The moon blinked, the stars followed, and the mare found herself lost in the dark among the soft dunes of the desert where she had been exploring. The pitch darkness shocked her into holding her breath. She had never gone out this far before. She lit her horn with a light spell, and started back by its light.
On the crest of a dune some thousand steps away her horn illuminated a large drop of darkness on the sand, as if the moon had wept a single tear before extinguishing. She approached, half sliding down the dune, and stood at the edge of it. She knelt and peered into the dark.
It was a pit, punctured deep into the desert’s heart.
•••
"Uh, did you dream?" Sweet Dream asked her friend who lived and slept in the out-of-the-way alley where the Canterlot guards couldn't find her.
"My dreams are like mice. They scurry when the sun rises," Crowsfeather said from her perch on a stack of crates. She took hungry bites out of Sweet Dream's spare bread roll. "You keep yours in a journal?"
"Yes! It is very helpful in remembering dreams. It's with me if you'd like to examine it." Sweet Dream levitated the journal out of her saddlebags. "This one carries my dreams from this year and last."
"Any of me?" Crowsfeather's grin was a slash of white in the shadows.
"Perhaps," Sweet Dream said with a smile of her own. She flipped to a recent page and levitated the journal in front of Crowsfeather so she could read.
"The moon?" Crowsfeather asked after a moment. "You dream of the moon?"
"Yes. At the far reaches of my dreams where I've explored there is a moon that is unlike ours. Look, —" Sweet Dream pointed a hoof at some sketches of the moon on the page. "— it is blank. There is no Mare!"
"The Mare in the Moon?" Crowsfeather squinted at the sketches. None of the moons Sweet Dream had sketched depicted the shadowy figure of a pony that marred the face of their moon.
Sweet Dream nodded.
Crowsfeather shrugged. "So what does it mean? Too much spice in your supper? Or" — Crowsfeather lowered her voice and hid behind her wing — "could it be? The Mare in the Moon is after you?"
"I would not expect her to be. Unlike you, I am a well-behaved filly," Sweet Dream nickered. She spirited her journal away back to her saddlebags. When Sweet Dream looked back at Crowsfeather, she caught her staring off into the sky. "Crowsfeather?"
"Look at this." The pegasus leaped into the air and pointed a hoof at somewhere in the sky. Sweet Dream moved a bit and saw a distant spire of Canterlot Castle where she pointed above the buildings. "There's this big balcony up there. At night the moon is so close you can almost touch it."
"How do you know? Are those towers not forbidden without escorts?"
"Very, though I stop there to rest all the time. The guards never catch me. For that, at least. I can fly us there. "
"In the night?"
"Nightmare Night." Crowsfeather's wild grin only grew wider. "It is only some days away. On what better night?"
•••
Sweet Dream chased her dream through the alley, galloping over litter and garbage that spilled like the nests of vermin. Around her she could sense the faint dreams of the other ponies: her father's dreams, her sister's, her neighbors'. If she went far enough she could sense all of Canterlot's dreams as the city slept, though she did her best not to pry.
There was one pony who escaped her, however — one whose dreams she would be interested in. One who slept at odd hours.
She turned a corner into what was a dead-end, and she froze at the sight of the thing on the alley floor. Through a knothole in the wooden fence a stream of sunlight burned a harsh, white circle into the dirt.
The dreams of the other ponies became quiet, and a terrible loneliness settled into Sweet Dream. The drone of those dreams had been a constant weight. Now it was as if she alone slept in all of Canterlot. She reached out for somepony, anypony who still could be dreaming.
She felt the sand against her cheeks before she opened her eyes. When she did, she again saw the soft dunes of the desert where she had been exploring, and the black pit in the sand. The moon, mareless, was out but the stars were not, and the desert shined in the glow of it.
Reality blurred in Sweet Dream's mind.
The words were scrawled into the sand beside the pit, as if by hoof.
HERE DREAMS THE MOTHER OF DARKNESS
•••
Nightmare Night. By the time the two mares set off for the tower, Sweet Dream latched onto Crowsfeather's neck, the moon was already well on its track across the Equestrian night sky. It appeared to come closer with every labored flap of Crowsfeather's wings. Sweet Dream held tight as Crowsfeather struggled to draw them to the castle spire.
Thankfully, the flight didn't last. Sweet Dream hopped off Crowsfeather's back as they landed on a spacious balcony — a viewing platform, perhaps — decorated in the castle's usual opulence.
The view over Canterlot was magnificent, true enough.
Sweet Dream set out a blanket and the food from her bags while Crowsfeather rested. Naturally, beneath the moon, the conversation soon shifted back to Sweet Dream's dreams.
"You?" Sweet Dream asked Crowsfeather after a while. "You allow me to speak to what interests me, dreams and the like, but you never discuss what you fancy."
"Hearing you tell your dreams is enough. To have passion — it must be nice. There is nothing that sings for me such as that."
"Your cutie mark?"
"A feather. Earned it when I fled home. Living on my own without roots is well and all — I could not live by any other way..." Crowsfeather sighed. "Though you make waking up seem so exciting. Your dreams inspire you. Me? There is little for me to wake up for."
Sweet Dream went and sat beside her friend. "You have me."
Crowsfeather let her head fall against Sweet Dream's neck. "I know it."
The two mares sat there in silence and watched the moon crawl across the sky.
"Sweet Dream," Crowsfeather spoke up. Sweet Dream could feel the other mare grow warmer against her neck.
"What is it?"
"...Is this odd?" Crowsfeather's voice was calm.
"No. 'Course not. You are my best friend, Crowsfeather."
Crowsfeather mumbled something and nuzzled against Sweet Dream's neck. Sweet Dream had never seen Crowsfeather like this before. It almost reminded her of herself.
Sweet Dream looked up at the moon. It had grown closer. Larger. She could make out even the creases of its craters. The shadow that was the Mare in the Moon watched her.
"It does seem as if you can touch it," Sweet Dream whispered.
Crowsfeather lifted her head. "Why not try it?" she whispered back. Sweet Dream could feel the other mare's hot breath against her ear.
A white eye, closing, and the stars snuffing out one by one. The scene from her dream flashed through her mind.
Sweet Dream followed Crowsfeather to the railing. The two of them stood together before the moon. Soon, she observed the exact moment. The perigee: when the moon was closest.
The moon appeared to slide to a halt as it clicked into place among the stars.
Crowsfeather whooped and thrust her hoof out to the moon. Sweet Dream raised her's halfway.
A gale blew over the mares, whipping their manes behind them as Crowsfeather whooped again. "Come, Sweet Dream!"
Sweet Dream shut her eyes and breathed in the night air. She smiled wide. She had waited for this moment. To do something daring, something free — with a friend at her side.
A white eye, closing, and another, green and slitted like a cat's, opening.
She laughed and threw her hoof at the moon, stretching at it as if she were trying to pick it like an apple out of the sky.
In an instant the world faded away like smoke, replaced by the soft dunes of her dream. Sweet Dream stood again at the edge of the desert pit, alone. The mareless moon shone and stared down at her as if it alone could judge her, and she could hear the beating of heavy wings somewhere in the musty darkness beneath. Sweet Dream knelt and shouted into the pit, a primal shout, and something shouted back.
Sweet Dream reared away.
A distant part of her still had her hoof raised. She could feel it brushing against a surface that was strange to her. Foreign. Carefully she traced her hoof through its valleys. She could feel the cragginess of the ridges and the craters, and the softness of the dust that was like ash.
"Sweet Dream!" a voice yelled. She felt somepony shake her.
Sweet Dream pulled her hoof away as if she had touched fire. The moon dominated the sky before her, enormous and all-encompassing — the white eye! Her knees buckled. Something pulled hard at her mane, pulling her away from the railing and down on the cold stone floor.
•••
The mother of darkness.
The words repeated themselves in Sweet Dream's mind as she huddled in bed. A tremendous fear gripped her. She knew she was out there, the sole white eye of her visage rolling languidly in search of her. Every street, every alley, every dream. For what is Equestria but another dream? One of a mad beast.
One which had smelled her.
The flame in her bedroom lamp flickered.
Sweet Dream looked upon the soft dunes of the nameless desert, ghosts lit by a mareless moon. The pit loomed in front of her. She stood at its edge, but there was no strength left in her, and nopony to pull her away this time. Her legs gave and she tumbled.
The darkness rushed past her in a timeless eternity until the entrance to the pit faded to a pinpoint of light against thousands clustered like stars in the sky. Even the stars fled from her, leaving her alone in the cold dark.
Only then could she sense it. Something immense, circling her, beating down with wings so large they must have been enough to blacken the sky. The Mare in the Moon laughed as she lunged for Sweet Dream, her voice thunderous in her ears. "Dare you wander in the desert where my shadow falls? Little mare, now you will live as I have lived for the past five hundred years!"