Dream Makers

In which fears of failure are discussed, and a way forward down is discovered.

“So I was thinking, now that we’ve got the lamp set up in the attic, I could try and repair the roof for you before I go?”

Cherry Berry’s voice was cheerful, her expression that of a pony who had explored every nook of a (subjectively speaking) spooky house and found nothing even remotely murderous or sinister hiding within them.  She chewed her lip as her thoughtful gaze tracked across the living room.  “I’m sure I could rig up something to replace those broken tiles and—Hey, Bon! You still with me?”

“Sorry?” Bon Bon pulled her sullen gaze up from the neat pile of dust she had been shepherding across the floor for the past half hour.  Cherry was staring at her, her soft eyes appraising.

“Um...” Frantically chasing the scraps of recent conversation she had only been half listening to, Bon Bon was eventually forced to concede defeat.  She offered her friend an apologetic smile.

“Whoa, if looks could kill!” Cherry’s mane tumbled about her face as she cocked her head.  “You okay? You’ve been in a funny mood considering we’ve just found the place of your dreams.”

“I’m fine,” Bon Bon snapped.  She sighed, watching her breath scatter the dust into the embrace of the shadows flickering in the corners of the room.  Though the windows had been cleaned, clearing the place up had taken them the best part of the day, and the pale evening light now needed the support of the candles they had both placed around the house.  It created the perfect atmosphere—warm, without being too cosy; safe, without being too secure.

But Cherry was right.  The house which had offered unending promises upon their arrival had slowly become a place that was crushing them underhoof.  The rising disappointment Bon Bon had felt with the discovery of each uninteresting room had been matched only by the terrible numbness spreading from her stomach.  She had banked so much on this venture, and to be defeated so soon felt awful.

Bon Bon gazed out of one of the windows.  The branches of the trees outside made cracks in the jaundiced sky, and the longer she kept her eyes on their harsh forms the more lost and afraid she felt.  What was she doing? She wasn’t ready for this—not in the slightest.

“You’re still staying the night... right?” Bon Bon shuffled her hooves against the wooden floor to disguise how unpleasantly hopeful the brittle echo of her voice sounded.

It didn’t work.

“Of course I am! You think I’m taking my chances with whatever beasties come out at night round here?” Cherry giggled and bumped a shoulder against Bon Bon’s.  “Also, I suppose you look as though you might need cheering up too.”

“Heh, yeah... A little bit.  What would I do without you, Cherry?” Bon Bon nuzzled her friend, the confirmation quashing her fears, hiding them somewhere deep for another day.

“Well, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Cherry replied with a wink.  She sat down on the rug and inclined her head.  “So what’s up?”

Bon Bon scuffed a hoof.  “It’s just... This is supposed to be a dungeon, you know? I was supposed to find my fortune here.  But we’ve been looking for hours now, and the closest thing I’ve found to one is a stupid dumb cupboard beneath the stairs with some half-sentient mould growing in it.”

“Well you could have asked if it knows where the dungeon is.” Cherry’s giggle died on her lips.  “Oh, hey, come on now,” she cooed, wrapping her forelegs around Bon Bon and squeezing tight.  “This isn’t like you at all.  So what if we haven’t found the dungeon yet—big deal! You’re telling me someplace as rickety as this doesn’t have at least one secret passage tucked away somewhere?”

Bon Bon tried to frown, she really did.  But Cherry’s encouraging expression—those intense wide eyes and puckering lips—was just too funny to ignore.  A reluctant giggle escaped her mouth, turning quickly into desperate, throaty laughter as she gently pushed her friend away.

“It’s not just that,” she said, running a hoof through her two-toned mane.  “I’m worried—terrified, even—that Mom and Dad are right.  That I should have just stayed in business school and... waited.”

Cherry Berry blew a raspberry.  “Hey, if I always listened to my folks then I wouldn’t have swiped Best Junior Inventor at Canterlot high—or be here with you, in fact.”

“Oh you would too.  Your parents really support your decisions.”  Bon Bon trotted across to the empty trophy cabinet and looked it up and down.  Had it ever housed the trophies of dreaming colts and fillies—and if so, what had happened to them over the years?

“Yeah, well... My point remains valid.”  Cherry held up a hoof.  “So they wanted you to go to business school first before setting out on your own.  That doesn’t mean that flunking it and striking out a few years early was the wrong thing to do.”

“I guess.  Unless I fail and have to move back into the family dungeon—the first ever Drops to fail to find a dungeon at the first time of asking.”

Cherry tapped Bon Bon on the muzzle, her eyes glittering in the half-light of the room.  “You know what your problem is, Bon? You think too fast.  Now, let me share with you something that will help you with your problem.”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes.  “A nice bottle of sangiovese, right?”

“Uh... No? Goodness, Bon, booze is all you ever go on about.  I think you might have a problem!” Cherry laughed, ducking as Bon Bon launched the dustpan at her.  “I was actually talking about positive thinking!”

She closed her eyes and held up a hoof, an infuriating pose that she adopted whenever she lectured somepony—usually Bon Bon.  “Do you think I gave up when I was trying to build the first ever pony-pedal-powered-plane in Canterbury? Even though everyone told me it wouldn’t work, I believed I could do it.  And do you know what happened?”

“Yes I do.” Bon Bon replied through a clenched jaw.  “You crashed—frequently!”

“The point is I crashed less often,” Cherry said hastily.  “Because positive thinking!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“And neither does moping about a situation that you haven’t even tried to change yet.”  Cherry’s expression was smug, as though this was the specific point she had been intending to make all along.  “Honestly, Bon.  Try again, and actually believe that you’ll find it.  I promise you that you will.”

Bon Bon kept her eyes on the floor as she considered her friend’s words.  Cherry was right.  Had any Drops ever said that finding a dungeon was easy? But they had all found one, each and every Drops.  And she would too.  The entrance was here... somewhere.  She just had to try harder, and embrace the challenge.

She gave Cherry a warm smile.  “Thanks. I think I needed that pep talk.  And you’re right.  I shouldn’t just give up at the first problem that rears its head.”  She placed a hoof on her friend’s shoulder.  “Honestly, I’d be a total mess without you.”

Her chest felt tight as she spoke, and she quickly distracted herself with thoughts of finding the entrance to the dungeon.  Tomorrow was coming, and with it the reality that she would be parting ways with the friend who had been by her side the longest.  Bon Bon closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Okay, here goes,” she announced, trotting across the rug.  “Think positive, think positive, think posi—urk!”

Her hoof caught against something small and heavy, and Bon Bon tumbled tail over muzzle across the room.

Cherry Berry’s warm laughter filled the air.  “Goodness, Bonny.  You really do have a drinking problem! Are you okay?”

“Ugh,” Bon Bon replied succinctly.  She waited for the room to stop spinning, before picking up her glasses and lurching to her hooves.  Glaring at the rug, she then blinked in surprise on noticing what it was that she had tripped over—a small mound of... well, there was a small mound of something underneath it.

She pointed a hoof.  “Was that there before?”

Cherry’s expression instantly become wary.  “Not that I remember,” she replied.  “You think that it’s a... body?”

“That small?”  Bon Bon trotted to one side of the rug and lowered her head.  “Honestly, Cherry.  Come on, help me roll this up.”

Her friend cast a final uncertain glance at the bulge before moving alongside Bon Bon.  “Okay, sure,” she muttered, dipping her head, “but if that’s the latest victim of some bunny obsessed serial killing monster then you’re on your own.”

Spirals of dust erupted like fireworks from the rug as they rolled it to one side of the room.  Coughing and spluttering, Bon Bon wiped at her eyes before looking down.  Then she froze.

“Is that..?” she began, before her trembling voice failed her.

Cherry’s eyes were as wide as her own, but that smug expression quickly returned to her friend’s face.  “Told you,” she replied.

Cut into the floor, and with a heavy metal ring pull handle attached to it, was a large trapdoor.

Tapping a jittery staccato on the wooden floor, Bon Bon squealed and grabbed the handle with her teeth.  A thick, heady concoction of smells filled the air as she pulled the trapdoor open—Bon Bon could instantly imagine lichen-slicked rocks being dashed by crisp, running water and rusted metal frames and woodworm-infested doors.  She breathed deep, and was transported to an dank underworld beneath the house, where red-eyed creatures watched from the cracks between flagstones and unnamed things slithered and crawled and—

With a strangely muted thud, the trapdoor fell shut again.  Bon Bon blinked, and then glared at Cherry.

“What did you do that for?”

“Because there was a staircase,” Cherry replied, “and that staircase was disappearing into an impenetrable and cold darkness, probably from which there'd be no return, and I could already imagine the argument we would be having, where you'd want to go off and explore it right away and I’d rather be keeping the pelt firmly on my back.”

“But—”

Cherry ruffled Bon Bon’s mane.  “So I skipped to the end.  Congratulations, Bon, you’ve found the entrance to your dungeon.  I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun exploring it, but maybe that can wait until tomorrow? You know, when I’ll be too far away to get dragged along for the ride?”

Bon Bon opened her mouth, but then swallowed her protest.  She had found the dungeon, and it was hers to explore for as long as she wanted to.  Cherry had done so much for her this past week, the very least she could in return do was to respect her fears and delay her own plans by a day.

She nodded at her friend, and grinned as excitement and joy and sheer anticipation flooded back into her body, chasing away those earlier doubts.  “You’ve got a deal.  So then, what did you want to do for the rest of the day?”

Cherry’s smile was wide and toothy.  “Celebrate, of course! And you know what we need to be able to do that, right?”

“Positive thinking?”

Bon Bon snickered as Cherry pulled her into another gentle headlock.