Carrot Top watched as the Tantabus turned yet another building into a hideous caricature of a living creature. “I think that’s Berry Punch’s house,” she observed.
“Well, it was,” mumbled Berry, trotting up behind her. “Guess I’m gonna be sleeping on someone’s couch until we all wake up.”
Minuette frowned. “Why would you go to sleep in a dream? Can you even do that?”
Any further exploration of the subject was cut off as Fluttershy came galloping up to the group. “Please!” she cried, “We need your help, too!”
“Fluttershy’s right,” added Twilight, trotting over to the assembled ponies. “We’ve all got to work together to stop it from escaping!”
As more and more ponies gathered around them, Twilight and her friends explained their plan. Carrot Top had to admit it made a certain amount of sense: since they were all dreaming, they could do anything they could dream of. Before long, a knightly Spike riding a house-sized Derpy was jousting with the Tantabus, and Filthy Rich was hurling waves of coins upon the creature as though they were raw spellforce.
“Huh,” said Lily, as she and the others looked on. “I always thought ‘the power of money’ was a metaphor.”
“It is!” cried Twilight, as she galloped past. “But in a dream, metaphors can be real!” As the other ponies watched, she ran to the ruined remains of the Golden Oaks Library, which were instantly transmogrified to their original, un-destroyed state by her arrival.
“Well, in that case…” Berry muttered. She furrowed her brow, and as the other ponies watched, she was engulfed by a flash of brilliant white light.
When the other ponies’ eyes adjusted, they saw Berry Punch standing exactly where she had been… but behind her was her home, its door open, its porchlight on, and its structure now devoid of monstrous limbs and gaping maws. “Sweet!” she cried, and trotted inside.
“Berry, where are you going?” called Minuette.
“To bed! All this dreaming is making me sleepy!”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
Berry just shrugged, and closed the door behind her with a yawn.
“So, is nopony bothered by the fact that her house is in the middle of the road now?” asked Carrot Top.
“Eh, it’s just a dream,” said Minuette. “So, I guess we should probably go help the girls?”
Carrot Top nodded, and in a flash, Minuette was surrounded by a swarm of gibbering skulls, their cacophonic voices combining into a foul miasma of un-music. “TO THE DEPTHS OF TARTARUS WITH THEE, FOUL DWIMMERLAIK!” she cried. Then she giggled. “Oh, it’s just like I imagined!” she squealed, as she rode a wave of ebon darkness toward the Tantabus.
“That girl’s got issues,” muttered the Bon Bon half of Lyrabon. Then, she turned to the Lyra half. “Honey, I’ll be honest; unless baking perfect toffee squares is gonna help defeat this thing, I don’t have any useful dreams for fighting something like this. If we’re gonna help, it’s up to you.”
Lyra blushed and looked down. “Yeah, I don’t have any dreams that would be… well, appropriate.”
Carrot Top cleared her throat.
“Right!” said Bon Bon, a little too loudly. “Well… Lyra, do you want to make some perfect toffee squares?”
“Sure! After everypony else beats the monster, they’ll probably be hungry, anyway.”
“You don’t need to eat in dreams!” thundered Minuette, passing by on wings made from the bones of her enemies as she rained blackfire upon the Tantabus.
“You know, now that I think about it,” said Lily, “she always was a little too cheerful.” Carrot Top could only nod.
Lyrabon trotted off together/alone, to do their baking. Other ponies quickly separated as well; some to assist in the battle as best their dreaming allowed, others to get out of the way of the ponies doing the fighting. Soon, only two ponies were left watching.
“...So,” began Lily, after an awkward silence. “What’re you going to do?”
Carrot Top looked down. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I mean, I know I should help, but… I don’t have any dreams that could help with this! My dreams are about self-weeding gardens, or winning the Sisterhooves Social, or… well, normal stuff.” She shook her head. “I’ve never dreamed about being a superhero, or a princess, or… or whatever Minuette is.” She sighed. “I want to help, but I don’t know how.” She turned to Lily. “What about you? Why are you still here?”
Lily grimaced. “I don’t have any big dreams, either, but I thought I should stay and watch. You know, in case the Tantabus really does break into reality and shroud Equestria in eternal nightmares.”
“Why would you want to watch that?”
“Because it’s history! I mean, someday I’ll want to be able to tell my foals I was here when the world was rendered an unending field of horror and despair.”
Carrot Top rolled her eyes. “Lily, you are such a…” she trailed off as the Tantabus swelled to take the shape of a massive alicorn, dwarfing the town. With a thunderous crack, it used its horn to rip a hole in the fabric of the dreamscape, one larger than all the ponies together could hope to patch. With slow steps, it began to enter the tear. “...Well, looks like you’ll get your wish.”
As the end of Equestria drew nigh, Carrot Top racked her brains for something, anything that she could do. She sifted through every dream she could remember: dreams of farming, of relaxing by the stream, of visiting her family. Even her most far-fetched dreams were of nothing more exciting than being able to fly, and a simple pair of wings wouldn’t help now.
Then, she had an idea.
*****
It was Sunday, and Sunday was Muffin Day. Muffin Day might not be a national holiday (or, as Derpy would say, “It might not be a national holiday yet”), but that didn’t make its celebration any less important to Carrot Top. After all, a Sunday morning without a fresh muffin and a good friend would hardly be worth getting up for.
“So, do we know-know that the star monster is gone?” asked Derpy, as she selected a fourth muffin from the basket set between them in the middle of the table.
Carrot Top, still only halfway through her first, gave a noncommittal “mmph,” then swallowed. “Well,” she said, “Princess Luna said she had it ‘completely under control.’ If the princess says it’s not a problem, I think we can take her word for it.”
Derpy frowned. “But I thought that the last time everypony took her word for it when she said everything was under control, she tried to bring forth eternal night.”
“Yes, but she’s better now, isn’t she? So it’s probably fine.” Carrot Top scrunched up her nose as she thought of something. “By the way, why were you twenty feet tall in that dream? Isn’t that kind of a weird thing to dream about?”
Derpy shrugged. “I dunno. I like to imagine I’m really big sometimes, and then I can do things like put the star on the Hearth’s Warming tree, or look in my friends’ upstairs windows and say ‘hello!’”
“You’re a pegasus,” Carrot Top said, eyebrow arching. “You can already do those things.”
“Yeah, but in my dreams, I can do them while I’m big!”
Carrot Top sighed, but she let the matter drop. She was about to take another bite out of her muffin when Derpy asked a question of her own. “What was your dream, anyway?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Right before the Princess stopped the star monster, I saw you down near the town square, and you flashed white like everypony did when they dreamed something.” Derpy leaned forward, and did her best to look Carrot Top in the eyes. “But you still looked the same afterward. What was it that you dreamed about?”
Carrot Top smiled. “I don’t know if it was a dream, exactly, but when it looked like the Tantabus was about to defeat everypony and escape into Equestria, I realized something. I was trying to think of something from my dreams that would help, but everything was too normal or boring to do any good. But then I realized there was something that all of my dreams had in common.”
Derpy cocked her head. “What was that?”
Carrot Top’s smile grew a bit more wistful. “In all of my dreams, whether they’re about my farm, or my friends, or my life…
“In all of my dreams, everything always works out for the best.”
Author's Note
Inspired by the scene from Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? from which the cover is taken. Seeing all the ponies in town take flight, both literally and figuratively, to battle the Tantabus, while Carrot Top looks on, normal as ever, made me wonder what her dreams must be like. My conclusion? They must be terribly "normal" dreams.
But sometimes, there's nothing wrong with normal.
