He’d finally done it. Dream sat at the table, across from Octavia herself. He’d finally gotten the courage to ask her out. Admittedly, it was partially because Dragoon had thrown him headfirst through a window onto her table while screaming, “Jus’ ask her out already, lad!” But nonetheless, it had finally happened. The complete weirdness of the day was finally behind him.
---
He was actually pretty exhausted. Justice’s routine of re-teaching him magic was a grueling challenge, involving working the body until the magic eventually had forced itself out. Justice said that was the hard part, and the rest would be easy. However, Dream had run 300 laps around the house, and not a spark of magic had left his horn. Justice was baffled by the lack of ANYTHING appearing.
About three hours before the window incident, Justice had looked at a nearby clock, and locked up suddenly. He shouted for Dream to go and take care of whatever he wanted to, and that he was almost late for something. The last thing that Dream had seen of Justice that afternoon was his cutie mark of golden scales running away from him at full speed.
When Dream finally dragged himself back to the house, he went to Justice’s room to see why he had run off so quickly. When he opened the door however, he froze… Stood right in front of him was a unicorn of equal size to Justice, yet colored green, and with the cutie mark of a Lily pad. She was wearing a brightly colored red dress They stared silently at each other for a moment, then the unknown mare winked, and Dream slowly closed the door.
“Dragoon?!? Who is in this room?” he shouted to his friend, who was doing some breathing exercises downstairs.
“Hm? Golden Justice is in there, he just moved there a couple days ago. I thought you knew that!” Dragoon shouted back. Ooo, three foot flares that time. Nice.
“No, I meant who’s in there now! It isn’t Justice, that’s for sure!” Dream sometimes wondered why his friend could appear so intelligent, yet so dense at the same time.
“Wait, what?” Dragoon rushed up the stairs. There would be no intruders on his watch. Without pausing to say a thing to Dream, he turned and threw both back hooves with full force into the door, blowing it open.
Justice sat in the middle of the room, polishing his armor. Nopony else was in sight. “What is it? What happened?” Justice cried, leaping to his feet.
Dragoon looked at Dream, who shrugged. Maybe she was visiting him, and didn’t wasn’t anyone to know. “Um, do you have a visitor or something? Dream says he saw somepony else in here.”
“No, nopony but me has been in here all afternoon.” Dragoon concentrated. No shifts in tempo, heartbeat even… He was telling the truth. Maybe Dream just imagined some mysterious pony had broken in.
“Well, sorry for disturbing you. We’ll just leave now.” Dragoon slowly backed out. Dream was his friend, but how could somepony so intelligent sometimes be so dense?
---
They’d left the house then, Dream and Dragoon, and left Justice to his polishing. “Dream, Justice wasn’t lying. He was the only one in that room all day.”
“Well… I’m pretty tired… I probably just saw something… Why are we going behind the house?” He thought they were heading out to get something from town.
Dragoon smiled at Dream, and said, “This is the greatest secret of my house, Dream. I built it here because there was a natural cave system beneath it. Now, where was it…” He began tapping at the ground with a hoof, listening carefully, “Ah, there we are!” he exclaimed, lifting a square piece of grass straight into the air, “And now, behold my collection!”
Dream stared in wonder at the cavern. Expanding into the distance, in all directions, was… Cider. Cider of every flavor, every year, huge barrels, small barrels. Dragoon dropped in, and called up, “Lad, what’s your favorite fruit?”
Dream replied, still ogling the collection, “Um… I like strawberries?” Dragoon, from below, nodded, then rushed off.
Dream could hear Dragoon talking about something, “Lemme see, strawberries, strawberries… Ah! Here we are… Lemme see… OOOO, 1643, a REAL good year for strawberry cider… *hup* Alright, gangway up there!” Dream backpedalled as Dragoon rocketed through the door, carrying a huge barrel of cider on his back, “All right, here we go…. What’s with the look? Never thought of me as a cider connoisseur?”
“Um… no. And what’s the celebration, may I ask?”
“Sure! The celebration is that there is no celebration. I just haven’t had a good drink since I met you. So this one is for our first adventures! May they always be adventurous!” Dragoon cried. He wrapped a wing around the nozzle, and filled up two very large mugs, “Drink up, lad! We got an entire barrel to go through!”
Dream gulped his first flagon. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he had to admit that this was some good stuff. He requested a second mug…
---
Five minutes before the window incident, he had woken up. Dragoon was shaking him, “Lad, you only got four pints in ya before you went down. Had ta finish it on my own! Anyway, we have to go out and see if we can find some more good quality stuff. Let’s go.”
Dream was very dizzy, yet somehow managed to stand up. He followed Dragoon in a daze, not entirely sure where they were going.
“Oh, lad, look in the window over there.” Dream squinted his eyes, shaking his head to clear his vision. There, right beside the window of Sugarcube corner, was Octavia, who seemed to be reading a newpaper. “Now’s yer big chance, lad. Go in and ask her! You got the liquid courage in ya!” Dream shook his head rapidly, and began backpedaling. Dragoon stopped him with a wing. “Knew that ya’d try an’ back out of this one too… Well, not happenin this time!” With that, Dragoon threw Dream onto his back and began charging the window
“Jus’ ask her out already, lad!” Dragoon cried, and he vaulted Dream through the air, face first into the window. He landed square in the middle of her table, looking her right in the extremely surprised eyes.
“Um…” she said, confused as to what had just happened, “Are you all right?”
“Um…” Dream looked over at Dragoon, who nodded vigorously, and motioned with his fore-hooves, “Um… Do you want to go out tonight?”