I wake up, sprawled all over Lyra's music sheets. A pool of drool gathers below my face on a particularly large tome of music. Quickly, I push myself off the book pile, scattering and ripping yet more music sheets.
“Crap,” I whisper to myself, unsure of what to tell Lyra when she finds out.
Turns out there's no need, as Lyra's looking at me from on top of her bed. “Don't worry about it.”
I look at the torn music sheets. “You don't care about this stuff?”
“I do, but I don't need to read those anymore.”
My eyes widen, and I look at her incredulously. “You mean you've got a photographic memory?”
“No, I just play my harp so freakin' much.” She hops down from her bed. “I'm not in the mood for work today. Do you wanna go somewhere?”
I stand up.
I wake up.
Lyra's ceiling comes into view as I open my eyes. A hoof prods at my chest.
“Human. Human! You alright?”
I manage to sit up, but without realizing it, fall back down, hitting my head on the wooden, paneled floor.
“Yeah, don't move. I'll be right back.” Clip-clop.
A commotion filters in through the open door as I hear Bon Bon and Lyra arguing in the living room.
“What do you mean he just passed out? Ponies don't just do that!”
“He's a human, and he's already gotten a head injury before. I feel like it's related to that.”
“Okay, okay.” Bon Bon takes a moment to catch her breath. “Let me get a doctor, and do what you can do to help human.”
“Okay.”
I hear the pattering of Lyra's hooves as she rushes back to me and turn my head to look at her. “What...what did I do?”
She puts her hoof to her face. “I don't know. I don't know. You just stood up and fell right back down.”
I sit up again, this time keeping control of myself. “Back where I come from, that's kinda normal. I stood up too quickly, and passed out because of it.”
“That doesn't make sense.”
“It has to do with blood flow or something. I wouldn't worry about it.”
She looks at the ground. “Well, I already got Bon Bon to get a doctor, so you'll have to explain that again.”
I sigh. “Okay.”
The doctor pulls off her latex, hoof-gloves. “As long as you're sure this is normal, I'll let you go. If it happens again, call me right away.”
“Yep,” I respond.
The doctor leaves, her hoof steps fading in the distance from outside of the door.
Lyra sits down next to me. “You still up for doing something today?”
“Of course.”
Just like that, we're wandering around Ponyville, not really sure where to go, or what to do. The sun is strong in my face and the air stagnant.
I sigh. “Lyra, I've already told you three times now. I've only been here for what, a week and a half? There's no way I'd know what to do in this city.”
“I don't care, think of something creative.”
“Alright then, how about we visit Zecora?”
She looks at me like I'm stupid. “That's the worst idea I've ever heard.”
“You told me to think of something creative!”
“I already told you that was too dangerous, and repeating something you'd mentioned a week ago isn't creative.”
I punch her in the shoulder. “It's pretty obvious you aren't that creative either.”
“I've made the decisions from day one here, it's time you actually contributed.”
I scrunch my brow, trying to think of anything so that Lyra would stop harassing me. “How about you try actually teaching me that harp of yours? You've been avoiding it ever since I suggested it.”
“Nah, I'm not really feeling it.”
I look at her, acting hurt. “You're never feeling it.”
“Sorry, but you're probably going to want to learn it on your own. I don't mind you playing my harp, it's just I don't think teaching you would be fun.”
“What about if I just asked questions every now and then?”
“A few questions are fine, but a lot of playing music is you figuring things out for yourself. All I'm supposed to do is guide you in the right direction.”
I shrug. “Well, I want to play your harp, what you do is your business.”
It's Lyra's turn to look hurt. “But I don't want you to do your own thing.”
“What do you want to do then?”
“I've been asking you that question for the past half-hour!” She falls sideways, as well as the buildings right behind her...somehow.
I wake up, again, to see Lyra peering at me, her face expressing a large amount of guilt.
“What’s wrong?” I say, my speech slurring a bit. I'm having trouble controlling my mouth.
“You need a doctor.”
I'm sitting on a hospital bed, still in my normal clothes, trying my best not to hyperventilate. “What's wrong with me?”
“I wish I could tell you, but until I can get more information on your symptoms, you might just be a little loose-minded.” The doctor walks out of the room, but not without saying, “Be right back.”
No pony else is to be seen, so I just wait, looking at the terrifying machinery next me. A heart monitor rests to the right of me, turned-off. On my left, I see a tray of food on a small mobile table. More lettuce.
Thankfully, no needles were stuck into me during the visit, so I'm able to keep my calm until the doctor returns.
The doctor comes back through the door and looks at me thoughtfully. “Are you feeling fine now?”
“Yeah,” my voice quavers a bit. I can't remember the last time I wasn't with Lyra.
“And you remember everything that happened to you, before and after your incidents?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugs. “I've got no reason to keep you here. I doesn't even seem like you've gone through a concussion.”
As if nothing had happened, I'm walking next to Lyra in the streets of Ponyville again, but this time worried that I'm going to take another fall. I feel an incredible sense of foreboding that I wont wake up next time. I'm probably going to slip into a coma.
“You were waiting for me in the lobby huh?” I say, a little hurt.
“Yeah, what did you expect me to do?”
“It's just...you're always there for me, what happened?”
“What happened was I didn't want my presence to hurt you. There's a reason the doctor didn't let me into that room with you. I know that doctor personally.”
I look at her skeptically. “You really know him personally?”
“If it makes you feel better,” she says, chuckling.
“You can't blame me for being moody! I just passed out twice today!”
“That's because you're a wuss.”
“And you aren't a very credible source of information are you?” I say, my voice full of snark.
“That's your opinion.”
“It isn't an opinion if it's a fact.”
“Show me your theorems and conjectures and I'll believe you,” Lyra snaps.
“My theory is that you've shown a history of stupidity since I've met you.”
She yells at me. “That isn't a theorem!”
“It is the way you've been acting recently! Seriously! I'm scared Lyra! This has happened twice in one day! What if I don't wake up next time! I don't want to lose you and you're just being an asshole about it!”
She stiffens. “Hey...”
“What.”
“I...I need to tell you something.”
“Get out with it.”
She wipes at her eyes. “When you passed out on the streets...I-I didn't catch you.”
“What's so bad about that?”
“Your head hit the ground so hard. I didn't realize you'd fallen until I heard that ugly clunk from right next to me. I was so...so scared. It would've been my fault. I-I'm...”
I try to put on an authoritative voice, but it shakes regardless, “Stop.”
“What?”
“Is this what you were so riled up about?” I feel like familiar vomit feeling coming up from inside me. It builds and builds and builds.
“Well, yeah. You're my friend! It's my responsibility to keep you safe! I'd be a wor-”
“You just make this so hard you know that?” My body starts shaking.
Slowly, I sit door on the cobblestone below me. A few light tears fall, but I keep a hold of myself.
I try to speak, but my voice chokes up, “I-”
I try again, “I-”
Again, “I woke up in that patch of grass like I was betrayed, I was hurting so bad. You could've just ignored me, got on with your happy go-lucky life, but no. You decided to help me.”
I sniffle a little, feeling ashamed that I've gone through three emotional breakdowns since visiting Ponyville.
I continue, “You decided to risk your own safety on someone who cared nothing about you, even himself. I...I...fuck!”
“I don't fucking deserve that. I'm so twisted and broken and heartless. Everything about my existence is wrong. Why? Why did you fucking help me? Why did you think it was a good idea to get involved with this piece of shit?” I say pointing to myself.
“This piece of shit cared nothing about you, he was wired to destroy, corrupt, hurt, and take advantage of things like you. In fact, he probably has already corrupted you. I don't see you hang out with your pony friends at all! It’s because you're so far removed from your friends now, isn’t it?”
“I'm a scourge, a cancer, I'm bad to everything that's good. You should have run from me, let me die. And to think. That you would feel bad for not being able to help me?! Do you know how messed up that makes me feel?!”
My pent up breath filters through my lips. “Yeah, I did enjoy myself hanging out with you, it was fun, but deep down, I couldn't help but feel perverted because of my willingness to accept kindness from you.”
I take a deep breath, “All this time I've been using you. Just like a parasite would latch onto a frail, elegant flower...It's obvious isn't it?”
Lyra laughs, more loudly, forcefully, powerfully, than I've ever heard her laugh. “Even if what all you said were true, that you were poisoning me, feeding off me, killing me...I'd most definitely go down with that ship.”
“Why would you want that?”
She smiles. “I don't want that, but it's for my own sake that I’d do it.”
"What?!"
Black.
Now, I'm probably going to have to break this to you quickly, no use drawing it out after all.
That was the last time I saw Lyra.
It was immediately after that I woke up in a hospital bed, surrounded by a team of human scientists, all clapping, cheering in exultation at some kind of success.
I thought it was my birthday at first, but well, that wasn't the case either, as much as I would've liked it to be.
Turns out they'd recently gotten a breakthrough in the understanding of human consciousness, by testing on, you guessed it...me.
It was a miracle I didn't die on my journey with Lyra. I'd been comatose for two years, a dying, rotting vegetable of a man with no other use than that of a lab rat.
You might think I took my separation from Lyra well upon waking up, especially by the tone of voice I'm using now, but that was definitely not the case.
The scientists standing around me quickly got serious as I threw a tantrum the size of Mount Saint Helens at my sudden revival to 'reality'. I did not want to go back. It was much too sudden and took me days to cope. Those nights I spent alone were hard; I wouldn't want to live them again.
At least now, I guess, you could say I've calmed down quite a bit. After all, how do you think I wrote this book?
I want to mention something of extreme importance, however. It can't be stressed enough how Lyra was indeed real to me, and, I suppose, to you too. We all have our different realities that interact with each other in the human world, all of them ever changing and conflicting in beautiful ways.
Just because some of our realities don't exist in the 'real world' doesn't mean they are any less valid. What I experienced on that day was real. As real as the time I tried eating the bran muffin the nurse served me for lunch, which was not fun.
Now I'm not saying you should go about creating your own realities right now. You'd fail. We don't have the technology for that right now. There's a reason I have intense interest in VR.
What I want to say is that every time you dream, you're experiencing something as real as world is to your awoken self. It doesn't matter if it involves angels, demons, skeletons, unicorns, pixies, or anything else you could fathom. They are very real if you dream them.
You could indeed fill your heads with ponies every night before going to bed, just to experience what I experienced, with definite success I'm sure, but this message is also a cry for help.
Too many of us are broken, sad, twisted, poisonous, and messed up in the reality I see right now. I want to make their realities better. I want you guys to make their realities better.
Yeah, I know the human condition is to be selfish, to work on our own realities, to make them shine. But think about how much easier it would be to shine, if you helped others shine first, if we all helped each other shine. It would be so hard to be broken, to be sad. We wouldn't even need other realities in the first place!
I'm going to end with one last sentence, as sensual as it may sound.
Make it hard...for things to get hard.