Author's Note

To the Angel of the Church of Ponyville write:

These are the words of she who is holy and true, who holds the key of Dave. What she opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name...Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth...

Prolouge?

"...And remember, dear ponies," boomed the voice through the town,

"We are Stretched Thin!"

I ignored the voice proudly erupting from the lips of the unseen stallion.

I grimaced, as I was now able to fully hear my patient's raspy, moist breaths. He broke into a coughing fit, as I retracted my stethoscope, and draped it over my neck.

I brushed my white mane from my face.

"It's best if we monitor your brother for a couple days," I said to the pony, bearing the arrow on his flank. He nodded. I barked instructions at the nurse, and withdrew from the room. Back down the hall, to my office I went. I returned to my desk, with its lovely stacks of papers, and musty textbooks. Outside, the silence gave way to the murmur of voices, gradually returning to the daily commotion of the square.

The flock of sheep in the square faded like ants leaving the carcass of a bird.

The salmon colored colt; He was the third to be admitted for a moist cough that week. Likely not a coincidence. For the rest of the day, I tended to the patients, and endlessly rifled through my papers, often falling into almost a trance. The whispers of paper can be quite soothing, like the sound of the sea, and I often lose myself in the comfort until I am no longer reading the words...just simply staring at them...but I digress.

Anyway....The night came.

This night, well, it was an odd night. Not odd in the way that all nights are odd, with the customary chants in long dead languages, and the wailing of the Everfree forest. No, this night was odd BECAUSE of the absence of these things. Unease gripped my heart like a snake coiling around its prey. Before the rest of the staff departed , I asked a nurse if he noticed the peculiar way in which the darkness was creeping into the town. He simply gave me an odd look, before closing the door behind him. I tiptoed past the rooms, back to my office.

"Didn't I close the window?", I spoke aloud. I closed the window, and suddenly noticed the chill in the room.

I poked at the fire.

My brown fur glowed crimson in the warm light.

Glass shattered.

I turned.

A flask was sprawled as puzzle pieces on the floor.

My grip on the poker tightened.

The wail of foals broke the silence like lambs screaming before the slaughter.

I did not think.

I galloped downstairs, still clutching the fire poker.

The foals screamed in unbridled terror, and it slunk into the room.

What could only be called its face, was contorted into a wide grin. Its many tendrils whipped and pulled the air, as it dragged itself toward its targets.

A terrified shriek escaped my muzzle, not a cry of my own making, but of this mortal mouth reacting instinctively to the danger. My body mimicked my mouth in its terror, as my foreleg flailed and the poker flew from it.

I am one lucky mare, I am. By a stroke of dumb luck, the poker met the center of its disgusting smile, like a pitchfork protruding from a hay bale.

It gave a terrible, soul piercing scream. The poker was still hot, and its dark flesh boiled and sizzled. Its tendrils spasamed frantically, as it pulled itself back through the window. I note the droplets of melted ooze spattered on the floorboards.

I'l have to collect some of that later.

It's interesting that in times of terror and panic, ones thoughts often turn to things so mundane as stains on the floorboards.

I rushed to the window, and slammed it shut. I yanked the curtains closed, as if it would do any additional good, and turned to the foals.

I hold them tight, my hooves gently cupped over their manes. Their faced were pressed into my shoulders. They wailed into my mane, and my soothing words passed over them like tired waves over sand.

I told them, "Everything will be ok,"

I told a terrible lie that night.