Dreams are Magic

You know when some pony say’s something like “I’m blind!” or I can’t see!” yea I hate those ponies. I guess I should do a little explaining huh? My name is Dream Caster and not a lot of ponies know this but I’m the student of Princess Luna, I was also born with the inability to perceive light, In short I’m blind.

I was born in Las Pegasus, but unlike every other foal, my parents weren’t ready to take care of me and I wound up in an orphanage. My condition wasn’t apparent until I was a few months old. Every pony had assumed that the silver of my eyes was natural. It wasn’t until the nannies tried to play games with me that they began to notice that something wasn’t right. A short trip to the doctor’s later and it was official. I was blind, and no spell was going to fix that. Apparently my brain had developed too much and the part that controlled my sight was left underdeveloped for too long which resulted in that part of my brain to be, in the best way I can understand it, shut down, which meant that no amount of stimulation could trigger it to develop.

At first I thought it was natural to not be able to see, in fact I thought every pony wasn’t able to see. It was the sort of thing that only a child could convince, though as I grew older I soon began to understand that this wasn’t the case. I soon found that other ponies were able to move about freely without fear of hitting something.

The caretakers at the orphanage took every precaution to prevent me from hurting myself at a young age and they worked until I got older. I began to go into my rebellious stage that all fillies and colt’s go through. I wasn’t any different, though when the caretakers told me not to run in the hall’s I purposely ignored them which resulted in a lot of crashes with the walls and other ponies, which I would be reprimanded, though not with the same severity as the other ponies my age .

As I grew up I began to grow envious of every pony, around me, they spoke of beautiful things, gave vast descriptions of them, and named the colors that a particular object contained. Any pony could see why I would be jealous. When the spoke of colors, I tried in my mind’s eye to imagine some sort of color some shape, something that I could imagine as beautiful. But I didn’t know what a color looked like, and no pony could give me a good description of a color other than “it looks like the color red” or “blue is blue.” I hated when Some pony told me something like that. At the time I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to describe a color, everything else could be described in great detail, the floors, the walls, their shape, texture, height, thickness. Every pony could describe everything before, but when it came to a color, I was left with an unsatisfying answer!

It was because of this that I hated when some pony would tell me what I looked like. As far as I had been told I was a dark blue unicorn with a somewhat silver white mane and tail, and a pair of empty silver eyes. I hated when I was told what I looked like, I would never be able to see what I looked like and yet they continued to comment on my appearance.

I was ten when I finally got my cutie mark, though at the time I could care less about the cutie mark, what it entitled sent chills down my spine because I was given the one thing I had sought for so long.

The day started out like it always did. It was a Saturday, which meant no school. It also meant that I could finally sleep all day and be up all night. Due to my lack of sight other parts of my brain had been overdeveloped, mainly my other senses, mainly my sense of hearing. Due to this I hated loud noises because they always hurt my ears. Since most ponies fell asleep when the sun began to fall, that meant that the night was relatively quiet, as such I began to enjoy the nights I could stay up.

As I began to drift off into sleep I heard the knocking on my door, and quickly ignored it. A few seconds later the knocking began again, this time louder and more persistent.  “Go away!” I shouted from under the covers as I began to drift off.

“Dream Open the door. You’ll be late for the meeting!” Came the familiar voice of a mare caretaker.

I jumped up in surprise as her statement caught me off guard. Every week a couple would come in and observe the fillies and colt’s play, then they would choose one of them that they would like to personally meet, so see if they wanted to take them home to start a family. This was good for the foals as they were able to become part of a family early in their life so they would be more willing to please potential parents, but for me I found the whole process tedious.

Don’t get me wrong I wanted to be part of a family, just like every other orphan, but given the fact that I couldn’t see, I had doubts, first and foremost was that I would never see my parents faces. Another thing was that since I was blind any family that took me in would have to work around the clock to keep me both safe, and happy, an act which was too much work for any pony since I was almost never happy.

“Rosemary, do I have to?” I asked a slight whine in my voice. It was totally fake but Rosemary tended to let me have my way on most things when I added the whine.

“Get our flank out here Mister!” Sadly this was not one of those things she would let me have.

Sighing I threw the covers off of myself and opened the door with my magic,  having somewhat of an idea of what it was my magic was to manipulate since I had studies the door knob with my hooves extensively, and yawned.

“Have you been up all night again?!” she chided me her voice stern.

‘Uh-huh.” I replied as another yawn overtook me.

“You haven’t even brushed your mane!” I could hear stomping approach me before something was dragged through my mane, pulling at my scalp, I remember complaining the entire time, because my mane was always in knots since I never brushed it. I saw no need for it since I couldn’t see.

“Hey! Rosemary, cut it out, that hurts!” I yelled as she racked the brush through my messy hair pulling at my scalp and eliciting more yells of annoyance.

“Nu-uh” she said the brush Rosemary was a Pegasus, so she couldn’t use magic like I could.

After a few minutes of brushing she finally set the brush down, my scalp now officially pulsating with each heartbeat.

“I lifted my hoof up to my mane and felt around. “I think you pulled some hair out.” I commented as I got out of bed and headed for the door.

“Oh no you don’t!” Something grabbed my tail and yanked me back into my room. This time it was more poor tail that received the treatment of the brush yanking out knots. It took another ten minutes before she finally finished straightening my tail out and I was allowed to leave the safety of my room.

“I thought I was gonna be late?” I commented a little angrily that it had taken so long.

“Well the family that wants to talk to you will be here shortly, and as your personal caretaker it was my duty to make sure you didn’t miss it. So I lied.” Dirty little cheater, but I couldn’t really blame her, I had constantly tried to be late to these things, because they were always monitored by some pony from the orphanage, which meant they stopped me from being me, which was a little rude.

We walked in silence, the other fillies and colt’s from the orphanage were running around having a good time while I walked the “hall of shame,” as some pony had named it since all my meeting came back as failures and I was never adopted.

As such when every pony saw me heading in the direction of the orphanages headmaster, they would split and the hall would grow silent. They all would lower their heads in pity, or so I was told, I no longer cared though. Adopted or not I soon realized that being in a family would never make me truly happy, it would only take away a sting in my heart.

We arrived at the headmaster’s office a little quicker than what we normally would have, I knew this since I had counted the steps it would take me to get from my room to this exact office, this was fairly easy since no pony ever changed anything around, at least nothing that I would bump into. I wondered why we had gotten here faster but I wasn’t allowed the opportunity to question it as Rosemary opened the door for me.

“Ah Dream come in please.” Came the stallion’s voice. As always he sounded sincere yet I couldn’t help but find his tone held a bit of pity in it. Maybe it was just me or maybe he did pity me in some way, either way I hated his voice because of the pity

“Is it that time again Headmaster?” I asked not really sounding enthusiastic at all to be here.

He must have heard a bit of sarcasm in voice because he gave a slight sigh before clearing his voice. “As a matter of fact it is, but this time I wanted to give you a few pointers so that you can finally be adopted.” Was this guy for real? He wanted to give me pointers on getting adopted.

“Okay sure.” I remarked casually, though we both knew I didn’t like the Idea.

“Right, now first thing’s first, you could try putting on a smile when the walk into the room, give them something to indicate that you’re a happy young colt.” So not gonna happen because that would be a lie, I wasn’t happy, and even if I faked a smile it probably wouldn’t be believable.

“When they ask you what your hobbies are, tell them something positive, like you love to play, or you love listening to music, even reading brail would be acceptable.” Well the last two wouldn’t be such a bad thing to mention after all I did love to read and I did like listening to music, but to be fair, every pony liked to listen to music, so he only had one good idea.

“And lastly try to be polite.” Okay I’ll give him that, there’s no reason to be rude to them so I guess I could do that, after all I didn’t really like being rude as it was.

“So basically you want me to lie to them?” I asked a little skeptical, this was what he was asking of me after all, to try and be happy in front of them.

“I don’t want you to lie, I just want you to be happy, and I think you being adopted is the best way to do that.” This guy didn’t know anything about me, but granted no pony really knew me that well; I slept when I could and stayed by myself when I got the chance.

Before I could retort and tell him off there was a knock on the door. I could hear the headmaster get up from his chair and walk over to the door, before opening it. Immediately I took up my position on a couch which was in the room.

I could three sets of hooves, one belonged to the headmaster, obviously, and the other two belonging to the two ponies who wanted to adopt me. I listened to their brief exchange of courtesy. Judging just from a few words I was able tell that these two ponies were of high class, due to their accents, probably from Canterlot.

“Dream this is mister Fancy Pants, and his wife Fleur de lis. You two this is Dream Caster.” The Headmaster said as he returned to his desk. I could hear the ruffling of paper, before his hoof steps retreated towards the door. This was odd since every interview had some pony present.

“Hello.” I said trying to make my voice sound cheery.

“Hello young colt” Fancy pants said, sounding polite yet I could detect a bit of…was that disappointment? What was he disappointed in, did I not meet up to his expectations or something, and did I look like I was tired? Granted I was tired but that was beside the point. “So what is it you like to do in your spare time?”

“Well I like to listen to music.” I said trying to lighten the mood a bit.

“Do you have a particular instrument you like?’ Fleur asked me this time. I have to admit she sounded a bit snobby, but pretty. Of course I had no concept of what looked like but sound was something I knew well, and knew when something sounded pretty or not.

“Well… I like to listen to the violin and the piano.” This was actually the truth since loud noises hurt my ears, the sound of a bass dropping was my nightmare, epically when some pony cranked the amp all the up.

“Ah I see, you can appreciate the finer things in life I see.” Fancy pants said his voice perking up a bit. At least he sounded slightly interested in me that was good I guess. “What about hobbies, do you have any?”

“Not really, since I  can’t see, there are not a lot of things that I can do.” I replied a little ashamed of the statement.

“What a shame. I was hoping you’d be a little more active.” Fancy Pants said his voice returning to that disappointed tone, though this time it was more evident. Who the buck did this guy think he was. He may have had money but obviously he hadn’t bothered to buy manner lessons, I mean really, could he at least try to act like he wasn’t disappointed?

Well that’s what I had been thinking at the time, and now that I look back on it I realized I had handled it very poorly.

“Yea well that’s kind or hard when you can’t see.” Sarcasm dripped from my voice like the drool from my roommate’s mouth. “But there are things I can do, like listening to the other kids play games, or I could sit in a room all by myself and think about how I’m ‘blessed’ to be unable to see.”

Complete silence, this was my reply. Needless to say I think I screwed getting adopted up big time, but I didn’t really care, because this stallion was rude in my opinion, for all I knew he could have not liked me for the simple fact that I was blind. I wasn’t really sure about Fleur, since she hardly talked, maybe she wasn’t good with kids, maybe she was uncomfortable to be around me since I was disabled, whatever it was I was still unsure about her, her snobby sounding voice could easily turn to one of anger.

Needless to say I never heard another word from either of them ever again, because the promptly stood and left the room. A few seconds later the Headmaster returned, his hooves sounded heavy as he marched towards me.

“What was that all about?” He didn’t yell, but I could hear the fury in his voice. From what I could guess was that Fancy Pants and his wife had marched out of the orphanage leaving in their wake the dropped jaws of every pony that saw the dissatisfied look on their faces.

“He was being rude.” I commented not caring at what would come next.

“What did you say?” he kept his voice lowered not wanting to cause a scene, but I knew better.

“Nothing bad about him or his wife.” I said as I pretended to examine my hooves as if I could actually see them.

“Do you think this is a joke?” Finally his anger began to show, as he blew up on me. “They were some of the most highly respected ponies in Canterlot…” I totally called it. “…which means they have a lot of influence with other ponies, and if they wanted to they could help or hurt the funds that come here with a single sentence…” I stopped listening at this point; this whole thing was about money.

From what I Understood the Headmaster had probably heard of them wanting to adopt a foal, and so he invited them to come and take a look, it was just by pure coincidence that they had wanted to interview me, which the Headmaster probably knew was a bad idea, but he didn’t say anything for fear that trying to sway their minds would end up with them leaving in anger, that and the hope that on the rare occasion that I might actually be adopted.

I didn’t really care what his motivation was, whether he really did care for use kids and wanted to use the money to better the orphanage for us or if he just wanted the money to lace his own pockets. I only cared about getting back to bed because I was dog tired and the confrontation with Fancy Pants had put me in a sour mood. This of course caused me to remember a colt describing his dream one day. I was so entranced by his tale that I listened so intensely that I actually tried to imagine what it was he was talking about, but since I didn’t really know what the things he was describing looked like it was hard. Since then I had wanted to hear about every last dream any pony had. I didn’t know what it was but dreams fascinated me. I even began to compare them to my own.

My dreams were a little weird, to say the least. Since I was born blind, my brain didn’t record  any images meaning that since I had never seen anything before they could not be projected into my dreams. Some ponies would think, “well then obviously you don’t see anything but black and can only hear the voices of ponies.” This was actually spot on but my dreams had a twist to them. I had taken a lot of time to examine everything I had ever come into contact with, so that I could understand what its basic shape was and how it felt. Whenever I had a dream yes I couldn’t see anything but I could kind of sense where everything was. Confusing right? Well in general I knew where everything was I knew its shape and I could move freely from place to place. When I wanted to place a cup on a table, that table was there, if I wanted to sit on a couch that couch was where I had expected it to be.

I was omniscient in my dreams I knew exactly what was happening anywhere in my dream. See here’s the confusing part though. A dream is only the world our mind makes up right? So then how can I have several places present in my dream all at different locations? I didn’t really understand this myself and I couldn’t find any information on theories either. Every book I read was no help. By the way for those of you confused I can read brail. It didn’t make sense and what was weirder was that I could dream lucidly and yet I couldn’t find a way to travel to these other places, which was strange because they shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

See at first it only started out with one place, my current dream, then as I got older it grew to two, then, four and now it was currently up to thirty six, all with an abundance of knowledge that I seemed to know about, yet I couldn’t see any of it.

When I say I knew everything that was happening what I mean is that little scenes were playing off inside my head all at once, yet I couldn’t see any of it. This was another reason why I started to sleep during the day, instead of the night. With all this information running through my head, thinks got kind of hectic for me and I would wake with a dumbfounded look on my face. It was beginning to affect my sleeping habits and I soon became an insomniac. Days of restless nights had finally taken it’s toll on me and I ended up falling asleep in the middle of the day.

During that time asleep I could only feel the presence of one other place in my dreams. It was like the other locations suddenly disappeared and the only ones that remained were mine and the other one, of course this didn’t bother me as much since I could easily handle the other location.

“Are you even listening to me!?” the headmaster’s voice suddenly cut into my thinking.

“Huh, oh uh sure, can I go to bed now?” I asked. I couldn’t really concentrate at this point since I was pushing nearly twenty four hours of no sleep.

Needless to say he was not happy, but he didn’t bother to repeat himself, instead he told me I was to stay up all day and sleep at night which was customary for a normal pony my age.  I wasn’t very happy either and I said a few things I don’t care to mention here. As a result I was sent to my room, but by this time I was to worked up from screaming at the Headmaster that even though I was incredibly tired I couldn’t fall asleep .

It went like this up till around noon when I finally crashed hard. At first my dreams started out as they always did. I could distinctly feel the presences of the other location but I was still able to concentrate on my own dreams. My dreams were always spent the same way. Since I could dream lucidly I tried to use the time I was asleep to try and visualize something, I wanted to give it some kind of color but they were always the same.

See the thing about dreams is that time passes differently. Five minutes in a dream could turn out to be an entire hour, or an entire night, so I had no idea when my dreams actually took a turn for the unexpected. I began to notice that the other locations were beginning to reappear, due to the fact that I found concentrating on a single thing hard. Thinking in general was too difficult to do since there were so many things passing through my mind in a single instant.

Everything began to spin, and my head felt like it was on fire. It was strange since you’re not really supposed to feel anything in a dream but my head was literally pounding. I didn’t know how to make I stop, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I wanted it to stop, begged it to stop, I even tried to imagine my head in a pot of soil as I that would help, but nothing worked.

I was just about ready to wake up when suddenly I was….blinded?! Strange as it sounds a flood of color was all I could see. It was so bright I ended up closing my eyes because my eyes were beginning to hurt. For the first few minute I tried to open my eyes to get a look at all the colors.

My first attempt was met with failure as I immediately closed my eyes. I waited for a few seconds before trying again. Again I met with failure and just as quickly closed my eyes. It was not until my third try that I managed to get my eyes to adjust. I had opened my eyes slowly, only allowing a little light in at a time until I was comfortable enough to open them all the way.

Before my eyes I saw that I was in some sort of city. I took it that I was in Las Pegasus. I had been told before hoof what the city looked like. The buildings were dull colors of grey and black. The only real vibrant colors that the city really had was the graffiti that covered the walls and streets and anything else that had enough room to fit some message of some sort. From what I was seeing this city matched this description to the T.

The first thing that went through my head, besides the initial “Sweet Celestia I can see!” was. “What can I see first?” There were so many things that I wanted to see, of course at first I didn’t realize what was really happening. I didn’t care to question the validity of the situation; all I cared about was finally getting the chance to experience the one thing that had been denied me.

I quickly started to look around; taking in everything I could, studying the different colors trying to put the names to colors. For the most part I was clueless until I remembered that I had been told I had a blue coat and silver mane. I quickly took a look at myself and noticed the dark color my coat as I identified that as my color. I began to look around trying to find the same color only to find that there were many different variations to any color ranging from light to dark. Of course you probably already knew that since you were born with the ability to see, but imagine how I felt at that moment.

When I finally got over the initial excitement I began to notice that the city was a dump. The sight of the rundown buildings and broken street lamps began to fill my heart with dread. Did I really live in this city? Was the rest of Equestria the same? If so I began to think that maybe I’d been blessed not to see.

I began to walk the streets growing bored as no pony was around. I just wanted to leave I wanted to get away from this place, to find something more beautiful to look at. It wasn’t until I heard a scream that I realized something was wrong. I wasn’t allowed the chance to try and figure out who was screaming before some pony rushed past me, quickly followed by some shadow.

Without thought I gave chase as well, I didn’t understand at the time the danger I was putting myself in, nor did I understand what it was that I was chasing, but something felt off. We ran for several minutes before finally the pony ran down a dead end, the shadow hot on his tail. I ran into the ally along with them.

I quickly hid, I may not have understood what was happening, but I wasn’t stupid. The pony quickly began to cry as shadow began to get closer. I recognized that voice. That was Rosemary’s voice.

Rosemary was like my older sister, she looked out for me, scolded me when I needed it, she loved and cared for me. I was quickly one the defensive, I wasn’t going to let whatever this thing was hurt the one I cared about most.

Call it youthful stupidity, or courage, I jumped out from my hiding place and shouted at the thing.

“Hey! Leave her alone!” my voice as fierce as a ten year old colt’s voice could be.

The thing turned on me now, its face seeming to phase in from its back. The thing itself was completely black which was why I had assumed it was a shadow. It’s eyes though, that’s what had gotten my attention. I color of its eyes was a dark and sickening color, that I had later learned was called yellow. I didn’t care what the color was called; right now the thing was sending chills down my spine, with the look it was giving me.

I began to back away now a little fear spreading through me, as its attention was now directed at me. Rosemary seemed to be absolutely petrified at this point which meant she was not able to help me. Fear began to overtake me, but I fought desperately trying to stay calm.

Blackness slowly began to overtake my vision. At first I hadn’t noticed because I had come accustomed to being sightless, but even so the sudden lack of color isn’t hard to notice. I felt my world go cold. My worst fears began to come alive.

Since I was blind everything was a danger and almost everything had reason to incite fear, though I would classify these as minor fears, day to day fears, fears easily overcome. But the worst fear that I had, the one that caused me to tread carefully, was beginning to come true.

My breath was taken away from me, as I felt water fill my mouth and lungs. I began to panic as I could feel my heart racing a mile a minute, my lungs began to burn, I could feel myself become light headed. I tried to cry out, tried to call to Rosemary. I began to whimper as I was sure my life was coming to an end.

I began to pray for a miracle, for some pony or something to come and save me. It seemed that some pony was listening because no sooner had I begun to pray did I feel my breath returning. I gasped for a few seconds, before I looked up. I was now angry.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me of course there were a lot of things a ten year old wouldn’t understand, but I was growing angry. I slowly began to stand as I felt a sense of power course through me. I felt the power begin to travel up my body before it was centered in my horn. A moment later and my horn shot a blast of magic at the shadow causing it to begin to burn like a piece of paper in an open flame.

It was a good two minutes before I realized Rosemary was standing over me, saying something but I didn’t know what it was she was saying. I couldn’t hear, my ears were ringing and I had the distinct feeling of wanting to vomit, but try as I might nothing would come out. Call me lucky or unlucky the choice is yours. I looked up only to see Rosemary was gone. I looked around the ally I had chased Rosemary and that thing down only to find I was completely alone…except for that mare standing at the end of the ally’s opening.

She had wings and a horn and her coat was just a bit darker then my own. Her mane and tail were flowing in some invisible wind and I could see little lights twinkling in her mane and tail. She looked back at me and for a single moment our eyes connected. She flashed me a happy yet puzzled smile before she spread her wings and flew away. I wanted to chase after her but the minute I began to run after her…I woke up!

That’s right I had woken up from the most spectacular dream of my life. You could imagine my disappointment when I realized that I had only been dreaming. I was overcome with a great sadness only for a few minutes before the door to my room busted open and I could Hear Rosemary saying something. She was…thanking me!

Had my dream been real? No, that was ridiculous that’s all it was, a dream, but whose dream? That question had already been answered, since here she was hugging me and crying all the while thanking me over and over again. I wanted her to stop, primarily because she was choking the life out of me. I didn’t even get a say in before the next thing she had said caught my attention really quickly.

“Dream…You’ve got your cutie mark!” She shouted in my ear.

“I…what?!” I asked completely speechless at this point.

“You’ve got your cutie mark, and it’s a…It’s a dream catcher!” Needless to say I think she was more excited about my cutie mark than I was, me I was happy for a whole different reason. I was finally able to see, at least in some way. Things were beginning to look up for me, and for the first time since I was younger, I honestly felt happy, and excited, because tonight meant I could do it all over again, but first, I had to had to figure out how I had done it the first time.