What Fun is There in Nightmares?
One pony's dream could be another pony's nightmare. Nevertheless, Luna couldn't figure out why this would be anypony's nightmare.
The world she had stepped into looked perfectly ordinary. Ponies went about their days in a quaint village reminiscent of the small town that had appeared next to the Everfree Forest during her absence – Ponyville, she thought her sister had called it. This wasn't the same town, she was sure, but Ponyville was the only small town she had seen in the waking world since her recent return, and the first she intended to visit again when she could find the time, so it was the first to come to mind.
By all accounts, this should be a completely ordinary dream – the kind the dreamer didn't remember after they woke, because it had been so dull. But the very essence of the dreamscape told Luna otherwise.
Every dreamscape was different on a fundamental, metaphysical level, and she could feel the difference as she moved from one dream to another. The feel of a world depended more on the dreamer than on the dream – some dreamscapes could fill a visitor with confidence and joy even if the dream was melancholic, while others might tear at their very being like a hard breeze through the soul at the best of times. But that didn't mean the fabric of unreality was unaffected by nightmares. When a dream turned into a nightmare, the world itself turned harsher and more hostile to visitors. Confidence and joy would turn to pride and sickening schadenfreude, a breeze into a storm.
This world felt cruelly whimsical and… breathless, restrained to the point of suffocation. She could breathe just fine in the dream's air if she wanted to, but the world itself made her feel like a drowning clown. Regardless of how ordinary it looked, it was undeniably a nightmare.
Below, none of the vivid, yet unidentifiable ponies noticed the Princess of the Night hovering above them. That would be because none of them were real. They were simply reflections of the dreamer's concept of a crowd of ponies, which was why they all had the same face, wearing the same happy expression. At least they had faces in this dream. Not every dreamer gave them that much.
That was the other odd thing about the nightmare. Where was the dreamer? Normally the dreamer would be central to the dreamscape, the world itself shifting more than the dreamer truly moved. Were they somewhere in the crowd?
Luna looked closer at the ponies as they wandered about the town's central marketplace, consisting of a number of sales stands surrounding an ornate fountain. They all seemed to know exactly where they were going at all times, but none were in a rush, and none left the market. Everything was in perfect order, the dream ponies living together in harmony. Sometimes two or more of them would stop for some pleasant conversation with each other, though the words were impossible to make out. That wasn't unusual for dream ponies; often, one could only make out their tone, for that was all that mattered to the dreamer.
Finally, she found her target – a gray, middle-aged earth stallion with a salt and pepper mane and a white beard. He moved about in the crowd just like everypony else, but he wore a frown instead of a smile and scowled wordlessly at each dream pony who attempted to strike a conversation in pleasant gibberish.
"Come to gloat?" he asked scornfully when he noticed her approach. He didn't stop trotting. Luna suddenly realized that he couldn't – the dream had taken control over his hooves.
"Nay, my loyal subject!" she said in her Royal Canterlot Voice. Tradition was tradition. "We, Princess Luna, have come to thine aid against thy nightmare!"
"You know nopony talks like that anymore, right?" the stallion said flatly.
His voice sounded oddly familiar, but Luna had already met many other ponies whose voices sounded familiar since she came back from the moon. Perhaps she had visited the stallion's dreams before, as Nightmare Moon? She was never going to forgive herself for the millennium she had spent creating nightmares instead of alleviating them.
"We do not understand."
"I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure ponies haven't used the royal We in centuries, and the shouting is frankly obnoxious."
"But it is tradition when addressing Our subjects!"
"Well, I'm not one of your subjects, okay?" The exasperated tone sounded odd coming from the stallion, who was now heading towards an apple stand. "Apples," he said to himself as he reached it and bought some. "Such a boring, common fruit. Would it kill this dream to sell some tangerines, or perhaps guaraná?"
He was claiming to not be her subject? Much had changed in a thousand years, but as far as she was aware, almost every pony was still under Equestrian rule.
"Art thou–" she caught herself and very deliberately lowered the volume. It was easier in a dream. "...art thou not a pony?"
The stallion's eyes widened. "You don't recognize me," he said, thoughtfully. "I… thought you'd know who I was even in this nightmarish pony form."
She had been gone for a thousand years, why would she recognize anypony? Unless...
Oh no.
"Discord?!"
"Yes, yes, that's my name, don't wear it out," he said. "Discord, Lord of Chaos and Disharmony, once and future ruler of Equestria, and primary target practice for the birds in the Royal Canterlot Garden. You know I'm conscious in there most of the time, right? Over a thousand years is a long time to stand still for somepony like me. It's so boring."
Luna could only stare as Discord wandered over to a stand that sold flowers, against his will.
"You'd think dreams would at least bring some excitement, and I will admit they usually do, but then – well, I'm sure you can see this for yourself."
"We… we turned you into stone…"
"Yes," Discord said casually, but not without a hint of venom in his voice, "I noticed."
"But Starswirl cast a spell on the statue to confirm thou were fully petrified! How canst thou be conscious when thou art made entirely out of stone? How canst thou dream? It makes no sense!"
"Have you met me, Luna? Really, you ponies never learn." He shook his head as his body turned in the direction of the souvenir stand at the other side of the market. The souvenirs on display were perfectly nondescript in a way only dream objects could manage.
"Over a thousand years encased in stone…" Luna muttered, mostly to herself.
"I heard you took a vacation from the world yourself," Discord said. "Well, actually, I saw it happen – watching you and Celestia fight each other was the most exciting thing that happened to me after the two of you put me in my predicament. Picture it: the ponies who had worked so hard together to end my reign, duking it out in the sky right in front of me! And then afterwards, when Celestia came to look at my statue and cry about it, talking to herself, no, singing about how it was all her fault? Good times, good times."
Luna glared at Discord. "I was not myself that night," she said. She could have said more, but she refused to let him rile her up.
"Of course you weren't. The regular you would never fight Celestia – you were always the boring one, you know? Back then, I really thought Celestia would be the first to turn evil, but you sure proved me wrong."
"If all thou intendest to do is rip open old wounds," Luna said calmly, "I believe it is time for me to depart." She turned towards the moon, which was still adorned with her own silhouette. That was normal, as not everypony had truly gotten used to the change.
"W-wait!" Discord said, suddenly sounding desperate as he trotted towards his next destination. "Aren't you going to help me with this nightmare first? You said you came to my aid."
He was right. Discord or no Discord, leaving now would be willfully neglecting her duty as the Princess of the Night. Besides, something he had said had struck a chord with her.
She sighed and turned back to him. At least it would be an easy task. "Thy dream hooves run away with thee only so long as thou allowest them to. Thou dost not like it, but hast thou truly attempted to stop it? Thou needest but to truly believe that thou hast control, and thou wilst have it."
He screeched to a halt.
"Thou art afraid of being forced into a normal life, but know that as long as thou existest, for better or worse, thou wilst always be thou."
His pony body began to morph, growing longer and longer. His limbs changed, each into a different form, and a pair of mismatched antlers appeared on his head. Soon enough, he looked just as he had all those years ago, when she and Celestia had first confronted him.
Discord stretched. "Ahh, that's much better."
He looked down at his claw, as if wondering something. Then he snapped, and gravity stopped working. Luna tried to stabilize herself with her wings, but it didn't help much.
Discord snapped again, and all at once the marketplace changed. Stands floated upside down selling chocolate milk, exotic fruits and cherry bombs – bundled sticks of dynamite that periodically exploded into a large amount of cherries. The water from the fountain was flowing sideways, right into a gaping mouth on the side of a building.
The roads turned into soap, but it didn't do much to the dream ponies, since they were all floating anyway. Soon enough the soap started floating as well.
"Oh, this is so much more fun!" Discord said. "Thank you ever so much, Moon Moon."
"Thou art… welcome?" Luna said, uncertainly. Should she have done this? Didn't Discord deserve bad dreams for what he had done to the citizens of Equestria?
Then again, perhaps the waking world was a bad enough dream for him as it was.
"I must depart now," she told him, flapping her wings in an attempt to move towards the moon. It was difficult to fly without gravity, even in a dream. "I have other subjects to tend to."
A sing-song "See you soo-oon!" was the last thing she heard as she tumbled awkwardly through the face of the moon into the realm between dreams.
Wait, what?
As far as Princess Celestia knew, her sister had never cared for sculptures. Whenever Luna did seek out art, she had preferred impressionist paintings over hard rock depictions that left little to the imagination. She had always scoffed at the collection of statues they had owned at the Castle of the Two Sisters, most of which had been moved to Canterlot when Celestia did.
And so Celestia was surprised, to say the least, when she discovered Luna's first use of her restored executive power as Princess of Equestria:
Increase cleaning frequency for the statues in the Royal Canterlot Garden. Allocate time on Our my schedule for regular visits, unaccompanied.
– Princess Luna
Author's Note
I felt like writing but wasn't in the headspace for working on either of my ongoing fics, and so this came to be.
Discord wanting to replace the apples with tangerines is a reference to Krickis' story Inner Strength. The mention of guaraná, on the other hand, is there simply because I think Discord would love them aesthetically.
Update: This story now has a sequel!
