Author's Note
A disclaimer:
I'm neither justifying nor approving the character's choice. Please understand that this story is not an advertisment of... "Equestrial Airlines" 
No. Way.
But each of us can relate to the character more or less once in a while.
This was written in the state of deep depression and won't cause anything, except alike.
Do not become Nightmare Moon, fine brony folk. Do not use the "portal" either.
Better ask Luna kindly once more and again... and maybe she finds a way.
TL;DR Want just fun? Avoid. Or take whole responsibility for the reading.
Portal
Not all the stories end well!
You knew that since the first day you started writing fiction, since the first day you started reading others’ work. People liked tragedy, in fact if anyone asked you what they liked more, love stories or tragedy, you couldn’t probably answer. But did they always relate? Or they just enjoyed the strong feelings, keeping themselves safe in the warm comfort of their cozy armchairs, surrounded by those who understand and love. Could only one, having neither, truly relate then?
One rainy evening a few years ago you started watching the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on TV with your little son. You can remember, like if it was yesterday, how your wife laughed at you, totally surprised by a grown up man sticking to the screen.
“Boys, how can you watch this?..” she said. “Well, I can understand our kid, but you, you’ll hit twenty five soon.”
“What’s wrong with it?” you retorted. “We’re having fun, you know, even more fun, if one can “read between the lines”.”
“The majority of cartoons are not ONLY for the kids,” you added, while she was looking at you with a strange grin.
“I can’t even stand that pinkish gamma,” dropped she, leaving the room.
What started as entertainment, just to kill time, as you thought, soon became the inspiration. To your own utter surprise, you started writing on the matter, developing the plotlines mentioned in the show and… making up your own. You read a few to your son, bright and entertaining ones, but mostly your stories were not for his age.
Finding a place to publish your stories online was a true revelation, as you couldn’t afford printing and no publishing house was interested, perhaps due to copyright reasons. Finally you had a place to express your thoughts and a small, but faithful audience… which at least understood you. You started spending more of your free time writing, planning… living in Equestria.
Then a true shock happened. You were sitting in your cabinet long after midnight, as it was the only suitable time for your creation. The day was filled with work, the evening with family – you tried your best to give them deserved attention and compensate for your unwelcome, as you sadly admitted, passion. How could you still cope with that broken sleep pattern, nobody knew, including yourself. Your family was asleep long ago, nothing broke the silence of the apartment. Fresh, if that could be said about the city, air came through the open window, bringing the distant noise of late cars. The full moon raised in the sky and drew a silver rectangle on the floor behind your back.
“Celestia! It seems you can’t grasp it no matter what,” you muttered with your eyes chained to the monitor, the glow strained and made you close them and rub your temples. “So much for the few years of writing – you can imagine that, but can’t word it to satisfy your vision and, which is more important, your readers.”
“What doth thou need my regal sister for?” quietly and mockingly asked a female voice from behind. “Mayhap we could give thee a… hoof.”
You were lucky that your chair didn’t fall on the floor waking up the whole house. Yet it screeched protestingly when you turned around and moved it aside jumping to your feet. That wasn’t your wife’s voice and you could swear that she was the least person interested in your writing to offer you…
A hoof!!!
'What the flying buck?!' You felt your heart beating somewhere in your throat, when you stared in two slightly glowing eyes in the darkness of your study.
“Alas, thy politesse is striking, mine lief!” the darkness giggled.
Then it moved and you saw a dark blue winged equine figure entering the moonlit spot. She, and it was undoubtedly she, sat on the floor, looking at you through her long eyelashes. Sly cheerful sparkles danced in her big dark eyes and the starry night sky of her mane and tail was flowing in the evening breeze.
The slender and elegant… alicorn pony wiggled her folded wings a little and gave you a reassuring smile, which made her cheeks round themselves in such a childish endearing way, that your heart melted and your body unfroze. You knew that face well, lion’s share of your sad and romantic stories were about her.
“Ahem…” you cleared your throat, like learning to speak again.
“Your royal highness, princess… Luna?..” you bowed. “My apologies!”
“Accepted!” nodded your beautiful guest… or intruder. Yet you preferred to think of her as a guest. “Dost not stress thyself, human, we used and heard worse forsooth, at which hour we were having quarrels with Tia ere.”
“I’m truly honored,” you said heartily. Her Old English was comprehensible and, to tell the truth, made her soft voice even prettier. “But why… your highness?”
“Oh,” remembered you. “My manners are indeed a calamity,” involuntarily you started accommodating yourself to her language. “I’m […]”
“We are pleased, […] the human,” Luna raised her fore hoof and after a second you realized, with light heart lowering on one knee and kissing her above the hoof.
The dark blue coat was amazingly soft and smelled of lavender. Catching yourself on the wish to stay nuzzling it, you felt a light touch on your shoulder. The princess gave you a sign that you might sit, which exactly you did, placing yourself right on the floor in front of your marvellous visitor.
“As for thy question,” she leaned her head to one shoulder giving you a sly gaze. “We usually can’t hear humans or affect their dreams… But, we suppose, thy call was so strong and desperate, that we could hear it… and decided to attend.”
“But… I… I didn’t call for help,” your embarrassment raced your perplexity, but something twitched inside.
“Thy soul did,” Luna answered with a soft smile.
“We… I can recognize that call,” she added in a moment while her eyes became suddenly sad. “I used to call for salvation the same way… ere… long ago…”
“Before Nightmare Moon…” your voice was barely audible.
The princess of the Night leaned to you and you felt her silky forehead touching yours and her eyelashes tickling your cheekbones when she blinked. Then a hot drop scorched your arm. You raised your hand and wiped a couple more from the corners of her glorious eyes.
“Mine apologies!” she straightened. “I still… can’t recall those times… without shedding a tear.”
“Please, […] the human, dost not become… “Nightmare Moon”,” she added, trying to squeeze a small smile.
You had no other answer than a heart tearing sigh.
“So,” Luna nuzzled your shoulder, hinting you to show her the source of your troubles. “What mishap brings thy soul to grief, mine lief.”
“Right now, my princess, or in general?” you threw in a crude attempt to joke. Then you realized, what you did say… and look down blushing in embarrassment.
A soft snicker showed you, that she wasn’t angry with your feelings slipping out, and she raised and headed to your table, making you follow. When you both sat, you on your chair and Luna on the floor, waving her hoof on your desperate attempt to find her a suitable seat, in front of your computer, your eyes were on the same level.
“Hmm…” she looked through the wall of text on the screen. “I really didn’t think of it that way, but…”
You felt her soft hair tickling your neck and ear, as she placed her head on your shoulder, when you started explaining.
*
The next morning your wife found a large dark blue feather in your study. She glanced on it for the good five minutes, before asking what it was. You shrugged.
“I didn’t hear a bird flying inside last night,” and what else could you probably say.
“Me neither,” said she in half tone. Then she turned to you. “You must be sitting with your “pones” till sunrise again, no wonder you can’t notice a bird, even if it flies in your window.”
“Though it must be an eagle rather,” a faint tint of unease appeared in her voice.
She carried that feather like a bomb and threw it in the trash, making sure your son didn’t notice.
A night after you took a new feather and put it in the locker of your table… and locked it… first time ever.
*
The next few years flied as one day. You worked, came home and stayed with your family, wrote at nights… when you had strength to do. Your son went to school and talking ponies meant less and less for him each day. Perhaps to return into his life at some point, perhaps… You knew, that there was more in them than in a simple TV show, but admitting it openly would mean making your relatives look at you even stranger than they did.
Your nights became amazing, filled with inspiration. Obviously, the princess couldn’t visit you regularly, but when she did, you talked and she shared the news, which you subtly used, writing your stories. When she couldn’t come, the nights were still blessing, you felt perhaps even more inspiration, waiting for your princess. Anyway you worked hard and to your surprise you felt noticeably less tired in the mornings after sleepless nights than before, perhaps it was some magic.
The impact on your work was even more noticeable, your audience grew and people became visibly more pleased by your stories. That was a new level of quality and… immersion. You often laughed, imagining what could they say, if they knew the true source, your true muse. Even those people who understood you… but were too distant to support you, when you really needed it. Sometimes you laughed with Luna, quietly, not to wake your sleeping family.
Some stories made Luna instantly blush, when you showed them to her. Yet she read to the end before turning to you with pink cheeks (amazing how this could be visible through her dark coat) and dilated eyes. Your heart jumped of happiness, when you noticed, that they were dilated not because of wrath or disgust.
“Thou was’t truly venturing to doth ‘tis?” she quietly asked, looking down, then raised her bright eyes on you.
“Well… I’m married… and you’re a princess, “mine lief”,” your smile was rather sad than promising. “I’d have hardly dared.”
“I must admit, for the thousand years I haven’t yet heard such a peremptory “yes”,” the smile lighted Luna’s face and made your heart thump. “Which was so nicely disguised as “no”.”
Electricity rushed through your veins when your lips met.
*
The days became worse and worse though. You remembered the words princess Luna said to you the first night – “Don’t become Nightmare Moon.” And you gritted your teeth and grabbed all your will tight, to keep smiling over the wall of misunderstanding. All your free time was now devoted to your wife and son, when they were awake obviously. But you couldn’t help thinking about Equestria even when you were taking them on a walk, to a picnic, to the woods. Occasionally your eyes became riveted to the distance, like if you were watching the green fields of Everfree from the top of some mountain, and you missed a question or phrase addressed to you, making them repeat it twice.
“On vacation to Ponyville,” acidly dropped your wife in that case, causing you to sigh heavily.
Eventually she became conveying her attitude to your son, making him voice her thoughts, but with extra gore, intrinsic for kids. Celestia to your witness, how much it cost you not to hit a tree upon “Father thinks about the ponies more than about me!”, thrown by him, when you all drove home after an evening in the cinema. Which, you were sure, they liked.
You never deprived your wife of yourself as a man, even when you started quarreling severely. She was excited in the process and satisfied after… but her grumpiness inevitably returned. Faster, if she spotted you writing.
This started getting under your skin and, when Luna wasn’t near, you wrote terrible things, then deleted the written… then wrote again. Not all the stories end well! But you wouldn’t probably dare sharing those under any circumstances. You published less these days, and now Luna was to hug you and wipe your tears often during your nights together.
*
It started like a usual – alas, they became usual finally – quarrel one morning. Your wife threw you accusations, like a large-caliber machinegun, pounding you with lead.
“Can you explain, what’s going on?!” she shouted and you were glad your son was already on his way to school.
“I’m tired to find those feathers,” she grabbed her clothes and locked herself in the bathroom to change, but you could hear her complaints through the thin door, like there was none. “I find one at least weekly in your cabinet. What. Is. Going. On? For God’s sake…”
“And that smell of lavender,” she wasn’t going to calm down. “My head starts aching each time I enter your study. I can’t stand lavender anymore…”
“You know, I have nothing that produces that smell,” you said calmly. “You’ve searched my room thoroughly, don’t imagine, that I haven’t noticed… And you found nothing, right?”
“Right,” she took a breath, slightly embarrassed by the truth. Then burst again. “Then what is it?”
She came closer, standing to you nose to nose, and dropped the last argument.
“Last night I could swear I heard a quiet woman’s voice coming from your room.”
“You should just enter and make sure there was no woman in my room. I swear!” sometimes you really thought, that it would be a relief to make her find out everything. But you were unsure about two things at once. First, if Luna was OK about new… acquaintance, and second, if your wife didn’t get a panic attack, and put you and her both into a nuthouse shortly after, despite the obvious feathers, lavender scent and… the mere fact that several people never hallucinated the same way.
“I know there hardly could be…” your wife stumbled, then confessed. “I wasn’t sleeping… and nobody entered the house as I heard.”
“There always were things you simply refused to understand,” that was muttered as an understatement, not an accusation. “Just like my personal space, which could have been respected, regardless to how weird it seems to you.”
“And you, no matter how mental you are, couldn’t imitate such a soft… melodic tone ever.”
“Your deep manly voice always turned me on,” she added with a faint shadow of the smile in her eyes. “Before…”
And saying no more she exited your bedroom. You followed shortly, grabbing the car keys and thinking what to do with all this.
*
The day at work passed as usual, you learned to switch yourself to succeed, just as you switched your mind at home with your family. With the only difference, that at work people understood that you concentrated on business and appreciated that.
Then you came home, it was quiet and you saw there are things missing. It wasn’t a robbery, the small on the table in the living room said otherwise.
“[…]
It can’t last this way. If there is somebody in your life more important than us and our (I mean all three of us) peace, then you must make your choice. Don’t, please, start with your usual pony “literature” shit. You have changed. Life has changed. I’m not seeing the same […] with us anymore. You seem to be with us, but your heart is somewhere else. I fear to imagine where…
We’re leaving and staying with my mom for now. Don’t bother yourself calling or writing… God, I hate that word already. That won’t be a phone talk.
Come when you are ready, if you are ready. We’ll be waiting our former […] back.”
You crumpled the paper. People have outside interests. Why yours, if you didn’t make it your work, should be your family only? You made a small fortune, you devoted enough to your family. Would they be happier, if you climbed mountains instead of writing? Or having non-mainstream interests is prosecuted nowadays. Anyway, the decision was made.
*
This day you came earlier, as you took a day off to settle things. And you realized that she came during the day… for the first time, as lavender reached your nostrils as soon as you entered your apartment.
Wondering about the reasons, you took off your shoes and faced your alicorn friend exiting the living room.
“[…], mine lief, art thou alright?” Luna approached and hugged you with her wings. “I felt that thou art in grief... more than afore, I mean.”
She then yawned and put a hoof over her mouth.
“Apologies. I broke my sleep pattern today,” she smiled sheepishly. “I normally sleep at the day time, but not today…”
Something in your look made her concerned.
“Art thou absolutely sure everything is alright… mine love?” she asked again. “And whither are thy family belongings?”
“They decided to spend a few days off with grandma,” you squeezed a smile, quickly putting a folder from notary on the table in the living room, not to draw Luna’s attention to it much.
“Thou could think about a better lie,” Luna’s eyes narrowed and she grabbed you with her wing again, putting her head on your shoulder and breathing in your ear. “Please tell.”
“Well, there is truth in that, you can’t deny,” smirked you grimly. “They decided to have some days off of new […], they barely tolerated lately. I told you, I had general problems as well, I started having them before we met actually.”
“They don’t really need me anymore, especially now when our boy is going to turn sixteen this autumn,” added you, finally confessing that to yourself.
You nuzzled her hair, breathing your full lungs of lavender and bathing in it. And the following kiss, despite being short, was one of the few most natural and passionate in your life.
“I wanted to ask you, my princess,” now the smile on your face was natural as well. “Could you take me with you, I mean to Equestria?”
“I wanted, oh, Celestia, I wanted,” Luna looked aside sadly. “But even, if I could allow myself taking thee from thy family, it is still impossible.”
“It seems they don’t need me that much already,” said you quietly.
“Besides, you are right and you are wrong at the same time, my love,” you finally said that.
“How…”
“I planned to go for a walk this evening,” you said interrupting her question. “But screw that, I’m happy to stay with you here, while you can stay with me.”
Luna kept silence for a short while thinking about something.
“I fain join thee on thy walk,” she said.
Now it was your turn to make big eyes in surprise.
“But, there are people outside… How…”
“So much for… dating an alicorn for a few years,” Luna laughed at your long faced look. “I have magic, darling. I can stay invisible for others and follow you. That would be an interesting experience I guess.”
“So, let’s go then,” you finally unfroze. And before she could move, you planted another kiss.
“After you, my princess,” you held the door for Luna, throwing last glance on the folder still laying in the living room.
You walked up the street in the falling twilight, dusty leaves whispered slightly on the mercilessly cut trees. Heading to the larger street, you tried to avoid or come round occasional strangers, when you noticed that Luna trotting side by side with you somehow makes them get off her way and not bump into her, despite they didn’t see her. You smiled at another demonstration of her magic. Yet a torn newspaper flied in the air and landed a couple of feet further, when she passed it.
You talked less, fairly avoiding to do when there were people nearby. Fortunately there were not many of in the street.
“I’d like to go to the park,” you stopped and glanced at your alicorn… girl. “Luna, do you remember how I told you about the metro?”
“It’s the underground traveling system, whither electric trains carry humans… people!” her eyes dilated. “I do. I’d like to see it, we don’t have electric trains, we have steam propelled ones in Equestria.”
“I was going to suggest to catch a train exactly,” you smirked, turning to the nearest subway station and catching yourself on the attempt to take Luna arm like a common girl… except she had no arms and used her fore legs to walk. Luna giggled like a filly and kissed your cheek lightly.
“It’s amazing,” you said. “How you can transfer yourself anywhere in our world. You can do it anywhere and anywhere from, right?”
“Ay, my love,” Luna threw a slightly puzzled glance on you.
“Still you can’t take me with you…”
She looked away and you could swear there was a tear in her eye.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I swear with mine life, I would do that right now, if I could.”
“Don’t worry, my princess,” your smile was bright and serene. “There is another way.”
“Remember how my “distress call” reached you through dimensions and distance?” you both reached the stairs and walked down to the station. “I was amazed, no, I was shocked that something alike was even possible.”
“I thought much since then,” you continued, when you and Luna stepped onto the running band of the escalator. Luna looked around with wide open eyes, yet you saw she was all ears about your explanation. “About will and determination. And I’m now sure like never before that I have hardcoded the destination well enough.”
“[…], I don’t quite understand what thou art talking ‘bout,” Luna became slightly nervous, as if she could read your mind.
But you were sure, she couldn’t, despite all her power and magic. At least when you were not looking into to the dark lakes of her eyes. Now though she was looking at you, and you – to the future.
There were considerably more people on the platform, but Luna still managed to part and avoid them, like ice breaker parts drifting ice, while you slowly walked to the right edge of the platform.
“[…]!” her voice became higher by an octave in concern, when you turned to your princess. A few people turned to look at you in surprise.
“I love you, my princess…” you scolded yourself inwardly for the official tone and made better attempt. “I love you, Luna. Whatever happens, I’ll be yours…”
“I love thee too, […],” she whispered and her eyes started dilating in awful realization.
“Now, before it’s too late,” you said to yourself, hearing the low noise coming from the tunnel.
“Just wait for me a little while, when you return to Canterlot,” you whispered in her ear. “I will be shortly. I know it will work, my heart. Not all the stories end well! But this will be different, I promise, Luna!”
You quickly kissed her nose and turned away, before she could stop you. There was a service door on the narrow end of the platform. “No exit” the plate claimed.
'Fuck you! There is always an exit!' you smirked and climbed over a grate, blocking the stairs at the platform end.
“[…]!!!” Luna’s yell rolled under station vaulting like thunder. “NO-O-O-O!!!”
You looked back right in time to notice how she spread her wings, knocking a man off. Perhaps she broke her invisibility spell as a few people shouted pointing at her. Her horn glowed brightly, but you were fast, ducking under the beam, which hit the service lamp on the tunnel ceiling. The lamp burst in sparkles.
Not giving your love time for another attempt, you walked into the dark maw of the tunnel. Towards the glowing approaching portal. To another life. To Equestria…
