Derpy flew north-south over Ponyville, crosswise to the sun, just feeling the satisfying steady work of flapping, the wind tickling her face, the sun blanketing her back, and the pressure of the big cardboard box strapped snuggly-tight against her back.

The box had three big bold words on it: “TO”, “FROM”, and “FRAGILE”. “FRAGILE” was exciting, because it meant that it would take all her care and skill as a mailmare to deliver it safely. Underneath the “TO” there was a name, and that was more exciting: Sketchy Gallery, the owner of that artsy place on Mane Street that maybe Derpy would be allowed inside of again if she delivered this package safely. But the name underneath the “FROM” was the most exciting of all: The Dream Factory, in Hoofington. Derpy imagined a great square building squatting at the end of the Hoofington skyline like a giant package waiting to be delivered.

… the inside was one vast cavernous space, dark. Derpy heard air hiss from the center of the room, and a warm breeze stirred her mane, bringing the fresh scent of muffins baking at dawn. A soft white light slowly woke in lanterns hung around the outer walls, until she could see a great silver machine in the very center, blowing out one giant fragile dream-bubble. The light reflected off it made a rainbow of twelve different colors. “AAAH!” somepony near shouted...

Derpy snapped her eyes open.

“Watch where you’re going!” a frost-haired pegasus called from behind her.

“Sorry!” Derpy called over her shoulder. She flapped harder to regain some altitude. The buildings were taller here near the center of Ponyville. She rubbed her left shoulder and winced. She really had to remember that.

She wondered what kind of dreams Sketchy had, that she had to send away to Hoofington for them. Derpy thought a lot about dreams, and in dreams. And now she was going to bring Sketchy her dream! Maybe then Sketchy would be happy, and her lip wouldn’t always curl down like an inchworm that had been poked when she didn’t think ponies were looking.

Maybe Sketchy would be so excited to get her dream that she’d forget all about last time. “Carry it in for me, would you?” she’d say. … Derpy followed her into the gallery. The walls were covered with sketches and paintings that shimmered and shifted through twelve different colors each as she walked by, of ponies and flowers and fields and one of a giant muffin twice Derpy’s size. But Sketchy ignored them all. “Set him down here,” she said, pointing at an empty spot roped off in the very center of the gallery, her eyes gleaming.

Derpy set the FRAGILE package down so gently that the worm inching along its upper edge didn’t even flinch. “Allow me,” she said, and made two expert flicks of her wrist to slice the packing tape with the edge of her steel shoe.

Before Sketchy could even step forward to open the box, the flaps pushed up and out of their own accord, and a fluffy muffin-colored colt pushed his head out of the box. His eyes darted instantly to Sketchy. “Mommy!” he said.

Sketchy ran forward with a whinny. “My little colt!” she said, and threw her forelegs around him.

“Fine-looking colt!” somepony in the crowd ringing round them said.

“He has your eyes!” said another.

Sketchy looked back at Derpy, her eyes brimming with gratitude. “I’ll name him Ditzy, after you!”

Derpy blushed. “My name’s not really Ditzy. It’s—

“Derpy!” Luna shouted from the crowd. “WAKE UP!”

Derpy shook her head. Up ahead, the big clock on Town Hall was zooming right at her!

She threw both wings up toward it and braked hard. The package slipped loose from between her withers somehow, slid up her back, and knocked her in the back of the head. She saw it fly through the air in front of her, bounce off the side of Town Hall, and land in the street below.

“Oh, no!” Derpy gasped, dropping down to land beside it. “Are you okay?” Ponies standing in the street stared, but she didn’t care. She hugged it to her chest and swung back and forth. “I’m so sorry!”

The package rattled in an un-coltish way. Probably it was not a colt at all.

She strapped it carefully onto her back. It was easy to see how it had come loose: the box wasn’t rigid, but bent and a little crushed. That must have let it slip under the wrappings. She made them tighter this time, then took off hoofing it for the gallery.

Maybe somepony had given the colt a rattle, to play with during his journey. Derpy hoped they did that, if they delivered foals in packages. Otherwise he’d probably be terrified by now. She trotted faster.

Sketchy met her at the door with a little frown, which turned into a big frown when Derpy gave her the package.

“It’s from the Dream Factory!” Derpy said.

“Yes,” Sketchy said, turning it over slowly.

“Don’tcha want to see what’s in it?” Derpy said after a few seconds.

“Yes,” she said. “Wait here.” She disappeared into the gallery, shutting the door behind her.

Her voice had sounded more angry than excited. Maybe she realized her dream wasn’t the right dream. Sometimes that happened.

But then what would happen to the colt?

… “And stay out!” Sketchy said, shoving the little colt out the door and slamming it behind him. He sat and stared up at the brass knocker with wide eyes, and began to shiver.

“Aw, don’t worry, little fella!” Derpy said. She crouched behind him, and wrapped one wing around him. “I’ve got room in my house. Dinky will have somepony to play with, and on Hearts and Hooves Day I’ll take you both into town for ice cream and muffins!”

“Completely unacceptable!” the colt shouted back, his lips twisting in anger. He had already grown a lot taller, almost to the full height of a mare...

Derpy blinked.

Sketchy thrust the now-opened package back at her. “I expect a full reimbursement from the post office!” she said.

Derpy peered down inside the package. The thing inside was definitely… wood. Several pieces of wood, which might make a model of a house or a, well, like one of those tall things she could see through the gallery window. If you put them together right.

The door slammed, and she looked up. Sketchy was gone.

Derpy sighed. She’d been through many re-imbursements, but never an imbursement. It seemed unfair. She strapped the package to her back again and took off, flying back north toward the post office.

It was only broken into two or three pieces. Making one just as good out of two or three big pieces had to be easier than making a new one out of a whole bunch of little pieces. And wood was nice to work with. It was soft to touch, and light, and smelled like wood. It was always a little hard to connect different bits of wood together. If only somepony could invent some kind of glue that would hold things together really well.

… Derpy leaned over her workbench, peering intently at the three pieces of wood in front of her. One was clamped to the edge of the work bench, and the other two lay beside it.

She pulled the trigger on her glue gun. A sweet-smelling light-brown smoke streamed up from its tip. She quickly applied it to twelve different spots on the wood, then deftly spun them around, her hooves moving in a blur. When she stood back, the wood was joined together seamlessly.

“I can’t believe it!” Twilight Sparkle said, looking over Derpy’s shoulder. “It’s as good as new! No; it’s [i]better[/i] than new! It’s a work of art [i]and[/i] a model of a house!”

“The secret is in the glue!” Derpy said. “It’s made from boiled muffins!”

Twilight stepped in front of her to get a better look, and Derpy realized that Twilight was taller, and darker, and Luna. “Look out, Derpy!” she shouted. But it was too late; Derpy had ran forward and smashed right into Luna’s chest, knocking them both down.

Derpy leapt to her feet. She put her forelegs on Luna’s shoulders to look at her, but Luna was still a blur to her. “Sorry, I’m so sorry! Are you okay, Miss Princess Luna?”

Then she drew back, remembering that she wasn’t supposed to hug princesses, and was probably “violating personal space.” Perhaps sensing this, Luna folded one wing over Derpy’s back, and touched her mane lightly with a hoof.

“We commend thy concern for us,” she said. “Would that thou caredst as much for the ponies whose need for our attention is not of their own making. We love thee, Derpy, but bind us not to thee with thy carelessness.”

“What?”

Luna wrinkled her muzzle in thought for a moment, then said, “Save thy dreams for the night, Derpy, or for someplace where thy body will do no harm as thy soul journeys. We cannot always keep one eye on thee, and another on all Equestria besides.”

As Derpy’s vision cleared, Luna’s voice faded, leaving a metallic echo, and she became much taller, and colder, and harder, and a lamppost. Two earth ponies standing outside the feed store were staring at Derpy. They looked away when she looked back at them.

She let go of the lamppost and sat down on the stump behind her to rest and think. It snapped like a breaking twig and collapsed. As she hit the ground she realized the package had somehow worked its way loose again and fallen underneath her and she was sitting on it.

It had burst when she sat on it, and was entirely flat now. Twiglike bits of dark-stained wood lay on the ground all around it. She shook the package hopefully. It sounded like some pieces of wood were still in there.

She sighed. This was going to be a very full reimbursement.

When she arrived at the post office, she began filling out the reimbursement paperwork quickly. If she could somehow get the paperwork onto Box Jumper’s desk without him noticing…

“You got another reimbursement, Derpy?” Box Jumper asked in a tired voice from the doorway behind her.

“Yessir, that’s right,” she said, spinning around and shifting to put her body between him and the box.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, reaching out for it. She gave him the form and backed away. He glanced over it.

“Lot of digits here in the value column. That the package behind you?” he asked without looking up.

She sidled out of the way, and he walked up to the table and prodded the flattened remains of the package with one hoof. He didn’t even have to grab one of the box-cutters hanging from the wall; the box was so torn that he just lifted it up by one corner and shook it. Five small wooden dowels spilled out onto the table.

“Hardly seems worth all that now, does it?” he said.

“There was… more.”

“Yeah.” He pointed to the box’s top panel. “What’s this say, Derpy?”

“FRAGILE,” Derpy read.

“What’s ‘fragile’ mean?”

“To be delivered by somepony who isn’t Derpy,” she recited, looking down at her hooves.

He was still staring at her when she looked back up. Not saying anything, just waiting.

Derpy dragged one hoof across the floor. “I thought…”


Box Jumper held up one hoof. “You thought. No. No, Derpy, I don’t think that word means what you think it means. I just don’t know what goes on in your head.”

“Thoughts,” Derpy said. “I have thoughts.”

“Well, quit it. This work don’t require thought.”

“But,” she said, “but…”

“I hate that word. Now I’m gonna sign this form and take it down to accounting, and they’re gonna yell at me, and I’m gonna come back here and yell at you, so try to be gone by the time I do, okay?”

Derpy nodded.

“Okay,” he said, and left with the form.

“... but it’s what I do,” Derpy finished after he’d left.

In the locker room, she sighed, shrugged off the package wraps, and grabbed her saddlebags. She went to pick up a load of envelopes from the local outgoing box. Just focus on the work. Don’t think. She narrowed her eyes in steely determination. She was a postal service employee, trained to deliver the mail, come rain, sleet, or dark of night...

… “Forget it, Derpy,” Box Jumper said. “Nopony can get the mail through to Appleloosa, not since the Everfree went crazy. It’s just mail. It isn’t worth your life.”

Derpy jammed her field-issue cap tightly onto her head and stared out into the dark and stormy night. “Mail [i]is[/i] life, Box Jumper,” she said. “The links between one pony and another are all that hold Equestria together, and the only link between here and Appleloosa is the Equestrian Postal Service.” She reached grimly for the wooden box, marked URGENT in bold red letters.

“Wait, Derpy,” Box Jumper said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“The mail waits for no mare,” she said.

“Please, wait!” He placed a hoof on her shoulder.

“I can’t. The muffins will get cold.”

“WAIT,” she said in Derpy’s ear.

Derpy turned. She set the box of muffins down slowly on the floor. “Luna?”

Luna used her wing to indicate a spot on the floor beside her. Derpy came over and sat down.

“Our little pony,” she said, and leaned over to nuzzle Derpy’s shoulder.

Derpy looked down at the floor.

“It is a rare pony who can visit our domain at will, Derpy. Thy talent is marvelous. It is because it is a marvel that it hath power to harm.”

“I know,” Derpy said. “I have to do my job.”

“Good.” Luna waited. “But?”

Derpy stared sullenly at the ground, then looked back at her flank.

“Ah,” Luna said.

“Box Jumper’s cutie mark is a package waiting to be shipped.”

“True.”

“Miss Princess Luna,” she asked, “will my special talent ever be useful?”

“Useful?”

Derpy nodded.

Luna tilted her head, considering the question. Then she smiled gently and answered, “Thy talent can never be useful, Derpy.”

“What if… what if I got a job at the Dream Factory?”

Luna shook her head. “They make a different kind of dream there.”

“But… it isn’t fair. Why is my special talent so useless?”

Luna leaned in a little and gave Derpy a strange, sly look. “Choose thy words carefully, little pony. Thou speakest to her who chose the color of moonlight, and who paints the night with stars.”

Derpy sighed. “I know I should be grateful for it, but…” She looked back at the floor.

“Come; rouse thyself,” Luna said. “Thy master shall soon return in full wroth, and thou hast one more package to deliver today.”

“No, I don’t,” Derpy said. “All the packages went out already.”

“Thou hast one more,” Luna said. “Farewell, my little pony.” She faded away, and Derpy found herself alone in bright daylight in the sorting and shipping room.

She trotted over to the local outgoing box and looked inside. She shook her head, and looked again. On top of the pile of afternoon letters was one neat square cardboard package just the size of a good carving pumpkin, with three big bold words on it: FROM (Miss Princess Luna, Western Tower, Canterlot Castle), TO (Hazel Honeycomb, Room 9, Long Term Care Facility, Ponyville Hospital), and, biggest of all with a black outline around it, NOT FRAGILE.

After getting the package wraps from the locker room, Derpy strapped the NOT FRAGILE package to her back. It was so light it almost made strapping it down difficult, but also so light that if it fell, Derpy thought it would float down to the ground like a balloon.

Derpy launched herself from the western platform and headed for the hospital. Her mind raced, but without drifting. She was too curious to see who Hazel Honeycomb was and what was in the package to imagine anything.

She didn’t feel like imagining anything anymore anyway. She was an actor in a real-life waking dream, an adventure dreamed by the Mistress of Dream. Delivering a package. Playing the role she was supposed to.

She thought with embarrassment of all her little dreams that Luna had caught her in. Silly, small, useless things.

The sun was just low enough to cast a glow on Ponyville Hospital as she glided toward it. It looked real enough. White brick walls, wide double doors in front. Her hooves clicked on the tiles. The halls smelled lemony as always.

The Long Term Care wing had a different smell, a mix of old-pony smell and urine. She didn’t come here often. An old stallion in a wheelchair looked at her and said “Eh! Eh! Eh!” as she hurried by.

Room 9 had a single bed with one old earth pony mare, her hair and mane a matching obsidian, except where it had begun to gray around the muzzle. Derpy could see the bones in the two skinny forelegs that lay limply on top of the covers.

“Hi!” Derpy said. “Package for you!”

The mare did not look at Derpy. She kept looking forward with an expression of mild surprise.

“It’s from Princess Luna,” Derpy added. The mare still did not blink.
 
Derpy set the package on the dresser in front of the bed, where she could see it, probably.

“I left a package with Hazel Honeycomb in room 9,” she told the nurse at the duty counter.

The nurse nodded, and looked back down at her charts.

“She didn’t open it.”

“No, that she wouldn’t,” the nurse said without looking up.

“I think it’s important,” Derpy said.

“Well, you’d better open it for her then, dearie,” the nurse said.

Derpy went back to room 9. The package and the mare were exactly as she’d left them.

“Excuse me, Miss Honeycomb. I’m going to open your package for you, if you don’t mind.”

She didn’t.

Derpy cut the packing tape. When she opened the package and looked inside, there was nothing there but the bare insides of its cardboard walls.

Nothing.

Derpy sniffed the inside of the box.

… no. No, not nothing. It smelled faintly of muffins.

Of course! That was what Hazel Honeycomb needed. The scent of muffins. That would wake anypony up!

Derpy brought the box over to the bed, and held it up to the older mare’s nose, so that she pulled in wisps of muffin-scent each time she inhaled.

An ear twitched.

Two eyes blinked.

Hazel Honeycomb sat up slowly in bed. “Why,” she said in a whispery voice, “I was having a lovely dream about muffins.”

“I dream about muffins all the time!” Derpy said. “Especially the blueberry ones.”

“I prefer an amaretto walnut myself,” Hazel said.

“We enjoy our muffins absinthe-flavored, with anise,” a voice said from behind Derpy.

Derpy turned, and saw Luna entering the doorway. “Oh.” Her ears fell. “I’m dreaming again.”

“You are both dreaming,” Luna said.

“We are? When will she wake up?” She turned to Hazel. “Wake up, Miss Hazel!”

“She will never wake up,” Luna said.

“Oh. Um. Sorry.”

“It’s not so bad,” Hazel said. “Luna tells me stories. Terrible stories about the old days. Funny stories about yesterday. Or sometimes the other way around. Sometimes she… takes me places.”

“When we are not busy saving other ponies from their own heedlessness,” Luna added, looking at Derpy.

[i]Heedless. Sounds like Headless[/i], Derpy thought, and her head drooped in shame.

“Hast thou ever counted all the stars, Derpy?” Luna asked.

“No,” Derpy said. “There’s too many of them.”

Luna nodded. “Every star is a dream. That is why they come out at night, all but for a few day-stars such as you. And every one of them hath need of our attention eventually. Some more than others.”

“Oh,” Derpy said. She looked out the window, and now that she knew they were there, she could just make out two little stars huddled next to each other high up in the bright blue afternoon sky.

“If you’re dreaming, why don’t you get out of bed?” she asked Hazel.

Hazel looked down at her forelegs questioningly, as if the question might have been directed at them. When nothing happened, she looked back up at Derpy.

“Dreams are made from pieces you remember from your waking days,” Luna said. “Hazel’s memories of waking life have long since faded and crumbled to dust. She needeth some other to remember the pieces for her. But only the most stalwart of dreamers can guide another pony in dream. It is an intimate thing, and not one we often undertake.”

Derpy stared at Hazel’s forelegs. Hazel stirred in the bed…

Nothing.

“Like leading a partner in a dance,” Luna said.

Derpy wrinkled her forehead in concentration. The covers ruffled as if in a high wind, and flapped around the edges of the bed.

“I can’t dance,” Derpy said.

“Like this,” Luna said, and stepped towards Derpy with a smile.

Luna’s movement was a melody, inaudible, but with an ineluctable rhythm, and it was the most natural thing for Derpy to rise up on her hind legs just as Luna did the same, their hooves joining in the air between them. The bed now stood in the center of a ballroom dimly lit by chandeliers, and the two of them moved in a circle around it to that same rhythm.

Derpy could not have told you whether it was three or four or twelve beats to the measure; it was now, and now, and now, and just before each now Derpy felt a little lump in her throat, her body demanding she do something, something to pass the hot pulse on through her, or all those bright nows would pile up inside her until she burst. Always just in time there was a hoof offered in front of her or a gentle pressure on her back, suggesting some movement that Derpy realized was exactly what she wanted to do. She met Luna’s eyes in the darkness under the arch of their raised hooves; she twisted to the left and right as Luna’s bright teeth passed within inches; she spun around gracefully on one leg.

All too soon, she had fallen back on all fours and stood panting, face to face with Luna.

“But…” Derpy looked back at her body, which had never done anything like that before. It just stood there smugly.

“I remembered it for thee, and led thee,” Luna said. “Now remember for her.”

It didn’t make any sense. But Luna was gazing into her eyes confidently, so Derpy turned to the bed, which was now back in a single room of the Long Term Care Facility of the Ponyville Hospital. She saw Hazel pull both her forelegs up to the top of the covers, just a moment before it happened. The two ponies both opened their eyes wide.

She saw Hazel reach over with her right hoof, grasp the cover, and pull it diagonally toward her and down while lifting, folding the cover over so that she could slide out of bed to her left. From there on it came naturally, without thinking too much about left hindleg or right elbow, until Hazel was standing in the room with them, alongside the bed, next to Luna. Her legs wobbled, and her front legs were splayed wider than her rear, but she looked up at Derpy with a shy grin.

“Thou hast done well,” Luna said. “We have sometimes likewise done as much for her, but lack the time to train her again to walk. This shall be thy duty, Derpy, in penance each day thy absence of mind disrupts our duty, and in reward each day it does not.”

“Learn to walk?” Derpy said. “That’s hard. Hazel, how’d you like to learn to fly?”

Hazel’s grin grew wider, and they both looked expectantly at her side, waiting for feathers to sprout. But nothing happened.

“‘Tis hard labour and hard practice, to mold another’s body in the dream,” Luna said.

“That’s okay!” Derpy said. “She can use mine!” And she pulled her wings off, first the left one and then the right, starting from the back and working forward. They came free with a sucking sound, leaving a sticky ridge on Derpy’s hide.

“Good thing I brought some muffin glue!” Derpy said. She pulled out her glue gun and drew a line down each side of Hazel’s barrel, then pressed the wings on. “Now hold them there without moving for one minute,” she instructed.

[hr]

“Look at her go,” Celestia said, looking down from the hospital roof.

“She hath for certain an uncanny knack at the business for an earth pony,” Luna agreed.

Below them, Hazel squealed with glee as she flapped the long grey wings and flew low figure-eights over the hospital grounds, while Derpy, wingless, cheered her on from her bedroom window.

“Thank you for inviting me to share this dream, Luna,” Celestia told her sister. “It’s one of those things that makes it all worthwhile. There’s one thing I don’t understand, though.”

Luna raised an eyebrow.

“You told Derpy her special talent was useless.”

Luna plucked a dictionary from the dreamspace beside her. She riffled through it, then read: “Useful: Of practical use; producing material results; supplying physical needs; having utility or economic value.”

She snapped the dictionary shut and returned it to the void. “The mare will never awake. Her dreams will produce no material results; they have not one cent of economic value.”

“You make fine distinctions with words.”

“Words make fine distinctions,” Luna replied. “Ponies forget that at their peril.”

Celestia smiled. “Such as the distinction between ‘you’ and ‘thou’?”

“For example,” Luna agreed.

“Still. Things might not have worked as you’d planned. You might have left her with just that.”

“It still would have been true.”

“A half-truth.”

“All the important truths are half-truths,” Luna said. “Every artist must confront the uselessness of her art.”

Celestia snorted. “I haven’t.”

“Thy work doth oft intimate a certain lack of serious intent,” Luna admitted.

“Like rainbows?” Celestia asked.

“For example.”

Down below, a confused-looking Hazel was circling the grounds upside-down while Derpy struggled to uncross her eyes.

“Well,” Celestia said with a grin, “at least they’re completely useless.”