Dreamstrider

by OkemosBrony

Chapter 8

Somepony starts knocking at the door as I’m hauling a bag across the room in my teeth. I try to yell to them to come in, but of course it comes as gibberish because of the strap in my mouth.

I pick up the pace, and the knocking grows a little louder. “Come in!” I pant as I drop the bag hard on the ground. Good thing nothing breakable was in there. I think. I hope.

Princess Luna opens the door and walks in, carrying a tea set like she often does. “Do you need help?”

“No,” I say, wiping some sweat off my face. “Got it pretty much done at this point.”

“I’ll just join you by your bed,” she says while levitating the tea set onto my nightstand. After stretching my sore back a little bit, I hop in bed.

“Tonight is a different blend than you are used to,” she informs me while shoveling some red dried leaves into the tea infuser. “I figured with ending school and getting ready to go back home and celebrate a holiday, you might be a little excited.”

I blush as I remember the kiss with Dusty, something she thankfully doesn’t know about. “Yeah, I kind of am excited.”

She drops the infuser in the mug, then pours some steaming water over it which starts turning red. “This will help you relax. It will dull your emotions and increase your calmness, which are of course important when attempting to Dreamstride.”

She waits a few minutes before bobbing the infuser a few times and passing it to me. By now, it’s a deep blood red and must be extremely sweet, because I can smell the sweetness already. I place my lips on it and drink a little, and it’s delicious! It tastes just like all kinds of fresh fruit, and makes me feel really warm inside.

When I finish most of it, I place the mug on the tray and close my eyes. The warmth from the tea is spreading through my body, relaxing my sore muscles and generally calming me.

“Good, now attempt to grab the pulling, just like we’ve tried,” she whispers calmly. I try and move my magic around it and can feel it graze it a few times, but never grasp it outright.

“Imagine something that is soft yet firm,” she instructs. “That is what you must recreate.”

I imagine hugging my dad, because his fur is always really soft and his body really warm, but it’s still a strong hug nonetheless. I try and capture the feeling from that and move it towards the pulling, and I can feel like I’m hitting it a little more than I usually do.

Eventually, I manage to get a grasp on it. I finally did it! After all those months, I was able to finally do it!

“Now that you have a grip, push!” she demands, a little louder this time. “It wants to push into your mind, and you must push back!”

When I start pushing it, it doesn’t want to budge. I grit my teeth and focus all my strength on it, and eventually it feels like it’s going. But it’s slow, and it feels like I’m trying to push something through a pit of tar. Every little movement I make seems to slow me down even more, like the tar is starting to collect on my body.

“I know it is hard, but keep pushing! It gives eventually!”

I grit my teeth even harder, and I can feel some of my muscles clench up. Which is weird, since this is all in my mind. Just a natural response, I guess. I keep pushing and pushing, and eventually, I feel like I trip, which jolts my eyes open.

Princess Luna’s nowhere to be found, though. “Hello?” I ask. “Princess Luna?”

There’s no response. I get off my bed and look around. Empty. That’s weird, she was just here. Did that take longer than I thought? Was I maybe trying for a few hours to do that?

“Well done,” Princess Luna says from behind me after a few seconds of me just looking off into space. When I turn around, that is definitely her.

“Where’d you go?” I ask. She simply laughs a little. “What, what did I say?”

“You’re in your own dream,” she smiles. “You’ve done it.”

“I did it?” I echo. She nods, and I can’t help but break out into a huge smile. I did it! I finally was able to Dreamstride! I can’t help it, but now I’m just jumping for joy! I don’t even know why, I just am!

“Calm yourself,” she laughs, putting a hoof up and coming closer to me. “While this is your dream yes, it is technically not the dream world.”

“Oh.” I stop jumping. “So I didn’t do it?”

“Not all the way.” She gestures to the ceiling. “What do you see?”

I look up like she wants me, and instead of seeing the ceiling, there’s just some weird gray mist. “What’s that?”

“That is the entrance to the dream world.” She puts out a hoof. “I will teach you to enter it yourself eventually, but this is something I am capable of assisting with. Do you wish to see a world other than the one you have always lived in?”

My smile comes back as I run up to her. “Yeah! Let’s do it!”

She wraps her foreleg around me and pulls me in tight. “Now, try and remember this feeling, as you will need to replicate it later.” With that, she crouches down and points her other hoof to the mist, then jumps up. While we’re flying towards it, my stomach and heart feels like they’re bouncing around inside my chest. I feel like I might be sick.

Before I really am sick, we land in the dark on our hooves. “Look around,” she instructs, taking her hoof off me.

I do as she says, and it looks like we’re just in a cave. A big cave with little puddles of gray mist all around us. “Where are we?”

“The dream world, of course,” she smiles. “Those puddles of mist are the dreams of other ponies. Specifically, the ones in Canterlot.” She gestures to the walls of the cave. “This cave corresponds to Canterlot in our world, and it has been named Canterlot Cave as such.” She brings her hoof down. “Every place in our world empties into an area of this world. Your home town empties into a forest, for example.” She waves her hoof towards herself. “Would you like to see what the dream world is really like?”

Again, I can’t help but smile. “Sure!” I walk up next to her, and she starts walking towards the light at the end of the cave.

When we emerge, it’s really weird. It looks really normal; it’s basically just a forest, with a small mountain behind us. But the trees and grass are all some weird color blue, and the sky looks like a night sky, with a big moon and tons of bright stars littered throughout. It’s all calm and blue, not bright like our world.

She walks into the grass and starts looking around, and I follow her. The grass kind of throws me off, because it’s cold. But like, a good kind of cold. It feels inviting and comforting, which is weird because that’s not usually what I think cold is. Like a much-needed breeze on a hot summer day, or a big drink of water after running for a long time.

“Perfect,” Princess Luna whispers to herself loud enough for me to hear. “Aurora, do you wish to meet a citizen of this world?”

I don’t even answer, that’s how excited I am! I quickly turn around, though what I see isn’t really what I expect. Princess Luna’s forehoof is outstretched, and a small white cat-like creature is perched on it. But it has no paws, and its face looks more like a pony’s than a cat’s.

“What is it?” I ask in wonder, not able to take my eyes off it.

She chuckles a little to herself. “This is a demon.”

Wait, a demon? I take a few steps back; I don’t want a demon near me!

She laughs again, a little louder this time. “This is why I held off on telling you what they were called until you were able to meet one.” She scratches its chin, and it raises it so she can continue scratching. “Yes, creatures native to this world are called demons, but our language has corrupted that word. The word ‘demon’ in Equestrian may mean some evil creature or spirit, but in truth, it just describes a race. It would be as if the word for ‘pony’ in a different language were to become synonymous with evil; the word implies we are all evil, but it is simply the name of us.”

I take a few steps back towards it, and it starts looking down at me. “Uh, hi,” I say to it.

Princess Luna shushes at it quietly and not harshly, more drawn out than you would when trying to get somepony to be quiet. Like when my aunts or uncles try to get my baby cousins to stop crying. It shushes back at her in the same way, and she turns her head to me. “It says it remembers you.”

I tilt my head a little and just look at it. “Why does it remember me?”

“This is a playful demon,” she says happily. “Small little creatures, not very powerful. Demons require energy, and they find it in different ways. These types of demons get it from fun, happy experiences. They roam the dream world, looking for dreamers, particularly foals. They make them dream about a fun experience in their life, and they get energy from that.”

“So that thing ate one of my happy dreams?”

She shakes her head. “No, while some demons do leech or outright devour the dreams of the dreamers, others, such as this one, are simply energized by the experience. They get energy, and the foal gets a happy dream.”

“What did I dream about with it?”

She shushes at it, and it shushes back at her. “It says you were at the lake with your family, and that it was many years ago. Your sisters helped you make a sand castle after you kept building it too close to the shore and having it knocked over by the waves, and you three convinced your parents to buy you all ice cream after.”

I don’t remember this at all, but I know we go to the lake a lot in the summer, so that sounds like it could be true. “How do you speak with it?”

“In the demon language, of course.” She nods a little. “Yes, it is something you will need to learn, and yes, it is difficult. Because magic here flows much more freely than in our world, it incorporates much of that magic into its speech. To speak in the demon language, you need to draw from your emotions and your thoughts, because those are louder than sounds in this world.” She says something else to the demon, and it hops off her foreleg and runs into the cave.

“What did you tell it now?”

“Simply that we do not need it anymore, and to go find another foal to give a happy dream.”

“Do all demons act like that one? Giving us happy dreams and all that?”

She thinks it over for a moment. “There is no uniform way demons act. Like ponies, some of them act similarly, though some act much differently. They are generally classified fairly well, with categories such as playful demons or love demons. Each one seeks different types of magic, and they all act differently to find and use it.”

“Are all demons good?”

She shakes her head. “Again, like ponies, there are good demons and bad demons. Some, like the playful demons, are considered benevolent, because they help us by giving us happiness. Creative demons are considered neutral for example, because they simply go from dream to dream and spread ideas and experiences they have seen in other dreams while experiencing new ones all the same. Although they help us by secretly exposing us to views we’ve never experienced, they do not care that they do so; it is simply a byproduct of them gaining our own views. And then there are the malevolent demons; blood demons, who seek out dreamers who feel no remorse or regret over the lives they’ve ended or go kill their fellow demons for sport, or silvertongue demons, who live only to lie and deceive their fellow demons.”

I’m not really sure what to say. That’s a lot, and it’s really hard to wrap my head around the fact that there’s a whole race of creatures most ponies probably don’t even know exist. “Wow,” I say softly. I guess I can’t put into words how strange this all is.

“I suppose we have a few moments,” Princess Luna says to herself while looking at the moon. “Aurora, come over here and sit down, would you?”

I do as she says, sitting across from her. “Princess Luna?”

“Please, just call me Luna,” she instructs.

“Okay Luna,” I say, trying it out. It’s odd not to address a Princess as such. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course! You may ask me anything!”

“You do more than protect us in our dreams, right? Because that’s all I thought Dreamstriding was, but now we’re sitting in a different world and we just talked to a demon.”

She nods a little. “Yes, though clearing away the demons which cause nightmares to torture my subjects is the only responsibility they can see. I also study this world, trying to better understand it.”

“What does studying this world get us? No offense.”

“I’m not really sure what studying this world gets us,” she admits. “It is a vast world, one that is saturated with magic.” She runs her hoof through some of the grass. “Unlike in our world, where magic complements the physical elements that make up the world, the dream world is mostly magic, complemented by physical elements. There is so much magic in this world, much more than in our world. Since our world’s brightest minds will never be able to enter here and study it for themselves, I must if we have any hope of learning something from this world.”

“How could we learn things? Would it even work on our world?”

“You mentioned you were studying divination in your class. Were you aware that divination is a field of study started by a Dreamstrider?”

“No,” I shake my head.

She nods. “Yes, a Battlemage known as Sleepy Hollow was the first to formalize the study of the magic that surrounds us. He was able to do because of the freely-flowing magic here, where he first started measuring and studying. He then took his findings into the real world and shared them, where they helped to create the backbone of modern magic.”

“Have you ever found anything?” I ask excitedly.

“A few things,” she confirms. “Mostly about the ponies of Equestria. You’ll find yourself feeling different things in different dreams; those things you feel can give you insight into what a pony is like and what they will become.”

“Is that how you knew I was a Dreamstrider?”

“Somewhat. I felt it when you were born; you likely have felt it before when one is born but did not know what it was. There is also a certain magic surrounding your dreams, one that makes you feel familiar even when I did not know you. I will have to bring you to some different dreams and have you feel what I am talking about and what each thing you feel means.” She looks up to the moon, then back at me. “Alas, we have unfortunately used up our time for tonight. I need to let you get a good night’s sleep, after all.”

“Thanks for doing all this for me, Luna,” I tell her sincerely.

“It is no problem,” she beams back. “It feels good to discuss the dream world and magic with another Dreamstrider again. It has been far too long since I was able.”

We walk back in silence to the cave, which now has more puddles of gray mist than before. “How do I tell which one’s mine?” I ask her, worried I might get lost and not be able to wake up.

“It will feel...right,” she says, clearly trying to look for the right words.

With only that to go on, I start walking around. Most of these clearly aren’t mine, but one of them I pass pulls on my mind a little, so I walk towards it.

“Does this one feel right?” Luna asks, walking up to me.

I think about what I’m feeling for a moment. “Kinda.”

“That is the Dreamstrider magic you feel,” she explains. “That is my dream.”

Oops. As much as I’d like to see what her dream is like, I leave it and start walking through the dreams again. I get to one that pulls me again, but when I get closer, it feels much stronger than the other one. “This one, right?” I ask.

She nods, then puts a hoof around my body. “Ready?”

“Yeah, ready.”

She places her other hoof in the mist, which just disappears. She then dips her head down and goes in with me, and we’re soon surrounded by a cloud of gray mist. The mist then clears, and we’re floating gently back down the ground of the fake bedroom that is my dream.

“Can I ask one more question?” I make sure to ask before she pushes me back into the real world or something.

“Ask away,” she nods.

“Are all our dreams like, just mirrors of what we see around us? Because this is my room, and you said when I first met you that you were sleeping in the Dreamstrider office.”

“Not quite. Our mind just makes a copy of what’s around us when a Dreamstrider begins to Dreamstride; we are essentially forcing our mind to dream, so it just creates what it sees currently. Should you dream normally, you would see something else, something it creates on its own and may not have a parallel in the real world.”

“Okay.” I look around, seeing if there’s anything that says how to get out of here. “How do we go back to the real world?”

“Close your eyes,” she says calmly.

I do as she says. “Now what?”

“You had to push in your mind to get here. Now release the tension in your mind between the dream world and the awakened world.”

I have no idea why, but I know exactly what she means. Where the pulling in my mind usually is, there’s just some mass of tension. I grasp it way more easily than I can grasp the pulling, and I push it. This time goes much easier, unlike trying to create the dream. The feeling of my bed rapidly returns to me.

I open my eyes to see Luna resting her head on my bed, eyes closed. She must still be coming back, so I wait. Only a few seconds later, she opens her eyes and looks at me.

“That was really cool,” I smile.

“The first time always is,” she smiles back. “Now that you are able to enter your dream, the training when you get back starts being fun.”

“Can’t wait,” I say, barely containing my excitement.

She stands up and takes the tea set on my nightstand with her, but leaves the mug. “Drink the rest of the tea; it will help you relax. And you have a big day tomorrow, so you will want to make sure you are well-rested.”

I grasp the mug in my hooves and smile slightly as she walks out of the room. I’d say my life is really going well right about now.