//------------------------------//
// Chapter VI 
// Story: Of Moments and Melodies 
// by Church 
//------------------------------//


Said maybe
You’re gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You’re my wonderwall





















Fluttershy and I trotted along the dusty old path that led away from town, the moon lighting the way ahead for us. It was like the scene from a movie, like one of those old flicks that I used to watch with Pop, ‘cuz he liked those black and white pictures. Secretly, I never liked them. I only watched them ‘cuz Pop watched them, and that was all. But this was one I was really looking forward to. Two ponies walking side by side down an old, moonlit road, traversing the world together. That sounded like a black and white flick I would watch.

We never looked back as we trotted along. Looking back would have spoiled the whole ‘heroic image’ in my head. Instead, we stoically trotted forward.  My house must have been acres away by now, as we had been trotting for... uh, seven minutes. I’m not an adventurer, so perhaps gauging time and distance wasn’t my specialty, but it had to be somewhere around there, I was sure of it. My house most definitely could not be seen from where we were.

Call that fear of turning around to find out, or just adoration of the sights that lay before me.

“So, um... where would you like to go first?” Fluttershy asked me, thousands of lightning bugs dancing around her body. Was I actually in a movie, or was I in a dream? If it was the latter one, and I woke up in my house the next morning... oh, I would be so angry.

I pinched myself, just to be sure. Ow.

“I don’t know,” I said to her as she happened to catch me pinching myself, which in turn twisted her expression into a curious one. I didn’t bother to give her an explanation, as I turned out to the forest that lined the outside of town, the one that had been in our backyard. “Ooh! What is there to do in the forest over-”

“Nothing!” Fluttershy interjected. She had caught me off guard, and I flinched. "Oh, I mean, um... nothing."

“Okay... nothing,” I said defensively. I looked further down the road ahead, out at the stretch of gravel that went on for miles. How was I supposed to know what was out there? “Um... where is the best place to go?”

Fluttershy’s smile was the sun in the middle of the night. “Oh, goodness, well, uh, I really like a nice little place called Star Lake. It's not too far from here, and It’s wonderful this time of night, the flowers and the trees are some of the most beautiful in all Equestria! That’s not just it, though. When the moon hits the water just right, the water becomes completely still, and you can see everything around you in it. Oh, it’s lovely.”

I was awkwardly smiling at Fluttershy while she was talking, ‘cuz I loved just listening to her babble on. She was like the dreamy voice in your head that you never wanted to get rid of. The reality was, it was just a complete deviation from the voice I had been listening to for the past three years.

Fluttershy caught me looking at her. I continued to do it like a dumb foal. “Um, but if you want to go somewhere else, that’s fine...” she said. Her smile was replaced by a sheepish look.

I snapped out of it. “Wha? No! Star Lake, you say? Sounds great!” I told her, ‘cuz really, it did sound great. Everything about she and I living on our own now sounded great. There wasn’t a single worry or care in the world right now, and that’s how it should be.

“Oh, well okay!” Fluttershy said, picking up her pace a tad. “Then let’s go, we don’t want to miss it, the moon needs to be just overhead!”









Fluttershy and I ventured off of the main road, down a rocky pathway that looked as though it hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. The grass was starting to overtake it, their long, bony fingers protruding through the rock. It was sort of creepy... I wasn’t so sure this was the right way to go. But I trusted Fluttershy. If she said she knew where to go, then that’s where we went. There was a small gap in a lining of trees just ahead of us, and I assumed that’s where we were headed. The path led right through the trees and into what appeared to be a small clearing on the other side.

“It’s just through here,” Fluttershy assured me, brimming with joy and excitement. “Oh, gosh, I haven’t been here in so long! I hope that we didn’t miss it...” 

Fluttershy led me through the gap in the trees, and the clearing on the other side wasn’t as dark as I thought. In fact, it was exactly as Fluttershy described it and more. The moonlight shone through the branches, making everything light up in a shadowy, dark blue glow. There was flora galore, tulips and dafodils and roses and pegunias and daisies all littered the ground, and you couldn't even take a step without accidentally stepping on them (sorry). That was not the best part, oh no. As Fluttershy had said before, the lake in the middle of the clearing was by far the most spectacular. The moon was reflected in the rippling waters, essentially acting as a secondary moon. The light shot off of the waters, into the surrounding area, making everything spring to life like a cartoon. In the words of a great friend, oh, it was lovely.

Fluttershy settled herself down on the bank of the lake (it was more of a pond, really). She let out a restful sigh. "Oh, good, we aren't too late," she said.

I just stared at her dumbly again. "You mean this isn't it?"

"Oh no," she said. "We have to wait for the moon to be just overhead." 

"Uh-huh," was all that I could say.

Fluttershy pointed to my knapsack in the meantime. She cocked her head to the side in curiosity. “What do you have in there?” she asked.

I turned over my shoulder and bit hold of the strap, so that in turn I could swing it around. I did so, and I gently set it down on the ground, where I sat down next to Fluttershy and started to open it. “Just the necessities,” I said. “I brought some dafodil sandwiches, some bandages, water, my lucky rabbit’s... um.” I froze and turned to look at Fluttershy. “Uh... favorite flower...” I wiped the sweat from my brow real quick, “some crayons, a flashlight, and some squirt guns, just in case we have to fight off some ghosts or something."

Fluttershy giggled. "Do ghosts get hurt by water?" 

"Heck if I know, we can use it on vamponies I guess."

"Um, is the water blessed by Celestia?"

"Oh... shoot."

Fluttershy giggled again and turned her gaze to the bespeckled night sky. She followed the path of the moon, probably gauging when it would be time. “Just a few more minutes.” she said. She curled up into a ball as if she were going to bed, but she trained her eyes on the waters. “Then you’ll see what you’ve been missing.”

I copied Fluttershy’s body language as I layed down next to her, keeping my head up so that I could see over the taller grasses. I anxiously awaited the spectacle that was promised to me on this cloudless evening, as whatever Fluttershy promised me I would look forward to, and already the night had been perfect. I took in deep, relaxed breaths as the waters lapped at the bank. I wished that Pop was here to share this with me.

“Are you ready?” Fluttershy asked me, smiling, and turning to face me.

“Is that a question?” I replied.

Fluttershy frowned. “Oh, yes, it was a question. Why? Did it not seem like one?”

I only smiled back at her. She was silly, I liked her. It was good that we were friends, ‘cuz if not, I wouldn’t be doing anything even remotely fun right now. I would most likely be crying in my bed, wasting my life away staying in a lonely old house with no future. I would be dying a long and drawn out death, one that seemed to be refusing to come. But now... now I had something to live for. Now I had purpose. It was nice, ‘cuz everypony needs to have a purpose.

“Do you know how much longer?” I asked Fluttershy, partaking in a bite of one of the dafodil sandwiches at my disposal. She was staring up at the sky. “‘Cuz I don’t want Mum to come searching for us in the middle of the night.”

Fluttershy didn’t bother to notice. It was like she was lost in another world. The stars seemed to glimmer in her eyes, as it the entirety of the night was thrust into her vision. They twinkled and played with her features like that of a young foal with a sparkler to shake. It must have thrown her into another world, because her wondrous eyes stared through the sky as if her sight could carry through to another universe.

I wish I had her eyes.

“Just be patient.” Fluttershy said to me, coolly breaking the silence with her lovely voice and soft-spoken mannerism. “Because it all starts about now.”












Remember what the world looked like when we escaped our house but a few hours ago? How beautiful it was? How marvelous it was? I didn’t think that it could get any better than that, ‘cuz how could it get better than that? There really wasn’t a way possible. Couldn’t have been. The world was going to be like that brilliant display in my eyes forevermore. I wanted it to be that way. Who wouldn’t want that to be in their life whenever they woke up? A crazy pony, that’s what I think. Nothing could have been more joyous or appealing.

I. Was. Dead. Wrong.







Suddenly, the moon seemed to come to a stop in its orbit directly overhead of Star Lake. I could see its entire form in the water, a full moon, seemingly magnified by the pond’s waters. The water itself went completely still, as if idled, like the calm before a storm, or a tiger waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey. What happened next was what dreams can only dream of dreaming about when they dream.

An explosion of sparks flew from the waters, as if the stars themselves had shot straight down in a barrage of pure energy and light, and then bounced off of the stilled water and descended like burning snowflakes. The moon in the center was spinning like a ridiculously over-sized disco ball, like the one at Canterlot’s annual disco party, which is said to house the biggest one in all Equestria. Wrong. The flowers and the trees buckled in the sudden breeze that picked up, as if bowing before the awe-inspiring sight that they were privileged to behold. The stars reflected in the mirror that was the pond were so numerous in quantity that they could not be counted. Constellations could easily be picked out in the star-studded waters, if only I had known what some of them were.

As the fireflakes (that’s what I call them) gradually sank to the earth, the moon appeared to replace the fading light from them with its own intensity. Suddenly, the scene was so bright and vividly painted that I could count the petals on one of the flowers that harbors my name from across the pond. Ten, I counted on one of them. It was happily stretching to show me its full bloom. Some of the flowers even appeared to be dancing and wearing smiling faces, like in those old black and white cartoons. They waved to me, delighted by my being here, and I smiled awkwardly in return. The fireflakes descended fully, leaving the moonlight to gleam off of the waters and hit the surrounding trees with blinding force.

The scenery was like the clip out of a romance movie, one done so over the top that the cheesiest kiss would be tossed aside by critics in regard for the special effects in the background. As the fireflakes slowly burned into the earth, not leaving scorch marks or charred dirt or anything, the only thing anypony could really think about would be grabbing sompony special and hugging them tight. Pop wasn’t here with me, but somepony else was.

Without saying anything, I shuffled over to Fluttershy and I embraced her, which caused her to call out with the surprise. We fell down in the grasses together as the moonlight glanced off our bodies and struck our surroundings, tinting everything in a lavish royal blue.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” I said to Fluttershy as she let me hug her tightly. I pulled back from her to find that her eyes were glued open and her face was frozen in shock. “You don’t know how much this means to me!”

Fluttershy only stared at me in amazement. The halo of light that was produced around her made her look like an angel, but I have never seen an angel, so I can’t really know that for sure.

“I could just stay here forever!”

Fluttershy seemed to snap out of it as she turned to me, gazing into my eyes with a thin smirk on her face. “Oh, um, well there’s a lot more to the world than this... but whatever you want to do is fine.”

My smile must have stretched to the moon and back. “How much more?”

“A lot.”

“A lot?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Will you show me to a lot?

Now Fluttershy’s smile was fully displayed in the light, her pearly whites shining like a fluorescent light bulb. “That’s what I’m here for, I guess.” came her soothing voice. “So, um, yes, I will show it to you...”

I was so excited, ‘cuz my friend and I were gonna have adventures like this every day. I could not have been more enthralled by the news. Crossing this wonderful world, the aesthetics sometimes too much to take in, and with my best friend. It just made me wonder... what else is out there?

“Oh, and, um, Daisy?” Fluttershy whispered. She gently raised a hoof over my head, like she was going to pet me or something. I flinched, ‘cuz I thought she was just being weird. “I think that you have a daisy in your mane...” She giggled. I sighed. “Here, let me get that for you.”


o----o





















Song: Wonderwall

By: Oasis