//------------------------------// // Prologue: Living A Dream // Story: That Maverick With The Dog // by Dan The Man //------------------------------// Prologue - Living A Dream (You may want to play this) Last night as I lay on my pillow,… Last night as I lay on my bed…, Last night as I lay on my pillow,… I thought you, dear Dashie, were dead. “Oh, you’re just playing silly again, aren’t you?” Yes… I mean no. Dashie, please, I really thought that something happened to you. I haven’t seen you for such a long time. Two years, at least. “Pah, two years flat, dad!” Oh Dash… “Mmh? Yeah?” Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to do it. “Do what? I beg you, don’t you do anything nutty!” I… no, no. I said that tomorrow… I want to go into town. It has been a long enough time. “Oh yeah, and what will you do there? Have a coffee?” Dunno. I honestly don’t. But I can’t just… “Sure you can. You know what they say; if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything!” Dash. It has been two years. I cannot just sit in my house, eat onion soup all day and wait for a miracle to happen. “Come on, Dad. You know as well as me that I will return some day.” When... you return. “Yeah. Think about it. I can’t just abandon you here on this crazy planet like nothing, right?” Dash… “Wait for it… yeah: I’ll bring everypony along, Dad. It’s gonna be great fun. I’ll also get Pinkie. And we all know what’s she’ll do.” Party? “Party!” Dash. What will Celestia… the Princess… say? “Mmmh… May-be she’ll change her mind?” Change her mind? Is it ever that easy? “Why don’t we try it out? The both of us?” But when? “When time’s ripe. For Pete’s sake, I sound like Zecora already.” Heh. Tomorrow, Dash. Tomorrow I’ll go to town, I’m sure they’ll be happy as heck to see me around again. Tomorrow, I’ll do it. “And what if I come back tomorrow?” What if not? “I will. Maybe.” Dashie? “Yeah?” Is… is this a dream? “What? What do you mean?” It’s just… the two of us talking… talking about how I have trapped myself in our home for all those months… with Mummy’s pictures,… when you were gone. “Yeah. Dad, I listened to everything, too.“ Dashie… you are still gone. “Of course.” But how can I talk to you, all of a sudden? “I was just thinking… hey, if Pinky Pie can do it, so should I.” Dashie… It doesn’t work that way. You know it doesn’t work that way. But… I still love you. You know that? “I love you too, dad. Just hang in there, and pitch.” It was then that I wake up. A dream, a mellow dream, and it seeps through the fingers of my mind like fine sand. I knew it. I knew it was a dream, but in the end I still embraced it. I was honestly thinking that Dash would… That she would… oh come on. Think for a second. Celestia, she would never allow it. It were never supposed to happen, she said after all. Then, I look out the window, illuminated by bright strips of sunlight, shining on my alarm clock and my green-white covers. The former had not even rung yet, and the latter really needed a change. I should just get up now. Only as my feet touched the ground, my dream came back to me. Tomorrow, I said, tomorrow I will go into town, and I will live my life again. A life without Dashie, without a daughter. Was something like it even possible? But she was safe, wasn’t she? She misses me too, doesn’t she? Shouldn’t I rather feel happy for her? I rub my eyes. How often had I gone over that question in the last months? A billion times? I had to get out. No matter what my damn conscience told me, my Dashie will stay my daughter, and will always be, even when I step over the ledge of my house into the outside world. Nothing will change, nothing at all. So it’s settled. I will go outside now. Outside, into a cold, miserable world, full of remnants of once friendly humans. A rarity these days. I had felt happy around Rainbow, I had felt safe. Perhaps, I would have never thought about returning to the… real world, as they call it. Maybe I would have stayed with her until all eternity. I would have been content. Now, however, I must face the music sooner or later. I know it won’t work out like that. I have to accept, that the rest of this existence will not, cannot centre around my little Dashie anymore. It felt like an eternity since I felt the warmth of the sun on my skin as I strode down my driveway. Out of Dashie’s home, out of my home. And back into the other, 'real' world. Whatever this world may bring.