Happy Adventuring, Twilight!

by Pennington Inkwell

Need Answers? TO THE PONYNET!

Pennington could feel the dye washing off as the streams of water pummeled his body. He had asked Calalily for her specialty, a washable dye that could be used for only a quick change of appearance, a few days at most. From his perspective, Pennington felt relieved to be blue again. Scorching Quill is fun to be for a while, but it gets tiring to maintain a different identity for a day or two...

His mind flashed back to what had happened minutes ago, and he felt another swell of fear rise up in his chest. His mind flew involuntarily back to a horrific memory: trapped in his own bed, pushing with all of his might to simply lift a hoof. A feeling of his breaths becoming shorter and faster. All his effort to move having all of the effect of blowing on a brick wall....

Pennington could almost hear the sound of shattering glass as a sudden burst of concentration shattered the grip of the horrific memory. I already know how it ended. I opened my eyes and woke up... I didn't suffocate, I didn't die. I just moved after the adrenaline kicked in.

He looked over his body, making sure that no traces of his alter ego remained, right down to the bottoms of his hooves. Convinced, he turned off the water and grabbed a towel, drying himself off before stepping out of the shower.

Twilight didn't know. His conscience nagged at him as the last shreds of his panic finally melted away. You nearly chopped her head off, and she didn't even know you had a phobia.

Pennington nodded, the force knocking his blue and violet mane back into place. I wasn't really going to hurt her. I just was trying to make my point.

You scared the living daylights out of her, and as far as she knew, you were threatening her life! You owe her an apology and an explanation...

"You're right, but not a full explanation." Pennington nodded to his reflection, wrapped his towel around himself, and gently pushed to door open. "Twilight? Are you still here?"

"Yes." Twilight's tone was flat, and she was obviously angry. She was using her magic to hold the TV remote, and was channel surfing so fast, Pennington couldn't even see what she was passing by. She didn't even take the time to look over at him, keeping her eyes fixed blankly on the screen.

"I'm sorry about what happened back there... I lost control of myself." Pennington almost stepped back into the bathroom to hide from the awkward situation. "I have a real problem, a phobia, in fact, of paralysis. When my body can't move, I panic, and panic makes it hard to tell friend from foe..."

"A phobia of paralysis?" Twilight finally looked over at him. "I've never heard of a fear like tha- Your coat!"

"Yes, the red and yellow were a washable dye that Calalily invented." Pennington rolled his eyes. "You didn't think that I was going on an espionage mission with those colors, did you?" He was a little worried to bring up his trip so soon after their fight, but Twilight seemed more interested in something else.

"So, when I tried to hold you still..." Her eyes widened in shock. "I'm sorry! I had no idea that you-"

"Forget it. I held a knife to your throat, we're at least even!" He gave Twilight a smile as he jumped up to sit next to her on the bed.

"Yeah... I understand why a bit better now, but don't you think that the Arabian Scimitar was a bit much?" Twilight eyed him warily, but with a friendly smile to show her sarcasm.

"Well, I tend to feel like my life is in danger if I'm paralyzed... I start to feel like I can't breathe, and my breath just-" Pennington shook his head, catching himself giving information that he hadn't intended to. "Part of the phobia, I guess."

"Well, that would make some sense..." Twilight nodded, remembering what she had read about the symptoms of severe fears. "But... Why paralysis?"

"It's... Just always been scary to me." His eyes flicked over to his saddlebag, and his hoof began tapping nervously.

Twilight didn't press him for an answer, despite the fact that she could tell that he was lying. Maybe it was a bad experience... Her thoughts made a quick connection without her even trying. He didn't want to talk about his pills, either. They couldn't be related, could they?

"So... We're still friends?" Pennington held out an open hoof to Twilight, who gladly took it.

"Of course! A little fight shouldn't be enough to make us stop being friends!" Twilight gladly shook his hoof, but she could feel that he was still shaken in his weak grip. "Are you sure that you're okay? I just put you head-to-head with your worst fear..."

"Of course! I've learned to recover..." Pennington smiled and tightened his grip to illustrate his point, holding her hoof a bit longer than she had expected. Twilight laughed a little as she tried to pull her hoof away.

"Learned to recover? Is this a common occurrence?" She joked as a small game of tug-o-war began to play out, with her hoof in the center. As soon as the words had left her mouth, however, Pennington let go. Twilight's hoof flew back towards her, knocking her backwards.

"No!" Pennington quickly assured her. "It hardly happens at all!"

As Twilight sat up again, she couldn't help herself. "One of the Elements of Harmony is Honesty, Pennington Inkwell. I don't think that you're being very honest with me... You're nervous when you talk about your 'phobia,' you refuse to talk about why you're afraid of being paralyzed, and then you say that you've been through it enough times to learn how to recover." She gave him as reassuring a smile as she could, looking him in the eyes to convey her openness to him. "Maybe I could help you, or maybe I couldn't, but I just want to know what you're not telling me... That's what friends do, share their problems so that they can get through them together!"

Pennington let out a long sigh, then jumped down from the bed, moving towards the door. "It's not something that you could help with, Twilight... It's an issue, not a problem. Problems can be solved. I'm going for a walk..." He took a deep breath, then walked out the door, leaving Twilight alone again.

"I was so close..." Twilight muttered as she laid back into her pillows. "He was about to open up, I could feel it!" She lifted up the remote, once again beginning to flick through channels again. "Maybe I should just go with him on his walk!"

Welcome back to "Paranormal Ponies!" The TV shouted at her. Our investigation today has been venturing into close encounters... of the fourth kind! Alien abduction!

Twilight sat up again, looking at the television with overwhelming cynicism. "You've got to be kidding me..." She reached for the remote to change the channel again. "This show's only good for one thing: laughs."

Many abduct-ees claim that their encounter begins with a horrifying paralysis. Just as Twilight was about to press the "Off" button, she stopped. This includes an inability to breathe, described as a pressure on the chest and short breaths...

"That sounds like... No. Pennington wouldn't seriously believe that he had been abducted by aliens!" Twilight picked up the remote again to change the channel.

While scientists tend not to think that abduction is real, doctors have confirmed the existence of the paralysis, caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain during the deeper stages of sleep! Called "Sleep Paralysis," this phenomenon is often coupled with livid dreaming, creating a lifelike illusion upon which alien abductions are often blamed. Twilight dropped the remote once again.

"Sleep Paralysis? I- I've never heard of that..." She thought back to every book that she had ever read on sleep disorders, but couldn't think of any mention of "Sleep Paralysis."

We think that dreaming up an abduction might be possible for a few cases, but there's far more evidence than simply what ponies can remember, dream or not! When we return: a pony who claims to have had a tracer placed in his neck by aliens after abduction! Are ponies being tagged like livestock? It was at this ridiculous point that Twilight turned off the television.

"I need to do some research." Twilight muttered, trying to remember what she had seen in town that could help her. "This place doesn't even have a library!" She jumped down from her bed and began pacing in frustration. "There isn't a book store, a library, or a school anywhere near here!" She groaned loudly as she realized that she had only one option for her research: the small computer that she had seen in the lobby.

"But I hate the ponynet... Anypony can post whatever they want there!" She muttered as she walked out the door and to the lobby. "There's no way to tell what's true and what's not!"

As she finally reached the lobby, her patience only continued to be tested. Mounted on the wall was a large TV playing, of course, "Paranormal Ponies." Red-and gold carpets with strange, swirling patterns covered grimy-looking tiles. There were large, yellowed sofas for travelers to relax in, but only a small stool in front of the ancient-looking computer. Twilight rolled her eyes and sat uncomfortably on the stool, shaking the mouse back and forth to bring it to life. The towering hard drive below hummed loudly, and the screen in front of her flickered into life. She clicked on the icon labeled "Ponynet Explorer" and soon had prompted up the only search engine that she had deemed semi-reliable: Squee.

"Okay, let's see what you can give me... on sleep paralysis." She whispered as she typed the words into the search bar. The first link to appear was to another one of the rare websites that she trusted: Omnipedia. It may be user- edited, but at least it's filtered for mistakes and cites its information...

Sleep Paralysis: a rare condition that causes the inability to move immediately prior to or following falling asleep, often associated with narcolepsy. While its causes cannot be completely confirmed, it is often blamed upon the brain's ability to paralyze the body during deep sleep. While this usually prevents a pony from lashing out and hurting themselves in response to a dream, it will, in rare cases, continue to function after awakening, accompanied by vivid hallucinations and the feeling of being in danger.

To the left of the article, Twilight saw a disturbing looking image of a pony stretched out across her bed, with a large, demonic bat perched on top of her. Before modern medicine, sleep paralysis was often considered to be in connection with demon attacks... This is horrible!

In surveys from several cities of Equestria, 20 to 60 percent of ponies have reported experiencing sleep paralysis at least once in their lives. An extremely small percentage of these reported sleep paralysis to be a persistent ailment, happening far more often. Most who reported this had been diagnosed with narcolepsy.

But, Pennington couldn't be narcoleptic... There have been times when falling asleep at the wrong moment could have killed him! Twilight quickly read the rest of the article, taking in everything from cultural references to advisories on how to avoid it.

"Um, excuse me? I need to look up directions of how to get from here to Stalliongrad..." A voice behind her asked. Twilight turned around and found herself facing a sorry-looking yellow stallion with a suitcase.

"Oh, of course..." Twilight stepped down from the computer, allowing him to take over the desktop. Feeling that she had learned enough on the subject, she walked back upstairs to the motel room. To her surprise, Pennington was already there, sitting at the room's one desk and working furiously with a quill and scroll similar to the ones behind the compass on his cutie mark. He was so engrossed in his work, he didn't even notice that Twilight had come in until she was close enough to read over his shoulder. The moment that she could begin reading, though, he flipped the scroll over, not even waiting for the ink to dry.

"Hello, Twilight!" He gave her a wide smile as he spun around in his seat to face her. "Good to see that you made it back, I was afraid that you might have decided to go to Ponyville on your own four hooves!" Something about him seemed tense as he rolled the scroll up and he shoved it into his bag.

"Not quite. I'd be better off waiting for the train..." Twilight played into his friendly banter, trying to stave off curiosity as to what he was writing. She walked over and sat down on his bed, looking him straight in the eye. "I heard about something really interesting today while I was watching TV..."

The blue unicorn seemed to relax a bit when she changed the subject farther away from what he had been writing. "Really? You have to be careful, you can't trust everything you hear about on television..."

"Yes, but it was a medical condition called 'sleep paralysis.' It made me think of your phobia, so I've become a little interested in it." As Pennington tensed up again, his eyes deviated from hers for a split second toward the door, then righted themselves again. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Well, no more than any other pony might..." Pennington leaned back in his chair and spun around, breaking from Twilight's lie-detecting gaze. "You wake up and can't move, some think that the problem's genetic, and it's an extremely rare experience." As his chair came full circle, Twilight saw that he was holding himself with the same tenseness as he had when facing down the street gang. "With the exception of a few poor ponies who suffer from it chronically..." He stood up and walked over to his bed, taking a seat next to her. "In which case, going to sleep can feel like stepping into a minefield..."

"Can you tell me anything... from experience?" It was only now that Twilight saw how unlikely her theory truly was, and an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment for proposing something so remote swept over her.

"It's like a nightmare. You're locked in place, unable to lift your hoof even one inch." To her utter amazement, Pennington's eyes began to water up, though no tears fell. "You feel like your body might already be dead, and your heart and your brain are just the last lights to go out..." He didn't look at Twilight, instead looking back to some indiscriminate point on the opposite wall. "Sometimes, it really is a nightmare. You're being crushed under a merciless falling tree, and can't get out, no matter how hard you push. Or you're caught in an undertow that refuses to let you move away from the cold, dark ocean floor. When your eyes finally open in reality, you try to sit up, but your legs refuse to listen. You try just to move one hoof, to push yourself up, and you realize that you're still pinned under that tree, still sleeping with the fishes..." His voice was beginning to choke up now, and Twilight felt sorry for even asking him.

"You realize that you're completely paralyzed, a prisoner in your own body. Your breathing is meant for the smaller and slower needs of a comatose body, not the pounding heart in your chest, and the air comes in shorter and shorter bursts. You simply want to breathe, to take long gulps of life-giving air... But you're no longer in control of even the most simple of your body's functions. You wish with all your flailing heart to be free, to stand and walk again... to rejoin the living." He finally looked over to Twilight, and she could see that his eyes were red from the tears that he had refused to let fall.

"And then you're free. It never happens the same way twice, but that's always been the ending... The adrenaline kicks you from neutral to high gear, and you leap out of your bed, happy to simply be alive! ...And scared stiff to go back to sleep." Twilight could see a pain in his eyes, pain that she could only guess came from the horror of what he had described. "Is that a 'personal' enough experience, Twilight?"

"P-Plenty..." She whispered, transfixed in her own way by the terrifying images that he had presented to her.

Pennington reached down into his bag and pulled out his pill bottle. For a moment, he looked as if he was about to give himself another dose, but he simply tossed it over his shoulder with a careless sigh. "And the only thing standing between me and that living Hell are a couple of tiny, white pills prescribed to me by the only other pony who knows about my struggle: Zecora, the kindest zebra I've ever met."

"And now I know, too." Twilight ignored how obviously awkward it would be and gave Pennington a gentle hug. "And I'm going to help you any way I can, as your friend."

"You can't do anything to help me..." Pennington whispered as he returned the hug. "But... That does make me feel better. Thank you, Twilight."

Comments

[Pennington Inkwell]

I know what you're all thinking... dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/sillyfilly_Derpy_Hooves.png Where's the adventure??dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/sillyfilly_Rainbow_Dash.png

Don't worry. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/shrug_Twilight_future.png Our insipid (I mean, intrepid) heroes will soon be on their way to meet the changelings!dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/shrug_Queen_Chrysalis.png

This story will earn its "Adventure" categorization very soon. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Rainbow_dealwithit.png dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Rainbow_dealwithit.png

Fun facts!

1. Sleep Paralysis is a real problem. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Soarin_dayum.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

2. I, like Pennington, am a non-narcoleptic sufferer of chronic sleep paralysis, though it has been months since I last had to deal with it, a streak I hope not to break!dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_YouDontSay2.png (Certainly explains how I wrote his description of it so well, doesn't it?) dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Fluttershy_umad.png

3. There is no white pill. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Redheart_gasp.png There are many tactics, however, such as sleeping on your stomach, not eating or exercising before sleeping, and having a regular time to go to sleep, that can prevent sleep paralysis. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Redheart_smile.png

As an author, I strive to give people a glimpse into my own dreams (of both night and day) and experiences. That means that in moments like this, I need to put a piece of myself into my writing. This is MY experience with sleep paralysis as the real-life Pennington, not just the character.

[Neon Icy Wings]

Really like where this is going! And the pace is good, you're not just jumping into the adventure you're actually settling everything in! So far everything is fantastic! Continue please!

[Lord_Kalbario]

i feel for you man...

[Lithl]

I suffered from sleep paralysis once. I didn't find it horrific, truth be told.

Now, a gran mal seizure, on the other hand... I remember once during a seizure I felt like my pinkie was trying to loop across the back of my hand and hook around my thumb, all while my arm lifted into the air of its own accord before trying to wrench itself out of my shoulder socket.

You think being paralyzed is scary? Try having your limbs and digits moving all on their own, in ways they're not meant to move.

Also, the year I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I was at university. Usually, the beds were lofted, with a desk underneath them -- the mattress was roughly 6' off the ground, give or take a few inches. As a tall person (over 6'), I preferred to move my desk elsewhere in the room and get the bed de-lofted (standing from a desk under a lofted bed would make me hit my head). I felt extremely vindicated on that decision when my second seizure caused me to fall out of bed. If my bed had still been lofted, I probably would've broken my neck, and not been here today.

[Dido]

i got to the beginning of chapter 7 and then i finally made some ramen, thanks

[MariusIoannesP]

2514961 Just makes me want Oreos.

[MariusIoannesP]

968065 Wow really. Pennington's description kind of touched me too. My own fear of not being able to breathe.

[Radoran]

3348802 This just made me want Pringles. Goin' to the cabinet now.

968065 I actually suffered from sleep paralysis once. It's not chronic to me, but I have suffered it. It was when I moved into my new house in Wilmington, wait, why am I telling you where I live? Oh wait, I don't live there anymore. I moved to SC. Dammit now I'm telling you close glimpses as to where I currently live… I'll shut up now.