Fluttershy dug her hoof down into the cold, hard dirt of Whitetail Woods. She worked silently and without complaint. When she finished, she loosened the scarf around her neck and wiped the little bit of sweat from her forehead, and stepped back.
“How is this?” she asked the chubby gopher who had appeared in front of her door a month before, two of his legs broken.
He scampered up to the burrow she had dug and sniffed. He had healed well, but he still had trouble digging, especially in soil turned tough by the cold. He disappeared down the burrow, and Fluttershy heard him sniffing about underneath the dirt. He popped back out a moment later, chittering happily.
“You’re welcome,” Fluttershy said, rubbing his head. “Goodbye, until spring. I’ll miss you.”
He chittered a farewell and dropped back down into his new burrow. He was an early hibernator, and after he finished gathering food he wouldn’t come back out until the first thaw.
Fluttershy sighed and tightened her scarf again as a cold breeze fell down upon her. There had already been a dozen goodbyes before the chubby gopher, and she didn’t know how many were still to come. Probably a hundred, if not more. She walked away from the burrow, deeper into the woods, to check on the beaver she had, years before, discovered crying and hurt and alone underneath a fallen stump. Above her, the trees had turned orange and red and yellow and brown. Fluttershy’s every step produced a brittle crunch of dried leaves underneath. The trees were quiet now except for an occasional rustle in the cold wind. The birds had already gone. That had been another she didn’t know how many goodbyes and wish-you-wells and see-you-in-springs.
The beaver lived near the brook. He would need help gathering enough sticks and logs to last through the coming winter. He wouldn’t hibernate, but he would be locked up in his pond all through the winter. That would be another goodbye, but thankfully not today.
Autumn was a season of goodbyes.
It was Fluttershy’s worst season. This season, when every one of her friends would fly away, or disappear underground, or begin staying home and sleeping all day. She would spend weeks saying goodbyes, and then have nothing left to do but ready herself for the long isolation of winter. She liked to tell everypony that she was used to saying goodbye, so much so that she didn’t feel a thing anymore when she said it, that she didn’t care at all.
It was a lie. Fluttershy had never gotten used to saying goodbye, and never would. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t always help her friends leave her. She helped dig their burrows and dens, and gather food, and point the way towards migration.
Fluttershy would never ask them to stay, of course. She would never act so selfishly. Her friends had their own lives, she knew, and sometimes their lives took them far away from her.
It was also her busiest season. At no other time of year was there so much work to be done. That meant she hadn’t had much time for Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy only saw her marefriend once every few days, and then she was too tired to do much more than talk for a while and then go to sleep. She could tell Rainbow Dash was becoming frustrated and bored. But Fluttershy had responsibilities to her other friends that absolutely had to be kept.
Thinking back on the past few months, Fluttershy suspected Rainbow Dash’s boredom had begun earlier than this. The heat of spring and summer had long since faded.
At first, the gifts and the dinners and the shows had begun to taper off. Fluttershy didn’t complain, of course. She had never asked Rainbow for any of those things, and would certainly never demand them of her. But Fluttershy had still noticed when they stopped. The unannounced visits to her cottage happened less and less, too. After a time, it became Fluttershy who most often sought Rainbow Dash out, where before Rainbow had so doggedly stayed near. Then, with the first cold nights, the trips out to the clearing had ended, and those Fluttershy missed most of all.
Now autumn had arrived, and they barely saw each other. Even when Rainbow Dash asked her to come to her practices, Fluttershy had to say no. She was simply too busy.
Rainbow Dash had told her that she understood, and Fluttershy wanted to believe that she did. But Fluttershy knew Rainbow, and she knew what Rainbow felt even when her marefriend didn’t give those feelings voice. Rainbow Dash felt hurt that Fluttershy couldn’t make time for her, and maybe even a little betrayed. And Fluttershy knew also that Rainbow became bored when others didn’t engage her, and that she grew frustrated when she felt she was being ignored.
In a way, Fluttershy felt that their relationship was like a heavy rock fallen in a calm lake. When it first hit the surface, it made a great splash of waves that rushed in all directions and left no water anywhere in the lake undisturbed. But the rock had sunk and the waves had turned to ripples, and soon those ripples would abate and the water’s surface would become smooth and flat again.
But not yet, and it wasn’t inevitable. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had arranged a date for that night at Fluttershy’s cottage, a whole night just for each other. Fluttershy smiled and thought about the vegetable soup and salad she would prepare and how she would ask Rainbow Dash about her practices and Rainbow would talk and shout and make silly motions with her hooves to explain how a trick worked, and then Fluttershy would lead Rainbow up to her bedroom and draw the curtains. Fluttershy giggled and blushed the more she thought about that part, but she knew Rainbow Dash wouldn’t be bored any longer after she saw what Fluttershy had planned for her there.
Fluttershy caught sight of the beaver’s dam between some trees nearby and trotted towards it, a newfound spring in her step.
That night, in her cottage, Fluttershy sat down at her dinner table. She was alone. The cottage was silent.
Her cottage had never been silent before. There was almost always a flurry of activity. Critters skittering and chittering on the floor, underneath chairs and shelves, into and out of the walls. Birds in the birdhouses, on the window sills, fluttering about the ceiling, out the window, in through the chimney. And from outside always drifted in the sounds of the cats and the dogs and the foxes and the deer playing and quarreling, and otters and beavers splashing in the brook, and crickets and grasshoppers and cicadas chirping in the trees. At night, the animals that didn’t sleep crept and lurked in grass outside, and in the house could be heard the slow, sleeping breaths of a hundred living beings. Even in autumn and winter, the sounds never fully died away.
On occasion over the past few months, all the critters had graciously gone to give Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash privacy for an evening. But on those nights, Rainbow Dash’s boisterous voice had more than made up for the lack of animals.
On this night, the critters had gone, but Rainbow Dash had never come to take their place.
From her seat, Fluttershy glanced up at the clock. Rainbow Dash was hours late.
Fluttershy had nibbled at the salad, but the soup in the pot on the table lay untouched, and mushy peas and celery slices floated atop the cold broth.
Fluttershy didn’t know to feel. Disappointed, she supposed. And she wanted to be angry, but couldn’t seem to work up the energy. She wondered if she should worry, and lie to herself and say Rainbow Dash would never forget such an important date. Or maybe she should hope that Rainbow had tried to arrive on time, but had been held up, and felt terribly bad about it, and was rushing to come and apologize.
The door of her cottage opened, not suddenly or quickly, but with a slow creak.
Fluttershy turned and saw Rainbow Dash walk inside. Rainbow’s head was lowered, her wings limp, and her steps slow.
At first, Fluttershy thought she had been right. Something unfortunate had come up that caused Rainbow to be late, but now she was here, and she would explain and apologize. But then Fluttershy instantly knew that wasn’t it at all, for Rainbow Dash didn’t look up and smile embarrassedly or apologetically, or smile or say anything at all. She only walked to the table and sat down.
Fluttershy waited.
Rainbow Dash looked over the food on the table, her eyes distant and listless. She pulled out an envelope she had tucked in her wing and set it in front of Fluttershy.
On the envelope, Fluttershy saw the winged lightning bolt insignia of the Wonderbolts. She opened the envelope and pulled out a letter. She read the words and quickly realized that they were calling Rainbow Dash far away.
Fluttershy laid the letter back down.
Rainbow looked at her, and Fluttershy saw that her eyes were rimmed with red.
Rainbow Dash said, “Please.”
Somehow, incredibly, Fluttershy smiled and said, “Of course.”
Rainbow Dash grinned and leapt across the table and wrapped her hooves and wings around Fluttershy.
Fluttershy gripped her back and cried into Rainbow Dash’s mane.
They spent the rest of the night pretending that everything was as it had been. Fluttershy told herself that it wasn’t so bad. She had expected this from the beginning. She had always known she couldn’t hold onto Rainbow Dash for long. Rainbow was too wild to stay on the ground forever. This was just one more goodbye among hundreds.
Fluttershy lied to herself through the whole night.