Beside the Last Gateway
Luna walked through a shadowy space in the Dream Realm, a thousand doorways appearing and disappearing on all sides of her as she moved.
Through each portal she could see a pony's dream, and feel a little of the mood leaking through. Some portals radiated peace and joy. Some portals radiated fear and worry. Sometimes she passed a portal that radiated a deep despair, or a terror that might cause anypony less wise in the ways of dreams than Luna to run away screaming.
Tonight, Luna sniffed the astral air for a dream subtly unlike any of those. Maybe that way...yes, probably. A scent of sickness...a stench of something gone wrong.
In a place where place didn't quite exist, in a turning where direction was a matter of individual perspective, and could change from one night to the next, Luna trotted down the closest thing to an alleyway. Near the end of it, a yellowish light beckoned her. She leapt through the doorway while carefully keeping far away from its edges, as if it were hazardous even to brush with a feathertip.
A colt lay on the grass, belly upwards, basking in the sunlight.
Luna cleared her throat.
"Hello?" the colt said, his eyes opening as his head turned towards Luna. "Who are you?"
"My name is Princess Luna," the dusky alicorn replied. "And who might you be?"
"I'm Swift Bark," he said. "A bark is a kind of boat. Of course it's also something you find on a tree."
"I suppose your name confuses many ponies," Luna remarked. "So are you a sailor, or a pony who lives in a tree?"
Swift Bark grinned. "I suppose I'm some of both. To row or sail a boat, you need a boat. And one way to get a boat is to make a boat yourself. And boats are made from trees. And a good place to find trees is in the forest. When you're in the forest, it's good to learn your way around, and get to know the plants that grow there. There's no end to it."
"So," Luna said, "your name is confusing, but when a pony gets to know you, it makes perfect sense."
"Yes," Swift Bark agreed. "It's like a lot of things that way."
Luna looked up at the blue sky, studying the white, fluffy clouds. They were very realistic, and quite detailed. "Do you like clouds?" she asked.
"I do," Swift Bark said. "Without rain we wouldn't have forests, or much of anything at all. And looking at the clouds, and the wind, and the colors of the light in the sunrise or the sunset, you can read a lot about the coming weather."
Luna looked up at the sky again, carefully not looking at the colt. She breathed a few times. Deep breaths. Calming breaths. Enough calm for both her and the colt to share.
"So," Luna asked, "what coming weather do you read?"
The colt grimaced. "I...really don't feel like talking about that right now."
"I'm sorry," Luna said. She looked up at the sky again. Those really were beautiful clouds.
Luna said, "Are you enjoying the sun?"
"I am," the colt replied. "When it shines on my belly like this, it makes my stomach hurt less. Of course, it's only an illusion, but it still makes me feel better."
Luna's ears perked up. "An illusion?" she asked. (572)
The colt snorted. "Well, of course," he said. "I'm basking in the sun, on a beautiful day, barely sick at all, not dead, not even in a hospital bed. And along comes Luna, the Princess of Dreams, to say hi. It's not difficult to figure out."
Luna chuckled. "You would be surprised. Many ponies do have to be told they're dreaming. Some ponies find it hard to accept."
"I've always been rather good," the colt said, "at accepting the inevitable."
With that remark, he closed his eyes and turned his face back towards the sunlight. "Sorry," he said, "I don't want to get a crick in my neck."
Luna said, "It's your dream. If you don't want to dream a crick in your neck, just refuse to have one. Or if you do dream a crick, just fix it."
"I really am sorry," the colt explained. "It's just that I'm already juggling a lot of dream here. Arranging to feel warm sunlight when my real body is probably already starting to stiffen and cool. Making the sun soothe my belly, when in real life my stomach is probably in agony. Do you know how hard it is to make a dream override reality like that? When reality hurts so much?"
"It can be very hard to keep our real problems from pushing into our dreams," Luna agreed. "Which is why I am here. Did you think that maybe I came to talk to you for a reason?"
"I didn't really think about it," the colt said.
"But let us please think about it a little. I know it can be hard, when you're struggling with so much. But I need to know what happened."
"I...it hurts," the colt said. "I don't like..."
"Do not go back directly to it," Luna said. "Could you tell me a story? Please? Like a bedtime story? Like if I wanted to take a nap in the sun myself?"
Swift Bark said, "Once upon a time, there was a colt. He lived in a village with the sea on one side, and a tree-covered mountain on the other."
In the sky, some of the clouds changed shape, starting to look like the scene Swift Bark described. On one side, a cloud turned grayish blue like a distant mountain. On the other side, fuzzy clouds formed delicate patterns like seafoam on waves. Between them, small cloud-houses and cloud-huts grew.
Luna admired the artistry, but said, "Are you sure you want to put this much work into it, instead of just telling me the story?"
The colt grunted. "If I concentrate on the work...it hurts less, or I feel it less."
Luna nodded. "Please continue."
"In that seaside village, there lived a colt who loved both the sea and the forest. One weekend, he packed his saddlebags and took a long walk into the mountains, looking for the best and straightest and stoutest and strongest tree to build a canoe. And," the colt grunted, "he found one."
Luna watched a cloud-colt walk though a forest, and jump for joy when he saw a tree he liked best of all. The colt ran around the tree, admiring every side of it.
"The only problem was, the colt liked this tree so much, he started to feel it would be a shame to cut it down, or to harm it in any way. So he sat admiring the tree and thinking about that."
Behind the cloud-colt, a manticore stalked out of a thicket. But the colt was so lost in thought, he never heard its footsteps. Finally the colt noticed the crack of a twig behind him, and turned around. But the manticore was already very close. Even as the colt stood up on his two hind legs, reaching for his bow and an arrow, the manticore's tail whipped around towards the colt. Only an instant after the colt's arrow struck deep through the manticore's eye, the manticore's stinger struck the colt right in the belly.
The manticore fell to the ground with an arrow in its brain, but the colt had already been stung.
"Yes," Luna muttered, "this much we knew. A manticore sting is easy to recognize. But what else happened?"
The colt said, "A manticore sting is fatal unless you have the antidote. Struggling against the pain, the colt looked all around for some scorpion balm. Even a single flower would have done. But he saw none, and didn't know of any nearby.
"At last, crawling awkwardly, the colt spotted a bit of heartsleep. A little dark green herb..."
Luna gasped. "But...heartsleep is a deadly poison!"
"Yes," the colt said, "Heartsleep puts a pony into a deep sleep, and after a few weeks, the pony dies. But heartsleep might slow the manticore venom. So the colt chewed the heartsleep and gulped it down. In less than a minute, the colt was in the deepest of sleep.
"So far as I know," the colt said, "that's how the story ends. A colt sleeping in a forest, dying slowly instead of quickly, hoping somepony would find him in time."
Luna said, "You are in a hospital. Is there anything else the doctors need to know? Except for the manticore sting and the heartsleep poisoning?"
"No," the colt said, "that's all I know. Go tell them, please."
"I am on it!" Luna shouted as she galloped towards the doorway.
***
In the hospital room, Luna smirked at Twilight Sparkle. "When you were a filly, did anypony ever tell you the story of Sleeping Beauty?"
"Yes," Twilight said. "I always thought it was creepy. Kissed on the lips by sompeony she doesn't even know? And she's supposed to marry him? Ick!"
Luna bent over the comatose colt.
"You wouldn't!" Twilight said. Luna kissed the colt on the cheek.
"Twilight," Luna remarked, "you might not have known the many uses of an alicorn's kiss. Of course, your kiss can express love and affection. But it is also the safest known cure for heartsleep poisoning." She kissed the colt's cheek again.
The colt started to lick his lips. "Whuh?" he mumbled. Luna ducked. She dropped into a low crawl, lower than the bed, and sneaked out of the room.
The colt's eyes opened. He mumbled, "Where am I?"
Twilight said cheerily, "You're in a hospital! Looks like you're going to get better!"
"Are you a doctor? You don't look like a doctor. Am I still dreaming?"
A nurse hurried into the room. "He's awake!" the nurse said. "And he seems to be improving. Who administered the....treatment?"
Twilight smiled. "That," she said, "is a secret."
The nurse snorted, and started examining the patient in detail, listening to his heartbeat and his breathing, and checking other vital signs and clues. "Well," she said, "Looks like whoever did it, did a good job."
The colt grinned. "I had the strangest dream," he said.
"Did you now?" the nurse remarked.
"Yes. It was about clouds, and a kind of puppet theater. And Princess Luna herself, asking me to tell her a story. And at the very end, somepony kissed me on the cheek."
The nurse chuckled. "Under the influence of heartsleep," she said, "ponies can have all sorts of crazy dreams."
The colt took a deep breath. "But it seemed so real," he said. He looked at Twilight Sparkle and winked.
"I--I didn't do it!" Twilight shouted, and ran out of the room.
In the hall, Twilight caught up with Luna, who grinned impishly and whispered, "Leave it to Twilight Sparkle, to...whatever it is that you got into there."
Twilight hissed, "It was a setup! It's all your fault!"
Luna smirked. "Yes, it was all my fault. Thank you for not revealing my prankish secret."
Twilight sighed. "I guess you're welcome. You did save a colt's life, so I suppose I should forgive you."
"I have an idea for merriment," Luna said. "Let us find ways to frame Celestia for curing him."
"Let's have an enormous cake delivered to his room," Twiliight suggested.
"With a big sun cutie mark on it."
"Bigger than any normal pony could eat."
"Bigger than any TEN normal ponies could eat."
"And lots of candles...how old is Celestia exactly?"
The two alicorns trotted off, conspiring cheerfully.