The night’s sweltering summer air lay on Fluttershy like a wool blanket. She had long since kicked away her bed sheets, which now tangled around her hooves, damp with sweat. An impotent breeze crawled through the open windows, barely stirring the curtains. It licked her shoulder with a cool kiss so brief she almost imagined it was a dream, except dreams required sleep, and sleep felt leagues away. Instead, she drowsed, tuned to the buzz of cicadas and the faint light of a waxing moon yet to crest the sky.
Out of mordant curiosity, she craned her neck to glance at the bedside clock. Nearly one a.m. Some circuit deep in the pegasus lobe of her brain knew the sun would rise in precisely five hours and fourteen minutes. Other circuits, closer to the surface of her thoughts and tinged with hot malaise, knew she wouldn’t get any sleep in those hours.
She could sleep in the clouds. Most pegasi did. It was cool up there, crisp and breezy. It was also an admission that this cottage, the ground, and this life itself weren’t really for her; that, like all pegasi, she was only a guest here. And so, out of stubborn pride felt only in the safe confines of the night, she held fast to the stifling cottage and heavy air.
But she didn’t have to sleep in the bed. As the moon reached its zenith, willpower overcame inertia, and she rose with languid grace to flow out the window into the night.
* * *
She didn’t go far. Just a few feet.
The grass roof was wild with summer growth, seared tawny and gold by the heat. It crackled like straw as she flopped down, wings and legs splayed. The breeze stirred her feathers and bore with it the scents of the forest – loam, pines and decay.
Dry grass rustled beside her. A mouse, probably, or a snake. They were surprisingly good climbers. She resolved to limit her tossing and turning for its sake and wondered what it thought of its new bedmate.
Something pragmatic, probably. Her animal friends were all pragmatists at heart – they had to be, when each day might be their last. For all that she made her cottage a shelter from the wilderness and enforced her will within its walls like a god, her guests were itinerants, as happy to flee into the forest as to hide beneath her bed. They were wild at heart and could no more be caged than she could capture a cool autumn evening and save it for summer. Likely the little mouse or snake or vole nesting beside her concluded that she was a friend, and safe, and went back to whatever little dreams sustained it through the night.
It wasn’t the first time an animal had shared her bed. They didn’t attach any meaning to the act. To them, sleeping with her was just an extra layer of security against the night.
Ah, but ponies. She shifted, and when her hidden bedmate didn’t protest, rolled onto her back, exposing her belly to the breeze. Ponies were troublesome. She’d never shared her bed with one and couldn’t imagine the courage it took. And wouldn’t it be too hot, with another body burning like a furnace beside her on a sultry night like this? How did couples stand it? The thought dredged the depths of her mind while she lingered on the edge of sleep. Some of her friends had lovers, and she imagined them tangled together, sweating in the heat, clearly unbothered, perhaps enjoying it as an excuse not to sleep at all and instead—
A drop of rain landed on her muzzle, startling her back into lucidity. Her imagination lived on for a few more seconds, and she flushed pink with mortification. Around her, the rain pattered on the grass and the trees, a light shower attending a passing cloud like the train of a dress. Within minutes it was gone, and only its incense remained. She shoved all thoughts of bedmates and lovers deep into her mind and closed her eyes, willing sleep to return.
It didn’t, or perhaps it did. She bobbed on the waves, aware of the passage of time by the staccato motion of the moon overhead. The raindrops evaporated, scenting the air, and then even that memory was gone, and the heat of summer remained.
Somewhere in the forest, a grey-mantled wren called to its mate. A mockingbird picked up the song, and a brief argument followed. Fluttershy listened with half an ear, her mind spinning out abstract lessons: those birds, only a few seasons old, were already doing all the things nature required of birds. And here she was, a full-grown mare, the fundamental facts of her life unchanged across the passage of years. Stalled, one might say. A cool current of despair teased her hooves. Years lost, wasted, spent caring for birds and rodents that would forget her the day she died. And though that day was surely decades away, in the throes of half-sleep she imagined it rushing forward, devouring all the squandered years that lay before her. “A strange mare,” they would say at her ill-attended funeral. “Spent all her time with animals. They couldn’t reject her.”
She woke with a start. Dawn painted the east a somber grey. Overhead, the dark shapes of early rising pegasi pushed clouds across the sky, preparing the day’s weather. She blinked at them in surprise – it had just been full dark.
She yawned and stood. The bleak thoughts were already faint shadows, dissolving like mist as the sun pinked the horizon. A grackle croaked from its perch on the roof, and she reached out a wing to brush it in greeting. It nibbled her feathers.
Another hot day, she judged. If she hurried, she could catch Rarity at Sugarcube Corner. She smiled at the thought of breakfast and hopped from the roof, her wings catching the air and lofting her into the morning.
