//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Plants // Story: I wish, I hope, I dream, I pray // by TNBi //------------------------------// “Snowdrop? Snowdrop! Open the door, please! Was somepony bullying you again?” Primrose asked anxiously, knocking at her daughter’s door. “Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!” Snowdrop screamed towards her door before burying her face in her pillow, which was already soaking wet because of all her uncontrollable crying. She couldn’t help but feel so much hatred: she hated those companions who had been dishonest to her, and that liar who had cheated on her; yet the one whom she hated most was nopony other than herself, a filly that cannot see. They all bullied me, because I’m blind; and I cannot make snow beautiful, because I’m blind… I’m so useless… I can’t do anything… She wept and wept, until she fell asleep before she even realized it. This time, she fell into a really bad dream: again, nothing was visible to her, and to make it even worse, voices of Cumulo Nimbus and Victor came out of nowhere, taunting her, making fun of her, looping around her without stopping. “Leave me alone!” She shrieked in terror. She wanted to escape this terrible dream, she wanted to wake up from it so bad — until everything was exorcized with an agitated call: “Snowdrop!” She opened her eyes, and found herself resting on a land. Waves brushed at her hooves, and a gentle wind was fondling her face. Up above, pieces of white cloud were floating in the azure sky. “Snowdrop, are you all right?” She heard it and turned around — Princess Luna was right by her side, looking at her with anxiety written all over her face. “Princess Luna… It’s really been a long while since we last met,” said Snowdrop. Ever since her last dream in which the sky, the land and the sea were created, the moon princess had not entered any of her dreams for quite some time. She never lost heart though, because she had learned that Luna could only occasionally succeed in this particular magic, and that she had been practicing it all the while. To her, all the wait was worthwhile. “I felt a strong emotional surge from you, and I managed to enter here again thanks to it. The moment I was inside, I saw nightmares haunting you. What happened?” “Well…” The younger filly hung her head and fell silent, for she feared that if she told the truth, Princess Luna would punish Cumulo Nimbus and Cirrus angrily. What they had done did hurt her, but she wouldn’t want to see them getting punished. “Alright, let’s skip it if you dont’ want to talk about it,” said Luna, noticing her reluctance. “Now that I’m here, let us continue from where we left off last time.” “What are you creating this time? I hope it’s nothing too scary…” Snowdrop lookup up at her and asked in anticipation. “You’ll love them,” the night princess gave her a confident smile. She lowered her head, and touched the ground with her horn. In the next moment, just like how she broke off from the ground last time, large amounts of water gushed from below, and gathered into streaks and rivers. Where there the water flowed, little green things started to emerge. Soon, more and more of them started to break the ground and grew longer and longer, covering almost every last piece of the land. As some of those green things grew, their tips started to develop a different color, and swell into small round lumps, which in time opened to let out a mild pleasant scent. Some grew significantly taller and thicker while their bodies turned to brown, with green pieces growing out of their tips. Later, those small round lumps appeared on them as well, and opened to let out their fragrance inside. Some of the greens grew even longer, and started to wind around other things. “These —” Princess Luna started to introduce, “are the plants of the earth. Those long ones are grass, the colorful ones are flowers, those that crawl onto others are called vines, and the taller ones are…” “They’re trees!” said Snowdrop with her eyes wide open in wonder. She lift a hoof, and stroked a leaf’s surface for a brief moment. Although she always lived on the clouds and hadn’t any chance to touch the plants on the earth below, her mother had told her of how the plants were like when she was still little. Now, she could witness how the plants grow with her own eyes — such thrill and excitement filled her heart, and she almost forgot about what had happened earlier. “Correct. There are many more plants to be seen, but I’m going to show you something better.” Princess Luna said, and let her horn glow again. A gust of wind swept by, and stirred the tree leaves into rustling sounds. Snowdrop watched as the plants of the earth started to take on different new looks. Some of the plants’ appearances didn’t change very much, but their flowers withered to make way for bearing firm, round balls that has different colors and sweet scents. She guessed that these were called “fruit“ — and inside them lived little seeds, the children of plants. Her mother Primrose had once told her a story, that plants wanted to let their children travel to places far, far away, but they didn’t have legs, so they asked other animals for help to take the seeds with them, and in return they would grow these tasty fruit to repay the favor. Some other plants started to turn yellow, with all their flowers and fruit fallen. Meanwhile, their once green leaves turned to an amazing burning red, and fell slowly to the ground. As for the grass, they turned into an especially beautiful golden color, with little ears of firm seeds growing above their tips. But what happened to the remaining plants frightened Snowdrop somehow: all the leaves, flowers and fruit had fallen off the trees, leaving only a bare trunk; all the grass and vines had withered away as well. Then little dots of white stuff started to fall from the clouds above, and they soon covered up that very region. “What you just saw were the four seasons. What I showed you first was Spring, then the fruit-laden Summer, then the colorful leaves-filled Autumn, and finally it’s…” “It’s Winter…” Snowdrop murmured, and walked into that white domain. Unlike the other regions, the ground felt rather stiff under the snow. Looking at all these, she suddenly felt an ache in her heart. “Now I understand why… Why everypony doesn’t like winter at all. Unlike other seasons, everything here seems so deadly silent, and its color looks so monotonic…” She picked up a snowflake from the ground, when suddenly something sparked inside her mind. “Snow!” she exclaimed, “I wanna see the snow made by me and… others!” “As you wish,” nodded the moon princess. Her horn emitted another faint glow, and those snowflakes made in the factory started falling from the clouds above the winter region. Snowdrop picked some of them up, and before long she distinguished the ones made by her from those made by others — the snowflakes made by them looked neat, with carefully arranged even patterns carved in the center, while those made by herself had uneven shapes and randomly engraved holes, which made them rather messy-looking as a result, and gave her an unsatisfactory feeling. “Now I see… So they are the snowflakes I made, and they really look awful… Too awful to bring happiness to anypony who sees them,” she said, and couldn’t help her tears falling as she felt something inside her shattering. “Don’t say that,” seeing that Snowdrop wept again, Princess Luna tried to soothe her, “Didn’t I tell you before, that the snowflakes you made had brought me ha—” “But you never said they were beautiful either! Did you? Please tell me the truth!” The moon princess never expected to be snapped back at, and the two of them fell into a moment of awkward silence. “I...I’m so sorry for being so disrespectful,” as Snowdrop calmed down a bit, she realized that she had shown a terrible attitude towards a royal princess, so she hung her head and apologized to Luna, and told her details of the injustice she had just suffered today. “I’ll forgive you of your outburst,” the moon princess walked beside her and continued, “and I have my apology to you as well, for helping you see in dreams is the best I can do for now. Should you be able to see in reality, you could probably produce beautiful snowflakes, and rid yourself of such unjust sufferings forever.” “Wait — that’s it!” Snowdrop’s ears twitched a little at Luna’s remarks, then her eyes glinted as if something had finally dawned on her. “I can see in dreams! And everything here seemed so real too! So if I can make some beautiful snowflakes here and remember the steps, I can reproduce them in reality just the same! My memory won’t fail me, and I’ll try to — no, I must remember them!” “That’s an amazing idea! You— “ before Luna could finish her admiration, she stopped halfway with a twitch of her ear.”Did you hear that?” “Hear what?” “There’s somepony calling me… It’s my sister!” Hearing this, Snowdrop listened carefully, but her sensitive ears didn’t distinguish anything other than the blowing wind and the flowing rivers. “No, I can’t hear it,” she answered, before she heard an agitated exclaim from the moon princess. “This is bad! I was too anxious entering your dream that I forgot to raise the moon!” It was the first time for the little blue filly ever saw her princess panic, and what she heard astonished her even more, for raising and setting those two celestial orbs were the most important thing for the two princess and all Equestria. She never expected that she could be the cause of such a grave delay. “Oh my, what shall we do now?” she asked. “You wait right here; I’ll be back in a minute!” Luna reached out a hoof, and the air around it rippled as if she had touched something. Then from where she touched, a black hole appeared, big enough for her to go through. She didn’t hesitate to jump into it, which then closed and disappeared, leaving Snowdrop alone staying in the dreamscape. She had thought that the dream would immediately end on Luna’s leave. However, it didn’t end at all, and everything remained intact. She decided that she’d attempt to created some new winter snow before the princess’s return.