Fluttershy stared at the single blade of grass, and decided there was no such thing as simplicity.
She shifted. Her wings were getting itchy again. She rolled onto her side and twisted her body so that the blades would scrape against her sweater and, in turn, scrape the sweater against the appendages beneath.
Satisfied, she turned back over, back to the single little stalk poking its way out of the dirt. She counted the dewdrops on it. Seventeen. Afterward, she wondered if she had anything better to do besides lie on the bank of the little stream and listen to it trickle.
“Well,” she mumbled to herself. “I am kind of thirsty.”
Her water had been shut off a few weeks ago, and she had been drinking streamwater ever since. Properly, of course—she had a cauldron in her cottage she would occasionally drag out into the open whenever she was thirsty. It took a little more effort, but the days were longer for her now than they ever had been before. She had the time to spare.
She lifted herself off the ground, shaking leaves and flecks of soil from her sweater, the only article of clothing that made the itchiness bearable, before she slipped it off. Bracing herself, she slid down into the stream, kneeling down in order to submerge her wings. It was frigid at first, but cold was a sensation she had grown accustomed to.
A few ducks gave her a wide berth as they paddled upstream. A minute or two later, when she was sufficiently cooled, Fluttershy clambered out of the stream and shook herself off. A flock of birds hurriedly took wing from a nearby forest when they saw her emerge.
She bit the tops off a few blades of grass, chewing them as she ambled down the path to her cottage. It too had fallen into disrepair; there was no need to keep it clean if nopony ever came over or slept inside. It was her home, Fluttershy reasoned; she could keep it how she liked, and as she became one with nature, her house followed.
She retrieved a rusty iron cauldron that had been sitting on the counter of her kitchen. The floorboards were overcome with rot, the carpet torn apart by mold, and the paint peeled to the ceiling. The smell of it assaulted her, and invading spores invited her to sneeze, but she shook it off and dragged the metal container outside.
She stepped over her mailbox, which had fallen over in a storm last week. She hadn’t bothered to stand it back up, even though she passed it every day. A few rotting letters were lying by it, but they were all worthless, advertising products no longer of any worth to her, like microwaves and jury duty.
She dragged her burden to the stream, filled it, and dragged it out, now laden with clear, fresh water. There was some firewood nearby, which she retrieved and set around the cauldron. Her flint was still in her cottage, so once she made sure her bounty was balanced, she began the second round trip of the day.
Life was slow now. She liked it that way.
On the day when she committed to the idea of self-sufficiency, she scraped together what little she had saved and donated it all to the nearby orphanage. Fluttershy’s talent drove her to all the fortune she could ever need. Apparently it had been something of a hefty sum, enough for her to receive a thank-you card in return, signed by Scootaloo. She had it hung on the inside of her door.
Just as she arrived at her cottage, there was a blink of light in the sky above her. She glanced upward. There was distant flash, a screeching noise, and a powerful blast of wind. Fluttershy didn’t flinch, although she did close her eyes as a glob of mud smacked into her snout.
She wiped it away to see the resulting destruction. Her mailbox was standing upright again, she noted. Smoke was rising from the blackened dirt path. There was a second hole in the wall of her home. A muffled grunt rose from the inside.
“You really gotta get a longer runway, ‘Shy,” Dash complained as she poked her head out from under the rubble. She was wearing a blue jumpsuit with a jagged yellow stripe down her chest, and her goggles had fallen over her nose when she ‘landed.’ The suit was frayed around the hooves, and there was a bleeding scratch running down her side, but Fluttershy knew better than to worry.
Fluttershy tried to form words, but they came out as a muffled choke. She coughed, spitting out mucous, before rasping, “M-maybe.” She hadn’t used her voice in almost a day.
“You okay?” Dash asked casually, as if they saw each other regularly. With how many ponies she talked to, Fluttershy could imagine her falling into the habit of always using that overly calm, aloof tone.
“I’m fine,” Fluttershy said quickly, recovering her voice. “I... I didn’t expect you.”
“Well, enjoy it. I called off five appointments and one book signing to get here today,” Dash huffed. Fluttershy knew, of course, that the appointments would have been called off regardless whether Dash decided to show up at her doorstep instead of the office of her latest therapist.
“Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked, mostly out of habit. Back when she had helped Dash in her Wonderbolt-sponsored “200% Cardio Intensity” training program, it had almost been their equivalent of hello.
“I’m doing good,” Dash answered. “We were hovering around Ponyville for a while. Thought I would stop by.”
“You don’t just ‘stop by,’ Dash. This is only the second time I’ve seen you since you left,” Fluttershy said. “What did you do this time?”
She didn’t bother asking why Dash didn’t go to any of her other friends, to Twilight, to Applejack, to Pinkie, to Rarity. They might have been able to look at Dash and say, ‘I understand,’ because they did. In fact, a couple months ago, Dash had gone to each and every one of them, looking for guidance. What she had received instead was ‘help,’ in the most generic, unintentionally meaningless sense possible. That was how Fluttershy’s cottage had got its first hole punched through its side. Out of desperation.
“Look, do we have to get into that right away?” Dash asked. “I know I made some bad decisions, but we worked all that out last time. I just came to talk, okay? I like being around you.”
Fluttershy didn’t buy it, but she didn’t say so. Instead, as she trotted into her home to fetch her flint, she asked, “How’s performing been?” Some may have called it impolite to just walk away from the conversation, but she was really getting thirsty.
“Like I toldja, five appointments. My sleep schedule is whack. I’m looking into getting a fourth mattress, actually. Maybe it’ll help me kick my insomnia,” Dash explained. “That, and Wondrous is nearly onto the bestseller list. In a few more years, I might actually be able to get my own place.”
Fluttershy nodded, though she couldn’t reply while carrying the flint. She motioned in the direction of the stream. Dash followed her, hovering off the ground.
“Ugh... It’s really humid out here,” Dash muttered, partially in an effort to make small talk, partially because, to somepony who spent most of her life above the clouds, ground level may as well have been underwater, at least where humidity was concerned.
Fluttershy shrugged, but said nothing. They arrived at the cauldron, and Fluttershy struck the side of it with her flint. The resulting shower of sparks caught on the dry leaves and twigs that covered the tinder. In a few moments, a healthy fire was burning, and Fluttershy sat patiently as the water heated.
Dash shifted uncomfortably on her hooves. “Uh... so...”
Fluttershy said nothing. She was past the point of needing to entertain her guests. After a minute or two, though, more out of curiosity than anything else, she asked, “Is something on your mind, Dash?”
“...Maybe...” Dash said after a few moments.
Fluttershy plucked a few more loose feathers from her wing and tossed them aside. That was enough to snap Dash out of her daydream.
“Fluttershy... What happened to your wings?” she asked.
Fluttershy smiled softly, not directly looking at Dash, as she extended them to their fullest. Dash recoiled. They were bony fragments, shadows of the past, held together by cartilage and flaps of skin. Some pitiful tufts of down were spattered here and there, but, for the most part, her wings were completely bare.
Dash looked away, gagging. “Oh Celestia...”
Fluttershy said nothing, folding her wings back against her sides. No color rose to her cheeks, no anger or shame festered in her heart. There was nothing that meant less to her now than emotions.
After a while, after she had recovered her wits, Dash turned back around. “Wh—... What happened?”
“About two and a half months ago... they just started to fall out,” Fluttershy explained simply. “I don’t fly. It didn’t really matter to me.”
“B-... B-But why didn’t you go see a doctor? Or Twilight, or Zecora, or somepony? Fluttershy, that’s disgusting!” Dash blurted, her eyes wide.
“I tried,” Fluttershy stated, though the tiny bit of her that still cared about Dash’s opinion was starting to heat up. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Fluttershy, these are your wings we’re talking about! You’re a pegasus!” Dash argued. “There’s... There’s got to be something!”
“Unlike you, I don’t like to waste my time,” she snapped, still not looking directly at her friend.
She bit her tongue, but the damage was done. Dash’s eyes widened for a moment, then she tightly shut them and looked away. The fire crackled slightly, but the water was still cold.
“...Sorry,” Fluttershy mumbled after a few moments, though her voice had slipped back into its usual tone of resignation, lacking any indicators of conviction, or remorse.
Dash didn’t reply for a while. She was breathing deeply, her eyes still shut tight. But, eventually, she managed to choke out, “No. You’re right.”
“I know I’m right,” Fluttershy retorted quietly. “That doesn’t mean I should have said so. I’m sorry, Dash.”
“For what, letting me know?” Dash muttered. “I know you’re not sorry. And you shouldn’t be. All this—the appointments, the books, the suit, and what for? To cover up my own stupidity. I wasn’t meant for this.”
Fluttershy didn’t answer. She didn’t bother to reassure her friend. You don’t bandage a severed artery and call it a day. Instead, she asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know,” Dash mumbled. “Listen, I guess. Tell me I’m an idiot like you did last time. I’m tired of my friends telling me I’m awesome and I’m fantastic when I’m not. Ponies have been calling me perfect for years, now. It’s just my luck that I get to prove them wrong every single day.”
“I’m not going to listen to you mope,” Fluttershy stated. “You could always just quit, and you know that.”
“You know that I can’t,” Dash answered.
“You could live like me,” Fluttershy proposed.
Dash snorted. “Yeah, totally. I told you last time, I’m stuck. I’ve made commitments, I’ve signed contracts, I just can’t leave. I’d be letting other ponies down. I have responsibilities, ‘Shy, or do you even remember what the word means?”
Her insult fell on deaf ears. Fluttershy tipped the cauldron toward her and tested the water; it was lukewarm. “If you’re expecting me to set you straight... I’m sorry, Dash. You have to want it.”
“I don’t want to be fixed, Fluttershy.” Dash sighed. “I... I just want to talk to you.”
Fluttershy coughed, wiping her nose. “Fine. What do you want to talk about? How awful you are at everything? We’ve already gone over that. You are. I don’t care. ...Why should I?”
“Maybe because we’re friends,” Dash argued.
“Maybe. But you can afford the most brilliant therapists in Equestria to wring out your mind and leave it to dry. So, Rainbolt Dash, why in the world would you come see a monster like me for advice?” Fluttershy inquired. She glanced at the cauldron and saw the the water inside was simmering. “Your life is perfect, even if you aren’t.”
“That’s not true,” Dash muttered.
“Oh really? You have four mattresses. I sleep on the ground. You dine in the finest restaurants in Canterlot. I eat grass. Everypony looks up to you; you told me about the time that you dedicated your entire day to fan mail and weren’t even half done by sundown. My home is falling apart, I’m tired all the time, and I have nopony,” Fluttershy snapped, though she never once raised her voice or expressed anything resembling anger or passion.
Dash shut her eyes tight and took a deep breath. Fluttershy noticed the quiver in her bottom lip, though.
“If you’re going to cry, just do it,” she ordered. “What are you even doing?”
Dash uttered a short laugh. She rubbed her eyes, waited a moment, and said, “It’s something I learned a few years ago. When you do more complex stunts, you have a greater chance to get seriously injured. But it’s bad to cry to the cameras. So, you suck it up, and you walk it off, even when something really, really hurts.” She paused, taking a seat. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but...”
Fluttershy’s mouth twitched in what, a few years ago, would have been a scowl. “They taught you how to be Supermare?” she asked, taking a seat as well.
Dash nodded. “There’s ten thousand little foals out there who look up to me. Twenty thousand more ponies Scoot’s age, then fifty thousand more stallions and mares. I can’t be me anywhere where there’s ponies.”
“If you want to wallow in your insecurity, go back to Canterlot. At least you’d be in good company,” Fluttershy sneered, in what may have been her harshest tone yet that day. “I don’t want to be around a crybaby who thinks she can outrun her feelings.”
Fluttershy could tell Dash was struggling, but she somehow managed to rein her emotions in. “N-No,” she stammered, a pained smile somehow making its way onto her face, “you just hate seeing me this way.”
Fluttershy paused, tossing some dirt on her fire to calm it down and keep it from spreading, before answering. “Nopony wants to see anypony this way, Dash.”
“But you’re the only one who won’t try to make me feel better,” Dash replied. “You’re the only pony who isn’t going to see the Bolt. ...Maybe I am insecure. Maybe I am a crybaby. At least you have the spine to tell me so.”
“It comes from being Ponyville’s very own hermit.” Fluttershy sighed. “Emotions don’t matter out here. Just the sun, the stream, and the animals.”
“...How’s that going, by the way?” Dash asked, quickly regaining her composure. “Anything new?”
Ponies often came to Fluttershy with veterinary cases deemed hopeless by doctors in town. She took care of the dying animals. Once in a while, she even managed to cure them. She had often wondered why ponies were so afraid of dying things. Maybe even death in general. It had stopped scaring her when she stopped fearing everything else.
“My last case was about three months ago,” Fluttershy said simply.
It took a moment for that to click. When it did, though, Dash exclaimed, “So does that—”
“Don’t,” Fluttershy snapped.
“Fluttershy, I can get you the best doctors in Equestria,” Dash stated.
“There are other ponies they could be treating,” Fluttershy replied.
“You’re sick, ‘Shy. I’m not going to just leave you out here to—”
“Stop,” Fluttershy interrupted forcefully, too forcefully. There was a slight tickle in her throat, and she quickly covered her mouth with a hoof as she erupted into a fit of coughing. For a few moments, her body was racked with terrible spasms as her body desperately tried to rid her lungs of the thick slime that was slowly filling them. Trembling slightly, she wiped mucous from her nose. “I’ve been through worse. I’ll get through this.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Dash said, gritting her teeth. “I thought you said you tried talking to Twilight. Twilight never gives up. She’d think of something!”
“She’s busy,” Fluttershy stated automatically, gritting her teeth and forcing her tone down. She was now terribly thirsty, but the water was beginning to boil and would take a few minutes to settle down.
“Are you hiding?” Dash asked, mouth agape.
Fluttershy was silent, waiting for her weak heart to stop pounding and her muscles to relax. Tiny, itchy pinpricks wove their way up and down her body, and she wanted nothing more than to flop onto her back and thrash until the pain went away, but she controlled herself in front of Dash. Her breath smoothed out, her eyes opened, and she moistened her lips.
“I walked to the edge of town,” she said quietly. “Then I walked back.”
Dash regarded her with a mix of shock, fury, and exasperation. “That’s it?”
“I know better than you,” Fluttershy mumbled, her voice hoarse. “Don’t push me, Dash.”
Dash stood up and turned around. “Whatever. Throw your life away.”
“Nopony would miss me,” Fluttershy muttered.
Dash’s ears twitched at this remark. She sucked in a breath, turned around, and snapped, “That’s not true!”
Fluttershy said nothing. The water was still hot, too hot to drink, but she was so thirsty she tried anyway. The water burned her tongue, and she spit it out. She tossed more dirt and mud onto the fire, stifling it.
“...I would,” Dash whispered. She bit her lip, but she felt wetness running down the side of her face, cutting paths through the dirt and dust on her cheeks.
“You could be anywhere in the world, Dash. You could do anything with your life,” Fluttershy said softly. She looked away. “I’ve tried to live on my own, but this is as far as it goes. There are better ways you can spend your time.”
“But I want to spend it with you,” Dash pleaded. “I want to spend it with you because you see the world for what it is, even if you don’t like what you see. I want to spend it with you because you’re not like the fans, you’re not like the cameras, you’re not like the paparazzi. You don’t have expectations, of me, or of anything else. I just...” she trailed off, looking up at the sky. “I used to think I was freest when I was in the air. Maybe I was, until I started doing it for show.”
“Please, just go away,” Fluttershy begged. “I don’t want to hear all this, not from one of the most successful ponies on the planet.”
“‘Shy, you have no idea how much I’ve given up for this stupid uniform,” Dash growled, and to push the point, she started to pull the tights off, throwing the goggles to the ground. “I have another two years on this contract, and another five after that so that I can pay off these debts. Maybe you’re lonely, Fluttershy. Maybe you’re bored. But every day, I feel like I’m under attack. I don’t even enjoy what I do anymore, and you know how hard I worked for it. It’s just...”
“...Like a hamster wheel,” Fluttershy mused. “You can run and run, but you never get anywhere.”
“Yeah. Just like that,” Dash sighed, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve been awake for about thirty hours now, running on caffeine and endurance. Sometimes two days straight. It’s too much, ‘Shy. But I have to.”
“If you didn’t ever get to where you are now, though, you would be whining for the rest of your life, anyway,” Fluttershy spat. “Dash, your life may be awful. I wouldn’t trade mine for it. But that’s your own fault. I told you that last time. So what’s different?”
Dash tried to speak, but her words mashed together in her mouth, forming a sound something like ‘Neervrything.’
“The Wonderbolts have been near Ponyville for a while now. You could have visited earlier if you really wanted to,” Fluttershy pointed out. Her eyes narrowed. “Where were you last night?”
Dash closed her eyes. “‘Shy—”
“Gambling?” Fluttershy asked.
“Yes, but—!” she said, raising a hoof when Fluttershy opened her mouth to speak, “I wasn’t gambling bits this time. Only book signings. Those go for about a hundred apiece.”
“Dash...” Fluttershy sighed.
“This isn’t about me playing cards,” Dash said, her eyes still closed. She paused, bit her lip, and continued. “It was some nightclub. A patron of the Wonderbolts invited me, and he was real rich, so I kinda had to go. I played some cards, but all I had to give away were a few signings. But what they served there... Celestia, Fluttershy, I’ll never forgive myself for this.” She shook her head, wiping her eyes with a hoof.
“Well?” Fluttershy asked, and though her speech implied impatience, her tone denoted apathy.
“They were these little pink cubes. Salty. A little chewy. Hard to swallow. I asked the waiter what they were and...” She swallowed. “They were meat.”
Fluttershy looked up, her eyes wide.
“I-I didn’t believe it, but it was true. Spring pork, they ca-called it,” Dash said, the edge of a stammer creeping into her voice. “Everypony there was eating it, like sugarcubes. The patron, the card players, everypony. I almost threw up. I just... where was I? I-I had just gotten so used to nightclubs and parlors and casinos that I just d-didn’t notice it was one of those places.” She took a deep breath. “I just... got out. As fast as I could.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Fluttershy said disinterestedly. Carnivorism was taboo in Equestria, only practiced in the darkest of the nightlife. It was about as bad as murder.
“That isn’t the worst part, though. I got home, and I threw up as much as I could. I really, really tried. And another wonderbolt came by, kinda concerned, and asked what was wrong. And I explained, as calmly as I could, what I had just done,” Dash continued, her voice nearly a whisper. “And you know what he said? ‘Oh, yeah. It’s always toughest to keep it down the first time.’ I thought he was joking. ...He w-w-wasn’t.”
Dash broke. Any notion of self-control she had crumbled, and she sobbed openly for about a minute before beginning to hyperventilate. Though Fluttershy was concerned for her friend’s safety, she knew well the most efficient way to get Dash into a coherent state: She smacked Dash across the side of the snout as hard as she possibly could.
Which, admittedly, wasn’t that hard, but it did the trick. Dash rubbed the red mark on the side of her face, still sniffling. “Wh-Wh-Wh—”
“You’re sorry for what you did?” Fluttershy asked. Her voice was barely above a murmur, but she sounded stern regardless.
Dash nodded, instinctively wiping away her tears, and the dirt with them.
“Then that’s all you can do,” Fluttershy stated. “You can’t go back in time and fix your mistake. All you can do is pick yourself up and try not to make it again.”
Dash may have lost composure for a moment, but she was trained for quick recoveries. “Y-Yeah,” she agreed. “I just feel... I feel like my life is over. I feel like I can’t go any further. I can’t fly any higher. I can only go down.”
“Then it is what it is,” Fluttershy stated with a sigh.
They stood for a little while. The water was still too hot, but the fire was dying down.
“You need to come back with me,” Dash said.
“I can’t,” Fluttershy replied, knowing how this conversation would go. They had the same one last time.
“Why not?” Dash asked in return.
“Because this is all I know,” Fluttershy said simply. “The sun, the stars, the stream, the cottage, the animals, the forest... I wouldn’t be able to function anywhere else. You know that. I wouldn’t survive out there.”
“You won’t survive out here.” Dash put a hoof on the side of Fluttershy’s face. “Look at me. Look at me,” she ordered, forcing her friend to make eye contact. “I can’t survive out there, either. I need you to come out with me. You... You make me see clearly.”
Fluttershy took a deep breath, feeling the tickle in her throat again. “Give me a day to think about it.”
“Why a day?” Dash asked. “I can buy the train tickets right now. I can call a chariot. You don’t have to fly. You don’t have to do anything. Please... Don’t make me beg, ‘Shy.”
Fluttershy shook her head. “I need to think.”
“Isn’t that what you do out here every day, all the time?” Dash asked, her frustration apparent in her voice. “Don’t do this to me, Fluttershy.”
Fluttershy turned away, walking back toward her cottage.
Dash bit her lip, looking away for a moment, before turning back to Fluttershy’s bony silhouette. “What if you die?”
That made Fluttershy stop in her tracks.
“What if you die, tonight?” Dash added.
Fluttershy sighed, turning around. “Dash, you should go.”
“What if you don’t have the time to think about it? What if you just disappear, and you leave me on my own?” Dash demanded, storming up to Fluttershy, desperation apparent in her eyes.
Fluttershy took a few moments to answer. “...Then I die,” she began. Another pause. “And, when I die, I’ll decompose. And I’ll go back to the earth. I’ll give back what little I have left to Equestria. And that’ll be that.” She grit her teeth, feeling true anger for the first time in a long, long while. “And you know who isn’t in that picture? You.”
She could tell her remark stung, and Dash flinched from the force of the blow. “Fluttershy,” she breathed.
“And you know why? Because the world doesn’t revolve around you,” Fluttershy snapped. “Not out here. Out here there’s the sun, the light, the birds, and the trees. Nothing—else. And if I die tonight, that’s my business, not yours. I get to decide when and where I live and when and where I die.” She spat at Dash’s hooves. “Your life stopped being your own when you gave it away to other ponies. You think you have all the power, you think you’re the big cheese in show business, but you’re not. You’re everypony else’s—”
It was too much for Fluttershy’s body to handle. She coughed, retching, and fell to her knees. Her gnarled form twitched and shuddered as it tried to stave off suffocation. She was paralyzed for nearly a minute as her body attempted to expunge pent-up fluids.
After the storm had passed, though, she picked herself up, wiped her nose, and said, “I’m never going to live your life, Dash. And if that’s where you want to take me, then I want nothing to do with you.” She turned and began to walk away.
A strangled sob escaped Dash’s lips. “How could you?” she choked out.
Fluttershy’s limbs were pulling her toward her cottage, but her heart ordered her to stay. “Dash...”
“How could you just turn your back on me like this! You’re supposed to be the Element of Kindness!” Dash yelled.
Fluttershy felt something twist in her chest as she slowly turned around. There was liquid dripping down her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure what it was or why it was there. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“You can’t what?” Dash demanded.
Fluttershy drew in a breath, a slight wheeze at the end of it. “I can’t save you,” she murmured. She blinked; it was becoming difficult to see.
“Why not?” Dash asked, softer. She took a step toward Fluttershy.
“I couldn’t take how ponies didn’t want to look at me. I couldn’t stand the way—” She took a breath. “—the way they acted toward me, they way they stared and sneered and glared.” She rasped again, her teeth grit as her beating heart began to ache. “I wasn’t—I couldn’t—”
“What?” Dash murmured, placing a hoof under Fluttershy’s chin.
“...I wasn’t strong enough,” she answered after a brief pause. “I couldn’t do it anymore!” she yelled. “The way they acted like I wasn’t here, like I was contagious; the way conversations would just stop whenever I went anywhere, the rumors, the gossip, the—” She lurched forward, her diaphragm twisting in her core once again, forcing air in and out of the already dry sides of her throat. The longest conversation she had endured in years was beginning to take its toll on her; black spots were dancing on her vision. But, after a mere moment of her system running amok, it was stopped dead in its tracks.
Because, in that moment, Dash pulled Fluttershy in and kissed her.
It wasn’t a long kiss, by any means, nor was it an exceptionally passionate or well-thought-out romantic moment. But it was long enough to startle Fluttershy’s respiratory system into submission, and her breath resumed.
The rest of her body, though, could barely interpret what had just happened. Her eyes wide, her legs shaking, she mumbled, “Why...?”
“Because I’m not afraid of you,” Dash stated, and there was water building in her eyes, as well, cascading down her cheeks. “And because I didn’t come here to hear you mope around.” She took a shaky breath “...And because I care about what happens to you even if you don’t. And because I don’t care about what other ponies think, and because I don’t care if they laugh at you or if they laugh at me, because we’ll be together and that’s all that matters.”
Fluttershy was absolutely silent. She put a hoof to her lips, warmth slowly spreading from her core to the rest of her body before finally reaching the tips of her exposed wings.
“And so help me Celestia, if you don’t come back with me to Canterlot, I’m going to drag your sorry flank up the mountainside myself, you hear me?” Dash finally demanded, trembling slightly herself. “Well?”
Fluttershy murmured something, her mind far separated from her body.
“Louder,” Dash ordered.
Fluttershy mumbled something, her eyes burning with tears.
“Louder!” Dash barked.
Fluttershy shook her head violently, her mouth forming words but no sound managing to escape.
“Louder!
And with that, Fluttershy burst into tears. They weren’t sad tears, and they weren’t upset tears, but they weren’t happy tears, either. The salty water coursing down her face seemed more a mix of pent-up outrage, fear, and loneliness she had suffered as she was left to rot by the town that had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go.
The tears burned like acid as they trickled down her chin, and they started to eat away at the walls she had carefully constructed between herself and everything painful in her world. And some part of her wanted so desperately for things to go back to the way they were that it dragged her to her knees, forcing her to bow her head down to the ground as she sobbed, as the earth called out to her, and the birds sang their siren’s song.
The other part of her, however, resisted, the part of her that wanted freedom, the part of her that wanted to fly again and feel the wind against her cheeks as it flowed through her feathers. She wanted to glide again, she wanted to see newborn eagles in their nests, she wanted to take risks and have fun. And these two parts of her waged a terrible war inside her body and mind, and tears ran like blood down her snout.
But, quaking with the force of her sobs, she finally managed to squeeze a single sentence out of her dying lungs: “What d-do y-you want m-me t-to do?”
Dash didn’t immediately reply. Instead, she helped Fluttershy up, and led her over to the cauldron. Fluttershy dipped her snout into the water and drank, allowing the water to smooth over her ragged throat, for nearly a minute.
Meanwhile, Dash draped a wing over her friend, and although she felt tears rising from her chest, she took a deep breath and managed to hold them back. This wasn’t the time. Instead, she explained softly into Fluttershy’s ear, “I want you to have hope. I want you to know that things will get better. And I want you to know that you aren’t alone.”
Fluttershy looked up at her, and some part of her, the bitter, twisted part of her heart that had been beaten to the ground, trampled, and bucked, wanted to spit on Dash’s stupid hope and run away, because she had been hoping for all these years that somepony would come back for her, and now it was too late.
The other part of her, though, the part of her that was gazing into Dash’s eyes, knew that it was never too late.
“But how?” she whimpered, pushing her face into Dash’s chest and nuzzling. Her body ached, and she felt faint, even when salvation was so close at hoof. “Dash, there’s no way... I can’t make before... before...” She couldn’t finish that statement. “I’m so, so sorry,” she sobbed instead, pressing into Dash’s body and feeling its warmth. It occurred to her then just how cold she must have become. Her wings were useless, and she could barely walk from her home to the river without feeling her bones drag her back to the earth, as if they couldn’t wait to join it.
“That doesn’t matter,” Dash whispered, holding Fluttershy close. “Even if the worst happens, it’ll be worth it. Because at least we can say we tried. At least we’ll have each other... even if it only is for a little while.”
“You really think so?” Fluttershy asked, her eyes shining with something that hadn’t graced them since her best friend left Ponyville.
“I know so,” Dash stated confidently. “You’re looking at the fastest pegasus in Equestria, after all.”
Fluttershy stifled a cough as she wrapped her forelegs around her friend and clutched her tightly. “Oh, Dash... You haven’t changed a bit.”
Life passes quickly
Friendship heals a broken heart
Here we are hopeful.
Author's Note
Version 1.1
