"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying, And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying."
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I had that weird dream again last night. You know, the one where I’m wearing a dark crown. Violet cape fluttering in the wind. Standing on top of a pile of bones. Looking down on the blackened buildings. Seeing all the tattered ponies marching past in chains. That one.
I like that one. I wish I didn’t. But I really, totally dig it.
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...That was good.
And I mean that in the best possible way.
I really do.
7967545
Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked my story so much.
Interesting character study for someone who barely got any lines in the show. There were a few times I thought this might have been going more of a fantasy/adventure direction, but the psychological angle is just as interesting. Sometimes the world really is cruel to individuals for no reason—but sometimes, the miserable person is needlessly making things harder for him/herself, too.
7970751
Thanks. That's what the fandom does best, after all.
Hm. Not a reaction I'd have expected. I'm intrigued; I thought it was clear from the start this was going to be psychological in nature. I wonder what I did that made you think more fantasy/adventure?
Yes! I take the view that life is often complicated, and that many factors are usually in play for any one issue... though obviously, not always to the same degree. And the outsider's contribution, or even simply their acting as a patient soundboard for the other person, can be a great help for someone who hasn't realized that yet. Especially when it's someone like Luna, given her historical and personal baggage.
Glad you found it interesting.
7971483
Mainly it was this bit here:
I see that it was meant as a comment on how quickly society could collapse and get replaced by totalitarian horrors. But the Sombra connection made me think of "The Cutie Re-Mark" and wonder if perhaps Moonlight was stumbling into or remembering those alternate timelines.
Then when her counselor encouraged Moonlight to change her recurring dream, I get that she was concerned about this power fantasy breeding bitterness and cruelty in her mind. But I thought perhaps the concern was over the possibility of this dream becoming a reality (hello, Tantabus!) or because Moonlight's dream was somehow real in another universe.
Basically, I’ve got those nutty SF/fantasy tropes on my mind, and I was leaping at them because they were adjacent to what you wrote.
Moonlight! I for one would find the gothic mansion and vampire fangs endearing!
You just gotta learn to stick with your own kind, filthy daywalkers be darned!
But great story, thanks for writing it! Five stars out of some number of stars!
The world needs more Moonlight Raven.
7972733
You're most welcome.
Well, she can't avoid 'em completely, of course. Otherwise, whose blood would she feast upon?
Indeed it does. She is the one pony cheerfully in touch with the dark side of the soul. Also, she has good taste in dresses.
7972131
I see. That said, I got the impression the tantabus and timeline-altering powers were unique to Luna/Starlight, so I doubt a regular pony - even one like Moonlight Raven - would manage it, especially by accident.
Those parallels you draw are definitely interesting, though. They could work for a tantabus-centric story - so long as its return and/or survival was justified in said story too - but I think it'd need someone like Twilight or Luna to pull off that kind of "your-mind-makes-it-real" power.
Good job!
8008458
Many thanks for the compliment.
Daaaang. I wasn't sure about this for at least 9/10ths of it, but then when I finally realized at the end that she was talking to Luna, the whole thing clicked.
This is really offbeat, but I think ultimately it's a good exploration of ponies who don't quite fit in and who hover on the periphery of being okay with not fitting in. The style is loquacious at times, but I feel like it has a lot of heart in the end.
Seriously, those last few lines made this for me.
7972733
The world does not deserve more Moonlight Raven, but she is beneficent to grace us with her dark and brooding presence.
8403081
Ha, it's always a pleasant surprise to be blindsided by new comments to old fics I'd almost forgotten about. I do remember this one as being quite a delightful experiment in first-person story-telling. Always fun to write in another character's voice. I'm glad you liked the twist at the end too.
"Offbeat"? I take that as a compliment.
"Loquacious", on the other hand, is a recurring problem for me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 
Trouble is I worry at times about being too plain, and I can't always tell when flowery language is effective and when it's just overreaching. At least it doesn't seem to have affected your enjoyment too much. 
Thank you for the lovely comment. It was a pleasure to read.
8403519
Yes, I'd say "offbeat" isn't a bad thing; perhaps I mean it more in the sense that the experimental approach taken with this story poses a challenge to establishing the audience's expectations up-front for what kind of story it's going to be. E.g., I enjoy the text of the current summary and chapter titles, but in some ways I don't think they clearly establish what to expect--notwithstanding that the text is very much rooted in the style of the story proper. (Note that I never said I would achieve greater clarity by trying to explain myself.) 
Most welcome.
Perhaps the thing I found most "loquacious" was that a lot of words seemed to be spent on responding to unheard bits of conversation with Luna. By which I mean, Raven speaks very conversationally, but we're only hearing half (or more-ish) of the conversation, and the style of what we hear reflects the presence (or absence?) of bits of conversation that we don't get to see. I'd submit that a stronger approach might be to structure Raven's dialogue less as a dialogue and much closer to a self-contained monologue. And this may be a fine point, given that it can be argued that this is purely monologue by virtue of the absence of words from the other party; but I would argue that its style and diction hew more closely to dialogue than monologue.
...I should take a step back, though: I found this quite enjoyable in the end, and in large part because of the effectiveness of the reveal. For what it's worth, I don't tend to post comments on stories unless I enjoy them; and it's the ones that strike me as memorable that inspire me to put on my Quibble Pants and start poking at minutiae.
(And if I might shill for a moment, I also recently conducted an experiment with perspective that yielded interesting, if not quite as successful, results)
8404332
I'll confess I hadn't considered it that way. Right from the beginning, I thought it was presented as obvious there was someone else she was talking to. Moreover, and since a lot of the stranger's responses could be gleaned from Moonlight's answers to those responses, I thought all that was really left for the reader to do was figure out who it was. Perhaps I assumed too much, at least some of the time. Alas, being the writer doesn't put me in - however unintentionally - a totally unbiased position. That's backfired on me a few times recently.
Honoured to have been one of those few, even if it comes with Quibble Pants' (doubtless Daring-Do-themed) poking stick.
Excellent depth and characterisation, consistent voicing, and a lovely last line that puts it all into context. Nae bad at all.
9026511
(looks at the date) Ouch. Please forgive my tardiness, good sir.
To the point: Thanks a ton for leaving this comment!
This fic hasn't seen much activity in a while, so it's encouraging to see people come in and still enjoy it months later. Thanks again. 