Daydream

by Gray Compass

Rating: mature
Tags: Random, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Human, Other, Lyra, Romance, Bon-Bon
Length: 2625

Lyra has delved too deeply into her fantasies, and now it's time to return.

What is the definition of reality?

What about belief? If you believe in something, who can prove you wrong?

For years Lyra has struggled with different realities clashing in a war inside her mind. Now it's up to her to decide, which side is the real one.

Published 2016-03-06 21:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-03-06 21:10:02 UTC

Amber's Eyes

I dream a bad dream of you baby.

You're bleeding on the hall floor, and even though I wish it could be amid the flowers outside, it was amid your pills and all those empty shell casings. And I stare at your pathetic silhouette from the doorway as I fondle my mane, trying to find a reason to keep loving you. Because reasons are one of the many things you never gave me. You never found your own reasons to be here. Only In this chemical dream of yours, you are able to dissolve your mistakes, but you ain't dissolving me again.

This time, I won't be the one extinguishing your burns. No; I'll let them burn. I'll leave you and your open wounds, your shallow words and your acid rain.

One day, you'll realize that pills can't bloom, darling.

Clanking tings of bullet shells dropping onto concrete, bouncing and settling, one by one. Rotating, whizzing, high density piercing impacts, turning the limestone walls into powdered styrofoam.

She was loosing her favorite game again, loosing her mind again. And she ran more and more, through debris and dust-filled air, the steely fragments that pierced her pale human skin went unnoticed. And not even her long aubergine-colored trench coat could mask the sheer crimson color leaking from all those open wounds. The physical ones at least, because the others could only leak inside. Arms and shoulders brushed against the cratered columns, dodging, fleeing, still breathing.

Also steely was the long and hollow barrel protruding from her non stopping killing machine, following her steps like an obsessive street spirit being carried by the hand. And she dragged it, heavily panting and sweating, her hair plastered against her face, not making any efforts to look back every time she pulled the trigger, eventually leaving ominous trails of bullet holes on the floor.

And the space-time wires seemed to stretch and contort as she made her way towards the end of the arched corridor, crossing flashes of colored sunlight and shadow as her furtive form meandered stained window panes and massive granitic walls. Never such a corridor became so long, almost a highway in length, still, wherever her desperate feet landed, a moment of despair awaited ahead.

Guards did what they could, shot what they could, but they could never hit her, instead, merely collapsed on the floor like dead moths.

"Amber!"

So time paused, and the seconds turned into minutes. The portal stood right in front of her, an arm away, maybe less. She stood there, a beige suitcase hanging from one of her hands, the elegant decay of her trench coat, which always fit perfectly well in her body, and a flawless tommy gun so firmly held, that calling it a weapon wouldn't be enough. It was a part of her.

The girl seemed to be sculpted in white ivory, with delicate features, yellowish eyes of a dark cat, and chestnut hair that flowed in the wind. Every inch of her body contrasted with all the gruesome things she had done. Those things couldn't be overlooked.

"Amber please..." Lyra said, her bloodshot eyes staring at the unresponsive girl. "Drop this weapon." She insisted.

"I'm sorry Lyra, I'm no longer part of your world." Amber turned around to face the cyan-haired pony, which in turn tried to hold her smoky gaze. "And you're not part of mine."

"Then I'm afraid I can't help you anymore."

And those last words quickly evolved into a painful farewell, as before any sort of reinforcement arrived, the young mare finished what she started by herself, with a sharp move that not even the deepest musings of Amber's mind could predict. Lyra hadn't the strength to open her eyes, after a single hail of bullets escaped the gun awkwardly floating in front of her. Never in her life, Lyra used her magic to activate such a thing, and never again she would.

A heavy metallic clang resonated through the floor, as Lyra dropped the rifle back on the ground where it belonged, near the body of a fallen unicorn stallion still in his steely armor.

Lyra was unable to hear the sound of Amber's knees as they touched the ground, the collapse of her silhouette muffled by the sound of heavy hoofsteps striding down the stairs. Her soul collapsed, watching through cascading teary eyes, the love of her life agonizing on the floor. Spread like a smashed flower, her Amber eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling.

Lyra screamed, pulling her human self against her chest, sobbing, destroyed.

"You need to let her go!" A voice said. "Let her go, Lyra, we are doing it for your best. You won't understand now, but Amber had to go!"

"You made me kill her! I was forced to destroyed someone I've built throughout my entire life!" She cried, burying her muzzle on Amber's chest. "You dismantled a part of me, Bon Bon!"

And in a matter of seconds, the corridor of the first floor was bustling with guards, and doctors, and princesses, and nightmares, and daydreams.

Lyra closed her eyes, not wanting to walk away from the dead body.

Easy it could never be.

What to do when to save your life, you are forced to dismantle an important part of you? A piece of you.

"Amber lived inside of me." She muttered, digging her hooves into the lively chestnut hair of the human. She was so real, and she was so close of crossing the portal - the portal to the real world. "But I failed again"

"No Lyra, you didn't!" A shadow of Bon Bon's figure drifted through the room, as a liquid flower in space, delving in waterfalls into her friend's mind.

"You need to wake up!" Bon Bon said. Wrapping an arm around Lyra's shoulder, the unicorn finally releasing the grasp, allowing Amber to close her eyes for the last time.

"But how?" Her lips quivered, a hot tear streaming down her face, in flames.

"Wake up from this chemical dream of yours, Lyra." She muttered. "I'm see your silhouette from the doorway, you're laying on the bedroom floor, surrounded by things I can't even start to explain."

"No..." Lyra shook her head. "I'm... I'm a detective, I need to-"

"You just need to remember. The flowers outside, the day you met me. The day you ceased to be yourself." Invisible shadow guards surrounded the surreal crime scene, where no blood poured, and no eyes every opened. The justice in battle inside a single mind.

"Wake up, Lyra."

Purgatory

A loud, terrifying scream echoed through the polished white tiles of the nursery ward, it came from a gurney at the very corner of the room, isolated from all the patients, ponies, humans, and everything else you could find in the realm of the damned.

The purgatory was anything but an empty space.

A white unicorn nurse, covered in silky sheets, serenely made her way through the corridors, checking each one of her specially chosen patients.

There was a fantastic story behind each one of them, but unfortunately, very few were willing to listen those tales of apparent non-sense, a hidden beauty. But through nurse's Soul heart, she felt not only the stories, but the belief behind each one of them.

Some were carried on for ages, others for a few weeks, each patient had their time, and their personal world. If at least one of them managed to reach the nursery, there were considerable chances to achieve cure. Still, it was often recalled that cure was a choice, and many of the lost minds around these places, opted for not facing reality.

It is a soul's right.

It's not easy at all to fight to forget, it's a battle with oneself, with one's world.

"Hello Lyra." Said the silk covered nurse. "How you've been doing?"

A pale unicorn was curled over a bed, vanished portraits scattered around her silhouette. Empty frames. Lyra took each one of them, inspecting the blurred pictures, trying to find a person.

"Who should be this this one?" The nurse asked, caressing her head with a hoof.

"I don't know. I know nothing at all." She stated. "But I feel the lack of... her. Why do I feel this way, Soul?" She asked. Ignoring the circumstances surrounding her arrival.

"She's something you decided to forget." The nurse tenderly replied.

"I see her name on the walls. I feel those Amber eyes staring at me in the dark, but I know nothing about her." Lyra looked spectral, as if only half of her body was present, the other one somewhere else.

Everyone looked the same around here, because this was a place of recycling. Not waste, but souls - and what remained of them.

"Lyra, Lyra..." The nurse muttered, removing a translucent veil from her face, and revealing a pair of soothing blue eyes. Blue eyes that healed.

"You went so far for love. Few ponies have destroyed so many dangerous barriers. You lost parts of you spirit to keep others intact. It's a miracle your conscience is alive."

Light filled the walls and ceiling of the nursery, a soft light. The windows here would lead nowhere, but light still escaped through the gaps.

"Is this the end?" Lyra asked.

"No darling... That's just the begging." The nurse said. "Still, we are only allowed to help those who are willing to be helped."

An odd silence filled the ethereal chamber, daydreams collapsed against nightmares, and her mind in war ceased fire. It was a matter of choice, to be or not to be Amber Gray.

"What do I do?" Lyra asked.

"Let her go, Lyra. Let Amber go." The nurse approached her, a cold touch penetrating her horn. "Try again."

Dazzled, in a dusty basement, a thin layer of dust floated in the air after each hoofstep. Showcase walls depicted frames of her so called life frozen in time. The question was: Which one of them were real?

Lyra stumbled, her hooves finding no safe place to land. The ground was covered in old newspapers. Amber was in each one of them, like postcard collection.

Her back shivered, as she realized she was at the present moment, crossing the depths of the mental basement, where all her failed attempts were disposed to die.

"I thought I'd see you here, Lyra." A sultry voice echoed from a distant corner. Backstage lights surrounded a decaying figure, bullet holes on her trench-coat, an open suitcase laying aside, a rusted handgun resting inside. "Is this the Amber you wanted to believe, Lyra?"

"I don't- I never meant to-"

"You believed in me!" She shouted, hissing like a fiend. "You created me. I was yours. And then you betrayed me!" Her face morphed, eyes burned, a pair of horns blinked into existence for a second, and then back into oblivion. "You invited me."

"I did not!" Lyra cried. Trying her best not to step down. "You were never supposed to exist, you do not belong to this dimension."

Amber chuckled, her fiery eyes reflecting the scattered light like a black cat in a roof.

"Do you really believe you are the real one?" Amber asked. Throwing a box of photographs on the floor. There were ponies there, many of them, ponies Lyra had never seen. "How could I know about them? Being only a part of you?"

"No..."

"You are a simulation, Lyra Heartstrings. We all are." She somberly said. "It's all but a matter of choosing your side."

"I am tired of choosing." Lyra looked to the ground, covered in dust and pictures. "You do not belong to me, I command you to leave my mind!"

Amber just chuckled. "Do you think, pony, you can forget me like a bad dream?"

"I never said I was planning to forget." From a box, Lyra dragged a heavy gallon of gasoline. Quickly she had learned that inside her mind, she was the god she wanted to be. "Ever heard the expression, better to burn, than fade away?"

"You wouldn't dare..."

"Farewell, Amber."

The explosion that consumed the insides of her mind was so strong, that a burning fever took over her body. In a quiet room, in a quiet neighborhood of Ponyville, a unicorn burned with fever. Bon Bon hurried up, running up and down the stairs, bringing wet towels and buckets of fresh water, in an attempt to lower the fever of her friend and roommate.

What burned her insides, was finally burning her outsides.

Epilogue

"Lyra?"

"Lyra, are you with me?" A voice reverberated inside her sensitive ears.

The unicorn blinked, her eyelids heavy as stones, a burning fever fading away. Her vision was blurry and misshapen, she was only certain that a warm light emanated from the nightstand.

Gradually, she felt the texture of the woolen bed sheets, the fresh air coming from an open window, the smell of coffee lingering in the atmosphere.

Lyra was awake.

She rubbed her eyes slowly, feeling the touch of her wet fur. Had it been that long ago?

Bon Bon stood right beside the bed, she looked awfully tired, a wet towel dripping from her hoof. Lyra tried to look around, but every single muscle of her body was stiff and sore.

"W-what..." She muttered. "What did I do to myself?" Her voice failed.

Covering her eyes with a pillow, Lyra sobbed and broke into tears. All around the room, dozens of foreign equipment pilled up against the walls. Twilight's experiments, advanced scanners, reminiscences of all the failed attempts of bringing the unicorn back from her coma.

It was a warm Sunday afternoon, when Bon Bon arrived home, only to find her lover laying on the floor, empty flasks and vials scattered around her limp body.

No one ever figured out where she got those things, or for what purposes. But they suspected it had to do with her growing obsession.

But Lyra did, Lyra would remember that fateful day of her life, when she nearly drugged herself to death, in a desperate attempt to contact a human soul.

Insanity?

Maybe.

She wouldn't dare to call it a fantasy again, not after all she went through, what happened to her was real. Not in Equestria, not on Earth, but somewhere between. Because while Bon Bon, and the best scientists money could afford tried to disentangle the deathly spell that locked her mind away from the real world, Lyra lived a life inside of herself.

She was deformed by the spiritual energy that flowed through her incompatible soul. Reality was highly subjective.

"It's over now dear... It's over." Bon Bon hugged her tightly. "I don't know what you found, or what they did to you. But it's not real." She whispered. "I'll never let you go again."

"I know..." She said, planting a long kiss on Bon Bon's lips. Inspecting her real self after such a long slumber was very painful. There was much to be fixed. "She won't find us, I promise."

The pony shivered a little at the thought. Bon Bon heard stories about the person in her lover's head, and although she never admitted, she feared for her safety.

Lyra was a duo inside herself, and no matter how hard she tried to suppress that part of her soul, It would eventually reveal itself again. It was always a matter of time.

As they hugged, Bon Bon stared into her glistening eyes.

Those deep amber eyes.

Author's Note

This was a short story intended to serve as a (non-necessary) prologue to 'Amber Eyes', an incoming story which may take place in a noir world, where lost souls and outlaws of many dimensions seek shelter.