SIX MONTHS LATER
It was a nice place to be before I moved on.
For the third and final time of my life, I was in my dreamscape forest, and I was grateful for a final opportunity to talk to Luna. As expected, she appeared, looking a bit shaken. I didn't need to ask what was wrong.
"It's alright," I said. "I'm perfectly fine."
In reality, I hadn't been fine. I had been, as I had predicted, stuck in a hospital bed constantly taking medications and treatments, going through each fruitless attempt to eliminate the cancer that would remain until it killed me, which, once this dream was over, it would.
I had been aching from treatments, my hair had gone, and I looked nothing like myself. Here, I was back to the same person I used to be, pain gone, feeling better than I had since I was last here. It felt like it was impossible to be scared or worried in this place, as all I could feel was calm.
"This is your final dream, I presume," said Luna.
I nodded. "Yep." Taking a look at the sky, I noticed the bright moon, always present.
"Wonder what it'll be like," I said. "The afterlife."
"I suppose we can only imagine for now," said Luna. "It seems your time has not come yet."
"Yeah," I said. "How have you been these past few months?"
"I have been well," said the night princess. "Concerned, but well."
"Concerned?" I had suspected it. "Is it about me?"
Luna sighed. "Your condition, Dean, has left you limited, kept you from what should have been a whole and happy life. You have a good heart, yet now here you are, at the precipice of your lifetime, preparing to step over the edge. It is sad to see, yet there is nothing that can be done. It must happen."
"I appreciate your concern, Luna." It felt nice to know she cared, to know she wanted to stop this just as much as I did. But we both knew that soon I would stop dreaming, and I would never be able to see her again. The thought sat in the back of my mind, and I tried to ignore it. I was dreading that part.
"You know, when I was twenty-five, I went to go visit one of my friends. He had two kids, and a little while after I got there I noticed the older of the two, maybe ten or eleven, drawing on a piece of paper. I remember he kept looking at me as he drew.
"I went back to his house two months later, and when I was about to leave his older son gave me a drawing. The one he had been working on the first time. It was a drawing of my face, and I could tell he had put a lot of effort into it. He was really happy to give it to me, even though he barely knew me. He had only seen me twice.
"I know it's a bit of a childish way to go about it, but three years ago I started a drawing of my own. I finished it a while back, after we last talked." I felt in the pocket of my jeans, jeans I hadn't worn in six months. And there it was, folded and a bit wrinkled. I handed it to her. "It's sort of based off of my memories of you when I'm conscious."
She extended her hoof and took the paper, using her magic to unfold it. It was the first time I had seen her use her horn. It was incredible.
She looked at the drawing for a moment. I felt a twinge of embarrassment, but I stood where I was, waiting for a response.
Luna looked back up at me, smiling the sort of smile you'd give to your dog licking you on the face before getting put to sleep. It was a sad smile, and it hurt to see. "Thank you," she said softly. I didn't know if she would keep it, but I hoped.
"No problem," I said. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out the words I had been trying to conceal behind my mask of calm this place provided me with.
"I don't want to die, Luna."
It seemed that those six words, said with the same calm I had spoken with since the beginning, were too much for the princess to take. A tear rolled down her cheek, and I couldn't help feeling sorry for her, just as she was feeling sorry for me.
"I do not want you to die either, Dean." She looked up at the moon as she did last time, tears still falling down her face. It was a sight so beautiful yet so sad.
"Hopefully dying isn't too bad," I said.
"Indeed," Luna replied.
And I could feel everything slowly beginning to fade. I turned to Luna, who turned toward me, looking me in the eyes.
"Goodbye, Luna," I said, wrapping my arms around her in a heartfelt hug. It felt nice to finally be able to touch her, like a sort of long-needed confirmation of her existence.
"Goodbye, Dean." She said, returning the hug. Everything became more and more foggy with each passing second. It wasn't like before, as if I was returning to reality, but different, the feeling more hollow, because I was now truly dying. It didn't hurt at all.
And then everything was gone.
"Well, that's it," said a man. "He's gone."
Before him was a bed, occupied by a man who had just passed away. With him were two other men, friends of the deceased. There wasn't a dry eye in the room, not even those of the young doctor.
"He was a good dude," said another of the men.
"Look, he's holding something." The third man reached down and grabbed a piece of paper from the dead man's hand.
"How in the world was he able to hold that through all of this?" said the second man as he and the first looked over at the piece of paper that had just been unfolded.
It was a well-drawn picture of a horse, an indigo blue horse with wings and a horn, and a flowy-looking mane dotted with white specks. In the corner of the piece of paper were the words Luna, The Princess of the Night.
"Wonder where he thought of that," said the first of the three men as he wiped his eyes.
"Who knows," said the third, refolding the paper and placing it gently back in the man's hands. "Maybe in one of his dreams. Dean was a great thinker, he always told me, 'Guess I just dreamt it up." The man sighed.
The three friends of the man named Dean left with the doctor, leaving the departed alone in the room.
This was the end.