Mag dreamed.
She dreamed of marble pillars under the open sky, lit only by an unfamiliar moon. The floor was all one piece of smooth stone. Mag walked barefoot, like she used to over leaves and round, flat rocks in the woods of Mississippi so, so long ago, and her hair hung loose around her shoulders. Through an open door on the other side of the—was it a temple?—she could see the glow of a fire, and from the door issued a single indistinct voice. It seemed to be calling her name.
Mag walked to the door, confused but unafraid. The floor was cool under her feet but not cold. What stone was it? Alabaster. But she'd never seen it before, so how could it be in her dream, and why did she know what it was?
Mag pushed open the door and found a larger and better lit pillared marble and alabaster room with its own open ceiling, with Luna sitting in front of a bonfire as wide as Mag's house and taller than the big bear, though the fire burned silent.
Even if Mag hadn't seen Celestia's drawing, there was no mistaking Luna. She was the younger sister, yet her eyes looked older. Celestia would always look young, while Luna looked as if she was born old. Her smile was small, secretive, sincere, and her shadow spread hugely against the wall beside the door Mag had just walked through. Luna's shadow was sharp and perfectly still however the fire danced, and darker than the bottom of a coal mine.
Luna spoke.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?
Mag approached the fire and sat beside her. Luna turned to face the fire. They watched it together for a while.
"My point," said Luna, "is that I've access to the minds of Earth while you sleep. Do you recognize this poem?"
Mag shook her head.
"It is by Percy Shelley," said Luna.
"It sounds like a love poem," said Mag. Her voice sounded so strange in this place.
"It is," said Luna.
"Getting Stockholm syndrome?"
"What is that?"
"Is this really the place for talking?" said Mag. "It feels like it's supposed to be a quiet place."
"This place is of my own design and serves whatever purpose I wish it to, theoretically; but, having made it out of your own dreamstuff rather than mine, perhaps it carries properties I didn't put into it. Is it? Is this a quiet place, Mag?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm just feeling quiet."
Luna closed her eyes, looked at the fire through her eyelids, lifted her nose to smell the air. "All of this is yours. Let your mood dictate its purpose. We will call it a quiet place, and be quiet together."
Mag leaned against Luna. She wouldn't do such a thing in the waking world, but surely the rules were different in dreams. Luna didn't protest.
Mag took soft, barefoot, low-gravity leaps over the gray sand, hair floating around her face. Luna flew beside her.
Some small, black prominence sat at the central mound of a great crater. Mag bound down the wall of the crater and then up the prominence to examine it, and found it to be an unfamiliar pony princess sitting stock still.
If princesses were Disney characters, this one was Maleficent. She had slitted cat's eyes, a black coat, wings like scythes, a suit of armor, and Luna's old eyes. Mag waved her hand in front of the new princess, who didn't move. Luna caught up and sat beside Mag, looking anywhere but at the black princess.
"Can I ask?" said Mag.
"I resolved some time ago to answer all questions honestly, that regard the Nightmare," said Luna.
"This is you."
"This was me."
"Did you really just sit here like this?"
"For a thousand years," said Luna. "I'll have the cod." She shut her menu and gave it to the waiter.
"Crab salad," said Mag, doing the same.
"Leila lina lu," said the waiter, and swam away.
"You're aware that cod is a type of meat?" said Mag.
"You're aware that this is a dream?" said Luna.
"Fair enough. I recognize this place, you know."
Luna changed into a human (the mirror of her sister, but a little shorter and with harsher features) and examined herself in the bowl of her spoon. "Yes?"
"I was a toddler. I never went in, but I liked the neon sign outside, though I couldn't read it. I asked if we could eat there. They told me it looked "pretty sleezy" and I didn't understand what "sleezy" meant, but I knew the word "pretty" and it only made me more curious. We never did go in, and now I dream about the place sometimes." She held up a drink coaster, a thick circle of cardboard embossed with the words "The Sleezypretty."
"Did you ever learn the true name of the place?" said Luna.
"I've never remembered this place, except in dreams," said Mag. "I'll forget everything when I wake up. And I'm sure it'd turn out to be a low-rent Hooter's knockoff or something equally banal, so I'd just be disappointed."
The food arrived with improbable speed. Luna tucked one of the black cloth napkins into the collar of her slinky evening gown and dug into the cod with every sign of enjoyment. This put Mag off her salad. She slid it to the side and ordered a Jack and Coke.
"There is something I'd like to discuss," said Luna.
"Hm?"
"Magic."
"Another of these," said Mag, waving her empty glass at a passing busser.
"Do you mean to get drunk?" said Luna.
"I hadn't thought that far ahead. Don't let me distract you. What's this about magic?"
"I'm afraid there is a possibility you'll need basic access to your magic before dawn tomorrow. We can discuss the whys later. For now, black red white black." Luna tipped her plate of fishbones into the bonfire. Mag sat down on the stone floor again and set her drink beside her.
Luna spoke mildly, conversationally, as if to avoid scaring Mag off. "The world of dreams is an excellent place to practice magic, I have always felt. The classic student's complaint 'But I can't do that' is inarguably foolishness here, for this is your dream. You needn't concern yourself with what is possible, here, only what is imaginable. Imagine yourself doing magic. Dream of magic, learn the feel of it, and carry that feeling into the sunlight. Do this, learn the processes, and all that is left is practice."
"I didn't say you could teach me magic," said Mag.
"May I teach you magic?" said Luna.
"Not just now. I feel so tired. I'm asleep, but I'm so tired. What does that mean?"
"You've had a trying day," said Luna.
"We all have," said Mag, "and between the three of us, I'm the one with the fewest problems. I'm being selfish by bringing it up."
"Nay. I have fewer problems than you, for a problem is only a problem insofar as it may be solved, and what you would call my problems are insoluble, whatever my sister's view. All that I love is gone, Mag, except for my sister, and there is nothing I can do about it. I shall cling to what I have left, therefore, as the survivor of a sunken ship clings to a piece of broken hull, and paddle to shore as best I can. Then I'll prove that it is possible to live with a broken heart."
"How can you stand it?" said Mag. Was that a cruel question? She couldn't take it back.
"I can't," said Luna.
"What can I do?"
Luna smiled. "You are already doing it."
Mag finished her drink and tossed the glass into the fire. "Celestia thinks she can bring back Equestria."
"To that I can only say that if hope were music, Celestia would be Mozart," said Luna.
"It's pronounced 'Mozart,'" said Mag.
"I don't care. Of course, in fairness, blind hope is how she accomplishes all her miracles. She turns traitors into sisters and mortals into legends. Celestia can be so very stubborn, and she has a talent for finding loopholes, so who can say for sure what she'll accomplish? But there is no bringing back the dead. But come; you don't yet wish to discuss magic, and, in all candor, I haven't the heart to discuss what has been lost. So, apropos of nothing and without any reference to tiring subjects or questions of rights to teaching, out of curiosity, what does the combination of the colors red, white, and black mean to you?"
"Sometimes I get the feeling you two are used to getting your way," said Mag.
"Should you respond with a flat 'no' to my question then I will drop the issue for now, but this is rather important. I'll explain why later tonight. Will you please answer?"
"All right, you've got me curious. What was your question again?"
"What does the combination of the colors red, white, and black mean to you?"
Mag, in a spirit of experimentation, closed her eyes and imagined the moon, but a different part than they'd seen tonight. She imagined them looking off the edge of a great cliff on the moon, opened her eyes, and found herself there. Details she hadn't pictured had filled themselves in, maybe from Luna's mind, maybe from somewhere else, wherever it was dreams really came from.
The fire was still there. Luna had brought it with them.
"Red, white, black," said Mag. "Weren't there four colors?"
"The full pattern is black, red, white, black," said Luna. "Don't concern yourself with the precise order for now. Now we discuss the introspective and the imaginative portions of magic."
"Black, red, white, black," said Mag. "White, black, red. Red black white. Black red white." Luna waited patiently.
"I guess the first thing I think of is snakes," said Mag.
"Snakes?"
"King snakes and coral snakes," said Mag.
"Yes?"
"Yeah. A coral snake is a secretive, reclusive type of poisonous snake they teach you to watch out for in America. The king snake isn't venomous, but it looks almost exactly like the coral snake, so you have to know the difference if you get bitten. The best way to tell the king snake from the coral snake is their stripe patterns, and there's a rhyme to remember what order the stripes are in for the two types of snake. 'Red touches yellow, kills a fellow. Red touches black, friend of Jack.' That rhyme is what I remember."
"Have you ever encountered either species of snake?" said Luna.
"Only king snakes," said Mag. "You know, they're called king snakes because they eat other snakes, including the poisonous ones."
"No coral snakes?"
"Nope."
"You seem to have some knowledge of snakes. Do they interest you?"
Mag shrugged.
"What else do red, white, and black call to mind?"
"Masks," said Mag.
"What sort of mask?" said Luna.
Mag dropped a rock off the precipice. It made no sound as it hit the bottom; there were no sounds here, except their voices. "African tribal masks."
"What purpose do they serve?"
"Oh, you know. People wear them to act out folktales and that kind of thing."
Luna nudged a rock off the edge as well. "And these masks are red, white, and black?"
"Some of them," said Mag.
"Masks and snakes. Very well. What do you think magic feels like?"
"Hopefully we're getting closer to the part where you tell me what you're looking for here. What do I think it feels like? I don't think I'd feel anything. I can't feel the aether. It'd be like Beethoven at his piano, playing music he can't hear."
"Let us discuss Beethoven some other time, when we both better understand what barriers to learning you must overcome. Anyway, I was being unclear. How would it make you feel, emotionally, to see yourself perform magic?"
"Confused," said Mag truthfully.
"To be expected. You've had no time to become comfortable with it."
"Now I have a question," said Mag.
"Ask," said Luna.
"Why did I break the wall and the phone when I got mad? If getting angry is what sets off the magic for me, why hasn't it ever happened before? Did you guys do something? Did the eldest?"
Luna looked pleased. "Ah, we approach the mechanics of magic. I'll speak in the simplest terms I can because all of this is new to you. Magic comes from the heart. It is an expression of your essential self. What you can do, as well as how you do it, is defined by how you see the world. When you broke that wall and that phone, you were reacting to something you saw in the world, reacting in a way that expressed something fundamental to your understanding of yourself and everything else. This is not so easy, and that is why you haven't done it before. It is possible you never would have performed any magic in your entire life, had the eldest not goaded you into it."
"I'm not thanking him until I see what comes of all this. So you're saying that telling the eldest to go to Hell is an expression of my essential self?"
"It is likely better to consider the feelings of the moment, rather than the words you spoke," said Luna. "Try to recall how it felt when the eldest first altered his voice, how you felt when he insulted Celestia, what the wall felt like under your hand, the smell of pine. Sift through the details, and what they felt like. This is where you'll find your power."
"What kinds of powers come from people who, uh, get their powers from getting mad?"
"It may not be anger," said Luna. "It could be fear. It could be the smell of spilled alcohol while the sun is in your eyes. Perhaps you'll cast your spells by recalling the feeling of being slightly hungry. Most likely, it's something you have no word for, or else something too precise for words."
"All right, then what does it say about me that my powers involve breaking things?"
Luna chuckled. "That depends. What does 'black red white black' mean? I've never seen that one. Not even close. I can only tell you it's inequine. The closest auric signature I've seen was of an old lantern frame, rusty and broken, once used in a lighthouse by an earth pony who carried it to work every day and back home every night. Used so often, over so many years, that it developed a magic of its own. White grey white red black, I think it was. I couldn't tell you what that signature meant either." Luna turned her head to the fire, as if hearing something. "Our time is up. One more thing..."
***
Mag woke up to a genteel knock on her bedroom door. "Dinner's ready," said Celestia. "Would you like to come out? We can talk about what happened, if you like."
"Be out in a second," mumbled Mag, and slid out of bed. She lifted her fingers to hook the hair out of her face, but noticed something in her hand that hadn't been there before. She turned on the light to look at it.
It was a drink coaster embossed with the words "The Sleezypretty."
"You've lived a life without magic," said Luna, "but today you found it in yourself, and now you must learn that the rules are not what you think they are. Be humble and be careful, or others will pay the price. Do you understand? Remember the red asphalt."
Distracted, Mag lost track of the coaster somewhere between the bed and the door. She never saw it again.