Thump. Thump. Thump.
The muffled sound of a pony’s hoofsteps echoed out into the night, interrupting the quiet of the remote forest.
The pony walked across the soft pine ground, looking around uneasily. The only audible sounds being his hoofsteps, his heartbeat, and his rapid breathing. The forest was dead quiet.
Looking up at the only source of light, he spotted the moon hanging over the tree canopy. It was barely visible.
“Darn it,” he whispered to himself, “I should have made camp for the night.” It would have been the wise thing to do, of course, but he felt that the town could only be a couple more kilotrots away. It had to be; he could make it that night, and there was no point stopping.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His hoofsteps seemed to grow louder and he slightly accelerated his pace. Surely, if he kept going, he would find the town. Perhaps all he had to do was go over the next hill, and the lights would appear on the horizon.
Thump. Thump. He reached the top of the slight incline. No such luck.
He kept walking for what seemed like years, kept company only by his thoughts. Have I seen that tree before? He shook his head violently, getting rid of the treacherous thought. He had a cutie mark in navigation, and he could always, no matter the circumstances, follow a straight line.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
But can I be sure? What if I’m travelling in circles? What if... no. No. I can’t think like that; I have to keep going.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
How long have I been walking? Five minutes? Ten hours? What if I’ve stumbled into a cursed forest, a place where the sun never sets?
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Why am I so uneasy? Well... it must be because the forest is so silent. Come to think of it, why’s the forest so silent?
Thump. Thump. He stopped as the realization struck him.
He was terrified.
It had been so easy to overlook, really. It was perfectly natural, after all, for the pony mind to blindly accept raw information from the senses. It seemed obvious that the brain would only analyze the information if it found a need to.
I’m a pegasus, he told himself. He had already come to a conclusion, but he repeated it inside his head. Perhaps he was trying to convince himself. My bones are hollow, and my body is configured for minimal weight.
Gulping, he looked down at the forest floor.
The ground is covered with soft pine. I’m not making any noise as I walk.
So why can I hear footsteps?
He felt paralysed. He needed to turn his head. He didn’t want to, be he desperately needed to. Slowly, his body complied.
A high pitched scream echoed through the forest.
He wanted to run, but he was paralysed. He wanted to fly, but his wing was wrapped in a restrictive bandage. He wanted to fight, to bluff, to do bucking anything other than standing there like an idiot. His body, however, would not move.
The creature pounced, and he fell.
The next morning, dozens of Search and Rescue pegasi were flying, scouring the forest for the pony who hadn’t returned home the previous night. At around one PM, an assisting police officer found the distinctive signs of a pegasus crash.
The search refocused in that area, and ground based royal guard units were called in to assist the rescuers. Two hours later, the mutilated body of a pony was found approximately three hours walking distance away from the crash site. The cause of death was listed as an “unknown attack”, and the investigation was dropped just a few days later.