Fluttershy cradled Rainbow Dash's head against her chest, stroking her mane in the firelight. Highlights danced along its strands silky and soft. She lifted her own head from her pillow and slipped a hoof into the folds of Rainbow's wing.

"No, don't stop," Dash said. "That feels nice."

"I was just thinking." Fluttershy looked into the campfire light reflected in Dash's eyes. "About one time around a campfire, when I was staying with the deer, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah! Wasn't that the summer I was at Junior Speedsters?"

"Mmm-hmm." Fluttershy took a deep breath. "Have you ever had a moment when you feel very... pony?"

"What do you mean?" Dash rolled as if to sit up, but Fluttershy stopped her with a hoof on her chest.

"When you're not like any other kind of creature, and you feel alone - but you're not sure if you should be ashamed or proud of it?"

"I..."

"And it's something you regret, maybe?"

Rainbow laughed. "Nuh-uh. This pony's got no regrets."

"Oh. Really?"

"Fluttershy, I am one hundred percent sure about that."

---

The dog-summer sun beat into Dash's eyes mixing with the sweat that was creeping from her forelock. Downrange the target shimmered in the heat, or maybe it was just the wind pulling tears from her eyes. She shuddered, then almost swore as the movement pulled the black point of her forward sight all out of whack.

"Easy, Dash. Easy," Gilda said, lying prone next to her. "You've got good form, just relax and squeeeeeze - well, bite, you know."

Dash took a deep breath and pulled the griffon-built weapon solidly against her shoulder. Its bit tasted of the oil it had been packed in; it wasn't often that anypony set hoof in Grimhold, and it still surprised her that they could make guns work for anypony - anyone - who didn't have talons. Her heart pounded, but she looked through the hole in its rear sight, just a tiny little hole that swelled and pulsed as her eye focused and refocused.

She had to get three points to line up at once: the pinhole, the front blade, the bright yellow dried squash sitting on a rock three dozen strides away. And the moment she did that she had to trip the trigger - except it was more complicated than that. Gilda insisted that she must not jerk, or nip, at the bit. She had to let the moment surprise her, which was really bucking frustrating when three different things were floating three different ways and she'd just--

Twack-krrr!

The gun kicked her shoulder and hammered her ears and ripped across the surrounding craggy peaks. The gourd stood untouched.

"That's okay, Dash. Just take a deep breath and try again."

"Hookay," Dash breathed. Something inside the bit clicked when she loosened the pressure she'd been applying with her tongue. It had been a surprise - for all the good it did - and now she was doing her best to fight her instinct to spread her wings and fly of and leave that dumb stupid vegetable mocking her...

Oh buck that. Dash took another deep breath and through sheer force of will and maybe a little awesomeness calmed her trembling forehooves. Sights and target drifted together. Gently she sunk her tongue into the warm brass.

Twack-krrr!



The griffons of Grimhold built their homes from stone and roofed them with thatch and let coniferous trees grow between them for shade. The trees grew slow and stunted and wizened in the wind. Outside the village in places here and there the soil grew thin and blew from the bones of the mountain and in those places orange lichen clung to the granite.

And a few days before it was into one such clearing that Gilda and Dash landed, Gilda sure-pawed but Dash's shoes clinking and scraping against the pitted stone. Side-by-side they walked into the village. Both wore bags, Gilda's slung under her chest and Dash's over her lower back, because they were shopping for the evening meal.

"Hey, G," Dash said, "I think I want to go hunting too."

Gilda laughed or maybe she scoffed but Dash knew there was no mean spirit behind it. "So, you wanna be the great pony hunter, slayer of beasts. That it, Dash?"

"Well, no. But it's like your mom was saying to Greg. It's not really - what was that word she used? Griffonish? Anyway, that to eat something you won't kill yourself."

"Gifferlich," said Gilda. "But yeah, it means 'griffonish' or 'grown-up' or something like that. You still look like a pony to me. You came along to pick out an entirely unreasonable variety of vegetables because you are obsessed with fiber."

Dash paused and looked around the market to which they had came. It was built in a clearing, with a wide shallow granite bowl set on raised paving stones in the middle. It overflowed its sides, animated by some kind of magic or griffon technology, and served both as a public fountain and a kind of mirror reflecting the wooly white clouds that meandered the untamed sky above.

Griffons bustled about, some even pulling carts, and it was across their activity that Dash peered. "Unreasonable? Try having colic some time. Seriously not fun. Now I think I see some squash that are calling for us. Now I like meat, and it only seems fair."

"You don't have to be gifferlich, Dash. You're a fine pony-"

"You came to Junior Speedsters to play pretend pony. How come you get to have all the fun?"

"Fun? C'mere, Dash." Before Dash could protest, Gilda had pounced on her, wrapped taloned arms under her chest and lifted with the breathtaking effortless strength griffons had. She deposited them both at the edge of the pool. "Look."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm a pony. You're a griffon. And I'll never measure up, just like you never really were comfortable there..." Dash rolled her eyes. "Can't I at least try?"

"Sure," Gilda said. "You can try for fun. Because you're practically made of fun and before you get all offended..." Gilda set her claws gently on the nape of Dash's neck and her great golden eyes and hooked beak stared in reflection at Dash, who thought she could see her own toughness and determination on her own face. G's talons pricked her skin lightly - it felt dangerous and maybe a little sexy too.

Gilda purred, "I like that about you, pony girl. Be fun, be tough, be every bit as gifferlich as your sugar-soaked heart desires. But I promise you, the hunt isn't exactly fun. Thrilling, yes. And yes you can come along. Just... know that you get what you choose, I guess."



Hunting turned out to be boring and sort of lame, if Dash were to be totally honest with herself. She expected more shooting and griffons dropping out of trees with beaks and claws and stuff like that. Sure, she had an alarmingly large switchblade strapped to her left hoof and a loaded slug-gun hanging from a harness - but both were getting heavy and the novelty, the fact that griffons didn't even bat an eye at anyone flying around armed to the gills like that, had long since worn off.

Dash saw green, green, and more green broken here and there by the branches of trees or rocks on the ground. Greg, Gilda's little brother, perched lower in the same tree. G herself was a little ways off to their right. Hogs were supposed to be taking the bait below, giving Greg a chance to pounce on one or Rainbow to take a shot if he gave the signal.

The only problem was the hogs hadn't shown up. Rainbow had figured it would be like buying bacon in the market - oh, she had no illusions of a wild animal magically turning into neat little paper-wrapped parcels, but she just assumed that if there was bacon to be had, it would just be there and if not they'd look somewhere else. All this waiting blowed a real arctic wind up her puss.

Something rustled in a bush. Dash's heart thudded and she scanned the bushes trying to see what it was. Greg swooped closer and closer and a big black beach-ball of fur stumbled out of the bushes.

A moment later, Dash recognized it. It was a bear cub.

"Greg! Get out of there!" Gilda shouted. "Stupid chick."

Twack-krrr! Greg shot the cub. Then, he disappeared. That was the only way Dash could describe it: he was hovering low one moment, clutching his gun. In the next, he had been replaced by a much larger mountain of black fur. The cub's mother.

Dash could practically taste the adrenaline in her mouth. It seemed to freeze her to her perch.

Twack-krrr! Dash's head jerked toward the sound, Gilda taking an airborne shot as she flew by her brother, who was trying to extract himself from a tree. "Dash!" Gilda shouted. "We need help here!"

That finally unglued Rainbow Dash from her shock. She sprang into the fight and afterwards couldn't remember exactly what happened next. She must have tried to shoot the bear. She at least got her gun up - she must have, because the recoil knocked her clean out of the air and onto her ass on the ground.

She next remembered the bear about to charge her. She struggled to lift her gun, not to terribly hard, but she couldn't seem to find the trigger. Everything seemed to slow down. Her hooves were incredibly heavy, the bit - she had lost the damn bit and she felt the moment when it was too late.

Only by luck, she went for her knife, strapped to her left forehoof. She only had to press the button with her right - it was supposed to be very stiff, but she barely felt the resistance. The bear was closer, closer, on top of her! Dash swung once, nicking its nose, then she flailed her hoof back. This time it caught on something that wrenched her hoof. She ripped it free, staring into the bear's mad eyes.

Hot blood poured onto Dash's chest, then the bear fell on top of her, crushing out her breath. It tried to rise, getting up on one paw and swatting her weakly with the other. If the bear weren't already dying, its claws would have opened her ribcage like a can of beans.

As it was, it hurt. It hurt a whole buck of a lot. Then the bear didn't roar. It tried to, but it gurgled frothy pink blood from its mouth and from the second, jagged mouth Dash had opened under its chin. It's teeth were huge, yellow, and sharp. They were about to come down and tear out Dash's throat in return.

Except that was the moment when the bear's face exploded into ground meat, bone, and brains, all of which which showered Dash's face.

She didn't actually remember hearing the shot. And it wasn't until Greg and Gilda worked together to haul the bear off her that Dash realized she had thoroughly shit herself too.

---

The scar on Dash's chest had faded into her coat so well that nopony could see it. Still, she could feel it with her own hoof as she lay back in Fluttershy's embrace. Dash told herself again that she didn't regret killing the bear. So she wasn't actually telling a lie. And it wasn't something she could tell Fluttershy anyway.

"But," she said, "look, Shy. I love you. If there's something you need to get off your chest, I promise I'll understand and I swear - absolutely swear - I'll keep it secret. Even if you're a killer or something. I'll understand."

Fluttershy jolted in place, sending a shock through Dash's back and wing. "Oh goodness, no. It wasn't that. But I was with the deer and... things happened. Wonderful things I guess, but..."

---

Melliflua, though the other deer hardly ever called her by her full name, had a gift for water that was rare among does. The first time Fluttershy saw her, she was sitting on her haunches, dainty black forehooves tucked together in front of her crotch and belly, which were creamy white. Her back was arrow-straight as if she were watching over something, but her eyes were closed, her ears relaxed downwards, and she had a short pair of antlers that made Fluttershy assume on first glance that she was a buck, albeit a buck with an elegant, almost feminine, face.

Fluttershy still hadn't gotten used to the appearance of deer. They were all lean and wiry, skinny, she thought, and narrow-chested. Their legs were spindly like twigs. Their backs looked naked without wings. Cloudsdale had been home to pegasi and griffons and only the occasional unicorn, and to be here, on the ground with dirt underhoof and the forest canopy above as a ceiling not a carpet disoriented the young mare.

Mell sat below a tree on an island in the middle of a pool. Fluttershy stopped short on the opposite bank. She could hear the waterfall which fed the pool, just around the bend behind her. Everything else was still - but the water was moving. It didn't ripple and splash downstream from the fall. Waves wheeled against the current, like spokes of a wheel centered on the antlered figure sitting under the tree. Fluttershy stopped to watch.

Gradually she came to notice the slight rise and fall of Mell's slender chest and a light that was playing over her antlers. It was almost too faint to notice in the sunlight, but it reminded her of the few unicorns she knew - this deer was working magic. Her antlers grew sideways just in front of her ears, splitting and curving upward to four soft and fuzzy points. The aura that played over them was a pastel blue.

Something black, wet, and shiny emerged from the water, shook itself, scurried up Mell's back and chattered at Fluttershy. She startled and rose to a hover, knocking her head into the branch overhead, yelping in pain, and falling on her rump. The animal bolted into the brush behind Mell, who at last opened her eyes and spoke.

"You really do fly, Bright One." Her voice was a mellow alto, too deep to be a foal's - a faun's, Fluttershy corrected herself - and too smooth to be a buck's.

"Wait, are you a doe?" Fluttershy asked. She clapped her forehooves to her face. "Sorry. I'm being awfully rude."

Mell barked a single laugh like a thunderclap. Along with it the water surged in a wave that struck the bank below Fluttershy and splashed her mane. "You are bright in colors and strange in manners, pony, but I think too strange to be polite or to be rude just yet." She rose to her feet and forded the brook to where Fluttershy sat. "Are you a doe?"

"P- pegasus mare. My name's Fluttershy." The first part still sounded strange to say. Fluttershy had only gotten her cutie mark the summer before. Now she was here, out of school, visiting the Whitetail Woods for an entire year. Her sister had helped arrange the trip; she knew a pony at work whose cousin was friends with deer. But Fluttershy was here alone wondering exactly when she had stopped being a filly. "I'm here because my special talent has a connection to animals - I think - and there aren't a lot of them in Cloudsdale, so I guess-"

"Are pegasuses animals, Bright Shy? Are we deer animals?"

"Oh. I... I guess..."

"Stop messing around, Mell, and answer the question. If you can." The voice belonged to a deer Fluttershy already knew, a young buck named Ravast, who had just rounded the trail. His antlers were larger and their velvet was beginning to fall off to reveal a nest of sharp points. He answered before Mell could speak for herself. "She's the herd's freemartin freak. She's just a doe with a rack, 'cuz a deer sure can't be a buck if she's got a cunt. We call her Mell."

Fluttershy felt like she had swallowed something sour and hot. She leaped to her hooves. "Now just you wait there!" she gently cried, but Ravast was gone.

"Do you think it matters? When it does I am a doe. My name is Melliflua," the doe said. She stood next to Fluttershy. "But my friends and herdmates call me Mell. He is my heardmate. I would like it very much if you are my friend."

Fluttershy took a deep breath and did her best to let her temper go. Mell stood beside her, short and slender. Fluttershy wasn't sure if her missing mane was what made her ears look so big. Her eyes, big and brown, grabbed hold of Fluttershy's own. She was so very strange and yet she seemed kind enough. Fluttershy smiled and nodded. "If you want to call me Bright Shy or something, I don't mind."



Fluttershy met Mell the very first day she spent with the deer. That night the herd held a bonfire for her. Looking back on it, it hardly seemed like she knew anyone then - Mell and Ravast of course, also a doe named Patah who had met her sky-chariot and helped her settle in. That night she met the elder stag, who they called Rukh, though she later learned that was his title and not his name.

Rukh was tall even by pony standards and he grew a rack that was gnarled and broad. The hair on his muzzle was streaked with grey and when he took Fluttershy aside to speak, his voice was rumbly and smooth, like it had been cut from stone steps worn down by centuries of hooffalls.

"I see you have earned your Marks, pony, and I presume to know enough about your kind to understand what they mean. You are a grown mare and by custom responsible for yourself, yes?"

"Yes," Fluttershy said, neither sure what Rukh was getting at nor comfortable with it.

"And you plan to stay with us an entire year?"

"I do."

"Hmmm..." Rukh stretched out a foreleg from where he lay and stretched and twisted his neck. "I cannot tell you what to think. I can only ask. Please do not judge us by the coming weeks. Rut is an awkward season for foreigners and for our youth. I would rather you arrived after its end than now, just when it is to begin."

"Rut?" Fluttershy's heart pounded. "Is that your breeding season?"

"Indeed. I have made it clear to the bucks that you are a guest and out of bounds. They are to watch each other. If at any time you feel it necessary to enforce those limits, you may do so with whatever force you deem reasonable."

It was a beautiful night, even by the standards of late summer in the Woods. But at that moment, Fluttershy felt an icy wind. "F- f- force? Will I h- have to?"

"It would surprise me and disappoint the honor of my herd. I do not think so. But if I may give some advice: do not pursue a buck without making your intentions publicly known."

"I wasn't planning to," Fluttershy said. She wondered if she had been expected to.

"Mmmm," Rukh rumbled. "That is good. I have also heard that you and Melliflua have met. She is a fine young thing. Sometimes I wonder if she is my grand-daughter or great-grand-daughter."

"Oh," said Fluttershy.

"In any case she is a treasure of the heard, yet I fear she may not be appreciated. Be a friend to her. No, no - I cannot demand that of you. But if you should be friends, it would be good for the heart of this old stag."



Fluttershy had never been a pony to forge many friendships, but the few that she made seemed to come quickly and deep. By the end of her first week with the deer, she felt as comfortable with her as if they had known each other for years.

So one day, not even two weeks after her arrival, she was surprised to be reminded how little they knew about each other. They were lying in a meadow not far from the herd's corn-fields. Fluttershy stretched out on her back with wings spread into the sunlight, as was the habit of many pegasi.

"Is that comfortable?" Mell asked. "I shall try it too." She lay in the opposite direction, so either could raise her head over her chest and see the other. It took some trying; the first time she rolled over, she crashed against Fluttershy's side and both laughed.

"I am lying on your wing," Mell said once she had twisted herself around.

Fluttershy recognized her deerish habit of apologizing for minor offenses by stating them plainly. It was Fluttershy's turn to complain or not. She said, "You're not heavy and I don't mind."

"You remind me: I have meant to ask what it is like to be a pony. You have a special talent, yes? When did you know?"

Fluttershy pulled her head up with one forehoof and brought the other to Mell's chest so that their lower limbs touched yellow to tawny.

"Last summer I went to practice flying with a lot of other fillies and colts and my friend, Rainbow Dash, was there too," she began. She told the story of how weak a flyer she'd been, how she fell, and how she met so many creatures on the ground. Mell made her stop and describe Rainbow in detail, the bullies, how the air felt whistling through her mane and ears.

"And you having a friend, it helped you understand what kind of a pony you are supposed to be?"

"Well, yes and no." Fluttershy stared up at the clouds. She hadn't really thought of Rainbow lately. "She belongs in the sky. I'm starting to like the ground. She made it possible for me to discover my talent. I don't think she could be still enough to really get to know birds or squirrels."

"I have seen you let birds perch on your wings," Mell said.

Fluttershy laughed. "Their claws prickle and tickle. I have to try hard to stay still."

"You have magic, I think. For them to come so close to you."

Fluttershy and Melliflua lay in the late summer grass, listening to the wind rustle and the cicadas whine.

"I guess I do have magic," Fluttershy said. "It reminds me of something I read in a book, about how all ponies have magic, not just unicorns. Magic is just a word for when talents reflect off each other, it said."

Mell picked herself up. "I want to show you something. May you fly us there?"

"I..." Fluttershy considered it as she climbed to her hooves. "We can try. Are you scared of heights?"

"Not if I am holding on to you."

Fluttershy spread her wings and crouched her hindquarters, letting Mell climb up her back. Mell's forehooves locked around her neck and her hams fit into the hollows of her flanks. "Okay. Here goes. I'm not the strongest flyer, so I don't know if this will work."

As light as Mell was, she still weighed Fluttershy down. It took heavy wing-beats to haul them both into the air. But then Fluttershy could feel Mell's neck against her own and hear her faint, excited "Woah" in her ear. Both seemed to lift her into the air, to the level of the tree canopies and into a bit of a cross-wind.

"Where are we going?" Fluttershy asked.

"To the brook" Mell said. She pointed with one black-tipped hoof and hugged the other tighter around Fluttershy's throat.

"Got it," Fluttershy could see the scar the brook cut into the canopy, where the trees were missing. Mell had pointed to the falls, pool, and island. They flew heavy, but Fluttershy's wings rose to meet the challenge and before long at all, she was bringing them down gently onto the island.

"I have magic, too," Mell whispered.

"I know. You did that thing with the water."

Mell let go when they were still nearly a pony's height off the ground and landed deftly on her springy limbs. "No, I mean this."

She sat and once again, and as Fluttershy watched, the water began to ripple and wave against its current.

"What are you doing?" Fluttershy asked.

"I am becoming the brook."

By luck that day it didn't take long before a wet, hairy black head with shiny beady-black eyes broke the surface of the water. Fluttershy sat completely still and a tubular yet muscled body followed, climbing up the muddy banks and then up Mell's back. The creature turned its face toward Fluttershy. His muzzle was a lighter shade of grey, surrounded with a bush of whiskers. He blinked, then yawned, showing brilliant white and needle-sharp teeth, and nestled himself around Mell's neck.

"I call him Swims-Faster," she said. "He eats fish. So maybe I have a talent, even though I do not have a mark. Maybe it is like yours."

"Sometimes," Fluttershy admitted, gently so that she did not alarm Swims-Faster. "Sometime's I'm not so sure myself. I'm supposed to be growing up, but..."

"Look in the water," Mell said. "Sometimes I too miss what others can see."

Fluttershy took a few soft steps forward, so that her hooves were in the bank mud. Her reflection in the pool greeted her, next to Mell's and Swims-Faster's, but it wasn't the gangly adolescent she still thought of herself as. She had grown even taller in the last year especially, but her frame had filled out so she wasn't nearly as spindly. To her surprise she saw a young mare.

"I am proud of what I have made this summer. You will see it too soon."

"What did you do?"

"Wait and be surprised." Mell laughed and Swims-Faster bounded from her shoulder and disappeared below the surface of the pool.



Fluttershy waited and busied herself with the small chores of the forest, gathering seeds and browsing for shoots. Her sister had suggested time with deer because, even more so than earth ponies, they lived close to nature. They were not entirely without technology: they slept outside but built storehouses for food. Within the herd's range there were numerous gardens and fields, and one day without any warning or gossip Rukh announced that it was time to harvest corn.

And so it was.

Everyone worked hard for three solid days from sunrise to well into the late summer evenings. Fluttershy worked hard with them too, especially once they realized that she, much more than the strongest stag, could pull a cart like only a pony could.

They finished on the fourth day in the early afternoon, then immediately set about preparing a feast and gathering the crop scraps to serve as fuel for a huge bonfire. Deer napped throughout the afternoon.

Dusk came. The fires roared.

Fluttershy sat with a cob of roasted corn. Deer were holding them by skewers set into the ends of the cobs, which they manipulated with the splits in their hooves. Fluttershy, being a solid-hoofed pony, was having to get more creative.

Mell laughed. "You are not doing that easily. Let me help." She sat next to Fluttershy and reached her legs around her neck. Fluttershy gratefully handed the corn over. The heat of Mell's body felt good against her side, and she hugged her friend with a wing.

"So do you like what I made?" Mell asked.

"What?"

"The corn. I helped to irrigate it." Her grin glowed in the firelight. "What do you think of my antlers?"

"I'm sorry, I don't quite und-" Melliflua suddenly shifted, swinging her foreleg over Fluttershy's head and grabbing one of Fluttershy's. She rubbed an antler against its fetlock.

Fluttershy had never touched a unicorn's horn or deer's antler. She was surprised at the energy that seemed to be flowing over it, a vibrating thrum that seemed to sound through her entire body. Where hoof and antler touched, she could see the blue glow of Mell's magic, bright in the darkness.

Mell asked again, "What do you think of my antlers?"

"I- I haven't, really. They look good on you, at least I think so, but once I got to know you I kind of stopped noticing."

"We did not have a buck this year whose magic handles water, so Rukh said that I should call the rain," Mell explained. "So I did so."

Fluttershy's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "I just realized something. All the bucks have antlers. All the other does, except you, do not. But you are the only deer I have seen with magic like our unicorns."

"Bucks work magic in the spring. Does do not. That is the way it is. I am something different, but I think that I did something good."

"Oh," Fluttershy said. "And Ravast? Is that what made him so cross?"

"He moves the wind and he is good at it. But he thinks for magic a deer needs a penis, not just antlers in velvet." Mell giggled and hugged Fluttershy tightly. "And he is jealous because I have kept my velvet even now, the first night of the rut. I do not think I could fight with these even if I wanted to."

"Tonight?" Fluttershy asked. "It starts tonight?"

"You are prohibited to the stags," Mell reminded her. "And since this is my first year, I am not to bear fawns even if my body can."

"You don't know?" Fluttershy asked.

"I wish to try next year. But I do not know if I am fertile."

"Oh. I see. Good luck," said Fluttershy. "I think it will be a long time before I've found a special stallion for myself and my foals. I'm still trying to figure out where I fit in and what my talent means, you know."

Mell took her hoof from Fluttershy's shoulder and wrapped it around her chest. Then she began to rub gently, running her dewclaws through the hair of Fluttershy's underside.

"Melliflua, um- oh!" Fluttershy gasped when her friend brought her hoof lower, feeling along her navel and tits.

"Ponies only have two?" Mell asked, innocently.

"What are you doing?!" Fluttershy demanded. A blush was rising in her cheeks.

Mell took her hoof away. "I am sorry. I meant for us to celebrate this night, because we are friends though we will not breed this year."

"I... I'm sorry, too, Mel. And you are a good friend, but I don't love you like that. I want to keep my sex to myself until I find the right pony. So I'm sorry that you're not." Fluttershy took her wing back to herself. And then, because it was too awkward to stay, she got up and went.



Pegasi didn't control the weather here. Except for the deer's magic nobody did. So it was only by luck that there were low, flat clouds tonight. She needed to take a break, to lie in them, to... to be separate from the deer for a breather.

The cloud on which Fluttershy landed was gauzy-thin, so that she could look down on the bonfire and party below, if she chose. She lay with her back towards them, facing the moon and the mare imprisoned within, wondering what the right stallion would be like. Her hoof lay along her crotch, which was still warm with her surprised arousal. She didn't think it meant anything: somebody had touched her belly. It was only natural for her clit to respond and push the base of her cun out into a little tent between her legs.

It would feel so nice to clop right now, imagining the perfect stallion. He'd be gentle, even if others were unfair to him - that is the truest test of gentleness. He'd be confident in and proud of his talent. He would have to put up with animals, because it was starting to look like Fluttershy might keep a lot, so if he had a pet river otter...

And adorable brown-velveted antlers. Fluttershy groaned. So, no, there was no way that she could make a life with Melliflua. But then again, it wasn't what she had asked for.

Or what Rukh had asked for the outcast, the one deer who might not be the most appealing with her straightforwardness and butch, buck-mocking, ever-magical antlers. Rukh wanted Fluttershy to be a friend. "Mell" was her name to herdmates and friends. Suddenly, Fluttershy recognized something. She turned to look below, but couldn't see well enough. So she pushed through and overflew the clearing where the heard was gathered.

Herdmates embraced. Herdmates kissed. A few were kissing between another's legs. But only with her sudden insight could she see the two things that weren't there. Bucks kissed bucks. Does kissed does. But no herdmates went beyond embraces if they were buck and doe. And many of the bucks were already gone.

Already gone.

Rukh didn't know if a deer was his descendent. Deer had friends, but she knew no couples who were couples. Deer were herdmates, or they were friends, and the culture shock tore her heart in two. Fluttershy searched the whole clearing for Mell.

Like many of the bucks, she was already gone. If she had wandered off looking for other herds like they had, herds who were not kin, Fluttershy didn't even know if bucks ever returned.

But when it mattered, Mell had said, she was a doe. And so Fluttershy felt pretty good about her chances as she climbed out of the clearing and looked out across the forest. In the moonlight, she spied the scar in the canopy where the brook and the pool by the falls kept the trees from growing.

She flew to the island as fast as she could and hovered down to the island. Melliflua sat there as still as a statue with drooping ears but none of her magic lit her antlers.

"I am content," she said. "I am not your special somepony."

"I'm sorry," Fluttershy said. "I only just figured things out but I want to be your deer friend." She sat on her haunches beside Mell. She snaked her forehooves around her flanks. She kissed the base of Mell's ear then her antler,
which still buzzed with power.

Mell pushed herself back into Fluttershy's embrace. "Oh. I have wanted you, Bright Shy."

Her deerish under-fur blazed silver in the moonlight. Fluttershy set her down on the soft moss that grew there and set about kissing every inch of it, starting with her lips. Mell didn't kiss back very hard, so Shy moved down her neck and up the inside of her foreleg, leading to her hoof.

She hadn't really taken a close look at any deer's hoof before. Now Fluttershy cradled Mell's between her own and marveled. She had four toes: two formed her cloven hoof, two were tiny black adorable dewclaws. But she hadn't been expecting how soft they were, two leathery pads behind the keratin formed the sole of Mell's hoof.

It was like she walked on her frogs all the time. It was amazing. Fluttershy kissed and ran her lips and cheeks over Mell's foot. Her hair was prickly, the keratin smooth and sharp, the pads soft, tough, and warm.

Mell giggled. "Are you having fun, Shy? My most interesting parts are down here." She pointed her free hoof at her belly.

"Oh. Right. You just have very nice hooves."

Fluttershy moved to Mell's sternum and kissed her way down, making progress now, but not rushing. She seriously hoped she was doing it right - she and Rainbow had talked about it that year when they had breaks at school, how to give good sex. It had all been theoretical, second hoof. Now she was doing it and -

And Mell's very nice hooves were now running over her mane, prickling and prodding at the margins of her wings, massaging their muscles. Mell laughed again and the sound vibrated up from her belly.

Fluttershy nosed through Mell's coat on her belly. "Ooh. There's one," she said and licked messily at one of her tits. "Does that feel good?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I think I'll like it, too. Um, how many?"

"Four."

Fluttershy took her time touring Mell's belly, then up and down either thigh. Hers weren't as solid and meaty as Fluttershy's own, but she didn't complain, and her musk began to fill Fluttershy's nose. Come to think of it, her own arousal was hanging heavily below her tail.

Mell's short tail stood out flat along the ground. Fluttershy drew back and regarded her work: the mussed hair of Mell's belly, her wide-spread thighs and the wet little slit below them. She didn't have the soft hills Fluttershy would recognize on a mare like herself, but everything was more or less where it should be. Just leaner and more muscular - like everything else about deer.

"Mell, I'd like to do your slit now."

Mell groaned. "Please."

"Let me know if this is too intense."

"Mmm."

Fluttershy bent her head low, lying across one thigh. She opened her wings, one of which Mell took with her forehooves.

And then she opened her jaw and slowly started licking her way around the shallows of Mell's vulva, rewarded with moans that grew deeper and less coherent.

---

When Fluttershy finished her story, Dash took a deep breath. "So, I'm still trying to see what you did wrong, Shy."

"Why do I feel so guilty, then? I didn't love her. Not really. It was just something silly and adolescent and... I shouldn't have. I'd rather... have had my first time with you."

"Shy, Shy, you know what? Did you keep in touch with this Mell doe? She sounds kinda hot."

Fluttershy jabbed Dash hard in the ribs. "I'm trying to be serious."

"So am I. You, me, and her? I bet we could make it work out. Anyway, that doesn't count. Let me tell you a real regret, Fluttershy."

"I thought you said you didn't have any."

Dash sighed. "Well, that was a lie. And you're probably going to hate me forever for what I did."