Appledashery

by Just Essay

It's a Dream Come True For You and Me

Rainbow Dash Chewed on her bottom lip. As the ride hummed along, facing a flat blue wall, she spotted several panels lighting up along the inner frame of the seat before her. Her eyes flickered across bright images of a desert, an underwater city, and a bunch of metallic structures floating amidst stars.

"Errr..."

"Heehee!" Epcot grinned, teeth glinting. "They all look so good, don't they?"

"Yeah... I-I guess..." Rainbow's gaze traveled twice across Mesa Verde and two other times across Sea Castle. Then, her eyes fell on Omega Centauri for the third time, and she pressed the celestial icon. "This one looks the awesomest, I guess."

"Neato Keano!" Epcot leaned back and braced herself. "Prepare for the far reaches out outer space!"

"Whoah, really?" Rainbow Dash tightened her muscles as her wings twitched. She looked straight ahead, eyes thin and piercing.

With a rattling noise, several beams of light flickered across the moving wall. Rainbow spotted the moving image of metal hangar doors. They opened to deep space, and the flickering image simulated a swift, zero gravity cruise along the metal lattices of an orbiting station.

"Seriously?" Rainbow arched an eyebrow.

Epcot blinked innocently. "Is something wrong?"

Rainbow gestured towards the images in front of their strafing ride. "It's just a lame projection! It's not even close to the real thing!"

"Heeheehee... this is Cider Space, ya silly filly!" Epcot smiled. "Just what is the 'real thing?'"

"... ... ..."

"If you can dream it, then you—"

"Yeah... I get it." Rianbow frowned. "But I'm no alicorn! I thought this friggin' ride thingy was supposed to show me the rest of Cider Space!"

"Do you really want to see the rest of Cider Space?" Epcot asked. "Beyond the Tutorial?"

"Uh... yeah."

"Then focus on what you want!" Epcot grinned. "The dreamscape will bend to your will!"

"But I don't friggin' know what Cider Space has in store for me!" Rainbow said. "How can I focus on that?"

"You don't. You make the dream revolve around you." Epcot gestured with a pleasant expression. "Think about what your heart desires the most. It's that simple!"

"What..." Rainbow exhaled her breath and murmured in a low tone. "...what my heart desires the most..."

"Yuperooni! After all, one little spark of inspiration is at the heart of all creation! Right at the start of everything that's new, one little spark lights up for you!"

Rainbow Dash glared at her. "You're cavity inducing. I kinda want to throw up."

"Heeheehee!" Epcot hugged herself as her cheeks went rosy. "You left your tummy in the dreamscape, for Figment's sake!"

"Right... right..." Rainbow Dash took a deep breath, clutching the edge of the seat. "My... heart's desire..."

"Imagination..."

"Right..."

"Is that really so tough for you?"

Rainbow felt a lump in her throat. "You've got no idea." And, at last, she closed her eyes, her ears twitching to the sound of simulated jet engines and roaring exhaust.

---

Across the starry expanse...

Across the fuzzy dark layers of every lonely night...

She collapsed in warm forelimbs.

A pair of hooves surrounded her in a strong embrace.

The smell of sweat, grass, and the touch of sawdust...

Apples and hay—a weighted ponytail of silken gold.

A cheek that nuzzled Rainbow... lips that pursed and shushed Rainbow's trilling whimpers...

And all the pegasus had to do as surrender...

Curl up and drift in the hug forever...

Never again to be lost...

---

A brisk wind blew into Rainbow's muzzle.

Her eyes snapped open.

She saw a enormous expanse of verdant green plateaus flanked by sharp canyon drops filled with raging river rapids. In the far distance, entire continents floated amidst the clouds, shimmering with rainbows and ethereal bands of golden light.

"Viola!" Epcot smiled, spreading her forelimbs wide as the two ponies plunged hundreds of feet into the rockbed below. "You've got Cider Space!"

"Crud!" Rainbow Dash shrieked, spreading her wings. Bursts of confetti exploded out her ripbcage and her tail turned to butterflies. "Mega crud!"

"Hmmm..." Epcot morphed into a geodesic sphere and materialized on the other side of the plunging pegasus. "...you don't use your imagination much, do you?!"

"Do something!" Rainbow hissed, wingless and flailing. Her mane exploded into fire-crackers as she plunged towards a pool of foalish laughter in the center of a chocolate basin. "I didn't come all this way just to become a bloody stain!"

"Oh, the fall won't kill you!" Epcot said with a giggle, then blushed. "Though it might confuse you."

"Confuse me?!" Rainbow hollered with what was left of a tongue.

A sphere flitted past her. "YES." And that was precisely when Rainbow Dash struck concrete, her body exploding into a million lady bugs, then morphing back together in the form of a gasping, sputtering pegasus.

"Duaaaah!" Rainbow's eyes bulged. From across the universe, her tail and mane hairs flew into her, one prismatic needle at a time. "Ow! Ow! Ow-ow-ow!" Then, at the last second, her wings snapped towards her with screeching tire noises. The impact twisted her body like a twenty-foot long noodle, and then she collapsed back on her spine, lying in a bed of flowers. The flora gasped in shock and galloped away, leaving her alone in the grassy field. "Muhhhh..."

The geodesic sphere hovered down, then rolled out into the uniformed mare. "Hey! You made it! Heehee! You really are tomorrow's child!"

"... ... ..." Rainbow blinked, staring up at a distant chunk of purple-hued earth floating miles away, flanked by levitating palaces. "...okay, so maybe that was kind of awesome," she muttered into the bubblegum scented air.

Author's Note:

Sea Castle: 2
Mesa Verde: 2
Omega Centauri: 3

Comments

[unknownbore]

That note tho.

[RoboRed]

Darn. I wanted deserty goodness.

[Sharp Quill]

I just noticed the chapter titles are following the lyrics of the Carousel of Progress song.

Man has a dream and that's the start.
He follows his dream in mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality,
It's a dream come true for you and me.
So there's a great big beautiful tomorrow,
Shining at the end of every day.
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow,
Just a dream away.

The four lines already used are marked green.

[Sharp Quill]

5562437 Eh, it was just a cheesy projection on a screen, anyway.

[Lord Dragon]

5562475 I didn't realize that, but now that I look at it, it makes total sense. Anyway, dude , he reads the comments... I think he'll still follow through with his design, but jinxing anything is not a good idea... Oh and Ponky's finally back!!!! He just wrote a blog announcing his official arrival back into FIMFiction!! Oh and confound it! I didn't vote. Though I would have chosen Alpha Centauri. Oh and finally, I am banking that this arc is going to be about the segmented length of the Carousel of Progress. Revelations, oh revelations, though we get them, this author never ceases to surprise. Essay/Colon/Skirts, if you read this, know that I respect you deeply.

[Shipmun]

Your imagination is rather chaotic for an element of harmony, don't ya think RD? Because I think Lancie is having too much of an influence over you. But he, this'll make for an interesting cider space so I ain't complainin'.

Also Ponky is back. My mind is having trouble comprehending this. Just... So many emotions.

In fact just put every emoticon down. I need a while to get composed...

[Lightning Bearer]

Aw, we were voting. Oh well. I would've voted for Omega Centauri anyway, so no bigs.

Also, dare I hope that the damned cat might finally find its way out of the bag during all these dreamy, wish-fulfilly goings-on, or am I getting several hundred chapters ahead of myself?

[Sam the Anti-Ninja]

Too late do I realize that I held the deciding vote. Oh well, onward and upward. Maybe we'll get to see the other two later.

EDIT: it has come to my attention that the vote didn't even matter. So there goes the chances of seeing the other choices.

Oh, well, let's have fun watching Dashie learn the struggles of walking across a Mindscape.

[Aatxe360]

5562566

but jinxing anything is not a good idea...

Just by mentioning the jinx, jinxes things. The more times the jinx is mentioned, the less power the jinx has. Don't you jinx so?

[YoshiFawful64]

So we were voting... not that it really had any effect anyway.
5562765
I'd say you're roughly 560 chapters ahead of yourself.

[Leftover of Saikano]

And so Rainbow gets what she wants the most. And it's cuddles. And that's how the story ends, with Rainbow trapped in a dream world.
Maybe I would prefer that to the alternative of later never being sure if anything is still dream or reality, like in Inception. We have enough of that with the hallucinogen effect of Rainbow's medicine.

[Lord Dragon]

5563012 Yes I know, it's a unending viscous cycle creating a maelstrom, trapping us all.

[Bulbajer]

Is this a reference to the Star Tours ride in MGM Studios?

[Sharp Quill]

5563712 Star Tours is a ride at Disneyland, a joint project with Lucasfilms (a quarter century before Disney bought them). I assume there's one somewhere in Disney World/Epcot as well. Nothing cheesy about that ride, and that was before it got updated a few years ago. It did a darn good job of convincing you that you were in the Star Wars universe.

This sounds like a ride at Epcot, but I've never been there, so I have no idea how well it has stood up to the passage of time.

[MoonMirror]

Not the sea of orange and freckles I was expecting. But neat enough :3

[BabySkittleMonster]

I'm starting to get a really bad feeling about this place. After all, just cuddles and hugs are too much to ask when it comes to Skirts and his epics.