It was a gorgeous night. A great festival was being held to last several weeks that celebrated cultures from all over the world. There were great displays and fantastic shows from not just ponies, but other creatures from across the world. There were dancers from all over putting on shows in different places across the festival grounds, from places like Saddle Arabia to the Crystal Empire. The Zebras had put on incredible shows and plays, telling of the history of their country.
Amongst all the other grander shows, a humble little stage was set up on the eastern part of the festival grounds for a pegasus mare to tell interested festival attendees about the legends and tales from her homeland. Her wings looked bruised and damaged, the right one in a sling, but her coat was a clear white color, and her mane flowed in a way that looked like a sakura tree. Her eyes had a calm appearance to them, and were colored with an emerald green. Her cutiemark was an open book before a warm red sunrise, with cherry blossoms flowing from the book’s pages. The cutiemark seemed to change and move, almost as if it were alive.
She spoke softly to her audience who had just gathered as she introduced herself. “My name is Sakka no Kouma, though you may call me Page Turner. I come from the far east land of Neighpon, which you may know more commonly as Japony” The audience nodded in response. “I have journeyed far and come to tell you of the tales my homeland has. Such as one of a bunny who comes from the moon and hides among us. They are a prince of a kingdom on the moon and will demand to be treated as such. They will choose a pony to live with and they must be taken care of by that pony, lest the pony meet with misfortune. Those who do not give up on taking care of the bunny prince and continue forward are rewarded with anything their heart desires, but according to legend, no pony has ever taken care of the prince for longer than a few weeks.”
A curious pony in the audience asked “Why can’t anypony handle the prince for longer than a few weeks? He’s just a bunny, I’m sure a lot of us here have taken care of bunnies before.”
“Because the bunny prince of the moon kingdom is an abusive uncontrollable ball of pure disrespect given physical form.”
The story is interrupted by a noise coming from a bush nearby, startling some ponies. Every pony stops and looks in the direction of the loud rustling, expecting a young pony or small woodland creature to come out of it. What did come out of it was not what any of them were expecting. Out from the bushes, smelling of musk and alcohol, was a Tanuki. Not only was it a creature none of the ponies from Equestria had ever seen, but it was standing on it’s hind legs, drinking a bottle of sake and proudly displaying itself with confidence towards a crowd, something wild, small, furry creatures didn’t normally do in Equestria except around very particular ponies.
Page Turner giggled and offered the boozy beast a seat next to her, which it gladly took. “I was not expecting a tanuki to show up here in Equestria!” she exclaimed. The other ponies settled down after the initial shock of seeing a new creature and started to ask about it. “These creatures are playful and mischievous, with the ability to change themselves and shapeshift.”
“And make you ponies look like ********, too!” the tanuki said in a deep voice. The ponies in the audience jumped back a little in surprise at this, causing a giggle to come from Page Turner. “That is correct, they often transform themselves to make ponies look foolish or feel embarrassed. They do speak and are quite vulgar at times too.” She explained. “We also got ******* huge-” Page interrupts the tanuki and explains before he can blurt out a more vulgar sentence. “They are well endowed, yes, yes, you can stop talking now, okay, Akamori?”
The tanuki grows a massive grin on his face. “So you do recognize me?” Page rolls her eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t bring Yuki with you. I told you I was going to be busy. One of you showing up is a surprise, but if both of you-”
”Don’t worry about it, I didn’t bring Yuki.”
Page breathes a sigh of relief.
“They brought themselves.” The tanuki says with a wicked smile on his face.
If there was color on Page’s face, it would have drained by now. The bushes nearby started to rustle again. A panicked white fox rushes out from the bush. “We need help, now!” It yelled. “A well just appeared near a farm on the other side of these trees!”
Page Turner’s face went from shock to confusion. “I’m going to skip asking what you’re even doing here and just ask, why is that important? I’m in the middle of something here.”
“There’s a skeleton pony trying to drag another pony down into it.”
Page’s expression turned serious in an instant. “Any strong ponies in the audience, come with me right now! We have a pony to save!” She ran towards where the fox had come from. Any ponies who weren’t completely confused by the events that just took place followed behind.
After a few minutes of galloping, the group found the old decrepit looking well where the spirit manifested. A stallion was grabbing the outside wall of the well with all his might, trying not to be dragged in by this skeleton pony floating above the hole. His repeated screams of “Dear Celestia, somepony help!” echoed through the air.
Page instructed two ponies to grab the stallion and hold onto him while she opened her saddlebags to look for a sealing tag. Finding one she rushes onto the wall of the well and plants the tag on the forehead of the skeleton spirit, a bright light flashing from the contact for a brief moment before the spirit slowly starts to fade away. “Get him out of this well now!” Page orders, and the ponies pull the stallion out with one last tug of all their might. “Sir, are you okay?”
“Oh thank Celestia you came! What was that?!” The stallion asked.
“That was a vengeful spirit. It was created by somepony tossing a dead pony’s bones unceremoniously and disrespectfully into a well. After many years, the spirit emerges from it’s well and attacks anypony close by, transferring the grudge from itself to the new dead spirit in the well, trapped until it can pass on it’s own grudge or until the spirit or well can be cleansed.” Page explained.
“But there’s no well there! Can the well move? What does it have to do with me?” The stallion asked.
“The well can not move. The only explanation must be that a well used to be here and was broken and covered up until the spirit became strong enough to manifest itself on the surface. When the rest of my people come I’ll tell my friend to come cleanse this place. She’s a shrine maiden, she’ll know how to do it right. The sealing tag I put on the spirit was given to me by her and should hold that spirit there for a good amount of time so we can cleanse the well with no troubles.” She turned back around and started heading back to the festival. “We should leave this place for now though, the festival is still going on. I think we could all use some fun to take our minds off what happened here.”
As Page started to walk away, the other ponies looked amongst themselves and all nodded with agreement before following behind. Just before entering the treeline again, the fox and tanuki showed up. “Told you to keep up, but no, I had to slow down for you, Yuki.”
“I’m tired, give me a break!” the fox whined.
Page Turner walked past them back into the woods, followed by the rest of the herd.
“See? I told you they’d be finished by the time we got here, slowpoke!” Akamori yelled. Yuki just fell over on their side, panting. “Fine, I’ll carry you back. Sheesh. Don’t know why you didn't just turn into a bird to get over here, would’ve saved you a lot of energy for moments like these.” the tanuki said, picking up the fox on his back before carrying them back through the woods, following the trail of the ponies who just went back through. “It probably wasn’t even anything too dangerous, I bet you blew it out of proportion again, you lazy fox!”
Yuki growled and smacked Akamori with three tails in the face at once. “Like you would do something?”
“Yeah I would! I’d watch!” Akamori laughed.
The festival continued through the night uninterrupted, but the most recent incident with the vengeful spirit was only the beginning, and a sign of things to come. Page Turner knew that these incidents were only going to get more frequent until the rest of her group showed up. She had a bad feeling about all this, but she was honestly kind of excited. What better way to tell a story than to have your listeners truly experience it for themselves?