“Oh Angel, Oh Angel,” Fluttershy muttered, as she blindly knocked some of the items on the bookshelf over, as she searched for the ingredients she needed, the components for her forgiveness. It was all her fault, all her fault and she was so sorry, she really was.
It had just came on so suddenly, this flash of red hot anger, and the next thing she knew Angel was lying on the floor, prone, and it was all her fault. Part of her wanted to blame the weather, or the time of the year or the fact that she had been up since five tending to her animals friends, many of whom had come down with the whisker flu at just the absolute worst possible time. But stress was no excuse for her behaviour--she was a bad pony!
She was a very bad pony, but she could fix this. She would! She just hoped her little Angel Bunny would find it in his big, warm heart to forgive her.
Fluttershy didn’t dare move Angel, and thus, everything around him had to go. The rug was rolled back, the table was shoved over to the side--in her haste, spilling the remains of her first and only meal of the day. None of that mattered, of course, not now, not with her friend… hurt like this.
At her own hoof.
“I’m so sorry, Angel,” Fluttershy gasped, in half a sob, even as she frittered around the room like a mad butterfly, shutting the blinds.
It was good that he had rolled off the carpet it would be much harder to get everything back where it belonged if she had to deal with the roughly woven fabric alongside everything else, that was for sure.
Setting the ingredients down, she couldn’t help but stop and carefully pet Angel, even if the feeling of the jagged pieces of bone poking through his pelt caused her vision to blur with unspent tears. She could hardly cry now, she needed to fix this, she would fix this.
Fluttershy carefully measured out the appropriate amounts of each into a mixing bowl. Cinnamon, for zest, and energy and bite, a few shards of a ruby she had squirreled away from Spike--she felt bad about that, too, but she needed them, for this. Maybe if she wasn’t such a bad pony, but she was and her animal friends deserved so much better! Rubies symbolized blood, and gave her focus, though, and she knew of no better stone to use it its place.
The rubies were followed by some yew leaves, not too many, she had to be careful--she didn’t want what had happened the last time to happen again! And then a sprinkling of ashes, followed by a generous amount of fear driven, guilt driven, grinding; reducing everything to a fine, red flecked powder.
She set it aside and picked up the chalk in her mouth and carefully drew out the lines, first a square, than a circle, then a star to connect the points. It wasn’t perfect, and it made Fluttershy cringe inside. Angel Bunny deserved better! Still, she didn’t want to wait long, he didn’t deserve that either.
After the lines around Angel were drawn, she poured the powder into the gaps between them, and hurried to get out the candles from the cabin. The candles themselves were special, and getting them had cost her dearly, made from zebrican beeswax infused with dragon bones. Her beseeching chant was cut off as she moaned: the candles were not so tall as she remembered. They were short, with a pool of lost wax around their bases, like stalagmites in a cave. They seemed almost sad, perhaps disappointed in her, having been brought out so many times, so many times for this very purpose. It was her fault that they were barely stubs, but they’d have to do. They were hardly the sort of thing you could buy at the store, and she could hardly ask Twilight for her help.
It would break their hearts, if they knew how bad of a pony Fluttershy was, and she couldn’t bare to do that to them.
Her gaze fell, briefly, on Angel Bunny, and she bit back yet another sob.
At least, that’s what she told herself.
The knife was extremely sharp, and it was foal’s play to make the appropriate cuts--where other ponies couldn’t see them, of course. Then it was a drop here, a drop there, a sprinkling of the red, life giving substance, sharp and vibrant against the snow white of Angel’s fur. Not unlike his own blood, slowly drying in a pool around his broken body.
She was ready.
She forced herself to close her eyes, and focus, her stream of impassioned pleas for forgiveness, and half tearful apologizes cut off as she recalled the words, words she had used so often before. Too often.
There was an energy in the room, like a summer storm, but colder, filled with life, yet not. It didn’t matter, all that mattered was Angel Bunny, who had done nothing more than insist she make him another, better bowl of salad, which he deserved, of course he deserved it. Nevermind he had been bothering her all day, getting in her way, getting underhoof, pulling on her hair, her tail and other, less polite areas, demanding her attention even as she tried to stop any of her friends from succumbing.
She’d get him the best salad she could, after.
The storm grew, and grew, as Fluttershy put more of herself into it. The cut on the back of her pastern burned fiercely, as if it wanted to storm too, as if it wanted to rip out of her and join the ghosts and souls spinning about the room.
And then it collapsed, as the spell completed, like somepony pulling a cork out of a tub, the energy swirled and swished and drained in one great big rolling rush.
Fluttershy sat there. Quivering. Not daring to open her eyes, not daring to look, for fear, fear ruled her, and demanded her obedience. Yet her ears strained yet, listening, hoping, needing.
There was a cough, faint and watery. A cough!
“Oh Angel!” Fluttershy cried, scattering the tools of the ritual aside as she darted into the middle of the tripartite circle, dispensing its energies, little though they might be. “Oh Angel, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
She held him like that, in her arms, rocking him back and forth as she cleaned a bit of his dried blood off by hoof and tongue; he was alright, he was alright, again. He had come back to her.
Like all her friends did.
Fluttershy couldn’t bear the thought of letting her friends go. So, she never did.