Child of the Moon

by _Moonbeam

Prologue

I didn't realize it at the time, but for me, everything started quite a while before the talking horse showed up and asked me to…

Sorry, getting ahead of myself.

There was quite a bit leading up to that point, sure. However, the first one that I was there for was the dream, about two years before the alicorns found me.

---

A forgotten temple.

No, an empty city.

No, a mountaintop.

Landscapes shimmered in and out of my perception as I tried to settle on a location that seemed interesting enough to spend the night in. Back then, my lucid dreams were occasional, but not uncommon enough for me to give this time much surprise. I eventually settled on an infinitely expansive field, setting up the lucid dream.

Shutting my mind’s eye to concentrate on specific details of the dream, I could feel some of the changes I made fill in around me. A flat, grass-covered plain, under a clear, sunny sky without any other structures as far as the eye could see. I’d add some later, but for now I’d just sit down and contemplate for a bit. Once I was confident all the details were right, I mentally opened my eyes and took a step forward.

The laws of physics are different in dreams. For things like flying, that's great. When the ground suddenly decides to become noncorporeal, not so much. Without warning, I was in freefall through a floor that had been solid a second earlier. And if you think it's disorienting when you fall off the map in a game, I can assure you it has nothing on actually experiencing it. Stupid dream grass.

I'm not sure if I ever really stopped falling, or if the dreamscape above me vanished, leaving me without anything to orient myself. I'd fallen into a space-like area, seemingly without any discernible features.

This new dreamscape was unstable. Chunks of stars would move in and out of existence, and when I looked down at my hands, they were… fuzzy, like on a television with bad reception. That in itself was unusual. Normally, the only time a dream stopped feeling real was when I stopped concentrating on it.

In front of me, a mass of energy condensed. It wasn't magic or anything, but when there's another person by you, you can just kind of… sense it. That's what this was. At first, I couldn't see it at all, before a coherent figure started to become visible. I didn't recognize it at first, only something large, dark, and definitely not human. As it continued to focus through the unstable environment, I could see a dark purple-blue unicorn, with a pair of wings on its back and a mane that looked like the night sky, nearly identical to the one behind it. It only said one thing.

“It's you.”

It was a woman's voice, but distorted like everything else here, as if put through a voice synthesizer. Even through that, the voice carried a hint of loss, as if the unicorn had recently been crying, or perhaps was just about to start. It- she, I guess - took a deep breath, distorted by the mental static.

Before she could say anything else, the dream collapsed. The stars in the background went out as if an invisible wave passed through the sky. The presence in front of me suddenly winked out of existence, severing a tiny thread of silver light I hadn't noticed connecting us at her horn. As abruptly as it had started, I was alone in the abyss.

---

I woke up with a start, gasping for air. After I'd caught my breath, I rolled over in bed to check my alarm clock. 5:27. Too early to actually get out of bed, but too late to go back to sleep.

Deciding on a happy medium, I pulled my phone off the bedside table. I knew I had seen that unicorn before somewhere, but I couldn't remember where.

Luckily for my sleep-addled mind, the first search result for “purple-blue unicorn wings moon” was a wiki page for Princess Luna. A cartoon version, but clearly the same as the thing I had just seen. A My Little Pony character. Having had no experience with the show up to that point other than reputation, my first reaction was, “I really hope that's not my subconscious mind trying to tell me something about my sexuality.” (I later found out I was closer than I thought). Directly underneath the picture was a “first appearance” label. Lucky me, she's in the pilot. After thinking it over for a moment, I turned up my phone’s volume. Not like there was anything more productive I could be doing, I told myself. I'd watch the episode on Netflix, laugh off the odd coincidence, and forget about the whole thing.

I'm sure you can guess exactly how that went.

Comments

[Zen-Aku]

Nice chapter but expected a new 1 after "the homecoming"

[REDMAMBA]

7744207 Agreed.

[Shadow_Quill]

Yay new chapter!

[tsaukpaetra]

And out of the blue, a prologue!
Figure readers: the above comments are due to the prologue being released after the first three chapters.
Keep going! ;)

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Decent prologue, but I'd personally cut that one, last line.

Because I'm writing this on FiMfiction, you can guess exactly how that went.

The rest of this is fine, but that one line would have made me drop the story if the prologue had been here since start. Not only does it heavily hint at an tragic ending, but it also takes rings quite a lot of 'this is a self-insert' warning bells.

[IcefireInfinite]

“I really hope that's not my subconscious mind trying to tell me something about my sexuality.”

Ha! That's a great line.

[SoulOfAsh]

For a prologue added after writing several chapters - not bad. On the other hand - you'd likely want to at least slightly edit other chapters. For example, to take into account the fact that he already saw Luna in the prologue - you should probably slightly tone down his surprise at seeing her in chapter 1, or, alternatively, add a mention of the dream from the prologue.