Dinky moved purposely around her home, tracked silently by one of her mother’s wary eyes. She picked up a doll in her mouth and walked slowly over to the toybox before pausing, contemplating carefully where to put it, and gently setting it in.
She looked up from the box and surveyed the room, noting the three blocks she had taken out earlier in the day. She shuffled over to them and grabbed a single block in her mouth, as lightly as possible, and began her return journey to the box on the other side of the room.
“Dinky.”
Dinky didn’t respond to her mother’s soft call, choosing instead to examine in minute detail the arrangement of toys in front of her. She set the block down and picked up a different toy and replaced it differently in the box, making a perfect little square space. Satisfied, she grabbed the wooden cube and dropped it into place.
“Dinky Hooves.”
She ignored her mother again, continuing her dawdling procession.
“Dinky, it’s time for bed.”
“I’m cleaning, mum.” She said this as cutely as she could muster. “You always ask me to clean up after myself and so I’m doing that.”
Derpy did not respond to her, and continued to watch. A frown over her walled eyes betrayed the concern she was clearly feeling. Dinky didn’t blame her; it had been a long week for both of them. She was left unaccosted for the remainder of her agonizingly slow ritual, before finally she brought the lid of the toy chest down and latched it shut for the night.
“Bed time, now,” Derpy said. She tried to be forceful when speaking to Dinky, but could never pull it off. Compounding her lack of emphasis was the sleep they had both been missing. Between the two ponies, they were hitting about three nights’ worth of rest over seven days.
“...Read me a story?” Dinky asked, scrambling up onto the couch and plopping down, resting her head on her mother’s back.
“I’ve already read you your story tonight, Dinky.”
“I’m just going to get a glass of water first.”
“You’ve already had two glasses of water.”
“That reminds me, I-”
“And used the washroom three times.” She wrapped her grey legs around Dinky, hugging her tight. “I know you’re scared, and I’m sorry. But you need to go to sleep. I need to go to sleep, and I can’t unless you’re asleep. It’s okay,” she said again, cutting off Dinky’s quivering rebuttal before it started with another squeeze. “You will be okay. It’s only bad dreams, Dinky. Bad dreams can’t hurt you.”
“They’re not dreams! They actually-!” She choked as her throat swelled alongside the tears forming in her eyes. Nopony seemed to listen to her about her nights. They were real. She had always been awake, every night, woken by the shambling right at one in the morning as if on some sort of sick schedule. She could smell the stench, hear the rustling and snapping, and feel the rough touch on her paralyzed body. “It’s not safe to sleep, mum,” she said, sullen now.
Dinky clung to her Derpy as her mother stood up from the couch, and scrambled up to her back between her wings. She nestled her head into the feathers at her mom’s wing joint, breathing the faint scent of postage glue that always clung to her. For a moment, the peace and warmth enveloped her, and she felt the world start to slip away and shadows rush in from the edge of her eyes, and she startled.
“You need to sleep, Dinky,” Derpy said in response to her spasm. “We spoke to Princess Twilight about this already. You know how smart she is, right?”
“...Yeah,” Dinky said, dejected.
“She had a book on what’s happening and everything. Sleep paralysis. They seem real, but they aren’t real. And she helped talk you through what you’re going to do, right?”
“I’m gonna focus everything on moving my tail and hooves, even the slightest amount.”
“And?”
“And I’m gonna tell myself that I’m just dreaming and they can’t hurt me.”
“And?”
“And I’m not gonna stay up too late colouring or reading after you’ve gone to bed, so I can get a full night’s sleep.”
Dinky looked up to see her mom beaming at her, eyes closed. She wished she didn’t close her eyes when she smiled that wide. She loved her mom’s eyes. Nevertheless, she felt a little bit warmer and less frightened. If Princess Twilight said it was safe…
She thought back to the lessons from two days ago, when they had first brought up the night terrors with the Princess. After all of her comfort and advice, she had promised Dinky that she would send a letter to Princess Luna and ask her to watch over Dinky’s dreams.
She hadn’t seen Luna yet, but she supposed she needed to be asleep in the first place. She yawned, involuntarily, and her mother echoed her moments later.
“When all ponies yawn,” Derpy said sleepily to her daughter as she tilted next to Dinky’s bed, extending a wing towards it.
“The house sleeps ‘till dawn,” Dinky replied, letting go of her mother and rolling down the wing into bed. She looked up at her mom as she was tucked into bed, and beamed back, eyes open.
There was a peck on the cheek, a wishing of good rest, a click of a light, and then silence. Dinky turned to her side, facing the door to her room, remembering Princess Twilight’s lesson on avoiding sleeping on her back. She closed her eyes and focused on fun times at school, playing with her friends, and her mother’s smile, and when the shadows reached in from the edges of her eyes again, she did not startle.
Thump.
Dinky opened her eyes. The room was far darker now, and the house beyond was just as black. Dinky couldn’t see the door in front of her. She felt her heart pounding already, and sweat started to soak into her bed sheets. Just a dream, she reminded herself, seeing nothing in the room before her. She closed her eyes again, breathing just like she had practiced.
Thump.
She opened her eyes again. It was louder this time--no, not louder. Closer. But still, just a dream, right? She tried to close her eyes again, but this time--despite their heaviness--her lids did not respond.
Thump.
The just-a-dream thing that had been tormenting her each night reached the edge of her peripheral vision, and Dinky’s heart took off, thumping in her chest like a galloping racehorse. She could see the ever-familiar shape of the just-a-dream; tall, gangly, and moving about on two legs.
Thump.
It lumbered towards her, and a long arm with spindly digits like a tree branch reached out, pressing down on the end of her bed for balance. She felt the mattress tilt slightly.
As the just-a-dream reached closer to her, she could see the faint red spots in place of eyes appear in the darkness. The eyes illuminated its face; a stretched and wretched thing, like the wound of a tree struck by lightning, with peeling bark and splintered chips. It reminded her of timberwolves, with various bits of forest coagulated into this marionette, compelled forward by magic or fear.
Dinky did everything she could to close her eyes again, but they stuck open, paralyzed with the rest of her. The just-a-dream was leaning in slowly now, its red glow starting to light up the edge of her bed and her muzzle. She redirected her efforts, suddenly remembering what she had been told in a daylight which felt so far away now. She struggled to reach her legs with her mind, directing every ounce of her fibre to getting them to respond.
The just-a-dream was there now, its jagged hole in place of a nose an inch away from the end of Dinky’s. She could hear it breathe; a death knell a minute, raspy and weak, but the moving air over her dry open eyes felt as if it was powerful enough to rip her soul out from within her.
She focused on her extremities, taking every speck of concentration she could muster and aiming it at the ends of her legs and tail. Something had to move. Anything, she pleaded to herself.
By now, she normally would have been shrieking and seizing, but the determination to move her legs had overpowered the urge to scream. And so when the just-a-dream moved again, she didn’t know what to expect, and she paused in her efforts out of primal confusion.
The just-a-dream reached up slowly with one of its knotted arms, and curled all the branches at the end of its limb back save for one. Another grating exhalation passed, and then it slowly started moving the solitary twig forward, directly towards one of Dinky’s open eyes.
A decade of imagined futures passed through Dinky’s mind then, of the insults she had heard her mother called, of the struggles she watched her face every day, of the pain and headaches that Derpy had thought she had hidden so well, and fear turned to anger. Dinky loved her mother and her eyes, but she did not want to live like that herself.
At that moment, the block from her brain evaporated, and the tension built up in her entire body released itself all in one leg. She kicked forward without even thinking about it, harder than she knew she ever could, and hoof connected with wood. There was a deafening crack as her hoof continued forward, splitting the chest of the just-a-dream in two and spreading it up to each end. The just-a-dream stumbled backwards, knocking over the stack of books on Dinky’s bedside table, and collapsed onto the ground. It scattered into moss and lumber, loose on the floor.
Dinky breathed hard in absolute silence, waiting. The detritus did not disappear, nor did it move. She closed her eyes, waited a moment, and opened them, finding the sticks and leaves spread about her room still there. In the next room, she could hear movement as her mother stirred at the commotion caused by the just-a-dream collapsing, and she screamed for her for the last night.
