In Birdsong

by themoontonite

RE-ANIMATOR

Dear Princess Celestia,

—

Quiet. Fluttershy loved the quiet, generally speaking. She loved certain kinds of quiet. There was the peaceful babble of a brook that slowly dissolved into white noise, there was the quiet of the first snowfall of the season as the entire world slowed in response, there was the quiet of a night spent wrapped around a good book. These were the quiet moments Fluttershy had come to revere as an animal caretaker. Brief moments of simplicity that served as the foundation her otherwise busy days stood upon.

This was not one of those quiets. This was tense, fraught with static and fear. Her brain told her the air was copper and every little flicker of sun across the still-wet grass was a powder keg waiting to explode. That was absurd, of course, but the dread wouldn’t leave her mind. It only sank further into her psyche as a young brown squirrel tugged on her fetlock, trying to pull her down a path to her right. She acquiesced, following him down and away from her mornings work.

She had come to understand the animals and their particulars as she spent more time with them. Not just them personally, of course; the average wild animal wasn’t nearly as long-lived as a pony. Instead as she helped shepherd generations of new wildlife into fruitful lives, she had built a familiarity with the quirks of many different species. Rodents, in her experience, were skittish. This wasn’t skittish.

This was terrified.

—

I… don’t really know where to start. Or if I should start at all. I just know that after all these years, there’s something I really need to tell you. I have a few questions I want to ask first. You don’t have to answer them right away; just spend some time thinking about them while you read the rest of my letter.

The first question I had was: has a pony ever brought another living thing back from the dead?

—

The first thing that she noticed was the smell. She had smelled death and all its attendants before. She had stumbled upon corpses, two weeks rotten, bloated with all the filth of decay. A dead animal should not smell like this. She gagged, dragging her trembling hoofsteps closer to the source of the stench. She was grateful it was obscured from view for now as her stomach gave way, heaving her breakfast into the bushes that lined the path. The squirrel that had been guiding her had long since fled the scene.

She couldn’t blame the little guy. She felt awful that any other creature besides her had to be the first one to stumble upon whatever she was about to see. The horrid odor continued to mount, mingling with the stale and silent air to form an oppressive blanket of rot. She wished it could’ve just stayed that — a smell. She wished on everything in the world, as she puked a second time, that it would have only ever been an awful smell.

—

I know that’s not the best way to open a letter to the Princess but… I don’t feel like I have much of a choice. Do you have nightmares? I do. About all sorts of things. It’s usually really mundane things, like being late for school or my friends all leaving me alone to go to a party. Sometimes it gets really bad and it makes it hard to sleep for a couple days. Sometimes I get nightmares that don’t leave me for weeks on end, that haunt even my daydreams and twist them into something that not even Princess Luna could save me from.

What I’m about to tell you is a lot like one of those.

—

Fluttershy recognized a corpse when she saw one. She could tell apart their causes, even. An animal dying naturally was different from an animal killing another. This wasn't a natural death. This poor rabbit, splayed spread-eagle across the packed dirt, had met a far worse fate. As she stood transfixed by its mangled remains the smell seemed to fade into the back of her mind.

All she could think about, all she could keep in her rattled and panic-stricken mind, was the image of a dead rabbit and the sound of birdsong. Birdsong? She tore her eyes away from the grisly scene and scanned the treetops around her. There wasn't a single flighty friend to be found but still a jumbled haze of birdsong crashed into and through her thoughts.

It was telling her something. She could do nothing but listen.

—

I've never seen anything like it. The poor thing was split open, from neck to groin, and all the parts of it were pulled back. Like something had been studying it. Every organ was neatly organized and folded in ways that I knew they weren't supposed to be.

Animals don't do that. Ponies, I hope, don't do that. I don't know what does and I pray to never find out. That was bad enough already but… but then the singing started.

—

Fluttershy couldn't think, she couldn't speak, she could hardly see. Her vision was encompassed entirely by gore and viscera, her hearing stolen by a tangle of song, her thoughts a roaring wave of static and one word, over and over.

Live.

She cried out in pain as that word found its way to the forefront of her mind, drilling through her brain and threatening to burst from her fragile skull.

Live.

She crumpled to the ground, tears streaming down her face as she felt a single bony protrusion claw its way through the taut coat that wrapped her head.

Live.

She howled, her voice ragged with pain and sorrow as a horn burst from forehead with a sickening snap. She howled until her voice frayed and gave way, choking out a desperate wordless cry as pain coursed through every nerve in her trembling body.

Live.

Until the pain stopped and she sat, watching as magic reached out to seize the slaughtered rabbit. Her magic, she surmised, blinking the blood from her eyes.

Live.

She spoke the command, as much as her ruined voice allowed her to speak, and she saw the threads of life begin to stitch the ruined corpse back together.

—

It never happened again. The noise, the blood, the smell… it happened all at once then never again. Like it was a nightmare, my own private slice of unreality. I know it was real, though. The rabbit I saved is… he’s still around. Far longer than he’s got any reason to be. The horn was gone when I woke up the next morning.

So I guess I wanted to ask… do you hear the singing too?

Comments

[Legioner8]

Was that Angel?

[themoontonite]

11195074
it was!

[The Red Parade]

Genuine chills from the last part. The album and Birdsong itself hits such a special, mystic vibe and you just nailed it so perfectly here. I love how eerie and unsettling this is, and it gets a gasp out of me as the story progresses. The hints to what's happening and the execution of it all... this was so good. Great work!!!

[sykko]

Somehow our favorite butterflybutt managed to encounter something eldritch. I'd suggest she stay away from anything that smells of the sea and rotten fish, and has tentacles.

[SirReal]

Something is out there killing and vivisecting animals for sport. That's what unsettles me. That, and we don't know just what on earth the birdsong is.

[overdue]

The focus on the senses of hearing and smell is interesting, but It seems to me like they are ways to build suspense, rather than conveying some idea. Maybe this story is about willpower, or something like that, instead of a mysterious forest dwelling predator? These kind of short stories are usually about something other than the literal events.. I would probably have to listen to the album to understand what this means, instead of rambling in the comments

[quoteThere wasn't a single flighty friend to be found]this made me smile

[Alondro]

11195383 Alondro hides a bloody scalpel behind his back, "Errrr, well I for one blame... PINKIE PIE!! Yeah! She's probably making cupcakes again and ran out of ponies!"

[Boomstick Mick]

I checked out the song, because I was genuinely curious to hear the music which evoked the inspiration to write such an interesting, albeit abstract, story. I didn't particularly care for the song, but that's just me. I did, however, like the story, and I like how you kept things vague. Sometimes it's better to leave it to the reader to answer their own questions. Some of the greatest writers in history have advertently left their works replete with vagueries meant to stimulate reader speculation. It's an interesting technique, and you managed to pull it off without allowing your writing to fall into the trap of being overly contrived. Bravo

[Cawfee]

I can't tell what this makes me question more.

Did Fluttershy tap into some part of their world, which is undeniably filled with magic, that was forbidden?
Does this imply Alicorns of all kinds have some sort of otherwordly connection to everything around them? To the magic? To the world itself? To whatever sustains the magic in their world?
Or was this merely some freak accident, that she heard things you don't normally hear because her brain was fried from both, emotion and magic? It seems to be pretty heavily implied that emotion influences magic, in the later seasons of the show.
Am I thinking too much about a short story I've read after merely three hours of sleep?

It vaguely gives me Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood vibes in that Fluttershy managed to, ever so briefly, reach across from her normal world into something far deeper that granted her something no one else had. And her senses, and the accompanying birdsong was her brain's best way of making the experience "rational".

I like it.

[Boomstick Mick]

11195599
Except Equivalent Exchange wasn't as much of a seething heartless bitch to Fluttershy as it was to Ed and his brother... Now, you have me wondering if there was a homunculus spawned from this event.

[ZettaiDullahan]

11195383
Sport? Every alicorn needs a mentor and Fluttershy needs a little push now and again.

[KarasAdamas]

This felt like something straight out of Steven King or H.P Lovecraft. The vagueness of whether or not the event was a dream is the true horror. And the ending of her telling Celestia that the rabbit is still around, makes us believe that it was real. But if it was real, then why did the horn disappear? And were did the birdsong come from?

Fluttershy tapped into something eldritch, the description of how the rabbit's organs were placed and organized, showed that something wanted this. Something unseen by mortal eyes, something incomprehensible by the mortal mind, it wanted Fluttershy to understand and show her a glimpse of immortality. It's not just watching her, it's watching us, it's guiding us, and it wants us to listen and obey.

[Lurks-no-More]

11195103
"Ah always knew there was somethin' wrong about that there rabbit."

[StraightToThePointStudio]

This is uniquely creative! Bone-chilling, yet too intriguing to stop! Hope ya didn't mind, but I couldn't resist making a reading of this mysterious lil' fic of yours! Twas too good to pass up!

Audio Linkyloo!: https://youtu.be/kCWleOOI2no

[Bandy]

Your writing style is just as well suited for horror as it is sapphic poetry. Gripping read. Thanks for sharing!

[Cawfee]

11195603
In its defense, it's very hard to be a seething heartless bitch to Fluttershy.

[Dr Freaky]

This was fantastic

[tailsopony]

Oh. I loved this. Thank you!

[SigmasonicX]

This was wonderfully evocative. The focus on senses of smell and hearing did a ton to sell the horror, and then the feelings of Fluttershy's horn breaking through. All this worked to sell the ambiguity of whether this really happened or if it was a dream.

[videomaster21XX]

I know everyone else is commenting about the horror aspect, and I'm sorry, but me being the weirdo that I am. My mind went elsewhere due to the fact this fic is called birdsong.

So, basically it's got this bird motif going on and then Fluttershy flat out asks:

has a pony ever brought another living thing back from the dead?

And my mind immediately thought:

Well not pony dear Fluttershy but you see... Ponies once believed that one somepony dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead.

But some times, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it, and the soul can't rest.

Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong thing's right.

The title of the chapter has me thinking of another song too. ^^;

[Winter_Solstice]

Delightfully gory and eerie, with plenty of horror to engage all the senses!

Lovecraft and King would be proud...

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

a little too creepy for my tastes, but that's just me. I will applaud the author for writing such a visceral experience nevertheless, the line between what is and what is not is incredibly thin here. Is this an actual event? Is this a dream? Is Fluttershy connecting with beings outside of reality? Is she really writing a letter?

[Falkenlied]

Oh my gosh, the descriptions in this make the experience ever the more visceral. And the implications of it are very creepy as well. This was a very welcoming read and I glad it got featured.
Great job!
Thank you for writing this!

[TheOneAJ]

[PresentPerfect]

oh my god c.c what the hell

[Spazz Kid]

The images this put in my head were pretty rad to watch.

10/10
Flawless stuff right here.

[Mocha Star]

Meh, I get it but wasn't shocked or awed. It was a good 4 minute read through though.

[Winter_Solstice]

Featured in October for Tag-A-Long's Book Club

[PaulAsaran]

You can has review!