Prologue - The Mare In The Night
Lily Artist’s mind wandered as she searched her abstract thoughts for ideas of things to draw. She sat in her chair staring at her pages so hard, she thought she heard the papers rip as her piercing pink and purple gaze tore straight through them. But when she blinked, the blank canvas remained untouched. Frustrated, she threw her head down onto the desk, but immediately regretted it when pain rushed to her forehead. Holding her hoof to her head and extending her wings outward to balance herself, she trotted to the kitchen to get an ice pack. She silently walked to the kitchen, carefully placing one hoof in front of the other, in case a creek woke her best friend Cherry Bookworm.
Cherry had been her best friend since they were fillies. They were ten when they first met at Cloudsdale Christian Center. Although they didn’t have the exact same personalities, they clicked instantly and became the best of friends.
Lily was lost in her memories, until a sharp pain shot her back to the present. She continued her journey to the kitchen, trying her best to ignore the pain. Her apartment was pretty small, so it didn’t take long to get to another room. When she entered the kitchen, she flew straight to the freezer, opened the door, grabbed an ice pack and gently placed it to her forehead.
She was starting to feel somewhat better by the time she got to her bed. Lily had decided to figure out what to draw in the morning, after a good night’s rest. Slowly she felt the pain die away and sleep swallow her like a sea of darkness drowning out the light...
As she opened her eyes, Lily realized she was in the one place she would never forget, the place she was raised in, Pony Ville. She looked up and saw her old house. Unlike the other houses, this one was a small, one story, wooden cottage. Lily began to take a step forward, but as she placed her hoof on the ground, all went black.
Suddenly, she heard a click and light was restored, but Pony Ville was gone. Instead of standing in her old house, Lily was in a different house, a house she never dared step hoof in again. In the shadows, she heard hoof steps approaching, then another set of steps, and another and another. Frightened, she backed up until she felt her back hooves hit the stone wall of the fireplace, and she stood there listening to several unknown ponies creeping toward her.
As the first pony crept into the light, she felt a shiver run down her spine and her blood run cold. Her red and black striped mane, her sharp yellow wings, her deadly grin on her face, and her eyes as red as blood had burned the image of the pony into Lily’s memory long ago. The pony stopped and waited for the others to join her. A dark red stallion with a fiery black mane and a curved charcoal horn trotted up and stood right next to her. Another mare came forward. She was a sapphire earthpony with a white and yellow mane. A white stallion earthpony with a gray mane and yellow eyes closely followed her as they stepped forward.
They stared at Lily as though they were wolves and she was a piece of meat. The yellow mare walked forward until she was an inch away from Lily’s face. Lily growled at her trying not to show how afraid she was. The pony looked at her with a look of pure immorality and whispered in a voice that chilled her to the bone.
“Face it, you have nowhere to go. Soon you will join us.”
“Never!” She growled, “I am nothing like you! Why would I choose to be someone as heartless as you!”
The mare looked back at her companions and signaled them to retreat to the shadows. The pony turned and followed them, then looked back and said, “You are exactly like me.”
As those words came out of her mouth, a bright light shone from above them and the pony froze. A dark blue alicorn shot from the light, and stood in front of Lily, with her wings spread out defensively. Princess Luna! She came!
Luna bared her teeth and screamed “GO!”
The pony whimpered, turned and ran into the depths of shadows. Luna lit up her horn and sent a shock-wave of blue light into the air. The house disappeared and they were standing on what looked like a path of light and stars.
Luna turned and looked at her with sadness in her eyes. Lily tried to hold it together, but she couldn’t. She ran into the princess’s arms and tears streamed down her face. Luna wrapped her wings around her and held Lily like she would a child.
“I’m so sorry Lily.” She whispered.
Lily opened her eyes, and got out of her cloud bed. She walked over to her desk, but lost interest quickly when she saw the blank paper. As she walked toward the door, she stopped and remembered the icepack. She rolled her eyes and lazily walked back to pick it up.
The dream was still fresh in her mind, and she couldn’t get what the mare said out of her head. ‘You are exactly like me.’ The words echoed throughout Lily’s mind. She wondered and hoped it wasn’t true. Surely it wasn’t true... right?
She shook the thought out of her head and began walking to the kitchen. Cherry was already up and making breakfast.
Cherry turned around and said “Finally, you’re up. I’ve been up for like an hour.”
“What time is it?” She asked.
“Eleven, seven-teen. I made breakfast, and it’s not burnt hay.” Lily rolled her eyes at her.
That had been joke for a long time, and still Cherry liked to bring it up just to annoy her. When they were fillies, Lily once said that she was going to make breakfast. But when she cooked the hay, she burnt it until it was charcoal black. As much as she laughed she still couldn’t help thinking about if she really was as heartless as the pony. Then she thought, ‘am I really like my birth mother?’
Author's Note
By the way, the burnt hay thing was a real thing and it was actually burnt bacon. But I couldn't put bacon in there because they are ponies and ponies don't exactly eat meat so I just put hay in there instead. Also I have just started working on Chapter 1 and I will let you know when I am almost done with it.
Chapter 1 - A Light In Her Heart
“Bye Lily!” Cherry called as Lily flew off to her part time job.
Still in flight, Lily looked back and waved good-bye to her best friend until Cherry trotted back inside. Suddenly, Lily felt herself crash into another pegasus. She was flying so fast, that the impact knocked her back onto a cloud. Thank Celestia there was a cloud under me, she thought. As she gathered her senses, she looked up to see what or who she had smashed into. At first all she could see was a blurry light and dark blue figure. But as soon as her vision cleared, she immediately recognized who it was. Sorin!!
“Oh my word! I am so sorry! I wasn’t paying attention, and I was in a hurry, and I-”
“It’s fine.” He said, stopping Lily from rambling, and then smiled at her.
Ahh! Why am I so stupid! She wanted to scream it so loud, that all of Cloudsdale would hear her. Then realized, other than experiencing the most awkward moment in her life, she was missing something.
Lily gasped, “My saddlebags!” she looked over the edge of the cloud, and saw nothing but the dark trees and grass of the forest below. “No! They must have fallen off the cloud and into the Everfree Forest!” She looked at Sorin, then looked down at the forest, and back up again. “Again I’m so sorry, and I don’t want to bother you.” She was about to soar down into the forest, until she heard him respond.
“Well, I have nowhere to be and you don’t bother me at all. So I am going to help you, and you are going to except. Okay?”
Sorin looked at her so deeply, with such love, such kindness, that she never wanted to turn her gaze away ever. He is so... kind, she thought. Lily had seen him a few times from her apartment, flying in the sky with the rest of the Wonderbolts team. She never really was a huge fan of flying sports, but one day she decided to come to a show. The whole time she was only interested in the stallion with the dark blue mane and emerald green eyes.
Lily never thought he would be so... nice, and friendly. Self-consciousness rushed over in an instant when she remembered the black marks that covered her white legs, ears, wings and eyes. She had almost forgotten about them, and how much pain she suffered as a filly from ponies who thought she was strange. She hated how different she was from other normal ponies. The marks weren’t birthmarks, she drew them on with a permanent marker when she was going through a deep depression. When she was done, she instantly regretted it and tried to wash them off, but they wouldn’t even fade. He won’t ever like me...
“But, it will only take me a minute,” Lily argued.
“Then it won’t hurt for me to come with you.”
Without giving Lily another moment to respond, he was already flying down toward the earth. She rolled her eyes, and flew after him. She could feel the wind ruffling her colorful feathers, and her pink mane flowing with it.
Sorin was already on the ground. He looked up at her, and waited until she landed softly next to him.
He glanced at Lily, “So what do they look like?”
“They are light blue, with my cutie mark on the straps.”
“Okay, so we should probably spit up.” He looked at her, “Be careful.”
“I will,” her voice then turned to a whisper, “you have no idea.”
She turned and walked deeper into the forest. Lily looked from left to right searching for something that could be used as a weapon, just in case if any dangerous creature decided to attack her. At last she found a tree branch that had splinters sticking out at the end, and it would be the perfect defense against anything that threatened Lily.
In the distance she could see her light blue saddlebags, but it was its location that was the problem. There they sat, in a dark, creepy, shadowy, cave.
She growled, “Why does it always have to be a cave.”
Lily took a step forward, but before she got any closer, something growled and she knew exactly what it was. A Manticore! It stalked out of the shadows and into the light.
“Oh great,” she sighed, readying her weapon.
The beast glowered at her snarling and scoring the ground with its claws. Lily extended her wings and snarled right back at it.
“Come at me! I dare you,” she challenged.
At that moment the Manticore let out a roar, and charged toward her, but Lily was ready. She ducked, slid under it and used the sharp end of her weapon to slash at the Manticore’s legs. It let out a cry of pain, turned around and clawed at her. Her back stung as she felt the claws dig into her back. But before the Manticore could do anymore damage, she flew up into the sky. When she was far above the monster, she plummeted toward it, and plunged the stick deep into its chest. The Manticore let out one last cry, but it turned to a whisper as its eyes clouded, blood dripped from its jaw, and its body went limp.
“Wow.”
Lily jumped as she heard a voice behind her.
“Oh, good. It’s just you,” she sighed with relief.
Her hooves felt abnormally warm, so she looked down. They were covered in blood.
“Um, did you see all of that?” she asked him.
“I did. You were amazing.”
“What?”
“Where did you learn all of that?”
“Do you really want to know?” she asked, and walked over to her saddlebags.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” As she put her saddlebags on, she sighed and continued. “At day time I work at Cloudsdale Animation Studios, but my night time job is...”
“Is??”
“I’m a dawn guard.”
“Guard? As in royalty guarding guards?”
Lily sighed, “Yes.”
“That must be really cool, being around the princesses and all that.”
“Well, more like princess. I usually only see Princess Luna. Well we’d better get back up there. I don’t want to see what else likes violence.”
“Yeah. Wanna race?”
“Race?! Against a Wonderbolt? Yeah, right!”
“Oh come on! It’s not like you can’t get one foot off the ground! I saw you back there, remember?”
“Ugh, fine!”
“Okay, you say whe-”
“Go!” and without giving him time to warm up, she dashed off into the sky. From what she saw, she was ahead. But when she looked down again, Sorin was right on her tail. He was almost in front of her, but not for long. Lily flapped her wings as hard as she could, and in the near distance she could see the cloud she fell on. She was almost there. Almost there! She flew through the sky and slowed down so she could land safely on top of the cloud. It was close but she had won. They sat on the cloud next to each other, then Sorin looked up at her and smiled.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for what? Crashing into you?”
He laughed, “Yes.”
“But why? I could have killed you.”
“Because if you didn’t, then I would have gone my whole life without ever meeting you.”
She was speechless. She didn’t know what to say, or think, or do. He... he likes me? But how?
“B-but how could you like me? I’m so different, and abnormal.”
“It’s because you’re different. That’s why.”
Lily was so shocked, she forgot she was almost late for work.
“Um.. I have to go to work. I’m going to be late.”
“Okay. I hope to see you soon. And I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Oh yeah! Uh, it’s Lily. My name is Lily.”
“Well, goodbye Lily.”
“Goodbye.”
All she could think about while she was flying to work, was what he said. She smiled. He likes me...
Author's Note
Sorry that it took me so long to post this. At first I was planning on making it longer, but then I thought I would save it for the next chapter. Also I am aware that there are cheesy lines or stuff like that. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed!
