Chapter 3:
Nightmare
Sunset passed the school hallway which was particularly calm that morning, yet to her that was nothing special, as she was often one of the first to arrive at school; except on Monday of course.
She went straight to the music room, for that was the place were she and her friends hanged out most of the times. What was special that morning was that after a goodnight sleep she was feeling quite relived and ready to face the day: “ok” thought the girl: “today is a fresh start!” Sunset slowly approached the room’s door, yet as she was about to open it; her heart started pounding like a horse running on a field: “What?”thought Sunset as she tried to open the door once more. Every time she was about to walk into the music room, she felt her chest going crazy, a wild beat that she had never felt before. Her mind lost itself again in her thoughts: “What’s happening to me?” After so many attempts she finally had stored enough courage to face up to her unusual fear and charged against the door and at last she found herself in the room:
“Wow” she said: “I never would have imagined that I’d find hard to open a door, right girls?”. At that very moment Sunset raised her head realizing she was still alone, for there was nobody with here: “This is weird, they’re usually here by now”. The girl left the music room, still wondering the reason behind her friends’ delay: “Could it be...ah of course it is; they have all been worried about me lately” Sunset thought while passing the corridors headed to the library: “They’re probably still thinking about what I did yesterday. Congrats Sunset, you’re a genius!” The girl tried to open the door in front of her, but after a useless waste of energy, she could not help but notice that it was shut tight: “Even the library’s closed now, what’s wrong today?” Sunset made one more desperate attempt to open the library door, using all of her strength only to fail once again: “Ah great, and here I thought I could finally have a nice day, but it seems that somebody has something to say about it”. Thought the poor girl, going downstairs: “I hope my locker has the answer I need”.
Sunset was right to be upset, for she had really thought she could forget about what was secretly tormenting her: Applejack’s words had really worked the previous day, she had even decided to wear her favourite clothes that day in hope they would bring her good luck: and exquisite sleeveless jacked made of pure lamb leather painted in an intense shade of black with two pockets on the front the edges of which were crafted from shining steel, it even had golden spikes on it that one could swear were made of actual gold, under the jacket she was wearing a bright coloured T-shirt, short sleeved, tailored in an expensive fabric that really made her cutie mark, which of course she had requested designed on it, pop out, moreover although one could not notice it; the T-shirt left her shoulder uncovered, a bright new skirt clearly sewed in purple silk with two horizontal black stripes which ended in a grey line on the front and a pair of fine dark books, that she had rubbed clean the night before and decorated with lots of sparkling priceless gems.
The girl sighed repeatedly, as she was walking, through the school corridors: sometimes she would raise hear head high and stare at the sealing while thinking: “Were are they? Why did they just disappeared without saying anything.” Her mind was still keen on these thoughts, when suddenly the lights turned off, leaving the hallway in a shadowy atmosphere: “Well, that’s just great” said Sunset while talking to herself: “They must have forgotten to replace the...”
At that moment her heart pounded again, as she noticed that somebody had suddenly appeared in front of her, yet they were so distant and hidden in the dark that it was impossible for Sunset to identify them. At first the girl was unsure whether to approach or not the mysterious figure, for they could even have just been an illusion created by Sunset’s vivid imagination, or at least that was what she had thought in the firs place. But as often happens in those kind of situations when one is in desperate need of company, her curiosity got the best of her
: “Hello, can you hear me?” The shadowy figure did not dare to answer: “Hey, are you listening to me? It looks like we are the only ones in the whole school; do you happen to now where the others are?” As her rather unpleasant interlocutor once more refused to answer, the girl, who was already upset for obvious reasons, decided to confront them face to face.
As Sunset got closer to the one who had so unexpectedly appeared before her, the shadow surrounding them slowly began to faint: all of a sudden she was able to distinguish some attributes of her physical appearance, even though she could only see her from behind: the person standing in front of her had long straight hair of a slightly dark purple colour, yet some of her locks appeared to be magenta, her skin was also purple, but of a different tone, as Sunset could tell looking at her arms which remained uncovered by her short sleeved light blue shirt, her skirt and boots were of the same colour of her hair, even if Sunset thought they were of a more intense colour. As the girl reached the point were the mysterious figure was standing, she could not help but notice the one in front of her had a peculiar symbol designed on her skirt, a familiar one to Sunset’s eyes: a magenta spark.
As Sunset saw it, she finally knew the reason of her heart’s pounding: “Twi… Twilight, is that really you?”managed to say the girl after clearing her throat: “I can’t believe it, Twilight you came back! I’ve been waiting so long for this; you didn’t write me back these past weeks, so I got worried and thought I needed to...”,
after feeling the excitement of the moment, Sunset did notice that her dear friend had been strangely quite: “Twilight why aren’t you answering me?” the girl put her left hand on Twilight’s shoulder and shook it, but the only thing she got in return for doing so was silence: “Hey Twilight, what happened to you, why are you being so quite?”
As she spoke those words, her friend began to walk away, though one could not rightly say she was actually walking, for it seemed more like something was pushing her away from Sunset: “Twilight come back!” shouted Sunset who had found herself with her feet stuck on the ground, as if an unnatural force prevented her from moving towards her now distant friend: “Twilight wait for me!” the sound of the girl’s desperate voice seemed to have no effect on Twilight, for she was getting more and more far away until she finally disappeared as mysteriously as she had previously come out of nowhere:
“Twilight!” Sunset’s echoey voice slowly fainted, as the poor and now once again alone girl, loosing all her strength fell on her knees and felt her cheeks lined by tears, dropping over and over again from her reddish eyes: “Twilight, why?” cried Sunset: “I thought… I thought we were close, I thought we were friends. If that’s so, then why are you avoiding me, why aren’t you answering me?!” The girl’s desperate cry remained unheard by anybody but the darkness that was now surrounding her in the same way as Twilight before. Sunset stayed still without moving, without uttering a single word, she was feeling like she had no more tears to cry or enough voice in her throat to scream; until she heard a powerful sound, a thunder and she suddenly found herself back in her bedroom, wormed up by the blankets covering her. In the dark she turned her head towards the window and saw clouds hiding the night sky and drops of rain on the window glass. As relief filled her previously tormented soul, she found the calm to close her eyes again, while whispering to herself: “It was just a nightmare...”and, after she had once more put her head on her comfy white pillow, her slumber proceeded peacefully.