Dreamwalker's Tale: An Anthology

I trudged along like the steadfast little soldier I was supposed to be. Every hoofstep fell on the thick, soft carpet lining the hallways of Canterlot Castle, muffling the sound it would have made otherwise. I had a destination in mind, but no urgency to get there faster. Every now and again, I passed by another massive window, the evening sun shining through into the hallway. It was a weird sensation, this recurring shift between walking in the sun’s warmth and passing through those gaps in between windows.

I had cared for my armor and put it away, as I was supposed to do after training. It was well-maintained, because I was nothing if not meticulous. Somehow though, I still felt like I was wearing it. I felt its presence, its weight pushing me down.

Every. Muscle. Ached.

I noticed that I had subconsciously started to slow down whenever I was walking under Celestia’s sun. Whenever I passed by another window. The warmth seeped into me, plastered my coat and soothed my aching muscles. And then I moved past the window, past the sun and past the warmth and I sped up a little. Just a little, to reach the next window a fraction of a second faster.

I wondered how strange I must have looked at that moment.

Suddenly growing self-conscious was nothing new for me, so I barely reacted to it. I just took a quick look around, but the hallway was almost empty. I could see a few day guards down the corridor, flanking another door, but other than that? I was alone. It was fine.

Even if there had been witnesses, I doubted I could have brought myself to care. I was spent. Drained. Exhausted. And I desperately wanted to go home.

A left turn, a couple dozen feet more, a right turn and my destination was in sight. Two more day guards flanked the doors to Celestia's study. “Hey guys,” I greeted them lazily as I raised a hoof to knock. They knew my face by now. While they might not have approved of me, or cared about me at all, it was enough for them to not stop me. Then again… that might not have been fair. I had to repeat to Pinkie to this very day every now and again, swear to her, that I could not read minds. Maybe these guards liked me. Maybe they cared who I was. Or how I was. I was just assuming again.

I sighed, but said nothing. They sure said nothing as well, it was part of their job after all. Be impressive, be silent, stand at attention.

“Come in,” piped Celestia up. It was her usual, practiced business-voice.

I opened the door, stepped past the threshold and stopped. She was not alone, to my surprise. Two other guards, day guards, stood before her desk. They had apparently just finished a report or something and waited for her reply. I realized I had left the door open, so I took another step into the room, closed it and waited near the entrance until whatever this was was finished.

Celestia did not break character. Even when she looked up at the newcomer – me –, she did not even smile. Well, that was not true. She smiled of course. She always did. But it was her usual smile. Her serene Princess-smile. I understood its necessity, but I did not like it very much.

“Thank you, Captain. That would be all,” she addressed the two guards. They gave a curt nod and turned and headed for the exit. One of them looked at me. For just a second or two, he looked at me. And there was a disdain in that look that made me flinch a little. Neither of those two slowed down. They reached the door in perfect unison and left the room quietly.

The door closed again and with the lock in place, the layers upon layers of protective spells re-established themselves. I liked her study. It felt safe. I also liked the memories I had of this place. Of the times I shared this room with her. Of the first time in here. We were lying before that fireplace. I had prepared tea for her. Only weeks later did she muster enough courage to tell me that while she appreciated the gesture, my tea was awful. We had a good laugh that day.

I had massaged her. Preened her. We had talked. And we had sex. I liked my memories of that evening. They were my memories.

“Reminiscing again?” she asked me. There was a mirthful undercurrent in her voice. I could hear her smiling.

I looked over to her and confirmed my suspicion. And I could not help but smile in return. I loved her. I loved that smile. It was honest and unfiltered and it was mine. “A little,” I admitted. But then the clouds returned and I looked over my shoulder, back to the closed door. As if that would answer my question. Or Questions? I wasn’t even sure what I was asking that door. But I returned my gaze to her and I felt my brow furrow. “Who were those two?” I asked, but quickly corrected myself. “Actually, the one on the left. Who was that?”

I had presented her with a little puzzle box, it seemed. There was a certain glint in her eyes whenever I did that. A conundrum of sorts she could take a look at. She prodded and studied and took a guess about its many possible solutions. She could not help herself, it was her nature.

“His name is Iron Grip,” she finally replied, willing to engage in this puzzle.

She did not mention any rank. It was the first thing that I noticed. Which already led me to believe that this was not about me being a recruit for the night guard, or me being special in any way. This was apparently something of a more personal nature.

On any other day, I would have loved to do this little dance with her. She would give me little hints, lead me along until I finally figured it out. And she would satisfy her own curiosity, seeing how I would react, how I put the pieces together and what I would make of it all. But I felt exhausted. Tired. So I preferred to take a shortcut. “What’s his problem with me?”

She was not disappointed, it seemed. No surprise, really – she had looked me over when I entered. She probably had already guessed that I was in no mood to puzzle over this. “While he has not come forth in any way, I presume he harbors deeper feelings beyond loyalty for me.”

There it was again. I felt my armor on my back. Its massive, almost unbearable weight seemed to push me down to the floor. The leather straps, meant to hold it in place, restricted my breathing. I involuntarily let my head hang lower. “Oh.” And I felt a little bit more exhausted than I already had.

It was really ungrateful. I was ungrateful. Despite our relationship, I had not been as much in the public eye as I could have been. Should have been really. All thanks to her and her sister and their attempts to accommodate me. They did not keep me hidden per se. We did not keep our relationship a secret. With a public figure like Celestia, that was all but impossible. But she did not drag me to every public appearance she had to attend. I usually waited for her at the palace, once she returned. So that I could help her relax afterwards, to flush any remaining frustration out of her system, or listen to her excited retelling of some funny event.

“Are you jealous?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question of course. She already knew the answer.

“No,” I replied dutifully. I dared to look up to her. She sat at her desk, behind mountains of paperwork. I saw her shoulders slump a little. Saw her sigh silently.

“Guilty, then,” she stated matter-of-factly.

I sighed. Although I hesitated, we both knew that I would not start lying to her here, now. “I guess,” I replied.

She nodded and furrowed her brow in thought. She finally put down that feather she had been levitating the entire time and stood up from her chair. She walked around the table, over to the fireplace and lit it with a spark of magic, patting the carpet beside her.

That was not what I had intended.

I nevertheless walked over and plopped myself down and I happily leaned against her side. I cherished this closeness each and every time. I felt privileged. Not because she was a princess. Never because of that. But because she was Sunny. My Sunny. “I missed you,” I mumbled and nuzzled along her neck and into her mane. Morning dew and summer’s heath. I loved her smell.

For a sweet, short moment, she laid her head on top of mine and gave an appreciative sigh of her own. “I missed you as well.” We remained silent for a little while until she started what had at this point become inevitable. “There are many that love me.”

I knew that. The most unobservant foal in all of Equestria would know that. “Most of those love Princess Celestia though,” I weakly objected.

She did not disagree. She did not have to. “Indeed. Some of those love what they perceive as my ‘lifestyle’. They love the wealth I have, the power I wield, the influence my position gives me-“

“Your immaculate body,” I interjected in a weak attempt at humor. And maybe a little bit of flattery.

It worked. She paused for a moment, stifled a quiet giggle and a fainted blush rose to her cheeks. She could have controlled herself. I would never have heard any of that, or seen any of that. But she let me. And I loved that. “Immaculate, is it?” she teased and extended her wing.

Her primaries trailed along my spine, from my dock up to my mane. I deeply enjoyed the sensation and shuddered. “Oh yes,” I quietly mumbled. Immaculate indeed. My eyelids fluttered shut and a little whine escaped my throat when she retracted her feathers. A smile tugged at my lips as I heard her quiet giggle again. “Tease,” I accused her.

She did not mind much. She just smiled, and after another moment returned to our topic, much to my dismay. “Yet despite most of those ponies loving the idea of me more than the real me, there are those few who do see beyond all that pomp and splendor.”

I laid my head on the carpet. “I know,” I replied, accompanied by a sigh.

“But here I am, with you by my side,” she made her final push.

“I’m… trying,” I answered without raising my head again. “This isn’t about questioning your judgment. I can tell that you’re happy. And I am happy as well and that should mean that everything is just fine. But those voices keep nagging me. Telling me that I am not worthy of you. Telling me that I stole chances from others. They question me if somepony else might be able to make you more happy than I can, and if that might not be reason enough to—"

I sighed and shook my head to exile the thoughts I had been battling. "I want you to be happy. The happiest ‘you’ that you can be.” Even if that means that there is no ‘us’ anymore. The implication weighed heavily on my mind. We had this talk and many similar ones before. I had these discussions with Celestia. I had them with Luna. I had them with Twilight. Goodness gracious, I had them with a lot of my friends as well. Talking to Applejack was usually the best way to set myself straight again fast. She was not about to let myself talk myself down like that and if necessary, she would smack those self-deprecating thoughts right out of my head.

Literally, if necessary. Which had only happened twice so far. Yay, go me.

This was about self-worth. And I did not exactly have a high opinion of myself. Initially, after my arrival, I had been so focused on ‘fixing’ everything — and everypony —, that I had barely noticed how broken I was in places. Thinking about myself in the way I did was neither healthy nor normal. I knew that. Now. But it had taken time to accept this. And I had yet to find a way to ‘fix’ this. To fix myself. I was told to be patient. That time would heal all wounds. But I was doubtful.

We remained quiet for some time again. She finally broke that silence, lowered her head and used a little bit of her magic to guide my head upwards again. “I love you,” she said barely above a whisper. She looked into my eyes, so that I could see how earnest she was. Her words carried weight, but it was a good kind of weight. One I welcomed into my heart with open arms. One deep sigh later, I felt a smile creep up on me, tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I love you too.”

Satisfied with what she saw and what she had heard, she leaned in and I met her halfway. Kissing her was something I would never grow tired of. Despite the unfathomable amount of years she had lived, despite the countless romances she had experienced, her kisses always felt… well, almost innocent in a way. Pure.

She broke the kiss. For just a moment, I pondered following up on that. Drawing her in, pulling her back down to me, maybe letting things escalate beyond just kissing. But I had seen those mountains of paperwork. I had seen her tired yet determined expression. And I still felt oh so very tired.

There would be other evenings.

I procrastinated just a little bit by leaning against her again and I sighed and remained silent. She did not mind much. I assumed that this break was a welcome one for her. She would soon enough dive head-first into those mountains again in hopes of conquering them by the end of the day.

“What brought you to me?” she finally asked. I had started to wonder who of us would cave in first. Who would ruin the sanctity of this moment.

I took a deep breath. “I need your help,” I started. “Could you… could you charge the stone for me? Again?”

I continued to stare at the fire as I did not dare to meet her gaze. But I could feel her regard me with worry. “That would be the fourth night this week,” she replied.

It was neither a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’. Lucky me, however: Only a rather small part of me had dared to hope for a quick and easy answer. And even that part wasn’t all that surprised. I was still searching for an adequate answer, for anything to reply, when she continued. “Is there anything you want to talk about?” she offered. And it was an offer. Despite almost two years of training, we had yet to reach the stage where she pleaded for me to tell her what was going on. I was almost proud of that. I had not failed completely so far.

But there was worry in her voice. The stone recharged its teleportation ability passively, absorbing magic from its surroundings. It was enough for a ‘free’ teleport once per two weeks. It had originally been once per month, but Twilight continued to fine-tune the artifact. Still, in those last two weeks I had used it excessively. I knew that, she knew that, Luna and Twilight knew that.

None of them had pushed for answers too hard as of yet.

“I…” Bad start, try again. “Yes.”

And then I immediately fell silent again. But Celestia was smart. “But you do not want to talk to me about it,” she guessed.

My ears splayed flat against my skull. “I don’t want to disappoint you,” I replied. If she would ask, I would tell her. She knew that. But I did not want to tell her. So I was more or less asking her not to ask.

“You are not disappointing me,” she answered and nuzzled me. “There are certain things I prefer to discuss with my aides, or seneschals, or Luna.”

That made me chuckle a little bit. “Yeah, and Luna comes straight to me and discusses them with me.”

“Well, such is the nature of ponies,” she mused with a smile. “… and cheeky little sisters, apparently.”

I raised my head, stretched my neck enough that I could reach her jawline and gave her a series of little kisses along it, until she tilted her head for a proper kiss. “She has been bothering you again, hasn’t she?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

“She means well,” was Celestia's diplomatic non-answer.

“I could… try and tell her to stop?” I offered.

We both shared a serious look before we started smiling at each other. “And it would do little,” Celestia stated.

“And it would do little,” I agreed. I sighed and looked at the fireplace once more. “Still though. I might try anyway. At this point, she’s not doing anypony any favors with her persistence. I’m going to talk to Twilight about this, maybe she’s got a smart idea.”

It took me a couple of seconds to realize that she did not answer. Or react in any way. I looked up at her once I started to feel that prickly sensation of magic being cast in my vicinity. And indeed, Celestia's horn was wreathed in a golden aura. The glow faded seconds later and she opened her eyes again. “The stone should be charged now,” she let me know.

“Thank you, love.” And to show her just how much I appreciated her, I pulled her head down, took her sensitive ear between my teeth and softly nipped it once, only to immediately trail my tongue over it as soon as I heard her barely stifled moan.

“Maybe I should reconsider helping you,” she ‘grumbled’ once I gave her free.

“Maybe you should,” I agreed. “That way, I would be around you longer, giving me more chances to do things like this…” I breathed hotly against her ear and placed yet another kiss on its edge. It was a delight to see it flick and to notice that blush rise again.

“Good point,” she replied with a nod. “The stone is charged, off you go!”

Her horn came aglow once more, her levitation gripped me and effortlessly lifted me off the ground. I floated towards the doors. “Oi!” I half-heartedly complained.

Once she sat me down, I turned and saw her standing up. She dusted herself off when I trotted back over to her. “I meant what I said,” I insisted as I reached up to her again. “I am grateful for your help. For you in general. I might not understand why you agreed to be with me, but… you make me happy. Very much so. And I love you.”

She sported a playful smile when she stole a kiss from me. “You don’t have to understand, I suppose. You just have to accept that you will not get rid of me anytime soon.”

“Oh woe is me,” I half-heartedly faked some theatrics.

“Careful love, your inner Rarity is showing,” she joked.

“Good luck with the paperwork. I’ll miss you tonight.”

“I will miss you too,” she answered with a sigh. We nuzzled each other's necks for a moment and enjoyed the other’s warmth until I retreated and headed for the exit. As usual, I looked back halfway and almost tripped over my own hooves when I noticed her hips swaying more than was strictly necessary as she made her way back to her chair and work.

She knew, I realized, and she incessantly teased me. So that I may never forget what I was missing out on by leaving her alone for another night. I felt that stupid grin on my face, but could not do anything about it. I really was the luckiest stallion in all of Equestria, wasn’t I?

The teleportation stone was held in a vault. Only the princesses – and I – had permission to access the vault and use it. For now anyway. Twilight, always the busy bee, had plans to expand this into an entire network of teleportation devices all over Equestria to bring all of ponykind closer together.

She truly was a visionary.

Of course there had been certain… quirks. Like that one time the stone seemingly randomly teleported me on top of Mount Canterhorn. Or that one time Luna appeared up in the stratosphere for some reason. But by now, using it was safe. And with Twilight running the numbers and calibrating it, using the stone was getting easier and easier as well.

The only flaw we recognized so far was one we were not able to fix now. We had used a stone. A regular, literal stone. We had been so excited about the prospect of its function, about the theory behind it all, about testing our ideas, that we had spared little thought on appearances. A magic mirror might have been great. Or a magic door. Or maybe even a necklace or something.

It looked a little bit out of place, this hoof-sized, gray rock lying on a pedestal in the middle of a pompous room. Marble columns, marble tiled floor, stained glass window, a velvet cushion underneath it, several magical wards and runes all over the walls and ceiling and in the center of all that… a rock.

Well.

Next time.

The guards let me in and closed those doors behind me again. I trotted over without much thought, touched the darn thing and imagined Ponyville. Twilight's castle, a similar shaped and sized rock sitting on a crystal pedestal near the friendship map.

I felt a little sick for a couple of seconds. That was the only indication of the spell doing its work, which was marvelous. Every time Twilight teleported me, I wanted to throw up. It never happened when Celestia or Luna did that and luckily, Luna had helped significantly with the stone’s creation process.

Once I opened my eyes again, I was indeed standing in the very room I had envisioned.

There were no signs of Twilight or Spike in the room. Considering the time of day, they were probably busy with dinner and despite the fact that I had not eaten yet, I wasn’t hungry either. I took a shower and headed straight for bed – that actually sounded great.

But on my way through the crystal hallways, I somehow got everything mixed up in my head. I opened a door and walked in without closing it, only then realizing that I was heading straight for my bed without even noticing that I had skipped my trip to the bathroom.

But… but bed…!

It looked so enticing. Luring me in with its promises of rest and relaxation, the sweet, sweet release of sleep…

I slowly stepped up to it, my hoof traced over the blanket in an almost nostalgic gesture and with a dramatic “Ugh”, I raised myself up and let myself fall forward on top of it.

“That bad, huh?” came an amused voice behind me shortly after.

“Hi, Twilight,” I mumbled into the blanket. I felt heavy. Despite that – or maybe because of it – I noticed the shift on the bed as she sat down beside me.

“Oof, you could use a shower,” she noted.

For a fraction of a second, I wanted to be offended. I wasn’t smelling that bad… okay, fine, I was smelling. Bad. Probably. Maybe. But I could not bring myself to argue anyway. “I know,” I just replied weakly, almost in a whine. It was the fourth consecutive night I had returned home after all. “Luna ‘round?” I continued to mumble into the blanket.

“No,” she replied and almost sounded… hm. What was that? Sad? Concerned? “Rarity and Fluttershy invited her for a ‘girl’s night out’ and subsequent sleepover.” Ah yes. Troubled. She sounded troubled.

“That’s nice,” I nevertheless answered and could hear her blow a raspberry. It made me smile. I cracked my right eye open again, squinted in her direction and could see her smile down at me. “Did I disrupt dinner?”

“No, don’t worry,” she attempted to reassure me. “We just finished. Spike is now reading some new comic book he got from Luna. Have you had dinner already?”

“Mhm,” I blatantly lied.

Please don’t lie to me, Twilight's voice echoed in my head. She had sounded so desperate. Heartbroken. That had not been a flash. By now, I was decently experienced in distinguishing between those and ‘real’ memories. Shortly after my arrival, she had asked that of me. She had asked me and I had agreed. Seeing how little I thought I was able to offer, how little good I could do, how little I could contribute to the happiness of those dear to me… I was adamant about my word being worth something. I had to make it worth something.

Thus, I could not lie to her.

Ever.

Because I was awful at striking a balance.

I sighed deeply, I turned my head and looked at her. She was waiting. Patiently. But she knew and she was waiting for me to correct my mistake. “I haven’t had dinner yet,” I admitted. “But I’m not particularly hungry either. I just… I wanted to come home, I needed to… haaah… I don’t know…”

She leaned down and nuzzled me. It felt nice. So very different from Celestia, yet still very nice. I could not help but notice how she wrinkled her nose though, once she withdrew. “That bad, huh?” I asked.

She blushed a little, but nodded. “Long day?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Hm. Can I ask something of you?” With what felt like gargantuan effort, I rolled over onto my side to better face her.

“Sure,” she replied without hesitation.

“I initially just wanted to take a shower, crawl into bed and sleep,” I explained. “But I’ve done that the last three days and another couple of days last week and it’s not really getting better, it seems. Would you mind taking a bath with me? In the large bathroom, maybe?”

Despite Celestia telling me that it was okay and that she understood, and despite Luna telling me something similar, I still tried to keep a certain distance to Twilight most of the time. Being close to her was just fine. But in the last two years, there had been three or four instances where ‘being close’ had been too much and without thinking much about it, I had leaned in and done things I really should not have done. Like kissing her. Nipping her neck on that one very sensitive spot I knew about. Stroking a hoof lazily along her back and over her cutie mark. Things even very close friends really should not do.

It was still second nature for me. Despite all my attempts to differentiate between old memories and new ones, between flashes and this life, my ties to Twilight were just too strong. I was in a dedicated relationship with Celestia. I loved her with all my heart. But despite ‘all my heart’ loving her, there somehow still was a part of it that loved Twilight just as much. By now, I had come to terms with the fact that it would always be there. Celestia was my love, but Twilight was the center of my world. Somehow. And she would remain as such forevermore.

With Luna's occasional spikes in jealousy and her somewhat possessive nature, we had to be doubly careful. Another fact that probably contributed to me being one heck of a lucky stallion – we sat down and talked things through and I got their understanding. Mistakes were inevitably made and every time we talked it out. No sudden bombs that dramatically ended all happiness or something like that.

But we had to trust each other. We had to confide in each other. We had to be honest with each other.

And we had to be careful, lest the mistakes might unnecessarily spike in frequency.

Twilight nodded after giving it some thought. “The large bathroom should be enough that we don’t exactly have to pile on each other, it should be fine.”

I was grateful and nodded. “Thank you.”

I earned another hard-fought victory by successfully standing up again. Seriously, my hooves felt like lead at this point. I dragged them across the floor, sometimes barely lifting them at all and I already knew that taking a nice, hot bath would do nothing to help me with that situation. Quite the contrary, it would make it all worse. I would be half-asleep when exiting the bathroom and I would be fast asleep before entering my bedroom. Or something along those lines.

But that was a problem for future-Dreamwalker.

I followed her past several banners proudly displaying her cutie mark, past shelves lined with books and into another room. The large bathroom did not have a bathtub per se. It was more a terrace-like depression in the back-half of the room that could be flooded entirely. At its deepest point, I would have needed to swim. Twilight could still stand there, if barely. It was one of the most decadent, unnecessary luxuries of this entire castle, at least in my opinion, and I loved it.

There was a lot I could live without. I did not need much space to begin with. My bed did not need to be large. I did not give a flying haystack about how many windows my home had, or how large they were, or if they had pretty stained glass pictures in them. When it came to luxuries, an opulent bathroom was my top priority. A large shower. A large bathtub. Hot water. And that was enough.

The downside with this ‘tub’ was the time it took to fill up, of course. We sat at the edge and stared at the rising water level. “Why water?” she asked after a good long while.

“Hm?” I had not noticed, but apparently I had dozed somehow.

“Well, at this point we have established that you take ages in the bathroom,” she quipped with a smile. “But I noticed that this is especially true whenever you take a shower or a bath. And most of the time, when you return from those, you are… full of new ideas. I don’t get it.”

That made me chuckle. I exhaled, raised my head and looked at the ceiling, as if that would somehow help. “Honestly,” I started, “I can’t tell you. I have no idea why that is. My body feels light, and so do my thoughts. Everything just… drifts around aimlessly. It usually starts with stuff that is on my mind right now, and randomly drifts from there to… anywhere else really. It’s kind of unpredictable where I end up. Sometimes I stumble into a new train of thought that keeps me around for a while, and at other times I just continue to drift for the entire duration. And I don’t feel any… I don’t feel any need. I don’t need to solve any problem. I don’t need to worry. I don’t need to live up to expectations. There’s just no need of any kind whatsoever. So when I drift, I drift as freely as I can be. And I guess that somehow helps creative juices to flow? I tried to talk to Rarity about this once. How her creativity works, how she gets her inspiration, how she works past dead ends. I think we might have meant to say the same thing in a way, but it felt like we were speaking different languages doing so.”

She regarded me with curiosity and that studious gaze she tended to get whenever she was getting insight into a new topic. “Well she is a seamstress,” she finally replied, still furrowing her brow.

“I like to think creativity is the language,” I objected. “And being a writer, or being a seamstress, or singing or whatever is just the chosen method to express that. But I might be wrong about that, admittedly.” We fell quiet again as each of us chased around their own thoughts. Until I piped up again. “The water should be ready.” It certainly was deep enough. The rest could be filled with us inside, as to circumvent flooding the entire room. Twilight applied some oils or something to the steaming water and immediately a nice, relaxing smell made its presence known. A herbal mixture with a hint of… oranges, maybe?

We walked in and I immediately sighed as the warmth seeped into my very bones, just like the sun’s warmth had done previously. I gave myself over to the water and let it carry me, carefully turning on my back and stretching my legs outwards. I once again wondered for just a short moment how strange this must have looked from outside.

Twilight did not comment on it. She instead swam little circles around me and smiled to herself. Up until I splashed her with water, grinning. “Ruuude,” she accused me, but giggled all the same.

I just drifted for a couple of minutes. Just like I had tried to describe previously. It came as no surprise that my mind wandered to what ailed me these past days. Weeks, at this point. “Mind if I go all philosophical on your pretty rump?” I jokingly asked.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see her blush a little. “Sure, you are welcome to try,” she shot back.

That would do. I looked back up at the ceiling, tried to fish something out of that swirling chaos and neatly packaged it into words. “Everything is a matter of perspective and everything is relative,” I started my initial assessment. “And I mean quite literally everything. I am Dreamwalker. I am a pony. I am male. I have a cutie mark. I am a unicorn. I am a recruit of the night guard. Short statements. Short truths, supposedly. But there’s so much information missing that it’s hard to declare anything ‘truth’. Another recruit in my class, Pepper Belle… she’s colorblind. In her eyes – quite literally – red and blue are indistinguishable. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Her entire reality is missing a color or two. Because her eyes were built wrong or something. Another recruit, Soft Step, has such amazing, exceptional hearing that most of us just refer to her by her nickname, Bats. There’s this entire debate about nature versus nurture. I think both play important roles in who we are and grow up to be. Or I’d like to think that, because… there’s information missing. Every conscious thought is a product of what we perceive with the senses we have. We are a sentience, inhabiting a shell made of matter, living in a world made of matter. But in the end, matter can be broken down into energy. On a base level, everything is energy, isn’t it? Or maybe energy isn’t even the base, maybe there’s something even below that. And our shells, our bodies, are so flawed. Remember what you told me about how Rainbow learns? She sees all this stuff and barely anything of it reaches her consciousness. So much information that feeds into her subconsciousness instead, forming the grounds on which her intuition makes its ‘own’ decisions. Fluttershy once told me how bees see the world. Because they had told her and she had difficulties understanding it. I don’t remember the exact context. I think she was trying to lecture me, or something? Point is: Bees can see stuff we can’t. Because their eyes are built differently. So there’s a lot of stuff that is just there, but we cannot perceive it. And even if we were to perceive it, it might end up in our subconsciousness. That makes sense of course. Layers and layers of filters. Our minds wouldn’t be able to operate properly, given the full extent of information we gather. But it makes me think: How much is there that just gets lost? How much we don’t even know about?”

When I fell silent drifting about in the water, I stared at the ceiling and chewed my lower lip. She did not disrupt that flow of thoughts I had going on. She watched me. Studied me. And patiently waited for me to move on. “We use words to communicate with each other. I say ‘green’, and you know what I mean. You have an immediate response in your head, telling you of that color, showing you that color. But there is no certainty in that, is there? What I say might not be what I wanted to say. And what you hear might not be what I wanted you to hear. Or what I said. Heck, my understanding of the concept of ‘green’ might not even be the same as yours. I see grass and you could see something else and we just assume the other one sees the same thing. Because we are built similarly. And with how flawed our shells are, with how much information gets lost on the intake already, it’s not that much of a stretch to think about how much might get lost with the output either, is it? I think, so I am. But what I am I cannot communicate, because communication is flawed. One mind cannot truly touch, or know, the other. To truly know, it would mean becoming the other and that would end you. Because you can’t return from that, since you don’t know your original self anymore. So in the end, we are all just isolated specks of sentience, drifting in a shifting mass of energy, some of it stored in the form of matter, some not, with only assumptions about how the world is, how we are and what we experience. And no certainty to be found or gained anywhere. Everything is thought, and even thought is unreliable. Because… am I thinking what I am thinking because some external, higher force is making me think it? Am I thinking because of my nature, because some ancestor was shy or determined or freakishly honest and now I have those traits? Am I thinking because my immeasurably flawed perception of my surroundings has fostered certain expectations? If you disconnect my sentience from my body and my memories, take away the physical world, my organs responsible for my perception, and all expectations nurtured by years of living… would I still be thinking? What would I be thinking about? Would there be truth in it? What even is ‘truth’, at this point?”

I raised my hooves out of the water and waited for a couple of seconds until the dripping slowed down, then I brought them to my face and dragged them across it. I felt tired. Exhausted. Even here, now, drifting in warm water. The usual relaxation eluded me. “There is no such thing as ‘reality’. Everything is just as real as I accept it to be. I admittedly was raised… at least I assume as much. I was probably raised to accept a lot of things. I was raised to accept that green is the color of grass, and that my green grass is the same green grass everypony else sees. It makes it easier to… accept things as real. But I made the mistake of opening this box, asking these questions, and I can’t… ‘unask’ them. I can’t close that box again. I questioned reality and reality just shrugged. ‘That sounds like a ‘you’-problem, buddy’, it seemed to say. And I don’t have any answers. Just the uneasy feeling that in a relative world, where perspective is everything, it becomes infinitely more difficult to find meaning in anything. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Is there a reason for all this? I loved the fact that I have a cutie mark. It was supposed to help me find my place. Implying that I have a place. Implying that there is a plan. Order in this chaos. But now…? I don’t know. I just… I don’t know. That's all I can think of. All I ever return to. The only answer I have to all of those questions: I. Don’t. Know.”

A frustrated groan escaped my throat and my limbs went slack again, splashing a little bit of water around when they hit the surface. “Twilight, what do I do?”

The fact of the matter was: I was desperate for help. I had maneuvered myself into a conundrum I could not solve myself. I could not even fully grasp what the nature of this conundrum was. But Twilight was smart. I used three words, and she heard nine. I made one statement, and she understood seven. Probably not how it worked, but I liked to think of it that way.

She remained silent for a good long while, thinking about this herself. I sometimes tilted my head a little and watched her furrow her brow. “Friendship is magic,” were the first three words she replied with. It made me chuckle a little. She had said it with pathos, with the same gravitas she used when facing down another villain. And my reaction was expected. She smiled in that deeply satisfied way she usually did when solving a puzzle. “That became something of a catchphrase for me over the years,” she admitted. It seemed like she felt a little uneasy about that. “It’s true. I have seen what friendship can do. I… have also weaponized it to some degree. Turning villains to stone is not exactly what I would call ‘friendly’. It might be the better option, but there can be no argument that the Elements of Harmony are a weapon. Meant for defense only, but a weapon nonetheless. But this phrase, it… I also say it as a reminder for myself.”

That got my attention. Not that she had not had my full attention anyway, but now I twisted, turned around and stood in the water, watching her. Watching how she shifted uncomfortably. How her wings gave a nervous twitch every so often. The Element of Magic, the Princess of Friendship… constantly needed to remind herself that yes, indeed, friendship was magic. Curious.

“My mind cannot be stopped,” she resumed. I wanted to chuckle at that, but thought better of it. This was serious. More importantly, it seemed that talking about this wasn’t as easy for her as I had anticipated. “I can slow it down. I can distract myself. But it can never, ever, stop. Rainbow once described to me how she spent hours lazily lying around on a cloud over Sweet Apple Acres, she drifted with the wind and thought about nothing. And I could barely understand that. But what I understood was enough to feel a deep, almost desperate longing. I wanted to experience that. Just once. Once in my lifetime, I wanted to not think. But I can’t. My curiosity drives me to seek out new topics, new knowledge, new spells. Sometimes, it does not allow me to sleep. Sometimes, it does not allow me to enjoy my meal… or to remember even having a meal in the first place. I have been researching my entire life, one way or another. I have stood on the edges of those questions more than enough times as well, staring down into that abyss. It is easy to get lost down there.”

It started as pure, untainted sadness. But as she talked, it became almost desperate. Here I stood, listened to her and thought that maybe, just maybe, she understood. She felt it. She got me. And all of a sudden, despite my struggles, I wanted nothing more than for her to not understand. To not get it. Because I knew how it felt to understand that and I wanted nothing less than for her to feel that way. But that sentiment came way too late, did it not? She was telling me right now how she had been there before. Probably years before I ever opened that box in my idiocy.

But she smiled. She was enjoying her food. Or sunshine. Meeting her friends. Reading a good book. Complaining about a bad one. I had seen all those things… had I not? So how. How? If I was too late anyway, I might as well ask. “What do you do?” I hated how small my voice sounded. How fragile.

She looked up at me, those wrinkles on her brow evened out and a smile tugged at her lips. “I share,” she simply replied. “I challenge Rainbow to a race that I will inevitably lose. I talk to Applejack until she tries to help, sometimes by stuffing enough pie down my throat that I can barely move home on my own. I snuggle close to Luna and let her comfort me. I let Pinkie throw a ‘we just wanted to have a party’-party. Despite my doubts and thoughts, those things feel real. I want them to be real. And I make a decision. I decide for them to be real. Because if my mind is the master of reality, why would I choose for things to be real that punish and hurt me? Why would I not choose to accept what makes me happy? I…” She blushed and I knew why the moment I saw the color tinting her cheeks. She was preparing to be incredibly sappy. It made me smile just in anticipation. “I follow my heart.”

Oof. Rainbow would have loved to hear that line…

“I love you,” I blurted out.

A moment of silence. We both blinked. I felt the heat rising up. I was probably glowing like an oven at that point. Twilight, however, just smiled. “In a purely platonic, friendly way, right?” she offered with a knowing smile.

Cheeky mare. I chuckled a little bit and nodded. “Yeah, sure, let’s go with that. That way, Luna won’t try to rip my head off, right?”

“She would not dare,” Twilight answered.

“She would,” I simply disagreed.

“I would not let her,” she insisted.

“Aw. You would fight the Princess of the Night for me?” I teased.

I had to laugh when her blush deepened and she mumbled a shy little “Maybe…?” I waded over to her and nestled against her. It felt nice. “You smell a lot better,” she quietly remarked.

I had to laugh once more. “You broke the moment,” I faux-complained and withdrew from her, but not before mumbling a little “… but thank you.”

We fell silent once again until I noticed how she watched me. Almost expectantly. “What?” I had been a writer once, as far as the flashes had told me. Sometimes, I impress myself with my eloquence…

“Well I thought you would start talking about what troubles you at some point,” she replied with a patient smile. Most definitely proof that Celestia had rubbed off on her.

“What, my existential crisis isn’t enough for the Princess of Friendship?” I teased.

“Oh, it would be,” she answered with the same smile. “Except we all have our routines, don’t we? And you, you tend to talk about something that troubles you to get yourself into the right mindset, before you talk about the actual problem.”

Was I really that predictable? Well… even if I was, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Two for the price of one. Looks like a good deal to me, doesn’t it?” I half-joked. But her unwavering smile made it quite clear – she wanted to know. If I kept dodging, she would start pushing. A familiar little dance. The reason why we were here in the first place. I had maneuvered myself into this situation willingly and knowingly so she could coax it out of me if I were to chicken out. But I was determined not to, so I swallowed that lump that formed in my throat and tried. “I had a flash.”

That had not been any horrifying revelation of course. I have had flashes of insight since I arrived here more than two years ago. Some were useful, some less so. By now, I had made the conscious decision to treat them with care and I tried to ignore them as best as I could, preferring to learn things myself instead of relying on the knowledge previous incarnations had gathered.

Still. These last two weeks had been rough. We both knew that. So it was no surprise that she seemed worried. “When?”

Rhetoric question again. But she had to ask that. For clarification’s sake. “Two weeks ago, give or take.”

She nodded. “What happened?”

And that… was actually a really good question. I didn’t exactly know myself. “I’m not sure. I think I might have seen the end. There was a black void. I stood there, opposite a strange creature. It was tall, standing on two legs. Clothed. Celestia, Luna and the Elements were there as well. I felt like a spectator, drifting around the scene. Which is unusual. I’m normally in first person and see events unfold through my own eyes. This strange perspective allowed me to see that I was under some kind of force, I think. I moved a hoof and that creature moved a hand. We were about to touch when you called for me. I hesitated, but I guess my will wasn’t strong enough. You realized that and you tried to help. You used the elements. There was a… a shimmering wall of rainbow-colored light, thin as paper, rising up between that creature and me. But that… enchantment or whatever it was, it was still there and active. We both touched the wall and… I don’t know. It exploded? Maybe? A bright, white light flooded everything. Last thing I heard was a bird chirping. And I had this really uneasy feeling, like… like I had heard that bird before. Over and over and over.” And indeed, one of my earliest memories upon my arrival was a bird chirping somewhere in the treeline of the Everfree Forest, the place of my arrival.

“I don’t know what it means,” I admitted, but hastily continued. “And I don’t want to know. I don’t care. But… it made me think. This stupid, bucking bird…” I wanted to apologize for cursing like that, but I could not bring myself to do so. Not this time. I felt lost again. “In that vision… I wasn’t that old, you know? There were no… no wounds. No signs of—” I could not bring myself to say it.

“You fear to lose us again.” Her voice was thick with emotion. We both decided to close the distance again to seek comfort with each other.

“I can’t lose you again,” I whispered while embracing her. It felt like I was holding onto her for dear life. And maybe I was? Maybe I was.

This was obviously not just about Twilight. It was about Celestia too. About Luna. And Derpy. About Aloe and Lotus, Applejack, Pinkie, about all my friends.

There was an obvious perspective here: Nothing was sacred, nothing was ever safe. Life could end. At any moment. Everything I had could burst into flames. Everypony dear to me could be ripped from me. Option one, for the self-destructive type that I sometimes tended to be: Care about nothing, avoid deep connections, preempt the pain of loss. That tended to work just as good as one could imagine: It failed every time. Option two, which thereby became the only viable option: Take what I could get, cherish it as long as I had the privilege of having it and bear the pain once it came. And it would inevitably come. Because nothing lasts forever. Not even princesses.

They might be immortal and nigh-on invulnerable. But at some point, the heat-death of the universe would get them. Or all existence would collapse in on itself. Or time would stop. Something would inevitably happen, I was sure of that. Somehow.

The options – or lack thereof – were so painfully obvious that she did not feel the need to plainly state them. And I was grateful for that. Because I really did not want to hear about inevitable pain and I knew myself well enough to realize that that would be the part lingering in my mind.

After what felt like a little eternity of bliss, Twilight withdrew to look me in the eyes. “Have you talked about this with Princess Celestia?”

Oh Twilight… always with the Princess… “No,” I admitted. “I’m not… I don’t know... how. I don’t know how to breach the subject.”

She looked around and smiled playfully before she returned her gaze to me. “Take a bath?” she offered.

It drew a quiet chuckle out of me. “It’s different with you. You know that.” It was the honest truth. What it was not, was a compliment. Per se. But she blushed a little anyway. I always found it endearing how she liked to feel special to me. And I was grateful that I could make her feel that way.

“You could try?” she persisted.

“We don’t have a bath tub this huge,” I countered.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, you’re both free to use this one then.”

“She’s really bus-”

Her hoof sealed my mouth. I would have shut up without it, just because that determined look in her eyes had returned. “Stop making excuses,” she chided me. “Princess Celestia is worried about you as much as I am. Maybe even more. I am glad you came to me for help, and I want to help you as much as I can. But she deserves it, does she not?”

She lowered her hoof after a moment and I sighed. “She does,” I meekly replied. It was not the first time I ran to Twilight with my problems, although it would have been faster to talk to Celestia. Twilight was my go-to problem solver. My best friend. My study buddy. But she was right. I ought to let Celestia in more than I had done so far. Before my refusal to do so actually started to hurt her.

“I love her,” I stated. I could not even have told why I felt it necessary to say it.

“I know,” Twilight replied. “And I am pretty sure she knows as well. You are just in a… weird situation.” She remained silent for a moment before she spoke up again. “Are you going to talk to her?”

I nodded after a moment of hesitation. “Tomorrow. I still need sleep though. Thinking straight becomes increasingly difficult, if I’m being honest.”

She smiled again. “Good. Then let’s get out of the water. I’ll quickly fix you something to eat before bed.”

“I don’t—” I started, only to be immediately interrupted.

“You will eat something before you fall asleep on me,” she insisted in a tone that would not suffer backtalk. “You will be grateful tomorrow morning when training resumes, believe me.”

“And how would you know?” I asked in a weak attempt to tease her a little.

“I talk to Fluttershy,” she replied.

That confused me to no end. “What? How does that have to do with anything…?”

Instead of answering, she threw a towel in my face…