It was the very definition of bucolic. It depicted a cottage sitting on a hill that overlooked a road leading toward the viewer. A thin plume of smoke rose from the cottage’s stone chimney and twirled into the sky. Farm animals idled around the perimeter of the cottage. Chickens wandered free across the ruts of the road and cows could be seen to the left within a fence-line. A single pony stood at the top of the hill near the back of the painting, looking down the road toward the viewer.
Fluttershy tilted her head as she looked at it. The booth in Ponyville market was new, and sold artwork of all types. Paintings, drawings, sculptures and carvings. They used mediums of all types, and the resulting effect was a shop that drew in the eye, followed by the pony themselves. If for no other reason than curiosity.
The proprietor himself was strangely the opposite of the art he sold. He was a dull grey pegasus pony with a short and average mane and tail of similarly dull brown. His eyes were half-lidded all the time as if he were bored. When he spoke, his voice was clear, but he did not sound excited by anything. It was amazing he sold anything at all.
But, sell things he did. Ponies came to see what the new shop was all about, and once they saw the artwork, they were inevitably drawn in. Ponies asked him ‘how much is this painting?’ or ‘how much for this carving?’ and he would answer in his dull monotone voice. His words were as dry as his wares were unique, but the pony who asked would always walk away with something in their hooves, and their bit-pouch that much lighter.
It seemed like it would soon be Fluttershy’s turn to walk away with something in her hooves. The painting in front of her was peaceful, idyllic, and filled Fluttershy with a strange longing for something she’d never had and couldn’t quite name.
“How much for–” Fluttershy began.
“Ten bits for a drawing, twenty bits for paintings, thirty bits for sculptures, forty for a carving,” the salespony (who Fluttershy had overheard was named Wheat Grass) said.
It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t more than she could afford to spend on a luxury. “I’ll take this one, please.” Fluttershy pointed to the painting she had been looking at the whole time.
Wheat Grass held out a hoof for the bits, and Fluttershy paid him. He wrapped it up in wax paper and passed it to her. She set it on her back, using her wings to balance it, and left the stall with a smile on her face. As she made her way home, she realized she hadn’t taken the time to look at any of the other art that had been there. She couldn’t even recall what the statuettes flanking the stall’s entrance looked like. She felt the shifting weight of the painting on her back and smiled again. It didn’t matter too much. She really liked this painting, and that would be enough.
She entered her cottage and placed her groceries on the floor. She eased the painting off her wings and laid it on the floor. She picked it up and leaned it against the sofa while she went into the kitchen and put away the food. When she came back, she found Angel looking at the paper-wrapped painting and tilting his head. He pointed at it and looked at her quizzically.
“It’s a painting, Angel. It’s really cute. Would you like to see it?”
Angel nodded and stepped back to let her pull the paper off. Fluttershy tried to pull the tape so it wouldn’t make a mess, but she still ended up ripping it in a few places. She got it off, though, and there was the calming hill and pleasant pasture.
“What do you think, Angel?” Fluttershy looked at him to judge his reaction.
Angel looked for a moment, and his head tilted left and right. He folded his paws in front of him and huffed, then shrugged and hopped away.
“Oh... Well I like it.”
With Angel gone, Fluttershy could admire the painting again. The lighting in her cottage didn’t quite do it justice, but she was confident it would look stunning next to the bookcase. It would face her couch so she and Discord could see it when they had tea.
She leaned it against the wall, then flew over to her toolbox and grabbed a hammer and a nail. She came back and tapped on the wall to locate a good beam, then hammered the nail in. She held the hammer in her teeth and flew down to pick up the painting, then hung it up on the wall. She pulled back to admire her work and make sure it was straight. Once she was satisfied, she put the hammer away and flew back to sit on the couch and look at it.
“Simply lovely,” Fluttershy said.
The pastoral scene wasn’t lit as well as it had been in daylight, but she could move some lamps around so it would be illuminated when she was in the room. She could have it lit during meals, and especially during tea. She couldn’t wait to hear Discord’s opinion. He would probably think it was dull, but if he didn’t outright call something awful, that was high enough praise for Fluttershy.
Happy with the setup, Fluttershy turned away from the painting and trotted into the kitchen to start preparing supper. Angel would be hungry, and she’d bought some delicious vegetables from the market before she’d gotten distracted by the new stall. She would make a delicious vegetable soup worthy of a prairie cottage for her dinner!
Angel Bunny didn’t complain when Fluttershy presented him with some of the more choice vegetables while she was cooking. He did, however, manage to fill up on them, and was too full to eat the soup. Fluttershy shrugged and put his portion back in the pot and enjoyed her own bowl of it. She sat on her couch and looked over at where it hung on the wall while she ate.
It was exactly as she remembered it when she was admiring it in the market. The cottage was there with the plume of smoke. The fenced-in cows were grazing. The chickens were pecking away at the road, and the single pony was staring down at it all from the back.
Fluttershy ate in silence while she looked. When she was done eating she brought her bowl to the kitchen, washed it up and put it away, then went back to look some more. She tilted her head as she stared, then went outside to look at her own cottage.
She looked around just outside the front door. She had animals, including chickens. She didn’t have cows, but she had a goat or two, and plenty of other animals hung around her cottage. She had a fireplace that had a fire going in it from when she made the soup, so smoke curled out the chimney.
She walked a shorted distance down the road and turned back to look at her cottage. It was even set on a hill. Nothing was in the same position as it was in the painting, and there was a forest behind her house instead of another hill, but something about the painting still filled her with longing for something she didn’t have. She was living in a situation almost exactly like it. Her house was idyllic and bucolic, though maybe not to the same degree.
Birds fluttered about her cottage, landing in the eaves where they kept their nests, and then flew out again, hunting for sticks or food. Fluttershy rubbed a foreleg against the other as she watched animals run, play, and eat. She was sure something was missing, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
With a sigh and a shrug, Fluttershy went back inside. She prepared for tomorrow by setting up feeding tins for all the animals and made sure she still had enough supplies for them, then went to bed.
While Fluttershy slept, her animals continued much of their business. The nocturnals ones prepared themselves for their activities. Owls hunted on silent wings, and spiders scurried from place to place in the dark. None of them were aware of, nor cared about, Fluttershy’s new painting.
With the lights out and the darkness in place, the idyllic scenery was unlit by outside light sources. The cottage, which had appeared cozy and comfortable when properly lit, looked shabby and old in the darkness. The cows looked thin and wasted, and the chickens appeared untamed and skittish. What had been an idyllic, pastoral scene was transformed in the dark to a struggling farmhouse plagued by misfortune and decay. The sky in the scene which had once been blue with lightly scudding clouds was a night sky, complete with stars that could not find it in themselves to twinkle. The road seemed overgrown with weeds and dandelions, but the most glaring difference was the hill in the background, where the pony had stood and looked down upon the entirety of it: It was empty.
Angel hopped by the painting. He was a creature of habits, and some of those needed to be performed at night. He stopped in front of the painting and looked up at it. He squinted, scratched his chin, and shrugged. He had business, and although the painting seemed strange, it did not matter to him.
In the darkness, however, quiet and shadowy hoofsteps passed through the home. Boards creaked under an invisible pressure, and Angel Bunny whipped his head about to search for the source of the sound. The hoofsteps passed through the house, moving from behind Angel Bunny, through the kitchen, then the living room, until they stopped at the front door.
Angel waited, but no other noise was forthcoming. He eventually shrugged and continued toward the door himself. He looked around, but saw nothing and nopony. The sound that had passed him by was seemingly gone, and there was nothing here. He didn’t need to worry any longer.
Angel leaped up and gripped the door handle. It opened and he hopped outside. He made sure to shut it behind him, because Fluttershy got mad if he didn’t. When it was shut, he continued on his way out into the yard to see to his business with some neighboring rabbits.
As he left the cottage behind him, he heard the door slam.
He whipped around at the noise, but there was nothing. The cottage door was shut. He had shut it himself. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, then hopped back to double-check.
The door was shut, that was for certain, but sitting at the doorstep, clearly visible in the moonlight, were two white feathers. He picked one up to get a closer look, and he was able to confirm that they were chicken feathers. But something was odd. He picked up the other one and compared the two. One was white and pure, clean and well-groomed. Fitting of the chickens that Fluttershy kept, but the other one was dirty and unclean. It felt oily to the touch, and it had ragged edges, indicating the bird it belonged to lived in constant fear or filth. It did not have the same comfort it needed to groom itself like Fluttershy’s chickens usually did. This was a foreign feather.
Angel scratched his head and shrugged, then tossed the feathers to the ground. It was strange, and something was weird, but it didn’t affect him. It didn’t matter to him if Elizabeak or some other chicken got inside the house with a friend from outside their pen. What chickens did in their spare time didn’t affect him at all. Angel went on his way to his meeting, the feathers forgotten on the doorstep behind him.
In the chicken pen, hidden away inside their coop, one of the nests had a new occupant. Her feathers were greasy and stained, and the nest, which had been neat and clean until her appearance, was already being mussed and ruined. Among the other sleeping chickens, she sat, staring out at the world with wide and feral eyes, blinking only occasionally in the darkness.
When Fluttershy woke up, it was to the cacophony of her hens outside. They were clucking and bocking loud and wild, enough that it woke Fluttershy before the rooster let loose.
“Oh? What’s going on?” Fluttershy jumped out of bed and hurried to the window. She pushed it open and looked down onto the pen.
Her rooster, Cockenspiel, was on top of the coop, scratching at the roof and flapping his wings. The rest of her hens were all gathered in one corner of the pen, as far away from the coop as they could get. Fluttershy scanned the area, but didn’t see any blood. Plenty of feathers, but those were likely just from stress and panic. Nopony immediately appeared hurt, but there was something inside the coop that was scaring them.
“I’m coming, just hold on.” Fluttershy floated out the window and down to the pen. She landed amidst the hens and tried to calm them down. “It’s okay everypony. Whoever is in there doesn’t mean you any harm. They just wanted somewhere to hide from something else. I’ll get them out.”
The coop wasn’t damaged beyond what Cockenspiel was doing to the roof, so whatever it was that had snuck inside wasn’t big enough or strong enough to do any serious harm to the place. Maybe a fox, but she would have expected some of her chickens to have been attacked. Not to mention, she had an agreement with the foxes around her cottage, so it would have to have been a fox from out of town.
Fluttershy took a deep breath. Whatever it was, she was confident she could talk to it and get to know it, then coax it out of the coop and out of the pen. With that decided, she let out her breath, and stuck her head inside.
“Hello? Is anypony in here? Come out, I won’t hurt you,” Fluttershy said.
There was a rustling sound near the back of the coop, but she couldn’t see anything back there. Her body was blocking the light from outside.
Fluttershy crawled the rest of the way in and stepped to the side. Light poured in, and she could see that the nests, and the coop itself, were undisturbed. None of them had been damaged, and all the eggs were safe and unbroken. Nothing was messed up at all.
Save one.
One nest near the back had trigs and straw poking wildly out of it. It was lopsided and stuck further out of its space than the others around it, and when she moved closer she could see a dark body occupying it. It shifted and shivered, and although she couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was, its body language seemed to indicate it was scared.
“Hello? It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, but I need to make sure you’re okay,” Fluttershy said. “You didn’t hurt any of my chickens so thank you for that. I realize you just wanted somewhere to hide, but you can’t stay here. If you come out, I’ll help you out, get you cleaned up, and we can work out what needs to be done next.”
The body stopped shivering, and Fluttershy heard a quiet cooing sound. It had feathers, but they were filthy and covered in some kind of grease or other film. It was very poorly groomed.
“Please, will you tell me what’s wrong?” Fluttershy shifted closer.
Out of the body a head popped up with an alarmed *bock*. It was a chicken. A filthy chicken, and not one of hers. Its eyes were wild and panicked, and as Fluttershy moved closer, it watched her close, one eye focused on her. As she got closer it started to fluff itself up, making itself appear bigger.
When Fluttershy got close enough, she reached out a hoof toward it. “Please, let me help you.”
As soon as her hoof touched the chicken’s feathers, it leapt up to its claws. In a torrent of talons, feathers, and wild clucking, the chicken flapped about the inside of the coop. It leaped from nest to nest, squawking at her, then scratched its way over her back, across her wings, and out the door. All Fluttershy could do was cover her head with her hooves and close her eyes until the chicken was done.
Once the chicken had left her alone, Fluttershy scurried outside after it. She had a few scratches, but nothing too serious. That chicken, however, was scared. Terrified even! She needed to do all she could to help it and find out what had it so frightened. If it was running from something, that something could be a danger to the rest of her animals.
“Please, come back! I can help you! What are you afraid of!”
The chicken had settled into one corner of the pen, with Cockenspiel standing between it and the other hens. It was pecking at the ground, eyeing Cockenspiel and Fluttershy. It seemed to be taking their measure, deciding if it wanted to fight them or keep running away.
“Cockenspiel, please. I can take care of this,” Fluttershy said.
The rooster glared at the strange hen, then turned his angry gaze to Fluttershy. Fluttershy stared back with a frown.
“She’s already frightened enough, Cockenspiel. Please leave her to me.” Fluttershy leaned toward him, and he backed off. He went to stand closer to the hens that were clustered together as far away from the new chicken as they could get.
Fluttershy turned back to the new hen and held out a hoof. The hen was uninterested at first, but Fluttershy was patient. She stood waiting and following the hen around for some time, hoof outstretched and whispering calming words the whole time.
Eventually, Fluttershy had it cornered. It had pecked and clucked its way to a corner of the pen, and finally had to pay attention to Fluttershy’s hoof. It looked at her hoof, moved closer and pecked at the empty limb. Finding nothing, it started to walk past her, pecking away at the ground.
Fluttershy took the opportunity to reach out and grasp the bird. It panicked at being touched and began flapping and scratching. Fluttershy had enough experience to subdue the bird and held it down so she could have a look at it.
It was in good condition, despite its filthy appearance. The feathers were ragged and dirty, but beyond that it wasn’t suffering from malnutrition, nor did it seem to have any scabs or scars. It appeared to just be scared and dirty.
Satisfied with her examination, Fluttershy released the bird from her hooves. It scampered away and began pecking at the ground again, as if nothing untoward had happened to it. It did stay far away from the other hens, though. To Fluttershy, that meant that its trauma was mental rather than physical. The physical aspect was just dirt and grime.
Besides its appearance, it was just a normal hen, as far as Fluttershy could tell. It wasn’t colored in strange ways, nor was it behaving any differently than a hen would. It was just scared. The question was ‘why’ it was scared.
Fluttershy left the hen alone as she tended to her morning routine. She got the animals breakfast first, then ate breakfast herself. She checked up on the chickens as the day progressed. She needed to make sure Cockenspiel wasn’t going to harm the new chicken, and that the new chicken wasn’t going to do anything cruel to the other chickens.
It was after breakfast when she came back out to check on the hens, that she realized one of her chickens was missing! They had been so tightly clustered together that she hadn’t even thought to check! Fluttershy counted her chickens, and then counted again. Both times she came up one short!
“Oh no! Who is it? Elizabeak?”
One of the chickens clucked loud. It wasn’t Elizabeak. She was the one who was the most precocious, and prone to getting out. Thankfully, she was still here. So, who was it? Fluttershy counted again, but this time she named the off as she went. When she reached the end, she had a name: Peckenzie.
“Peckenzie? Oh no! Where did she go?”
A flurry of clucking came at her all at once, and she had to wave a hoof to calm them down.
“One at a time, please!”
They all clucked wildly at once again and she sighed. Fluttershy tried to pick out a specific voice in the wild crowd, but couldn’t make sense of it. Something about it being dark, or they were asleep. But the one thing they all had in common was that when they woke up, the new chicken was in Peckenzie’s nest.
The interloper was standing on the far side of the pen, staring blankly at the group. Fluttershy waved a wary hello, but the chicken didn’t respond. She hadn’t said a word to Fluttershy that she had been able to understand. It was all just incoherent yelling to her ears, which was unusual. It meant either the chicken wasn’t willing to talk, or couldn’t. It could have been either.
Fluttershy hadn’t been able to get a word out of the new chicken yet, so she didn’t think that would change immediately. She sent word to her animal friends to keep an eye out for Peckenzie, and Fluttershy searched as well. She had to take breaks to do her chores and check up on the chickens again, but by the time the day ended, she had seen neither feather nor beak of Peckenzie. None of the foxes had seen her, and there didn’t appear to be any tracks leading away from the pen. Peckenzie had vanished.
It was a worried Fluttershy that went to sleep that night. She had spent the entire day hunting for her chicken friend and watching over the new one. She’d had to separate the new chicken from the rest to get them to sleep in their coop, and the new chicken was locked in a small cage inside her house on the ground floor. It was only a temporary solution, but it would work for now. She would bathe the chicken tomorrow and try to get her in with the others.
Her bed called to her, and Fluttershy fell asleep despite her concerns. Peckenzie was missing, but living this close to the Everfree Forest, it happened. She would try her best to find her, but that was all she could do. She would continue the search in the morning.
The day had been so busy for everypony at the cottage that Fluttershy had not had time to appreciate her new painting. It had laid there against the wall where she had put it, unassuming and unremarkable. When night came once again, that changed.
The painting once again showed a farm struggling to survive. The chickens, cows, and cottage all appearing as though they were treading the edge of death. The stars above lit the weed-choked road, where along its ruts walked a shadow.
The shadow spilled out of the frame of the painting and into Fluttershy’s home. Its own darkness merged with the shadows inside, leaving hoofsteps on wood the only indication something was amiss at all.
The hen Fluttershy had caged clucked softly in the darkness. Its eyes glittered in the moonlight spilling through the windows, but it didn’t sleep. It turned its head to follow the sound of the hoofsteps as they passed through the cottage. They tapped through the house to the kitchen, around the living room, then went to the front door. The door opened seemingly on its own, and the hoofsteps left the building.
All was quiet for some time, but the hen did not sleep. She watched the door, head tilting this way and that as she waited for something. Hours passed, but eventually the door opened again, and the hoofsteps quietly tapped back into the house. They traveled through the living room and stopped in front of the hen’s cage.
The hen went silent. She stared out of the slats of the cage at seemingly nothing but darkness. She barely moved, and her eyes didn’t even flicker left or right. She waited until the sound of hoofsteps moved away and traveled back to the painting. There, the shadows deepened for a moment and darkness flowed back into the painting, and a shadow traveled back up the road where the pony appeared once again.
The sun rose and light filled the idyllic little cottage Fluttershy called home. The sound of myriad animals filled the air and spilled in the window. The rooster crowing, birds chirsping, chickens clucking, a cow mooing. Fluttershy’s eyes snapped open. She didn’t have a cow.
Cows needed far more space than she had available, and they were notoriously finicky and prone to panic about the smallest things. Applejack had the space, time, and personality to handle cows. Fluttershy did not. She could talk to them, but she couldn’t herd them or take care of them as well as they needed.
The fact that one was on her property could mean there had been a stampede during the night. Timberwolves might have driven them from Applejack’s property over here, and this one got separated when they were eventually rounded up. No matter what brought it here, it was important that Fluttershy figure out if it was okay and needed help, then she could see about getting it home.
Ignoring her growling stomach and Angel’s tapping foot disapproving of her ignoring breakfast, Fluttershy hurried downstairs. She spared a brief glance for her new chicken, but stepped outside her front door and began looking for the cow.
It was easy to find. She followed the mooing around one side of her cottage and found the cow chewing contentedly at the grass near the brook that passed next to her house. Fluttershy was struck by how sickly the cow looked. This couldn’t be one of Applejack’s cows, as this cow was emaciated and filthy. She didn’t look like she’d been groomed for weeks, and Fluttershy could clearly see her ribs. Applejack would never ignore her cows so badly, and they certainly wouldn’t put up with it if she did. This cow came from somewhere else.
“Hello, good morning! Are you alright?” Fluttershy trotted toward the cow, but stopped when the cow ran away from her upon her approach. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please. I’ll stay back. Can you tell me your name?”
The cow stared at her and didn’t say anything. The cow looked frightened, of her or something else Fluttershy couldn’t tell. If she were to use a word to describe the look in its eyes, Fluttershy would say they were ‘haunted’, like it lived in a constant state of fear. Fear of what, Fluttershy couldn’t say, but this cow was not from around Ponyville.
“You’re safe here. I can get you some help, and we’ll clean you up and get you something to eat, okay?”
The cow did not respond, but just stared at Fluttershy.
“Okay, you wait here. Please don’t run away, okay? I’ll be back.” Fluttershy flapped her wings and flew back up the hill to the house. She collected a spare blanket and some of the feed she gave to her goats, then brought them back down to the cow’s spot by the brook. She laid the blanket down on the ground, and put a generous pile of feed next to it.
“There you go. I’ll leave these here for you, eat and use them if you like, but I’ll come check on you throughout the day, okay?”
The cow still didn’t respond, but it did look at the pile of feed instead of her. That was a promising reaction.
Fluttershy left the cow to its own devices and went about her day as usual. She fed the rest of the animals, and even brought the chicken out to the pen to see if it could get along with the others. Sadly, it didn’t look any more promising than yesterday, and she still hadn’t heard from any of her animal friends about Peckenzie. She was worried about her missing friend, and now she had to wonder where these other animals were coming from.
When she finally stopped for lunch, Fluttershy had talked with every animal she had asked about Peckenzie yesterday. Not a one had heard or seen anything. Not even the birds, in their flights around the cottage, had seen a feather of Peckenzie. Fluttershy was worried that whatever had chased the chicken and cow to her cottage had taken Peckenzie when it couldn’t get what it had been chasing. It was beginning to look grim.
Fluttershy ate without enthusiasm and made herself a cup of tea to help herself feel better. She’d lost animals before, but that didn’t make it any easier. It was while she was drinking tea on her couch that she finally took a look at her new painting.
It had been a whole day and a half since she had bought it. The idyllic picture made her smile. A nice little cottage on the prairie, complete with animals and home-grown vegetables. She smiled and sighed.
That was when she noticed one of the chickens seemed familiar. She squinted at the painting and stood up. To any other pony, Peckenzie looked like just another one of Fluttershy’s many chickens. For Fluttershy, though, she knew each one of them by name, and could pick each one out of a crowd. This chicken in the painting, standing on the road in the middle of the painting as she was frozen mid-peck, looked like the spitting image of Peckenzie.
Fluttershy reached up with a hoof and touched the painting. It felt cold, and lifeless, and exactly like she would have expected a painting to feel. It was just a picture, and it wasn’t Peckenzie, no matter how much it looked like her.
“Ohhhh, I’m so anxious I’m seeing Peckenzie everywhere I look!” Fluttershy huffed back to her tea and chugged the rest of it. “Ow! Hot!” She fanned her mouth and panted.
She put her cup back in the sink and walked back outside. She glanced at the painting on her way out and felt a pang of regret that she couldn’t find Peckenzie. That chicken in the painting really was the spitting image of her.
Outside, the chickens were still isolated from the new hen. Cockenspiel seemed less put-off by her, which was some progress, but the rest were still clustered as far away as they could get. The cow, on the other hoof, was right where Fluttershy had left her. She had eaten the feed that had been left out for her, but she hadn’t touched the blanket. Fluttershy picked it up and moved toward her, but the cow trotted away, keeping a fair distance between the two of them.
“Oh, come now. You’ll freeze overnight without some protection. You’re far too thin!”
Fluttershy flapped her wings and hovered above-ground holding the blanket. She tried to fly over the cow and drop the blanket on her, but the cow kept moving out from underneath her. After several minutes of trying, Fluttershy had to admit defeat. She hung the blanket on a branch nearby and left.
“It’s right here if you need it, okay?” The cow didn’t respond.
There was still a few hours left in the day, and Fluttershy decided she would try to spend it doing something productive for at least one of the new tenants at her cottage. The hen was much easier to catch than the cow, due to the pen she was caged in. Fluttershy swooped down, picked her up with ease, and brought her over to a barrel filled with rainwater next to her house.
“I’m really sorry if this is uncomfortable for you, but you’re filthy. Once you’re clean, you’ll feel that much better, I promise.” The chicken kept struggling in her grip, but Fluttershy had a firm hold on her.
She held up a spare toothbrush and dipped it in the barrel. She then gently began scrubbing the dirty chicken all over, making sure to cover as much of the hen as possible. It was going to take multiple sessions to clean up all of the chicken, but she was patient and willing to try.
It was time-consuming, but when she was done, Fluttershy brought the chicken inside and placed her inside the cage for her stay overnight. She was filthy herself, but she thought the chicken looked much better than before. It was still quite dirty, but Fluttershy was confident one or two more sessions would have it looking bright and cheery in no time. She retired to bed, exhausted, but optimistic.
The morning once again brought a flurry of animal noises to Fluttershy’s ears. She wasn’t concerned by the cow mooing this time, but the chickens sounded like they were worked up into a frenzy again.
Worried that the creature that had been hounding the poor newcomer and had possibly taken Peckenzie was in her yard, Fluttershy fluttered out her window and down to the chicken coop again.
“What’s wrong? What’s got you all so excited this morning? Is something bad here?” Fluttershy asked.
They all in unison looked in the direction of the other side of the pen, where her filthy chicken friend was pecking away at the ground. Fluttershy stared, confused. She had caged that chicken when she went to bed, hadn’t she?
Fluttershy flew back inside and went to the cage in her living room, and found it occupied. The hen was still inside clucking contentedly to itself. She opened the cage and brought the hen outside and set it down in the pen. The two filthy chickens immediately clustered together and clucked at each other. They were, indeed, friends. But Fluttershy couldn’t understand a word they were saying. That concerned her more than anything else.
The chickens were fast friends with each other, and retreated to one side of the pen, leaving the cleaner chickens alone. That didn’t solve the problem Fluttershy had with them integrating into the rest of the flock, but that wasn’t her first concern anymore. When the first chicken appeared, she lost one of her own. She needed to know if that had happened again.
Fluttershy went to her flock and began counting. When she finished, she felt a cold fear creep in. She was missing another chicken. This time it was Abigull.
“Oh no, no, no!” Fluttershy paced in small circles as she tried to determine what could be done. Something was taking her chickens! She was glad these new ones were safe, but they had led something terrible to her happy little cottage, and now it was stealing away her animals! Possibly even harming them!
Fluttershy took several deep breaths. Panicking wasn’t going to help. She needed to think through this carefully and take action that would protect the flock from whatever was out there. She also still needed to feed them. She could do that, and think about what could be done.
The food was distributed to those that needed it. Many of the animals were independent and didn’t need her to hoof-feed them, but she stopped to talk to all of them and let them know to keep an eye out for Abigull as well.
She bustled hither and thither, trying to set up protection for her animals. She reinforced the fences, double-checked for holes or tunnels, and set Harry guard duty. If anypony would be able to protect her chickens, it would be Harry. He was big, though, so small entrances needed to be covered up. When it was all done, Fluttershy retired to bed, hoping that they would be able to catch whatever animal was attacking her poor flock.
When morning came, she was dismayed to find that yet another cow had appeared. She immediately went to check on all her other animals, but all the chickens were there, nopony else was missing, and Harry had seen nothing all night.
As Harry yawned and tried to catch up on his sleep, Fluttershy was rushing about in a tizzy, checking with all the animals, trying to find anypony at all who had seen or heard something. Anything to go on would help her find out where these animals were being chased from, because now she had two cows and two chickens from somepony else’s farm.
Fluttershy took care of her daily chores, and once all the animals were fed, she planned to go see Applejack and find out what could be done to help the cows, or maybe protect her cottage from wildlife. If Timberwolves were getting close, Harry should have been able to take care of them, but the second cow had made it onto her property and Harry professed that he hadn’t seen anything approach. Not even the cow.
It was a problem she didn’t know how to fix, and it was causing her a lot of worry. If she couldn’t keep her own cottage safe, she couldn’t keep all the animals here. It wouldn’t be enough to protect them.
She gave her cottage a brief flyover to try to find evidence of animals coming in from outside, but there was nothing obvious she could see. No timberwolf tracks, no cragadile paths, no parasprite spoor, no flyder-webs, nothing. She landed and started down the road to Applejack’s farm, when suddenly the cows started crying out. The two chickens started clucking wildly, which set off the rest of the pen, and Fluttershy rushed back to see what was the matter.
“What is it? What’s going on?” She whipped about, fluttering just above the ground, looking for something that caused their reaction.
There was nothing. Harry had been woken up by the sound and just shrugged. Angel was confused and annoyed. He had his ears pulled down around his head to try to drown out the sound. None of the other animals seemed to have heard or seen anything.
Eventually they appeared to have calmed down, and Fluttershy once again started down the road. There was another loud reaction, and she came hurrying back.
“What’s going on? What has you so scared? I’m here to help! Why won’t you talk to me? Please, I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me!”
Fluttershy was on the verge of tears. She couldn’t understand the new animals, which was worrying enough, but then there was the problem of where they came from, and what was chasing them, and why they were so skittish now that they had a pen and other animals to help protect them. She would have thought Harry would have scared them somewhat, but they didn’t care about him. He could walk by the chickens and cows and not elicit more than a quiet cluck or moo. The whole situation was strange.
Fluttershy decided to stay home. If they were worried about her leaving, maybe that meant they were starting to warm up to her and she was the one that made them feel safe? She didn’t know if that was true, since she still couldn’t get close to them, but if it helped them feel more at home, she would stay.
She stayed and watched them for the rest of the day. She tried to clean the chickens again, since they were easy to catch, but the dirt that covered them was caked on thick, or had set into the feathers more than she had originally assumed. Despite a vigorous brushing, they still looked like they were covered in a thick film of dirt and grime.
Frustrated with her inability to fix anything, Fluttershy caged the two dirty chickens and retired to bed angry and confused. She couldn’t clean the new animals properly, she didn’t know where they were coming from, and she didn’t know what was chasing them, and whether it was the same thing taking her chickens. She felt impotent, and that made her mad.
She tossed and turned in her bed, annoying Angel, who stomped off downstairs to try to get some peace and quiet. She lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the night filter in her window. She heard owls and insects, all come out to hunt and mate under the cover of night, but she heard nothing else.
But neither had Harry. He was big, and he was brave, and he was a predator, but he hadn’t heard anything either. Maybe that was because the thing could fly! If it was flying, Harry would have only heard the sound of wings, and a flying creature wouldn’t leave tracks! The chickens and the cows should have, but she was more interested in protecting her own animals than immediately finding out where the new ones were coming from. She was kind, but she had her priorities.
Fluttershy threw off the covers and fluttered out her window. She looked down at the pen for her chickens and saw nothing, but the night had only just begun. She looked over to the brook where the cows were sleeping. There was nothing there except the two of them, huddled next to each other. The blanket she had offered hung off the branch where she had left it, unused.
There didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary going on around her cottage. She flew to and fro and there was nothing unusual that she could see. Animals hunted, slept, or just went about normal foraging activities. Still, Fluttershy couldn’t leave it to chance or anypony else. She had to keep an eye on things herself.
Fluttershy stayed up all through the night, watching and waiting. She kept an eye most closely on the chickens and cows. She saw nothing enter the pen or the coop, and the cows went unmolested and unmoved during the night. There wasn’t even a single peep or cluck, and from her vantage point up above, she didn’t even see much movement. There was the occasional bat that flew by, but other than that, the night was quiet and calm.
With the rising of the sun, however, a flurry of noise and activity came from the chicken coop. Fluttershy swooped down as the hens all piled out of the coop, wings flapping and feathers flying. They scurried off to one side of the pen, and to Fluttershy’s dismay, after them came a filthy hen.
A new one had arrived.
Fluttershy gasped and turned to her chickens. She counted them and found yet another one missing: Peggy.
“No! Why is this happening? What is happening!” Fluttershy started crying. “Why is this happening? Why? Why? Why?” She turned to glare at the new filthy chicken. “Where are you coming from? Where are my friends being taken? Where!”
Fluttershy stamped her hooves at the dirty chicken. It jumped, shedding dirty feathers everywhere. Fluttershy stomped the ground at it harder, chasing it around the pen.
“Why won’t you talk to me! My friends are disappearing, and I know you know what’s going on! What’s out there? Tell me!” She broke down and started crying on the ground. The filthy chicken didn’t spare her a second glance and went right back to scratching and pecking for food.
The rest of the flock came and gathered around Fluttershy. Those that remained tried to offer comfort and Harry even lumbered into the pen to give her a hug. She sobbed into his fur until she felt better. He wiped the tears from her eyes and offered her a reassuring smile.
“Thank you, all. I’m sure we can *sniff* get to the bottom of this. I just need to be more vigilant. I can find whoever is doing this and stop them. Even if *they* won’t help.” She glared at the three dirty chickens.
They ignored her. Again.
Harry grunted and roared sadly. He pointed at the chickens and blubbered.
“It’s okay, Harry. I know you did your best. Whoever or whatever is doing this is just much sneakier than we expected. We’ll have to keep our eyes open just that much more.” Fluttershy looked around. “Angel! Angel Bunny come here!”
Angel poked his head out of the house and glared.
“I need your help, Angel, please,” Fluttershy said.
Angel hopped out to the pen and folded his arms. He motioned for her to get on with it, but he was listening.
“I need you to stand guard at the chicken coop tonight, okay? Don’t let anything in or out, and yes—” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “—if that means using violence, please do so. I can’t have anypony kidnapping any more chickens. Their safety is our main concern now.”
Angel Bunny broke out in a grin and punched the air, pretending to box an invisible opponent. He smiled at Fluttershy and punched one paw into the other.
Fluttershy winced and turned to Harry. “Harry, I need you to stand guard from the forest. If it’s coming from anywhere, it’s coming from there. I’ll keep watching for anything airborne. We’ll catch this thing, whatever it is. Just enjoy your day for now, okay? I’ll bring food to both of you for the night’s watch.”
Harry smiled and nodded. Angel grinned. Fluttershy gave a sad smile, then went to do her chores. She fed every animal, even the cows and new chickens. She let the other two dirty chickens out into the pen where they clustered up with their new friend. She frowned at them, but didn’t molest them further. She’d manage this without their help.
As the sun set, Fluttershy prepared food and water for the overnight watch they would be doing. She brought Harry a large portion of fruits and bucket of water. She brought Angel a plate of vegetables and a bottle. She, herself had a meal set out just on her windowsill where she could fly down and grab if it she needed something to eat during her watch.
She ate a little something before it got dark, but she was ready to stay up all night again if necessary. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel tired, but she chalked that up to the adrenaline of losing some of her friends. She wouldn’t let that happen again.
While she ate some of her food, she sat on the couch in her living room. She looked up at the painting and winced as the familiar faces of her chicken friends stared back at her. She knew it was just the pain of loss hitting her, but they looked so much like them. Abigull, Peckenzie, and Peggy were all suffering or… or dead, wherever they were. She missed them.
She started to sniffle but held it back. She needed to be strong tonight. If something was out there, she needed to be ready to catch it in the act. If it came anywhere near her cottage and her friends, she would be on it as fast as she could be. Harry and Angel would help, and they would subdue it and make it pay for what it was doing. Scaring chickens and kidnapping others was unforgivably mean!
She sighed and picked up her dishes. She went to the kitchen and washed them, then turned out the light as she went to the front door. Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the dark, and she couldn’t see the shadowy head of the painted pony turn to follow her as she walked. When the front door shut, the pony was on his way down the road toward the frame of the painting.
Outside, the animals had all been tucked away. The birds in their nests, the chickens in their coop, and the cows had lain down together. Angel gave Fluttershy a thumbs-up from his spot in front of the coop door, and Harry likewise gave her a thumbs-up from his spot facing the forest. Fluttershy flew up past her bedroom window and hovered in the air, taking a birds-eye view of her cottage and its surroundings.
It was quiet for almost an hour, at which point there came a sound. The front door opened, then shut again. Angel crouched as if to hop toward it, but Fluttershy stopped him.
“Angel! Don’t move! Block that door!” Fluttershy ordered.
She flew down herself to have a look, and found the door tightly closed. But something had opened it. There was nopony here, and no signs of anypony passing. It had been all of maybe five seconds, so where had they gone?
Fluttershy flew up into the sky again and looked down. All around her house appeared to be clear. There was nopony to be seen. Angel was in front of the coop, Harry was in his spot near the forest, and Fluttershy was up here. The clouds moved away from the moon, and Fluttershy could see the faint outline of her shadow, flapping in the darkness.
That was when she saw it: A faint shadow, moving across her yard, passed directly underneath Fluttershy’s own shadow. It was going toward the chicken coop!
“Angel! I see something! It’s coming toward you!” Fluttershy yelled.
Angel swiveled around, paws at the ready, but there was nothing there. Nopony was visible to him at all, and he just jumped in a circle, confused.
“It’s invisible, Angel! Swing to your right!”
Angel swung, but hit nothing.
“Your left!”
He spun around and swiped with a paw, but hit nothing but air.
“He’s going inside the coop!”
Angel swung at the open doorway, but still hit nothing at all.
Fluttershy swooped down and pushed Angel out of the way. Nopony was going to steal another one of her chickens while she was here! She stepped inside, the blackness of the coop prevented her from seeing anything, but she felt movement. She tried to grapple the invisible thing, but just fell on her face. The sound disturbed the chickens, who were already tense from Angel’s presence, and suddenly there was a squawking flurry of activity as they all tried to escape the coop at once. They squeezed out the tiny door in a line, clawing their way overtop of Fluttershy.
When the flurry ended, Angel was picking Fluttershy up and pointing. He was pointing at the house, and Fluttershy hurried outside. One of her chickens was being carried by nothing back toward the front door!
“Stop right there! Leave my friends alone!” Fluttershy flapped toward it and grabbed her chicken. Some invisible force held onto it and tried to pull away. It was far stronger than her, and Fluttershy had to let go when something pushed her backward. She rolled away from the door and could only watch in horror as her friend was carried silently inside the house.
She followed as soon as she could, throwing the door open, but she arrived only in time to see her chicken–and the shadow–disappear into the painting.
“No! No, it’s true! It is you!” Fluttershy cried. “Peggy! Peckenzie! Abigull! Give me back my friends!” Fluttershy scratched at the painting, but all that happened was she tore a line into the canvas.
From the hole issued a thin stream of liquid paint, and Fluttershy could hear a deep, nasty laugh coming from all around her. She needed help! This was something nasty and strange she couldn’t deal with alone. It was definitely wicked magic!
She pulled the painting off her wall and put it inside the cage with the dirty chickens. If that thing came out again, maybe it would be stopped by the cage. She thought it unlikely, but it was still something. She raced outside to get Angel and ordered him to watch the cage.
“Keep the lights on at all times, Angel! If anything comes out of there, you attack it! No mercy! It’s a wicked, wicked thing! Get Harry if you need help. I’m going to go get Twilight!”
Fluttershy opened the front door and galloped down the path to Ponyville as fast as she could. She had just crossed the brook when she ran into something. Something she couldn’t see.
She rubbed her nose in pain and blinked. She shook her head and stood up and tried to see what it was. She pressed a hoof against it and it had a small amount of give. It felt coarse, and rough, but was soft enough to be pliable.
“What in the world?”
She pushed harder, but she didn’t quite have the strength to break it. She followed it to one side as far as she dared, and hit another barrier. This one felt like wood. She tried to go around it, but there was another wall, hard and unmoving. The only soft barrier was directly in front. She pushed on it again, but this time something happened.
A rainbow of colors appeared high in the sky and ran down the pliable but invisible surface in front of her. It revealed a picture in the sky, of moving ponies and a view of several other pieces of artwork. Fluttershy flew back and above her cottage to get a better look.
“Oh no… oh no, no!”
A new painting appeared in Wheat Grass’s stall. It was an idyllic little country scene, with a cottage at the top of a small hill above a babbling brook. There were cows to the left, and chickens to the right cooped up in a pen. A large brown bear stood silently in the background, and a yellow pegasus with pink hair flew above the scene, staring down the road toward the viewer just across a tiny little bridge. A pony stood admiring it and tilted their head in appraisal.
“How much for this painting of the cottage?”
“Ten bits for a drawing, twenty bits for paintings, thirty bits for sculptures, forty for a carving,” Wheat Grass said, without emotion.
“I’ll take it!” The pony said.
The End.
