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Things Left Unsaid · FiM Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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Apistat Commander
She was no longer hungry, so she stopped eating.

Fluttershy looked down at the completely full bowl of salad, not a single leaf displaced from when she had started eating. The carrots and tomatoes likewise had remained untouched, and just looking at them made her complexion pale.

"Here you, go, Angel," Fluttershy said softly, pushing the bowl over to the opposite side of the table, where her pet rabbit sat, watching her. Usually, the ornery beast would balk at the idea of eating Fluttershy's leftovers, but this time he fished a carrot out from the mass of leaves. Popping it into his mouth, he half-heartedly chewed on it before grabbing another few carrots from the bowl and offered them to Fluttershy.

"Oh, no thank you," she said, smiling weakly. "I'm full."

Fluttershy removed herself from the table, walking to the couch in her cottage living room. The pegasus was all skin and bones; in fact, the bones could be seen through her pale yellow coat, which was so tight around them she looked skeletal. She held her wings tight to her body, and they were a ghastly sight. Missing almost more than half their feathers, a few more fluttered to the ground as she advanced towards the couch. Sitting down, Fluttershy leaned against the back of the couch, her frail form barely moved with each breath.

She had sent all her animals away to Treehugger. All except Angel, who in his eternal stubbornness, refused to leave the cottage. She hadn't wanted them to see her like this, and the same went for her friends. She had kept herself locked up in her home, and her friends respected this and gave her her distance after a while. At first, they had shown up every day, asking her to leave her home. She had declined, and through stalwart denial, they had come to accept her reluctance. After a week or two, even Pinkie Pie had stopped coming to see her.

She couldn't be there in the outside world. The sky came crashing down on her, the earth rose to swallow her, and even the trees and solitude of nature that she once loved so much made an effort to strangle her in a compression cage. Ponies looked at her from all sides, gazing right through her and seeing every single dent and chip in her history and personality. She couldn't even make eye contact with her friends, for she was afraid they were able to read her mind and judge every single strange and personal thought.

She had fled inside, where she hoped her animal friends could offer her comfort. But after a while, even they gave er the sensation of constant scrutiny. Failures of the past she knew no one but herself were privy to were coming forward, and through some unexplainable act of dark magic, anypony—or anything—could see her darkest heart. Only Angle remained, and as awful as it sounded, she loathed to look at him.

Years ago, when they had first met, Fluttershy had gone to Twilight about the overwhelming feelings. She had given her a small bottle full of white pills.

"I know you're not much of a drinker," Twilight had said to her while giving her the bottle. "But these have a potentially lethal reaction with alcohol. So just be careful to stay away from hard cider, alright?"

Now the bottle was sitting on the table next to her couch, right next to a small mug of hard cider from the barrel Applejack had given her years ago. Twilight as right, she wasn't much of a drinker—that barrel had never meant to be touched. But now, in this horrible world where everything collapsed on her and nothing was safe, not even in her mind... there was a reason to drink it.

The pills hadn't worked, but she hadn't told Twilight that. At the time, she hand't wanted to upset her. She knew this would upset her more, but there was nothing else she could do now. She couldn't leave the house, much less look Twilight in the eye and talk to her.

She took the remaining twenty or so pills and downed them. Dry in her mouth, the hard cider chugged next, leaving a terrible taste behind. The world grew fuzzy, and Fluttershy closed her eyes. She had expected to feel something, anything about leaving behind everything in the world.

As her fragile body grew heavy, the oddest feeling washed over her. Pure, unadulterated relief.

Fluttershy smiled.
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