//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10: Snare 
// Story: Chain of Dreams 
// by Hippocrene Artifex 
//------------------------------//

“Where did the moon go?”

Night time was always the loveliest time for foals. It was at night that they built glowing castles and great ships sailing the dark seas of the star-studded sky with the stars that lined the dark blanket above. For the lone filly who raised her head to discern those stars she loved so much through an open patch in the canopy of the forest, they were no more fascinating without the great white orb that lit the dark-blue carpet that was the night sky.

Tired and hungry from a long day’s trek, the lone unicorn filly slumped down on her belly at the foot of the river shore, the gravel shoreline crunching underneath her as she let a tiny saddle bag, bulgy on one side and flat on the other, slide from her back. Her name was Snare, a unicorn filly of six that might have blended well into the darkness had her coat been a bit more darker than the sky-blue one she had. Her eyes were heavy yellow that otherwise made her appear older than her true age.

Her thoughts, as they have throughout the day, ran in circles; constantly switching from her time in the forest, to the incised yells that clawed at her ears then the ultimate decision that led her to the very spot she sat at now and back again. She no longer wanted to cry, nor could she cry had she had the urge to, for all her tears were long gone, leaving her eyes feeling as if they had sand in them, and she no longer cared if she wanted to be truthful to herself. Looking up at a starry sky might have offered her a little peace to ease her mind and settle her down for a moment before she had to find some shelter for the night, but no comfort came to her as she raised sad eyes to the sky to wonder, for the thousandth time, “Where did the moon go?!”

Snare always found the night canvas to be a beautiful sight no matter how many times she looked up at it from the small window of her bedroom. All the stories her parents used to read to her, about the princess of night and how the said princess would carefully craft and weave the twinkling jewels into sky for everypony to see, flooded her mind with bliss despite her sickened heart. Snare remembered all the times she would stay up past bedtime just to gaze upon the blanket of stars, tracing shapes and inventing stories with the sparkling ponies her eyes and imaginative mind created; how she would eagerly await the setting of Princess Celestia’s sun to make way for the soft glow of the moon; announcing the start of another magical night to dream of and sleep peacefully under.

Among the countless stories she knew by heart, one story in particular had always caught her attention; the tale of Nightmare Moon. Snare would scoff at the idea of a boogeymare that wanted nothing more than to plunge the world into an eternal darkness. Just as much as that it was Princess Luna herself that had vowed such a claim. ‘Not her!’ Snare would shout every time she heard this particular story, ‘Not the princess of the night!’. For it was an impossibility as far as she was concerned that such a benevolent ruler, much like her sister, would be so mean. Indeed, whenever she would hear any foal slandering Princess Luna with that ‘deceitful story’, she would go in on a quarrel with them to defend the princess she so much wished she would meet one day. How could she be so evil, after all, her nights were so gentle and her moon cast its silvery glow upon all of Equestria as it journeyed upon the trail of stars in the heavens, unlike the horrid stories of Nightmare Moon. Snare raised her head to the sky above and searched, for the hundredth time this night, for the moon.

But all of that was irrelevant now as far as Snare thought at the moment, none of that truly mattered. All that she could think about was where she was going to find shelter for the night. The forest she had emerged from offered little in the ways of true shelter, and the constant echoes of wild animals deep within the forest shifted the little filly’s mind into unease. The river bank was a nice spot, and the trickling sounds the river made gave her a sense of security, but she was still smart enough to know that she should never leave herself completely exposed to the elements at night. Looking downstream in hopeful search, she saw nothing that even remotely looked like shelter and let out a heavy sigh of defeat. “At this rate I’d probably go around in circles...”

She looked up to the sky again, calling upon another memory of her past. The memory was of one of her most favourite stories. A story she once read that said that Princess Luna would sometimes glide in a fierce glow like a star cast across the sky. These were known as ‘shooting stars’, or ‘wishing stars’. Once she found out about them, Snare would look to the sky in hope of seeing one that nopony had made a wish on already.

Of course, these stars were few and far between, or so the book said, but this never deterred her from trying to find one and make a wish, so she looked up at the night sky once again in hope that tonight would be the one that she would catch a star shooting across the sky. One... two... ten minutes passed in silence as the young filly gazed at the starlit sky. She so much hoped she could see a star gliding across the sky so that she could whisper her dreams to it, but none came to view no matter how hard she gazed. “Luna must be busy tonight,” thought Snare, her will surrendering and her resolve fading. Indeed, Snare was about to rise to her hooves and pick up her single possession when it suddenly happened. Her eyes grew wide with wonder and her heart skipped a beat to a faster tempo. Just above the constellation Oriana, the Dragon Huntress, a streak of pure light zipped above, reflecting across the large orbs of her eyes. It was there and gone in less than a moment, but to the wishful Snare, it danced against the black canvas like a well versed recitalist. It was bright but with subtle shades of yellow and blue around the edges of a white, flaring center; truly one of the most beautiful scenes she ever saw in her young life.

Snare was mesmerized by the view that flashed by that it took her a moment to remind herself that she needed to breathe after witnessing such wonder. With her senses finally catching up, Snare recited in her mind what she had read on how to wish upon a shooting star. Immediately, she closed her eyes, the trail of the shooting star still imprinted upon her eyelids. She had to be quick about it or else she would miss her chance as it would otherwise be claimed by somepony else, and now that she had it, she almost could not think of what to wish for. There was simply so much she had always wanted, and though they were not all toys and baubles, they all felt so petty now.

But, quite as sudden as the shooting star itself, Snare knew; she knew exactly what she wanted, and a warm smile, a first this day, found it’s way to her face and pulled at her mouth. Exactly as she read in her beloved book, Snare focused solely upon her wish and recited three times in her mind, careful that the actual wish would not reach her lips.


--o0o--


Snare waited.

Her eyes were closed, yet her ears flickered in every direction, taking in everything in her surrounding. A soft breeze passed over her withers behind her mane, making her shiver slightly at it’s cold touch, but nothing beyond that stirred around her. Her eyes popped open and surveyed her surroundings: there was the river in front of her, the foreboding brush line of the forest behind her and another, equally foreboding brush line to the forest across the river from her, but aside from the sum of that, there was nothing else.
Snare’s heart sank as did she to her haunches; did she do something wrong when making her wish? Maybe she only thought she saw the shooting star in the first place. After all, she was exhausted and her eyes were still sore from a day’s worth of tears. Another heavy sigh left the troubled filly as she made to pick her saddle bag back up for a fresh search to find refuge somewhere upstream that could house somepony as small as her.

Or at least she would have, were it not for something that caught her eye as soon as she turned her gaze toward upstream. Even though it was dark up there and she could hardly see anything, the starry sky provided more than enough light for the filly to spot something laying a dozen meters up the shoreline from her, yet what caught her eyes was a faint glow that came from the mound-like shape. Snare was frightened; she did not know what could glow faintly like that, so she took one little step after another but only until she was halfway across that she realized that the shape was actually a pony slumped upon the river bank.

Despite her increasing fear, Snare was not about to pass by the pony out of good conscious, and trotted over to them. She could see that it was a colt and that his coat is dark brown, but the darkness around her was nothing compared to the black he had for the mane that was splattered across his face. He was a unicorn, she could tell, but he appeared to have a somewhat exotic appearance to his features that she was sure that he could not be a pony that came from Equestria. Her eyes, however, simply passed over all that to the glimmering form upon the colt’s flank. It was then that she spotted the weak glow coming from his cutie mark, and her eyes lit up; it was a golden, four point star set in a luminescent, silver crescent moon. The faintly-glowing cutie mark had Snare transfixed for well more than a minute as she regarded each individual contour of the depiction. She felt like she was on top of the world and even let a small squeal of excitement and hopped to the river’s edge. Perching there on a small rock, Snare slowly sent one shaking hoof to the cutie mark that entranced her eyes, but a mere inch away from it, the faint glow simply flickered and was swept away as if the river took it away from her and left nothing but the now-dimmed colt.

With her her unparalleled exhilaration turned to frustration, as if a real treat had been taken away from her, she realized something in her mind that made her poke at the unicorn’s cheek with her tiny hoof.

“Hey!” the filly unicorn said, trying to rouse the unconscious colt, “Mr. Star, wake up!” And even threw in a few extra prods and pokes for good measure until she elicited a small groan from the sleeping form. “Come on, why haven’t you granted my wish?”

Her attempts were successful and she was almost fascinated by the mere flickering of the eyelids that half-opened his eyes, so she asked again, huffing her cheeks to look even more annoyed, “Mister Star, why haven’t you granted my wish yet?”

But the colt’s pupils slowly traveled up his eyes until they settled on her. With their eyes locked together for countless moments, a vacant smile touched upon his exhausted features and he spoke in a hoarse whisper, “I will, Meda... I will bring you the star itself...”
At his words, Snare smiled widely; he had promised her that he will make her wish come true and she could see that he did not lie to her in the gentle eyes that were reserved just for her... half-lidded eyes that slowly started to droop until they shut her access to them. “No, wake up!” yelled the little filly and pokes at his head again, but he did not wake up, nor did he even groan.

“Great! Now what am I supposed to do?” Snare spoke under her breath and kicked a nearby pebble into the water. She could not stray away from him now, or else somepony else might steal her wish and make him disappear, but she could not pull him away from the river by herself either. While in the middle of her musings as to how she could take him with her, an idea came to her so brilliant that she actually smacked herself in the face and muttered, “Silly, Snare. You can use magic the same way mom used to do. Let's see, if I just concentrate, I can do this!”

So, with her tongue once again between her teeth, Snare concentrated very hard on the stallion before her, but it was no use for nothing happened. With much more determination at her second attempt, Snare gave her best effort and concentration. To her delight, a bright teal glow shone from her little horn and she opened her eyes with a bright smile to admire her effort, but as her eyes slid to the colt, she huffed in her frustration, “Oh, come on!” It was only the large fringe of mane that hung over the colt’s eye that was even slightly raised in the glow of her horn.

With her heart sinking yet again into despair and her sigh of defeat coming from the depth of her heart, Snare sat again on her haunches and closed her eyes in surrender. However, she was left in that state for only a moment, for it was then that her ears perked up when a rustling of some undergrowth near the forest edge caught her attention. She looked around again only to see what she’s already seen before, but this time she was much more frightened; what if it was a cockatrice, a timberwolf, or even a hydra! The mere thought terrified her in every way possible, but she couldn’t even know where to look to face her inevitable doom. She wished that she could have used her wish to dispel whatever evil was now approaching her, but the very thought made her get up to her hooves and walk to stand before the colt, her thoughts taking a rather possessive and protective stance towards the colt who promised her wish come true.

Despite her show of courage, Snare almost screamed when the two figures finally broke through the natural barriers to reveal themselves. They were two ponies, both pegasi, also looking like they were a bit stunned to see another pony before them as well. The three stood there for a while: two mares facing one little filly in a silence that was broken when one of them stepped forward and spoke in a gentle voice, “Hello there…”