Follows A Little Spark 06

>All around you is nothing.
>It’s pitch black.
>The silence is almost painful.
>You can feel nothing, though you are pretty sure you are curled up into a ball.
>Hours pass in seconds, or maybe the other way around. You don’t have a reference for time.
>Maybe you’re going insane.
>”Anon.”
>The voice is really far away, far enough to be right next to your ear.
>”Be not afraid, Anon.”
>Ah, you’re pretty sure you know who that is.
>Which means you know what this is.
“Princess Luna, is this your idea of a prank?”
>Or, you’re pretty sure that’s what you said. You can’t hear your own voice.
>”We have brought thy mind to alertness before any dreams arose.”
“This isn’t very fun.”
>”Dost thou wish to see home?”
>Ah, right.
>It wouldn’t be your first time you’ve dreamed of home, but it’d be the first you could interact with it while aware. You were never a lucid dreamer.
“Is it going to be as weird as last time?”
>”Thy dreams formeth their own structure. We need not force them as before.”
>Whatever that means.
“Fine, let's see it. Just, uh, just don’t get your hopes up.”
>”Whatever dost thou mean?”
“You’ll understand.”
>The darkness turns itself inside out, now blinding white. A loud ringing sounds in your ears. For the briefest moment, you feel like you’ve been kicked in the head.
>Turns out you weren’t curled into a ball, you were standing.
>You twitch violently as your brain does a proprioceptive double-take.
>You are standing in front of your apartment’s door, to be precise. Your keychain is in your hand. The right key is already in the lock.
>You turn the key and open the door, then step inside.
>When you turn to close the door, you hear a voice behind you. “Ah. We understand.”
>Turning back again, you see Luna in the middle of what passes for a living room. She's looking towards the kitchen area at the back of the long room. “Thou art lowborn.”
“Uh, I guess you could say that. I wasn’t exactly rolling in it.”
>You open a second door, one leading to your bedroom. The walls are covered with posters of nerdy shit, from video games to reference charts.
>Luna cranes her neck to look over your shoulder. “This space is too small for thy family.”
“I lived here alone.”
>You hear a slight gasp from her. “Alone? Art thou honest?”
“No lie.”
>You walk into your bedroom. It’s spotless, but everything you remember is here. In their proper places, too, which is somewhat of a rarity for you. You spread your hands to indicate the whole room.
“All this, just for me.”
>You expect to see some expression of indignation, that she’d be mad you were without a minder, despite the fact this was your world and not hers, with no Celestia to demand a guardian.
>Instead, she looks down at your carpet, and then to one of your bedroom windows. She makes her way over – cautiously, for your room was too cramped for her long body to maneuver well in – and looks outside.
>You join her at the window.
>Outside, the street is strangely empty. No pedestrians, no cars. No activity in nearby buildings.
“It’s usually more busy than this.”
>”Was that better or worse?”
“Uh, sorry?”
>She tries backing up the way she approached the window. Your dresser jabs her in the flank. Her wings extend outward slightly at the shock, which knocks some knickknack off your desk.
>She sighs and stops moving. “Better or worse than silence, Anon. Didst thou prefer bustle or quiet?”
“Quiet, I think. I usually just lost myself in...”
>You wave a hand in the air vaguely.
“Other stuff.”
>You point to your computer, then.
“This could talk to people all over the world, access all sorts of knowledge, play different kinds of games. Most of my time was spent using it.”
>Luna cocked her head and peered at it. “Fascinating.”
“Here.”
>You wave a hand at your bed.
“Feel free to take a seat. Furniture’s not arranged for someone who’s several feet long to walk around.”
>”We shall presume not to lay ourselves upon thy bed, even invited. We have tact.”
“Suit yourself.”
>You sit on its end, facing her.
>She looks around at your walls. “Thy appetite for art seems as voracious as it is peculiar.”
“Well, it’s not all art. Some of it is reference material. Others are… Well, here.”
>You gesture towards a sky blue poster with images of many rockets.
“This one depicts a bunch of vehicles we used to get to space. Uh, outside the atmosphere. Er, beyond the sky.”
>More light jostling of furniture as Luna makes her way over. She looks at the many designs. “How doth they function?”
“Explosions.”
>She looks at you like you just yanked on a couple of her feathers. “We desire serious answers.”
“I’m giving them to you. They work by exploding. Controlled rapid combustion. Think like giant fireworks, but many times more violent. Rockets are thousands of tons of canned explosion, with a couple people sitting on top crazy enough to light the fuse and try to steer.”
>You point to the image of a Saturn V
“This one sent people to the moon, with enough hardware to get them back home. We did that half a dozen times.”
>Once again, Luna defies your expectations by remaining silent. She slowly sits down on her haunches, staring at the poster.
>Her silence extends for an uncomfortable period of time. You decide to get something else to show her.
>Your neglected electric guitar sits in a corner. You never did bother to learn how to play to any degree of proficiency.
>As you’re reaching for it, Luna finally speaks.
>”Why?”
>You look back at her as you pull the guitar free.
“What was that?”
>”Why send thy kind to the moon?”
“We wanted to go, just to say we did.”
>”Foolish. Naught but rocks.”
“Rocks we were quite happy to take home. It was a race; who could get there first. Uh, we have a lot of countries here. Some of them compete. Some of them… do worse than compete.”
>She hasn’t looked back at you since she asked the question. She lapsed into silence again.
>You turn on the tiny amp near your guitar stand, and pluck a few strings. At least the thing was in-tune
>This finally gets Luna to face you. “A musician?”
“Hell no, I can’t play for shit.”
>You noodle through some of the Forbidden Riffs. Even in a dream, you manage to fuck up quite a few of them.
>Luna looks less than impressed.
“I got this cheap piece of crap for a project I was doing in college. I was meaning to learn it properly some day, but obviously that’s not going to happen.”
>You stop yourself cold, and slowly put the guitar down.
“I’m not coming back here, am I?”
>Luna’s expression immediately softens. “Our sister and her student have found not a way to send thee home. We have discovered not how thou came to us in the first place.”
“I didn’t exactly lead a spectacular life here, but the little things bother me.”
>You gesture at your computer again.
“Not gonna lie, I miss that thing a lot, and that’s not something I can rebuild in your world. I didn’t have many friends, but those I did have were good ones, and I miss them too. Every once in a while I’ll be working on a project and have a question I’d want to ask, and I can’t do that. I miss sending dumb edited pictures to friends I’ve never met over the internet.”
>You sigh as Luna delicately makes her way over to your side.
“There are a lot of things about my new life that are better, I’ll admit. I was surprised by that, which is weird, considering my mode of humor when I was still here. This world sucks. But despite that – maybe because of it – we made a lot of ways to enjoy it. Human technology can be summed up as one long arc of making our shitty world nicer for ourselves. And for the most part, we did a damn good job. There’s so much I lost that I loved.”
>”May we touch thee?”
“What? I guess, whatever.”
>Luna stretches a wing out, hesitates a moment, then wraps it around your shoulders.
>You realize just how little physical contact you’ve received these past few months.
>”We know, better than thou mayest imagine, the difficulties of an exile. We thought not that our world could be considered such a curse as that. We see now that thou hast lost that which is most important. Thou hast lost friendship, and our world hath not given much of it to fill such a void.”
“Well, Twilight’s nice enough. Celestia relented on that one.”
>You look at Luna. She’s looking over the details of your face, but her neck is held at an odd angle. You guess it’s to put an arbitrary polite distance between your face and hers.
“You know, your sister said you might be avoiding me. Said you were in charge of planning stuff, so I’d have to come to you if I wanted to know how my suggestions, and your silence meant you might not want to be around me. We don’t see face-to-face, in the real world, outside those evening meetings.”
>Luna frowned. “Anon, we have received no such suggestions of thine.”
>Well shit. You rub your face with a hand.
“She treats me like a child.”
>”Our sister is very protective. We think thy position exists not to advise. Thy position exists to shield thyself.”
“I got that impression.”
>You don’t even try to keep the sarcastic tone in check.
>”If thou wishest, we could make time for thee. Late evening, or early night, we could discuss matters of state.”
>You shrug.
“At least I’ll be able to fulfill my job description.”
>”And Anon...”
>You look over to Luna when she trails off. She looks almost bashful.
>”We are princess of dreams. We are not princess of friendship, as Twilight is. But we understand thy suffering, even if not its particulars. We shall endeavor to be a friend to thee as best we can.”
>You’ve never in your life heard something so formally declared. Considering the subject, it should have been preposterous.
>Luna, somehow, sold the idea as if it was perfectly ordinary.
“I… thanks. I appreciate it.”
>Luna smiles, but it’s a sad one. “When we say we wish it was not needed, we hope thou understandest we mean not that we wish to be rid of thee.”
“I, uh, I think I follow. Maybe.”
>Luna laughs. Compared to her stilted form of speech, it’s the most natural sounding thing to come out of her mouth. “Perhaps, with time spent in our company, thou mayest understand proper speech.”
>She pulls her wing from your shoulders, folding it against her back once more. “Come show us more of thy world. We are sure there are more wonders to this place than large exploding cans and distance friendship boxes.”
“For as long as this dream lets me, sure. But first, lemme do something.”
>You grab the heavy paperweight that had earlier fallen off your desk and move over to your nightstand. After lifting the polished stone comically high over your head, you bring it down as hard as possible on your alarm clock.
>The thing caves in as if it were hollow.
“Always wanted to do that. Princess, as a formal declaration of our friendship, I destroy my killer of dreams.”
>She smiles at you, warm and gentle. “We accept thy gesture with gratitude, Anon.”