Time is a strange concept, Nightmare Moon thought to herself as she sat on her couch. A thousand years of imprisonment seemed to last forever but at the same time it felt so distant from now, so small. The last years she spent on the forest felt longer than it sometimes. But longer than all that together, and shorter at the same time, was the time she had to wait for the sun to raise.
How ironic it was that she, the Empress of the Night,the Queen of the Darkness of all ponies, couldn't wait for the sun to raise and cast her night away, she thought to herself, well, not her night...
Before she could walk that thought all the way through, she started feeling something. A weird warmth and a weak sensation of having something pressing on her eyes. It didn't take long before she realized that it was not her eyes that were being troubled. Casting her own sensations aside, she instead focused on that of her host. It was a strange feeling having the sensations of some other pony —well, dragon—, especially due to the difference in anatomy, but it didn't take long for her to find the source of the disturbance. Even through the closed eyelids of the dragon she could 'see' that the room where they were in was brighter than before.
Focusing back on her 'body' in her little room she looked around. She had said that she would wake Spike up at the sunrise, but now that it was time, she had no idea on how to do so. Looking around the room, while seeking for a solution, she looked at the weird door purple and green that stood at the opposite site of the room. Of course! All she had to do was to enter Spike's dream and wake him there.
She rouse from her couch and walked to the door, already thinking of several ways to scar—wake someone up off their dream. She grabbed the handle in her magic and opened it. Or at least she tried to, but the handle wouldn't even move. She looked at the door for a second trying to figure out what was happening. She almost noticed that the colors of the door were somewhat faded, less saturated than before, but instead she had an idea. The key!. Of course, the key! She had locked the door with it the last time she walked through.
Summoning the ethereal key with her magic, she put it on the lock and tried to turn it, but the key refused to move. The Queen of the Night was rather annoyed by this stubborn door. Annoyance quickly turned into fury as she repeatedly tried to open the door to no success. It didn't take long until she started shouting at the door.
"OPEN UP ALREADY," Nightmare Moon all but barked at the door, "OR WE SHALL SHOW TO THEE WHAT SHALL HAPPEN TO THOSE WHO OPPOSE US!" When the door continued to not even flinch at her attempts to open it, she turned around and with all the grace of a princess like herself—that is, all the grace of a hungry manticore—she bucked the door. Instead of destroying the door, like she expected, her hooves hit what felt like stone, propelling her forward, into the sofa in the other side of the room.
Before she could cry out or complain due to the bone breaking pain in her hooves, something she didn't even know was possible to feel in this place, another voice spoke up.
"ARGHH! Whaat... My head..." Said a rather equally sleepy and confused dragon, "Why does it feel like I've been run over by a train?"
Nightmare Moon thought to respond, but was way more preoccupied with her own pain. Instead, she just kept rolling on the floor trying to hold back not-so-metaphorical tears of pain. Meanwhile Spike rubbed his temples trying to understand where he was. He was on what seemed to be a really old bed, in a really old room. Only when he saw his bag on top of an really old nightstand he remembered where he was and what he was doing. But more important, with who he was doing it.
"Nightmare Moon," he said trying to suppress his annoyance with a sigh, "What are you doing in there? I'm not sure why, but I'm pretty sure you are the one who gave me this headache."
"..." Nightmare Moon didn't try to respond, even if the tone of the dragon to the princess was reprehensible.
"Nightmare Moon?" He said with some surprise at the lack of response, but also with some... genuine worry? "Are you okay?"
His tone really got her off-guard, was that dragon... Worried about her well-being? Of all ponies?. The shock was so much that the pain seemed to fade a little. Just enough for her to respond.
"I'm here." Her voice much quieter than she had intended. "I'm fine."
"Are you sure?" The same worry still on his voice.
Nightmare Moon thought of assuring him of her well-being, but then she looked at herself. There she was, the Queen of the Night, rolling in the floor due to some imaginary pain, with a dragon, an old enemy nonetheless, feeling pity towards her. Towards Nightmare Moon! She rouse with all her mighty, all her will-power directed to not flinch due to her hooves still in pain.
"Do you doubt thy Queen? Yes! We are fine!" She shouted, proudly looking to ceiling of her room. "Nothing can hurt us"
"Ouch, don't scream! You know it give me a headache every time!" Spike rubbed his eyes trying to adapt to the sunlight. "Is it morning already?"
"Yes, your Queen believe so." She spoke looking at the ceiling while sitting at her couch, not because her hooves hurt, mind you, a queen like herself would never be so easily afflicted, but simply because she felt like it. "Now, let us get going, my little dragon"
Spike rubbed his nose bridge and murmured something about useless elements and queen my tail that even Nightmare Moon didn't hear, but she still felt insulted anyway. One should not murmur before a queen. He picked his bag and put it on the bed with him.
"What are you waiting for, dragon?" Her neck started to get sore from looking towards the ceiling and talking to the walls didn't seen really appropriated, so she created a small crystal ball that she put onto the small table in front of her couch and transferred some of Spike's sensations to it. Now, while she still could feel him if she wanted to, the ball displayed his vision and served as a speaker for what he spoke and heard. "Now, much better." She was pleased by her own ingenuity.
"I'm getting my breakfast first." He said while picking some gems off his bag. "And what's better?"
Nightmare Moon took a second to think before responding, should she tell him? For some reason she didn't want to. What harm would it do to do so? She couldn't think of any. Finally she decided to put that feeling aside and just tell him.
"I built myself a room." She said somewhat reluctantly.
"A room, uh... Wait, wha—" He choked in a gem he had just bit. "Cough! cough! What do yo— cough. How do you? What?" To say that he was bweldered was a understatement.
"While you were asleep, we projected a body and a room." Nightmare said rolling her eyes.
"B-but how?" Spike was still confused, but it didn't take long before it turned into caution. "Wait, you better not be messing around inside my head!"
"Worry not little dragon!" She said confident, satisfied with what she took as fear coming from the dragon. "This room and our body are not unlike a waken dream that we created for our comfort."
"If you say so..." The crystal ball in the room went black as Spike closed his eyes and munched on a gem as he had an idea. "What color is the room?"
Were she not so proudly indulging on her regained confidence, she would have been somewhat taken aback from such an odd question. But she wasn't, so she answered anyway, "Why, it is the beautiful colors of our royal night, of course! Rich Indigo and Symphony Blue!"
Spike focused on those colors, after taking a second to silently thanks Rarity for making him memorize the names of thousands colors on the times he helped her in her boutique, and started to visualize then. If he was right, then... There! Spike thought to himself as he started to see a room. It was like trying to remember of a dream so it was really difficult to properly "see" things, but he still knew what they were somehow. A bedroom, with a large bed, some furniture and tapestry. But much more important was the big couch in one of the walls of the room, or rather, the pony sitting on it.
"What are you doing?" She said looking to something in the table in front of her, he wasn't sure what it was, but it felt important. "We don't have the time for you to sleep again! Open your eyes already!"
"I think I can see..." He simply said, trying to focus on the thing she looked at.
"What can you see? Your eyes are closed! Have your fear of me finally settled in and now you're seeing things?" She mocked with a grin smile.
"You, I think." –Nightmare Moon stopped smiling– "You said it's like a dream, so I tried to... remember it I guess... I can kinda see a room an—"
"What?" She said quickly raising from her couch and accidentally hitting the small table in front of her, dropping the crystal ball on the floor. "Get out!"
"AHHHH!" Spike stumbled and fell out of the bed, the sudden change of position of what he was focusing on breaking his concentration and giving him a headache. "Ouch, what was that for?"
"You dragon! Do not spy on a mare's room like it is yours!" She shouted at the crystal ball on the floor, only worsening Spike's headache.
"Calm down!" He shouted back while pressing his head where he hit it when he fell. "Sorry, ugh, I was just curious. Anyway we don't have time for this, let's get going." He added, trying to change subject.
"Agreed" Nightmare Moon simply said, with some repressed fury. "But we'll talk about this later. Now let us get going, it must already be past 6 AM."
Spike yawned and put on his bag, "Right, we should get there and get the tickets before the train arrives"
"Right... What's a ticket?"
Spike face-palmed, something that he always wondered how ponies could do with hooves instead of claws. "This is going to be a long ride..." He said as they started their way out of the castle. The Everfree and the entirety of Equestria ahead of then.
But first, the Ponyville train station.
A beautiful and well conserved building, or at least as well conserved as a building in a city under constant attacks of magical beings and catastrophes can be. It stood proudly at the limits of Ponyville, far from other buildings so that the noise from the train would not bother them.
Some meters away from it's platform was what seemed, to anypony passing by, like a lonely bush somewhat weirdly placed at the middle of the field, distant from a bunch of similar bushes nearby. When nopony was looking at it, it grew eyes and legs and hopped away to the train station platform where it settled again for a minute before hopping away again.
Not far away from where the bush was before, stood a very unimpressed dragon hiding in bunch of similar bushes.
"What was that?" Asked a very impressed and confused Nightmare Moon.
"It was just Pinkie." Spike said as he got out of the bush. "Now that she is not here, I think that we can just wait for the train without anypony seeing us."
"Pinkie? Wait, is this one of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony? The pink one?"
"Yeah. Element of Laughter."
"What was she doing hiding in a bush?"
"She was just being Pinkie, I guess." Spike shrugged. "Probably planing somepony surprise party."
"Humm... Really fitting for the Element of Laughter to do this sort of things." She mumbled to herself, remembering the ridiculous way that the pink pony got past her Trees of Nightmare.
"Look!" Spike said as he got onto the train station platform and pointed at a clock on the building's wall. "It's 7:55 AM already! The train should arrive at any moment now!" And as to punctuate his words, the noise of steel on steel of the train approaching started to appear on the distance.
Spike ran to the station's booth where he asked for two tickets to Canterlot. The train brakes screeched on the trails at the same time he managed to find some bits in his bag and gave them to the stallion at the booth.
"What is this noise?!" Shouted Nightmare Moon trying to tune down the volume of her crystal ball. "Are we being attacked by a giant Tatzlwurm?!"
"It's just the train" Spike said in low-voice so that nopony would hear him as he looked at the train so that Nightmare Moon could see it.
It was as strange as she expected it to be. A weirdly shaped carriage at the front with gray smoke clouds coming out of long tubes. Several closed carriages attached to it's back in a line, each with numerous windows , all on top of impossibly small wheels. All made of metal. Nightmare Moon wondered how could such thing exist, there was no way that a thing that should weight several tons like this could be moved by regular ponies. But a much more important question stroke her.
"Ugh, why so colorful?" She buried her head in a pillow on her couch. "Aren't ponies colorful enough?"
Meanwhile, Spike presented his tickets to the conductor pony that picked both on his magic.
"Are you waiting for somepony to show up?" Said the unicorn as he perforated one of the tickets with a tool and gave it back to Spike. "If so, they better hurry up, we are leaving soon."
"What? No, why?" Said the soon to be very embarrassed dragon.
"You have two tickets, why, did you buy the extra by accident?"
"Well, one for me and the other..." He suddenly turned red, something impressive for a being with scales, the realization hitting him like a train. "I—The ticket— Ehhh—Bye!" He picked the tickets and ran to the next wagon.
"You can refund the ticket if you want!" Shouted the unicorn before shrugging as the dragon closed the door that connected the two carts. "What an weird dragon."
Spike sat at the first bench at his left and tried to make himself as small as possible on it, trying to hide away his shame. With little success due to the constant laughing inside his head.
"Sh–shut up!" He was still red hot of embarrassment, even if the only pony in the wagon was inside his head.
Eventually her laughter died out and Spike finally got himself in a comfortable position on his seat.
"So, how does this 'train' move? I couldn't see it before it stopped." Asked Nightmare Moon having regained some air after her fit of laughter.
"Well, it has a vapor engine in the first cart of the train." Spike explained. "They put water and burn coal to make vapor and them the pressure moves some pistons or something."
"Vapor? The same thing that clouds are made off? How could it move such a heavy vehicle?" Nightmare Moon inquired. "There must be some magic on it."
"It has some sort of tubing or something, it is really complex, but I don't think it involves magic since I have seen some train drivers that where earth ponies. If I could I would show you, but—" The train sounded its whistle, cutting off Spike, and slowly started to move. "Look!" Spike looked outside the window where the world slowly started to move.
"It is rather slow isn't it? It should be, being this big an— Wow." As the engine started to kick more power, the train quickly gained speed, the acceleration giving Nightmare Moon some movement sickness. She still stared, eyes wide, as the town became smaller and smaller in the distance. The acceleration rapidly gave off as the train reached its speed limit. "This is... Amazing!" She said not even trying to hold back her wonder.
"Yeah." Spike agreed . "I'm pretty used to it, but I still like to watch the terrain passing by."
"At this speed we can cross Equestria in less than a night!" The Queen of the Night exclaimed. "How long do you think it will take to reach... What is the name of the city again?"
"Canterlot? About three hours I think."
"Canterlot... Was it built after my—" Her words got caught on her throat. "Uh-hum. In the last thousand years?"
"I don't know... Wait, yeah! It was built after..." Spike stopped on time, having got the hint that she didn't like this topic in particular. "After the old castle was destroyed. The Princess built her new castle there and it became the capital of—"
"It became what?!" Nightmare Moon shouted, just low enough to not give Spike a headache.
Spike gulped in dry. "The capital...?"
"Are you saying to me, the Queen of the Night, that we are going to not only the capital of Equestria, but the place where both princesses of Equestria live? The two most powerful beings that could destroy us if they suspected that their biggest enemy is there?!"
"Wel– well, when you put it like that..." Spike could feel her ice freezing stare at him. Taking a second to breath and calm himself, he thought on what to do and spoke a little to quickly. "T–the train makes various stops before Canterlot, w–we can always hop out in one of them."
Nightmare Moon took a second to consider that possibility, analyzing it from every angle. "It sounds good. But to just hop out anywhere would be suspect—" Now that her paranoia was on, there was no coming back. "—we should go to another big city where we can hide, do you know any?"
Spike said the first city that came to mind. "Fillydelphia! I visited it before, and there are a lot of dragons living there! And I know some ponies there!" He decided to omit that he had visited it with Luna and that the ponies he knew where police officers.
"Perfect! A city with dragons and ponies you say? That's strange. I remember that we were not exactly in speaking terms with them in my time." Nightmare Moon remembered some conflicts that she— Luna had to settled with dragons, due to the old enmity between them and pegasus. "Things must have really changed since then. I really shouldn't be surprised since you yourself live among ponies peacefully."
"Well, Fillydelphia – and I– are kinda the exception, most cities have almost no dragons in them. I'm the only one in Ponyville and I never met others when I lived in Canterlot. We will need to buy the tickets to it in the next station though."
"I see." She lost herself in her thoughts, thinking about what she had just learned, and Spike did the same, both appreciating the view that the window provided.
Far away from where they were now, and some minutes later, a sleepy unicorn started to raise from her bed. Her horn shining brightly in a purplish hue with an alarm spell that she made herself to always wake in time. Twilight walked to the bathroom, shaking away the dreams she had. She washed her muzzle and with a quick spell dried it out after an yawn.
Walking back into her bedroom, she noticed that she was not alone. Owlicious stood sleeping at the headboard of her bed.
She giggled to herself. "Must have felt alone in this big castle."
Twilight thought of petting him, but didn't want to disturb his sleep, instead she silently walked out of her room. Without even noticing the scroll fallen at the feet of her bed.
Walking her way to the kitchen, the big and long way, she found it strangely empty, without either the characteristic smell of recent cooked food or an apron wearing Spike.
"He must have gone buy ingredients." She said to herself. "I'm just going to pick something to read and wait for him to be back with breakfast."
"Who are you talking to?" Said a new voice behind her.
"Ahhh!" She jumped and turned around, recovering her balance with her wings. "Oh, Starlight, you scared me."
"Sorry..." Starlight lowered her head a bit, felling some guilt.
"It's okay. I was just talking to myself..." Twilight blushed a little, embarrassed for that little habit of hers.
"Is breakfast done?" Glimmer tried to spy into the kitchen behind Twilight.
"No, Spike must have gone somewhere. I'm sure he will be back soon."
"Oh, well, in that case, I guess I'm going to see if Trixie wants to go out and eat something." Starlight said as she happily trotted away.
"Okay, I will be in the library if you need me." Twilight said as Starlight turned around the corner.
And so she walked to the library where she would spent the next hours lost in some very interesting book about dragon's migration habits. Completely clueless of the irony of it.