OPALESCENCE?
A Feline Metamorphosis
Cascades of pearly moonlight illuminated the centre of Rarity’s thoroughly ruined bedroom.
All manners of cloth, clothing and bed linens laid strewn haphazardly across her room. What was once a neat dresser, had been turned into an amalgamation of velvet and silk knitting material. A once tidy closet too had been over-embellished with wreaths of cotton and wool.
Dresses and skirts sprawled over practically every meter of what was once a mirage of blue and grey carpeting. Rarity’s collection of ponnequins too had been chaotically dispersed across the room. Some remained standing, whilst others laid in ruin; victims of their owner’s wrath and misery.
The centrepiece of the pandemonium however remained Rarity herself.
She sat, head sunk low into her forehooves on her comparatively intact bed. Tears, both dried and fresh, stained her usually pristine makeup.
She’d searched desperately for hours on end in every crack, every corner.
‘Under the dressers, under the tables, in the closets.’ Rarity thought, digging her muzzle ever deeper into her forehooves.
‘Every crack. Every corner. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘Nothing at all.’
A strained sigh escaped her cracked lips.
‘Where have you gone Opal?’ Rarity asked hopelessly, drawing her eyes to the window, which Rarity had left open, in hopes that her feline companion might return. With several days already past, unthinkable doubts threatened to creep into her head.
‘Unthinkable,’ Rarity whispered with a shake of her head. ‘Absolutely unthinkable.’
She raised a now chipped hoof to her chaotic and unkempt coil of a mane. Sweetie Belle had been sent away after the mania had begun.
‘It’s better that way. Was that a day ago? Two? I can’t remember.’ Rarity thought, stabbing at the fringes of her scrambled memory.
Evading sleep apparently did indeed have its consequences.
Slumber however remained and would continue to remain nought but a fantasy.
There would be no rest for Rarity till Opal returned alive or…
‘Inconceivable! Unthinkable!’ she screeched, as the impossible thought lingered once more too close to the surface of her conscious.
Rarity cringed at her outburst, and comforted her now throbbing temples. The deathly, near incapacitating headache didn’t help the situation either.
Sometime ago during her hurricane of turmoil, Rarity’s friends had approached her, offering their support around the house. They seemed worried.
She’d rejected them.
‘Obviously.’ Rarity thought.
They couldn’t possibly hope to help her here. Not while Opal remained lost. They needed to search, and she needed to stay and wait. Wait till her kitty returned home. Which she would, eventually.
What did Fluttershy tell her about cats travelling dozens of kilometers to return home?
‘She always does.’ Rarity thought aloud.
A shadow crossed the moonlit ray that beamed through her window. Rarity’s heart skipped a beat, and faster than could ever be expected for a pony of her physique and condition, she leapt from her bed and towards the edge of her window. Gripping the wooden frame, she haphazardly lifted half her body out of the window and into cold nighttime air.
Her eyes darted around in their sockets, scanning the environment like some bird of prey.
She found nothing.
‘Opal!’ Rarity screamed, with such pitch and volume that half of Ponyville likely awoke from their slumber.
A whimper escaped something above her.
With an almost animalistic degree of velocity, Rarity trained her vision above her, heart full of hope.
A set of terrified, turquoise eyes stared back, accompanied by a shuddering and shivering pale gold pegasus.
‘Fluttershy?’ Rarity asked in disbelief, as her heart shattered.
‘I’m sorry, I know you told us to go, but I was worried about you Rarity.’ Fluttershy whimpered, peeling away from the window frame.
Rarity gritted her teeth and tensed her exhausted muscles as unbridled rage and frustration pulsed through her veins.
Fluttershy, terrified of her friend’s change in demeanour, made to hide behind her pale rose mane, and prepared for the worst.
Rarity opened her mouth to release the most virulent spew of debauchery she possibly could at her shy pegasus friend, but nothing came.
She sighed.
‘Fluttershy. Go home.’ Rarity managed, before dropping back into her room in defeat. Distantly, she just about heard the light fluttering of her friend’s wings as Fluttershy undoubtedly fled the scene.
‘Perhaps Opal really is gone.’ Rarity thought.
Tears fought their way to the corners of her eyes. She cast a now blurry gaze across the ruined form of her bedroom. She’d shunned her friends and even cast out her own sister.
‘I’m a mess.’ Rarity concluded, allowing reality to sink in for the first time since the whole ordeal had started.
Opal had been with Rarity since the very beginning. As nought but a filly, they’d grown up side by side. Through every struggle, every hurdle, Opal had been there (even if her love wasn’t exactly palpable sometimes).
What had begun as an exhausted cry soon transformed into open bawling. Rarity just about managed to crawl into her bed, curling into a fetal position as she wept.
Eventually, her sobbing ceased and shortly thereafter, Luna’s inevitable slumber claimed her.
Rarity awoke to the slight, but unmistakable sound of movement by her window frame.
Sleep still clouded her eyes, but even in the blur, she could make out a figure casting a shadow in the pale moonlight.
‘Fluttershy, I’m sorry about how I treated you earlier. It was rather unkind of me.’ Rarity slurred, swiping at the sleep in her eyes and struggling to sit up.
The figure stopped abruptly, and remained still.
‘I know, the room is a mess. Opal going missing has been… hard on me to say the least.’ Rarity admitted, finally in a seated position. She looked up with the most heartfelt smile she could rally.
As she looked upon the figure, Rarity’s smile faltered before ultimately fading entirely, as she processed the fact that whatever sat in her window frame, it most certainly wasn’t Fluttershy. Even though half of the figure remained drenched in the darkness of her room, what Rarity could make out for certain, that it indeed wasn’t a pegasus.
Nor a pony.
Rarity’s heart sunk to the floor, as both her and the figure remained locked in an almost trance like staring contest. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, further features on the thing that sat in her window frame became evermore clear.
Most notably, distinctively feline ears.
Rarity’s brow furrowed in equal parts horror and confusion.
‘Opalescence?’ she whispered with all the courage she could muster.
The thing’s head cocked, before taking a slow but decisively deliberate step into Rarity’s bedchamber.
Every semblance of Rarity’s being urged her to run and not look back, but her body refused. A sense of cold, numbing paralysis sunk into her limbs, and she couldn’t help but watch as it approached her bedside.
As the creature grew closer, so did its features grow clearer.
Pinkish, hairless skin hung loosely from the abomination’s frame, accompanied by a gaping, twisting maw. Bloodshot emerald eyes twitched and flickered as the creature took in Rarity’s now quivering form.
Thick, dark liquid painted the horror’s wickedly pointed teeth.
A wave of uneasy nausea ran through Rarity’s bowels. Some semblance of strength returned to her weary body, allowing her to slowly crawl backwards as Opalescence’s distorted frame clawed its way onto her bed.
An almost debilitating odour filled Rarity’s nose, as whatever power she had left took flight and abandoned her.
The creature placed a disfigured paw onto Rarity’s chest, effectively pinning her.
‘Home…’ It gargled, spilling drops of equal parts blood and saliva onto its owner's features.
Rarity looked into the maddened eyes of her once-beloved pet.
‘Food…’
A short lived scream escaped Rarity’s lips as Opalescence gorged itself on its master.
