The carousel boutique turned, its wooden joints and frames groaning and splintering. Threads of colored light splashed the walls and brought Rarity out of idleness. She knew it was her shop, and yet not her shop. The unreality of her dream gave her pause, for each movement and each sight she took in felt more real than her waking life.
If this is a dream, it is a positively dreadful one.
A tingle crept up Rarity's back and settled onto her neck. She glanced back and spun around, but could not find anyone. The sensation of spinning along with the increasing speed of the shop made her a little dizzy.
There's no sense in just sitting around waiting for it to end, now is there?
Her hoofsteps echoed beneath her as if the floor was hollow, carrying the sound deep into the earth. She heard somepony crying just outside the window and leaned over to look.
Inky blackness looked back into her. In spite of it, she could make out the gray and fuzzy shape of ponies twisting with the landscape outside. They reminded her a little too much of her mannequins, standing rigid with no expressions. Somewhere amongst the shapes she thought she saw a unicorn crying.
“Pardon me,” she called out the window, feeling a little silly for addressing the dream, “are you alright?”
As soon as finished speaking, the Carousel Boutique rumbled and swung hard, throwing her to the floor. All of the silhouettes outside turned and watched as the building continued to whirl. Fabric and pins began to tumble across the floor. Rarity scrambled to her feet and raced away from the window, her heart pounding.
“I don't see why she's making such a big deal out of it.”
Rarity turned again to the sound of her friends' voices.
“Just humor her,” said Twilight Sparkle, her voice echoing from somewhere beyond the boutique. “It makes her happy when we wear her creations.”
Rainbow Dash grumbled. “But it's all she ever does. It's like she doesn't know how to actually do something meaningful, so she just throws another pile of dresses at us and calls it good.”
Rarity's ears flattened. She pressed herself against the wall, which was easier than trying to fight the spin of the carousel.It's just a silly dream. They can't possibly think that. Even so, she couldn't help but worry that her friends really did feel that way.
“To be totally honest,” said Fluttershy, “I never even liked them at all.”
“A real eyesore,” agreed Applejack.
Fluttershy continued though, flapping her wings in punctuation. “She must think we really don't care. Always trying to buy our friendship with pretty things...”
“You think so, too, 'shy?” Rainbow cut in.
“I reckon we always kind of felt that way.”
“Check out the size of this cream puff!” declared Pinkie Pie. “I mean, I hate Rarity too. Grr.”
“Maybe it's our fault,” said Twilight Sparkle. “We should stop pretending she's our friend and just cut it off clean. We'll all be better off without her.”
Rarity knew that they were not the words of her friends, but each insult still made its mark on her. She trembled and tears began to run down her face. They did not come from her sadness, but rather seemed to bring sorrow to her. All the while the reeling spin of the boutique made her sick to her stomach. Behind every sensation there was a tingle crawling from the tip of her tail to the back of her brain. Some deep part of her sensed it coming.
It urged her to run.
The floor in front of her darkened as it crept closer. She tried moving, but the shadow hanging over her seemed to pin her down. She squeezed her eyes shut, and then wide open, trying desperately to snap herself out of the dream.
“Just let it end,” she pleaded. The prism of colors leaking in through the windows turned black and the walls opened up to reveal darkness. Needles worked their way down the walls, threads pulling the corridor into a tight circle. The sound of scissors shutting came louder and louder until she could feel the tingle right near the tips of her ears.
A pair of hooves struck the floor in front of her. The impact snapped her out of her terror long enough to pull herself to her feet. A pegasus stallion stood before her, though a second look told her that the new arrival was more than just that. She'd seen the bat-winged pegasi before, but always exclusively in Princess Luna's entourage. This one lacked the armor, allowing her to see his full wingspan and the dark circle on his flank.
“You seem out of place,” said Rarity, voice still trembling, “but not unwelcome.”
The pony stepped over her and opened up his wings, blocking out the shadow that had crept over her body with his own. “You're dreaming,” he said, his voice like a drum struck in a cavern.
“Well, I hadn't figured that one out by now,” said Rarity, wiping her cheeks, even though her tears had not left any marks.
“We're still in danger,” said the pony, rearing back. Somewhere behind her, wood crackled. The boutique shook beneath them. “I can help you, but you need to face it.”
It had been there since the dream began, the seed of the whole thing. Her mind thought it was protecting itself, but instead it allowed the creature to grow and take control of her lucid landscape. She drew herself up and turned around.
A cloud of shadow rippled in the air. And in the same space, the same body, it resembled a pony. Horns. Wings. Powerful hooves. It assumed the form of all of her friends, face shifting between each one in sequence. Bits of tar dripped from its belly, and its feathers folded into impossible tendrils.
The nightmare lashed out at the bat pony with a length of shadow. He met it with a raised hoof and thrust it back, delivering a swift slash of his wing-tips across it. Inky fluid sprayed along the floor of the boutique and it howled, struggling to retain its form.
“A nightmare is a part of who you are,” said the pony, raising his wings again. “This creature is not your nightmare. It takes your fears and cultivates that part of you, causing it to grow out of control. Then it feeds.”
Rarity scraped her hoof on the floor and glowered at the creature. “So what you're saying is that if we destroy it, this horrible nightmare will end?”
“Aye.” The stallion lowered his chest, preparing to charge. “And you will be left safe to--”
Before he could take action, Rarity summoned her magic. In reality she had little practice with violent spells. In her dream, though, she knew she could give it easy shape. The creature seemed little more than a cloud and a body now, and her strength felt infinite. A pearl light surged from her horn and engulfed the creature.
“Rarity...” it groaned, speaking the voice of all of her friends at once. “You know what they think of you.”
“My friends would never say such horrible things about me,” she said, lowering her horn. “It may be true that we do not see eye to eye on everything, and I'm afraid of hurting or losing them, but that will never happen, and I won't let you turn that nightmare into a reality.”
Then, if by magic or by her sheer force of will, the creature cried out and dissolved into the light of her spell.
The stallion turned and stared back at her, still crouched down, and shook his head. “The princess did mention you girls were something else,” he murmured. “Scary.”
The building stopped shaking and all of the twisted images faded. Bits of starlight trickled in through the windows as the air cooled. Where once the nightmare creature stood, now bits of black dust dwindled into absence. In its place, a single fragment of light floated.
“This is the part of you that the nightmare was feeding on,” explained the stallion, leading her to it. “Once you take it back, the dream will end.”
Rarity nodded, reaching for it with a hoof. “You said it feeds on nightmares,” she said, looking back at him. “How could this beautiful thing possibly be a nightmare?”
The stallion shrugged. “Because it is also what you are afraid of losing.”
Rarity blinked. My friends... losing them would be the worst possible thing. That would explain the dream. And yet...
“How does that explain you?” she wondered. “I've heard tell of the princess appearing in dreams, but not her guard.”
He scraped the ground and looked away, wings folding against his back. “The princess watches over her subjects in slumber, yes, but she does not do all of the work herself. The nightmare creatures have been showing up in number, and so our flight has been sent out to meet them.”
“Really?” asked Rarity. “Then there are more of these?”
“Indeed, and it is our purpose to hunt them. We will be watching over you, but remember your own strength. This is your mind. Do not let another control it.”
Then the pony flew a few feet up and vanished. Rarity turned back to the shard and placed her hoof against it. It was like touching liquid sunlight, her whole body and mind basking in its energy. It slipped back into her, making her complete again as her vision faded.
It was still dark when Rarity awoke. The strength and awareness that she had in her dream only began to ebb into the waking world. She turned in her bed in time to see the bat pony standing upon her windowsill, about to take off.
“If you're going to intrude in a lady's room,” she mused, “you should at least tell her your name.”
The stallion flinched and flexed his wings, looking back at her once. The moonlight outlined his body and cast his face in shadow. “Umbra,” he said. Then he flicked his wings once and flew out into the night.
She stared at the space he had left in the room, the stallion shaped absence she was now painfully aware of. Of course it's improper, plain and simple, she thought. He did save me though, didn't he?
Dawn was still hours off, but the nightmare bothered her. It has been more real than any other dream, and if the princess' entourage was working as hard as Umbra said they were... something else was going on.
“I hope Twilight is alright,” she whispered to herself. “Knowing her, she's already studied up on every detail of these things.”
Rarity slipped out of her robe and lifted a brush with her magic. Either way, she needed to pay her friend a visit. Umbra told her she was safe, but after that dream, she wouldn't be able to rest easy until she'd seen at least one of her friends again.
