Anik examined the plaque located at the entrance of the building to verify that he had the correct address. Taking a deep breath, he walked up to the door and rapped upon it in a determined fashion. "Hello?"
"Sleeping!" came an angry female voice from somewhere inside.
Anik stared at the door and remained there calmly, as if a brief pause could resolve the situation. As it turned out, it could. The door opened, and a pony peeked free. A male. "Hello?"
Anik smiled at the new pony. "If I'm not mistaken, you are Wensley, correct?" He carefully examined the features of the pony. Earth pony, and tired. Tired was much too inadequate of a term to accurately describe how he was feeling. Despite feeling physically and mentally exhausted, there was also a feeling of weariness that had settled in. "I'm here to help."
"Help?" Wensley slipped free of the house and closed it with great care behind him, barely a sound made as the latch caught. "Help with what? Do I... know you?"
"I'm Umbra's son, by adoption." He chuckled with the idea. "Come to think of it, all her children are by adoption. I wonder why that is, but that's another topic for another day. She told me, about you that is."
Wensley colored, but even his blush seemed tired, barely darkening his face as he wobbled faintly in place. "She did? That was... a secret."
"Sorry, but it was for your own safety, sir. Please forgive her." Anik stepped closer and wrapped an arm around Wensley, as much offering support as giving a little squeeze. "I hear you're plagued by night visions."
"Night visions?" He quirked an ear weakly. "I never heard that afore. What's that?"
Anik brought up his other hoof in a slow pan across the horizon. "Where I came from, it was dark, very dark. A per--pony's not made to live in the dark. Sometimes, it'd get to you. You'd see things. Things you didn't want to see. They come from in here." He tapped at his head. "But it felt just as real in that moment. Night visions."
Wensley shrank back, but could only go so far with Anik holding him. "I can't blame any, um... It's not dark here, ya see..."
Anik was patient with Wensley's slow words, nodding along gently. "The dark's inside you, and doing a nasty job. Fortunately, my specialty is light."
Wensley blinked at that. "Light?"
Anik reflected the sun in a diffuse scattering, causing the area around him to be illuminated with a bright light. The borrowed sunlight from the field made Wensley look almost as if he was glowing as he stood there. "And I've been practicing. If you'll let me, I'll try to bring some light to you."
Wensley suddenly fell. He might have been aiming for his haunches, but he outright collapsed to his belly in an ungainly collapse. "I... It doesn't work that way, ah don't think..."
Anik rested a hoof gently on Wensley's collapsed head, rubbing quietly. "May I try?"
"Ugh. Fine... Do what yer doin'. Then ah'm headed back inside." Wensley didn't move much, perhaps too tired for that.
The glow shifted, the brightness around Anik remaining, but the area cooled to normal as he rearranged that power to his brighter hooves. He cupped Wensley's head with them. "Just relax." And things changed.
Wensley experienced a light that seemed to penetrate deep within himself, penetrating a place that he didn't even know existed within him. His spirit, or whatever it could be called, was taken aback in surprise and he squeaked out of shock, but the light didn't cause any harm. It just surprised him. "W-wha'?" That wasn't a literal light. His brain wasn't solar powered. But the magic of ponies sometimes stopped being literal.
Anik focused on the warmth of the light, bathing Wensley's internal place in its brilliance. "Mom cares about you, and she's not alone. I know we just met, but I want you to get better too, Wensley. You can just relax, let me work. If you're too tired to move, don't move." He kneaded at the sides of Wensley's head with slow circles of his hooves, massaging along with the strange internal light. "You are safe."
Wensley couldn't see, and his eyes hurt, somehow more than they had been already. He weakly got a fetlock over to rub at the problem, drawing away tears. "You don't want something back?"
"I want you to get better." Anik had no other desire. He was a simple pony, from a simple world. "Relax..." Time became slippery. Wensley lost track if he was there for a moment, a minute, or maybe an hour or three, but he finally did. He had relaxed, and fallen asleep there under Anik's gentle attention. "Not done." Anik stood up from Wensley, leaving him to sleep for his first bit of true slumber in some time. "We have other problems."
He did not knock that time, instead carefully opening the door and slipping inside. He carried his glow with him, but only allowed it out in a hazy piercing of the gloom, barely enough to see by. On quiet hooves, he pressed into the house. It looked... almost abandoned, and had that feel to it, but he could hear snoring coming from further within.
Despite the outer walls being made of crystal, it was dark. He had to imagine that was done on purpose. There. Emerging from around a corner, he saw the slumbering mare half-sprawled in her bed, half-fallen from it, half of her slumped and spread across the ground as if it was just as fine a bed as anything else. "You too," he whispered to himself as he slunk up on her. "Too much dark."
"No such thing." She jumped to her hooves, eyes flashing dangerously. "You! That little brat I wanted to murder before. What are you doing in my house?!"
Anik stopped holding his glow back, bursting free in all directions and drawing a pained hiss from the umbrum. "I am here to help you."
"Some damn help that is." Witching threw her blanket over her head to muffle the light. "Stop that! How does that help me of all the things you could have done!"
"Mother told me." Anik stepped closer. "About her sister. She is a creature of darkness too. But even a light creature needs darkness. Even a dark creature needs a little light."
"Ugh! You have no darkness." She glared as best she could through her blanket, which was a middling effort at best. "So take your own advice!"
"You can't see my darkness, because the light is in the way. But I have darkness."
Witching perked at that. "You do?! I doubt that... Fine, fine! Name your shame. Reveal that you have one. I don't smell it on you."
Anik drew back his glow to a more companionable shimmer. "I have a shame I will never be rid of."
Witching sat up properly. "I love the sound of that... Do go on."
"Of all the people of my world, such bright souls with dreams and ambitions, why am I the one chosen to survive, when the rest died?" Anik leaned forward. "How is that fair? Was I better? I don't think I was. I could name a few I know I would have picked, if they asked me... They would have loved this bright world. They never will know it. They are dead, and I am alive."
"Survivor's guilt, nasty." Witching was smiling despite it, drawing pleasure from the shame. "But you still don't reek of that shame. Why?"
"Because the best thing I can do is to live." Anik reached out a hoof towards her, but didn't step closer. "I honor them and their memories by making sure their sacrifice was never in vain. I will rejoice, and be happy, because they can't. I will double and redouble my smile, so I can do it for them. I would want them to do the same thing, if we swapped places. Let their smile stretch from sky to sky, if my death was the price to gain it. Compared to that dark world, at least now there is light, and a reason to smile."
"Wow."
Anik inclined his head at that short reply. "You understand?"
"I understand you are a poster pony of emotional stability. I'm... impressed. Disgusted, but also impressed." She drew down her blanket, the light down to tolerable levels. "So what do you actually want?" She darted her eyes around. "Where's Wensley? Did you do something to him?!" She fluffed up in anger, scowling at Anik. "If you hurt him, I swear..."
"You care for him. Good." Anik pointed back at the front door. "He's sleeping. He's very... very tired."
"Hm? He could nap whenever he wants." Witching shrugged expansively at that. "He shouldn't be tired."
"He needed light. So do you. May I help you?"
"No, thanks." She hopped up onto her bed, as if the elevation helped the situation and any battle to come.
"You are hurting Wensley." Anik took a single step forward. "You are hurting yourself."
"I'm saving him," she hissed out, trying to take a more fearsome form, but the light drove away her shadows before they could finish forming, leaving her skeletal. Fearsome enough? She'd have to make do with it. "I hate you."
"Sorry." Not that he stopped glowing. "What are you saving him from?"
"Himself, obviously." She let out an exasperated huff as she rolled her eyes. "He hates himself, and thought he'd be alone forever. I give him company. I even love hating him. We both win."
"He takes hate because he doesn't think he deserves love," reasoned Anik as if doing so while he said it. "He deserves love. You deserve love."
"Please." She sat back. "Umbrum don't need love, thanks."
"Your neice, my sister, my namesake. She is loved, and she grows stronger. Even a creature of darkness can use that little light."
"You'd use her against me!? Foul ball..." She glared at Anik with freshened fury. "I'm impressed, a little... Let's just... pretend... Who would 'love' me?"
Anik turned to the door. "Wensley loves you, but it is a desperate love. Still, love. That's why you like him. You like that little light."
"Hmmph, not you?"
Anik twirled towards her. "Huh?"
"Nothing." Witching took on her usual pony form, able to manage that at least. "Nothing. What if I don't want to love him. Not the way you'd do it, or Umbra for that matter." She made a face of disgust just at the idea of it. "I'm not the 'hug gently and enjoy a sunset' kind of mare, if you didn't notice!"
"Because you're scared."
Witching hopped from the bed with a renewed glare. "What did you just say?"
"You're sca--" The unfortunate event of being crashed into prevented him from being able to finish.
With a powerful throw fueled by her anger, she used her magic to send him flying to the ground and roughly pin him there. "I am a master of fear! I am its lord and liege! Nothing scares me! I scare everything else!"
Anik watched her calmy despite being pinned. It was almost a stare, but there was no malice there, just an even watching.
"Say something!" But he didn't She shook him with a low growl. "Don't just look at me!"
No words came from him. "Stop it!" She slammed a hoof just beside his head. "The next one is going in your face!"
"Scared?"
She hesitated, surprised. "What? You. You're scared. You don't want to be stepped on, and ripped apart, do you?"
"No." There was no fear in that word. "You are scared. All creatures are scared, sometimes."
She willed him aside, but he didn't move, her magic weak with her sudden lack of motivation. "I hate you... so much..."
Anik sat up to his haunches. "He loves you. Will you love him back?"