The World's Beauty Becomes Enough
Fluttershy wakes in the night to rumbling on the horizon. She's home again, where wet hooves and the comforting roll of thunder beneath them are the only markers of the storm brewing in the gut of Cloudsdale. Her legs shift under the blankets, restless for a walk. Mom will tell her to wear her galoshes, even though she likes the feeling of the clouds beneath her.
Her eyes slowly open and she looks out the window. Dark clouds cluster over the forest. The cottage falls into place around her as she remembers where she is: Ponyville; not in the clouds but on the ground. The bedroom is unfamiliar in the dark and she can't resolve the black shapes into things she knows. Instead, she returns her gaze to the horizon, where flashes outline the thunderhead's underside. She's never been on the underside of a storm before.
She must have drifted back to sleep, because what wakes her is a crash, not a rumble. She's lucid instantly, whipping her head around, expecting her roof to have fallen in. Then the dark shapes of her bedroom are thrown into jagged relief as lightning strikes again, the cottage rumbling with the force. She screams, full-throated, and the sound is swallowed by rain battering against the windowpanes.
Angel, her rabbit plushie, is clutched tight in her forelegs, pressed into her barrel with her muzzle nestled between his ears. She searches through her already-blurry memories of school, trying to find a statistic on how many ponies get killed by lightning in the safety of their own beds. She doesn't find one, but her mind helpfully fills in the blank space next to the percent sign with 'probably a lot'. It's wiped off her cramped mental blackboard with another flash.
Her wings twitch and flex against the bedsheets, trying in vain to read the weather. Pegasus instincts, ignoring the signals from her eyes relayed by her brain confirming that yes, there is a storm. She squeezes her eyes shut and wonders where Rainbow Dash is now. After school, she became hard to get a hold of — she'd just show up every month or so, floating lazily outside Fluttershy's window like she was sneaking her out of a study session again.
They'd wander Cloudsdale together, Dash taking circuitous, looping, dizzy routes, and Fluttershy following in more or less a straight line, eyes on her friend. Eventually they'd end up in some coffee shop, order breakfast, and talk for hours. There were clear, unspoken rules to these conversations: Fluttershy wouldn't ask Rainbow where she'd gone, and Rainbow wouldn't ask Fluttershy where she was planning to go. It didn't leave much to talk about, but they were old friends, so they found plenty.
After, they'd part ways at the doorstep. For the rest of the day, Fluttershy would worry. Did Rainbow Dash visit her parents when she returned to Cloudsdale? Did she have a whole itinerary of friends to catch up with, on which their visit was just one line? Or did she come home just to see withdrawn little Fluttershy and check if she'd left the nest?
She finally has, now. She wonders if Dash has already visited and looked for her only to find an empty bedroom with her possessions packed away. Would she be proud of her for finally finding the courage to leave home? Rainbow was gone from Cloudsdale only a few days after her graduation, striking out into the world like the coiled spring she was. Her thoughts wander after her old friend, trying and failing as usual to trace what her path through the world could be.
With blissful mercy, exhaustion drags Fluttershy under. She dreams of an ocean the breadth of Equestria, surface broken only by the peak of Canterlot and the downpour. She dreams she's the Princess, and her nation is drowning, and her long white legs are milling uselessly as her sodden wings drag her under. She dreams within as without: pounding rain. It stops in the morning, the only evidence of its passage being mud she has to tiphoof around for days.
A quartet of pink galoshes sit lined up in the entryway. A pot of tea lies abandoned in the kitchen, curling steam lost among the rafters. Rain lashes against the windows in waves, so hard that it looks like the little cottage is adrift at sea. Up the narrow staircase, a mare who has spent weeks convincing herself she's as grown as her age indicates hides under the sheets like a filly. Her bedroom is dark, despite it being the middle of the day, curtains drawn shut to hide the gray outside.
She thinks again about storms in Cloudsdale, about her clean wet hooves she'd towel off when she stepped back inside. It's nothing like the icky mud that sucks hungrily at her hooves down here. When thunder was just a distant rumble, she loved to fall asleep to it. Here on the ground, a storm feels like the wrath of an alicorn. The sound of it does not roll but crashes, her room lighting up bright white that washes out the glow of the lantern she'd lit for comfort.
She shuts her eyes. Maybe if she just focuses on the weight of her blankets, on the smell of linen, on the feeling of Angel pressed into her barrel, she'd open her eyes and be home. She'd roll out of bed, take in the sight of all the familiar posters of wildlife, and trot downstairs. Her dad would be fussing over the stove, and her mom would call her into the sitting room, where she'd be knitting. She'd sit down with her, and her dad would bring in a plate of freshly-baked cookies, and—
She cries out as another crash shakes her cottage. At least she wasn't caught out in it. She's a rotten flier, but she still has the keen weathersense of the average pegasus, so when the light drizzle that had defined the day grew heavier she hurried along with the last of her food deliveries to the animals and rushed home. She hopes they're all in their burrows, too, safe from the howling wind outside.
Is this what she came down to the ground for, to hide in her own burrow and pretend she never left home?
She kicks off her sheets before she can think and gallops down the stairs. The unopened package from her parents on the table, the pot of tea, her galoshes and the still-wet raincoat hanging above them, all are ignored in her dash to the door. She sweeps the pin free of the hasp with a wing and batters it open, stumbling. The wall of noise nearly knocks her off her hooves.
She walks into the storm and the world falls away. Rain whips against her face so hard it stings. It's warm. The storm swallows everything, all sound, all vision — if she spun around three times, she wouldn't be able to find her cottage again. Instead, she sits down on her haunches and raises her head to greet the weather.
The fear is Fluttershy's. The storm does not want her to be afraid — it does not want anything but to be, to blow, to exist as it will until it is time for it to stop. The loud noises, the flashes, the shivers, they all reminded her of the fury of a pony. But out here, in the storm, part of the storm, she understands it is nothing like that. It holds no anger or fury. It simply is, it only exists, and anything she feels toward it is her own. Here is a force which expects nothing from her.
So, she lets those feelings be washed away. Anxiety, fear, happiness, joy. All the defenses she threw up against the inquisitions of other ponies, all the reactions she'd trained herself into to avoid their ire. She lets them go, for a moment, and the storm takes them, as it does everything. Not gladly, or begrudgingly. It is an action alone, with nothing hidden beneath. The wind washes them from her mane like dust, rain licks them from her feathers like a cat with its young, and they soak into the grass with the rest of the water.
They will return, all of them, when the storm leaves and the sun shines again. They are not stone sculptures, but plants that sprung from rich soil she'd cultivated in herself. But she understands, in that moment, that soil is not only to be tilled. The world has its own ways beyond the whim of ponies. Not a plan, for a plan requires a future and a goal. Just a way things are, and will be, as long as she lets them.
A fresh pot of tea sits brewing on the counter. Outside the open windows, birds chirp, rediscovering the world beyond the hollows in which they hid. One, plumage a bright blue, perches a moment on the sill. Fluttershy smiles and offers him the cookie she's eating. He looks at it for a moment, then flies away again, joining his friends in the branches above. A drenched towel lies next to the doormat, water pooling on the floor.
Fluttershy returns to the letter. It's an update on the things that have happened in the few weeks she's been gone — mom's work at the weather factory is as rote as ever, even if she doesn't say as much. Dad jokes about empty nest syndrome and writes that he's taking dancing lessons. She giggles. Maybe she'll tell him that Zephyr would be eager to fill the gap she'd left.
The care package smelled like home and contained some tupperware stuffed to the brim with molasses cookies, two of which have already vanished with a third following, and a light, hoof-knit scarf done in a powdery pink. Fluttershy doesn't cry — she already had in the morning when it arrived, and four days ago when she smelled a mushroom pot pie just like dad's at the market, and three days before that. Now she treasures the pangs in her chest instead.
The pain is vital because it reassures her of the importance of what she does. Even with something tugging at her heart, she's still here, in the cottage she has been calling home out of a will that will become habit.
The little rabbit lies on the table. The only evidence of Fluttershy's work are the bandages wrapped around him, white on white, and the rise and fall of his chest, shallow but present. A medical kit's contents sprawl like viscera, gauze and scalpels and forceps and antiseptic. The bunny's savior is in the kitchen, far enough away to not smell the blood but close enough to watch. She sits on the floor, back resting against the counter, hooves clutching a mug, wings tight against her sides.
She's done all she can. She'd found him not far from her cottage, and it was clear he'd ran until he collapsed. His beautiful white coat, the same shade as her stuffed toy, was stained red with blood, and his breath came in little pants. She'd rushed him in, only pausing for a moment before bringing him over the threshold into her home, cleaned his wound, and dressed it as well as she could. She's even closed the windows, in hopes warmth would bring him comfort. It's nothing like when she used to play doctor with Angel. She doesn't get to decide when he gets better. All she can do is wait.
Just... wait.
She springs up, her tea spilling on the hardwood, and rushes over to the table. The smell of blood makes her stomach turn, but she looks over the bunny for the fifth time. Surely there's something more she can do! The sun's setting, so... She darts around, gathering a box and a fresh towel. She lifts the bunny, every so gently, wraps him in the towel, and places him in the box so he can get a good night's rest.
A smile graces her lips for the first time in hours. Looking down at him, it's almost easy to forget how injured he is. He's just a sweet little bunny, bundled up for bedtime... Slowly, so slow she's barely moving, she reaches her muzzle down and nuzzles it against his head, once, gentle. A breathy squeak makes her rear back, nearly falling over herself at her haste to give him space. "Sorry, little guy..." she murmurs, ashamed to have brought him pain when she only meant comfort.
She paces back to her spot in the kitchen and curls up. The exertion of all her panicking is finally catching up, and her eyes begin to flutter closed. She'll be here with him through the night. And she is, sleeping in fitful half hour bursts, a chain of naps interrupted by pacing, checking, unwrapping, rewrapping, even changing his dressings once. The wound doesn't look any better, but it wouldn't, she tells herself.
It'll take time to heal, but she'll know by morning whether he'll make it through. And he will. She's doing everything she can.
It's four in the AM when she knows. It comes on her without warning, a feeling deep in her belly, so totally assured that it takes her a moment to recognize it as her own. When she finally understands what it is, she pulls the box from the table and places it on her back. He doesn't belong in here. He should be able to see the stars.
She curls around him out on the grass, on a hill nearby. Close enough to let him know he's not alone, far enough to not frighten him. He doesn't shy away, just lies there and breathes, big dark eyes staring up at the cosmos above. Hopefully those wide eyes are those of wonder, not terror. Either way, he must know there's something bigger than himself at play. She's not sure he's all there, already, or he wouldn't let her rest her chin on the grass next to him, unable to tear her eyes away.
She wishes it could've waited until morning, so he could see the sun again. Nopony should have to die in the dark with only the mare in the moon for company. And Fluttershy, of course, but who would want her there? Useless in the sky, useless on the ground. Can't even save a perfect little rabbit. Maybe, floats a voice from the dark corners of her mind, you should try the sea next.
She shakes it off, a practiced mental release. The stars are beautiful, twinkling and shimmering more here than they do against the thin air back home. A warm breeze shifts the grass and her feathers with it. Tomorrow will be clear and blue. She looks down again to the bunny who will never know that. He's not gone, but he's going. All she can do now is be with him and offer some small comfort. She's doing all that she can. That's all that she can do. When she no longer has reason to keep her eyes to the ground, the stars above are fading under the rose glow of dawn.
She can see him up on the hill from here. Grass has grown over the turned earth, and bright yellow bursts of wildflower crowd around. She thought of adorning the spot with a grave marker, but treating it as a grave felt wrong. Graves are for ponies, for things with names to mark their resting places. They're marked so loved ones can visit and remember.
Animals are not remembered — they exist, and then they don't, like a spring storm. Fluttershy hadn't named the rabbit, but she remembers the scent of his fur beneath the blood. She suspects she'll remember it long after the cool earth beneath the plants finishes forgetting him, but she's a pony. This is the headstone, vivid in her own mind.
She pulls another heliotrope from the earth with her teeth. Planting the land in front of her cottage was one of her first acts on moving in; she'd been so excited to bury her hooves in the earth. As a pegasus, the way she was raised to understand something was to exert will on it, to sculpt and herd as they did the clouds. She planted geraniums, heliotropes, and dahlias. None were native to Ponyville, but they were pretty, so she bought seeds from the market and forced them into the earth.
She spits the flower into a wheelbarrow with the rest and digs her hooves into the earth, churning it and turning it over, occasionally plucking a stray root out with her teeth. She'd watered her garden and been filled with pride as it bloomed, a clear 'Fluttershy is here' marker in the wilderness. The fact it marked hasn't changed, of course, but Fluttershy's starting to think that the mare it declared has.
The work done, she flicks the sweat off her wingtips and leaves the wheelbarrow where it is. The evening sun is casting warm tangerine light through the boughs, and the river's deliciously cold this late in autumn. She hums notes without tune to herself as she walks upstream to where it's wider, and birds lend snatches of their own song as they pass. A squirrel watches her from up in the canopy and she waves a wing at it. Does it recognize her? It's probably hungry, either way. She pulls an acorn from her saddlebag with her teeth and tosses it up, where the squirrel scrambles to catch it and darts away. Everything's getting a little leaner as winter peeks in, and all the animals are a little more on edge for it.
She is as well. Her first winter on the ground, even followed by her first spring, first summer, and first autumn, will be a challenge. She still doesn't know very many ponies in town, and she can count those she doesn't buy supplies from on her hooves without losing balance. Everypony she's met has been very nice, though.
Water glints in the light, a flow so clear that only the sunlight's reflection obscures the rocks in the riverbed. Willows lean low as if stooping to drink, and a pair of white swans take off from the bank, winging into the air. A carp flits upstream, silver scales catching the sun for a moment and turning it koi-colored.
She shrugs her saddlebags off and leaves them on the bank. Part of her mind yells to do a cannonball, but she just giggles at it and wades in slowly. The chill does nothing to her pegasus physiology, only reminding her of winters back home. She spreads her wings, letting the feathers float on the surface, humming with pleasure at the feeling of the flow parting them.
It's been a couple months since she's heard her own name on another pony's lips, so when it floats into her ears she nearly takes flight like a pigeon. Instead, she freezes up entirely. Maybe it's just the wind.
A patch of water next to her explodes into a column of glittering droplets. She really does take flight then, or tries to, wet wings only leaving her to tumble in the water, her head going under. The shock knocks the air out of her, and for a moment she can't tell which way is up, the sunlight reflected all around her. Before she can even panic, a pair of strong forelegs wrap around her barrel and haul her to the surface, where she splutters and gasps for air.
"Sheesh, Fluttershy, did you get even more jumpy?" a familiar voice asks from just behind her ear. She whirls around, hooves finding purchase again in the silt at the bottom of the river. Rainbow Dash smiles at her, like always, confidence unmarred or even bolstered by over a year adrift. Or that's what Fluttershy figures, anyway; she's never gotten a full story out of her friend in her visits to Cloudsdale, only the sense that she was coming back from somewhere new each time.
"Rainbow! It's... It's nice to see you," she says, trying to package up just how wonderful it is into her words and float it downstream towards Rainbow.
"Right?" she responds, kicking over so she's belly up in the water. "Sorry I haven't been around for a while, Flutters. Tried out the whole 'having a job' thing everypony talks about, out in Griffonstone. Wasn't my thing, but I stuck it out. Definitely made spitting in my boss's face a lot more satisfying at the end." She laughs, and Fluttershy has to wade after her as the current drifts them downstream.
"That's good... What now?" Fluttershy asks, the same question she always does. Usually she gets a shrug and some whim or another, but this already isn't usual. This is the most Rainbow has ever said about her latest trip, even if she didn't say what she was doing for work.
The blue pegasus doesn't answer for a while, just staring up through the willows at the sky that must be the only constant in her life. Fluttershy opens her mouth to change the subject, but is interrupted. "I think... I'm going to stay here, for a while."
Fluttershy looks around, then back. "... In the river?"
Dash laughs, a loud bark that scares a bluebird off its branch. "In Ponyville, dude. I've been through a couple times, back before you came down, and the weather patrol is pretty simple. I could do it in my sleep, I bet." Her wings twitch against the current, as if eager to be pulling her through the air even now.
"That... That would be wonderful," Fluttershy says, wiggling a hoof in the mud, watching as it blooms into a cloud underwater.
"I actually came over to get your say on it. I know you're totes biased since you want me around and all, but I'm a pony in high demand, y'know? What do you think of things down here?" Fluttershy glances up to look at her, and is surprised to see her looking back, a watchful eye and neutral expression that looks out of place.
Fluttershy smiles, the answer coming so easily that she savors it in her mouth for a moment before she speaks it. "I love it."
Rainbow raises an eyebrow at her, then cracks into a smile. "Well, that settles it, then." She rolls over and paddles to the bank, then hops out of the river, shaking droplets of water everywhere. Fluttershy's best friend turns and flashes a grin over her shoulder. "See you soon, Flutters." Then she's off, leaves rustling in her wake. This time, the empty space doesn't ache, it sings.
Carousel Boutique's interior is bright and full of color, not like a carnival but instead a field of flowers, the kind of natural complements hewn into a pony's mind by instinct. However, its proprietor and star, Rarity, doesn't rely on those primitive impulses; she designs, and to do that, she understands. The white mare is frighteningly good at understanding, in the literal sense — when the seamstress first fixed eyes on her, she felt pinned like a butterfly to a board.
Rarity had made good on the promise in those eyes in the hours after, when she pulled the poor pegasus into her boutique and proceeded to design a dress that is hanging in her closet even now. She winces thinking about it. All the passion and drive Rarity poured into it had curdled into guilt as Fluttershy could find no occasion suitable for its wearing, no bravery suitable for the attention it would draw. Rarity had offered to design more dresses since, likely thinking the first not suited to her taste, and she had declined.
Instead, on the dais in the center of the boutique stands a proper candidate for the seamstress's talent. The Princess, in all her radiance and beauty, carries herself as regally as always, even with measuring tape sliding around her barrel. Rarity takes the measurements with professionality utmost, all the while carrying a conversation that is neither scandalous gossip nor dry business, but the best of both. Fluttershy herself isn't sure why she's here: fading into the background has its uses, but she's afraid it's long since passed into the realm of spying, and can't bring herself to interrupt.
It's no wonder they don't notice her here, since they're both facing away. It's a strange angle to see Princess Celestia from. The Summer Sun Celebration is often held in Cloudsdale, so Fluttershy has had the privilege of seeing Her Highness up close a few times, but she always faced the crowd, all the better to watch over her little ponies. Seeing her flanks-first— not that she's staring, of course —is uncanny. The bright cutie mark and ethereally flowing tail, not to mention having to crane her neck up, are at least familiar.
"Fluttershy, what do you think of this color on Celestia?" Rarity asks, and the pegasus jumps as she realizes she's being watched, both by the seamstress and her subject. Rarity's holding up a light pink swatch not unlike the mane currently half-hiding the blush on Fluttershy's face. Her eyes dart to the Princess, expecting a reprimand either for her staring or Rarity's familiarity, but she only sees the renowned mien of generous patience. Is the unicorn on a first name basis already?
Of course she would be. Rarity is everything Fluttershy isn't, after all. Confident, accomplished, moving easily in her social circles like a butterfly, so sure of what she wants and how to get it that there's never any question on either matter. A tugging, rabid thing inside Fluttershy's mind howls and wishes the unicorn was mean, or shallow or petty, or anything but the very embodiment of generosity and kindness. She wishes Rarity was a bully instead, so all her defenses would work and she could shut her out.
Ignorant to her wishes, they both continue to stare. The Princess steals a glance at Rarity, obviously unused to Fluttershy's spaces of silence, then looks back to her. "It's lovely," she manages to squeak out, hating the way her voice nearly fails to carry across the room to them.
"It certainly is," Princess Celestia agrees, not looking back at the fabric. The air in the boutique is still, the windows latched shut.
Fluttershy wanders to wakefulness slowly, the only sensations left from her dream the heat of a blush on her face and the sight of two shades of white close enough to contrast. The memories slip away entirely as she rolls over to look out the window, seeing snow. It's overcast still, the kind of weather ponies call gloomy, but she doesn't mind. The snow, three days old, lies piled in some places and tamped down in others, all sorts of off-whites.
She isn't quite pegasus enough to sleep out in it, much as she'd like to. Even in the cold nights of this season, she's sometimes found Dash in her wandering flights, visible as a bright blue against a dark cloud, dozing. She's still grateful for her cottage, of course. It's comfortable for guests, as few as they might be, it's an effective animal hospital, and when she feels like something more substantial than foraged plants, the stove is a welcome luxury.
Still, the conception of 'home' she so willfully tried to cram into this space has finally been given the chance to sprawl. Its borders are vague, but it encompasses the hill, the trees, the river. The cottage is another habitat with its own nature, as the river has the cool water she bathes in, as the hill has the lush grass on which she suns herself. The snow has muted some of that for now, but it will melt. The snow always melts.
A magpie perches on the sill and sings a snatch of notes it learned from somepony. She's read that they're one of few birds to pass the mirror test — capable of recognizing that their reflection is indeed a reflection, not another animal. Does this animal name themselves, garb their body with an abstraction to save them from the reality that they, too, are part of nature? The bird looks at her quizzically, then flies off, as if offended at her silent evaluation. She would be, too.
Finally, she shrugs off her blankets and rolls out of bed. It's market day, and she needs to buy food and firewood. A simple little desire which flickers in her chest like an ember. She shields it from the cold as she trots down the stairs, donning her saddlebags. Her eyes flick to the letter on the desk which she opened last night.
In it, her parents edged around a question they refused to put into writing but came across loud as anything: what's next? She's not chewing on the question itself, because she doesn't care for it. Instead, she's mulling over her reaction to it, the way her mind darts away like a shadow from the sun. Being here in Ponyville was her "what's next" for years. Now, after not even a year here, they're asking her to take another step. Toward what?
Her mind wanders to the town veterinarian, who'd learned of her talent for animals from Rarity during one of Opal's routine checkups. She'd come out to the cottage to see her, and Fluttershy agreed to do some odd jobs for bits now and again. Fauna was impressed with her work, and always eager to get her back for more. She could tell her parents about that, but then they'd ask whether she's going to go to school for it, and how much she's being paid, and if Ponyville has room for another vet, anyway, and Manehattan has so many opportunities, and...
She knows they're not being demanding, of course. They're only curious. That's what bothers her, she thinks: the desire to understand, as ponies do. To cultivate, to shape and mold toward "what's next". To grow a garden, when wildflowers are just as pretty, and bare earth beautiful too. Why do ponies strive toward order and call it beauty? Why do worms fattened with mulberries disgust Rarity while the silk they produce draws her fascination?
She thinks then of the word 'refinement', in both its senses. In Rarity, it is class, style, a height to aspire to, something she ties dress after dress together to ascend as a colt climbs knotted bedsheets to his lover's window. Fluttershy knows it to be Rarity's dream to sit at the beck of Princess Celestia herself, in the highest echelons of pony society.
In Cloudsdale's weather factory, refinement is the process by which loose vapor and unruly weather is transformed into cultivated clouds which can be distributed on a schedule. The world's natural processes, organized. Raw material into something useful to ponies. The sun, tracking across the sky.
White coats and white fur and splatters of red linger in her mind as she makes her way into town, galoshes forgotten in the foyer.
Out on the fringes of the town of Ponyville, the wind meanders past the Everfree. On its course, it takes a moment to wind around and through a cottage. The path leading to the cottage is a suggestion made by its visitors which the world heard but did not take to heart. Its thatch roof holds heat as well as it does the animals which have made dens throughout it, and birds roost on the smooth wood of the worn sills as easily as any branch.
The cottage does not hamper the breeze's work — it blows freely from front to back through windows which are never closed, carrying pollen and seeds and birds. It does not linger in the kitchen, though guests do at times, and for them plates are retrieved from the cabinet; the oven is stoked and tea prepared; soil is brushed from couches and swept from hardwood.
The interior is not lit at night by anything but the moon.
Below, a river canters upon rock. Some snowmelt mixes with the flow, the last vestiges of winter in the places unwrapped by ponies. It meanders like the wind, going no place in particular but, inevitably, to the ocean. On its bank, a white rabbit sits, nose twitching, and casts about, foraging out of curiosity rather than hunger. At the water's edge is a boundary of reeds, and the mud beneath is cool and clean.
On the hill, wildflowers blossom like blessings, in blue and pink and more. A yellow pony lies in the grass, wings spread out not to catch the sun, but to cradle it for a moment before it goes on its way. Birds share songs in boughs above. The wind takes a moment to kiss feathers and whisper of weather to come, not advice rendered but secrets shared, that which may be taken in or ignored at will.
Beyond, in Ponyville and Canterlot, ponies perform their dances. The hop, the ballet, the waltz. Instinctual, learned, socially required. They dance unceasingly, even in their sleep, dreaming of the roles they play, of who leads and who follows. In time, Fluttershy may learn the steps, and join them for a while. If she doesn't, then that's fine, too.
Author's Note
"the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke. 'theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron'" - dril
this was originally inspired by a quote from toni morrison's tar baby about beauty (that's where the title came from), but it kind of morphed into a reflection on narrative and order. i have a lot of thoughts on equestria and Narrative. you can probably tell because of how i use celestia as a symbol in this work, i think she's very embedded into the pony psyche as this idea of order and fate. it's pretty telling that love is a physical force here and has as many princesses as the astral bodies. it's telling also that the first major villain is a literal embodiment of chaos, the antithesis of narrative, and not only is he tamed far before his redemption by being fit into the role of villain, he's turned into a puppy later by being redeemed and even used as a hero against forces that feed on love.
i think the fluttershy of this story does, eventually, fold into the fluttershy of canon as she's introduced. her ego death here is kind of an overcorrection, the pendulum swinging far before it finds its equilibrium. she has a lot to learn about ponies in general, but i think her thoughts on beauty and nature form a solid base of quiet confidence as she explores those frontiers
