My name is Fluttershy

by Duplex Fields

I can't fly well, and I am very shy

My name is Fluttershy.

My mother's name was Pansy. She was a yellow pegasus with pink hair, and flowers for her cutie mark. The flowers were pansies.

People use 'pansy' as an insult. Whomever they call a pansy, they portray as a weakling, a simpering coward who shies away from the threats of life.

When I fell from Cloudsdale, one of the things I did was take care of other ponies' pets. A gardener whose hamsters I watched once told me that pansies deserve a far better reputation. They bloom in fall, winter, and spring. They survive where most flowers die, and only the freeze of darkest winter and the unyielding heat of summer make them wither.

My mother was not a pansy. She was stronger than anypony knows. She stood up to him, and took me away, because she knew how to stand up in the harshest winter. His brutality had clipped her petals, and she couldn't teach me how to fly herself, so she entrusted me to the flight camp's wandering gaze. When I fell from Cloudsdale, she rode a rented balloon down to the dirt and searched for me herself.

She was a very strong pony. Even when ponies mistook her for an earth pony, she didn't waver. She always showed the world her smiling face, even when she shouldn't have.

---

My name is Fluttershy. I can't fly well, and I am very shy.

Pony names are the strangest things in the world.

Cutie marks are relatively sane; the kiss of destiny upon one's hips occurs after a pony realizes what she or he is meant to do in this life. It takes a powerful moment of self-realization and clarity, and brands it into a pony's soul forever. In a sense, a cutie mark is a pony.

I have met dozens of ponies with names that retroactively fit their cutie marks. Lickety Split and Rainbow Dash are just two of them; one makes incredible banana splits, and the other dashes everywhere she goes. Does a pony grow into their name? Does destiny smile upon a pony's parents when the name is chosen? What mixture of these two leads a pony named "shy" to be shy?

Did he pick my name? Was he cruelty incarnate, as much as the stone fruit of a crystal tree has deemed me kindness incarnate? I never asked her, and now that I can ponder that question, the answer will not be mine in this life.

Or maybe I was always destined to be saved by butterflies. Butterfly, Fluttershy...

---

My name is Fluttershy, and I fell to my death. I was interrupted on my way there by butterflies.

Does that seem strange to you? Why would the sky be full of bullies, and lower to the ground, saviors?

---

My name is Fluttershy, and I am a useless and worthless pony.

"You take care of animals," you might say, "You communicate with them on another level." Ha.

I fell to earth with limbs pinwheeling, spinning out of control. I met animals, and when they were startled, I helped them. I have done nothing else with my life since.

"But what about your Element of Harmony?" you may ask, "Your kindness is legendary."

You call me a hero for not hurting anypony else? Do you say the same of those ponies you meet in everyday life? No. You just call them civil.

I fell from Cloudsdale, and I did the first thing that I came across, and I haven't stopped since. I pretended that it could be a job, and ponies started paying me to care for the animals, and I never stopped because I was afraid to be caught in the lie.

Science would take schooling; trades would take apprenticing; professionalism would take social ability; everything else I could do would take more courage daily than I need to muster for a single trip to the feed store.

I called Rarity and Pinkie frivolous for their lives' pursuits; what does that make me?

There are no words for how empty and useless and worthless I feel inside right now, and I can't tell you how much more useless your attempts to cheer me up would make me feel.

---

My name is Fluttershy, and I cannot be important.

Trixie challenged us, and Pinkie Pie didn't respond. She could have made Trixie's act seem like a cheap
and ridiculous thing, but she respected that showmare's performance.

I didn't say anything because Trixie said she could be better at anything we could do, and I couldn't think of anything except total and utter agreement.

They put me on stained glass windows, but if I were to be killed by the next monster or atrocity to hit Equestria, Twilight would find another Kindness. They would mourn, but they would move on.

They would mourn, but they wouldn't miss my contributions to society. Spike would find Angel to be a menace, and Twilight would miss my hold over Discord, such as it is, but they would move on. Maybe the Crusaders would get their marks in cleaning out a pet hoarder's house? Maybe.

---

I do the same thing I've been doing every day since my greatest and most memorable failure. I am Fluttershy, and I am still falling.

---

Butterflies.

They stopped me, they saved me. They lifted me up when my wings couldn't lift me. It wasn't my own doing, and I don't know why those butterflies were there. It certainly wasn't because I deserved it.

Without them, the animals around Ponyville wouldn't have a caretaker who can communicate with animals the way I do. They buoyed me up, and I buoy up ponies and pets alike with my kindness.

If butterflies think I should be saved, maybe they're right.

Destiny has kissed my hips gently, telling me to be like them.

I am there to save others when they fall? I explore the thought, turning it over in my mind like a sweet morsel in my mouth from Sugar Cube Corner. I look at it, at once familiar and yet so strange and foreign.

I am not here to pander weakly. I am not here to give way when anypony wants something different than what I want. I am not here to be a doormat, to have the mud of the roads others walk wiped on my hide by their harsh hooves. I am not here to say yes when others expect a yes. I am not here to agree with the judgments of others when they consider me a fraud, a fake, a pain, a lazy sack of horseshoes.

I am here to help.

I have seen when ponies try to change ponies or other creatures. I have tried and failed; so have those other busybodies. So I won't try to change them; I will simply be kind.

I cannot be the pony others want me to be. I am now, and always shall be, Fluttershy. I flutter and I am shy, and the mark I will make on the world is animals caretaken and ponies given kindness.

Do you think I can do it?

Author's Note:

Have you ever experienced that moment when you have to write? When you're eight hours from waking up and going to work, but you absolutely must stay up another two hours turning raw emotion into story?

I was reading ugugg93's "Thirteen Days without Pink" before bed, and something resonated so deeply that I turned on my computer and just wrote. This story doesn't go in the same direction, but it's the part of me that is Fluttershy, and a part I've been noticing out of the corners of my mind recently. (The low self esteem, not the parental abuse, though I have had friends who suffered and survived such things.)

For those out there who, like me, tend to worry about the author when stories like this show up, don't worry, I'm in a good place. Sometimes, a ray of light finds the darkest corners, and shows the dust that settled there.

Comments

[DeiligKjott]

I'm surprised such a work of art hasn't been given the attention it deserves.

[mehperson]

This is a very good story. Keep it up

[Duplex Fields]

4569744 Thank you very much.

4569617 I started typing out a very self-deprecating reply describing the very reasonable reasons it only has 43 views and two comments so far, and the obvious and inescapable reasons why it's unlikely to get much publicity in the future, when I realized I was making the same low self-esteem choices in my reply that I described in my story. So instead, I simply thank you.

[A Fox in Equestria]

This was beautiful.
No other words.
Beautiful.

[TheAccidentalBrony]

I'm a Fluttershy too...

This was touching. I wish there was more of it.

[horizon]

> When I fell from Cloudsdale, she rode a rented balloon down to the dirt …

Oh, wow, this goes some dark places.

Very economical storytelling. It packs a lot of powerful stuff in a short space.

And I'm glad to hear you're doing well.

[taterforlife]

I could write my own words, but I do believe the other reviews have said it all, especially the reviews of A Fox in Equestria and immagetu. Beautiful. I love how it leaves us with a sense of hope, and not that Fluttershy is utterly hopeless. Thank you for this piece of art.