Twilight, in an effort to calm her brain down from its "over-calculation", took a look around her surroundings. Nothing but the vast, pitch-black darkness that was the forest. Only the ground in front of her face was visible. She couldn't even see if there were any trees or if the darkness was just that: Darkness.
What was I running from? she thought, now calmed enough to, obviously, be able to think and analyze her situation. She lifted her head and squinted through the darkness for a good minute. When her eyes became heavy, she lowered her head in defeat. There was nothing that could be able to gaze through darkness that dark.
Noticed a pebble in front of her, she moved her limped hooves and toyed with it. There went the pebble to one side, then to the other, to the other, to the other... These boring, repetitive actions gave Twilight more time for ration thinking. Oh, how she hated being alone. What was she to do, stay in the forest forever? She couldn't handle that; The solitude would no doubt affect her within a week, not to mention how she'd more than likely die of hunger around that time, where her carcass would've been devoured by carnivores. She just wanted to go home!
"What home?" Twilight asked herself. Did she even have one? She furrowed her brow, struggling to remember anything that happened before. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember a thing. No friends, no family, no home...
She had just noticed her hoof absentmindedly playing with a pebble and drew it back. A look of horror then flushed on her face. She didn't lose just her memories of any possible friends or acquaintances; She had absolutely no idea who she was.
Her entire foreleg was shaking. She hadn't a clue whether this was her hoof to begin with, or if she somehow changed in form. If it was the latter, what was her previous form, and how could've she arrived in the forest? Was it... her home?
Twilight felt herself hyperventilating as she could feel her brain forcing her body to shut down from the severity of what was dawning on her. She collapsed once again on the ground, her vision and senses blurring. Just then, a faint thought reached Twilight, crystal clear, though the thought had a voice, and it was a gentle, caring female voice she hadn't recognized in the slightest. Either wait, the voice had said one thing: "Remember."
The thought was right; She needed to remember. If she could remember at least something, she'd be fine for the moment. Twilight couldn't give up now, that was certain. She willed her body to stay active for just a bit more and she tried even harder to remember, her face straining from the effort. Something, anything that was even remotely relevant would do.
Green. Bright green flashed in her mind, and Twilight yelled in pain. She felt as if she were being burned alive. And then, for a split second, a malevolent face with an expression of pure evil flashed in her mind, sending chills down her spine and created her scream of pain into a scream of terror.
Birds, disrupted by the noise, flew off in flocks, leaving Twilight truly alone to suffer.
Author's Note
Guess what the bright green was? Did you guess? You guessed right, didn't you?
Empty.
It was a strange word, wasn't it? It was one of those words that had different meanings. The common and most iconic definition of the word empty was the opposite of full, implying matter was involved, but was taken away. A common synonymous event would be an entire family passing, making the family from full to empty in ten seconds flat, or, as a simpler alternative, taking water away from a glass. It was easy to identify with this type of empty, as everyone has experienced, at least, an empty glass.
But empty as an emotion? An entirely different thing. You couldn't relate it to an opposite that you could touch. It had no matter to begin with. Most people don't experience this emotional empty; they take everything for granted because they fully believe they can never have emptiness within themselves. Such a powerful thing denial can be to others. The smaller portion of people who have felt emptiness know exactly what it means. In fact, to feel empty was to feel... like something was missing.
For Twilight Sparkle, everything was missing. But she couldn't dwell on that now. She was too busy running for her life. Snapping on twigs, jumping over logs, ignoring all the bugs that swatted in her face... It would seem like what she was running from was something that'd frighten the living daylights out of any pony, something that could gobble her up in a big tasty stew. That wasn't the case, however. She was running, simply, from the emptiness, though she didn't realize it then. With the panting and the fear, running for her life wouldn't allow her to think straight. Her brain was focused on one thing and one thing alone: What was in front of her, which was nothing but the darkness of the trees. The darkness of the unknown. The darkness... of the emptiness.
When her brain finally acknowledged that Twilight didn't know what she was running from, her entire body stopped and collapsed in a heap on the cold, barren dirt. Try as she might, she couldn't will her body to get up, and she soon gave up. Her heavy panting grew softer and more silent. Her body was calming down, but her brain certainly wasn't. Her brain might've calmed down in unison with her body if only it could process and analyze. But how could it? It needed to know what happened that brought Twilight running for her life from seemingly nothing.
Problem was, Twilight couldn't remember a thing.
Author's Note
Short prologue, but we've got more chapters ahead.
This was just a silly idea that popped in my head, basically. I'll probably work on this as a side project in the future.