Luna soared through the night on dream-lofted wings.
Below her stretched Equestria, a vast patchwork tapestry of cities and darkness. Fires burned where ponies slept, their minds filling the air with countless sparks of light that drifted on the wind of their thoughts. Below her, these embers floated across the dark forests and fields, so many of them that they resembled the stars in the skies above.
She tipped her wings and wheeled down to skim through them. Images assaulted her. An earth pony stallion sat beneath a tree, watching his lover run through a sunburnt field toward him, but no matter how fast or how long she ran, they never grew closer together. A pegasus mare struggled to fly, never realizing she was swimming through oil, her wings burning with each slow beat. A foal cowered in the attic, quaking in terror as something huge and dark crept toward her on paws that bristled with claws. This one Luna snagged with her hoof, and with a few gentle manipulations she pried the foal loose from the nightmare. She tossed the little mind into the night, and in her hoof she regarded the speck of foul darkness that remained.
Nightmares served their purpose. If dreams were too pleasant, ponies would never desire to wake from them. But there were nightmares, and there were foul things like this crawling parasite, a ball of malice that had squeaked in from between the stars and fed on the fears of her subjects. She ground it to dust between her hooves and cast it out into the ether, where it would fuel more pleasant dreams in the nights to come.
So it went for Luna. A normal night, in other words, spent surveying the land of the unconscious. In the far distance, where the sky met the horizon, vast mountains rose like the teeth of a saw. They bounded in the world, and she knew that if she flew to them she would leave the sleeping minds of her beloved subjects behind; the embers of their thoughts would fall away, and only darkness would remain. And part of her soul yearned for that, begged to be free of this demeaning guard duty. Her heart of hearts wanted to soar past those mountains into the land of true night. And there she could be queen once more, the indisputable god of everything dark and shadowed and unloved by the sun, just as she had been once—
Luna shook her head. The thoughts came sometimes, but she was stronger now. They had no power over her.
She soared on through the night land, tending the dreams of her subjects like flowers in a garden.
* * *
Hours later, the eastern horizon began to glow with the pink tinge of the coming dawn. As this was the world of dreams, there was no sun and nothing would rise in the east, but it still served as a warning for her. Time was short. Return home now, the light said. So she banked her wings and arrowed back toward the citadel of her slumbering mind.
Dream wind filled her ears. The stars sang their song above, and below the thoughts of thousands began to slowly vanish. Early risers, some of them.
She drank in the noise, let it lull her mind. Soon she would be abed. Her tired legs dangled beneath her. A pillow, a pillow, how she longed for a pillow. A pillow and perhaps some blankets and wasn’t there a stallion or two in the guard who’d looked at her longer than mere duty demanded, long enough to catch her eye before turning away with a blush. How warm would their bodies be, she wondered, tangled beneath the sheets with hers. A hungry smile began to play at her lips at the thought, and—
“Meow.” It sounded below her like a bell, slicing through the night’s other noises. It startled her from the pleasant daydream (as she laughingly called them) and drew her gaze below.
“Meow.” It came again. Not from somepony’s dream. From the night itself. She circled down, down, down toward the slumbering lands below, found a darkened farmhouse that twisted and grew and shrank as the ponies who dreamed it meandered in their thoughts, and she alighted on the steeple of the barn.
Silence now. She frowned, then called out, “Meow?”
“Meow,” came the answer. From within the barn. She ducked through the loft door into the upper floor, and found the sound’s author.
It was a black cat, though all cats in dreams were black. Even white cats were black – they couldn’t help it, or perhaps they liked it this way. Luna never could tell with cats; you never knew what they wanted. It gazed at her from beneath a fallen slab of timber planks, its golden eyes bright as lanterns in the gloom.
“Meow?” she asked again. She took a few careful steps toward it, then settled down on her belly to speak with it better.
Cats did not dream, as such. They were too magical for that. Rather, when they slept they entered the dreamlands as fully as she did. Not as powerfully, of course, because they were not gods, but they had a touch of the divine in them. They’d probably stolen it from her at some point when she was young and not paying attention. They were sneaky like that.
Still, company was nice. She shoved her muzzle under the board, right up into claw-range of the cat, daring it to object. “Why call you out for me, little one?”
“Meow.” Again. It was female, Luna saw, and she lay on her side. At her belly nursed a litter of kittens.
“Congratulations,” Luna said. She’d never been a mother, of course, but she had all the equipment to be one, if she chose. In that remote sense there was a connection between her and this lowly cat. And in any case, it was the polite thing to say. “You must be proud.”
“Meow,” the cat replied. There was some pride in that voice, yes, but something melancholy as well. It begged for more attention. Luna peered close, at the cat, at the kittens, and jerked in sudden awareness.
“Ah,” she said. One of the kittens was smaller than the others. It had only three legs. It struggled with its siblings to find a teat to nurse from.
Luna was no prophet, but she could see its fate. Weaker than its siblings, it would struggle for a few days. Wither as they grew. Then starve.
“So it goes.” She stood, preparing to depart. There were countless kittens in the world, after all. One more or less would make no difference. Her bed called for her.
“Meow.” The mother tried again, plaintive. It knew the kitten’s fate too.
“I’m sorry. That is life,” Luna said. She spread her wings to depart. “It is the fate of the weak to be eclipsed by the strong.”
She took a step, and froze. The dream world waited for her to soar, to join it again. Behind her, life would take its course, and soon nopony but her would remember that a weak, three-legged kitten had existed at all.
She swallowed. On the eastern horizon, the sky began to catch fire. Her time was short.
“Fine,” she mumbled. She turned back and swaddled the kitten in her wings. It pawed weakly at her, its tiny claws snagging the barbs of her feathers, but she was a god and it was a kitten and it was no trouble at all to bundle it up.
“Meow,” the mother said. There was a note of thankfulness there, but when Luna turned to look, the cat had already set her head down, ignoring the princess completely.
Cats. What a tragedy that kittens turned into them. Luna rolled her eyes and leapt back into the night, the little package safely held against her breast.
* * *
Celestia was at her breakfast table when Luna arrived after a few hours of true sleep. While she could (and sometimes did) spend entire nights tending to her subjects’ dreams, such ventures were not restful; they did not refresh her. So she made a habit of bookending her nightly rounds with periods of laborless slumber, in which she dreamed freely as any other pony.
She took a seat on the indigo cushion across from Celestia and plucked at the selection of fruit with her magic. A slice of cantaloupe, a few cubes of melon. A demure little cinnamon roll. And a saucer of milk, which she heated with her magic until it was about what she judged to be a cat’s body temperature, and then she carefully lifted the kitten from its perch in her mane and set it the table. It bobbled, unsteady on its three legs, then took a shaking step toward the saucer and began to lap at the warm milk.
Celestia watched all this in silence. Finally, when everycreature was settled into their meals, she raised an eyebrow.
“This is Pumpkin,” Luna said. “He’s a kitten.”
Pumpkin had turned out to be orange with light brown streaks running up his cheeks and across his eyes, as she’d discovered upon waking with him. She would have liked to take credit for the name, but it actually came from Cornflower, the maid who’d spotted him when she came to rouse Luna and change the linens. “Oh, what a cute little pumpkin that is,” she’d said. And that was as good a name as any.
“So I see,” Celestia said. “You’re keeping him?”
“No, I’m fattening him up for lunch,” Luna said. “Of course I’m keeping him, sister.”
“I thought you didn’t like cats?” Celestia reached across the table with the tip of her wing, lightly brushing Pumpkin’s ears. “Where did you find him?”
Luna eyed the wing carefully, ready to snatch Pumpkin away at the first sign of distress. “I don’t. They’re little thieves. But I like Pumpkin.” She nibbled on a bit of melon, letting its sweet juices drip onto her tongue. “And I found him in a dream. Where else do cats come from?”
“Where else indeed.” Celestia pulled back her wing, and returned to the stack of pancakes piles before her. “Well, let me know if you need any help caring for him. He appears a little… forgive me, a little sickly.”
Luna regarded Pumpkin, his tiny, emaciated frame, so thin she could see his tiny ribs beneath his fur. And of course his mangled leg, gone just beneath the shoulder. He faced a tough road ahead, no doubt. Giving him up was the most loving thing his mother could have done.
“He’ll be fine,” Luna said. “Us little siblings have to watch out for each other.”
