Just an old pony tale...
There is a tale that lingers on the tongues of ponies in Equestria. A tale of a storyteller who would recount gruesome, horrific stories to anypony who would listen. She resides along the traveler trails that lead to major cities in Equestria. Only in the dead of night, she would appear out of the mist, her hoof steps echoing among the trees and moonlight. Most ponies didn’t know what to make of her, considering the weathered cloak that covered her body and the glowing crimson eyes that shined through the leathery mask that hid her face. However, among the gruesome features of her exterior there was one thing that caught ponies’ eyes: her hollowed out horn. It resembled the horn of a changeling on first glance, but upon closer inspection, one would realize it was rotting from the inside out.
There were documented cases of a unicorn horn-rot epidemic before the advancements of MediMagic, but that was before the time of the Princesses’ reign. However, the horn upon this particular unicorn’s head could still cast magic. Sufferers of Unicorn horn-rot were unable to use magic, with some extreme cases having the horn amputated. So for this mare to even have such an ability with her horn at that level of decomposition was mind-boggling.
Using this hollowed out horn, she created worlds for her listeners - worlds filled with agony and death, revenge and gore, darkness and despair. These stories gripped her listeners until the end of their telling; yet it wasn’t until their closure that she would utter a single, ominous phrase.
“But nothing can compare to the loss of a Beloved.”
With that, she would walk back into the dead of night, the lingering smell of rotting flesh trailing behind her.
Anypony unfortunate enough to hear her stories would have... a series of cursed events befall them. Events that mirrored the stories they had heard from The Lost Narrator.
And I know what you’re thinking... it’s just an old pony tale. Those kinds of stories never end up being true; merely tales woven by parents to scare their foals into listening. Those foals would grow into mares and stallions, and they pass on those stories to their children, and the cycle continues.
But with every story, there is some truth behind the words. The Lost Narrator was an actual pony who lived in Equestria, though she wasn’t always known for the title bestowed upon her. And there is more to that story than a simple entity damning ponies for her pleasure.
So, let’s start at the beginning.
For starters, The Lost Narrator wasn’t her real name. She was just a simple unicorn mare named Curse Word who lived in a small town. She was known for having very colorful language. She spoke her mind and didn’t care what others thought, even if she offended the ponies around her. She honestly believed that words were just words; powerless little entities that only had meaning if you gave them that power.
She lived in a little house in the middle of the town with her Beloved. They both loved each other very much. Many ponies aspired to have their relationship: to have a natural understanding for one another like they had. Curse Word’s Beloved knew her better than she knew herself, and she knew her Beloved’s heart was pure. However, no relationship is without flaw. They had fights like any other couple, but their understanding for each other outshone any conflict. Curse Word cherished her Beloved with all her heart.
In her little town, she was known for being a storyteller to the fillies and colts, as one cannot make a living on just foul language alone. Utilizing her magic, she would create images, music, and sounds that brought her stories to life. She would act out each one of them, pulling in her little listeners with such vivid detail. The foals were always left in awe. They would sit around for hours, listening to her stories of heroes conquering villains, good triumphing over evil, and happy moments within life. Curse Word always made sure to leave a lingering moral in each one of her stories. It was her own way of making sure she was helping those around her and ensuring that the good in ponies flourished.
Some ponies would say that Curse Word’s life was near perfect, with each day being the same pleasant routine. However, with stories like these, there is something rotten underlying the core. No ponies’ life is this perfect. For you see, Curse Word had not unlocked the true nature of her power. In the past, numerous events around her had seemed coincidental, particularly ones of a terrible nature. Ponies getting sick around her, bad luck falling upon them… It always seemed odd, but she would always keep these thoughts to herself. She never even told her Beloved. She buried these thoughts, and continued on with her storytelling and her everyday life.
That is until one day when she had just finished recounting a fairy tale to a group of fillies and colts at the town library, when the truth came to light. There was one little colt who had not enjoyed the story as much as the other foals had. He had shouted a phrase that Curse Word herself would dare not utter in front of them. She had been especially proud of the story she had told that day, so for that little colt to say those words… it enraged her.
At first she politely told him to be quiet, but the little colt wouldn’t listen. He kept yelling, almost taunting Curse Word to retaliate and defend the story she had told. Her rage began building inside. She glared at the colt, who kept shouting and shouting.
Finally she reached her limit. Her eyes shimmered crimson. She muttered: “You’d better watch out or else your mother might wash that mouth clean off with soap.”
She then calmly gathered her things, walked out of the library and went back to her home, hoping her Beloved could calm her rage.
And her Beloved certainly obliged. Her Beloved served a nice quiet dinner and they spent time alone together. Later, when Curse Word went to bed, her thoughts drifted to getting up again in the morning and going down to the library to tell stories to the foals. Dread began to take hold. Then she heard a blood curdling scream. She lifted her head and stared out the window, wondering where it had come from. A few moments passed. Nothing but silence. She paused, wondering whether she should get up, but decided to rest her head back on the pillow. She heard another cry from outside. Sitting up in bed, she turned to her Beloved, who strangely did not stir at the sounds. Curse Word slowly got up and trotted over to the window, trying to pinpoint the source of the distant screams.
Then she saw it. About ten houses away, in one upper story, she could see the silhouette of a mare shouting. Curse Word watched, wide eyed, as the mare struggled with something, as if holding it down. Water splashed up at the window, leaving the glass blurry for her to see through. Uneasiness came over Curse Word. Couldn’t any other pony in the town hear the mare? The window was wide open. Everypony in town should have heard those muffled screams.
Curse Word shook her Beloved awake, demanding she get help. Her Beloved woke up, perplexed, worried that the stress of Curse Word’s job had gotten the best of her, but decided to humor Curse Word. They raced downstairs, galloping towards the house from whence the sounds originated. As they got closer, her Beloved could finally hear the muffled screams that Curse Word had heard so clearly, coming from the upper story window of the home. As Curse Word and her Beloved tried to force open the door to the little house, Curse Word started shouting, trying to get other ponies to wake up. Ponies in neighboring houses began to stir from their slumber. She finally managed to pry the front door open with her magic. She raced up the stairs, reaching the bathroom at the end of the hall that faced her own house. As she opened the door, her mouth dropped open in shock at the sight before her.
The mare she had seen in the window was standing over the tub. The tap still on, water overflowing everywhere. She was panting and hunched over, mane disheveled. Below her in the tub was a small figure, floating lifeless in the rushing, chilled water. His identity finally clicked in Curse Word’s mind: it was the little colt from earlier that day. The mare who had drowned him slowly turned to Curse Word, who stood there in silence, trying to process what was happening. Their eyes locked. In that brief moment, both knew what had happened: the irreversible actions of a mother and the words Curse Word had uttered only hours before.
That lingering truth rose to the surface of Curse Word’s mind. Had she caused this event to happen with just her words? As undesirable as the colt’s death was, she knew that she had some claim in it.
But how? That was the question that played back and forth in her mind, after the royal guards had questioned everypony, as she walked back home later with her Beloved. She had not told the royal guards of her suspicions. If she had a power this great, she needed to figure out a way to control it. Maybe it could be used for good, maybe she could create events to help those around her, to help the town, to benefit her Beloved… She knew she needed to dedicate all of her time to uncovering this mystery.
And so she did. Every waking moment from then on was devoted to analyzing this new found power she possessed. Morning and night, she would spend studying, researching, trying to gain any kind of knowledge of this. Had there been other ponies in history that could perform feats like this? Equestrian History only went so far back, to a time without the Princesses, and Curse Word could not find anything that could explain this. Unfortunately, as time went on, she started to forget about her daily obligations: the storytellings to the foals, her daily upkeep, even her grocery shopping. Many ponies in the town worried about this “obsession,” still not knowing the truth of what Curse Word wanted to learn about. They only saw her absences and the foals sadly waiting for her to come and tell them stories. Not even her Beloved knew what plagued her mind and Curse Word wanted to keep it that way. She refused to let anypony know the true nature of her research, afraid of what someone else might do with this kind of knowledge. With a power as great as hers, able to will things to happen by speaking words alone, it could overshadow even the Princesses’ power in the wrong hooves.
But these walls that Curse Word built around her were far from healthy. She began to push everypony away, only engrossed over this power and its secrets. Days began to blur together. She forgot to eat. She forgot to sleep. She forgot to wash or look after herself. Her Beloved tried to make her see reason but her research had become her passion and held sway over her whole life.
One night, after traveling to Canterlot in hopes of finding a clue to the truth, she arrived home to find her Beloved at the dining room table, candles lit and with the lingering smell of food, cooked many hours ago, hanging in the air. Her Beloved looked up, eyes filled with tears. Curse Word stood stock still as a realization flashed in her mind, soon followed by guilt and regret: she had forgotten their anniversary.
She hadn’t meant to. She was doing all this for both of them, after all. Her obsession with her studies was not just for herself, but for her Beloved as well. She was trying to better their lives, and all that hope was instilled in finding the truth.
Yet her Beloved did not know or understand this. She only saw Curse Word growing more and more distant, unaware of her true motives. With frustration and emotions running high, an argument ensued. Her Beloved demanded and pried, wanting to know what she was hiding from her. Curse Word began trembling with anger, nervousness. Why couldn’t her Beloved just understand it was better she didn’t know the truth? She shut her eyes, hoping that her Beloved would stop, but she just kept shouting, yelling that Curse Word didn’t love her anymore.
Those words hit a terrible nerve. Curse Word could feel the lump in her throat trying to choke what was left of her patience. Her eyes snapped open, glinting crimson red. Her mind had reached its limit.
“Just leave me alone!”
With that, she ran upstairs, slamming the bedroom door behind her.
She stood in their bedroom, wondering if she had taken things too far with her quest to understand the truth. She had never meant to be that heartless to her Beloved. One of the main reasons she was even pushing herself was for her Beloved’s sake, but it was still no reason to act that way. She sighed, knowing she needed to make things right. She opened the door, and walked back downstairs, calling out to her Beloved.
But only the silence of the quiet little home answered her.
Curse Word called out to her again, thinking she was quietly seething, but only the silence remained. It was then that Curse Word began to glance around their little home and noticed the table had been cleared of any romantic effects. She found that odd, considering she had been upstairs for only a few minutes. She called out again and was about to make her way outside to see if her Beloved had gone out for a walk when she sensed how empty the home felt. The encroaching void moved through the air and washed over her as she looked around the room, wondering what had happened. It wasn’t until her eyes fell upon a photo on the shelf that she had realized the truth - and what she had accidentally done. A photo frame where Curse Word stood alone. Where once she had been smiling at another pony as they celebrated their anniversary, now she was smiling to herself.
Curse Word’s Beloved had been erased from her life. Not a single pony in the town remembered them as a couple. They only remembered Curse Word, the lonely storyteller.
Curse Word held onto the memories of her Beloved tightly, trying to piece together what had happened. Panic and devastation began to consume Curse Word. She had caused this. The one thing in her life that had made her truly happy had vanished without a trace - because of her. Was her Beloved dead or just misplaced? Had she been moved somewhere else in Equestria, given a different life, or had she just vanished completely? And how did Curse Word even cause that to happen?
Even now, she was wondering about her strange new magic.
The crushing reality of Curse Word’s hidden power only drove her obsession deeper into the dark depths of her own mind. If she had made her Beloved disappear, then surely she could make her beloved reappear the same way. She refused to give up the hope of being reunited with her Beloved. For you see, even though the ponies in the town could not remember the pony that had always been her faithful companion; her Beloved’s belongings were still there in their home. It didn’t make any sense. She knew that, dead or alive, her Beloved had to be somewhere; it was just the matter of time and discovery.
Curse Word decided that she would go back to her storytelling, but with a difference: she would recount memories of her Beloved to other ponies. No longer were her stories tailored only to a young audience, for they were stories of love and the crushing reality of loss. Curse Word purchased a travel wagon, loaded up the tattered remains of her life and made her way along the traveler trails in Equestria, wearing the silvery cloak that had once belonged to her Beloved. She would tell stories to any traveler who would listen and felt closer to finding her Beloved again with each story she told. Her words had power, after all. She truly believed that if she just kept trying, just kept speaking, just kept narrating their life together, she would somehow, some way, bring back her Beloved by the sheer power of her words. It didn’t matter that she had never cracked how to enact her strange power on command. Tenacity became her best friend and she kept at her quest even when she failed time and again.
However, Curse Word’s plight lasted for many years and proved ever more fruitless as time wore on. She told the same stories over and over, hoping to remember some new detail that would unlock the mystery of how to reverse her Beloved’s disappearance, but she never did.
One day, a group of fellow travellers told her that the “boring love stories” were getting old. They demanded she tell them another story, a new story she had not told before, but she refused. She would tell no stories but those of her Beloved and there were no new stories to tell. They insisted she tell something new, something made up. It was then that hatred began to bubble to the surface as she stared at these ungrateful ponies. How dare they not listen to her stories … no, her memories… her last remnants of her Beloved. Her tales were all she had left of her most precious somepony besides the old and weathered cloak. She looked at the other travellers, anger glimmering in her crimson eyes as she said: “Those stories are the only ones you will ever hear.”
She left them there, reeling from the adrenaline and anger coursing through her veins. Returning to her wagon, she decided it would be wise just to rest a while. As the horizon drifted lazily into dusk and then night, she wondered whether her quest was all hopeless after all. She had been the one to cause her own heartache. Her Beloved was gone and she foolishly thought that telling stories could reverse that? Bitterness swelled in her chest. She was tenacious, yes, but tenacity can only take someone so far. Hope has to carry the burden after that, and her hope was in short supply these days.
She finally decided that enough was enough. She had gone years without her strange power manifesting again. Now it seemed like it would never surface again. Maybe this was the last part of her punishment for neglecting the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was time for Curse Word to return to her hometown and her empty house, filled with nothing but old memories and old regrets.
It was that next morning, on her way back to her town, that she overheard a commotion in a camp near to where she had parked her wagon. The royal guards themselves had arrived to secure the area. Drawing closer to the crowd that had gathered, she learned that a group of travellers had been discovered with vicious slash marks on their ears and throats. Nearby travellers had heard crazed shouting coming from that campsite, yelling about “that mare and her stories.” In the morning they were found dead in pools of their own blood. The reports that the guards made surmised that each pony was suffering from paranoid delusions from eating the mushrooms nearby, since a skillet of them had burned to a crisp on the campfire, and they had committed suicide to quiet their minds.
Curse Word alone understood what had happened. She also saw the power of her words in a new light. Once again ponies had fallen victim to her and once again she was riddled with guilt. It seemed the only way that the power would manifest itself was when she spoke words with a malicious intent. Realizing this, she knew that she could not tell her stories or say her words to innocent victims; she had ruined so many lives with her power: the rude colt, these ungrateful ponies, her Beloved … She wanted to right the wrongs she had committed. She did not want any more innocent blood on her hooves, so instead of returning home, she continued on the traveller trails. Yet this time, she wore a mask she had fashioned for herself to hide her shame and identity. She did not want ponies to know who she was, especially considering what she planned to do.
Curse Word began to target particular ponies along her travels; ones whose hooves were unclean and who were no strangers to the darkness within. Murderers, rapists, vile ponies who needed to be punished for their crimes but who had slipped through the hooves of the law. She made it her business to find out about them and then find them and tell them her stories. She told them twisted and gruesome tales of the most depraved acts ponies had ever committed within Equestria; tales of murder, revenge, blood, guts and viscera. Those ponies would listen in awe as her voice enspelled them, mesmerized by Curse Word and her storytelling ability, as she detailed a twisted narrative that even she couldn’t believe was coming from her mouth. She wanted to punish these ponies. And so, each time that she did this, the ponies she spoke to would fall to fates most fitting for their crimes; it was a dark justice for the pain they had caused others and it slated the burning need inside her to punish and rend and slay with her tainted powers.
Curse Word felt a sense of accomplishment. She believed that her Beloved would be proud of the good she was doing. She was ridding Equestria of its evils. She had at least tried to atone for her sins. Yet, as time went on, Curse Word began to notice a change within herself. With each pony she damned, her body began to reflect the nature of her stories. Her flesh began to green, then rot, then peel off her forelegs. Her horn gnarled and hollowed, but was still somehow able to utilize magic. And most of all, her face beneath her mask changed until … well, you see, after a time she wasn’t just wearing that mask to hide her identity. It has been said that Curse Word didn’t have any flesh or muscle left under that mask; only skint white bone and hollow, crimson eyes. Others have said that the mask fused itself to her skull, becoming her face in place of her old one. No one knows for certain, for no-one ever saw her without her mask anymore.
Curse Word had truly lost herself in her stories. Her sole intention for starting her quest had been to find her Beloved, but it had somehow degraded into something much darker. She became worried that if her Beloved was indeed alive, and they did get to see each other again, that her Beloved would not recognize the monster Curse Word had become. Word of her began to spread and soon she was feared by all travellers in Equestria, both good and bad. They warned each other to be leery of the the tales of “The Lost Narrator,” a mare in a mask who would damn you for not enjoying her stories of death and despair. Their tales weren’t all true, but that hardly mattered. She had ceased to be a mere pony. She had become a legend.
As the years went on, the story was passed down from generation to generation. Curse Word endured, perhaps made immortal by her strange power, perhaps merely immortalised by her fame. Yet you can see why ponies today still think that this story of “The Lost Narrator” is just an old pony tale. She is a narrator of stories and those who hear them are lost; or maybe she narrates stories because she herself is lost. Hardly anypony remembers Curse Word, the odd lonely pony who left her hometown and never came back. Curse Word was just a footnote in history. The Lost Narrator was a piece of history, and myth, and lore. The legend of her is so old now that she certainly can’t be alive now, especially in a time of great harmony. Right? Besides, Princess Celestia would have received knowledge of her ruinous power by now and done something to stop her … right?
The Lost Narrator is a story to scare foals into listening to their parents and warn travelers not to let strangers into their camp when they travel. She is a something, not a someone. She is fear and regret and dark bitterness masquerading as do-gooding incarnate. She is a lost soul.
But still, her fate is nothing compared to the loss of a Beloved.
