Starting from the background.

Shelves. Dim light coming from an unknown source. Dust, or more like the smell of dust. And books - hundreds and hundreds of them, stacked neatly at the shelves, lying in small piles where there is no place to shelve them properly. Some small, some large, some so huge you can take their covers for a small door - especially since most of the bigger ones have a lock on the cover. Some have titles you can read, some are written in a foreign languages, some don't have any indication of what they hide under the bejeweled covers. Thick and thin, old and new, the books are everywhere, they own the place and you can only feel yourself a guest, rudely intruding in their domain. Shelves go as long, as you can see, and your mind is filled with the anticipation and dread that your life is not enough to even scratch the surface of the knowledge stored within.

Especially if you are aware, that all this wonderful sight to behold is just a part one of your lucid dreams, and the one thing you know about the dream is that no matter, how lucid it is, no matter, how hard you try, you can't read a thing. Even the letters on the covers will start to slip and move once you start to pay any real attention to them. You know, the words are there, you know, you are capable to read those words, but if you want to actually read - wake up and go to the real library.

Though this one seemed strangely off. A lucid dream is not a new experience to me, I do have them pretty often. There are places I end up in more, mostly based on my favorite books and movies, there are some bizarre places I prefer not to remember ever again, but up to that point it was never something like that. Every place had this distinctive dream feeling to it. Something that is not exactly real.  Something always betraying it as a well drawn, well written moving picture. Something looking too good or too bad to be true. Too many or too little details here or there, the landscape slowly shifting while you look the other way, the meaning of what's happening coming without an explanation. This library was solid, detailed, with no sign of dream decay or buildup, and, most certainly, not based off any of my previous experiences, be it a book, a movie, or a personal encounter. Well, everything is a first someday, even such a useless thing as a dream library.

I'm not sure how much it is the case for other people, but my lucid dreams tend to be on a long side. It's hard to measure time in a shifting dream world, but sometimes it takes what it feel like days to wake up. It's nothing bad, if it's some kind of an adventure my mind decided to make me part of after a glimpse on it in some media. It can get pretty boring in a place with nothing to do - like that time, when it brought me to the shore of the ocean, with a small hut, an elderly fisherman couple and the magical goldfish they managed to royally piss off. It felt like a week there, and with nothing to do, but to look at the waves and hear the old fisherman retelling the tale of his encounter with the goldfish, interrupted only by the occasional appearances of his grumpy wife demanding him to go to the fish and make amends. It was terribly boring, but at least there was someone to talk to, even if not on many topics. A library with the books I can't read and with no one to talk to was bound to be much worse.

While thinking all this inspiring thoughts, I was lazily examining my surroundings, and something was starting to bother me more and more, like some kind of thing you see, but it still have some way to really get to your attention. I had examined several covers of the books nearby, none with anything interesting written on them, when it struck.

Nothing interesting written. To know that you must be able to read. I was reading the covers all this time, and only my knowledge that you can't read in a dream stopped me from realising it! A library in a dream, when there never was one, a place, that is a dream, but looks about as real, as anything real, and now - an ability to read in a place, that makes reading impossible. It was a dream, no second thought about it, when you get this lucid stuff often, you learn, how to tell the difference. Yet, the books had readable covers. Probably, readable contents too. And there was so many around. I knew, that someday I'll dream myself into some paradise!

Now, to be in a library and not to read a book or ten is a mortal sin, right? Right. So, I grabbed the first book from a nearby shelf and opened it to check, if it wasn't some stupid dream prank.

"Once upon a time, in a magical land of Equestria..." waaait a moment, WHAT? It can't be that book, right? I mean, it's not like it has been even written! It was just a picture of the cover, an "Once upon a time..." and some narration! Yet, here it was, heavy brown ornamented cover in my hands, with gold unicorn on it, the gem in it's eye gleaming deep blue, and the words, that was still fresh in my memory, telling the story of the alicorn sisters and their ancient conflict, written on it's thick pages and illustrated by the very same pictures I've seen only yesterday.

"Studying history? A good start!" congratulated me a deep voice from behind. I turned around, glimpsing something white and blue, and woke up.