As We Tarry There
“And He walks with me, and He talks with me…”
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The Equestrian sun was just beginning to paint the eastern horizon with gold, one cool summer morning, when a certain little pegasus awoke with a start, and knew herself summoned to the garden behind her cottage. It wasn’t the sort of knowledge she could have explained, if anypony had questioned it; it came, not from words she had heard or sensations she had seen or felt, but from some hidden place deep within herself, from which she couldn’t separate her mind even long enough to name it. Perhaps another pony could have analyzed it more thoroughly; she could imagine her new friend Twilight writing a forty-chapter report on it for Princess Celestia, complete with illuminating metaphors and humorous asides. For her own part, though, it was enough to know that it was, and was true, and was to be obeyed.
She fluttered out of her bed with dainty haste, hurried to her washroom, and set about washing her face, brushing her mane, and preening her wings. The sound of the running water, and of her soft yelps of pain as she wrestled with her morning tangles, roused the attention of her lapine pet, and he hopped into the washroom, anxious to learn the program for the day.
“Good morning, Angel,” she said to him. “I hope you don’t mind fending for yourself today; I have to go meet somepony this morning, and I have a feeling that we’re going to need a long time. Maybe you could go visit your brothers and sisters, out in the countryside; I’m sure they’d love to see you again.”
The idea seemed to appeal to Angel; he hopped back out to go pack his suitcase, and his mistress giggled affectionately as she returned to her toilet. There was so much to treasure in Angel – or rather, in all the beasts of Equestria – and of course her friends and the other ponies, too – and the other voiced peoples, and all living things, and the waters and mountains and stars and… well, when she came right down to it, she couldn’t think of anything that didn’t cry out to her to treasure it, simply by being itself. She was only sorry that she had so little of herself to give to them; she sometimes wished that she could be a great river flowing down from the mountains, pouring herself out continually upon the land and bringing health and refreshment to all Equestria, instead of the frail little pony she was.
–But, then again, if she had been a river, perhaps she couldn’t have been received the summons that was so filling her heart. In which case, she supposed she didn’t mind so much.
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It was some few minutes later that she stood before her back door, as fresh and dewy as the roses that still sparkled in the sunrise in the garden beyond. Her little heart was racing in her breast; taking a deep breath to steady it, she put a hoof to the door and pressed it open.
She was disappointed, at first, to find that the garden looked the same as it always had. Not that it wasn’t lovely in itself; indeed, at just that moment, with the pale morning light lying on the creepers and the first blossoms just beginning to open, there was a particular delicate beauty about it that she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen in it before. But, still, lovely as it was, it was only itself; she had vaguely expected to find it transformed into a pavilion of otherworldly delights, with pussy-willows made of finest pearl and aureoles of liquid gold darting gaily from the milkweed patch.
The next moment, she came to her senses and laughed at her silliness – and, the moment after that, she entirely forgot about the appearance of the garden, either expected or actual. For it was in that moment that she heard a voice speak her name – a deep, stallion’s voice, which was gentler than any mare’s; a small, still voice, which could have shattered the moon with a word; a stern, dreadful, wholly alien voice, which her soft and timid heart at once recognized as the one true sustenance of its own. And it was right, she knew, that the voice should be all these things, for it was the voice of him from whom mares and stallions, mighty forces and gentle inclinings, the remotest parts of the cosmos and the innermost parts of each pony’s heart – in short, all things that were or ever would be – derived the inmost essences that made them each what they were, and by whose power alone they remained in being from one moment to another. She had heard, from her Nana in Cloudsdale, that he sometimes appeared to chosen ponies in a form that equine eyes could see, and that their accounts of his visits were treasured by the wise beyond all other lore; until that morning, she had never dreamed that she might someday be one of those ponies herself, but now there was no doubt in her.
She turned, and beheld him standing beside the rhubarb patch, with an outlying leaf overshadowing him like a canopy. His form was like that of the legendary Dawn Pony – the size, more or less, of a cat or a raccoon, with three-toed pads for hooves and a muzzle even snubber than her own – but his coat was pure white except for a single blood-red star in the center of his forehead. He wore a mantle of golden linen that came down to his hocks, and his eyes were like the sky on days when she was gladdest to have wings.
He said again, “Fluttershy.”
She couldn’t have moved if she had wanted to. All six of her limbs were weak with fear – not the common fear she knew so well, but the special, precious dread that had seized her when the Element of Kindness had lain itself upon her neck, only a few short weeks before. Even her lips, for a moment, seemed frozen in place; it cost her tremendous effort to open them wide enough to whisper, “I’m here, Prince Daystar.”
“So I can see,” said Daystar, and there was laughter like the dawn in his voice. “You aren’t easily mistaken for any other pony, Fluttershy. A great work is being prepared in you, and your soul is bright with the glory of it; even I, who have seen Jubilee Golden and Clover the Clever in the prime of their youth, hardly dare to look upon your luster.”
He spoke with a sire’s pride in a favored foal, but Fluttershy, who liked nothing less than special attention, couldn’t help shuddering a little at the thought. And Prince Daystar understood, and softened his tone. “Don’t be afraid, Fluttershy,” he said. “It won’t be anything too grand for you. Indeed, when the time comes, you’ll hardly think twice about it; though it seem impossible to everypony about you, to you it will be as natural as giving milk to a hungry bob-kitten.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “Will it?”
“Certainly,” said Daystar. “Why should you doubt? All the ways of Equestria are in my hooves; do you suppose I would give my little pony a greater burden than she was fitted to bear?”
A quiet thrill ran through Fluttershy from muzzle to tail, and the magic in her cutie mark vibrated so with delight that her whole being felt like a Salzlecke zither. My little pony. So it was true, what her Nana had told her: to the Lord of Life, she was not merely a token part of some greater plan, but his own dear creature. Oh, how wonderful it was to exist…
“But enough of that for now,” said Daystar, and came up beside Fluttershy and brushed his shoulder against her wing. “Come. Let us walk awhile.”
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They walked a very great while. They walked further and longer, side by side through the little pegasus’s garden, than the garden itself ought to have been able to permit – and yet there was never a moment when the bushes and trellises about them seemed to Fluttershy to be anything but the homely and beloved greenery of her own familiar dwelling.
Though it must be confessed that Fluttershy’s attention, as she walked, was hardly given to her surroundings at all. The voice of Prince Daystar, as he spoke softly to her of the things he wished her to hear, was too irresistible in its sweetness and power for any whose ear it struck to spare a moment’s concern for anything else; even the usual dawn chorus of woodlarks and goldfinches fell reverently silent, as though ashamed to vie for territory in the presence of the land’s true Master.
He told her of the beginnings of Equestria: how he, together with his father King Everwhen and the Great Firebird who shared their heart, had summoned all things into being, from great mountains and roaring rivers to the humblest kinds of living creatures. He told her of the Elements that she and her friends now bore: that they were but imperfect replicas of the original Elements of Harmony, which her forefather Sleipnir had lost through folly and selfishness, and which wouldn’t be united again till all Equestria was remade. He told her of the secret workings of her world: how tadpoles grew into frogs, and where butterflies went in the winter; what made dragons afraid of perindeus trees, and why robins were so much easier to get along with than mistle thrushes.
And he told her of herself: how he had known and cherished her eons before her parents had conceived her; with what joy, when the time had finally come, he had knit together the elements of her within her mother’s womb; how he had accompanied her throughout her life, hidden from her eyes and mind but perceptible to the deepest parts of her heart, and gently urging her away from any kind of wickedness, be it spite or envy or laziness or cowardice (though he noted, with rueful laughter, that he hadn’t been quite so often successful in the latter case).
He told her all these things, and she listened with diligent attention, knowing that it would be inexcusable of her to forget the least word of his discourse as long as she lived. Yet whereas, in ordinary life, such momentousness of responsibility would itself have rendered her unable to retain a single syllable, now she absorbed it all with effortless delight, her memory being as eager as the rest of her to receive the Prince’s speech. So it ever is, when the message of the Daystar falls upon pure and faithful ears; it is only his enemies who forget his words.
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The hours passed; the sun overhead crept steadily toward the western horizon, and still Fluttershy walked beside Prince Daystar. Time seemed to her to have no meaning; there was that in her companion’s presence to keep her from ever getting old or sad or tired, and she could see no reason why it shouldn’t evermore be so.
Then, just as the first stars of evening were beginning to twinkle overhead, they arrived at the boxwood hedge at the garden’s far end, and Prince Daystar stopped and turned to her. “It is time, Fluttershy,” he said. “Yet a little while, and you will see me no more.”
Fluttershy’s mouth fell open, and her wings sagged with the access of her dismay. “Oh… no, Prince Daystar, please!” she said. “Don’t leave me! I’ll pitch you a tent, I’ll… I’ll bring you clover from the meadow, I’ll…” She trailed off, blushing at the absurdity of her own words, and repeated with simple entreaty, “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you, Fluttershy,” said Daystar. “You know that. But there is work for you to do outside: sickness to tend, hunger to feed, ignorance to instruct – all the wounds of your world to bind up as best you may. It isn’t yet time for you to rest for good.”
Fluttershy knew it was true, but her heart still ached to think of being separated, even in mere appearance, from the joy it had found in its maker’s company. She shot Daystar one last appealing glance, hoping that he might at least be prevailed upon to give her one more hour – but the Prince’s eyes, for all their compassion, were firm, and the next moment Fluttershy found herself the only pony visible among the garden blooms.
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But, even as she stood nursing her disappointment, she heard hoofsteps coming up the garden path, and a ten-gallon-hatted head poked out from around a nearby rose trellis. “Oh, Fluttershy, there you are,” said Applejack. “That’s a relief, anyway. I was starting to worry you’d scooted off to Cloudsdale or something.”
“Applejack?” said Fluttershy. “What are you doing here?”
Applejack chuckled self-consciously. “Well, I’d like to say I just dropped in to see a friend,” she said, “but there’s a little more to it than that. See, I lingered a mite late in the orchards today, so Apple Bloom decided to take Winona out for her evening run; on their way back, Winona darted off to chase a squirrel or something, and stumbled into a gopher hole and twisted her leg out of joint.”
Immediately, Fluttershy’s innate solicitude for dumb beasts overwhelmed every other emotion in her. “Oh, no!” she said. “Will she be all right?”
“Well, that’s what we want you to come say,” said Applejack. “She don’t look too awful to me, but you’re the expert. And of course Apple Bloom’s just about ready to drown herself for letting it happen, so a few kind words to her wouldn’t come amiss, either.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Fluttershy. “I’ll be right down.”
Applejack smiled. “Thanks, Fluttershy,” she said. “You’re a real friend.”
As Fluttershy smiled back, she became aware of a pregnant feeling in the darkness around her, as though it were full to bursting with some inconceivable music – and then, the next moment, she heard a soundless voice calling to her from some region of sublime immanence. It spoke only her name, but that was enough: she knew it to be at once a whisper of consolation, a word of praise, and a gentle reminder to always remain on the path that love laid out for her. And she knew who it was who called – and knew, also, that from then on she would always be able, if she stilled her fears and quieted her self-will, to hear that voice calling to her heart.
The knowledge filled the little pegasus with joy, but she was a little nervous as well; she was sure that the mark of her mystic communication was visible all over her, and she wasn’t sure how she would explain it to Applejack. But then she looked into Applejack’s eyes, and saw that she didn’t need to explain. What Applejack was hearing, she didn’t know; it might have been something quite similar to her own call (though it couldn’t, she felt sure, be exactly the same, any more than their cutie marks could have been), or, then again, it might have been something utterly different. But she knew, beyond question, that it was the same voice calling to her friend, and she suddenly understood what had detained Applejack in the orchards.
And if she and Applejack had both met Prince Daystar, what of their other friends? Had Twilight, that day, been shown wisdom beyond all Nature, and Rainbow Dash strength that surpassed equine dreams; had Rarity received a glimpse of ultimate beauty, and Pinkie Pie of the gladness that kindled the stars? Wonder overcame Fluttershy at the thought: what momentous destiny lay before their friendship, to earn it such signal favor – and would they be able to bear it, when it came? Such little ponies they were, after all…
But, with the voice of Everwhen’s son still echoing in her soul, she was unable to truly fear the shadows of the future. When the moment came, he would have prepared her for it; in the meantime, it was hers to attend to the present moment, and to the opportunities for good that lay ready to her hoof.
“We should get going,” she murmured softly.
“Yeah,” said Applejack, and shook herself. “Yeah, reckon we should.”