An explosion shook the clearing, tearing leaves from the surrounding trees and sending a thick cloud of dirt flying upwards. A blue pegasus darted into the cloud, followed by a slightly slower purple alicorn. On the ground, matching them in speed, a pink earth pony and an orange earth pony followed.
Fighting monsters was not something just about anyone could do. It took strength, cunning, powerful magic, or at the very least an affinity for the nonsensical. And even then, a pony put their lives on the line just considering it.
Rarity poured a cup of tea and set it down daintily on the porcelain dish beside Fluttershy on the picnic blanket far away from the conflict. No, fighting monsters was not for everyone.
She took a slow sip from her own cup. The taste of unsweetened green tea washed over her tongue: bitter and refined.
Fluttershy carefully added a heaping teaspoon of sugar, stirring it in idly. She was the first to speak. “I hope the poor little beholder is okay.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow. “You're rooting for the...” She wanted to use the word monster, but past experience told her it would go over poorly with the mare's caring instincts. “... creature that is currently attempting to– how should I put this? Incapacitate our friends?”
“Well he seemed like he was just having a bad day. I'm sure he's a perfectly fine floating eyeball creature.”
“Did you come to this conclusion before or after it nearly incinerated your mane with lasers?”
Fluttershy stared deeply into her tea, not making eye contact when she responded: “Before.”
Off in the distance, the dust cloud had cleared, leaving the gigantic beholder and its undulating eye-stalks clear. It whirled around as it fought, attempting to train the one massive eye on its body toward four different ponies at once.
“I'm sure it will turn out perfectly fine,” Rarity made an effort to comfort her.
A blue blur dove down, striking the main eye hoof first. Fluttershy visibly cringed.
Rarity changed the topic to the first thing that came to mind. “Your little pony drawings from last Nightmare Night were lovely, even if the whole scenario you painted wasn't exactly blood chilling. Where did you learn to draw in that wonderfully unique style?”
Fluttershy blushed at the compliment. “Oh, you know, by mimicking another artist. It isn't really all that impressive.”
“Who would that be? I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.”
If it were possible to literally burst into flame from sheer blush, Fluttershy would have had a short but fulfilling career in arson. “Just a graphic novel artist,” she squeaked out.
Her curiosity piqued, Rarity pressed, “There are perhaps more graphic novel artists than there are apples in Ponyville. You are going to need to be more specific, darling.”
Fluttershy's wings twitched nervously, and her voice reached into pitches previously thought only attainable by Sweetie Belle. Rarity strained her ears to hear her. “Swift Stroke.”
The name struck a chord with Rarity, but for the life of her she couldn't place it. “That name sounds familiar. On the tip of my tongue, really.” She gave Fluttershy a pleading look. “Help me out here.”
Fluttershy shook her head vigorously.
“Oh!” epiphany struck, “Isn't he the stallion who draws the–” Her pupils narrowed. “Oh my. Fluttershy, I didn't know you liked to read–”
Fluttershy hid her head under her hooves and emitted a high pitched whining sound.
Rarity bit her lip. She didn't have the slightest clue what to do when a pony drove Fluttershy to do what she was doing presently... And to think she had been the one to do it. She had been so careless! Resolving to do something, she reached out with an awkward hoof and gave the mare a gentle pat on the head.
“Don't you fret,” she didn't let the tiniest bit of her uncertainty slip into her voice, “I won't tell a single soul.”
A shout managed to reach them from the distance. “Rainbow Dash, throw me!” Rarity watched as the blue speck dove downward, lifted up the orange speck, and tossed it into the air. The pony they could only assume was Applejack arced gracefully through the air before coming down on the top of the beholder with a powerful buck.
Rarity glanced furtively at Fluttershy, hoping the mare hadn't seen that. Thankfully, she was still trying to hide from the last minute of conversation. For certain definitions of the term thankfully.
She was whimpering, or at least, attempting to between her rapid breaths. Her entire body had tensed up as she tried to contract herself into the smallest ball possible. It was clear Rarity had hit a nerve.
Rarity sighed. She was going to have to do something a little more drastic.
Like one might hug a dog with glass bones that are rigged to explode, Rarity carefully wrapped her hooves around what she could only assume was the mare's neck. The scrunched up tangle of limbs and mane she had made of herself made it exceedingly hard to tell.
“It's okay,” she enunciated carefully. Had she known exactly which patch of pink hair was Fluttershy's mane, awkward pats would have abounded.
Fluttershy responded with the faintest of squeaks. It might have been words, it might not have been.
Rarity hazarded a guess that it was. “You're going to have to repeat yourself, darling.”
“It's not okay,” Fluttershy spoke on the very edge of hearing.
“Fluttershy, this isn't like you. You're braver than this. You've stared down a cockatrice, stood up to your younger brother, dethroned a veritable despot in Los Pegasus. How is me finding out you like a certain kind of content worse than any of those things?”
“It's worse than all of those things combined.”
“Now why exactly is that?”
“It just is, okay?!” Fluttershy practically shouted, despite the fact that her voice barely even met the volume of a normal speaking voice. She untangled her head from her body and gave Rarity a fierce glare.
Rarity met her glare and refused to back down. “Fluttershy.”
Her temper broke, and her head was back under her hooves nigh instantaneously. “I don't want to talk about it.”
“If you talk about it, you might feel better. I'm not pressuring you to sate my own curiosity.”
She refused to respond.
Off in the distance, the beholder suddenly found a large portion of its eyesight blocked by the largest blindfold Rarity had ever seen. The pink blob that had no doubt accomplished such a feat bounced from eye-stalk to eye-stalk. Rarity could almost hear the laughter.
“It's because it's not who I am.”
Rarity cocked her head. “Now what, pray tell, do you mean by that?”
Fluttershy peaked out between her hooves, meeting Rarity's eyes with a terrified gaze. “It's not who I am supposed to be. I'm supposed to be innocent. I'm not supposed to like things like that.”
“How absurd. Who in the world told you such a thing?”
“Everypony.”
“Everypony?” Rarity deadpanned.
She laughed a crude imitation of Rainbow Dash's boyish laughter. “You don't know what clopping is? You're so innocent.”
Her voice shifted. “Oh silly Fluttershy, you don't want to go to this party. You're too innocent.”
Her voice shifted again. “Maaaaybe stay away from that section of the library. You're a little on the innocent side to be reading those books.”
Her voice raised, shedding all effort to imitate. “Fluttershy, darling, you don't want a dress like that! You're much too innocent!”
Fluttershy was practically seething at the end. Then, as if realizing the full weight of her outburst, she blinked once, and went back to hiding under her hooves.
“I–” Rarity faltered, “I had no idea.”
“Nopony does,” she whimpered.
A ways away, the beholder's myriad of eyes began to glow, and lasers sprang forth from them. Moments before impact, a shimmering purple dome phased into existence. Pounded by beam of light after lethal beam of light, it refused to falter.
“You know, my parents expected me to be a miner.”
Fluttershy's ears perked up, but otherwise she did nothing to signal her attention.
Rarity continued, “Every day they would tell me, 'Oh we're so proud of you, Rarity-warity. Your gem finding talent is amazing! We're sure you'll be one of the best miners in Equestria when you grow up.' It wasn't just them either. Everypony around me seemed to echo the same sentiment.
“For a while I thought that would be the case. After all, when everypony around you says something it's hard to think of it as anything other than true. The idea didn't really make me happy though.” She laughed. “You know me. You know exactly why it didn't quite click.
“At first I tried to ignore that feeling. After all, becoming a miner was what I was supposed to do. I tried to become what they wanted me to be. Gruff, headstrong...” She shivered. “Unsanitary. But it wasn't long before that became completely untenable. My personality is simply too brilliant to be snuffed out like that! I am an eternal flame, and I will not be–”
Rarity stopped herself and grinned sheepishly. “In any case, the point was I couldn't be happy until I stopped focusing on what others thought I was, and started focusing on what I was. And I think, you need to learn the same lesson.” She punctuated her last remark by gently pressing her hoof onto the tip of Fluttershy's muzzle.
Fluttershy slowly relaxed, uncurling from the anxious ball she had formed until she once again resembled a pony. “I don't know what to say.”
Rarity, in an uncanny display of wisdom said, “You don't need to say anything. Not yet, anyways. Just think about it.”
Fluttershy took a sip of her tea. “Could you pour me another? It's a little sweet for my tastes.”
Lifting the teapot up in her telekinetic grip, Rarity smiled softly. Maybe Fluttershy would figure it out faster than she had.
In the distance, the battle went on. Ponies exchanged blows with the monster, over and over, until finally with one magical blast, the purple blob sent the beholder tumbling to the ground; still.
“It looks like our friends have wrapped up. Shall we rejoin them?”
Silently, Rarity and Fluttershy packed up their things, and made their way to the clearing where their friends waited.
Fighting monsters was not something just about anyone could do, but neither was saying the right words at the right time.