You’re asleep. In your dream, you’re with your friends, and you are all having a party at Pinkie’s house.
The dream begins to fade. It fades into blackness. You begin to hear your hearbeat, and your breathing. You subconsciously turn yourself to the left.
You’re not asleep anymore.
After realizing you are awake, you decide to turn to the right again, and attempt to fall into slumber once more. You sense the cold air getting under the blanket, and it makes you shiver slightly. You hold on to the blanket firmly.
Your entire body feels uncomfortable. Your right hind leg is starting to ache due to the its position. You switch to the left, again, desperately trying to get back to your dream.
Few minutes pass, and you still can’t fall asleep. You question yourself whether you should get out of bed, or just stay put. After a few moments, you reluctantly decide to get out of bed. Perhaps after reading a book you will be able to sleep again.
As you move your body to remove the blanket, you feel a shiver down your spine. You question yourself if it really is a good idea to get out of the warmth from your bed and into the cold outside.
You groan quietly. You know you’re not going to sleep much tonight. As much as you could try to sleep, you would end up just waiting until 7 a.m., like usual. You think you might as well get out of bed already. You open your eyes, breathe in deeply, and stretch your body, like you do every morning.
You look outside the bedroom window and see exactly what you expected. Night sky. Complete darkness. It’s probably between 2 and 4 a.m. at the moment, you think. You take a few steps towards the door, and put your right fore hoof on the light switch. You immediately close your eyes. You really don’t want that strong light burning into them. It’s best to let them adjust to the light while they are closed. You click the light switch.
Instead of seeing a faint light coming through your eyelids, you see just darkness. You open your eyes.
"Huh?" It’s still dark. You click the light switch two more times, and nothing happens. Suddenly, you remember you have a flashlight just for this kind of occasion under the bed. You take a few steps towards the bed, crouch, and retrieve the flashlight with your hoof. You turn the flashlight on. Or so you try.
Without light, you can’t read, as you were planning to. After a short sigh, you think it would be nice to have a snack before heading back to bed. You take slow, careful steps towards the door once again and walk downstairs.
You notice something is off, but you don’t know what it is. You discard this thought and walk to the kitchen. After going to the kitchen, you find a massive shopping list on the counter. Now you hope there’s still something left you can eat in the refrigerator.
There isn’t.
The only thing you find in there is a small bag with carrots, just for Angel. You think you might as well put his food in his bowl, so that when he wakes up, it’s already there for him to eat. You carry the small bag to the living room. You open the bag with your teeth and remove the carrots and put them in the bowl Angel always eats in. You head back to the kitchen and toss the empty bag in the trash can. You suddenly grasp what has been bugging your mind.
"Angel?" Just as you came downstairs, you looked around the living room and saw that the bed where Angel usually sleeps in was empty. Just to be sure, you quietly walk towards his bed and check under the covers. Angel is not in his bed. You find it weird how you didn’t notice his absence as soon as you came downstairs. Though, perhaps, you were just feeling sleepy and that prevented you from being attentive at the time. You don’t know if you should call for his name or not. Maybe he is sleeping somewhere else? You don’t want to risk wake him up, but at the same time you want to know where he is.
You figure it’s best to call for him.
"A-Angel? Angel Bunny?" Your voice is very quiet. You whisper so low that even if he was awake, he would probably still not hear you. You cough a little. This time, you try to call for him a little bit louder, but not loud enough to make too much noise.
"Angel Bunny! Where are you, Angel?" You wait a few seconds, expecting to hear a soft noise, something that would indicate where the rabbit is. You get no reply. You start to feel a little worried. You clear your throat once more. Then, you try make yourself loud and clear.
"Angel! Angel! Angel? Where are you?" Again, no reply.
Your mind starts to wonder. Where did Angel go? Where would he go in the middle of the night? You think back to the previous day. Yesterday, just before heading upstairs, you know for sure Angel was already asleep in his bed. He had to have gone somewhere in the middle of the night.
Something occurs to you. You really hope you are wrong. You move to the entrance door, and open it. The sound the wooden door makes while it opens crushes your heart.
"Oh, no..." You forgot to lock the entrance door yesterday. That’s how Angel was able to go outside.
You feel sick with apprehension. This whole situation is just too much for you to bear. It’s late in the night, so you can’t get your friends to help you. The flashlight doesn’t work, for some reason. Now, as much as you don’t want to, you have to leave the cottage. You have to go outside. Into the woods. In the middle of the night. To find Angel Bunny. Alone, with no light source, and with no food.
Rabbits are preys for a vast number of species. You doubt Angel Bunny will survive out there without you. Angel may not treat you right very often. But he’s still your friend, you care a lot about him. You can’t let him stay in the forest and risk finding him dead the next day, that would not be kind.
You nod to yourself. This is it. You are going to find him and bring him home. For now, you will just have to ignore the anxiety and fear you are feeling. As soon as you take a step outside, your ears sense the sound of crickets chirping. You quickly remind yourself that the night is not something to be feared. Most critters are asleep at this hour.
"This is very peaceful, actually." You calmly walk in direction of the Everfree Forest, which is where you believe Angel went to. It’s not uncommon for him to head there, actually. But when he does run off like that, it’s usually during the day, not at night. You begin to wonder what makes him go there anyways.
As you’re walking, you notice the grass is wet. It definitely rained this night, not many hours ago. You also notice, in the distance, parts of grass that appear to have been stomped on. This probably would not be easily observed had it not rained.
Due to the density of the vegetation, and since it’s also nighttime, you quickly get engulfed in darkness. That flashlight would really help out a lot here.
You call out for Angel a few more times. "Angel! Angel Bunny! Angel!" You wait for a few seconds. But still, no reply.
You proceed to search for a trail of smashed grass. After some time, you find one. You are pretty confident that the trail you found belongs to Angel, so, you choose to follow it.
While walking, you consider if it is a good idea to keep shouting for Angel in the middle of the night. You might risk attracting a timberwolf or some other dangerous wild animal if you keep making noise. But then again, by being silent you might not be able to find the bunny even if he’s just 10 yards away from you. For now, you think you’ll just keep following the trail.
It’s been almost half an hour, and you’re still following the trail. You have no idea where you are. The darkness makes it impossible for you to recognize any trees, or really just anything to make it easier for you to know your location.
You’ve been to this forest countless times. If you could see a certain plant, or unique tree you could easily move around without getting lost. But the other times you came here it was daytime, and when it wasn’t, you had at least a flashlight to help you identify the vegetation.
Your mind starts to wander for a few minutes. You unconsciously stop paying attention to the trail and just keep moving forward. After you realize what you just did, you look back, trying to get back to the trail of smashed grass. You can only see the silhouettes of the trees. Even as you look on the ground, you can’t see anything. Just blackness. Perhaps you were initially able to see the trail because you weren’t too deep into the forest. Maybe, since the vegetation is denser, it’s even harder for any light to illuminate anything, even the slightlest.
You sit down for a moment, trying to come up with a plan for this whole situation. You really want to find your friend, but you doubt that you can do it by searching for him, in this entire forest, all by yourself, without a flashlight. Your heart feels a sense of urgency, that something bad will happen to Angel if you don’t find him in time. But your mind says that there must be a better, more effective way to do this.
It’s not realistic to think that your current strategy is working, so, you need to think of something smarter. First off, you need to get out of the forest. Then, you plan on going to Twilight Sparkle’s castle, and request for her aid in finding Angel.
You know that alicorn always stays up at night, so you don’t worry about waking her on her sleep. Twilight could bring one or two flashlights, and maybe even her assistant, Spike, to help you find Angel. Yes, this sounds like a good plan. Now, you look around, try to distinguish the shapes and see if you know where you are. You don’t know where you are. You’re completely lost.
You think it’s best just to take the opposite steps to find the trail you were following few minutes ago. You stand up and turn yourself to the opposite direction you were just facing, and start walking forward.
You don’t know if you can find the trail again. Thankfully, you memorized the trajectory. When you entered the forest, you walked forward for about 5 minutes, then, took a turn to the left and walked for about 15 minutes, and then, you took a turn to the right and walked some more. Now, you have to make the opposite turns. First, you have to walk for almost 10 minutes, then, turn left, walk for 15 minutes, turn right, and then finally, walk forward until you are out of the forest.
As you are walking, you feel the grass touching your hooves and notice it’s not wet. The grass was wet just a minute ago. Your mind can’t find a logical explanation for this.
You keep on walking. And still, the grass isn’t wet. For a moment, you thought the other portion of grass simply hadn’t gotten wet, somehow, but now, this confuses you more. You followed a trail of smashed grass, among all the wet grass. It’s just not possible that the grass got completely dry in less than an hour, in the middle of the night.
You stop walking. You pause and think for a moment. If the grass you’re walking on is completely dry, it means you haven’t been here before. And if you haven’t been here before, that means that if you keep on walking forward, you’re actually getting deeper into the forest, which is the opposite of what you want to do.
This isn’t working. You don’t want to risk going even deeper into the forest, but at the same time, you have to make a decision, otherwise, you will keep stopping and changing your mind. You need to keep moving.
You change your direction 90º to the right and immediately start trotting. This is it. If you keep moving in this exact direction, you know you will eventually get out of the forest.
You quickly notice that you don’t feel the same cold you felt when you left the cottage. This is probably because now you have moved for a while, and that exercise increased your body temperature. Either that, or the temperature got higher since you came to forest.
You yawn quietly. Your eyelids start drooping ever so slightly.
"N-no! I can’t fall asleep here." You feel the temptation to just lay down on the ground, and let yourself go back into dream world. But you don’t fall for it. You know this is not the time for that. If you decided to sleep here for the rest of the night, that would have lots of risks. The risk of not finding Angel Bunny. The risk of being attacked by an animal in your sleep. Thinking about this makes you feel very anxious.
You start sprinting.
A high pitched, vibrant, metallic sound penetrates your ears.
The strange sound swiftly fades away. For a moment, you don’t know who you are or where you are. You just feel a strange pain inside your head. Immediately afterwards, your mind fills in the blanks.
You suddenly remember everything. You remember running, trying to get out of the Everfree Forest. If you had stopped to close your eyes for just a moment, it would be obvious that you would have fallen asleep. But you didn’t. You remember doing your very best not to fall asleep.
Just like the sound did, the pain in your head begins to fade as well.
You are jump scared by the sound of birds flapping their wings very close to you. As you get on your hooves and open your eyes; you see that it’s still night. It’s still completely dark. In fact, you think it’s even darker than it was before you became unconscious.
You look at the trees, and something feels off. It’s something very subtle, you don’t even know what it is. You think you’re being paranoid. This whole night, you have been feeling like a mess. Each problem you are facing, individually, is small. But all of them, mixed together, have lead you to where you are now.
You shake your head.
"No. I can do this. I am getting out of here. And then, I am going to find Angel." You try to ignore the negative thoughts you’re having and focus more on solutions.
You start trotting. You are confident that as soon as you manage to get out of here, the rest of the night will be easier.
Night. This makes you think. If it’s still very late in the night, then, for how long did you stay unconscious? You would expect that by 5 a.m., it would start to get less dark. This means you couldn’t have stayed unconscious for a long time. Which also begs the question, how did you become unconscious in the first place? You do not recall closing your eyes, and falling asleep. You also don’t recall collapsing.
You interrupt your thoughts as you stomp on something. It’s spongy. Likely, some sort of fungus. It also has an intense, sour smell that quickly makes you cringe. Realization hits you.
"Cleome Stolonifera! It’s extremely flammable. With this, I can make fire!" You enthusiastically remove the mushroom from the soil. Now, all you have to do is find some branches and put it on fire. Then, you will finally have some light.
You stumble around in the dark for some moments, until you finally find what you are looking for. Apparently, a tree had been completely destroyed by some animal. You pick some branches and put them over each other on the ground.
You proceed to hold the mushroom over the branches with your hooves and begin squeezing it. As you do so, the mushroom expels a liquid that once it touches the wood; it makes some smoke.
"Come on, just a little more..."
You struggle while attempting to extract more of the liquid from the mushroom. Just a little more, and you will be able to light the wood on fire.
"You bucking idiot! What are you doing?!" You look behind you. A figure is approaching you in high speed. You don’t know what to do, so, you just drop the mushroom and start running to the opposite direction.
Your heart is pounding. You are running as fast as you can.
The fight-or-flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. You don’t want to fight.
You are not even sure if whoever or whatever is that is actually hostile, but you don’t want to take any risks.
You feel scared. You don’t dare to stop or to look back. Not until you are absolutely certain that that thing has stopped chasing you. You keep on running.
You try your best to look at the ground and make sure you don’t step on anything and fall. Collapsing while being chased by a possibly harmful creature would be the worst thing that could happen.
You realize you’re not being chased anymore. You don’t hear an animal running towards you from behind. All you hear is your own accelerated breathing. You turn around slowly, just to be sure.
You see a silhouette in the distance. That thing had a voice. It sounded like a stallion. An extremely angry stallion, but a stallion nonetheless. You approach the silhouette quietly. Now that the distance is shorter, you can clearly see that it really is a pony.
You feel drastically relieved. You don’t know why you even considered the possibility of that not being a pony.
You observe him. To the best of your ability, that is. He is kicking the branches you prepared. After a few seconds, he stomps on something, probably the mushroom you were using. He sits down on the ground, and sighs loudly. You wonder if you should talk to him, but what if he’s hostile?
"Don’t worry, miss, I’m not going to harm you. You can come out now." He says it while turning the head towards you. He seems to be calmer now. His voice is a bit raspy, and you notice a slight southern accent. By his voice alone, you assume he is at least old enough to be your father.
You shyly take two steps towards the stallion. You try to take a better look at him, but it’s pointless. In the dark, you can only see he has a pretty generic shape. You can’t see his face, cutie mark, or anything, really, to identify him.
You finally decide to speak.
"I-I... I’m sorry, sir, did-"
"Heck yeah you did! I mean, no, you were about to. You were just about to screw up everything. Just, *sigh* what do you want?" You nervously take a step back.
"No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question. What do you want? What are you doing here?"
"I’m sorry, I just... I am lost, I want to get out of this forest. I tried-"
"To make fire, get some light. Yeah, now I get it. Look, miss, you can’t do that in here. Do you know what an ursa minor is?"
"Yes, I’ve seen one before."
"Thing is, this forest is full of ‘em. I can see you’re not exactly from around here. But please, don’t you ever light a fire, or use anything that makes light in here, that attracts those ursas like mad crazy."
"Oh, my."
You feel a sense of dread creeping in. You’ve seen the damage a single ursa minor can make. If a pony ever confronted an ursa minor, they would not survive. The ursa minor is an extremely dangerous animal. It can kill without mercy.
You fall on your knees.
First, you were struggling to find your lost friend. Now, you’re going to have to fight for your own survival. This night never seems to end.
You shake your head. You close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. You really need to calm down. Panicking is not going to help in anything. You must keep cool.
"Miss, it’s all right. I can help you. Look, I know you probably have lots of questions for me, but if you want my help, and it looks like you need it, I request that you trust me."
You take a deep breath, and after opening your eyes, you reply to the stallion.
"All right. I trust you, sir."
"Good. Now that’s a smart mare. Yeah, so I have this shed, about two miles in that *points hoof* direction. I have a bed, so you can stay the night there, and by tomorrow morning you can leave safely. Ursas sleep during the day, in case you didn’t know. I will have to go somewhere else, to, uh, take care of a certain business. Just, don’t wait for me. And also, I think I have plenty of food, so, in case you get any hungry, feel free to eat something."
"Oh, thank you so much, sir, how can I ever re-"
"No, nah, no need to thank me, miss. Just go, just go. I really need to go somewhere else now."
The stallion stands up, and starts trotting in the opposite direction of his shed. Few moments later, his figure fades into the shadows and you can no longer sense his presence.
There are many questions you can make about the situation you’re in, but now it’s not the time for that. You need to get to the shed.
You begin trotting in the direction he told you to go. Your mind is still full of worry, but you try not to think too much and just concentrate on finding the shed. After you find the shed, everything will be fine. He said it was two miles of distance. At your current pace, you will get there in less than an hour.
But there’s the issue of you not finding it in all this darkness.
You stop trotting. The stallion told you not to use any light, because that would attract ursas. If what he said is true, his shed will not be illuminated when you find it. Merely following the direction he pointed to will not be enough. This is a massive forest, and if you deviate even with a 10º angle from the correct direction, that will be a major difference in the distance of two miles.
You think. You think carefully about what you should do on this situation.
...
Something comes to you. Something so obvious that if you had thought about this earlier in the night, you probably wouldn’t even be here by now. You have wings. You can just fly over the trees until you’re out of the forest. You feel very disappointed at yourself for not having thought of this before. At the same time, you feel mildly relieved; maybe it’s now that things are going to turn your way.
You start flapping your wings. They feel very heavy. You never enjoyed flying, and all your life you avoided having to do it. Maybe the lack of exercise is taking a toll now.
Your hooves stop touching the ground and the grass; you’re slowly gaining altitude. With some struggle, you manage to surpass the trees’ height.
You look around and examine your surroundings: trees, trees, and more trees. You cannot see the end of the forest. Everything just looks exactly the same, it’s impossible to navigate in the forest like this. Which begs the question, how did the stallion do it?
Perhaps he has a compass? Even if he does, it’s not very likely that he manages to move around, at night, for at least two miles away from his shed and then come back with just that object to guide him.
You shake your head. There is no time to waste. You must hurry.
You start flying forward, flapping your wings as fast as you can. For now, all you can do is fly in this direction and hope you will eventually find the shed.
You’re not confident that’s going to happen, though.
Twenty minutes pass, and you start feeling very tired. You look back, and observe the horizon. The sky is still completely dark. You had hoped you would see a faint tinge of orange, but you were apparently wrong.
Your wings are aching; you think it’s best to land now than risk straining your muscles. But at the same time, you know you fly much faster than you gallop. And the faster you move, the faster you will be out of this forest.
As the movement of your wings decreases in speed, you slowly begin losing altitude. You enter the forest once more.
You can hear yourself panting. Flying has always been something tiring for you. At least, now, you can put your hooves on land once more.
While you’re descending, just as you’re about to reach the ground, a surge of pain in your right wing makes you fall face to the ground.
You’re not going to be able to fly for a while.
You remain on the ground, wishing for this infernal night to be over. You close your eyes and imagine yourself at home. You imagine holding Angel in a tight embrace. You imagine seeing all your friends there as well. You imagine yourself telling them about this crazy night and how glad you are that it’s all over now.
But it’s not. This night isn’t over. You’re not home yet, and you haven’t managed to find Angel. Even after all this time and frustration, there’s still a long way to go. You still have to persist.
“Frustrated”. That’s a perfect way to describe how you feel right now.
You sigh softly. You stay on the ground for a while. You just keep breathing in and out, not thinking about anything in particular.
After a moment of hesitation, you open your eyes and swiftly get on your hooves. You start trotting once again. You figure it will always be best to just keep moving. It doesn’t even matter which way you’re going.
You give up on the hope of ever finding the shed. You recall what the stallion said, “I have a bed, so you can stay the night there, and by tomorrow morning you can leave safely”, which would imply the shed is in the woods.
Sheds are usually pretty small. You can’t see yourself finding one among all these trees, let alone in this darkness. The idea is simply not realistic.
While trotting, you see the grass is much taller in this area. The grass reaches up to your shoulders, and it tickles you a little.
You’re afraid of stomping on some bug accidentally. Bugs already have short life spans, and you don’t want to make them even shorter.
You remember the day you were walking around in Manehattan and you heard something being crushed by your hoof. When you stopped and brought your hoof up, you saw a dead ladybug stuck on it. You felt horrible for the rest of the day.
Just by reliving that moment makes you feel bad. You don’t want your own rashness to cause the death of an innocent creature ever again.
You’re a veterinary. Your duty is to always do your best to prevent animals from all sorts of harm. Even in these terrible conditions, you still want to stick to your duty.
You hear something moving in the grass. It’s to your right, and it doesn’t sound very close. You have no idea what animal it is, although you’re pretty sure it’s not an ursa. Ursas are animals of big dimensions, and they make quite a lot of noise while moving.
That animal can be anything from an innocent critter like a bunny, to a possibly dangerous animal, like a timberwolf. You consider the possibility of that being Angel. You think of going towards it for a moment.
But you quickly reject the idea. It’s not likely that’s Angel. The mere possibility of that being a timberwolf is enough for you to make up your mind. It would be unwise to let the animal know your position. You come to a halt in your trot. You quietly begin marching to the opposite direction of the unseen animal.
Author's Note
Yeah, I know, it's pretty bland so far.
The second chapter is where it really starts to get intense. I still need to correct some mistakes before posting it, though.
