He had asked her a question, and Fleur didn't feel like answering it. Any potential claim he had to information only existed through right of blood -- which created a certain temptation to shed some of his on the spot: the excuse would be that she needed a sample for comparison.
So she didn't tell him that Fluttershy was likely at the back of the cottage -- or on the move from that point, because there was a good chance that her love had heard the alert and was coming forward to see why it had sounded. She just used the moment to look at him. Evaluation of the stallion's appearance, as a partial means of determining his immediate level of threat. And after a few seconds, when the silence began to openly confuse him --
-- he grew up around Fluttershy and he doesn't know how to deal with silence --
-- she got to watch his eyes as the stallion began to do the same thing to her -- on the most superficial level possible.
But for what she saw in him...
Fleur felt that when it came to all the myriad aspects of pony beauty, her judgment was utterly fair. She never held anypony's luck of the blood against them, because there was no way to determine what kind of factors might emerge from the flow. There was never any point to downgrading somepony because they were short -- although in the case of Ponyville's primary tool-builder, Stile's grade had to be delivered at an extreme level of down. Birth defects were bad luck made manifest, and... there was a postpony, one who possessed an odd sort of appeal -- and one eye which was never quite looking in the same direction as the other. It had been more than a year and Fleur still couldn't get that mare to speak with her, because the cruelly-nicknamed mare's resentment formed an unbreakable barrier. Most of that time had been required just to find out what her real name was, and the anger hadn't weakened in the least since Dulcinea had finally started dating again.
In Fleur's court, guilty verdicts were only rendered on those aspects which could be controlled. So your fur wasn't the best natural shade? Dyes existed. Highlighting powders. The best cure for a poor natural lie and grain was to start a grooming routine, and fixative agents to bind the results could be found in any store's beauty aisle. There were all sorts of things which could be done with a lank mane, which included making it more lank because some ponies preferred that. The only things preventing most ponies from boosting themselves were time, learning, and effort. If they couldn't be bothered to put in the work...
She was fair. So she temporarily put her emotions out of the way, shoved aside everything she'd been told about her love's sibling and fairly judged the stallion to be -- handsome.
Barely.
There were things which ponies typically noticed first when judging each other: fur, build, facial features, mane and tail -- and always, always the mark. (Fleur, who hadn't grown up in Equestria, was still working on the exact order.) And by those standards...
She had no particular fondness for his fur's exact shade of aquamarine, but didn't find the color to be offensive. When it came to hues, Fleur was slightly more fond of the greyish-gold which sprouted from his head and dock. Casual display? He actually carried his tail rather well. That fall was the one aspect of him which suggested any potential connection with his sibling: no aspect of Fluttershy's incredible fullness, but there was something similar in the truncated version of the overall shape.
His features? Youthful, pleasant, well-balanced with the fur of the face completely unlined because there had been a day when the stallion had heard of 'worry' and decided to pass off his portion to everypony else. Something about the cerise eyes suggested a constant quizzical inquiry, as if the stallion wasn't quite sure of what was going on at any time and was very much hoping somepony would be kind enough to explain. It was a familiar expression for Fleur, who usually saw some degree of near-constant manifestation when in the presence of preschoolers.
He was unusually tall for a pegasus: something which, on level ground, would have put him on a near-exact eye level with Fleur. She briefly wondered if years-distant experience was the reason Fluttershy had always been so good at meeting the unicorn's sight lines.
Handsome enough, at the base level. Sufficient for appealing to any number of mares. But the unicorn had been an escort once, and when it came to appearance -- she tended to look a little deeper.
Fluttershy's wings were slightly oversized for her form. The stallion's were folded into the rest position, and Fleur could still tell that the proportions were perfect -- but the feathers were not. Pegasi needed to preen their wings regularly: basic cleaning, checking for rare (but persistent) parasites, and realigning crucial flight feathers. There was one ideal for that last, and the stallion's vanes suggested that he had ignored it in order to try for the layered look.
The tail, for color and natural shape, was fine. It obviously saw a decent amount of grooming. The bulk of the mane had been piled up on top of the skull in a way which required some of the longer strands to serve as support structure. The results were a madmare's cross between a bun, poof, and waterfall: the resulting threesome had birthed a child and named it Horrible Mistake. It was the sort of mane which was only partially held together by exotic gels, because there was only so much you could ask mane care products to do before they declared overwork and quit on the spot. It was a mane which made her want to apologize to Caramel. It was a mane which demanded external support, and this was provided by the ears. The stallion's ears were constantly aloft. Held straight up, pressed inwards against the mass of the hair. The ears didn't move very much. They seldom rotated towards interesting sounds, because their central job was something else.
It was an experimental mane, and to look at it was to wait for something to explode.
When it came to build? Base perception suggested that there had to be a little strength, because there was some visible musculature present -- but the only thing it seemed to be doing was holding the skeleton together. The stallion's movements were carefully languid: hooves raised by mere tail strands over the ground, legs pendulumed forward more than pushed. It was a maximal study on how to proceed with minimal effort, and left the ears burning the majority of calories.
And then there was the lower jaw. A minority of adult stallions had the capacity for facial hair: altered follicles which pushed their way between strands of fur. The few who possessed the trait had to find ways of dealing with it: some shaved regularly, others tried to pluck the offending growth out, and Fancypants had made his mustache into its very own form of art. Fleur's escort time had mostly dealt with bearded graduates of the Gifted School, and they'd all had two things in common: the claim that they were a direct descendant of Star Swirl, and a tendency to go full goat and try to groom the thing through licking it. Not understanding how ponies could be repelled by this served as a partial explanation for why they'd needed to hire an escort in the first place.
The stallion's lower jaw was a darker shade than the rest of his fur, and ponies who displayed two or more hues on their bodies were rare. It meant the effective shadow suggested a male who had the potential to grow a beard -- while having no desire to either proceed or truly deal with the extra hairs. Let them reach the length of his fur, trim away anything which stuck out past that, and call it solved.
It was also possible that he was still trying to master the delicate art and subtle craft of washing his face. Something else which Fleur most typically saw with preschoolers.
And then there was the mark. A feather, and... she wasn't sure what the symbology just below it was meant to represent. Lifting currents? was a fair guess, but... her love had barely spoken of the sibling, just about everything said had formed another reason for wanting him gone, and none of it had related to the talent. Fleur didn't know what he was capable of, and had already decided to remain on guard accordingly.
Handsome? That was just being fair. But it was the sort of attractiveness which mostly had to maintain itself. Just about all the work which the stallion was putting in had gone to whatever the mane was supposed to be accomplishing, and gravity hadn't been defied there so much as slightly postponed. Any leftover effort didn't get past the surface level, and it left Fleur trying to decide whether the stallion had a healthy musk, an artificial one, or had decided not to dip his entire body into bath waters because the topmost hairs had a chance to capsize.
And he was looking at her, with those cerise eyes casually, openly roaming across her form: the careless regard of a pony who didn't care if he got caught, much less what anypony might think of him after. It was something Fleur was used to, and the lack of subtlety finally placed something about the stallion in early adolescence. He focused on her face, then moved to the forelegs, drank in her flanks for a few seconds, switched to the mark and she got to watch his features momentarily twist in renewed confusion...
All of his attention was staying on the surface. But he was examining her. And when it came to her own inspection of the stallion... Fleur could look deeper still.
From all outwards appearances, the stallion was evaluating her on the sexual level. Nothing was simpler than returning the favor.
You're looking at me.
So what are you looking for?
She usually kept her talent shut down at the cottage. There would always be enough animal presence in bulk to create discomfort, and when it came to learning how to ignore them -- she'd factored out the permanent residents, and it did nothing to help her with those who cycled through. And when it came to her love... it was usually just a quick peek at Fluttershy's inner portrait, now and again. Something she saved for the bad days, because any relationship was going to have a few of those and no matter how the half-soft arguments went, Fleur could use her talent and -- know she was still wanted.
It only took a thought to reactivate it, and her deepest magic lanced forth. Delved into the heart of the puzzle, gathered up scattered pieces, aligned edges and tried to assemble some sort of whole --
-- there was something the majority of minotaurs said during their wedding vows: a phrase which Fleur was seriously thinking about incorporating into her own after
if
the triggering event finally took place: 'and with my body, I thee worship.' And, but for a few pronoun swaps, that would have been the stallion. Because Fleur's talent told her about the sexual aspects of a being, what everyone desired in their partners -- and what the stallion desired was a partner, because pony masturbation could be a complicated affair and you generally didn't get to do it in front of an audience.
He had a physical preference: pegasi mares first and foremost, sleek and streamlined and without much in the way of buttocks. (Fleur immediately assumed that growing up around Fluttershy had forever ruined him for tails.) But they were easily overridden by the primary, and that wasn't particularly fussy. His baseline requirement for a mare was to find somepony who was looking back. And it wasn't sexual addiction, where he needed to be with somepony or face the withdrawals which came from having to bear his own company. He simply wanted to be wanted. To feel the reinforcement of self which came from somepony desiring him. And once that partner of the moment reached a bedroom, everything he wished for could be summarized as a simple phrase: that with their body, they he worship.
It was a puzzle which suggested some degree of narcissism. His body was a temple, and he might never figure out why any given supplicant stopped showing up at the altar after a week. Because Fleur had just learned that the stallion didn't move much during sex. It was unnecessary effort and besides, if the mare really wanted to show her appreciation, she could do all of the work. This was a stallion who might decide he was a sex god, if only because his devotion to taking the easiest way out bordered on the religious.
He was still looking at her, from what was now about eight body lengths away: a few extra languid hoofsteps had been risked during the mutual examination. But when it came to the stallion, the unicorn had seen enough.
There were many ways to describe Zephyr Breeze and in a world much more ideal than the one she had to occupy, the one Fleur would have hoped to use in the (very short-term) future tense was 'corpse'.
However, despite the dark non-jokes which a certain shadow-blotch of a unicorn mare occasionally kicked around, Fleur's first (and only) solution for dealing with any given annoyance wasn't murder. She just reserved the internal right to treat it as a rather appealing fantasy.
"That's a pretty smile," Zephyr unwisely decided to vocalize, and did so at the exact moment her inner self went for the throat again. "So anyway, I'm not sure you heard me. Since I'm all the way over here and all."
It was possible to watch him weigh whether taking another hoofstep forward was actually worth it. Fleur wondered whether the decision was taking more effort than the movement --
-- he just barely shrugged, and then came that much closer. "But I can remember what I said, so... Hull-o!"
That one naval officer I escorted to the Buttonwillow Ball said there's something called 'keelhauling'.
I should have gotten more details.
"Is my sister in?" Zephyr finished repeating.
"Your sister," Fleur quietly said.
He blinked a few times. The collective effort made several feathers sag.
"Yeah. Are you new here?" Another miniature shrug. "I mean, you're new to me, but I haven't been around in a few years. So maybe you're so new that she hasn't had the chance to talk about me yet. Or talk." Two whole feathers managed to complete a partial shift in position. "She doesn't always talk much. Anyway -- yeah," he failed to Snowflake. "I'm Zephyr Breeze. My sister's Fluttershy Phylia. And I'm pretty sure she still lives here, unless you've got the exact same interests and kept some of the old birds around. I think I recognized some of the birds."
He briefly turned his head, looked back towards the bridge. Turned back to face Fleur.
"Nearly hit my mane," he passively announced. "But hey, that's what birds do, right? It's nothing personal."
I heard the 'intruder' song. Don't place any bets.
"So anyway," because that was easier than thinking of a new way to start a sentence, "it's been a while. And I really need to talk. With her. Not that there's anything wrong with talking to you, and I don't mind if you want to do some of that later --"
-- and there go three of his pieces.
Awake. Breathing. Looked at him.
-- wait. Does he like to be followed? At least for a little while, until he pretends he's just noticed. He loves it when somepony's tracking his rear.
...no, nothing about alpacas...
"-- but I'm still, you know, trying to find out if she's here." The smallest shrug yet, something which was mostly indicated by a micro-ripple of fur. "So --"
"-- she's told me about you," Fleur softly informed him.
He blinked. She generously allowed him a full second for recovery.
"Cool," Zephyr decided. "So anyw --"
Fleur could hear claws ticking their way across the sitting room floor. Wings beginning to shift, and paws starting to come forward. The front door normally didn't remain open this long, and the residents wanted to get a look at what was going on. That didn't bother her.
But there was also a more solid sound: something produced by keratin repeatedly impacting the wood floors. Getting close. Accelerating --
-- she's cutting through the cottage.
Of course it's through. Just about every other pegasus would have gone over --
-- I don't have a lot of time --
"-- she doesn't want you here," Fleur calmly told him. "Neither do I. And if I say one word, you're going to meet a lot of other things which don't want you here. They have claws. Incisors. The biggest one has both, but we can just shorthoof his description as 'bear'." A light spring breeze shifted her mane, added a warm grace note to the current version of her polite smile. "So here are your options, Zephyr. You can flare your wings and take off right now, before she sees you. Fly away and never come back. Or -- you can take it up with them."
It was a very special smile, when it came to dealing with ponies. Because a certain level of lip pullback was a sign of aggression, and Equestrians generally weren't used to seeing a mare peacefully displaying her teeth.
"Or," the Protoceran immigrant placidly finished, "you can take it up with her. I'm pretty sure that'll be worse."
I have to trust her.
She's stronger than I am. She kicked him out once. I know she can do it again.
But I don't want her to deal with him unless she absolutely has to.
Zephyr glanced around the area. At the squirrels in the trees, birds on branches and those who were hunting through the sod of the cottage roof. It wasn't the best outdoor selection for Fleur, but she had reinforcements coming in from the sitting room. However, she genuinely didn't know where Harry was. Harry mostly tended to turn up of his own accord.
"That's not a nice way to treat a visitor." And he'd actually managed to sound offended. "Besides --" he looked at her mark again "-- that's not your trick." The confusion briefly came back. "Right?"
She didn't bother answering. Fleur didn't have Fluttershy's talent -- and didn't always need it, because her love could gather the cottage denizens and make standing requests. One of them was that if the unicorn appeared to be in trouble (or stomped her hooves in a certain way), they were to provide whatever backup they could. Which wasn't always a lot, and both mares were all too aware that actually putting the tactic into full use stood the chance of getting an animal hurt -- but as Fluttershy had personally and repeatedly proven, there were times when staring was enough. Especially when the same Go Away glare was coming from four dozen sets of eyes.
But the patter of hooves was approaching the reception desk.
"I left an option out," she told him.
Zephyr's shoulders squared: the hips didn't bother to join in. "Yeah?"
Snowflake dropped by. He wanted me to tell you that he's going to need that back.
Fleur's horn ignited.
She didn't project her field, because there were those who would claim that doing so had put her on the attack. She just kept the corona at a full single layer, and made sure her smile held nothing except peace and teeth.
She's coming through the sitting room. I've got seconds...
"I pick you up," she told him, "put you in a box, and mail you back to wherever you came from." Thoughtfully, "We might be able to speed that up. I know someone who does special tricks with scrolls. I'm sure he'd just love to try a box --"
-- flare your wings, flap, move --
-- maybe I aimed too high. Overshot his imagination. (Fleur wasn't sure she could have done much more in lowering her vocabulary.) Or maybe he's just too stupid to realize when somepony's trying to dominate him. Sun's spots, even Blueblood worked that one out.
But he just looked at her. It wasn't even a full stare, because that level of focus required a commitment he didn't want to give. It was a look of confusion, and -- she wasn't sure how much of it might have been deliberate. If he was trying to buy time --
"...Fleur," wafted into her ears from behind, and the half-whisper of a word was far too controlled. "...I can see past you. A little. Please move to the side. Enough so I can get by."
-- then he was about to learn what came with it.
I didn't want you to deal with this.
I wanted to spare --
-- I have to trust you...
The charge stepped slightly to the left, deferring to the guardian. Fluttershy moved into view.
Every muscle was tight. Half of the held-back mane had slipped out of the restraining loop, putting a lesser fall than the usual in front of the left eye. But the yellow fur had gone rigid at the roots, and her love's feathers were vibrating...
"Sis!" the stallion exhaled. "It's almost good to see your face!" With far too wide a grin, "More of your face than usual. Are you really going with that much exposure? I could give you some advice there --"
Under normal circumstances, Fluttershy hesitated before speaking. Sentences faded in, sometimes faded out. Something which had gotten a little better in the time since they'd started living together, and a crisis usually found the pegasus speaking quickly and immediately -- but when it came to the rigors of everyday living, the pauses might never fully vanish.
When they'd first met, Fleur had perceived the hesitations as her then-charge taking a moment to summon the willpower required for speech to take place at all. And there was a pause before Fluttershy spoke to the stallion, something all too typical, a predictable wait time which had Fleur automatically adding extra minutes into any discussion -- but this time, it was being used for something else.
The unicorn looked at vibrating feathers, saw the rib cage swell, and watched as the rage was pushed back.
"...go away."
It was all that remained. A soft exhalation. Not quite a request, while lacking the audible power to serve as an order. But the incredible tail was starting to lash.
He took a step forward.
"I came here to see you," Zephyr stated.
Don't say anything.
Trust her.
"...well," Fluttershy offered, "...mission accomplished."
The confusion took over his features again.
"...yeah," he didn't quite agree. "So anyway --"
"...you've seen me." Her head abruptly shook, and a little more of the coral mane shifted back. "More of me than usual. So now you can leave."
He still didn't quite seem to know what he was supposed to do with that.
"There's stuff I've got to say," the stallion abruptly insisted. "I came a long way to say it. To talk. The last time I was here --"
"-- the last time you were here," the older sibling cut him off, "you tried to rob me."
Three blinks. A pair of wing joints loosened accordingly.
"Well," Zephyr lightly declared from the heart of what Fleur now suspected might be confusion as well-rendered art, "if that's how you've decided to remember it --"
Fleur, regardless of every dark failure at a jest, really didn't see murder as a primary option. Or a secondary. It generally wasn't anywhere near the list, and it took an instant willful lockdown for every last one of her joints to prevent a few editorial revisions.
-- don't move --
-- don't let my field wink out, but don't move --
-- maybe if I go to a double corona --
Fur brushed against her hocks. Feathers grazed her pasterns.
The cottage watched out for Fleur, because that was what its mistress desired. But when Fluttershy was involved, the animals came on their own.
"...I remember what happened," Fluttershy stated.
Reinforcements were gathering around their legs. Small, quick, clawed, and waiting on the signal which would tell them what they were going to be upset with. And Zephyr... didn't seem to notice.
"No," the stallion countered. "You remember what you think you saw."
-- he'd have to make at least one threatening move.
Any threatening move.
...which probably has to be full speed to count.
Fluttershy took a slow breath. Yellow feathers vibrated all the faster. The lashing coral tail sent five kittens into a desperate scatter.
"...you're going to leave," she informed him. "I don't want --"
"We have to sort this out," Zephyr broke in. "That's why I'm here. Because it's been years, 'Shy: years! What kind of family is it that never gets together at all? I see Mom and Dad more than you do, and you know they're barely home! But I don't see you, ever! I don't know what you've been up to, or how you're still surviving out here when we both know you can barely keep it together at all!" And before either mare could say a word (because Fleur's self-imposed blockade had developed multiple cracks), "I don't even know who this is!"
One aquamarine wing, presumably attempting to be helpful, semi-flared towards Fleur. Numerous theoretical parasites completely failed to fall out.
"...this," Fluttershy quietly stated, "is my partner."
The stallion's eyebrows attempted to get a workout in. The ears had to pull them up.
With open pride, "So you finally figured out that you needed to team up with a real vet?"
The next tail lash nearly took out Fleur's back legs.
"...my mate," Fluttershy pushed through hard-clenched teeth. "...I told you to --"
He looked at Fleur again. Went back to Fluttershy and, in a display which probably maximized his exercise for the moon, repeated the sequence four times.
"Since when do you do that?" Zephyr pushed through the stun. "Mares or stallion? Anypony or anything? What kind of mare would even --" another look at Fleur "-- I mean, unless she's got a trick where she turns into a beaver when Moon gets full --"
Portions of the settled zone generally had trouble with the mere concept of Fluttershy becoming angry and when it did happen, those who hadn't been through it before tended not to take the emotion seriously. It was Fluttershy and in the opinion of those with no direct experience, having that pegasus in a rage would be like dealing with a furious shrew.
Fluttershy took a step forward. Fleur took the movement as a sign that she could match the approach. So did two dozen animals, several of whom let their hisses clear the way.
It was exactly like dealing with a furious shrew.
"Get. Out."
And if they were lucky, they would recognize the implications before personally experiencing the venom.
Zephyr didn't take a step back. His hooves simply skittered in a bridgeward direction.
"I'll go," he told them.
Good.
Leave. Leave and don't ever --
"For now," he pushed on. "I'm staying in Ponyville for a while, 'Shy. And 'a while' is gonna be however long it takes before you're my sister again."
He turned, with dozens of eyes watching the torpid movements. Slowly shifted his legs towards the bridge and Fleur, only half-lost within the mire of horrible implications, began to wonder if anypony in that family flew -- well, yes, the parents, they were stormbreakers and managing to maintain within atmosphere and altitude during nightmare was part of the job, but Fluttershy rarely took off and now the sibling was trotting in and out --
-- Zephyr glanced back: something which only lasted for a second. Making sure that, with all the eyes watching him leave, he still had the full attention of two.
"Toodles!" he told Fleur, because a greeting which made her want to kick him in the teeth just had to come with a departure twin.
And then his wings flared out to their full span, the first downbeat scattered small pieces of soil from the path, he jumped and --
-- it was easy for both mares to see the power which had gone into his flight: the pegasus had spent the early part of her life upon tacky-feeling clouds, while the unicorn had grown up among griffons. They were used to watching those who were stronger in the air than they. Fluttershy rarely flew because she considered herself to be exceptionally poor at it: low speed and poor maneuverability combined with moderate flight endurance -- but there was an exception: the always-unexpected bursts of raw velocity which appeared only when she was truly upset. And Fleur could levitate herself, but... it took a double corona, constant concentration, the lack of wings meant she had no true way to utilize momentum...
Lack of skill in the air, having lived with those who outshone them -- both were among the smallest factors which drew them together. But Fleur, who had experience with pegasi and griffons...
There's something odd about his style.
Power. Speed. He's getting out of sight in a hurry. But his wings --
-- if I just had a minute with a better view --
She didn't. A few more flaps, and he was gone.
For now.
Nothing about the rest of the day ever recovered.
Fleur had been expecting her love to be somewhat down after clearing the graves, a little moody and in need of cheering up. What she got was worse. The pegasus half-slunk around the cottage. Speaking volume bottomed out. She didn't want to talk, she kept telling Fleur that she would discuss it when she was ready, and she spent hours pushing her way through the day's schedule with all the energy of -- well, Zephyr. And Fleur did what she could, but trying to bring it up in a way which would let her guide Fluttershy out of the fast-deepening pit was just making her love more upset, and...
...there were appointments. Two unexpected drop-ins: neither of which thankfully rose to the level of full crisis, both arriving at a moment when the unicorn thought she had finally started to make some headway. The daily routine of the cottage claimed its hours, and once all of that was wrapped up...
They ate. (Well, Fleur ate. Fluttershy nosed her food around the plate and, when she felt the unicorn wasn't looking, shifted it to floor level: multiple cottage denizens immediately welcomed the bounty from on high.) Then there was a quiz about medicine doses for cats where the teacher kept losing track of the proper page, and they finally went to bed.
Fluttershy generally didn't go to bed when Fleur did. There were many gifts which came with the triad butterfly mark, and one of them was the ability to get by on less sleep: all the better for tending to the cottage's nocturnals. But emotional exhaustion had extracted a toll.
They didn't have sex, because each wished to show the other that love was still present, and... neither wanted to push. Not when the mood was so dark. There would be no fresh stick in the morning, and Fleur belatedly realized she'd neglected to try one during the afternoon.
Both nestled into the billowing vapors of the Cumulus mattress, and... that was when Fleur got to measure how bad it truly was. The pegasus often wished to be spooned, because the enchanted cloud nest allowed her to lie on her side without placing excess pressure on the wing. Fleur, by far the larger of the two, would take the enclosing position: barrel against the smaller mare's back, careful not to squeeze too much with her legs.
But all that did was let her discover just how tight every muscle truly was. Tensed to the point where it felt as if something had to snap.
The unicorn had a natural response to that kind of pain. But it took nearly twenty minutes of shimmering massage before the worst of it began to fade.
Fluttershy fell asleep. After a few minutes, soft feathers began to tremble.
Fleur held her, as best she could. Tried to follow her love into the nightscape. But the sleep which had come for the pegasus refused to welcome the unicorn, and all she could do was hold her. Stay in contact, letting the dreamer know she was there.
Fluttershy would talk when she was ready. Hard experience had taught Fleur that there were times when she shouldn't push. A day or two --
-- maybe a week...
...he was going to stay in town until --
-- she might be like this as long as he's here --
She thought about the calendar posted at the side of the mirror, and some of the things which weren't on it. Two ponies lived at the cottage now: something which provided a little more freedom in having one come and go without having to arrange for a temporary caretaker. The next day would see Fleur spend most of an afternoon in Ponyville: shopping for supplies, added to three prearranged meetings. The first of that trio was starting to look rather... useful.
Zephyr had announced his intent: to stay in Ponyville.
So Fleur was going to get him out.