Sweetie Belle cannot sleep.
It is too bright.
She closes her eyes.
It is still too bright.
She opens her eyes.
It feels the same.
She closes her eyes once more and turns over in bed.
Stiff.
Stuffy.
Uncomfortable.
She groans.
Colors flicker across the room.
She squints her eyes open.
Shadows and shapes.
Fuzzy.
She frowns at the room.
It tastes like her mouth.
Dry and flavorless and bland.
She cannot sleep.
Sweetie Belle sighs.
She makes to kick the covers off.
They are not there.
It does not matter.
She finds it easier to roll over and hop out of bed.
The floor feels dull beneath her tiny hooves.
Like dusty cardboard.
She trots dizzily out of the room.
A wobble.
A teeter.
She pauses to rub her tired eyes.
The lights stay the same.
Her brow furrows.
But she presses on.
Down the second floor hallway.
Five feet.
Ten feet.
Sweetie Belle stifles a yawn.
She passes family portraits on the walls.
Full of ears and manes but no eyes.
Fifteen feet.
Twenty.
Sweetie Belle thinks about waking up in the morning.
There is a reading assignment that she procrastinated on.
She should still have an hour before school in the morning to read the selection assigned to her.
Forty feet.
Eighty.
Her mouth aches for water.
She reaches the bathroom.
She trots inside.
The sink should be to her right.
She blinks.
It is now.
Sweetie Belle scoots a stool over.
She stands on it.
She reaches with both hooves.
She grasps a plastic cup and holds it over the faucet.
She turns the handle counter-clockwise.
Nothing happens.
Curious, she turns it clockwise.
Nothing happens.
With a grunt of frustration, Sweetie Belle turns the handle counter-clockwise again.
Water pours out of the faucet.
It fills the cup.
Slowly.
Exhaling, Sweetie Belle looks to her left.
On the wall is a calendar.
She vaguely remembers marking something down for next week.
She cannot see the mark now.
She cannot see the days.
What is today?
What is tomorrow?
Sweetie Belle is thirsty.
She stops the faucet.
The cup is not even more than halfway full.
Sweetie Belle does not care.
She sits down on the stool and brings the cup to her muzzle for a sip.
The water is not cool.
The water is not refreshing.
The water is not water.
Confused, Sweetie Belle lowers the glass and looks inside of it.
The glass is empty.
Something settles beneath her.
She looks straight down.
The bathroom floor is covered with dust.
She looks at the sink in front of her.
Dust overflows past the porcelain edge.
Curious, she turns the glass completely upside down and gives it a shake.
A fresh layer of dust pours out.
Sweetie Belle is confused.
She opens her mouth to say something.
Colors come out
She blinks.
She speaks again.
More colors.
She looks for a pattern, but finds none.
What was yesterday?
The fuzziness persists.
Sweetie Belle looks towards the bathroom window above the tub.
It is bright outside.
It is bright inside.
She places the glass down and approaches the window.
Before she even reaches the tub, she bumps into something.
A solid wall of color dances in front of her.
She gasps, and the colors coalesce against the barrier.
They look like refracted light against the gossamer surfaces of soap bubbles.
Dancing and fuzzy and stale.
Sweetie Belle blinks.
Her hooves shift through sand.
The dust is everywhere now.
It coats the walls and the floors and the colors.
Sweetie Belle turns around.
She looks out the hallway.
A straight corridor leads straight to the first floor kitchen.
She pivots to the right.
Another corridor opens into her school classroom.
She pivots to the right.
A hallway is flanked by the storefronts of Manehattan and Canterlot.
She pivots to the right.
A flat sun looms over a flat beach with a flat ocean.
She pivots to the right.
She is inside the Crusaders' tree house.
It is bright here as well.
The colors are all stale.
Like her mouth.
She tries to move.
Dust rises, falls, and settles.
A swath of sediment stops in mid-air.
It drapes over something.
That something moves.
It has a head that is close to the ceiling.
It looks down at Sweetie Belle.
It has many many many legs.
Sweetie Belle freezes.
Paralyzed.
Like so many forgotten moments in bed.
Gravity presses her harder to the sand.
It looks at her.
It raises one of its many many legs.
Sweetie Belle can move again.
She uses the opportunity to breathe and breathe and breathe.
The colors ripple between them.
It is too fuzzy.
There is not enough light to see beyond the sand.
An arm moves.
Drags.
Curls.
Sweetie Belle watches.
It paints the sky that is the ceiling that is the air that is the floor.
It draws lines.
Circles.
Focal points.
Sweetie Belle watches.
Sweetie Belle studies.
Sweetie Belle counts.
It finishes its pattern.
A singularity.
Surrounded by fourteen spheres.
It waits.
Its head and limbs are still.
Sweetie Belle looks at it.
Then she looks at the pattern.
What is a day?
What is night?
Sweetie Belle is still thirsty.
But not for water.
She trots forward in the sand.
She raises her hoof.
She creates an elliptical circle, framing the fifth sphere around the singularity.
She looks up at it.
She points at herself, and then at the fifth sphere.
It tilts its head aside.
Colors protrude.
They resemble pressure against Sweetie's eyeballs when she rubs her lids.
She suddenly remembers the smell of grass during recess.
The colors fade.
The dust ripples.
The image is erased.
It draws new lines.
Sweetie Belle watches.
It is a square.
But it is not a square.
It is both inside and out.
Within and without.
Above and below.
The longer that Sweetie Belle stares at it, the more the colors flicker and froth.
She realizes she is exhaling.
She cannot make out her own words.
The fuzziness and the dizziness coalesce.
It observes this.
It stops.
All is silent and still.
When Sweetie Belle finally recovers, she refuses to look at what it has drawn.
There is a ripple of stale air.
The dusty floor is blank once again.
It waits.
Or maybe it contemplates.
Sweetie Belle looks at it.
She decides to take the initiative.
She places two marks in the sand.
She then places three.
Then five.
Then seven.
Eleven.
Thirteen.
Seventeen.
Nineteen
Twenty-three.
Twenty-nine.
Thirty-one.
Thirty-seven.
It watches.
Its head tilts and revolves.
More like it materialize through the fuzziness.
All peering.
All full of manes and ears but no eyes.
Many many many many many many legs.
She sees them watching.
She shuffles a dozen feet to the side.
She sketches two lines.
Perpendicular.
A right angle.
She sketches them at separate lengths.
Then she attaches a third and longest line.
Forming a right triangle.
On one line, she marks three notches.
On the second, she marks four.
On the longest line that is opposite of the right angle she sketches five notches.
She takes a step back and gestures at the design.
There are more of it now.
Surrounding.
Towering.
The walls are their legs.
Colors flicker between them.
It is so very bright.
Sweetie Belle sees it with both her eyes closed and open.
She tries to get their attention again.
She presses a hoof to the floor.
She prepares to write out her name.
But she cannot.
She does not remember how.
She tries to say her name out loud.
Only colors come out.
She cannot come up with the strokes or the angles that are required.
Sweetie Belle fidgets, feeling ashamed and embarrassed.
She is so very thirsty.
It circles.
It draws closer.
She pivots to look at it.
It leans over.
The head splits in four, but remains the same.
A stream of color spills out.
It travels for thousands of yards.
It comes to a point between them.
It grows solid.
It gains weight.
It shrinks as it expands.
Sweetie Belle feels herself spinning while staying still.
She is in one place and yet she is in all places.
The longer she looks at the infinitesimal point, the more she feels like screaming.
Her colors swirl into the event horizon.
They form prismatic dances as they plummet towards the center.
But they never reach.
She is ashamed of this too.
At last.
Before she could faint.
It stops speaking.
The four become one above the legs and legs and legs.
It leans back.
It stares at her.
Sweetie Belle breathes.
Sweetie Belle weeps.
Sweetie Belle understands.
Nopony is ready yet.
It reaches down to her.
All legs.
They all reach down.
All legs and legs and legs.
They clasp around Sweetie's skull.
A burst of color.
She falls back and the sand parts and she sinks through the house and the earth and the stars and the fuzziness.
“Grnngh... mrmmfff...”
Sweetie Belle's eyes blearily opened. She couldn't move. She was simply too exhausted. And sleepy.
Yawning, she turned over in bed—only to yelp in sudden pain.
“Eeek!”
Wincing—and more than a little bit startled—the little filly shot up straight. She leaned against her headboard, rubbing her neck and chest. Her skin stung in a few specific patches. Summoning a luminosity spell from her inner being, she made the tip of her horn glow. Looking down at herself, she saw eight symmetrically arranged welts along the slope of her tummy. The skin was slightly raw and hairless at each point. Reaching a hoof down, she touched one of the marks, feeling a teensy bit of a sting.
“Huh...?”
Lights.
Bright and strobing.
Squinting, Sweetie Belle looked out her bedside window. She caught the barest hint of rotating streamers. Colorful and bright and lifting. Like nebulaic stars. They were gone just as soon as she imagined them. As was the discomfort in her chest.
“Mmmmmfff...”
She tongued the inside of her muzzle. Her mouth felt dry. Parched. And unbelievably thirsty.
“Mehhhh...” Another yawn, and she surrendered to the fluffy comfort of her pillow. “Five more minutes.”
She thought of pineapple sherbet floats. Her muzzle curved into a smile. She fell asleep, dreaming of fruit and rainbows.