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// Chapter 19: Love Hurts 
// Story: Marshmallow Dreams 
// by Halira 
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The first time I ever saw Miss Seapony's other form was the night after the Cataclysm of Riverview. 

I don't remember what I was dreaming, because she didn't give me a chance. The first thing I was aware of were hooves and wings wrapped around me, and a pony sobbing on my shoulder. She had dark orange fur, and a dark red mane. Her cutie mark was something that made me blush to even look at, and I won't describe what it was. She didn't seem that old, maybe my mom's age, or even younger than that. She looked entirely unlike her normal form in the dream, yet I knew somehow this was her. 

"What's wrong, Miss Seapony? Is it the thing that happened to that city?"

"Oh, Rebecca." She sniffled. “Today I have lost my beloved sister.""

"I don't understand? You have a sister?"

Still not letting me go, she answered. "Had… Sha'am Maut. She was so cruel and hateful, she did horrible things to ponies and I hated her for it. She’s the main reason why so many people hate us Dreamwardens, and she’s gone forever now."

"But you said you loved her too?" I was still confused.

"My brothers, and my other sister-- well, sisters again now, in the Dreamwardens knew her better than anyone. She had so much hurt happen to her, so much injustice, so much loss, that it became all she knew. Yet there were still rare moments where she could still be kind and gentle. Enough to give us hope that she could one day escape her darkness. People never saw her with foals, or those she went to in their last moments. When she’d drop her guard and show the gentle soul buried under all her hate, something worthy of love. Unfortunately, all her other moments reminded us how far removed she was from that goodness."

She stopped and choked out more sobs. "We tried time and time again to plead with her, tried to offer her help, tried to make her understand, but in the end she never came back into the light. I hope that where she is now that she somehow gets her spirit healed and knows some peace."

I had a rare moment of needing to be bluntly honest. I thought Miss Seapony might be blinding herself to how bad Sha'am Maut was. She'd told me lots of stories about her in the past, and I knew Sha'am was a very BAD pony. "Even bad people can do good things. Didn’t Hitler love dogs?" That was something I always heard people say. 

Miss Seapony pulled back from me and growled. "I'm well aware that she was evil, Rebecca. My siblings and I are not naive. We just lament that we weren't able to save her from herself."

"I still don't know how you can both love and hate someone," I confessed.

She sighed. "Love and hate are not always separate things and family complicates things even more. I know the good that Sha'am was capable of in her softer moments, but I was not blind to what she did in all her other moments. I felt nothing but sympathy and woe for the hardships that made her into the monster she became, but I could not deny the woe she caused as a monster. She was a broken and sick person that we wanted so desperately to heal, and we failed so horribly at doing so. Now she is gone."

I didn't know what to say as Miss Seapony wrapped her wings around me again. She put her head once more on my shoulder and whispered. "Let me just cry for my lost sister. Today I'm asking you for comfort. People around the world will soon be cheering her passing, but the dream realm mourns."

And so she started crying again, and I wrapped my wings around her as she did.





I was now a mare on a mission. Miss Seapony had deliberately kept me from knowing anything about her foals, and I wanted to know why. I knew it was deliberate; there was no way with all the years we spent together that she wouldn't have told me more about them than they exist if she hadn't been keeping it from me on purpose. I didn't even know how many more there were. Were more ponies going to come at me like that? 

There were more questions. Out of the whole world what were the chances of actually running into one of them? There were more than half-a-billion ponies in the world, yet somehow the two of us still met, and she knew who I was. She knew me by name on sight, and everything about her was a mystery to me. The only way she could know about me was if Miss Seapony told her. Why would Miss Seapony tell her about me and not tell me anything about her?

Why did she think Miss Seapony loved me more than her? Was it true? 

I told Maggie that I needed to go home. If she wasn't ready to leave that was okay, because I could fly if I needed to. Maggie didn't argue with me about it. She simply said I had enough crashes already today, and flying around mad wasn't a good idea. I don't think she knew how to deal with me right then. I rarely got mad, and never lasted more than a few seconds. This was new, this was me seething with bottled-up anger. I wasn't even completely sure what I was angry about, but the hurt, anger, and resentment in Lántiān's words made something in me snap. 

Maggie drove me home, and when she dropped me off I told her I would give her a call tomorrow afternoon. I didn't mention I needed to face Miss Nightmares tomorrow morning, because all that mattered was facing Miss Seapony tonight. She knew about my intentions for tonight. I didn't have to say anything for her to know. Maggie likely had no intention of getting involved with me yelling at a Dreamwarden. Like most people she had a fear of them, and no desire to provoke them; not that she could, since she couldn't encounter a Dreamwarden in a dream. She'd never meet Miss Seapony.

I accidentally slammed the door to the house shut after walking in, and my mom lightly admonished me from the kitchen for it. "Hey! Easy on the door. The door didn't do anything to you. You're home earlier than I expected. How did the-"

I walked straight by her towards my room. "I'm going to be projecting. I don't know how long I'll be, but I need privacy."

She immediately picked up on my mood. "What's wrong? Did you and Maggie have a fight? Did someone at the school make fun of you?" She paused briefly and lowered her voice. "Is this about the stuff we aren't supposed to talk about?"

"No, I don't know what this is about, but I'm going to find out!" I closed my door with a more deliberate slam and retreated over to my bed.

At this point I realized there was a major miscalculation in my plan. I was too worked up to project. In order to project I needed to be relaxed, calm, in my happy place. I was most certainly none of those things at the moment. Trying to force it when I was like this wouldn't work either. That meant I either had to calm down, or I needed an alternative method of getting to talk to Miss Seapony. 

I tried to calm myself and find my happy place, but it became apparent that wasn't going to be happening. I needed to do something else. With a beat of my wings I was back down off the bed and headed back to my door. I marched down the hallway to go see my mom in the kitchen.

"Do we have any of that stuff… what's it called? The stuff that makes people sleepy?" I asked her as I entered the kitchen. 

It looked like she was making dinner. My stepdad wasn't around, which meant he must have had a later shift at the restaurant today. She pursed her lips as she laid down the knife she'd been cutting vegetables with. "Melatonin, is the name. Yes, we have some. Are you going to tell me what has you acting like this? I'm almost done prepping the food, and you can try to calm down with a meal."

My first instinct was to snap, but I restrained myself. Snapping at my mom would be unfair to her. She hadn't done anything wrong, and was just trying to help me. There was no guarantee that the sleep aid was going to do much to get me to sleep faster either if my adrenaline was running. I clenched my wings against my side and took a deep breath. 

"I met a pony named Lántiān today. She says that she's Miss Seapony's daughter," I explained. 

My mom blinked and grabbed a chair. She straddled it and sat down so she could lean over the back of the chair and cross her arms. "That's interesting. Not something I would have expected. It doesn't explain why you're so angry though. Did she say something to you?"

I plopped my rump down and stared down at the floor. "She says that Miss Seapony died because of me. She says that Miss Seapony loved me too much. She acted like she hated me, but said she was really angry at Miss Seapony."

My mom took that news in with a long exhale. "Wow..  Okay, sounds like there is some serious family drama going on there. I always thought that she spent an inordinate amount of time with you. If I was her daughter I might be a little resentful too. What kind of pony is she? Tribe I mean."

I flicked an ear. "Pegasus. She's got blue fur, a black mane and tail. She was wearing yoga pants that blocked me from seeing her cutie mark. She was giving out information about some organization at the school, and all the people doing that were seniors or recent graduates, so she has to be older than me."

My mom frowned. "She's a student at your school? That's quite a coincidence."

I went full scowl. "Yeah, I thought so too. One of the things I wanted answers from Miss Seapony about."

My mom leaned the chair towards me a little so it was on two legs then plopped it back down on four. "You know. It must be tough being a pegasus with a night pony for a mother, much less a Dreamwarden."

I looked up at my mom and cocked my head. "Why do you say that?"

She shrugged. "Think about what it must have been like for her growing up. Her mom is always asleep when she's awake, and when she's asleep her mom is awake. She doesn't ever get to see her own mom. In the meantime her mom is giving you plenty of attention in the dream realm. That probably changed after Yinyu… after what happened when she tried to reach the states, but that was years of time where she never got to have her mom. Judging by the age you describe those were the years she would have most wanted her mom's approval, and she never had her there to get it."

I lowered my ears and head, and wrapped my tail tightly around myself. "I- I never thought…" All that time she had been giving me all the care and attention any filly could ever ask for, Lántiān had been sitting there wanting. Miss Seapony had planned to come to the USA to train me in person, so her final days were partially my fault. I now was starting to understand the anger Lántiān directed at me, but I still didn't understand why Miss Seapony had never said a word about Lántiān. It didn't explain why we ended up together at the same school. It also didn't answer why Miss Seapony had told Lántiān about me if she was so quiet about her own foals. 

Thinking about how Lántiān must have felt took the seething anger out of me. I was still angry at Miss Seapony, but it was a more subdued anger. A lot of it was actually at me wondering how Miss Seapony could leave her own daughter feeling like that. 

I stood back up. "I think I'm calm enough to project now. I don't need the melatonin. Thanks for talking to me. You've been a big help."

"I'm always here for you, for anything," Mom replied. She didn't stand up, only watched me. "After you're done come back and talk to me some more. It doesn't have to be about anything important. You're going to be moving into the dorms soon, and I won't be seeing you as much. It won't be long before you're moved out of here altogether, and starting a new life on your own. I want my time with you; I only get so much."

I turned and half galloped back to her. Grabbing a hold of her leg and giving it a squeeze. She reached down with both of her arms and gave me a proper hug. "I love you, Mom."

"I love you just as much or more. Don't ever doubt it," she replied.