Oneiromance

by gloamish

first

I loved plans. Sure, I could get a little frazzled in the face of something scary that I wasn't prepared for, when the plans needed plans to plan them, and backup plans and upfront plans. But a plan that had worked before became more like a recipe — a set of steps for success. When I knew what was coming, when I'd done it before, there was a meditative quality to process.

Getting ready for a date was a new kind of process, but already I found it comforting. Predictable steps, time-consuming but not difficult, each one visible in its result as the bookish mare in the mirror slowly transformed into somepony special. I trotted out of the bathroom and triple-checked my list for the second time. Everything was in order! Nerves flitting about my stomach, I walked into my bedroom, slid under the covers, and turned off the light.

I awoke into lucidity, lying on a soft shadow, stars scattered in unfamiliar constellations above. Standing, I looked down, happy to see my dress and all the other preparations had carried over. Oneiromancy was a new field to me, one I was eager to explore, but I found it a little fickle. Dreams were slippery things, and since magic was a practice of gripping the world, it followed that the magic of dreams would be tricky.

I turned to see a mare emerge from the boundary of my dream. As my eyes wandered that midnight blue coat, I wondered briefly whether Luna prepared herself in the same way, or if she formed her dreamself at will. It must be the latter, because perfection like this couldn't exist in the waking world. I thought, distantly, that that wasn't a scientific observation but rather the murmurings of a lovestruck filly, but the review panel of my mind overruled the objection. Luna's mane, which in waking felt like a void in space, here was a natural extension of the stars all around. As if the stuff of dreams itself had extended a hoof to brush against my cheek.

"Oh my, am I early?" she asked, looking around at the naked stars. "This dream doesn't seem quite finished."

I blushed and wound up the pickup line I'd prepared. "You're all I need to make this dream complete, Luna," I mumbled, eyes breaking from her and wandering into the stars beyond. No points for execution, I guess.

She stepped forward and nuzzled me, then drew back and caught my eyes. Any place I dreamed up would've vanished then, anyway — that gaze shrunk the world down so it only had space for her and I. "As much as I agree with the sentiment," Luna said, "somewhere to lay would be most pleasant, would it not?"

"Uhh," I looked around, then down. Folding my legs under me and sitting on the admittedly not-really-comfortable not-really-ground, I grinned sheepishly up at her. "Maybe it does need a little more to be complete."

Luna laughed, a sharp sound with a husky edge, like the arc connecting shadow and light on the face of the moon. "This seems a good opportunity for a lesson," she said, sitting next to me.

My tail flicked with glee. A date and a lesson? She really was the one for me. "I'd love that," I responded, scooting over to press my coat against hers.

"You mentioned that you learned to lucid dream when you were young."

"I, err. I thought it was a waste of time, eight hours when I could be studying..." I admitted, laughing at myself. "Imagine how disappointed I was when I finally figured out it was impossible to read in a dream."

Luna smiled and looked out at the starfield. "As much as this is a boundless realm, it is written in a language ponies have forgotten. Especially for one so learned as you, learning to think in symbols alone poses challenges." Luna paused and looked back down at me with a thoughtful expression. "The luthier who carved the first fiddle... Would you say it was her destiny, to bring that instrument into our world? Or that her talent was the creation of fiddles?"

"Rosin Pitch?" I blinked at the non sequitur, but was accustomed to the pedagogical methods of alicorns and pressed on. "I would. I don't know how much I believe in destiny, but inventing such an instrument must be the height of any craftspony's talent."

"Mm. Yet her cutie mark did not depict a fiddle, but a bowed length of wood. It would be disconcerting, to say the least, for our history to be shaped by pictures on our flanks. But after the first luthier's work, it still took decades for it to appear on ponies' flanks. What do you suppose was the catalyst for its appearance?"

I watched the stars twinkle, an effect of ripples along the dream's boundary. "Do they need time to soak into culture? After the fiddle's inception, I bet it took years for any songs to be composed for them, and decades for any masterpiece. Nopony would've thought them more than a novelty for a while, if a beautiful one."

"That is a fair theory, and one held by many. I believe the truth lies a sight further, in the dreams swirling in the wake of society's currents."

"You're saying that cutie marks are symbols which draw from the zeitgeist in the same way that dreams do?" I asked, skipping a few steps of logic instinctively. I flinched at my rudeness, but Luna grinned.

"That is what I believe. But all I mean to illustrate with this detour is that you may be more familiar with the language of dreams than you believe. You have, after all, given a lecture on novel cutie mark research, have you not?"

"I suppose I have," I chuckled. "Let me try." I closed my eyes, thinking of the park in Ponyville at night, a crescent moon hanging above, lit by lamplight and crossed with stone paths. A lamppost was kind of a symbol, right? Is the whole place a symbol, or is it composed of them? When I opened my eyes again, only the stars remained from my memory. "I could go places I remembered in the past, but now... Maybe it's nerves. I can't seem to summon anything."

"You're at the figurative bedrock of the dreamscape, Twilight," Luna said, looking around. "There's no substrate to work with, so to speak. Nothing grows on rock. To even get to this state to begin with is no easy feat, and I am impressed, but I imagine you achieved it subconsciously." Her tail flicked against mine, ethereal starstuff playing with earthly fiber. "Perhaps you were too focused on something else to dream of anything at all."

I blushed and looked away. "Perhaps."

"Close your eyes," Luna said, and I did. "You must thrust all your senses into memory. Somewhere you remember vividly, somewhere you miss: the smell of it, the sounds, the feeling. Forget about the sight of it; imagine you are there, with your eyes closed as they are now."

Somewhere I missed. Afternoon sun warming my coat. A light summer wind. Summer grass and sweet pollen carried in it. Rustling leaves and music from a hanging set of wind chimes. Parchment. A cup of black tea, ritualistically prepared in the way my mentor taught me, not through pedagogy but routine.

I opened my eyes, and I was home. Ponyville was perfectly framed through the open balcony of the Golden Oak. The lack of tears surprised me — where I expected the raw, jagged edge of loss, instead there was a calm and sense of rightness that pressed against my insides with a pleasant pressure. I looked up to see Luna sipping a cup of tea, pleased expression mirroring mine.

"Exploration is the first and most important part of oneiromancy," she said, pausing to take a sip. "All magic requires an understanding of the world surrounding you and the laws governing it. The same is true here, but this world is your own mind. Trips through it like this one are an excellent way to learn the lay of the land."

I walked out onto the balcony and paused in thought, enjoying the feeling of the sun on my coat. "That sounds... hard. When I was a filly, sometimes I dove so deeply into my studies only because there was something about myself I didn't want to think about." Trying to take the curiosity that drove me to learn magic and turn it inward, when it had at least partially risen out of a desire to avoid doing just that... No easy task, surely.

Luna joined me on the balcony. "We have all the time in the world," she said, a wing coming to rest around my withers, her foreleg flush with mine. "Unfortunately..."

I looked up at her, prompting her through the pause. "Unfortunately?"

"I," she said, leaning down with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, "am easily distracted." She leaned down and kissed me, neither a quick peck nor a deep passion. It was firm but yielding, an assurance of the strength of what was growing between us.

When she broke it, I nuzzled into her side and she wrapped her wing tighter around me, looking out across Ponyville. "It's a beautiful town, isn't it?" I asked, following her gaze.

"It's wonderful. I practically consider it a home away from home, now... I cannot wait to share it with you again. But we could hide away here in your library and I would be just as happy," she said, lifting her wing from me and stepping back.

"Wellllll... Now that I'm getting the hang of summoning dreams, maybe we can have a few trial runs." I turned to follow, but stopped.

There, inside my old bedroom, stood two Lunas. The Luna I'd spent the evening with up until this point, who wore no regalia and had let her walls down to show me her playfulness and affection, was one. The other was Princess Luna of Equestria, crown and all.

Following my gaze, my Luna sighted her copy and jumped a little, then relaxed. She waved a hoof over the other's eyes, who turned to look at her, clearly miffed. "How interesting! A figment."

"We are not a—" The fake Luna started, the offense on her face growing.

"Where'd she— uh, you? — come from?"

"Hm..." Luna tapped her chin with a hoof. "It's a manifestation of some feeling in your subconscious... But what, I can't be sure." she said, circling her copy slowly.

"I'm not sure a fourth date is quite in 'show your marefriend the deep-seated fears which wear her face' territory..." I mumbled, scuffing a hoof against the ground.

"You dare psycho-analyze us?!" Dream Luna responded, nostrils flaring. "We are not a manifestation!"

"Well, I've read some dream analysis books... It's using the royal plural like you used to. Maybe it represents some feelings I had toward you in the past?" I sat on my haunches, raising a foreleg to my chin in thought.

"Fear?" Luna asked quietly.

"... No, that's not it. Or, it is, but not the kind of fear you're thinking. Back then, I was afraid, but of my own desires, not of you."

"You did say that you've had a crush on me practically since we met..." Luna mused, stopping her circumnavigation to sit next to me.

"Crush?!" Dream Luna asked, head whipping back and forth between the two of them.

"Maybe... shame? It might've appeared when you brought up going around Ponyville together as... as a couple. It's scary."

Dream Luna focused on me. "A... couple?" Its expression was just as I imagined it would be back then, had I not kept my feelings under control: not disgust, per se, but disquiet, as if the thought didn't quite fit into her brain. I looked at the floor, eyes tracing the rings in the wood.

"Yeah... This is basically how I imagined you reacting." I shuddered. "Even if I know it's not really you, it still feels..."

Luna nuzzled me, warm breath tickling my cheek. "My love, it is only a dream."

I snorted. "Only a dream, says the mistress of the night."

She looked thoughtful. "Well. While it cannot hurt you, anything here in this realm is a manifestation of your psyche." She paused. "Except me, of course," she said with a laugh, and I leaned against her. "For shame to find space here, now, even while we are this," she said, wing returning to me, "tells me that something should change."

"I think... Could we start small? Just my friends. And Princess Celestia." I said, smiling up at her.

"Of course." She took my chin in her hoof and returned the gaze. "While these dream rendezvouses are the height of romance," she said, something hungry flickering in her eyes, "I would very much like to do this in the waking world."

She closed the distance and demonstrated, letting the kiss languish this time, her lips yielding to mine. I wondered whether here, in a dream, we could melt into each other if we kissed long enough. It felt like we were, and I wanted to know how it felt in life, too. I drew away slowly, and opened my eyes to meet hers again. "I think I'd like that."

I leaned up, hungry for more, but my gaze flicked to Dream Luna, who had fallen to her rump and was staring, slack-jawed. "This... doesn't make for a very romantic atmosphere, does it?" I asked with a chuckle.

"It does not," Luna agreed. "And while yours is my favorite destination, Twilight, I have many more dreams to visit tonight. You are an excellent hostess. Good evening." She kissed me quickly, once more, then spread her wings and took off from the balcony, flying up and out of sight.

When I looked back, Dream Luna was gone as well, and with her went the clammy feeling of fear in my gut. On waking, I decided I needed some practice before telling the others. It was time to write a letter.

Comments

[overdue]

This is really interesting. I wonder how it's going to be a tragedy