Princess Luna, Mare of the Night, Guardian of Dreams, Shaper of the Night Sky, rarely dreamed her own dreams.
For one thing, she and her sister rarely slept as other ponies did. Long ago, afraid of failing in their duties while asleep, they'd learned to rest their vast and complex minds mostly in parts. Celestia's highest cognitive functions took a break while she enjoyed her long evening meal. The part of Luna's mind that could feel boredom cleaned house while she was attending court. And so on. Neither sister spent more than an hour each day or night truly unconscious.
And, of course, in Luna's case, Equestria's dreams were hers as well. In the short time since she'd come to herself from the Nightmare's grip, she'd shared the sleepy wanderings of countless mares, stallions, fillies, and colts. She knew, and took some pride in knowing, that the lives of her subjects were better for her efforts.
Tonight, though, for the first time since her return, she felt herself falling into a dream that was hers alone. She barely remembered the last time it had happened, a thousand years of imprisoned rage ago, but now as she lay in her royal chambers and felt all the layers of her immortal consciousness shutting down, she was seized by how complete the wave of dreaming coming on her felt. Inevitably her eyes closed...
New eyes opened on a hairless pink face, grinning and cooing. It looked like nothing Luna had ever seen, somehow far more detailed. But that part of her was fading into the dream-consciousness, and the rest of her was screaming "mommy". Then her memory of Luna was gone entirely. Several months later - and oh the months felt long! - she realized, quite unexpectedly, that her name was Serena.
Serena grew up in rural New England in the heady later days of the twentieth century. Her early years were the eighties, full of fear and hope in a clashing neon package. She loved to watch the stars at night, and sometimes when she stood beneath them she could almost feel wings upon her back, flapping in the night breeze. But she could never explain it, and no part of her mind brought up Princesses or colorful equines.
She was in middle school when the wall fell, just when she started to think about global issues. It was the first time she felt like the world had shifted beneath her, just as she was getting her footing. It wouldn't be the last. High school came not long after, and she felt that only the stars would ever make sense again, predictably distant and beautiful.
She'd never been great at connecting, despite her parents' best efforts. Something always seemed distant about her, and she unconsciously drove other children away. In high school, she became beautiful, but no more outgoing. She became known as the weird girl, shunned to her face even as her classmates fantasized about being the one to come to understand her.
She took refuge in the sky, and in her studies. She learned astronomy and math, and became taken with the idea of finding and naming a comet or asteroid. This search brought her to the nascent Internet, and her chances of being driven to learn to interact with her peers in person were lost.
Still, her dedication to her studies served her well, and she applied to and was accepted to a prestigious college. Majoring in astronomy, she found herself connecting better there, and gradually formed a group of friends. She remained painfully shy, and seemed apart, but they met up every week for Dungeons and Dragons, and though eventually she found she preferred games set in space, she made every meeting.
As the end of the millennium approached, it found Serena in graduate school. Astronomy, of course. Her gaming group was different, and her PhD studies were more focused, but her life was nearly the same. Still she felt like she drifted, as if almost nothing kept her tied to earth. James, from her gaming group, helped her update her computer's BIOS to avoid the dreaded Y2K bug. He was handsome, in a tall, lean way, and she felt that it would only be appropriate to party like it was 1999. They drank classier beer, because they weren't in college anymore, and after several, she asked him to take her virginity over the desk while the progress bar slowly ticked up on the monitor next to her head. She never had much interest in dating him, and wasn't adept enough to keep his friendship in the fallout. She didn't need to keep his baby, either, but she decided to anyway. She told herself she wasn't comfortable aborting, and it was true, but she knew some part of her hoped that having another person depending on her would make her feel more at home beneath the stars.
As it turned out, it did. The years flew by faster and faster. After finishing her doctorate, she got a job teaching at her old college. Young Sarah consumed the time the job didn't, and she was happy for it. Sarah grew like a weed, the clever, withdrawn child of a clever, withdrawn mother. She only seemed to connect well with the boy next door, Aaron. Well, Serena thought, it was one better than she'd done. And so she settled into life.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, she was tenured, and Sarah was nearly finished with high school, applying to colleges herself. To Serena, it seemed absurdly strange, like her daughter's whole life had passed her in an instant. Her own teen years and before had seemed endless, but now she could still remember the pains of labor, and the sight of her daughter, now a woman in her own right, in swaddling clothes. Her sense of being unattached only increased, and she felt, every time she looked at her telescope, great wings straining to pull her from the very Earth.
On a fall Sunday like any other, Serena called out to her daughter that she was going shopping. She grabbed her keys and wallet, opened the door, and Princess Luna woke up.
"Oh my," she said to herself, shaking her wings, still remembering the whole dream as vividly as she'd felt it, "I wonder what I'd have told myself about that one."
"Look at Kelly," Sarah rolled her eyes at Aaron, gesturing to the pretty brunette across the lunchroom. "How does she have time for all those paintings in the art show? I know her parents have her applying to all the Ivies, plus Swarthore, Amherst, Williams...I barely have time to sleep, and I'm only going for three schools!"
Aaron shrugged, and scrunched his face a little. "Not like extracurriculars don't matter. And who knows? Maybe she's tanking 'em. I heard she'd rather go to art school." He leaned back in the plastic chair and narrowed his eyes at her. "But come on Sere, idle gossip? Since when do you care about where Kelly's going? Are you so stressed it's all you can think of?"
Sarah looked down at her plate and poked at her half-eaten lunch with her fork. Aaron sat up again and stared at her, saying nothing.
"I don't know where mom is," she said finally, keeping her voice as low as possible.
"What?"
"She said she was going out shopping yesterday afternoon. But she wasn't back by dinner time, and when I went out to look, the car was still in the drive."
"What the hell, Sere! Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell the police?!"
She shrugged and poked her food again. "I figured she came back and walked to campus, and I just missed her. I was pretty distracted by my application. And then this morning...I dunno, I didn't know, like, what can you do? And the police can't do anything for twenty-four hours, right?"
"I guess. So you're gonna call them after school? If she's not back?"
Sarah shook her head slowly. "I dunno. What if they took me away? I mean, sure, I'm eighteen but I don't own the house, and it's not paid down or anything. What if the bank takes it away?"
Aaron sighed. "Come on, you have to call them. I know it's scary, but what if she's in trouble?"
"I dunno, A. What if --" Sarah was cut off by the bell summoning them back to class.
"Okay, look, I'm sorry," Aaron gave her a hug as they stood, "this is crazy and it sucks. I'll come over right after school, alright? We can call together. But let's get to class."
Sarah nodded, returning the hug tightly, and hurried off to class.
There was no sign of Sarah's mother when she and Aaron walked in that afternoon, nor any evidence she'd been there. Sarah's stomach, already tense, felt like it must have fallen out of her body on to the floor.
"This is fucked up, Sere," Aaron said, "you really need to call the police."
She looked over at her oldest and only friend. She sighed but nodded. "I know." She pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened the phone app, but found herself just staring at it. Aaron moved up behind her.
"Want me to dial?"
Sarah felt like dialing would make it real. She desperately wanted to agree and have him do it. But she made herself shake her head. (Funny, she thought, to force something so natural.)
"I'll do it," she said, and slowly did so. Aaron took her hand, and she felt herself blushing, though she knew it was just friendly comfort.
She tried her best not to sound like a scared kid on the line, she really did. She thought she might have managed to sound a whole twelve years old, which she thought was a victory. The police came by, looked around, and said they'd put out a bulletin. They also told her, no doubt trying to be comforting, that the small town hadn't had a real kidnapping ever, and that in cases like this it was almost always a misunderstanding.
She was not particularly comforted.
Aaron stayed with her after the police left, by which point it was almost dinner time.
"You wanna stay at my place? I'm sure my folks wouldn't mind."
Sarah shook her head. "I wanna be here if she comes back."
Aaron took out his phone and sent a text. "Okay, then I'm staying too. Pizza?"
She managed a little smile. "Sure."
She was too worried to do anything requiring thought, even homework, and Aaron seemed to realize it. They flopped down on the couch and Sarah turned on the TV and brought up Netflix. They were in the middle of the run of some forgettable supernatural teenage drama; it had seriously jumped the shark after the second season, but they felt invested, and besides, she was in no state to think of alternatives. They watched in companionable silence and ate their pizza, Aaron's hand still on hers. Partway through the third episode, she noticed he'd fallen asleep.
Sarah had a rich fantasy life. For years, probably unsurprisingly, she'd been attracted to her friend. But he was far more confident romantically, and always seemed to be dating some girl or other. She'd long ago convinced herself he couldn't be interested in her that way. But between his hand in hers, and the intentionally charged show on the screen, she found herself imagining waking him with a kiss, or a flirty touch. She imagined taking comfort in his arms, wondered if it would distract her enough to remove the part at the back of her brain that was constantly hoping for the sound of the front door being unlocked, or her phone ringing.
Sighing, she gently removed her hand from his instead, and stopped the show. She didn't need this now, not now that she was effectively alone. She wanted something familiar and comforting to distract her. Maybe she'd be able to sleep herself; she'd barely done so the night before, and all she wanted was to pass out until her mother returned, and stopped the horrible worry wrapped around her spine.
Sighing, she queued up Friendship is Magic and set it to play the whole thing. She hoped the happier world would settle her mind enough to sleep, and curled up on the couch, just letting her head touch Aaron's hand.
As it turned out, it did, and not long into the third episode, she was fast asleep.
Sarah could tell immediately that her choice of viewing had influenced her dream. She was surrounded by cartoon trees, looking identical to the show - solid colors with whimsical detail lines. All around her, pony foals frolicked, also looking exactly as they did in the show, though slightly less flat, like her brain was filling in a true third dimension rather than the animation profiles. In front of her, white picket fences converged on what she recognized after a moment as the Ponyville schoolhouse. The whole scene looked almost, but not quite, exactly as it did in the show; it was just filled out enough to let her brain process depth correctly. She found it mostly charming, but the way the angles worked was also slightly creepy.
Well, she thought, I've figured out it's a dream, so I can do whatever I want! Time to alicorn princess it up! Expectantly she looked down at herself, expecting to see the powerful form of a princess. Instead, she saw the lavender coat, blank flank, and blonde tail of one of the background foals. She searched her head; she'd never been totally up on the names for these ponies. Dinky Hooves? That sounded right.
She blinked in confusion, and then did so again at the prosaic and convincing feeling of her eyelids moving. A breeze played over her coat, causing a little tuft of fur to briefly animate on it. Despite the ridiculous visual, it felt normal, or at least as normal as being so furry could be. She didn't think she'd felt that kind of sensation in a dream before.
A noise from in front of her caught her attention, and she turned to look. There was a dark-maned pale gray pegasus colt in front of her, glancing around wide-eyed.
"What's wrong..." she dredged up the name, "...Rumble?"
"My name's not Rumble," he said, "it's Aaron. Where am I?"
"Aaron? Aaron Hansis?"
He nodded. "How'd you know? And why'd you call me Rumble?"
"It's Sarah! Why are you in my dream?"
"Why are you in mine?"
The cartoon sun beat down on Sarah's cartoon coat. The heat felt utterly, convincingly real. Another breeze kicked up, and she felt the hairs in her fur register it washing over them, even though she couldn't see them at all on her solid-colored blob of a body. She saw the simple lines indicating Aaron's moving as well, and he stared at them.
"This is the least most realistic dream I've ever had," Aaron said.
Sarah looked around. Nothing was blurry or indistinct: there were none of the unfilled areas she always realized in retrospect were present in her dreams. She realized they were always present, come to that. Other foals played in the schoolyard, and the trees blocked the horizon in all directions save one, where she could see cartoon buildings crowding the flat blue sky and, in the distance, Canterlot on its mountain.
"I don't think we're dreaming," she said slowly.
He swallowed. "Shit. What are we going to do? I don't even know anything about this show." His wings flapped, seemingly subconsciously, with his agitation. Sarah thought it was adorable, but kept it to herself. "And how does this even work? We're all cartoony! Was there something in that pizza?"
Sarah was wondering something similar herself. She'd never been this lucid or keenly aware of a dream, but she had no idea what else could be happening. Her thoughts swirled, and every time she thought she had it figured out, she realized that there was no way to be sure. Of course she'd heard about "lucid dreaming" - that if you realized you were dreaming you could take control - but she'd never cared enough to do the research and figure out if it was true, and now she was kicking herself for it. Before she could descend too far into solipsism, she noticed Aaron - Rumble? - gazing at her expectantly, and realized she'd left his question hanging.
"Look," she sighed, "I've got no idea if this is real or you are or whatever. But either we wake up and it doesn't matter, or it's as real as this," she gestured at the cartoon world, "can be, so we might as well act like we're really here." She remembered his initial question. "Oh, and I guess you don't know the show. Rumble is your name. Well, the character you're standing in for's name. Mine is Dinky." She gazed around the schoolyard naming all the fillies and colts she could remember, which was most of them.
The simple activity seemed to calm him down, and his wings settled. "Right. What do we do now, then?"
The heavy ringing of a bell came from the nearby schoolhouse, and the other fillies and colts started ambling towards the door, though not with any more enthusiasm than Sarah had seen in their human equivalents.
"I guess we go to school," she said, and started walking. "The teacher's Ms. Cheerilee. Let's meet up after and we'll figure it out."
Sarah and Aaron, or Dinky and Rumble, were in the oldest group of foals in the school, along with Snips and Snails, the Cutie Mark Crusaders and their rivals, and a few others. This seemed to be roughly similar to their status as seniors in high school on Earth, since everyone seemed to feel they were on the verge of adulthood. As such, Cheerilee mostly left them alone with their assignments, and went to talk to the younger foals.
The presence of their peers more or less stopped Aaron and Sarah from using the time to talk, but at least saved her from having to talk to any of the other ponies either. Instead she focused on her work, which for the most part she couldn't make heads or tails of. There were some math problems - which were far easier than what she was used to, just some simple algebra and geometry - but even with her knowledge of the show, she couldn't make any headway on the history essay. And her own special book, which she'd found in her bag - Beginning Spellcraft - might as well have been written in Sumerian for all she understood what it was trying to get her to do with her horn. She realized right after opening it that she'd removed it from the bag and opened the cover with her magic, but it was just like moving her arms - she had no idea how she was getting it to do what she wanted it to. Not long in, she gave it up as a bad job, and focused on the math.
Cheerilee was close enough by that every...pony worked in silence. The hours stretched on, the sheer detailed boredom increasingly convincing Sarah that this couldn't be a dream. She finished her math homework and went on in the book just to have something to do. Finally the bell rang.
"Alright, everypony," Cheerilee's tone matched her name, though it only seemed to twist the knife in Sarah's acute boredom. "Have a good weekend! And girls," she lowered her voice as she passed the Crusaders, who were sitting directly in front of Sarah, "don't forget you each need to do an essay on the legal uses of love and other emotion potions."
"Yes Ms. Cheerilee," they said in unison, "we're sorry."
"I know you are," Cheerilee smiled at them. "But those are important laws, and you're just a mark away from being legally responsible. You could get in real trouble if you don't learn this!"
Well, Sarah thought to herself, at least I know where we are in the show's run.
As soon as Cheerilee moved on, Sarah gathered her books up to leave. Her awareness that she was using magic didn't seem to be doing her skill any favors; she nearly dropped the book as she focused on it. She managed it, though, and soon trotted out of the schoolhouse. Aaron was waiting outside, just next to the fence. A few knots of other foals were hanging around, chatting idly, including the Crusaders.
"Hey," she said quietly, approaching him.
"That was weird," he said. "I couldn't do anything but the math! I thought I'd be okay on the Mechanics of Pegasus Flight book but it had all these weird symbols mixed in with the aerodynamics, and there's no way these wings should do anything."
"That must be how they convey magic stuff, I had a unicorn book full of it," Sarah sighed, hats, wands, hearts, horseshoes, and stuff. But this just feels, well, not exactly more real, but less like a dream. I think we really are in the show, somehow."
"Yeah," Aaron said, "and I had a thought in class: do you think our bodies are still on the couch asleep? Or do you think maybe we...disappeared?"
"You mean...like mom? Maybe she's here too?"
"Could be, right?"
"If she is, we've gotta find her!"
"Did your mom wander off again, Dinky?"
"What?" Sarah tried to spin around, but apparently didn't have quite all the instincts for her four-legged body, and ended up falling over, tangled up in her legs. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were behind her; she was pretty sure Sweetie Belle had been the one to ask.
"We heard y'all talking about your mom," Apple Bloom said, reaching a leg down to help her up, though she wasn't sure how it was supposed to do that. "Is she missing again? I remember last time she wandered off for a bit."
"Oh, uh, I don't think so, we were, uh..." Sarah's mind raced trying to think of what to say. Aaron walked forward and whispered in her ear.
"Why don't we just tell them?"
She thought about it. On the one hand, she was pretty sure weirder things had happened to the Crusaders. On the other hand, she suspected the truth might lead to some unwelcome attention, particularly from one Twilight Sparkle. She shook her head at Aaron. Unfortunately she had no idea what to say instead.
"Well, uh," Aaron said, "we think it's okay, but her mom wasn't around this morning, so she's a little worried you're right. No big deal."
"Oh, we'll totally help you look," Scootaloo said, "maybe we'll get our cutie marks!"
"Cutie Mark Crusader Parent Finders, YAY!" All three dashed off down the road.
"Well," Aaron said as they ran after them, "at least we don't have to try to figure out where you live. Unless you know your way around?"
Sarah thought for a moment, but realized the show never made much clear about Ponyville's practical geography. The major buildings, like Sugarcube Corner or the Town Hall, seemed like they should be easy to find, but she had no idea what Dinky's house even looked like.
"Not really," she said.
They hurried after the Crusaders. The town passing by looked increasingly strange. Like everything, it was obtrusively unreal looking - all solid colors with simple detail lines. The shadows were similarly cartoony, making her feel slightly dizzy as they hurried along, her brain registering the disconnect between the depth conveyed by the motion, and the lack of depth implied by the simple shadows. She shook her head trying to clear it.
"This is really weird," Aaron said. She nodded at him.
"I hope Mom is here."
"Maybe we'll get lucky, and she became your pony's mom."
"Then I guess all we'll have to worry about is getting home."
Aaron lapsed into silence, and Sarah realized she'd once again exercised her talent for killing a conversation. She sighed. Ahead, the Crusaders came to a stop in front of a seemingly unremarkable thatched-roof cottage. In the flower-filled front yard, Sarah recognized the controversial pegasus with the bubble cutie mark, cheerfully weeding. She thought the show had finally decided her name was Muffin.
"Awww," Scootaloo said, "she's right there. She doesn't need finding at all!"
"We shouldn't be disappointed that Dinky's mom isn't missing," Sweetie said.
"I guess," Scootaloo said, "but how are we gonna get our cutie marks now?"
As the three fillies wandered off, Dinky's mom looked up and waved with a cross-eyed smile. At least I can just call her mom until I figure out which name they're using here, Sarah thought.
"Well, let's hope," Aaron said, and they walked down towards the house.