Luna woke.
Which was odd, because she didn't remember sleeping.
She lifted her head, feeling the crisp prickle of hay against her neck and cheek and shoulder and jaw, and found that odd as well, because the last time she had seen hay of any sort was when her motorcycle had decided to spring a leak at the gate of a farm in Windriver, half-way into their journey to Applewood and hundreds of miles from anywhere.
A lucky place to break down, if she were honest; Celestia would never have known which oil to bring back from the service station, while the old goat of a farmer who owned the place had been able to recite the specs of her engine from memory and had even offered them dinner. The start of a horror movie for some, but in this case they had left the next morning with nothing scarier than a friendly goodbye.
Luna sat up and plucked a stray straw from her hair. She was dreaming, that had to be it. She'd fallen asleep while working on her bike and now she was dreaming about happier, younger days.
She peered about the dimly lit barn, for that was all it could be, and wondered if this was the sort of dream where the shapeless monster crawled from the shadows to torment her with vivid memories of her past mistakes, or the rarer Invasion of The Naked Football Team, though as far as she could recall, they'd never had an agricultural theme before.
"T'is neither one, nor the other," said a voice.
And then Luna realised it had been her voice, though she hadn't spoken. So it was one of those dreams, was it? She glanced around again, noting the same still shadows in the barn at first, until one in particular, beneath the eaves by the back wall, caught her eye as somehow deeper, filled with glittering dust that seemed to stretch into eternity.
"It is no dream at all," said her voice from all around, whilst the dust shimmered and weaved about itself until, all at once, the diamantine outline of a rather fetching horse formed within it.
One of those dreams...
The figure, transparent at first, hauled itself from the shadow and in so doing, tugged the shadow taut about its frame to form coat and rippling muscle and flowing mane, until the shadow was town away entirely and the horse stood, whole and real, before Luna. She looked the creature over, took note of the polished horn rising from its forehead, the wings folded at its side, and found she could only let out an odd sigh.
"So. You're real after all."
"Sooth," the horse replied, on the tail of a dainty forward step. It bowed its head to her. "As real as any one thing might be in this place, at least."
Luna braced her hand against a nearby post and rose first to her knees, then to her feet, one crackling leg at a time. She saw the sympathetic wince on the face of this unearthly counterpart of hers, but the creature made no move to assist.
"Not a dream, you said." She closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her thighs a moment, until the perpetual stiffness had eased out of them enough to ignore when she straightened up. "I could believe it. My dreams don't usually hurt."
She could smell the creature now, against the rank sweet decay of the stable. A low, dry scent, bitter and sharp, like an overworked spark plug or a failing alternator. Like the smoke of a firework, freshly spent. M-Ones let loose in the boys restrooms.
"You don't smell like a horse." Luna and immediately had to resist the urge to slap herself. She closed her eyes a moment instead. "I mean–"
"T'is but a trifling error. As you may see plain," the other replied, lifting a wing, "I am no such beast."
Could have fooled me, Luna wanted to reply. instead she stared at the wing and hoped she didn't look like a complete idiot, until it folded away.
The creature turned then, nodding horselike as it moved, which put the lie to at least part of its claim. It ambled toward the door and paused there, its tail flagging – a word Luna's memory dedged unbidden from that same night, farm and farmer, as they had supped deep into his less than legal stock back-woods liquor, while he had held forth on the intricacies of horse husbandry – and looked back at an expectant expression. A narrow frown curled the corners of its mouth when Luna didn't move.
"Follow," it said.
Luna crossed her arms. "And if I don't?"
"You will find yourself most bored," the not-a-horse replied. Then it stuck out its tongue and trotted through the door, which opened a moment after.
"I shouldn't be dreaming about rude ghost horse princesses at my age," Luna muttered. She glared about the barn a last time, in the hope that the Mustangs might finally make an appearance, then shuffled toward the door when it was clear her hopes were in vain.
The world beyond stretched to a horizon vast as any Luna had dared imagine, one that called to her with an aching familiarity, though she was sure she had never seen its like. No lonely Windriver ranch this. She looked up to her left, where a distant mountain peak glowed golden and red in the light of a low sun. Rising or setting, she couldn't be sure, but it was beautiful all the same.
Close by, Luna saw her companion standing belly deep in a meadow of rippling, seed-heavy grass. She was staring at the mountain as well, head tilted a little to one side. Her eyes were narrow, melancholy; her lips pressed together to little more than a thin line. Her mane floated about her head as if submerged in eddying waters, where before it had hung limp and blue across her shoulders and neck, yet for all that she seemed more solid, more defined than in the mundane world of the barn at Luna's back.
Unprompted, Luna moved to her companion's side, to place a hand on her thick neck. Who it was meant to comfort was a mystery for the ages.
"I remember, a long time ago, being told that you looked after dreams." Luna looked up; her companion gazed back at her, half-smiling. "Is that why you're here?"
"Would that it were so." Her counterpart looked away again, back to the horizon, to the mountain. The silvery thread of a waterfall glittered on its flank, standing needle-like above a faint mist of spray. It seemed to fascinate her. "I do not, cannot, walk the dreams of your world. Which gast may tread such vales is unknown to me. Our reason to meet in this place is far, far different."
Luna plucked at the grass by her leg, tugging free a fingerful of fat, golden barley corns. "Then either I'm dreaming you, and my dreams are being unusually obtuse." She held the corns out to her companion, who refused the offering with a snort and a shake of her head. "Or I'm awake and I should be looking for a stargate and a pair of ruby slippers."
"Were I to insist this was not a dream, you in your turn would insist that a dream would indeed say such a thing regardless of its truth."
"And if I demanded proof, anything you'd provide would easily be explained as my own memory within the dream. Or merely the product of my own fertile imagination."
"And rich it doth appear," said the horse, with a noticeable shudder about its shoulders. "Thus we stand, deadlocked."
Luna's jaw clenched; she worked it, eager to avoid the dreaded lockjaw her mother had always warned her about as a child, though it was a silly thing to worry about after so long. What narrow possibilities were left to her–
"Then there must be a third choice," she said, more to avoid the spiralling of her mind than anything else. Always forward. "I am neither awake, nor am I dreaming. What else is left?"
The horse, the princess, whatever the creature may be, looked expectantly at her. And she knew it was so, because it was her face, no matter how long... there was probably a joke in that somewhere. But there was also a lack of denial.
In itself, that was telling. Luna lifted her eyes to the horizon, or where she thought the horizon must be within the misty shroud, endlessly in motion, that circled all that she could see. Toward that distance she made out near-empty fields and meadows, bobbing heavy with crocus and daffodil and thick meadows of sweet grass. This might well be heaven for some creature like her companion, but it also brought to mind the endless summer days of her youth, when life had seemed so much more vivid and real, and endless.
The expectant look remained when she turned back to the horse. Again, for a moment, Luna felt her gaze drawn to the distance.
"Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?"
The words came unbidden, rose frantic to her mouth before she could think. Anything to distract from that mist-shrouded horizon and the river that ran across it. Her interlocutor, companion, whatever she might be, tilted her head and frowned.
"I am aware of such a thing," said the horse. "A cart that moves itself upon but two wheels, yet does not fall. My sister did tell of her attempt to ride such a beast once, in a world much like your own."
"So that'd be a no..."
"We have little need for such things." The alicorn raised her forehoof and waggled it awkwardly, then turned to preen briefly at her wings. She was showing off, Luna was sure of it.
"I could tell stories..."
But then she caught the other's eye, the curious set of her gaze, and had to pause. What stories could she really tell? Celestia was the creative one. She leaned back against the motorcycle propped at her back. Then she stumbled and turned awkwardly to face it. A single, moon-white headlamp stared back at her, between the wide flare of a custom handlebar and a carefully polished fender.
"What the fuck?" she said.
The Princess ambled toward the motorcycle, holding her head low as she snuffed first at the front wheel, then at the handlebars. Her nostrils flared when she reached the leather seat and the fuel tank, but if she had any particular comment on them, she held it back.
"A curious tool indeed," she said, raising her head once again to look down her nose at Luna. "You appear upset."
Luna held out her hands toward the bike. "What the fuck," she repeated.
"It is a motor cycle, is it not?"
"That's– that's not the point." Luna knelt down by the bike, one hand on the tank, the other on her knee. She ran her fingers across the silver-grey paint. "This is Tiberius." She paused a moment at the Princess's querying snort. "I was working on him–"
The silence was the thing. Luna dropped her hand from the bike and leaned back on her haunches, arms folded across her knees as she looked up at the sky. Since awakening, she hadn't heard a single bird or insect anywhere.
"He's always had a squirrely oil pump." She lowered her chin to her arms and stared at the bike's engine. How often had she spent with that thing torn apart on a workbench? "I'd replaced it three times. New lines twice. Nothing ever really worked. That's how we ended up outside that damn farm."
"I am familiar with the unwitting attraction of such places," the Princess said. Her voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper.
There was a story behind that, Luna decided, but maybe she'd ask about it later. She stood, grasping the bike's closest handle to steady herself, and leaned over the machine as if it were a slumbering lover.
"You're still going to insist this isn't a dream," she said, looking up. The Princess lifted her wings a fraction; a shrug, possibly. Not an answer. She probably wouldn't find any now. "Then there must be a way back home."
Further silence was the only response she got, while this alien creature that spoke with her voice only stared at her. Luna shrugged herself then, swung her leg over the back and settled into the familiar curve of the saddle. She fumbled a moment in her pocket for the key, but then found it was already in the ignition.
Tiberius started with a gutteral wheeze – another problem she had never quite managed to resolve – and a quiet rumble deep in its mufflers. Luna smiled then, revving the engine once, twice and then leaned back to listen to the quiet tick of idling valves.
"T'is noisome," the Princess said. Her voice was raised, as were her wings when Luna looked back to her.
"You know that doesn't mean loud, right?"
"We know of which we speak," the Princess replied, flaring her nostrils. She stepped back a pace, folding her wings tight against her body. "It is loud also. One wonders how you might stand to bear such torment for more than a moment."
"You get used to it," said Luna. She revved the bike again, then kicked back the stand and settled into her seat. More upright than Celestia's tourer. What an odd thing to remember. She turned to the Princess and grinned and she twisted her wheel in the opposite direction. "I'd offer you a lift, but I have no idea if I'm going your way. Besides..."
"You do not know which way is your way, either," said the Princess.
Luna just shrugged and pointed toward the edge of the field, where a rough road meandered away toward the distant mountains. She gave a tight wave and then jerked Tiberius into gear, kicking up a rooster tail of grass and dirt as she swung the bike toward the road.
It didn't take long to recall that she wasn't wearing a helmet, or leathers, or anything remotely appropriate for biking in an apparently deserted wilderness. Yet, as unkempt bushes and meadows flew past on either side, Luna found she didn't really care. It wasn't a problem, she knew, though how she could be so sure of this was a mystery. Just add it to the pile, she thought.
A shadow flickered across her, passing from right to left. Luna looked up to find the Princess coasting down to fly alongside the road, banking gently as she swooped between and over trees and berms, and weed-entangled cairns that should have looked out of place, but didn't.
The road wound onward, rough, but serviceable, though it seemed little used in any case. There were no ruts and tracks, no patches of tyre-trampled mud or traffic-scuffed verges. Not even the prints of boots or hooves. All the better; no surprises on this ride. Luna powered on, pushing Tiberius to speeds she hadn't sought in years, not caring how the wind whipped her hair across her shoulders and back, and into her face, or how it sucked greedily at the tears crawling from the corners of her eyes. A helmet might have helped there.
Bushes and trees drew closer to the road as she roared on, narrowing her path until all she could see was the road, a sliver of sky, and the mountains rising above the pale horizon.
And all the while, her Princess self sailed serenely alongside, barely flapping her broad-stretched wings.
The road dipped abruptly ahead; no, not a dip. A gulley crossed her path, a little less than a metre wide, but deep and sharp all the same. For a moment Luna braced, her fingers stretching for the brakes until she fought them back. She yanked at the throttle, stealing a final pace of speed from her engine, and at the cusp of the gulley she leaped, hauling the weight of Tiberius aloft just enough to bring his rear wheel to solid ground on the far side.
The bike landed with a crunch of earth and gravel, and the rattling ring of strained trusses. She felt the rear snaking out from under her and twisted the front, falling into a dramatic power slide that sent a fan of scree into the air in the sort of display that would have had Celestia berating Luna's recklessness, even as she recorded the whole thing for posterity on her ancient camcorder.
Luna found herself in a broad, rolling meadow, dotted with clumps of nodding daffodils and sheaves of tall, feather-tailed grass of the sort whose name she could never quite remember. The road had narrowed again to little more than a goat track in the grass, barely wider than Tiberius' wheels.
A river sang close by, rolling shallow over its rocky bed. The river, the same one that had seemed so distant just minutes before, so impassable and ominous. Luna kicked Tiberius back onto his stand and killed the engine, before easing oh-so-gingerly from his saddle to stand at his side.
Her companion alighted near-soundlessly on the far side of the bike, expression stoic as ever. Luna scrubbed a sleeve across her eyes and looked up at the Princess, at her own self if she had to be honest, trying to force a smile to her face, though it ached to weep.
"He hasn't worked like that in years," she said, resting her hands on Tiberius' saddle. "It was perfect."
The Princess lifted her brows. "Indeed?"
"I ain't in Windriver no more," Luna whispered. She closed her eyes and took a breath. "I'd hoped..."
"You often do," said the Princess. "Hope has been our bedrock for such time as we have existed. It was the end of hope, however briefly, that drove me to darkness and despair. I am glad that you have yet to follow that same path, even now."
When Luna opened her eyes, she found she was rubbing her fingers back and forth across her heart. "It hurt," she said. "So much."
"It will again."
"What if I don't want it to?"
The Princess stepped around Tiberius to Luna's side, ushering her with a raised away from the bike and a little toward the river. Feathers embraced Luna, still carrying the same acrid scent she had noticed before. It should have been unpleasant, distracting, but it was more a comfort than Luna could credit. She leaned into the unconventional hug.
"If I could promise an eternity free of pain, I would do so."
The Princess nodded toward the river, that now flowed deep and wide between the nearside bank and another too distant to even see. A scree beach sloped away from Luna's feet, toward the sluggish water.
"It isn't a promise I can make," she continued. "This way, across this river, lies a new life, of pain, and pleasure, and intimacy, and loneliness, and loss, and triumph, and all the other things that make life more than mere existence."
Luna found her eyes drawn toward the horizon again. "And if I stay, I die?"
"Nay. To die, as to live, is to seek and find change. Change is anathema to this place, as eternal changelessness is anathema to life. Look," she said, holding her free wing toward the horizon. "See."
Shielding her eyes, Luna peered toward the horizon, to the mist that had teased at her mind since she had laid sight to it. When she spoke, her voice quivered. "What am I looking at?"
"Look closer," the Princess whispered.
At her words it seemed as though the horizon drove into a tight circle about them, barely more than an arm's length away, and now Luna could see clearly the jumbled mass of ghostly forms that made up the endlessly wavering shapes of the mist. Barely visible arms reached toward her, beneath blank-eyed faces whose mouths twisted in endless, paradoxical despair as their fingers brushed within mere inches of her flesh.
She pressed herself deeper into the Princess's comforting grasp, arms wrapped about her chest and shoulders as if that would somehow ward off the chill she felt deep in her heart. "What– who are they?"
"Those of this world that denied the choice between life and death. This is their torment. There is no hate amongst them, no anger, no fear, because there is no joy, no love, no compassion. They feel nothing but the endless despair for life."
"Can they be saved?" Luna looked up at the Princess, at her huge, shining eyes that bore so much pain and sadness.
"I do not know," she said. "Perhaps, at the end of all things."
They were gone again, banished to the horizon once again. The road was gone. Tiberius was gone. Luna stood once more on the beach by the river, facing the distant mountains. Below that peak, in the mist that had risen over the still water, a low-decked boat scudded slowly toward the shore. She looked to her side, where the Princess waited at some remove.
"Will I remember any of this."
"You will not." The Princess smiled, though her eyes were wet. "To cross you must drink of the river, and be cleansed of your past."
Such is life, Luna thought. She knelt by the water and dipped her hand in the river then raised her gaze to the Princess one last time.
"I hope I have less expensive hobbies. "
She raised the water to her lips.