AN: I'm bummed that only my sister reviewed the last chapter. I understand that Night Assault can't review, but everyone else... have I done something to displease you? :'(

Anyway, I promised my sister a new chapter, so this is for you, sis! Thank you for your loyalty!

Punky Print's Log: Day 113

This morning, I woke up screaming.

Drenched in sweat, I shot upright and frantically kicked away my covers. Tentatively, I put one hoof on the ground at a time, my heart hammering in my chest. When each hoof had hit the ground safely, I rushed to the bathroom and stared down my reflection, feeling my horn and determining that, yes, it was still wholly there. I slumped down against the closed door of the bathroom and sighed in relief.

Shakily I got ready for work, pulling on my cloak and quickly eating a carrot. By now, the other ponies that live inside the wall have become accustomed to me enough that they can simply ignore me if we pass each other on the roads. As I walked to Mystic's house, I saw other unicorns trudging through the town, jumpy and irritable. When I reached Mystic's house the shades were drawn. I opened the front door and walked in, the same agitated feeling of the unicorns outside coming off of my mentor in waves.

"Um, Mystic?" My mentor whipped around and glared at me with bloodshot eyes, his front hooves manically working on stirring a large vat of liquid as his horn held a book open to a recipe for a dreamlessness potion.

"No visitors!" He turned back to the mixture in front of him and added something, his shoulders hunched forward. At the harshness of his tone I backed away, my eyes wide. My mentor had never been even slightly unkind to me before. His shoulders relaxed and his head rose. He turned to me and stepped away from the vat. "Punky? I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" He reached out to me with a shaking hoof, which I held between mine.

"You had a nightmare, too?" His eyes widened, and he nodded.

"It was horrid, little one. That pony... I have lived a very long time, little one, and I have never seen a pony so distorted as him." He shuddered and made his way back to the vat. "His eyes were..."

"...glazed over?" He turned back to me, clearly upset.

"Yes. But still, it felt like he could see me! More than me, he saw-"

"-into your soul?" We stared at each other for a moment, before once again he stepped away from the vat.

"Little one, did the nightmare pony say anything to you?" I nodded.

"His voice hurt to hear, it sounded like something inside of him was falling apart," I shuddered at the memory, "and he said I was just like him." Mystic's brow creased, and he rushed back to the vat, rushing as he spilled one ingredient in after the other.

"Need to make more," he mumbled, "you'll need some, too..." Mystic lost himself in his work, and I quietly left the house. As I strolled aimlessly through the town, I saw Lemon Grass and Coco talking with worry etched in their features and bags under their eyes.

"Lemon Grass, how come you aren't working at the farm?" He looked to me blearily and cocked his head.

"How come you aren't working at the zebra's place," he shot back irritably. Coco nudged him and he hung his head. "I'm sorry, I'm a little on edge today, I didn't sleep well."

"Did... did you have the nightmare, too?"

"Um, the nightmare," Coco asked. "What's the nightmare?"

"Um, my mentor and I both had the same nightmare. A pony with these milky white eyes and a really terrifying voice telling us that we were the same as him." My friends' eyes widened as their faces went pale. "You had it too, then?" They nodded.

"And, did yours have the water in it?" Coco asked, a worried look on her face.

"You mean the little pool with my reflection?" She and Lemon Grass nodded. "And the reflection's eyes were all white and-"

"-and it's horn was broken off," Lemon Grass finished. I shrank back when he said that, still frightened by the idea of having my horn broken off. The pain somepony has to feel when that happens, I never want to feel it in my life. Lemon Grass wrapped me up in a hug, and only then did I realize how badly I was shaking. "That's four of us now that have had this same dream."

"I don't want to scare either of you," Coco started, cautious of me as I shook, "but what if this isn't just a dream?" The three of us stood quietly, each of us aware that this was too organized to be a coincidence. Lemon Grass shook away the notion and forced a smile.

"C'mon, let's go talk to Brassheart, that'll cheer you up!" I nodded and the three of us made our way to the wall. Once we got there, Coco spotted him patrolling near my house on the wall. She called him over, and he flew down with a smile.

"Hello there Coco, Punky, Lemon Grass," his smile shifted into a frown when he saw the distraught looks on our faces. "What's wrong?"

"We all had a nightmare," Coco explained, "it was the same one for all of us." Brassheart looked worriedly between the three of us.

"What... what can I do?" Coco and Lemon Grass thought on that for a moment.

"Could you tell us more about the world outside the wall?" I saw Brassheart's heart break a bit for Lemon Grass and Coco, who nodded emphatically, as he remembered that they had only been out as far as the Badlands.

"Alright," he replied with a smile, "what do you want to hear about first?"

"The Wonderbolts!"

"Your family!"

"Alright, I'll tell you about both," he said with a smile. "Well one day, my wife took Ironhide, that's our son, remember?" We nodded. "Well, she took him with her to work one day, and as the Wonderbolts were practicing their flying maneuvers - because they do synchronized stunt flying - he decided to try to join them. Not by actually being a member of the Wonderbolts, but instead by being a part of their performance right that second." He chuckled. "Well, he ended up ramming into a Wonderbolt named Flash Flight, who knocked the rest of them out of the sky like dominoes!" We all gasped, including nearby foals who had just recently sat down to listen.

"Now, most of them were alright and caught themselves, but Flash Flight was a pretty heavy stallion, especially for a pegasus. As it turned out, he had fallen straight on Ironhide's mom, and injured her wing. Well as soon as we saw that Windalyn, that's my wife, wasn't flying back up to the others, we both made a beeline for her. Now, Ironhide was never a very fast flyer, and I was flying up from the ground, so you'd think that I would catch her, right?" We all nodded. "But that wasn't the case. Ironhide Grabbed her and flew her to safety faster than I've ever seen anypony fly. It was incredible, he was so tiny at the time, he hadn't even gotten his cutie mark yet." Lemon Grass looked quickly at his newly gotten cutie mark, three leaves with their ends forming the angles of a triangle.

"When everypony flew up to check on Windalyn, she was awake and ecstatic. Ironhide had gotten hid cutie mark, a little shield with a pair of extended wings. The two of them were laughing with relief, and once Windalyn's wing was bandaged, we left the Wonderbolts' training ground and celebrated."

"Did he do a sonic rainboom," Rainy asked eagerly, "I read about those in a book once. Did he go that fast?"

"No, but I'm almost certain that sonic rainbooms are just an old mare's tail." Rainy nodded.

"How did you and Windalyn meet?" Brassheart blushed at the little filly's question. As the world got darker under the clouds, I thought in the back of my mind that it was strange that nopony called Brassheart back up to the wall. When the first little foal yawned, Brassheart smiled and sent us all off to sleep in our homes. I quickly went to Mystic's house and received my bottle of the dreamlessness potion. I hope it works.