Umbra walked through the grand vault of all the dreams of the empire. Just outside that room, there was a garden. In that garden, little cute plants, a bountiful harvest of little rabbit dreams. She had taken the vault and its garden as her territory, to be guarded and protected. "At least I don't have to water them..."
They weren't real plants, so they needed no water, nor fertilizer, just a watchful eye for... "Hm." She saw a big radish like plant poking free of the ground, its bright green stem wilted and sad. "What's troubling you, little one?" The tsuki were not little, by habit, but still, children. Adorable children, by her estimation. Umbra flowed through the shadows, popping up next to the sad plant and gently petting it. "Let's see what's bothering you..."
She was in the caves, many and vast. It was dark, but that didn't bother her generally, and certainly didn't in the dreamworld. She heard talking and sped towards it, emerging from a tunnel into a cavern where three tsuki were conversing heatedly. "We not know them," sternly warned a female, arms crossed.
"They nice." A male huffed. "Heard Petri. Nice. Good. Want be friend."
The third, a smaller female, backed away. "They have shadows. Shadows hurt." The other two fell away, just unimportant for the dream, leaving the small female. "Hurting shadows..." She hopped down a tunnel, forgetting she was ever in a conversation, as dreams went sometimes.
Umbra flinched. She was a shadow, unfortunately. But... It was a dream. She could be anything she cared to be. She was also an umbrum, which meant she had a double claim on that power. She reached up and ran an arm over her face, leaving the cutest tsuki she could envision behind with its passing. Wrapped in the pleasant image, she bounded out on new rabbit legs. "Hello!"
"Hello." The dreamer turned to her. "Is good?" She didn't ask who Umbra was. That just didn't even occur to her as a question to ask.
"Is good," agreed Umbra. "Bad shadow bad."
"Bad shadow bad!" agreed the little female, looking happy to find sometsuki that agreed with her. "All shadow bad."
"Some shadow good," gently countered Umbra. "Some shadow bad. Bad shadow bad."
The tsuki scratched at her cheek fitfully. "How know? If bad shadow bad, how know if shadow bad?"
Umbra perked at that question, though her ears didn't want to move, too heavy and large for that. That was a good question. "How know if tsuki bad?"
"Most tsuki good." The little female wriggled in place, tail giving a jitter only a rabbit could really give.
"Not all. How tell tsuki bad?" Speaking like a tsuki was an interesting experiment, but flowing with the dream made it easier. It was a rabbit dream, their speech was natural there. "Give chance, find good tsuki. Give chance, find good shadow."
"But..." The little tsuki bounced back and forth as if unsure where to go. "If hurt. What then?"
"Then friends." She hadn't summoned them, but her words caused countless other smiling tsuki to appear. The scared one's friends. "Friends protect."
The friend smiled at all the friendly faces. "Friends... Yes. Yes, friends." She tackled one, just to get tackled in kind. The dream became a storm of hugs and wrestling.
Umbra wrenched her head out of the dirt, coughing up bits of dirt and dust. Emerging from tsuki dreams could be an experience.The plant-dream was looking a little brighter. It was healing. "Mission complete." The garden looked fine, other than that, so she went back into the vault, stalking for troubled gems. Oh, that one. That dark and troubled gem.
She picked it up gently and turned it around. "Will you let me in tonight?" Umbra added it to her tiara, placing it in a niche that waited for it. Such was the nature of dreams. She was not there anymore.
"Waste of oxygen," sneered a feral pony of shadows and bile. "Why do I even put up with your excuses?"
Morning glared down at the dreamer. "I can feel the shame in you, imagining shoving parts of you into me, of becoming smeared with my various fluids as if they belonged to you."
Wensley trembled, ears folded back in his dream, his nightmare. "I thought..."
"That I liked it? I hate it. I love hating it." Morning thudded a hoof against Wensley's chest. "Now wake up." That was a request coming from outside, and Wensley woke up, being shaken awake.
Umbra opened her eyes, sitting back in the vault, the troubled gem in front of her. "I messed up... again..." An adult among children. She sure was bad at times at safeguarding them. Part of her wanted to awaken properly and zip off to Wensley's side, but storming in there, likely with the two mid-conversation... That felt bad... Ugh. "She's keeping you up, isn't she?" Umbra picked up the dark and shadowed gem. "Poor thing..." A pony lost in shadow. Of course shadowy ponies were alright with that, but they were bad caretakers.
She should know, being exactly one of those. "Damn it..." She had to fix it, somehow... Ideally without making an enemy and upsetting her daughter while she was at it. They just had to be related, to complicate things...
The answer wasn't leaping at her, just a lot of dream jewels. "Let's sleep on this." A dreamwalking pun, one could argue. She set the disturbed gem carefully aside. "You asked me to visit..."
She found the shield of Shining Armor, bejewled and lustrous. It did not show immediate signs of being disturbed, resting just in front of the tiara that was Cadance, of course. Even in dreams, they were connected and... "Aren't I connected?" As if conjured by the thought, she felt a necklace of pearls land on her shoulders. The beads went out, connecting to the shield and another strand to the tiara, binding them together. "There we go." Dream logic was a funny thing.
She sometimes only saw what she thought to look for. She grasped the shield in her magic, holding it firmly in front of herself as if to deflect a blow that wasn't coming. It was enough to slip inside.
She appeared in the throne room of the Crystal Palace, but Cadance wasn't seated on the throne. She was wearing a knight's attire and standing guard. Shining was on the throne, talking to a pony about sometime of some importance. So important no words came with it. But it was important. The pony ran off, having heard those important words.
"You dream of power?" Umbra strode up directly. "I'm surprised."
Shining looked confused a moment, but the fog cleared. "Umbrie!" He hopped from the throne, it vanishing as he forgot about it. "You came!"
Umbra got a hoof out barely in time to catch the eager stallion in a hug. "Hey! I said I would." She put him down carefully. "Seriously though, didn't expect this?"
"Hm?" He looked back at the throne that had returned, his thoughts going back to it. "Oh, we roleplay a little, switching roles. It's fun." He ribbed at Umbra. "Maybe some day you'll let me patrol your dreams, huh?"
"If you can manage it." Umbra sat on her haunches. "Why'd you call me? Had something private you wanted to chat about?"
"That, but also, here, we can talk without pressures. It's just me and you." He nuzzled under her snout, burying his nose in her chin. "That's enough of a reason, right?"
"Adorable!" She squeezed him extra hard for that. "Well, here I am! Your shadow princess. I was just tending to some dreams before I stopped in here."
"How are they?" He went to a window to peek out at dream-empire, but it was quite undetailed, that dream. He wasn't focused on the whole empire. "Mostly good?"
"A tsuki with worries of bad shadows." Umbra was next to him, skipping the whole actually moving in closer part. "And an earth pony I may have given bad relationship advice to... I have to fix that."
Shining's ears went up at that. "Bad advice? Not the sort of advice I'm used to hearing you make. What kind of bad advice?"
"Mmmf, I don't want to betray his confidence... But he has a thing... He's always imagining a specific sort of thing. I hooked him up with a pony that's alright with that... but now I'm worried she's taking advantage of him, and it's my fault." Umbra rubbed her head with the flat of a hoof. "But you didn't call me to hear me complain about my job."
"On the contrary." He casually rubbed her other cheek with a hoof. "I want to hear about you, and what you're doing. I want to hear the ups and the downs. If we're getting married, this is all of our business. That goes the other way too. We're a team! Wanna hear about how my things are going?"
She imagined a lot of guards and their drills were involved... "Actually, yes." She hopped up onto a comfy chair that was there because it was convenient. "Tell me."
Shining joined her on another chair next to her's. "Most of them know the process, but I have this new one." A guard came rushing in to stand in front of them, a gem pony with a quiver. "A mess. He really wants to be a guard, but he has no stamina, no strength, and he's nervous about everything."
"S-sorry, sir." The dreamed pony looked around fretfully. "I'm getting better!"
"He is," agreed Shining without delay. "I'm training him, and I don't give up on ponies!" He clapped a hoof on his chest. "But it's a lot of work. Thankfully, the other guards are pitching in." The slight guard was suddenly set upon by others who rushed him away with enthusiastic grunts of brotherhood. "Good ponies, the lot of 'em."
Umbra watched the guards retreat into obscurity. "Problem solved, or at least being solved. Good! Glad to hear that has a happy ending. Reminds me... of a time I tried to get in on something I wasn't prepared for... Took some gentle friends to make it work." She swatted at Shining. "And you are that gentle friend."
"I try to be," he laughed out, cheeks colored lightly. "Oh. I meant to bring up but kept forgetting, thought about our problem." He waved between Umbra and himself. "And I decided to let you go first. My thing is... almost for fun. I just want to do it just... to do it... You are a mare. It's not right to make you wait for that, when I have the whole stallion thing worked out already."
Umbra pawed at him gently. "You are such a sweetie! No wonder you've captured the heart of such fair mares. A pity ponies don't do the whole 'harem' thing really, seeing as you have one... kinda."
"Kinda..." Shining inclined his head. "Does it still count when your 'harem' could easily take charge back the moment you annoyed them?"
"Where I'm from, that is a specific genre, so, yes."
Shining frowned, trying to imagine it, but he had no concept of human entertainment. "Really? I need to visit your dreams, so you can show me these things. You could do that there, right?"
"Technically..." Umbra rubbed her cheek. "But... Only a dreamwalker could visit my dreams like that. If I showed you here, you'd forget most of it by the time you woke up, only remembering the important bits."
"Poo." His dream, punctured. "Well, fine! Can you show me how to dreamwalk?"
"I'd love to... but..."
"But?" Shining looked like he could feel the rejection coming.
"But, Luna made me triple swear that I wouldn't. It's her magic. You'd have to ask her for it. That goes for husbands and wives too." She crossed her arms, firm on that point. "I will not dissapoint her."
"I wouldn't want you to. Mmm... Maybe I should ask..."
Umbra leaned out of her chair, nose to nose with Shining. "Protect our days, let me handle the nights."