler and Hurricane the Great, long predating the rule of the Sun Tyrant. He had banished her from their ancestral home in Cloudsdale, arranged a remittance -- so that the clan should not be shamed by the sight of one of its members starving in the streets, or worse -- on the understanding that she would speak nothing of her connections.
Or worse. The phrase had stuck in her mind, in part because at fifteen she had still been too innocent to understand what it was that Windvane was implying she might otherwise do, and had wondered what might be worse than starving in the streets, which after all sounded pretty bad. She also remembered that he'd also suggested that, if she found the burden of living rejected by her Clan too onerous, she was always welcome to choose an honorable exit.
She had known what that meant. The old tales told of what a greatly-dishonored Pegasus of the High Clans was expected to do. Either expiate the shame through a deed of equivalently-great glory, or drown it in her own life's blood. Sometimes both. Which struck her as reasonable, though she supposed she would always be too afraid to actually do either.
But she had not felt even slightly-dishonored by Windvane's rejection. He might value his own opinion that highly, but she did not. She had never done anything particularly brave in her own estimation; indeed, she considered herself a coward. However, she had done nothing dishonorable. She was simply herself, and she was free, and she desired life rather than death.
She had almost laughed in his face when he had tried to suggest that the Wind honor blade would be more appropriate in his keeping than in hers. His motive was transparent -- if she had felt greatly dishonored, and slain herself, then she might have done so with the blade -- and that was a priceless historical relic, forged almost fifteen hundred years ago in Derecho, at a time when the Winds had led the Imperial Guards of the vanished North-Realm. And when an honor-blade was put to its final purpose, it would be melted down and a new blade forged.
Fluttershy might have given Windvane the blade simply to stop his complaints. But that blade had been given to her by her mother Sweetwing on her fourteenth birthday, as one of Sweetwing's last acts of sanity. The blade normally passed from mother to daughter, by the matrilineage that was the only sure form of descent over any great number of generations. So it had passed to Fluttershy, and so she would keep it. She knew that her mother would never have wanted it to fall into the hands of Windvane, a brother Sweetwing had always disliked.
So she kept her Honor Blade. And had not used it, not even after the sad set of circustances that led her to discover that she was in truth unlovable. That had been but a slight dishonor, not the great sort that required ritual suicide. She was saddened to realize that she would in all likelihood never find a true mate, but such was a small thing on the scale of her life. She had her studies, and her animal friends to keep her company.
The code of the High Clans was not that of the Earth Pony gentry, who worshipped wealth and propriety, nor even that of the Unicorn aristocracy, with their subtle and centuries-long social schemes. It was a code of wind and blood, of high sky and sudden death, life lived on the edge of reflex and razor wing, even for the greatest. Fluttershy was herself a creature of the lower airs, happiest walking the woods amongst the wealth of Nature, and yet she understood this instinctively: it was part of her soul.
Even if Windvane didn't understand that, even if he thought that one couldn't be a proper Pegasus of the High Clans without wanting to compete, to fight, to think all the time on precedence and honor and blood and death. Fluttershy would rather be out among her animals, enjoying her life in the warm sunlight of late spring. Who in their right mind would want to fight when there was no need? Even the most admirable of Pegsi would rather compete in good sport, rather than harm others.
Fluttershy knew this because it was her great privilege to call the most admirable of Pegasi her oldest and dearest friend. Rainbow Dash was of common birth, but she was as athletic and magnificent, as much the ideal Pegasus, as Fluttershy herself was not nor could ever hope to be. Cerise eyes full of determination, muscles rippling on her blue barrel and thighs, rainbow mane and tail streaming in the breeze to merge with her rainbow-streaked flight trail -- she was the epitome of excellence and beauty in Fluttershy's eyes.
She was Fluttershy's oldest friend. They'd met in flight camp, twelve years ago when Fluttershy had been eight and Dashie only six. Though Fluttershy was the elder, it was Rainbow Dash who had become her protector, a situation which had not substantially changed in the ensuing years. They had grown, from little fillies to young mares, something which to Fluttershy meant in part that the stakes in the social games grew greater, and the rules by which they were played ever subtler and more complex. Fluttershy hated such social games. She always seemed to lose them, humiliatingly, and have to pay in one form or another for her losses.
Rainbow Dash played them with gusto and no strategic subtlety, though she was good enough on tactics. Aggressive and good-hearted, she just bulled her way through all opposition, trusting to her momentum to see her through the vicissitudes of life as it saw her through races and other sports. Somehow, this worked out just fine for her: Dashie was was incomparably brave and incredibly thick-skinned; an irresistible force, before which all but the most immovable objects gave way.
Fluttershy's only other good friend, Rarity Belle, was almost Dashie's opposite. Rarity was subtle, sophisticated, a social schemer and natural charmer who employed a combination of briliance, hard work, shrewdness and downright niceness to climb the status ladder. Rarity had met Fluttershy almost ten years ago, soon after Fluttershy had literally fallen to earth near Ponyville and discovered she loved living down on the ground.
Like Rainbow Dash, Rarity was two years younger than Fluttershy. Like Rainbow Dash, it was the younger Rarity who had taken Fluttershy under her wing. Or, rather, under her horn, since Rarity was a Unicorn.
Ambitious, beautiful and manipulative, Rarity by all the rules of drama should have been a heartless, shallow creature who was only pretending to like Fluttershy in the hope of getting an introduction into Pegasus Society. And it was quite true, as Fluttershy later realized, that Rarity had initially been drawn to her obviously-aristocratic manner -- something which Fluttershy could not help but reveal to a perceptive Pony such as Rarity in a dozen little ways. When Rarity realized just how little Fluttershy cared for her old world, the world of the High Clans, she should have dropped Fluttershy like a hot potato.
Instead, Rarity remained her friend, taking her under her (figurative) wing and teaching her how to reach out to other Ponies. Not that Fluttershy ever would reach out to other Ponies -- she knew that she was barely even a proper Pegasus, neither brave nor strong, neither admirable nor loveable. She tried to tell Rarity this, but the white Unicorn simply laughed and told her that she was and always would be her dear friend. Fluttershy was astonished that Rarity could accept a freak like herself.
More of a freak than even her friends realized, in fact ... but she did not like to think of what she had discovered about herself six years ago on that menhir-crowned hill out in the Badlands, leered down upon by that tunnel-riddled mesa, that mesa crawling with monsters. Shapeshifting monsters like great black-carapaced insects in equoid forms that flew and buzzed and spoke into her mind and told her she was no true Pegasus at all, but really one of them.
Fluttershy knew she was cursed, living on borrowed time, before one of the many terrifying truths she concealed from the world caught up with and destroyed her. But in the meantime, she tried her best to enjoy her life, living with her animals, enjoying their love, and spending time with her two best friends, Rainbow Dash and Rarity Belle. It was not a bad life, not a bad way to spend the interval she had until her invitable doom. There were no grand joys for her, but there were quiet little pleasures, and to her surprise she became mostly happy in it.
Days passed, blended into weeks, into months. She became used to Ponyville, to her friends and life there. Slowly, her fears began to fade: her fears of being abused by bullies, cast out by other Pegasi, eaten by Dragons. She fed on the love of her animals without harming them, and began to hope that she was simply different due to her birth, maybe not even a real monster at all. The memory of the mesa in the Badlands, the menhir-crowned hill, the terrible voice of Chrysalis that had spoken into her very soul -- became but a bad dream, a nightmare fantasy, irrelevant to her waking life in the real world.
She still knew that she was cowardly and freakish and unloveable, not a proper Pegasus -- but did she really have to be? The most amazing Pegasus of all, Rainbow Dash, was her loyal friend and protector. Beautiful and kind Rarity took hours out of her busy days to talk to her, comfort her, teach her how to pretend to be normal. And if the lesson that Nosey had taught her -- that she was unloveable -- remained seared into her soul, she didn't have to think about it too often. She was afraid of most other Ponies anyway. Her life did not need real romantic, or even crassly sexual love in it. She could be happy simply tasting the love of her animals.
She did not know it, she might have denied it had one told her, but Fluttershy was in fact slowly, gradually healing from the shocks and insults she had suffered. Her hair grew long and luxurious, her legs lengthened, her features lost their last baby-fat and became fine and aristocratic. She was still incredibly, painfully shy, so she shrank from them, but she began to attract admiring gazes. She would definitely have denied this, but she was in fact becoming achingly, heart-breakingly beautiful, something Rainbow Dash sometimes saw with pangs of impossible longing, and Rarity Belle perceived with an almost professional satisfaction.
So went the course of Fluttershy Wind's slow recovery.
Who knows how many years it might have taken, had her comfortable, safe little world not ended forever for her on June 21st, YOH 1500, when an emissary from Canterlot came upon her in the midst of her band practice?
