Everypony has always just assumed that Fluttershy is simply a product of her environment, of her parents’ amalgamated genetic material. She is just a remarkably pretty but reticent pony, who had a questionable upbringing by questionable ponies. She could have turned out better. End of story.

Not so. Fluttershy’s misery does not spawn from family or environment at all. And as a particular time of year arrives yet again, the long-suffering pegasus realises that she, like all those around her, must finally begin asking the right questions and discover the true reason that every two years she must meet with a strange otherworldly being, the true reason she hurts more than anypony else, the true reason the Abyss calls to her.