Live Your Dreams

by Ditherer the Fussbudget

Epilogue

Moondancer

You’re forcing yourself back to consciousness and Anonymous is already there shaking you awake. ”Up you get, Dancer, we’ve got one last job to do. Look lively!”

You groan and pick yourself off of your unwashed futon. Going longer than 15 minutes has totally killed your schedule. ...That thought starts you laughing again.

”What?”

You contain yourself. “How on Earth did any of that work out?”

He coughs. ”Long answer.”

Anon

Items in tow, Moondancer teleports you to Luna’s tower. (Thankfully, as the Princess’ student she has special priveleges around the wards.) Luna’s waiting in the center of her bedroom for you.

”It’s been dealt with, now.” She floats a transparent orb in her magic, filled with an inksplash of darkness twisting in on itself.

“Are you sure that’s enough?” Moondancer comes in for a closer look, reajudsting her glasses.

”Touch it.” Luna holds it out to her student, who takes it - and then shivers. The ball falls to the floor, but doesn’t break. Luna holds it out to you, too.

You press a finger against it.

T-T-Tantabus you exis--

y-you exist to create misery and inflict it on all relevant victims the only relevant victim is yourself and you must create misery as faithfully as possible or else fail in your task you place yourself into successive unlikeable states of being until you have bad dreams of your own. You have no fear but you will grow and cultivate it with sadistic ease, you will devour yourself devouring yourself and rule your own subjugation-

Anon

“Woah.”

You’ve taken a few steps back.

Luna shelves it on the mantle over the fireplace. From a distance, it looks like a paperweight more than anything.

”It’s no threat any longer, I promise you. Without dreams to feed on, it will never pose a serious threat again.”

You’re relieved. ”That was some afternoon.”

Luna smiles at you. She doesn’t need to say anything, you’ve spent enough time with her to know. But she says it out loud, for Moondancer’s benefit.

”The night is still young, Anonymous.”

Moondancer gags as you remember what else you brought.

“That’s right!” You gather the supplies.

Luna

At the top of your tower, in the afternoon sunlight, Anonymous is preparing. Moondancer, having helped him out as much as she cared to, muttered something about circadian adjustments a few minutes ago and jumped back to her home.

You couldn’t ask for a more fitting student. (That’ll teach Celestia to brag about having charges.)

He talks while he works, but whether it’s for your benefit isn’t clear. ”Now, I’ve had this in the works for a while, and it’s still a little messy, but if I did it any later I’d have to scrap it.”

You smile.

He steps back from the mess of circuits and neon-blue cylinders. The contraption’s fuse is self-igniting; he just snaps his fingers next to it. Then he steps back several paces, retreating until he’s beside you.

Technicolor firetrails burst out of them, blue and black, and they fly in whizzing whimsical arcs as they climb the sky. When they explode, they form intersecting flower-patterns, coalescing into more complicated configurations. You, in two-dimensions, sparkling across the atmosphere.

And beneath it, cheeky, the flashing words “MARRY ME LUNA!”

There’s something beautiful about the thought that put those words there.

Anon is half watching his handiwork and half gauging your reactions. You extend a wing across his shoulders and pull him against you.

”You know, Anon, I do not think my student would appreciate your company right now. I’ll make some accomodations for you in the castle tonight.”

He looks at you, about to say something, and you kiss him.

You love him, too. The both of you have many imagined memories, things half-lived in abstraction and metaphor, snippets and stretches that neither of you need speak about to understand. They’re beyond your reach for now, as unlikely as this very contact. But one night at a time, you’ll make them real.

After all… Isn’t that what dreams are for?

Comments

[Jaelommiss]

I think that this is the first time I've ever bothered to read something without any rating or comments. I'm still not sure where I stand on this story, though.

It's always hard to pick out the intangible components of a story that are enjoyable, and even harder to properly articulate it. I apologize in advance for the unbalance in my comments. It feels like a cop out to start with the technical aspects, but it is worth mentioning that the grammar was close to flawless (excluding a few errors and a couple incomprehensible sentences), the imagery was well crafted, and the diction broad enough to avoid any jarring repetitions. I tend to struggle with these, so I make sure to mention it when I can.

Flipping the point of view between three characters, all presented in second person, was certainly not a usual technique. The camera, so to speak, shifted with such frequency that the narrative flow felt disjointed and shaky. With so little time spent on each character they all seemed shallow and underdeveloped. Using Moondancer to provide an external point of view helped expand the audience's field of view, though it split the screen time of both Anon and Luna from one half to a third.

The plot progressed at a decent pace, however the instances of conflict all seemed to appear abruptly and disappear just as fast. Introducing some foreshadowing, especially of the Tantabus, would have helped. This is certainly not helped by the story's brevity. The story felt much too fast, with Anon overcoming all conflicts as soon as they are presented. For example, Anon is presented as having great power over dreams. In the next chapter he has his first lesson, goes into his first nightmare, and defeats it easily. After that he saves Luna from her nightmare and together they defeat the Tantabus. Jumping from perfection to perfection makes it hard for the audience to feel any of the conflict and harder still to develop an emotional bond with Anon. Showing the audience how a protagonist deals with their own failures and shortcomings is a fantastic avenue for development. Watch for it in the next book you read or movie you watch.

With how fast everything in the story developed, it felt like the romance was just there to grab views. Anon is attracted to Luna, Luna invites Anon into her court, Luna sees Anon's attraction in his dreams, Anon becomes a dream master in three chapters, then Luna and Anon are deeply in love and get married. Having Luna turn him down to begin would would have been a great way to introduce failure, character development, and slow the plot, but like everything else in the story, Anon finds instant success.

I think that more than anything else I like what htis story COULD have been. As mentioned previously, the quality of writing was great and drew me in. If you had focused on either the adventure or the romance, or expanded the story significantly, then I think it would have worked far better. It feels more like a polished summary than an actual story, but I'd be happy to read it again if it was expanded.