Something's squeaking... like... really squeaking.
What is it? A leaky pipe? A broken bicycle? A sick puppy?
No... these squeaks have echoes to them... as if they're somewhere in the distance... almost like...
Birds chirping?
But, then that would mean it's morning.
Morning... and I...
I...
I swear, it takes a full minute to unpeel my eyelids apart from one another. A fuzzy, fuzzy world looms before me, lingering with gray fog between the trees. The campfire is a smoldering, smoking heap of charcoal black bits. Twilight's and Pinkie's sleeping bag is empty; I see a lavender shade trotting around in one corner of my vision and a fuchsia shape bouncing in the other. Rarity and Fluttershy are still snuggling, sleeping quietly.
I...
I try to move, but...
This is the absolute warmest, snuggliest, toastiest feeling I've ever felt in my whole life. It's like I'm having an out-of-body experience. Is it possible to sleep oneself to death? I don't know. Maybe... maybe you...
You...
I whip around—although, in reality, I just crane my neck slowly over my shoulder and blink in a tired haze.
You're gone.
Not only that, but the sleeping bag is zipped up tightly all around me. All around just me... as if it was my bag and mine alone since nightfall.
"Mrmmff... wh-where...?" I blink. "Who...?"
And then I hear it, the ripe, sexy drawl floating comfortably through the forest. "Good mornin', sugarcube." It's a soft thing. A feathery whisper. I know that you're just being quiet so as not to wake up Rarity and Fluttershy. But... a mare can dream. A mare did dream. "Sleep well, darlin'?" The crunch of leaves and twigs. I look up, up, up... and there is your face with the golden sunrise, and I'm at a loss to guess which of the two is brighter. "Must say, yer lookin' mighty cozy in there."
"I... I haven't..." I blink blearily. "What... t-time?"
"Half past eight, darlin'."
"But... grmmfff..." I try sitting up. I'm like a blue beetle being halfway digested inside a giant green caterpillar. "I... I-I promised to..." I yawn. Dammit. "To sc-scout ahead..."
"Shhhh..." You push me back down with the gentlest of hooves. I see a smile. It's real... it's all very real. "S'all good, Rainbow. When yer ready." My vision clears enough to see something that resembles a wink, but I'm too distracted by your sweet-as-sugar smile. "Not 'til yer good'n'ready."
"Mmmmf..." I don't protest. I don't fight. I don't move. "Okay... AJ..."
You stand over me for a few more seconds. What's there left to say? What's there left to smile about? And yet, you linger... it has to have been half a minute by now. Just... you gazing. "You just rest now. The day will be awesome. Trust me."
And, at last, you're gone. And yet you're not. Those last few words linger with me. They throb through my head. As the bloodrush clears, I remember things... gentle things... cuddly things. I remember a pegasus in the dead thick of night who hugged her best friend's tears away, and I can only imagine one way in which the two would have woken up from that sweet embrace... or at least one of them.
And then I look at the sleeping bag, at how tightly it's zipped around me, how I'm in the center of it and not the side, as if I was placed there... deposited by an angel. And when I look over and I see you gathering things and rolling them up into our pack, I see a flounce to your mane and tail that somehow wasn't there before, and I hear you whistling an old country tune, and it's the most melodic thing I've ever heard from your lips. I don't need to see your smile to know that it's there, and you don't even have to see mine.
So I snuggle up in the bed that's been made for me, still crisp and sweet with the scent of you. It carries me into the next sleepy minutes, smiling the whole way.
And for the first time in countless nights of tossing... turning... wondering, I feel... I know...
That life is good.