I Still Remember In My Mind How It Used to Be
Rumble dreamt.
His dream was that he was on a beach. The sand beneath his hooves was white, like snow.
Even though the sand was white, though, it was very hot on top. He didn’t have horseshoes on in the dream. Despite that, the sand was very comfortable against his hooves.
There was a breeze. It was cool and refreshing. It smelled of salt, which meant that Rumble was on a beach at the sea. He tried to turn his head away from the water to see if there was a city, but the sands were an endless desert riddled with dunes.
Rumble didn’t see a city. There were no landmarks for him, then. But in dreams, ponies have thoughts that make sense only in the dream. Rumble was lost, but he was okay with that. After all, he liked the beach.
He was alone, though. Rumble ruffled his wings. He didn’t like being alone. Pegasi were the most social creatures in Celestia’s kingdom, after all. Even though Rumble mostly kept to himself, he liked to have company every now and again. He wanted to have company now, of any kind, because the beach was so pretty and he wanted somepony else to look at the water with.
His dream obliged him. Rumble was aware now of a presence beside him, and another pair of hooffalls on the sand. Although he didn’t turn his head, he saw a glimpse of orange in his eye, and thought it was Scootaloo, although his dream told him it wasn’t. She was very much like Scootaloo, but not completely. She had a gentle smile and big, broad wings, the sorts of wings the adults would have, and the seemed to fall upon her back like a feathered cloak. Her fetlocks were unshorn. Scootaloo’s eyes were purple, but this filly had green eyes, and her mane was styled the other way.
She laughed. It was a nice laugh, so Rumble laughed with her. And she began to speak, but the words slipped past his ears and fell into nothingness. She wasn’t much louder than the gently-lapping waves. It was like listening to a song, and not knowing the words, only the melody, except Rumble couldn’t hum along with this. He could only catch glimpses of her in the corner of his eye, and whenever he got a good look in his dream, her visage was unclear. Small details changed every time he looked at her, from the shape of her jaw to the crook of her snout. He couldn’t hear her words, but he could see them form clearly on her lips.
I love you, she said. Rumble loved her too. He felt a powerful force in his chest that told him so. But he wasn’t able to look at her, so he looked out at the water. It was blue, but not the way the ocean was normally blue. It was the same blue color of the sky, the crests of the waves forming little clouds upon it’s surface. She was looking, too. Rumble couldn’t see her do it, but he knew she was doing it. She was speaking still, the words a little bit garbled, but still clear.
They used to sleep on this beach, the filly said, flapping her wings. I was lost on this beach once, but they found me. Then they went to sleep on the beach again. But they don’t sleep on the beach anymore. These were the only clear words that she had said to him in his dream. He tried to ask her why they didn’t sleep on the beach anymore, but his dream changed his words into something else. The filly laughed and sprinted ahead of him, spreading her wings, taking flight. Rumble followed her. He could feel himself smiling, and the force in his chest swelling as he took to the air. He loved her.
He felt different. His body was different, but he didn’t know how. Maybe he was older, but he didn’t feel older. His wings were the same size, as was his body. Even though he was as big as he was when he had gone to sleep, Rumble felt bigger for whatever reason. It must have been the dream. Or maybe he was getting older. He looked down at the sands below, and saw that they stretched onwards for miles and miles. But there was a city on the horizon. It looked a little bit like Manehattan, but bigger, big enough to border the entire horizon like a sunset of buildings. The filly didn’t look at the city, and Rumble could tell that she didn’t like it very much.
Maybe that was why they didn’t sleep on the beach anymore. Rumble wasn’t sure. He was playing with the filly in the limitless-seeming skies. There were no clouds, and the sun and the moon were together in the air. As one, they made the world seem all that more brighter, so bright that Rumble could see that he didn’t cast a shadow. The filly did, though. Her shadow soon swooped up and joined the play, swooping, hollering and laughing with the three of them. They performed perfect dive-bombs, effortless loop-de-loops, lazy corkscrews, and behind them they left a trail of grey, orange and black feathers against the pure, snowlike sands. Rumble noticed that the tide was coming in. The water began to rise up further and further, and he saw their feathers floating inside of it. He and the filly landed in the shallow-for-now tide and began to wade. It was more like the filling of a tub than the tide of a beach, but Rumble didn’t mind in the least.
The water was cool, lapping against his hooves, and her lips were warm, pressed against his. Her voice was too quiet to hear over the waves again, but he saw the words. I love you. He felt his mouth move the same way, at the same time, and turned his head towards the water. There was a collossal wave headed towards them, towering into the sky, blotting out the sun and moon together. Rumble felt no fear. He stood still, and let it wash over him and the filly both, and they soon found themselves deep in the ocean. A pod of whales crooned in the distance. Rumble saw, in the corner of his eye, the filly giggle, and no bubbles of air left her mouth. He laughed loudly, and water filled his lungs, but it was painless, and the sound was clear as it was in the open air. They no longer stood upon the sand, now seemingly trotting over an impressive coral reef, that stretched in the opposite direction of the beach for endless, countless miles, before the natural fog of the ocean depths swallowed it up. She kissed him again, and said, once more, that they used to sleep on the beach, that she was lost there but then found, but now they don’t sleep on the beach anymore. Rumble suddenly fell very still, staring into her eyes, and noticing that she had no pupils.
He woke up with a start.
Rumble groaned, and looked at the clock by his bedside. It was three o’clock in the morning.
He stared at the ceiling for a good, long while. They used to sleep on the beach. Now they don’t sleep on the beach anymore.
He knew it was almost exceedingly early, but he found himself crawling out of bed. He glided down the stairs, and went out the front door. He didn’t leave a note out of pure negligence, and the hour was too early for him to remember such things, and he felt that something important was compelling him. They used to sleep on the beach, but they don’t anymore.
He started to trot down the empty, silent streets. And then he began to gallop. And then, panic set foot in his chest, and he began to run like he was being chased by a manticore. It was three o’clock in the morning. They used to sleep on the beach, now they don’t anymore.
He knew where he was going. He was going to the beach. He didn’t know why he was going there, but it was something in his dream. They used to sleep on the beach. Now they don’t anymore. Maybe Princess Luna was trying to tell him something.
Yes, surely she was! Rumble was certain of it! he put a little bit of extra speed into his step, his wings flaring behind him, flapping every so often but never quite taking flight. He didn’t need to fly. He needed to run. He needed to feel sand beneath his hooves, to feel the spray of water against his cheek. He needed to see what was on the beach, what might have stopped them from sleeping there.
He arrived not too long later, short of breath, sweating slightly. He was at the beach. His tired hooves stumbled against the stone-hewn pathway leading down to shell-speckled sands on the lake. The air smelt of fish and algae, but Rumble wasn’t complaining, for it was a beach. They used to sleep here. He wasn’t sure exactly who, but it wasn’t important who. What was important was that they once did it, time immemorial ago. But now, nopony slept on beaches.
Rumble slumped onto his back, wings splaying out behind him.
There was now at least one pony sleeping on the beach. It occured to him that maybe Princess Luna had given him a dream that had no true purpose.
He didn’t fault her for it. His eyes were on her starlit sky, and it was beautiful like the face in his dreams, the face that he didn’t know but knew was beautiful all the same, and claimed that she loved him. Rumble closed his eyes, and slept peacefully again.