A voice in the dark

by EmberLight

Chapter 4: Fun

"I could show you the rest of the caves," I said. "The places I showed you were only the ones on this side of the cave system that hadn't collapsed," I explained. It had been a few hours since we had returned and had been playing around in the garden. It was a huge room near the center of the caves, filled with plants of all kinds. Thanks to a preservation spell someone had placed on it, the plants were able to live on their own for years, with no water or sunlight. In the past year the spell had begun to wear off, and a rare few of the plants were beginning to wither and die. The garden had grass covering every spot of dirt you could see. The walls were covered completely by the grass too, leaving no room for the glowing ivy to grow. The light in this room came from a small orange and black flower named the "Nightmare flower". It's nectar would glow a soft blue permanently and would burn if it was set on fire. A small river ran through the center of the garden, only a few metres wide.

"But this place is so fun!" Shimmering Cloud said, popping her head out of a bush, making me fall over backwards and land on the grass.

"Heh, but you did say earlier that you wanted to know your way around this place," I said, not bothering to get to my hooves.

"Aww, okay then."

---

"There's so many books!"

"Yeah, if I get bored I come here normally and read a book. Have you ever heard of daring do?" I asked her. I loved the book series, but unfortunately I only have the first six of them, I wonder how many there are now. I had found them in a small cardboard box beside a river, with the tag "from pinkie" on it. I never found out who this pinkie pony was, but I hope they didn't mind that I had taken the books.

"Are you kidding me! I love the book series, I love reading them!" she said, flying up and onto a bookshelf.

"Really!? How many are there now?" I asked.

"Well, I never managed to finish the book I was reading... I got here before I could read more."

"Oh... Hey I meant to ask you earlier, why was your necklace glowing blue all the way to the garden?"

"My necklace?" She said, looking down at it. "...I don't know why it would do that," She said truthfully.

I still wanted to ask her about earlier when she woke up and yelled at me, but I thought it would be better to just leave it.

"Anyway, the room we're going to is the next one on the left," I said, walking out the doorway. I headed down the hall with shimmering cloud following behind me, her blue mane dragging itself along the floor, the vines on the walls making her mane glow and sparkle in the light.

"Um... Hello? Fyre?" Shimmering cloud asked, looking at me with a confused expression. I snapped back to reality, mentally scolding myself for staring like that, and turning my head back to the door on the left.

"Right, yeah uh..." The door for this room had long leaves hanging down in front of it, instead of an open gateway, or a brown door, and the floor was covered in moss. There was a large pool of water in the center of the room that was steaming, that had water falling from the ceiling into it. "This is the showers, pretty much what you'd expect right?" I asked, expecting a simple answer.

"...This is beautiful! I can't believe someone would be able to make this!" She said. She ran ahead of me and jumped in the water, sending the water flying through the air towards me. In one word, I was soaked. The moss on the floor absorbed the water leaving the floor nice and dry for anyone else that wanted to walk in.

"Oh, I- I'm sorry I didn't mean to-" she started, but I wouldn't let her finish. I jumped in the pool and soaked her with a huge splash of water, leaving us both laughing and flipping water at each other. I had forgotten how good it felt to just lose yourself and play with somepony...

---

After we had finished playing around in the water I explained to shimmer that the moss would absorb any water in our fur acting like a towel if we just rolled around in it.

After we finished drying ourselves we just lay there for a while in a friendly silence. I closed my eyes and started thinking about how today had been the best day of my life. I had finally made a friend after the seven years of isolation. I had the most fun I had ever had in my life. I had somepony to talk to if I was ever feeling down.

"Hey Cloud?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for today, this has been the best day I've had in such a long time."

There was a small silence before she replied, "no problem..."

---

"Huh... Where am I going to sleep?" Cloud asked. We had just gotten back to my room from the showers, and had realised we only have one bed. There had been plenty of other bedrooms in the caves before, but all those had collapsed and mine was the only one left standing, probably thanks to the special metal I had pushed in the walls myself after I realised that the rooms were caving in.

"I suppose I could sleep on the floor again," I suggested.

"What? No, it's your bed! I'll just go sleep in the library or something."

"No! I can't do that to you, and books aren't comfortable!"

"Yes they are!.. And no, I can't just steal your bed from you!"

"I suppose... No never mind. That's stupid..."

"Huh? What is it?"

"Well... I suppose... We could share the bed?" I suggested sheepishly. My fur had turned a light pink. I could only imagine how ridiculous I must have looked.

"uh, sure... I suppose..." She said, her cheeks painted red.

Cloud climbed into the bed first, with her long blue mane trailing over the sides. She tucked her mane under her wings and lifted her head up, looking at me with a confused face.

"I snapped out of my trance and climbed in the bed, pulling the covers over me and cloud. I was grateful nopony was here to see us, though I wasn't sure if it was because of embarrassment or because it wouldn't be a precious moment just between me and Cloud. Truthfully there was a pony watching us, and it was smiling. The shadow slunk back under the door and out into the cave system.

Author's Note:

Sorry for the day late chapter, I got caught up watching an anime and completely forgot about the chapter till just now, the last half of the chapter was written at 3:30am on my Ipad so please forgive me if anything seems sleepy... Sloppy... G'night... *passes out*

Edit: not even 24 hours later ...When did I write this?

Comments

[Dark Nightshade]

This was a good chapter! If only some of these things existed in real life!