Author's Note

This is just a little prologue to the actually good stuff. Way darker in tone than what I have in mind for everything that will follow it. I wanted to give darn a good reason for Luna to end up sleeping in her sister's bed. Plus its helpful to have a sort of warm-up after not writing anything in a long while. Hope it makes for a compelling, if extremely short, read.

Chapter the First

It is just after midnight on a cool summer evening. The moon hangs full and proud above a city of dreaming unicorns. Ill gotten flame bathes the streets below, making cobblestone dance spectacularly as if bewitched. At the halfway point between heaven and earth, the Princess of the Night stirs from her trance.

Luna had found herself within the dream of an orphan colt, where she did battle with manifestations of trauma she could not hope to soothe. The young urchin's indescribable sorrow had affected her deeply, and her will to fight faltered. She could do nothing more than flee, and vow to rescue the poor foal in the waking world.

She now stands, crestfallen, atop her spire. Though certain she will make good on her promise, she nonetheless feels as though she has failed her subjects. Ashamed though she is, Luna recognizes that she is in no state to aid ponies in their dreams and resolves to take the rest of the night for herself. She hopes the ponies of Equestria will once again pardon her absence from their dreams as she makes her way to bed.

Luna spends an agonizing hour chasing sleep in the dark of her bedchamber. Eventually, she finds it. Rest, however, still eludes her. She dreams of Canterlot arranged as a labyrinth, and of herself arranged as a great heroine. She fearlessly navigates its shifting corridors and presses on towards its heart. Though upon arriving at the maze's center, she finds no minotaur to fell. Her Asterion is a child, alone and sobbing. He turns to face his savior, and her noble visage dams his eyes. He beams a gap-toothed smile at her which reveals discolored gums. Luna reaches out to touch the colt's face, but in that instant his body melts like wax, leaving behind that gap-tooth smile, disembodied. His teeth, too, begin to melt and soon all that remains is the gap, pitch black and screaming. Its nothingness swallows Luna whole.

A moment later, darkness constricts the princess. She is trapped, as though bound in a sack sunken deep below the water. The damp walls of her prison tighten around her rhythmically, as warm liquid begins to pool at her hooves. Slowly the warmth climbs up her body until it grazes her chin. She can hardly breathe. Her pupils widen with terror. There is only blackness here to fill them. Finally, the liquid submerges her completely, and begins to fill her lungs. It tastes sour. It stings as it invades the cavities of her body. Just as Luna realizes that she is going to die here, choked by hot sloshing void, she wakes up.