The door shook as the figure on the other side banged hard, I dropped the decoration I was hanging from the lamp as I startled.
“Fragile Flower, let us in, quick! He’s coming!” The pony on the other side of the door sounded nearly hysterical. “Hurry!”
“What’s wrong?” I slid the deadbolt open and cracked the door open an inch to peek out. Then something shoved the door all the way open, and I found myself face to snarling monkey face with the Storm King!
“Rarwl!” He jumped towards me, and I fell back screaming, holding my forelimbs over my face while I shuddered. “Gotcha!” A light laugh, too high pitch for any male, emerged from the would-be tyrant. I wouldn’t look up at him. “Flower? Are you alright?” The laugh faded, and I felt something step closer.
“I told you this was a bad idea.” I blinked slowly and risked a glimpse up. Tirek stood next to the Storm King. Something was weird about his arms, they seemed to hang off his neck in the wrong place. “Don’t worry Fragile, it’s just us.” I glanced again at the two villains and realized they were just costumes.
“Dainty Dawn?” The Storm King pulled her mask off, revealing the grinning cream colored face of her Unicorn friend. “Picket?” Tirek turned out to be Dainty’s grey Pegasus coltfriend, with a pair of plush arms stitched to his outfit’s neck in place of real arms. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“Here, back on your feet.” Picket helped me back upright and the drums beating in my ears faded.
“It’s Nightmare Night! Seriously Fragile, you’ve got to get in the spirit of things.”
“But I am, see?” I waved my forelimb at my apartment, and both Picket and Dainty glanced around trying to find what I meant. “Sigh. Look, I’ve hung up bats!”
“Three paper bats is not ‘getting in the spirit of things,’ Fragile.” Dainty rolled her eyes. “Now come on, we’ve got all sorts of fun ahead of us tonight.”
“I’d really rather not.” My heart started to beat hard, and not in a good way, when I thought about all the other ponies looking at me. “I was just going to stay in and read a good book.”
“I knew you’d say that.” Dainty stepped in behind me and started pushing me out the door, ignoring my protests. “It’s not healthy; you need to get out more!”
“We’ll be right beside you the whole time. You don’t need to be afraid out there.”
“You two can go have fun, I’ll just be a third wheel anyway.”
“We’re not leaving without you!” Dainty huffed, refusing to let me escape. Clearly, I had no say in this.
“…I don’t have a costume.” It was a weak argument and my last hope of staying home.
“Then it’s a good thing I brought one for you.” Dainty giggled mischievously, pulling from her candy bag a purple Unicorn horn headband and clip-on wings, along with a dark grey wig with a magenta streak and matching tail.
“Twilight Sparkle cosplay? Really?” It was Picket’s turn to roll his eyes. Dainty responded by sticking her tongue out at him and forcing the headband on me.
“Well OK, if you really want to stay here, you can…” she grinned evilly, “all alone… in the dark… with all sorts of creepy things hanging around just outside and branches scratching at the window.” My skin was already crawling.
“That’s a dirty trick.” They were both silent, waiting for my answer. I’d never be comfortable alone now. “Sigh. Fine, give me a couple minutes and I’ll be right there.”
I shut the bathroom door behind me, if only to get a moment longer to compose myself. The lock tempted me, and I briefly considered hiding here until they would both leave. But I caught the purple horn headband in the mirror and realized how much effort they were putting into getting me out tonight. I took it off and looked at it for a moment, and then up at my reflection.
The thin Earth pony mare in the mirror looked back at me seemed to be quite uncertain, and unsteady enough that a stiff breeze might knock her over. She had pale white fur, bordering on ghostly, and a light periwinkle blue mane. The only splash of real color on her face were the thin vines of yellowish-orange through her wavy mane. On her flank a light green spiraling vine with three purple flowers hanging from it. Even her eyes were delicate, an ice blue which might at any moment melt down her face. I adjusted my glasses when the headband knocked them askew; I didn’t actually need them and they didn’t even have lenses, but I felt as though they made me look a little less frail and a bit more intellectual instead.
Before heading back out I took one last long deep breath, hoping to steady my nerves. It didn’t work, and I could still feel my limbs shaking as Dainty Dawn and Picket got me down to the street.
Nightmare Night was already in full swing. Children and adults in full costumes were heading up to Canterlot’s center with bags for candy, none of them paid me any attention. As we passed under the steamers of paper bats and low hanging pumpkin lights I ducked reflexively, involuntarily imagining what a falling lamp could do to a pony’s head. When I looked up I found the sky above dismal and grey, which only heightened the spooky mood.
“I overheard some of the other guards saying the Princess thought the weather would help set the mood.” Picket had seen me eying the sky. “It shouldn’t rain though.” That was when the thunder boomed, sending me scurrying for cover. “Can’t promise anything about thunder and lightning.” It took them another minute to get me moving again, and we joined the crowds again.
All the streets in central Canterlot were devoted to the celebration. Stalls containing games and food filled the thoroughfares, and all of them themed around skeletons, bats, and other creepy-crawly things. Over-sized spiderwebs draped from streetlamps, and bats hung from eaves, I swear I saw a few of them move of their own accord. Children with bags newly full of candy sprinted from place to place in colorful costumes of pirates and monsters, their parents following close behind.
“Oooh, where should we go first?” Dainty Dawn shared the foals enthusiasm, nearly dancing on the spot. Picket pointed down the road, plushy arms waving wildly.
“I've got a friend who’s running a haunted house at the museum.” Without any complaint I followed them, it’s not like it would be any worse there than anywhere.
I was wrong, of course. The museum had gone all out; strange things flickered in and out of view in dimly lit windows, ghostly apparitions floated out of the ground to snag at passing ponies, glowing eyes tracked me from the shadows, and there was an occasional terrified scream from somewhere inside.
“That’s uh… a bit much for me.”
“Come on, Fragile! Don’t leave us hanging.” Dainty tugged on my forelimb, trying to drag me inside. But this really was more than I was willing to put up with and dug my heels into the ground.
“Dawn, that’s enough.” Picket pried us apart. “She doesn’t have to go in.”
“Spoilsport.”
“You two go have fun in there, I’ll wait out here.” I glanced around and found a bench underneath a particularly bright streetlamp not far off. “I’ll be right over there.”
“You sure?” Dainty was already pulling at Picket to get him moving as he asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
“OK then.” He finally allowed himself to be drawn off and I moved over to the pool of light to wait and watch all the other ponies having fun. Among all the ninjas and mummies and ghosts there were quite a lot of Storm Kings in the crowd, not surprising considering how fresh the invasion was in our memories. Second in popularity were unreformed changelings, naturally scary in their own right, some seemed so realistic that I considered they might not be costumes at all…
I let my gaze go back to the clouds above, which were growing darker and thicker. For a moment some yellowish glowing thing slipped under the cloud’s edges and into view briefly before disappearing upwards. Something about it disturbed my gut, and I dropped my gaze back to the ground.
A bat-winged shadow suddenly blotted out the light above me, sending a shiver down my spine. Slowly I looked back and up and found a pitch black Alicorn in midnight-blue armor above me, sharp teeth opened as if to bite down on my neck. I screamed as Nightmare Moon descended, flinging myself under the bench for cover. She laughed as if expecting me to join her. I didn’t, I was too busy shaking my fake wings in fear and couldn’t catch my breath. Then her laugh died.
“Oh dear, I seem to have gone a little too far.” Nightmare Moon leaned down and fixed her eyes on me, speaking softly. “Are you alright?” I couldn’t speak, I could barely even hear her over my drumming heartbeat. “You don’t need to fear me, it’s just an illusion.” She removed her helmet, and the darkness lifted from her body to reveal the much softer deep blue of Princess Luna. When I still didn’t come out from under the bench I felt myself lifted out by a gentle spell, and Luna set me down on my own feet. “I apologize, I didn’t know I would terrify you that intensely. I was under the expectation you would enjoy being startled in such a way.”
“P-p-p-p-” I couldn’t even manage to say her name.
“Breathe.” I inhaled sharply at her command and held it for nearly as long as I could. “Let it out slowly. There, is that better?” I did feel better, or maybe I was just too overwhelmed to notice. “Was I really that terrifying?”
“No, Princess. Well, maybe… it’s me. I’m just easily frightened.” I sat down on the bench before my legs could give out.
“One so easily panicked should probably stay home on Nightmare Night.”
“I wanted to, but my friends pulled me out. They thought it would be healthy for me.”
“They are probably correct.” I could feel her eyes boring into me, stern but not unkind. “Do you wish to speak of it?”
“I’ve never really been able to control my fear.” I don’t know why I felt I could be open with her, but suddenly I did. “I’m scared of everything, heights, the dark, strangers, spiders, the attention of ponies I don’t know, even walking down the street can be hard sometimes.” My eyes fell to the ground. The Princess didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was sincerely listening. “Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me, and I see things in the way it might scare me off or hurt me. It gets in the way of everything.”
“I am sorry. I do not experience fear as intense as yours, and I suspect you have heard before all the advice I could give you.” She blinks and looks up at the activities around us. “Except, perhaps, that you use tonight and other Nightmare Nights as practice.”
“Practice?”
“In facing your fears in a safe and controlled place. Out tonight, with all the frightful things, yet none of them will harm you.”
“I… hadn’t looked at it that way.” I glanced down at my hoof, still shaking, if not as badly as before. “Thank you.”
“Although, tonight I would suggest you stay clear of the palace courtyard. I have something special planned for later, and I think it may be a bit more than you can stand.”
“You do?” She smiled down at me and leaned in close to whisper.
“Don’t spread it around, I want it to be a surprise.” She paused, I nodded. “I’ve a friend who is going to pretend to attack the crowd with a sword. We’re going to stage a fight, it’ll be quite the show.”
“Oh, uh, thank you for the warning.” Princess Luna backed away from me and put her helmet back on, shifting back into the black form of Nightmare Moon as she did.
“If you will excuse me, I have more ponies to startle.” Then she laughed maniacally again, sending another shiver down my spine, and vanished up into the darkness.