In my dreams, I carry the moon on my back. It lights my path up an endless hill.
The hill is lush with the stuff of imagination. Bioluminescent flora glows an otherworldly blue. It sways as if underwater. I move equally slowly, soupily forward.
The moon is alive. It is full of the dreams of ponies, swimming around unconsciously, ethereally, colliding, merging, splitting. Cell mitosis. An embryo of living creativity. Hope meets fear and passion meets fate and love meets war and memory meets surreality.
It is only a matter of time until it kills me.
Every night, without fail, I falter under its weight and collapse. The weight of all those dreams crushes me flat. My body gives way. I feel every cell shattering.
Then I wake up.
I rise up from my bed in an earthly pallor and drift through the winding hallways. One thing I appreciate about Canterlot Castle is, its upper levels are laid out exactly like the castle of Everfree. The lower levels are all new and confounding, but up here things are familiar.
My sister, here a thousand years ago at the time of the castle’s construction, thought ahead to days like these. The gesture is quite thoughtful.
I float my way around a series of blind corners to a kitchenette built exclusively to serve breakfast. Aside from my bed, it is my favorite place in the entire castle.
The cooking area, a stone enclosure taking up exactly half of the room and staffed by two unspeaking servants, contains a stove with two burners, two comically tiny egg pans, two wide flat crepe pans, and two sets of additional cutlery necessary to make two meals simultaneously. In the cabinets are two plates, two sets of silverware, two coffee mugs, and one large serving pitcher.
The servants bow respectfully. Two eggs are nestled in their tiny pans. They sing in butter, warbly in the mids and crispy around the edges. Two crepes solidify beside them. English muffins darken in a dual toaster beside the stovetop.
A smile comes across my face. I have a hunch they’re making my favorite breakfast sandwich.
On the other side of the kitchen, unseparated from the kitchen, my sister sits at a small square table. She sips a cup of coffee and reads a newspaper.
There’s a cup of coffee waiting for me as well, a thin trail of steam still curling from the surface. The mug is unfamiliar. Printed on the side in large letters are the words Number One Sister!
A welcome asymmetry. My attention moves to a jar of syrup and mareygold butter sitting beside the coffee.
My smile grows wider. They definitely are making my favorite breakfast sandwich.
“Good morning,” my sister says as I slip into the seat across from her. “How did you sleep?”
I think about a billion feathers stuffed into a single massive pillowcase, the weight of all that weightlessness.
“Well,” I say, and breakfast arrives. Two english muffins, one a receptacle for jam and the other for butter. On top of that goes one runny egg, a dash of salt, then the crepe. Then a dash of maple syrup. I top it with the other part of the english muffin, and the beast is complete.
I wolf it down in a few seconds, noting the chefs’ approving nods out of the corner of my eye.
I will not eat again until dinner. And who knows what dinner will be?
“I have resumed my duties,” I say to my sister after I have finished chewing. “As of last night.”
“Really? So soon?”
I know she means no harm by that. “It gives me purpose,” I reply. “To feel that connection after so long is sublime.”
Once again, my thoughts turn to connection--specifically, my face connecting with the earth as the moon squishes me flat.
“Has it changed?” My sister lifts the sandwich to her lips and takes a delicate nibble. Her curiosity is palatable. How wonderful, to have someone who shares my fascination with the realm of dreams.
“The hill is the same. The grass waves like it’s underwater, and it looks blue in the light.” I return the kindness, asking, “And yours?”
“Still barren,” my sister says with a sigh. “I long to trade places. Just for a night.”
“Tell me. When I was up in the moon and you carried their dreams, did you ever see my realm?”
“Sadly not. I carried their dreams, but I carried it across my usual wastes.”
“Fascinating. And the sun--does it crush you?”
My sister holds up her sandwich abomination and considers the crepe nestled inside. “Every evening, without fail.”
I let out a low hmm. “Is it heavier?”
“In a sense. It took some time adjusting to carrying both.”
“That is no small feat,” I say, redirecting. “You were quite strong in those times.”
“I was so weak.”
I frown and look down at my sister’s sandwich. The egg yolk spills out the side and onto the plate, mingling in a syrupy jelly. “We both were.” I drift a moment, lost in thought. Then I say, “I believe the hill is not a hill at all, but a spiral of sorts. We are bound to it like a line is bound to the page on which it is drawn.”
“Perhaps.” My sister takes another sip of the coffee. “I have had many lifetimes to consider the nature of our task.”
“And?”
She takes another bite of her sandwich. Answer enough for me.
“Does it hurt?” my sister asks. “When the moon--” she taps her hoof on the table and leaves it there.
I shake my head. “It used to hurt. But I find it no longer carries that weight. I am the master of dreams, yet for so long I let my dreams control me.” I shake my head. “Now, the weight signals wake. I die, and I wake, and I get to see you and eat my sandwiches.”
My sister smiles.
And I smile back.
