The sun rose over their hopes the next morning. As they approached the florist’s, waved at passing ponies, and stopped to fumble through their saddlebags to see who could get their key first, the greens and pinks of the shop reminded them of meadows from long ago.
Lily unlocked the front door and guided the top half open, then the bottom, before entering a perfume of eye-watering smells. Snowdrops bowed their little heads respectfully. Tulips looked up, their petals blazing red under the sunlight streaming through the window. Lilacs offered up their heart-shaped leaves and huddled together as fluffy bunches.
“OK,” said Lily, dropping her saddlebags behind the counter, “I’ll run the till and you, Rose, can make a start on the accounting.”
Roseluck grimaced. “But what about Daisy?”
“Come on, Rose, you’ve got a head for numbers. Just because Daisy always did it, doesn’t mean you can’t. Or wouldn’t be better at it.”
“No. I meant we should check up on her.”
Only a flicker of uncertainty creased Lily’s face. “All right. She’s obviously still asleep, though, or she’d be down here.”
They blundered up the steps together, banging each other’s elbows. The door creaked when they pushed it. For the moment, Lily crouched down and peeked inside, Roseluck rearing up to do the same overhead.
There on the bed, having not moved an inch from last night – or so Lily guessed – Daisy lay, a square of window-framed sunlight halfway up her face.
“She’s still asleep,” said Roseluck quietly.
Lily growled; she’d be darned if she’d let Daisy ruin such a perfect start to the day. “She’s just having a lie-in. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Except that now we’re the ones controlling the shop.
“I’m not sure…” Roseluck looked from one to the other, tapping her teeth in doubt and contemplation.
“Roseluck, she will wake up sooner or later. She always does. Let’s just not panic over this, OK? Someone could come through the front at any moment. Let’s go.”
Happily, she brought the door to a close and led Roseluck downstairs.
Cha-ching! went the cash till. Lily dropped the coins and beamed at the face behind the fireworks display of colour. “Excellent choice for a bouquet, if I may say so. Please tell Rarity I said happy birthday.”
“You bet!” Sweetie Belle groaned and staggered under the weight of dozens of stems. The bell tinkled. The door shut.
While she gleefully counted the coins, she heard Roseluck’s hoofsteps approach from behind. “Closing time, I’m afraid. How many did we sell?”
“Well, including Sweetie Belle’s request… one.”
“Oh.” Roseluck blew between her lips as though cold.
“At least it’s better than… ooh, than Saturday.”
“Do you think we should add another discount?” said Roseluck.
“No. If we discount any further, we’ll be giving them away.” Lily slammed the till shut and leaned against the counter, tilting both left legs for the perfect casual effect. “How’s the stock books coming along?”
Roseluck’s smile staggered out of the sticking-up wreckage of her face. “I’ve corrected all the mistakes of the last twelve months.”
“Wow.” Lily chewed for something to say. “How many were there?”
“About one a day.”
Lily frowned. “But you’ve been working on them for hours… Did you double-check?”
“Double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked… How does Twilight Sparkle do it? My brain feels like mush!”
“Come on, let’s check on Daisy and then go home.”
They staggered up the stairs and apologised when they bumped heads. Boredom was sapping their wits.
This time they peeked for longer. With the sunlight on the other side of the room, Daisy was darker. Even smaller, if she remembered it was just a trick of the light…
“Oh no,” moaned Roseluck.
For several minutes, they patiently watched to make sure her chest was still rising and falling. Under their current collective state of mind, the steady rhythm was almost soothing.
But Lily lived in a permanent state of “almost”, and soon said, “What’s her current record?”
Yawning, Roseluck tapped the woodwork to count. “Eighteen hours and a half, I think.”
“Not anymore…”
The flicker of uncertainty stuck to Lily’s face. If only Daisy had woken up by now, they could have gone back to normal. Well, normal for a time when Daisy randomly slept for hours on end. Yet her nerves had stopped twanging so much after the first few weeks of uncertainty, and now they twanged harder again with a strum of concern.
“Should we call Doc? Or maybe Nurse Redheart?” said Roseluck overhead.
“Um… maybe this is just part of the pattern?”
“You mean an outlier?”
“Sure. Sure. Remember, let’s not panic too soon. Let’s go home, and sleep –” And try to sleep, she thought with more conviction than she spoke “– and then we’ll check up on her in the morning. How’s that?”
They locked up and went their separate ways, alone.
Clouds forbade the sun from shining again the next day. Lily wondered if, somehow, the pegasi could read the mood of the town and fix the weather as appropriate.
She found Roseluck already waiting at the doorstep.
“I couldn’t sleep a wink,” she said, and Lily noticed the puffed up skin around her eyes.
“And you didn’t want to go in,” Lily said, sighing.
“Not on my own. I know what this –” a hoof rattled the locked door “– means.”
Lily gulped. Trying to unlock said door, she dropped the key twice. Inside, the same snowdrops, tulips, and lilacs failed utterly to cheer them up.
Truth be told, she had slept a few winks last night, but she must have lain there for hours, rolling and wriggling, demanding her brain shut off and let her dream. How had her brain thanked her? By waking her up two hours before breakfast. She always knew she had a defective between her ears…
They went straight up the steps and peered in.
Daisy’s limbs strewn as though she’d been placed there that very morning. Mouth slightly open, permanently surprised by the universe. Sweat on her forehead –
Wait… that’s new.
“She’s not…” Roseluck covered her hoof.
Lily squinted. “No. She’s still breathing. But you have to concentrate to see it.”
They shut the door, unable to take it anymore, and sought comfort from each other’s wide eyes, slack mouths, and overhanging, knitted brows like blankets on their heads.
“I think we should call Nurse Redheart,” said Roseluck at once.
“No! No. That’s not gonna work.”
“What!? Why not!?”
“Well, um… what if Daisy wakes up? Wouldn’t we look stupid?”
“I’m willing to take that chance –”
Lily’s hoof gripped her upper forelimb before she passed. “Wait! Don’t panic! We’re not panicking! I’m not panicking!”
“We have to do something!”
“We will! We will! Let’s just… Let’s just give her a little longer, OK? Then we’ll call someone.”
Her hoof dropped. Roseluck smoothed her own mane down.
“I’ll give her that nasogastric tube thing,” said Roseluck.
“You think she'll need it?”
“She hasn't eaten anything for ages. I'm not taking that chance, and Doc left the stuff with us.”
“Um. Good. You do that then.”
Lily waited as patiently as she could outside the bedroom door while Roseluck grunted and moaned and fought with some plastic wiring. A little buzzing signalled success; Roseluck stepped out, definitely green as grass but otherwise remarkably composed for someone who'd just guided a tube up a sleeping nose.
Wisely, Lily refrained from asking how Roseluck had the technical know-how to do that. The girl did hang around Doc all the time, and the fewer grisly details Lily had to hear, the better.
“I'll change it in a bit and then check the stock books for last year.” On her way down, Roseluck added, “I hope we’re doing the right thing.”
You and me both. Lily peeked once more into the room, then slid the door shut and wandered back to the counter.
Throughout the day, the florist’s was dull and lost its colour; the clouds through the window refused to budge, stolid bodyguards of the gloom.
Five minutes before closing time, Lily hurried forwards and flipped the sign from “OPEN” to “CLOSED”. Of the three ponies who’d come in, none had actually bought anything. Forget ‘em, she thought, desperate even within her own head to inject some semblance of the carefree.
Roseluck didn’t look any better after she came out the backroom. If anything, the long hours indoors had greased her mane something fierce, and there were obvious knots dotting her coat where she’d rubbed continuously.
Wordless and wishing they could speak, both of them went up the stairs.
They went right inside the bedroom and stood beside the bed. Both of them stared. Despite themselves, and despite wondering how on earth they could justify this if Daisy woke up and caught them at it, they couldn’t help but stare. Daisy had told them what to do so often that they’d felt like foals half the time. And now they felt like parents brooding over a sickly daughter.
The tube didn't help. Nor did the little retractable stand thing that Doc had left them; Roseluck had come up here frequently to change the feeding bag, and the gooey yellow behind it reminded Lily too much of porridge crossed with sick and left to rot for a few days. The result of this presumably lifesaving procedure was to give the impression that Daisy was on her deathbed.
They stared. They wished they didn’t, and yet they couldn’t help it. Daisy had never looked so vulnerable, so weak…
Twice, Roseluck reached forwards to adjust her, but always drew back at the last second.
Eventually, when the room began to darken under the promise of nightfall, Lily said, “She must be faking it. I’ll bet anything as soon as we step outside, she gets up, does whatever she wants to do, and then goes back to look sleepy the instant she hears us.”
“I haven't seen her do anything but sleep.”
“She's getting up when you're not around, then. With or without that tube thing.”
“Why would she do that?” Roseluck whispered.
“Just to spite us.”
“All right. Then you can prove it. Wake her up.”
Lily shot a look at her. “What?”
“You heard me. Nudge her awake, or something.”
Lily, if anything, drew away a couple of steps. “I think I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.”
“We should call Nurse Redheart… or Doc…”
“Give it one more day.” Lily forced her legs not to tremble, with such effort that they trembled anyway. “One more day, and then we do it. We don’t want… to blow this… out of proportion…”
Pummelling drops soaked their manes to their heads the next morning. All around, the sky was an unforgiving black. In a way, Lily was thankful. It meant she had an excuse if anyone asked her why she shivered.
This time, the front was already open. Hope rising, she splashed towards the dry interior and through the unlit space and over the crashing stairs to burst into the room –
And found Roseluck, standing over Daisy.
Nothing had changed.
Her groan left Lily staggering and she flopped onto the floor.
“She’s getting worse!” Roseluck’s voice shot up. “She’s getting worse! I've changed her feeding bag twice, but she's getting worse!”
Lily jumped to her hooves. She prodded Daisy’s face and hastily wiped her own hoof against the bedstead to remove any sweat. She stamped on the floorboards, close to Daisy’s head. She shouted her name over and over. She sang loud, boisterous national anthems. She rocked Daisy’s body so hard she almost pushed it into the wall opposite.
Nothing had changed.
Groaning, she let Daisy flow back and slopped onto the floor, wishing she could faint and get away, just like Daisy was well away from the two of them. The ugly feeder buzzed nearby and yellow pulsed down the tube, and that was it.
Roseluck’s voice was so quiet she almost didn’t hear it. “We should tell Goldengrape. We owe him that much.”
“NO!” Lily’s fear jolted; she sprang to her feet. “Are you mad!? He’ll go to pieces!”
“And we won’t!? Daisy would want us to let him know how she is!”
“We won’t know that, Roseluck, because Daisy’s not in a state to tell us what she wants! She’s not in a state to tell us anything!”
“Then we’ll call Nurse Redheart!”
“NO, NO, NOOO! That’s even worse! Then she’d be just like…” Lily gulped “…Mister Greenhooves.”
Roseluck’s hoof met her shoulder, and stayed there.
Against the window, the rain hammered on, demanding their attention, trying to get them to acknowledge the dark sky.
“Last chance,” squeaked Roseluck, not meeting her eye. “This evening. If she’s not… by that point… then we’re calling in Doc. And we are getting her back.”
An hour before closing time, Lily threw up her hooves, marched over to the door, and flipped the sign. And locked up. And drew any and all curtains and blinds.
Instantly, the humdrum hours vanished down a pit in her memory. As far as she was concerned, she’d jumped straight from the morning check to the evening.
“Roseluck!” she called, and then she went upstairs without her.
The door. The bedroom. The bed.
Daisy.
Nothing had changed. Nothing was changing. Nothing was going to change. She was this close to tearing her mane out.
“OK,” she said the instant Roseluck stampeded through the door. “That’s it. Call the Doc. I’ll stay and watch over her.”
“But –” Roseluck threw her a frightened look.
Lily returned it.
When the hoofsteps died away and Roseluck rattled the lock and the bell tinkled and the door slammed, Lily was left with nothing but the relentless reminders of rain on the window.
The darkness drained the room of colours, as though twilight had no truck with anything psychedelic, or colourful, or remotely life-affirming.
Out of respect and as a sort of far-too-late apology, Lily did not give Daisy so much as a glance. Instead, her nerves insisted she pace up and down. Once or twice, she stopped to cock an ear. Only the faintest puffs over the rainfall.
“Don’t panic,” she murmured. “Don’t panic. Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic don’t panic dopanicopanicopanic STOP IT! Don’t… panic…” Deep breaths. The room started to wave and distort; the floor lapped at the walls, which flexed around the ceiling. Angrily, she cracked herself like a whip until the solids stayed solid. “Do. Not. Panic. Do not panic. Do not panic.”
Her chest tightened. Thoughts of a heart attack ambushed her before she checked her pulse.
She swallowed again, hoping her fear would go down this time. The mantra eroded her mind: Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic…
To her horror, she wanted to hit Daisy. Somewhere in her head, common sense and courtesy left her behind. Daisy was the cause of all this; that was what she understood.
But then… hadn’t she – Lily – been the cause of Daisy lying there, right now? After all, Daisy struggled the most against her and her stupid, stupid problems…
No. Lily absolutely refused to give the guilt an inch. She was a doer, not a worrier. She’d do something to make it right. She’d do something…
What, though, she had no idea.
Unable to stop herself, she looked at the bed. Daisy began twitching and wincing.
Lily opened her mouth to apologize, but nothing came out.
Eventually, finally, shifting the weight off her mind, she heard the bell tinkle downstairs. Heard their voices. Heard Roseluck and Doc, speaking as urgently as she felt.
Lily sat beside the bed. It only seemed right. She hadn’t spoken the entire time, but neither had she tried looking at the bed.
His mane flat enough to be painted on, Doc gleamed while he set up the equipment and rolled out a spare blanket and pillow.
“Sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” he said, voice muffled deep in the suitcase. “I was trying to replicate the Oneiro-Scope so more than one of us could get in, but the spell –”
Roseluck, hovering over him, backed off for a moment; he’d frozen.
“I mean, the design only works once.”
“What does that mean?” said Roseluck.
“I mean I can’t replicate it,” said Doc lamely. “Limitations. Technical limitations. Now… how ready are we feeling for this new frontier in science-pony relations?”
Lily listened out for the faint puffs. They seemed to be getting fainter.
“Remind me again how this works?” she heard Roseluck say.
“Assuming that Daisy’s trapped in an anomalous REM sleep phase, she’ll be experiencing some quite powerful dreams. Emotions affect dreams, and if this is stress-related, then she’ll be having some nigh-realistic experiences in there. Possibly hallucinatory. Hard to tell without an EEG.”
“An egg?” said Roseluck, puzzled.
“No, no, no. An EEG. Electro-encephalo-graph. It’s a device that reads pony minds. We made one a while back, remember? Big and clunky, and not perfect, it must be said –”
“Wow,” breathed Roseluck.
“– and anyway, it doesn't work. A bit above my pay grade, I regret to say. Missing some vital components, and they don't come cheap, but by golly we came pretty close, eh?”
“Oh,” said Roseluck, ears wilting.
“Either way, expect a lot of translation from Daisy’s inner thoughts and feelings to the contents of her dreams. Three-level communication. Psychosomatic.”
Grimacing at his pompous word-dropping, Lily shook with the urge to look…
She couldn’t take it anymore.
Lily glanced at Daisy. Her chest was still rising and falling. The twitches and winces were becoming more frequent, though…
“Oh, I know this one!” Roseluck cleared her throat. “The contents of the dream will largely reflect the contents of the subject’s mind, though they interact in complex and unpredictable ways.”
And now she paid closer attention, specks of sweat glinted on Daisy’s face…
“Spot on! And should the patient come to understand the nature of the dream, they’ll use the virtual experience as an allegorical aid when they wake up and deal with an actual experience –”
Lily stamped her hoof.
“Don’t you understand?” She brought her hoof down on the side of the bed. “Daisy needs our help! Do something!”
They heard the rain drumming on the rooftop. Cascades of runoff wiped the window down, leaving shimmering lines reflected along the bed, along Daisy’s belly, along her face now fading to a frown.
“What if she never wakes up?” said Lily quietly.
“B-B-But she can,” stammered Doc. “That’s why I built the Oneiro-Scope. Conventional waking techniques tend to be, uh… unreliable. Now, Luna’s works suggest that it’s perfectly possible for ponies to cross over into other reveries synchronously, though usually only when she lets them do it.”
“And your machine can let us into her dream, can it?” snapped Lily. She never understood what Roseluck saw in this stallion. When he wasn’t gushing like a schoolboy at a candy store, he struck her as the sort to throw around large words to hide how obvious his ideas really were.
Doc shuffled on the spot. “One of us, one of us.”
“What good would that do?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Should she be locked in a sleep cycle feedback loop, an outside agent can open the loop again and –”
“He means,” piped up Roseluck, “if she gets stuck, someone can bring her back.”
Lily stared at Roseluck’s thorn of an expression. Little, but sharp and full of edges. She turned her gaze back to the bed.
Was that the real cause, then? Somewhere inside that curly-maned head? The real reason she stayed among her dreams for longer and longer, the reason she’d been leaving the real world behind every night, for longer and longer, over weeks and weeks?
Outrage sparked across Lily’s heart. What is she hiding? Why does she keep shutting us out?
A sting behind her eye. Hastily, she wiped the offending eyeball, lest anything come through.
“I suppose I could –” began Roseluck.
“I’ll do it,” said Lily.
“You!? But, but you never trust Doc’s machines.”
Lily rounded on her so fast her mane whipped her cheeks. “So? I’m going in there. I’m not always a coward.”
“I never said you were…”
No. Everyone else does. This is my show now. If anyone else dares say I’m a paranoid freak-out on legs after this, I’ll… I’ll… Well, they better not say it, that’s all.
Mad, am I? We’ll see who’s mad when I’ve jumped into a dream and dragged Daisy kicking and screaming out of it. Oh yes, we’ll see who’s mad, then!
Sense only trickled in once her gaze caught the helmet in Doc’s grip. Frankly, Roseluck had a point.
“How does this work, then?” Lily said.
“Um… you lie down on the floor and I put the helmet on. Daisy gets a helmet too. Soon as you’re off to sleep, I’ll activate the harmonizer module – here in the suitcase, with the flashing lights – and then modulate the brainwave patterns –”
“We’ll get you into her dreams,” said Roseluck, opening the dresser.
Blanket and pillow lay on the planks. She reached forwards to guide Lily onto the floor.
“Hope the floor’s not too uncomfortable,” said Roseluck, blushing.
“So I just go in, grab her, and get her out, right?” Lily grimaced; even through the blanket wrapped around her, the floor was an ice block. “Anyway, it’s only dreams. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Roseluck held her gaze for a moment. “Just promise me you’ll help her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s her dream. And she’s our friend.”
Lily didn’t reply. There wasn’t really anything she could, from the bottom of her heart, say to that.
“We’ll keep an eye on things from this end.” Roseluck wiped a few errant locks of hair out of Lily’s eyes.
From the suitcase with the flashing lights, a click and a buzz. “All set,” said Doc. “Now just relax and think sleepy thoughts. We’ll have you off to the Land of Nod before you can say ‘REM sleep’.”
“Good luck,” was all Roseluck managed.
Lily didn’t even smile. While she closed her eyes and willed herself to wind down, she wondered if she’d need any luck at all.
At the end of the day, they were only dreams, right?
In the darkness, she felt the hard floor press against her back for hours before her mind became a confused blur.