Blind

by GjallarFox

A Strange Desire

Author's Note:

Alrighty, so this took a long time. Like, over a year. So, uh. Sorry about that. Life kinda kicked me in the balls and shoved me into a hole, then proceeded to bury me up to my neck on the beach with high-tide coming in. So, I decided it would be best to dig myself out with a pen before I drowned to death.

Sorry it took forfuckingever to shove this out.

</3 DarqFox

The next few weeks were relatively normal. The days seemed to slip by, with the six of us hanging out in various capacities when our schedules allowed it. The others invited me to join them every Saturday for their pet play-dates, even though I didn't have a pet. Fluttershy and I went out for poetry night at the Teapot every week. She took me out on a few other random dates and outings every so often, like walks in the Whitetail Woods, or picnics in the meadow next to the Everfree Forest. Every date was something unique and fun in its own way. Sometimes we would talk about our lives before we met, and other times we were quiet, speaking in a language of gentle nudges and touches.

The more time we spent together, the more I got to know her, and the more fondly I thought of her. I felt something stronger than close friendship or even romantic interest growing for her, but I couldn't put a hoof on it. It could very well have been love, but the stories that I read on romance always had some sort of visual component that I really couldn't connect with. They talked about "the way her eyes seemed to light up when she caught me staring" and "the shine of the sweat on his body as he worked" and other such things I really couldn't understand. With Fluttershy being my first marefriend, I had no prior experience to refer to, making romance novels the only sources of information I had to work with. Each and every romance I'd read gave me the belief that love had multiple requirements, including physical attractiveness. And since I could never judge on that, I wasn’t sure I could ever truly love somepony.

I'd noticed Fluttershy getting a significant bit clumsier during our dates, bumping into things she very easily could have seen. During a walk in the Whitetail Woods, she bumped face-first into a tree, which I had detected earlier and avoided. She tripped on a root later that same day, and at a picnic later that week, she almost twisted her fetlock in a rabbit hole that she normally pointed out as the one Angel visited regularly. It was very odd, but I never bothered to ask how she didn't see those things. I dared not come off as rude to my marefriend. But it still made me curious. So far as I knew, Fluttershy had perfect vision. She didn't wear glasses that I felt when we kissed, so if her sight wasn't perfect, it wasn't bad enough to warrant a sight-aid. What, then, could be making her so clumsy?

"Hey, Twilight!" a certain raspy-voiced pegasus interrupted me from my thoughts. "You alright there?"

"Yeah, just thinking," I answered, setting my speculations aside for later examination. "You guys ready for the next lesson?"

"Mhm!" Fluttershy's excited hum greeted my ears.

"Yeah," Rainbow replied, her hooves tapping against the table.

"Alright. So you guys know the alphabet, but I haven't taught you numbers yet," I began. I pulled the mobile chalkboard over from its place against the wall with my magic, stopping it exactly the length of my leg away. Reaching out with my magic, I plucked the chalk from its place in the tray and drew a vertical line with two cross-hatches, making a two-by-three grid. I repeated the process until I had two rows of eight of the grids next to each other. Now set up for the lesson, I made dots in the first grid, filling the left column and bottom row, which was a backwards V for anyone who knew Bridle. "That is the number sign. When that is placed in front of letters A through J, they become numbers one through zero respectively."

Rainbow knocked her hoof against the table twice, which we had earlier agreed should be the signal that either her or Fluttershy had a question. She asked, "Do you need to repeat the number sign before each letter you want to be a number? Or does it follow through until you have a space or a letter that doesn't turn into a number?"

"It does carry through, so as to save space for big numbers like three hundred ninety seven thousand. In that case, we'd only need seven characters, instead of fifteen," I explained, marking the next few grids with C, I, G, and three J's respectively. "Like so."

The scratching sound of Rainbow's quill scribbling down what I had mentioned on a piece of paper floated past my ears as she took notes to refer back to if she forgot. She was actually a good student when she was interested in something and she had a more personalized learning environment. From what she'd told me, Flight Academy never really worked for her. The teachers focused more on the theory of flight and how it was supposed to work rather than actually learning to fly. She was stuck in an uncomfortable classroom for too much time per session, and while she could recite the theories that the books taught her, she learned more from actually trying to fly than from any book. But in the library, it was much more comfortable, and I tried to keep most lessons to a twenty-minute maximum. I tried to actually integrate practicing the act of reading and writing in Bridle into the lesson, often telling them to write a question or suggestion for the next lesson at the end of our weekly sessions. Rainbow was the one who suggested that idea after she'd learned enough of the alphabet to make it possible for her.

"So. What letters would I need in order to make the number four hundred sixty-one?" I asked. "Fluttershy?"

"Um, D, F, and A," the quiet pegasus in question answered. For her, the more personalized and friendly environment had brought her out of her shell, making her a much more active student than she had been in Flight Academy. She stuttered far less, and volunteered to answer questions more frequently, exposing the brilliant mind that lay beneath the shy exterior.

"Exactly," I confirmed with a smile. "Either of you know the time?"

"Twelve oh-eight," Rainbow replied.

"Perfect. So now it's time to work with the grammatical markings of Bridle," I said as I began erasing the dots in the seven used grids. "Punctuation. Up until now, everything you've written in Bridle has been in roughly the style of Horse Code. No periods, no commas, no question marks or exclamation points. So now it's time to add punctuation."

------

After the lesson finished twelve minutes later, Rainbow left to go home, but Fluttershy didn't budge from her spot on the sofa in front of the table. Hesitantly, she asked, "Um… Twilight…?"

"Yes, Fluttershy?" I responded, pushing the freshly erased blackboard back to its usual spot along the back wall. I turned back around and took a seat on the couch next to her, facing her to convey that I was giving her my full attention. My hoof made its way over hers, her nervously quick pulse suddenly apparent.

"I'd like to ask something of you that, um, may seem a bit strange, or even flat out crazy…" she continued, her voice quivering just a little bit, like a leaf in a gentle summer breeze. She took my hoof in her own as though for comfort. "A-and… I don't want an answer today. I want you to really think about it."

"I promise I won't judge you for anything," I reassured my lovely marefriend, quickly pecking her cheek. "And I promise I'll give your request serious consideration, no matter what it is."

"I want to know… really know, what being blind is like," she murmured, straightening her posture. Her body turned to face me in its entirety. "I know it sounds crazy, but I want to ask you if there's a way that you could make me blind for a while. Maybe a month at most."

When the initial shock of the request wore off, I asked the one question I needed to fully consider it: "Why?"

"I don't fully understand myself, but I want to, forgive me for using this expression, see the world the way you do," she replied, her mane shifting a little as she turned to hide behind it. "I want to get to know you as best as I possibly can, and I feel like this could help me do just that in a really personal way. I don't think that you being blind is all bad. Sure, some books aren't as enjoyable anymore, but then again, you really see ponies' personalities where most others judge each other by their appearance. I wonder what else you might be able to experience that no one else can. T-that's why I kept bumping into things and tripping on things I should have seen coming… I had my eyes closed to try to experience it."

So that's why she kept bumping into things… She was trying to experience blindness… I paused and carefully considered my next words. She did seem a little crazy at first, but the more I thought about it, the more romantic I found it to be. Here I was, sitting with a sweet, caring pony who instead of settling for believing that being blind was naught but a disability or a disadvantage, wished to find out for herself what the trade-offs were. Nopony else had ever done that, and it actually touched me that she could be so sweet. "I won't give you your answer today, as you wish, but I will tell you two things. The first, is that I would wish blindness on nopony. Not the bullies who mocked me, not the worst criminals in the Canterlot Dungeons. I have experienced an amount of pain that I hope nopony ever has to suffer because of my blindness."

I could feel her head droop low with my words.

"However, I find it touching on a profound level that you would voluntarily give up your sight in order to experience the world the way I do. Where most ponies settle for assuming that blindness is only negative, and that there can't be any benefits to being blind, you do not. You want to find the positives to it. And that gives me enough reason to give it serious consideration to actually do so."

She perked up immediately, throwing herself at me and tackling me in a tight, joyous hug. I could feel the air being squeezed from my chest as she squealed excitedly, "Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh! Thank you so much!"

"Y-you're wel…come…" I choked out, trying desperately to bring some air into my lungs.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" she apologized, quickly loosening her hold on me. As soon as I'd caught my breath, she planted a gentle kiss on my lips, just long enough to be felt as more than a peck. "I have to go feed the animals now… I'll see you tomorrow for Poetry Night?"

"O-of course!" I stammered, still stunned from the kiss.

She made an adorable squee, and then clambered off of me, calmly walking to the door. "Bye Twilight! I'll see you tomorrow!"

I didn't even hear the door close, as I was already deep within my thoughts, throwing around the idea of fulfilling Fluttershy's strange request. It was definitely something I didn't expect to ever be asked. But she had the best of intentions for it, and if anyone could pull off a temporary blindness spell that wouldn't have lasting negative effects, it was me or the Princesses. Which brought me to another point. Temporary blindness spells, like most other disabling spells, were classified as curses, and considered illegal to perform on another pony unless in self-defense. If I were to perform such a spell, I could be punished by law. Unless…

"Spike!" I hollered.

Tiny footsteps padded through the wood, making their way down stairs as my scaly assistant and friend answered my summons. "What's up?" he asked as he stepped off the last stair. He sounded tired, as though he'd just finished a nap. I could almost feel him rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Spike, I'm going to need you to send a letter in just a bit," I said. "Can you grab some paper and a quill?"

"On it!" the small dragon replied with what I interpreted to be a salute. He dashed off to some corner of the library, pulling open a drawer and plucking a quill and a number of sheets of paper. He ran back, setting the supplies on the table before me. "Anything else?"

"Thank you, and yes, actually. I need the self-defense spell book. The one that smells like coffee," I requested.

"Gotcha," he huffed, heading off to find the book.

"Go ahead and take your time. There's no rush."

Comments

[MadMaxtheBlack]

Holy *bleepity bleep*! It updated!

[GjallarFox]

5211659
Yeah. Thought I'd scare all you fuckboys with an update on Nightmare Night.

Did I scare you?

<3 DarqFox

[Szalhi]

You uploaded this earlier than i expected.

[Lily Gingertail]

First off. Welcome back to the land of writing (sorry if that sounds mean)
This chapter was well written and well executed, i saw no mistakes in it so good job
here's hoping that life won't interrupt the next chapter
~Tobben

[Ausbrony]

As a guy with impaired vision, I can sympathize with Twilight at least a little. And Fluttershy wanting to be blind, just to understand Twilight better? That's love right there.

I'm glad this updated again, it's a beautiful story.

[Jlargent]

IT LIVES!

[Marshal Twilight]

img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140321232216/wingsoffire/images/7/70/Twilight_sparkle_yes.gif

*Ahem*. In any case, this was a lovely little chapter. I really like your little nods to what blindness would be like. In particular, this line stood out to me:

"I need the self-defense spell book. The one that smells like coffee."

The little things like this are what make this story a fine example of "show, not tell." The TwiShy is nice, of course, and it's what attracted me to this story, but I've come to see that the perspective this story has on visual impairment is actually more intriguing in the long run. This is a story with actual depth in addition to the warm and fluffy shipping.

Now, if I were to offer critique, it's that you use "said bookisms" too much. In case you don't know the term, it's when you use speech descriptors like "inquired" or "stated", as opposed to more basic ones like "asked" or "said".

I can understand the temptation, as one would think that using them too much would make a story seem repetitive, but it is surprisingly not the case. A good metaphor for words like "said" and "asked" is that, when you use them often enough, the reader glosses over them like they are merely speech bubbles. How often do you notice when someone uses "the" or "a"?

In addition, sometimes said bookisms cause redundancies. For instance:

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" she apologized

Why would you need to use "apologized" to indicate that Fluttershy is speaking? The dialogue is the apology, so you're essentially repeating yourself here. 80% of the time, dialogue should speak for itself. That's what it's for. The important part is not the word you use for "said". That is only a placeholder.

"O-of course!" I stammered, still stunned from the kiss.

This is more forgivable than most examples, but in this case the fact that her speech is broken up by a hyphen shows that she's stammering, and the exclamation mark implies a somewhat panicked reaction. The dialogue itself did a better job conveying this than the descriptor did.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that you already know what you're doing in regards to the dialogue itself. You're actually very good at conveying the tone of speech and the characters' reactions with your wording and use of punctuation. The only thing left for you to do is to stop using those unnecessary descriptors.

Eagerly awaiting the next chapter.

[PetuTheViewer]

I'm not sure if my vocabulary even includes words of high enough praise to describe my feelings on this updating after all this time. Usually I remove a story from my favorites after three months of no updates because it's not worth the wait if I have to reread it just to understand what's what. This story here is one of the few exceptions as I love it far too much to forget it or to get tired of it. Meaning it gets skipped in my cleanup runs. Great work once again and I hope you have gotten your life to semblence of peace that allows you to keep treating us with more gems like this one here.

[GjallarFox]

5212850
I can see where you're coming from as far as my speech descriptors. For me, though, I do notice how often 'said' and 'asked' are used (and they do annoy me when they're pretty much the only descriptors there), so I try really hard to use others. Plus, as far as the stylistics of the story, speech is one of the biggest points in the story because Twi can't obtain sight-based information. So Twi would distinguish someone simply asking a question from someone making an inquiry from someone interrogating her. I'm still working on widening my use of them, so I'm sorry if I seem repetitive with the unusual ones, but it is important to the story itself that I do that.

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave me a comment. It absolutely makes my day.

<3 DarqFox

[randomsurprise]

Sorry, that i didn't catch this update on it's actual release but, anyways i was a lil confused on flutters' odd cluminess yet, found it endearin n' sweet when shy finally gav her reason behind it . Altho i wonder if Twi's letter will be to Tia on gettin permission for a temporary usage of a "curse" per to her marefriend's request ? If not then hopefully she doesn't get in too much trouble later or if so then here's hopin things go well durin flutters' week with blindness

[GjallarFox]

5221456
Is all good! Ch7 will elaborate further and there shall be adorbs. Many thousands of adorbs.

Stay tuned, as the only way to find out what happens next is to wait and listen.

<3 DarqFox

[randomsurprise]

5221479
K, i'll keep a ear out for any followin news ; altho i may not always answer quickly when said news arise

[Szalhi]

what's worse than seeing a story slowly updating? Wanting to be the one who posts the next chapter.

[GjallarFox]

5341618
Know what's worse than a slow-to-update story?
Being the guy who updates it.

Next Chapter's at 1000/2500(goal) words. I've been busy with uni assignments. Winter break's in two weeks, so I should have time then.

</3 DarqFox

[forrest yuchnitz]

So nightmare has been forgotten i bet that pisses her off

[GjallarFox]

5392614
Yes. The NMM encounter happened, but the events weren't relevant to the plotline of this story, so they were left out.

5393108
See the above.

5400107
I'm still teaching myself. However, since my sense of sight is so keen, I have a difficult time really knowing what being blind and NEEDING to learn it is like.

<3 DarqFox

[Nira Lightshine]

Are you going to continue this?

[GjallarFox]

5506484
I am a little stuck, but I'm trying to write it right now, so if I manage to get myself moving, then the chapter could be out anywhere between 2days to a year from now. All depends on the shit that happens to me.

<3 DarqFox

[Unbridled Dolly]

Fluttershy's so sweet.

You have just made me fall in love with TwiShy. Looking forward to the next chapter!

[Eldrimur]

Very good story, unique perspective and heart warming to read. Keep up the good work. Thanks for writing this.

[dragonjek]

This is an amazing story. Favorited.

[TwilightXLuna]

No more this is just to good to stop now

[midnight rose]

do you plan to continue this soon?

[Midnight Moon]

Please get back to work on this someday.

[GjallarFox]

6771769
It will eventually update, but I do have other priorities.

<3 DarqFox

[TheMTVGAMEONE1]

Hi just finisehd this story the second time and i do wonder if you know when you will continiu this story.

[GjallarFox]

7075011
Hi there. I will not tolerate hateful comments on my stories.

Also, the plan is to update this story, but I do have ongoing projects that I am much more motivated for. For the time being, this story is on hiatus.

Please remain respectful of people here.

<3 DarqFox

[Spacecowboy]

Sorting out my bookshelves, saw you're still writing at least. Will check sometime in the future to see if this has gotten more work. Peace.

[DMakkam]

Good to know that you're still working on this. I like your work. And I will be looking forward for your next update.

[HeyItsFish]

Just a question... About when do you think you'll continue this work of art?

[GjallarFox]

7500835
Surprisingly, I'm working on it right now. I don't know how regularly I'll be able to update this one, but I'll give it another chapter within a few months. Hopefully.

</3 DarqFox

[HeyItsFish]

7501906
Alright, good to know. Thanks

[TheMTVGAMEONE1]

It would be realy sweet if you would Update this one of my Favorits from you. I know you have depressions so take you're time but atleast let me us know if you will continiu this story at some point.