//------------------------------//
// Chapter 14: Never Said Goodbye 
// Story: Trus and Luna 
// by Trus 
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Trus and Luna
Chapter Fourteen
Never Said Goodbye

After a long, sad, self harassment, Trus was snapped out of his self inflicted mental torture by something prodding him in the back. 
With a little jump and a sharp intake of breath he threw his head up and checked behind him. There, barely visible against the dark background, hovered a tiny, solid black cloud of smoke that was so dark it looked like a hole in existence. 
It just hovered there beside him for a second…and then it lunged at him and got him in his throat! 
The instant it hit him His adrenalin kicked in. He reacted, slapping it with a wing while pushing himself into a position that he could jump and spin over from. He did so and then blasted himself away into the air while shoving the little cloud down with the air pushed down from his wings. It slipped off and he looked down at it a little perplexed. Okay stuff like that normally doesn’t work unless I’m in dragon form…
It started to come up towards him slowly so he moved up. He checked to his left, then to his right and then up. Everywhere he looked he could see tiny, black, cloud holes in existence covering every angle he could see, all of them growing larger as they seemed to be coming closer. He looked forward, brows low. Fun… 
He checked his neck and winced. He felt it twinge in pain at the touch of one of his hooves. He drew his hoof away and looked at it. He couldn’t really make it out in the dark, but it seemed a bit wet. He could also feel something running down his side. What kind of cloud draws blood? He put some more distance between himself and the one that had gotten him. Even in a dream that’s pretty weird…then again most dreams are wacked. 
He looked around and tried to spot any sign of Luna, but he could only see the black and the somehow even darker little clouds. 
Gotta get out of here, but how?... he kept an eye out for any of them getting too close. There was no way of telling just how many there were, or even just how far away they really were, with them all so well camouflaged against everything, but they would easily cover all holes and possible exits soon. He flew at a spot that looked like an opening and nearly ran into a wall of them that only became visible as the clouds once he was closer. 
He darted back in the other direction, looked around at his impending doom and thought. Portal? I did make an entire landscape appear earlier. He focused and thought of a portal opening to a place with much more space than he had right now. 
It opened and he could see his destination with all the extra space it had. That is to say, it was a portal to space... He flew towards it and it puffed out of existence the instant he made contact with it. 
...oh…
He then ran right into one of the clouds. It clung onto his chest, but a quick backwards spiral released it. 
He felt his chest searing in pain and it made him want to clutch up. He did his best to resist the urge to do so however as another thought entered his mind. 
He swung his wings with as much force as he could muster shooting a blast of air towards the last cloud that had gotten him. He could barely make out anything, but if size told him anything, it seemed to have at least pushed it away.
Little shimmers of white lights started to appear… 
Ignoring any pain now, he started blasting air in every direction as fast as he could. He wished he could make a tornado, but he had no idea that, that was something a pegasus pony could do. 
As it was, he was doing a really good job of blasting in one direction, then flipping around to blast in another direction, and then repeating the process. 
It was a futile effort, but it was keeping them at bay for the most part. However, there was no way he could stop them all forever.
Little lights were everywhere now. It was both just as beautiful and gross as ever…
“Trus!” Came a yell! Then a blue light that resonated from whatever ground was beneath him just a little ways off, filled his view and covered the black sky. 
It blinded him and left him stunned. He tried to continue with his efforts of blasting air around, but he was too disoriented by the light and the pain in his chest was catching up to him now, making it too difficult to do much of anything. The only thing he ended up doing was tumbling down through the air.
Thanks to his expertise in flying though, even though the light persisted, he was able to get himself out of his fall with a few quick tricks he knew. 
Once stable again, he turned his head away from the source of the light and was even able to see something.
The light was growing out into a giant cone that illuminated all the little clouds that hadn’t been unfortunate enough to have been hit by it yet. Those that were hit by the cone were being disintegrated. 
He looked on in awe and wonder. Then he attempted to turn around to face the light that was still blasting its way through the sky. However, his eyes just couldn’t stand its intensity and with his still disorienting wounds he became dazed again and dropped a few feet more. He caught himself again, but decided to flutter the rest of the way down to the ground. The beam followed him all the way down and grew outward as it did so until it filled the entire world around him.
When Trus reached the ground he landed on all four hooves, but he was quickly loosing the stability in his legs. He sat his haunches down first. Then they were quickly followed by the rest of his body. He made sure to lay down on his right side so he could see where the light was coming from. It was a bonus too that one of his wounds was on his left. 
The source of the light waned and faded out leaving behind a beautiful, blue sky where the entire world reflected the same bright, blue hues. 
As he had quietly guessed during his fallings, Luna had been the source of the light and now that all the deadly, dark clouds were gone she had put out her spell and was galloping up to him. 
“No…” was the first thing she said when she got to him. 
“Eh…it’s just a flesh wound, or two.” He said knowing she wouldn’t even get the reference.
“That is not a flesh wound!!!” She screamed! “How did this even happen!?! What were you fighting!?”
“Little, black cloud things of death.” He said, emphasizing the last word.  “They touched me and this,” he pointed to his chest and then his neck, “happened… I haven’t actually gotten a look at it myself. How-” he let out a huff as pain shot through him. “How bad is it?” 
Her horn glowed and his left foreleg was enveloped in her blue, magic’s aura as it was lifted out of the way for her to get a closer look.
There were little lights coming off him from all around the wound as well as from off the ground underneath him. Luna stuck her head in close and started blinking as the lights swirled around her face. She drew her head back quickly. “Why does that happen?” she said with a grimace. 
“I choose for it to happen…”
“Why, when they could so easily get in the way of treatment!?” 
“Well…if I’m going to die all the time…I might as well make it as pleasant…as possible…they calm me down…” He was taking short moments in between speaking to breath.
She looked at his face and then at his chest and clenched her teeth… “It is not as bad as I feared, but still needs to be tended to immediately… I should be able to heal it here, as we are in a dream.” Her horn glowed and he felt a nauseating tight pain resonating from his chest, part of his neck and left shoulder. 
His breaths began to be rapid and shallow and he felt like he was going to pass out any second! Screw it all being a dream. That ******** hurts (and yes he censers his thoughts).
Luna stopped and had new tears in her eyes. She whipped them away and lit her horn again.
Trus visibly started shaking and his mouth went wide. He however didn’t make a sound this time…

After an excruciating, period of time that felt way too long, Luna stopped and looked him in the face. “That should do it. How do you feel?”
Trus was breathing hard and his eyes were a bit wide. Then they slowly relaxed and he responded. “I think you forgot to tear my heart out…but beyond that I feel really nauseous and okay.” 
“Why would I need to take your heart out?!” Luna asked, looking horrified.
“Joke… Joke. It was a joke…”
“Oh…” she let out a deep breath that almost came out as a grunt. Her eyes hung half open as she looked down at him. “Will you be alright?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. “…Maybe... get my hooves up into the air so I don’t go into shock.”
She lit her horn again and he turned over onto his back as all four of his hooves were lifted into the air. 
“Better?” she asked.
He did feel a little better. It was still totally odd to him that he could be in pain in a dream. It all felt like it was in his head, but at the same time…not. “A little. I should be more or less okay like this...” She nodded and remained quiet. “So do you have any idea on what was going on by any chance?” 
She looked down. “I…” She paused. Trus waited. 
“I am sorry. I believe I was the cause of this.” 
Trus simply waited for her to continue. “I had begun to think about what could kill you in a dream and before I knew it, all my thoughts were playing out before me…”
“Okay.” Trus nodded. “Happens to the best of dreamers I suppose. The mind is hard to control sometimes.”
She looked at him frowning. “No it is not alright.” she said. “Not here, not where I could kill you with a stray thought!”
He thought about that. “I suppose, but…in that case I guess it would never be safe for me here.” 
She hung her mouth open ever so slightly. “I’m sorry…”
He let out a sigh. “I am too… I don’t want to make you feel bad…just because you got a little lost in a dream and I got hurt. I get hurt all the time.” Trus said. “You can’t control all the thoughts that enter your head. You just have to learn how to…push the bad ones away…”
Tears had returned to her eyes. “Regardless I am sorry. I was caught up in the spectacle and…it was the little lights that snapped me out of it.”
He looked at her blankly and then smiled.
“What is it?” She asked.
“Don’t worry about it…my friend.” He was still smiling.
She gapped at him…
He closed his eyes. 
“Trustin!”
He took in a deep breath and opened his eyes again. He looked up at her. “How did you know my actual, name?”
She was looking wide eyed down at him and breathing hard. “Do not do that again!” 
“What?”
“Close your eyes!”
The world around them blurred and rippled like it was the surface of an ocean for a second. Luna snapped into a fearful sort of attention, looking wide eyed off into the distance.
Trus brows pushed together with semi wide eyes as he looked at her and glanced around in the direction she was looking. “What? What’s going on?”
“I am waking up.” Luna said blankly. 
“Oh!…” guess I really shouldn’t have closed my eyes… “So uh…what now?”
She didn’t reply, just kept on staring off into the distance for a bit. Then she looked down at him, brows together seeming confused. “I heard it while you were talking to the ponies in town.”
“Huh?...Oh my name.”
“I do not know what comes next.” 
She seemed very oddly calm now, yet her body was rigid. 
She went back to staring off into the distance.
Things started to blur and her telekinesis dropped on his hooves. He was able to keep his hooves above himself while continuing to lie on his back. He watched her in confusion, glancing occasionally around to see the world falling in and out of focus. 
Then her frame relaxed and she looked down one last time at him. “It was all a dream.” She said.
He blinked. “…Umm…Yeah…” He said. “…Except me I guess…and maybe Dark.”
She gave him an odd curious look and then everything blurred completely out of focus and went black.

…


Eye lids opened revealing a world high up above. 
Where am I…? Thought Trus, completely disoriented.
A voice spoke that sounded similar to Luna’s, but it was somewhat off. “It was a dream…” 
A dream?... Wait, am I looking out from inside Luna? Or…Nightmare Moon or… gah… Not this again. As he went about questioned things he began to notice that his vision was starting to fade. 
“Just a strange, silly dream.”
His sight wasn’t failing him all too quickly, but it was certainly and slowly falling away bit by bit. Any other senses he still had seemed to be following suit…
Nothing was said for a time…and Trus didn’t have much that he wanted to think about at the given moment. He just felt like he wanted to keep watching that distant, blue world up above that somehow seemed just out of reach. 
It nearly filled the view he had from, whoever’s eyes they were exactly. 
There were only a few places in the corners of the view where he could see stars just before the edges of his vision faded out.
He finally settled down for the last little bit to look down at what, he guessed, must have been the land of Equestria…

…When his vision finally gave out entirely, the silence was broken one last time and he was privileged to hear one last, faint, little thing just before his senses gave out completely…

“…I am certain it was just an odd, little dream. How could it have been anything else?”
.
.
.

The next thing he knew, he was somewhere else entirely in some other form…