//------------------------------// // Day 6 // Story: Fluttershy Saves The World in 7 Days // by Miller Minus //------------------------------// Angel’s seven-day plan was finished in five days. The cottage was tidied. Bags of discarded items, waiting for pick-up, sat inside the foyer. And every door and window to the cottage was open, letting it drink in the fall breeze, its leaves rustling gladly. Pony and bunny sat on lawn chairs, just paces from the babbling river in front of the cottage. Fluttershy read her tome. Angel, nodding in and out of sleep, held a tiny reflective board across his shoulders, a patch of sunscreen on his pink nose. Both of them wore sunglasses. Whether or not Fluttershy was recovered, or if she truly ever would be, Angel couldn’t tell. From what he could tell from his research, anxiety was not really something to recover from completely. But her fur seemed to catch the sun a little better than ever before, and that was a good enough start for him. Maybe this was just a peak before another trough, but the point, to him, was that the peaks existed. “I think I’m going to ask Twilight for another book,” Fluttershy announced quietly. She closed the cover of her tome, not having gotten past the first page in over half an hour. “I don’t think I’m…” Angel raised both eyebrows. Was she about to insult herself? “…ready for something like this yet.” Angel smiled. With that, she flew into her cottage, coming out a few minutes later to place a letter in the mailbox and take her place back in her chair, carrying her book instead of her tome. She had another announcement. “I’m hoping to see Twilight tomorrow.” She turned to Angel for a moment. “I know tomorrow’s my last day. But if it’s okay with you…?” It was nice of her to ask, Angel thought. He’d known this was coming ever since he’d read Fluttershy’s letters to Twilight. He’d agonized over whether it was a good idea, or something to stamp out, but in the end he realized he had no way of stopping her. So he nodded, putting on a frown that feigned a tough decision being made. Fluttershy giggled. “Okay, good,” she said. “Because I just asked her.” Angel chuckled, massaging his aching shoulder and temples. He dozed off. Hours later, the sound of crackling green fire startled him from slumber, causing him to clutch at his heart. “That was fast!” Fluttershy elated. “But… there’s no book?” Snatching at the letter before it hit the ground, Fluttershy tore off the seal. Angel watched her eyes fly across the page, and he almost went back to sleep, until he saw her eyebrows turn upwards at the middle, and her lips press together. From behind her sunglasses, her eyes began to twinkle with the ghosts of tears. Angel rocketed to her from his chair, massaging her shoulder with both paws. He made worried sounds to get her attention. “Oh.. Angel, it’s fine, it’s just,” but he could hear her voice shaking. Her gaze moved between him and the page, then suddenly behind her. She got up and paced, dropping the letter on the ground. In a moment, she was trotting towards the cottage. Angel made to follow, but couldn’t leave without reading the letter first. Hi, Fluttershy! I’m so glad to hear you’re feeling better! You’re right, I’m always busy, but I can open up my schedule tomorrow. How about we go to the Ponyville Zoo? Say around 4 PM? I haven’t been there since it opened last year. Maybe you can teach me a thing or two about the animals! And I’m sorry to hear that the book is a struggle, I just think it would be really cool if we could both learn how pegasus magic worked together. Did you know, that if you get good enough, there might be a way for you to invent your own pegasus magic? How cool would that be? I mean, nopony has ever done anything like that before, but that’s what makes it so exciting! Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow?” Yours, Twilight Sparkle Angel sighed and applied his paw to his forehead. The Ponyville Zoo was a lot of things to Fluttershy, and none of them good. It was caged animals, restricted from living their lives. It was the absence of their growls, cries, roars, chirps, squeaks, and other sounds of the wild, implying some kind of sedation. But not the chemical kind—something much more powerful than that. Boredom. Angel threw the letter on the ground and kicked it. How naive he was, to let this happen! To let Fluttershy give the decision of ‘where’ to have their first date to that Bookface, that imbecile! To give her an opportunity to blow it like she just had! Angel stamped and stamped on the letter until it was covered in dirt, then picked it up and tore it in two. *** That night, Fluttershy finished Daring Do and the Rest of Her Life. Closing it softly and pushing it across the desk, she laid her head down between her hooves and exhaled deeply. Angel knocked on the wood to get her attention. He didn’t have a chance to give her a quizzical look—she answered without turning. “The ending wasn’t what I wanted,” she murmured. Angel rubbed circles into the back of her neck, spinning strands of pink hair together. “…But it was the only way it could have ended.” Angel kept rubbing. He noticed that she was staring at the page-a-day calendar still standing proudly at the back of her desk. Fluttershy had yet to tear off the page from six days ago, asking what strength was.