Into Ashes: Act I

Day 9

That dream.. That same obscure, barely comprehensible dream I’ve been having since Day 0… I had it again, only this time there was some clarity to it. I still can’t seem to recall any parts of it. The moment my eyes open, and I try to piece it all together it evaporates away like steam. The only thing that seems to persist is the feeling it gives me. This time it was noticeably stronger, felt like someone or something beckoning to me from afar. To do something for them. They need my help and are not able to do it themselves. I don’t know. I always wave it off as my mind still trying to cope with the very sudden change in lifestyle I’ve undergone. Though it is bothersome that I have the same dream every night and I’m never able to understand it, I’ll continue to ignore it for now. It seems to be getting clearer as the days move on.

I awaken to find that Fluttershy has already been awake for some time. She happily trots around, humming a tune to herself as she tidies up the place and empties out the fire pit. “Good morning sleepy head.” she says cheerfully, a smile on her face as she cleans.

“Morning” I reply, a yawn creeps from my mouth as I say it. “You’re up early.”

“I used to wake up early every morning because of the chores I have to take care of. I guess I’m still used to my schedule.”

“Tell me something Fluttershy, have you been having any weird dreams lately?”

“Hmm, no. I haven't been having any dreams lately. I used to dream every night but I haven’t had one in a long time.”

“I keep having this same dream every night. I feel like while I’m dreaming I know what’s going on but when I wake up it all just kind of disappears and I forget it.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I wish I could help you figure it out.”

“Nah don’t worry about it. It’s not important. It’s probably just a me thing."

“Okay..”

“How are your wings feeling?”

“Oh! They feel much better now, thank you.”

I smile. “Maybe we can try em out again when we’re outside, yeah? This time without a fire around.”

She chuckles lightly.

“So where should we go today… Oh yeah, we need to go stop by that bakery you mentioned yesterday. Do you still remember how to get there?”

“Um, yes, I should, at least I hope I do.”

“Well no rush, we got all day to find it. That should be our focus for today.”

I pack us only one ration of food and water, and an extra magazine of ammo because one never knows. I don’t expect our trip to find the bakery to take long, she makes it sound like it’s just on the other side of town which shouldn’t be very far.

We leave the hovel. Fluttershy leads the way. For once, she seems confident about being out here. I know it’s still difficult to traverse certain areas of town, as it all looks the same no matter where you go. We have often found ourselves trying to figure out if we’ve gone the right way or have just been walking in unguided circles. But not this time. Fluttershy seems much more self-assured that she knows where she’s going based on her foggy memory.

“Gah, where would we go to even find water? Ponyville is bone dry. All the wells are destroyed and there aren’t any ponds or lakes anywhere.. Think Fluttershy think..”

“Um.. Maybe we could look outside of Ponyville. In another town?”

“Maybe. How far away is the nearest town? I don’t want to start a trip there and end up still outside after sundown.”

She thinks for a moment. “Hmm.. Well Canterlot isn’t that far from here. If we leave early enough we might be able to make it there before the sun goes down.”

“Do you still know the way there?”

“Mm hmm! We used to take a train there instead of walking but it’s in that direction.” She points ahead down one of the main roads that lead out of town. The ashen fog obscures anything far in the distance. “Or at least, It should be in that direction.”

“Was there a lot of water there before?”

“Oh yes! There was lots of water there! There were fountains and waterfalls and rivers with the most beautiful gardens around them --”

“That might be our best bet then. If there were fountains then there must have been plumbing or some sort of irrigation system we can tap into. Good thinking Fluttershy.”

She smiles.

“If what you say is true, and there’s a chance we might find water, I think I’m willing to risk staying out for a night just to get there. It’s one of those times where the reward outweighs the risks. We won’t last long if we don’t at least try it anyway. Plus I always have this for protection.” I motion to show her my rifle.

“What is that thing anyway?”

“This? This is a DSR-22, that’s Designated Scout Rifle, model 22.”

“What does it do?”

“Well.. how do I explain this.. Do you know what magnets are?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well it uses a series of magnets and electricity to accelerate a small piece of metal, about the size of my thumb, to very high speeds to um.. hurt things that are far away.”

“Oh.. It’s one of those things…”

“... Yes, but I wouldn’t ever use it except to protect myself or you if a dro- a Nightcrawler ever found us.”

Fluttershy slowly begins to distance herself from me as we walk down the road. No doubt that she’s more afraid of it now that she knows what it is. Unfortunately I already know she’s probably seen weapons like these being used far too many times.

“Don’t worry Fluttershy. In the hands of the right person it can be a very safe and reliable tool for.. Defense.”

I hold my rifle up and look over it with fondness, proud of all the time and experience I’ve been through with this exact one. I think of it as someone I’ve known for the longest time, an inseparable friend who’s been with me through the best and the worst of it all. And I treat it much the same.

“I’ve spent the last 12 years of my life training with this rifle. Learning every function, every part, and last little detail about its inner workings. And so many years actually training with it.. I don’t mean to brag but I’m kind of an expert with this thing. And it’s got all sorts of cool features. It’s got thermal and infrared imaging, a laser range finder, a crosswind sensor, 20x optical zoom, and different settings for however much power I want to use behind the projectile. Like if I want to hit something that’s very sturdy or far away, I can set it to full power. Or if something’s close by and I’m trying to be quiet, I can power it down all the way to even make it non lethal. And it has a ballistic computer inside to help me hit targets as far out as 6000 meters. Yeah.. you probably have no idea what any of that means-”

“It’s very… Neat.”

Her previously pleasant mood seems to have gone down from the detail in which I used to describe my weapon.

“Hey, Fluttershy.. I wouldn’t ever use this on a pony. It’s for protection only and --”

“All of your friends did…”

I reel back a little at her statement. For some reason hearing her say this hits me harder than anything she’s ever said to me before, stabbing me right through my heart like an invisible blade.

“... Well I’m not like them, am I?” I try to sound confident that she should know I’m not.

She doesn’t say anything. She just continues to trot down the road with her head hanging low. Her lack of response says more to me than what she could have expressed with words.

I let out a long sigh. “How much farther to the bakery?”

Fluttershy stops to survey the buildings around us. “Umm..” she mutters, not sounding very sure of herself. “I think umm.. Maybe it’s this way? Or.. Oh, I’m lost..”

“Hey it’s fine, like I said we got all day to find it. Let’s just have a sit down while I look at my map okay?”

I spot a nice comfy place to sit next to a nearby pile of rubble. This trash heap has managed to collapse in such a way that it resembles a long wooden bench complete with a sturdy backrest. We sit down and I pull out my map and some water. I forget all about the troubling discussion we just had. Now that I have a good chunk of the town already mapped out, I should be able to pinpoint exactly where we are. “If you say it’s on the other side of town then we should be about half way there. Trouble is it’s probably in a part of town I’m still blind to.” I pull out the water pack and offer it to Fluttershy before myself. “Care for some water?” I ask.

She for some reason gives it a guilty glare before saying “Oh, yes please, thank you.” She takes a few small sips before offering it back. I, deep in a meticulous study of the map, don’t notice her offering it back at first. It takes a few seconds, but Fluttershy gets my attention by politely clearing her throat. I take the water back, still intently focused on the map.

“Let’s see.. Do you know which way North would be?”

“Um, no.. I wouldn’t know..” Again a stint of guilt permeates in her timid voice.

“Hmm.. So if we orient the map this way…. You seem so guilt ridden all of the sudden. Something on your mind?”

“Um, no. I mean.. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Hmm.. If we orient the map where a straight line from our house to the library is North… Then that places us somewhere in the eastern side of town.”

I take a sip of water as I continue to talk to myself. Upon first taste my attention shifts from the map to the water. Curiously it tastes somehow.. different. It’s a very subtle and yet very distinct difference. Water has always had one distinguishable taste to me but not now. Even if filled with ash, it still should carry the same filtered taste but this water tastes.. Dirty. And full of minerals. I hope Fluttershy didn’t accidentally spill another water packet but it seems evident that she spilled this one and got a whole bunch of dirt in it. But I hesitate to pin it as her fault. Afterall, it is hard for someone with no hands to hold something that was designed for things with hands. I wonder then, how much of it she spilled. Oh well, it’s not a big deal, there’s more important things to be worried about right now. We still have a couple of packets left plus this one which is more than just a few days worth of water. Enough to get us to Canterlot tomorrow. Canterlot.. Now why does that name seem familiar? It’s not a name or location I had ever been taught before. Not until Fluttershy mentioned it at least. And yet it still feels close to my heart and mind as the names Auria or Bastion, the names of two of the many sister ships that accompanied mine on the way to this planet. I can’t imagine any sort of way I would have come across that name before, but my thoughts soon faintly look back to the dream I’ve been having. I don’t dwell on it for long however, there’s still business to be done.

I give my map a hardy thwap with the back of my hand. “Welp! I think I know where we’re at, let’s get going.” I stand up, Fluttershy following in tow, and we continue on with our venture into unvisited territory. It is another stroll quilted in silence. I sense that the burden of guilt still hangs over Fluttershy. Every time I try to bring up anything about water, she gives me one of two responses - She either tries to sweep it up under the rug or avoids talking about it all together. I decide to speak against her guilt, and assure her that if she did spill the water for a second time that it’s no big worry. But that doesn’t quell her shaded guilt. The only sense I can make of her is that as we come closer to where the bakery is supposed to be, the more guilt ridden she behaves. I begin to think that she’s been hiding something about it from me and perhaps knows more than I do, but is doing a horrible job of hiding it. I hold back any more questions I have about it and subtly study her strange behavior. But due to my curious nature, the more guilty shades she expresses, the more intrigued I become.

10:33 am

“Well” Fluttershy gulps mid sentence. “H-here it is.”

I look up from the crude etchings I’ve been jotting down to a sight that.. Looks just the same and just as unremarkable as everything else in Ponyville. Just another crater in the ground overflowing with an amalgam of debris and scorched wood sticking out of the ground. It looks just like any of the other building around us. I’m almost unsure of what exactly she is alluding my attention to. “You sure this is the right one?” I ask confused, not sure if she’s just pointing to a random pile of rubble or if she actually knows this is it. But now, all her pent up guilt has transpired over into a stark certainty.

“Yes.” She announces confidently, wearing a brave but troubled grimace.

“How can you tell?”

She trots over to just in front of the rubble and picks up a sign in her mouth, bringing it back with just the same confidence. On the sign, characters of her written language are carved into the wood. A large burn mark covers most of the letters in the middle but she’s still able to make out what it says. She directs my attention to the inscription. “Okay? So what does it mean?”

She puts the sign at my feet and calmly takes a full breath. She then turns away to face the building. “It says Sugarcube Corner. This is it.” She speaks with conviction, still staring mournfully towards the rubble. I let her have another moment of silence before I speak. In that time I ponder her recent strange behavior. It perplexes me why she’s been acting the way she is. First she was cheerful, then overcome with guilt, and now she looks to this place as if she has returned to a site of a long forgotten but still painful memory. I can’t understand what is causing these mood swings.

I slowly walk up beside her and kneel down. “You okay Fluttershy? You’ve been acting very strange all day. What’s going on?”

She instantly jumps out of her current mood and into a nervous sweat. “OH, um. I-i-i-it’s nothing.”

“No, there’s definitely something up with you. Are you hiding something? Is there something about this place that you don't want me to know?”

“Um.. Umm..” She begins to pick up a small but nervous fluster. “I, uh..” She looks around for something to shift my attention away from her. “Oh look! There’s a thing inside the bakery! That sure does look interesting!”

She makes a skittish dash into the rubble. A hearty flap of her wings lifts her up and propels her over the rubble and to the inside floorspace. She lands directly in the center, and upon landing one of her front hoofs breaks through the fragile floor. She tumbles over forward and right on to her back.

“Fluttershy!” I run in after her to help. She groans in pain on the floor and doesn’t make an effort to pull her hoof loose. I cautiously tiptoe over the weak, rickety floorboards to her and pull her hoof free. It pops out of the broken floor. I examine it but find no immediate injuries.

“Are you hurt? Anything feel cut or broken? Tell me where it hurts.”

“I’m, okay, ow, please be careful. No, I’m okay I just tripped.”

“That was a pretty hard trip. You sure?”

She jumps right up to her feet. “Yep! See?” She quickly turns away and begins sifting.

“Okay what is going on with you Fluttershy? You can’t seem to control yourself today.”

She blatantly ignores me and continues to anxiously dig through the bakery. “Fine. You won’t tell me now but I’ll find out somehow. You’re starting to worry me a little…”

Annoyed, I go off and begin my digging on the other side of the pile away from her. I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into her. She’s definitely hiding something from me, I just know it! But I just can’t figure out what or why! It’s got to do something with this bakery, it’s the only thing that seems to be correlating with her mood swings. But what could it be.. I must dig to find out more.

I feverishly throw all of the debris out of my way, furiously trying to race Fluttershy to uncovering the floor. She had a head start but I can manage to shovel through it much faster than she can. A small bit of wood clocks me in the back of the head. I look over my shoulder to her. She’s still just haphazardly grabbing and throwing whatever she can get her hooves on in every direction. I don’t think she’s even looking for anything at this point. I think she’s just digging to dissuade my attention from her. I let out a sigh. What am I going to do with her? She’s starting to lose her mind and I have no idea why. Maybe it’s all just finally getting to her. All the stresses of our daily lives maybe? I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to wait until she calms down and comes back to her senses. IF she comes back to her senses. She’s usually much more sensible when she’s calm so I’ll just wait until then.

• - - -

I finally clear out a significant amount of floorspace. I notice a small round hole that a pile of ash is pouring into. I watch as it continues pouring in but never fills. While Fluttershy keeps up with her meaningless digging, I sweep the floor with my hands and clear away the ash. I peek through the tiny hole. I see nothing. Nothing but a black void beneath the floor. I angle myself to find a point where the sunlight can peek through as well, but to almost no avail. The only thing the sunlight does for me is confirm that there is indeed a cavernous space underneath the floorboards, but no allusion as to what may be inside. It’s too deep and too dark to see anything. I feel around the floor, and my hand runs over something cold and metal. I rub what I feel, and find a weak metal hinge camouflaged against the bleak gray.

Maybe if there’s a hinge, there’s a latch somewhere. I feel around the floor some more, wiping away all the ash with long, wide sweeps of the arms. Fluttershy eventually abandons her less than fruitful search and assists me in sweeping over the floor. After a short time she pipes up that she had found another piece of metal. I look to what she finds, and with a stroke of good fortune it turns out she found the latch.

I give it a slight tug, but nothing moves. An even heavier tug, and the whole floor around the latch creaks and groans uncooperatively, but still nothing happens. The board the latch is attached to bends and cracks, but nothing else moves.. Whatever this latch opens just doesn’t want to have its secrets spoiled. I stand directly over the latch, feet firmly planted to its flanks. Both hands tightly grip the rounded handle, and with a mighty heave I begin to lift the floor. Several boards crack and snap, doing their best to keep what is hidden from me but I prevail. One more powerful surge of muscle and I throw the whole floor hatch open. The hinges snap and the entire hatch flies clean off the floor and lands on top of all the rubble I moved.

Before us now, the entrance to a dark cellar. A rickety set of stairs guides down into its forlorn maw. Fluttershy and I stare into the void. We give each other a look. Both of us are curiously terrified of traveling down into the gaping blackness but know we can’t just leave this unventured. “Stay up here, I’ll go down.” I say. Before going down I peer through my rifle scope, Thermal mode already set. But I see no heat signatures, only a narrow path leading away from the staircase. Once confident nothing is going to jump out at me when I get in there, I place my foot on the first step. It moans with a very unhappy creak as I set my full weight on it, more than it was probably built to hold. But it holds steady, and I take another step down. The second step snaps after putting hardly any weight on it. I almost lose my balance but I catch myself. I carefully test each and every step all the way down. Every step forward further envelops my feet in darkness.

Only once I reach the bottom of the stairs, fully immersed in almost complete darkness does the dim incandescence of the sun help reveal the interior. All that lay inside, A short dead end hallway, with stacks of wooden shelves lining every wall. The shelves extend all the way to the back wall, and reach level by level from floor to ceiling. On many of the shelves rest dozens of torn and misshapen burlap sacks. A handful of them lay flat against the floor, spilled of their contents. A white powder, much whiter than the normal gray of ash has been poured from them. It coats my hand as I grasp a handful and let it all spill back down to the floor. I take another handful back up the steps with me and show it to Fluttershy.

“It’s flour.” she says.

“And what is.. Flour?”

“Well we can bake this into bread and eat that as food!”

“We can turn this into food?! Well how? Can we not just eat it raw?” I touch my tongue to it.

“No, we have to turn it into dough first and let it bake in an oven for a little while. I know all about baking, I used to help one of my friends make lots of tasty treats here.”

“So we can turn this into food.. Is this what has had you so on edge this morning? Did you know this was here and didn’t want to tell me?”

“What? No! I had no idea this was still here!”

“Then why all the nervousness? Why the mood swings? You’ve been hiding something from me, I know you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m not hiding anything!”

“Enough games Fluttershy!” My aggressive questioning almost has her to the point of tears again. “You’ve been acting weird all morning, and I want to know why. I have a hunch you’re intentionally keeping things hidden from me. If you knew we could find food here, what else do you know!”

“I don’t know anything! Please stop!”

“I thought that by now, after all I’ve done for you I would have gained some semblance of your trust. I took you in, I saved your life! And now you keep things from me that might save mine.”

“Jax I really didn’t know this was here, I promise! Now please stop yelling at me!”

“Doesn’t any of what I’ve done for you count for anything? I know you’re not telling me something and I just want to know what it is, that’s all I want. What could be so important that you’d have to keep it hidden?”

She backs away slowly, a tear rolling down her cheek. But she musters up the courage to stand up straight and confident to defiantly answer my question.

“I can’t tell you.” Her voice is broken and weak, choked by her straining to hold her tears back. “I’m going home!”

She thrust into the air with a flap of the wings and darts back down the road we came here on, tears dripping off her cheek the whole way. A sad, shallow feeling wells up from my chest and passes to the rest of my body. Watching her fly away, all by herself.. Disappearing into the thickening haze between us. Maybe… Maybe I pushed too hard. Maybe there is something that’s just so private to her that she.. Just doesn’t want to share it with me.

I feel an almost palpable sense of remorse as I lose sight of her. Of all I’ve been through.. All the dull training days, waking up covered in ash, all the killing, all the destruction.. Nothing has ever hurt me more than knowing I’m the reason I drive people I care about away. This wouldn’t be the first time that through my own selfish arrogance, someone near and dear to me slowly pulls tight on our cord of trust until it snapped and separates us. I just hope that Fluttershy knows her way back home.. And I hope even more that she’ll be there when I get back.

Without the right tools and knowhow to process this flour it’s all useless to me. This building has turned out to be just as desolate and useless as all the others. No point in continuing my search here when I know I’m not going to find anything else. Perhaps it is time I return home as well.

The walk home is.. Lonely. Just as lonely as the days gone by before meeting Fluttershy. Only the ambiance of the still, dead town accompanies me. The muffled bite of the ash beneath my boots, the delicate whispers of an afternoon breeze, and my own thoughts of hopeful worry for Fluttershy. Hope that when I return home she will still be there. Hope that she is still on my side. I know that when I get back, if she is still there she will be very wary of my presence as she was in the early days. I sincerely wish that I am able to sum up the right words to maybe bridge the gap in trust she now has with me. I don’t want to drive her away.. Inside I know that having her around, having someone to look after and take care of is my only real motivation to keep going. I don’t know if I would have made it this far on my own if it weren’t for finding her. I was constantly on the fence about the value of my own life before she showed up. By now I might have just offed myself or have taken a midnight stroll and offered myself up to a drone. She’s the only thing I’ve ever had to look forward to when I go to sleep at night. She was.. My only friend.

I spend the rest of the walk home preparing an apology. Eventually I arrive. The door flap dances in the soft breeze. I quietly approach and make a gentle entrance so as to not startle Fluttershy. I take a deep breath, the right words fresh on my mind and slowly open the flap and go inside. I step in, look around the room and there she… Isn’t. She’s not here.

• - - -

I sit on the far side of the room away from the door, dejected and alone, and unpack my bag. I gather all my other belongings in one big pile. I move with a sense of heavy lethargy, hardly any motivation left inside me. I know what I must do however. I know what my purpose is but the ache inside my chest, thick and weighing me down, makes it all seem pointless.

I lay my rifle down, and with it all the ammo I was carrying. I collect up all my remaining Z-Rations, including the half eaten packet of rice Fluttershy and I shared and write down a new ration schedule, made for one. Once I finish figuring and calculating out a new plan, I do the same with my water. All two packets I still have left. Wait. Three of them..Four...Five? Six?.. They’re all... full. Every pack I’ve finished and emptied, it’s all filled back up to the brim with fresh, glistening water.

I grab one at random and whip out the straw to drink. After my first sip I relax and melt into relief, engrossed by knowing I now have double the water from when I started. I down nearly the entire packet in one sitting, not stopping to take a single breath. I suck it dry, so happy to finally have had a chance to re-hydrate. It has the exact same dirty, mineral taste I noted earlier today. It’s all been refilled! But where could it have come from? How could this even be possible?

The answer hits me like a wall when I figure out how obvious it is. This must have been what Fluttershy was hiding! She knew where to find more water! How could I have been so opaque to have missed this? She must have hidden it from me to keep it for herself. How selfish of her.. But then again.. What would have prompted her to refill all of mine? Was she really beginning to care about me?

I am bluntly struck again by another revelation in thought. Canterlot.. If she knows so much that I don’t then maybe she wants me to go to Canterlot on my own. Maybe it’s her way of saying there’s more there for me! But then that also would mean, that… This kind gift of fresh water was a final parting message…

A loud crunch sounds from the door. I turn to look, and there she is, poking her head timidly through the flap. “Fluttershy…” I say, overcome with joy that I must restrain myself from expressing. “...You came back.”

Without looking at me she walks in. I can practically see the stormcloud hovering above her head as she slowly skulks to her side and lays down. I don’t say a word. I’m still overcome with happiness and mystery as to why she’s here now.

She sits up, takes a slow, deep breath, and then lets it out gently in its entirety. “I’m… sorry.” She says. I continue to remain silent.

“I’m… Sorry, I ran away.”

She pauses

“I didn’t want to. I just got so scared, and you were getting mad at me and yelling at me and I*sniffle* I just didn’t know what to do so I ran. And then I got lost and flew around and tried to find my way home and.. Please don’t be mad at me anymore. I’m trying my best..”

I leave a long space of silence. Fluttershy lays down on her back, wings unfolded flat on the floor, covering her face with her hooves.

“I.. thought you weren’t coming back.” I finally say, apology fresh and refined just waiting on the tip of my tongue. “And I’m glad you did. I was starting to get a little lonely again.” I chuckle insincerely. “I admit.. I did get a little bit.. harsh with you earlier. I’m just trying to make it through to the next day. Trying to survive. I just felt like you were keeping something that would help me do that away from me and, since it’s just you and me against the world now I wanted some of it too. I thought I had earned your trust enough where it was something that you owed me, and I felt threatened when you told me otherwise…”

My thoughts begin to stray off the rails in the emotion of the situation.

“...But you were hiding something important. And now I know what it is.”

I pull another pack of water from my pile. Fluttershy curls up with dread, anticipating I might be mad at her for going behind my back to refill my water.

“I can’t thank you enough for this. You’ve really gone out of your way to give me something special after all I’ve done for you. It really says a lot, that you really do care about me like I care about you, that you really want to help me make it through this too. And I think that’s very beautiful and kind of you.”

I put in a brief pause.

“But I have to know. I have to know where you got this from. After you ran away I realized just how vulnerable I am without your help. If I ever lose you I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just need to know in case we get separated again. And I know you care about me enough to surprise me with more of what I need to stay alive, so telling me where I can find more of it would help with that, yeah?”

She slowly sits back up, and as usual hangs her head in shame, avoiding eye contact. I remain silent, hopeful and eager that she’s finally calm enough now and will tell me what all the fuss has been about.

“I.. I..”

I lean forward with excited anticipation.

“....Can’t.”

I drop the water I was holding in frustrated disappointment. Fluttershy flinches at the sound of it slapping to the ground. But I try not to look or sound frustrated though my temper is beginning to boil.

“Look Fluttershy… I know it’s hard to look at someone like me in the eyes and say that you trust me. I get that. What my people did to yours is downright unforgivable, and I know you know that I was a part of it. And no matter what I say to set things straight, that vision of me is always going to be what fills your eyes. But I’m here just like you. Feeling the same struggle every day as you are. But you and I have to work together and share what we have you know?”

“I told you. I just can’t.”

“Then help me understand. Why can’t you tell me?”

She turns around to face away from me. “No..”

“It’s so simple Fluttershy. All you have to do is tell me where you got this water from and we can go back to the way things were, when I wasn’t so upset with you.”

“Noo..”

“Fluttershy.. Why not?”

“I won’t tell you why..”

“Fluttershy just tell me.”

“No, I can’t!”

“I just want to know! Why are you making this so hard!”

“Please don’t yell!”

“I’ll yell all I want until I find out where this came from!”

“Please stop!”

“Please tell me where you found it!”

“No!”

“Fluttershy tell me where you found it!”

“Stop!”

“Just tell me!”

“I can’t!”

“WELL WHY NOT!”

“BECAUSE THEY’LL KILL YOU!”

I stop and the mood drops at what she said. They.. They will kill me..

“...And because you might kill them!” she screams again.

“...What do you mean by They?... Who’s going to kill me?”

“Oh no, I’ve said too much!”

She bolts for the door.

“Fluttershy wait!” I yell as I jump up to run after her. “Don’t g--!”

I smash through the door flap to find nothing. Not a single hoof print or trace to show where she ran off to. There’s no sign of her in any direction. Except not until I look to my feet to see and pair of wing prints implanted into the ash. I look up and around in all directions, frantically trying to find where she went. But again, not a trace. Not a sound. Just the ashen snowfall gently drifting down from above. It’s almost as if the moment she breached the door she disappeared into thin air. The only sign she was ever here being the wing prints. This.. is her final parting message. But those too slowly fade away as a light breeze dusts them over. She’s gone.. This time.. Forever.

The sinking feeling I felt earlier returns, amplified by the emptiness I feel knowing this time she won’t be coming back. And now I stand here alone, the ashfall slowly building up on my shoulders, no better off than I was eight days ago.

And again a wave of remorse washes in from the seas of despair. Why does it always seem that everything I could have said differently, all the things I could have done better.. Every option that could have prevented a moment like this all becomes so clear only at the exact moment that it’s too late to change?

That, was the last time I will ever see Fluttershy.

I drop to my knees. Tears well up in my eyes but never flow. This is the second time I’ve fought so hard to keep someone with me only to have pushed them away with my own arrogance. First the love of my life.. And now the only hope in my life.

The rest of the evening is… Uneventful.