Crescendo
The impossibly dense undergrowth gnaws at your heels as you trudge through the underbrush, twisted, dark thorns making their mark with every determined step you take. It hurt at first, but after some time stuck in this seemingly endless forest, you were almost completely numb from the knees downward. Only dull vibrations from the impact of your footsteps let you know that you still have your lower legs, a hindrance that slows you down considerably.
You stop only for a second to survey your surroundings, squinting to see anything at all. An endless, wild forest stretches into the limits of your vision, all of the flora a couple shades darker than what they would ideally look like. Spiny vines dangle from the canopy, hanging down far enough to impede your path if you don’t clear them out of the way by hand, since you lack a machete. The forest floor is completely covered by wildly chaotic thickets and nettles, reaching just up to your knees. Peeking through the tightly packed treetops, a moonless sky offers you no help in your evidently fruitless endeavor.
Mere moments later, a strange, snaking sensation on your thigh rips you from your thoughts. An alarmed glance downward reveals a gathering of the same thorny vines from the canopy crawling slowly up your leg, impeding any kind of movement.
Without a moment’s hesitation, you begin trying to tear them off of you, puncturing your hands in various places in the process. With most of them gone, you swing your leg forward, breaking the rest of them off from their roots.
A raggedy breath of relief escapes you as you begin to walk forward again, only to find that more vines have crawled their way up your other leg. Panicking, you rip them all off one by one, your hands now throbbing as you break into a steadily paced run, resolving not to stop for too long again. Shaky breaths cycle through your lungs as you run from tree to tree, running your hands over what feels like serrated bark for balance as you pass each one.
How long have you been at this? Where are you? Why is this happening to you?
As your inquiries bounce around within your addled mind, a decidedly speedy vine erupts from the earth, tripping you as it maintains a herculean grip on your leg. You fall headfirst into the forest floor, nettles claiming your skin as a playground for their hellish trichomes.
You scramble to get back to your feet in spite of the pain, but more vines erupt from the earth, thorns puncturing your skin with reckless abandon as they hold you tightly to the ground. The pain from everything up to this point becomes unbearable. A cry for help escapes your mouth, but you are quickly silenced by a bundle of thorns whipping themselves across your face, hampering any speech beyond muffled yells. A primal, unrestrained panic sets in, the adrenaline all for naught as you struggle helplessly against the forest itself.
The panic turns into a full-on attack when the vines begin slowly sinking you further into the ground. You thrash about, desperate to keep your head above the ground, only just barely being able to. You yell out once more against the vines, but they muffle it into near silence.
Tears begin welling up in your eyes. You don’t want to die, not like this.
“FEAR NOT, ANONYMOUS!”
A booming voice from above catches you off guard, and your eyes dart up as high as they can to see its origin. That, ultimately, is also useless; the vines are holding your head down to the ground, preventing your full range of sight.
With renewed hope, you struggle with all of your might against the forest’s unholy grip…
Only to witness all of your surroundings - every single shred of the forest - be blown away by an unseen force, disappearing entirely at the edge of the horizon.
The vines surrounding you evaporate into nothing, as do the nettles. With them, pain also leaves you, although you still look like absolute hell. After some effort, you heave your sore body upward into a kneeling position, casting your gaze skyward.
A sizable full moon is now perched in the middle of the otherwise starless sky, and your savior is silhouetted against it as she descends from the heavens.
Luna.
Her worried eyes are locked onto you the moment she spots you, floating quickly downward, her ethereal mane waving in a wind that you can’t feel. She touches down some yards away from you, opting to canter the rest of the way over. She closes the distance fairly quickly, wrapping you up into a tight hug with her hooves the moment she gets close. Her wings shoot out around you, another layer of the embrace pulling you in tighter against her. The soft, downy feathers insulate you from the cold of your bizarre landscape, having gone from a forest to a windy, open plains.
“Sweet heavens above, Anon,” she softly exclaims over your shoulder, the vibrations of her voice traveling through your shoulder as she rests her head there. “Are you alright?”
Are you? Your body is wracked with injuries, and yet there is no pain of any kind present. Not anymore, at least.
“I-I don’t know. What-”
The words, whatever they were going to be, catch in your throat as if they were destined to die there. Luna begins tracing circles with her hoof on your back, her gentle ministrations slowly easing the built-up panic out of your system.
“Your nightmares are always so stressful to witness, I swear…”
Nightmares?
...Oh. That explains the terrain being blown away in the most literal sense of the word, at least.
After you eventually separate from her embrace, you look down at yourself to survey your cuts and bruises again, but they’ve disappeared entirely, without even the ghost of a mark in sight. The inordinate amount of time you’d spent running through that hellish stretch of forest had been effectively erased from existence.
“Another one?” you ask, breathless. You go to wipe the sweat from your brow, only to find that it, too, was rendered null due to Luna’s intervention. “Isn’t that the fifth in this week alone?”
Your attention returns to the mare standing above you as she eyes various parts of your body, seemingly checking you over for any contusions she may have missed.
“It is,” she responds with a hint of anxiety, nodding in tandem with her words. “Perhaps more worryingly, they have been steadily increasing in intensity as they come.”
She’s right. The first nightmare you had earlier this week was nothing more than you walking around Ponyville in your underwear, and everyone laughing at you. Your attention veers off into the endlessly flat horizon, stuck on one point where it appears as though there’s a tree way off in the distance.
“I don’t think I want to get used to this. Next thing you know, I’ll end up having a nightmare about some kind of tragedy…”
“I won’t allow that to happen,” Luna proclaims soothingly, taking a seat right up against your side. “It would be remiss of me to let my favorite human suffer these unrestful dreams for any longer.”
You shift onto your butt and lean into her, resting your head on her neck while she wraps a wing around you. Though you’re taller than her while you’re standing, she just barely gains the advantage on you while you’re both sitting, an advantage of her quadrupedal anatomy versus your bipedal one. You chuckle to yourself, drawing her intimate attention over to you.
“Favorite human, huh? Last I checked, I’m the only human here.”
You can feel a soft smile supplant her previously neutral expression as she nuzzles the top of your head.
“How lucky I am, then, that one so perfect for me would fall into my hooves.”
Her oratorical artistry sends a shiver down your spine, goosebumps crawling across your skin. Within a moment, you’re blushing like a maniac, unable to curtail the massive, dopey grin on your face. Instead, you choose to bury it in her neck, which rouses a fit of heaven-sent giggles from her.
Funnily enough, you can feel her warmth just as vividly as you felt your pain earlier. Much more, as a matter of fact, so you lean into her further, putting the whole of your body weight into the sturdy mare. She hums aloud and leans into you as well, the two of you becoming statues of affection to one another.
“You should come stay at the castle for a while, Anon,” she offers, pulling you tighter against her. “I can get a better grasp of why your nightmares are so persistent with you close by.”
“You suuuuuure it’s not just because you wanna spend a few days with me?”
She bats you playfully on the arm with her hoof.
“Hush, you,” she chides, failing to suppress a small chuckle. “I’m serious. If you’re being subjected to these nightmares because of some outside influence, I would like to snuff it out sooner rather than later.”
You crane your neck up at her, admiring her beauty from an admittedly odd angle.
“Joking aside, I agree. I’ll talk to my boss and see about getting the rest of the week off.”
“He’ll understand when he receives a letter requesting your extended presence in Canterlot tomorrow,” Luna boasts mischievously. “No need to delay the inevitable with pointless bargaining, is there?”
“I suppose not, hon,” you respond, flattered by her willingness to cut red tape for you.
She tenses up against you all of a sudden, fur and feathers alike shifting against your skin; not a lot, but just enough for you to notice.
“Call me that again,” she all but demands, looking down at you from above with nothing short of outright adoration.
“What? ‘Honey?’”
“No, no, the shorthand.”
A smirk finds its way onto your face.
“As you wish, hon.”
She can’t help but let out an unintentionally husky chuckle when she blushes up a storm, easily visible through her gorgeous navy blue fur. It’s enough to send your heart soaring, as well as turn up the heat a few degrees.
“Again,” she commands once more, having drawn slightly closer.
“Does my hon like her new nickname? Hm?”
“Again.”
“Hon, I’m running out of-”
You’re cut off by the warmest pair of lips you’ve ever felt being thrown firmly against yours, sending you both falling over, her on top of you, covering the both of you with her wings. You gently hold her chin steady with your hand as you match her force with your own. Despite the borderline lustful beginning of the kiss, it never develops into anything too greedy - the two of you stay relatively prudent, content enjoying the delicate intimacy with one another.
Eventually, disappointingly, the both of you separate with a quiet, wet pop, Luna opting to saddle up higher on you so that she can be level with your face. Looking down at you, her ethereal hair dominating your vision, she laughs with delight. You take the opportunity to share breath with her, laughter from both of you kicking up and mingling as you both bask in the afterglow of a tender moment.
After some time, your duetted song of joy dies down, but both of your gazes remain firmly locked onto each other. There’s something in her eyes that holds you there, unwilling to let go for anything. For a second, you can’t place what it is, so you simply chalk it up to how stunning she always is. After a while, though…
You recognize it. You recognize this feeling. And despite its inherent familiarity, somehow, its real weight has eluded you, all of your life. The inside of your chest feels…
Sticky. Gummed up with something.
It’s hard to breathe, locked into her eyes like this. She’s stealing that ability from you, making it dependent on her presence. The inexplicable sensation builds, spreading to your stomach, then to your cheeks, and it builds and builds and builds and builds and builds until-
“I love you, Anonymous.”
Crescendo - the heat is everywhere.
Everything freezes, the weight of three words holding the world unshakably in place. You’ve heard of the way this feels, before, from friends who had claimed to have experienced it.
From authors of sonnets from ages long past.
From tales of heroes dependent on another.
From the many old mentors of your life, attempting to steer you right.
From the world that you lived in, when it whispered to you through vistas and panoramas.
None of them ever did it any justice. They could never have hoped to even come close to the reality of it. It is a beautiful, unsullied, trembling entry into an eternal duet.
What comes next is the easiest thing you’ve ever done in your life.
“I love you too, Luna.”
Her eyes come alight as your reciprocation finds its place in her heart, unstoppable glee spreading across every inch of her face. The distance between the two of you closes once more, and in your union, the memory of your nightmare fades into utter insignificance.