Scootaloo sat on a windowsill one frostspun, moonchilled night. She pressed her nose to the glass. Her eyes were glued to the hospital, and her mind was fixed upon Rainbow Dash. “She’ll be fine,” she whispered, staring at the white glow of the hospital windows. “She’s gonna be fine. She’s gotta be fine, ’cause she’s Rainbow.”
A gentle knock on the bedroom door; a voice sewn together from hush and whispers. “S-sorry,” said Fluttershy from behind the door. “I don’t mean to intrude, but is everything alright in there?”
Scootaloo fidgeted for a moment. Then she said, “I’m… fine, Fluttershy. Everything’s wicked-cool. Promise.”
Her words drip-dripped with nerves, drowning away any traces of alleged coolness. It was a relief when Fluttershy opened the door and switched on the bedside lamp. “Now, you’re my guest tonight, Scootaloo, and I have to check up on you. Is it Rainbow again?”
Scootaloo replied with a nod-shake, a shake-nod. She was torn. Half of her wanted to say that Rainbow’s accident didn’t bother her, that it was no big deal, nothing to fret about, worry about, or fear. Rainbow, hurt? Rainbow had accidents all the time! Yet what did it matter for the pegasus with wings of iron, and bones made from pure daring? The sky itself couldn’t harm that mare, not with wind, lightning, or thunder.
But the other half of Scootaloo warned that this was a lie, that tough wasn’t the same thing as indestructible. It was the part of herself that had been drawn to Fluttershy’s cottage when the hospital had refused to let her spend the night curled at the foot of Rainbow’s bed. The part of herself that had stood up to her parents, and made her insist to them that she wasn’t coming home that night.
Even though Rainbow was going to be fine, of course.
Even though there was no use worrying.
Fluttershy frowned. “Are you sure you’re alright, Scootaloo? You're awfully pale.”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Everything was fine, wonderfully, amazingly fine – save for the fact that Rainbow had never had an accident like this before. Never had Scootaloo seen her hero hit the ground with such speed and force. Never had she heard the shatter of her—
Heard the crack of her—
Heard everything.
Scootaloo closed her eyes. She wished she could close her ears.
“Goodness, Scootaloo! You’re crying.”
The next she knew, Scootaloo was wrapped in Fluttershy’s embrace, and the older pegasus let her sob against her skin. “Shush, dear one. Silly Rainbow’s always getting herself into trouble – but you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need.”
Scootaloo tried to say thanks, but thanks wouldn’t come. It was trampled over by sobs and sniffles. It was flooded beneath tears.
Who knew if Rainbow would ever recover? Who knew if she would ever hold her again? Ever speak to her, ever see her, ever love her?
Crack, went Rainbow's wings in Scootaloo’s memory. Crack. Crack.
She winced. And with her ear against the mare’s coat, Scootaloo attempted to lose herself in a body’s worth of new sounds, new noises. The warm beat-beat of Fluttershy’s heart; the rush of blood under her skin, and the gurgle of her belly. Life sounds, reminding her of when she had been four years old, and snuggled beside Mother as the rain beat down, as lightning flashed, and thunder bellowed.
Life sounds weren’t enough to banish Rainbow’s cries from her head. They couldn’t make her forget the dreadful crack of the mare’s bones.
“Fluttershy,” she whispered. “I can’t get her out of my ears. She’s stuck there, and I dunno how to dig her out.”
Fluttershy released her. Scootaloo shivered as the chill of the moon cloaked them, and as the cottage spoke with a voice formed from the creaking of floorboards, the glug-glug of water pipes, the crackle of the fireplace downstairs. In Fluttershy’s quiet presence, the house seemed alive, somehow. Alive, and as eager to comfort her as its owner.
She shook her head; cottages didn’t speak. She was tired, that was all. Tired and nervous, and imagining things. “Y-you can go, if you wanna,” said Scootaloo, and she gave a mighty stretch and a tremendous yawn. “I’m fine. I’m honestly fine. I’m gonna hit the hay, I reckon.”
But rather than leave, instead, the mare stared at her, and then through the window and then back to Scootaloo – and she nodded to herself, as though coming to a decision. “If you say so, Miss ‘Fine’. Although… don't take this the wrong way, but I insist on you having a bath before going to sleep.”
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. Of all the responses Fluttershy could have given, this wasn’t merely near the bottom of the list, but lurking beneath the list entirely. “A… bath? For real?”
Fluttershy clapped her hooves. “Oh yes! Not with water, though. A bath of silence.”
Abandoning all pretence of tiredness, Scootaloo blinked at her, and said, “Aren’t you gonna tell me to, I dunno, just talk about what I’m feeling and junk? That’s what the other grown-ups wanted. They said it would be good for me.” Scootaloo snorted. “As if.”
“Oh, but talking is good," said Fluttershy. "I know it’s hard to believe – between you and me, I never used to believe it either. Um, then again…”
Scootaloo watched as she peered back through the window – although not at the hospital, nor the brook babbling by her cottage, nor even at the fields and the forest and the stars. It was as though she stared at something beyond the vision of a normal pony. Scootaloo sensed it. She felt it in the creeping shiver in her bones, and saw it written upon Fluttershy’s face: something elusive, indefinable...
The silence grew, swallowing up the voice of the cottage, so that all Scootaloo heard was the beat of her own heart – and when she followed Fluttershy’s gaze through the glass, she gasped, for the view seemed bigger than before, vaster, wider, enormous! The trees were larger. The stream morphed into a river. The hospital, once separated from the cottage by a scant few fields, now rested mile upon moonlit mile away; and the sky bulged with twice the usual number of stars. In the primal silence of Fluttershy’s presence, the night seemed to stretch and fatten, until it was huge beyond imagining, the biggest sight in all the world. Scootaloo gawked at the impossible view spreading before her.
“Grown-ups were right to say talking is healthy,” Fluttershy said, making Scootaloo jump. “If you ask me though, being quiet can be good too. Being quiet heals the soul. You look like a filly who needs her hush.”
Her voice flitted halfway between whispers and breathing, her words woven from the material of dreams. “We are all made from silence,” Fluttershy continued. “We grow in silence in our mother’s bellies, and when we’re gone, we rest in silence below the earth. Knowing that can help you see the world in new ways.”
Rubbing her eyes, Scootaloo scrambled down from the windowsill and blinked, blinked until the world was normal again – not vast, but small and manageable. “Um, what just happened?” she said, voice fast and higher pitched than usual. Rarely had she stared at Fluttershy so, with awe in her eyes but clammy coldness gathering in her hooves. She yearned to hear more about the silence, more about the hush. Yet at the same time, the silence scared her. Fluttershy was scaring her. “Wh-what d’you mean, ‘we’re all made from silence?’ I’m not made from silence.” She buzzed her wings. “I’m made from awesome.”
Fluttershy smiled. “So you are, but you’re made from silence too. Think. What do you remember from before you were born?”
Scootaloo grinned. “Oh, oh. Mom showed me pictures once. She had this crazy mane, and braces and disco pants, and— ”
Fluttershy gave her the barest hint of a smile, the slightest shake of the head. Crazy manecuts and disco pants were the wrong answers. Scootaloo wasn’t sure how, exactly, but she felt that the true answer was on the tip of her tongue.
What did she remember from before she was born?
What did anypony remember?
“Err, n-nothing, I guess,” she said at last. She jerked her head, because now that the answer was loose in the open, she found that she didn’t like it. It was rough and itchy, and it scratched at the corners of her mind. “When I think about it, it’s just blackness, and—”
“Silence?”
Scootaloo glanced at her hooves. “... I don’t get how this helps with Rainbow...”
“I can show you – only if you want me to, mind. I’d hate to feel like I was forcing you, and, um…”
Even in the gloom, she saw Fluttershy’s cheeks burn red. And this, more than anything, convinced Scootaloo to let her guide her into the heart of silence. For although the mere thought of it made her skin goose-pimple and her forehead sweat, if there was anypony she trusted to guide her right, anypony at all, it was this mare who lived with one hoof forever placed within the quiet.
Scootaloo stood tall in the moonlight, gritting her teeth. “Show me,” she said.
So with a smile, Fluttershy closed the door and switched off the lamp, meaning that the only light came from the stars, and from the skin of the moon. “Take a deep, deep breath,” she whispered. “Nice and slow. Firm and steady. Fill up your lungs, then let it all go.”
For long, slow minutes they stood and breathed, the two of them wading ever deeper into the hush. At first, Scootaloo concentrated on keeping her breath steady. But after a while, she began to fidget again, imagining Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle giggling at her through the window. She thought of what Rainbow would say, of how uncool she must have looked, lame, lame!
Breathe in, breathe out, she told herself. Silent. Silent. Silent.
She wanted to rush, dash, gallop. She wanted to jump up and down on the wooden floor. She wanted to make noise. She wanted to hear the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels of her scooter, the splash of puddles, her own whopping and cheering. Singing! Laughter! Joy! For noise was life; and Scootaloo was so very, very noisy on times.
Fluttershy’s gaze, however, kept her anchored her to the floor, and so she forced herself to persevere with her breathing. Do it for Rainbow. Do it for Rainbow.
“You’re doing beautifully, Scootaloo,” said Fluttershy, so softly that she could have been the silence given voice. “Keep going. Concentrate on your breath.”
Seconds become minutes, or perhaps minutes became seconds – Scootaloo was so focused on her breathing that she wasn’t sure which. Either way, time weirdened, becoming fast and slow all at once, hasty yet sluggish, speedy yet snailish. “Oh, I’m not sure I like this,” she said, swaying on the spot. Dizziness danced inside her head, and there were goblins in her stomach. “It’s making me feel all weird and stuff.”
“Keep calm,” Fluttershy told her. “Everypony experiences silence differently. You are a leaf in the current. A feather in the wind. Let the silence carry you away.”
Fluttershy didn’t open her eyes as she said this. Scootaloo had the unerring sense that she hadn’t heard her at all, and that the silence had spoken through her – that it was alive, and the mare had allowed it to take control of her body.
Whatever the case, the filly shut her own eyes and became a leaf in the current, a feather in the wind. In her mind, the imaginary Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle continued to snigger. She shushed them, making herself empty her head of all but Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, and the silence.
I am a leaf in the current, a feather in the wind. A leaf. A feather. A leaf. A feather.
She scrunched her eyelids tighter. Currents of silence washed her away into infinite blackness.
Then the current led her straight to Rainbow Dash.
A hospital bed materialized in the darkness, sitting in a pool of white light in an otherwise gloomy hospital room. The room felt less than real, yet more than a dream. Less than waking, but more than sleeping. A place halfway between reality and imagination, ruled over by the Goddess of Silence.
And there were stars, so many of them that Scootaloo’s jaw dropped. The mysterious room lacked a ceiling; a great nebula glowed mightily in the sprawling night, glowing clouds of pink and blue and purple covering half her vision. And three stars in particular, three blazing, brilliant stars, caught her eye against the wonder: one for herself, one for Rainbow Dash, and another for Fluttershy, whose guidance had led her to this strange new world.
More marvellous than starlight was Rainbow herself. There she lay, in the bed, her wings bandaged. Her breathing came fast, and she scowled in her sleep.
Scootaloo rushed over, no longer caring whether the room was real or not. “Rainbow! Rainbow, it’s me, it’s your Scootaloo! Are you alright? Say you’re alright. Please!”
Rainbow frowned all the harder, rolling over in bed. Scootaloo stepped closer. She was so close that she made out each of her hero’s individual hairs, and heard the air being drawn in and out from her nostrils.
“R-Rainbow. I’m here, it’s me. Wake up.”
Her voice was so quiet that it was scarcely speech at all, but scraps of stolen syllables escaping from between her breaths. “Wake up, Rainbow. You have to wake up. I need you to wake up.”
For a long while, she stood with her face pressed against Rainbow’s body, trembling, and wrapping the silence around them like a blanket.
A moment later, the hush broke. It cracked. It shattered.
“What do you fear the most, Scootaloo?” said somepony from behind – the Goddess of Silence, maybe, or possibly something more sinister. The voice reminded her of Fluttershy’s, though it was deeper by far, deeper than that of any mare Scootaloo had ever encountered.
“Go away,” Scootaloo snapped, turning around to face the darkness. There was nopony to be seen, yet she knew in her bones that she hadn’t imagined the voice. “I’m a leaf in the current. I’m not scared of you.”
The darkness pondered Scootaloo’s words; then she yelped as one of Rainbow’s wings was crushed by powerful, invisible hands, crack. The mare’s bones snapped, crack, crack. Her wingtips were bent backwards, crack, crack, crack.
“You’ve spent all night trying to close your ears,” the Goddess of Silence said. “You’ve spent all your life making noise, yet never talking about that which matters. What noise do you fear the most, Scootaloo? What scares you?”
“I… I already told you. I don’t get scared. Leave us alone.”
Crack. Another bone, another wing. Crack. Crack.
“Stop! Stop!” screeched Scootaloo.
And like that, Rainbow was gone, vanished into nothingness. And from the stars above rained…
Feathers?
Scootaloo squinted her eyes, trying to make sense of what she was seeing: a blizzard’s worth of blue and orange feathers drifted down from the heavens, gathering in flurries upon the floor.
Then came the wings, tumbling from the sky like monstrous hail: disembodied wings, all of them bright blue or fiery orange. Whenever one hit the floor, their bones went snap, they went shatter, they went crack, crack. Soon, the torrent of feathers and wings sent a horrified Scootaloo scurrying under the bed. “Is this the best you’ve got?" she hissed, although to whom or what she was speaking, she wasn't certain. "Y-you can’t scare me, whatever you are.”
“I am not trying to scare you, Scootaloo,” replied the Goddess, her voice sounding from nowhere, from everywhere. “I am trying to help you.”
Snap, shatter, crack.
By now, the flood of wings and feathers came up to Scootaloo’s knees. “This counts as helping? Are you crazy?!”
“What do you fear the most?”
“Nothing. I’m not scared.”
Crack. Crack.
The Goddess tried again. “What do you fear the most?”
Scootaloo was snout deep in feathers and wings. Her tears flowed freely. “I’m not scared!”
Clatter, clatter, went the wings as they smacked against the floor, crack, crack, crack.
Scootaloo felt her soul crack.
“OK!” she yelled, as the terrible flood completely engulfed her. She was going to drown here, under a hospital bed in the pit of her fears. “I AM scared, alright? Is that what you wanna hear? I’m scared Rainbow will be so hurt that… that she won’t be Rainbow anymore. That she’ll have forgotten how to love me, and— ”
Click.
Fluttershy switched on the bedside lamp. In an instant, the stars, the feather flood, and the mysterious room were all banished, chased away by the warm golden glow. Scootaloo found herself back in Fluttershy’s cottage, laying down and shaking on the floor, sweaty and queasy and panting. She tasted stale foulness on her tongue – she had thrown up. Blushing, she mumbled an apology to Fluttershy, before wiping her mouth.
Yet secretly, and to her shame, she didn’t feel sorry at all. She felt… lighter. Lighter and happier.
Which didn’t make sense to her nine-year-old mind. She had been trapped, drowning in a flood of wings! How in Equestria could such terror make her happy? Scootaloo thought furiously to herself, the dark and mighty voice sounding in her memory – until Fluttershy dabbed a towel around her mouth. “You poor dear,” she said. “Good gracious, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I should have started smaller. I shouldn’t have suggested that we—”
Scootaloo didn’t give her a chance to finish, but threw her forelegs around Fluttershy, and said, “I saw Rainbow. I swear it, I swear on everything. I saw her, and… and then…”
She paused. Gulped.
“Fluttershy,” she said, stepping back and tracing a circle on the floor with a hoof. “I was in a room, and there was a bed. There were stars, too. Then I heard a voice, and then… and then...”
Now it was Fluttershy's turn to wrap her forelegs around a shuddering Scootaloo, and gently rock her, and love her, and shush her. “Whatever the silence showed you,” she whispered in her ear, “it was personal, and just for you. Nopony else is allowed to know it. Not unless you share it.”
Scootaloo examined Fluttershy’s words from every angle. What she had seen was for herself and herself alone – a dark gift from the silence. As private as crying alone in her bedroom at night, yet as cherished as her time spent with Rainbow Dash.
I am not trying to scare you, Scootaloo. I am trying to help you.
The words baffled her, puzzled and perplexed her. Though the most confusing thing of all was that, now she remembered the voice of the silence, she found it darkly comforting…
But as for sharing the gift with Fluttershy? Scootaloo wasn’t sure that she could, because talking was lame. Feelings were mushy. Feelings were stupid. What good came from talking about her feelings?
Which was why she scarcely believed what she was doing when she looked Fluttershy in the eye, grinned, and then said something incredible. “I… I…”
“What is it, Scootaloo? What are you trying to say?”
Scootaloo took a deep breath. “I want to share it,” she said.
