A Wrong-Sized Tail

by Impossible Numbers

Natural Flair

Fluttershy’s tail dragged through the leaf litter, however much she ignored it. Every time she ignored it, she looked back and found a few more leaves had joined the litter caught in the hairs. In fact, she felt it tugging on snags along the path, and her concentration fought to ignore it all the harder.

Whitetail Woods was the perfect distraction. It was too big and too glorious to be a distraction. It swallowed distractions and overwhelmed them. Soon, her perspective flipped, and Whitetail Woods was everything, and the dull tug of her tail was itself the distraction, and eventually not even that.

Apart from the two ponies themselves, dormice scurried through the undergrowth urgently. Hearing them, nervous birds quivered on the branches overhead. Dotted here and there like embers of a dying fire, the hoverflies pinned themselves to the three dimensions of the air as though daring a wayward wing to dislodge them. The trunks and ferns themselves joined in, leaning close and listening, or admiring the sunset.

It was not like Ponyville, where the ponies and the pets and the buildings and the streets kept themselves clear of one another in civilized, orderly ways. Here, everything mingled. There were no rules. No clear boundaries, or respected ones: a bird darted from branch to branch, leaves shuddered around it, one tumbled down, and far below the hoverfly zipped back and forth trying to correct for the sudden rush of eddies behind the leaf, which landed and startled a dormouse into a squeaky, crashing scurry.

Anyone could join in, if they could handle it.

“Fluttershy!” cried Rarity from behind. “Wait up!”

If they could handle it.

The ferns behind Fluttershy crashed and a frizzled mess of mane burst through.

Whitetail Woods was not totally wild. In deference to Rarity’s lack of enthusiasm, Fluttershy had stuck to the one path in the forest, a path meant for those ponies who didn’t like ploughing through masses of bracken. Judging by Rarity’s muddy legs, she’d somehow managed to plough through them anyway.

“I had no idea it’d be so humid!” Rarity sprayed herself all over. “And there are horseflies everywhere!”

The little hiss sizzled on Fluttershy’s nerves. “They’re not horseflies. I’d have noticed.”

“Dratted things keep landing on my coat.” Rarity’s spray can slipped back into one of several “emergency” satchels she’d brought along. Even her floppy hat stiffened like a military helmet. “And my hooves hurt!”

“I’m sorry,” said Fluttershy. “It’s just a little further. I promise.”

“A little further –” only after a brief wrestling match for a bottle in her satchel did Rarity continue “– and then I’m going straight home.”

“That’s right, just a little further.” Fluttershy tried not to enjoy herself; Rarity looked like a doily that had been used for digging.

“You do this every day?”

“When I can.”

“Why?”

But Fluttershy let this one go. Sometimes, it helped to let Rarity have her little vent first instead of trying to dam it.

“Mm,” continued Rarity. “Drat. I knew I should have brought my sunscreen. It’s still bright out! All it takes to spoil a complexion is a little overindulgence of sunlight…”

Letting the words flow by, Fluttershy crunched over the leaves strewn on the path. Her idle pegasus wings beat the air either side of her; her urge to flap them grew ever more restless. Through gaps in the ragged canopy, she saw purple clouds bruise the tanned skies, and the blood of birds ran wild through her heart. Pegasus instincts dared her to leap up and fly forth, into the violent colours.

A chick chirped. Much too close to have come from on high.

Frowning, Fluttershy hovered. Where exactly was that? Down there! The patch of long grass rustled.

She drifted forwards whilst her wings strained to keep her aloft, and as she did so, the dragging weight of the tail snagged on a low branch. Fluttershy yelped. She flicked the dock, heard only a crash, turned to tug it out, and eventually just kicked at the branch to make the tail flop out.

Hoping Rarity hadn’t seen that, Fluttershy leaned in close.

A baby bird, as she’d suspected. It fell silent at once. Small, fluffy ball of hyperventilating fear. Its eyes reflected her own wide ones back.

Tenderly, she reached forwards and held a hoof just in front of its beak. No closer. Chicks had to let you come close, not the other way around.

The silence was totally ignored by distant crows, which cawed at the sky as though laughing and accusing it gruffly.

Then the chick cheeped.

An honour! Fluttershy picked the little ball of fluff up as gently as her hooves would allow, though here they felt like dinner plates being used to scoop a dust bunny off the floor. A gentle scrape, and the cheeping cheerful chick looked up expectantly, all fear forgotten.

Fluttershy looked up. Instantly, the hole to the nest stood out on the trunk right next to a branch. A few tiny heads peered over the edge of the hole, one head bigger than the others. A titmouse! A mother titmouse! Yes! She knew that yellow and black cap on its head like the bonnet of a familiar baby.

Trying not to look like a big yellow swan out of water, Fluttershy rose up. Her wings either batted or blew branches away, but only enough to let her come through. Her tail snagged on a couple, but always tugged free at the last possible moment.

Carefully, she stretched her front hooves up as high as they would go and focused. Tiny little legs pattered across. The weight vanished from her hoof. She lowered both. Nothing in them.

One more little head peered out of the hole to the nest. Cheeped its thanks.

“You’re very welcome,” whispered Fluttershy, as if her wings hadn’t already blown leaves about.

When Fluttershy landed again, she started. Rarity hummed with a question mark on the end, eyebrow leaning forward as though it had put a smug elbow on a bar and was waiting for a round.

Wait. Had she seen all that? It was supposed to be a private family matter for the birds. Falling out of nests was so embarrassing to a chick.

Fluttershy hurried on the path, hoping no questions were asked. It was just one of those things she had to do. No need for that smug look. Really, Rarity shouldn’t make such a fuss over it…

Anyway, here was the main attraction. This was the thing Rarity had to see.

“We’re here!” Fluttershy landed, wings folding up.

Beside her, Rarity gagged and gasped for water. Lowered her “emergency” bottle.

Both of them looked up to the gap where the trees and the hillside gave way to open skies. On the horizon, the sun melted into the burnt mountains, singing its swan song in watercolours across the skies. More forest and glimpses of pathway watched from the valley below, as though a ragged congregation stood transfixed.

Fluttershy turned to see Rarity’s eyes hypnotized by the fading light.

It would have been a perfect moment if it wasn’t for the wretched tail.

Strains, tugs, and little wriggling feelings where beetles had probably gotten snagged in it: Fluttershy glanced back at the constant complaints coming in, and saw a tail bedraggled as a pink rag that had been thrown into the forest for a week. She could see black carapaces crawling over it.

And it was so dirty! As Fluttershy swished it, trying to dislodge the bigger clumps of dirt, the tail dragged over the ground again.

At once, Rarity awoke from the spell. She cringed and inched away from the flying flecks.

Fluttershy stopped swishing.

“Look up!” she said quickly. “Look at this tree here!”

Rarity threw it a look even dirtier than Fluttershy’s tail. “It’s a tree. Yes?”

“Uh huh, but do you notice anything… unusual about it?”

One long silence indicated that Rarity would quite unhappily stand there all evening and all night, unless someone just pointed out the trick already.

“Well?” prompted Fluttershy.

Rarity snorted. “Oh, your games, Fluttershy! Really! It’s a tree. Maybe a bit browner than the standard-issue variety, but forgive me a rather emotional: ‘So what?’ I am not, as I have hastened to point out before, a ‘Nature pony’, hence the nature of this tree is, I’m afraid…”

Fluttershy was really starting to hate that whine. If her body language had indicated as such, then Rarity sure picked up on it because the sentence changed mid-way to: “…a bit of a mystery.”

As good a lead-in as Fluttershy was going to get.

She opened her mouth and looked up. Just in time for a monarch butterfly to flutter out of nowhere and land on her nose.

Its stained-glass wings flared with the same orange brilliance as the sunset above, each glassy panel rounded and soft on the eyes, stretched like individual feathers and large as though aspiring to become full wings of their own. Flecks of white fringed the canvas, so many and so thickly that the sunset painting on the monarch’s wings appeared to be framed by snowy mountaintops.

The wings folded and flexed in readiness. Fluttershy blinked in time with them.

“Oh my!” she heard Rarity say.

“Did you fall down?” Fluttershy whispered to the butterfly, which flapped twice and almost threw itself off under the enthusiasm. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back up there with your friends.”

As she floated up, she heard Rarity choke. “Friends!?”

Fluttershy guided her nose towards the nearest branch of the brown tree…

…which exploded. Where brown masses of “leaves” had roosted, bursts of flapping orange and black and white flecks radiated outwards. The tree might have taken off, one leaf at a time. A whole swarm of monarchs rustled through the air around her, zipping so close that Fluttershy felt their wings tickle her own. Her guest on her very nose flapped through rampant excitement and was instantly free, lost to the silent storm as it settled back down on the once-green tree and, thanks to their sheer numbers and the confusion of colours, once more turned it brown.

Fluttershy landed on the earth again. Against the sunset sky, the unusually thick-clad brown tree stood asleep at its post as before. Every last butterfly blended in perfectly; the muted whirlwind of wings might never have been disturbed at all.

“Such a marvel,” breathed Rarity.

Fluttershy grinned at her, only to find her looking back. Between the flimsy eyelashes and the purple dots for irises, Rarity’s own gaze might have been a rare breed of butterfly itself.

“They’ll be gathering around Whitetail Wood for the next few weeks,” Fluttershy said, trying to steer Rarity’s mind back to the tree. “And then they’ll all set off south before the Running of the Leaves. None of them could make it through an Equestrian winter. They’re too delicate.”

Still, Rarity kept her gaze on Fluttershy.

At some point, Rarity must have noticed the gaze was mutual, and much less awestruck coming back, so she relented and straightened up, coughing politely.

“Naturally,” she said. “Fluttershy, only you could take a mud-coloured tree and breathe life into it. I would take my hat off to your enviable knowledge, if only I’d thought to pack it.” A thought struck her; she frowned and rummaged through her saddlebag. “At least, I assume I didn’t pack it.” The stiffened brim of the hat flapped at the edges as she moved.

Fluttershy groaned into a hoof. “You’re wearing it on your head. Right now.”

“Hm? Am I? Oh yes. So I am. I thought that was damp.”

“But don’t you think the butterflies are so amazing and inspirational?” pleaded Fluttershy.

“Oh yes. Absolutely.” Rarity stopped rummaging to nod her agreement, dislodging a twig from her curls and a leaf from her hat.

“Isn’t it… beautiful?” Fluttershy leaned forwards, ignoring the snag on her tail again.

Turning to the forest path, the sunset, the tree full of monarchs, Rarity’s eyes glowed… then dimmed.

She shook her head sadly. “Alas, not yet. Nothing’s coming to me so far. But, but my mind works on it as we speak!”

Well, so much for that.

Fluttershy wished she wasn’t alone in seeing the monarchs in everything – that beetle on the ground, those mice scurrying through the undergrowth, even the little hoverflies that Rarity insisted on spraying at – like now.

Misery tugged on her tail again, no longer distracted. Fluttershy waited for the hovering dots to vanish and the hiss of the hateful spray can to stop.

“Oh I am sorry, Fluttershy,” whined Rarity, slumping where she stood. “I just don’t think Nature is in my… well, in my nature, I suppose.”

“It’s OK.” It wasn’t, but cracked hearts were best kept private, in Fluttershy’s experience.

“I appreciate the effort, and I cannot say I learned nothing from this. Maybe I need more time to get used to this sort of excursion? Another time? Perhaps?”

“How about we go back for tea, then?” said Fluttershy, defeat dripping from every pathetic word.

“Ooh, you temptress. A spot of oolong would do wonders.” Rarity winked. “Just… bear with me a moment.”

They started the trek back, or rather Fluttershy flapped easily over the ground – yanking her tail off whatever bit of root had tried to snag it – and Rarity stumbled after her, crashing over the shrub despite how easy it should have been for even the most dirt-hating ponies to just walk the stupid path already.

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