Conceptualizations

Rating: Possibly Dark, Possibly Teen

The lights are there, I know they are, they have to be, I’ve SEEN THEM. Starshimmer is an ordinary earth pony, no special background, no weird friends, no history of insanity or bouts of madness, and yet she’s different. She lives in Ponyville, as it seems more and more ponies do these days, the little town had grown a lot in the past few years. She’s been to the Everfree Forest more than most, and she cannot seem to fathom why. All she knows is that something keeps drawing her there, something strange, something important, something everypony should know about, something that is hidden away to keep it safe, but what? It all began after the return of Nightmare Moon, and her final defeat in the old castle ruins deep within Everfree. Every time she goes to the Forest she sees them, the lights, the shimmering, twinkling lights, they’re always there, hiding in the darkness and the shadows, disappearing whenever she tries to catch them, and nopony else ever sees them, even when they’re looking right at them. Starshimmer doesn’t know what the lights mean, only that they remind her of the stars in the sky, only ever twinkling in the dark, just out of reach. Now she has returned to the Everfree Forest, alone this time, though she doesn’t know why, and this time she intends to find out the secret of the lights, the stars, and just what their purpose is. This journey will lead to long untold pieces of the past, lost to the ravages of time, magic so ancient it dwarfs the Elements of Harmony by millennia, before the time of the ponies when the moon and sun were moved by the magic of the planet itself, and finally to the magic of the stars, a magic that dates back before the earth, before Harmony and Chaos, the power of the stars themselves, a power steeped in mystery, and so great it’s true potential has never been breached. When even the moon fears the nightmares, what is certain but the uncertainty. Sometimes there is more truth in a lie than in what is right, sometimes, the greatest dream becomes the worst nightmare, and sometimes even when you’ve woken up, the nightmare doesn’t end.