Starfish

Two ponies sat at the table in a bright, ornate room. It was all quiet. The ceiling was covered with a layer of water and some gooey green chandeliers that had floating mass of gloomy green light from inside, bombarding him with heavy photons. The Other lights were yellow and all on the floor near the walls.

Overall, strong grayish brown elder unicorn stallion with horn glasses, silently took a plate, filled it with darkness from the colorful box and began to eat.

Syntax Splitter, green one who sat at the other end, stared at the wall. It was quiet. The wall wasn't laughing. It was an all too normal wall. He looked at the plate in front of him. He looked at all the boxes and strange metal sticks on the table. He looked at the clock on the wall. He looked at highlights on walls. It all seemed very unusual.

Splitter shivered when something perfectly normal reflected in the plate.

"You're not a lemur, Overall..."

Saying that was not the right thing to do. Right after that, he heard something humming behind him. Yellow lights surrounding the room began turning brighter and brighter. The stallion blinked, and something else changed. Where Overall was, now there was a stone statue of a water pony. But now behind him, something was trying to make a noise, that was then becoming louder and growing in area. He didn't want to turn the head back. From the sound he knew clearly that the thing behind him, the water armadillo, was almost big enough to fill all of the empty space in there.

A variable curved, and he turned towards the beast. The ghostly being of force roared right into his soul. And it kept roaring fiercely for minutes. It was half past five on the clock.

The pony opened his eyes. It was all quiet in a bright room with matte walls and water on the ceiling. Green and red glowing chandeliers, rocks and plants were clearly visible somethere in there, together with the moonlight reflecting from the surfaces, coming from the ceiling in smooth waves. At the other end of the table, there was a chair that shouldn't have been there before, but at that moment, it was throwing sense all around it. Two ponies sat at the table. Then a third pony appeared.

Syntax Splitter blinked.

"What's your name?" - he asked.

"Awareness" - the mare whose coat was an odd gradient of red at the top with mane and tail matching it, and yellow at the bottom, said shortly. Fireworks went off somewhere in the distance behind the wall. "What you have to know now is what you should tell me afterwards. But you won't know it. Yet, I should tell you nevertheless. The room with a purple window in here stands for the starfish center while it's dark. It's in the opposite, filling in as the Various attack. No ends of the starfish may go into the opposite. Purple window reflects into the outside when there's too much perfect echoes."

While Splitter processed the riddle, Overall picked a magical remote control and pushed a button, switching yellow velvet walls to crimson color. "I don't know", he said, putting the device back, "this dark thing is tasty. What is it?"

No one said anything, but it was the telescope plant. Ponies from cities of Far West noticed that it grew inside frozen telescopes if they were protected from daylight, but absorbed space energy while it's night. But Awareness wasn't aware. "It's something that randomly appeared", she shrugged.

Splitter awoke in the safety bubble in shallow waters of eastern part of Circumference bay, the place where their water ponies pod usually gathered food. He gathered the bags and began the way back toward their network of caves, accelerating with his water wings. Recalling the dream, he wondered where Awareness Squee, the seaweed gatherer he was in team with, went. As the current area was visible in all directions and she wasn't in sight, he just went north west, avoiding local plants and jellyfish.

When he reached the exit from that bay, he began hearing some music, likely coming from side branches of the tunnel network. The five water ponies who came to mind immediately were Simultaneously, Guitar Mane, Eye Fair, Tangerine Gasoline and Forget Time, who were musicians of the pod, often calling the five of them "the Crowd". There weren't supposed to be any concerts that day though, but Splitter thought that someone could ask Overall, the leader, to organize something.

On the way, a black spider thing wanted to catch him, but didn't, because it was too lazy.

However, thinking of kelp muffins, Splitter ran into a wall once. The pain made him forget about them and swim further - after turning left. Left was the right way there.

Some seconds later, he was there, in that cave where cool seashells were and lotus flowers grew and wind of fresh air above the water surface existed. It was his destination. Eventually, somepony from the pod would arrive. He waited.

Above the surface, a bird waited for anything interesting to happen.

After half hour of waiting, another bird came and distracted that one, so they flew away, leaving Syntax Splitter waiting in silence. No usual accordion sounds from Tangerine came, either.

Another hour later, an otter came from above, caught a yellow fish, and carried it away.

Then an angry crab slowly came and somehow actually hissed at Splitter. He took just one chosen shell and left. Splitter thought it was getting darker.

Awareness came unexpectedly then, swimming in spirals with hard hat on her head.

"Splitter? Hi." - she said, "My kite broke, and I spend an hour getting off the rock. Do you know if there is any materials left to build a new one? It would be hard to search at night, maybe Shining Plank has any?" Water tried to escape the cave from amount of splashing these spiral tricks caused, making crabs above the surface protect their face with claws.

"Let's ask Overall," - Splitter agreed. "Shining wouldn't give anything without his order."

"Overall's not in his room" - Awareness noted, "I could not find him. Or anyone else actually, only music coming from nowhere" - she frowned. "Let's pretend they're all still here - but let's find them now also" - whispering, she added strictly, "so when you enter Overall's chamber, greet him as if he's there. And greet Wild Tube in the western corridor. Then report to me at the kitchen where I left the food..." - she said, quietly but swiftly swimming away into the darkness.