Everything went dark. There was the briefest sparkle of light in the darkness, which faded quickly. Then the darkness itself faded into a different kind of darkness. Moonchaser had to think for a moment before realizing what the difference in this darkness was.
She opened her eyes to the soft darkness of the night as it filled the room. Reaching out with a hoof, she pulled back the curtain dividing the room. Midnight was there, sitting on a twisted pile of blankets. Their eyes met for a moment before the alicorn stallion gave a head toss in the direction of the door. "I'm going to go get some air. Want to join me?"
The mare thought about it for a moment before silently getting out of the bed. She followed him out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door of the tree. They sat there for a while, just watching the moon and enjoying each others' presence.
"So..." Midnight finally broke the silence, "Do you want to talk about it?"
Moonchaser nodded, "What happened?"
"I don't know. Apparently you were right about it being a dream, but I don't know how I wound up in it. Do you think it has something to do with two alicorns sleeping near each other?"
The mare shook her head. "You went to bed as a bat pony, something about the dream made you shift. Besides, Dust Runner sleeps in an adjoining room to mine, and Sunbeam isn't far from me either."
"Then that's out... Ah well, we'll figure it out eventually. If it happens again we just need to be ready for it."
"I suppose so..."
"...For the record, that wasn't what I meant when I asked if you wanted to talk about it."
"...I know. I probably should talk about it, shouldn't I?"
"Only way I know of to get rid of nightmares."
"Really?"
Midnight nodded. "Nightmares gain power by isolating you. That's why you're always alone in them. Or haven't you noticed that nopony else is ever with you in a nightmare?"
After a brief pause, Moonchaser blinked. "You're right. I'd never noticed that before, but the first part of every nightmare is being alone. Even in the ones where there are lots of ponies, none of them are ever friendly."
"Case in point. Since you haven't told me you don't want to talk about it, I'm going to go ahead and stop letting you dodge the subject. You know that your mother would never say any of that, right?" There was a pause. "Moonchaser? You know that, right?"
The mare sighed. "I just found out that she's been lying to me for my entire life. About everything. What am I supposed to believe Midnight? How can I trust anything about her now? Can I even call her my mother?"
Silence reigned again. After a few moments, the colt spoke, "Not everything." The mare turned to him in surprise. "She didn't lie to you about everything."
"Oh really?" She snapped, "Then tell me, what part of lying to me about my parentage, race, origins, birth, upbringing, and family for seventeen years doesn't constitute lying about everything?"
"There's a word missing there and a word that shouldn't be there. Love and family." Midnight locked eyes with his friend. "You didn't see her after you left Moonchaser. She was broken, shattered. I know that look she had in her eyes, it's the one ponies get when they lose the one thing in the world that means more to them than anything else. No matter what else you doubt about her, don't you ever doubt that she loves you.
"And don't you believe for one second that you are not her daughter."
Moonchaser recoiled, caught completely off guard. Reflexively, she fired back with the first thing that came to mind. "Believe? Midnight, I know. You heard her yourself, straight from her own mouth she admitted that I wasn't her child!"
"Really? So explain to me, what part of naming you, raising you, protecting you, feeding you, teaching you to fly, providing for you, and loving you for seventeen years fails to qualify her to be your mother?"
"She's been decieving me from the day I got dropped off on her doorstep! There's not a single family tie! There is no blood between me and her!"
When the echoes of Moonchaser's shouts died away, the silence was deafening. After a full minute, Midnight almost whispered, "Remember who you're talking to." At the mare's confused expression, he elaborated, "You heard my story too Moonchaser. There's no blood between me and Featherdancer, or any of our other siblings, or our parents. Do you think we let that stop us? Family isn't about blood Moony, or is Sunbeam not really your sister either?" The mare recoiled like he'd slapped her. "Don't get me wrong, your mom screwed up not telling you about all of this sooner. Frankly, you're right to be hurt. But is the pain worth losing your family? Because trust me, that's a kind of pain that nopony should have to go through."
Moonchaser's response died in her throat as she noticed the haunted look that came into his eyes. It was just enough of a pause to make her consider things. "Fine... I'll go back tomorrow and hear her out. But it looks like I might not be the only one with nightmares, do you want to talk about it?"
Midnight barked out a bitter laugh, "Something tells me that if I don't, we're going to have a flipped repeat of our earlier adventure... before I do though, I have to ask. Do you really want to know? It's a dark story, my world isn't a very pleasant place. This could wind up simply giving you more nightmares."
The mare nodded, "I think we just proved that nightmares aren't as bad if you're sharing them."
Midnight sighed, "Alright then. But one condition. This is going to be hard enough for me. If you want me to tell you, you have to hear all of it. And if it gets to be too much and you can't take any more... the story stops there, and you never ask me to tell you any more of it."
"Agreed."
The stallion's eyes closed as he steadied himself with a breath.
Seven years ago, my mother died. It was childbirth, a death that she had managed to escape thrice. My baby sister crossed to the other side with her.
We sent news to my father, a soldier who was fighting bandits in the south. He had left before we found out Mom was pregnant, and from what we learned from those who fought with him, it did something to him, losing his wife and a daughter who he had never had any contact with. Apparently that was the point where he stopped making the weapons and siege engines and started using them. He never came home. Two months before I went through the mirror, a military runner came into town. My father had been killed in action. His body had been found surrounded by enemy soldiers.
According to the messenger he had died succesfully protecting a group of children on his own. I can only assume he finally found peace, reconciling the child he lost with those he saved.
My oldest sister was the next to go. About five years back. She was sixteen. A traveling merchant came through town, staying for about a week. He informed us that he would be adding our town to his usual route, which helped a lot of our people sell more things so that they could get by a little better. If we had only known what he was really up to.
He stopped by every three months, traded with us, always carefully making sure that every person made just the tiniest bit more money than they spent. Over time, my sister fell in love with his son. On their sixth visit, she married him. She left town with him, planning on coming back the next time they came through town. Three months with him, three months in the town. The arrangement gave her some stability for when they started having children.
We should have known better.
The morning after they left was when we started noticing that things were wrong. It took us until lunchtime to figure out what had happened. They had taken almost a dozen children.
It turns out that these "Merchants" were actually slavers. Quite notorious ones at that. They couldn't even get near a city anymore, so they had started targetting small towns. Children were easy to wrangle and sold well since they could still be trained. Of course we didn't find any of this out until later, when the soldiers came to collect them.
All we knew was that the children had been kidnapped. Even then, some of us were hesitant to believe it. Maybe the children were simply following them, or had stowed away.
And then we caught up to them. All of them.
There were sixty in all, forty of them had never come into town. What's more, it looked like they were expecting us. They had rigged up some fortifications, simple but effective. Honestly we never would have stood a chance if it weren't for the one thing they weren't counting on.
Starswirl the Bearded.
He was lashing out with fire, lightning, ice, raw magical energy, everything. The rest of us helped, Featherdancer used his bow for more than hunting for the first time in his life, I was throwing magic around myself - I hadn't figured out how to control it, but I had figured out a few things that would blow up. Ultimately though our resident wizard carried the day.
At the end of the fight, I ran my sister's husband through with his father's sword before I took his head off with mine.
So that's what you were talking about when you asked the Lupus Minor not to make you kill again.
...Yes.
I passed out after that, but apparently we took about a dozen of the slavers prisoner, and most of the town got their loved ones back.
Unfortunately we couldn't bring back the dead.
My sister had been chained up and thrown in with the rest of the slaves. She led an escape attempt a few hours before dawn, and when it failed, they executed her as an example. She was dead before we even realized the children were gone.
It stayed that way for a while, Vapor Mist and I taking care of each other and Featherdancer. And then he went on a hunting trip with some of the other men in town. Honestly, we had been reduced to a small village by that point, and losing Featherdancer only chopped us down further. Featherdancer was the best shot in Everfree, so he was partnered up with a pair of younger teens on their first hunt.
The three of them were trapped in a box canyon by a starving cougar. They killed it, but all of them were wounded and bleeding. A few hours later, the wolves found them. The boys said that they only saw five, but we found seven dead wolves, so either a second pack showed up, or the first pack was bigger than they thought.
Featherdancer's leg was torn open while they were running. He had sent the other boys to get help while he bought them time to get away. When we found him, his arrows were spent and his bow was broken. One of the wolves was covered in knife wounds and another still had his knife sticking out of it's chest. They found the missing parts of Featherdancer's throat in that one's mouth.
I'm pretty sure they'll be telling stories about that kid for a while yet. Between the cougar and the wolves, he brought in more meat that winter than any other man in the village. The wolves might still tell stories too, not a single one has been seen within fifty miles of Everfree since.
That was really my lowest point. I spent a while searching for a way to bring back the dead. Necromancy was the one I spent the most time thinking about, since it's almost all ritual magic, I probably could have pulled it off. But the price was too high, Featherdancer wouldn't have wanted me to bring him back that way.
It was a year later when I finally accepted it. Vapor and I started drifting apart after that. It was stupid of us. We should have been drawing closer together for support, but... our entire family was gone, neither of us wanted to say it, but we were both wondering how long it would be until the other one died.
Two years ago a travelling troop of performers came through town. She left with them and hasn't been back since. She writes occasionally though, lets me know she's still alive. She was supposed to come back through town a few months after I came here. Honestly that might be one of the reasons I went through the mirror. There's a reason she left, and... I lost myself in my studies. Being around town, around each other, just brought back painful memories.
I don't think you ever met the version of me from the other side of the mirror. Six months of being in this world, of interacting with my family's counterparts, of having a family, helped me a lot. At this point the old wounds are healed, though some of them scarred.
"...The point is that those wounds existed. Losing your family hurts like nothing you can imagine. And throwing your family away this easily?" Midnight shook his head. "Nopony should ever go through that kind of pain when they don't have to."
Moonchaser was silent, her back too him. He noticed that she was shaking very slightly, but before he could ask if she was cold, she turned to face him, lines of water glistening on her cheeks. "Midnight..." Her hug was as unexpected as it was sudden, almost bowling the colt over. "Promise me," She whispered in his ear, "Promise me that you'll never keep something like that to yourself again. It doesn't have to be me, but promise me that you'll always tell somepony. Promise me you'll never carry a burden like that alone again."
Midnight did the only thing he could. Relaxing slightly he leaned into the mare, wrapping his wings around her. "I promise." He whispered back to his friend.
They stayed like that for a while, even after Moonchaser had stopped crying and shaking and they had separated, they watched the beauty of the night for almost a full hour before they quietly turned and went back inside.