Blind Eye

   The creature before him was, by all means, horrific. He didn't scream, however, or cry, or run away. The thing before him was too much a replica of himself. Sad. A misunderstood being out of the legends and depths of the Everfree forest, told to the naughty babies and disobedient schoolchildren, an old-mares-tale meant to keep others from wandering off.

Of course, these were usually read to fillies and foals whose parents had time to tell them.

He never was told to scream.

   He blinked, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He knew that there was a slight possibility that the monster was yet another hallucination in a dream, put that would be nearly impossible. Dreams did not explain why it smiled at him, mouth curling impossibly around it's head, and the teeth that had looked rusted and decayed. He didn't even dream that night.

   He shaked off the last sheet that was strewn across the bed, and lazily walked over to the dark creature. He sat down on the plush rug, looking up at it with caramel eyes. It looked down at him, and he heard a sharp crack as it did, and he felt it's questions bore into him like nails.

   It's eyes were a feature that he noticed quite quickly. The left one, it was sewn shut. The upper eyelid was sewn to the bottom one, and it looked like there wasn't even an eye underneath them. The string used to connect them looked like copper, and perhaps it was, and it looked like the thing had been crying out of the seams. It was not tears, no, it was blood. Blood and seawater cascaded down the thin cheekbone and then fell to the ground. Some of it looked dried.

   The other eye looked like one large pupil, the thin circle of white surrounding it looked bloodshot. It had large eyes, and a large mouth, but the actual head looked like a regular pony's. Though the skull looked cracked a bit, seen through the sickly white skin it had, as if it couldn't hold its contents and may fall apart. It had no hair, only small scars and cuts, which also showed small drops of blood dripping out. The ears were normal, if not a tad large, and he could see some of the veins running through them.

   The other thing that the child noticed were its forelegs. The right one looked charred, burned and black. This was sewn onto the body, with the same wire used to sew shut the one eye. The skin, which was the only thing shown since the fur looked like it had been singed off, was crisp and showed small spots of regular white flakes.

   The rest of the body was seemingly okay, besides the fact that the thing looked starved. Bones and ribs were seen protruding out of its frame, and there were cuts and scars on the body which made it look like it had been abused. The back, where vertebrae jutted out like spines, were two large bumps, just behind the ribcage. He supposed that there were wings there once, but were torn or cut off. This must've been true, because whenever the creature flexed, the two lumps moved as when a Pegasus' wings do when trying to lift off.

   Besides this, the tail looked like it was made purely out of darkness, as it flowed with the shadows. There were chunks of seaweed in there too, tangled in the black void that passed for hair. The thing had no Cutie Mark upon its flank. Instead, the shadowy tail seemed to seep into the skin skin around the base, creating swirling patterns whenever it moved.

He took a moment to view the creature, eyes unyielding. He paused, and caught his breath as he formed the words in his mouth, still tired from a night's sleep. "What's your name?" he asked innocently, blinking in the collision of the shadows it created and the sunshine outside. He yawned, once, twice, before looking back at the monster.

   It paused momentarily, looking at the foal with the good eye, before replying. "What would you like my name to be?"

It said as it tilted its head slightly to the side, again with a loud crack of bones snapping.

It's voice was rough, as if someone had tried to rip out the creature's throat. It was like choking on gravel, a dark, terrifying sound that chilled the spine. He shivered as he heard it, but still thought over the question it answered with. He turned around, catching a glimpse of the bookshelf that sat behind them. One of the tomes, with a worn out leather cover, caught his eye.

   It was one of his favorite books, a fantasy story called The Velveteen Rabbit. He remembered that the main hero, a stuffed toy bunny, had lost an eye on the way back home so it could see his master again. He looked back up to the creature and smiled, seeing that it too had no use of the left eye, just like his childhood hero.

   "I'll call you ... Charlie. I like that name." he replied finally as he stood up and trotted over to his desk and pulled out a pencil and paper. He looked back at it, before fetching the book off of the shelf.

   "Chaaarliie..." it said to itself as it dragged out the syllables one by one. It looked around, and then back at the boy. He was drawing a haphazard picture of the creature, scribbling every detail as a child would do in their own way. After a few moments of uncounted silence, and he felt satisfied with the picture, he folded it crisply and stuck it in the middle of the book. The thing never looked away, sort of mesmerized by the child's movements.

When the boy was done, and the old book was left neatly upon the shelf, he again trotted over to the monster. Never quivering or shaking, he sat down on the plush carpet, looking at the shadowy being once more.

"Would you like to be my friend?"