In her considerable free time, Astral found herself poring over her books and pages and pages of notes. It wasn’t that she was bored and needed something to do; it was that she felt good doing this. True, it was difficult, sifting through increasingly abstract spells for thaumatic magic, dream magic, and combinations of the two. But when she got them to click together, it was so satisfying. So she found herself diving deeper into the spells she’d made for the mailbox, refining them as best she could without the equipment of the lab. It was slow, but it was always forward.
One thing she didn’t know she’d love? The quiet. When all she had were her thoughts, she could pay plenty of attention to those thoughts. She was alone. She had no guests. And her walls were decently soundproofed. The only thing making any sort of noise was herself. That meant she could sit down with a glass of soda, a clementine, and get to work, and there would be nothing — nothing — to disrupt her flow.
Except for the knock on the door that nearly gave her a heart attack.
Astral twitched hard enough to send her book spinning across the table. Who’d want to see her? She waited for a few moments, holding her breath in the silence. If they were unimportant, maybe they’d go away and-
Knock knock.
Friggety. At least it didn’t sound insistent in any sort of government-agent kind of way. Taking a deep breath, Astral opened the door a crack and peeped around it. A semi-yellowish unicorn with a thick sweater and a messy mane and dorky taped glasses was standing right outside, shifting her weight around in anticipation. Astral pulled the door open a little more and cleared her throat. “Yes?”
“You’re Astral Mind, right?” asked the unicorn.
Astral barely managed to not blurt out, I was paroled! The more reflexive part of her was asking what else would bring somepony here but her sordid past? The more intellectual part of her managed to remind her that she worked directly for a princess, now, so plenty else could bring somepony here. “Yeeeaaah…” Astral said cautiously.
A grin briefly flashed its way across the unicorn’s face. “Doing-research-for-Moondog Astral Mind?”
Thank goodness for the more intellectual part, reining her in before she made a fool of herself. Astral let out a breath and said, “Yeah. How’d you-”
The unicorn leaned forward, making Astral take a step back. “You’re still doing research, right? Could I sit in on your next session?”
Astral planted a hoof in the unicorn’s face and lightly nudged her back to a standing-up-straight position. “One, how do you know about this? Two, who are you?”
“This is Canterlot. Gossip moves faster than light here,” the unicorn replied, taking Astral’s actions superbly well (all she did was adjust her glasses). “Even scientific gossip. I heard about research being done for Princess Moondog, when I asked Twilight about it, she pointed me in-”
“You just asked her?” Astral gawked. She hadn’t forgotten about somepony in Twilight’s world-saving entourage, had she? The only unicorn in that group she remembered at the moment was Rarity, who wouldn’t be caught dead in that getup. (And maybe Starlight? The stories were fuzzy on that.)
“I knew Twilight back when she was still a party-forgetting shut-in. Sort of.” The unicorn shrugged. “We’re still friends.”
“…Okay, seriously, who are you?”
“Oh! Sorry. Moondancer.”
At least she couldn’t be faulted for not recognizing the unicorn; Astral had never heard that name in her life. “You know we only work Saturdays, right?”
Moondancer frowned slightly. In a stating-the-obvious voice, she said, “I mean, I figured I should ask you before Saturday, so I don’t get turned down after I’ve already cleared my weekend out. …So you are still working?”
“For the moment, I… guess,” said Astral. “Uh, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Meet me here at… 8:50 on Saturday, and I can take you to the lab.”
From nowhere, Moondancer whipped out a pen and notepad and scribbled something down. “8:50 Saturday, got it. Soooo…” She leaned forward again, the grin creeping back onto her face. “What’re you working on right now? The mailbox?”
“Erm…” None of this was classified, was it? Moondog hadn’t said anything about that. “Y-yeah. I was, uh, just- looking over some measurements. Can you please get out of my-”
“So how far along are you?” Moondancer asked. “Have you linked it with Moondog yet?”
“Um.” Astral suddenly got the impression that she’d missed an important step of something somewhere. “Linked?”
Why did the slightest of frowns from Moondancer look accusative? “Yeah. Linked with Moondog. So the messages can go straight to her. You were planning on implementing that, right?”
“Oh, yeah, we were totally gonna implement that,” said the pony who hadn’t even remotely thought about implementing that. “We just- haven’t gotten there yet.”
“How close-”
“Look.” Astral planted a hoof on Moondancer’s chest and pushed her into the middle of the hallway. Not exactly lightly, either. “I’m glad you’re interested in this, but hanging around my apartment like this means you’re about the same level of annoying as door-to-door salesmares. Please leave.”
“Right,” Moondancer said, her ears back. Then those ears went right back up. Evidently, the love of science took precedence over things like shame. “Until Saturday, right?”
“8:50 Saturday and not a second earlier,” Astral said, already considering hammering a No Loitering sign to her door regardless of what Twilight said about it. “I’m busy.”
“Right sorry see you then,” Moondancer said breathlessly. She turned around and moseyed away, trying and failing to keep it looking casual.
Sighing, Astral closed her door. Ponies willing to talk about science was fun, but not when they barged in on you in the middle of something. Especially now, when she’d just been suddenly passed something she hadn’t imagined before. But, hey. No biggie. She just needed to rework her current project into something quite different from its current, semi-well-developed state. And hopefully convince Moondog to help, or else she’d make no progress.
No biggie.
“You know,” Astral said as Moondog slipped into her dream, “being able to send you a message and get a response in seconds is nice. If we ever have to bureaucratize this, it’s gonna be a nightmare.”
“Good thing getting rid of nightmares is what I was made to do,” Moondog said, brushing herself off. “Ergo, I am existentially compelled to oppose any attempt to bureaucratize the dream realm. So!” She flexed her wings. “What do you need me for?”
“You know how we’ve got the basics of the mailbox working?” asked Astral. “I get the messages in the dream and give them to you. I’m just thinking; if we, you know, kept going… maybe we wouldn’t need me at all. We could just drop the letters into the mailbox and they get sent to you directly.”
“Oh, come on!” Moondog said, grinning stupidly. “Being a glorified pack pony isn’t satisfying?”
“I’ve never even done it and I’m trying to avoid it. What do you think?”
Moondog chuckled, then tapped her chin in thought. “Might as well keep going. It’d make things easier for everyone.” She narrowed her eyes. “But what’s the catch? If there wasn’t a catch, I bet you’d be working on it already.”
“In order to do that,” said Astral, “we’ll need to work with you to connect it, and that means you’ll need to come into the real world.”
Groaning and rubbing her forehead, Moondog slouched forward. “You know, I hired you so I wouldn’t have to do that, not so I’d have to do it more often.”
“Tough tooties. It needs to work that way.”
“Stupid reality, with its necessities.” Moondog flexed her wings. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”
“Thanks. Also, um, you don’t have any objections to another pony watching us work, do you?”
“Not as long as they behave. Who’s the pony?”
“She’s named Moondancer.”
“Oh, yeah, she’s fine.” Moondog nodded. “Definitely cut from the same cloth as Twilight. But with less dedication to friendship and more dedication to studying.”
Astral’s eyes widened slightly as she nodded. That was… something. But on the other hoof, it also gave her an idea. Somepony that dedicated to science would be very, very punctual. So punctual that…
Astral sat just inside her door, waiting. Her clock said 8:48, but she knew it could be inaccurate. Any second now… Any second-
Knock knock knock. “Astral?” asked Moondancer. “Are you ready?”
Astral quickly set her clock to 8:50. Obsessive nerds made excellent timepieces, though sadly not portable ones. “Yeah, hang on.”
A quick gathering of her notes, and she was out the door, Moondancer trailing behind her and very talkative. “So what’s it like?” she asked before they’d gone ten paces. “Working with dream magic, I mean. Especially in the real world like this.”
“Eh.” Astral shrugged. “It’s… kinda hard to describe.”
“Can you try?”
After a moment, Astral said, “It’s like trying to wrangle a greased-up bubble on an ice rink, except there’s no bubbles or ice rinks but there is a lot of grease.”
Moondancer flattened her ears and tilted her head; you could practically hear the chugging as her brain struggled. Eventually, she said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Astral gave Moondancer a Look. “You see the issue.”
Moondancer stayed quiet for almost a whole minute, even unconsciously slowing her pace, as she pondered this. Eventually, she mused, “I really shouldn’t be surprised, since, you know, dream magic…” She shook her head and trotted up next to Astral. “Anyway, thanks for letting me in! I’m sure it can’t be easy to let somepony watch like this.”
“Eh, don’t worry about it,” said Moondog.
Astral had never imagined a pony could wrap their entire body around somepony else’s head before. Yet that was exactly what Moondancer did, Astral’s head being the one in question. She’d probably also squeaked in surprise, only for it to be so high-pitched nopony could hear it. (Astral also had no idea how she managed to keep herself upright.)
“Um,” Moondancer cheeped at the golem suddenly walking alongside them. “Hi.”
“Low,” replied Moondog casually in a deep, bassy voice, not so much as glancing in Moondancer’s direction. “Seriously, you’re not disrupting much.”
Moondancer managed to peel herself off of Astral’s head, allowing her to breathe again. “You’re not,” Astral wheezed as she rubbed her throat. “Just sit back and listen and don’t say anything that makes me want to throw you through a window.”
“That last part’s my job,” said Moondog sternly. “Also harder than it sounds.”
“Whoa,” Moondancer said quietly, clearly having not heard one word. “You’re… Wow. Twilight’s book really didn’t explain what you felt like.”
“Read that whole thing, did you?” asked Astral.
“Twice! I like knowing what the cutting edge of science looks like! And since she’s technically an accident, we won’t be seeing anything like her for… I don’t know, ages!” Moondancer whipped around to face Moondog. “What’re you even doing out here, anyway? I thought reality drained you.”
“It does.” Moondog flattened her ears. “Astral and her science friends need to link up the mailbox with me, and it’s kinda hard to do that when I’m not around, no?” She flexed her wings. “But don’t worry about it. It’s just annoying, nothing more.”
“Really?” asked Moondancer. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s it feel like?”
“A lot of things, but mostly…”
Moondog and Moondancer managed to keep talking for quite some time and still weren’t remotely close to running out of topics by the time they reached the lab. Starlight and Star Swirl were already there, discussing… classes and textbooks?
“…kind of a… tailored experience,” Starlight was saying. “I mean, they’re all drawing from personal experience and none of them are authors-”
“You could have a stenographer sit in the back of their classes and take notes,” Star Swirl responded. “If their students can learn from their lectures, surely other students can as well. Such knowledge is invaluable.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” muttered Starlight. “I’ll think about it.” Then she noticed who had entered the lab. Her eyes flicked between Moondog and Moondancer. “Alright, what went wrong?”
“This is Moondancer,” Astral said, poking said pony in the trunk (Moondancer didn’t notice; she was too busy boggling at Star Swirl). “She’ll be watching us while we work. And Moondog’s here to help us with the mailbox a bit.”
“We weren’t doing that badly!” protested Starlight.
“Not like that,” Astral said quickly. “Just- for efficiency’s sake, we’ll send the messages straight to her instead of a courier.”
Star Swirl coughed. “Perhaps things are done differently these days,” he said testily, “but perhaps we ought to make sure the base of the mailbox is working properly before we make it more complex, true?”
“Yeah, I figured.” Astral grinned. “Which is why I got it working already.”
“What?” asked Starlight, her ears jerking up like she’d been stuck with a pin.
Moondog began, “She-”
“Got it working! Okay, it’s not perfect, but I only needed to make a few changes.” Astral spread the jumbled mess that barely qualified as her notes across one of the tables. Star Swirl and Starlight immediately piled around her as she pointed. “See, here… we needed to… uh…” Hrng. She had a good idea of what was happening, so why was she so confused at how to phrase it? Stupid dream magic. “We needed to… link the… dream projection of the scroll with the… real thing… to… to, uh-”
“To keep the thingamahooze from breaking apart the whatsawhoozie, thereby keeping the haecceity of the message intact,” declared Star Swirl sagely.
“Yeah. That.” (Moondancer gave them both Looks.)
Star Swirl nodded as he contemplatively stroked his beard. “So obvious, yet so clever… And while we’re on the subject, I think I also have the dreamlock working, although I have been unable to test it.”
Well, okay, then. Of course, Astral knew she shouldn’t’ve been surprised at something like that coming from Star Swirl, but still.
“It was a simple matter.” Star Swirl laid out his own notes, far neater than Astral’s, complete with annotations and footnotes. “Taking each dream as its own universe linked to the multiverse of the collective unconscious, all I had to do was prevent any connections forming between the individual mind and the worldwide zeitgeist of sophontism.”
This time, the Look Moondancer gave Astral was sympathetic. “Simple, huh?” asked Astral.
“Indeed. I already have experience in that field.” Star Swirl pointed at the mirror portal. “Keeping the interuniversal link closed rather than opening spontaneously was a far easier task than adapting it to dream magic.”
“So how did-” began Moondog.
“Can I take a look?” Moondancer asked. She was a few impulses away from pogoing on the periphery of their group, not wanting to intrude while wanting to intrude so very badly. “I’m interested in the actual arcanics of it all, you know…”
“Here, take a look at mine.” Astral levitated her notes over her shoulder.
Moondancer snatched them up like a prospector would gold and darted over to a free table, quickly reading over them. Yet, within a few seconds, Astral could spot the exact moment her brain stopped working. Moondancer blinked, turned one of the papers upside down, and stared at it. “I’m not sure whether I want to devote my life to studying dream magic,” she said quietly, “or never look at dream magic ever again.”
“I know the feeling,” grumbled Star Swirl. “It took me far too long to put together a dreamlock prototype for testing. Every single gain I made seemed to slip away from me in the next step. But…” He held up a large, thick anklet, various gems and sigils awkwardly thrown on in a proof-of-concept sort of way. “I made the prototype without too much difficulty.”
“Hmm.” Moondancer looked back and forth between Star Swirl and his notes with a frown.
“Should we test that first, then?” Starlight asked. “Just so we know it’s working now.”
“Only if I’m not the one it’s being tested with,” Astral said. “Falling asleep and waking up like that over and over really… Well, let’s just say what we did to my circadian rhythm bordered on a war crime.” She still wasn’t sure her sleep cycle was totally back to normal.
Starlight and Star Swirl looked at each other for a moment, then Starlight sighed. “I’ll do it,” she said, snatching the anklet and slapping it on. “Just to get it over with.” She picked up one of the sleeping potions from the shelf, sat on the mattress, and held the bottle up to the light. “These things don’t… decay, do they?”
“No. The recipe is remarkably stable,” Star Swirl said. “Seal it properly, and one could drink it half a century later with no ill effects. Although the flavor might be lackluster by that point.”
Starlight uncorked the bottle, sniffed, and gagged. “At this point, lackluster would be an improvement.” Deep breaths. She swirled the bottle around, looked into it-
“Hey,” said Astral, waving a hoof. “Can we move this along? I think Her Nibs is getting bored.”
“What’re you talking about? I’m not bored. Whatever gave you that idea?” Moondog said as she juggled her heads.
“Call it a hunch.”
“Then here we go,” said Starlight. With a grimace, she downed the potion and was out in moments. No snoring. If the dreamlock anklet was working, it didn’t look it.
“Finally,” said Moondog. “Be back in a second.” Her image defocused and she was gone.
Almost immediately, Moondancer turned to Star Swirl. “So, transuniversal blocking. I’ve been doing some research on that — very, very light research, really, barely anything — and I had some questions that maybe you could answer.”
“I am a trailblazer in that field,” Star Swirl said, holding his head high. “What did you need to know?”
Astral promptly tuned the two out. If she needed to know, she could have it explained later. She’d bet money Star Swirl had no clue as to what he was doing on the dream magic side of things, anyway. She retreated to the corner with the mirror to wait for Moondog to return.
It took about ten seconds for her to realize that waiting more than five seconds for Moondog to do anything was strange. She was so prompt on… everything that any sort of waiting felt uncanny. But this was Moondog actually doing something rather than answering to a message, so Astral wasn’t worried just-
The surface of the mirror suddenly began rippling, and by the time Astral could react to it, a golden-orange unicorn had stumbled out. So she was probably one of the ape-things on the other side of the mirror, right? But she took to quadrupedalism just fine. Maybe she’d been here before? Come to think of it, how often did those apes come on through, only to stagger back, screaming in horror at what they’d turned into? (Astral assumed that was how it went. She certainly found them horrifying.)
Astral risked taking a step forward when the unicorn looked at her. Just as she was about to say something and risking botching her first interdimensional interaction, the unicorn instead seized the initiative by frowning and saying, “This isn’t the castle.”
Someone from another dimension still spoke Ponish? “Uh… yeah, it is,” said Astral.
“No, it’s not. It needs more books. And purple. And not lavender! Purple.” The unicorn looked around. “Did Twilight just do some remodeling? Or-” She looked Astral in the eye, her gaze oddly, casually intense. “Which castle is this?”
“Canterlot Castle.”
“Ah. Not Namepending, then.” The unicorn tapped her chin and stared off into the distance, as if that phrase meant something. “But Twilight already knows how it works… so why… Wait, sorry, let’s start over.” Clearing her throat, she said, “I’m sorry for intruding. I’m Sunset Shimmer.”
“Oh, right!” Astral said brightly. “You’re the edgy teen!”
Sunset blinked, then jerked as a snort threatened to escape her. Rubbing the back of her neck, she grinned in a self-effacing sort of way and said, “Yeeeaaah… Except I didn’t always have the excuse of being a teen…”
“I heard. Because of a load of weird, transformational, interdimensional night soil, right?”
“Close enough.” When Sunset noticed Starlight, her ears drooped a little in anxiety and she took a tentative step. “Is something wrong with…?”
Astral almost made a quip about, She’s a little nuts, but so’s everyone close to Twilight, but herself off; Sunset might not think it was funny. Instead, she said, “Nah. We’re working with Princess Moondog to- Wait, do you kn-”
Astral’s question got cut off by its own answer as Sunset’s ears went right back up again, her eyes grew wide, and her tail twitched. “Oh, Princess Moondog? I’ve worked with her before. Although dream magic’s one of the few fields I never touched on this side of the mirror.”
“Ask nicely and I bet she’ll teach you. …Um, do you… have somewhere to be? You kinda just…” Astral waved at the mirror. “And I don’t want to keep you.”
“Yes and no. I had a free weekend, so I was going to show up at Canterlot Castle to surprise Twilight-” (Astral wondered if every remotely important unicorn out there in the multiverse knew Twilight.) “-but I expected the mirror would still be in Ponyville, so if we’re in Canterlot already, I have some extra time.” Sunset looked around the room again. “This is all a lot more modern than when I was Celestia’s student. I wonder if…”
Sunset continued talking, but suddenly Astral wasn’t listening. Sunset had been Celestia’s student, hadn’t she? And that reminder made Astral notice a pattern. Just to be sure, she pointed at each pony in the room in turn as she named them, quietly talking to herself. “Moondancer. Star Swirl. Starlight. Sunset. Astral. And Twilight. And Celestia and Luna.” (She pointed at a random wall for those last three.) “And even Moondog.”
“Bit for your thoughts,” Sunset said immediately. Even Astral could see she’d gone full restrained scientist; her front hooves were rocking back and forth in restlessness and her ears were turned forward.
“I just noticed… If you give a pony a stellar name,” Astral asked, “do they automatically become a prodigy?”
Hundreds of miles away, Sunburst suddenly felt so incredibly inadequate he dropped Flurry Heart. (She thought it was great fun.)
“Not a pony!” chirped Moondog.
“Guess I shouldn’t’ve counted you among the prodigies, then,” said Astral. “Sunset, this is Princess Moondog.” Moondog smiled, giving Sunset a nod and a wave.
“Like I said, we’ve met,” Sunset said as she unfrazzled her mane. She’d taken Moondog’s sudden appearance like a champ, but certain reflexes couldn’t be beaten. “Anyway, nice to see you again… um, Princess.” Her legs twitched, like the decision to bow because of tradition was having a fight with the decision to not bow because of personal experience and neither side had much of an edge.
The tie was broken when Moondog’s regalia all vanished in an instant. “Oh, don’t worry about protocol, it’s overrated,” she said, waving a hoof. “Gets in the way of communication. Speaking of which, you heard anything from Exterreri?”
“No. I don’t really know what we’d look for, but I haven’t seen anything beyond the usual weirdness and nothing like him in the usual weirdness.”
“Alright. Let me know if anything comes up. Although I can’t promise much, since…” She pulled the air up to briefly reveal her crown still on her head. “Princess and all.” Glancing at Astral, she said, “Short version, the Eschaton’s a loser even across dimensions.”
Astral snorted. Somehow, that wasn’t remotely surprising.
“Anyway, researchers.” Moondog clapped Astral on the back. “Astral Mind, currently my emissary and courier.”
“Gofer and paid intern,” Astral stage-whispered.
“You know Starlight-” Moondog gestured at the still-sleeping pony. “-and over there’s Moondancer and Star Swirl the Bearded. Although Moondancer’s not officially a researcher at the moment.”
“So what’s wrong with Starlight?”
“A lot of things,” said Moondog (Astral groused at her missed line), “but at the moment, just a sleeping potion. Testing the whole, y’know, dream part of dream magic.” She gave Starlight a few light pokes in the ribs. “She’ll be fine once she wakes up.”
Indeed, Starlight’s eyelids were already fluttering. She groaned, murmured something about papayas, and stretched. With a sigh, Moondog licked her hoof and stuck it in Starlight’s ear, prompting her to jerk awake with a yelp and prompting Astral to wonder how a glob of energy even had saliva. “I’m up!” she squawked, making Star Swirl and Moondancer both jump. Rubbing her ear, she glared at Moondog. “Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, dropped a piano on me in my dream?” she asked.
“Yes, I could’ve!” Moondog said with a highly-punchable grin.
Starlight rolled her eyes and out of bed. She looked up, flinched when she saw Sunset, glanced at the mirror, and said, “Surprise visit to Twilight?”
“Surprise visit to Twilight,” Sunset said with a nod. “Hey, Starlight.”
“Hey.” Starlight yawned and stood up straight. “Testing dream stuff. Give me a moment to get my head on straight.” She started pacing a circuit of the lab.
“Excuse me.” Star Swirl had broken off from Moondancer and was now eyeing Sunset suspiciously. “Who might you be and what are you doing here?”
“I’m-” Sunset did a double take when she saw who she was talking to. “Star Swirl?”
“No, he’s Star Swirl, you’re Sunset,” said Astral. (“I was gonna say that,” Moondog’s pouty voice whispered in her ear.)
“I know Twilight said you were back, but, whoo, wow, I didn’t think I’d- Well, I suppose I did- But it didn’t really-” With every word, Sunset sounded more and more like a starstruck teen, albeit one more taken with whiskered wizards than boy bands.
“We know,” Moondancer said flatly. “He’s an old smart guy with a rumpload of magic, we get it.” Under her breath, she added, “Very old.”
Sunset kept talking like she hadn’t heard anything. “Sorry, sorry.” She took a deep breath, pulled herself to her full height, and extended a hoof. “Sunset Shimmer.”
“Ah, yes. The prodigal student.” Star Swirl bumped his hoof with hers. “Twilight has told me about you. She said you were as fine a friend as any.” A brief pause, then he added, “Once you, and I quote, ‘got over the whole demon thing’.”
“Yeah,” Sunset replied, snorting. “That was a little bit of a hurdle.”
“Fortunately, such hurdles are her specialty.”
Starlight cleared her throat. “Um. Getting back on track…” She raised the leg with the dreamlock. “This feels fine, both physically and mentally. No headaches, no balance issues, no existential dread from bystander syndrome beyond the usual, nothing.”
“Perfect.” Moondog clapped her hooves and rubbed them together. “Good news, everyone! As far as I can tell, the dreamlock is working perfectly.” She pulled down a crayon thought bubble above a crayon Starlight. “Went into Starlight’s dream, tried to access the collective unconscious, no dice.” A little drawing of Moondog appeared in the dreamscape, bumped against the walls, and scowled. “Came back out, went to the collective unconscious through a Night Guard’s dreams — those guys are so useful for that during the day — tried to find Starlight, unhappy dice goblin.” Crayon-Moondog flowed into a larger thought bubble, looked around, and scowled again. “One last trip back into Starlight’s dream to see if anything was going wrong, nothing was, boom, scouting done.” Moondog snatched the drawings from the air and crushed them into nothing. “Congrats, O Bearded One. We are now two for two on prototypes.”
“Uh…” Sunset raised a hoof. “I know I’m missing context, but why would you want to not be able to go into somepony’s dreams?”
“As a side effect of rudimentary dream protection that doesn’t involve me poking around in that somepony head,” Moondog said. “For, y’know, privacy’s sake for whoever wants it.”
“Fair enough.” Sunset took a step towards the door. “Anyway, sorry to bother you, I’ll just… Aaaactually, you wouldn’t happen to have notes, would you? I’ve got some free time and it’s been a while since I looked at Equestrian magic in Equestria-”
“Here.” Moondancer quickly pushed an equation-covered paper at her. “Take a look.” She sounded sullen, for some reason.
Sunset took one look at the paper and twitched. Without a pause, she snatched up a nearby quill and attacked the equations like they’d murdered her children. “Yep. Yep. Nope. Yep. Nope. Nope. Yep. Nope. Nope. Definitely nope. Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, that’s clever. Yep. Nope. Yep. Nope. Yep. Yep. Yep.” She went over it so fast the annotations at the top hadn’t yet dried when she reached the bottom. “Not bad,” she said, tossing the quill aside, “but half the techniques in here were obsolete decades ago. Who’s the hidebound mage who designed this?”
“I am,” growled Star Swirl.
Sunset suddenly looked like she was caught in the headlamp of an oncoming train. She looked at Star Swirl, at the paper, at Star Swirl again, and managed to wheeze, “It’s still old…”
“That’s what I was saying!” protested Moondancer. “And he won’t listen!”
“It works,” huffed Star Swirl.
“Yeah, the same way a Rube Goldbuck machine works!”
“A what?”
“You see what I’m dealing with?” Moondancer said to Sunset. “He hasn’t even heard of Rube Goldbuck machines!”
“Well, I mean,” said Sunset quietly, “he’s- Star Swirl, he- already knows so much about-”
“Urrfh! What is it with ponies and hero worship?” groaned Moondancer, risking a bruise from how hard she facehooved. “Make one good spell, even if it was a million years ago, and suddenly everyone thinks you can walk on water.”
“I was actually responsible for creating-” cut in Star Swirl.
“I know. Look, Sunset — that’s your name, right? — you obviously know this better than me, you argue with him.” Moondancer fumed off to one corner, plopped herself down on one of the lab stools, and started glaring at the table.
Sunset looked at the changes she’d made to Star Swirl’s notes, looked at the fabled arcanist of legend standing before her that she’d just called hidebound, and grinned nervously. “W-well, um, see, this part, it depends on an outdated theory of-”
Astral took a seat across from Moondancer to talk, but Moondancer spoke up first. “Here’s a tip,” she said. “No matter how famous or important they are, a pony is still a pony, with their own… hang-ups. And him?” She nodded towards Star Swirl (Starlight had also gotten involved in his and Sunset’s conversation, but at least it wasn’t coming to blows). “Still adjusting to magic moving on for over a thousand years without him.”
“Sounds like Star Swirl,” said Astral. A sort of bile curiosity prompted her to ask, “And you said you knew Twilight before…?”
“Before she even moved to Ponyville,” Moondancer said. She stated it simply, like the fact that she knew the Princess of Friendship was no biggie. “Her hang-ups were tunnel vision and… general aloofness. She once skipped an important party of mine because she thought she’d read something even more important in a book.”
“Ouch.”
“Except she was right, because that was how she learned about Nightmare Moon. So, yeah. Her skipping something that was important to me led to her becoming a princess, which did wonders for my self-esteem.” Then Moondancer smiled. “But don’t worry about us, we buried the hatchet and we’re on good terms again.”
“Good.”
Moondog suddenly flowed onto the table, coalescing a quarter of her usual size. “And don’t worry about Astral hero-worshiping,” she said, dropping onto her rump. “She’s just the right kind of cynic to avoid that. Part of the reason I hired her.”
“One of my conditions for working for her was being able to call her ‘Your Nibs’,” said Astral. “And Her Nibs allowed it immediately.”
“Really.” Moondancer looked between the two of them. “Then you both went up a spot in my book.”
“As long as you ignore my time in a cult with a boss so cliché he’s a stock villain in pulp adventure stories.”
“Alright, I’ll ignore that,” Moondancer said with a distressingly straight face. “Speaking of changing the subject to ignore that, can I get a better look at your notes for the mailbox?”
Knowing better than to try to fight with a scientist who’d smelled experiments, Astral laid her notes out. “It’s still a bit of a mess,” she said. “It’s very-”
“That’s wrong.” Moondancer pointed at one of the last equational systems. “Or not wrong, but not good.” She squinted at it. “End-of-research-session-and-low-on-coffee work, right?”
“Close enough. How’d you know?”
“I sometimes grade papers for favors, so I can recognize when somepony’s muttering ‘I hate math’ with every symbol they write.”
Astral snorted. “Yeah. That sounds about right. Never did get back to it. So how do you want to fix it?”
“Okay.” Moondancer grabbed a quill and started sketching a diagram out. “We start by abusing the Holstein equivalence principle until it screams ‘Uncle’…”
In all honesty, Moondancer wasn’t a huge help. There was very little she knew that Starlight and/or Star Swirl and/or even Astral herself didn’t. But she was good enough to definitely follow along, she made a decent sounding board for problems, and she knew some tricks to pull with magic that had to have come from experience. Of course, she hadn’t even come as a researcher to begin with. All things considered, it could’ve been worse.
As the S-unicorns pared down the dreamlock into something more manageable, Astral and Moondancer beat their heads against the math until something resembling Moondog-connected-to-the-mailbox fell out. Moondog herself kept bouncing between the two groups, offering commentary and help wherever she was needed. Including bodily mutilation.
“Do you really need to do this?” Astral asked, in train-wreck “I can’t watch but I can’t look away” mode.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. Maybe.” Moondancer peeled a little bit more of energy from Moondog and Astral cringed again at the thought of being flensed alive. “I can’t remember any of the non-invasive techniques for sympathetic magic like this, but I know they’re all complicated. And Moondog’s technically from a different plane of existence, so…”
“I mean, think about it,” Moondog said. Her leg stayed still as Moondancer continued her extraction “How much work did you need to do just to connect the physical mailbox to the dream mailbox? And that was with training wheels on. Just having her take bits and pieces of me works fine. …You can stop turning green, you know, this doesn’t hurt me.”
“Sorry. It’s just- my mind goes places.”
“Yeah, that’s called thinking.”
Moondancer rolled her eyes as she laid essence of Moondog into the spell matrix on the mailbox’s bowl. “How do you feel?”
“Ehm…” Moondog tilted her head back and forth. “No different than before, really. Give it a shot.”
Astral and Moondancer already had questions ready, written on folded pieces of paper. Moondancer dropped hers in the bowl; it hadn’t even touched the ground before Moondog turned to her and said, “Because Mom wanted me to keep disruptions to sleep to a minimum. I have been in your dreams; you just haven’t noticed me.”
Astral’s heart started fluttering and Moondancer whispered, “Oh, wow. That’s…”
“A fine example of a job well done,” Moondog said, grinning. “As long as it reaches me in dreams. On that note…” She evaporated away.
“She doesn’t stop much, does she?” Moondancer asked.
“She does if it’s worth stopping for,” Astral replied. She grabbed her own question — This sentence is false. True or false? — and tossed it into the mailbox.
After a few moments, Moondog puffed from the air. “Half and half,” she said, “but you need to use Lofty Saturn’s fuzzy logic. It’s useful! The equine mind uses it more than you realize.” She flexed her wings. “Everything was there, nothing got lost in transit. Even that little bit of ink you spilled in the bottom left corner. You’re good at this, you know,” she said to Moondancer.
Moondancer twitched backward, apparently surprised. “I’m- just bridging the gaps,” she said. “Grunt work. Following the trail that was already set out.”
“And that suddenly makes you not good at it?” asked Moondog. “There’s following a trail, and then there’s seeing where that trail’s going to lead. You’re more of the latter.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Better check and see if they need help.” She flowed over to the dreamlock trio.
Astral and Moondancer looked at each other. “I am just bridging the gaps,” Moondancer said defensively.
“Moondog’s still right,” said Astral. “It’s not like the gaps didn’t need bridging.”
“Anypony could’ve done it.”
“Not as fast as you. Half the stuff you were doing, I never would’ve got. Those guys?” Astral gestured at the other cluster of unicorns. “Eh, probably. But you were here and you helped and you were good at it, so thanks.”
Moondancer blinked expressionlessly. “No, seriously, this wasn’t hard. It’s not-”
“Ah-bah-bah!” Astral put a hoof to Moondancer’s mouth. “It’s an easy compliment from one of the princesses. Pretend it’s a big deal and bask in the adulation you get from the clueless.” In a stage whisper, she added, “It works for me.”
With a snort, Moondancer looked over the notes for the mailbox again (furious studying seemed to be a stress reliever for her). Half a second later, her ears went up. “Speaking of bridging,” she said, “we’ve already bridged this one way, getting information from the real world to Moondog. But what if we did it the other way? Getting information from Moondog to the real world. Unless you want to write everything down whenever she wants to send a letter.”
The very idea sent shivers down Astral’s spine. “Okay,” she said, “but… I mean, where would we even start? We sent info right into Moondog’s head, but that won’t do much good out-”
“I bet we can just flip the mailbox’s link around and strap it to a dictation spell,” Moondancer said.
Astral blinked, then hollered out, “Hey! Moonie!”
“See what I mean about this being easy?”
Another whirlwind bout of research- Well, Moondancer’s hunch about the dictation spell had proven accurate, so it was shorter and far less all-encompassing than a whirlwind. Dust devil stretch of research, then. Ten, fifteen minutes, max. It wasn’t even a particularly innovative fifteen minutes, since it was just hooking elements from already-established spells together.
And yet, that didn’t make it any less satisfying. Astral actually felt her heart thumping in her chest as she put the last enchantment touches on the quill they were using for testing. Excitement was excitement, and the body didn’t care whether it came from writing or bungee jumping. As she laid the quill down on a sheet of paper, Astral asked, “And the parameters of the spell will still hold, right? The quill will stay in the margins and everything?”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Moondancer said. “The spell doesn’t actually care about the source of the information, just that it’s formatted as words.”
“Which can actually be real limiting, but oh well,” Moondog said. “I’ll take what I can get.” She was sitting on a stool, eyes closed, not doing anything obvious. Of course, as Princess of Dreams, her best work wasn’t obvious.
“Are you doing okay?” Moondancer asked. “You’ve been-”
“Sure, sure. Just making the spell part of my essence.”
“You can do that?” Moondancer asked, agape.
“You can, too. It’s called habit and muscle memory.” Moondog grinned. “I can just form it consciously. Aaaaand…”
The stars in Moondog’s form suddenly twisted. A nighttime glow passed across the quill, which shivered. Moondog blinked and flexed her mane. “Whoof.” Bells clanged as she shook her head. “That’s a weird feeling.”
“Good weird or bad weird?” asked Astral.
Moondog opened her mouth, paused, then said, “Let’s see.” And suddenly she was gone.
Before Astral could be surprised, the quill shivered and stood up on its end. It scribbled out, If you can read this, it’s the good weird. I swear, Night Guard, SO convenient. Should I give a bonus to whoever’s dreams I use? Then it laid itself back down.
Astral and Moondancer looked at the scroll. Astral and Moondancer looked at each other. Astral and Moondancer grinned at each other. And Astral and Moondancer broke into little experiment-accomplished giggles at each other.
Moondog flickered back into existence next to them. “You know,” she said as she watched them, “scientists giggling like foals is either a very good thing or a very very bad thing.” She took one look at the paper. “Good thing! Good. Good things are good.”
“But, hehe, don’t listen to Moondancer!” Astral said. “You heard her, it’s nothing special.”
“If you think, heh, you think that’s special,” Moondancer responded, “you are one terrible arcanist.”
“Then I guess I am.”
“If it’s not special,” said Moondog, “then you’re not entitled to a…” She tapped her chin. “…specialist’s consulting fee.”
Moondancer’s flinch was so large it knocked her glasses off. She respectacled herself, goggled, and said, “It’s special! Special! So special! …You’re serious, right?”
“Considering you did plenty of work… yeah, I am.”
“She’s getting paid?” Sunset yelped.
“Based on the work you’re doing, so’re you!” Moondog said.
“Never mind! Anyway…” Grinning, Sunset tossed a scroll over — a scroll that was remarkably thin for all the work they’d been doing. “We’ve finished our work on the dreamlock. It’s so efficient now.”
Astral unrolled the scroll. She could recognize the same framework as the original design, but plenty of things had been removed, switched around, or renamed (changing a variable from x to p held considerably more meaning in dream logic than geometric logic). Astral could follow it as well as she could the first design (that is, barely at all), but figuring out how one had changed to the other was beyond her.
Not beyond Moondancer, evidently, who lit up once she saw it. “Oooooh, that’s veeeeery nice,” she purred(!). She held the scroll up, examining it like it was a centerfold. Nodding, she said, “Yeah. This is much better.”
“We still based it on Star Swirl’s design,” Sunset said quickly, “so it-”
“-was a learning experience for me,” Star Swirl said quickly. He was fidgeting oddly, like he’d been put on the spot, even though he’d enjoyed being put on the spot before.
“It’s a lot easier to work with,” Starlight added to fill the silence. “We actually probably could’ve made one here, but we didn’t have any materials short of melting the original one, so… yeah, bad idea.”
“I’ve heard worse,” Moondancer said vaguely. She pulled her attention away from the scroll. “And this won’t just keep you out, right?” she asked Moondog. “It’ll also stop the… whatever the nightmare monsters are called?”
Moondog nodded. “Oh, yeah, definitely! I forgot to mention: since the dreamlock stops the connection between dreams and the collective unconscious from forming, it’s actually impossible to get into somepony’s dreams from the collective unconscious. It’s not like breaking through a wall, it’s more like the space for the wall to exist in isn’t even there. No nocnice, no outside intruders, nothing. Perfect.”
“Good.” Moondancer turned back to the equations, and it almost looked like she was salivating.
A moment later, Astral raised her hoof. “So, uh… now what? If Moondancer and I have got the mailbox working both ways, and the Star Gang over there has gotten the dreamlock down to that, what’s next?”
“Hmm.” Moondog folded one of her ears down. “Testing, I guess. More intensive testing than we can do here. Full-night, long-term testing.”
“So… do we have anything else we need to do here, now?”
“Hmm. I guess we don’t.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Sunset spoke up. “In that case, it’s been fun,” she said, doing a catlike full-body flex, “but I really should get to Twilight before how is it 3:15 already?!”
Astral looked at the clock. 3:15ish. Huh. They hadn’t even broken for lunch.
“Dang,” mumbled Sunset. “I was hoping… Next week then.” She took a step towards the mirror.
“Wait.” Starlight zipped in front of her. “Okay, so you can’t see Twilight today, but do you really want to leave without doing anything? If we’re this far into working on these dream artifacts, maybe we could have some sort of celebration?” She glanced towards Moondog.
“Sure. We got a lot accomplished, might as well,” Moondog said with a shrug.
“And where are we going to have a good celebration at 3 in the afternoon?” asked Sunset.
Moondog pointed at the shelf of sleeping potions. “You know how cheap those things are, right?”
“Why’re you wiping glasses down if germs don’t exist?” asked Starlight.
“It’s a thing bartenders do,” Moondog replied as she continued doing just that. “Keep wiping glasses down until you wipe a hole clean through it.” (Of course, Astral figured, Starlight should’ve known better than to ask that, considering Moondog had whipped herself up a bartender getup even though the bar they were in didn’t exist.)
“She’s right,” said Sunset. “In TV and movies, bartenders are always cleaning glasses. It’s weird, really, if you think about it. The place is never that busy, and-”
“Hold on.” Moondancer wiped down her chocolate milk mustache and leaned in. “I’m sorry, I think I might’ve misheard something. What’s teevee?”
“Short for television,” said Starlight. “On the other side of the mirror…” And she lapsed into science-sounding words that made no sense to Astral but probably made plenty of sense to Moondancer and would someday make her very rich. She was definitely hanging on Starlight’s every word.
Astral turned away from the technobabble to Star Swirl, who was looking sullenly into his cranberry juice. “Why the long face?” she asked. “You’ve got the dreamlock working, right?”
Star Swirl’s grunt was affirmative.
“So what’s the matter? As far as I can tell, everything’s going fine.”
“I may need to go to school,” pouted Star Swirl. He grasped the tumbler in his teeth and tilted his head upwards to drink. He set it back down roughly enough to leave a dent in the table. “My cutting edge is not as sharp as the modern day’s cutting edge.”
“Oooooh nooooo, you’re not the greatest in all fields anymore.” (Off to the side, Sunset looked mortified.)
“It is more than just that. When I was young, before I was an archmage, I sought knowledge from all walks of life. Now I find myself falling back into my original habits. I am- I’m old.”
“Of course you’re old. Look at your beard.”
“My hair has been white since I was a colt.” Star Swirl made a gesture at Moondog and his cup was full again. “But now, my mind rejects ideas that were not around in my time. I fear I may never be jarred out of the rut I am in.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Moondog said, flowing over to them. “That jarring worked with Sunset.”
“Indeed, but we were lucky to run into her when we did.”
A little bell rang in Astral’s head. “So,” she said as she tossed the bell away, “let’s make sure the next time, luck has nothing to do with it.” And she grinned at Sunset.
Sunset blinked at Astral, looked at Star Swirl, gawked at Astral, stared at Star Swirl, boggled at Astral, gaped at Star Swirl, spluttered at Astral, wheezed at Star Swirl, and went chalk white from head to hoof.
“Yeah, you’re cut from the same cloth as Twilight,” Moondog said. She tapped Sunset’s head to let color drain back into her.
“I- I can’t,” Sunset said in a small voice. “I can’t- teach- Star Swirl the Bearded.”
“Why not?” Star Swirl’s voice was already perking up. “You did it already.”
“Once!”
“So surely you can do it again.”
“I have responsibilities, I can’t keep coming here! You’ll need to come to my side of the mirror!”
“A journey I’ve been meaning to undertake for some time yet never got around to.”
“You won’t even be able to use magic!”
“We already know I can use magic perfectly well. This is about technique. Forcing me to think about the systems being used would help me confront the problem head-on.”
Sunset glanced at Astral in terror. “Help me,” she whispered.
“It’s a great idea!” Astral said cheerfully. “You two should talk it out, get it scheduled!”
“That’s your idea of helping?!”
“You’ve got a problem with hero worship you need to get over.”
“Indubitably,” Moondog intoned.
“If you would rather not,” said Star Swirl, “I understand. Perhaps I ought to make study a habit of mine again-”
Sunset’s ears quivered and she swallowed. “W-wait,” she said. Her tail flicked. “I, maybe we can do it.”
“But?” Star Swirl’s ears twitched forwards.
“Well, my schedule’s kinda… crazy, and-”
As Sunset and Star Swirl talked about him maybe-maybe-not getting tutored by her, Astral leaned back in her chair. With no one else to talk to, she asked the air, “Moondog?”
Moondog materialized in the chair across from her. “Yeah?”
“What sort of testing will you be doing?”
“Nothing fancy.” Moondog flicked a hoof and a glass of orange juice slid across the table. “I’ll give the dreamlock to Twilight, she’ll give it to somepony to wear for a few nights, and we’ll see how well it holds up. I’ll write my reports to her over ethermail, she’ll respond in the same way, and we’ll see how well that holds up.” A shrug. “You can take a break.”
Actual free time. Forced free time. Time for Astral to (shudder) socialize. Ah, well. She’d live. “Hmm.”
“And, Astral? Thanks.”
Astral’s ears twitched. “For what?”
“For going above and beyond the call of duty, obviously!” Moondog said, spreading her wings. “I just asked you for the dreamlock and a mailbox, but you went and also made it easier for me to respond to letters.”
With a snort, Astral said, “You know I didn’t do it just for you, right? I-”
“-proposed it the first chance you got,” Moondog said, poking Astral in the chest. “You’ve only taken one letter for me, and that was over a moon ago. You could’ve waited to give yourself more work until that actually became an issue, but you didn’t. Besides, even if you mostly did it for you, it still helped me. So: thanks.”
“Whatever,” Astral said with a shrug. She took a sip. How could it taste so close to the real thing when she knew it was fake? “I just hope I didn’t efficiency myself out of a job.”
“Technically, you did. But you efficiencied yourself into another. You are the second person in a millennium to make any sort of innovation in dream magic.”
“Heh. I gue-” Astral suddenly sat up straight. “Wait. Second? But between you and…”
“Not quite. I-” Moondog tapped her chest. “-am an innovation. I myself did not innovate. That’s all you and Mom.”
“Huh.” Astral smirked. “So I guess I’m more creative than you when it comes to dream magic?”
“Technically correct, the best kind of correct. Congratulations.” Moondog stuck a gold star on Astral’s muzzle. “Which makes you my new R&D pony. If you’re okay with it.”
As she fruitlessly tried to remove the star, Astral thought. Not for very long, though. “Yeah, of course. I like doing it and-”
…Huh.
It hadn’t really occurred to her before, not fully. Sure, she’d known she liked doing it, but she’d never thought about what that meant. For the Eschaton, she’d needed to feel needed. But this wasn’t like any of that, was it? She’d been given a task, only to go beyond the bounds of the task to make things easier for herself. Not for her boss, just for herself. And she’d liked doing it.
This was a life she wanted to live.
Huh.
“I, I like doing it,” mumbled Astral, growing interested in the bartop. The implications were getting away from her, no matter how much she tried to corral them, and staring at the bar felt like all she could physically do.
“You’ve got Self-Actualization Face,” said Moondog. “Should I let you think?”
“…Okay, no way that’s a thing.”
“Yes way. It’s this blank, kinda confused sort of thing, which means you’re thinking. But you’re not looking around at anything, so you’ve got all the information you need in your head already. You’re quiet, so you’re thinking very deeply, probably existentially. And because you’re calm — well, more confused than calm, but whatever — it’s not something you can scream or rage or cry about. You realized something new and profound about yourself, something intrinsic, something that doesn’t fall into the same category as ‘someday nopony will remember me’. Ergo: Self-Actualization Face.” Moondog pulled out a flipbook and fanned the pages to display dozens of ponies, each with an expression similar to Astral’s. “I’ve seen it before.”
Against her wishes, Astral found herself chuckling. “Sure. I guess it’s Self-Actualization Face. So, uh… thanks for giving me a chance to self-actualize. Bit of a change from how we first met, huh?”
“Where I alerted you to the path your life was taking and nudged you onto a better one? Nah, not really.”
A snort. “That doesn’t count if you didn’t intend it from the beginning.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Nope.”
“Darn. Still, from attempted mind control to…” Moondog waved a hoof between the two of them. “…whatever this is. Do we qualify as friends?”
“You know what? Sure.” Astral smiled and raised her cup. “Friends.”
“Nice.” Moondog manifested a cup and: clink.
Astral was halfway through her glass when she realized- “Oh, Celestia. You’re pulling a Twilight on me again.”
“Is that bad?”
“…No. Not at all.”