Fluttershy’s marker squeaked as it crossed another day off the calendar. When her gaze darted to the next day, she smiled around her bared teeth before spitting out the pen. This was better than raptor rodeo day. It didn’t involve claws or rope-induced whiplash, for a start.
The sofa was empty. The birdhouses were quiet. Throughout the den, the usual chatter and flashing colours of chickadees and chipmunks was gone. Fluttershy sighed. They must’ve seen the calendar last night.
She could still see, as though haunted for a moment, the screwed-up face of Twilight Sparkle from elevenses at the Friendship Castle’s throne room. The words “raptor?” and “rodeo?” and “really?” echoed back, but in the faintly puzzled way of one trying to suggest that maybe there was a point, and that maybe the interlocutor was simply missing it. Fluttershy still blushed. She hadn’t come up with a real answer at the time.
Under the blush, pride flexed its wings. In a way, Twilight’s surprise had been a compliment. No one else had thought that bald eagles liked hay-bale-throwing, even if the hay bales had to be the size of shoeboxes to fit.
Her watering can gripped between her front hooves, Fluttershy slipped through the front door and round to her rosebushes. For a moment, she hovered over the white and red blossoms. She glanced around.
You’re being silly, she thought. No one’s going to bother you. It’s Gold Market Day. I bet Applejack’s “special offer” stall will keep them coming back until sundown. I’d wait in the queue too if I could. I don’t know what Granny Smith does to those apple pies, but there must be magic involved somewhere.
Overhead, not a cumulus cloud could be seen. She kept her ears cocked for the slightest tremble of a leaf.
If only I could take them to the market. It wouldn’t have to be like last time, would it?
Even she didn’t believe that. Deep in her chest, the memory lurked. It was too primal to say anything, but then it didn’t need to. Merely being there was enough. Like a tiger lounging in the midst of a lamb flock.
Fluttershy checked the blue skies again before leaning down to the bush’s level. Thorns swelled in her sight. Every time she blinked, she fancied the splaying leaves quivered as though at the small puffs of air pushed aside.
“Hello?” she whispered. “Are you there?”
Yet speaking Equestrian yielded no response. Instead, she gingerly lowered the watering can to the grass – not daring to make so much as a metallic clunk – and stretched until the tip of her hoof wall kissed the nearest stem. Speaking in vibrations did not come naturally to her, but she quivered a kind of stop-start code down her leg, through the toe, and into the green strip as best she could. Occasionally, she mouthed the code while trying not to breathe out.
Inside her head, a smirking, narrow-eyed little Fluttershy said, Of course, you’re never going to the market because you’re still saving up for the new chicken coop. You know, the one that doesn’t have a chicken-sized hole on one side?
She didn’t bother arguing back. That chicken coop should’ve been replaced years ago, but somehow she’d never gotten around to it. More than once, she’d considered joining one of those weekly charity contests for the prize money, but The Foal Free Press never had anything about animals, and the idea of singing or modelling in front of a crowd still kept her up at nights. That pretty much exhausted all her options there.
Finally, she stopped and waited until the blur slowed to a thorny stem again. Her hoof pressed against it.
A few answering quivers came back. Fluttershy shut her eyes and concentrated.
Each slight quiver-gap-quiver combination morphed into a letter of the alphabet. Drops became a stream. All… clear… question… mark…
She tapped back: Yes. Only later did she realize she’d missed the punctuation mark at the end. They’d ignore it, of course, but she still fought the urge to slap her own forehead.
After a while, the quivering said: Good… exclamation… mark… coming… out… now… stop…
And it seemed to continue. The pitter-patter of pinpricks beat its way up her leg, like a paint brush sliding up the world, drawing the limb into existence behind it. An old foal’s instinct yelled out inside her with shock, but then quickly died away. Her smile trickled over her face. It’s OK. It’s OK.
When it passed her elbow, however, she bit down hard on her lower lip. They never seemed to learn where she was ticklish, no matter how many times she told them.
Soon, more pattering pins and needles danced up her forelimbs until she could’ve been slipping on a scratchy jumper, sleeves-first. They crept finger-like across her shoulders, and she didn’t dare let a muscle there twitch or flicker. Some rained down her back, occasionally prickling the dock of her tail like mobile feather dusters. One or two nestled in the nook between a beating wing and her torso, and she hoped, hoped, hoped they had the sense not to go anywhere they’d get crushed. They stroked her neck, clumped on locks of her mane, and squirmed and shuffled so far forwards that she braced herself in case one fell over her eyes and bounced off her muzzle.
After a few minutes, she could breathe without bursting into giggles. They’d settled down. Although the sensation was of itchy pyjamas, at least it wasn’t squirming over her skin anymore. After all, they were very good at keeping still.
One, evidently stumbling, flopped over her right eye, swinging from a stray lock.
Alarm rushed through her. They could probably feel her heart trying to beat its way out of her ribcage, and her skin pulse with the rushing of the veins and arteries.
No! she thought, but had she spoken it instead, it would’ve echoed off the distant mountains. I’m better than that. It’s not fair. I’m not being fair. Stop it right now.
All the same, her heartbeat burned her chest with the pressure. A few tiny legs scrabbled along her flanks where her hair was becoming slick.
“It’s OK,” she cooed, and the silhouette loomed in her eye.
This close, the spider was a blur she couldn’t focus on, but clear as a distilled nightmare were the eight splayed legs, black and hair-like fingers trying to grasp her eyeball…
No, she thought, swallowing.
…a little set of eyes staring out from a little head with a little mind and little feelings of its own. It wiggled helplessly on the locks. Its eyelash limbs quivered with frustration while it dangled on a silvery thread that gleamed against the sunlight.
He wants to get up. Oh, poor thing.
Fluttershy didn’t dare blink, but she braved a smile and raised a hoof until the spider could tap the yellow platform. At once, it swung its legs forwards, patting and trying to fix its grip. All four back legs stiffened. Her smile almost burst its banks. Perhaps spiders worry about losing their balance too.
Then its thread snapped away and the pupil-sized spider stood petrified on her frog.
Fluttershy stretched a limb up gently, hoping it was close enough for a jump without trapping any spiders against her forelocks. Everything past the pastern was black, shiny, and lumpy. Her mane’s hairs tugged. She counted to ten before lowering what she now saw was an empty hoof.
“Wonderful,” she breathed, and she reached down for the watering can. “OK, then. Who’s ready to enjoy Special Spider Time?”
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”
Scrolls, tomes, codices, and bookmarked folders piled themselves up on the map of Equestria, glowing and sparkling as they did so. Merely to peer up the slopes of the growing mountain was to make the eye water.
Around the thrones, maps and legal papers swirled in an orderly and law-abiding whirlwind. Once or twice, a sheet ducked out of its orbit and hovered before Twilight, who soon cast it back and resumed pacing.
Fluttershy took a deep breath. “If I can help at all, I’d be more than glad to do so.”
Spike nudged her in the ribs. “I think it’s best to let her get on with it. Princess Celestia asked her to do it, so I guess –”
“I have to make absolutely sure I know exactly what I’m doing,” piped up Twilight, skim-reading a treaty that unfurled down to the crystalline floor. “The Hair-Splitter Nation could quote regulation subsection paragraph line for sneezing without due care and attention! Can you imagine what would happen if I were to sneeze at the wrong moment?”
The letter lay on the edge of the table’s map, covering Griffonstone and surrounded by a growing tower block of books. Fluttershy could see the sun symbol stamped on the corner of the paper.
“But I’m sure Celestia wouldn’t have asked you if she thought you couldn’t handle it. It's not like she's asking you to meet up with…" Fluttershy gulped. “Dragons.”
She seemed to notice Spike for the first time.
“N-No offence,” she added hastily.
Spike grinned at her. “Ha! None taken. I am the exception that proves the rule.”
“Right. My point is that she must have chosen you for a reason.” All the same, Fluttershy felt the stabbing panic fighting against her insides. She half-expected Twilight to spin round and ask her for help. Her knees were already braced to flee.
Spike shrugged up at her, not entirely distracting from the worry lines of his brow. In any case, she could smell the acidic, burning stench of anxiety reeking off his shiny scales.
“Oh, OK. If it worries you so much,” she tried instead, “maybe you should send a polite letter back saying you’d rather not?”
The map flopped to the floor, and Twilight sighed after it.
“I know, I know,” she said. “Don’t go over the top, take a deep breath, think less emotionally. That’s all very well, but then who’ll go to the summit in my place? The Hair-Splitters might tear the treaty up on a technicality, and then it’ll be my fault for not being there when I could’ve seen that disaster coming. No, Princess Celestia chose me for a reason, and I intend to honour her request.”
Six different voices within Fluttershy’s head fought to be heard. All that came out was a prolonged gape while they wrestled for control of her jaw and tongue.
That’s what I said earlier, wasn’t it? she thought.
“Can I… help in any way?” she said, and then instantly regretted it.
No sooner had the echoes died away when Spike spun round and clasped his clawed hands. “Come with us! Princess Celestia wanted us to represent the best Equestria had to offer. She reckons if we can’t always impress them with our rules, we might impress them by showing how awesome and friendly we are. And we could invite Applejack and Rarity and Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. They’re all so amazing that I bet the Hair-Splitters would get along with at least one of them!”
Fluttershy grasped at this life-belt. “Oh, if you think it’d help, I’d love to come and make new fr –”
“You’d have to learn all their rules and customs, though,” piped up Twilight.
The life-belt sank without trace.
Now the unicorn was stuffing a saddlebag. While Fluttershy watched, she could’ve sworn the funnelling mass of paperwork couldn’t possibly have fit into a bag the size of a pony head. Yet the flow never seemed to stop.
“Er…” She worked her jaw, hoping for a response to come out. “All of them?”
“It’s the only way to be sure.” Twilight summoned the letter from the table.
And it might take the burden off you, Fluttershy desperately tried to think, but most of the rest of her mental crew had worked out what a sixth of a mountain looked like, and were throwing themselves overboard.
“I don’t know…” Fluttershy’s brain spluttered and thrashed and tried to kick out at the encroaching chill. “I’d love to help you relax, but all those books, and all those strangers staring at me, waiting for me to make the teeniest tiniest little slip-up…” She shuddered at the ice slicing along her spine. “Oh no, I’m sorry. I don’t think I could do that.”
Spike slumped where he stood. The last of the books slipped into the bag, and the flap slapped over the top.
“That’s OK,” said Twilight, whose left eye was twitching. “If you don’t want to come, then I’ll respect your wishes. Take care of things in Ponyville while I’m gone, OK?”
Which made Fluttershy choke, and finally her brain gave up and drowned in the guilty deep, watching the sad bubbles drift away.
Stress, stress, stress, she thought, and hidden within her imagination, she sighed with relief.
Around the den, the spiders were making themselves comfortable. Orb-web spiders jostled for space: in the corners, from hanging lampshades and birdhouses, across mouse holes, and even below the arms of the sofa, until most of the place was invaded by grey tissue. House spiders and wolf spiders raced each other across the floorboards, while jumping spiders watched and tilted their fronts as though cocking their heads curiously.
Bolas spiders whirled their silk bolas and, on the potted plants she’d spread around earlier, crab spiders lurked among the flowers. Tarantulas stood all around the perimeter, pressed right up against the skirting board; she had the vague suspicion that they were acting as guards.
Curled up on the sofa, Fluttershy felt her eyelids aching to close, and she couldn’t fight against the yawn. Normally, half of the spiders would have tried eating the other half, but here a kind of truce held for twenty four hours. She knew: she’d insisted on it herself. Special Spider Time had to be gentle. Most of the tarantulas had gotten the message, and the rest fell into line on the basis that a tarantula with official backing was not to be trifled with.
Perhaps it is OK for a nap. It has been a busy week, after all.
Several money spiders slipped over her folded forelimbs. It was only the sight of the scuttling dots that alerted her; their bodies were little bigger than commas and had no weight. She didn’t dare move. Not only were they too small to track, but they moved in sudden darting spurts that could easily end under her chin if she rested it a fraction of a second too early or too late.
Long ago, she’d once tried to impose a schedule on them. Spider-skating on a little water bowl for the morning, web-building contests for lunch, maybe an Araneae’s Fable to help them settle down in the afternoon: that had been the plan. Hidden away upstairs, the scrunched-up ball under her bed had once been a full timetable, decorated – because this was Fluttershy – with drawings of daisies and robins. But the spiders had kept inches away from the bowl, the web-builders had already set up and didn’t want to shift, and there had been no way to pick up the book of fables without forcing a resting daddy-long-legs spider off.
Instead, Fluttershy glanced around at the tarantulas. The door was kept open, but the blinds were drawn. After that, she let them get on with it.
A huddle of jumping spiders stared up at her from the armrest. Tiny pincers wiggled. A few tilted themselves, catching the glow of the blinds, which shone in eyes like marbles embedded in woolly pom-poms.
“What are you thinking, little spiders?” she whispered. Even under the meagre puffs of air this created, the huddle twitched and was soon a few millimetres away.
I suppose it’s a spidery thing. After all, they don’t have to eat for months or even years. A day to them might be like a few minutes to us. If only I could enjoy standing still and doing nothing like that. Oh, but I’m such a fidget. I’ll have to get a drink soon. My mouth’s so dry.
She wondered what it would be like to have eight legs. A strain, possibly, with all the rights and lefts they’d have to remember. Her parents had to label her hooves before she’d gone to Flight Camp. Not that it mattered when she kept smashing into flagpoles.
Or maybe it just came naturally to them. Maybe these ones staring up at her were wondering what it would be like to have four legs. They’d be thinking: Way too confusing! Wouldn’t she have to stop to check each time she wanted to walk? How clumsy and awkward!
Fluttershy closed her eyes and tried to feel the pattering of thousands of feet through her legs, pressed up against the sofa weighing down on the floorboards which were connected to the walls and ceiling. Vibration was a language all of its own.
As if I’ll ever master it. But it has to be worth a try, or else I’ll never understand their spidery little secrets.
In the end she gave up, opened her eyes, and spent hours watching the scuttling ones, the still ones, and the creeping and twitching ones. She sighed for a million mysteries hidden behind tiny eyes.
No mystery was hidden in Pinkie Pie’s mind. It was set to party, party, party.
At least, that was what Fluttershy kept thinking over and over while the beatbox throbbed onwards and she bumped into the hundredth pony. It was the only explanation for why she hadn’t managed the guest list more stringently.
Overhead, the domed ceiling of Town Hall had been painted: a large pink star, orbited by five smaller ones, all on a midnight blue backdrop. Below it, the glittery banner read “GOOD LUCK TO PRINCESS TWILIGHT SPAR”. Confetti rained down from the pegasi hovering below the ceiling. Over the heads of the crowd, a disco ball arced over and over in a bizarre game of volleyball. It was that kind of party.
Most of the ponies on her own level were Ponyville residents, but a few camera-toting tourists had wandered in. She hadn’t seen any of the other girls for over an hour.
Beside her, the curving buffet table around the outside of the room creaked with plates of cakes, pies, and little Cheddar chunks on sticks. Her own empty plate and drained glass lay enticingly on the corner. After the rumbling in her stomach, she was starting to regret her seventh helping of chocolate ice cream.
Fluttershy winced and ran a critical gaze over her lime dress, from the puffed sleeves to the hem flowing down to the coronets of her rear hooves. At least I don’t have to worry about the dress itching, she thought, and she uttered a silent thanks to Rarity’s skill.
Before she’d raised a leg for the plate, she saw Pinkie Pie leap out of the wall of flanks and faces.
“There you are!” Pinkie grinned from ear to ear. “I’ve been looking top and bottom, up and down, back to front for you. Where have you been?”
“I got lost,” she said. I remember when parties were smaller.
“Ah well, here you are, and here I am. OK, so Twilight’s gonna be here any second now. What I wanted you to do is –”
The music exploded. Wincing at the new – louder – track being played, Fluttershy watched in horror as the mouth moved and the occasional squeaky pitch met her ears, but no words cut through the thick air or her thick ear.
“What!?” Fluttershy raised her voice. “What did you say!?”
“I SAID!” Pinkie grabbed her around the head, and every shout that broke through scraped across her brain. “ISN’T IT SUPER-DUPER EXCITING THAT TWILIGHT’S GOING AWAY THIS WEEKEND? BET SHE’S REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO IT!”
“I think she’s a bit nervous!” Fluttershy tried shouting back.
“WHAT?”
“I said, she’s nervous!”
“WHAT? OH, HOLD THAT THOUGHT! I WANT YOU TO MEET SOME NEW FRIENDS! THEY CAME OVER JUST FOR TWILY!”
“Pinkie!” Fluttershy yelped as she was dragged and bounced off the writhing mass of dancers. “Why is everything so LOUD!?”
“YES! THE CAKES REALLY OUTDID THEMSELVES, DIDN’T THEY!?”
She bounced off two more shoulders before hours of stares and of missing out on cake finally got to her. “WHY IS IT SO LOUD!?”
“WHY IS IT SO WHAT?”
“LOOOOUUUUUD!”
“IS IT? YOU THINK SO? I DIDN’T NOTICE!”
Fluttershy stared at Pinkie’s face and only saw the guileless smile and bright eyes. Suddenly, she wanted, really wanted to slip out of the hall. Pinkie was a handful at the best of times.
“CAN YOU PLEASE TURN IT DOWN?” she screamed.
“THAT’S HOW THE DJ SPINS HER DISC! HOLD ON! I’LL TALK TO HER IN A SEC!” Pinkie thrust her forwards.
And then Fluttershy found herself face-to-face with a dinner suit, a flashing camera, and a chapeau of the lacy, chrysanthemum-bearing persuasion. Barely had she taken in the three new ponies when the suit beamed at her and hid a chuckle behind his hoof. He said something, but it wasn’t until the music stopped exploding that she could hear a word of it.
“I’m sorry?” she said.
“I say,” he drawled. “I thought I recognized you. Weren’t you a model for Photo Finish once?”
“Er…” Her ears burned and she glanced around for a Pinkie Pie she knew was no longer there. “NNNNNooooo… You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“Oh no, I follow her work most devotedly. Your era was a particular highlight. In fact, I’m quite surprised you didn’t continue it. You still have the lithe figure and, if you don’t mind my saying so, the most enchantingly demure eyes.” He extended his hoof and bowed his head. “Artiste Aficionado, at your service.”
He’s just being nice, she thought while parts of her trembled with the effort. He’s just seen an old photo. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing unless he’d said the exact opposite after looking at you on a printed page. Nothing wrong whatsoever. It won’t come back to haunt you again. Will it?
Gingerly, she shook his hoof, stiffening herself up in case he found her demure again.
The chapeau frowned. “Well really, Aficionado! You mean you know this barbarian? Philistine! She was at the Canterlot Garden Party, bringing in those” – she curled her lip – “birds, those flying pests to a party. I ask you!”
Brakes in her head screeched while she tried to switch track. “Garden Party? Oh, you mean the one Rarity –”
“But then I should not be surprised. I recall you acting disgracefully at the Grand Galloping Gala, bringing in more – urgh! – uncouth savages to such a genteel event.” She eyed up the ceiling as though expecting to spot the uncouth savages there and then.
“Er…” Fluttershy said, horribly aware of the way the tourist pony with the camera was peering into her face.
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “I remember asking directions from you once.”
Sighing with relief, Fluttershy summoned a smile. “Oh yes? Fancy us meeting up again at a party, huh?”
“Yes. Didn’t you throw me into the clock tower at one point?”
There was no escape: pinned down by three stares, surrounded by a wall of bumping flanks, half-confused by the echoes of the music smashing up the inside of her head. She was almost relieved when Pinkie shouted, “TWILIGHT TIME!”
All faces turned around and converged on Princess Twilight Sparkle, who’d just mounted the stage with a wad of papers.
“The speech!” cried out the chapeau. “Oh, about time!”
The tourist pony raised his camera. “I’m gonna get some pictures! The kids at home won’t believe this.”
Evidently, he wasn’t the only one. While flashes burst out across the hall, Pinkie grinned and almost seized Twilight in a one-limbed headlock. She was shouting some kind of announcement. Unfortunately, the DJ didn’t seem to have noticed. Half of the words vanished behind the booming track.
Quietly, Fluttershy slipped through the unresisting crowd back to the buffet table. She knew where she was with Cheddar chunks on sticks.