I was running up two flights of creaky wooden stairs, my blue Pokemon tee shirt and matching shorts flapping, racing my mother to the top. A wave of deja vu came over me when I touched the splintery handrail, its sun bathed warmth too familiar to my young touch. I had been to the Louisa Medstar Thrift shop hundreds of times before, and had grabbed the very same handrail just and many, but this time felt different. It felt wrong.

But that feeling left as fast as the croissant Mom bought me at the french bakery about a mile from the thrift shop, and I shouted “I win, I win” before she even climbed the first flight.

The entire stairway was lined with random pencil landscapes going from the Milwaukee skyline to a lighthouse in Portland Maine, and to my left a short hallway with three doors. In this hallway were two young ladies, one wearing a tight white dress that looked ready to split at the seams, and a pair of half moon glasses perched on her nose. A beaded cord wrapping around her wrinkled neck like rosary beads. Pinned to her chest was an oblong name tag, the words read Delores Benfield. The other lady was younger, with a more fitting ‘Life is Good’ tee shirt and a pair of slacks. She had fine blond hair that looked right out of the steamer. There was a glazed look in her eyes as she looked at a pair of run down sneakers. The two stood by a stainless steel crate filled with old shoes, one filling while the other browsing.

“Hi, Mrs. Benfield,” Mom said, finally reaching the top of the stairs, “Jessica,” she added with a nod.

Mom also wore a ‘Life is Good’ tee shirt, but her’s was purple. She had a pair of loose khakis that went down to her knee. If it wasn’t for the belt they would be down to her ankles, her pink frilly underwear exposed. I know because I watched her get dressed for the first three years of my life.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Mrs. Winter.” Mrs. Benfield said.

“Well, Eric heard you got a new shipment of video games.” she looked at me with an accusing glare. “And he wouldn’t leave me alone until I brought him.”

“Oh, those are downstairs.” Jessica added, setting a pair of Adidas back into the pile.

“Oh I know,” Mom said with a hint of spite. “Eric just needs to wait for me to shop before he gets his chance.” I grumbled, crossing my arms in silent protest. “Isn’t that right? Eric”

“I’ll be in this room okay Mom?” I said pointing to the room marked ACCESSORIES.

“Don’t avoid the question!” She gave me a stern, annoyed, look before taking a deep breath, ignoring the strange looks everyone gave. “Sure, Honey.” Mom got down onto one knee and pulled me into a hug.

“Not in front of Jessica, Mooom.” I looked at Jessica’s face, bright green eyes looking back as she held back a chuckle.

“Just don’t break anything.” I could feel the spite in her smile. “I don’t want to have to buy another broken dog statue.”

“That only happened once!”

“Yeah, and I don’t want it to happen again.” she let go, standing up to twice my height before pushing me along.

“Okay, Okay, just don’t take too long this time.”

I walked into the ACCESSORIES department, which had a lot more than just accessories. There were tops, bottoms, belts of all colors, pillows, dolls, and baby toys. Not going to lie, some of the dolls scare me so I keep away from that end of the room. This is actually the biggest room in the thrift store, I found that out after getting bored waiting for Mom to finish looking at some of the tops. Twice I got caught by, Mrs. Benfield trying to get into the off limits areas.

“Hello there, Eric?”

I turned towards the kind voice, looking away from the only orange pillow on the rack. It looked like a bean pillow. Something stirred inside of me at its sight.

“Yes, Miss. Juniper.” Miss Juniper, while not as important as Mrs Benfield, is the only other worker that stays at the store from open to close, but I like her more than Mrs Benfield because she sidelines some of the stuff from new shipments she thinks I’d like. I wondered what she had this time?

“Now that’s not how I taught you to greet me, Eric, is it?”

I clacked my feet together and saluted with my right hand. “M’lady”

“At ease soldier.” I released my hand and clasped both, spreading my legs and looking down. Parade rest. “I got some good stuff this time Eric, someone donated a copy of,” she paused for dramatic effect, grinning at my look of anticipation I know. “Ocarina of time!”

I gasped and ran up to her, unable to wrap both my arms around her plump waist. I had been looking for that game for an entire month! “Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me, thank the person who donated it. I think you know him. Remember John Haybert?”

“Him? Wow, I thought he loved that game?”

“He came with his mom this morning. Apparently he did something so naughty, she made him give it up.”

“I’ll have to thank him later.” I said taking the beautiful thing from her warm, meaty hands. I turned the gray cartridge around and found the JH etched he etched in. It was definitely his. “Do you mind telling me about the orange pillow there?” I pointed to the pillow in question.

“Why? Just grab it.” I wanted to, but something told me, a sort of feeling, that I should stay far away from it.”John got a green one when he came. I remember how happy he was when…” I ignored her and moved closer, hand held out like it would snap at me, snake style. “Just take it Eric, it’s not going to bite you.” I jumped and snatched it from its perch below a blue, purple and yellow one of the same quality.

My mother screamed.

“Fire!” somewhat garbled screams could be heard from the floor below.

“Hurry, put it out!”

Everything faded as I clutched the pillow close to my chest instinctively. The world spun and heated up. Orange flames flickered up the stairway, burning the Milwaukee skyline as they climbed to the second floor.

“Were trapped!” Miss Juniper shouted.

I dropped Ocarina of Time , the clack it made hitting the ground sounded like a gunshot. I collapsed, my legs going numb as the temperature skyrocketed and the screams seemed to melt away downstairs.

I stared into a fiery abyss, the flames burning through the last of the pencil drawings, not noticing a black figure racing towards me.

“Hold on tight, Eric.” I barely registered my mother’s touch. She holstered me over her shoulders just as the flames crept into the ACCESSORIES room. “Don’t let go, whatever happens.” I heard Miss Juniper scream followed by a loud meaty thump from outside.

People were jumping out of the windows into a roaring thunderstorm.

Just before we jumped, I saw Jessica’s face run into the room, she screamed, her entire body engulfed in flames. Soon she fell to the burning ground. I saw her flesh boil, literally melting off the bone. Then the cold assault of rain.

Mom was below me and I saw a patch of cloth on her right eye, a bandage. We fell into a mud patch, barely missing Miss. Juniper and everything went black.

I shot up. My blanket was soaked in cold sweat. I swished my pajama pants together, they were dry. I looked at the time. 11:00 the red light blinked. Groaning I took my hand away from my mouth and sighed.

“Only asleep for a half an hour.”

I kicked the blanket off and shuffled quietly to the kitchen. Eclipse ate her spaghetti in relative peace, but kept giving me a look that seemed a mixture of desperation, frustration and a vain attempt at blaming me for her world being displayed in a childrens cartoon.

Somehow, she ended up getting her head stuck in one of the striped socks. She said it happened so she didn’t have to look at me, but I think she was hiding from the truth. Anyway, the action was cute at first, watching her struggle to stay upright, but that changed when she fell off the chair. I tried to help her, but she ran away, hitting the wall three times before giving up and falling to the ground. She hissed when I took the sock off and ran under the couch, her eyes glowing in the moonlight. She fell asleep lying on the orange pillow about an hour after I fixed her sock. I was in the middle of researching My Little Pony when I noticed.

I have to admit, the villain, Nightmare Moon did turn out to be rather interesting. She gave off a seriously stupid vibe. Serious in the sense that she was determined to get her goal of bringing everlasting night to Equestria, and stupid because she didn’t think about the fact that nothing grows without sunlight. But what really intrigued me was Princess Luna. Why wasn’t she talked about either before or after the Nightmare Moon incident? Is she plotting to take over the now diarchy? These are questions I hope will be answered later in season one.

I silently crept past Bane’s cage, listening to the gentle breathing coming from under the couch, and snatched the laptop from the table. Slowly I slithered back to my bedroom. After the nightmare, I figured I wouldn’t get much sleep so I planned on researching more about both my mother’s death and My Little Pony until either I passed out or had to go to work.

The warmth from my blanket felt great and I quickly got comfortable underneath. While I waited for my laptop to finish starting up, the names, Mrs. Benfield, Jessica, Miss Juniper and John Haybert bounced around in my head like tiny pinballs. I knew who they were, and what they looked like, but for some reason I couldn’t remember why.

I went back to the site with the pictures of my mother being rolled away on a stretcher and looked at the names one more time.

“Jonathan, H, Haybert, Jessica Alberni, Delores Benfield… and Julia Juniper. They’re all here!” I slowly scrolled down the list of green and red names, almost every name rung a bell, some were louder than others. Every name I heard in my dream but Delores was in green while she and two other names shared the red. Looking Delores up I found out that she died a widow, without a single child to her family name. Same with the other two, both died in the fire without a child to call their own. Samuel Winslow’s wife had three miscarriages before giving up on her dream. They adopted Li Chan from the Gatewood Childrens home a year before the fire.
The last name in the red group, Jordan Kingsley, was not from the Louisa area. Her roots were in Montgomery county Maryland, and the statement from her husband was that the two of them were staying at the Marriott over in Richmond for a bird watching convention. Jordan had just wanted to look at the shirts on sale, said she needed a new one (or twelve as Jordan’s husband later explained) to replace the one she gifted to her friend.

I put a sweaty palm over my eyes. They begged for sleep, but everytime I closed them I saw my mother’s face as she landed in the mud. If all three red names never had any children of their own, then does that mean the other eleven did? Quickly I looked the entire page from top to bottom, ignoring the pictures that showed on the sides, in hope of finding some kind of key, but to my disappointment there was none. No name stuck out to me, and most of the names I didn’t know. I shrugged my worry away and looked up to of the other patrons in the thrift shop that fateful day. Adam Dansly and Joe Marygold were two married men both with two children to call their own, oddly enough all four were boys.

Boredom and just wanting to think about something else forced my thoughts to Eclipse, and as I changed position to put one of the extra pillows under the computer, I began wondering why she sounded so… mature. Looking back on my notes, I couldn’t find anything that would help me understand this. She has such good manners, talks without a lisp and knows some pretty big words for her age. I was stumped until I stumbled onto two words that explained everything. Twilight Sparkle.

In a child’s eye, mother and father might as well be god. They feed, shelter and give unconditional love. It took me until the age of eighteen to see my own mother as anything else but a god, especially after she died. This means that a child would imitate their mother, needing to please her at any cost. And with Twilight’s love of books it wouldn’t be surprising to find that Eclipse took up reading to spend a little extra time with her.

“Okay, that makes sense, but what about the manners?” I said aloud to no one in particular

Six year olds tend to know some manners, mainly the p’s and q’s, but Eclipse never tried to attack me, a possibly dangerous alien that might be holding her hostage, even going so far as to let me give her a bath when she was clearly uncomfortable. I pondered this for some time, watching the blinking clock go from 11:25 to 11:45, until something clicked.

“She was afraid of me!” I slapped my head in frustration — regretting it immediately as a dull pain sent the world spinning for a few moments— she had no idea if I was friend or foe. After the bath she looked more, comfortable, all worry lifted when I said she could stay until her mother picked her up. It seemed all her problems were solved.

“Then Bridget came over and I kept her from killing the poor thing.” I said, mulling over my notes while twirling the ballpoint pen around in my mouth. “Eclipse trusted me enough, after that, to call me her uncle and recite what she knew about nen.” I clicked to the tab with episode five of My Little Pony and looked at the purple unicorn talking to the hyper active (and a little terrifying) Aunt Pinkie PIe. “After that, I showed her this show and she flipped. Accusing me of spying on her family, but that also says the world of Equestria is really where she’s from.”

After writing a few more notes in my notebook, I settled down to watch more of the show that would change my life

Around 1 o'clock I heard a soft knock at the door.

Pressing pause, I took off my headphones and listened, making sure my tired mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. Moments later the knocking came again.

I knew who it was; there was no doubt. Shuffling out from under my covers I made my way to the door, opening it to find that Eclipse had her back turned.

Her mane was a mess and her tail seemed to have tied itself into a knot around her back leg. When she turned around I saw that her eyes dropped with sleep, but she forced them back up as if afraid of some nightmare.

“I-I’m still mad at you,” she said, her voice, dry and scratchy. “But I—” she turned her head, straining to get the words out. “But I want to hear my… mommy’s voice again.”

“Sure, come on in.” I opened the door and moved back to the bed, wrapping myself in the blanket once again before going back to the ‘Winter Wrap Up’ episode. I enjoyed watching… I mean researching that episode as it had a bunch of Ponyville culture laced in with a good moral and well written, and choreographed, song.

“Do you want to listen from that dark and scary hall?” I said in the best taunting voice my brain could muster. “Or do you want to hear it from my warm bed?”

“I JUST WANT TO HEAR MY MOMMY’S VOICE!!!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “Don’t patronize me!”

“Okay, okay.” I clicked play.

“Spike, wake up. Wake up, wake up, it's Winter Wrap Up day!” Twilight’s voice shouted as she nudged a sleeping Spike.

“Huh? Mommy?” Spike said looking at Twilight with groggy eyes.

“Winter Wrap Up!”

“You’re not mommy.” Spike pulled the blanket back over his head and went back to sleep.

I turned to Eclipse. The sound of tiny sniffles were all that I could hear besides Twilight going on about a checklist.

“Ma- Mommy?” I picked up on the soft sound of her small hooves scratching against the carpet. “Mommy?” Her voice cracked and she forced a cry down with a hiccup. “Mommy!” This one was more of a whine, but the beginnings of her face entered the light.

My heart sank.

Though I had enough light to see that her mane and tail were disheveled, I couldn’t clearly see her eyes. The closer she got, the more redness I saw in them. There was a giant bag under each one and when she got to the foot of the bed I saw that she was still crying!

I reached over the bed to bring her into a hug, but froze when she hit my hand.

“Stay aw-aw-away!” she shouted, her hiccups making her stutter her words. “It-it’s y-your fault! Everything!” She ran out of the room, her hiccups turning into full fledged sobs.

I couldn’t help letting a few tears of my own fall. I felt them take their journey along my cheek. It hurts whenever a child cries, especially when she said it’s your fault. Even though I know it wasn’t, my heart breaking made me feel like I was to blame.
To make matters worse, I couldn’t comfort her. I knew that if I confronted Eclipse, she would attack me like a cornered animal.

With a hard shutter, I clicked back to the “Call of the Cutie’ episode and put my headphones back on, turning the volume up to the max in hopes of drowning out her cries.

It didn’t work and I fell asleep two hours later.