“What went down well?" Mum asks, coming back to the table.
"Nothing," I say.
"The Titanic," Elliot says.” - Zoe Sugg
Girl Online, 2014 book by Zoe Sugg.
Breakfast was… wonderful. No meat or jam, but that's what you get when you are having breakfast with magical equines.
“Is it sad that breakfast was like, one of the best things to happen to me lately? Besides being adopted?” Mag said out loud.
“I don’t think so, now… do you know who could buy this?” Celestia said and showed Mag a rock.
“Is that gold?” Mag just had to ask .
“Yes. You lost your job so we need a way to pay for things, like getting more stuff for your house.”
“We will have to go to the city, maybe by bus? No I got a car, ah right I don’t anymore, Bus is it.”
“Is this bus some sort of mechanical carriage?”
“I see you have been using Google.”
“It… it does distract me.”
And then Mag have Celestia another hug, the third since they woke up.
“Why do you keep thinking on a pink unicorn dancing?”Luna asked interrupting the hug, Mag guessed Luna, borrowed human body or not, just wasn’t a morning pony.
“Don’t be silly, there is no pink unicorn dancing.” Mag said almost automatically.
"Yes there is.” Luna said borrowing Mag’s mouth.
“No, there is not.”
“YES THERE IS!” Luna voiced sounded like thunder.
“NO!” Mag yelled and her chair cracked, making her fall.
“Hey, that was petty!” Not to mention she didn’t have many chairs to start with.
"That’s was you Mag, not me.”
“What? How could I a mere human… oh fudge it, that was magic?”
"Yes. Have you always been ignoring a pink unicorn in your head?”
Mag blushed “Uh… when I was like… four or five I had this imaginary friend...”
Celestia then said “Mag, you don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I… I need to. I had this imaginary friend that was a pink unicorn that liked to dance but my parents didn’t like that and… let’s just end it I preferred to pretend she wasn’t there than taking stupid pills that made me sick. Only as time passed, she really wasn't there anymore, but I still imagine her dancing sometimes, only is like a faded memory.”
“What was her name?”
“What?”
“What was your imaginary dancing pink unicorn friend name?”
“Pink, I know is not great but I was like… four? Okay I gonna eat a jar of peanut butter right now.”
“What do you mean you're going to eat a jar of peanut butter? You just had breakfast.” Celestia face was serious.
“I… I just discovered my former imaginary friend I tried for many years to not think about is basically my magic. So…. I need to disappear into my room and pretend to myself that I'll never come out again, m'kay? Just knock when you need help.”
“Do whatever you need to, Mag, and talk with me whenever you're ready,” said Celestia. She glanced back at Mag. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Luna is laughing herself sick at the way you are acting like a mother, is all, even if she really should not since you adopted me and that. See you soon.” Mag stalked into the bedroom, turned the lights off, and fell into bed.
But she couldn’t sleep.
“Luna, can you make me sleep?”
“Fine.”
And then Mag dreamed.
She dreamed of marble pillars under the open sky, lit only by an unfamiliar moon. The floor was all one piece of smooth stone. Mag walked barefoot, like she used to over leaves and round, flat rocks in the woods of Mississippi so, so long ago, and her hair hung loose around her shoulders. Through an open door on the other side of the—was it a temple?—she could see the glow of a fire, and from the door issued a single indistinct voice. It seemed to be calling her name.
Mag walked to the door, confused but unafraid. The floor was cool under her feet but not cold. What stone was it? Alabaster. But she'd never seen it before, so how could it be in her dream, and why did she know what it was?
The pink unicorn was there next to her, no longer dancing, but it made her feel safer and tasting blueberries.
Mag pushed open the door and found a larger and better lit pillared marble and alabaster room with its own open ceiling, with Luna sitting in front of a bonfire as wide as Mag's house and taller than the big bear, though the fire burned silent.
Even if Mag hadn't seen Celestia's drawing, there was no mistaking Luna. She was the younger sister, yet her eyes looked older. Celestia would always look young, while Luna looked as if she was born old. Her smile was small, secretive, sincere, and her shadow spread hugely against the wall beside the door Mag had just walked through. Luna's shadow was sharp and perfectly still however the fire danced, and darker than the bottom of a coal mine.
Luna spoke.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?
Mag approached the fire and sat beside her. Luna turned to face the fire. They watched it together for a while.
"My point," said Luna, "is that I've access to the minds of Earth while you sleep. Do you recognize this poem?"
Mag shook her head.
"It is by Percy Shelley," said Luna.
"It sounds like a love poem," said Mag. Her voice sounded so strange in this place.
"It is," said Luna.
"Getting Stockholm syndrome?"
"What is that?"
"Is this really the place for talking?" asked Mag. "It feels like it's supposed to be a quiet place."
"This place is of my own design and serves whatever purpose I wish it to, theoretically; but, having made it out of your own dreamstuff rather than mine, perhaps it carries properties I didn't put into it. Is it? Is this a quiet place, Mag?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling quiet."
Luna closed her eyes, looked at the fire through her eyelids, lifted her nose to smell the air. "All of this is yours. Let your mood dictate its purpose. We will call it a quiet place, and be quiet together."
Mag leaned against Luna. She wouldn't do such a thing in the waking world, but surely the rules were different in dreams. Luna didn't protest.
Mag took soft, barefoot, low-gravity leaps over the gray sand, hair floating around her face. Luna flew beside her.
Some small, black prominence sat at the central mound of a great crater. Mag bound down the wall of the crater and then up the prominence to examine it, and found it to be an unfamiliar pony princess sitting stock still.
If princesses were Disney characters, this one was Maleficent. She had slitted cat's eyes, a black coat, wings like scythes, a suit of armor, and Luna's old eyes. Mag waved her hand in front of the new princess, who didn't move. Luna caught up and sat beside Mag, looking anywhere but at the black princess.
"Can I ask?" said Mag.
"I resolved some time ago to answer all questions honestly, that regard the Nightmare," said Luna.
"This is you."
"This was me."
"Did you really just sit here like this?"
"For a thousand years," said Luna. "I'll have the cod." She shut her menu and gave it to the waiter.
"Crab salad," said Mag, doing the same.
"Leila lina lu," said the waiter, and swam away.
"You're aware that cod is a type of meat?" said Mag.
"You're aware that this is a dream?" said Luna.
"Fair enough. I recognize this place, you know."
Luna changed into a human (the mirror of her sister, but a little shorter and with harsher features) and examined herself in the bowl of her spoon. "Yes?"
"I was a toddler. I never went in, but I liked the neon sign outside, though I couldn't read it. I asked if we could eat there. They told me it looked "pretty sleezy" and I didn't understand what "sleezy" meant, but I knew the word "pretty" and it only made me more curious. We never did go in, and now I dream about the place sometimes." She held up a drink coaster, a thick circle of cardboard embossed with the words "The Sleezypretty."
"Did you ever learn the true name of the place?" asked Luna.
"I've never remembered this place, except in dreams," said Mag. "I'll forget everything when I wake up. And I'm sure it'd turn out to be a low-rent Hooter's knockoff or something equally banal, so I'd just be disappointed."
The pink unicorn have Mag a comforting hug, for the first time in a long time, she hugged him back. Luna didn't even raise a eyebrow at that.
The food arrived with improbable speed. Luna tucked one of the black cloth napkins into the collar of her slinky evening gown and dug into the cod with every sign of enjoyment. This put Mag off her salad. She slid it to the side and ordered a Jack and Coke.
"There is something I'd like to discuss," said Luna.
"Hm?"
"Magic."
"Another of these," said Mag, waving her empty glass at a passing bush.
"Do you mean to get drunk?" asked Luna.
"I hadn't thought that far ahead. Don't let me distract you. What's this about magic?"
"I'm afraid there is a possibility you'll need basic access to your magic before dawn tomorrow. We can discuss the whys later. For now, talk to your pink friend." Luna tipped her plate of fishbones into the bonfire. Mag sat down on the stone floor again and set her drink beside her.
Then she looked at Pink the pink, currently not dancing, unicorn.
“Eh… Hi?”
The pink unicorn disappeared, yeah that was useful.
Luna spoke mildly, conversationally, as if to avoid scaring Mag off and not saying anything about what just happened. "The world of dreams is an excellent place to practice magic, I have always felt. The classic student's complaint 'But I can't do that' is inarguably foolishness here, for this is your dream. You needn't concern yourself with what is possible, here, only what is imaginable. Imagine yourself doing magic. Dream of magic, learn the feel of it, and carry that feeling into the sunlight. Do this, learn the processes, and all that is left is practice."
"I didn't say you could teach me magic," said Mag. “Wait… I did? But was was awake me, does it count?”
"May I teach you magic?" said Luna.
"Not just now. I feel so tired. I'm asleep, but I'm so tired. What does that mean?"
"You've had a trying day," said Luna. The pink unicorn tied a cute bow made out of blueberries to the princess of the night tail.
"We all have," said Mag, "and between the three of us, I'm the one with the fewest problems. I'm being selfish by bringing it up."
"Nay. I have fewer problems than you, for a problem is only a problem insofar as it may be solved, and what you would call my problems are insoluble, whatever my sister's view. All that I love is gone, Mag, except for my sister, and there is nothing I can do about it. I shall cling to what I have left, therefore, as the survivor of a sunken ship clings to a piece of broken hull, and paddle to shore as best I can. Then I'll prove that it is possible to live with a broken heart."
"How can you stand it?" asked Mag. Was that a cruel question? She couldn't take it back.
"I can't," Luna answered.
"What can I do?"
Luna smiled. "You are already doing it dear niece."
Right, being Celestia adopted daughter, even if she felt like Celestia pet human instead.
Mag finished her drink and tossed the glass into the fire. "Celestia thinks she can bring back Equestria."
"To that I can only say that if hope were music, Celestia would be Mozart," said Luna.
"It's pronounced 'Mozart,'" said Mag.
"I don't care. Of course, in fairness, blind hope is how she accomplishes all her miracles. She turns traitors into sisters and mortals into legends. Celestia can be so very stubborn, and she has a talent for finding loopholes, so who can say for sure what she'll accomplish? But there is no bringing back the dead. But come; you don't yet wish to discuss magic, and, in all candor, I haven't the heart to discuss what has been lost. So, apropos of nothing and without any reference to tiring subjects or questions of rights to teaching, out of curiosity, does this taste of blueberries?"
Luna have Mag a chair, Mag bit a piece off it and ate that.
"Sometimes I get the feeling you two are used to getting your way," said Mag. “And no, it tasted like strawberry juice.”
"Sorry this is rather important. I'll explain why later tonight. How about this?" Luna licked Mag face, it tasted like moonshine, and made Mag feel drunk.
"No, why blueberries?”
“Your magic is pink, dancing and blueberries.”
And then Mag was wearing a pink tutu.
“I am not dancing.” Mag protested
“I am not the one who put you in that pink tutu.” Luna really looked like she was holding back laughter and making a horrible job at it.
“Oh great, I should just have keep ignoring the pink unicorn.”
“Oh right, because that has worked great so far, has it not?”
Mag couldn’t argue with that. So she danced, and because it was a dream, she actually could do it.
Pink became her dance partner and have her a kiss, it tasted of blueberries.
Then Luna was wearing a pink tutu too.
Mag felt down laughing, then she feel off a precipice. She made no sound as she hit the bottom; there were no sounds there.
"Our time is up. One more thing…" Luna voice whispered.
Mag woke up to a genteel knock on her bedroom door. "Lunch's ready," said Celestia. "Would you like to come out? We can talk about what happened, if you like."
"Be out in a second," mumbled Mag, and slid out of bed. She lifted her fingers to hook the hair out of her face, but noticed something in her hand that hadn't been there before. She turned on the light to look at it.
It was a drink coaster embossed with the words "The Sleezypretty."
"You've lived a life without magic," said Luna, "but today you found it in yourself, and now you must learn that the rules are not what you think they are. Be humble and be careful, or others will pay the price. Do you understand? Remember the Titanic."
Distracted about why and how Luna would know about the Titanic, Mag lost track of the coaster somewhere between the bed and the door. She never saw it again, but she later found a pink plushie she had believed lost forever.