PataPommel

Coco Pommel talks to a statue among other things

This was most definitely the most lucid dream Coco Pommel had ever experienced. She wasn't really a pony who had such dreams in the first place- usually they were mostly flat ones that would suddenly devolve into nightmare territory- and something like this was very new to her.

When ponies dream everything seems to be separated by a gauze veil, has a jerky sort of quality or moves in strange ways, but this one was smooth and indistinguishable from reality in her dreaming state. She could move any way she wanted to and her thoughts were fully conscious to everything except for the fact that she was dreaming.

Filly Coco had to push open the doors with her little hoof and her head to get them to budge, wanting to get away from the quiet stillness of the night that lay behind her on the road and the trees and houses on the sides. It was any suburban street, except for the redwood double doors that weren't really connected to anything and beyond which nothing else existed (because of dream logic).

They creaked open grimly, and the filly walked into what was apparently some sort of polished bar.
It was rather dark in there but she could see that there were many red stools accompanying some strangely shaped flat tables. There was a smooth dark tiled floor with shiny crimson walls and the decor of the place was rather surreal- such as a statue of half a unicorn and a cardboard cutout of a droopy melting pocketwatch.

Coco came up to the inky granite counter. There was nopony in the room except for her and the bartender in front steadily wiping away at the counters and consisted of nothing but a floating well- trimmed suit (which raised the question of how exactly he could hold the cleaning rag).
She hoisted herself onto one of the stools lining the counter and sat up as straight as she could, her chin just managing to clear the top and stretched out her legs enquiringly.

A thick glass of something that was probably water (she had never touched alcohol in her life) materialized between that she drew close to herself and peered down into, noting that instead of a reflection there was a rather solid image of a crumbling house surrounded by grass, the significance of which she was not bothered to decipher.

And then she began to talk.

"Most of the time, ponies who are celebrities get together because it would improve their ratings, something which their whole career depends on," she said, her voice still that of an innocent yet all-too-knowing foal. "The media's often made of really shallow ponies- ones who don't read into things at all, but they just snap it up and display it- like ponies who don't read the nutrition labels but just scoop something up because the thing looks pretty. But you can't really blame them, because so many of them live in a way in which I would call sheltered..."

She swallowed. "I never felt like a normal teenager, because everypony I knew had comfortable nuclear lives which they were always complaining about- their parents, how they grounded them or they never give this thing they want, and-and how they were always getting into all these relationships-"

She slammed her hoof on the table, looking a little shaky. "It's one thing to say that you don't believe in love and another to feel like it! You can't just tell somepony that you don't think it's real, or how you believe that it's just some stupid trick of nature to get you to reproduce- they'll never understand! They don't change their views or put themselves in my shoes!"

Coco hung her head. "My parents were married because it would give them so much good publicity- it was like something that comes out of a fairytale possibly, one who is invested in song and the other who can dance, both having some noble lineage. But it is so, so much harder than you think to live with somepony you don't know... don't have any feelings for... who is nothing but a stranger with a wallet to you...