“Well, Greta,” Fluttershy said as they pushed themselves up from off the ground. “That certainly was … an experience unlike any other I’ve ever had.”

“Aw, shucks.” Greta blushed. “Thanks, Fluttershy.” Greta turned her head and sighed. “I admit, maybe these night hasn’t gone entirely as I’d hoped … but I found you, and for that, I’m glad. And I hope that even if we weren’t stuck together, you’d still be my friend.” She leaned over and gave Fluttershy’s half of their body a hug.

“Of course,” Fluttershy said, patting Greta on the hand.

“What do you say we head home and go rest up for the night?” Greta asked.

“Home? You mean you have a home?”

“Well, I have a place where I live, at any rate. Come on, I’ll take you there. I’ll show you our bed.”

Fluttershy followed Greta’s lead into a forest that was a little ways out from the outskirts of her neighborhood. She brought Fluttershy up to a particular tree that, at first glance, did not seem like it was capable of supporting a creature as large as Greta for a home, even before she doubled her body mass by adding Fluttershy’s to it.

“This is your home?” Fluttershy asked, confused.

“Sure is! Nothing like home, sweet home, am I right?”

“Of course,” Fluttershy said, smiling nervously. She didn’t like the idea of them trying to sleep in this dinky little tree with their huge body.

“What’s with that face, Fluttershy?” Greta asked.

“What?” Fluttershy asked through gritted teeth. “I’m not making a face.”

Greta chuckled. “Oh, I know what the problem is. Here. This whole tree isn’t actually our home. It’s just the front.”

“What?”

Greta grabbed the tree and swung open, and a door appeared in thin, invisible until now, yet clearly attached to the slender tree.

“I can’t wait to show you around the place,” Greta said, and she skipped inside.

Despite the fact that was an entire, good-sized house hidden by magic that somehow fit perfectly into the tree, cheating the laws of physics, Fluttershy was not overly impressed at first. There were candy wrappers all over the floor, the dishes were stacked up hapharzardly in the sink, and honestly, the place smelled. For house concealed with magic, it sure was filthy and in need of some upkeep.

“You live like this?” Fluttershy asked incredulously.

“No! Sometimes. Not all the time!” Greta’s nose wrinkled. “Honestly, I didn’t realize it had gotten this bad.”

“Well, of course you didn’t,” Fluttershy said. “You were depressed from not finding someone to merge with, so you fell into living like this. But not to worry, Greta.” Fluttershy went over and started picking up the wrappers. “Now that I’m here, I’ll see to it we get this place cleaned up and made right. By the time we’re done, you won’t even recognize it.”

“But I like this house,” Greta said, confused.

“Greta, it’s an expression,” Fluttershy said with exsperation.

“Ooh! … I don’t get it. Why would you live in a house you don’t recognize?”

Fluttershy rolled her eyes. She went to go some of the socks off the floor.

“Oh, someone should do the dishes,” Greta tried to take a step towards the sink, but Fluttershy held her foot firm.

Fluttershy loudly cleared her throat, and Greta felt embarrassed.

“Greta,” Fluttershy said, “if this is going to work, you and I are going to have to work together on this.”

“Sorry, I know,” Greta said. “It’s just, sometimes I still can’t believe I was lucky enough to find you.”

“Well, aren’t you precious,” Fluttershy patted Greta on the head. “But I’m going to be the one who decides which chores get done first, and I say we clean up the floor.”

“Why the floor?” Greta asked.

“Because, Greta, if we’re going to have guests over, we need better than this,” Fluttershy said. “Dishes are understandable, but not the floor.”

They resumed picking things up off the floor, putting their multimple limbs to good use in order to continue roving through the floor, like an archaric early vaccum cleaner. It was soon cleaned up of debris, and Fluttershy looked on it proudly.

“Wait a minute,” Fluttershy said. “You’ve enchanted this house.”

“Yes?” Greta asked. “Fluttershy, if you’re worried about how your friends are going to find the house, don’t. I’ll give them exact instructions.”

“No, I mean,” Fluttershy said. “You’ve enchanted this house so that it fits into a smaller space that it actually takes up. Or at least appears that way.”

“Yeah? … Where you going with this?”

“Can you cast it on us?” Fluttershy asked. “It would be wonderful to be smaller again. I don’t like having to walk on these tree trunk legs. No offense.”

“No, no, I understand!” Greta said. “You want something more like your old body to walk around in. I get it! I do. Now, I think I can whip something up to make that work, but I have one condition.”

“Condition?” Fluttershy asked, raising an eyebrow and wondering if she was going to have to get snippy with Greta again.

“You … have to do all the dishes by yourself,” Greta said.

Fluttershy scoffed. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Greta said. “Do we have a deal, or no deal?”

“It seems kind of rude to make me do all the dishes by myself when you’re literally right next to me, but … sure, okay, fine. Deal.”

They shook on it, then walked over to the sink. Fluttershy started the water running while Greta began chanting an incantation.

As she was running the sponge over a plate, Fluttershy looked up at the window next to the sink.

“Would you like at that,” Fluttershy said.

“Look at what?” Greta asked, interrupting her incantation.

“Look,” Fluttershy gestured with her head at the window. “It’s starting to snow.”

“Already?” Greta asked. “Goodness, the time really does fly by, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah ...” Fluttershy looked down at the sink, wondering what she was going to do now that she was joined with Greta permanently. Time was so precious, and all of that she spent not with her son felt … awful. Horrible. She had felt so lonely in the world, so lost and disconnected.

But now she was with Greta. It hadn’t started off on the best foot, but Fluttershy was glad it happened. It was like Greta had pulled her out of a tunnel, and now that she was back in the light of day, Fluttershy could tell just how really troubled she had been. She would have gone down a dark if Greta hadn’t thrown a wrench into the works and interrupted Fluttershy’s path towards becoming an old crone that people avoided.

“Greta?” Fluttershy said.

“Fluttershy,” Greta said.

“I just wanted to say thank you for finding me,” Fluttershy said. “And … being the change that I needed in my life.”

“Aww, you’re welcome!” Greta leaned and pressed their cheeks together. “And I’m … sorry I wasn’t a little … more clear on what joining meant when I met you.”

“No, no, I understand,” Fluttershy said. “You weren’t thinking straight. You had a long night. You’d been so alone, so awfully alone for so long that your people skills just kind of … decayed.” Fluttershy sighed. “Just like I almost was. So, thank you for … saving me from that path.”

“Stop,” Greta said. “You’re making me blush.”

“Am I? I can’t tell under all that gray skin you’ve got.”

“Oh, whatever. Here.” Greta lent a helping hand to the dishes after all, helping to rinse and dry them off once Fluttershy finished scrubbing them.

“Greta?” Fluttershy asked. “Do you suppose we could have someone come over before too long?”

“What, before we’re finished cleaning up the house?”

“Maybe,” Fluttershy said. “This house is dirty. We could use the help.” She chuckled. “But no, I just meant … are you okay with me inviting guests over?”

“You do whatever it is you want to do, Fluttershy,” Greta said. “I’ll support you, every step of the way.”

“Thank you.”

“Unless you try to invite that evil ex-husband of yours over,” Greta snapped. “That guy is a jerk and a moron who had his chance to be with you, and he blew it. He’s not setting one foot anywhere near that door.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Fluttershy said.

Greta narrowed her eyes. “Fluttershy … you weren’t really thinking of doing that, were you?”

“No! No, I wasn’t, I…” Fluttershy sighed. “Okay. Yes. I was thinking about it. Maybe we could talk things out. Mend some fences. Make an arrangement where I could see starting seeing our kid again ...”

“Nuh-huh,” Greta said. “Fluttershy, I’m sorry you lost your kid. That’s an awful, awful thing to happen to anyone, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But you have to accept that what’s happened, happened, and you’re not getting him back unless your husband has some kind of serious accident.”

Fluttershy looked at Greta skeptically.

“No, that wasn’t a veiled offer to assassinate your husband,” Greta said.

“Are you sure?” Fluttershy asked. “We don’t have to kill him, just make him not legally capable of taking care of a dependent.”

“Do you really want to go through with that?” Greta asked.

“No,” Fluttershy admitted, turning her attention back to the dishes. “But it’s a nice fantasy to hold on to, every now and then.”

“So long as it stays just there,” Greta said, patting Fluttershy on the shoulder. “A fantasy. Oh. You missed a spot there.”

“Did I?” Fluttershy scrubbed the plate again.

It had been three months since Fluttershy had moved in with Greta. It took awhile to get all the things from Fluttershy’s house and move them into Greta’s, but with their impressive troll strength, it was no trouble to pack up the boxes and move them, and Greta’s glamour magic kept them from being seen by the public when they weren’t ready.

They were getting ready for Christmas and making all the arrangements. As of now, they were sitting in the living room, Greta holding a crystal ball she was to use to contact her father while Fluttershy worked on writing letters to her family.

Fluttershy was in the midst of trying to figure out how best to explain to her parents that she had merged with a troll when she noticed Greta staring into the empty crystall ball.

“Greta?” Fluttershy asked. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to talk to your dad?”

“I do,” Greta admitted. “But I’m not sure he’s going to want to talk to me. There are so few trolls these days who do merging, and, well … my father’s always been a traditionalist.”

“Ah, I see,” Fluttershy said. In her experience, “traditionalist” often meant “stuck-up, stubborn, inconsiderate first class a-hole.” The logical side of her brain told she should drop it and let Greta move on, but the empathatic side wouldn’t allow it. If there was a chance that they could get him for Christmas, they had to try.

“Go on,” Fluttershy encouraged her. “Call him. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Greta, don’t live in fear like this,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe he won’t take it well. Maybe he’ll hate it. But wouldn’t it better to know? If you don’t, and there’s a chance he might have accepted it, you’ll never forgive yourself. And if he doesn’t … well, it’s not like you can get rid of me, so it’s best to just get it over with.”

“You’re right, Fluttershy,” Greta said with a smile. “You’re a good friend.”

“I try,” Fluttershy said.

Greta’s smile faded, and she looked to the crystal ball. She breathed on it, rubbed it, and polished, and the visage of her father appeared inside. Fluttershy thought he didn’t look too bad for an old troll, but she suspected she’d just been around Greta too long.

“Greta?” her father said. “I haven’t heard you from in ages. What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Greta said. “I was just wondering if you would, you know, want to come over for Christmas and meet Fluttershy?”

“Who … is Fluttershy?” her father drawled.

Fluttershy leaned her head over and waved at him. “That would be me. Hi. It’s nice to meet you, Mister Greta’s Dad.”

“Nice to meet you, too, I guess,” Greta’s father replied. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Fluttershy with suspicion. “Tell me, Fluttershy, what, exactly, is your relationship with my daughter?”

“Oh, well, we’re sort of … living together,” Fluttershy said.

“I see. And you haven’t … merged together, have you?”

Fluttershy blushed, feeling all of a sudden nervous. “And what if we did?”

Greta’s father groaned with disgust. “Greta! I told you not to keep trying to do that! It’s a ridiculous thing! Respectable trolls don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

“I know, daddy, I know, but I was just … I was so lonely, and ...”

“That’s no exscuse!”

“If I may,” Fluttershy said. “Sir, I still have a lot to learn about troll culture, but Greta was in a dark place when she found me, and so I was. Both of us were extremely lonely and miserable, but then we merged. It didn’t start off great, but once I got used to it, we both found ourselves much happier. So please don’t judge her too harshly. It really was the best for her.”

Greta’s father harrumphed and ‘hung up’ on the ball.

Greta looked down at the floor, dejected.

“Hey, don’t look like that,” Fluttershy said, cupping Greta’s head and tilting her head up. “We tried, and that’s what matters.”

Greta nodded. She wiped a tear from her eye. “Still, it would have been nice if he’d … have more of an open mind.”

“Maybe he’ll change his mind one day,” Flutershy said. “You’re his daughter, after all. If he really cares about you, he’ll try to work on himself.”

Greta nodded. “Fluttershy?”

“Yes?”

“I take back what I said earlier. You’re not a good friend.” She leaned over, pressing her cheeks to Fluttershy and wrapping her arms around Fluttershy’s half of their shard body. “You’re an amazing friend.”

Fluttershy chuckled softly and returned the hug. “Well, it’s nice that you have such a high opinion of me.”

“No, really, I mean it.”

“I know,” Fluttershy patted Greta on the head. She looked back to her unfinished letters, and her heart grew heavy. “I just hope maybe my family will take it better.”

“You think they will?” Greta asked.

“I don’t know,” Fluttershy said. “They’re good people, really, but this ...” she held up one of her arms. “This is a lot to take in, especially around the holidays. I mean, how are they going to shop for shirts in our size?”

Greta laughed.

“Say, why don’t you help me write the letters? Maybe if they hear your voice in words before meeting you, it’ll help them warm up to you.”

“Good idea!” Greta eagerly took up a pen and a piece of paper.

They finished the letters and sent them out. In the end, they decided to simply tell them everything in the letter and hope they would understand. The reply back from Fluttershy’s family was much more positive than that from Greta’s father, though most of them still had several questions, some of which Greta found a little intrusive, but Fluttershy understood perfectly.

Zephry Breeze wanted to know if Greta had any dating advice. Fluttershy’s mother wanted to know how much this affected her chance of getting grandchildren, and her father wanted to know if he was supposed to buy them one or two gifts for Christmas. But the important thing, the thing that mattered most, was that they were all willing to come over to Greta’s house for Christmas and give it a try, unlike Greta’s father.

And so it was on Christmas eve that they arrived and got settled in and put their presents under the tree.

Zephry Breeze tried several times to sneak under the tree while their parents were busy getting to know Greta, but Greta always caught him and got on to him – something which helped to quickly endear her to Mr and Mrs. Shy.

“So, Greta,” Mrs. Shy asked, “can I ask you a question that’s … rather sensentive?”

“If you’re going to ask me if I’m gay, Mrs. Shy, the answer is yes,” Greta said. “And yes, I do think Fluttershy is attractive, but no, we’re not married.”

“Yet,” Fluttershy said boldly, much to her parents’ shock.
“That wasn’t I was going to ask, but, um good to know ...” Mrs. Shy. “No, see, what I wanted to know was … how did you get pregnant? Do you both have the baby, or …?”

“Oh, well, troll reproduction isn’t entirely like humans,” Greta said. “There’s a lot more magic involved.”

“Yeah, I bet there is,” Zephy Breeze added, snickering to himself.

“Zephry Breeze, don’t be crude,” Mr. Shy got on to him. “Go on, Greta. We’re listening. Respectfully.” He gave Zephy Breeze some side-eye.

“Okay, well, it starts like this,” but Greta was interrupted again by a knock on the door.

“Who could that be?” Greta asked. “Who even knows where to find us?”

“Oh, well ...” Zephy Breeze said. “Maybe I should have asked if it was okay, first ...”

“If what was okay?” Fluttershy demanded, affixing him with a glare so intense Greta though he was going to catch on fire.

“Well, I just thought … I’d heard you drifted away over the years, so I just thought it would be nice if you could see your old friends again, so I let them all know where you were and asked them if they would consider coming over!”

“You did what!?” Fluttershy said. “You shouldn’t have done that, Zephry Breeze. I appreciate what you were trying to, and I think your heart was in the right place, but my friends and I haven’t talked in years. There’s no way they would come see me now.”

The knock continued.

“Then … who is it at the door?” Zephy Breeze asked.

Fluttershy looked to Greta.

“Don’t look at me. I know it’s not my dad.”

Fluttershy and Greta got up and went to the door. Fluttershy’s hand trembled as she put on the door, fearing and wondering who could be on the other side. Perhaps it was Greta’s father, here to chew them out for their decision. Perhaps it was a vampire hunter seeking the knowledge of trolls to help him in his quest – or seeking their blood.

Fluttershy opened the door, and gasped.

It was none of the above. Instead, standing in front of the door, were Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, standing on the other side with gift bags slung under their arms and snow building up on their shoulders.

Fluttershy blubbered and stammered.

“Hey,” Rainbow Dash said. “Been a while, huh?”

Fluttershy could only continue to stutter.

“Here, I brought you something!” Pinkie Pie said, offering up a wrapped gift with pink wrapping and a yellow bow. “I matched it to your colors.”

Fluttershy finally managed to progress from blubbering to total silence.

Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Yeah, it’s good to see you, too, Fluttershy, but … could we come inside? It’s cold out here and the snow is really starting to get heavy.”

Fluttershy sniffed. She reached out and picked up both of them, bringing them out from the snow and into her arms. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie struggled to get out of the bear hug.

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash squeaked out, her voice strained. “It’s good to see you, too, but I – I can’t breath!”

“Oh! Sorry!” Fluttershy let go, dropping them both to the floor.

Rainbow Dash pushed herself up and chuckled.

“We don’t see each other for years, and the first word you say to me is sorry,” Rainbow Dash said. She placed a hand on Fluttershy’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sure you were expecting something more like a lovely poem or something.”

“No, no, no!” Rainbow Dash said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She turned to Greta. “And you must be Greta.”

Greta nodded. “And you must be that living bullet Fluttershy’s told me so much about!”

Fluttershy blushed and suddenly felt hot. Rainbow Dash looked at her skeptically.

“I didn’t say that,” Fluttershy said. “But I may have her told about some of your sports days and some of the more … risky moves in your old games,” Fluttershy said.

Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Living bullet, huh? Come on, Greta, walk with me. Fluttershy didn’t do me justice, Greta. I wasn’t a bullet. I was a cannonball.”

Rainbow Dash and Pinkie joined them in the living room. Mrs. Shy gave them both hugs and their presents went under the tree. Despite the years long absence from each others’ lives, soon, Fluttershy, Pinkie and Fluttershy were talking between them, cracking jokes, laughing at in-jokes they only had the context to find funny while everyone else was lost, and telling stories about embarrassing things that happened to their other friends when they were young. It was like no time had passed at all.

“And you remember the time when Twilight,” Rainbow Dash started, cracking up in the middle of her sentence and unable to finish her story. “When she put the thing in with … the thing, and then she … and then we had to …”

She and Pinkie Pie rolled on the floor laughing, rubbing at their bellies and even starting to cry from their laughter.

“What an egghead!” Rainbow Dash said.

“Fluttershy, I thought you said Twilight was one of your friends with Rainbow?” Greta said.

“Yes?”

“So why does Rainbow Dash keep calling her names?”

“It’s just something she does,” Fluttershy said. “You’ll understand when you have more friends, Greta. Some of them just like to give nicknames.”

“Ha ha, yeah!” Zephy Breeze said, joining Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie on the floor. “That good old Twilight Sparkle, she sure is an egghead, huh?”

“Oh, don’t pretend like you know what she’s talking about,” Fluttershy said.

“I mean, he might have been there, for all we know,” Mr. Shy said. “Rainbow Dash has left a few details out.”

“Yeah!” Mrs. Shy said. “Fill us in on the joke, Rainbow Dash!”

“Okay, okay,” Rainbow Dash sat up and did her best to calm herself. “So Twilight ...” she started laughing again, and Zephry Breeze took her hand to get her stay on track. “So Twilight was conducting this experiment, see, and she was putting in this chemical eggs-celsium or whatever, and she warned us not to mix it with the potassium nitrate, and then what does this egghead do? She mixes them up herself!”

“That’s not all that funny,” Mr. Shy.

“It’s not,” Dash said. “I haven’t gotten to the good part. So then, what happened ...”

Her story was cut off from another knock on the door. This was tiny-sounding, weak, almost shy and afraid.

“Now who could that be?” Fluttershy asked.

“Maybe Twilight?” Pinkie Pie suggested.

Zephry Breeze gasped. “She heard you talking about her and now she’s here for vengence!”

“Don’t be silly, Zephry Breeze. Twilight’s revenge would be subtler than that.”

“Everyone, hush,” Fluttershy said. “I’m going to go see who it is.”

Fluttershy and Greta approached the door once more. Fluttershy swung open.

Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie were a pleasant surprise by themselves, but Fluttershy would have never, in a million years, been prepared to see what she saw standing on the front porch.

It was her son, Pascal, standing in front of her after all this time. He was dressed in a knit cap, a fluffy coat, and had a suit case with him.

“My – my boy!” Fluttershy broke into tears and scooped him up into her arms, hugging him even tighter than she did Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie. “My precious boy! What in the world are you doing here?”

Pascal produced a letter.

“What’s this?” Fluttershy opened the letter.

“What’s it say?” Greta asked.

“It’s … it’s from my ex,” Fluttershy said. “He … he says he’s giving me full custody and … and he’s going to be making child support payments!”

“What? Why? Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Who cares?” Fluttershy nuzzled her son close to her chest. She gave him a kiss on the forehead. “He’s here with me now, just like he always should have been.”

“Hi, Mom,” her son greeted out. He looked over to Greta. “Who’s this?”

“Oh, um ...” Fluttershy stuttered. “Right. You wouldn't know about … how do I explain this?”

“Oh! I know!”

“You do?”

“Yes, she’s attached to you, so she must be my other mom!” Pascal said. He looked at her again, confused. “Or, wait … would that make you my aunt? I’m so confused.”

Fluttershy and Greta chuckled.

“Well, aren’t you just precious,” Greta said.

“Come on,” Fluttershy said. “Let’s go introduce you to everyone else. Ooh, Mom! I have that grandson you asked for!”

“Say what now?” Mrs. Shy asked.

“Everyone, I want you meet Pascal,” Fluttershy said, setting Pascal down on the floor. “He’s my son.”
Everyone immeadiately crowded Pascal, each of them asking him a million questions and all of them competing to be his new favorite aunt or uncle.

Fluttershy shook the letter, and a note fell out of it.

“What’s this?”

She picked it up. On it were four words written in a distinct, bold cursive in purple ink.

Merry Christmas, Fluttershy.

• Rarity.

Fluttershy teared up. She clutched the letter in her hand and looked up at the ceiling, wishing well wishes to Rarity, whatever she was.
“Merry Christmas.”

Author's Note

Chapter uploaded a little late, but here we go.

This wasn't originally the final chapter, but the commissioner had a change of heart and wanted to finish this story and try it again. I did offer to just do some revisions, but they declined.

Now it was an idea discussed that I don't know ever made it into the story, but there was an idea that Fluttershy's ex had actually married Rarity, and on my own, I came up with the idea that Rarity's 'child' was actually Fluttershy's - and that him being returned to Fluttershy was a result of Rarity not knowing of this fact, finding out about it, and confronting the jerk before sending the kid back home where he belongs.

Special Thanks To The Following:

Trepphacs
LazyReader19
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Thehock1
MyMaskofShame
Captain Croisandwich
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Magnaking
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