Princess Luna surveyed her kingdom. Properly speaking it was a principality, given that she used the title of Princess and not queen, but people had been calling it the Lunar Kingdom for centuries now, so even Luna tended to think of it that way. She stood on a small viewing platform atop the highest spire of her castle, which itself stood at the exact center of Imbrium City. From that lofty point she could, if she wished, reach up and touch the peak of the crystal dome that covered the city proper. Below the palace spire, the city stretched out along the lunar plain, its lights glittering in the long lunar night.
Imbrium City hummed with life. Shuttles and aircars zipped along in orderly lanes. Ground effect vehicles whooshed down narrow streets. People thronged the avenues, working and playing, buying and selling, living and dying. The majority were humans, but other, stranger beings moved among them. Luna watched her subjects with a small, benign smile. Her eyes fell on a speck of light brighter than most, that had just now flickered to life outside the dome. The spaceport lay there, clinging to the base of the giant crystal bubble. A shuttle, its engines glowing blue-white, arced up from the moon's surface towards the void above.
The tiny glow passed near a blue and white marble that hung above the lunar scene—a distant, beautiful, shining orb—but Luna's gaze avoided the cloud-swirled world. There was nothing there for her anymore.
Instead she followed the track of the shuttle until it met with a brighter light, an interstellar spaceship, which drifted gently across the sky as it orbited the moon. Such ships never made landfall within a gravity well, they were built for the endless reaches between the stars, not the tiny specks of inhabited worlds.
Luna had never boarded such a ship. Her duty lay here, and now it was time to see to the part of it she loved best. The tasks of ruling she found onerous, and had long since passed most of them off to others. A parliament saw to the everyday governing of the moon itself. But the humans and others that ruled in her stead in all but name could not take this beloved duty from her, even if she had wished it so. For only she had the ability to walk among dreams and soothe the nightmares of the lunar denizens.
On other worlds, nightmares were unpleasant but largely harmless things. On Luna's moon, however, nightmares had a greater and more fearful power. Luna regarded fighting that power as her duty. She could not guard all dreams, but she would do what she could to diminish and undo nightmares whenever she found one.
She descended to her bedroom, which lay below the high observation deck at the peak of the castle's highest turret, and changed into her night-dress. The covers were cool as she slipped between them. Her magic woke as her eyes closed, the faintest of glows blossoming on her forehead, at the spot sometimes called the third eye.
Then she was in among the dreams, floating in an indescribable space peopled with a thousand thousand bubbles, each a dream of someone, human or otherwise, somewhere on her moon. Location here had nothing to do with location in the waking world. She might find a dreamer from Imbrium City beside one from Darkside Station, and a wet dream from within her castle floating near a nightmare from the spaceport. There were no dreams from those in orbit, though, and none from the distant planet, either. Those were beyond her reach.
She entered the dream realm at high alert, scanning for any sign of danger. But tonight, it seemed, she would not be immediately attacked. With a soft sigh she relaxed, and set about her work.
Luna soared on wings of light through the dreamscape, considering the bubbles as she passed them, seeking nightmares.
It wasn't long before she found one. She cupped the nightmare in her palms for a long moment, bracing herself. This was not just a nightmare, it carried the shuddering energies of a nightmare born from real life trauma. Such dreams were powerful and unpredictable, to the point of being dangerous to enter. Yet she could not abandon the dreamer to their fate, so she closed her eyes again, and opened them within the dream.
Amid a verdant wood, a feline creature crouched, roaring, long fangs bared. For an instant, Luna thought it a part of the nightmare, but then she saw the shadows around it. They stretched up into tall, humanoid shapes with glowing, bug-like eyes, that circled around the enraged and yet terrified cat. The creature was the dreamer, caught in the center of a nightmare. The tall shapes around it flung nets at it, and their glowing eyes shot beams out towards it, that made the feline's roar break with pain.
The tall beings pulled on the nets, that tangled the feline, and pulled it to them. The dream twisted, the background changing without the dreamer having moved, and now it was within a cage, while the tall things poked and prodded at it from without. One removed its bug-eyed face, and with a shock, Luna suddenly recognized it as human, the insect features a respirator mask. Its face was distorted by dream and memory, but it was nonetheless unmistakably human.
Within its cage the feline was flattened to the ground, defeated and terrified by the alien beings surrounding it. Luna knew she must intervene, especially now knowing that her own species was responsible for its suffering. "Stop!" she cried, exerting her power, and the dream froze.
"Begone!" The tall, shadowy humans melted away, as did the cage, leaving only Luna and the feline floating in an indistinct space. The creature was very large, it probably would come nearly to Luna's waist if it were standing and not half-flattened to the ground with fear. It was a tawny orange, with tiger-like stripes in white. Indeed the creature was not unlike a tiger, with a broad, feline face and long, striped tail behind it. The head was shaped a little differently, but the overall effect was quite tiger-like.
The tiger-creature lashed its tail, staring up at Luna with amber-brown eyes, and then leaped. Luna yelped and went down with the feline on top of her. It pinned her beneath its large paws and growled low in its throat.
"Hey! I'm not your enemy, I'm trying to help you here." Luna tried to use her power to project a sense of calm and friendliness. She was within the tiger's mind, so there was a connection between them, and sometimes that could be used to communicate, though in a fairly crude and indirect way.
The tiger's growling stopped and it shifted slightly, sniffing at her curiously. As it snuffled at her, she could feel its whiskers against the sensitive skin of her face and throat. She held very still. One bite could kill her effortlessly. It was only a dream, but she still felt a shiver go through her at the thought.
Then it licked her shoulder, prompting a squeak of surprise from Luna. "Eep!"
Another snuffle, and the dream changed again, rippling. The pair were suddenly no longer in formless space, but in a lush, moonlit forest, very like the scene she had first glimpsed. Something else had changed as well, for Luna found that she was no longer herself. She had changed into a tiger-like feline as well. That might be a good sign, if the alien being was thinking of her as a person like itself, and not a dangerous nightmare like those that had presumably attacked and captured it.
The tiger lapped her shoulder again, then nipped the side of her neck lightly, its sharp canines pricking through her new, dense fur. She shivered again, and realized that the mood of the dream had also changed. There was no sense of terror now. She had succeeded in heading off the nightmare. But anger still lingered, and with it came another, stronger emotion.
"Oh dear." The alien was still atop her, but it—no he, definitely he—no longer feared her. He pressed his body along hers and she could feel the absolute confirmation that the creature was male. She licked her lips, not sure what to do. She had certainly been caught up in wet dreams before, but never quite like this. Never with such anger mingled with the passion.
The tiger expressed his anger, and his passion as well. Luna, utterly caught up in sensation and emotion, made no move to leave or alter the dream. She accepted the alien being's primal passion and returned his affections, both of them joining together in a dance as old as the stars themselves.
When their dance was done, the dream began abruptly to dissolve around them. Luna felt herself pulled away from the tiger, her human form returning as the nebulous forest around them blurred and ran like watercolor paint in the rain. "I'll find you," she called out, though she knew the tiger probably wouldn't understand. "I'll find you and help you in the waking world, I promise."
Then the dream was gone, and Luna floated alone in the dreamscape.
Luna woke hours later, having tended other dreams through the night, but thoughts of the tiger-like alien lingered with her more than any other nightmare she'd soothed. She had to admit it was in part because of the heated, primal sex. It had been wonderfully intense. But it was also because from what she could tell, the alien was being held prisoner somewhere, quite possibly mistaken for an animal. That could not be permitted.
"Selene," she said as she sat up in bed, "Find me a list of all the zoos here on the moon."
"Yes, your highness," said a disembodied voice from somewhere up near the ceiling.
"Do we have complete information on what animals are exhibited in them?"
"No, your highness. There are publicly available records, but they are unlikely to be complete, they seem to be infrequently updated."
"What I'm looking for would be pretty recent. Search what you can find and see if any zoo has acquired a large, orange and white striped feline creature. I can't give an exact origin or time frame, but it comes from outside the system and it's probably not further back than a month or so at most."
There was a pause, during which a faint, musical humming could be heard. Then Selene responded. "No such creature appears in any record I can access legally, your highness."
Luna chuckled at the faint hint. "Well, I'm not sure trying to hack zoos will get us anywhere, it probably is simply too recent an acquisition to actually be recorded yet. I suppose if they keep digital feeding records, or any kind of purchase records there's probably something..." She shook her head. "But I wouldn't be sure what to look for. No, this should be fairly straightforward and quite legal. Just call around and ask about such a creature. Let me know once you've found it. Him. The alien."
"Yes, your highness." There was a soft click, which was the AI's polite way of letting her mistress know that Selene wasn't paying active attention and she could have some minimal amount of privacy. They both knew it was largely a fiction, Selene saw everything that went on within Luna's palace and much of what happened in Imbrium City too, but such little fictions made life easier.
Luna rose and stretched. She shed her night-dress and stood before a floor-length mirror, regarding herself. She was naked, save for her long blue hair, touched with a starry nimbus that came from the unique magic she wielded. Her extremely pale skin contrasted with her dark hair, and made her tall, lean form all the more striking. She frowned faintly as she considered what to wear. She would probably be out and about, once the tiger was found, so she needed something suitable for public appearances. But the occasion would be informal, and stars knew where she might have to go to see the tiger freed, so something relatively comfortable and practical seemed in order.
She eventually chose a stylish suit, with trousers and jacket of midnight blue over a lighter blue shirt with a ruffled front. A small black and silver tiara emphasized her authority, and practical low boots in black leather completed the outfit. With a nod at herself in the mirror, she set about her day.
"Day" was technically incorrect, of course. The lunar day lasted for two weeks, so the day/night cycle had little to do with the regular activities of the lunar inhabitants. There was, however, an agreed on twenty-four hour cycle which most of her subjects kept to, and by that clock it was morning.
Her "days" were, to be honest, rather boring. She'd let herself settle into a routine, something all too easy to do as time slipped by. Breakfast alone in a small dining room with a view of the domed city. A morning meeting with her cabinet, followed by a brief appearance at parliament, during which she simply smiled and nodded at whatever was going on. Selene would tell her if they attempted to pass any laws she need take note of, so it was largely a formality, so that she would be seen to care.
Lunch could be a diplomatic occasion at need, but just now there were no special ambassadors or unusual visitors, so she had it alone again, and then spent the afternoon in her studio. She was on a sculpture kick currently, so there were stone chips and dust everywhere. She was making a heroic marble, just for fun. The female figure was currently faceless, she hadn't quite decided who it should be. The horse was fully detailed, including elaborate armor with a chamfron that made it look like a unicorn. Luna had always had a fondness for unicorns, though as far as she knew they'd always been mythical, and if any had ever existed they were on the distant blue planet, not on her moon.
She pushed that thought aside and scowled at the statue's face. For a moment she saw familiar features there, a gentle, knowing smile, soft lavender eyes that looked down on a little sister, who was always shorter no matter how much she grew...
Luna cursed faintly and turned away from the statue. Perhaps it was time to pick up oil painting again. She could attempt to paint the tiger alien, perhaps. A visual representation to show might make locating the creature easier.
Speaking of which... "Selene? Have you called all the zoos yet?"
"Almost. Several of them are frustratingly lax about picking up their phones, and about departmental transfers. I've not been able to reach the appropriate parties in one case. So far none of them have anything like your description, though two have ordinary Terran tigers."
Luna sighed. "Damn. I thought this was going to be easy. Keep calling the last zoo until you get results. What kind of import records do we have for exotic animals?"
"There's no register of individuals. Shipments must be approved and quarantined, and there will be a manifest, but..." There was a pause. "Yes, as I suspected, it simply has numbers of animals and broad categories. 'Non-Terran' is as detailed as most get. There's a blacklist of animals that can't be imported, but no whitelist of ones that are allowed."
"Of course. Well, I suppose that's my own fault for keeping a loose hand on the governmental reins. Though I probably wouldn't have been in favor of the bureaucracy necessary to track all that in detail. Still, it would be useful to just be able to check recent ship manifests. I wonder... It could be some private individual, out building a menagerie, but that's awfully expensive to do on an interstellar scale. If it's a business, they'll be making sales, which means a storefront. Hmm."
"There are thirty-two distinct listings under 'exotic pet shop' when I search the lunar net."
"Aha! Do any of them have our tiger listed for sale on line, then?"
"Unfortunately no. I can begin calling them, if you like."
"Yes, please do so. And don't forget to keep calling that last zoo. I'd feel like quite the idiot if he was there."
"Yes, your highness."
Left to herself once more, Luna set about starting her painting. But by the time she'd located the oil paints amid the vast clutter of art supplies she owned, and then found the canvas, easel, brushes, and solvents it was time for dinner.
She had her dinners with a rotating cast of interesting and important people, and so the meal passed in pleasant conversation with an ambassador from one of the far planets, a slightly insect-like biped called a changeling with a face that was nearly human. Luna happened to know, due to seeing a few very revealing dreams from other members of the embassy, that the ambassador was the first probe in an attempt at a hostile takeover, and she was rather relishing the slow unfolding of the ambassador's plan. The alien thought her victory was inevitable, but Luna was staying several steps ahead. She was quite curious how the changelings would handle their defeat.
Political maneuvering occupied her thoughts as she climbed the stairs to the highest tower after dinner. She enjoyed the view as she let the day's cares run through her mind. Everything was well in hand with the changelings, so eventually her mind drifted back to the tiger. She didn't want to speak to Selene just now, she was enjoying her solitude, but the AI's silence suggested that she hadn't found anything yet.
Indeed, when Luna descended to her bedchamber and checked in as she once again dressed for the night, Selene reported no success. Several of the shops were closed for the 'night', and several more kept highly irregular hours. Those that could be contacted had reported no sign of the tiger.
Luna sighed. "And here I thought this would be easy. Well, keep looking. Don't wake me, though, I'll hear your findings in the morning, if there are any."
"Yes, your highness."
Luna climbed into bed and lay back on her pillow. Since Selene had not located the tiger, she would search the dream realm for him. It took only moments for her to slip into slumber, and then she once more floated amid the gossamer bubbles of the lunar dreamscape. Once again she scanned the dream realm for enemy action, but there was nothing. A little knot of awful tension dissolved within her. She was very glad she would not have to deal with that one tonight.
With a thought, she focused her magic, seeking, but there was no response. If the tiger slept, he did not dream. She sighed and soared out amid the other dreams, pausing to soothe a minor nightmare here and there. She kept calling, avoiding any dreams that would take more than a few moments of her attention. At last a dream came floating to her in response to her summons. This dream was not a nightmare, but Luna stepped into it all the same.
A forest formed around her. It was a little more detailed than it had been in the previous dreams. The plants were all unfamiliar to Luna, but the rich, moist, crowded greenness of it brought back memories of long ago, of traveling through the forest called Everfree with her sister...
She cut off that train of thought ruthlessly and turned her attention back to the dream. She saw trees in abundance, and things like ferns and bushes and vines, but there was no sign of the dreamer who must be somewhere within the imagined wood. A faint rustle made Luna spin around, but she saw nothing, only a tiny movement of a branch, as if something had brushed against it moments ago. Though she knew this was just a dream, still she felt her heart pound. Something was out there in the forest. Had the dream turned nightmare after all?
Slowly, cautiously, she began to make her way through the wood, trying to make no sound, searching for some sign of the dreamer. The forest was dark, the sky mostly obscured by reaching branches, and showing only a scattering of stars when it could be glimpsed. The gloom beneath was thick, and Luna found herself stumbling frequently. There was another rustle, behind her, but again when she spun she saw nothing but a waving bit of greenery.
She stooped, peering into the darkness, looking for whatever had made the sound, but saw nothing. She straightened, still tense, thoughts of all the nightmare monsters she'd ever encountered floating through her mind. Then something dropped out of the canopy above her, pinning her to the ground. She heard a low, rumbling growl and smelled a hint of animal musk. Eyes that caught the light and glowed green glared down at her, terrifying, alien. The monster atop her leaned close... and licked her cheek.
Luna blinked up at it, suddenly recognizing the tiger. He had stalked her through his own dream! She laughed suddenly, with relief as much as amusement. "Well, it seems you're a lucid dreamer," she said, looking up at him. "Or you're something like one that I've never seen before. Certainly I've never been hunted by someone whose dream I've shared!"
The tiger made a soft chuffing noise that might have been a word. The syllables were indistinct, on the very edge of Luna's hearing. He stepped back, taking his weight off of her, and sat on the forest floor. Luna got to her feet, dusting off bits of moss and twig. This dream was certainly vivid enough to belong to a lucid dreamer.
"So what now?" said Luna. "I came to look for some clue about where you are now. I have no idea how to tell you that." She considered. She could alter the dream, but how to change it to tell the tiger what she wanted? She looked over at the tiger, who was suddenly, for some reason, just at her eye level.
Blinking, Luna looked down at herself. She was a tiger again. Or perhaps "tigress" would be the better term. The tiger tilted his head at her and seemed to smile. He must have made her change again, he was the dreamer here, after all. But had it been on purpose? Luna made a mental effort and changed back to her usual human self, curious to see what the tiger would do.
He sniffed at her, then snorted, and she found herself once again a tiger. "Not a fan of humans?"
The tiger definitely said something in response, several deep, rumbling, almost purring words that were like nothing Luna had ever heard before. He still seemed to be smiling. Luna chuckled and smiled back. "Well, I don't understand you, and I've no idea how to get you to understand me, but I guess you kinda like... eep!" As she was speaking, the tiger had walked up to her and rubbed his head against her cheek, then nipped her ear.
"Oh, is that how it's going to be?" Luna knew where this was probably leading. If last night was anything to go by, at least. But she couldn't find it in her to object. Indeed just the memory of last night was stirring a heat between her legs. Giving up on verbal communication, she nipped at the tiger's ear in return, and got a brief, trilling purr in response. The tiger rubbed along her side, and Luna leaned into the feline caress, running her own cheek along the tiger's fur.
The tiger continued the gesture, bumping his head against her shoulder and then along her side, finally giving her hindquarters a sniff. She also inhaled, smelling the animal musk of him. A trill of desire went through her. He obviously felt much the same, for he nosed under her tail, skipping any further preliminaries.. She let out a soft, feline moan, then a louder one as the tiger licked her. He chuckled, and said something. She could almost guess at its meaning, it was sly, teasing, asking perhaps if she'd liked his attentions.
She answered the only way she could, lifting her tail up, setting her hind feet a little further apart. The tiger responded eagerly, and soon the two were once again dancing their ancient dance beneath the dream-image of the forest's alien stars.
Eventually, when the dance was done, Luna rolled over onto her paws. Looking down at them she said, "This is nice and all, but I think I'd rather be myself." It took only a small exertion of her will to return her to human form.
The tiger frowned faintly, and Luna sensed a faint unease in the dream. She sighed. "I'm sorry humans make you nervous. Stars, I have to figure out a way to talk to you. I wonder if Selene can dig me up a translation spell..."
The tiger replied in his own language, the meaning of it hovering tantalizingly on the edge of her understanding. It was a query of some kind, something the tiger was puzzled about. Then an interruption broke into the dream from the waking world.
"Your highness," came Selene's familiar voice through their neural tie, "I know you prefer to not be disturbed while you are dream-walking, but I believe I've found the location of the alien you're seeking."
"Wonderful!" Luna grinned at the tiger. "I'm afraid I have to go, but hopefully we'll be meeting in person soon!" Then, with a wave of her hand and a flicker of power, she pulled herself from the dream, from the dreaming realm, and into the waking world.