Kind Hands

“…Well, it is only natural that mosquitos such as yourselves would wish to break free from this place. I’m sure that you have done this many times before.”

“You’re stuck in here with us too, you lowlife…”

I don’t know how many hours had passed before I opened my eyes and lifted my head from the stone floor. It mustn’t’ve been that many as I was completely unable to get my thoughts in order. I groggily turned towards my fellow prisoners; I already knew who they were because of the confrontation that they were engaged in.

“Oh really- I’m the lowlife? Brave words from the one who sleeps in a sewage drain.”

“That’s it! I’m gonna ram your horn up your-”

“-Do you two wanna shut up?” I interjected as I rubbed my eyes, unimpressed with the loud confrontation in front of me. “I’m trying to sleep…”

“I’m tryna break this door down,” Fairfeather explained, showing little interest in my discomfort. He gestured towards the door in question as he spoke, which interested me for whatever reason. Despite how braindead I felt, I still felt a strong urge to move towards the shack’s entryway and inspect it further.

Illuminated by a pale light that had no discernible source, I could’ve sworn that the door looked slightly different than it had done during the day, although that could have been due to the new light that fell upon it. Pristine in appearance and shimmering from the illumination that it likely contained, the door appeared to pulsate slightly, suggesting that some incredible mass of energy was contained behind it.

I subconsciously reached out and touched the door with my finger, curious about it and eager to feel it on my skin. The moment I did so, however, the door thrust itself open, revealing a wall of darkness beyond it.

Now, this was interesting. Thoroughly intrigued, there was no way that I was going to simply ignore this development, so I stepped into the void with little hesitation.

“Woah. Déjà vu.”

I stepped into a place that I instantly recognised. A flat plane of darkness and sunlight stretched out before me, bringing me those cosy, familiar feelings of distress and despair. Familiar whisps of pastel colours gave me something to focus on before a loud voice boomed across the landscape.

“GREETINGS, DENIZEN OF THIS RESTLESS MIND!”

The realm practically shook from the force as another entity announced their presence. The words that were spoken were of such a volume that they could only have originated from an incredible, all-powerful-

“Wait, I recognise that voice,” I announced to the empty plane. It was my favourite little night-mare. “Come on out, Luna!”

As if the mention of her name caused her to materialise, Luna appeared above me in a ball of blue light. I expected something more grandiose, but the princess appeared less-than-impressed with my middling reaction to her display of power. Therefore, she ruined her own entrance by lowering herself to the ground with an annoyed expression.

“You are supposed to stand here in awe and wonder until I arrive.”

She may’ve been a bit angry by my conduct, but truth be told, in that moment, I was just as stoic as she was.

“Well, I’ve been here before and you gave me an earful yesterday, so I know what you sound like.”

Giving up on the possibility of leaving her audience starstruck, Luna sighed in resignation.

“It is most underwhelming for you to break this cycle.”

“Yeah, well, I’m tired so I don’t have time for this anyway.”

“But we have all the time in the night for this discussion, for I speak to you in your dreamscape.”

“My dreamscape? So, this is my dream? I thought this place was, uh…what’s it called again? ‘Celestial…’”

“The Celestial Plane. I’m glad that you remember it so vividly.”

“I only remember it because the trauma of this place is burned into my psyche. And the colours are pretty.”

“Of that, I can agree. The exact structure and design of the dreamscape varies depending on the individual, and this is the form that you subconsciously chose. It is the Celestial Plane, yet it is not- if you allow me to be cryptic.”

I simply rolled my eyes.

“I hope that your head is clearer than it was the last time that we spoke here,” Luna commented, undeterred by my disrespectful gesture.

“I’d say ‘yes’, but there must be some reason that you’ve brought me here. Some form of peril, no doubt.”

I crossed my arms and slumped slightly, no doubt looking like I’d regressed back to my teenage years. There was no way that I was going to receive any good news from this little princess, but I was open to being surprised.

“Shockingly, no- at least, not you, specifically,” Luna stated, leaving me overjoyed, as you can probably tell. “You are safe for tonight. Safe, yet also confused, if the look on your face is an adequate indication.”

The mare was correct. Of course, she was. The prospect of a positive change in circumstances was so far removed from my expectations that the slightest mention of safety was surely enough for my jaw to hit the floor.

After getting my wild expectations under control, a thought quickly popped into my mind. “This is a very surreal experience for me. Most humans don’t have control in their dreams,” I explained to Luna. I looked down at my hands while I spoke, wiggling my fingers as if to test the validity of my own statement. I appeared to be in control, although it took a long while of finger-flexing to reach that conclusion.

“I expected as much,” Luna replied contentedly. “You humans are both simple and complex without any rhyme or reason. I would find it amusing, had it not taken such a great amount of effort to bring you and your foals’ minds to this place.”

“What do you mean? How can you ‘bring’ minds?”

Any concept of melding minds slowed my thinking to a crawl. Luckily, Luna was more than happy to provide a demonstration. Her horn glowed with magic as she summoned two separate wooden doors, each crudely decorated and what I would picture a ‘child-mind-door-thing’ to be like, if, God forbid, such an image exists.

“You see, each mind can be entered and exited at will- so long as one holds the power to do so. I like to do so with a unique door for each pony’s mind. A ‘Moonsters Inc.’ sort of scenario if you will!”

“…”

I don’t think I need to tell you how I felt about this bastardisation of a childhood classic. Luna may’ve been beside herself in admiration of her wordplay, but I answered her with a look of perhaps the strongest display of disinterest that there had ever been. Upon noticing my frosty attitude, the princess did her best to explain.

“…I saw something of a familiar name in your memories. Its viewing was a cherished experience?”

I continued with my silence. Again, I considered such a flagrant misuse of my childhood nostalgia to be puzzling at best. Christ, man- get your own memories. As my disdain developed, and with her explanation going nowhere, the princess felt that further elaboration may be necessary.

“…It is a pun, you see. It builds a strong camaraderie between partners, I have been told.”

She raised a foreleg and swung it about in a poorly understood ‘We can do it!’ sort-of motion. It wasn’t compelling. “It builds a strong sense of mental decline if you butcher it,” I commented before sighing loudly. “I told you I was tired.”

“Ah, but fret not, for you are still asleep. This is all a dream.”

“But you-”

“-But I am very real.”

This conversation was pointless, so I turned away from the mare and knelt down.

“…I want to go to bed.”

Unfortunately, Luna did not care for my desires. Instead, she allowed me to lie down and find a comfortable spot on the floor before picking me back up with her magic. I swear that she smiled in amusement as she watched the contentedness on my face revert to mild disappointment.

“Listen, it is I. I am Princess Luna from the real world. And this is my line of work at night when the ponies of Equestria sleep.”

With that, I clicked my fingers as I remembered something important.

“Oh, so that’s why you’re always sleeping during the day.”

Luna was not particularly happy with that comment.

“You have been here for less than a week- you have no right to comment on our sleeping habits!”

“Well-”

“-And if you have consciously recognised that we rest during the day, then why do you choose to wake us at goodness-knows-what hours of the day to help with your menial-”

“-Christ, love, as long as you’re not going on about it…”

Huffing in frustration, Luna pushed one of her…‘Moonsters Inc.’ doors in front of me. “…Just open the door, you scruffy biped.”

Before doing as I was ever-so politely instructed, I had a look at the door in front of me. If I was to imagine what a young girl’s bedroom door would look like- and that is not something that I do regularly- this would likely be it: small, pink, and with a single white flower on its surface. As my eyes traced over the surface, I noticed several cracks and flakes that had embedded themselves into the material; a standard sign of wear-and-tear. Much like the door that I’d previously stepped through, there was a clear pulse behind this entryway as well.

I brushed my hand against the door’s surface, placing my palm against the flower. Doing so caused the door to slowly open, revealing a white light behind it- seemingly the polar opposite to the void that I’d seen before my arrival to the dreamscape.

“Hmm. It seems that you have figured that out for yourself.”

The light from within was far too much for me to handle. Piercing, blinding- whatever words you want to use. To tell the truth, I found it awfully intimidating and I looked back at Luna for some form of reassurance.

“You coming?”

Luna raised her head and looked away from me in response.

“I will be with you shortly. I have several other matters to attend to first.”

And with that, she flapped her wings and disappeared in another ball of light, leaving behind nothing more than erratic strands of deep blue that waved through the air before fading away themselves. I wanted to say some form of snide comment before Luna left, yet, with the prospect of entering another’s mind literally at my fingertips, I found myself incapable of doing anything other than walking forwards into the light.

Much like the journey into my apparent dreamscape, the transition through this new door was near-instantaneous. The change in brightness was difficult to adjust to, and my vision recovered just in time to witness the violation of my other senses. It was the physical manifestation of sensory overload, like when you recognise so many different stimuli at once that your brain is unable to interpret them all simultaneously.

But it was the sounds around me that hurt the most. A discordant cacophony of numerous different voices flooded my ears, creating an overwhelming assault on my mind. The sounds came and went seemingly at random and made it difficult for me to focus on anything- let alone what I was actually hearing.

Through the struggle to regain control of my mind, I became barely aware of a faintly shimmering veil of light. It flickered slightly as I tried to focus on it, most closely resembling the surface of a large bubble. It was the only thing that I was able to focus on for any worthwhile period of time, so I forced myself to move towards it and eventually breach its surface.

Upon breaching the pocket of space, I found myself in a small, circular area that was thankfully devoid of any noise or distractions- mainly because it was practically devoid of anything. The only objects that filled the space were a table and some crayons, although they weren’t the main feature. That honour belonged to the only thing that mattered to me: the auburn-haired girl who sat at the table in the centre.

“Well, this is Eva’s dream then.”

Well, it was a 50/50 either way. There could only have been two people to choose from and I chose the shy one. It was easy to assume, then, that Eve’s dream was just next-door, but there was no way that I was going to give up the chance to see whatever the hell this little one was dreaming about. It wasn’t every day that one could enter another’s mind like this. In a literal sense, at least. Is this literal?

Before I could get close to the little girl, however, another child entered the space. I recognised this one: Teddy- another child from Eva’s class. I also question the mindset of a parent who names their child ‘Teddy’, but there you go. Not for me to judge. Although I already have.

Regardless, the child moved in a dead-straight line, as if in a trance, before stopping inches away from Eva. He opened his mouth to speak, but the noises that came out of his mouth only vaguely resembled English, sounding more like a babble. I imagine it’s how English sounds to non-English speakers.

Eva appeared to notice this noise, though. She raised her head and spoke to him in a disengaged tone, speaking in the same babble-like way, as she engaged in an unintelligible conversation with the boy. It was unsettling to see Eva reduced to something so mindless, particularly as the girl’s eyes were glazed over, with little sign of any conscience behind them.

Even as she spoke to the boy, she was barely looking in his direction and appeared to not even be fully aware of his presence. She may’ve been absent at times before, but this looked like someone whose consciousness was on autopilot. Luckily for me, it looked as if Teddy was on his way out, so I waited for the boy to leave before approaching the little girl in the centre.

“Eva?”

I crouched down beside the little one as I spoke, only to watch her completely ignore me and turn her attention back to her crayons. She haphazardly threw her hand into a pile of pencils before grabbing a colour at random and carelessly waving her hand above a piece of paper, likely attempting to colour it in.

There was something darkly comedic about the level of absence to her movements- she hadn’t actually hit the paper, for God’s sake- but that didn’t make the scene any less difficult to sit through. I called out to her again, with slightly more urgency.

“Eva…!”

The girl’s head immediately shot up to greet me, eyes still glazed over and barely focused. She spoke in the same way as she had previously, which was concerning, but it was probably better than ignoring me entirely.

“Eva!”

I crouched down again and firmly shook her shoulders, watching as her eyes rolled around in her skull. I was beginning to wonder about the effects that this confrontation would have on the girl’s mind, but I was thankfully interrupted by a sudden gasp for air.

I felt the girl in my arms stiffen up slightly as she took in several deep breaths of air, eyes shut tightly. When they opened, they looked clearer and more focused, as if a new level of consciousness had been bestowed upon them. It didn’t take long for her to find me, and she acted quickly when she did.

“Mr. Bayard!”

She was quick at wrapping herself around me at least. Since I was already holding the little thing, she didn’t have far to travel, so I suppose I shouldn’t give her too much credit. I mean, with the way she lazily flopped forward, she practically forced me to hold her up. Maybe she didn’t have the strength to sit on her own.

“Good morning!”

But she didn’t let her lack of strength slow her down. The girl’s tone was syrupy-sweet as she beamed up at me with a toothy grin. Looking at her smile, I found it difficult to speak, so I pulled her in again for a second, stronger embrace. She didn’t let this last long, though, as the comfortable silence was broken by her questioning, “Where were you earlier? I didn’t see you come in.”

It appeared that Eva didn’t understand the situation that she was in. Judging by how difficult it was for me to understand, I wasn’t surprised. “How do I phrase this?” I wondered as I looked off to the side. How was I supposed to explain something as complex as this to a child?

Even as I surely frowned in frustration, I could see the little girl in my arms smiling up at me, swinging her arms from side-to-side as she patiently waited. “Well, we’re both dreaming,” I said to the confused child, unsurprised when she looked back at me blankly. “And we’re both in your dream.”

That wasn’t too difficult to explain- likely because I doubt I really said anything. Naturally, this left Eva with some questions.

“So, we’re not at school?”

I felt the little one push away from me as she stood up with the intent of exploring the area that she was in. It became obvious as she struggled to stand that much of her strength had been lost to this place; the reasons for this were unclear. I couldn’t just leave her to flop about, so I stood up as well, lending her my strength as she leaned into me.

“No,” I answered simply, shaking my head quite emphatically. I was faintly aware- but not really- of how such a mindfuck could affect someone, so I forced some kind of sickly smile on my face, lest reality unnerved this poor soul in front of me. “You’re just dreaming about school.”

This was obviously still difficult for the Eva to understand, no matter how hard she tried. And she certainly did try. I don’t know how long I stood there, watching the girl think to herself, but it was long enough for me to consider what the hell time was around here.

As the little one stood and thought to herself, I couldn’t help but grin at the sight of her blank face, full to the brim with confusion. “So, why are you here?” Eva bluntly asked once she had processed the situation. I responded with a shrug.

“Why not?”

“‘Why not’?”

“Yeah. I wanted to come see you.”

This explanation was apparently good enough for Eva as she jumped away from me and seemingly recuperated, never losing her smile. She swayed excitedly from side-to-side as she looked as if she wanted to say something.

“Mr. Bayard?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed you.”

The girl’s smile was the widest I could remember seeing it. It was a beautiful sight- had we not been in some form of vortex and the smile itself being the result of some very short-term longing for company.

“It’s only been a day.”

“But I missed you!”

She was more adamant as she repeated her sentence, frowning slightly and stamping her foot in frustration. This was similarly something that I couldn’t remember seeing before, but I still knew that she was desperate for me to say only one small thing to her, and I was happy to oblige.

“I missed you too, then.”

“The colours make me feel ill.”

After our previous conversation had died down, Eva stood on the outer edge of the area that we were contained in, staring at the barrier between this space and the next. Even as she spoke, she couldn’t peel her eyes away from the wall of colours and noises, transfixed by the movement that was concealed behind it.

She could’ve been forgiven for being enraptured by the outer surface: the picture it painted was a difficult one to digest. The noises and the lights from outside combined to create a crude and unfinished interpretation of the outside world, consisting of warping colours, textures and bouts of laughter that one could barely associate with a high-activity classroom.

“Yeah, it’s a…it’s a mess,” I remarked, scratching the back of my neck and remembering the way that my senses had been violated upon my arrival. “Don’t look at it too much: it’s easy to forget where you are when you look at it.”

“But I heared you.”

Eva interrupted my warning by bringing up a new subject, as if she was unsuccessfully trying to connect two separate thoughts together. “I was so stuck in my drawing, but I still heard you. So, I looked up and you were there.” I wasn’t completely sure if she was even talking to me at this point as she was continuing to stare at the mass of colours that whirled around us. “But I couldn’t move,” she added, sadly.

Any of my concerns about me being forgotten were dispelled in an instant as Eva turned back to face me, face wet with tears. “Eh, eh, eh!” I exclaimed as I rushed to her side. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Once I was there, I felt much of the child’s strength leave her body.

“I don’t know…”

Eva seemed incapable of explaining anything- maybe speech itself was beyond her at that precise moment. As she limply rested in my arms, the only indication of her presence was a slight yet noticeable shaking that had overtaken her entire body. I said nothing, holding the girl in my arms until she regained control of her mind.

“Existential crisis, eh?” I whispered to myself, unaware if Eva had lost me again. I looked down at her face for some form of response. The only sign of consciousness from the girl was the pronounced blinking of her eyes, as if she was blinking tears away.

I moved back to the table and sat down next to it, Eva leaning on my chest as she remained in my lap. “Don’t you worry- you’re safe now,” I reassured the little one’s little form, hoping that she was still in there somewhere.

I had hoped that I could sit in silence and wait for Eva to come back to her senses, if she could at all. Almost immediately, however, I was interrupted by someone that I didn’t expect to see: me. Specifically, some form of interpretation of Mr. Bayard.

“God, I’m an ugly bastard.”

The ugly bastard looked a bit like me, with a few differing features. These features were all around its face, with an impossibly large smile that made it look more like a demon from the harshest of nightmares. The cruel interpretation grinned discerningly as jet-black hair messily fell in front of its right eye- a far cry from the brown curls that I possessed.

The more I looked at it, the less it resembled me. To a child, it must’ve been terrifying, but the sight of it only served to fill me with a type of disgust that was difficult to justify. Wearing an oversized dress-shirt, the creature began to approach us with the same uncanny movement as Teddy had before; it was definitely something that Eva had dreamed up.

I wasn’t really in the mood for a boss fight against myself, yet it looked like there were few other possible scenarios. Luckily though, the amalgamation stopped in front of Eva and I. Looking down at the girl, it began to speak to her in the same babble that all the others in the dream had used.

“Mister…”

Eva gave a subconscious reply as I felt her move, reacting to the babble that invaded her ears. I felt her body shift as she turned to look at the mockery of Mr. Bayard. Again, it was if I no longer existed. “Eva…?” I asked to the empty shell in my arms. The girl’s name fell on deaf ears as the apparition above her reached an arm out for her to grab.

“Mister…”

Repeating herself, Eva slowly stretched out her arm with the intent to meet the apparition halfway. No chance was I losing her to that thing, so I swatted at the girl’s hand, wrenching her body away in order to shield her from the apparition’s advance.

“Mister…”

Eva continued to repeat that cursed word as she looked to have succumbed to the meaningless babble that had infected her mind. I strengthened my grip on the little one, denying every attempt she made to push away from me.

“Don’t do this, Eva…”

I pushed Eva’s head deeper into my chest, placing a hand over the back of it to keep it shielded. Although she was still trying to push away from me, I felt her begin to repeatedly shake her head in a resounding ‘no’. She once again had her eyes firmly closed- strained shut, even- focused on her thoughts as if her body and her mind weren’t speaking the same language.

“Stop…” she weakly called out, and that was all I needed. I began to stroke at the side of the girl’s face, whispering to her and closing my own eyes, trying to will the encroaching creature away.

“You’re better than this, Eva…”

Feeling the strength at which Eva pushed away from me decreasing, I increased my own efforts, pulling her in even harder as her mind’s will overpowered her body’s.

“Stop…” I heard the little one croak out as her breathing became deeper and more purposeful. I was sure that this fight was now mine to lose, but also one that I couldn’t participate in, so I continued with my verbal support.

“Fight it, Eva…”

Daring to glance up, I watched as the apparition’s hand stopped just in front of me, harmlessly hovering above Eva’s head. “Let me go…” the little girl murmured, her voice becoming slightly more forceful as she strained the muscles in her throat, trying to push the words out. I knew that she needed one final push, so I placed a kiss on her forehead before calling out to her one last time.

“Do it, Eva.”

With one final shake, Eva raised her head to the heavens and let out a fearful wail.

“Stop!”

Everything fell silent as the space became overwhelmed with a single, overwhelming rumble. As if the power of her voice had halted the passage of time, the world that Eva had created froze in place. There were no more sounds; no more lights; even the colour had drained from the outer border. And as the colour of the world drained, its foundations began to disintegrate in tandem.

Starting from the space above us, the sound of decay overcame the empty silence as nothingness claimed all that had once existed in the dream. Eating away at the area around us, I kept Eva’s head close to my chest as I watched the world fade away, leaving only the darkness that I’d walked into when I’d initially entered the dreamscape.

Once the metaphorical dust had settled, I knew where I needed to go, and I had no plans to leave Eva alone in a place like this. I picked myself and the crying child up and headed off into the void.

Before fully allowing myself to be consumed by the darkness, I dared to take one look back at the apparition. Previously overjoyed and forceful, it stared back at me with empty eyes, before it also disintegrated into nothingness, becoming nothing more than a faded memory.