The Pony Who Feared The Living
Eerie Lantern stared at the storefront to Tipped Hat's Food Market, her orange eyes wide and her scruffy ears pinned. Next to her trembling lavender flank was a woven basket, meant to be filled with the month’s needed goods. Sitting alone inside it was a small china teapot, decorated with blue flowers and undulating lines. Gray smoke trailed from the spout.
“You can do this, hon,” Scarlet Orange said behind Eerie. Her sweet voice held all the charm of a country belle. “You just go on in, and—”
“I can’t,” Eerie whispered. Her mouth was dry. It felt as though she was standing under a desert sun, the sweat oozing from her until her shaggy coat was a pungent mess, making her smiling jack-o-lantern cutie mark look like a grotesque and frowning blob. “Scarlet, I can’t!”
“Of course you can,” Scarlet said. “We’ve been through this, a million times.”
“A million and one is past my limit. This is too stressful. He’ll talk to me again!”
She heard Scarlet snort. “Naturally, Eerie. How else is the stallion supposed to do business with you?”
Eerie’s wide gaze dropped to her quivering hooves. “I make a list! A very detailed list. All he has to do is load my basket with my stuff, and yet every time he feels the need to chit chat while he does it—”
Scarlet gasped. “No!”
“He asks about my day and everything!”
“Oh, the horror!”
Eerie pouted at the sarcasm, one of her ears flicking hard. “He touches me! When I give him his bits, he always pats my hoof! Why does he do that?! I have boundaries!”
Scarlet Orange sighed. “Tis the troubles of the living, dear. Like flour, and lamp oil, and tea… All of which you've run out of, if you’ll recall.”
Eerie slouched. She scratched at the base of her short horn, buried under her messy crop of orange hair. “Scarlet, I dunno—”
Scarlet tutted, her voice rising an octave. “Eerie Lantern, what have I said about horn scratching? It’s unseemly!”
Eerie slouched further, her muzzle wrinkling. “But it always itches when I’m nervous!” Still, she lowered her hoof.
“Eerie?” Tipped Hat called.
The mare jumped. She looked up to see Tipped standing at his store’s entrance, a bemused look on his face. He was a broad-chested gray earth pony with a newsboy cap tipped to the side atop his combed black mane.
“Er...” He stepped further out the door, his eyes casting up and down the street. At this hour, this part of Canterlot was fairly quiet. “Who are you talking to, filly?”
Eerie turned to look at Scarlet with a long, pleading face.
Scarlet was floating behind Eerie in a silk dress. She simply patted her silver curls with a smoky hoof and turned her muzzle up. “I warned you about carrying on with me in public, pumpkin!” Then with a billow of smoke, the ghost shrank back into her teapot, out of sight.
The goods were purchased. The chit chat and hoof-contact had been endured.
Eerie Lantern felt like she’d been beaten into a paste and baked into a pie.
At least they were out of town now. It was evening, so traffic was light coming down the mountain. Canterlot shrank steadily behind them.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Scarlet’s voice squeaked from the teapot.
“Next time, just possess me and do it yourself,” Eerie intoned.
Her aura shone from under her stringy orange mane, the basket bobbing unevenly next to her. Having a short horn meant her magic power wasn’t always the most reliable. As far as handicaps went, it wasn’t the worst. She could still use magic after all.
In her opinion, what made her horn really strange was the fact that it was noticeably crooked. This, Eerie suspected, was why she could see ghosts.
“Possess you to run errands?” Scarlet emerged from the teapot’s spout like a genie, all smoke and flash, her translucent face contorted in disgust. “I wouldn’t dream of wasting such a precious bond on something so pedestrian!”
Eerie arched an eyebrow. “You whine for possession all the time.”
“Yes! To do all the wonderful things you living can still do. Drink tea! Eat cake! Dance!” Scarlet twirled, smoke whipping about her as she smiled up at the burgeoning night sky.
Eerie rolled her eyes. “Sooo important.”
“Hmph!” Scarlet crossed her forelegs and turned her face away. “So rude! When you’re dead and still drifting around like a storm cloud, I’d like to see you pooh-pooh such divine pleasures!”
Eerie opened her mouth to reply, but stopped abruptly when she saw a light blue-gray unicorn with dark hair and heavy eye makeup standing in the road. They were near the base of the mountain, Canterlot no longer in sight. It was rare that other ponies were on the road at this time.
Eerie’s breath caught as she slowed to a stop.
A robber, maybe?
The stranger was staring with lidded eyes and a blank expression, but she was clearly focused on Eerie.
Eerie stared back, fresh sweat already dampening her coat anew.
Where did she come from? Did I really let my guard down that badly? But no one is ever out here this late!
The two unicorns watched each other for what felt like a long time.
The stranger spoke first, her head tilting to the side. “Woah. Were you, like, talking to a ghost or something?” Her voice dripped with a kind of ennui.
Eerie was so taken aback by the question that her wide eyes snapped up to Scarlet.
Scarlet mirrored Eerie’s expression and drifted backward a little. “Now don’t you go looking at me, pumpkin! What in the hay do you expect me to do? She can only see you, remember?”
Eerie took a deep breath. She looked at the strange unicorn and tried to tamp down her growing trembles.
Be convincing, be convincing, be convincing—
“G-Ghost? Wh-What ghost?” She laughed. Or tried to. The sound shared more in common with a duck suffering from laryngitis, even to Eerie.
Scarlet just hoofed her face.
The stranger arched an eyebrow and came closer. “I’ve seen you around before. You come up to Canterlot once a month, right?”
“Yes?” Eerie started to backpedal, her ears drooping.
Should I run? I should probably run. But she’s a unicorn, she could attack me with magic! Wouldn’t I be safer facing her straight on?
The indecision left Eerie feeling too afraid to do anything but continue to retreat backward.
The strange unicorn didn’t stop her advance. “And you sell those spooky pumpkins and gourds for Nightmare Night every year, don’t you?”
“Th-That’s right.” Eerie’s aura flickered as her power dipped, and she only just managed to catch the basket before it crashed to the road.
Scarlet let out a huff. “Be careful with my teapot!”
Eerie's rear hoof caught on a rock, and she stumbled onto her rump. She watched with shortening breath as the stranger closed in. She squeezed her eyes shut and pinned her ears, waiting for the end to come—
“Cool. I was wondering if we could, like, have lunch or something.”
Eerie cracked open one eye as one ear quivered back up. The stranger had stopped in front of her.
“Wh-What?” Eerie looked the unicorn over once, quickly.
No knife. No capture net. No free literature.
She noted the mare’s cutie mark: a purple heart and four outward-facing crescent moons.
The strange unicorn spoke again, apparently unfazed by Eerie’s lack of participation. “My sister has been on my case to make new friends for-like-ever, but none of the ponies I know seem to understand the darkness in my soul.” She gave a small shrug. “Not surprising. It’s like, blacker than black.”
Eerie’s raised ear drooped. “O-kay...?”
“Someone’s a few oranges short of a glass of OJ,” Scarlet muttered. Eerie gave the basket a hard shake, making the ghost gasp out: “Rude!”
“My name’s Moonlight Raven,” the unicorn said. “You’re Eerie…?” she tilted her head to the side meaningfully.
Eerie drew up, her eyes going wide. “Oh! Er, Lantern! Eerie Lantern. That’s me.” She smiled with effort.
Moonlight gave a small nod. “Nice. So, like, tomorrow then?”
Eerie stared blankly. “Tomorrow, what?”
“Lunch. Noon. I’d like to bring my sister, just so she can see that I’m…” Moonlight furrowed her brow and looked up with a low hum.
Eerie blinked once. Twice. “S-So that she can see you’re t-trying to make... friends?” She squinted one eye on the last word.
Moonlight’s eyebrows lifted. “Woah. Our spirits are totally on the same wavelength.” She began to walk around, apparently resuming her trek back up to Canterlot. The faintest hints of a smile was on her lips. “Cool. Should’ve known I’d be friends with a mare who can see the dead.”
“B-But I can’t see the dead!” Eerie blurted. Her heart was in her throat. “And we aren’t friends! Plus, you don’t know where I live!”
Moonlight paused and glanced back at her. “Oh, so you don’t live at that creepy little cottage near Foal Mountain anymore?”
“Er, yes? Wait, no! Um.” Eerie gave her head a hard shake. “Sorry. I’m confused. How do you know where I live?”
Is she a stalker? I KNEW I should have gotten a guard Cerberus!
“Sometimes I take long walks out that way.” Moonlight let her gaze drift up to the darkening sky. “I like to watch the shadows grow as the sun sets. At night, it’s like seeing into the abyss.”
Scarlet whistled. “Pumpkin, this mare ain’t just short oranges, heck she’s short a tall glass!”
“Hush!” Eerie snapped at her.
“Me, or…?” Moonlight paused to gesture where Scarlet was floating.
“Her!” Then Eerie’s mouth fell open with horror. “Shit! No, I meant—!”
“It’s okay, you know.” Moonlight squinted her eyes as she looked in Scarlet's direction. “I can’t see her, but I can, like, feel her. It’s a mare, right? I'm guessing an earth pony, too. They have harsh auras.”
Scarlet scoffed, her hooves going to her smoky hips. “Who has a harsh aura?”
Eerie just stared at Moonlight. Does she actually sense the dead like I do? She guessed where Scarlet was, and even what she was, but...
Moonlight nodded like Eerie’s silence was a sufficient answer. “Whenever I bought pumpkins from you, I always kind of suspected… But then I saw you two talking tonight, and was like, ‘Woah.’ Sometimes, it's just fate.” She turned and resumed walking. “I’ll bring drinks tomorrow. My sister will bring sandwiches. Don’t worry about doing anything else. I don’t eat much anyway.”
Eerie Lantern watched her go, one eye twitching.
Scarlet Orange let out something between a hum and a chuckle. “My stars! It seems Chateau Lantern will have a new kind of haunting!”
The words hung in the air like a thick fog.
Then Eerie’s eyes brightened. She looked at Scarlet, her ears pricked forward and her lips pursing.
Scarlet batted her eyes under the attention. Then her face lengthened.
“Eerie Lantern, tell me you aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking!” She shook her head vehemently. “The answer is absolutely not! If you didn’t want that pony to come, you should’ve told her ‘no’!”
Eerie hastily levitated the basket and took off at a brisk trot for home. Her heart was hammering hard in her chest. “I told her we weren’t friends! Considering how well my brain was working, I think that was the best I could manage as far as discouragement goes! I mean, who does that? Just walks up to a pony and says, ‘We’re friends, now!’” Eerie gave her mane a hard shake, her jaw tightening. “You know who does that? Murderers! Thieves! Politicians!”
She glanced up at Scarlet. The ghost wasn’t glaring at her… She was looking at her with pity.
Pity for the handicapped unicorn who was terrified of other ponies.
Eerie hated pity.
“It’s fine! I’m fine!” Eerie snapped, tearing her eyes away. “Listen, if we scare those two enough, then I’ll never have to worry about ponies trying to befriend me again! Maybe even Tipped will know better than to trade words with me when I go shopping, and I can finally have the kind of life I want. Quiet! Alone!”
Out of the corner of her gaze, she could see her friend shaking her head. “Alone, but for the dead,” Scarlet muttered.
"Whatever."
Eerie paused, another idea coming to her. “Scarlet, how scary can you howl?”
Scarlet gasped, her hoof going to her chest. “Well, I never! I do not howl. I’ll have you know, I once sang in the opera!”
“Eh. Close enough.”
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I don't see many stories with those two ponies, Moonlight and Sunshine, so this should be an interesting read.
9924750
I've always wanted to do a fic with them! They looked like so much fun.
Please continue. This is great.
Oooh, this is real good. Well written with a unique and appealing concept. Following with great anticipation.
What could go wrong?
Oh finally, a character that wants to be a loner. I always hated interacting with people IRL, so it's nice to see a character that agrees.
9926485
Yes! I thought it was such an obvious conflict to explore, considering the entire show is centered on friendship. I don't find enough stories centered on breaking through to someone who is anti-social.
Who are Moonlight Raven and Sunshine Smiles, and where are they from?
9926908
We see them for the first time in the season 5 episode Canterlot Boutique.
Great premise, great characterisation, great dialogue.
Very much looking forward to the next chapter.
In case it wasn't obvious already, I think this is great!
9935045
That's very kind of you! Thank you so much.
I think opera would be more of a wail. Possibly screech?
9945627
True! Maybe... a metal scream?
Ugh, now I'm thinking of Scarlet singing Judas Priest or Iron Maiden XD
Well, I'm hooked. There's a lot of fun stuff going on here. The characters are so delightfully quirky too!
Ooh, this is a great start for my favorite background duo and a pair of adorable OCs. I shall keep reading!