Dear Shadow Shine,
I've never tried writing a book before, so I hope I'm doing this correctly. Recently, you have been asking me about my past. Instead of continuing to brush you off, I am going to tell you the story of my life- at least, the interesting parts.
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
It all began with a letter. I was in the middle of posing for one of Love Bright's pictures when one of the butlers presented me with a letter from Princess Platinum herself. I was less than thrilled. The last time I had gotten one of these letters, it informed me that I was being taken from my home and farmed out to the Bright House, all because I apparently had some Unicornian nobility in me. If you're a noble of some sort, it's considered illicit to live with one of the other "lesser tribes" unless you are assigned to them as an ambassador. Why couldn't she have done that instead?
Fortunately, I wasn't getting new parents. I was getting assigned to a province all my own, which I guess is slightly better. Since Father, as he requested I call him, had perished by tripping over a pebble, his provinces were now in need of new ownership. Princess Platinum decided to grant me one of the most prominent. As I continued to skim through the many passages dictating my new responsibilities, I noticed further down that the scroll also mentioned that there was a plague in the area. It said a disease was affecting most of the Earth Pony population, leaving them sickly and unable to grow food.
I was bothered at being given a town that was literally starving though I couldn't complain. It was a way out of this waking nightmare. Since I arrived, everypony aside from Love had made a point of making sure I understood how much of a nuisance my presence was. I was the "little-horned earth pony." The worst part was that I wasn't even doing anything bothersome, unless sitting alone for hours in a library is now considered so.
When she learned of the news, Mother literally kicked me out of the house with only half the trip's worth of provisioning. Since I arrived, Lady Bright and I were constantly at odds, why couldn't Platinum have given me to somepony decent? For the first time in my life. I learned what it was like to be hungry. I kept trotting onwards, following the directions the scroll had given me, hoping that this newfound fiefdom of mine would at least put a roof over my head and some food in my stomach.
I opened my eyes and was greeted by a stream of bright morning light. Gritting my teeth, I raised my head and glanced around as my pupils adapted to the light. My head ached, and thinking was difficult. I felt drunk, but I couldn't remember drinking anything. An earth pony was sitting beside the couch I was laying on, which was situated against one of the walls in an uncomfortably small room.
I heard the stallion's voice call out through the haze of my mind, "Good morning, miss! It's good to see you're awake and in good health." The mystery stallion chuckled. "I was starting to fear that you'd caught a case of Greywater." All those hours of study were beginning to prove useful as I was beginning to understand the magnitude of what I was up against, even in my diminished mental state. Greywater is a disease originating from ingesting water that had been contaminated with fecal matter.
Upon inquiry, the stallion informed me that the city was just up the road, about two twists up the mountain. The trip was slow: balancing while intoxicated is a rather difficult task. As I walked, I couldn't help but question why I was there. The details of my mission which I have previously explained were fading in and out of my memory. The constant winding of the road was not helping with the attention of my task at all.
My thoughts were silenced when I exited the small tunnel that the road ran through, giving me my first glimpse of my new home. It was a beautiful work of modern architecture, a city built into a sharp overhang of a mountain so perfectly formed that it seemed to be floating by its own power.
Canterlot was a very important territory to all three tribes, and, as such, there were several reasons they all wanted it. It is the province in the exact center of all three tribes. It also had control over the Hoofington River, which is an important asset to all non-aerial based trade routes.
In a way, whoever controlled Canterlot, controlled the trade between the three tribes. I was now the one with this control, and I was starting off at a disadvantage; Unicornia had conquered the province about ten years prior and most of these earth pony inhabitants were alive at the time, and still hated the idea of a Unicorn ruling over them. On top of that, I was only a filly. Why should they respect a child in any way?
I technically wasn't a filly in any way but name and appearance; I had celebrated my 14th birthday about 6 months prior, probably the primary reason for my promotion. The only problem was, my body didn't seem to agree. I hadn't grown one inch since the day I got my cutiemark, and any bypasser who didn't know better could easily have taken me for just another street urchin. To make matters worse, I was meeting a new group of ponies and needed to make a good first impression.
After wandering around for several hours trying to find where I was supposed to be, I found a line of ponies stretching out of an official looking building at what seemed like the center of town. It's curvy, white and purple design towering over the other buildings. Figuring that something interesting must be happening and that I could possibly ascertain who I should talk to about becoming governmare, I joined the line.
The mare in front of me whirled around, eyebrows raised. "Did you catch the plague too? I thought it was only affecting us earth ponies, but I guess not. Don't drink any more of the water, it will make you feel worse."
I hiccuped. In hindsight, I realized that I was hiccuping the entire trip, but this was the first time I noticed.
"You must be worse than I thought." She took a step back from me, bumping into the pony behind her, "You're already at the hiccuping stage."
"Hiccuping stage?" I queried, the book hadn't mentioned anything about Greywater having a hiccuping stage.
She nodded, "There's a plague in the water, you silly filly. And it's making you hiccup. Mother said that some unicorn was coming to fix it for us. Are you that unicorn?" she asked, her eyes widening.
"I don't know, but I think so." My vision was beginning to blur, and I felt dizzy.
"If you are that unicorn- what was it mother said that Unicorn was named- oh right, 'M-Lady' then you should be inside," she said, pointing at the Town Hall.
"Inside?" I asked drowsily.
"Yes inside, are you-"
I toppled over, my ears rang, blocking out the rest of her statement. It was strange. I felt like I was underwater, drowning. My vision was closing in on me, and that was it. I was completely surrounded by icy tendrils of unconsciousness as they wrapped themselves tightly around me. A feeling I would become quite accustomed to in the months to come.
The ringing suddenly faded; I could hear muffled talking from somewhere. I was lying on my back in a bed with no covering on its feathers. Feathers surrounded me on all sides. They tickled- especially the one resting on my muzzle. I sneezed, and the talking outside stopped.
A light brown stallion trotted into the room and smiled at me, "Good morning. It's good to see you awake, Lady Spotlight. Where have you been? Everypony was worried sick about your disappearance. Poor Skywalker even has the sniffles, although that could be unrelated."
I sneezed again and asked in a sleepy voice, "Where am I?"
"This is Canterlot M'lady, do you not remember that?" he queried.
"I… do… Where am I?"
He sighed, "You're laying in the receptionist's room of the town hall. You fainted on the doorstep so we brought you in here. I was still adding feathers to the bed, I apologize for any inconvenience."
"And… you are?"
"I'm Flawless Cut, your carpenter."
This was a bit of a surprise, aside from a carpenter having a jeweler's name; I had never really "had" anything before. Given, I had always had everything I needed, but my entire life nothing had really ever been mine, not even my family was mine. It was given to me at birth. For the last several years, I wasn't even my own, being constantly reminded that I was an outsider. It was with this view that I asked, "What do you mean, 'my carpenter'?"
"I'm a carpenter… and I worked for Lord Soft Serve, which means I work for you now..." he explained slowly.
I sat up, wiping the feather off my muzzle. I was in a small room with a single window, which looked out over the wide rolling fields of the countryside below. I looked at the carpenter, "How bad is it?"
"The plague?" I nodded "Pretty bad, about half of our population is sick. Due to the medical steps Lord Serve took the spread of the disease has been halted. The sick ones are mostly still sick, though." Despite the gravity of the subject, I couldn't help but smile at his ignorance of Unicornian.
Rolling off the bed, I sauntered into the main room of the hall. I could walk normally now. There had been a slight pain in my stomach that I hadn't quite noticed before. The room was crowded. The line which outside didn't appear to be all that long took up most of the interior space. Many of the ponies were coughing a little while the ponies at the desk passed out medicine.
I wondered why medicine was being passed out in a town hall since that is what hospitals were built for. That, however, wasn't important right now. I needed to find the source of the epidemic. Looking at the crowd, I shouted, "Can anypony show me the way to where you get the water?"
A pegasus sauntered out of the crowd. "Yes? Do you need something?" he asked me with a small smile.
"Do you know where the water comes from?"
"Nope!"
"Then… why did you respond?"
"You called my name," he deadpanned.
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did."
"No, I didn't, I asked for some po..."
"Yes, you asked for Anypony, and that's my name," he said, rather rudely cutting me off mid-sentence.
After a few moments, I retorted, a sly smile plastered upon my face, "Are you a dirty bastard?" He stared at me blankly. "Mother said you Pegasi were dirty bastards. All the pegasi I have ever met seemed nice, but, well... are you a dirty bastard?" I asked with a grin.
After thinking for a few moments, he asked me to show him my hoof. I raised a hoof, confident in my logic. He put out his hoof, and, after looking at both of them closely for a moment, shrugged, "Mine's cleaner, I'm gonna kill some Cervids. Bye!"
He flew off before I could make any kind of response. I was stunned! I had just gotten outwitted by a pegasus. That was unheard of! Surprised, sure, outmaneuvered, of course, but getting outwitted… That meant making a good first impression was out of the question now. Flawless Cut was snickering behind me and before long I was afraid of getting a new title, "Spotlight, The Little Dull Unicorn."
I was yanked out of my musing by a gentle tap on my shoulder. A brown Earth Pony was crouching down next to me. She smiled softly and whispered, "I, know." I smiled back. Hers was the first friendly face I had seen since that time Crimson visited.
"Can you show me the way?" I asked.
She nodded and started slinking off towards the door, with me following closely behind. After leaving town, we silently traveled the same path I had followed several hours before. At the bottom of the first tunnel, we turned off onto a small hoof-path that zigzagged down the cliff face. It was a little unsettling, trotting down a path with only a few inches of space between you and a several-thousand-foot drop. The forest below was rather beautiful, but I know what happened to a pegasus who stopped flying and I wasn't expecting a unicorn to fare much better.
My guide, however, didn't seem at all fazed by our peril. She trotted happily along, like a foal chasing a butterfly. Glancing down again, I asked, "Where exactly are you taking me?" Her response was less than desirable, amounting to little more than the promise of a lake. Nothing at all to help ease me of my worry.
We continued onwards in silence while I tried to make sense of her response. (There was apparently a "lake"-"down.") When we finally got to the bottom of the hill, safely thank Arcana, she led me down an even smaller path that was probably made by a roaming herd of Cervids.
We continued onwards in silence until my guide stopped abruptly in front of me. "What was that!?" she stammered.
I stopped listening, "That? Just a cricket." I couldn't help but grin at how scared she was at such a harmless little creature… Well, at least harmless to ponies, the same can't always be said about agriculture."
"Big?" she demanded; terror portrayed by all her features.
"I don't... think so-," I said, trying to remember ever hearing of a 'Big' cricket "-all the ones that I have ever seen are about the size of a really small pebble."
"O-o-o-o-kay," she said, voice still quivering.
She started down the path again, furtively glancing around her. I was following closely behind until I felt something crawling on the underside of my muzzle. Wiping it off onto my leg, I could see that it was a little cricket.
I galloped after her shouting, "I got a cricket- OW!" I had somehow managed to trip over a root and was rolling uncontrollably down the hill. I felt a sharp pain in my nose, and nighttime came in an instant.
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
I laid on my back in the cold forest leaves. It was mid-autumn and all the trees were a bright crimson color. A cold wind blew up below me, my guide was shivering.
"How much further do we have to go?" I asked, looking at her. She was curled up into a little ball, watching me sleep.
"F-f-f-ar" she responded, her teeth chattering, and her entire body shivering. It was at times like these that long fur comes in handy.
After a few moments I asked, "Are you alright?" She nodded.
"Is there any kind of shelter down there?" She nodded.
"How long have I been out for?" She hesitated for a moment before answering, "Five."
We continued trotting in silence as I tried to decipher what exactly 'Five' meant. Another wave of cold air came flowing up the hill, making her shuddering worse. I was starting to feel the effects of the cold through my fur, which has always been longer than that of other ponies, but not even that was protecting me from this wind. It was an unnatural wind, something was wrong about it. We huddled together for warmth as we walked.
To my relief, after climbing out of a small valley which the path ran into, we came in sight of a small thatched hut dug a few feet into the foot of an aqueduct which ran from the lake up to the city; looking up, I saw that we were directly under the outcropping that Canterlot was built upon.
The lake was a beautiful bluish-white. It all seemed surreal, like something you would imagine in a fairy tale. That was until a sharp hissing sound came from the hut. It was nearly deafening. Inside, I could see a large spider web, with something moving within. My guide had lost her mind and was running around bucking at everything she saw. The commotion she was making seemed to agitate the spider further as the hissing grew louder, taking my hopes of diplomacy with it.
As I was trying to figure out what to do about the spider and the frightened pony, I heard a small voice in my head, "try fire." Picking up two sticks, I ground them together the same way my 'brother' had taught me back when I was little. Before long I had a spark, and piling up some dry leaves, I soon had the thatch hut nicely ablaze.
Steam began coming out of the hut, mixing beautifully with the sunrise. Satisfied with my work I turned my attention to my guide, who had decided to repeatedly buck a poor tree standing near the edge of the forest. I had succeeded at calming her with a hug when the spider started screaming. It was a blood-curdling sound of death. I still remember how cold it made me feel.
My guide crawled underneath my legs, whimpering uncontrollably until the screaming from the hut subsided along with the fire. The entire time, I was trying to figure out how some pony twice my size could fit underneath and leave me surprisingly comfortable. The biggest surprise, however, was about to come. I was looking down at her trying to figure out exactly how she was managing to fit under me when she told me. It was in rather unsatisfactory detail, but it was a complete sentence, "I have always been flexible, that's how I got my name."
"So you can talk in complete sentences?" She nodded.
"What's your name then?"
"Flexible Wood but everypony calls me Flex; I don't know why they call me that. What's wrong with the name Flexible?"
I was rather surprised that such a shy pony, who had spoken barely a word up until this time, was now being so... open. My mind was quickly set at ease as to why. She didn't even give me time to respond to her question. "How are you so big? Your-your things, that is… they're um… bigger than mine, and-and-and, there are four of them, and you're so small," she said pointing at my hindquarters.
I should take a minute to explain something about my genetics, and technically yours, but you're a stallion dragon pony thing so it doesn't apply as much to you... We are from a breed referred to as Cheveux Licorne. We are known for having thicker than average fur as well as four mammaries; two where they normally belong and two on the center of the chest. Commonly the hind two are rather large while the front two just make hugs irritating, while the entire setup leads to more milk.
In hindsight, I was probably rather harsh to her demanding her to get out from underneath me in a good bit of color. She, however, seemed really calm about my glowering, aside from her relapse back into one-word responses-
By this time, the fire was beginning to die down. It had done its job of warming us and weakening the spider. Now it was up to me to put the poor creature out of it's misery, something that I sadly had no problem in doing. I was mad. Given somepony groping you is a good thing to get mad over, but the poor spider hadn't done anything wrong (scary, but not wrong) and I had burned it and it's home.
I regret the relish I took in stomping its head over and over again. Its spasming, the crunch of bone smashing through an exoskeleton, the smell of burned flesh drifting out of it, and the pale-blue blood that was splattering my leg, I loved it, and then I felt sick.
The adrenaline and anger that I was taking out upon that spider was now gone. I was left standing there next to a spider with its brains all over my hooves. I looked at myself, this was what I was becoming. I had always this twisted dream of killing something, to watch something beg for mercy at my hooves. However, having done that, I just felt... empty. I wanted to go home and cry, but I had a job to do. I had come here to find out what was wrong with the water.
By this time, the Sunlight Council was beginning to raise the sun. I had been unconscious for so long that morning was beginning to dawn. It was a beautiful sunrise, little streaks of orange dotted the sky where clouds rested while the rest of the sky clung to the bluish-purple color of night. Sunrise and sunset were always my favorite times of day; it might just be me being biased to my color scheme, but, there was something about it that I loved, and that something was something that no pony could ever take away from me.
After my momentarily relishing I again returned my attention to the task at hand. The lake which had looked so majestic in the moonlight had now acquired a very different appearance. The beautiful silver glow had been replaced with a murky brown. Little black globs of... something... floated in on the surface, giving it a very vile appearance.
Given the situation, what would a smart pony do? Obviously not what I did, which was to levitate up a ball of water and lick it. Even if it was safe, why would you need to lick it? The experience did one thing, however- clarify without a shadow of a doubt that this was the source of the Greywater.
I braced my hooves, took a deep breath, and focused. A faint orange glow began to envelop the lake. The glow began to intensify in brightness as the water in the lake began to form itself into an orb which then started to float, defying gravity. Underneath the water was a rather thick layer of light brown goo which clashed dramatically with the rest of the stony lakebed.
Flex, who at some point had managed to come up beside me, let out a low exclamation that described my feelings as well, "Awful."
After setting the water down and wiping away the sweat that was flowing freely down the side of my face, I braced myself again. This time, I focused on the brown goo. An orange glow covered the bottom of the lake and grew as I focused on lifting it up into the air. A dripping brown glob came floating out of the surface of the water. It was heavy- really heavy. Heavier than all of the water in the lake combined. With a heave, I drifted the ball over to an indentation in the ground that had once been the residence of a giant spider.
I collapsed panting, with sweat rolling down my neck and dripping onto the ground. I felt nauseous and could barely stand. Something like this had never happened before. I had, of course, read about what happens when a unicorn has a 'magical burnout', but those didn't come with this kind of major physical weakness. This was something far worse. Greywater only affects earth ponies my rear.
The world began to blur again, and for the second time since arriving here, I found myself wrapped in the tendrils of unconsciousness. I had been thrust into a whole new world, and this was my initiation. The pattern of pain would continue for many days to come. And I thought the hangover earlier in the day was bad.