Exit Light, Enter Night

by alarajrogers

it's as well we tell no lies, so i'll sing you no lullaby

Jethro Tull, No Lullaby
She dreams of monsters.

They assemble in hordes, creatures of darkness and fear. They are nothing so predictable as manticores and dragons; they have no truly defined shape at all, and it's only if she looks at them too closely that they start to take any form. They are nothingness, and if they devour her, she will cease to exist, and nopony will remember that she ever existed.

But she's not afraid. They are awful dreams incarnate, and she is supposed to fear them, but she doesn't. She has her friends to stand with her.

They stand behind her, her army. Mondrian the Bat, his well-gnawed orange wings at the ready to take flight with her. Stelluffy the Cat, pink and purple paws braced against the ground. Harmony the Bear, Gunther and Gretchen the Griffins, Meg the giant ancient dragon, moonlight glinting off her gold and green scales. With Favorite Blanket tied ‘round her neck as a cape, flowing in the wind, and Pink Receiving Blanket and Fluffy Blanket wrapped around her as armor, her wings poking out from underneath them, she stands ready, facing the fearsome horde. In the dream, she has a horn, not just wings, and she holds a sword just like her father's in a telekinetic grip she doesn't have in real life, with blades of moonlight strapped to her wings, ready to deal death to the monsters of hatred, apathy and nonexistence.

Luna grins savagely at her opponents. Once again, the bad dreams have chosen the wrong filly to torment. By day, she might be merely a Princess of Equestria, not even a Crown Princess like her big sister. But when she sleeps, she imagines herself Princess of Dreams, a brave and ferocious warrior ready to do battle against any number of things that go bump in the night.

"Ready, soldiers?" she calls to her army of stuffed animals.

"Ready, Your Nightness!" they chorus back.

"Then let us attack! GO!"

She charges forward, her sword held in front of her, her cape flowing behind her as she flies. Her army bellows in the voices of a dozen different animals as they launch themselves against the darkness.

Author's Note:

In my headcanon for this series, Celestia was a unicorn and Luna was a pegasus before they ascended, but Luna gained access to dream magic for the same reason Fluttershy can talk to animals and use the Stare. Not all pegasi are limited to flight and weather powers.

In her dreams, Luna was always the Princess of the Night, though.

Comments

[alarajrogers]

5234071
Luna is six, Discord is ten, Celestia's about eleven.

Discord has actually lived through some fairly awful shit by this time in his life, Celestia's just starting to feel the pressure of being the Crown Princess, and Luna... is Luna.

[Spiritofchaos227]

5234077 TEN!? Oh boy, I guess I'm in for a sob fest whenever Last Draconequus updates. Also, * old narrator voice * It looks like our hero has once again been bested by the beast known as new ideas. Will Alara be able to stand up to this monster and finally finish one of her incomplete fics? Find out next time!

Hehe, I'm joking, I love your ideas, so I'm not complaining!

[alarajrogers]

5234109
To be fair, I thought of this because I'm writing a sequence in Not the Hero where Discord confronts Luna in the dream world he left her in, which got me thinking about the relationship between the two of them and also Luna and dreams.

And I never promised I wouldn't do any new completed one-shots, only that I wouldn't add to my incompletes before I completed something. :-)

But yeah. In the background, I'm actively writing Last Draconequus and Not the Hero, and I'm head-writing Elements of Opposition (I generally write a story multiple times in my head before finally committing it to paper).

[Scarheart]

Playing off the story title..."Take my hand, Off to never Neverland!"

[alarajrogers]

5239372
Oh, he does that (as an adult), by choice. What terrifies him is the fear of forced conformity. (That reforming spell idea of Twilight's probably hit a nerve or two.) The "being forced to be a pony" thing is his childish mind coming up with a metaphor for how everything in his world is organized around what ponies want and need and how he's treated like a defective pony rather than like what he is.

(Ironically in my universe the draconequui would probably consider him defective too if there were any left, because they aren't supposed to be hyper-chimerical; normal draconequui are dragon horses, and that's it. But he idealizes his own people because they're dead and can't reject him.)

[Jordan179]

5239393

Discord never becomes really comfortable with his nature, does he? Not as a youth, not as a tyrant, not as a statue, and not restored to live and reformed. Will he ever find peace with himself?

[MidnightMadness]

Celestia, crushed underneath her crown
Discord, trying to hide his fears of forced identity
Luna, bat shit crazy... I kinda giggled how light this chapter felt compared to the other two

[FanOfMostEverything]

I don't know how I missed this, but I'm very glad I found it. The nightmares are all too appropriate, and Luna in her element is amazing. It's such an adorably badass image, I feel like it's a cut scene from Moonstuck.

Thank you for these vignettes. I'm very glad I chose to dig through your archive today.

[Hecallsmehischild]

I love these snippet views into each character's dreams. I love how triumphant Luna is, especially.

[PuppetXMaster]

5242702
I'm confused by this, he is comfortable with his nature, what he dislikes is that no one else seems comfortable with what he is and fears that they will one day force him to be exactly like them, aka twilights reform spell