But To Be Fair, She's Severely Out Of Practice
There were times when she wondered what love looked like.
Fleur could only perceive the sexual aspects of a sapient's being, sort through endless puzzle pieces with the speed of a professional who'd seen just about every individual component before and so could spend the majority of their efforts on lining up individual edges. When it came to sex, she didn't feel she knew everything: there were pieces so scarce as to have potentially escaped her registry, along with entire species she hadn't encountered yet. (There were also aspects which she would never fail to recognize, and never wanted to understand.) She didn't know everything -- but she believed herself to know more than anypony alive.
But that was for sex. And sex wasn't love. You could try to make sex look like love and there were those who were only too happy to fall into that illusion, at least long enough for Fleur to finish her work. But in the end, love was... something else. Something rare, something special, something which never lasted because love was many things and as Celestia was probably aware (presuming that one was even capable of it), none of them included immortality.
Still... the myriad aspects of sexual attraction were treated by Fleur's talent as something very much like a puzzle. Something which could be assembled and solved, with the results framed within her internal gallery. Always ready for review at any moment, just in case she needed to use some portion of that whole. And while nothing about the results was truly visual, it still added up to something she could perceive.
So what was love?
Was it just another kind of puzzle? Did it manifest as a whole at the outset, something where no aspect had ever fractured away from another? Did it appear through slowly gaining density, or was it all at once, in a single flash? Was transmutation involved, various forms of relationship steadily gaining in power until a sudden spark changed them into something else entirely?
Perhaps Princess Cadance knew. At the very least, a talent which temporarily reinforced love had to include some way of detecting just how much strength had been present at the outset. (It seemed odd to Fleur that an alicorn-level talent, the only one known to be capable of manipulating love at all, was limited to basic reinforcement -- but then, some talents operated within fairly narrow parameters, and it was possible that nopony other than an alicorn would have possessed any magical access to the emotion.) But it wasn't as if she could have asked: no part of her Canterlot efforts had put her in the presence of any Princess until that first hated encounter, and even if she had been able to speak with what had formerly been the youngest of the alicorns... Fleur's own talent had been a carefully-maintained secret. Comparing notes was effectively impossible.
(Strictly speaking, she would have wanted to meet Cadance for more than that, but -- well, that alicorn was taken. And when it came to the other three, nothing within her was still capable of perceiving beauty within Celestia's form, Twilight was likely under constant Solar watch, and Princess Luna was -- actually rather appealing, although persistent rumors in the capital suggested a near-medical need to bring along earplugs.)
Cadance might know, where Fleur did (could) not. But if love had its own image, something which could be perceived... then Fleur was certain about one thing: her current stalkers were displaying nothing more than an empty frame.
"Stop following me."
They ignored this, and did so in bulk. Dozens of claws skittered across the cottage floor, and that one still-loathed parrot was now flying a little too close to her mane.
"I'll do it in a little while," she told them, still leading the procession through the cottage. (Fleur knew they couldn't understand her words. She still felt that most of them should have been able to pick up on her tone, and now they were ignoring that too.) "Snowflake told me what the schedule is supposed to be."
Three small puppies whined, and did so as a chorus. Fleur sighed.
"Look," she pointlessly explained, "some of it has to cool down. You'll burn your tongues."
A trio of wet noses nudged against her hind ankles. Several squirrels chittered at her.
"That's not going to work," she crossly declared. "No one's getting anything until the clock says so. Noses don't work. Tails don't work. And when it comes to begging for something while your eyes go wide, I'm an escort. You can't do anything that a hundred ponies haven't failed at, and they had words. Besides, I'm working." She glanced at the newest crack in the wall, and the field-held quill jotted down a few notes. "And I'm not going into her bedroom, so you don't have to worry about that."
Actually... that did have to be checked. There were several reasons to invoice the palace for cottage repairs, and one of the more significant was because 'emotional support' seemed to cover a lot of billable ground. The less Fluttershy had to worry about, the more she would be able to concentrate on dating. A residence which was forever looking for new ways of falling apart was something to worry about, and so Fleur was surveying every square hoofwidth she could reach, searching for problems which could be professionally repaired.
Her primary concern was based in temperature. Autumn was passing, winter couldn't (or rather, given pegasus capabilities, wouldn't) be stopped, and the roof sod only insulated the attic. Fleur was slowly trotting along the cottage's many corridors, concentrating on a more conventional sense while the lightest air currents ruffled her fur. It meant the various animal passages honeycombed into the walls occasionally gave her some trouble, but she was finding enough real problems to compile a fairly extensive list. Seal the gaps, make it all the easier for the cottage to hold a given level of heat (and pegasus ground residences usually didn't seem to have this many thermal problems), then force that much more out of the treasury. But it wouldn't do any real good until the sealing was complete, and a single crack within Fluttershy's bedroom...
When she gets back.
(If her charge returned.)
I'll explain what's going on, and then we'll check her bedroom. There shouldn't be a repairpony in there without her knowing about it anyway.
A cat's tail majestically rubbed against her left foreleg. The white rabbit got in front of her just long enough to be registered, rapidly tapped his right hind paw against the floor six times, and ran for it again. Several birds sang, and did so only for her. She had no idea what the platypus was trying to accomplish.
She didn't know what love looked like. She fully understood that this wasn't it.
"Congratulations," Fleur dryly told the traveling menagerie. "You've figured out that I feed you."
More time passing. Time during which the palace sent her no updates on the mission, and that seemed to be a new form of Celestial cruelty. Fluttershy was Fleur's charge, and Fleur had no idea what her charge was doing. Or... what might be happening to her. None at all.
The daily tasks required by the cottage consumed time, and did so in a way where Fleur seldom felt the wounds, at least not for the tiny ones which gobbled up seconds: she generally realized what the totals were when she glanced back at the end of the day and found a huge gap of hours bitten out of her flank. There was always cleaning to do, more food to prepare, grounds to inspect and herbs to maintain (she hired an earth pony to work in the attic for a few hours, just in case), plus there was grooming and Fluttershy offered kennel services and there was a never-ending parade of the sick, at least as far as 'parade' could apply for those who could barely limp along.
Injured beavers. Hurt dogs. But no birds: so far, not a single wounded avian had come in, so
the clacking, the mindless clacking
at least there was that.
She was getting used to working with Snowflake, and the hours spent with him in the cottage also allowed her to discover more of his conversational boundaries. He was willing to discuss many of the more mundane aspects of Fluttershy's life: just about anything involving the cottage would get a response from him, he was always up to explaining some aspect for the business side of the operation, and the huge pegasus would never hesitate to pull out anything regarding a client. But when it came to the details of being a Bearer... missions were personal, private, or classified. It was frustrating, because she was starting to feel as if that was information she needed. Overhearing a simple exchange between Fluttershy and... 'Rarity'... had been enough to tell Fleur that missions could come with their own traumas, and if any of that got in the way...
It was something she could think about, during the endless labors which kept her from thinking about so much else. It confined the nightmares to the place they belonged. The world she couldn't control.
Of course, there were other things she wasn't thinking about. She never really wondered about why he hadn't appeared at the cottage, at least not for long: she presumed Discord had his own ways of knowing how the mission was going, and -- had already spent too much time in considering what might happen if it all went wrong. But for him not to have any interest in how cottage matters were operating under Fleur's partial custody -- well, in the best case, she simply wasn't permitting enough chaos for him to be interested and when viewed that way, it was both safety and a compliment.
(She never asked Snowflake if the draconequus had ever checked in on him. It might not have changed anything. It might have altered everything. And still, in so many ways, every branch path she saw when looking back always led her to the bridge.)
Clients came. Clients left. Some animals could be released immediately: others had to stay for a while. Every so often, herbs would need to be mixed.
and then the sound stopped
A few animals arrived on their own: stragglers coming in from what Fleur presumed were the outskirts of the property. Another displayed the kind of scar on its right foreleg which could only be created by careful stitching of the original wound, and so had presumably remembered what it was supposed to do about the angry peck wounds to its forehead. And sometimes, a pony would arrive without an animal.
For the most part, they didn't know her. The rumor mill was still hard at work, but the damaged pieces of truth took time to spread. The concept of Fluttershy has an assistant had yet to fully saturate the settled zone, and so her presence still surprised the majority of ponies: they had been expecting Snowflake, and... when it came to similarity in appearance, both coats were white. It was something which still had a few of the stupider ones launch a full syllable of the wrong greeting before reality managed to intrude.
Most hadn't been aware of her presence before arrival. But a few knew she was there. And one...
"Sorry," Fleur softly offered as the vials were floated over the top of the examination table, carefully moving towards the stallion's open saddlebags. "I know that took a while, but... I've never mixed that before." And the results of her efforts allowed most of the sigh to be real. "It was trickier than I thought it would be. So there's no charge for the ingredients I wasted on the first two attempts, because... that's on me. But this one's right."
Caramel silently nodded. The movement exposed a little more of his mane, and so there was a moment when Fleur almost believed he'd been trying something new -- but any pressing-down along the crest had been produced by internal weight.
For Fleur's original plan, his part was over. He had failed, exactly on schedule, and so the rejection had been true. When it came to Fluttershy, the only thing he could do was pay his bills on time. And so, as far as Fleur normally would have been concerned --
-- but very little about Ponyville was normal.
Caramel was a pony whose reputation preceded him by hundreds of body lengths, somepony without contacts or connections or anything she could use -- but of all the ponies in the settled zone, he was the only one who thought Fleur was his friend.
It made her reluctant to fully discard him, especially since her attempts to proceed with finding backup plans had mostly led to extra cleaning.
(The comfort food hadn't been everything she'd hoped for, and she'd quickly blamed the results on the poor quality of the base ingredients. If she could just reach Canterlot...)
"How are you doing?" she gently asked. "I would have come by to check on you, but..." And added another sigh to that. "...it's the cottage. I think you can guess what it's like, when Fluttershy's away. I've been getting here early, I leave too late, our work hours overlap to start with and by the time I get back to Ponyville..." Falling asleep had been easy. Staying that way was another problem entirely.
"...not so good," Caramel eventually said, with dipped head now joined by lowered ears. "But I've had to live things down before, Fleur. You know I've had a lot of relationships, at least for a moon or three each. When they end... well, I've never seen anypony with that many lamps in their home to kick. But in the stories..." which triggered the ghost of a smile, all the more notable for being dead "...every last one of them hits the back of my head. It'll die down after a while." And added a tiny shrug. "It's one of the good things about living in this town. Just wait long enough, and it'll give everypony something new to talk about."
"Is it causing any problems at work?" Because that was something a friend would ask.
"A few snickers," the weary stallion admitted. "And... somepony said the cinema's owner isn't happy with me."
He had already been humiliated. (He had also been weak, he'd been weaker than anypony at the movie, the link in the chain which you didn't so much leap over as grind your hoof upon as you crossed...) There was no way of bringing the events up which wouldn't cause him to relive them. But in a way, that made everything safe to say.
"If it's about the cleaning bills --"
The ghost died. "No. There's been..." The long pause was meant to let him gather strength, and he didn't find enough of it. "...fillies and colts who've snuck into shows before. Every theater has that problem. He just heard about how I -- reacted. And then he decided to base his entire advertising campaign around it. Come see The Beast With Five Fingers, the most frightening movie anypony's ever seen. He even bumped some other reels to give it extra showtimes, and Bayleaf said he was originally thinking about holding it over through Nightmare Night."
Which was all too close now. Fleur had spent the last two in Canterlot: the first had mostly been used for puzzling out the holiday, while the second had found her trying to locate disguises which hid her nature while allowing her beauty to shine through. It had been something of a challenge.
"But nopony else reacted the way I did," Caramel quietly finished. "They mostly just laugh." The brown shoulders barely shifted. "Maybe I just have a phobia about centaurs. The only pony in the world who can say that, and I didn't know until I saw one charging at me."
"You're lucky." And much to her own surprise, she managed to put a little smile at the end of it.
"...lucky," he tonelessly echoed and deep within the lack of music, she felt a perceived friendship beginning to break --
"I'm afraid of overshadows. That can happen just about every day. When are you ever going to see a real centaur?"
He blinked.
"Overshadows?" There was a tone present now: abject confusion. "You're afraid of the dark? You've been fine every time I've seen you under Moon, even when it's been overcast --"
"-- it's not that," Fleur quietly said. "It's more like... having something looming over me. Something I can't fight, where all anypony can do is run. It's..."
...what am I saying?
Why did I just say...?
"That's happened?" And now that tone was changing. "You've had --"
It had been too much for him to dismiss, more than Fleur could casually excuse. It meant the only way out was forward. Weaving a precise trail through the narrow space between truth and lie.
"-- it's a phobia," she softly cut in. "It doesn't have to be based in anything real. And I was taught ways to resist it, a long time ago. But it's there, Caramel. It's always going to be there. Waiting. I feel like I can fight most things. But there's always going to be something nopony can stand against, looming, and when that happens, when I start to feel like there's no chance... that's an overshadow. When running is all that's left, and you don't even know if you can get away. When you... lose yourself --"
-- her body knew exactly how to react, and did so automatically. Her head moved slightly forward, tilted a little to the right in order to ensure her horn (only at a partial corona, but it was best to be safe) contacted nothing more than air. Foreknees bent a little, because she was taller. Eyes half-closed, but only half: there was a certain need to see if he was going to do anything else. And the vials, which had been moving so very slowly as every word subtracted speed, simply stopped in positions of safety.
Her body reacted properly, because it had been trained to do so. It meant he had no idea of what was happening within her mind as he maintained the contact of the little nuzzle. The nuzzle which was supposedly meant for friends.
(It was a rather soft touch, and there was nothing unpleasant about the grain of his fur. She supposed he had to be good at something.)
"That's why we have heroes," Caramel steadily told her. "The ones who don't run. So the rest of us can."
She would have won.
Her own breath seemed to be shaking within her ribs, and so she pulled back.
"Fluttershy included," Fleur said. She'd managed to get some humor into it.
"She's scared," Caramel stated, with the words surprisingly even. "Everypony knows that. She runs from almost everything. And it's part of how we know how bad something is. The worst things are the ones she doesn't run from."
She would have won.
"Like death," Fleur quietly observed. "She faces it. When other ponies won't."
He silently nodded.
"There's more to being attracted to Fluttershy than just her wings," Caramel dryly told her. "Or even her tail. She's something special, when she has to be."
She finished placing Shimmy's medicine into the padded saddlebags, because doing so served as the first step in changing the subject.
"I've been meaning to ask you," Fleur told him, her corona now projecting towards a clean scrap of towel: the examination table needed a wipedown. "Why Fluttershy? For the medicine, I mean." Other than the fact that you were able to get away without paying for so many moons. "With Shimmy's condition... from what I've heard, most ponies would have gone to Sweetbark."
His features abruptly tightened. Fur stood up along his spine, and the brown hue retreated into private shadows.
"I did."
All right. Let's see what his version of the story is. "And she couldn't see you?"
"She saw us exactly long enough to send us out the door." The words were closer to hiss than speech, for there was one relationship in Caramel's life which had always held true, and the well-protected vials were the only way to ensure it went on for another week. "You know what Sweetbark's good at, Fleur? Health. Her waiting room was full of the healthiest pets I'd ever seen. I thought it was a good sign. With everything Shimmy had been going through, knowing that... it was getting worse -- seeing all of those happy animals playing with their ponies while they waited... it made me feel like we had a chance. Like everything was going to be okay. But then she came out, she looked at Shimmy, and our appointment window slammed shut on my snout. The receptionist couldn't find the booking she'd verified forty minutes earlier, the next one was suddenly moons away, and she told us that if we wanted to be seen, we'd have to go elsewhere."
His hard-planted forehooves were rotating slightly, seemingly without his awareness. Grinding against the floor, and earth pony strength didn't require a build like Snowflake's to do some damage to the wood.
As softly as she could make the word while still keeping it audible, "Why?"
"Because Shimmy can't be cured." The first splinter broke away from the edge of the new dent. "Because the medicine is so hard to make. She's good at health, Fleur. She knows which animals are healthy, and she can diagnose when someone's going to be a week away from dying. Forever. And that's the best case, the best it can ever be for Shimmy. One mistake, one week. So she kicked us out. There's stories like that all over the settled zone, I'm sure of it. The worst wounds, the illnesses which don't get cleared up after six herbs and a little extra water during the day." With open bitterness, "The ponies who go to Sweetbark say she's perfect, and I'm pretty sure she stays that way by only seeing animals who don't really have anything wrong with them."
"But that can't last," Fleur immediately argued. "That's luck as much as anything else. Nopony can stay that lucky --"
"-- so she's lucky," Caramel angrily declared, and the lashing tail knocked two spools to the floor. "And you know the worst part, Fleur? I can't even wish anything else on her, because that means hoping for somepony's companion to get hurt. I have to hope she stays lucky because that way, none of her clients have to mourn anything other than a natural death." The last words emerged through gritted teeth. "Assuming she can even deal with that --"
-- and stopped, as he closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. Three more just like it followed, and his tail eventually returned to a resting position.
"I'll get the spools," the stallion quietly offered.
"I already did," Fleur replied as her field deposited them in place. "It's okay."
His lips quirked. "Maybe we should change the subject."
Especially since you're just echoing the others. Those who had been rejected by Sweetbark were willing to discuss it -- but the ones who still believed in the vet never came to the cottage, and the ponies who had tried talking to them about it elsewhere had found true believers unwilling to trust in the words of those without faith. "Probably," Fleur wryly agreed. "So back to the basics. How's work?"
Caramel sighed. "Tense. That new shop may not be open before Nightmare Night, but there's no way it isn't ready by Hearth's Warming. That's one of our biggest sales times for custom orders, and any degree of undercutting..." He slowly shook his head. "As much as she grumbles, Bon-Bon's never really minded Barnyard Bargains, because that's mass-produced bulk items: things where the time she'd need for small batches doesn't make sense when she compares them to the profit margin. And it helps to have Mr. Rich buy his own deluxe pieces from her. But specialty items keep the shop alive, and the profit margin still isn't great. Lose too many orders..."
He trailed off. Fleur polished the examination table, and thought about the approaching dominance war.
"How much trouble would she be in?"
"It depends on whether the new place catches on," Caramel sincerely replied. "It's not like we've had the chance to sample his work, and he's going after a younger market than we do -- well, than Bon-Bon did." This breath was swallow. "She's been aiming a little more down in years lately. It's natural. It's..."'
Stopped again, and his head came up.
"It's not fair," he clearly said. "Not to have this happen now. He's not even in another part of town, he's right across the street. And they've got a filly on the way. Their first foal by next spring, and this has to happen now. It's not fair to them."
"Life doesn't care about fairness." Words learned by rote, something which could emerge without thought, and so she didn't consider their potential impact until after they'd already escaped --
-- but Caramel just wearily smiled, with no true mirth at all.
"Tell that to their child."
Innocence always dies.
A foal wouldn't truly understand, not for years to come. A foal simply heard the pain without understanding where it came from, and -- waited to see if it would stop.
But the world didn't care about pain any more than it tried to enforce any concept of fairness. It simply created a place for struggle. Some lived. Others didn't.
And in the end, time always ran out.
Moon was lowered. Sun was raised.
The new couch was seeing some use. Fleur occasionally collapsed onto it for an hour before trying to head back to her rental, and mostly used her prone position to contemplate just how hard it was to get tear stains out of satin.
Bills were paid, and Fleur added those expenses to the frequent invoices.
The shrew began to follow her around.
In what turned out to be the highlight of Fluttershy's absence, a pony who was at least five days behind on the news approached the cottage not with work or bits, but an intent to ask the usual occupant out: something she entrusted Fleur with passing on while the unicorn taking the message asked a few subtle questions and made plans to sniff out the mare's exact economic and social status (although being so far out of the gossip loop served as penalty for the first missed hurdle).
She didn't see it as a good sign, because to do so invoked a rare degree of understatement regarding the positive. It was the best thing to happen since her durance had begun. The herd was shifting its perception of her charge: Fluttershy was now seen as available, and the return to Ponyville would be followed by more queries. A coral-shrouded social calendar had finally opened, and that meant it was Fleur's responsibility to make sure it was filled properly. In fact, all things considered...
The next potential activity would potentially help Fluttershy. It would definitely aid Fleur, and that meant it had priority. As soon as Fluttershy got back --
if she
Moon was brought down. Sun was raised up. The cycle continued and so Fleur was almost certain her charge was safe, for both events continued to occur in their usual order.
She waited. It was all she could do. A now-familiar lack of volume would be just barely heard within the cottage, or...
She moves towards flame.
It was a sign of bravery. A level of courage which that name never should have allowed.
It was also a way to die.
She heard the door open, even from the chill dispensary. (It was perhaps too dignified a term for a closet which had every wall lined with narrow shelves, spaced to allow a pony's snout easy access to the little glass bottles. It was the place where things which would keep without special conditions were stored, and Fleur had still found a need to sort out those approaching their effective expiration dates while researching replacement costs. It was also where she'd found another crack.) She had become all too attuned to the sound of that door opening, because she had no real need to lock it. As far as Fleur was concerned, the security measures required for the cottage came from the occupants.
It was probably going to be another emergency. There was a chance that it was just Snowflake, who was out on the grounds: the kennels needed cleaning and it was a job she was perfectly content to let him take. But then she heard a rush of wings, multiple scrabbling claws racing across the floor towards the door, her instincts shifted to intruder, she ran out of the dispensary and her trailing field bubble brought a few bottles with her in case ammunition was needed --
"...it's all right!" Which was followed by the softest of giggles, something which was nearly broken by the little gasp. "No, it's okay! I'm home, you can just... all right, you can't all lick my face at once, you know that, someone has to go to the back and... not my back, Angel: not right now..."
Anypony would have picked up on the open delight, the joy at simply having come home. Fleur's hearing centered on something else.
It's been hours now. Hours of trying to continue her travels in the dark. Going forward is something which can be done, because... there's nothing else she can do.
Every so often, something passes overhead, or on the road which cuts through the forest, guarded by trees and reinforced by spells which do their best to keep the nightmares within: something which has, in so many ways, already failed. There's always enough warning for her to get out of the way in time, because just about every last one of those travelers is screaming.
She is moving through the dark, and doing so when so many others aren't moving at all. Some are huddled in their homes, while others take to the roads because those they love are elsewhere and this is the time to find them. The only time, the last chance, so they rush forward at the best speed they can manage. They commit everything they have to that, because they only have to last long enough to reach their own charges and after that...
...after that, it won't matter any more.
She is moving through the dark. Traveling under Moon, when Sun should have been raised hours ago. Forcing herself to go forward in a world approaching its death, and doing so at a standard pace. There is nowhere she can run, nowhere anyone can run, not when the overshadowing is complete. And so she might as well continue her journey, to see how far she can get before all heat drains away, before every plant dies and the rivers freeze and her blood goes solid within an ice-coated corpse.
No loved ones to find. (She has never truly believed that they await her, and recognizes that the issue will be settled soon enough.) Nothing she can do to change anything, because... there's nothing to be done.
She has no way of knowing what truly happened. Just about every sapient within a night without end can only guess, and hers echoes that of the majority.
The Princess is dead.
It's the only possible answer. Sun has been late before: a few seconds might mean somepony meeting Equestria's ruler in a corridor at just the wrong moment, a minute represents a quick conference, and three generally has that one individual who lives in every neighborhood internally justifying the existence of their well-stocked basement. But she can't remember anything over five minutes. Five minutes is a joke: clearly somepony slept in today, a thousand years of responsibility and this is when she decides to skive off. Five minutes of delay is incredibly rare, but it's something the world can understand.
It's been hours.
Immortality was a lie. The Princess is dead. The cycle has ended, and so the world dies with her.
She distantly wonders how it happened. History contains wars against Equestria, and some of those were led by monsters who wore the skin of leadership. The ones who truly didn't care if everyone died as long as they were the ones to trigger global extinction, or just believed they had a way to take over the cycle when there was only one way of being proven right. So it could have been a first strike, one where she didn't know there was any war starting at all because she's been on the road. Assassination seems like a possibility. Or... accident. The whole world tripped on a flowerpot and broke its neck. It would almost be funny if not for all the screaming.
There's nothing she can do. Canterlot is gallops and gallops away, a distance she will never be able to cross before the end. She's between towns, which means none can offer her comfort and... she wouldn't accept that now. She hasn't been able to believe in such things for some time, and not even the end of the world can change that. And when it comes to offering comfort to others...
They rush past her, screaming. Some scream out names, trying to find those they love before it all ends. But for the most part, they just scream.
She will be dead soon enough, and the same will apply to an entire planet. But she intends to outlast a number, simply through remembering her lessons. Even to the last, and perhaps especially to the last. That simply going forward can represent some form of victory.
She's frightened, in the face of death. She can almost smell the stink of her own fear rising from her shadowed fur. And she can hear the predators in the woods on the side of the road, those who hunt at night. They should have been too tired to prowl, they should have rested, but... their instincts drive them on, because Sun is gone and so they must continue their hunt. She wonders if they're capable of realizing that the hunt will never end, that with the most vital thing having failed, the protection of the road should be tested because perhaps that will fail too and if not... they'll be dead soon enough anyway.
Half the world will freeze. Half will burn. All will die.
She's frightened. But her hooves shuffle forward, because she has her lessons. They won't protect her from death. But as long as she remains alert, focused, as long as she can still think... then she might meet her end as something other than prey.
The world dies, and takes everyone with it. But when it comes to her, she intends to let it die hungry.
It's not a plan. It's something to do, and so she pushes forward, claiming a small victory with every extra breath --
-- she's looking down when it happens, and so she doesn't initially realize what's going on. For a moment, she just thinks her eyes have adjusted to a new level of night vision, something they've never accomplished before just because she's never spent this much time within the dark, and that's why the road is a little easier to make out --
-- one of the pebbles is quartz. Dulled by centuries of dirt, nowhere near the polish of false jewelry, and there's still enough left to allow a single glint at the moment the light touches it.
And then Sun is raised.
It's not complete, not all at once. Sun is moving somewhat faster than normal, as if trying to make up for lost time -- but it's not all that much of a difference, and so nothing rushes through the sky. The glint simply makes her look up, turn to see the sky lightening as Sun approaches, blacks and deep blues going pale, red and orange and pink join the procession, and in time it's another kind of blue, the blue of life and the cycle renewed. A promise kept.
She stands there as her fur is illuminated into white, watching for as long as she can. (She almost injures herself in doing so, for Sun remains Sun and so none can look for too long.) She can still hear screams off in the distance as light turns the road's borders back into trees and weary predators slump off to their dens. But they're different screams now, the screams of celebration --
-- almost.
There's something else within those sounds, and she feels the twinned emotions within herself as she stands under new Sun. Joy (so rare, something which almost required this to even temporarily restore within her). Terror.
The first is because it ended.
The second is because something went so crucially wrong as to let it happen at all.
If it happened once...
...and then she came around the corner, cleared the hallway, and the first thing Fleur saw was the scrum.
There were probably better ways to have described it, but that was what her mind provided: a hoofball pile made up of dozens of little bodies, all fighting to be the ones who reached Fluttershy first. The pegasus was laughing as those she cared for moved across her, rubbed against legs and wings and face, and that was the joy. Because she was home, because the mission was over and their mistress had returned home at last.
There were those among the animals with very little sense of time, for whom now was just about eternal and any true amount of absence equated to forever. From them, the greeting came as if it welcomed somepony back from the dead, and that too was the joy.
But Fleur was listening to something else, as the happy swarm surrounded its heart. The little gasps which arose when contact was made. She saw the winces as claws moved across the pegasus' back, glimpsed saddlebags which had partial rents in their sides, something which seemed to have been created by blades, spotted the discoloration to fur which had been produced by underlying bruises...
There was joy, and perhaps all of that belonged to the animals. But the price of sapience was fear.
"You need treatment," were the first words to emerge, and the startled jerk of the yellow head told Fleur that until the moment she'd spoken, Fluttershy hadn't known she was there at all.
The words confirmed it.
"...you're here?" the pegasus softly said. "You're -- why are you --"
"-- Snowflake asked for help." She took two steps forward. "Did you see a doctor before you came back?" Or was that something else Celestia couldn't be bothered to authorize?
"...it's just some bruises," the pegasus softly protested as birds landed along mostly-folded wings: she winced again. "I have liniment. And mchanga for the pain. It's nothing --"
"-- I'll say when it's nothing!" She almost completely missed the little gasp in the sound of her own hoofsteps quickly moving across the wood, lost a few subtleties of the startled expression in the light from her horn as her field projected over and over again. "Clear off! Move away from her or I'll move you!" And they couldn't understand her, but they saw the bubbles carrying their smaller fellows to cubbyholes and furnishings and a fainting couch which had just found a new purpose, some were startled and others were beginning to glare at her, she felt a shrew's angry claws beginning to scramble up her right hind leg... "Fluttershy, tell them to give me some space! I want you on the examination table, and then we just might go to the hospital!"
If she dies...
"...it's just bruises!" The exclamation point was mostly implied: volume had remained consistent, but the one visible eye was widening. "We get bruised all the time, Fleur, we're okay, we're all okay. Even Twilight's just missing some of her mane. Again. It's usually accidents in the basement, but this time it was --"
Horror flashed across yellow features, and she stopped. So did Fleur, at least for the advance: field bubbles continued to pick off squirrels, and the largest carried away a loudly-protesting raccoon.
"What happened?" There was cold in those words, on a chill autumn morning.
"...it was a mission... we can't always talk about them, and this one... it doesn't matter if we're a little hurt, Fleur, it never matters if I'm hurt as long as we're all still alive --"
"-- it doesn't matter?" There was ice in her blood now and judging by Fluttershy's expression, the glaciers seemed to be floating into a second body. "What do you mean, 'it doesn't matter?' This is your life!"
"...we're alive..."
It was like explaining Sun to a foal. "You're hurt. Your being hurt matters."
In a way, the trembling was helping Fleur: at the very least, a few of the smallest animals were being dislodged. "...it's just... just bruises..."
"Tell me what happened on the mission." It was meant to come across as an order. As something dominant. "At least for what happened to cause those injuries. The wrong kinds of magic need their own treatment, and when it comes to monsters --"
"-- I can't." The shaking was accelerating. "I'm fine, I just need a day or two at home and I'll be --"
Her charge's volume had remained consistent, even as some of the animals began to form a protective barrier and others moved towards Fleur. She was aware of that, if not her own decibels steadily increasing "-- I need to know what's going on with you, I can't help you unless you let me --"
"-- being home is what helps, I just thought I was coming home, I didn't think you were going to be --"
"-- of course I'm here! Where else am I ever going to be? I'm here until the job is complete, until you're happy and I can't do anything about it, you won't even tell me why you're hurt and I have to worry about what --"
But that was when Fluttershy's head flipped back, just enough to send her mane cascading across her spine and somehow, the mere movement silenced Fleur. It took the shock in the pair of exposed blue-green eyes to make her recognize exactly what she'd been saying.
Those slightly-oversized wings flared. Animals scrambled in all directions, there was a backblast of wind and --
-- Fleur's jaw tightened.
She knew what words had just come out of her mouth. She had watched her charge flee and upset animals were focusing on her as the source of the pain, but that didn't matter because Fluttershy had just flown away and --
No.
Not this time.
She hadn't gone very far, because she didn't have to.
For Fleur, there had been enough study of her charge to recognize that flight seldom occurred, and she knew how those capable of going airborne tended to retreat from the ground-bound. They would frequently go exactly far enough to be out of reach, and then they would stay there.
In this case, the morning was cold. Overcast, with a good number of exceptionally low-lying thick clouds drifting over the cottage. A place to perch which couldn't be reached, added to one where hiding was possible, and the sounds of crying might never echo to the earth, with falling tears simply mistaken for rain. It had made guessing exceptionally simple, and as it turned out...
"I'm sorry I yelled."
The curl of weeping life blinked.
Slowly, a shapely yellow head raised itself from forelegs and vapor, stared out across the grey until the startled gaze focused on pink glow.
"I was upset," Fleur admitted. "I'm still upset. You're hurt, and -- you made it sound like that wasn't important. Like you don't think you're important." With a sigh (and a full-body bob), "And that's part of the problem. You have to believe you're worthwhile. That you have value, because value is something which somepony else can desire. It's self-esteem, and when you talk like that --"
"...how are..." Another blink. "...how are you doing that? How..."
The sigh repeated itself. Pink-encased hindquarters were hoisted a little, trying to keep them out of the billowing vapors. She hadn't been able to find a hole on the way up and liquid tended to entangle itself in field borders: it left little rivers twisting across the glow, mere fractions of a hoofwidth away from her skin. The briefest dip would make it that much worse.
There were many prices to be paid if her concentration completely collapsed, and very close to the bottom of the list would be dying with her coat utterly ruined.
"It's not easy," Fleur said, and squinted her eyes against the glow from her horn's hard-surging double corona. "Self-levitation is..."
Her body bobbed again (as Fluttershy continued to stare), and she just barely managed to keep it from turning into a full-fledged dip.
Fleur's next word was "Um," and it immediately made her feel stupid. She was just a little... distracted.
"...well," Fleur finally continued, "you have to be capable of managing your own weight. I can. But it's not easy." Which she hated admitting: letting anypony know the limits of her field strength was potentially giving them a weapon to use against her --
-- but this was Fluttershy.
"Plus you have to sort of project your field backwards," Fleur added. "That doesn't come naturally. It's a trick of thinking, and when you put together the field strength requirements with the number of ponies who can manage --"
Her hooves dropped into the vapor, and she flailed for a few seconds before lifting herself enough to free them. Fresh water crawled around the energy surrounding her hocks.
"We can do this up here," she painfully said as a flash of light behind her eyes served as the migraine's announcement for its imminent arrival. (She'd thought she was past that, but... the last time had been well before Canterlot.) "I'd rather not. I just didn't want what I said to be the last thing you heard from me today, because if I did... you might have decided they were the last words you ever wanted to hear. Fluttershy..."
Careful. It's either this or prison.
But the pegasus was looking at her, and both eyes were completely focused.
"...I was worried. I think everypony was. Ponyville changes when you're all away, because everypony is hoping you'll all come home. But with me -- my job is to worry about you. To make sure you're okay, that everything works out in a way where, in the end -- you're happy. And you came back, but you came back hurt, and you start to say things which make it sound like you feel you're not important. So even if you can't believe you matter, not even to yourself -- you matter to every animal in that cottage. You matter to me. And I have to be with you, as much as possible, until you're happy." She took a breath, blinked until her vision was partially clear: no unicorn was immune to their own corona light. "Even if I'm the one who upset you, and I'm sorry for yelling. Even if I have to follow you up --"
This time, she went in up to her knees.
"-- I haven't done this for a while," Fleur added (and now she sounded awkward, she hated sounding as if she didn't have control). "I'm not sure how long I can --"
Yellow wings flared, and then the pegasus was almost directly in front of her.
Almost directly in front --
"-- watch the horn!" It had been a yelp of panic, and it had also been fully justified: sharp contact while she was at a double corona... there would be no chance of maintaining the levitation and even if Fluttershy somehow managed to catch her in time, the backlash alone would be enough to put Fleur in the hospital. Of course, depending on how badly her charge was truly injured, there might be company --
"-- I know," the pegasus softly said. "Easy, Fleur. Easy..."
The yellow form went up a little more, rotated and went out of sight. The first indication Fleur had of Fluttershy's new position was the sudden pressure of four legs against the portion of field which had coated the white torso.
There was also warmth. Pegasi had the highest base body temperature of the three main pony races, and it gave the pressure a certain level of gentle heat.
"What are you doing?" It seemed important to ask.
"...pressure carry. In case you slip."
Which encouraged a rather natural follow-up question. "Can you --" Because a swoop and momentum bleed-off was one thing, but carrying...
"...I'm stronger than I look." And Fleur heard the smile. "You'll be okay."
The awkward pause was also audible.
"...you're not very good at this," Fluttershy added. "I know bad fliers. I'm not good. But you're horrible."
The humor registered in Fleur's ears, and did so while it was in the middle of setting off what she felt was both a rather reasonable reaction and explanation. Something which could be accomplished simultaneously by the same three words.
"I'm a unicorn."
"...yes," Fluttershy agreed after a few seconds. "...Twilight's been having the same problem. But she actually has wings. Do you do this a lot?"
Moons of memories replayed within a second of time.
"Not anymore," Fleur quietly answered. "Will you let me look at your injuries?"
"...yes. Even though the doctors already did, because you're worried. And... I accept the apology. That you're sorry you yelled." Pink light added its own tones to yellow fur. "I'm sorry you yelled too."
Fleur wondered if that had been a joke. Then she wondered if it was the right place to have that thought, and any actual discussion seemed to require ground. "So... can we go down now?"
"...yes." The pegasus' legs pressed more tightly, and did so with surprising power -- but Fleur didn't drop her corona. It was still important to have a backup plan. "I'll steer."
They began to descend through the cloud. The world went grey.
"Fluttershy?"
"...I've got you."
"I want to take you into Canterlot. In three days, after you've had some time to just -- be home. There's some things I have to do in the capital, and it'll help if you're with me. Will you come?"
Two bodies, each battered in its own way, with both still beautiful, emerged into open air.
"...yes."
"Thank you."
Animals were staring up at them from the cottage doorway. Several birds were already coming up to meet them.
"...and you have a very frightened shrew on your back."
There were easily two hundred ponies in the huge hall within the noble's ancient Canterlot house, moving under the seven crystal chandeliers while dressed in all their finery. Just about none of them had bothered to look up and of those who had, none realized that there were supposed to be six chandeliers. Nopony had spotted the book, carefully supported by curving brass arms.
"...what are we doing?" Harem Fantasy tentatively asked.
Several shards grinned.
"Scouting. Now, keep an eye --"
"I don't have eyes."
"And yet you can see," the chandelier huffily noted. "So work with me here. Start by watching the white unicorn stallion. Closely. I've heard a few things about him..."
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That chandelier is Discord, right?
(Also, I'm kind of hoping Fleur keeps the shrew.)
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Gotta be, and watching Fancy Pants too!
And here I thought it was a rapid transition to Fleur and Fluttershy in Canterlot!
...
Fear of no Sun... Overshadow! That's so good!
Self-levitation means a certain level of Field Strength, and her capability lets us guess at her Dexterity...
...
I wonder if the precise Mission matters, or if it's just setup for this. Either way works.
please tell me discord isn’t going to try to set fluttershy up with blue blood, on second toght I don’t want to know.
A simple statement, but true, and impressively deep. One of my favorite things about your writing, because you do it so well.
A nice touch, seeing what it was like for other ponies, when NMM returned. I've rarely seen that in any fic, and never one of yours. At least not that I remember.
And as for that pony at the end, there are only two white unicorns I can think of, especially that Discord would have heard anything about. And I can't imagine him being willing to pair up Blueblood with Fluttershy. Which only leaves Fancy Pants, and that could lead to some very interesting consequences on the coming Canterlot trip, if not sooner. I mean, sure Shining Armor fits the description, too, but I'd guess he's still in the Crystal Empire. Unless he's just visiting for some reason. Even then, though, Discord has to know he's married. Unless he's trying to set up a herd, maybe to cover both possibilities of Fluttershy's sexuality. Might just be the kind of mistake someone with his history of romantic understanding could make.
Neat, an update. It has been some time but I am glad to see a new chapter. On top of it, Fluttershy is back and it feels like it will be able to move forward now.
Yay! My favorite continuing story!
Well, with the social chain talk it is all but explicitly confirmed she’s from Protocera.
It’s great to hear Lyra and Bon Bon got the most special spell done. They are the most adorable couple. 50% Off confirmed that.
For a second I though Fluttershy was going to learn she is Fluer’s prison sentence. The Caramel stuff was nice and my expectations were subverted when it turned out to be just a nuzzle for friends. When she said she was afraid of overshadow, my thought was attacking Dragons or Griffins. Interesting it seems to be eternal night. Seems like nightmare moon returning might be what pushed her over the top.
Great stuff. Let’s have another!
I lean toward thinking it’s Fancy Pants being stalked but it could be a random Blueblood.
Hype is real. This has Absolutely made my night and possibly month.
I'm so stoked about everything in here. It's got all the greatest hits: backstory hints, traumas, bonding and reconciliation (literally in heaven!!! Estee!! Ehat the fuck!!), semi-confirmation of my pet theory that Fleur potentially has some pegasus in her, but just the fact that she can self-levitate is really cool in and of itself. And more. Literally carried her out of the sky. Like my brain is exploding from the dopamine.
Anyway, this was amazing and absolutely wild. I really love this chapter. It's like it was made for me. [Insert Junji Ito panel here of the dude climbing in the hole. I'm the dude.]
Hurrah, it continues! Oh, Fleur. By the end of this, you're going to be terribly attached, aren't you?
I’m glad to see that your life is going well enough that you can write
I wish this was cannon; it's filling in a lot of stuff I wanted to happen in the main cannon.
For some reason...I have this image of Discord and Takeshi Kovacs getting together and getting along uncomfortably well.
Discord has the kind of written/vocal cadence of Kovacs in his stories, and the same attitude. It's disturbingly coincidental.
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Don’t forget, Discord’s research assistant is a harem fantasy novel. She’s probably going to have some bias to polygamy. I doubt Shining and Cadance would move from the Crystal Empire, or Fluttershy moving to there.
There is a part of me that wants to see Fleur and Cadance compare notes. And for Twilight to meet Harem Fantasy. And for Rarity to try to read Harem Fantasy...
Okay, I’d happily see my Patreon money going towards a Harem Fantasy spin-off story. She could travel across Equestria as part of the new free mini library program. Give Luna an insight into the experience from the book’s point of view... (A minute of hysterical laughter later, if Estee ever decides to take commissions, I know what I’m buying!)
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That's what I thought, too. Some shadow passing overhead, like a predator. Especially with how much emphasis and effort she puts on/into not being prey.
9856739
I did consider that a part of what I meant by his romantic understanding. IIRC, Discord understood some of the more biological aspects of mating/breeding, but didn't understand romance at all, beyond some basic, intellectual awareness that it was a thing. Which is why he went to the library where he ultimately picked up Harem Fantasy. So his knowledge basically consists of one rather confusing study-binge, from sources that seemed somewhat confused. Of course, it has been months since I read the relevant chapters, so I may be mistaken. If so, then just ignore my misguided ramblings.
Also, just how many harem stories actually end in polygamy? I think pretty much all of the admittedly few I've read still end with the protagonist getting together with just one potential suitor. And being in Equestria, where herds are a legal thing really doesn't matter, since they've been described as so rare as to hardly count. Then again, I suppose Harem's views really depend on whether or not she knows about the more adult examples of her genre.
Man, that scene about what Nightmare Moon's return was like for the common pony was extremely well done. I don't think I've ever read a scene like that before. I really liked it.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
Discord is trying to learn. I find that interesting. I find that Fluer is gonna bankrupt Celestia to be hilarious though. But the real interesting thing is that Fluer just showed she cares about Fluttershys well being. And maybe she can impart that need for self care onto her charge. Because if nothing else the fact the girls come home battered and bruised and just move on with life is just plain wrong and shows the lack of care on the goverments behalf on there well being.
Could Sweetbarks talent be literally telling the health of a creature? She can see the health bars over them so she known to select those least likely to die so she doesn't have to be so lucky?
Wonderful as always. Highlights are the reaction to the endless night and the return of dawn, and her growing to have a genuine friendship with Caramel. You can tell it's real because she's letting some honesty slip out without even planning it. Heck, she did that last chapter too with the soup, even if it didn't go so well. She's learning.
Capable of guilt and empathy? Check. Not a sociopath. There's hope for her yet.
And as a small detail, just Fleur INSISTING that the cottage get the repair it desperately needs and billing the Palace. It actually occurs to me, talking about how the Palace doesn't provide enough for the bearers? There's a quote from Digger. "The Gods will provide, honored Digger." "Yeah, okay, see I think what you're failing to grasp here is that your god DID provide, and what he provided was ME." If you think that providing Fluttershy someone who will bill the palace for the best and highest quality work possible as long as it's for her out of sheer spite was an accident, you may be surprised...
And Fleur's conversation with Shy, apologizing but making it clear that Fluttershy needs to value herself, and that she cares and all... really great.
That shrew will be a perfect pet for Fleur, on a number of levels. Vicious little predator, always hungry and hunting, one of the only venomous mammals, but smart and resourceful and adaptable and intelligent. And, yes, capable of being affectionate in the right circumstances.
Urgh I ran out of chapters before Fluttershy could find out about Fleur acting as, shall we say, the real kind of vet. And for Fleur to get back to Sweetie. I'm trying not to fall in love with unfinished fics these days, and this is why.
Unrelated thoughts:
- So many Estee stories are about trauma. Fleur's more formative experiences are pretty much out in the open at this point even if we're missing a few details, and it really is painful to see what they've done to her. So many Estee stories are about trauma, which naturally means so many Estee stories are about healing, and that's why I need the rest of this fic post haste uuuuugh
- Estee stories don't like to state the obvious, which means I have to pay complete attention just to get 95 percent of it. I remember noticing a while ago that part of the writing process is to decide where you want to fall between making sure the audience is following along at the expense of subtlety and the patience of the more keyed-in and active readers, versus taking advantage of the extra weight and richness you can get out of ambiguity and leaving things unstated at the expense of people who just got home from a long day at work and want to read something easy. Estee goes straight for the latter, and I appreciate their misplaced trust in my reading abilities.
- Shrew!!
- I'm a soppy person who wants Fleur to end up with Fluttershy, obviously after Fleur makes some serious progress as a person. That's probably the happiest possible ending, right? Comedy ending is for one of them to end up with Harem Fantasy, who, by the way, is great. In a fic like this, her naivety is touching.
- How much of Celestia's sentence for Fleur is aimed at rehabilitation, and if so, how much does she know about Fleur's early life and how did it figure into her decision? What exactly is her sentence supposed to do to her? Nearly any answer makes Celestia kind of an asshole, but we'll see I guess.
- Making this fic non-canon is an interesting move. It means Fluttershy's eventual life partner could be absolutely anybody and we won't know from other fics, it means anything could happen to Sweetbark, Caramel, Fluttershy's sad life, and anything or anyone else. Love the tension! On the other hand, it means any personal progress the characters make is not going to carry over to other fics, which is a bummer. Fleur could very well turn Fluttershy's entire life around and it won't mean anything to canon Fluttershy.
- God I want Fleur to make friends with Rarity and Twi. GOD.
- GOD I want that.
9857311
I thought that was exactly what was being implied. Which would still be an enormous boon for a vet, triage and everything and being able to know you’re making the right call on euthanasia. But she’s too much of a coward to take real responsibility for her gift, and uses it like *this* instead.
Now I find myself hoping that Fleur and Cadence did get to compare notes in the main Continuum. It would certainly make for an interesting discussion.
And it's hardly Fleur's concern whether or not it shouldn't.
Does anyone? Ever? Dare I even ask where the platypus came from? (Maybe Fluttershy's looking after it for Discord...)
That's certainly an optimistic way of looking at Ponyville.
And that's a poetic way of looking at Fluttershy.
Lyra and Bonbon have a baby on the way? I see Half! happened several months back, then.
It's funny. You see so many stories rehash Nightmare Moon's return, and so few of them consider what it's like for ponies who don't set out to track down the Elements. Or have any context for what happened to the sun. I don't think I've seen something like this since The Silver Standard.
Plus, between the flashback and the record of Fleur's Nightmare Nights, we have a rough timeline of her time in Equestria. Along with confirmation of her homeland, or at least where she had a lot of formative experiences, though that had basically been spelled out even before this chapter.
The Tree almost certainly isn't a thing in the Continuum, but I do have to wonder about plundervines...
Maybe some of this is because we're looking at through Fleur's eyes, but this reads almost like Celestia is performing domestic abuse by proxy on the Bearers with these missions.
I have to appreciate how the chapter title could refer to medicine, autolevitation, or empathy.
Excellent heart-to-heart. As with Caramel, Fleur is seeing Fluttershy as a person, not just an asset. Of course, it's Fleur's job to see Fluttershy as a person, but still, this is a very good experience for both of them. Hopefully the trip to Canterlot will go...
Okay, Fleur's return to Canterlot is going to be awkward no matter what. Let's just hope for something other than the worst case scenario. Which, if Discord is still in town, may involve the entire city sliding off the mountain.
9857311
Well, we know that Doctor Sweetbark's luck runs out eventually, as in later season's she's either replaced by, or acquires competition in the form of, the demonstrably more competent Doctor Fauna, who actually gets recommendations from Fluttershy. This allows Fluttershy to transition from being the one ponies go to when Doctor Sweetbark turns them away to being the one ponies go to once Doctor Fauna has dealt with the primary problems and all their pets require is a quite and safe place to recover.
All signs point to Fluttershy and Doctor Fauna having developed a good working relationship where they both respect each other in a professional capacity as well as actually being friends.
So we (the readers) have seen the future, whether or not Doctor Sweetbark gets replaced or just acquires competent competition: the pressure on Fluttershy to take care of the workload lessens, and she (somehow) ends up with enough funds to build the animal sanctuary she has always dreamed of. Still, from the perspective of those in this story, this future remains unknown.
Good on Caramel for not wanting Doctor Sweetbark's luck to run out for the sake of the pets.
"back, Angel: not right"
"back, Angel; not right"?
"the pegasus' back"
"the pegasus's back"?
"I have lineament."
"I have liniment."?
(Turns out those are actually two different words; I didn't know either before looking them up.)
"The pegasus' legs"
"The pegasus's legs"?
Excellent, in a variety of ways in different places. :)
9857961
I know what you mean about the bruises. I can't think of any reason Celestia would have for that, though I haven't gotten enough of a run up to tackle Tryptych yet. But that doesn't mean there isn't one. And certainly the neglect and danger would be explained by that in a lot of ways. And Celestia has serious issues, as you'd expect for someone who ruled a thousand years after surviving Discord's reign and banishing her sister. I know she still gets ptsd attacks about farming, for example, because Discord targeted agriculture specifically.
9857974
There's a flaw in your logic.
Estee has been writing in a roughly consistent 'verse (but fears and hates that word) for years. That meant assigning names and personalities to characters that didn't have them yet. Snowflake (Bulk Biceps) is the most visible example.
Sweetbark is based on the veterinarian that sees Spike during his season two growth spurt. The same veterinarian that is finally labeled 'Dr. Fauna' in season seven.
While that confrontation would be kind of amazing, it's not going to happen because they're the same character.
IT HAS EVER BEEN OF IMPORTANCE THAT THE CITIZENRY HAVE CONFIDENCE A NEW GENERATION OF ROYALTY IS FORTHCOMING!
Oh Fleur, it almost sounds like you're not trying to save your own ass.
9856452
When she first described a fear of darkness overhead, I thought eventually we would get a story about how some monster like a wyvern or roc tried to eat her. But no, she means the entire sky itself. Now, that seems like something that would be downright common.
Which raises the question of what Sweetbark does in case of natural death. Or rather, almost-natural death. An animal who suffers something significant in the last moons or days of what should be their natural lifespan? Does she send them to Flutters, too, or does she actually grow a pair and do her job? Or maybe she sends them to Canterlot, on some excuse? That last one actually sounds the most likely, because I really can't imagine a greater risk to her reputation than a lifelong patient suddenly turned away in their last, worst hour of need.
Or is this part of her luck? Has she just not been in town long enough to deal with a natural death yet? I really don't remember how long she's been in town, but I think she predated Twilight, which means at least three years, and that sounds like it should be long enough for some of the shorter-lived animals to at least be nearing their time.
Hell, maybe Caramel's right, and her Mark lets her know if an animal is supposed to live a full, mostly-healthy life. But still, accidents do happen, especially outside of her--apparently not-exactly-generous--office hours. That much, at least, is pretty obviously just luck. But luck runs out sometime, and I just hope we all get to see it.
9858545
The moon and stars have been put away, but the sun is hours late. No light, just darkness. Absolutely blind, but your eyes are fine. Screaming, everywhere. Celestia is presumably dead. And you’re so alone. No Light of Harmony, or a Warm Hearth, or friends or family. Just the certainty that we will ALL die now.
Wait a minute, I thought Fleur flew--sorry, levitated--herself to the cottage earlier in the fic. I don't remember exactly when, but I think it was in the morning. Maybe the day after the party? I remember she was in a hurry, and I think she checked around her to make sure no one was watching, then the scene cut to the cottage, almost suspiciously.
Also, caught a typo.
I believe that should be supported.
I do not like Doctrix Sweetbark. She can postpone the loss of her 1st patient but not prevent it:
Veterinarians see 5 times more death than Hospiceworkers. That is why they have such an high suiciderate:
In their profession, they must euthanize multiple animals daily, and when it gets to be too much, they have access to powerful general anesthetics and narcotics, plus the knowledge for mixing them into and injectable which has a less than .1% of not being lethal.
Her luck will run out and she will learn the terrible burden Fluttershy must bear, which you described very well in 500 Little Murders. As it is know, she evades the responsibility and burden of her profession.
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Huh. I'm not hearing that at all, but it has been a few years since I've read any of those. ...I'll try them again once the local libraries are a bit more accessible.
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Depends on your source for the harem story. While most of the Japanese comedy imports do end up in a single pairing regardless of the genders involved (with a small niche available for a legal-pair-plus-one-more), I've seen more serious Western fare where the girl ends up with a lot of boys. (As in one woman in committed, emotional and sexual relationships with over a dozen men at once.) Not sure why, given that such setups are usually depicted as generating a lot of stress, upheaval and drama. Unless that's the point, of course. (Written works being written by writers to be writeable and all that.)
Heh. Nice to know I was picking up the clues, even if I am coming to them fairly late.
Hmm... interesting that that night of terror doesn't seem to have much impact on a certain night princess's appeal to Fleur.
What is up with that shrew?