"When I was a little filly and the sun was going down..."
The sun was setting on the Pie family's rock farm, the work for the day was finished, and only one of the three Pie sisters had yet to return inside with their parents. Pinkamena Diane Pie sat cross-legged on a particularly comfortable rock she liked to use as a seat, staring at the sun as she absent-mindedly played with her straight pink hair.
"Pinkie, there you are."
"Granny!" the young girl whipped around to face the older woman, a smile growing to match the one on her grandmother's wizened face, "I thought you weren't going to make it back here this month."
"Oh come now, my little Pinkie," Granny kneeled down to level with her granddaughter, idly brushing a strand of her frizzy gray hair out of her face, "have I ever missed a month before now?"
"I guess not," Pinkie smiled sheepishly and started fidgeting, "but I was just worried, since you usually make it by lunchtime."
"And is that why you stayed out when everyone's already gone inside?" she didn't need to wait for Pinkie's nod to know the answer, "Well, I'm here now, so why don't we head inside before it gets too dark?"
"The darkness and the shadows they would always make me frown..."
"Yeah, and I think I smell dinner too!" Pinkie skipped towards the house, but stopped when she noticed she was alone, "Granny Pie?"
"I'll be with you in a moment dear," she hadn't moved from her spot near Pinkie's rock, and her voice was oddly distant, "I'll catch up, don't worry."
"Okay," Pinkie hesitated, then smiled as a thought occured to her, "I'll let everybody know you're here!"
Granny Pie didn't react as her granddaughter ran into the house, instead she just glared into the darkness, as if daring it to come at her. In just a moment however, she reformed her kindly old smile and turned back to the house.
Dinner had passed as joyfully as it ever did when Granny Pie arrived, and before long the Pie children had been hurried up to bed as per the usual.
Pinkie was usually a deep sleeper, but tonight she found herself unusually restless, and no matter what position she tried, sleep refused to come to her. And so she was sitting on top of the covers, counting sheep to no avail, when a strange light suddenly shone in from her window, supplanting the familiar moonlight.
Pinkie practically jumped off her bed to get to the window, and the sight beyond it was mystifying.
A wall of shimmering light was just outside her window, rippling and shimmering like water.
"Magic..." it was the only explanation, even though she knew there weren't any mages living nearby, it had to be magic.
Pinkie wasted no time running out of her room and down the stairs to the front door, she flung it open and ran outside, barely having the time to register the fact that Granny was on the other side of the shimmering wall.
"I'd hide under my pillows, from what I thought I'd saw..."
It was such a blur that Pinkie had trouble processing what had happened, she'd been running a little too fast and she couldn't stop when she reached the wall, there were those eyes and Granny yelled and pushed her and now she was wet.
But it wasn't over, Pinkie could still see Granny by the moonlight, fighting those monsters.
No, no there couldn't be any monsters, she was just dreaming, right? It was just a nightmare, and she just had to go to sleep and it would be over, right?
Pinkie didn't know how she'd ended up in her bed, but she wasn't complaining as she pressed her pillow over her head as though her life depended on it.
"Pinkamena, that's no way to deal with your fears," Pinkie gasped and looked to see Granny standing there, covered with something shiny, "come with me."
Pinkie froze, this wasn't the warm and loving Granny she knew, she was cold, and she was frightening.
"Come on Pinkie," Granny clasped the girl's hands in her own, her voice warming over as she spoke, "you gotta stand up tall, it's time you learned to face your fears."
Pinkie felt herself getting out of bed despite herself, and before she knew what was happening she was outside again, passing through the wall with Granny.
"Look around you Pinkamena, and tell me what you see." the chill returned to Granny's voice and Pinkie couldn't help but comply.
"M-monsters," it was the only word Pinkie could use to describe them, strange, fearsome creatures, even cut up as they were, they looked twisted and angry, something shiny was pooled around them.
"That's a good answer," Granny led her granddaughter somewhat forcefully to one of the creatures, which seemed to have a pole stuck in it, "what we're looking at is a monster, and you're going to kill it."
"What?" Pinkie looked from Granny to the monster in front of her, and she realised that it was in fact breathing faintly.
"I wish that it didn't have to be this way, but I was about your age when I killed my first." Granny drew out a knife as she spoke, holding it up to reflect the moonlight.
"B-but why me?" Pinkie was on the verge of tears as she spoke, "Why can't you k-k-" her breath caught in her throat as she spoke.
"Because this monster didn't come for me," Granny placed the knife in Pinkie's hands as she spoke, "this monster came to take away your happiness."
"What do you mean?" tears were starting to stream from Pinkie's eyes as she gripped the knife shakily.
"Every month, they come at the full moon," Granny moved her hands to the girl's shoulders, leading her closer to the wounded monster, "they come to take away your mother, your father, and your sisters forever, and they'll do it if you can't stop them."
Pinkie was right in front of the monster now, the monster that wanted to take her family away, the monster that Granny said she had to stop.
Pinkie raised up Granny's knife and screamed as she brought it down again and again, not caring if she woke anyone up, not caring that she was getting wet and shiny like Granny was, not caring about the monster's pitiful whining as it died.
"Good job Pinkie," Granny kissed the top of her head as she stopped, "now you wait here, I need to clean up the blood we tracked inside."
Blood.
She was covered in blood, kneeling in blood, holding a blood-stained knife.
What might have been pleasant dreams in another life were nothing but bloody nightmares as she passed out from exhaustion.
Pinkie learned a lot about the 'monsters' that she saw that night, Granny started teaching her every night about the things she called Shadows.
She learned that the Shadows appeared every month on the full moon, and that they disappeared when the light of Celestia's sun touched them, she learned how best to kill them, and she learned why she needed to.
"The Guard doesn't care about us regular humans out here in the sticks," she told Pinkie harshly when she asked, "that's why we need to protect our families ourselves."
But most of all, Pinkie learned the meaning of sadness, a feeling that grew every month as Granny 'let' her participate in the defense of her home more and more.
She learned the truth about the darkness.
Twilight could only stare blankly at the woman in front of her, soaked in blood and laughing while surrounded by corpses.
She knew she was just human, but at that moment she looked more like a demon.
Author's Note
To be continued.
In a completely separate story with no direct ties to the main plot of this story.
So yeah, I've had an idea for a humanized AU for a while now, but I hadn't gotten to writing anything for it until now.
Also, I just wrote this all in one stream-of-consciousness sitting, so it might be a tad rough, and if anyone wants to edit or proofread this and/or later installments in my AU, just PM me.
One last note, this story was inspired by General Mumbles' Crack Up The Creepy, which I listened to on repeat the entire time I was writing this.
