Chapter One - Gaze Not Into The Abyss
The cool blanket of night had only just recently fallen over the vast expanse of the Pie family rock farm half an hour ago, the sun still barely clinging to view. Its last few waning beams stretched thin and far over the horizon to paint the world in soft reds as a very happy little pink pony trotted away from the family barn.
She was in good spirits, incredible even. Especially compared to her usual feelings of despair. Because today, today she had finally realized her calling in life. To bring a smile to the face of every pony young and old with spectacular festivities.
The first of which she was actually just heading back from cleaning up. She had had a wonderful day of merriment with her family, actually made them smile. Her own mother, her father, smiling! She never thought she would see the day.
She was in fact, so caught up in the feeling of contentment that in her merry trotting, she tripped facefirst over something in the fields with a loud squeal.
She picked herself up from the ground, quickly dusting herself off as she inspected in front of her to find what had caused her to fall, her eyes coming to rest on...a rock.
She chuckled to herself as she picked the item up. Of course, it had been a rock, what else would it be! She turned it this way and that and slowly inspected it. It was perfectly round, and bleached white, save for veins of red running thickly from one side and thinning out as they reached the other. On the side where the red veins were thinnest was a perfectly round hole. She had initially taken the hole for a discoloration and had squeaked when her hoof clipped the opening slightly.
“Oop! It sorta looks like an eyeball, how spooky!” She said with a slightly nervous tinge to her voice. Of course, Granny Pie had long since imparted the ancient wisdom to deal with spookiness so she did the only sensible thing and laughed.
She giggled softly as she looked it over, deciding to look it dead into its “eyehole” Helloooooo, is anybody….home….”
Her smile slowly fell from her face as she stared into the hole. Her first note would be blackness. The little hole. Even with the sun behind her, faintly casting light into it was still quite a bit darker than it should be. Darker than any hole that size has any right to be. She could not see the back of it, as if it had none.
As she looked longer, deeper, she heard something, a soft tremble of the wind, exacerbated by her young, imaginative mind perhaps. Or perhaps something more nefarious. She thought she saw something, a faint glimmer. Perhaps a small gem inside of the rock reflecting the faint remaining light.
She gazed deeper...ever deeper into the tiny entrance to the abyss to get a closer look. And finally, after several long moments…
something gazed back.
A strange eye snapped open, staring deep into her own. It seemed to glow ever so softly within the blackness in a faint sickly white.
Her breath caught in her throat, hitching with a small, ineffectual half-formed yelp as she felt paralyzed by the gaze. It did not seem malicious. If anything it seemed at best curious, perhaps even a bit indifferent. Nonetheless, it stared at her as if expecting her to do something. The longer she stared the more she could swear she heard a voice creeping sickeningly along the back of her skull, telling her to-
Go inside
With a startled whinny she pulled her head back all at once and dropped the stone, stomping it violently, hard enough to make a small crater with the hole facing down into the dirt, turning and quickly bolting back towards her house, her hair losing all of the marvelous volume it has gained earlier as suddenly as it had appeared.
She ran fast, faster than perhaps she ever had, her lungs burning as she fought to draw breath fast enough to sustain the leg-burning pace of her gallop, her sprint to put as much distance between herself and that as she possibly could, aching for the safety of her soft, cozy bed within which she could hide her little head and try to forget what she had seen.
She did not ease her pace until at least three doors were between her and the object of her fear, locking herself away in her room without so much as a word to her concerned parents and sisters, drawing the blinds and lighting an oil lamp at her bedside table before she curled into her sheets with a distressed whimper. Her hind hoof and lungs aching softly from the experience.
She was not sure what...what or who she had locked eyes with, but she knew she had seen it
Knew that she had heard it.
It had called to her, there was no doubt, and the way in which it did so left very little room for argument. As much as she tried to distract herself by making the situation amusing, there had been nothing mirthful or humorous about whatever strange, unwanted contact with a strange presence had been foisted onto her fragile, youthful psyche.
Pinkie Pie, as seemed to happen all too often, found herself once more bereft of a giggle to give.
As she slowly slipped out of her bed and peeked out of a gap in her curtains, in the final dying rays of the sun’s light she saw it again.
And it was staring at her.
She had been quite sure that she had made sure to drop it face down when she galloped away. Maybe it had rolled. But there it lay still, in the crater she had stomped it into. Perhaps her sisters had repositioned it as a goof? But they had gone in before her, and not enough time had passed to go there and back unless they had run even faster than Pinkie had.
But there it lay, peering into her soul even as the absence of light obscured her sight of it. She could still feel it staring her down, the feeling did not abate.
Even as she closed her curtains and slipped back into her bed, the feeling did not abate.
Even as she closed her eyes, pushing her head beneath her pillow and turning off the lights, the feeling did into abate.
But even as uneasy as she was, today had been a very tiring day for a little filly. All of this excitement to top it off left her eyes fluttering shut as the adrenaline of her earlier dash faded and exhaustion set into her diminutive frame. Her body slumped slowly and with a soft, uneasy snore, she imbibed the sleep of the dead.
And she dreamed.