Fluttershy Digs Deep

by MagicS


Flower Fatigue

The tunnel was easy to fly through, it just went straight on and Fluttershy’s hardhat lit up every part that was relevant to her. No branching paths or any large rocks were in her way. Good. She realized that it had been a long time since she had gone down any further, instead ever since coming out of that waterslide she’d pretty much just been going straight. At some point she’d probably have another tunnel or shaft that led deeper underground but it was also possible that Moleville wasn’t any deeper than this. Fluttershy wasn’t sure if she cared one way or the other, she just wanted to find the moles and Angel. The deeper she went though the more she thought she’d probably find weirder stuff.

“Well… weird is okay. As long as it’s nice too,” Fluttershy pondered. “I still need to find Angel but as long as I can make friends with anyone I come across I shouldn’t be upset.”

She was sure she could make friends and get on the good side of the moles too. Maybe they would like to get to know her and ponies better? Maybe they could even come to the School of Friendship? That would be so nice, and Twilight would be so happy to have more creatures learning the magic of friendship. She just had to find them first. Even if they weren’t friendly or happy to see her at the start she would do her best to win them over. For the sake of Angel, herself, and the happiness that friendship could bring itself.

After flying for a bit longer, Fluttershy saw a light up ahead. So it was likely she was about to find herself somewhere weird again. She reached a hoof up to turn off her hardhat light and winced slightly at the change in illumination coming directly into her eyes now. But it still lit up all she needed to see in the tunnel so Fluttershy decided to save the power she had in her hardhat. The literal light at the end of the tunnel completely obscured what lay beyond it so Fluttershy was just going to have to fly on out of it and see what was there.

Giant Geode? Mushroom forest? Upside-down forest? She would take it in stride at this point.

Out of caution she still wasn’t flying very fast but she reached the curtain of light soon enough and emerged out of the tunnel. For a second she held a hoof over her eyes so she could let them slowly adjust, squinting a bit she lowered her hoof and looked out into the new chamber she was in. With a few blinks the white blur went away and the world came into focus. And once more Fluttershy was again looking at something she didn’t expect to see down here.

But since she did expect to see something weird then maybe she did expect it after all? She furrowed her brow for a second but then shook her head. No time for confusing questions like that.

This new part of the underground caverns she had entered was—to put it simply—very pretty. The water coming out of the tunnel split into two different directions, going up and down the shore of a large bed of rocks and dirt that stretched for hundreds of feet and formed a large oval, mimicking the overall shape of the huge chamber. Fluttershy gently flapped over to the rocks and landed on them to give her wings a little rest while she inspected the other oddities in here. Chiefly among them the fact that the entire ground portion of the chamber beyond the water was covered in flowers. Flowers, flowers, and flowers as far as the eye could see. It was a rainbow world of them, so many different colors and types were sprouting up from the ground.

Daffodils, daisies, roses, lilies, snapdragons, poppies, pansies, marigolds, begonias, chrysanthemum, and so many more Fluttershy couldn’t even name or recognize. The flower sisters up in Ponyville would love to come across this place.

“Oh, this is even more beautiful than the geode!” Fluttershy said as she hopped from the rocks and onto the dirt, sniffing the first patch of daisies she found. “But how did such lovely flowers grow down here in the first place?”

Fluttershy looked up to see what exactly it was that was giving this place its light. More glowing moss? No, nothing so simple this time. Fluttershy looked all across the ceiling of the chamber to see glowing red crystals jutting out everywhere. Dozens of them of all shapes and sizes were embedded into the rock. Together they gave off enough light to make it look like she had walked out into a real, above the ground, meadow.

“I know some crystals glow when magic is put into them, so why are these glowing like this now?” Fluttershy wondered. She wasn’t a magic expert like Twilight or Starlight though so it was doubtful she’d be able to discover why they were the way they were.

What was doubly weird was that while Fluttershy could see that their cores were all clearly ruby red, the light they emitted was much more natural like real sunlight. Maybe someone or something had put them here at some point specifically to grow these flowers? But why? Fluttershy looked around the flower bed some more, she didn’t see any signs of them having been planted or any being dug up recently. There wasn’t a single pony-built touch to the entire huge harden. Oh well, in the end it wasn’t a big deal to what she was doing down in these caves in the first place. It obviously wasn’t Moleville and Angel Bunny obviously wasn’t here.

What it was though was food.

Fluttershy had finally come across something she could eat, and her empty tummy was extremely grateful for it.

“These daisies look perfect,” Fluttershy said with a big smile as she walked up to the nearest ones. She really had her pick of any flowers she wanted. Some of the ones she didn’t recognize she might stay away from, they could always be poisonous, but she’d give them a smell at least too while she was here.

Fluttershy was always a dainty eater even when she was starving like she was now (which is why she stopped going to get hayburgers with Twilight) so all she did was calmly lower her mouth to the daisies and pecked the flowers off their stems. They were just normal daisies but they were still absolutely, positively, wonderfully, scrumdiddlyumptious! With her stomach as empty as it was the daisies were more than the perfect little lunch to have. Or possibly dinner. Or even breakfast. She still wasn’t exactly sure how long she had been here now. But she hadn’t fallen asleep yet aside from that time she fainted earlier. She didn’t exactly feel safe enough anywhere yet to fall asleep and she didn’t want to fall even further behind Angel and the moles. Sleeping could come after she rescued Angel or she truly had no more energy left.

These flowers were going to go a long way to replenishing that energy though. Fluttershy ate up a few daisies, enough to feel a little full, and went to pick some when she frowned. No bag to carry them—or anything else for that matter—in. So she couldn’t really bring any food with her to snack on later.

“Oh!” A lightbulb suddenly lit up over Fluttershy’s head. She plucked a few of the daisies and lifted up her hardhat, sticking them up under it. Safe and sound right on top of her head. It wasn’t a lot of room but it didn’t matter if flowers got a little squished either.

It was certainly better than however Pinkie managed to transport those cupcakes she always seemed to have on her…

After her quick meal and foraging was done, Fluttershy decided to go walk through the field of flowers. She did her best not to step directly on any of them but it was such an ocean of them that that was a little tough. But she didn’t want to just fly over them either, she wanted to feel the ground on her hooves and the flowers brushing up against her legs. That’s how you were supposed to enjoy a meadow. Some of the flowers were quite tall and bushy too, they reached up to her shoulders and even her head and tickled her as she walked by.

Since Fluttershy was looking all over to make sure she didn’t miss any pretty flowers she almost ended up walking directly into a peculiar and quite large one right in front of her.

“Oops!” She caught herself just before her nose bumped into it and blinked a few times before narrowing her eyes and inspecting this new flower. It had beautiful royal purple petals that got darker at their tips and a dusty yellow stamen emerging up from the middle of it. Fluttershy was enraptured by just how pretty it was and she leaned in to take a whiff of its fragrance.

When she did though, the purple petals all convulsed as if they sensed how close Fluttershy was to the flower. Fluttershy’s eyebrows shot up as the entire flower wavered and its stamen shook until—puff!

A big cloud of pollen was blown directly into Fluttershy’s face.

“Ack! Geheh!” Fluttershy wheezed and coughed, backpedaling away from the flower as her eyes teared up and her nose immediately went runny. The pollen didn’t stop there though, Fluttershy felt a great sneeze building up inside her and her whole body stiffened up in preparation. “Ah—Ah—Achoo!” Fluttershy loudly sneezed and fell onto her butt, head listing about as she suddenly felt very tired and dizzy.

“Oh my… t-that pollen may be a little… oh...” she couldn’t finish her sentence as the world spun around and her eyes rolled back into her head. Fluttershy fell over backwards and was out instantly, snoring her troubles away.


Fluttershy was still spinning behind her closed eyes by the time she regained any sort of awareness. The world was dark for her but there was light just beyond her lids, she only needed to open them back up. That was easier said than done though. Each time she tried to move her body it felt like she was fuzzy and floaty all over. And she still felt just plain weird. Dizzy but full of energy and with another big sneeze just waiting around the corner-

“Achoo!” Fluttershy sneezed and bolted upright, her wings spread out and breath quickly leaving her panting mouth.

She was still in the flower garden, that much was certain. But she couldn’t exactly remember what had happened. Only that she now felt all warm and light and still rather dizzy. There was a pleasant aroma filling up the air, sweet like honey and different from any flower she could recall. It beckoned Fluttershy to stand back up and she did so, though her hooves felt all tingly. She followed along with the pleasant aroma as it was joined by many others just as sweet.

“This has all gotten so strange again...” Fluttershy murmured to herself in a daze as she walked past more flowers.

“What’s gotten so strange?”

This time despite her somewhat fuzzy state of mind, Fluttershy immediately realized that there shouldn’t have been anyone else in here to talk with her.

“Who said that?” She asked, looking around and not seeing anyone.

“She’s a rather oblivious creature isn’t she?”

“Speaking of strange, isn’t she quite strange looking?”

“And her coloring is so drab and simple.”

“That fragrance coming off her is just mud, isn’t it?”

“My, whatever would possess such a… unfortunate creature to come here?”

“Hopefully she doesn’t stay long.”

“We can’t have something dragging the rest of our pretty selves down.”

The voices kept coming and coming and they were making Fluttershy’s pupils spin around and around before she finally clamped her hooves onto the side of her face. “Would somepony please be friendly and tell me what’s going on!” She shouted before getting red in the face after realizing what she had just said. “Um, if that’s okay that is...” she added, much quieter.

“Look down, you silly creature.”

Fluttershy looked down right at a blue tulip.

“Hello,” the tulip said to her.

“So we are greeting this thing?” A red rose next to it said.

“Might as well be polite I suppose,” a violet said.

Fluttershy looked all around the flower patch she was standing in, more and more flowers were clearly moving around and whispering and looking up at her. Was she hallucinating all of this? She certainly felt weird enough to. They didn’t have faces like Phillip and the rest of the mushroom brothers either. All Fluttershy saw were “normal” flowers that were somehow moving and talking on their own. And they seemed a bit snobbish at that.

“More talking plants?” Fluttershy said. “Well, mushrooms aren’t plants, they’re a fungus, but—oh, that’s not very important right now!”

“You consort with mushrooms?” A tiger lily asked her. “How utterly vulgar. What ugly things they are.”

Fluttershy frowned. “They were friendly...”

“But of course they were. How could something so ugly and smelly get any attention if they weren’t friendly?” A poppy said.

A group of azaleas then giggled. “Are you talking about mushrooms or her?”

Now Fluttershy may have been the element of kindness and she could take petty insults thrown her way, more or less, but she certainly didn’t like hearing those friendly mushrooms disparaged. She was about to tell these flowers to stop being so rude when the big red rose asked her a question.

“What even are you? Odd creature.”

“Oh, well, I’m a pony,” Fluttershy replied, still polite.

“Pony? Never heard of such a thing,” the tulip said. “Have any of you ladies?”

The flowers went around, whispering and gossiping to each other while Fluttershy stood there with an unhappy look on her face. She really loved flowers so why did they have to turn out to be so rude? If she ever had pictured herself meeting with and talking to flowers one day in the past this is certainly not how she wanted it to go. Well, she knew she probably shouldn’t have such a knee-jerk reaction, maybe she should give them a chance? They were probably fine once you got to know them. And even if they weren’t it would’ve been Fluttershy’s duty to make them nicer.

“I believe I know of these pony creatures,” an old zinnia said.

The other flowers looked over at her respectfully.

“Oh, of course, you’re the eldest of us all, if any of us know about ponies it would be you,” the tulip said.

“Pony… pony...” the zinnia said, seemingly trying to peruse her memories. “Ah yes, Equus Ferus Caballus. Pony. A four legged creature that sometimes comes with wings and sometimes with a horn. Rather widespread if I recall correctly.” The zinnia rubbed at one of its petals with a leaf. “There was something else about ponies that involved flowers but I can’t quite recall what at the moment.”

“Obviously not a flower. So what is the pony doing down here and why are we bothering to converse with her?” A particularly snobbish hydrangea asked.

“Well I’m looking for my dear friend, Angel Bunny. He was taken away by moles. Speaking of which, have you seen him or the moles come through here?” Fluttershy asked.

“Oh you mean those vile, ugly, smelly little things? They affront us with their presence all the time,” the same tulip said.

“They did come through here not too long ago,” a lily said.

Fluttershy’s eyes lit up as a wide smile appeared on her face. “Oh, that’s wonderful to hear! Now I know I’m still on the right path!”

“You aren’t saying you’re friends with those moles too, are you?” The rose asked.

Fluttershy shook her head. “Oh no, not at all. Maybe some day but for now I need to rescue a friend of mine from them.”

“Well even as unimpressive as your coloring is at least you’re somewhat prettier than those moles,” a poppy said.

“Um… thank you?” Fluttershy said, fighting back a frown.

“Yes, but not nearly as pretty as us flowers, hahahahaha!” A violet laughed.

“Not at all,” the tulip said.

The rose then joined on, with a tittering giggle on her breath. “No, not as pretty as-”

The flooooowwwwerrrrrs~

All of the garden around her sang at once, with Fluttershy only blinking in astonishment. “Oh, is this happening again?”

Whether its roses, violets, lilies, tulips or azaleas~
We’re all called flowers, yes it’s true~

Truuu-oooo-uuuee~

From beautiful red to lovely morning yellow~
All colors of the rainbow you will see in the garden~

Raaa-aaaiiiin-bow~

There’s nothing as pretty as a flower~
Nothing that can compare to our beauty~

So beautiful it’s true~

Our petals and our stems both are lovely~
And our pollen and fragrance too~

Oooooh, oooooh, ooooh~

Every single flower has its own beauty~
Whether its hydrangeas, poppies, daisies, or chrysanthemums~
We all have something different to offer~
And it’s all just as pretty and wonderful~

And colorful indeed too~

We’re different from the other plants you’ll see~
No weeds or ugliness here at all~

Aaaa-aaa-aallll~

Not just some simple green grass~
We’re far more pretty and colorful than that~

Coooo-loooor-ful~

Flowers like us make the garden truly wonderful~
Not like ugly weeds or dirty mushrooms~

Noooo-oooo-oooo~

Here we make sure things stay lovely~
And only pretty flowers make that come true~
Whether it be zinnias, carnations, gardenias, or orchids~
There’s nothing as pretty as a flower!~

As a flower, ooooooohhhhh~

The singing stopped and all the flowers laughed and giggled together. Fluttershy looked around awkwardly before she started clapping her hooves together.

“T-That was a very pretty song,” she said, smiling. “Although some of the lyrics...” She whispered.

“Of course it was pretty, it was about flowers!” The tulip scoffed.

“Well… good point,” Fluttershy admitted.

She could hear a bunch of the flowers start to gossip and complain about her behind her back, as if she couldn’t hear them. Fluttershy was being as kind and patient as possible but even she had her limits. If they gave her a chance she would’ve extended an olive branch but they seemed too stuck-up to give her that chance or accept it anyways. It’s not like she needed to stay here around them anymore what with knowing that Angel had been through here, but she didn’t like just leaving. It would feel bad if she didn’t at least attempt to get these flowers to be a little less rude.

“You don’t need to be so rude to strangers who haven’t done anything wrong to you, you know?” Fluttershy said to the flowers. As kindly and politely as she could.

“Well I never!” The rose gasped.

“You come to our home and just insult us like that?” One of the poppies said.

“What a vulgar creature,” the tulip sneered. “Vulgar colors, vulgar shape, vulgar smell, and a vulgar little crown on her head.”

That last one was the one that actually made Fluttershy a little annoyed. “This isn’t vulgar, it was a gift from a very close fried. And it’s not a crown either, it’s a hardhat.” She said and grabbed it with her hooves, lifting it up to show them.

Forgetting what she had underneath it.

Several pulled up daisies fell off of her head and onto the ground, in full view of all the other flowers. It was dreadfully silent as Fluttershy and all the flowers looked down at the daisies. A single bead of sweat rolled down Fluttershy’s face as all the flowers slowly turned to look up at her.

“Umm… this isn’t what it looks like?” Fluttershy blushed.

“N-Now I remember what ponies have to do with flowers,” the elderly zinnia said. “Ponies eat flowers!”

“Ahhhh!” All the other flowers screamed in terror.

“Oh no, no, no, no!” Fluttershy tried to calm them down. “I would never do something like that to you!” Her words however didn’t sound very convincing with the daisies right there though.

“Pull up your roots, ladies! Let’s get out of here!” The tulip said and then much to Fluttershy’s amazement, actually did pull up her roots and started running off.

The other talking flowers soon followed suit despite Fluttershy attempting to stop them. Even as she flew about and tried to calm them down it didn’t stop all the roses, poppies, azaleas, and what else from quickly ditching her and running away. Soon things were quiet again in the big flower patch and Fluttershy was left alone. She sighed as she looked down at the daisies she had took with her for a snack, this was really not how she wanted things to go. Quietly she picked them up and stuck them back under her hardhat.

It was bad to be wasteful after all…

“Oh, Fluttershy, you’re such a screw up.”

The good thing was she was still on the right path to Angel. Fluttershy tried to stay positive with that thought in mind and began walking to the other end of the huge flower garden in search of a tunnel.