//------------------------------//
// Quiet Now (Refrain) 
// Story: The Oldest Lullaby 
// by flutterdash1 
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A hard concept for many ponies to grasp is the sheer unreality of dreams.  They are beyond explanation.  They were not imitations of reality with a few twists and tweaks to adapt them to your unconscious mind, nor were they wild and crazy expanses of random objects and flashing, swirling colors.  These were constructs of Hollywood and Las Pegasus.  Ponies with no experience or understanding of the subject matter, aiming to make a cinematic and visually appealing experience that was both entertaining and brought in the bits.

Dreams were the random assembly of thoughts taken form.  Thoughts were organized words, so to describe a dream would be like saying “Pickles this foot at Barney midnight.” They were wild, unbridled, and infinite freedom to create and destroy.  Dreams were the realm of creation, and nightmares were the concentration of destruction. That was Shut Eye’s experience, at least.  And from what he was seeing right now, this was definitely a nightmare.

The air around him was permeated by this dark, red mist.  No… not really a mist.  It’s more of a… more of a haze he decided.  It was more than just filling the air, though.  Shut Eye could feel the miasma of hate, pain, and rage affecting the very essence of the dream.  This was more than a normal nightmare.  This was something powerful, something forced into Lyra’s mind.  Nopony could be this filled with loathing and pain, least of all somepony as kind as her.

Shut Eye could not see far in the dark red fog.  What few things he could see were vague and obscure shapes.  They cast long shadows of deepest, blackest darkness, as though they were the substance of void of eternity that hid between the stars themselves.  The contrast between the dull red veil and the infinite blackness in the cast shadows may have been more shocking to Shut Eye if the lines between the two were not so blurry.

Everything around him was out of focus.  Just slightly.  It reminded him of the time he had tried on his father’s glasses; everything became blurry and smudgy, and he could not walk quite right.  Unlike such foalish antics, however, movement here was painful.  His joints ached with each step, and his muscles burned as if he had been running for miles and miles.  Maybe he had.  There was no sense of time or distance in dreams.  A moment could be a year and mile a mere inch.

“Lyra!?” He called into the nightmare realm, trying to find her so that he could wake her up.  His voice fell flat to his own ears and caused them to ache some.  Shut Eye swallowed a couple of times while clenching his jaw and he felt his ears pop somewhat and then the pressure feeling vanished.  The moment he called for Lyra again he felt the same pressure in his ears.  It was very uncomfortable and very distracting.

He continued to walk, looking around the hazy red emptiness.  Occasionally he would call for Lyra and then stop to pop his ears and rest.  He could not move for very long or very far before the accumulated irritations and aches became near overwhelming.  The strange images that floated through the red haze made travel even more confusing.

Shortly after he arrived, a strange stony landscape began to fade into and out of Shut Eye’s vision.  It was dark and grey and dusty.  The landscape changed as he walked, small craters appearing or being filled in.  But the vision came with more than just the sensation of cold and dust underhoof.  It came with a painful loneliness and a burning hatred.  Shut Eye did not know why he was so angry.  It was alarming.  But he felt as though he had been abandoned and betrayed, and it hurt more than the aches and pains he was feeling in his body.

The strange horizon went away in time, though, and Shut Eye was free to wander the pain filled nightmare again.  He did not know how much time was passing in the real world because dreams operated outside of time.  He could spend what seemed like days or weeks in a dream and wake up without an hour having passed.  It felt like a long while had passed when a new scene began to unfold in the unfocused haze before him.

It was a fight.  He was one of the combatants, or at least he saw it from one of their perspectives.  A bright figure came at him and struck him, trying to hold him down.  But Shut Eye felt his own power and he knew he could overcome this adversary.  But it was not just some adversary.  It was someone special.  Someone both loved and hated.  This fight was not what he wanted, though.  He only wanted what he was owed but this… this… whoever this was had taken it all and kept it.  Righteous fury coursed through him, but then an array of light, all of the colors of the rainbow, exploded before him and enshrouded him.

When the harsh bright glare cleared, Shut Eye was back in Lyra’s nightmare.  He shook his head and blinked repeatedly.  That had been… he did not know what to make of it.  The red haze around him began to darken further.  A deep dread filled him as something green appeared, as if from a great distance.  A dark, sonorous, thundering laughter crossed the spreading void.

Then it was upon him.  Once again, Shut Eye felt himself experiencing a fight.  Unlike the one against the bright figure, this one was completely dark, and Shut Eye felt that he wanted to fight it.  He needed to defeat this darkness.  It was a cancer on the world and would spread and consume.  The dark force attacked with black magic and Shut Eye felt the sharp cut of the sweeping gestures it made.

Then temptation.  The darkness enshrouded him.  Shut eye could not discern what the low rumble was saying, but it was a voice.  It spoke a language he could not understand, but he felt its meaning.  The shadow wanted to give him power.  To join forces with it.  To stand together… but it did not understand.  The shadow thought it was of the same ilk.  It did not comprehend the sheer folly of its own audacity.

Before he could laugh at the fool, the dark vanished and he was back in the red realm.  Shut Eye was once more himself.  He remained completely motionless, rooted to the spot, afraid that if he moved again he would fall into the mind of another.  

Were those the dreams of other ponies?  Is this nightmare connecting the minds of Nightmare Moon’s victims? Shut eye thought to himself as he slowly looked through the dark red miasma, his eyes slowly turning one way and then the other.  A long dark shadow caught his attention because it was moving slightly.  Only minor movements, but it was more movement than he saw in the red haze.

Shut Eye followed the shadow through the nightmare.  He did not have to travel far before he could see the caster of the shadow.  In the distance, a bright teal spec.  It was Lyra, the only thing that was not red or black in this bleak world of pain and hate.  Running, Shut Eye felt as though his muscles were going to explode as he drew nearer and nearer.

“Lyra!” he called out as he got closer, stumbling as he ran from his slowly cramping legs.  He made it to her in moments, panting with exertion, his entire body awash in minor pains and aches.  Unlike everything around him, Lyra was properly in focus, and the red mist did not seem to surround her.  

She was curled up on the ground, slowly rocking and whimpering.  Shut Eye’s excitement at finally finding her was quickly lost as he saw what state she was in.  Tears were streaming down her face and she looked as though she were in pain.  He reached out to nudge her, trying to tap her shoulder.  When his hoof made contact with her she cried out in pain and fear.

“Don’t leave me!”