//------------------------------// // Scootaloo’s Dream // Story: Bloom Filter // by ferret //------------------------------// The night before Wednesday, Apple Bloom decided to try to just dive into the rushing darkness, and see what she could find in there. This time she had help though. She figured her friend was ready to come out of her dream as she’d ever be, and helped coax Sweetie Belle into this not place that Apple Bloom felt like Scootaloo was most at. There in that inscrutable darkness that pervaded this... place was the feeling of motion, and not much else. “Is this it, do you think?” Sweetie Belle called out, her voice diminished as though there was a wind in her face. “I think so!” Apple Bloom said. “But where are we?” The two found themselves hurtling through an inky darkness, a darkness Apple Bloom had managed to find nights ago, but couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Unable to do anything with it herself, she finally had to coax Sweetie Belle gently, slowly out of her dream space, and into this... fluid that Apple Bloom found, somewhere that Apple Bloom thought maybe she had a feeling for Scootaloo being. Sweetie Belle was barely into dreaming nowadays, but she was a second pair of eyes, and without the princess around, Apple Bloom sorely needed something like that. Or as such the case may be, a second pair of buttcheeks. “Are we sitting in something?” Sweetie shouted back. “Maybe?” Apple Bloom said, feeling around blindly along the edge of this thing they were sitting in. It was bumping and rumbling underneath them. “It feels like a box?” Sweetie said, clearly visible to Apple Bloom despite the lack of any source of light. “Like cardboard?” Apple Bloom called back, rapping the edge with a hoof. It wasn’t cardboard. It made a dull metallic clunking noise that could barely be heard over the noise that filled their ears. “No!” she shouted, “More like metal! Why are we sittin’ in a metal box?” “And why does it keep moving?” Sweetie called back, wobbling as it shook and danced underneath them. What was going on here, and what was the source of that wind? A big metal box just hurtling through space, bumping and rattling around like “A wagon, Sweetie!” Apple Bloom shouted. “We’re in a wagon!” “Oh, yeah!” Sweetie exclaimed. The box was shaking and rumbling because it was up on four wagon wheels, not a wooden wagon but a metal one, like a Red Rider. “I think we’re going over stones?” she suggested, peering over the edge trying hard to see the ground. “Scootaloo’s in here somewhere!” Apple Bloom said, moving around the wagon as best as she could. Why was a wagon rolling over stones? “It ain’t rough enough for stones!” she shouted, “It’s just like rough dirt!” “Like a dirt road!” Sweetie exclaimed and the two were startled to see the wagon was actually hurtling down a dirt road, going down an incline then up an incline. “A road where, though?” Apple Bloom shouted. “And where are we going?” “It’s hilly!” Sweetie called back. “Maybe like a farm road somewhere?” “What could you grow on hilly ground though?” Apple Bloom called back. “...trees?” Sweetie suggested. “That’s it!” Apple Bloom said, looking at the trees whipping past their wagon. “We’re in like a forest or a... a...” “An orchard!” Sweetie exclaimed. “These are fruit trees!” “I think we’re comin’ out of it?” Apple Bloom said squinting at the distance where the trees were rapidly thinning out with the flattening of the land. “Maybe we’re going to Scootaloo?” Sweetie suggested. “No, we’re goin’ to something else!” Apple Bloom said, “Ah just don’t know what!” “This is weird, Apple Bloom!” Sweetie whined. “What’s outside this orchard, and why is Scootaloo dreaming about this?” “She ain’t supposed to be dreamin’ about anything!” Apple Bloom shouted back. “There ain’t no idear I got, so just go with it for now. We can always wake up!” “Ohh, here it comes...” Sweetie whimpered in anticipation, as the wagon barrelled heedlessly on towards the bright edge of the fruit trees. They blasted out of there and... “I can’t see anymore!” Apple Bloom cried out in alarm, as blackness enveloped them again. She turned to face Sweetie, the both of them suddenly buried under some rumply thing that landed on them or ...something. “Could we ever see?” Sweetie pondered almost to herself, “Or was it never there at all?” “...no, ah’m pretty sure we’re just under a blanket or somethin’,” Apple Bloom bluntly corrected, struggling to the edge of the wagon, to lift up a corner and peer to the sunlit outside. And it was just... “Farmland?” Apple Bloom asked uncertainly. “Lookit all the crops!” Sweetie joined her, the two of them peering out from underneath the edge of this blanket they were covered in. From here to the distant hills there were orderly rows of crops, all unattended. What looked like wheat, and oats, and lettuce of some sort, maybe chard? “Maybe this is the forest by your farm!” Sweetie suggested hopefully. “We have a cow farm, Sweetie,” Apple Bloom said plainly, “Not an orchard, or a... ah guess this is mostly wheat?” They buzzed along in this bizarre little wagon, past what looked like idyllic rows of crops to their left and right, lit by a pleasant bright sunny day from above. But the pleasant sun wasn’t holding that way. It was twisting somehow, and turning sinister even as they traveled along. The darkness they blasted out of seemed like it was still right close behind them, fluttering and seething not like a living thing, but like a lot of living things. It was hard to look at. The dream scene just—stopped, shortly behind their wagon, and dissolved into confusion and darkness from there behind them. Hadn’t they been coming out of an orchard? The orchard was still there though! And yet it wasn’t. It was like there wasn’t anyone in it, anymore?” “Apple Bloom, what happened to them?” Sweetie asked, peering into the darkness behind, in tearful confusion. “What happened to who?!” Apple Bloom asked her incredulously. “I don’t know!” Sweetie shouted back. “The orchard is all empty!” “So’s everything, Sweetie!” Apple Bloom yelled to her, trying to pierce the crazy odd feeling of whatever was so different from the empty landscape far behind them, and the empty landscape right before them. “Look!” Sweetie shouted, making Apple Bloom scramble around under the blanket. At the front of this self propelled wagon, Sweetie pointed her little white hoof to what lay ahead of them. “There’s a town!” she yelled. “We must be going for that little town!” “There’s a castle!” Apple Bloom exclaimed in even more shock. “Look beyond the town, that thing is huge!” “Wow, look at that!” Sweetie said looking up in awe. “A real castle! Are we dreaming about medieval times? Does Scootaloo read fantasy maybe?” “She mostly reads adventure books!” Apple Bloom called out. “On account of that Rainbow Dash does!” “It’s not a temple though, it’s a castle!” Sweetie protested. “Ah dunno, Sweetie,” Apple Bloom said as they reached the town, lots bigger than they’d thought, and started zipping through it, past quaint looking cottages one after another, their propelled motion making a beeline for that castle place. “WHAT IS THAT?!” Sweetie shrieked, pointing at the sky. Apple Bloom looked up and... and... she didn’t know what the fuck she was looking at. “It’s a... a dome?” she said uncertainly. It was a strangely shining pearlescent dome covering the sky above them. It spreading out from a point above the center of that castle, the shimmering edge sliding forward like it was growing towards them, or tilting forward, or... or falling. “We’re gonna run into it!” Sweetie continued to shriek. “It’ll come down right in front of us!” “No it won’t, Sweetie, look!” Apple Bloom said at the leading edge of the thing. “It ain’t falling fast enough! We can still make it!” “Are you crazy?!” Sweetie shouted angrily. “No!” Apple Bloom said in a hurt tone, turning and saying, “Why would I be crazy?” Sweetie blinked at Apple Bloom in sudden uncertainty, saying, “Uhm... because this whole thing is crazy?” They both lurched as the wagon jerked forward, and Apple Bloom had to grab Sweetie to keep her from falling out. “Ohh lord Sweetie we’re going faster!” Apple Bloom shouted, the two of them hanging on for dear life, their blanket flapping as they gripped it in their hooves, peering up at the descending veil, looking like the jaws of a steel trap coming to shut. “The thing is going faster too!” Sweetie exclaimed desperately, eyes on the sky. “It’s coming right for us!” “We gotta make it, Sweetie!” Apple Bloom yelled back at her. “What do you mean?” she retorted in a tight horselike squeal. “I don’t know!” Apple Bloom shouted. “I just know we gotta!” “I’m scared, Apple Bloom...” Sweetie whimpered, ducking low in the wagon, as if that would get them under this plummeting barrier more assuredly. Actually, Apple Bloom ducked down low herself. Couldn’t hurt to be too careful. “Hold on, Sweetie,” Apple Bloom moaned, “Here it comes!” It was falling blindingly fast, like it could have sliced them right in two, and with a heart stopping crunch, the wagon flew up a hill straight into the air. The two ponies had their hearts in their throats, while the wagon hurtled in a graceful arc as The thing... Slammed to the ground, right behind them. With a noisy clatter, the wagon landed, and kept moving forward. The town was still there, some of it at least. The entire quaint hamlet had gotten a piece carved out of it by the weird sky eggshell thing, encompassing the castle, and at least some of the houses. It was a lot larger of a castle than it first appeared, as they rode up to it, with towering parapets, thin, defensible windows in places, and in others beautiful steel framed stained glass panels. Everything was anything but peaceful now. That insane sense of urgency was gone, but it was replaced with a frantic crowded activity. The wagon was still going to the castle much more nearby now, but there were... shadows flitting around everywhere. It was like they were worries, personified. And none of them were running towards the castle. Unlike their wagon, everyone else was crowding each other to get past their wagon in the opposite direction, straight to the edge of that dome thing. It had taken over the entire sky, and neatly bisected the houses that were unlucky enough to be in the way. Perhaps not so unlucky, as it actually didn’t seem to cut them in half at all, just blocked everything from outside making it all look wavery and indistinct with a weirdly pearlescent glowing barrier. “It looks like a shield or something...” Sweetie said engrossed in looking at the thing. “Okay,” Apple Bloom said, confused and somewhat irritated. “Okay, fine. Something bad’s out there, and this here’s some kinda magic shield thing. And heck if this ain’t the weirdest dream ah ever had!” “Shouldn’t we have woken up?” Sweetie asked in puzzlement. “That was frightening!” “Yeah but it... it was fright’nin’,” Apple Bloom said thoughtfully. “You know what I’m sayin’? Was, but not is?” “That makes sense, and I have no idea why,” Sweetie agreed, settling down to her haunches in the much slower moving wagon, rolling its way over what looked like even, flat cobbles. The crowd of... people? The crowd was clearing out around them in a broad circle. The wagon wasn’t moving as fast, and it started to take a more erratic course on its way, wobbling this way and that. “What’s even pulling this wagon?” Apple Bloom asked, in puzzlement. Sweetie Belle looked and, “Scootaloo!” she declared excitedly. Apple Bloom took another long, hard look where Sweetie was looking and... of course! The wagon couldn’t just pull itself. There was a... a thing... no a person. There was a person pulling it. No, a... a pony? At Sweetie’s cry, they both laid eyes on the familiar orange pony, their friend pulling the wagon in front of them as she moved forward. Scootaloo moved like... like she was standing on something, like her old scooter, back from... yeah, it was her old childhood scooter! The old model she used to truck around on! And didn’t she take the two of them around in this very wagon, or something? Apple Bloom shook her head negatory. They only fit in this little wagon, on account of being changed into little ponies. When they were human, it’d just been a novelty, crowding one at a time into the little red thing to ride down hills all crazy like, just for the fun of it. She looked at herself, still all custard yellow like she was born, but all smoothly furry now, instead of just smooth. She didn’t have five fingered hands, but had two big fingers out in front of her, hooked over the edge of the wagon: hooves, that she walked on, now. And apparantly she and Sweetie could both ride in that wagon she remembered, as little ponies. Maybe this was a dream about if they ever found a wagon like that one, some time in the future? When the wagon stopped, it was because Scootaloo took a hard right, throwing them around, and screeching the whole assembly to a halt. Her scooter clattered on its side in the cobbles, but Scootaloo didn’t—get thrown off. She just remained standing as if she were still supported by it. The scooter just passed right through her stiffly unwavering hooves, floating right up in the air. “Scootaloo!” Sweetie repeated in a terrified sort of worry, “Are you okay?” Apple Bloom looked up from the scooter and... Scootaloo was totally quiet, and didn’t exactly look right. She looked more like a place, than a person. Right in place, she turned to face them, in a way that didn’t look like moving. She was rotating around to look at them, her shadow dancing crazily on the cobbles, as if the steady light overhead were a guttering candle. She faced the two of them, and the pony had no face. Scootaloo was standing there looking at them, except she didn’t have any eyes or nose or mouth or face. The pony had no face. THE PONY HAD NO The faceless Scootaloo popped like a soap bubble, before Apple Bloom could scream, bursting out in a... a splat noise, and inside of it was a very surprised looking Scootaloo standing there. The real Scootaloo, this time. Still the pony version of Scootaloo, but at least now she had a rather discombobulated, dizzily disoriented ...face. “What the fuck was that?” Scootaloo swore, dropping to all fours and turning her head this way and that, desperately trying to get her bearings. “Wh...” Apple Bloom said incredulously. “What was that?!” she accused right back, in a frightened, flustered tone. “That’s what I’m asking you, Apple Bloom!” Scootaloo shouted, focusing angrily on her friend. “That was like, the weirdest...” Scootaloo trailed off, and her eyes widened. She looked around in amazement, saying, “Woah... where are we?” Scootaloo started to take in this dome enclosed castle city, like it was the first time she saw it before. Which technically would be true, if... she hadn’t had a face, this whole time. “Scootaloo,” Sweetie said urgently. “Do you remember anything? You were pulling us in the wagon! S-somehow.” “I... I was?” Scootaloo asked, looking at the wagon, and then how it connected to her scooter there. “Woah!” Scootaloo exclaimed again, gallopping over to the scooter, the air rippling around her as she did so. “Look at this thing!” “Careful Scoots,” Apple Bloom cautioned, “Ah think we’re in your dream, so you cain’t—” “It’s so tiny!” Scootaloo said, rearing up and putting her hooves on the scooter. “I could ride this!” “Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom shouted in alarm. “I could ride this, Apple Bloom!” Scootaloo said so excitedly. “Even if I was a little pony, I could ride this! I could—” the whole dream popped. “Still...ride...” Apple Bloom heard Scootaloo mumble, as she opened her eyes. Apple Bloom blinked there in the darkness, laying snug in her bed. That was... “Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom exclaimed infuriated, kicking her leg in frustration at the darkness. “You woke us up!” “But why we didn’t wake up before?” Sweetie uttered from beneath the blankets. Didn’t look like she wanted to come out. “Because it wasn’t our dream,” Apple Bloom told her in a snide tone. “Of course Scootaloo could wake us up at the drop of a hat. Like with the princess. If’n ah got too excited in mah dream, I’d wake up, but in her dream, in her library, it don’t work the same. The princess just... lets me out, if ah’m wakin’ up in her dream. But if ah wake in my dream... she gets tossed right out!” “I wasn’t dreaming, was I?” Scootaloo asked skeptically, sitting up to look at Apple Bloom with two luminous violet eyes. “I never remember my dreams,” Scootaloo said, “But I remember like a big castle thing, and you two, and also the sky was a shell or something? Was that really...?” “Yeah, that was your dream Scootaloo,” Apple Bloom nodded to her friend. “You mean we couldn’t have woken up, if we didn’t find Scootaloo?” Sweetie squeaked to Apple Bloom in a very anxious tone. “No,” Apple Bloom said irritated, “It like... uh... She rubbed a hoof under her chin. “Oh lord, ah don’t really know actually,” Apple Bloom said in sudden creeping horror. “U-uh that is, ah mean... ah’d have to ask the dream... princess... wherever she is.” “Well you did find me,” Scootaloo interrupted in a practical tone, cutting cleanly through Apple Bloom’s panic, “So we all woke up just fine. And I was dreaming somehow. But why am I remembering it now? I never remember my dreams!” “Maybe because we were there, this time?” Sweetie suggested. “Oh yeah, just like the golden apple thing,” Scootaloo recalled in a subdued tone, looking down at her little pony body, so small in that big bed. Each of them looked and felt even smaller than they were, with all three of them so comfortably situated in that poster bed of Apple Bloom’s. It was a big bed, even when she was fully human. “That was the last dream I remembered,” Scootaloo remarked glumly, flopping her forehooves on the sheets. “Ah don’t think it was just us being there,” Apple Bloom contested, shaking head at that, with her tomato-red mane swinging around sans bow. “We had to drag that dream outta darkness, practically kicking an’ screaming. Ah been tryin’ to remembe—uh—imaginember that dream for a while now. Between me and Sweetie, I think we sorta... made you do it.” “So you... made me dream?” Scootaloo suggested, lifting her head and eyeing Apple Bloom with nervous worry. “Yeah, ah guess you were kinda... rusty on dreaming,” Apple Bloom said unsure of herself, herself. “So we kinda had to... snap you out of it?” “More like explode her out of it,” Sweetie grumbled. “What was with that faceless Scootaloo?” Apple Bloom just had to shrug at that. Scootaloo was even more at a loss. She knew nothing about it even existing, and could barely remember even getting on that scooter, much less carrying them across an idyllic yet somehow indescribably horrifying countryside. And now the three of them were so awake, that they woke up with their hearts still hammering. So Apple Bloom helped the two of them out of bed, and they crept down in the quiet night, to engage in the ancient, time honored tradition for consoling oneself over troubling dreams, by turning the lights on in the kitchen, and fixing up a midnight snack. Plum jelly, graham crackers and hay was a stroke of comfort-food genius, if Apple Bloom did happen to say so herself. As long as it was plum jelly, at least. Plum jelly went really good with alfalfa. No, really. Scootaloo didn’t want to believe it,but one bite from that bale of dry crackly hay made the plum dripping cracker take on a more complex and satisfying flavor. Apple Bloom wasn’t huge on experimenting with food, and had yet to find food that outright made her sick, but plum crackers and hay. And a big glass, er, bowl of orange juice. Perfect combination. They had to use a bowl for Sweetie and Scootaloo’s sake, even if Apple Bloom had drinking pretty much down pat out of one of those (now giant to her) cups. It was... actually all kinds of adorable, watching Sweetie sticking her nose in that bowl and sucking up the orange juice. Would have been for Scootaloo too, if she didn’t insist on noisily slurping while doing it. Come to think on it, that was probably intentional. The three toddled up sleepily to bed then, and with that warm feeling in their tummies. Sure enough, the moment that they were asleep, they completely failed to have any more dreams that night, and woke up feeling disappointed, if refreshed. It would be some time in fact, before they got back to where they started at. Cheerilee did in fact find a book or three on speech therapy, but Apple Bloom’s two friends improved a whole lot on their own, especially with how Scootaloo liked to chatter on about whatever they were doing. Sweetie was a quieter friend, but still better at improving her speech than Scootaloo. She had a frightening passion for what managed to catch her eye. Whether it was making beautiful clothing to help her sister, or making delicious food to help her sister, or... actually now that Apple Bloom thought about it, it was probably adding on years to Rarity’s life that Sweetie wasn’t there to help her out anymore. Sweetie was a handful even at her helpfullest. It didn’t bother Apple Bloom one bit that she had to take care of her friends. She was just glad for their company, and did whatever she could do to make them as comfortable as they could. All their kin were busy with school most of the time, but Rarity and Cheerilee did come over a lot much to Sweetie’s delight and Scootaloo’s reluctant admission. Thanks to their tireless efforts, it was empirically demonstrated to be an objective fact that ponies really enjoy getting brushed while sitting in your lap. Apple Bloom was kind of glad in fact, that Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were right there with her, and she wasn’t the weird one for sitting there melting into her sister’s lap on chilly afternoons with a blanket draped over both of them and Applejack’s idle but supple fingers smoothing out all the tingly tight spots in Apple Bloom’s back. Sweetie’s thing for belly rubs might have been a bit weird, but she didn’t mind it, not even when Rarity would poke her presented belly making her giggle and wiggle her hind legs. Rarity herself was doing so much better now, that she was forced to confront her own sister as a little pony; she’d been avoiding Apple Bloom like crazy! Apple Bloom hated that, and now that disaster had befallen Sweetie Belle, Rarity was actually starting to treat all three of them like people. As for Sweetie Belle, she was doing... ...better than she’d been doing, at least. Sweetie Belle’s confession about attending school again had neatly shifted her anxiety back onto Apple Bloom. Apple Bloom might be too dumb and scared to care about her own academic future, but she wasn’t going to impose any sort of exile on her friends, just to avoid trouble. Somehow, Apple Bloom was going to have to figure out how she was going to go back to school. She had time to think about it, with how long it took the other two to get steady on their feet and well spoken, and good at mouth writing, but it was still a thing she had to... think about. It took a while for them to find the dream princess. Apple Bloom really wished they could have found her sooner. The first night after Scootaloo’s dream, she could really have used some advice from the dream princess, when all three of them were trying to get asleep again, and afraid of dreaming like that again. “Apple Bloom, are you scared?” Sweetie asked in a quavering voice, there beneath the bedcovers. Apple Bloom shifted her head to look at the moonlit huddled form of Sweetie Belle. “Scared of what?” she asked carefully. “All this dreaming stuff,” Sweetie clarified, lifting her head up out of the blankets. “What if we get hurt?” Apple Bloom smiled at Sweetie as comfortingly as she could. “Then we dream up not gettin’ hurt, silly!” she said with a false confidence, patting the unicorn’s oddly human-like curls with a hoof. “It’s just a dream, right?” “I dunno, my dreams are really different now...” Sweetie Belle said reluctantly. “Maybe it is dangerous for ponies. We can dream together, after all. So maybe something... bad could, too?” “Jeez girls, I already know it’s not gonna be dangerous at all,” Scootaloo grumbled on the other side of Sweetie Belle, in a groggy grackle. “How do you know, though?” Sweetie insisted at Scootaloo, in a flustered worry. “Because if you keep telling us how worried you are, we’re never gonna get to sleep in the first place!” Scootaloo griped, the little orange pony glaring at Sweetie Belle, from where her head lay buried deep in her pillow. Sweetie blinked. “Oh,” Sweetie meeped, meekly snuggling down into their shared bed, and carefully pulling the sheets up to her hooves. “Sorry.” Apple Bloom herself worried, until her friends’ breathing evened out. But then she too was pulled into the seductive embrace of sleep. She was barely even dreaming when someone called out “Apple Bloom!?” in Sweetie Belle’s voice. Apple Bloom opened her eyes and looked around in surprise. But her surprise dimmed as she realized this should have been expected. They were still in the exact same place, that frozen moment outside the castle, surrounded by the strangely translucent barrier. They were the only ones here this time, though. Her, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. All the activity and tumult before was just... empty. It was like they were in a preserved replica of the scenery of where they’d been. “Apple Bloom, there you are!” Scootaloo said, trotting up to her, getting in her face anxiously. “We just woke up like—I mean we just fell asleep and it was like this. I don’t know how to go places in a d-dream yet! We just had to wait for you. This place is totally creepy!” “It’s not so bad,” Sweetie said placatingly, pulling Scootaloo calmly away from Apple Bloom’s face. “It’s not even... doing anything. It’s kinda boring, really.” “So now that ah’m here, we get to just... continue the dream?” Apple Bloom wondered curiously. Everything seemed so still around them, not even a breeze on the wind. Not that a breeze could get very far, even under this massive dome. Nobody was around, nobody distinct at least. It was like standing in a picture. “It’s not continuing...” Sweetie said uncertainly. “Maybe if we redo what we did before, to remember what happens next?” “Oh that’s totally gotta be it!” Scootaloo said with a big smile at Sweetie. “It’s just like in Assassin’s Creed!” “Assassin’s what now?” Apple Bloom asked curiously. “Iiiiit’s a video game,” Scootaloo said, waving a dismissive hoof. “The character relives their ancestor’s memories as dreams,” Sweetie explained, abruptly cut off when Scootaloo got in her face and said excitedly, “Oh wow, you played that?” Sweetie gently pushed Scootaloo’s face away from hers, nodding and blushing. “I–I like the story,” she said, “He gets to dream of great adventures, even though he’s just this normal guy... even though he’s not really. I only rented it... I couldn’t get past the part with the horse.” “Which part with the horse?” Scootaloo asked, with a head tilt. “There’s more than one?” Sweetie queried reluctantly, insecurity wavering in her open green eyes. Scootaloo just stared at her. “He kept running off the cliff!” Sweetie vainly protested, rearing up bashfully. “Girls, cain we focus?” Apple Bloom cut in, before Scootaloo could start laughing at how bad Sweetie was at video games. “There’s a horse running off a cliff over there, an’ ah don’t think it’s supposed to be here!” “What?” Scootaloo asked, looking off to the mist on their left where a crudely rendered horse was just flipping end over end stiffly as it fell off an endless cliff. “Woah,” Scootaloo said with big eyes. “That’s exactly how I imagined it!” “Well cut it out. You’re messin’ up your old dream!” Apple Bloom said, waving that mist back as best she could. “H-how do I stop?” Scootaloo said nervously, everything taking on washed out colors, and also she had a white cloak on now, sized to fit a pony. “The castle, remember?” Apple Bloom prompted her hastily. “We were riding on a wagon thing, and this shiny egg shield covered like half the town? Tons of cottages everywhere! And also this blanket keeps falling on me for some reason?” She crawled out from underneath the blanket at that, looking grumpy. “Not all washed out an’ misty,” she told Scootaloo admonishingly, “Colorful! An’ real!” That seemed to snap Scootaloo out of it, and the mist parted to reveal the empty castle town, again. “S-s-sorry,” Scootaloo said, scrunching down on her belly uneasily. “Ponies can dream what they want, Scootaloo,” Apple Bloom said gently, nosing at the orange furred shoulder of her crouching, unnerved friend. “It just takes practice. We probably should go to my dream for now.” “I just feel all sorts of creeped out here,” Scootaloo fussed, not coming out of her crouch as she looked around nervously. “It’s so... unquiet,” Sweetie observed, her voice sounding thin in the still air. “It feels like... something should happen, I just don’t know what, so...” Scootaloo’s ears went down. “I guess I don’t know what to dream next?” “Well, c’mon,” Apple Bloom said sighing, “We can at least try to get in that castle over there.” They crept along the flat cobbled streets of this eerily rustic town, trotting easily on four hooves with soft clopping noises. At the gateway into the great stone castle, Apple Bloom put her forehooves up on the door, laying an ear against it to listen in. “What’s inside the castle?” Scootaloo asked curiously. “It’s your dream,” Sweetie said flatly. “Don’t you know?” “It seems familiar, but... I dunno,” Scootaloo said, uncertainly. “Maybe in a game I played recently?” “There’s somethin’ in here,” Apple Bloom said suspiciously, “But the gate won’t open. Ah thought we could get to the library through here. Maybe we should try one of those houses instead.” “Why would those houses be a library?” Scootaloo asked in puzzlement. “They just look like ordinary houses. If really old medieval ones.” “Because,” Apple Bloom explained unhelpfully. “Now c’mon!” Once they stood before an apparantly random cottage, Apple Bloom instructed as best as she knew, saying, “We can get to my dream through here Scootaloo, because you ain’t never dreamed about what’s past this door. Somethin’s in the castle, but there ain’t nothin’ here, since you don’t know what’s through here. An’ that means ah do know what’s through here.” She swung her hoof at the door with a flourish. “So what’s through there?” Scootaloo asked, with a tired look at Apple Bloom’s theatrics. “A whole lotta books!” Apple Bloom declared, as if the answer couldn’t be more obvious, opening the door to dramatically reveal a...solid wall of books. “Oops,” Apple Bloom uttered, climbing up in there and pushing books aside with her nose, to squeeze her face in to look beyond them. “Ah was aimin’ for the princess’s library. Guess it musta opened behind one of the bookshelves.” It was close enough though, and sliding the shelf aside, they made their way to the library. The library was a dream the princess herself crafted for Apple Bloom. It made an exceptionally good meeting spot, being that it technically was Apple Bloom’s dream, yet didn’t seem as governed by Apple Bloom’s arbitrary head rules as much as her other dreams. The columns of pristine white marble, the elegant staircases with railings just the right height, and the everlasting sunlight beaming in through the tall framed windows high above them on the arching ceiling were all the princess’s imagination, so Apple Bloom didn’t have to think about it. The library also had the advantage of having so many portals all over the place, and so many walls that could contain doors in it. The inside was brightly lit at all times, and even if they couldn’t read most of the books, their welcoming musty smell along with the scent of solid oak wooden shelves and furniture just gave the place a welcoming, magical feel to it. The three pony girls carefully scooted the bookshelf aside so they could get through, then Apple Bloom closed the door behind them. It was an ordinary cottage door like the one they opened to get there, sort of stuck in the library wall. “That way we can get back, once we find the princess an’ can ask her about this stuff!” Apple Bloom explained cheerily, closing and latching the door. The other two just eyed Apple Bloom with varying degrees of nervousness at how much control she had over this dream. “Will the princess be here?” Sweetie asked uncertainly then, looking around wide eyed at the empty sunlit halls. “Hello, princess?” She trotted in a circle. “Princess Twilight?” “Ah don’t hear her,” Apple Bloom said, disappointed. “Guess she’s still out.” “Well I don’t care, this is the coolest library ever!” Scootaloo said in characteristic enthusiasm. “Is this really a dream? It’s so real! Is there an outside? I see the sun shining through the windows! The ceilings are so high too, but not as high as in the school library. But I mean, it has columns!” Scootaloo got excited about her very first actual real pony dream, albeit kept from waking them all up by Apple Bloom’s stubborn levelheadedness. Apple Bloom and Sweetie nosed around in the meantime, but couldn’t find hide nor hair of the princess. That was disappointing, but when the three of them awoke that morning, they were pretty sure that things were gonna be okay for Scootaloo now, dream-wise. From there it was clean sailing for Scootaloo. Snapped out of whatever that dark nightmare was, she dreamt normally now, dreaming together with the three of them when she dreamed. Scootaloo dreamed of her scooter a lot, except it was sized down for a pony. She drew crude pictures when awake too, trying to capture just how she could possibly use such a scooter as a pony, and maybe get some semblance of her old self back. The others helped too, but it wasn’t as simple as stitching an outfit. The physics of designing those was actually real complex. Plus Rarity had a big exam crunch, so even getting new outfits was a difficult proposition, much less a new scaled down non-motor vehicle. It was kind of nice how ponies could all dream together. Apple Bloom didn’t know what you called that kind of magic, figured she’d ask Sunset again sometime, or that new Twilight girl, who herself seemed to know something about vice principal Luna having some relation with dreams. Which didn’t explain why the dream princess was Twilight Sparkle at all. Maybe the vice principal fantasized about being... some random high school girl, as a pony princess? Even without the dream princess to help, Sweetie was already getting to the point she could snap herself out of a fugue state on her own, and the process of helping her two friends with their dreams was giving Apple Bloom tons of practice of her own. Apple Bloom seemed to be their temporary “dream princess” so to speak, though she could only dream up wings and a horn for herself as a prop gag. You could fly in dreams anyway, and your ability to do magic was limited only by your ability to imagine something vividly and with stability. They didn’t run into any nightmares after Scootaloo’s... thing. Sweetie Belle didn’t know of any she was having at least, so she remained the odd one out. Sweetie dreamed of overwhelming tasks like giant boutiques, and of pirate ships that sailed over grass instead of water for some reason. Apple Bloom’s own vague nightmare of being chased never did return, at least not after the princess blew it to smithereens that one time, when Apple Bloom ran face first into her planetary starscape. They probably should have checked that planetarium, because that’s where the princess had been this whole time, just sitting like a statue and thinking. But instead of doing that, and instead of discovering her, the three just played together, talking about plans, and pony things, and the princess got to leave herself be until she was good and ready to find Apple Bloom again. Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had been dreaming together again, just chatting about Diamond, and what they were gonna do about her when she came back, and if they were gonna prank her or not, when Apple Bloom almost lost the dream entirely. Suddenly, a dominating presence just swamped Apple Bloom, before she could even turn around. The dream princess just waltzed up out of nowhere right into Apple Bloom’s dream, saying cheerfully, “Oh there you are, Apple Bloom! I think I finally have it figured ouWHO THE HECK ARE THEY?!” Apple Bloom fell on her face at the sudden outburst, but quickly collected herself, and shook her head, just to make sure she could feel herself do it. She carefully kept in mind where Sweetie and Scoots were, and that they were all sitting here, out on a bright sunny summer day, on this giant, checkerboard clothed picnic table. Then opening her eyes, Apple Bloom found that to still be the case, and her dream was stable again. With a satisfied smile, Apple Bloom turned her head away from her friends, and there before the little yellow filly was the dream princess, lavender wings spread in resplendant glory, majestic starscapes in her mane and tail, so ethereally unreal, yet so resemblant of that one purple girl’s hair. Really, Apple Bloom felt kind of dumb for not immediately making this connection, dream-confusion or not. Apple Bloom was definitely looking at a pony, a beautiful purple pony mare, suffused with the very power of existence itself. A unicorn, and a pegasus, and... an earth pony too, somehow. Three ponies in one, just like Twilight said. And the dream princess gazed serenely back at Apple Bloom, saying somewhat less serenely, in a surprised and agitated voice. “Did you just... stabilize your own dream?” Apple Bloom blinked. Actually, the princess was looking more along the lines of kind of shocked, and less along the lines of serene. “Uh, yeah...” she admitted bashfully. “Ah mean, who else is gonna do it? Mah friends ain’t doing the dreamin’, and they’re still workin’ on gettin’ good at it too. Maybe? Ah guess? “Ah dunno!” Apple Bloom declared, exasperatedly throwing her hooves up. “You don’t come for like weeks, an’ ah just keep on dreamin’, so ah gotta just figure out this pony dreamin’ thing all on mah own!” Instead of answering her, or even acknowledging that Apple Bloom said anything, the princess trotted right up to Sweetie and Scootaloo. The two were looking very calm and collected, for two ponies facing a divine superpony, while neither of them could wake up, thanks to the stabilizing influence of one very powerful being, and one very uppity earth filly who didn’t know any better. Which is to say they were looking terrified as all get out. “Are these your friends, as ponies, Apple Bloom?” the princess asked, getting right up into their faces. She wasn’t asking them though! She was just talking about them! “It’s uncanny, I have to admit,” the princess told Apple Bloom in an engrossed tone, never breaking her fascinated stare at Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. “You’ve only dreamed them up as humans before. I thought they were real ponies, at first.” “What is she talking about, Apple Bloom?” Scootaloo asked, making the princess immediately yelp in surprise, and leap back from the two of them. Which caused Apple Bloom’s two friends to yelp in surprise and fall on their butts, looking up at the princess in mild terror. Craning around the princess’s fallen rump, the two of them looked at Apple Bloom in confusion, “Ohh! Ha ha ha,” the dream princess gave a nervous but conclusive laugh, and stood, raising a hoof, folding her wings and looking over her shoulder at Apple Bloom. “You really got me, there. What’s got you in such an impish mood, to make your dreams startle me like that? I wasn’t gone that long, was I?” Apple Bloom just stared at the dream princess, slack jawed. The dream princess stared back, in eerie stillness, and also total uncomprehension. “Seriously people—uh... ponies,” Scootaloo said behind the princess. “You’ve been dreaming of Sweetie and me as humans, Apple Bloom? Why can’t we do that now?” “W-well,” Apple Bloom admitted to Scootaloo, finding her voice somehow, “Ah ain’t very good at it. Uuh...” she closed her eyes and tried to remember Scootaloo as she once was, an orange girl with purple hair, busting out of the high school doors, and riding her scooter right down the railing, rushing to head into town to get a soft serve before lunch period was over. Apple Bloom opened her eyes, seeing the scene rendered before her planted forehooves, hovering in like a little cloud sort of thing. “There we go,” Apple Bloom said happily, reaching in it with a forehoof and plucking the human Scootaloo right out of it. Placing her on the surface of the marble table they were standing on, the human Scootaloo was about the size of a doll, if Apple Bloom had been the size of a human girl. “See?” Apple Bloom demonstrated with an awkward grin, giving the doll-like human Scootaloo a little push. The teeny little Scootaloo rolled forward on her scooter a bit, before bumping to a stop against Scootaloo’s hoof. “Wow uh,” Scootaloo said with a less than impressed look. “I see what you mean, Apple Bloom. Uh—h-hey!” she squawked. Scootaloo shouted, because suddenly the dream princess’s star speckled butt was shoved in her face. Scootaloo now saw this side of the princess, because the princess’s front side was right up close to the Scootaloo toy, pushing the pony Scootaloo back away from it with her princessly rear. The princess stared at the toy intensely, then gave Apple Bloom a frightened, frightful look, then whirled on her hooves to stare at Scootaloo directly nose-to-nose, then back to the toy, then Scootaloo. “You ponies are real?!” the princess shouted at her terrified friends.