Sometimes the Difference Between a Dream and a Nightmare Is When You Wake Up
She was in Las Pegasus, missing her little sister Berryshine. Yearning to be with her. Feeling that there's an empty spot in the bed.
She fell asleep.
In her dream, she flew through the night. Still a pegasus, okay. In a way, every moment she spends when she's aware that she's the same pony race as she was last moment, is just very slightly reassuring. In the sense that somepony who lives in a narrow, deep mountain valley that's prone to landslides and earthquakes and avalanches, can look up at the mountains around herself and say, nope, I don't see one right this moment. I definitely have seconds left, maybe even minutes, to live. Maybe a lot more than that, but at the least, the tiny sliver of future that I can already see.
As she thought about that, the landscape melted and changed around her. The mountains faded, the buildings slid and wobbled like spilled raw eggs slipping along a countertop. The sky was still mostly the same, except that with the mountains out of the way she could see more of it.
Finally the liquid world all around her went solid again, and she recognized her surroundings. Ponyville.
She knocked on a door. A light went on inside. After a minute, the door opened.
Cherry Berry breathed the word, "Berryshine."
"Cherry Berry!" Cherry's little sister said. "You came back! Oh, how I've missed you." Berry grabbed Cherry in her forelegs, as if trying to smoosh herself into her big sister's chest.
Berry's shape started to change, gradually becoming more like a pancake wrapping itself around Cherry.
But some part of Cherry that the bigger sister didn't recognize stirred. It said, "Enough." Berry snapped back into her normal shape.
Berry blinked, confused. "What was that? First I...and now..." She shook her head.
Cherry Berry said, "This is a dream."
After a moment, Berry said, "Oh. Of course. I should have known this was too good to be real."
Cherry said, "But this is really me. Aren't you really you?"
Berry said, "I THINK I am. But of course, a dream pony would say that, wouldn't she?"
From somewhere inside her that she didn't quite recognize, Cherry said, "She might. Or she might not. Quick, let's tell each other things that we would only find out if we're really each other."
Berry said, "I'm still living here in Ponyville. But you could already guess that. I have a new job, after school. Do you remember that year when we were living in the woods without anypony to take care of us, and food was scarce, and I was so happy to see a big garden with carrots growing in it, that I just ran up and stole as many as I could? Well, now I'm working on a carrot farm. All the vegetables I can eat." She sighed. "Ponyville really is a nice place. When a pony is in trouble, they try to find a way to help you make it better."
"The carrot farm job is one thing I didn't know," Cherry said. "Tell me another."
"Trixie came back through town again. She has a new act where she cuts a Diamond Dog in half, and the bottom walks around while the top half talks."
"That's good," Cherry said. "I'm hiding out in Las Pegasus, because that's a town where a pegasus can fit in, but there's lots of race-inclusive housing where even if you're not a pegasus, you won't fall through the floor."
"That makes sense," Berry said. "But the ponies in Ponyville are good ponies. They learned to accept me, and they can learn to accept you too."
Cherry said, "I don't want ponies to see me as some freak!"
"You're not a freak!" Berry said. "You're just special. Both of us are."
"SPECIAL is how polite ponies call a freak a freak," Cherry said. "Here in Las Pegasus nopony knows who I am, or what I am. And I like it that way."
"But Cherry! If you never let anypony know who you are, you won't have any friends! That's no way to live! You even left your own sister!"
The night around the ponies started to grow lighter. "Cherry!" Berryshine cried out, "Tell me something else quick!"
Cherry looked at the surroundings starting to fade. "I love you."
Berryshine said, "I love you too!"
At that moment, the dream vanished. Berryshine's eyes started to open. "Harmony take it!" she spoke rudely. "Just when...well, it was a pleasant dream, anyway. While it lasted."
Berry crawled out of bed, and twitched her wings. Still there. She had feared she might have changed pony races during the night. She always had an underlying fear that some night a time might come when she would change species, and who knew what that might to do her life? But she was still okay. Today, at least, she wouldn't have to flee town to find another place where nopony knew her.
How many years would it take her, she wondered, before she ran out of big cities and little towns to hide in? Maybe today she could find time to stop in at a bookstore or a library, and look at an atlas.
Bleary-eyed, Berry took a shower, brushing her teeth at the same time. It was more efficient that way, and who knew how many more days her life would give her before a horrific transformation might do her in for good?
Berry went outside, strolling as she tried to think of the closest place to get an atlas. But as she passed a pair of ponies, they looked at her strangely. After they passed, Berry checked her wings, and looked down at her own body. Nothing weird about her at all. Why did they react like that? Were they tourists so rustic that they'd never seen a big city pegasus before?
As Berry approached a shop window, she looked inside. No books here, she thought. But in the window's reflected light, a motion caught her attention. Her eyes refocused, to look at the reflection instead of the shop's contents.
On the sidewalk to one side of her, a pony was bowing deeply, almost laying his body down onto the pavement. Berry didn't look forward to dealing with some obnoxious beggar! With the frequent changes disrupting her life and losing her job after job, she hardly had enough bits for herself!
She finally noticed something else in the reflection. Something was stuck in her mane. Berry reflexively tried to straighten her mane...with magic.
Berry recognized that today, she was an alicorn.
"Oh buck," she said to herself. "As if I wasn't an obvious enough freak already."
Author's Note
Another story that used a somewhat similar premise, but with a rather different tone from Shaslan's Changing Cherries, is Element of Malice's It’s NOT conTAGIOUS!!.
Second Author's Note
This story's metadata (title, summary/summaries...) received some rather pointed criticism from some people who I respect. (The story itself was also criticized, but that's another thing.) So I'm changing that metadata on the story, but for future reference the old metadata is here, at least so I can be criticized for what I did instead of some misunderstanding of what I did not do.
TITLE
Cherry's Dream (An I-Hated-the-Ending-Fic)
Short Description
Cherry's spontaneous night changes make her, in many ponies' eyes, a changeling-like freak. But one night, an innocent dream turns into a nightmare that leaves her no place to hide. (Unauthorized sequel to a story by Shaslan because I hated the end.)
Long Description
Where did this story come from? I read a very, very good story that was marked "Complete," and I was disappointed (maybe even peeved) that in my view it wasn't a story, it was a situation plus a backstory. Both very well-written, but NOT A STORY.
It turns out that Shaslan is working on at least one more chapter to Changing Cherries. I didn't realize that, because the story was marked "Complete," and I didn't see any indication that more would be coming, in the story description/summary or the Author's Note.
So...this is an unauthorized sequel to Chapter One of Changing Cherries, because I hated the original ending to a "Complete" story THAT MUCH. This is also my first speedfic, I guess.
TAGS:
AU
Comedy
Drama
Slice of Life
Main Characters
Other
Cherry Berry
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CHAPTER TITLE:
Sometimes the Difference Between a Dream and a Nightmare Is When You Wake Up
