It was cold. Fluttershy wanted to pull her blanket tighter around herself, but when she felt for it, there was nothing but cold air brushing through her feathers. Had it slipped off during the night? She opened her eyes, but it didn’t make a difference. The world wasn’t just dark, it was pitch black, devoid of even the slightest sliver of moonlight that usually fell through her window.

But she wasn’t home. She wasn’t home because she wasn’t lying in her bed; she was lying on a surface that was hard and perfectly smooth. When she stood up, she could barely feel it below her hooves. Was it metal? Was it stone? She could walk without slipping, but to what end? There was nothing here. Still, she took a couple of steps. Nothing. It was hard to believe that she was even moving... she had no point of reference, could not even see her own hooves.

She had died. She knew it. That was the only explanation. This wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t Equestria, either. It was simply nothing, cold nothingness. This was where everypony went after her death, then. A place where there was nothing. Because death was nothing. That made sense.

Fluttershy didn’t remember how she had died. She didn’t remember much of anything. Had she died old or young? Alone or with friends by her side? There was only darkness, a big hole where her memory had once been, with just little bits of information sprinkled in. She knew that she liked sleeping with an open window. She knew that she liked it quiet. She knew her name, and she knew the name ‘Rarity’. But that was it. Was it her mother? Her lover? Her friend? Her child? She couldn’t tell. She knew she was a pegasus. She knew she wasn’t good at flying. She knew she had taken care of animals. What animals? She didn’t know. It was dark, part of the hole.

She ran. She didn’t know why. But then, why not? There was hardly something to lose. She ran and ran, for minutes on end, if time was even a concept here. She might have run until she was out of breath, but that never happened. She never even got tired. Apparently, exhaustion no longer existed. She could probably run for hours if she wanted to... and when she did stop, it was merely due to boredom. How long had she run? She had no idea.

She spread her wings outward. Maybe she wasn’t good at flying, but she could still fly, right? She flapped them. Was it working? It seemed to. She flapped them harder. She could actually hear the sound of air being pushed aside. Coming to think of it, that was strange. If there was nothing, then why was there air? And now she realized that she had been breathing all along, too.

She needed to think. She should land. She stopped flapping, expecting to sail downward. But she didn’t. She was feeling the same surface beneath her hooves. It was as if the ground had ascended along with her.

Experimentally, she flapped her wings again. The feeling on her hooves vanished. She wasn’t standing on the ground anymore. She pressed her wings downward, as strong as she could. She could feel the thrust moving her upward. Then she stopped. Momentarily, the feeling below her hooves returned.

She closed her eyes. It felt wrong. She reopened them. It made no difference. It was all black. She couldn’t see.

But she could hear. So she said her name.

“Fluttershy.” She could hear her own voice. “Rarity.” Those were the only names she knew. “I’m trapped.” It felt good to talk. “I don’t know where I am. I’m talking to myself.”

Some ponies talked to themselves regularly, even while they were alive. Had she? She didn’t remember.

“I’m dead,” she said. No response. “You don’t want to say yes? There is nopony to say yes. But I am.”

She turned around. Had she done it? It was impossible to know. She would never find the direction she had been heading towards again. She had probably already changed it several times during her flight.

Why was there air? It didn’t seem right. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all. Maybe she was alive, just... in a bad place. Maybe the gates of Tartarus had broken, and this was some kind of dystopia. But then... why wasn’t she getting tired?

Maybe it was a dream? Not a normal dream; that was a thought she had dismissed from the very beginning. It felt too real. But perhaps a special dream. Some strange state of hallucination someone had put her under.

A flicker. Fluttershy felt it coming before she could react. A flicker of hope. The idea that it wasn’t real, that she was hallucinating. That she was really lying in bed somewhere, and soon she would wake. Maybe a drug. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t the kind of pony who had taken drugs, but maybe something had made her. Or maybe it was an accident. Maybe a potion she had drunk. Maybe it was a bad trip. A horrible trip. She knew... or at least she thought she knew... that those existed. Things that would mess with a pony’s mind, but only for a while. Her memory was fractured, but perhaps it was coming back. Perhaps it was all just a matter of time.

And perhaps not. The flicker died as quickly as it had come up. She didn’t believe any of it. This was not a dream. At least not one she would wake from. An eternal waking nightmare from which there was no escape, maybe. Might as well call it real.

Rarity was probably here, too. If not, she would be, soon. But Fluttershy would never see her again. She would never see again. Probably because there was nothing to see. If everything was black, then it made no difference whether one could see or not. Whether her eyes were

open

closed.

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