“It was a fateful day. In my many travels I had never seen a place so desolate.
An endless sea of gray, barren wasteland. I could not pass on seeing its beautiful emptiness myself.
I was out for too long. I sought shelter from Her overbearing sun in a nearby cave, and begun setting up to paint.
Suddenly a creature I had never seen before startled me! …But I think I startled it far more.
It saw me. And as soon as it realized I saw it, it disappeared in a flash of a glorious green fire.
I ran, scared, but I could never get the image out of my head. The memory was so sharp and yet so fuzzy on the details…
I painted what I could remember of it as soon as I was safe. Safe enough, that is. I had to paint it as soon as I could.
It was horrifying. I have never seen anything remotely like it. Bald, almost pure black, with exposed ribs and thin limbs full of holes.
When I came home no one believed me. They thought the creature too decrepit to be alive.
Sometimes I didn’t believe it myself. How could something like that really exist?
How could I, of all ponykind, stumble onto it first? Was I even first?
Time had passed. I moved on. Sometimes the memory came back but I’ve stopped believing in it.
But now I know it was real. Now I know what they are. And they know who we are.
And now I have to speak with their victims, blaming myself for exposing our kind to them in that fateful encounter.
It’s my way of making up for it, even if I know it’ll never be enough.
They don’t know. I couldn’t tell them, but it’s crippling me. I can’t get it out of my head.
I still have the painting. I don’t know what to do with it. It haunts me.
If only I hadn’t gone there. If only the comfort of love and compassion back home was enough for me.
But I know that I always would’ve. That I had to know.
…
Now I know.”

Vent art.

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