//------------------------------// // It Does not do to Dwell on Dreams // Story: An old timers tale // by Ecthelion_Yuda //------------------------------// I may have been one of the most successful mares in Equestria and I may also have been 35 years old, but at heart I was little more than a filly. The prospect of getting married still made my head spin and in fact it still does sometimes. I don’t think you can ever truly appreciate the pure excitement at the prospect of sharing your life with another pony until you experience it for yourself. But in no uncertain terms, my upcoming wedding was the only thing that occupied my mind for weeks. I would constantly find myself sitting in my office daydreaming about how I would look in my gown, what music I would have playing and all sorts of wedding related themes when I would suddenly realise that I still had work to do. Hidden Gem may not have noticed anything as a company, but I know that for about two months my own personal efficiency severely decreased. I didn’t care though. I still don’t. If there is ever a time that a girl can let herself get carried away it is her wedding and for me that included everything that led up to it. Grace wouldn’t talk about anything else. It still makes me laugh when I think about how excited she was too. You’d think that it was her getting married in place of me sometimes. I knew that I wanted her as my Mare of Honour without a doubt. She had been with me since the start of Hidden Gem and she was my closest friend. She would wander around with me, looking at wedding dresses and complimenting me whenever she saw one that she liked. Whenever we weren’t choosing my gown Grace’s attentions were permanently fixed on the rock on my hoof. Ray O’Sunshine was not a poor stallion by any stretch of the imagination, so when he splashed out he really was able to afford something quite spectacular. My ring was 14 karat gold band with a relatively large Amethyst stone in the top of it. It sat surprisingly heavily on my hoof, but it was a weight that I was glad to bear. It felt somehow more natural for me. Ray and I had decided on a date for our wedding: 15th April, a pretty spring wedding in the gardens of Charlesfort in the Emerald Isle, near Ray’s home. Having visited there a few times with Ray I knew just how beautiful it was and so I had no problem with getting married there. It was to be a sweet, intimate and private affair only inviting close friends and family. I couldn’t wait to see it, all of the blossoms in the trees around us in bloom, permeating the air with their swirling dance in the wind as the petals fell, carpeting the ground in a natural white and purple. After looking at almost half of the dress makers in Canterlot, I finally settled on one dress. It was a pure white gown with a respectably long train but nothing too ridiculous. The gown was studded with small white gems towards the hem, but other than that it was a plain white dress. A translucent veil encrusted with little pearls matched the dress absolutely perfectly and it fit so well on my head that I simply had to have it. The dress was not as decorative as would normally be expected in a celebrity wedding, but there was finery in the stitching and I couldn’t help but think that the dress would serve as a metaphor for our life together: Simple yet comfortable. By this time both myself and Ray had built substantial empires with our businesses. Hidden Gem had grown so much that Fancy Pants no longer had the power to do anything to us. His attempts at boycotting us had failed, so he simply admitted defeat and cease all involvement with us. Thanks to our joint net worth money was not really a problem for us. We just liked the idea of having something to fall back on if ever the need arose. The months went by far too quickly and I remember watching the winter melt into spring before my very eyes. I barely had time to collect my thoughts before the venue was booked, the priest had been contacted and had agreed to perform the service, caterers had been organised and Ray had bought his suit. I was nervous, far too nervous for it to be healthy, but I was also excited. I couldn’t wait for myself and Ray to be joined as husband and wife. There comes a point in the life in every bride-to-be’s life where she begins thinking of herself as married and practices doing everything that married mares do. I started writing my name as Applebloom O’Sunshine and I couldn’t help squealing in excitement every time I saw my name attached to his surname. It made everything so much more real and I loved it. Until, that is, I had the nightmare. Normally I slept soundly with Ray beside me, and I knew that there was never anything to fear. But that night remains in my mind, haunting me in both my waking and sleeping hours. I normally forget dreams within an hour of having woken up, but this one was so vivid that it has stayed with me for almost four decades. I still remember it, clearly as though it were an actual event in my life. … I was looking out at the Hidden Gem main office from my C.E.O’s office. A work related dream never usually affected me, but this time my building was in complete ruin. The beautiful mahogany desks where my main accountants worked were falling apart and covered in dust, the designers and dress makers had left and Grace had vanished along with all of the models. A light flickered on and off in the corner, illuminating the disrepair that my empire had fallen into. All around me lay the rubble of my baby, my child that I had created and that I had brought into this world. The Hidden Gem company was dead and all that remained was me, alone in a ruined office block staring out at the shattered remains of what had once been the biggest company in Equestria. Well, I was almost alone. There, in the centre of the room, lying on a pile of broken rocks and papers was Ray. He was older, but not actually old yet. He appeared to have aged about ten years. He turned to face me, smiling sweetly as he always did. But this smile was different this time. This time there was a hollowness in his eyes, a darkness and a sorrow that I had never seen in him before. He was dressed in the same suit he had chosen for our wedding, but the brilliant beetle black coat was torn and dusty. The trousers had more holes in them than the broken building around us and he looked withered. He was little more than the shell of a stallion, a broken remnant of the once great pony. He beckoned for me to come to him and lie beside him. “Well,” he said to me, half chuckling but all the while speaking in a more mournful tone than suited his voice. “At least we still have each other.” It was then that I understood what had happened. Our businesses had failed, we were destroyed financially and penniless. Ray was lying on the bed of rubble because that was the only bed we had left to share. I didn’t want that life for Ray, I loved him too much to let that happen. I understand now how absurd I was being, how I put too much thought into that dream, but I would swear that that dream had been a premonition of the future. I know now that that outcome was impossible because both of our businesses were too big to ever be effectively challenged. But that did not change the fact that I believed that the dream had shown me what future Ray and I would have had if we had chosen to get married that year. … I spoke with him about it in the morning and he was unsurprisingly good natured about it. He was a bit upset that we were going to have to postpone the wedding, but he knew that it wouldn’t be forever. And it was never meant to be forever. Ray was always really good about things like that, he always wanted me to feel comfortable about everything that we did, so as much as we both wanted to get married, he agreed to postpone. At this point, I wish I could say that I had no idea why Ray and I never did get married. I wish I could blame him, or his family, or some other outside factor. But I can’t do any of those things. I can’t lie about my past. I can’t justify why I behaved the way I did and I don’t doubt that I should have done things differently and perhaps we were just fated not to be together. But one thing I cannot do is blame Ray for any of this. My conscience won’t let me. Because I do know why we never married, I do know why he left me. And I do know that it was all entirely my fault.