//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - Who's Argyle? // Story: We Deserve A Soft Epilogue, My Love // by Apple Bottoms //------------------------------// Please, just open your eyes.  It was a wonderful dream - or maybe it wasn’t a dream? Was it a memory? It was warm, and comfortable, but blurry. It had that unreal feeling like a dream, but the more he tried to gain his bearings, the blurrier his surroundings became. He was in a - forest? But then the forest was gone, and he stood in a cloud bank, void of any defining features. There was an orange pony, with a brightly colored mane and tail, but she raced out of his reach before he could catch up to her.  You have to be okay.  The voice! The orange pony was gone, so he ran towards the last steady thing in the dreamscape, the familiar voice. Yet even as he ran, he wondered why it was familiar. With a violent gasp, he pulled himself out of his dream.  The pony who had been leaning close to him jerked backwards and landed hard on the floor. There was a floor now! The room came into abrupt, sharp focus - wait, no, still blurry. He squinted, until he remembered that there should be something on his face. His glasses!  “Argyle?”  The pony on the sofa stiffened and turned towards the voice. The same voice!  “Are you alright?” the voice tried again. “Yes, of course I am.” A beat. “Who are you?”  The unicorn stared at him, and although blurry, Argyle did his best to fill in the rest of the features that his ears couldn’t supply. Big, round, gray like the cloudbank of his dream, and just as blurry. He stood up from the floor - tall! Oh dear, would this be a problem? - and he moved with the sort of easy grace that took a lifetime to build. He leaned close to the sofa and Argyle tensed; when he pulled back he had something in his hoof, which Argyle only recognized when he placed it on his nose and the world came back into focus. His glasses!  “You don’t know who I am?” the unicorn ventured again, and that’s what he was, a unicorn. The word pinged a sharp note of panic, but it hung loosely in his thoughts with nothing else to connect to and quickly faded. A massive unicorn stallion as broad across as a barn, his coat the color of a storm cloud, and a voice that boomed like thunder. And yet his hoof had been so gentle when it placed his glasses on his nose.  When did Argyle get so flowery with his descriptions, anyway?  “No, I don’t think so,” Argyle said lightly, doing his best not to offend the large stranger. “Do you know me?”  “I would like to,” the stranger said tentatively, and he held his hoof out to shake. “My name is Alphabittle. And you are?”  “A pleasure to meet you, Alphabittle. My name is -” Argyle opened his mouth, but nothing came. He closed his mouth, then tried again, opening and closing his mouth a few times, trying to form different letters, hoping one would spark some recognition.  Something was wrong.  Alphabittle must have seen the growing panic in his expression and came closer, but the motion which was meant to comfort only sent Argyle pressing himself more sharply into the corner of the sofa. Alphabittle retreated, pressing himself into the opposite corner as he watched Argyle unravel.  “Why - why don’t I know - that’s - it’s my name, shouldn’t I -”  “Do you remember how you came to Bridlewood?”  “What’s - what’s Bridlewood?” The name pinged a memory, like the word ‘unicorn’ had, but it couldn’t catch, and spiraled away out of his reach.  “The forest? Do you remember a forest?”  The forest in his dream! But the memory had already fluttered away. Was the forest real? Was the orange pony real? Was he orange? No, he confirmed quickly with a glance downward, he was a bright shade of blue, with a darker mane and tail. Not as broad as the one across him on the sofa, that’s for sure. Was he in danger?  “It’s okay, Argyle. Deep breath.”  Argyle! He’d said it before, but now it was like he could really hear it! But when he repeated it back to him, softer, it felt strange in his mouth. “Argyle.”  “That’s you.”  Argyle sat for a moment, and simply stared at Alphabittle. He was making no aggressive moves, and if anything, he almost looked… sad? Worried, perhaps. Celestia’s Pauldrons, he hoped that he remembered how expressions worked better than he remembered who he was. Argyle might not have been able to remember much, but he could remember that waking up with a big stranger in a strange place with no memory to protect him was a very, very unsafe place to be. And it felt like it ought to be even more dangerous, but Argyle couldn’t quite remember why.  “How do you know my name, if you don’t know who I am?”  Argyle’s suspicions kicked into overdrive as panic flashed over Alphabittle’s face, which he tried to disguise (badly) with a cough. “Well, you were mumbling in your sleep. Either you’re Argyle, or you know an Argyle.” Alphabittle swallowed. “Do you, uh, know an Argyle?”  Argyle shook his head; that’s who he was, wasn’t he? It felt right once he said it a few times, like it slotted into some place in his memory, next to the place that reminded him that he wore glasses. But the rest of it - Bridlewood, a forest, unicorn, an orange blur, Alphabittle - none of it was fitting. He touched his glasses with a hoof, then pulled them off of his face, staring at them as if they might hold some answer for him.  “What happened to me?”