As one night pony pondered the implications of a suspiciously beneficial deal, another was alone pondering the stressful politics that were flaring up back home in his dream. As creative and artistic as he could be, Stanley wasn’t a dream crafter, which was fine by him. Some ponies like Silver Eclipse were naturals at it and would spend countless days building up some fantastical dream, but Stanley was more than content just using the quiet place to reflect in.
Dreams were often strange and hard to follow— even for night ponies, but they could also reflect a deeper insight into one’s subconscious thoughts, and that’s just what filled Stanley’s current dream. A warped desert village with shadowy phantoms sprawled out in front of him, a dark and foreboding rift torn through the center of it. On one side, there were earth ponies and night ponies united together in the farm fields; on the other, there was another night pony surrounded by unicorns and pegasi. In the center was Stanley, who was standing on his own isolated chunk of land, the two different sides of the village caught in a complicated dance around him.
This dream wasn’t surprising to him at all— it was clearly a representation of the current situation back home. By all counts, the side with the unicorns and pegasi represented Dawn’s loyalists, who were kept in the dark about the betrayal that was happening right in front of them. The earth ponies represented Gizmo’s loyalists, who had been granted permission to do as they pleased by Midnight Sun, albeit off the books. Their ambition and desires were not misplaced, but the fact that they were now granted the permission to simply do what they wanted without any formal compromise between themselves and Dawn meant that any further negotiations would most likely fall through.
In the center sat Stanley, the pony who saw both sides of the drama and was drawn into it whether he liked it or not. Maybe that was his problem? Perhaps his kindness and drive to see things with an open mind was itself misplaced. Could he have possibly avoided the position he was currently in? Probably not, at least not forever. No, it was clear that this shaky peace was a stopgap at best.
Closing his eyes, he decided to clear the dream and move onto the next part of his reflection. Opening his eyes, Stanley looked all around at the infinite darkness of the dream realm and smiled. As weird and as scary as it could be before, by now the place had become a sort of second home— maybe even an extension of his self as some night ponies had come to see it as. In here he was just another lone soul in a pool of millions of countless other minds, but despite that, he still felt as if he was a part of something greater than just himself.
He could have sat and just reflected on the nature of Dreams for the whole night if he wanted to, the serenity and solitude would have done wonders to ease his current stresses, but he had something important to get off of his chest. What felt like ages ago, Silver and Scarlet had offered him a place to crash, and the growing discontent that a number of his close friends were feeling towards Dawn was pushing him to consider any alternative options that he could.
In this case, it boiled down to finding a new home for him and, for sure, at least two others. However, the growing rift between Gizmo’s loyalists and the ponies loyal to Dawn was growing at an alarming rate, and he wouldn’t be surprised if half the village decided to pack up and move. Feeling antsy just sitting around, he reached out into the endless starry void and felt for the familiar signature of Silver’s dream, taking note of the fact that there seemed to be two familiar but subtly different stars floating in the void.
Focusing harder, he decided to ignore this fact and instead latched onto the stronger of the two dreams, pulling its gateway towards him. Opening his eyes, a brightly lit star that somehow seemed to shine a little differently than usual greeted him. He couldn’t immediately tell what it was, but something was different here. This wasn’t a passionate or lust-filled dream, and it wasn’t a sad or happy one either… it just looked and felt like any ordinary dream would, but with an almost ghostly shine to it, as if it was somehow in a different plane of existence than other dreams were.
Choosing to ignore the growing sense of curiosity that was currently welling up within, Stanley trotted into the dream. Greeted by a distinctly alien environment, Stanley let out a gasp as he looked around at the twisted buildings that Silver had created. It hadn’t been all that long since he had last visited his friend’s dream, but the stallion’s proficiency had grown so much in that time.
A somber quiet filled the air, and for a brief moment, Stanley almost felt as if he was alone, but surely this dream wouldn’t still be active if he was. Deciding to investigate, he trotted around the twisted cityscape, taking in the mysterious otherworldly nature of it all. The buildings themselves were made up of strange materials that seemed to shine with the sheen of polished metals but felt more like stone to the touch. The stars in the sky up above shone with an uninhibited clarity that would never be possible out in the waking world.
In the back of his mind, something felt off, as if this dream was somehow different than the many others he usually explored, but he couldn’t quite place what it was for certain. A grim feeling of unseen eyes watching him sent a shiver down his spine and almost caused him to jump back at the unexpected sensation.
“Stanley?” the voice of Silver called over to him, “Hey, what’s up man?”
“Oh, not much, just the usual,” he half-heartedly replied.
The stallion trotted up to him and scanned him over, “Everything okay? You seem a little down.”
“Just stressed,” he admitted.
“More trouble in the village?”
“Something like that. Basically, it’s a lot of politics that I didn’t expect to have to deal with, and there’s a divide growing between the earth ponies who aren’t happy and the ponies loyal to the village leader who don’t want to change anything.”
“That sounds like a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” he paused and looked up at Silver, “so that’s kind of why I’m here.”
“Oh? What do you mean?”
“Well… remember when you and Scarlet said I could maybe crash with you?”
“Uh-huh, still need a place to stay?”
“Me and about two others, and maybe a bunch more— if things don’t work out, that is.”
“Right,… well, I think that’d be a little too cramped for our cabin, but if it’s just you three, I can see if there’s any room in the village.”
“And if there’s more of us?”
Silver paused. “That’d make things a lot trickier. How many are you talking?”
“Probably a dozen or so, mostly earth ponies. But there’s also a few pegasi and unicorns who might tag along.”
“Yeah… that’s going to make things difficult. If it was just the three of you, then we could probably find a place for you to crash at, but an entire village’s worth of ponies is out of the question right now. There’s only so much space to go around without cutting into land that still belongs to the humans and there’s no telling whether they’d let us expand out more.”
“That’s what I figured, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyways.” Stanley looked away and summoned a gateway to another dream. “I need to go talk with one of my friends about this, so I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Hang on a sec,” Silver replied.
“Huh?” The stallion turned back to face his friend.
“This is going to be a total long shot, but I might have a solution. I just need to go talk with some of my friends about something else.”
“Well, I don’t want to bother you with it any more than I have to. Unless you’ve got a whole empty village lying around, then I don’t think you’ll be able to help, but I appreciate it.”
Silver’s face briefly twitched as if what Stanley had said had sparked some thought in his mind, but if the stallion had an idea, then he sure wasn’t going to say it right now.
“It’s not a bother at all,” Silver continued. “Like I said, it’s a huge long shot, and I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I might know a way to get this to work out good for you. You’re up in Arizona, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Even better. Just hang tight for now if you can, and I’ll come find you when I know more.”
“Not to sound unappreciative or selfish or anything, but how long do you think this’ll take? Because I don't think that things are gonna last if the village drama keeps going the way it’s going. One of the leaders is basically going behind another one’s back to make her side of the village happy, and I just know it’s going to go south real fast.”
“Can you hold on for a week?”
“We can try. I don’t think peace will last that long, but I’ll try and nudge it towards that as long as I can.”
“Great. Just give me a week to get some stuff worked out, and I’ll let you know what happens.”
“When you say you’ll maybe have things worked out, what do you mean? Because I’ve got a lot of ponies that’ll probably need new homes if things don’t work here, and I can’t just lead them on with a maybe.”
“I can’t say a whole lot because it involves stuff learned in a dream that I can’t share. But the short answer is that I have friends over in Phoenix who are working on some stuff, and there’s a small chance that they’ll maybe get a facility of their own set up at some point. It’s a small chance, mind you, and almost all of it’s up in the air right now.”
“And you’re saying a bunch of refugee ponies could stay there or something? What kind of facility is it?”
“I’m saying something like that. I don’t know what they had in mind, but they talked about wanting to buy up an old mining town someday, and I might have found a way for them to do it. It’s not much, but it’s at least better than nothing, though,” Silver added.
“If it actually goes through,” Stanley countered. “You said it’s all up in the air, right? Is that something you can really figure out in a week’s time?”
“As crazy as it sounds, yes. If I can get everything worked out, then they could hopefully get everything settled sooner than later.”
What Silver was proposing sounded way too good to be true, but the Stallion seemed so genuinely sincere with his plan that it gave Stanley a mix of thoughts. If this worked out the way Silver wanted it to, then that would quickly solve one of the biggest issues Stanley was facing right now, but that would also bring forward its own issues. A village was only as good as the ponies that ran it, and starting another would only end in failure if they didn’t address the actual issues that kept creeping up.
A lingering sense of unease and anxiety boiled to the surface, but despite his better judgment Stanley nodded. “This is a huge leap of faith, but if you can make this happen, then I owe you one. A lot of ponies will owe you one, in fact.”
“You don’t have to owe me anything; ponies help each other out, right?”
“This is a huge help, though. There’s a lot of ponies that might need an oasis of their own soon, and this is giving them that chance, even if it doesn’t seem like a huge deal to you.”
“Tell you what, I have to call up my friends, so I’ll see what comes up tomorrow, and I’ll get back to you. I won’t know everything for sure, but I’ll have a better idea of what’s in the cards then. Can you do me a favor in the meantime, though?”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“A list of how many ponies might be displaced and their tribe. If we’re going to start something, it’d help to know at least the basics of that. We can probably work the rest out later.”
Stanley nodded. “Alright, consider it done.” He rested a hoof on Silver’s side, “Thanks again for looking into it. I know it’s huge to ask, but I still appreciate it. I wish I could say that things would work out well where I am… but I can’t. So thanks.”
Silver smiled and nodded, “It’s no trouble at all. That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Right…” he agreed.
Looking back at the twisted buildings, he almost couldn’t help but imagine them as another reflection of what he felt inside, even if this wasn’t his own dream. Regardless of what it reflected or didn’t, his mind was still filled with an uncertainty that he’d just have to trust. Things were about to get a whole lot more intense, and he just knew it…