Chapter 1: Personification of Fear & Doubt
The ethereal albino unicorn drifted listlessly through the night air. Gently floating on her back, White Noise gazed up at the blurry moonlight. The silhouettes of the desert hills and the night sky blended together in her poor eyesight. A cactus passed through her intangible naked body without a disturbance.
White Noise touched down onto the wooden walkway of the tiny village of Needlestack. She passed through the wall of the saloon. She sidled up to a stallion, leaning up against the wall. Oblivious to her presence, he idly wiped off the sweat from the beer bottle off on his leather chaps.
Wistful, he watched the mildly attractive mare sitting at the far end of the bar, from the corner. He scratched his beard, and shifted his weight, hesitant to approach her. Noise leaned in close to his ear. Her lips moved, sans audible words. A pained look crossed his face. The stallion covered his face with his hand, and then turned his back to the mare. Leaning on the windowsill, he somberly looked out at the black night.
Noise caressed his back with her pale hand, as she returned to the moonlight outside. Pushing off with her foot, she weightlessly drifted back into the air. Ruminating on her past deeds, White Noise felt the presence of a certain draconequus worming into the back of her mind.
“Intruding upon my thoughts again, are we?” she said aloud.
“Of course. When one magically spawns a daughter of chaos, you tend to keep track of them,” Discord said telepathically from his stone prison in Canterlot.
White Noise let out a short laugh. “That’s not very chaotic of you, father.”
Discord didn’t reply. Noise twirled around, and lightly swiped her hand over the ground, sending tumbleweeds rolling down a hill. The moonlight shimmered throughout her bare ghostly body.
“Let me guess, you’ve come to criticize my style again. How predictable of you.” Noise curled her body around a cactus, as she glided past. “Or did you have something else in mind for this ‘delightfully cruel twist of irony’, you call a daughter?” she quoted him from their last conversation.
Discord remained silent for a long minute. “Well…” he finally started, “granted, you didn’t inherit my style, and it’s true, you were not what I had hoped for in a daughter. However, that in itself is chaos, I suppose,” he admitted superciliously.
“I also didn’t inherit the same level of reality-bending spaghetti powers that you have; so I work with what I’ve got.”
“I’ve been listening to your little hi-jinks, up north in Coltsgold. Everypony is calling it a ‘calamity’. Eh, not the word I would have used. I’ll give you partial credit for twisting that demented scientist’s mind. Zombifying half of the ponies across two towns, and then terrify the rest with those robotic ponies, was a nice touch; but that’s foal’s play. It’s been three months, and nopony’s talking about it anymore. In fact, the news hasn’t even spread past the Withered Wood Forest,” he ranted.
Scanning the desert landscape, Noise sensed a group of fillies camped out in the wilderness. She drew her knees up, and kicked a cactus; propelling herself towards the campsite.
Discord sighed. “If it were me, I would have turned the town into one of those mare’s video games; reverse the ground with the sky; and then make the ponies swing from tree-to-tree, all while being chased by flying sentient potatoes!” His voice dripped with gleeful excitement. “But I suppose you’re not good enough to handle such a feat,” Discord’s voice deepened with a hard edge.
White Noise circled a grouping of boulders. She used her magic to create a tiny luminous sphere. A small insect flittered around the light. In an instant, a lizard snapped its jaws, and devoured it. A moment later, an owl swooped down, and snatched the lizard from the rock. White Noise let the magical orb fade.
“I told you, father. You lack subtlety. Everypony knows your chaos across Equestria, and that landed you in a prison of stone. Nopony knows my name, yet those few I’ve met, will remember what happened for the rest of their days. I’ve manipulated some since they were foals.” White Noise smiled. “The highs, the lows, the crushing humiliations, the fears, doubts, and uncertainties… Does that not make life more interesting?” she marveled, brushing the long straight white hair from her face. Her red eyes gleamed.
“Fine,” Discord sighed. “But if you don’t want my advice, don’t expect me to care about what you’re doing.”
“Liar.”
“Eh,” he groaned dismissively.
***
The cool night air hung motionless in the foothills of the Tumbleweed Desert. The Filly Scout troupe slept soundly in their tents. All the foals were still, except for Sandy Stream. The young mule tossed and turned in her sleeping bag, next to her earth pony friend, Dusty Pearl. Sandy’s long ears twitched at the sound of hooting owls. She contemplated playing her portable GameColt handheld, but didn’t want it to be confiscated by the troupe leader.
Sandy Stream crossed her arms, and frowned. “I wanna go home,” she mouthed silently. Her forehead creased as she held back a wave of emotions. “Ugh, not again…” She rubbed her reddened eyes. The memory was still fresh of her mother and her favorite teacher, pointing and laughing at her, as Sandy sat sniveling by the window seat on the train. Her lip curled.
Sinking deeper into her sleeping bag, Sandy hugged her pillow tight. She buried her face, and fought back the tears. She clawed her fingers into the fluffiness of the pillow, and then rocked herself gently.
Suddenly, she froze. Her ears twitched back and forth, listening intently. She poked her head out from the sleeping bag, and then propped herself up onto her elbows. Sandy held her breath. The desert was eerily silent. Her home in Oakhoof was fairly quiet, but it was normal to hear at least some travelers along the road at night.
She rubbed her burning eyes. Sandy looked at Dusty Pearl, who was dead to the world. Her mouth hung slack, as she slept on her stomach. Frowning, Sandy snuggled back into her bedding.
Her large ears rotated towards a vague sound. Opening her eyes, she listened again. She wrinkled her nose, trying to make it out. Sandy lifted her head off the pillow again. She took two breaths. Something reflecting the moonlight moved outside of their tent. Her brown eyes locked onto the subtle motion. The faintly glowing silhouette drew closer.
“Ms. Chatter?” Sandy mouthed inaudibly. The troupe leader wasn’t so tall, and didn’t have a long flowing mane. Squinting, she leaned forward. Sandy’s eyebrows shot up. She wasn’t sure, but the blurry figure looked naked.
The mare stopped, and turned its head. Sandy Stream felt eyes staring straight at her. She quickly covered her head inside her sleeping bag, pretending to be asleep. Her heart beat rapidly. She waited for the troupe leader to scold her for not being asleep. Seconds ticked by at a snail’s pace. No scolding ever came.
Tension in her muscles relaxed. Sandy yawned, and then nuzzled her pillow. Soon she dozed off. Sandy slept for a while, until she woke up to a noise outside.
“Shh. Come on, this way,” somepony whispered. Footsteps walked away from the campsite.
Sandy ignored it, and pulled the sleeping bag over her face. She tried to sleep, but something was annoying her. Rolling over to her left side, she looked at Dusty Pearl. Her tiny earth pony frame rose and fell with each slow breath. Groaning, Sandy covered her head again.
SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH…
Tossing back the covers, Sandy listened closely. A strange noise gradually filled the tent. At first she thought it was a small babbling brook, but then it was more like hissing air, coming from inside the tent. Sandy sat up, and groped around in the dark.
“What is that?” she muttered, lifting up her blankets.
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!
A deafening roar of static erupted from their walkie-talkies. Sandy yelped, and clamped her hands over her ears.
Dusty Pearl jumped up, startled. “What? What’s going on?” she asked, bewildered.
“Turn ‘em off! Quick, before anypony wakes up!” Sandy replied frantically.
Sandy fumbled with her walkie-talkie. She turned the volume down.
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!
She clicked off the power switch.
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!!
Pulling open the black plastic covers, they yanked out the batteries.
The noise stopped.
Hastily the two fillies hid back inside of their sleeping bags, and waited. Neither a murmur, nor a motion came from the troupe. If anypony heard them, they weren’t investigating.
“What did you do?” Dusty Pearl whispered, combing her dark mane behind her hear.
“Nothing, it just went nuts,” Sandy Stream replied.
“Well, I don’t want to get in trouble with Ms. Chatter. Do you think anypony else heard it?” Dusty asked.
“I dunno. It doesn’t seem like it. But I think I saw Ms. Chatter walk by earlier…”
“What were you doing? Did you break the walkie-talkies? ‘Cause we’ll be in big trouble if they aren’t working,” Dusty fretted.
Sandy sat up and leaned over to Dusty’s side of the tent. “I told you, I didn’t do nothing!” she hissed in a hushed tone.
The two fillies stared each other. Dusty Pearl hugged her teddy bear tight. “Can you look outside and check? I’m too afraid to go back to sleep,” she said.
Sandy frowned, and crossed her arms. Turning her head away, she huffed. After a long pause, she rolled her eyes, and sighed. “Okay, fine…”
Unzipping the sleeping bag, Sandy crawled out in her fuzzy white pajamas, patterned with cartoon frogs. Slowly she opened the portal of the tent, careful to make as little sound as possible. She poked her blue furred face outside, and looked around.
All the tents were dark. The smell from the doused campfire hung in the air. Everything was as before. Nopony was awake.
As Sandy retreated back inside the tent, a light caught her attention. Crawling outside, Sandy squinted at the will-o’-the-wisp glowing in the darkness. Ponies chitchatted in the distance.
“What’s wrong, Sandy?” Dusty asked, poking her smoky-furred muzzle out of the tent.
Waving a hand at her, she muttered, “Hang on…” Sandy cupped her ears, trying to make out what they were saying.
“Okay girls, to get your astronomy badges, you need to point out and draw each of the constellations,” a distant voice announced.
Sandy gasped. “Applesauce!” she swore, and then dived back inside the tent with a thud.
“What is it?” Dusty asked, clutching the top of her plaid sleeping bag to her pink and white polka-dot pajamas.
Sandy frantically searched for her flashlight. Clicking the light on, she pulled open her backpack; digging for her Filly Scout uniform. “Quick! We gotta go! They left us!”
Dusty’s grey eyes grew wide. “They what?!” she squeaked.
“Everypony ditched us, to go get their ‘pastramony’ badges,” she replied, yanking out her brown skirt and white shirt from her bag.
“Pastrami badges? What the hay is that?”
“I dunno. Something to do with constipations, I think,” Sandy said, crawling inside of her sleeping bag in order to change into her uniform.
Dusty wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound right. Are you sure?”
“Just hurry up, or else we’ll lose ‘em.”
Dusty fished for her Filly Scout uniform. “But I thought we were done for the night. Why would Ms. Chatter send us to bed, only to go out again while we’re all asleep?”
“Don’t ask me! I dunno. All I know is I heard the troupe sneaking off without us, a few minutes ago.” Sandy battled to pull her top over her head. She looked down and found it was on backwards. Ducking back under the sleeping bag, she wrestled it around the right way.
Dusty Pearl struggled to get dressed in the privacy of her own sleeping bag. “If you knew they were leaving, why didn’t you wake me up?”
Popping up from her sleeping bag, Sandy grabbed her walkie-talkie and stuffed it into her backpack. “I didn’t know. I thought Ms. Chatter was just walking around, making sure everyone was asleep,” she bristled.
Tossing back the top of her sleeping bag, Dusty rolled out, and put her teddy bear and her walkie-talkie into her bag, and then zipped it closed. Butterflies fluttered in her tummy.
Sandy slung her backpack over her shoulders, and then crawled out of the tent.
“Hey! Wait for me!” Dusty called after her, scrambling to tie her shoelaces.
“Come on, hurry up!” Sandy nervously hopped from one foot to the other.
Dusty got halfway out of the tent, before pausing. She kicked her foot around, trying to untangle herself from her bedding and pajamas.
“Whoa!” Dusty yelped, as Sandy grabbed her by the straps of her backpack, and pulled her out of the tent the rest of the way. Dusty Pearl stumbled to her feet, and brushed off her skirt.
The two foals ran. The rest of the troupe reached the top of the hill. Panting, they hurried as fast as they could. The two stumbled over rocks, and narrowly avoided cacti. The other fillies got further away. Their lights disappeared over the hillside.
Wheezing, Dusty trotted to a stop. “Wait! Don’t leave me,” she panted.
Sandy stopped. “Hurry, we’re losing them!”
“Hold on!” Dusty bent over, desperately trying to catch her breath.
Sandy bounced anxiously. “It’s so dark, I can barely see anything. It would be so much easier if we were pegasi. Then we could just fly over to the others,” she said, eyeing the dangerous needles from a nearby cactus.
After a few moments, Dusty Pearl nodded, and started up a slow jog. Racing over the hillside, the lights and the laughter were so much farther away than before. “How the heck did they get over there so fast? Why are they going so far away from the camp?”
“Come on, move!” Sandy bolted ahead.
“They’re leaving you behind. You’re not good enough to be a Filly Scout,” said the voice in the back of her mind.
Sandy Stream held back another wave of tears, as she ran faster. “I promised I wasn’t gonna cry again,” she muttered to herself.
“You’re just a crybaby. That’s why they left you. That’s why your mom laughed at you. If Dusty finds out you’re crying, she’ll leave you too, just like everypony else.”
“Wait for me, Sandy! It’s too dark; I can’t see where I’m going!”
She panicked.
Sandy didn’t slow down. Her eyes blurred with tears. Leaping over cacti and tumbleweeds, she ran ahead. Cacti spines snagged at her short sleeves.
Focused on the lights, they got further away, despite her haste. She still heard the echoes of their laugher, along with Dusty’s pleas behind her.
A cactus suddenly appeared in front of her. At the last second, Sandy twisted her body around, and narrowly avoided it. However, she stumbled. Sharp pain jabbed Sandy’s right inner calve. Tumbling, she lost her flashlight, and her backpack. For a second, her body lost contact with the ground. She spun through the air, arms and legs outstretched. She landed hard on her back.
Coughing, Sandy choked on the cloud of dust. She lay still, catching her breath. Her whole body stung. Sandy’s leg burned, and her head throbbed from hitting the dry creek bed. Her eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark without her flashlight. Sandy looked up at the moon, seemingly motionless in the night sky. She didn’t dare move a muscle. She knew she hurt herself in the fall, but was too afraid to find out just how bad it was.
“You’ll never catch up to them,” said the voice in her mind.
Sandy’s teeth started to chatter. She tried to sit up, but yelped when a stabbing pain shot through her leg. She fell flat on her back again. She glanced around for Dusty Pearl’s flashlight, but there was nothing but blackness all around. Her heart pounded inside her chest. She tried to swallow hard, but her throat and mouth were dry.
“D-Dusty?” her voice came out as a quiet whimper. “Dusty?” she called out again. The lump in her throat prevented her from uttering anything above a whisper. “Help… Help me… Dusty, I need you… Please, don’t leave me…”
“No one is ever going to find you,” said the voice. “You’re all alone. You will never see your family and friends again. You will be here forever. It’s all your fault.”
Tears streamed down her face. Her body trembled. Sandy tried to speak, but all that came out was a high pitched squeak. “Dus—” her voice failed to say her name again. She felt sick to her stomach. Sandy’s emotions bubbled over. Unable to hold back any longer, she bawled loudly. She sobbed for what felt like an hour.
After eight and a half minutes of searching, Dusty Pearl found Sandy lying on the ground, distraught. She shined the flashlight on her. Sandy’s dirty uniform was ripped under her left armpit, and had a small tear on her right side. She suffered several bleeding scrapes. Dusty winced at the cactus ball stuck to Sandy’s inner right calve.
“Sandy Stream! What happened? Are you okay?” Dusty wheezed, breathlessly.
Sandy couldn’t answer. She cried helplessly, covering her face. She saw me. It’s all over, she thought.
“Hang on, I’ve got my first-aid thing.” Dusty dropped her bag on the ground, and squatted next to her.
“I don’t wanna be a Filly Scout anymore! I wanna go home!” her words finally erupted from her chest.
“Hold still, you’ve got a cactus stuck on your leg,” Dusty warned, unzipping her bag.
She rummaged through her backpack, until she found her small folding multi-tool, and her first aid kit. She unfolded the pliers, and shined the light on Sandy’s leg. Dusty tried to grab the cactus with the pliers, but Sandy wouldn’t stop moving.
“Hey, hey, calm down. Calm down,” she soothed. Dusty knelt over her, and held Sandy’s hands. Tears left dirty trails down Sandy’s dusty face. Dusty looked into her bloodshot eyes, and squeezed her hands firmly.
Sandy’s lips quivered. She hiccupped a few times, and quieted down briefly. Her face contorted, and then she fell into another fit of sobbing. Carefully, Dusty leaned down and hugged her. Sandy wrapped her arms around her, and held her tight. Together they rocked back and forth for a long while, until Sandy’s bawling calmed down a little.
Sniffling, Sandy Stream sat up, and carefully bent her knees. She flinched from the pain. Whimpering, she saw the cactus ball stuck to her leg, and then felt a bit woozy. Her head lolled back, but she caught herself before she fainted.
“Okay… Don’t move,” Dusty said. She held her light betwixt her neck and shoulder. Taking a few deep breaths did nothing to help steady her hand. Sandy jumped every time the pliers barely touched the cactus. Carefully Dusty clamped down on the spines, and gently pulled.
“Ow!” Sandy protested. The cactus pulled on her skin, and refused to let go. “Get it out! Get it out!” she begged.
Dusty pulled a little harder. The spines still wouldn’t relent. Gritting her teeth, she pulled harder. The cactus yanked free from Sandy’s leg, and then promptly embedded itself into her other calve. Dusty didn’t know what came first: the ear piercing screech or the kick to the gut that sent her flying backwards.
Landing on her back and shoulders, with her legs in the air, she nearly did a complete reverse somersault. She got smacked in the face with her own tail. When her butt finally hit the dirt, her legs bounced. Dusty heard the flashlight clatter on the ground somewhere behind her. Coughing, she drew her knees up to her chest, and then rolled over onto her side.
Dusty let out a pained groan. Curling up into a ball, she closed her eyes. She lay still for several long minutes. She couldn’t tell if she accidentally peed herself from the force of Sandy’s kick, or not. Her abdomen throbbed badly.
She dug her fingers into the dirt, and tried to pull herself to her hands and knees, but barely moved an inch. Her eyes watered. After a minute, she tried to lift her head, but quickly collapsed again. Dusty wanted to lie where she was, and rest, but Sandy’s wailing urged her to try again.
It took her several more minutes to recover. She slowly rolled over onto her hands and knees. Dusty groaned, and wiped her eyes. She wished she could just go back to the tent and go to sleep. Reluctantly she sat up straight.
“You kicked me,” she stated in a shaky voice.
“You jabbed me with the cactus!” Sandy shouted.
“It was an accident!” She sat for a moment. Her face contorted as another wave of pain rippled through her tummy. “Ugh, you kick like a mule…” Dusty groaned.
“I am a mule!” Sandy whined.
“It’s a figure of—ugh…” She gave up, and limply waved her hand at Sandy.
Looking around, she spotted the flashlight shining several feet away, among several tumbleweeds. Dusty crawled for a couple feet, and thankfully found her pliers by chance. Getting to her feet, she shambled over to the flashlight. Pausing briefly, she looked around for the other Filly Scouts’ lights, but found only darkness. On her way back, she stumbled upon Sandy’s backpack.
Plunking the backpack down next to Sandy, Dusty sat cross-legged across from her. “Okay, this time, you put your one leg under the other, so it’s not in the way again,” she suggested. Sandy complied.
Dusty gripped the cactus, and made sure to aim it away from either of them. With another loud yelp, and a bout of crying, she rid the cactus from Sandy’s leg without further injury. She went on to pluck the other stray spines from her upper arm and her side. Dusty cleaned and disinfected her scrapes and wounds as best she could, and then applied adhesive bandages.
Upon closer inspection, Sandy’s uniform was in worse condition than she realized. The hole under the arm had split all the way around her shoulder blade.
“Think we can get a sewing badge if we can patch this up?” Dusty asked lightheartedly.
Sandy looked down and frowned.
“Come on, let’s go back to camp. I don’t think we can catch up with Ms. Chatter. Can you get up?” Dusty held her hand.
“I dunno,” Sandy uttered. Dusty helped her to her feet. Sandy wiped her red puffy eyes with the back of her hands, and sniffled. Wrapping her arms around herself, she rocked back and forth.
“Uh…” Dusty shined her light around in every direction.
“Where’s my flashlight?” Sandy asked.
“I don’t know. Do you know which way we came from?”
Sandy glanced around the shadowy landscape. “I don’t know. Did you see which direction Ms. Chatter was going?”
“Nuh-uh. I lost sight of her the same time I lost you.”
The two foals took turns calling out for their scout leader, with no luck.
Dusty let out a heavy sigh. “Well, it looks like we’re going to be here for a while. When lost, it’s important to stay where you are, until a grownup finds you.”
A faint low roar echoed in the distance, over the ridge. The two foals whipped their heads around in the direction of the sound.
“Dusty? W-what was that?” she stammered nervously.
Shaking her head, Dusty looked haunted. Suddenly her face lit up. “The radio!” She shrugged her bag off her shoulders, and dug up her walkie-talkie. She clicked it on, and pressed the button. “Ms. Chatter? Help! It’s Dusty Pearl, and I’m here with Sandy Stream! We’re lost, we need help,” she said.
There was no response.
She turned up the volume, and tried again.
Nothing.
Dusty shined the light on it, and clicked the button several times. No sound came out of it.
Sandy took hers out, and tried it, but it too wouldn’t turn on. “Oh, filthy flank!” she cursed. Opening the battery compartment revealed it to be empty. “We forgot about the batteries!”
“Do you have any extras?”
Sandy shook her head. “I have some of the round batteries, but these take the square ones.”
“Crud…”
The sound of the haunting roar grew closer.
“The dragon’s going to find you. It’s going to eat you. It’ll start with your legs, so you can’t run away. Then it’ll devour your arms, so you can’t fight back. Dragons would keep you alive for weeks, slowly snacking on your body, until there’s nothing left. You better run. You better hide. Keep quiet, or its belly you’ll be inside,” White Noise whispered into their minds. The two foals paled.
Dusty Pearl lurched forward. She doubled over, and began to heave. She coughed loudly, as Sandy Stream anxiously tapped her on the back.
“Dusty? We gotta find my flashlight, and get out of here,” she insisted.
Dusty spat on the ground, and wiped her mouth. When she looked up, faintly glowing red eyes scanned the area. It let out a low growl. Dusty grabbed Sandy’s hand. “Leave it. We gotta get out of here now, and find some place to hide, fast,” she whispered.
Keeping their heads down, the two fillies sneaked away, further into the desert. White Noise let out another loud roar. She smirked, watching the two small blurry shapes scurry off into the distance. Noise twirled gracefully through the air. Her horn glowed with magic, an instant before she teleported back to the town of Oakhoof.
