“Mommy!” My eyes snapped open and a small pink foal that I recognized as Skyla sat there in front of me, sticking her tongue out at me and then gigging. Sitting up I found myself in an open field, a soft breeze blowing through my mane.
“Hi, there…” I said with a smile, my daughter giggling as she hugged my foreleg with her tiny hooves. “Sorry… guess I was just… asleep. Staying out of trouble?”
“Nah, she’s been behaving herself.” A male voice I knew said next to me, and there was my husband and the love of my life, Shining Armor seated there in the grass alongside me. “You on the other hoof…”
“Oh, hush. You know how busy I’ve been lately.” I said, looking down at Skyla and nuzzling her. Somewhere in my mind, all I did and said felt unfamiliar yet so normal for me.
I also noticed how at peace I felt. “We’ve gone through a lot, together, haven’t we?” I asked. “I’m the luckiest mare in Equestria to have you.”
“And here I thought I was the luckiest guy in Equestria to have you!” he answered, leaning forward and our lips met. Our moment was interrupted two seconds after by Skyla blowing a raspberry at us.
“Oh, Skyla!” I giggled, shaking my head. “Just you wait, you’re gonna want to do the same stuff when you’re all grown up!”
“Bet she’ll be a real head-turner when she is,” Shining said with a laugh. “And I’ll get to be the overprotective dad and everything!”
“A good, loving heart is what I want her to have most.” I said, watching Skyla yawn and curl up to me, closing her blue eyes. Smiling down at her, I gently brushed her mane with my hoof as another soft breeze blew past us.
~
My eyes fluttered open again, and I found myself someplace else completely. Nothing like where I was, or even Alice’s apartment, but a place I remembered more then any other. The DVD player, the hand-down Super NES, some old action figures, it was my childhood room, illuminated remarkably by the moon outside.
“What the…” I muttered, looking at myself and seeing I was still very much Princess Cadance. What I’d experienced a moment ago left me uncertain… was it a memory? Or maybe it was a dream of something I hoped could still come true. Ponies I barely remembered beyond what I’d seen on the show but now felt like I’d known for so much longer and far more intimately tugged at my heart
I shivered a little, it was evident this was a dream, too, and if it was Discord could show up again. My anxiety was answered by a soft knock on the door. I turned sharply, pausing for a moment. Was that my parents? Even in a dream what would they say to a pink pony mare in their son’s room. “Uhhh… y-yes?” I stammered, before facehoofing at my response.
“Just knocking to let you know I'm opening the door,” a vaguely familiar voice said as the door slowly opened. As soon as it did, Princess Luna of all ponies poked her head in. “Mind if I come in?” she asked.
“P-Princess Luna?” I asked, still wide-eyed with astonishment. “Uh… yes, sure. C-come on in.”
.
“Yep, it's me, and thanks.” Luna said with a smile, opening the door fully and walking in and looking around for a moment. Figuring she probably wanted a place to sit, I scooted over on my bed to allow her room. The dark blue alicorn hopped onto the bed and lay down near me. “Thanks again…” she said.
“Heh, it's no problem. I-is this a dream?” I asked, though I felt I already knew the answer.
“Yes, this is a dream,” Luna replied, sitting there seemingly unsure of what to say.
Deciding to break the ice, I spoke up again. “I was... I was in a really bad place until today. Celestia, she helped me,” I explained.
“Oh good, I wasn't sure she'd be able to make it to you in time,” Luna replied. “I actually tried entering your dreams at one point a few days ago, but I was unsuccessful…” she explained, with a look of embarrassment.
“It had to have been Discord stopping you...” I explained. “He was driving me crazy when I finished changing into this... I went to a mental hospital, and it didn't stop, it only got worse and it was like being in an endless nightmare…” I cringed a little, remembering all the awful things he’d put me through when my mind had been reduced to a complete mess.
The other alicorn’s expression hardened slightly. “It even appeared as one…”
“As what?” I asked, confused.
“A nightmare,” she answered, “although I was slightly confused when I first tried to enter…” Luna’s voice trembled a little. “W-which is a story for another time…” she said, managing a smile again. “Anyways, what is your plan now?”
I looked down at myself again, my gaze drifting to my childhood bedcovers and then to the window. “...If Equestria is real... I need to find a way back. The memories I got... the Crystal Empire, I need to go back, it's my responsibility, isn't it? And... ” Involuntarily I began to hyperventilate as I began to remember the last time I’d been asleep.
“What's wrong?” the princess of the night asked me.
“T-the last... time I was asleep, Discord appeared again, he showed me what else I lost...” I explained, my voice trembling as I looked at Luna. “...Luna... before this happened... Shining and I... we had a daughter.”
“You mean to say she was banished here as well?” Luna asked, clearly surprised by what I’d said.
“I don't know!” I replied. “The memory he showed me, the guards told me to take her and get out of there, but then Discord... he took her from me and I couldn't do anything to stop him! He was holding her when he banished me... I don't know what he may have done with her, she was just a foal!”
Luna’s eyebrows creased a little. “Then...there is nothing we can do it about it at this time but hope. I will search the dreams for her, but we need to prepare for the possibility that she may still be in Equestria as well. I fear what Discord may plan for her.”
“He said not many remember, but Twilight did... just enough to get her name out... I have no idea what that means, but you know that alicorn foal plush, Princess Skyla? The fan theories about her being mine and Shining's daughter? They were right.” I explained.
“Really? Wow, that'd make me...a great-aunt…” Luna replied. “Great, now I feel ancient.”
Even with all I’d dealt with, Luna’s sense of humor managed to get a small laugh of amusement from me. “Well, at least you look good for your age, right?” I asked, prompting an eyeroll from her.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she muttered, shuffling a little closer.
“But Skyla… my daughter…” I explained, “she was just a foal when Discord took her. I don’t just have a kingdom to go back to, I need to know if she’s still alive,” I looked down for a moment. “…A-and Shining… all I remember is what I’ve seen in the show but when I do, I can feel this… it’s like an aching or a longing in my heart.”
Luna’s face softened a little, a sympathetic look in her eyes. “It's understandable that you'd feel that way; love works in funny ways, as you'd more than likely know…” she said.
“Yes... I was married... and went through a divorce not long before my 25th birthday... I have people I care for here that I know I'll have to leave behind since I have a kingdom I'm responsible for in Equestria... I have a husband and a daughter who I don't know if I'll see again...” I replied.
“But, do you feel like you have to go back to him because of the past, or because you truly love him?” Luna asked me. “I have no doubt of your love for him, but do you feel like you need to go back to him because of that love?”
That was a rather odd question, was she trying to insinuate something? Thinking about him made my heart feel heavy again. That had to be proof enough that as Cadance I still felt all I did before.
“Yes, I do. It's really like everything... I... felt for him then is all coming back to me.” I said, somewhat uncertain of how Luna was going to answer me.
Luna seemed to look rather uneasy again. “Well, alright, but…” she muttered something before speaking clearly again. “…what if he doesn't…” she grew quiet again, but I didn’t need to be anything special to realize then what she was getting to.
“…Remember me?” I asked, finishing her sentence.
Unable to meet my eyes, she responded. “Yes...”
I felt my already heavy heart sink, the ache and longing I’d been feeling growing worse then ever, now. A pain I’d last felt when I’d divorced my wife back when I was human suddenly struck me. The grief, the strain from such a loss, to know someone you felt such a strong emotional attachment for felt nothing for you anymore was one of the worst feelings imaginable; and to continue on then felt like the idea of trying to walk again after losing a leg, or losing the arm you wrote with, or the death of a close friend or family member; there was a void it left that felt impossible to fill with anything but that which you’d lost… if Discord had taken Shining Armor from me, then he’d forced me to suffer this feeling not once, but twice.
The words Discord had cited playing through my thoughts…
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! I don’t want to go there again! I didn’t want to think about that awful place in my mind that I’d been once locked away in.
“...With my deeds, true love is lost, and it shall be you who'll face the cost...” I muttered, squeezing my eyes shut, fighting back tears, “Sh-shattered hopes and... a broken heart, you shall endure...” I continued, “That's... that's what he said to me before I was banished.”
I felt Luna drape her wing over me as she spoke softly to me. “I can't begin to understand how you feel; I've never known love like you have. In his curse for me, he made it so that I would always be alone,” she explained.
I scooted closer to the other alicorn. “That's what had hurt you in the past, wasn't it? It feels like there's this hole in your heart and nothing can fill it…”
“Yes, that is how it feels…” Luna replied softly.
“I've felt that ever since I had gone through the divorce... I never imagined I could fall any deeper. If Shining Armor forgot all about me…” I said, still holding back tears as I felt Luna’s wing tighten over me.
“I’m sorry for mentioning it…” she said.
I sighed a little, I suppose one way or another I’d have found out. “It may have... been for the better. But I still need to see him or this is never going to go away,” I said. If Shining Armor couldn’t remember me, maybe I could change that… or at least resolve all this emotion bottling inside me.
“I understand…” Luna replied.
“...Whatever happens, I know what I have to do, but I have no idea where to start or where to look.” I replied. As dire as my situation was, as many things as there were that I knew I needed to do, I really had no idea where to start.
“Well, you can always look around on the internet, and you don't have just me to help you. I believe my sister is there as well, correct?” Luna offered.
“Yes, she is.” I replied, nodding.
“Well, I'm sure she would be more than willing to help you…” Luna said. A second later I could have sworn a lightbulb appeared over her head as her face seemed to light up. “Oh! Did she have a little filly with her?” she asked.
“Yes, she did. Pinkie Peach was her name.” I explained. “Adorable thing, though I can't imagine what it's like to get being reduced to childhood added with the gender and species change.”
Luna shuddered a little. “I know. But anyways, earlier I didn't get a chance to ask Tia if she'd been able to save little Pinkie earlier. I only spoke with her long enough to tell her where you were and that you needed help I could not provide…” she explained.
“Well, you can be assured she's safe now. Much as she can be, I suppose. Last I know, she snuggled up to me while she was asleep,” I said, smirking a little. “Guess the filly part of her still exists.”
“Well, that's one good thing at least,” Luna replied.
“Has there been anyone else out there?” I asked. “What I'd said earlier... Discord mentioned Twilight. Does that mean she's here on Earth, too?”
“More than likely,” Luna said, slight irritation in her voice. “He's banished a countless number of ponies here, which is why it took me so long to find you in the first place.”
“I see...” I replied, downcast again as I thought about Shining Armor and my daughter, whom I still had no idea where they were… or how they were.
“Hey, don't worry, I'm sure we'll all find some way to make it through this,” Luna said, trying to keep me calm, but it didn’t.
“I hope so... after what I went through,” I said. “…I can only imagine there's a lot of scared and confused people-turned-ponies out there.”
“There most certainly are, though you had it amongst some of the worst,” Luna replied, causing me to shiver from the memories of that experience as they hit me again.
“It feels like any time I'm out of the fire Discord uses something else to push me back in,” I said, trying to stay calm. “My identity... my sanity... my life... my daughter... now Shining... knowing he doesn't remember anything about me when I'm still left feeling everything I did before for him…” I explained, laying my head down on my bed. “...Celestia also confirmed something I was also afraid of exists... that there's people who'd want to hurt us. She told me about Pinkie Peach's foalsitter.”
Luna tensed up a little. “Yes, luckily we managed to save her before it was too late…”
Realization hit me again the more I thought about it. “Alice... so long as I'm here she's in danger, then. I don't want her getting hurt or worse trying to protect me from people like that.” I said. The thought of dangerous people busting down Alice’s door and hurting her to get to me was a frightening notion. I’d never be able to forgive myself if anything happened to her.
“Well, you and your friend may be fine,” Luna offered. “I have reason to believe that these "mercenaries" are related to Discord in some way, so as long as you have the focus of one of these "aspects," you MIGHT be fine,” she explained.
I shook my head. “That aspect's out of the way, Celestia helped me get rid of it. The pony you helped... is she alright?” I asked.
Luna paused for a moment, as if unsure of what the answer to that was. “For the most part I believe so; I did everything I could, but she'll have to fight the rest of the way by herself, though I can give some assistance.”
“I really hope so... I try not to show it too much but I can't help it that I'm scared about all this,” I replied. Discord, mercenaries, no surefire way back to Equestria, unsure of what had become of those close to who I now was…
“Heh, I don't blame you,” Luna answered. A moment of silence passed and the moon seemed a little brighter, shining through the windows and compelling me to look over. As I did, I suddenly found myself standing on a balcony that seemed to be made of tinted glass. As I looked closer, I realized it wasn’t glass, but crystal. Looking around, I saw that I was now overlooking a vast city of crystalline buildings. The sky was filled with countless stars and the light of the moon and a prismatic aurora borealis above the palace roof shined off the balcony I stood on.
The Crystal Empire… my kingdom… I thought, down below I could see tiny equine figures moving about the streets, light coming from several of the windows. This… I felt a soft breeze blow through my mane, causing it to billow in the wind.
It was strange, I’d only seen it in my nightmares of when Discord took over, and on the show in its uncorrupted form. The show did it no justice in how beautiful it really was, and how oddly at home I suddenly felt.
I belong here… my thoughts told me. But the realization that I’d be leaving friends and family behind made feelings more and more bittersweet to me.
“It's beautiful...” Luna mused, breaking me from my thoughts.
“It really is... I've been thinking about it ever since Celestia helped me wake up. If we beat Discord, and get back home, I have to make it that way again.” I said, feeling my eyes water slightly as the full weight of the damage the chaos god had caused hit me, and what I’d have to leave behind to undo it. “All the crystal ponies... they depended on me. They were all my responsibility and I have to find my way back to them. Even... if it means everything I'll have to leave behind.”
Luna stood back up and jumped from the bed that had now found itself on the balcony, and it faded away as soon as she left it. “Hopefully we will be able to find some way to come back to Earth, so we won't have to leave everything here forever…” she said.
“That'd mean the world to me if we do...” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes with my forehoof, before planting it on my forehead as something else dawned on me. “My parents... talking to them now's gonna be so awkward.” I muttered. How in the world was I supposed to approach them like this?! How would they react? The person they thought to have been their son was now a girly pink pony princess named Cadance.
My words seemed to have a similar effect on Luna as well, as her ears suddenly drooped. “Oh, yes...parents,” she muttered, gulping nervously.
“...Haven't spoken to yours, either?” I asked.
“No, but I'm slowly making my way back to Colorado to do so,” she replied.
“Mine live about an hour from me...” I said as I looked down at the nighttime activity below. “I hope Alice will go with me. I don't know how I'm gonna be able to unload all this on them. Their son's now a pink pony princess that has to go back to the world they came from and save it from a chaos god.”
“Yeah, I have the same problem, though I won't have anyone with me to tell them” Luna replied sadly. A moment of silence passed before she spoke up again. “So what's this "Alice" like? She sounds like a fun person to meet.”
“She really is. Alice has been my best friend ever since we were in school. She's a big fan of the show but not the disturbingly obsessed kind,” I explained. It seemed like any major following the freaks and weirdos tended to be the ones that the rest got generalized as. If anything Alice liked to troll those types every chance she got.
“Maybe we can meet up some time and I can get the chance to meet her,” Luna replied, a slight frown briefly forming that made me guess as she’d implied earlier she didn’t have many friends in the past, if any.
I gave the other alicorn a smile. “I'm sure she'd be glad to meet you, and I think you'd like her. She kind of understands what it's like to be different from others, I kind of... helped her come out to her parents back in high school,” I explained. “I sort of always had a talent for helping others with their love lives.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Luna asked with an eyeroll.
“Excuse me?” I asked, confused by her reaction.
“You, with helping people with their love lives,” she clarified.
I sighed a little. “I guess in hindsight it shouldn't be too surprising. If you've seen Hitch, that was the sort of thing I did back before... well everything,” I explained.
“Ah yes, I actually liked that movie, and I can see the comparison,” Luna answered.
“Finally!” I squealed in delight, “Someone who has seen that movie!” It’d been rather odd that so few people I’d known seemed to remember it.
“I take it everyone you've talked to hasn't seen it?” Luna asked, chuckling.
“A lot fewer then I'd have expected,” I replied with an eyeroll. “That was something I was really good at, ironically my own romantic life not so much...”
“What happened there?” Luna asked.
“When I was still human, I was married...” I began, everything that had come to pass in that part of my life still clear as day to me.
“What happened?” Luna asked again, now more concerned.
“It didn't work out.” I said, looking downward. All the fights, the arguments, having gotten a bruise or two from a few of them that I’d always blamed myself for were also fresh in my memory.
“I see...” Luna replied, looking downcast as well.
“It all ended not long before all this happened, so it was like one thing after another.” I said softly.
“But now, hopefully, things will get better,” Luna answered.
“I hope so…” I said, staring down at the crystal ponies below again, going about their lives unaware of me as I watched over them. I heard Luna come up alongside me watch my subjects as well for a moment, but she suddenly winced as though she could feel something going on.
“It would appear someone is trying to wake you up…” she said as she suddenly started to become more and more translucent. I guess as someone begins to wake up, Luna is evicted from the dream beforehand.
“I see...” I said, not really wanting Luna to go after having just met her. “…before I go…” I instinctively came over and gave her an affectionate nuzzle, much like a foal would to its mother. “Thanks... Aunt Luna.”
For a moment, Luna seemed surprised by the gesture, but then returned it seconds after. “It's no problem to me...my niece,” she said softly.
“Tell my sister to contact me!” She called out as she began to back away and vanished completely. I nodded in response, and turned to look back at the vast kingdom before me as it faded into blackness around me; the dream coming to an end with a small, but still present feeling of relief that I was a little less alone then I’d thought.