A strange creature watched as a small orange pegasus walked off into the sunset, flanked by her two friends. He smiled sadly. Just one short year with the young filly, a mere blink of an eye in his long life span, had changed nearly a millennium of bitterness inside of him, and he could say with certainty that he had made his first friend. However, he knew he couldn't stay here any longer. It was time for both of them to move on, as they had each discovered their true purpose.
The creature nodded to himself and turned to walk in the other direction. He had only moved one step when a light plop caught his attention. Something had landed on the ground underneath him, and when he turned his head to look he saw a small black leather book: his journal that he had used to keep track of the past couple hundred years. It was a nostalgic item, especially for the entries of his time with Scootaloo.
Pages flitted as the creature picked up the journal and thumbed through it. He couldn't help but smile upon reading his entry where he had first encountered the young foal who would change his life drastically. They were wonderful memories, and now that he had the time, why not take a few moments to reminisce?
The creature couldn't remember the last time he had just taken time to relax. It was certainly overdue. Using his magic, he lifted a stone chair padded with moss from the ground and sat down on it. He flipped to the first page of text and smiled to himself. There was a lot to read through. This could take a while.
Dreadwing's Journal
My name is Dreadwing. I'm not a pony, but I often find myself wishing I had been one. Sure, I'd have died long ago, but mortality is worth the happiness and relative sanity it brings. I can feel the madness creeping in around the edges of my mind and I need somewhere else to put it all. This journal will have to do.
These worries keep circling endlessly through my mind. Will I really have to do this for the rest of my existence? How long will that even be? I don't think I've aged physically since my creation, so will it be for eternity? If some terrible disaster happens that wipes out all of pony life, will the lack of emotions to feed off of drive me insane?
I digress. Worrying about the future does me no good, and I certainly do it a lot for someone so old.
Maybe resentment is what drove me to stop showing myself to others. Nopony accepted me, so why should I care about them? I can control who sees me and who can't, but nopony has seen me for the past eight hundred years. Mortals tend to run screaming whenever that happens and it's quite a nuisance when the royal guard or some egotistical unicorn comes to try to fend you off. I was even chased by Celestia herself once. I'm sure Tirek would have loved the chance to come face to face with her, and while I could have easily defended myself, I merely fled. Now that I think about it, that might have been the final straw that shoved me to where I am today, feasting off of the minds of young colts and fillies.
You see, similarly to changelings I require the essence of other creatures to survive (or so I think. I tend to lose control of myself when I try "starving" myself to death, so I still don't know if I even can die). Unlike them, I can absorb any emotion and I have to mentally connect myself to the host pony. The only limitation to this, as far as I can tell, is that I can't attach to a pony with a cutie mark. Not easily, anyway. That's why I usually target young foals who have yet to earn theirs. Sure, stealing some of the joy and happiness from foals may seem cruel, but I don't care anymore. Maybe there was a time when I would have, but those days are long gone.
I digress again. You get the gist. I selfishly feed off of young ponies and cause potentially permanent emotional damage just to remain in control of my mind. Sure I'm no Grogar or Sombra, but I'm not nice or selfless. I couldn't care less about the foals I feed off of. It's just the circle of life, I guess.
The creature thumbed over to the first entry in his journal. It was all written in first person, but he felt it wasn't really immersive enough to just read the entries as they were. No, he wanted to actually be there in the moment. He thought to himself. The magic he possessed seemed to have infinite potential, so why not try something new?
The stone chair receded back into the ground as the creature stood up and allowed the book to levitate in front of him. The open pages began to glow and he felt a strange tugging in his mind. After a short moment, his consciousness was catapulted back in time, the emotions and scenes around him all as strong as if he were really there on that chilly evening in autumn again. He had no control of his body, but his mind was still there and he was truly reliving the past. He even surprised himself with his magic sometimes.