Night Harvest
Twilight Sparkle woke up with a scream.
She stood there, panting, with the sound of her broken breaths in her ears, and the sight of colours and forms that still moved and writhed between her opened wide eyes. She batted her eyelids, and passed a hoof over her damp coat.
She was still breathing hard.
Damn; every time, the same dream.
Twilight Sparkle gulped down a bit of her own saliva and let the taste set in her mouth, her thoughts collect, her breath become more even. She registered the softness of the mattress under her body, the dull aching of her shoulders from the strain of keeping her up for more than a few moments.
She never was the athletic mare, after all, and her muscles were screaming for release; she complained and straightened her back, putting her hooves in her lap. She was still panting a bit in the cold air of the room, and that was the only noise she could hear but for the rumble of her heart and the soft snoring of Spike, asleep.
Twilight drew a breath and then lightened up her horn, filling the room up with a suffused purple light, drawing out the frames of books, shelves and a desk from the darkness. Outside, the light of the stars seemed brighter than ever. Twilight moved out of the bed, paying little no to attention to the amount of noise she was making – her little assistant, after all, was already showing some of the traits of his species, like the tendency to fall into very deep slumbers.
Twilight, somehow amused by the thought, moved outside of her room and got ready to get out; she fashioned herself with a scarf – deep blue and silver – to protect her from the cold and opened the door. The air outside was crisp and somehow clear – it made things and frames stand out from the surroundings, and it helped her to cast away some of the strange images that still lingered from the dream.
She closed the door behind her back and started to walk through the alleys of the city, drawing soft sounds from the road; her head was held down, her brows furrowed in thought, and if she looked at some other pony up at this hour of the night or at the bulky form of a guard patrolling, she didn't pay attention to them.
Twilight had been tormented by the same dream for little more than two years now – it wasn't always the same scenes and faces, but she remembered the voices, the colours, and it wasn't anything like she had experienced in her life. Looking up to the starry sky, she wandered for a bit, looking at the road only from time to time, basking in the silvery light that seemed to embrace everything, and draw out the most wonderful contours and details of the paved road, of the lovely-carved houses, of the tiny decorations that were in abundance.
So thinking, Twilight came to the outskirts of the city, and she stood at the edge of a slope that gave down a hill; her hooves touched the end of the road. She out herself down with grace and stood still, looking at the night sky, looking for answers to her questions.
Knowledge is night, Twilight used to repeat to herself when she was in doubt. This time didn't seem to be that useful, even if she was so concentrated on her thoughts.
Maybe it was for this reason that she didn't hear Her Highness coming.
“Twilight Sparkle,” she greeted her, with her soothing voice.
Twilight turned and looked at her; a few tendrils of her ethereal mane brushed against her coat, making her feel better.
“Princess,” She greeted back, happy but with a low voice not to disturb the silence of her night.
“I see you are thoughtful in this hour of the Night. Care to share your worries?”
Twilight pursed her lips.
“It's... it's always the same dream. I had experienced it for more than two years now...”
Princess Luna interrupted her and came closer; Twilight basked in the strange light that came from her ethereal mane, that looked like a section of the starry sky, just sped up incredibly so that it showed the changes that usually happened in centuries... in millennia...
“Twilight Sparkle?”
Twilight batted her eyes and, blushing a bit, got back to explain.
“It's the same dream because I always feel the same way, Princess, but I cannot explain it... it's like... like I need some sort of connection, and right now I'm missing it. Things I have to do, places I'm needed to be. And a... a... spark missing.”
Princess Luna said nothing.
“It's like... there are other ponies somewhere, that I need to... to... know, somehow... I... I have these flashes, from time to time, of images, sounds...” Twilight massaged her forehead with a hoof.
Then, Princess Luna put one of her hooves on Twilight's shoulder.
“Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student, I suggest you to go back to sleep. Don't be afraid of these thoughts, just try to explore them; we can talk about it together another time. Let the Night bring advice to you.”
Princess Luna nuzzled Twilight for a moment, then the unicorn got up; even though her conversation with the Princess had been little more than an exchange of greetings, she felt better. A bit of the coldness that resided in her heart after these dreams went away.
Twilight smiled to the Princess, then she moved her gaze up to the object that filled the sky. It was always the same, even if parts of it were obscured in the course of the month. Right now, it was visible only the right half, which clearly showed the charred, blackened wastes of the surface. Twilight didn't like it.
Then, she smiled and bowed to the Princess, basking in her beauty: her ethereal, dark blue mane, her black coat, her blue-green eyes of dragon, the magic of the silvery starlight that played with the frames of her armour and helmet-fashioned crown, with the long black horn that came out of it.
She came back to her place, her steps carrying a bit more of a spring in them.
Behind her, Princess Luna folded back her great, pointed wings on her flanks, and stood still, looking up in the sky at the charred remains of what had once been a luscious planet. Her vision wasn't impaired like that of her most wonderful student, and could point out the various craters on the surface, vitrified by the clash of incredible amounts of heat and cold, of the power of the sunlight and the coldness of space.
Then, she moved her gaze away from the planet and over the silvery wastes of the desert just out of the town, where groups of crystal-like trees, looking like a landscape of thorns, were giving out pallid fruit to sustain her subjects, and into the dunes that went down to the horizons, white and grey and black, looking like slender petals.
Nightmare Moon stood there again a moment or two, thinking about the words of Twilight Sparkle, and the meaning that they could carry. She would have to make a bit of research... find where the other five where, and look in their dreams for any signs of memories of thoughts that cold prove... dangerous.
Finally, with one last look at the charred semicircle that had once been her home, she turned herself into her signature blue mist and flew back to her palace, passing through the houses and ceilings of her prized city, and the thin air of the Moon.
