The campfire at Camp Everfree glowed again at night as campers enjoyed their marshmallows and the warmth of the fire.
Sunset Shimmer had been playing some songs with her acoustic guitar to liven up the evening, but in the moonlight, what the rest of the campers were asking for was the typical stuff in those kinds of situations: scary stories.
"Come on, who's up for a spooky story?" Asked vice-principal Luna.
"Why don't you tell us another one, Timber? You did it quite fine with the story of Gaia Everfree." Said Flash Sentry.
"Oh no, I told that story to cover up for my sister, I can't think of any other one." Timber excused himself.
"I’m pretty sure you still have one in mind." Rainbow Dash said eager to hear something scary.
They all encouraged Timber to tell another story, but he kept going on.
"Come on Timber, tell us another story." Twilight said looking into his eyes as he blushed slightly.
Timber Spruce seemed hesitant, looked at the campfire flames that seemed to have a hypnotic effect on him, then looked up at the rest of the campers, and cleared his throat.
"Very well, but if anyone cries in fear, I won't be responsible." He said smirking. After taking a comfortable posture on the log he was sitting on, he began to speak. "I’m going to tell you about something most people say it’s just an urban legend, but my grandfather swore for all that it’s holy that it’s absolutely real, he always affirmed that the Skinwalkers exist..."
The teenagers looked at him strangely, as if he had suddenly spoken in another language.
"What’s a Skinwalker?" Asked Sunset.
"According to the ancient natives, a Skinwalker was a forest-dwelling shaman, who through black magic rituals could take the form of another creature, and that he was even able to take the form of one person to approach another and thus harm him…” Timber's tone turned somber and the play of light and shadows that the fire caused in his face made the hearts of the campers begin to beat stronger. “For a long time, my grandfather talked about disappearances in the forest, people who entered it, especially at night, and who disappeared without a trace. My grandfather always said it was the Skinwalkers' fault.”
Fluttershy and Rarity were holding hands tightly, while Pinkie Pie ate marshmallows intrigued by the story, but also scared. Rainbow Dash and Applejack seemed to pretend they weren’t scared, although they were visibly nervous.
“They say that the easiest way to identify a Skinwalker is by observing its movements, in their animal form they are clumsy and may even appear to be deformed versions of the animal they emulate. When they play another human, things change... they are indistinguishable. However, they say that during the ritual in what they became what they are, the Skinwalkers give up and forget part of their humanity, so their behavior is also strange at first glance.”
Timber picked up from the floor a handful of gray ashes of the last day bonfire. "The Skinwalkers are also capable of cursing their victim in an atrocious way, the most widely used is the corpse dust. They blow that powder onto their victims faces.” Timber opened the palm of his hand and blew the ash into the air, causing the campers to jump." The victim's tongue is dyed black, and after a short period of intense suffering, he or she dies..."
Campers listened intently to the story with their nerves on the surface. "It is precisely in the deep forests and late at night when the Skinwalkers are most likely to be found, do you want to know the worst part?" Everyone was silent waiting for the answer. "According to the natives, even if there is no skinwalker nearby, just mentioning them is more than enough reason to attract one of them to where you are right now..."
The noise of the wind and brush made the campers look around, as if unconsciously were searching for some predator lurking in the dark of the night. Sunset just took a deep breath trying to calm down, but she couldn’t avoid turning her gaze back only to run into the deep forest that stretched like a black cloak to infinity.
"Well, what did you think?" Timber asked speaking again in a normal tone.
"It was very scary, I loved it." Pinkie Pie said with a smile.
"It wasn't bad." Said Rainbow Dash trying to downplay it.
"So 'it wasn't bad,' right? Then, why couldn't you avoid looking at your back through the whole story?" Asked Applejack as Rainbow blushed.
"For the same reason that your hand couldn't stop shaking." Now it was Applejack who blushed while the rest laughed.
"Well, it's late, everybody to their tents." Said vice-principal Luna rising from the log.
And so, the campers returned to their respective lodgings and headed to bed with Timber’s story still hanging around their minds.
In the Sapphire Tent, Sunset finished putting on her pajamas while Twilight was reading.
"Do you think that Skinwalkers thing may have something to do with Equestrian magic?" Asked Sunset.
"Sunset, we already dealt with Equestrian magic in this place, I think it’s just one more story of ancient folklore." Twilight said, trying to give a logical vision to the whole thing.
"It may be, but if I have learned anything in all my years of study it’s that all folklore and legends are based on something real, either here or in Equestria." Sunset said as she got into bed.
After ten minutes reading, Twilight turned the lights off and fell asleep, but Sunset didn’t feel sleepy. A little while after the lights in her tent went out, Celestia's former student opened her eyes awake. She decided to check her e-mails from in her mobile phone and activity in her social networks, however, she wasn’t tired enough to sleep. Sunset thought about listening to some music until she fell asleep, but she immediately dismissed it.
After checking that Twilight and Spike were fast asleep, the fiery-haired girl got up and silently went to her backpack. She took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from it, and like someone who skips the curfew, she put on her shoes, sneaked out of the tent and walked to the edge of the tent lines to smoke a cigarette with the moonlight and the murmur of the lake water as her only witnesses.
It was around 3:00 AM so it was unlikely that anyone would catch her smoking. It’s not like Sunset was a regular smoker or anything, but every once in a while she liked to relax with a cigarette, especially on nights like that, with the bright moon high in the night sky, with the clear waters of the lake showing its reflection and the Everfree trees swaying in the gentle breeze of the wind. On nights like that it was when she missed Equestria the most.
Perhaps that was why she was so excited to discover Equestrian magic in her new home-world, because it was a way to have her home closer, a home Sunset missed, even if she didn’t admit it, not even to her closest friends.
Sunset gave short puffs on her cigarette and blew the smoke slowly as she lost herself in her thoughts and homesickness. The moment the smoke vanished something caught her attention. Someone was watching her through the trees.
Only the moonlight allowed Sunset to distinguish who was staring at her, she took a few steps to see better and seemed to recognize that person. It was Applejack. The cowgirl was behind a tree and still as a statue. Sunset thought that her friend would be returning from a night walk or that she had been looking for materials to practice bushcraft because she loved those things.
She put out the cigarette in a joint holder. Without further ado the fiery-haired girl greeted Applejack with a wave, but she didn't flinch. She was there just staring at her. For a moment Sunset thought that Applejack's strange expression was because she had caught her smoking, and this would have surprised the cowgirl.
Sunset then pressed her palms together as a plea and then put her finger between her lips trying to explain her with gestures to not tell anyone that she had caught her smoking, but Applejack continued to not answer.
"What's wrong with her? Why is she looking at me like that?" Thought Sunset as she kept her eyes on her friend.
For a while they stared at each other without saying anything, the situation was beginning to be so tense for Sunset that she decided to look away. When she looked back into the forest, Applejack had disappeared...
The former unicorn had a bad feeling. Concerned about her friend, she marched in the direction she had seen her and entered the forest surrounding the camp.
Sunset walked towards the forest, illuminating the path with the help of her mobile phone's flashlight. Sunset kept walking through the trees hoping to find Applejack soon. But she saw nothing, not an animal, not Applejack, nothing... A chill began to run down her spine when the silence of the forest had stopped being something relaxing to become a bad omen.
At that moment, Sunset began to feel bad, really bad. She had a feeling of heaviness in her stomach, the kind of feeling that would usually send anyone running to the bathroom; It was the same overwhelmed feeling when you’re listening music with your headphones on and you feel that someone is watching you without saying anything to you. Only in this case, that discomfort she felt was multiplied by ten.
All the nerves in her body screamed in unison to get out of there, and due to that bad feeling she had, Sunset decided to return to her tent, but when she turned her surprise was capital when she discovered that Applejack was just three trees away from where she was.
Sunset gasped and her eyes widened as she covered her mouth with her hand. Applejack's face was almost expressionless, and she looked at her with eyes that seemed lifeless. Sunset began to breathe heavily, her legs were trembling, and her heart skipped a beat.
Suddenly, as if the situation wasn't weird enough, Applejack started waving her hand to greet her, but in a mechanical, not natural way, as if it were a misinterpreted gesture by someone or something that tries to imitate human behavior and doesn't know how to do it correctly; a gesture of greeting that seemed to try to convey a sense of calm, as if the cowgirl wanted Sunset to stay where she was...
Sunset reacted with a scream to that way of acting and ran in the opposite direction, hysterical and with tears in her eyes due to the fear she felt. Without looking back, without knowing exactly where she was going, just wanting to get away from what was supposed to be her friend.
Sunset didn’t mind that the branches and leaves hit her in the face, she tried to protect herself with her arms as she ran begging Celestia or whoever for that thing did not reach her.
Sunset kept running, but something bumped into her and grabbed her tight. Sunset screamed and tried to wriggle out, but that thing wouldn't let her go.
"Sunset! Sunset, calm down, it’s me!" Yelled the guy holding her.
Calming down, she realized that whoever had caught her was someone quite familiar, it was Flash Sentry.
"Flash, what are you doing here?" She asked trying to calm down.
“I was awake, I thought I heard a scream and I went to see what was going on. You're alright?"
"Yes, but let's get out of here, please." Sunset said still very nervous.
The way to the tents was completely silent, Sunset was calmer for being accompanied; however, she couldn't help but look back at each step she took, as she still had the heavy feeling that someone or something was watching them through the trees.
Upon reaching the tents, Flash decided to break the silence.
"Are you going to tell me what you were doing in the forest at this time of night?"
"Look, I don't know if you're going to believe me or not, but I couldn't sleep and I decided to take a breath, so I saw... Applejack among the trees, she was standing there without doing or saying anything." She was saying as she pointed in the direction in where she last saw her country friend." I went after her to see if something was wrong, and in the middle of the trees I ran into her, but there was something strange about her, as if it wasn't really Applejack... I don't know how to explain what happened, I was so scared that I screamed and ran away...”
"Sunset, don't you think maybe you were suggested by Timber’s story?" Asked Flash trying to cut to the gravity of the situation.
"Flash, I'm not sure what I saw, but I swear I saw something on the woods..." Said Sunset completely convinced.
Flash scratched the back of his neck and looked at Sunset decisively. "Ok then, I believe you. But we better clarify this tomorrow, go back to your tent and rest and we will clarify all this in the morning.” Said Flash Sentry.
The guitarist accompanied his ex-girlfriend to the tent, and she said goodbye to him with a kiss on his cheek followed by a "thank you."
Sunset found that Twilight and Spike were still asleep and climbed into her bed. But unfortunately, the memory of what happened in the forest still haunted her so she couldn't sleep a wink the whole night.
The next morning the seven friends gathered and to everyone's surprise Sunset had some dark circles under her eyes that made her look like a panda bear.
"Oh my… darling do you want me to lend you some makeup for those horrible dark circles?" Asked Rarity upon seeing her friend's appearance.
"Don't worry, Rarity." Said Sunset. "Applejack, may I ask you a question?"
"Is everything all right sugarcube?" Asked the cowgirl.
"What did you do last night?" That question not only surprised Applejack but the rest as well.
"Well, sleeping, what else was I going to do?" She said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course, why would I lie to you?" That was true, she’d rather grow up a racoon tail before to see Applejack deliberately lying to her friends.
"By any chance you won't be a sleepwalker..." Sunset insisted on her interrogation.
“Sunset, I don't know what this is all about, but Applejack didn't come out of our tent all night. I’m her tentmate, I would have realized if she went out at night.” Rainbow Dash said defending Applejack's alibi.
The fiery-haired girl stared at the forest without saying anything and with a lost look, while the memories of that night began to bombard her mind again.
"Sunset, are you alright?" Asked Twilight, beginning to worry.
Sunset didn't answer, she kept her gaze on the forest as she was convinced that something was moving among the trees and watched her from the brush.
Author's Note
Hope y'all liked it!
I want to give thanks to my friends Danny, Alex and Pete for supporting, and my cousin Jimmy who had the idea for the title! Thanks guys! 😁
