A Wrong-Sized Tail

by Impossible Numbers

Preparing for Beauty

“Honestly, Fluttershy dear, you’d look stunning with these new tail decorations,” said Rarity from the neighbouring bath. “Yours is a canvas I’d be honoured to work upon.”

Seaweed-wrapped in her mud bath, Fluttershy lifted up one of the cucumber slices, wincing as a drop of brown goop hit her eye. She’d only just been talked into trying a full spa makeover, Rarity-style, and that could take half a day at best. But this? This was all too fast!

Fighting back the urge to shrivel up, she said as politely as she could, “Maybe another time? I think the massage was really enough experimenting for today.”

Yes. Harder than she usually liked, at the instigation of Rarity, and now it left her with a spine making short, sharp complaints to the manager. She winced as another one landed hard on her brain’s desk.

“Oh, the massage is more a therapeutic thing,” said Rarity carelessly. “But I’ve always said you possess a natural grace and beauty, and what kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t help you reach your full potential?”

“I’m… fine with this potential, thanks.”

“Hm. You’re enjoying the full mud bath treatment, I take it? Not too hot for you?”

“No, but…” Fluttershy grimaced. “I just agreed to this bath to be polite. I’ll only get mud on my coat later anyway.”

Cucumbers covering her own eyes, Rarity nevertheless looked in the right direction and raised an eyebrow at her. “You’ve started home treatments?”

“No, I meant I’ll get mud on it when I clean out Harry’s cave.” Fluttershy winced as another drop of mud hit her eye, and she lowered the cucumber piece and her dripping hoof. “Bears aren’t the best at housekeeping,” she added, with a sorry smile.

Once more, Rarity sighed, like a schoolgirl who’d been denied a triple hot fudge sundae. “I’ll have you one day yet, Fluttershy, so be it!” More cheerfully, she added, “Oh, but wait until you try the new hoof bubble bath. Aloe Vera and Lotus Blossom assure me the new salts are environmentally sound and leave your feet sparkling like stars! Stars! Sapphire Shores swears by it, you should see the new advertisements at Barnyard Bargains… Not that I shop there myself, obviously Applejack happened to mention it in passing…”

Fluttershy nodded before she remembered Rarity was currently blinded by green produce, so instead she switched hastily to saying “uh huh?” and “gosh” and “oh my!” at the right bits.

It had taken a long time, years ago, for Rarity to convince her to join the spa at all. Over time, Rarity tried to ply her more and more with the services they offered. Why, it was a kind of beauty creep.

Flattering, though. In a way.

After all, no one else took to it like Fluttershy did. Rainbow Dash barely cared beyond being pampered like a Wonderbolt celebrity, and that was the only reason Fluttershy could see for her.

Twilight and Applejack sometimes popped in, but they always gave the impression of having left their minds at home – on a recent royal report, say, or on a list of pig-feeding chores.

Pinkie rarely even looked in. Spa treatments were gifts given to the right friends, as far as Miss Pinkamena “All Give and No Take” Pie was concerned.

Whereas Fluttershy made it a weekly thing. Beauty didn’t feature much in nature except in very abstract, personal, and hard-to-share terms.

For instance, she could look at the orange richness of a monarch butterfly, alone in a meadow, but… well, she couldn’t really talk about such a sight to other ponies. It didn’t make sense if she questioned why. It was just one of those things. A pony had to be there when the wings blinked, and if they were there, then words didn’t matter anyway.

Besides, any mare who loved nature nevertheless must accept that most of it was barely house-trained, and definitely not toilet-trained. Sooner or later, it involved… Fluttershy daren’t even think the word… All right, call it “muck”. It brought her azaleas up a treat, but that wasn’t the sort of thing you told Rarity.

Yours is a canvas I’d be honoured to work upon.

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy! Hello? Is anyone home?”

“Hm? What?” Fluttershy cocked her ears and realized the chatter had stopped. “Oh. Sorry, Rarity. I, er, I think the hot mud is making me woozy.”

“Woozy!?” said Rarity, at once all concern.

“I meant drowsy,” Fluttershy corrected, mentally clipping herself round the ear. “I’m fine. I’m not ill or anything.”

“Oh, thank goodness. I wouldn’t want to push you too far out of your comfort zone.” Not quietly enough, Rarity murmured, “Much as it pains me to resist.”

Fluttershy chewed her lip, and instantly regretted it. The mud facial still left a funny stickiness she didn’t want to taste twice.

“Rarity, when you said my… tail was a canvas…?” she said, as though apologizing for bringing up the point.

In some ways, Rarity was a quick thinker. “I only meant that it looks lovely as it is, but if you don’t mind my being so forward, there is room for – there is potential for ‘fantastic’, or even – dare I say it? – ‘fantastique’!”

Fluttershy wondered if she could die from overblushing. She felt it. She felt it from a heart collapsing in on itself, and she felt it up to her head, which sank lower into the mud from lack of support. Was Rarity saying too much? She talked fast, like someone hastily papering over a mark on the wall.

Nothing had been overheard, but Fluttershy really hoped the spa ponies had not wandered back in, quietly or otherwise. They usually left her and Rarity to talk right about now, but then she’d never been in the bath for so long.

On the other hoof, perhaps it was indeed time to talk about this. Rarity would never blab to anyone else, and… and who else was better to ask than someone with her vision?

Still, Fluttershy shuffled her legs before plucking up the nerve, which twanged horribly under all the strain.

And she raised the cucumber slice again, to make sure no one else was around.

Opposite, Rarity rested her head and smiled.

“My, um, my tail’s not too… not too… long? Is it?” Fluttershy whispered.

A frown flickered over Rarity’s face. Surprise trickled out of her voice when she next spoke.

“Of course not,” she said. “Why would it be?”

The words scarred Fluttershy’s brain. If her tail was too long now, then that meant it was really, actually, naturally too short.

“Um…” she said, and the hot mud was nothing to how her face felt right now. The cucumber slice sizzled, and so did the other when she dropped it. Suddenly, she didn’t want to see Rarity’s expression.

“Something the matter?” said Rarity.

Fluttershy struck out wildly. “It can be a bit… um… impractical, maybe. I –” Then the horror of what she was doing jumped out at her. “Rarity, please promise me this doesn’t leave the room!”

“But of course, but of course! Fluttershy, whatever is it? You sound like someone’s torn up your home.”

“You promise?”

“Promise? I won’t just promise! I will give you my word and my life.”

“No one else will hear it?”

“May I be tied to a stake, shaved, set on fire, and – ulp – forced to watch every single one of my most prized gowns be torn asunder by wild dogs before I betray your trust!” And because Rarity, even at her most gallant, had the nosiness of a true gossip, she added, “Now tell me, tell me, tell me, please, before I explode!”

Starting to choke under all the words and the heat, Fluttershy took a deep breath. “You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure I’m sure I’m sure!” Rarity’s voice quaked with confused concern. “We’ve seen each other at our best and worst. There are no secrets between us, remember?”

After licking her lips – and coughing up the gungy taste that this left – Fluttershy screwed them up. Too late to back out now. Rarity could be trusted to keep her mouth shut, but first she’d make Fluttershy exercise hers. Fluttershy swore the unicorn sloshed in her own bath, leaning forwards.

More sympathetically, Rarity whispered, “If you’re worried about your tail, I assure you I meant no offence when I suggested ornaments. The curse of an artist, I fear. Perfectionism makes critics of gold.”

“It’s not that,” said Fluttershy, who deep down knew and seethed over the fact that it was exactly that. “Only, a long tail can be a bit… awkward, at times. Sometimes, it snags on things, or picks up dirt and leaves, and gets trapped in doors a lot –”

“Recently?” Even Rarity’s voice raised its eyebrow.

Mind stumbling, Fluttershy lied, “Not recently, no.”

“There you are, then. You’ve adapted. Everything comes together. Is that all you’re worried about?”

“No! No. Not really. No.” The stupid question stepped forwards, but such was Fluttershy’s struggling mindset that she couldn’t think of anything better. “You know it’s because of my, uh, my uh, my uh my… my…?”

Tail extensions, she said in her head. Come on. Two words, that’s all.

Tail extensions.

She hadn’t always needed them, not when she was small. At that age, her tail had seemed normal enough. Anyway, tail length didn’t matter much when there were so many other flaws for bullies to pick on, starting with her inability to fly and working up – or in her case, down – from there.

Past a certain age, though, she noticed her tail didn’t seem to grow along with her. Meanwhile, fillies had become mares and colts had become stallions. And they paid attention to things like that in other pegasi. Presentation of the tail, how the hairs flowed, how much healthy growth there was. Even that hadn’t been a problem; Fluttershy spent so much time around star-nosed moles and mockingbirds that any Cloudsdale company, much less mare and stallion company, was just a footnote. A footnote that noted, loudly and often, that she looked like she’d rolled in muck, and then left it – rather hurriedly – at that.

But then she’d moved, and she’d started talking more and more to the unicorns and earth ponies of Ponyville as well, and suddenly their eyes filled her thoughts and mulled over her memories.

She noticed the subtleties. Glances at her tail, “short” comments, “little” jokes, things which seemed innocuous at the time, and true, they might have been nothing worse than harmless little ice-breakers…

…like that one she’d just accidentally come up with…

…but she’d looked more and more in a mirror. The tail was a lot shorter than some ponies’. Definitely shorter than her own mane. It all looked wrong. Clownish. Pitiful.

She’d started wearing stuff over it. Carousel Boutique sold dresses with long, long skirts, but that meant there was a horrible time when she’d had to come in with no dress on at all, because there had to be a first time, right? So long as the businesspony behind the counter never really got a chance to see the tail…

Well, that had been hard to do when Fluttershy usually didn’t pay much attention to her posture. Bears, racoons, and wild dogs don’t care what you look like, so long as you got grub.

And then one of the days when Fluttershy had learned to trust the businesspony Rarity – who always seemed so confident, so dazzling, so carefree and friendly and basically everything Fluttershy secretly wished she was – she’d worked up the courage, and she managed to talk about her work and how the beavers were planning to take over the south fields and the butterflies had petitioned her to clear the migratory traffic over Whitetail Woods this year, and then Rarity had smiled and winked and asked the dreaded question –

“Are you thinking about tail extensions?”

Fluttershy was so surprised she only just noticed her cucumber slices had fallen off. She opened her eyes back to the present.

From her own bath, Rarity aimed a crinkled look of concern over to her – not too crinkled, not after that mud facial – but since she still had her cucumbers on, she’d aimed too far to the left.

“Mm hm,” was all Fluttershy dared murmur.

To her surprise, she watched Rarity deflate with disappointment.

“Oh, Fluttershy, everyone knows that. I knew it even before the Foal Free Press got wind of it. Do you honestly believe that we – that I think any less of you?”

“No,” said Fluttershy, much more defensively than she’d intended.

“Anyway, lots of mares have short tails. You can look beautiful with one or the other. It’s all in how you use it. And on that subject, I hope you don’t mind if I suggest plaiting yours as part of an ensemble –”

“No, thank you,” said Fluttershy, indicating firmly that this line of thought was much shorter than her tail, or darn well better be.

Rarity pouted for creation defied, but at least shrugged with a noble grace. “Oho, very well. You can’t fend me off forever, my dear. I shall persuade you yet!”

Under her breath, Fluttershy grumbled, “I bet you will.”

But she’d misjudged the volume of her voice. And Rarity’s keen ears. Which fell.

“Rarity, I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry! I only meant –”

“Fiddle-faddle and rot! You’re quite right. Yours is yours to do with as you wish. I didn’t mean to press the point so crudely.”

Fluttershy sat and gritted her teeth whilst two forces fought inside her chest. She was getting too angry, and to think she’d been on top of it for so long! Perhaps it was time? Perhaps she needed to look this thing squarely in the face, or in the tail, or whatever.

Much, much more quietly, she added, “Erm… Rarity?”

“Mm-yeeeeeeeesss?” said Rarity warily, as though approaching the smoking remains of a dragon’s nest.

Hearing that wariness in her friend’s voice, Fluttershy swallowed her cowardice, and then winced as it caught on the lump in her throat. “Actually, maybe I’d like to try something different. This time. After the spa?”

Even Rarity’s voice smiled, in that characteristic genteel fashion which meant a secret delight had been acknowledged, but that it was still being suppressed for the sake of tact.

“It would be a privilege,” she said. “Very well. After the spa.”

That left Fluttershy enough time to soak up just how badly she wished she wasn’t doing this. Although the bubbles did sparkle her hooves up a treat. Sparkling like stars.

---

Comments

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Oh...

Why do I feel so bad now?

[elyktsorb]

I like it

[Impossible Numbers]

10566499

Glad to hear it! Thanks for leaving a comment. It's good to see people enjoying my work.