“Aren’t horses supposed to be able to sleep standing up?” asked Trip as he kicked the sheets around on his bed.
On the other side of the room, from her own bed, Rose responded drowsily “If you want to try it, go ahead.”
Trip tossed his body so he was facing the other way. “C’mon, don’t tell me your tired already.” he whined.
“Trip, I spent most of my day walking through a forest. And then I had a very filling meal. I am telling you, I am very tired.”
Trip kicked his back legs in an attempt to find a comfortable position in the sheets. “Well, so did I, but I can’t close my eyes. I’m too wired.”
She groaned. “Well, maybe if you try closing your eyes and not talking, you’ll fall asleep eventually.”
He turned his head around on the pillow. “I’m afraid of what happens when I go to sleep. What happens if I meet that voice?”
“Then you talk to it, it tells you things, and stuff happens.” she said, her voice muffled by her talking face down into the pillow. “Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. You should try going to sleep to see if it happens.”
He turned his body so it was facing the same way as his head. “Rose, what’s the most painful thing you’ve felt?” he asked.
“Actually,” she perked up a bit. “There was one time I accidentally got kicked in the head.”
“Really?” Trip asked, turning towards her. “How’d that happen?”
“Oh, I think he meant to kick this carriage or something, and I walked right between him and it, or something. I don’t remember much of what happened right after that.”
“Huh.” Trip sat up and turned the pillow over and layed back down on it. “Mine would probably have to be... this time I passed out while running a race.”
She yawned. “You ran races?”
He fluffed his pillow again. “Yeah. I ran track. And I was really good, too. I won us a lot of races. But after a lot of weeks, they had to kick me out cause I wasn’t taking care of myself, or something. But one of the last races I ran, I was really tired, I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, cause... well, I just didn’t get a lot of sleep for some reason, I don’t really remember. And I didn’t have anything to eat for breakfast. That day, I didn’t have anything to eat for breakfast that day. So, I ran, and I started seeing these black dots in my vision. Eventually, everything blacked out, but not before I lost control of my legs and I face planted into the concrete. How I didn’t have a broken nose when I woke up, I’ll never know. Or even just a whole broken face. I got really lucky. But I walked it off. I was good after a while.”
He paused to pull the sheets back onto his body, and he heard soft, rhythmic breathing. The kind he had heard from Rose when she was asleep on the train.
“Rose,” he turned his head again. “Rose, don’t go to sleep. Don’t leave me alone. Rose.”
The breathing was halted for a second. “Trip? Trip what are you doing to those poor carrots?”
“Rose, I’m not talking to carrots. I mean, I’m not doing anything to carrots. You were dreaming.”
“Well, if I was dreaming, why did you stop me?”
He rolled over so that he was laying on his front. “Cause I’m bored and I think I might have restless leg syndrome.”
“Well, we’ll get one of Celestia’s doctors to mix up a potion for it. In the morning.” she pulled the pillow over her head, definitively ending the conversation between the two of them.
Trip kicked his legs around some more. He felt no ounce of sleep run through his eyes or any other part of his body. He felt like he could have ran a mile. Maybe two miles. He was definitely sure of the mile. Maybe if he ran a mile and tried to go another mile, he’d pass out or become tired enough to the point where he could fall asleep.
He looked at his hoof-hands. They were green. A pale, dark green. How did he never notice this before? He thought back to Celestia’s story. She said she never thought to look down and see if she was dressed.
Is this just something that happens when you switch worlds? he thought to himself. Do you just accept the body that you’re in and don’t think to look down? Or are you so afraid of what you’ve become that subconsciously you don’t even think to look down at yourself? Wait, I looked at my hands when I first came here. Didn’t I notice their color then? Why didn’t Rose tell me I’m the color of Kermit the Frog? Can that happen? Wouldn’t I blend into the background of trees and grass and stuff? And wouldn’t that make it hard for the viewers at home to see me? Oh wait, they can’t see me, I can’t get in the way of the important stuff. Wait, then how did I get into the palace? Isn’t the princess important? Geez, I wonder how Ren’s doing right now. Dad can’t be too good either. At least they have each other for support right now. Ugh, my nose is probably broken. I’m gonna need plastic surgery for that. I don’t want a nose job. Do ponies get snout jobs? That white one probably has at one point. Is it morning yet?
He rolled over and looked out the window. The sky was still a dark blue with the occasional specks of white. He kicked his legs out of frustration, causing the sheets and blankets to fly off of his bed and onto the floor. He stretched out his body in resignation. “You’ve got to be f- kidding me.” he muttered to himself. He rolled himself off of the bed and landed with a soft splat. The ground was cold and unforgiving, but surprisingly, he found more comfort in it’s solidness than on the bed’s squishy frame. But the air was still cold around him. He rolled around so he was facing the other way, and used his back legs to push him towards where the blankets laid on ground.
He grabbed one of the edges of the blanket and rolled himself all up in it. The blanket protected him from the cold and the occasional bump in the floor, while the floor itself gave enough support and restriction that moving wasn’t as available an option.
Soon, he could feel his thoughts and heart rate slowing down. His eyelids actually managed to start to feel heavy. Darkness swelled around him.
He awoke, still as a quadruped. There was no sky around him, just blankness, with gray colored cracks that existed in the air beyond what he could reach. He looked down, and his feet were all encased by some black material that ran down from his legs and into the root of a tree that was entirely black in itself. Attempting to move was interesting, because all of his motions were incredibly slowed, but once he told his muscles to move in a certain direction, they would continue to move in that direction if he didn’t actively stop them. It was what he imagined being an astronaut in space would have felt like.
He moved his front foot, and it was eventually up in the air near his face, still floating somewhat. He moved all four of his legs, and his body spun around, the black matter around his legs moving along with him like puppet strings. Eventually, he was completely upside down. He laughed at the improbability of the situation and attempted to turn himself around. By awkwardly flailing his legs and head, he turned around and faced the other direction. The matter connection his legs to the tree had become tangled in itself in the process, slightly, restricting his movement.
While attempting to untangle himself, Trip looked up, and saw the upside-down image of a yellow snake, slithering along on of the roots of the tree.
It was making strange, guttural noises that sounded like it was in agony. Trip looked closer and saw that it was trying to rub up against the trunk of the tree, but every time it did, it recoiled back and made another noise.
Trip waved his legs to get closer to the creature. At first, it didn’t notice his presence there, but as he had to work harder to get closer, he started breathing heavier, and that’s when the reptile noticed him. It jerked its head in his direction, and froze. Trip tried to stop moving to, but against his will, he continued to float in the direction of the creature. As he got closer, it started backing away, until the point where it could back away no further, but Trip kept creeping closer and closer.
It lashed out at Trip, and hit him in the neck, without biting him. The strike was somewhat powerful, but instead of causing him pain, it only cause Trip to freeze in midair.
Trip nodded as a sign of gratitude. The snake nodded back as a sign of recognition.
The snake went back to its business of rubbing itself against the tree. Now that he was closer, he could see a transparent yellow film being shed from the snake’s skin. But it wasn’t all the way off. The skin was still connected on the lower half of its body. The excess skin had only been shed to the point where there was an open wound on the snake’s side. The snake would rub its body against the bark of the tree, and when it grazed the open wound, it would let out a pained sound and back away from the tree.
Trip tilted his head in confusion. He tried stretching out his neck to assist the creature in some way, but as he did, it hissed in anger. Trip jerked his head back. The snake calmly went back to its futile attempt at shedding itself. Trip continued to watch, silently, for a few minutes.
Eventually, after grazing against its wound so many times, the snake turned to the tree and hissed at it. It struck the bark with its teeth bared, and ended up chipping one of its teeth. It let out a high pitched whine that Trip wasn’t completely sure was possible for snakes to make.
The snake turned its head towards Trip and bared its tooth at him. Trip’s eyes fell directly on the single fang, and the snake turned away in what seemed like embarrassment.
It looked at its own wound, and then the bark, contemplatively. It then turned its head, so the opposite side was facing the bark now. It started rubbing its opposite side against the bark, now able to get the entire length of its body. Unfortunately, only half of the skin on the reptile’s body was able to peel off, still leaving the skin around the area of the wound attached to itself. The creature looked down at the area, and collapsed in complete resignation. It’s head and lengths of its body were hanging off of roots of the tree and into the nothingness.
For a long time, it just stood there. Trip pushed his head forward to inch closer towards the snake. By the time he was close enough to be able to touch it with his nose, the snake started slithering forward, heading for an eternal fall. Trip felt as if he should have done something, but as he stretched out his neck to try and grab the creature using his teeth, he found that he couldn’t reach far enough to do so.
Trip’s eyes opened slowly. He was still encased in the blankets. It was still nighttime. He was still on the floor. He was still a pony. But he felt different.