Your room is dark.
This is not news to you. It never really is--you’ve preferred the darkness for quite some time yet. You don’t quite know what it is, but there’s something comforting about it, almost as if your childhood fears of the darkness had entirely reversed themselves to the point where you were almost afraid of the light.
That, in and of itself, is not far from the truth. No, you are not so much afraid of the light itself, but more so what happens within it. In the light is where the eyes of the world are upon you. In the light is where the expectations of others, be they wanted or not, are heaped upon your shoulders. In the light is where others can see you plain as day, and where they can make judgments about you. In the light is where all your actions are laid out plain as the day itself, and where they can be scrutinized and picked apart by everyone who takes enough of an interest to do so.
Perhaps it is not so much a love of the dark, more so it is a fear of the light.
You sigh. Tonight marks the umpteenth time where you haven’t been able to catch a wink of sleep. You have almost stopped trying, at this point--resigned to your fate of being a near nocturnal being whose body clock is almost permanently set in the opposite way as it should be. Your desk has a mass of papers upon it, unsorted and unfiled, in addition to a half-drank mug of tea. In front of you, is your computer screen, its bright light illuminating the upper half of your body that is visible to it. This is perhaps the most familiar scene to you that you have ever known--for it is one that you live each nightfall.
There is a knock at your door. You glance at the digital clock in the bottom left of your computer screen, and see that the time reads 3:28 AM. You knew that your suite-mates also had tendencies to stay up late, but seldom did they ever make any disturbances after midnight. You sigh in resignation, and push yourself away from your desk, rising to your feet. With a quick stretch, you walk over to the doorway, hoping that whoever it is, they will not be here for long.
“Anon? May I come in?”
You freeze. The voice you hear is strikingly familiar--and female. Given that there are no co-ed dorms on your university campus, you wonder who on Earth it could possibly be, and what they could possibly want with you. You are by no means a recluse, but most of the time when girls speak to you, it is only to say hello in passing from class to class or to and from the dining hall. Carefully, you grip the steel handle of your door, turning the cold metal until you hear the needed “click” that allows you to swing open the large wooden board.
And before you, stands Princess Celestia.
You nearly jump out of your skin at the sight. Your first thought is that you are hallucinating, but you don’t ever feel the breath of hallucinations on your skin, nor can you smell the scent of flowers and freshly washed linen on them. You take a step back as your brain scrambles to try and make sense of what you are seeing, searching for any plausible explanation as to why the Sun Horse herself is standing right in front of you.
“May I come in?”
Her voice is soft, sweet, and soothing. Her eyes convey an unknown desire, a motive that you cannot quite place. Her lips are curled in a gentle smile, and her ethereal and ever-moving mane brushes against the doorway as she stands ever so politely and composedly before you. It takes a moment for her words to register in your mind, but when they do, you quickly nod your head and stand aside.
She ducks her head to enter, her horn missing the top of the doorway by mere centimeters. With a few graceful and elegant steps, she is in your dorm room. Princess Celestia, Princess of the Sun, Diarch of Equestria… is in your dorm room.
She sits. There is not a whole lot of room for her to sit given that your dorm room is, in essence, a glorified ice box in size, but with a bit of finagling here and there, she manages to sit regally as ever in between the bed of you and your roommate. She curls her tail around her legs almost in the manner of a cat, and although her mane brushes against the frame of your bed, she is touching mostly nothing.
Meanwhile, you are simply dumbfounded.
“...Hi there,” you say, unable to come up with much else.
The Princess before you giggles as she places a hoof over her mouth. “Hello to you too, Anon.”
How she knew your name, you were not sure. However, of the many things that were weird about this situation, that was certainly lower on your list.
You slowly move back over to your seat, and nearly miss it as you sit down. She has captivated your gaze entirely--it would be hard for any pony that came into your room not to, let alone… well, the character you had fallen head over heels in love with. Many thoughts fly around in your head, but only a few words leave. “Why… what… how…”
“I am afraid that I cannot be here for long, so I will keep this brief,” the Princess cleared her throat, looking into your eyes with careful attention. “I have come here to try and alleviate some of your ailments.”
You look at her quizzically. Alleviate some of your ailments? Why? And how? How did she know of your troubles? Why did she care about them? What prompted her to transcend the valleys of time and space to come to you, simply to try and help insignificant little you with your problems?
“Anon…” the Sun Princess begins. “I came here to tell you that I love you.”
Your heart practically stops as your mind ceases all non-essential functions.
“Yes… it’s true,” she affirms. “I love you, and I do not appreciate the way you have been treating yourself recently. All of these self-deprecating thoughts… thoughts that you could never be loved, that you do not deserve happiness… that I could never love you… I do not appreciate them.”
“Why…”
“You are so special, Anon,” she cuts you off. “You are funny, smart, talented, kind, caring, loving, and more… There is so much good that you have done for others, so many people you have helped, and so many things that you have gotten right… and yet, you seem only capable of identifying the wrong within yourself.”
“Princess, I…”
“Know that I love you, that I appreciate you, that I long for you, wish to cherish and hold you, to keep you safe and warm and comfortable,” she speaks. “It kills me to see you thinking the thoughts of yourself that you do…”
She rises to her hooves. “Please, Anon… if for no one else, then for me… love yourself. Care for yourself, and treat yourself with kindness as you wish to treat me. Give yourself the same love as you wish to give me…” she leans forward, and plants a soft, delicate, and loving kiss on your lips.
She then quickly trots off and out your door. You scramble to your feet to follow her, to cling onto her and not let her go, to tell her everything you have wanted to for so long; but when you turn the corner, she is gone. Vanished… as though she had never been there at all…
...And it is only then that you wake up, finding yourself only in your bed.