"I can't believe I slept through all that." Cloudy mumbled. She looked sour sitting there in the middle of the room, with her hooves crossed and a pout on her face. "Just my luck. I could've slept on that bed if I had waited a few more minutes."
"Cloudy, we're kind of going through something at the moment." Violet mumbled to her sister. She let her eyes travel to Luna, who was sitting on a large pillow next to her bed. Violet grew flabbergasted at the sight, a princess was laying on nothing more than a pillow, yet she looked more like a god made of stars waiting to be pampered by followers. "You can sleep on the bed later."
"But I won't be tired then." Cloudy whined. Midnight Gust, who stood stiffly near the doorway, snickered and let out a tiny snort. Cloudy flashed her a tiny smile, happy she could make one of the guards break and react.
"Can we please just... get on with it?" Violet said to Luna in a way that showed restraint. Her jaw was aching from how tight her teeth were clenched, and her legs were starting to shake a little at the knees. Luna nodded. "Alright." Violet breathed. "Fabulous."
"It's just a simple sleeping spell, Miss Lace." Luna consoled as Violet crawled into the bed. "It won't hurt you."
"Yeah, well..." Violet struggled getting under the covers, her hooves were shaking way too much. The silk kept slipping from her grasp. It's not like this is going to be fun either...
Once Violet was nicely situated, Luna's horn started to glow. "Are you ready?" She asked.
"Not really..." Violet replied honestly. "Princess, if I must be entirely truthful... I'm scared."
Luna nodded sympathetically. "Nightmares can be a powerful thing, Miss Lace. You have every right to be scared. But! They will never go away until you face them."
"But what if they can't be faced?" Violet asked. "What if I... what if I don't have the strength to do so." Violet remembered how scared she had been every morning. How sad, how terrified, and how frustrated with how they never ended. Each morning, never able to remember, always feeling like she forgot something she wasn't supposed to.
"Violet Lace." Luna looked her dead in the eye. "Inside you, we see a strength that can only ever be matched by one pony. A pony who will forever be engraved in our heart. Please." Her brows furrowed in a subtle look of pleading. "We promise you'll be alright."
And with that, Violet submitted. She let her head rest on her pillow, replaying Luna's words over and over. Did she really think that? Or was she just saying that to get her to do what she was told? No matter the reason, a wonderful warmth spread throughout her chest at the compliment. She quickly buried her face in her pillow to prevent her blushing from being seen. Her hot face was encased in cool silk, and Luna took that as a sign to perform the spell.
Her eyes grew heavy. The blanket of sleep encased her like her head was slipping beneath black water.
...
Violet, for a few brief seconds, felt herself falling. It was short lived. As soon as her eyes opened, her hooves met hard ground and the prickling of shock caused her body to shake and twitch. The echo radiated from her, and didn't seem to ever fade.
"What the..." Violet whispered. Whiteness. White was the only thing she could see. It was liked she was plucked from life and placed in some sort of void.
"Miss Lace!" Violet's head snapped around. Luna was flying towards her, her large wings tossing up a wind that caused Violet's long hair to feather and caress her face. "Are you alright?"
"Y-yes!" Violet called up to her. It wasn't until Luna's hoofs hit the hard ground did she let herself speak again. "You're here... how did you get here?"
Luna smiled a small smile. "We have many secrets, Miss Lace. Dream walking is something we have been doing for a very long time." Luna looked around, puzzled. "Is... this all there is?"
"I think so..." Violet looked around. "I'm... pretty sure there's meant to be more."
"Hm..." Luna spun around in a circle, making sure she didn't miss anything. "Strange. We've never seen anything like this."
"What do we do?" Violet found herself looking down. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled a little in fear as she realized that she probably wasn't even standing on anything. There was no reflection, there were no shadows or lines. No way to tell the ground from the sky, if they even existed.
Luna's brow furrowed, thinking hard about her next move. "Dreams... are tricky. Things are not always what they appear." She slowly started walking in no particular direction. "But... perhaps this isn't meant to appear as anything."
"What do you mean?" Violet galloped, desperate to catch up to the princess; she didn't want to be alone in this strange void.
"We mean..." Luna kept walking, but her horn started to glow a bright blue. "Maybe this isn't a dream at all. It's possible you could've had a dreamless sleep tonight."
"But how can we be here if there's no dream?" Violet asked.
"That's what we're trying to figure out." Her horn glowed brighter. "Stay close to us, we're going to try to do something."
Violet felt a loud pop in her joints and felt a strange pulling in her ears. She closed her eyes out of fear. This was supposed to be a nightmare, after all. However, when she opened them, she found that she and Luna were just simply floating. It was more than odd, due to the fact that the only thing indicating such was the fact that Violet couldn't feel the ground below her hooves and her mane swept back behind her head. "What's are we doing?"
"We're just having a look around." Luna shouted back at her, her voice drifting off into an unexplainable wind. "We wouldn't be able to be here without a dream to be in, Miss Lace. Though you may not experience it, a dream still needs to be here in order for our dream walking magic to work."
Both she and Luna searched and searched for what felt like hours. Violet wasn't sure about how much time had actually passed, dreams had always been deemed finicky in that sort of area, but she was sure that she was meant to wake up soon. Luna seemed so desperate to find something, it almost made Violet uncomfortable. What were to happen that would be so important that the princess herself would be so eager to fix the problem? So what if Violet continued to have nightmares? The princess and her didn't share a room. Other than a rude awakening, something Violet was quite used to at this point, what else could harmless nightmares do? She was just going to forget them anyway.
"Any luck?" Luna shouted back for what appeared to be the millionth time.
"N-" Violet stopped. She had given up hope on finding anything, deeming the endless void as a nightmare on its own. But, lo and behold, there was something. "There!" She pointed. Luna had to squint to see it, but it was there! A single red dot, like a drop of blood, stood stark against the white canvas that was Violet's dreamscape. They shot downward. The drop grew and took shape. With a swallow of an unknown fear, Violet realized that it was a pony.
With a coat the color of wet ashes and soot, and mane and tail a color that made Violet stomach churn because it had a startling resemblance to day old blood. She looked unkempt and frazzled, her eyes crazed and staring directly ahead not seeing anything. A ruby shard seemed to grow directly out of her chest, but as they got closer it became startlingly clear that it was just simply a necklace. She also had a red cutie mark, but it was hard to tell exactly what it was due to the fact that her rear was covered in a ragged cloak that was hanging on by threads.
"Do you know this pony?" Luna asked. Even she looked disturbed by the pony's appearance.
"I... I don't know." Violet answered. She didn't want to get too close, afraid that whatever trance the pony was in would break. However, once she actually looked closer, she saw things clearer. There was something blocking the pony from moving, from advancing forward into Violet's dream. A wall of sorts, distorting Violet's view and making the pony look muted and dull. The pony probably couldn't even see Violet from where she stood.
Stepping closer to the invisible barrier,she stood mere breath widths away from her face. She looked into the pony's crazed eyes, trying to spark some memory, trying to remember who this pony was. She was important, that was for sure. Violet was positive about that with how the mare in front of her shook her to her core in a way that Violet couldn't explain. But it seemed like when she got anywhere close to figure out who she was, Violet would hit a wall in her mind that would forbid her from advancing.
She was about to look away, disturbed by the mare and wanting at last to wake up. But as she turned her head, she saw something. The way the pony's nose was turned up, or perhaps how the ears were shaped. It was like a putting in the missing gear into a machine. Suddenly, everything started moving and working and Violet's brain started to put the pieces together. She felt her entire body go cold.
"Shimmering... Ruby." Violet whispered. Her entire body shaking, she backed away. The pony- no! Shimmering, now a full grown mare with the most twisted and darkness filled eyes she had ever seen, was staring directly at her. She continued to back up until she accidentally ran into Luna, who was staring at Shimmering with a mixture of fear and interest.
"You know this mare?" She asked again.
"I-I..." But Violet couldn't say anything. More pieces started to be found between the crevasses of her brain. "Scarlet." She heard herself whisper. "Scarlet Ruby... S-shimmering ruby." Tears of horror rolled down her cheeks as all of the horrid nightmares she had faced came back to her. "Sh-she..."
It was then that Shimmering let out a blood-curdling scream. Beastly in every way possible, Violet's ears felt as though they were going to start bleeding. Even Luna shrunk down, covering her head with her hooves.
"You!" Shimmering screeched. "You putrid slut!" Her cracked and worn hooves pounded against the barrier that was preventing her from entering. She kept screaming curses and anything vile at Violet, as the purple and silver pony cowered on the other side. She flung her body at the barrier, she bit at with her teeth, and bucked against it with her back hooves. The barrier creaked and echoed her hits, but refused to move.
Violet couldn't stop shaking. It was like her body turned into some sort of meat heap, and her own consciousness was floating outside watching Shimmering/Scarlet Ruby pounding her body against an invisible wall. She wanted nothing more than for it to stop. For it to all end, and for her to wake up and never see her again. She had disappeared, transferred to some city nopony could remember, years ago. What in the world was she doing here, in her dreams, looking like that?!
She kept hitting the wall. Her screams of rage and madness turning for brief seconds into screams of pain. Luna tried to fire magic at her, but as soon as it hit the barrier, it dissipated as though it was a gentle breeze. There was nothing they could do. Not even the princess herself, a pony who had suffered through her own nightmares, and had magic specially created to fight them could do anything. Violet felt the last shreds of hope she had for peace float away like shreds of ribbon in a gust of stormy wind. She was stuck like this. Forever.
She buried her head in her hooves. She had so many nightmares that seemed to last an eternity, and this clearly looked to be one of them. What could they do? Luna was still firing what was probably the most powerful magic she could at the wall, but it was unbreakable and impenetrable. Shimmering, though unable to get through the wall herself, was protected and therefore couldn't be stopped.
"Miss Lace, we are sorry, but there is nothing we can do." Luna looked at her, emotion clear as the stars on a cloudless night on her face. She was sorry, frustrated, and probably most terrifying of all: frightened. "We don't know how to get to her." Violet had to swallow back tears. She wanted nothing more than to be held, to be away from this horrible place, and for everything to just go away!
The ground started to shake. Even Shimmering stopped screaming, leaving the guttural rumble of the twitching world the only thing in Violet's ears. "What's happening?" Violet asked, sorrow filling every possible inch in her voice. She couldn't handle anything else. "Is the dream ending?" She asked.
Violet dove deeper into sorrow when Luna looked at her. "No. We're afraid not." They both looked at Shimmering, who was frantically running along the wall's edge, as though testing it for weak spots. She was digging in places, sticking her muzzle in others. Violet desperately wished that the rumbling wasn't the wall crumbling down.
It wasn't.
Plants started to sprout. Bright green vines grew out of the ground at the walls edge. Shimmering, after seeing it reared back on her hooves and jumped as though the plants had burned her. Violet heard her utter a screech and watched as she ran away from the wall. The plants continued to grow, spreading over the white ground, giving the entire world dimension. As they crept closer she and Luna backed away. The plants had nasty looking thorns and with their size, they would've been quite dangerous. Luna prepared her magic, wanting to strike at the vines, but Violet quickly stopped her.
"Wait!" She held Luna back. "Look, they're avoiding us." She was right. The plants in her draw circled them but stayed more than a few feet away. They continued to grow, further and further until neither one of them could see the end of them, and the entire ground was covered in a beautiful green that screamed thriving life and energy. They quickly turned their heads back to Shimmering, only to find that the vines had started climbing up the wall. They saw Shimmering cower, shrinking down to the smallest ball she could be. Her cruel face puckered, and giant blood red ruby shards grew out of the ground and towards the wall. It didn't break through and ricocheted against the surface and back at her.
"I've had my own share of nightmares too, Violet Lace." Violet heard a voice echo inside her head. It was severe and twisted, tinged with evil and darkness. It caused Violet's stomach to roll. "I'm going to make sure they never come true!" The vines continued to grow, blocking their view of Shimmering completely. Tiny flowers budded out from the stems like little pods. "Your life is my nightmare, and I'm going to make sure you regret ever letting it exist!"
The flowers blossomed. Big, beautiful and full roses the size of Violet's head expanded out of the greenery like neither Luna or Violet had ever seen in dreams or reality. They were all different shades of red; some ranging from the palest of pink to the darkest of scarlet. Luna held her back, unsure that they were truly safe, but Violet saw that the strange webbing that marked the roses wasn't thread or black spider silk, but the veins of the flower themselves were black and gray. Looking deep into one of the roses, Violet jumped when all of them suddenly exploded and the vines suddenly receded. After seconds the only left was a large cloud and heaps of petals laying on the ground.
"The dream is ending." Luna said quietly. As soon as the words were spoken Violet felt the world go fuzzy. She blinked, and with a small twinge of fear, she saw that Luna was gone.
The dream was fading away. She felt the pressure of her pillow on her face, and the slight weight of her silk blanket on her body. Everything was disappearing, slipping into the strange blue and black color of her closed eyelids. She was almost sad to see such a pretty sight go, but most of her was glad to finally be waking up. With a last glance at the pretty petals that floated and danced in the air, she felt the dream finally reach its end.
But she could've sworn she saw something in the soft red mass. A shape of a pony, a stallion looking back at her with a happy look on his face. A smile that made her heart act strange. It was so distant, so abstract that Violet could've easily said to herself that she didn't see anything. But the familiar curl of his lips, into that stupid smirk that caused an instinctual twinge of irritation and a flutter of her heart caused her to admit that she saw something. But who was it? What was it?
She woke up before she could figure it out.
...
"Violet!" Violet felt the harshness of hooves trying to shake her awake. "Violet!"
She mumbled and curled into an even tighter ball than what she was before. Who was that stallion? Grasping desperately at threads she weren't even sure were there, she tried to piece together his face again.
"Violet! Wake up!" Cloudy hit her on her flank. Hard. Violet jumped at the sudden pain and her eyes sprang open, letting in light that caused her eyes to prickle with tears.
"Wha-What's goin' on..." Violet shouted, her speech slurred by sleep. "What happened? Did Luna do the thing?"
"The thing?" Cloudy quoted. "Yes, Vi. Luna did the thing." She motioned towards the princess, who looked like she had just woken up herself. Both Luna and Violet's eyes met, and for the briefest of seconds, Violet saw confusion. Did Luna not know what happened?
"What... what happened?" Violet asked. "Is it over? Are my nightmares over?"
"We... are pretty sure that yes, Miss Lace," Something about Luna's eyes told Violet that there was more than what she was saying. "Your nightmares are over for the time being."
"That's great!" Cloudy beamed, her smile stretching from ear to ear. "That's exactly what we wanted, right?"
"Hm." Luna nodded. "We suppose it doesn't matter how it ended, just so long as there was an ending."
"What do you mean?" Violet was rubbing the last few traces of sleep from her eyes.
"Violet Lace..." Luna started. Her gazed drifted elsewhere, trying to find out exactly what to say. "You see, nightmares can become very powerful in not dealt with properly." She looked Violet in the eye and searched for something that nopony else could see. She found nothing, she looked away, still lost. "They can manifest themselves into something serious. And we could tell, your nightmares were something that we had only dealt with a couple of times." She straightened a loose piece of mane that must have gone astray when she slept. "Your... nightmares... had become something that bordered on life-threatening. Becoming something along the lines of a physical mass."
"Nightmares can do that?" Cloudy asked, her eyes huge.
"Not without magical influence." Luna comforted, seeing the fear in everyponies eyes. "But, one spark from a pony with enough magic, and it would have."
"That's..." Violet breathed.
"Terrifying." Midnight finished. She stood, quiet and nearly invisible in the shadow of Violet's bed.
"Yes, but it is over now." Luna consoled. However, instead of turning to leave the room, she looked at Violet with confused and concerned eyes. "Miss Lace," She started. "We are confused with how the strange mare was not able to get into your dream. In fact... we are confused about many things."
"What is there to be confused about?" Violet asked.
"Nearly everything about your dream was not natural." Luna stated bluntly. "Normally, when a pony has a dream-less sleep, the dream is just small. Wisps of visions and color, something that wouldn't be remembered the next morning. But yours... there was nothing there. No nightmare, no dream, nothing. It was like nothing we had ever seen."
"What are you saying?" Cloudy asked, her eyes about to pop out of her head.
"We are saying that there has clearly been magical influence on Violet while she's sleeping." Luna explained. "That wall..." She focused her eyes on Violet again. "Not even my magic could break through it, so it must not have been capable of being affected. Same thing with those roses, and those vines."
"How can you tell?" Violet asked, now getting scared. "Maybe it was just... part of it all."
Luna shook her head. "I've traveled through many dreams, Violet Lace. Those flowers, as well as that wall, was not a part of any dream. It was real. And very magically powerful."
"But we never looked for magic cures for Violet's nightmares." Cloudy said. "We tried many things, but not that."
"We are not sure what could've caused it. Whatever it was wanted to keep that strange mare out. And that mare must have had something to do with your nightmares. It wouldn't surprise me if she was the cause of them with what she yelled at you."
Violet swallowed. "That can't be true. Those nightmares have been going on for years, there's no way she could be the cause in reality. She would have been an awkward filly all those years ago!"
"Who are you talking about?" Midnight asked. "You're acting like her nightmare actually exists in real life."
"She does." Violet answered. "She was a filly we knew back when we were younger." Violet swallowed again, forcing the name to come to her lips like bile. "Shimmering Ruby."
"What?" Cloudy shouted. "Are you insane? We haven't seen Shimmering in years! Violet, you must have confused her with something else." She looked at Luna. "Clearly she must have. Right?"
Luna didn't look too sure. "We... do not know. Like we said, whatever was going on had to have some sort of outside influence. If this "Shimmering Ruby" is our likely suspect, then we should investigate post-haste."
"Oh, come on!" Cloudy looked completely unconvinced. "Shimmering was a lot of things, Vi. But not even she could enter your dreams!"
"She had an ugly looking crystal around her neck, what do you think that means?" Violet asked Luna. Both her and Luna had a sneaking suspicion. Luna just simply looked away, admitting what Violet was thinking without saying a word. "It's more than possible she could've gotten some magic help."
"You can't be serious." Cloudy would've laughed in the situation didn't have such a serious air surrounding it. "Violet, we haven't seen Shimmering since we were fillies. She might not even look the same."
Oh, trust me. She doesn't! Violet thought. "Cloudy, look at me. Tell me I'm lying." Cloudy looked deep into her sister's eyes, looking slightly smug and eager to end the conversation. "Shimmering Ruby was in my dream, and both Luna and I think she's causing my nightmares."
Cloudy's smug look faded. "You... you can't be... Violet, that's not physically possible."
"Time travel is a thing, apparently." Midnight suddenly piped up. Everypony went silent.
"But what about this wall everypony keeps bringing up?" Cloudy argued. "If she's the one causing all the nightmares, why would she want to keep herself outI?"
"The wall looked to be something entirely different." Luna answered. "A magical cure to a magical problem. The real question in what caused it?" She looked towards Violet again, trying to find the answer in her eyes. "Like we said, it was like nothing we had ever seen before..."
"Are you sure?" Violet asked. A new memory bubbled up to the surface of her mind. "Luna... I think you might've helped me in my dreams before."
Luna's eyes showed a small spark of surprise. "We... we are more than positive that we would not be capable of helping you at the time. Perhaps our essence, if there even was one, could've guided you... but it certainly wasn't us."
"Essence...?"Midnight asked, suddenly confused. "What's an essence?" Her mouth was quickly closed firmly shut. But before an apology could be uttered for breaking many rules of protocol, the princess began explaining.
"An essence is a magical residue of sorts." She stated. "After a magical unicorn goes through a transformation of large proportions, such as turning themselves into a mouse or changing their appearance all over their body, there are cases where they would see their old selves for the smallest of seconds. Their old reflection in a mirror out of the corner of their eye, or their shadow before the sun or moon is covered by the clouds. Sometimes they or their comrades could see their old face in the dirt or on an old rock, only for it to never be seen again."
"But how can that pull me out of a dream?" Violet asked.
"It can't, Miss Lace." Luna stated bluntly. "The amount of magic and willpower alone for an essence to last longer than a few seconds is nearly impossible for any pony to create." Luna's eyes suddenly darkened. "The only thing that would even stand a chance is love, and we can assure you that we had very little in our heart during our transformation. Surely not enough to help you like how you describe or how we saw. And none the less, we still do not have the ability to make a shield such as that one, and those flowers were beyond our comprehension as well."
"So... we're at a complete loss?" Cloudy asked, her eyes getting teary.
Luna sighed. "No. Not necessarily. Though we have many questions, whatever was plaguing Miss Lace is now gone. There are no nightmares, we can be sure of that. That is what's important. Miss Lace," She looked her dead in the eye, and Violet could've sworn to the stars themselves that she saw the corner of Luna's eyes crinkle with a small smile. "You, for the time being, are safe." And with a small look at the clock, Luna deemed herself busy and showed herself out. The door closed behind her with an audible thud.
"Well..." Midnight said once everything grew quiet. "That was exhausting." She chuckled and let her sincere eyes rest on Violet. "Violet, after everything, I'm more than certain that the one thing you need right now is rest- real rest." She flew above the bed and pulled close the black curtain that was meant to block out the sun. "Me and Cloudy will keep ourselves busy for the rest of the night. Sleep as much as you need."
Violet was about to object, but the look on Cloudy's face told her that there was no escaping her bed's silky clutches. "She's right. If what Luna said was right, then you shouldn't have any nightmares anymore. You need this sleep more than you need to breathe right now."
And with that, the curtain closed and Violet fell into a cool darkness. Silently, she rested her head on her pillow, closed her eyes, and drifted into nothingess. And for the first time in years, Violet slept peacefully.