//------------------------------//
// Dream 
// Story: Home 
// by rainbowloyalty 
//------------------------------//

	There was a grassy field. It was the same field that many ponies sometimes saw in their dreams. In all likelihood, this field was in the middle of nowhere, with green as far as the eye could see in any direction. There was probably no escape from this place; anypony who tried would have probably run themselves to death first. But whatever this place looked like, it didn't feel like it. It felt like the most familiar place in all of Equestria. Because it was. This was a place conceived in the mind, the most personal of all places. As most ponies could trust their minds to come up with something safe and secure, this was the haven away from the harsh realities of the real world. Those who couldn't would probably go insane. 

However, by design, there was something strange about this place. Reality was, for the most part, nonexistent here, although more could not have been expected of a place that only existed in the imagination. Of course this place was different from pony to pony because of the basic subjectivity of perception. Words and the ideas they express are never as consistent as they appear to be. Something simple and seemingly universal like the color green could be interpreted in an incredible number of ways. There was something else in this world that made it different from everything that made sense. It was dependent on time and logic and not much else. Some phenomena in the real world didn't make sense if you thought long enough about them: rainbows, for example. But in this world, things just made too much sense. The lack of the little rough edges around things that made them seem normal was missing. The hyperreal seemed surprisingly fake. And the things that didn't make complete sense, time took care of. There weren't any other ponies, so the seasons should not have changed. Yet, over time, they did, from the springtime of a young foal to the eventual winter of a graying elder. And the fields turned yellow when even time stopped believing in what was real.

So Twilight was presented with the same scene almost everypony had seen before, even though it was not quite the same as anypony had seen before. In a way, it was a personalized dream. She saw everything exactly how she wanted to. She saw her idea of what a grassy field was, and her idea of what a gentle hill was, and her idea of what color the sky was supposed to be. How quickly ponies forget that the sky was not cyan or azure but rather cerulean! Then she saw a sun in the sky, and melodramatically gasped at the ironic scene.

Twilight knew this place would be a dreamland for some ponies. Not just because it was part of a subconscious stream of imagination also known as a dream, but was a place they would actually hope to be in. She didn't understand why at all. This strange place was among the most boring places she could imagine. It was just the same in every direction. Well, that wasn't really true. The pattern of grass was ever-changing and the whole thing was probably a dynamic system anyways. Still, it was an infinitely non-repeating field of monotony. She would have much rather been in a library or even a social gathering. This neverending stretch of land was entirely pointless! There wasn't a single thing to do here except wait. As a matter of fact, there wasn't even anything to wait for. Nothing ever happened in this place. Just waiting. She was in luck, because time was the only thing in this entire blasted land that didn't work. So there was no guarantee of how long the wait was going to be. Her own internal clock ticked the seconds away, however meaningless that was. When she didn't have a watch, Twilight could usually judge the time to the nearest half-hour just by the sun, but this hallucination didn't even have a... well it wasn't supposed to have a sun anyways. 

And... the sun was setting? How in Equestria could that be? This place didn't have princesses watching over it, and it didn't even exist! In fact, wasn't she the one that was supposed to be in control over her own dreams? She silently cursed herself for a minute, and then cursed the enigma that was behind this perfectly orchestrated chaos that was everything she knew for the time being. The sudden emptiness of the compartment in Twilight's brain labeled "total control" vexed her as much as the feasibility of an infinite world did.

At least this gave her something to do. She chased the fleeing sun, she chased it westward, as if directions mattered in a place such as this one. For a while that could have been either a matter of seconds or a matter of hours, she kept pace, as from her perspective, the sun sank no lower in the sky. But just as she was gaining confidence, the sun began to pull ahead in the dash for the grassy horizon. Just another game of cat and mouse where the mouse was going to win. For one beautiful moment, the sun glowed green behind the glassy cloud covering the ground. Another second later, it was gone, not even emanating the brilliant glows of twilight.  The sky was suddenly full of stars. Strangely enough, these stars mirrored the constellations Twilight gazed up at each night. She continued to trot in the same direction, with her original intentions long forgotten, not saying a word, lost in a dream.





She awoke to her head resting on a hard surface. Eyes widening in shock, Twilight noticed that it was still dark outside. Momentarily terrified, she whipped her head backwards to glance at the clock, and the knots tightening inside of her loosened. 3:24 am. I was only asleep for two hours. Getting up slowly from the uncomfortable sleeping position, she lightly ambled over to her trusty lamp, and extinguished it. Then, going over to the window, she took one last look at the darkness outside, this time from the darkness of her own room, and gently closed the window, as not to disturb the peaceful night. Out of habit and laziness and a general feeling of security, she left the window unlocked. After this little nighttime ritual, she climbed into her proper bed, and soon fell asleep once again. A dreamless sleep.