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// Chapter 6: Epilogue 
// Story: Slender Mane 
// by 2tailedpony 
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It was only a few days later that Fluttershy and Twilight were pronounced dead. The news quickly reached their friends in Ponyville. A service was held to remember them, but their bodies were never found. As the years went by, their friend's lives went on. The pain of loss eventually faded, and was then forgotten as the four friends each died in their own due time.
Ever since those strange events occurred, there were rumors though, of strange ponies lurking on the edge of the Everfree forest who wore pale masks to hide their faces. Ones that would snatch up little fillies who wandered too far away from their parents at night, "don't you wander off," they would say, "if you get lost in the dark then they will find you and pull you into the forest! Then they'll bury in the ground, and you'll grow into a tree. No matter how much we search, we won't be able to find you among all those trees."
The fillies had no reason not to believe them. They'd seen them after all. The strange black trees with yellow berries that only seemed to grow deep in the Everfree Forest. No matter how many they cut down, more seemed to appear. They heard that every time you would cut them, they would scream, and if you ate their fruit you would die right then and there. They called the places where the trees grew, "filly fields," because that's where they would bury the fillies they stole. It was said that the fields were haunted by a cloaked pony with glowing yellow eyes. Lots of fillies thought this was made up, but some older ponies swore that they had seen her wandering the fields, picking the berries from the trees.
The fillies would grow up someday and dismiss the stories as something their parents used in order to scare them into behaving. No one ever really wondered who the ponies were that lingered just out of view on the forest's edge. No one bothered to find out who the strange shadows belonged to that could be seen in the windows of the old abandoned cabin by the forest. The same one where a pony was supposedly murdered a long time ago. They were fine not knowing though. It was just a story after all.
And everyone knows that there's no reason to be afraid of a simple story.

THE END