Story of the shadow pony

It had took some minutes to get everything ready, but now it should do. Starlight had collected a crystal mirror from a recently moved in neighbor from the crystal empire and got the brilliant pearls of one of her necklace to perform the shadow pony spell.

The instruction read that the pearls would turn black while performing the spell, meaning everything was working fine.

Besides the mirror and pearls, Starlight would have to focus on how her creation should look like, what age it would have etc.

Only then, the spell should create exactly what it was supposed to do. It made Starlight a little nervous, but the fought of finally having a child made her heart take flight. She would create a little filly. Thinking about what she heard about pegasus and unicorn foals, she thought it maybe would be best to have an earth pony filly. But how should she explain to her friends how she got it?

Honestly, she didn't knew, but also didn't cared much. She just wanted a foal. And with that, she got ready.

The mirror was leaning against a wall, directly under the single window in the living room and kitchen area, beside it where two lines of pearls, about three on each side, going away from the mirror itself. Starlight stood in front of that formation and started to focus. She knew exactly how her child should look like, so she cast the spell. Her horn began to glow in its usual, bright blue aura, but soon, all light of the room faded, creating pitch black darkness, with only the pearls, window and mirror shining as bright as the sun.

Then, all shadows flew towards Starlights horn, as the room began to brighten up. And with that, a pitch black beam shot out of the horn, right at the mirror, passing by the pearls. Exhausted from the weird feeling of the shadows, Starlight collapsed to the ground. But she looked up at the mirror. It was shaking. Nearly everything was shaking in her apartment and even a couple of things fell and broke into pieces. Then, the pearls started to hover in the air. They turned black, then back to white. The closest to Starlight became white first, the last being the pearls closest to the mirror, as all shadow seemed to concentrate there.

And as all the shadow disappeared in the middle of the mirror, with all the bright white around her fading away to the state it was before, a last light appeared and quickly disappeared. Did it worked? Or did it failed? Starlight got back on her hooves, starting to fear it hadn't, as she spotted something in the mirror. Something dark was walking towards her from inside of it.

Not so long after, a tiny, dark gray hoof reached out and touched the ground, dragging the rest of its body outside.

It was a filly, an earth pony filly with a dark gray coat, black mane and bright gray eyes. It was covered in a weird liquid, which turned the ground below it in a gray color, but that didn't mattered now to Starlight. It had worked, she had created a shadow pony. And it stood there, cute and small. But it then collapsed. Finally, it screamed, like a foal that age would.

Quickly, Starlight hurried to it, taking it in her forelegs and looking at it closer. It wasn't quite what she imaged her foal to be, but it was cute no matter what. "Hush, don't cry little one" She said in a calm voice. The filly looked up at her. She had adorable gray eyes. They looked kinda like mist in the early morning on a winter day.

"Starlight?" Tailor yelled from outside, as she opened the door and stepped in. The mare looked scared and was surprised to find a couple of tables and tea cups broken on the floor, as for her neighbor sitting there with a dark foal. "Oh, Tailor!" Starlight said, blushing slightly "I ah.... I can explain this.". Tailor just looked at the filly, confused. But then said "I... I heard rumbling from here and worried that something might have happened to you and ah..." "Don't worry, I am fine." "Okay-a but what is that... filly doing here? And where did it come from?". Tailor pointed at it while saying that. Starlight just rubbed the back of her head with one hoof, not knowing how to answer. Tailor stepped in further and saw the instruction, taking it and reading it.

Starlight tried to get it back, but Tailor was a quick reader. "A shadow pony?" She said, hearing that kind of thing for the first time in her life "Is that thing that?". Starlight nodded, having a sad look. She was afraid of what her friend might think.

Tailor didn't knew what to think at first either. But seeing that her friend seemed to finally get something she had wished for, made her happy and she didn't wanted that she would regret that. "Well, seems like you finally have your foal." She said, smiling. Starlight was surprised she took it that well, then smiled and said "Yeah...". With that, Tailor sat down besides her and said "Well, she sure is cute. How do you want to call her?". Starlight thought for a bit and then said "Misty Shade." "The name is perfect." Tailor smiled, tickling the foals belly, making it laugh. But she then asked "How do you explain to the others that you suddenly have a filly?" "I-I don't know..." Starlight answered, looking down sad at the filly.

Tailor stood up, walking around a bit before she said "How about you had, well, a certain something with a stallion some time ago and he got you pregnant? Lets say around the time you had that sickness, you actually hide yourself because it was embarrassing to you that he had left you as you told him that and didn't wanted to bother any of us with that?"

"That... That is brilliant." Starlight said. Tailor smiled and said "Yeah. But today, I found out. To make it more realistic, how about I got you to show your filly to the others now?". Starlight looked at her baby and said "Okay.".

It took some minutes to get everypony in the building down in the lobby, so Starlight could introduced Misty Shade to everypony. They believed the story, Jazz was so surprised that he had missed that out, that he laughed at himself for not being up to date anymore. And they all got to like Misty pretty quickly. She was the new family member now.

Over the time, Starlight gave her best to raise her foal, getting an official birth certificate for her and when she had to work, lots of her neighbors offered to take care for the filly. With that, Misty was raised in a good environment.