’Twas a long while that I journeyed through the Dreamscape in search of Sunset Shimmer’s dream.

Innumerable were the spiraling galaxies and twisting nebulae that made up the collective Equestrian subconscious, but time, malleable as it was in the Dreamscape, afforded me the luxury of infinity and the mental space to understand my place among it all.

At first I feared her cluster of stars would be merely an echo, a distant memory of our world, as she had long since found her place beyond the mirror. Though as I wandered, I found that was not the case. She was forever a daughter of Equestria, and so her mind yet came to rest within my bosom when she slept. I need only close my eyes and follow my heart, for it would never steer me wrong.

Far into the distant reaches my heart led me, but it led me true all the same. Hers was a radiant star amidst the Dreamscape, a beacon to all that here slept one of Equestria’s great heroines of this age. Though, as I neared, something seemed off.

It bore a translucency I had never once encountered in my time shepherding the Dreamscape. The celestial bodies that made up the dreams of our little ponies bore a similar transparency whenever they themselves were not asleep to dream them, but where theirs arose from a disconnect of their tether to the collective subconscious, hers appeared… attenuated.

I assumed it a side effect of her place beyond the mirror, but the fears that dwelt within my heart whispered more sinister truths, those of promises I did not want to remember. Nevertheless, I touched the Veil of her subconscious, and I borrowed my share of it as I passed into her dream.

The Veil itself was more than simply a metaphor. It served as a barrier that divided the Self from the Other, the safety of the known from the terrors of the Outer Dark. More importantly, ’twas a blind spot in the subconscious. The mind only knew what should exist within one’s dream, and so I, cloaked as I was in my piece of the Veil, remained invisible to and untouchable by anything within, until I saw fit to cast it aside and intervene.

’Twas my cloak, my shield, my means of discretion. In this uncertain moment between my present self and my past evils, I was loath to admit I needed it now more than ever.

I touched down on silent hooves to find myself in a formless courtyard, enveloped by the arms of a building as devoid of detail as the world around it. The vague shapes of hedge bushes and other greenery outlined the spaces between like the rough brush strokes of a foal. All was shrouded in a dense fog.

Unlike what many assumed, individual aspects of dreams did not exist as concretely as they appeared to the dreamer, at least not natively. They were as ephemeral as a castle of sand amidst a river. Wherever the dreamer went within their dream, up went the castles of sand as if they had always been, molded by the dreamer and their subconscious. Once left behind, however, they would lapse back into blurs and suggestion, their details washed away on the currents of oblivion.

With nary a detail greeting me, I knew Sunset Shimmer had not passed this way recently. Strangely, though, all was hauntingly silent. One could hear sound from farther away than other details, as they were peripheral to what the dreamer actively focused on. But even so, I should still have heard birdsong from the trees or the babble of this world’s inhabitants, distorted as if underwater if not better.

This fog, too—mysteries working in tandem, or perhaps symptoms of her place beyond the mirror. It lent an air of trepidation, one I respected as I took my first step toward the building’s double doors.

They stood ajar, beckoning me to peer inside. When I did, however, a darkness blacker than the night sky between stars gazed back at me, as if her dream simply ended at the threshold.

’Twas not wholly unusual for dead zones to exist within a dream, but they were cause for alarm. They oft presented in recurring nightmares, where the offending nightmare-thought had begun stripping away the foundations of a dream to better entrench itself. The longer this persisted, the worse it would become, and the onset of psychosis with it.

Sunset had carried this nightmare a long while, and again I feared the part I had played.

I set forth, focused on the link Sunset and I shared as dreamer and dream steward. She was in here somewhere, beyond the darkness—or worse, below.

Below was for the helpless ones, the lost causes, those too far gone to save, and despite my hopes—or perhaps through their own spite for me—I found the path pitching downward as if following the curve of a bowl to its lowest point. There I came upon her, though she did not appear as I remembered her.

I knew the body lying before me belonged to her by the tether binding her soul to mine, but she possessed a taller, more slender form, reminiscent of a minotaur but without the musculature or bullish face. Human, Twilight had once mentioned.

She lay on her back, eyes glazed over. Naked. Defenseless. Dare I say, supplicant?

As if the act of coming abreast of her sprang a trap, a chilling presence materialized behind me. I turned to face what I knew to be the offending nightmare-thought, but rather than the usual, twisting amalgamation of abstract fears and buried prejudices that embodied recurring nightmares, I came face-to-face with the truth I did not want to believe:

Soulless eyes, cold as ice, that saw the world not in color but in miseries and the calculations of how best to extract them. A starless mane, blacker than the fur of its coat or the heart beating in its chest, curling and twisting like the nebulae of the furthest reaches of space. But worst of all, that smile—a demure widowmaker’s smile that relished the weight of my sins.

Nightmare Moon.

I could do naught but stare at my antithetical reflection standing before me, and as our manes co-mingled in the silence, I feared, briefly, that its eyes could penetrate the Veil and claw their way into my soul.

Its smile sharpened, and I stepped backward on instinct. However, its gaze continued beyond me, and it then raised its head so as to look down the bridge of its nose before stepping through me. Its body was cold like the slurry of an arctic tide.

Where its hooves touched the nothingness that held us aloft, shadows curled upward like flames from a stoked fire. It circled Sunset, tracing a wingtip up her leg, thigh, belly, as it lowered its head to come nose to nose with her.

Sunset roused from her stupor, eyes locked with Nightmare Moon’s. She did not make a sound, but the fear in her eyes transcended language, and I knew my time was now.

I must not fear it. I must not fail her. I was starlight and fire, and within the bounds of my domain I spread my wings to shed the Veil and assert my authority.

“That is enough,” I commanded. My voice echoed off the nothingness, resounded in my head and heart as grand as the day I shed the skin of the monster before me.

But neither Nightmare Moon nor Sunset acknowledged me, and the cold finger of doubt drew a long trail up my spine. I felt it still about my shoulders: the Veil, draped as it was like a silken cloak. I remained a ghost, yet I knew not why. I cursed my weakness and flared my horn. My mane and tail lifted into the air about me in the swirl of energy, yet I still could not cast aside the Veil.

Then I saw it in the light of my horn: that fog. It persisted even here in this lightless place, constricting tighter about my horn the more I tried mustering my strength.

So it must indeed be the distance between our two worlds that caged me so. I was powerless to intervene. I could only watch as that thing lorded over Sunset, a wolf and its prey.

A fanged grin tugged at the corners of its mouth. Out rolled a long slavering tongue to trail up Sunset’s chest, neck, cheek.

Sunset shied away from it, wincing as it caressed her cheekbone and continued on to trace the curve of her ear. She had not the faculties to move in earnest, as many dreams were wont to hinder their dreamer in strange and insidious ways.

I… I turned away. I shut my eyes and flattened my ears to drown out her whimpers. There was nothing I could do.

I folded my wings about my chest and lifted from the ground. As if falling upward into the soft pillows of my bed, I passed through the Veil and again drifted among the stars of the Dreamscape. I watched them twinkle their condolences as I tumbled in lazy silence.

That image of my past evils… ’Twas not a normal nightmare-thought. There was something hauntingly powerful about it. The way it felt as it moved through me, that sensation of an arctic tide. Dreams could not interact with me ere I shed the Veil, nor I them, yet I felt it plain as the moon and stars.

Whether this particular manifestation had always been or became something more in the years between, I could no longer deny the truth of the matter. The nightmares I had long ago wrought in my quest for vengeance yet plagued Sunset.

Twilight had regaled me briefly with her own exploits in the human world, and Sunset sounded well on the surface. However, what I had witnessed indicated she had merely learned to hide her pain. I feared what would become of her were I to allow this to continue.

But the scope of my transgressions… I knew it was my responsibility to see that she found peace; however, if the past had taught me anything, I needed counsel before I acted, lest I set in motion even greater catastrophes.

Sister knew Sunset better than anypony. She would understand the gravity of my query.

A final flash of light from my horn, and I awoke to my bedchambers. I gave my legs a quick stretch ere rising for the door.

Sister would know what to do.

• • •

“Luna?” Celestia said upon opening her chamber door. “Is everything okay?”

Her usual smile teetered precariously upon the concern underpinning her question, highlighted by the glow of candlelight somewhere to her left. She knew better than to assume the worst, but I was not one to come calling in the dead of night without reason.

“Sister,” I said, glancing briefly at the guard stationed beside her door. “May we speak in private?”

She held her gaze upon me a moment ere stepping back.

I followed her in, past the side table whose candelabra cast long shadows across the floor. The hardened runnels of wax trailing down its candles told the story of a late night recently put to bed. Likewise, Philomena crowed as she oft did when rudely awoken, but chirruped when she saw it was me who caused the disturbance. I afforded her a smile whilst making myself comfortable at Sister’s tea table in the middle of the room.

Sister sat opposite me. She poured a cup of tea for me before I could decline, so I took it out of courtesy. Its warmth confirmed that she had only recently bedded down. She had been up thinking about things again.

“What’s wrong, Luna?” she asked.

“I spoke with young Twilight yesterday,” I said. I took a sip. ’Twas bitter, whatever it was, meant to sharpen the mind rather than relax it. Her late-night musings were of some greater import than her usual day-to-day affairs.

“Yes, I remember you saying something about meeting her for dinner.” She did not pour a cup for herself, perhaps intent on returning to bed the moment I left.

I curled my lips at her remark. “If by dinner you mean being accosted with a score of astronomy books, then yes.”

Sister chuckled, a reminiscent look in her eye. “Twilight has always been eager to please. But I assume that’s not what this is about.”

Sister wore her signature smile. Beneath it, however, I read her true statement as one would an open book: What is wrong, Little Sister?

“She… has a book,” I said.

“She has many of those, Luna.” Her smile sharpened a hair.

I rolled my eyes. Even in the sublunary hours, she spared me none of her witticisms.

“’Tis Sunset Shimmer’s. They use it to speak with one another.”

Sister’s smirk faded, she cast her gaze down at my cup of tea, and we shared a moment of silence. “You still feel guilty,” she said.

’Twas not a question, though I frowned and let the bridging silence be an answer regardless.

Sister rose and came around the table, wings half spread to drape one over my shoulder should the need arise. Not that I would allow myself to show such vulnerability; however, the look in her eyes bespoke I had failed thusly.

“It was a long time ago, Luna,” she said.

“But it has not left her, Sister. I found her dream this eve. What I did still haunts her. What I… What I did to her.”

“She’ll work through her dreams in her own time, Luna. You’ve told me that time and again about anypony having nightmares.”

I shook my head. “That may be true for normal nightmares, Sister, but this was more than simply a nightmare. I… I felt it, that, that whatever-it-is. I do not know what to call it or what it portends, but I believe it may be a piece of Nightmare Moon still clinging to her, or something of the like.”

Sister knitted her brow. “How’s that possible? Didn’t Twilight and her friends cleanse all traces of Nightmare Moon with the Elements when you first returned?”

I slanted my mouth to deflect the sting of her words. I had to remind myself she did not mean it as such.

“They cleansed that evil from me, true. That is all I know. But what I saw within Sunset Shimmer’s dream was unmistakable. I was one to have hoped that time would heal her wounds as it is wont to do, but this one runs deeper than any I have ever seen. There was practically nothing left of her dream. ’Twas naught but…”

I took a deep breath to steady myself and spent the time distracting myself with the odds and ends of her tea table. Sister had acquired another tea bag tray since last she entertained me.

She placed a hoof on my shoulder. For as much as I should have let myself lean into her, I instead took a long drink of tea. It scalded all the way down, but I dared not let it show.

“We all have our scars, Luna. Some of them run deeper than we wish, but we all learn to heal. For some ponies, it takes longer than others.” She squeezed my shoulder a mite bit harder.

I remained silent.

Nay, Sister. This was not a scar. Scars were wounds that had since healed. This nightmare was a festering boil that needed lancing, and, perhaps, more abrasive measures. Though I was the knife that wounded her, I could also be the salve that healed her. She deserved that much.

“I must right this wrong…” I afforded Sister a pleading gaze, despite knowing I must do this alone.

“Are you asking me for guidance, Luna, or permission?” Hers was an inquisitive face, one that knew the gravitas of my worries. She was right, however.

Now that I knew the evils I committed as Nightmare Moon still plagued Sunset, to even step hoof into her dream felt criminally invasive. Trespass remained the most straightforward method, yet two wrongs did not necessarily make a right.

Part of me yearned for some outside volition to lend me direction, to pardon the wrong of this would-be offense so that I may proceed with clear conscience. Again, however, I knew that was not the way of things.

I stared into my empty tea cup, unable to bear Sister’s gaze. “All I know is that she does not deserve to suffer for my transgressions. She never once did.”

A sister’s ignorance was a sister’s forgiveness. She may have found room in her heart to extend to me an olive branch, but I knew better. To see the consequences of my actions lingering in the mind of one I had sworn to protect stirred within me that cold reminder—the Tantabus that I would forever carry with me. I could not allow it to consume me as it once nearly had, yet I refused the prospect of ignorance.

“I know what I must do.” I smiled at Sister, as briefly as it might have been. “’Twill not be easy, but I must face my fears all the same.”

“May I ask?”

I looked at the fleurs-de-lis in the carpet beneath me. “I will write to her, in Twilight’s book. I must explain myself.”

“Are you sure you want to tell her who you are? Who you were?”

A pause, and I felt my ears fall back of their own accord. If only you knew, Sister…

“I must,” I said. “’Tis better to be honest than to let that hammer forever hang over my head. I will swallow my pride. I will dig out this cancer by the root.”

I headed for the door, half expecting Sister to leave me with a few parting words. She remained silent, however. Only Philomena bid me farewell with a little chirrup ere I shut the door behind me.

The hall lay dark, lit only by the candelabras spaced at lonely intervals along its length. The night sky outside the nearby window twinkled its well wishings to me, but among the stars I saw that waning crescent, that eye slowly closing in fear of what was to come.

’Twas quiet enough to hear the blood flowing through my veins, and in the nighttime silence of the hallway, I heard Sister pour herself a cup of tea.

Author's Note

Finally back to it. I hope this story doesn't disappoint.

Onward and Upward!

This story has undergone changes. Some comments may no longer make sense or be relevant.