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// An Encounter in Wonderland 
// Story: Across the Universe 
// by JewishKamikaze 
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	With the forest filled with mirthful singing and a flock of lustrous dragon-birds all orbiting an equine singularity, things were back in the right direction. From the occasional rod of sun that poked through the throngs of leaves, Fluttershy could tell that it was about noontime. 
Although the land she was in was not exactly wonderful, to her, it was a wonderland. In fact, she witnessed a sizeable rabbit and a little man in a large hat sporting an improper fraction enjoying a spot of tea together. Before she could wish them a happy unbirthday, the Universe regurgitated their silliness elsewhere. Since then, Fluttershy has convinced herself that this was a happy hallucination.
Aerating her wings in the late afternoon’s heat and the forest’s gentle breeze, she reached a small rivulet. As Fluttershy refreshed her parched throat with the water that fluxed past the pastel-colored the rocks of every fit and form, her mind wandered. The birds aren’t scary at all! They sing just like the birds I know… They aren’t quite as nice to look at, but they’re pretty in their own ways. I was wrong to judge them from my first impulse. Fluttershy noticed that she was simply craning her neck and had the front end of her face submerged as opposed to drinking. She snorted into the water at her own absentmindedness.
Fluttershy did not have the towel soak up the water on her muzzle. Rather, she left it alone, preferring to take advantage of evaporative cooling. To keep her wings moving, she opted to stroll up the stream instead of the forest path. The gentle current chilled her, rising to contact the flesh just above the hooves, and each time a new sliver of her leg was submerged, a new gasp egressed forth from her lips. Despite the discomfort, she relished the feeling of the cool water and the timelessness she dwelled in during her ascent up the gentle grade. 
A small waterfall came into view. It poured sheets of water insouciantly down an assortment of stones comprising all shapes and sizes, the largest boulders at the top and fine gravel making up the local streambed. She was hesitant to navigate the obstacle. The relentless, albeit lackadaisical flow water had furrowed a swath into the ground, carving two steep walls of crumbling macadam to either side. Clearly, climbing out would be burdensome. The small aggregation of birds was expectantly perched on the branches above, staring intently with their cold, red eyes. Mysteriously, the same eyes fixated upon something beyond the waterfall.
For Fluttershy’s life up to that point, her friends had intervened defensively when anypony would dare her to complete a task or to do something that she was not inclined to. Whenever other ponies would attempt daring acts like intricate tricks whilst airborne, Fluttershy always lay low and remained a spectator. In fact, she was so good at maneuvering herself into the position of a bystander that she never had to do anything of the potentially dangerous and/or daring sort. 
Now, however, she had fallen into a beguiling trap she had never known before. Fluttershy faced an ages-old battle of wills in which the shy part of her psyche was losing to the audacious part of her psyche, the intrepid bits in her having been mostly out to lunch up to this point in her journey. Clenching the towel in her teeth, Fluttershy found a shallow spit of gravel below the current that led into the gaping maw. 
The roaring beast appeared much more imposing from where she stood, although the lowest part, the part she intended to jump to, resided only a meter above than her head. Biting the towel hard, she snarled, determined to undertake the challenge she had presented herself. The sun beat down on her back, unopposed by any branches or leaves as it assumed its final vector unto the horizon. She loosened her grip on the towel, snorted into where it resided in front of her nostrils, and clenched it once more. Her brows furrowed, and she galloped and beat her wings until she made a great, winged jump. 
Her mind subsided into blank clarity, filled with determination and pervaded by a calm that expunged all fear and uneasiness. In only a short set of bounds and several furious wingbeats, she was over the crest, soaked by the spray. She let out an uncharacteristically loud ‘yay’ of delight. 
Her reply came from what the dragon-birds had been looking at: a scaly, bulky, massive beast. It reared its head away from what would have become its dinner. Obscured by the great beast, whatever that was quickly ran off, making crunching noises as it oppressed the otherwise peaceful leaves.
The face of the animal now before Fluttershy was not unlike that of a dragon. Like the rest of its quadrupedal body, it was a gray-green, with more gray than green, as well as more brown than green for that matter. Its snout was very compact, its ears were big and round, and each limb was as short and stocky as the rest of the animal. It resembled a bear, roared not unlike a bear, and charged at Fluttershy, stopping two meters short, breathing hot, malodorous breath into her sopping-wet face as one would expect a bear to. It reared up on its hind legs and roared a low, throaty bark. 
The shock Fluttershy retorted with made the single, fashionable pink-colored bang of hair flop wetly over her eye in most comical display. Her victory was cut short, and her valiant pose with wings gloriously outstretched turned to cowardly prostration with wings tucked down submissively. Her legs buckled and she expected—. Expect what? 
The realization that her friends no longer occurred, occurred. There appeared only one course of action, one avenue. Calm overtook her as the last hoof to push off the ground barely dodged a powerful scaled swipe, and in a dramatic flurry, she was up in the air, flying for the first time in many Equestrian days. 
Then a sense of controlled chaos overcame Fluttershy as she beat her feathery appendages furiously, swiveling her neck in a figure-eight to flourish the towel at the creature. With a steady, delicate growl, she vocalized her aggression through the threads of the weapon each time it hit the intersection of the two imaginary ellipses. She had made friends with the Everfree bears, but her life was in danger, and this was not an Everfree bear. 
The dragon-bear regained composure and endeavored to make another swipe. Fluttershy, not planning or thinking lucidly, instinctively twisted and whipped her lifeline it at the beast’s mighty paw, knocking it back with a sharp crack. The beast’s better and more opportunistic instincts told it that the chances of winning this battle were slim if it was to escape without injury. It growled at its own logic, frustrated, and took one last look at the dangerous mare. What it got was a stern stare so staggering, it ran off along a separate vector from either the stream or whatever it had previously preyed upon until it was out of sight and audibility. 
Hopping down a majestic meter, first touching the back-right hoof, then back-left, front-right, and finally front-left, Fluttershy radiated a unique regality the likes nobody in Equestria had known her capable of, not even herself. The effect was abruptly pulverized when, out of the corner of her eye, a stubby, bipedal figure hustled towards her. Fluttershy’s wings, still fully outstretched in formidable radiance, politely retreated to her still-wet sides, effectively making her a full half-meter shorter. 
Fluttershy’s mane flopped down in a sopping mop, and only one eye was available to greet the first soul to speak with her. In a peculiar way, despite all that Fluttershy had come to know and remember, the pony had only mattered for a few hours. It was intrinsically peculiar, despite being apparently obvious, that in no way the ground Fluttershy stood on at that very moment could have been affected by her up to the point that she occupied space on that tranquil hill overlooking the veldt.
The same could be said for everything in this new place. In fact, she had begun causing adverse change in the inconceivable instant her soft, cream-pink tail and cream-yellow body juxtaposed themselves into the time-space fabric of the land like a pin on a pin cushion suddenly being improbably transported into another pin cushion across the Universe without anybody so much as picking blueberries near either. Unbeknownst to Fluttershy, the ground was not the sole beneficiary of the adverse change Fluttershy would work.