Shadow Prophet

The next day...

"Yeah, right there! No wait, a little to the left! That's it!" The construction stallion called to the unicorn, who was using his magic to lift a sign up to the front of Shadow Prophet's house. It read, "Oddities." Short, but it got the point across. Eventually, the sign was rested against the nails placed in the wall, and the unicorn's magical aura faded away from it. The worker released a heavy breath, and one of his companions galloped up to him with a bottle of water, which he promptly downed.

Inside the home of Shadow Prophet, he had remodeled the den, which was the room one would trot into upon entrance, into the interior of a shop. Earlier that day, along with the small construction squad, came all of his old belongings. When the carriage pulled up, he thought, Surprising. They didn't burn my house down in the short time between me leaving and them collecting my things. Four hours later, he had set it all up.

Placing a two-headed skull on the edge of a shelf, he trotted back and examined his new store. "Pretty nice, if I do say so myself," Shadow said to himself.

"Yeah," a voice behind him replied. Shadow twirled around and saw it was the blue pegasus he had risked his hooves to save two nights before. He remembered that he should replace his bandages.

Rainbow Dash was standing in the door, looking drowsy and dazed, small bags under her eyes. She seemed distant, still recovering from the shock of almost having her eye gouged out from a cake knife five seconds after she had been having tons of fun.

"Um, hi there... Rainbow Dash." Shadow didn't know how to treat this situation. He shifted uneasily from wounded hoof to wounded hoof.

"I..." Rainbow looked to the floor, then back to Shadow, "I just wanted to thank you. I don't know how I could repay you." She said this in the raspy, quiet voice of somepony who hadn't had anything to drink so far today. The blue mare then seemed to think for a while before saying in the same voice, "I know. I could be your assistant for a while. You know, help you around the shop."

Shadow shook his head, "No thanks. You don't need to repay me. It was an act of civil duty." He said this because he didn't want somepony in his mane trying to quote unquote "help" him.

Rainbow Dash let out a quick breath, a one-beat laugh. "You know, when that knife was heading for me, everything slowed down. I felt like it was never going to get to me. But I knew that was a lie. I knew it eventually would hit me and pop my eye, leaving me half-blind for the rest of my life. But then you came out of nowhere, like some sort of guardian angel, and then it never did hit me. Thanks to you. And your sacrifice." She nodded toward his bandaged hooves. "And so if you won't let me repay you, at least answer me this: how did you get there in time to stop it? IT must have been only a second and a half or something. How did you react that fast?"

Shadow's eyes widened and he started blubbering, "Well, uh, I... um, I, well, you know, I just..." A blue hoof a shade brighter than him was pressed against his lips, silencing him. Rainbow Dash was right in front of him. "Cut the crap," she said. " Just tell me. I only want to know the simple truth."

Shadow Prophet sighed. He sat down on his rump and set his upper hooves on the ground in front of him. He looked down at the wooden floor, and started tracing the dark patterns in the floor's surface. He looked up at Rainbow Dash and said, "Promise you won't freak out."

Rainbow Dash crossed her chest with her hoof. "Pinkie promise," she said.

"Okay. To tell the truth, I've never really been... normal." Rainbow Dash sat down next to Shadow, listening intently.

"Sometimes I like to deny it, or think that whatever causes it is gone, but it always stays. I..." he looked at Rainbow with a pleading face, and she somehow knew she was seeing a part of him only a small number of ponies had ever seen. "I can see into the future."

Rainbow Dash instantly went into denial. "But that's impossible!"

Shadow looked at her with that same pleading face, and she began to get angry. "What is this, some kind of practical joke? This is my life we're talking about, destiny! And you're going to joke about it and expect me to believe that crap?! Well I'm not falling for it, bud!" She put extreme emphasis on the word "bud," like she expressed all of her rage in that one title.

Shadow's voice cracked, but it was calm, and he seemed on the verge of tears. "No, please, Rainbow Dash! They always said that! They always said it was impossible but it's not! I was far away from you, and I started running in there before the Doctor even fell!"

Rainbow Dash rubbed her face and looked at him. Angrily, between gritted teeth, she said, "Fuck you," and yanked open the door, trotted out, and slammed it behind her. Shadow sat in his empty shop and stared with bewilderment at the door which Rainbow had left from. He sat there, and thought he may as well never move, may as well sit there until he died of either starvation or of thirst. But it was not meant to be, for only ten minutes had passed, before there was an angry knock at the door which Shadow was looking at. "Go away, Rainbow!" He yelled. The voice which replied was not Rainbow's voice, but Twilight's, "Let me in, Shadow Prophet!"

The stallion looked back to the floor and said passively, "It's unlocked." The door burst open, hitting the wall and almost ricocheting enough to touch the Princess, but not quite. "What in the hay?! Rainbow Dash asked you how and you said you could tell the fututre?! Are you stupid?"

"No, actually. I had a fine education, if the University of Fillydelphia is good." Shadow said in a once again calm tone. Twilight scoffed, turning her head up at a diagonal angle for a moment, then looking back at Shadow on the floor.

"What, then? Why would you joke about something like that?"

"I wasn't joking."

"Yes you were! Everypony knows that there's no spell to tell the future!"

"I don't use magic. Ever. This is a natural ability."

Twilight looked at Shadow Prophet for a long time, searching for some sign of fakeness, some sign of a jokester or a liar. When she found none, she began to soften.

"If that's so, please explain it to me."

Shadow looked up. "It's a long story."

"I've got plenty of time."

"Okay then."

When I was born, my parents named me through that flash of intuition all parents have, and the nurses at the hospital where I was born all asked my parents if they were sure that was what they wanted to name their baby. They insisted that that should be my name.

Later, when I went to school, of course kids made fun of me for my odd name. They always asked me to tell them their shadow's destiny. It was immature and wasn't that funny, but it never got old. It was only in the fifth grade that I got a hint as to what my name meant.

One day, some of my few friends and I went climbing through the rock farm nearby, I forget who owned it. Anyways, we were trotting along this large mountain of rocks, when I suddenly saw something that I somehow knew was going to happen soon. I saw a giant colorful explosion in the west, and saw it causing  an avalanche where we were standing! Then the vision was gone and I looked to my right, and there it was. The rainbow colored detonation in the flesh. I knew from school that it would take a minute for the sound to get to us, so I started head-butting my friends and they started running, without question.

The sonic boom hit us, and I could just barely hear the sound of rocks loosening above us. It's hard to explain, but I was getting flashes of the near future and being in real time almost... simultaneously. At one point, I pushed them out of the way of a huge boulder; they would have been flattened to sheets of paper had I not intervened. However, the boulder pinned my tail down, almost got me. I couldn't pull it out, and I asked my friends for help. They didn't answer.

When I looked at them, they looked... scared. Of me. At the time I didn't understand. I asked for help again, and they just ran away. Left me there. I had thought they were going to get some help or something, but nopony came for me.

Eventually, I had to pry my tail out myself, and that took about an hour. I was terribly angry that my friends had betrayed me like that, so I went storming into town. And...

Shadow's voice cracked. Twilight had been listening so intently, she didn't notice that Shadow had begun crying. His eyes were red, and hot tears dribbled down his muzzle.

"Hey, if this is hard for you, I can understand-" Twilight started.

"No. I have to tell it. I've always had to tell it." He continued.

Apparently... a lot can happen in an hour. Like the spreading of a rumor, the acceptance of said rumor as truth, and the inevitable backlash. I arrived at my house, and it was surrounded by denizens. They were throwing stones at my house. My parents were both in there. I ran up to the crowd, and I yelled for them to stop. They turned to me and one said, "Look! There he is!"

I saw through a gap in the mass, and there, through the shattered windows, I saw my parents, crumpled on the ground.

So many emotions flooded through me at that moment. Hate, fear, anger, despair. They all mixed together into a deadly brew, and just as the mob was about to throw their stones at me, I screamed. My horn shot out a beam of magic that shattered the stones in midair. For a moment there was silence, then one yelled, "He used his dark magic again! He'll kill us!" Then they all scattered away, like frightened mice.

Of course it wasn't dark magic, it was pure magic, known to do almost anything. I hadn't had much training in how to use my horn correctly, and the magic was only released because of my emotion. But fear can make ponies believe strange things.

I ran to my parents, and nudged them lightly. They didn't move. They weren't breathing. Their eyes stared at nothing.

I sat in between them, crying, but keeping a straight posture. I felt that if I showed weakness, the would come back and stone me. Then I saw them, sitting outside, looking at me with stupid faces. My friends.

"You did this!" I yelled to them, once again feeling that mix of emotion. "It was you! Why?!"

They ran away. They always ran away.

That night a lot of things went through my mind. But the one subject that stayed on top of all the others was revenge.

"Do you know what it's like to bury your own parents in your backyard?" Shadow asked Twilight, whose mouth was quivering. There was no reply. None was needed.

I walked into school, and everypony I passed stared at me with awe and fear. You know what I did? Looked evil. On purpose. I gave everypony a look that said, "If you cross me, oh boy, you'll be in for a ride." I always kept my head at an angle that cast a shadow over my eyes. And then I went about school as usual. I did it just to scare the crap out of everypony in that horrible town. You see, I had pieced it together in the long time I had had to think the night before. My friends had thought I used dark magic to cause the avalanche to try to kill them, and that it had backfired. So while I was stuck, they went and told everypony about it. They all thought I was some horrible sorcerer that was bent on destroying them all.

I thought if I acted the part, I would be pleased in seeing them cower away from me. I was. But not for too long. I didn't come back the next day, and I never did. I stayed at home and usually sat in the place where my parents died. Nopony ever came in, or even came close to the house. Pretty soon , I ran out of food. I left my old home finally, and tried to get some sort of work. Obviously, nopony would even take me in, let alone give me a job. They were all too scared or hating. Except for one mare. Sunshine was her name. She lived alone in her house, and didn't believe I was evil. When I fell asleep on her lawn one night, she opened the door and asked me to come in, that she had a blanket for me.

In my desperation I did, and she had much more. She gave me a blanket, a mattress, and even some cookies and warm milk. For a few years I stayed with her, and she had to keep me a secret. Once I was old enough, she saved up enough money for me to move away. I hated to leave her, but I knew it was my only option.

However, somepony saw me on my way to the hot air balloon station, and we had to outrun a mob to be able to board the balloon. But... Sunshine got caught. The last I ever saw of her was her being dragged away by her front hooves.

There was a long silence, then Shadow concluded, "So that's my story."

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Partially because she was too stunned to talk, but mostly because she didn't know what to say anyways. In the end, Twilight mournfully stood up and slowly began to leave. At the door, she gave Shadow Prophet a respectful nod, then flew away.