When Fluttershy came to, she gasped as the pain in her muzzle caught up to her. Holding her nose, she stood up. Her chin and underside were covered in mud. She looked around. It was sunrise. The large mud wallow she’d landed in had a few wild boars standing around casually in it. She saw that her face had hit a large rock. There was no sign of any ponies, griffons, or breezies.
“Hello?!” she called in a slightly gurgly voice.
The only reply came from two of the boars, who sauntered towards her inquisitively.
“Oh, hello,” said Fluttershy politely. “I’m Fluttershy. My friends and I got caught up in a cyclone in the town of Griffonstone. Do you know where that is?”
One of the boars turned his head, and Fluttershy saw a mountain that was the spitting image of the one Griffonstone sat atop.
“Thank you,” said Fluttershy nasally; she couldn’t breathe through her nose.
A few more boars approached her out of curiosity.
“Um, have any of you seen a griffon around here?” asked Fluttershy.
The boars all shook their heads. As Fluttershy was about to ask if they’d seen any breezies, a horrible thought entered her mind about one of the boars finding one of her breezie pony friends and eating her.
“What about any breezies?” she gulped. “Seen any breezies?”
Again, the boars shook their heads.
“Okay,” sighed Fluttershy. “Well, I need to go to Griffonstone, but first can any of you show me to a source of food?”
One of the boars beckoned Fluttershy to follow her.
The boar led Fluttershy to a cluster of crab-apple trees. He asked in return for her to knock some of the topmost crab apples off their branches since he and his fellows couldn’t reach them. Fluttershy agreed, thanked the boar, and flew up to the top branches of the trees. She shook them and made it rain crab apples for a few minutes. She watched happily as several boars jogged over to eat the fallen crab apples.
“It’s good to be useful,” sighed Fluttershy.
She was about to fly back down to the ground when something leapt out of one of the trees and grabbed her by the wings. In a split second, Fluttershy knew it was a breezie. Next second, she found she had to grab a branch to stop herself from falling several feet.
“Alright, Fluttershy!” shouted a foreign voice. “Who’s the strongest of your pony friends?!”
Fluttershy did of course understand every word, but she couldn’t ignore her astonishment or the discomfort in her wins.
“H-how can a breezie be holding my wings so firmly?!” she exclaimed.
“That is no way to speak to me! Bluster! The peak of the breezie race!” growled the squeaky voice.
Fluttershy felt one of her wings break in the breezie’s grip.
“Ouch!”
“Give me the answer!” demanded Bluster, tightening his grip on Fluttershy’s other wing. “Who is your strongest pony friend?!”
“Applejack!” wailed Fluttershy in Breezian.
“That’s better,” growled Bluster.
And with that, he squeezed Fluttershy’s other wing and broke it too.
When Bluster had let go of her wings and started to fly away, Fluttershy tried to reach out and grab him. But she missed and ended up losing her grip on the tree branch. She managed to land on her hooves, and fortunately, no further bones broke. She looked up. There was no sign of the breezie that attacked her.
“Where are you!” she called, looking all around the cluster of trees.
Bluster didn’t answer. Fluttershy couldn’t see where he’d gone. She thought he must be hiding in the leaves on the trees, and kept her eyes on them for almost half an hour. Then her stomach growled, and she knew she had to eat. She scooped up some crab apples and munched away. They weren’t too bad, though that might have been just because she was starving, and she scooped up a few more and ate them. A minute later, one of the wild boars snorted at her. He told her the breezie was flying away. Fluttershy spun around. She couldn’t see Bluster. She asked the boar where he’d seen it, and he pointed towards the mountain Griffonstone sat on. Fluttershy thanked the boar and began to run towards Griffonstone. Along the way, she slowed down.
“What if I pass by any of my friends without realising it?” she worried.
Reluctantly, she carried on at walking pace, and looked around as she went; stopping to look in bushes, patches of tall grass, and between rocks in case one or her breezie pony friends was stuck there.
As she drew nearer to the mountain, her restrictive precaution proved justified. In between two shrubs, stuck to a spider web, with legs, wings, body, and mouth wrapped in silk, was Rarity. She was writhing and screaming inaudibly.
“It’s alright, Rarity,” said Fluttershy. “I’m here.”
She reached out and let the entire web stick to her hoof. Then, very gently and carefully, she peeled the spider silk off of Rarity.
“Thank you so much, Fluttershy,” gasped Rarity. “Oh, it was dreadful. I got dizzy and didn’t know where or who I was for who knows how long. And then my vision cleared up, and…”
She shuddered in Fluttershy hooves.
“All I could see was this horrible face with eight black eyes and two long pincers staring down at me,” she groaned, shutting her eyes. “I screamed, and it gagged me with its wretched silk. I struggled and struggled, but couldn’t escape. And then it left the web for some reason. I can’t imagine why.”
“It must’ve been a nephila clavata,” said Fluttershy. “They like to compete with each other for the biggest thing they catch in their webs. This one must’ve gone to find some others to show you off to.”
Rarity winced. “Well, I’m happy to say that disgusting beast has no meal to show off to his revolting fellows.”
Fluttershy frowned. “I wouldn’t call them disgusting.”
“Bah! Just you wait until you’re as small as I am now!” huffed Rarity. “Then let me know what you think of them!”
“Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed. “You’re nose looks in a terrible state. And whatever happened to your wings?”
“Bluster broke them,” sighed Fluttershy.
“Gracious! But who’s Bluster?”
“The breezie we were looking for,” Fluttershy grunted. “But he’s no ordinary breezie. He’s stronger, bulkier, and much, much meaner even than Seabreeze.”
“Evidently,” said Rarity, gazing repulsed at Fluttershy’s bent wings. “Why would he do that to you?”
“He wanted to know who my strongest friend was,” said Fluttershy, with a twinge of guilt. “He broke me.”
Rarity gasped. “He’s after Applejack now?! We’ve got to stop him!”
“He went that way, towards Griffonstone,” Fluttershy pointed to the mountain.
“Surely he wouldn’t go back there,” said Rarity. “He’ll be spotted for sure. There’s bound to be lots of griffons out and about after that awful storm.”
That was when Fluttershy realised why that cyclone came down upon Griffonstone. It was unbelievable. She never would have guessed one breezie could cause so much damage.