Frosted Tips, Emotinal Slips
“Now, this is my favorite flower stall, with the best begonias in all of Equestria! I mean, in my humble opinion.”
“Lovely. Yes, hello.”
“And here’s where I get my fresh veggies for all of the critters! And myself, of course, because it wouldn’t do to feed my animals any less than I would feed myself!”
“Uh-huh. Ma’am. Ma’am. MA’AM. Your child is kicking me. Could you stop them?”
Fluttershy turned sharply, gasping as she caught sight of Fontana Beyoncé, her new raccoon fairy friend-maybe-girlfriend, being kicked insistently by a small foal.
“My mommy says you’re a freak!” the foal snarled, and gave Fontana’s shin another vicious kick.
“Oh yeah? How’d you like to be glue?” Fontana snarled, and crouched to bare her teeth in the foal’s face. The foal took to screaming, ran backwards, and crashed into a market stall labeled GIOVANNI’S RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE KNICKKNACKS! BUY THREE, PAY FULL PRICE!
“Ohhh dear, let’s go this way, alright darling?” Fluttershy cooed, and grabbed hold of Fontana’s precious raccoon-shaped hand and dragged her away.
“Right,” Fontana muttered, doing her best to round her shoulders, as if that could make her any less visible to the pony crowd that she towered over.
Geez, this felt like a moment from a classic 90s teen drama; something like,
[Freezeframe]
OBNOXIOUS TEENAGE LEAD WHO PROBABLY JUST FINISHED A BRIEF TRIUMPHANT RUN ON A DISNEY CHANNEL SERIES: Yep. That’s me. And me? I am in a lot of trouble. I bet you wonder how I got myself into this situation. Well, if you take one part eBay magic ingredients, two parts nerd fan rage, and one part sweet little pegasus pony, you’d get pretty close to my current predicament.
Fontana would have only considered something like that if she wanted to die of shame. Who would want to read about her life adventures, anyway? It wasn’t like they were that exciting.
Well, scratch that; they were exciting, in the sense that she had just stepped into the magical pony kingdom she’d spent a literal decade fangirling over, had tased the obnoxious former-villain-turned-‘friend’ character she loathed, and was in the process of suggesting a better lifestyle of boundary-building to the most historically trod-upon character in the entire show.
But her adventures weren’t exciting by like, 90s teen dramas standards. First of all, no one had frosted tips. Second of all, Johnathan Taylor Thomas was nowhere to be seen.
“Are you alright, my dear?” Fluttershy fussed over her. While Fontana was internally monologuing, she’d guided them both into an empty market stall, and stood on one of the wooden shelves to look Fontana over. As a human, Fontana was almost twice her height walking; lengthwise, they were much closer. She assumed, anyway, since ponies had relatively long legs. Hell, what was she supposed to do, ask Fluttershy to lie down so they could compare bodies? She wasn’t a freak like the kid and their mom in the marketplace thought!
“You seem a million miles away right now,” Fluttershy tried again, and fluttered up to Fontana’s face so that she could cradle her cheek in her yellow hoof. “Did that mean little foal hurt my raccoon fairy friend?”
Oh, right, the other thing; Fluttershy was clearly enamored of her and her ‘raccoon hands’, and their whole relationship was founded on lie after lie! She wasn’t even a raccoon!
“Sorry, Fluttershy. I guess I got a lot on my mind,” Fontana Beyoncé (not her real name either) sighed.
“Do you need a little kissy on your boo-boo?” Fluttershy crooned, and returned to the ground so that she could give Fontana’s sore shin a smattering of light kisses.
As much as it made her feel guilty, Fontana enjoyed that smattering, very much.
“All better?” Fluttershy asked, gazing up at Fontana affectionately. She didn’t seem to notice or mind that Fontana was so much taller than her.
“Much better, thank you,” Fontana agreed, and knelt down to smooth a hand over Fluttershy’s mane. It was so soft, and she leaned into it like a cat, giggling as her cheeks pinked. Fluttershy reveled in her raccoon hands, so who was Fontana to deny her that pleasure? “I guess I am just very aware of the way the other ponies look at me.”
“Up? They can’t help that, you’re quite tall, Fon-Fon.”
“No, I mean - like that little kid. With the kicking. That, uh, made an impression.” Fontana rubbed her shin. “Literally. Possibly in the bone.”
“Are the others unkind to you? I should think they’ve gotten used to you by now!”
“Fluttershy, it’s been a week.”
Fluttershy blinked up at Fontana expectantly. “So?”
“So … maybe it’ll just take some time,” Fontana offered, but she knew it was mostly a lie. How would other ponies get used to a human in Ponyville? It had never happened before! Not since the 80s, anyway, and Megan never tried to kiss a pony! (At least, not unless you looked at very specific websites…)
“And how can they get used to you if you don’t give them a chance?” Fluttershy smiled, and gave Fontana’s leg a little pat-pat. “Ponyville is full of good, kind ponies. You just have to give them a chance to show you that, in a way that feels safe for you. I know it’s hard, but I’ll be by your side the whole time! Would it help if we did a breathing exercise first?”
Fontana chuckled, and shook her head down at Fluttershy. Something warm swelled in her chest; she wasn’t going to call it love, very purposefully. But it was nice, whatever it was. Definitely not love though. Nope. “You really enjoyed those self help books, huh?”
“Yes, I did!” Fluttershy beamed, and gave her tail a happy swish. “I am bettering myself day by day! But the best me is the me I already am; I just have to reveal her while ignoring the burden of societal expectations and pony-pleasing that I’ve allowed to hold sway over my internal monologue for far too long!”
Fontana Beyoncé blinked.
“Sorry. Too much? No! Not sorry! I will accept my mistakes with a grateful attitude and self love!” Fluttershy would have clenched her hoof in a fist, Fontana was pretty sure, if she had one. “It’s not ‘too much’ to express yourself honestly to other ponies!”
“Wow, look at you! You really got a lot out of those books, huh Fluttershy?” Fontana couldn’t hide the wide grin on her face. “I’m really glad for you. I could use a little bit more of that, I think; radical self love, and stuff!”
“You can borrow my latest book from the Ponyville Library if you’d like, Fon-Fon,” Fluttershy demurred, and she gazed up at Fontana a little shyly from under her mane. “We could read it together.”
“That sounds really nice,” Fontana agreed.
“We could … r-read it … before bed,” Fluttershy continued, and more and more of her face vanished beneath her mane, until Fontana felt like she was talking to a L’Oreal commercial. “At … at night … eep!”
“I think that’s a good idea, Fluttershy,” Fontana agreed again, bending sideways to try and get a look at her face, and failed. “Hey, how about we go pick up my new clothes from Rarity’s shop?”
The naked attempt at topic-changing worked, and Fluttershy’s face popped out from behind her hair. “Okay! Let’s go!”
And off they went! Rarity’s shop was a quick jaunt from the market, and as before, Fontana had to stoop a little bit to get inside of the Carousel Boutique.
“Bonjour, mes amis! Rarity shall be right with - FLUTTERSHY.” Rarity kicked a pony into a changing room, and yanked the curtain closed. “Un moment, ma chère! I will be right back! FLUTTERSHY.” Rarity’s tonal shifting was giving Fontana whiplash, and she was anything but smiling when she stalked over to where they stood together at the front of her shop.
“Hi, Rarity! I’m here to pick up the new clothes that you made for Fontana?”
“I thought we agreed,” Rarity ground out, “that you would come back to get them alone?”
“No,” Fluttershy said warmly, “You said that, and I said that I would examine my personal truth and see how I felt about it.”
Rarity stared at Fluttershy. “Pardon?”
“And I’ve realized that I am not honoring my friendship with Fontana, nor my own personal truth, if I allow you to dictate where and when I may collect the goods which I have exchanged my money for, at a very fair rate, due to your own speciesism.” Fluttershy stared at her, then gave a little nod to cap it off.
“... hubba wha?”
“Fontana is my new friend, and as one of my closest friends, I wish that you would offer as much patience and friendliness to her as you would to any of my other friends!”
“Fluttershy. Darling. Cupcake. She’s not a pony,” Rarity pulled Fluttershy aside with one pale foreleg, using that stage whisper that excluded precisely no one from the conversation. It might have actually been louder than her speaking voice.
“Discord wasn’t a pony, and you guys warmed up to him eventually!”
Rarity gave Fluttershy a pitying gaze. “Being guilted into something by Celestia gives things rather a different tone, dear. And I never trusted that lout as far as I could lift my chiffonier, anyways.”
“Hey! You’re that freak from the marketplace!” came a voice from behind the pair, and they both whirled to see a strange stallion jabbing his hoof at Fontana.
“I was there for like, five minutes, how did you even see me?” Fontana squinted down at him.
“You made my wife cry! She said, ‘look at that horrible thing! It’s awful! It’s so tall, and ungainly!’ You frightened children!”
“Children who deserved it, or like, normal children?”
“You get out of here!” Fluttershy came charging up suddenly, glaring intensely at the stallion. “You leave her alone!”
“I don’t have a problem with you, just with this fr-”
“I SAID GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE I SHOVE SOMETHING FANCY AND FRENCH WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE!!!!”
The stallion’s eyes bugged out of his head, and he fled the shop.
“Oh!” Fluttershy gasped, and lifted her hoof to her mouth. “Where did that come from?”
“Where, indeed?” Rarity scowled, directing it at Fontana.
Fontana, for her part, looked guilty, but she tried to deflect from it. “C’mon Fluttershy, we should leave before that guy in Rarity’s dressing room wakes up.”
“Wakes up!? I’ll have you know that he’s just fine, right monsieur? … monsieur?” Rarity barked, but her voice rapidly softened as she went to check on her customer, and stared at a point on the floor behind the curtain for some time. “Oh boy.”
[***]
Fluttershy and Fontana spent most of the walk back to Fluttershy’s home in silence. On Fontana’s side, at least, it was guilty. She had only wanted to come to this universe in the first place to make Fluttershy’s life better, but it felt like she was making it worse. Sure, Fluttershy was speaking up for herself, that was a positive. It wasn’t really in her own voice yet, but that happened with everyone who tried a new self help track, like therapy, or AA, or Richard Simmons Sweatin’ To the Oldies.
She had succeeded in scaring off Discord, since he hadn’t been sighted in Ponyville since last week; but was she making Fluttershy’s life better? Fluttershy was enamored with her, clearly, but all she had done was lie to her! How could she call that lo- Very Like? And now she was offending ponies and friends alike, simply by existing, and made Fluttershy’s life harder? Who was she, if not Discord Lite?
The very thought of it had made her barf in her mouth a little bit. To quote the 90s teen drama that her life was being compared to, this was totally not radical, dude!
“Good afternoon, Mailmare - Oh! My apologies, you’re not Mailmare Cloudbreak,” Fluttershy broke the silence at last, startled when she confused the pony who turned towards them for her regular postal worker. Fluttershy was so sweet like that; every afternoon she’d trot out and ask if the mailmare wanted a refreshment when she came by on her route. It was something Fontana had found out about her that wasn’t from the show, that she Very Liked about her.
“Yeah, I’m Mailmare - oh NO! The FREAK!”
Oh boy, here we go again.
“I heard about the commotion you made in the marketplace today! Children crying, expensive trinkets broken, mares fainting dead away on the spot!” the Mailmare gasped, clapping her hooves to her cheeks. “You’ve left a trail of mayhem behind you, you awful, awful monster!”
Fontana dropped her eyes away and folded her arms, squinting at a point on the horizon. At her side, Fluttershy’s ears were pinned in anger.
“Don’t you have anything to say? And you even abused that kind fellow, Discord! Why, he’d truly turned a leaf before you came around, lady! I bet due to your evil deeds, he might as well turn to evil again! And it would be all your fault if Ponyville should fall to chaos once more! Why, if I had my say -”
“Isn’t that the mailmare’s wagon over across the street?”
The mailmare whirled; indeed it was, and in fact, they saw Mailmare Cloudbreak merrily return to her wagon, and take off at a trot once more, whistling a jaunty tune.
Slowly, the pair turned back to face the mailmare.
“Well - er - the fact that I’m committing mail fraud shouldn’t distract from the valid point that I’m making!” the mailmare insisted, and squawked sharply when Fontana lifted her up and gave her a rough shake. “Hey! Let me down! I’m just a little pony, you monster!”
“Are you? Because your voice sounds awfully familiar - you sound kind of like the stallion in Rarity’s dress shop, actually! And kind of like that brat in the market who dented my shin! And kind of like an obnoxious power-tripping alien from reruns on the SciFi network before it got bought out by those alien-history-conspiracy-theory shows!” Fontana accused, and shook the pony roughly enough until, in a puff of sparkles and magic, she transformed back into her normal form.
“Alright, alright! I don’t know what that last one means, but yes, those were all me! Stop shaking me, geez! You’re one more shake away from a tragic after-school special!” Discord huffed, and smoothed down his fur with his scaled talon as Fontana released him.
“Discord! How could you?” Fluttershy snapped, stomping her tiny yellow hoof. Despite her anger, it was adorable. “You’ve really hurt Fontana’s feelings! She’s been sad all week because of you!”
“Because of me? She’s sad because of how she abused me?” Discord snarled, rising to his full height to loom over Fluttershy. “How about, she should feel bad because of her own actions? She lied to you! Repeatedly! She’s lied to everyone in this town! She attacked me, for no reason, and drove me away from my only friend! And then I had to pay for all of Giovanni’s Ridiculously Expensive Knickknacks I broke on top of everything else! Have you ever thought to check in on how I’m doing? Who’s going to worry about poor little Discord?”
“Most of the fandom?” Fontana grumbled to herself.
“You be quiet!” Discord snarled, rounding on Fontana. “I’m not done monologuing!”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it Discord? You’re never done monologuing!” Fontana snapped, and stepped sharply between Discord and the yellow pony he loomed over. Fontana, at least, was closer to his own height. “I’m not perfect, okay? But I straight-up told you to your face what a little shitbag you are! You had to go hiding around town and make me think that every pony in it hated me! Plus, my shin will probably never be the same, and there are ZERO human doctors in this town, asshole!”
“Oh, please,” Discord huffed.
“And you know what? You don’t get to loom over her like that anymore! It’s not okay! If you’re bigger than someone else, you have to be mindful of that! You can’t be a bully!”
“A bully? Oh, like a bully who tases someone?” Discord sneered, leaning into Fontana’s face instead. He was taller than Fontana too, but at least the height difference was less extreme between them. “Yeah, I figured out what you zapped me with! Does Fluttershy even know that you lied? That you’re not even a fairy at all? Because I’m here, and I’m ready to tell her everything!”
“I was going to tell her I lied!” Fontana barked, and it startled Discord into silence for a moment; he wasn’t expecting her to admit it quite so readily, and spoil his monologue teasing it out for the next fifteen minutes (with commercial breaks). “I lied, okay? I lied. I lied about - about a lot of stuff. I told her I was a fairy - and I’m not a fairy. Fontana Beyoncé isn’t even my real name. I don’t have fairy magic - I have a taser I got from a women’s self defense course at my junior college. I’m not from Pixie Glen, I’m not a raccoon fae, and I only came here to make sure that you would never be able to hurt her again. I even had a whole plan laid out about how I would seduce her away from you.”
Fontana waited for a witty quip to come to her, perhaps an outdated reference or meme, but none came. She was left staring down at her hands, utterly defenseless to the silence that filled the room.
“But I didn’t lie about wanting to help her. And I didn’t lie about my feelings,” Fontana said finally, her voice low. “I didn’t even intend to have feelings. And I’ve spent all week - tangled up about that. Not feeling bad for you, asshole,” she added with a venomous hiss, lifting her overbright eyes to glare at Discord.
“Fontana told me that she lied, Discord,” Fluttershy spoke suddenly, and although it was with her same soft, breathy little soprano, it was firmer than before “And I forgave her. We should be willing to forgive ponies when they are sorry and want to change their behavior, and it is clear that these lies have worn very heavily on her. You have apologized many times, Discord, but you keep repeating the same mistakes.”
“Well, now, Fluttershy - but I am sowwy, pwincess,” Discord shifted rapidly to dismay, and arched his neck, lowering his head in a show of meek guilt.
“And you isolated me from my friends! That’s an abusive behavior, Discord, and I will no longer stand for those behaviors in my life!” Fluttershy stomped her hoof again, and lifted her head to lock eyes with him, her gaze ablaze. “You lied, and you tried to gaslight Fontana -”
“That’s a charged word right now, let’s use ‘manipulate’ instead,” Fontana interjected quietly, her eyes darting to an imaginary camera.
“- You manipulated Fontana, just like you’ve manipulated me for years. You made me think you could change so many times. I’m going to hold you to it, Discord. You can have a place in my life.”
“I can?” he asked hopefully.
“If you can change. I will not tolerate most of the boolshit that I’ve suffered thus far!” Fluttershy barked, and Discord flinched at the curse, albeit one with a strange pronunciation. “And you will wait until I tell you that I am ready to try having you in my life again. Until then -” and Fluttershy stomped away, up into her house. Because they still stood on the street beside her mailbox, it took several minutes.
“I feel like this would have been more dramatic if it didn’t take so long, you know?” Discord opined.
“We aren’t friends,” Fontana growled.
Fluttershy came stomping back.
“Until then,” she was huffing a little bit from the brisk trot she’d been moving at, not wanting to miss the momentum of the moment, “you can read this, and try to become the kind of friend that ponies want to be around.” She shoved a book into Discord’s midsection, and he gave a comical little oof! as he stumbled backwards, clutching the dog-eared copy of It’s a Big World Out There, Little Pony; Better Yourself, Better Your World.
“I have to do friendship homework?” Discord simpered.
“Yes. And you need to leave.” Fluttershy glared at him. “Now.”
“Well, I - I guess I can tell when it’s my cue to go,” Discord said sadly, and tucked the book into a little pocket that he opened up out of nowhere. “Thanks for the book, Fluttershy, I guess. I’ll miss you - my only friend. My, sniff, best friend.”
“Guilting does the opposite of making me miss you.” Fluttershy growled, and with a little ‘eep!’, Discord vanished into thin air. Fluttershy frowned at the empty air for a long moment, then sighed, sagging against her fence.
“You okay?” Fontana murmured.
“Let’s go inside,” Fluttershy sighed, and gazed up at Fontana pleadingly. “Was it hard to pick up Discord?”
“Well - not terribly. I think he’s mostly hot air,” Fontana grinned.
“Do you think you could lift a pony?”
Fontana looked down at Fluttershy, surprised; Fluttershy’s bottom lip wobbled pleadingly. “Sure,” Fontana replied, and bent down, carefully gathering her arms around Fluttershy’s back and hind legs. Fluttershy was heavier than Discord, but she was still lighter than she expected, especially when she snuggled under her chin like that. Maybe it was just Fontana’s footsteps that felt lighter than air.
“Thank you, Fontana,” Fluttershy murmured, once they had landed on the sofa. Fontana expected Fluttershy to pull away; she remained in place, so Fontana began stroking her mane instead. “Were you really going to tell me?”
“Yes,” Fontana replied, equally soft. The house was so quiet; there was nowhere for Fontana to hide, especially not from the doe-eyed little pegasus curling into her chest. “I know it might seem like I was caught in it, but … yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking about all week, I’ve been feeling … bad. For lying to you.”
“You haven’t kissed me since that night,” Fluttershy whispered, and when she gazed up at her, her eyes were overbright. “I thought maybe you stopped liking me.”
“No! I - no. It wasn’t that,” Fontana sighed, and lifted one arm, dragging her fingernails over her neck, avoiding Fluttershy’s gaze. “It was supposed to be strictly mercenary, no feelings. But then I had feelings, and I didn’t know where to put them. It felt wrong, to feel that way about someone I lied to. Someone I was still lying to.”
Fluttershy nodded, her eyes still on her companion’s flat, human face. “I could tell you were upset. And I could tell you liked it when I was tender with you. But then … sometimes you pulled away.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that, Fluttershy. Really, I am.” Fontana slowly returned her gaze to Fluttershy. “I never meant to let you know I was such a mess, either,” Fontana laughed, and shook her head.
Fluttershy’s gaze was gentle where it rested on her. “Nopony’s perfect, Fontana. Would it make you feel better, to tell me the truth? I would like to hear it.”
Fontana looked at Fluttershy more closely, then nodded. “Well, a lot of it won’t make sense to you, I’m sure. But .. the easiest thing is probably my name.”
Fluttershy’s brows lifted, and she gave a little nod. “What’s your real name, then?”
“Well, it’s - kind of embarrassing. I usually go by my last name, back home I mean, because I don’t want people to realize what my first name is,” Fontana began a little slowly, clearly hesitant. “It’s Montana. So sometimes I’m Monny, with some of my friends.”
“That’s a very nice name; it sounds like Fontana,” Fluttershy smiled. “You have a first name, too?”
“Yeah,” Fontana said slowly. “It’s, uh … Hannah.”
“Hannah,” Fluttershy enunciated carefully, savoring the strange words on her little pony tongue. “Hannah Montana. It kind of rhymes, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. It was a cute name to have, up until around March 24th, 2006…” Fontana muttered, and a jingle fluttered through her thoughts, unbidden.
“Well, I think it’s still a cute name. But we can keep it between us, if you’d like,” Fluttershy smiled, and Fontana realized that, for the first time ever, she was in a place where absolutely no one would sing part of a theme song to her upon their introduction.
“Well, I … I really like it when you call me Fon-Fon, to be honest,” Fontana murmured, and this time, she returned Fluttershy’s smile.
“I like it, too,” Fluttershy beamed. “Do … do you think that we could kiss again, Fon-Fon? Someday?”
“Oh, well - I bet it could be much sooner than someday,” Fontana chuckled as her face warmed, “if you would like that.”
“I would like that very much,” Fluttershy replied, and sat up on her lap so that she could face Fontana more squarely. She stared up at Fontana so hopefully, so intently, it was all Fontana could do not to laugh.
“Would you, uh … like that now?”
“Yes, please!”
Fontana allowed a fond chuckle to escape, and then lifted her hand, cradling Fluttershy’s cheek as she pressed the first of many kisses to her soft mouth. It looked like Fontana was truly getting the best of both worlds.
Behind them, the doorbell rang.
“Can we keep kissing and talking if I go answer that? Just for a moment?” Fluttershy asked. “I don’t want to invalidate your sharing.”
“No - please, please do.” Fontana chuckled, and when Fluttershy hopped off of her lap, she gave her eyes a quick dab with her sleeve. It was easier to be disaffected and hide behind humor; this feelings business was no fuckin’ joke.
“Hewwo!” said the little gryphon at the door, dressed in a green scout-type uniform. “My name is Fwendship Gwiffon! I’m here to sell you fwiendship cookies - do you have anyone spechul you might wanna shawe dem with? Like, maybe, I dunno wady, a dwaconequus?”
BZZZZT! went the taser.
“I told you to give me time, Discord, and that was your first warning,” Fluttershy snarled, holding the little box she’d stolen from Fontana’s back pocket. “Next time I won’t be so nice, shitbag.”
