<ins>The Candlelight Pony</ins>

The air was cool and the atmosphere quite gloomy- just another evening in the Everfree. Most ponies knew better than to linger in the forest for too long; the stories of all the strange happenings in the forest made sure of that, not to mention the occasional scare of a timberwolf attack.

Sable wasn’t most pones. If you asked him personally, he’d say he was probably a rather foolish pony. And so here he was where other ponies feared to trot. Of course, he wasn’t merely here on a whim- somepony had gone missing, and while the rest of the townsponies searched high and low through the streets for their missing friend, he had tasked himself with checking to make sure the errant soul hadn’t stumbled into Ponyville’s go-to hot spot of weirdness.

The evening gloom was contested only by the glow of a single candle held firmly in the young priest’s wing-grasp as his eyes darted from tree, to brush, to clearing, to another tree. No sign of a missing pony yet.

A stiff breeze rolled through, rustling the trees and making the lonely light of Sable’s candle flicker. Instinctively, he tried his best to shield the flame from dying. The little light was a more reassuring defense to him than any armor and he’d not let himself be deprived of it easily! Thankfully the air settled before the flame could be fully extinguished…

… that’s one crisis averted, at least.

The night was still young, and Sable had a gut feeling he wouldn’t be returning to the safe sanctuary of his chapel for some time, so he steeled his wits and prepared to delve further from safety and deeper into the enigmatic Everfree…

(Kudos to Flash Equestria Photography for helping me design my first fully realized OC, and for being an overall wonderful person to work with and talk to over the past few months. Cheers, friend!)