Slice of Strife

by helmet of salvation

4. A bit of a disgrace

She couldn't stay in hiding forever.

Ponies were counting on her.

She had to live up to her true self.

She had to overcome her fear.

Not the sharp, brutal shock of the bursting balloon that had sent her squealing behind the lounge. Again. That, thankfully, had dissipated.

This was a far deeper and more paralysing dread. One that penetrated every corner of her psyche, taunting her.

She had to perform for other ponies. In this instance, for the most implacable, unforgiving and unashamedly blunt audience of all.

Foals.

Trembling, trying to stifle her whimpers, Fluttershy slowly emerged from behind the lounge. The sight of the little pony faces almost sent her cowering straight back down. Yet the pale yellow pegasus reminded herself that she had a duty to perform, and walked as if through a lake of oil to the front of the lounge, in front of the audience whose collective gaze struck such terror into her.

Not that all of the birthday guests were even looking at her. Some were glancing around the living room in bored distraction, or murmuring to one another with frowns of annoyance. Yet most were staring at the party pony with muted expectation.

One pegasus filly with a coat the colour of a fresh, deep spring sat front and centre of the group. She wore a silver-coloured crown with a bright blue jewel at its centre atop her golden-maned head. Her disarmingly pretty face bore a pleading expression, punctuated with anxious glances at her friends and young relatives.

"Um, maybe we can leave the balloon animals aside for a moment." This part of Fluttershy's act had gone much better in rehearsal. She had assembled the long, thin, balloons of multiple colours into an assortment of adorable animals—bunnies, poodles, snails, behemoths—with little difficulty, despite her lack of telekinetic magic and opposable digits. Yet the pressure of having all those pony eyes trained on her, boring into her as if collectively willing her to fail, shattered her confidence and with it her dexterity. One balloon after another either popped or zipped deflating around the room like an angry wasp before she could even tie it off. Both outcomes startled Fluttershy into cowering behind the lounge. At first the foals thought it was part of her act and tittered accordingly. Yet the apparent running gag quickly ran itself into the ground.

"Oh, I know! I have a little story to tell that I'm sure you'll all just love." Fluttershy cleared her throat. "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful pony with a long, golden, flowing mane and a coat that shone like polished silver. She lived in a magnificent palace surrounded by pretty flowers and every day adorable critters would come to visit her."

Several of the assembled fillies had begun to groan in dismay.

"A fairy tale?" cried one earth pony. "It's not bedtime."

"Then why do I feel like falling asleep?" replied a mauve-coated unicorn, eliciting more laughter than anything Fluttershy had said or done so far.

"Stop it you guys." Wildest Dreams, the filly of honour, turned back to Fluttershy with increasing anxiety. "Fluttershy, do something."

"Um," Fluttershy rummaged around in her props and found a mask with round, lensless eyeglasses, a pink fright wig and a wide, toothy smile with thick lips. "Look at this, everypony." She hooked the mask over her own face.

The ponies looked at her, waiting for the payoff. Alas, Fluttershy thought that the mask itself was the payoff. "It's a funny face." She pointed to her mask, as if that would help her audience understand.

"Great," said the mauve unicorn. "A fake smile. Can't you even pretend you're happy to be here?"

"Can't you?" Wildest Dreams implored through clenched teeth to the unicorn.

"Um, let me just ... oh wait, I just remembered a really funny story. You—hee-hee—you should have seen what Pound Cake did with Pumpkin's toy butterfly the other day..."

* * *

As Applejack approached Wildest Dreams's home, her hasty trot ground to a desolate stagger at the realisation of her worst fears. Two pony fillies exited the house and stomped with an unmistakable air of disappointment to their waiting parents. There were no squeals of merriment from within, no joyous songs, no animated chatter. The party was over.

Next to emerge was Fluttershy, having caught sight of her friend from the living room window. Her head hung low, her eyes were downcast, her hooves barely left the ground. Stains of various thrown foodstuffs marred her hide and her dishevelled, candy-pink mane.

Applejack felt her stomach churn at the sight. Fluttershy was the gentlest, most tender-hearted pony she knew. There was nothing she wouldn't do for her friends if she could. She'd do it with a smile, too.

And she'd let her down.

"Fluttershy, ah am so, so sorry. Things took longer than ah thought to get ready, then ah ran into some trouble on the way and, well, ah guess none of that matters now. All that matters is mah tardiness ruined yer whole party."

The pegasus slowly turned her head from the frocks to her friend. "It's okay, Applejack. Somehow I don't think those frocks would have saved this party."

Applejack grimaced. "That bad, huh?"

"Awful. Just awful."

The earth pony was taken aback at this blunt assessment. So much for gentle and tender-hearted. "Well, ah'm sorry things weren't more to yer likin'."

"Thank you, Applejack."

And the hits just kept coming. It was bad enough having her creations denounced so brutally—from a friend, no less—but Fluttershy standing there all meek and humble as if she was just passing the time of day was intolerable. Applejack gulped down her pain and spoke with a slight break in her voice. "Guess ah'll just take these awful frocks back to the boutique then."

"Wait, what?"

"Maybe next time y'all can get yer fancy party outfits shipped in from Manehattan." She turned to leave.

"I never said your frocks were——" Realising to her horror what Applejack must have thought she meant, Fluttershy flew with rare (for her) speed past the earth pony and prostrated herself in front of her. "No, no, no, I wasn't talking about your frocks. I would never...I was just...I..." The stress of her verbal mix-up weakened her suppression of the ordeal of her failed party. Her words devolved into pitiful, unintelligible squeaks as her emotions obliterated her composure.

The sight of Fluttershy's breakdown quickly overcame Applejack's own hurt. She unhitched herself from her rack, knelt down on the dusty path and gathered the quivering pegasus in her forelegs. Fluttershy's sobs were muffled as she buried her muzzle into Applejack's side.

Even as she gave vent to her misery, Fluttershy found herself drawing comfort from Applejack's strong yet gentle embrace. She felt a calloused forehoof patting her on the back, giving further balm for her suffering.

Then the pats became harder and more rapid, and it dawned on Fluttershy that the earth pony had been trying to get her attention.

"Hey, Chuckles!"

Fluttershy winced, then turned towards the source of the irate male voice. A bronze-coated pegasus, moderately tall yet powerfully built, stood before her. He jerked his blond-maned, square-muzzled head towards the house. "Our living room isn't gonna clean itself up, you know."

Keeping one foreleg around Fluttershy, Applejack took off her Stetson hat and held it over her chest. "Please Mr Hard Bargain sir, won't y'all give Fluttershy a minute to collect herself first? She's upset."

"Upset?!" Veins bulged on Hard Bargain's neck as he turned his scowl from Applejack back to Fluttershy and jabbed a forehoof towards the upper storey of the house. "My daughter is devastated. She's been looking forward to this party for years. You heard. We can't afford a big fancy celebration for all our foals' birthdays every year, so for Wildest Dreams this was supposed to be the big one. The one she could invite all her friends and favourite cousins to. And what did she get?" The brawny stallion began mincing and fidgeting about and spoke a hesitant, flustered, high-pitched whimper. "'Oh, um, oh my goodness, um, that wasn't supposed to, aaieee, um, oh, please laugh'." Sadly, this was only a modest exaggeration of Fluttershy's performance. "You ruined Dreamy's special day. You humiliated her in front of her friends. You...you just...have you even met any foals before? Do you have the first clue what they think is fun?"

Turning away to try and calm himself, Hard Bargain caught sight of Applejack's trolley. "I take it these are the rental frocks I ordered as part of this sweet package deal you two offered me. The frocks that should have been here hours ago."

Applejack rose to her hooves and bowed her head. "Ah'm powerful sorry about the delay, sir. It was unavoidable."

"Unavoidable, huh?" The stallion walked a steady ellipse around the rack, his look of distaste growing with every step. "Maybe you could have sped things up a little by actually using those sketches you showed me as a guide. Or if you'd spent less time making the outfits look extra ugly."

Applejack swallowed heavily to keep silent the retort that came to her mind. "Again, sir, ah can only apolog——"

"Oh, put a bridle on it. I take it I'm not paying for these."

Fluttershy, meanwhile, was beside herself with guilt. She had been so preoccupied with her own shame and sense of failure that she had given no thought to how this afternoon might have affected Wildest Dreams. Her destiny was to bring joy; instead, she had wrought only boredom, misery and humiliation.

There was only one way to salvage something from this disgrace. She would have to return Hard Bargain's deposit in full and waive the balance. It wouldn't give Wildest Dreams her birthday party back but at least her family might have the means to do something else special for her.

Even as Fluttershy made up her mind, a slew of anxieties beset her. The bills for her various party supplies—balloons, banners, party hats, paint—would be arriving before she knew it. With no revenue from Wildest's party, squaring her accounts would be tough. She could not face the thought of begging her vendors for extensions again: they had their own bills to pay, after all. Putting in more hours at Sugarcube Corner—the local patisserie where Fluttershy worked part-time as a live-in apprentice baker—was unlikely to help either. Mr and Mrs Cake, the proprietors, had already indicated that since the arrival of their twin foals, Pound and Pumpkin, there was little in their budget for extra shifts.

The only option Fluttershy could see would be to dig into her savings. That would probably mean living on grass and water until she could restore her accumulated bits to more secure levels. It was a grim prospect but she had only herself to blame. Rising to her hooves, she steeled herself to put forth her proposition, silently, desperately hoping it would pacify her client.

"As for you, Fluttercry, what kind of discount are you gonna offer me for that fiasco?"

"Um...I...um..."

Hard Bargain swivelled his right ear towards Fluttershy and flared his wing behind it. "Hmm? What's that? Fifty percent? Hmm." He cocked his head and scratched his lower jaw with his forehoof, pretending to consider the un-offered discount.

"Um, actually, I was thinking, um——"

"Um um um tell you what, if you can get our living room back to how you found it in fifteen minutes starting now, I'll take it. Every minute longer means another five percent off."

"Oh-o-okay." Fluttershy had never dreamt that it might sometimes pay to be unassertive.

"Done." Feeling somewhat mollified by his imaginary triumph, Hard Bargain spun around and stamped back to his house. Relieved at the mitigation of her financial loss but no less ashamed, Fluttershy prepared to slink after him.

"Need some help, Fluttershy?"

"Oh, I couldn't ask you to do that. You must be behind in your own work as it is."

"Ah can spare fifteen minutes. Come on now."

Thanks to the strong, hard-working earth pony's assistance, Fluttershy had the living room cleaned and straightened well within her deadline. The pair crammed the bags of collected trash into Fluttershy's red party wagon, along with her still-usable party supplies.

Hard Bargain made a show of checking every corner and furnishing of the room, then left and re-entered moments later with a clinking sack of bits. Their value, combined with his deposit, totalled half of the quoted price for Fluttershy's party. With no good grace, the stallion hurled the sack straight at the cringing pegasus mare—Applejack intercepted it just in time, catching it in her teeth—and sent the pair off with an emphatic declaration that he had no intention of doing business with either of them again. As the two friends slunk shamefacedly out, Wildest Dreams's parents headed upstairs to her bedroom to try to deal with the other mess that Fluttershy had left behind.

* * *

For several minutes the ponies made no sound except for their slow hoofbeats and the trundling of Applejack's clothing rack and Fluttershy's party wagon along the dusty pathways. Eventually Fluttershy spoke up. "Um, sorry for all that bawling back there."

"Ain't nuthin' to be sorry about, sugar cube. Y'all know yew can vent to me about anything."

"I'm glad to hear you say that."

Her ears pricking up, Applejack turned to her friend. "Go on."

"Do, do you ever wish that, um, you had a-a different...destiny?"

"Sure do." Applejack jolted to a halt with a snort of alarm. "Ah mean, uh..." Her widened green eyes darted every which way as she tried to think of some way to walk back her unguarded comment, to make herself sound less like a quitter. Yet her mind was blank; indeed it seemed to be actively blocking her. "Aw shoot. It mighta crossed mah mind once er twice."

"When I first got my cutie mark, after I'd organised that high tea for the Ponyville Birdwatchers club, I thought all my dreams had come true. Now it feels like I'm in a nightmare and I can't wake up." The pegasus turned away. "It must sound silly to you, getting all panicked over a lot of birthday cake and party hats."

"Ah'd never think anythin' like that," said Applejack, who sometimes privately wondered about the importance of her own vocation.

"But there's so much more to parties than food and decorations. I have to entertain the guests. I have to be the centre of attention. I hate that. I hate mingling with and talking to strange ponies when I don't even know what to say to them, and all the time I have to act like I'm really happy about it. I feel like I-I don't even know what I'm doing." She groaned in powerless frustration. "Can't Twilight just wave her magic horn and make everything all right?"

Her forehooves shot to her mouth, causing her hindquarters to drop to the ground, as she registered what she had just blurted out. Twilight Sparkle was one of her dearest friends. The unicorn mare from Canterlot had stuck by her, and her four other friends, through their many tough times, when few other ponies would even give them the time of day. Fluttershy had no right to take out her frustrations on the unicorn. Her inability to live up to her own destiny was hardly Twilight's fault, after all.

She risked a timid glance at Applejack and saw to her relief that there was no reproach in the earth pony's eyes. "Ah get it, Fluttershy. But even if we asked we both know what she'd say."

Fluttershy heaved a sigh and spoke mechanically, by rote. "That a cutie mark reflects a pony's true inherent nature and no unicorn magic can change it."

"Yes ma'am. An' that's just the way it oughta be. Think about it. Can you imagine a pony, even one as smart and good-hearted as Twilight, bein' able to change other ponies' destinies?"

Fluttershy gaped in horror. Not even Twilight was immune from making mistakes. Worse, the power to control ponies' true selves could corrupt even the most innocent of souls. Ponies could wind up trying to do all kinds of crazy things. Rainbow Dash making dresses, Rarity working the Apple farm, Pinkie Pie controlling the weather. "It could be a catastrophe."

"Exactly. So don't go whittlin' yer life away wishin' an' hopin' fer somethin' that ain't never gonna happen. We just gotta put our heads down and do what we're destined to do."

"I know. I just don't think I can cope for much longer. I don't have your strength." Fluttershy began to sag in chagrin. She felt Applejack's forehoof gently lifting her lower jaw and guiding it until the two ponies faced each other.

"Yew will always have mah strength, no matter what. So keep yer chin up."

"Um, and my head down?"

Applejack frowned in puzzlement for a moment, before the mixture of her own metaphors dawned on her. "Heh. Yup, that too. Heh-heh."

A laugh.

An unmalicious, honest-to-goodness laugh. Just a little chuckle but, considering its source, undoubtedly genuine.

And Fluttershy had made it happen, however inadvertently.

The joy that flooded into Fluttershy's heart brought forth a trickle of dainty titters from her own throat. Her mirth infected Applejack, making the earth pony chuckle some more, and the two resumed their journey in somewhat higher spirits.