My dream melted away, and the meaningless words spoken by faceless ponies became distant memories as the feelings of my sleep mask and heavy comforter grounded me in reality. I sighed, smiling as I enjoyed a final few seconds of beauty rest, then lifted my mask off and opened my eyes.
My first and brief impression was that I had simply woken up early, and it was still dark. But my smile died quickly as I realized that was not the case.
"What?" I said, as if asking the room itself what I was seeing.
I could see my bed, well lit just as it was every morning, with a rounded spot of sunlight falling on one corner from my window.
I could not see my window.
I could see my floor, the softest non-cloud material available, in a deep blue that perfectly complemented the faded purple walls.
I could not see the walls.
Instead, the floor stretched away, disappearing into a black horizon in all directions. Several blinks of my heavy eyelids did nothing to change it. My ponnequins, my sewing table, my bookshelf, my area rug, the walls and ceiling, the windows, the door, none of it was anywhere to be seen.
Convinced I was still dreaming, I used my magic to pinch myself, only for it to hurt like one would expect.
"What?" I said again.
I pushed my comforter down and sat up, using my magic to grab blindly at the glass of water on my nightstand, only to feel nothing there. A glance confirmed that my nightstand was also missing.
I decided to take a moment to collect my thoughts and try to make sense of my situation.
If this wasn't a dream, it could only be some kind of powerful magic. Discord playing a prank, perhaps? That seemed likely, even if his sense of humor was a tad less dark than this. Or perhaps I was trapped in some kind of magic device, like a book or relic? Held in suspension? I recalled how vivid my nightmares were when I had been cocooned by the changelings. Maybe the Tantabus was responsible? I could certainly see it coming after the ones responsible for defeating it before.
Whatever the cause, my first concern was for my sister.
"Sweetie Belle?" I called out into the void, only to notice just how odd my voice sounded. It was like the vast emptiness swallowed it up and left nothing but the vibrations in my own head, silent now but still echoing through my mind.
Silent.
I noticed the silence then, as the phantom sounds of my voice faded to leave a terrifying nothingness. I strained to hear anything. Birds chirping, ponies passing, wind rustling the leaves, Opalescence mewling for breakfast, anything.
What I heard was the muffled thump-thump of my own heart and the faint straining of my clenched jaw.
I realized I was holding my breath, and I let it out in a rush of air that drowned out the other sounds. After a few breaths, however, I could still hear my heart in between each one.
"Hahaha, ahhhhh," I said to temporarily cover it up again, turning the sigh into a cheery hum.
The longer I spent covering the awful silence with my own voice, the more I relaxed. Equestria and I had been through worse, and I was sure that, whatever this was, my friends would come for me. Or, even if they were experiencing the same thing, there was a long list of very capable creatures we knew who could help us.
My heart drummed in my ears. I resumed humming.
Well, I certainly couldn't just wait without trying to solve the mystery myself. The silence alone would drive me mad if I sat still.
I decided to investigate the spot of sunlight on my bed's corner first. Where was it coming from? Still on my bed, I crawled to it and stuck a hoof out over it. Oddly, my hoof made a shadow but didn't get any brighter itself. Stranger still, I could feel the warmth of sunlight where it was landing. I decided to lie on my back and stick my face in it.
When my eyes entered the light, I immediately had the urge to shut them, despite seeing nothing but blackness above. I slowly opened them to slits, squinting hard to look for the source, but could not see anything. When I pulled my head out, I rubbed my eyes and saw spots dancing in my vision, lingering even after opening them again.
Sitting up in bed now, I looked down at the spot of sunshine and grimaced.
I decided to check the floor next, stepping carefully down onto the familiar carpet. It felt totally normal. Experimental stomps made the hollow thud one would expect from floorboards beneath it, too.
And walking a full circle around my bed revealed nothing helpful.
I stared into the distance. With no frame of reference but uniformly black sky and blue floor, it was impossible to tell just how far away I was seeing. Everything seemed to be evenly lit, too. Everything except the sunlight on my bed, that is.
I was afraid to leave my bed behind, but I wanted to walk out and see how far away the horizon was. Given the odd nature of magic, it could have all been some kind of illusion. Because of this, my first steps were slow, swinging a hoof out in a wide arc in front of me to check for invisible furniture or walls. I stopped when I was definitely beyond where my walls would have been and switched to a cautious trot.
Regularly looking back, I watched my bed shrink. And shrink. And shrink. Being a large four-poster bed, it stood out on the horizon. But, lacking any kind of frame of reference made the distant object look like doll furniture. I figured I had probably gone the equivalent of halfway across Ponyville.
Still, everything around me was endless carpet.
It was time to turn back.
Long distances can be deceptive, and the walk back felt longer with the bed constantly in view. I kept thinking that it should have been getting bigger, but it wasn't. Not at first, anyway, and the illusion persisted long enough to make me question whether it was getting closer at all. It reminded me of seeing a distant pony in dim light, either walking towards you or away from you, but you can’t tell which. I did eventually make it back, much to my relief.
Part of me hoped to find something had changed about the bed, but it was still just as I had left it.
"Okay, bed," I said, "give me a clue. What's going on? Where's my bedroom? Where's my sister? Where are my friends? Where's Opalescence?"
I continued asking questions to keep the silence at bay as I stripped off the linens and slid the mattress onto the floor. The box spring revealed nothing new. The pile of sheets, my pillows, and my red comforter all lay separately and neatly folded; they were ordinary and unhelpful. My mattress taunted me with its lack of clues.
With frustration building, I removed the box spring from the frame, uncovering the floor beneath my bed.
Something was off, this time. Something was missing.
The patch of sunlight! It wasn't there.
I quickly replaced the box spring, and saw the light hitting it as I did. Then I moved it, and where a bright spot should have appeared on the floor, it was simply swallowed up. Passing my hoof across it, I could feel where it was.
"Okay, sun. Just you and me. Show me where you're coming from."
I tossed a sheet on the floor and slowly levitated it up and along the sunbeam, watching it closely.
"Of course!" I said.
It was coming from the direction of where my window would be. And my window, being about head height… yes! As I moved away from my bed, holding up the sheet, I could follow the sunlight by keeping it level.
With nothing better to go on, I located my sleeping mask and tore the elastic band off. "Sorry, mask, but I need this," I told it.
It was difficult without scissors, but not impossible to tear off a square from my sheets. I'd worked without tools during fashion emergencies before, after all. I held the sheet up to my face, happy that I could see through the thin fabric well enough, and standing in the sunlight brightened it up just as I'd hoped it would.
I stripped a sharp splinter of wood from my bed's frame and removed thick threads from my comforter, using them to sew the bit of sheet to the elastic band, making a new mask. It wasn't pretty. In fact, it was downright ugly... but it would be useful. Applejack would be proud.
I tried it on, and it worked like a charm. The light was a bit harsh on my eyes, so I gathered a second sheet to try it with two layers. That made it impossible to see, but the brightness was manageable, so I sewed it along the top where it could be folded up just in case.
Taking the mask off, I spared a glance at my bed. Even in its ruined state, it promised safety. Familiarity. But, with a goal in mind now, it also promised complacency. I had to investigate the sunlight. If I found my window, perhaps I could get outside and escape this place. My bed, however, was going to do nothing for me except be a nice place to sleep.
I nodded, and, with new conviction, put the mask over my face after locating the sunbeam.
From there, it was as simple as walking while keeping the sunlight in my face.
Simple.
I hadn't considered that simple would not be easy.