Her parents’ house looks just like Fluttershy remembers, the middle in a long row of Pegasopolis revival-style houses complete with cloud roofing, curling rainbow fencing, and ornate columns decorating everything from the chimney to the entryway. It looks inviting as always, though the purple curtains on the second floor are drawn against the noon sun. Wispy white spirals, reminiscent of the Weather Factory’s motif, cover the few bare spots of cloud in the front and back yard as well as the walls, the rest teeming with green.

Wait, teeming? Fluttershy does a second take. She doesn’t remember there being so many flowers growing, in the front yard or back yard or on the roof. Even the windowsills have blossoms! Sure, her dam has a green hoof, uncommon among pegasi, but she had generally confined her hobby to a few planters along the sunhouse in the back. To be fair, it has been years since she’s been here, and she spots her dam in the backyard, carefully measuring scoops of enhanced dirt. A number of empty containers are littered around her, as well as square clouds anchored by thick cords. It feels weird having dirt be a precious commodity, what with the effort required to haul it up, as well as pay an earth pony to imbue it if you wanted more than one or two blooms a year.

The saddlebags on her flank keep shifting, Hedge trying to look around her wings and body. She’s glad her filly is respecting her wishes to stay put even without telling her to. “Ready to come out?” Fluttershy beckons. Her grin turns worried as Hedge leaps out, eager to spread her wings and glide to the chimney. “Oh, do be careful!”

“Careful?” Rainbow Dash laughs. “Come on, ‘Shy! Let her live a little!”

The exchange draws Mrs. Shy’s attention. The aged mare raises a yellow hoof, clad in a dark brown gardening glove, and pushes her curly magenta mane out of her sweaty face. A wide smile slowly crosses her muzzle as she recognizes her visitors. She wipes her gloves on her apron, then stands to greet them with a fond wave, her soft voice easily carrying in the serene neighborhood. “Hello, Fluttershy! Rainbow Dash. It’s so good to see you! Oh my, and little Hedge! Did you fly the whole way here?”

“Hi, Grandmare Shy!” Hedge, first to land, races forward. She wraps her hooves around Mrs. Shy, then proceeds to wipe her muzzle back and forth as only a filly can, heedless of the dirt now staining her face and coat. “No, Mrs. Dash ferried me. She’s real nice!”

“Fluttershy helped, too,” Rainbow Dash says, hovering nearby.

“Not nearly as much as you,” Fluttershy says as she lands, huffing at how Hedge has already gotten dirty, even if the brown is hard to tell against her tan coat. She licks her hoof, ready to scrub it away. “What have I told you about playing in the dirt?”

“I need to keep my hooves and face clean,” Hedge answers with a resigned sigh.

“Speaking of dirt.” Rainbow Dash gives the garden an appreciative nod. “This place is looking great, Grandmare Shy!”

“Please, call me Sylvia,” Mrs. Shy winks. “Coming from you, Grandmare Shy makes me feel so old!”

“That’s ‘cause you are old!” Rainbow Dash smirks as Sylvia concedes with a warm, grandmare-esque smile. She looks around, peeking into the sunhouse, more as a formality than an actual search. Inside are dozens of bottles arranged on the walls containing a myriad of tiny twisters, resplendent rainbows, and miniature storms. “Is Mr. Shy around? I thought he’d be retired by now!” Her smirk turns mischievous. “Or should I call him Dick?”

“Slick is working the morning shift at the factory.” Sylvia stands, stripping off her gardening equipment. “I don’t know if he’ll ever retire; they keep piling more and more work on him! And now they’ve got him covering half the midnight shift, too.” She offers Fluttershy a soft smile at seeing her cross look. “Now, we may not be as bold as you, Fluttershy, but don’t you worry. We know how to stand up for ourselves!”

She heads to the main house. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash follow. The inside of the Shy house is quite cozy, with numerous cloud-themed decorations and pictures of the Shy family covering the tan-and-cloud wallpaper. Rainbow Dash can’t help but smirk at how Zephyr Breeze, Fluttershy’s younger brother, dominates the majority of the pictures he is in. “Slick might stop by Stormy and Sleethoof’s,” Mrs. Shy explains as she washes up in the Cloudcraft sink, “but he should be here in time for lunch. Were you planning on staying long?”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes go wide with delight. “Stormy and Sleethoof? Maybe we can eat lunch with them!”

“Well, I don’t see why not!” Mrs. Shy gives a half-hearted smile before calling upstairs, “Acridy?”

A door upstairs opens, the acrid stench of disinfectant covering something worse wafting down and stinging their eyes. A slate-gray changeling sticks her head through the cloud-and-rainbow railing. She swallows her mouthful of flower stalks before asking, “Yes, Sylvy?” At seeing how their nostrils twitch she gasps, “Oh, sorry! Here, let me take care of that.” She darts from window to window, opal-white wings struggling to keep her bulging belly from bonking on the extra-stuffed chairs and couches covering most of the floor space. “Normally I go in and out through the window upstairs. Keeps the irritants away.”

A second smell joins the first, this one decidedly less antiseptic and more desperately requiring antiperspirant. A green head, complete with an untidy blond mane tied in a rough bun topped by a silver paper crown, sticks down. Amber eyes light up upon seeing Fluttershy, or far more likely Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash gags. “Speaking of irritants…”

“Hi, Flutterbutter! How’s the bestest big sister ever?” Zephyr Breeze dances down the stairs, wrapping his entirely unamused sister in a hug. “Hey, where’s the love? How about a little excitement to see your baby brother?”

“I’m just surprised,” Fluttershy answers as dryly as she can. “I thought Luna would have paid you enough to get out of the house for more than a week.”

“Paid to leave? Sis, I get paid to…” Zephyr Breeze laughs, but it quickly becomes nervous. He steals a decidedly worried glance at Acridy. She cocks her head to the side just a touch, enough to send a message. He turns his glance into a wide yawn, probably thinking himself as deceptive as Chrysalis herself. “Oh, would you look at the time? And, hey Rainbows, sorry I can’t stay to chat. I’m touched you came to see me, really. I hate to deprive you of my presence, but this breeze needs his Z’s.”

Rainbow Dash looks ready to comment on the time of day, then wisely shuts her mouth.

Zephyr retraces his steps, dancing backward as though in reverse, probably thinking himself clever. He shoots Acridy an overly broad smile, which she returns, and promptly shuts the door.

Rainbow Dash remarks, “You know changelings don’t need to steal love anymore, right?”

Acridy giggles. “It’s not stealing if you pay for it!” Her grin loses any semblance of Laughter, capital-lettered or not. “Some stallions just have a different kind of ‘productive’ labor. And with how much love he has for himself?”

It bothers Fluttershy that somepony - or someling - could have such a poor impression of her brother. But is it inaccurate? She scowls. She knows her brother is better than this!

“I hope you don’t mind,” Mrs. Shy explains, obviously hoping for an affirming nod from Fluttershy, “but when Acridy needed a place to convert to a, well, you know…”

“A burrow,” Acridy states, looking far less fraught about the topic and more about the smell emanating from said burrow. “And harvesting station.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Shy says, still uncomfortable. “...We decided your room would be, um, best suited.”

“Less likely to be used again,” Acridy adds unabashedly. “Also, we needed a bed.”

As much as Fluttershy wants to criticize her brother’s choice, it is his life. Right? He didn’t look coerced. He had even shaved! Certainly a step in the right direction. Is it really her place to set him on the ‘right’ path? Or would sticking her hoof in the hornet’s nest - or changeling burrow - merely get him to regress? And can she really fault Acridy for taking advantage - or, as Chrysalis would put it, exploiting an opportunity?

As much as she wants to meddle, Fluttershy decides to set aside her animosity and offers the changeling a fond smile. “I’m glad you’re… making it work.”

“Exactly!” Once all the windows are open Acridy turns to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, eyes whirling a happy red. She notes how Rainbow Dash’s eyes focus on her belly. “Hi! I’m Acridy Day. But you can call me Acridy! And that’s Slick’s little one in there. We’re naming her Drizzle Day!”

“How precious! I’m Fluttershy, as you probably guessed,” the yellow pegasus introduces, “and this is Rainbow Dash.”

“Hey!” The cerulean mare gives a quick wave as she hovers even with the low ceilings. “We, uh, haven’t come up with a name for this little guy yet.”

Fluttershy motions behind her. “And this is… Wait, where is Hedge?” Fluttershy checks the kitchen first, in case Hedge started preparing lunch, but she’s nowhere to be found. And there aren’t the dozens of nooks and crannies for timid critters that her house contains.

Rainbow Dash sticks her head out the front window. “Hedge?”

Fluttershy zips to the back. “Hedge!” She doesn’t see any motion at all. She tries to make out any holes in the expansive garden, made difficult by the numerous bushes. “Did she go through?”

“The base is solid cloudcrete,” Rainbow Dash says as she joins Fluttershy. She looks up, a direction Fluttershy berates herself for not even thinking of considering. “Doug could walk on it and be fine.” Her muzzle tightens. “Probably.”

A large sack of dirt, logo of a sprouting tree, ambles from the sunhouse to one of the empty planters. Hedge, Mrs. Shy’s gardening gloves going almost to the pint-sized filly’s haunches, tosses the bag to the side with a loud grunt. Her ears flick in surprise at seeing Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy staring at her. “Y-yes?”

“Hedge!” Fluttershy eschews the door to leap out the window, torn between admonishing her filly for scaring her and relief that she is okay. “Mommy was so worried!” She settles for wrapping her in a tight embrace, never wanting to let go. “What have I told you about wandering off?”

If it was Scootaloo she would have rolled her eyes with a sarcastic remark, but Hedge just sighs, ears folding against her head. “Yes, Mama.” Her gaze roams from the empty planters just waiting to be filled with packets of seeds to the nearby sunhouse. “But, Mama…”

Fluttershy huffs. She knows she shouldn’t be one to talk, but her filly can be so stubbornly shy! “You can help with the gardening once we’re home. We are going to eat lunch with your grand-dahms. Don’t you want to meet them?”

“Um,” Hedge mumbles, glancing away. She picks up Mrs. Shy’s trowel and nervously fiddles with it. “I, uh, maybe I can stay here?” She gulps at Fluttershy’s disapproving stare. “The dirt is, err, different?” Her ears sag down. “And there aren’t as many insects. Or… animals.”

The last word, nearly a whisper, sets Fluttershy’s teeth against each other. What is Hedge insinuating? That she wants her filly to get an animal caretaker cutie mark, because that’s what she has? That her encouragement to work exclusively with the animals on the farm is actually controlling her, against her interests?

As a Malevolent mind would control another?

“I don’t mind staying with her,” Acridy says, earning herself a flicker of Fluttershy’s glare. It doesn’t have quite the effect that it does on Hedge. “I’m nowhere near as good as Slyvy here, but I’ve been picking up tips!”

Mrs. Shy blushes, still unused to the ingratiating nature of the changelings. “Half this garden was your idea! And you’ve been the one putting in the heavy lifting.”

“It’s not like she’ll be missing much,” Rainbow Dash cuts in.

Fluttershy doesn’t care for how her herdmate isn’t standing up for her, instead anxious to leave. Understandable, perhaps, and she doesn’t like being outnumbered. “Just be careful, okay?”

Hedge grins, so broadly it nearly breaks Fluttershy’s heart. “Okay!” She races forward to give her dam a hug, then rips open the bag with such exuberance that she showers herself in dirt. Her ears fold as she glances back at her dam, then brighten when Fluttershy gives an encouraging, if subdued, motion to continue on.

“So, what brought you three here to Cloudsdale?” Mrs. Shy asks as they take off.

“A friendship problem,” Fluttershy answers. “A lesson to learn about Friendship.”

But for whom is that lesson for?

Next Chapter: Ch. 168 - Natural Affinity, Part Three Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 35 Minutes