The mill had been abandoned for some time. The scant panes of glass which occasionally broke up the Sun-faded paint just below the gutters had been heavily coated in dust, just about entirely from the inside. What appeared to be the main entrance had seen the frame warp around the door, bringing it to the point where a serious shove would be required to get inside -- and afterwards, it might never close again. But the water wheel -- it was old enough to have a water wheel -- still turned, creaking softly under the eternal pressure of the driving stream, and she could just barely hear a faint chorus of slow clicks coming from somewhere inside the building, gears skipping over each other instead of meshing.
She saw an overflow of leaves in the gutters, when there were just about none on the ground. The local version of the Running -- a custom which still surprised her, although there was something to be said for watching a crowd of athletic bodies pushing themselves along, and Fleur had entertained thoughts of going to the Games one post-retirement day just to drink in the sights -- well, that had yet to take place. There were always a few leaves around, of course: it hardly took the pounding of pony hooves to drop a single leaf and the usual tree denizens severed a few connections with normal movements. But to have so many leaves... that was years' worth of drops, matted into each other by the pressure of rain, rendered into a solid which no normally-scheduled amount of wind could truly shift.
There was a total lack of No Trespassing signs posted about the area. Not a single notice claimed ownership or an increasing desperation to transfer same. A careful attempt to feel for security spells completely failed to pick up even the most passive of standing defenses. The building belonged to nopony at all, and might have been remembered by a slightly higher number.
Some ponies said that autumn was a time for renewal. The world let go of the last of its yearly burdens, used the cold of winter as a time for slumber and recovery, began again in the spring. Those ponies were stupid. The colors of the changed leaves were the shades of fallen bodies. The scents came from decay. And the chill, that which Fleur had been completely and foolishly prepared to enjoy for a moon or so... that was the grave reaching out from the soil, trying to see what it could drag down.
The mill wasn't just abandoned. It was old and ugly and dead, a single huge corpse with smaller ones littering its skin. Nopony needed it any more. Nopony would ever try to use it. Nopony cared.
Fleur looked at it for a time which exactly worked out to too long, and finally managed to resume her trot.
She smelled it before she saw it.
This part of the road was more of a well-worn trail, one which showed signs of having been pounded down by hooves in all seasons and possibly at all hours -- along with a few less-than-subtle signs of animal traffic, which was a reasonable expectation this close to the fringe: if there were no predators (or larger predators) around, a few would risk temporarily losing cover in order to make greater speed. And on this trail -- more than a few. In fact, it came across as a number which had long ago passed too many, and Fleur was starting to wonder if the cottage was truly on the edge of the fringe, as opposed to resting firmly within it. It was a suspicion which had put her senses on high alert, which didn't exactly help with the increasing problem.
Where animals traveled, they left markers: establishment of territory, silent challenges against any who might encroach on it. Sometimes that meant little gnaw marks in the wood, or claw scrapes against stone. But more frequently, it was urine. Feces. Spray here, drop there. And as Fleur trotted on, those smells were getting stronger. More frequent. Extremely... mixed. It seemed as if just about everything came down this road, and it smelled as if just about none of it ever bothered to step into the border grass before squatting. Fleur kept stopping to check the path ahead, occasionally checked on her hooves, and made sure her tail never got too close to a tree -- but there was nothing visible. Just the smell, increasing in intensity with every hoofstep, she swore it had to be soaking into her coat, started to wonder if there was a Ponyville supply of the only soap in the world which was guaranteed to free her from it and, in concentrating on that, nearly trotted into the ostrich.
Black eyes stared down at her, from too far above her own natural view line. The warped, hairlike feathers around the tiny head seemed to bristle, and the beak opened just enough to scream at her --
-- but Fleur had already moved.
"They can only kick forward. As soon as you see one, get to the side, or behind it. Don't let it face you. If it's angry, keep it spinning around, and when you get an opening, that's when your horn should ignite. Or it'll give me a chance to swoop in and do something. Just keep moving."
"What if you're not there?"
A smile, or what passed for one. "Why wouldn't I be there?"
The ostrich, startled by the sudden dart to the left, tried to swirl. Fleur moved faster and the bird spun, trying to keep up. Fleur accelerated, a half-canter, half-hop to the side, springing from place to place, the ostrich attempted to match the pace, and a mere two legs found their knees going into each other.
The resulting glare was much easier to meet, even with Fleur a full body length back, well out of reach from any attempt the long neck might have made at stabbing. It was also considerably lower.
The grey throat swelled, and a low booming sound echoed across the landscape. Again and again, with Fleur watching from that safe distance, corona at a full primary, waiting to see if the bird would make a move. But it stayed where it was, vocalizing in those deep half-vibrating tones -- and somehow, there didn't seem to be any anger in it. Just... confusion.
It got up, which took two tries before all the joints were untangled. Fleur watched, ready to strike --
-- it stared down at her again. Blinked twice, with eyelashes which would have been the envy of anything which could somehow ignore the rest of the face meshing and unmeshing. Turned, walked away.
Fleur slowly let her horn's corona ebb back to the partial level, not quite ready to let it go dark just yet. The bird could always come back, and when it came to magic being used on offense, Fleur could --
-- which was when she heard the long, low, rumbling growl.
Ostriches were prey. Powerful prey, hard to catch and incredibly dangerous for anything that might want to try -- but still prey. The growl had come from a predator.
Her corona surged again, just in time for the extra illumination to add its own touches to the play of Sun on the bobcat's fur.
It stared up at her, from where it had paused after stalking around the sharp little bend in the trail. Blinked, then yawned, showing off every oddly-clean fang. Sat down in the dirt and kept on staring.
Just a bobcat. A fierce little predator, surprisingly deadly for its size -- but a little predator. Fleur's field strength wasn't sufficient for levitating a full-grown male ostrich. A bobcat could be enveloped with ease. There was no threat to her, as long as she kept an eye on where it was.
It was still staring. She stared right back.
After a while, it yawned again, got up, and almost casually stalked back the way it had came. In the direction of the cottage. A direction which had just produced an ostrich --
-- ostriches aren't native to this part of Equestria, they're barely in Equestria at all --
-- and a bobcat in rapid succession. A direction which smelled like urine and feces from those animals and many more, so much more than Fleur couldn't pick out any actual species in the light miasma, just that there were so many of them and... that was where she was supposed to be going. To a place which was supposedly within the borders of the settled zone, with that many animals around, freely moving down the trail...
...as long as I stay alert.
As long as I stay focused.
As long as I'm not afraid, I win.
Fleur took a deep breath, instantly regretted it, and trotted forward, with the casual nature of that travel sold by every shift of shapely legs. Around the bend: no sign of the bobcat, nothing from the ostrich, but with an increasing number of claw marks in the bordering tree bark. Forward, and the smells kept getting stronger. Another twist in the path, she was starting to hear birdsong, too much birdsong in too many octaves, there was a tiny hint of fresh water trying to reach her nostrils along with the susurrus of a slow-moving stream, and then --
-- several words went through her inner ear, in more than one language, and not even the conjunctions were polite.
The cottage was alive, and showed that life in a way the mill could not. Greenery grew across the roof, or at least tried to: autumn had rendered some of it into browns and greys -- but as far as Fleur could tell, the entire upper surface of the building had been deliberately coated in insulating sod, followed by carefully seeding it. There was a virtual, partially-vertical pasture growing on the cottage, and small animals scampered through it, chasing each other, hunting for those last crucial blooms to take back to their holes. There were a lot of holes to choose from, in the trees on the cottage grounds, in the birdhouses which seemed to be hanging from every possible branch, and the assault of birdsong got that louder as their occupants registered the presence of a fresh intruder.
The stream was clear, and could be easily viewed from the careful arch of the little bridge: there were no railings, side walls, or safety measures of any kind. Not that it was much of a drop: two and a half times Fleur's height at the peak, and the water looked deep enough to ensure a safe landing -- assuming she didn't find her sudden arrival drastically insulting one of the swimming beavers. Insulted beavers tended to express their anger with teeth.
More birds flitted about the area. Some of them landed on the roof, hunted for worms. Others simply did what birds apparently existed for and shed their loads. There were loads everywhere, and not all that many of them were avian. There was spoor. There was scat. There was at least a tiny chance of fewmets, and Fleur started to wonder if she should be keeping an eye out for that -- but there weren't that many reptiles about, sentient or otherwise, not in autumn: the increasing cold took its toll, and so if there had been a scaled presence at the cottage, it was probably resting now. Most of what she saw was mammals, generally those which were well under a bale-weight in mass, and identifying them all took her well into a taxonomy book before threatening to revise the index.
Predators. Prey. Carnivores, herbivores, omnivores. For the most part, they didn't mix, keeping themselves separated behind invisible borders on the property -- although she did spot an oddly-calm shrew making the rounds, along with an overweight waddler of a flamingo with a perpetually concussed look, who didn't seem to be intelligent enough to realize when it should have been in trouble. Nothing seemed to feel it was worth bothering about, with the exception of the shrew -- who eventually scrambled up to its back and let the passive ride begin.
The cottage was organic, in more ways than just the mostly-wooden construction and plant-bearing roof. It had managed the impressive feat of finding a way to sprawl on the vertical. The textures which shifted with each increase in height didn't so much suggest that rooms had been added at need as directly state it, along with pushing forward a rather depressing financial ledger which laid out all the underfunding which had just barely gone into each successive project. The results didn't tilt or sway: there was a solidity in the never-quite-final results. But nothing above the ground floor entirely matched the base, and the entire structure appeared to have been designed by an argumentative committee on a restrictive budget which had seen eighty percent of the available bits locked into greenery.
The cottage was alive, alive in a way Fleur had never seen before. It was also wounded. The claw marks which had been in the bark were also on the door. The windows showed signs of frequent replacement: too many scrapings around the frames. There was fresh paint everywhere, few of the shades matched, and all of it was marred, for that which lived around (and probably in) the cottage wouldn't bother waiting for a surface to dry before climbing over it. One portion of a side wall showed a fresh gouge. An edge had been gnawed, another slashed, and a section close to the foundation stone seemed to have been bitten. More lack of color matching showed where repairs had already been made, followed by repairs on top of the repairs, repairs around the repairs, and defenses to areas which were probably going to be in need of repair without them, all of which had not only failed, but were themselves in need of repair.
Fleur recognized the patching methods: it was easy, with so many examples on display. Spackle here. Extra sod there. Wood which was never meant to fit forced into places it shouldn't have been, with most of that showing heavy gnaw marks around the edges -- the kind which might have been left by, say, a beaver. The paint was whatever had been on sale, which meant it would inevitably peel away about two weeks before the next sale. The sheer quantity of nails started to get expensive after a while, so dowels were used right up until the moment they failed, at which point, there would be more dowels -- because the nails which would last required bits which never did. The efforts to maintain an intact structure were nearly constant: some had been worked in wood, virtually none in metal, and just about all in desperation.
The animals were staring at her. Not all -- but enough. Beads here, lambent there, a hint of reflection under Sun. But none of them moved towards her. None of them offered threat, and it was a threat Fleur never would have been able to fully counter: there was no way to outrace them all, and the problem with staredowns was that they could only be done in a single direction at a time. They simply regarded the intruder, and waited to see what she would do.
What Fleur did was keep looking at the cottage. Part of that was from deliberately ignoring the animals, making them think she didn't consider the gathering to be anything worthy of concern, and that was a lie she was used to selling. She wasn't listening to them either, or was at least giving off that impression, that no little chirps or growls or booms had reached her ears, along with the semi-sensory impression which no other pony could access. But it meant she had to look at something, and as for listening... the cottage had so much to tell her.
There were several reasonable explanations for the presence of those animals. Fluttershy could be a veterinarian or biologist. She might run some kind of open-air boarding operation for pets whose owners were traveling, although it begged the question of just who would consider an ostrich to be their ideal avian companion. It was possible that Fleur's charge was completely insane, and that possibility didn't feel like a small one. But the animals had multiple potential explanations -- while the cottage had only one.
How much did being a Bearer pay, as a government job? Even when Fleur factored out what had to be a daily nightmare of feed bills (and there were carnivores, so the high local cost of meat was in there somewhere), property tax on what appeared to be a rather significant amount of property (which admittedly assumed the occupant wasn't renting), and then tossed the repair costs into that...
She looked at the building, and in silent words, it once again spoke its truth.
'The pony who lives here is poor.'
She wanted to close her eyes. She didn't. The animals needed to know she was constantly on the alert, even in those times when she had too much information coming in, enough that it was constantly trying to distract her from the increasingly horrifying reality before her.
Just... just go up to the door. Knock. She's expecting me. The sooner we start...
When it came to her talent, animals generally didn't register: an individual didn't have enough presence to be picked up, and she suspected intelligence played a part as well. But in this kind of bulk... she was getting something. She was getting too much, and virtually none of it arrived as pieces, for animals generally didn't have what was required for them. Intact images were pressing against her, demanding attention which she didn't want to give.
Fleur forced a breath, reached down inside herself, down past workings and her personal trick, to the heart of her talent -- and shut it down. Given enough time (and how much time would she have to spend here?), she could filter her perceptions, learn to ignore the presence of puzzles which she'd already solved. But that was a task best done in solitude, when she could truly concentrate -- and with this kind of population, everything she could directly see added to those which only registered on her personal sense, it would take hours. And right now, those were hours she didn't have to give.
She could live without her talent for a little while, especially since her first meeting with her new charge would require using it but once. Use her deepest magic on Fluttershy, then shut herself down again until she was safely away from the cottage grounds. But in the event that nopony answered the door, she didn't want to leave herself open until she found the pegasus.
More breaths, trying to get herself centered, or at least to where she was presenting the outward appearance of it. And then she trotted up to the door, with far too many eyes watching her. A perfectly hooficured left foreleg came up, and she knocked on the gouged wood.
Fleur gave it two minutes, for the cottage had that sprawl to it and not every pegasus was comfortable with flying through enclosed spaces. Then she knocked again, a little more insistently, and counted off two more minutes. The process was then repeated until the imprint of her hoof began to mar the perfect gouge marks, at which point she considered it failed.
She turned to look at the animals. Nearly all of them were still watching her. The central exception was the concussed flamingo, who had just discovered the stream and was trying to work out what it was for.
Knowing the words were pointless well before they emerged, "I don't suppose any of you know where she is?" Some of the stares seemed to narrow their focus, and Fleur instantly rejected the idea of just trying to wait inside: the group was unlikely to react well when an intruder tried to reach the heart of their territory. "Fine." She shrugged. "Follow me if you feel like it."
More than a few trailed her as she began to search the grounds. Most of what she found was scat.
Well into the afternoon now, in the shorter autumn days: it hadn't been a short trot, and recovery from her attempted first meal had taken more time than she ever would have believed. The sky would be changing shade all too soon, blue gone to rose and pink and occasional streaks of what some teased as airborne blood to those too young to know any better, and shortly after that, it would leave Fleur trying to head back in the dark. Under Moon, far too close to the fringe, which seemed to start at the exact border of what was proving to be some fairly extensive property.
(Celestia had told her that the pegasus was waiting for her at the cottage. As jokes went, it was a rather minor one, which didn't do much to diminish the complete lack of humor.)
She was just on the verge of giving up for the day when she heard the little lapine squeal. The one where the volume wasn't quite right, with harmonics which somehow seemed far too complicated. The squeal which had come from a pony throat.
Fleur turned left, crested a small rise, and saw the little gathering.
There was a rabbit: a small white one with exceptionally dark eyes and a frustrated aspect to his low-slung stance. There was also a small brown vole, which had a fresh set of tiny, bleeding claw marks swiped into the sensitive snout. And there was a pegasus.
Fleur looked at her, under dipping Sun, and somehow, it took a temporary second place to the listening, for no words came from that mane-hidden throat. She couldn't see any part of the pegasus' face, for the manefall obscured everything on Fleur's side. So for a moment, there were only the sounds: something close to lapine when the head turned that way, something very much like a vole when the pegasus faced the other party. They were complex sounds, and yet seemed oddly simple, especially in their content. Fleur couldn't understand any of it, not for words or the noises which animals used for such-- but the tone was pure pony, and so she was able to pick up on the nature of the discussion. There had been a fight, when there should not have been. And now chiding was in progress. The lapine was acting as if he was the wounded party, and she was asking him to be sorry, when his posture said the only thing he was sorry about was having been caught -- which told Fleur just who had started it.
She watched and listened, as a pony talked to animals, and it took a long minute before she realized she was staring.
Celestia hadn't told her anything real about the pegasus. Not occupation, not income -- and not talent. Was this the magic symbolized by the trio of butterflies which made up the mark? (A triad mark, somewhat like her own, and Fleur pushed memories away.) Or had the Elements granted extra powers to their Bearers -- no, that wasn't it: the Elements had only reemerged a little over three years ago, and the pegasus switched between her strange near-languages with the facility of a long-time speaker. This was a talent. Magic for conversation, comprehension...
Fleur used a moment for considering the information-gathering opportunities available through casual interviews of a pony's pets, and was sincerely impressed.
The talk seemed to have wrapped up: the vole, whose cuts were now somewhat cleaner -- Fleur was presuming a hidden preening pony tongue -- scrambled off towards its hole. The still-offended rabbit stomped its right hind leg three times, then turned away from the pegasus. This allowed it to spot Fleur, and the little face seemed to work into something very close to a sneer.
It stomped again. Five times, in rapid succession. And the pegasus looked up.
A little more than half of her face was visible, and it was a percentage which made the viewer internally beg for a full reveal.
The single visible eye blinked. The beautiful head tilted away, looking down her own flank, leaving Fleur regarding little more than mane again.
"Hello," she tried.
There was a sound. It was fully a pony sound in every way, and still came across as if Fleur had just skidded her hoof down the edges of a hoofball.
They were about nine body lengths apart, at least until the pegasus instinctively backed up enough to make it nine and a half.
"You were expecting me?" Fleur tried. "I'm --" well, it was a form of truth "-- from the palace. They let you know I'd be coming?"
There were probably squeak-producing toys scattered about the grounds for those animals who found them entertaining and judging by this newest sound, somepony had just stepped on three of them.
With most of the increasing desperation kept out of it, "I'm Fleur. Fleur Dis Lee. And you must be...?"
The best Fleur's forward-rotated ears could do with the next noise was "...eep!"
Sun was now visibly lower in the sky, as if pressed down by the sheer weight of embarrassment.
Fleur had been through the official training courses before receiving her now-destroyed license, and had managed to keep from laughing during all of them. But they had offered her words to say, if not ones to always believe in.
"I can't help you," she quietly offered, "unless you let me."
The pegasus took a slow breath.
In the time to come, Fleur would often look back on that first bit of speech: not so much the word itself as what had happened in order to produce it. Something which would happen over and over again with her new charge: the hesitation, that almost visible summoning of what little could pass for strength, stitching together the faint strands of willpower just long enough to produce speech at all. Sentences faded in, sometimes faded out. And far too often, every word carried the fearful undertones which suggested being made to talk to a pony was the worst thing to ever happen to the pegasus, at least until the next sentence.
It told Fleur so much about what she had to work with, and none of it was good.
"...okay."
She followed the pegasus back to the cottage. The rabbit mostly scampered alongside its mistress, sometimes getting ahead just long enough to turn and glare back at Fleur. The other animals cleared the path, and she saw bodies fading into the gradually increasing shadows.
Fleur had to focus in order to truly notice that. Walking closely behind her charge created certain... distractions. For starters, she had already verified that every last strand of that incredible tail spread was natural.
When it came to the typical pegasi standards of bodily beauty for mares... her charge was somewhat out of date. The majority of pegasi, at least for those who looked towards their own race, found their attractions centering around the sleek: the more aerodynamic, the better. The ideal was streamlined: air would flow over fur and feathers, and even standing next to a completely still mare might produce the phantom sensation of a breeze. (The cyan egotist who had provided directions actually wasn't bad in that regard: a nicely trimmed form, with a definitive impression of movement about her at all times -- but the manestyle was a low-maintenance expression of boredom, and the self-involvement writ all over that mare's face made judging her features a pointless exercise, because their owner had already done it, found herself perfect, and didn't understand why other opinions should be allowed to exist.) For that, this pegasus was lacking. But other types cycled in and out of fashion, and as little as three years ago, the body type in front of her would have been in: slender, with muscles shifting more on suggestions than orders: not physically weak, just seeming that way. The wings were a little oversized, enough that they would produce more air resistance than the ideal. The tail was... the tail. All of it. And as for the hindquarters... well, as long as you were in a position to watch the tail, your experience wouldn't exactly be hindered by expanding the view.
Not the ideal standard of beauty for a pegasus mare. But it was a type which always had fans, would forever have ponies seeking it out, and some of those ponies were prepared to go a long way to find exactly what they desired. Fluttershy would never be perfect in the majority of pegasi eyes -- but she would always draw some degree of attention. When her type cycled back in, she would get nearly all of it, at least until the trends shifted again. Fleur knew this one was capable of producing a few crashes of her own simply by trotting through town -- if she would just trot. What momentum the pegasus possessed seemed to be from having been pushed along by the negligible force of Fleur's expert scrutiny. She didn't seem to know what to do with her shoulders and hips beyond the simple creation of movement. The tail, which could have so easily been wrecking traffic all over the continent, just... hung there, arced just enough to keep it out of the scat which she seemed to have a truly magical talent for dodging. The magnificent eyelashes did nothing more than blink, or at least the one visible pair did, while her mane tried to hide the rest from the world.
Fluttershy was beautiful. To the right eyes, she would replace that status with spectacular. And she clearly had absolutely no idea how to deal with it. Might not even recognize --
-- no, that can't be right. Nopony could look like this and not figure out what they have. She's just -- the name. She's her name all over...
Fleur internally sighed and made an initial diagnosis of early puberty. There were those who used their first arrival status to dominate -- and more than a few who spent those first crucial moons running away from themselves.
They went into the cottage. Fleur silently noted the stained, damaged nature of the furniture, and the distraction let her get a little closer to the tail than she should have, enough for her snout to pick up on the faintest remnants...
"Doctor Groomer's Supermild Eighteen-In-One Foal-Castille Soap?"
Fluttershy glanced back over her shoulder. "...yes."
Fleur nodded approvingly. In her opinion, the soap in question was one of the greatest products available in the world -- along with being one of the least appreciated, because it had a negative feature to go with its positive. The beneficial aspect was that anypony who worked around foul odors could remove them from their coat with a simple two-minute soak, and that bath would generally prevent them from acquiring outside scents for about a day. It did render regular users incapable of putting on perfume -- but for anypony in Fluttershy's position, it would let her move through the settled zone without starting a different kind of unintentional riot.
The negative was found on the label.
For who else but Moon gave pony this sensuous passion, Love that can spark mere dust to life! Revealing beauty in our Eternal Orb's fashion, poetry, uniting All-One, all brave, all life! Who else but Moon! Who else! Each day, like a bird, perfect thyself first! Have courage and smile my pony friend! Think & act ten years ahead! And the pony without fault? He's dead! Do one thing at a time! Work hard. Get done! Then teach the Harmonic Ecstasy that unites all ponykind free! Love is like a willful bird! Do you want it? It flies away! Yet when you least expect its bliss, it turns around & it's here to stay! For centuries, ponies struggles, half asleep, half living, small, jealous, bickering over mountains made of dragon scales! To be awakened the night Moon chose giving its great reward for hard work: poetry-unity-love, evolving pony above, above the monsters! Passions that quicken your senses, fulfill, quench the thirst of lonesome years! Yet Moon has shadows, learn to control your will, to enjoy life-long happiness, not tears! For Moon alone knows pony's far distant future! Towards which love's unfailing light shows clear the upward path to ponyhood-peace! Great tasks to nurture, with strength and knowledge happiness can last! Love when conquered after years of toil-sweat-blood, love can strike like greased lightning sent by Moon to spark mere dust to intense blazing fire and create new Love, faith-hope-guts-strength as only Moon Inspire! Unite the Pony races in our Eternal Orb's great All-One-Faith, as all ponykind desire!
All three thousand small-printed words of it, when new prospective buyers were generally terrified into fleeing within the first forty.
(The Foal Soap had taught Fleur several lessons, not the least of which was that a pony didn't have to be sane in order to make a good living, along with providing hours of passable entertainment as everyone tried to work out exactly what some of the ranting was supposed to mean. No one had ever come up with a solution for 'arctic owls-penguin-pilot-cat-swallow-beaver, bee.')
There were birds on multiple perches inside the damaged sitting room. Small mammals sticking their snouts out of holes in the wall. Fluttershy took a long one-eyed look at them all.
"...privacy?" The group began to scatter, and Fluttershy glanced at Fleur again. "...I was going to get a drink. Do you... want anything?"
A very long list of desires scrolled across Fleur's inner vision, most of which required either a truly expert piece of blackmail or six-Element blast to fully execute. "Just water. Thank you."
Fluttershy forced a nod, then went into what was probably the kitchen as the last of the animals cleared out --
-- no, almost the last. The white rabbit was still there. And it had just kicked her right forehoof.
She looked down at it. The black eyes glared up at her. It was angry. It was offended by her presence. It was...
...completely familiar.
I know you.
You're the dominant one. Or at least you want everyone and everypony to believe that. But you know you're not. You're small and weak and can be beaten by just about anything that makes even a casual effort. You know that. And you think that if you're angry and stomp around and do what little damage you can while counting on someone else to protect you when things get bad, you'll get away with it. If you're furious all the time, maybe it'll look like strength, enough to keep from being pushed away. Except that you're the weakest thing here, and that's why you have to pretend so hard.
I've seen so many like you.
I hated them too.
Fleur carefully lowered her body to the floor until her chin was against the wood, casually looked down her snout at the rabbit, maintaining eye contact the whole time. And the words were meaningless, would never carry understanding to long ears -- but the tone would get through.
"I care about your life," Fleur softly told the rabbit, "exactly as much as you care about mine."
The black eyes went wide.
Fleur smiled. It wasn't a particularly attractive smile. The one which showed teeth wasn't meant to be.
Fluttershy glanced down at the white streak which rushed past her before bolting into the nearest low-set hole. The pegasus waited until she'd lowered the lift loop of the mini-trough from her outstretched wing before speaking. "...what happened?"
"Oh, we were just talking," Fleur casually said, pushing herself upright enough to take a drink. The water was pure, at least. "Thank you." She assumed a more standard sitting posture, hindquarters against the floor: there might be furniture, but she didn't trust any of it. "So... let's get started."
Fluttershy slowly nodded, went to a fainting couch, settled in as best she could, which still seemed to mean a fairly large number of twitches. She was reacting to every sound -- and even with the animals out of the immediate vicinity, there were a lot of sounds.
Fleur decided to get the worst part out of the way first. "What do you know about me?" Because this wasn't just the pony Celestia wanted her to (somehow) help: this was her point of first contact with the Bearers. Learning how Fluttershy had been briefed would let her know just how much resistance she was in for.
"...you're... um..."
Fleur waited.
"...an escort. But... not the teleport kind?"
"No," Fleur calmly said, and provided a smile. "That confusion happens with unicorns."
"...I know. One of my friends... I missed that one, but... I know. There's the ones who -- take ponies with them, when they teleport. And there's the ones who... um..." Half of the beautiful face twisted from awkwardness: the hidden portion could have been up to anything. "Um..."
Fleur took a small amount of pity, and got it over with. "Serve as professional companions, for pay. Sometimes that means going to parties or attending dinners." Gently, "And sometimes it means having sex. That's the job. I help ponies who need company." And for the most part, she had helped them to become somewhat poorer.
"...the Princess said that," Fluttershy eventually told her. "And... she also said that... you aren't... you're not..."
The battered clock hands visibly advanced.
"...nice," Fluttershy finished, and somehow made it into the worst word in the world.
Fleur blinked.
"That's what she told you?"
"...yes."
"That I'm not... nice?"
"...yes," the pegasus eventually admitted. "But she said... I didn't need a nice pony for this. I needed somepony who... wasn't nice. And that when it came to not being nice, maybe even at the right times, when nice would be... wrong... you were the best pony anypony could have asked for. So... she would send you. And she did."
Fleur needed a few seconds to reconcile that.
"And that's all she told you."
"...yes."
She was trying to read tells, spot little signs that the pegasus was lying. The obscuring manefall was getting in her way. "That I'm not nice."
"...yes." Hesitantly, "...what did she -- tell you about me?"
Nowhere near enough. Fleur took a breath. "Just that you're one of the Bearers, plus your name, and she showed me a picture. She didn't tell me what you did for a living, or anything about the cottage, or... anything else."
"...I'm -- sort of an animal caretaker," Fluttershy offered, and when Fleur's eyebrows requested more, turned that into "...I take care of animals."
"So you're a vet?"
The one visible eye briefly closed, and Fleur could tell it had been from pain. "...not officially. Just in all the practical ways. The -- hard ones."
It was as good a time as any. "And you add your Bearer's salary to that."
Fluttershy blinked in innocent confusion, and Fleur's heart froze with horror. "...salary?"
The next thought was fully sincere. Celestia, you bitch. "You -- don't get paid?" She wished it had been a statement of disbelief -- but as it was, the question mark had been purely rhetorical.
"...we... get our expenses back. And compensation for what we don't earn normally because we're on missions." A pause. "...well, we get that now."
Fleur doubled down on the bitch status and began applying the careful, permanent internal label of monster.
"Okay," she forced herself to say. "Maybe we'll come back to that." Sun and Moon, what kind of monster kicks somepony into a fight with Nightmare and doesn't even pay...
She took a very necessary moment for driving the fury down to a background level before risking "But right now, the only other thing she told me is what she needs me to do. To help you find a mate. Somepony you can have foals with."
"...yes."
And, because the anger hadn't been pushed deep enough, Fleur said it.
"Why are you letting her do this to you?"
Another blink of innocent confusion. It was a very pretty one, and it was also very close to becoming Fluttershy's signature move. "...do?"
"She's forcing you to find somepony! She's making you have children!" Fleur didn't hear the increase in her own volume, didn't even wonder why some of the smaller bits of brick-a-brac in the room were starting to dance. "She's basically selling you off for the good of the nation, she's sending you out there to have kids which you don't even want, she's acting like she owns you and when the kids come, the kids you don't even -- !"
And somehow, the near-whisper cut through the near-scream.
"...I asked her."
The shock coated Fleur's throat in ice, bound her tail to the floor and paralyzed all four legs.
"...for help. Because --"
The words burned her tongue on the way out, burned her with cold. "You. Asked. Her."
"-- it's -- just me..."
That one eye blinked, and with that motion, the first tear fell.
"...he's... never had a friend before. He... doesn't know -- about loss. He'll outlive me. That's the cycle. He's part of it... but a different part, a part which turns so slowly... and when I die... it'll hurt him. He doesn't understand death. Not -- that way. I think... he killed, back when things were bad, when he was in charge of the whole world. Sometimes ponies died just from what he'd made the world into. Maybe sometimes... directly. He doesn't talk about it, and... I don't ask. But those deaths were just... broken toys, and there were always more toys, and toys didn't care or feel and... now he's starting to understand a little, I think. Maybe it'll all kick him at once, and... I'll be there for him when it does, if I'm still alive..."
She was talking about the Discordian Era.
She was talking about Discord. As if he was an entity which could potentially become something very close to a pony.
She was talking about the inevitability of her own death.
The words were soft. Pained. Agonizing just to hear. And yet they kept coming.
"...but when he loses me, if he doesn't have anypony else... it'll hurt him, he won't know what to do, he might lash out, and... I'm scared, I'm scared for him, and... one of my friends is dating now. Well -- two of them, really. Each other. It's sort of -- tentative? -- I guess that's the word. They're both trying to -- work things out. But it made me start thinking. That eventually, maybe everypony will find somepony, and... I can't even look. If I think about looking... knowing nopony would look back... I can't, I can't and... I'll be the last one, I always knew I would be the last one left alone, but now they're dating and he's going to lose me and I don't... I don't want to be..."
There was a very large salt water stain on the couch cushions. That was what happened when a pony cried into the fabric. Over and over.
"...I don't want to be alone any more," Fluttershy whispered. "I have my friends, plus my animal friends, but I see the two of them together and I know it's not the same thing. I don't want to be the last one. But I don't know how to stop. And... if I have foals... I know how to love them, I swear I do. I swear they'll be loved. I want... to love. Not just for him, even if he started me thinking about it. For... me. Because... I'm afraid of so much, and now I'm afraid I'll be alone... and I don't know how to start... "
It would have been so easy to go to her. Let the pegasus cry into Fleur's coat as the faint scent of that familiar soap brought the former escort back to places she didn't want to remember. And so she didn't. She simply watched, and waited until the tears temporarily stopped. Perhaps it would always be temporary.
"All right," she heard herself say. "We'll get started tomorrow."
"...but..."
"You need rest," Fleur stated. And so do I. "We'll start when you're fresh. What's a good time to come by?"
The thought process was rather visible. "...there's never a good time... but if nothing happens, then... two hours after sunrise?"
She nodded. "I'll see you then." She started to stand up.
The words stopped the movement. "...the Princess said... I have a lot of rooms, but most of them are -- occupied. But I could -- clear one out, if you haven't found anything yet. It's just a matter of... shifting the least nests. And cubbyholes. There's... some makeshift burrows --"
Which would leave all of those displaced residents both furious with the new occupant and, in all likelihood, trying to reclaim their territory -- a process which would start by marking it all over again, possibly on top of the most recent arrival. "I've got something already," Fleur smoothly lied.
"...oh. Okay. Um... how are we going to... start?"
Teaching you how to trot would be a good idea. Fleur just wasn't sure it was the first step. "By starting," she told her charge, deliberately leaving it vague until she could think of something.
"...oh," Fluttershy repeated. "Um... did you want anything to eat before you left, or...?"
Fleur mentally reviewed her estimate of the battered cottage's weekly feed bill. "I'm fine." Because when somepony had virtually no money, you didn't ask them to spend it on you. "Good night, Fluttershy."
Eventually, "...good night -- Fleur. I'll -- walk you over the bridge. And I'll tell everyone about you, so it'll be easier to visit after."
Fleur nodded, putting a note of thanks on the end of it. Fluttershy got up and led the way to the door, which normally would have been providing fresh access to that view, but --
-- all right. I just got some idea of what I'm working with. If 'idea' could be applied to 'nightmare'. Let's see what the rest of it looks like...
She delved down within herself, and told her talent to act.
Half a second later, her frozen hindquarters were on the floor again.
It took the pegasus a few hoofsteps to notice that her guest had become incapable of movement. "...Fleur?"
"...nothing," Fleur slowly said. "Nothing..."
Openly worried now, which was obviously something Fluttershy had a lot of practice with. "...are you okay?"
"It's -- nothing," Fleur lied. "I've just been trotting around all day. My left hind hoof slipped."
"...are you going to be okay for the road? It's a long way back to Ponyville --"
"-- it's just one little slip." Nothing... "I just have to be more careful about where I trot."
"...but..."
"I'm fine."
The pegasus listened to those words, for they had not been nice. And so she led her teacher out of the cottage and over the bridge, then went back to her home, awkwardly glancing back over her right shoulder all the way.
Fleur waited until the door was completely shut, then forced herself to trot beneath a sky of rose and blood until she was out of window view. And only then, after a careful check above her for yellow feathers, did she allow her tail to splay over the ground again.
It was long minutes before she was able to move, more than long enough for Sun to be completely lowered, with all of that time spent staring at what her deepest magic had delivered.
Fleur's talent was, in many ways, a simple one. As Celestia had said, many ponies had a gift for empathy: the ability to read the emotional states of those they interacted with, something which gave them an edge in choosing how to respond. Fleur couldn't quite do that. Her talent was focused in a single path, and so found extra power flowing down the narrow channel.
Fleur knew what ponies liked. Sexually. Even when those ponies didn't.
It could almost be funny, the things which influenced desire. A pony in her filly years would have a gentle wing drape across her back in a time of high emotion and when that pony grew up, she might just find herself looking for pegasi above all else, ones who would open their overtures through tickling her with their feathers. Under the right circumstances, just about any moment could crystallize, become an internal image which the bearer might not even be aware of at all. Long before the moment of first open desire, every sapient would be forming a picture of what they wished for in a mate. Additional events would add their own aspects to that ideal. And as new wants arrived, the image became increasingly complicated. Inevitably, it would fracture.
Somepony who'll cook for me: one piece of the puzzle.
Somepony who spoons after sex: another.
Somepony who'll kick my ribs just hard enough to sting and tell me I've been bad: a third, and one which tended to make the spooning a little painful -- which might be a fourth piece.
It was almost impossible to find every piece present in the same potential partner. And so as ponies moved through the world, consciously (and otherwise) evaluating those around them, pieces would shift about, trying to match as much as possible, attempting to come close to an ideal which could only exist in their heads...
Fleur knew what everypony liked, and everyone. It was something which had helped her as an escort: this one wants the base of his ears rubbed, that one wants her wings to be very slowly preened, and having somepony doing exactly what they wanted without needing to be told had made some of her clients very happy ponies indeed. It was also something which gave her access to secrets, for not everypony wanted others to learn what they truly wanted, not even those they had hired as companions -- but Fleur would find out anyway. Every time.
She had reached out to solve Fluttershy's puzzle. And it had taken the second shortest amount of time required for a solution since the day her talent and mark had appeared. The first had been the True Surge, the arrival of power at the exact moment of manifest. This time...
Fleur was supposed to be finding a mate for her charge. The first natural step was to find out what Fluttershy dreamed of in her ideal partner. And so her magic had done its job, and delivered --
-- a blank. white. slate.
Fluttershy had no puzzle.
No picture.
Nothing at all.
Her head was still spinning as she forced herself to move under Moon.
How is that possible? Even those few who could be truly thought of as asexual had puzzles -- but in those cases, there were very few pieces, which mostly bore faint washes of grey. The only way anypony could reach her age with nothing is if they spent their entire lives responding to every thought of desire with 'I can't.' If she decided it was impossible and so the least hurtful thing she could do was to never want anypony at all! Scrubbing every piece clean as soon as it broke off, fusing it back to the main mass, until all she had was...
...white.
She doesn't know what she wants because she's never let herself want anything.
Fleur had -- potentially, at least -- a very large number of options for making Celestia feel her hate. Making Fluttershy miserable through creating a deliberately bad match had never been one of them. It was punishing the pegasus for something her non-paying employer had done, and striking at the boss through the underlings generally just resulted in a lot of wounded underlings and a boss with a Help Wanted sign. And besides, setting somepony up with a mate who didn't love them was... wrong. Fleur would manipulate. She would get into the Bearers' heads and use whatever she could to rebuild her web. But that was just work. It was what was necessary in order to create security. Deliberately manufacturing a lifetime of pain had never been part of any plan, should never be -- and so while she hated what Celestia had done in sending her to Ponyville, she had always intended to spend whatever portion of her durance she was unable to escape in actually performing the task.
But Fluttershy didn't want anything. The pegasus knew she wanted to be in love and have foals with the pony she was in love with. As for what that pony was supposed to be other than 'in love with me'... nothing. Nothing at all. How was Fleur supposed to match a blank?
-- and that was when she heard the howl.
Timber wolf. Not close. Only one. Searching for the rest of the pack.
It had been just about the worst day of her life. Tomorrow wasn't promising to be any kind of improvement. She had no bed waiting for her in Ponyville, and while arranging one in an emergency was generally a matter of a casual smile added to a subtle glance directed at just the right pony, she found she had no desire for companionship on this night. She didn't want anything except her life back.
Ponyville was still a good distance away. And the timber wolf wasn't anywhere near close -- but it was a timber wolf, and she'd heard those howl before, from a much shorter distance. She didn't need to hear it again.
...no. There's something else I want. I want this day to be over.
She was hungry. Tired. Emotionally exhausted.
None of that kept her from breaking into the abandoned mill in less than ten seconds.
The glow of her horn turned darkness into degrees of shadow, and it was enough to let her make her way through useless machinery and long-discharged devices. She could have created more light, but... there were windows, even if they were dusty ones, and there was always the chance of somepony passing by at just the wrong moment.
Less than ten seconds to break in: it was good to know her skills hadn't eroded from lack of use. Something over three minutes to secure the place so that nothing else could come in after her without creating a racket, and then just a little longer to find a corner she could risk curling up in. Something defensible, if dirtier than she would have liked.
She would have to wake up very close to sunrise, and told her body that as she settled into the corner. Early enough to gallop to Ponyville, find some degree of breakfast, and then get back to the cottage in time for that first lesson. Whatever that was going to be, whatever it could be for a pony who wanted nothing.
Her eyes began to close. Somewhere, the timber wolf howled again, but it didn't concern her. There were walls. And when she woke up... would there be enough time to check the mill, to see if there was anything she could scavenge, something to be sold and --
-- she was so tired...
But she had to be up early, because there was extra time needed on top of what she'd already listed. She was sleeping in dirt and dust. She would need to be clean again.
She would need to be pretty.
Fleur's breathing began to slow, gradually matching the rhythm of the misaligned gear clicks.
They said my mother was pretty...