Fluttershy’s anxiety rose as the sun set. She had called for her animal friends to come in. First from the window, then from her doorstep, then from the little path that lead to her home. She had called for them, trying as far as the road and as far as the edge of the Everfree Forest, even poked her head in between the drooping branches. She listened as long as her trembling courage allowed; not even the Forest’s own residents had called back, no irritable hoots or squawks found her.
The sun set with a last kiss of light upon the world, a last few embers glowing on the horizon. The shadows had trickled out already, down from the treetops and up from the creekbed. Now they pooled together, filling up the deep corners first, spilling out and flowing over the land, so that when Fluttershy scurried back home the stones beneath her hooves were hardly visible. Everything was cold and blue in the last vestiges of twilight, it was all just impressions of shapes rather than things truly solid and real.
“Angel?” she cried again from her doorstep, a single candle’s fitful flame the only light to be seen through her window. A speck almost blinding in lieu of this world-turned-dark. She had moved past the capacity to be angry with him for being so late—she would be so happy just to see him, to see any of the animals return.
None had. Fluttershy stifled a whimper. She glanced this way and that, hoping against hope to steal from the night a glimpse of something furry and friendly wandering its way back home to her and not. She tried to convince herself that this was why her eyes flicked so quickly to and fro, rather than to keep herself from turning her back on any one place for too long.
She shivered, and not just from fear. It truly was cold, piercingly so. You couldn’t feel darkness, not really, but Fluttershy felt it all the same. Just like you could lie in the sunshine on a summer’s day, dozing in the warmth, never needing to open your eyes and still know if the clouds were overhead or not, she felt it. The darkness was heavy. Claustrophobic. Overflowing.
“Angel, come home now. Please” This time her words were little more than whispers, ones greedily swallowed up by the silence. Whimpering and trying not to cry she slid inside, opening her door only as little as she must as if the blackness might spill in behind her.
She shook as she took up the candle. She tilted it cautiously, but rather than light a second only managed to extinguish the first, its fragile existence ended in a lingering puff of smoke.
“Oh no,” she whimpered. Top drawer. Top drawer, in the hallway dresser. That’s where she kept the matches. Fluttershy could feel her heartbeat, thundering behind her eyes, but would not have seen her hoof in front of them. Opened eyes or closed, it made no difference at all to the night.
She fumbled along the hall. Feeling, groping. Crawling like a newborn. There was the floor and the seams between floor beams, there was the wall. She felt her way along, recoiled from the sudden edge of the dresser. The drawer clattered as she forced it open.
“Matches. I need matches.” The hiss of the flaring matchhead was most welcome, even the pain of the stinging brightness that came with it was worth. Not letting her watering eyes blink, not letting herself breathe or tremble, Fluttershy set the tiny life of the flame to wick. It spluttered, shifted and settled, casting a thin aura of luminensce. Fluttershy blinked, wiped her eyes, felt relief. She drew a breath that, despite her care was still sharp enough to make the little flame twitch in a moment’s agitation. The match she had held all the while had since burnt down to its base. The flame there had since gone out and what ember of it remained, twisting in on itself like a dying thing, singed her hoof. Fluttershy gasped silently and dropped the match, now nothing more than a black husk lost to a blacker sea, only the acrid scent of smoke, now fading, all that remained.
Fluttershy stood very still and counted out three breaths. Taking the candle in hoof, she carried it. Held it close. Sheltered it. Barely dared to breath, did not dare at all to consider the vastness out there against the tiny fragility of this here.
She smiled nervously when one lit candle became two, then three. These she set on her window sills, curtains drawn wide. She didn’t like the idea, like it might invite something’s attention to her home, but the slowly growing numbers of candles eased her somewhat. They would shine enough to guide her friends home, she told herself. For each candle, it’d be brighter. For each candle, it’d be warmer. More welcoming. When these ones were all lit the room became navigable, though the ceiling and the crannies and the corners all harboured shadows, oily, viscous and resentful.
“Please come home,” she whispered. Fluttershy fetched more. Candles still tied together with a ribbon, an as yet untouched set. Tea candles and aromatic candles too. These were thick and colourful, with old wax dribbled and dried, the wicks long since carving their way deep into the heart for some of them. Deformed candles, molten and warped and recast, but somehow made all the more beautiful for the change. Fluttershy paused as she lit these, but light them she did.
She lit them all, a flame leaping from one perch to the next, setting them on countertops and tables, wherever she might happen to find herself standing. Plates and upturned glasses. Like a flock of little birds, Fluttershy fancied. As the light grew steadier, stronger, so too did the scents filling the air. Lavender and mandarin. Cherry and apple wood. Scents more spicy and exotic still. Each smell cluttered the air, conflicting, confused. Underpinning it all was the scent of wax steadily burning down, down, slowly down.
Fluttershy curled up on the couch, hoping to find some respite. The shadows were still there. Pushed back. Condensed. Angry. The flickering lights made them pulse, like silent, angry hearts. She winced and looked away. Tried not to think of them like that, or indeed think of the shadows clinging to the corners at all.
Her thoughts for her animal friends were no less distressing. Bear and bunny, birds to bats, they were all gone. Rarely did Fluttershy keep pony guests, but it had always harboured living things in abundance. Ever since that very first day years ago, when her new cutie mark still was full of untold promise, when she had made this humble site her home. Some animals had gone to prepare for their hibernation; such was the turn of seasons now upon them all. Others had simply gone because, as always, they were free to do so and needed no more reason than that. But even those she happily called residents had disappeared today, gone and not come back. Not for dinner. Not for anything. Just gone.
The emptiness of the house crushed down upon her with all its weight, and the silence of it roared in her ears. No matter how she curled up within herself, no matter how she tightly she wrapped herself in her wings, Fluttershy could not buffer herself against the pervasive cold. Her head sunk down to the cushions, and with nothing left more that she could do, she waited, staring at the candles so that she wouldn’t stare at the shadows. At the corner of her eye and in the back of her mind they seethed. Pushed back. Strived.
For the first in a very long time, Fluttershy knew she was alone.
The knock at the door came as a single wham, one that shook the heavy woodwork and jarred Fluttershy, making her scream aloud. She peeked out from over her hooves. The bear would stumble into the door sometimes, she reminded herself. When he was tired, especially if he’d been up late. She had no idea what time it was now, no idea what would be closer, dusk or dawn.
The words caught in her throat, choked her, refused to come out. “Hello?” she managed to squeak, but with no strength at all in her voice. There was no answer, no sound at all, and then another heavy blow upon her door. One that rattled Fluttershy’s heart within her ribcage and made it stutter and speed up, while all the candles flickered at once.
It was her friend the bear. He had just momentarily forgotten his manners. Certainly none of her other animal friends had such...such strength to shake the foundations like that. So why was she cowering at the furthest corner of the couch, huddling in on herself as much as she possible could? Surely, it had to be the bear. It had to be.
The knock came again. A single, resounding impact that shook the whole world, or near enough as far as Fluttershy could tell. A shrill cry escaped her, as did a sob and a tear. Shaking all over, she wiped at her face. “Hello?” She called again. Louder, more forcefully. More desperately.
For a moment, silence. Sweet, blessed, accursed silence. The absence of all sound, save Fluttershy’s own rough breathing and occasional whimper that shook her gently. She waited and listened and did not dare not to move. She waited and listened and waited even more, until she could scream and fly away to the clouds and never come down.
She waited, and still there was no answer. The cushions were cold and rough under her; Fluttershy slid off them slowly. She was going to douse the candles and close the curtains. She was going to hide under her blankets, hug a pillow within an inch of its life and cry herself into some semblance of sleep. She was going to -
The window erupted inwards in a torrent of breaking glass and a icy air. The light of dozens of candles was scattered thousands of ways as each shard spun through the air. Cold glass fell on Fluttershy. Pieces of it bounced off her back, others nestled themselves into her feathers and mane, but she saw none of this, felt nothing of it. She was already screaming, already lunging across the room. She tripped and crashed through the coffee table, heightening her panic with pain that shot through her leg. The three candles she had put on the table were tossed, rolled and were extinguished.
Fluttershy clambered blindly, kicking and dragging her hooves through broken wood and broken glass, a pool of quickly cooling wax sticking itself to her once pristine coat. She flapped her wings, but there wasn’t the room to fly. She tried to stand, but her ankle surged with pain and would not take her weight and she fell once more. Cowering, she cried and covered her head in her hooves.
“Oh, Fluttershy. I was expecting more from you.” The voice was hollow and distant as if what was said was only an echo. Its mirth and self-satisfaction were apparent and cruel. It was like no natural voice Fluttershy had ever heard, and yet...
...it was unmistakable. She’d have known it anywhere. Even here.
“Applejack?” Fluttershy whimpered. She didn’t understand.
A cold breeze hissed and what Fluttershy only felt as an indescribable presence flowed into the room. A short bark of laughter came from the couch.
“More or less.” Less less less... the dying sounds said. That voice was its own canyon to echo against, its own sunless pit. Fluttershy propped herself up, braved the sting of pain and turned slowly. Afraid to look, more afraid not to.
A dozen or more candles had died; all those nearest the window. What remained was a crescent of faint, lonely little lights pushing against the entirety of the night. And, in the heart of that impenetrable blackness, eyes and teeth that shone so bright and so white, staring and grinning at Fluttershy. The pupils were slitted, like cat’s eyes.
Terror gripped Fluttershy. It muffled and suffocated her, stopped her from even screaming.
“Call me Poison,” came the ghostly voice. “Poison Apple, I suppose. It’ll do for now. I don’t plan to keep it for long.” Again the clipped, harsh laughter. “Cat got your tongue, Fluttershy? Well, there’s worse things. Case in point,” she said, gesturing to herself. Fluttershy caught a suggestion of motion, an impression of shape, and the chilling suspicion that that was all they were; suggestions and impressions, with as little substance as mist, or shadow.
Fluttershy cowered away from the severity, the casual sadism shining in those eyes. Her ankle ached no less, and with every little motion the broken glass that had rained down on her dug deeper into her coat, that much more willing and inclined to carve into whatever piece of her they could. Fluttershy ignored these things. Forced herself to meet that gaze. “What happened to you?” she whispered, struggling to voice each word.
Poison Apple - Fluttershy hated to consider this thing having any connection with her stalwart, constant friend - did not deign to answer, seeming instead to find utter gratification in stretching out and bedding down on the couch cushions, not a care at all for the cutting edges of glass that littered them. “I saw something I’ve been missing, all these years, Fluttershy. Would you like to hear?”
Candles flickered, silently hissing at the intrusion, impotent to stop it. “I-I don’t-”
“Luna caved too easily, in the end. They all do, because all these centuries, I’ve kept on looking in the wrong places for power. No matter how much I found, I’m always defeated in the end. I think I’m starting to see why.” Poison Apple clacked her teeth together, purred as they slowly opened back up.
Fluttershy had no idea what this was about, no idea on how to escape it, could not even think on it. The words drew her in with a horrid, frightful curiosity. “Why?” she asked.
Poison barked out her sharp, painful laughter. “You can thank your friend Applejack for that. I never would have put much worth on an earth pony,” she spat the name, “and yet here I am. In the home of the last remaining Element to boot. Oh, did I spill that little secret too soon? Don’t look at me like that, Fluttershy. We’re Honesty, aren’t we? Would we lie?” The fakeness in the words dripped off them. There was a clatter, a jangle of metal and a thunk next to Fluttershy. “See for yourself.”
Fluttershy’s blood chilled and breath tightened on every familiar curve and clasp, every familiar jewel gone dark. The Elements...her friends. Her own was there too, the last light that remained of any of them, flickering and sputtering worse than any candle.
Poison stood and pointed. “There! That’s the look on your face I wanted to see. Speechless, Fluttershy? That’s okay,” she smiled and walked through the broken table, “it’ll all be over soon.” The sweetness spilled like venom between those teeth. The necklace of Kindness sparked fitfully; the candle nearest the spectre flared up with pink malevolence. For an instant Fluttershy could see what Poison Apple truly was; a pony shape made of haze and black smoke, eyes and teeth all the more real for being the only real parts at all. It took a step back, into the darkness and the vision was lost. “Still a bit of fight in you, I see. I’m impressed,” she said. The gout of flame faltered and died, and that spot too was subsumed into the greedy dark. Poison cackled. “Show me how much fight you have left. I’ll make sure you do. There’s no rush.”
Whatever it was, the Element had taken something from Fluttershy, that much she could be sure of. Something of herself had been drawn on, spat at the nightmare like a feral cat would hiss and spit at Fluttershy’s first overtures of kindness. She did not know if there could be another such effort, or even if she had the strength left for it. But, in all that it had also given something back. A single impression, the shape of an urgent thought had filled her mind in that instant: Nightmare.
Fluttershy shuffled backwards, towards the hall, and felt the first serrations as splinters of her window dug into her. Wincing, cautious in her movements, Fluttershy tried to steal every inch of distance she could. Inch by inch, the erratic, weak flashes of her own necklace slid further away, and Fluttershy cursed herself for not thinking in her panic to take it.
If Poison noticed any of this, she didn’t care. “As I was saying before, I never expected much from earth ponies,” she said, tasting the name of a race. “Doesn’t it make sense though, Fluttershy? No wings, no horns. What’s the point to them, really? But now I’m starting to see that no one else is forced to face the darkness quite like them. No one else is forced to face fear quite like them. No flying away, no cheap little magic lights to hide under. Just look at Applejack. Facing those fears made her stronger. Made her resilient, and defiant. It was quite the struggle to break her in, and the longer she could fight me, the prize of taking her was going to be; that strength becomes mine! It feels amazing.” Poison indulged in another spout of cackling. The wind, whipped up by her exultation swirled about, snuffing candle after candle in its frenzy. The wind died, but the echoes of that laughter persisted. “After all, it’s what inside that counts, isn’t that right? And I am inside, Fluttershy. More than you know.”
All of the ground gained by Fluttershy’s painful crawling was undone by a few easy steps from Poison. “Where will you go, Fluttershy? Pretending that you can even get out of here, that is. You’re friends are broken. My prediction is it’ll be Pinkie Pie that really despairs enough to do something...silly. It would have just broken your heart to see her sad little face when I was through with her.” Poison snorted. “Rainbow Dash wasn’t much better, now that I think of it. If only they’d been strong enough to save themselves. To save you. If Applejack had just been a little stronger, who knows where we’d be?
“What about your animals, you’re thinking? Ha! They’re animals, Fluttershy. They know when to flee, and they always, always will. You’re the last one, Fluttershy. You’re alone, Fluttershy. The only one left, and when I’m through with you there will be no light left for this world.”
Another spark surged within the necklace. A pink tide of flame washed over Poison Apple’s side. She blinked with surprise, distracted more than hurt. Nightmare! came the insistent, not quite alive thought, filling Fluttershy’s mind. She understood.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered, but it rang with a truth that echoed off distant mountains.
“What?”
“This isn’t real!” she shouted. Fluttershy stood up; found her ankle did not hurt so much as she feared, found the glass was an irritation, nothing more. She would’ve thrown a punch just then, if she’d thought it could connect. “Nightmares! That’s all it ever is, whatever form, whatever name you take. We all know to stand up to you! You’re in my mind, in my house, in my friend and I say get out!” Every single candle flared back into life, and from each one stemmed a pink blaze that slammed into the ghast. Poison Apple screamed, caved in on herself as tangible shadows were stripped away, devoured into nothingness. The roar gave way to the hiss of steam, then calm silence.
Darkness returned, but with starlight and moonlight to temper it. Applejack, collapsed to the floor, shuddered and twitched in fitful sleep. She was scorched and smoking, but would be all right given time, and care.
Fluttershy rushed to her friend. “It’s okay,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Fluttershy,” the mare wheezed between racking coughs as she stirred.
“I’m here,” she said, hugging Applejack, cradling Applejack, needing to feel the reassurance of another living being near her.
“Anyone...ever tell you...” Applejack heaved with a harsh cough, but there was pride and great satisfaction in that voice, “that you face fear just like an earth pony?”
“Wha—”
Too late she saw the cat’s eyes pupils, and the too-white teeth.