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My life truly began the day I got my cutie mark. I guess that’s normal, but to be honest, I can hardly remember what happened before then. I was an average colt, intelligent but shy, with no real friends and too many books. It comes with being a unicorn, I guess—even the famed Twilight Sparkle spent more of her childhood in the company of books than that of friends.
It was worse for me, though. I had been cursed (in hindsight, blessed, but hindsight is funny like that) with a perfectly average appearance, along with the ability to just blend in with my surroundings. White coat, black mane, grey eyes, and a skinny build for a colt which I’ve kept well into stallionhood. An uninteresting name, Shadow (for my black mane, which my mother always loved). Perfectly normal, perfectly average, perfectly unremarkable. And, being so truly unremarkable, I was never accepted into Celestia’s famed unicorn academy. I vaguely remember being upset when I received the rejection letter from Ponyville’s mailpony, Dorky Doo (mother of our current mailpony Ditzy Doo). I may have even cried. It seems almost funny, looking back.
Not long after that, upset at my lack of special talent, or anything to set me apart for that matter, I ran away from home. And where else was a lonely, untalented, unwanted young buck to go but the Everfree Forest? I think I truly intended to die there. And I very nearly got that wish. As I pressed deeper and the vines and leaves pressed in around me, I heard more and more deep, animalistic noises. Eventually, cold and wet from a sudden squall of rain, I emerged from the brush in front of an enormous cave. I had already accepted my fate; anything this horrible place threw at me, I would simply let it happen. So I walked right in.
It quickly grew too dark to see, and the deep growls and snarls were growing louder all the time. I pressed on, determining to see this final adventure through to the end, and before long I bumped into a huge wall of furry flesh. The cavern lit up with a pale glow like starlight, and the vast creature reared up with a sleepy growl. An Ursa. Not a bad way to go, I guess. Except Fate had other things in store for me. I cowered as the creature drew up a humongous paw to end my short, meaningless existence… And in that moment, everything changed. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t think my life was meaningless. And who did this creature think it was, to try to kill ME? HOW DARE IT? Power, unlike any I had experienced in my previous studies, surged through my body and left my horn in a pure, black beam.
I must have blacked out. When I woke up, there was blood in my mouth and nose. I shook it off, but the foul metallic taste clung to my tongue and settled in the back of my throat. The cavern was lit with the barest edge of daylight, enough to see the fuzzy outline of the Ursa as it lay in the center of the cave, unmoving. I crept towards it slowly, not knowing if it was asleep or awake. As I passed the huge, fallen head, I saw that the eyes were still open and froze… But they were glazed and grey, unmoving… dead. I had cast my first real spell: a Death spell. And with just my own power, I had slain an Ursa.
I staggered from the beshadowed cave into the light of what was, to me at least, my first day. A convenient pool of water drew my attention; I really needed to wash up, to get the blood from my face before heading home. As I finished scrubbing my face with my hooves, something caught my eye: where before had been a blank white flank was now a cutie mark, one that would define my whole life: the Grim Pony’s scythe.
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The next few years were interesting, to say the least. I couldn’t reveal the true meaning behind my cutie mark to my family or the other colts and fillies, so I was forced to pretend that it was actually meant to represent a passion for farming. My parents were disappointed; after all, farming is an Earth Pony occupation. Unicorns are supposed to be better than that. But it was what it was, and there was no changing it, so they accepted it. I learned the rudiments of farming from the local Earth Ponies (who smirked to themselves about a Unicorn like myself having to work and get their hooves dirty like them), and discovered that my talents applied to harvesting. A surprise, but a beneficial one, because it allowed me to maintain my cover.
In the meantime, I did what I could to learn more about my real talent. Books on the subject were understandably rare, ponies being ponies, but I still managed to get my hooves on some thanks to my local library. When those tomes were leafed through to the point where pages were coming loose from their bindings, I turned to the Doo family. Ditzy was the closest thing I had to a friend: behind those googly eyes was a gentle, caring soul, and I alone out of our class had never made fun of her for that deformity. The first time I broached the subject to her, she was hesitant, but after I told her of how I had gotten my cutie mark she relented. Everything we needed to track down books of magic was in her parents’ house, and we scrimped and saved enough to pay for them ourselves. Nopony gave the packages a second look, and I made up Ditzy’s share by playing with her at school and keeping her company at home. That was a good time, and Ditzy is still one of my closest friends, as much as somepony like me can have friends.
As we grew up and moved into our niches, I kept my secret studies, practicing what I learned on monsters in the Everfree Forest. There were times when those spells wouldn’t work and I’d get beaten up or scratched, and before I learned how to master the backlash from my more destructive spells I came back to my house with a bloody muzzle more than once. As I grew more powerful magically, I forced myself to learn a simple healing spell; not much, but enough to at least pass the monster claw marks off as thorn scratches and to prevent myself from scarring.
Life was better, but I still felt incomplete. Even with the sessions in the Forest, I still felt like something was missing, that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to. On the farm, I was told good-naturedly to stay away from the crops until harvest time, which left me plenty of free time to pursue my studies. When harvest time came around, it was all the poor Earth Ponies could do to keep up with me as I became a hurricane of magic. With my help, harvest time took a quarter of what it had before, so in my coworkers’ opinion I more than made up for my absence the rest of the year.
I fell into a routine, alternating between studying, practicing, and spending time with Ditzy Doo. I got so used to being dissatisfied with my life that I didn’t even notice it anymore. And then that fateful Summer Sun Celebration happened, and everything changed once again.