"Dad, dad!" The young boy ran up to his father, clutching a thin, colorful book in his small, chubby hands. 'The Stars of the World', the cover read in sparkling, silver letters. "Look!" He fumbled with the pages until he found the page he had been looking at just earlier. "It says, uh, you can see the, uh..." He narrowed his eyes at the words, trying to figure out how to pronounce it. "... con... ste... constellation, of Orion, at night!"
His high pitched voice rang through the city library, turning a few visitors' heads for just a moment. His father looked away from the stack of papers that laid on the table before him and smiled. "Oh, is that right?"
"Yeah! Uh, it says you can see..." The kid turned the book towards his father, pointing towards a little line of three white dots floating high in the night sky of the page's illustration. "You can see his belt!"
His father briefly scanned the page's contents and chuckled softly. "Yep, that's Orion. Probably the easiest constellation you can recognize because of those three stars."
"But..." The kid sputtered, looking down at the picture of the sky. It featured those three white dots, surrounded by a rectangle sort of shape formed by more white dots, with lines connecting them all. Surrounding them all was a faint outline of robed man holding a sword and shield in his arms. Accompanying this man in the sky, however, were several more pictures of various objects and animals and people, all littering the sky, each of them surrounding their own little pattern of stars and lines. He looked back up to his dad. "There's more of them! Look, there's um, a bear here, and... and a horse with wings!" He pointed to picture after picture, each time turning back to his dad to make sure he was watching. "And... another bear! And, um..."
His father's smile faltered slightly. He reached down and gently ruffled the boy's hair. "Are you wondering why you've never seen most of those?"
The boy looked back to his dad in surprise. "Uhm... mhm?"
His father sighed and pushed away the stack of papers, turning fully to look him in the eyes. "Alan, we live in a... really busy city. There's a lot of cars and buildings and... well, people too... that make a lot of smoke. This smoke goes into the sky and mixes with the air, making something called smog."
Alan cringed at the last word. He never remembered hearing it before, but it sounded... bad. Gross. Dirty.
His father laughed at his reaction. "Yep, me too, kiddo. This smog goes up into the sky and just sort of sits there, like a blanket over us. It's not exactly healthy either, it's the whole reason you cough a lot when we're outdoors." He sighed and looked away briefly. "But it also blocks out the stars, keeps their light from reaching us."
Alan tilted his head in confusion. "But... I can still see the moon! And I think I can see those three stars-"
"The moon is very bright, Alan, no amount of smog can ever block it out." His father chuckles dryly. "At least, I hope. And some stars are just bright enough to make it through. But not most, most stars you'll never be able to see from here in the city."
"Where... where can you see them?" Alan asked, trying to imagine in his head, all those extra stars from the book in the night sky he had grown used to outside his bedroom window. Those three little stars were all he could remember seeing consistently, aside from the moon and a few other specks of light that moved a lot faster than the stars and moon did."
His father hung his head a little. "We'd have to go pretty far from the city to even see a few of those extra stars. Where I grew up, you could see a lot more stars and constellations, just like that picture. My family's house was just on the edge of the city, where there wasn't this much air pollution."
"Air pollution?" Alan questioned, not recognizing the word.
"Oh, sorry." His father laughed. "Same thing as smog, just a longer way of saying it. When there's less and less smog, you can see more of the night sky. And in areas where there is almost no smog, I've heard you can see almost everything. The pictures I've seen make what I remember growing up look like nothing, it's like the sky is... alive. It's been so long, I can't really remember what it looked like anymore, but I'll always remember what it felt like. And the air, it is hard to explain it to you when the city's air is all you've known, but the air out there is... free, and clean."
Alan thought for a second. "Can we... go to your old house to see the stars?"
"Someone else lives there now." His father muttered quietly. He turned back towards his son. "And... between my job and taking care of you, it's just... I'm too much of a mess right now, I'm sorry." He placed a comforting hand on his son's shoulder and offered a weak smile. "Maybe... once things settle down more, I can drive us just outside of the city. It won't look anything like the pictures I've seen, but it will look a little like those in that book of yours. That sound good?"
Alan froze, wanting to simply nodded and ran back to his old reading spot. Behind him, his father sighed morosely before reopening his laptop and resuming work.
Alan hopped onto his cramped bed, in his cramped, little room, holding his newly borrowed book of the stars. Or... it used to be newly borrowed. Fortunately, nobody else seemed interested in this specific book, letting him constantly beg his dad to let him renew it for months on end since he first came across it in the library.
He leaned to the side and gazed out the side of his room, where the faint traces of the closing day's sunlight poured through his open window. With so much of this 'smog' filling the air, the sun burned with an angry, yet dim, red glow, framed perfectly by the towering giants of stone and glass. Even so late into the evening, the muffled, constant honking and shouting from furious drivers and passersby leaked into his room.
Tilting his head a little, he could see the faint, silver glow of the moon, peeking just shy above one of the looming skyscrapers. He recalled panicking the first time he saw that. After all, the moon is supposed to rise in the night only, while the sun rises during the day, right? He still couldn't understand, or remember, his dad's explanation, only that moon "rose when it did, and was not stuck to a time of day or place."
The day's many activities began to weigh on what little remaining energy he had left. He tossed his book onto the floor beside his bed and laid down on his back, facing the ceiling. Calling upon the many pictures he'd seen during his trips to the library, Alan saw himself standing on a grassy hill, surrounded by a meadow that stretched forever, filled with flowers of all shapes and colors.
Now, forest rested amidst that meadow, just a little to his right, where the trees grew so close together, their underbrush was cast in shadow so dark, one wouldn't know whether it was day or night.
Now, the meadow no longer reached the horizon, and instead, stopped short of thin strip of sand that was followed by a never-ending blanket of blue, shimmering water, so blue that it merged with the sky itself. He could hear the sounds of crashing wave, sounds he only knew from that one time his teacher brought a cassette to class to show them all the movie. There was a single scene that was near the beach, and with it came those haunting, beautiful sounds of water, so much water, smashing against the sand.
As he always would, he laid on his back and looked up at the now darkened sky, highlighted by the brilliant shine of the full moon. He blinked, and the sky filled with specks of glittering white. Only, they didn't look... right.
He focused, trying to bathe the canvas before him with more and more of the stars he could remember, but each time, would only manage to make copies of those three stars of Orion's belt. Other times, the sky would appear like a grid of white spots, some of which donned streaks of silver light connecting them. A few times, these spots would start moving in straight lines, leaving little trails of cloud behind them.
Frustration grew in his mind as he failed over and over to get the sky right. And the smell, the suffocating scent of smoke that, even in their little place, they could not escape from. Even in his own dreams, night after night, the city chased him, constantly reminding him of what awaited him when he opened his eyes.
He turned to glare at the moon, which lazily drifted through the sky like a single, shining, bubble floating through the air when the wind was calm. It was the only part of the sky that ever seemed right, as if to mock him for never getting the rest. "What?!" He screamed at it. "Why are you looking at me?!"
He bent down and picked up a rock, chucking it hard into the sky at the moon. It sailed high before gradually slowing to a stop, where it remained floating in the air. "Do you know what the sky really looks like?!"
He reached down again and grabbed a fistful of grass, also throwing it towards the moon. As soon as it left his hand, the blades flew wildly in the air before also settling as if they landed on the surface of some invisible lake. "Show me! Show me the sky! Show me the stars!"
"You wish to see the stars, young one?"
Alan shivered as an unfamiliar woman's voice echoed all around him. It was... gentle, yet absolute. He looked back towards the sky and saw the moon glowing far brighter than before. "Ye- yes?"
The moon's glow continued to intensify in brightness until he was forced to shut his eyes from the light, but even then, he could still see it through his eyelids. Finally, it died down, and he peeked his eyes open. The chaotic flow of lights in the sky had frozen, and the moon was back to its old light. However, his attention was drawn to what- no, who, now stood before him.
Towering above him stood what looked like a dark, blue horse, though its face looked expressive, almost human. Its blueish green eyes were cartoonishly large for what a horse should have, and yet it looked... natural. Its long mane and tail flowed in an softly as if submerged in still water, filled with spots of light, and hues of purple and blue, that swirled and danced around each other. A wide pair of wings stretched open from her back, her hooves covered in shimmering, light blue... shoes? Her flanks, as well as a black apron-looking item on her chest, donned a white, crescent moon. On her forehead, a long, dark blue horn spiraled out, glowing with a faint cyan light. It looked down at Alan with a curious look and a gentle smile.
"Hmm... lucid dreaming? Quite impressive, little one, though I cannot say I... know what you are."
The woman's voice from earlier spoke through the horse's lips, and Alan gasped in surprise. "You- you're a talking horse?"
"Pony." She corrected, looking a bit surprised as well. "And alicorn." She leaned a little closer to him. "And... what are you?"
"Me?" Alan sputtered, not expecting to ever hear such a question in his life. "I'm... a human? My, uh, name is Alan."
The alicorn pony lifted a hoof to her chin and looked away, as if in thought. "Oh, a human? Interesting, I do not recognize that name. And your name does not sound like a name our ponies would use."
Alan sat there for a moment, trying to figure out what to say, before settling the basics his dad had taught him. "Um, what's your name?"
The alicorn pony snapped out of her thoughts. "My name is Princess Luna, but... you may just call me Luna." Luna offered a warm smile.
"Oh... hi Luna." Alan returned awkwardly.
Luna turned her sights away and towards the surrounding landscape. "I felt a dream, out in the distance, further than anything I have ever perceived. Faint, but desperate, as if it wanted me to enter for something."
Alan wasn't sure what to make of her words. After a bit, he remembered what he was doing earlier. "Uh, Luna? Do you know what the night sky looks like?"
"Oh?" Luna looked shocked at the question. "Of course I do! Do you not know?"
Alan quietly shook his head. "Dad said, uh, that there is too much smog to see the stars here."
"Smog? I do not know this word either." Luna stared a little harder at Alan. "But you say you cannot see the stars?"
"I can see some, but I don't think I can see all of them." Alan looked back at the sky, and the stars moved again. This time, it looked exactly like in his book, with a few dots of white here and there connected by lines, and surrounded by the faint images of figures around them. "I always wanted to see more stars in the sky, but I don't know what that should look like. Is... is this right?"
Luna gazed up at the sky and shook her head. "You cannot fully imagine a night sky when you have never truly seen it in the first place. It is... a sight that everyone deserves to see in all its glory, at least once in their lifetime."
Alan hung his head low and kicked at the grass. "Dad said he wants to show me it one day, but he's always busy working. I can't really remember seeing him not working."
"Hmmm... you say you cannot see the stars from where you are at?"
Alan shook his head.
"Then let us see from where you are looking at them."
Suddenly, the landscape around him shifted and morphed, the grass below twisting into the familiar fluff of his blanket and pillows, the sky closing in until it became the ceiling. In a second, he was back in his room, laying on his bed, at the foot of which Luna stood, curiously gazing all around. Her wings were folded tightly to her sides as she attempted to squeeze her way around. "This is... interesting. And a bit cramped for me." The light around her horn brightened for a moment, and his walls seemed to stretch back just a little further. "That's much better."
Finally, she spotted the window and trotted towards it. Its shutters and glass disappeared in an instant, and Luna peeked her head out, taking in the many sights of the city. In the darkness of night, flashes of yellow and red flowed through the streets, shouts filling the air. "Similar. Almost familiar... and yet not. And, eugh." Her nose wrinkled in disgust as the familiar stench of the city wafted through. She stamped a hoof, and suddenly, the air smelled... clean, just like how his dad described it at his old house. Alan used to think there were only two ways the air could smell, the dirty outside and the less dirty inside, but never before did he imagine a third existing. Where the air smelled... free.
She turned her gaze upwards towards the sky, and her ears drooped. "Oh." She sounded disappointed, almost upset.
Alan walked up besides Luna, standing on his tip toes to look out the window with her. "What's wrong?"
"This." She raised a hoof and gestured towards the night sky, where the darkness was pierced by nothing but a handful of silver specks and the full moon. "All this... there should be so much more than just this. Is this all you have known of the night sky for all your life?"
"Um... I guess." Alan shrugged weakly. "I didn't know there was supposed to be more. Then I got this book from the library, and it told me there's a lot more. Now that I know, the sky feels empty."
Luna continued to stare into the void above the city. "A lot more is... not enough to describe it." She eyed the book sitting beside Alan's bed and tilted her head. It floated in the air, wrapped in the same glow around her horn, and drifted towards the pair. It opened and flipped through page after page before landing on the one Alan remembered showing his dad. "Not even this book shows everything."
"Dad said if you go really, really far from the city, you can see everything."
Luna squeezed her eyes shut in concentration. "I can feel them, I can feel all of the stars up there, every single one of them just waiting to be seen." She tilts her head. "And so many dreams too, from so many souls. From those who have long since forgotten the beauty of the night sky, or have never even been graced by it."
She groaned faintly. "It is taking me... an immense amount of my strength and willpower to remain here so far away, I don't think I can stay for too much longer, dear Alan."
"What?" Alan whined in disappointment, but also confusion. "You are from somewhere? I... thought this is just a dream? Are you real?"
Luna laughed wholeheartedly, albeit a bit strained. "Oh, little one, of course this is just a dream." She reached down to brush a hoof through his hair. "But who is to say your dreams can't be real?"
Alan looked down and narrowed his eyes furiously, trying to understand what was meant by that. Meanwhile, the wind began to pick up around him and the ground began to rumble. He looked back up to Luna and noticed her eyes now glowing with a blinding white light. Outside, he spotted the moon starting to glow with that same light it shone just before Luna showed up. "Wha- what's going on?!"
"I have just enough strength to do one last thing, something I can feel yearned for deep within the hearts of the thousands of dreamers." Luna's wings flared open suddenly, and the entire out-facing wall of the room dissolved into silvery sparkles, letting him take in the full view of the city. "Even from such a grand distance, enough of my magic can still travel through the dreamscape, to the dreams I can reach, to where you reside. These may not be my subjects, but I will always see to the beauty of the night sky, wherever it may be."
She turned to Alan and wrapped a wing around his back, pulling him into a gentle embrace and shielding him from the wind, where the sounds and rumbling seemed to momentarily muffle. Her fur was warm and soft, softer than any pillow he could ever imagine. His arm brushed against her starry, flowing mane, and he shivered as it sent chills up where it touched. "Never underestimate the power of dreams, Alan. And never, ever, give up on them."
Luna pulled back and, with a mighty flap from her wings, soared high into the sky, a trail of stars streaking from behind her. Alan watched as she rose higher and higher, glowing brighter and brighter, until she was but a single bright dot piercing the barren, empty night sky.
"You wanted to see the stars, Alan?"
Her voice boomed through the air, almost knocking Alan to his feet. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, carrying a powerful echo that he felt deep in his bones. And yet at the same time, it felt soft and sweet. The light from Luna rapidly intensified until his vision was filled with white.
"See them all."
"Alan! Alan, wake up!"
Alan groggily opened his eyes, finding himself curled up on his bed. His book of stars was clutched tightly in his arms as if it were a pillow. He looked up to see the excited face of his dad, who was grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him awake.
"Come on, you need to see this, you won't believe it!"
His dad practically dragged him out his room and out of their place, and down the stairs towards the outside door. As his dad paused and fumbled to put on a jacket, he heard voices from a radio from one of their neighbor's rooms, its door hanging wide open.
"... no, there's never been anything like this before!"
"And you say you were awake when this happened?"
"Yeah! I felt my room shake, like there was a short earthquake. When I looked outside to see what it was, that's when I saw it!"
"And what about your wife?"
"I tell you, she's normally such a deep sleeper, but when I felt that rumble, she rose straight out of bed! Said something about hearing a voice in her dream that woke her up. Apparently, even my kids heard the same voice! It's a miracle, that's what! I've no idea how long it would've taken for all this smog to go away, and I used to always hope it did as a kid! And then, bam! Just like that?!"
"Alright, thanks for calling in, Mr. Rosen. Well, you heard it straight from one of our fellow residents, you aren't alone if you heard a-"
"There we go, almost lost my wallet." Alan's dad finally yanked the outside door open and rushed outside.
The first thing he noticed was the ground seemed a lot brighter than he remembered it being at night, even with the few lampposts around. The second thing he noticed was the smell. It was... just like in his dream. Clean. Free,
"Alan, what are you doing?! Look up!"
Confused and tired, Alan turned his eyes to the sky, and his jaw fell open. Where there were once but a few dim spots of light, now laid thousands of brilliant, shining lights, stars, all throughout the sky. He could see the three stars from Orion's belt, but they were far brighter now, and accompanied by the rest of the stars he remembered seeing as part of that constellation. He spotted more and more brighter stars, and his head immediately drew lines between familiar sections, allowing him to recognize so many more constellations from his book.
But between all of those stars, just slightly dimmer, were even more stars, far more than he could even try to count, filling every gap to the point where there didn't seem to be a single dark patch throughout the night sky. He stepped forward and looked down the street near the horizon and saw... everything. An impossibly beautiful river of stars flowed just above the horizon, carrying shades of purple and yellow and blue and... colors he couldn't even compare to anything he had ever seen.
Down in the streets, people stood beside their cars, some of which were left right in the middle of the road. But there was no one to complain, as they too had left their vehicles to gaze at the night sky. Light after light in the skyscrapers around them began to flicker off as people moved towards the windows to get a view. Alan's dad wiped a tear from his eye. "Alan, that over there..." He pointed to the brushstroke of stars painted on the canvas of the sky right over where the sun had previously set, framed between the buildings. "That's the edge of the Milky Way, one of the most beautiful things you could ever see at night."
He sniffled a little, trying to subtly hide his face from Alan. "I've... never seen it before, only in pictures, but not even those pictures compare to... seeing it for real. I didn't think I'd ever live to see the night where I can look up and see this many stars, with everything that I'm dealing with. And I didn't think you'd ever get to see this, at least not for many years, if you manage to move somewhere far away from this place."
As Alan marveled at the stars, he picked up on more faint voices from the radio in the apartment building.
"...and our instruments seem to confirm it, following the brief earthquake, virtually all traces of air pollution over the city have completely vanished, as if it was never here! Lord knows what could be behind such a miracle like this, or how long it'll last. Excuse me for a moment, I really need to have a look for myself too..."
"Wait, Sarah, we aren't done-"
Alan felt his dad hug him closer to his side, and he leaned over to embrace him, which he graciously reciprocated in full. He looked up to the sky and noticed, once again, the full moon lazily drifting over the top of a nearby skyscraper. For a very brief moment, he thought he faintly make out the silhouette of Luna's head, eyes glowing brightly.
It looked like it was smiling at him, but when he blinked, there was nothing to be seen but the brilliant shine of the moon, accompanied by her infinite canvas of stars.