Sandbar relaxed on his changing table, letting his head sink into the padding as he patiently waited for Ocellus to come back to change him. He could have sworn he had still been in bed, but maybe he was wet enough where she thought his diaper wouldn't make it through the night.

"So, is my little bro ready for his change?"

Sandbar's ears twitched at the voice that most definitely did not belong to Ocellus. Before any other thoughts could register, an all too familiar figure of a cerulean griffon came into his view.

Gallus.

Sandbar's little headspace melted away as his emotions focused into a single beam of anger centered on the griffon standing over him as the stallion sat up and delivered a right hook with his front hoof, only to have his ex leap back out of reach.

"Whoa, a little cranky are we?"

Sandbar swung his back legs off of the changing table and leapt to the floor, which he now realized was the floor of a cavern. He glanced back at the changing table, and saw the mage's staff from his Starswirl costume. He grabbed it, and his reach now extended considerably, he swung it out angrily towards the griffon, who again jumped out of reach, this time taking flight with a flap of his wings, and took off down the cavern, with the padded pony galloping in chase.

"I think a little foal needs his nap!" Gallus called back as he disappeared around the bend.

His mind dismissing all reason as he galloped after the griffon, Sandbar ran on three legs as he tightly held the mage's staff with his fourth. He rounded the bend, and saw Gallus standing there facing him, among the surrounding pitch blackness of the cave, and Sandbar skidded to a halt.

"Are you all calm now?" The griffon asked, holding out his front talons in an invitation to a hug.

Sandbar gritted his teeth as his eyes became pinpricks, and the mage's staff began to crackle with electricity.

"Leave me the fuck alone, you sky dropping!!!" He screamed, thrusting the mage's staff forward, and a glowing orb of lightning shot forward from the tip, surging forward, illuminating the cavern as it did so. A split-second before it hit its target, the griffon vanished like nothing more than an apparition, and the crackling orb continued forward, illuminating the cave, and showing was behind where Gallus had been standing.

The Tree of Harmony.

Sandbar's eyes widened in horror as the orb continued to surge forward and slam into the tree, making a smoldering hole that continued to expand and crack the tree's crystal trunk.

"No, no, no!" Sandbar yelled, running forward in vain. The branches began to fall to the floor, shattering to pieces, continuing to fall off until only the trunk remained, which collapsed to a heap of shards, which tumbled end over end as the pile collapsed around Sandbar's hooves.

The young stallion's emotions quickly bubbled over as he tried in vein to piece together the indiscernible shards of the tree, and his legs gave out from under him, as he began to weep, his soft cries echoing down the dark cave.

Sandbar heard hoofsteps behind him, and saw a new source of illumination as a pair of dark blue hooves gently wrapped around his barrel, and he saw an unmistakable waving mane filled with sparkling stars.

"Be calm, Sandbar." The gentle voice told him. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and go to where you are most at peace."

His surging emotions beginning to subside, he did as he was asked, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He held it a moment, and when he exhaled, the hooves holding him vanished. He still felt the stone floor, but a cool, comforting breeze had joined it. He opened his eyes, and found himself on a small rocky outcropping, overlooking a white sand beach under a brilliant, clear night sky and full moon. The ocean was just a hair over calm, providing the relaxing sound of waves splashing up on the beach.

Down on the beach, a couple dozen feet away, sat Princess Luna, seeming content to wait on him and watch the surf. He took another breath, and stepped down off of the outcropping, and walked down the beach to where the Princess of the Night waited.

"I'm sorry to take up your time, Princess." The stallion apologized, coming up and sitting next to her.

"'Time' is hardly conventional in the realm of dreaming, Sandbar. It is bent and woven here in ways you can only imagine. And this is how my time is best spent, helping ponies in their times of need. So how can I help you, Sandbar?" Luna asked gently, looking over at him.

"I wish I knew. Some days I'm okay, and some days... I feel as broken as the Tree of Harmony just was in that cave. I know Princess Cadance warned me that it would be something I would struggle with for a very long, long time. Still, I guess I should consider myself lucky that I'm an earth pony, so I don't get dark magic, or seriously screw up clouds or something..." Sandbar mused.

"I sincerely hope you don't continue to dismiss the struggles with your emotions purely based on your race, Sandbar. It hardly matters whether your natural strength lies in hooves, wings, or a horn; If you ignore the negativity churning inside you, it will change you in ways you cannot imagine."

"Just as well, I think if I had a horn right now, I'd have tried a memory erasing spell at this point. That's how badly I just want to forget everything about him."

"What if I told you that such an artifact did indeed exist once, and was very, very dangerous?" Luna told him.

"I think I'd ask where it was."

"If you erase a piece of your past, you will erase a piece of yourself. An old poet once wrote, 'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all.' I believe you have many more pleasant memories than bad, Sandbar, and that you just aren't letting yourself think of them right now, and that's okay, for a little while. But I think when more time passes, you will still cherish the positive ways Gallus helped you grow. Or the small parts of yourself he helped you discover." Luna told him as she motioned to the lower half of his body.

Sandbar glanced down, and his face flushed red when he suddenly realized that dream or not, there was still a fresh diaper taped around his waist, and a pacifier hung around his neck.

Luna giggled lightly at his embarrassment.

"My point is, Sandbar, you enjoy and embrace parts of yourself that he helped bring out. The tricky part for you will indeed be to slowly forget about him, but not the ways he helped you grow. Forgive me for being so direct, but perhaps it would be for the best to try to act as if he were dead."

"What???" Sandbar asked, perplexed.

"If what I have heard through the grapevine is true, all the relationships he abandoned with almost no warning, it is not so farfetched to imagine that the griffon you loved is gone."

Sandbar considered the Princess' words carefully, and began to think that she was correct. When he imagined himself confronting his ex face to face, he never got as far as asking him things like "why?" because he knew he would never accept any of the answers that would possibly come out of the griffon's mouth. Instead, he frequently fantasized about making him count his teeth, not asking him any questions, instead verbally berating him that whoever he ran away to needed as much professional help as he did, or that nothing he endeavored for in life wouldn't even be a footnote in history books.

"Lastly, I do hope you realize how very lucky you are, to have Ocellus. You two have been helping each other through this superbly. Many struggling with painful breakups don't have others to lean on, and frequently it takes them many years to open their hearts to others again, if they do so at all."

"Princess, I have never taken Ocellus for granted. I just hope she doesn't have trouble in her dreams like I do, or that she has ways of dealing with it, because you can't visit other creatures in their sleep like you can ponies."

"Sadly, no, I cannot." Luna affirmed.

Sandbar took another breath, taking hold of the pacifier around his neck in his front hooves, turning it end over end as he looked down at it.

"Thank you, Princess. I'll think about what you said, and I'll keep trying."

Luna nodded sympathetically at him.

"That's all anypony can ever do."

Spreading her wings, Luna took to the skies, quickly vanishing against the clear night sky. With that, Sandbar slowly laid back, resting on the cool white sand, and when he took another breath and blinked, he found himself laying in his crib, and he glanced over at a soundly sleeping Ocellus, who was still maintaining her 'big sister' transformation.

Looking over at the clock on the nightstand, and seeing it wasn't going to be too much longer before sunrise, Sandbar leaned up as quietly as he could, slowly and silently unlatching the gate of the crib. He lowered it so he could get out onto the bedroom floor, before raising it again, closing Ocellus in. Slowly removing his clean diaper to keep the crinkling to a minimum, he tossed it into the diaper pail before going over to his desk, and picked up the quill that was resting next to a few sheets of paper, putting the tip to the parchment as he began to write...

Author's Note

Apologies for the long delay between updates. The only excuse I can offer is life.

Thanks for reading, and I sincerely hope you've been enjoying.

More to come!

-milesprower06