Fluttershy Goes To The Bank
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had moved in with each other to a wondrous home in the sky. On a fine brisk Saturday October 14th morning, Fluttershy unpacked a bag of tomatoes and put them away in the kitchen, opening the cloudfrigerator and finding a place behind milk. She strained with the effort of pleasingly arranging their fridge.
"Hey Fluttershy", said RD, coming in from the back of the house. "How are you, roommate, being a pony who lives together with me in this house, in the sky, as my mate. Together as roommates, we together must share in the togetherly purchased great food here, which you have bought now, for us, as yourself and your mate."
Fluttershy blushed. She turned around to greet RD with numerous hugs, and asked "why didn't you answer the phone when I called?" The cloudophone had in fact never rung, as Fluttershy dialed Frau Pinkie Pie's home by mistake. When the ponies were old and forgetful they would look back on this day as a rare staying moment of lucidity in an otherwise blurry recollection of washed away dreams, but for now the remark was forgotten as the tomatoes remained sadly packed.
"I didn't even hear the phone" RD answered, in a way she had not done the phone. "I'm sorry, but I need you to go buy us colors. My mane is almost out of its orange. I wish to become a complete fully wonderful blur of emotion-sparked cascades of split wondrous light, and I simply cannot without orange. My hair cannot go from gold to red."
"True", said Fluttershy, putting aside the last tomato to its designated place on the shelves. "I'll ask Rarity. She mustn't be gone for too long, and will surely return."
Rarity had long fled to the holding cells wherein Twilight awaited her rest. She would surely return with great haste. Meaning Rarity, that.
But alas though, as Fluttershy soared to Boutique, her cloud wallet weighed light on her skin. "What horror", she called to the empty blue sky, to a God(dess) that wasn't to hear, "I've no bits, and my quest is for naught." She touched down next to Sugarcube Corner to enter the bank.
The bank was a mammoth construction and soared to the five hundred clouds of the skies. She was sorrowful, now, as she entered, for she couldn't conceive of the wonders that ponies had wrought. "I need help" came a voice from a cloudspeaker. The bank's limestone columns surrounded by flame reached up endlessly unto the roof, where sapphire masonry formed into domes out of view. The sordid despair of the world was here ever-hid, as the slow bursting fountains brought grace to the feeling of hedonic bliss in the air. Cherubim ponies engraved on the wall sang out wintertime hymns all the day. Glass etchings lay on the ten meter windows that opened to let fly all tears. Beauty and form were as one in the bank; as a tower to heaven it served.
Fluttershy waited in line for three hours while she gazed at the sights all around. The bank would in some other life be her heaven, a wondrous hope to allay all her fears of a world that wasn't to come. Here and now she could not come to terms with the grandeur and fainted then rose from the ground. Behind her was Vinyl, enraptured, and the two exchanged greetings and spoke.
"I wish I could love all the rest, here", she started, the she being Fluttershy rather than Scratch. "There are times when I feel alone. I live with a roommate, my mate here, and love her the way that inaugural rains are so welcome on warm summer days. Frau Dash is a night storm in August, the opening up of new Earth to a pony who hasn't much joy. And yet, all I know is that one day she'll leave me. We'll suffer. The grace that she offers me now is but tension to snap and destroy when it gives. She has ushered me into a world of speed and excitement and taken me now from the world I once called my home. No more seals to leap from the waves. I was younger once, now I'm older, and one day I'll wonder what happened that made me lose sight of the things I once loved. The answer is Rainbow Dash. Beautiful sorrowless R. Dash. She will forgive me for saying in truth I'm afraid. What if she hadn't come into my life? I'd be lesser but ever the same. Now what she does is convince me that I can now fly, and I can. But one day I can't, and the world will crash up before me and all that we saw will be gone. Say that the bank had not ever arrived in our 'ville. We had not ever known the great touch of the columns of flame. Would not Sugarcube Corner now seem as majestic a wonder? The bank is our wonder but ever awaits to be topped. It is in the construction of buildings we find their perfection, never their use. I am boring you. If the bank were to leave, enter sorrow. Despair and a now-cloudless world where who really need help are ourselves. Satiation would be a release. We must always have more banks, more Frau Dash. More rain to dash hopes of a summer to end now our pain. What should I do? Offer more of myself to her arms and in doing so find a soon-fleeting release? Reject her affection and spend my life here in the bank? How do I build myself up in a way that avoids our grand trap for transcendence? Transcending the need to transcend? I love her, but love more the world. I worship the corner far more than I worship the bank. The question is simple: to keep for myself the last vestiges of what's truly me or become one with Dashie, never again to have "me" as a pony, a pegasus all to my own?
"Go to her", whispered back Vinyl, and Fluttershy flew from the line.
When she returned, she brought liters of sunlight, retained in a jar. "This holds all the colors", she uttered, and Rainbow Dash said it was good.
