There was no way… I HAD to have been dreaming! Nightshade, one of my close friends, was actually Nightmare Moon, the mare who twice attempted to bring nighttime eternal to Equestria, and she was standing right in front of me! The adrenaline rushed through my veins as I trembled in fear. The terror enveloped my mind as I searched desperately for a solution, no ideas presenting themselves due to the panic attack. This dark mare’s presence itself was suffocating me as the air grew heavy and hard to breathe in. I shut my eyes and held my head, trying to wake myself up.
“It’s just a dream,” I repeated over and over. “It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream!”
“This isn’t a dream, Noah,” she said as she looked down at me. “What you’re seeing is the truth. I am Nightmare Moon.”
I backed away from her and continued to do so until I hit a wall, and Nightmare calmly approached me. I felt a crawling sensation upon my skin, warning me of her approach. It seemed that my body was prepared to do just about anything to avoid direct contact with this entity of illusions.
My mind raced… Nightshade… she must have kidnapped her and took her place.
“Where is she!?” I asked demandingly.
“What?” Nightmare asked innocently.
“What did you do to Nightshade!?” I yelled.
My fear had just dissolved. It had now turned into pure rage and aggression. I completely forgot about the impending danger in front of me for the sake of the friend that I had just remembered, a friend whom I really cherished. I had known Nightshade for quite a while, and even though she was the newest member of my companions, she was just as precious to me as Klaus and Maud were. The possibility of this evil creature stooping so low as to kill Nightshade and take her place infuriated me!
“You don’t understand. Nightshade and I are one and the same.”
“I don’t believe you!” I hollered again, clenching my fist in blind hatred.
The alicorn sighed and go on her knees so that she was closer to eye-level with me. “I’m telling the truth, Noah,” she said as she leaned closer to me. “Look at my eyes. You know it’s me. The only difference between Nightshade and I is our appearance.”
With no other choice, I peered into Nightmare’s teal-blue eyes, and for some reason, the speed of my heartbeat began to gradually go down. The burning sensation in my head and chest died down, a calmer feeling taking its place. I didn’t see any hostility in neither her eyes, nor the rest of her face, but… I still wasn’t sure.
“H-how are you even here? You’re supposed to share a body with Princess Luna, and she’s in Equestria…”
Nightmare sighed. “I know that I have a lot of explaining to do, and I am willing to tell you, but I must ask you a question first.”
“W-what?”
“How is it that you know enough of me to be so scared of me?” she asked. “I didn’t think that humans would know much about me outside of the Nightmare Night legends.”
I looked away from the alicorn, her piercing gaze becoming too much for me. “I was there… during the Summer Sun Celebration almost three years ago.” I confessed, a flood of unpleasant memories rushing back.
Nightmare’s eyes widened when she heard this. “You were?” she asked in disbelief. “But… you told me that you never liked travelling long-distance.”
“I don’t, and I didn’t like it back then, either, but my school’s Astronomy club wanted to go there for their summer trip, and we had spent the entire school year raising money to go. As the club’s president, I had to represent the group, so I really couldn’t get out of it.”
As I spoke, my breathing became calmer and more even, and I wasn’t as nervous as I was before.
“I see…” said Nightmare. “…So I guess you saw when I appeared at the event instead of Celestia.”
I nodded.
“But I’m no longer like that, Noah. I swear!”
“And how am I supposed to believe that?” I said, my tone dipped in pain. Betrayal swirled inside my heart, and it stung me deeply.
She sighed and sat beside me, and I moved away from her a little when she did. “I suppose it’d help if I first answered your question on how I even got here in the first place, if you’re willing to listen, that is.”
I nodded my head, and Nightmare began to explain herself.
“When I was defeated by the Elements of Harmony in the Castle of the Two Sisters, my spirit was forced out of Luna’s body, and I nearly died. However, by some miracle, a small fragment of me survived. I was nothing more than a small speck of magical energy, but over the course of the next several months, I started to regain some of my strength. By the time a year had passed, I became a full spirit; I was essentially a ghost. Over the next year, I attained a physical form, as well, and I was able to roam beyond the castle and gather food from the Everfree Forest.”
“And you left Equestria soon after that?”
“No. I was still much too weak. I had little to no magic left at first, so my horn was nothing more than an accessory. After about a week, though, I was able to perform invisibility spells, and I used them to visit the nearby towns and cities. At the time, I was still plotting my revenge, and I had planned to take Celestia down once and for all, but then I saw that it was not just her ruling Equestria anymore. There were now four princesses, her included, and I realized that my magic would have to be even more powerful than it used to be in order to defeat them. With that in mind, I knew that I had to go somewhere where they couldn’t track me while I regained my strength… and that’s when I noticed the humans.”
“What about humans?” I asked.
“From my short time in modern Equestria since I returned from the moon, I noticed the humans at the Summer Sun Celebration. They obviously weren’t from Equus, so they had to have come from somewhere, so eight months ago, I followed a family of humans to one of the portals to Earth, and that’s how I ended up in Florida. Once I got here, I knew that I couldn’t just stay in this broken-down house forever. With a physical body to maintain, I needed food and water, so I had been stealing from corner stores and drinking water from the sink since I’ve been here.”
That explained how she had been surviving for so long, but there was one thing that didn’t make sense. “Why did you decide to attend UF?”
“I figured that I needed to adapt to the way things worked in the human world, lest I stay in this house every day until I was ready to go back to Equus, so last November, once my magic developed to the point where I could disguise myself, I decided to don a new persona and see what normal young adult humans did.”
“And that was how Nightshade came to be?”
Nightmare Moon nodded her head as she continued. “At first I wandered around the campus, observing the other students and studying how they interacted. I also had to see how they used their technology as well, because my inexperience would have been a dead giveaway if I tried to blend in. When I felt that I was finally ready to test how much I had learned, I started walking in on classes. Thankfully, there were so many students that the professors didn’t even notice.”
Nightmare’s situation made a lot more sense to me once she explained it. All this time, she had been biding her time for her strength to come back, and then she’d return to Equestria to try and take over again.
But there was still something that didn’t add up.
“You said that the only difference between you and Nightshade was that your appearance, and yet you’re talking about to returning to Equestria and defeating the princesses.”
“Yes,” Nightmare answered, “but I don’t feel that way anymore.”
I looked at her skeptically. “What made you change your mind, then?”
The alicorn looked down at the floor for a moment, and then she looked back up at me. “It was when I met you.”
My eyes widened. “Me?” I asked.
“Not just you, but Klaus and Maud, too,” she answered. “I’ll admit, I wasn’t very excited about sitting with you guys the day we met, but when I saw how well the three of you get along, I suddenly felt the need for that sense of companionship, and with the way you guys accepted me so openly, I finally felt something that I never felt before. I felt like I was wanted, like I had a group of, well… friends. Being somepony who’s always been alone, I’ve never had that before.”
“Nightmare…” I said, unsure of what to say.
Now that I thought about it, I could almost see the emotional phases Nightmare endured throughout the periods of her existence: hate, vengeance, patience, curiosity, thirst for knowledge, surprise, pensiveness and reflections, opening up, the discovery of friendship, and finally, the desire to preserve that sense companionship and love.
“After getting to know the three of you, I began to let my guard down and actually be myself around you guys, and I began to forget about my plans for revenge. It began to matter less and less to me as the weeks went by, and I began to think that starting over my life as a normal pony would be better for me.”
“Well… why did you reveal yourself to only me?”
“Because out of the three of you, I trusted you the most. You were the first friend I made here, and you shared my interest in the stars and constellations. I thought that if I revealed myself to you, you wouldn’t react as harshly as anyone else would.”
After that statement, Nightmare’s ears lopped down, her expression pleading and regretful.
That really hit me…
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I yelled and crawled away in fear.”
“Actually,” said Nightmare, “I’m quite relieved that that’s all you did. I feared that you would immediately run away and tell someone of my existence, but you stayed, and you were willing to listen to me.”
“How are you so sure that I won’t tell anyone?”
“I’m not sure, actually, but I don’t think you will.”
“And why’s that? You’ll do something terrible to me if I do?”
“No, and for two reasons, the first being that I’m still too weak to do anything that bad to you, and the second being that I don’t want to. I trust you, Noah, and all I ask is that you trust me.”
I looked down and sighed. “How much magic do you have then?” I asked, changing the subject.
“As of now, I can only perform invisibility and disguise spells, and my physical capabilities aren’t at their normal state, either,” she explained. “The way I am now, a regular earth pony could do more harm to you than I can.”
“Really?”
“Really. So, will you still keep my secret?”
I had to think about that for a moment. Nightshade, or rather, Nightmare Moon, was asking me to keep her existence a secret so that she wouldn’t be found out. She claimed that her magic and strength were a fraction of what they once were, but the only proof I had of that was her word.
It all boiled down to whether or not I could trust her not to do anything bad to me, or anyone else.
My common sense told me not to trust her, that she was just trying to use me, and that I’d be a fool to believe her story…
But something else within me told me that I could trust her, that Nightmare Moon was still the same mare that I had come to know over the past three months, and that she wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.
“I… I will,” I told her. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Nightmare’s eyes immediately brightened up when she heard me say that. “Thank you so much, Noah! I knew I made the right choice in telling you.”
“No problem…” I said nervously.
“So… I’ll see you at school tomorrow?” she asked.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“Will I see you at school tomorrow?” she repeated.
“Um, yeah. Sure.”
“I know this is a lot to take in, but I promise you, Noah, nothing will change between us. We’ll still be friends, just like before.”
I nodded my head and got onto my feet and walked towards the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then… Nightmare…”
The alicorn turned around and gave me a concerned look. “You can still call me Nightshade, if that makes you feel more comfortable.”
I didn’t look back at her. “Sure…”
With that, I walked out of the decrepit house, leaving the alicorn behind as I made my way down the block of houses that had lived well past their lifespan. As I walked, though, part of me felt guilty for leaving the poor mare back there like that. Hell, I didn’t even say goodbye to her. Not only that, but she was alone in that run-down building without any food, and she was lucky to have running water.
I sighed as looked back, wondering what the hell I was thinking, and I walked back to the house.
I didn’t bother to knock on the door and simply walked in, and I saw Nightmare Moon sitting in the same spot she was sitting in when I left her.
I took a deep breath and cleared my throat, and she immediately turned around, surprised to see me.
“Noah!” she gasped.
“Hey, Nightmare…” I said, looking at the ground. “Look, I don’t think that I can let you keep living here in good conscience, so…”
I hesitated for a moment, but then I just spit it out.
“Do you want to stay at my place?”