Music for the Mare in the Moon
The Dreamscape never failed to awe Night Whisper. Equestria was beautiful through the gauzy haze that was the barrier between Reverie and the Wakeful World; what may in on one side be merely a tree could be wrapped in colors such as a pony would never see while awake, and its fruits could be but dazzling, dancing lights. Fields of churned earth become rows of painted glass (making her very grateful that she had wings), and an earth pony’s garden a small jungle alive with the sound of escaped, wild dreams.
Night Whisper avoided the daylight more than most nocturne pegasi, but from what she had seen her nation was beautiful enough on its more real half; but the otherworldly touch of Reverie made all the world into art.
And being art, there were of course some pieces meant to horrify and dismay.
The growling of the gaseous, ovoid thing was so deep her skull vibrated in response. The fledgling Nightmare lashed out with what a pony might generously term “arms”, but Night Whisper was no recruit to the dangers of delivering dreams.
Her wings flared wide to cut her speed, the clawed arms ripping pointlessly through the air inches ahead of her. Manipulating the phalanges of her wings with the precision only one of the nocturne could achieve, she burst near-instantly back to full speed, adroitly dropping below it to where she was, for a brief moment, free from the gaze of those malevolent yellow eyes.
And as simply as that, she was free. Such a young Nightmare wasn’t fast enough to keep up with a filly, let alone an experienced member of the Royal Dream Service. Small slivers of pain in her wings reminded her that age came hoof-in-hoof with experience, but loyalty didn’t have time to slow down.
After all, the night wouldn’t last forever, and ponies needed their dreams. The cornucopia full of music notes on each flank was a constant reminder of how much she could still do for others.
Night Whisper permitted herself a peek into her knapsack—
“—f course, Mr. Seed! How could I ever object to a stallion such as you seeking my daughter’s hoof? You have my blessi—”
—to ensure that her cargo was safe. Reassured that her maneuvers hadn’t knocked anything out of the bag and that they hadn’t been stained by the Nightmare, she steadied her flight as she sought her way out of the jungle that was some earth pony’s flower garden.
She didn’t pay attention to it, of course! That would have been a most foul violation of professionalism, one of the worst she could imagine. One got quite good at ignoring things in this job.
‘Even so… wow. That was one pretty mare.’
Night Whisper had too athletic a build to pull off that runway-model look. Her grey-purple coat was marred by the occasional scar, and half her left ear had been lost to a Nightmare years ago. And maybe the edges of her mane were more white than gold (not that she’d ever admit it).
But she had a special somepony to fall asleep alongside come the dawn and she found pride in every ‘flaw’ in her body, so Night had all the beauty she needed.
The flower-trees that towered hundreds of hooves into the air slowly grew less dense as she reached the edge of this little pocket of dream-space, until they finally disappeared entirely. It took five steps to cross from quaint little Ponyville to Brayzil, and an hour’s walk just to get a rough map of a tiny hamlet within.
‘Thirty ponies at most… time to get to work! Hopefully this won’t take all night.’
Time was a tricky thing in dreams.
She nosed around the edge of the buildings to find a way in. Nopony liked to go straight through a wall, even if it wouldn’t leave any lasting marks. She could do quite happily without non-existent bruises that still hurt.
Windows left barely cracked open were carefully pulled wide to allow for her entry. She slipped down chimney shafts and carefully slid the tips of her thin wings along the edge of doors to under the latches keeping her out. It took little time or effort with all the experience she had garnered in breaking and entering, and she easily brought the dreams to their rightful recipients.
The last house was less accommodating. At two stories it was easily the largest building there, and was securely locked—which, unfortunately, included having a chimney flue. She hummed a wordless tune as she made her third pass around the house. It was sealed up pretty tightly, but…
A sigh fell past her lips. Time to use the dog door. Again.
It was times like this that made her wish she had learned dreamsculpting. But she could only weave the unshaped, not change dream-stuff that already had form. She took a deep breath before kneeling to push through.
Of course, nopony less than a foal would fit through such a tiny entrance—but the self was more malleable than the rest of the world of dreams. But not so much so as to make wiggling through it an easy job for a full-grown mare.
If Night Whisper was so unlucky a pony as to be overheard by other ponies, she was certain they would have had the entirely wrong idea about just what she was doing. Going through such a tiny opening involved a great deal of moaning and panting and drawn-out groans that made her turn red to the tips of her ears at just the thought of being overheard.
Some fears never disappeared, she supposed. Maybe that was why Nightmares were so hard to drive away.
Night shook her head to dispel her worries and useless insecurities. Now inside the house, she looked around to see if anypony was there. Thankfully, she found no signs of the residents being awake. Sitting around waiting for somepony to go to sleep was boring and could take forever. She sighed in happy relief and started trotting carefully upstairs, avoiding some pet toys in the way. The little things were like traps specifically designed for a pony’s hooves. ‘Dogs…’ Night rolled her eyes. She hated dogs.
But she needed to focus, and with a sharp shake of her head Night stopped thinking about other, less important matters. She found pride in her professionalism, and some stupid mutt wasn’t going to interfere with that.
As Night got upstairs, she saw a simple hall with a cracked-open window in the end of it. She cursed herself internally for not seeing it before and going through the dog door. Windows were easy to force open if there was even a small gap. She did so now, inserting the narrow tips of her wings between window and windowsill before pulling it up. There was no way she was going back through that dog door if there was such a convenient exit right here!
She trotted into one of the rooms slowly, trying to not awake the little filly lying in there.
Not that the filly would see Night Whisper, but foals had an uncanny ability to sense their presence in the World of Dreams. Their own fear could turn a perfectly good dream into something darker.
Before she could do anything else, the mare heard something. She frowned; it was like a small wing-beat, but this house had no birds and the homeowners weren’t pegasi. She turned back as she heard it come again from the hall. This prompted her to carefully draw out of the room to investigate, crouching low to the floor.
Tense muscles readied to launch her into motion the moment she spotted danger. It could be anything from a harmless dream-mite to a Nightmare, but it wasn’t something she could leave uninvestigated.
She was instead met with the surprising sight of a Messenger of the Night
The Messengers were rare — only appearing in the most important of situations, such as when nightmares (or worse yet, Nightmares) infected the dreams of ponies of great significance or when their mistress wanted to recruit ponies for the elite Dream Guard. They could appear in many ways: Deers, Birds, Bats, or even other Ponies. This one was an Owl (never to be confused with the wholly different Bird Messengers! The definitions of the World of the Waking were of little import to entities such as they).
But for all the pride they found in their forms, their bodies were but a single step more solid than illusions. They were formed from blue astral dust to allow them to do things normal beings couldn’t, even by the standards of the Dreamscape.
They were only created for this: delivering important messages.
Night widened her eyes in the moment she saw the Owl. She had never received a Messenger of the Night, even though she was a veteran—the vast majority of ponies who had been in the business for longer than she would say the same. “What is this about?” she whispered in her soft, raspy voice.
As it was with all pony parents, Night Whisper’s mother had chosen her name well.
The Messenger looked at her with the curiosity that seemed to be inherent in every Owl and owl’s gaze. “Important affairs. A special delivery, if you will, and a very risky one,” the magical creature began, looking at Night with narrowed eyes, silently judging her. It sounded like somepony was trying to speak through a birdwhistle.
Special?! Night’s eyes lit up and she felt an entirely unprofessional giggle well up in her throat, which she thankfully coughed in time not to ruin her image in front of the Messenger. “Well? Come out with it. I’m one of the best in the Service. I can handle danger.”
‘And I can definitely handle the salary bump I’m sure to get from this. Maybe even enough to cover that vacation to Prance?’
“Okay then, o’ brave little Night Whisper,” the Owl responded with a mocking and doubting chuckle. It paused for a while, staring at her without blinking. “But Her Majesty felt you were the pony to go to, and I must concede that it isn’t a Messenger’s place to suggest otherwise. I came here to deliver you the news that you’ve been chosen to deliver a dream.”
Night Whisper waited for the Owl to continue, but the Messenger seemed fine with leaving it at that. Her eye twitched as she ground out the question she shouldn’t have needed to ask. “And what, exactly, makes it so special and risky?”
“I haven’t finished yet!” the Owl exclaimed in a shocked voice as though she had interrupted it mid-sentence. Night rubbed at her temples with her hooves. She was beginning to understand why Owls had the worst reputation of all the Messengers of the Night. But as it continued into the message proper, its voice took on a grander tone.
“Nay, call it not special, for it is far beyond that! The location of your delivery is none other than the Moon!” exclaimed the supernatural animal with a dramatic wave towards the window. “And of course, there can only be one recipient out there.”
“The Princess.” She could barely breath out the words as she stared at the lunar orb that shone so clearly over Reverie.
“You will deliver this dream to Her Royal Highness Princess Luna, Guardian of Dreams, Goddess of the Moon, and our Princess of the Night. I’m certain that I don’t need to recount the danger of such a mission,” stated the Owl with a raised eyebrow. When she agreed, the facade of formality the annoying Messenger had donned fell away. “The dream you must deliver is already ready, but you still gotta treat it with care. It’ll be waiting for you back under the Canterhorn.”
As it finished its explanation, Night Whisper blinked her eyes rapidly while she struggled to process what she had just heard.
She wasn’t so presumptive as to have ever considered delivering a dream to a Princess, much less the Princess of Dreams. And going to the Moon for a dream was certainly something that had never crossed her mind! But the very idea of it was exciting, as though she were looking at what could very well be the pinnacle act of dream delivery.
She gulped. Even if it was dangerous, she loved her job. Night Whisper had flown through entire nests of Nightmares before for the sake of her duty, and went to work again the next night. She wanted to take this. But despite that…
Despite that, the thought of agreeing sent a chill down her spine that she had never known before.
But it wasn’t like she could refuse. Even if she had been far more frightened of going to the Moon and seeing the banished Princess… ponies didn’t refuse Messengers of the Night. It just wasn’t done.
To call it unprofessional was a gross understatement, for the Messengers were created and sent by Nyx, Goddess of the Night and mother of Princess Luna. They served as both her ears and eyes and could freely talk to her. Nyx was a good Goddess, but a harsh one, and disobedience would certainly cost her the job she loved.
So there really wasn’t a decision to make at all. She saluted. “Understood. I’ll get that dream to Her Highness before the first light of dawn. I won’t let you down!”
“Her Majesty is sure you won’t.” The Owl opened his wings to fly out of there, delaying only long enough for some parting words. “Good luck. You will need it.” With that, the magical animal leave the place.
Night observed the Owl fly away and disappear magically into the stars, where all the Messengers of the Night were created and could thus live forever. Night dragged her attention off the stars and stared for long minutes at the Moon.
The aubade pegasi had kept the sky perfectly clear that night, leaving not so much as a single cloud to block her view. The Moon shone brighter than it did on other nights, but the Mare in the Moon mark seemed darker than ever, like it was trying to call her by some method she didn’t dare to imagine.
She shuddered at the thought of that sickly stain on the beloved Moon’s face crooning temptations into the void between them. So disturbing was the idea that she could almost hear the voices.
She ignored them. Night Whisper had now a mission, and she wasn’t going to fail.
With the practiced movements of a long-time deliverymare she slipped the door to the master bedroom open just wide enough for her to make out the lone stallion within and tossed his dream at him. It was solid like a sphere of glass, but made of light and smoke and spinning, living colors.
She didn’t wait to see if the dream landed—of course it did—before spinning around to dart down the hall and out the window, not pausing as she let loose a dream onto the filly.
The family would wake with a restful night of deep sleep and happy dreams, and find a house absent of any signs of an intruder. For what could one in the Dreamscape affect save for the dream-self?
₪₪₪
It wasn’t easy to measure distance in the Dreamscape, neither by time nor space nor even the length of one’s own body. But, due perhaps to Nyx’s blessing, Night Whisper found herself back at the base of the Canterhorn in short time.
To Reverie, the mountain truly appeared to be a horn, massive and glistening with magic beyond measure in echo of the Princess who had made it home. But once she slipped into one of the cavern entrances it transformed, walls wavering before turning to normal, artificial structures, albeit formed of silver and glass and whispers.
An artist could work wonders in the Dreamscape, in the most literal of senses. Nothing was beyond their hooves. They could put every piece of their minds and heart in this. Every form of art was an essential part of Reverie—which was, in the end, the birthplace of every artist’s inspiration—but none were greater than dreamsculpting and dreamweaving.
These moderately-misnomered monikers often had nothing to do with actual sculpting or weaving at all. To sculpt in Reverie was to reshape the World of Dreams. To weave was to give shape to that which was yet shapeless. The specific medium used was secondary.
This was the part of her job Night Whisper loved the most (with ‘everything else’ being a close second). To weave up a dream and to know that somepony would enjoy the fruits of that labor… there was a reason that she preferred to wait and watch after she delivered a dream, on those few nights when she had the time to. It was true that the dreamer’s subconscious completed the dream, personalized it, but it was a sublime feeling to know that she played a part in that.
And it made the touch of Nightmares seem all the more a violation.
But she wasn’t here to create or to indulge her creativity, even if she loved it. No, she was there to go to the Moon, the easy way.
The World of Dreams’s bizarre nature made travel quicker—without fail, long distances would be passed in far less that in would normally take to travel such a distance. Nopony could really fly to the Moon, but the fluid form of the Dreamscape made such a journey possible. Even so, it would take far too long to make a trip unaided, even for the most talented traveler of dreams.
Night Whisper’s travel down the passage was interrupted by the appearance of a large and pearlescent gate. She didn’t slow her trot as she approached it, instead pulling her willpower to bear as she touched upon the innate magic that was the nocturne’s heritage.
The was an uncomfortable shifting sensation, as though her heart and soul suddenly slid in some strange direction, before the mists of Reverie faded away and she returned to the Waking Realm.
Where had once been barred gates was but an open door, simple and unostentatious in design. Much of the RDS’s headquarters in the real world was similar—it was infinitely cheaper to design in the Dreamscape, so they just stored their beauty there.
Ten feet later she found a stone wall, prompting her to return to Reverie to find a large opening in its place. Twice more she shifted as she passed through the barriers meant to deter anything not working for the Royal Dream Service from entering their center of operations, before she finally entered the main hall.
Great columns of glass and platinum reached up into the vaulted ceiling. Openings on and near the ceiling permitted a small procession of nocturne pegasi to fly from room to room and between floors, and even now a group flew upwards carrying a large casket full of dreams. The great walls were covered from floor to ceiling with artwork depicting the history of Equestria, from the earliest days they could remember to the present year.
Her hooves were almost silent as they trod upon the floor, which was covered in broad tiles in warm, welcoming colors. That was a very literal statement, and Night could feel the chill from her work being replaced by gentle warmth.
She paused upon arriving at the front desk. A pony she had never met before lay muzzle-down on paperwork, drawing out long, grating snores as she somehow slept with her face pressed against a stone desk. A multicolored cloud of gas and shards swirled above her head to show Night that she was snoozing on the job.
“No need, Mrs. Whisper,” came a soft voice from behind her before Night Whisper could shake the pony awake. She spun about, wings flared in preparation for flight. “Calm down, would you? There’s no reason to wake Fairy Lily. Poor mare just transferred in from the day shift.”
The instinctive wariness that she had wrapped around herself like a suit of armor vanished as she saw the pony who had approached her. She saluted. “Vice-Director Yucca. I assume you heard about my assignment?”
The older pony nodded. His coat was almost completely blue, and scruffier than one would imagine another pony’s to be. His short-cropped hair had long since gone as grey as his flower-outline cutie mark. “Of course. It will take a few more minutes before the harness is prepared, but we’re otherwise ready. The question is, are you?”
“Certainly, Vice-Director,” Night replied. Although quiet, she was nonetheless proud of the determination that snuck into her voice. “It isn’t every day that a pony gets the opportunity for such an important job.” Her posture slackened as she cast a dubious glance at the new mare. “Although… is it really alright for her to be sleeping at work like this?”
“No, no, it’s nothing to worry about,” Yucca responded with a laugh that showed the pounds he had put on since quitting delivery duty. “It’s alright to cut a pony some slack when the time calls for it. I don’t know who snuck a dream out to her, but it’s nothing worth punishing her for.”
Night frowned, but didn’t object. Wasn’t such laziness to be reprimanded?
‘Maybe I’m being too harsh. I suppose that not everypony can keep up with my work ethic. Celestia knows my special somepony can’t.’
She silently followed her superior deeper into the mountain, the halls passing by the numerous passages and rooms that were needed for the dream making and delivery processes. The most majestic and important of these was the Orchard, a vast field of tilled dreams that stretched out to cover a larger space than the entire base of the Canterhorn.
As always, the beauty of it pulled at Night Whisper’s attention. She kept following Yucca along the elevated path over the fields, but her eyes weren’t focused on the older nocturne. Bizarre plants that had no analogue in the Waking World grew within, glowing as though they were but glass structures filled with a multitude of incandescent gases. Large fruits were located in high boughs or in vines that hugged the ground, each shining like a small star.
She could make out the movement of her fellow nocturne moving amongst the plants. The fruits were too tough to simply tear from the tree/shrub/vines, but a nocturne’s fangs were perfectly suited to cutting them free of the plants. Some were without fruit, so were instead scraped down to the core for the dream-fibers that composed the plant. The harvests were gathered and carried off in large bundles.
Their path ended in a large, mostly-empty room. The center was dominated by a map carved into a platform standing a good three feet above the floor—one of the most important tools for the Royal Dream Service, it showed every single place in Equestria and beyond.
A pair of her coworkers flew down into the room with a large chest held between them. After carefully unlocking it, they pulled out the harness within.
Calling it merely a ‘harness’ didn’t do the device justice. It was woven of dreamstuff and looked like somepony had infused cloth with the night sky to give it the appearance of liquid. Despite that, she could make out where the fabric folded around the armor plates within.
The sheer amount of enchantments layered over the object was staggering. But nothing provided safer or quicker travel through the Dreamscape than the harness.
It felt unusual as they slipped it onto her frame—she had worn it once before, but it hadn’t prepared her to once more feel the strange sensation in the least. Night shuffled under its admittedly light weight to get rid of what discomfort she could.
Yucca reached into the chest again to pull out a glass sphere. It caught Night Whisper’s eye immediately; where a normal dream was but a hoof-sized glass ball that glowed with lights, this one was so intense that it more closely resembled a small sun. Its spherical shape told her that it was an artificial dream, not one of the dream-fruits.
“The weaver who worked on that really outdid himself. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Yucca shook his head. “Not ‘he’, Mrs. Whisper. This dream and its song-seed were crafted by Princess Celestia’s own hooves.”
‘I know alicorns are meant to show aspects of all races of pony, but it’s bizarre to think of the Princess of the Sun having any degree of power over dreams.’ But there was the proof.
Wait. “What do you mean? Nopony can just make a song-seed. Tartarus’s pits, we don’t even know how they get into dreams in the first place, much less how to create them ourselves!”
One of the assistants looked at her like she asked a stupid question (which she had). “It’s the Princess.”
It was all the answer her question needed.
Yucca carefully latched the glowing orb onto her harness, the thick straps reducing its brilliant shine to a mercifully dim glow. A nocturne’s eyes were ill-suited to brightness.
“Are you…” The stallion swallowed. “Are you sure you’re prepared for this? Not everypony has made it back from these missions. I’d love not to have to write another letter telling somepony that they’ve just been widowed.”
Night Whisper gave herself a final shake to ensure that her ensemble had settled properly, before turning to the map. Faint lights could be seen running across the breadth of Equestria and beyond, forming veins of phantasmal colors that made the land look alive with the travels of dream-bearing nocturne.
Hovering around the edges of the great map floated a multitude of spheres, uniformly colored a shade of azure reminiscent of the dark blue that grew in the sky with the end of day. They would gently float around any motion, but close examination would show their eager, jittery trembles. How something without a mind or face could look eager, Night didn’t know, but the little motes of stardust certainly did.
She raised a hoof above the depiction of Equestria, into the ‘sky’, until her hoof brushed against the illusory replica of the Moon. It was funny how the mark of Nightmare Moon wasn’t there, Night guessed it only existed due to magic, to intimidate and say that one night she would return and bring about eternal night. Did the map show the true nature of the Moon, or did it just not recognize whatever caused the filthy stain covering the Moon?
She wouldn’t allow fear to keep her from flying up there and delivering that dream. Because this was for Princess Luna, the nocturne’s beloved Princess of the Night, and she wasn’t going to fail her. Not tonight, nor any other.
“You don’t have to worry about that, sir. I’ve got plenty of years left in me.” She reached out and snagged a wingful of the tiny stars. “Just make sure I get a raise for this, alright?”
And with that she left.
₪₪₪
The Moon was a long, long ways away, but she was prepared to reach it. As soon as she exited the Canterhorn she let loose her wing of stars. They briefly flurried around her body—well, around the harness—with particular attention given to the dream she guarded. Then the little orbs floated up into the sky.
Tension rung through her legs when Night crouched. She licked her suddenly-dry lips as she stared up at the feared and beloved Moon. And then, with a deep breath, she launched herself towards it.
“—Lullay Moon Princess, goodnight sister mine
Rest now in moonlight’s embrace—”
The blue stars showed her the way, and she moved eternally to stay within the closest edge of the swiftly-moving patch as it shifted direction. Even the most experienced nocturne couldn’t truly know distance and direction in the realm of dreams. The most direct route wasn’t necessarily the shortest, neither in time nor distance. These blue stars guided the nocturnes when in far-reaching missions, making sure that they wouldn’t get lost in the way to and from their target and ensuring the swiftest travel.
Shorter mission didn’t require such a thing, but nopony would be foolish enough to go on a delivery far beyond the borders of Equestria without one—and there wasn’t much farther from Equestria than the Moon.
So she followed her stars without noise, her wingbeats soft against the night air and her exhalations empty of the exhaustion a less fit pony might have felt by this point in the night. The little star path remade itself, making way into space and the Moon.
“—Bear up my lullaby, winds of the earth
Through cloud and through sky and through space—”
Due to the strong magical forces there in the Dreamscape, even in the void Night remained capable of breathing, and her wings had no need for air to permit her movement. She couldn’t say how long she traveled; for all her experience in Reverie, the sheer endless emptiness was alien, and it felt like time slipped away when she didn’t focus on it.
Be it swiftly or slowly, the visage of the Mare in the Moon grew, and with it did Night’s apprehension. No nocturne pegasus looked at the sky with ease. Most avoided it entirely, and it was all too easy to see why.
It wasn’t by mistake that the dark taint on the Moon was portrayed in art more malevolently than it already appeared. The hideous mar on its surface looked less like scarring than it did some manner of rot.
Night felt surges of dizziness as it increased in size. She had called them dark, but the head-shaped mass of splotches couldn’t be described so casually. The word failed to encompass their oppressive bearing or the way the image seemed almost alive as it glowered down at her.
‘No. No, that’s not possible!’
Her wingbeats skipped at the thought, and she focused her eyes on the Moon with renewed intensity.
No, it wasn’t her imagination. The taint in the Moon was alive.
She had thought them craters or massive magical seals or illusions, but this—Night Whisper swallowed, but she had no saliva with which to wet her throat.
The Moon was covered in Nightmares. Great, teeming masses that roiled and shifted like boiling water, veritable oceans of hate and evil and darkness that tainted the Moon with their presence.
There was no sound in the void. Even so, Night could clearly hear the angry and seductive whispers that now snuck into her ears—no, that wasn’t right. They had been doing so since early in her journey, and it was only now that she was aware enough to consciously notice them.
They spoke of wealth. Of power. Of beauty. Of worship.
Countless thousands of voices threw out enticement after enticement, leaving Night without the time to even consider even one of them. She could take the love of anypony she wished. She could rule Equestria. She could ascend into an alicorn. She could know all the secrets of the world. She could—
There seemed to be no limits to these proposals, neither in number nor in magnitude. The not-sound grated more each time they spoke, and the rancid scent of the words and images that wriggled into her ears were enough to make her gag.
She couldn’t deny that some of what they described in their endless offers was tempting. But Night Whisper now understood why it was Nyx had chosen her, specifically, to carry out this delivery.
There was nothing Night wanted dearly enough for her to listen to the Nightmares’ serenade. She had already achieved everything that she truly desired. She had a job she loved, was about to get a raise, and had a loving family. Being only an ordinary pony with an ordinary life, there simply wasn’t much for a Nightmare to seduce.
So she ignored the voices of the vast congregations of Nightmares. Their response came in roars and invectives, vile unsounds laced through them such as to make nausea coil in her stomach. But duty called her ever forwards, and she continued to follow the cloud of blue stars toward the Moon.
By this point the Moon’s gravity had taken sufficient hold that she felt as though she were flying downwards rather than up. This meant that she had grown closer to the Moon, and as it turned out, this was a Bad Thing.
It wasn’t that the lunar maria were filled with thousands of Nightmares, as she had thought. It was one Nightmare with thousands of voices. One Nightmare.
Colossal chains strapped down each of the wells of darkness, each link the size of Fillydelphia and sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow. Beneath this cage of light struggled pits of darkness that surpassed the whole of Equestria in their sheer size. Their edges bent and flowed as each great pool of hate tried to reach out for another.
Swift lashes of light struck out to punish such attempts, but it seemed that the Nightmare had made progress over the past millennium despite this. Night took note of just how many of them had managed to reach one another and merge, and she was overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and horror that she had never before experienced.
The majority had already connected to one another, and the chains that bound them looked so small in comparison. Blacker-than-black tendrils writhed across the Moon’s surface even now in search of one another, seeking to return the Nightmare’s broken form to its former, terrible glory.
Night Whisper turned her eyes away and continued her dive, pulling away from the mass of shadows as she drew ever closer to the surface.
Her motion did not escape the monstrosity’s attention. A great heaving movement shifted through the mark of Nightmare Moon, and from the center of the largest mass emerged a twisted protrusion, resembling nothing so much as a leg with too many joints and a clawed hoof. Links of chains that had long ago been shattered fell away as it struck at her.
The tiny stars surrounding Night burst into a frenzy, and she dove after them with a speed she had never known herself to be capable of. She couldn’t even guess the distance she traveled to evade the blow from the continent-sized limb, and she could but thank the heavens that size made the Nightmare slow.
It seemed that the Nightmare realized that too, and soon enough the titanic leg split into innumerable tentacles of blackness and hate that dove at her. As they moved, the non-air split and crackled as though their mere presence was harmful to even empty space.
Nocturne pegasi were renowned for their aerial agility, and Night had never been as thankful for it as she was tonight. She jigged to her left before falling into a corkscrew towards the Moon’s surface, but even then she couldn’t fully escape the lashes of the tentacles.
Had there been air in space, she would have cried out from the pain of having a line split open along her back. But she was forced into silence.
More wary than ever, she dived straight down, juking from side to side to avoid the tendrils seeking her flesh. Mere feet away from the clean lunar surface she hurled herself forwards, transforming downwards momentum into horizontal. The ground behind her was rent asunder as her motion pulled her out of harm’s way, provoking a hiss of frustration from the Nightmare.
Perhaps flying so close to the surface limited her mobility, but she was no longer vulnerable to attack from every side; Night Whisper found that to be a tradeoff in her favor.
She pushed herself as she never had before, and burning pain raced through her entire body from the exertion needed to avoid the seemingly endless barrage of tentacles. Sweat dripped into the wound on her back, adding even more pain with every wingbeat. She survived by a hair’s breadth as tentacles smashed into the ground around her.
Her swarm of stars disappeared at a frightful rate from these near-misses, and Night Whisper’s pursuit of their fading light became a desperate one in short order.
But everything comes to an end, and Night eventually passed beyond the reach of the Nightmare, much to its rage. Soon after, she crossed the border into the dark side of the Moon.
It was a perfect, unmarred stillness. It was silent beyond even the silence of space. If her race hadn’t been born able to see without light, she wouldn’t have noticed her own hoof an inch in front of her own face.
“—Carry the peace, and the coolness of night—”
Was it a surprise that she fell to her knees as soon as she went over?
Where the blackness of the Nightmare was ominous, the unbroken black of the lightless Moon became almost welcoming in comparison. It cloaked and hid, and in the solitude Night felt no shame for the tears of fear and pain that trailed down her cheeks.
Duty called her ever forwards, however, and she rose to her hooves with renewed determination. The warmth of exercise had begun to fade, leaving the beginnings of a deep chill in its place. Nothing like true space, but unpleasant al the same.
She broke into a weary trot, kicking up white dust with the motion. It made her cringe; it felt almost like a desecration to walk here.
In a sense, it was—she was their Princess, so the nocturne pegasi knew more about the seal than the day-walking ponies, courtesy of their dear Princess Celestia. Somepony had to remember the truth for… something. Nopony really knew why, but it was important that they remembered.
The Moon always showed the same face to Equestria, and its dark side was perpetually hidden. In this, it was a reflection of Princess Luna herself—to Equestria, all there was to see on the Moon is an evil blemish. Nopony could see the true Princess, the real Luna trapped out of sight on the opposing side of the Moon.
She trotted for a seeming eternity, her head in constant motion as she tried to find her Princess. The few remaining blue stars guided her, but in small numbers they glowed weakly.
The Moon was beautiful. It held the purity of the finest ceramic and the sense of majesty normally seen only in great, snow-capped mountain ranges. But more wonderful still were the stars—in the Waking World they were but spheres of light hung across the night sky, but here atop the Moon they were so, so much more.
Each star was a galaxy in its own right. Where the Moon was pristinely devoid of life, each galaxy held the promise of another dimension full of living beings. She knew that they were far away and beyond difficult to reach even when traveling with harness and stars, but for a pony willing to try they could reach those portals and go where no pony had gone before.
Nocturne legend claimed this to be the reason for Starswirl’s name, but Night Whisper had always taken that with a piece of salt. But she was certain that if any pony could have reached them, it would have been Starswirl the Bearded (or at the very least, another pony of similar stature), even if he wasn’t a nocturne.
‘Poor Princess. The Moon is just so desolate.’ All that beauty didn’t mean anything in the midst of such emptiness. Night tried to imagine how mind-numbing it would be to do nothing for one thousand years. She failed. ‘It was needed though. Eternal darkness is too terrible a thing to permit to happen.’ She remembered how her grandma used to tell her the story about the battles between the two sisters.
‘Apocalyptic’ was a word that came up frequently.
Such thoughts were driven out of her head as she found her quarry, with the Mare in the Moon lying asleep in the dust.
And the sight of her Princess of the Night pushed the nocturne to tears.
To call Princess Luna ‘beautiful’ would be an insult. From the shape of her wings to her defined musculature to her proportions, every inch of her body was what Night Whisper could only call ‘perfect’. She surpassed beauty as her sister’s Sun surpassed a candle.
And her mane! Mane and tail alike flowed in nonexistent wind, and they seemed as though the very night itself had woven itself into the fabric of her being. It matched perfectly to the dark blue shade of her coat to produce the perfect image of benevolent midnight. Princess Celestia bore the gentle lights of the sun, but the star-speckled mane of the Princess of the Night inspired Night’s heart in ways she had never before imagined.
While the wonder of Princess Luna was certainly enough to bring an unprepared pony to tears, Night Whisper’s cheeks were not wetted from joy or awe.
“—And carry my sorrow in kind—”
Like noxious oil, chains of black oozed up from cracks in the Moon. Wretched and pus-filled, these flowing tendrils wrapped around the Princess’s hooves and pulled them, leaving the mare splayed out on the ground without dignity. Her lovely wings were pierced through with this hatred incarnate, and webs of tar matted her ethereal mane to plaster it to the Moon as well.
Night Whisper staggered away. Her bile had grown since she had first seen the Nightmare in full, but this… this was beyond what anypony could accept. It was a desecration, as hideous to the soul as defiling a temple. A Goddess should never look like this. A Goddess should never be seen like this.
She closed her eyes, but simply knowing it was there, right in front of her, was agony. She wailed unabashedly at the defilement of her Princess, weeping as she hadn’t since her parents’ funeral, and hating the silence that swallowed the sound of her grief.
Warmth pulsed through her chest, a sensation so unexpected in the cold of the Moon that it pulled her from her sorrow for a short time—but that was enough. It wasn’t merely a physical heat, but one that reached into her very heart. She unlatched the dream she had held close to her chest, and its brilliant light shone forth once again.
“—Luna, you’re loved so much more than you know
May troubles be far from your mind—”
A scream resounded across the Moon, and the disgusting ooze retreated into the cracks. It was impossible to measure Night Whisper’s relief as she stepped forwards and gently pressed the dream against Princess Luna’s forehead.
The orb fell apart into a gentle swirl of light and color and wonder that embraced the Princess, looking like nothing so much as a halo. Just standing next to it battered Night Whisper with a storm of emotions.
Guilt.
Longing.
Sorrow.
Hope.
Shame.
Love. So, so much love.
It was too much for the poor nocturne pegasus after what she had endured so far. But as she flared her wings for liftoff, a new pulse of light washed over her face. She turned back to her Princess, and was startled to see a dream lying on the ground in front of her.
Night Whisper cautiously approached. It certainly looked like a dream, but where had it come from? She cast a look at the sleeping Princess of the Night. True, Luna was the Princess of Dreams, but to make one in her sleep, so quickly? It boggled the mind.
She poked at the orb with a wingtip. It was almost pure white, but with hardly any glow at all. Even so, she could tell who this was meant for the moment she felt it. But I can’t leave quite yet.
Looking at Luna made her feel like something was unfinished. It took her long minutes to figure out just what it was. She carefully unwove part of the hem of the harness, working at it until she had a good number of strands removed—not very much physically, but there was quite a lot of material once she included the magic.
With careful prods of hoof and wing, she broke it down into its dream-components, then wove it together again. It was slow to create, but eventually she beheld the fruits of her labor; a dark metallic crown.
Night Whisper carefully set it onto her regent’s head and smiled at the soft smile crossing Princess Luna’s face and the sense of fulfillment that followed.
Breathing deeply of the magic that saturated the Moon, she launched herself towards the planet.
“—And forgive me for being so blind—”
₪₪₪
Weariness dragged at Night Whisper’s body as she nearly crash-landed onto Princess Celestia’s balcony in Canterlot. She stood still for a long minute as she mustered up the energy to keep going.
Fortunately, the Dream Guard assigned to protect the Princess were polite enough not to stab her until she had stated her intentions to deliver a dream. After a brief inspection, she was permitted into the Royal Suite.
It was overwhelmingly dominated by colors of gold and white, with liberal applications of royal purple spread throughout. To the World of Dreams, the Princess of the Sun’s rooms were like a vast cathedral. What may have been paintings were reimagined into infinitely intricate works of stained glass. The stylized sun decorations blazed as though they were the real thing, and the ceiling rose far higher than it possibly could have. Merely stepping into her living room provoked feelings of awe and recognition of undeniable majesty.
Thus was how Reverie viewed the home of Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia, Sol Invictus, Goddess of the Sun and Our Princess of the Day.
The daughter of Hemera, Goddess of the Day, had secrets of her own, though. Sisters will be sisters, after all. That wasn’t a thought that had ever occurred to Night Whisper, but it was the first that came to mind when she opened the door to Princess Celestia’s bedroom.
The sun motif remained, but they were dim things lacking any luster or brilliance. Water seeped out from their edges to drip down the walls and puddle on the floor in a continual soft deluge. The tang of salt in the air was thick enough that Night could taste it.
Framed paintings covered the walls, all of the same blue alicorn. From infancy to childhood, teenage years to the proud adult—each capturing a perfect moment in the long lives of the sisters. But even when the background suggested some happy event, the faces of every Princess Luna were identical. They glared at the center of the room with harshly furrowed brows and lips curled into a snarl. The loathing and rage were almost tangible, but layering over all of it was a sense of betrayal.
Everything that could be a symbol for other ponies or even Equestria itself were either drowned or hidden along the edges of the room, as far from the Princess as possible, to isolate her so that nothing could block her sister’s gaze.
In the World of the Waking, Princess Celestia was no doubt sleeping on a mound of cushions. Here, however, she lay down in a pool of tears, her wings spread wide across the wet floor.
Night Whisper had already cried out all the tears she had that night, so her response was little more than a soft whimper. She knew that the Princess had been growing unhappier—how could anyone who saw her on a regular basis think otherwise? Even if she had rarely spoken to Her Highness, it was clear as starlight to the nocturne mare.
But she had never imagined this… this supreme loneliness.
Sunset Shimmer’s abandonment of her studies must have been agonizing. The Princess had slept in this room for so long that it had become almost a mirror to her feelings. But Shimmer—who Night had only had the displeasure of meeting once—hungered for power too much.
To have inflicted this sort of pain on the Princess should be a crime. There was no physical assault, but this… bleeding of the flesh was a very small thing in comparison to bleeding of the heart.
‘I hope the Princess finds a special somepony soon—or perhaps takes on another student. For such loneliness to exist is too sad for words.’
Night Whisper worked for the Princess, as did many nocturne pegasi. Without Princess Luna, Princess Celestia had been forced to take management of both the day and night—and that involved more than simply raising the Moon. The Royal Dream Service frequently saw Her Highness, and it grew ever harder to deny the lost expression growing on the Princess’s face.
‘I guess she’s tired of waiting, tired of having ponies leaving her.’
It was with a heavy heart that she stepped up to her bed—or tried to. The injury along her back, as well as several minor lacerations she hadn’t noticed, suddenly burned with renewed pain. She winced and backed away, watching as gold sparks filled the air where she had once been.
Night Whisper was impressed—even with the Dream Guard on hand, the Princess still kept a barrier against evil dream spirits. There must have been some energy left in the cut—a common problem with Nightmare wounds. It was easily removed, though—but not without the right tools.
Unable to place it normally, she simply threw the dream at the Princess.
“—I love you, I miss you
All these miles away—”
The Princess’s pained expression settled as the dream engulfed her, and the suns stopped weeping.
With a proud, exhausted smile, she made her way out of the castle and back down the Canterhorn, where she intended to take full use of the medical facilities therein.
An hour later, Night Whisper lay as still as possible on the hospital bed. The touch of a Nightmare, beyond tainting the wound, could cause rapid infection, and it wasn’t pleasant to remove. She wanted nothing more than to fall asleep right there, but she didn’t want to sleep alone.
Not tonight.
It was in the midst of this musing that Vice-Director Yucca walked in, his face beaming as he approached. “I came as soon as I heard you were out of operating! Well done Mrs. Whisper, well done indeed. Everypony’s delightfully happy to see you back in one piece.”
“I said I’d be fine, didn’t I?” Night responded, chuckling awkwardly as Yucca forced a hoofshake.
“Nonsense. Don’t be so dismissive! You’ve actually been on a run up to the Moon. We get one every year—don’t think that you’re the only one who knows what it’s like,” Yucca warned, his normally jovial voice taking an unnaturally serious tone. “And seeing as how you aren’t the first… well, I took the liberty of drawing up this form, should you wish to use it.”
She took the paper from him. “Retirement? Did—did I do something wrong, sir?”
“No, not at all! But… that’s probably the most harrowing delivery the RDS has, and seeing what’s up there is… stressful, to say the least. Most of the ponies who survive it quit shortly afterwards. Keeping up delivery work is just too much for them.”
Night Whisper stared at the paper in front of her, considering it far more seriously than she would have only twelve hours earlier. Her heart and soul felt raw, and to be honest the thought of never touching a dream again appealed to her. She had little doubt that the events of tonight would haunt her for a long time to come, but…
“I refuse.” She tore the paper in two. “I’m not going to give up what I’ve accomplished or what I can still accomplish to a Nightmare. I’ve got a lot of deliveries left in me. But… sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can—”
‘I don’t think I could handle it if I had to go back tomorrow.’ Images of a continent-sized weapon of spite bearing down on her ran through her mind until they curdled her stomach.
Yucca waved her concerns away with his wing. “No, don’t worry. Even if you didn’t have that injury, we would have given you two weeks leave for this. It… isn’t easy to bounce back from. Please, remember that our insurance policy covers therapy and psychiatric help.”
She saluted. “Yes sir.”
₪₪₪
Her special somepony lay slumped over a pile of books, drool dripping onto the research notes beneath the head. She had no idea what had possessed her to love such an egghead, but emotions could be weird.
Eventide Bolt was a normal stallion, a dedicated aubade pegasus that had dreamt of becoming a Wonderbolt like Wind Rider since he was but a colt. Every pegasus foal did, but most others outgrew it.
Night Whisper wasn’t one to deride his goal as impossible or anything, but Eventide’s were very close. Even so, Eventide continued to study history, pegasus magic, and flight mechanics for his dream.
Night Whisper let out a little giggle as she remembered when he had first told her about it. He was a stunningly unathletic stallion who was happier with his nose in a book than he was doing wing-ups, She had no idea how he thought he’d get in without being a top-notch flyer, but she didn’t have the heart to bring it up with him.
But despite his silly dream, she had found Eventide to have a heart of gold and enough knowledge to fill a small library. He easily lost himself in his work, but Night wasn’t going to complain at all. After all, the only thing that could get out that egghead of studies was herself, and she was grateful for that.
But he had never understood how terrible his infinite number of puns were.
“Hey,” She came to him, making Eventide mumble in response. “Put those books aside, it’s time to sleep.” Night Whisper passed her tall along his face, making him feel her sweet perfume.
Eventide smiled unsteadily as he wobbled to his hooves, letting his magic books and notes fall into a pile by the ground. “Come on, love. I know you aren’t the most physical pony, but you’re going to mess up your body if you keep this up. You don’t want to break your primaries, do you?”
The aubade pegasus murmured sleepy, probably impolite nonsense into her ear as Night Whisper relocated the two of them to the bed. After ensuring that her birdbrained lover hadn’t managed to accidentally crush one of his wings, she crawled in after.
Then she held him as tightly to her chest as she could, wrapping her legs and wings around him and burrowing her muzzle in his neck to banish the hollow feeling in her heart. She lay awake till after the sun rose, hoping for Eventide’s hugs and love to melt away the unrelenting cold of the Moon. Fear of what nightmares she might find in her sleep haunted her.
But when she finally fell asleep, Night Whisper had nothing more than good dreams.
Author's Note
A huge thank you to Miss Spectrum for working with me on this! It's thanks to her help that this story won the competition.
It also helped that we were apparently the only entrant...
And thanks to PonyPhonic for being such an inspiration.
