Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Subjective Mortality

"Starshine, wasn't it?" asked Rainbow Dash, approaching the unicorn.

Starshine was stuck looking around the empty black void she sat in the middle of. "Where am I?" she asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Rainbow also had a look around. "No idea. If you don't know that one then I can't help you there."

Starshine frowned. "Then how did you get here?" She looked at Rainbow Dash with a questioning pout. "How did I get here? Why don't I remember getting here? The last thing I remember is having an existential crisis and talking with dad about it." She suddenly stood up. "Where is he? Is he okay?"

Rainbow looked confused for a moment. "Sunburst? I can check on him later if you want. I think I got your question wrong before, though," she said. "This is a dream. I didn't think I needed to make that clear, usually ponies either know it is one or don't care."

"A dream?" Starshine fell back into a sitting position, with a soft thud of her hindquarters against the arbitrarily tangible horizontal slice of emptiness she stood and walked on. "How? What?"

It was Rainbow's turn to frown. "Do you not know what a dream is?"

"Of course I know what a dream is!" Starshine threw a hoof up for emphasis. "But... But I'm not supposed to have dreams! Not me! I've never had dreams before! I've never even been asleep before! Oh Harmony am I asleep now? This is all wrong!"

Rainbow's puzzlement didn't leave her expression. "What do you mean you're not supposed to have dreams? Everypony dreams. Of course you're having one. Maybe you just forgot about the other ones you've had."

"Forgot?" Starshine's head snapped towards Rainbow. "What do you mean forgot? Am I going to forget this too?"

"Probably?" Rainbow shrugged. "Most ponies forget most of their dreams, most of the time. You'll probably forget about this one if I had to guess."

"Oh no no no!" Starshine stood up and began to pace back and forth around the place. "This is terrible! I can't forget about this! I need to remind myself that I dreamed, this isn't supposed to happen!"

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Relax. There's nothing weird about forgetting your dreams, it's perfectly natural. There's nothing weird about dreaming either. This is all normal, I don't get why you're so bothered by it all."

"Normal," repeated Starshine, like she was hearing the word for the first time. She marched up to Rainbow, some anger in her steps. "I'm not supposed to be normal! I'm not supposed to be... a normal pony." Her tone grew meeker and she looked to the side.

"Hey." Rainbow tried to get a better look at the mare's face. "Are you okay? Do you need to talk about something? Do you need some time off?"

"Leave me alone," replied Starshine. "I need to think."

Rainbow shrugged. "Alright then. Take care." She began to fly away. "And get something going with this dream. It's not supposed to be all empty, you know?"

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Yeah, Dash hasn't exactly been kept in the loop about the local tulpa. Poor thing's just having crisis after crisis.

[Speckle]

Starshine is slowly but surely becoming a real pony