Darling, Don't You Be Afraid
“EEEK! RARITY!”
Rarity’s eyes shot open, only to meet the darkness. With a small burst of magic, her nighttime blinder was flung off of her face, and she found herself flinging the covers off of herself and dashing towards the hallway.
Once she was in the hall, Rarity galloped down towards her younger sister’s room. Throwing the door open with a thunderous BANG, Rarity skidded into Sweetie Belle’s room, looking around frantically.
“Sweetie Belle! What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Did somepony break in?”
Rarity looked around, and did not find Sweetie in the dark of the room. In her haste, Rarity had forgotten to turn on the light, and now that she did not see Sweetie, the thought was further shoved into a crevice of her mind.
Rarity’s eyes shot open wide, and she sat down on her haunches, tugging on her mane with her forehooves. “Oh dear sweet Celestia, she’s gone! What could have....” she slowly trailed off when she saw that there was a quivering mass under the blankets of Sweetie’s bed. Slowly, she trotted over to the bed, and levitated the blanket slightly to the side.
“AH!” Sweetie Belle shrieked upon being exposed.
“AH!” Rarity shrieked in response, flailing backwards as the sudden shock sent her reeling. The elder unicorn fell sideways onto the floor, grunting softly as she hit the ground.
“R-Rarity?” came the sound of Sweetie’s shaking voice from the bed above.
Rarity groaned, picking herself off the floor, heart still racing. Instinctively patting down her mane into a more presentable condition, she looked over at Sweetie Belle, who was curled up into a ball in the center of the sheets.
“Sweetie Belle? Are you alright?” she asked, pausing for a moment to take a few deep breathes in an effort to calm herself. When she had regained her composition, she set a hoof on Sweetie Belle’s bed, right next to her sister’s head. “Whatever was that shriek for? You nearly gave me a heart attack! I thought for sure something awful was happening to you!”
Sweetie Belle was gasping deeply, her little chest moving up and down rapidly as she heaved in air. “S-Something awful did happen!”
Rarity’s already flustered heart skipped a beat. “You did?”
Sweetie swallowed hard, and nodded feverishly. Rarity cast a paranoid glance around the room.
“Wh-What happened, Sweetie?”
Sweetie opened her mouth, and the words poured from her like water from an open spigot, punctuated only by sharp gasps. “I-I saw—I woke up to a loud banging—and then I looked around the room to see what had caused it—and I saw a horrible shadow across the room!”
“A shadow?”
Sweetie Belle nodded once more. “It was huge, and black, and it was on the other side of the room just... STARING at me!” She closed her eyes in terror, and latched on to Rarity’s foreleg. “Make it go away, Rarity!”
Rarity looked over to the part of the room where Sweetie Belle had described the shadow as being. Only having the vague direction of “across the room” to go on, Rarity scanned the area of Sweetie’s bedroom that was directly across from her bed.
“Sweetie, I think it may have only been a dream,” Rarity said, after a few moments of silent surveying. “It’s best if you try to get back to sleep, darling, a lack of sleep only makes your imagination go wild...”
“I know it’s there!” Sweetie cried out indignantly. “I saw it! Rarity, do something! Kick it! You know self defense!”
Rarity giggled softly. “Oh, Sweetie, dear, even if the shadow was there, I couldn’t do anything against it. Kicks go right through shadows!”
Rarity paused, her brow knitting together, too late realizing that that was quite possibly one of the stupidest things she could have said in that scenario.
“Th-they do?” Sweetie Belle squeaked, terrified. “Then all hope is lost! Rarity, we need to leave the house now! And then we need to burn it down, and salt the earth where the wreckage is to make sure that—”
Rarity put her hoof gently on Sweetie’s side, causing the foal to freeze up momentarily in terror. Once she registered that it was only her sister’s hoof, she relaxed slightly, turning her head over and meeting Rarity’s gaze.
“Sweetie Belle,” Rarity said, in quite, calm voice. “There is no shadow! I can go over and shine a light on the wall and check for you. Would that make you feel better?”
Sweetie nodded, and bit her bottom lip. “Y-Yeah...”
Rarity lit her horn, casting a pale shade of blue around the room, and slowly walked over to the other side. The light cast shadows over the toys and books that were piled there, but none as Sweetie Belle had described.
“Do you feel better now, Sweetie?” Rarity asked, casting her sister a concerned glance. “There’s no shadow here.”
“I-I guess,” Sweetie said, with a small hiccup. “I was... I was so sure that there was something there!”
“It’s alright, darling,” Rarity assured her, trotting over to the bed and pulling the covers back up over her sister. “You know, I used to have nightmares just like yours when I was your age.”
Sweetie Belle, who had burrowed under the covers, poked her head out from under the blanket. “Really?”
Rarity smiled. “Really. Why, just ask our parents! I’m sure that mother or father would be hard pressed to remember just how many times I had done it, but...”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better...” Sweetie said. “You sleep just fine now, right?”
“I do,” Rarity said. “You’ll grow out of it, Sweetie. Your imagination is just running wild right now.”
Sweetie Belle bobbed her head for a moment, before squirming her legs out from under the covers and extending them outward towards Rarity. “C-Can I have a hug, please?”
“Of course you can, Sweetie,” Rarity said kindly, leaning over and embracing her sister. Sweetie Belle closed her eyes, and snuggled up against the crook of Rarity’s neck, her face disappearing into her sister’s mane.
“Thanks for being here, Rarity,” Sweetie Belle whispered.
“I’ll be there whenever and wherever you need me, Sweetie.” Rarity squeezed her little sister gently. “Will you be alright for tonight?”
When Sweetie Belle resurfaced from Rarity’s mane, she smiled at her. “Yeah! I-I guess it’s not too bad. Now that I’m calmed down, I can even explain some of the stuff I heard and saw! I mean, there was probably just a branch hitting the window that made that noise! And the moonlight cast a weird shadow in, and my imagination filled out the rest!”
Rarity nodded. “Exactly!”
“So there’s nothing to be afraid of?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” Rarity assured her sister, petting her mane.
“Even giant pony eating spiders?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Rarity smiled and rolled her eyes. “Well, of course one should be afraid of those, but the chances of them attacking us here are—”
Just then, the window shattered inward, spraying them both with shards of glass. The two ponies screamed as four huge, spindly, hairy legs crept in through the window, and the large head of a spider soon followed, eight eyes glowing read in the dark, and its horrifying mandibles dripping with venom and clacking together.
“FEED ME,” it bellowed, forcing its hairy thorax through the remnants of the window, the wall crumbling in its wake. The two ponies were frozen in horror, screaming as loud as they possibly could. The spider shot two quick strands of wed from its spinnerets to gag the ponies, and hurriedly scuttled across the floor towards Rarity, who obviously had more meat on her, preparing for the feast of a lifetime.
