//------------------------------// // 5/19: The Mære // Story: In the Country of Posh Things // by Posh //------------------------------// Apple Bloom blinked. In the instant that her eyes closed, and reopened, the universe lurched, and she woke. She found herself in a murky expanse of darkness, painted by pale blue fingers of moonlight. The shapes she glimpsed were familiar, though: her desk, her chair her dressers. Reality recentered itself. She was in her bed; she'd never left. She blinked again, and lifted her hoof to rub her eyes–– And felt her breathing hitch as her hoof refused to move. Apple Bloom tried to swivel her head, press her cheek against the cool cloth of the pillow, to make sure her hoof was still attached to her body. Her neck wouldn't move either. Nor did her other hoof, her hind legs, even her tail. She tried to cry out; a dry gasp hissed through her teeth. Her heart thundered as she sucked in fresh breath, thundered harder as even that felt constricted, as if some weight was pressing on her chest. It was like she was trapped in a suit of armor, too heavy to move, too tight for her to breathe. Her eyes were the only things she could control. She searched the room for something, someone who could save her... Something stirred underneath her desk – a lump of darkness that rose, until it stood over her bed. Indistinct at first, it gradually took on a familiar form: limbs, wings, horn and head. Princess Luna, Apple Bloom thought. Her moment of relief withered as it shook its head and let pink and purple tresses tumble across its neck. A faceless Princess Twilight stood at the foot of her bed. Twilight spoke in a wordless tongue, clacking like hoofsteps on wooden stairs. Twilight's head creaked like a rusty hinge as she turned her face toward the bedroom door. Apple Bloom's eyes rolled in their sockets, in the direction the shadowy alicorn now faced. A featureless filly of white flesh and bushy red mane stood by the door. It looked at Apple Bloom with its void of a face, and nodded, once. Twilight turned toward Apple Bloom again. From nothing, a narrow white line stitched across the middle of its face; milky white eyes split open above that. The edges of her mouth, thin as a wire, curled upward, creeping up to her ears. She mounted the bed, and crawled, catlike, toward Apple Bloom. Apple Bloom screamed silence until her lungs burned. An inky forehoof planted on Apple Bloom's barrel, and pushed all air from Apple Bloom's lungs. Twilight shoved her into her mattress – shoved her through her mattress. The darkness crawled from the edges of the room and into the edges of Apple Bloom's vision, until all she saw was that grin, those eyes, wreathed in wriggling black tendrils as she sank into an inescapable void. Desperately, Apple Bloom willed her body to move. She beat her hooves and kicked her legs and whipped her head, straining against the suit of armor she'd been cinched into, and when none of that worked, she poured every ounce of will and focus and Apple family grit into moving her hoof, one hoof, just the meagerest little inch... It twitched. Apple Bloom pushed again, wriggled her hoof experimentally, and, satisfied, swung it like a mace through Twilight's face. And, like a rope had snapped, Apple Bloom's body lurched forward. Hooves beat madly against the bed that threatened to swallow her, lashed out at the shapes encroaching upon her. Shouting, she leaped from bed and galloped to her door and fumbled desperately for the knob, before that Twilight-thing could return and drag her down to who knows where... Applejack's voice, thick with sleep, rasped at her through the heavy wooden door. "Apple Bloom? You okay?" Without thinking, Apple Bloom said, "The bed's too deep; I almost fell right in." There was an awkward scraping sound from the other side of the door. "We'll, uh, fix that right up tomorrow. Why don'tcha try gettin' back to sleep?" Apple Bloom blinked. Her eyelids moved slowly, like she was coated in molasses. She rapped on the door, glanced back at her bed – wary, without knowing why, without knowing why she was even out of it. She crept back to bed without answering Applejack, and crawled under the disheveled covers. Pulling them tightly up to her neck, she rolled onto her back, and stared past the foot of her bed, at her desk. Apple Bloom didn't look away until sleep reclaimed her.