//------------------------------// // NIghtmare // Story: Crystaline Twilight // by Dragon Angel Knight //------------------------------// Chp 1 Nightmare Twilight Sparkle-Bray sat up suddenly in her bed, tears still falling down her cheeks and a scream leaving her lips as her adoptive sisters Anastasia and Elizabeth came running. The young women rushed to the side of the Alicorn (a name Anna had dug up from an old story somewhere) and attempted to calm her down. “Twilight,” Elsie, ever the level headed one said, “You’re alright. It’s alright, Twilight…” Anna had wrapped herself around Twilight’s smaller body, comforting the pony as much as she could, stroking the her deep amethyst mane while rocking a little bit. Several years had passed since Twilight had fallen from a portal in the sky to land just outside a Clovis Bray facility on Earth, just outside of Chicago. Ever since the Traveler’s arrival in the Sol system, Clovis Bray had been the head of almost all the best tech since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with the only competition being the supremely secretive Black Armory. At least in terms of weapons design, that is. Twilight herself, however, had been the first entirely new life form discovered in all that time, with her very existence being kept a secret from all but the highest levels of Bray’s scientists. She’d been kept first as an animal, but that ended rather quickly the moment Sylvie Bray, (Elsie and Anna’s mother) had seen the poor girl and the state she’d been kept in. The fact that Twilight had also been talking for most of the day she had been in captivity had only made the mother far, FAR angrier than even the great patriarch of the Bray family, Clovis the First, was willing to deal with. “Do as you see fit,” he’d said callously when Sylvie had seemed ready to strike the man during their talk, “I doubt I could get anything truly USEFUL from that little horse anyway.” From that point on, Twilight would purposefully blind her ‘grandfather’ with a flash from her horn as she left the room, something that Sylvie never really encouraged, but never went out of her way to discourage. Clovis I absolutely hated it, but could do nothing since all the rest of his family would come down on him like a pack of scavengers on a fresh kill. As much as the old man hated to admit, she DID provide some useful data simply by doing that. Even if the data itself was mostly garbage energy readings. In all that time, however, Twilight had been having nightmares on and off. When Sylvie, Anna, Elsie, and their father, Clovis the Second brought in a psychaiatrist (who had then been paid a rather fantastic sum and then hired on as a personal therapist to ensure secrecy) and a root cause couldn’t be found, they all simply resolved to be there for Twilight when they happened. Though, Twilight had told the therapist and her adopted family that she occasionally heard… whispers. Very faint, almost unnoticeable, but it got worse when she was around Clovis the First or near certain facilities the Corporation had set up, like the colonies out on Europa or the Searph Bunker on the Moon. When the foal had asked what the bunkers themselves were for, Clovis the Second had replied, “Just in case something happens. A wise man once said to speak softly, but carry a big stick. He meant that we should always try to be kind to one another, but we should never be afraid to defend ourselves if the worst happens. For all my father’s faults, that was one ideology he and I have in common…” Still, Twilight had nodded, fluffing her raven black wings, and nuzzled her father’s leg a little bit, accepting that explanation without much hassle. “I don’t like this place,” Twilight had said all the same, “It feels too… Dark down here…” Anna and Elsie had stayed close to Twilight the whole time, somehow knowing that their sister wasn’t alright, though Clovis had shrugged and said, “The inspection is done now anyway. Let’s head home.” Now, however, Twilight found herself sniffling into Anna’s shoulder while Elsie hugged them both from behind, the elder of the three humming softly as they all rocked back and forth. Sylvie had come along sometime after, having heard the commotion and upon seeing the scene had left, only to return with some soothing tea. After sipping on the steaming beverage, Twilight and Anna had ended up crawling into the pony’s bed, cuddling up together to sleep the night away, leaving Elsie and their mother to talk. “Another nightmare?” Sylvie had asked Elsie. The girl nodded, then said, “I don’t like this… I don’t like not being able to help her.” “I know,” the mother replied, gently bringing Elizabeth in for a hug, “But there isn’t much we can do… She’s my daughter, but we know so little about her…” “Yeah… I want to keep her safe though. She’s my sister. Her and Anna both,” Elsie said, an iron resolve in her tone. “Good,” Sylvie said, giving the girl a squeeze, “They’ll both need their big sister.” “I’ll do my best,” Elsie said with a nod. `~`~`~`~`~`~ After having seen to the younger ones, Elsie stepped out of the room and went to the kitchen, the teen feeling restless as she often did when Twilight had a nightmare. She set about making some more tea when her father came in to the room, the same restless look on his face that the girl had seen countless times before. “You can’t sleep either?” Elsie’s father asked tiredly. “No. Twilight had another nightmare,” the girl replied with a helpless shrug, “She’s asleep again with Anna, but…” “Can’t sleep because you’re worried about her,” Clovis II said with a knowing tone, “I understand that. I was always worried about your sisters and brother when they were toddlers… it often felt too quiet after your mother and I got them to sleep…” “Willa isn’t around all that much anymore,” Elsie said with another shrug as she set about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, “So I’m not even really sure how accurate that is.” The sister Elsie had mentioned was Wilhelmina. The older teen had gone on to work for their grandfather not too long ago and was working on nano-tech to help with deep space colonization and something to do with programming matter, though it was all kept fairly secret. Elsie didn’t mind since Willa tended to be a bit work focused. Twilight herself had had more interactions with Willa than most of the rest of the family put together. Something about the alicorn foal endeared her to the scientist in Willa. Most likely it was the pony’s knack for most things scientific, Willa being able to bounce ideas off Twilight with relative ease and the foal being able to pick up on concepts that were far beyond what most children were capable of understanding. It also helped that whenever Willa had issues with a particular spot in her research, Twilight seemed to have a ready answer, almost as if the foal had done that kind of thing before… Alton Bray, on the other hand, was… different. He wasn’t a scientist in most respects and simply just didn’t have an interest in the company in a lot of ways. That was fine with Sylvie as it kept the boy out of Clovis I’s sight for the most part. Twilight actually liked that about Alton. He wasn’t too busy to help in most cases and often grounded Twilight in ways that the girls weren’t able to, the foal calling him BBBFF, Big Brother Best Friend Forever. Alton blushed whenever it happened, but accepted the torpedo hug Twilight gave whenever he came back from school.