If Only In My Dreams...
In my homeland, no hippogriff has their head in the clouds. The expression itself doesn’t even exist, and if it does, it’s just one of the many spatterings of pony culture we’ve heard without exploring. It can never become one with us, and so we are never warned of the danger.
Because the skies, when it comes down to it, are not the thing we fear. They are the things we dominate every day, they are the reality only we can control. So if my people knew, if they even had a word for the type of traitor I was, it would be this: a dreamer who drowns. Water is something that’s meant to weigh us down, keep us tethered to earth, put us in our place. Just like the Storm King did.
But it is the place I call home, more than the land I’ve dwelled for most of my life. Each night, as if by some incomprehensible magic, I’m always drawn to the same place, the same dream. And even though every piece of my current biology says I should, I am never the one who drowns.
Instead, there is another, a gray figure at once similar and different from me. My shadow in these dreams, maybe even my someday shadow in reality. It always starts out differently, whether I’m saving him from drowning or telling him off for an equally ridiculous thing. But it always ends with splashing together in the unnamed river as one, a place I could never locate on a map but could always come back to in my mind.
I have never been like other hippogriffs, always stored away in some far off castle, but each time I save him again, I remember: neither is he. And if he isn’t just an illusion, if dreams really do reflect reality, then I know someday, I can meet him again. But until then, I keep him in my heart, from everyone else who’d ever call me crazy for seeing him. The one being I know who would stay with me forever, and even past death itself.
I knew from the minute I started seeing him that there was no way anything I thought up could be that vivid, but somehow, every night, I will him into existence yet again. That’s how I know that it has to be magic from deep within Equestria, something even I don’t know.
I pull him out of the nameless river for what has to be the hundredth time in my life, and slowly but surely, we get to know each other all over again. Except I know this time will be different, because where else would such an un-hippogriffic figure live...other than Equestria itself?
The minute I received the call, I knew that Princess Twilight Sparkle would have to be the one other creature in this world who knew, that I couldn’t go on living like this anymore. So, as I prepare to awake from my dream, I tell myself that this is not goodbye. This is just another new beginning, and I will find him this time.
My name is Silverstream, and the hippogriff I love more than anything might not even exist. But until then, even as I learn friendship’s ways, he’ll always be my ultimate goal in life. The ultimate proof that I don’t drown in my dreams.
He’ll always be my Graystripe, and this time, our story will never end in tragedy or woe. As long as Equestria’s promise shines, my dreams will fade into reality.
****
I’m not exactly sure how I’ll find him, or even how long I’ve been having these dreams to begin with, but for the past few days, I’ve had to struggle to push him out of my mind. All these temporary immigration papers and orientation sessions have taken a lot out of me, and I beg to see him in my dreams again. But he doesn’t show up, as if he knows that’s the best way to support me. Or, at least, that’s how I choose to see it.
Part of my coming to Equestria, as much as I hate to admit it, was my rational side’s way of saying that I can’t rely on Graystripe any longer, that I have to find real friends that don’t just come into my mind whenever I feel like it. After all, believe it or not, I have a pretty shy side beneath all this energy. Then again, the other side of me wished to come here for the opposite reason, as if some sort of magic was pointing me here towards him. Either way, I leaped on the chance as soon as Seaquestria’s savior, Princess Twilight Sparkle, opened up her new friendship school. Maybe, I’d thought at the time, I could find a way to satisfy both sides of me.
For my first week or so of being here, I thought maybe my visions had stopped soon as I stepped foot onto foreign borders, and honestly, I could barely think of anything more depressing. Yet, just as I’m about to walk into Princess Twilight’s library, in the castle home she’s so generously provided all of us, I can feel his presence there, even if it’s not a dream. By the time I reach the books, in some futile attempt to figure out what was going on, my mind already goes blank into another world. Soon, any desire for explanations is gone.
The rational side of me screams out yet again, but over time in Equestria, I’ve figured out how to snuff it out. So, I cloud myself from the truth yet again and tell myself that the border has only strengthened our bond.
Once or twice, I tell myself that I should be worried about them occurring more frequently, that there’s something sinister at play, but I never really stop embracing them. As my time goes by in Ponyville, I even stop questioning them altogether. This is what I wanted, I tell myself, so there’s really no point in doing so. It just means I’m getting closer to finding him with every new image I get.
More, more, ever more. So many, I can barely keep track of them all. They rearrange themselves, corrupt themselves into other images. Sometimes of hippogriffs, sometimes of cats, sometimes of mutant hybrids of both. His presence is comforting all the same, even as friends from all over Equestria begin to surround me. I’ve gotten so close to where I need to be that I can’t give it up. Not now.
Even with these invasive daydreams of mine, my mind is still lucid enough to learn and move around the real world, and so whenever I’m not at school studying some abstract concept or another, I head straight towards the beach, the one place I feel the most connected to him. At first, I approach the Ponyville watering hole cautiously, knowing that most hippogriffs only consider water a necessary evil, a way of hiding from the Storm King. But as the days buzz by, mixing into one another, the caution fades away, too. I become one with my dreams, and with the water. Truly, there is nothing else to think about.
I can’t even recall the exact day everything changed. Really, there’s so much I can’t recall at all anymore. But what I do remember is that on that day, even though I always make sure to swim during the beach’s off hours, I could feel somepony else paddling beside me. The dream was starting to replicate itself right in front of me, I’d told myself at the time.
I look up and allow myself to effortlessly flow into it. To bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. But to my surprise, the face that greets me is not that of a gray hippogriff.
It is that of a purple alicorn.
That’s the last thing I see before my body freezes up. At first, I wonder if it’s from fear, but as I feel the dream creeping up on me, I know I’m really ascending. Entering another world, so to speak, and maybe, I tell myself, that’s how I’ll end up meeting him in the first place.
By leaving this world, and drowning.
****
By the time I start to feel my body again, the water has already left me. Instead, there’s a blanket over my legs, the one that’s come to feel so familiar in the past month or so. Even if it’s the world outside of my dream, the one I dread returning to, the comfort of the castle is still a beautiful feeling.
My eyes are closed, signifying that I’m still in between worlds, but my ears have started to readjust to the outside. I have no clue how long I’ve been out, but all I know is that my fantasies have never knocked me out like this before. My thoughts are still too blurry to figure out how I feel about this development, but I can already hear Twilight’s panicked voice in the distance.
“There’s no way any of this can be happening!” she calls out from another room. “Hospitals, clinics, personal research, and everything else, and still no cure! I can’t have a student die on me already!”
Right when my eyes open, a flash of light emerges from another room, almost as if I willed it into existence. I ponder this possibility for a few minutes, figuring stranger things have already begun to happen to me, until I hear another voice. A calm, feminine one that’s both unfamiliar and soft.
“Sorry I’m late,” the other pony begins. “Princess Celestia wanted me to test out the new portal Starswirl made in Canterlot, and I needed to swing by the restricted section anyway. Any news?”
From the shadows of the closed doorway, I can see her wobble a little, as if she’s not used to land. Like the way I was when I changed into a hippogriff again, really, though I’m not sure if that brings me comfort or suspicion. Anyway, I don’t see any wings, so for the time being, I assume she’s a pony.
From what I hear about the portal, though, I know that getting her to come over here couldn’t have been easy. Whatever happened to me has to be something that only ponies beyond Equestria can decipher. Just thinking about that sends quivers down my spine, though I’m not sure if they’re out of pity for Twilight or out of some recognition that this might be a hopeless cause.
Like usual, I try not to think about it, and try to ease into eavesdropping. It’s not necessarily something I ought to be doing, but something about the dreams I had seemed different, darker somehow. I’ve already forgotten what happened in them, and yet a part of me still needs to take my mind off everything. Or, at the very least, to get some idea of what went down while I was unconscious.
“She still isn’t awake, Sunset,” Twilight mutters. “I know that normally, I’m the one you’re supposed to ask for help, but this really is the worst emergency I can think of. Even worse than the school almost shutting down! I’ve been up day and night trying to cure it, and so far, you’re the only pony who has any clue what’s going on.”
“Not even bothering to lecture me on how I went to the restricted section without you?” Sunset replies, attempting to lighten the mood. “This must really be serious.”
All Twilight has is clear her throat, and the shadowed unicorn stops her quips at once. In the meantime, she pulls out a book with what has to be the strangest bookmark I’ve ever seen. Even though I’m only seeing a silhouette of it through a window, I can practically feel it shimmering. I can picture its starry design in my mind, almost as if I’ve seen it before. As if it’s yet another vision of mine.
It disappears into Sunset’s saddlebag about as soon as I notice it, but I find that their conversation is almost enough to push that strange bookmark out of my mind. Or, at least, it should have been.
“It’s still a longshot, but I think I might be onto something. Remember last month, when I told you about the enchantment I found in CHS’s library?”
I could see Twilight putting her hoof to her chin in thought, bobbing it from side to side as she struggled to recall the incident. It took her a full minute of silence, but her horn shone a little in realization once it hit her. I can’t help but wonder if all unicorns--or alicorns, even--do that when they remember something. I sure know that’d make things easier on me, at least.
“Right! You only wrote a paragraph about it, so I figured it wasn’t important. You said you could feel magic in that general area, but nothing actually happened. So I figured, since the library’s pretty close to the portal, maybe it just threw your geode off, and--”
“That’s what I thought, too,” answered Sunset, cutting off Twilight’s rambling. “But the other Twilight’s been volunteering at the CHS library, and she noticed some of the books had bookmarks like these. I don’t remember how things are in Equestria, but sometimes, people leave them in the books after they bring them back, so that’s not so weird. But there was some sort of magic in them that set Twilight’s geode off, and she’s been trying to figure all this out for weeks. And then, you sent me the message, and I couldn’t stop thinking about one of the affected books.”
She takes out the book again, this time letting Twilight take it into her magic. The princess examines it for a few seconds, flips through the pages with more care than I’ve ever seen anypony else do. I guess her love for books really isn’t an urban legend.
“Fire and Ice,” she mutters to herself, uttering the words so many times that I figure it has to be the tome’s title. “I’ve never heard of this one before. Or...anything like this, really.”
Like a jeweler appraising a fine gemstone, she continues to gaze at it until she gets to the page the bookmark is on. And then, she does the least likely thing in all of Equestria.
Her magic fails her for a few seconds, and she practically slams the book to the ground. Even Sunset jumps a little when she sees this, finally easing back into herself when Twilight takes it back into her grasp.
“Like I said, this is the only lead I have,” the unicorn finally says. “It’s from a series of fantasy books popular in my world, Warrior Cats. I read some of them when I first went through the mirror, and the minute you told me your student’s name, I had to check and see if one of the Warriors books was affected. Because, as you just saw, one of the subplots of this book happens to center on Graystripe, the dashing, witty new warrior in one of the four feral cat Clans. And just after bringing the long-lost WindClan back to the forest, he falls in love with a rival Clan leader’s daughter, whose name just so happens to be…”
Panic sweeps over me in this very instant, wiping out any confusion I might’ve had before. I’m still not sure where this Sunset comes from, or what portal she went through, but the message hits me all the same.
Twilight doesn’t say the leader’s daughter’s name right away, but she doesn’t have to. I’ve seen it unfold time and time again, in dream after dream, even if I don’t remember who this father of mine is supposed to be. Even if he doesn’t exist. Because he’s a character, and once that thought comes into my mind, the floodgates burst open.
What if Graystripe doesn’t exist? What if I don’t?
I find myself curling up into a ball, on the verge of hyperventilating, when the princess finally decides to speak again.
“It could just be a coincidence, Sunset. You said yourself that the magic didn’t do anything. Sometimes magic doesn’t need explanation. It’s just there.”
Sunset takes another book out of her saddlebag, probably the “restricted” one she mentions before. Whatever it is, I’ve already turned away and decided I want no part of it. The only thing I choose to notice is the way Twilight’s voice breaks in half when she says her next few words.
“You’re right. Starswirl might have been able to come up with something like this. I want to believe you, but out of all my new students, Silverstream has always been more excited than anyone. She’s never shown any signs of knowing about this character, or seemed different in any other way. I can tell her heart is more beautiful than most of the Equestrian creatures I’ve run into.
“I want to believe you, but I want to believe those feelings are real, too. That no spell could ever replicate the hippogriff Silverstream is turning out to be.”
I want to live in those words and block out everything else, but I can already feel something else coming through again. Something that used to be an escape, but is now an oasis filled with thorns, trapping me each time I visit.
As my eyes will themselves into sleep, I can already feel the clouds suffocating me.
****
The next time I wake up, I feel a horn touching my wings. It takes me a few short seconds to recognize Sunset, but the minute I notice her, I wonder how long I’ve really been out. I push that thought out of my mind, and all the other ones that surround it, to focus on the mantra Sunset mutters as she focuses her magic.
“It’s just like the book said,” she whispers, looking at Twilight. “Her actual memories are too muddled, even for me, and every time I try to push through, I see this gray hippogriff. He’s consumed just about every part of her mind.”
I’m still not lucid enough to remember everything that happened since I was out, but the way she says this is enough to make me shrink away. Even if these dreams are starting to tear me out of Equestria, I still don’t want to believe he could harm me in any way. He’s never looked at me with anything but a smile, always understood when I’d had to leave his world behind. He’s never held me down and kept me out of reality. What, if anything, had changed since then?
From Fluttershy’s classes, I can recall that the Everfree, the place I’d been staying for days when I was on the run from my kingdom, could be dangerous. I’d flown headfirst into all sorts of mysterious flora, and perhaps that was what caused my current trouble. It had to be some sort of corrupting magic that seized my daydreams, holding them down until they became nightmares. I made a mental list of every plant the Everfree Forest held, every one I’d come into contact with, until the worst sorts of thoughts enter my mind.
Shouldn’t Twilight know how to cure things like that?
And then, once that piece of armor had fades away, another mental attack invades my brain. A memory, to be precise, or a string of them, dating back to the last time I was conscious.
And right as that terrible book enters my mind, Sunset asks me a single, concerned question.
“Silverstream,” I could hear her saying, even as her mouth stayed still. “Try to remember something, anything, from Seaquestria. Tell me about your family. What was the queen like?”
At that moment, I can see that she has something around her neck, some weird artifact that could let her see these memories. It should have been as easy as that, as effortless as any magic. But I know what’s at stake here, and somehow that makes it the most herculean task in Equestria.
Remember.
Remember.
You have to.
I don’t. I can’t. I knew what had happened--we’d lived in peace, the Storm King had come, we found a new home, we came back. Anything else, though, feels like it’s hidden behind some wall in my brain. It was like Gallus always tells me about Equestrian history class--you’d learn about the events, what ponies did, but never about the ponies themselves. I pull up another memory, of the way Princess Twilight had broken past the EEA seal, and imagine myself doing that to the wall in my mind. Over and over, countless times, until I finally end up giving myself a migraine.
Until I finally realize that those memories, and everyone I’m supposed to care about back home, are gone.
“No,” I finally mutter in the tiniest voice I’d ever heard. I can already feel myself burrowing into a ball, huddled against the bed in a pathetic display.
More than anything, I want to ask, “What happened to me?” But at this point, even I know that’s not true. Whatever was wrong with me had been wrong since the very moment I was born.
“What am I?” I end up asking instead.
I can see Twilight back away in confusion, and I force myself to speak again.
“I--I heard everything you were saying the other night, about that book. So you think that character reincarnated herself into me, or…”
Tears are practically streaming out of the alicorn’s eyes, and I can’t help but regret everything. Even though we’ve only known each other for a month, I can’t help but feel that learning everything about myself isn’t worth it anymore if it means seeing her pain. Then again, I tell myself, I don’t think I’ve really gotten to know anypony else for longer than that, if my memories are any indication.
“You have no idea how much I wish that was what happened,” Twilight finally tells me, holding me tightly to her chest as if doing so will ease both of our hearts. “But I talked to Starswirl while you were out, and let me just say that I’m sorry about what I’m going to have to tell you.”
“Let me be the one, Twilight,” Sunset answers. “You’ve gone through enough already. I certainly couldn’t have come up with this clear of a plan in a time like this. But before we do anything, I want you to know that it’s your decision in the end, Silverstream. We have a way out for you, but only if it’s what you really want.”
As Twilight nods, Sunset gives the tiniest of sighs, like a student about to give an oral report. She places three books by my side and opens two of them. One of them is the book that started it all, Fire and Ice, and the other is some arcane spellbook I can barely decipher. The smallest one, which appears to be made out of some kind of cardboard, remains closed.
“Thousands of years ago, the great wizard Starswirl the Bearded composed thousands of spells that unicorns still use today. But, for all his successes, he failed just as often as everypony else, and many of those failed experiments have ended up on my world. During one of his many trials, he created a talisman that could copy objects from books and bring them onto our plane, like this.”
In any other moment, I would’ve bombarded Sunset with questions about the worlds beyond, places I didn’t even know existed. But instead, I watch like a faithful student as she removes the bookmark from Fire and Ice and opens the third book, one that even I recognize. It’s one for young creatures, with thick pages and pictures of objects. Sunset turns to a page labelled “circles” and places the shimmering piece of fabric on top.
“If the spell functions as it should, I would be able to say that I want a head of lettuce, and it would appear in my hooves.”
She points to a picture of a lettuce plant, which is surrounded by several other circular objects. However, as she casts her spell, I notice that a doughnut appears instead.
“Now, unless you’re allergic to wheat, like Starswirl was, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. The doughnut would still be edible, and if you were stuck on a deserted island with nothing but this talisman and a board book, you could survive. But anything past that, and it gets tricky in the worst sorts of ways.”
The spell book flips toward a page on something called a “book golem,” and suddenly, I can’t help but feel a bit confused. According to Fluttershy, golems can only be created from wood or clay, and the spell is so complicated that few exist in Equestria. When I go to ask Sunset, however, a dark look suddenly clouds her face.
“That’s the terrible part about this spell,” she explains. “Summoning objects with it is hard enough, but creating life with it is almost impossible. I’ve done my research, and out of the twenty or so magical bookmarks that manifested in my school library, only one was able to complete the process. As soon as it did, the page it marked became magical in and of itself, as little sense as that makes. And from there, it was able to turn itself into a living, breathing, Equestrian being and convince itself it had always been there. For a while, this magic page was even able to implant false memories in others, convincing them that the character it represented had always existed.”
“And that’s how I was born?” I ask, a hint of sarcasm suddenly hitting my voice. “Everything I’ve done here is a lie, and I’m just some scrap of paper hiding behind a random character?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Twilight suddenly chimes in. “For one, the spell allowed you to create your own personality, and for a while, you were able to choose your own friends. The Silverstream in the book is calm and quiet, and yet you decided you wanted to be passionate and curious. Your spirit was so strong that it was able to bend the spell without any magic of your own. And the hippogriff you became in my school was real, not influenced by anyone or any book.”
For a while, I want those words to hit me straight in my heart, to send me to the way things were before. I want to live in this moment with the teacher who believes in me more than anyone else ever did. Tears stream down my face, however, as soon as I realize that I can’t.
“Then who was I before? How long have I even been alive, if all these memories are fake?”
And then, a sudden, insane, and overpowering wake of hope hits me. Monsters are always supposed to go in pairs, masculine and feminine, even if they have no chance of creating new life. It’s part of why ponies, and every creature in this world, fear them so much. It’s the most merciless thing I’ve ever thought, forcing another spirit to go through the same thing I did.
But as soon as Twilight tells me that I’ve only been alive for a month, that the whole persona I’ve had is nothing but a mirage, the thought infects my mind and invigorates me yet again.
I’ve said before that I’ll do anything to find Graystripe. And as my claw forms around the bookmark, I tell myself that it’s never been so easy. All I have to do is summon what little magic I have, maybe even take some from whatever force created me, and--
The next thing I know, I’m as still as a doll, and for once, I know it isn’t because I’ve left this plane of existence. I feel a magenta aura holding me down, Twilight restraining me harder than she’s ever done to me.
Maybe, I think, more than she’s ever done to anyone.
“I know you won’t want to hear this,” she speaks, her voice straining not to break, “but you can’t go back. You’re not the same as that Silverstream, and even if you were, the spell won’t work anymore. You won’t bring Graystripe here, and you won’t be able to live there. You’ll go back into the container your magic used to take, and you’ll be gone for good.”
“How do you know I don’t want that?” I respond.
As much as I try to threaten her, I know that I can’t. Even after everything she’s put me through, I know none of it was by her own choice, and even then, I can feel that she’s the one thing about me that’s completely real. As long as that’s the case, I can’t hate her, and even if that isn’t the case, I’ve never been a rebellious spirit at heart. That’s something I know, even if I feel like I shouldn’t.
Once more, I try to hold my tears at bay, locking them away like the wall inside my brain, but then Twilight says the one thing that hits me at my core.
“I don’t,” she whispers, “but I don’t want any of my students to fade away, either. I want to remember each and every one of you, and I want to protect all of you. I know you don’t want that because I know you’re meant to be more than some spell fragment. You’re meant to be my student, and you’re meant to be my friend.”
Even when she releases me, I know for sure that I don’t want to go near that bookmark again. I don’t know why, but just being around her keeps me from sacrificing myself. I lie, tell myself that I would’ve done that with the rest of my friends, but somehow, part of me knows that isn’t the case.
Graystripe may not exist, and Twilight may differ from him in so many ways. She’s so much more uptight, nervous, awkward...but somehow, touching her feels like I’m with him. So as she holds me tight and tells me how she can help, I feel like she’s my real savior. Like something about this was always meant to happen, even in my dreams.
“I told you that you could make the final choice in the end. You can do nothing, or you can start something new. Choose the first, and you can spend your last few months being absorbed into the talisman again. You’ll black out more, but you can be with your friends and continue your studies.”
I stare at her skeptically, but in that moment, she unfurls a scroll I recognize. It’s the one Starlight’s embarrassedly joked about, the one so powerful, it can alter time itself. At first I think that there’s nothing in this world that can possibly make the princess use it, and then I realize just how wrong I am.
She lays out another collection of objects and places them on top of each other--the scroll, the bookmark, a pebble Sunset found that glows with unlimited magic. And then, with more effort than I’ve ever seen her exert, she combines the three, creating a new magical object that I can’t even begin to describe.
“Something tells me that you’ll prefer this other one, but it’s a hard choice to make,” she begins. “Starswirl, Sunset, and I have come up with a way for you to be born into this world for real, magic that would’ve been impossible for any of us to do on our own. You’ll keep your name, your family, everything else that the spell put into your mind. But, in turn, you’ll forget everything that happened here. You’ll never be able to remember Graystripe, or your book.”
In another world, on another day, I might have refused. But in that second, I decide that I refuse to let my mind deteriorate any more. I’m barely able to comprehend the situation to begin with, but I know that’s for the best, and that the more it seeps into my mind, the more my life and my sanity will be absorbed into the bookmark.
And the very minute I begin to doubt, my eyes meet hers, and I know for sure. I want to become worthy of meeting her again, in another time, even if time has to reset itself for it to happen. Because if my memories are the same, and if she really is my Graystripe, I know we’ll meet again.
Minutes pass, and as I let her cast the spell on me, one last dream floats into my head. It’s the same as before, the one where Graystripe is drowning, except I can feel the water coming to take me. My breath suddenly leaves me, and for a minute, I feel like I no longer exist.
And then I feel a hoof extend out towards me, and in that very minute, I know I’ll repeat that dream over and over again. As many times as it takes for me to remember who I really am and what I need to do.
I drown in new memories, but I know that there will always be someone there to save me.
Not my Graystripe. My Twilight.