Within Mount Aris, although we were not of any magnificent means, my family inhabited a castle, of sorts. The small kind, built long before our proud kingdom receded to the waters below the island. In that castle, the stone walls built up and around my living spaces echoed the many sounds of mice and crickets scuttling around the unlit corners. The waves, often loudest at night when the moon reached its zenith, crashed their cold breeze through the narrow windows. Salt would slowly gather on the windowsill of my bedroom, left behind by the droplets of the sea.
I mention this only because at the moment I met her, I was feeling particularly homesick, and I noticed that she had snuck up on me. Such acts might seem trivial, but I had spent my years in that half-abandoned castle tuning my ears to subtle sounds. So, I was understandably shocked when this quiet, pink-maned pegasus approached me unnoticed.
“Excuse me, but you’re one of the new students, right? Mistwake?” Her voice was no louder than it needed to be. Subtle, but not entirely soft.
“Yes,” I answered rather flatly. This was my first time living outside of Mount Aris, you see, and at the time I kept many things at a distance from myself for fear of their strangeness, not least of which were strangers. “But I am not lost. You see here? It says I must go to Intro to Reciprocation.”
I held up the paper map provided to every student of the Friendship School, with directions to every class. The pegasus mare took a short, sweet look at it. And then she giggled.
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to give directions.” She extended her hoof to embrace my talons, her boldest act thus far in our exchange. “I’m Fluttershy. I simply wanted to introduce myself before class. I’m going to be teaching Intro to Reciprocation, and probably every other class with cute, fuzzy little friends.”
To understand my reaction to this, one would have to first understand life in Mount Aris, at least as it was for me. My father, like so many other young male hippogriffs, was a petty officer within our navy. My mother was a governess, who oversaw the education of the young lady of the castle.
We inhabited the castle, although we did not own it. From my father, our family had the reputation of order, responsibility, and respect that so often accompanied naval service. From my mother, her strict but caring skills as a governess provided the necessity that we be located within the castle. The family who owned and looked after us were staunch traditionalists, with distant relations to the royal family, and they would not have tolerated anything less than the seemingly perfect pairing between my two parents.
And so, within those stone walls which were not my own, I was surrounded by formalities and expected behaviour. I understood that among peers, such as the other students attending the School of Friendship, it was acceptable to behave in a much more casual manner.
However, to be approached by an instructor with equal casualness was astounding to me, and for a moment, my mind was stuck, like a pocket watch with a jammed cog or twisted spring.
“Yes, very good to meet you,” I replied tentatively. “I look forward to enjoying your class, professor.” Turning, I followed the mental map I had memorized and escaped the conversation, desperately hoping to recover my senses before class could begin.
I don’t believe there is a need to discuss exactly what went on in the classroom. Its likeness and activities seemed so familiar to every creature that it must’ve been a trivial matter.
The only thing of note was that, once again, the instructor took special note of me. Fluttershy said, among other things, that another hippogriff student, older by one year, was also attending the School of Friendship. This I was well aware of. Silverstream was the Queen’s niece, and her actions were well spoken of in Mount Aris. But I let my teacher continue.
“If you ever feel like no creature understands you, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her. Making new friends can be scary, but you’ll never know what lies ahead if you keep standing back.”
“Yes, thank you,” I answered back politely, before taking my leave to the next class. Moving from room to room was an unusual affair for me. The castle in which I lived was on the edge of Mount Aris, where a length of rocky cliffs and shores met the sea. Even as the Storm King’s eye swirled over our little island, we lived there. It was crumbling along its outer walls, bearing the appearance of a truly abandoned domicile. The lower half of the keeps and towers were sunken into the sea, collapsed when the waters swallowed half of the castle’s stony beach.
It was one of the few places on land which could be called part of the underwater kingdom. There, my mother lectured me and the lady of the castle. Nimblefin, a young hippogriff who was many years my junior, was my mother’s charge. Her family owned the castle, and we lived in it at their behest for as long as my mother could teach their daughter.
She was kind and caring, even if her privilege did, at times, blind her to the needs of others. But she was always a manageable student. I would sit with her through long hours of my mother’s lessons, skipping between history and mathematics and the sciences, all in one session.
The movement felt refreshing. I stretched my talons as I walked across the School of Friendship to Professor Rarity’s lessons on friendships within businesses.
The tumult of the School of Friendship tossed me to the end of the day much sooner than I had expected. I soon found myself organizing syllabi and squeezing through a crowd of ponies and griffons and changelings, all eager to see their dorm rooms and roommates.
If trading a castle for a dorm room sounds like an awful deal, one need only remember that my home was not my own and that its walls were crumbling and half-sunken into the ocean.
“Hey!” I watched pink feathers pop up and out of the room adjacent to mine. “So you must be Mistwake!” I recognized immediately who had suddenly begun gripping and shaking my talon.
“My name’s Silverstream, and I’m going to be your Dorm Assistant this year! It looks like you just missed your roommate. She’s a pegasus from Cloudsdale. Oh! You’d love her, she has white feathers just like you!”
I looked inside the dorm and noticed already that the beds were unusual. One was constructed over the other, so that floor space was not used, though the bed on top would be much closer to the dorm’s stumpy ceiling. My roommate apparently preferred the upper bed, seeing that her bags were placed up there. As a pegasus, flying up into bed was possibly second-nature to her.
“Autumn Brook had questions about a pet project, so I told her she should talk to Professor Fluttershy,” Silverstream informed me. “If you really want to meet her, you could probably catch up with them right now.”
I put my books and papers on the empty desk and declined with a gentle bow of my head. “I’m quite fine, thank you. It has been a long day today, and I would like to rest my legs instead.”
“Oh, right,” Silverstream laughed, kicking out her own legs. “Takes time getting used to using these everywhere, huh? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to them.”
Then, she gasped. “Have you seen the stairs yet?”
I told her yes, but that they didn’t impress me very much. We had a short conversation before she realized what part of Mount Aris I was from. She seemed disappointed that I didn’t share her enthusiasm about the surface, but I was equally befuddled by the bubbly behaviour of a member of the royal family, even if she was only Queen Novo’s niece. This feeling, however, I kept to myself as I put away my belongings and shut the door of my dorm.
It was sometime later that my roommate finally returned.
Late at night, say around midnight for the moon was high and the candles outside in the hall had been snuffed away, Miss Brook stumbled into bed. Having the lower bed, I was adjacent to the door and got a full glimpse of her unusual state. She teetered on her hooves as if the slightest breeze might knock her over, and opted to climb the short ladder on the side to reach the top bed, rather than simply flying up.
I did not mutter a word, nor did I recoil, for I was afraid of disturbing her fragile state. I considered if she was sickly, or perhaps even afflicted by some magic. I had heard of all the magical dangers and threats that once roamed Equestria, and a few of them seemed capable of leaving a pony in a weakened state.
But I pushed the superstition away and buried myself in my blankets. It was late, and students were nothing if not infamous for being overworked.
I left the issue alone.
Try as did, I could not seem to communicate with my roommate. We were of two minds, her and I. This seemed to irk Silverstream, who insisted we get along as if we were new sisters. It could never be.
To begin with, her habits grew ever more nocturnal as the days went on. She would sleep in, and I would only see her as a blur as she flew by my first-period class onwards to her own.
Secondly, she had no care for the cold. Even with plumage, I was not comfortable with the chill of late nights. But I often found myself waking up sometime after Miss Brook had returned, with our window shutters swinging far apart and full of wind.
Lastly, I was deathly afraid of catching whatever curse or condition afflicted, of which I was certain there was one. As I spied her each day, her eyes became more sunken, her snoring more tumultuous. And she had a coat of rich eggshell white that only grew more sickly and pale as the school days dragged on.
This was the chief reason I hesitated to confront her, for fear it was contagious.
Though as time passed I attributed it to her poor sleep habits, and eventually grew so disturbed I no longer cared if she was or wasn’t afflicted.
In the castle, my mother and father were in strong agreement over the curfew for every member within the walls. We, meaning myself and Lady Nimblefin, were allowed no more than one hour after the last light of the sun dipped away behind the horizon. The cooks and maids had another hour after that to clean up and prepare the castle for the morning. And then my parents would, supposedly, retreat to their beds an hour after the staff.
I say supposedly because, in truth, I never had the courage to stay up late enough to verify for myself. Before hippogriffs could return to the surface, the noble family who claimed the castle used it as their way of exposing their daughter to the surface.
The very act must’ve been done in secret, for during my youth, there was no attempt to hide the distrust that Queen Novo held for the surface. And any who went above the waters of Seaquestria were equally untrusted.
There was an understanding between myself and my parents. We enjoyed great luxuries and gifts from our benefactors, but we were only trusted for the perfect unison of our household. The stern military father, the diligent and talented mother, and I, the obedient daughter. So, no, I never did spy from behind my door to see if my parents truly slept when they said.
And so, for my perfect rhythm of sleep to be so thoroughly disrupted by this singular pegasus, it brought no limit to my ire and frustration. I believed that I could ignore Miss Brooks, but after two weeks, the affair needed to be settled.
I approached her that afternoon when both our classes were finished, but she had not yet gone off to do whatever it was that she did.
“Excuse me,” I told her, dropping any pretence of friendliness, “but we have to talk about your inexcusable behaviour.”
“Uh, sure, I guess I can talk,” she said with apprehension. “Who are you again?”
She spoke with that particular accent of the northeast, close to the city of Manehattan. “Talk” was “tawk.” “Who” was “whu.” And though I knew she could not help it, the casualness of her tone made my concern seem trivial to her.
I clenched my talons, frowning and pressing my brows together in great frustration. “Your roommate. We have been sharing the same room for weeks now.”
“Oh shoot, no way!” She laughed in a naive and ignorant way as if treating her mistake as an accident and not the consequence of her disregard for her surroundings.
Before I continued, she put her hoof on my shoulders. “Alright, I’ll level with ya. How about we chat later, yeah? I’m working on a project right now with Professor Fluttershy.”
“No,” I said, firmly taking her by the hoof and pulling her aside from the hallway so that the other passing students would not disturb us. “Whatever your project is, it hasn’t done your health any favours, and it certainly isn’t doing me any. And stop opening the windows at such odd hours!”
She pulled herself away. “What are you talking about? I don’t leave the windows open.”
“I have been woken on repeated nights from the bite of a cold breeze flying through our window. Explain that to me then.”
“I dunno,” she shrugged. “I’m too tired to notice anything when I come back, but maybe you got a sleepwalking problem. You’re on the bottom bunk. It’d be pretty easy to get out of bed.”
“Ridiculous,” I hissed at her.
“You calling me a liar?” Against the insult, she leaned forward. “Forget about it. I don’t have to take this from you.” She scowled as she turned, the dark rings under her eyes appearing more monstrous as she did so.
I was at a loss of what to do about her.
As the name implied, the School of Friendship was to foster relationships with others. Yet my time there felt no different from the lessons from my home. The only difference was the rooms I was in.
I found myself on the stairs entering the school, thinking about how I might change my situation. This was the time when a blue-feathered griffon approached me. I had seen him around, he was one of the more popular second-year students. But we had never been introduced.
“Something got you down?” he asked. “The name’s Gallus. I’m normally a Dorm Assistant for the boys’ side, but if there’s anything you need to talk about, that’s what I’m here for.”
“A griffon assisting others?” I could not hide my amusement. “Does Ponyville have a changeling as a couple’s counsellor too?”
My joke didn’t seem to hit its mark. Gallus simply sat down beside me. “I don’t know what you think about the other creatures. But you should know, Silverstream’s my friend. And one of the smartest students I know is a changeling. We all learned how to get along.”
“Did they ignore you whenever you had a problem?”
He looked over at my face, quite curious by what I had said. “No. We had other problems, but we made the effort to get through them because we wanted to stay friends. Do you want to be friends with Autumn Brook?”
I instantly shifted back, surprised that he knew my thoughts. It dawned on me only when he started laughing that he had mentioned his relationship with Silverstream. Perhaps she had asked him to help since I seemed so reserved around her. Or, it was possible he simply overheard my problem from her and helped of his own accord.
I never would have imagined the latter to be possible from a griffon, but this school had begun to show me that I didn’t know the half of what was possible.
“She’s annoying.” My mouth spoke the truth before I could consider my answer. “I don’t think I do.”
Gallus didn’t seem surprised by my response. “I don’t blame you. Sometimes, friends need some space to get to know each other. Being roommates just might not suit you.”
“What do you suggest I do?”
“Tell Silverstream.” He stood up and dusted himself down. “We didn’t go over it a lot during orientation, but you can request room changes if you need to. Silverstream should be able to fill out all the forms to do it.”
He had other students who needed his help, but before he left I gave him my thanks and apologized for my remarks about griffons. He claimed it did not bother him, but his gentle smile suggested he was the least bit relieved to hear my regret.
I sat there for the rest of the day, growing rather comfortable under the late afternoon sun as I had lunch and finished my homework for the day. The sky just began to tint orange and pink when I was done. Reminding myself of Gallus’s words, I stood emboldened.
But before I could return to my dorm and seek out Silverstream to begin my request, I noticed a pink-maned figure leaving the school grounds. Professor Fluttershy. Without Miss Brook attending her.
Where was my roommate, if not with the professor she claimed to be working with?
“Nimblefin’s parents are not yet convinced that the Equestria school is suitable for their daughter’s future.” Those were the first words my mother spoke to me the day I learned I would begin attending school in Equestria. “They have asked us to enrol you in the School of Friendship to investigate the state of its curriculum and students.”
“Will they accept a homeschooled foreigner?”
“If this school will enrol griffons and changelings, who have no form of schooling, public or private, I believe your education will give you far more distinction than what is required. But don’t assume that will mean your time there as a student will be simple. Our Lord and Lady have conferred the distinction and obligation to judge the possible future for their daughter.”
I did not need the reminder of our obligations to our landlords, but I accepted it anyway. “Then I should revise my Ponish grammar.”
All this, and details which I had already described, I ended up telling Professor Fluttershy after I had approached her to ask about Miss Brook. I was, at first, still uneasy by her presence. As it were, she was my superior. Instructor and elder, I was accustomed to listening to those whose status included either, let alone both. But she absorbed my woes and worries more readily than even my parents, and I found myself quite delighted after sharing.
“I guess I never thought that this project could affect other students,” she admitted when I had finally finished my tale. “But you’re right. As teachers, the work we assign also affects how much time you have to make real friendships.”
“What is this project, anyhow?”
“It’s nothing special, just an experiment, really.” I was surprised to see her so shy talking about her work. The other professors, Rarity and Rainbow Dash, and especially Pinkie Pie, seemed to hold their professions in such high regard that to stop them from talking about it was tantamount to stopping an avalanche once it had already begun.
“An experiment away from the school?”
My sceptical question drew out an excited nod from the Professor. “Oh yes, it has to be far away. Autumn Brook came to me saying she saw a creature she couldn’t identify out in the Everfree Forest. Rare animals like that are shy around ponies, so we’ve been bringing snacks and food to it instead of trying to lure it out of its home.”
Silverstream had said Autumn was working on a pet project. I hadn’t realized then how literally she meant it.
“So, she has to trot from here into the forest? Can she not fly to it?”
“It spooks very easily,” Fluttershy said. “I haven’t even seen it myself. On top of that, it’s nocturnal.”
“Then that is why she has come back to our dorm so late. Why did you allow her to do this?”
Fluttershy’s eyes flickered around, and she was nervously combing and fussing with the ends of her long mane until finally, she faced me with stern resolve.
“You are right. I thought I was helping her, she’s always excited when she visits the creature. But I have to be firm with her. Extracurriculars can’t interfere with a student’s health and studies. There are other ways to make friends with animals.”
I joined her in flying over the town to the sacred and wild forest. There were eerie lights lurking behind the shadows of the trees. Flickering insects projected their presence, as curious cats and rowdy racoons peered their gleaming gazes upward at our approach.
I knew nothing of where to go, nor did I know exactly why I joined the Professor. Certainly, if Miss Brook could be disengaged from her nightly activities and recover her health, I was not opposed to remaining roommates. Hope was strong throughout Ponyville and the school, and I had a wish to live as they preached to experience that hope for myself.
“We’re close,” Fluttershy said and dipped her head down toward a clearing in the forest. It was the first hour of twilight, but within the branches and brambles of the forest, we were swallowed by the dark and wild.
“Stay close. Cockatrice and timberwolves live in this part of the Everfree.”
“Then Miss Brook shouldn’t have ever been allowed to come here.” I noticed I had begun whispering angrily. Frustration with Fluttershy and fear of the creatures around me mixed into a singular feeling that weighed on my stomach.
“They’re not monsters, we just need to give the animals their space. Autumn should know that too, I’m sure she’s safe.”
I did not share her confidence, but I followed behind anyway. We walked quietly through the brush. I was unaccustomed to forests and woodlands. When I was not living in the sunken halls of our castle, I was studying behind wooden doors and stone walls. And when I could explore the surface, after the shadow of the Storm King had passed, no creek or meadow or copse of trees on Mount Aris were ever so wild as to snag on my feet and pull my wings.
But to my great relief, we saw neither hide nor hair of any animals in the shadows. Except one.
An injured doe.
The faintest light from a swarm of fireflies revealed the mewling deer, collapsed at the roots of a great oak tree.
“What-” my voice was caught in my throat, and every word took double the effort to say. “What could have done this?” I approached only to slip on a warm, slick surface.
The Professor pulled me back, steading my fall. I believed immediately that I had stepped in mud, and started the task of cleaning myself up by wiping the substance from my talons against some moss. Under the faint light of the fireflies around us, it was impossible to distinguish what that black fluid consisted of, not by sight at least. It was by smell, the sickly iron smell, that horrified me as I paid closer attention to it.
“This is blood?”
“It is,” Fluttershy said sullenly. She turned to the insects above us and whispered to them. In a few moments, the dull glow expanded as more fireflies circled around us, combining and strengthening their light until we could see clearly for about one meter in all directions.
On top of the doe, we both spotted fuzzy-white moths crawling about. They touched their long mouths to the doe in what seemed to be gentle kisses until I noticed they only congregated around bleeding wounds.
I couldn’t understand any of it. “Why are they doing that? Those are just moths.” I turned to Professor Fluttershy for help and guidance, but she seemed affixed to the scene in front of us. I nudged her, even being so bold as to pull at her wings and mane.
Only after great effort could I bring back her attention. “Huh? Oh, the moths, that’s right. They’re drinking the blood for salt.”
“Salt?”
“Moths and butterflies like nectar because the sugar gives them energy, but animals need more than just energy. They probably don’t even realize what they’re doing, they just wanted to eat something salty.”
“And that is a very interesting fact,” I told her, “but are you alright? You seemed… unavailable.”
“Sorry, I just don’t know what I should do. I want to help her, but there’s a limit to how much ponies can do. If we were at my sanctuary, I could give a predator a meat substitute. But in the wild, if I saved this doe, then another animal would just go hungry.”
I looked across the shadows that lurked just beyond our circle of light. “You mean to say that there is a predator, here? Now?”
The Professor shook her head. “It might be close, but it’s not here. There’s a lot of dry blood mixed with the new. This deer has been here for a while, maybe since yesterday. If the predator was here, they would have already taken her.”
“Then she must not have much time left. To have suffered for so long, do you think she can be saved?”
Fluttershy wiped her face as tears gathered in her eyes. I hadn’t noticed she was crying until then.
“No. Besides, we came here for Autumn. We should find her before an accident happens.”
I was thankful that the fireflies did not leave our side as we trotted through the forest. But even with some light, the features of the forest began to look the same with every step. My mother taught me many lessons in writing, mathematics, sewing, etiquette, cooking, and even coral carving. But not a single book was spent on tracking.
There was no worry that we would be lost. Either of us could just as easily fly up and away from danger. But I began to question whether Miss Brook would be capable of making that judgement. I remember her eyes the last time she looked at me. Tired. Drained. To avoid danger one needed their wits, and it was clear to me that Autumn had not had hers for quite some time.
“We should fly back and bring torchlights,” I finally said to the Professor. “Firefly light can only help us find our footing.”
No response. I jerked my head around to where I thought the Professor had been following. I shouted out, again and again.
“Fluttershy?” But she didn’t call back. “Professor?”
Desperate, I resorted to the fireflies who buzzed around my head. I questioned them at length, but try as I might, they understood nothing from me, nor I from them.
I was prepared to fly at a moment’s notice, but my unconscionable impulse was restrained by guilt. I imagined that the Professor could be around the corner, fallen behind a bush or tree, or perhaps escaping the clutches of a creature.
Pressured to find them, I pushed onward.
The sinister vanishing of Professor Fluttershy made the impending scene more frightful to my heart. I stumbled forward, and looking down it seemed to have been due to some unevenness of the ground and knocked my head against a tree. This sent my balance wayward, and I quickly found myself tumbling down a hillside, bumping or crunching against twigs and branches.
It was at the base of this hill I found my roommate. She seemed nearly dead if it weren’t for her obnoxious snoring, which came into my ears once they stopped ringing from my fall. I could not begin to guess how we arrived at the same place, though my intuition told me that following her path would invariably lead me to the same accidents.
Fluttershy’s firefly friends were more than dutiful. Despite the distance of my fall, which was so great I could not recount exactly how long it took me to complete the descent, they followed closely and illuminated the scrapes all over Miss Brook’s head. She laid against the stump of an old, fallen tree. With faint speckles of her blood on the bark, it was apparent she had fallen as I did, only to be knocked unconscious upon landing.
I nudged her vigorously.
I called her.
And although she snored, I still began to worry.
“Autumn. Are you alright? I don’t know if I can carry you out.” In one regard, I succeeded in my quest, and I was glad to have found her. But I was unspeakably fatigued at this point. “You can sleep in the room and snore all you like. But we have to leave. There are monsters about. They’ve taken Professor Fluttershy!”
At last, when it was clear she would not rise, I lifted her onto my back, and I was doubly surprised. First, my reserve of strength exceeded my assumptions for, with the chance of escape so close, I felt the soreness in my legs and wings slipping away. Secondly, that Autumn was as light as a child. I couldn’t help but wonder if all pegasi were as weightless as she was.
Leaving the Professor was something I could barely stomach, but with Autumn on my back, I felt as though I had pushed my luck enough. I flew with all the will and strength I could muster and bore us from the depths of the forest back to the ground of our school.
And for the first night, once I had dragged us both to the nurse’s office, I was glad to be asleep knowing my roommate was by my side.
It pained me to think it, but Fluttershy’s disappearance was followed by the discontinuance of my troubles. Autumn Brook was truly a gentle spirit. She was easily irritated by many things, such as the clicking sound students made when they tapped their quills against their papers or the taste that mashed potatoes left on her tongue. But all her quirks and annoyances came as blessings.
When I had told her what transpired in order for me to have found her, she apologized profusely, and almost daily she would bring it up and offer small gifts of gratitude. Her favourite trinkets were tiny toy animals made from fabric and stuffed with cotton. They came with clips inside them so that they could be attached to a pencil or the spine of a notebook.
And I received many of them.
For my part, I was simply glad to find a new friend, and equally glad that I no longer had to close the window in the middle of the night.
It should go without saying that in the midst of my growing relationship with Autumn, news of Professor Fluttershy’s disappearance rocked the school. The Headmare demanded that all students follow a strict curfew until Fluttershy was found and the mysterious creature was captured.
Even the Princess of Equestria, the founder of the School of Friendship, was called from her post. I saw little of her, she was mostly occupied with finding her friend, but her presence proved to all the other students how serious the situation truly was.
It was not for another two weeks that the state of the school changed. During this time, I wrote home on three separate occasions. Autumn watched me, fully aware by the second letter of what my home life had been like.
“You should tell them we got the best celery sandwiches in Bronclyn, they can stop by my old neighbourhood when they come visit. Your folks know what celery is, right?”
That, among other recommendations of what could only be bought in Equestria, were the bulk of Autumn’s contribution to my otherwise solemn assessment of the school.
But at the end of those two weeks, came the most disturbing development.
It should be noted that, despite Fluttershy’s confidence with Autumn’s attempts to find the unknown creature for her project, the truth was that Autumn could only ever recall seeing its eyes, after which she would forget the rest of the memory or claim she stumbled back to our dorm.
It should be doubly noted that despite leaving every assortment of food out for the animal, nothing seemed to be eaten. In fact, every night she went searching for the creature, it seemed the previous night’s food was untouched by any animal.
That last fact’s relevance was, unfortunately, unclear until I met her.
I awoke to the sound of stuttering shutters and cold winds. Winter was close, and the pegasi had issued a test storm to prepare Ponyville for its upcoming snows.
Shutting the window and fastening the latch as tight as it could be, my natural reaction was to see if Autumn had returned to her old habits.
I stood petrified.
It was the night of a new moon, but the storm’s lightning brought flashes into our dorm. I stood by my desk, which was directly beside the window, and stared intensely at what I thought ought to be a shadow.
A horrifying dark figure dressed in black loomed over Autumn’s body. Light gleamed only off its beady pupils and fangs, which dripped with hunger and desirous salivation. The monster’s black hair flopped down from her bed, hanging over mine and dripping mud mixed with the foliage of the woods.
The head turned toward me, glaring with skulking ferocity and horror which stuck to me like a carving knife in a pumpkin. What she speculated as she looked on me, I knew not. But I would not give her the chance.
I flew with talons bared and slashed at it, but it was crawling through the window before I landed. Bouncing off the bed I turned and tried to strike again, but only managed to wedge my talons into my desk while the monster fled.
At once, I startled Autumn awake.
“What, dude?” she complained as I dragged her out of bed.
“Now is not the time for ‘dude.’ The creature, I saw it! It stood over your body with fangs and hungry eyes. Look at the mess it left!”
The mud streaks stained the carpet and walls of our dorm, splattered everywhere from the creature’s hurried escape. We both lit matches and grabbed candles to illuminate the tracks.
And upon Autumn’s bed, we found the only hint at the truth behind the horror. A clump of the monster’s hair, snagged off by my talons, was stuck to the bedsheets. And as we picked it up and cleaned the grime from it, the black strands brightened and gleamed under the light of our candles, showing a brilliant light-pink colour.
“No way. What is this? It looks like… the Professor’s hair!”
I nodded.
Any pony or hippogriff would no doubt be familiar by the rumours of emptied graves and spontaneous marks along the neck’s veins. If one considers how many stories hail from a time of superstition, lacking understanding of the rules of magic and nature, it is easy to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as the vampire. But as I had heard of no other explanation or theory for what I had witnessed, from my first encounter with Autumn and this one, I was left only with the ancient stories which haunted the dreams of children worldwide.
“Professor Fluttershy may not have been taken after all.”
“May not? I bet she’s already been getting her refills off of me. That’s why I can’t remember anything after I entered the forest.”
“And this explains her motivation for permitting your project. I simply assumed it was her incompetence at proper teaching.”
“We gotta do something about this. She tried to bite my neck!”
“We don’t know her intentions or the state of her mind.” I struggled not to panic, but rather offer the route of caution. “She seemed more like an animal than anything else. We should inform the Headmare.”
“And tell them what? That Fluttershy tried to take a bite out of me? Drink me dry like a cup of water in the desert? Yeah right, like they’d ever believe us.”
“I wonder why she is so fixated on you,” I said. “That night we searched for you, I could have just as easily become a victim.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She waved her hoof in a wide circle, encompassing her entire self. “Look at me. I look like a snack!”
“I wouldn’t haven’t agreed with you after your first meeting, but now that you’re less overworked and have recovered your sleep, you might be right.”
“Wait, you saying you think I’m pretty?”
I paused to answer, both mortified that I had said something inappropriate and curious as to why she sounded surprised. “Doesn’t everyone? Most would say that you’re unquestionably attractive.”
“Well, that’d be nice, if I wasn’t marked by a hungry vampire!”
We debated all night into the morning, and both of us reported sick to our professors in order to give ourselves time to decide what to do with our newfound information. Autumn’s answer was invariably to starve out the beast by hiding behind protective charms. Garlic, talismans, and nightshade brews from a zebra in the woods was her answer.
That, along with all her other ideas, was decidedly not going to work.
I borrowed numerous books from the library and set upon them to find a solution. Not one born out of superstition, but truth. And the answer came in a book on forest ecology and bats.
“We can find her when she is asleep. Owls can nest happily in shaded trees, and many mammals possess dens. But bats form large colonies which require caves as living spaces.”
“And how’s that going to help us?”
“A beast of the night as large as a pony doesn’t have many options. A den would be too difficult to dig, a nest too small. But a cave would be perfect.”
“So, if we follow the bats, then we’ll find the Professor. Then we take her head off, right?”
I stared at her. “And then we bring the sleeping vampire to the Headmare.”
“Not my first choice, but we’ll go with it. I’m packing a stake through, and you won’t change my mind.”
That night passed and we slept well, somewhat assured by the incense and garlic Autumn had bought and arranged in a circle around our dorm. There was no sign the creature had tried to enter, and bright and early that Saturday we made haste for the Everfree Forest.
Our search did not go on for long. We rose before the sun dawned to track the bats returning to their caves. Although there were dozens of places, half of them could be excluded for they were either too far or too close to Ponyville to be candidates for the Professor’s den.
We concluded which were the few most likely, and began combing each one. The second to last cave bore fruit.
There are no words to describe that surreal sensation that washed over me, but an attempt must be made, for Professor Fluttershy was in the most decrepit state for a monster that could so terrify us.
She had bitten herself across her body, mixing her blood with the unclean mud covering her every inch. But nothing on her seemed inflamed or infected, only red and dripping.
The spot on her mane where I had managed to pull her hair was visible, a small, short patch among her long and tangled, but still silky, hair.
“You take the left, I take the right.” Autumn lifted the Professor to her back. I did the same, and we were about to take flight when her body shifted around on both our shoulders.
No hesitation slowed us from being shocked and startled. At once we dropped her, screaming in high pitches and falling away from the body.
“Girls?” The voice that belonged to the body was as soft-spoken as ever. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. I thought… I thought I had done something terrible.”
“How did you come to be like this?” I asked, mortified but irresistibly curious.
She coughed, straining herself to sit up with some semblance of composure. “It happened once before. Twilight reversed the spell, but I think something stayed behind. It’s like something inside me is changing, growing. I don’t know what’s going on. Please. I need your help.”
Autumn did not drop her suspicions for a moment. “What kind of help?”
“I won’t last, girls. Not without a drink. Autumn, please, I was so scared, I only wanted one bite, but you kept coming out to the forest, and I couldn’t help myself.”
The Professor slowly reached her hoof out to me. “Mistwake. Remember the moths? You understand, don’t you?”
All manner of reason yelled at me not to take her hoof, even Autumn shook her head at me so strongly that it almost seemed like it would come off. But the memory of the night I found Autumn surfaced again. She may have been a vampire, but I felt no difference between leaving her behind and denying her help. Guilt piled up inside me until I reached out and smiled at our professor with sympathy.
“Mistwake!”
I was on my back before I heard Autumn scream. The vampire’s starving fangs gnawed at me, her muddy face and savage eyes looked through me as if I was not even alive.
A spine-chilling shriek stiffened the Professor’s body until she convulsed and writhed up. The elastic flesh stretched over her ribs twisted and burst with blood, covering my face and blinding me momentarily.
I recovered to my feet, wiping off and spitting out all that I could. When I could see again, Autumn was standing over the Professor’s heavy-breathing body, a long stake protruding from the bottom of her shoulder.
“I told you so,” she gasped, looking at me. “Shoulda brought garlic too.”
And so we brought her back to the school.
The Headmare explained the nature of the curse, some mutation of a spell the Princess of Equestria once cast on Fluttershy years ago.
I didn’t understand much, and neither did she, for it was unclear what triggered the spell to manifest in such a way as it did. Such a thing had never even occurred before, by Fluttershy's own attestation, and neither she nor the Princess of Equestria knew how to cure the unusual affliction.
They would have to bring her to Canterlot until they could remedy the affliction with a counter-spell.
But for me and Autumn, it was over.
And in the weeks and months afterwards, I continued to write to my family. The letters grew longer, filled with more nonsense Autumn conjured up. But they also became more affectionate of the School of Friendship.
That following semester, my mother visited the school to see it for herself. She rented a room in the town and stayed for a few months. And when the Headmare confirmed that my letters of vampires were not fictitious imagination, she nearly rescinded my enrollment for fear of my safety.
It took hours of pleading from Autumn to convince her that I had made a difference and gained new friends in the school.
“It seems to me,” my mother smiled and said to me on the last day of her visit, “that you have managed to do far more than what has been asked of you. Your father and I are bound to the castle and Lady Nimblefin. But when I tell your father how much this place has freed you, he will be as proud as I am that you are studying here among your friends.”
Students would wonder what happened to one of their professors, and like the rest of the staff, we would have to keep our mouths silent, for it was decided that vampire stories would only stir fear and distrust in the rest of the school.
And I understood. For myself, it was long before the terror truly subsided. Frequently, when the morning cast long shadows from the trees into my dorm, I would wake and see the form of the vampire and be reminded of the taste of blood as the stake drove through her shoulder.
And after I caught my breath, Autumn would climb down from her bed and into mine, holding me close until my heart stopped racing.
So together, we got through it.
“Hey, beaks,” Autumn called out to me as I joined her for a picnic out in front of the school. “Nice shades.”
I adjusted the tinted spectacles on my face. “Yesterday’s test challenged me. I didn’t sleep well last night, so everything bright has given me headaches today.”
“Talk about it over a nice celery sandwich?”
I sat down and declined the offer, despite how much I enjoyed her recipes for sandwiches. “No appetite today.” I simply wanted to watch the sunset. For as the twilight hours grew nearer, I felt emboldened in the dark to inch closer and closer to her.
Her golden mane fluttered to expose eggshell-white coat, which was almost as dazzling to the eyes as her pearly smile. The winking sun cast rainbows of pinks and oranges on her light complexion, deepening and reddening with each passing minute.
I stared long and hard, imagining what would have happened if I had changed roommates, and my mind produced ambiguously alternating memories. I never would have seen a side of her that I liked. I never would have marched through a midnight forest. I never would have tasted a vampire’s blood.
My eyes followed her shapely chin and settled on the warm crest of her neck.
