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// Prologue: Immersion's a Fickle Thing 
// Story: Flying Shotgun 
// by Adin Terim 
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And everything went dark.





My mind was hazy. It was hard to think. It kind of felt like the time I tried to look around inside of a cloud, but not quite. More like my head was full of the fluffy things just swirling around in my mind. Where was I? Slowly, like a gentle breeze blowing away the smoke, my vision started to clear. I could see a mirror. It was a large thing, wider than it was tall, nothing was special about it. Yet it filled me with confusion. What was wrong? I felt that the image in the mirror was somehow responsible. It was just my reflection, but the mere sight of it caused me to tremble in fear. Why did such a simple thing make me feel this way? I never felt like this when looking into the rainbow wells with my brother or brushing my teeth. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Was I horribly deformed and missing a limb? No. The colt in the mirror looked fine, if not more than a little shaken. All my limbs were intact. Then was some sort of horrible monster creeping up behind me getting ready to eat me?  No, there was no Taraxippus waiting to steal my soul away or Troll that was going to gobble me up. Those were just stories, and it’s not like they could get to me up here in the house. They were make believe told to me by my brother. That's all they were and there was definitely no way that I believed in them... Then what was the problem? Why did I feel so wrong? Why was I just standing there wide-eyed and shaking with fear? Other than my reflection the mirror contained nothing else. Nothing at all. The only other thing that I could really see was the ugly green faux marble counter that was underneath my clattering hooves… faux marble?





Hunger permeated my mind, rousing me out of my stupor. That and a good dose of confusion. I was sitting somewhere looking at an array of food before me. I had a muffin, some scrambled eggs, and a bowl of milk. The muffin smelled delicious. All I really wanted to do was devour it in all of its chocolaty goodness, but I couldn't. Because it was the source of my confusion. How could a muffin make me confused? And for that matter why was I even having a muffin for breakfast? Not that I was complaining, I'd rather have a muffin for breakfast than cereal any day, but normally we only had muffins on special days like on my birthday. Maybe that was why I was confused. How was today special? Was school canceled for some reason? Did my brother finally have a day off from weather duty? Was he going to finally have some time to play with me? Maybe we were even going to go flying later on. Where was he? And more importantly why wasn't I eating the muffin yet? All I seemed able to do was stare at it in confusion. I mean I was so hungry that I could... eat a horse?





The feeling of excitement brought me back. I could feel air rushing past my face, rustling hairs on its way. I loved that feeling, it was the best. Was I flying? Had my brother finally made time to take me flying, because I wasn't really supposed to go out on my own. I- FALLLING. I was falling not flying! I was going to crash into the ground, it was rushing to meet me. I was probably going to die on impact. I was going to hit the ground and go splat like that apple I dropped from a cloud did. I was going to become a small red and grey smear on the earth. I was going to... stop moving? Never mind, I wasn't going to die today. Embarrassment filled me, I had let my imagination take me away again. I was fine. My body decided that it was probably a good idea to lie on the ground. Wait. Why did I fall in the first place? Maybe somepony crashed into me? No, other than my near death experience I felt fine. I might have forgotten to stretch and had my wings freeze up on me. No. I knew better than to go flying without stretching first, it was something my brother drilled into me when I was just a little foal. And it couldn't have been a cramp. So how did this happen? Was I distracted? Whatever the reason I was sooo going to get a lecture on proper flight mechanics from Thunderlane again. I'm just glad that my sister was there to catch me... sister?





A mild pang of disgust roused me. My eyes were trained on a simple bowl of salad. It was apparently all I had to eat with only a bowl of water to drink. It smelled fresh and was adorned with cherry tomatoes and sliced green beans. It looked scrumptious. But for some reason I wanted none of it, not even the cherry tomatoes made it seem appetizing. And those were my favorite! Just looking at the greenery made me wish I had something else to eat like the muffin from breakfast. Why? I normally enjoyed salad and I knew the importance of eating vegetables in staying healthy and fit for flying. Yet for some reason the thought of even touching the salad made me nauseous. I really felt like I didn't want to eat that, meat is what I hungered for. A nice steak soun... MEAT!?





Worry suddenly tore through my mind.  I was tired, but couldn't sleep. Whatever the cause of my distress it just wouldn't leave my mind. I was so affected that my wings had started shaking, causing them to rub into the comforter covering my body. It felt constricting. Every little twitch caused irritation; fur catching on sheets was not a good feeling. So different than my usual bed of clouds... Where was I? This- This wasn't my bed. I didn't have an earth-pony style bed. This wasn't even my room! Everything looked so big. The door was huge; the nob was so high up that even Thunderlane would have to hover to reach it. Where was I? Had somepony kidnapped me? No, this was a dream. It had to be, nopony could have kidnapped me. Thunderlane would have stopped them. I needed to wake up. That's all. Just needed to wake up. I needed to wake up. Wake up. I had to WAKE UP!

And then it was as if the sun exploded, a bright light was all that I could comprehend. I didn’t know where I was, but I could tell. No, I could feel that I wasn’t alone.