"So why come to me Ms. Midnight? Am I a danger to your little trotters and border-lining on going psycho on each and everyone of them?" I said to the mistress of the night standing in my bedroom. I made my way in the near darkness of my apartment to a loose board, just under my night-table. Working it loose and open to pull up my prized possession; a two hundred dollar black velvet boxed bottle of Sinatra Select Jack Daniels. Then currently the most expensive thing I had ever bought in my life and was just barley able to get through the Equestria customs officers.
"Do you drink to solve your problems often sir?" She asked so nonchalantly I at first thought it was a joke.
"Shut up, I don't tell you how to live your life don't butt into mine, but what kind of a host would I be if I didn't offer the princess of the night a drink of her own...we don't have to tell the king and queen, you know?"
"Very amusing, " she told me with a huff and sarcastic roll of her eyes. "Listen to me, and listen well. I know where these mixed feelings in you are coming from, and I also know that you are taking no pleasure in the machinations of your mind. I can help you overcome them; even more so than any bottle of liquor or self pity can, IF...you are willing to do as I say and cooperate with me to the later."
I took a out a CD from my collection that I kept on a dresser near the window. The thing about me you may not know is, I have a very...unusual taste in music. MY collection that I knew so well that it didn't matter in the slightest that I could barely see around my apartment in the low light of just the moon, consisted of the Rat pack next to Oingo Boingo's Dead man's party; or Kenny G mixed in with the entirety of "The Eminem show" albums. I also had the uncanny belief that; even the worst of times and problems seem less impacting when you have your best songs playing. The princess of the night and I never once took our gaze's off each other; but it was purely because she probably thought I kept a gun stashed someplace and was looking for it (not that even if I did it wouldn't matter giver her being an immortal goddess and all) and me? Hey you try being woken up at one AM and tell me how you deal with moonlighting visitors.
I snapped a Sinatra CD in the old styled player, (the kind you'd swear was a boom box from the 80's or 90's if the manufacture date didn't say 2011) hit a few buttons, dialed the volume reasonably up and hit play.
"You sure I can't offer you a drink princess?"
"I appreciate both the gesture, and your...eye for details if I follow your choice in music." She said turning to look at the marks on her shapely but bigger than most equine's sides. "But this doesn't answer my question."
"Hey, c'mon now just thought you'd be more receptive if I was, whatever you want your majesty...I'll do it. I'm both dead serious on that statement," I said while dumping my Smoky, full bodied (and posthumously endorsed) Jack down the drain. "And dead sober."
"You know, the deceased crooner you admire, who's name is on that fire water you call a beverage; he would never have approved of it. He drank ordinary Whiskey that doesn't cost ridiculous amounts of coinage for just a taste. What you see as homage...It's really exploitation."
"You think I don't know that " I said trying my best to play it cool, what I thought was suave and slick only made me look like a grade A idiot. "Only I'm amazed you do too."
"Now focus subject; or I will be forced to take measures more akin to what you know as..."tough love." She said her demeanor growing icy a bit, and her face looking less like a concerned Mare-friend and more like an intervening mother.
"Yes; your majesty"
"It's Luna subject....just Luna or princess Luna." "Now, without any Alcohol, or influences." She proclaimed turning my tunes off. "I need you to sleep. a long peaceful, natural sleep, and hurry as the night grows short in the morning hours, and while I will do everything I can, I hope not many sessions will be necessary of you." I laughed a hearty laugh at her request. I wasn't too big on the whole "Little Nemo" shtick she seem'd to be going for. I sat on my bed and looked over at her, she trotted over and sat beside me, a hoof lovingly on my shoulder and a solemn glint in her big eyes. Only the wind whispering through the window audible until she finally spoke.
"Please subject, not for me; do it for yourself. Learn and realize that their is more to love than what you where raised to believe in. That one is never truly sure of who they feel a bond to, but that there's an entire spectrum to love than..."
"Being attracted to either the opposite or same gender, with it being set in stone that the one you are is the one you are." I finished for her. "I'm sorry princess.....Luna, I guess...it's harder for me to come to terms with what your suggesting." I took a deep breath and lay back collapsing into my pillow a blue aura covering me in my blanket. "I'm Ready. "
She got beside me, her coat on my skin even softer and warmer than the afghan blanket. She held me in her hooves, but also let me hold her in my arms. Like a teddy bear to a little boy. purely in the interest of making the journey into her realm where she was the absolute rule of all, the sleepers. And making it as comfortable a journey as possible, the perfect princess; performing her "royal duty."
There was a total; dead silence, followed by a rushing in my ears, finally a warm and easy peace, and I found myself floating above myself. My first thought? This must be what it's like to be dead. My second?
"WHAT DID YOU DO TOO ME?!" I shouted over to my glowing blue companion in the strange new world.
"Subject, please calm down! you're only sleeping." She informed me sternly, most likely because I shouted practically in her ear. "You are asleep; but unlike when you sleep back in your world; you're not just in a deeply relaxed state of mind, you're in my domain now subject....you're in the dreamstride." she said taking a sort of great pride in it.