I sighed contentedly as I doodled in my notebook. My best friend, Pander, snickered at me from the bench seat beside mine. I felt his hoof jabbing into my side and was pulled from my wandering thoughts.

"Dude you best pay attention or Professor Hoofensnaple is gonna have your flank." I couldn't help the involuntary snicker that I produced whenever someone said my Professor's name aloud. "What are you drawing anyways?" My friend asked, peering over my leg at my notebook. I blushed profusely and scrambled to close my notebook. I ended up knocking it off the table instead, and much to my chagrin Pander snatched it off of the floor. He flipped through it and I buried my face into my legs and chest as I slumped against the bench.

"No way! Don't tell me you're totally crushing on Princess Luna!" He said, perhaps, a little too loudly. I was blushing full force now. I could feel the eyes of my fellow college students in bench below, above, and to the sides of me and a small wave of snickers flowed from them and assaulted my ears.

"Yo! Not cool!" I hissed under my breath, snatching my notebook from his grasp. He looked about, noticing the glances of the other, guilt becoming apparent on his features, but without a beat he assuaged the onlookers.

"Got you!" He said with loud deliberation. "You should have seen the look on your face when I yelled that out." I just just frowned at him but his ploy seemed to work; the onlookers suddenly had the sudden 'realization' that I was simply the butt end of a prank and that I was, apparently, not 'crushing' on Princess Luna, but the reality was quite the contrary. On almost every page of my notebook, and, unknown to Pander, in every notebook I owned was a doodle of some sort that related to Luna. I had drawn her cutie mark countless times. Even so far at to draw my own and hers inside of a heart.

It has been a little more than one year since she has returned and a little less than one year that I had know about her. You can literally use my notebook as a reference for the day I first saw her. If you flipped through my notebook the first Luna 'entry' you would find would be on the day after she was reintroduced to the public via an 'emergency' PSA gathering on the castle grounds. I didn't typically concern myself with public affairs, I was busy getting my degree in behavioral sleep medicine and had no time for much else but school, but I happened upon the event on my way home. I stopped to watch our benevolent matriarch speak, for she was beautiful to behold and certainly I could be bother to stop for just a moment, but then she stepped out to offer her thanks for the warm welcome, and to promise her effort towards a peaceful nation from then on. By then I was smitten.

"Oof!" I flailed my limbs out helplessly as an eraser collided with my nose. Several other nearby students were in various degrees of recovery after the assault. Hoofensnapple did not like being interrupted or having to repeat himself. As a result he developed a tactic to keep his student's attention on himself, namely flinging an eraser at them with precision magic. Eventually he developed the skill so much he could fling up to 5 erasers at 5 different students in various locations, and he never missed. So as 5 erasers floated back I looked at him and grinned sheepishly.

"Quite frankly Mr.Chase I'm surprised, I've never had to pelt you with an eraser before. Get it together and pay attention." I swallowed hard and let out a 'yes, sir' and he went back to teaching, and I went back to staring daggers at Pander.

After class I wandered off, knowing that Pander would eventually catch up with me.

"Yo! What were you thinking?" I heard a harsh wisper, his voice, in my ear.

"No, what are you thinking, calling me out like that in the middle of class. That was not cool."

"Yeah, yeah." He waved it off. "I fixed that, whatever. Point is you're the one crushing on a Princess."

"So what if I am, can't a stallion dream?" I said, annoyance clear in my tone.

"Nooo I don't mean it like that, in fact I commend you, shoot for the stars bro, or in this case the moon," He snickered at his pun. "actually, "He paused to think for a bit, "Now that I think about it this is like a challenge."

I paled at his words. Pander and challenges did mix well, but I'm pretty positive even a master of providing happiness like Pander could pull something like this off.

"Hey now, before you get ahead of yourself, this is totally not a challenge of any sort. I mean I know your special talent is, ahem," I gestured sarcastically in the air reciting his own words, "Procurement of goods and services, but I don't think this is something you can help me with." I begged him with my eyes to just let it go, but he would not.

"But I can totally hook you up!"

"I know you've made matches successfully before, but honestly; she's a Princess."

We had meandered from the main entrance to a point between our dorm and the main building, around us were the central gardens and nearby were a few benches, I headed over to one and plopped down onto it. Pander sat next to me, a sort of defeated look about him. It was in how he sat, and how his head hung, but I knew better. He was far from done, he was just plotting.

"Dude you gotta give it a chance! Don't you want to at least meet her?" He said suddenly.

"Well... Well yeah, that wouldn't be too bad I suppose."

"Great! I already have a plan!"

I paced in front of the doors of Luna's night court. Pander knew that she held night court and that it was a less than popular event. In fact he discovered that Luna had perhaps a total of 100 petitioners in her last year of service.

"Dude the place is gonna be empty and she's gonna be eager to talk to anypony. Just head in about an hour after it starts and she'll be bored out of her mind." He reasoned. It seemed pretty sound, except for one detail that popped into my mind.

"Hey? I can't just go in and make idle talk, I gotta be there on official business. I need to have something to petition her for..." I trailed off, nothing fresh coming to mind.

"You telling me that a sleep doctor, named 'Dream Chaser', has nothing to petition the Princess of the night and dreams about?" He looked at me critically. He had a point, and suddenly this seemed extremely easy. After all I was going to petition the Canterlot U board to add a sleep lab. My thoughts began to blur as the implications and possibilities came together.

So now here I was, pacing while the guards stared me down.

"You looking kinda shifty buddy, you have business here?" One guard stepped away from the wall to confront me.

"N-no, I mean! Yes, I'm here to petition the Princess." I stuttered. The guards exchanged looks, but relaxed. "Well go on in then, and no funny business."

"Yes, sir." I gulped as I passed through the oaken doors. Once through I walked towards the central podium.

Author's Note

Twilight's cutie mark is a PITA.