Many tears were shed during this feast that they gorged themselves into, more so on Fluttershy’s part. When they reached the last onion, Fluttershy was surprised that Rainbow Dash had just been finishing up her first onion, while Fluttershy had already finished her second. This was the first time that Fluttershy found herself not only eating faster than Rainbow Dash, but also more. In fact, this was the first time, even before Rainbow turned into a tatzlpony. Why hadn’t she started on her second onion yet?
Rainbow answered that when she began using her muzzle to nudge the onion towards Fluttershy. It surprised Fluttershy at what she was suggesting.
“No, Rainbow!” Fluttershy said, still in tears. “I-I’ve already had my two. That one is yours.” But Rainbow just shook her head. She leaned over and took one bite out of the onion, bringing more tears to her eyes, and then nudged the onion closer to Fluttershy. Fluttershy understood what she was suggesting. “But Rainbow… that would still mean that I’ve had more than you. And that wouldn’t be…”
Rainbow just cut her off by moving the onion straight in her face. Fluttershy sighed. It seemed Rainbow wasn’t gonna change her mind on this. “Okay... if you insist. We’ll share this last one.” She went ahead and leaned her head forwards, taking a bite out of the onion with Rainbow following suit. This of course brought more tears in her eyes, but, if her heart could cry, it would be flooding with tears right now. They were literally eating the same onion together, sharing food.
”Oh, Rainbow…” Fluttershy thought. ”Why are you being so cute right now? What happened to that side of you that denied cuteness?” She shut her eyes tightly as she took a hard bite into the onion, letting her tears pour faster. ”And why does it have to be absent now?!” This moment with Rainbow Dash, she was enjoying it a lot. But she didn’t want to enjoy it. Her heart told her yes, but her brain kept telling her no.
Fluttershy kept biting into the onion. Every time her heart raced, she bit into it faster. Rainbow Dash could see just how fast Fluttershy was biting into the onion, how joyful her moans of pleasure was. She was actually enjoying it more watching Fluttershy enjoy the onion, than actually eating it herself. So when she got through a quarter of it, she stopped biting into it and watched Fluttershy munch through the rest.
In a matter of seconds after stopping, Fluttershy finished the onion. She tried to take another bite into it, only to realize that there was nothing left. Realizing this, her eyes snapped open, immediately questioning how much of that onion did she really eat. All she found was Rainbow Dash looking back at her with a smile, chuckling even. From that reaction, and the feeling of how full her belly was, she could only conclude that she ate way more than half of that onion.
Fluttershy sat back and looked away, moaning with a regretful blush. She didn’t mean to do that. And to make matters worse, Rainbow moved up to her and gave her a lick, this time just below her eyes. It made her recoil a bit, realizing that Rainbow just licked off one of the tears sliding down her face. Before she could respond, Rainbow moved up even closer, placing her body against Fluttershy's.
Fluttershy yelped as she found her self suddenly lying on her back, with Rainbow's hooves pressed on top of her. Rainbow continued licking across her face, lapping up all the tears that was covering her face due to the onions. She instinctively braced her hooves against Rainbow's weight, but all she could do was moan and keep her eyes closed while the licking happened. Those tongues lapped along her cheeks, above her snout, just under her neck, but mostly along her closed eyes. They felt so slick and slippery, but removed the tears without leaving a mess. Half her mind wanted to push Rainbow off, or at least tell her to stop. But the other half didn't want to move, or say anything. Every time Rainbow did this, it was sending a pleasant chill through her body that she absolutely loved. Now this pleasure was just torturing her. Why did this have to feel so bad, yet feel so wonderful at the same time?
Rainbow didn't stop until all the tears were gone, also making sure the saliva was lapped up as well. It was amazing how her tongues could be really messy, yet still be used to clean really well. When she removed herself off Fluttershy, Fluttershy was left blushing, happy, embarrassed, and held with regret, all at the same time. A moan escaped her as she got up, not sure which of those feeling was most present during it. Looking towards Rainbow's smiling face wasn't helping her figure that out either. If anything, it was just making it worse.
Rainbow was wiping her own eyes by using her wing. But it didn't stop there. She took those wings in front of her face and started licking them with one of her tongues, licking the tears that she just wiped from them. It was way too cute for Fluttershy to keep witnessing. So she took her eyes off Rainbow and looked to the bag. Maybe going back to her review would help keep her mind off this torturous fantasy.
“Okay, Rainbow. Let’s continue where we left off.” Fluttershy reached for the bag to grab the journal, but paused. Her heart sank further as she remembered the real reason why she didn’t want to eat right now. She didn’t want Rainbow to worry about this, but after what she just did, now she really had a reason to worry.
The thing was, those onions were actually the last of their food. Besides the Alpine Flowers, there wasn’t anymore food left on them. They had to find this garden soon, else they’d have to turn back, or run the risk of starvation unless they found some more edible food around this part of the forest. At least she was quite full for the time being, but she was far more worried about Rainbow Dash getting hungry. If she got too hungry...
Fluttershy shook her head quickly at that. She grabbed the journal and went back to her notes in the back of the book. Rainbow Dash took that time to situate herself back to her comfortable lying position.
“We stopped at the part where we were discussing the mare who sacrificed herself to rescue you.” She took a deep breath as she continued this. Having remembered this subject, Rainbow’s frown returned, still unable to believe that she allowed that to happen. “You were under a spell that was getting your memory wiped. You still wanted to help, but it sounded like she did something to you to convince you to leave.”
Fluttershy shook her head. “I still don’t know why she would go through all that trouble to rescue you. But after you left, you eventually found yourself in the clearing that you showed me that day. And that was when your mind was fully cleared… of everything… even what happened just a few minutes ago. You were at peace… carefree… without guilt. It was home to you.”
“That is… until you found me. While you were exploring the forest, you were swallowing almost everything in sight. Berries, squirrels, snakes… parasprites… and even me. But just like everything else, you spit me out, and left.” Fluttershy noticed that Rainbow sunk her head low with her ears drooping. She still must’ve been feeling guilty about that.
“It’s okay, Rainbow,” Fluttershy said as she moved up to pat her mane. “You didn’t know any better at the time. Besides, you also said you were having this strange hungry feeling in your stomach at the time. Do you feel it now?” Rainbow looked down to her stomach for a second before shaking her head. “See? You also told me that eating a lot helps you with it too. As long as you keep eating regular food a lot, you’ll be able to keep that hunger in control.”
Except what Fluttershy didn’t know though was... she recently fed on Fluttershy before her battle with X. That was probably why she hadn’t been feeling it right now. Maybe it wasn’t… maybe it was. But one thing Fluttershy was right about, food did help. And maybe that was why Fluttershy wanted her to be eating so much. Then again, she kinda did just say that.
“After you told the story, you…” Fluttershy blinked. “Actually, you introduced me to another thing about the tatzlponies. They can dig themselves underground, dig really fast. Fast like a diamond dog I think. You told me that underground was where you slept that night.” She put a hoof to her mouth to think. “Do you think that’s because tatzlponies… live underground?”
Rainbow’s eyes grew curiously in awe at that. “Maybe that’s why nopony’s ever seen them before. Do you think we could find more tatzlponies if we checked underground somewhere?” Both their eyes grew curiously, but then Fluttershy’s shrunk. “Oh… but their toxin. If they’ve been living underground, then all the toxic air that they’re releasing would be insulated in their home. If we ever did find them, somepony like me would instantly suffer from that toxic air.”
“But! If they’re living underground together, then that must mean they’re immune to their own toxin. Which means you won’t suffer anything if you find them.” Fluttershy put her hoof back to her mouth as she re-read the notes of what the Spellcaster was saying. “Tomorrow will discover. Is that what they want? Do they intend to use you… to find these other tatzlponies?”
Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy exchanged glances at this, both eyes in awe. It sounded plausible, but… “But why do they want to find them?” She then thought about another part of the verse. “You will be its messenger… And you will be their new beginning.” There was a long pause. Nopony could provide a response.
Fluttershy started having doubts. She went back to the journal after marking that down with the Spellcaster. “If that’s all they wanted… why did they force it on you? Why couldn’t they have asked?” Scanning her previous notes left her with no leads. All she could find was that… “Somepony tried to stop this Spellcaster from doing whatever it is they wanted to do with them.” All she could conclude to, was sighing. “We just don’t know enough yet. But… I think it does give me some good news.”
Rainbow raised her ears at this. “If tatzlponies live underground, then… I think I know of a way to slow down the spreading of your toxin.” There was a light gasp that came from Rainbow. Her eyes were filled with hope. But, Fluttershy’s looked concerned. “Well… I’ll leave this decision up to you. But if your toxin can be insulated underground, then… during nights, when we’re ready to go to sleep, you can sleep underground while I sleep above ground. That way your toxin won’t have to spread further while we’re sleeping. It’ll give us about twice as long as we have now.”
Fluttershy looked away with a frown. “Of course… that means that we won’t be able to sleep together anymore. But if we can find a way to make those Alpine Flowers grow, we won’t have to resort to that. What do you think?” Rainbow had to turn her head to think on that. But that was okay. If Fluttershy’s theory was right, then tatzlponies were indeed very lonely. Any sort of insecurities, including sleeping apart, was probably a hurtful sign to them. She didn’t want to be a bad tatzlpony, but insecurities like these would make her feel otherwise.
“Like I said, it’s your choice, and you don’t have to choose right now.” Rainbow nodded in understanding. Fluttershy went back to the journal. “So… that moment we slept under that tree, we finally came to the end of Day Five.” She braced her head with a hoof. “Phew… What an eventful day that was. Now… Day Six… that was when my health was getting really bad. I tried taking medicine for it, but I would later learn that wasn’t working.”
“We set out to look for the place where you were held captive.” Rainbow remembered. It was about this time where she tried telling Fluttershy about what she did to Scootaloo after she swallowed her and took her away to the Everfree Forest. She still couldn’t find it in her to tell Fluttershy about those energy draining capabilities. And she still didn’t know enough about it herself. All she knew, was that she could drain her prey’s energy to restore her own. It would leave her prey exhausted and sleepy, and after a certain amount of time, leave herself just as sleepy and exhausted, if not more.
After what she did to Fluttershy with that kind of power, even now, she couldn’t find it in her to tell Fluttershy about it. Fluttershy continued. “On the way, we found a patch of flowers that we’ve never seen before. The Alpine Flowers. It was also the place where you met that Spellcaster, wasn’t it?” Rainbow nodded. “A few miles away from that, we found the place where the Rescuer sacrificed herself to set you free. You seemed to have a lot on your mind back then. Can you remember why?”
Rainbow tried to re-think that. Sighing, she shook her head. Fluttershy hummed. “After that, we found the shack where you were held captive. You still had a lot on your mind, and my health was getting worse. While you explored outside the shack, I explored inside.”
Now Rainbow remembered. Something about the place gave her a massive chill throughout her body. She thought it was a memory, but now, it felt more like a dreaded sense. There was something that she saw around that site, something huge. A monster. Probably the same monster that attacked her and her rescuer earlier. What was this monster, and what was it about this monster that gave her such chills?
“Inside the shack was… where I found this journal.” Fluttershy pointed to the journal she was currently using for notes. “This journal belonged to somepony, somepony who was born with an illness, an illness that could be treated, but had no cure. They were searching for a way to cure that illness, and that search brought them here.”
“Two ponies were mentioned. The Journalist, and… ‘Him’?” Fluttershy noted those down as ‘Journalist’, and ‘Unnamed’. “Whoever he was, it seemed that the Journalist didn’t want to mention him by name, or even who he was. They also didn’t want him reading this journal.”
“The Journalist mentioned meeting a creature that gave him hope, but gave the Journalist a horrible experience. Was that creature possibly another tatzlpony? Or was it something else?” Fluttershy paused for a moment to think. “Clang said… that a tatzlpony… ‘took the life of somepony very close to his client’.” A huge shudder ran through Rainbow’s spine. Was it possible that her power of draining her prey’s energy could do that?
“We thought they meant you… But then Strike told us that it wasn’t you specifically that they were talking about. If that’s the case, then is this what they meant?” Fluttershy thought back to what she learned from Clang, and what the journal said. “A new type of flower was discovered recently. It was very important to his client. Very important… because it provided a cure for the tatzlpony's toxin. The journal was mentioning this flower. But before I could get to it, I became infected, very badly. My heart felt like it was on fire, and beating so fast. It left the rest of my body in so much pain.”
Fluttershy closed her eyes and winced. “And to make matters worse, that was when the rest of the group that the client hired appeared before us.” She decided to note down ‘Client’. “One of them, he called himself ‘Renard Strike’. And the other, he called, ‘X’.” A hum escaped her mouth. “I wonder… is that really her name? Or is that just what they’re calling her?” While it was a curious question, it wasn’t important right now, so she dropped that subject.
“Anyway, you managed to get us to safety, after the timberwolves appeared. Strike provoked them when he tried to attack, making them all focus on him and X, instead of us. We were lucky, but without that flower, I wasn’t gonna make it. So you went out there without me to try and find that flower patch again. You said that when you found it, parasprites came and ate all of them, except one, which was the one you gave me. Were they following you?” Rainbow nodded.
“Because of that, X doesn’t trust us with finding this garden. We have to make sure that there’s nothing like that following us when we find this garden.” Fluttershy sighed. “IF… we ever find it that is…” She and Rainbow looked off into the direction that X said it was. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t see any signs of the garden from here. And judging by the fact they were in a clearing right now, it was probably still a good few miles away.
“I didn’t really know at the time if the flower would be able to cure what was wrong with me. It was the only hope I could think of from reading the journal. And I didn’t realize what it would imply if it worked. The illness that I was suffering turned out to be the same illness that the Journalist is having. Only... they were born with it.”
Fluttershy put a heart to her chest as a wave of despair washed through her body. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to feel that kind of pain every day. But they did mention that it could be treated. I wonder how.” There was a pause as Fluttershy collected her thoughts. Rainbow’s ears dropped. She knew what was coming next. “The Journalist mentioned that this creature they were talking about was the one causing the illness. Since I recently got sick at the time, even though I was taking medicine, that could only mean that the creature they were talking about was a tatzlpony. A tatzlpony… was attacking them…”
Both Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy weren’t liking where this was going. If that tatzlpony attacked them, it was only further proving that tatzlponies were indeed bad. There had to be a reason why it was attacking them. But what was it?
“The Journalist said that they had to perform a simple spell. A flower appeared as well as the tatzlpony. It tried to eat them while the Journalist made off with that flower. Are the flowers that precious to the tatzlponies?” With that in mind, Fluttershy decided to go to her bag to grab the Alpine Flowers that she had. Curious, Rainbow sat up to watch what she was doing. After pulling out the vase that contained them, Fluttershy brought them in front of Rainbow Dash.
“Tell me, Rainbow. Do you feel anything special when you look at these flowers?” Rainbow did as Fluttershy asked and took a nice long look at the Alpines presented to her. The results were as expected, but also disappointing. She could feel that these flowers were indeed very important to her. But the reason for that didn’t have anything to do with her tatzlpony side. These flowers were the cure to anypony infected by her toxin. That was the only importance she could feel with them right now, and Fluttershy already knew about that bit.
Sighing, Rainbow Dash replied by shaking her head, leaving Fluttershy with a disappointed frown. “Why did that tatzlpony attack then?” She placed the Alpine Flowers back into her bag. “If only we knew what kind of spell they were using, it would help us understand why it was attacking. But as it stands now, I can only say that a tatzlpony can become quite aggressive if it’s disturbed.”
“Rainbow?” Before Rainbow could start worrying about that statement, her attention was immediately brought. “You were always pretty aggressive before you lost your memory. But you were always fighting for what was right. I know you’ve been pretty aggressive as a tatzlpony too. But please understand that it wasn’t because of your tatzlpony side. I know that, because all those times were times you were trying to protect somepony. Protect me.”
Hearing all of that put Rainbow’s mind at ease. What she said was true. All those times she was aggressive were from her protecting somepony. Mostly protecting Fluttershy. Even the time when she literally had to rip off the vine tongues from a monstrous plant trying to eat her. Yeah… she was violent, but for a good cause. Speaking of which, that’s actually part of what happened during the time she went to get those Alpine Flowers, not that Fluttershy knew that.
“Back to what happened,” Fluttershy continued. “You managed to save one flower and bring it to me. That was when you learned that you were poisonous, and causing my illness. You left, left so that I wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.” She closed her eyes, as did Rainbow, trying not to let this news get to them that much. This is what they’re trying to fix.
“Day Seven. After eating that flower, I was feeling a lot better. But I noticed that you were gone, gone because of what the journal said. I kept reading after that, and learned that the Journalist had a moment of all hope being lost. They were saved, but they called it a cursed miracle. They… weren't happy that they were saved. They were saved, but it came at the cost of… ‘him’... ‘Unnamed’. When they said he was gone, they also said, ‘just like my mother’.”
Fluttershy placed a hoof onto the book. “It sounds like this ‘he’ that the Journalist is mentioning, was their father. But why didn’t they want to call him that?” She tried skimming through the other words mentioned by this Journalist. Rainbow moved up for a closer look. “And what about the Journalist’s mother? What made her…” A thought came to Fluttershy. There was one part of the journal that was crossed off. “‘Left behind by’... an illness that they were born with… oh no.”
Only one conclusion could come to Fluttershy’s mind. She didn’t want to say it out loud. But judging by the look on Rainbow’s face, it looked like she could already tell what happened too. Rainbow may have had her memory lost, but it certainly didn’t leave her clueless. A part of Fluttershy kind of wish it did for this moment. Maybe it was better that it wasn’t that way. The question that escaped Fluttershy was how this journalist was stuck with an illness caused by a tatzlpony’s toxin. Instead, her mind was left on the sadder note.
“They grew up without a mother… grew up with a father they didn’t want to name… and grew up with a terrible illness every day.” Fluttershy noted these details next to where the Journalist was noted. “They’ve been searching for a cure ever since.” Suddenly, Fluttershy’s heart started pounding. She quickly flipped through the pages to where the journal was talking about the flowers. “The Alpines… they were the cure. They said that if they could find more, they could finally be cured of that illness, as long as they stayed away from a tatzlpony.”
“That garden… if it does exist, that would give them more than enough, right?” Another thought came to Fluttershy, making her gasp. “The Client… they said that this flower was very important to them.” That was when Rainbow Dash raised her eyes in shock. Looks like she realized where Fluttershy was going with all this. “The Client hired three ponies to capture a tatzlpony... that is… you. They want you captured because they believe you’re dangerous, poisonous. And it was because of a tatzlpony that somepony very important to them was lost.”
All of the pieces came together. Such a huge motive was placed. “Now I understand why they’re so desperate to capture you. The Journalist’s only experience with a tatzlpony was an awful, awful one. One who left them born with an incurable illness, took their mother upon being born, and now took what I believe was their father.”
Heavy breaths escaped from both Rainbow and Fluttershy. “It has to be. The Journalist and the Client, they must be the same pony. And that must mean…” Rainbow and Fluttershy looked at each other directly, both with the same conclusion on their minds.
“If they capture you, they’ll get rid of you, for good. They believe tatzlponies are bad...”