Hunger had forced Fluttershy to leave her home and go into her new town to purchase supplies. She knew roughly where the market was, and she had been working her timid way toward it for the past half-hour, darting from streetlight to streetlight to avoid the weight of the night on her back. At last, she came into view of the market square, and shrank away from the quiet press of bodies around the food and grocery stalls. Two years before, she might have registered the desperation in everypony’s movements. Now, that was background noise, filtered out by familiarity.
She stayed on the fringe of the market and looked around for the least busy stall. Her eyes landed on a lone stall attended by an orange mare. Fluttershy crept toward that stall, fighting down her fear by firmly informing herself that two nights without eating was enough and her hunger was more important than her fear. She didn’t believe it, but she kept walking anyway.
At the stall, the shopkeeper was standing close to a lantern and touching up her makeup from a mirrored compact. Fluttershy stood by for one minute, then two, hoping that the shopkeeper would look up and notice her. Fluttershy looked at her as she continued to work on her makeup. Her blonde mane was done up in an elaborate braided bun, interwoven with a red ribbon. Her orange-red coat was the color of dawn—a color Fluttershy was surprised to find that she remembered—and it hugged sleek, soft curves, not a hard edge anywhere on her body. Her cutie mark was a trio of oranges, and Fluttershy’s mouth watered at the sight. She had not seen an orange in years.
Fluttershy’s stomach rumbled, a digestive noise hardly louder than a whisper. It was loud enough to attract the attention of the shopkeeper, who looked up in surprise, meeting Fluttershy’s startled eyes.
Fluttershy blushed a hot red and turned to flee in embarrassment, but the shopkeeper’s voice stopped her in her tracks. “I say, darling, wherever are you going? You do intend to buy something, do you not?”
Fluttershy dragged her head around to face the shopkeeper, her eyes screwed shut. She had to say something; silence would only make her angry and that would be worse than simple embarrassment. “Yes . . .?” she managed, then cracked an eyelid open, wary of the shopkeeper’s reaction.
Fluttershy opened both eyes in surprise; the mare behind the stall didn’t look angry at all. She was smiling. Fluttershy’s suspicion at the strange reaction warred with her hunger, and the hunger won. “I’d like to buy . . .” She glanced down and found that the cart contained an assortment of withered apples shining dully in the lamplight. “. . . an apple, please, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” She flinched away as she finished speaking, knowing that the shopkeeper’s smile would soon turn ugly and mocking. But there was something strange in the shopkeeper’s green eyes. Fluttershy stared at them for a long moment before remembering what that expression was. It was sympathy. She shrank back as the shopkeeper extended a hoof toward her.
The shopkeeper said, “Please, calm yourself, my good mare. There is no reason for you to be nervous. I am Applejack, and you are . . .?”
Fluttershy tentatively touched her own hoof to Applejack’s, dropping the contact after a fraction of a second. “Fluttershy,” she said, as she continued staring at Applejack. Fluttershy had never met a pony who treated her like this, and she was not sure how to act. Experience told her that Applejack would begin heaping abuse on her at any moment, but there was something in those green eyes that made Fluttershy feel like she was safe at home in the sunshine. She shifted her gaze away from Applejack’s unsettling eyes to stare at the long-dead grass between her hooves.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Fluttershy. How many apples would you like?”
“Just one, thank you, if that’s fine with you.” Fluttershy’s stomach rumbled again. “I mean, um, two, please.” Another rumble. Fluttershy hid behind her mane. “. . . Five apples, please. I’m sorry.”
Applejack’s laughter bubbled up out of her like water from a spring. Fluttershy winced, but realized after a moment that she was not mocking her. She brushed her mane away from her face and showed Applejack a tiny smile. Her stomach grumbled again, and Applejack picked up a shrunken apple from the cart and offered it to Fluttershy. “Take this, Miss Fluttershy, I insist. You clearly have need of it.”
Fluttershy normally would never impose like that, but Applejack continued to hold the apple out toward her, so she took it so that Applejack’s arm wouldn’t get tired. She nibbled at it as Applejack placed her apples in a paper bag. Her blonde bun shone in the lamplight like a little sun, golden light so bright that Fluttershy had to wipe away tears.
Applejack folded the bag over, then fixed her with an earnest green-eyed look. “Miss Fluttershy, I find myself wondering about your cutie mark. It is quite unusual, is it not? Would you mind terribly explaining it to me?”
Fluttershy glanced at her own flank, seeing the fluffy black cloud there. At flight school, she had been constantly bullied. Before long, she had found that she could conceal herself within the clouds and nopony would find her. If they couldn’t find her, they couldn’t hurt her or call her names, so she spent more and more of her time hidden away in her fluffy, private nests. One day her chief tormentors were searching for her and stepped directly on her cloud without noticing her. When she had finally stopped shaking, she noticed that she had been marked by the experience.
She looked off into the dark, away from Applejack’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’d really rather not talk about it, if that’s alright.”
Applejack raised an eyebrow, then rearranged her expression into a genteel smile. “It’s perfectly alright, my dear. I apologize for bringing up a sensitive matter. I hope you can forgive me.”
Fluttershy gasped, her wide eyes flicking to Applejack’s calm ones. “No! No, it’s fine, it’s nothing. You don’t need forgiveness from somepony like me. I’m sorry for not answering you.” She looked at the ground, biting her lip.
Applejack tilted her head a fraction, considering the terrified mare. She smoothed her voice to a buttery tone, hoping to draw her out of her shell. “How long have you lived in Ponyville, Miss Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy glanced up, but went back to staring at the dirt between her hooves. “Four nights,” she murmured.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Fluttershy, darling, what brought you to this backwater little burg?”
Fluttershy looked up at last, a real smile on her face. Applejack blinked in surprise at seeing it. “Ponyville is a backwater little burg, isn’t it?” Her smile broadened. “It’s simply wonderful.”
Applejack forced her eyebrows down out of her hairline. “. . . Is that so?”
“Oh, yes. I wanted to find the smallest, emptiest, and boringest town in Equestria, and I finally found it. Ponyville is . . .” She sighed blissfully. “wonderful.” She stared into space for a moment, then blinked and focused on Applejack with a wince. “Um, I’m sorry. Nopony wants to hear about me. Do you live here in Ponyville, Applejack?”
“Moon, no. If you will pardon my language.” Her bubbling laugh had a jagged edge to it, as though the spring had iced over. “I hail from Manehattan. I find myself called to little Ponyville to help my relatives pack up and move. They are farming folk, you see, and since, well, you know,” she gestured at the night sky with a graceful motion, “the apples haven’t been growing as they should. My dear, rustic relatives have heard rumor that there is still sun in the south, so they are ‘pulling up stakes,’ as they put it, and traveling in that direction.” She rapped a hoof on the top of the apple stand. “It just so happens that ‘helping my relatives move’ looks a great deal like ‘selling apples in the market all night, every night.’ To my relief, they are nearly ready to leave, so with a bit of luck, I should be on the train to Manehattan tomorrow.”
Fluttershy offered a small smile. “I’m happy. For you, I mean. That you’re going back home, I mean. That’s nice for you.”
Applejack returned her smile. “Thank you, my dear. Ponyville has a certain . . . charm, I suppose, for some ponies, but it’s not Manehattan. It’s not home. I shall be glad to see the last of it.”
Fluttershy was surprised to find that she was feeling sad at the thought of Applejack leaving. Normally Fluttershy wanted to be as far away from every other pony as possible, but Applejack was different. She was so nice. Fluttershy would have liked to listen to her talk more.
Maybe there were other ponies in Ponyville who were as nice as Applejack? Fluttershy looked out over the market, seeing anew the quiet desperation on every face as they clustered together in the lamplight at the run-down food stalls, and she turned away quickly. Applejack was waiting politely for her to say something, and Fluttershy quailed. “It was very nice to meet you, Applejack. I should go now.”
The corners of Applejack’s eyes crinkled as she smiled, and Fluttershy couldn’t help but smile back. “It was truly a pleasure to meet you, Miss Fluttershy. Enjoy your apples, will you please?”
Fluttershy bent to pick up the bag of apples in her teeth, but hesitated. She looked past Applejack’s shoulder. “Maybe I’ll come and buy more apples tomorrow.”
Applejack nodded. “I would enjoy that. I shall see you tomorrow, then, darling.”
Looking at Applejack’s smile and her dawn-colored coat, Fluttershy felt her chest buoyed, a lightness she hadn’t felt since she was very small, when she used to sit in the bright sunlight with her parents and feel safe and secure. She breathed a small shuddering sigh. She would definitely come back tomorrow to feel like this again, even if only for a little while.
She picked up the folded paper bag of apples in her mouth, dipped her head to Applejack by way of a goodbye, and crept out of the stall’s bubble of light toward her new house. She moved from streetlight to streetlight, darting through the darkness between, but the weight of the always-night sky pressed down on her each time, squeezing the light of dawn out of her heart drop by drop.
The next night, she could not bear the darkness. She did not go to the market. Later, she heard the train whistle moaning in the distance, and she curled herself closer around her lantern and cried.
Author’s Note: This story was originally written as an entry for prompt #9 over at Thirty Minute Ponies. The prompt was named Such Sweet Sorrow, and it was “Write a Flutterjack fic which includes the last words Fluttershy and Applejack ever say to one another.” On consideration, I realized that everyone was going to do either “one of them dies” or “they have a terrible breakup and stop talking to each other,” which were my first two ideas. So I sat around and thought about it, and the idea of an AU without Dash popped into my head, and the idea that without the Sonic Rainboom, the ponies would not have met, and probably would not have become the Elements of Harmony. And that turned into this. I didn’t submit it to TMP because it took me well over half an hour to write. So here it is.
