It's Not Easy Bein' Seen

by helmet of salvation

3. Every night I start out

One of the commonest misconceptions about parties was that they were all about fun.

The parties themselves were fun, of course. That was the reason for their existence. But the preparation and work that went into ensuring said fun ensued without a hitch was serious business. One could not simply cram a random assortment of treats and decorations into a cannon, blast it around the venue and expect everything to be okey-dokey-lokey. No, a party cannon's ammunition needed to be meticulously planned and assembled prior to loading. There were other details to consider, as well. One declined invitation, mistimed remark or culturally insensitive hors d'oeuvre could lead to insult and humiliation that would take years to heal.

So it was with Fluttershy's bid to bring friendship to the squonk's life. The decorations could afford some flexibility but the food, games and costumes had to be perfect. Even the music needed to be conducive to a suitable mode of dancing. One slip—literally— could send the guest of honour lumbering distraught back into the depths of the forest, never to contemplate social interaction again, and all the ponies' endeavours would be for less than naught.

Of course, before the ponies could even begin preparations, they needed to approach the squonk, introduce themselves, convey their invitation and convince her to accept. That phase of the project was a significant operation in itself. Best case scenario, they might successfully befriend the squonk and lift her spirits without even needing the party. Yet failure at any step would compel the ponies to abandon their project altogether.

Nevertheless, despite the risks and required effort, Fluttershy's friends were eager to pitch in and help.

With one exception.

Fluttershy's gape of bewildered dismay was more piercing than the angriest glare. Yet Twilight Sparkle suppressed the pain and marshalled her defences. "I'm sorry, Fluttershy, I just don't think we should be expending all this effort and taking all these risks on a fool's errand."

"How can you say that?" cried Fluttershy. "You're the Princess of Friendship, tasked with spreading its magic throughout Equestria."

"Exactly. Throughout Equestria. The Everfree Forest is outside our jurisdiction."

"Oh, that's just a technicality."

"It is not. That forest is no place to sow friendship. It's an untamed wilderness, home to wild and ferocious animals."

"It's also home to Zecora. Would we hesitate to help her if she needed it?"

Twilight reeled from the blow. "That's different," she blurted unconvincingly. "She's our friend."

"She wasn't always," Fluttershy pointed out. "She used to be an outcast because of where she lives and how she looks."

"So are we going to make friends with every one of the millions of critters in the forest now? Try to solve all of their problems? Where will it all end?"

"Of course not, Twilight. We couldn't do that if we lived forever. But every evening I hear that squonk weeping and wailing, thinking not a creature in the world can ever care about her. How am I supposed to ignore that?"

"The same way you ignored the distress cries of that parasprite who got caught in the silk trap."

Fluttershy flinched as if slapped. She took a few seconds to ride out the hurt of the memory before steadily returning her gaze to Twilight. "I'm not talking about interfering with the Everfree's biological cycles. This is one creature who feels horrible every single night. I can't just leave her like that. Not without at least trying to extend the hoof of friendship to her."

"Zecora already tried that. The way she told it, she only made things worse."

"Well, I mean no disrespect to Zecora, but communicating with wild creatures is my destiny. I believe I can connect to the squonk on a different level."

Twilight's resistance was slipping fast. It was time to unleash her finishing move. All or nothing. "That's all very well but you really need to see this first." The alicorn levitated a volume from one of the many bookshelves lining the castle sitting room. She opened the copy of Weighty Tome's Monsters—Mythical and Mundane to a bookmarked page and suspended it in front of Fluttershy's muzzle. "I've highlighted the relevant section."

As Fluttershy scanned the open pages, her mouth and green eyes gradually widened in horror, then screwed up into a grimace. Her eyes foundered with tears and a series of pitiable squeaks trickled through her trembling lips.

The passage she read told of a time many years ago, when a pair of unicorn explorers had discovered a squonk in the wild. Fascinated, they laid a trap for the poor beast and carried him, in a locked container, back to the realm of Equestria. The unscrupulous explorers turned a deaf ear towards his horrific pleas to be let go, pleas that reached a shrieking crescendo before falling silent. When they finally arrived with their prize before a group of curious onlookers, they opened their container to reveal nothing but a deep pool of salty water.

Twilight spoke pensively, "If we try to impose socialisation upon the squonk, the same could happen to her."

It took Fluttershy several seconds to find her voice. "Twilight, I-I-even if I hadn't just read that horrible story, you must know that I would never push the squonk into a social situation against her will. You know how much I hate being the centre of attention. How much worse would it be for her? I've already discussed safety precautions with Pinkie and Rarity. And joining us will be purely her choice. No pressure."

"But do you really think she'll take that risk? For the sake of a bit of fun?"

"Ponies across Equestria do all kinds of dangerous things for fun. Ziplining, white water rafting, bungee jumping, deep sea diving, those terrifying rides they have at carnivals—what are they called again? Ferris wheels? If just one thing goes wrong it could cost lives. Yet they do them anyway. It's not my thing but who am I to judge? This may be the only 'bit of fun' the squonk has ever known. And like I said, it's her choice. If she's game then so am I."

"And if she doesn't want to know?"

Fluttershy paused, blinking three times. "So be it. It won't be easy, hearing her cry every night. But at least I'll know I gave her a chance to experience friendship. I can't do any more than that."

The alicorn thought furiously for a few seconds before mentally giving the floor three rapid taps of her forehoof. "What do you need me to do?" she smiled.

Fluttershy's look of joy was like a huge pink-and-yellow flower, bursting into full bloom. "Oh Twilight, I'm so happy you're helping." She lunged forwards and buried her face in Twilight's shoulder, nuzzling firmly as if trying to burrow her way through her friend's hide. "You don't know how much this means to me."

Twilight glanced down at the fragile, softly spoken pegasus who was showering her with effusive gratitude. She had often encouraged—practically demanded, she had to admit—Fluttershy to stand up for herself. Now the little sissy could kick her hindquarters, fair and square, without needing any kind of emotional appeal. Be careful what you wish for, the princess thought with a chuckle.

"What's so funny, Twilight?"

"Oh, I'm just wondering whatever happened to that timid, delicate little pushover I met when I first came to Ponyville."

"Oh dear. Maybe I can help. What does she look like?"

* * *

The sky had darkened from pink to the deep purple of dusk, the first stars gingerly taking the chance to reveal their light. The sounds of the Everfree Forest were in transit, twittering birds giving way to insectile and amphibian chirping, punctuated with assorted mammalian growls and cries. One cry in particular caught the attention of the four ponies gathered at the edge of the forest.

"Okay, let's go." A brilliant beam of light diverged from Twilight Sparkle's horn as the princess led the way into the forest. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy followed behind, while Rainbow Dash hovered at the rear, casting her torch in a wide arc to ensure nothing surprised the ponies from behind. They made as little sound as possible as they honed in on the funereal moaning of the squonk.

When it sounded like their target was only a few dozen metres away, Fluttershy whispered, "Okay, this should be near enough."

"Got it," replied Twilight. "Rainbow?"

Rainbow Dash gave a military-style salute to her three friends, then turned in mid-air to face away from them. She continued to arc her beam around the forest, taking care not to wave it in the direction of the squonk's despairing sobs.

"The rest of us, assume position." The other three ponies assembled themselves in single file. Pinkie Pie lifted her fluffy pink tail to the muzzle of Fluttershy, who clamped her jaws down on the tip. Pinkie, in turn, fastened her teeth onto the majenta-streaked, purple tail of Twilight's. A surge of energy from Twilight's horn opened the flap on her saddlebag and retrieved three sleeping masks Rarity had lent them for the exercise. Twilight guided one mask each to Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie and fastened them on. "Can you see anything?"

"Mmh-mmh," her friends grunted in the negative, through mouths full of tail hair.

Satisfied, Twilight placed the third face mask over her own eyes. The already dim light of the forest was now completely gone from her sight. Ending the spell that generated the light beam from her horn, she switched to a different spell, one that produced not light but sound.

Among the vast array of books Twilight had acquired to line the walls of Friendship Castle was a volume of biomimicry spells. Some of the powers that Equestria's fauna exhibited seemed almost magical even to unicorns. One such power was sonar. The ability to navigate through darkness without revealing one's own presence with light seemed decidedly useful. So it was that Marathon Safari and Dawn Batcloud, through diligent study of bats and dolphins, adapted their innate magic to send pulses of sound from their spiral horns, and return signals clearly indicating what tangible objects lay ahead, above and below, even in pitch darkness. After a quick refresher and some practice, Twilight was able to replicate their spell sufficiently to lead her two friends carefully through the forest. She followed the clearest path, negotiating obstacles and staying alert for any approaching danger—a serious instance of which would prompt an immediate retreat to Ponyville.

Of course, they still needed to exercise caution. The density of the surrounding plant life was no more easily penetrable by sonar than by eyesight. And even the forest's flora could cause trouble: Twilight had stocked up on a variety of remedies that day, in case she woke up the next morning to find, say, her horn flaccid and covered in spots.

* * *

Time to get up already?

Why should I even bother?

What do I hope to accomplish?

What do I have to look forward to?

Who would miss me if I just stayed in this hole forever?

I'm thirsty.

With despondent resignation, the squat creature hauled herself to her feet, peered out the entrance of her den to ensure nothing was nearby, and lumbered outside, shaking the excess dirt off. As usual, the action made her wish there was more about herself she could shake off, and as the inescapable burden of being what she was began to weigh her down, her first sobs of the day bubbled up from within. She trudged towards the nearby spring that provided her supply of fresh water, a supply she dearly needed in order to compensate for the dehydration of her continual weeping.

Am I being ... followed?

The sound of the squonk's crying grew louder in the ponies' ears, and not because they were drawing nearer, at least not directly. Animal bodies react to signs of danger with stress, sometimes known as the "fight or flight" response. Squonks had no natural weapons, and their sagging hides and splayed feet ruled out flight as an option. Some harmless, slow-moving animals opted to hide or freeze and hope the threat bypassed them. For a squonk, the trail of tears they typically left behind rendered this tactic useless, even if they were capable of refraining from sobbing for more than a few seconds.

Their solution was the opposite: a loss of inhibitions, making them cry even louder and harder than usual. This served a similar purpose to a threatening display. Other animals no more wanted a visual encounter with a squonk than a squonk himself would, so the distinctive bawling enabled them to give the unhappy creature a wide berth.

Of course an unchecked increase in any creature's stress level could be fatal, more rapidly so for a squonk than for most other creatures. So when this squonk realised that her louder cries were only drawing the approaching hoofbeats even more quickly, her anxiety began to flare into panic. She looked awkwardly behind herself and in the dim light of the forest she saw the string of three ponies only a few feet away.

The squonk lifted her voice and unleashed a howl of naked dread, her pitch raising and lowering. "No! Don't look at me! Please! Go away, leave me alone! Don't look at me! Don't look at me!"

"We're not looking at you." Fluttershy's voice was only slightly raised above her usual soft, gentle timbre yet somehow, in the squonk's ears, it cut through her own unbridled screams like a knife through warm butter. Her shrieks of terror died down into whimpers and acquired a touch of bewilderment. "Show her, Twilight."

Twilight conjured a light spell. Not the powerful, direct beam she had used to light the way through the forest, but a soft, radiant glow, like a candle, bathing herself and her two friends. Still whimpering, the squonk peered at the three visitors, who were now standing roughly side by side. She saw the material covering their eyes and noticed that their faces were aimed in her general direction, rather than directly at her. Most importantly, they were clearly not leering, recoiling nor hurrying off with cries of dismay. They were standing there. With her. Smiling.

The squonk spoke cautiously, her words irregularly interrupted by sniffs, sobs and gulps. "All right, so you're not looking at me. What are you doing here then? What do you want with me? I'm upset."

"That's what we're doing here," replied Fluttershy. "I've been hearing you cry for weeks and the thought of you being so upset all this time is awful to me."

"Oh. Well, I'm sorry if my chronic abject misery makes you uncomfortable but it kind of goes with the territory when you're the most repulsive abomination ever to desecrate the earth. We're born ugly and we get uglier every day. I'm a squonk. A squonk." She repeated the word with a deliberate enunciation that unmistakably conveyed her distaste. "Even my kind's name is ugly."

"Well, we could call you something different if you'd prefer. Do you have a name of your own?"

The squonk's confusion was mounting at this unprecedented encounter. "Uhh..."

"I'm Fluttershy. These are my friends Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle." By prior arrangement, Fluttershy had omitted the royal title from Twilight's name. She felt the squonk would likely be nervous enough about meeting new friends; knowing she was in the presence of royalty might be too intimidating. Twilight herself had no objections. On the contrary, she preferred being called plain old 'Twilight', although she tolerated Rainbow Dash teasingly addressing her by the ambiguous epithet 'princess'.

"Hi," Pinkie chirped brightly.

"Pleased to meet you," added Twilight.

"Elegy," the squonk responded guardedly. Her weepy voice seemed young, slightly younger than the ponies.

Fluttershy smiled. "That's a pretty name."

"It's a miserable name for a miserable animal. Now, was there anything else?"

"Would you like to talk for a while?"

"Why? Will talking improve my appearance?"

"Will crying?"

Elegy sputtered, trying to think of something to say in response.

"Because I don't mean to brag," Fluttershy continued, "but you seem to have been crying a lot less since we started talking."

"Terrific. Too bad I've nothing to talk about. I eat, I sleep, I cry. That's my life. Compelling stuff. Now go home, little ponies. It's not safe for you out here."

"Oh? Is it safe for you out here?"

A hollow, joyless, bitter laugh burst forth from Elegy. "Oh it's safe for me, all right, thanks to my complexion. Warts mean disease and no predator wants to ingest that. They won't even come near me."

"Then it seems to me that the safest place for us to be is here with you."

Elegy struggled to make sense of the situation. "Why are you doing this? Nothing wants to be with me."

"Not even other squonks?"

"We're solitary. Our mothers stay with us until we can fend for ourselves. After that, usually the only time we see any other squonks is during mating season, and I am so not talking about that, okay?"

"I understand," said Fluttershy gently.

"You do not understand," Elegy spat in sudden aggression. "Don't you dare tell me you understand. Look at you. Look at all of you. Your manes, your coats, your cute little muzzles. You're about the prettiest creatures I've ever seen. How can you possibly know what it's like to have to hide yourself away all the time, to see everything else flinch and recoil and run off as soon as you enter their field of vision? So don't you pretend to understand anything about me."

Normally, an outburst like this would send Fluttershy into a hurried, stammering denial, after which she would whimper an apology for taking up her attacker's time, and slink away. This time, she forced herself to absorb Elegy's vitriol and calmly let it dissipate from her. "I can't begin to imagine what that must be like. But I'll tell you what I do understand: feeling alone. Feeling like I'm not good enough. Being afraid to engage with other ponies because it would mean looking them in the eye, having them look me in the eye, trying to come up with something to say that they might want to hear.

"Good looks won't solve all your problems, any more than being smart or athletic or outgoing. We all have our weaknesses. My biggest one is, well, weakness. It can get very frustrating for other ponies, and a few times it's even caused them real trouble.

"But I have friends who understand me, who are patient with me, who help me better myself while staying true to who I am."

"Well I'm glad to hear it," replied Elegy, not sounding glad at all. "I sure wish I could have friends who take me as I am."

"You can," urged Fluttershy. "You just have to give it a chance. If my friends can get used to me and my ways, maybe we can get used to your——"

"No." Elegy's response was terse and firm.

"If I could just suggest——"

"No."

"Coming to meet——"

"No. No, no, no, no, no." Elegy's voice reached a crescendo of panicked screams and she cowered from eyes that could not see her. "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"

"We have to comfort her," cried Pinkie Pie.

"We have to turn back," insisted Twilight Sparkle.

"We have to wait." Fluttershy placed a firm emphasis on her final word. "Listen."

The nature of Elegy's crying had changed significantly. No longer shrieking, she had quietened to a series of breathy, tremulous, high-pitched whimpers. They were the cries of one desperately trying to quell her terrors. Elegy had sensed the rising stress levels that accompanied the prospect of visual exposure, and had almost given full-throated control to them.

Yet there was something very different about these ponies. They had taken considerable trouble to put her at ease. Walking blindfolded through the Everfree Forest after sundown was no light undertaking. And instead of forcibly thrusting her into the intolerable glare of attention, they were inviting her. How likely was it that they would go to these lengths just to make sport of a creature they didn't even know? Would they truly be that cruel?

Perhaps. But how could they convince her that their intentions were honourable?

"Look," Elegy paused for a copious, wet sniffle, "maybe you really do want to get to know me and maybe you really do believe you can lay your eyes on me without being totally disgusted and appalled. I'm just afraid you're promising something you can't deliver. I've seen those looks too many times and I never get used to it. And when I say I'm afraid I mean seriously afraid. I've heard stories from my mother, passed down from generation to generation, about what happens when we're forced to be looked at. Let's just say that among us squonks, 'dying of embarrassment' is not just an expression."

Fluttershy nodded. "Elegy, if you're willing to listen, we may have a way around that. Pinkie?"

The pink pony cleared her throat and spoke. "I, Pinkie Pie, am Ponyville's premier party planning pony. And one does not appropriate the position of Ponyville's premier party planning pony without being primed and pumped to prepare for all potential possibilities. So please permit me to present the proceeding proposition to prevent the problem posed by your paucity of pulchritude."

Elegy looked uncertainly at her. "You're not all going to wear blindfolds the whole time, are you?"

"Of course not."