There couldn’t have been a better day to go out for a trot around the forest. Maybe there would have been a better day during the summer, right before winter, when all the trees had thinned up and there was a little more light, but this was still a good enough day.
Fluttershy slowly paced along a rather large, often traveled path in the forest, and hummed a small tune in her head. She looked around at all the trees, watching for birds and other small animals, and occasionally checked in front of her. She didn’t want to trip on some rock of course, that would be stupid, even if there was nopony around.
Suddenly however, there was a rather obnoxious noise coming from behind. Please let them just pass me! She thought to herself.
“Hey! Fluttershy!” came an all too familiar voice.
“Yes?” came Fluttershy’s soft, easygoing voice.
“Can I tag a long?” came that voice again.
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
“Cool, I just couldn’t stand being in town alone, it just gets so boring. What are you doin out here all alone?”
Rainbow Dash looked at Fluttershy quizzically. It almost seemed that if Fluttershy gave an incorrect response, then Rainbow might consider her crazy.
“I like to come out here and, uh, look at the birds.” Fluttershy responded softly.
“You are weird sometimes, you know that?”
Fluttershy sighed. She knew that it would be a while before Rainbow found something else to do. She didn’t hate her, heck, Rainbow was her best friend, but there were just times when a pony needed to be alone, and it always seemed that when that time came for Fluttershy, there was always somepony to bug her.
“Well, you don’t have to be weird as well,” said a ‘headstrong’ Fluttershy. “Unless you like being weird, in which case you are welcome to walk with me,” she added shortly after.
Without another word, and for the better, Fluttershy and Rainbow trotted along at a fair pace. The current situation was coming out better than expected, and Fluttershy was happy. She wouldn’t want to have to get all angry and decisive right away.
“So Fluttershy, why do you go on these walks?” questioned Rainbow Dash.
“Well, I like to go on these walks to be alone,” she said courageously, “but I don’t mind it when somepony joins me.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” asked a puzzled Rainbow Dash.
“I never said that – unless you want to leave me alone, in which case you are welcome to.”
Rainbow looked long and hard at Fluttershy, dissecting her features, seeing what she wanted. Fluttershy looked down at the ground embarrassed.
“I didn’t upset you, did I?” asked Fluttershy.
“No, not at all. Don’t worry yourself about it!”
“Well, you can stay. I would like it if you did, but you can leave if you want. I don’t want to force you into something you don’t want to do. It would just be rude, and I don’t want to be rude. It is not a very nice thing to be. Rude that is, not being…”
As Fluttershy rambled on, trying to not sound like she wanted Rainbow gone, Rainbow stopped walking. She watched Fluttershy go on about being rude and being in general. She watched with curiosity. She didn’t understand how somepony might want to ramble on about such nonsense.
Rainbow quickly ran to catch up to Fluttershy.
“… not being. But you can be if you want. I don’t-“ rambled Fluttershy.
Interupting Fluttershy’s answer to life, “Hey, I almost forgot. I gotta meet Pinkie at Sugarcube Corner for some, uh, tea. Or cupcakes. Whatever Pinkie likes. Yeah. See ya around!”
With that, Rainbow Dash took the air in a few swoops and went to sail back down the path, but was stopped short by a minor obstacle.
In her hurry, Rainbow didn’t watch for any low-hanging branches, and ended up flying straight into one. She nearly knocked herself out.
“That moved into my way! You saw it move, right Fluttershy?” said a distraught Rainbow.
With a light sigh, “Yeah, it moved.”
Rainbow quickly, or moreover, clumsily, started running back down the path to Ponyville. She didn’t want Fluttershy to find out she lied about the meet up with Pinkie. That would be bad, and maybe lead to an argument. That wouldn’t end well, at all.
However, Fluttershy made no attempt to stop Rainbow Dash. She just watched as she ran down the path. Rainbow Dash probably wasted energy pretending to get away. If she knew that Fluttershy preferred to be alone today, she might not have panicked to get away so quickly.
Still, she meandered on. She almost seemed to be browsing the forest for some new animals to bring home, or for some sort of disorder to correct. She did this for maybe two hours, until she heard a noise off to one side.
It quickly caught her attention. She turned left to where it had come from. She couldn’t resist the urge to go look what could have made the noise.
It came again, this time louder. It was a cute, little squeal, almost like a baby squirrel was in need of help.
Quickly, Fluttershy acted. She sought out the creature hidden off to the left of the trail. She looked high and low, scanning everything right beside the trail, but she couldn’t find anything. She looked in the bushes, up the trees, and even in the little holes in the ground, but she couldn’t find what had made the noise at all.
She sat confused for a moment, pondering where the noise could have come from when the noise sounded again. She noticed it coming from the left still.
She quietly flew up into the canopy of trees and scanned over the forest floor.
She saw something that she probably shouldn’t have seen, or even know about for a long time, but it was there, it was happening, and she was witnessing it. In that one moment of watching, feelings came over her in such a way that she had never felt before.
Below her sat Rarity, doing some sort of ritual.
