Dreamwalker's Tale: An Anthology

I was sitting on the balcony floor. I had initially put my hooves on the railing, but that grew uncomfortable at some point, so I just let them drop down. I wished I had wings at several points. So I could spread them wide, let them hang behind me, open and lazy and drooping with water. And from time to time, I could have held them up above me, like a ceiling, or an umbrella. It sounded so nice when rain hit an umbrella right above.

Luna was there. I did not know when exactly she had arrived, and she clearly preferred to watch for a moment. But I knew she was there. I could feel her gaze, her presence. Eventually, despite the rain's continuous pitter-patter, I could hear the door open. And there was warmth flooding out from that small gap, even if said gap only persisted for a short moment.

I did not like summer. For all my seemingly bottomless love and devotion and dedication for and to Celestia, I did not like summer. Or excessive sunlight. Or heat. And in the same vein, I did not like summer nights. I would have to live under a shower to finally get rid of being sticky and sweaty all the time. I could not sleep properly. The heat fried my brains and made my thoughts all wonky. I could not concentrate. Remembering things was harder, too. And differentiating between my own memories and those from previous cycles. And I got sunburn. Goodness gracious me, I got sunburn so easily. She had taken me to a lake once. It had been a lovely evening. An off-white cloud cover was blocking the sun, and the rest of the sky with it. We swam a lot. And when we were not, we laid under a tree. And to this day, she remained utterly in disbelief about how I had managed to get such a severe sunburn that it did not show the next day, oh no, it showed before we even left the lake.

There was only one circumstance I could think of right in this moment when I actually appreciated summer nights. And that… was when it was raining.

I could hear her hoofsteps nearby. She closed the door and walked over to me. No urgency whatsoever. Good. And after a couple of seconds, she sat down beside me. Close enough that I could feel the warmth her body radiated, but too far away for our coats to brush.

I had to follow the events with my ears alone. I was utterly unwilling to lower my head, or open my eyes. With my muzzle raised high, I let the rain pelt down on me. I was a night guard, sure. But I had been a storyteller as well. In too many cycles to ignore it. I found it incredibly hard to tell if I was talented with words. But I most certainly was experienced to a certain degree. I had the impulse, the drive to write. To tell stories. This time around, I was a night guard. And yet, inside her bedchamber, there was her desk and her chair, a firefly lantern and an inkwell. Closed, of course. I lived with Twilight — I inevitably would have learned how to treat my writing supplies if I had not known already.

And on that desk, there were several sheets of paper. Unfinished drafts of yet another short story. I had considered writing something longer. I had considered that time and time again. But curiously enough, I just never found the time.

But that did not matter. Not right now. The draft did not matter. The summer heat did not matter. I preferred the softer shades of moon- and starlight. And even that did not matter. The sky was clouded. Black and heavy towers of cloud stuff, forming a blanket. And it was raining. That. That mattered. Would Luna disapprove if I were to tell her that, despite me smiling due to her presence, despite me enjoying her presence, even that did not matter right now?

It was the rain.

I loved the rain.

The soft, almost tender impact of each and every droplet on my muzzle. On my mane, my hooves, my coat. The sound of it pelting the marble tiles that formed the balcony’s floor. How it sounded different from it impacting on the railing. Or the nearby windows.

The scent was enticing. It was an aspect I appreciated even more when I was in Ponyville. The scent of grass after rain was just one of the best experiences ever. Grass and soil and just… life. It was the scent of life. Of potential. One of the reasons I loved Luna so much. She smelled like fresh rainfall. It was intoxicating. I could have at least a tiny part of this whenever I wanted. All I needed to do was bury my muzzle in her mane.

Here and now, the scent was different. No soil or grass nearby. Instead, the heat of the day was washed out of the stone. The cold water impacted the castle, draining the excess warmth from it. Washing away the heat and the grime and the sweat and the day’s burdens. Yes. All the burdens, just down the metaphorical drain.

No tomorrow.

No worries.

No plans.

Just rain.

It was a peaceful experience. One I had little words for. If I focused on it enough, I could do so much more than just hear the different sounds of impact. I could do more than just feel how my face was pelted, or my back. I could feel the water on my hooves. A wetness distinctively different from taking a bath or even from stepping into a puddle. Rain brought me… clarity. It somehow soothed all the chaos, and straightened out what was a tangled mess.

I was not entirely sure if it was this clarity that put my mind into overdrive, despite being the calmest it ever was. Taking a shower was the poor stallion’s equivalent to this. To this very moment, right now. Sitting down on the ground, in the rain. And it was inspiring. Rainbow could tease me all day long. I had no explanation myself. But something about water was just a magnificent catalyst for my creativity.

Taking a shower was a decent option. A bath did that, too. But in a different way, somehow. Taking a bath usually felt like floating. Drifting through unimportant, nondescript space. Having no weight. Burdenless, again. A shower still connected me to the ground.

And sitting in the rain felt like a constant stream of revelations, both new and old.

Rain was strangely dependable. So many factors came into play, so many variables. And yet it was still always 'just' rain. The size of each droplet could vary greatly. The density of it too. Those clouds over our heads, they could be so many different shades, from fluffy white to the black of the void. They could take so many shapes. Towers high above, or mist-like vapors. Rain could be cold enough to freeze ponies to death, or, on rare occasions, just as warm as a pony’s body already was. So much variety. So much change. And yet it always remained the same. Rain was still rain. Sure, we scheduled it. We monitored and shepherded it. But as far as I knew, there was a limit to how much we could influence the minute details.

To be fair though, I had never asked Rainbow for clarification on that.

I had to consciously remind myself to breathe at times. It is supposedly impossible to ‘forget’ that. But every now and then, it sure did not feel like that. And those inhales were greedy. They felt needed and desired. And it was a strange feeling — to enjoy a single, conscious breath, despite each and every one of us taking hundreds or thousands each day.

Equestria was a lovely place. It was home. Here and now, sitting in the rain, I could almost grasp Celestia’s love for this land. Not just her ponies. Not just the nation. But the land itself. The idea of Equestria, and everything relating to that. It felt like standing in the middle of an ocean, and almost being able to see the shore in all directions. It was just enough to get the slightest hint to the vastness of it all.

Rain brought clarity.

And I could feel for her and for Equestria and I shared in her love. And ideas streamed by like water in a river. I thought about all the ponies down there in the city. Each and every life was precious. Each one an adventure in its own right. With obstacles and villains, with goals and dreams and wishes. A prelude, a climax… an end, inevitably.

Stories don’t end.

We just stop telling them.

To a certain extent, that was a creed of mine. And as hard a time as I had believing in anything, I had an unshakable faith in this. I believed that even something most ponies perceived as a horrible thing — death — was not necessarily the end of a story.

Then again, I obviously had a much easier time believing this, given my rather unusual circumstances. If I were to die — would I just start the next cycle? It seemed so obvious.

Clarity could take many forms. A lighthouse keeper could stare into the mist and see way beyond what his eyes allowed him, due to clarity of mind. And he would probably see different things than a pegasus breaking through the clouds and flying above them. Clouds that did not care if they were lazily drifting above Equestria, or hastily rushing along the winds above other nations, or even continents.

This clarity made me feel like I could grasp the concept of this world. A mere marble in the palm of my hoof. Small and vast at the same time. Full of life and potential. Full of stories. It made me feel both incredibly big, and unimaginably tiny in turn.

Truly knowing even a single pony was a monumental task. One I believed impossible to this very day. We could learn about each other. We could gain understanding. Knowing about somepony’s upbringing, about their daily routines, likes, dislikes, fears, dreams… it helped. It allows us to speculate about mechanics at work. About their psychology. How they ‘ticked’. But even after decades, even with soulmates, we are still just guessing. To varying degrees of success. We can minimize our error rate. By knowing more. Learning more. Closing the gap even further. But we can never truly know.

My thoughts meandered around. Lazily drifted in the same river as the ideas passed me by. Ideas for my draft, back in Luna’s bedroom. Ideas for a nice date with Twilight once I return home. Ideas for a new recipe I would like to try with Spike one day. And even more and more and more ideas, many of which of a vastly more esoteric nature. Ideas about pony psychology. About the betterment of Equestria. About the history of our world, and how its mechanics came to be.

A constant stream. No focus whatsoever. And yet it was so calm. Felt so refreshing. The constant pitter-patter in my head drowned out all the impulses and voices that tried to sow chaos, tried to reinstate the usual tangled mess. It was a reprieve of sorts. I would eventually have to return to the world I puzzled about like a bystander. I would have to return to Luna's side, in more ways than one. And to my friends. To my life. But right now, nothing mattered. Only the sound of the rain, and the clarity it brought.

The fact of the matter was though: As esoteric as this all felt — and truly, it felt like a small snippet of enlightenment — there were very real, very tangible consequences to sitting in the rain in the dead of night. It had not been so bad at first. Everything was fine once the numbness set in. But at some point, my body apparently remembered that being cold might not be the best state of being. So it started to shiver. And I suppressed the impulse to groan in annoyance.

I have been out here for an hour… or two… or… well I actually don’t know how long I’ve been out here. But you choose now to be difficult?

Would it have started earlier, or even later, it would have made no difference of course. I would have been frustrated anyway. Because freezing and shivering was something I could not ignore. Something more prominent than Luna sitting beside me.

“Should we return inside?” I heard her voice. She often had this impeccable timing.

For just a fraction of a second, it sounded so incredibly unfamiliar. Like a stranger. Well, maybe not a stranger. But like the voice of somepony I had not seen or heard from in many years. It was such a jarring sensation that I dared to crack my eyes open and look at her out of the corner of my eyes.

She is beautiful.

A plain statement. The sky is blue. Water is wet. And yet I feared I would lose myself, slowly drowning in her beauty. It would be a good death — if such a thing existed.

I teared my gaze away and closed my eyes again. I tried to refocus on the rain, on the feeling of it, the sound, the smell. But the shivering just did not stop. It became aggravating. “Not yet,” I finally replied. And I replied as much to her question as I did state it in defiance of my own impulses and urges. I would not give in just yet. I would bear the cold just that little bit longer.

It was really stupid. What difference would it make? The clarity was slipping away. Like sand or water. I could feel it. And I tried to refrain from getting desperate. I tried to let it go peacefully. With my dignity intact. Instead of clawing and grasping at it in a vain effort to prolong this state a few arduous seconds longer.

I tensed quite a bit when I suddenly felt her. She had closed the gap between us and her wing folded itself around me. She did not say a single word. Just her downy, feathery embrace. It was lovely. And more importantly, it was warm. And the shivering receded. Not fully, no. But it got better.

And I endured the cold because she was there. No, not ‘there’. Here. Here with me.

“Thank you,” I uttered. With more warmth and love than my half-frozen body should have been willing to spare. She could have insisted we go back inside. She could have tried to usher me back in. She could simply have teleported me inside. A single word from her would have been enough. This state of being, this state of mind, was rather fragile after all.

But she did not.

We sat there for a few more minutes. I even considered explaining at one point. But the more I thought about it, the less viable it seemed. Each and every attempt was doomed to fail. How? How could I explain what I felt and thought and became, with something so flawed and inadequate as words? I liked to call myself a storyteller at times. I had the drive to use words. And maybe that contributed to this conundrum. I believed I knew the limitations of language. Or some of it at least.

I could explain for all eternity and it would still be up to luck if she truly understood. Because one can only guess, but never truly know.

I leaned against her. Nestled against her side, and refocused my attention on these new sensations. On her body heat. On the softness of her coat. The water clinging to it. She was taller than me by a good deal. Not as much as Celestia, but still taller. Despite some minor inconveniences that entailed, it had its perks as well. She had a perfect size for me to lean against. The perfect size to hug me with her wing. Was it weird? To be grateful for that? To enjoy something so mundane to such an extent?

I sighed deeply. “I love you.” It was the culmination of details. I loved her scent. Like the cold night breeze that occasionally directed the rain right now. Like the damp and heavy clouds high above our heads. Like the very rainfall that I enjoyed. I loved the feeling of her coat on mine. I loved how willingly her body shared its heat with me. I loved how she felt. I loved hearing her slow, calm breathing despite the rain's constant pitter-patter. I simply loved her.

The rain was slowing down. It would stop in a couple of minutes. She had heard my mumble despite the rain. She craned her neck down and pressed her lips to mine. The tiniest hint of hesitation. It was as much a question as it was a response. I allowed it. Embraced it. Welcomed it. And returned the kiss in kind. It grew more passionate over the next couple of seconds, until we parted again. Making love in the rain sounded romantic for a second or two. And problematic, as soon as my mind actually took a closer look at the prospect. The idea was derailed and that somehow made me smile.

I loved the rain. And what it did for me. What it did to me. With me.

But it was quite an inconvenience when trying to make out with a loved one. Not at all as romantic as so many stories made it out to be. It was a wet mess. One could not properly see, or breathe, or taste, it interfered with just too many senses.

That perfectly explained why we both chuckled slightly when we parted.

There was a fire in her eyes that I knew all too well, despite our little relationship talk taking place less than three weeks ago. But patience was not one of Luna's strengths, and she moved fast if she wanted something. Or somepony.

I was not opposed to the idea. To the slightly impatient question in her eyes.

“I think we can go back inside now,” I replied with a lopsided smile.

I should probably ask her why she was not in Night Court, as she should have been at this time of night. But first, we had to make a mess of her bed. Very important business to attend to.

She ushered me back inside and I waited curiously to see just how impatient she was. Would she aim for the bathroom, to get us some towels? Or would she prefer to just dry us off a bit with a spell? My question was answered when she closed the door, trotted ahead for just a couple of steps before she turned around and pressed against me with carefully measured force, driving me backwards until my back hit the wall beside the door.

Or we just start here and now, I mused with a grin. With her usually ethereal and now drenched mane somewhat limply clinging to her neck, she was even more alluring than usual. And I had to admit: This warmed me up quicker than any towel or fireplace could have...