I sat before the enormous sink in my cavernous bathroom. Even with the door closed and the lights out, I could see perfectly. The amethyst crystal walls let in just enough sunlight to fill the room with an easy purple glow. I sat there, staring into the mirror, and thought about Applejack.
I’d never been as close to her as I was with Rarity or Starlight. Our temperaments, our backgrounds, were just too different. She disdained book-learning, while it was my life. Family was everything to her, but I barely ever saw mine.
Family. If there was one word to describe Applejack, that was it. She was a mare who would do everything for her family. It was the first thing I’d learned about her, all those years ago, on that day I came to Ponyville.
And now, this. Being free, she’d said. How long had she dreamed of it? Of being free of all the ties that bind our mortal clay together. Did she imagine her family tree, a lineage extending back generations into the clouded past, and cut her own branch loose?
I was crying, I realized. Quietly, unconsciously. The tears ran down my face, wetting the thin coat over my cheeks. I leaned over the huge sink, struggling to reach the faucets. Finally I just turned them on with my magic, and when enough water had filled the basin, I splashed it on my face with my hooves.
We could still fix this. We could still fix this. I repeated it, mantra like. But slowly the enormity of what had happened to Applejack’s family began to sank in. I breathed faster and faster. I tried to stop, to slow down, but my lungs were seized by their own energy. I started to gasp.
Everything was falling apart. Applejack, Fluttershy. Starlight, Trixie. The world was changing too fast and for once I knew whose fault it was. Discord was out there somewhere, laughing at all this chaos. He finally got one over on us. This was probably the greatest damn day of his immortal life. I let out a great, wracking sob, and leaned over the sink. Something like a panicked, frantic laugh bubbled out of my chest.
The sink was full. Water began to flow out onto the crystal and down the floor. I flailed for the faucet handles but they were still out of reach. Here I was, princess of the realm, one of the greatest magic users of the past thousand years, many-time savior of the world, and I couldn’t reach the damn faucet of my own Celestia-damned sink because it was too large. My hooves splashed in the basin and sent water everywhere.
Something snapped inside me. I screamed loud enough that the crystal walls rang, louder than any mortal pony could have screamed. A blind rage bubbled up out of my heart, flowing through my veins like fire and setting my mind aflame. I screamed again and brought my hooves down on the crystal sink. They smashed through the diamond-hard matter and kept going all the way to the floor. Great chunks of it shot away to crash against the walls. The mirror shattered. The floor beneath me cracked. I stomped on it again and again until nothing remained but broken shards and water spurting from the twisted plumbing like blood from a wound.
I stood among the wreckage, panting. I was soaked, dripping. Little cuts from flying bits of crystal turned my coat pink. I could feel them already closing up, healing in the space of seconds.
The door crashed open. Light spilled in, blinding me. I raised a wing to shield my eyes. Dimly, I could make out Starlight’s silhouette. Her horn blazed, and the look of fear on her face finally brought me back to my senses.
She stared at me for long seconds, taking in the scene. I huddled under my wings. Finally, she spoke.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I licked my lips. “Didn’t like the sink.”
“Uh huh.” She kicked away a chunk of crystal that had ended up by the door. “We can get a new one, I guess.”
“That’d be nice.”
Her horn glowed. I squeezed my eyes shut against the light. After a few seconds I heard a metal squeal as she twisted the pipes shut. “So, um… What do we do now?”
“We find Luna.”
* * *
Canterlot was… changed. The stars were out in the middle of the day. The summer heat that so tormented us in Ponyville was gone, replaced by the pleasing, crisp and slightly chilly mountain air. I thought it was a little much, but as long as the sun was still shining its light was enough for me.
Ponies walked about as if in a daze. Dreamers who dreamed of being awake. The castle foyer had been taken over by an enormous laurel tree whose boughs chimed with the hours. We ducked beneath the branches and wound our way through the labyrinthian passages toward Luna’s quarters. An usher found us lost in one particular spiral and led us the rest of the way. I tried to thank him, but he vanished into mist.
“At a certain point,” Starlight said as we watched the page colt’s remains dissipate in the wind, “the fear that dreams are leaking into the real world is replaced by the fear that we simply haven’t yet woken up.”
“I don’t feel asleep,” I said.
“Neither do I.” She sighed. “But I never do when I’m dreaming. Come on.” So saying, she knocked twice on Luna’s door and pushed it open without waiting for an invitation.
The fire was out in Luna’s hearth, and winter had moved in. Drifts of snow piled up against the far wall. I fluffed my wings for extra insulation against the cold. Beside me, Starlight shivered.
“Luna!” I called. The room appeared empty, but with Luna that meant nothing. “We need to talk!”
The floor shook gently beneath our hooves. It was a faint sensation, as though somepony had dropped a heavy object on another level and the vibrations travelled through the stone pillars and the tile floors and into our hooves and then our bones. Again, and a faint drifting of dust fell from the rafters, staining the piles of snow around us a dingy gray.
What did the alicorn of night dream of? The room shook again. The porcelain tea set laid out on the little table by Luna’s hearth rattled in sympathy.
The far wall seemed to deform. It stretched and blackened, and after a moment nothing remained but an inky bubble slowly expanding toward us. Indentations appeared, tightening around an emerging form, and with a suddenness that kicked my heart Luna was there.
She was huge. Almost too large for the room. The mantle of her wings brushed the ceiling, while the trailing edges of her feathers traced lacy patterns in the snowbound floor. Her horn, a meter-long obsidian spiral, tangled in the crystal chandelier and tore it away with a musical clatter that rang in our ears. She snorted in amusement, then leaned down to peer at us.
“So talk.” Her voice shook my chest.
Right. Talk. I was shivering, and not because of the cold. I swallowed the fear – this was Luna, my friend – and plunged forward.
“Discord’s curse is growing,” I said. “He’s changing us all. Soon there may not be anything left of us—”
“This is not Discord’s doing,” Luna interrupted. She tucked her tree-like legs beneath her barrel and lay before us; still her head towered over me. “I have been searching these past nights for his influence, and it is not to be found in our dreams. He is not responsible for the changes you see.”
“It’s gotten out of his control?”
Luna shrugged. The sound of her feathers rubbing against each other filled the room. “Or it was never in his control. He is not the kind of being that controls things.”
“Could he still stop this?” Starlight asked. “Put things back the way they were? If, uh, ponies wanted?”
“Possibly. He is very powerful, there can be no doubt about that. But if this was never his doing, then it may not be something he can fix. You will have to keep searching for him, I’m afraid.”
“We’re trying. Fluttershy might be able to help us, but she’s been… elusive. Ponies have seen her, but she’s never around her cottage. I think she’s in the Everfree looking for some animal.”
Luna nodded. “I cannot say where she spends her days, Twilight Sparkle, but I have seen her dreams. Have you tried visiting her cottage at night?”
“I… no.” My face flushed at such a simple failure. “You think she’ll be there?”
“Predicting the future is not one of my skills. But I think there’s a good chance. Only be careful that you do not disturb her dreams too greatly.”
“Aren’t you upset by all this?” Starlight said. “Dreams are your realm, and Discord is disturbing them.”
Luna was silent. She stared down at Starlight long enough that I grew uncomfortable, and Starlight herself began to fidget. Just when I started making plans for a quick escape, though, Luna spoke.
“No, I am not. Discord has no power over dreams. As I said, the changes you see in your friends are not his doing.”
I frowned. “Then… whose is it? Yours?”
Luna laughed. “No, Twilight Sparkle. I am merely a witness to this great spectacle. But, if you find out, let me know. Such greatness should be appreciated.”
With that she stood and crouched, her legs coiled beneath her like springs, and she jumped straight up. I yelped and ducked and covered my head with my forelegs, expecting the ceiling to come crashing down on us. But I felt nothing except the gentle touch of snow, and when I looked, Luna was gone.
“We came all the way to Canterlot for that?” Starlight said. She was shivering gently. Snow started to build up on her withers, and I brushed it away with my wings.
“It’s more than we knew before.” Not much, though. And not the easy answer I’d been hoping for. But now we had an idea for finding Fluttershy. And if we could find her, we could find Discord, and then… well, I wasn’t really sure what came next. Convincing him to undo all this, if he even could.
That was a problem for future Twilight, though. One step at a time. We trudged through the deepening snow out of Luna’s quarters and back into the hall. The guards didn’t seem too surprised by the sight of two soaked, shivering mares, trailing the breath of winter in their wake.
Maybe they were just used to it by now.
I wonder what Celestia is dreaming of...
The physical is an anchor that they no longer have.
Ok, I feel like Twilight is going to go mad. I don't want her to see Celestia. Based on her dreams, I'm not even sure what horrible thing would happen.
I was thinking yesterday that if AJ was willing to burn down her family's home to disconnect from the chains she felt bound by, what's to stop her from doing the same to her family? One would think her family is a much stronger symbol of her chains than the home they all lived in (until now).
This also keeps reminding me of A Once and Future Darkness, and on some level I have to wonder if this catastrophe is caused by Discord removing the barrier between dreams and reality. But I am probably wrong about that...
Anyway you sure enjoy writing dreams, and I certainly enjoy reading them.
Well. That raises further questions. And I'm convinced that Twilight's bathroom is getting remodeled by someone's dreams, though I doubt it's hers.
9562639
So, The Archetypist started as a companion piece to A Once and Future Darkness after some of the judges for AOaFD critiqued it as 'More like Discord than Luna.' So I figured, Fine, let's see what would happen if Discord messed with ponies' dreams.
There's a blog post about it here.
Ok, what in the everloving f#ck is going on!?
You know, there's at least a small chance he's enough pony to have screwed himself up with this dream change. Any dream series by him about not being chaos based might have rendered him no longer able to fix it.
Yeah, this Equestria is fucked. Luna is dreaming herself into a literal goddess, and for all we know Celestia is that tree out in the courtyard.
Hmn. Maybe Discord is the animal she is searching for?
9562699
Gonna wanna stick a pin in that thought. I won't say it's correct, but it's in the vicinity.
So Luna is essentially worthless. She's more fascinated than disturbed that the world is literally stuck in a dream like state, regardless if the country she supposedly runs is collapsing all around her. Nice to see your Luna is very much consistent with the show haha
I like that you suggest that things have perhaps gone beyond Discord's control but I still have this niggling feeling that this is still all some elaborate dream designed to teach Twilight a lesson. Call it a hunch or perhaps just a desire considering how bad things are at the moment
So, are we saying that its simply too chaotic for the Lord of Chaos to fix? That's amusing, and if true, only shows his incompetence.
9562673 Excellent, thank you for that! Not sure how I missed it, but things have been a bit turbulent for me lately.
There is a lingering doubt within Twilight, one that if left unchallenged will consume her. The best slave is one who does not know they are one. It could be considered that ponies are a slave to their archetypes.
What if, this is how it is supposed to be. Discord may have opened the door, but it was their choice to walk through it. Their willing desire to make that dream a reality. If those archetypes were forced, then isn't being cut from them a kind of freedom?
The real question then, is what is Twilight going to do with that freedom?
media.giphy.com/media/9mmWez1yhWNXO/giphy.gif
this story best not end being just twilight's dream.
Interesting that when Twilight flounders with her sink, she's trying to use her hooves, never for a moment considering using her magic to turn the faucets off. Almost like the whole thing is an excuse for her to vent her building anger on something.
9562974
This is one of the few cases where "And it was all a dream!" would be a fitting ending.
But I think that if this is a dream, it's not just Twilight's.
Reading that made my thoughts about this fic fall into place. It doesn't feel like you're trying to tell a story, you just want to talk about dreams. You go on about what they represent about people and what they mean while the plot is just sort of there. This doesn't feel like a story about Twilight struggling to figure out what's going on in a world falling apart because dreams are becoming real, no one even treats it like it matters at all most of the time. Twilight herself sat around pointlessly, for days apparently, it's just... dream stuff. I get nobody caring is part of said dream stuff but there's so much of it that it overshadows the story and makes it feel shallow. At least it does to me. Maybe there's something I'm missing or it's just not "clicking" but I don't know.
9562536
Amazing how much a little aside like that can change the way you read something, isn't it? The past tense is fun to play with like that; it's not just being relayed with past-tense verbs, it is literally the narrator's past.
Luna could well be technically correct; what if Discord merely connected pony dreams to each other or weakened the dream/reality barrier, but all the changes we've seen are the results of ponies' own dreams and desires? It's not Discord's fault if a pony walks through a door he opened.
As to what's happened to him... if Fluttershy dreamed he was more pony-like, and that in turn led to him dreaming more of being whatever Fluttershy wanted, the effects might heterodyne.
The interesting question is: even if a method is found to return everypony to their original states, should it be deployed? As has been noted several times, the changes don't appear to be hurting anypony, the Apple family's sudden homelessness and potential loss of one member aside. Even so, there does seem to be an element of bringing out a pony's true desire, even when that conflicts with the social mask they've built up over their life. A bit of a shock when it happens to one pony, but potentially problematically chaotic if it happens to many ponies in quick succession. We've already seen that it can result in property destruction and damage to interpony bonds. When things you've relied on for years or decades suddenly aren't reliable any longer, what happens to society?
Okay, so... this raises more questions than it answers. Was the weirdness in Canterlot Luna's doing or have the dreams gotten even more out of control there? Was the talk with Luna in a dream or in reality? Do either of those two questions mean anything at this point?
In any case, given the control Luna has over others' dreams, you have to wonder what impact she will have on the world around her now that dreams are leaking into reality... if the world of waking and the world of dreaming are now so much more tied into one another, and Luna can control dreams so thoroughly... hmm.
And what about Discord? Did he simply set off something he had no intention of controlling -- like kicking a pebble down a slope to see what shape the landslide will take? Or is something different in play here?
9563567
You're treading very closely there to the central question Twilight will ultimately have to confront. Hope you're enjoying so far!
9562721
But what lesson? You can't know what everyone is dreaming about even though you are thier friend?