Twilight Sparkle was in a tall, vast library. It had all the comforts of her home-library and a seemingly endless supply of books for her to read. She galloped up and down and all along the rows of books, magically pulling them out, looking them over and reorganizing them. It was a dream come true!
"Heheehee! Yay! This is just--awesome!"
Still reorganizing, she held a few books in front of her. "Hmm... now which should I read first?" She looked over several titles: The Secret Histories of Star Swirl the Bearded, Alicorn Magic for Gifted Unicorns, How to Make the Best of Your Work-space, Everypony's Guide to Dragons, The Magic of Friendship, Obscure and Under-Rated Masterpieces of Pony Paintings.
"Oh! It's so hard to choose just one to start."
She called to Spike to bring her whatever book he happened to have in his claws. This would be much easier: she could just have Spike bring her books so she wouldn't have to waste time deciding which to read in what order. He came up a flight of stairs with a big book in his claws. Twilight quickly snatched it with her magic and opened it to the first page: 'Time Spells.'
"Perfect! Thank you Spike, My Number One Assistant." She pat him on the head and he disappeared down the same flight of stairs he had come up.
She turned a page and was shocked to find it blank. She turned another. Blank. And another. Blank. Another. Blank. Blank. Blank. Blank. Blank!
"Haaaargh! What's with this?" She turned one more page. It was... black! "Huh?" She dropped the book and jumped back when the black began to leak off the pages and form the shape of a pony.
"Spike, quick!"
Spike didn't come. She grabbed some books from the shelf behind her and hid behind them, though ready to cast a spell if necessary.
"Twilight Sparkle, I require you assistance."
It was a familiar voice. Twilight peaked between the books to see--
"Princess Luna! Am I glad to see you! Where's the black shifty--"
"That was me."
"Oh. Wait. What are you doing here?"
"This is your dream, Twilight Sparkle. Now, quickly. I haven't much time." She magically pulled Twilight from the mound of books and set her close to herself. She hunched down close to Twilight's ear. "Discord is attempting to return."
"What?!"
"Shh, shh. He has entered the dreams of one, 'Cherry Garden.' A painter pony with a light lime mane and tail, cut in the same style as your friend Cherry Berry's, and a creamy-peach coat; her cutie mark is three pairs of cherries. I've been in her dreams the past few nights attempting to stop him, but my sister and I feel this is a job for you."
"Me? But I can't--I don't even know how to enter dreams."
"I will teach you. But please, Twilight Sparkle, I must hurry and finish. He has been attempting to use this pony's passionate creativity and natural sensitivity to bring his chaos back and ensure his release from his current captivity so he can once again spread it across Equestria. You have to go into Cherry Garden's dreams and put a stop to him before he can realize his plans. You must once again wield the Elements of Harmony and defeat him. But be very careful, he has... knock, knock... gurghe, hmmph... knock, knock, knock..."
"Huh? what?!"
The dream library rippled away and Twilight awoke to find herself face down in a book on the floor, papers spread out around her. She checked the clock: 10pm. She must have passed-out while studying... again. The lights were off and she heard snoring above her and assumed Spike must have fallen asleep too.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!
She started, lit a candle, and with a yawn sleepily made her way to the front door. When she opened the door and saw that it was Cherry Garden, just as Princess Luna had described, she remembered her dream and what the Princess had told her.
"You must be Cherry Garden." Cherry Garden had noticeable bags under her lavender eyes. Twilight recognized her, also, as one of the ponies who had come to her to complain when Pinkie Pie had duplicated herself.
"Yes. I was told you could help me with my nightmares?" She sounded exhausted.
"Yes, yes. Please come inside and sit down."
Cherry Garden slowly entered. Twilight sat her down in the kitchen (a relatively unused room).
"Can I get you anything? Snacks, something to drink? Hot coco, water, cider, tea?"
"I don't--"
"How about some white tea? My friend Zecora got it for me."
"Okay..." Cherry Garden slumped on the table, absently gazing at the ceiling.
Twilight talked nervously as she heated the water. "These nightmares must be really bad."
"They are! I haven't had much sleep in four nights... five nights?" She spoke dreamily, almost half asleep. "But I can't sleep! Every time I do I have horrible nightmares with that strange creature making everything all... chaotic! And when I wake up I always find things in my house have been changed--water is chocolate milk--a bird is a gummy bear--my bed is on the ceiling--my paintings are alive!" She pulled up a saddle-bag she had on her that Twilight hadn't noticed before. She took out a painted canvas. "Just look!" She turned it so Twilight could see. Twilight nearly screamed at what she saw. It was a portrait of Discord's statue, still locked in that same fearful expression he wore when Twilight and her friends had defeated him. The whole picture was painted in dashed, expressive lines which in a normal painting would have been still, but were now instead moving. Discord's eyes seemed to faintly glow and subtly and slowly move into a sinister glare.
Seeing that the picture made Twilight uneasy, she attempted to return it to her bag. "Hey, there's something in here." She threw her saddle-bag on the table and took out what was in it. It was a book. "What is this doing--"
"Let me see!" Twilight was in the middle of putting the tea leaves into the cups when she slept across the kitchen and stole the book from Cherry Garden's hooves. "'Dreaming Spells.' Ah-hah! Thank you Princess Luna!" She embraced it and then set it on the table to read. It surprised her that the pages were still unbroken despite its aged appearance.
Cherry Garden languidly put away the painting. She stared at Twilight absently and began to take up her saddle-bag as though it were a cup; upon realizing it wasn't, she indifferently let it drop to the floor.
"Okay, this spell seems surprisingly easy. All it really requires is for you to be asleep."
"Oooh no!" Cherry Garden bolted up in fright. "I'm not going to sleep again! You don't know what it's like--you can't make me!"
Twilight thought she would say as much. Well, she thought, It was a good thing I suggested tea to drink; that should help calm her nerves and let her sleep.
"Alright. We could instead, I guess, just stay up and talk and play games." Twilight began brewing the tea as she talked.
"That sounds good! What do you want to do first?" Even as she tried to talk excitedly, Cherry Garden nearly dozed off her chair.
Twilight brought the two cups of tea to the table, moved the book onto an empty chair, and took the seat opposite Cherry Garden.
"Well, let's see," Twilight enthusiastically began. "We could read my book about advanced organization skills--or we could play word games--or how about we go on the balcony, and we could name the constellations--ooh, ooh! Or we could--"
"I'm--Those don't sound too interesting, no offence or anything. Those just aren't my things...."
"I see...."
"What... um, do you know about these nightmares I've been having?"
"Here, drink some tea and I'll tell you." Twilight was still a little scared and nervous but she did her best to feign calmness in attempt to help relax Cherry Garden.
Cherry Garden slowly lifted her her cup and softly blew across the surface, her nose nearly falling in it. She took a sip and winced at the sudden bitterness.
"Go on now, drink up!"
Twilight took a long sip of her own tea. "I need to calm my nerves too," she said to herself.
Cherry Garden took a few more forced sips, each time her face turning a little from disgust to delight in the taste. Soon she took sips because she wanted to.
Between sips of her own tea, Twilight told Cherry Garden about Discord, how her and her friends defeated him, and about what Princess Luna had told her in her dream.
"So that was Princess Luna in my dreams these past few nights. And it has been this draca--dracocos... Discord thing that's been giving me nightmares." Cherry garden spoke with the utmost placidity. "But what I don't understand is why both Princess Luna and Discord told me to come to you for help tonight."
"WHAT?!" Twilight screamed and started up, nearly spilling her tea. She sank back down and covered her mouth, first listening for Spike's snoring then looking over at Cherry Garden. It was too late: she was already dead-asleep on the table, the last of her tea spilling onto the floor. She desperately wanted to wake her back up and find out what she meant by saying both Luna and Discord told her to come to her for help, but she didn't have time: she had to go into Cherry Garden's dreams and stop Discord before she woke.
"I'll just have to find out when I get there, or ask Princess Luna if I see her in Cherry Garden's dreams. Either way, I must set to work!" And set to work she did. She was so excited to perform a new spell, she forgot how nervous she was.
She magically levitated Cherry Garden out onto the couch, bringing the book with her. She sat on a few soft pillows on the ground next to Cherry Garden, opened the book to the correct page, and read how to do the spell a few times before performing it and slipping magically into Cherry Garden's dreams.
"Did it work?" Twilight wondered, wondering at the unchanged scene.
"I wish they would only take me as I am..." Cherry Garden muttered in her sleep. "Simple--Simple--simplicity is the ultimate sophistication..."
There was something strange about the way Cherry Garden looked. Twilight leaned in closer.
"...No doubt there will be some who will see the truth in what I paint... Nature is never superfluous..."
She was still muttering, but there was something strange about her mouth...was it moving?
"I wish it were all over now..."
Twilight fell back in shock: Cherry Garden's mouth didn't move when she spoke!
Twilight looked around the library anxiously. She tried to look closely at the things around her in the dim candle-light. Everything seemed to have a flow, like solid, flowing water. Everything looked...alive.
"But how is that possible? Wait, of course it isn't possible, because I'm in Cherry Garden's dreams!" She clapped giddily. "I can't believe it actually worked!"
Remembering her mission, she became serious. She looked the sleeping Cherry Garden over and thought it best that she wasn't woken, and that she'd be safest here in the library anyway. She went to the kitchen and took Cherry Garden's saddle-bag with the painting in it, thinking it might come in handy, put the 'Dreaming Spells' book in it, backed the whole thing, and headed outside.
But she didn't step out into Ponyville. Before her rose a tall, dark hill that seemed to flow towards her. The ground at her hooves was very bizarre: a base of earthly brown with strokes of night blues and violets and blacks--there were even yellow-brown, pink, and lighter blue, violet, and green streaks seen--all moving and flowing in the direction of the hill.
"Cherry Garden certainly has the strangest dreams, visually."
Undeterred, focused on her mission, she made her way up the hill. Though the ground seemed to move, it felt just like normal, still, solid ground. She looked up the hill and saw the sky a patched, deep indigo with darker and lighter bits.
When she finally reached the top she was overlooking the most beautiful nightscape of a small valley she had ever seen. To her left, a great towering cypress, black and lined with faint traces of red and green, rising like fire. Down in the valley were a dozen or so small buildings, roofs of steely grays and blues, and some red dashed with green, walls blue, gray, green, and brown, with a splash of yellow in those buildings where warm light escaped from some of the windows; a bright silvery spire shot up from a sharp-roofed building in the center of the town; a good amount of the streets were obscured from her sight by the dark green and blue foliage that flooded the town. On the other side of the small valley, just behind the small town, were flowing ultramarine hills that rolled like great waves in a vast ocean; at the base of these hills were unclear signs of farmed plants, striking with their lighter contrasts of green and blue and white on the black ground. And then--the sky!
"Oh my--!" Twilight nearly fell over looking at it. Everything in the sky was in constant motion: bright yellow stars with thick halos seemed to appear in vortexes all over the sky; a high-yellow crescent moon, more to the right of her, was drowning in a swirl of sulfur-yellow strokes edged with lime green that melted onto the feverishly flowing indigo-violet sky; the Milky-Way, running all throughout the sky with its bright strokes of white, blue, yellow, green, and even some burnt-brown strokes, swirled and crashed like a monster, and yet only making the whole scene all the more beautiful. Everything was alive! She felt dizzy, but she never felt so happy and alive... and never so lonely.
"Beautiful isn't it, Twilight Sparkle?"
She heard Discord's voice above her and fell from surprise, letting out a small cry.
"Isn't it fascinating that the painter didn't really like this scene so much? It's an imaginary image made up of different places from all over Ponyville. Strange that everypony in Conterlot should know her by this one picture. She didn't even sell this picture--somepony just happened to take it to Canterlot and show it in a gallery--of course, no pony really knows of her there. She has only yet sold one painting, I believe; one with a red vineyard in it--and that was only for a small hoof-full of bits! She's completely poor! Living off Derpy Hooves and Golden Harvest, if memory serves.... Doesn't that just make you want to cry?" The entire time he talked he sat relaxing on top of the giant cypress, playing with the very tip-top as though it were his own tail.
"I don't care what you have to say, Discord! I'm here to put a stop to you!" Twilight firmly stood her ground, expecting the same old Discord tricks.
"Oh," Discord mockingly made a scared face that fell into a sinister one, "But you might want to listen at least in part to what I have to say," now more dignified; "for what I have to say is very important."
"If it were very important, then why would you tell me?"
"Because what fun is it if all the odds are in my favor?" He sighed heavily. "I have to at least give you a chance to make it interesting. Now hear me out--" Twilight felt a claw pull something out of her saddle-bag. Discord was laying on a bush next to her with the 'Dreaming Spells' book. He flipped through the pages with a smirk. "If you want to stop me you'll have to find the Elements of Harmony I've hidden in Cherry Garden's dreams. So, in a way, the game is the same as before--only I don't have to go out of my way again to wreak chaos. It is already chaos here--this is the mind-capital of chaos!" He chuckled to himself. With a mocking tone of pity, "Poor Cherry Garden, such a tormented thing..."
Twilight shot a magical blast at him from her horn, but next thing she knew she felt Discord's arm wrap around her and his claw and paw lift her into the air. The scene had changed.
"Look, Twilight Sparkle. This image is called 'The Starry Night over the Ride River,' painted by Cherry Garden about two years ago in some southern town by the sea. It's far less ambitious than the 'Starry Night' you just saw, but she was very happy with it. She worked on it all night, candles in her sraw hat, en-plein-air (that's fancy-talk for 'in the open air,' Twilight Sparkle). Perhaps it struck a personal cord?"
Below them was the bank of the river, moss-green and dotted with blue strokes, with ghostly figures of Cherry Garden and some ambiguously colored stallion, walking along the bank, tails intertwined. Behind the two lovers was the calm expanse of the river, deep indigo and blue, extending into the horizon, reflecting the gas-lamp lights of the town that curved from the bank, back and along the horizon. The sky was tranquil: a blue-green expanse with lighter colors near the city and darkening in tone, almost to a black, as it drifted high above, stained with greenish-gold stars that were few but cheery.
"'The town is blue and violet, the gas light is yellow, and its cast reflections range from russet-gold down to greenish-bronze. The constellation of the Great Bear sparkles green and pink against the expanse of blue-green sky,' so does Cherry garden express it in a letter to a friend of hers who seems to know not her feelings of love for him. It's pathetic--pitiable, really. She really is so alone."
He dropped Twilight. Where was she now? She quickly looked around at the small room lit only with a single small candle. She saw bars on one window (a window too big for a jail).
"Now, before it slips my mind," Discord mockingly began, pulling the 'Dreaming Spells' book literally from thin air, "Here is your hint:
Twists and turns in an Olive Grove is my master plan,
Neither lofty intelligence nor imagination nor both together
Can help you find what you seek where you began,
The Soul of Harmony is love, love, Love.
That's all I'll say for now." He tossed the book at Twilight and chuckled when she glared at him when it hit her head. "But don't worry, I'll be seeing you every now and again to check on how you're faring... or not. Good luck, Twilight Sparkle!" And with a snap of his fingers, he disappeared.
Twilight picked up the book and shoved it back in her saddle-bag. She trotted toward the window and stuck her face close to the glass. She could see an enclosed wheat field with haystacks, flooded in ghostly moonlight. Over the wall to the left were the tops of rows of olive trees.
"He probably wants to get me into a labyrinth again so he can trick me and waste my time," she thought, hoof to her mouth. "But then again, maybe he knew I would think just that and told me so I wouldn't look there. Hmmm..." She struggled a few moments, deciding. She watched the moonlight gallop across the hills beyond the far wall of the wheat field. She hit her head a few times, confounded. At last, she decided: "I have no other leads, and I have no idea where I am in Cherry Garden's dreams--the olive grove is as good a place to start as any."