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// But Patience to prevent that murmur, soon replies 
// Story: When I Consider How My Light is Spent 
// by Cynewulf 
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She was wearing a blindfold over her stricken eyes when Apple Bloom asked her what it had been like.


There really ought to be a better word than blindfold. It sounded… vulgar? No. Unhappy? Maybe. She wasn’t sure. Twilight would know how to describe the feeling she had. Twilight’s vocabulary was large and she’d read so many books. Most of Fluttershy’s reading had been for the job. Or the books underneath her mattress which she had absolutely made sure Mac did not see. Or anypony else for that matter. Well, except for Rarity.


“Miss Fluttershy?”


“You can call me Shy, if you’d like,” she said, as Apple Bloom led her across the house. 


“Can I ask you a question?”


“I think you already did,” Fluttershy said, and giggled. “It’s alright.”


“Did it hurt? I mean, the thing with your… um, your eyes.”


Fluttershy bowed up slightly.


“Not at all,” she lied. "And Twilight deadened the nerves, so it's not uncomfortable now."










It hurt a lot.


The weeks after her first encounter with the cockatrice had been unpleasant for her and Twilight alike. The aftereffects of the beast’s magic were harsh. But they'd recovered.


When the newly minted princess had visited determined to find and study the creature in order to work out some sort of cure that didn’t involve finding the original cockatrice, Fluttershy had agreed happily. It was always wonderful when her talent with animals came in handy for her friends.


They had spent days in the Everfree, searching for a cockatrice, to no avail. Twilight had taken precautions, of course. There were magical wards that would buy them precious seconds to look away and retreat if caught in the open. At least, she'd thought they would.


It was sudden. One moment, she’d been talking to Twilight, and the next, Twilight was panicking.


Her eyes had gone wide, her jaw slack, her body rigid as a statue. And then she was, in fact, a statue. Fluttershy watched in muted, unbreakable horror as her friend struggled to move, to look away, and then she felt the creature on her back and she bucked it off and screamed, narrowly avoiding knocking Twilight over. She turned by instinct, looking for it, looking to run--


And then she’d seen it, bigger than the last, hissing at her. She felt the familiar cold numbness in her hooves begin.


She stared it down. She willed all of her talent into a single command.


“Stop.”


It did not stop. It hissed again.


She could not feel her legs.


“You stop this, right now. You stop. Stop!”


Every syllable was firmer than the last, and they fell on the monster like hammerblows. Every stop she muttered as her eyes bore into its gaze and her lips sputtered and her wings petrified and her body screamed--every single one seemed to do more to break the hold it had.


Until it snapped. It looked away, whining, and she commanded it firmly to release her and Twilight. It was all she could do. The only part of her not solid stone was her face.


It hurt. It hurt so badly she cried and as soon as her legs were flesh again and the creature was gone she rolled on the ground and sobbed like a newborn foal because everything hurt so much.


They wouldn’t notice anything else wrong for another two weeks.