Ever since I had that nightmare, I kept a close eye on both of my parents. If they were monsters, however, they didn't show it. Every mannerism, everything my parents knew, they knew. They went to work, came home, played with me, we had dinner together, and they read me stories before we went to bed. Perhaps that nightmare really was just that, a simple nightmare. Weeks had gone by and everything seemed normal, including not having nightmares. Because nothing out of the ordinary was happening, I soon forgot about the nightmare I had that day, and things went on peacefully.
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As my life continued on in this peaceful way and the Great Famine subsided I soon forgot about tales of monsters. This was also due in part to me growing up, I wasn't a scared little foal anymore and I knew better than to believe in monsters and the like. They were make-believe and I was starting to learn that the real world was far more scary than things that don’t exist.
When I went to school I learned all about The Plague, Great War, and Famine. My teacher said that while these things happened just in recent decades, it was important to look back at them, remembering and learning from them. We learned of all the new advancements made thanks to these tragedies, but we also learned about the horrible lengths some ponies would go to in their selfishness and greed.
These subjects interested me more than any others, for some reason. I was drawn to learn all I could about them. I was born towards the end of the Famine, so most of my memories of it were from when I was a foal. Because of course I couldn't remember much about it. Perhaps this was the reason I was so interested in the three tragedies, or perhaps I simply liked learning about the past. Whatever the reason, I studied these subjects as often as I could.
But my studies only lasted a few years. The Magical Symposium council had decreed new land grants to families willing to move back into newly reclaimed land. While this land wouldn't be useful right away, within years it would be rich in nutrients and would yield high harvests. My parents, always seeing opportunity, decided to take the council up on this, and we started packing our belongings, heading to a new town.
This news seemed to come out of the blue. It wasn't unheard of for families in the town we were living to take this offer, many had already done so. But my parents always seemed so…disinterested in it, that I was caught off guard by the news. Whatever it was that changed their minds must have been huge, because we packed up within a day and were on our way to our new home. It was a town I never heard of called Vanatonem.
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It took us a few days of travel, but we finally arrive at the outskirts of our new town, Vanatonem. Looking down at it from the hill we are on, there only appears to be four buildings alongside a mountain and each building has a large amount of farmland next to it. As we get closer, however, I notice that between the buildings there is a well lit cavern in the mountain, that the road we are on continues through. It wasn’t long before we were moving through the cavern and after a minute or so we came to a large open area inside the mountain. It was like someone had hallowed the mountain out, and in places, opened holes in the top. Many of these holes had veins crawling over them, but they still let in plenty of sunlight from outside.
I continue to look around the cavern I was now in, taking in the grassy hills, cobbled streets, and wooden buildings. It was a whole town hidden benieth the mountain, smaller than my previous town, but it still probably had a population of a few thousand. I was speechless at the beauty of the town and the disbelief I had for its existance.
I was in such awe of the town that I didn’t notice we had arrived at our new home. It was a bit smaller than our old house, but it looked decent. I snapped out of my state of awe and began to help mother and father unload our belongings into our new house. I soon realized it was quite similar to our old house, in terms of layout. You enter into the kitchen, which has three doors that lead to two bedrooms and an extra room for storage, or anything we would want it to be.
We spend the rest of the day unpacking, and don’t get a chance to take a look at the town, even though I was begging mother and father again and again to take a break and take a look. They said we would all take a good look around tomorrow, so when I finally crawl into my bed I am to anxious to fall asleep right away.
I think of all the things we will see tomorrow and I cannot wait to ask someone how the town was built. My mind continues to run at full speed, until it runs into a brick wall. A memory I had forgotten about for years. It crawled into my mind slowly, but when it finally appeared, it just wouldn’t go away. It was the memory of that night long ago, when those things had attacked my parents. The nightmare I had had as a foal.
I didn’t know why I had suddenly remembered this, but I wasn’t a foal anymore. Monsters didn’t exist and that was just a nightmare, nothing more. However I couldn’t take my mind from it as it kept replaying over and over in my head. Why was I remembering this now? I continue to think about this question, and about the nightmare, until my mind slowly stops working and I drift off to sleep.