Author's Note
ANOTHER COMMISSION, WOO!
Thanks to the totally awesome Yosh E-0 for this! I am very proud of where it went. Thank you for the idea!
Just a bit of foalish fun. Enjoy!
Courage
Courage.
She saw it every day. In the first steps a foal took into the terrifying outside world beyond their home. In the way her parents cooked using fire- fire!- Inside of the house. In the way her brother Zephyr Breeze played at bath time, with no concept of the danger of drowning. She saw it all of the time, and sometimes she wanted it for herself because it was something she lacked, but then she saw ponies do something stupid and reconsidered. Still, there was that tentative wanting of courage kept inside of her.
Her parents were certainly wanting her to have courage. Fluttershy had gotten to the point of being at the age to potty train, but was too afraid to try the training potty. Her parents easily assessed the problem. Fear of the unknown, and fear of what would come after. Fluttershy was a foal who depended heavily on routine. If things happened in a certain order during the day, and the next one of those things didn’t happen, she couldn’t get past it and ended up hiding in her room. She was painfully shy, to the point where she had not made very many friends, apart from Rainbow Dash, the daughter of Windy Whistles and Bow Hothoof, whose easygoing and confident nature seemed to rub off on her in a good way.
Mr. And Mrs. Shy were, in essence, stuck. They had tried everything they could think of to get Fluttershy to start potty training. They had tried rewarding her, bribing her, taking a toy away (and subsequently not following through with it because she had cried so much), and letting her get comfortable with the potty on her own, which did not happen because she was too afraid to go near it. Their daughter’s fears were never allayed, and it was wearing them out. Between dealing with Fluttershy’s emotional needs and Zephyr’s physical ones at barely a week old, they were beyond tired, and the stress of the situation was not helping matters any. Neither of them could take a nap or a day off, because two kids completely changed the game. When one was calm the other was not. Fluttershy alone demanded constant emotional support, and Zephyr was loud when he did not get his needs met, so it kept them hopping.
Today though, might be a bit of a break. Today they were going over to Bow and Windy’s house for a playdate with Rainbow Dash for Fluttershy, and Zephyr was going to be foalsat at home while it happened because right after they had to go get some paperwork done, and they could not bring a fussy baby with them. Fluttershy was old enough and well behaved enough to know when to be quiet, and it wasn’t like she wasn’t quiet to begin with. As long as the room did not change, she would be fine, and those offices were as about as unchanging as you could get. So, Mr. Shy paid the sitter and picked up his daughter while Mrs. Shy packed a bag for her child before grabbing her things to leave. Fluttershy trembled upon her father’s back. She did not like being up so high, and clutched him in a vice grip. Mercifully for him, it was his back and not his neck. His little girl was tiny, but she could be powerfully strong when she was afraid. The last time she had her legs around his neck, she had squeezed so hard she choked him a little. Her squeezing at his back just felt more like wearing saddlebags.
When they were all packed up and ready to go, they walked outside. This was a harrowing endeavor for Fluttershy, who panicked at leaving the safety of her home. This was mitigated slightly by the presence of both her parents, but nonetheless terrified her. It wasn’t being outside itself that terrified her. She loved to go in her backyard and look up at the sky or see the animals flying by. What terrified her was the idea of what waited for her outside of her home. Other ponies, other foals, large crowds, open spaces, the possibility of being separated from her parents. Her fears were numerous.
Mr. And Mrs. Shy had a lot of guilt in that regard. They had been overprotective of her and made it a point to coddle her in her earliest days and eventual years. Their daughter had been bashful from the start, afraid of strangers, of change, even as a newborn, and thus so had they in their high strung state. They had taken it upon themselves to make sure she felt extra safe and love by narrowing the circle of who could visit her, and thereby narrowing the world around her. They did not even take her outside until she could walk, for fear of what might happen to her. The instinctive drive to protect their daughter had blinded them to a simple fact: children learn what they live. Because they were afraid for her all the time, she interpreted that as needing to be afraid of everything. When they realized their mistake, they had tried to correct it, but it was a firm imprint on their daughter’s mind, to fear things. And now they were paying the price for what they had taught her.
The trip to Bow and Windy’s home was mercifully short, and Mr. Shy was grateful for it because of how his daughter was digging into his sides with her hooves. When they knocked on the door, they waited. Windy answered, smiling brightly.
“Hi there! Come on in, please!” Her voice was perky but not loud, as she had learned the first time she had over enthusiastically greeted Fluttershy, and the foal had burst into tears. Mr. and Mrs. Shy thanked her, and entered. Fluttershy seemed to relax once she was in a contained space again. Rainbow’s house was familiar to her at the very least, so it wasn’t as scary. As Mr. Shy pried his daughter off of his back and set her down, Bow came over to shake his hoof.
“Pleasure seeing you again.” He said in a deep, rich tenor.
“Thank you for having us.” Mr. Shy responded, gently taking his hoof.
“I was about to go out back and get a few things set up for the girls to play with. Mind giving me a hoof?”
“Sure.” He said and walked off.
That left Mrs. Shy and Windy Whistles. Windy Whistles bent down to Fluttershy’s level, careful not to overcrowd her.
“Dashie is waiting for you in her room over there.” Windy pointed to the direction of the room with her hoof. “We can take you up there if you like.”
Fluttershy just nodded mutely. Windy gave her a gentle smile and nod, and Mrs. Shy made her way to the room alongside Windy with her daughter attached to her leg. When Windy opened up the door, she spoke.
“Dashie sweetie, somepony came to play with you!” Windy called.
Rainbow Dash was sitting on a rainbow rug, stacking some blocks when she heard the sweet sound of her mother’s voice. She looked up and saw Fluttershy, and her tiny wings buzzed in anticipation. She knocked over the block tower and tripped over one of them, but she did not cry to Fluttershy’s shock and awe. How on earth was Dashie so brave?
“Fwuttews!” Dashie called, and reached to give her friend a hug. Fluttershy responded in kind, but was still awed.
“Dashie!” Fluttershy responded in kind.
Windy and Mrs. Shy smiled at each other.
“We’ll be in the kitchen if you need us.” Windy said.
“Kay Mama!” Dashie chirped, and the two mares walked away, leaving the foals to play.
Dashie immediately gestured for Fluttershy to follow her. “Pway?”
Fluttershy nodded and followed Dashie into the colorful room, where the rainbow haired pegasus plopped down and started to build another block tower. What Fluttershy had not heard, nor seen, was the distinctive sound of a diaper crinkling or seen one itself. Instead, Dashie was wearing something that kind of looked like a diaper but was much thinner.
“Wha dat?” Fluttershy asked, pointing to the garment.
“Is my puww up!”
“Puww up?”
Dashie nodded. “Mama an’ Dada gimme fow potty twaining. I wike it! No mowe diapees!” She cheered.
Fluttershy nodded. “Mine wan me ta potty twain too, bu’ I dun wanna.”
“Why no?”
“Scawy. How ya do it, Dashie? How ya bwave aww da time?”
Dashie grinned proudly. “‘Cause I happy. I wan do big pony tings. I wan go in da potty an’ fwy, an’ be big wike Mama an’ Dada.”
“Ya no scawed?”
“Why I be scawed? They no scawed. Ya dun hafta be scawed. I not. I bwave pony. So awe ya.”
Fluttershy smiled tentatively at the praise. Maybe she could give this a try. If a brave pony like Dashie could do it, maybe she could too.
In the kitchen, Windy Whistles poured herself and Mrs. Shy a cup of tea. “Sugarcube?” She asked, holding up the sugar bowl.
“Two please.” Mrs. Shy asked. Windy nodded and plopped two in. Mrs. Shy thanked her, and they both took a seat at the table nearby.
“Any luck on potty training?” Windy asked her friend.
Mrs. Shy shook her head. “Not yet. We’ve tried everything we can think of, and now that we have Zephyr it’s much harder to give the issue the attention it needs.”
Windy nodded thoughtfully. “I think I can understand that. Nopony ever said raising kids was easy.”
“I’m hoping her playing with Rainbow will open her up to it.”
“I hope so, for your sake.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.” Windy said, sipping her tea. “It’s funny though,” She said after a pause, “Zephyr is so much younger than she is but I can see that he’s far more outgoing than Fluttershy is.”
“Yes. I think that’s our fault. We coddled her too much from day one.”
“You did what you thought was best.” Windy soothed her. “Nopony can ever prepare you for being a first time parent. You did the best with what you had.”
“And look what happened. She’s so afraid… She’s not enjoying her life.”
“You were trying to protect her.” Windy reasoned. “You followed your instincts. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Everypony makes mistakes their first time doing anything, let alone being a parent.”
“You seem to be doing a fairly perfect job.”
Windy smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “They say that children are our second chance. We raise them into who we wish we were. I try and keep that in mind with Dashie, but more than one time it’s gotten me into trouble. Like when she tried to run out of the backyard when I had my back turned for a second. There are perils of raising an overly confident child, just like there are a shy one.”
Mrs. Shy nodded. “We’re going to try and be less overprotective with Zephyr. We’ve seen the results of that and we don’t want to make him afraid of everything too.”
“The good thing about having two kids is that you’ve become an expert by the second one.” Windy joked, and they shared a laugh. She beamed at her friend. “I am proud of you, though. You’ve grown a lot since having Zephyr. I can tell.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me.” The two women shared a smile and drank their tea in silence for a few minutes. “What do you think the future holds for our kids?” She asked.
“I don’t know. I hope they grow up to be loyal and kind, smart, brave, empathetic, and hardworking. Really that’s all I can ask for for them.” Said Windy before she smiled and set down her emptied tea cup. “Who knows? Maybe someday our kids will grow up and get married to each other. Now that would be an incredible future!”