Have you ever had one of those moments where more than anything else in the whole wide world, you just wanted to become an inanimate object? Maybe you felt insecure after being treated like dirt by your local bullies, or perhaps you're just so bored that you'd like trying it out if for nothing but the novelty of it all. Did you ever wish that just for a day, one sweet blessed day, you could turn yourself into something non-living?

I have. After living on the surface of one gigantic inanimate object in a stasis spell that left me aware but immobile, I knew what it felt like to be inanimate. Being stuck in suspended animation in the biting cold of space for an entire millenia, I knew all to well the feelings of loneliness and utter boredom that a thousand years of static existence could bring.

So maybe it comes as a bit of a surprise that right now, at this very moment in time, I'd very much like to be inanimate again.

I'm not saying that I want to be a permanent addition to the architecture or something insane like that, but it would certainly be nice to just sit still and enjoy a moment of peace and quiet with nopony badgering me to sign some stupid bill that clearly grants the nobles even more control over their subjects. There are measures that I will not be taking, and this is clearly one of them!

But I digress. The point being is that right now I'd like to be a pillow. Nothing grand or overly frilly, mind you, but the sensation of being so unassuming and irrelevant in a life filled only with duties and pointless relevance seems far too refreshing for me to ignore.

"Okay, Luna, you can do this," I mutter, weaving a chain of magic around myself. I feel the fibers of my essence beginning to coalesce, and I have to keep myself from panicking when I start to feel nauseous.

"And there!" I shout, releasing the spell. I almost scream as I feel my flesh transform into cloth, but my mouth is fortunately gagged with forming down. The world seems to such up at me for a moment before my eyes disappear into the mix.

Ah, the joy of complete and utter silence! It's a warm, tender feeling for someone as introverted as myself. Nopony's around to hurt me. Nopony's around to be hurt by me. I am truly and perpetually alone in a world all my own. All the anger, bitterness, hatred, denial, love, compassion, and regret fade into nothing as I slip further into the void.

Time is meaningless when the observer cannot fathom it. Time is a perception left only to those who pay attention to it, and it's no longer of any relevance to me. I am completely, and utterly, alone.

That's when the spell suddenly decides to collapse.

"Mmmph!" I try to shout as I feel my sister's arm around me. A deep roar burns into my ears, the sounds of a thousand logging companies hacking away at the Everfree Forest creating some kind of chaotic symphony in my brain.

Celestia's snoring. Right. In. My. Ear!

"Gah!" I gasp, sucking in all of the precious air my lungs can hold as I try to reorient myself. Apparently shapeshifting into a pillow wasn't really the smartest idea. I don't know what it is about me and stupid ideas, but I never seem to have any trouble coming up with them.

"Snoogogogogogogrununununun!!!"

I should seriously have my sister's vocal chords checked out sometime. While there are quite a few good surgeons in town, I'm guessing that a mechanic would be more fitting for something of the magnitude of Tia's sleeping habbits.

"SSNNNOOGGGGGGGLUUUGLUGLUGLUGLUGUGLLLL!!!!!"

Forget that, I need a team of capable engineers. How isn't the entire castle awake right now? I sigh, heading over to the balcony to look up at my night sky. That's when I spot it; the endless line of gigantic towers soaring as high as the sky can reach.

"W-what?!"

"SNLORGINORNGINORG!!"

I stumble back in shock, trying to get a sense of all the chaos around me. That's when I bump into a small, red button.

"INTRUDER, INTRUDER, INTRUDER!!"

The nearest wall cracks open, a barrage of gigantic pillow cannons coming to bear on me. I have about three seconds to realize how utterly pompfed I am before the pillows smother me with their downy softness.

"BURN IT WITH FIRE!!" I scream to no avail. The cursed things now have me in their grasp! I struggle to get out, but they're far too powerful for a mere mortal like myself. "UNHAND US NOW, KNAVE!!"

Why do I always revert to prosaic dialogue whenever I get stressed? I don't recall being this formal when I first returned to the world of the living after being Nightmare Moon. No matter, there's only one way to escape.

"KILL IT WITH FIRE!!" I howl, spreading a wide fan of plasmatic heat throughout the room, instantly turning most of the contents into subatomic vapor. The heat grows stronger as I pump more fuel into the inferno in my desperate need for survival.

I don't even notice when the fires stop burning and the temperature cools down enough for me to make sense of what just happened. The last thing I remember seeing is Celestia staring down at me with this weird mixture of pain, joy, and annoyance. Was she scowling?

Everything turns to black.

I groan as feeling worms its way back into my limbs. My entire body feels numb with exhaustion, but my curiousity is easily stifling the otherwise depressive state I'm in. I might as well have been thrown into a meat grinder for all I care.

"Where am I?" I ask. Well, to be more specific, that's what I try to ask. What comes out is probably something more along the lines of "Whertyeramee?"

"In the Canterlot Memorial Hospital," a voice tells me. My vision fills with white as my sight starts to adjust.

"Are you God?" I ask as I finally start to make out the features of the room around me.

"No, not quite," an old doctor replies from where he's been sitting, keeping an eye on my charts and vitals. Apparently he'd taken some pretty good fluency tests in hospital gibberish, because even doped out on morphine (that's what I think this is), I can still tell how easily he's reading me.

"You'll be alright, Princess."

The double doors to my room open as my sister barges her way in. She looks at me for a moment before looking over at the doctor. "How's she doing?" she asks.

"Well enough, Your Highness. She must've been in quite a state of shock when she came to, so I have her on a steady dose of morphine."

"Hah! I knew it!" I shout. It was great to be right, after all. "Hurry up, fair Doctor! This morphine is the substance of gods!"

"No," he says dispassionately, continuing about with his routine. "You've had more than enough as it is."

"Oh Lulu, you choose now to wake up?" Celestia says, getting angrily close to my face. "Right now, after disappearing for yet another millenia, and like clockwork you show up once more when I just finally start to get used to your absence?"

"I'm sorry, Tia. I just had..."

"You had to what?" she asks, glaring at me. "What was so pressing that you had to run off on me? Again, for Faust's sake!"

"I had to..."

"Just spit it out already!"

"I had to pillow!" I shout, trying hard to make myself a few inches smaller. The doctor rolls his eyes before pretending not to notice me.

"U wot, m8?" my sister asks, reverting back to her usual internet slang as the universe starts to crumble from my unusual conjecture. "Nuu!!" she cries out as the floor falls in around us, and I watch as my spell finally catches up with everypony else. We float away into the deep void of pillow fluff and feathers before everything turns black once more.

"Gah!" I shout, waking up in a cold sweat. It takes me a few moments to realize that I was just going through another one of my lucid dreams before sitting up. My hoof drifts up to my eyes, trying and failing to wipe away the slime. I finally reorient myself before opening the door to my personal bathroom. One thing was certain, a simple fact that I can no longer avoid. I have a task in front of me, and I know it'll be hard, but I have no choice other than to stick with it.

"That's the last time I get drunk."