Emberwolf

by Lucky Dreams

Snow

Scootaloo leapt from bed and rushed from one photo of Rainbow Dash to another, but the foalsitter was missing from all of them. So were other ponies from their own pictures: Aunt Holiday, Aunt Lofty, and Mom and Dad in twin halves of a photograph which had been torn in two.

The tips of Scootaloo’s wings itched. Kneeling by the bed, she pried open a loose floorboard and picked up a small tin box from the space beneath. Inside was a wad of photos. Some were ripped, some were crumpled, and others were scrunched; until a day previously, all had lived on the walls of her room. Now, when she flickered through them, all were empty of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle…

Carefully, she put the friendless photos back in the tin, then placed the tin under the floorboards again.

Her hooves shook.

“Wake up,” she told herself, but from the frost in her blood she knew it was helpless. She was familiar with the texture of dreams and nightmares – so, she was sure this was really happening. She felt it. She tasted the air, and the air tasted cold and real.

She hurried to the upstairs landing, switched on the lights and peered at the walls, but the photos here were no different. She had stuck them all around with tape and drawing pins. There were swarms of them, and even one or two tacked to the ceiling! Rainbow Dash wasn't in any of them, nor any of Scootaloo’s friends and family.

She rapped on her aunt’s door.

“Aunt Holiday? Aunt Lofty?”

They didn’t respond so she knocked harder. “Holiday! Lofty!”

There was silence. Yet Scootaloo’s heart demanded action, so she tossed aside her manners, opened the door and shot into the room. It was lit by two small candles she couldn’t remember seeing before. The bed was neatly made, and the curtains were shut. The room was distressingly clear of aunts.

The itch in Scootaloo’s feathers grew. She had the distinct sense that she was being watched...

That’s when it happened. Upon the very edge of hearing, where noise becomes silence and silence becomes noise, she heard the tiniest voices in the world. “Run,” they told her, so quietly that she couldn’t tell how many of them there were, or if they belonged to mares, stallions, or colts or fillies.

“Wh-who said that?”

“You’re in terrible danger, darling one. Get out of the house. Run!”

Scootaloo backed out of the empty room, shut the door and hurried through the cottage. She checked the bathroom and the spare bedroom, and the not-quite-a-room yet not-quite-a-wardrobe Aunt Lofty called her office. At the end of the landing, she tried the door to the attic, but it was locked.

She thumped on the attic door. “Hello?” she called, but there was no response, not even the creak of a floorboard from upstairs. Nopony was there.

She paused and allowed herself to feel the thunder of her heart. Then she raced downstairs and dashed through the kitchen, through the pantry, and then through the dining room. She did not search the living room. She didn’t even glance at the door.

Exhausted, Scootaloo slumped on the bottom of the stairwell, sniffled, and wiped a cheek. “Brave ponies don’t cry,” she told herself, but the words were as flimsy as fragments of torn photos.

Just then, Scootaloo’s eye was drawn directly ahead of her, past the lamp on the small table in the foyer, and towards the front door.

She furrowed her brow.

Run, the tiny voices had told her.

She wondered if they had told her aunts to run as well. Had Holiday and Lofty heard the mysterious voices, then galloped away as fast as their hooves could carry them? But it was a silly thought, Scootaloo knew. Aunt Holiday and Aunt Lofty wouldn’t abandon her in the dead of night. They were the best aunts a filly could wish for, the most soul-proud and spirit-joyous guardians that had ever lived. Even in the face of all available evidence, Scootaloo refused to believe they would be so thoughtless, careless, cruel.

Yet the fact remained that, tonight, there were whispers in the bedrooms. The fireplace had spoken to her, and her aunts were nowhere to be found.

It was a night of the impossible.

She whimpered and thought of Rainbow Dash.

“Don’t just sit there, kiddo,” she imagined her foalsitter saying. “Take things into your own hooves. Do things.”

In her head, Scootaloo counted one, two, two-and-a-half, two-and-three-quarters, two-and-nine-tenths, three. She stood up and crept towards the front door and pulled it open.

She was greeted with the impossible.

Outside, there was nothing but pure whiteness which glittered in the lamplight, as though a wall of smooth marble had grown from the front steps and now blocked the entrance to the house. Scootaloo held a bewildered hoof to the wall, but she stopped short of actually touching it. Around the whiteness, the air was as cold as a howl of winter. The only sounds were her own worried breath, and the doom doom doom of her frantic heart.

Then she touched the wall and gasped as her hoof sunk into the snow: for indeed, it was snow. It was an incredible, unbelievable amount of snow.

Her aunts were missing, and there were whispers in the bedrooms and the fireplace was speaking. And now, as she had slept, the house had been blizzard-buried.

The Night of the Impossible had struck again.

Comments

[Chara Undertale]

9th October 2018 "Check back in around 2 weeks"

I had a pony dream today and decided to take a break from reading chinese web novels to get back into pony fanfiction and it must be fate that the story I was most hyped for it's continuation is coming back soon.

[The Grimm Reaper]

she heard the tiniest voices in the world. “Run,”