Thirty Minutes Shy

by Esle Ynopemos

24: Bringing In the Experts [Comedy]

((Prompt: Re-imagine MLP: FiM as a home and garden show.))

Fluttershy's cottage burned down.

It happened more often than you would think. While she lived a quiet lifestyle and was quite good about fire safety, the fact remained that she lived in Ponyville, where buildings had a frequent tendency to end up under the foot of some hundred-foot monster, or eaten to the frame by parasprites, or in the path of some unstoppable heat ray courtesy of an out-of-control experiment of the town's librarian. The town always looked fresh and new because the paint hadn't yet dried since rebuilding from the last disaster.

This time it was the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Determined to make up for their failure as matchmakers the previous Hearts and Hooves day, they had decided to aim for matchstick-making instead. Based on advice from a book that, in hindsight, Twilight really should not have lent out to the young fillies, they had gone to Fluttershy's home to acquire some bat droppings as an ingredient. To make a long story short, they proved true the common wisdom around Ponyville that anything that might potentially combust definitely will when in proximity to the Crusaders.

Fortunately, Fluttershy's animals were all well-trained for fire drills. They all made it out of the place without sustaining any injuries other than a few soot-smudged faces.

The cottage, however, was gone. Fluttershy stood by with the fillies and her friends—pony and animal alike—and watched on as the last blackened stumps of what had been her home finally collapsed to the ground in a puff of ash.

Sweetie Belle's lip trembled. “I'm sorry!” she wailed. “I didn't know it would spread so fast! Now you're homeless, and it's all my fault!”

Fluttershy put a wing at her back and smiled gently. “It's okay,” she told her. “I know you didn't mean to, and I won't be homeless. I know some experts, and they'll have it rebuilt before the sun sets.”

“Experts like that can't come cheap, darling,” Rarity said. “Please, let me pay for it. If I had been keeping a better eye on the girls, this wouldn't have happened.”

“That's very kind of you to offer, Rarity,” Fluttershy said, “but they don't ever ask for bits. All they need is the wood to do it with.”

Applejack rubbed her jaw suspiciously. “I don't know, sugarcube. That sounds a mite too good to be true. What's the catch? They do shoddy work, or somethin'?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, they're the best builders I know.”

Applejack remained unconvinced. “How come we've never met these carpenter friends of yours?”

“Oh, you've met them,” she replied. “There they are, now.”

A troupe of beavers waddled up, noses twitching as they followed the smoke in the air.

Fluttershy grinned and fluttered over to greet them. “Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said to them.

They chittered and squeaked in reply.

“Yes,” she said. “We'll have to wait for the embers to cool before we can clear the space and start building, but we can start collecting wood from the forest in the meantime.” She looked up at her pony friends. “Um, they won't mind if you all help with that part, if you'd like.

Comments

[Periphery]

This has actually been my belief for quite a while about how Fluttershy got her home in the first place. She helps out all her animal friends, and they help her in their own ways in return, when they can.

[KitsuneRisu]

3041582
You know what, I CHALLENGE you to make a UTOPIAN cyberpunk future setting for one of these stories, and have things be so paradigm shifty that you and all the readers suffer from intense cognitive dissonance and we all end up brain-vomiting out of our eyeballs.

[Brakyo]

All they need is the wood to do it with.

Is when I became suspicious.

“No, they're the best builders I know.”

Is when I realized who she was talking about.

Yeah, I'm slow.

[defunct321]

I'm dissapointed it wasn't a little pig...

[Esle Ynopemos]

5912401 Perhaps this is just a reference I don't get, but why would it be a little pig?