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Magic is the Moon
Dreams, I so adored the dreams of my little ponies. Whether the sweet and simple wishes of foals, tucked snug in their beds or turbulent lovers' visions of raw passion, I loved them all. It was my power over the collective dreams of all sleepers that I adored most. Since my return from my 'hiatus' as Celly liked to call it, my ability to influence the Dreamland seemed to have grown exponentially. In all other areas I had atrophied significantly, even shrinking in physical stature and losing my formerly nebulous, star spangled mane and tail.
The Nightmare which had possessed me cared nothing for exercising my physical form or practicing my magics, preferring to spend a millennium plotting ever more elaborate revenge schemes and devising bold new tortures to inflict on my subjects upon her escape. In the tiny corner of my mind left to me, I found solace in what few dreams managed to bridge the airless void. Only the boldest and most vivid of dreamers could manage that feat, souls possessed of a level of sensitivity and passion which most could never imagine, let alone achieve. In those dreams I once more walked the green fields of Equestria, flew its skies, and found again the love for my subjects which my tormentor had so thoroughly poisoned.
For one thousand years I languished, trapped, imprisoned in the very source of my power, fairly stewing in raw and unchanneled magic. I feasted on the nocturnal visions of those rare and special ponies, artists and poets, lovers and visionaries. Thus it came as no surprise to me, that when I returned, my control and influence in that shadowed realm had vastly improved.
"Good evening Lulu." Celly knew that I once despised that term of endearment. Now I pretended to loathe it with a flaming passion, while secretly warming to my very core at the sound of my sister's voice calling out that sobriquet. I released a withering glare and a derisive snort at her, to which she replied with only one of her trademark grins.
Tonight was going to be one of those: a verbal jousting match between immortal siblings is not for the faint of heart. Over the centuries we had mastered the fine and subtle art of lèse-majesté, refining the game of royal insult to a purity unknown outside our small family. Many a palace functionary had fled in horror at the indignities we could heap on each other when the mood struck us.
"Are you going to sink that flaming gas-ball you are holding up? Or will we be forced to suffer through another of your interminable and overblown sunsets tonight?" I asked in exaggerated ire.
"Tisk, tisk. Always so eager to pitch your pallid, lumpy rock into the sky, never fear, I will graciously make room for your pitiful little beach-ball." Once more I suffered the sight of her infuriating grin, and loved every gleaming tooth of it.
"Oh sister dear, I was thinking of putting up a new constellation in your honor, but I cannot seem to find enough stars to form your girth, might I suggest that the occasional salad could cross the royal lips?" I now had a smug grin of satisfaction of my own on display. Celly seemed disturbingly calm after that jibe, I knew she had something diabolical up her metaphorical sleeve.
"Dear Lulu, astronomical observation has made great strides over the last few centuries, my little ponies have been diligent in recording and naming your heavenly bodies during your absence." I nodded, fearing what was to come, while burning with curiosity at what she had schemed. "Do you remember that little planet you put up around eleven hundred years ago?"
"I do, it is not visible to pony eyes, I placed it to balance the gravitational forces after you added a planetoid to the inner ring while I was on vacation." I was still irked by that one. It took a week for me to find what was throwing my orbits off.
"Well, a few hundred years ago a clever pony named Galloplieo came up with something called the telescope; using it, he spotted your little planet and asked me what to name it." Her grin grew ever wider, threatening to consume her entire face.
"What did you do Celly, what did you do?" My stomach roiled in anticipation, while more and more of her teeth and gums were revealed by her ever spreading smile. Finally she squeaked out a single word, a name.
"Uranus."
I died a little inside just then. She had been planning this moment for centuries and I was undone. With that masterful stroke of schoolyard toilet humor she had won this round, we collapsed in spasms of laughter.
Moonrise was late, and Equestria was treated to a sunset of untold beauty as we failed to master ourselves until long after our schedule had passed. The poor astronomers of Equestria are all too often caught in the midst of our sibling rivalry. I pity them for the suffering we cause, but not enough to stop.
Ensconced securely in my observatory, I sat like a spider in her web, only without the whole creepy/venom/bulbous-abdomen/crawling-on-ponies-while-they-sleep thing. My web was formed of infinitesimal strands of lunar magics and instead of insects, I captured the dreams of my subjects in all their simplicity and grandeur. With a gentle tug here I helped an artist finalize her plans for a sculpture. A pluck of this thread sent soothing vibrations to calm a foal's nightmare, returning her to sweet slumber. I gave additional slack to a colt in Hoofington, allowing him to imagine a new textile mill design, one destined to ease the burden on workers in that hazardous field. I was not a spider, I was a musician, composing an aria only I could ever hear.
At the center of my far flung strands and skeins one cluster of particularly vibrant threads always garnered special attention. Ponyville: a snug and happy hamlet at the base of Canterlot mountain. Close enough to the (unfairly) dreaded Everfree forest that its residents sipped unconsciously, but deeply at its swirling and chaotic draughts of wild magic. Dear Celly had established the town immediately after my 'departure', as a part of her centuries long plan to save my sanity.
Even she did not know just how well she had succeeded, it was those dreamers who came in loud and clear in my lunar prison. Ponies of talent, vision and creativity from all corners of Equestria were gathered there by her subtle machinations. Poets, artists, craftsponies, thinkers and creative souls all, drenched in Everfree's unpredictable currents of power.
She had planned only to cultivate ponies capable of wielding the Elements of Harmony, nurturing them like a garden of virtues for her eventual use. What she had created was far more, a reserve of genius and wealth of creativity, which had slowly dispersed to all corners of our realm, while maintaining its vibrant core in an oft overlooked provincial village.
Where most dreams are slender and ephemeral floss, fragile beyond belief, Ponyville's were thick and strong, braided into cords by co-operation and friendship. Dreams wrapped round with their owner's friends' well wishes are as strong as anchor cables. An entire town of such intertwined friendship thrummed with power in the night, reaching out to me through the Nightmare and slowly unraveling its grasp from afar.
Despite the stories some will tell, it was not the stars which aided my escape, nor the Elements of Harmony which freed me. From the instant my hooves touched land, my liberation was unavoidable and the Nightmare knew it. While my body sought to enact its petty schemes, I hammered and raged against the prison in my mind that the Nightmare had forged. It wanted so desperately to torture, maim and kill, but too much of its force was dedicated to attempting to restrain me. The tables had been turned, I was the influence guiding it against its wishes. My will prevented it from harming anypony, just as it had once steered me from the shadows.
Poor Nightmare, where it had imprisoned me in a light-less iron box bound with chains of dread, I had placed it in a sunlit and candy colored garden at the back of my mind. Permanent strands of dream, drawn from six special ponies fed a constant stream of warm and gentle magic into that recess of myself. I could feel Nightmare squirm and writhe in self inflicted agony at the barrage of kind and gentle thoughts bombarding it. Oh how it hated Pinkie Pie's Element, but it was Fluttershy who wrought a little more change every night. No substance could withstand the slow grinding and polishing of her Kindness, I could feel it a little more with each passing week, soon the Nightmare would simply be my Id, ready to be re-absorbed into my personality. Soon I would be whole again.
Until that moment, I had my duty, my joyful task every night; to guide the dreams and soothe the troubles of my subjects, returning to them a small measure of what I had received over the last ten centuries.
Not all dreams are created equal, nor are all dreamers. Some dream of wealth and luxury, others crave fame, a few wish to be feared. Those few I watched, the darker side of my age old mission. In the early days of the nation, power hungry nobles plotted to seize control and rule in our stead, some subtly, as the power behind the dual thrones of day and night. Using wealth and political intrigue to further their goals, these peddled influence an fostered corruption in our nascent regime. They never failed to marvel at the delicate methods used to end their plans. Eventually they were won over and became the core of our diplomatic and political machine.
A few noble born ponies sought to wrest power by force of arms, only to find their armies demoralized by restless sleep and their assassins caught, tried and turned to our service as forest rangers or police. Such is the power of dreams, they can corrupt and poison hearts or lift spirits to lofty heights. My secret, our secret remains secure to this day. Though, even were it known that I am empowered to move the hearts and minds of all creatures, who could deny my influence? Like the tides, my power is irresistible and subtle. I thank my stars that the Nightmare never valued that gentle influence, preferring instead brute force.
It was this shadowy task which I embarked on as the early morning drew ever closer. This dreamer, I knew, never slept until dawn began to glow in the east. He cast himself (in his own mind at least) as a consummate political animal, imagining himself too suave and charming to be suspected of aspirations above his station (and capabilities). His life of sloth, indolence and indifference, (he told himself) was a front, to mask the clever plans he had set in motion. Plans he was certain would lead him to glory and the thrones he so coveted.
I caught the self satisfied aroma of his dream immediately, it was once again the one where he lounged on the solar throne while using the lunar seat as a footstool. The pompous windbag was being fanned by a pair of scantily clad servant fillies... oh stars above, that would be Celly and myself in the guise of slave girls wearing bronze bikinis. What kind of fetish was that anyway? Ponies in bikinis, disgusting. While I had only known Prince Blueblood for a brief time, I despised him utterly, this foal however was just as useless, but far more dangerous.
Grand Duke Hoofworthy Sunshower Blueblood IV was the classic scion of a noble house in precipitous decline: lazy, selfish, thoughtless and inbred beyond salvaging. The only area of the clan not plunging towards entropy was its wealth. Vast and disgusting wealth, rivaling the national treasury itself. Even this bloated sack of manure could not spend it faster than it accumulated, despite heroic efforts on his part.
Though Prince Blueblood held a higher stature in the nobility, he remained a (relatively) impoverished lord, subsisting on his allowance from the crown. With careful management and some effort, his holdings would be sufficient to support even his lavish lifestyle. Not so for his cousin the Grand Duke, teams of accountant ponies, a legion of investment brokers and vast inherited lands secured his family's position for the foreseeable future (and I can foresee quite a way, thank you.). Left to his own devices, he would pose no threat, but somepony had put it in his head that he would make a smashing King of Equestria.
That Pony's identity was what I sought in the murky depths of the Duke's mind. First I needed to make him more tractable. It was time for a little dream manipulation.
It was the work of but a moment to unravel his fantasies, turning the throne room he sprawled in from a luxurious den of pleasure, into a stinking foetid bog. The royal raiment he wore becoming a set of tattered wading boots, half filled with itchy, squelching mud of course. I sprinkled the water with leeches and a thick scum of algae, adding a few particularly noxious buzzing flies and mosquitoes for spice. I took away the hydra his mind had added to the newly crafted nightmare, replacing it with a bubbling vent of especially aromatic swamp gas. True fear would end this delicious torment far to quickly, I wanted him to awake, not in a few minutes in a cold fear sweat, but in an exhausted stupor of misery after a full night of exquisite pastoral labor.
Under the rules of the Dreamlands, one had little choice but to follow the narrative set forth by one's subconscious (or in this case, my petty enjoyment). A disciplined mind or a strong will could change the course of a dream from the inside, he had neither- in spades.
For some ponies the life of a forest ranger, taking the annual frog census in Froggy Bottom Bog would be satisfying and full. His painful discomfort was a balm to my injured pride, easing the sting of seeing my beloved sister (and myself) in slave regalia. This was far more satisfying than visiting some horrific tenebrous creature from beyond on him. Besides, there was always tomorrow night for that.
While he wallowed in whatever ranger ponies wallow in during frog census, I took a stroll through the unguarded back rooms of his mind; vast corridors of hubris, self importance, and indulgence opened before me. Reeking cesspits of base lusts and desires gurgled just behind delicate curtains of self deception. In a disused toilet (who has a toilet in their mind, seriously?) I found the tattered remains of his Kindness and Generosity, gathering them up, I moved on. Laughter was stored in a trunk in the conservatory of his cruelty. Loyalty was being used to level a pedestal holding an elaborate nude sculpture of himself, featuring two highly exaggerated protuberances, one was his horn, enough said about that. At long last, I located Honesty, in a drawer filled with erotic etchings and dirty magazines, beside the bed of his deceptions. I had never seen a set of elements so battered and under used.
The longer I searched, the more certain I became that the idea of becoming king was not his own. Yet still no sign of the individual with the big ideas. I expanded my search to include non ponies as well, with no result.
I was about to exit his wretched excuse for a mind when I quite literally tripped over the answer. There in the middle of his brain lay a web of magic, lunar magic. Lunar magic not of my crafting! Somepony had been playing in my sandbox and doing a clumsy job of it at that. Now that I was looking for it, the strands were everywhere, thin as cobweb, tangled and matted in every corner of his mind. That somepony had learned to manipulate dreams at all was shocking and disturbing on several levels.
For two thousand years this magic had been forbidden, all mention redacted from every known text. Every clue had been diligently scrubbed from the memory of every living pony a hundred generations ago. Yet here was the evidence proving my failure to erase this knowledge; a nexus of control and influence, years in the making. Showing every sign of having been adjusted and managed very recently as well.