Tantabus
And now the dream has ended
And Luna the princess said, "I do."
And I answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?
Then I ascended from the skies of Equestria and all the ponies tried to stop me. And I reached the horizon to stand upon the world beyond.
And facing the ponies again, I raised my voice and said:
Ponies of Ponyville, the dream bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the dream, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while Equestria sleeps I travel.
I am the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in my ripeness and my fullness of heart that we are given to the nightmare and are scattered.
Brief were my nights among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.
But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,
And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Now, I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek her understanding.
And not in vain will I seek.
If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.
I go with the dream, ponies of Ponyville, but not down into nothingness;
And if this night is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another night. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.
The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.
And not unlike the mist have I been.
In the stillness of the night I have walked in her streets, and my magic has entered your houses,
And her heart-beats were in my heart, and her breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.
Yes, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your nightmares were my dreams.
And oftentimes I was among her a lake among the mountains.
I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires.
And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers.
And when they reached my depth the streams and the rivers ceased not yet to sing.
But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.
It was boundless in Luna;
The vast mares in whom you are all but cells and sinews;
She in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.
It is in the vast of ponies that you are vast,
And in beholding her that I beheld you and loved you.
For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast dream?
What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast mare in you.
Her mind binds you to Equestria, her fragrance lifts you into space, and in her durability you are deathless.
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistency.
Yes, you ponies are like an ocean,
And though the heavy-grounded rift await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.
And like the seasons you are also,
And though in winter you deny your spring,
Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended.
Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other, "Celestia praised us well. She saw but the good in us."
I only speak to you in mind of that which you yourselves don't know in thought.
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays,
And of the ancient days when Equestria knew not us nor herself,
And of nights when Equestria was up wrought with chaos,
Wise ponies have come to you to give you of their wisdom. I came to take of your wisdom:
And behold I have found that which is greater than wisdom.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself,
While you, heedless its expansion, bewail the withering of your nights.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
There are no graves here.
These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone.
Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your fillies dancing hoof in hoof.
Verily you often make merry without knowing.
Others have come to you to whom for golden promises made unto your faith you have given but riches and power and glory.
Less than a promise have I given, and yet more destructive have you been to me.
You have given me deeper thirsting after life.
Surely there is no greater gift to a pony than that which turns all her aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.
And in this lies my honour and my reward, -
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
Some of you have deemed me deceitful and frightening to receive gifts.
To deceitful indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts.
And though I have eaten ponies dreams among the town when you would have had me sit at your forgotten memories,
And slept in the portico of the building where you would have gladly bucked me out,
Yet was it not my loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to your mouth and girdled your sleep with visions?
For this I bless you most:
You give much and know not that you gave me none.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to dust,
And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness,
And you have said, "She holds council with the trees of the forest, but not with us.
She sits alone in her broken throne and looks down upon our town."
True it is that I have climbed the castle and walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a great height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless she be far?
And others among you called unto me, not in words, and they said,
Stranger, stranger, lover of the night, why dwell you among the summits where owls build their nests?
Why seek you the unattainable?
What storms would you trap in your net,
And what nocturnal birds do you hunt in the dark?
Come and be one of us.
Descend and appease your hunger with our friendship and quench your thirst with our love."
In the solitude of their souls they said these things;
But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret of your joy and your pain,
And I hunted only your larger dreams that walk the night.
But the hunter was also the hunted:
For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own heart.
And the flier was also the creeper;
For when my wings were spread in the moon their shadow upon the earth was a turtle.
And I the believer was also the doubter;
For often have I put my hoof in my own wound that I might have the greater belief in you and the greater knowledge of you.
And it is with this belief and this knowledge that I say,
You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety,
But a thing free, a spirit that envelops Equestria and moves in the ether.
If this be vague words, then seek not to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end,
And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
This would I have you remember in remembering me:
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt that building your town and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those hoofs that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
After saying these things she looked about me, and she saw the rift upon the horizon standing by the sky and gazing now at its full size and now at the distance.
And I said:
Patient, over-patient, is the words of my sister.
The wind blows, and restless are the dreams;
Even the clouds begs direction;
Yet quietly my sister awaits my silence.
And these my nightmare, who have heard the choir of the greater dreams, they too have heard me patiently.
Now they shall wait no longer.
I am ready.
The mist has reached her body, and once more the great mother holds her daughter against her breast.
Fare you well, ponies of Ponyville.
This night has ended.
It is closing upon me even as the night wait upon its own tomorrow.
What was given me here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hoofs unto the giver.
Forget not that I shall not back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the dream, and another mare shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my lonesomeness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hoofs should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.
So saying she spoke the words that grasped my attention, and straightaway I weighed my form and cast the rift loose from its state, and they closed slowly.
And a cry came from Luna as from a single heart, and it rose the dusk and was carried out over her like a great trumpeting.
Only Ponyville was silent, gazing at my form until it had vanished into my creator.
And when all the ponies were dispersed she still stood alone upon the dreamworld, remembering in her heart I was saying,
"A little while, a moment of rest upon our dreams, and another mare shall bear me."
And now, morning has come
