//------------------------------//
// Startracking - Part 5 
// Story: Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot 
// by Equimorto 
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Fluttershy was in the Everfree Forest, near the border, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. She was going back to her house, after spending some time tending to the manticore she'd befriended there.
Before the ground shook, before any other sign, she felt something was amiss. She felt it around her, a quiet unease, a thrill of nervousness that ran through the creatures of the forest. A jerkiness to their movements, a sudden awareness that something wasn't quite right. Fear, in a sense.
She had just a second to notice it and wonder, then one to prepare. Then the ground shook. Feebly, at first, distant and barely noticeable. But still there. The unrest in the creatures around her came to a halt, but it wasn't calm. Just stalling, the tension building up one moment after the other. A second quake, stronger, as every creature held its breath. Then the third one came, and the stillness broke.
Creatures went running, flying, barking and howling and crying, no direction to their movements, no destination on their minds, only an unbearable need to move, to do something, to get away from something that was everywhere around them. The increasing intensity of the subsequent quakes did not help.
And Fluttershy stood there, in the middle of it all. She couldn't see it all, most was hidden by the trees or simply too fast to follow, but she could hear it. She could hear them, all around her, and through the forest as their cries echoed to her. She had never seen the creatures of the Everfree like that.
Whatever it was, whatever was happening, it wasn't normal. It wasn't natural, not even by the forest's standards. And that had her worried. A different pony, in her situation, might have been concerned about their safety and about the animals running around them. Flutterhsy, however, knew that whatever they were running from would be far more worrying.
But whatever that was, she would have time to evaluate the situation later. In that moment, instead, her thoughts went to the animals in her sanctuary, and she immediately began to run back towards it, out of the forest. If the animals in the forest were afraid, the ones there would probably be terrified, and far more confused about what they were feeling.
Because they would be feeling something. Because even she had felt something, if just for a moment. A normal pony wouldn't, but spending enough time with animals had led her to share some of their instincts, or at least have a better understanding of them. Something she couldn't quite explain, some unconscious reaction about subtle details she couldn't quite point out.
She got to the sanctuary as quickly as she could, and there managed to calm down the commotion. Only a while later, once everything had been taken care of and things had calmed down, did she actually go into town and inquire about what had happened. And as the ponies pointed towards the mountain, and she turned her gaze to follow, she felt it again. That shiver down her spine, as she first saw the Behemoth, and wondered just how much things would change from that moment on.