Pillow thoughts

Chapter 8
Too good to be true

“Can’t this wait!?”, shouted Applejack as she was trying to keep up with Rainbow Dash. They were galloping towards Twilight’s treehouse in the middle of the night.

“No!”, replied the blue pegasus and yelped as her friend grabbed her tail, making her slow down.

“Rainbow, let’s just leave it be... Why is this so important? It took us weeks to get to this point—“

“Exactly, AJ, and I want to make sure it’s... right.”

“Huh?”, asked the confused earth pony.

Rainbow came to a full stop and turned towards her. “I just... want to be sure... that everything is alright.”

“Still not followin’”

“Listen, AJ, I don’t know what will happen next... or if this is okay. I mean, you felt it too, right? Tonight, our kiss tonight... this was not our first kiss.”

“It felt familiar, yeah... so what? We’ve been around each other so long, maybe we just knew what to expect.”

Applejack’s words did not appease the pegasus. She shook her head and continued; “Applejack, what if... what if this was the result of some spell or something? What if...”, she found it hard to continue. “What if we don’t really feel that way about each other and this is all just somepony’s cruel joke?”

“Now y’all are just being silly,” replied the earth pony, waving away all those thoughts. “Let’s just head back to the farm. It’s been a long day and-- Oh for Pete’s sake!” she shouted as Rainbow started galloping again towards Twilight’s house.

Rainbow knocked on the door but couldn’t wait anymore so she just let herself in.

“Twilight, sorry, sorry, sorry to barge in like this... but something weird happened!”

The purple pony poked her head out of the kitchen. Rainbow continued as AJ just caught up with her.

“We kissed!” exploded Rainbow Dash with a terrified look on her face.

Twilight blinked once and took a few steps towards the pair. “Oh, well, that doesn’t sound so bad.” She looked at Applejack who lowered her ears and blushed a little. “I mean, practice makes perfect, Rainbow. Many ponies learn as they go...”

“Wha--?” asked the pegasus, shaking her head and quickly redressing herself “What, wait, nonono, AJ is a great kisser, she really knows her stuff! You should’ve seen her!”

The blush has been doubled. On both AJ and Twilight.

“Yeah, uh, Rainbow... I’m happy for you two but I don’t need to know ALL the details”, Twilight started explaining before being cut off by the pegasus.

“Wait, no, listen! We both felt that we’ve done this before. It felt familiar to us... like... too familiar.”

“Sorry to bother you with this, Twilight,” said Applejack, adjusting her hat. “Rainbow started panicking and came up with this crazy idea that, well... it’s just plain ol’ silly.”

“No, it’s not!" Rainbow protested.

“Yeah, it is... Ah think y’all just chickened out like that”, continued the earth pony, making Rainbow blush for a change.

“What?! I did not--”

“Yeah, as you can see, Twilight is not worried one bit. She also thinks it’s silly!”

“I have no idea what we are all talking about,” said the purple unicorn in her defense.

“That’s probably for the best,” replied Applejack, turning to Rainbow. “Now, let’s leave Twilight alone and go back to the farm! Don’t make me use mah rope to drag you back to bed!”

Rainbow jerked her head up in surprise as she looked at her friend. Twilight was a mere spectator (though was feeling more and more awkward in this situation) as she could only guess what was going on in their heads right now. Applejack frowned, then her eyes widened as she replayed her own words in her mind.

“Wait, no... YOUR bed! Not mah bed! Not like THAT! Oh, you know what Ah mean!”

Rainbow blinked.

There was a moment of silence as various images and thoughts invaded the pony’s brain.

Twilight blinked, not knowing what exactly was she supposed to do in this situation. Frankly, no book could help her there.

Rarity blinked too... and then she grinned.

***

“Oh.... Yeah...” started Twilight, rubbing her hooves together apologetically. “Rarity was spending the night here. She was helping me with this new dress that I wanted to—“

“No... way!”, the white unicorn shouted, forgetting all the 'fancy-talk' that she was used to.

Rainbow opened her mouth, and closed it... then opened it again, looking at Rarity who was acting almost like a filly who got lost in a Theme Park.

“Ah told you we should’ve waited 'til morning!” snapped Applejack.

“You’re not making this sound any better. Really.” replied Rainbow Dash, and then turned towards Rarity. “Uh, hey...Rarity... Not sure what you’ve heard, but it’s not what it—“

“I can already see”, continued Rarity as if she was in a semi-trance. “Matching dresses for fancy balls! Oh and maybe matching accessories for day-today activities! Ah and we’ll surely need to find a harmonious blend of colours, then again, orange does go quite well with blue!”

“Uh, Rarity... maybe now is not the time,” suggested Twilight. The words entered Rarity’s left ear and exited through the right one as the unicorn started babbling about how she always dreamed to “work on couples”.

“Listen, Rarity, it’s all nice that you’re not as freaked out as we were about this... but we’re trying to figure something out here,” explained Rainbow. “All this started during that night we all spent at Twilight’s.”

“Well, let’s all just take it one by one...” continued the purple unicorn. “You all came over, we talked, we laughed, I arranged everything by the book...”

“We had music... maybe there was something wrong with that, maybe that’s what made Rainbow bite me,” said Applejack as they were all trying to put an end to this uncertainty. Except Rarity, of course.

“Wait, what?” inquired the white pony. “Rainbow, you... you bit Applejack?”

“Uh... yeah. Heh... I have no idea when that happened. In my sleep, I guess.”

Rarity didn’t know if she should be really excited of the situation (like when she reads all those scandal-magazines related to famous ponies) or if she should feel really, really dumb for believing such nonsense as bed bugs. Either way, the ponies continued throwing ideas, hoping that they might make some sense out of all of this.

Applejack started walking around, focusing on her thoughts. “Y’all tried various musics, I played mah guitar for a while... then we all had that pillow fight...”

The glitter in Rarity’s eyes faded out for a split second. “Wait, pillow fight? What pillow fight?”

The ponies turned to her nor knowing if she was joking or not.

“Um, the biggest and most epic pillow fight we've ever had, hello?!” said Rainbow as if one could not easily forget such a memorable scenario. “You even held your ground better than ever!”

Rarity frowned. “I’m sorry, but as much as I love Twilight’s slumber parties, I would do no such thing as, how you say, stand my ground. Pillow fights are fun... from a certain distance.”.

Twilight was baffled. “Are you saying you don’t remember the way you completely took AJ by surprise?”

“There’s nothing to remember, we had no pillow fight!” replied Rarity, getting slightly irritated by the thought.

“Okay, this doesn’t make any sense... We need to bring Fluttershy and Pinkie here. This goes beyond AJ and myself. This involves all of us,” said Rainbow, stomping a hoof on the floor.

***

“Are we having another party!?” screamed Pinkie with glee, but she soon felt disappointed as the ponies shook their heads.

Twilight approached her and said, trying to hide her wry smile, “Pinkie, we wouldn’t normally ask you this but, given the circumstances... could you please tell us, in detail, what you remember from the slumber party?”

What followed was a rain of words and half-thought sentences that would probably tear apart any parchment if Pinkie would’ve addressed this to Princess Celestia. She did offer enough details, to the semi-exasperation of her friends who started to wonder when will she stop to take another breath of air. However, they were looking for something that was missing... and they found it.

“Woah, hang on, stop... Pinkie, STOP, please, for a moment... Thank you”, shouted Twilight. She redressed her voice and continued, “You just said that we all went upstairs and got ready for bed... and shared stories and talked... but don’t you remember the window incident?”

Pinkie stared at her.

“You know, you were jumping on the bed and, somehow, you managed to throw yourself out the window...?”

Pinkie kept staring. The finally replied, grinning, “That sounds like fun!”

“Yes, but... you already did that,” said the purple unicorn.

“No I didn’t! I mean, yeah, sure, sounds like fun but I’d be too scared to do something like that! I mean, not scared-scared, but I wouldn’t just do it without making sure I land safely. That would be crazy, to jump around like that! Well, it would be fun doing that without looking, you know, jumping before looking, and I’d have a blast but I’m not that crazy!” said the pink pony and she would’ve probably kept on talking if Twilight didn’t raise a hoof.

“Alright, so we have Pinkie not remembering the window incident and Rarity not remembering the pillow fight.”

“Um, excuse me... Twilight, but, um... I don’t know if this helps or not... I don’t remember any pillow fight either,” said Fluttershy after waiting patiently in a corner. Everypony turned towards her, making her feel slightly uncomfortable. “I don’t want you to think that I disliked your party... I just don’t remember that part. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Fluttershy. You’ve actually helped us a lot”, Twilight said, turning to the other ponies. “It seems each of us forgot something from the party”

“Except you”, observed Applejack as the group nodded their heads.

“Yes,” confirmed the purple unicorn. “Which leads to the question: What did I do different than everypony, that allowed me to remember everything? If we find the answer to that, we can find out what happened to us.”

The questions followed like an avalanche, each of the ponies trying to figure out what was different in the equation.

“Did ya dance?”

“Yeah”

“Are you sure you participated in that pillow fight you all recall, darling?”

“Yes, quite sure”

The questions were getting slightly more ridiculous and Pinkie was clearly enjoying this game, despite it not being part of a party.

“Oh, I know! Did you laugh?”

“Yes, Pinkie, I did. A Lot!”

“Did you experiment with magic at one point? Or did you use magic to do anything?”

“No, not at all. Except for the party decorations, but that was before anypony was here. I just decorated the library, Spike helped me arrange the food and the drinks and—“

It suddenly hit her.

“No...”

It suddenly made sense.

“I told him not to use that—“, she said, rushing towards one of her cabinets and opened it desperately, to the surprise of everypony in the room. She gasped as her eyes fell upon an empty bottle.

She didn’t waste any time. She teleported herself upstairs, near Spike’s bed.

“Spike, wake up!” she shouted as she started shaking the confused dragon.

“What?! What did I do?!”

The pony pointed towards the levitating bottle: “Did you pour this into our glasses at the slumber party?”

Spike probably managed to set a new record with his level of confusion. It took a few good minutes for Twilight to wake him up fully and explain the situation to him, sparing the minor details involving Rainbow and Applejack.

“You asked me to go grab some juice but I kept telling you that there was plenty left from the previous party you had not too long ago. I didn’t know this one wasn't juice! It smelled like juice to me!”, explained the dragon. “Are... are you going to explode because of me?”

“No, Spike... you can go back to bed now. It’s fine... just, next time, tell me before you start doing things like that”

And with that, she left the little dragon in peace as she returned to her friends.

Without another word, she sent Rainbow and Applejack in her bedroom. The two ponies complied. As they shut the door behind them, they could hear the other ponies in awe as Twilight explained everything. They both pressed their ears on the wooden door, but they couldn’t make out anything of that.

At one point, Rarity shouted something along the lines of: “Please, let me stay! I want to see their faces!”

They heard the door being shut and then hoofsteps as Twilight was approaching them. This was it. It was probably all one big mistake, one silly prank that got out of control.

Twilight opened the bedroom door and found Rainbow and Applejack sitting on the bed, with a concerned look on their faces, holding each other’s hooves.

***

The moonlight was shining through the window, veiling the room in a sad and deep shade of blue. The night was similar to the one in which everything started, yet there were no laughs now, no stories... not even a trace of smiles on the ponies’ faces.

It was quiet.

Twilight sighed as she approached them.

“I’m sorry, girls”

Rainbow cringed and squeezed Applejack’s hoof in her own. Even if it was fake... she didn’t want it to end or 'be fixed'. She was actually happy like that. She knew Applejack felt the same, even if the orange pony couldn’t express her emotions so lightly. They just looked at each other, wondering how much time they had left until everything was back to ...”normal”.

“I didn’t mean to hide you up here like that, but the last thing we needed was Pinkie finding out about you two. I mean, no offense... but you’ll have to learn to be really discreet about this.”

“Wait... you mean we didn’t drink some silly love potion that will wear off in a few days?”, asked Rainbow, confused.

“Heh, nooot exactly”, replied Twilight, sitting down right in front of them. “The potion that Spike accidentally mistook for juice was actually brought by Zecora a few days before the party. She was working on it for quite some time and asked me to perform some tests. It wasn’t meant to be used on ponies yet, especially since the side-effects are unaccounted for”

“Side effects?” repeated Applejack.

“Relax... it’s not harmful, but as you can see, it can create a lot of confusion. Zecora defined it as a potion that can help the pony who drinks it to fulfill his or her biggest wish at that moment. You realize that such a powerful potion needs a lot of tests, not to mention that the ingredients are pretty rare...”

“Did we all drink that thing?”, asked the blue pegasus.

“Yes, except me. When I arrange parties, I’m getting so worked up about them that I’m more focused on you guys having fun rather than me relaxing. I don’t drink and I eat very little at the parties I organize, just to make sure there’s enough drinks and food for everypony. It’s silly, I know... but I’m not the only one doing that... I think,” said Twilight, smiling. “You drank it and the effects were almost instant. Fluttershy gathered up the courage to join the group in a pillow fight, where Rarity forgot all about her classy ways just so she can feel more like one of us. I’ve seen artists feeling that way about their group of friends, and the potion helped her overcome her fears... or emotional obstacles.”

“You’re kinda losing us here,” said Applejack, trying to follow Twilight’s train of thought.

“Right, sorry... Pinkie is always looking for fun things to do and, as I suspect, she really wished the party would go on. Remember how she didn’t want to go to bed? The potion helped her create a situation through which she could consume her wish of ‘more fun stuff to do’, taking it a little to the extreme. As crazy as it sounds, she got her wish fulfilled by doing something completely unexpected and, in her view, fun”

“Somehow, it does make sense. Even for Pinkie,” concluded Rainbow, nodding her head.

“But what about us?” asked the orange pony. “Ah mean, Fluttershy wished for courage, Rarity for feelin’ like she belongs in our group and Pinkie for fun...”

“Yeah, where does that leave us? They didn’t know they were actively wishing all that... neither did we”, continued Dash.

Twilight lowered her head, thinking. After a few seconds, she looked back at them and nodded.

“I’m not usually messing around with other ponies’ private thoughts, but... if I’m right... it wouldn’t make much difference anyway”, she said, making the other two lean in close, to hear every single word. “As far as I figured out, Applejack... you really wanted somepony beside you. Without realizing it, the potion might’ve helped you choose Rainbow out of all of us. Remember? You did say that you’ll ‘share your blanket’ with her”

Applejack thought about it and nodded. It was true. Twilight continued.

“Now, here comes the tricky part... When Pinkie wanted to have more fun, the potion helped her have fun, without influencing the rest of us against our will. Since you and Rainbow don’t remember what happened after we all went to sleep, I can only assume that both of you wanted... each other. The potion you drank did more than help you... it basically worked in harmony to fulfill both your wishes, through each other”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that, without realizing it, you probably already wanted to be with each other long before all this happened. The potion just sped up everything. It just helped enhance your own natural feelings,” concluded the unicorn, smiling at the surprised pair. “As for what you actually did that night, heh, ahem... well, we were all asleep, so we might never know for sure. Still, since none of you can remember it, I have a few ideas as to what you two did. In my bedroom. As we were sleeping...”

The couple smiled awkwardly as both ponies were looking anywhere but at Twilight.

“Well, uh... now that you talk about it like that...” started Rainbow, scratching the back of her head. “AJ... You did mention a long time ago that, well... one of your, uh, sensitive zones is your neck. I guess that I sort of remembered that... involuntarily.”

Applejack’s hoof met the top of Rainbow’s head in a painful, but endearing, knuckle. The orange pony turned to Twilight, “Ah’m mighty sorry about that, Twilight... and causing all this trouble.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, Applejack. Besides, I’m pretty sure nothing, uh... too detailed happened then. At least now we can all relax and get on with our lives. Especially you two.”

The ponies smiled at each other and both of them rushed towards the unicorn and hugged her tight as ever. “You’re an awesome friend, Twilight. Thank you!”

“I’m happy everything turned out to be fine”

“Are you kidding?” jumped Rainbow. “It’s more than fine! It’s awesome!”

“Well, either way, to show our appreciation... we’ll just let y’all get your sleep. Ah guess we all deserve it”

“Indeed...” yawned the purple unicorn as she lead Rainbow and Applejack out the door. “See you tomorrow, girls. Good night!”

***

As the couple returned to the farm, in silence, smiling and enjoying each other’s company, the world around them seemed a lot calmer. Peaceful. Beautiful.

“Ya know, Rainbow...” started the orange pony, breaking the silence. “There might be difficult times ahead for us. Ah don’t know if mah family suspects anything or if...you know... word got out...”

“Hey, it’s alright. We’re together now. We’re unstoppable and we can face anything that gets thrown at us!”

“Ah know but... what if everything changes?”

“I don’t know... but what if everything changes... for the better?”

Rainbow stopped and gently, but firmly, grabbed Applejack by the neck and turned the pony towards herself, planting a kiss on her lips. “This is all that matters to me from now on, AJ. If you are here, everything can change as much as it wants to”

Applejack frowned a little. “It will all take some time to get used to, ya know?”

“Yes... but we’ll be busy during that time”, replied Rainbow as she started walking again.

“What do ya mean?”

“Well, I for one don’t really like having memory losses... so we’ll both have to work really hard to figure out what exactly we did do that night. You know, trial and error... see what else seems familiar and what else seems... better,” she smirked, playfully, at the blushing pony.

“Y’all can work as hard as ya want... but Ah am not giving you mah hat,” she replied, confronting her.

“Nah, not interested in the hat... actually, I’d very much like you to keep it on...”

“Rainbow!”

The two giggled their way back to the farm as a new way of life slowly embraced them and all the things around suddenly seemed brighter.

The End

Thank you for supporting me during the entire writing process of this story.
Will