Something heavier than she is, heavier than she can bear, is pushing her down. Crushing her. She struggles to stay on her feet, to stagger uphill against the weight. Nopony else is affected, just her.
She grows stiff and rigid, forcing the weight back at the cost of being able to move. Every step is torture, grinding, creaking, when she longs to run and play. Inside her a fire burns, and it burns hotter and hotter with each moment, but she cannot move. She cannot release it.
In some of the dreams, she twists, and thrashes, and the rigidity cracks, the weight releases, and for moments, she knows freedom. And then the whole world burns from the fire inside her.
She is carrying something up the hill, carrying something unbelievably heavy, her body stiff and barely able to move so it can be strong enough to carry the weight. Sometimes the weight slips, and she watches a ball of fire roll down the mountain, setting fire to everything in its path. Then the world turns into a flare of white, and she wakes with tears on her face, feeling like a failure.
Sometimes she lifts the weight up with her telekinesis. Up, up, up, so high that she almost feels free of it, but it is always pressing on her horn, always grinding her down. She can take the fire out of herself, she can lift the weight, but it's always there, pressing on her, and if she ever drops it, the world will burn.
Sometimes the weight is a crown. Not the one she wears, the simple circlet that marks her as the heir, but the one her father wears, golden and heavy. It's on her head, and she can barely stand up, but if she shakes it off something terrible will happen.
The dreams about manticores and dragons come as a relief. She can just be afraid for her life then, or Luna's. She doesn't have to fear that the whole world will burn if her strength ever falters under the weight.
the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i've ever had
Ponies with pitchforks, ponies with whips. Ponies three times his size, made of shadows and fear. Ponies carrying torches, ponies with magic in their horns ready to grab him and throw him, ponies with rope and chains. He is running, always running, throwing various magical tricks behind him or in front of him.
He makes portable holes and runs through them, then closes them behind him. Ponies slam into tree trunks or cliff faces and bounce away, dizzy, as he laughs and escapes. But then in front of him there are always more ponies. Different ponies, with the same intent, like a hive mind that marches in lockstep. He can never figure out how they are communicating with each other, or even if they are. They all look alike; when shadows devour their color and their cutie marks, he can't tell any of the ponies apart. They're all the same, horrifying creatures trying to catch him, and he never knows why, or how they keep finding him.
Most nights he just runs and runs until he wakes up. His tricks hold them off and they never do catch him. Other nights they drag him down and throw him in a cage. They beat him, they chain him, they scream at him and batter him with sticks. He gets away sometimes; other times the torment goes on until he wakes up.
The worst dreams are the ones where they have a ponyquin, a stiff hollow pony-shaped thing, and they catch him. Sometimes he just barely manages to get away. But when the ponyquin's in the dream, that's not usually what happens. Usually, they grab him, and as he struggles and screams and tries to bite them, they force him into the ponyquin, and he feels it crushing him around his body, forcing him into the shape of a pony, smashing the fingers of his paws into a solid hoof, shrinking his long, flexible tail into a tiny bundle of hair. It doesn't hurt physically -- the dreams of the beatings awaken the echoes of remembered pain, because those were things that actually happened to him, but in reality nopony ever shoved him into a ponyquin and morphed his body to fit it, and he's experimented with voluntary shapeshifts and they don't hurt. The horror of the dream is that when he feels himself changing, when his body is reshaped to fit the ponyquin, he becomes the ponyquin. Locked into an alien form that all around him agree is the only form anything that talks should ever have, and no matter how much he screams inside, all that comes out of his mouth is cheerful singing, like the ponies do.
When he wakes from those, he's usually screaming, and he usually finds Luna, either snuggled at his side or at his door coming to bring him water and curl up with him. He has no idea how she always knows, but it helps. He's closer to Celestia than he is to her baby sister, but Celestia sleeps like a log, and he's not allowed to sleep in her room, whereas no one has forbidden Luna to come to him at night.
Other times he dreams of strange, mysterious things, creatures in impossible colors made entirely of a thousand eyes and mouths and wings and feet, things that speak in a language that reverberates in his bones. When they come, the air turns to jello and the angles bend and twist, reality itself reshaping and becoming bigger, bending around them to accommodate them, and sometimes when they touch him he finds his body dissolving, turning into a colorful liquid, or mist.
Even Luna doesn't understand when he tells her about those dreams. She thinks they're bad dreams. He admits they sound frightening, when he describes them. But they aren't scary at all, quite the contrary.
It feels wonderful, when he has one of those dreams. It feels like going home.
it's as well we tell no lies, so i'll sing you no lullaby
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.
