Lightning Dust sat on her haunches with her eyes closed, focusing on the sensations around her: the water droplets bouncing off of her wings and the hot water flowing through her fur and mane. Even how her ears would occasionally flicker when a droplet hit them just right.
“How is this is not real…?”
She turned off the water and shook herself mostly dry, leaving the shower, she reached for a towel to finish the job. The sense of the towel gliding over her fur felt familiar, no different that any other time she had dried herself. Lightning Dust started to place the towel back on the hanger, then hesitated. “What’s the point? I really shouldn’t care.” With that, she let the wet towel slip from the towel rack to the floor.
Leaving the bathroom, Lightning Dust frowned at the sheer lack of anything of interest on the walls of her home. “You would think I would have made this place look better, maybe some paintings or something, given it is my dream after all…” she grumbled as she continued to walk out of the bedroom.
Making her way to the middle of the living room, Lightning Dust stopped. Her ears fell flat and she frowned as she looked around. There were a few trophies and other relics of her childhood on a bookshelf next to a red velvet sitting cushion, as well as some workout equipment in the other corner for those days when she wanted stay active without leaving her home.
“Well, if I’m stuck here then I might as well do something interesting. Perhaps I could read something to pass the time?" she said as she walked over to the sitting cushion.
She scanned the contents of the bookshelf. There were more trophies, papers, and even some old toys, but no books. “I should really stop using this bookcase as a dumping ground for stuff… there has to be at least one book in here somewhere,” Lightning Dust said as she rummaged through the clutter of old trinkets from her past.
She poked around for some time until her ears perked up. “Aha! Found one!” She pushed some papers off to the side to uncover the lost treasure. ”Hey, I remember this book. It’s the first book of that mystery novel series written by Novel Tale.” She picked up the book and placed it on the cushion. With a smile on her face, she lay down on the cushion.
“I remember the reviews on this one were pretty good, now I’m starting to wish I’d bought the other books in the series….” She glanced at the bookshelf with a rather disappointed look. Her gaze returned to the book she managed to find and she smiled again. “Oh well, it’s nice having something to read to take my mind off things.”
Lightning Dust opened the book to the first page and immediately her smile faltered as one of her eyes twitched. “What the…” She continued to flip through more of the pages, but they were all blank. “Ugh!” She closed the book and threw it to the ground, wrapping her hooves around the top of her head burying her face into the soft cushion. “This dream sucks,” she said in a muffled voice.
She looked up from the cushion and grabbed one of the papers she moved while looking for the book. It was an old past-due bill, and she had no trouble reading it. “I guess I can only read things I’ve seen before? Well that’s just dumb…”
She looked once more at the book in front of her and frowned with her ears pinned back. “I suppose I should’ve read that novel when I had the chance…” Pushing the book and paper aside, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
Lightning Dust’s mind drifted and she started to think about the filly she saw earlier. She was young, she couldn’t fly, and she was determined to keep her “safe”, a word that Lightning Dust was unsure the little filly understood completely. If the filly was truly her, or at least a younger version of herself, then she could see where Dusty was coming from.
Lightning Dust remembered when she was that small, her favorite swing on the playground, her favorite stuffed bear, and how she loved to play alone because the other foals would tease her over her inability to fly. Lightning Dust hated the teasing, but the bullying was far worse. She couldn’t just fly away like the other foals, and one griffon took advantage of this. She would routinely harass Lightning Dust and take her lunch money. Lightning Dust couldn’t recall her name, but to be honest, she would rather forget all about that griffon.
~~~
The griffon’s eyes narrowed as she clenched her claws and enunciated every word with spite as she spoke. “What did you say?”
“You heard me, bird brain, I said no! I’m not giving you my bits anymore!” Lightning Dust stood as stiff as she could, wings flared out and staring daggers at the griffon in front of her.
The griffon slowly walked toward Lightning Dust, closing the distance between herself and the steadfast filly. “And why should I let you do that? You can’t fly away, and I’m not going to let my meal ticket get away that easily.”
Lightning Dust didn’t let an ounce of her courage falter as the griffon stopped just mere inches from her face. “What are you going to do about it? You can’t hurt me, the teachers will –”
Lightning Dust was cut off by a swipe of the griffon’s talon, which crumpled her into a heap before the bully.
The griffon smirked at the sight of the injured filly. “Still feeling strong, little foal?”
Lightning Dust rose to her hooves and stared down the griffon despite the pain in the side of her face. “I am not going to give in! This ends today!” shouted Lightning Dust as her voice cracked.
The griffon’s eyes narrowed. “You bet it does!” she said as she lunged at Lightning Dust, grabbing her by the neck, forcing her to the cloud surface. The griffon got up and dragged the struggling filly along the cloud. Lightning Dust grabbed the griffon’s claw in an effort to pull herself free. “Hey! Get off! What are you…?”
Lightning Dust felt her hooves collapse under her, and she glanced down in horror. She was being held over the edge of the cloud with nothing to support her. “Now hoof over your money and we can get back to where things were before you stepped out of line.”
Steeling herself with what resolve she had left, Lighting Dust grabbed her bits and extended her shaking hoof away from the griffon. “Y-You want them? W-Well go get them!” And she let the bits fall from her hoof.
The griffon’s eyes went wide and followed the bits as they disappeared into the vastness of sky and land below. Her gaze returned to Lightning and her eyes narrowed with anger. “You know what? Why don’t you go get them…”
Lightning Dust’s eyes went wide, and she clutched onto the griffon’s arm with both hooves. “I… I can’t! I’ll scream if you let go!”
The griffon raised an eyebrow. “Good point,” she said.
Lightning let her grip relax slightly. “Oh good, she’s finally listening to reason. She’s not going to let me fall. Hehe… She really had me going there for a –”
Lightning Dust’s eyes went wide then squeezed tightly shut as the griffon curled her claw into a fist and hit Lightning right in the gut. She tried to scream but only a gasp came out, she’d had the breath knocked out of her.
“There, now you can’t scream,” the griffon said with a smirk, “now try to get those bits back before lunchtime.” With that, she loosened her grip on Lightning Dust’s neck. Lighting Dust frantically struggled to grab onto the griffon, but it was too late. She slipped from her claws and was now plummeting to the earth below.
Lightning Dust tumbled through the air as she descended from Cloudsdale. Frantically hyperventilating, she managed to right herself as she flapped frantically in the air. She had only seconds left to slow down or she would hit the ground with too much force. The pain in her chest was making it nearly impossible to focus on slowing her descent.
She pushed herself to flap her wings as hard as she ever had in her life, and she could see the horizon’s approach start to slow, but it wasn’t enough. She crashed through a tree and plummeted through the foliage, crashing onto the ground. Dazed and confused, she tried to get to her hooves, but collapsed as the world spun into darkness around her. It would be hours before anypony found her, and when they did, she was crumpled into a quivering ball.
~~~
A shiver went through Lightning Dust’s body at the memory. She ran her hoof across her neck, reminding herself where the griffon’s talons had grabbed her.
“I pushed myself for years to be the best flyer in Equestria after that. Nothing else mattered to me anymore…” She unclenched her wings for just a moment before tucking them back to her side.
“Ugh… I need to get my mind off of this,” she said as she got up off of the cushion and started looking for something to do.
Lightning Dust kept walking around her home in circles, trying to think of things to do. She glanced at the weight set in the corner, “I could, but… what’s the point?” Lifting weights and doing wingups seems kind of pointless in a dream. She stopped in the middle of the living room and reared up on her hind legs, bringing her hooves to her temples. “Ugh… this is stupid! I need to figure out how to get out of here. Why can’t I just wake up?”
She dropped to all fours and started to ponder the last thing she remembered before going to bed when a realization struck her. “Actually, come to think of it, I don’t remember ever going to bed the day I was discharged. Or even making it home for that matter.” She walked back to her cushion and sat down to think. “The last thing I remember was reviewing some ideas I had to get readmitted and then… nothing.”
Lightning Dust blinked in surprise at that realization. “I just… I don’t remember anything. Why don’t I remember?” She brought a hoof to her chin. “There has to be some reason why I can’t remember this stuff. I kind of remember things from the previous dream, but not really… I remember Dusty, but not leaving the Academy.”
Lightning Dust’s eyes went wide, and the hoof supporting her chin went down to the floor. “Wait, if I can’t remember what happened before, then I’m probably not going to remember this dream either. Which means I’ll wake up again and won’t even remember I’m in a dream at all! Oh Celestia… if that’s true, then I’d be a prisoner in my own mind and wouldn’t even know it!” She got up from the cushion and trotted around in circles in the middle of the room, trying to think what to do.
“I’m not going to let that happen, I have to remember this is a dream! I need to remember this is a dream!” she came to a halt as the obvious solution came to mind, “No, wait… I have to wake up. That’s the only way this is going to end.”
Lightning Dust made her way to the bedroom and slipped into bed. As she lay there waiting for dream to restart, she kept repeating to herself her mantra:
“This is just a dream, and I’m waking up… it’s just… a dream… and…”
Lightning Dust stirred in her bunk as consciousness took hold once more. She lifted her head up and rose to her haunches as an all-too-familiar pain in her head pounded away that needed soothing. After massaging her temples for a moment she felt the pain subside.
“Ugh… My head. Horsefeathers, I probably drank too much last night. Or something. I’m not even sure…” She muttered to herself as she looked around the empty barracks before her. “Well… This is kind of strange, I… guess the instructors are moving us around or something. Still, it’s kind of odd that the other ponies' stuff isn’t in here yet.” Lightning Dust scanned the room again but shrugged off the unsettling feeling she had. “Spitfire and her ways, I guess.“ Getting out of her bunk, Lightning Dust made her bed to Academy specifications before leaving the room. “I hope I’m not late. The other ponies are probably already warming up.”
Lightning Dust was walking out of the room when she stopped at the door and put a hoof to her chin. There was a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that she'd forgotten something, but she couldn’t put a hoof on it. Shrugging it off, she smiled and continued walking down the hall. “Well, if it’s important, I’m sure I’ll remember it…” she said as she continued down the corridor.