Marshmallow Dreams

by Halira

Chapter 38: Not the Only One With Secrets

As early evening came, and the light outside began to dim, the grounds around the reflection pond came to life with students. Everyone had come out for one big party before the school year began. Well, almost everyone, a few evening classes were starting at the same time, but they were very few. Julie had wandered off to catch up with some of her teammates, leaving just me, Meadow, and Sunflower as a group.

"Wow, there's so many ponies—and humans," Sunflower said as she stepped out of the way of a girl who didn't seem to be paying attention to where she was going.

I looked around; it was a big mass of people, and it reminded me of the crowded halls of my old high school. "How many people did you say lived out in your hometown?"

"Forty-one, at least before I left," Sunflower replied. "Sometimes we would get together with the two closest towns, to celebrate a harvest, then there'd be over a hundred ponies in one place. That seemed like so many, but since I left home, that doesn't seem like that many anymore. There seems like a lot more than that out here right now."

"I think there were more than a hundred in the cafeteria when we were in there," Meadow said as she eyeballed a stand with some guessing games with prizes to win. "Think there are more ponies on our side of the female dorm than that. Is it too much for you? We get it if you need to go back to the room and recharge."

"I'm alright," Sunflower said quickly. "I wish Ashley would come back soon. I feel better with her around. She said she'd keep me safe."

Meadow blinked and gave Sunflower a sideways look. "When she say that? I don't doubt she would say that, but I've been around you the whole time she has, and I don't remember that."

Sunflower fluffed her wings. "Oh! Um—we met before I moved in, somewhere else. Not that long before."

I fluttered my eyelashes at my shy bathroommate. "Do you have a crush on her?"

"Please say no," Meadow groaned. "Relationships between roommates are too much drama!"

"What?! No!" Sunflower shouted in shock. "I like stallions, not mares. She just promised to keep me safe, and I trust her."

Meadow giggled. "Sounds like you don't get to dish out any payback yet about us reacting to your human boyfriend, Rebecca."

I fluffed my wings. "He's not my boyfriend!"

Meadow smirked and pointed a wing. "Well, loverfilly, your not boyfriend is right over at that stand."

I turned around to look, and I heard Meadow laugh loudly. "Your tail just flagged!"

"Meadow, stop it. You're picking on her too much about that. You're going to make her feel bad," Sunflower protested.

I hadn't located what stand Meadow had been pointing at and decided that she must have been just trying to get a rise out of me… or at least my tail. It was kind of embarrassing that my tail shot up. We ponies have a hard time disguising our emotions due to our body language with our ears and tails. It also made us almost always lose to humans at poker.

I turned around with a massive grin on my face. "I was doing my patented tail lifts. Got to keep that tail in shape."

Meadow gave me a flat look. "Seriously? That was the best excuse you could come up with?"

I shrugged. "Best that I could come up with on the fly. Not my best attempt to play something off." I let myself relax. "Okay, I admit; I'm a little aroused, but I'm at that time of the month. I'm surprised you didn't get a strong whiff of my lavender fresh deodorant when my tail pointed towards the Big Dipper."

"Deodorant?" Sunflower asked in confusion.

I blinked. "You do wear deodorant when you're on your time of the month, don't you, Sunflower?"

Meadow looked concerned. "We don't want to embarrass you, Sun. We just don't want you getting into an embarrassing situation."

Sunflower turned her ears flat and looked downward. That told the other two of us all we needed to know. I looked at Meadow. "You want to do the tail check, or should I?"

Meadow stepped forward towards Sunflower and put her nose right up next to Sunflower's rear, then withdrew. "She's clear! No monthly pheromone funk."

"I'll lend you some next time it's needed," I assured her. "I keep way more than I need."

Meadow looked out past me. "Hey, I was yanking your chain last time, but he really is over there now… if you wanted to go say hi."

I looked over and saw him. He was right at the stand where you had to guess how many jelly beans were in the jar, and whoever was closest at the end of the night won the candy.

"I don't know," I replied. "I don't want to get involved in a relationship. I always intended not ever to have sex or anything, so I don't have foals. I worry about getting too close to people like that anyway."

"Um, he's human; you aren't making any foals with him," Meadow replied with a snort, but then softened her tone. "But if you aren't comfortable flirting with the idea of getting involved with anybody, I can respect that. I don't understand what's to be afraid of, but I don't need to in order to respect it."

"I kinda understand," Sunflower said slowly. "A lot of the fillies I grew up with got pregnant and started raising families already. My mom says it's like we ponies have a greater compulsion than when we were humans to have families and multiply. She said that it could get in the way of me trying to become more than just a backwater bumpkin if I did that too early, and always told me to avoid getting involved with anypony like that until after I was done with college."

"You two are no fun," Meadow lamented. "I don't mean that literally. I get day-dreamy about finding the love of my life while here, and going into my second year coming out still single. Julie doesn't do the dating thing either, and Nightscape already found her special somepony." The green pegasus looked over at Russell. "Hey, if you aren't interested in him, mind if I go try to flirt?"

"You're into humans?" I asked, a little surprised.

Meadow shrugged. "I've never given humans a fair shot. The majority of us were human once, even if it was a long time ago, and we can't remember it anymore. So I figure humans are pretty close to us, and it's worth the shot to see if there's any chemistry. There's no harm in experimenting a little; the worst-case scenario is there isn't any spark."

"Go for it," I said with a big grin. "You're right; no harm in trying."

Meadow took a deep breath. "Okay, but you two need to scram. I'll lose my nerve if you're watching."

"We're scramming," I quickly replied as I put a wing on Sunflower and directed her to start walking away. Sunflower and I started walking, and I glanced back and saw Meadow was indeed approaching Russell.

Sunflower was looking around the crowd nervously, and I could tell she was uncomfortable. Ponies are social creatures, but that didn't mean we couldn't get distressed dealing with more massive crowds than we were accustomed to being around. She was also too proud to say that she wanted to head back to the room now that her circle of safety had dwindled to just me. I needed to convince her that going back to the room was alright.

"Hey, I'm pretty clumsy, and I'm afraid that I'm going to run into someone or get my tail stepped on if I hang out in this crowd too long. You saw what happened in the cafeteria," I said as I pointed around at the crowd. "Want to fly back with me to the rooms? I'd go back alone, but I tend to crash—a lot, and it is generally safer for me if someone is around in case I get myself into trouble."

The relief on Sunflower's face and the way her shoulders picked up told me that she was thankful for a legitimate excuse to get away. Technically, everything I said was true. I had a high probability of doing something klutzy in this crowd, and ponies were always safer traveling in groups. I wished I could hang around some more, but Sunflower was going to be sharing space with me for the next few months, perhaps even years, and that meant I needed to look out for her.

We walked for a short distance to get out of the crowd. It is exceptionally rude to try to take off flying in a packed crowd because it is very easy in a group to smack someone with a wing during takeoff. Once we were clear of the mass of people, we took to the air.

Sunflower turned her head and looked at me as we flew. "Are you alright? You're wobbling."

I tried harder to straighten up my flight but to no avail. "I'm not a great flyer. I'm not making things up when I say I crash all the time. I can keep in the air, but I can't do the same speeds everyone else can or have as easy a time at it. Even night ponies can outrace me in the air and fly higher with no problems. My weather magic is pretty much non-existent as well. I've had tons of flying lessons and instructions to try to correct it, and it is better than it used to be—if you can believe that, but my flying is never going to be great."

"I heard there was a famous Equestrian pegasus named Scooter or something like that, who can't fly at all, but she still ended up famous for other things," Sunflower replied. "It's alright if you can't fly well. At least you can fly, which is better than whatshername."

We reached the dorms and came in for a landing on the balcony for Sunflower's room. Sunflower landed perfectly fine, me; I caught my legs on the balcony railing and did one of my more colorful landings.

KRUNK!

It wasn't a bad crash, at least by my standards, but I'd landed in just the right way that I now had dampness and coppery smell in my nose.

"Oh, no! You're bleeding!" Sunflower said in shock. "Can you walk? I should get you in the bathroom, or maybe I should call a doctor."

I pulled myself to my hooves and almost shook my head before I caught myself. Shaking my head would just spread my blood around. Instead, I put a wing up to my nose and applied some pressure. "I'll be okay, just a bloody nose. If you get me a damp towel to hold on it, it will be fine in a few minutes. I don't want to drip blood through your room."

Sunflower opened the sliding glass door for her room—which was unlocked, probably not a good idea, and hurried in. I heard water running a moment later and then shut off. She then came back in a rush with a damp white towel.

I took the towel in a hoof and held it on my sore nose. "Thank you. I'll hold this for a few minutes, and everything will be fine."

She still seemed fretful as she watched me. "Why did you fly here if you could get hurt flying?"

I shrugged, still holding the towel to my nose. "Every pegasus can crash and get hurt when they're flying, even the best flyers. I could get injured just walking. Flying, even clumsy flying, is part of me, and I'd be miserable if I never flew. Sometimes you have to risk getting hurt to be happy."

Sunflower hung her head. "I don't know. I get so nervous lately that it seems like it gets in the way of being happy. Coming here was about fulfilling my dreams, but so far, I've been so anxious that it's hard to enjoy anything."

"You need to have a little confidence," I replied. I was smiling but doubted she could see it around the towel. "Since we're just sitting around. Do you have any examples of your art? I'd love to see what you've done."

Sunflower blinked. "Yeah, I have a little portfolio. Give me a minute." She then retreated into the room and began looking through her still mostly packed luggage.

I waited patiently for her, and after about two minutes, I removed the towel from my nose and checked to see if I was still bleeding. The white cloth now had a big scarlet spot on it that made me wince to look at it, but my nose seemed to have stopped. I took a second to wipe up a few drops of blood that had landed on the ground, and by the time I was done, Sunflower was returning with a folder clasped under her wing.

"Here you go," Sunflower said as she passed me the folder. "My quality varies a lot. My copies of book covers are generally pretty good, but most of my original work… it needs some work."

I cupped the folder in my wings and used my hooves to open it and start flipping through drawings. The first few drawings were clearly copies of illustrations from books, a few of them I had even seen before, and several others I could guess what book based on the image. They did look excellent, and I assumed I would have a hard time telling them apart from the original artist's work. The next several looked like still-life sketches. They were good, but nothing exceptional. Following that were several landscapes; these looked more amatuerish, and had some issues with perspective and shading.

As I finished flipping through the landscapes, a very different drawing greeted me. My first thought was that it might have been another illustration copy, but the angles were all wrong for something like that, as it didn't seem to have a defined subject. It was also a significant break in style and content from the other drawings. The drawing was a pencil sketch of a woman sitting cross-legged on the ground with a big black ball in her lap. It looked like her shoulder was injured, and looming in the background was some sort of monster. Everything looked far more lifelike than any previous drawings, almost like a black and white photograph. It felt out of place.

"What's this?" I asked.

She looked at which drawing I had in front of me, and her ears sagged low. "Oh… that. I didn't realize that was in there. I normally keep those drawings separate. My mom and dad call that, and the others like it, my magic drawings."

I looked at her and studied her face. "It is really good, the focus could use some work, but everything else about it is great. Why do you look so ashamed of it, and why do they call it a magic drawing?"

She looked at the piece of art like it was an angry snake. "Because I don't choose to draw those. I go into almost like a trance, and it's like I attack the canvas with my brush or pencil or whatever I'm using. I just start drawing so fast, faster than I can force myself when I'm trying, and I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only when I'm done, and I'm staring at a drawing I have no memory of doing that I realize that it's happened."

I looked at the drawing again. "And you don't know why?"

She shook her head. "No, it just happens, and I never know when it will. I've done a bunch of them over the years. They're all different; some are just pictures of places, some of them are weird things like this one, some of them are pictures of just a pony or human. I hate that they happen, but they're my best work."

That was strange, and sounded like magic at work. Was she having visions? "When did this start?"

"Years ago, a few days before the Cataclysm," she replied. "I was doing a normal drawing, or at least trying—I was just a little filly and my art at the time looked like it came from a little filly. The next thing I knew, I was staring at this picture of ponies attacking other ponies. It was this kind of quality, even back then. I was barely out of drawing stick figures at the time. The image was so violent, and I was scared. It happens on and off since then, it can go months with nothing, and I have no idea what triggers it."

That could be very frightening, especially for a young foal. "Well, it seems like you have a unique gift. I don't know what to make of it, but I'm sure you'll find a reason for it, someday."

She reached out with her wings and grabbed the folder back. "Maybe. Right now, it just makes me weird."

I laughed. "Hey, I still have to show you all my magic. I think I have you bested in the weird department. When Nightscape and the others are back, I'll show you, and perhaps you'll feel a little less unusual."

She didn't look convinced, but nodded. "I'd like to feel less like a freak. Could you do me a favor? Can you not mention my trance drawings or anything about them? I probably shouldn't have told you about it. I was told it would be a bad idea if lots of ponies knew. Can you keep this a secret, please?"

I briefly bit the inside of my lip for a second before answering. "I'll keep it secret, just like I want you to keep mine secret after I show you later, but I think you should show the others. If you can't predict when this happens, it is a good idea to warn all of us about it before it happens, or you'll make the others worry. I could alert them that everything is alright, but that's supposing I'm in the room and not in class or whatever at the time."

She sighed. "You're probably right. Ashley already knows about it, but I'll tell everypony else. Just don't let it go past our two rooms, okay?"

"Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!" I said, going through the gestures as I did and avoiding smacking myself in the face.

Sunflower arched one eyebrow at me. "Um, what is that?"

I giggled. "It's something Yinyu taught me. She says she learned it from Princess Luna of Equestria, and that Luna learned it from the Element of Laughter. It's their version of a pinkie swear—which is great because we don't have pinkie fingers, or any fingers, so pinkie swears are normally pretty hard to do. It's me giving you my promise."

The door to Sunflower's room opened up, and Ashley stepped in and smiled at Sunflower. "Good, you're here. I couldn't find you when I went out to the party and was a little worried about you." Her eyes fell to the bloody towel by my hooves and widened. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, we just needed to get away from the crowd," I replied. "I ended up doing a crash landing on the balcony and bloodied up my nose."

"She needs to be careful with her landings," Sunflower added on.

Ashley gave a relieved sigh. "Alright, I was just worried. I get a little paranoid sometimes."

"Well, we're okay," I said, then looked at the towel. "You wouldn't happen to know where we do laundry, do you? I want to get this towel washed up so it won't stain."

Ashley nodded. "Sure, just follow me."

As I gathered up the towel, I noted that Ashley's focus had been mainly on Sunflower, and remembered that Sunflower had mentioned the two had met prior. "Hey, by the way, where did you two meet before moving in?"

They both froze and looked at one another. Ashley gave Sunflower an almost scolding look like she'd done something wrong, and Sunflower looked like she'd just taken a bite out of an onion as she turned back towards me. "The dream realm."

Comments

[badninja]

I think most if not all of her dorm mates are connected to the dream realm.

[Halira]

10511166
For this one, you might want to go back and re-read chapter 34 to find out the significance of why they met in the dream realm is odd.