Dreamstrider

by OkemosBrony

Chapter 23

I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here, but it feels like it’s been forever.

I’m trying to think about how I got here, but every time I try, I have absolutely no idea how this happened. I was just sitting here meditating, and before I knew it, I had no control over my body. Even when I was speaking with Luna, I wasn’t controlling myself. My brain is trying to tell my body to do all these different things, but my body is being stubborn and not listening. Plus, I’ve never heard of anything like this, so I could have no idea what’s happening to me.

There has to be some way out of this, right? Luna wouldn’t just abandon me...right? Given how rare she said Dreamstriders are, I’m probably too valuable for her to just leave here. After all, if she wanted to put me in something that I couldn’t escape from, I think she would have tried to do it sooner than this.

Then again, if she planned for me to be a Dreamstrider for the rest of my life, a little over a year of training wouldn’t be that much time. And for somepony that’s been alive for thousands of years, just a year spent with me wouldn’t be a big waste.

Mom would probably have a heart attack and then kill me if she heard me say this, but shit. Shit, shit, shit. Based on how she laid-back she was when she told me to escape, it’s probably not a big deal to her. There are plenty of other Dreamstriders alive now, and one of them is going to be coming to the castle pretty soon. She can afford to lose me here.

Relax Aurora, just relax. Luna’s not like that, she wouldn’t just leave me here to die. She’s not cruel. She’s been with me for a year and spent a lot of time not only training me, but opening up to me as well. There’s so much I learned about her that I don’t think anypony else knows, except maybe Princess Celestia. She wouldn’t tell me her deepest thoughts and feelings just to trap me in the dream world.

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I’ve tried to get some part of my body, literally any part, to move. Even a tiny hoof twitch or sending just a spark of magic through my horn is impossible. My body is completely paralyzed, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Maybe it’s a good thing I’m paralyzed. Then nopony could see me crying, because I know that’s definitely what I would be doing right now. I guess there’s nopony else here to actually see me cry, but I’d know. I cried a lot when I was little, and I’m growing out of that. Still though, I’m trapped in the dream world; I feel like it would be okay to cry this one time. It’s not like I have no reason to.

Nothing I’ve done so far has worked, so I have to think about what I haven’t done. Unfortunately, there’s still a lot I haven’t done. The entire time I’ve been here has just been me trying to regain control of my body by trying to move things, so there’s a ton of things I could do. The only question is what I need to do. It’s got to be obvious, right? It’s going to be one of those things that I look back on and wonder how I didn’t get it the first time. So now I just have to think of something that could be like that. Easier said than done.

Maybe Luna said something that might help? Great, now I have to remember what she said. She said something about the magic of the moon in this world and how it makes my magic stronger, maybe it’s something to do with magic? I know I can’t cast any spells because I can’t use my horn, but I guess that doesn’t mean I can’t go through all the steps of moving the magic around in my mind as if I was casting a spell. What spell, though? There are just so many spells I know, and even more that I don’t know.

Probably is one I know, though. Luna might put me in a situation where I could fail and be left here to die, but she wouldn’t put me in a situation that I physically could not get out of. And since she mentioned my Dreamstriding abilities, it’s probably a spell related to that. That narrows it down, but that leaves me with a list of spells that probably wouldn’t have much effect. I do feel a stronger connection to my magic and the magic around me, and I can say for sure that this isn’t caused by a demon, which eliminates most of the Dreamstriding-related spells I know.

What few spells I have left to use wouldn’t be much, really. I know a spell to send my voice across the dream world but only if I speak in Demon, a spell to locate the pain of dreamers nearby, and now that I think of it, those are all the dream-related spells I know that don’t have anything to do with demons.

Guess testing all these spells will be easy, then.

I test the voice spell first and while I can tell it was done right, without being able to control my speaking it doesn’t do anything. The second spell also is cast right, but without my horn, nothing happens. Right back where I started.

Honestly, I wish I could cry. At least then I’d feel better when it was done. I always do.

Just when I start thinking about wanting to cry, I swear I can feel my eye twitch a little. I have to be imagining that, right?

Only one way to find out.

I try and think sad thoughts, and eventually, I can feel my eyes move a little more. It’s working! I have no idea why Luna would put me in a trap where I need to cry to escape, but she did. I’m sure there’s some sort of deeper meaning to this and crying probably isn’t the exact way she meant for me to get out of this, but that’s not important. For now, I just have to cry.

I try to go back to thinking about when I was hopeless, when I thought nothing could get me out of this. It works a little bit and I can feel my body a little more, but it’s not enough. What else do I have to cry about, then?

I guess I do kind of miss my family. I’ve gotten used to being away from them, but I’d be lying if I didn’t want to be back in Coltlumbus every now and then. Being a Dreamstrider has put a lot of pressure on me, way more than I thought. If I had learned last year that I would be having to fight demons every few nights because the safety of innocent ponies was in my hooves, I’d be pretty worried. And I can that thinking about it is working, because I can now feel my mane blowing in my face from the wind. It’s a very, very faint feeling, but I can feel it nonetheless. I still need more, though. But what else could I think about that might make me cry? My life’s pretty good, so it’s not like I have much to cry about. I like my family, I like the friends I have both back home and here, I like Luna, and I like Dreamstriding.

I guess I can try and make myself feel bad about Snowy moving away. I won’t get to see her all the time anymore, and before I know it, I’ll hardly ever see her. Sure it’ll take four years for her to complete college, but it’ll happen eventually. And even before she’s done, Dew Drop will go away as well. Before long, I’ll be the only one going back home to see mom and dad, and who knows how often I’ll get to see my sisters? Even though they were always way older than me, they cared about me. Sure being a younger sister can really stink, but I think I’d hate it a lot more if they weren’t my older sisters. They’ve been there my whole life, and thinking about hardly ever seeing them again gives me a knot in my gut. And one day, we’ll all be in different cities, doing different things, married to different ponies, and having foals of our own. We’ll be so busy, we’ll be lucky if we get to see each other once a year. And even then it’ll just be for a short time, since we’ll all have to get back to our jobs. My own sisters, the two ponies who have always been there for me and will be there with me when I’m old and the world is a much different place than it is now, and I’ll barely be able to visit them.

It’s working. I can open my eyes now if I try really hard, even though they’re just barely cracked and I can hardly see anything through the tears that are building up in my eyes. It’s something, but I can feel that I just need a little more.

I can’t really think of anything else to be sad about, so I just have to focus on what I have. I’m all alone in the dream world, Luna may have just left me here to die, and I may rarely see my family just because of what I am.

I now have full control over my eyes, and I push the tears out. Little by little, feeling comes back to my face. It’s working! Before long, I can hardly control my breathing and I can feel myself getting light-headed. By the time I can take control of my crying and calm down, I’m able to move everything in my body. I feel pretty stiff, but the important part is that I can move. The first thing I do is get out of the moonlight, since I have a feeling that has something to do with the fact that I was just trapped.

“Luna?” I ask, hoping she’s nearby. When I don’t get a response, I decide to go back to Canterlot Cave. Maybe she’s waiting there for me?

A few minutes later, I come to the cave’s mouth, but she’s not there either. There are even fewer dreams inside than when I came here, so I can tell pretty quickly that none of these are hers. She did say she’d be in her room, right? I didn’t really think she’d actually leave me alone in the dream world, but I guess she did. Guess I have to go find her.

I find my dream and enter it before going back into the awakened world, and when I open my eyes, I can see that the three ponies studying me are all doing something else. The mare is grading a stack of papers, the stallion with glasses is reading a book, and the other stallion is just looking out of my window, looking really bored while he does so.

“I’m back,” I say quietly, trying not to disturb them too much. They all look to me, and then come over and start taking the electrodes off. “How long was I gone?”

“A little over an hour,” the mare says. “Do you feel any different than you did before Dreamstriding?”

“No,” I shake my head. Well, I feel a lot sadder, but that’s because of what Luna had me do. Coming out of Dreamstriding doesn’t make me feel any different than going into it does. “Hey, can I go to Princess Luna?”

“Why?” she asks. “Did something happen in there?”

“She just said that I need to go see her when I got out of the dream world.”

She looks at the two other ponies, then looks back to me. “Sure, I suppose. We have a lot of data, so if you wish to end the observations for the time being, you may.”

“I’ll probably help you out later,” I say as I get out of bed once the last electrode is taken off my horn. I could stay and help them some more, but I want to talk to Luna about what she made me do. I don’t really think she would leave me for dead, but unlike everything else she’s ever had me do, she never told me what it was for.

When I come to Luna’s room, the bat pony moves his spear aside to let me open her door. Weird, usually I have to ask for permission to go in. Maybe she told him that she told me to come and to just let me in? Whatever the reason, I open the door and walk into her living room, where she’s laying on the couch and reading a book.

“Given the time it took me to come back and get here, I’d say that took you about…” She picks up a small alarm clock in her magic and looks at it. “An hour and a quarter, maybe a little less. Actually quite good for your first time.”

“My what?” I walk up in front of her, and she doesn’t even close her book, just looks up at me. “What was that?”

“It was an exercise.” She points to the other end of the couch. “Come, sit with me.”

“An exercise in what?”

“What do you think it was an exercise in?”

“You trapped me.”

“Yes, but why do you think I did so?”

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I had to cry my way out, and I don’t know what that could help me with.”

“You…” She pauses, and I can tell she’s trying really hard to hold back a smile. “You...cried your way out?”

“Yeah.” Great, I just embarrassed myself to one of the most powerful ponies in Equestria. “That wasn’t what I was supposed to do, was it?”

She takes her eyes off me, thinking for a moment. “Technically, it was what you were supposed to do. That was a ritual to disconnect your mind from your body, and the only way to reconnect them was to tap into your magic at a deep level. Many ponies have tapped into their emotional magic before to do so, but…” She stops trying to hold the smile back, now instead trying to hold back some laughter. “I do believe that is the first time somepony has used crying to get out of it. To say the least, you’re inventive.”

“Yeah, and I just cried my way out of a serious test you gave me,” I mumble.

“I did not put you in that situation expecting you to take one way out over another. I knew you would be able to eventually figure out how to regain control of your body, and I was curious to see how you would do so. The exercise is as much a test of a Dreamstrider’s ability to remain calm and think as it is a way for me to see how they react in that sort of situation. You crying your way out showed me a lot about you, and none of it nearly as negative as you seem to think it is.”

“Really?”

She nods. “Yes. Is it a safe assumption that you cried because you felt overwhelmed and were worried?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “I was frustrated that nothing was working, and was worried that you would have just left me there if I didn’t get out by myself.”

“First, I would not have left you there forever,” she says. “Second, the way you got out of that shows me that you hate not being in control.”

“I don’t care about that!” I defend. “I’m not one of those ponies who needs to be in control of everything.”

“No, you are not. You are perfectly happy following orders, but you do them because you want to, correct?”

Now that I think of it, she is kind of right. “Sort of. Why?”

“You were upset that you were not in control of yourself,” she says. “That showed me that you value self-efficacy highly. You wished to take action, and when your body was frozen and you were not able to, you got upset.”

I hadn’t thought of that, actually. I was too busy thinking about the fact that I escaped one of Luna’s deep meditation exercises by crying.

“Congratulations, however,” she smiles. “In the days of the old Dreamstriders, I used that ritual to initiate members into our order, to test them one last time before giving them full status as a Dreamstrider.”

“So I’m not a student of yours anymore?” I ask excitedly.

“Well...I will still have you under my wing and teach you about what I know regarding the dream world. However, we can consider this an official graduation, where you are now an official member of the Dreamstriders. I will be assigning you to patrol the dream world at night and study on your own, although since you are still in school for this year, I will ensure that this does not get in the way of your schoolwork.”

“What sort of study on my own do I have to do? What have other ponies done when you give that to them?”

“All sorts of things,” she shrugs. “Choosing things to study independently is something that you will be doing for the rest of your life, so if you have any ideas about what you wish to do, I would start exploring what you would need to do for that now. If you are unsure about your ambitions, most Dreamstriders decide to start by studying magic or dedicating themselves to becoming fluent in the Demon langage. Both are things that you will need to do eventually, but they can come little by little as you work on your own interests, or you can even devote some time every now and again to it but not make it your top priority.”

“Don’t really have anything that I really want to go and study right now,” I admit.

“If you have absolutely no idea on what to do, I can always still prepare lessons for you, although they will be much more self-guided and you may cease them at any time if you find something you wish to explore further on your own. And as always, you may come to me with any questions; while I may not know the answer, either myself or Celestia likely will have known somepony who did.”

“I think I’ll do that. I’ve only been Dreamstriding and learning magic for a year, so I don’t know enough about it to decide on something to dedicate my life to.”

“A fair point,” she nods slowly. “I will work on preparing some more lessons, and then give them to you. I shall allow you to work at your own pace, but I will check in on occasion to make sure you are not falling behind on your studies.”

“So...not really that much is changing from before.”

“I disagree, for now you have much greater control over what it is you choose to use your gift for. And unlike before, at any point you may choose to forgo my lessons and pursue something of your own interests. Instead of being your teacher, you may now consider me as your guide or your mentor, helping you find your path instead of being the one to lead you down one that I told you to take.”

“So if I find something I want to do, I can stop your lessons and go after it? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she repeats before pulling out another book from under her desk and opening it up. She doesn’t look like she wants to be disturbed, so I guess it’s time for me to head out.