I said, "I don't know why I doubted myself for a second. Now this is what I call a perfect Nightmare Night." Me, under my tall bed, snacks and books and a lantern at hoof, some good reading to while away the time as my animal friends escaped the shrieks and bother of the crazy ponies outside. I might not like Nightmare Night, but the book I borrowed from Twilight about it proved interesting enough, especially the second-edition chapter where Luna clarified some legends.
It was while turning a page in Luna's chapter, with an absent-minded wave of a wing, that I realized I was hungry. Not for the tea cakes, nor the sticky caramel hay ball, or the custard bread I had within reach. Angel Bunny lay asleep against my chest, one paw absently jerking. Harry snored and drooled, only his head and shoulders under the frame. Birds roosted on books and the lamp. It smelled a bit like a barn. I had thought the potion lamp had dimmed, but it seemed too bright suddenly.
I felt uncomfortably warm, too.
I slipped out with speed and finesse that I did not expect just a few hours before dawn. The bed skirt let out little light, but it blazed like sunshine. In the otherwise dark room, I could see my night table, read the titles on the spines of the books on the shelf, and see the second hand tick-tick-ticking on my clock.
In shades of gray.
I shrugged.
I pushed down the handle on a window with mullions curved in the shape of a butterfly, thrust it wide open, and jumped into the cool fresh pre-dawn sky. Luna's moon washed the ground like the brightest summer sun, flooding even the shadows cast by trees and houses with plenty of light. Air sung as it rushed through my fur and caressed my skin. Scents of jasmine and pine spiced the air. I swooped and looped around houses and over thatched roofs, rattled street signs, then dive-bombed late revelers in a Bee and in a Timberwolf costume—and began to realize what Rainbow Dash felt when she flew fast and wildly without thought for life or limb.
It felt pretty good, actually.
The two in costumes fled, screaming, and I smiled, hoping they enjoyed receiving the fright as much as I enjoyed giving it. I pumped my wings, sounds like sail cloth filling the night as I shot into the sky, then swooped again low to the ground, through a fragrant hay field back into town, watching as the grass, hedgerows, and cobblestone blurred by. I shot through an open patio window and out hay loft doors on the other side, blue bedsheets sucked into the air by my slipstream, startled voices following but lost in the distance. Wind whipped my mane and fluttering tail behind me while crisp autumn air filled my lungs. My heart beat strongly. I felt so alive. It was—
Exhilarating.
Silly me for not doing this more often, for not flying with—no, racing against—Dashie more often.
A niggling sensation at the back of my mind of something wrong tried to poke out as I flew, and flew, and flew.
As the sky turned a shade of morning blue, and the east became orange with a presentiment of yellow, I found myself hanging upside down from a tree viewing Ponyville from a distant hill, trying to figure out what bothered me. Blood rushed in my ears. I smelled rabbits denned near by and fragrant autumn-dried laurel leaves that rattled like muted bamboo chimes beside me. I thought how nice it was to have a prehensile tail to allow me to hang securely while viewing the beauty of an exquisite dawn. Sooo. What was I forgetting?
My stomach growled.
Right. Apples! I hissed and launched myself vertically into the sky, did a backflip, and shot off toward Sweet Apple Acres.
At which point it hit me. My whole body went cold. Confused, I glided back toward town, the air in my wings icy, the smell of a burning rubbish pile displacing the scents of dew and early blooming flowers. I slowed, despite instincts that cried speed and food! Something was wrong with me, terribly wrong. I did not want to look at myself, and as I fluttered to the ground, I did not.
And there I stood, unable (or unwilling, it did not matter) to move, on the lip of the fountain in the town square, in front of Town Hall, hyperventilating in huge loud gasps. Water from the fountain's center spout cascaded into the upper pond, the splashing and patter of drops varying with the whims of a capricious breeze, but filling the air with a humid scent. Early-rising ponies, pulling creaking wagons to the farmers' market or trotting to popular breakfast spots, began to appear.
When each one looked, they stopped, they stared. My heart raced. Why were they looking at me? Why?
I wobbled, dizzy from breathing too much. As the horsy scent of their fear wafted toward me, I fought the paralysis that gripped me, forcing myself to gaze at the reflection in the still water of the lower pond.
Red irises.
Fox ears.
Fangs.
When I flared my wings, they lacked feathers and displayed a taut yellow membrane stretched between a boney framework.
I screamed, louder than I had ever been capable of before, until my throat burned, "I'm a monster! "
No, not really, said a kind voice that was loud but firm, and, though it seemed possibly to be in my head was not me thinking it. You are not a monster. You are just dreaming of freedom.
I continued hyperventilating, my shoulders heaving with the effort as I sought the voice. About me, the droplets of the fountain hovered frozen in midair. Ponies galloping from my ghastly scream floated suspended mid-stride. I felt like the world had become a crystal with me suspended inside.
I looked up. The moon itself shimmered like a reflection in a lake after a stone had been dropped in. From the center appeared the princess of the night. With a few flaps of her wings, Luna settled near my perch.
Why do you punish yourself so, dear Fluttershy, oh Element of Kindness? Did I not say this is a dream? You can be yourself in a dream.
"I'm a monster."
Oh, my, no. She laughed, flaring her wings momentarily. You are experiencing your heritage, and the carefree pony that your fears repress.
"B-but, I'm Flutterbat, again!"
That much is true. I have learned from Burn Hard, captain of my night guard, that your grandmother, who died giving birth to your mother, was a night wing pony. You and he share a great-grandfather. Twilight's inept spell did not transform you, it released you. It is your heritage to be wild and to be free.
I grew still as she talked, and cold, and brutally unforgiving. "I'm still a monster," I breathed when she finished.
Exasperated, the princess struck a steel shod hoof on the cobble stones, throwing sparks into the brightening dawn. All of reality shimmered. No! she said.
Something wild inside responded. Wings flared, I leapt with a hiss directly at Luna. "I'm a monster! "
I bumped my head and whacked both wings against the wood slats holding up the underside of my bed, then cracked my flank as I tried to stand, completely disoriented. My words, "I'm a monster!" echoed in my ears as Angel Bunny, flung away by my sudden movement, stalked back under the bed, chittering in anger. My other animal friends had fled my tantrum.
Suddenly claustrophobic, I scrambled out into bright morning sunshine, only minutes into a cloudless dawn. I swiftly preened my sleep-disarrayed wings, nibbling feathers into place before I realized I actually had feathers. I stopped and spat out some dander and found myself shaking.
The nightmare seemed so very real. I flashed on the ecstasy of me flying. Me scaring ponies. Me charging Luna. Emotions that felt good. I looked at my wings again, then lifted a hoof to feel my normal pony ears and trace the teeth behind my lips.
Normal.
I calmed a bit, then I thought how wonderful the first part of the dream had been. How could I think of that me as a monster? I began shaking all over.
Even with a hot honeyed chamomile tea in my favorite ruddy-red earthenware mug—the one with pink hearts—steaming before me, I could not stop shaking; I could barely sip it; the golden liquid kept sloshing. I could not stop thinking, I'm a monster. I had enjoyed scaring the ponies, more than just being in control of what scared me, but having fun swooping and being terrifying.
Fun. I-would-even-do-it-for-my-friends-if-they-asked fun.
Pop! Something inside, like a fragile glass Hearthswarming Eve tree ornament, shattered, spraying tinkling glass. I was broken.
Irreparably.
The truth finally; and I stopped shaking, sober. It was fun. It had been fun. I would do it again fun. And thusly I accepted I was a monster.
But what did it really mean to be a monster?
Night wing ponies were rare in Equestria. They had not been one of the three tribes that had squabbled and eventually sent representatives to find what would become Equestria, and had subsequently gone on to colonize it.
Did their original absence make them monsters? Unfamiliar, yes. Bizarre looking, to Equestrians, may be. Dangerous or undeserving of kindness?
Princess Luna certainly trusted a few dozen of these denizens of the night to populate her royal guard. How could they be monsters?
And if I was related by blood... No. Not going to think about that…
It changed the whole meaning of the word. Gave it the nuance of prejudice—or as Twilight might say, the absence of rational thought.
I lifted the mug of tea and sipped the sugary herbal brew, hooves surprisingly steady again. My kitchen faced away from town and looked past the hen house to the Everfree forest.
I remembered how dreadfully scary it had been to purchase a cottage, let alone one the edge of this forest, but the fixer-upper (what a euphemism, that!) had been all I could afford. I had fallen from Cloudsdale, barely a teenager, and hid as the nomad city drifted away, taking my neglectful parents with it. I soon found work helping farmers with their animals, and with animal doctors diagnosing veterinary diseases, making enough bits to quit living in the meadows without shelter before the snows came. When I bought the cottage, the Everfree had been a dark band of rustling leaves west of my house from one horizon to the other, always foreboding, emitting horrifying howls and sulfury fumes day and night.
Since we had returned the Elements to the Tree of Harmony, the forest had begun to appear more natural, verdant, open, even inviting. The noises had abated, too. The sulfurous smells, not so much.
Animals lived there. What of those monsters?
Were they any more monstrous than I, or Harry the bear who loomed over the biggest pony? Were they monsters in their world? I remembered the manticore from whose paw I removed the thorn. Was Manny a monster? A big kitty, really.
Was there a forest of animals I had neglected, mislabeled, and defamed?
I stood up suddenly, banging the table, letting the cool air flowing through the open window ruffle my mane. I glanced at the spilt mug rolling on the redwood table top.
Last night I had spoken about having been taking baby steps and transitioning to grown-up ones—and that had been about doing something frivolous.
I embodied the Element of Kindness, as Luna had pointed out. I had a forest to explore, full of animals not only abused by the malevolent influence of a dying Tree of Harmony, feared because of their mysteriousness, but shunned for being monsters. For being misunderstood.
If I was really, truly a monster, also, then perhaps I was also really well equipped to make some special new friends. No maybes; I was.
It was as if I had been looking at the world upside down and through a fog—and now, not.
When it came to the animals I could take care of, clearly, "cute" and "monstrous" were in the eye of the beholder.
I had work to do.
Author's Note
Picture credit: Imspainter, formerly on Tumblr, whose picture lives on in Google's cache. (Cropped.)
A canned Google search is here. I had the picture in mind when writing the last act of the story. If you're the artist, please comment or PM. It's a much loved image and I'd buy a full-sized one.
If you're thinking that this seemed like the perfect start of a longer piece, well, you're right. I had wanted this part to be about 400 words. It turned out a bit bigger. Only so much I can speed-write in a night. So far as a sequel goes, I have a whole outline in my head... it may happen, if the story is well liked.
Again, a big thank you to Docontra for finding some of the little "mistaekes" in my speed-written manuscript. Anything remaining you may find in my published story, however, is solely my stumble and responsibility. Critiques that include what you thought I wrote so I can see how it differs from what I thought I wrote are always appreciated.
