It was dusk by the time Starlight Glimmer and Fluttershy finished tending to the animals in and around Ponyville.
How many miles had they traveled? Round trip, no less? All to feed and help bears, fish, squirrels, raccoons, birds, crocodiles—seriously, why crocodiles? Not that it hadn't all been surprisingly fun, but Starlight was feeling just a tad winded by the time Fluttershy's house came back into view.
Fluttershy, however, showed absolutely no signs of fatigue whatsoever. Almost as if she does this every day, Starlight thought to herself.
"That was a slower day than usual," Fluttershy said, flying ahead of a line of robins and bluejays. "But that's okay. I'm only one pony, and even I need to take it easy sometimes." She turned and smiled to her winged friends. "Come on, birdies, this way. Mama Fluttershy's going to give you dinner."
Starlight followed beside—and below—the birds as Fluttershy led them into her house. Starlight gestured them inside, but hesitated at the door, not knowing what to do.
Should she go back to the castle? Starlight wasn't sure she wanted to. She had certainly "spent time" with Fluttershy today, but it had all consisted of Fluttershy showing her around the forests and meadows lining Ponyville. All they'd talked about was flora and fauna. Hardly the "getting to know" Fluttershy that Twilight had suggested.
Fluttershy turned back to face her with the same smile she had given the birds. "It's okay to come in if you want to, Starlight. You're our friend now. Not just to me, but to the animals as well."
Starlight blinked. "Oh." Well, that settled that.
She walked into Fluttershy's cottage. Nature colors and rustic design greeted her when she did so. She sighed relaxedly when her hooves met—and relished—the softness of Fluttershy's centerpiece throw rug. "Thanks for having me."
"Not at all. I'm glad to have you," Fluttershy replied. "Just between you and me? None of my other pony friends have ever taken so much interest in my day-to-day doings with my animal friends as you did today."
"Really?" Starlight cocked her head. "Well, no offense to those pony friends, but I seriously can't see why not. I mean, they're adorable."
She saw a cute white rabbit, walked over, and held out her hoof to pet it. The bunny fixed her with a cold stare for her efforts. Starlight backed away, and soon found herself amidst a crowd of affectionate squirrels who proceeded to crawl around and over her, tickling her and making her giggle. She decided that she was fine with this, and sat down to join them, cuddling one of them in her forelegs.
Fluttershy threw around feed to several other animals. Starlight watched beavers, rabbits and raccoons and most of her squirrel crowd gather around to chow down. "For some ponies it just isn't their thing. And that's just fine. But even now, you seem to be a natural when it comes to interacting with them. I still remember you coaxing that last bear out of his cave today. It was a good thing you did, otherwise we never would have found the leech that was on him."
Starlight looked at the critters again, petting a raccoon to her side. More relaxation washed over her. She was starting to see just why Fluttershy seemed so... so calm, and soft-spoken, all the time. And truth be told, she was quickly starting to feel at home in Fluttershy's cottage herself.
Why was this?
Starlight had never asked herself that question before. She decided to give answering it a shot then and there.
"I guess I just always felt... a lot of ponies don't give animals enough credit. They can be reasoned with just like anyone else, and show reason. They can be emotional—happy, sad, scared. They can talk amongst themselves, play amongst themselves, and follow the words of a guide they trust."
Starlight looked at the mass of animals running and chattering amongst themselves. "Honestly, looking at your collective here? Really just reminds me of..." She stopped short.
Fluttershy looked at Starlight pensively, and even though she had no way to prove it, Starlight could tell that both were harboring similar thoughts. In the end, however, Starlight willed herself to finish the sentence.
"....a community." Starlight's face fell. "A small town, unto itself."
The room fell silent for several moments before Fluttershy softly spoke again.
"Do you miss them?" she asked.
Starlight shook her head. "Whether I do or not doesn't matter." She got up and took a seat on the nearby sofa. "Everypony in that town had one thing in common: they trusted me. Believed in me. And... and I led them all to terrible places. I stole parts of their lives, and livelihoods."
She sighed. "Even though they have their cutie marks back now, they've still lost so much time to... just be themselves. I would do anything to be able to give them that time back. But I don't need to miss them. I don't want to miss them. Because that's a luxury I don't deserve."
Fluttershy sat next to Starlight and wrapped her forelegs around her. "I think they would think differently," Fluttershy said. "If you ever told them the words you're telling me."
Starlight looked at Fluttershy. Twilight said that Fluttershy was good at warming hearts, but once again, it had to have been something Starlight experienced for herself. That unexpected warmth emboldened her to try something she had been deathly scared to try, the whole time they had been together today.
"Fluttershy? Can I ask you something?"
Fluttershy nodded, releasing her embrace. "Of course, Starlight."
"Okay." Starlight fidgeted with her hooves. "Well, I... I probably shouldn't be bringing this up. Putting my past behind me and all that. But since we're already kind of on the subject..."
"Yes?"
Starlight took a deep breath. "Back when you and your friends first... 'discovered' me, and even before then, I would always be overjoyed whenever somepony said they wanted to join my town. Our town. The town. I mean, the town from when I—"
Fluttershy patted Starlight's hoof. "I understand what you mean. Like you said, we were just talking about it, remember?"
Starlight exhaled. "Okay, good. Anyway, back then, you said you wanted to join, and... well, I can usually tell when someone's sincere. It's not like you six were the first outsiders to learn about us. We've endured our share of ridicule.
"But in the end, Fluttershy?" Starlight shifted her gaze to the other end of the cottage. "You... were the one who undid me. You got past all of my defenses. I truly thought you had really embraced my... old philosophy, so I let you in. But you completely fooled me."
Starlight rubbed her eyes. Why was she getting misty? She'd been in the wrong the entire time, she didn't have the right to feel anything but happy that she'd gotten her just desserts. She forced herself to look back at Fluttershy...
...who promptly shook her head.
"That's because you were right."
Starlight recoiled. "I was?"
"Well, forcibly taking our cutie marks and throwing us into a conditioning room—to say nothing of having a conditioning room in the first place that you'd clearly used on your citizens—was naturally where my friends and I drew the line," Fluttershy said.
O-of course," Starlight said, guilt washing over her again, with expression to match. "Naturally."
Fluttershy placed her hoof on Starlight's cheek. "Please don't take it the wrong way. We were scared for everyone in the town. And eventually, we were scared for you, too." She looked away. "But when I said I wanted to join.... it's not as if i didn't have anything to draw on."
Starlight peered over to see Fluttershy suddenly looking forlorn—her eyes half-closed, her mouth drooped, her breathing deeper than before.
"I... probably shouldn't be telling you this," Fluttershy said.
Starlight shook her head, torn between insatiable curiosity and wanting to preserve Fluttershy's emotional well-being. "You don't have to."
Fluttershy raised her head and looked back at Starlight. "No. I want to. I need to. Now that we're able to talk together, I feel like I need you to know that saying I wanted to join your town was easy. Because... I liked your town when I saw it."
Starlight's mind raced. "You... liked it?"
Fluttershy nodded.
"But I..." Starlight threw up her hooves. "But how? I mean, you're a world hero! Embodiment of Kindness itself, to hear the stories tell it! I and my town were the opposite of both of those things!"
Fluttershy met Starlight's eyes. "Were you really?"
Starlight froze, gaping. "Um..."
Fluttershy sighed. "The more time you spend with us, the more you'll find out the ponies telling all the 'Element of Harmony' stories... exaggerate some details."
"What do you mean?"
Fluttershy got up from the sofa, and stood on the rug in the center of the room, directly in front of Starlight. "When you look at me? What do you see?"
Starlight looked at Fluttershy, hoping this wasn't a trick question. "Um... pegasus. Yellow." Starlight looked around the room. "Good with animals. Appreciates a good tea party. Quiet." She paused before finishing with. "And... cute, too. If you don't mind me saying so."
Fluttershy smiled. "I don't. Thank you. I think you're cute too."
Starlight smiled back.
"But yes." Fluttershy nodded. "Everything you said is exactly what a lot of ponies see. Trouble is, one of those words doesn't quite match up with the others."
"What do you mean?"
Fluttershy spread her wings. With slow flaps, she slowly rose off of the ground. Starlight gasped as she understood.
"I wasn't there when you got your cutie mark, Starlight. But I can guess. It's not hard to figure out, from your words and actions. You felt completely alone. Completely different. Completely... inadequate. And you didn't know if there was any way out. Cutie marks are for life, after all. How close am I?"
At Fluttershy's words, flashes of her fillyhood ran through Starlight's mind. She gasped, and placed her hooves over her eyes, realizing too late that that was the worst idea as she remembered herself alone, deep in a forest, sobbing tearlessly and incessantly.
So much power. So much potential. None of which she understood. What could a cutie mark do? Why did she even have it? It couldn't bring back a friendship, could it? It couldn't turn back time, put things back the way they were?
Heck, cutie marks were how this had all started!
"Just write letters," everypony had said. As if she hadn't thought of that already! But letters weren't the same. Letters didn't bring back her lifelong friend from his rigorous study program, which clearly hadn't given him time to write any either. Letters, which took days to send one way, weeks to hold a conversation with. Letters, which didn't let her spend time every day with the one pony who had ever understood her, who she could, and did, confide everything in—
Cutie marks are for life, the world around her had echoed. They're a fact of life. They're not something you can escape.
You're wrong, she'd screamed back. One day, I will!
With a pained cry, Starlight removed her hooves from her eyes. "Why are you saying this?" she shouted at Fluttershy, even though she hadn't wanted to.
"Because the same thing happened to me. I know what it was like for you, because that was my life the second everyone realized I had my wings... and everyone started telling me me what I needed to be doing because of them."
"What..." Starlight calmed down slightly, surprise overtaking her sadness. "Fluttershy..."
"'You're a pegasus,'" Fluttershy dictated. "'You're destined for greatness. To soar amongst the clouds and the stars. You're going to be a top racer. Or maybe a weatherpony. Oh! Cloudsdale is the best place to live! It's full of nothing but your own kind."
Starlight gasped. "Fluttershy, no..."
Fluttershy landed on the ground, and paced around her rug. "'You know what'd be great for you, Fluttershy? Flight camp. That place is just what you need to learn to be be the best pegasus you can be.' So I went."
Fluttershy sat back down on the rug with a sigh. "All I learned at flight camp was that I was the worst pegasus anypony could be."
"Fluttershy, no," Starlight said, getting up from the sofa and walking towards her. "You are not—"
"I lived with knowing that, for months, before I got my cutie mark. That was actually one of the best moments of my life. It told me that it was okay for me to live my life the way I wanted to live it. But what it didn't tell me? Was that it would still be hard. Or that even though I knew who I was, and wanted to be, and wanted do, and what my limitations were?" Her voice took on an edge. "Ponies would still have a problem with it."
"But... surely once ponies found out your true nature, they learned to look past the surface differences?" Starlight protested, fully aware of the irony of such words leaving her lips.
Fluttershy nodded. "Oh, they do."
Starlight sighed in relief.
"And then they go, 'Oh, it's Fluttershy. She's different. She's not like the other pegasi.' Sometimes I get lucky and ponies mean it as a compliment. 'She's not some dumb jock. She's actually nice and thoughtful. She's one of a kind. A credit to pegasi everywhere."
Fluttershy looked straight into Starlight's eyes, her own piercing.
"But again. I'm not usually that lucky. Turns out a whole lot of other ponies really like how pegasi are supposed to be."
Starlight placed her hoof on Fluttershy's shoulder, not knowing what else to do but listen as Fluttershy went on a roll.
"Pegasi are athletes," Fluttershy said, her voice forced and shaking. "Pegasi take on forces of nature and survive. Pegasi are strong, and speak out when they see something wrong. Pegasi fly everywhere. Pegasi command the room. Command attention."
Fluttershy rose above the ground again, her face reddening as her voice rose. Granted, it simply rose to the level of anypony else's normal speaking voice, but Starlight was good at understanding context.
"Pegasi can land anypony they want! They're the ones you look up to! Pegasi are heroes. Pegasi are Wonderbolts. Pegasi! Aren't! Fluttershy!" she finished with a pained whimper.
Starlight darted upwards, using her horn to levitate and catch Fluttershy in her forelegs. "Fluttershy! Stop doing this to yourself," she said, running her hoof through Fluttershy's mane. "I totally get it. You're totally right. I understand. I've been where you are. We've both felt this pain, in our own way."
Fluttershy looked at Starlight again, the pain in her eyes reflecting Starlight's.
"The difference," Fluttershy said, "is that you did something about it. I didn't. I just let everypony talk."
Starlight gulped as her heart fell into her stomach.
"'There goes Fluttershy, the doormat who doesn't fly,'" Fluttershy sniffled. "Who would ever look up to her? She stays on the ground. Explores caves. Talks to animals. She's practically an earth pony. Doesn't she know who she is? Doesn't she know what she's missing by living her life how she wants to? By being scared all the time of what we like? Doesn't she know what's she's throwing away?'
"There goes Fluttershy. She has zero-point-two percent wing power. What's she worth to you? A copy of the latest Daring Do book, maybe? No problem,'" she said, her voice deflating and shuddering. "'Let's trade."
Fluttershy sank to the rug, curling into herself. "'Come out of your shell,'" she whispered. "'Lighten up. Live a little. You're not going to learn anything keeping to yourself. Unless you're a reclusive bookworm mage sent on a mission from Celestia herself, of course.'
"'There goes Fluttershy. She just wants to be left alone. She just wants to be herself. Let's change her instead.'"
As Fluttershy broke down into sobs, Starlight cuddled her close. The animals closed the circle.
Eventually, Fluttershy's sobs died down. She sniffled, and wiped her eyes. The animals widened their circle to allow her to move. Starlight let go as well.
"Are you okay?" Starlight asked.
"I am," Fluttershy replied. "Thank you. Sometimes I... still have moments of weakness."
"It's okay, Fluttershy," Starlight said, as reassuringly as she could. "Really, it is. We all have those moments. There's no shame in them."
Fluttershy nodded. "I know. I used to feel ashamed of them, a long time ago. They still do hurt, though." She exhaled, long and low, looking at Starlight with a tiny, defeated smile. "But now you understand the kinds of thoughts I used to regularly have. Your town looked like an escape from them. From everything. Even now, there's so much pain I would give almost anything to stop."
Fluttershy got up, and trotted towards the front door. "Which is why I was able to sound so sincere when I said I wanted to join your town. I had lots to draw from."
Starlight nodded, then did a double take. "Wait a minute. Sound sincere? Used to have?"
Fluttershy nodded again, dusting her legs, and opening the door. "Well, your town was set up to relieve willing ponies of their cutie marks. I knew getting rid of my cutie mark wouldn't change anything. Our pains might have been similar, but my cutie mark has never been the source of mine. Completely the opposite." She hesitated, looking at the sky. "Of course, if you'd had a spell to get rid of wings handy..."
The room fell quiet.
"You know, if you really wanted to..." Starlight said softly.
Without looking at Starlight, Fluttershy held up a hoof, and shook her head. "Follow me."
Fluttershy took off into the sky, and Starlight followed using her magic. The two flew a short distance, until Fluttershy stopped over the center of the town. Starlight looked down to see colored lights for miles around, as well as rich farmland, and hundreds of little multicolored dots scurrying around. If she listened hard enough, she could hear the chatters of several ponies even from her height.
"For the short time I was... part of your town, I had a chance to look around," Fluttershy said. "What I saw was that everybody was doing everything they possibly could to be on the 'same page.' About everything. They were scared to talk more than a few sentences to each other, and they didn't have much to talk about even when they did.
"Which meant nopony complimented each other on their clothes or manestyles. No one threw parties, no one gave gifts, no one told jokes, and there were barely any smiles. The conditioning room you threw me and my friends in was the closest thing to a school that I saw. It was then when I realized that what I'd just joined wasn't a town... but a hole to hide in."
Starlight's heart twisted as she remembered the lonely nights looking at her own cutie mark in the mirror... while making sure nopony else in her town could. Wishing she could lock hers away with the others and still be able to lead. To live her own life, instead of the double one she'd been forced to in order to keep the town just barely stable. It had always been a hassle.
No wonder Fluttershy had figured her out.
Fluttershy continued. "Ponyville is the town I know. And we're considered smaller than most. But it's always as you see right now, even during the early morning hours. Because everypony here has always been free to say and do as they wish, and other ponies were always free to respond to those words and actions."
She turned to Starlight.
"If I'd stayed in your town, I wouldn't be able to be me, cutie mark or not. Wings or not. My wings aren't me. I use them when I want to. I like them. Having them doesn't define who I am, and don't ever want them to. Even my cutie mark is more symbolic than a rule."
She put her hoof over her heart. "What makes me unique is who I am, regardless of what I'm born with. And I actually love being unique. It makes me happy. Anything else would just hurt. Hurt even more than all those ponies' words did. And at this point, I've been through so much that the last thing I want to do is change myself to what they want... and let them win."
Starlight sighed, holding back tears, feeling lower than she had ever felt even as a town leader. She wiped her eyes. "That's... that's fair. It really is."
Fluttershy looked at Starlight. "Oh, no. I didn't mean to upset you. That's not why I said all this. This all ended up being good for both of us in the end."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I realized everything I said just now, I was happy. Because I finally knew: whatever problems I had with what ponies thought of 'cute and quiet' Fluttershy, none of them laid with me. But your town taught me that. You taught me that. And it's a big part of why we can even talk about all of this now, while giving our lives fresh starts."
Fluttershy smiled. "What I'm trying to say is, I owe a lot to you, Starlight. Even before you became... somepony we could trust. Thank you so much, for being who you were then... and who you are now."
Starlight stayed silent, the word trust echoing over and over, in her mind and heart. It wasn't a word she'd ever heard much in her life. She... was rather okay with it, she decided.
"I... I know that sounds weird," Fluttershy added. "I'm sorry again—"
Starlight cut Fluttershy off, taking her in her forehooves.
"Fluttershy... I haven't known you long. But I know that not only are you cute and quiet, you are special and caring. And I love who you are."
Fluttershy sniffled. "Thank you. So do I. But I have a question."
"Anything," Starlight said.
"Do you love who you are?"
Starlight pulled back.
She shook her head, her chest aching with the knowledge of how effortless her answer came to her.
Starlight didn't bother wiping her eyes this time. It would have been futile anyway. Her words came out in weak breaths.
"I can't remember the last time I did."
Author's Note
