Tempest returned to her usual chores that day. Granted, even after her day spent laid up in the family’s guestroom, there wasn’t much left to do; the frostcarrots were adequately tended to, the family had enough firewood for the next two weeks, and there were no more outdoor odd jobs that she hadn’t done in her first week. Still, she found an hour or two’s work clearing snow from their garden walkways, just to keep her mind from wandering.
Yet wander her mind did, confronting questions both new and familiar.
What will I do, where will I go, if Gelfand’s family releases me?
Am I any closer to my goal?
What is my goal?
Is this where I’m supposed to be?
What else could I deserve but this?
Tempest noticed she was losing herself in her thoughts again. She looked up from her shoveling to come to her senses… only to see white in all directions. A chill wind blew wickedly against her face. A freak snowsquall? Adrenaline pumped. She dropped the shovel at her hooves.
“Hello Tempest,” spoke a royal voice from behind.
Tempest spun around, and quickly put a name to the voice: “Princess Luna?”
“That is correct. You are in a dream now.” An alicorn’s silhouette in the distance drew closer, until finally the princess of the night’s face was recognizable through the blizzard.
Tempest quickly thought back—yes, she had gone to lie down after she’d finished shoveling. She felt her body relax: The wind no longer whipped and whistled in her ears, and the air now exuded a soothing warmth over her whole body.
“Is this how dreams always feel?” The words rolled off Tempest’s lips as quickly as they came to mind. Sedated. Hypnotic. Uninhibited.
Luna smiled. “I have added a little something to this one. Is it agreeable?”
“Yes… very much so...”
As if caught in a compassionate embrace, she felt the warmth overtake her. It intensified many times over, without becoming hot. The blizzard’s snow was replaced by little white lights all around, blinding her in both eyes, yet it was not painful. Every sense of hers, even her mind itself, seemed to slip away, to be replaced only by things bright and blissful. It felt as though, she were falling asleep, dreaming within a dream…
An indeterminate amount of time passed for her in this state. A minute? An hour? After however long it was, Tempest experienced a gentle reawakening of her faculties. Awakened from the dream within a dream, but not from the dream itself, clearly, as the lights died back down, and Tempest could see and hear Princess Luna once more: “I felt you were only deserving of a good reverie, after what’s been the content of your dreams lately.”
As Tempest’s senses returned to her, so too did she feel her usual anxieties rise to the surface. “Yes, I was meaning to ask about those,” she said. “By presenting me with such nightmares, or at least in continuing to allow them to occur… I only imagined you had a very specific message in mind.”
Luna shook her head morosely. “Perish the thought. Those ‘nightmares’ are dreams in name only, and I have scant authority or control over them; in fact, I can only even observe such dreams through a foggy lens of sorts. Tonight, however, I made it a point to preempt them within your psyche, so that we might have a discussion.”
“I see,” Tempest ceded. “What are they, then, if not dreams like any other that you can control?”
“I can only influence the content of the idling subconscious; in your case, every detail of your nightmare was borne directly of your memories, immune to any amount of suggestion.” Luna peered across the barren blizzard landscape, before returning to Tempest’s gaze. “And though I could not easily witness them, it was clear enough that they were not happy memories, were they?”
“Somehow I wonder if you haven’t actually seen them, and are just trying to spare my dignity,” Tempest mused darkly. “Regardless, you can take a guess; you’re well aware of my past.”
“I should imagine you’re aware of mine in turn. The path of a reformed villain is a long and trying one, is it not?”
“Yes. As it should be, in my opinion.”
The response appeared to give the princess some pause. “Please don’t tell me you’re making the transition harder for yourself than it needs to be...”
Slightly indignant: “And how hard does it need to be? Or maybe, how hard should it be?”
She shook her head. “You are right to take offense; I should not comment on your situation as though it were my own.”
More than a brief moment passed in silence between the two. Tempest couldn’t tell whether Luna was trying and failing to find the right words, or whether the uncomfortable stillness was exactly what she was going for. “Well, I can’t pretend that our situations aren’t analogous,” she finally responded, “but I do think they are… incomparable, in an important sense.”
“Oh?”
“You tried to kill your sister, yes? And you were planning on conquering all Equestria out of sheer jealousy?” After awaiting an approving nod from the princess, she continued: “But none of that actually came to pass. You were stopped, purified, and thereafter revoked your evil ways. Your sins were purely potential—my own, actual. And the damages probably exceed my ability to fully undo even over the course of several lifetimes.”
Again, Luna remained quiet when Tempest desired some sort of response. So, she continued:
“It’s just, for a little while after I reformed, it felt amazing. To be able to listen to my conscience for once, instead of repressing it with lies and excuses. But then I realized there were negative things I had been repressing, too: The tortured voices of innumerable victims calling out from beyond the grave, who seek nothing more than some sort of justice. Voices that don’t want me to have a warm place to sleep, that don’t want me to have good dreams at night, that don’t even want me to still be—”
“These voices are in your head,” Luna interrupted brusquely.
“What?” Tempest retorted. In this moment of tension, she felt a fading of sorts, a slipping away… was she waking up? “They’re only in my head because I buried most of their owners.”
“And there is nothing in all Equestria—or Griffonstone—that will bring them back.”
“That’s right! There’s precious little I can do that’s a drop in the bucket compared… You know I’m in Griffonstone?”
The princess’s lips moved as if uttering a response, but Tempest heard nothing. On instinct, Tempest attempted to ask that she repeat herself, only to be met with the same silence. She felt her head begin to spin, as the silhouette of the princess against the falling snow faded and blurred into itself. Like sugar in water, the dreamscape all around her did rapidly dissolve, until it was replaced with the lonely, drafty interior of Gelfand’s shed.
Until Luna’s sympathies were nothing more than just a distant dream.