Sigil of Souls, Stream of Memories

by Piccolo Sky

Nightwatch: The Miraculous Healer

“Tweet tweet! Tweet tweet!”

With the dark confines of the cellar, a woman with long, pink hair slowly opened her eyes. They focused only a moment as her awareness came back, before the pupils shrank. A cold shiver ran down her spine.

Morning had come again.

Sunlight was streaming through the cracks of the floorboards over her head, just enough to make out the bottom of the cellar. What was once nothing but dug earth and floorboards had been set up with crude bits of furniture and hastily-made wooden shelves, which in turn were filled with items of bedding, litter, fluff, and other nesting materials. No less than thirty separate animals were crowded into that dark space. Many of them were small—rodents and birds. A pair of foxes was in one corner. A trio of raccoons was in another. Most conspicuous was an adult bear actually taking up the side nearest a wooden staircase that he could hardly climb without breaking. On the other side, on an old mattress covered up with down pillows, blankets, and a curled-up white rabbit, lay the woman.

She had woken up as soon as the lark in the cellar had begun to sing. Now she lay there trembling. Like a frightened child, she pulled the covers over her mouth and nose. The other animals began to rise but they all stayed exactly where they were. Not one dared move. Slowly, she looked from one corner of the room to another. All was still. All was silent. Not the slightest speck of light—natural or otherwise.

After some time, the covers were slowly pulled away. She slowly and silently extruded herself from beneath them and slid herself onto the floor. She reached her hand out for a thin chain dangling from the ceiling to the floor and grasped the end. After hesitating long enough to swallow a lump in her throat, she pulled.

On the floor above her, the chain grew taut around an old metal cylinder fashioned into a hood. It drew upward, allowing a lit candle underneath it to be exposed. Ever since moving into the cellar, she always waited for the sun to rise and for silence before emerging from it every day. She realized two months after she started that this was insufficient. Something could have broken in and taken refuge in the shadowy areas of the upstairs, as something had on that particular day, and when she emerged it promptly killed two chickens and a box turtle she had taken in. The candle she had exposed served to “draw them out” if they were taking shelter in the dark places above her. Even if hiding from daylight, they seemed to always hate unnatural light enough to try and snuff it.

She waited patiently. One minute passed. Two minutes passed. On the third minute, she finally relaxed. Letting out a shaky exhale, she eased her arm and lowered the hood again. She rose to her feet, no longer trying to be quiet. The other animals followed suit and began to get up from their respective positions. That included the rabbit she had left on her pillow. As for her, she moved to the wooden staircase and ascended it a few steps, so that her head touched the floor of the room overhead. She placed her hand on it and paused again.

Fears ran through her heart. After all, even with her precautions, there could always be a way something got missed. Taking in one deep breath, she pushed it open.

Nothing but rays of sunlight from her windows and her empty house greeted her.

She smiled in full relief, relaxing completely at last, and moved to one side. Moments later, the birds flapped out and the rest of the animals rapidly climbed the stairs to join them in the main room.

---

The “house” the woman lived it had been abandoned along with the land on it well before the Lunar Fall. The terrain surrounding most of the area was rocky with poor soil and not suitable for any sort of development and all claims to it either relaxed or abandoned. After the Lunar Fall, Mount Eris declared the strip of land she resided on “No Man’s Land” for miles in both directions as a buffer zone to Equestria. There was no one left to molest her for squatting.

The structure's roof had fallen in and the stones that made up the walls had begun to bulge outward as it sagged. It was overgrown with a mixture of moss, vines, and one old tree pressing into it as it grew. It was hard to even make out the house from the surrounding country from a distance. Repairs had been done in the form of rags or mud to patch as many holes as possible, setting up old discarded iron rods or bits of timber to prop walls, and nailing strips of wood over the roof holes.

Inside the house was a bit different. It had been made into something of a home, using discarded and secondhand furnishings, old yet suitable rugs and drapes, and collections of reclaimed flatware and cooking apparel around a tiny, wood-burning, iron stove—the biggest the owner had been able to bring in and put in the house under her own power. Nevertheless, it was just one giant room, and to account for all residents it too had many places for birds and mammals to recline, perch, or eat. There were more places for animals inside than there was for its sole resident.

The woman herself was moving around in it now. She was changed from her simply one-piece nightgown to her day clothes. She had no shoes but had dressed herself in a simple dress made from basic fabric she had scavenged and hand-stitched, and she had taken time to brush her long hair until the tips curled. With the sun out and the various creatures roosting, fluttering, or running about her, she was in a far better mood. She smiled pleasantly and sang to herself as she worked.

She eventually came up to an empty feed bowl. A piglet with a tiny purple splotch about the size of a pencil eraser head on her shoulder blade stood in front of it, looking up at her and grunting.

“Sorry, Olivia, but you already had your breakfast,” she smiled back. “You’ll just have to wait until lunch.”

The piglet grunted again, lowering her head and looking almost unhappy, as the woman moved on to a crude shelf nearby where numerous smaller creatures were dwelling. She leaned in closer to it. “Hello, little friends! It’s tidy time! Everyone together!”

As one, the creatures on the shelf looked up to her, before each one turned about and began to work in their nesting space. A squirrel with a little dark blemish behind one ear quickly picked up rinds of walnuts and other shells and placed them over the edge of the shelf, letting them fall to the floor. The woman immediately swept them up. “Thank you, Nutmeg!”

A pair of mice, each sporting a small discoloration on a different spot on their body, quickly worked in tandem; one of them picking up their newborn children one by one while the other rooted in the litter underneath for bits of old seed husks and dirty straw and placed them over the edge. She quickly swept this up as well. “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Pawsworth!”

On the next spot, a chickadee whose wingtip was darkly discolored quickly flitted about the air, nimbly sweeping over her nest to pick out bad materials and place them in a neat pile on the floor, finished up just as the woman arrived. The songbird landed on her nest and sung proudly; causing the woman to smile more as she cleaned. “Thank you, Carolina! You’re always so neat!”

She continued to make the rounds until each occupied space was cleaned up. Once she had all the dirt and refuse swept, she took up an old metal lid she used for a dustpan to gather it together and began to move over to an iron drum that served as a garbage can.

She reached for the lid only to freeze where she stood. A pair of snakes, both the venomous variety, were coiled up on the lid. As soon as her hand neared them, both reared up and hissed at her.

She didn’t look scared though. Instead her face flushed red in embarrassment. “Oh my…I’m so sorry, Sylvester… Sylvia… I wanted to get started on cleaning so soon I forgot all about you two.” Putting the dustpan to one side, she reached nearby for one of the floorboards. One in particular had an old knothole that had come loose but had been plugged again with a large piece of cork. With some effort, she grasped it and pulled it free, and as soon as it was both snakes calmed down and quickly slithered off the bin and into the hole one after the other; showing off a dark spot on either one's scales as they did. The woman would not allow either snake to eat any of the other “residents” of the house, so instead that served as a route under the home to the stream where they could move south and eat their fill of wild rats and voles.

No sooner had she finished letting them out when the back door to the house creaked. She turned to see the white rabbit that had slept with her rushing in. As soon as it reached her, it came to a stop and reared up; only then exposing a purple splotch on its own inner thigh. It let out a series of squeaking noises.

“Oh, the chickens are getting impatient? I’m sorry, Angel. I got carried away this morning. How many eggs today?”

He raised one leg and thumped it against the ground six times.

“That many? I’ll make sure to get them before I head out today. We’re out of corn and I think I can still get a few carrots.”

The rabbit curled on himself at that and let out another cry.

“Tomatoes?" She looked a little uncertain. "I don’t know… It’s a bit early in the year, and the patch is so far away…”

The rabbit cried again, louder.

“But I was going to go with Barry to look for huckleberries today.”

He cried yet again, almost sounding like a whine, and stamped his feet. The woman winced uncomfortably, but after holding out a bit she broke.

“Well…I guess I could take a look… Just so long as we leave soon…”

This seemed to satisfy the rabbit, as he calmed soon after and looked up hopefully. The woman herself quickly dumped the dustpan and set both it and the broom against the wall. “Just let me grab my basket… Now where did I leave it?”

A loud bird squeal went off in response. She looked and spotted a jay perched on the chair to her “dining room table” (nothing more than a small table with one chair) pointing to another shelf. It was lined with dried foodstuffs, not just for human consumption but animal as well. The basket was set idly on on the second rack from the bottom over a few sacks. The piglet was rooting around one that was empty.

“I’m sorry, Olivia, but we’re fresh out of truffles. We can go hunting for more tomorrow.”

The piglet snorted unhappily as she pulled herself out.

---

The grounds around the home weren’t much better farther away than when they were up close. There were a few grazing animals living there that kept the immediate grass on the property trim, but other than that there was little but an open, uneven field spreading out between rocky hills leading to the mountains on either side. Aside from the stream that ran from south to north, past her property and into the woods beyond, there was nothing more than an old path wide enough for wagon traffic running in the same direction.

On exiting the house, the woman did what she normally did most days: tried her best to ignore anything to the north of her property. She tried to avoid even catching it in her peripheral vision. Her focus was on a small outgrowth building adjacent to the slumping structure she lived in. At one point, it had been a wood bin, but she had converted it into a chicken hutch. Most of the time the chickens slept in the cellar with everyone else, in spite of the smell, but during the daylight hours they roosted in there. She now had her basket and was reaching into each nesting box, pulling out the fresh eggs one after another.

Most of the other animals were out and running around now. The sun was fully up and none of them feared the long shadows any longer. The area about the slumped house was filled with the sounds of foraging and birds singing. It was a cheerful spot in the No Man’s Land, because for miles in all other directions the land was silent. The animals that had resided there had long since left--willingly or unwillingly.

As she pulled out her sixth and final egg, she rose and turned to go inside. However, she halted whens he caught sight of one of the adult raccoons running up to her as fast as it could. As soon as he saw he had her attention, he reared up on his hind legs chittering furiously.

“Hmm? What is it, Smoky?”

The raccoon chittered louder, gesturing about with his small hands.

“Something’s wrong with Smoky Jr.? What is it?”

He balled his hands into fists and opened them wide in an “erupting” gesture.

The basket of eggs fell out of the woman's grip as she gasped. On landing four of them were smashed, but she didn't care. Her eyes had shrunk into pinpricks. “Oh no! Hurry! Show me where he is!”

The raccoon spun around and took off. She quickly followed behind. Fortunately, they didn’t have to go far. Simply running around to the front of the house was enough.

Several of the animals were already gathered around, whimpering and whining. That included another adult raccoon standing near a juvenile currently curled into the fetal position and spasming as if sick or in pain. The woman ran toward him as soon as she caught sight of him, and she let out another frightened gasp as she got close. A good portion of his back had been “stained” a dark blue, causing the fur to grow wild and scraggly compared to the rest of him. Worse yet was that it seemed to be spreading out before her very eyes, slowly crawling along the rest of his body and staining more of it.

She didn’t waste a moment. She learned the hard way with Mrs. Beaverteeth a year ago there was no time to waste on words. Once it “flared up”, you could have anywhere from fifteen minutes to fifteen seconds before the animal was past the point of no return. Soon she was on her knees at Smoky Jr.’s side.

His face was stretched and his teeth bared. It was no longer a sign purely of pain but of loss of sentience. She swallowed as she reached down for his head.

She cried out and pulled back a moment later as Smoky Jr. instinctively snapped at her hands. She cringed a moment, trembling not only in fear of what was happening but the danger to her that was rapidly increasing. Yet she clutched her cold, sweaty palms for a moment before reaching down again; faster this time. Before he could snap again, she placed her hands around his head and held firm.

“Look at me, Smoky.”

Smoky Jr. didn’t react beyond his fit throwing. Yet the woman pulled his head up so that that juvenile raccoon was looking her straight in the eye.

“Look at me.”

The raccoon fought a little, but his eyes cracked open and caught hers. The moment they did, they locked into them. She saw traces of a yellow light far back in the pupils, and her focus locked onto those.

In moments, the raccoon’s body began to relax. He stopped stiffening and resisting and eased into her hands. When he did, her own grip became gentler. She began to move her fingers slowly and comfortingly, gently petting the sides of his head as she continued to stare. She ignored her surroundings. She thought nothing of the rest of the raccoon’s family, the surrounding animals, the eggs, or anything else. Everything vanished into black about her except the young raccoon’s eyes. Her own body began to go flaccid, even numb, as she stared deep and long into them.

She saw only the yellow light. Knew only the yellow light. And as she stared on at it, she felt herself imagining a candle wick being quenched. One of the bits of yellow went out at that, but the rest remained. Yet her mind kept imagining wicks going out, and soon another bit went out. And another after that. In a few moments, all had disappeared.

The woman let in a gasp as dizziness came over her, and all truly did fade to black for a moment as her senses left her completely. It lasted only a few seconds, however, and soon reality fully returned. Her vision became a light blur again before focusing sharp enough to see the house and the animals around her, and she could once again feel sunshine and hear birds singing. Her hands had released Smoky Jr. unwillingly and she herself had almost collapsed to the ground, but her senses had come back in time to push back her lingering dizziness and straighten up.

The young raccoon was standing on the ground, looking quite normal and shaking himself off, before his mother and father came up and happily nuzzled him. Best of all, to her relief, the large patch of dark fur on his back had receded to only a small dot once again.

She smiled a bit weakly at the whole thing, in spite of how she felt. The other animals began to cry and chitter happily about her. None of them realized that her smile was forced. She had again driven back a flare up, but again the spot remained. Just like it did on all of them. She couldn’t even look at the other animals without having her eyes zoom to that spot on them some days. And there they would remain for days, weeks, months…two years was her personal record she had seen…before something like this would happen again.

And next time she might not be fast enough.

After a while, she finally got enough strength to rise to her feet again. There were more chores to do.

---

There had been a number of farms as well as townships before the area became No Man’s Land. The fallow fields served most of the woman’s needs as well as those of the animals. When the sun was high and there was plenty of daylight left, she did what she did most days and traveled to them. After seven years, most of them were highly overgrown and no longer productive, but they stayed fresher and viable longer than most. After all, there weren’t any pests around to eat from them.

Up and down through old fields of wheat and rows of corn she went; looking over one old ear or stalk after another and stripping it of kernels or seeds if necessary. She wore a large bushel backpack specifically for that, as grains made up the bulk of both her diet as well as that of all of her friends. After the hour it took to even walk to the field, she devoted three to filling it up. That done, she spent the next hour going for other vegetables. This was a more random bet. She didn’t know where all the fields in the area were yet, but often when she toured a new field she found nothing but a ruined, blighted crop. Every so often, however, she found one that was still viable. The carrot patch she had been tending for months was one, although at this point she had to pull three bad carrots to get a good one. She nearly headed back afterward before she remembered Angel’s insistence that morning, and devoted another hour to traveling to the tomato patch she had picked out and back.

By the time she saw her home again, the sun was still up and would be for hours yet, so she didn’t mind that her trip had taken longer. As soon as her feet touched the wide path alongside her house, she started thinking about how she needed to get lunch out before she could do a good cleaning of the dishes, and still wanted to gather some huckleberries before she needed to worry about dinner and setting things up for another night.

She was still thinking about it when she reached the house and began to put down her bushel and vegetables when she heard a tell-tale thumping along the path. Soon after, she saw Angel come around the corner and quickly rush up to her. Seeing his speed, she blanched. She remembered how fast Smoky had come running to her earlier and began to fear a similar event was taking place. If it had started sometime after she left it might already be too late…

“Angel? What’s wrong?”

The rabbit stopped and began to furiously stamp around and squeak at the same time.

“What?”

He even more insistently made the same gestures.

“Please, slow down! I can’t understand you when you’re talking so fast!”

The rabbit paused to take a breath before squeaking more slowly.

She blinked. “Olivia? What about her?”

He squeaked a bit more, and the woman looked shocked.

“What? By herself? But she knows better than that! There aren’t even any truffles around here to sniff out! Where would she go looking for them?”

The rabbit gestured again, this time up the path.

“Wh…what?!”

As scared as the woman had been earlier with Smoky Jr., now she went white as a sheet. About the only thing worse the piglet could have done aside from walking right up to a Light Eater was what Angel had just said.

The woman began to tremble as her eyes drifted up past Angel to the path. The forest that it vanished to north of her house led right toward the very reason this land was now abandoned. It sat on the borders of Equestria. Even now, no matter what time of year or day, she saw the darkness that hung over it. Not very far away at all, in eyesight in fact, the path went straight into the woods. And she knew from experience that one didn’t need to go inside more than twenty feet before it started getting darker. That had been purely by accident once, and ever since she had sternly warned all of the animals to never go anywhere near it. In that place, no birds ever sang, no bees ever buzzed, and the only life was the Nighttouched.

Olivia, however, was young and tended to think with her stomach. She may very well have been walking along the forest edge and caught the whiff of a truffle...

She stood there paralyzed for several seconds. Fear seized her heart. It took all of her courage even to make it through each night living out here. She wouldn’t have walked a hundred feet inside that forest for all the money in Greater Equestria.

This wasn’t about just her, though. It was about Olivia.

She had to take not one, not two, but three deep breaths before she finally felt stable enough to command her body to straighten. She continued to shake uncontrollably as she looked back down at the rabbit. “Angel, stay here and keep an eye on everyone else.”

The rabbit, as much as was possible for a creature like it, looked surprised at her saying that, but she didn’t give a chance for her resolve to waver. Commanding her legs to move, she began to walk down the path toward the forest. Angel squeaked back loudly, but she didn’t answer. Someone had to go in after Olivia and it might as well have been her. She heard his protests stop eventually as she kept walking, and she took yet another deep breath as she forced her feet onward.

She didn’t get much farther from the house and closer to the woods before she began to feel more nervous. The woods' edge was thick with undergrowth, and combined with the dark shadow looming over it night and day, she shook harder the nearer she grew. What started off as a forced walk was now a much slower stroll that was quickly turning into a creep. It grew quieter the closer she came. She wasn’t able to hear the slightest sound from her homestead or the others. The silence of the forest ahead seemed to swallow it up before she even stepped inside.

She came to the “threshold” of the forest entrance and paused. She saw the path stretch a short ways where the daylight still came through the canopy, but after that it began to look dimmer before the path turned. It was like staring into a basement or old building rather than a forest; the way the shadows encroached within. While in the light, the Nighttouched would remain hidden, but not far inside they could move freely. Especially with all of the shadows of trees to move around in.

Teeth chattering a little, she slowly opened her mouth. “O…Olivia?”

Her voice was practically a whisper. If Olivia had been right next to her she would have barely heard it.

“Olivia?” she called again; somewhat louder.

Still nothing.

“Olivia!”

That last one managed to have some volume, but it was no use. The forest was dead silent. She swallowed again; realizing there was only one option left. Cupping her hands to her chest to try and quell its fierce beating, she commanded her body to move. A moment after she slowly began to walk into the woods.

Even in the light portions, she was scared. It was too quiet and still. Everything seemed stuck in time. Yet the light portions quickly dimmed. Just as she remembered, she didn’t have to go far before the light around her seemed to fade. It was like the sun itself was an oil lamp that was slowly being turned lower. Even though the path was nothing but packed dirt, she could hear each one of her footsteps and each panicked gasp through her lips. As the path soon made its first turn and afterward continued to twist and curl, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to see the way back behind her…which meant she would receive no comforting look of sunlight and her home until she was nearly out again.

She tried calling again, but this time she couldn’t manage more than a whisper. She didn’t want to call out in here, especially as the shadows lengthened with the closing darkness. Shadowy patches began to fill the woods around her and she knew Nighttouched could be in them. She told herself Olivia would have broken off earlier in the path, staying in the light portions. However, she corrected herself soon after that. She knew the piglet was smart enough to stay in open spaces rather than wander off the trail. Besides, she would have heard her before if that was the case.

Finally, she reached a point where the light faded so much she was having a hard time seeing. At that point, her resolve began to ebb again. She tried to open her mouth to call out one more time, but she no longer had the bravery to speak. She didn’t want anything to hear her. Realizing she was getting nowhere, she resolved to turn around and head back…

The forest was so silent she heard the oink up ahead quite distinctly.

“…Olivia?”

She cupped her hands to her own mouth. The forest was so still that even speaking it was like shouting in a closed room. Yet there was no mistaking what she had heard. That had been a pig. There was a question of whether it was Olivia or something else…but before the thought could scare her too much she pushed herself to walk again.

Now the forest truly did grow dark. The last trace of sunlight vanished overhead. Normally this would have made the area beneath the canopy completely opaque, but the blackness was so great that stars and the moon began to come out. More of them came as the darkness deepened, and in spite of the unnatural night about her she could still see. That was a good thing, because soon the trail began to grow hilly and uneven as well as winding. Combined with the darkness, it was almost impossible to see where she was going. Her foot suddenly caught on a stray root, and, once again, she gave an involuntary cry as she stumbled. She managed to get her feet underneath her before falling but she froze at her own cry, listening around her. Only when she confirmed no reaction did she move again.

She made it for a few more twists and turns before she was forced to stop again. Although she could barely see it through the canopy and the moonlight, the trail ahead of her suddenly blanked out and gave way to rougher terrain. That confused her momentarily, but as her eyes adjusted she managed to make out signs of a massive washout ahead. The big rain from three years ago must have swollen the creek into spilling forth and rubbing out the trail. She could proceed no further unless she went into the newly made ravine.

However, stopping also revealed something else. The forest was no longer silent.

She could definitely hear sounds now. It was faint but distinct. Something was moving up ahead. She wasn’t sure what, for it didn't sound like any movement she had ever heard before, but it was definitely there and, more importantly, not far from where she was.

Before her terror could make her turn back, she heard a short squeal. Her head snapped to it at once as she realized it wasn't far from where she now stood. No more than fifty feet ahead in the woods proper. The only problem was it was closer to what was moving. If she had stopped to think any longer of getting closer to that sound, the fear would have locked her up. As it was, she made her hands into fists and actually closed her eyes before charging forward for the trees.

She made far more noise now as she ran into the undergrowth; her feet crunching plants and ruffling through leaves. The sound of the movement grew louder quickly but she kept pushing. She wasn’t able to keep her eyes closed long before forcing to open them again to see around the trees in front of her and avoid collisions, but she didn't stop. As her ears began to make out individual smaller noises on the movement, she forced her eyes open wider and looked to the forest floor.

No signs of anything but darkness, but no signs of small lights either. She kept her eyes open as she continued to run. Her toes stubbed another root, and she nearly faltered again as her bare foot stepped on a sharp rock, but she still kept moving.

Finally, in the pale moonlight streaming through the canopy, she saw a splotch of whiter color. Growing nearer, she made out the shape of a piglet. Olivia was cringing and trying to hide as best as she could in the undergrowth, but as soon as the woman was close enough to hear she wheeled around and spotted her. Giving a panicked squeal, she ran up to her as quickly as she could.

As soon as she reached her, the woman dropped to her knees and the piglet jumped into her arms. She quickly hugged Olivia tightly to her chest, both out of relief as well as protection. She nearly rose again, meaning to turn and not stop running until she was out of the forest.

Instead, she straightened up only a little before she stopped again.

She choked a horrified gasp.

The washout ravine was just ahead of her. It was filled with thousands upon thousands of tiny yellow eyes—the result of thousands of Nighttouched. They had to be things like mice, lizards, and other small creatures to be so clustered together so densely. They were all going the same way; clamoring over and under each other. There were so many that it looked like a living stream of yellow lights.

The air caught in her lungs. She didn’t know whether to run, rise, or even breathe.

Suddenly she heard the trees begin to creak before her, as something struck the ground so deep and heavy it shuddered. The sound of branches breaking rang out soon after, followed by another shudder…this one closer and more forceful.

Sweating now, shaking almost uncontrollably, she looked up into the forest to see the cause.

Her words were drowned out by Olivia’s squeals.

"Oh my..."

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Hell of a cliffhanger. Fluttershy's powers are definitely impressive... which would make her loss all the more devastating. I suppose we'll cut back to her in time, but the mystery of her fate is going hang heavy over the next few chapters.