How does it feel to dive into the foremost nightmares every night…?
Many would expect an immortal being to get used to the madness and its uncountable spawns. Truth is: it never bores. At least it never did get to me in another way than horror, pain, and fear. Ponies and the from-afar-the-shores are the kilns of the evanescent dreams I cannot forget, of the mangled hopes I cannot listen to, and of the endless flow of questions I never found an answer to.
I may be the queen of the night… but the night never accepted me as regent as she, the Night, is but an eternal war to regain control.
The night is madness for sure.
But in this madness dwells beauty.
Chapter 1, Failure
"The first thing you learn when you enter a dream, and even more a nightmare, is that nothing comes in easy."
I opened my eyes to a lonesome forest. A small breeze hanging in the air gave this common summer night a delightfully fresh sweep of air. The abandoned wood was dark and silent. The night was nearing to its end, the first shades of blue starting to seep over the horizon behind a far streak of saw-toothed mountains. A thick mist had slowly risen across the vegetation, its green turned black by the creeping darkness.
I tensed at a crystalline foal’s voice crawling aloft in the night. The whisper was not spared from hiccups and sobs: a pleading constantly repeated, definitely hopeless. The dreamer, a filly, was desperately scared, probably alone. No filly deserved such treatment. The only thing a filly needed was guidance, and I would be the light in her darkness.
A scream shattered the woodland peacefulness. It was a shriek, a saw grinding over a piece of rusty iron bar. Unnatural sounds clung to that rushing complaint, waltz of discordant violins weaving between the rustlings leaves.
What I had misinterpreted for bushes flew off in the air, plummeting trails of dripping blackness in their wake. Crows. Hundreds of them. The breeze turned into wind. The fog forced its path sideway from mine, streaking with lingering shards of black. I could only see my own footpath in that haze: a dark footpath made of gravel covered with lichen.
I lifted my head from the unstridden passage. I could not see further than a few metres. I was, to be honest, completely blind. Yet, another call in the distance reasserted me. I had to walk the way up, even though it was to be a hard road to pace along.
A raven lurched at me from behind a tree, clawing at my face, cackling mockery. I gasped, striking it away from the back of my hoof. I tasted blood, dripping from my cheeks and forehead into my mouth and eyes.
I forced my way forth, fighting the gusts that had turned to face me, to fight me back into the deepest and darkest folds of this dreamt Tartarus. Was I crying? I couldn’t tell. The wind was ripping off leaves, thrusting them at me like shards of glass. I had to move on. I could not stop here. I would not be given that privilege anyway.
Screams were getting closer; as much as the length of time between each of them. I was running out of time.
Trees cracked not so far from the road; somewhere I could not see. Their trunks split under a force I had no way to fathom. I heard the branches whirl, the trunks fell in a loud rat-a-tat. Tremors cracked open the footpath. I quickened my pace. I was already late.
Another tree fell. Yet, instead of the tearing up sound came a voice. No, not a voice… a vibrant whistle. I raised my head, paying heed to the lurking sound. The whistle broke into a howl, trashing. I hated it. My ears rang. My head reeled. I wanted out from here. I knew, however, that the only exit was keeping walking.
“You’re going to die,” an echoing and creaking voice crowed ahead of me, adult, definitely male. “Why don’t you die!?”
The stallion, or whatever that was, vented a rage I had not seen often in the limbos. I heard a lash of leather whipping in the air and hit in a clack. The foal’s voice rose, a meek shriek that had lost its strength. Not even a sob. Not even a tear.
I pressed myself forward and step in a small round clearing in the forest. There stood a shack, and next to ita brown stallion with an ageing blue mane was waving a makeshift whip of tanned leather in his mouth. The young filly was facing him, her back stuck against the rotting wood frame of the shed.
“Why don’t you die?! You sickening monster!” the stallion bellowed.
I saw the whip swept in the air, gashing deep in my hide before I gathered enough wit to react. I leaped forward and shielded the foal with my body. The lash gashed at my side. Burn. It burnt as I had never experienced before.
In dreams, senses were exacerbated. Thus, in dreams, pain had to be avoided. Through what had been that foal? What was she fleeing? An abusive father? A violent relative? Nightmares were just a mirror pond of reality. As always, I had stepped in something personal, intimate.
“You won’t touch her anymore,” I warned, hugging the poor, trembling shape of a foal between my hooves.
The leather strap struck four times before the stallion backed in, scrutinizing me. Those piercing green eyes stared at me like they could bite through my flesh. The pause did not last long. He resumed his thrashing fit of rage, roaring.
“Why don’t you die? I’m fed up with you! Tormenting me every day! Night!” he pleaded. “Why don’t you go away?! Why?!”
Tears streaked down his cheeks, boring at his skin like scars of old, badly healed burns. His fur fell into clumps on the ground. His mouth dripped with muddy saliva. His hindquarters failed him, falling into the wet, blackish grass. His frail, broken body was just a shadow of its former self. It had been through fire, literally. He had jumped into fire, literally.
“Why don’t you understand?” he seethed, his voice gradually turning into a low whimper. “Why won’t you let me turn the page?”
I frowned.
“I want to reach the blank page,” he cried. “I want to go on. I was an undeserving father. I failed you. But I can’t suffer anymore. You died! You’re dead. But they are others. Family. They need me… as much you needed me.”
The foal between my hooves gagged a ripping laughter. She… seeped away. The foal slipped between my hooves, her skin changing into a black sludge dangling through my embrace. It began drowning me, reaching my mouth. It forced its way through, hurting… violating. I felt… raped.
I had been wrong the whole footpath. The foal had never been the dreamer. The stallion had been the dreamer all along, prey to his own sins and pains. I had failed him. As much he had failed his daughter. I shook my head.
I had been defeated.
ⱴĦ – V α ϵ R, E! Ω – Ħⱴ
I opened my eyes to my room ceiling. The severed nightmare still blinding my eyes. It was time to lower the moon, like every night. It would not be a good day to begin with for sure, for today I would find another pony in the newspaper’s obituary.
