“You know,” said Doc, as the falling rain faded to nothing and he guided Roseluck over the threshold like a true gentlecolt, “Twilight may be misguided on some of her philosophy, but get past that and she’s a good egg really.”
They made it several yards before the rain tapping their heads and backs stopped. Overhead, pegasi pushed clouds away, and Roseluck watched them with uncomprehending interest. How did clouds work, really?
“I heard,” said Roseluck, sighing. “I liked that last talk.” Didn’t understand a lot of it, but it sure sounded sciency. “All that stuff about causal agents.”
“Oh, you know how it is – Oops! Sorry.” Doc, waving a hoof airily, had accidentally cuffed a passing Shoeshine around the ear.
“Watch what you’re doing, you!” she snapped before crossing the wet grass.
Roseluck stuck a tongue out at her, secure in the knowledge that Shoeshine wasn’t looking and wouldn’t find out. “Tell me about all those Golden Bough laws. I really liked those ones.”
“Really? Why’s that, mon cherie?”
Unsure about his French, but nevertheless aflutter that he was using French on her, Roseluck added, “I just think it’s nice. To think that earth ponies could do magic too.”
“Ah, ah, ah! Sufficiently advanced science, you mean.”
“I like ‘magic’ better. Ooh, makes me tingle just saying it. ‘Magic’, ‘magic’, ‘magic’.” She beamed up at the purple remnants of dusk. Around them, ponies shuffled or staggered across the grass to their cottages. “The world’s full of magic, isn’t it? All waiting to be discovered.”
“Roseluck, beneath that sappy, sentimental exterior of yours beats the heart of a cold-blooded romantic.”
She didn’t answer. “Romantic” sounded complimentary enough, but when it was Doc saying it…
“I just think it all makes sense, really,” she said, pressing her mane up against his neck. “Once you learn the rules, everything makes sense. All those particles.”
“Oh, you learned all their names?”
Roseluck took a deep breath. “Up quarks, down quarks, charm quarks, strange quarks, top quarks, bottom quarks, electrons, muons, tau particles –”
“Whoa! Who ordered that?” Doc chuckled and staggered a little; the waltz was probably hurting his legs still. “And you a botanist too.”
She chuckled back. Within a few hours, the spell would be broken; she’d no longer be dazzled by his incantations or charmed by his ceremony and ritual. No, within a few hours she’d be no better than Daisy, or even Lily, who panicked at bent stems. Bent stems! Right now, they sounded so utterly childish! Bent stems!
Snapped ones would have done, but bent stems!? The idea!
She really was the bravest of the three. Her heart and several cups of lemonade fizzing its way through her brain told her so.
Behind her, she heard the crunching of grass under hooves. When she glanced back, she saw Lily trailing some feet behind like a lost child wondering if this was Mom and Dad.
A pang of a memory… They’d agreed to a promise…
Roseluck turned to Doc again, whose tie she noticed was wrapped around his collar; it had been a heck of a waltz. “Doc, can I ask you something?”
“A paradoxical question indeedy, my little assistant!” Doc hiccupped. “I say, that was some good lemonade, wasn’t it? What did Berry Punch put in that stuff? Some secret ingredient, some piece de resistance, what?”
Assuming this was Doc-speak for “yes”, Roseluck offered her question. “My friend, Daisy: she’s been acting… weird lately. Sleeping all the time.”
“I’m a very open-minded stallion, you know,” said Doc with unexpected sharpness.
“Sorry?”
“So you should be.” He frowned in puzzlement. “Say that again.”
“I said, ‘Sorry?’”
“No, before that.”
“Daisy’s sleeping more and more often.” The words rushed out of her, overtaking her fresh surge of worry. “I think it’s that hypersomnia catching. Can’t you do something to help her? Maybe Twilight knows a spell – you’re such good friends with her –”
But Doc shook his head sadly. “Roseluck, my dear, I’m not that kind of ‘scientist’. ‘Maybe Twilight knows a spell’ – this is exactly the sort of antiquated thinking that holds back the scientific revolution.”
“Oh, of course. You said. Sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Yet Roseluck frowned too. She was wondering if Doc’s talk about the revolution made him sound too much like Lily and the Ancient Pegasus Empire stuff.
“Not your fault. It’s our backward educational system. Magic this and magic that. ‘Magic’ is such a nice-sounding word, but you try and swap it for ‘science’, and you see how everyone likes it. I keep telling them spells are too easy; a real pony should look for hard work and invent machines to help. Not wave a magic horn and make it all better –”
Realizing he would go on like this for some time, Roseluck spoke hurriedly. “But what about her hypersomnia?”
“Huh? Oh, right. Of course. I should work on that, shouldn’t I?”
Roseluck pursed her lips in thought. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
“You were talking about it last week.”
“Was I?”
“You’ll reinvent the way we study sleep, or at least that’s what you said you’d do.”
“I will?” Doc blinked blearily at her.
They turned a corner. Embarrassingly, they’d missed their turning a few sentences back in the conversation, and Roseluck was now steering for the two of them, looking for another route. Behind, Lily’s crunching hooves kept pace.
Grimacing, Roseluck nudged him again. A genius and a marvel like him should not be walking and talking like a fog-brained old hack with the tearaway glee of a child, yet he beamed at random and had to be held and led all the way up the next street, between the stalls of the marketplace.
“I remember.” She sighed, watching the first of the stars twinkle into place rather than watching him miss yet another step. “You talked about all those brainwaves and kept asking about the soup strainer. We made so many brain-reading things that day. I can see all the books open on the desk. Minds. Imagination. Insight. Circuits.”
She sighed again, longer and with lachrymose spreading over the breath.
“Didn’t get it, ‘cause of my stupid little brain, but it sounded amazing. You really think we could look inside ourselves one day?”
“Do I?” he said, and fumbled another step that jerked her awake for a moment.
She didn’t bother sighing this time. “It would’ve been nice if we’d kept a backup copy of those notes.”
“I always forget,” he mumbled.
“So do I,” she said. “And you really should have a pile for papers you don’t want shredded.”
“I got them mixed up.”
“That’s why we need backups. It’s like me and bouquets. You don’t just have one of each flower hanging around; you have spares, just in case –” she gulped “– one gets… ruined.”
“We should do in the wizard,” mumbled Doc, who judging by his drooping eyelids was done-in himself.
“Ooh, that sounds nasty. Why can’t we be nice to him?”
“Was speaking metaphricly.” He yawned.
“Metaphricly?”
“Met’phorically.”
“Did you?”
“I say, jolly good lemonade.”
“Yes…” Roseluck was wondering about that herself. Whereas Berry Punch would never tamper with her own drinks, some ponies liked to pour in spices when no one was looking. Or when they thought no one was looking.
Didn’t they, Shoeshine? Roseluck grinned. She’d spotted the mare doing it, too.
Oh, she hadn’t said anything. That would be Making Something Of It, especially since Shoeshine tended to make very unpleasant somethings of anything. But she’d spotted her doing it. Whatever it was.
They turned yet another corner, leaving the marketplace behind, and saw the moon rising over the chimneys and distant hills.
“Twinkleshine went on about Luna’s night once,” Roseluck said, stoutly refusing to add: I didn’t get a lot of that, either. I can’t admit I’m ignorant about EVERYTHING. You have to start out knowing everything, in science. Or almost everything. Twilight does. And she can sing the periodic table backwards. In her sleep!
“Oh?” said Doc. Far behind, Lily coughed awkwardly as though to remind them she was still there and wanted to be shepherded home.
“Yes. And I said it must be great to be Luna. You get to go into dreams and everything. That sounds lovely.” Roseluck skewed her jaw. “I don’t think Twinkleshine understood. She kept going on about the actual sky, and when I told her yes, there were skies in dreams, she went off in a sulk.”
Determined not to end on a sour note, she went on, “But how lovely that would be! If only we could fly through dreams whenever we wanted, like Luna. Remember when we went into that shared dream? Yes, the Tantabus was scary, but we saw what everyone was like. Behind the mask, I mean? Do you… see where I’m going with this?”
For once, Doc ruffled her mane. Part of her was sure this was not proper protocol, and a bit patronizing to boot, but Doc did it like a proud parent boasting about a model student. Anyway, she hadn’t the heart to oppose that chortle.
“Well said, Rose! We’ll crack the mysteries of the universe, even the ones inside our heads!”
“Oh, here’s your house coming up.”
Both of them stood before the hulking heap for a moment. Someone should tidy up that thatch, she thought, and would it kill him to plug a few holes, and maybe add some flower baskets like the ones outside the florist’s…
They stood, and stood, and stood before they realized they’d have to make the next move.
“Well…” they said.
“Um…” they said.
“Nice to –” they tried again.
“That was –” They both even kicked the grass and cursed at the same time.
They tried bringing their heads closer, but she couldn’t tell if they were beginning a kiss, a nuzzle, or a staring contest, and both hastily pretended they were just stretching their necks.
They tried for a hug, but Doc stiffened up halfway and she dropped down quickly. They tried a hoofshake, except she tutted in disgust and drew away at the last moment.
In the end, they settled for smiles, which involved no physical contact and wasn’t likely to lead to awkward questions in the morning. After all, they were both into science. That was it, really…
…she reminded herself.
“Goodnight, Doc!” she squeaked, waving.
“Goodnight and allons-y!” He tripped, stumbled over the welcome mat, vanished inside with a clatter, and popped up a moment later to wave her goodbye.
The door clicked shut. Lily stepped forwards.
“You’re hopeless,” she muttered. “Even I could’ve done better than that.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Roseluck even felt the blush clinging stubbornly to her cheeks. “Come on, let’s go home.”
“Derpy could’ve done better than that. And she’s got those funny eyes –”
“Lily! Please! Let’s just go home and check on Daisy, OK? Please? Don’t go on about it. He’s sweet and everything, but it’d never work.” I don’t work. Not like he does. I’d never get to his level.
Thus Lily didn’t say anything the rest of the way. Roseluck could hear her not saying things, and her ears burned at the silence of them all.
When Lily got back later – accompanied by Roseluck, who was going on about some radical new theory of sleep, or something – she found Daisy slumped over the counter.
Nothing else had changed; her panicky gaze darted across the scene within seconds before she lunged forwards. “Daisy! Oh my gosh!”
“No! Is she…?” squeaked Roseluck.
Lily’s heart almost burst. Her thoughts scattered in panic –
Daisy’s eyes were closed; her chest rose and fell gently. Putting the back of her cannon before the slightly open mouth, Lily felt the slightest puffs of air.
“Asleep.” Lily’s heart almost settled. It lived on “almost”: never quite settled, never quite bursting, always on a knife-edge. “Again,” she added bitterly.
“How awful! Lily! Lily!” Roseluck danced on the spot. “What do we do!? What do we do!?”
“I don’t know! Put her to bed!? Leave her!? What!?”
“She always knew what to do! What do we do!? What do we –”
At those words, Lily bit down hard on her lip. “Ow! She always knew what to do?”
“Well, yeah. OK, maybe she panicked with us a couple of times, but for stuff like this… Well, what can we do?”
Lily stared at her, both dripping wet, manes flat on their heads and necks, stinking of wet fur. It was true, of course. If the midden ever hit the fan, Daisy was usually the first on the scene with a mop and bucket. But some of the rumours going around had included her too. They were all three of them mad. Apparently.
About flowers, of course.
She hoped.
“I don’t know,” she said. She licked her lips. “Uh… find someone to help us? Maybe?”
A lightbulb switched on in Roseluck’s face. “I’ll get Doc! He knows all about this sort of thing. I’ll bet he’s been working on something good.”
“Uh, sure. You do that. I’ll, um, get Daisy to bed. Keep an eye on her.”
As soon as Roseluck was gone, though, she regretted it at once. It wasn’t only the question of how she was going to haul a fully grown pony up a flight of stairs. She, who thought flowerpots were a tad on the heavy side at best.
Flower ponies like them weren’t meant for this sort of thing. The closest she had to an intellectual exercise was figuring out why the begonias weren’t blooming on time, and the solution was more often than not a game of Hunt-the-Creepy-Crawly-Pest. Actual exercise ended where trolleys of garden shrubs began. Her idea of excitement was a dance party, for pity’s sake. And they said she was mad, but had they ever considered that life could just be too much at times, like a day trekking under the midsummer sunshine?
Nevertheless, in the end she managed to drape Daisy over her back. Up the stairs, Daisy’s head kept bumping into hers, and the odd snore made her yelp and rub her ear.
Daisy lived over the shop. Technically, the shop was hers, and she took that commitment to heart; virtually every piece of paper – invoices, transactions, the receipts from the till – came under her hooves at some point. Even though Roseluck had a way with numbers, it was Daisy who totted up the incomings and outgoings. Daisy who kept them together.
Daisy, who still panicked with them.
Carefully, Lily laid her out on the bed. Asleep, her friend looked so much like an innocent child, with her bushy locks and slightly gaping mouth as though about to ask for mommy.
That she was twitching and wincing every minute or so was beside the point. At least, she thought it was. Or hoped.
She glanced about the room, but her gaze never strayed from Daisy’s face for long. Too much sleep. According to Roseluck – or rather, according to Doc via Roseluck – Daisy had hypersomnia. It was the opposite of insomnia, and often a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Another twitch. Another wince. Lily gulped just seeing this.
What are you dreaming about, Daisy?
Downstairs, the bell tinkled, and Lily breathed out, the relief pushed out of her mouth. Hooves clattered, and she heard voices babbling. Doc and Roseluck, all right.
“Up here!” she called.
The babbling thundered up the stairs. From the sound of it, Doc was doing most of the talking.
“See?” said Roseluck, scurrying across to the bed. “She was like this when we found her. All the oversleeping’s getting worse and worse!”
Doc hurried over, tripped on his scarf, stumbled, dropped the case he was carrying in his mouth, fumbled to catch it, straightened up, and smoothed down his tie.
“Exactly as my theory predicted,” he said, beaming. “Without addressing the underlying cause, hypersomnia is bound to increase as she uses up her bodily resources on psychosomatic –”
“This isn’t the time for that, Doc!” Roseluck prodded him until he took her place. “What do we do?”
“Oh, right, right, right. Of course. One moment.”
“Roseluck?”
While Doc wrestled to open his case and the contents clattered, Lily beckoned her over to a corner. Pointedly, she turned her back on the humming of the stallion while measuring tapes snapped and metal instruments creaked.
“Roseluck,” she whispered once the pale face leaned in. “You’re sure he knows what he’s doing?”
“Of course! He’s a scientist.”
“He says he is.”
“Well, he’s the best we’ve got. The princesses are busy. They’re not gonna come down to see little ponies like us, simply ‘cause Daisy’s sleeping a lot. They’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
Which ran smack against the inside of Lily’s head. Of course, it was true. Deep in her mind, a little worm of a thought insisted it was true. There were bigger things going on than one pony sleeping a lot. She was smart enough to know that, even if she still didn’t know how to spell “hypersomnia”.
But it didn’t matter.
“We should’ve sent for Princess Luna,” Lily muttered. “She knows about dreams and stuff.”
“I told you,” pleaded Roseluck, even ducking on her knees. “Royal requests take ages to get through. Trust me. Doc knows these things.”
“OK!” Doc called, turning round. “Ladies, I have some news!”
Surprised, they dashed over to the bedside. Perhaps Daisy was waking up – No, she was still lying as though knocked out. Lily wished she’d placed her friend down with some more dignity; those splayed limbs made the tiny torso all the more obvious.
Doc waved what looked like a soup strainer with diodes shot into it at random. “Latest revolution in dream mechanics hardware. Ever since you told me about poor Daisy’s plight, I’ve been developing this for weeks should such an eventuality… well, eventuate. My latest invention!”
“And this one works, right?” Unlike Roseluck, Lily treated Doc’s mishmash of metal and machinery as one might treat unexploded shells after a bombing run.
Doc wrinkled up his face with hurt. “Of course! I designed it in case Daisy needed someone to reach her during her sleep cycle. I call it the Oneiro-Scope!”
On cue, Roseluck reared and flailed her front legs. “Oh bravo, Doc! You do think of everything!”
“Yes.” He rubbed his chin. “Although I haven’t tested it yet, I calculate this device has a 99.9% chance of success on its first try. Give or take 0.1%, obviously.”
Lily glared at him. “And this calculation is based on…?”
“Er.” Doc turned back to the bed. “Getting back to the main issue, I predict that Daisy’s hypersomnia will also be accompanied by some powerful dreaming episodes. I’ve studied Luna’s works on the subject, and I’m quite sure I know how it works.”
On the bed, Daisy’s twitches and winces died down. She seemed more peaceful, more innocent this way. Merely asleep, after all…
“You mean,” said Roseluck, voice rising in excitement, “you can actually help us to see Daisy’s dreams? That’s what Oneiro-Scope means, isn’t it? Literally a ‘dream aimer’, from the Ancient Pegasine…”
Not – when she thought about it – in any actual danger. Crease lines faded on Daisy’s brow even as she, Lily, watched…
“Well said!” Doc’s fidgeting hooves were muffled within the suitcase. “Although that’s not specifically what I had in mind. Skopos in Ancient Pegasine also meant ‘to shoot at’, and I intend to take a shot at Daisy’s dreams.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed. Her front hooves pawed at the ground.
“What are you babbling about?” She turned away from the bed and gave them her most twisted grimace. “Shooting at dreams? Seriously?”
Neither of them did anything but stare at her. Around them, reminders of Daisy’s modest existence stood to attention. A bookshelf with few books. A desk with the barest amount of cluttered papers on it. A wardrobe which she and Roseluck knew was full – if full was the word – of a grand total of three costumes, one of which was that ridiculous bunch of sunflowers she only wore for the Summer Harvest Parade.
“What does that mean anyway?” she said, and caught their stunned expressions.
“Erm,” said Doc, glancing at Roseluck for support and getting only a confused shrug. “It means that if I put this one helmet here on Daisy’s head, put the other helmet on a second subject’s head – say, Roseluck’s – and do a little of what we in the trade call ‘jiggery-pokery’, this device can actually send the second subject – Roseluck, I mean – into Daisy’s dreams.”
“Ah,” said Lily coldly. “Is that all? So nothing ridiculously overcomplicated and questionable, then?”
“Questionable? I assure you, the machine works –”
“Oh, I don’t doubt,” said Lily, who privately had a list of doubts. “But here’s question number one: is it right to do something like that?”
As usual when faced with anything non-technical, Doc stopped for a moment in complete bewilderment. Not that it ever lasted long; the jumped-up chatterbox would probably sooner blow himself up than stop trying to talk the world into a more understandable shape.
“Well, when one has to perform a cost-benefit analysis to work out the utilitarian ratio –”
“In Equestrian, please?”
“That was Equestrian,” he said, matching her “coldly” with a subzero chill icing up his own voice. “Very common language around here, you’ll find.”
“He means,” said Roseluck, smartly stepping between them, “if it’s worse not to do it, then we should do it.”
“Worse?” said Lily.
“Well, yeah. No point rushing to her rescue if there’s no reason to rush, right?”
Roseluck’s face bloomed with goodwill, soft and expanding and containing something sweet. If honey could be transformed into an expression, this would be it.
“I also brought,” said Doc happily, “a nasogastric tube for just such a contingency.”
For her part, Lily looked past her friend’s face to the sleeping figure on the bed. Yes, that sounded like exactly the sort of thing Daisy would go on about: cost-benefit analysis. She had talked about costs a lot. And contingencies too.
Correction: She talked about costs a lot. No need for the “had” just yet.
Meanwhile, Roseluck's pale face, if anything, went paler. “A nasogastric tube?”
“Oh yes. Well, presumably poor Daisy will want feeding while she's out like a light. Her sleeping bouts have become somewhat unwieldy, and a good scientist is prepared for every occasion!”
“You mean, you're actually going to stick that up her nose and –”
“Keep her nourished while she's in no fit state to feed herself? Of course!”
“But you can't!”
“Oh, it's perfectly all right. I did the training on that correspondence course, remember? Lifesaving Techniques and Medical Matters, I think. I tried to get you on it too.”
Now Rose's face turned green and sought refuge in Lily's. “Don't remind me.”
Lily jutted her jaw. Now that the shock drained away, the drum beats of her heart became the relentless thump, thump, thump of a summons to war.
Why are you doing this to us, Daisy? Who the heck do you think you are?
Even the skin surrounding her eyes clenched like fists. Daisy really did look far too childish, sprawled so lazily on the bed.
“Well,” said Doc, moving into her line of sight. He raised the helmet. “I suppose we’d better get started.”
“No,” said Lily.
The helmet held halfway. Doc raised an eyebrow at her, but it was a stock-issue expression and merely gave her rage yet another target, without in any way intensifying.
“No!?” squeaked Roseluck incredulously.
“Come now, Miss Valley,” he said. “You hardly would have summoned me here if you weren’t expecting this kind of mechanical assistance.”
“Oh, really?” snapped Lily. “Well, I hardly think the solution to our problems is to throw ourselves into someone else’s head. Are you crazy?”
“Opinion is divided on the subject,” muttered Doc, not quite under his breath.
“Yeah? Well, my opinion is we don’t need all this fancy-schmancy sciency-wiency stuff.”
Roseluck shivered. “Lily, for pity’s sake, we need Daisy. She’s our fr –”
At this, Lily spluttered and spat and stretched her face before she answered any more coherently. “Need her? Need her? No, we don’t! We want her back, but we don’t need her.”
“How can you say that? The florist’s –”
“Pur-lease. The two of us can manage a shop, I think, without her help for a while. Come on, we basically were anyway. What good’s a sleepyhead like her at a time like this?”
More familiar tremors of fear danced within her chest. Doc’s helmet was right behind Roseluck, and definitely the thought of putting that on her head and waking up in whatever fantasy Daisy could conjure up –
“We’re not doing it,” she said sharply. “This is just us getting hysterical again.”
Narrow-eyed, Doc sauntered over to the suitcase and rammed his helmet back in. “So I take it you no longer need my assistance, Miss Valley?”
Roseluck spun around. “Doc? No! Daisy needs –”
“Apologies, my dear Roseluck, but I rather think she has a point. Now that she mentions it.” Bravely, he attempted a smile, and for once Lily felt a slight flicker of pity for him, as though she’d just scolded a kid asking for ice cream. “Diving into dreams and all that. Truth be told, just because we can push back the boundaries of the science-magic divide and achieve things previously only the reserve of the high and mighty, does not mean we should.”
Brass clasps snapped shut. Doc flung the suitcase over and onto his saddle. Both Lily and Roseluck stared as he made for the door, but one hoof stayed on the edge and he met them stare for stare.
“I sincerely hope your friend wakes up soon, and I'll leave the nasogastric tube as a goodwill gesture,” he said, “but just in case: my door is always open for you.”
They didn’t move until his hoofsteps died away and the front bell jingled.
Lily had expected it, but she hadn’t expected Roseluck to spin around so fast. “Lily, what on earth are you –!?”
“If Daisy’s told us once, she’s told us a thousand times,” said Lily, refusing to back down. “We’ve got to stop being… us.”
“Us?”
“You know: going ‘the horror, the horror’ and hitting the ground. It’s not normal. Well, we’re doing it again. And we rely too much on other ponies to carry our weight. Isn’t it about time we carried our own?”
Roseluck’s facial features balanced, neither too tight nor too relaxed. The pupils flicked right and left, looking for a hint in Lily’s own.
“Maybe for you,” said Roseluck under her breath.
“Don’t even pretend you weren’t panicking back there,” said Lily stoutly. “Look, this is what’ll happen; Daisy will have another nap, she’ll wake up, we go into another tizzy, and then life carries on as normal.”
“That’s awful.” Roseluck’s eyes shone.
“Yeah? You think? I know about stock market crashes and crop failures; those are just the least scary ways the world could come to an end. Compared to that, I think Daisy dozing off wouldn’t even make the top one hundred list of ‘awful’ things.”
More gently, she nodded to the bed. Daisy was utterly free of twitch or wince now.
Roseluck hung her head. “I suppose so… but…”
Neither of them said anything more. Nothing could adequately follow up that “but”. They were the Flower Trio. They were all that they had, in this little bedroom in this little shop, and Lily sensed the world beyond as an arctic explorer sensed, beyond their tent, the howling winds and biting flakes of the arctic storm.
Surrounded by chills, Lily’s anger dwindled.
“Look,” said Lily, “it’s bedtime. We’ll check on her tomorrow morning, see if she’s OK, and then get some breakfast together. How does that sound, huh? Nice and simple.”