“To remember us by,” Seabreeze squeaked, offering a flower to the breeziefied Fluttershy. He floated closer as Fluttershy lowered her head to accept the gift. Her eyes began to water as he gently wove the flower’s stem through her hair.
“Thank you! I’ll miss you,” she cried sincerely, barely managing to stop her voice from breaking. “I’ll miss all of you!” She sprang forward and wrapped Seabreeze in a farewell hug, then floated away from the group of breezies back towards her Ponyville friends. They all flew out of the nearly-closed portal with Fluttershy in the rear. Before she went through she turned around for one last look at the home of the breezies. To her surprise Seabreeze was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh,” she sighed disappointedly to herself. She’d been hoping to fit in one last farewell before she left forever. The portal was closing too quickly, however, and she didn’t have time to wonder where he’d gone. With another disappointed sigh she drifted through the portal, leaving this new magical land forever behind her.
“Fluttershy, wait!” Seabreeze’s voice called from the other side. She instantly perked up and whirled around seeing the breezie’s face through the tiny glowing circle. The hole was too small to fit through now, but Fluttershy anxiously got as close to it as she could.
“What?” she asked hurriedly, searching his face for a clue to why he had called her back.
“Take this too,” he spoke quickly, tossing a tiny book through the almost-as-tiny portal. It flew through and smacked fluttershy in the face then fell to the ground. “Us breezies use books to keep our--” he began to explain as fast as he could, but the portal closed in a tiny, anticlimactic beam of light and Fluttershy couldn’t hear anything from the other side.
“What’s that, Fluttershy?” Applejack asked in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, indicating the book on the ground below. She, along with the rest of her friends, had turned around and came back to Fluttershy with questioning gazes.
“Well...” Fluttershy answered cautiously while floating down towards her extra gift. “I’m not sure.” She landed and held the book up in her hooves to examine it, noting that it felt a lot lighter than she would have expected. It seemed like an ordinary book, only the front and back were covered with a foreign script that Fluttershy couldn’t recognize. It was held closed by twigs entwined with each other, forming a band around the book and preventing her from opening it. “Seabreeze wanted me to have it,” she explained, holding it tightly in her front legs.
“That was nice of him,” smiled Twilight. “I think they’re all really grateful for your help,” she said sagely. “Now, let’s get back to our normal selves,” she said to the whole group. She lead them out of the tunnel into the open air. “Okay, gather round.”
Then in a flash of purple light, Twilight transformed the six breezies into six ponies. As they all returned to their normal size the flower and the book from seabreeze somehow grew bigger as well, matching the ponies’ proportions.
Soon they were heading off into the sunset while Rainbow Dash pestered Twilight about turning her into a griffon or a dragon or a manticore or a sea serpent or a bunch of other cool monsters. For the whole journey Fluttershy was preoccupied with wondering what Seabreeze had given her this book for. She decided she should wait to remove the twig binding until she was safe back in her cottage.
She hardly even noticed when they finally made it back to Ponyville. She absent-mindedly said goodbye to her friends and set off for her house. It was nighttime so most of her animal friends were asleep when she got back. As she quietly snuck in through the front door she was extra careful to not make any noises that would disturb her sleeping animals. She softly trotted over to her table and laid down the mysterious book then politely whispered to the lightning bugs she kept for her lamp asking them to light up for her. Of course they were more than happy to help out and they lit up the table just enough for Fluttershy to examine the book more closely.
She was still unable to figure out what the weird writing was all over the outside. She figured it was the written language of the breezies, which would be a problem if Seabreeze had wanted her to read this book. Although she could understand other languages rather easily, that only applied to spoken languages. Reading was entirely different. Most animals don’t even have written languages, so the only one she knew how to read was her own.
Since she couldn’t understand anything on the cover, Fluttershy decided it was time to break the seal and open the book to see what was inside. She slid the twig binding upwards, pulling it off the top of the book. Carefully peeling back the cover, she found that the first page on the inside was more or less a wall of text, none of which she could read.
Turning the page, she found another wall of text. The next page after that revealed nothing new, just more text. It looked like it was just going to be hundreds of pages of text. She was getting a little discouraged. She didn’t know how Seabreeze had expected her to do anything with the book. Maybe the breezie had just assumed Fluttershy knew how to read the breezie language since she could understand it vocally. She closed the book, looking again at the cover with a lost expression on her face. Soon her features hardened with newfound determination. It was time for her to learn how to read a new language.
She brought out some papers and ink from her closet, setting them down on the table in preparation for the task at hand. She scanned the cover, looking for any patterns in words or letters that might match up with parts of the spoken language she could understand. But still she could make no sense of it. She opened the book again and tried her luck on the first page. A few minutes later she had made no progress and hadn’t been able to find anything in the wall of text that even looked vaguely familiar. It was then that she realized she needed someone with more literary experience.
She immediately stood up, slid the twig binding back on the book, taking it with her, and headed off to the library. When she got there she realized that it was still the middle of the night and Twilight was almost certainly asleep. Noticing that not a single light was on in any of the library’s windows, Fluttershy decided it would be best to wait until the morning so as not to interrupt her friend’s sleep. Twilight was probably pretty tired from turning them all into breezies and back, after all. So she sat down in Twilight’s front yard, her book in the grass beside her. Soon enough the sitting turned into laying and she drifted off to sleep using the book as a pillow.
“Fluttershy? Is everything alright?” the yellow pegasus shook herself awake. The sun was up and Twilight was standing over her looking concerned.
“Oh, yes. Everything’s fine,” she answered sleepily.
“Then… why are you sleeping in my front yard?”
“Oh my! I’m sorry!” the timid pony apologized, suddenly remembering her situation. She abruptly leapt up and brushed off her book, smiling sheepishly.
“Don’t worry,” Twilight said curiously. “I mean, you can sleep in my yard whenever you’d like. It’s just a little, um, strange.”
“Thank you! But... I was actually waiting for you to see if you could help me read this book. It’s written in some language I can’t understand.”
“Of course! I’ve got loads of experience translating foreign languages. Come on inside and we can figure it out together.” As she finished speaking she began trotting across her lawn to her house and she lifted up Fluttershy’s book with her magic. The pegasus followed her with a refreshed sense of hope that she’d figure out the meaning of Seabreeze’s gift.
“Wow,” Twilight remarked, “this book feels really light. Maybe there’s actually some truth to the rumor that alicorns’ magic is stronger right after they wake up.”
“No,” disagreed Fluttershy. Then she blushed realizing that might seem rude of her. “I mean,” she started again, “it felt light no me too. Everything about the book is confusing. I just can’t make any sense of it.”
“I see!” Twilight’s eyes seemed to light up as her interest grew. “Well I’m sure we’ll be able to clear away this mystery together.” By that time they were inside and Twilight had cleared a space for them to work in the middle of the floor. She used her magic to slide off the binding and then laid the book on the floor.
“Hmm,” she pondered the cover carefully. After a few seconds of deep thought she spoke again. “Well this definitely is a new language to me. And something about it is particularly unique. Normally I’d get my first clue on how to read it by looking for any characters that are repeated often and then try to figure out what sort of sound or idea they might correspond to. But if you look at this, every character is unique and none are repeated. Now, what’s really interesting is that you’ll notice that a lot of these characters seem to be made up of pieces that appear in characters as well. For example, do you notice this oval with the squiggle in it at the bottom right of this character? Well look here. It also appears here, here, here, here, and here. Each time it’s at a different position inside the character. Is the rest of the book written the same way?” she asked, almost more to herself than to Fluttershy as the flipped open the cover and examined the first page.
“Yes, it is,” explained Fluttershy. “I tried looking through the first few pages to see if I could figure anything out, but when I couldn’t I thought you might be better at it.”
“Did you look in the back of the book?” Twilight inquired, beginning to flip through the pages. “Maybe there’s a glossary or an index that wo-- Oh!” She stopped suddenly after flipping through a couple dozen pages. After that point the pages were cut so that the inside of the book was hollow. In that manner the book was transformed into a box, and this one seemed to be filled with pieces of grass. “Well that explains why it was so light,” Twilight declared in surprise. She immediately recovered and stared at the grass thoughtfully. “I wonder...” she muttered to herself then disappeared into some other room of the library.
So Fluttershy was left alone with this small pile of grass. She was completely at a loss as to why Seabreeze had given her a hollowed out book full of grass when suddenly an idea struck her. The grass was probably just packaging material to keep something safe. She sifted through the grass with her hoof and almost immediately found something buried inside. She reached under it and pulled it out, shaking off loose pieces of grass. The object appeared to be a twig bent into a circle with some strange fiber running through it making a two dimensional flower pattern. In the very center a beautiful yellow jewel was set which sent colorful beams of light dancing around the room as the sun hit it.
She’d seen something like this before. Pinkie had shown her something similar once. It was a dreamcatcher!
“Good news, Fluttershy! I figured it out,” Twilight cheered, trotting back into the room with another book in tow. “Oh, good! So did you!” she exclaimed, noticing Fluttershy holding the dreamcatcher.
“Isn’t it such a lovely gift?” Fluttershy sighed, admiring the bejeweled object.
“It is really pretty,” Twilight agreed, joining her friend in admiration. After a couple seconds, she switched her focus back to the book she was carrying. Glancing at it’s pages she explained to Fluttershy, “breezies are rumoured to repay favors with spiritual artifacts such as magical incense, dreamcatchers, and enchanted wind chimes.” She flipped to a different section of the book. “And it turns out that nopony, and nobreezie, in the world understands the breezie written language. It looks like even the breezies themselves forgot how to read it ages ago, and now they’ve started using leftover books for other purposes such as furnishing their houses, decoration, and transporting fragile objects.”
“I think that’s what Seabreeze was trying to tell me just before the portal closed,” agreed Fluttershy.
Twilight chuckled. “Another mystery solved. Looks like Seabreeze didn’t really want you to read the book at all. He just wanted to give you what was inside. Now what would be really neat is if I could figure out their language. Do you mind if I hold on to this?” she asked hopefully, gesturing at Fluttershy’s hollow book.
“Not at all,” Fluttershy smiled. “The real gift is right here,” she held up the dreamcatcher.
“Thank you! With any luck, I might just be able to rediscover a long-forgotten language. It’s a shame we don’t have any more breezie books. There must be so much ancient knowledge in all those texts. I hate to think of all the ways the breezies have been mistreating them.”
“Right… Well I’ll leave you to that,” Fluttershy said, making her way towards the door. “Thank you so much for your help. I’ll make sure to look through the entire book next time.”
“Don’t worry. It’s no trouble,” Twilight replied distractedly as Fluttershy slipped out the door.
The yellow mare realized how tired she was as soon as she began her walk back to her cottage. She wasn’t sure how much sleep she’d gotten, but she could definitely use some more. As soon as she got home she hung the dreamcatcher from her bedpost and crawled into bed. Within minutes she was fast asleep.
Hours later, a well rested Fluttershy began her most recent entry into the diary she shared with her friends.
“I just woke up from the most wonderful dream. I was with the breezies in their home and Seabreeze was there with his little baby breezie. He showed me all around his house and took me on a tour across their land. My favorite part, though, was when I got to play with the baby. She’s just so adorable! I don’t think I’ve ever seen an animal cuter than a baby breezie!
Anyway, I’ve always known that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I always thought that was just a saying. Today I learned that you literally shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or even the first few pages. You never know what you’ll find if you look carefully enough.”
To this day the dreamcatcher has brought Fluttershy only the happiest dreams and still carries her to the land of the breezies whenever she misses them.