JANMMS

by Moterius


Chapter 8: Distant Dreams

I snapped aware; it was quite an unpleasant sensation.

When I looked around, I found myself floating in the void of space, which I only realized after some observation to not be actual space, but the world of dreams instead.

Somehow, I ended up here, though I could not fathom why. Perhaps I was here because my body had to rest, but my mind demanded to be awake?

Looking around, I found that everything seemed similarly far away, and I decided to just look around randomly for the time being. Picking out a light in the distance, I willed myself forwards and quickly found myself hovering in front of what looked like a brilliantly glowing marble. I reached out a semi-physical hand, touching the orb, finding it was not something I could enter, realizing a moment later that somehow, whatever was there in front of me wasn’t a dream. There was a connection I could feel to the light in front of me, but it wasn’t that of a dreamer.

Feeling something pass… no, not pass, move through my semi-real body, I turned, finding another if smaller marble moving around the not-dream, and when I leaned down to look at it, I found myself shrinking to better perceive it.

But the marble just looked like a ball of red and yellow, with no texture to speak of. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like I have seen it somewhere before…

Moving away from it, I found myself growing again, and looked around the lights, picking another at random. I moved over to it, which took a moment, but once I arrived, I found that the same thing as before happened. It just wasn’t a dream, but still, it was something that I could feel a small connection with.

Around this not-dream, there, too, were small marbles orbiting it, but once again, they were little more than swatches of color.

I looked around again and picked up the brightest light I could see. Moving towards it, I found that surprisingly it did not get brighter as I got closer, yet I could tell that there was something different about it even while I was still far away.

This time, the not-dream was different. There still was a connection between it and me, but there was another, much stronger bond linking it to a blue-green marble flying around it. Leaning in closer, I found the marble to look familiar…

…to a planet.

There was a ‘moon’ orbiting the ‘planet’, and it was one that had a similar bond as the ‘star’, an incredibly strong connection binding it to the blue body below. A connection I recognized, having touched it before.

Luna?

I leaned in close, finding the planet to be much more sharply defined than anything else I had seen so far. Was it because this planet had life? (Was it even a planet?) I was unsure, but I did not dwell on it too long.

There was a small blue speck of mana moving on the surface of the planet, teleporting from time to time. It was the same mana bound to the moon…

I decided to call out to her.

Hey, princess.

She looked around, clearly having heard me, but she seemed incapable of finding me. She was looking around, but not up, probably used to where things were in the equestrian part of the dream world.

Look up.

She turned her gaze upon mine and jumped back.

“Nightmare?! You… what… what in the world?”

I shrugged.

I woke up a few parsecs away… in the dream world. It’s less defined if there’s no life around to materialize it,” I explained, leaning in closer yet again, but not finding myself shrinking much more. I blinked but shrugged, I could always cast a spell to press my essence together manually.

“No! Why art you so massive? Where did you gain all this energy of yours?”

Ha?

What do you mean?

“Your presence! You have so much magic!”

I blinked, and focussed, not outwards but inwards. I found a small empty blue sphere of magic, around which an uncountable number of strings wrapped themselves, trailing off towards the sky. Looking at Luna, I found a filled light blue sphere of magic, slightly bigger than the one I possessed – but it still was empty. A single cord of powerful magic wrapped around it, and moved from there towards the sky, wrapping itself around the moon.

Your magic is similar to mine, is it not? You, too, draw your power from outside… I can feel the bond you have with the moon.

Now that I was looking closer…

And the moon collects the magic of the creatures looking up at it and acknowledging its existence, but it also emits its own magic as a celestial body. And you, as its steward, have access to a small part of that magic, enough to move it and to make yourself immortal, and some extra for yourself.

Luna was looking at the images of mine and her magic that I had brought up, then blinked.

“Might this be because of thy ascension in a different realm? The magic of the world acknowledging thy presence as an outer being?”

I shrugged.

Does it matter?

She sighed.

“I guess not. Do you wish me to show you ‘your’ dream?” she asked, and I shrugged, then nodded.

Extending out her hand, I took hers much the same, and she pulled me downwards, my body shifting to become a black mirror of hers. She led me to a grey, small orb hovering amidst thousands of others, above a mountain I recognized as Mt. Canterhorn.

“Tis’ your dream, missing not what I thought was emotion, but missing a dreamer.”

Touching it, I could see a grey plane extending to infinity. Once I became part of the dream, it changed, turning a dark blue reminiscent of ink, before shifting into the more normal nonsense of a dream. I was still lucid, but no longer in the world between dreams.

Knowing how restful sleep could be, I bid Luna goodnight and thanked her for showing me the way back, then let go of the grip I reflexively held onto my dream, making me forget that it was a dream, and finally started dreaming earnestly.