My Little Pony Friendship is Magic
Healing Pony POV Series
"The Alicorn and the Steed"

I remember how I was born. How many ponies can say that? Oh right, I'm not a pony. And I wasn't born: born means you grew, you started as something tiny. I was made, aware and knowing the moment I came into existence. I came into existence whole and complete with nothing before it.

I don't know if the old man made me out of a piece of himself like his old man did before him, or whether I was just spun out of nothingness.

I remember being confused for the few moments after I was made, I heard words but didn't understand them, I felt sensations but had no clue what they meant.

Then everything snapped into focus as I shook my head and memories came to me. Of a life I'd never lived, of people I'd have never known, of a name I had never been called. I hear someone call that name. I recognize the voice I've never heard.

Twilight Sparkle: Nerd. Geek. Bookworm. Miss High And Mighty Magic. And now whining about something or other.

I swear I hear my thoughts being echoed inside my own head by a voice that's my own, but I ignore it.

I tell Twilight what I think of her and her magic now that she doesn't have any and give her a good whip to the face with my tail for good measure.

I see some other ponies I recognize, they're in my way, so I push them out of my way.

I remember how fun it was watching others squirm and playing others with hair triggers. I remember having fun making the geek blow-up twice at me, it was so easy!

Then the magical dodads of whatever failed to stop the draconequus, no big deal, I liked Angel the way he was right now anyway, and I didn't need these losers anyway.

Then the geek and the hayseed came to my home, and the hayseed LASSOED AND HOGTIED ME! WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS? This isn't funny, because it's happening to me! Then the geek touches her horn to my head.

And my thoughts are no longer echoing, and I see memories flash in my mind of me acting like a total half-wit Snow White wannabe and having less spine than a wild flower. It made me sick.

Then I felt pieces of something inside me reconnecting themselves, pulling themselves back together, and fusing into one piece. Problem was that it was where it was forming!

I was being crushed from all sides inside my own body! I was suffocating! I panicked. My legs and wings pressed into me like clay.

You ever been squeezed out of a tube into a freezing senseless nothingness? It's every bit of fun that you think it is.

And I drifted in the void, voiceless, senseless, helpless. In a black ocean without a surface, constantly drowning.

After a month, eternity or five minutes, something changed.

I saw a pink light like a butterfly, it hurt and made me sick just to look at it! It was horrible! I didn't know what it was but it was not me! I tried to swim away from it but it was like a black hole and I was sucked in!

I see another version of myself fly by, she has such anger on her face, so badass!

I'm in the sky! I'm flying! Pulling a balloon! Why am I here? And it floods back. Anger tells me that my friends being hurt was a bad thing that I should be angry. That the draconequus is a jackass that I don't want to see get anything he wants! I want to see him hurt! I want to see him squirm! I want him to beg for mercy when I won't have any!

"That, big, dumb, MEANIE!!!"

Huh? Why did I say something as first grade as that?

I speed like lightning towards the slacker loud-mouth, hayseed manages to lasso the slack loud-mouth and I feel a coolness run over me and . . .

I'm in the blackness, drowning, AGAIN!!!

Another eternity, another forever, another moment, time had no meaning. I thrash about madly this time. Let me out. Let me out! PLEASE LET ME OUT!

The blackness suddenly has a surface and completely exhausted, my formless, shapeless self floats to the top.

Memories, someone else's memories, came crashing in, I saw myself, saw her, acting in ways I'd never act, feeling things I'd never feel, thinking thought I never would.

I was celebrating in Canterlot, no, someone else was. I was groggy as senses returned and I had legs and wings again. Or were they mine? All I knew, was that it was someone else speaking and moving.

The losers called out my name, and she responded. She was me? No, she was she, she was Fluttershy.

I wasn't anything.

I screamed.

She didn't hear me, no one did.

I finally realized where -my- memories actually started. I remember her not playing along with the draconequus, Discord, I remember her knowing she was a pathetic weakling and her brain not able to process her friends abandoning her. So Discord got angry and punched through her brain with a tap on the head.

Then my memories started. I was her, no, I was an IMITATION OF HER made to be cruel. Discord, the draconequus, had made me, and left me. Bastard.

Like a straight jacketed ghost I was dragged along inside her. Her being always so pathetically shy and sickeningly kind as she fluttered.

I finally understood the first words said to me the moment I was made, 'You've been kind for far too long my dear, time to be cruel.'

I am Cruel? As she fluttered about among her loser friends I fluttered in my infinite but at the same time skin tight prison, I fluttered?

I hear her apologize profusely for what I did. They tell her that it wasn't the real her so there's nothing to forgive.

I'm not real?

I'm just an imitation of her? I am just a cruel Fluttershy? Cruel Fluttershy. FlutterCruel?

A name. I have a name. And not a moment later after too long I feel joyful surprise. A tiny bit of myself roots into her body, my body. I can feel it twitch as I twitch! I have proof of my own exist. And I spread like a cancer, enjoying every moment of it.

Finally we're close enough that I can speak to her, that I CAN SPEAK!

I hear her thoughts. I laugh at her. I hear myself laugh on the outside! It was so sweet a feeling you have no idea you twits!

Then I spring myself on her when she got home, I let her known what I am and who I am and what she isn't. I tell her what I plan to do. She can be the 'me' that's a prisoner. I don't care if she was here first. I'm here now! And then . . . she . . . sings . . . me . . . TO SLEEP!

That was well over a month ago, a lot more so, since I was born, created. I'm still FlutterCruel, I don't like being called what's just a modification of -her- name, but my name is just about the only thing I own and I'm going to keep it.

The longest time my jailer has let me out is when I gave a bear a good beating just to work out the tension in it's shoulders when my jailer needed to give some extra harsh chiropractic care.

I've been able to force myself to the surface a few times, I'm not sure what lets me. My jailer is just as surprised as me when it happens. Like when I made sure Pinkie didn't get out of her bed early, and when grounded Rainbow Dash going psycho.

And I got a good laugh out of scaring the feathers off her during her night home alone on Nightmare Night. I actually got her mumbling 'count the shadows' by the time it was morning.

I wanted to actually go out that night, but Fluttershy must have seen it coming because she locked the doors and windows and gave the keys to Angel and told him to not give them back to her until morning. I think Angel's guessed by now that 'mommy' is of two minds now, but he's taking it in stride. He actually unlocked the door for us when we had guests though.

Having Princess Luna show up wanting voice lessons was a riot! If Fluttershy hadn't made my body go catatonic I'd have been laughing my head off! Normally I find Fluttershy's cowardice sickening, but unlike the half-pint Pipsqueak I was more interested in good laugh for my first Nightmare Night than free candy!

I can't believe I'm been cowed and subjugated by a pony whose scared of her own shadow and neglects her wings so badly it's a wonder they haven't atrophied!

At least Angel's fun to hang around with, I think I appreciate his attitude more than my jailer.

"That poor filly." My jailer said as we feed the animals. "I should go look for her too. She could be lost somewhere out there all alone." I've finally gotten used to hearing my own voice speak without me.

"Planning on giving her a lesson in manners too?" I said deadpan.

"I would if I thought she'd listen."

"That's hasn't stopped you with me." The animals have long since gotten used to me speaking to myself. I still think they looked cooler when the old man had his fun.

"I'd say it's worked fairly well. You don't want to admit it. But I can tell you've changed."

"Yes warden."

"I've been trying to help you, not imprison you."

"You have a funny way of showing it."

"You might have my memories. But you have almost no experiences of your own. You're like a filly in a mare's body sometimes. Which is rather scary when I think about it. It wouldn't be so bad if somepony became a filly again in mind AND body, cause then you're just giving them a second chance at finding themselves if their life had hit a dead end and they can't find their way out. But it would feel way too much like stealing if you just made someone a filly in mind without giving them those years to learn the world again."

"You think maybe Nightmare Moon started out the same age as Celestia, and became a Alicorn filly when she got blasted by the Elements for those reasons?" I asked off handedly curious.

"Maybe. I doubt we'll ever know for sure."

"We could ya know, ASK."

"ASK Princess LUNA about her age-?! THAT'S! I mean-let's keep looking."

We spent the evening looking for the brat. Before we finally came home and went to bed. No matter what happened, we shared the same brain, so when one of us fell unconscious so did the other, when of us dreamed, so did the other though we never saw each other's dreams. There was an infinite abyss between us there. And I was very grateful for that. It meant there was one more thing that belonged only to me and didn't also belong to my jailer.

We woke up the next morning and she had breakfast. Of course I tasted it as she was eating, but I couldn't help the feeling every time that I was being spoon feed like a toddler.

"We should go looking a bit more for Diamond Tiara today." She said with my voice.

"For a filly you don't even know and from all accounts is Gilda with hooves?"

"You like Gilda."

"You don't."

"That doesn't mean I want to see a small filly out there somewhere cold alone hungry and scared."

I growled. "Then what are you waiting for?! Go! Go! Carry as many bags of food and blankets you can and fly and do not rest until you arrive in Zebrabwa! All those starving little zebra foals! Go! Go!"

I so regretted saying that a second later from the splitting headache of Fluttershy on reaction alone trying to fly out of the kitchen in a beeline for the distant land of strips and spots and ramming her head on the door frame. UGH! Even our house is barely built for flying!

Fluttershy shook her head and trotted over to the ice box and placed a bag of ice against our head to sooth the throbbing. That felt so much better.

"I was being sarcastic." I managed to grunt.

" . . . If I could help, I would. But I'm not a rescue worker . . . and I have a responcibility to my animals."

"So dumb animals matter more than ponies who can think and speak?"

I felt a kick in my shin.

I looked down and aplogized. "Sorry Angel, didn't mean you."

"Everything alive is precious. Including you FlutterCruel. Nothing should have to suffer."

"Pssh. I'm not alive. And suffering is a part of life girl. Welcome to reality."

"It shouldn't have to be! And we really do need to look for her! She could have wandered into the Everfree Forest! That horrible place! I get shivers just thinking of it! All those poor animals force to eat each other because Everfree won't let us provide for them! It's just not natural."

" . . . you think animals eating each other on their own is not natural?" I asked drolly.

"HOW CAN IT BE? Life taking life?! Livings things are supposed to grow and propagate not destroy each other!"

I said in a completely flat tone. "Okay. That's it. You know what? I think I'll just fly to the Griffons' Dens and order a hamburger."

"WHAT?"

"Don't be such a scary-cat, griffons haven't eaten ponies in a thousand years."

"THAT'S NOT IT! And you're not!"

"Oh just watch me! Or rather, watch you!" I began to trot towards the door.

"Oh no you're not!" I tripped on my own hooves.

"Oh yes I am!" I got up and made a flying gallop before my wings spread out and stopped me dead in my tracks making me crash. Our nose throbbed now. "You're making this harder than it has to be."

"I said no!"

I crawled foreword while she dug in our back hooves.

"And I said yes!" I hissed.

"ANGEL! HELP-clean up while mama is gone. Oh and you can take out those wolf traps mama told you to throw out but you just hid under the house." I said in the most warm and loving voice I could create dripping with honey.

Angel just grinned, saluted and was a white blur off to retrieve his contraband.

Fluttershy startled. I can't blame her, I've never been able to take control like this before!

"I won't let you do something so unnatural! Think of the poor cows! I'm friends with some!"

"You are! I'm not dummy! And you aren't going to be friends with the hamburger! And are you saying dragons and griffons are unnatural then?"

"It's unnatural for ponies!"

"Ponies CAN eat meat stupid!"

"That doesn't mean they SHOULD!"

Oh no she didn't. I stopped dead in my tracks. When did Celestia crown this pony the magistrate of what was and what was not natural? Who was she to make that call? "You . . . you . . ." I said gritting my teeth. "You high and mighty, holier than thou, YOU MAKE ME SO MAD!" I snarled. My entire body went stiff standing at attention. I began shaking and rumbling like a volcano. I wondered if we were going to explode. It felt like all of Equestria was shaking. I couldn't take this anymore! I don't care if I die (oh right need to be alive for that), just let me out, let me out! LET ME- it stopped.

"Huh?" I blinked and looked around, down at myself and at my wings. Everything seemed all right.

"What happened?" I heard a voice say out of my mouth.

"I don't . . . wait . . ." I flapped in the air then did a dangerous loop de loop in doors. "No! Stop!"

I landed huffing but smiling. Could it be? Was it real?

I looked in the mirror, I saw a worried face look back. "FlutterCruel what-"

"BOO! BAH! BLABLABLA! Hahah!" I made several faces at the mirror. I giggled. "I'm the Alicorn! You're the steed! At last!" I cackled. Then I noticed something strange. "Blank?" There was no sign of her cutie mark on my haunches. Huh? How did that work? Oh well. "Well that makes things harder."

I looked through Fluttershy's closet, still filled with dresses from her model days until I found and put on a simple green saddle skirt that hid my flanks. "You know what? Forget the hamburger! Let's have a nice outing instead!" I grinned ear to ear.

I went out the front door. Which hoof first? Left or right? Oh right, I get to choose! Not her! I laughed. I fell on my back and laughed and kicked my hoofs in the air! I existed! I was! I was alive! I actually cried I was so happy. Did these make the first tears of my life?

"You stop this right now-"

"No." I said simply and she was silent. I trotted out the door and flew towards Ponyville.

"You know maybe I'll find and share with the Crusader a few drops of Witch Weed. Maybe their cutie marks are Witch Weed Dealers."

"I'LL DROWN US FIRST!" I could already feel Fluttershy ready to bite through our own tongue.

"KIDDING! Just joking! Geeze!" I laughed so hard at hearing her so uncharacteristically serious.

"What . . . are you going to do?" She asked sounding very worried. It was great.

"Same as anyone else: anything I want."

I sang.

I know this place filled with so many wonders
Casting its spell that I so remember.
Birds in the trees and the cute tough bunnies,
Me flying free tastes just like honey,
Honey~!

Oh, what a magical place,
And the other me is now out of my face!
I knew the outside had so much up its sleeve
And now that I'm here, I'll never leave.

I am me,

I don't owe anyone anythiiiiiiiiiing!

Not The End