//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Making New Friends // Story: How To Befriend a Baby Dragon // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Had Fluttershy's life been one of the Old Pegasus sagas, that moment of perfect joy and understanding at age eight, when she first beheld the diversely riotous loveliness of surface-dwelling Nature, and realized that she could understand and talk to all animals, would have been the full dramatic climax of her childhood. This would have been the moment when the heroine unlocked her special talents, and might thus begin the series of preparations and trials against increasingly that would culminate in her Heroic Quest to enter some cursed realm and overcome some fell monster, resulting in her returning with some great gift of victory that would help her kinsponies forever, the great Deed which would have been the reason for the writing of the saga. Some of it was already set up. The heroine usually had a best friend, who was sometimes also her lover, regardless of gender (Old Pegasus culture was remarkably tolerant of divergent sexualities, especially in its protagonists and their friends). At ten years of age, Fluttershy of course had no lovers of either gender, nor much desire for romantic attachments (though she was old enough to be more than a little creeped out at the way in which Cloud Kicker eyed her), but she did have a best friend. One whom, as she grew older, she sometimes found herself regarding in an increasingly warm, and eventually more than merely friendly, light. This was, of course, Rainbow Dash. Dashie was two years her junior, but her courage and competence meant that it was almost always Dash defending Fluttershy, rather than the other way round. That was simply in the nature of Rainbow Dash -- to protect the weak and innocent against harm. Even as a filly, Dashie had the heart of a hero, which was something Fluttershy had recognized from the moment she met her: recognized and admired. Fluttershy had always hoped to find a hero. One of the good things about her insane mother, Sweetwing Wind, was Sweetwing's love of ancient lore and legendry. This was not so good when Sweetwing was ranting about Buzzies and Dragons about to attack them, but it did mean that Fluttershy grew up absorbing all sorts of old sagas and wonder-tales, and had access to many books about the heroic past of the Pegasi. Rainbow Dash did not like to read -- even in the first flush of her admiration for her polychromatic-maned best friend, Fluttershy was aware of Dashie's intellectual limitations -- but she did not at all mind letting Fluttershy reading to her, especially if it was a tale of exciting adventure. Often, Fluttershy would borrow one of the less rare books from Sweetwing's library, or take one of her own books of wonder-tales, and spend the day curled up with her on a private cloud or in some secluded forest glen, recounting to Rainbow the ancient myths and legends. Rainbow Dash seemed to love those times together, when Fluttershy read to her. Sometimes Dashie just cuddled into her and listened, and at those times Fluttershy simply enjoyed the primal happiness of Dashie's friendly warmth and familiar smell, and dear heartbeat nestled against her own. And even before Fluttershy knew what she was doing, she was sensing Dashie's love and friendship, the radiance of her shining soul, and sustaining herself in some way she could not yet comprehend from the presence of that spiritual fire. Sometimes, though, the stories would inspire Rainbow Dash to question and comment, and they would have the most wonderful discussions about the heroes and the villains and other characters; about what they would do were they in the situations from the stories. These were almost always tremendous fun, because it let them fantasize that they were epic heroes. Dashie, of course, always favored the more direct and violent strategies. For instance, when Fluttershy read her from the Feats of Flash Magnus, and got to one of his fights against Dragons -- despite the fact that Fluttershy described the huge archosaurs with delicious and mostly-unfeigned horror, Dashie jumped up and launched into an elaborate boast about how she would have flown right up to their gigantic leader and "kicked him right in the snoot, pow!" Fluttershy giggled in delight and clapped her forehooves as Rainbow Dash proceeded to demonstrate, in a long pantomime somewhere in between brag and combat kata, just how she would have beaten up the Dragon Lord and all his minions for good measure. Dashie's routine involved violent punches and kicks, delivered to the air or to nearby unfortunate trees, and ended when she became a bit over-enthusiastic and managed to entangle herself in a mess of lianas. It might have been embarrassing in front of others, but with no witnesses other than themselves, they were both laughing, as Fluttershy helped her friend get loose, and they collapsed, still laughing, into a long hug. "Well, that's how I would have done it 'cept for that last part," Dashie summarized, and Fluttershy smiled happily at her, for in truth Dashie already was her hero, and needed prove nothing to her. Fluttershy's solutions, on the other hoof, tended to be softer ones. In the "Tale of Swiftwing Breeze and the Twister," for instance, when the eponymous hero and villain met, and Swiftwing stood before the anatomically-monstrous Twister, who boasted to him of being "the most mighty force of the Universe, alone in his magnificent glory," and set to him the Eight Impossible Tasks and the Ninth Hidden Quest, Dashie said that Swiftwing should have just kicked him, but Fluttershy disagreed. "I think that The Twister was mostly just lonely," Fluttershy said. "He was mean and powerful, so everypony was scared of him. Maybe what he really wanted was a friend. Maybe if Swiftwing had been really nice to him, he and The Twister might have been friends, and then The Twister might have become nice too." Rainbow Dash shook her head. "Things don't work like that," she said, a bit sadly. "Jerks are jerks. They aren't nice. You maybe don't get that 'cause you're real nice, Fluttershy -- the nicest Pony I've ever known." Her lovely cerise eyes shone at that. "Jerks are just ... jerks." "Sometimes maybe jerks can be nice," Fluttershy argued. "Suppose everypony was always scared of you? They thought you were a jerk and they didn't want to be nice to you. Maybe you'd be a jerk, just to show them how mean you could be. But maybe inside you'd hope that somepony would be nice to you, be your friend, so you could be nice back." "I wish things worked like that, 'Shy," Dashie said a bit sadly. "I wish more Ponies were nice. I don't like hanging around jerks. But I don't think it works that way. Jerks will be jerks, and they'll pick on nice Ponies, unless somepony shows them why they shouldn't be. Pow!" She mimed front-kicking a jerk. "That's how things are." Fluttershy gave up on the argument. She didn't like arguing against Dashie, who was her best friend. But secretly, she still thought that The Twister had mostly just been lonely, and that the Tale of Swiftwing proved it. After all, even though Swiftwing had been a really fast flier, The Twister could teleport. He could make banana mead rain from the clouds or make monsters from thin air. He could probably kill a Pony, real easily, if he wanted to do so. But he hadn't killed Swiftwing. Instead he'd talked to him; offered him hospitality; set him tasks to do which, while difficult, weren't really impossible. Instead of fighting Swiftwing, he was sort of playing games with him. Extreme games, which could have killed Swiftwing, and might well have killed a normal Pony -- but then Swiftwing was no normal Pony. And The Twister, with his weird alien wisdom, might have known what Swiftwing could do. And the deeds Swiftwing had done, because The Twister had told him to do it as the price of giving back Fairfeather Damson, had benefitted all Ponykind. If Swiftwing hadn't chained up the Skeleton Horde back in their cave, or slain the Fire Hydra, wouldn't a lot of other Ponies have gotten hurt? That didn't sound as if The Twister was really the Enemy of Ponykind, as so many stories claimed. It sounded more as if he was a secret friend, or wanted to be one. Maybe he just needed a chance to be friends with Ponies. Fluttershy resolved to herself that, if she ever met anyone like The Twister, she'd try to make friends with him. As their childhood changed into adolescence, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash continued to be best friends; continued to read and discuss and act out the old sagas. Gradually, their acting became more organized: Fluttershy wrote little playlets based loosely on the sagas and they would do whole scenes together. Their favorite scenes would be dramatic ones in which involving a High Lady, played by Fluttershy, and her elite Bannermare, played by Rainbow Dash, faced various dangers side by side. Often the High Lady would call the Bannermare to her, and send the Bannermare on some perilous quest; sometimes the Bannermare would rescue the High Lady from danger; occasionally, they would experiment with declarations of romantic love (but usually in the context of the threatened or actual death of one or both of them, because otherwise, in Dashie's opinion, it would be "too mushy"). Fluttershy by this point understood Rainbow Dash well enough to know that Dashie's willingness to get even this mushy, even in the context of pretend games, was something she would have done only with somepony she wholly trusted, and she well appreciated the gift of that trust. In their little scenes they would have died for one another; they both knew, though for different reasons they were too shy to outright say it, that the same was true between them in real life. They did other things together too, of course. They went on long walks and flights together, seeking out places of beauty and history and legend, and had many little adventures in the process. They joined the Junior Militia and made sure to get into the same squad: they camped out together on militia training and helped each other get through the rough parts. Dashie aided Fluttershy on the physical challenges, while Fluttershy cooked for them and tended Dashie's occasional injuries. Those were good days. Wrapped in the pure and innocent fillyhood love of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy was in part able to forget the warnings of her mother Sweetwing that the world was full of enemies; that the foes of Clan Wind and her scarcely-less malign kin of Windvane's part of Clan Wind plotted against her; that Buzzies lurked in the shadows always watching them; that Dragons were waiting for just the right moment to descend on them and eat them. These fears seemed meaningless in Dashie's aura of affection, in a world that contained a laughing boasting raspy voice and a rainbow mane and a lovely pair of cerise eyes. There were still the bullies and the scoffers; the other Pegasi who laughed at her because she got scared sometimes and her wings locked up and she could barely fly when that happened; this was one reason why she very much preferred to stay near the ground. But Dashie was never mean to her about this, and who really cared what the others thought when Rainbow Dash, who Fluttershy considered the ideal Pegasus filly, so obviously approved of her? Dashie had other Pegasus friends, and when they saw that she liked Fluttershy, they tolerated her for the sake of Dashie's friendship. Some of them even came to almost like her. There was one Pegasus she especially disliked. Cloud Kicker, who was already a teenager, had always had some odd sort of fascination with her, and even as a pre-teen Fluttershy saw something wrong in the way those orchid-hued eyes stared at her; the way she sometimes fancied she saw someone or something else looking out at her, something predatory and cruel. Cloud Kicker already had a reputation for flying off with a lot of different colts -- and fillies -- and Dashie told her that Cloud just wanted to do some kind of mushy stuff to her. "But she wants that with everypony, 'Shy," Rainbow Dash said. "She's nuts about it. Nothing special about it toward you -- which I guess is kind of icky in itself -- and she's mostly harmless. Just don't let her kiss you or anything, and you'll be okay." Fluttershy wasn't so sure about that. She'd seen other Ponies look at her with lust before -- even at ten and eleven some Ponies thought she was beautiful, though Fluttershy didn't really agree with them -- and her extra sense could feel it. It wasn't a very nice feeling, but what that sense was picking up from Cloud Kicker when she leered at Fluttershy was somehow worse. It was like Cloud Kicker was one of the Dragons that Sweetwing always went on about, and she wanted to eat her. She couldn't explain it to anypony, not even Rainbow Dash, and nopony would believe her. So she just stayed quiet, and tried to stay out of the way of Cloud Kicker. Aside from Cloud Kicker, though, Fluttershy soon had little complaint regarding her treatment by the other Pegasi. The friendship of Rainbow Dash protected her from the bullies, who knew that they'd have to get through Dashie to get to Fluttershy; in a little while, the bullies found easier targets. Besides, though Fluttershy did not fully realize it, she was growing into a fairly impressive young Pegasus mare herself. Her legs and neck and wings lengthened; her barrel curved; she began to unconsciously step high and deliberate when she walked. Cloud Kicker regarded her even more hungrily, and Fluttershy wasn't sure why, but Cloud Kicker was avoidable. Other Ponies -- mostly colts and stallions -- began to eye her admiringly, and though Fluttershy blushed and hid behind her own pink mane when this happened, it was sort of a good kind of embarrassment. Fluttershy had been spending more and more time on the ground, exploring the White Tail Woods and the tame northern extension of the Everfree past Sweet Apple Acres into the outskirts of Ponyville; reveling in the diversity and beauty of the abundant surface life she found there. She made friends with many animals, and -- inevitably -- with a few Ponies. She met three Earth Ponies, Big Mac and Applejack and Landscape Carrot, whom she sometimes ran into when she wandered on the northern edge of the Everfree. Big Mac was then in his late teens, a big red stallion, scary in terms of his size but sweet and shy and gentle when you got to know him. Fluttershy thought he was really nice, and sometimes wished she could work up the courage to really talk to him. She felt he was the kind of Pony who might be really worth knowing. Applejack -- in her early teens -- was a small but well-muscled farm-filly: athletic and brave and rough and tough, and at first Fluttershy found her a little intimidating. Soon, though, Fluttershy saw that under that tough exterior, Applejack was one of the nicest and kindest girls she had ever met. AJ liked to boast, rather like Rainbow Dash, which was thus something that Fluttershy didn't mind at all. Sometimes Rainbow Dash came with Fluttershy to visit Sweet Apple Acres, and inevitably, Dashie and Jackie wound up boasting at each other of their athletic prowess, which would often lead to impromptu competitons. When these happened, Fluttershy and Landscape would watch, keep score, and try to make sure nopony got seriously hurt. Landscape Carrot was a quiet brown teenaged Earth Pony stallion Applejack's age, and Applejack's best friend: smart and a little shy and fascinated by geography and exploration. When he did talk, he often talked about the unexplored parts of Equestria, and the stories about what might be in there, and how much he wanted to go someday and find out himself. Fluttershy liked Landscape. She thought he was at least as nice as Big Mac, in his own way, but she could see the way in which Applejack and Landscape looked adoringly at each other, especially when they thought nopony else was watching. Fluttershy could taste the love boiling off them at those moments -- and she knew better than to come between them. It was not as if Fluttershy, as she was in her, was actually capable of setting her cap for anypony. Oh, she had yearnings: originally-inchoate, and composed largely of pure admiration, but increasingly-romantic and sexual as she put on years and began to regularly Cycle. These centered mostly on her two best friends -- Rainbow Dash and Rarity Belle -- both of whom were female. When she learned enough to know the concept, she might have assumed she was lesbian, were it not for the fact that she had equally strong, perhaps stronger, fantasies regarding certain colts and younger stallions. However, these yearnings had nothing, in her mind, to do with anything she might actually do, aside from the obvious ways in which she might relieve herself: with a wingtip or forehoof, later with an object Rarity gave her (given the limitations of hooves, Ponykind had long excelled in the crafting of such toys). This was because she would no more dream of approaching a colt (or filly, for that matter) romantically, let alone sexually than she would of voluntarily entering an air race. This was not because she felt it immoral. She did not exactly have normal morals. Equestria, in the late 15th century YOH, was in a relatively prudish cycle of her civilization -- the Equestrians were more sexually-restrained than they had been a century agone, and (though Fluttershy then had no way of knowing this) more than they would be in a century to come. While, as always, the Pegasi were the least prudish of the Three Kinds (their sense of honor being more centered on athletics and war than on sex), they were also affected by this cultural trend. Fluttershy, however, at the time had no real close contact with the culture as a whole. Her mother, Sweetwing, was far too concerned with improbable attacks by assassins, brigands, conspiracies and dragons, to teach her how to behave around colts, other than whispered admonitions to "beware of infiltrators!" Rainbow Dash, uninterested in "mushy stuff," was no fit tutor on the topic. Applejack and Landscape were too concerned with their own personal "mushy stuff," and Rarity ... Rarity actually might have made a good tutor regarding such matters. The problem was that Fluttershy lacked the fundamental education regarding flirtations and how to handle them that an ordinary filly would have gotten from her mother, her older sisters, her ordinary friends. Rarity instinctively understood things about affairs of the heart which Fluttershy was never to fully grasp, not in this incarnation of Kindness, and often chattered on happily about them to her friend. Fluttershy listened to all this with a sort of bemused admiration, like somepony who had barely mastered fundamental algebra listening to a lecture on n-dimensional vector analysis. She was not greatly enlightened. To Fluttershy it all seemed very theoretical and not at all applicable to her own life. She knew that she was an ugly, freakish thing: that something was fundamentally wrong with her body, that it did not properly fit the soul within her. She wasn't sure why, but it all sort of stemmed from that moment she fell out of the sky, and generated that very strange flight-field, the four-lobed one that would have worked better were she some creature with insectile, rather than avian wings. Rainbow Dash and Rarity told her she was beautiful. Applejack and Landscape agreed, when they weren't just dreamily gazing at each other. When pressed (generally by Rarity) on the issue, even Big Mac responded to the question of Fluttershy's attractiveness with an "Eeyup!" -- though then he blushed right through his red coat and hid his face for the next few minutes. She had met Rarity -- an off-white coated, violet-haired Unicorn filly the same age as Rainbow Dash, who was also a friend of Applejack's, though she spent most of her time in the town of Ponyville proper -- around the same time that she had met Applejack and the rest of the gang who hung out at Sweet Apple Acres. She was very much unlike Dashie or Jackie -- she fancied herself a refined lady, even as a little filly, and she managed to be one, most of the time. She was very much into hairstyles and pretty clothes and fashionable gatherings, or what she could find of them as a pre-teen filly. They should not really have become good friends. Rarity was very outgoing and quite bold, for all her polite ways, and she was very good at inserting herself into whatever social group she wanted to join. Everypony noticed her, and inevitably admired the precocious filly. Fluttershy was close to the opposite, when it came to other Ponies. She loved animals, and they loved her back, in part because she could talk to them, and most animals were fundamentally simple. If they knew that you meant them no harm, and were unafraid of them, they usually became friendly, or at least non-hostile. They just wanted to live: to eat and sleep and mate and enjoy whatever society was natural to them. Fluttershy could understand their motivations. Ponies, now Ponies were complicated. They had all sorts of twisty goals and plans, and sometimes they didn't like you even if you were kind to them. What was worse, they could hide contempt and hostility from her -- all she would sense from that was that they didn't love or like her, but that was also what she got from Ponies who were indifferent toward her -- and then strike when her guard was down. Her friends weren't always around to protect her. But Rarity -- Rarity understood other Ponies. She could talk to them like Fluttershy could to animals -- which is to say, she could say the right things to be respected by them, and she saw their motivations, even the twisty ones. Fluttershy was in awe of Rarity's smoothness and social skills, just as she was in awe of Dashie's bravery and athletic feats. Rarity once explained to her that it was about sensing patterns, but Fluttershy couldn't understand any but the simplest part of that. Fluttershy knew, of course, that Ponies had patterns just like animals -- however, those patterns were far too complicated for Fluttershy to understand. Sometimes, Fluttershy wished that Ponies had simpler patterns -- that a town of Ponies could all be like one big happy family, cooperating to do what needed to be done, never fighting, all just obeying their mayor and working together, sort of like a beehive. She didn't yet know about Leveling and Equalism, but she would have liked the ideas, had she encountered them as a child. Beehives and anthills made sense to her, in a way that Pony towns did not. Rarity returned Fluttershy's fascination, though not for her abilities with animals. Rarity actually told Fluttershy, soon after they met: "I can see that you're special." Fluttershy hadn't been sure what Rarity meant, so she wrapped her hair around her face and blushed and said in a small voice, "Not really." "Oh, really you are," insisted Rarity. She was only eight at the time, but she was already very good at controlling a conversation. "I can tell by your voice and your manners that you're from one of the Old Clans." Fluttershy was not even surprised that Rarity had picked up on this. In the months she had known her, Fluttershy had already realized that Rarity tended to pick up on everything about other Ponies, and they had spent hours at a time hanging out with each other. "Sort of ..." Fluttershy admitted. "A little." Rarity smiled at her. Her eyes were bright and her expression utterly friendly, practically-demanding more candid revelations. "Well, um, I told you I'm Fluttershy Wind. Senior line. Kind of ... um ... very high." Fluttershy winced as she said this, expecting her pretty friend to heap scorn upon her ridiculous claim. Though it was completely true, so laughing at her would have been unfair. Even at ten, she did not expect the world to be fair to her. To her surprise, Rarity's eyes lit up and she nodded, as if a guess had been confirmed. "Oho!" said Rarity. "I always saw something special about you! As if you were royal ... but I didn't know it was totally true!" "Well sort of," Fluttershy explained. "See we don't have noble ranks. Only hono ... honorifics. I've got one." She felt utter horror when she realized just how far she'd stuck herself out then, and wished she could just shrink until her mane could completely conceal her. "And yours would be?" Rarity asked. "H... high Lady," Fluttershy breathed, her voice dying out on the last syllables. "Eh?" "High Lady," she whispered, a little louder. Rarity frowned slightly, and wiped her ears with a purple silk kerchief. "Fluttershy, can you say that just one more time?" "High Lady!" Fluttershy almost screamed. Then she made a meeping noise and looked around frantically, fearing that somepony else had overheard. Luckily, there was nopony else around. "I see ..." Rarity stroked her chin with her kerchief. "High nobility or royalty, but no specified title." She lowered her head a moment, obviously mulling a bit more on it. Then Rarity looked up. "Senior Wind line. Doesn't that mean that your family were the Command --" "We're not any more!" Fluttershy said that last part almost hysterically, something she noticed only after it was too late. "Sorry," she said. "We ... um ... gave that claim up in the Unification ... long, long ago ... we mustn't let other Ponies think that about us any more. We're ... just normal Pegasi now." Or, in her own case, less than normal, as everypony must at least secretly realize. But one thing that Sweetwing Wind had impressed upon her was that Fluttershy shouldn't pretend to royalty, lest it be seen as an act of treason. Then, she realized something truly scary. Far worse, to her youthful mind, than upsetting Celestia could ever be. "Um ... please don't tell Rainbow Dash. Not that I'm High Clan, she knows that, but that I'm senior Wind. She might get mad at me cause I didn't tell her first." "Say no more," Rarity reassured her. "Your secret is safe with me. From her ... and everypony." And, because Fluttershy was still very naïve, she trusted Rarity completely. And, because Rarity was a very good Pony, she never betrayed her friend.