The subject of our story is Junebug. Occupation, baker. An almost pumpkin orange coloured earth pony mare, her mane is tidy, brushed over one eye in gentle waves that flows down over her shoulders. She keeps this in check with a light brown flat cap that she wears because it makes her feel dapper. Not that she would tell anypony this though. Her cutie mark is a slice of key lime pie.
We find her in a darkened room sound asleep and nestled under the thick quilts that her friend helped her make the year previous. She is dreaming of happy things, baking cakes and ponies to buy them.
All at once those dreams have ended. She blinks and rubs her eyes before staring out at the sudden bright light that has suddenly appeared in her room. All she sees is white, its rays so intense that it burns her eyes and she shields them with her hooves. All at once the light is gone.
She looks around at the room. Darkness just as it was before. It’s almost as if nothing had happened at all and she isn’t even seeing spots from looking at the light. Still shaken from the experience she considers getting out of bed and going to a friends house. Just as she’s about to roll out of bed and make a run for it, she opens her eyes again.
It’s morning, Celestia’s sun shines down from her window. She’s surprised, but still too groggy to feel much of anything else. Junebug looks around the room, it’s sparsely furnished with the bed, a dresser, and a small bookshelf being the highlights of the room. These are accented with hoof sewn doilies. In one corner of the room we see a pile of stuffed animals and ponies. A large stuffed Celestia smiles from the top of the pile. She wonders what the princess thought of her merchandise.
Junebug groans and rolls over onto the floor. It’s not a good morning, she feels like a couple more hours would do her wonders. But she knows that it’s already late enough in the day from the light from her window and she should have opened the shoppe by now.
But first she allows herself a few moments to brush her teeth and run a comb through her chocolate brown mane.
Her apartment is just above her store, so when she’s done she grabs her hat and she hurries downstairs and turns the closed sign to open before disappearing behind the counter. She takes a look at the clock hanging the wall, it’s eight o’clock. “Thank goodness, I thought I slept in later then that.”
There’s a happier jump to her step now and she sets to work going over her business ledger. She hums and she looks through and rechecks her stock for anything she might need to order more of. She quickly does the estimates the price of the order and marks in down for later.
Apples and sugar are dangerously low right now. But she decides that what she does have can last at least until her lunch break, after all, they don’t deal in just deserts and apples aren’t used in many of her recipes.
It’s a modest little store, made up of two sections. The front and the back. The front is of course where customers can come in and look at the cakes, pies and breads on display. The back is the kitchen, her tiny office, the pantry, and then finally the stairs leading up to her home.
It is in the the tiny office that Junebug finally looks up from the ledger and realizes something. She hasn’t heard a single sound since she woke up. Infact, she hasn’t had a single customer yet. She looks over at the clock again. It’s eight o’clock.
“Wait.”
She looks back at the clock. Sure enough it says eight o’clock. “But wasn’t that the time when I came down stairs? It’s been at least a half hour since then…”
She gets up from the desk and trots over to the clock in the wall and looks at it. The minute hand isn’t moving. She sighs and runs her hoof over her face. “Well that’s a relief, I thought I was going nuts for a second there.”
Junebug steps out of the office and back into the kitchen. She hasn’t cooked anything yet today, but the room is still rich with the smells only a bakery can have. The warm inviting smell of chocolate, the tang of fruit, the soft smell of flour. The smell of all these things mingle in the air and she can’t help but smile and take a slow inhale of breath to take it all in.
The counters wrap around the rectangle shaped room, on the far end the wall is covered by four large ovens, to one side is a shelf fashioned from cooling racks. There are several loaves of bread ready to be moved to the front room.
She ignores these for now and trots over to the clock she checked earlier. Eight o’clock.
“Huh? That can’t be right. How can both clocks stop working… All at once?”
Junebug curses under her breath as she turns and walks out into the front room and swings open the front door. Outside is main street. Normally it’s sees quite a bit of traffic with ponies going this way and that going about their business, however Junebug is surprised to find the street completely empty.
“Hello? Is anypony there?” She calls out. Her words seem to disappear the moment she says them, the silence is stifling. She doesn’t understand it. It takes her another moment to realize there isn’t even a breeze blowing, Though aside from that everything at least looks normal enough. She walks out onto the hard packed dirt of the streets looking both ways.
Well Care Hollow’s wooden buildings stretch out around her in every direction. It’s so quiet she starts to fear she might have gone deaf. “Hello!?” She calls out and she’s relieved to hear something.
But still no answer comes. ‘Oh no, they must have called a town meeting while I was still asleep.’ Junebug thinks to herself. It’s the only explanation that comes to mind and in a moment she’s back in the shoppe. She turns the sign on the shop window back to closed and trots back outside, not bothering to lock up.
Town hall is clear on the edge of town, roughly ten minutes by Junebugs estimation. Hoping she hadn’t missed anything important she starts a brisk trot down the street.
It feels like a ghost town. Not a single pony around. She wonders what could have been so important to have this sort of effect. It was a rare thing indeed for everypony to attend a town meeting like this. Normally only several or so of the town folk would attend while the others just waited to hear the events of the meeting from the ponies who went.
Was somepony hurt? Missing? Worse? She wasn’t sure and the anticipation of what she might find out drove her into a faster pace. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt such a bad sense of foreboding, it was almost as if she was being chased by something. She pushed those thoughts from her mind and reminded herself she was just late to a town meeting. She doesn’t notice how her hoof steps seem to make no sound, how no birds seem to be singing in spite of the beautiful day. Instead she focused herself on the movement of her hooves, which were taking her to town hall almost on autopilot. That well known was the path.
Finally she turned the corner and arrived at the… Library? She shook her head and looked around trying to catch her bearings. Hollow Fell Library was a large brick building in the town's center, it was situated in a small clearing with five apple trees planted around the front, more for decoration then any real need for crops. This wasn’t right. She was sure she hadn’t taken any wrong turns and yet here she was at the library, no where near the town hall.
She didn’t give herself anymore time to think about it. She was already late enough. Junebug turned left down the road and another route to the town hall.
That sense of foreboding from earlier was only fueled by the frustration she felt now. Junebug couldn’t help but imagine all the ponies at town hall helping out with whatever had happened and her not there to help too. ‘How scandalous!’ her mother would say, ‘First you sleep in, and then you can’t even find your way here.’ She breaks into a run.
After another few turns, Junebug stood in the middle of the road gasping for breath. “I’m.. Finally here…” She trailed off as she looked up and saw her bakery. All she could do was stare and for a long moment she considers screaming.
Instead she lets herself fall onto the ground, still gasping for air. “What.. What the hay is going on here!?” She asks the vacant bakery. She shivers and shakily gets back up onto her hooves. Junebug looks around at the buildings, she hopes that somepony will pop out of one of the shoppes and yell surprise. That they’ll laugh at a joke well played. But nopony appears. Instead the vacant building seem to loom over her.
She starts trotting towards town hall again. This time she slower, choosing the roads she goes down more carefully. Then finally she finds herself standing in- In front of the Library. This time she doesn’t hold back her screams.
For what feels like several minutes she yells out her frustration. A calmer part of her mind hopes that somepony will hear and come running. Finally she collapses onto the ground, her body shakes with sobs but no real tears flow. Like dry heaving when you’re sick, this feels almost worse than actually crying.
After some time, she isn’t certain how long, Junebug finally regains her composure.
‘Okay.. I need to think about this. Every time I try to get to town hall I either end up at the bakery or here.’ She gets back up to her hooves and looks around.
The street looked just the way it always did. She looked up and down the road, shielding her with an upraised hoof. Everything looked normal and familiar. There was no way she could be slipping up this much. She turned to face the Library.
The longer she stared at the old brick building the more she felt the need to enter it. Almost as though she was being drawn in by some unseen force. Junebug could feel something like a pressure building up behind her, pushing her forward.
She stumbles forward a few steps and then all of a sudden it felt as though the hooves of many ponies were shoving her. Pushing her ever closer to the library. She has no choice but to stumble forward with the ever growing force. She did not want to find out what would happen if she fell down with this force on her.
She tries to gallop ahead of it but it’s faster than her. It’s much bigger than her too and she can hear it crashing through the apple tree branches as they make their way underneath and then finally onto the front steps of the library.
For a fleeting moment she fears she will be crushed into the door, but the force eases. She needed no further prompting before she flung open the library door and runs inside.
It’s dark in the library. Even so she can see light shining through some of the windows. If it hadn’t been for the books shelve blocking the way it might have lit the place well enough to read by. Junebug thought back to what she knew from visiting this place. It was lit by a rather simplistic grid of light crystals. Every so often a unicorn was hired to come in and charge them with magic.
She quickly trots between the bookshelves. ‘First priority, get the lights on. No way I am sitting in the dark after THAT.’ The crystal needed a small charge to get them to activate. Not that big of a charge mind you, running a hoof over one of the connected crystals would generate enough of a spark.
If Junebug had been thinking straight, she might have checked the entrance way for one of these. Instead she made her way to the librarian's work area. Not bothering to go around she jumps over the counter and trips over the librarian chair in the process. She knocks her head into floor, however she recovers quickly enough. Wobbling on her hooves, she looks desperately around for the start point.
She sees it. A line of crystal starts in the middle of the wall and climbs up towards the ceiling. In a second she’s upon it and gives it a hopeful rub with her hoof. ‘Please let this work!’
She lets out a long sigh of relief as the lights slowly flicker on.
Falling onto the floor, the excitement finally catches up with her. Between gulps of air she exclaims. “Sweet Celestia, what was that thing!?” No answers comes and all things considered she’s actually glad of it.
Finally she gets back up onto her hooves. A poster of Princess Twilight Sparkle smiles down at her. She looks up at the Princess’s large purple eyes. The poster proclaims loudly in a large curvy font, ‘Reading is magic.’ Junebug heaves a sigh, ‘I wish she was here, she’d probably know exactly what was going on. She’d probably…’ She turns and looks at the shelves. ‘Well, I guess if I wanted to take a note out of the Princess’s book I’m in the right place to do it.. Wait, do we even have a section on monsters?’
Her eyes widen at the reminder. She perks up her ears and listens, it’s gone deathly quiet again. No sounds of a monster banging on the door. Not even the expected sounds of the light crystals pulsating magical energy. Her ears begin to ring and she starts humming frantically to block it out holding her hooves down onto her ears.
She loses her breath rather quickly and starts panting, Junebug knows if she doesn’t stop soon she might hyperventilate and pass out. She turns her attention back to the poster and focusses on Twilight’s eyes, forcing herself to breath more slowly. After a moment or so it works though her breaths are still coming out in ragged puffs. The sound of her own heavy breathing was better than nothing. Junebug wonders how she’d ever taken sound for granted before now. She trots around the counter and starts through the shelves, she knows where the fiction section is from her occasional trips but that’s about it.
It takes her several moments to finally find the correct section and even then she’s stunned on the shear amount of books she had to go through. But to her disappointment, most of the books here don’t seem particularly relevant. She runs her hoof along the spines and mutters the names as she goes through. Timber wolves and how they function, by Ivy Trellis, Snippets guide to changelings, The Tree of harmony: Fact or fiction, by Quandary. She rolls her eyes at that last one.
After several moments it seems fairly obvious that she’s not going to find what she’s looking for. ‘I don’t even know what it looks like, it sounded so big but I felt.. Hooves… So many..’ Junebug shivers and listens again for sound. But she’s only greeted by the same dead silence as before. With nothing else to do she doubles checks the shelf.
It hadn’t seemed very promising the first time she came across it as the sources it boasted on its back cover didn’t seem all too reliable. It reminded her of those silly tales of Big Hoof. But the second look through she realised it might be the closest she would get. She pops the book from the shelf with her hoof and carries back to the librarian's desk between her teeth. She felt safest there, it had a good view of the library and since it was only open to one side it meant nothing could sneak up on her. Though that did mean she was backed up into a corner, she didn’t exactly want to think about that too deeply. She ran her hoof over the book's cover, ‘Monsters of Equestria and evidence of the unseen, By Chap’,
Opening to the table of content, she began to read.
Nothing here seemed particularly relevant either and she began to feel herself losing hope. She thought about the town ponies, her friends, Berry Sprite and Narrow Edge. She wondered if they had managed to get away from that thing like she had. Had they holed up inside somewhere? She quietly chastised herself for not checking any of the houses first.
Slowly she turned her attention back to the book. She’d been right about her first assumption about the book, as she recognised some of the names in the table of contents. Funnily enough, Big Hoof was one of the first names listed, along with Moth Stallion. But there were plenty of names she didn’t know and she flipps to their sections one by one, skimming through before ruling them out as possible culprits.
Lamia, a mythical monster often portrayed in works of art from the classical period of Equestria are half pony mare with the hind quarters of a giant snake. They are commonly known to live in rivers where they lure stallion- “Nope,” she mutters and flips back to the table of contents.
Nekomata, a feline- “No…”
Succubus, a female variant of a creature often found in tartarus. Known for their sexual encounter- “Okay, that’s a no too.”
Narlock, much like the changelings these creatures feed on the emotions of ponies. However, unlike the changelings they feed on a much more negative emotion, fear, in which they coerce their victims into producing with magical delusions.
She reads over that passage a few more times. “If that’s true… Then it would mean everything up to this point been has just been in my head.. But that means everypony else is trapped in the same thing. But no, if that thing really was a Narlock then why would it let me read this? Why would it leave me in the library like this…”
She gets to her hooves. This was very wrong. It didn’t make sense. Why would it just push her into the library and just leave her alone? Unless it wanted her in the library. It wanted her to find this book. It wanted her to cower in here and just let it feed off of her.
If all it could do was produce delusions to get what it wanted… That meant she could probably just leave now? Her thoughts trailed back to how lost she had gotten. Now that she thought about it, those were clearly cases of the creature using its magic on her. But then again, what had she felt pushing her into the library? Another delusion? She doubted it.
She scanned back over the passage about the narlock. There were only a few possible means of protection. One she couldn’t do because she wasn’t a unicorn, the second was probably something that was even impossible for a unicorn, stop being afraid. She rolled her eyes, though she has considered the possibility of some kind of courage spell. But she doubted most unicorns would know something like that. The last, just sounded ridiculous.
To dispel a narlock’s delusions simply turn an article of clothing inside out.
She wasn’t wearing any clothes except for… She reaches up and pats the top of her head. Her hat was gone. Lost in the struggle getting into the library no doubt, or maybe even before that. She wasn’t sure, though she knew it didn’t matter now.
She spent nearly the whole next hour pacing up and down the shelves. “You are brave, Junebug. All that thing is is a giant bully! I mean… it doesn’t even push that hard… Okay maybe it does, but you could have used some of that earth pony strength! Yeah. It just caught you off guard the last time…”
Then she checked the back rooms to see if anypony had forgotten a sweater or something. The lost and found was fairly interesting but no clothes.
Then she started pacing again. She could still feel it, the icy tendrils of fears clawing into her stomach, and she wondered if she would ever be able to psyche herself up enough to be able to do it. She thought of her friends again, imagined them locked up in their rooms scared out of their minds wandering what was going on and if anypony would ever come to rescue them.
She found that as she thought of this, those icy shards of doubt and fear slowly made way for another raw emotion, anger. She wanted to walk out there and give that filthy creature a bucking it would never forget.
Junebug focused on those images, letting those raw emotions fill her to the brink and then without giving herself even a moment to doubt herself she runs for the door and throws it open hollering all the while. “I’m not afraid of you anymore!” She jumped to and fro sending random bucks blindly into the air. “I’m not going to let you turn my shame into your next snack!”
And then riding the adrenaline for all it was worth, she bolts down the street. This time she wasn’t heading to the town hall. She was going to save her friends, the closest one to here was Narrow Edge. junebug flew down the roadways, she didn’t even know she could run that fast. She felt the wind roar in her ears and heavy thump of her heart beating wildly in her chest.
She could see his house, she was almost there. Junebug speeds up, her muscles scream for her to slow down but she doesn’t listen. All she can think about is getting to Narrow Edge. After she got to him they could go together and save Berry Sprite. With her friends by her side she knew she would never have to feel afraid, she just had to get to them first.
She rears up and lands full force onto the door, she will feel that in the morning. But she didn’t really care now. She grasps the door handle in her hooves attempting to open it, but it was locked shut. So I bang on it with both hooves crying his name. “Narrow Edge! You gotta open the door, it’s me, Junebug! I know what’s happening, we can save everypony!”
After a moment she was relieved to hear the sound of the doors lock clicking open. She stepped back and prepared to launch herself into the safety of the house with her dear friend. But it wasn’t her friend who opened the door. It was a pony who looked just like her. Junebug begins backing away from the entrance in horror. It was almost a perfect copy of her, it was even wearing the hat she had lost. She might have thought it was a changeling had it not been for those piercing black eyes.
It smile at her and open its mouth, though it didn’t move its lips it spoke. It was like a distorted recording of Junebug’s previous cries. “NaRrOw edGe! YoU GoTta OpEn tHe dOOr. iT’s mE, JuNEBuG….” The things distorted voice broke off with a loud pop.
She turns around and runs. Then picking a random house she runs up to the door and bangs on it screaming for the pony to let her inside. Only to find another twisted copy of herself opens the door. It follows her out onto the street, the sound of her desperate echoing distortedly from the creature mouth.
As she runs down the street more doors open and more twisted version of herself come running out to give chase. Their numbers grow until it looks like an entire army has amassed itself for the sole purpose of catching this one mare.
Junebug runs straight into a wall. Blood drips down her forehead making her vision go red. She knows that this turn shouldn’t have lead to an alley, but it doesn’t matter now. She turns to face the narlock.
*** *** ***
The Care Well Hollow Gazette
Baker found.
Local resident, Junebug, of When In June Baked Goods, who went missing over a month and a half ago has finally been found. Local pegasus hero, Tornado Serenade is reported to have found the young mare stumbling around the nearby wooded area while she was going for a quick glide to stretch her wings.
She has suffered from severe mental trauma and is receiving treatment at Stetson Asylum.
The local authorities suspect foul play and the events surrounding her disappearance are still under investigation.
Only time will tell if the poor girl will be well enough to speak with the guard about her experiences.
The end
,
