“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
Big Mac was the first to see him.
It was after an unprecedented full week of thunderstorms, for which the weather patrol seemed to have no answer or effect upon. The torrential downpour turned well trod hills to mudslides, flooded basements, and frightened foals.
The lightning was almost as damaging as the rain. Bolts of plasma erupted from the sky striking the orchard and starting several fires, thankfully dealt with by the rain.
The Princesses had prepared to call for a state of emergency when it stopped.
As though it was never there at all.
There was much work to be done in the fields and orchards. Burnt trees needed to be cut and dragged to the sawmill. Stumps of trees that had been blown apart by lightning had to be pulled to make way for saplings. Debris thrown onto the property by the savage wind had to be removed, and there was of course the barn roof to repair.
The wind had thrown the shingles from the roof all the way to the center of town. Most of them had been broken and needed to be replaced. Mac sighed as he walked through the farm, inspecting the damage and making mental notes to himself. Applejack was not at home. She was standing beneath Rainbow Dash’s cloud house cussing like a sailor and bellowing like a banshee about how far the harvest had been set back by the ‘featherbrained incompetence’.
Dash was most likely sleeping off a week’s worth of fighting with uncooperative weather. Every free moment with her friends she had, she would swear it was as though the thunder was ‘fighting back’.
Plodding to the edge of the property through mud and leaves is where Mac first saw the shape.
Taller than he was, and dark in the wood outside the property, it seemed as though the shape was surprised by Mac’s presence.
Mac began to think it was some kind of bear, but as the shape disappeared further into the wood, he did not think any bear could move so quietly.
It was two weeks after this when Mac began to notice evidence of some unseen presence around the farm.
Large hoofprints leading towards and away from the kitchen window. Trash from the storm cleared in the night. Limbs from fallen trees split to firewood, even though the axe hadn’t been moved from its place in the chest by the fireplace. Apple cores littered around the fence where he had seen the shape before.
Though the unknown guest seemed to hold no cruel intention toward his family, Mac kept a weather eye toward the wood, and told Applebloom that she and her friends should play somewhere else.
Applejack seemed to pick up on her brother’s unease.
“Mac,” she began as they were clearing the table after dinner, “you been acting all sorts of odd fer a while now.”
She set down her scrubbing brush and turned to face him. “Is everything alright?”
Mac stood, considering for a moment. “Can’t rightly say,” he shrugged as he carried dishes toward the sink, “just got a funny feeling is all.”
“Funny how?” Applejack asked. “Like the ‘ha-ha’ kind of funny, or the other one?”
“Other one I suppose…” he trailed off as he looked out the window. The trees danced in the wind.
“Well I trust ya Mac.” Applejack said. “Anything I should be lookin out fer then?”
She waited for him to answer, but the answer never came. She turned to see her brother staring out the window, color fleeing from his body, fur standing on end.
“What’s wrong Mac? Something out there?” she moved behind him and peered into the darkness.
Applejack was the second one to see him.
Shrouded by the darkness of the night and the shadows of the trees was a stallion who stood a head taller than her older brother.
His fur was grey and matted. The mane that framed his face was dark and long, longer than any stallion’s but shorter than a mare’s. It was as though it had not been cut for some time. He wore a cloak cobbled together from pieces of fabric that looked to be held together with the sheer need for warmth.
Applejack couldn’t see what had frightened her brother so much, and then the wind changed. The long black mane was pushed out of his eyes and she was struck cold in an instant.
The only word for them was ‘wrong’. The whites of his eyes were black, the iris’ were a sickly yellow, and the pupils looked to be a clouded grey. Though there was nothing terribly offensive about him, or even his eyes, Applejack couldn’t help but feel uneasy.
Swallowing her fear, she slowly made her way to the front door. Mac turned to protest, but she was already opening their home to the outdoors, to the darkness, to the massive, mysterious, stranger.
As she came around the house, AJ got a better look at the stallion. The light from the window illuminated his face and she saw the most shocking thing about him.
He was afraid. His stance was like that of a timid stray dog hoping to gain shelter. His face looked like a foal’s on nightmare night, frightened, but too curious to run away.
AJ decided that she would have to break the night’s silence, or both she and the stranger would freeze to death.
“Ahem.” She cleared her throat. From the stranger’s reaction one might think that she had struck him. He flinched as he turned to face her, eyes now darting between AJ on the porch, and Mac in the window.
“Everything alright mister?”
She didn’t think she had asked very forcefully, but as the words left her lips, the stranger backed away like a frightened kitten. “I didn’t mean to frighten-”
Before she could finish, the stranger’s resolve seemed to break. In a whirl of dark hair, matted fur, ragged cloth and mud, the stranger galloped away at full pace.
“Hey! Wait!” AJ chased him in the dark, she knew the farm like the back of her hoof.
She caught glimpses of the stranger sprinting between the trees, tripping over buckets, snapping twigs with his speed. Speed, AJ thought, that was unnatural for a stallion so large.
She gained on him slowly, calling out over and over. “I just wanna talk to ya, so SLOW DOWN.”
How she wished she had her lariat with her. But in fairness, shouting at the very frightened stranger was probably a bad idea.
His speed increased and as he approached the fence leading to the woods, AJ watched as the muscles in his broad back made ready to leap the whole thing.
Fortune seemed to frown on his flight, for at the last moment an unseen stone caused him to lose his footing. The massive stallion tumbled forward, smashing the fence post and rails in his path to pieces.
He whined in pain, clenching his teeth. AJ saw him look back in horror at the destruction in his wake. He wore an apology on his face like a mask as tears pricked the corners of his unsettling eyes.
Applejack slowed as she approached the destroyed fence, looking between the sawdust and the stranger.
“You alright? Did ya hurt yerself at all?”
He looked at her in a mixture of confusion and fear. He made to flee into the woods, but seemed unable to put any weight on his left forehoof.
“Why don’t ya come on back to the house and we can get that looked at?” AJ approached the stranger slowly. This close, and under the light of the moon, AJ finally got a good look at the stranger’s face.
Scars seemed to hold him together.
Though his face was hole, a long forked scar began above his right temple, and disappeared into his hair. She could see the scars on his neck, and how they reached down under his ramshackle cloak.
The scars she could see oh his body seemed symmetrical, as if he was a patient of some mass operation from his fetlocks to his forehead. Some of the scars were more pronounced than others, some pink and inflamed by the elements and infection.
The stranger suddenly seemed to become aware of her approach and panicked. Forgetting his pain in fear, he sprinted into the woods, into the dark, and out of sight.
The only evidence of his existence, a shattered fence, and a trail red drops leading through the woods.
AJ stood on the edge of the woods for what felt like hours, staring into the dark and trying to understand what had occured. She couldn't follow him, not in the dark. But to leave him to the wild felt wrong of her. The only thing she could think to do was sleep, and search in the morning.
When she woke the next morning, an entire tree had been uprooted from the woods and placed where the fence had been destroyed as makeshift barricade. Bloody hoofprints spotted the bottom of the tree.
AJ ran for someone to help her find the stranger. Wherever he was he was in pain, and the least she could do for frightening him so bad was make sure he was alright.