Stars
Fluttershy fell back against the grass, a small, girlish giggle escaping her elegant throat as she felt the ticklish stroke of the downy blades against her buttery yellow coat; she let her wings spread out to their apex, stretching them as she would her legs after a long day spent being rushed off her hooves by the demands of her animal friends, before tucking them back into their resting position by her sides. With her head tilted back, she let her bright beryl eyes drift upwards to take in the majestic vista of the night sky. “Princess Luna does a wonderful job, doesn't she?” Fluttershy said to her companion, her quiet voice wrought with naked awe. Her vision flicked briefly in the direction of her toiling alicorn friend who was much too busy to be astonished by the splendour overhead. There were some sights that just got better the more you looked at them.
“Luna doesn't arrange every aspect of the night,” Twilight Sparkle said, straining for a patience that had long since deserted her, not even bothering to make eye-contact with Fluttershy so engrossed was she in mending the telescope's deviated field lens … a telescope that she was about five seconds away from smashing with a hammer. “She raises the moon, just as Celestia raises the sun in the morning. Everything else is-” she waggled a grease-stained hoof in the general direction of the marquee of stars “-left to its own devices.”
“Oh,” the pegasus pony replied, sounding disappointed by this revelation. As much as she respected Twilight Sparkle's knowledge, sometimes she could be a little bit, well … dry. Intellect was all well and good, of course, but there had to be room for a little bit of romance, surely? Was there any harm in believing a small, inconsequential lie after all? Fluttershy rolled onto her stomach and sidled up to her friend, peering through half-lidded eyes at the instrument that she worked on with the curiosity of a filly. “Can I … I mean, is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Do you know anything about repairing telescopes?” asked Twilight shrilly, ignoring the look that Fluttershy was giving her while picking up another tool from the small but complete box that she had brought with her and bringing it to bear on the plethora of loose screws, warped gears and myriad other issues that the apparatus had developed following its extended storage in the basement of the Castle of Friendship. A sense of fatigue gripped her as yet another thing seemed to go wrong.
“Well, no,” Fluttershy replied, biting her lower lip ruefully, irrationally feeling as though the whole thing was her fault. Technically, the pegasus supposed, it is.
“Well.” The alicorn levelled a clenched hoof at the mount connecting it to the tripod. She gave it a firm poke, but not enough to knock it over. She immediately felt regret at having done so, knowing what the device had been through already. “Apparently, neither do I,” she said, frustration beginning to bubble over in her normally placid tone.
Fluttershy sat up on her haunches, her muzzle creasing to form a frown. “I'm sorry.”
“It's fine. It's my fault for not giving it a once-over before we left. I should've known that it was going to require more adjustments than I could actually do out in the field. But no, as usual, I rush into something without really preparing for it.” Twilight let out a world-weary sigh, tossing the gadget she clutched in her hoof to the ground with a soft thump. The telescope had been one of a precious few objects that she'd been able to retrieve from the remnants of the Golden Oaks Library following its destruction by Tirek. A small twinge of something tugged at her. She wasn't sure if it was guilt or sadness. Maybe both? Nopony had died, the library could be rebuilt and restocked, but … Twilight couldn't shake the notion that she'd somehow failed in her assignment. She cast an appraising mulberry eye at Fluttershy.
The pegasus always knew when a creature was in distress, no matter what it was; could it be that she'd sensed Twilight's anguish, and had suggested this little stargazing trip as a way of unwinding? She'd never known Fluttershy to have taken an interest in astronomy before, anyway. If so, it hadn't quite worked out that way.
“Uh, are you okay, Twilight?” asked Fluttershy, the empathy practically radiating from her as she placed a kindly hoof on her friend's withers. “You were spacing-out pretty hard there.”
“I'm fine,” Twilight replied, taking Fluttershy's hoof in her own and giving it a small squeeze. “I'm just annoyed at myself.”
“Don't be.” Fluttershy wished that there was something that she could do or say to comfort the alicorn, but Twilight's occasional small bouts of depression tended to be episodes that she needed to work out on her own at her own pace.
“Easier said than done,” replied Twilight, offering the pegasus a watery smile, wishing that she could just sleep and forget about her problems for a few hours. It had been so long since she'd had a decent night's shut-eye … not since the destruction of the library, in fact, and she'd been forced into the cool, impersonal walls of the castle.
The night air was warm, but not so much that it became an overbearing, smothering presence to the pair; the gentle breeze drifting in from the west was doing much to take the edge off, and Fluttershy's mind was filled with visions of her pegasi brethren – led by the irrepressible Rainbow Dash – stirring up the gale and directing it to where it needed to be. She did not envy them this task. During her formative years, she had been doubly terrible at both flying and weather manipulation. The concepts that the others in her flight school class had taken for granted had seemed like a foreign language to her. I should've been born an earth pony.
“Fluttershy, I'm so sorry.” Twilight's tired-but-contrite-sounding tone cut into her thoughts, shaking her out of her reverie.
“For what?” the pegasus asked, startled by the abruptness of the apology and pricking up her ears.
“For being such terrible company. For ruining what should've been a fun night for both of us. For yelling at you.”
“It wasn't really yelling,” Fluttershy replied in a low, almost gently amused, voice; she'd had entirely too much experience with ponies being angry with her, and though it bothered her, she wasn't prepared to let it change who she was. She favoured Twilight with a tiny smile. “It's always disappointing when things don't go according to plan, but … we're still here, together, and that's what actually matters.” She let her eyes turn toward the sky once more. “And we can still see the stars, telescope or not.”
“You're a very wise pony,” said Twilight, sitting by Fluttershy's side and looking upwards, too. On sudden impulse, she allowed herself get closer until their coats brushed together. “Fluttershy?”
“Mm?” The pegasus felt Twilight's muzzle against her neck, the hot breath from her nostrils caressing the sensitive flesh there. Once upon a time, this kind of close-quarters contact with another pony would've made her very uncomfortable. Her back stiffened of its own accord, but it wasn't the same type of discomfort that she'd experienced whenever somepony had tried to get near to her in the past. It was an altogether more personal sort of ache that racked her now.
“I'm glad that you asked me out here tonight,” said Twilight, closing her eyes and savouring the heat coming off of her friend with a sigh of contentment, unaware of or ignoring her friend's sudden tension. She was so used to the pegasus' skittishness that it didn't even occur to her to think of it as a problem. Twilight did not feel the cold, even as the breeze began to pick up in intensity, but it was a different sort of warmth that she sought from proximity to Fluttershy's body, anyway. “I didn't want to spend another minute in that castle feeling sorry for myself.”
Before Fluttershy could form any sort of a response, the slow, rhythmic exhalations kissing her neck and ear told her that Twilight had fallen asleep; with a wry smile, she carefully, tenderly lowered her friend's head until it was resting in her lap. The pegasus ran a hoof through Twilight's soft, silky mane, tracing the nearly invisible line where her purple and pink highlights met. The alicorn stirred, her legs jerking as they sought a more comfortable position, but did not wake, instead settling herself deeper into Fluttershy's abdomen.
Fluttershy let out the breath she had been holding gingerly, not wanting to wake her friend up, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “I hoped that tonight would be the night that I'd finally tell you, Twilight,” the pegasus said, a solitary tear tracing its way down the delicate curve of her cheek. She barely felt the wetness, though. Fluttershy brushed Twilight's mane aside and looked at her sleeping face; her heart stirred as she did so, and a curious tightness gripped her stomach. “You're so beautiful, and funny, and kind, and smart, and all the things that I'm not and never could be.” More tears fell. “Don't make the same stupid mistake I did and let a lack of confidence stop you from pursuing your dreams, whatever they are.” As if to prove her own words to herself, Fluttershy leaned down and placed the tiniest of kisses on the tip of Twilight's horn.
It wasn't long before the pegasus herself succumbed to tiredness; her last waking thought was, typically, one of acute embarrassment and she was grateful that her friend would not see the crimson blush break out across her muzzle: she'd hoped that by showing an interest in one of Twilight's hobbies, by being a little bit more open and expressive around her, that she might get the alicorn princess to … notice her. It hadn't quite worked out like that, but, with one last exhausted glance at the sleeping princess, she decided that this was enough.
When Fluttershy dreamed, she dreamt of brilliant, shining stars.
But not the ones in the heavens above.
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Warm, sweet and well written too.
Nicely done, I enjoyed it.
6260026
6260083
Thank you, both. I appreciate your kind words.
i hope i enjoy it as well
6260635
I hope so, too.
Ahh that was so sweet and very nicely put together for a first timer.
All questions i got is, will there be more?
i had relay nothing to say about this except that i liked it, a fun little distraction to reed. I'll give you a 7/10 would read again.
~Tobben
I have two issues. First, if you put an empty line between paragraphs, it makes it more readable.
My second issue is with this line;
It's a bit awkward. It feels to me like the break should be before "is", not after it.
But I get the feeling that some people will disagree with me, and, perfectly honest, it doesn't detract from the story. I found it cute and likable.
A.K.A. Fluttershy dreamed about Twilight's butt.
"stirring up the gale and directing"
Is that "gale" meant to refer to the gentle breeze? Because, um...
"gale |geɪl|
noun
1 a very strong wind: I slept well despite the howling gales outside | it was blowing a gale | [ as modifier ] : gale-force winds battered the North Sea coast.
• (also fresh gale) (on the Beaufort scale) a wind of force 8 (34–40 knots or 63–74 km/h).
• a storm at sea."
Other than that, it seemed pretty good. I don't know about favouriting it, but I'll certainly upvote. Nicely done for your first story. :)
6260965
What would have improved it for you?
6261395
This is my preferred style of indenting paragraphs. It looks neater to me.
Mm. I think the Is needs to be where it is because left to its own devices is the phrase that Twilight is fishing for. I think it'd look awkward if I moved it now.
Thank you for your comment. I'm glad you found it enjoyable.
6261551
Well, if you want to put it bluntly ...
6262460
I suppose I should've clarified that a bit. The wind started off at gale force when the pegasi created it, but by the time it reaches wherever Twilight and Fluttershy are sitting, it's lost its edge.
6262851
To be honest not much, just a tad longer and maybe have a scene were they wake up, one can only speculate what happend when they woke up to head home.
Again you did a good job, god knows you did better then my first.
~Tobben
6262882
Speculation is fun, though.
I mean, there are a couple of things I could possibly do with the scenario at hand, but they're all a bit similar to what's already out there. I'd rather leave this a mildly good one-shot than ruin it by heading down a clichéd path.
6262851
Ah, okay; thanks.
6263069
You're welcome. Thanks for the comment.
Very lovely!
6263713
Thanks!
That was beautiful and sweet!
6263874
Thank you!
6262851
I can't tell if you understood my issue or not. The indenting isn't an issue to me, and actually makes it a bit easier to tell when a new paragraph starts. It's the lack of a space between paragraphs that actually makes it a bit tricky for me to read. What I mean is:
Paragraph
Empty line
Paragraph
I don't know if you realized that that was what I had issues with, but it was just a suggestion.
As for that line, I suggested moving the "is" because "Everything else" is the subject of the sentence, and what Twilight was indicating by waving her hoof. Having her motion described away from the subject seems strange to me. Again, it's just a suggestion.
6264406
No, I understood. It's, well, this is how I've always formatted stories.
lol theres another story with the same name but its most likely a diff story
6265348
Probably.
Both sweet and sad. Fantastic slice of life. Hope to read more from you
6478665
Me, too, but alas real life all too often intervenes in the best laid plans ...
Great Job for a first story. I've never read a romance of Twilight and Fluttershy but this is certainly interesting.
I like how you showed each characters thoughts and Reflections and I especially loved that the story ends without Fluttershy revealing her feelings. That ending with the stars could imply a lot of things and It could create the starting point for a sequel. Great Job!
6641774
Thank you. I'm glad that you liked the story. (Sorry for the late reply. I don't get around as much as I'd like to.) I wanted to do something atypical for the romance genre: we take it as read that, at the end, the characters will get together, but real life doesn't have a nice, smooth narrative to it.
It's stories like this which. make me feel as if Twishy should be canon. Because this was good.