“So, cockatrices,” Doug says with a tremor in his voice. “They petrify things?”

Fluttershy nods, smiling at the recognition.

“Fascinating. That was super annoying in games, because it would stun your character for a while.” Doug taps his chin in quick succession. “I know less about them than snakes because, well, cockatrices are fictional.”

“Fictional?” Fluttershy repeats with a slight raise of her head. She glances towards the Everfree Forest. “I think Scaarcarruoah is brooding right now, and a mote territorial, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a visit!”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” Doug says, rubbing at his neck. He can almost feel the sweat beading. “Somehow I don’t feel like ending up a statue on her lawn.”

“Oh, she doesn’t leave statues.” Fluttershy waits a beat as Doug glances at her. “Cockatrices eat stone. Well, unless she’s laid her eggs in their mouth or, um…” She bashfully scratches at her tail with a forehoof.

Doug’s eyes slowly widen as he stares at Fluttershy. He can definitely feel the sweat this time. “That is terrifying. Utterly, pants-shittingly terrifying.”

A grim smile crosses Fluttershy’s muzzle as she nods along. She looks far less distraught about this than Doug expected. “Well, they should know better than to eat ponies. Unless they’re a rebellious teenage cockatrice showing off for their friends. Or they’re swarming.” She shudders.

“And the reason you haven’t Agent Orange’d that whole forest is…” Doug says, his hand making a little circle in the air, “some circle of life nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense at all,” Fluttershy says forcefully. Doug is a little taken aback. “How would you feel if somepony colored you As The Dawn just because of what your neighbors are? Not because of what they did, but what they can?”

“Fairly certain I felt pretty awful when something unjustified happened to me,” Doug grunts out, folding his arms across his chest.

Fluttershy stares at him, slowly nodding her head.

Doug takes a deep breath, feeling his brief burst of anger deflate. “And you’re saying I’m proposing the exact same thing.”

“It wasn’t right what happened to you.” Fluttershy hunkers down, hiding her face with her mane. “And… and maybe if I had stayed with you, instead of running away, it wouldn’t have happened.” She sinks so low, she’s surprised she doesn’t fall right through her chair. “I… I’m sorry.”

Doug’s hand around Fluttershy grips her side, pulls her across his lap and wraps his hand around her neck. “It’s okay, ‘Shy. I don’t blame you for that. There’s nothing to forgive.”

“But-” Fluttershy starts, immediately cut off as he hugs her tighter.

Fluttershy’s heart pounds as he holds her in place, wanting nothing more than to dart upstairs and bury herself under her bed. Her breath comes fast, then faster, and she lets out a muffled ‘eep’ into his chest.

Except, he’s not ripping her to pieces like a frenzied manticore.

The petrified feeling slowly fades as his arms sink into her. The fact that she is confronting this fear spurs her on, and she hugs back, almost able to wrap her forelegs all the way around. She feels the chuckle in his chest more than she hears it, the pat on her back particularly reassuring.

“It takes a lot of guts to be friends with creatures like that,” Doug says, glancing at the picture of Fluttershy and the cockatrice, “and unknown creatures like me. Who knows, maybe you talking with me let enough of the other ponies give me a chance.”

Fluttershy’s spirits soar like a pack of butterflies, her tail flipping back and forth as she beams at Doug with a wide smile. She refrains from kissing him, even if she did overhear her friend. Instead she slowly backs up, letting his hand rest on her back.

“It’s actually comforting to talk to somepony who doesn’t view those creatures with, how should I say, the fear they could deserve. Not that I think I’ll ever go into the Everfree Forest. Well, without a really compelling reason.” Doug shrugs as his hand rubs her back. Her coat is wonderfully soft, much like Rarity’s, and he’s glad the ponies are so comfortable with being physical.

“I-it’s really nothing special.” Fluttershy finds herself missing the full body contact, far more than she thought she would have. She drops her head down, staring at his thigh and wondering if he would mind if she rested there.

Several minutes pass, occasional tweets from the birds fluttering about outside breaking the silence.

“So, how does it work?” Doug asks out of the blue.

“Hm?” Fluttershy says as she looks up from his thigh, almost done tracing the comparably longer hairs to his knee. She takes the chance to push forwards, rolling onto her back and resting her head on his leg, her legs tucking against her body even as they stick in the air. His hand starts on her belly before quickly shifting to her neck, scratching right at her jaw. She loves it, tilting her head up to give him even better access, her mane spilling in between his legs.

“Well, you’re friends with snakes.” Doug waits for her to nod, his head slowly making circles as if that would convey his meaning. “And you’re also friends with, say, rabbits.”

Fluttershy’s eyes barely narrow, and she nods again.

“How do you reconcile that?” Doug demands, looking at the birds flying outside. “I mean, I’m sure you know what happens between them.”

Fluttershy takes a deep breath, the hand stroking at her neck oddly calming. “I do,” she whispers, her barrel shaking despite her attempts to keep it calm. “It’s… it’s hard. No, it’s devastating every time I lose a friend.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way.” Doug keeps his hand going as he pauses. “I don’t know how things work here, and a lot is way different than what I’m used to. Like plants growing; Applejack mentioned that one of the reasons the Everfree Forest is weird and strange is because plants grow on their own. That’s… to put it lightly, completely counter to how I’m used to things working. I’m used to everything growing on it’s own. Maybe not as fast as at Applejack’s, but it happens everywhere with no human intervention.”

“Your whole world is like the Everfree Forest?” Fluttershy asks, her eyes going wide. She feels her body shuddering, that overwhelming desire to flee to her bed coming back. “That’s…”

“Except for the chaos magic stuff? From what little I know, it seems like an apt comparison. But my understanding is pretty superficial, so I’m hesitant on staking a claim on that.” Doug shrugs. “I would say the defining factor would be a concept called survival of the fittest, where the organisms - plants, animals, everything - who are best able to reproduce do so and thus, over time, crowd out less successful ones. And so everything is focused on competing, so a plant that isn’t able to grow on its own would, well, be replaced by one that could.”

Doug pauses again, huffing to himself. “I’m trying to figure out which of those isn’t correct here.”

“Hmm,” Fluttershy says, curiously cocking her head. Then she looks up at the bookshelf with her nature guides. “Other ponies can probably explain it better than me…”

“But you’re doing a great job,” Doug says with a smile, scratching into her chin a little harder.

Fluttershy perks up, eagerly wiggling in his lap. “Plants grow very slowly without an earth pony helping them. A pegasus would have to spend nearly all day farming just to feed herself, and would barely have time to get enough clouds for rain! It would be horrible! They’d never be able to fulfill their mark!”

“That sounds like subsistence farming,” Doug comments, “which was a staple for life for the majority of the world for a lot of life. Not very exciting, but you do what you have to in order to survive.”

Fluttershy nods along, “And it takes everypony working together to get life running so smoothly. But without an earth pony helping, even a pair of hares would quickly devour all the grass and roots in an area. And then, without any food, they and their family would move on, and it would just get worse.”

“So your whole world is potentially Australia.” Doug rolls his eyes as Fluttershy looks up at him, confused. “Okay, should have seen that coming. So, it’s an ecosystem where there aren’t any natural predators for the new organism and plentiful food. So the new creature is able to grow out of control, unbounded, and ends up devastating everything when their food runs out.”

“That’s terrible…” Fluttershy trails off, taking a deep breath. “And we are very careful to keep that from happening here.” She motions to the window, indicating everything with a wide wave of her foreleg. “It’s a lot of work, but everypony, and everycreature, wins when we all work together!”

“Which, in this case, means…” Doug says, rolling his hand through the air.

“Oh. Oh! You don’t know?” Fluttershy frowns slightly.

Doug’s hand reaches into her mane, finding the spot on her ears that Applejack loves. “Storied Pages mentioned ‘everycreature choosing to participate’, or something to that extent. I assume animals are counted in that.”

“It’s a pretty easy choice for most to make.” Fluttershy squirms from the scratching, loving it. “After all, who wants to spend all their hours being hunted?”

“So you provide them with shelter and food,” Doug says slowly, Fluttershy eventually nodding with her eyes glistening, “and in return…”

“They go where we say to go, and when their time is up, they say their goodbyes.” Fluttershy sinks down, her breath catching in her throat. “I-it’s sad. Every time.”

Doug’s stares at the opposite wall, evoking images of his friends and family. “I… I don’t know if I could do that. Make friends with so many people, knowing they are going to leave me. And knowing what is going to happen to them.”

“But, why?” Fluttershy says with a frown. “Why would you shut yourself off from new friends just because they are going to die?”

“Because it’s easier,” Doug says, wincing. He can feel his eyes getting wet. “Because I wouldn’t have to deal with the pain.”

“I’m so sorry,” Fluttershy says, reaching a foreleg as far as she can around Doug and hugging him. “I didn’t mean to bring up such a painful topic.” She tightens her grip, her muzzle resting against his chest as she pulls herself close. “It must be hard to make new friends when you’re constantly reminded how much you don’t belong, and how it would be better if you left, and how stallions are just interested in you for your flanks.”

Doug nods along, though he stops at that last one. “What?”

“Um, nevermind,” Fluttershy covers quickly, her eyes darting back and forth. “We were, uh, talking about, um, cuts of meat. Right?”

“Sure,” Doug says slowly. He thinks back to the menu. “And it’s the same with the chickens? The cows, the pigs?”

Fluttershy barely nods.

“But,” Doug says with a bit of a stammer, “I heard cows are sapient. They can talk, right? To anypony?”

“Mhmm. I’m not as good friends with them, they prefer to stay to themselves.” Fluttershy motions to the back part of her yard. A squat red building sits, too small for a pony to fit inside. “But I keep lots of chickens, and other animals.”

“But you eat cows.” Doug leans back, trying to wrap his head around the concept.

“Oh, no! I would never.” Fluttershy shakes her head, almost flipping herself over to better do so. “They mostly get sent to the griffons, or the dragons. Dragons pay handsomely since, well, they’ve hunted most of the contractless creatures they could. Same with the griffons.”

“And so the creatures voluntarily sell their bodies in order to not get hunted.” Doug’s eye squints. “I’ve got that about right? Somehow that seems… wrong.”

“Not many ponies care for it either. They prefer to not know, and go about their day as normal.” Fluttershy sighs as she thinks about all of her animal friends. “But noanimal lives forever. And the snakes and arctic wolves, the other predators, they know not to go after animals around Ponyville. Or ponies.”

“I hope you can add me to that list,” Doug says with a forced chuckle. He massages his temple, trying to get over all the implications. “This is fascinating stuff, but I think I need to process it for a bit.”

“Same time next week?” Fluttershy asks chipperly, though she hunkers down as Doug gets up. “That is, um, if you’re free.”

“I’ll meet up with you after Dash’s goodbye party,” Doug says. He waves at Fluttershy, stalling at the door. “I had a great time.”

Fluttershy’s expression brightens, and she takes to the air. A quick peck on the cheek later and she pulls away, blushing and tittering like a schoolfilly.

Next Chapter: Ch. 66 - Windripper Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 4 Minutes