Sleepless Knights

by R5h

Prologue

With a dazzling smile and a wave of her arm, Rarity proudly welcomed all in attendance to the first ever Carousel Boutique… in space.

The press oohed and ahhed, and snapped many pictures. They were floating in front of her boutique, wearing spacesuits, because they were also in space. The Earth shone beneath them, brilliant and nearly unobstructed. Rarity had the best view in the cosmos: she could see her house from here.

She produced an oversized pair of scissors, opened them around the ribbon that wrapped around the building, and—snip!—cut the ribbon. With that, she declared the boutique open, and demanded that everyone enter and shop to their hearts’ contents.

The crowds rushed in—there hadn't been any and now there was a universe full of them. They filled the boutique, packing into every available space and then into the spaces that weren't available, speaking excitedly about all of her fancy dresses and sharp suits and stylish shoes, and Rarity's smile shone like the Earth. She'd done it, she'd accomplished her fashion ambitions, and she was literally over the moon—

“Hey!” someone cried out.

Rarity asked what was the matter.

“You don't have any pants!”

Rarity gasped and looked down—but her legs were covered. The voice continued, “There's no pants for sale! How are we supposed to shop if there aren't any pants?”

She found herself in front of the pants section, and gasped—there weren't any pants, just infinite rows of empty shelves. Panic rose in her throat, and it pushed empty words from her mouth: how she was certain she could resolve all of this if they would just give her a moment—

“There's no clothes at all!”

And the store was empty, and there had never been any fancy dresses, sharp suits, or stylish shoes. Rarity made noises like a dying fish.

“And there's a better store right over there!”

Rarity rushed outside—no, she found herself outside—and saw that there had never been an unobstructed view of the earth: there was an infinitely larger and much much better boutique not twenty feet from her own, and the crowd was streaming into that one instead. Please, she found herself saying, if they would just give her a moment to find some pants?

A beeping noise filled her ears, and she whirled around to see a tow truck backing up, and hitching up her store to drag it away. She tried to run at it, but she couldn't run because she was in space, and then the space cops showed up to arrest her for opening the worst boutique of all time, and she was still trying to run as her store was towed away, and the beeping was getting louder, the beeping, the beeping—

---

Rarity awoke with a gasp.

Her hand scrabbled for her phone, which had been making the beeping sound, but only managed to push it off her nightstand. With an unladylike grumble, she freed herself from her tangle of sheets, swung her legs off the bed, and bent down to turn off her alarm.

As stress dreams went, that one had been particularly stupid.

Comments

[SigmasonicX]

The Enchanted Kingdom's dream chapter has nothing on this.

Good job twisting the dream cliches in a clever way for Rarity.

[PresentPerfect]

what an amazing take on a classic trope :D