It's Got To Be My Destiny

by 1Bluefur

Flutter On Arrival (2020 Revision)

A cold wind swept among gnarled trees, making them eerily rub and rustle together. The full moons light highlighted the forest in hues of blue and silver. But despite it's bright beams, there was no comfort to be found in the dark shadows they cast.

Suddenly a laugh echoed throughout the forest. It was a mare’s laugh, manic and maniacal. It reverberated around a petrified unicorn. Her amethyst eyes were wide with terror. She was helplessly frozen in place as a black fog started to engulf her.

“Oh you silly little foal… If only you knew…”

~10 Months before Summer Sun Celebration~

Twilight Sparkle sighed, lowering the paper in front of her face. It had been hard to concentrate ever since the nightmare she had. “That’s the last time I read anything superstitious before bed,” she thought to herself.

The unicorn was attempting to look over some important notes on teaching as she was traveling to her new home: Ponyville. Twilight glanced outside to get her bearings only to do a double take.

It was raining! She must have been so lost in thought that she didn’t hear it until she saw it.

“That’s weird, it was supposed to be clear skies today,” she recalled as she felt a growing sense of unease. Normally she loved the rain, the pattering of drops on the glass was soothing. The way the outside world grew vibrant and the unique smell that blanketed a newly dampened world.

But there was no denying it to herself, Twilight was extremely nervous. Even if she hadn’t had a nightmare before that day she would still be anxious. This would be her first time trying something totally new in… Well forever.

“What if I’m not good? Tutoring is one thing but I’ll be working with a whole class!” she thought. “What if Cheerilee hates me? Or the ponies I’m staying with? Or… The class!”

Thankfully before her train of thought could go any further, the actual train’s whistle brought her back to reality. The conductors voice crackled on the loudspeaker. “This stop is Ponyville! Ponyville everypony! Only the back four cars to exit for Ponyville!”

Twilight started and quickly gathered her papers up with her magic. She put them as neatly as she could into her saddlebags before slipping them on. Luckily she managed to get everything in order as the train screeched to a halt. The unicorn stumbled forewords as the train gave one last jolt.

She hurriedly exited the train, humming to herself nervously. “Thank goodness I didn’t know anypony on that train,” she thought. She swiftly trotted over to where the luggage pony was unloading the last bags. Hers was the easiest to spot as she had quite a few more things than everypony else.

“Hoo!” her pet owl, Owlowliscious, greeted her from his cage atop her belongings. She smiled, feeling better at the sight of him. After she checked the small wagon to make sure everything was secure (and present) she began to look around.

“Okay, so I’m supposed to be meeting a pegasus pony named Fluttershy," she scanned the crowd of ponies who were slowly making their way off the platform. From what she understood, Fluttershy was a not a blood relative of the Apple Family (whose farm she would be staying on). Rather, she was a long time family friend who moved in to work with them.

Frowning, Twilight was about to turn around when she felt a light poke at her flank. Flinching from the unfamiliar touch she whirled around to come face-to-extremely-close-face with a yellow pegasus mare.

The other pony’s blue eyes widened with shock and she cowered back. “O-Oh goodness! I’m so sorry, I didn’t meant to startle you!” the pony whimpered. “I-I uh, I’m looking f-for Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight blinked, unsure how to approach the situation. “Oh uh, no I’m sorry,” she said, “I was just a bit surprised but I uh…” she trailed off, feeling extremely awkward. “Sorry, let me start over. My name is Twilight Sparkle,”

She offered the other pony her best smile. She had read once that ponies generally preferred to introduce themselves. Unfortunately, much to Twilight’s dismay, the other mare seemed to tense up even more. “Oh... Uhm… I-It’s nice to meet you I’m... Fluttershy” she mumbled.

Twilight thought she said “Fluttershy,” but she wasn’t certain. “Uh, I’m so sorry, could you repeat that?” she asked as kindly as she could. She also desperately hoped the other pony would stand up. She was still pressed into the ground, which made Twilight fell uncomfortable trying to talk to her.

“…I’m Fluttershy” the other pony responded in a somehow softer whisper. Twilight took a deep breath through her nose, rapidly realizing that the conversation was headed nowhere.

“Okay! I think I got it! Fluttershy right?” she asked, doing her best to keep her expression cheerful and totally not frustrated. To her relief the mare before her nodded and finally straightened up. The feeling evaporated though as the two entered a very uncomfortable silence.

“Well um, I’m very excited to stay with the Apples! It means a lot to me that you guys could help out at the last second. See, I initially wanted to rent this room in town but another pony beat me to it! Uh, I can’t quite remember their name though… Have you met anypony new recently?”

Fluttershy gave a tiny little shake of her head, but didn’t speak. Twilight forced a small laugh, doing her best to avoid anymore uncomfortable pauses. “At any rate, I guess we better get moving. I wouldn’t want to keep anypony waiting for me,”

As soon as she moved towards the hitch of her wagon Fluttershy let out a huge gasp. Twilight quickly turned back to face her, expecting to see something terrible. Instead of being in distress, the pegasus in question was just gawking at her pet. “Oh my goodness! Granny Smith didn’t tell me you had an owl ohh, he’s so cute! What’s his name?!” she gushed. With an elegant flap of her wings she gently hovered next to the cage.

Twilight took a second to recover from her shock. “She is so strange,” she thought. “But I guess it’s good to know she really likes animals,”

“His name is Owlowliscious, I’ve had him for maybe a year now. It’s kind of a funny story actually; he used to hang out with me whenever I was out late studying in the park. Eventually I guess he decided he liked me enough to follow me home!”

“Oh, he’s so handsome looking! I love his name,” Fluttershy coo’d at the owl who seemed to be greatly enjoying the attention.

“Hah yeah, you should have seen my mom’s face when I first brought him back, in fact…” the unicorn trailed off as she noticed the sudden change of expression on Fluttershy’s face. “Uh it kinda looked like that," she gestured to the pegasus' horrified look "Is... Everything okay?”

Fluttershy shook her head, her pink mane swaying back and forth with the motion.“No! Oh gosh, that reminded me that I’m supposed to be helping you. Here, let me help you with the wagon!” she said in a surprisingly firm tone. Twilight looked at the harness she was about to strap into, and then back at her bags.

“Oh! No, it’s okay. See, I enchanted everything to feel a bit lighter; it’s actually quite a fascinating spell. It uses Starswirl’s infamous research into the density of matter and….” Twilight once again found herself trailing off. “Sorry, haha, I uh… Tend to ramble; I forget most ponies don’t like listening to that kind of thing... But my point is that I can definitely lug my own luggage,”

Fluttershy gave her a small smile of reassurance. “Oh, no it’s okay Twilight. It sounded really uhm, interesting,” the mare’s expression turned serious. “But I simply must insist on helping you with your bags. You’re going to be our guest, so I should do everything I can to make you feel comfortable.”

Twilight opened her mouth to retort but shut it again when she realized it wouldn’t do her much good. It only took a few moments to strap the pegasus pony in. “Okay, if you insist, but if you get tired or something just let me know. I seriously don’t mind hauling my own stuff,”

“Oh it’s no problem at all Twilight, that’s what friends are for right? I can tell already you’re going to be a great friend, so it’s my pleasure!” Twilight bristled at the word friend. “Me, a good friend? She must be joking!” Twilight Sparkle had made it a point to avoid socialization. The time and energy it took to care for and attend to other ponies were a waste as far as she was concerned.

Despite how she felt, she did her best to match Fluttershy’s smile. After all, it wouldn’t really do her any favors to try and oppose her now. “I just have to get to the farm and get settled in,” she thought to herself. “It’s just a trip across a small town, it should be quick and painless! Right?”

But as Fluttershy led the way to the Apple homestead, Twilight couldn’t shake her weird feelings around what the pegasus had said. “I can tell already you’re gong to be a great friend!”

Author's Note:

The new chapter will be up soon, Pinkie Promise! But since I've been struggling a bit more with later chapters, I figured it would be good to go back and finally get those revisions underway!

It was a fun rewrite! I kept a couple of things from the original but almost all of it was scrapped. Naturally the original chapter is still up if anypony wants to see it .

Revising also made me spot some small inconsistencies that I'm pretty happy to fix. So it should make more sense now with later chapters.

Cheers!

Comments

[Comickook]

REALLY good job on the revised version of the first chapter. The exchange and characterizations between Twi and Fluttershy remain good, but there is SLIGHTLY more info including on how Twilight first met Owlicious in this universe and the mention of Velvet's face when SHE first saw Owlicious.

Anyway, onto the next revised chapter.

[Killjoy1221]

My favorite part of the story so far is that Spike was never hatched. I'm sure some other unicorn hatched him. Or maybe nopony did and he was sent back to the dragons.