Lunacy
-I-
By Sparklight
Why were beds always more comfortable in the mornings?
My entire body was enveloped in the warm embrace of my sheets. The thick covers shielded me from the cool air of my darkened room as I fought to lose myself again in the void of unconsciousness. Though closed eyes, I could see only the darkness, or rather, could not see any large source of light. Slowly, I allowed my eyelids to part, taking in the dark that consumed my room.
It must have been quite early, before sunrise, as no light escaped past the gaps where the curtains of my room met the walls. I wondered how much longer it would be before my alarm went off. I dreaded the noise, my deep running hatred only amplified by my half conscious state of awakening. In the early mornings, it was an oncoming storm, destined to strike at any moment to annoy me from my comfort and into another chaotic day of my education. A painful necessity.
Letting out a sigh, I rolled over, but my eyebrows slanted down at the unfamiliar feelings my body sent my brain. Concerned, I continued to move, trying to identify the odd feelings I was getting with each touch of body to bedding. There were strange, somewhat soft lumps on my back, as if I was wearing a pair of sacks on my sides, each containing tough, but not solid, frames, along with a soft, plush like feeling wrapped around the back of my head, and it was one that definitely wasn’t my pillow. The strangest feeling of all was my hands. The hands themselves felt like rigid stumps at the ends of my arms, and there was a numbed effect on the digits, not like the pins and needles feeling when I wake up having slept on it, but no feeling at all.
I clumsily wrestled my right arm out from under the covers, lifting it in front of my face to identify the source of my numbness. A dark silhouette bobbed back and forth in front of my eyes, following my every movement. Curious of its nature, I pressed the appendage against my nose.
Blood drained from my face and the warmth of my bed was lost to oblivion as the dark shape touched the tip of my nose. It was somewhat soft and malleable, like a balloon filled with clay, yet it turned flat and rigid when I tensed my muscles.
The horrifying discovery of my hand’s fate was not the only one I made: My nose was flat, protruding from my face, but that was not the worst discovery. The collision of the odd appendage and my nose brought forth the chilling sensation of fur. Confused and dismayed, I ran my former hands down my body. My flesh was an alien landscape beneath my limbs, covered in a dense forest of soft hair.
For a moment, I lay silent and still. My mind was ablaze with questions regarding my current situation, and hasty answers, each seeming more outrageous then the last. There was one answer that I could settle on: a lucid dream.
I’d never had the fortune of a lucid dream before. The entire concept of realising that I was dreaming was foreign to me. In my younger years, I had been able to recall the dreams in enough detail to form a distorted narrative, but these days dreams were few and far between, and on the rare occasion that I did happen to remember, they were mostly jumbled messes of incomprehensible activity. A lizard, a tree, my school, my name and more seemingly random details strewn together like three second extracts from over a dozen different movies.
This was a new feeling; an entire world in the depth of my mind that was completely under my control. For a minute or so I simply lay in the bed, unmoving, afraid that a single wrong movement would dispel the illusion and throw me back into the real world. It didn’t take long before I began to feel restless and bored. Was this level of conscious thought and feeling normal for lucid dreams?
After a moment of thought I decided that this unique experience may be the only one of its kind that I might have, and should not be wasted lying in bed and caressing this strange form. I took a deep breath and, using my oddly shaped arms, threw the covers off my body. There was a rapid drop in temperature, although the new layer of fur helped repel the advance of the cold. The dark had faded somewhat, giving me limited vision of my surroundings. Ignoring all else, I focused on my body.
Sprawled out on the bed was an elongated body, dark furs standing out against the considerably lighter sheets. Curiously, I examined myself. My legs caught my interest the most, as they were completely different to my old pair. Protruding out at an almost perpendicular angle to my body, they continued down, bending back slightly before continuing down the same direction again. It was almost like a dog’s hind leg, or...
...that of a horse.
I suppressed a fan boy squeal of delight as I realised what form the dream world had seen fit to bestow upon me. With the corners of my mouth stretching back toward my ears, I craned my head over toward my flank, eager to see if there was any sort of mark adorning the fur. Much to my pleasure, there was something there. The fur had darkened considerably, and there was some sort of white shape splodged in the centre. The darkness of the room obscured any further details, and my hopes fell slightly. How my mind would render my talents in the form of an image was intriguing, but to have the answer right in front of my face yet unable to see it was, to say the least, annoying.
The room appeared to be lighting up quite quickly, so there would be time enough later to discover the visualisation of my talent. Trying to distract myself from the mark on my flank, I turned my attention to my back. The equine neck was much more flexible than should have been possible in a real horse, but I ignored that small detail. The hows and whys could wait, I had so much more to experience.
My grin must have been on par with the happiest expressions Pinkie Pie could offer, as the strange bumps on my back were none other than a pair of wings. The dark bluish, feathery appendages were tucked neatly against my sides, beckoning me to experiment. I was disappointed when the most I could do was make a wing twitch. All of the muscles were completely foreign to me, and my brain had no idea how to control the limbs. Frowning, I tried again, but only to be rewarded with the same tiny twitch.
I exhaled out of annoyance. I had hoped that the dream would allow me at least the basic knowledge of flight, but this was not the case. I would be lying if I said I was not envious of birds, and other winged animals. Their ability to take to the sky, to defy gravity itself and soar with the wind through the pristine skies, was something I could only dream about. I chuckled at the pun, but froze when the sound reached my ears. My voice was different.
“Hello?”
My words broke the room’s silence, the minute volume amplified tenfold by the noiseless environment. My voice itself was unusual, coming out in a mere whisper, yet the pitch was much higher than the deep, almost rumble like, voice I was used to. Concerned, I spoke again.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
My eyes widened, a small gasp escaping my mouth. My vocal chords emitted a sound vastly different from my previous set. It was the sound of a young woman.
Keeping my mouth clamped shut, I parted my hind legs and craned my head to get a better view. I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not ponies did actually possess reproductive organs. There were plenty of rather provocative shots in the show itself, and that was not to mention the wealth of images one could find if they looked hard enough.
Not that I did.
Only a few moments of searching returned results that shocked me more than I thought they would have: I was indeed female. Was this some sort of cruel joke my dream was playing on me? Was it the result of some strange curiosity of the other sex, buried deep within the dark recesses of my mind? At the current time, I had no way of knowing. How would my mind render a female reproductive organ? It was an interesting proposition, and one that I was somewhat inclined to-
My face heated up and I squeezed my hind legs together. The prospect of having a lucid dream was already exciting enough, and I felt I didn’t need to turn it into a ‘wet lucid dream where I played the role of a vertically challenged horse pleasing herself’. Turning my head away from my rear end, I searched for something else to occupy my mind.
The soft, airy cushion that was my mane intrigued me enough to forget about my previous venture. The mass of hair swayed back and forth with each turn of my head, some of it swinging down into sight. Was that glitter? Curiously, I ran a fore hoof through the growth around the back of my neck. The feeling was divine, as if the mane was comprised of silken strands that reached down my neck toward my shoulders. It was in near perfect condition, too, no sign of any flakes of glitter. It seemed that not a single hair was out of place, which was surprising considering the usual state of my hair in the morning.
I continued to revel in the soft touch of my mane, stoking its length from the back of my head, down to my shoulders. The mane seemed extraordinarily long, as it kept going out of reach in my current position, but that didn’t matter to me. I reached up to perform the action again, when my hoof bumped into a sudden hard object atop my head. At the same time, I felt a jolt of pressure at the top of my skull. Intrigued by the curious shape, I began to rub my hoof along its surface.
A rigid, bumpy surface met my hoof as it slid along the length of the protrusion. It seemed quite obvious, given my current position, what the hard, bumpy object attached to my head was: None other than a horn.
I’d ready plenty of fiction, and more than enough to be familiar with the ridiculously named, poorly characterised creation known as the self-insert alicorn. More than once I had left a rancid comment on a particular story because of the presence of one of these literary demons. I found it was somewhat ironic that after having so much hate toward those characters and their writers, that I should find myself in the same situation that they dreamed up and put to words.
Well, almost the same. The alien territory between my hind legs stood out as a major difference between myself and those horrific cardboard cut-outs. At least I didn’t wake up face down in a puddle of mud somewhere in the Everfree Forest.
I frowned. Where was I, anyway?
The room I was in definitely wasn’t my own. In the low light I could see a good deal of its contents, and it was huge. It was relatively circular, and had I still had my previous body, if probably would have taken the better part of twenty paces to reach the other side. The bed I currently resided in was huge, queen sized, with silky smooth sheets and the fluffiest pillows I had ever had the fortune to touch. I had to give my subconscious credit for the comfort I experienced.
The walls looked a sort of pale bluish-white colour, and many were covered with navy blue tapestries depicting odd images I couldn’t quite make out, no matter how hard I squinted. Various kinds of furniture lined the walls and filled the chamber’s empty space, ranging desks, cupboards, cushioned stools and lounges, and even an empty fireplace. A tall mirror, at least the height of a man, was fixed to the wall opposite my bed, a silhouetted shape shifting with my every movement.
Mirror, eh?
My next target was decided, it was time to get a proper look at my body, and put my locomotive skills to the test. The stories all had varying ways in which their protagonist took their first steps in their hooves. Some would take shortcuts, giving the former human immediate familiarity with their new body, enabling them to walk (and in the case of pegasi, fly) with minimal effort. Others took the longer road, forcing the protagonist to learn their new body through practice. I had no idea how long the dream would last for me, so, for the sake of time, I prayed for the former. I began to move my limbs, getting a feel for how the muscles moved. After a moment or two of experimentation, I decided I was ready. Nervously, I wriggled my body toward the side of the bed.
The first step of my journey to the mirror was stepping down from the bed. This seemingly simple challenge would actually hold dire consequences in the event of failure. I can recall a dream I had several years ago. The memory had stuck with me through the years. In the dream, I was running. There was no detail in my surroundings, just myself and the grass below me, the green fields just like those I used to run on in school. The dream only lasted a few, fleeting moments. I was running, and I tripped. The shock alone I felt from my sudden loss of balance was enough to launch me back into consciousness with a jolt. This was what I was afraid of. Just a single slip, and I could bring this unique experience to a swift and premature close.
I was at the edge of the bed now. Before me was a slight drop, not even a metre high of the ground. Still I was scared, but my options were limited. I could either spend the rest of the dream lying in bed, wasting what might be my only chance to live the brony dream, or take the risk of losing it all in an instant.
With a slight shake in the limb, I reached my right foreleg over the edge, slowly lowering it to the floor. The smooth surface was cold against my hoof, and I paused for a moment. One down, four to go. I dragged my left foreleg across the surface of the bed, the waves of the disturbed covers passing under hoof like silken sand dunes. My hoof passed out over the void at the edge of the bed, slowly lowering to join its sibling on the ground. Soon enough both of my front hooves rested on the polished marble floor. Halfway there.
I paused when I realised my position presented a new problem. With both my forelegs over the edge and on the ground, I was in a position that resembled standing, except that my hind legs were pressed up against my body. My pose may not have seemed to be the most dangerous of positions, but coupled with my unfamiliarity with this body, the risk of falling, and therefore ending the dream, was high. I found myself faced with two options: pull my legs back up and try a different approach, or wriggle my backside forward and continue as planned.
I sat still for a moment, pondering my choices. Light was slowly filling the room