//------------------------------//
// This Tastes Like Bleach: Part 3 
// Story: Sweet Dreams, LLP 
// by AnchorsAway 
//------------------------------//




“What do you see?”
Her voice wisped on unseen winds, filling Bright Shine’s head. He couldn’t see her, at least not yet. Everything was still coming into focus, and his world was still dark. 
“I…I can’t see,” he said, reaching his hooves out in front of him but feeling thin air. He couldn’t even find his hooves in front of his face.
“Yes, you can, Bright Shine,” Luna assured him. Her voice sounded deep and far away, as if Bright Shine was hearing her from another room. “You just have to open your eyes. It’s only a dream, after all. Now, tell me what you can see.”
“I see…I see stars,” he said and gasped. One by one, they erupted out of the void, gently popping to life. They hung in the blackness above him, twinkling with colors he had never experienced before. Their lights pulsed and wavered as if they were alive, a living, breathing membrane of light.
“Good,” Luna’s voice echoed. “Look down. Tell me what else you see.”
Bright Shine dipped his head. “It’s all white,” he said. “Like a dirty grey.” The soil beneath his hooves was bleached, the barren ground pocket-marked with craters. Some were small, while others were much larger, their rims towering mountains that cast thick shadows across the alabaster landscape. “What is this place?” he asked. 
“This is calibration,” Luna informed him, her voice carrying into space with a deep, distant rumble. “Just some simple steps to align your subconscious with the Dream Core. Think of it like a gateway to your dreams, Bright Shine. But I’m sure you recognize what it is modeled after; it only comes out in the sky every night.” 
Bright Shine turned around, and his eyes glowed with the awe and wonder of the blue orb dominating the horizon. The Earth hung in the sky, a ball of intense blues and greens that filled the edge of the empty landscape. And if the Earth was there, he concluded, that meant he was here. 
“The moon,” he breathed aloud, though he wasn’t sure how he could breathe in a vacuum. “It seems so real.” He scraped the regolith with a hoof and watched the particles float gently away. 
“I thought I would at least make the calibration process interesting,” Luna chuckled elsewhere. “I built it myself. Funny how you can reconstruct all the little details. I was only there for a thousand years, of course.” 
“Here for all that time,” he said quietly, “with home right over the horizon.” 
“Nothing more than a memory now. But we need to keep moving,” the Princess said, hurrying him along. “You should see somepony there with you. Can you see her?” 
It took Bright Shine a minute to spot the pony the Princess was talking about. “Somepony else?” And as he spotted her, his bubbling enthusiasm died like a smoldering fire.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he deadpanned. “Seriously, is this a joke?”
The pony had materialized just a few short paces away, an unassuming mare with a long brown mane. Unassuming, except for the sign she shook in her hooves.

Quills and Sofas


New Summer Selections Arriving Now

“A sign spinner? What is she doing in here with me?” he demanded, stepping cautiously back from the spinner. She had a pair of earbuds in, bobbing and dancing enthusiastically to her music. 
“Don’t worry, she isn’t real. It’s just an advertisement,” Luna assured him. “Bits are a little tight around here. Paid advertising helps keep the lights on,” she said begrudgingly with a mutter. 
“I hate sign spinners.” 
“I know, I know, just try not to think about it. Besides, this the last part of calibration,” she said. “Now, this part is important. I want to move the sign with your mind. Just give it a spin,” she offered. 
“Move the sign with my mind?” She was beginning to sound even crazier. “How do I move a sign with my mind?” The spinner held the cutout over her head, bobbing it back and forth to her music with a grin. 
“You have to trust me on this, Bright Shine. Reach out with your mind. Imagine yourself as that sign.” 
“I’d rather not,” he said with an indignant snort, turning up his nose as the spinner waggled the sign in his direction, the mare dancing and popping in place to the music. 
“You’re stuck here with her longer the more you wait.” 
That was all he needed to hear. 
“Fine, be the sign,” he grumbled. 
Bright Shine focused intently on the sign spinner, dismissing her sloppy choreography. He needed to be the sign. He needed it to spin.
“Imagine yourself as one with the sign, Bright Shine,” Luna encouraged him. 
Slowly at first, the spinner twirled the cutout. Round and round, she spun the sign in her hooves, picking up speed. 
“You’re doing great, Bright Shine. Spin that sign,” Luna said, observing from her unseen vantage. 
Bright Shine could feel it now. It was the most bizarre feeling he had ever experienced. It was as if his mind was the sign, spinning faster and faster. It was a blur in the spinner’s hooves, so fast that everything was collapsing around him due to its sheer speed. It was a black hole, a spinning sign of unproportional gravity, pulling everything toward it. But still, it spun faster, propelled by intent focus. Bright Shine was one with the sign; he could feel it. His mind was drawn into its depths, entranced by its mesmeric ballet. The last thing he experienced was the world falling away, and once again reality flew to black.


Calibration Complete



 
“Open your eyes.”
Like lighting a match, everything erupted around him, bursting to life in an explosive flash of color and sound. It was like being launched from a cannon. 
Bright Shine was thrust head-first into his new reality, every sense assaulting him at once: the damp, swampy air on his tongue, the slimy mush beneath his hooves, a chorus of bullfrogs, and the unmistakable, putrid smell of timberwolf breath. 
“Shh.” Luna slapped her hoof over his mouth before he could even breathe. Bright Shine’s eyes drew wide, darting like enraged bees all around him. He remembered this place. He remembered the mauling pretty well by now. The nightmare had returned with a vengeance, right where he left off.
Luna was bent down beside him, her eyes glued to the edge of the boulder the two crouched behind. “Quiet, or they might hear us,” she whispered. “And I’m sure you don’t want a repeat of last time. Don’t forget, it will feel ten times more real this time.” 
Bright Shine’s eyes slowly crept from their cover behind the boulder. The two timberwolves that had chased him endlessly through the dark, twisting forest were sniffing the ground, tracing their scent. 
“What do we do?” he hissed feverishly, pressing himself down low. This had been a series of continuous mistakes. “They’ll find us.”  
Luna grabbed onto his shoulders tight, her eyes locked in his wild gaze. “This is your dream, Bright Shine. I’m just a passenger. You tell me what we should we do.” 
“H-hide,” he uttered. “We should find someplace to hide.” 
“But we can’t hide here,” she calmly reminded him. “Where do we need to hide? You need to let the dream take you. Let it lead you, Bright Shine.” 
Bright Shine scanned the overgrown and gloom, searching for someplace, anyplace, that they might escape the hungry wolves. But everything was so dark; he could barely see a few paces in front of him. “I don’t know,” he whispered with a pitiful whimper. “I can’t even see.” 
“You don’t have to see. Let your mind guide you, Bright Shine,” Luna softly told him.
A glimmer? His hoof shot up. “There,” he said and pointed. “I’m not sure. I think there is something there, a cave.” 
The small portal of black stood out against the trees, surrounded by rock. 
“Good catch. Stay low and try not to draw the wolves’ attention. We don’t need a repeat of last time,” she warned, hunkering down and slinking toward the cave. 
“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” he said with a worried scowl, pressing himself down low and crawling after the alicorn. “Slow down!” he hissed. 
The interior of the cave was awash in total darkness; Bright Shine probed the ground in front of him as they crept inside. “Can you see anything?” he asked. “We might be walking into an Ursa’s open mouth for all I know.” 
A warm light spontaneously grew beside him, glowing brighter till the cave walls materialized out the blackness. Luna’s horntip held the orb of light, illuminating their path. “Nice job keeping your cool back there.” She patted him roughly on the back. “But now we need to probe deeper,” she told him, pointing further into the cave. “We need to get to the bottom of your nightmare, find the source. We were meant to find this cave. It’s your subconscious steering us toward the center of your mind.”
“Is that such a wise thing to do? We don’t even know what is down here, or at least I don’t. Why does my subconscious want all of this anyway?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” She moved deeper into the cave. “These nightmares, when did they start?” the Princess asked, surveying clusters of stalactites dripping with moisture.
“I don’t know,” he claimed despondently. “Like, maybe a few months ago.”
“And why do you think it was?”
“Do nightmares need to have a reason?”
“There’s always a deeper meaning,” she explained, taking off further into the cave, Bright Shine following cautiously. “What do you think, Pepper?” Luna called out. “Check manual five of Temperaments and Tribulations.” 
“Here it is,” Pepper replied, the mare’s voice suddenly resonating through the fabric of the dream, echoing with the same deep, distant rumble as in calibration. Bright Shine could hear her all around them.
“Timberwolves and miscellaneous pursuing terrors,”—she read out—“are a common nightmare experience, usually followed by them mauling the dreamer, signifying deeper underlying social ineptitudes or deteriorating personal relationships.” 
“In-ineptitudes?” Bright Shine stopped and squinted at the cave ceiling accusingly. “I don’t have social ineptitude,” he mocked defensively. 
“What’s the verdict from the jury, Gilbert?” Luna asked. They weaved around slithering, slippery walls. 
“Well, the equipment is reading the patient’s dream patterns as slightly scattered,” the griffon’s voice squawked into his dream. “But I think the data is telling me this thing goes deep, like really deep. You are barely on the surface, Doc.” 
“I knew I sensed the same when I stumbled upon him,” Luna replied. “We’ll just have to start chipping away at it. I knew there was more to your nightmares than met the mind, Bright Shine.” 
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Bright Shine trotted to keep up with the alicorn, not daring to stray too far from the light. He could almost feel there was something out there—something waiting for him. “I don’t like you poking and prodding inside my subconscious.” 
“No need to be a scaredy-colt,” Luna retorted. 
“You weren’t the one mauled,” he grumbled softly. “So what makes me any different anyway?” he wondered, shifting his thoughts away from the unfortunate experience he hoped not to repeat. “I’m sure you’ve visited hundreds of other dreams before. What makes mine any different?”
“The mind is a powerful force, Bright Shine.” Luna ducked beneath an overhang of rock, her mane brushing its cold surface. “A dream as deep and as powerful as yours—you’re lucky to have a very capable dream state.”
“Somehow, I don’t feel so lucky.”
“Wait,” she stopped, holding up a hoof for him to be quiet. “Do you hear that?”
Bright Shine paused and cocked an ear. It was faint but audible. Whatever it was, it was just ahead, crawling from deeper within the cave. “It sounds like…crying.” 
“It’s close,” Luna said, eyes peering into the dark. “Up ahead.” 
Bright Shine didn’t have to wonder long, for as the duo rounded the bend, the glow of Luna’s horn outlined somepony. She appeared to be a mare, and she was crying. Her back was to them as they approached; she was curled tightly in a ball, her sobs coming in spasms that wracked her body. 
“Who is this pony to you, Bright Shine?” Luna stopped and stood over the weeping mare, gazing over the pitiful thing. “Who is she to you?” 
Bright Shine cautiously approached, eyes locked on the mare curled upon the damp cave floor. “Snow Berry?” 
“You know her?” 
“She’s my special somepo—” He stopped. “Was my special somepony,” Bright Shine corrected himself. “She left me last month, packed her things in the middle of the night.” 
“Why?” Luna wondered, eyes looking forlornly on the mare. 
“It all happened so fast,” he said with a sigh, his gaze locked on Snow Berry. “I really don’t know why. She packed her things and moved back to Fillydelphia. It was so sudden I never really got the chance to understand why. Something about how it ‘would never work.’” The words overflowed with a distant hurt. “What couldn’t work between us?” 
“Maybe now you have that chance.” Luna nodded down at Snow Berry. “But that will only happen if you take that first step.” She backed away, motioning him to come forward. 
Bright Shine gulped, stepping closer and gently kneeling beside the mare. He reached his hoof out, leaving it hovering over her side. “Snow Berry?” 
“Go on,” Luna said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Tell her how you feel. You deserve to know why.” 
Bright Shine’s hoof gently rested on Snow Berry, the mare’s sobs slowly subsiding till they were little more than sniffles. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’m sorry for whatever I did to hurt you.” His throat clenched tight, his eyes hot. “Please, tell me. Tell me what I did to make you leave.” 
Snow Berry froze, her shakes and tremors evaporating in an instant. 
“What you did?” Her words were like stones, emotionless and gritty. The small mare voice was toneless, steeled without feeling. “You want me to tell you where it all went wrong?” 
“Yes, please,” Bright Shine begged her, her face still buried beneath her hooves. “I don’t understand.” 
“You—” Snow Berry’s breaths were deeper, her body trembling with the word. 
“Bright Shine, you might want to step back,” Luna warned, uneasily taking a few strides back herself. Snow Berry was shaking again, slowly lifting herself from the cave floor. The mare’s slender face came into the light. Her eyes were slack, yet bore a barely contained fire.
“You come all the way down here, and you have the nerve to ask me where it all went wrong. Why I would leave somepony like you.” 
Bright Shine fell back, Snow Berry’s words dripping with uncontained rage. She turned toward him, the mare’s eyes igniting into twin blazes that drowned out Luna’s feeble light. The fire blinded them both, Bright Shine shielding his face from where he lay as Snow Berry stood over him. He couldn’t move; he was frozen beneath the mare’s piercing glare. 
 “You!”  Snow Berry’s voice boomed and rattled like thunder. “You insignificant little pony are asking me why I would dump somepony like you.” 
“I take back what I said earlier, don’t listen to her.” Luna was pressed against the cave wall, retreating as far as she could from the mad mare. “Don’t listen to her, Bright Shine.” 
But Bright Shine wasn’t moving anywhere fast, the stallion stiff upon his back, staring up at the monstrous manifestation towering over him. 
“You’re just an inconsequential, timid, loser!” Snow Berry roared, taking another aggressive step toward him. Grotesque and leathery clawed wings unfurling from her back with a nightmarish flourish. “No job, no girlfriend, a dumpy little apartment, and no life. What pony could ever love you?” she hissed through dagger-like teeth that sprouted, dripping with saliva. 
“She’s wrong!” Luna shouted words of encouragement at him. “This is just you, Bright Shine. She is just a projection of your subconscious.”
Bright Shine was pinned to the ground by Snow Berry’s horrifying presence. “Well why in Tartarus is my subconscious a nightmare version of my ex?!”
Luna’s light grew brighter, her horn filling the cave with a cold, blue luminescence. “You can’t be afraid of yourself, Bright Shine. Stand up to yourself. Tell her that she’s wrong about you. You are somepony, not some insignificant loser!” 
“But...but she’s right.” 
“What?” Luna’s light fizzled for a moment. 
“I mean s-she’s right,” Bright Shine stuttered, looking back at her. “I’ve got no job, no girlfriend, and my apartment walls are so thin that you can hear the mice screwing at night. I am right. I’ve got no life,” he said woefully. 
“Then we’ve got a major problem,” Luna muttered, staring at Snow Berry, who was licking her fangs. 
“What should I do?” Bright Shine was backpedaling as Snow Berry crept closer toward him. The bonfires in her eyes seemed to burn hungrily. 
“I think this is an obstacle for another time,” she breathed quickly. “In fact, I think you need to run, Bright Shine,” Luna proclaimed.  “Right now!”  In an instant, “Doctor L” was charging further into the tunnel, leaving Bright Shine scrambling after her. 
Snow Berry charged, Bright Shine stumbling to his hooves in a flurry of gravel. He ducked, a massive leathery wing swiping at him and raking the cave wall with an angry screech. 
“Running away like you always have, Bright?” Snow Berry hissed. “What should I have expected?” the monstrous mare growled, pursuing them further into the cave. If it wasn’t timberwolves after Bright Shine, it was a bloodthirsty ex. 
Bright Shine’s lungs burned. He could barely keep up with Luna, the alicorn soaring through the hairpin turns and ducking below sharp stalactites that clung to the ceiling. She barely had room to fly, the passage becoming narrower the deeper they fled. 
“What do we do?” Bright Shine asked with a breathless puff, the hot cave air pressing down on him like a leaden blanket. 
“You have to take control!” Luna shouted back to him, her wingtips now inches away from brushing the walls. “It’s not really Snow Berry; she isn’t in here. The only thing chasing you is your subconscious, Bright Shine.” 
“Well then why is my subconscious trying to kill me? Make it fuck off!” 
“The patient’s inner subconscious is manifesting his fears of humiliation and inadequacy into a physical form,” Pepper’s voice echoed from outside. “I read it in Prefectures of Pursuing Phantoms. That must be the first root of the patient’s nightmares. It fits perfectly with the timberwolves and the blood-sucking ex-girlfriend.” She sounded all too happy with her diagnosis. 
“Thank you, Pepper, but right now isn’t the best opportunity to congratulate on a job well done. We have another problem.” 
Luna screeched to a halt, hooves falling and digging deep ruts into the muddy cave floor. 
Bright Shine tried to slow down, to step around her, but it was too late. He crashed into her, her horn light flickering briefly as they both smacked the door blocking their path with a meaty thwack. 
“Dead end,” Luna moaned, rubbing a healthy bump on her head. Bright Shine grasped his snout with a hoof, the pain surprisingly real for a dream. It hurt like a mother-hoofer. 
“Thanks for the heads up,” he wheezed through his bruised snout. 
“What did you find?” Gilbert asked from outside. 
“It’s a door,” Luna told him, standing up shakily and stroking the boards. They were thick, sturdy, a bright coat of purple painted across them. There was no handle, no latch. A single keyhole in its center was its only other feature. 
“She’s getting closer,” Bright Shine warned Luna. He could already see Snow Berry’s burning eyes lighting the last bend. 
“Where’s the key, Bright Shine?” Luna searched their surroundings, but there was no place a key could have been hidden. The walls were almost perfectly smooth. 
“Key? Why would I have a key?” he demanded. 
“It’s your door. You were the only one who could have locked it. So, where is the key?” Luna must have seen they were running out of time. She undoubtedly could hear Snow Berry’s thunderous hooves approaching. 
“But I don’t have a key,” Bright Shine insisted feverishly. “I’ve never even seen this door before.” 
“Alright, we’ll come back to it. Were out of time,” she said in defeat. Snow Berry had rounded the bend, and she was charging them like a freight train. Her eyes lit up the cave, flames licking out their sockets “Pull us out, Gilbert. We’re done in here for now.” 
“Uh-oh,” Gilbert chirped with a clatter of claws on a keyboard. 
“What do you mean, Gilbert? What’s the uh-oh?” she demanded. “Now is not the time for an uh-oh.” 
“I’m ready to wake up, Doc,” Bright Shine hissed, streams of nervous fear pouring off his face. “Wake me up. Wake me up!” His flank was pressed against the locked door, his eyes fixated on the behemoth barreling toward him. 
“I can’t,” Gilbert squawked. “I can pull you out, Doc, but the patient’s dream state is deteriorating. He’s spiraling out of alignment. I can’t pull him out.” 
“Jump out of there, Doc,” Pepper pleaded. “He’ll wake up once his crazy, monstrous ex tears him to pieces.” 
“What!” Bright Shine cried, hooves desperately clawing at the locked door to no avail. 
“I’m not going to leave a patient, Pepper,” Luna reprimanded. “We’re going to have to extract him the old-fashioned way. We’re going to pull you out, Bright Shine.” 
“Whatever you’re going to do, just hurry,” he pleaded, back pressed against the door. Snow Berry was seconds away from tearing straight through him. 
Luna planted her hooves wide, lowing her horn and directing it at Bright Shine. “Don’t move,” she instructed. “I’m not always the best shot.” 
“What are you doing?” he asked frantically, Snow Berry letting out a roar that reverberated through his bones as she cleared the final distance. 
“It’s the only other way to pull you out. I have to kill you, Bright Shine,” she told him. “Don’t worry, it will hurt less than being mauled—somewhat.” 
“Wait, wait, wait,” he rattled off, eyes darting between the blood-sucking rendition of Snow Berry and the horn pointing dangerously at him, glowing with uncontained magical energy. He wasn’t sure which would be worse. 
“A little advice. Don’t tense up, or you may actually wet yourself,” Luna offered helpfully before his world exploded with light. 
And also, pain. Lots of it. 
BANG! 



The first sensation that reached out to him from the void was a strange tightness in his chest. To Bright Shine, it felt like something was planted on his chest, possibly an elephant. 
“Does he look alright to you? He seems kinda pale.” The words reached out to him as reality came into focus once more. 
“He’ll be fine, Pepper. I blasted him right through the noggin, a clean shot. Now, go check his bags and see if you can find a credit card. Blank checks work, too.” 
“I think he’s coming around, Doc.” 
“Crap, quick, put his stuff back like it was. Hurry.” 
“Ohhhhh,” Bright Shine groaned. “My head.” 
“Congratulations!” The face of Luna beamed over him as he clutched his head and writhed in the chair. The lights of the dream chamber were so bright as they materialized.
“Breathe,” he gasped, struggling to fill his lungs. “I can’t breathe.” For several terrifying moments, Bright Shine wondered if he had suffered some terrible side effect, for he was sure he was about to suffocate. That was until he spotted the two black, beady eyes staring at him from atop his midriff.
The eyes, in fact, belonged to a possum. A very large, and very round possum at that. The generously proportioned marsupial twitched its nose and scratch at one of his many chins, the creature never breaking its gaze on the dazed pony it sat atop.
“Oh, Tiberius, get down,” Luna scolded. “Naughty opossum.” She picked up the animal in an extensive levitation field, setting him down on the floor of the dream chamber.
Instantly Bright Shine could breathe again, gulping down lungfuls of air as his mind continued to swim.
“Wonderful job back there, Bright Shine. You’re well on your way to recovery,” Princess Luna congratulated him, halfway ignoring Tiberius, who was attempting to climb the mare’s hind leg. “Here, for you.” She passed him a small piece of paper. 
Bright Shine’s watery eyes squinted over the paper. It was hard to read with the ceaseless thrumming, but he could just make out the words. “This is a receipt for a night club,” he said, confused. “Halter’s and Tie-down’s?” 
“Whoops.” Luna quickly snatched the paper from his hooves, stuffing it into a lab coat pocket. “Wrong one. Don’t know how that got in there. Not mine of course. Here you go,” she apologized and chuckled tensely, pulling another slip from her other pocket. “Your prescription.” 
Bright Shine scanned the scribble, making sure he was reading it correctly. “A job?” he asked. “You’re prescribing me a job?” 
“Not just prescribing you one,” she said with a smile. “I’m offering you one. Here, at Sweet Dreams, LLP. A job is just what you need to help get you started on your dream therapy. You need some purpose,” she informed him, hardly able to contain her enthusiasm. 
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Bright Shine gurgled, letting the script slip from his hooves. 
“It’s not so bad,” Luna offered. “We need a fresh young-blood like yourself; you’d be a perfect dream assistant. Plus, there is the matter of repayment of your bill. Most reputable insurance providers don’t exactly cover us.” 
Bright Shine’s mouth opened and closed, the words caught in his throat. 
“Speechless, huh? I know, it is an exciting opportunity.” 
Bright Shine responded by retching violently, hot bile spewing over the cracked linoleum. 
“Whoops, that’s fine,” Luna said, quickly sidestepping the forming puddle. “That happens from time to time. Don’t worry, there’s a hose out back you can rinse yourself off with.” 
“Sorry anyway,” he said weakly, wiping the dribble from his chin. 
“Don’t fret, I’ll leave it for Broodly to deal with.”
“Nooos!” a defiant voice answered somewhere behind him. “I tolds you all, I’m an alchamists, not your little dirty errand bat! I’m nots cleaning that!”
Luna snapped in the direction of the voice in an instant, her enthusiastic demeanor crushing into a scowl. “Oh yes, you will! I let you sleep here at the center for virtually free, Broodly. You will clean that up!"
“I saids no! You ponies cants treat me like this!”
Bright Shine never saw the Princess throw the object. But he did hear something heavy smash into Brood’s head followed by a string of unintelligible curses trailed by a croaking sob as a door slammed. 
“I think I should be going,” Bright Shine said with a tired groan, sliding limply out the chair onto four unsteady hooves and trying to avoid the puddle of bile. The electrodes tore from his head, leaving more than a dozen bald patches in his coat. He didn’t feel it either way. “I can’t miss that bus,” he said groggily, trying to steady himself. 
“Goodness me, you’re right,” she said. “Look at the time. You just run along then,” Luna told him, levitating his saddlebags on him. “Great progress today, by the way. You did outstanding.” 
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, stumbling to the rear exit and shouldering it open. “Listen, thanks and all, but I think this was a mistake. I won’t tell anypony about you or this place, I swear.” 
These ponies were nuts. If he stayed any longer, he might just lose a limb, he warned himself. With any luck, he could slip away before they tried to collect on their bill. It wasn’t like he would be able to pay it anyway. 
“Oh, Bright Shine,” Luna called to him. 
He stopped, wedged in the doorway, his bloodshot eyes rolling in their sockets as another thread of sputum dripped off his lips. 
“Get some rest, you look terrible. Don’t want to be late for your first day on the job.” She gave him a warm smile. “See you bright and early tomorrow morning.” 
Not happening, Bright Shine firmly told himself just long enough for a fresh wave of nausea to roll over him. He slammed the door behind him. 
It was well past sundown, the moon already having crept over the distant Canterlot Castle towers. The air sent fresh chills up his back, and Bright Shine steeled himself for the run to the bus, hopefully without encountering any diamond dogs. The only positive would be that the sign spinner was likely long gone by now. 
He hated sign spinners.