“Wake up, wake up, we almost arrived. Then I open my eyes to find Celestia using her white fire armor under an early red sky. And then I wake up”.
Lyra attention was fully focused in just these simple words, while setting more mirror all around the lake.
“So, even you can dream” Lyra said before lifting magically more mirrors from a red wagon pulling cart toy
“Of course I can dream, although all my dreams are only past memories.” Whispered Luna like drowning her word in melancholy while flying slowly above the mirrors behind Lyra, and magically adjusting them perfectly, each side and edge together.
“Well, we are out of mirrors!” Lyra said a little disappointed with a slight ending sigh.
“Then we’re done” Luna said recovering a good mood, landing next to Lyra and contemplating their work.
“Hum… We’re done!? What do you mean we’re done? I was expecting some kind of spectacular magic here,” Lyra stated with a confused exprecion.
“Don’t you see?” Luna said facing Lyra and holding a modest smile in her face. Then she touched the nearest mirror with just a peck of her decorated hoof, and it waved through the whole lake, making dance all the night sky, and all the galaxies within itself.
“woah... whendidyou…-”
“When you were helping me” Luna interrupted. “You need to be more confident. That if you want to be my student” Luna said facing Lyra again, this time hanging her head down to Lyra’s eye level.
“You could teach any other pony, any smarter pony, a more-apt-with-magic pony.” A grumpy Lyra said.
“I know you mean Twilight Sparkle. I have seen in you, I now you see her as a friend much more closely than you really are”
“Oh. Yeah? Wait, what!??” Lyra asked with a startled expression.
“Don’t worry too much in the fact, that’s a wonderful and necessary skill by itself if you learn what I want to teach you”. Said Luna muzzling Lyra’s mane.
“But, I, being your student… doesn’t seems like...-” Lyra said weighing her hooves.
“You studied in Canterlot along with Twilight; I saw your grades, I know you can be a great student. I understand that learning magic from a princess can be rather… intimidating. Especially old and forgotten magic, from over one thousand years ago” Luna said trying to keep a calm tone in her voice.
“But twilight could learn anything you teach her!” Lyra retorted.
“You’ll need more than learn in my ways. I knew you would be a perfect student that night when you wished to my shooting star inspiration for your new song, you need to want that to learn this kind of magic. Twilight learns from books, recalls from rooms in her memory, never had wished for inspiration, she barely holds any wishes within herself, and certainly she doesn’t wish to me”.
“Lucky her” said Lyra frowning while eyeing the newly formatted sky in the surface of the lake, just before shook her head back to Luna’s sight “NONO, I DIDN’T MEAN THAT!!”
“I know, don’t worry” Luna said before giggle a bit. “This village near is growing, and some ponies had wished a larger reserve of water for their crops, very soon they’ll need it. That’s why we did this”.
“But where’s the land? And how deep is the water below?”
“That’s for the ponies living here to determinate, if they think it’s deep, then it will be, but if somepony is thinking about determinate before jumping in, well, then it probably won’t be. And an impetuous pony jumping in that very moment could get a surprise. That could be a funny prank played between friends without notice it” Said the princes keeping her sleepy smile.
Lyra thought “that’s weird, you’re weird, and I’m leaving”. just like her friend Bon Bon had said to Lyra many times before. And Lyra could well walk away from Luna in that moment, but she didn’t remind from where they had come.
Lyra could distinguish; maybe a barn not too far, and the cups of trees behind the lake, and roofs of buildings, back of a near road, in the distance. But the night was covered everything with a mysterious and frightening blanket, and lyra didn’t dare to walk by any other street not marked in the sky.
*Besides you just don’t walk away from a princess,* She thought and stood there.
“But… isn’t anypony going to notice what we did here? I mean, didn’t we just change the landscape?”
“So what if they notice? The landscape changes all the time, my distracted student; you just hadn’t appreciated till now. Maybe you did once, or twice; but your eyes made you drop your realization. In fact you could fine be wishing more of your acts to be appreciated once you grasp a hold on this".
“Ahh..what?”
“This.” Luna said pointing the lake, or maybe the sky, perhaps the whole universe. “The sky and its reflection are the same thing my student, don’t forget it. The world is made with the same elements repeated once and once again, that’s basic magic information that has been forgotten. I can teach you back how to transform piles of books into towers within cities, or the branches on a forest tree down to useful roads back to dear friends. Learn well, and I will be sending you to bother dragons in their sleep very soon too” said Luna holding both fore hooves on her lips to catch any runaway laughter she could let scape.
“Oh, no… I pass. WAIT!”. Shouted Lyra suddenly feeling how the ground didn’t hold her anymore.
C C C C C C C C C C C C
C C C C C C C C C C C C C
“What was that Lyra? A nightmare?” Said Bon Bon Holding her head down from the upper bunk bed in which she slept.
“No, I. Wait, what!?” A confused semi-slept Lyra answered rubbing softly her own head.
“You were having nightmares again”. Retorted Bon Bon going back to her pillow above.
“Yeah, sure I was. A very vivid one” she said to a probably already slept Bon Bon.
Lyra tried to identify herself apart out from her dream that night, she even went to the kitchen after a while; maybe a drink of water, or a bite on a snack could help distracting her mind, but nothing made the dream feel less real. Nothing had help her calm down; when she returned to her low bunk bed, nothing except the sky through the window that night made her feel less weary. It was a dark, starry and deep sky, somehow illuminating itself with its stars, just like the one on her dreams.
It all started when they decided to have one daughter collecting all the rocks from each one of the fields; The younger one had the smallest field, so she ended quickly. The older one was skillful and smart, and with her experience she was done with the biggest field faster than the middle one. For her it was boring and monotonous, so she didn’t care in do it well, and was left alone as a lesson. Life on the farm was always like that, and every day was harder to withstand. Soon it was going to be too impossible.
Pinkie pushed a lonesome rock, and sighed in front of a pile of more rocks. That day However, Pinkie heard a loud explosion that rumbled her thoughts and shook her whole body. She looked up to see a Rainbow Shockwave followed by the absolute, most vivid, rainbow ever witnessed by pony eyes.
As the rainbow shockwave passed by pinkie, it sent waves of cool wind through her mane and tail,
poofing them out.
Pinkie looked up at the bright, shining rainbow above, and smiled for the first time in her filly life. Her eyes shone as she smiled wider and wider with each second she stared at that rainbow. It was unlike anything she had felt before. She just wanted to keep smiling forever when she fall backside down following the trace of the expanding rainbow, still amazed at the sight in the sky, but then she noticed the presence of somepony else in that place.
“PRINCESS LUNA!?? What are you doing in this place? Is now nightmare night!??” Shouted the confused mare, twirling between rocks.
“No” whispered Luna, “I just... like this dream.”
“Ooh! Is this a dream!!?” Said pinkie hugging somehow he own hooves.
“Not quite exactly, but you certainly are dreaming. In fact the reason why I keep looking at this, is because it was a real event”
“So, I’m dreaming, but this isn’t a dream?!!”
“Exactly”.
Pinkie expression was of utter confusion, but after a brief moment she chilled out an “I get it!” laying out from anywhere into Luna’s nose and going back inviting a small smile out of the night princess.
“And now you are going to grant me a wish, aren’t you?” Said Pinkie clopping her front hooves together in a delightful expression.
“You aren’t supposed to remember that,” Luna said lifting a brown.
“Oh. But I do! ’Cuz sometimes I remember when I’m dreaming and sometimes I don’t remember it at all but when I wake up I always forget!” An accelerated Pinkie said excited inside a same breath.
“Ah. Very well then. Then you remember what we talked about real dreams and fantasy ones?”
Pinkie hold a hoof to her chin, ducking her mouth, and holding closed an eye, humming as loud as she could, as if it were helping her to remember. She ended whispering “No” in the most defeated expression she could mutter without straightening her hair.
“It doesn’t matter; I already know what you want: Avoid a nightmare,”
“Oohhh! Sounds useful!”
“I can do that; a soothsaying twitch shall warn you before an event that otherwise would give you a nightmare. I know you’ll end asking for it.”
“Oh, thanks, I dunnowhatdoesthatmean, but sounds nice!!”
“It is. And now; farewell!” Mustered Luna placing her ornamented hoof above pinkie’s head, banish her back to nowhere, probably just another dream, after pinkie’s war cry of “But I wanted to stay for the party!!!”
Soon after; the rocks in the ground start to shake, and the farm to collapse, falling down just as a sandcastle too dry to keep shape.
C C C C C C C C C C C C
C C C C C C C C C C C C C
Lyra was dictating the rhythm for a whole orchestra, somehow floating her lyre held by magic above her head. When suddenly a wild Luna appeared behind her, clopping and smiling to the tune performed.
“Hey, you! Wait, what!??”
“Oh my student, you need to prevent ponies sneaking inside your own dreams. It’s one of the easiest things to do. I ensure.”
“I- I was... I think I did“
“You think? Or you did? You need more confidence, my student; I have dragons reserved for you”
“I- I, well. I wasn’t expecting you, I told my friends that you’re teaching me magic and they all convinced me it was just a dream. Of the absurd kind I would like to add.”
“No my student, I guarantee. Even this dream started by you, is more real than absurd. In fact; let us be the first one to congratulate you. That song, simply wonderful; you could win the competition with a song like that.”
“You’ve been in the moon the last one thousand year, how can you say so?” Lyra said almost in a whisper and hanging down her shoulders, her lira in her hooves, and the orchestra is now the public of a packed theatre.
“Well, have you heard the song yet?”
Lyra shocked a little to this last sentence, of course she had heard it, she was playing it just a while ago, she had practiced it, long before, she was born knowing it, that song existed way before princes Luna where banished to the moon, and Lyra was an expert on everything related to that song, it was in fact THE song from between all other songs in history.
Or at least she had played it before, why if not was she playing it to a public?
Or where they all cacti?
The night too dark to have a sight. Was it a desert?
She touched the strings to play the song to a mountain in the distance.
It didn’t sound at all like such song.
“Was it? Was that the correct string?” Lyra thought.
“So you haven’t heard it, yet” Luna asked.
Lyra kept brushing her hoof to a small plush doll of herself, performing to a giant marshmallow, before admit it. “So this is a dream” she said blushing a little.
“Something very alike” Luna answered looking at random directions around.
“But I was hearing it just before you came here”
“You have convinced yourself otherwise, my student. I have told you, be more confident. You can grasp that song if you want. And you can be my student, if you don’t let your friends convince you on the contrary”
Lyra let out a sigh inside an infinite bare sand desert. With just a single reflector’s light above her head. “So, all I need is… “
“Yes, yes!”
“An audience”
“Well, you don’t need public to create music”
“But the number of spectators around a musician represents how good a song is performed”. Lyra said lifting up and down the reflector now between her hooves, creating shadows behind the red earth cacti, Shadows pilling between the earth, creating the illusion of manes and hooves, wings and horns, corners and walls, surrounding a crowd.
“Aha! You have a point there” Said Luna pointing a hoof to Lyra.
“Out of how many?” retorted Lyra, but Luna didn’t gave a sound. “Ah! c’mon, tell me!” Lyra cried back.
“Keep going” directed Luna moving her hoof forth and back.
Lyra prepared herself on stage for her new audience, Fixing a tuxedo jacket, and a small bowtie, standing bipedally over her hind legs, and pulling from an unknown location her mini Lyra plush, and after a brief pause, she started her performance squeaking it frantically all around the place, just in front of her shadowy crowd, almost standing in the walls or the inexistent roof with the mightiest smile she could bear. She ended and another pause was followed for an earned hindleging ovation from the ghostly audience. And a double facehoof out of Luna, because sometimes one hoof just isn’t enough.
“Least fifteen points” Shouted Luna from under her hooves. Lyra was just wondering what went wrong, but squeezing her toy certainly made her felt better.
“That… thing, you just did, that… performance… That was an inception dream; you made a public, gave them whatever your most basic interpretation of music was” Luna continued with just a hoof on her face, swallowing the sorrow. “And they heard the whole musical world these simple old sounds opened for you”.
It didn’t sound too bad in Lyra’s ears, but of course she didn’t have a way to know if it was, in fact, the real princess Luna, or an already forgotten ghostly Luna created to compliment her. But she understood that she did basically just what she was trying to do, just in the opposite direction, which gave her a great feeling of development.
“That song you were playing first, it’ll come to you, eventually. It already exist because you want it to exist, you just haven’t heard it yet”. Explained Luna trying to smile a bit before growling at the next “But the inception dream is a primal concept from within a mind, and it plays as anything the dreamer wants, it can fill the most wonderful concept, to the upmost distressing moment. You need to see into some other pony dreams to appreciate the difference, but you must learn first the way to the doors; Come my student, let’s go in there”. Luna advised with her eyes still closed “Try not to fall”. Suggested the princess unfolding her wings. The place started to melt into fine sand, or perhaps it was mist.
“BUT IM NOT A PEGASUS!!!” Lyra clarified in a calmly and convincing way.
“It’s not about being a pegasus. It’s more like being a fish. Just try not to fall, or you’ll wake up”
“Wait. What? What was that about being a fish!!?”
They suddenly stood in a black, or maybe, white world. Nothing around. Not even floor below.
“This path leads to the dreams’ door, learn the way well student, and you won’t need to cross it someday” to Lyra these words were as cryptic like the road ahead. All was surrounded by darkness, still perfectly illuminated somehow.
“What happened to the last place?” Lyra asked a bit confused by the new surroundings.
“Last place? No. My little pony, There’s not a thing such like a Last-Place in here that -place- as you called it, has always existed, after and before you dreamt yourself on it, and it still there, we are just moving away, it’s like a play of even littler ponies were you play better with a doll than a place”.
“Wait, does that mean that…“ Lyra started asking when unexpectedly a small slug of darkness started to entwining in the corner of the infinite flawless world, forming something in somewhere like a corner, and when it ended Lyra eeped to the vision of a whiskered black fish not bigger than a filly
“This here is Phobos, he’s gonna help me guide your way ahead, it’s dangerous way, so it’s important to stay close, and watch out yourself”
“D– Da…” Lyra gulped after her Fluttershy imitation. “Dangerous!?? Y- You think so!!?”
“Well, with Phobos here, and myself of course, we should be enough security for you”
“S- Should?!”
“Besides you aren’t anymore stranger to the magic in this place”
Then Luna started to walk, and so on, Lyra started to follow, slightly worried about how little she had learned about practical magic. Had she learned anything at all? Sure the strange fish was behind, but what was him anyway? He moved in the air like swimming, and didn’t seem weirder than them walking without a road. He was floating slightly over Lyra’s head but not higher than Luna’s horn, his body was smooth and scaleless, billowing sometimes a very dark tone of blue reflected from his body from an inexistent source of light, but black for the most part, except for his eyes, plain white, no pupil, not even a texture.
“Maybe these are just spots in his coat; maybe he doesn’t even have eyes”. Lyra thought, but when he was facing her, she didn’t have a doubt the feeling of being watched.
“Are you sure he is… I mean, how you are sure he’s not a dream?”
“Oh, but he IS a dream” Luna replied
“Well… And how do you know that he isn’t the dream of a dream?”
“Because that’s his younger brother, Deimos” said Luna cheerfully
“Oh…“ Objected Lyra speechless
“Phobos is real even if he’s a dream, student. Things aren’t fake just because they are a dream; I’m trying to teach you so with this travel”
“What is this place anyways?”
“Anyways? You have a point there, student”
“Out of how many?” Lyra whined back
“This place is where mad ponies wander”
“This is madness!!” Lyra shouted back
“No, this is a nightmare” Luna explained as calmly as she could “have you dreamed of a never ending fall? Or be eaten, giant fruit shooting you away, or monstrous faces on trees? These all are common nightmares for ponies, and they all have place in here. But, sometimes some ponies go too close chasing a dream, and they get lost in this darkness, it was used as a defensive pit by its creator”
“Its creator?”
“Well, I only assume it was his creator, I would be wrong, but he never gave it a name upon,,,
Luna’s voice was slowly being clouded with the sound of a song in a unfeeling wind; it sounded from far away, and was a buzzing sound at the beginning, but shortly after the music was discernible as a whisper, and then real sound, real music at all, strings old music bringing back and old forgotten song, Lyra felt nostalgia for it but before she could give a single step into the sound, the dark fish interposed in her way, and the music left as soon as it had come.
“I know you are listening, you must never follow the sound. Are you even listening to me?” Luna questioned pushing the song away from Lyra’s mind again. “This darkness calls your name, in a missing and beloved tone, and sometimes it’s what you are looking for, or what you wish the most, sometimes…” said Luna before stop and look at the distance
“Princess, what are you listening?” Lyra questioned.
“To my parents” Luna said hastening to guide the way again, and Lyra didn’t felt like ask something else.
“I spent a lot of time in this place when I was a little filly, but when I grew up I started to wish more and more thing, making the way harder myself, But back in the moon this was the only way to reach at least somepony dreams, do you even know why ponies celebrate Nightmare night? Well, I guess I’m myself a common nightmare in ponies’ dreams” Luna explained to Lyra in somehow a joking tone like trying to cheer her up and accelerating the peace of her march.
“So, what’s your thing?” Luna said keeping an eye in the distance “I mean, sometimes if you focus, you can see ponies having nightmares here; you should totally help them when you find your friends here, I mean; if you’re up to a little of danger. Of course it won’t be dangerous to you at all, knowing it’s only a dream and so. So, do you have any friends, right?”
“Well… yeah, I have my friend Bonbon, I could help her. I had to move with her when I came from Canterlot. I thought I had talked to you about her”.
“You did indeed... Yes. Yes, the one that doesn’t like humans, bad things since humans are such a wonderful creature”
“Do you like them?!”
“But of course, I like them a lot, but keep telling me about your friends”
“Well, she’s not my only friend. Twilight is living in Ponyville too, and it’s such a friendly place”
“Great, great, two in harmony are better than one in perfection, but don’t make too many friends, or they will become difficult to handle, still you can keep an eye in their dreams and find out what they like, that will be an easier way to make more friends”
Lyra jaw dropped and she stood frozen slowing down the march. ”Isn’t it like invade the privacy of other ponies?”
“Yeah, But it’s fun, and you can become the soul of parties that way” Luna said and Lyra’s jaw droped even more. “Don’t worry, you can always make a deal with them anyways, another dream if they found you, and take away a nightmare if you erase your own trace from one of their dreams, you can make it all the time, no risk. I do it all the time with Pinkie Pie; I spend a lot of time with her, She’s such a clever pony, she could’ve been my student, but she is… you know…”
“What? An earth pony?”
“Ooohh, how cute of you, I can’t believe you had said that. No, I meant she’s too pink, you know. The sun princess has a purple student; I wanted something between cream yellow, and mint green, now, hurry up, to infinity, and beyond!”
:Q
After that Lyra was almost having an embolism when Phobos appeared and hastily pushed away this lunatic Luna.
“Get away from her!” Real Luna shouted while covering Lyra with a wing and with Phobos keeping a distance amongst Lyra and the lunatic Alicorn who then revealed her true form to be a small deep blue filly with puffy hair, a fan hat, and a cutie mark of a baseball ball and a screw.
“Who is that pony?” Lyra thrown up.
“She’s not a pony, she is Discord’s spawn”
“Wait, what!?” Lyra retorted when Screwball got away bouncing happily in a pinkish way into the dark away.
“That abomination can enter here, and drag in ponies into this place”.
“But who is discord? And why she can change of form?”
“Who is discord?? But student, what do they teach you in school, if you ask what’s a phoenix, or an Ursa, I’m going to take your points down”
“Aren’t you supposed to be my teacher?”
“Ehem… you’re right, plus one point”
“Out of how many?”
“we have lost enough time over here, we should keep on, we’re near, this travel is hard even for me, gladly we brought Phobos here”
“and who or what Phobos is?”
“Well, you could say that he is my mascot, but he’s a much more close to me, he’s a friend. Like my sister’s pet, Philomena. And about what he is, well, he’s… a genko of course”
“And that is…” Lyra watched Luna expectantly from under her wing while Luna eyed her.
“You’re looking at one”
“I mean it, I never heard of them before”
“Well, a genko is a shadow fish, than lives between shadows or deep waters, and feeds on memories.
“He feeds on memories? Isn’t that dangerous”
“no more than fire at all, he’s part of the natural harmony of nature, tell me, do you keep a memory of every instant on your life”
“well… i…“
“Of course you don’t, genkos eat most of them, but they don’t eat dared memories, these don’t taste well to them. They are used to night since they cannot live in the sunlight, and there… Feeding behaviors have them used to the ways in the mind.
“is he going to feed from me?”
“I would say that he already feed tonight, but maybe he had before, but be confident, my student, defend a memory form one or even a million of them is an easy task when you really try, follow by this road is much more difficult, even for me
“It’s him!” Luna exclaimed taking away the cover under her wings from Lyra, but then Phobos placed himself ahead, facing Luna this time. “We know, dared friend... But we can never be sure if it’s not him. … we, I know”. Luna Said to Phobos or herself, and went closer to Lyra
To Be Continued…
