The day that changed Fluttershy’s life was warm and beautiful.
After a restless, lonely night (as all her nights were), she fixed herself a quick breakfast and strolled outside, relishing the perfect weather. The birds that had already gathered about her front door were in agreement with her—the blue jays, robins, cardinals, and sparrows wanted to tell her all about it.
Fluttershy flew up to them in their perch on the tree, smiling warmly, happy for the company. “Can you sing to me about the clouds today?” she asked.
The birds chirped in affirmation and began to sing sweetly, and Fluttershy closed her eyes in bliss.
With their beautiful music, she could almost forget how lonely she was.
She had animal friends, of course, and sometimes she told herself that animals made the best friends. But animals tended to not stay around for too long. Animals were sweet, yes. And she adored them. And they (usually) adored her.
But in her heart, Fluttershy knew that they weren’t quite the same as having a pony friend. A real friend.
And it was very hard for her to make friends. With ponies, anyway.
But, well, it could be worse, Fluttershy thought to herself. At least she had this lovely cottage and all these birds and rabbits and squirrels and butterflies and ladybugs and every other creature who came by her house, however briefly. At least she had something. “Your song is so beautiful,” she said to the birds as they finished their tune. “Do you have a song about spring flowers?”
But then, she heard the horrifying, unmistakable sound of somepony—someponies, from the sound of it—coming up the lane towards her cottage.
Fluttershy squeaked in terror, already feeling her body freeze up.
Oh, come on, Fluttershy! she thought to herself. They’re not even in sight yet and you’re already tensing up! Maybe today, finally, it’ll be somepony who you can actually befriend!
Two seconds later, however, Fluttershy realized that her anxiety was more than justified in this case.
Because it wasn’t just any ponies.
It was Princess Celestia and two of her guards.
Fluttershy absolutely froze in place, her wings only barely keeping her afloat.
“Oh my! What lovely singing!” said Celestia, stepping up closer towards the tree and looking up at the birds. Fluttershy trembled, trying to very discreetly float back down to the ground without being noticed, which was a bit difficult given how her wings had locked up along with the rest of her body. She had never seen the princess this close before. She was so much taller than she’d imagined. Her voice and face were kind, though.
Celestia looked at Fluttershy, still smiling and ignoring how awkwardly she’d hit the ground. “Are these your birds?”
Fluttershy tried to open her mouth to speak, fully aware that it was probably dreadfully rude to not respond to a direct question from the princess herself, but her shyness that made talking to even normal ponies difficult seemed to be amplified tenfold by actual royalty.
“Because,” Celestia continued, thoughtfully raising a hoof to her chin, “they might be able to help me with a problem I’ve encountered.” Her eyes flittered upwards for a moment, thinking, before focusing back on Fluttershy. “I’m sure you know about the upcoming Summer Sun Celebration, yes?”
Still unable to make any sort of noise, Fluttershy simply nodded.
“Are you already involved with it in any capacity?”
What a ridiculous question; being involved would involve talking to somepony and Fluttershy tended to avoid that if at all possible. She shook her head.
“Oh, wonderful! You see, I had the singer Tess Sparkleberry booked to do the music, but unfortunately her grandmother has taken ill and she had to go to Manehattan to care for her. Caring for a sick relative is of course far more important than a summer celebration, but we’ve been scrambling to find somepony to replace her. I know it’s short notice…” Celestia glanced up at the birds, still perched on their branch, and smiled again. “But I believe your birds would be wonderful at the ceremony. Do you think you could help?”
Fluttershy wanted to say a lot of things—like, for one, they weren’t really her birds, and also she was absolutely sure that there was no way an insignificant pegasus like her could possibly help out a princess. But, instead, she forced her wings to flap and moved back up towards the branch, in order to ask the birds, in a very quiet voice that she couldn’t raise any louder, “What do you think? Would you like to sing at… the princess’s ceremony?”
She hoped they said no.
But their chirps said otherwise, and, turning beet red, Fluttershy landed back down on the ground, forced herself to look Celestia in the eye, and nodded again.
Celestia beamed. “Wonderful!” She turned to one of her guards. “Sojourner, do you have the paperwork?”
“Right here, your highness.”
Celestia took it from her and handed them to Fluttershy. “This is your copy to keep with the schedule all in place. I’ll just need you to sign this page and hand it back so we have it on record.”
Fluttershy only quickly glanced over the fine print before hurriedly signing it, wanting to move as fast as possible before she inevitably convinced herself to change her mind. She handed it back to Celestia, trying her best to hide her face in her mane.
“Thank you so much for your help…” Celestia glanced at the signature before looking back at Fluttershy with a grateful smile. “Fluttershy. Equestria is in your debt.”
Oh surely it couldn’t be that important, could it?!
Celestia and her entourage carried on down the path, and it was only until Fluttershy could no longer hear even the slightest hoof on the ground that she was able to breathe again.
Before hyperventilating again.
“We… we have a lot of practicing to do!” she cried to the birds, who all twittered excitedly. She rummaged through the pages, finding the assigned music, begging her heartbeat to calm back down. Accolades and honor from the princess? Any other pony would probably be delighted, but not Fluttershy. She just wanted to crawl into the shadows and hide. But… too late for that now. She had given her word. And her signature.
“What have I gotten myself into?” she whispered to herself.
…
As it turned out, a very good thing.
It took a few days for that to become clear, though. But, looking back on it later on, with the benefit of retrospect… if Fluttershy hadn’t taken up the musical assignment, she wouldn’t have been at the celebration that fateful morning. And if she hadn’t been at the celebration that morning, she wouldn’t have witnessed the return of Nightmare Moon. Which, of course, was terrifying.
But if she hadn’t witnessed the return of Nightmare Moon, she wouldn’t have gotten better acquainted with Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie. She couldn’t say meet because technically she had met all of them before—she’d known Rainbow Dash as a filly, after all; she’d stopped by Sweet Apple Acres to buy apples from Applejack for some of her animal charges (and herself, of course); she’d bought pastries from Pinkie once or twice before (all while trying to avoid her incessant, cheerful questions); her path crossed with Rarity’s every so often; and even the newcomer Twilight she had met the previous day by chance.
But, when the six of them were thrust together by fate and happenstance, the most extraordinary thing happened.
Fluttershy made real friends.
Which ended up being absolutely essential, not only for her own emotional well-being, but also for Equestria as a whole, for when they faced Nightmare Moon, it was their friendship paired with the Elements of Harmony that were able to stop her reign of terror. And after witnessing the cruelty from Nightmare Moon that Fluttershy knew had to be some sort of cry for help, and seeing Princess Luna emerge—confused, remorseful, hurt—Fluttershy felt a sense of relief on a more personal level. Yes, saving Equestria was good and important, but she had also helped to save this princess from… herself.
The Elements of Harmony were quite clearly very powerful, and Fluttershy offered no objections when Celestia had taken them for safekeeping in her palace. Rainbow Dash had protested a bit, and Rarity was a bit saddened to lose such a fabulously beautiful necklace, but Celestia was firm in her decision.
“The Elements must be kept safe. They are our most powerful weapon.”
Fluttershy shuddered. She didn’t like to think of them as weapons.
“Do you really think there’ll be a need to use ‘em again?” Applejack asked.
“I sincerely hope not,” said Celestia gravely, “but one can never be too careful.”
Fluttershy shuddered again and resolved to not think about them anymore.
This is not to say that she didn’t continue to face situations that were a bit frightening, mind you. But with the help and encouragement from her friends, Fluttershy found that she was able to face nearly everything that life threw her way. And she was able to return the favor to her friends whenever they faced obstacles.
Plus, life was now… interesting. She realized, now that her life was so much fuller, that she hadn’t just been lonely before; she had also been bored. And while this new life of hers could definitely get a little scarier than what she’d lived before, she still wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was all worth it in the end. She’d made friends, true friends, for the first time in her life. And hopefully things would never get so dire that they’d have to use the Elements of Harmony ever again.
…
“I’ve called you here for a matter of great importance.”
The odd happenings with the weather… and the animals… and everything else… had made Fluttershy feel uneasy, true. But she didn’t really start to despair until Celestia called all of them to her palace.
Because that could only mean one thing.
Celestia needed them to use the Elements of Harmony again.
Fluttershy fell back a bit as Celestia and her friends pressed onward through the hallway. She had never been here before, and the current circumstances were making her wish that the pleasure of the visit had been indefinitely postponed. The stained glass windows were colorful and immense, bathing the hallway in a prism of tones, but the images depicted all seemed to show battles, or frightening encounters of some kind. Even the fact that most of them showed the frightening entities being vanquished did little to assuage Fluttershy’s unease.
But through her fear, she examined the one that currently bathed her in its unearthly glow, depicting a strange-looking, mismatched dragon-type creature, and the sinking pit in her stomach told her that it was this creature who was responsible for the chaos that had brought them there. That this was who Celestia expected them to defeat.
“It seems an old foe of mine, someone I thought I had defeated long ago, has returned.”
Please, don’t, Fluttershy pleaded inwardly, unable to take her eyes off of the disturbing figure in the stained glass. Please don’t make us do this again.
“His name… is Discord.”
Fluttershy let out a shriek and scampered back in line with her friends. Please please please I don’t want to do this again I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS AGAIN…
But no… she had to do this again. She had to wield the Elements. Because, as Celestia explained, and the stained glass window pane that no one had noticed until now displayed… the six of them were now bound to the Elements, not Celestia and Luna.
It was almost funny, but that stained glass pane that depicted her own form dismayed Fluttershy nearly more than everything else thus far.
Seeing that pane of her “defeating” Nightmare Moon, with a calm and serene expression that she certainly hadn’t had at the time, frozen for any and all onlookers to gaze upon, for years and years and years and… ages…
Fluttershy was so troubled by the thought that she almost forgot why they were there in the first place.
But as Celestia retrieved the case that contained the Elements, Fluttershy swallowed hard and forced the thoughts of the stained glass out of her mind. Now that they all knew more-or-less how the Elements worked, hopefully they’d be able to stop Discord in, like, ten seconds, and it would be such an all-around uneventful affair that no thought of a stained glass window commemorating the occasion would enter anypony’s mind.
The case opened… and it was empty.
Fluttershy’s heart nearly dropped right out of her chest.
No, actually, this was not going to be easy at all.
…
She wasn’t sure how they did it, but after every terrible thing Discord did to them, they still managed to find the Elements—and rediscover their true selves, too.
It was like waking up from a nightmare only to end up in another nightmare, honestly. Fluttershy could hardly believe the horrible things she’d done and said to her friends while under Discord’s… rewriting of her personality.
There was no sugar-coating it—Fluttershy wasn’t scared anymore. She was just angry.
But, as she and her friends activated their Elements, as their power lifted them into the air, she did her best to push her anger down—if only for a moment. She wondered how Discord would act after the Elements worked their magic on him. Would he be remorseful? Petulant? Giddy? Would everything turn back to normal on its own, or would he have to do it himself? And how easy would it be for Fluttershy to forgive him, after what he’d done to them? –No, no, now was not the time to think about that…
The power and light shot from their Elements, and Fluttershy nearly winced at Discord’s terrified scream. Okay, so he probably wouldn’t be giddy… She kept her eyes shut, not wanting to open them until it was over.
When the stream of magic finally ended, she opened them… and nearly fell out of the sky.
This wasn’t at all like the first time.
Because, instead of the first time, when they had freed Princess Luna from herself, when they had helped her, when she had emerged from the magic of the Elements as a changed, benevolent pony…
…this time, they just turned Discord to stone again.
“Alright! We did it! WOO HOO!” Rainbow Dash crowed, flying triumphant cartwheels in the air.
“Equestria is saved!” declared Rarity.
“Great job, girls!” praised Twilight, grinning from ear to ear.
And as the five of them celebrated their victory amongst themselves, none noticed the small, horrified look on Fluttershy’s face as she gaped at their handiwork. At the very much not reformed Discord, trapped again in a stone prison, in a position that looked exceedingly uncomfortable, and already tipped over onto the ground unceremoniously.
And none heard the forlorn whisper that escaped her lips at the sight.
“We failed…”