Prologue

Fluttershy hummed an idle tune as she tended to her garden. It wasn’t a song she knew. Indeed, it lacked a discernible melody. That wasn’t the point, though. The soft hum was her way of expressing to the universe a simple truth: the sun was warm against her coat, the weekend was hers to spend however she chose, and above all else, she was content. It was more than mere happiness; deep within her soul, she felt a calming presence that told her that all was right.

Her carrots were looking quite healthy and ready for picking. Bending down, she bit the sprouted stem and leaned back, throwing her full weight into it. There was no budge initially, but then a start, and soon the root slid free from the earth. She turned her head to the side, depositing the carrot in a basket carefully balanced upon—

Water filled her nostrils. Drowning! Instinct drove her to cough and sputter. Air! A panicked inhale sucked in air atop the water in her lungs, triggering a renewed set of coughs deep from her chest. Each convulsion of her diaphragm wrenched her eyes shut tighter as she tried to stabilize her breathing.

A soft touch.

As she strained an eye open, Angel Bunny appeared before her at eye level. The critter let cry a warbling squeak before disappearing from her field of vision—she felt a warm, furry body clinging tightly to the side of her face. Out the right corner of her eye, her basket was upended, the carrots strewn across the garden patch. Behind where Angel once stood, Fluttershy saw her watering can tipped sideways, the dirt in front of her muzzle still dark from saturation.

She took another breath, this one clean. “Angel? W-What happened?” Finding her hooves, she slowly pushed up off the ground and stood upright.

Angel released his hug and hopped over toward the watering can. Craning his neck up to look at Fluttershy, he made a barrage of rough pantomimes punctuated with light squeaks. It was a rough means of communicating, lacking in nuance, yet years of close friendship helped Fluttershy to quickly discern the meaning. Pointing at her. Falling over, paws comically clutched to chest. Rapidly pointing to himself. Cupping his paws around his mouth for one loud squeak. A few strong pushes against her foreleg. Then, hopping behind the fallen watering can for one sharp kick.

“Oh dear. I passed out? And you helped wake me back up?” she asked. This was fairly basic as far as Angel’s pantomimes went, so she was quite certain of his meaning, but sometimes it felt nice just to check.

Nod. Something—

The rest of Angel’s pantomime was lost to Fluttershy as she felt the hum return. Return from where? It wasn’t the tune she had been humming to herself. This was just a single pitch, or perhaps two? It seemed beyond familiar; it felt like it spoke to her very being. It cut through her head, blurring her vision and making her wobble atop her hooves. Vaguely, she was aware of two tiny paws pushing against her leg, bravely trying to keep her from toppling once more. Then, a few rapid taps, to get her attention. She tried to concentrate, but the hum made everything so very difficult. It was as if every muscle of her body was growing heavy and numb, slowing her toward a restful sleep. Determined, she brought her vision back into focus.

One foreleg upright, the other crossing it. A convenient, oft-used shorthand.

“Help?” Fluttershy echoed. Even now, her voice sounded disconnected, not her own. She wobbled slightly, but a replaced step caught her balance. “Buh... But where? H-Hospital, or... Umm...”

Head shake. Paws hinged apart, like a book.

“T-Twi... light? I... I don’t.... Far.” Sleep sounded so lovely right now. To curl up in the soft grass around her home, bask in the warmth of the sun, feel the—

Paws pushing her once more, this time on her hind leg. Urging her forward. Angel was right. He generally was. Twilight always knew what to do. She’d know about this, too. About the hum. And about sleeping on a Saturday afternoon, when the sun felt so warm and fuzzy and enveloping. Pushing again. Insistent. Urgent. Angel was a good bunny. She took a step forward.

Twilight’s house was far. Not normally; Fluttershy could trot there in three minutes. But now, she was so sleepy. Twilight could wait. A short nap wouldn’t hurt anything. Angel was in a hurry, though. Good bunny. She stumbled and tripped a few times. Even scuffed up her knee. It didn’t hurt though. Angel helped her back up again. Such a good, sweet bunny.

She was in front of Twilight’s library. It was just there. She didn’t remember walking here, but that wasn’t important. The hum was everywhere and vibrated her very being. She would just take a nap, and everything would make sense in the morning. Twilight seemed upset, though. She looked like she was going to panic, but why? Everything felt heavy, so peaceful. Twilight had her mouth open, as if she was speaking, or yelling even, but no sound was coming out. Maybe she’d feel better after a nap too. Oh, right. Fluttershy remembered that she’d come here to ask something.

“Help,” she whispered, before the ground fell away and dreams claimed her.

Chapter 1

Fluttershy opened her eyes and said a name.

She looked up at the wood-carved ceiling of Twilight’s library. No, its basement. There weren’t any windows down here, so the shadows lurked deeper into the corners. Twilight’s science machines provided plenty of illumination, though, with their flashing lights timed up with each beep or whirr. Fluttershy hadn’t been down in Twilight’s basement very often—there hadn’t been a need to—but Pinkie Pie had. She’d told Fluttershy of the time when Twilight had hooked up a number of wires to her head and her hooves, and measured—

Hooves.

Fluttershy lifted a leg, holding it above her face. It ended in a hoof. Hooficured two days ago, yellow fetlocks neatly trimmed. Exactly at it should be.

Exactly as it should be.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight Sparkle poked her head out from behind one of the larger apparatus. Her mouth quickly turned to a smile, gentle and reassuring. Together with the look in her eyes, she had much the same presence as a doctor informing their patient that their wing would be in a cast for a month. Fluttershy fidgeted restlessly beneath the gaze as Twilight approach. “Oh Fluttershy, thank Celestia! I was so worried when you collapsed.” She turned her attention to a nearby machine that was spitting out a waterfall of paper, with a red line zigzagged across its surface. “How are you feeling now?”

Fluttershy returned her stare to her forehoof. “Confused,” she answered after a moment.

“That sounds understandable,” said Twilight. Her voice was gentle. A bit too gentle. She ran her eyes up and down Fluttershy’s prone, blanket-covered form, making the pegasus feel a tad self-conscious. “Any headaches? Memory loss? Inability to focus?”

“I did feel, um...” Fluttershy let her hoof drop to her side atop the blanket. “My thoughts felt all fuzzy when I walked over here. Sort of like right before you drift off to sleep. But, I’m feeling better now. Actually...” She leaned upright slightly and wiggled about until her wings were freed from the blanket, and she stretched them out to their full wingspan. “I feel quite well-rested now. Nothing that a nice nap can’t fix.”

“Yes, yes.” Nodding, Twilight placed a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder and gently pressed her to lay back down. “I, err”—her hind hoof tapped the floor, rapid and light—“heard you say a word. Right as you were waking up.”

Fluttershy frowned slightly at the line of questioning. She repeated the word, then said, “Yes. That was his name.”

“His?”

“The creature from my dream. During my nap.”

Twilight looked out of the corner of her eye at a clipboard hanging beside Fluttershy’s makeshift bed. A large graph dominated the page, lines of purple and green and red waving up and down before reaching a violent crescendo. “A creature? So, not a pony, then.”

Fluttershy looked up and to the right, her brow creasing ever so slightly. “He said that he was a human. He didn’t have any coat, like a pig, except he walked on two legs, like Discord or Spike.” She blanched. “Normally.”

“So,” she asked, head tilted to one side, “this creature—this human—appeared to you, in your dream? And spoke to you?”

The makeshift bed underneath Fluttershy suddenly felt very stiff. She squirmed about to find a more comfortable position. “Not exactly. It was more like, our minds were connected somehow, and we could hear each other’s thoughts... a little.”

“Oookay.” Twilight frowned, arching an eyebrow at the pegasus below her. “So, then, you’re saying he was like a voice in your head?”

Fluttershy twisted and rolled, slinking down the table, the edge of the blanket coming up to her muzzle. “That’s... not quite... Um...”

Closing her eyes and holding a hoof to her temple, Twilight said, “But you were still sharing thoughts. So if your minds were connected, and he wasn’t inside your head, then you... were inside...” Her eyes opened wide, her face perfectly blank.

Fluttershy’s head disappeared beneath the blanket. “...eep.”

Wordlessly, Twilight Sparkle’s horn came alight, gently yet insistently tugging the blanket out from between Fluttershy’s hooves. A pair of black, horn-rimmed glasses came to rest on the bridge of her muzzle, while her mane twisted and knotted itself into a pert bun on the back of her head. “So,” she said calmly, levitating a scroll and quill in front of her, “perhaps you should just start from the beginning.”

Fluttershy let that comment hang in the air for a moment. She tried to look straight up at the ceiling or off to the side, anywhere but at Twilight sitting beside her, unmoving, waiting patiently. With a relenting sigh, she looked down at the folded blanket and idly smoothed out its surface with her forehooves. “It started this afternoon, when I was in my garden.”

“What started? Specifically, I mean.”

“The hum. That was probably the most overwhelming thing. It felt like my whole body was fading away, right before the first time I passed out, and Angel—” She bolted upright, turning to Twilight with ears perked. “Angel! Oh no, what happened to Angel? He was—”

Twilight held up a placating wing. “He’s upstairs. He was getting a bit too fidgety while you were”—frowning, she took a light nibble on the quill that levitated before her—“unresponsive. He kept trying to rouse you, so Spike volunteered to watch after him.”

The tension slowly left Fluttershy’s body. She laid back down. “Oh, I see. That was quite nice of Spike.”

“Was volunteered,” Twilight amended with a cough. “Anyway, auditory hallucinations, followed by impairment of motor function and a sensation of fading consciousness. Does that sound about right?”

“Yes, I guess so. I fell asleep right outside your home, and by the time I woke up, you had carried me down here.”

“Mmm hmm.” The sound of Twilight’s quill scratching across the parchment filled the gap in the conversation. “And while you were asleep, you had a dream about this human.”

Fluttershy tugged sharply on the blanket but, alas, Twilight had had the foresight to pin the corners down with magic. After a few moments of futile tugging, she relented and looked away. “I had a dream that I was in a bedroom, by myself. It was really dark so I couldn’t see much, but I knew it wasn’t mine, plus I could still hear the humming from before.” She ran her hoof in circles on the blanket’s top. “And I, uh... wasn’t quite myself.”

“Your consciousness was inhabiting his body. In the dream, I mean.”

Fluttershy turned her head upright and lifted a hoof above her muzzle, taking a moment to stare at the appendage. “It turns out that humans have fingers, like Spike does. That was, um, quite an unusual sensation.”

Scratch scratch. “So, you felt as though your body was that of a human?”

“Yes. No.” Scrunching her eyes shut, Fluttershy brought a forehoof to her temple. “My ears felt normal, except it felt like I didn’t have a muzzle anymore. Not really. And all of my hooves had these ‘fingers’, but my tail felt normal but only sometimes, and—”

Fluttershy felt a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” said Twilight. “I can imagine how disorienting that must have seemed. You don’t have to go into full detail right now. I’ll just put down ‘proprioceptive cognitive dissonance.’”

“O-Okay then,” said Fluttershy, taking a few slow breaths. “Thanks. I think.”

“And you’re saying that he talked to you. Inside his head.”

“Y-Yes.” Fluttershy blushed sharply at that. “The entire thing felt a bit unusual at first—”

“Does seem rather inappropriate.”

“—but he was really nice about explaining things. Well, sort of.” She turned to Twilight Sparkle and gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “It was only a dream, so I was drifting in and out, and I couldn’t always hear his thoughts that well. But he was a human, and he knew my name, and he said that he’d been looking forward to talking to me, so he was really excited.”

“Really.” Twilight’s quill jotted down a few more notes. “What else did you discuss?”

She tapped a hoof to her chin. “Nothing, really. We both noticed that I couldn’t really feel my wings that well.” She instinctively spread the appendages in question. “He seemed to be thinking about that quite a lot, so I tried thinking about it too, and that did help a little. Oh!” With a start, she lightly tapped upon the table with a hoof. “I also trotted around inside the bedroom. Just for a tiny bit. I couldn’t see very well, after all, and besides, I still felt really sleepy.”

Twilight looked up from her notes and gave her a gentle smile. “Actually, you would just say ‘walked’, not ‘trotted’. A trot is a specific gait that requires four legs, so for bipedal creatures, like Discord or a human, you’d say ‘walked’ instead.”

In that moment, Fluttershy really wished that she were a unicorn. Then she could dispel this pesky magic from her blanket and hide beneath it.

Twilight Sparkle’s smile slowly dissolved, while her quill came back to live. “Uh. Right, then. Trotted.”

“After that... I woke up.” She looked back at Twilight and tittered. “It may not have been the most exciting dream, and perhaps more than a little bit strange, I admit, but it was certainly curious, don’t you think?”

Twilight didn’t make eye contact, instead jotting away on her scroll. She punctuated her last sentence, tapping the period over and again while she mulled away. With a heavy exhale, she turned toward Fluttershy proper, a bleak look to her face. “Okay. Fluttershy.”

“Y-Yes?” The wooden tabletop felt scratchy against her back once more.

“I’m going to tell you something which is probably...” She groaned and shook her head. “No, it is going to freak you out, but you deserve to know the truth. So please, wait until I’ve finished explaining before you react.”

Fluttershy forced her throat to swallow. “I’ll try.”

Twilight Sparkle closed her eyes and folded her wings against her body. With a slow inhale, she said, “That wasn’t a dream. It was real.”

Fluttershy blinked once, twice. She sat up in bed and twisted about, so that she could fully face Twilight. “Really?”

“I could feel it as soon as you approached the library, and my lab equipment certainly confirmed it.” She waved a hoof at the nearby printouts and charts. “Via whatever means, you were being targeted by a fairly high-level summon spell.”

“Summoned...” She looked down and to the left.

“Not physically, of course,” continued Twilight. “After all, you never left this room. But somehow, that spell was able to disassociate your conscious entity from your physical being and channel it into an alternate dimension, whereupon your errant conscious spirit bound—albeit temporarily—into a receptive host to cohabitate with his own extant ego.”

Fluttershy nodded slowly for a few seconds. “Oh.”

Twilight Sparkle tittered and scratched at her neck. “Uh... Basically, he summoned your mind into his head. With magic.”

“Oh!” She smiled in recognition, looking at her own back. “Well, that makes sense, I guess. Since I was feeling sleepy and couldn’t feel my wings, he must have been working on the spell to help me feel more comfortable.”

“That,” she said, taking a step back and looking askance, “does line up with my hypothesis, and also, you’re taking this news way way better than I thought you would.”

Fluttershy gave a demure shrug. “Well, I mean, I suppose you’re right. That it wasn’t very considerate of him to summon me before asking if it was okay, or if now was a good time. But still, he seemed nice.”

Twilight brought a hoof to her brow for a moment before leveling her gaze. “Fluttershy, Discord made it rain chocolate milk and brought your gravy boat to life. He ‘seemed nice’, too.”

“Exactly,” Fluttershy calmly returned. “And tomorrow, Discord and I are going to go uphill-sledding together.”

Twilight opened her mouth a few times, before finally snapping it shut.

“He seems like a nice creature, even if we don’t understand much about him,” Fluttershy continued with a small nod. “I’m sure that if I talked him some more, we could—”

“Oh, no. Absolutely not.” Twilight Sparkle waved both her forehooves, her brow furrowing tighter. “There is absolutely no way that I’m going to stand by and let somepony from another dimension cast spells on my friend in order to hijack her mind.”

Fluttershy brought a hoof gently underneath her own chin. “He seems like he just wants to talk.”

“Princess Celestia would never allow this!”

Fluttershy locked eyes with Twilight. The two stared at each other in silence for a bit, a moment, a while. Fluttershy tilted her head.

Twilight Sparkle grunted. “Spiiike!”

Angel Bunny nuzzled against Fluttershy’s face as she laid beside him. When he was first let into the basement, he was nothing but excited squeaks and frantic displays of emotion. Now that the situation had calmed down, he seemed content to rest beside her. Good bunny. He could still stand to be nicer to his bunnysitter; Angel was still giving Spike the occasional baleful glare.

The bunnysitter in question tapped his clawed foot against the wood flooring, crossing his arms and pouting at Twilight Sparkle. “Come on, Twilight! Do I really need to be down here still?”

“Yes.” Twilight Sparkle, meanwhile, was stacking together some of her charts and data, and writing notes on a scroll that was getting lengthier and lengthier by the second. “We’re waiting for the Princess to reply.”

“Um, duh? You told me that when I sent her your letter.” Spike jerked his thumb at the staircase leading to the main foyer. “How about I go upstairs, get back to the cleaning, which is supposed to be your chore this week, and then as soon as—”

She rolled her eyes upward. “Please, Spike, this is important! The Princess’s letter could arrive any second now.”

“Seriously? In the time it could take for me to walk up the stairs and back down again,” he said, pantomiming the action with his fingers, “you honestly think that the Pri—” Clutching suddenly at his gut, Spike released a rumbling belch. A flume of green dragonfire illuminated the room, producing a tightly-rolled parchment wrapped in ribbon, along with the faint odor of sulfur.

“Ah, perfect!” Twilight Sparkle reached out to the scroll in midair, unfurling it in front of her. “And in the time it took you to gripe about how long it was taking, the Princess wrote back to us.” She looked away from the scroll for just a moment and gave a pacifying smile and a wave of her hoof. “Thank you, Spike. You can get back to... whatever you were doing earlier.”

Grumbling and scratching at the side of his face, Spike started his climb back up the staircase to the main floor. Fluttershy watched him intently as he climbed, studying his actions. She noted how each of his clawed fingers dug and scraped along his face. That probably made it lots easier to deal with an itch.

“My dear Twilight, thank you for your detailed letter. I am...” Twilight read aloud in a soft monotone, her voice fading in and out as she reached certain lines. Fluttershy broke her attention from Spike and watched as her friend’s face grew more and more concentrated. “...understand your apprehension... powerful magicks targeting... well-being of your friend... need for—” She jerked her head back and boggled a moment before rereading an excerpt in an incredulous tone. “While it is very compassionate for you to be concerned for the well-being of your friend, I do not feel that there is need for immediate alarm. So long as Fluttershy feels safe, then this could indeed prove to be a terrific chance for discovery. I trust that Fluttershy will inform you should anything trouble her, and that you will be able to take the appropriate actions. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any further concerns. Yours, Princess Celestia.” Twilight Sparkle lowered the letter and stared straight at Fluttershy, her expression unreadable.

Fluttershy looked down and to the side almost immediately, her brow scrunching lightly. “The Princess thinks that this is ‘a terrific chance for discovery’?”

“I can’t believe she’d just allow this kind of magic to occur,” Twilight said, her voice hollow. “Completely unregulated? Source unknown?”

“We would just be talking,” she said, frowning slightly at Twilight. “It should be safe, so long as—”

“—so long as we take proper precautions.” Twilight jammed a thermometer into Fluttershy’s mouth under her tongue, before pushing her back onto the tabletop. “That means some protective counterspells, a full array of biometric and thaumaturgic recording devices, thorough psychological profiles both before and after...”

“Ah ke doi nah.”

“What?”

Fluttershy pulled the thermometer out of her mouth. “I can’t do it now. I think. I mean, I can’t hear the humming, so...”

Twilight gently reinserted the thermometer. “All the more reason to take proper precautions. We’ll get some baseline measurements now. But you need to promise me, as soon as you start to feel that spell’s effects kicking in, you drop whatever you’re doing and come straight here, okay?” She looked down at Fluttershy and gently smiled. “I just want to make sure that we can properly monitor you, while you’re... you know. Away. Make sure that you’re safe.”

“Okay, I promise, Twilight,” she said, once she had removed the thermometer. She looked up at the ceiling and blinked a few times. A new person. A new type of creature, in fact. Reaching out from a different dimension, just so that he could talk to her? The thought made her a bit self-conscious—why choose her, specifically, out of all the creatures in all of Equestria—but all the same, he seemed nice enough. Maybe they could become friends? She smiled at that. It’s always nice to make a new friend.

Twilight Sparkle stuck the thermometer back under her tongue.

Chapter 2

Twilight pulled open the door, smiling as she let her inside. “Hi, Fluttershy. Felt you coming, with how strong that spell is. Guess it’s time, huh?”

Fluttershy trotted into the library, scuffing her hooves slightly as she went. She gave Twilight a half-lidded smile. What a good friend. “Hi, Twilight. Thanks f’everything.”

“We’re going to get you set up in the lab again,” she said, opening the door thusly. As they trotted down the steps—Twilight following closely so that Fluttershy could lean her weight onto her—the setup looked nearly the same as it had last week when she’d suddenly passed out, with one key difference. The rigid wooden table from before had been replaced with Twilight’s spare bed, plush and quilted and warm. Fluttershy felt the strength leave her knees at the mere thought of laying down on the soft mattress and taking a quick little nap. Luckily, Twilight was right there to catch her before she tumbled down the steps.

“I’ll have you hooked up to all the machines, in order to track your status, but otherwise I’ll keep things nice and quiet here so as not to disturb you.” Reaching the bottom of the steps, she turned to Fluttershy and bit her lip. “If... If something bad should happen, during the spell...”

“S’ok,” Fluttershy said with a smirk, her eyes blinking independent of one another. “I c’n stop the spell, if I wanna. Think so. He said that, anyway.” The bed looked oh-so-inviting right now.

“He? The human?”

“Nah. S’mepony else.” She clambered over to the bed and started helping herself into it. Such a warm and fluffy bed.

Sighing and shaking her head, Twilight Sparkle gave her a hoof, helped tucked her in, and connected a few wires to a maneband and some hoof bracelets that she put on her. “I’ll be down here, just to keep an eye on things, okay?” When no reply came, she smiles and brushed Fluttershy’s mane off of her face. “Good luck, Fluttershy.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled back before drifting away.

Twilight stared down upon Fluttershy’s sleeping form. She could feel magic seeping into the room from unknown vectors, washing over Fluttershy’s form, pulsing with a gentle rhythm. Her entire form went slack, save for a serene smile and the gentle twitching beneath her eyelids.

Turning to her printouts, Twilight Sparkle studied the fluctuations in the line graph. Her horn glowed with an aura of its own, sensing the pulses of invading energies. She touched her nose just underneath Fluttershy’s jawline, furrowing her brow as she searched for a pulse. And she sighed. “Normal.” Twilight trotted over to the nearby workbench, flipped open her copy of Finnegans Whinny to the bookmarked page, and glanced over the edge of the binding. Fluttershy slept. With a gentle shrug, Twilight Sparkle began to read.

Not more than an hour had passed before the aura finally faded, like air from a balloon, rapid and ungraceful. Twilight looked up from her book just as Fluttershy’s eyelids blinked open. Smiling warmly, Twilight set down her book and trotted to the bedside. “Welcome back, Fluttershy. How was—”

Springing upright in bed, Fluttershy spun to look at Twilight, her pupils the size of pinpricks. “Rarity! I need Rarity!” Lunging with both forehooves, she grabbed Twilight about the withers and pulled her muzzle-to-muzzle before wailing, “Now!”

“Millions of them!” Fluttershy shivered and clung close to Rarity, her face buried deep in the curls of her mane. “And they know everything about us. Absolutely everything!”

“Shh, shh shh.” Rarity quietly shushed her friend, running a gentle hoof along her mane. “It’s alright, dear. You’re safe now. Back home in Ponyville.”

“You don’t understand,” she moaned, squeezing Rarity tighter. “He said they’d seen all kinds of stories about us: fighting Chrysalis, visiting the Crystal Empire, your sleepover with Twilight and Applejack...” She leaned back and looked up at Rarity, her face a blank mask. “They could be watching us. Right now!”

Rarity frowned at that, clicking her tongue. “That does seem rather inappropriate.”

“Unlikely.” Back behind one of her large science machines, Twilight was busy collecting all of her data readouts and spreadsheets as one big bundle of paper. “At least, not this very second. Given how unrefined this one mind-link spell is, I’m pretty sure I’d notice a million clairvoyance spells.” After wiping the sweat off her brow with a hoof, she fanned herself with one of her pie charts. “Though that raises the question of how he’d know about a sleepover between just us three girls. Perhaps they somehow intercepted my friendship reports to the princess, and wrote some sort of novelization loosely based—”

Rarity cleared her throat. “I’m certain that we can speculate on that little privacy breach at a better time,” she said, offering the slightest emphasis to the last words. Smiling back at Fluttershy, she continued, “But it seems safe to say that you’re a bit of a celebrity over there, no?”

She frowned, a light crease at her brow. “I… guess so.”

“Am I mistaken?”

Fluttershy’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. “I mean. No, you’re right. I suppose that all of us are… a bit famous.” She brought her hoof up to her chin, rubbing back and forth against it. “It’s just, I don’t think that’s why he chose me. He did mention that he had thought about casting that spell on the rest of you girls.”

Rarity jolted her head back, scoffing thrice. “I should think not! You have been more than accommodating with this ‘human’, Fluttershy, but I have no intention of letting him… touch minds with me, on his whim!” Huffing, she ran a hoof through her mane. “Honestly, now. Doesn’t your friend have any manners?”

Fluttershy hid her giggling behind a hoof. “It’s okay, Rarity. He changed his mind.”

“Why’s that?” asked Twilight. She emerged from the back, floating a tome of paper beside her, and made her way to Fluttershy’s bedside. “Why single you out?”

“Well, he said…” Blushing, Fluttershy played around with the sheets beneath her hooves, smoothing and crumpling them in turn. Still, she knew she had to spit it out, before Rarity drew her own conclusions. “He said I was very kind. And forgiving. And a good friend.” She looked down at her hooves and shrugged. “And he wished that he could be kinder too, so… he was hoping that he could learn. From me.”

Inevitably, Twilight and Rarity let out a chorus of “aww”s at this. Fluttershy squirmed, uncomfortable with so much attention being showered upon her. And yet… she felt a warm tingle in her cheeks.

“Well, I for one can think of no better teacher.” Rarity placed a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder, and after a moment, won a small smile from her.

“I’m still really hesitant over the whole idea. But,” said Twilight, scratching at her neck, “if we think of it more like some sort of cultural exchange… And after all, he’s asking to learn about kindness, and friendship. We’re sort of obligated to help those in need.”

“Mmm.” Fluttershy shook her head, smiling gently. “I’m helping him because I want to. We haven’t talked that much, but I have a feeling. He’s kinder than he thinks,” she says, tilting his head. “He just needs help to… live it?”

Twilight blinked. “You mean, like ‘practicing what you preach’?”

She shrugged, smile unwavering. “Something like that.” And then the smile wavered, hard. Sitting upright, she turned to speak to Rarity, but then her mouth snapped shut.

Rarity frowned, leaning in closer beside her friend. “Do you…” she murmured, sotto voce.

“Twilight?” Fluttershy asked, half-smiling and half-wincing. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t mean to impose on you, but I’m a little bit thirsty. Could—”

“Oh! Of course, of course,” said Twilight with chagrin. “I’m sorry, I should have thought of how much of a toll that much magical energy would put on you.” She made her way up the stairs to the main level, calling down, “I’ll be back down with some tea in a few minutes. You girls just make yourself comfortable.”

Both ponies followed Twilight with their eyes, until the upstairs door closed with a soft click. Rarity immediately turned to Fluttershy and leaned closer, whispering conspiratorially. “What? What is it? Did something else happen?”

Fluttershy nodded, biting her lip.

“Something bad?” asked Rarity; Fluttershy shook her head. “Good?” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Come, dear, spit it out. You’ve got me on pins and needles!”

“It’s…” Scrunching up her face, Fluttershy turned away until her face was sufficiently hidden by mane. “He knows.”

“Knows? What does he…” Rarity’s eyes grew wide with dawning realization, and she gasped. “No! He knows about—” She shot a quick glance upstairs, ensuring that the door was still closed, then quickly proceeded to pantomime sticking a cupcake into her eye. “Fluttershy, I swear to you, I did not breathe a word! To anypony!”

She shook her head, still hiding behind a wall of pink. “No, I know you didn’t. He um… He sort of likes to matchmake, I guess? Sort of like how you like to predict all the latest celebrity couples in Canterlot. So… when he…”

“Oh.” Rarity put a gentle hoof on her back. “When he predicted that you and R… that the two of you were an item, and when you reacted…”

Fluttershy nodded somberly. “He wasn’t even that good of a guesser,” she mumbled, though it gave way to a weak chuckle. “Some of his guesses were just silly. I mean, he told me that the guess he was most proud of was Twilight, together with Princess Celestia.” She chuckled again, shaking her head. “Could you imagine? The two of them, in love with each other?”

Rarity’s body went rigid, and she shot another glance at the upstairs door—still closed. “Y-Yes! Positively absurd. I talk with Twilight frequently, so believe me, she has told me that such a thing would never come to be. Ah… all the same, it would probably be best if you didn’t mention that to anypony else. At all. Wouldn’t want ponies getting the wrong idea, would we?”

“I suppose not,” was Fluttershy’s sullen reply. She stared down at her hooves.

Frowning, Rarity waited for a moment, letting the silence fall across the conversation. After a moment, she prodded. “So. What now?”

“Nothing, really,” she said with a half-hearted shrug. “He felt bad for embarrassing me, even though it was an accident. So, he apologized, and we dropped it, and…” Fluttershy shrugged again. “We talked about other things.”

“Fluttershy.” Rarity leveled her gaze. “I can understand your panic then, having one’s private feelings brought out onto display. But you wouldn’t be bringing this up to me now unless there was a reason for it.” When Fluttershy looked away, twirling her mane with a hoof, Rarity continued, “Would you like to know what I think?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. Rarity was a good friend. Fluttershy was lucky to have several good friends.

“I think you want him to know,” she said, raising her hoof to quell Fluttershy’s hyperventilating before it had a chance to start, “for the same reason you asked yours truly to carry your secret: because at the rate you’re going, you’re never going to confess to her.” She flashes Fluttershy a confident smirk. “Sometimes, you just need a set of hooves in your back to give you that extra push. Or, I suppose in his case, claws.” Frowning, she tapped a hoof to her chin. “Paws? Legs.”

“Rarity,” pleased Fluttershy, her eyes growing the slightest bit moist, “I can’t tell her! You know why I can’t—”

“I know all of the excuses you have made for yourself.” Calm and gentle, Rarity took up a few locks of Fluttershy’s mane with her hooves, brushing it out and separating it into braids. “And I know all the things you are afraid of. Despite all this, I’ve told you time and again that you should tell her. She has the right to know your feelings, darling.”

Fluttershy tried to resist for a moment, but Rarity knew her way around a makeover, and soon the tension drained from her muscles. Still, a nugget of uncertainty weighed down upon her. “Do you think he can even help, though? How would he?” Her ear flicked of its own accord. “He’s not in Equestria, I mean.”

“He sees it,” Rarity said as she twisted the loose braids between one another. “You said that even before he properly met you, he knew that you and she would be a match for one another. Isn’t that enough? That he believes in you.”

Believes. The word echoed around in Fluttershy’s head. He believed that they had a chance. Rarity did too, certainly. It was sweet enough, and she certainly appreciated it, but… Wishing only gets a pony so far. Some things in life were possible, and some things were not. Fluttershy had made peace with reality, with her lot in life. It was fine. She didn’t need to ask for more.

A creaking sound from upstairs and the sound of hooves resonating through the tree signalled the end of their conversation. Fluttershy trusted that Twilight wouldn’t tell, but all the same, secrets are easier to keep, the fewer ponies who know them. Plus it would be so embarrassing for yet another pony to learn her secret, and she’d had enough embarrassment for today. So they drank tea while Twilight asked a few more questions and took her measurements. Once Rarity had finished braiding her mane, it was about time for the three of them to get back to the rest of their day. As the three of them climbed the stairs to the ground level, Fluttershy gave one last lingering look to the bed.

What if she could ask for more?