War in Peace

Twilight sat with a stunned expression as her friend began her story about the dream she had been having. "how could anypony have dreams that vivid? scent, sight, touch, sound and taste?" she thought with confusion as she had heard Fluttershy describe how the buildings didn't look fliat like in most of her dreams, but were actually three-dimensional. Her description of how she could actually feel the grass and dirt under her hooves, coupled with how there was a strange whirring sound in the background of the dream that seemed to emanate from every direction.

Twilight worried about her friend when she described that just as soon as she began seeing a beautiful towering city appear before her, it had dissapeared and was replaced by something that looked like a battlefield and the smell of blood and gun residue was so heavy in the air that it felt like she was tasting it every time she breathed.

As Fluttershy looked like she was about to break down and start crying Twilight rushed to her friend's side and gave her a reasurring hug. The vibrations Twilight felt emanating from her friend quickly subsided as the hug's effect seemed to be working. When Fluttershy had calmed down once again Twilight let go and let her continue.

"it was so frightening... that whirring sound was replaced by something that sounded like small explosions..." Fluttershy explained, her voice betrayed the notion that she might start crying soon, "...and soon a bunch of creatures began to swarm the place... most of them stood on two legs, and used their forehooves- no, they didn't seem to have hooves... but whatever they were they didn't look like ponies... anyway, the ones that weren't on only two legs seemed to be more feral and violent than the creatures we have here."

Fluttershy suppressed a shudder as she remembered the next part of the dream

"...and out of what seemed like nowhere... a giant creature that looked like a T-rex began charging through the battlefield, not caring who it killed..." at this Twilight gave her friend another hug as tears began to form at the edge of her eyes. Twilight got an idea as she held onto her friend, hoping that this would help her.

"Fluttershy..." she began tentatively, "...would you mind if I made us some tea? I think it'll help your nerves..." she was relieved as the yellow mare slowly nodded her head without taking her gaze off the table. Twilight quickly took the opportunity to rummage through the cupboards in the kitchen, looking for her box of tea. When she finally found it she filled a teapot up with water and set it over the stove, there weren't any oven mitts to be found in the room because whenever she or Spike would be cooking something, she would either levitate the hot object with magic, or Spike would carry it since he was immune to fire and burns.

When the teapot finally whistled for her to come and get the steaming water, Twilight dashed over to it, levitating a few cups with her and proceeded to pour the water into the cups. She carefully placed the packets of tea in the cup and brought each one out with a little dish to set them on. With a little forethought, Twilight had picked up one of the Hoofshy's (pronounced Hoof-she, like Hershey) bars that she had been storing in the icebox, it was her guilty pleasure from time to time but she believed that the comfort that the bar of chocolate could give was what Fluttershy needed more than her.

The two settled in Twilight's living room once again and both were sipping from the cups that Twilight had brought out with her, while Fluttershy was eating small pieces from the candy bar that Twi had given her. Several thoughts passed through Twilights head as she waited for her friend to begin speaking again.

"how in the world can she stand to eat only a little bit of that at a time?! I've never seen anypony taste one of those and not just eat it in seconds because of it's sweet taste..." was her most pressing thought, others swarmed her head in a similar line of questioning until she had finally put them to the back of her mind with a simple thought.

"I am Fluttershy's friend... I gave her that bar because I am a good friend and I knew that she would need it more than me... and besides... I've been eating too many of them lately..." the way she ended the thought gave her a pang of regret, but ultimately silenced her other nagging thoughts.

Her attention was brought back to what her eyes saw as Fluttershy laid the half-eaten bar down on the table after carefully wrapping it up to prevent it from melting on her friend's furniture.

Fluttershy sniffed once and wiped the tear from her eye before turning her gaze to Twilight. and Twilight noticed how the young mare's eyes were as close to bloodshot as they could get without sleep deprivation. so she scooted herself over to her friend and gave her another reassuring hug, which she knew was working as the small trembles that Fluttershy had been making slowly subsided. the yellow mare took a deep breath before continuing, and twilight admired that, "she really wants to finish telling me the dream so that she can get all the pain off her mind... and... well... I'm ready to listen" Twilight thought with a bit of an impressed mental tone. She was surprised however as Fluttershy's expression changed from sadness to a small smile.

"the dream ended nicely though... it seemed as if the creatures that weren't bi-pedal were actually made of some sort of whispy stuff that dissapeared into the air when struck down, and when the bi-peds in the red and black armor won the fight, they cheered... at first I couldn't understand why they were happy at the slaughter that they caused..." she took a small breath and Twilight noticed that she had leaned a little too close to her friend in her interest.

"I-I'm sorry Fluttershy, it's just that I found what you were telling me to be interesting... and I do that out of a habit formed from sitting at school desks when I heard something interesting." Twilight managed to get out after she scooted back on the couch. Fortunately, Fluttershy understood what she was saying and continued her story.

"...anyway... after I spent a few minutes trying to figure out why they were celebrating, I saw one pull out this strange bottle that glowed orange. As the dream went on more of them pulled out more of those bottles, and when they tossed the bottles at the dead bi-peds... they began to get back up. The ones in the black and red armor removed the armor of the losers and placed these strange..." she paused as she tried to use her hooves to get the point across, "...glowing manacles. When all the losers had been brought back to life, none of the beings in my dream had any hostility towards each other... some of the winners said that the losers would return to 'Galbadia' after the war was over... and I kinda assumed that the losers were from a kingdom called Galbadia."

When Fluttershy had finished her story Twilight sat in a stunned silence as she registered the vivid details that her friend was remembering. It took her several minutes before she could answer Fluttershy as she tried to come up with a possible translation.

"maybe... maybe your dream is trying to tell you that the paradise we live in would become a battlefield... but that in the end, everything would go back to normal?" Twilight gave a shrug as she finished, she was still new to the dream interpretation theories herself, so she admitted she didn't have it down to the exact science that Luna did.

Fluttershy smiled as she gave her friend a hug that only meant to be a friend-to-friend hug. She quietly thanked Twilight and tried to make sure that her friend understood that she felt much better.

"Thank you Twilight... I appreciate you listening to me, I'm not sure if I could have told any of our other friends about this because they might overreact, but I knew that you would hear me out to the end. thank you for being such a good friend." She gave Twilight a friendly little smile.

"well, ever since I found out about the true meaning of the Elements of Harmony, that's what I've been trying to do... just be as good of a friend as I can." Twilight replied with a smile as she watched her friend fly off to her cottage.

As soon as Fluttershy was out of sight Twilight slammed the door shut without meaning to and began furiously reading through the books she had on dream interpretation to try and figure out what her friend's dream truly meant... praying to Celestia and Luna that her friend's dream truly meant what she had said.