From the Journal of Sharp, one year before the return of Nightmare Moon.

With no real friends to "hang out" with, and being privately tutored despite being the least favorite of my five older and six younger sisters, I had loads upon loads of free time. When I was younger, I would spend this time daydreaming and imagining up friends for myself. Imaginary ponies that I could trust and who cared for me. I was a smart colt, and I knew that my imaginary friends weren't real, but I just felt that it was better to talk to somepony instead of talking to nopony at all, even if that somepony wasn't really real. I had always felt that there was something, some feeling that I never had from my parents or siblings that I could get at least a little from my imaginary friends. That one nameless thing that I was missing.

I had learned to read soon after creating my first imaginary friend and my imaginary friends became much more realistic in my mind, until my family found out. I was talking to the most recent imaginary friend (an earth pony that I had named Lighty) when one of my older sisters, Sliced Bread, came into my room and asked who I was talking to. I was too innocent to understand that most of my family did not like me, and so I told her that I was talking to my imaginary friend. Her eyes went wide and she disappeared from view behind the door, and I resumed my one-sided conversation.

It was not even five minutes later when both my mother and my father came into my room and locked the door behind them. My father sat on the floor while my mother asked me if I had an imaginary friend. I told her that I did. She looked at me with concern, and then told me that imaginary friends were evil. I told her that it wasn't true. She went on to explain that one of her old neighbors used to have a young colt. The colt made an imaginary friend, and they did everything together. But the colt began to grow up, and didn't have as much time to spend with his imaginary friend. The imaginary friend didn't like that, so it killed him. As a young colt, I was absolutely terrified, and I began to cry. My parents left my room, leaving me alone with the newly formed monsters in my head. I kept the light on all night, hiding under the covers from my own thoughts. Eventually, I fell asleep and started dreaming. In the dream there was a glass wall, and behind it were all of my imaginary friends, pushing and shoving at each other, all of them trying to get to me. The glass began to crack, and I tried to run, but I was frozen in place. This was before Princess Luna returned from the moon, and so nightmares were unrestrained. The glass continued to crack, and crack, until it shattered and the mass of ponies dived at me hungrily. I closed my eyes, but they never reached me. I opened one eye and could make out a rusty-orange pegasus wearing reddish-bronze armor. I opened the other eye and could see that she was holding back the horde of deadly imaginary ponies with wings that seemed to stretch into eternity. With one mighty push from her massive wings, the pegasus sent the horde flying out of view. The pegasus turned to me, and I could see that she was beautiful. I wanted to say something, to thank her or really say anything at all, but I found myself still speechless and immobile. The rusty-orange mare gazed deep into my eyes and I recognized her. She was my very first imaginary friend out of the twenty-something that I had made. The one that I had spent the most time with. Autumn was her name. You are dreaming, Sharp. she said, her mouth not moving and eyes never wavering from my own. As I realized that she was speaking the truth, I began to wake. As the dream began to fade, I heard her words as almost a whisper: I will protect you.

I sat up in my bed, drenched in sweat. It was still very, very dark out, and there were no lights in my room, but I didn't feel as afraid as I had been before I had the nightmare. I wasn't really fully awake, so I just laid back down in bed and went back to sleep without any problems. To be honest, it was the first real good sleep that I'd had since I can't remember when.

All of the other imaginary friends I had made had really just been figments of my imagination, but there was something else that I had put into Autumn when I created her in my head that made her different. Something that made her more real than the others. I first noticed it a few nights after my parents found out that I had imaginary friends.

I was imagining up an adventure where Autumn and myself had to get from one side of a "cloud mountain" (a pile of cloud by the weather academy known as "Cloud Pile") to the other. It wasn't much of a challenge, and after we had gone over and back a few times, Autumn suggested that we go into it. What was weird wasn't the suggestion itself, but instead the fact that she had suggested it without me imagining her to do so. I immediately remembered the story my parents told me and became scared. I suggested that she go in first to make sure that it was safe, but she didn't seem to hear me. She stared at me, her eyes a bit wet-looking and her ears drooping.

Sharp, if you don't like me... there's nothing I can do to stop you from getting rid of me. Your parents told you that story to scare you. It's not true.

In my head I had directed her to go into the mound of cloud, but in my imagination, she wouldn't move. She just looked at me sadly. I looked away, at my hooves. I waited a few seconds and looked back up, expecting my imagination to show an angry demon, but instead my mind was blank. Autumn was not there.

Afterwards, I tried to fly back home, and I couldn't do it. I had to glide to the ground and walk to the mansion. Alone. Every few minutes I would look back, half expecting an evil-Autumn to be attacking, but my imagination refused to show me what I feared. I remembered how sad she had looked, and felt guilty, but not guilty enough to try to talk to Autumn.

It was shortly before dinner when I arrived at the mansion that my parents owned. I was an emotional mess, barely holding back tears that could have been from guilt, fear, or something else. I entered through the back, not wanting to let my parents know that I was sad, because no doubt they would try to make it worse, either on purpose or by accident. Luckily for me, one of the older maids who I was friends with, named Doily, saw me and brought me to my room. She left me there saying that she would bring me my dinner in my room and inform the rest of my family that I seemed "barfy," because that would keep them away from me for the night. I thanked her and watched her fly off down the hall. Doily was one of the few ponies that I knew who cared even a squitch about me. She had two daughters, both younger than me, and I loved to hear about them and their normal lives. I stayed in my room and read a book alone, eating a little of my dinner and otherwise avoiding thinking about Autumn. I eventually fell asleep, and found myself in an empty white space asI began to dream.

It was just white, with no floor or walls. There were no points of reference for me to gauge my position. In my dream, I blinked, and suddenly the white was black, and I could feel it all around me, squishing me. I felt like I was suffocating, and I could do nothing to stop it. Then came the fear; the wave of utter terror at the darkness. This was no ordinary nightmare, no it was a Night Terror. In some small corner of my mind not totally overtaken by terror, I remembered from a class on monsters and demons where the teacher had talked about Night Terrors. Night Terrors were shadow beings that fed on fear, and would find and latch on to a dreaming host. They would then take over the host's mind and cause endless nightmares, and feed off of the fear. Nopony ever survived very long, and I would probably die of an exploded heart within an hour. I struggled and tried to suppress the fear, but it kept coming. I tried to think happy thoughts, and my mind turned to memories of Autumn. How much fun I had when I first made her, and how she had protected me in my dreams. Suddenly, I felt a tugging sensation and the next thing I knew, I was face to face with my savior: Autumn.

She had her bronze armor on with the blades on her wing's edges and the helmet on her head. The blackness that had held me just moments before rose up in front of Autumn and she used her wings to slice through it. Almost immediately, the dark started to reform in the cuts, but Autumn kept cutting and slicing, using her momentum from one cut to make the next easier. Somehow, she was able to hold it at bay.

As Autumn tirelessly fought the Night Terror, I could not move. I could not help her. But could I do something else? Night terrors could only affect dreaming ponies, so if I woke up, I'd be safe. An easy way to wake up in a dream was to... to die. I suddenly heard Autumn yell.

Are you sure?

I didn't understand.

Are you sure that dying will wake you up? We're in each other's heads, Sharp. Now. Are. You. Sure?!?

I was sure. I needed to wake up. If I could have screamed, I would have when Autumn's wing blades came whistling towards my neck. Just before they would have hit me, I woke up. I had a horrible headache, and my bed was covered in a black, tar-like substance.

But I had survived.

We had survived.

Autumn was not just a figment of my imagination. We still don't know what exactly she is, or how she came to be. Maybe, once I find somepony that I really trust, I can tell them about her. Until then, I will keep her hidden.

Author's Notes:

Just some backstory this time. Whenever a character is not really doing much, I’ll give them a journal excerpt. You will never see three of these in a row, cuz that’d be boring.