Chrysalis’ wings buzz as she darts through the air to hover just in front of Shining Armour. Her enormous eyes take in the hall full of ponies standing with gaping jaws, and her tiny, sharp teeth lock together in a foxlike grin. “Soon, my changeling army will break through. First, we take Canterlot. And then, all of Equestria!”

A minute ago you were craning your neck like all the ponies around you to get a better view of the wedding far ahead of you, at the other end of the great hall. Being on two feet gave you a small advantage. The truth was you hadn’t even heard of this Cadence or Cadance or whoever until yesterday; you only came in hopes of seeing Princess Celestia up close.

Her voice rings out now over Chrysalis’ chittering laugh. “No. You won't.” Celestia strides down from the stage. Her steps are graceful, almost dainty, yet their smoothness also speaks of something massive and unstoppable.

“You may have made it impossible for Shining Armor to perform his spell, but now that you have so foolishly revealed your true self, I can protect my subjects from you!”

The feminine sensuality of her movements blends with her stern and warlike face in a way that makes you feel faint for a moment. You shiver, and a part of you is glad to have come, whatever happens, just for that glimpse.

Their horns collide with a crash, then they each spring back and release a blast of glowing energy at the other, Chrysalis’ a diseased phosphorescent green, Celestia’s a blinding gold. Sparks flash where the beams break upon each other. You watch in horror as Chrysalis’ beam slowly pushes Celestia’s back.

You look to your right and to your left. Hundreds of ponies stand staring while their princess fights alone.

A feeling rises from your gut, choking and hot, to fill the space between your ears with a red ringing. Rage, at the insect queen, but even more at the stupefied cowards around you.

You find yourself running down the long red carpet, charging towards Chrysalis Her eyes remained locked on Celestia.

A second before you reach her, Celestia falls to the ground, black burning smoke rising from her horn. Chrysalis turns her head back and sees you running towards her backside. It shines like polished steel. You see the glint of sharp corners that were not evident from a distance. The corners of her mouth turn up in amusement.

At the last instant you swerve, and lunge and tackle not Chrysalis, but her left wing. You hope it isn’t as sharp as it looks.

Her eyes widen even further as she realizes what’s about to happen. The wing doesn’t even slow you down; it shreds like a kite in your grasp. You stumble and fall, dropping small bright shreds of wing that drift to the ground about you.

“VILLAIN!” Chrysalis shrieks, and lowers her horn. A sickly green flash erases your world.

---

You wake in darkness. You feel a slight pressure all over your body, and a vagueness about up and down, as if you were underwater.

As you come to you realize you aren’t in complete darkness. Everything is covered in a dim green light. Your back presses against something cold and slimy; your front, against something soft and warm.

“Human,” Celestia’s voice says, inches from your ear. “Are you alive?”

The space is so constricted you feel the air move when she speaks. You cough something nasty into the dark green. “If you are,” you reply, genuinely unsure.

“For a time,” she says calmly.

You blink, and things become a little clearer. Clear enough to make out Celestia’s ears just ahead of you. The soft, warm thing moves against your chest as she speaks, and you realize it is her.

“Where are we?” you ask.

“In Chrysalis’ larder. Formerly my throne room. Hanging from the ceiling in a cocoon.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

“You were the only one who came to my aid,” she says. “Even my guards stood by and watched.”

“It was nothing,” you say. “Long-term cultural inoculation to violence.”

“Still. It was very gallant of you.”

You shrug in the darkness.

“No doubt that’s why she found it amusing to bind us together in this manner,” she says.

You weren’t going to bring it up, but you’re bent over and pinned against that wide posterior you’d been admiring from afar just minutes ago, with your feet gripped firmly and deeply in a hard, solid substance below you, and your hands stretched out above your head and encased in more of the same somewhere ahead of Celestia’s throat.

“What do we do now?” you ask.

“We do nothing. Then she eats us.”

“Oh.”

More silence.

“Surely there’s something we can do,” you say.

She sighs. “There were many things I could have done,” she says. “But I was a fool. I forgot that the greatest magics in Equestria are friendship and love. Even as I scolded Twilight and told her to make some friends, I had none myself.”

“I have always been your friend,” you say.

She goes silent. You feel her shudder beneath you, and realize she’s crying silently.

“I’m a terrible friend,” she says.

You wish you could stroke her face. You consider blowing in her ear, but it might be misconstrued. “You’re a wonderful pony,” you tell her. “Even though we never met, you made me a better person, just by being yourself.”

She sniffs, then her head moves with a sudden start that shakes the cocoon.

“I felt that,” she says.

“Felt what?”

“Friendship.”

“Um. Good.”

“Give me more.”

More?

You bury your face in her mane, and try to feel your forced embrace not as constraint, but as the hug you’ve always wanted to give her.

“I’m sorry about being eaten,” you say. “But I’m glad to be here with you, now, and tell you that I’ll be your friend for as long as we have left.” Her mane muffles you a bit.

“Yes,” she says, and sounds surprised. You can see her fur, her mane, her eye more clearly, and you realize her horn is glowing dimly. “You are glad. I can feel it.”

You can feel the warmth of her neck, through the short, soft, neatly-curried fur there. You relax your neck and let your cheek sink into it.

“Ah,” she says, and her horn glows a shade brighter.

“Is that good?”

“Yes. But I need more to get us out of here.”

You hold her tight and remember how she sent her guards to Ponyville when you first appeared there, for your protection. You remember the marks of her benevolence, scattered across Equestria—schools, libraries, universities, hospitals—and the little signs of her as well: the cream-filled donut named after her at Pony Joe’s, the birdfeeders kept stocked on every Canterlot street corner.

“Oh, yes!” she says. You think, from her voice, that she’s smiling. Her horn glows enough for you to see the downy hairs inside her ear. They look very soft.

“I want to see your face,” she says.

You use your arms to pull yourself as far up against her as you can, finally finding your right eye level with her left ear. She turns her great eye upon yours, as best she can with the tip of her horn stuck firmly in something unyielding. You feel her gaze touch yours, and in that dark place, waiting your shared doom together, it feels more intimate than physical contact. Each time she breathes in, her chest expands and it pushes you back an inch, and you lose that precious lifeline. Each time she breaths out, you come forward, and the two of you lock eyes again for another moment, and you feel her warm, moist breath on your face.

You must be breathing each other’s breath over and over. You don’t know why you haven’t suffocated. Changeling magic, you suppose. A little something to keep the meat fresh.

Her eye begins to lose its focus on you, yet you sense she’s more aware of you than ever. Her nostrils open wide. You feel her legs twitch beneath you. “More!” she says.

You try, but you don’t know how to friend her any harder. You haven’t got any actual memories of her. Perhaps you don’t really know her at all.

“I’m sorry,” you say, breathing hard. “That’s all I’ve got.”

She sighs. The light flickers.

“Is… Is that it, then?” you whisper.

She catches you again in that gaze. “There is… one more thing we can try.”

“Anything!”

“It’s a terrible thing to ask of you.”

“Anything,” you repeat, more slowly.

“Well…” She looks away. “You have to love me.”

“But, princess. I do love you.”

“I mean… you have to… love me.”

An awkward silence.

“For Equestria,” she says hoarsely.

“For Equestria,” you repeat softly. “I think I can do that, princess.”

“Please. Call me Celestia.”

You aren’t sure how you feel about this. Scratch that; you are sure how you feel about this; you just aren’t sure how you feel about how you feel about it. She thinks she’s asking something terrible of you, and you’re playing along while inwardly saying a frenzied prayer of thanks to Chrysalis. As you debate your feelings, you feel her rump press up against you.

“Well?” she says after a long, even more awkward silence.

You realize the princess doesn’t understand the difficulties involved.

“I’m wearing these things called pants.” Levi’s 501s, to be precise. The worst possible thing.

She nickers in frustration. “My kingdom will fall because of your species’ ridiculous fondness for pants?”

“It’s not so much a fondness as a… safeguard.”

“A safeguard? Against what?”

“Well… against this.”

She snorts, though daintily. “That is, forgive me, but I’m a little tense when I’m about to be eaten, the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Sorry. Really. I am.”

She stirs beneath you. Suddenly you feel the entire length of her tail draw itself slowly up through your legs, and you cry out.

“Sorry!” she says.

“It’s... fine,” you gasp.

“I needed to get my tail free.” You feel the tip of her tail brushing across your stomach. It’s prodding, feeling.

“I see the problem!” she says. “Figuratively speaking.”

Her tail begins poking at the hem of your jeans, long rough hairs sliding in deep under it and then back out. You brace yourself, but your underpants protect you. Fortunately. Maybe.

“They’re rivets,” you say. “Big brass ones. All down the front. Look, you’ve got a nice tail, but there’s no way it’s sensitive enough to—”

Her tail sides in between the first and second buttons.

“—ooh, ah, sensitive enough to—”

Her tail and haunches tighten suddenly, yanking you up tight against her, and the first button pops off, flies across her shoulders, and lodges in the ooze beyond.

“Oh,” you say in a small voice.

She pauses, her tail already wrapped around the next button. “Are you certain you wish to do this, human?”

You’re about to blurt out that yes, you’ve never felt more certain of anything, when suddenly you realize, to your own amazement, that you aren’t.

“Celestia.” You give yourself a moment to savor the taste of the word on your lips, of saying it, that way, to her, before you say the thing you’re afraid to say and ruin everything. “If it works, and we get out, and save Equestria—what then?”

You see the silhouette of her ear lie back nearly against her head. She seems no more eager to answer the question than you were to ask it.

“Because if it’s just for Equestria, let me down now, first. Don’t…” You realize you’re crying. You wish you could wipe your nose, but it’s running, and you’re dripping tears and snot into her fur. “I do want love, real love. More than anything.”

Her head swivels around—actually, you’re not sure what happens; her horn is stuck in the cocoon, her eye still faces forward, but you can see her eye clearly, growing larger, shining brighter, as if it had been just a doll’s eye before but had now suddenly come to life.

“Dost thou?” it asks in a different voice, closer, almost in your head, yet also very far away.

You are naked before it, not in body but in soul. It stares through your eye as if it were a window.

“Dost thou truly?” it asks, and you hear a note of long-stifled hope in the strange, dusky voice.

You try to shut your eyes, but it’s
              still      behind your
               there  darkness  eyelids
                 in the       and
                         you
                       shake
                         your
                          head
                         and

the pegasi barely look up as you enter the forum, your shoes glowing with the magic that lets you join them there. It’s all brilliant white and open to the sky, like a stone amphitheater where Aristotle might have argued with Aristarchus. But they squabble and squawk like, well, a flock of birds with their feathers ruffled, oblivious to their dignified surroundings.

“We’ll have to cancel spring!” a small green pegasus mare moans.

“Our situation is indeed dire,” an old, dark grey stallion says.

“What’s so special about green, anyway?” Rainbow Dash says.

“What’s so special about green?” the green mare repeats, her wings quivering. “What’s so special about green?”

The grey stallion holds up a wing. “Hold your theatrics, Cloudhuffer. I shall explain.” Bending forward, speaking not just to Rainbow but to the entire circle of at least a dozen pegasi, he says, “Green is the color of spring. But it’s not merely a color. It’s—how shall explain—the genesis of life is green. Green is as necessary to life as orange is to fire.”

“Then,” Rainbow says, bringing her eyes together, “if there’s no green—”

“Precisely,” the stallion says. The circle falls quiet.

“Hello, gents and mares,” you say in the pause, sitting down on a stony-looking cloud seat. “What’s all this about green?”

“See for yourself,” Rainbow says, nodding towards a pair of arches at the other end of the forum, which you hadn’t noticed before.

You walk through the arches and find yourself a vast workspace. Pegasi seldom bother with rooms except for privacy, as there’s neither rain nor wind above the clouds. Six great vats stand in a semi-circle, colored red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. A tube runs from the bottom of each, off to the edge of the cloud, where they drip their contents over the edge in five bright ribbons that curve down to earth in a gap-toothed rainbow. Gap-toothed, because one color is missing. A few drops are all that emerge from the tube leading to the green vat.

You grab a couple of empty buckets, and fill one halfway with blue, and the other halfway with yellow. You return to the forum.

The pegasi are arguing again, this time over whose fault it is. Saying nothing, you walk to the center of the circle and pour out the bucket of yellow in a line across the floor.

A few pegasi pause their bickering to look at you, and raise their eyebrows.

You take a few steps, then pour the bucket of blue in another line, crossing the yellow line in a large X. Where they cross, the blue turns a bright green.

The pegasi fall silent instantly. They stare for a few seconds.

“How’d you do that?” one asks.

“If you mix blue and yellow,” you say, “you get green!”

“He’s a witch!” Cloudhuffer shrieks, and falls down in a faint.

The circle clusters around you and stares and sniffs at the colored X. Derpy takes one step closer than the others and sticks her nose right in it. She sits back on her haunches and licks it off her face with one wipe of her tongue.

“It tastes green!” she says with a grin.

This seems to be the final definitive proof, for the pegasi give a great cheer and hoist you on their shoulders. They fly you around Cloudsdale three times, cheering all the while, before finally setting you back down where you began.

“So,” Rainbow says, sidling up and rubbing against your hip. “I guess you saved spring, stranger.”

You shrug. “No big deal.”

“No big deal?” She grins. “I’d say that was [i]pretty cool[i]. What’s your name, stranger?”

You’re about to tell her when Princess Celestia arrives in her sky chariot. She steps out daintily and walks toward you.

“I’ll get back to you later, Dash,” you say. “Duty calls.”

Rainbow’s ears fall in disappointment, but she takes a step back as the princess steps toward you. She has another one of those medals hanging in the air before her.

“Human. I had a feeling we’d meet again.”

You shrug.

“This is beginning to become a habit,” she says. “Why am I always coming to you, human? You should come to Canterlot Castle sometime, and I’ll find some reward for you there.”

She smiles slyly, then clears her throat to indicate that now is the time for formalities.

“For saving the realm of Equestria, again, I award you the Golden Phoenix, again.”

You bow, and she slips the medal’s ribbon around your neck. It slides down and jangles against your other medals.

“Thank you, princess.” You stand there while everyone stares, and you begin to feel a bit silly wearing all these medals around your neck. They’re kind of heavy. Why were you wearing all of them today, anyway?

“If it’s all the same to you, you can skip the medal next time,” you tell Celestia. “I just want to be helpful.”

A small pegasus filly who had remained silent until then cocks her head and stares meditatively at you. Her eye draws you toward her, and Celestia, Dash, and the guards all seem pushed away to the side.

“Dost thou?” she asks in a dusky alto full of doubt, as you fall into her old, old eyes. “Dost thou truly?”

You wake, gasping for air.

Your bedroom is still dark. The birds are not yet awake. In the distance, a cat screeches.

You feel the weight of the air settle on you, pressing you down into the mattress. Everything’s so heavy, out here. You inwardly curse your luck, as you do every morning, at having come out the other side of the night.

You could probably still fall back asleep, snatch a few more hours of oblivion. But those eyes…

You roll onto your side and blink until you can make out the red glow of your clock. 4:15.

If you get up now, you’ll be exhausted all day. Worse than that—you’ll have to be you for twenty hours straight.

You don’t know if you can handle that.

You close your eyes. The heavy gravity still pulls at you, but now it’s your friend, pulling you down and under. You feel so heavy, like an anchor dozing for centuries on the ocean floor, like an ancient thing sleeping under a mountain…

“...the dragon!”

A guard slaps you in the face, and you look up. “Sorry,” you say. “My attention kind of drifted there.”

“Speak more respectfully to her majesty, dog!” He cuffs you harder.

You wince, then grin. You try to reach up to rub your chin, but find all four of your hooves in chains. It’s quite a compliment; murderers and madmen get by with just one when they’re brought into the Room of Judgement. But you are the desert fox, the one rebel stallion Celestia never could capture. Until she did. The gallery is packed with mares who came for the thrill of being terrified by your gaze.

“Maybe I just won’t speak at all,” you say.

The guard spins to kick you, but Celestia holds up one wing. “Peace.” She leans forward behind her desk. “You know our woes, rebel. If you have any feeling left in your heart for Equestria, you will do this for us.”

“My name,” you say, “is Broken Wing.” The guard cuffs you again. You hear the plink of a drop of blood from your nose hitting the floor.

Celestia stares down at you arrogantly. You stare back, just as arrogantly.

“Well, then. Broken Wing.” It’s the first time she’s ever called you by name. She must be truly desperate. “You are the only pony among us whom this dragon will talk to, in gratitude for when you, out of a sympathy owing to your own injuries, tended to his broken wing and nursed him back to health. Persuade him to leave Equestria and return to the Everfree, and your crimes shall be forgiven.”

You look her straight in the eyes. “I have committed no crimes, and need no forgiveness from you.”

The mares in the gallery gasp. One faints, and a bailiff runs to get her water. Even your guard is too shocked to strike you. You press your luck. “Perhaps,” you say, “I would consider your offer, if you sought forgiveness from me.”

Now your guard strikes you, a hard blow in the stomach. The courtroom buzzes, then hushes as you raise your head again.

You point your muzzle at the guard, keeping your eyes on Celestia. “Get rid of him.”

She looks at you, then looks at the guard, and nods. He mutters darkly at you, then retires to stand behind the bar.

“For seven years you left me to rot,” you say. “Seven years, for the crime of saving your ponies from your own corrupt officials.”

“I know the tale you spin, desert fox.”

“And I know your heart, princess. You’re not like this. You’re not cruel and cold and distant.”

“You know nothing of my heart,” she says, and her eyes flash in warning.

“It’s not your fault,” you say.

“To hear you speak, everything is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault, what you did to your sister.”

The gallery goes crazy again. The bailiff shouts for order and stomps his hoof on the marble floor repeatedly until the crowd falls silent. In the silence, you hear sobs. Celestia, head down on her desk, crying.

“Truly,” she says, “you are the one pony who knows my heart. Forgive me, Broken Wing! But save us. Save my people.”

“No,” you say. “That’s still not enough.”

She raises her tear-stained head from her desk. “Not enough? What more do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

The crowd does not even gasp, not believing you could mean what they think you do.

You do.

She sits up straight in her chair, her face drawn in tightly. A blush rises to her cheeks. “Very well,” she says. “On the nights of the full moon, you may be my consort, and distract my mind from its troubles if you can.”

Around the courtroom, jaws drop.

“Still not enough,” you say.

Celestia stares at you, her eyes drooping in despair. Then, suddenly, like sun shining through the clouds, she smiles, as if a heavy burden has been lifted from her.

A mare in the front of the gallery whom you hadn’t noticed before raises her hoof. “Um,” she says in a dusky voice like stardust. “Mayhap the dragon will talk to us, since we tended his other broken wing ‘til he regained his full mettle, ‘an it please your majesty.”

“What?” You blink.

“I think he’s in my book discussion group,” a dark stallion you hadn’t noticed standing beside you says, “albeit he sitteth in the back and sayeth little.”

A colt sitting in the front of the gallery with old, old eyes, whom you hadn’t noticed before, pipes up. “We play checkers with him every other Sunday. A worthy foe he is, most puissant on that motley wooden field.”

“Guard!” Celestia calls. “Take this rebel back to the dungeon.” She turns to the dark stallion. “Tell me about this ‘book’ group,” she says. “Is it loyal to the crown?”

“Wait!” you say. “I’m the only pony Smaug will talk to.” But the guard cuffs the side of your head again, and begins dragging you away.

The bailiff rolls his old, old eyes at you as you pass. “Smaug? Really.”

The guard yanks your chains mercilessly, making you stumble on the rough stones of the dungeon. He regards you out of the corner of his old, old eyes. “The one pony who this, the one pony who that. You one ponies bore us.”

“But this is my dream!”

She stops, dropping your chains. “Is it? Is it really?”

“Who else’s would it be?”

“That is not what we meant,” she says, and suddenly you remember where you’ve seen those eyes before.

She resumes walking, without picking up your chains, but you’re dragged along just as before. The stars come out one by one, mirroring the lights glowing in her cerulean mane. “This dream is a thing for thee alone. To thee it is a pleasant distraction, but whom canst thou share it with? None other could find aught of value in it.” Her breath mists in the chill night air. Endless plains stretch out into the darkness around you.

“You can’t share a dream,” you protest. “They’re not real.”

Princess Luna comes to a sudden halt and turns that eye on you, the one you can fall into. “That is thy folly. Thou must share thy dream, for it to become real. Thou saidst thou desired love; thou saidst thou wanted to be useful; yet thy dreams seek only the shadows of these things.”

You kick at the gravel beneath your feet, and notice, idly, that you’re human again. “What would you know? You’re not real.”

She laughs, and it echoes separately off each individual star.

“Don’t laugh at me,” you warn.

She smiles, which is worse.

“You’re a thing of my dream. The result of a headache, of eating that week-old pizza before bed.”

“Believe that if thou wilt.”

“And you’ve ruined my dreams. Three times. This is my time, Luna. This is the only time I have to be happy.”

“We desire thy happiness.”

Hopefully that weird grammar doesn’t mean she wants to take it from you, or something.

“Oh, yeah? Well, good. Because I think you owe me some happiness. And I think you’re gonna make me happy, right now.” You glower at her. This is your world. Everything in it must bend to your will. Let one figment of your imagination rebel, and you’ll be left with nothing, nothing, it’s too horrible to contemplate.

“Mortal,” she says. “Take care.”

Let her take care. You’re the master here.

“No. Everypony loves me. And you,” you say in a slow, commanding voice, “are going to love me too.”

She smiles at you again, with no hint of mockery. Somehow that makes it more infuriating. “We beg of thee…”

“Good. That’s a good start.” You point down at the ground. “Beg.” You will her to bend down. She’s your creation. She must bend.

Her legs tense, and she frowns, as if a great weight has come down upon her, but she stands there stubbornly. You concentrate harder on pushing her down.

Her legs tremble, but still she stands. “We can play these games, mortal, if thou insist.”

“Good. Let’s play rodeo.” You snap your fingers and a saddle appears on Luna’s back, western-style, and a bit and bridle on her head. You leap up, throw one leg across her back, and grab the reins.

“What…” She immediately tries to grab the bit in her teeth, but you’re ready and pull back, keeping it in the tender rear part of her mouth. She speaks with some difficulty: “What game is this?”

“You try to throw me off, and I try to stay on.” You kick your spurs into her ribs. “Giddyup!”

She lurches forward at the first kick, but then stands and refuses to move no matter how hard you kick. That’s got to hurt.

“Fine,” you say. You wave an arm, and a dark, conical mountain rises from the plains behind you with a rumble. You snap your fingers and its peak explodes, belching bright orange lava. It pours down the mountainside toward the two of you.

“Of course,” you say, “it’s not really hot. You could just stand here and let it wash over us.”

Your face is reddening from the heat as you speak. Luna bolts away from the tide of lava, and you hold on, holler, and swing your Stetson wildly in the air above you.

The lava comes on fast, faster than any horse can run. It pours across the plain like an ocean, like the original diluvial flood. But Luna is no horse. She gallops across the plains like an express train, the saddle beneath you smooth and level, and the lava recedes behind you. You wonder why she doesn’t fly, then see her wings are pinned underneath the saddle.

Well. That just makes it more challenging. You pull left on the reins. Luna grunts in pain as the bit tears into the left side of her mouth.

“Left,” you explain, and pull harder. She shouts something, you’re not sure what, you only hear the word “lava.”

“Yes, that’s the point. Left,” you say again, and pull.

She veers left. The lava rushes closer.

“Good pony.” You pat her on the neck. She tries to reach back and bite your hand, but you straighten her head out with a quick pull of the reins.

She turns right, and you yank the reins left. “I didn’t say right.”

She’s streaming with sweat now, from the heat or from the running. With a great grunt she bucks her hindquarters high into the air. No rodeo rules here; you let the Stetson fall and wrap both arms around her neck.

The reins fall away. She whinnies and bolts again to the right, bucking wildly beneath you. You cling to her neck. The saddle horn suddenly turns into a viper’s head, but you will it back into dead leather. Then she gives a brutal kick and the entire saddle slides out from under you and falls into the darkness, and her wings come out and she leaps into the night sky.

Your arms and legs are wrapped tightly around her neck; no points for style, but that’s not the point now. The wind rushes through your hair as she spirals and spins madly, thrashing beneath you. You can’t tell up from down and don’t care; you just hold on, sweat running down your face, mingling with hers where it drips onto her mane.

Your fingers burn, and have already begun to uncurl in protest when you remember you can control time, and point of view. You haven’t done that in so long. You zoom out and watch the scene from somewhere above as your body and hers continue their wild gyrations. Time passes.

Say an hour. It’s cheating, but that’s the point. Your dream, your rules.

You look back at the scene. An hour later, and Luna has landed on the vast empty plain, but is still going strong, bucking and shaking the you clinging to her back. Her endurance is incredible.

Time passes. Say a day.

You look back in on the scene, and Luna is a sodden mess. You can smell the stink of her sweat from here. Her chest heaves violently, her head drooping between her shoulders.

You slide back into the scene. You prod her side with your spurs. She kicks weakly, barely lifting off the ground.

“Lie down,” you whisper in her ear.

She lies down gratefully, with you still astride her.

“Doesn’t that feel good?”

She says nothing. Her ears flick at nothing. She looks off vacantly into the distance and gulps in air.

“Now, say that you love me.”

“We lovest thou,” she mumbles.

“Louder. Like you mean it.”

“We lovest thou,” she says more loudly. Her eyes open wide in realization and gratitude. You have broken her, emptied her, and she waits now for you to fill her up again according to your desire.

“You love it when I saddle you up and ride you. Nothing gives you more pleasure than feeling the pull of my bit in your mouth, and obeying its commands.”

“We lovest thine saddle,” she begins slowly.

“No, no, a thousand times, no,” a dusky velvet voice says from behind you. “Thy grammar is as villainous as thine imagination.”

You turn, and see Princess Luna standing above you, glittering in her full regalia.

You look down. Between your legs is a crude sock puppet fashioned from old rags. Its sock mouth opens, and you see your arm working it. “We lovest the feel of thy bit,” it says in a squeaky voice, but the words come out of your own mouth.

“We love, thou lovest,” the real Luna says. “Say it.”

You look down at the puppet, then realize she’s speaking to you.

“Say it, mortal.”

You narrow your eyes at her. You can do this all night. By force of will, you bring her to her knees.

“No, thou dost not.”

You snap your fingers, and saddle and reins appear again on her back.

“No, they do not.”

Stop that! You can’t—

“We are done playing games.”

You look into her eyes, and they are not the least bit tired or beaten. They look down on you from the vantage point of three thousand years.

“We love, thou lovest,” she says calmly, and waits.

You will the sock puppet to disappear into the sand, but it lies there, staring mutely at you with one button eye.

You lower your head. “We love,” you repeat. “Thou lovest.”

“We love thine armour, but we love thy saddle. Thy or thine, as best keeps one consonant between the syllables and lets the words flow trippingly off the tongue. Thine armour, thy saddle. Say it.”

“Thine armour,” you say. “Thy saddle.”

“Finally, in the scenario thou hast envisioned, thou art the master and my doppelganger thy servant. She must not ‘thou’ thee! To thee falls the thou-ing.”

You hold your hands to your head. “Luna. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“Thou liest.”

You wake.

---

You go through your morning ritual, go to work, and slip into your cubicle without speaking to anyone. You think: This is madness. You should be doing something, anything, different. But you don’t know what. Only one thing is clear: you can never sleep again.

You search the internet to find out what happens to people who can’t sleep. Wikipedia says that attempts to torture people with complete sleeplessness have failed, on account of their eventually falling asleep no matter how they are tormented.

There must be people who can’t sleep. You Google “sleepless disease.”

“Hey.”

You look up. Your boss is leaning against your cubicle wall.

“Arthur says you put code in a changeset summary. You can’t put code in a changeset summary.”

“The code is the changeset summary,” you say. “There was a typo in a hash key.”

“A changeset summary is supposed to be in English.”

“It’s one line,” you say.

“You can’t put code there.”

“I have to put it somewhere in the ticket. There’s no place else to put it.”

“You can’t put code in a changeset summary,” he says.

“Where should I put it?”

“Somewhere else.” He stands up to go, but turns back for a final word. “And try not to upset Arthur, okay? I’m sure you can still fit in here if you try. Thanks.”

You turn back to your browser. There’s a disease, fatal familial insomnia. Its victims stop sleeping, begin hallucinating and go mad. It takes one year to kill them.

Maybe she’ll lose interest before a year runs out. Maybe she’ll think you’re dead.

You go through the rest of the day on autopilot, which is how you usually do anyway. Then you stop by the supermarket and buy a shopping cart full of energy drinks, plus one quart of milk just for a touch of normality. The teenage clerk barely looks at you as he rings them up. Maybe people do this all the time.

You stay up all night drinking energy drinks and watching horror movies on Netflix. You hate horror movies, but they keep you awake. The next morning you stumble through your house like a zombie. Your head buzzes, and your hands tremble with their own nervous energy, which they selfishly refuse to share with the rest of your body.

You nearly fall asleep several times at work. Maybe you do. No dreams, anyway.

At home, you try watching movies again, but sometime after midnight you realize you’re not looking at the screen. You get up and pace back and forth to stay awake. Images flash before you each time you close your eyes. Why do you keep closing your eyes? You put on some E Nomine and crank up the stereo.

Maybe the neighbors will complain. Maybe the cops will come. That might keep you awake.

You laugh at your plan to go a year without sleep. You can’t go through one more day of this.

About 3 AM you go to the kitchen and take down the bottle of vodka that you’ve had at least since you moved out of the place in Oakton six years ago. It doesn’t matter; it’s vodka. You find the set of shot glasses you bought on sale about the same time at Ross, thinking you’d host wild parties. You break the seal on the box, put a glass on the counter, and fill it up. One shot, enough to make you talkative.

You take out another glass and fill it up. Two shots. Enough to make your tongue stumble.

You take out another glass and fill it up. Three shots. Enough to make your whole body stumble.

You take out another glass and fill it up. Four shots. You’ve never had four shots. You’re not a drinker.

You look at the four shots lined up on the counter, then stagger back to your computer and type “How many shots of vodka does it take to black out” into Google. A common answer is an incredible 16 shots.

You try “How many shots of vodka does it take to kill you”. The answer is also about 16 shots.

You almost fall asleep from sitting down for that brief time, but you get up, go back to the kitchen, take out the other four shot glasses and fill them up. Eight shots. Almost definitely not enough to kill you.

The first two shots go down with an almost pleasant burn. You have to pause after the third and force yourself to swallow. By the fourth, you’re already feeling dizzy. After the fifth you think the lining of your throat has burned away. You gag on the sixth, force it down, and face the seventh. You blink at it, and lift it up, when you feel the sixth coming back, with five and four close behind it.

You bend over and take a deep, slow breath, holding everything in. It settles for a moment, and you dump the seventh down your throat.

You contemplate the eighth briefly, but the counter stumbles into you, and you realize you’ll be lucky to make it to your bed with seven.

You careen around the corner of your kitchen, down the hall, into your bedroom, and trip over your bed, which catches you as you fall into darkness.

---

tiny bright lights spinning in the dark, there and there and there and

“Come here!”

stumble-slog through shifting sands—

“the stink of thy shame pollutes our realm!”

bright teeth flash above, dark steel-blue lips chewing, chewing angry velvet words

“—waiting, and then this thy foalish—”

muzzle-chewed words dribble down your face unheard loud too loud eyes eyes oh God her eyesss

“Leave! Leave now!”

---

You wake underwater. There’s a pounding in your head. You gasp for breath but suck in more water. You thrash wildly for the surface, turn, roll, and cough vomit onto your mattress.

You suck in huge breaths in between coughing fits. Finally, you lie on your side, panting. Your nose has something to say, and your crotch is complaining about a sticky wet feeling, but you’ll deal with them later.

It was a shitty old bedspread anyway.

There’s no question of going to work today. No question of falling back asleep, either, with this headache. No questions about anything at all. You close your eyes and listen to the pounding in your head.

Hours later, after you’ve showered, had a glass of water, cleaned up, showered again, and had another glass of water, you consider your options and realize you haven’t got any.

Well, you could see a doctor or a psychiatrist. Maybe they’d have some pills. Something to keep you from dreaming ever again.

But when you woke up in your own vomit and piss, it felt—well, it felt nasty, that’s for sure. But it also felt like a relief. To be punished. Like there was some logic or justice to the world. Try to mind-rape Princess Luna, wake up covered in vomit.

Why did you try to do that to her? Why did it feel so good when you thought you’d broken her?

Whatever Luna plans to do to you, it can’t be any worse than you were already doing to yourself.

You glance toward the kitchen. You could have another energy drink. Maybe. Or you could take up smoking.

Instead, you plant yourself in your armchair, legs spread, arms on the rests, lean back, and close your eyes.

---

You come to in a cedar grove. Below you, surf-smoothed rocks lead down to a blue-black lake that laps at the shore. Pine needles cushion your bare feet. Their scent fills the air.

You hop down to the shore and search for a flat stone. When you find one, you fling it spinning across the waters. It skips three times before a small wave brings it down.

You look up and down the shore. To your right it stretches on to where a bare spit of land leads out to a small peninsula, the lake beyond it stretching to the horizon. To your left, a bay. Luna waits between you and the mainland.

You recognize the peninsula to your right. You spent many days there as a child, playing by yourself on its shores and in its woods and abandoned clearings. You take a step toward it, then halt. Gulls cry overhead.

You skip one more stone, then turn and head toward Luna.

She looks up as you approach, but says nothing.

“Princess Luna. I’m so sorry,” you begin.

“Stop,” she says.

“You must think I’m a monster—”

“Stop.”

You stop.

“Again the one pony,” she says. “First thou wilt be the one hero, the one genius. When thou canst not, thou wouldst be the one monster, though thy base thoughts are as common among men as moss is on the rocks of this shore.”

“The things I thought about you—I didn’t mean them.”

“Thy repentance followed marvelous close on the heels of the realization thine attempt to break us had failed.”

You hang your head.

She trots over to stand beside you, and reaches out one hoof to raise your head.

You look into her eyes. They are deep, and old, but you wonder why you were so frightened of them. “You’re not angry?” you ask.

“We are.”

“But if you won’t let me apologize—”

“Only feigned apologies can come from a feigned point of view. It is not thy past deeds that anger us, but that thou hast carried thy shame and thy lies with thee to this sacred place. Thou desirest love and admiration, and thy heart cries out in anger at those that have them. Do not pretend it is not so. It is thus with men and ponies, and always has been.”

“I don’t understand!”

She points across the bay in front of you with her muzzle. “What lies over there on yonder shore?”

“That’s Canada. Land of hockey and donuts.”

“It looks much the same as this land here. Yet thou namest it differently.”

“Well, it’s the same, but on the other side of the border.”

“Show us this border.”

“I can’t. It’s a line on a map.”

“An agreed-upon phantasm.”

You think about that for a moment. “Yes.”

She nods. “And yet, with such fantasies people draw themselves together in nations, and do things greater or more terrible than ever they could without them, until they come to harbor devout feelings about these borders.”

“I guess.”

“Shame, morality, love of country, and a thousand other feelings are the borders of the mind. We need them in the waking world, to prop each other up and fool ourselves into acting nobler than we are.” She kicks the dirt at her feet. “But just as sometimes one must remember that the land on both sides of the border is made of the same plants amongst the same rocks and the same dirt, and the men or ponies on both sides are made of the same hopes and fears, one must sometimes remember thy basest feelings and desires. For ‘base’ means not only ‘common’ and ‘sullied’, but also the foundations on which all else is built.”

She looks up, and casts a fond eye over all the land about her, and, you think, more besides. “That is what this place is for. Shame and other treatied feelings are for the waking world. This is a place of deeper truth.”

You scratch your head and think about this. “So… it wasn’t my dreams or my… riding… that upset you?”

She snorts in laughter. “We have seen the dreams of men and of ponies. This is the place of safety, where all secrets are laid bare. The pretenses of the waking world have no place here.”

“Why did you keep interrupting my dreams, then?”

She smiles gently and turns toward you, bringing her head in close. “Thy simulacrum spoke one truth: We love thee.” Then, to your surprise, she touches her nose to your cheek and lets it rest there for a moment.

“Not in the way thou desirest. Ask not for explanation. Know that we love thee, and desire thy happiness.”

You raise your hand to your cheek. It feels hot. Your whole face feels hot.

“Thy one-man dreams have much to offer thee. Thou shalt never feel the admiration of crowds, nor hold one as lovely as our own self in thine arms in the waking world. If imagining these things brings thee true happiness, we would not disturb it, nor judge thee for it. Thou hast done enough already; thou hast earned thy rest.”

She looks off across the water. “And who are we to judge thine envy? We have beauty, power, and eternal youth, all undeserved. Thou hast none of these things. We have done worse things than thou hast dreamed of doing, to more people, for less cause.”

You watch her face, staring at something more distant than the horizon, and realize she, too, has fears. You wonder who she turns to for comfort. But the look of pain vanishes, and she turns back to you. “But thou saidst thou wanted love, and to be useful. If that is thy dream, we would help thee along that path.”

“Of course I want real love, and to really help people. I want more than fantasy. But I want that too! You can have more than just one dream, you know!”

She looks at you and shakes her head sadly. “Child. Who told thee that?”

You stare at her, wondering whether she really means that.

“But what should I do?” you ask.

“To follow the One True Law, thou must know thy one true dream.” She begins to fade, or you do.

“Wait! What’s the one true law?”

“Do as thou wilt.”

You wake.