//------------------------------//
// Taygete 
// Story: The Long Eventide 
// by SilverNotes 
//------------------------------//

It felt wrong, waking up alone.

Well, not alone alone. Her pony friends were here with her, and Rainbow's snoring was a welcome familiarity. Fluttershy just didn't have her animal friends, and everything felt wrong without furry, feathery, and scaly bodies huddling with her for warmth, with the most important one, soft and white with long ears, tucked against her chest. Reaching for the presences that weren't there, trying to find a companion to pet and only finding more sheets... The distress of it made it impossible to continue trying to sleep, even before she woke enough to remember that she'd made plans for today.

Fluttershy slid off the bed, careful not to wake the others, and flinched briefly at the cold stone before continuing on. While it was a slight shock to the system, she'd had worse against her frogs before, for temperature and for texture. Taking care of animals meant a lot of walking in the wilds, and tending to those animals in her home meant learning the hard way to watch her step. She saw that Applejack and Pinkie Pie were gone, and had both taken their saddlebags, and it was unsurprising, since they were the earliest risers of the group. Fluttershy was often also woken in the pre-dawn, and even here, without her animals...

She hoped they were doing okay. There weren't a lot of ponies who could handle them, and while she had a few regular substitutes that the cottage residents were used to by now, the lack of the proper mark meant that no stand-in would be perfect, and she always worried about the animals trying to tell them something important that would never be understood.

Harry may be able to bridge the gap, at least a little. He understood more Equestrian words than any other animal there, even Angel, and he was getting better at gesturing in ways that could be understood by ponies. The other caretakers were mostly unafraid of the bear by now, and knew that he often just wanted to help.

Bears were intelligent animals, so much so that they were almost not animals at all.

Almost.

Fluttershy, more than anypony, could see where the line of sapience was and tell at a glance if a creature was over it. Anything on the animal side was a friend, and anything on the other side was terrifying.

But even terrifying things deserved kindness, and could become a friend. She was making progress there, slowly.

Fluttershy grabbed her saddlebags, and a combination of wings, mouth, and careful shimmying had them settling into their proper place. Her Element provided a comfortable weight in one, and gave her that bit more confidence. She was going to be helping out another pony who made friends of animals, and one who did so without the help of a mark. Brandywine wasn't exactly like her, but she felt that the hulking earth pony may... understand, a little.

She was nervous. As good as the chat over lunch had been, Brandy still made her nervous. She couldn't help it. Other ponies were one of the scariest things in the world.

But being afraid of everything made for some experience in how to be brave.

Fluttershy glanced back at Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle still on the bed. Her friends, no less so for the fact that they were ponies. And she smiled before she headed for the door.





Brandywine would have been happy to never see another pony again.

Meetings, meetings, meetings. She hated them, and there had been too many leading up to the celebration. And now that it was almost the Winter Moon? Not just meetings, but schmoozing with a bunch of outsiders who she didn't know, couldn't be sure of the intentions of, and were the unknowing crux of Penny's plan. She hated it. It was the kind of thing that could make a pony want to throw off all trappings of civilization and run into the woods.

She knew she wouldn't get far. The screams of the dead in the forest would be too much. And once she reached the end of the Shroud, she would need to stop anyway.

Trapped. Trapped in this little star-studded fishbowl with too many other ponies.

She'd been meant to be a grunt. Another cog in the Society's clockwork. Complete a brute-force task once and a while, and then back to doing what she wanted. But no, Penumbra had to go and see potential, and now precious chunks of the clock were being reserved for so many things that were useless and stupid. She wasn't a noble, wasn't a scholar, and wasn't a bureaucrat. She was a hammer, and too many things placed in front of her hadn't been nails.

She was at her best among the animals, and she went through her daily chores like a wind-up pony, to enclosure after enclosure in turn. She was on the outskirts, when city started to turn to forest, still well-shielded from the sun and with the earth's screams a little softer, and she owned enough land to give her menagerie of wards plenty of space. The fences were necessary, to keep them safe, but after breakfast she would open the gates and let some of them roam the property to stretch their legs.

A night raven was following her, feathers a glossy purple-black. He'd been losing weight and Brandywine didn't know why, but he still flew after her in as much excitement to be fed as always. He didn't act sick, and the vet had found nothing wrong, only recommending that she up the amount of food she was giving him.

Useless. Hopefully, at least, the pony she was supposed to meet today should be able to help with that mystery instead.

Brandy didn't like ponies. She lived in protest of the fact that she was of a supposed herd species, raging against that fact at every turn. But there were ponies that she disliked the least, and Fluttershy was, tentatively, poised to move into that space.

That was dangerous. She knew it was dangerous to like these ponies. They were too close to the sun, and associating with them could get Brandy and her kin burned beyond recovery.

She just wanted to know what was wrong with the bird.

She just wanted some help.

It wasn't fair to have somepony who could help her end up being likeable.





Fluttershy felt a bit more at ease after she stepped off the streets of the city and onto the dirt road. There had been ponies and other creatures bustling around under the false moon, and she'd taken off into the air more times this morning than she was pretty sure she had all week, just to get some breathing room from the crowd, though she gave that up right after she accidentally flew right into a hurried griffon.

The griffon had been very polite and spoken very softly in the face of her apologies, and helped steady her when she nearly dropped her saddlebags. Fluttershy was just relieved that she hadn't been roared at.

She wanted to scold herself for that. Meeting Gilda had been bad, but not all griffons were going to roar at her, just like not all ponies were going to laugh and jeer at her. But it was hard. Sapient creatures were terrifying, because she couldn't understand them like she did animals and when it came to sapients that weren't ponies--

"I didn't know dragons could talk!"

--Fluttershy could be said to have a lot of gaps in her knowledge. She'd at least seen griffons before, in Cloudsdale, but even then, there was a barrier. The families grouped together, formed their own small community, and the children typically did the same. She had seen griffons, in school, in camps and at other children-focused events, but there tended to be species-specific clusters, with the chicks and foals hurling all manner of insults at each other and adults intervening when talons were brandished and hooves started pawing at cloud. 

She'd never talked to one, or been talked to by one. She wasn't sure what had shocked her more about Gilda, that she was down in a ground-bound settlement like Ponyville, even for a visit, or that she and Rainbow Dash had been friends.

Yet that was still the non-pony sapient species she had the most experience with. She'd been fortunate that Spike had just been happy to be fussed over and he hadn't been upset by her saying something that insensitive, and then there was Zecora. At least everypony else had been just as bad about Zecora, but that didn't make her feel any less guilty about her treatment.

Eventide had a surprising amount of nonponies in the crowds, but no matter what they were made of, they were still crowds, and so once her hooves were on dirt and she was following the trail the way Brandywine had told her to go, she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't long before she started to hear the tell-tale sounds of animals calling for a breakfast they knew was coming, and she picked up her pace with a smile.

She spotted Brandywine just as she kicked a basket, sending a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, insects, and hunks of fish spilling out as it toppled over, to the delight of a litter of young raccoons who clamoured to be the first to grab the tastiest bits. Then the smallest of them, part way through shoving a grape in their mouth, spotted her and raced to hide behind Brandy with a cry of alarm.

Brandy looked up, but any fury melted away when the two mares met eyes, and she gave a small smile. "Hey, you're here early."

Fluttershy's wings rustled with anxious energy. "I'm sorry. Is that a problem? I can come back later..."

"Nah, it's fine." She jerked her head a set of fences. "If you don't mind a walk-and-talk, I can explain the situation while I finish the morning chores.

"Oh, that's not a problem at all." She moved to follow Brandy as she moved deeper into the property, struggling a bit to match the larger mare's strides. "Is there something I can do to help?"

"Thanks, but I'm good." She led the way back to a cart, and pulled another basket down, this one stocked with fish and eggs. "I'm so used to doing it myself that it'd take longer to stop and explain how to help." She hauled down another, similarly loaded down. "I'm glad to have you here, though. I can do a lot of the grunt work of looking after animals, but--" She paused to seize a rope in her teeth and string it through the loops of the baskets, after which a bout of coordination had her wearing them like crude saddlebags. "--I don't have a mark that lets me ask them what's wrong."

Brandy led the way again, and Fluttershy could hear the sounds of excited otters who had heard the hooves of the pony who fed them. "I'm always happy to help." There was a pause, and then she hesitated asked, "Can... I ask a question?"

Brandy didn't look back at her. "What's the question?"

"Well it's just that... if it's not too personal... if you wouldn't mind... I was just curious..." Fluttershy stopped, took a deep breath. "What is your mark for?"

At first, there was silence. Then she muttered something under her breath.

"I'm sorry? I didn't quite--"

"Age." She came upon a fully-enclosed space, a foal-sized pool visible through the protective mesh, and a trio of otters hurried to the door and reared up on their hind paws. "Things change as they age. Wine... animals... ponies..." She cast a brief look at the barrel on her hip, then unlatched the door with her teeth and positioned herself so that one of the baskets blocked the doorway. She was more careful with this one, gently toppling it with a nudge of her shoulder, and the otters scrambled over each other to grab at the food. "I didn't really need the vet to tell me those kittens were older than they looked, or their mother was too young. I could already tell."

Brandywine seized the rope in her teeth again and started to drag the remaining basket as Fluttershy turned that information over in her head. "It must be strange looking at Princess Luna, then."

Brandy stopped and let go of the rope. "What do you mean?"

Fluttershy rustled her wings again. "Oh um well, it's okay if I'm wrong... but it just occurred to me that she's been around a long time, but she's spent so much of it in the moon. So... she must seem old and young at the same time?"

Brandy blinked at few times as she seemed to chew on the words. "She does seem weird when I look at her too much. Like there's a young mare there, but the longer I stare, the more the years show up." She cracked a lopsided smile. "Huh, didn't expect anypony else to think of that. You're pretty bright, Fluttershy."

Fluttershy blinked back, unsure what to do with the strange compliment. "Thank you?"

"Now come on, once I get this over to the fisher cats I'll introduce you to Oz..."





Brandywine watched Fluttershy talk to the bird, and knew she was in danger.

Night ravens were a rare bird, a magical cousin to more common corvids. The undersides of their wings were star-patterned, and they were near-invisible against the sky when they flew. Roused into flight during the day, in large enough quantities, they were said to make it look like the sun was being blotted out for a premature night, but she nor any of her kin were in a position to have seen it in action. 

While technically nocturnal, the presence of the Shroud meant that it was easy for them to sync their internal clock to any schedule, because the moon and stars would always be there. And so Oz was woken up and fed with the rest of the animals, and was awake to converse with Fluttershy. 

It was a strange conversation to watch, too. While the species was able to learn some voice mimicry, the farthest Oz had ever gotten in his vocabulary was "hello" and "peanut," and Brandy still wasn't sure how much he understood. And while Fluttershy was speaking a bit of Equestrian to him, she kept dipping into making birdlike sounds, which he returned with great excitement, and so she couldn't begin to follow the conversation.

Brandy was laying in the dirt, her legs tucked to make her into a pony-loaf, as she watched the conversation go on, and she couldn't help but observe how at ease Fluttershy looked. She'd picked up on the unease the slim pegasus had felt in approaching her--it was no grand feat; she was pretty sure a blind pony could have seen it--and there'd still been tension when she'd first arrived, but right here, right now, she was watching the mare in her element.

There was a beauty to somepony entirely engrossed in the work they were destined for that made other ponies instinctively want to stop and stare. Diamond Dust had it when she wielded the right magic, Blackbird did when she was working the crowd...

Admiration was dangerous. Friendship was dangerous. Especially with outsiders. But Brandywine respected a pony who wielded their talent with skill and confidence, and so the conversation was mesmerizing.

Fluttershy eventually nodded and cawed, a caw that Oz returned before taking off from the fence he'd been perched on, and as she turned and walked toward Brandy, she got back to her hooves. "So, what's the verdict?"

Fluttershy smiled. "He's not sick."

Brandy felt days of tension ease. "Thank the moon. The vet couldn't find anything wrong and nothing I was doing was helping." She tilted her head. "So why's he dropping off the weight?"

"Well... it turns out he's not eating all of it." She gave the softest giggle. "You've got another night raven nearby, and he's been taking her the food as gifts."

Brandy stared. Then her hoof struck her face with such force that a less sturdy pony would have heard their own bones crack. "That stupid... he's gonna starve himself over a crush?" She let out a long, deep sigh. "Can you ask him to get his ladyfriend to come here with him at mealtime? I can just put out enough food for both."

"She seemed a little shy of ponies, from how he was describing her, but I can ask him to try."

"Then can you tell him that if she won't come, then he can come back to the feeding spot after he's given her food and I'll refill it?"

Fluttershy nodded. "I will."

Brandy sighed and shook her head again. As smart as night ravens could be, it seemed they could still be about as dumb as ponies. "Thanks for your help, Fluttershy. I was getting really worried." She gave a breath of a laugh. "And I wouldn't have guessed he was giving away his food in a million years. He's usually such a glutton."

Fluttershy smiled at that. "Well, a special somepony--or someone--can sometimes bring out the best in us."

"I guess." Brandy looked away, staring out at the trees. She'd been so engrossed earlier in watching the bird and mare talk that she'd almost stopped hearing the earth, but the calls were coming again, distractingly loud. She still envied pegasi, for being unable to hear it. "I wouldn't know."

"Oh I..." When she glanced back, the smile was gone for Fluttershy's face. "I wouldn't either. I've never... I-it's just what ponies say--"

"Ponies say a lot of things. Usually it's just to hear themselves talk." She turned away, trying to force herself back in the direction of the city. "Anyway, now that the animals are fed, wanna go get breakfast? I know a place that's quiet. Won't have a crowd."

The smile came back, more tentatively. "I'd be happy to. Thank you."

It wasn't fair, her being so polite. Not even in the way that Mask or Diamond could be polite, in that they would say all the nice words and still make it clear that you were being insulted. She was just... nice. Why did she have to be nice?

It was going to hurt, later, doing what was necessary. But then, nopony had been under the illusion that she and her kin were the heroes of this story. Those touched by the night never were, they were just sometimes spared when the dust settled.

And so Brandywine broke into a trot, off to buy her enemy breakfast.