Twilight watched as The Slitherfort slithered away from the deck with her windmill standing high and proud, the crews and captain singing her an enchanting melody to thank her and wish her a safe journey.
Twilight sang back a grateful tune, thanking them for bringing her to where her beloved may recover. She sang also to the one crewman and Gus down on the docks with her, carrying Luna along with her bed.
As Twilight stepped off the dock, Undrykken Valley greeted her with gentle guitar rock and an accompanying soft drum. She giggled, admiring again her newly found ability to listen to the silent tunes of the Worldsbridges, this time not because an invitation card messed around with her brain.
The stairs down the dock sloped steeply as if the sea was atop a mountain or the valley an undried chunk of the seabed. Twilight trotted alongside Gus, humming tunes along with the valley’s rhythm and enjoying the view the valley was offering: seas of tulips in an assortment of colors covering all where there wasn’t a windmill or a village, with rows of Verenigost soldiers in elaborate uniforms trampling them and grinding them into colorful dyes under their spin top appendages.
Twilight saw that the road they were on wound across the valley, up and down the hills and behind the mountains only to show again on another mountain. Unending windy tulip plains and windmills dotting the landscape uniformly spread throughout the biome, patrolling soldiers grinding and collecting dyes ignoring the road completely.
Hills upon hills and villages upon villages they walked by, smiling upon soldiers should they cross paths and enjoying the tulips and the view.
Time passed and Twilight frowned. Right and left and up to the horizon sunken beneath the mountains, she saw that the view was not any different from when they left. Yet, looking back, the docks were nowhere in sight. “Are we going the right way?”
“Of course,” answered Gus.
“We’ve passed through so many villages. None of them was our destination?”
“None.” Gus kept on walking. “Just enjoy the journey; it’s a long one.”
And so Twilight walked and trotted and dragged her hooves and body down the road, pushing herself until her hooves ached and body full of sweat and breath labored and— “Are we there yet!?”
“No,” Gus answered flatly. “Just enjoy the journey.”
“We’ve been walking endlessly!” she exclaimed. “And it looks like we’ll journey endlessly still.”
Gus hummed. “Seems like it.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
He shrugged. “Why not? Just enjoy the journey.”
“Really?”
“Sing, and you’ll understand.”
And so Twilight sang to Undrykken Valley, asking it for a true path that would bring her to her destination.
The valley asked her what her destination was.
Twilight turned to Gus. “Where are we going?”
Gus wasn’t there.
She whipped her head left and right. “Gus?” She turned around and about, breath quickening and eyes darting about. “Luna?” Nowhere. The tulips were gone, the road was gone, the sky was an abysmal black and ground nonexistent. She tried to look up and down, but there were no up or down to find. She lifted a hoof but found that her hoof wasn’t there. She tried opening her eyes and found that she had no eyes. She tried to do anything, but there was nothing that could be done.
Twilight jumped up from her bed, her breathing quick and back full of sweat. She took a lungful of cold midnight air, then breathed it slowly away.
“You’re dreaming.”
Twilight whipped her head to her side, finding Luna sitting by the bed, looking down at her worriedly. Scanning up and around, she found the ceiling high and full of stars, the window tall and draped by a pair of twinkling blue curtains. Luna’s room. “I… I guess I am.” She took another breath. “You saw my dream?”
“I did.” She lifted the blanket away. “How are you feeling?”
“Strange,” she said. “All that seems so… real.”
“You’re stressed.” Luna floated a bottle of wine from under the bed. “I brought you a drink.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
She shrugged. “I thought you’d want some.” She floated a pair of glasses from her cupboard.
Twilight sat in silence as Luna poured the red liquid, the glass suddenly cold as it started to fill and dew collected by the sides and made her hooves wet. “It’s your favorite wine.”
Luna giggled. “It’s also your favorite wine.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It is?”
“It is. Now come on, you’ve had a rough week.”
“Yeah, I—” She stopped her glass midway. “Wait, what?”
Luna looked at her worriedly. “Is something wrong?”
“I—yes!” She pointed a hoof at Luna. “We—we just broke up! A-and then—”
“We… what?” Luna put down her glass. “Twilight, d-don’t be silly. We’ve never broken up before! I—” She gaped. “This is not... You’re not suggesting, aren’t you? Twilight, please—”
“B-but we have! But then we come back! And then you—” She stopped, then stared down at her glass of wine, the dew now a layer of frost biting into her fur, decorated with a frozen drop of water.
“Twilight,” Luna said slowly as she reached out to hug her, “you’re stressed.”
“I-I guess I am.” She looked at her in the eyes. “Luna, I’m so sorry. I-I’d never leave you!”
Luna kissed her on the forehead. “I know, Twilight.” She smiled and whispered, “Now, drink. It’ll calm you down.”
“Thank you.” She downed it in one gulp, the liquid fire burning her throat and drying her tongue.
“Twilight, are you okay?”
She opened her eyes, finding a pair of blue irises looking at her worriedly. She glanced right and left, finding herself in a cafe in the middle of Philadelphia. Men and women alike chattered about with coffee accompanying their conversations.
“Twilight, you’re daydreaming.”
She stared at those eyes again, ignoring Luna’s gentle fingers against her golden ring. “I guess I am.”
“A penny for your thoughts?”
She lifted a steaming mug of frozen wine. “What if I am a unicorn? A purple unicorn, one that could do magic with her horn?”
Luna giggled, her laughter jingling across the establishment and down the streets like how once their wedding bells rang across the city. “I'll love you the same. But why a unicorn?”
She closed her eyes and downed the wine after saying, “Dragons.”
A dragon roared, and Twilight felt a gust of hot air brushing against her fur.
Opening her eyes, she saw a black dragon right in front of her, its wings spanning as wide as a castle and claws as wide as two ponies standing back-to-front. She touched her chest, finding herself clad in heavy armor and carrying on her back the Caledfwlch.
There was a tower there, behind the dragon, and from the lone window she could see the faint glow from her princess’ glowing mane.
“Right,” Twilight murmured. “I was dreaming.”
The Jabberwocky jumped and flapped its wing, up high in the air then swooped to gobble her whole.
And Twilight jumped aside, dragging the Caledfwlch to and fro and swung it back and forth.
Callooh, Callay! And the Jabberwock laid still as its head tumbled down the cliff, splashing to the red-hot river with naught but a spiff.
Twilight took a rock and smashed it into a cup, then collected the dripping blood as the sides froze by the cold from the dragon’s heart.
“My hero!” shouted Luna from high above the tower.
“Yes,” Twilight answered. “I am.” She looked down at the cup of wine. “...Or am I?” She closed her eyes and downed the wine.
Opening her eyes, she found a book lying wide open in front of her, a ballpoint pen floating lazily in her telekinetic grip. Music in low fidelity drifted from her headphones, accompanying the steady rhythm of her writing under the desk lamp. Her cat was sitting at the edge of their window and staring idly at the dark raining city outside her dorm. Behind her was Luna, draped over the side of their bed, intensely focused on a game on the screen in front of her.
A minute passed before Luna grumbled and set her controller down.
“Luna?”
Luna took off her glasses and murmured, “Hm?”
“Do we have any wine?”
“Some leftovers from yesterday.” She looked at her and wiggled her eyebrows. “Greedy for another happy time, aren’t you?”
Twilight giggled. “I guess I am.” And she opened the fridge and downed the entire bottle in a single gulp, the freezing fire biting into her stomach like cheap beer mixed with naphthalene.
“Stop it.”
“I tried to.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I failed.” A chasm greeted her, stretching from horizon to horizon between her and a faint silhouette of a glowing castle in the distance.
“You didn’t,” said Luna by her side. “You can do this, Twilight.”
“It just seems endless.”
Luna clutched her hoof tight. “We’ll get through this, Twilight. It’s the end of our journey there.”
“But then what?”
Luna stared at her. “And then… what?”
“After all this journey,” she said as she swept her hoof across the view. “What’s there waiting for us?”
“A happily ever after.”
She shook her head. “No, Luna.” She looked at her in the eye and scowled. “There’s no ending. There’s never an ending. Destination after destination, journey after journey, and dream after dream, there’s always another sequel. Another journey. Another remake. Another dream. Another fantasy after the seventh time you said it was the final! The ending of the end and then what? Another generation is born and a new beginning comes for them!” She scoffed and wiped her tears away. “What is our purpose in this world? Nothing?”
Luna shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m just a figment of your imagination.”
“Exactly. I’m dreaming. This is all just a dream, and when I wake up, I’m just going to be in another dream. A metaphorical dream, that I chase down all my life.”
“And after that?”
“Nothing. I find another dream.”
“What is it, then, the point of your existence?”
“Nothing, nothing…”
“Really? Why does anything exist, then?”
“No reason, I guess.”
“Your guess was right.”
“Of course it is. You’re just a figment of my imagination.”
“I am your dream.”
“And I’ve got you.” Twilight sobbed. “And now what? Just seeking endlessly for another dream? What kind of journey is that? Not a journey, that’s what! It’s all just a… just a...”
“A game.”
Twilight stared at the castle in the distance. “It’s all just a game?”
“It’s a stage.”
“And all the creatures are merely players.” Twilight stepped forward to the chasm, and a tile blinked into existence to support her. “There is no necessity for existence in the universe, is there?”
“The physical existence is inherently playful.”
Twilight giggled and trotted forward, followed by Luna, as tiles upon tiles appeared to guide her across the chasm. “Like music. No one works the piano. You play the piano. There’s no point in a composition: the point of a composition is the composition; else the best musicians are the ones who play the fastest. Like a dance: there’s no endpoint on the dance floor to which I want to go to; the point of dancing is the dance.”
Luna, or, Twilight’s dream image of Luna, chuckled. “And life is like music.”
Twilight laughed and jumped over the chasm. “And we have to sing along with it!”
“We’re here!”
Twilight opened her eyes, finding beside her Gus putting Luna down in front of a cottage with a skull symbol drawn on its door. “This is it?”
“Yes,” the other crewman answered. “And thank goodness you’ve stopped singing.”
Twilight giggled. “Well, I’ll just sing some more, then. To enjoy the journey, y’know?”
Gus grinned and laughed, and soon Twilight and the crewman joined the laughter as a Verenigost sage opened the door and stared at them in confusion.