The conversation turned, as it so often did, to Rarity’s increasingly cosmopolitan life. Her new Reinford boutique, Coco’s unlikely stardom, the growing Canterlot fame of Fluttershy's Carillon Songbird Choir. It was gossipy—but with Fluttershy, Rarity felt little need to keep up appearances. Besides, wherever she travelled, whoever she met, whatever she did, for Rarity “home” would always mean Ponyville.
Although Fluttershy had commented in all the right places, with that piercing insight into pony character, Rarity thought she wasn’t quite with it today. A headache, perhaps: Fluttershy rarely liked to cause concern, however often Rarity reassured her.
They made tea together, “accidentally” slipping cookies onto eacn other’s plate with wildly unconvincing furtive giggles. Rarity hoped the warm, soothing liquid would work its magic. They sat comfortably at Fluttershy’s battered old kitchen table, savouring the tea and the company as the inseparable partnership it had become. For some while, no words passed.
“Sometimes there really isn’t anything to be done,” said Fluttershy suddenly.
Ah. They had been this way before. Rarity, with that sense of awe she always felt – but never quite admitted – about what Fluttershy faced, set down the dregs of her tea and held her friend’s soft gaze. She fought and won against the urge to fill the quiet with an “indeed” or a “yes”. She felt oddly proud, then embarrassed at that pride. She hoped it hadn’t shown.
“Some call Nature cruel,” said Fluttershy at last. “But this is Equestria, isn’t it? We wake the hibernating animals at the Wrap Up, we help the leaf-fall in the woods at the Running. We are Nature. So if Nature is cruel… are we cruel, Rarity?”
Another long silence, and presently Rarity judged that this one needed punctuating.
“I don’t know that we’re the ones to say,” she said, her tone carefully neutral.
Fluttershy took a dainty sip of her tea, eyes demurely downcast. Many ponies would have asked whether she was capable of drinking tea any other way. Rarity, who had known her friend a long time, knew better. Something was coming.
“I was cruel once,” said Fluttershy. She didn’t raise her eyes.
Rarity relaxed and smiled warmly, even if Fluttershy could not see it. She hoped she would hear it.
“Oh, the Breezies? Darling, I don’t think anypony would say—”
“Not that. Longer ago. Before we really knew one another.”
Now Fluttershy did regard Rarity squarely. The unicorn felt the frisson one might experience when stepping off a rocky, bumpy but nevertheless well-known and strangely reassuring path into dark, unexplored woods beyond.
Breaking her gaze, Fluttershy took a bite of her cookie, chewing slowly as if reflecting on challenges ahead. At length she swallowed, then took another sip of tea. Rarity thought there was a deliberateness about her that belied deep nervousness. She was trying so hard to keep it in check and almost succeeding—but “almost” would not get past Rarity. She wondered whether Fluttershy had similarly picked up on her own minute nod; she guessed so.
“It was springtime,” said Fluttershy. “My favourite season.” Rarity knew that; she giggled minutely to acknowledge the fact and Fluttershy returned the favour, the two old friends easily complicit in each other’s games. “Rainbow Dash was in Cloudsdale doing something; I don’t know what exactly, she told me but I’m afraid I found it too technical. I missed her, of course, but there was plenty to do here, so there wasn’t much time to feel sad.”
Again, Rarity suspected Fluttershy had weighed those words very carefully in the knowledge that they would be understood for what they were.
She made a tiny gesture with her hoof. “But…?”
“Yes.” Fluttershy looked into some indefinable distance for a moment. “But.” The warm smile returned, but only to her muzzle.
“I’d never looked after a canary before Carillon,” she said. “I thought it would be easy. I was confident I could treat his fever and then he’d just need rest.” She swallowed. “I was right about that, until he started telling me he had to fly outside.
“I didn’t want him to go, but he kept pressing his beak against the glass and then looking right at me. At first I tried to get him to come outside with me, but he was a wild bird, you know. He wanted to fly alone, and I didn’t know how to argue back then.
“So I opened the door and he flew straight out. I sat right here, watching through the window as he began to fly, a free bird in his free air for the first time in weeks. Oh, Rarity, it was so wonderful and I was just lost in it all.”
Rarity’s brow prickled as an awful suspicion crept across her, though Fluttershy seemed not to notice as she spoke again.
“Then… SNAP.”
From Fluttershy the sound was like a thunderclap and Rarity jerked in her chair, only a most unladylike lurch keeping her upright. She realised that Fluttershy was weeping, silently.
“Oh darling, whatever happened?”
“An eagle. I’d… I’d been so quick to let Carillon go outside again that I hadn’t checked if it was safe. I thought I was being kind by giving him what he wanted, but really it was the cruellest thing I’ve ever done. How could I claim to be an animal caretaker if I didn’t take care?”
A thought came to Rarity. “Is that why—?”
“Yes. I wanted – needed – to do something for the other songbirds, something that would mean I had to spend time with them and look out for them. I’m fairly good at singing—” (Rarity stifled a smile) “—and so I asked if any of them would be interested in helping me form a choir. Of course it took a while, some of them didn’t want me around at all and that hurt.
“But yes,” said Fluttershy. “The Carillon Choir is named in his memory—so that I never again forget that giving someone exactly what they want can sometimes be the cruellest thing of all.”
