The Harder They Fall

by DJ Leftwing

Chapter III:Excuses

“Hi Cloudchaser! Don’t worry, I’m coming into work today, I just need a little bit of time to get a few things fixed around my house.”

“Kay, that’s good, but that’s not what I was here to tell you. Fluttershy just wanted to let you know that she had a question for you. She’s waiting down below, didn’t want to fly up here herself for some reason.”

With that, the grey pegasus took off from Dash’s doorstep and flew off towards town. Dash walked over to the edge of the cloud that her house sat upon and peered over at the ground far below. She could vaguely make out a speck of yellow and pink on the road below, pacing back and forth while waiting for Rainbow to emerge. The cyan pegasus leaped into the air and glided with ease to the surface, where her shy friend stood with her back to Rainbow.

“Hey Fluttershy, you had a question for me?”

Fluttershy jumped with surprise and let out a small eep at the sound of Rainbow’s voice. She quickly spun around and shrunk back in order to defend herself from what instinct told her might be danger. Once she realized that it was a friend though, she stood back up and composed herself enough to ask the question that was on her mind.

“Yes, I just wanted to know, when is that trip that you had planned? You see, I don’t want to have to cancel anything I already have planned, and I’ll need to get somepony to take care of all my animals while I’m away, so I just wanted to know when it was…”

‘Trip, what trip? I planned a trip? Since when did I plan things?'

Dash thought back, trying to remember a trip that she had organized, and suddenly recalled the events of the previous night. During her daydreaming that morning, she had entirely forgotten about asking Fluttershy to accompany her to Cloudsdale. She couldn’t even remember why she needed to go to the floating city.

‘This isn’t good, maybe I can get her to tell me why I asked her to come along without actually asking her, don’t want to seem like I forgot my own plans.’

“I didn’t really have any date actually planned, so whenever is fine with me. You sure you still want to come along, you don’t have to if it’s too inconvenient. I should be able to do whatever it is that I needed to do by myself.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine. You may need somepony to help you carry your stuff if there’s a lot of it. I just need to get a pet sitter. Does next Monday sound like a good day to start?”

‘Ah-ha!’ Dash thought as she remembered what had happened. ‘I asked her to come and help me move my old stuff from my parent’s house, it makes sense now. But wait, I didn’t leave anything at my parent’s house…why would I ask her to help me move stuff that didn’t exist? Even worse though is why would I even go back to my parent’s house, they hate me; and if I went there with Fluttershy, they would probably jump to the wrong conclusion. I have to think of some way to get out of this trip now, maybe she would buy it if I …'

“…Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy exclaimed, almost loud enough to be a normal speaking voice for any other pony. Dash shook her head in order to regain her thoughts after being interrupted; but of course, Fluttershy took it as an answer to her question.

“Oh, Monday isn’t good. Okay then, how is Wednesday? Does that work for you? Or we could leave Friday, or next Monday.”

“No, Monday is good. I just remembered that I might not have left anything at my parent’s house…’cause I just found a box in my basement this morning! Yep, just found it this morning.”

“But you don’t have a basement.” Fluttershy said, glancing up at the floating cloud castle above her.

“Oh, did I say basement, I meant attic. I think the box may have the stuff I thought I had left. If it does, we won’t even have to bother with the trip.”

“Oh, okay then…” The shy pony lowered her head a little and her eyes turned towards the ground. “Well, thank you for inviting me anyways. I’ll see you later Rainbow Dash,”

Fluttershy turned around and started trotting back towards her cottage.

“See ya later!” Dash called towards the now growing distant mare. The blue pegasus started heading back up to her cloud house, thinking of how cleverly she had gotten out of visiting her parents.

‘Wow, she actually bought it; I can’t believe she actually bought it. I better find a box though; she might come back and see if I actually did find the stuff. That was even better than the housesitting for a bear excuse we gave Pinkie that one time. Okay, maybe not, but it was close.’

Rainbow smiled at the thought as she looked for a box to fill with junk from around her house. She loved it when she was able to think of convincing excuses.

‘I hate that I had to lie to Fluttershy though, but I just don’t think I could put up with what my parents would put me through if I showed up with her. I just hope I didn’t hurt her feelings, she did look sort of sad when I said the trip would probably be cancelled…’

Rainbow Dash picked up a cardboard box from the floor and dumped the contents out. She started rummaging through the clutter absentmindedly, continuing to think about the conversation with her friend.

Picking up a picture from the bottom of the stack, she saw her and Fluttershy standing beside the yellow pegasi’s parents the day that summer flight camp ended. They all looked happy. Shy had improved her flying, and Dash had made her first friend. ‘That was a great day, I got to meet Fluttershy’s parents and she got to meet…wait a second, she’s never gotten to meet my parents even once. She probably wanted to at least meet them, and that must be why she got sad!’

Dash stood up as she reached this conclusion, congratulating herself on finally being able to correctly read somepony else’s feelings. She then realized that she should probably at least make the trip to introduce her parents to Fluttershy and vice versa, it was only courtesy after all.

‘Not to mention I just can’t stand to see Fluttershy sad over something that I could have fixed years ago.’

She stretched her wings and prepared to go and visit the cottage at the edge of the Everfree Forest for the second time in the past six or seven hours.

Comments

[SpyroFlame]

I love how i could work on my murder fic and just turn around and read FlutterDash great chapter by the way