Fluttershy got up, stretched lazily like a cat in a sun ray, and flexed her wings to their fullest lateral extent. She pointed each dormant feather in the same direction and grunted softly as she did so. Probing the nightstand’s surface for a match with the aid of feeble light poking under and around the door, her hoof connected with the sought irregularity. She lit it and watched the room expand with the crackle of light and sound. The meager flame found itself in a coal lamp, which turned the half-light whole. The square room, big enough for one pony’s needs, was fully visible. The lamp bathed the stark stone walls and nearby floor with comfortable light but projected harsh shadows on the opposite walls and floor.
The image before her appeared as a dreamscape, one that Fluttershy saw every day but often had to remind herself was genuine. Secure in reality, Fluttershy ambled around her bed towards her mirror and her washbasin. From the cold stone, she plucked forth her brush and hummed absent-mindedly while she stroked her mane, mussed after a long night’s sleep.
Decisively awoken by the brisk, dull stings innumerable knots bring, she proceeded to make her bed. After much reaching and pulling, the bed was made. Almost ready to begin the day, she perambulated around the bed, clutched the idle lantern in her teeth, and brought it towards a small, wooden table by the door. As she neared the table, she looked back and took the room in.
The lantern casted distorted adumbrations of her belongings onto the walls, which seemed to slowly advance towards her. These did not frighten her as they once would have, however. Her room was placid and plain, like an unfrequented pond. It was her sanctuary after a big day; a place for her to think and to meditate. Although she had few personal belongings and it was not as snug of an abode as one of her previous iterations would have demanded, it belonged to her just as much as any.
Set on the table by the opened door, the lantern was put out, returning the room to darkness. Fluttershy stepped out and took in her surroundings, remembering to pull the door back to close it. On it were the numbers 2, 3, and 7. And so, the sleep thoroughly rubbed from her eyes, she proceeded onward and upward, humming peaceably, long before most of the other villagers in Butzbik woke. Around her wrist was a talisman of her duty: the bracelet that signified her first job of the day.
Although the place Fluttershy arrived at was her job, this “work” filled her with such glee that it could not be considered labor by her definition. She entered either grinning, beaming, or with the corners of her mouth turned up in some way. The job was one of the highlights of her day for many reasons other than the joys of feeding everydragon and assisting the community as a whole by doing her part. Fluttershy was vaguely sure that her daily feeling of joviality would have fulfilled someone else’s dream and made their day, but neither name nor face registered. As she swung around the doorway, her eyes registered with unusually colored pair: pink.
All around the deep-sunk pink eyes were yellow and yellow-green scales that covered the eyes’ face, utilizing the gloom cast by a dozen warming ovens to procure a scowl. The eyes stared at her blankly. Fluttershy greeted, “Heya there, Ezalg.” Ezalg was always the first one up every morning in order to kindle the ovens.
“Hey there, Flutter!” Ezalg exclaimed, as most of Fluttershy’s friends’ mouths were too maladroit to pronounce her full name, their mouths being filled with unwieldy teeth. Ezalg’s lips curled around her many outward-pointing teeth to smile, “Sleep well?” Her eyes seemed to find hitherto nonexistent light in order to glisten in an amicable manner.
“Oh just fine, thanks,” Fluttershy stated plainly, maintaining eye-contact with her friend.
“That’s just swell news,” Ezalg turned and stoked an oven, “They’re warming up nicely. Just a little while and they’ll be ready for you.”
The scraping growing ever-more sonorous foretold the arrival of Dentrassis, whose job was to prepare the beverages for the community. He arrived punctually, albeit shuffling to work as usual. As he set the various herbs and juices onto his allotment of countertop, one could see that mixing drinks was his joy. In fact, he enjoyed it so much, he was the head drink-mixer for every meal, relieved to be relieved of his former position as the head breakfast chef.
Next to appear was Fluttershy’s apprentice, Hoov. His full name was Hoovaloo, but he preferred Hoov for short, much to the disappointment of his scales’ color, who was very smart—hyper-intelligent, in fact. Regardless, the color was intelligent enough to kept quiet. As was quotidian, under Hoov’s eyes were deep wrinkles slightly more purple than the surrounding scales. It was not uncommon for a dragon’s face here to be wrinkled, but the severity of physical deviance indicated a lack of sleep. He had been out late again.
By then, Fluttershy had assembled the various utensils required to make each pancake. She had gradually acquired her instruments of culinary genesis throughout the time she had lived in Butzbik. There was her special chopping-knife, curved along its length in order to glide through whatever fruit was required that day, her flour-cup precisely measured to contain the perfect amount of flour, her corresponding cup for sugar, and her various bowls required for the baking task. She put her mixing bowl on the counter and picked up her mixing spoon. The spoon was well-marked by her teeth, having been clutched daily.
Hoov shuffled languidly towards the assemblage of apparatus and peeled the crystaline sleep from his eyes. He occupied one of the simpler tasks concerning pancake production by peeling the fruit, the supply of produce already relieved of its protective barrier swiftly increasing in scarcity. He yawned and nodded a few times, his head jerking up with more and more acumen. He peeled off a scale in a perfunctory swipe, decisively waking himself. Sucking in air through the sides of his mouth, he grimaced, suppressing an impulsive paroxysm. The color of his scales mourned silently at the loss of a member.
“Woken up?” Fluttershy smiled wryly, her eyes soft and her head cocked to the side. To Hoov, it seemed she unfairly held the secret to compos mentis every morning.
“Yeah… Just a small scratch,” he allowed. Confidingly he whispered, “I shouldn’t stay up so late, I know.” Sighing, he admitted, “It’s just that I like to spend time with my friends.”
Fluttershy could relate: “It’s tough to say no, but one has to realize that the same opportunities will rise again, given time.” She marveled at this incident of confidence. It was unusual for someone to ask or divulge more than was necessary, even to those with whom they were well acquainted.
Fluttershy wondered if it was time for her to tell her story. The possibility crossed her mind on occasion, but what enrichment would be wrought in telling people about something that has no way of affecting them? While she weighed her options, Fluttershy wrapped the handle of a hot pan in a floral sheet of absorbent cloth dotted with many dark spots.
Fluttershy resolved to let her simplistic remarks immortalize themselves in her apprentice’s conscience and to allow the two of them to fall back into silence. She stole a glance around. Her friends on the other side of the kitchen made no indication that they had perceived the short patch of conversation.
Often whilst baking, Fluttershy’s mind gadded about, often unconscious to the things it scrutinized. It’s like spring now with the birdies and berries… Winter wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t very festive, but it wasn’t harsh… Her conscious was like a vast stretch of water at this time of day, rendering her free to swim endlessly in any direction. Humming leisurely to an old tune, she tended to the sizzling just beneath her nose. We wake their sleepyheads so quietly and nice… She scanned the countertop for the cup filled a few ticks above halfway with the next ingredient. Is it three quarters of a cup or two thirds? One thought descended into another within the catalyst of the concept of measurement, which transferred volumetric thought to the chronological sort. Wait: is it Wednesday or Friday? Is today somedragon’s birthday? She searched franticly in the cabinet above her. At first, she was gripped with fear at having forgotten one of her friend’s special days. Oh, the sprinkles were hiding behind the hinge, of course. She gave a laugh of relief, and smiled at the wall she so dearly baked in front of each morning along with some of her friends.
Humming to herself, Fluttershy glanced down. Burnt! They’re going to get burnt! She shifted the iron pan cradling the molten dough with what can only be described as a schmatta. It was marvelous how much the towel had served while she lived in Butzbik. These look about ready. In a couple of soprano hm’s, a new set of discoid globs atop the heated pans was set over the stove as the previous batch was deposited onto the designated porcelain receptacle. And so, onward went her gleeful work.
* * *
Breakfast came tardy, but the residents of Butzbik could not have cared less so long as it was as delectable as the previous day’s breakfast. Of all things that morning, foreseeable and unforeseeable, the likelihood of the meal’s imminent saporosity was definitely on everydragon’s top five most-likely events.
Warm saucers of pastry eased onto the rows of tables. The new custodians graced them with insignificant yellow crystals of sleep wiped clear of their tear ducts while they consumed the pancakes. The yawns and slow stretches were soon drowned in the voracious din of utensils stabbing, cutting, and scooping.
“I must say, Flutter,” Tharur began, speaking through and then around the wad of sweetness in his mouth, “you’ve done a good job again, and props to Hoov.”
“Oh thank you. I’m just glad to be doing my part here,” she warranted graciously, “I know all of you do the same.” She smiled contentedly, vindicated for her hard work. Upon such, she sipped a few dehydrating gulps of Dentrassis’s morning concoction and felt at the sacchariferous residue assert its dry presence on the back of her throat. She partook in some cool water to rid herself of the heavy dosage of cassonade and glanced about.
Everydragon was content: Hoov was off with his buddies, and Nare was undoubtedly discussing politics and trade with a few elders concerning the nearby villages, or as Fluttershy had learned to call them, Munecoms. Fluttershy blinked slowly at Tharur as he explained the intricacies of the upcoming festival commemorating the anniversary of Butzbik’s founding. Lebb’s eyes seemed entirely consumed by a single point infinitely inside and infinitely outside the Universe in which the tabletop that her eyes were vectored at existed. Naruk, on the other hand, was erratically nodding and jolting up over his empty plate in a vain attempt to appear ready for the day, but it was evident that he was failing even to convince himself.
Fluttershy chipped away glacially at her pancakes. Eventually, the moraine of crumbs and syrup left was picked up by a passing busboy. From the diminishing din generated by the last pokes at tidbits of pancake, a lively buzz of talk brewed: expectations, hopes, inhibitions, dreams, ideas, dreadings, and all sort of conversation that goes with a public site of food worship.
* * *
In Fluttershy’s own room, she combed her hair after the dash to make the daily requirement of batches (along with a few extra). She lay enervated on her side following a fervent lecture given by Tharur. In this position, she dozed, eyelids fluctuating in their weight like a young woman in the dating game. This presented a comfortable challenge, as Fluttershy wished not to slumber through lunch and endanger her punctuality. However, she had a while to rest before having lunch and then completing the task dictated by her second band.
In this world without the abundant magic of her last, there were no preordained destinies determined by images on one’s rear. Instead, to establish similar order and individuality, everydragon wore tri-colored bands denoting their particular task. There could be many or a few, depending on the length of each responsibility. Fluttershy’s first, the one closest to the end of her foreleg, was colored with two blue stripes and a single yellow. Next, she had one with a blue stripe, a red stripe, and another blue stripe. Past that, she had a solely blue band.
It had taken a while, but they had grown to feel natural. Every so often, Fluttershy shifted the multicolored rings to allow the flesh beneath them to breathe. At first they itched, but eventually she adjusted. When close enough, however, the bands pinched the skin in a most unwelcome manner, forcing her to take precautions to prevent such annoyances every few moments.
Fluttershy wore a short, fashionable headdress she felt passively amplified the long, curled suaveness of her hair, and only a thin necklace graced her otherwise plain neck. The string was thin enough and well-worn enough that it was rendered virtually invisible under the hair it had sunken into. The sole item it strung itself though thus produced the effect of protruding from her chest. That item was a long, curved, falciform fang clearly having pertained at some point to the left side of a jaw, but not to the jaw of any of the inhabitants of Munecom—as far as she could tell. The thought of something large enough to have once wielded the wicked tooth frightened her, but it was a gift of honor. Hence, she wore it respectfully until she had gotten used to it, and it was a source of great pride for Fluttershy.
* * *
Rounding corners was an inescapable reality of life in the spiral. Their inherent blindness could make them dangerous, being made of stone and part of an unrelenting roundabout. As a generally accepted unspoken rule passed down over the centuries in order to avert collisions, most residents of Butzbik stuck to the outside going counterclockwise down and the inside going clockwise up.
That day, Fluttershy had taken a catnap whose end lay just outside her desired wake-up time: lunch. After so long without constant reference to time, such as was her case, she eventually managed to trust her inner clock, which was sending strong vibes to her that she was tardy. She bolted upright and took a risk, diving down the spiral in tight circles to compensate for lost time, hugging the coarse stone as she descended.
Of course, luck is a rarified air reserved for wizards’ drinks and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. people. The meager bits Fluttershy had accumulated over time ran out when she hit a rough red wall. She rebounded off, and one her lower vertebrae met the merciless corner of a step, knocking her windless. “Hey! I’ve been having enough trouble today as it is!” came a low, pugnacious-sounding voice.
“—,” Was Fluttershy’s reply, her lungs too preoccupied with the pain in her back to contract and allow air in. She managed a cough pitifully through the pulsations of shock.
“All I wanted was to get back to my room and be alone, but you had to come and get in my way,” the wall waved his burly arms over her. She noticed bands and bands of agricultural yellow denoting his work as a laborer.
“—,” Fluttershy began a retort, drawing in a few wisps of air to reassure herself that she was not in danger of asphyxiation, “I’m… sorry.” She felt relieved to be able to apologize. “I’m just in a hurry. Didn’t mean to get in your way,” she smiled weakly from her pained position lying on her back looking up at the towering red dragon. From there, she reckoned that he was about her height, enormous by Butzbik-standards.
His face was furrowed with frustration, and his eyes seemed teared-up from his trouble. No doubt today had not been his best, “Look, it’s okay. You seem to be the one who got the worst of this—here—let me help you up,” he extended a jagged limb in offering of help.
“Thanks!” pulling hard until she felt an electric spasm course outward from her lower back. Ignoring it in a painfully cold shiver and gritting her teeth, Fluttershy informed him, “I better get going. See you around!”
“You, too, Flutter,” his vibrant eyes mismatched his menacing face.
She murmured musically to herself on the rest of the trip down. I love to see everydragon beam. It just brightens up my day.
* * *
Sand, smoothed by a day’s wind scouring, was perforated with patterns of a single rounded figure with three small, laterally spaced pokes clustered in a line adorning one side. Really, these bunches of four ovaloids were in two side-by-side chains, each set of three being situated towards the ‘top’ of the rounded figures on each side. The chains arched from a common forest path to a point on the shore. But the sand was not riddled with just one, but many of these furrows. In fact, the shore was a rife with muddled sand kicked up where claws trampled the same places again and again to reach similar destinations. Out of the multitudes of the scrambled scores punctuating the granular tract, one such path had no small perforations, and each dent was not irregular. Moreover, each pit in this set of two side-by-side chains of elegantly intersticed pits was perfectly circular.
At the end of each of these curious formations, including the perfectly circular one, porcelain disks were covered in sand, dipped in water, scrubbed with a towel, and dipped once more in the pool. The mere, situated in a calm part of the local stream system, was still enough to not sweep away any plates, yet moving enough not to be considered stagnant, not unlike to your author’s social life. The sluice picked up its pace near a rocky bend downstream. Still further along the rivulet’s course lay a waterfall of special significance to three residents of the forest.
A persistent din pervaded, antithesizing with the placidness of the pond. The clamor comprised of the familiar clink of plates, but the mass aggregation of noise at any given moment was so dense and consistent with the last that the effective result was utter silence. The grand commotion allowed for the idle mind to engage in furious cognitive locomotion; it was here that one could meditate peacefully.
Completing the ordainment of her second armband was a daily reminder to Fluttershy of her entry into an invisible world of friends, relationships, and jobs. She hummed away the scraps, the grease, the grit, and the wet. Among the many positive aspects of the job, it was a joy to watch the sun bow beneath the forest canopy and end its daily reign, signing a red promise across the sky of its return. To her left and right, a couple of fast friends worked industriously, humming along with her, unconscious to the lyrics of the spritely tune. The lyrics would not have made too much sense to them as they did not know what apple cider was, so they mused along wordlessly. They did indeed have an unfiltered, unsweetened, apple-flavored beverage that they served occasionally, but they called it jynnan tonnyk. Oddly enough, they did enjoy a good tonic with a spot of gin in it every now and again, but they had another name for that.
Whereupon the evening had been coasting along ordinarily, at one moment, Fluttershy recalled that the friend to her left, Church, was having trouble. As Church had informed Fluttershy recently, there was a male whom she knew whose company she very much favored. Tragically enough, Fenchurch did not know what to say, the most common dilemma to face romantic urges in the Universe after the absence of decent prospective companions. Fluttershy’s subconscious was bubbling with calculation when solace frothed forth across the membrane of her conscious, tickled it a bit, and then popped into her head proper. Fluttershy, say something.
“Well, Fennie, there used to be a day called Hearts and Hooves day where everypo—everydragon would ask another if they would be their special er—,” she finagled the two discordant words into one brief, “somedragon.” It was hard to fight against the indoctrination gradient and not utter a word she had used so many times before in similar situations. Continuing, “If you get a chance like that, you should talk.”
Fenchurch, surprised at this reference to her friend’s unknown past life, tried to remain nonchalant, but the mere reference to something otherworldly halted the sharp clinks and the piercing scrapes of the clean and dirty stacks of porcelain. Fenchurch, flummoxed, “Oh, er, okay. Thanks. I guess—I mean that’s really helpful. Our Couples’ Day is in a few weeks. Thanks for the tip.” The short bout of words passed in a tone quiet enough that nodragon would normally hear. However, this seemingly insignificant peek into an infinitesimal facet of Fluttershy’s past life thickened the air, and it teemed with anticipation. Not ready to commit to her own history out of fear of dejection, Fluttershy continued scrubbing. Following three excruciating moments, each one a separately severe tremor of terror for the spotlighted little pony, the air was once again thick with furious scrubbing, stacking, and sanding.
* * *
Dinner was done, and most of the Butzbikians were reading, writing, or accomplishing some leisure in their personal residences. Outside, however, turbulence wreaked the canopy. The tree beneath Fluttershy found its matted clumps of leaves flapping savagely in the shifting air currents. The ground was a stable commodity not found at this height, as the moonlit leaves of the much lower surrounding trees formed a glittering cloak over it. At this precarious height, the branches of the ancient tree were not particularly confident in safely distributing a pony’s weight, even that of a petite pegasus, but Fluttershy paid no attention to her imminent danger and balanced, meditating.
Fluttershy had been out flying a few times, but each time, she could not safely burst through the dense canopy formed by the lower trees. That night, however, she decided to hop, skip, and jump her way to the top of a tree not far from the bushes from which she harvested berries with Hoovaloo every few nights. In this position, she gracefully stretched herself out linearly, raising her chin to the horizon and disregarding the majesty of the night with closed eyes. But solitary concentration is another humor one rarely assumes, as the Universe is prone to aggressively terminate it. Under her, the mighty trunk and its multitudes upon multitudes of singular fibers each warped minutely, producing a fearsome bellow and a few degrees of deviation.
Instinctively, she leaped into the air. The tree groaned back, seemingly saying, “Go”. It had the voice of an irritated bullfrog under rapidly decaying effects of sulfur hexafluoride. In fact, it was expressing to the tree next to it that its solitary concentration had been brusquely interrupted by the feeble creature atop it. It had been a hair’s breadth away from realizing the Question. It has been long-speculated whether or not it was about to realize the actual Question, how many roads a man must truly walk down, or both.
Now, flapping in idle, Fluttershy looked at the moon in its quicksilver serenity. It was pockmarked with craters, forming what the Munecomers called the Moon’s Claw. Fluttershy was not fazed; she had seen more frightening patterns on more frightening moons and had even been one’s speech coach. Another gust of bitter wind knocked her out of transfixion. It was dangerous, as lingering at treetop level permits very little margin for error.
To compensate for hugging the deck, Fluttershy rose, distancing herself from the homely calls of the forest beneath her. Soon, only the wind hissed at her as she reached a cloud enjoying a nighttime float through the local climate of the valley. Then, she felt above everything; she felt in command of all that lay beneath her. Here was a safe enough place to start.
No single organism was discernible at this height. Patches of black lines and shimmering lines interspersed the silver valley’s floor far, far below. Although her muscles stayed warm, her nose and ears began to chill. Up there, the horizon sat slightly beyond the peaks of the mountains, allowing a short glimpse at the world around the one she knew as her own. It did not seem too interesting, being just a round sliver of land the same color as the one situated dizzyingly far below.
With the night’s observations completed and the moon in a distressingly late position, Fluttershy ceased opening her eyes and beating her feathered appendages. Her airfoils released their firm grip on altitude in single synchronized contraction.
Down Fluttershy dropped, her mane and tail corkscrewing with turbulence and drag, fanning out into shapes most unlike their usual forms. The shrill wail of the wind and the greedy tug of gravity were all Fluttershy felt for as long as she dared.
She teared up when her eyes opened a safe distance from the ground in order to institute a singularly tall tree as a reference point in accordance to her position relative to the ground. At that, she opened up her wings slowly. They seemed to want to tear off against the onrushing air, but she persevered. The ground slowed toward her, and she angled her wings when the treetops reached out to take her. With blistering speed, the forest below blurred past, and in a breathless instant, it turned away from her. As the relentless curb turned vertical, beyond a brief glimpse of the mountain peaks, all she hurtled towards were stars. Her wings, fully extended, were hastily withdrawn once more, and her inertia carried her onto her back. A rhinestone sheet radiated at her as she inverted.
Next, her vision was consumed by the brilliantly gleaming orb of the moon. Fluttershy whispered breathless, “Luna.” It beamed at her as an unrelenting quicksilver spotlight above the world. On her back with wings fully outstretched, nothing supported her; not even a single updraft prodded her.
The sky was at her command, and nothing could touch her. Euphoria and enlightenment seemed to immerse the sky, and the ground became an afterthought. Actually, the ground had become an unthought. The boundaries of her mind felt endless. Her heartbeat was so rapid, too, that it pulsed over her whole body and especially in her ears.
When the Universe caught up to Fluttershy, her mind’s tendrils reached out to the subjects of gravity, ground, and going down— all against her will—and she resumed descending. Abruptly but precisely, she completed a concise flip and regained idle flapping. Next, she glided down, not understanding what exactly had happened, but euphoric once more at having been able to do something she had never dared to try in her past life. Dashie would be so proud.
* * *
The next night was one of the two nights of the week when Fluttershy completed the task directed by the band closest to her chest. It was a part-time job, so it comprised only two stripes instead of the usual three. In this case, both were blue.
Fluttershy was busy explaining the technique of finding the very best in berries by their appearance to Hoov, speaking around three basket handles. To him, delicately holding a pair of woven containers in each set of fore-claws, it was nice to get out of the spiral every now and again. To her, it was a reminder of her past life, which soothed her.
They went around the great, familiarly groaning trunk of one of the tallest trees in the forest. Down there, below the enveloping canopy of the season, it was as dark as pitch. Although Fluttershy was light on her feet and walked briskly, Hoov led the way, his adolescent internal clock ordaining the hour as the one at which he was most active. He stopped for a second, exclaiming, “Oh!”
“Why’d you stop?” Fluttershy inquired, gently setting the baskets down on a root.
“I just remembered,” only his teeth showed in the darkness as he smiled a few inches below her. It seemed like a prideful smile. “They’re taking you to the elder!”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s this great dragon whom everyone reveres and who comes around every now and again.”
“So when’s the next time he’ll be here?” Fluttershy asked, suddenly intrigued.
“He just gets here when he gets here, but it’s always announced in some way. It’s kind of a big deal.”
“Okay. Have you ever seen him?”
“No, but he sounds pretty neat,” assured Hoov, “I hear he’s the most incredible, gigan—.”
Remembering that Hoov should be sleeping soon, Fluttershy decided to get him moving with, “From what you say, it seems like a great honor. Now, back to business.” She smiled at him as he turned and led the winding way between prickly bushes that were so very similar to juniper. “You know, I used to pick berries in this way almost every night, except alone,” Fluttershy divulged absent mindedly. A revealing moon ray brightly revealed Hoov’s gleaming head as his ears pricked back expectantly. Fluttershy debated telling him more. By the next beam of moonlight, his ears were once again directed into their normal setting.
They split off from there and each found a separate thicket from which to harvest the berries before feeling their way back home.