The Birds Sang for Her

by HoofBitingActionOverload

Spring

Fluttershy led Rainbow Dash towards the forest clearing. Fluttershy had never brought another pony this far into Whitetail Woods before. This forest was not a place for ponies. Ponies could so often be loud and disruptive and thoughtless. This forest was a place for the quiet and the restful, and the skittering foxes and the twittering songbirds, and for her, for Fluttershy to be alone with the trees and her thoughts. But now, Rainbow Dash walked with her.

Rainbow Dash walked slowly. She took long, easy steps. She yawned often, and sporadically hopped up into the air to dive between pairs of tree branches or kick wayward clouds out of the sky or sometimes only to hover in the air for a moment before she lost interest in that, too, and dropped back down onto her hooves. Occasionally, she would lazily flap her wings without rising off the ground and say something to Fluttershy about Wonderbolts or weather patterns or friends. Fluttershy would try to smile or laugh, because she couldn’t think clearly about what Rainbow had said. She could think only about what would happen when they reached the clearing, and everything that could happen afterwards.

Fluttershy wondered if she was making a mistake. She wondered if she would lose all she had built up with her friend, or if instead she might gain all she’d ever hoped they both might have. Because those thoughts spun in her head, Fluttershy couldn’t remember the right way to talk. So Rainbow Dash would give up on trying to talk with her altogether and busy herself with kicking at fallen branches or flipping over rocks on the path instead.

While Rainbow Dash walked slowly, Fluttershy walked quickly. She took abrupt, awkward steps, stumbling over her own legs and every little stone and root. Her wings twitched and trembled at every embarrassment, and Fluttershy kept glancing back to see if Rainbow noticed how inadequate she was. But, thankfully, Rainbow barely ever looked up at her. Fluttershy shouldn’t have been surprised. Rainbow was used to seeing her act nervous, but Fluttershy could not quiet the mosquito-wing buzz of disappointment that lingered in her chest at Rainbow’s unawareness. Rainbow Dash might have noticed that this time was different. She might have noticed that Fluttershy wasn’t only nervous, but was nervous for her, for Rainbow. Fluttershy knew she could not blame Rainbow Dash for not finding something she had hidden for so long, but if only Rainbow would ask her what was wrong…

Regardless, Fluttershy had no more time to fret over the matter, as the brook lay just ahead of them, and beyond it the clearing.

Fluttershy stumbled ahead of Rainbow Dash and crossed the trickling brook and into open space. She moved from among the old trees whose roots dug deep into earth, whose branches rose far, far above, and whose trunks were tough and scraggly with age to the small, circular clearing carpeted by low, soft grass lightly wet with dew and where the sun’s light passed down through gaps between the leaves.

Springtime had always been beautiful in Whitetail Woods. But this season, Fluttershy and the animals of the woods had strived to ensure it would be unforgettable. The branches of every tree surrounding the clearing had blossomed. Trunks close together, leaves intermixed, the softly pink, butterfly-shaped crabapple flowers brushed into and among the strikingly yellow, confetti-style bursting forsythia buds, and which met with the drooping, white pendant flowers of the yellowoods.

Fluttershy heard Rainbow Dash’s breath catch behind her. She allowed herself the smallest of smiles and glanced back. Rainbow Dash stood in the brook, the water eddying around her legs, and she looked up at the clearing, mouth open and eyes wide.

Fluttershy’s smile grew. She had hoped so much that she could make the clearing mean as much to Rainbow Dash as it meant to her. For this was the clearing where, as a young filly, Fluttershy had fallen from the sky and landed in a cloud of butterflies, and then discovered the earth and the trees and the animals. It was the same clearing where, years after, Fluttershy had returned alone as a less young filly, not to visit, but to begin a new life on the ground by herself. It was in this clearing that she had discovered the crying and hurt daisy-white bunny rabbit whom she scooped up in one of her wings and carried back to her cottage, and who became the first of the animals to live in her home. It was in this clearing that she had made new friends among the animals of the forest and stopped being alone. It was in this clearing where those friends had helped her sculpt her first garden out of the soil, and where they had shared in every harvest since. It was in this clearing that Fluttershy had lain in the grass and looked up at the sky and thought about the scruffy, loud little pegasus pony who had been her only friend when she lived in the clouds. It was to this clearing that Fluttershy had galloped to celebrate when that same pegasus pony tumbled into Ponyville one day, not so little anymore. It was in this clearing that Fluttershy had wondered and dreamed of herself and Rainbow Dash together, if only Fluttershy could work up the courage to ask. And now, this was the clearing Fluttershy brought Rainbow to, to say all she had never been bold enough to say before.

Rainbow Dash finally moved beside Fluttershy. Cool water still dripping down their legs, they walked through the dewy, deep green grass and the clusters of daisies and tulips and the flowering hydrangea bushes. A wind passed through the branches so first one-by-one and then all at once the trees rustled and hummed as if in friendly greeting, and blossoms of all colors drifted down into their manes like winter’s first snow, and neither Fluttershy nor Rainbow Dash moved to brush the flowers away.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash sat down together in the grass. They stayed quiet, for then the songbirds appeared. At first, they were only lightning flashes of color and beating wings between the blossoms, scarlet wings flitting in pink blooms, yellow feathers among the white petals, blue tails in green stalks. Then, not with the rigidity of scribbles on paper, but with the free-flowing, organic melody of springtime, the birds sang for them. It was a whisper there first, and then a titter here, and then a warble over there, and then it came as a full chorus of trills.

Rainbow Dash looked at Fluttershy and smiled, and Fluttershy forgot about the clearing and the flowering trees and the singing birds, and only knew Rainbow Dash’s smile.

Fluttershy opened her mouth to say all the things she had rehearsed. How she had felt when that scruffy, loud little pegasus had first stood between her and her jeering classmates. How often she thought about all the nights they had stayed up past their bedtimes and Fluttershy had listened as Rainbow Dash told her all the things they would see and do together, dreams of Wonderbolts and airshows and adoring fans, just as soon as she taught Fluttershy to fly as well as she could, and even made Fluttershy believe it all might come true. How a little bit of Fluttershy’s heart had broken when she left Cloudsdale for the ground, and how her heart had become whole again when Rainbow came down, too. How Rainbow Dash was everything she had always wanted to be, talented and strong and confident, and all Fluttershy had ever hoped to have and keep close.

But all that came from Fluttershy’s mouth was a horrible, embarrassed squeak.

Rainbow Dash leaned towards her and asked, “What?”

And with Rainbow’s face close, and in her eyes the reflections of the sunlight and the tree blossoms, and her face so very close to Fluttershy’s, and Rainbow’s lips parted and her warm breath tickling Fluttershy’s cheek, and the light grass underneath Fluttershy’s stomach, and the scent of flowers and Rainbow Dash mixing in her nose, and listening to the songbirds and the rustling trees and the trickling brook, and with Rainbow’s mouth so very, very close to her own, Fluttershy reached a wing around her friend and pulled Rainbow Dash the rest of the way towards her.

Fluttershy met Rainbow Dash’s lips with her own. Fluttershy closed her eyes and her head spun and she seemed to drift somewhere faraway and high up into the air where there was nothing but each other. She said everything she could not say in words, all the years of waiting and hoping and all feelings never expressed.

Then Fluttershy pulled back as quickly as she had pushed forward, and watched from behind her mane for Rainbow Dash’s reaction.

Rainbow Dash did not speak, and Fluttershy immediately knew that it had all been a mistake. She would have turned to run if only her legs would work and her whole world hadn’t just shattered and collapsed all around and on top of her.

Eyes wide, in a daze, Rainbow Dash touched a hoof to her own lips, and Fluttershy tried and failed to find the words to apologize.

But then, Rainbow Dash looked up at her and grinned.

Both terrified and suddenly filled with hope, Fluttershy sat and waited.

Wordlessly, still grinning, Rainbow Dash dove forward and threw their mouths together. Fluttershy’s mind went blank of everything but longing and joy, and she pulled Rainbow close.

They fell together down into the grass, and did not rise again until after sunset.

Comments

[Red and Black Alicorn OC]

I am not a big fan of romance stories, but this one I have to admit is pretty good, keep up the good work!

[Blank!]

Too many adjectives and externalities! But good!

[lunargaurd4ever]

Hmm...this story seems cute, I'll keep reading.