The Darʞ Snow

by Lack of Tact

2: The Whitest Shadows

Clop.
hef
Clop.
hef
Clop.
hef

I shivered quietly as I wrapped myself tighter in my sheets. My hooves clopped loudly against the hardwood as I trudged along the hallway of the second floor. I'd woken up a little earlier than usual, just a bit before sunrise I'd imagined. I was facing my window when I did. I hated when I did that. Blackened trees loomed in the view beyond my window, over the greyscaled plain beneath them. I hated looking out that window every night and every morning. It was just a window, sure.

It wasn't scary. It wasn't abnormal. It wasn't even the worst of it.

The snow that kept hitting my window last night, granted me a restless sleep. Kept pittering and pattering something awful. I'd tossed and turned, turned and tossed. I lamented on the snow, the nuisance of all seasonal weathers. I didn't know if I'd imagined what I'd seen last night, but the thought had kept shivers and goosebumps perpetually grabbing and gripping along my spine. I'd felt so cold then, still did. How couldn't I?

Two black, rugged-edged coals stared at me--or-or I'd imagined they did. It was a snowmare, but I didn't build one... it would've been there in the morning if I did. That it wasn't, I'd reckoned it was just my mind playing tricks on me. The fact it was gone after I'd all but blinked, or maybe slept... I hated it so much.

The empty house groaned with what seemed every other-other step. I wasn't particularly fond of that either. Luckily, the dog was with me from the room. Winona the collie, having woken up due to my restless restlessness, wobbled quietly at my side as we made for the entrance. Her quiet panting had kept my mind at ease. I'd be afraid of what things would've been like if she weren't here.

A yawn had escaped my throat and the dog curiously looked up at me from the corner of her eye. She'd tilted her head, but aside from the notion, we kept down the hall--although at a slowed pace.

I'd felt my lips tug at the corners as I loosed a single half-hearted chuckle. I was so, so tired, but she deserved the little pat on the noggin I'd given her. Her little yip acknowledged the sentiment and I couldn't prevent the full-fledged smile that broke out on my muzzle.

Which had dropped when I'd finally stopped at the stairwell. Peering over the ledge, I'd looked down over the railing; the darkness the snow had brought loomed below. Past the fourth step was nothing but a shadowy depth.

While I was evidently afraid of the snow, I wasn't afraid of the dark. I'd taken my first step down the stairwell, my breath visibly wafted from and behind me, going into my face as it passed. All the way down.

My muzzle warmed only a little as I found myself at the bottommost steps of the main foyer. Otherwise, the temperature had seemed to have dropped even lower if that was possible. I shivered beneath my sheets in the cold, a trembling wave of it had rushed over me. My eyelids lowered as I paused on the last step, my lips pursed slightly in a frown. It was cold then too, I ruminated to myself.

I stood just sev'ral-ponies-length away from the doorway, the exact spot I'd stood when... I'd first asked.

The day after Hearth's Warming, last year. The air seemed thick, dense with something palpable. I played the fool, but I wasn't ignorant. Not as much as they'd thought. It was freezing that day, and I could still taste the dishonesty that loomed within. A lie that was practiced, but ill-arranged, ill-worded. It had tasted like rotten apples; the frosty, bittersweet air. Unfulfilling. It was the first time I'd asked where Granny had gone.

Applejack had lied to me before. But then--it's just what she did, but during that one, particular time, I couldn't tell. At least at first, it was like she was telling me the truth, but it was skewed, altered.

Wrong.

After I'd come to find certain facts, after learning a grimly particular truth, I couldn't meet her in the eye anymore. I knew she was a liar. She knew I knew. Her actions spoke louder than her words. She'd only turned away and muttered the same words she'd said yesterday. She was distant then... all but a husk of what she once was, now.

Big Mac and her both were.

Whereas she'd taken to speaking untruths, he had gone quiet entirely. He couldn't stand to see me hurt in any way, couldn't bear to see my tears at the fact. To prevent himself from hurting me, he'd stopped talking outright. Little did he know, it sucked a lot more to have been ignored. The trip to the train station yesterday was proof enough. He hadn't uttered a single word: not when I'd asked when Granny was coming back. Not when I wished him well. Not when I said I loved him one last time.

Neither of them wanted to tell me. To be honest with me.

To them, I was just their foal-sister, but I'm not a foal! Not like the one they'd needed me to be. I reckoned I had a pretty good growth spurt when I'd found Granny's marker in the acres, out back. 'Neath the dirt. That was half a year ago.

I didn't know where someplace better was, but I knew I never wanted to go.

Even with the snow, the lies, even with the dwindling family, I would have rather been home than to have been anywhere else. I'd needed them. They needn't, me. I shivered again, out of the blue. Strange? I'd thought to myself as I'd readjusted my loose covering. It was certainly colder this year and I knew I'd needed my blanket; it was thicker than these blasted sheets. I'd known that if I didn't want to be a ponysicle by the time my o' so dear siblings returned, it was kind of essential.

My head dipped as my thoughts lingered over to the why it was so cold: the snow. My only issue was that I didn't want to walk through the immense blank that no doubt blanketed the lands from here to Canterlot.

I didn't want to, what-so-ever.

Beyond the walls of sanctuary, beyond the safe-haven of home, something in the snow was watching me. Off white on white... the whitest shadows, maybe, I didn't know. The thicket of trees in the distance didn't look anywhere near as inviting as last year, as if they ever were... this cold wasn't right at all. Since when was the dark forest ever inviting?

Something wanted me to invite it in last night... my mind blanked as I bit my lip. I'd remembered some of the less finer events from last night.

My heart thrummed in my chest as if to warn me and I quickly shot my head upwards. I glared at the door as I half expected another set of sudden knocks to have erupted from it. When nothing came, I released a breath I didn't even know I'd started to hold. I opened the entryway and looked out into the white skied vista, a plain of snow far as the eye could see; an assured frozen death should I have strayed too far into its brightest, furthest depths.

I mentally thanked Celestia that I hadn't a reason to venture out, at least until my siblings had returned.

My eyes struggled as they trailed the almost indistinguishable path towards the old barn; it being laden in snow didn't help any. First thing I'd looked for, the waymarker lantern, was long out and the second... my teeth found themselves clenched, my jaw locked as I just--I just stared.

I'd noticed the large wooden doorway off in the distance was already opened. Hundreds of questions flooded my brain at the sight.

Was it open last...? Did it blow open with...? Did something...- a part of me didn't want to finish or answer any; the last one repeated and repeated in my head. I kept my eyes trained on the old barn. I chewed on my lower lip as I couldn't properly judge the distance. Why was did it seem so far away? Was it the snow? Played tricks on my mind, maybe. I'd winced as I'd drewn blood from the bite; a little bit harder than I'd realized.

Why was I so nervous crossing over to the barn? I'd done it tons of times in the past, but it seemed so unsettling this winter. So many questions and all I'd needed to do to answer them, was take a step forward. And that's what I did.

My right foreleg stepped on the concrete porch of our home; it crunched softly as I stepped in the-the snow--a sense of wrong dawned on me. What felt like spiders crawling under my hide, scrambled all over my body when I'd frozen still. My eyes lowered downward, my breath hitched in the back of my throat as I noticed I'd stepped in a hoofprint. A hoofprint of... offwhite snow.

I'd glanced around and to my horror, three others were near in a way only a quadruped could have made. A formation that stated out that where I'd stood, someone else did too. I swallowed a build-up of saliva as I peered downward at the four blotches that damn-near scared me speechless.

Again, I had failed to notice the world had gone quiet--eerilee so. It was only a moment, but a moment I'd missed. Something snapped in the silence. It echoed beyond the snowdriftsROARFROARF the sudden, wretched, warning bark of Winona startled me out of my petrified stupor. I'd looked up just to see her as she waded across the snowfield with ease.

I'd just noticed the dog had gone after something, but it was too late to have tried and stopped her. I couldn't find my voice as Winona barked loudly off in the distance; it wasn't long until I had tried my damndest to make out her form as she faded off in the white not a moment after.

I should have called after her, but my voice had failed me. I had failed her.

I stared, mouth agaped, in silence at where Winona had once been. Disbelief washed over me as I'd glanced out into the forest where she'd gone off to, before finally, my gaze settled back down to the four snowsteps. Winona would be back, right? No, of course she would be. I couldn't focus. That was the one thought I could latch onto. She'll be back. She'd just run off to play in the snow.

In the end, I'd figured, that just left me then. I glared across the mass white that devoured the dog. It disregarded me relentlessly as it fell beyond the cover of the porch. The steps drowned beneath the snow, yet it was melted everywhere else on the warmed concrete entrance.

Everywhere but the... porch. I wormed my tongue behind clenched teeth; the fat of my lip lightly bit between them at the thought.
"Applebloom, Applebloom, will you play with me at the barn?" The question was inaudible in the snowfall.
My mouth's muscle pressed and rubbed against the freshly-opened wound behind the rightermost bottom of my lip. I winced again, but it calmed me just enough.
Yet it spoke. "It is so very, very lonely in the snow."
With my mind eased, I could just run over to the barn and grab my blanket. Right? I sighed as I weighed the option mentally. Maybe if I was quick, I could be there and back in a matter of moments, blanket in hoof. Even with the feigned confidence, I'd really hoped Winona would be back soon. Whatever was out there really had her going; I barely heard her over the audible flurry of snowy winds.

Winona had made the first night bearable, I'd hate for her to be gone too long. I'd started galloping toward the lone barn in the distance when the collie's barking stopped with an abrupt yelp.

All I had heard was the sound of my hooves as they pumped against the unfeeling snow.