//------------------------------// // Sleep Helps Not // Story: The Poly Little Pony // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// A new group on Fimfiction, 'No Author Left Unnoticed!' was kind enough to allow me to join. Sometimes, I search the New Groups to find a way to promote my works and gain new readers - reasonable enough, since art unseen (or unread) is not art at all. The group recently ran a writing prompt contest, with the 3000 word maximum prompt being “Sleep doesn't help if it's your soul that's tired.”. I decided that, having not written anything in quite some time, I might throw my hat into the ring. Being an essentially sad sort of prompt - weary souls are no fun, I assure you - I instantly thought of one of my own story universes: Red Kryptonite. Ponies from Equestria forced to become humanized refugees on our earth. They arrive at some point around the end of the 50's and the beginning of the 60's, and are a part of the reason for the so-called "Baby Boom" of that time. The increase in population was not entirely because of frisky humans, but also the result of a government effort to integrate hundreds of thousands of humanized former Equestrians, escaping their dying universe through a portal to our own. Their lives are hard, and brutal and short, just as has been the lot of all humanity since it arose on our definitively non-magical world. It isn't easy being a refugee, it is worse, perhaps, being a refugee from a cosmos of friendship and wonder, now trying to fit in to a soulless world of unforgiving physical laws, where the only magic is card tricks and the self delusions of religion. As we shall discover, sleep helps not, when there is no soul that can be rested. Sleep Helps Not A Red Kryptonite Story By Chatoyance "Sleep is a problem for me. It isn't the nightmares - it's always the same nightmare - it's that I just never feel rested when I wake up." Lucy leaned forward, tilting her head to take the teacup in her teeth. She stopped, blinked, and grimaced. She forced her forelegs - arms! - forward so that her hands could grasp and clutch. It had been almost sixty earth years and even now, still, the bony brown octopuses that wriggled where her hooves had been still felt alien to her. "The Luna nightmare, or the Celestia one?" Nicole had turned out to be a good friend. Newmen weren't easily accepted by many humans because of their extraversal origins. The government kept track of them, they had special Transformed Human Identification and Naturalization Guarantee benefit cards, and had to regularly report to FEMA homomorph handlers. The general public had limited knowledge about the Foothold Portal Incident, and many thought of it as an alien invasion. But former Equestrians found it difficult to remain isolated or closed off, and many had made cishuman friends that accepted and embraced them. Lucy put her cup down carefully. In her proper life, she had been a pegasus; teeth and lips and wingtips had been her way to relate to the world. She stared for a moment at her mildly wrinkled foreleg spiders. They looked old, yet she was at most a young adult, just out of foalhood. Equestrian lives lasted for three-hundred and fifty to four hundred earth years. Sixty was barely out of the paddock. Humans were fortunate to reach eighty. "The Luna one. The one where she is in the bunker they built around the Portal, trying to keep the gate open to the last moment. The one where she runs out of... the one where she fades away." "And you, all of you, you never hear what she says at the very end?" Nicole sipped her own tea. It was warm and slightly sweet in her mouth. "No. As far as I know, only your government..." when the handlers heard Newmen phrase things that way, sharp reprimands followed "...THE government heard her last words. We've tried that Freedom Of Information thing for decades, but... apparently it's classified, whatever it was she said." Nicole lifted the pot "More?" Lucy's soft head shake made her put the teapot down. "At least it isn't the Celestia dream, right?" Lucy shuddered. "Yeah." She tucked her hands between her hindlegs on the chair. "I haven't had one of those in forever. Thankfully." It was always the same. Celestia, standing with a few unknown ponies and the remains of Discord, desperately trying to keep an entire pocket universe from draining away into some horrific abyss, winds howling, mountains and continents tumbling like clods of soil into oblivion around her. Celestia shrieking the last of her power and soul away to allow as many of her ponies to escape to earth as possible. "Maybe... maybe that one is finally done. Maybe the Luna one will go too. Then you could have happy dreams from now on?" Nicole offered another strawberry jam tart, then took one for herself. "I hope so. Not many dreams left now." She felt bad the moment she said it. Lucy often felt like she complained far too often. To humans, an Equestrian lifespan was unthinkable. At least something of Equestria had been saved, after a fashion. That was, after all, what Celestia had given her existence for. Newmen could pass down their stories to whoever would listen. "Sorry." Nicole smiled, patiently. "It's okay. I get it." She munched the last of her tart and swallowed a sip of herbal tea. "I'd feel the same way, if I had grown up in a magical land. I think anybody would." Lucy nodded. She hadn't gotten to grow up there at all. She was still a foal when she had been shoved through the Portal, and transformed in a FEMA shelter. Humanification. Three ounces of something Celestia and Discord had together created and her hooves became fleshy crabs and her muzzle became a flat ape's face. Her mother hadn't made it to earth. Nopony she had known in her foalhood had made it. It was just random luck who survived the end of her world. At least she had the Newman support group. And Nicole, of course. "I... I need to go." Lucy stood up and brushed the bright pink hair from her eyes. It was naturally so; many Newmen had small physical anomalies that marked them as different. Hers was her pink hair, which grew well below her neck, to halfway down her back. She told people that she dyed it, and wore bulky clothing that hid the locks growing down her spine. "It's late, and I need to... confront... bed. You were a true peach putting up with me on a worknight and all. Thank you, Nicole." "Hey, not everyone has a friend from another universe. It's a special thing, and worth a little effort." Nicole yawned. It was late, and she had the early shift, dammit. "I'm honored to be your friend." Lucy stood close, leaned in, and placed her chin over Nicole's shoulder. Then she remembered to raise her forelegs and wrap them in a properly human hug. Nicole patted her, and stroked the mane down her back through the sweater. "Hang in there, Lucy. Hang in there." "I will." Lucy passed through the door and made her way cautiously down the steps. She felt more unsteady every day. It was almost a trauma - at her age, she should be pronking and galloping across endless green fields at the peak of her power. But she wasn't a pony anymore. And she wasn't young as a human. Far from young. Maybe only two decades left. One of the Newmen she had known had died at fifty-three. Heart disease. On earth, hearts could actually become diseased. The old Volkswagen started slowly in the autumn air. It still got cold, but not like it had when she had first arrived on earth. The climate was so different from what she remembered. It had changed, but not because of any pegasus. That would have been her job, if Equestria hadn't died. Her parents had worked in weather. They had lived in a cloud city, and she would have grown up to move rainclouds to where earthponies needed them to grow crops. Now, she lived on Newman benefits and the occasional check she got for allowing herself to be a scientific test subject. The human government was always curious about anything involving her extrauniversal origins. They drew her blood and scraped her skin, took samples of her hair and sweat. They never seemed to find anything, but, then again, if they did, why would she ever know? Humans were very good at keeping secrets, especially if they thought something could give them power over other humans. They wanted Equestrian magic for their military. For a 'Thaumatic Bomb'. But there wasn't any magic. Not anymore. The Portal had closed when Luna... had ended. Driving was something Lucy enjoyed. It wasn't flying, like a pegasus should do, but it was fast, and smooth, and felt like some kind of glide. She had tried human flight, strapped into a seat inside a metal tube, and it had made her cry. That wasn't flying. She had known flying. As a foal, she had been considered precocious. Her father had imagined her a Wonderbolt one day. She couldn't remember what he looked like anymore. She could barely remember what the face of any pony looked like anymore. She couldn't remember her mother! Not at all, not her voice, not her face, not even the color of her coat. A horn honked. Rain was streaming down and it was hard to see in the dark. It got very dark at night on earth. Lucy struggled, wrinkling her brow. She couldn't remember. Her mother. Her mother was gone inside her. Maybe... maybe her tail? Was it short, or long? Did she trim her fetlocks close? What color were her eyes? A horn screamed past. Lucy couldn't even remember the smell of her mother. Every pony always remembers the smell of their own mother. But now, she had a human nose, and those barely worked at all. Lights blurred through the spattering rain. Not even the scent of her own mother was left to her. The horns were screaming, the light blinding her, filling the entirety of her rainstreaked windshield. She slammed her hindleg down on the brakes, but, in the moment, she used her toes instead of the entire foot. Ponies walked on their toes, on their hooves. It was a natural mistake. The brake didn't depress far and she felt her middle toe break from the stress. Then the windshield broke, glass blossoming around her, slicing through her face, through her hair, as the airbag exploded around her. She didn't have time to register the impact into it. It was over before she could even tell how hard it was to breath. She was drifting, in and out of darkness. Sometimes it was light, flashing red and blue, with crying voices and shouts and sirens. And sometimes it was dark and warm and quiet. She liked the dark and quiet better. It seemed as if she were on some kind of board for a while, being carried. There was a light shining in her eyes, first one, and then... no, just one. A stallion's voice. Asking for her name. She tried to tell the colt, but... no, it was just some human in strange clothing... "You don't understand!" Somepony... some woman... was arguing with... a man. Her voice was strident. "She has internal bleeding. She needs to be in surgery right now, this isn't..." "We will see she receives proper medical care. This is out of your hands, this is an official transfer to a government facility. There's a chopper on the roof right now and..." The man sounded very stern to Lucy. "There isn't time! Doctor Franklin made it very clear that..." "Everything is under control. We need you to leave now. Thank you for your cooperation." A door slammed. Another door opened. Lucy heard the sound of scuffling, tromping human boots and felt herself being moved. She saw lights above her swim past, everything was blurry and liquid, as if she were somehow underwater. She must be on human potions. She tried to look around, but her head was locked tightly in place by some kind of clamp. She still couldn't open her left eye, something felt distantly wrong there. Her cheek felt strange. There wasn't any pain, so that was good. She felt very tired. She saw something above flickering, spinning very fast, then suddenly there was a roof over her once more. The brief cold of being outside had flashed by, hardly registering while it happened. Men talked and voices buzzed and squawked from some machine in the space she was in. A loud noise, like a thousand beating wings, like countless squadrons of pegasai roared in her ears. She fell into the warm darkness and drifted. ",,,Bowells. Miss Bowells!" A man in a suit was crouched over her. He didn't look at all like a doctor. "My name is Jenkins. I'm from the Bureau Of Newman Affairs and Registration. I need you to provide consent. Miss Bowells, do you consent? State 'Yes' if you consent." It was hard to speak. She felt so weary. The Bureau. They deal with ponies. Former... ponies. It was all so blurry, and the sound was so loud. The Bureau had formed quickly after the Portal Incident. They processed all the Newmen and gave them their cards. Gave them new names. Human names. Immigrant names. They laughed when they gave the names. Stupid names. Bad names. Lucy couldn't even remember her real name anymore. It had to do with wind, somehow. "Miss Bowells! Do you consent?" She had no idea what was going on. Was she hurt? Did something happen? "Yeah... sure. Yes. Whatever." It was hard to say the words, but she managed. It was exhausting saying them. "Thank you, Miss Bowells. America thanks you." The man was gone. Maybe he sat down. Lucy giggled inside herself. Maybe he spread his wings and flew away! Lucy had never felt so tired. She felt like she wanted to sleep. The noise had become almost soft now, a gentle whomping whirr that seemed soothing in a way. But sleep. Sleep was no good. Always the nightmares. Most Newmen had them. It was traumatic to lose your home universe, the therapists said. The Bureau researchers thought the Princesses had sent the nightmares into the Newmen's heads, accidentally, as they... as they faded away. When the magic died. There was no magic here. In all of the universe of the humans, not a speck of magic anywhere. No unicorns, no spells, just stories and tales. The humans wanted magic, they craved it, but earth had none. It never would. That was the price to escape Equestria. The nearest universe had no magic. It was a strictly material universe. No magic. No souls. Just meat. Just stones. So... sleepy. Lucy closed her eye. She felt the flying machine shift direction, she felt the wind move it. She remembered flying! As a foal, so small, but she could fly. Father was so proud. Momma lifted her up with her hornfield and kissed her all over. They had iced clovercream and daddy had called her his little cloud dancer. Cloud... Dancer! Was that her name? Her real name? Cloud Dancer slowly fell asleep, but not to a nightmare. For the first time since becoming human, she was dreaming a happy dream. She was eating clovercreme with her mommy and daddy, because she had flown so well! It was such a lovely dream, like the ones she had known long, long before, when Luna had walked in them. She was home, truly home. It was so wonderful, so relaxing that she never wanted to wake up. Sometimes, wishes do come true. The End