//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 
// Story: I'm Real 
// by Feeling Grand 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow Dash looked at her in distrust.

I didn't know what to say to this woman Grace. I mean, she saved my life... but I was always told not to talk to strangers.

It was getting dark as the sun began to split the horizon, and I looked at it quietly with my pale blue eyes... saying goodbye to the harsh day that was to be replaced by the cold blistering night.

The woman seemed to take the belief of a cartoon pony coming to life in our world well. She accepted our plausible answers to her questions easily and we just sat on the mountain's ledge, a fire being lit by the lady, but Rainbow Dash told me to stay by her side.

I had to tell Grace but.

"My GRANNY tried to KILL me! And Rainbow Dash! She's a SERIAL KILLER!"

Tears came roaring down my cheeks as I plummeted all my fears and terrors onto this young woman and she just gave an uneasy resistant look to it all.

"I'm... so sorry..." she said and Rainbow Dash just scuffed.

"No you're not. You don't even know us."

"No... but-" Grace continued and Rainbow Dash glared her magenta eyes over at her with a distant stare, "I know that what she did was just... just... PURE EVIL!"

"IT WAS!" I bellowed in tears.

"Especially to such a sweet little girl like you, Anna."

"Uh huh, uh huh..." I blubbered.

"She must be going senile..."

"Or maybe..." Rainbow Dash said in anger, nearly blowing steam from her nose in the cold that was starting to set hard upon us. "She's just a psycho bitch!"

"Language, pony!" Grace warned the pegasus quickly, and Rainbow pulled back a startled look at that demand.

"You can't tell me what to do..." Rainbow said to her coldly and Grace just frowned, lowering her eyebrows into a deadly brow.

"Watch me."

Rainbow looked at her a little suspiciously at this returned threat, and I felt her nudge off me a little, saying in silent words.

"I think we should get going."

"And go into another cave?!" I said, my heart quickly beginning to pound frantically and Rainbow just sighed, looking cautiously over to Grace and said to me again.

"I think we should..."

"Oh..." I said, looking over at Grace, and her warm kind eyes. For some reason I felt more safe around a human than a cartoon character, but I couldn't betray my trust in Rainbow Dash.

After all, she was the element of loyalty.

"Anna..." Rainbow said in a quiet demand for a response and I swallowed, nodding my head.

"O-okay..."

I got up as Rainbow spread her wings, getting ready to take me on her back and lift off but Grace quickly perked up in seeing our movement and said, hastily.

"Woah, you two aren't just going to leave me, ARE you?!"

"Yes..." Rainbow said coldly and Grace stood up. The fire flickered sparks into the night sky and blew across our feet warming them ever just.

"look... I know you two have been betrayed by someone close to you-"

"Y-yeah..." I whispered, tears rising in my eyes, thinking of my granny.

"-but you need more protection than just yourselves. There are wolves out here, bears!"

"We're more dangerous than any wolves." Rainbow Dash assured her and I shook a little in fear of the killing of more innocent animals just so I could survive.

"Yes... but-"

"Look, lady." Rainbow Dash said to her flatly. "I don't trust you. WE don't trust you."

I said not a word.

"We're leaving. Any adult out here could be dangerous, I've seen enough of your kind by just one example to know that most of you are bad."

"-But."

"No buts." Rainbow said, just staring dead cold at her, and said in quick quiet words to me. "C'mon..."

She nudged her head a little towards her back as she looked at me and I saw her furry strong back waiting to be sat on so we could take flight.

But the terror of being in the sky got to me, and the memory of the lightning from flying with Rainbow Dash...

To be honest I was scared.

And something about Grace just made her feel homely, motherly... nurturing... like she could redeem the humanity Rainbow Dash now so despised.

"N-no..."

Rainbow Dash's eyes nearly popped opened when she heard me say this and she looked at me, aghast.

"What, Anna?!"

"I can't fly with you..." I peeped, tears swelling around my eyes and Rainbow weakened in her approach when she saw my timid self. "I can't keep running into wilderness... I want safety... I... I trust her..."

"Anna..."

Rainbow Dash and Grace both said this at the same time and I just shook my head, tears flinging away from my eyes and I begged.

"Just... please... I want to be around people... you didn't protect me when... I-I n-needed you..."

Rainbow looked at me heartbroken when I said this but I knew she knew what I meant.

She had left me alone in that cave. She had left me alone with my grandma.

Was she going to leave me alone now... if I chose to stay with this woman?

Would she leave me like she had done so many times before...?

Rainbow just lowered her eyes to the ground, mumbling something barely audible but it sounded in so much confused hurt.

"Anna... I-I had to get out of that place..." she swallowed. She looked at me slowly and whispered with shiny eyes. "Alright. We'll stay."

"If you want to leave..." I said in a stammer, looking at her, with wet eyes of my own. "Then go, I won't make you stay."

"No... I..."

Rainbow looked back at Grace, who only looked at her with silent eyes and Rainbow just looked down to the flickering burning hot fire, how it chewed up the wood and would soon die.

"You promise you won't hurt us?" Rainbow said, and Grace opened her eyes, surprised to hear this.

"Of course not." she said so softly with warm eyes and Rainbow just stamped back and forth in furious strides before she looked at me and said.

"Fine... we'll stay."

"I'm sorry, Rainbow." I begged for forgiveness, and Rainbow just held her hoof out to me to silence me.

"It's fine, Anna. But we need to find a cave... the temperature is going to drop to minus in seconds time."

"Okay..."

xxxxx

We picked up a burning branch and used it to guide our way back to the cave where the bear had once been. I was terrified going back to that dark and dank cave, but we used the flaming branch as light as we traveled to the very depths of it to see if there was anymore dangers hidden in its chambers.

I sighed a heavy, quaky breath of relief when I found there was nothing in there to attack us and we watched the flame die as it starved on the remaining ash of the branch.

In seconds time it was just the three of us in the dark, but the stars from the world outside let in some light as the inky blue sky got illuminated scarcely by the suns billions of light years away.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Grace said to Rainbow Dash as the two of them stood near the edge of the cave and I watched in the distance.

I had tried to go to sleep as my eyes grew so dreary, but the cold was too much, even with Grace's sleeping bag she had offered me. I wasn't used to being outside in nature.

"It's better than being alone in a static TV..." Rainbow muttered to her barely, and Grace just gave a warm smile at her, asking.

"So... how do you expect to live in this world of humans..?"

"Is it a world of just humans?" Rainbow Dash asked, and I listened and watched from the darkness of the cave as Rainbow Dash's body was silhouetted against the dark blue sky.

"Well nearly... we've basically ruined the planet... well them... not me."

"You've played some part." the pegasus said to her, and her magenta eyes almost seemed luminous in the night. "There's no way you couldn't have."

"I'm not from their world..." Grace said in a sigh and Rainbow looked at her slightly confused as Grace said to her with a wink. "I'm from a whole other existence."

"Keep telling yourself that." Rainbow muttered and Grace just gave a laugh.

"I will. Cos' I know I'm am."

Rainbow just stared at her, and I swear she was trying to understand this strange being before her. It was like Rainbow was finding it hard to connect to anyone... even with me... I felt she just stuck with me out of loyalty for what I did for her... then actually wanting to be my friend.

"Yeah..." Rainbow said to her, quietly and turned silently away as she looked up to the sky of a billion stars.

Grace sighed, and stood up, walking into the cave and coming to my side. She must've thought I was asleep as she just shook me a little and I didn't make a peep. I wanted to see more of their conversation but I only saw her lean against the dark cave wall and call over to Rainbow in a kind voice.

"Not going to sleep?"

"Not in case that woman gets us."

"She's a frail old lady... she's not going to get you up here."

"You didn't see her."

"Please... for Anna's sake."

Rainbow just stared at her, an undercurrent of frustration running under her fur and she just sighed, seeing Grace's kind smile and muttered.

"Yeah... okay..."

She laid down at the ledge of the cave, her blue wings folding tightly to her body and her eyes shutting closed, tightly, as she tried to settle herself but I could see through my own dreary eyes that she was very high strung and stressed.

I saw Grace just keep an eye view on Rainbow Dash, and when I saw the pegasus start to settle into sleep, I began to feel myself drift off as well.

My eyes were so drowsy as I slipped deeper and deeper into near unconsciousness but I weakly slit them opened, barely in the moment, as I saw Grace stand up and approach Rainbow in a few minutes time.

I saw her stretch for something in her utility belt as she dared to pat the unconscious pegasus, and when Rainbow didn't stir from the touch but almost fell snugly into it... I heard her say.

"You're such a sweet pony..."

I smiled in hearing her say this, and watched with happy eyes as she stroked the fur of Rainbow Dash softly before drawing something from her belt that glistened in the moonlight.

My eyes... they widened.

As before them was the sight of a sharp jagged knife.

She tore it into Rainbow Dash. I screamed. She drove it deep into the pony's body, stabbing unmercifully over and over. AGAIN AND AGAIN!

"STOP!" I shrieked, pulling myself out of the blanket and tearing across the cave to her, but the bleeding pony was just kicked off the cave's ledge by the murderous woman's foot and she gazed at me with a bloodthirsty grin.

"Don't worry, Anna." she said to me in a soft voice as I landed on my knees at the cave's ledge in panic. I looked for the fallen Rainbow Dash but she was gone!

"I'll let your death be swift."

"WHY?!" I asked, my eyes pleading as tears fell down from them in heart attacking agony.

"Because there can't be more than one of us." she whispered to me. She suddenly ripped me up to her by my blonde hair and I screamed in pure torture at this.

"Remember," she said with a wryly grin. "Granny knows best."

I suddenly felt the knife stab into my gut and I coughed out blood a second later, as she kissed me on the cheek.

Before she threw me of the ledge.

I fell for what seemed like eternity when it was only a few seconds. In dire agony.

But all I saw was the woman in the falling away distance light up like a lightning bolt and bounce across the sky.

I gasped, about to hit the ground and come to my death.

About to...

But I wasn't dead yet...