//------------------------------// // Nightmares // Story: Tears of a Foal // by Rocinante //------------------------------// - - - Day 3 pt 1 - - - Celestia stumbled into the kitchen, the smell of breakfast keeping her from hiding under the covers for another half hour. “Clover still asleep?” she asked, seeing only Luna and Merry at the table. Not that she'd fault him for sleeping in—like she wanted to. Luna sat her coffee down to face her sister. “He was awake when I came home. Seemed to be in one of his melancholy moods. He was just sitting there, watching the toy train go around the tree.” A little frown played across Celestia’s lips, only deepening as she looked back towards the guest rooms. “He seemed tired when I put him to bed.” Luna shrugged. “I made him some sedating tea, then put him back in bed.” Sitting at the table, Celestia sighed, but managed to gave Merry a smiling nod as she served her up a plate of golden hash browns. “I think Clover was something’s experiment.” Merry and Luna both stared at Celestia. “The poor thing,” Merry Hearth said. Luna chewed for a moment before speaking. “An experiment in what?” “I do not know, but it has become apparent that he has been both neglected, and deeply trained. I thought he was just quiet, but last night I discovered he had mind-body training.” The room was quiet as Celestia picked at her meal. “Perhaps it is better that he is asleep right now. Luna... I-” “I have tried that already. He is not receptive to me. Forcing my way in could do more harm than good,” Luna interrupted. Pushing herself from the table, she rose to her hooves. “But there is a trick I could try.” Celestia watched Luna walk to her chambers. Looking back to her meal, she ate it for the sake of Merry Hearth. There was nothing she could do for either Luna or Clover right now. Luna fetched a bundle of incense and a burner from her room. If she was going to have to force her way into the foal’s mind, she would use the softest tools she could. Shared sensations would obfuscate her within his mind, and smell was the most powerful sense to the subconscious. Back in the colt’s room, she let the scent of sandalwood and jasmine permeate the space before lighting her horn.  Looking down at the colt, she let her mind slip into its trance state, blurring the line between wake and sleep. Touching his mind, she met the wall of will that kept her out.   Every sapient creature had this wall; it was the surface tension that kept the self separate from the collective. Some were thicker, some were thinner. Ponies were naturally inclined to be thin, a side effect of their herd nature. Griffons on the other hoof, were all but immune to anything less than her full force. There were of course exceptions; every race had their weak and strong willed individuals. Clover fidgeted in his sleep as Luna pressed against the colt’s will; he was already fighting her. There would be no slipping in quietly or passive welcome. She blanked out her own thoughts, and focused on the smell of the incense. She could have punched through his defenses: he was strong, but not extraordinarily so. However such a brute force method would plunge him into a night terror, leaving her with little to work with inside a dream, and possibly scaring the foal for weeks if not years. There was no getting around giving the foal nightmares. She could feel them bubbling up within him already, but she refused to brew them into full night terrors. She made herself small and quiet. She had to fade into background noise, become hard for Clover’s mind to pick out from his own consciousness. The world slipped away from Luna as she pried, picked, and snuck her way into Clover’s nightmare. The dreamer’s world was tiny. No forests, fields, or even houses. Only a single room existed within. It was small and stuffy, but not unpleasant. This was the dream of a memory, not the whimsical construct of the subconscious. She had hoped for the latter, those were fluid, she could change those, use them as tools. This was as solid as reality; she could only watch, and at best, speak to the dreamer in hopes to try and snap them out of the memory. Dull light from the windows gave it the illusion of morning, but nothing existed past the curtains. Clover had either forgotten, or didn’t want to remember what lay beyond. The door out of the room was also false. Clover himself was in his bed, the blanket pulled over his head. Dread rose from him like so much smoke in the dreamscape. What he was hiding from, was the mystery. A hushed conversation on the other side of the door drew her attention. The words were mush, but the emotion was clear: dread and sorrow. The whole dream buzzed with foreboding as something on the other side of the door opened it, and shattered the dreamscape. Luna found herself somewhere else, the cloying smell of funeral flowers filling her nose. The room was empty, except for her and a closed casket. Confusion swam in her mind, she couldn’t look away from it. All of her senses had become slave to the memory. She had gone too deep, no longer watching the dream, but part of it. Quieting her mind, she let the dream take her. ‘This is his mother.’ she knew. A memory not her own nagged at her, another casket, from an earlier time, ‘that had been his father’. Behind her a voice cried out in anguish. The dream turned to face the sound, but faded to black before they came into sight. Luna kept herself as small as possible in the darkness. The dream had ran its course, and Clover was in dreamless sleep for the moment. Centering herself, Luna reached out to the foal’s mind, feeling for memories. There were too many memories, and none of them in their proper place. His mind was more than jumbled, there was real damage here. With no memories to use as a seed for a dream, Luna pulled from herself the sensation of peace. She wanted to see where his mind would take them to match the feeling. Clover’s mind filled the blank space of his sleep, with the image of her sister, memories of the great room and its fireplace soon completed the scene. Clover’s entire being relaxed as his affection for Celestia gave the dream a surreal appearance, but a quiver of confusion also ran through the dream. The confusion worried her. Letting go of the rest of his mind, she focused on that single emotion. She searched for its origin, and was pleasantly surprised at how close the cause was. ‘He is confused by his own feelings.’ The foal was embarrassed that he had attached himself so freely to her sister. Luna smiled, both in body, and within the dream. Unraveling her magic from Clover, she left him to dream the soft dream, and stepped back out into the hall. “Well?” Celestia asked. “I could not control his dreams, but I can tell you he has buried both his parents, and I feel he is several years older than he appears: at least seven, maybe ten. There is some very real damage to his psyche. It would be a bad idea for me to press further upon him.” Celestia's heart hung heavy. Instead of answers, she had found only more questions. Questions with implications she did not like. “Do you think he went mustang; after he was orphaned? Malnutrition would explain his size, but where would he have learned meditation or that strange language?” "Living in the wild would answer several questions," Luna said, returning to her coffee. "His language could be entirely self created, or perhaps he took up with some creatures we do not know about. How he found his way into the middle of Canterlot is still a mystery, but his fear of other ponies makes sense." Taking a long drink, Luna gathered her thoughts. "As for meditation, I suspect it was something his mother taught him, and he used it as a coping tool in the wild. I would not be surprised if he gets his mark in something related to it." Celestia hung her head, she had already failed him. Mustangs happened, but It was one thing for an adult to spurn society. Some wholesomely preferred the lifestyle, others used it as an escape from hardship. But for a foal to have wandered into the wild: that was her failing to serve her little ponies. “Twilight wrote me back. She and Rarity will be here tonight.” Luna nodded. “Sergent Green Bean has offered to watch Clover whenever needed; till he returns to his farm in the spring. I shall ask him to care for Clover during the midday; from the time I retire, till you finish with court.” Throwing a wing over Luna, Celestia gave her a hug. “Thank you.”