I wanted to thank you so much for coming to visit me. I’ve had such a teirrible week and if I didn’t get any company I thought I was going to lose my last nerve and do something I’d regret. I don’t get very many visitors anymore these days. The girls drop by every so often, but they can’t stand to be around me. I can see the looks on their faces when they come to see me. They don’t look me in the eye anymore because I’m so scary. Well, except for Pinkie Pie and Twilight. Pinkie Pie keeps trying to cheer me up and Twilight does tests every so often. She still says she can fix me, but I don’t know if she believes that. It seems impossible now.

After what happened to Rarity, I wouldn’t blame the girls for feeling like that.. I’m sorry it happened. I’m really, really sorry. I just want to tell her that I wish I could take it all back. But I can’t do that. I can’t do anything right like this…

I’m sorry, I had to… I had to step aside. I’m better now. Really. You don’t have to leave. Please don’t leave. I need somepony to talk to. I have so much I want to get off my chest.

Everything started going wrong when I sat down to eat lunch a week ago. This is back when my animals still came to me, when they wanted to be with me and be cared for. I remember that I was helping the bears hibernate by getting more food for them. There are lots of animals out there that need my help getting to sleep. My lullabies usually work. They just fall right to sleep after hearing them, after I’m done filling their bellies.

No, I’m fine. My thoughts just got away from me there.

After I was done with all of the hibernating animals, I took a break to get some of my own lunch. It was just a simple egg and cress sandwich with just a bit of salt and pepper for flavor. That’s my favorite kind, or maybe it isn’t anymore. I haven’t tried eating another one after that.

When I chewed on the last bite, I bit my tongue. That isn’t a big deal by itself. I think all of my friends did that at least once. But this one hurt, really hurt. I could feel my b-blood welling up in my mouth and mixing with the sandwich, and my tongue felt like it was stabbed, not just getting a little cut. I got worried that it was serious and that I needed stitches, so I swallowed and rushed over to my bathroom mirror, opening my mouth wide to see what was wrong.

It wasn’t the wound that got my attention. The wound was long enough to need stitches and it made my tongue throb and ache and drip blood in the sink, but that wasn’t the worst of it, no. It wasn’t what made me scream. What made me scream was the sharp, pointed fang on the left side of my mouth.

That fang was twice as long as any of my other teeth. It still had a little blood on the tip. It looked too big to fit, stretching my gums and pushing aside my lips. I was shocked at first, not saying anything, just staring at myself in the mirror. How did I close my lips around that fang and chew with that in my mouth? I still don’t know. I touched it with my hoof, felt my lips stretching over it, thought that maybe it wasn’t real, but it was. That was when I screamed.

Poor Angel Bunny probably heard me and wanted to check. I didn’t notice him, or many other things, when I rushed my way out the door. Ponies and buildings rushed past me, and I think some of them saw me and I surprised them, but all I wanted to do was go to Twilight and find out what happened. Twilight’s so smart, she had to know what happened. You know how smart she is.

When I knocked on the door, I didn’t know how to explain what went wrong. I just stood there for a moment and watched her watching me. She asked me what happened, like I just decided to stop by for a friendly visit. Not that I would have minded that, but, well. I just opened my mouth and let her look inside.

“Is something wrong?” she asked me. “Do you have a toothache? I’m afraid I’m not licensed to treat teeth. You should see the dentist.”

She didn’t see it, didn’t notice the gash or the fang or anything wrong at all. Then I noticed that I didn’t feel it, either. I felt around with my tongue just to make sure, and it wasn’t hurt. No pain at all, no cut, no huge, sharp tooth getting in the way. I was just normal Fluttershy again.

I didn’t tell Twilight what happened. It was just a trick of the mind. I’d been overworking myself keeping up with the animals and I needed to go to the spa and relax with Rarity. She could help me relax.

When I got to her boutique, I tried to ask her to bump up our spa date as politely as I could. I know it had to have been a hassle for her to work me into her schedule. She’s so busy with her work. But when I told her I had a panic attack, she made time for me. I should have told her why I panicked, but would you have believed me if I said I grew a fang when I was alone? I don’t deserve someone as nice as her.

The spa treatment almost worked to relax me, but I started hearing things when it came time to be massaged. It started out soft at first, almost like a faint drum beat that you hear behind other instruments on a song, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It just kept coming, louder and louder, with others joining in the longer the spa pony kept prodding at me with her hooves.

By the time Rarity and I got in the mud bath together, I was shaking like a leaf. The cucumbers on my eyes fell off once or twice. Rarity had to try and calm me down, but I don’t remember what she said. I think there was a ‘darling’ or two in there, but I mostly just remember how soft her voice sounded.

I could still hear those beating sounds, but they all slowed down and gave me the space I needed, so the rest of the date went okay. The spa date, I mean, not… not that other kind. I thought I could go home and calm down after I gave Rarity a hug. Touching her, I could feel a river running through her, and I realized just what it was I was hearing. Her heartbeat never left my ears after that hug.

So my day seemed like it would get normal again after that. I spent a moment or two in my cottage, making sure I was okay and that I wouldn’t have another episode, and then I spent the afternoon working on helping the animals hibernate again. It helped me keep my mind off what happened earlier, even if I kept trying to think that I heard the animals’ hearts too. They all sounded so different, with all sorts of different tempos and pitches, but I was starting to pick them out better. Even with so many, it was easier to tell them apart. I don’t know why. I think I knew it was a bad sign, deep down, and I didn’t want to think that it was real, that I could hear them.

Or maybe I did. I thought it would bring me closer to them, like I thought it would for Rarity. It had to be something special, hearing all of their hearts, right? I think I heard Twilight go on about how the heart is a wellspring of emotion and a source of magic binding us together. That’s probably why I wasn’t worried. Maybe if I was, I could have avoided hurting them.

My first blackout happened while I was in the middle of taking care of the squirrels and chipmunks and all of the other rodents who needed to make a store of nuts. It happened while I started nudging the last acorn underneath the tree to complete Chestnut’s stash for the winter.

Oh, I name all of the animals I take care of. It helps me feel like I’m closer to them that way, that I can care for them better when they’ve got different names. Don’t you name your pets? It’s not very different. You don’t have to name animals if you don’t want to. I was just saying it’s what I do. Sorry.

I just don’t want to remember what happened next. It’s so hazy, and it only came to me after it was too late for me to stop it. All I knew when I started thinking again was that I had a painful stomachache. For a moment I thought that I was hungry, since I was so caught up in helping the little critters that I may have skipped dinner. But that wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t the empty, stomach-rumbling feeling you get when you’re hungry, but the opposite feeling you get when Pinkie Pie asks you to sample some of her new baking recipes and she keeps offering them and you start to feel like you’re going to burst but you don’t want to say no to her and hurt her feelings.

Has that ever happened to anypony else? Just me? Sorry.

My stomach was so full that I thought I was going to vomit, but I never did. And I really wanted to, especially when I started tasting blood in my mouth again. It wasn’t the same blood as last time. I didn’t bite myself with a fang. My mouth was perfectly fine, and it didn’t taste the same.

That’s when… that’s when I noticed something clawing inside of me, multiple somethings that desperately wanted to get out. I could feel little claws trying to find purchase against my s-s-stomach wall and burrow out but they couldn’t get out. There was just too much else constricting them, so much in there and it was just too tough to…

No, I’m not okay! I need to tell somepony about this, because w-w-what I did to the rodents of Ponyville was unforgivable! I can’t… I don’t know if the animals will ever trust me again. I didn’t mean to hurt them. I swear to the princess I didn’t. It just happened.

I started panicking when that realization crept up on me like a monster from the Everfree, that I was the monster. That was when I tried to vomit, because I thought that maybe I could save one of them. It wasn’t really possible, I know, because they were all being drowned and d-d-digested and who could survive that? I stuck one of my pinions down my throat, trying to tickle it and make me puke. Rarity once told me that s-some Canterlot models did that. She didn’t like it, but she’d understand if I did it then.

I couldn’t do it, though. It just wouldn’t work. What do you call that part of you between the stomach and esophagus? Whatever it is, it didn’t budge. It wouldn’t open no matter how sick to my stomach I got. Maybe deep down I really, really didn’t want to see or expose what happened to them, what I did to them? It didn’t matter. They stopped moving soon. Just… stopped. It felt really cold, realizing that I couldn’t hear their hearts anymore. So I fainted. Wouldn’t you?

I wasn’t thinking clearly when I woke up and remembered what happened. You’ve probably heard about how weird and jumpy I was for the last few days. I mean, if you noticed a difference. Apparently some ponies didn’t. But it wasn’t just shyness that made me like that. I was shaking and jittery and I jumped and shrieked whenever somepony snuck up on me. That was when I came out of my cottage at all. The only reason I did it was to stock up on food.

Well, yes, part of it was so that I wouldn’t have to leave the house any more than that. You heard how out of control I was, didn’t you? I didn’t want to risk another blackout like the one I had before. I didn’t know who I’d eat next if that happened. I kept telling Angel that mama wasn’t feeling well, and that he should stay away and go play with the other bunnies, but he wouldn’t listen. He never did like playing with the other bunnies, did he? Eheheheh.

I knew that staying at home wouldn’t work by itself, though. If I had another blackout, I could just leave the house and find a neck to sink my teeth into, tearing out the juicy throat and catching the warm gush of blood in my mouth, gulping down-

Oh no, I’m doing it again! I need to tell Twilight and let her know! I… I think it’s gone. I’m fine. Please don’t leave.

L-like I said, I didn’t have this collar keeping me in the house, so I could just leave. That’s why I had to stuff myself with real food, normal pony food. I thought that if I was always so stuffed that just the thought of eating more was painful, then I could drive away these… these cravings and get back to my normal life. Sure, Rarity would probably get concerned with how fat I’d get, but I’ve seen her make dresses for plus-sized mares. She’d still be my friend, and Rainbow Dash would help me exercise to make up for all the food.

That’s not what happened. You can tell that just by looking at me. I’d still look like a pony if that plan worked. For a while it did. I kept on stuffing myself whenever my stomach stopped hurting. I kept my interactions with other ponies to a minimum, just going out and in to get more food without stopping to chat. The sounds of their heartbeats never stopped, but I didn’t think of them as something to kill and eat once! I thought I could actually get back to normal, but then whatever made this happen to me decided that it had enough.

I collapsed on the floor when I went to have another eggplant, the pain in my stomach spreading through my whole body. Needles sprouted inside my bones and muscles, shredding them all and reducing me to a limp doll, twitching and shivering. It felt like I was trapped inside of my own body and I desperately wanted to get out. No matter how much I willed myself up, it hurt too much to move. The fresh waves of pain nauseated me and made me drool on the floor, my legs and wings jerking spasmodically, but I still couldn’t let the food in my stomach loose. I don’t… I don’t think that my body would let me go. I got too hungry to pass up on food, even when it wasn’t meat.

So for a moment I just lay sprawled on the floor, crying and whimpering. I don’t think I could even scream. Getting enough of a lungful for a good shriek made me feel like sucking in little glass shards. One thing I remembered from however long it was that I had to lay there was how stupid I was for shutting myself off and eating too much. What if it was some kind of food paralysis and overeating illness that made me paralyzed? There wouldn’t be anypony helping me up and I was going to die.

But then something happened to my hooves. I’m still not sure how to describe it, because… They split apart. Sometimes when we work them too hard without shoes they crack and split apart and we can’t walk. Did that ever happen to you? Was it so bad that you felt them split apart down to the bone? I tried to look, but since my neck burned so much I just had to rely on feeling them twist and crack and mutate. I felt them drip blood or something else thick and goopy as they all shifted away. When I tried to fit them all back together, it stung and they wouldn’t combine anymore. They were all too soft. And that’s when I started wondering how I got the muscles to fit my toes together again, or toes at all.

Whatever fire split apart my hooves and turned them into burning appendages that I had to move on their own started spreading into my bones. I heard them all start breaking at once, which just made me whimper and cry again. They started healing almost immediately only to break again in all new places, and they were growing too. It made me keep growing, straining my skin and poking against it. The thought that my bones would puncture my skin and tear me open and kill me made me freeze up worse than anything else I ever thought in my life. I’ve panicked when I had to face against a dragon before. It was huge and scary and fearsome, but at least I could run away from it and hide.

That never happened, though. I heard my skin creak and strain, but it always stretched and grew around the bones. The muscles started growing and bulging too. I’m surprised I was able to stay conscious for so long with everything happening to me, even when it reached my head.

I felt that fang coming back, noticing it growing in, splitting my gums, jutting out of my lips. There were two of them, actually. More if you count all of my teeth shifting around my tongue to get sharper and pointier. My muzzle also started jutting out and growing. Then it started affecting my skull, and that’s just about when I couldn’t stand any more. All I wanted while I felt my body burning was to just go to sleep so I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore. It wasn’t until then that whatever did this to me finally let me drift off in peace.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was how shaggy I’d gotten. It felt like I grew a carpet from my skin. All of the fur on my body made me start panting. I almost didn’t want to get up since I knew moving would just make me hotter. I could just sit there and take up space on my floor until the sun set and I could get cool. But, well, you see what else changed? The big, black nose on my muzzle? The big, rock hard claws on my new paws? MY TEETH? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to panic, but I just want to be a pony again so much! I want to be able to take care of my animals and be friends with Rarity and not be a freak that has to keep itself on a leash and train itself not to think of ponies as food!

Please don’t leave. I can keep calm now. That was just bad luck that I couldn’t keep that in.

I couldn’t stay at the cottage for much longer, anyway. I felt a void in my stomach that I needed to fill really badly. All of the food that I stockpiled wouldn’t do anymore. It didn’t smell right, blending into all of the other things in the apartment that I couldn’t eat. The cheese wasn’t any more enticing than my wicker baskets. And the scents of all the other animals that used to be in my cottage made those other scents hard to notice anyway. Just a week before then I was letting birds fly through my windows and the little critters running on the stairs all around. Those stairs are probably gathering dust now. I should do something about that. They would sit in all of those little houses in the wall because they trusted me. Even though they were gone, I could still smell them. I can still smell them now, actually. If I really wanted to I could probably track them through the woods and find them. That’s not a good idea, not the way I am now, and not on an empty stomach either.

For a while I tried to ignore how hungry I was, but it just wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to eat meat now, but I didn’t know where else to get it. I didn’t want to hurt any more of my animal friends, and just the thought of losing control around my friends and the other ponies made me shiver and cringe. But then I thought of the Everfree Forest. All of the wild, untamed monsters in there were dangerous for ponies, and a lot of them ate meat, too!

It was the only solution I could think of, so I opened the door and looked to make sure there weren’t any ponies watching. My cottage is a good place to get away from the crowd, and I thanked myself for moving there as I squeezed through the front door. Now that I’m such a behemoth, I can barely fit through there anymore. You see those claw marks on the floor? I was in too much of a hurry to leave, so I ended up doing some damage because I didn’t want the door to constrict me so much. If you look closely you can see the splintering on the door frame. I’m surprised you can still close and lock it, honestly.

So I flew to the Everfree and stepped inside, whimpering with my tail between my legs. Even though I’ve been there a few times already, it’s still a scary place, but my new nose helped me out a little. Most ponies can’t see very much in the perpetual darkness, with the canopy so thick it blocks out the sun, but my new eyes did a little better than yours would. But even better than that, I could smell everything! It took me a while to tell all of the different plants and animals in the forest; they all made such an overwhelming bouquet. Since I could smell them all, though, and see into the dark, I didn’t have to worry about anything scary sneaking up on me. I don’t think there was anything scarier than me in the forest, anyway.

I don’t know if the manticore I hunted was the same one that I helped when my friends and I looked for the Elements of Harmony. It probably wasn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I did that much more damage. Honestly, I didn’t care at the moment, since he smelled so amazing, and the beat of his heart was such wondrous music. I had to come close and listen. It sounded so good when it started pumping harder and harder in the excitement of the fight.

Mine did too. Manticores are such fearsome beasts that I didn’t know if I could survive a fight with one. All I’d ever eaten were a dozen cute little squirrels and chipmunks! At first I just revealed myself to the manticore and shrank back a bit when it roared at me. I wasn’t about to pull a thorn out of its paw and make it friendly, after all. So I just ended up jumping out of the way when it swiped at me with its paws and tail. The tail especially scared me, because I didn’t know if being whatever I was would make me immune or resistant or if I would just feel my muscles shutting down until my heart stopped and I died alone in the forest, with none of my friends ever finding me.

I think that thought was what propelled me to start fighting back. A few months ago I became kind of a beast too, but that was because I was mean to everypony in Ponyville. I wasn’t feeling the need to rip their throats out and feel their blood in my mouth. To think I considered myself a monster in the wake of that little temper tantrum! But I guess Iron Will’s assertiveness training saved my life, because the next thing I knew I pinned that manticore to the ground and crushed its spine.

Before it could finish crying out in pain I went for the throat and killed it. New Fluttershy was in control, and she wasn’t going to waste any time crying over spilled blood. I ripped meat from his bones and swallowed, barely chewing or tasting it. All that mattered to me was that I just eat more and show this impudent beast what happened to anything that tried to kill me in this forest. I felt like I wanted to be queen of all the miserable animals in here, and I think at this point I started to forget what it was like before. The sounds of hooves stepping on hard floors, eating oats and hay, relaxing in the spa with the massage and mud bath, getting hugs and having conversations with my friends, all of that barely entered my mind, and I treated those kinds of thoughts like flies on my flank to swat with my tail. No, to scratch at with my paws.

Time passed and I continued to hunt for food. Is it wrong that I still feel some pride about how well I managed to feed myself, how dominant I proved to be in the forest where I resigned myself to live? I felt hungry all of the time, so I spent most of my time hunting when I wasn’t too full to function well.

I took down a few more manticores, though I did at least try to avoid their young. I think I may have failed once or twice, but I did try.

Timber wolves aren’t all that edible. I figured that out after I fought off that one pack. They only bothered me the one time, since I, um, set boundaries for them later.

Cockatrices were no problem, as long as I could sneak up on them and break their necks before they looked at me. Did you know that their petrifying gaze still takes effect a few minutes after death? I’m so thankful I didn’t find that out for myself. I just remember reading it somewhere. So I made sure to put the heads in my mouth, back first, and chew up their eyes.

Sorry. I’ll try to go into less detail. I can’t believe how fondly I’m remembering these hunts. That was me killing defenseless wildlife without any guilt – defenseless by my standards, anyway – just because they lived in the Everfree Forest! Even now I’m still getting the craving for juicy, bloody manticore liver and I have to concentrate on not scratching at this collar to get it off!

Anyway, I’m glad that I was discovered before I had the chance to do some serious damage to the Everfree ecosystem. Not that I would have done all that much by myself, but it felt like I could have taken on anything at all.

Oh my. I just thought, Spike said earlier that he ran into a dragon nesting in the Everfree Forest, so… what if I stumbled across him? I can’t imagine what would happen. Oh no, I’d probably have died. I don’t think I’d be afraid of it, the way I was that way in my bloodlust. Then I’d pick a fight and it would just… splat. Like that. And my friends might never have known what happened to me.

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t go see Zecora. I just told you, I wasn’t in the right mindset to see her. Either I was scared too much to make the trip and really, really hungry, or I just didn’t care… and was also hungry. But I guess she found what I left behind and told Twilight, because one day I started hearing some new animals to hunt. It took me a while to realize who they were at first, so I stalked them through the brush and I found that I was curious about the noises that they made with her mouth. At that point I hadn’t heard speech in quite a while, so I just… I don’t know why it took me so long to recognize it.

I’m trying to remember what they said before I attacked. I don’t know if I could make out any words. Everything I knew about language, it just flew away while I was eating. I’d like to think that Rainbow Dash was excited. She was chirping a lot, like a bird. It sounded like chirping to me. Applejack was probably talking her down. Rainbow stopped flying after Applejack said something. Pinkie Pie wasn’t bouncing like she does in Ponyville, Twilight and Zecora stood up front, whispering.

As for Rarity, I went for Rarity before I even knew what happened. I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe… at that point I wasn’t a monster, not entirely. I think instead of being the same mind as that monster, I was just separate enough to recognize my friends. But I wasn’t separate enough, wasn’t dominant enough to control it. I already leaped by the time I recognized Rarity and I tried to pounce and chew on her, and all this time I was talking to myself, trying to get me to stop, reminding myself of how much Rarity meant to me and that I didn’t want to hurt her and that’s all I knew before Twilight or Zecora or somebody did something to make me sleep.

She’s going to be alright. She’s in the hospital right now, but she’s going to be alright. Twilight said I didn’t use my teeth on her, so that’s a relief. But those broken bones and that concussion are still… I wish I hadn’t done that. Twilight made it so that I could talk to ponies and just… be myself. Except bigger and scarier. And still a carnivore.

That’s it. That’s all I have left. What have the ponies been saying about me in town lately?

Oh.

Th-thank you for staying with me this long, at least.

I can make you some dinner if you want! I’ve gotten better at using my paws to cook things, and I still have my cookbook ready!

Oh, well, that’s okay. You can tell Twilight I’m doing better now. Um, goodbye then.

Thanks.