((Prompt: Re-imagine MLP: FiM as a surrealist tragedy.))
Fluttershy owned a doll once, as a filly. Or her doll once owned a filly, perhaps. The semantics were arguable, and important enough for the common pony to shrug and ignore as they proceeded with their daily toil. The fact of supreme relevance was that she only possessed the doll once, and did not ever increase her ownings to two or more.
Her doll was a princess, for all fillies possess a princess. From birth up to marehood, they are ever gifted with something to smile and curtsey at, an idol before which to bow and scrape and plead with to never take away their family, even if their heinous crime warrants.
Fluttershy's princess was her doll, and she loved her princess with all of her heart. Fluttershy's doll was her princess, and she feared her doll with all her heart. She loved to fear her princess doll.
Every night she would play with her. She would look out her window in search of her precious possession and find her staring down at her from the sky, silver eye locked in the stone above her forever fixed on the filly she owned. The princess doll would point at Fluttershy's ratty feathers and tease her about her tail extensions and laugh and laugh at her until it drove her beneath her covers and she cried. They would have such fun.
And in the morning, Fluttershy's puffy, fun-stained eyes would chase her princess doll back into the toy chest, not to be taken back out until the next evening. Mother was adamant about this point; there would be no playing while the sun ruled the sky.
Fluttershy played her games with her princess doll for years. The princess doll would hurl rocks at her and call her a forsaken child and wish aloud for her to die in the streets, and Fluttershy would bow and curtsey for her, and thank her for her royal visit to her tea sets. Never a more wholesome relationship had been bred between a princess and her filly.
And then one night, it was day. No, one day, it was night. The semantics again tore asunder the truth of the statement, for it was either night or day, but not the one it was supposed to be. Fluttershy searched for her princess doll, but found naught but a dead orb sighing listlessly at the star-pocked sky.
She no longer had a princess, for she was a mare now. The filly her doll had lovingly beaten and screamed at was gone, and therefore her princess faded, too. Where fillies had princesses, mares had only dark forests and winding paths that led to a manticore's gullet. So Fluttershy smiled and curtseyed at her dark forest path and gave it the worship it was due. Five other non-fillies followed at her heels, and together they let darkness swallow them.
But at the end of the path, lo! Fluttershy beheld her princess once again! Not disappeared, but fully fleshed! Clad in silver and black and night and the blood of dreams, Fluttershy's princess stood. Her heart leapt and she cried silent and still for joy, for once more could her beloved princess doll torment her and prickle her with merciless needles. She could be a filly once more, and live in eternal night.
Laughingly, generously, truly, loyally, and filled with the spark of togetherness, Fluttershy slew her princess, casting her broken body into the void and leaving only a pale shell behind to weep at sisters and bow and scrape and smile and curtsey.
So cruel was this shadow, this not-princess. She did not bark at Fluttershy, nor berate her for her foibles. So monstrous was this thing that was not her princess that she did not even strike Fluttershy when she drew near. The lamentable shade instead wrapped her in soft hooves and shed tears and thanked her.
And weeks and years and decades passed and the not-princess refused to sink into her toy chest, even though the morning had clearly come. She wandered with regularity every time she had the whim, out of her stone dollhouse and down the cloud-lit road to visit the mare that had been the filly that had owned the princess she was not. She would sit on sandy beaches or in hammocks with Fluttershy, and speak not in angry shouts but loathsome kind words and pleasantries.
Over cups of tea and bargains and bets, they spoke. Not-princess and not-filly. And upon one day or one night, Fluttershy set her cup aside and let her hooves tremble, for she had dared to kiss her not-princess. There was the fear. There was the love. Her heart cried out in ecstasy, and then fell still, for she was a filly again, and she had her doll princess.
And then she woke.