Pockets Full of Posies

All of them, including Discord, travel there in a flash,
holding Fluttershy tight.
At once, they notice the ash,
the clouds obscuring the night.
No fields of emerald green,
or glittering gems of honey-amber sun,
just the oily sheen
of tar on the grass; no sign of anyone.

Fluttershy can’t help it:
she yells ‘till her voice is hoarse,
searching for a soul amidst the gray grit.
(But nopony comes, of course.)

They do find, in a glade
of sunrays piercing through the silt,
a pocket of gentle warm shade,
a place where a nest of some kind was built.

There in the golden patch,
hidden behind a gnarl of gorse,
a bed of turquoise petals, a flower that can hatch,
a floral crib the size of a small horse.

“It’s the only thing left,”
one of them mutters.
Fluttershy, bereft
of spirit, stutters.

She leans into Discord’s touch,
as he curls around her,
holds him tight as a crutch,
as her vision starts to blur.

But in the honeyrays
of Celestia’s golden light
she catches a blaze
of sun glinting off her hoof amidst the blight.

She looks at herself once more,
gazes at the beautiful shell,
and allows herself to feel a glow in her core:
No longer is her body a Hell.

She knows who she is.

She has answers.

And her soul, at once, is aligned.