Dream on, Butterfly of Mine
Everypony knows the story about the sage who dreamed to be a butterfly and, once awake, wondered whether he was but a butterfly dreaming to be a sage. The moral of the story is usually taken to have something to do with how consciousness works. However, there is another lesson, one dressed in the guise of a question, which often escapes philosopher’s inquiry while they ponder the repercussions of the story.
Do butterflies dream?
Of experience, our answer to that question must be affirmative, wrote Luna on her diary. She paused, idly biting the end of her phoenix feather quill while going over the paragraph in her mind. It didn’t feel right. After a moment of consideration, she changed the last line into:
Of experience, our answer to that question must be that at least one of them does.
She pondered yet more and added, to the very edge of the page:
And such dreams she has, the little butterfly of mine.
She set the quill aside and inspected her work. The night’s entry had been rather long, and yet it only scratched the surface of the story she had wanted to immortalise in ink. It was rather funny, and a bit sad, too. Who would have thought that the powers of the moon would be mystified in the face of the most innocent of world’s creations? On the other hoof, she had heard said that a wingbeat of a butterfly could cause a tornado on the other side of the world. Had anypony ever imagined what a dream of one could produce?
Luna closed the massive tome with a flick of her horn. Twilight was already at its end, and soon she’d have to retreat into her chamber to wait for another moonrise. With a modest yawn and a fleeting glance at her diary, she left the study and closed the door. The gloom turned a tad deeper by her passing. In the darkness, the book stayed closed. Sealed.
As if that had ever stopped any story from spilling out.
***
Tonight started like any other night, began the entry. At least, like most of my nights start nowadays. I may sound like a broken record, but the nocturnal hours today pale in comparison to what I had to deal with in the olden days. Oh, to think that a filly’s nightmare is what counts as a challenge now. But I suppose it’s all for the best, in the end. And it’s not like I particularly miss the continuous fear of having my soul butchered by whatever horror happened to lurk in the next shadow of the midnight proper.
Still, a girl needs her entertainment, and sometimes she needs it bad. So tonight, I chose to do things a bit differently. It can’t be that bad, letting the good Equestrians handle their own nightmares every now and then? I’m hardly indispensable to them in that regard. I mean, who couldn’t fend off a pack of enraged muffins? Seriously? Let Celestia deal with that crap for once!
So, instead of focusing on nightmares like usual, I chose to go for the more… carnal products of the unconscious. They’re just as easy to find, after all, and a lot more common. Much more enticing too, at least in the majority of cases. The other stuff… Well, to each their own, as I always say. Anyway, I’m talking of sex dreams, naturally.
The results of my little adventure were… interesting.
At first I just leafed through them in their scores. Most were from males, I could tell. The simple straightforward bluntness of them is universal, I should say. Is a common blowjob really the apex of their desire? Possibly given by two mares? After witnessing my twentieth fellatio of the night, I was seriously concerned with the prospect of getting bored to death. And then I threw the procedures through the window and chose to focus on the deviant specimens, which of course meant I’d be able to identify their hosts. Celestia might have a word or two to say about that… but she doesn’t need to know everything.
However, even if I’m caught one day, it will have been worth it. For one, there is this mare in Manehattan who has forever transformed my idea of toothbrushes. Wow that was weird. And this one stallion in Phillydelphia had a dream where he changed into a griffon, mated with a dolphin and a dragon, and finally with himself as a pony. Talk about cross-species action. My secret favourite, though, was this one guy in Canterlot who had Celestia tied to bed and spanked well and thoroughly. It was that close I didn’t join him.
There were all kinds of intriguing little sessions I followed through the midnight and beyond, and for some of them I might well have dedicated a chapter of their own. But I didn’t, because above all the spanking, blowjobs, anal, cross-species, vore and whatever fetish you might think of, there was this one dream, and one dreamer, that soon drew my full attention. It was not that her fetish was out of the dictionary, or that it was exceptionally vivid. To the contrary, it was quite mundane. What made it special for me was that, well, it was about me.
Pretty crazy, huh? To see somepony having a dream like that about yourself? It was a prospect I hadn’t actually anticipated, although in retrospect it should have been obvious. Of course there would be somepony dreaming of the dark, mystic and distant alicorn who’d fill their every desire, even those which they were not aware of themselves. Mind you, I saw quite a lot of naughty stuff about Cadance carrying over from Crystal Kingdom – and Armor wasn’t that uncommon of a sight, either. Even Twilight had an erotically oriented fandom of her own, albeit a very limited one. And extremely focused on socks, for some reason. Anyway, we were talking about me, and about this one dream.
It was Fluttershy’s. I was stunned. Simply bewildered. A bit flattered too, but most of all confused – why would this pony be fantasising about me, of all ponies? What could a butterfly want of the moon? It would only freeze there. And yet I could not deny the facts. Consequently, I tried to explain them.
The dream was hardly sexual. The color of it was slightly pink, not the usual reddish-purple. It was definitely intimate though, as I noticed while getting a good look of it. We were on some dreamscape, in a living room build of clouds, with the forest growing above us upside down. We weren’t even kissing, but holding hooves and pressing close together while laying on a cloud. Her head rested on my neck, and our eyes closed as we drifted through the eternity. A very boring dream, really.
Except for the fact that it was me Fluttershy was dreaming about. I could not wrap my head around it, no matter how hard I tried to look beyond the vision and into the mind beyond. Her tranquil state made it a vain effort: I might have as well tried to analyse a tree. I waited patiently, seeing if she’d made me blow her or at least give her a wingjob, but she remained impassive, seemingly satisfied with herself. It started bothering me beyond all reason. I mean, like really bothering me. It was an itch I could never scratch, caused by a butterfly's tickle.
You may notice that I’m going somewhere with this, so I’ll just say it: I entered the dream. It’s against the rules, I know, I’m not saying it isn’t but you weren’t there, you hypothetical stranger I’m writing to, so shut up! Anyway, it’s done now and there were no problems whatsoever. All went smooth as a silk, and softer than that, in the end. And yet I’m more perplexed than I was in the beginning.
Of course I didn’t simply walk to Fluttershy, tap her on the shoulder and ask what’s up. Instead, I replaced my dream self with my actual self. Fluttershy never noticed a thing, and frankly I would have been surprised if she had. I’m that good. So we remained stretched out on the cloud, watching the canopy spread aboves us. It was calm, very calm. The type of calm what you’d expect to find from a dream of a butterfly.
And then, just like that, she rolled over me, eyes still closed. With gentle thrusts, she started rubbing her nether regions against my thigh, sighing faintly in the process. “Finally some action!” is what you might think I was thinking by then. The truth is, only a part of me did. The rest simply played along, flowing with the little butterfly on the waves of her subconscious. I could still see beyond the obvious and into the mind behind the dream, but it was becoming more difficult by every heavy sigh. Immersion was settling in, and I was in an adventurous mood. What can I say? I became part of her dream. And I liked it. Especially the part where she began planting kisses on my chest.
To say that I enjoyed the devotion of her lips would be a terrible sin. The sensation was more titillating than what I had known, what, at least for a millennia, even if it was all a dream – or perhaps exactly because of this? I cannot say. All I can say is that I loved every minute of it, especially when she moved up and joined our lips, mouths, and tongues. For the record it should be said that she is a first-class kisser. Very sensitive.
Now you might be thinking that I ended up taking advantage of the poor little butterfly who flew too close to the moon, that I was there only to sate my on lust. Again, it pays to mention that you weren’t there, so keep your hypocritic preconceptions to yourself, thank you very much. In my mind, she took advantage of me rather than the other way around, even if she wasn’t aware of it. And she liked it. Oh yes, she did. Did I say I loved it? It’d be more correct to say she infected me with a craving of unfathomable intensity. The sheer depth of passion that emanated from her… It could have boiled away seas.
So we kept on making out for a while, sometimes harder but mostly gently, studying one another’s taste. Her’s was sweet, which probably goes without saying if you have any idea who we’re talking about here. It was like… suckling a cute kitten, but with no hairs sticking on your tongue afterwards. Nah, that’s just weird. It was like… how should I put it…
If you could squeeze a glassful juice out of a perfect summer day, spice it with honey and serve warm on the small hours of Hearth's Warming Eve, you might get a good idea of what Fluttershy tasted like. But at that point, you might just as well take my word for it that it was great.
You might now get an idea of my reaction when I realized she was going down on me.
You might also, at this point, get an idea of her reaction when she realized that I was, in fact, the real Luna.
Yep. That part wasn’t great at all. To tell the truth, it was that close I didn’t have to wipe away her memory clean on the spot. But we’re rushing ahead of things – how did she figure me out? My guise should have been perfect, after all, but the fact was of little comfort when Fluttershy, after a long pause, looked me in the eyes and blinked. And then I knew she knew.
She didn’t scream, which was a shame. I could deal with a screaming, hysteric mare – it’s what my nightly bread consists of these days. But Fluttershy only kept on staring, her mouth left open. Gradually I realized she had fallen to a sort of a deadlock, as if all the feelings she had ever known had tried rush out of her mind at the same time and consequently got stuck in the doorway. The effect was similar to watching a barrel of nitroglycerine falling from very high, in slow motion. I had to act before it would hit the ground.
“Hello,” I said.
The corner of her mouth twitched slightly. Next, there was a long, drawn-out moment when her lips moved to form the all too reasonable question, “What?”.
“I’m sure you’re a bit confused,” I continued, trying my best not to be bothered by her empty stare. “However, there is a good explanation for this.”
A rapid tic motion started on her eyelid, which really worried me. Time was starting to increase in speed, I could feel, and when it would catch us, they’d need a big bucking mop to clean the aftermath. It was at this point that I came close to wiping out her memory. It’s never the smoothest of routes, but I’ve done it a few times. Occasionally, the underside of a rug is what will have to count for psychotherapy, although that’s not something they teach in the medical school. Not anymore, anyway.
And then, just when I was about to pull the emergency brake, Fluttershy smiled. Kindly. The sight took my breath away, mostly because I was sure she had completely snapped. But she only kept on smiling, and little by little I was forced to accept that there was not a touch of lunacy in her expression. Only bare, pure, simple kindness, to the point where it was a turn of breath away from turning idiotic. But it never did.
“You’re real,” she whispered. “Really real.”
“How did you know?” I whispered, mesmerized by her gaze.
She blinked. The smile wavered. “I… don’t really… know…”
A stretched silence came after that. At some point, the wind had started to blow. I took it as a good sign that her unconscious was playing the ball still, and not ripping itself apart in a storm of shame and rage. My hoof was still on the big red button, though. For all you might take me for, know that I am not ignorant of the perils that meddling with dreams implies. I do know my nightmares. In a sense I was born of one. But that’s a story for another time.
This one should be about how Fluttershy and I, after recovering from the initial shock, spent the night screwing the living hell out of each other. But all in good time.
Once we were both on par with the realities of our peculiar situation, Fluttershy started asking the obvious questions. “What was I doing in her dream?” Well, mostly having a good time. “How long have you been here?” About from when you started kissing my belly. “You want me to continue that?” Uhh… Yeah?
For some reason, she was very eager to continue where we had left. I was more than eager to comply, of course, although a persistent nagging feeling kept on bothering me even as her tongue travelled across my labia. This wasn’t supposed to go this easy, right? It wasn’t like it was my dream. However, my worries were quickly forgotten as she settled to a steady pace.
Plain words always pale in the face of good sex, although it’s strange that they never fail to exaggerate how bad sex can be. Likewise, as pleasure turns divine, the words start catching up, weirdly enough. Now, I’m not much of a poet myself, but like everypony else I’ve entertained my fair share of vague rhymes to be buried in the back of drawers. Anyway, this all comes down to saying that what you’re about to read both encapsulates my actual experiences to the point while utterly failing to articulate them by magnificently blowing them out of proportion. That’s the magic of language, I suppose.
She started out slow and easy, a sure sign that she had done this before. I gathered some clouds behind my back and laid back to admire her work. Soon enough I found my focus severely disturbed by the shivers of pleasure traveling over me. Her tongue moved in graceful circles, painting an intricate pattern on the canvas of my flesh. To call her an artist would not be an overstatement. Then, as I was shivering like a leaf in a gale, she dived inside me in one smooth motion. I moaned aloud by then, and didn’t stop for a long while. She made me feel like the goddess that I truly am. My peak was approaching quickly, I could sense it forming in my loins, all over my body; a moment more and I would have reached it.
My flight was cut short an inch away from the horizon. Panting and starving for release, I opened my eyes and looked at Fluttershy, who now lay on her flank in my hooves, shivering just like I had a second ago. Well, almost like I had. The way she trembled resembled freezing more than burning. And her eyes had that empty, glazed look again. It was then that I realized she was muttering something.
“You’re real you’re real you’re real you’re real you’re real,” she repeated, over and over again. And then she started screaming.
“You’re real! You’re real! What did I do?! What did I do?! You’re real!”
Understandably, I felt a bit puzzled. A bit panicky, too. The wind had gained momentum, and the treetops above us were swaying uncontrollably, shedding leaves and branches all over the place. A storm was rising.
“Fluttershy,” I said. “Calm down.”
Her legs twitched, yet no other reaction occurred. Above us, dark clouds started gathering.
“Fluttershy. It’s okay. It’s just a dream.”
“No dream,” she blurted, shrinked pupils snapping to me. “Real. All real.”
There was the unmistakable sound of several trees being torn from their roots, high above. Dirt and branches rained upon us. The dark mass of clouds now covered the whole sky under us. This was not just a storm: the whole dream was collapsing. That was bad. There was no telling what would happen if Fluttershy awoke now. At the very least she’d wake up screaming. In the worst case, she’d carry on screaming. Forever.
I stood up and pulled Fluttershy on her feet. She would have collapsed right back, but I kept her standing even as gales turned frenzied around us. I looked into her eyes and said:
“Stop.”
She blinked, and once more there was somepony looking back at me. The wind had stopped, too. In fact, the whole dream had. It’s another one of those things they don’t teach in the medical school.
“You’re re–” she started. I muffled her gently with a hoof.
“I am,” I said. “And so are you. But the dream isn’t. That is all that matters.”
The eyes like polished ice shimmered. I felt wretched, to say the least. Good thing it’s an emotion I tamed centuries ago.
The air was vibrating around us, eager to howl again, to tear the dream asunder. There is a limit to everything, including to my powers. And yet a fraction of a moment was all I needed.
“This is what you wanted,” I whispered. “This is the kernel of your desire. It could never be real, not even if you spent the rest of your days hunting for it. Such is the way we are built.” I hazarded an encouraging smile. “That is why we dream.”
She swallowed. “But… We’ll remember it all afterwards…”
“Ah,” I said. “You won’t. Not unless you want to. Just say the word and all this will be forgotten. Forever.”
My magic was starting to fade. No force could resist the unconscious for more than a heartbeat. Yet the decision remained unmade, looming behind the ice.
“You swear?” she asked.
“On my life.”
She drew breath. It was the last straw that brought the reality down again, or whatever counted for one here. There were no gales, no storm. A faint rustle of falling leaves was the only sound in existence.
“Feeling better?” I ventured.
She studied her hooves for a while, a lot like she always did in the occasions we met in the real world. And to think that a minute ago she had given me head like there was no tomorrow.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Uhm… thanks.”
“What, for almost sending you to a closed ward?” I almost asked. Instead, I removed some of the mane covering her eyes and said: “No: thank you. That felt… unreal.”
She looked at me in confusion, and then the realization dawned on her face, accompanied by a deep blush. “Oh, that… Um. You’re welcome.” She shuffled her legs. “I liked it very much too, if you don’t mind me saying,” she said quickly.
I could not help but chuckle at that. “I could see.” A short smile flashed on her lips, under that gorgeous mane. A thought struck me. “Could I perhaps return the favour?”
She looked at me wide-eyed. Perhaps she was shocked enough that the blush couldn’t keep up. Or perhaps I had struck the exact right key. I could not tell, for immediately after she seemed to realize I was looking back at her back, and cast down her eyes.
“Ah. That’s. Oh.” She bit her lip and shifted her weight between her legs. “You can be very direct at times, Princess.”
I lifted her chin with a hoof, interlocking our gazes. “I can be anything you want me to be, Fluttershy. The dream is yours. And for this one night, so am I.”
It was the least I could do to repay for my intrusion, I felt. Not that my secret submissive streak wouldn’t have anything to do with the matter, though. For reasons unknown to me even know, I found this little, timid butterfly intriguing me in a way I could not have anticipated in my wildest dreams. Such innocence pregnant with the deepest of passions.
We kissed. To ask who moved first would not make sense. Where there once had been two, now but one could be found. The moon and the butterfly, entwined in time and space, in body and mind; in love which you can only dream of. We rose from the cloud and into the wind. A unity emerged; a simulacrum of bliss folded upon itself. A position also known by the name sixty-nine, I believe.
What before had felt divine now climbed to heights beyond sacred. We drank one another’s essences, pure and heavy with fleshy scent. She soon lost the rhythm which I didn’t even bother to chase. My tongue whipped her drenched folds, eager to match her similar efforts. What a sight we must have made, whirling weightless in the air, trembling and moaning without restraints. I cannot say how long it lasted. An eternity. Too little: perhaps that is answer enough.
Finally we came, right about the same time. Heat wracked my body wrapped around Fluttershy’s, and with one last lick and push of my hips I crossed the line between starvation and ultimate satisfaction. I think I cried a bit, and giggled, too. On the other end of our reciprocal bliss, Fluttershy wasn’t doing bad either, from what I could tell. Her body pressed against mine, her snout buried in my folds, her wings spread against the impossible sky. And that’s the story of the little butterfly who flew to the moon. Or so it would be, had Fluttershy’s lust been so easily quenched.
As the afterglow gradually released its grip on us, Fluttershy said: “I’m still horny.” She pulled farther from my marehood and looked at me, her face upside down. “It’s as if we hadn’t even started.”
“Correct you are,” I mused, and gave a slow lick to her love button. An intense shiver immediately travelled over her, forcing her eyes shut. “The pleasure you feel here has nothing to do with your body, but only with your desire, which can never be sated. Strictly speaking, we’re not even having sex but… something else.”
Her eyelids opened carefully. “I don’t think I understand.”
With a beat of my wings, I turned to face her. “And neither do you need to.”
We kissed again, even fiercer than before. Whatever shyness she had harbored before had all but burned away by now. She did not even close her eyes, but stole a glance at me every now and then, as if to check that I was really there, that all this was really real.
Our tongues were not satisfied with each other anymore, but began caressing whatever they could. She licked my cheek, my neck, even my mane. Our hooves behaved likewise, kneading and fondling whatever they could reach. We made a tangle of hair, coat and carnal fervour, of which no single part stood out. She was moving down on me again, driven more by instinct than anything else. What she found there gave her a pause, though.
“Uhm…” she began, looking up at my face. “This wasn’t here before.”
I giggled faintly. “I could not say. In the end, it’s you who put it there.”
She looked at my nether regions again. Where there once had been perfectly normal female genitalia, now protruded a quite handsome cock, accompanied by a pair of furry orbs. The basic color of the rod was midnight blue, although the head was of slightly lighter shade, along with the numerous spots near the base. Fluttershy studied it with fascination.
“Me?” she asked, tilting her head.
I smoothed her thick mane with a front leg. “Whereas desire can never sated, it will always get bored in the lack variance. Whatever form it happens to gorge itself on doesn’t really matter in the end. It’s only the change it cares about.”
For a moment I thought I’d end up keeping a short lecture on the intricacies of desire, for Fluttershy’s expression gave no hint of comprehension. It was to be expected – the topic has drained the lifetimes of several philosophers. Luckily, she had taken my previous advice to the heart.
She started by gently rubbing my new, fleshy appendage with both hooves. Again it was clear she had done this before: the pressure was just right, and increased along with my need. A small part of me, the one that wasn’t too wracked with bliss, was a bit surprised. I had always taken Fluttershy to be all into mares.
Once she had a solid mass of malehood to play with, she took the tip past her full, moist lips. I gasped involuntarily. The warm softness of it was incredible, indescribably erotic. A strong urge to shove myself into her throat seized me, but I refrained from the act. She clearly knew what she was doing, after all. Oh yes, she did.
Again she started out slow, suckling every square inch of the tip like it was the sweetest of lollipops. Gradually she took it deeper, only to withdraw in the most tantalizing of fashions. My dick was throbbing almost painfully by the time she finally got to the midring where, with a move that took my breath away, she swallowed me all the way to the base.
I could not tear my eyes off the sight, not in the face of perpetual blindness. Seeing Fluttershy gorge herself on my rod was only matched in beauty by the feeling of it. It might very well be that my earlier estimation, concerning blowjobs and their frequency in male dreams was blatantly wrong. Her mouth was a fantasy come true, made vivid by the tongue that kept on rubbing my underside even as she bobbed her head in an ever quickening pace. As a cherry on top, it was plain to see that she loved it even more than I did.
It didn’t take long for me to finish. After mere few minutes of furious sucking, one last moan signaled the end of the line for me. My whole body twitched, and Fluttershy’s eyes grew wide as the cock in her mouth started spurting thick, creamy liquid. She squeezed her lips tighter shut and pulled back to the midring. Soon I could see her throat quivering as a load after load of cum travelled there, all the way to her stomach. Not a drop escaped her.
Remember how I said that, in here, desire could not find satisfaction, not if it slapped it in the face. That is true, not only of the dreamscape, but of equine life in general, a fact which actually has some pretty disturbing consequences, in my mind. I’m straying, however. The point is that, after Fluttershy’s treatment, collapsing in exhaustion was a duty, not a logical consequence. My boner was still evident though, which Fluttershy pointed out.
“I want you to mount me,” she said with the sultriest voice you can imagine. “Hard.”
There was no question of disobeying. In a moment I found myself leaning over Fluttershy, her rear exposed to me in all its feminine splendour. Her entrance was wet enough to dribble juices all over the cloud we were standing on, which countered my lack of experience on this side of penetration. I slid inside her like in a dream, eliciting a shrill moan from her. At first a doubt gnawed me: how were you actually supposed to use this thing? My worries turned out to be in vain, for even if my mind could not find a way, my body did. My hips moved as if they had a will of their own, and soon I found a nice, steady rhythm to pound the little butterfly under me.
She groaned in enthusiasm, begging me to go harder, then slower, then harder again. I followed her wishes as best as I could, but in the end I don’t think it really mattered how successful I was. She was trapped in euphoria, and nothing in the world could have diminished her pleasure. Once or twice she called me “Thunderlane”, although at the time I couldn’t have cared less. The blowjob had left me wanting a more active role, and this was it. This was all I could have ever wanted. Each thrust was heavenly, only matched by the craving created by the withdrawing. At some point her front legs buckled, allowing me to press even deeper. Near the end, neither of us were really conscious.
Except that there was no end, not really. That was the problem, one which I could see even if Fluttershy couldn’t. My presence in the dream had stretched its natural boundaries, allowing us to shape it almost consciously. That is another terrible aspect of desire: the worst that could ever happen to it is for it to come true. There is no real comparison to make sense of what that would actually mean, but the following gets pretty close: imagine infinity. Now imagine an itch which you can never completely scratch away. Now combine the two, if you dare.
Fluttershy could not have ended the dream that she had started, just like she could not stop trying to scratch the itch, not if it meant tearing all the way to the bone. It was not her fault, but of her race’s. It is the fate of equinity to have been blessed with desires they can never satisfy, for in the end they do not even know what it exactly is they desire. Some find this sad, others don’t. I myself try not to think about it too much.
Fluttershy could not have ended her dream. Eventually her real body would have withered away, but still she would have dreamed on. I did not see it fit to simply end the dream, however. A more subtle closure was required, I felt, after what we had shared together. So, little by little, I removed myself from her dream, letting the natural state step in once more. The change was not visible so much in the environment as in Fluttershy herself, who, even as I kept on pounding her from behind, began losing focus. She started talking more about this Thunderlane, saying things I don’t see fit to repeat here. Finally, as I pulled out of her, she settled peacefully on the cloud, eyelids blinking lazily. My body returned to its normal self, giving room for the dream me to return. For the rest of the night, Fluttershy would have no dreams, and when she would wake up, she wouldn’t remember having any in the first place.
Before I could leave, a barely audible whisper stopped me. A call. I was amazed that Fluttershy could have managed that, in the state she was. Curious, I leaned over her, listening what the little butterfly had to say.
“You’re going already?” she said. Her lips hardly moved.
“It is my time,” I said.
She paused. “Will I… remember?”
I didn’t answer at once. There was tension in her voice, but not caused by shame nor regret. You might almost have called it sadness.
“Do you want to?” I asked.
Another pause. “Maybe… maybe… the kiss… Can I keep the kiss?”
I stared at her. A dream of a butterfly – a force strong enough to touch the moon.
There was a kiss.
In what concerns endings, I’ve seen worse.
***
In Luna’s study, the diary stood on the podium, opened from the middle. Pure sunshine flooded the room, dispelling all but he most persistent of shadows. The tallest one of them covered the pages. No matter how high the sun climbs, it can never cross its own shadow.
“And such dreams she has, the little butterfly of mine,” read Celestia under her breath. A small smile appeared on her lips. Despite what Luna herself had said, not all her poetic aspirations found their demise in the back of drawers, it seemed. That was one of the less conspicuous lessons Celestia had learned from the night’s entry. They would have a long talk, come the next twilight, she decided. Long and thorough.
As she closed the diary, a small note peeking from under it caught her attention. She picked it up and read the few lines of Luna’s unmistakable hoofwriting.
NOTE TO SELF. I’ve gone it over a dozen times by now, by I can’t figure out how Fluttershy could tell the difference between the dream me and the real me. My magic was impeccable, my guise perfect. Fluttershy is not even a unicorn, for midnight’s sake!
Could it be that I wanted her to recognize me?
Because it’s only through a faked accident that I dare to approach another pony?
Celestia stared at the note for a few minutes, then put it exactly back where she had taken it from. She would indeed have a talk with Luna. But perhaps a somewhat different from what she had first anticipated.
For one, there would be tea and cake. Lots of cake.
