"You can be happy!" Lyra chirped, smiling jubilantly as she stood on her hind quarters and strummed her lyre. "You can make sweet music!"
Bon Bon smiled back at her. It was a bright, sunny day. The two were situated under a spreading oak tree atop a bright green hill of grass. As Lyra played her instrument of choice, Bon Bon was practicing something new, and making a very awkward show of it. Squatting atop a wooden bench, she gripped two sticks in the crook of her cream-colored hooves. There was a drumset in front of her, complete with cymbals and snares. As Lyra continued her gentle melody, Bon Bon supplied a steady backbeat with the percussion instruments, or at least she tried to.
Lyra smiled at her significant other's foalish ineptitude. "I can't do this without you, honey," she said with a slight giggle and slowed her stringed melody just slightly.
With a return nod, Bon Bon bit her lip and focused on the task at hoof. She struck each drum in succession, maintaining a rhythmic bom bom bom bom sound that resonated through the afternoon breeze.
"I can hear you!" Lyra said, though the goofy expression on her face suggested that it was merely a playful jab.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, a flustered Bon Bon missed one of the drums with her wooden sticks, striking the metal frame instead. The beat broke, and the lyre's melody limped forward on its own, like a wailing cat with no pretense.
Lyra giggled, winked, and said "You always told me you wanted an encore."
Bon Bon's cheeks turned red as she gripped the sticks tighter, determined to keep a perfect pace.
"Stay with me now!" Lyra said, and suddenly broke into a far more complex melody.
Bon Bon gasped, surprised that her marefriend would increase her tempo without waiting for the drummer. Egged on by the challenge, she tilted forward on the bench and punished the drums ardently, bulleting the air with furious bom bom bom boms that positively shook the blades of grass and fluttering leaves of the oak tree overhead.
Lyra smiled. Her hooves danced over the strings of her instrument while Bon Bon fumbled to match her finesse. The poise and elegance Lyra exhibited was positively surreal, as was the fine balance she maintained on her hind legs. A brief wind blew at the hilltop, and just as it seemed like Lyre would fall back on her flank, she teetered forward with a crooked grin.
"They're not going to wait much longer," she said.
Bon Bon gazed at her awkwardly. It was just the sort of strange thing to finally break her rhythm. She swung blindly at a drum, and struck a cymbal instead. Her whole body shook from the crashing metal—from her ears to her tail—and it made her more than a little dizzy. Her bright blue eyes rolled from the echoing sensation in her skull.
Lyra gave a whole-hearted laugh. She lowered her lyre, leaned in, and gave Bon Bon a sweet peck on the cheek. "I love you so much," she said. Reaching a green hoof over to caress the mare's blue-and-pink bangs, she smiled delicately and breathed, "It's time that you wake up, sweetie."
Bon Bon squinted at Lyra quizzically, wondering what she might mean by that. Suddenly, her eyes felt heavy.
So she opened them. Bon Bon was seated on the bench, alone, surrounded by green grass and the cool shade of the oak tree.
After a lapse of silence, she produced a flighty giggle of embarrassment. "Heehee... Oh, where's your head at, Bon Bon?" she murmured to the air as her body stretched and her lungs produced a much-needed yawn. "You're letting yourself fall asleep in public now? What's next, showing up to work without washing your mane?"
A green shape materialized before her.
Bon Bon gazed up from underneath a sudden shadow. She smiled. "Oh, hey, Lyra! Heheh... I fell asleep out here. Can you believe it?"
Lyra merely grinned back at her. She tilted upwards like a reverse domino until she was standing on her hind quarters. "Darling," the unicorn said, stretching a hoof out towards her sleepy-eyed companion. "Listen to me..."
"Huh...?" Bon Bon squinted in confusion. Nevertheless, she reached her forelimb out and accepted Lyra's gesture. She was yanked off the bench. "Whoah!" Scrambling on the rest of her legs, she found herself being tugged by Lyra up the hill and towards where a drumset was situated in the glistening sunlight. "Lyra, what are you—?"
"You can be happy!" Lyra said. She looked back at Bon Bon and winked before positioning her in the middle of the drums and cymbals. "You can make sweet music!"
Bon Bon gawked at the drums. When she blinked, she saw a dreamy memory along her eyelids that looked a lot like the percussion instruments in front of her just now. "Lyra, I..."
A drumstick was hoofed over to Bon Bon. The mare awkwardly clutched them as Lyra lifted her golden instrument and sing-songed, "I can't do this without you, honey."
In return, Bon Bon groaned. "Fine..." She squatted before the set. She clapped the drumsticks together, flexed her forelimbs, and began smacking away at the various drums with a persistent bom bom bom bom sound. All the while, she stifled a giggle and glared in the unicorn’s direction. "Did you plan this, Lyra...?"
Lyra only giggled. She winked and played a sweet melody around the steady beat Bon Bon was giving. "I can hear you."
"Me? Or my drumming?" Bon Bon sweated slightly as Lyra's increasing melody forced her to accelerate her tempo at an uncomfortable degree. "Hey, Lyra, aren't you the one who's supposed to be keeping up with me?"
"You always told me you wanted an encore!"
"Yeah, but at this rate, I doubt we'd even earn ourselves a pre-show—"
"Stay with me now!" Lyra sped her hoof over the strings of her lyre, producing a melody that was too rapid to hear, much less keep up with.
"Whoah!" Bon Bon gasped. She slammed madly at the drumset as if she was swatting flies. The resulting cacophony would be an insult to call "music," and she realized right there and then just what sort of a ridiculous game this whole thing had been from the get-go. "Heehee... Okay, Lyra..." She stopped drumming altogether, giving the cymbals a defeated thwack before limply wiping the sweat from her cream-colored brow. "Joke's over. What is this?"
Lyra smiled, mangling her strings, her hoof blurring and blurring and blurring and—"They're not going to wait much longer," she hummed above the ringing noise of the cymbal.
This time, Bon Bon's brow furrowed. "Who?"
"I love you so much," Lyra's voice said from behind her.
Bon Bon turned around and opened her eyes. She was squatting on the bench under the shade of an oak tree surrounded by grass.
"It's time that you wake up, sweetie," Lyra said, standing above her.
"But..." Bon Bon tiredly murmured, her ears flicking confusedly. "I am... awake?"
Weighted by her grin, Lyra leaned forward at a forty-five degree angle from her hind quarters. "Darling, listen to me." She hoofed over a drumstick. "You can be happy. You can make sweet music."
"Music?" Bon Bon limply took the drumstick. "But I just woke up—" Her forelimb drifted down and instantly struck a round object. She blinked to see a heavy drumset sitting in front of her and the bench. "Uhm..."
"I can't do this without you, honey," Lyra said, tilting back up and reaching her front limbs out to catch a lyre dropping from the overcast sky.
"Lyra," Bon Bon said, frowning slightly. "I don't want to practice the drums right now. What I want..." She turned her head and glanced behind the bench, eyeing the dark clouds hovering high above the oak tree's swaying branches. "I just want to know why I was sleeping out on this bench."
"I can hear you."
"Good, then maybe you can tell me why..." Bon Bon's voice trailed off. She wasn't hitting the drums. She wasn't even gripping the drumsticks anymore; they had fallen beneath the cracks in the bench's wooden panels seconds ago. Still, she could have sworn she heard a resonating beat through the air, like thunder rolling off the bowers of the black clouds gathering overhead. As she tried to ascertain the source of the bom bom bom bom noise, she saw the leaves of the oak tree shaking with each successive thump. "Funny... is there something behind the tree making that noise?"
"You always told me you wanted an encore!"
"Lyra," Bon Bon sighed and turned around. "Will you stop and pay attention—?" Her eyes twitched and she gasped. "Lyra?!"
She was now standing several dozen meters away. Her lyre glistened in the sunlight as a thick shadow closed in from the far west side of the grassy field. Angry thunderclouds were just seconds away from overtaking the lone unicorn.
"Stay with me now!" Lyra shouted from afar, her bright instrument sounding like a lonesome signal beyond a harbor's fog.
"Lyra!" Bon Bon shouted. She sprang forward, bumbling through the drumset. As the instruments collapsed all around her, the cymbals struck the ground hard, filling the air with a vibration that shook the very enamel of the mare's teeth as she galloped desperately towards her loved one. "Lyra, get away from the thunderstorm! You silly filly! Don't you see how dark they are?!"
Yet, as swiftly as Bon Bon ran towards her, Lyra appeared to slide away, receding into the dead thick of black shadows. "They're not going to wait much longer!"
"What do you mean?!" Bon Bon shouted, panting and sweating from her sprint. The grass was bending, flattening, decaying under her hooves. "Lyra?! Lyra, where are you?" She skidded to a stop, hyperventilating, teetering on the verge of a hopeless sob. "L-Lyra...?!"
A green muzzle slithered through the inky darkness and kissed her cheek. "I love you so much."
Bon Bon spun around, nearly falling off the edge of the wooden bench.
Lyra leaned over her with a grin that glistened in the fading sunset. "It's time that you wake up, sweetie."
Bon Bon gasped. "Lyra!" Her eyes watered and her face broke into a painful grin. "Oh darling!" She swung her hooves forward and hugged the unicorn dearly. "Oh, what a nightmare! I'm so glad that you're..."
"Darling, listen to me." The weight of Lyra's body dissolved into hundreds of tiny slivers.
Bon Bon's brow furrowed. "Huh?" Her eyes opened. She found herself hugging two forelimbs full of rattling drumsticks.
Lyra was cavorting around the bench on two rear legs with the lyre in her grasp. "You can be happy! You can make sweet music!"
"Blast it, Lyra!" Bon Bon snarled and tossed the drumsticks to the grass. She stepped off the bench. "I don't want to practice the drums! I need to—Gah!" She shrieked as she tripped over several drums that rattled and rolled downhill. She grabbed a sea of green blades, tugging herself up as a distant thunder played with her ears, resonating from somewhere behind the oak tree.
Lyra giggled and winked down at Bon Bon's collapsed figure. "I can't do this without you, honey."
"Lyra, I..." Bon Bon struggled up to her hooves. She was drawn hypnotically to the bom bom bom boms coming from the oak tree uphill. "Just what is that...?"
"I can hear you," Lyra said.
"It's not me. I'm not the one who’s drumming. I..." Bon Bon took a deep breath and crawled uphill, practically pulling herself with each heavy-hoofed grip of the grass. She couldn't remember when the park in Ponyville had become this steep. The sun was burning in the horizon. The overcast sky cast a gray shadow over everything, and it only became darker the closer she pierced the shade of the tree.
"You always told me you wanted an encore!" Lyra said from far below. "Stay with me now!"
"I... I can't..." Bon Bon murmured as she approached the tree, clutching the side of it and shuddering from the thunderous bom bom boms ricocheting through her skeleton. "What in Celestia's name?" She finally peered around the wooden trunk. On the far side of the hill, she saw a cream-colored mare and a green unicorn squatting around a bench in the distance. One was playing the drums. The drummer turned, looked up, and waved a hoof from afar.
"They're not going to wait much longer."
"But who are they—?" Bon Bon backtrotted, then tripped over something. "Aack!" She fell over the back of the bench and landed awkwardly on the seat.
Lyra stood upside down behind a sea of drums. "I love you so much. It's time that you wake up, sweetie."
Bon Bon grunted and repositioned herself until she sat upright. "I am awake, Lyra. And—" When she raised her hooves, they were full of drumsticks. With an angry growl, she tossed them to the grass, only for them to hit several cymbals instead. The air filled with a nauseating ring that ushered the fall of night. "No more drums, okay?"
"Darling, listen to me—"
"No, you listen to me!" Bon Bon jumped off the bench and shoved the nearest drum away. It knocked into another drum that collided with another drum that smacked into a full line of several identical duplicates, all domino-sliding downhill with a bom bom bom bom bom sound. "I need to know what's going on! Am I dreaming all this? Is this some sort of crazy telepathic unicorn test? You and I agreed not to play head games with each other, honey—"
"You can be happy," Lyra said with a slightly hurt expression on her face. She waved her lyre for emphasis. "You can make sweet music..."
"Lyra, my love, making sweet music is your gig!" Bon Bon clutched Lyra's shoulders and stared at her deeply. "Not mine! I love you because you're sweet and intelligent and giving! But you have your talents, and I have mine—" When she brought her hooves back, she was clutching drumsticks again. Frowning, she tossed the things away again with gnashing teeth, only for them to strike a ring of drums suddenly surrounding her.
"I can't do this without you, honey."
"Nnngh—Yes you can! You—What's going on here?!" Bon Bon winced and planted two hooves against her throbbing ears as the bom bom bom resonated from the tree atop the hill. "That noise! It's so loud..."
"I can hear you."
"But I can barely hear you!" Bon Bon shrieked and swiftly shoved Lyra out of the way, panting. "I gotta get away from the noise! I gotta get away..." She broke into a furious gallop, burning a panicked path into the darkness lingering beyond the sunset.
"You always told me you wanted an encore!" Lyra shouted from behind her, cupping her hooves around her mouth. "Stay with me now!"
"I can't, Lyra!" Bon Bon shrieked, containing her sobs as she pierced the darkness. The blades of grass became indistinguishable blurs in the blackness all around her. "I'm sorry, but I have to find out what's going on! I..." She saw a tall shape up ahead. Her gallop slowed to a numb crawl as her mouth fell agape.
"They're not going to wait much longer..."
Bon Bon gazed at the shape up ahead as it came into focus. A lone oak tree rested atop a hill, illuminated by a halo of twilight. Breathless, Bon Bon turned around and saw the mirror image that she had just galloped from.
"Blessed Celestia, what...?"
Shivering, she pivoted about at ninety degrees and ran in a perpendicular direction. She ran through the inky curtain of night, until a light shone on a rising crest of grass before her.
"Oh please..."
An oak tree rested on the hill ahead. The bom bom boms thundered everywhere now. The mare almost fainted, her creamy coat turning even more pale. There was a pause in the beat, through which Lyra's voice melodiously teased her with, "I love you so much."
Bon Bon spun about.
A green face smiled at her. "It's time that you wake up, sweetie." She tapped Bon Bon on the chest.
Bon Bon fell back and landed on the seat of the bench. She blinked at a starry sky, blocked briefly by the black shape of a tall oak tree above.
"Darling, listen to me," Lyra gently said from several meters away. Bon Bon's bench glided down a series of pale drums and golden cymbals lined up like a metal canal. "You can be happy. You can make sweet music."
"I..." Bon Bon's eyes nervously darted left and right at the percussive instruments drifting past her. "I only want to make sense right now..."
"I can't do this without you, honey," Lyra said over her lyre, giving Bon Bon a loving smile. "I can hear you. You always told me you wanted an encore."
Bon Bon jolted as the bench came to a stop in front of a drumset just before Lyra. She lifted her hooves, shook the drumsticks loose from her grip, and gazed up into the stars as she thought aloud, "An encore follows the end of an act," she muttered. "The only way for the act to end is if the dream does. I have to wake myself up. But how?"
Lyra started plucking her strings. "Stay with me now!"
Bon Bon shook her head. "No..." She stood up from the bench and climbed over the drums. "To return to you, I have to get away from you... or at least this 'you.'" She scampered up the hill and towards the wooden trunk of the oak tree. "I have to get to the other side!"
Lyra's voice was barely discernible from the beat growing louder and louder as Bon Bon ascended the hill towards the tree. "They're not going to wait much longer!"
"It's alright!" Bon Bon shouted above the aching thunder. "I'm not going to let them wait! I’m not going to let us wait!" She finally tugged her way up the grass to the crest of the hill and clutched the vibrating body of the trunk. Wincing, she gazed down the other side of the hill where a green unicorn and a cream colored earth pony were playing a drum-and-lyre duet together. "I just gotta get to—"
The shadow of night poured down the side of the tree, making the grass slick with ink. Almost immediately, Bon Bon slipped, and the percussion from the trunk pushed her off the hilltop.
"Whoah!" she shrieked, she slid, she plummeted down the other side of the hill. The thunder grew distant. The two ponies loomed closer. They turned and waved at her. Their faces were indistinguishable, blurry masks. "Aaaugh!" Bon Bon winced, for she was flying straight into the wooden bench beneath herself.
With a smash, she flew through a sea of shrapnel. The shredded pieces of wood each turned into a duplicate bench. Bon Bon rolled over, lying precariously on three benches at once. She tried sitting up, only for a pair of drums to roll into her, knocking the breath out of her lungs.
Lyra was gliding through a mess of cymbals, riding a raft formed by several golden lyres tied together. "I love you so much," she said with a delighted sigh. She glanced over Bon Bon's way and rolled her eyes with a giggle. "It's time that you wake up, sweetie!"
"Nnngh... I'm trying!" Bon Bon shouted. With a snarl, she pulled herself upright atop the bobbing seat. Holding her breath, she leapt forward, playing hopscotch from one bench to another, until she was standing on her mare-friend's lyre raft and gripping the unicorn's shoulders. "Help me! Help me wake up if you're so blasted insistent!"
Lyra cackled, her barren head glistening in the twilight piercing through the branches of the oak tree above. "Darling, listen to me—"
"Why?!" Bon Bon barked. "There's nothing to listen to! You only repeat yourself! You—" She squinted. "Wait, what happened to your mane?" She twirled Lyra around.
The Back of Lyra's face smiled at her, her eye sockets brimming with green grass blades. "You can be happy!" The sockets spat out a pair of drumsticks that smacked Bon Bon in the face.
"Ooof!" Bon Bon fell back onto a flat plane of drum skin, stretching as far and wide as she could see.
"You can make sweet music!" Lyra’s voice echoed.
Bon Bon groaned, her head throbbing with the heavy vibrations bom bom bomming their way through the icy sheet of drumskin. She crawled towards a dome of grass several meters away as cymbals and drums rolled down past her.
"I can't do this without you, honey."
"Lyra, please..." Bon Bon whimpered as she clutched her first hoof-full of grass and began pulling herself towards the nebulous shadows of the vibrating tree branches above. "Something's wrong. The dream won't end. I keep trying to wake, but..."
"I can hear you."
"I don't think you can! I don't think anyone can! Something's wrong, I..." She winced as waves of sound blew down the hill and formed vaporous rivulets across the sea of drum skin surrounding the island of grass. "I have... I have to get away from the beat. I have to get away from the substance, and when it all dissolves, maybe then I'll wake up..."
"You always told me you wanted an encore!"
"But I was wrong, okay?!" Bon Bon shouted. She saw Lyra dangling from a swing made of lyre strings beneath a vibrating wooden branch above. "I can't have an encore without you! I have to get out of here! It's already so dark!" She stared straight up as the stars began to devour themselves in black little burps, one by one. "What happens when all the light is gone?"
"Stay with me now," Lyra's voice wavered as she swung overhead.
"You..." Bon Bon pulled herself up and galloped towards the unicorn. "You're my way out! You must be!" She yanked Lyra down from the swing and held her tightly, gazing into the unicorn's amber eyes. "How else can I return to you?"
Lyra gave Bon Bon a bittersweet smile, her horn glistening in the twilight. "They're not going to wait much longer."
"No, I imagine not..." Bon Bon said. She looked up at the horn; she grabbed it and pulled.
Lyra opened up, and through the doorframe the mare saw dozens upon hundreds upon thousands of Bon Bons pausing in the middle of playing a million drumsets. They waved their hooves with an infinite row of smiles and twirled their drumsticks while a mirrored stream of faceless Lyras walked into view and strummed their countless strings all at once.
The sheer noise blew Bon Bon back on her flank. She crashed through drums and cymbals that rolled downhill, only to settle against an identical wall of grass. Gasping for breath, Bon Bon looked up, down, left, right. The twilight was growing dimmer, but there couldn't possibly have been a source for it, for the entire universe had become a hollow cube with a swaying oak tree on every wall, floor, and ceiling. The bom bom bom bom boms were deafening now. The earthen walls were closing in, spilling grass blades and leaves everywhere so that she nearly choked on them every time she inhaled. Soon, a splash of wooden splinters joined the soupy mix as the oak trees collided with their vibrating doppelgangers, forming a grand crescendo of crunching horror. With no option beside screaming, Bon Bon held her breath and dove straight through the Lyra door.
She fell past multiplicitous onion layers of benches, drums, Lyras, Bon Bons, and hilltops. Soon the mosaic blur solidified into one stream of dim light, then several, until Bon Bon found herself plunging through a porous web of geometric lines. Fearful that she'd reach terminal velocity and not be able to save herself, she reached a suicidal hoof out and grabbed one of the silver streams. Her forelimbs hooked around an infinitely long, bowing string of metal. She dangled briefly, wincing as her muscles pulled to the breaking point. She yanked herself up until she was balanced like a ballet dancer on the vibrating cable. Gazing into the blackness, she could make out a golden horizon, like the polished surface of an impossibly enormous lyre.
"What...?" she gasped.
"I love you so much."
Bon Bon spun around and positively shrieked.
Lyra's grinning face was gliding towards her, and it was just her face alone. On eight drumstick legs with eight drumstick feet, the mint green unicorn skull clawed her way across the web of lyre strings, all the while winking and cooing, "It's time that you wake up, sweetie."
Whimpering, Bon Bon leapt off one silver cable and landed on another. She bounced and skipped and leapt her way across the vibrating grid of strings as it grew denser and denser beneath her fleeing body.
"Darling, listen to me," Lyra's voice bom bom bommed like a resonating tree trunk as her limbs scurried after the earth pony. "You can be happy."
"Stay away!" Bon Bon screamed. She bounded off the enormous lyre and landed on a gigantic plateau of splintery wooden bench beams. "You're not the Lyra I love—!" The wood split to her left as a giant green horn pierced up from the blackness below. Bon Bon shrieked and ran faster, dashing left and right to avoid the bursting emerald stalagmites.
"You can make sweet music!" Lyra's voice laughed over the heavens.
Bon Bon jumped off the seat and landed on a pontoon of cymbals. She dashed over the floating platforms as they bobbed in a river of leaves. Oaken clouds boiled overhead, raining down sheets of drumsticks as Bon Bon made swiftly for the distant hilltop, accompanied by the ear-splitting ring of metal cymbals sounding off beneath her clamoring hooves.
"I can't do this without you, honey—"
"Just stop talking!" Bon Bon leapt off the last cluster of cymbals and flew towards the floating hill in utter darkness. She clutched to the roots of dry grass and dangled briefly over the abyss. Wincing, she pulled herself up just as a swarm of bench-winged drums flew overhead with drumstick propellers, circling closer and closer to the vibrating tree. "I just need to think!" she rolled over onto dry land, soaked with cold sweat as she stared up at the last disappearing stars. "I need time to concentrate!"
But Bon Bon didn't have time. The darkness was closing in. She gasped as the very grass underneath her fell away into the abyss. The hilly island was shrinking. She crawled like a frightened infant towards the bom bom bom bomming tree, crying in fear and desperation.
"I can hear you," Lyra said in a sympathetic tone, lying on the opposite side of the tree and hugging her lyre. "You always told me you wanted an encore..."
Bon Bon looked her way. She crawled around the tree and briefly hugged Lyra, gulping. "And I believe you. But that's not gonna happen unless I get out of here."
Lyra looked at her sweetly. She said, "Stay with me now."
Bon Bon's nostrils flared. "I think I can do the next best thing..." She glanced all around. She saw a cymbal lying on the grass. With a jerk, she swiped it up before it could fall off the edge of the disappearing island. She pulled herself and Lyra up to their hooves so that they were standing as close to the vibrating tree as possible. Bending around, Bon Bon stretched her tail out and planted the blue-and-pink hairs up against the tree. Flexing her muscles, she gave the hairs several thwacks with the cymbal. The sharp edge of the round, golden instrument eventually sliced the pastel fibers off at the tail's base.
Once Bon Bon had successfully finished lopping the hairs loose, she flung the length of them over one forelimb and reached her other hoof towards Lyra's horn.
"Stay still."
She tugged, and the Lyra-door opened once more to the infinite corridor of faceless, waving marefriends.
"Stand aside!" Bon Bon shouted their way.
As the grass disappeared all around her, she tossed the length of tail hairs through the frame and into the black hall of mirrors. Gripping her end of the hairs, she tugged back. When the hair was pulled back all the way, the black and pink fibers had doubled in length. She tossed the coil of follicles again—twice as hard this time. She pulled the slack, and the natural rope was three times as long. Bon Bon repeated this process, using the infinity corridor to lengthen her colorful cord, until she had enough to make a loop with. She did so under much sweat and pressure, for the grass was starting to give way beneath her and the Lyra door.
"Almost... Almost..."
She formed a blue-and-pink lasso, looked up, and aimed for one of the drum-planes flying around.
"They're not going to wait much longer," Lyra's voice said from beyond infinity's hinges.
"Tell me about it!" Bon Bon shouted and flung the lasso up high. She barely avoided the drumstick propellers, but managed to loop the hairs around one of the bench wings. "There! Got it!"
"I love you so much..." Lyra's voice was fading, for the door was falling. The hill had disappeared, and the tree itself plummeted into the abyss beneath Bon Bon.
"Aaaaah!" Bon Bon shrieked in fright, gripping tightly to the tail hairs as the bom bom boms dwindled into pure blackness below. She swung from her floating anchor, trying to pull herself up to the drum plane.
Suddenly, the far end of the lasso slid towards the far end of the bench-wing, and the entire vehicle lurched. Bon Bon found herself jerking downwards with a gasp. The drum-plane veered at an awkward angle, gliding straight towards one of its many musical siblings.
"No. Oh please no..."
It was too late. The two vehicles collided, exploding into cymbals and drums and sticks and benches. Bon Bon fell, still clutching to the hairs that was lassoed around the bench wing. She climbed the final length of it in mid-air, ultimately grabbing onto the plummeting bench and clinging to it for dear life. Gravity shifted, and she realized that she was no longer falling, but instead drifting. Several drumsticks were forming all around her like a steep waterfall, until that very waterfall became raging rapids of wood with the occasional fish made of grass leaping through the twilight to shriek at her.
She batted the monstrosities away and stared ahead as several spiraling tributaries of drumsticks carried similar bench-rafts to a single, cohesive center, in the middle of which emerged the tallest oak tree of all, resonating with a booming bom bom bom across the inky depths of the universe.
"It's time that you wake up, sweetie," Lyra's sweet, angelic voice wafted over the starless cosmos.
"How?!" Bon Bon shouted. She grabbed a lyre bobbing in the river and used it as an oar, steering her bench raft sideways through the raging river of drumsticks. "How do I do it?! Please! I need to know!"
"Darling, listen to me."
"Listen to you?! I don't even know what to listen to—" Bon Bon stopped in mid sentence. She realized—aside from the enormous thunder of the tree towards which she was surging—that there was nothing else to listen to, nothing to even feel.
She then did something she hadn't done since she could remember. She held her breath, then brought a shivering hoof up to her left chest. She presses through her cream-colored coat, but felt absolutely nothing.
"My heart..." She muttered. "It's... It's not beating..."
She was right, only she wasn't. With a gawking expression, she tilted her head towards the tree, her ears pricking to a suddenly familiar bom bom... bom bom... bom bom...
"This..." she whispered. "...this isn't a dream. This is something else." She gulped hard and glared at the wooden trunk of the oak tree ahead. "I shouldn't be trying to run away from it; I should be searching for an answer within!"
With a determined breath, Bon Bon glanced around. She found a sharp, golden cymbal floating in the drumstick rapids. She snatched it up and clutched it to her chest along with her lyre. Pivoting, Bon Bon lowered her muzzle to the backrest of the bench and bit down onto a wooden board with her teeth. Tugging, she managed to snap a beam loose.
The rivers were converging. The tree was looming closer and closer. The bom bom bom boms increased in their cacophonous furor.
In the meantime, Bon Bon was getting to work. She smashed the lyre over her knee and pulled the metal strings loose. She then tied the cymbal tightly to the end of the loose wooden beam.
"You can be happy!" Lyra said, hanging upside down from a branch looming just overhead as the bench glided towards a murderous end. "You can make sweet music!"
"One thing at a time!" Bon Bon shouted, stood up, and leapt off the bench with the makeshift tool in full swing. "Raaaaaaugh!"
The bench slammed into the trunk of the giant tree and exploded beneath her. Bon Bon embedded the cymbal into the wooden body and hung off the handle like an axe. She dangled loosely, panting, her lower legs flailing twenty feet above furiously churning drumsticks.
"I can't do this without you, honey."
"Neither can I!" Bon Bon held her breath, swung her lower body, and pivoted so that she was straddling the body of the tree trunk with her hind quarters. Once she had a firm grip, she ripped the cymbal out from the wooden surface, flexed her hooves, and hacked repeatedly at the trunk.
Chips flew. The vibrating tree appeared to groan and undulate painfully beneath her. All was thunder and leaves and ringing.
"Come on!" Bon Bon shouted, sweat, chopped into the wooden flesh of the thundering structure. "Come on! Open up, curse you!"
"I can hear you!"
"Good!" Bon Bon shrieked, hissed, and slammed the cymbal-axe harder and harder. "Give it a few minutes, and you will get to kiss me too! Now break, you dang tree! Raaugh!"
Finally, the bark gave way. A hollow opened up to the churning darkness, expelling vaporous mists of compressed air as the thunder found a vent through with to channel its fury. Bon Bon dutifully chipped at the slit, forming a hole large enough to crawl through to the cylindrical space within.
"You always told me you wanted an encore."
"Hold that thought!" Bon Bon tossed the axe aside, held her breath, and dove straight into the hollow of the enormous tree. She found herself in a cold tunnel, stretching towards black infinity. She could hardly tell which way to go, until her ears told her from which direction the bom bom boms were sounding. Like a mole, Bon Bon squirmed until she was facing the noise, and blindly climbed her way up through the oaken corridor.
She began to shiver. The world was becoming colder. It smelled sterile, sapped of all warmth and texture. Still, the frigid realm beyond was calling to her, beckoning her. The bom bom bom boms became the backbeat to a gentle lullaby, and Lyra's sad voice was forming a solemn melody to it.
"Stay with me now. They're not going to wait much longer."
"It's okay..." Bon Bon panted. The walls were closing in. The corridor was becoming tighter and tighter the further she climbed. Soon she was inching her way through the hair-thin tree hollow like a worm. "I'm coming. You don't have to wait. You don't have..."
"I love you so much."
Bon Bon sniffled, her face scrunching up against solid wood that undulated like flesh around her. The smell became sour, and moisture was starting to seep in. "I love you too, Lyra. Oh darling, I love you—" She punched a hoof straight forward, and it pierced straight through the membrane.
A bright light exploded above.
The walls gave way, and Bon Bon plummeted backwards with a scream. She landed in a cold, bottomless pool. Bobbing back up to the surface, she treaded desperately in the waters, gazing up as a gigantic, curved ceiling opened like the roof to an astronomical observatory. As a pale glow illuminated her surroundings, she gasped to see herself surrounded by a giant ring of bright blue color, beyond which was a porcelain horizon of eggshell white.
"It's time that you wake up, sweetie," a sad voice boomed above, gentle and enormous at the same time.
Breathless, Bon Bon looked straight up.
Lyra's gigantic face was staring down at her as the eyelid opened halfway. Tears covered her mint-green face while several shadows shifted in the distances. The rigid lines of a room came into focus, with walls the size of mountains, all lined with x-rays and IVs. Just beyond Lyra's trembling shoulder, Bon Bon could make out the shimmering line of a heart monitor, with its emerald pulse bleeping at a regular bom bom... bom bom... bom bom..
"Darling, listen to me," Lyra's thunderous voice said between shuddering sobs. "You can be happy! You can make sweet music!" Her monumental face grimaced briefly as another tear trickled down her cheek. "I can't do this without you, honey."
"Lyra?!" Bon Bon shouted, treading water and sputtering for breath in the center of her own iris. "Lyra! Look! Listen! It's me! I'm here! I'm alive!"
"I can hear you," Lyra said, but her ear was tilted towards the heart monitor. "You always told me you wanted an encore," she said, then patted an enormous cream-colored hoof in her grip. Several wires of pumping fluid were attached to the limp forelimb as Lyra nuzzled it and said, "Stay with me now. They're not going to wait much longer."
"Who...?!" Bon Bon bobbed up and down in the currents, gazing all across the impossibly huge hospital room. "Who's not going to wait?" And then she saw the shadows once again, or more to the point: she saw their nervous proximity to a life support machine. "No—NO! Lyra, tell them I'm still here! Tell them I'm not dead yet!"
The lights dimmed as the enormous eyelid began to close, obscuring Lyra's crying face and bathing Bon Bon in shadow. "I love you so much..."
"No! Blast it! I'm here! I want to make music with you! I want—Nnngh!" Bon Bon punched the waters with a splash as the dome closed above her. The twilight returned, and a shower of loose leaves and grass blades fell down to litter the pool all around her. "In Celestia's name, listen to me! Don't pull the plug! I love you! I don't want to leave you! I don't..."
She hissed through gnashing teeth, spinning around in the waters and hyperventilating.
"Okay, think... think... think..." She murmured in a low breath, gazing as oak trees and wooden benches bobbed up to the surface with bright, pale-lit splashes all around her. "I'm in a coma, but I'm lucid. I can still get out of this somehow. This isn't a dream. My thoughts count. My thoughts count and I can get out of here... get out of this... But how?"
"You can be happy..."
Bon Bon gasped and spun around.
Lyra sat on a bench, floating lazily towards her. She twirled a cymbal in her grasp, smiling wickedly. "You can make sweet music!"
Bon Bon blinked. Suddenly, her eyes widened like saucers. "No!" she shrieked. "No, the music has to stop! It's a false melody! The real sound is at the surface, and..." She craned her neck. She heard the bom bom bom boms from far below and felt the waters rippling with each thunderous burst. "As soon as I end the beat, the real show starts! Then we can have our encore!"
"I can't do this without you, honey," Lyra said.
"Quiet, you!" Bon Bon grabbed the cymbal from Lyra's hooves, growled, and swung the metal instrument like a blade.
With a sickly pop, Lyra's skull flew clean off.
Bon Bon hopped onto the bench, grabbed Lyra's decapitated head, and heaved it over her skull like a helmet. She opened Lyra's jaw wide, revealing a translucent panel of airtight drumskin.
"We're doing this!" She then took a deep breath, dove off the bench, and swam straight down into the abysmal currents. On the way down, she surged past floating oak trees and drums and lyres. Tensing her face beneath the lyra helmet, she concentrated on the encompassing dreamscape.
Soon enough, currents of drumsticks swarmed up around her like serpentine double-helixes. They converged, coalesced, and turned into thick vessels through which Bon Bon plunged. Eventually, she didn't have to kick her hooves at all. A strong current had taken over and she was being funneled through the veins as the drums clustered up in droves, taking on concave shapes with grass blades morphing into enlarged hemoglobin.
"I can hear you," a voice said from behind Bon Bon in the surging currents. A loop of lyre strings coiled around the mare's rear hoof.
Bon Bon lurched and spun to look behind her.
A giant white blood cell made up of congealed cymbals frowned at her with Lyra's face. "You always told me you wanted an encore!"
"And I'm getting us one!" Bon Bon shouted. She kicked and struggled and fought the metal tendrils looping around her as more Lyra-cells joined with tree trunk platelets. "Now let go!"
"Stay with me now!"
"With the real you, sure! The rest of you can bite my flank! Nnnngh-GAAH!" Bon Bon finally tore loose from the blood cells. The current overtook her once again, and she was surging left and right, cascading down capillaries and looping veins. The bom bom bom bom boms were everywhere, screaming into every orifice, cracking the viewshield of the Lyra-helmet. Bon Bon panted for breath and spiraled madly through the currents. Several drums surged ahead of her, gaining color. She saw fleshy tones. A mystical glow of light blossomed just ahead. She tilted her head up and gasped.
The enormous pulsating door of the heart valve was undulating before her. In rhythmic surges—like drumstrokes—she was being yanked towards it, and towards freedom.
"Must shoot myself in there..." She hissed, her breath fogging up the helmet as she swam murderously towards her goal. "Must startle myself awake! It's the only way out! It's—"
Another length of lyre strings wrapped around her, this time at her waist.
"Gaaah!" Bon Bon shrieked, being yanked away from the heart. "No!"
"They're not going to wait much longer," the Lyra-cells said in unison, crowding around her as the bom bom boms grew distant once more. Everything was mint green madness and smiles. "I love you so much."
"You do...?" Bon Bon sneered, struggling for breath as the strings wrapped tighter and tighter. "Then maybe you'll forgive me for this!" She clamped her mouth shut, gripped the Lyra-helmet, and lifted it off her face. Submerged completely in plasma, she twirled the helmet around and stabbed its green horn straight into the fleshy face of the nearest cell.
The emerald doppelgangers shrieked and fell back in unison, dissolving into a cloud of rusted cymbals with a perpetual ringing sound.
Holding her breath, Bon Bon twirled from the noise, kicked her hooves, and swam desperately towards the heart. The light was blinding. The sound of life was everywhere and deliciously violent. Bon Bon's oxygen ran out, and she drifted with the blood, coasting limply towards the pumping valve as the bom bom boms embraced her like a long lost lover and—
"Aaaaah!" she shot up in bed, tied to a bleeping machine by half-a-dozen cables, her upper body clad in a sweat-stained, green gown. She blinked, gawking at the shadowed walls of the hospital room, reveling in the warm bom bom... bom bom... coming from directly beneath her chest, where it belonged.
She was alive, and she wasn't alone.
Instead of the shadowed forms of pony doctors in labcoats, Bon Bon saw a lone figure sitting in a chair across the way from the hospital bed. What was more, she was sitting in that one awkward manner that Bon Bon adored her for.
A sweet smile graced the exhausted patient's cheek. She sniffled, not bothering to fight back the tears. Swinging her numb limbs, she pulled herself out of bed. There was a painful tug, and several machines scraped across the cold tile floor along with her. Bon Bon reached down and pulled the wires and sensors from here forelimbs. In a limping gait, she trotted slowly across the room and shook her beloved's shoulder with a single hoof.
"Hey... Hey there, adorable..."
Lyra stirred. She shifted in her seat, her amber eyes fluttering open. When she saw Bon Bon, she gasped wide and shot up.
"Shhh..." Bon Bon stroked her cheek, smiling painfully. "It's okay. I'm back, my love. We can have that encore together."
Lyra was speechless. Her lips quivered, and sweet tears formed along the rims of her bloodshot eyes. She practically fell forward, and the two mares hugged each other tightly in the center of the cold, sterile room.
"You're the beat of my soul," Bon Bon said, nuzzling Lyra's cheek and whispering into her ear. "I'd make sweet music with you forever if I could."
To that, Lyra merely sniffled and murmured, "Oh darling, I wish that you could."
Bon Bon blinked curiously. She glanced at her marefriend's sobbing form, then at the bed. There was a clipboard resting at the foot of it, and there was something peculiar about the name. It didn't read Bon Bon, instead it read...
"Lyra, it's time that you wake up, sweetie."
Lyra's jaw hung open. She turned and looked up in confusion.
Bon Bon was gazing down at her in bed, clutching her arm and nuzzling it. "Darling, listen to me," she said in between sniffles, her voice a gentle, caressing thing as the lights around the hospital room began to dim. "You can be happy. You can make sweet music." Bon Bon's voice cracked, as did her face, leaking tears that ran down and collected upon Lyra's numb hoof. "I can't do this without you, honey."
Lyra tried to speak, but her breath was gone. She was too busy treading water inside an amber halo of color to even bother whispering.
Behind Bon Bon, shadows in labcoats gathered around the life support machine. The monitor was bleeping, albeit faintly.
"I can hear you," Bon Bon said. "You always told me you wanted an encore; stay with me now!" She sobbed and kissed the green hoof again. She was now a mile away, and the gigantic dome was closing above like a planetarium on the edge of the universe. "They're not going to wait much longer..."
Lyra struggled to speak. To do so, she had to give up treading, and she plunged into the waters.
"I love you so much..." Bon Bon said and was gone. The eyelid closed; all was darkness.
As Lyra drowned, there was no noise, not even a heartbeat: just her voice sounding off to an endless rhythm, as it had perpetually done so for countless lucid months in the mirrored hallways of madness, only now growing fainter and fainter as the black depths swallowed her up.
"Bon Bon... Bon Bon... Bon Bon..."
There was no encore.
