Twilight Sparkle screamed herself awake.
It always took a moment to regain her senses, which was unfortunate for her post-nightmare routine.
Twilight intuitively knew her nightmares were important, yet she could never remember them. It was a terrible feeling, that dire need to recall some essential fact just as it gets washed away by a tsunami of unstoppable forgetfulness. Dreams can be hard to remember in general, but Twilight's dream memories would fade with unnatural haste. Quickly, she grabbed the pen and paper she kept on her end table, and struggled to write just a couple of words down before—
"Twilight, are you okay?" called a distracting, familiar voice.
Oh no, she thought. No, no, no! But the memory had vanished.
Twilight sighed. "I'm fine, Spike. Just a bad dream," she said. "Wait, were you sleeping in my room again?"
Spike shook his head. "No, I was in my room. That scream was so loud you probably woke half of Ponyville," he said, walking up to the side of her bed. "I thought you got rid of your night terrors months ago?"
"I did. Don't worry, Spike. This one was just a common nightmare," she lied. "But don't tell anypony, okay? I don't want them to worry about me for no good reason. I'll see Zecora if it happens again, I promise."
"Well, okay," said Spike. "But if this keeps happening, you need to talk to your friends about it. Being a princess doesn't mean you can do everything by yourself." He frowned and walked out of her bedroom.
That cinches it, thought Twilight. Even though Spike sleeps in his own room now, I still need to cast the silencing spell when I go to sleep.
Twilight wondered if maybe she should tell her friends, but how could she break it to them? How do you tell somepony you love that you're slowly losing your mind? The nightmares were moderately concerning, but the hallucinations...
Twilight Sparkle looked down at the notepad in front of her. She had only managed to write:
Dea
"Dear Princess Celestia, in all likelihood," Twilight said. "Great, another bust."
She ripped off the page and stuffed it into her end table drawer, where lay dozens of similar papers with tiny nonsense words and phrases written on them, like "not gen", "buffa", or "fake me".
Twilight pondered the invitation Applejack had hoofed her yesterday. Maybe it was time to tell somepony besides Zecora.
"It's not like I have much left to lose at this point," she mused aloud, and then began the arduous task of preparing her mind for another day of strangeness.