//------------------------------//
// second 
// Story: Oneiromance 
// by gloamish 
//------------------------------//

Apart from the contented crackle and pop of the fire, my chambers were silent. A stack of parchment lay on the desk in front of me. Celestia had strict rules about not bringing work into her chambers, to avoid contaminating her private space with stress, but I lacked her rigor. The stack was supposedly a collated history of the development of modern weather manufacturing, but it could be about fancy hats through the ages, for all I knew; I hadn't read a word of it. After guiding my moon below the horizon and watching my sister raise her charge in its place, I had retired here early to sleep. Sleep had not come.

Most ponies familiar with the portion of my domain which did not hang in the sky at night believed my work there to be like sleep, but its resemblance was superficial. It was closer to meditation, and required focus. While sleeping ponies drifted in and out of dreams, I stepped straight into my realm and did not sink below it until I opened my eyes. It was as dissimilar from the sustenance of sleep as preparing food was to filling one's stomach.

On the moon, I did nothing but dream.

I slumped out of my chair sans royal grace, abandoning my attempts at study in favor of the embrace of my bed's sheets. It was pleasantly warm from the fire which had burned through the night, but the sensation did nothing to pull me under, content with just holding me there at the boundary of sleep. Some comfort, at least.

Indeed, it was not my work which kept me from rest. Or at least, not the nature of it. However, toward the beginning of the night, it had revealed a fact to me that I had been turning over in my mind since learning it, edge over edge until it was smooth. Here at my desk, I could finally behold it as it was. Twilight Sparkle had fallen into a dangerous delusion.

Usually, I wouldn't permit such a vision as I'd seen in her dream to follow me to the waking world. Those visions were moored loosely, and at the end of each journey I chose which I cut away to be left as mere suggestion and which I would keep. Dreams were private things, meant to flit through the mind and leave only imprints — a sensation of falling, a whisper from a pony mourned, a touch, hoof to cheek — I let them lay more often than not.

The sight of my dear friend kissing a copy of me would not stop replaying itself in my mind.

I was the one part of a pony's dream whose presence suggested it was more than a private memory. It was empowering for one to realize that their private terror, which was inexplicable on awakening, was at least witnessed by another. Sometimes, I played confidante and offered comfort, other times I played the hero and vanquished the nightmare myself. However, this fact had a downside that I had no reason to dwell on prior: were a pony to dream of me, how would they know their figment from my true self?

I shook my head. I had only seen a glimpse. There were plenty of explanations — first, dreams were often totally involuntary, and mixed one desire with another. Ponies could feel violated by the workings of their own subconscious. Her brain could have mixed the admiration we felt for each other with her own loneliness — and I knew she was lonely. I wondered if the Princess of Friendship had explored the fields adjacent to her domain and worried that, as Celestia said was her habit, she had thrown herself into her study to the utter exclusion of all else.

There was another explanation, however. A pony in dreams often does not appear as they are awake. Twilight had become a mare of renown, a Princess in her own right, and the starscape was dusted liberally with odd little fantasies. Ones as prominent as we in the psyche of our nation would appear naturally in these — it took me far too long to develop my oneiric sense enough to feel the dream-texture of white on midnight blue and turn away before I witnessed something unseemly.

The court held no rumors of me flitting from private affair to private affair via dreams, so ponies likely knew whatever figments they entertained with my face were just that. I was not so social as my sister, so nopony had a reason to believe I would seek them out for a roll in the proverbial hay. I rolled in my sheets instead, pointedly not thinking about how that sheen of deniability had tempted me before. But that was just further proof of its strength, and this could simply be a new shade of the common fantasies that danced in the collective subconscious, Friendship a new flavor to mix with the classics.

Alas, my fantasy of dropping the smooth stone I beheld and forgetting it underhoof the tread of rationalization did not last long.

There was a knocking at my door, which would've been too quiet to register had I been doing anything more than staring at the canopy above. I rolled to my hooves, caring not for the sheets which I dragged to the floor. Pulling the door open, I expected my seneschal with some forgotten business from court. Instead, I found myself looking down at a golden petral. My eyes flicked up to meet my sister's, and the blush on her face was so uncharacteristic that I forgot to greet her. She looked like a filly caught sneaking pastries, a crime she committed regularly in the castle kitchens with not a dimple out of place.

"S- Sister," she stammered. Stammered. Celestia stammered, I thought, still too stunned to say much of anything. "A letter came for you."

Now this was a sort of unusual I could at least deal with. The gears of bureaucracy which had become intricate in my absence, and the wrenches thrown into them so regularly as to be part of the machine. I remembered to close my mouth, and raised an eyebrow in its place. "Good morning, sister. Is my seneschal indisposed? Typically she would deliver my mail to me."

"Well, er. This came by dragonfire."

Few enough ponies had access to that line of communication that I instantly knew what the letter was.

"I see you must have been expecting it," Celestia said, looking off to the side. I realized I was blushing at least as badly as her and turned away. "I apologize profusely, sister, I had no idea it was addressed to you, and I didn't read more than a few lines, but—" she cut herself off, shoving the scroll with its broken seal to me, oblivious to its collision with my muzzle as her magic winked out.

I still couldn't muster a response, but this seemed not to matter as Celestia quickly turned and left without even a goodbye. Hoofbeats receded down the hallway. I swallowed, the fire suddenly distant and cold as I imagined the contents of the letter. Closing the door and barring it for good measure, I braced myself equally, then sat down to read.

My Moon and Stars,

Oh no. Oh no no no. I took a deep breath. All of my rationalizations flew skyward like smoke up the chimney, the fuel that was my friendship with Twilight burning merrily. For this to arrive here, from her, could only mean the dream had been hers, and she had been lucid enough to want all of it, but not enough to question any of it. The Princess of Friendship, whose domain I had entered by her side, was courting a figment that she'd mistaken for me. I let out my breath, mustered my courage, and continued reading.

I feel at a disadvantage, writing a love letter to you.

Eyes not lifting from the page, my horn lit and its aura coated a high cupboard from which I retrieved a bottle of apple brandy and a tumbler. With a pleasureless precision, I poured myself a drink and secreted the bottle back to its home. A single gulp, delivered like a hoof to the face, and I continued.

In courtship with any other pony, I could paint wall to wall with overwrought metaphors. I've read poets that claim their beloved hangs the stars in the sky. But before you such art is reduced to descriptor. What metaphor could capture the immensity of what you are to me, compared to the reality of what you are to Equestria?

Perhaps it is the other way around, then. Where other ponies see you and think of your moon, I see your moon and think of you. When it rises in the late evening, waxing or waning, new or full, I can barely see the moon for the mare in it. In the starry sky, every constellation seems to point to you in Canterlot, a distance only bridged by dreams.

This was wrong. This was private. I shouldn't have read another word — my fear was confirmed, after all. What more was there to gain? Outside my notice, sips of brandy had shifted from grounding me in reality to complementing to the letter's contents.

I've taken to basking in the moonlight as one would the sun because it feels like you do. I close my eyes, and imagine your hoof flowing through my mane like liquid silver. You caress my coat. I feel the shine on my lips and kiss it as if you can feel it on yours. When I sleep and find you, I swear I taste that same moonlight on your lips.

I know we're each as busy as the other, but please. Come to Ponyville tomorrow evening. I need to bask in your moon together.

Yours,

Twilight Sparkle

I put the letter down on my desk. This was too much. I stood and circled my room, hoping for the blush on my cheeks to abate. On my third lap, my eye caught that title, 'Moon and Stars', and all my progress was lost. Walking into the bathroom, I splashed my face with cold water and sighed deeply, looking into the mirror at the mess I was.

I was used to being the watcher. In my sister's shadow all those centuries ago, in the earth's shadow cast on the moon, here and now in a society which had moved beyond where I felt I could go. Sometimes, when I was tipsy and couldn't keep a harness on my dark sense of humor, I joked that if Celestia had really wanted to defeat me, she could have simply made me the subject of adulation I craved to be. A fraction of the eyes that followed my sister's every movement would reduce me to dust.

Now, simply being the center of attention for a single mare was disassembling my composure to dust. Memories tilted in my mind, lingering gazes and touches lining up, forming something new until I wasn't certain how long Twilight had felt this way.

I finished my brandy and closed my eyes, trying to summon the wisdom that lent my sister her even keel. Step back, remove yourself from the situation, consider it objectively. Then I grimaced, remembering that the love letter I had just read was penned by the quill of her faithful student, and remembered I had no talent whatsoever for impersonality. Instead, I had before me three options, like my moon anew, in crescent, and full.

First, distance. Simply let the matter rest. The figment would no doubt rationalize my silence to Twilight, excusing it as wanting to keep the matter quiet. I would stay clear of her dreams, and eventually the excuses would buckle under the weight of reality and fade. However, I'd likely meet Twilight again before that could happen. Would she wait for me to make the first move? No, I'd already been outmaneuvered with the... missive that lay before me. Already, another had been involved. I couldn't afford to take the coward's option.

Then, the crescent, the moderate approach. Neither withdrawing nor welcoming. I could simply pen a response to this letter now and ask Celestia to send it back. I would be kind, but firm. But something about the thought curdled in my stomach. It was almost as cowardly as total silence, and I owed my friend more than that. How would it feel, to receive a scroll so promptly, expecting a love letter she could treasure forever, and unrolling only a curt dismissal? We would not recover.

So, the full moon. All my glory, all my patience. I'd go to Ponyville tomorrow, as she asked, and let her down in person. I would be there to comfort her, as a friend should. I wouldn't have to lose her... And I could put off explaining to Celestia why her student sent me a love letter.

Yes, that would do it, I thought. A day of sleep, a night of duties, and then Ponyville the next morning. I finally felt ordered enough to attend to the first order of that business, but carried out ablution of my tumbler and my self first, two faithful vessels laid to rest 'til next use. Hopefully the latter far before the former, though I couldn't deny the appeal of some hair of the dog come evening, what with the headache this misunderstanding had become.