While everypony else travels to see family, buys gifts for their friends, you spend Hearths Warming setting out and lighting candles. You have selected presents, things he might like. A jar of teeth, a cut of offal from the best griffon butcher in the Wastes, and another candle. This one is far more dear to you than the rest. You made it yourself, after all and it cost so much.
You try to stay awake for as long as you can, but eventually your eyes grow heavy and your head lowers without your permission. You sleep, and dream of dark water. You awake with a start, as every candle blows out at once. You are freezing, there must be a draft somewhere.
At your window someone guides.
You look up. An enormous hunched figure crouches on your windowsill, robed in white and red fur that would have once made your heart tremble. Something glows faintly under his hood. He smells like salt, stagnant water, and sadness.
I have brought you gifts, he rasps.
You begin to suspect that you a being avoided. When you travel into the small settlements for supplies you find fewer and fewer willing to talk to you. Eventually you find your usual order already packed up, with a small box waiting for payment.
No guards, however. So you haven't been discovered yet. You keep yourself well wrapped in a cloak, even so.
The odd travelers you would find traveling near your campsite have dried up as well. Occasionally one does come, but they never stay long. They're always in a hurry to leave.
It stings, more than wounds for a social creature such as you, for someone who used to have an entire town of friends. But you still have something to look forward to every day.
You are hungry. You are hungry all the time now. Your stomach growls and turns and nothing will satisfy it, nothing you can find or buy.
You once knew a baker- you crush that thought ruthlessly under your hoof. She was no better a baker than anypony else.
Instead you gorge yourself on chestnuts until you feel fit to burst and still you are hungry. Something is wrong here. You lick at the blood drawn from your lips by the spiky shells. You raise a hoof to your mouth and idly nibble on the fetlock. Perhaps the butcher will have what you need.
You suspect that there is a monster living in the well on the furthest outskirts of the Wastes. Strangely, when you bring this up to anyone around you, they refuse to meet your eyes. A griffon aggressively tells you to drop the subject, his beak clacking inches from your snout. A changeling drops its disguise and flees into the air the instant you mention it.
And yet, you still feel compelled to visit. You pour your secrets, your hopes and fears into the well, just for the sense of acknowledgement. You acknowledging the well, the well acknowledging you. And it does. Something sloshes in the well far below. Something glitters, reflecting the light from your lantern from far below at the bottom of the well. You aren't sure what it is. Too many to be teeth. Far too many to be eyes.
Sometimes when you sleep, you wake to find the damnable cat resting on your barrel. It is as content as you have ever seen it, kneading at your fur and flesh with razor sharp claws. You think it might be purring. You think something in your chest might be purring back.
They call him Mr. Eaten. They call him Mr. Eaten and that is not his Name. They stole his name, buried it and made everyone and everypony forget it.
This is not right. To a pony, a name is precious. Your heart burns with the injustice of it all.
The cat appears out of the blue one day. It's in terrible condition, matted, emaciated. You dare not get close enough to remedy the first, but you start leaving food out for it, every night. You quickly learn to keep the rest of your stores shut, lest they be consumed.
Still, it remains in pitiful condition. You ask a pony with a talent for animals what bothers it. She takes one look and flees screaming.
Sometimes it looks at you and licks its chops.
There is writing on the side of the well, carvings so packed and encrusted with soil that you almost find them by accident. Is it a name? You have been looking for one, for what feels like your entire life.
The symbols burn at your eyes when you look at them. Paper for a rubbing ignites. This will require further study. You lay Starswirl's notes aside for now. You'll return to them later.
You have always had a talent for dancing. Now you dance around a well in the middle of the Wastes, singing whatever comes to mind. You sway, shifting from hoof to hoof. "All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well," you croon. The Thing In the Well whispers back.
The monster in your well is crying. The water gurgles in sobs, the wind becomes sharp breaths.
You understand it. Through a sense of magic or empathy, you just know why it cries. It-he is alone, betrayed, murdered, and tortured. It wails from the injustice of it, and weeps for a friend. Can you abandon him, the way you were once abandoned. Can you let this injustice pass, leave this creature alone and wounded?
No.
You curl up around the side of the well, nuzzle your face into the rough stone, try to comfort an edifice as you would comfort a friend. The weeping quiets, as if it is comforted by your presence. "Can I help you?" you whisper into the depths of black water.
Something screams in your dreams. Triumph and joy and despair. You scream with it.
