In all the years of her life, Princess Luna had never dreamed a dream of her own. Sleep had been silent. Blank. Her eyes shut and then opened hours later. Only as she grew into her alicorn powers did she learn of dreams.

They were wild things to her, and her first experience came as quite the surprise. She knew Celestia to act odd on occasion—pranks and mischief never outside the realm of reason—but at the time had never stopped to consider just how absurd it would have been to turn the entire castle into a giant ball pit. Their conversation the morning after was one she would never forget—much less her ability to peer into others’ dreams.

From that point on she came to realize her powers, seeing and manipulating the dreams of the ponies she ruled. All their night terrors, all their business meetings, all their school attendances in their undergarments. Always a pony slept somewhere in Equestria, and she lived their dreams every waking moment, relishing both the wacky and the worrisome.

But worrisome had been her own opinion on recent dreams. For never in her thousands of ruling years had they borne a collective narrative—a hive mind, even.

It started just a day ago, in the children. They dreamed of empty bags and unfilled buckets. Door handles towered, and parents towered further with shouts of anger and punishment. Dentists… the bane of all children.

Luna smacked her tongue, relishing the taste of their silly, little nightmares. Mmmm, bubblegum.

Though the children’s dreams tickled her palette, combined they left a certain leafy tang to the aftertaste, like parsley. It dwelled on the back of her tongue, a morsel that refused being swallowed. She figured the sudden upsurge in collective dreams must have been the culprit.

But why now? On the eve of the Nightmare Night season, what could be the explanation for such specific nightmares? Often she gave a nudge in the right direction to certain dreams, but never had she played such a direct hoof in so many, nor so near together. These were of the children’s doing.

Were they afraid of Nightmare Night?

Luna opened her eyes. She sat on her throne, the room a soft crystal blue in its want for light. Night Eye and Leather Wing stood at attention at the foot of her throne, unaware of her stirring. She glanced up at the stained glass at the far end of the hall. The sun had set. The moon was full.

It was time to hunt.

Come the turning of the leaves, Luna made a habit of slipping away in the deepest hours of the night. Her shadow slipped across Equestria in search of unsuspecting ponies. A couple on a moonlit stroll. A gang of curfew-breaking foals. It didn’t matter, so long as it wouldn’t lead to harm. In the season of Nightmare Night, everypony enjoyed a good scare. Or, at least, deserved one.

Nightmare Night had grown from a nation-wide respect for life’s delicacy, highlighted by what could have been a much darker reality. Luna had taken up the mantle—though in levity—as testament to her repentance, preserved the spirit of her past demons in hopes her transgressions would never be forgotten.

That, and scaring the withers off ponies was just plain fun.

That night’s withers of choice awaited her in Ponyville. It had been a while since her last Ponyville haunt, and the sight of the town brought a smile to her face. Its little thatched houses huddled together to stave off the autumnal chill, and their windows glowed warm with candlelight. The scent of the hearth lilted above their roofs as she glided over them, a shadow among shadows. The night was her talent, and it hid her well.

She moved invisible between buildings, nothing more than a wisp of smoke, prying, peeking in, searching for a mark. Under her domain the ponies of the town one by one retired to bed or were otherwise preparing.

One such pony turned out the lights and had just closed his eyes. He was a quick sleeper. Already she could feel him falling into the depths of her soul, his mind merging with hers—a fiddle player on a sailing ship.

A flicker of magic and Luna would have been inside to conjure her haunt, but the laughter of children caught her ear. Down the street, around the corner. Three or four of them. An opportunity she couldn’t miss.

She stole away in her shadow form to snake across the ground, the back of her mind twisting the dreams of the lucky stallion with thunderstorms and black cats.

The laughter grew louder at the corner of a flower shop, and she waited for them to near, poking a tendril around to see. There were indeed four of them. Happy, jaunty, without a care in the world. They each wore a mask: a goblin, a jack o’ lantern, a gargoyle, and a bat. It warmed her heart to see them enjoying the season, the night for the thrill of life it brought. But though she held it dear, she knew that little children had no place being out after bedtime. She withdrew and listened carefully.

The foals passed her by, their laughs and ‘rawr’s like music in the stillness of the night. Had she a mouth in her shadow form, Luna would have smiled.

She slipped around behind them, and with her magic conjured clouds to blot out the moonlight. They stopped in their tracks, looking up. The joy in their faces had evaporated like water in a desert, and their mouths hung open as if praying for rain.

A crack of thunder highlighted the worry growing on their faces, and a spark of magic brought mist rolling in through the streets. The children bunched up, back to back, teeth clenched. Luna needn’t look to know their fear—yellow eyes in the darkness, things skittering beyond sight. The imagination—daydreaming—was still within her realm, and she could see the images flashing through their heads as if they were her own.

Luna rose from the shadows, her magic projecting her size as a tide rising over them. Her eyes shone brighter than the full moon to their screams, and she crashed down upon them, dispersing into the mist.

Their shrieks abated as she reformed at the edge of sight, stepping forward with shining eyes. “Who dares disturb the sanctity of the night!?”

All but one of the foals trembled at the sight of her. The gargoyle leapt forward, a great, big smile behind his mask. “Princess Luna!”

She would have recognized that Trottingham accent anywhere, not to mention his tobiano coat. Though the frights were over, she continued her guise regardless.

“Pray tell, little Pipsqueak,” Luna commanded in a lower Voice. “Why art thou skulking about at such an hour? Thou shouldst be in bed.”

Pipsqueak turned his little gargoyle face back to his friends, shoulders slouched, then turned back. He rubbed his foreleg. “We… we snuck out.”

“Snuck out?” Luna questioned. “And disobeyed thy parents’ wishes of sleep?” Her voice, though booming, echoed only within the enshrouding mist, her magic maintaining the solemnity of the night outside.

“Y-yeah.” He cowed as if standing before the chopping block, but courage resurged. Every bit of him bespoke that he was in the right. “But we did it for a good reason!”

“Yeah!” his compatriots chimed in. A short glance silenced their cheers.

“We are listening,” Luna said.

His courage seemed to waver, turned more into desperation. “My mother says there won’t be another Nightmare Night!”

Say what? The veils about them collapsed, and Luna stared blankly at him. She spoke in a normal voice. “No Nightmare Night this year?”

“No! No more Nightmare Night ever!”

The others shouted their complaints, their ruckus causing a few nearby windows to light up.

Luna smirked. “Little Pipsqueak, that is absurd. We—err, I haven’t decreed anything of the sort.”

She felt her smile become strained. The collective dreams. Were they connected?

“Well, my mother says they’re going to partition the mayor and get rid of Nightmare Night!”

Partition? No, he must have meant ‘petition.’ Regardless, he seemed genuinely frightened, and not because of her.

“That’s why we snuck out of Sherry’s house,” he continued, pointing at the bat-mask filly. “We’re starting our own partition to keep Nightmare Night!” He grinned to the cheers of the others.

Luna smiled. Whatever was happening, she was glad to hear they were all for the season. But bedtime was still bedtime. She would figure out what he meant in the morning, when Celestia woke. “Nay, children. The dark of night is no place for you. I must ask that you return to your beds and await the morning.”

Her words ripped the wind from their sails. They ‘aww’ed in unison. “Do we have to?”

She nodded, her voice sympathetic but firm. “I am afraid so, children.”

“Um, Princess Luna.” Pipsqueak looked up at her with puppydog eyes. “We kind of snuck out the window, and we’ll get caught if we go back too early.”

“Yeah,” Sherry said. “My mommy said we had to be extra quiet tonight, because she drank too much mommy juice today.”

Luna blinked. Is that what they called it these days?

She shook her head. “So thou must sneaketh back in?” she said, changing the subject. Pipsqueak nodded, smiling. She could arrange that. “Show us the way.”

The children were more than happy to lead her home. They crossed a river, the cool churning of its stream a welcoming sound in lieu of the insects’ slow seasonal regression from the nightly atmosphere. Not far from it, they stopped before a small house. Luna guessed it to be a shade of red, what for the way the moonlight stripped away the colors of the world.

“We climbed down from there,” Pipsqueak said, pointing to a window. A rope of towels dangled from the open window, fluttering in the breeze. “You can just fly us up, can’t you?”

She could. But that would be too easy. Besides, this mommy juice mare needed a lesson in moderation, especially for her lack of it in front of the children.

“I have a better idea,” Luna said. “Wait here.” She stole into her shadow form and slipped beneath the cracks of the doorframe. The children gathered at the window to watch.

Inside, a gramophone crackled a slow, solemn tune. Old for sure, but not old enough for her to recognize. She flipped the lock open on the door and swept into the living room, where she found the mare dozing on the couch, floating on a cloud of tapioca pudding and cotton candy. What silly dreams some ponies had.

Behind the couch stood the liquor cabinet.

Soundless magic opened the glass doors, and out rolled a bottle to thud onto the carpet. The mare snapped to, staring apprehensively at the cabinet. Luna took form behind her, letting another bottle slip from its shelf to thud and roll away. Out the corner of her eye, she saw the children sneaking toward the stairs.

Concern grew apparent in the mare’s thoughts, smoke and shadows swirling in Luna’s breast. She took a tentative but wobbly step toward the cabinet, eyes dancing between the bottles still on the shelves, not seeing Luna’s reflection in the decorative mirror in the back of the cabinet. Another step. Just a little closer.

Luna let loose a bolt of lightning outside the window. The flash illuminated her in the darkness, a stark figure in the mirror, and she was gone from the house before the screams split the night.

Sobriety for the masses. A real-life dream she sought in passing. Accomplishing it while on a haunt was coincidental—two birds with one stone. Time to finish her rounds and then pay Celestia a visit. As absurd as Pipsqueak’s claim had sounded, it would be worth clarifying.