Dreamwalker's Tale

When the room got brighter by itself, I knew it was time. I closed the book, sorted it away in the ‘not helpful’-pile and made my way over to a window. Because dawn was spectacular. Usually I was kind of a night owl and would never see a sunrise, sleeping into the midday hours. But since sleep eluded me, this was an opportunity to behold a beautiful spectacle. “Good morning, Tia,” I mumbled when her sun dipped above the horizon in the east.

Once the sky took on its familiar light blue hue, I returned to the kitchen and busied myself with attempts to get breakfast ready. A bowl of cornflakes for Spike was not hard to get together. Grinding a bit of sapphire down to sprinkle it over the stuff was more of a challenge, but as I found out: Even unicorn hooves were quite sturdy. My next proud achievement was to make a second (and third) bowl and not mixing up which one was for Spike. Because I was pretty sure that Twilight would not appreciate sapphire dust in her cereal.

And finally, la piece de resistance… coffee.

I hated that stuff. Its acrid smell was awful, it tasted bitter and it made my heart race, and not in a good way. I tried it several times. Twilight asked me to. Luna almost demanded that I do. And to everypony’s horror, Pinkie had presented me with a whole pot at some point, revealing how she usually emptied an entire pot each morning. I remembered there had been attempts to say something along the lines of ‘well, that explains things’, but they quickly gave up on that. No, it did not. It was still Pinkie Pie and even an entire pot of black coffee did not explain Pinkie Pie.

I was deep in thought, trying to decipher which instance of me trying coffee came first and which one last, when I heard the cutest zombie in existence moan outside. I looked out the kitchen door and found Twilight shuffling her way forward, groaning and blinking occasionally. I chuckled. “Wow. You look like the life of the party,” I greeted her. She grumbled something unintelligible in reply.

Apparently, Spike hat accidentally slept in, because he immediately appeared behind her, low-key yelling about how he would have everything ready if she just gave him a second and hurried past Twilight into the kitchen. She did not even seem to notice much.

“You know… you looked so damn cute, lying on my side, I really considered letting you rest there. But seeing you now, I’m glad I dragged you off to bed. Sleeping on a couch is romantic and all, but the next morning, you’re going to feel that,” I teased. That got her attention and a slight blush. She really was not in any state to freak out over it, which played in my favor.

Then Spike reappeared from the kitchen. “Uh… breakfast… was already done?” he asked and looked between Twilight and me.

“Oh. Yeah. I tried to make myself useful. If I’m allowed to live here for a while, I thought that would be the least I could do. The coffee should be rather strong, though.” For a moment, they both considered me with looks I could not quite decipher, but then they both smiled and I just shrugged and told myself that apparently everything was fine.

We sat down for breakfast and Spike's entire face lit up with delight when he noticed the sapphire dust.

“So… you made breakfast,” Twilight stated while taking the fourth sip from her coffee.

“Yupp. Couldn’t quite sleep, so I kept on reading, but the letters blurred into one another and once the pages started to look like maws with inky teeth and the library was trying to devour me, I came to the conclusion that it would be best to pause for a moment and just—“ I stopped at Spikes unrestrained laughter. Hoping for an explanation, I looked over to Twilight, but her blush was so intense that it almost made her look like Cheerilee.

So, instead of pressing her for an answer, I simply waited until Spike reigned himself in and cocked an eyebrow questioningly. “You have the same ‘late night reading binge’-hallucinations,” he stated and started chuckling again.

I once again looked over to Twilight, but she did not deny it. She even hesitantly nodded after a moment. I chuckled. There was a short lull afterwards, but it was not uncomfortable. Just silence. We continued breakfast until our bowls were empty, the coffee was gone and Spike became more fidgety. “You look like you got plans,” I noted.

He nodded rather eagerly. “I want to go help Rarity,” he answered quickly.

With Rarity-things, I presumed. Probably a dress or another, maybe gemstone hunting again. So I just nodded. “Well… off you go?” In this household, I really should not be the one giving out any permission. For that exact reason, he looked to Twilight for confirmation before joyfully sprinting off. “Just remember to keep your eyes open,” I sent after him. I heard him stop somewhere in the hallway outside, and after a moment, he continued on his merry way.

“Will do,” came his muffled voice before the sounds of him running away resumed.

“And what, pray tell, are we two going to do, now that the little dragon is out and we have the entire castle to ourselves…?” I tried hard for what I had hoped was my best impression of ‘bedroom eyes’. She took her cup in her magic and swished it my way. Hard. Which meant that, expecting an onslaught of coffee, I held up my hooves and flailed around wildly. In turn, I lost my balance, fell from the stool I was sitting on and landed on my haunches with a thud. Obviously, there was not any coffee left in the pot to begin with. I knew that.

She held a hoof to her mouth, trying and failing to contain her mirth. Success, then. I was satisfied. I was unable to put into words how much fun it was to flirt with her, to tease her. Yet there was still no impulse to do more than that. But I buried that thought and just enjoyed myself. And her company, of course.

After cleaning up, we returned to the library. Books. Books. Booooooooooks. For today, to switch things up a little bit, we tried to research dream magic. We made several short breaks, mostly for tea so we reminded each other to drink enough throughout the day. We talked about interesting passages, discussed some weird or unnecessarily provocative opinions in those books and at the end of the day, we could show for ourselves: Three dead legs, red eyes, aching necks and one sprained ankle. We had gone through almost everything that promised as much as a hint and had landed in the esotericism part of the library. That truly spoke of desperation.

Of course there was more. There are always more books. But we had spent an entire day and had gotten nothing. Most research processes were not done in a day, as Twilight reminded me. But I already knew that. “You can’t tell me that you’re not at least a teensy bit frustrated anyway, right?” I asked, but she just smiled.

“Maybe we should just write to her,” Twilight mused.

I knew who she meant. And I did not quite feel comfortable with that. I could not tell why exactly, but involving Luna already…

I just popped into existence yesterday. I was kind of an intruder, was I not? How did that even work? Did one become a citizen of Equestria just by being in Equestria? Surely not. What then? Was being a Pony in Equestria enough? No, that could not be it either. That would have been way too racist. Did I have to have a house, then? What about homeless ponies? Maybe I had to be born in Equestria, but that opened up another can of worms.

“Nah,” I started my answer, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. First off, she’s a princess. Yes, yes, I know, so are you, but she’s more involved in state affairs, isn’t she? She’s probably busy and this isn’t exactly an emergency. We still have material to sort through. Maybe if we run into more dead ends. Adding to that…” I looked out the window. The sky had a pretty, rosy tint to it. “She’s probably still sleeping, right? Or in the middle of getting ready for Night Court. I wouldn’t want to be a bother.” I did not exactly feel great about manipulating her like that. And it would have been a different matter had it concerned Princess Celestia. But it did not, and my words fell on fertile soil. She was considering whether she would be bothering a busy princess.

“Come on,” I tried to push further. “We still have work to do.” I waggled a book in front of her nose like a carrot on a stick. She giggled and agreed to my proposition. We did not come far however, as Spike finally returned. With an impressive amount of cupcakes, courtesy of Pinkie Pie, who apparently was back from the Pie family rock farm. The mere presence of delectable treats made my stomach growl and reminded me of my missing dinner. Twilight's belly chimed in as well, so we both accepted the gift a little embarrassed and let Spike lecture us for a short while about how we could not just ‘forget eating’ because of books.

We both ‘hmmm’d and nodded and so forth, but once he went off to bed, we just shared a little look, grinned and dug in. The food was great, but… boooooks.

It was getting late again. By now, the ‘not useful’-pile had almost swallowed the entirety of the other pile and Twilight was once again yawning. This time, however, she did not just keel over and slump against me. I was almost a little bit disappointed. “We should head to bed.”

“Same one. Gotcha.” I was already cracking up internally at the mere expectation of how her face would look once my words registered.

“N-No…!” she stuttered embarrassed and actually hit the back of my head with a book. How rude…

“That poor book!” I remarked, at which point horror bloomed on her face and she feverishly searched it for any damages.

I was just laughing hard. I saw her swinging the book again, but she thought better of it last second and laid it down gently before tackling me. “That,” I remarked grinning, “was a stupid decision!” Because I knew all her weak spots. All. Of. Them.

I did not know what train of thought had made her tackle me, to be honest. Twilight never was all that touchy-feely with others; she preferred her private space and gave that to others in return. But I was glad she did tackle me. We rolled off the sofa, wrestled a short moment on the floor, choking on our laughter, until I just lost. She got lucky and had found one of my own ticklish spots and was trying to hone in on it, so I just lifted her off of me. And held her in levitation.

She still grinned wickedly, not struggling yet, but the threat of breaking free was written all over her face. “I surrender!” I blurted out between quick breaths.

She grinned triumphantly and nodded. “You better,” she threatened and I set her down on her hooves.

I followed her to her bedroom after that, walking side by side with her again. This time, I did not enter with her. I had no reason to, so I thought it would be weird if I attempted it. Instead, we stood in front of the door like on some kind of weird first date, which was quite hilarious in its own right. “Have a good night,” she said.

I hesitated for a moment, looking into her eyes, before I moved forward. I saw her tense up, but I did nothing other than embrace her. “Thank you,” I whispered. “And sleep tight.” She relaxed into the embrace and reciprocated it after a moment. Hugging her tightly, I felt… good. This was, as Fluttershy would have put it: Nice.

I let go of her, she went inside and I found a guest room. I did not know if it was the same one, a different one, it did not matter much. After half an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up again and went back to the library. There had to be some hint somewhere in here. I was not looking for a step by step tutorial on dream magic, though that would have been nice. I would have been fully satisfied with a little hint that I could present to Twilight, so she could use her super-librarian-powers to sniff out further knowledge about the matter.