"You wanna come?" I ask my husband as we lie in bed after a long exhausting day.
"To the party?"
I look up at the E floating above this story. "Yes, to the party. This could mean something very different in other contexts, I realize. I guess that's what I get for going with the cold opening."
"I guess," he replies, and drifts off to sleep, not actually answering my question.
That night, I dream I'm a tortallini, except it's a dream and dreams don't often make sense, so while in the dream I self-identify as a tortalini, in actuality the food item I become while sleeping is a quesadilla. Within the dream, that is. Not in reality. But I am an imaginary character, so what even is reality for me? Can you have different levels of realness? Woah man.
Maybe someday I'll get some characterization.
Doubful.
When I wake up in the morning, my husband is gone and my pillow is melted. The first of these is easy to explain, as he actually has a nine-to-five job and I'm still stuck working retail while I try to do something actually useful with my library degree. It's my day off, and also it's Tuesday. And my pillow is melted. I'm alive still, so whatever happened couldn't have been too catastrophic, but I have little flecks of burnt pillow gumming up my mane. Like, picture one of those Salivdore Dhali Lama painting where everything is melting. My pillow, or what remains of it, looks like that. Some of it trickled off the bed, onto the floor. Woah, man.
"Stevie Nicks, why is my pillow melted?" I ask. But Stevie Nicks is an imaginary creature to me, just as I am to you. And she doesn't know anyway, instead muttering something about Haywaiian shirts and the death of Phillips Head Spector, a famous produce who went a bit loony. What this has to do with my pillow, I can only guess, but I'm not going to, because honestly that's a waste of a guess, even if they are unlimited and free.
Equestria is lucky to be a fairly free state, so even if we are ruled by a hereditary diarchy, it's pretty free. We have great libraries as a result of this and other reasons involving why libraries tend to be great. Something about the civil service, probably. I think by law if you mention the civil service you are contractually obliged to mention Dotted Line, one of the greatest ponies ever to live. He is a hardworking pony who really likes tea and Princess Celestia. Anyway, just because I have a library degree, doesn't mean I can do much with it, because a few years ago there was a strike of library workers, probably involving a dumb reading pun, so Celestia, who hates labor unions for reasons unclear to me and unfunny all around, brought in scabs, and then the scabs got trained in the Dewey decimal system and other library jobs but eventually a deal was reached demonstrating the power of collective borrowing, but then between the original employees and the ones brought in to replace them when the strike occured, there was suddenly a glut of peope who could work in a library, and I, being a fresh-eyed graduate ready to take on the world, ran muzzle-first into that. Oops.
Now I work at H-mart.
This afternoon, I had to go to the post office to mail a care package to my sister doing peace corp work in Griffinstone. I ran into Moondancer, out of her house surprisingly, after everyone had forgotten about her thanks to Starlight Glimmer. "Hey, Moondancer," I said, and an awkward conversation ensued. I'll spare you the details but at one point the topic of sleep came up and I asked her, "Hey, you know why my pillow melted?"
She told me it was probably punishment for something I did in the past.
That doesn't make much sense.
I ate bean sprouts for dinner with my husband tonight. His name is Pencil Sharpe. He's pretty alright. He's nine years older than me which is a little weird and to be honest, I think I might have some psychological baggage tucked in this relationship. Anyway, I asked him about the pillow.
"The pillow is a metaphor," he calmly explained, "for this story. It didn't explode, it just didn't go anywhere. I'm not sure it can even be counted as a true story. If Bad Horse were dead he'd be rolling in his grave. Fortunately he's alive."
Okay, so what do I do now, I asked. "Use another pillow and go to sleep."
So I did.
The next day, I woke up, and I was the pillow.
Woah Man. Except not really. That was another metaphor. My life is a mess and honestly the only reason Pencil doesn't divorce me is that it would take too much effort to find someone else. I cry for a few minutes, then stop when I hear the icecream cart outside with its tasty treats.
My husband says I'm fat. My goodness, he's right. Where did I go wrong? Maybe I should get a gym membership at one of those cheaper, less pleasent gyms, the ones you find in the upper-lower class parts of Canterlot. I'm cheap. Maybe I'm just lazy. I don't know. But I do know that my pillow melted again last night. Maybe I should start a collection. At the very least, maybe a modern art exhibit. Maybe I should become a docent for an art museum. Celestia supports the arts very generously, so there are a good number of museums in the area. I'm sure one of theme would exhibit my pillows that keep melting in the middle of the night. Maybe a dragon is sneaking into the room or something.
Maybe I'm just an imaginary character who is transmitting thoughts into your brain right now.
