Dream A Little Dream Of Me

by horizon

23. Dawn has yet to break (Fahrenheit)

Night-Mare

Dawn has yet to break,
But I can feel the dreamscape splitting,
parting,
Spitting me out
upon the shores of consciousness--
leaving me bolt-upright in the straw, gasping for air,
as though it were saltwater
and not sleep
lapping softly

at the edges

of my mind.

The air is as raw as my thoughts are cloying,
and were it not for the heaviness of my limbs
betraying their corporeality,
I might have thought myself stumbled
into another's dreamings;
My thoughts are as fickle-flimsy as my traitorous kin.

Why would they turn upon the Dawnbringer?

I blink--
Staggering to my hooves in the dawn-dark,
Struggling to shake the dream-dew from my eyes,
Steadying the hoof
That trembles so,
easing open the tavern door to reveal the moon-washed world beyond--
Now is no time for hesitation.

I lurch through the streets half-asleep, and
my thoughts will
not clear.
Wake up.

The moon watches my unsteady gait with regal disapproval.

The wall is so far away.
And I am walking under stars
I should still be drowning in,
And I would be,
were it not
for the mare
in the castle-topped mountain,
waiting
in a room scented with sunshine and suspicion
for me to assure her
Myinnkyun rises not in defiance.

Waiting
For me to prove
that the night-song in my veins
has not tainted my loyalty
to the morn-mistress.

I give
my head
a
hard,
des

per

ate

shake and then open my eyes, lucid at last. Voices echo from distant streets, and the soft blush rising from the east tells me I have precious little time to escape, to get out of this sunforsaken tartarus before it crashes down around me and I must present the pieces before a Court that will be all too eager to ignore the innocence of my expression.

The voices have grown entirely too loud for comfort, and I ease open the door of a dilapidated warehouse, silencing its reluctant hinges with a spell. Hoofsteps grow louder, pounding a battle-cadence into the cobblestoned streets. I do not need to peek through the crack in the door to know that Sunspot approaches with his regiment.

I should not have peeked through the crack in the door.

I should have looked behind me.

Something moist and hot sweeps across the back of my neck, and then my ears notice the deep heartbeat of Myinnkyun’s other hidden inhabitant, and I smell blood.

I burst out of the warehouse, Palei Hantu behind me, and the resounding clatter is enough to bring the entire regiment running, and before I can move, we are in the eye of a hurricane of steel, the soldiers surrounding us with weapons drawn and eyes narrowed.

I do not need to scry to watch to conclusions write themselves. The soldiers size me up—an unfamiliar nocturne standing with a Mooken inside of the walls (and I suspect Shooting Star can see the dream-magic lingering in the scalloping of my horn)—and then the muttering starts.

How—
Foreigner?
No boats in weeks—
Murderer?
Who—
spy?
traitor
Nocturne?
enemy
friend?
Spy.
Why—
Spy!

Spy! they shout, and before I can tell them no, no that is not who I am, Palei Hantu lunges to escape, and their shouts turn from accusation to surprise and I do not wait for another chance; with a flash of light and a small tumble, I am gone.

I cannot tell if any follow me.

I can barely hear my own hoofsteps over the ear-splitting sound of Palei Hantu being ripped to pieces.

The gate is before me,
and it matters not that my head is swimming
and my steps are slowing
and the sound of the ocean requests my attention—
because the gate is before me;
I am leaving.

It is no trouble to step from shadow to shadow
from here to there,
but with the gate behind me
and the sand stretching so silently onward,
I can hear the tide singing,
and my soul,
my soul

wants

to

sing

a
l
o
n
g

I turn and,
with steady eyes
and steadier resolve
destroy the gate.

The city is too large;
too many streets,
too many guards,
too many citizens
running around screaming
as though there is anyone to save them
from the Mooken scaling the walls.

The jungle is invading;
I almost say—
Only the ocean can save you now.
But they will hear neither me
nor the seasong
over the cacophony.

They are slaughtering each other now.

Perhaps the serenade
playing so sweetly in my ears
is to them a call for blood.

Moonstruck does not seem to think so;
in his searching eyes
is the same wonder,
same entrancement,
same song,
and briefly I wonder
if the nighttide in our veins
really makes us so different,
and then I hear them
and it doesn’t matter.

My hoofsteps echo upon the empty pier,
carrying me to not-so-empty waters,
and perhaps it is ironic
that Princess Celestia sent me away
from the velvet-cloaked hostility of her Court,
sent me away
to investigate a disappearance.

Not necessarily a murder,
she had said,
with eyes as dark
as the shadow upon the moon.
Perhaps not even a death,
but a mystery all the same.

She did not add
that she knows I love mysteries,
that I am the only one to be entrusted with courting the truth,
that Canterlot is no longer safe for me,
and my title
of student
means nothing,
not anymore.

Why did they have to turn against Celestia?

Why did they have to brand us traitors?

The water is inches beneath my hoof,
and the music is deafening,
for a single kelpie is entrancing
but three are all-consuming,
and they insist
that I join them
in the deep.

The water is cold
and for a moment everything is crystal clear what am I doing the Princess is counting on me I was supposed to be safe here i haven’t told her yet i need to tell her or they’ll say I deserted her no

The song is gentle in the deep,
so gentle it can only be her smile,
and I think I might see her,
with her hair swirling like a golden sunrise.

Tell me,
she says.
Tell me and rest.

So I smile
and tell her
about Cabotage and his clumsy plot for Peridot’s shares,
about the ale
spiced sweet and heavy,
to loosen the tongue and soften the resolve,
shared freely but not without a price.

About Littlemoth,
who was to sneak in
and take the deeds
Cabotage desired,
in exchange for a cut large enough
to make a new life
in a new land,
and nearly didn’t.

She’s down here too, now.

I wonder if Peridot slipped—
as Cabotage is convinced—
or if she merely let the tidesong sing her to sea.

The water around me is lightening,
brightening,
and miles away,
a princess is shining with a dawn
I wish would warm my face.

I just hope
the Princess doesn’t think
I’ve betrayed her too.

Comments

[AugieDog]

An anonymous Nightmare:

Tries to get back to Celestia to report what's going on but gets caught up in the fighting and the siren song. We get some motive here--Cabotage was to pay Littlemoth to steal some of Peridot's paperwork while Cabot kept Peridot occupied--but the Nightmare never learns if Peridot's death was an accident or if the sirens called her into the deep.

Not quite an answer, but the verse works every bit as well as the prose sections. A nice way to end the collection.

Mike

[Titanium Dragon]

The nightmare is trying to prove their loyalty to Celestia
They want to head off the destruction of the place
Palei Hantu attacks them
The guards think he’s in league with her
He manages to escape them, but cannot escape the destruction
The sirens come and lure everyone into the sea

This was a pretty bleak piece, but resolved most of the clues, but I still wasn’t really satisfied with Littlemoth’s guilt in this piece, and it doesn't actually resolve Peridot's death fully.

Still, this did a pretty decent job of tying up most of the other loose ends, and the ending ensures that it was indeed the LAST dreams of Pony Island.

[Sypher]

This would make for a fine final chapter, in my opinion. It does a decent job of explaining what happened (I wonder though: if Peridot truly drowned, whose blood was on Palei Hantu?) and the writing was very good. I liked how seamless the transition between verse and prose and back again was, as well as the development of the greater narrative.

[Fahrenheit]

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Thank you all for your feedback! This entry was definitely a bit rushed (I slid it in about 10 minutes before submissions closed ) so I'm glad to hear that it wasn't totally incoherent. Thanks again!

[Spectral]

6477539
A bit late, but I just wanted to say that I really like the combination of prose and verse here. From a technical standpoint, this is my favourite.

[Fahrenheit]

6493776 Thanks! I love the dreaminess that accompanies poetry and wanted to keep the free verse associated with being asleep, so this was the result. Glad to hear you liked it!