The rich, warm aroma emanated from the bubbling pot and mingled with the other scents hanging in the air inside the cottage. Fluttershy inhaled deeply, humming with muted acceptance. Carefully, she clasped her teeth around the handle of the pot and carried it over to a thick board resting on her dining table. She doused the flames on her stove, then turned back to the collection of animals exchanging uncertain glances while piles of leaves, nuts and seeds awaited them on the cottage floor. Fluttershy had dutifully continued to care for their needs ever since the manticore's visit, but with a distracted, mechanical air, her sweet lilt giving way to a defeated murmur, and the animals had all picked up on her mood.
"Go on, my friends. Help yourselves."
As the critters joylessly ingested their lunch, Fluttershy re-gathered the pot and trudged with it out of her cottage and past the perimeter of the Everfree Forest, near where she and her friends had confronted the manticore a week earlier. A short way in, she found a grey, jagged, domed boulder at the edge of a clearing. With a strength she could rarely bring herself to draw upon, she upended the boulder to reveal a shallow depression lined with hard-packed earth. She then tipped the soybean casserole into the hole and heaved the boulder back into place. The dish would lie in the underground larder for the next week, where the manticore could feed from it as and when he needed. Fluttershy would try different meals each week. If they could safely sustain him, this would hopefully increase the numbers of his usual prey and prevent him from straying from the forest again. Not an ideal solution, but the best she dared try.
Returning to the forest perimeter, she was so lost in thought that she was almost within touching distance of her five closest pony friends—whom she had been avoiding ever since the manticore's near-disastrous visit to Ponyville—by the time she noticed them. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle and Rarity stood side by side across the path, while Rainbow Dash hung in mid-air just above them. They waited wordlessly with expectant, unsmiling gazes.
The empty casserole dish dropped with a dull thump onto the forest floor as Fluttershy's lower jaw went slack. In panic, she turned and galloped back into the forest, whimpering with every step. Rainbow Dash overtook her in a second and, forelegs akimbo, hovered imposingly in front of her, blocking her escape. Resigned, Fluttershy slunk despondently back towards her waiting friends. If they still are my friends, she thought.
"I guess I had to face the music sooner or later." Her voice a hoarse near-whisper, she turned her head away and down from the other ponies and closed her eyes. "Let me have it."
"First of all, let's hear what you plan to take away from this experience," said Twilight Sparkle with serene sternness.
Fluttershy thought for a moment, wanting to choose her words correctly. "That although it's important to forgive our enemies, sometimes it can take more than that for them to become our friends."
"And?" the alicorn princess prompted.
"And whenever I set out to do a good deed I should always, always, consider any risk of harm I might cause others." Slowly, the primrose pegasus cast a hopeful gaze across her friends.
"Sounds like a lesson well learned. So, what do we think would be a suitable punishment?" Twilight asked her companions.
"Ah reckon one week's cold shoulder oughta cover it," answered Applejack bluntly.
"Starting from the day she invited that ruffian into Ponyville," added Rarity. The others made sullen noises of agreement.
Fluttershy greeted her sentence with a mixture of relief and sorrow. At least they still planned to be friends with her again at some stage. Nevertheless, the thought of having displeased them at all weighed on her like a sack of wet sand. "Oh-o-okay," she stammered quietly, turning back towards the direction of her cottage. "That seems fair. I guess I'll see you guys in ..." She ran a quick mental calculation, checked and re-checked her figures, then looked back to the others. "Um, I don't mean to be contrary but it's already been a week since then."
"It has? Oopsies!" Pinkie Pie rolled her eyes in exaggerated mock-embarrassment.
With a gentle squeak of excitement, Fluttershy turned from the goofily-grinning pink pony to her other friends, whose unimpressed glares had changed to welcoming smiles. They had forgiven her after all. Thrilled beyond measure, she cantered joyously towards them, only to grind to a halt and recoil as the nature and potential cost of her failure intruded on her consciousness for about the thousandth time that week. "How can you ever trust me again? How can I trust myself again?"
"Same way any of us trusts ourselves after we mess up, sugar cube," replied Applejack warmly. "Admit our mistakes, learn from 'em 'n' move on."
"Just as we have moved on from how upset we might have been with you," smiled Rarity.
"Taming critters is supposed to be my destiny," Fluttershy quietly protested.
"But aren't some critters harder to tame than others?" Twilight pointed out.
"Yes, but ..."
"Then who's to say you couldn't have managed it, given more time and somewhere there was less risk of harming ponies?"
"I guess." Fluttershy felt her spirits gradually lifting. The unhappy memory of the incident would never fully leave her mind but she could still carry on with the help of her faithful, adoring friends.
Rainbow Dash loudly clopped her forehooves together. "Well, all this learning about friendship stuff has made me hungry. How about we get some lunch?"
"Ooo, yes indeed," Rarity enthused. "I'm in the mood for a lovely egg white omelette with a fresh garden salad on the side."
"Or some spinach and mushroom risotto," Twilight chimed in.
"Me, ah could go for somethin' a little heartier, maybe some punkin 'n' sweet 'tater soup."
"Mmmm, and some fresh berries. I wonder where we could get all those," mused an innocently smiling Pinkie Pie.
Fluttershy also gave a smile as she led her friends back to her cottage. At least somepony around here appreciated her cooking.
THE END