A journal lies before me, empty and devoid of life.
A quill rests in my claw, dry and devoid of ink.
A long night awaits me, calm and devoid of noise.
A still mind lies within me, at peace and...
... And unsure how to proceed.
With a grumble, I continue to stare at my journal as all its past chapters and passages mock me with their mere existence.
“Zzzzz…”
I look over to my right, and find Dusk Shine still sleeping soundly in his bed. He's none the wiser... But this, unfortunately, reminds me that if I want to write this chapter at all tonight now would be the chance.
I can’t bring myself to move my quill though.
“Come on, Barb,” I whisper to myself as my friend continues to snore. “Make up your mind already. Either write it or don’t.”
‘But it might mean nothing…’
“Maybe, but you can still write it down to get it out of your head, right?”
‘But what if it looks silly in here…?’
I end up snorting over this thought.
“Snort,” see? Told you. “Y-you mean at some point I wrote something dignified in this thing, brain?”
‘Heh, true,' my inner voice agrees. '...But still...’
“...”
‘...’
“... Sigh."
I let out a low sigh as I finally settle my mind.
“One ‘I had this weird dream once’ chapter isn’t going to jeopardize the integrity of this journal, Barb. I think we’ll be fine here writing it. This thing is a diary now anyways...”
‘... Sigh.’
With a mental release of air accompanying my physical one, my mind finally gets on board with the rest of me in this decision.
‘Fine fine,’ she... me... whatever relents in the face of my heart’s words. ‘I suppose ponies wouldn’t look at you too differently for writing about having a weird dream as opposed to, say, oh I don’t know... being an adult trapped in the body of a baby dragon who only stopped sucking on her claw recently...?’
“... S-shut up,” I retort with a blush.
‘Make me.’
“Wish I could, brain,” I groan, rubbing the tiredness out of my eye. “Would make this life a heck of a lot easier to deal with if you weren’t always yapping away at me.”
‘Hehe, yeah…
‘... At… a-at least we’re not as bad off as… you know.’
“...”
‘...’
Another sigh leaves my lips.
“Guess I really can’t ignore this,” I finally relent for real, taking up my quill in claw again and leaning over to dip it into my inkwell. “It’s only going to sit in my head like a rock if I leave it as is."
‘True...’
Scriblescrible
Hastily writing a title at the top of my flat piece of parchment, I sit back and consider the page for a time…
… Soon though the thoughts begin to form, and thus I begin to write.
‘I don’t take much stock in dreams…’ I internally dictate, allowing my mind to wander.
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I don’t take much stock in dreams. Despite Prince Solaris himself revealing to me that there are those out there with the power to manipulate them, I still don’t believe that dreams have a point or reason. My home planet of Earth was a vastly scientific-dominated place. Long ago did we use our research, machines, and good old observation skills to determine just what exactly a dream is.
Humans believe, and thusly do I still believe, that dreams are nothing more than our brain’s way of sorting out and ridding ourselves of completely nonessential ‘junk’ memories. It’s like a trash compactor in that sense, the fluidity and randomness of a dream can all be attributed to the imaginary act of our past thoughts and feelings being crushed and blended to create surreal experiences. Experiences that we, due to their very nature, can never truly hope to remember or understand.
That’s what I’ve always felt regarding dreams, at least.
Thusly then can you now imagine just how distraught I am in admitting that I just had a dream that was more than a simple illusion. Much more.
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Stopping, I consider my claw for a moment.
Its purple scales can barely be made out in the dim light of my candle. If not for my firsthand knowledge of what color it actually was, I don’t think I’d be able to identify my claw as being anything other than a dark shade of something right now…
… But during that dream…
“...”
… Scriblescriblescrible…
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Tonight I dreamt I had green scales, and a tail that ended in a fork.
I dreamt that my stomach was yellow and that I had a beautiful mane of red. Horns and spines of deep crimson rounded out the package, but what was attached to my back completed it. I had wings, large and powerful; with fingers of emerald and skin of sunflowers.
But, though I bared them, and was gifted with the entire sky as my domain, I was not free.
The scars along my wrists stood as a testament to this fact.
Cracks ran across the surface, cutting through the very scales. Flesh both green and raw greeted me when I looked down at them.
And along with them came the memories.
I saw flashes of chains and green lightning; of machines full of steam and stallions full of evil. Orange flames danced in my now teal eyes; my orange flames, I could recall, just as I could these eyes. Screams from times long since past ran rampant in my now internal ears as my mind was flooded with memories that were not my own. Memories of torture and pain and shed tears and loss. My mind was drowning in a literal cocktail of agony; death and soul-crushing despair replaced pacifism and hope in rapid succession. Futures were reaped, pasts were buried, monsters were revealed to exist in the shape of normal ponies.
It was too much for me to bear. It was too much for anyone to bear.
It was in realizing this that I felt no shame in collapsing to my knees, gripping my hair adorned head with these scarred claws of mine, and just screaming. The pain was too much; I saw every moment of sorrow, every second of loneliness, every instant of pain. This heart was ready to burst, I could feel. The anguish too great. I remember how the white cloak I was wearing dusted the empty ground beneath me as I shook. It was only then that I realized what I was wearing it, or that I was physically anywhere at all at the time.
After an entire other life settled itself into my brain, into my very soul, I can recall how I panted for breath as I gazed upon the empty white void I dwelled in and simply considered it. I tried to stand up again upon those unfamiliar legs, but the new body I was trapped in would not listen to me. My rationale at the time was that I was just too tired to do it.
"Tired," I thought back then. "From ponies using me for their own stupid greed, and tired of this whole stupid universe playing me like a fiddle." My thoughts carried me further down this dark path, causing honest anger to boil up within me. "It took Nate away from me," I remember growling. "Made him rightfully fear me, and to poor innocent Vinyl it…"
It was at this point that I realized that this wasn’t correct.
“Nate? Vinyl?” I had to, so confused was I, ask aloud; only to be greeted by a voice that wasn’t my own. I vividly remember that it wasn’t. Despite this, I didn't think it was strange at all within the dream. Nor did I, after a time, feel the same way as I uttered these two names again for myself. They were the names of a griffon and pony I had never met, yet knew without question who and what they were.
They were once my friends. Nothing more apparently needed to be said or explained. It was all so strange, I thought at the time. "How could I forget those so close to my heart?"
The answer became obvious a moment later, when my real heart took back control.
“Dusk!” I gasped as my true memories resurfaced. I gripped that body’s forehead as I did, the pain suddenly feeling all too real within this dreamscape. “Ashley, Nathaniel, Jason!” I shouted as well as I tried to fight through the fog that had ensnared my mind.
Human faces appeared in my heart as I uttered these names.
They were not humans I recognized.
My shaking intensified as the dream slowly became realer and realer, and as the borders between reality and fiction began to blur before me. I witnessed friendships being formed, joys being shared, and freedoms being granted, yet it all meant nothing and everything to me all at the same time. The whole of what I was was blending with another, and I was losing myself as a result.
“Barbara. Barbara,” I sobbed to myself, trying desperately to stay whole; trying desperately not to be swept away by the current that was this other dragon’s mind. This other human’s mind, I now knew with certainty.
It was then that I heard something.
A soft clicking sound.
Like clawed toes stepping over a marble floor.
I jumped to my feet as the noise reached my hearing; the body feeling more natural for me to control now. My wings held themselves out firmly and menacingly as I faced the source. I roared as well, the action feeling like the proper thing to do at the time.
This fury died instantly once I finally discovered my guest.
Another dragoness greeted me as I turned around to face her. One whose scales were magenta, and whose spines and fins were different shades of green. Her tail ended in a spike, and the purse draped across her midsection was as purple as it was frilly.
She was me.
My familiar eyes stared back at me as I let up my new pair’s glaring. They were the same green color as they ever were, but something was clearly different. They didn’t possess the same familiarity that they once held, instead appearing foreign to me. A moment later we both blinked, and it was in this instant that even their color changed. Now hers were teal in tone, and somehow I instinctively knew that mine had returned to green.
Then we blinked again, and I saw the shadow of who she used to be.
A young man stood where the baby dragoness once did; a young human with so much of his life yet to live. A family full of brothers stood beside him, all of whom looked towards him for strength. The features of these five boys escape me. All my mind can recall any more of them were simply shapes and feelings, nothing more.
Another blink and they were gone altogether. All that remained in their place was the tiny dragon from before.
She took a step towards me.
I fought hard not to take a step back.
As she approached me, her entire life replayed before me; her entire Equestrian life of pain and torture and heartache. Of losses and death and sorrow. Of fleeting happiness and constant despair. Gazing upon it, and feeling the rawness of the scars along her wrist, made me feel like a tiny thief; a thief that had stolen the last of what she was and all that she had left in this world to her name. Tears began to tarnish the face I wore as I turned away, unable to face her. How could I? I had lost so much, but never was I punished as harshly. Never did I experience such horrible and pure agony. Comparing her life to mine, how could I even think to do such a thing? To disrespect her so?
I had no right, I ultimately decided as she drew ever closer. No right at all.
This was how I felt as I closed my eyes and listened carefully to the clicking of her toes.
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I look down at what I had just written…
… And then I smile.
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You can imagine the great surprise I experienced when the clicking finally stopped and the very next thing I felt wasn’t a slap or flames or any other form of retaliation.
Instead, I felt a tight hug.
“Hang in there, Barb.”
My eyes shot open as my name was softly spoken to me in a voice I had greatly grown accustomed to hearing. My own. Purple scaled arms were wrapped around me as well, I discovered, providing all the evidence I needed to discern who the culprit was. Turning my head, whipping this long mane over my shoulders, earned me the sight of my body, worn by another, lovingly holding me within a gentle embrace. I watched this event for a moment longer before the proper response came to me.
Said response was to start crying again in earnest.
It was obvious why in hindsight, now that I have access to my mind again. So obvious, yet for a second I had fallen victim to my emotions and was unable to see it. I had witnessed the entirety of her being. I experienced her dreams, her goals, and her hardships. I interpreted them as harder and crueler than my own, and because of this I felt like I was wrongfully stealing from her.
I had not considered though, as she wore my scales, that the same could be said of her.
She had witnessed my own trials. She had bared witness to my tale just as I had hers. She had been granted the same opportunity as me; to compare her life against another’s and to draw up a conclusion based on what she saw. This conclusion was plain to see for me now, now that I had walked a mile in her scales. It shouldn’t have taken until that hug for me to realize it.
She had compared her experiences to my own.
And, in the end, she had felt that I had lost more.
That was just the kind of girl she was.
The tears ran hot down her cheeks as I continued to sniffle, grateful beyond words to have finally found someone to share my pain with. One who understood what I had gone through, and one who understood the sorrow that comes with it. I soon returned the hug, not daring to let go. I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want this dream to end. I didn’t want either of us to be left alone again once it was over and finished.
But I knew that this was an impossible thing to ask.
A miracle, only a miracle could keep us here, just as a miracle had brought us together.
In understanding this, I ended up weeping even harder as she did as well. Our bodies shook in our embrace as the dread of it washed over us both. Soon the dream would end and we’d both be left wondering whether it had happened at all. This tiny respite will disappear from our memories in time as well as our struggles consume us once again.
There was nothing we could do to change this fate; to change our fate.
A sound suddenly emanated in the air, not unlike an egg being cracked.
The pure white dreamscape we had been trapped in was beginning to disappear in the distance. Not long would it take to reach us and not long would it take for the connection to collapse completely.
So then, as the world around us was about to once again disappear and leave us to continue living our own lives, I leaned forward and set my head gently atop the girl's shoulder. As I lay there, tightening my hold on the poor dear one final time, showing her that I cared for her as well, I whispered back to the dragon in a voice that wasn’t my own
“You as well, Cog. Stay strong.”
A tear-filled smile graced Cogwill's borrowed lips as my double looked up at me and simply nodded.
And then the dream ended for us both.
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‘... I don’t take much stock in dreams,’ I repeat in my mind as my quill kept on writing. I stop for a moment afterward, though, to turn my head to the side and to look outwards through the window at the starry sky above. As I gaze up at the thousands upon thousands of lights overhead, and watch as one quietly races through the night, I find myself thinking...
"... but maybe I should have a little faith."
Get the "masturbation" joke in the Author's Note now?
This Crossover was brought to you by my oldest work on this site, A Cog in the Machine! Though currently going through a rewrite, check back with it to discover Cogwill's tale!
To read this chapter again from Cog's point of view, without having to read through her story completely, click this link to be taken directly to that story's April Fools chapter! Enjoy!