Miracles Can Happen
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"You forgot your 'Moonstone,' jackass," she says, with a male voice.
I yell, shut my eyes, and shake my head to clear it. When I look at Rarity again, it's not Rarity, but Spike. I'm hallucinating her now, apparently.
"What's the matter with you?" he says, having winced at my yell.
I wipe my forehead and, shaking, reply, "I thought you were Rarity."
He scrunches his face at me. "I don't know if I should feel insulted or flattered by that comment."
"It'd probably be better if you did neither of those things." My nose throbs, and I lift a claw to it to check the damage. "Maybe you should explain why you hit me instead."
"I told you," he says, pointing a hoof at the floor near my bed, "you forgot your 'Moonstone.'"
I look down at the spot he's pointing to, and lo and behold, there it is: my only ticket home.
"What's a Moonstone, by the way?"
I snatch it up without answering and inspect it. The gem looks undamaged, though I wouldn't be able to tell if there were any new flaws in it, anyway. The dot of light in its center has grown since I last saw it—time is running out, slowly but surely.
"What day is it?"
"What?"
I twist my head to look at him. "When did we talk last?"
"Uh, yesterday."
Yesterday. Okay, don't worry: you were exhausted, you'd spent all night slamming your head against a dome. Just because it seems like you've only been asleep for twenty minutes, doesn't make it true! What was it Luna said about time not flowing properly in dreams? You only dream for a minute, but in reality an hour has—
"Spike? You okay, buddy?"
A hoof appears in my face and waves, stunning me out of my stupor. I yell again and bat his hoof away with the Moonstone.
"Don't touch me!" I snap. "It's dangerous!"
"What?" He tilts his head at me. "What's dangerous?"
"We are! We can't make contact anymore, at all, ever!"
He just stares. I feel my panic starting to subside, and rational thoughts pour back into my head. I realize how insane I must be sounding to him right now and do my best not to blush.
"Look," I say, breathing deep, "there's a lot of info that I got on what's been happening to me and what's gonna happen next."
"That makes two of us," Spike says, shifting, "but I've got a feeling we've got two completely different stories."
"I think I can assure you that we do. So"—I gesture to the desk beyond the bookcase—"why don't you pull up a chair, and we'll trade stories?"
"Sounds like a plan."
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Okay, so, let's start with yesterday morning. After I left you wallowing in self-pity (not a good look for you, by the way), I went straight to the boutique, where I found that yes indeed, you'd screwed up big time. The dome was there, pink glow and all. I got ready to go in and be the knight in shining armor that you so failed to be to her when I noticed that orb of yours sitting in the grass. I figured it was one of Rarity's gemstones, the ones she uses for her dresses, so I picked it up and brought it into the dome with me. Of course, we both know it wasn't, or at least now we both know, so the moment she laid eyes on it, she burst into a fresh batch of tears, which meant another half-hour waiting for her to calm down so I could talk to her again.
But I'm jumping ahead. Allow me to fill you in on what happened those first few minutes I was there.
When did you say you were kicked out? Around sundown? Okay, so that was about twelve hours before I reached the Boutique. Any idea what she can do in twelve hours? Of course not—you've never gone inside the boutique during one of these before. See, you think she spent all that week just cooped up and moping. Nope. The first day was for moping. Just the first. And by moping, I mean she was destroying everything in her house. The other six days are for cleaning up her mess. It helps her stop thinking about whoever she was crushing on at the time. But those first twenty four hours of the dome? That's what I stepped right into the middle of. And my friend, it was as though Tartarus were brought to Dragonsville.
I'm gonna save us about twenty minutes and get to the part where I stopped gawking at her handiwork and actually started looking for her. It took about an hour—yes, really, an hour—to find Rarity in all that mess. She'd finished with the first floor early, apparently, so she'd decided to take a power nap underneath a couch that had been sliced in half and flipped upside-down, using some shreds of curtains for a blanket. Why would that take me an hour, you might ask? Because it was a maze: there were heaps of things that collapsed the moment I got close; there were shards of things that I had to try and walk through without getting them stuck in me; and of course I couldn't really see much because it was dark and she'd broken all the lights. By the light of my horn, the place looked, for all intents and purposes, like the den of a feral dragon living alone with its hoard, out in the wilderness.
I'm sure your Rarity didn't do as much damage as mine did back when Blueblood happened. Dragons are better at that kind of thing. I'm sure you've noticed.
Anyway, the Boutique was a mess, and it terrified me when I realized how quiet it was in there. I mean, we both know Rarity's not that melodramatic, she'd never do something as serious as offing herself, but when I was in there I thought, just for a second... Of course, I shrugged that off the moment it came to me, and I went looking for her. She was sleeping, like I said, and it took a while to work up the guts to wake her—don't laugh at me! You try waking up an emotionally traumatized dragoness when she's in the middle of a breakdown, tell me how that goes. When I finally worked up the balls to tap her on the shoulder, she did exactly what I was afraid she'd do—she pounced. We landed on the wreckage of her coffee table; I'm pretty sure I've still got some splinters from it. It was like she didn't know who I was for a second; she looked primed and ready to slice my head off, but I shoved your little Moon-gem—Moonstone, whatever—in her face, and when she recognized it she burst into tears. Then she fell on top of me and started hugging me like I was a teddy bear, which was pretty nice except for the part where I had wood shards in my back that she was now pressing deeper and deeper into my flesh.
Like I said earlier, it took half an hour for Rarity to calm down again, and even then when I tried to talk to her she was resistant. She told me to give her a few minutes, that she wanted to clean herself up first. Me being me, I naturally let her do whatever she wants, and she went upstairs and promptly started destroying everything again. I went rushing up after her, and into the fray I went, dodging picture frames and plants and an ottoman and things like that. I almost got to her, but she slammed the door to her bedroom and locked it with a spell. I spent about ten minutes trying to talk to her through the door, but once I realized that I wasn't going to get any answer besides those intimidating screeches she can make when she's all feral, I started trying to break the lock. I'm not really sure how much time passed, just that it was long enough for her room to be almost completely obliterated by the time I cracked the code and got in. She'd trashed everything except the bed, and I stepped in just in time to bear witness to the decapitation of the canopy above it. I tried talking to her then, standing just across the bed from her, but it was like she couldn't hear me. That's when I noticed the box in the center of the bed.
Your Rarity's still got the Fire Ruby, right? She ever wear it? No, didn't think so. See, I thought, what with the little disaster I caused with it, she must have thrown it out or buried it or something. Nope. It was still in that necklace she made out of it, sitting in a little jewelry box on top of her bed. That box had fallen with the canopy, and I saw exactly what Rarity had in mind for it once she laid eyes on it. She smashed it with a claw and plucked the necklace out of its remains, and she was getting ready to eat the Ruby when I stopped her. How, you say? Well, I did something I've never done before—I yelled at her.
I've never yelled at Rarity. Sure, I've yelled to her, when we're far away and I'm trying to get her attention or find her or something, but I've never been angry at her, not enough to yell. It shocked the both of us, but I was fortunate enough to snap out of it and keep going. I told her to stop, to think about what she was doing, to look down at the jewel in her claw and tell me what destroying it would do to help her feel better. I reminded her of the promise I made, that I would help her and be there for her if she ever hid herself in a dome again. I told her that I was going to do just that, but only if she stopped destroying everything in her house. Then I... I called her a name. I called her a psycho. Well, actually, I said she was acting like a psycho, but that's pretty much the same thing, right?
Stop laughing. I'm serious, this isn't funny. Stop—stop—STOP!
Yes, I hit you. You wouldn't shut up. Now let me finish my story.
She snapped out of her destruction-trance and realized that she had almost turned me into shredded horse meat, and just like that she was all over me, apologizing and hugging and sort-of crying. She insisted that it hadn't been her that wanted to slice me up, but that part of her that had destroyed her house. Now, knowing she doesn't eat meat helps, but it's still a little nerve-wracking to hear that your crush wanted to literally tear your heart out, so I was a little panicked right then. I mean, why would she even say something like that to me? Who just mentions, "Oh, hey, glad you caught me then, 'cause I was about to kill you and possibly eat you for lunch," and expects nodragon to freak out?
Oh. I'm getting off topic. Right.
Well, she settled down, sort of. She was still all weepy and stuff, but it was a lot more like the Rarity I know and love. She fixed her bed up with her magic, and we sat down on it together. Then she explained her mourning process, and actually, when you think about it, having magic can really help when you feel like breaking something. She just trashes her house, with the dome outside to protect anydragon from her, and then she spends a few days repairing things, cleaning up, maybe reorganizing. She told me it's a very effective method for relieving stress, reorganizing your house. She did agree when I told her she might have been a little too far gone when I came into the boutique, though, especially when I showed her my wood-filled back. It took her a while to find some disinfectant and bandages in her wrecked bathroom, and she agreed that maybe she should skip right to the reorganizing part the next time this happened. Once all the wood chips were out, I asked her if she could talk about it now. She could.
She didn't believe you, obviously. It was just like I thought: you wanted to get in bed with her, and once you had what you wanted, you'd come up with some excuse and bail town. What pissed her off was the devotion you put into your lie. The story you gave her sounded absolutely ridiculous to her, but apparently you're a very good actor. Yes, I know you weren't actually acting. These are her words, not mine. She told me that for a second, she almost believed what you'd told her. Once you mentioned that you had to leave in a week, well...
What made her even angrier was how much time you spent trying to get to her. All of that drama at the Summer Sun Celebration, all the confusion before that, even the moment you two met—all of it seemed so honest to her. She truly believed at one point that you absolutely loved her. And she loved you. Boy, did she love you. That's what she said, over and over again, as she was crying into my shoulder. She loved you, she loved your looks, she loved your way with words (which I don't get, honestly—you suck at talking), she loved your personality and every little flaw you had. You stole her heart with your shenanigans, and when you told her about your little "time limit," you smashed it to pieces.
Hearing all this, I figured I could just as easily sweep her off her feet—we're the same guy, remember? I had your personality, though maybe I'm not as messed up as you are now; I had your knowledge, and more when it came to this world; I was you with hooves, basically, and now that I knew for sure that it was just those hooves that had been keeping us apart, I was ready to jump that hurdle and swoop in to be that prince we'd both dreamed of being for her once. I was ready to tell her how I felt, how I could and would always be there for her, how I could do what you couldn't—stay for her. I was ready to share my heart with her to help fill in what you tore out.
She didn't have a clue as to who you really were, by the way. I want to keep it that way. Why? Well, let me finish, and I tell you why...
We had lunch. I told her it would help if she had something in her stomach, and it turned out she hadn't destroyed all of the first floor. The kitchen was basically okay, so I slapped together some sandwiches for the both of us. That's when I started to notice the way she was looking at me. It was like... do you remember when that little drake, or whatever you call a kid male pony, got lost in the Everfree, and you and the Crusaders went looking for him? She was looking at me the way that kid did when we found him; once lost, now found. We sat next to each other and ate, and it felt... awkward. I couldn't look at her, and I don't know if she was still looking at me, but anything we said sounded wrong somehow. Once we were done, I tried talking to her about this whole mess again, and at first she seemed like she was on the right track. Then she started talking about you, and how much you reminded her of me once she thought about it, and I started getting worried that she might have figured out who you were. I tried to change the subject as best as I could, but she just kept coming back to me. Just me. I didn't even realize what she was talking about until she brushed my cheek with her claw. She shut me up before I could get a single word in.
For a moment, I was in heaven. Angels were singing, fireworks were blasting off, the planets had aligned in perfect harmony. Everything was right with the world. She pulled me in close and hummed into my mouth. I hummed back and found out how it felt to have a dragon tongue poke at your teeth. Everything was warm, too. Me, her, the chairs we were in, the air around us. It was absolute perfection. For that first moment. Then she tried to push me onto the kitchen table.
A week ago, I would have pulled her on top of me without another thought, but with everything that had just happened, it didn't take much for me to realize what was really going on. So, I did the dumbest thing I've ever done, and told Rarity to stop.
She didn't hear me at first, so I had to actually push her off me to get her to notice what I was doing. She was properly confused: she knew I liked her, she liked me, so what was the matter? It was as if the past few hours hadn't happened, like there wasn't a completely destroyed living room just beyond the kitchen entrance. She was trying to drown her sorrows in me, I guess. That's what I told her, and she insisted that she was really, truly declaring her love for me. She told me she knew that I was her knight in shining armor, and she was done with anydragon else. She told me she didn't care that I had hooves instead of claws. She wanted me anyway. It was the speech I'd been waiting for since the day I'd met her, and I hated it. When she'd finished I told her she wasn't thinking straight. I said that she was just looking for another you, and that she was making false connections in her head to try and justify what she was doing. I told her she was still in love with you, and that she should go to you and try to make things right with you.
Why what? Why am I still helping you? I don't know, because you're me, or something. Maybe I just wanted to sick a crazy dragoness on your tail, or maybe I thought I didn't want to have sex with her right away. Honestly, I think I did it for her. I think she needs to see you, at least one more time, just to have some closure.
I told her you told me the same story. I told her that you said it while you were drunk at that Welcome Party Pinkie Pie threw, and that that was why I believed you, which is true—you can't just come up with stories like that when you're as drunk as you were that night. I gave it my all, defending you: I explained that it wouldn't make sense for you to work so hard, just to get in bed with her; I told her how you came to me asking for my blessing because you knew how much I cared (at this point she tried to kiss me again, but I managed to hold her steady); I said I really believed that what you said was true, especially after she told me the part about the Moon-rock—okay, yes, I get it!—Moonstone appearing in your hands while you slept. It was a long, rough process, and it took every ounce of my self-control not to throw you under the bus and go with Rarity's original plan of drowning in me, but I finally got her to consider seeing you again. I spent the night at the boutique and helped fix things up a bit while she thought about it.
She finally gave me a message for you: wait. If she's going to give you another chance, let her do it on her own. If you try going after her again, she wants me to stop you. And as you might imagine, I was happy to offer her my services.
When I finally left with that orb of yours, about thirty minutes ago, the dome was still in place. It came down as I stepped off her porch.
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Spike leans back in his seat and stretches, his story finished.
"So, what's your story?" he yawns.
I tell Spike about Luna, and the dreams, and everything about how I got here. I don't tell him the story about Rose the Dragoness and her Unnamed Stallion—it just doesn't seem relevant. When I finish, he sits silently for a moment. Then he whistles.
"Sounds like you've got one heck of a crapstorm waiting for you back home."
"Yep." I flash a grin. "Still want to try and swap places?"
He laughs, and for a moment I feel like everything is alright—we're just two friends having a chat about this and that. No drama, no alternate universes, no potential universe-destroying chaos energy. Just some normal, friendly banter between a drake and a stallion.
"No thanks," Spike chuckles. "I think I'll let you have that. I don't think I want to go there anymore."
"Really?" I raise an eyebrow. "You don't want to see what Rarity looks like as a pony?"
"Oh, definitely. I'd love to see her with hooves and a horn and a cutie mark on her flank—"
"Want to see her flank, huh?"
"Oh, shut up and let me finish. It all sounds nice, really: Ponyville, Equestria, all of it." He sighs and glances up the stairs. "But Dragonsville is home for me. If I went in your place to Ponyville, I'd have to get used to everydragon being, well, everypony. Even if I managed that, it just wouldn't feel right. Besides, I realized I love Rarity the Dragon, not Rarity the Pony, when I was comforting her over at the boutique. She's perfect the way she is."
"I couldn't agree more." I glance down at the Moonstone. "I feel like an idiot, after everything I've done here. I spent all my time sleeping or trying to make Rarity fall for me, even after I found out I wasn't going to be able to stay here. I wasted a perfect opportunity to learn more about my kind, and on top of all that, I feel like I cheated on my Rarity with the one here."
"Not to mention the fact that you almost brought about the end of, what, both our universes? Or was that not what you said just now?"
"Nope, you heard right. One more hoof-bump, and we might've torn a hole in reality or something." I chuckle.
He chuckles back. "Yeah, ya think?" A frown appears as he looks down at his hooves and says, "Seems a bit exaggerated, though, doesn't it? The end of a universe, just because we touch each other?"
"Well now, we're friends and all, but I don't think we're that close..."
I get an eye roll from him. "Ha-ha. He said 'touch each other.' Very funny."
"I'm quite the comedian."
"I know." That makes us both laugh. Then he says, "Friends, huh?"
"What?"
"You said we're friends."
"Aren't we?"
"I remember us agreeing to be that way, yeah." He's frowning at me now. "It just seems that we spent most of our time yelling at each other or fighting."
"Well, that wasn't completely our fault. I told you, Luna said we would both be a bit unstable whenever we were around each other."
"It seemed like it, too. Whenever you came into a room, even before I saw you, I felt this sort of—"
"—wave of repulsion?" I finish.
"Yeah. You too?"
"Yep. I probably got it worse, since I'm the one who doesn't belong here." Thinking back on it, something occurs to me. "We could have been friends from the start, couldn't we have?"
"I don't know. Maybe we're not supposed to. Maybe it's like how magnets work."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, opposites attract, right? It's the polarity of the metal that causes it, or whatever. We're the same guy in two different bodies. Same soul, same polarity..."
"...and we repel each other. You think it works on an emotional level, too?"
"That would explain the 'wave of repulsion,' as you called it."
"Huh. Never thought about it that way."
"Well, you clearly had other things on your mind."
"Mm." I consider something. "If we're supposed to repel each other, why did you help me, even after what I did to your Rarity?"
He shrugs. "Like I said, I think she needs it. If everything ended the way it did yesterday—"
"Two days ago, now."
"—two days ago, then. If it all ended like that, I don't know if she'd make it out okay. She's strong, but I don't think she's that strong. And anyways, she definitely wouldn't be up for another relationship anytime soon."
"Ah." I smirk. "Don't want to wait, huh?"
"Oh, shut it. You know what I mean." We laugh, and once the laughter dies out he continues, looking suddenly quite sad: "You do know the real reason for it, though. Right?"
"Of course I do. Who would I be if I didn't do everything I could to make Rarity happy?"
"Well, I know who you wouldn't be," he says, gesturing to himself.
"What, a pony?" I can't hide my cheeky grin.
"Yes, Spike, a pony," he deadpans, clip-clopping his hooves together.
I laugh and say, "Hey, I'm joking. I get it; I'm the one who'll come swooping in to save her just for the sake of doing so."
"Something wrong with that?"
"At one point I thought so. Then I realized how selfish I was being. I mean, doing everything for a mare just so she could notice you? That's shallow."
"It worked, though."
"Yeah, for the first year I knew her. Then came the second, and the third, and the fourth, and on and on and on..." I sigh, leaning back in bed. "I'm just glad I realized what I was doing."
"And then kept on doing it."
"For a different reason. A better reason, I think. I didn't do it because I had the hots for her. I did it because I love making her happy. Her smile makes me smile."
"Ah, love." Spike holds a theatrical hoof out and looks off into the distance. "Why must you make such a fool out of me?"
"You did the same things, though!"
"Yeah. Yeah, I did. And you know what?" He leans forward in his seat. "I loved it just as much as you did."
"Mm-hmm. That's what I thought." I look down at my claws, and another question comes bubbling up: "Do you still wish you were a dragon?"
"Do you still wish you were a pony?"
I glare back up at him. "Don't dodge the question."
He rolls his eyes at me. "No. I don't wish I was a dragon. Not since the Fire Ruby."
"I wish I could say the same, but it took me a little bit longer to realize I didn't want to be a pony."
"That emphasized 'little' makes me think you're understating things."
"Well, we have different lives, same soul or not. You spent your life as the cute little guy with a fuzzy coat and swishy tail, I spent mine as the fire-breathing lizard who'd destroy things more often than not." My fists clench. "I spent a lot of time wishing I could be like everypony else, so that I wouldn't be made fun of or be feared. Especially after I found out what I did at the Fashion Expo..."
"Yeah, that might lose you some points with the aristocrats."
"That's when I would have done anything to become a pony. Spells, potions, giving up my lifespan, anything to make me like them. I wanted out of Sergeant Spike's Lonely Dragon Hearts Club completely, and it took a few shouting matches with Princess Luna to stop me from doing something insanely stupid."
"What?" He sees grim look I have on. "Oh. That."
"Yeah. Not my proudest moment." I hold up the Moonstone. "If it weren't for her, I might still make you go off into the Everfree with this. I'd still hate myself for what I am, too.
"Now, though, I'm happy that I'm me. If I wasn't a dragon, I wouldn't have ever known Twilight or Celestia, or anypony in Ponyville. I'd probably be some average colt doing average things in an average town. I'd have a perfectly normal house that I'd have to pay for by working an ordinary job, and the closest I'd get to the life I've lived is by reading about it in a newspaper."
"And we are far too awesome to live that kind of life," Spike chimes in.
"Absolutely. Of course I'm still mad about what I did, and of course I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to the ponies I hurt. Of course I know that I'm different, that I can't stand eating flowers like everypony else does. Of course I know that... that I'll go on long after everypony else. I'm okay with all that now.
"My friends wouldn't be my friends if I were a pony, even if I somehow ended up living the life I've lived as a dragon, being Twilight's assistant and moving to Ponyville and all that. They'd just be other ponies to me, because I'd just be another pony to them. I might not get along with them the way I do as a drake, or maybe I'd get along better, but it wouldn't be the way it is, and I'd never give up the friendships I've had, not in a million years. Especially not my friendship with Rarity.
"I don't want to be a pony," I finish, "because even if I was, I'd always be a dragon at heart."
Silence fills the room. I realize I've been staring into the light of the Moonstone this whole time. Suddenly, Spike lifts his front hooves up and starts applauding.
"Best friendship report I've ever heard," he says, smiling.
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Twilight and Pinkie aren't around, and Spike explains that they've been spending their nights at the Sugarcube Corner, which doesn't make sense to me because the Cakes live there with their children already, and even if they're both teenagers now, it's still probably very disturbing to see (and hear, no doubt) a new couple's antics all the time, especially if half that couple is Pinkie Pie. When I express this concern, Spike just shrugs and says "It's their funeral if they don't get out and go somewhere else."
With that issue aside, we have lunch, and after the meal Spike tells me that if I really wanted to learn more about dragons, I could help myself to any book on the subject in the library. At first I'm skeptic to go, but once he reminds me that my alternative is going back to bed, it's down the hall and into the impossibly large library I go.
"And remember to take everything with a grain of salt!" he yells after me. "There might still be some differences between our worlds that you don't know about!"
With that in mind—as well as a ball of string in my hand, to be used to make sure I can find my way back—I dive in, searching and searching for anything I can about general dragon information. Naturally, I lose myself in the extended labyrinth of shelves, and because there are no directories around, I have to search book by book for whatever I can. It takes an hour to find the nonfiction section, and even then I'm stuck around books like The Draconic-Hippogriff Wars of the Late 700's and The Fall of the House of Firebrand, circa 467. After nearly vomiting over the amount of history I don't care about, I start looking for biology texts, maybe some reports Twilight might have written during her school days, anything. Unfortunately, it seems that in this world Twilight organizes the books a different way than she does in Ponyville, which renders my knowledge of the library's layout useless (though the labyrinth of book shelves that don't exist in the Ponyville library probably already did that). I don't know how long I search, but it's enough to make me quit after finding only one book on what I'm looking for: On the Species of Dragons: Essays from Halberd.
I find a desk to sit at (there are a bunch of them spotted amongst the shelves) and open the tome to the table of contents, wondering when to begin. Then I realize that both of my claws are empty.
"No..."
I spin around and look back the way I came. There's nothing there but shelves and floorboards.
"No..."
I leap out of the chair and find the shelf where I found On the Species of Dragons. Scanning the area and the shelves around it, I find absolutely no trace of the ball of string that I'd gone running in with.
"Oh Celestia, no!"
And that's how I spent the rest of that day with a heavy tome (it's the size of a cereal box) under my arm searching for a piece of string. It's not until I reach the back wall—yes, there is a back wall to this library—that I really start to panic and scream.
"Told you it wasn't enough string," Spike says once he's found me. He picks me up from my comfy spot on the floor (I either fell asleep or fainted) and starts carrying me with his magic. I'm curled up in a ball and holding the book like it's my old teddy.
The library is a scary, scary place. Always stay within eyeshot of the door, that's the lesson I learned.
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That night, after reading through the entire first chapter of On the Species ("In which the egg is explained," the subtitle reads, "as well as its classifications"), I take a nap. I call it a nap because when I slip under the covers it's nearly three in the morning (Twilight would be proud), and when I wake up it's only seven. In those short four hours, I dream. There's no Luna, no memories, no windows or anything flying about me. There is blue, however.
A beautiful, familiar blue.
‡
The first thing I notice is that I'm bigger. Not by that much, but it's enough that I can't stand on two legs anymore. Looking behind me, I can see that I stretch back at least twice as much as I did yesterday. I also apparently have wings now. They look beautiful; large, lean, and strong. Exactly how I always dreamed they'd look.
Something brushes my underbelly. I look down in time to see a mare pop up from underneath me. Her purple mane tickles my chest as she turns her head up to smile at me. She's wearing a golden necklace with a glamorous, heart-shaped ruby in its center. Her eyes are big and blue and beautiful.
"Hello," Rarity chirps. Her tail is swishing back and forth against my underbelly. She brings a hoof up and wraps it around my neck as much as possible. Pulling my head down, she brings her other front hoof up to my cheek, guiding me to her.
We kiss with our lips upside-down. It's absolutely perfect.
"Ewww!!"
Rarity breaks away and looks in the direction of the voice. Her mane brushes my nose as she takes a step forward. The smile on her face grows wider. I don't look up until I hear the voice say:
"They're kissing!"
My head snaps up. From far away, I see another pony giggling. Except, it isn't quite a pony. It's tail is lizard-like, and I can see claws at the end of it's hoof-like appendages. It has two horns, not one, with each residing behind an ear. The short, curly purple mane—which, combined with the voice I heard, tells me it's a girl—morphs into spines trailing down the back of the strange creature. Her coat is a bright violet, but I'm certain that if I shaved a bit of it off (but why would I? It's so beautiful) I would find scales that were almost the same color as my own.
"You two are gross!" the child yells, and falls over giggling. Beneath me, Rarity giggles too, and starts after the pony-dragon hybrid. Her tail slides along my underbelly and up my chest and neck.
"Come along, Spikey," she says, flicking the end of my nose with the tip of her tail. Then she's off, chasing the child, whose gotten up and is running away, shrieking with delight.
I'm about to follow when it all fades away, including me. Then I'm awake.
•
I don't open my eyes right away. All I do is roll over and bury my face into my pillow.
"Don't worry, Rarity," I whisper into the fabric. "I'm coming."