//------------------------------// // Gertie on Tour // Story: Rarity in Slumberland // by Botched Lobotomy //------------------------------// GERTIE loves music. Play some for her and she’ll dance. Music filled the air, sonorous and glorious and all the other words that Rarity would use if she knew them. But this was dreamland: the music sumptuary, aneldic, pressonious. Rarity clapped along cheerfully as the great dinosaurus reared up upon her hind legs and began to move, shaking out her shoulders, sliding back and forth in movements shockingly fluid for such a large creature. The life of the party. Indisputably! So compelled was she, in fact, by the music, by the dancing dinosaurus, that Rarity too found herself up on her hooves, rolling along to the music that reached down into her heart and tugged her along by its rhythm. Gertie trumpeted approvingly, tried her best to match herself to Rarity, the major to the minor, and before they drifted out of sync, fell about with gales of laughter as they had not laughed in years, there was a moment, precious moment, where they were united: moved as one: two stars in orbit round each other. “Darling,” said Rarity, when they were quite recovered, “that was transformystic. Quite transformystic.” Gertie scratched her head with the tip of her tail, embarrassed. “You know, you would have looked quite fine in clothes,” said Rarity, with just a hint of regret, this time. Gertie shook her head emphatically as she could manage – which for a creature so large, was really quite emphatically indeed. Rarity giggled, and stuck her tongue out. “It’s true! You would have! Quite lovely, in fact.” Gertie mimed biting the air just above her, and Rarity let out a squeal. “All right, all right! I’ll drop it.” Dinosauruses do not need clothes. “Neither do ponies,” replied Rarity. “But look, we do it anyway!” And she stood to show off her dress, smooth damask flowed like water in an enormous and voluminous train. Studded with as more gemstones than could be counted, in all the shades of the rainbow, and all the shades beyond that she could dream, as well. Glittering, magnificent, extravagant. At least seven layers of petticoats. Hmph. “I’m sure you’d also look fantasmic in a suit, darling,” said Rarity, kindly. “A disembodied voice to turn heads at any party.” She leaned back against the crook of Gertie’s neck, watching the rise and fall of the dinosaurus’s belly to her left, like a great jewelled balloon in the sparkling noonday sun. She wished, for a moment, that others were here. She was sure Fluttershy would have been captivated entirely by Gertie’s person, trying to give belly-rubs to a creature as big as her house. Twilight, certainly, would have enjoyed the quiet, she seemed more stressed than Rarity, most days. Pinkie Pie would just have loved to be there. Ah, well. The much more gentle rise and fall of Gertie’s neck behind her beat a gentle rhythm, breathing a soft melody into the lines of the landscape itself. “Are you a dreamer, darling?” asked Rarity. Dreamer? Yes, one might say that I was. I...dream. “I’m glad,” Rarity said. “I mean, I suppose everypony dreams, really. But there are those that dream, and there are dreamers. I don’t know where this...” she gestured to encompass Gertie, the whole dreamland, the universe, “comes from. But I’m not sure that I could do without it.” No. I’m not sure I could, either. Although... Time passed: how much, in this timeless place, ponies could not tell. Rarity waited. Is it worth it, do you think? “Of course. As I say, darling, without dreaming—” The other part, rather. Is the dreaming worth the cost of waking up again? “I...” Rarity frowned. The waking world seemed so far away, in here, a land of memory and half-forgotten places. But this was the memory, was it not? “I’m not sure I know.” Memories of each other. Of a future life and past death. Of unicorns and dresses and enormous dinosauruses. As she sleeps, she dreams of other days. Let us see what Gertie sees. And the rocks and mountains, trees and lakeside faded to reveal the dinosaurus memory: a host of huge, long-necked creatures standing on the rocks of some much older and more primal land, lost to all except the future children. Twenty, thirty, fifty creatures watching in a circle one much smaller dinosaurus: Gertie, there could be no doubt, a younger, shorter, leaner Gertie, a Gertie in the prime of youth and joy and heedless life: a dancing dinosaurus. A music filled the air she did not recognise, and yet somehow she thought she knew – familiar, pleasant, like the smell of Mrs Cake’s warm pastry oven in an instant transporting her to the bakery on Mane Street, her mother buying her a cupcake because she’d fallen over. Not the knee that hurt, no, the muddy dress! but she kept that to herself as the cake floated along beside her. Gradually, she realised the tune was coming from the other dinosauruses, their collective song a friendly note that pulled the hoofstrings jauntily. Gertie danced, and danced, and reared up high, and danced, and swung from side to side, and danced, and jumped, and shook the ground, and danced and sprung from foot to foot, and danced, and was completely happy, and in that moment, free. The life of the party. “Yes,” said Rarity, softly. “Herself. The same as waking.” Transformystic. And she awoke.