//------------------------------//
// Ordinary Nightmares 
// Story: Ordinary Nightmares 
// by Mannulus 
//------------------------------//


A Misadventure of Derpy Hooves



By Mannulus


She was falling.  The ground was rushing at her, and every tiny tree, stream, road, and house grew larger and more detailed to her sight by the second.  She wanted to flap her wings, of course.  She wanted to find her equilibrium; to gain control of her momentum, and rescue herself from the otherwise inevitable impact.
It was impossible.
No matter how hard she strained, her wings would not so much as open from her sides.  It was as if they were tied to her body.  She looked down (Or was it up?) to figure out why it was that she could not flex her wings and ply them against the atmosphere.  Why did it feel like they were tied?
Because they were buried.
She was buried up to her shoulders, and she threw her head back towards where the ground had been only a moment before.  Now, however, the ground was the sky, and soil slowly poured in around her, filling the hole that would surely become her grave.
She opened her mouth to cry out for help, but the flood of cold, wet dirt became faster and more violent.  It filled her mouth, choking off the sound.  She gagged, retched, and spat.  Then, she squirmed and writhed, trying to push herself upwards, but nothing would free her.
There came then, as the flood of earth continued, a face in the opening of the hole.  It was essentially equine, but also horrifically unnatural, like a clown or a living doll.  She had seen it many times before, but now, as in all those cases, she could not remember it.
“What's wrong, Ditzy?” asked the grinding, voice of the weird, clownish face. “Can't you fly, little filly?  Can't you get yourself up into the sky?  Can't you fly, you useless klutz?”
It was a mocking, ugly tone that grated on her ears like a knife's dull edge on a whetstone.
No, I can't, she thought, and she wanted to scream it, but the sour earth poured into her mouth each time she so much as cracked her lips, turning her words into a sputtering, gagging cough.
I can't fly!  I can't move!  Why can't I move!?
The face grinned so broadly that Derpy was amazed its mouth did not tear at the corners.  Its eyes flickered pale yellow in the dark and began to spin independently of one another, like those of some demonic chameleon.
“You can do better than this, you little Ditz,” it growled, and then it gave a heave, vomiting an incredible torrent of thick, silty mud into the hole.  This filled it even further, so that only Derpy's muzzle and eyes remained above the slow, encroaching flood.
“Come on and make Momma proud just like you always said you would!” the face screeched, its tone growing so shrill that it made Derpy's skin crawl beneath her fur and feathers, but what it had said still caused a sudden jolt of recognition in her.
Momma? She thought.
Around the face, the blue sky faded to black, but the silhouette of the grinning, hateful visage remained, its glowing eyes providing the only illumination in the slowly filling pit.  She would be buried underneath the gaze of this vile, Tartarean circus clown; a parody of the pony she had once wanted to be.
She thrashed against the muddy earth, and pushed her head free of the flood.
“PLEASE, NO!” she screamed. “I don't wanna die like this!  I wanted to be somepony...”
“No more chances," said the ugly thing above her. "You've wasted enough of them already."
Now, it crept down into the pit, the earth pouring ever faster around it.
“Not yet!” said Derpy, and as the thing drew nearer, she shut her eyes. “PLEASE, NOT...”
“Ditzy Doo,” said a voice. “Peace, my little pony.”
It came from close to her ear, this sound, and it was calm, quiet, and reassuring.  She was astonished and relieved to find that what had moments ago been unyielding earth all around her was somehow the legs and hooves of somepony embracing her – somepony much larger and stronger than herself.  She could feel the warmth of her – and she was sure from the voice that it had been a her – pressed against her back. She could breath again, and the filthy earth was gone from around her.  She lay on her side gasping shallowly and shivering.
Meaning to find out whom had spoken to her, she rolled slowly in their embrace, and came face to face with nopony other than her boyfriend, Chill Breeze.  She was in her own bed, safe and sound, and Chill Breeze was lost too deeply in his own sleep for the words to have been his, even had they been spoken in his voice.
She rolled back to face her window, and over the rooftop of the house that stood on the other side of the cramped little alley known as Tack Street, she saw the pale glint of an autumn moon.
“Why couldn't you have been around before, Princess?” she asked softly of the gleaming, silver disc. “Back when I had those dreams every night?”

Derpy stumbled into the Equestrian Parcel Service hub, still half asleep.  She had opted for a coffee-flavored muffin that morning when she made her usual stop by Sugar Cube Corner, and had added to that a cup of muffin-flavored coffee.  They had not yet taken effect, and she knew that when they did, the result would be little more than bolstered energy hampered by a drowsy haze.  When that spurt of energy faded, she would feel worse than ever, and would have to find a way to coordinate her route so that she could make another stop for a second dose of the same – this one most likely larger than the first.  She would repeat this cycle at least three times during the day, and by the time she got home, she would feel terribly exhausted in that peculiar way that only ever resulted from powering herself through a day on caffeine.  Worst of all, in spite of her weariness, the latent effect of the caffeine in her system would cause her difficulty falling asleep that night.  In short, she was keeping herself awake only at the risk of putting herself into a vicious cycle that would not break itself until the weekend.
It was Monday.
She found her way to the couch in the small lounge area outside her foreman's office, and slumped down onto it, groaning quietly.
“Don' wanna fly a route t'day,” she slurred out, rubbing at her eyes with a foreleg.
“Derpy, is that you?” came Boxxy's gravelly, bass voice from behind the door of his office, which stood slightly open.
“S'mee,” she groaned, laying back against the couch, and letting her head flop upwards to stare at the ceiling. “M'not late'm I?” she said, finding a way to mumble while still projecting her voice loudly enough for Boxxy to hear her.
She had been awake long before sunrise that morning, having never returned to sleep once wakened from her nightmare.  Rather than continue fighting for sleep, she had finally opted to get out of bed early to give herself more time to make her coffee stop.  Still, she was worried she had dawdled too long, and would now find herself outside Boxxy's good graces.
“What? No.” said Boxxy, giving her a sense of relief. “You're like half an hour early.”
“Oh, really?” asked Derpy, turning her eyes towards the clock, and squinting to try and bring it into focus.
“How early did I get out of bed?” she asked herself.
“Actually, this is a lucky break for both of us,” said Boxxy, and he opened the door of his office, a box clutched under his left wing.
“This got dropped off yesterday afternoon,” he said. “Goes to Canterlot; Princess Luna.  Train leaves in about ten minutes.”  He made his way to where she sat, and turned to the side, presenting the package. “Grab and go,” he said.
“Oh, now that's just great,” she grumbled. “If I hadn't had all that coffee, I could have slept on the train.”
She took the package, and stuffed it into her delivery bag, never rising from the couch.
“Come on,” said Boxxy.  “Up.”
She gave a whining, nasally moan as she forced herself to stand.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Princess Luna?  Where's this even from?”
As if she had to ask.
“Carousel Boutique,” she groaned, observing the shipping label.
“It's not like it's a tough delivery,” said Boxxy. “Just drop it off with whoever takes Princess Luna's mail and messages.  By the time you get there, she'll probably be asleep.”
“Lucky her,” said Derpy.
“Get going,” said Boxxy, tapping a hoof impatiently.
“Fine,” said Derpy, and she stumbled back out the way she had stumbled in.

The caffeine hit her right as she got aboard the train, and it lasted long enough to get her to Canterlot.  The castle guards allowed her in, but unlike her two previous visits, she was not directed to the large, central hall of the castle.  She was instead lead to an adjacent tower which connected to the the rest of the castle by a narrow, crenelated bridge.  Except for this peculiar segregation, it was unremarkable compared to the rest of the castle.
The guard leading her stopped outside the oaken door of the tower, and knocked.  The door opened to reveal a darkened chamber dominated by an ornate elevator of polished blue steel.  Whether it had been a pony, a mechanism, or magic that had opened the door, Derpy could not identify it.
“Just ride the elevator,” said the unicorn stallion who had lead her here.  “Give the box to her aide, and let her sign the papers.  Then, get right back on the elevator.  Quietly.”
“Easy enough,” said Derpy.
“I'll wait here until you return,” said the stallion, “oh, and just let me say it one more time; don't disturb the Princess.  If anything wakes her up before about five pm, she kinda tends to throw things... at me... later... because I'm supposed to warn everypony who goes in here to be quiet... and she also just doesn't like me... long story.”  He thought about if for a moment, then shrugged. “Actually, not a long story, at all:  ghost pepper.”
Derpy blinked a few times.
“Are you serious?” she finally asked.
“Princess Celestia said it would be funny!” he said defensively, and then added, after a moment, “She was right.”
He snickered to himself for a second.
“Right,” mumbled Derpy, and she stepped towards the elevator, keeping her hooves light on the stone floor.
She was amazed at how dark the place was.  She would have thought a tower like this would have a chandelier or at least gas lamps for illumination, but the only light came from a small candelabra in the elevator, which itself boasted only a meager three candles.  The resultant pervasive gloom made it difficult for her to make out much about the tower's interior beyond the existence of the elevator, and a floor of some kind of polished, black stone.
As she stepped into the elevator, its door slid shut behind her.  Remarkably, there came no metallic crash, but only a gentle, quiet rattling.  Likewise, the elevator's movement was almost perfectly silent, producing only the faintest occasional rattle of steel.  If the machine had any rails on which it rode or a chain or cable that held it aloft, she could not see them.  She was not sure if this was because of the pervasive darkness, or because they simply were not there.
As the elevator moved, she noticed several times the faint silhouettes of armored bat ponies, suspended upside-down at what seemed to be fairly regular intervals.  In the darkness of this chamber, the elevator's silent, unfelt motion gave the sense that it was not she who was moving, but them.  They seemed to pass by her slowly, their eyes fixed upon her, their expressions stolid.  Whatever it was they suspended themselves from, Derpy could not see it, and it made the passing figures seem all the more ghostly and surreal.  The strangest thing about them, though, was that they were moving not downward, as if the elevator was ascending the tower, but upward, as if it had begun to descend some long shaft into the depths of the caverns below Canterlot.
It was unsettling to her, a pegasus, to realize that she must be underground in the pitch-black darkness.  She belonged among the clouds and in the sun.  Caves and darkness were the realm of the bat pony, a race of which most ponies had never even seen a single member up close, and about which little was known to earth ponies, unicorns, or pegasi.  Even in the darkness, she could somehow almost feel them watching her with their eyes and their ears.  Even with how little was known of this reclusive race, Derpy knew more than enough to know that every bat pony in this long, dark shaft could hear the elevator's faintest rattle, and probably even the sound of her breath.
Bat ponies, she thought, shaking her head. I'd rather not deal with them, at all.
After only a minute or so, the darkened faces of the bat ponies began to move not upward, but sidelong, as if the “elevator” had somehow begun to move horizontally.  This continued for a while, and then the bat ponies ceased to appear to either side of the blued steel cage.  For at least half a minute, Derpy was totally alone in a steel cage in darkness that was perfect but for the faint flicker of the three candles, and it gave her a cold sense of dread.
She would not have known the elevator had stopped if the door had not opened, but when it did, she stepped out onto a stone floor, and breathed a sigh of relief.  She was glad to be out of the confines of the elevator, but the darkness still gave her pause.
Then came light, pale and silvery, emanating from just a step to Derpy's left.  It was a soft glow, providing very little illumination, but in the pitch darkness of this pit, it drew the pegasus' attention, prompting her to step towards it.  As she drew close to it, she saw that it came from no candle or gas lamp, but instead from the intricately-patterned wings of what she quickly identified as a moth as large as her hoof.
“Pretty,” she said, smiling, and as if responding to either the sound of her voice or the sensation of her breath stirring the air, the moth flicked its wings.
To its left, another pair of wings, patterned like its own with large spots that reminded Derpy of eyes, slowly faded into being.
Then, to its right, two more of the pale lights began to burn.  Then, from all around, a half dozen more.  Then two dozen, and then a hundred and a thousand, until Derpy saw that she stood in a short, arched corridor that terminated in an ebony door emblazoned with a crescent moon cast of what could be nothing other than pure platinum.
Not only was there a door, however, but also a desk -- and what a desk!  Derpy thought that Boxxy's desk at the EPS hub must be the world champion of clutter, but this desk outshone it completely.   It was huge; a full five paces long, and with a wraparound top, to boot.  For all of that space, Derpy could not see the desk's own top surface anywhere.  It was buried in papers and bulging file folders, and Derpy could only guess that the two tremendous piles of documents at its two foremost corners must conceal somewhere in their depths "in" and "out" boxes.
On top of the pile of papers, near the front edge of the desk, there rested a placard that read “Moondancer: Chief Aid to Princess Luna.”  There was nopony there, however, and Derpy wondered briefly what to do, until, by some miracle, she managed to spot what sat beside it among the clutter: beneath a marble-based paperweight otherwise made of ebony carved Princess Luna's image, there rested a note that read “Taking dictation in Princess' chamber.  Please step through door at left to tend to any pertinent business.”
“Oh,” said Derpy. “I guess Princess Luna's not asleep, after all,” she said.  “Well, guess I better drop this off, and be on my way.”
She walked to the door, marveling at the exquisite beauty of its polished and oiled ebony surface.  Finding no knob or handle, she decided that she would have to knock, and reached out to touch it.
It was an illusion.  Her hoof passed through it like thin air.  It did not ripple like water or flicker like a dying flame; it just let her hoof pass through it as though it did not exist.  She was taken momentarily aback, but realizing she had no other choice, she stepped directly through it.  There was no sensation associated with this act.  Her stomach did not turn.  Her fur did not stand on end.  Her skin did not tingle.  She simply passed through the image of the door as if it was thin air.
The room beyond it defied anything she might have expected.  It was less a room, really, than a platform; a spire of stone with a top somehow grated flat, which jutted upward from what seemed an infinite depth of blackness far below.  Perhaps it was because she could not see the pit's bottom, but something about the sight sent even her, a pegasus, dizzy with a sense of precipitous height.
She glanced back over her shoulder, and found that the door she had passed through was quite present.  It stood free at the edge of the platform with no frame or hinges to hold it, but it was there.
Ahead of her there was a chamber, ringed in blued steel candelabras and filled entirely with exquisite furniture, all made of the blackest ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl in motifs of the moon and stars.  The curtains around the enormous bed were deep, deep violet, and the pony that sat in their midst did not look at all, in that moment, like a Princess.
She wore no crown and no makeup.  She wore no mantle. She wore nothing at all, in fact, except an expression of weariness. Her mane was tied back into a tight braid to keep it in order as she slept, and the violet sheets of the bed were pulled up around her shoulders.
A unicorn that Derpy could only assume must be Moondancer sat at the foot of the bed on an ebony stool, scribbling on a note pad which she levitated in front of her face.  She was white with a very full mane of dark red – almost auburn -- having purple highlights.  Her cutie mark was a crescent moon with a trio of stars beneath it.  Derpy thought she would have been very pretty, except that her face bore an expression that somehow managed to mix sadness, desperation, and a weariness even more pervasive than that visible on the Princess' own.  In truth, if there was anything that Derpy would always remember about Moondancer from this, the only time she would ever meet her, it was that she seemed like she was just about to cry, but never did, like a river restrained by a leaking dam that somehow still refused to give way.
Derpy caught a few words of Princess Luna's dictation as she stepped through the door,  something to the effect that the wights in the Canterlot graveyard had been eliminated per the groundskeeper's request, before both the princess and her aide noticed her standing there.
The alicorn ceased speaking, and both she and Moondancer turned their eyes towards Derpy.
“Umm... Hello,” said Derpy, bowing quickly. “I have a package for Princess Luna from Carousel Boutique in Ponyville.  There was a note on the desk, so...”
“''Tis no bother,” said the Princess. “Were thou in any respect a threat, the door would not have let thee pass.”
“Well,” said Derpy, flicking her wings and swishing her tail nervously, “I just have to drop this off and get a signature or forty, and I'll be on my way.”
“Moondancer,” said Luna. “Wouldst thou tend unto the bureaucratic particulars of this courier's mission?”
“Yes, your highness,” said the unicorn, and she rose from her stool, leaving her note pad and pen upon it.  She walked to where Derpy stood, and extended a hoof, waving it towards herself as if to say, “come on and give it here.”
Derpy withdrew her clipboard from her bag, and held it out towards the white pony.  As Moondancer took it, the pegasus whispered: “There are probably more like fifty or sixty signatures, and maybe a few awkward questions about Princess Luna's credit score and random stuff like that.  You can probably just ignore those, since she's... you know... royalty, and such.”
“I do this every day,” sighed Moon Dancer, “and no, you can't ignore those questions.  Gets weird when they start asking for former places of residence, criminal records, and so forth.  When she first returned, I had to list the names, occupations, and marital statuses of all habitants of her current legal address just to get her a checking account opened.  The bank wouldn't let it go at anything less than every single guard and servant who lives at the castle!  It took me four days and three reams of paper to fill out that form!  I thought my horn would...”
“Moondancer,” Princess Luna cut her off, “return to thy desk for the day; I've no more to dictate unto thee, and I would speak at this pony alone.”
“Certainly my lady!” said the unicorn.
She turned back to Derpy long enough to hiss through her teeth, “if they find me dead at my desk of horn implosion, it's your fault!” and with that, she walked quite literally through the door.
As the unicorn's tail finally disappeared through the weird, illusory door, Derpy turned to the alicorn.  After staring at her for a few seconds, she decided that Princess Luna meant for her to have the first word.  So, she began with a question.
“Is horn implosion... Does that actually happen, or was she exaggerating?”
“Mindest thou not my scribe,” said the Princess, “She doth what she doth quite well, but she findeth her duty unenviable at times, and thereby doth she occasionally forget herself.”
“Then why not get somepony else for the job?” asked Derpy.
“Upon my return,” said the Princess, “she didst request the post she now keepeth.  She saith, given her name and heraldry, it must certainly be some duty of hers to serve me.
“Heraldry?” asked Derpy.
“Her... “cutie mark” is what I believe it is called in these times.”
“Oh,” said Derpy. “Well, I have this package for you.”
“I pray thou leavest it upon yonder dresser,” said Princess Luna.
“Don't you want to open it?” asked Derpy.
“I know already what it is,” said the alicorn, “and I am certain I shall find it satisfactory.”
“A dress,” said Derpy, “of course.” 
“A dress, indeed,” said the night-purple horse. “A gown fit for a queen.”
“A queen?” asked Derpy. “Why not a Princess?”
“'Tis for Nightmare Night,” came The alicorn's reply; “the one night which I am permitted to be a queen.”
“Oh yeah,” that's tomorrow night, isn't it?” asked Derpy.
“For most ponies,” said Luna.  “For you, 'twould seem to have come early.”
Derpy turned her eyes to the floor, and did not look up as she spoke.
“Yeah, sorry about the trouble.”
“Trouble?” asked the Princess, raising an eyebrow, and rising from her bed. “'Twas merely an ordinary evening.”
“For you, maybe,” said Derpy looking up to see Luna striding towards her, and noticing that her tail was, like her mane, tightly braided.
She must toss and turn a lot in her sleep, thought Derpy.  Who would have guessed?
“For thee as well,” said the Princess. “For among all dreams, nightmares are by far the most ordinary.”
“What do you mean?” asked Derpy. “How is something like a nightmare ordinary?”
“I have gazed into the dreams of thousands of ponies,” said the alicorn, “and I have seen dreams of innumerable descriptions.  They flow in strange ways, moving the dreamer through time and space in ways that defy reason.  They are peculiar and bare of logic or sensible sequence, and they are all very different.  All, that is, but nightmares.”
Princess Luna stood right in front of the little pegasus, now.
“Nightmares are rarely unique,” said Luna, “though some are more common to certain types of pony than others.  Every soldier, for instance, hath nightmares wherein he findeth himself in battle, but hath forgotten his lance, or wherein he findeth, if he doth indeed have it, that it will not pierce some foe's hide, no matter how swift and strong his charge.  Every mother hath her nightmares where she loseth a child, and every father also.  Every unicorn hath dreams where her magic will not obey her will, so that it consumeth her or faileth to manifest in a moment upon which life and death are hinged.  Every lover hath dreamt his love hath abandoned him.  Every pegasus knoweth the dream where her wings disappear or simply and suddenly will not move as she soareth high above the earth, and in regards to the matter of thy own nightmare of this eve past, not a few ponies have dreams of being buried alive, or of bizarre, painted faces.  Even dreams of one's own parents can become nightmarish, if those parents were wicked – or if they were good, and we feel we hath failed them.”
Derpy said nothing for a few moments, and finally shrugged.
“So, my nightmares aren't extra special,” she said plaintively. “Doesn't make them any less scary.”
“Indeed it does not,” said the alicorn. “It should at least offer thee some comfort, however, to know thou suffer nothing but that which is common to ponydom.”
“Even so," said Derpy, "I just wonder... Why now?  I used to have this dream – or dreams kind of like it, with that face in them -- all the time when I was a filly.  They started after my mother died... I don't really know why; she was always good to me.  I wanted to be just like her."
“And art thou?” asked Princess Luna. “Hast thou succeeded in becoming like her?”
“No,” said Derpy, sadly. “Momma was a dancer.  She was elegant and fluid and... perfect.” 
Derpy growled a little in her throat, and chewed at her lip.  She thought rarely of her past, and spoke of it almost never, but here she was allowing somepony who most definitely had better things to do -- most notably, sleeping -- to listen to her story like a psychologist.
I'm in it, now, she thought. Doubt she'd let me leave without hearing the rest, even if I didn't want to tell it.
“As for me?” she finally continued. “I carry the mail.  I wanted to be a dancer, and Momma taught me everything she could before she got sick. Look at how I turned out, though; brown bags, goofy eyes, and muffins.  Sometimes I'm glad Momma didn't live to see me like this.”
“And thy father?” asked the Princess. “How did he endure this loss?”
“Not well,” said Derpy.  “He just kinda withdrew from everypony.  I mean, he wasn't the most social pony before that, but afterwards... It was like he just put his heart up on a shelf, and left it there.  For all the rest of the time I lived at home, he just worked, and never really left the house, otherwise.  I did all the grocery shopping, and everything.  I don't know how he's gotten by since I finished school and left home.  I don't ever hear from him.”
“Sad,” said Princess Luna. “I would soothe his nightmares, had he any to be soothed, but I hath seen him not in my wanderings of the sleepers' realm.”
You probably never will, thought Derpy, but this she kept to herself.
"But as for thee, Ditzy Doo; thy nightmares didst fade in time?”
“They kind of went away as I grew up,” shrugged the pegasus, “and I never thought about them much after that.  Now, when I finally have my life together, this old dream comes back to haunt me.  It doesn't make any sense.”
“Perhaps thou hadst, until recently, too many cares of the here and of the now,” said the Princess; “too many fears of things more immediate and real, for thy mind to conjure fears so distant, forgotten, and unlikely to come to pass.”
“I don't know,” said Derpy. “If a thing hurts too much to think about, I usually just don't.”
“Then time has perhaps come for thee to give thought to the matters of thy past.”
“I'm tired of the matters of my past,” said Derpy. “And of everypony else's.  Lately, I keep getting dragged into trouble by the past, and it isn't even my past that's causing the problem.  When do I get to be boring, old Derpy Hooves, again?”
“Derpy Hooves?” asked the Princess. “I think those days are past for good.  For when I find some nights this mare before me as she wanders the halls of her own slumbering heart, she does not call herself by that name.”
Derpy shrugged, and said nothing, but gnawed a little at her lower lip, her eyes and ears both drooping slightly.
“Give thee some thought to these matters on thy ride back to Ponyville,” said the Princess, “but for the moment, my parcel.”
Derpy realized suddenly that she had never followed Princess Luna's directive to leave it on her dresser.  So, she lifted the box out of her saddlebag with her teeth, and was surprised when Princess Luna did not levitate it from her grasp, but instead took it in her own teeth and pulled it away, tucking it under a wing.
“''Twould be best for thee if thou left,” said the alicorn. “I shall have to try it on in order to be certain it shall require no alterations.”
“But I'd love to see it,” said Derpy. “Rarity's work is always amazing.”
“Indeed,” said Luna, “but this gown was not made to fit... Luna.”
Suddenly, Derpy understood.  For the past three years, Princess Luna had, for a portion of the Nightmare Night festival, transformed herself in image, (though not in heart or mind) into Nightmare Moon.  She typically gave some sort of a short speech or made some display of magic or other to provide a good-natured scare to all those assembled, and then she would leave.
“Thou hast seen enough of nightmares for a time,” said the Princess. 
Derpy almost turned and trotted quite directly out the illusory door, but then a thought came to her.
“You said I should face my fears, right?”
Luna smiled.
“Very well, I should like to know how it fits round the haunches, anyway, and 'tis difficult to see such a thing beyond one's own wings.”
“Oh, I know,” said the pegasus, watching the Princess turn and head across the platform within this strange, black void.  “My earth pony and unicorn friends all think it's weird when I ask them to check that... uh... area for me when we go shopping.”
She carried the box to her dresser, where she opened it by clipping the twine that bound it shut with a pair of scissors she levitated from the dresser's top drawer.
“That's why I would rather 'twere you, anyway,” said Luna. “Moondancer tends not to understand.  She seems to think I mean something untoward when I request such an inspection, but I have to be sure that I am immaculate before I attend a ball or some such.”
“Oh, lovely,” said Luna, looking down into the newly-opened box “but for the moment, several sizes too large; Brace thyself, Ditzy Doo.”
“Braced,” said Derpy.
Princess Luna began to glow.  She swelled in size and altered in shape, and when the light faded, there stood before Derpy a huge, black horse.
And Derpy laughed.
“What?” asked a voice an octave deeper than Princess Luna's.  “Why do you laugh?”
Derpy had to stifle herself to respond.
“Your mane is still up,” she said, pointing a hoof at the mirror.
The thing that was still Princess Luna, though in countenance was Nightmare Moon, looked at the mirror, and gave a snicker, for it wore no makeup or helmet or mantle, and its mane was tied back as tightly as it had been before Luna had transformed herself into it.
“Well, am I not a sight?” asked the horse.
“You certainly are,” said Derpy.
“Well, in any case,” said the Nightmare Luna, “let us tend to the business at hand.”
She levitated the gown out of the box, and Derpy was stunned at the sight of it:  black lace that still stood out against he black horse's body by virtue of what she could only assume was the dust of ground diamonds buried within it.
“It's beautiful,” said Derpy.
“Yes it is,” said the black mare. “Give me a moment.”
She slipped it on carefully, so as to avoid damaging the delicate weave of the wildly-patterned lace that flowed all over its surface.
It fit her curve for curve and line for line, and it made her look blacker, somehow, even as it made her shimmer like the night sky.
She stepped to her mirror, and looked herself up and down.
“Perfect,” she said turning her head towards Derpy. “Don't you think so?”
“Of course I do, Princess... er... Your Highness... or... whatever.”
“This is an only an image,” said the big, black mare. “You still may call me Luna.”
“Really?” asked Derpy. “Just 'Luna?' Is that really okay?”
“Why would it not be?” asked the big horse, her horn glowing and her mane and tale seeming to pull themselves free of the braid. “It's broad daylight down in Equestria, and your job is done here.  This is not in any capacity an official meeting; this is you making sure my butt looks good in a new outfit.”
“Well,” said Derpy, chuckling at Luna's frank observation, “I guess Princess Twilight lets me just call...”
Her heart skipped a beat.
“Down... in Equestria?” stammered the pegasus. "But the elevator went underground, how could we be... above?"
She swiveled her head left and right, looking around the black void that surrounded the strange platform that comprised Luna's “chamber.”
Luna said nothing, but stroked through her loosened mane with a hoof, allowing it to flow freely.
“So this is where you...” Derpy began, but stopped herself.
“Yes,” said Luna. “My big sister sent me to my room for a thousand years.”
“Sorry to bring it up,” said Derpy.
“Do not trouble yourself over it,” said the black horse, turning from the mirror. “Though in truth I admit I have seen enough of this place.  Soon I shall have a proper home on the Earth alongside those whom I guard on the darkened paths of night.”
Derpy found herself drawn towards the huge, black mare, and took a few steps in her direction.
“You know,” she said, "mane up or down, you're actually kinda pretty like this, when you aren't laughing like a maniac and wearing that helmet and all.”
“I know,” smiled Luna. “I created this form from my own memories.  This is what my mother looked like.”
“Really?” asked Derpy.
“Yes,” said Luna “Her name was Selene.  This is her form, except that she was perhaps not quite so tall.  Celestia got that from father, and I was always jealous of it.”
She grinned, and Derpy saw  in the dim glow of the candles the faint glint of silver-white fangs the color of moonlight.  She doubted those fangs had been part of Selene's appearance, either.
“I suppose I am still jealous of it,” said Luna.
“Why your mother?” asked Derpy.
“You said it yourself,” said Luna, shaking her head. “She was... 'kinda pretty.'”
These last two words came out just above a whisper, and Luna's voice cracked at them, slightly.
“I'm sorry,” said Derpy. “I should go.”
She turned to head for the door, but Luna stopped her with a word.
“Wait.”
Derpy stopped, and looked up at the black horse.
The creature that was at once Nightmare Moon and Luna and Selene looked up into the blackness, and her horn gleamed.  Stars faded into view, and then amidst them materialized the image of Earth, the sun glowing warmly far beyond it amidst the star-studded cloak of otherwise perfect blackness.
“This is where I watched from,” said Luna, “the literal Mare in the Moon for a thousand years, and for all those years, my own dreams were nightmares.”
Derpy was not certain why she had been asked to stay, but she planted her hooves, and looked up into the eyes of the huge horse, noticing that in this darkness, the slitted pupils of her eyes were dilated enough that they appeared almost normal and round, just as a cat's would, or even a bat pony's.
She looked down, and smiled.
“You and I share a nightmare, Ditzy Doo; that we have failed someone who is gone, and who cannot return to us to assure us otherwise.”
Derpy said nothing.
“I have no remedy for that fear,” said Princess Luna. “I will snatch you from it in the night as often as it should trouble you, but not even I can tell you how to make it go away.”
“That's okay,” said the pegasus. “It's not your job to make it go away.”
“Yes it is,” said Luna, walking back to her dresser. “and that is a small part of why I share it.”
Derpy watched as she carefully removed the dress, and hung it on an otherwise empty rack that stood nearby.
“Well,” Derpy finally said, quietly, scratching at one foreleg with the other's hoof.  “I do need to go.  There's somepony who will wonder where I am if I'm not home by six, and if I miss the train...”
“Go in peace of mind and heart,” said Luna, and she glowed briefly before returning to her true shape.
Her horn glimmered, and her mane and tail, both now flowing loosely, stretched themselves out, shimmering faintly under her telekinesis, and began to braid themselves up tightly, once more.
“As for this one,” said the Princess, resuming her archaic – and affected, Derpy decided – speech patterns,“'tis past her bedtime.”
Derpy stepped towards the strange illusory door that somehow acted as a portal between this black, empty chamber and the earth far beneath, and stopped, just as she reached it.  She turned to find Princess Luna nestling herself once more into her bed.
“Princess,” she found herself saying.
“Yes, Ditzy Doo?” asked the alicorn.
“You're a lot different than everypony thinks,” said the pegasus, and then she realized that the statement could be perceived in ways she did not intend.
“I mean you're...”
“Ordinary?” asked Luna.
“Yeah,” said Derpy.
“We are all ordinary,” said the alicorn. “All our names are writ in water; never let this truth pass from thy mind.”
“Uh... I won't,” said Derpy. “I'll try to remember that.”
Having said that, she gave a quick bow, and she stepped quite literally through the door.
Moondancer sat with her head lain upon her desk amidst the stacks of papers and folders.  The unicorn's eyes were glassy, distant, and hard, and her jaw was clenched so tightly that it twitched.  Still, just as before, though it looked for all the world as if she would burst into tears at any moment, she did not lose her composure.  She had lit a single candle which sat amidst the tremendous pile of papers, mounted on a short, ebony candlestick.  Derpy wondered if that was really safe until she realized that everything around the desk was stone, and that Moondancer probably would not be terribly upset to see the desk and everything on it go up in flames.
“Why?” she huffed wearily, not lifting her head. “Why do they always need so much paperwork?”
Derpy saw that the clipboard sat at the edge of the desk, all of the appropriate fields filled out according to protocol.
“Umm... Sorry?” said Derpy, gritting her teeth and looking down at Moondancer pityingly. "You gonna make it?"
“I'll be okay,” said Moondancer, quietly, still never lifting her head from the desk. “I'm just... my horn hurts.”
“Eh... I don't...” Derpy said.
“I can fill out this kinda thing by reflex, now,” said Moondancer, “but it's like holding my breath or running a marathon or lifting something really heavy, understand?”
“I think so,” said Derpy, but she wasn't a unicorn, and she knew she could never fully understand.  She thought for a moment that maybe what Moondancer was experiencing was something like a bad headache, but that couldn't be it, either, she decided.  Headaches happened inside your head, and horns were on the outside.
“I hate my job,” said Moondancer.
“So do I,” said Derpy. “I mean I hate my job; not yours.  Sorry.”
“What's so bad about delivering other ponies' mail?” asked the unicorn. “At least you get to go see different places.  I'm always stuck here, underground, or in that empty, dark room.”
“Well, I guess I like seeing new places,” said Derpy, “but this isn't what I really wanted to do.”
“Me either,” said Moondancer.  “I wanted to dance.”
“Well, why are you here, then?” asked Derpy.
“Are you kidding?” asked the unicorn, her eyes turning upward to meet Derpy's, though her face still rested on the desk. “Princess Luna returns, and here I am, running in the top ten percent of my class at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.  I have a crescent moon in my cutie mark, and the word 'moon' in my name."
She shook her head without lifting it, grinding her cheek against the papers on top of her desk, and causing several of them to fall to the floor.
“Where else was I supposed to end up?” she asked, her eyes unlocking from Derpy's and finding a spot on the wall.
“You do have 'moon' in your name, but you have the word 'dancer,' too,” said Derpy.  “That's what I wanted to be, but I didn't even have that much.  You know what my name is – the one my parents gave me?  Ditzy Doo.  And look at my cutie mark; bubbles.  I mean... bubbles?  What does that even mean I'm supposed to be?”
“As long as you're a bubbly ditz,” said Moondancer, “I guess it means you can be whatever else you want.”
“I guess so,” said Derpy, genuinely surprised at the revelation.
“But as for me?” asked Moondancer. “I don't see a lot of options.”
“Well, maybe not,” said Derpy, tucking the clipboard into her saddlebag, “but if you were meant for this, don't you think it would make you happy?”
“Who says everypony is meant to be happy?” asked the unicorn, still not lifting her face.  “You said your life wasn't what you wanted, either.  Why haven't you changed it?”
“I really don't know,” said Derpy. “I guess I don't know how to get out of it, anymore.”
“Me either,” said Moondancer, and at last she sat up, and gave Derpy a weak smile. “That's just life, isn't it?”
“I hope not,” said Derpy.
"Me, too," sighed Moondancer.
The unicorn said nothing else as Derpy walked off down the hall and stepped onto the cage-like elevator.
“Dancer,” she mumbled to herself. “Ditzy Doo, the ditzy dancer.  That might've been nice.”
The elevator began to move, and she sat down, resting her haunches on its floor.
But it's too late, now, she thought.  I'm the delivery pony, now, and too clumsy to ever be a dancer.
Never mind that she could outfly most ponies she knew.  Never mind that, at times, when she managed for a moment to just not care what anypony else thought, she could move with fluidity and grace that she herself did not fully believe.  She was Derpy Hooves – self-conscious, goofy, and afraid.  There was nothing else to her but a pair of brown bags, a naïve smile, and a pair of misaligned, yellow eyes.
A bat pony guard coughed as the elevator moved past him in the darkness, and it startled Derpy so much that she gave a brief, sharp shriek.
“Sorry, ma'am,” he said, his voice fading into the darkness behind her as he cleared his throat.
She let her heart settle, and simply shut all considerations of who she was and who she was meant to be out her mind as the elevator found its way back to the surface.  She was tired now, the boost of energy from her coffee being depleted by the long ride here and the morning's strange events and considerations.
“I'll sleep on the train,” she said to herself as she stepped into the light of the sun. “Nightmares or not, this day has already been too much, and it isn't half over, yet.
Ditzy Doo Hooves had no idea how true that statement was.