//------------------------------//
// Chapter XL 
// Story: Lessons in quirks 
// by Mike84 
//------------------------------//

	She was walking on the page of a giant book. It was far too large for her to be able to read the words written on the yellowed paper. Twilight uttered a frustrated groan. A book she wasn't able to read was her personal idea of limbus. 
"Shrink it!" she thought to herself and cast the spell to do just that. 
The book shrank, but to such a small size that Twilight lost the ground under her hooves and was falling while a voice sounded from every direction saying: 
"The party won't be ruined! This is not for you to read!"
Twilight was flapping or at least she thought she was until she realized that she didn't have any wings. She rolled her eyes. A dream had to meet a higher standard of probability to scare her or make her believe it was real. This kind of nonsense was just annoying to her and she regretted that in spite of her awareness of all this being a mere dream she couldn't exert more influence on what was happening. She almost took a little offense in the fact that some corner of her organized mind produced such silly nonsense. This falling was rather boring compared to her actual fall during the flight training with Rainbow Dash during the last day. Suddenly however there was a motion at the edge of her field of vision and as she turned her head to see it, it still remained only just far enough out of her field of vision to identify it. 
At the same time, Twilight felt that it was of the most urgent necessity to see and identify the vague shape that only just escaped her eye. She cast her head around frantically and pedaled with her hooves to turn around during her fall, but no matter what she did, the motion, or shape, or haze, or figure remained elusive. The more she tried to see it, the more intense became the sensation that she herself was being seen, observed even by... who or whatever it was and a sense of threat and even peril which the fall hadn't evoked began to set in. Suddenly there was another frightening thing Twilight realized. Her fall was suddenly no longer a boring drop into a never-ending void, but instead she suddenly saw treetops below and she was falling right towards them. She was screaming and kicking with all her legs. 
"Spread them out!"
"Rainbow Dash?" Twilight shouted. Or maybe she just thought she had shouted it. She wasn't even sure she had heard Rainbow Dash speak. Maybe it was just the memory of what she had heard her say, but in any case, Twilight suddenly noticed she had her wings back. She spread them out much like she had during her flying lesson. The air however was colder and would not carry her as much. She had to flap faster. 
"Rainbow?" Twilight asked again and looked around. But she didn't see her friend whom she had half hoped to unexpectedly pop up into her field of vision in midflight as Rainbow Dash so often did, both in dreams and when she was awake. 
"Is anypony here?" she asked, but there was only a rather oppressive silence as she flew low over treetops with a glorious starry-sky above her. 
Suddenly she spotted the motion again. It was right ahead of her, in her field of vision and still it seemed blurry or too far away or both of that. Twilight accelerated her speed as much as she could. The motion was moving away from her, yet she felt that she was gaining distance. If she could get just a little closer she would see, she would recognize, she would understand all that she didn't. 
"Wait! You don't know what you are after!" a voice shouted.
Twilight knew the voice, but didn't recognize and decided to ignore it. It was because she didn't know what she was after that she was after it in the first place. And if she could just get a little closer... Maybe if she could stop it with a levitation spell.
"Twilight Sparkle!" A booming voice sounded and something popped up in the air right in front of her. Twilight uttered a scream, tried to stop in mid-air, closed her eyes firmly, dropped, crashed through the treetops and landed on the ground. Usually this was the kind of thing that would make her wake up with a scream, but as she opened her eyes she found that she was standing on a forest floor and was obviously still in her dream. It was almost with surprise that she realized she hadn't hurt herself at all during the fall that in real life could have proven very painful, even dangerous. Twilight was looking around frantically, but didn't see the motion she had been pursuing. She spread her wings and wanted to take off to continue the chase, but before she could get off the ground, she heard the voice calling her again and she saw the owner of the voice descending through the treetops. 
"Princess Luna!" Twilight called in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"We are— I am the Princess of the night and the starry-sky, raiser of the moon and guardian of dreams and I have seen the realm of your dreams before... though you may not have seen me, Twilight Sparkle."
"I am sorry", Twilight said with a little bow, realizing that her question had perhaps been a bit brash and that she was probably not talking to some figure of her own imagination but to the very real Princess Luna herself. 
"I am surprised though not to see a single book or sheet of written paper anywhere", Princess Luna said in a tone that made it impossible to tell whether she was serious or if the remark was a joke at Twilight's expense. 
"There was one. It disappeared", Twilight said. "But, Princess Luna, I was just pursuing... something when you appeared. Can you tell me what it was? I didn't recognize."
Princess Luna shook her head. "It doth not work like that, Princess Twilight. I may walk in ponies' dreams and see what ails them and offer my help. But I am not making these dreams, I cannot see anything in your dream, or anypony's dream, that the dreamer could not. I cannot even see that what the dreamer, when awake, would think of as so much of a secret as to want to have it concealed from mine eyes."
Twilight sighed a little. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to recall what she had chased, but nothing appeared and her memory didn't yield anymore than the actual dream had. When she opened her eyes again, she immediately blushed. The forest had disappeared and given way to a landscape which Twilight recognized as her idea of what the surface of the moon would look like. She was mortified and frantically tried to recall the nightly forest or any surrounding other than the place of Princess Luna's thousand years lasting banishment. Much as she tried however, the moonscape remained. Princess Luna raised an eyebrow with an expression of royal decorum that Twilight doubted she would ever manage to produce on her own face. This expression could probably conceal any emotion from fury to amusement without giving the slightest clue about it away. 
"I'm sorry, Princess Luna", Twilight stammered very self-conscious about her faux-pas. 
"I see", Luna just said and, remembering her earlier explanation, Twilight wondered if perhaps the moonscape which she would have wanted to conceal from Luna's view had become visible to her only through her apology. 
Perhaps she should talk to Luna in a less embarrassing situation about her ability to wander in ponies' dreams, for Twilight found this quite interesting. Come to think of it, she thought that perhaps she should try to talk to Luna in general. She knew her so much less than her elder sister Celestia. But with all her worries about how to come to terms with her new role as a princess and Princess Luna's own difficulties in resuming that role after a thousand years of banishment and being the subject of many spine-chiller stories, there might be a common link for them. Something where they could both help and learn from each other. 
"It doth bother you that much, Twilight?" Luna asked and her voice sounded much less regal and much more compassionate now. Twilight was looking up in surprise and realized that the surroundings had changed once again. They were standing in a throne room. The grandeur of the room was dazzling to the point of being intimidating. More intimidating still were the dimensions however. The entrance gates and the stairs to the throne seemed to be set at opposite horizons. The pillars supporting an open sky sized ceiling had the dimensions of mountains and the steps leading up to the over-sized throne were each so high that it would be impossible to ascend without flying. In the proportions of this room Twilight felt like some tiny bug that would not even be noticed if it crawled through the halls of Canterlot. With her knowledge of dreams Twilight didn't doubt that Princess Luna was quite capable of drawing correct conclusions from the images. 
Twilight nodded and avoided Luna's look. 
"It is still all so sudden. I hadn't seen it coming. I mean I am just... a student. I'm trying to live up to Celestia but everypony keeps telling me that I should not. But I just want to be good at what is expected from me. I want to be a good Princess. I—"
"Tell me, Twilight Sparkle. Do you want to be good at what is expected from you? Or do you want to be a good Princess?"
Twilight opened her mouth, closed it again, opened it, closed it again and didn't say anything. 
"Both?" she finally tried, feeling like she was failing an important test. 
Luna was looking at her again with a solemn expression that could conceal any kind of emotion. 
"Sometimes my sister has very high expectations. She always has very high expectations of herself. When she sent you to the Chrystal Empire, Twilight Sparkle, I doubted the wisdom of her decision. I asked her to come with you to face king Sombra; but she would not have it so. I thought that she was asking too much of you."
Twilight remembered the day when Princess Celestia had given her the task to protect the Crystal Empire. She remembered the look Princess Luna had given her back then. A look which had seemed doubtful, almost contemptuous, even hostile to her and which had sent an icy shiver down her spine back then.
"I was wrong", Luna continued. "You exceeded all my expectations."
Twilight was not sure if perhaps she should feel a little offended about that.
"But remember, Twilight Sparkle, how you did. It was only when you gave up on the idea of having to do it all by yourself... only after you decided to act against the explicit instruction of my sister that you succeeded. That you even could succeed at all."
Twilight was feeling uncomfortable. "Princess Luna, what are you telling me?"
"Only that you should stop feeling that ponies were disesteeming you every time they tell you not to try to be my sister. They are not telling you to settle for something lower or to strive for something higher. They only tell you to remain Twilight and not try to be another pony, whatever new title has been bestowed upon you."
Twilight thought she understood what Luna was trying to tell her, but at the same time a part of her revolted against it. 
"But Princess, do you know how much I failed today? How I accused an innocent pony of a crime and caused so much distress for him. I wrote to your sister about it. Did you read it?"
Princess Luna raised an eyebrow and seemed slightly huffy when she responded: "I may act as my sister in Canterlot during her absence which includes the handling of official correspondence. But I do not consider myself entitled to read her private mail."
Once again Twilight felt she had committed a faux pas. Just why did she drop every clanger available when talking to Princess Luna?
"I'm very sorry! I just don't know... everything seems to go so wrong. Princesses don't make such terrible blunders!"
"Twilight Sparkle", Luna's voice sounded more solemn now than it ever had. "Look at me!"
Twilight was looking at the Princess of the night who stood right in front of her now. 
"Look into my eyes and repeat what you just said!"
Everything but Luna seemed to spin around Twilight and she was so embarrassed now that she began to wonder if it was possible to swoon in a dream just to get out of this embarrassment. Here she stood and told Princess Luna, whose mistakes had let her be dominated by the fearful Nightmare Moon for a thousand years, that princesses didn't make such terrible blunders as to suspect the wrong pony of a theft. 
Twilight couldn't stand her look anymore and cast her eyes down. Princess Luna in turn didn't press her command. She was apparently satisfied that she had gotten her point concerning the infallibility of princesses across.
"Twilight...", she said, her voice sounding more gentle again. "...you will be... There are...", she sighed and shook her head slightly. 
"Princess Luna?" Twilight asked confused. 
The princess of the night shook her head once again. "Never mind."
There was a long moment of silence. 
"Thank you", Twilight said finally. "For coming here, I mean."
"You are welcome, Twilight Sparkle", Princess Luna said in a somewhat official tone. "But I did not originally come to talk about these matters." 
"You did not?" Twilight asked surprised.
"The official correspondence I dealt with informed me about the events here in Ponyville which I presume you wrote about in the letter to my sister. I am to send an escort in case the hearing tomorrow results in Mr. Blanket being sent to Canterlot for further investigations."
"I do hope that won't be necessary", Twilight said. "I'm sure he didn't steal that money."
Once again Luna gave her an expressionless look that could conceal any kind of thought or emotion. 
"I once met him in Canterlot's royal library", Princess Luna said. "He had good manners and I found his research topics intriguing. It was I who suggested to my sister that, given your recent experiences, a visit to you and your friends might be more fruitful for his research than the halls of the library."
Twilight was surprised to hear this. She hadn't been aware of any academic interest of Luna and once again she noticed how little she knew about Celestia's younger sister.
"I have since visited some of his dreams. I shall not tell about his dreams same as I shall not talk about anypony's dreams to anypony except the dreamer. But when I wanted to visit him just before I came here, his dream suddenly ended."
"What do you mean?" Twilight asked confused. "Did he wake up?"
"No, he did not. You notice when a dreamer wakes up, you can even make them wake up. But one moment he was dreaming and the next moment there suddenly was no dream anymore. There was nothing there. Not him, nor anypony or anything else either. Just a void. I have never seen... or not seen... anything like this before."
Hearing this gave Twilight such a fright that she could only barely cling to her dream rather than waking up.
"Luna! Do you mean he died?" Twilight cried.
But Princess Luna shook her head again. "For more than thousand years I have been visiting dreams. Many more dreams than can be dreamed in the lifetime of a pony. And in this time, I have also sometimes accompanied ponies on their final dream up to the parting point where no living pony can follow."
A cold shiver ran down Twilight's spine. 
"This was not the ending of a dream at the threshold to... the other. To me it seemed much more uncanny and I cannot tell you what it means. I just thought that you should know this. But this is all that I can tell you."
Twilight gave Princess Luna a blank look, not knowing what to make of what she had told her.
"I will go now, Twilight Sparkle", Luna said. "Dawn is not afar. I wish for you to dream what dreams you would like to dream till then."
Princess Luna spread her wings, but before she disappeared, she turned her head one last time. "Twilight, my moon is not quite as desolate as your dream makes it out to be."
With that the Princess turned her head forward again and was gone.