Betwixt Dreams and Reality

by GeekyGami

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Luna, Random, Adventure, Discord, Slice of Life, Death, Human, Twilight Sparkle, Lyra, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Doctor Whooves
Length: 12982

A man whose passion is lucid dreaming ends up in Equestria.

'Isn't this dream lasting a tad bit too long...?
Why is it so coherent?'

Never had Willhelm thought he'd have a dream about Equestria that would pass through multiple days in said world.

Journey through the life and dreams of Willhelm in Equestria, as he loses the ability to distinguish fiction from reality.

Image made by me.

Published 2018-12-24 08:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-03-25 09:55:59 UTC

1

'... Ah, a dead bird on the pre-categorization conveyor.

What a surprise.'

If a tree falls in a forest,
does it make a sound?

Not in a dream it doesn't.
Dreams are peculiar that way.

Anything that is out of sight does not strictly exist, in a way not unlike Schrödinger's cat.

The idea of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, explained simply, is that there is a cat in a closed box.

Is it alive, or is it dead?

How may we know unless we open the box?

'... Ah, another dead bird, this time on conveyor C-14.'

Well, here's the thing.
Were it a dream, until the box is opened, the cat is neither alive nor dead, yet both alive and dead.

It is also both in the box and not in the box.

'... That's been 8 birds so far.'

... Dreams.
The only reason I take the time to sleep.
They keep life fresh.

It's like a free videogame or story every night, except I don't have to explain why I waste time on them.

Hi. My name is Willhelm.
Born in Canada, bald at 21.
Working at a recycling plant.

That's right, people don't know how to recycle.

Hunters are especially troublesome.

'... 12 birds. None of them have reached a state of rigor mortis.

They haven't been dead for long.'

I have many passions, despite the dead-end job I've chosen to put myself through.

One of those passions just so happens to be dreaming.

Lucid dreaming to be exact.

'Jesus H Christ, not only were there 12 dead birds, but now we've found a raccoon on conveyor C-17!

Doesn't seem to be from the same batch, it had started decaying at least a month or two ago from the looks of it.

Still, that's 13 dead animals on the same day!

Never thought I'd see that many.'

Lucid dreams are especially pleasant

... When they're not nightmares anyways.
Then they become mostly annoying.

They're honestly very comparable to virtual reality, in the sense that they feel real, but since you know it's fake, all sense of fear leaves you.

In fact, the moment you feel fear in a lucid dream is one of the many moments you're bound to accidentally wake yourself up, as you're in a half-conscious state.

'... Alright, that's one day of work done.'

I put the things I found and wanted to keep in my bag, and proceeded on to the car I was hitching a ride in.

As per usual, the ride home was uneventful. There were complaints about the managers here, complaints about needy kids there, coupled with obnoxiously bland pop/trap music.

While it shouldn't be important, I'll point out the lyrics of said songs were as trite as you could've gotten.

"I'll kiss you inside out" here, "I like your body" there, "I miss your body" from time to time.

Finally, I arrived home.

I took a 30 minute shower after eating dinner, and moved on to sitting at my computer for the 2 hours I had left to do anything substantial.

I would have played games or watched shows, but I had a habit of doing both of those hobbies for hours at a time, and I wanted to do multiple things with my alotted time, mostly routine.

Checking Deviantart, Memebase, Youtube, RoadToVR, Discord, and sites that needn't be mentioned.

There were also short activities that needn't be mentioned, as well as taking some time to flesh out some songs I was working on, bit by bit.

Clock hit 9 PM.

I would usually go to bed then, but I would often derail into a Discord conversation, a video or whatever else I decided to procrastinate on.

9:30 PM
No choice, I was out of time.

Headed to bed, did a few spine stretching exercises, then a few breathing exercises, before slowly falling asleep.

It was time to dream.

A white, dusty surface full of craters, a black sky.
The moon, presumably.

In the sky up above, a planet.
It looked like Earth, but I couldn't have told you for sure.
I didn't pay attention to the continents, it was just blue and green, with some big clouds here and there.

I can tell you that it was pretty bloody close though.
As in, closer than it had any right to be.
It took up more of my vision than my glasses (which I'm fairly certain I wasn't wearing. (I had my hair back, upon closer inspection.))
In fact, I could barely see the sky in my peripheral vision.

While usually I would've relied on symbols surrounding me to tell whether I was dreaming or not, in this case, it was fairly obvious.

You wouldn't just walk normally on the moon without even a helmet for protection now would you.
But that's precisely what I did.

The gravity was the same as on earth, providing gravity in dreams isn't different when you don't know it's a dream, and you don't happen to be floating like a third-person camera.

I spotted a figure on the edge of the moon.

(That's right, it had an edge, it didn't just continue on forever like a desert. It was more akin to a cinematic shot that entirely let go of logic for the sake of drama.)

I decided to investigate.

A horse, laying down, staring at "Earth"
Cyan eyes.
A dark blue coat, hair like stars.
A horn and wings.
Upon closer inspection, it was Luna.

As in, Luna from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Anybody who had done a Google search for the name Luna could tell you I am justified in this specification.

That's right.
I had enjoyed that show greatly around 2012 to 2016.

While it certainly didn't stand out from your typical anime fare, it certainly stood out from everything else on TV in Western regions.

The fantasy setting, with how fleshed out it was, made it incredibly interesting.
Nevermind the fact it was way ahead of any fantasy show that had relied on tropes like elves and dwarves, by going from a biped species to a quadruped one.

Certainly, previous generations of the show didn't quite click the way that generation did, but their ideas were similarly interesting, if somewhat misguided.

In fact, that show sparked the inspiration I had needed to get back into drawing and illustration.

I was surprised to see a pony of all things in my dream.
I don't often have cartoons running amok in there, let alone real versions of them.

... Well, real.
Same proportions as in the show, but in full perspective, properly lit.
Her fur was somewhat similar to that of a short-haired dog, while her mane was seemingly a dimension in itself, with a film surrounding it not unlike the whites of an egg around its core.

I figured the reason she looked like a real life rendition rather than a cartoon was that I had done 3D modeling of ponies prior, as a study of sorts.

Still, it was quite a surprise.

So, I sat beside her, and looked at the m-
I'm sorry, I meant "Earth." I looked at "Earth."

Of course, I got bored of that, and decided to look over to Luna.
With me sitting, and her laying down, we were at eye level.

Nevermind the fact her eyes were as big as fists.
That just means you find the center of the eyes to find the eye level.

I decided to wrap my arm around her.

It was comfortable.

I stayed like that for a little while, then I thought
'... You know, I've always wondered what kissing a pony would be like.'
'I wouldn't do that if it was real life, but this is a bloody dream. No one will judge, right.'

And so, I turned to her, made her face me, turned my head sideways, and we kissed.

It was oddly pleasant. I was expecting a more rubber-like texture, but it wasn't exactly a smooth surface,
it was quite diffuse.

My heart started pounding.
Despite beating very slow, it felt like it was about to burst out of my chest.

I knew I had to calm down, or I would wake up.
Thus, I tried taking slow, deep and methodical breaths.

Alas, to no avail.
I soon woke up from my dream, delving into another one afterwards.

All I could remember of the second dream was that I had passed in a backstreet alley, and arrived onto a boulevard that had fairly fancy buildings.

Everything was inside this big block, with walls of brick and a ceiling of smoothed sandstone.

There were people on the sides of the street walking around.
I flew around a bit, and soon, my alarm played "Drax - Happy Happy Christmas" also known as "It's a Mystery."

It was time to wake up, another day of work started.

Author's Note

First proper fic I've ever attempted, I hope this goes well!

It'll seem to lose the MLP context for a few chapters, but don't worry, it'll come back to ponies later on.

It'll be glorious!
.. I hope.

Do let me know if you spot any grammatical mistakes, or things I should work on in the future.

I'm not entirely certain when it comes to dialogues and introspections how they're supposed to be done.

I'm not entirely sure I'm paragraphing properly either.
I'm just trying to make it less... Wall-of-text-ish

Anyways, since this was a concept I didn't see explored too much, I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.

That was a dream I actually had by the by.
I'll tell you guys in notes whether or not the dreams I mention were dreams I actually had or not.

Cheers!

2

Equestria, PonyVille, one thousand years after Nightmare Moon's defeat.
The stars converge towards the Mare in the Moon.

Her silhouette disappears from the moon.

... Dreams.

I had dreams once.

Alas, much like real dreams, they fade away, slowly if not entirely forgotten.

'Ah, the lines stopped. Better clean my station.'

I'd always had an interest in drawing.
From the moment the first illustration I ever saw hit my eyes, I knew I wanted to make more like it.

Thus were made my first two drawings;
A badly drawn Odie, and an attempt at drawing Garfield.

Both were terrible, and even at the time I knew that much. I didn't understand how to make a line that didn't go where I didn't want it to.

"Hey John, why'd we stop?"

"Ribbons got stuck all over the belts! We're gonna have to clear that out before we can start again."

'I see, the conveyors got stopped by caution lines. Got stuck around the wheels of the conveyors.'

I looked up how to draw Garfield, and from there, I kept on learning.
I would only find out years later that I had been a one trick pony.

It took the graphics of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to bring back my passion in drawing.
For two years, all I drew was the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield.
I was fascinated by their designs.

To be fair, it was the first time I had ever seen live 3D graphics. Being a kid, I extrapolated from there, and everything looked way more realistic than it actually was.

'Damn, Midnight's in a hurry, opening that door this quick.'

I learned about light and shadows after witnessing the Master Sword as it was depicted in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

It looked absolutely magnificent, in comparison to the version from OOT.
It sparked my inspiration, made me realize how much room I had to grow.
I trained and trained, until I could actually draw it perfectly, with lights and shadows.

I then stopped for a good five years, satisfied in what I'd managed to do.

'Oh my god, it's like he's fighting against a monster made of caution lines!

You'd think he was a bad chef in a cartoon fighting against mutated food, what the hell!'

During that time, I hadn't learned what I needed to to properly be able to get back into drawing after long periods of time.

It was around 2013 that I finally had the inspiration I needed to get back into drawing;
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

I kept seeing the show pop up all over meme pages, and at one point I got annoyed and decided to see for myself what the fuss was about.

I was instantly hooked.

'Ah, the triple siren is blaring, time to get back to work.'

My first attempt at drawing a pony had gone horribly wrong.
One of his forelegs looked like an elongated pimple, while his wing looked like it hadn't managed to grow. Instead of looking like it was made of feathers, it looked more like a fish's fin. It looked awful, and it was then that I realized that I had let myself go.

I looked up an endless amount of tutorials on drawing ponies, and I saw one thing come up very often;
Proportions.

Fractions of things were where other things were meant to go.
That, coupled with some knowledge of perspective I'd learned in high-school got me through that hurdle.

I could now draw ponies decently.
They were far from perfect.

In fact, I put the wings in the wrong place on multiple occasions,

but it was a start.

'Ah, time for the break.'

I tried drawing ponies with shading.
It somewhat worked, as long as I had lines to rely on, but I found out very quickly that that wasn't enough.

I could see that something was missing when I tried doing shaded drawings without lines.
Everything looked flat.

I tried adding light, but everything still looked flat. I had to figure out how to build creases out of light only.

It was while I was painting an illustration of Luna wearing stockings that I stumbled upon the answer:

Reflections.

'... Tim Hortons' ? Why are we having donuts?'
"Hey Veronicka, are those donuts for us?"

"Yeah, Big Boss is planning a meeting during this break!"

'Oh, cool, free donuts. Don't mind if I do.'

That was no surprise, considering how much I relied on videogames for my knowledge of lighting.
I only learned around that time of ray-tracing.
I hadn't known how many steps games skipped to make their lighting work.

Once I added reflections, everything made sense. My illustration finally had the depth I had been looking for.

'Ah, there's the boss.'

"Hello everyone. I'm sure you all noticed the food laid out before you. Think of it as a reward for your hard work. Just the other day we reached a number of 161 bundles of recyclable materials!
That's the highest amount we've produced in 7 months!
Thank you all for your hard work!"

'... Huh. He did a meeting just to tell us that. That's nice...?

Eh, whatever. Getting free food. No complaints here. He can do what he wants as far as I'm concerned.'

I tried drawing humans around the same time.
Faces came out fine, but even with proportions, I couldn't quite figure out how to properly connect everything, and the arms looked like elongated balloons.
It was far from pleasing.

It was then that another revelation came to me in the form of anatomy.
I hadn't realized until now how important it was, but the moment I properly learned it, I felt silly for not doing so prior.
I practiced my anatomy, found proportions for where muscles connected to the bones, learned which overlapped which, and from there, I honed my skills with proportion, started to make them more vague and relative than they were prior.

At this point, my skills were at a level where I already knew where I wanted to go in the future.

As an artist, as my father had told me, work is not guaranteed.
It's a very competitive field, and the pay is extremely unstable. It's not a safe job to pursue on its own.

Fortunately, I had found a solution;
If I were to become a concept artist, I could make over 52 000$ CAD every year!
I could be paid to sit on my ass, think, and draw!

The perfect dream career!

'Ah, going to conveyor C-23 #1 next. That's nice, hardly need to think at that one. Just pick up the trash, put it in the trash compartment.'

Alas, the graphics design class I had chosen to complete to simultaneously get the credit I needed to get my high-school diploma taught me otherwise.

The conditions for workers were stifling. Everything was just a product. Draw this, draw that, we need to attract people to our product here, convince people to buy that.

"Hey WillHelm, we need someone at optic 45!"

'... Fuck, I knew it was too good to be true. Gotta go to the shittiest place in the factory. It's no wonder they officially call it the prison.'

I learned the hours were pretty terrible too.

I would arrive home, and no longer have enough fuel to even want to draw.
The only companies even remotely close to my home that I had a chance of joining were Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, both companies being infamous for their shady business practices, and too big for their own good.

I could tell turning my hobby into a job would spell the end of my love for it.

My dream was swiftly crushed.

'Fuck, I'm so glad the day is finally over. I feel like my soul got sucked onto the conveyor.'

It was finally time to go home.
The ride back was the same thing as usual.

Pete (The guy giving me rides from work and back) started talking about what it was really like dealing with the boss.

You see, Pete's been working there for a while. He was one of the specialists that would take care of the lower area of the factory, and had been working there for over 7 years so far.

He told us something interesting:
The boss allegedly said that every worker in the factory was entirely replaceable.

Quite the contrast to the rewards he gave us today.

Allegedly, he was also always thinking in terms of raw materials, and did not participate in the factory, beyond telling people to not do this or to do that.

He had no idea how the bloody place worked, no idea what the workers went through.

Our conversation was cut short. We had arrived to my destination: Home.

I did the same thing I did every day.

Eat.

Shower.

Internet routine.

Working on personal projects for no more than 45 minutes.

It was time to go to sleep.

... A corridor.

It was quite dim.

There were no lights, yet I could somehow see.
The walls were a putrid green, not unlike the Hero's clothes, and there was old, worn tapestry on the floor.

Both ends of the corridor were pitch-black.

I remembered.
I remembered having this dream before.

Originally, I moved forward, thinking that I wouldn't be surprised if zombies appeared.

Of course, in dreams, when you expect something to happen, usually, it does.
Very rarely did they do something you didn't expect.

So it was that I ended up in a room, seemingly an underground parking lot.

There were zombies everywhere, all of them from games I had played before.
Redeads, headcrab zombies, you name it, they were all there.

I was stuck between them and a wall.

All I had to defend myself with was a spiked bat.

Of course, I started flailing it around.

My heart rate increased, and I woke up.

Well, that's how the dream originally went.

'... Fuck that, I'm going the other way.'
I thought, following up by actually doing so.

This time, I chanced upon a factory. It was very tall, and the walls were lined with gigantic presents.

I decided to move forward, and looked around.

Of course, the last elementary school I had gone to somehow melded with the inside of the factory.
I already knew what my school looked like, so I didn't go that way.

Instead, I chanced upon a door.
Very simple frame, white.

It reminded me of an empty canvas, waiting to be painted on.

I opened it, and stepped through.

In front of me was a void, with doors lined up on either side.
They all looked unique.

Some of them had chains.
Others had emblems.

Some had windows, some had blinds.

I passed by what seemed to be the gate of a prison cell.
Through it I saw a figure. It was a pony, about my height. Ethereal mane, black fur, eyes similar to those of a cat.

It was Nightmare Moon.
She was looking right at me.
She narrowed her eyes, glaring daggers at me.
I decided to simply let her be and move on, after calming my heart rate a tad.

After that, I was expecting there to be more ponies.
I didn't see any, but I did see a very peculiar door.
It was entirely black, with an emblem of the moon on it. It was at least twice my height.
I didn't think too hard on it, I decided to open it and go on through.

It was the moon.
'Who would've thought a door with an emblem of the moon on it would lead to said rock.'

I looked around, but it was fairly barren. Of course, what was presumably Earth was as close as ever. It was a wonder the side of the planet facing the moon wasn't strictly water, tides and all.

I was surprised that the mere thought of that didn't cause tides to happen, but I didn't give it much thought.

I decided to look around a bit more.

I heard a gasp from my right.
When I looked, I saw a figure.
It was Luna.

She didn't look as tall as last time, but she didn't look like a foal either.
She arrived slightly below my chin while standing on her four legs.

She looked quite perplexed.
Unsurprising, considering the gasp from earlier.

She looked down at her snout, directed her hoof to it, seemingly fascinated with her shoe, before she lowered it and looked towards me.

Her emotions seemed to be conflicting quite a bit. She was seemingly offended and curious at the same time.
That wasn't helped at all by the fact that her head was tilted to the left slightly, not unlike a dog, while her brows were subtly creased. Her ears were facing forward, not unlike a cat that has focused all its attention on an object that may be a possible threat.

"Hello again Luna, fancy meeting you here." I told her.

A slap would've seemingly not had as much effect as the words I spoke, as far back as she brought her head in surprise.
She stayed out of arms' reach while moving around me, seemingly looking me up and down.

After finishing her examination, she came back to face me, still out of reach.

"WHAT ART THOU DOING HERE? WE DON'T REMEMBER YOUR SPECIES BEING PART OF EQUUS"

she all but yelled in my general direction, as if through a peaking amplificator, whilst raising her right foreleg.

... I didn't expect that at all. It was incredibly surprising. It's a wonder I hadn't woken up yet.
I took a few deep breaths, and did a few spins for good measure.

I didn't want the dream to end in such a pitiful way.

I now knew I had to expect loud volume, so I braced myself for such.
I tried summoning earbuds from the corner of my vision, but nothing happened.

Things were like that sometimes.

She didn't continue her speech, thankfully, so I had time to reply.

"This is the moon" I said as I pointed to the moon. "That is Earth." I immediately followed, pointing to "earth"

Of course, I was speaking by mumbling while projecting the idea of what I wanted to say. Actually opening my mouth could potentially increase blood flow, and thus, bring me closer to waking up.

She did a double-take.

"ART THOU NOT AFRAID? THOU SHOULDST BE COWERING IN FEAR, LIKE THE REST OF THEM"

Even though I expected that high velocity, I was still left dazed by the sheer amplitude.
When I was able to focus again, I raised my left eyebrow to signify my skepticism.

"... Why?" I asked.

She raised her leg as though she were going to yell again.
I put my hands on my ears, hoping the noise wouldn't be able to get through.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and lowered her leg.
I'm not quite sure what she intended to say, but she probably answered her own query.

I grew tired of the distance between us, so I took a few steps forward.
She took a few steps back, and looked at me disapprovingly.

I hadn't entirely expected that, but there were really only three possible outcomes.
Either she moved forward, stayed in place, or she moved back.

I decided to go lay down on the edge of the moon, like in the previous dream I had.

She followed behind me, but kept her distance still.
She didn't lay down.

I stared at "Earth" again without really looking.

"WE GROW TIRED OF LOOKING AT EQUUS. 'TIS BUT A BAD MEMORY."

she yelled to me out of bloody nowhere.
I jumped a little, I hadn't anticipated that.
I had to calm down. I took a great intake of breath and rolled on the floor.

It was a strangely good strategy to remain within one's dreams.

"Well I'm getting tired of hearing you scream, will you stop being so loud?" I told her.

She glared at me.

" 'TIS TRADITION TO SPEAK TO OUR SUBJECTS USING THE ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE!"

she bellowed as she hit her hoof on the ground for emphasis.

"Well I'm not your bloody subject now am I! Git outta here!" I countered.
That traditionalist attitude was getting on my nerves, it served no purpose whatsoever.

Oh boy, now she was pissed!
She was coming right at me!

I figured it was time to go, so I tried to phase through the moon, as if I were no-clipping.

It didn't work!

I tried imagining that the world around me was moving as I stayed in place (an effective way of basically flying in dreams.)
It didn't work either!

I was out of options, she seemed to be preparing to blast magic at me!

"Oh, fuck! Shitty shit fuck!" I yelled, before attempting to scream.
She shot a beam of energy at me.

I felt a great chill overcome me.
I gasped for breath.

I immediately woke up.

I checked my phone. Five minutes before waking up.
'Why does this happen every damn time...'

Author's Note

Hi again!
I uh, was able to get through the second chapter faster than I anticipated.

I'm hoping it won't be too long before the dream portion, I'm not entirely sure how to separate between exposition, action, and everything else.

I did twice the word count! I feel so proud ;-;

On that note, for this chapter's dream sequence, I decided to mix an actual dream I had with a dream I didn't have (That being the Luna and void portion ~~(obviously being used to set up the rest of the story)~~)

Merry no longer Christmas!

Now then, I need to think on how I'll introduce the next chapters.
I hope I didn't get too drawn out with this one :twilightsheepish:

Added a picture for it! Oof, hadn't drawn in a long time :twilightblush:

3

'... That's odd, the conveyors seem to be slowing down at random.'

... Time.
Such a valuable thing.

We always have so much we want to do,
yet a majority of our time is passed doing things we're obligated to do.

Working, sleeping, taking care of our social life, eating, making things to eat, getting from point A to point B.

Cleaning.

"this isn't normal, is it, Kate?"

"Nope. Conveyors are too cold, they're having trouble. That's what happens when you stop heating the place when everyone's gone!"

I used to have a lot of time.
Now 44 hours are taken off of every week.

Thankfully, I get multiple days in a row off, so I have time to do my other obligations before finally having some free time.

I cannot fathom how anyone could manage to get bored when they have so little time on their hands.

'Ah, time for lunch break, finally. I'm starving.'

Drawing easily uses up over two hours.
Playing games can go from two hours to 6 hours very easily.
Same for shows.
Figuring out how to mod something takes about an hour of trial and error before giving up and trying again later.
Making music, or just listening to one's music, trying to find how to improve it can also use up over one hour, if not 4 to 6 hours.

Sleeping takes a minimum of 8, though I try to limit myself to 10 hours as of late.

'... The hell is that awful ringing?'

"Hey Midnight, what does that ringing mean?"

".. Ah, that's the fire alarm. Everybody evacuate! Straight to the exit, we don't have time to stop by the lockers! Come on, let's go!"

Think about it this way;
we have 24 hours in a day.
Every day, 8 hours is taken off for sleep, provided you follow a healthy sleep schedule.
That means you're left with 16 hours in a day.

Every day, you take time to eat a breakfast, a lunch, and dinner.
Being generous, the time taken to cook is not counted.

That's about one hour and a half gone every day.

14 hours and a half.

'Yep, it's a Saturday alright.'

"Hey, was there really a fire going on?"

"Nope, the basement is flooded! Half the pipes burst!"

'And that's why you keep the heat on even when you're not home.'

"See over there, you can see the water dripping out of the garage!"

'Huh, he's right. That's a lotta damage.'

14 hours and a half, times 7 days.
101 hours and a half of time.

Take 50 hours off of that for work, and getting to and from work, on top of preparing yourself in the morning each day.
51 hours and 30 minutes left in a week, provided you don't have errands and groceries to take care of, which easily take up more than 4 hours each.

We can take about 16 hours off of that for variable obligations.
35 hours and a half.

That's a day and 11.5 hours worth of time to work with.

I don't know about you, but my days go by pretty fast.

That is hardly a lot of time.

'Ah, it's the fire department. They kinda came here for nothing, didn't they.'

Let's say you're playing Kingdom Hearts.
A casual play-through of that game is about 24 hours.

Same for the other Kingdom Hearts games.
That's 168 hours to complete the franchise, Kingdom Hearts 3 on the horizon notwithstanding.

If you divide that by 35 hours, that's 4.8 weeks of free time used up. An entire month, and then some.

A Television series! What a great idea!
24 episodes.
Each episode is 30 minutes long.

12 hours, you've got 23 hours left. Not bad.
You pass 6 hours on a drawing, and then you work on music for another 4.

13 hours left.

You pass the rest of that time with a friend or two, doing anything and everything.
There's still things left to do and experience, isn't there?

How can you get bored?

"Okay guys, the fire department has left, it's safe to enter back into the building now!" said one of our managers.

As we made our way back inside, one of my colleagues stopped by me.
"Oi, did you hear? They're letting us out early today!" he said.

"No way!"

I had to check for myself, so I asked the closest manager to where I was.
He'd been right.

I had to wait for my ride to be ready to leave, so I went to have a look at the basement.
It was like a shallow lake everywhere. Thankfully, most of the water had evacuated through the garage doors on its own.

When I came back to the lobby, Guy, the manager handling my team, asked for volunteers to go push the water out with scraping shovels.

'No way I'm doing that if I'm not told to.'

Thankfully, one or two people volunteered, since they needed the extra money, and we weren't paid over 3 hours for that day.

On the way back home, my co-workers started talking about how dumb it was to not leave the heating on, and how panicked our big boss had been when he arrived on the scene.

Of course, more terribly bland music was played.

Finally, I was back in my humble abode.
I had finished the third week of our work schedule cycle.
That meant that I had 5 days in a row off, and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to be using them.

I decided that I would pass my free time binge-watching "Your Lie in April."
I had already seen a good half of its episodes, so it was hardly a challenge to finish the rest that night.

I have no idea why I kept watching it.
It was incredibly cheesy, and it was also very predictable.
On top of that, it was a romance show.
I never enjoyed romance shows, and I had an especially scalding loathing for soap operas.
The symbolism all over the show also conveyed where it was going very often, and yet, I still cried a few times watching it.

It was hard not to connect with the main protagonist.
The art style was also very appealing, and I was a sucker for nice art styles despite myself.

After finishing the show, I headed to bed, and went on dreaming.

A corridor.
A very familiar corridor.

It was the upper floor corridor of the last elementary school I had gone to as a child.

I vaguely remembered a teacher from the school allegedly dying of a heart attack here.
I decided not to linger for very long, for fear of waking his spirit from the dead.

I went to the staircase entrance.

'That's odd, when did they remove entire fleets of stairs from the staircase? Why?' I wondered.

There were large gaps in between parts of the staircase, and I had to come up with a logical reason for that to be the case. I had seen dumber things before.

'Hm, perhaps it was to prevent bullying in the stairway, since they never bothered to put cameras there.' I pondered.

It still didn't make much sense, but I didn't question it. I jumped over the gaps to the first floor.
At some point, I went back up the broken stairway.

I arrived into one of the corridors of the high school I had gone to.
It was the one that had all the pictures of the people who finished their high school every year.

'Am I dreaming?' I wondered, noticing the incongruity that I had just gone from one school to another, merely through stairways.

I looked at the writing under the photograph facing me.
"1334 - board" it said.

I looked away, and then looked back at it.
"love - dool"

The writing had changed.

Bingo.
I was dreaming.

You see, in dreams, symbols and text only stay as they are as you look at them. The moment you look away, and look back, they'll have changed.

It was a method of lucid dreaming I had learned.
You look at text in real life, and double-check that it remains the same, while asking yourself if you are dreaming.

Because you did it in your waking life, you would remember doing it in your dream, and thus, you could manage to realize you were dreaming.

As soon as I realized as much, I decided to attempt phasing through the floor, to find somewhere nicer to be.
School was pretty boring after all.

unfortunately, I somehow couldn't manage to phase through anything.

I tried floating.
It didn't work either.

I was starting to grow impatient.
I didn't want to pass an entire dream inside of an entirely empty school.

I tried "closing" my eyes and imagining myself somewhere else.
Failure. when I "opened" them again, I was still in the same place.

It was quite frustrating, but there was allegedly nothing I could do about it, so I went for a small walk.

I got to the entrance, near the rows of lockers, in front of the corridor that led to the gym, and I sat on the wall of the middlemost line of lockers.

'Why is nothing I'm usually able to do working?! It's so simple! Just imagine the world moving as you stay in place, and bam, you're flying! Why is it not working?' I debated internally.

I tried imagining myself floating up every time I took a deep breath.

No dice.

I accepted my fate at that point.

Then came a most ludicrous idea.

I tried playing piano in the air.

Behold, there was a note!
I tried again.

Another note.

'What if I use both hands to play simultaneously?'

I played with both hands.
It sounded fantastic!

Keep in mind I had never actually learned how to play the piano.

As I played, I looked up at the ceiling, right at the sky.
There was a large window up there to see through.

I kept on playing for a little bit, and then I realized that this track was too great to simply forget the moment I would wake up, so I forcibly woke myself up, and immediately whistled the root notes of what I had just played into my phone.

I still had a few hours, so I went right back to bed.

I was in bed, trying to fall asleep.

I felt a very familiar pressure pass beside me on the bed.
It was my cat, Stoner.

I started petting him as he reached my pillow.

'... A dream, huh.'

My little feline had been dead for a year.
There was no other explanation to this than a dream.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." I told him. "I had no choice, we didn't have enough. I'm so sorry"

I kept petting him. He kept purring and leaning on my hand adorably.
I took it slow, enjoying the time I could still pass with him here.
______________________________________________________________

I woke up again, crying.
I checked the alarm.

I didn't have much time before waking up, so I closed it and got up to start my day.

I transcribed the song I had heard in my dream into LMMS.
I didn't have a piano, and I hadn't thought of using samples, so I used a synth preset of a piano.

In hindsight, it sounded horrible, but I uploaded it anyways.

I then realized a part of the melody had belonged to Dark Hyrule Castle from Minish Cap, but that was hardly surprising, as dreams are made up of memories.

I later ended up elaborating on it, based on the premise of the frustration of being unable to do anything at the time, both in life and in the dream I heard it in.

I also ended up realizing what I had done in that dream was very similar to what the protagonist in Your Lie in April had done while drowning in a pool, and looking up at the waves.

Little did Willhelm know, he had not been the only one witnessing those dreams.
A certain royal blue alicorn had watched, unable to bring herself to interrupt the dreams, choosing instead to let them play out.

Author's Note

Hey folks! Another chapter.

Tried something new, followed my intuition a bit.

Not many ponies in this one as you can tell.

It'll remain like that for maybe a chapter or two.

On that note, both of those dreams are dreams I've actually had.
I miss my cat so much ;-;

Here's some pictures of him.

It's funny, but it's like phantom pain doesn't only exist in reality.

Anyways, I'm surprised I'm still managing to hit the 2K word mark, what the hell :rainbowderp:

Ah, on that note, I'm working on a picture for the second chapter. I'll add it in when I bother finishing it.

4

Tulpamancy.

The art of creating a separate, consistent, independently thinking and feeling entity within your own mind.

'Alright, that's the shadows done. Gotta do the ambient occlusion now.'

I had found the subject of tulpas to be quite interesting.
In fact, tulpas were the main reason I got into lucid dreaming in the first place.

You see, there are many ways to go about creating your own tulpas, but I only knew of one at the time. Auto-hypnotism.

Now if the subject seems a bit foreign to you, that's none too surprising.

It's a meditation technique, usually used to reprogram one's thoughts to be more positive, somewhat akin to programming placebos onto yourself.

'Done with that, alright.
New layer, dodge, hmmm, let's go with 65% opacity.

Alright, clipped to layer below, moving along.'

From there, usually, you would enter what some would call your "wonderland" wherein you would proceed to concentrate on perhaps a dot, or whatever else you conjured as your tulpa's beginning form, and would tell it what its personality traits were, perhaps also physical traits.

After that's done, you would talk to what you conjured for as long as you chose, and you would do this over multiple sessions, until at one point, you received an answer when you didn't expect it.

It'd be somewhat straightforward from there. Create the physical form of your tulpa, show it how it can and can't move, then let it do it on its own.

There's multiple other methods, of course, as it's entirely subjective.

'Alright, first light pass is done.
Hmmmm, what next? How about...
Mmm'yes, let's start actually shading and lighting the hair.
Overlay layer, light version of color, check.
Dodge layer, check.
Multiply layer using hair's flat color, check.

Alright, let's get started. Clipped and ready to rumble.'

Unfortunately, the process wasn't so simple for me.
I wanted to be able to get into a visual state of auto-hypnotism without needing audio guides, as they had a tendency to cut your time short and get you out of the activity after a good 20 minutes.

That didn't pan out. I didn't have the discipline for it, never mind the discipline for proper visualization.

I thus decided it would be a better idea to focus on another possible method: lucid dreaming.

'... That's enough of that, getting tired of working on this. Let's work on music.'

'... On second thought, let's not. Haven't played Fallout 4 VR in a while.'

I only learned a few months later that you could make a tulpa without a form, but I wanted a tulpa I could perceive with all my senses.

An elaborate, controlled auto-hallucination of sorts.

Thus, I kept practicing to lucid dream to overcome my inability to visualize a wonderland.

'Why do I even bother with this game?
It's so uncooked I've spent more time trying to optimize it than playing it!

Now I'm finding out it doesn't even have a seated mode?

No wonder it got critically panned on release!

I can't just stand for over two hours when I'm on break!
I'm already standing for hours when I work!'

'... At least I didn't pay full price.'

Of course, I still tried to learn different methods.

I ended up doing research over research on different techniques of auto-hypnosis, on top of guides of all sorts.
It's often advised that one should take everything related to the subject as entirely subjective,
as there's no one right method.

I, of course, only learned that recently,
after focusing for so long on lucid dreaming.

I also ended up learning that thinking about visualization as actually "seeing" on the back of your eyelids was entirely erroneous.

Apparently, it was more of a question of suggesting to your mind's different senses what you are attempting to visualize, without actually using your eyes.
Some had a tendency to call that method of "seeing" the "mind's eye" as illogical as that may sound.

It wasn't an entirely surprising discovery, as some guides actually told people to breathe using their stomachs, which makes no sense, when you consider that the stomach area is not taken up by your lungs.

(They actually mentioned the stomach area because that is the feeling you're going for when trying to stimulate your diaphragm, a muscle that, when contracted, opens up the lungs further.)

'... Alright, I'll actually work on music this time. Uuuuuh, let's open up "Wan Yeah Yeah.mmpz," that should be fun.'

It shames me to admit that I am no closer to tulpa creation than I was previously.

At least I learned how to lucid dream from that, so that's nice.

'Yep, sounds way better after gain staging everything. Shame I don't know how to continue the track. Guess I'll return to it later.'

As I closed LMMS, I noticed it was starting to get pretty late.

'2 in the morning! Yikes.'

It was about time I hit the sack.
My work sleep schedule was going to be screwed up enough as it is.

So, I ate a piece of cheese, brushed my teeth, and went to bed for the night, or morning rather.

... Werewolf.

I was a werewolf.
The last of my kind.

The only ones left on this earth were humans.
I was all alone.

As I looked from above at the street below, I noticed it looked quite familiar.
There weren't many streets that I knew that were laid out in a roundabout format for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

It was the street my father's home was on.

I noticed something odd in the corner of my vision.
A telephone booth, one of the ones with glass panes.

I tried using the phone.
No one picked up.

I was all alone, after all.

As I looked back at the street, I felt that it was a rather hopeless cause I had driven myself to follow, and I decided to return to my father's abode.

I went inside, up the stairs.
The bathroom light was on, and so was the fan.
The door was wide open.

I found that to be a bit peculiar, and decided to investigate.

'What the hell?!' I thought. 'Who is this!'

In front of me, taking a bath, was a cat woman.
A blond-haired nekomimi, as some have taken to calling them.

'It turns out I am not the only werewolf anymore!'
I thought, heavily relieved from the burden of seclusion.

Now, of course, a part of me debated jumping into the bathtub to join her.
However, I felt that would be a little impolite, and I felt sleepy.
I decided to let her be, and went on my way to my bedroom.

I laid in bed, and fell asleep.

Darkness.
Darkness all around me.

It didn't feel terrifying, and it certainly didn't feel like anything was there.
I could however see my body perfectly.

Seeing the incongruity of the situation, I looked for any signs that this was in fact just a room painted completely black, but I could not find any light sources, nor any reflections.

It was at that point that I knew that I was dreaming.
I recalled my previous dream.

'What the hell, how did I ever think I was a werewolf of all things?'
'How would I have even known? I was a disembodied camera floating in the sky!'
'That girl wasn't even a werewolf, what the hell!'

As I kept nitpicking at the illogical things that had occurred, I noted that I was still in pitch black darkness.

I decided it was high time I do something interesting with my current state of being.

'You know, it'd be cool as all hell if my heart could be accessed like in Kingdom Hearts, looking like pillars on top of which laid symbolic mosaics.'

It was chosen as such, that I would attempt to reach my own heart.

I tried and tried to conjure up an image of my heart, but it did not work.
It was at this point that I decided to let myself float down into the depths below.

As I drifted forever downwards, I started hearing something.
It was Kingdom Hearts 2's soundtrack, "Sanctuary"

In you and I there's a new land.

As I kept drifting, something started to materialize.

A sanctuary, my sanctuary, yeah.
Where fears and lies melt away.

I started slowing down. As the song went on, in bits and pieces, I felt more and more relaxed.

What's left of me, what's left of me now.
My fears, my lies melt away.

I softly landed.

I was in a gargantuan hall, at least 40 times my height.
The walls, the ceiling, the floor.
Everything was covered in small , teal colored tiles.
They reminded me a lot of a public pool, or a bathroom.

You show me how to see
that nothing is whole,
and nothing is broken.

I had become the very definition of zen.
I felt like a saint.

The song went into the portion where it merely played an instrumental.

I walked by calmly.

I saw figures that had been important in my life, whether it be positively or negatively.

Nicholas, a friend I drifted apart from over the years.
"You know, we may not have been very close, but I still care about you." I told him. "I hope you are doing well."

Jasmine, my second true love interest.
Words needed not be said.

"Please, follow me." I told them, as I went towards other people I had known.

Follow they did.

My father.
He went in line with the others.

The teacher that was responsible for our infographism class.
"I forgive you, for what it's worth."

As I moved on, more and more people I knew lined up behind me.

I felt at peace like I had never felt before.

That was as much as I remembered of that dream before it ended.

Cobblestone.
Roads of cobblestone.

At least, that's what they appeared to be.
It was hard to tell, because the environment around me was incredibly low-poly.

It appeared to be a town from Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall at night, from the looks of it.

There was something in front of me.

A light blue person.
A lady, with short, light blue hair.

I would've asked myself questions regarding her color, but it didn't phase me in the least.

As I looked at her she suddenly crouched down low and spread her legs.
"Fuck me really hard, baby!" she exclaimed.

'What?! That is like, the last thing I expected to hear from you!'

This was so incredibly out of left field that I ended up almost waking up.

Scaffolding.

I was in the middle of scaffolding.
It was all painted blue.

I was glad, I had managed to stay asleep.

That fact that my previous dream had mostly ended didn't matter too much.

I figured a moment in a dream I absolutely did not expect had more meaning to it than just being arandom dream.

I tried to find that character from the previous dream.

Instead, I found a lady who looked like she came right out of Evangelion.

Somewhat similar to before, if she wasn't entirely blue.

I knew I was going to wake up soon, so I asked her her name, in case it was really the same entity.

The name I got back was "Rei."

I woke up, looked at my alarm.
5 minutes before when I was supposed to wake.

I had slept 9 hours, so 5 minutes less was certainly reasonable.

'Was that a sentient entity? The beginnings of a tulpa, maybe?'

'... Maybe I'm just really horny?'

A certain Moon Princess had to withhold her amusement.

Author's Note

Sorry, this chapter passed more time in the cooker than anticipated :twilightsheepish:

I wanted to make sure the information presented wasn't outright kill suspension of disbelief, so I had to go in and elaborate on most of the sections on tulpamancy.

While they're not in chronological order, all of the dreams on offer were dreams I've had.

The two last ones however were originally back to back

5

In an alternate reality of Equestria where the Castle of the Two Royal Sisters is in pristine shape...

"... You're absolutely sure this creature had a mane on its head?" asked an impertinent teal royal guard adorning winged dark purple armor.

"Yes, we've said so time and time again. Keep looking! If it is here, we want it brought to us immediately." replied a black mare adorning royal blue armor and a mane of stars. "Now go!"

"Yes Ma'am!" saluted the loyal guard.

Obsession.

Such an ugly word.
To obsess over something, to yearn for it to the point that all else takes a backseat.
Interest taken to the levels of a disorder.

While I can certainly not say that I was ever obsessive to the point where my life was put on the line, I can certainly say that most of the things I have been passionate about have come close to that.

'... Dildo.'

From Legend of Zelda to drawing, to My Little Pony, and then back to drawing and illustration.

There were the few times in-between where I was completely in love with cameras.
That, however, did not last as long.
It didn't leave much of an imprint on me,

especially considering I lost photos of cats whom we had to let go of due to financial constraints at the time.

'Anal vibrator...?'

I never let go of anything I ended up obsessing over, so to speak.
To this day, I still wear a Triforce belt buckle.

I can certainly say that my passion for what I had once obsessed over has died down, to a level where I come back to it from time to time, but never fully get back into it.

What I was passionate over is still part of who I am to this day.

It's hard to say if appropriating the works of art of others is merely etiquetting for the sake of identity, or if I really am the imprint of a mere consumer, but I certainly feel that I owe some of who I am to those games, shows and hobbies.

In the end, it's most likely that the experiences I've lived through those mediums helped me grow into who I am, was and will be, but no more than that.

'You gotta be kidding me, now it's an actual honest to god vibrator.

What is going on, I've never seen so many kinky instruments pass in one day!'

Pardon the tangent, I digress.

What it boils down to is that I've always had an obsession over the course of my days, a passion of sorts, taking everything else out of context.

My current passion was everything to do with lucid dreaming, for instance.

Under the guise of dreams, so much can be achieved.

I recently found out about a method of meditation called "hypnagogic meditation" wherein one sets themselves in the state of mind you would find yourself in were you to be falling asleep, more specifically, the moment when you start hearing strange noises, and seeing what appears to be plasma in your vision.

I had once managed to do it a few years back, as I laid to rest at home after a hard day.
It was unfortunately interrupted as my mother came into the house, creating all sorts of noises that did not otherwise occur.

I counted on attempting that when I'd get home,
if solely for the purpose of tulpa forcing like I've never forced before.

Good thing the day was over.

I went to the cafeteria, and signed for the week.
Headed off to the parking lot, got in the car, and we headed home.

On the way there, an interesting conversation was brought up.

Apparently, on the days we had off, one of the workers on the pre-categorization conveyor found an entire dead boa constrictor with its head smashed in.

The conversation then proceeded to derail into previous cadavers found there.
One interesting thing that had passed there for instance was not only the pelt, but an entire specimen's worth of bear, intact (beyond decomposition of course.)

As we finally arrived to my home, I paid Pete my due, and we left on our merry way.
I ate dinner, took a shower, shaved, and took care of my internet routine.

I had plenty of time as I needn't work the next day.
I tried performing hypnagogic meditation for about an hour, to no effect.

I worked on some unfinished soundtracks, and it was time to head to bed.

I was in a small room, the size of my bedroom, but it was empty, save for a very ornate, small round table in the middle.

Seated on a chair as I was, I noticed that there was a laptop on the table.
I took it to me, and checked what was on it.

It was running Windows 98, if any of you are old enough to remember that thing.

There was but one file in the center of the desktop, labeled "DONTPANIC.EXE"

'... That looks like it came right out of some cheesy creepy pasta, what the hell.'

Intrigued, I decided to launch the program.

It launched in fullscreen, showing a background of an 8-bit star field not unlike the backdrop of Metroid 1's title screen.

There were banana people floating all around the game's screen.

They looked like eldritch human-faced, half-peeled bananas that had small, black legs.
If Cyriak had decided to make a video about bananas, it would have probably looked like whatever those things were.

My heart skipped a beat, for some reason.
They were incredibly disturbing to me, despite having seen much more terrifying things in the past.

I pressed ALT+F4 to close the program.

'There we go, no more creepy bananas.' I thought.

I had been wrong. The Metroid landscape was gone, replaced with the desktop...
But now the bananas were taking over the desktop!

I opened Task Manager using Windows 7/8/8.1/10's shortcut, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, and looked for the program's process.

Bingo, it was running once per banana instance.
I selected one of the rampant "DONTPANIC.EXE" processes.

Two more appeared!
I couldn't kill them all at once, I was out of options.
I was starting to panic slightly.

I took the laptop, unplugged the mouse from it, closed it, and removed the battery from the back.

'Alright, I should be safe now.' I erroneously conveyed to myself.
The bananas were now in the "real world!"

As panic began to set in, I remembered the name of the program.
'Don't panic... That's it! Don't panic!'

I decided to accept the bananas as being a benign presence.
Their feeling of hostility slowly faded, as I began to slowly relax completely.

Even though they were horrifying moments ago, their disgusting appearance somehow appeared much less menacing to me now.

It was at this moment that everything faded to black.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a secret passage in one of the levels of the original Doom,
in a zigzagging portion.

I looked around, and noticed a lady to my left. She was probably a head shorter than I was, with short, wavy hair.
I don't remember what she was wearing unfortunately.

"That was fun! Let's do it again some time!" she told me, while smiling at me and waving goodbye.
It was then that I understood the game we had been playing.

The goal was to make the other panic.

I was slowly waking up, in my bedroom at my father's place.
I sat on the bed, and looked around.

I noticed that everything was no longer placed properly.
My room setup had changed back to how it was before.

It was then that I caught on that I had been dreaming.

'That lady, she said we could do it again some time. I should try summoning her.'
And try I did.

While I did not manage to summon her, red text in the font of the Descent franchise spelled to me her intentions.

We both knew the name of the game.

It was right before reading that I noticed that I could casually feel that I had morning wood.
'... Ah. Well that's wonderful.' I thought.

I read her message.
"I can now read every one of your thoughts." it said.

'Fuck, she's gonna find out about my morning wood! That'd be super embarrassing, how can I turn that around?'

... I had the perfect solution.
I would use my wood as a pretext for finding her very pretty.

... Let's be honest, now that I'm writing it, that sounds incredibly strange, but bear with me here, men don't get a choice in their morning woods.

'I love you, I love you so much!' I thought towards her.

"No!" she wrote back.
It was working!

'You look like an angel fallen from the heavens!' I "told" her.

"No no no no no!" she replied.

'There is no one prettier than you in this entire world!'

"NO!"

I was sure at that moment that I had won the game.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, what I was seeing changed entirely.

I was looking at a pixel art rendition of the lady with green hair holding my head with her left palm.
I could feel her palm on my actual head as well.

"My love, live freely." she told me, with an almost maternal look of love in her eyes.

She had managed to win.
I expected this reciprocation so little that it took me completely by surprise.
I panicked on the spot and woke up.
______________________________________________________________

As I woke up, I heard a pleasant melody in my mind.
I whistled it in my phone, and went on to eating breakfast.

I finished transcribing that song, and posted it online.

'You know, I should probably start thinking about looking into tulpae more. I haven't checked relevant guides in years, better ways of doing things might've been found.'

Author's Note

Sorry it took so long to release, I was a tad blocked on what subject to start with. :twilightsheepish:

The next chapter should flow much better, as I've already decided on a subject that'll work much better for it.

There'll probably be one or two more chapters around the subject of tulpamancy as a whole, before we head off into the final phase leading to our second story climax :moustache:

This entire dream sequence was two dreams I had on the same night originally.

6

... Love.

I had never fully understood the concept.
It always seemed as though it was too vague and subjective to be properly put into words.

Was it merely lust?
Was it a combination of friendship and lust?
Was it a constant that slowly dwindles, or is it on and off?

Can such a level of affection last for an entire life, or is it bound to be snuffed out like a flame?

Are the people who remain together forever merely still together due to comfort and convenience,
or do they still feel like they used to?

What if they're still together merely because both are cheating on one another?

What of monogamy, polygamy?

'... A picture of breastfeeding? Looks like something Andrew Loomis would've drawn. Shame, they're plastified, they'd be a contaminant.'

Some people have compared this yearning for another to drugs, to an addiction.
I don't entirely think they're wrong.

Great highs of whatever emotion or result is wanted, followed by great lows when they're not provided/reciprocated.

The longer one goes without said addiction, the more cranky they get, the more they crave it, until, finally, they're over it after a few months.

"Hahaha, dude, check this out!"

'... Oh my god. It's more pictures of breasts, but there's no breastfeeding this time.

What kind of loony had these laying around? Did they draw them?'

I've had many chances at a romantic relationship, don't get me wrong.
I just didn't take them, out of fright that building a dependence to another would yield... unwanted results.

Not only that, there were a few opportunities I didn't take seriously whatsoever, as I thought I was being pranked.

I'm sure you would be skeptical as well if the potential partner in question decided to flirt with you by telling you that your flimsy mustache that you merely grew for the fun of it, despite knowing it wasn't great, was something they liked.

It didn't help that I was the nerd of the class during that time.
I'm sure you could name me the people in your class that were always picked last in Physical Education as well.

That was me.

'... Who would make a book, give it a cardboard cover, and name it "management?"'

'... "Satsifying your sex partner for dummies." oh my god, it was a cover for a book about intercourse.'

"... Dude, check this "management book" out"

"... Sex for dummies. Yep, that looks about right, look"

For some reason, the most popular girl in the class kept trying to flirt with me.
I didn't understand why whatsoever. I imagined it must have been another ridiculous letdown scheme.

Most of these, however, were mere potential interests, I did not feel anything for them but physical attraction.

Notwithstanding their current societal status, I had not felt longing for any of them, not the kind of longing I have come to attribute to the aspect known as "love."

Forthwith their use of the language, it had come to my attention that I had only felt what I could quantify as "love" once, and I had not enjoyed it.

The one time I had learned to man up and go talk to a girl I knew had similar interests to me, I felt the greatest stress of my life.

'...? What is with this suspicious shape? Doesn't it look suspiciously like some kind of horse dong dildo?'
'Oh my god, he picked it up.'

"Oh my god, dude, pass this to the other guy!"

'... Oh fuck. I accidentally dropped it in the cardboard reservoir.'

At the time, I thought it might've been possible that I was merely so used to stress that I couldn't feel it.
That experience proved me wrong.

It was back in high school, during my final year.

I was at a point where I figured maybe I had been too picky in potential partners by truly trying to find someone like me.

I thought that may be for the best, you see.

Maybe, if I dropped my expectations, I could truly find someone to be at peace with.

'Finally on break, I just wanna read some cheesy light novel right now.'

Those dropped expectations were that lady.
Even as I was told to not expect anything, to not put all my eggs in one basket, I did both, on a time limit;
the end of the year, the last time I would be at that school.

I was foolish enough to expect one thing, and one thing only.
That if need be, we could talk.

Everything looked like it was going fine, but then, all avenues of contact were abruptly cut.

'... Oh hey, a porn magazine. Ooh, she doesn't look half bad. Let's put that one aside, somebody is bound to pick it up.'

When I found a way to ask them what had happened, all I was told was to leave them alone.

Of course, I did exactly that.

respect of another's boundaries and all.

'... Another porn mag. Jesus Christ, you can tell which truck all this garbage came from.'
'Hmmm, "50+" it says.'

'... Isn't that an old lady? What the hell, this isn't LemonParty! That one can go back on the line. Nope.'

I was left a husk of who I had once been, learning only courage in exchange for the second most harrowing moment of my life.

The reason for being left behind like an old toy never was once even alluded to.

Please don't end a relationship, whether romantic or not,
before at least making your reasons for your decisions clear.

It is pure, unadulterated torture.

'Finally, the day is over.'

On my way home, we talked about the day. It was mentioned during that conversation that what I had thrown in the cardboard reservoir was actually the inside of a fleshlight.

On our way home, I asked Pete to drop me off at the bank nearby.
I picked up some cash, and then walked on home.

When I arrived home, I put my rent on the table.
I took care of my other expenses, then left for the computer room, where I proceeded with my usual routine.

Unfortunately, the Discord channels I was frequenting took up the remainder of my time that night.

It was time to head to bed.

... A dirt road.
Clearly I'm in the country side.

To my left, fields.
To my right, a fairly large home.

It was entirely made out of wood, and it was greatly decayed.
Some white paint could be seen here and there, but you could mostly see the underlying structure.

I felt greatly unnerved by this.

I decided to check it out.

I remembered going upstairs into the cellar, when the dream ended.

I was going up the hill to school when I took a wrong turn.

I didn't know what street I was on, but it was clearly not the right one.

The road kept going up.

I looked at the houses around here.
They were all old, decrepit, and clearly abandoned.

I remembered going through terrifying events in my previous dream related to abandoned houses, but did not remember what events they were.

I could clearly tell I was dreaming however.

Thus, I tried to speed through the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, it just kept on going, getting more and more decrepit, until I got to a church.

Said church was in a graveyard, a very big graveyard.

'Hmmm. If this is anything like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I might not want to hang around at night.'

Lo and behold, it was suddenly nighttime.

I saw fog start to creep through the graveyard.
The neighborhood no longer existed.
There was only gravestones as far as the eye could see, a sea of fog and undead.

I didn't want to hang around, so I got into a car.
I didn't know how to drive a car.

'Was it the left or right pedal, did it go backwards or did it just break?
What about the wheel? How far does it go?'

Zombies were approaching, and time was of the essence.
I pressed the gas pedal, ran through multiple stones, avoiding zombies while trying to keep a straight line.

At one point, I got on a highway.
There was a small problem however.

It seemed to have gotten flooded by the rise of water.

I didn't know how to do anything but press the gas or steer, so I was left with no option.
It was either zombies, or water. I knew where my choice was headed.

I let the car drive half submerged underwater, and then everything faded to black.

I was driving on the highway.
I was taking turns above and below other lanes.

I arrived at the building I knew I wanted to access:
The museum mall of the train station.

'... The museum mall of the train station? Who would make a mall in a museum, nevermind a museum in a train station that happens to be a mall?' I wondered.

I climbed the stairs that lead to the front of the building, that happened to be on a corner of it behind a pillar that was presumably there to hold the rest of the building above the underpass.

As I got in, I was greeted by a small exhibit hidden behind glass.
It was a bronze plaque.

I read what was on it, it didn't make much sense.
This, on top of the strange place I was in, prompted a reality check.

I looked away from the slab, looked again.
The text on it had changed.

I was dreaming.

I decided that the dream was calm enough to not turn into a nightmare,
and so I went on, exploring the mall space.

There were many people, standing around a stall in the middle of a plaza.
They were cosplaying.

I couldn't have told you what they were cosplaying, but they seemed to have been here for some event relating to the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic movie.

I tried talking to them, but they didn't have much to respond on, and ended up leaving.

I arrived at the end of the mall.
As I had looked at people on the way there, I had decided to look for anyone that piqued my curiosity, but most of the people there were somewhat average looking at best.

When I returned to the plaza, it had changed.
It was now a school corridor, entirely tan-colored.

As I passed by some lockers, I noticed someone.
She was literally the only one there, staring into space, seemingly lost in thought.

For some reason, I found that very intriguing, and so I went up to her.
Even as I approached her, even as I was right in front of her,
she kept staring, as if entirely through me, as if I didn't exist.

She was about the same height as me, with shaggy short hair. Her bangs were mostly converging into a single parent strand, the tip converging at her nose bridge.

She was wearing a white, baggy camisole, and a pair of puke green cargo pants.

I started looking at her, as if looking at anything you would look at in a mall or museum, analyzing.
I pointed the middle phalanx of my right index finger under her chin, and rotated her head to the left.
I was curious as to what the profile of her face would look like.

She looked right at me.
She wasn't afraid, she was seemingly curious.
It looked somewhat as if she had just woken up from being hypnotized.

She gave a wry smile of sorts. It looked as if she was mildly annoyed, yet didn't feel like it.
In fact, it felt mildly pleasant.

My heart skipped a beat.

"What's your name?" I asked her, not wanting to forget her upon waking up.

"Parisma" she replied.

'Parisma, hmmm. I'll remember that.' I thought.
As I hadn't expected a response, seeing how other people didn't seem to have any to begin with,
I was mildly perturbed.

She seemed mildly aware, as opposed to entirely unaware, as if she knew as well as I did that this was a dream.

My vision started fading to white.
I didn't want to wake up yet, there was so much work to do.

I was somehow certain this was the same person I had met in a previous dream.

She felt the same, despite looking entirely different.

The alarm of my phone rang.
It was time to get up for work.

I decided it was about time I looked up more recent guides on tulpamancy,

I was fairly certain I had something to work with, so to speak.

Unbeknownst to Will, a cosplayer of our mare in the moon had been keeping watch.

Author's Note

Hi folks, it's another chapter.
I ended up being fairly busy, and my time was short.

I wanted to spend it on other things, so the chapter took a lot longer to complete due to that.

Next chapter might take a bit.
It'll be a tad bit different.

On that note, I mixed and matched one or two dreams, but the first two about abandoned houses happened one after the other originally.

The one about the church, and the part about the underwater highway I am fairly certain were the same dream, however it has been a while, and I hadn't noted that one down.

There were at least two instances of this mall that occurred in my dreams, however one of them had the mall in the middle of Ottawa.

This dream was the first time I saw my first tup in this form, though to be clear, the current name is an alibi.