• Published 19th Nov 2018
  • 17,791 Views, 1,536 Comments

Bedbound (And Beyond) - Cackling Moron



Freshly-arrived human in a state of some disrepair is tended to by local deity.

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We are indestructible

Author's Note:

Dream chapters are little.

My friend wanted my help. She wanted to become a trifle.

Being a good friend - or so I liked to think - of course I helped. Eagerly, in fact. Why wouldn’t I? It was what she wanted after all.

It was only once it was done and dusted that I realised the gravity of the situation, that I felt the full weight of what I’d done.

My friend! Gone! No more conversations! You could talk at trifle, you couldn’t talk with trifle!

What had I done!

Sadness overwhelmed me as I stared at the many, many dishes of trifle my beautiful friend had become. They knew I was there, somehow, and I knew they knew, somehow, but that wasn’t enough. It was gone, all gone!

“This is new,” I heard someone say and, turning my head and wiping tears from my eyes, I saw Luna.

“Oh hey Luna,” I said. Then I paused. “Wait. Why are you here?”

“You’re dreaming again.”

“I am?” I asked, goggling at her and then looking down at the trifle I was holding in my hand. Without eyes it looked back at me, so familiar yet now so different.

Maybe she had a point.

“Okay, I am, let’s go with that,” I said.

If I had a better grasp of who I actually was as a person I might have felt more affronted by the repeated invasion of my privacy. As it stood, I still thought an ability to just go wandering into dreams was kind of cool. And it wasn’t like I had anything to hide anyway.

“Trifle?” I asked, proffering the tub I was holding. Luna looked at it gingerly.

“Um, no, no thank you. I’m here because I wished to apologise.”

“For what?”

“You and I may have got off on the wrong hoof, and I believe it was my fault. I have treated you shortly and with discourtesy.”

“Uh,” I said, not really sure what other input I could make.

Hadn’t I only spoken to Luna once? And that hadn’t even been in real life? The only time I’d seen her in reality she had mostly just been talking to Celestia, I’d just been in the same room.

Maybe that’s what she was talking about? Some people apparently find that kind of thing rude. For whatever reason.

“You are not to blame for the circumstances you have found yourself in, and I am not disappointed in or angry with my sister for what she chose to do. Not really, anyway. I may not have done the same exactly, but I can understand her motivations. It was more that my sister was keeping secrets from me at all, than what those secrets were. You are here through no fault of your own, and taking out my displeasure on you was unkind. For this I apologise.”

Wordy. I chewed that over.

“Oh, right, well, it’s fine, really. You don’t need to apologise. I’m a big boy,” I said, at length. Kind of an anti-climax after what she’d clearly practised a bit but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. An apology just wasn’t something I’d expected.

Where even was I? Like, location-wise. The dream hadn’t clarified, so beyond the trifle - which stood in heaps of little pots, all of them somehow watching me - my immediate vicinity didn’t actually have any detail at all. Things just weren’t there, and my eyes didn’t want to look at anything that wasn’t there. It was disturbing, so I mainly just kept looking between the trifle and Luna.

“No, I have acted poorly and it is only right I apologise. Of course, you are more than welcome not to accept my apology…?”

The more thought was unbearable to me.

“No no, I accept, don’t worry about that. I just don’t see the need to. But if you do then fine, I accept. It’s all cool, all fine. We’re golden. Right?”

“Right,” she said, though she somehow managed to make the word sound unfamiliar. I imagine she was doing it for my benefit. Which was nice? I guess?

The two of us then stood in the formless, trifle-filled void of my dreamscape in total silence for a minute. Kind of awkward.

Luna cleared her throat before too long, the first of us to break.

“Celestia tells me you are having issues recollecting your past and your world.”

Kind of a long-winded way of putting it, but sure, yes. Also, was this small talk?

I was exchanging small talk with a horse who had stepped into my dream. I guess my life could have been worse, really.

“I’m a little fuzzier on some of the details than I’d like,” I said, and would have been happy to leave it there but a detail from Luna’s sentence caught up with me: “She told you that?” I asked. Luna nodded.

“She has spoken of you more than I would have expected her to. And I must admit, my sister has been happier these last few days than I have seen her in some time now.”

“That’s probably just a coincidence,” I said, utterly refusing even to consider any other possibility.

“I think you do yourself a disservice. She has become somewhat fond of you, this much is obvious.”

This was straining credibility.

“Come on, I’ve only been conscious for, what, two or three days now?”

I hadn’t been keeping exact track but this sounded about right, and it was certainly more than enough time for someone to dislike me, but nowhere near enough for anything like fondness. That sort of thing, with me, could take years. If I was lucky. Surely!

“Why are you arguing over whether my sister likes you or not? Would you rather she didn’t?” Luna asked.

“Ah, uh, well you see, ah - “ I floundered.

Good point.

“She’s very nice,” I said, to cap off the floundering, shifting in place and staring at the tub of trifle I was still holding. I remained acutely aware that the trifle was staring back at me. Dreams are weird.

Now it was my turn to clear my throat.

“Anyway,” I said before that particular topic of conversation could be pressed further. “How does it work having two princesses anyway? Are there many others hiding around the place I just haven’t seen yet?”

“You appear to be changing the subject,” Luna said, her eyes narrowed.

“No I’m not. Well, I am, but we were done with the last one, right? This is just the conversation flowing naturally onto the next topic. It’s fine.”

“Is talking about my sister something you’d rather avoid?”

“What? No. Yes! I mean, well, what else is there to say? She’s nice. I don’t really - look, listen, uh-”

I was getting played in my own dream. How humiliating.

Only then though did I notice that Luna was grinning at me so I stopped putting my foot in it and frowned.

“You’re just trying to get a rise out of me, aren’t you?” I asked, wagging the trifle in her direction. She stood up straighter and tried - and failed - to stop grinning quite so much.

“Whatever might give you that impression?”

“Har har. Look, right? One, she kept me from being dead, that makes me pretty well-disposed to her to start with. Two, she’s the only one here who, well, she’s my only friend here, really. That’s it. Happy now? I like to think that she’s my friend.”

I’d counted these points off on my fingers and only once I’d finished speaking did I realise that I was now making a rude gesture at Luna so I quickly dropped my hand back down again. Thankfully, this little faux pas was lost. Cultural divides and all that. Lack of fingers. Probably just as well.

“I hadn’t asked, but thank you for clarifying,” she said, with tactical-level coolness and reserve, all deployed with crushing expertise.

I would have had trouble keeping up with this conversation even had I been conscious. And I wasn’t! This was patently unfair. Magical horses invading my dreams to get under my skin with their snide insinuations and knowing grins. What do they know? I don’t know.

“Urgh, you’re worse than she is,” I said, finally tossing the pot of trifle back over my shoulder. From the sound of things it didn’t land anywhere. I looked around at the void. “When did I even fall asleep? I didn’t notice that.”

“No-one does,” Luna said, only she wasn’t there anymore.

I had the distinct impression of something very big rushing towards me.

“Oh for fucks’s sak-”