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?