//------------------------------//
// I Dreamed a Dream 
// Story: George Trestale, God of... Something 
// by DrOcsid 
//------------------------------//

After Lyra and I finished discussing King Tetesac, the both of us elected to take a little tour of the rest of the house. Walking out of the living room, we found ourselves in a kitchen with a staircase leading upstairs to the right. My mind elsewhere, I walked over to the fridge and opened it. What met my eyes at that point could only be described as a utopia of food and drink, all sorts of delicious-looking delectables shoved into every possible corner of the fridge.

It then occurred to me that I was very hungry.

I promptly grabbed the first thing I could reach, that being an uncooked T-bone steak wrapped in plastic. Walking away from the fridge and shutting its door, I waltzed over to the nearest counter and dropped the steak onto it with a loud THUNK.

Lyra walked up next to me. "Is that a steak?"

"Yes. Yes it is."

"You know how to cook that?"

I took a step back and stared the steak down. "You know, I have no idea."

Contradictory to what I had just said, however, I promptly went to a nearby cupboard and pulled out a large cast-iron pan. My arm nearly buckling under its weight, I slammed it onto the stove and turned on the heat. I rushed towards the fridge and pulled the door open, grabbing a stick of butter out of the door as if I had always known where it was. I grabbed a knife and cut off a one-centimeter thick square and dropped that in the pan, swirling it around to let it melt. I then unwrapped the steak, grabbed the salt and pepper shakers that happened to be resting by the stove, and sort of went to town on the slab of meat on my counter. I made sure I had a thoroughly even coating of salt and pepper, and then I grabbed the steak and dropped it into the pan, the smell of sizzling meat entering my nostrils.

"Mm-mm-mm! That smells god damned delicious!" I said, fanning the steam rising from the steak towards myself.

Lyra, on the other hand, was holding her nose. "Are you serious? It smells like a burning corpse."

"Well, I might have some celery or something in the fridge. You're free to eat as much of that as you want to, believe me. I, on the other hand, am about to enjoy a dinner of the gods."

As Lyra walked back to the fridge, I heard her ask me something. "You sure seemed like you knew exactly how to cook that, though."

...Huh. She's right, isn't she? "Yeah, you're right. That's weird, isn't it? It was like... instinct, or something."

~ Approximately 40 Minutes Later ~

"Oh, lord have mercy on my soul, for I have sinned..."

I leaned back in my chair, nothing left on my plate except for a T-shaped bone and my own dignity.

"...You're kinda weird, you know that?"

I looked over at Lyra. "I pity you, that you will never know the true deliciousness of a good steak."

"I think I'm fine with that," said Lyra, who had finished her own dinner of all the celery and lettuce I owned ten minutes ago. "I gotta say, though, for someone who looks like they're made out of toothpicks, you sure can pack away a lot of food."

"Yeah... I feel like I won't have to eat again for an entire week."

I got up from my chair and pushed it in. "Sleeping, though, I could definitely go and do that."

I started walking toward the stairs when Lyra stopped me. "Wait, so where am I gonna sleep?"

"I don't know, maybe I have a guest room or something. Let's go upstairs and check."

Dragging myself up the stairs, feeling immensely weighed down by my stomach full of seared cow flesh, I pulled myself to the top. On my left was a hallway that seemed to stretch about 15 feet, two doors on each wall. I opened the one I was closest to, revealing a bathroom.

"Well, that'll be usef-HOLYSHITINEEDTOGETINTHERE." I dashed into the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it. Remembering Lyra was still in the hallway, I called out to her.

"Hey, uh, Lyra? I might be a while, you can go look around for yourself if you want."

"...Alright. Out of curiosity, when was the last time you used a restroom?"

"What kind of a question is that? Just go look for a guest room or something!"

After some time (I'll spare you the details), I exited the bathroom to find an empty hallway. I guess Lyra found a guest room, or something. I went back into the bathroom, this time to pay more attention to the aesthetics. It was nice, the walls painted a beige color. Feeling explorative again, I opened a medicine cabinet to find... not much, actually. A can of shaving cream, some cologne, and a small unmarked jar containing some sort of plant matter I didn't recognize. Curious, I took the jar out of the cabinet and tried to get a closer look at the plant matter. It was green, almost some sort of nugget, or something along those lines. It was covered in what appeared to be very fine crystals of some kind. Wait, I think I recognize this...

At that moment, Lyra walked back in front of the entrance to the bathroom. "You done yet? I... why are you holding a jar of happy flower?"

"What the hell is happy flower?"

Lyra sighed and levitated the jar out of my hands. "It's... oh, never mind, I don't want to bother explaining it right now."

I snatched it out of the air. "Oh, wait, yeah, I remember now." Laughing awkwardly, I put the jar back into the cabinet and shut it. "Can't say I've heard it being called "happy flower", though." 

"Well, anyway, if you're done looking like an addict, I found what I think might be the guest room." I wordlessly followed Lyra out into the hallway as she led me to the second door on the left. It was already open, showing me a rather plainly covered room with beige walls, with a closet, and a brown bed with two nightstands.

"This does look pretty guest room-ish. How do you know this isn't just my room, though?"

"Open the door behind you."

I turned around, met with a door exactly the same as the guest room one. I opened the door, and in an instant I knew this had to be my room. Why, it was perfect. It was everything I could wish for in a room. It... was exactly the same as the guest room, except with a bookshelf against the wall and a pinball machine in the corner.

"Damn, son. Yeah, this is definitely my room. I feel zen in here."

Lyra gave me a strange look. "...Yeah. Well, I'm gonna go to sleep. Don't keep me up all night by playing pinball."

"Oh, please, I'm not that inconsiderate!" I laughed, waving her off into her own room. Now then, to look around some more. I immediately went over to the closet and opened it. While it was dark in there, I could tell it was a walk-in. I flicked on a switch that was on the wall, and looked back into the closet.

"OH SHIT, SON!"

~ 30 Minutes Later ~

Still absorbed in the arcade machine I had found in my closet, I heard a banging on my door.

"Goddammit, how do I pause this?"

Just as I said that, however, Pac-Human met his demise at the non-existent hands of a ghost. Sighing, I went over to my room's door and opened it, showing, obviously, Lyra.

She rubbed one of her eyes. "I thought you said you weren't going to keep me up all night."

"...Technically, I said I wouldn't do that by playing pinball. I never said anything about Pac-Human."

"Wh- Pac-Human? What, is that like Pac-Pony?"

"I don't know. Yours is probably a ripoff, if so."

"I doubt that, I mean it came out in- Wait, what am I doing? We're supposed to be at the castle tomorrow, George! It's like, one in the morning now, and I'd really like to get some sleep!"

"Oh, fiiiiiiiine," I said, adopting a stereotypically lethargic look. I gave an overly dramatic yawn. "I guess I'm tired too."

"Good." Lyra went back into her room and shut the door.

Closing my own, I spent about five minutes looking for pajamas, changed into them and got into bed. I clapped twice, causing the lights to turn off.

Wait, how did I know how to do that?

I clapped twice again and the lights turned on again. Huh. Well, that's convenient. I clapped two more times, shutting the lights off again. My room was now illuminated only by the clear image of the moon through the window. I laid down again and pulled the covers over myself.

"Maybe this whole memory restoration thing won't be too hard," I said to no one in particular. And then I fell asleep.

I dreamed a good many things, most of them not lasting long enough for me to remember. I saw images of people, people I didn't recognize, and some that I did. All of them familiar in some way that I couldn't put my finger on. I saw the K.E.V.I.N, without the coffee stain on its control panel. But perhaps the most notable part of that dream sequence happened as follows.

I was lying in a field, back in Equestria. It was nighttime, the moon in the center of the sky among the stars.

"Man, that is beautiful," I said to myself.

"I must agree," a voice replied.

"WOAHOLYSHI-" I jumped to my feet and snapped around, seeing myself face to face with a large pony of dark-blue color. Her mane looked as if it was made out of the sky itself, and she wore some sorts of jewelry or whatnot reminiscent of Celestia's.

She spoke first. "Greetings, Human."

It took me a second to reply. "Ah, oh, right. Hello. My name is-"

"George Trestale?" She had a serious expression on her face, but her head was tilted in what seemed like curiosity.

"...Yeah, actually. How'd you know?"

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Princess Luna, guardian of the night. I preside over the ponies' dreams, sometimes giving them guidance in their personal dilemmas."

I quickly looked around. "I'm dreaming this?"

"Yes, you are. At the moment, you are completely safe in whatever location you happen to be at the moment."

"Wait, so did you, like, read my mind or something?"

"Oh, no. I simply learned of you from my sister. The two of you have met, I believe?"

Sister? Wait, "Princess"...

"...Celestia?"

"Yes, we are the two rulers of this land. You have given her quite some trouble, I've been told."

"Hey, I don't like being held in a cell under false pretenses, alright? I'll escape if I goddamn please, thank you."

She held up a hoof. "There is no reason you should worry about that. Sister is aware that you must have made it to Anthropia by now. She called off the search a good while ago."

I put my hand to my chin. "Why are you here, then?"

She looked away for a moment. "I... have a request."

"Is that so? Alright, shoot."

She looked back to me. "I want you to convince King Tetesac to sign a treaty with Equestria."

I stepped back. She wants me to do what, now?!

"Allow me to explain. There has been an unnecessary feud between the two races for a long time. The fact is, it needs to stop. There is no reason for it. It can only bring pain to anyone involved."

"What, does Celestia not see that or something?"

"Sister sees it as clearly as I do. However, her attempts to make a treaty with Tetesac have always failed. No matter how she words her requests, Tetesac refuses to agree to anything. But it is different now."

"Different, how?"

"I have entered the minds of many humans in an attempt to convince them that their preconceived notions against us are false, to no avail. But you are different. You have a different impression of us, do you not?"

"...I wouldn't entirely say that, given the whole imprisonment thing."

"Did you not become friends with a certain Lyra Heartstrings?"

Oh. Yeah.

"Well, yeah, but that's just one pony. I've had a bunch of others come after me other than Celestia!"

"What about the two ponies called Rainbow Dash and Applejack? They let you leave, even when you were trespassing in a land humans are not permitted to enter."

"Okay, fine, so three. To be fair, though, the blue one did try to kick me in the head."

"Trestale, regardless of your opinion on a few ponies, I want you to tell me. What is your opinion of the Equestrian race as a whole?"

I fidgeted a bit and crossed my arms. "...I guess they're alright."

Luna smiled. "Then please, do us this good deed. I am sure Celestia will have a different opinion of you, even if you at least try."

"Alright, alright, you don't gotta convince me twice. I'll talk with Tetesac. I gotta warn you, though, he's pretty hard-set on the whole 'no association with Equestria' thing."

"You are the closest one we know of to the King.  I have faith that you could convince him."

"Well, if you say so." I crossed my arms and turned away. Thinking a bit, I turned back to ask something else, but she was gone.

"Oh, sure!" I yelled. "Just disappear right when I'm gonna ask you something! Yeah, you're real good at this dream stuff!"

"...George, I am over here."

I looked about 45 degrees to the left.

"Oh. Never mind."