Awakening Pink

by Masterweaver


Dreamscape

Dreams.....

A shifting miasma of colors and forms twisting into a landscape populated with clouds and creatures, each with their own story, each with their own legend. Armies move across the plains, individuals slither through the halls of ruined space stations, magic screams through the sky...

You have to understand as a writer, I don't get the normal boring flying dreams or wander through the mysterious restaurant dreams. Well not anymore, anyway. It's a lot more epic in my sleep, where I can follow any one character throughout a day or a year. Heck, I even met Discord once! No lie! Basically, take the sterotypical LSD experience but let the user remain focused, and you have my dreams.

Yes. I am a freak.

Anywho, the night's dream started off pretty normally for me, with a sort of spectral hound dragon thing leaping between floating chunks of red rock against a starry background. I followed in its path, tracing some half formed symbol out of the wake of its constant jumps--

"Hi there!"

Spectral hound dragon thing and I both stopped dead and stared. There was a smiling pink pony standing in front of us, looking as if she had just stepped off a flannelgraph and environmentally quite disparate to her surroundings.

"Hey, so which of you is Reid? I need to talk to him like really really really soon, it's kinda important."

The spectral dragon wolf thing gave me a long, slow look, before bounding away into the night.

"Coward! See if I write you into any stories, hmmph." I turned back to the felt pony. "Alright. So let me guess, you're Pinkie Pie."

"Yeperoni! Well, not exactly. It's sort of a maybe thing. Why are you only hands?"

That question came out of the blue. I glanced down at my hands, examining them. "I don't... understand what you mean--"

"I mean why don't you have a face?" Pinkie tilted her head. "You've got this sort of black thing that kinda looks like the center on an eye but it's just floating there and then there's all this woooOOOooo stuff that goes straight to the hands. It's not really creepy, but it is kinda weird."

"You do know I don't keep mirrors in my dreams, right?" I snorted. "Great. Now this is a lucid dream, it'll take me a while to get my creative energies flowing again. What do you want?"

"I wanna talk! About us! About what's going on here!"

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, so--"

"See, this is what I mean! I saw you roll your eyes, but you don't have eyes, so it was more of a feeling of eye-rolling than real eye-rolling and I'm kinda thinking that's part of the problem here!"

"What problem? There is no problem here, I don't know what you're talking about!"

The felt pony managed to give me a deadpan look. "Really. You don't have a problem? Not after that whole 'Pinkie give us a speech' thing back there?"

"...I've always been bad with crowds. They were being loud. And I handled that pretty well--"

"Hey guess what? I'm in your head! I can see how you think! And it's amazing!" She danced around me, giggling happily. "You've got these micronodes of environments and entire fictional ecologies swirling in a constant web of music and light and dark, like this wonderful amazing forest of vines and wires populated by singing immortal monkey caterpillars, or a setting where the hero only has a small amount of information and is destined to become a major politcal player for THREE different species of aliens, or the whole plethora of your pony OCs!"

I shrugged, a bit of warmth in my heart. "Well, yeah. I like to build worlds, it's what I do--"

"But which node is yours?"

"They're all mine--"

The felt pony pushed me to the ground. "No! They're all theirs! You make the worlds for them! Your characters! The vast majority don't even know you exist! The ones that do want to KILL YOU! And then, when I come along, you ignore me entirely!"

I looked up at her. "So, what's wrong with that? I don't hate you, I just want to stay me."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Reid Xansta Priddy, that's who I am!"

Pinkie snorted. "No, that's just a name. Pinkie Pie, Pinkimena, the Pink one--don't think I didn't see that title, mister, I've had time to poke around here! Doesn't matter what you call me, I know who I am," she finished proudly.

"You don't know who you are. This is a dream. You are a figment of my imagination. A representation of my fear."

"Am I?"

I pushed her off. "Look. We're fighting. This isn't right. We have to work together to get through this, whether or not you're real."

"That's what I'm saying! Why are you ignoring me?"

"I'm not ignoring you!"

"Don't you like me?"

"Of course I do! I wrote the Psychologest series, and after this whole thing is over I'm going to keep writing them!"

She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Yeah, about that. Why do chapters take so long? I mean you plunked out the Derpy and Lyra chapters really quickly but with Trixie--"

"The more screen time a pony has, the more complicated their issues. And since Pinkie is supposed to use her zanyness in the treatment, I have to focus it down." I waved a hand dismissively. "I haven't even figured out exactly what the next pony will have, it's just a general depression."

"You could have her look at Cadance's wedding and say something like 'Maybe I should date'."

"That..." I paused. "Wow, that could actually work, thanks."

"Welcome." Pinkie smiled. "So, anyway, I just want you to let me out a little more often and stop having panic attacks whenever you slip into character. I'm the element of laughter, the whole freak out thing is totally not me."

"Party of One."

"Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome. Doesn't count."

"Touche.... speaking of cutie marks, do I have to make parties or anything?"

Pinkie tilted her head. "I dunno. I'm new to this too. Maybe you can ask Erishy when you meet her."

"Or I could ask her over the internet."

"But you won't, because you don't want to worry her."

I sighed. "Yeah... you're right. She's going through so much already... At least I think she is, that's how these things usually work in the fanfics."

"Hey, do you think we're in a fanfic?"

"Infinite universe therom: Everything happens somewhere. So, no. But also yes."

"Oh, it depends on where you're standing! I get it."

"Relative fictionality. I was actually working on a musical number for you where you explain it."

"Neat!" Pinkie yawned. "Well anyways, you're about to wake up soon."

"What? My dreams usually last for hours!"

"Yeeeeeeah... um, about that..." Pinkie rubbed her mane sheepishly. "Side effect of being a pony, short dreams. Also, sorry about the pillow."

"What?"

"Okay, I'll cap off with this:"

She looked me in the eyes.

"Who are you?"

***

My eyes snapped open in the early morning dark, as I clutched Figment to my chest and breathed heavily. For some reason, I just... just couldn't think. My ears were pinned against my skull as I tried to keep myself from leaping up and screaming.

Eventually, I brought my heart rate down to normal. "Juths a shreamth..."

There was a quiet moment.

"....Wha eh enth ma mawth?"