Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto


Sea

Alone. Untethered. Distant from anything else. It was a strange experience to see her own dream like an observer. An enlightening one, in a certain way, but still certainly a weird one. She was accustomed to seeing her own self in the dream world, what she was not used to was knowing that it was the real one she was seeing.
As real as one could be in a dream, at least. That, too, was an enlightening part of the experience. The inherent separation between the form one took within their own dream and the dreamer itself. On some level she'd always known about it, it made perfect sense when thinking things over, but she'd never fully realised exactly what it entailed.
Did Luna feel that distinction all the time? Did she see things both as herself in the dream and as her conscious self observing the dream? No. Luna was different still. Her form in the dream was one with her conscious self, a difference in form was at best weaved by her or by the dream she inhabited. She walked dreams almost physically. As physically as one could with a dream, at least.
Rainbow wondered if she'd ever get there. Or if she'd ever get back to where she was before her more recent revelations. She was pretty sure she could pull the latter off. Switch between the two levels of awareness, with enough practise, and she suspected that would be pretty useful. Or pretty cool, at least. But she doubted she'd ever get to do what Luna did, rather strongly so.
She only had a small, tiny, loaned fragment of the alicorn's powers. Beyond the simple limitations of skills and power, she wasn't sure it would even be possible for her to replicate what Luna was doing with what she'd been given. She could always ask, though, she supposed. Before that, she could try to test out what she'd hypothesised.
Though she wasn't completely sure it would work right then. She feared she may remain caught up in her own dream, if she slipped into it. Experimenting while out in the space between dreams seemed more likely to succeed, she'd be starting out from the other state there rather than sliding into it.
Her only other alternative was watching her own dream play out, then. Her body slowly drifting in the water, with nothing in sight for as far as the eye could see. She knew it could all change in the blink of an eye, but she felt it wouldn't. It wasn't that kind of dream. Instead she'd just drift along, going nowhere, looking at a sky that would just refuse to change.
Not exactly an entertaining thing to watch, all things considered. Would she rather live it through, though? She thought about it. She thought about it seriously, and she realised she would. Even if she might not know it was a dream while experiencing it. It was a strange thing, but interesting too. And maybe she'd missed the simple act of dreaming, undisturbed.