The Hearth's Warming Horror
The Hearth's Warming Horror
Admiral Biscuit
Written for Equimorto
Throughout Equestria, the nearly uniform green-ness of trees and bushes had been replaced with a riot of colors—oranges and reds and yellows—as all the deciduous trees began the process of hibernating for winter. Outside of town, fields which had been full of crops were harvested, one by after another, leaving barren areas punctuated with corn sheaves or wheat stubble. Backyard gardens, the pride of every earth pony, were denuded, their bounty collected and canned for the wintertime.
Nightmare Night went by, a nice break for all the fillies and colts who’d once again had their summers rudely curtailed by the commencement of school. Cozy Glow had gotten enough candy to give her a stomachache two days in a row before she moderated her candy consumption.
Nightmare Night was, in her opinion, the last day of carefree celebration before autumn properly began. Sure, there were signs before, but she did her best to ignore them, to put them out of her mind even though every day the calendar in her room got a fresh X right before she went to bed, marking yet one more day gone.
If Nightmare Night was more a celebration for the foals, the Running of the Leaves was for the adults, although she could see in their eyes it was no real holiday. Sure, it had a festive atmosphere surrounding it. There was a big speech by the mayor, there were food carts and little races for the fillies and colts complete with colorful construction paper leaves, and there was a touch of sadness in all the earth ponies as they all lined up on the course.
She understood what was really in their minds. They knew what was coming in the wintertime, what awoke as the night stole the sun away.
Cozy wondered what would happen if they didn’t run. Would the leaves stay on the trees? Would they turn green again and bring back the warmth and sunlight? Might they keep it at bay? None of the big ponies would tell her, they just said that the land needed to be prepared for the winter and they ran through the woods and the leaves came off the trees. The pegasi gathered together all the songbirds and led them south, great flocks of geese and doves and cranes and red-winged blackbirds and warblers and even some vultures trailing along, maybe hoping that not all the birds would make their journey.
Other animals built nests to overwinter in, or dug burrows, or found a cave or crevasse in which to keep themselves safe from what would come.
The days got shorter and the nights turned cold as chill winds blew in from the North. Frost started appearing on the ground, covering the dead plants with a diamond-like glitter. Woodsmoke started filling the air as ponies lit their hearths and fireplaces. Was it drawn to smoke? Was that a signal that it should awaken from its torpor?
❄❄❄
Cozy Glow looked up nervously at the moon, casting its cold light on the leafless skeleton trees. Winter was coming.
As if Nature itself could read her thoughts, a chilly gust rustled the leaf-litter on the forest floor, causing her to twitch her wings involuntarily.
Winter wasn’t something she feared. Nopony did. It was cold, sure, and nopony liked the short days, but that was at least partially offset by hot chocolate and fireplaces.
No, it wasn’t the weather that she feared. It was the thing that was out there.
It was always out there, this thing, always watching and judging ponies. Many of her schoolmates thought it was benevolent, but she didn’t. Maybe when she’d been younger and less aware, she might have, before she’d fully realized the implications of it.
Cozy bit her lip and then took flight, hovering just above the path. Not that flying would help her escape it, but it was faster at least.
She zoomed home as quickly as she could fly, and she closed and locked the door behind her, as if that would be some kind of a barrier to it. As if an omnipresent eldritch being could be stymied by a simple locked door.
The house was still warmed by the dying heat of the fireplace. She lighted a lantern and sat at the kitchen table, trying to put it out of her mind as she opened her saddlebags and pulled out her classwork, as she spread sheets of paper across the table and started to work on her exercises. Diagramming sentences while trying to not think about how it might be watching her. Filling out multiplication tables while wondering what kind of elemental magic it used.
Outside, the wind picked up. It rattled the windows in their panes and crept through cracks in the house, chilly tendrils teasing at her fur and making the lantern’s flame dance.
Cozy covered a yawn and shoved her mostly complete homework back into her saddlebags for tomorrow, and then went up the stairs to her bedroom.
Sleep didn’t come easily. How could it when she was well aware that it knew when she was sleeping?
❄❄❄
Not thinking about it was easy in the spring, when the days were getting longer and warmer, when the grass was green and the flowers were budding, when the new leaves burst forth on the trees. When its time of reckoning had passed. Or the summer time, the long warm days that held no demands for a young filly, when the air currents were at their best and evening thermals carried on into the twilight; those were times when its reign of terror was easy to ignore.
She had never seen it. None of her schoolmates had, and maybe none of the adults—she wasn’t sure on that last point. Some of them claimed to have seen it but offered no actual proof, and she thought it was more braggado than actual fact.
Cozy lay in her bed, her covers pulled up to her chin in the false promise of warmth, her eyes open in the darkness, watching the skeleton shadows of trees (she hoped) playing across the ceiling and walls. Listening to the strange creaks and pops that the trees and the house made in the nighttime.
Any of them could be the thing. Even the chewing noise she could hear in the wall which might be a mouse or might not be.
What did it feed on? Her classmates swore that they could lure it in with food and the food would be gone in the morning, but it couldn’t subsist on those paltry snacks for an entire year. Especially since most of those snacks probably got eaten by a hungry mouse anyway, that was what happened any other night of the year that food was left out.
She didn’t want to think about that. She couldn’t help but think about that, lying in her bed in the dark, knowing that it was not yet its time and also knowing that every night meant it was one day closer to arriving.
❄❄❄
She dragged herself downstairs to the dull first light of the day. Angry grey clouds scudded overhead, reflecting her mood. Cozy knew that snow was scheduled, the first of the season. It wouldn’t start until after school had begun, which would give them just enough snow to play with in time for recess.
By the time school was let out, most of the roads would have been rolled . . . not that it mattered to her, either way; she could just fly above it. No need for the snowboots most of her classmates would be wearing.
The majority of fillies and colts were no doubt eager for the first snow, maybe some of them were pressing their muzzles against the glass in the hopes of spotting an early, errant flake. Not so Cozy Glow; it was just another reminder that the thing’s time was nearing for it only came in the winter, when it was dark and cold, when the hardiest creatures sought shelter from the dark and snow. It stirred with nothing else dared to.
She poured herself a bowl of oats even though she was hardly hungry, chewed them without tasting them, then she mechanically strapped on her saddlebags after patting them down and making sure they still contained her homework.
Her mostly complete homework; she could finish filling the rest of it out in downtime. Luminiferous aether was easy enough to understand, after all.
❄❄❄
She studied more than her schoolwork. Over the last month, after the Running of the Leaves, she’s started stopping at the library on her way home, mostly to do research but also because while she knew, deep down, that the pleasant crystal lamps of the reading room would do nothing to keep it at bay, it delayed the inevitable dark, chilly trek home.
It did nothing to push back the apprehension of the monster who lurked around every corner, in every shadow, behind every tree. Each day its power grew stronger, each day it changed further and further from a creature who just lurked to one that would soon creep through in the dead of the night, from house to house, rendering its judgement.
There were books that spoke of how one might lure it in, encourage it to visit, and perhaps encourage benevolence. She didn’t want that. She knew it was not to be trusted, and needed to know how to avoid it altogether.
None of the books were helpful in that regard.
Cozy looked over the pitiful selection of books that the library had. All of them were foal's books; she hadn’t found anything in the adult section.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but the only useful thing she’d uncovered was a parenting book that addressed when parents should tell their foals the truth about the thing—that, and a book on monsters of the Everfree forest which might have held some promise, except that the librarian had seen her reading it and snatched it away telling her that this was not a book for a little filly.
There was a conspiracy to keep the truth from her, she decided. And the librarian was in on it.
She pulled her saddlebags on and cinched the belly strap and headed out of the library, out into the darkness, into—
A fog had crept in, turning the lights in town into glowing halos that vanished in the mist much too quickly for her liking. All the sounds were muffled—even the sound of her hooves crunching through the snow was deadened.
She flared her nostrils, but the fog had taken that sense from her, too. Everything smelled of cloud and woodsmoke that came from everywhere and came from nowhere.
The library door closing behind her sounded like a tomb slamming shut, and she snapped her wings out and jumped up into the air before realizing what had spooked her.
You’d better not move.
Her eyes and ears darted around, trying to get a measure of fog-bound Ponyville. Was it out there?
Yes, it was out there. She knew it was out there, even if she couldn’t see it. It wasn’t blinded by the fog, if it was looking for her it could see her. Even the foal’s books agreed on when it would come, though, and today was not the day.
Cozy shivered and took a tentative step, then another, and before too long the library disappeared from view.
As she looked around her, she realized that she couldn’t see any ponies, none at all. It was as if she was alone in this strange, dark, fogbound world. There were always ponies in the streets of Ponyville, or at least there had been previously.
Were they just beyond the fog, or had they been consumed by the mist?
She took flight again, this time climbing to the top of the fog, but that wasn’t any better. It had swallowed nearly the whole town, leaving only the top of the Rotunda and the castle visible, and far off in the distance the lights of Canterlot.
The entire fogbank itself had an eerie glow, all the gas lamps and crystal lights that she couldn’t see trying to shine out of it.
Nevertheless, it was better up here, at least a little bit. The faint glow of a gibbous moon gave her some light, but it wasn’t enough to see landmarks by, and she realized that if she wanted to get home, she’d have to land back on the ground, figure out where she was, and then navigate from there.
Cozy circled, touching the top of the fog cloud with her hooves before swallowing and taking a deep breath, then diving back in, aiming for what she thought might be a street—she’d lost her bearings as she climbed above the fog cloud.
❄❄❄
By the time she finally got home, her fur was matted with fear sweat. It had followed her the whole way; she was sure of that. And it could be bold, she’d never have seen it in the fog—nopony would. It could hunt her down with impunity.
As she sat in the bathtub, soaking in water that couldn’t ever warm the chill she felt deep inside, she thought about her calendar, marked with Xs across each day that had passed, relentlessly marching towards The Day, circled in red crayon.
There were so few left.
What would she do? What could she do? How could she stop it or at least avoid it?
As its time of reckoning approached, her options diminished, and the few plans she had left became more outlandish, more desperate.
Hop on a freight train? Even if she knew how to get on one and stay on one, it would follow her.
Leave a fake Cozy Glow in her bed and hide somewhere else? That wouldn’t fool it.
Closing the shutters and boarding up the house would do nothing to stop it, as if she could even do that. Hopping a freight train was more likely; as soon as she started nailing boards up over the windows, her mom would stop her and tell her she was being silly, and didn’t she want to be a good pony, didn’t she want to meet the creature?
Did adult ponies get brainwashed by it? They must, everypony agreed that it only appeared to foals.
She’d already learned when she gave its name, adults turned cutesy and patronizing, even those that she trusted. So did most of her classmates, although some of them rolled their eyes and told her that it wasn’t real, that she was just being a silly filly. She knew it was real; she’d seen proof last year—not something stupid like an empty plate with just crumbs on it, but a couple of actual sooty bifurcated hoofprints on the living room floor and she had seen a shadow-shape flying away from her house just after she’d heard a noise downstairs.
Cozy pulled the plug out and let the water gurgle down the drain, idly wondering if she could somehow gurgle down the drain and avoid it that way. Maybe if she knew a spell that would turn her into a kelpie, and found a unicorn to cast it on her.
And it probably wouldn’t do any good; the thing would know what she’d done and mark it down in its book of reckoning. One of the books at the library told a story of how a fishermare had been visited while at sea.
She shook herself off mechanically, thinking through any possibilities she hadn’t explored. Did it visit other creatures? Did the deer of the forest know of it? Dragons? Diamond dogs?
Cozy sat down on the bathmat and ran the towel through her mane. None of the books had said if it preyed on any creatures besides ponies. It wouldn’t be morally correct to bring it to them—this was only a momentary consideration, quickly dismissed—and, more importantly, even if it didn’t naturally seek out deer or dragons or diamond dogs, if it was hunting for a pony it wouldn’t be distracted or deterred by them.
In fact, she might be better off with more ponies around her; perhaps its voracious hunger would diminish when it had more to choose from. Maybe she could arrange a sleepover with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Although they were often away on vacation, perhaps as a way to escape from its judgement.
❄❄❄
One night before it would arrive. She watched the sun sink below the horizon with trepidation, her mother mistaking it for anticipation.
She ate her dinner, although she had little appetite, and then helped her sister wash the dishes.
Tomorrow was The Day and she wanted to scream, she wanted to gallop off or fly away but she did neither, keeping her emotions bottled up as best as she could, agreeing to her brainwashed sister and brainwashed mother that it was good that the thing was coming tomorrow night.
She didn’t have any last-second plans or inspirations, and as the activities in the house wound down for the night, as the fire was banked and the lamps turned down, she trudged up the stairs to her bedroom and climbed into a bed that was hardly inviting, a bed which was no refuge from the thing which would come. Instead of curling up with her favorite plush kitten, she lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling and the stark shadows of tree limbs gently moving, as if they were advanced tendrils of the thing reaching out for her.
Tomorrow morning she’d wake up and mark one final cross on her calendar, and that would be it. Every minute that passed was one minute closer to its arrival, and she could think of nothing more that she could do to prevent it; she’d go about her day like normal—if she could—trying not to think about it.
What did it do to prepare? She imagined it, too, was preparing. The one night when it could reign supreme, when it could reach every household in Equestria that it wanted to, the night when its power was the greatest.
Everything came in cycles, she was old enough to know and understand that now. The seasons came one after another every year, with the days getting longer and longer and then shorter and shorter until the cycle repeated, not unlike the Moon in Her glory, waxing and waning on its four-week cycle.
Certain kinds of magic were lunar-bound, and worked best when the moon was fully illuminated, and other kinds worked best when the moon was dark, or barely a sliver in the night sky, overglown by the millions of stars that surrounded it.
The thing’s magic only worked but once a year, and that was at least a small mercy. But on the longest night of the winter, that was when it would appear.
❄❄❄
Tonight was the night that the thing would come.
Cozy felt a mixture of terror and thrill; she’d been preparing for it as best as she could. She’d spent hours and hours in the library after school learning all that she could about it. There wasn’t much, and she’d had to read between the lines. There was lots of stuff that adult ponies wouldn’t tell foals (often when she queried, she was told to ask her Mom, an experience that several of her classmates shared).
She could lure it with food, which would have been useful if she knew how to trap it. She had doubts that she could.
She wasn’t sure that she could keep it out, even if she tried.
Some of her classmates had watched for it in years past and hadn’t seen it, just evidence that it had been there—the same that Cozy Glow had seen.
It came through the chimney, all her sources were certain on that. That was the one part of a ground-house that couldn’t be secured, that didn’t have panes of glass or shutters or a nice solid door, and while a chimney wasn’t something a pony should fit down, she knew that they could: there was a colt who sometimes attended classes and mostly scrubbed the inside of chimneys to clean out all the creosote and soot.
Besides, it wasn’t corporeal anyway, even if it sometimes adopted a solid form.
It knew what was in her heart. How could she surprise it? It knew when she was sleeping. How could she avoid it? It knew when she was awake. How could she fool it?
Cozy had an idea. A dumb idea, to be sure, the kind of an idea only a foal could come up with but it was so dumb maybe it would work.
She lay awake in her room, her ears alert for the sounds of her Mom coming up the stairs to her bedroom, and when she had, Cozy got out of bed and flew silently to the door. A month ago she’d knocked the top hinge out of alignment so her door would squeak every time it was opened; this morning she’d oiled the hinge and worked her door back and forth until it was completely silent.
Nopony challenged her as she flew down the stairs and landed lightly in the living room.
That was part one of her plan. From here it got more complicated.
She lifted a couch cushion and pulled out a skein of twine she’d stashed, then went and tied one end around an andiron in the fireplace, then strung it out to the couch. She tied the other end to a hind hoof, making sure that it was tight enough that any jerk on the string would alert her—much like a spider’s web.
Cozy also put the fireplace poker on the floor under the couch, just in case.
And next came the most difficult part of her plan: she had to be asleep for it to work.
She knew that there were unicorns spells that could put a pony to sleep, but she wasn’t a unicorn. She also knew that there were earth pony elixirs which could put a pony to sleep, but she wasn’t an earth pony. Even zebras had their potions . . . but she wasn’t a zebra.
Nevertheless, she had a method of her own which never failed to work, a textbook on accounting theory and practice from her big sister Flitterheart.
Her eyes were already drooping as she read through the summary of the Principle of Sincerity, and she never finished the Principle of the Permanence of Methods—the book clattered to the floor. Cozy was completely zonked out.
She remained asleep for a couple of hours, unaware of the noctilucent clouds creeping across the sky and further blotting out the moonlight or the hoarfrost claiming the few surfaces that the snow hadn’t. She remained asleep as it came into town, soaring down from above, a mere shadow-shape in the night.
Cozy was unaware as it landed on her neighbor’s house and sneaked inside, unaware of the cloven hoofsteps on the roof of her house. Unaware as they scraped against the chimney, unattentive to the gentle fall of ash and creosote against the fireplace floor—
—until a bifurcated hoof landed on the grate, twitching the andiron and yanking the twine.
Cozy had mentally prepared herself for this moment, repeating her mantra even as her eyes blurred while reading the accounting textbook. Do not open your eyes.
So while in one sense she jerked awake, to anypony watching nothing happened at all. Her mind went to full wakefulness in an instance and she clamped her eyelids tight, faking sleep at the same moment that all her other senses went to full alarm.
❄❄❄
Maybe it would have worked if she’d practiced, maybe it wouldn’t have. It knew, after all, if she was sleeping or if she was awake.
Even if it hadn’t her wings betrayed her, tightening at the moment that the string jerked and the adrenaline flooded her body.
A deep laugh came from the creature, far down in its belly, the laugh of a being who had been confronted countless times before and remained undefeated.
Now there was no need to feign sleep. She snapped her eyes open and reached for the fireplace poker, getting a glimpse in the dim light of the room of a shadow-figure looming out of the fireplace. Its eyes glittered in the darkness and its jagged antlers stuck up in a mockery of a unicorn horn.
Even before her hooves could touch the poker, it reached into its sack and pulled out a package wrapped in glossy paper and tied with a bow, and it slid the present it across the floor to land under the Hearth’s Warming Tree. Before she could even get halfway out of the room, it turned tail and vanished up the chimney in a flash.
Frustrated, she threw the fireplace poker down and then tore into the package, shredding the neat paper and the cardboard beneath, to reveal nothing but an oily lump of coal yet again.
“You’ve been a very bad pony, Cozy,” came the taunting voice from above, and then in a brief clatter of bifurcated hoofbeats and a jingle of sleigh bells, it was gone.
Author's Note
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