Sadaka's Dream
IC date: Autumn 67
OOC date: November 25
Location: Dreamland
PCs: Sadaka Dream-Daze
NPCs: N/A
GM: Applejack

It's a fine autumn evening. A generally calm, cloudless sky stretches out as far as the eye can see, pure blue all around on every horizon. The sunshine filters through, gently warming the world below, currently a wide stretch of forest leading to a distant range of snowcapped mountain peaks. It's rather picturesque.

It's also prime flying weather! Perfect for a certain little flying zebra filly to go stretching her clockwork wings, to leave the woes of the earthly world behind! Fly, little filly, fly!

And she's very happy to be doing so! Sadaka has missed flying, since her wings were damaged in the recent foalnapping capers. Now that she once again has the opportunity, she's taking it every chance she gets! Out into the wild blue yonder she shall go~ And she doesn't even have to worry about landing for a while. Yay!

No worries, no troubles, no fuss, no muss. Just a zebra filly and her wings and the vastness of the sky to soar around in. The forest seems to just go on and on and on, the mountains never getting closer, just the breeze of flying through the sky forcing a breeze across the filly's face.

Slowly but surely the landscape begins to change. The sky seems to grow into a richer shade of blue, taking on a faintly green tint to it. The forest below darkens, from green to grey, lingering on a shade somewhere next to 'black'. The mountains in the distance seem to disappear entirely, shrouded by some odd kind of cloudy fog way in the distance, joining with the 'black forest' below the skybound filly.

But probably the most striking change…is when a fish suddenly leaps out of the sky above her! It arcs through the air, graceful as any water creature may be suddenly suspended in mid-air, and then falls - upwards - back into the sky…which ripples ominously above the filly after the fishy splash. The trees below? They've taken on a very cloudy appearance. Like heavy, lightning-filled stormclouds…

Ah, the wind! The clouds! The trees below! The open sky! The… fish? Blink. What? Fishbird? Okay she might still be learning but she thought she was pretty solid on, y'know, not flying upside-down by accident. …Or near water. WHY IS THERE FISH. She looks around nervously, tilting a wing to try and right herself, searching for something orienting. There was a forest there a minute ago! She hadn't been /that/ lost in the flight, had she?

Yet when the zebra filly tilts herself, to put the blue-green of what must be an ocean below her and the blacked clouds above, something else shifts! And a fish leaps out of one of the 'clouds' in that sea of puffy blackness, nearly grazes the filly's clockwork wings, and falls back to splash with a very pronounced splash into the stormy clouds! Water above AND water below?

All around, every horizon now has black and blue-green meeting in the distance. So far out to sea the filly is, there's not a single dollop of land in sight!

Sadaka meeps! Oh, this is bad. Very bad. Bad bad bad. (And weird. But mostly bad.) She's feeling very disoriented, which is not a good thing to feel in mid-air! Which way is up? Which way is down? And which way is AWAY FROM THE WATER?! She draws in a few tight circles, trying to figure out something useful. How high up is she? Is she upright or upside-down? And which way is home? She can't have come /that/ far out!

Splash! Splash! Two more fishes jump out of…both the 'sky' and the 'sea'? Then a couple more after that! From every direction, fish jump and splash, jump and splash, causing it to rain in multiple directions, water drops pattering all over the filly and her clockwork wings. Enough water droplets in the air to make a couple rainbows, inverted from one another, appear in the resulting waterspray!

Which way IS up? Or down? Or home? There's no easy way to tell! The sun's gone into hiding somewhere and it's impossible to tell where!

Sadaka is now getting rained on! And it is very confusing rain. "Quit it! You… you shouldn't be in the sky anyway!" she calls out as a fish leaps by. Maybe if she goes higher she'll spot something - no there's water up there. Well, she could go a little lower and look for tree trunks - no, there's water down there. She never studied what to do if she got lost over the ocean! It had never been an issue before!

The fishes stop mid-leap to stare at Sadaka when she yells at them.

"We're not in the sky. You're in the ocean you silly filly! What are you doing down here with us?"

…Suddenly this seems to be true. The surface above shimmers, and look! There's the sun! Shining just a stone's throw away, above the water, so merry and warm and /not in the water/!

Because that's where Sadaka is. IN the ocean. With a wide expanse of coral and seaweed stretching out towards the horizon, and many schools of fish swimming back and forth, and a few tiny bubbles of air wafting up in front of the filly's face.

Oh. Well. Okay. That explains the fish, then. Fish like the ocean and this is the ocean so of course there are fish OHGODDESSES WHAT WHY AAAAAAAAAH. Sadaka gives a little yelp, then closes her mouth quickly, hooves kicking and wings flapping frantically to try and get somewhere that is up. Up, and sunny, and warm, and NOT IN THE WATER AAAAAAAAH. Of course, it's hard to swim properly when you're flailing in a panic, so.

Swim filly swim! The surface is so close! So close, the bubbles are floating there, just within hoof's reach!

Swim, filly, swim! Because bigger bubbles are rising up beneath, wafting around the flailing zebra, breaking up around her and her wings in a veritable flurry of air trapped beneath the water.

Swim, filly, swim! Because bubbles that big mean something /big/ lurks below… And there's no telling if it might think such a quickly-flailing creature could be considered a crunchy lunch!

SWIM, filly, SWIM! …and suddenly she's there! At the surface! Breaking surface! The water around her toiling and bubbling from all the air rushing up to escape the watery depths with her! There's the clear blue sky again! And the cheerful sun! Oop, wait, the sun just disappeared behind the shape of a dragon, momentarily blotting out the light. Oh but that doesn't last long. There's the sun again!

Air! Precious air! It doesn't quite stop Sadaka's flailing, because she's still in water and water is bad, but at least she's not, you know, drowning. …Again. She gulps in air like she'd been under a good deal longer than she probably had, and tries to get her bearings enough to figure out how to take off from, well… water. It's not like she can get a running start or anyth- what the hay was THAT?!?!

Whatever it is, it's circling around in the sky on lazy currents of air, hardly having to beat its wings at all to stay aloft. Mocking the clockwork filly, it is, and glaring at the waters with big, red, hungry eyes. Does it see Sadaka? Or does it see something else? Like the squid-like appendages that are even now rising out of the waters around the wayward filly, several sucker-laden limbs rising up to loom and cast their own shadows across the waters.

Oh dear… First lost, then /water/, and now MONSTERS!

Yipe! Sadaka freezes in place for a moment, looking totally at a loss. The air is not safe! The water is not safe! WHAT SHOULD SHE DO AAAAAAAAHHHH. But it doesn't take long for her to start trying to flap again. Water is /never/ safe. She can't swim, but she /can/ fly, so she'd rather try and deal with whatever's in the air. Hey, she's… well… /seen/ a dragon before, right? That counts for something. …Right?

Flap flap flap! Those clockwork wings find plenty of purchase in the air, hefting the soaked filly up, up and away! Just in time too, those pseudopods in the water lash out at where Sadaka had just been, creating a splash that rains a sudden, if brief torrent of water down upon the fleeing filly!

But a sharp screech from above shows what the airborne predator thought of this. Seeing a chance at its own meal, it again passes across the sun, casting a shadow over the ocean…and dives! Yet it doesn't seem to be diving towards Sadaka. It buzzes right past her, aiming for the giant squid instead! A fierce fight ensues, with fire and flailing squid appendages, a horrible battle that adds a new layer of color to the ocean's surface…

Another shape appears. A familiar shape. A white pony. With a green mane and very fatherly features. But he's flying on a pair of black pegasus wings…

"Sadaka! I've been looking everywhere for you!"

Sadakas ears flatten and she flinches at the screech, diving out of the way quickly. Luckily that's not too hard, as she isn't the target! Still, she stares down at the fight, wide-eyed and stunned and a little bit pale, until she's distracted by something quite welcome. "Papa!"

Papa to the rescue! The black-winged pony beats those wings to keep himself aloft, gazing down at the striped filly, forelegs crossed. "Where have you been? You were so late, I was getting worried you were going to miss it…"

Sadaka wilts a bit under the gaze. That looks like a 'you did something wrong' look. She's not fond of that look. "I… I… I got lost! There was water and fishes in the sky but then they were in the ocean and there were monsters and I couldn't find any land and I thought I was over the forest but…" she blinks and tilts an ear. "Miss what?" She didn't remember anything planned. It wasn't even a school day!

"Your swimming lessons, of course." 'Papa' says, his lips curling into a grin. "Today's the day you visit your parents. You didn't want to miss that, did you?"

The sun seems to have gone hiding again. This time a thick veil of dark clouds - real ones this time - muddy up the skies above, rumbling ominously with a load of rain they're just waiting to start dishing out. Below, the seas have grown turbulent… Both dragon and giant squid have apparently done each other in, as they both seem to float, unmoving, in the roiling waters.
"S-swim… my…" Sadaka looks stunned. And a little hurt. And very confused. "B-but… I…" she squeaks and starts a bit at the rumble, looking up. And then down again, and then up again quickly because what's down there is not nice to look at. Gulp. "B-but Papa, I… can't s-swim… I wanna g-go home…"

'Papa' seems to darken as much as the sky does! The first hints of rain begin to pit-pat over the roiling waters, causing the 'white' of 'Papa's pelt to drip away, replaced with a deep, dark black. For that matter, it's revealing that 'Papa' isn't even a pony. His forelegs sluph away to reveal sharp birdlike claws, his snout doing the same to show a pointed beak. Feathers and fur replace what was once pony, a big, black griffon hulking in the air before the confused filly. "Your home is down there…" the griffon growls, eyes flashing and one talon-tipped finger pointing into the water.

The waters shift. They swirl. They spin! Within moments a veritable maelstrom has formed within the ocean, the dragon and giant squid of before getting pulled into the rapidly rushing waters, spinning around and around and around, until they both disappear within the 'drain' of the ocean! Blurp! Blurp!

Then something else rises from this whirlpool. At the center, where water 'drains' into something else, a pair of figures half-rise from the water. Gross, barely-recognizable hooves stretch towards Sadaka, so far away. A pair of seaweed-covered zebras. Her /parents/. Lurking in the middle of a whirlpool as though it were the biggest aquatic antlion den!

Sadaka stares up at Blackbird-who-is-not-Blackbird, eyes wide. "Wha… wh-who are you? Where's my Papa?!" She follows the talon, looking down at the water, and immediately regrets it. But there's something hypnotizing about a whirlpool like that; it's hard to look away. She flutters her wings and tries to raise higher in the air, away from the swirling maelstrom, but the appearance of the figures makes her pause, and blanch, and give a horrified little wail. "D-daddy? M-mama!"

"And soon, baby Sadaka!" the black griffon crows! "Dive, little filly! DIVE!" A pair of talon'd claws reach out to try and push the filly! Push her towards the maelstrom! Towards the watery grave, from whence her parents reach out to welcome her into their chilly, damp grasp!

…Just then, the tiniest break in the cloud cover above forms a vaguely pony-ish shape, and a voice rises up on a sea breeze. A…dream… Just a…dream…

Sadaka gives a frightened squeal and tries to dash away from the griffon, though that admittedly does drop her a few feet. "N-no! G-go away! L-leave me a-alone! Somepony h-help!" Yelling might be more effective if there was land anywhere that anypony could be on, but that's not gonna stop her.

The griffon caws with laughter as the frightened filly squeals and tries to flee away! "Where're you going? Your parents are right down there! You wanted to go home! So go home!" He dashes after, talons outstretched!

From the pony-shaped clouds…something bursts out! A little blue filly! With wings? Well how else is one supposed to fly around? Nontheless, the filly darts through the sky! Just before the black griff can get a solid clawtip on Sadaka, he's knocked away once by flailing blue limbs, the little pegasus flitting up to dart behind Sadaka.

It's just a dream Sadaka! If you wake up, it all goes away..!

Sadaka stares, in a teary, wild-eyed state of confusion and panic. "Dreamy?! Wh-what are you… what d-do you mean? I don't w-wanna go in the water! I want my Papa!"

The griffon isn't one to be turned away for long. If anything he seems to get bigger, bulkier, maybe even a little misshapen, soaring up a few feet. His eyes glimmer…and the ocean swells beneath him.

Dreamy fixes Sadaka with a look. It's a slightly confused look, because…well she hasn't exactly perfected this whole 'waking ponies up' thing. Much to her embarassment. She shakes her head and puts hooves on Sadaka's shoulders, trying this again! There's a voice. Her lips don't move, but there's definitely a voice. You have to find a way to wake up, or this nightmare won't end! I don't know how to wake you up…

The swelling of ocean water has turned into a wave. A rising wave. A huge, gigantic, immense wall of water that the griffon seems to just /push/ into rushing towards the pair of fillies! Surely it's going to knock them both out of the skies!

There's a griffon. There's a wave. There's a Dreamy, and a voice, and Mama and Daddy and water and whirlpools and she really really /really/ wants it to stop right now. If it is a dream, she wants to wake up! But she doesn't /feel/ asleep. She clings onto Dreamy and tries frantically to flap away from the wave. Wake up wake up wake up please be a dream!

Yet no matter how fast or furious Sadaka flaps, no matter how much she tries to outpace the water, the wave gains… It swells, it tips, drops of water pattering on the zebra filly's face, the rushing water starting to topple over, intent on dragging Sadaka down into the murky seawater, where outstretched pony limbs wait patiently to welcome their long-lost daughter 'home'…

"AAAAAAAAAHH!" Sadaka wails in horror and closes her eyes tight, flailing and kicking in a panicked attempt to 'swim' in mid-air, like that would somehow stop the wave from taking her down into grasping hooves. Flap flap flap flap flap THUMP "Ow!" Head meets ceiling. The zebra filly yelps in surprise, wings locking up and dropping her back to her rumpled bed with a flumph. She flails in terror for a moment before recognizing that her blankets are not, in fact, a whirlpool of watery death. She blinks. Then sniffles. Then gives a loud, tearful wail.

thudthudThudThudTHUDTHUDWHAM

The door slams open and Blackbird is in the doorway, panting and looking worried. "What is it? Is there a monster? Do I attack it? What happened?!"

Sadaka stares over at Blackbird for a beat. Just long enough to confirm that he does not, in fact, have wings. No wings? No wings. Good enough. She half-jumps, half-tumbles off the bed, scampering over to him. "Papaaaaa!" CLING. "I w-was flying and then there w-were clouds and rain and f-fishes and I was in the water and there were monsters and you turned into a griffon and Mama and Daddy were waiting and he s-said I had to g-go home with them and…" wail again. Somepony's not gonna be willingly taking a bath for a while. (Again.)

Blackbird blinks, confused. Where's the monster? Oh, it's just a nightmare. He hugs his little girl tight and kisses the top of her head. "Aww, it was just a dream, sugarplum," he reasons.

Sadaka sniffles and hugs onto him tightly, looking badly shaken either way. "It felt r-real."

Blackbird hugs her tightly. "Want to sleep in my room tonight then? I promise, no more nightmares." Silly Papa. You can't promise that.

Sadaka nods sheepishly. "O-okay." She's not gonna question one of Papa's promises!

Blackbird picks her up and sets her on his back. "Okay then, pumpkin! Let's go read a book about science and play some games before we fall asleep, huh?" He grins at her over his shoulder, and then trots back to his room, ward in tow. Maybe she's safe after all.