Romp

Somewhere between the realm of sleep and waking, a midnight blue alicorn ambled down a starlit path. Slippered hooves clopped softly against an unseen path as sapphire eyes squinted forward, reading the lines of an aged scroll held afloat in a field of magic.

“Hmm…” The alicorn pursed her lips and lifted her head away from the scroll to examine her surroundings. Blurred nebulas of amethyst hues swelled and shrank across the sky, distant as the stars that filled their shapes. But with merely a spark of her horn, she brought the shifting heavens to a halt.

She turned her head to the side and focused her magic on the space beside her. Soon, two shimmering walls of white took form along both sides of the path. With a hushed flourish, a column of doors slid forward along the walls, speeding past and down the path at unfathomable speed – until another spark of her magic commanded them to stop. Once the doors fell into place, she glanced to each side, then hung her head and sighed.

For several hours now, Princess Luna had worked to calm the nightmares of her many subjects, namely those within the town of Ponyville. The extended storm which the weather team crafted for the small village had done quite a number on the dreams of its citizens – most of all the children who struggled to brave the frightening sounds of the storm, only to find their sleep haunted with terrifying creatures of imagination. It came as no small relief when she graced the last foal’s dream with her presence: a world filled with rampaging gum drops. Despite their malevolent nature, she couldn’t help but smile a little as she helped a red-mane filly defeat the evil gum-drop lords with an army of candy canes.

One by one, she visited the children of Ponyville, marking off each name on the scroll as she went along. Now that most of the foals had been covered, she turned her attention to a set of adults listed near the middle of her scroll.

“Let’s see… Missus Cake,” she read aloud, turning to the left. A peach and periwinkle door sat at the ready nearest her side. Sending the scroll off with a pop, she approached the door and reached for the knob.

She paused. Immediately to the right of the door sat two others, a lavender and cerulean pair. The Princess recognized them as the dream realms of Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, but what caught her attention was not their presence so much as their placement.

Luna furrowed her brow, stepping away from Mrs. Cake’s door over to the others. When she had first returned to her royal duties as Princess of the Night, she made it a point to organize each pony’s dream in a specific order. Given her system of organization, Twilight and Rainbow’s dreams were not supposed to be adjacent to one-another. Unless she deigned to shift the order of the doors herself, there should have been no means for these two to have come together. Not unless…

“…Is it possible?” Luna craned her head forward. Between the two doors, a series of glowing threads reached out between another – frayed, delicate things that swayed with an unfelt breeze, barely visible to even her trained eye.

It was not often that she came across evidence of such spell use these days. Only certain ponies were known to dabble in such arcane magic, and oftentimes only for very specific reasons. Which begged the question:

“Why would Twilight want to use this spell? And for that matter… with Rainbow Dash?”

Her whispered musings faded without answer. Narrowing her eyes, the Princess cast a spell of her own over each door, causing the threads of light to pull taut. She then stepped up to Twilight’s and drew a deep breath, lifting a hoof to the knob.