The door was slightly off-kilter, and Moondog found that terrifying.

Contrary to the belief of many ponies, the dream realm actually did have certain rules it worked by. The laws of physics could be out to lunch, but a few specific things had no such lunch break and always worked in a few specific ways. One of those was that the doors to a pony’s subconscious were perfectly vertical and horizontal. Always, no matter what Moondog or even Mom did. It was an order-imposed-by-consciousness thing.

This one was tilted slightly to the left.

Moondog tilted its head one way. Tilted it the other, just to be sure. It’d checked more than a dozen times, but the very idea of a door being tilted out here was creepy, so it crossed its wings and bit its lip and hoped that- Nope, the door was still tilted.

self.psychUp();

“Alright, Moondog,” it said to itself. “There’s nothing wrong with this. Just a tilted door. That’s okay, right? You’ve seen weirder things in dreams. You’ve made weirder things in specific dreams. Heck, you’re a weirder thing.”

“Yeah, but that’s in specific dreams,” it countered. “This is in the collective unconscious. This place has stronger rules.”

“Oh, shut it,” it replied.

But it had a point. This door should not be tilted.

evaluateSafety(strangeDoor);--Error; InvalidDreamException e

Moondog slowly reached out, then slowly withdrew its hoof. What if the tilted door meant there was something bad about the dream? What if it went in and couldn’t get back out? What if there were nocnice inside? Mom would probably know. Moondog seriously considered going to her and asking.

It stopped because it couldn’t just go running to Mom every time it met something it didn’t know. Eventually, it’d have to do its own thing and couldn’t rely on her. Besides, there was a possibility, however small, that Mom actually didn’t know what was up with the door. She’d taught Moondog everything it knew about dream manipulation, nightmare entities, the connection of dreams to the subconscious, and loads and loads of other stuff. And yet she’d never mentioned this. There could still be things even she didn’t know.

So. Go crying to Mom for help? Or take an immense risk? Moondog thought and decided.

“Here goes nothing,” it muttered.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d6f6f6e6c6974204d6561646f77&lucid=n");

They may both emit water, but there is a drastic difference between a faucet and a broken water pipe. One is smooth, controlled, and very useful. The other is chaotic, wild, and does nothing but make a mess.

Dreams were the former. This was the latter.

It was barely even a dream, more incoherent expulsions from the mind; Moondog navigated more by feeling than by sight. It was like being in a funhouse, trippy with crazy angles. There was something in there that wanted to solidify into a proper dream, but it kept getting snatched away as the realm twitched and undulated.

But somewhere in it all, Moondog could feel somepony. They were terrified.

Time to do something about it.

dream.settle(MOOD.Default);

At just the right moment, Moondog planted a hoof on the ground and pulsed. Twitches were delayed half an instant and collided with other twitches in just the right way to cancel each other out. At the same time, Moondog dumped energy into the dreamform beneath. No shaping; that wasn’t important right now. It just needed a coherent environment.

From nothingness sprang a gorge, dozens of feet deep and several yards wide. It looked like a long-dry riverbed. An old graveyard, crisscrossed with random crumbling walls and filled with blank tombstones, spanned the bottom. Dead trees dotted the cemetery, the wind howling through their stiff branches. Everything was a dull, monochrome ashen gray. Even the sun seemed to be dying. Not exactly cheery, but it would do for now. And yet-

--Error; UnknownException e

Something about the dream threatened to slip away from Moondog. Something didn’t want to sit still like dreams did. Something wasn’t fully connected with the dreamer’s mind. Something was going to get itself slapped silly if it kept this up.

“H-hello? Mom? Dad? A-anypony?”

The voice wasn’t young, but it wasn’t exactly old, either. A teenager, maybe. 15 or 16. A mare. It wasn’t really coming from any specific location, and it was hard to tell whether that was because of dream logic or just sound echoing around the canyon. For some reason.

acquireDreamer();return:--Error; UnknownException e

Moondog frowned. Normally, it knew everything about the dreamer on instinct once it entered a dream. Why not now? It felt… discombobulated. Out of whack. But it quickly pushed the feeling aside. It had a dream to improve. “Somepony out there?” it called. “I don’t bite. Unless you want me to.”

“N-no!” the mare yelled. “It’s- How, how did I get here?”

Okay, that was strange. In dreams, either you didn’t question how you got there because you didn’t notice that sort of thing or knew it was a dream and didn’t care. You didn’t question the dream like it was reality. The mind just didn’t work like that.

Whatever the cause, the mare’s talking allowed Moondog to zero in on her location. “Hey, don’t ask me,” Moondog said, walking across the scraggly ground. “It’s your head.” It flitted over a ruined wall into a rundown graveyard.

“…What? I- W-what are you s-saying? I d-did this?”

Even Moondog couldn’t miss the fear in the voice. It dialled things back a bit. “Well, not deliberately.” It approached a gnarled, leafless tree that reached for the sky with twisted branches. “It’s complicated. Minds are like that.”

An earth pony leaned out from behind the tree to look at Moondog. She was about fifteen, with a yellow coat and soft green eyes. Her mane was long, cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall, pink and white twisted together. She was shaking slightly and blinking a lot. “Who are you?” She took a few tentative steps towards Moondog. “I… I’m Moonlit Meadow, by, by the way. Can- Can you help me get out of here?” Meadow looked around and pulled herself close. “This place scares me,” she whispered.

dream.settle(MOOD.Happy);--Error; UnknownException e

“Well, what about this?” Moondog reached up and, twisting the dream’s textures in just the right way, yanked away the grayness like it was wallpaper. In the space of an instant, grass had sprung up across the bottom of the canyon, the trees were full of leaves, the graveyard had been replaced with a particularly rocky patch of ground, and the sun was shining brightly.

It wasn’t perfect. There was something off about the way it changed, which befuddled Moondog to no end. Absolutely nothing, not even nocnice, had interfered with dream-changing in that particular way before. But the end result was the same, so-

noteToSelf("Ask Mom about error in tweaking dreams");

At the changeover, Meadow yelped, jumping two feet into the air from a sitting position. “What?” she squeaked. “How did you do that?!” She nosed at the ground, as if it would vanish if she poked it too hard. She tentatively bit-

grass.setFlavor(TRUE);

-off a tuft of grass and chewed. She swallowed and stared up at Moondog. “Who are you?”

Moondog chuckled. “Who am I? Who am I?”

boast(GO.Big || GO.Home);

“Moondog the Tantabus, at your service!” Moondog flared its wings and bowed. “The latest and greatest, as well as first and worst, dream apprentice of Princess Luna herself, and her sole psychosomatic descendant! If you want good dreams, I’ve got ’em by the trainload! I’m your all-singing, all-dancing ticket to anywhere! I slice, I dice, I make the best dang julienne fries this side of reality!” Confetti rained from the sky amid thunderous, sourceless applause.

Meadow was simply confused. “What… What are julienne fries? What’s a tantibus? A-are you even a pony?”

self.setAppearance(SPECIES.Abyssinian);

“Well, technically, I’m a pony now.” Moondog reared and quickly remolded itself; soon it was bipedal and feline. “And now I’m an Abyssinian.” It smiled and ran its fingers through its hair. Moondog liked fingers.

Meadow squeaked and shuffled away. “What-? I-! I don’t-” She took a deep breath, rubbed her temples, and screamed, “What is going on? Who are you, what are you, what am I doing here, why aren’t you giving me a straight answer, GAH!”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default);

Moondog dropped back into its usual form. “You really don’t know? This is a dream. C’mon, everypony gets that!”

“But I’m not asleep! I-” Meadow frowned and looked away. “I don’t think so, anyway. I…” She hit her head a few times. “I remember a… a fire, and… falling-”

self.setMentalAlarmBells(TRUE);

“-but that’s it.” Meadow glared at Moondog. “Really, who are you and what’s going on?”

Not liking the implications of Meadow’s last memory, Moondog stalled as it thought. What was it supposed to do at a time like this? “Oh, that’s complicated, you know,” it said airily. It waved a hoof around vaguely. “Long story. I’ll, um… I’ll be right back. Stay right here, okay?”

Meadow blinked, then screamed, “Where would I go?”

But Moondog was already gone.

self.setLocation(mom.getLocation());

Mom was turning a river to liquid chocolate for a hydrophobic stallion when Moondog popped up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, um, Mom?”

“Yes, Moondog?” Mom dipped a hoof in the river and licked the chocolate off. Smacking her lips, she said, “Hmm. A bit sweet, I think.”

“You’re leaning way too much on childhood memories of the taste,” Moondog said automatically. That was the mistake it always made. “Adults have it more mellow, smoother, bitterer.” It frowned. “‘Bitterer’? No, that’s not right. Stupid Ponish irregular comparatives.”

Tasting the tweaked river made Mom raise an eyebrow at Moondog. “You knew that?” She sounded a bit… proud.

“I’ve been experimenting with taste,” said Moondog. “Look, Mom, how’re a coma and sleeping different? The pony’s unconscious either way, right?”

“Why?” asked Mom, her voice sharp with worry. “What brought this to mind?”

“Well,” Moondog said, rubbing the back of its neck, “it’s…”

self.setHonestyLevel(100);

“I found a filly who’s- Her dreams are weird and the last thing she remembers is something about a fire, so I, I’m worried she’s in a coma.” Moondog wrung its hooves together. “And there are, you know, ways to wake a pony up from normal sleep, but I don’t want to do anything to her if she’s really comatose and I’d mess things up more.”

“Ah.” Mom’s ears drooped. She lowered her head and took a long draught from the chocolate river. “Ponies are unsure of the precise nature of comas,” she said, “but although your attempts would not harm her, they would not awaken her, either. There is more to sleep than mere unconsciousness. It is a time for relaxation, for the mind to rejuvenate itself. When one enters a coma, it is often because the body is in urgent need of healing and cannot afford exertion. What did the dream feel like?”

“It was… It’s kinda hard to describe.” Moondog looked up at the yellow sky. “It was like… the mind was dreaming, but didn’t know it was dreaming. Kind of a mess. I had to work more than usual to get the dream going how I wanted it and it kept wanting to slip out of that way. I… I really don’t know. And the usual knowledge spells weren’t working right, either.”

“Hmm. In those circumstances, a coma certainly sounds reasonable.” Mom sighed and the dream vanished around them. “It is always unfortunate, to encounter a situation such as that, but it cannot be helped.”

“Ah.” Moondog nodded vaguely, trying to process it all. Just dropping that information on Meadow — Hey, guess what, you’re in a coma! — would be… ugh. But she needed to know, right? She couldn’t just be stuck in that canyon thingamaplace until she woke up — if she woke up. What to do, what to do, how to do it, how to do i-

“Is there something more you need?” asked Mom.

“Nothing,” Moondog said quickly. “I just-”

--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

“-gotta… go… do… something else.” It paused and hastily flashed a nervous grin at an unconvinced Mom. “Another dusk, another dream, right?” It saluted and was gone.

Once it had something resembling a plan, Moondog covered its return to Meadow’s dream with a teleportation spark. The dream hadn’t changed much since Moondog had left, although it was maybe a little bit grayer. Meadow was sitting at the base of the tree, half-heartedly sketching out pictures it the dirt. When she heard Moondog arrive, she looked up, and you didn’t need magic to recognize the suspicion in her expression.

understate();

Moondog sat down some distance from her, giving her space. “Hey,” it said. “We kinda got off on the wrong hoof.”

Meadow’s lack of reaction spoke volumes.

“So let’s start over, ’kay?” Moondog went over its method of easing Meadow into the whole deal one last time, then said, “Right now, you’re in the dream realm.”

Meadow’s response was so quick it was practically reflexive. “But I’m not-”

“We’re getting to that,” Moondog said, holding up a hoof, “hold your horses. I’m Moondog, and I technically don’t exist. I was made by Princess Luna to help her in patrolling the dream realm. Basically, I’m just a blob of magic that thinks it’s something special.” It grinned lopsidedly. “I mean, did you think this-” It tossed its mane back and flared its wings wide, making sure its starry palette was as visible as possible. “-was real?”

“I just thought you did something weird to your coat,” Meadow said, “like the crystal ponies.”

There were times when magic took all the fun out of being magical.

“So… that means…” Meadow frowned and scratched the back of her neck. “You can control dreams? Like Princess Luna?”

“Yeah.” Moondog reached up and flicked a hoof through the sky, ignoring the coma’s mild jolts of pain. The sun raced to the horizon and day turned to night in seconds. As the moon soared to its peak, Moondog yanked it down. “It’s not that hard,” Moondog said, holding the foot-wide ball out to Meadow.

Meadow’s hooves twitched as she slowly reached out. She touched the moon, froze for an instant, and delicately plucked it from Moondog’s grasp. “Whoa,” she whispered, turning it over. She reached up and placed the moon back in the sky. Then she tried to grab it again, but it was too far away. “Whoa,” she said again. “That’s- I bet you could make better dreams than Luna.”

Moondog let out a quick, barklike laugh. “Oh, heck no. Mom could run rings around me in her sleep!” When Meadow tilted her head in confusion, Moondog could almost see her brain struggling to parse that sentence. “Metaphorically, I mean. Well, I guess literally, too. I wonder if she’s where that phrase came from…”

Meadow stared for a moment, then looked around the canyon. “So if this is the dream realm, how did I get here?” She stood up and started walking around. “I know I didn’t fall asleep.”

self.psychUp();

Unable to think of anything more gentle, Moondog said, “You’re in a coma.”

The entire dream twitched painfully, some grass turning gray. Meadow froze as she stared at a cloud. “W-what?”

“You’re in a coma. I think- Your house must’ve caught on fire or something.” Moondog was painfully aware that its bedside manner left a lot to be desired. “And now you’re here. Sorry.”

“B-but… This- I-” Meadow collapsed onto her rump, blinking. “You- You’re a- dream thingy! C-can’t you wake me up?” More color drained from the world, some plants withering to ash.

“If I could,” Moondog said, holding back a sigh, “I totally would. Really. But I can’t.” Why’d it decided to tell Meadow the truth, anyway? It should’ve taken her lucidity and been done with it. But then, planning ahead normally didn’t matter when nothing lasted more than a few hours.

“What?! But… my parents are out there, my family’s out there, my friends are out there… My- My life is out there! It-” Meadow cringed and looked away. “I-I don’t w-want to stay h-here. I sh-shouldn’t be here. I- I-” Holding her head in her hooves, she tried to force her words out, but they didn’t come. “I wanna go home…”

dream.settle(MOOD.Happy);--Error; UnknownException e

Moondog fluttered up to her, green haphazardly cascading from its shadow, and lightly put a hoof on her shoulder. Meadow immediately latched onto it, burying her face in its mane. Little gasps escaped her as she shook.

“Look,” said Moondog softly. “I need to leave. I have a job to do. But do you want me to come back when I can?”

“P-please. It’s so lonely here…”

Moondog let Meadow cling to it for several long moments. Let her have it. It’d probably be the closest thing to a happy experience she’d have for a whi- Idea…

dream.settle(MOOD.Happy_Memories);--Error; UnknownException edreamer.allowLucidity(FALSE);

Moondog held its nonexistent breath, but even as the dream stumbled awkwardly into Meadow’s past experiences, nothing felt wrong about her lucidity slipping away from her. With any luck, she wouldn’t be aware of loneliness or boredom.

Now. What would Mom say?

“…so I did the best I could,” Moondog said to Mom as it paced back and forth across a path of stars, “but she’s still comatose, and I-” It flared its wings in frustration. “I don’t know what to do! How do you get ponies up again?”

Mom had stared pensively at Moondog throughout the whole explanation, never interrupting it, never saying a word. Finally, with Moondog finished, she rustled her wings, took a deep breath, and said in an almost pained voice, “I can’t.”

“But-! If we- Uffh, fudge.” Moondog had been afraid of that. It ran a hoof through its mane. “I really shouldn’t have told her that, should I?”

“Perhaps not.” Mom could only be more stone-faced by being actual stone.

“Friggety. And it- feels like the dream’s just gonna fall apart sooner or later, so I’ve gotta hang around to make sure-”

“No.” Mom’s voice was solid, a statement of fact, yet she sounded reluctant at the same time.

Moondog flinched and looked up. “Mom, she’s like fifteen and she’s trapped in a strange place with literally nopony else around, not even her parents or friends, I can’t just let her dreams turn on her! I know I’d have to let some other nightmares get away, but-”

“You cannot attend one pony to the detriment of others, either,” said Mom. She took a deep breath, like she didn’t want to say what she was saying. “And if you neglect others’ dreams-”

“Mom, I- I don’t think you get it.” The stars in Moondog’s coat began twisting around each other. “I have one job — just one! — and that’s make good dreams. But you’re telling me to stay away from-”

“It’s not that simple,” Mom said, uncomfortably flexing her wings. “We care for all of Equestria. Should you devote all your time to this one pony, well-intentioned though it may be, you will miss the big picture.”

“Equestria’s a photomosaic, you know,” Moondog mumbled. “The big picture is made up of lots of little pictures.”

“That may be, but-”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

“Hold up. All my time?” asked Moondog. It flew up to Mom’s eye level. “Mom, how long do you think I’m going to be in her head?”

Mom blinked. Slowly, she said, “How long were you planning?”

“I dunno, maybe half an hour every day? Ish? It doesn’t need that much maintenance.” Without falling, Moondog paused in its flapping to make a noncommittal gesture with one of its wings. “And I’ve still got other stuff that needs doing, so I can’t skimp for much more than-”

“You define taking a half-hour break in between working for countless hours on end as skimping?” Mom asked quietly.

Moondog shrugged. “Making good dreams is kinda, y’know, my job, so I thought, like, if I wasn’t doing that-”

“It is my job as well, and yet I do not devote all my time to it,” said Mom. “I need rest, relaxation, ‘me’ time, so I take breaks. Why shouldn’t you?”

“I’m not a pony, so I kinda don’t need those things, so I thought-”

Mom waved a hoof dismissively. “That is irrelevant. How many ponies dream of things they want but do not need? I apologize for not making myself sufficiently clear earlier. It…” She unfolded and folded her wings as she paused. Moondog knew enough about her to tell that she was looking for the right way to phrase something, possibly without offending it. “It can be easy to… to forget-”

tension.break();

“That I’m barely a year old and know pretty much jack squat about the real world?” suggested Moondog, landing on the lack of ground again.

Mom couldn’t help smiling a little. “In essence. One is supposed to have a decade and a half of parenting before a child becomes remotely self-sufficient, not the mere months I have had with you. Even so, I certainly would not have described you in that manner.”

return: TRUE

“Mom, my self-awareness does include my own limits, you know. Usually.”

“That is true for astonishingly few ponies.” Mom flexed her wings and briefly looked over her shoulder at something Moondog wasn’t aware of. “I leave it to you to decide how much time with Meadow is sufficient. I shall trust your judgment on this matter. But if you remain worried about the rest of your work, might I offer some advice? Care for this pony during the day. You-”

“Yeah, yeah, less ponies asleep, less nightmares missed, I know,” said Moondog, waving Mom away. “I was planning on it.”

“Let me know what you learn about comas, if anything. Perhaps you could teach me.”

“Heh. That’ll be the day.”

By the time Moondog returned to Meadow’s “dream”, it was on the brink of collapsing into incoherent static again. With a slight twist, Moondog pulled it back to the canyon. Meadow was sitting beneath a tree, staring at nothing in particular. She turned to Moondog once it teleported in and pulled herself up to sit straighter. “I’m sorry I overreacted,” mumbled Meadow. She sounded like she was trying to sound tough. “I’m fifteen, and I was crying like a baby, and- Yeah.” She sniffed.

“Apology accepted,” said Moondog. “Won’t tell anypony.” It peeled off its mouth and tossed it away.

Meadow smiled weakly. “Thanks. That goes double for my sister.” She got up, flexing her legs. “So what’re you doing back here?”

self.setMouth(TRUE);

“Getting stuck inside your own head has gotta be a bit dull,” said Moondog. “I’m gonna stop by here every now and then to keep things interesting for you until you’re better. If that’s what you want, of course.”

“For- For me?” Meadow asked, putting a hoof on her chest. “Why? Don’t, don’t you have other stuff you need to do?”

“I can manage. Trust me.” Moondog walked up to Meadow, surreptitiously shrinking itself so the two of them were about the same size. “You’re in trouble. I can help. So why not?”

Meadow stared at the ground, but Moondog recognized the posture as thoughtful, not aversive. The idea of being able to do anything was often overwhelming for ponies, for some reason. Finally, Meadow asked, “So what can you do?”

“The only limits to that are your imagination,” Moondog said, smirking, “and believe me…” It stomped, shaking the entire canyon to its foundations.

for (i in range(6)) {    dream.settle(MOOD.Random);}

As the canyon folded backwards on itself, Moondog reared, spreading its wings and legs wide. “…that ain’t hyperbole at all.” Every few seconds, the dream fell into a new scene: a rainy city of skyscrapers, drenched in black and neon. A grey void filled with countless floating mirrors. The rings of a gas giant. The middle of a hurricane. An underwater volcano that spewed red smoke. Endless rolling plains.

Meadow would’ve yelped, but she had to spit out an eel first. It slithered into the grass and vanished. After she was done coughing, Meadow said angrily, “Could you, like, not do that? I feel like I’m gonna puke.” She sat down and rubbed her stomach.

“Gotcha. No rapid environment changes.”

dreamer.setNauseaLevel(0);

Moondog sat down in front of Meadow and smiled. “So. What do you want to do?”

“Mom? Could you… do me a favor? You know that filly in a coma? She’s… Her name’s Moonlit Meadow and she lives in Halterdale. Do you… think you could… maybe… I mean, if, if you have the time… I was just wondering…”

spitOutThoughts();

“Could you find her hospital records or something and tell me how she’s doing? I know it’s probably not great, but…”

“I shall do my best.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Moondog asked.

“I’m comatose. Am I supposed to feel okay?” Meadow replied. She leaned further over the ledge, staring down into the cenote.

“The kinda-mopey, things-are-bad-but-I-guess-they-could-be-worse sorta-okay, at least.” Meadow had been like that for a while, but it was hard to blame her; how much fun could you really have when you knew your body could be dying? Moondog swung itself down to the vertical portion of the ridge, jiggled with the gravity, and sat down. “Are you that? Or are you actually depressed about something?”

“Not really ‘depressed’, more…” Meadow sighed. “My sister would’ve loved it here. We always wanted to go cliff jumping in something like this, but our family just never had the money to go to Mexicolt.” She kicked a stone into space. Several seconds passed before they heard the splash. “And I feel kinda guilty for doing this without her, even if it’s not real.”

“Ah.” Moondog cartwheeled back up to level ground and sat next to Meadow. “Miss her?” It’d never really wanted siblings, although it could see the appeal. Kinda. Maybe.

“A lot, yeah. I know siblings are supposed to be at each others’ throats, but she’s cool.”

“Hmm.” But if a sister was a friendly face…

acquireDreamer();return:--Error; UnknownException e

Still no chance of getting Meadow’s memories of her, either. Daggit. “What was she like?” Moondog asked. It traced out the shape of a blank white, featureless pony in the air. “Maybe I can, like, make a dream copy of her, and-”

“I don’t think that’d work.” Meadow fell back onto the ridge and stared up at the sky. “I’d know it wasn’t really her, and- it wouldn’t- feel right. I’d be cheating.”

“Oh.” Stupid unreality. Moondog flexed its wings, considering whether or not it should be offended. It settled on “no”. “Are you sure you’re sorta-okay? It’s just cliff diving. It’s not even real.”

“I don’t know,” Meadow said. “It’s weird. I, just, I feel like I shouldn’t do it. I can’t explain it.” She got up again, looked down at the water again, and sighed. “Thanks for trying, but I don't think there's anything that can get me down there.”

dreamer.shove();

“Her house caught on fire during the night and her bedroom door was blocked. She attempted to climb down via the tree outside her window, but a branch broke, and she fell, hit her head, and lapsed into unconsciousness. That was over half a moon ago.”

“So… she… might not ever wake up.”

“She may not. She may. Ponies have survived worse. It is hard to say, even for professionals.”

“Here’s hoping. Thanks.”

The pirate ship rocked slightly against the oncoming waves. In the distance, a whale broke the surface of the water, hung for a split second, then crashed back down. “So if you’re like a… golem or something,” said Meadow, “do you remember what it was like when you woke up? Or were activated or whatever?”

whale.breach();

“Kinda, not really,” Moondog said, watching another whale jump. “It’s… I had all these stimuli, but I didn’t know what they meant. Doing some things felt good, doing others felt bad, but I didn’t know what I was doing.” It didn’t think about its creation much. It was a thing that had happened, so why linger on it? “Then, suddenly, it all clicked and everything made sense. I couldn’t even believe I’d been that stupid before. It’d been like I was drunk before.”

“…I’m fifteen. It’d be bad if I knew what that felt like.”

“Right. Sorry.” Moondog planted its hoof in its face. “Do you play any instruments? Piano, guitar, theremin?”

“Mom pushed me to play the piano,” said Meadow. “And… I actually didn’t hate it.” She smiled and the waves grew slightly smaller. “I still play a little. It’s fun.”

“Guess mothers know best, right?” Mom certainly did.

“This time. Why?”

“Take the times when you learned something new about playing music, finally understanding what it meant after seeing it elsewhere, then apply it to literally everything, and that was me waking up in a nutshell.”

Meadow stared out over the ocean, frowning as she thought. “That… That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Moondog said with a shrug. “But that’s what it was like.”

“Weird,” muttered Meadow. She blinked a few times, then leaned over the railing to look down at the water. “I wanna go for a swim. Can you-?”

dreamer.setWaterBreathing(TRUE);ocean.setTemperature(WARM.Somewhat);

“Already done,” said Moondog. “Come on.” It walked into thin air as the railing pulled itself apart and reassembled into a diving board.

“You know,” Meadow said, looking down from the board as she bounced up and down, “when I get up, Dad’s gonna freak at how good my diving is. I’ve been trying to learn it for, like, ever.”

“‘Yes, Dad,’” Moondog said in Meadow’s voice. “‘A figment of somepony else’s imagination taught me how to dive while I was unconscious.’”

“Your name should’ve been ‘Figment’ or something. ‘Moondog’s’ weird.” Meadow jumped from the board and dove into the ocean, plunging beneath the water with nary a splash.

“Well, I like it,” pouted Moondog.

“Meadow’s condition is unchanged.”

“It’s been almost a moon. Shouldn’t she…?”

“I cannot say. I lack medical experience with comas. I do not know what this means for her survival.”

Moondog watched Meadow skate without skates around the rings of a gas giant, thinking to itself. It’d been forming an idea for several nights, now, and the more it bounced the idea back and forth, the more the idea felt like a good one. Meadow didn't belong here, and the knowledge of her coma would work its way into every good experience she could have. Besides, she had family waiting for her.

“What’ll you do when I’m gone?” Meadow asked as she passed by Moondog again.

Moondog pushed off her asteroid and drifted over to Meadow. “Same thing I do when pretty much everypony else is gone during the day. Keep working on dreams.” It flared its wings to glide to a halt right next to her, vacuum of space notwithstanding.

“But you’ll miss me, right?” Meadow kicked off and started skating again.

“Oh, sure,” said Moondog. It skated off after her. “Not counting Mom, you’re the pony I’ve talked with the most.”

“…That’s depressing.”

“Eh. I don’t mind.”

self.gatherThoughts();

“You know, I’ve been thinking…” Moondog said. “I might know of a way to wake you up.”

Meadow whipped around to Moondog, her mouth hanging open. “What? How?”

“Well, it’s- I’m already in your head, right? So if I go deeper, maybe I can, y’know, find out what’s going on in your unconscious. Maybe. I dunno, I’m kinda playing this by ear. So…” Terrible, terrible bedside manner. Moondog took a deep breath. “If you’re okay with it, I’d like to try. I promise I’ll be careful.”

Meadow looked at her spacesuit and at the nebula that surrounded them. Looking down, she shuffled her hooves. “Well,” she mumbled, “I… don’t want you to-”

“Look, I won’t be offended. You belong in the physical world.”

“Then…” Meadow kept looking down for another few moments, then nodded. “Yeah. I… I miss my family.” She sniffed a little. “Just don’t touch anything else in there, okay?”

Moondog grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Booooooooo.”

“Now hold still.” Moondog lightly touched its horn to Meadow’s head and-

dreamer.viewSource();

-the world collapsed in on itself as sensation exploded.

MOV  $md, PDX

The realm Moondog dove into was indescribable, pure feeling and perception. It wasn’t black; there was simply nothing to see. It wasn’t silent; there was simply nothing to hear. Nothing existed, not even space, except thought, impression, and gut instinct. Fortunately, Moondog was essentially a construct of thought, perception, and gut instinct. It’d never been in the direct unconscious like this, but it felt right at home, almost even more than in dreams. It casually drifted from idea to idea, from concept to concept.

MOV  $md, PIPMOV  $md, PSXMOV  $md, PTX

It wasn’t sure what it was looking for, but it figured- There. That wasn’t right. Moondog had never perceived something like that, but that definitely wasn’t right. In laymare’s terms, there was a gap between thinking and doing. (It actually wasn’t like that at all, but the specifics of the concept defied words.) Signals came from the eyes, but the brain didn’t get them. Ideas came from the mind, but the muscles wouldn’t act on them. Whether it was due to brain damage or something else, Moondog couldn’t tell. But maybe it could do something about it.

POP  PMDPUSH PACPOP  PMDPUSH PAC

It started, for lack of a better term, pulling, trying to close the gap. The two sides had to be connected, or else mind and body would stay separated. Something like that. And it wasn’t like pulling at all, closer to recoloring a painting to make it more like another painting. Except not really. Moondog suspected that the necessary terms for whatever it was doing hadn’t been invented yet.

It was hard at first. One side or the other barely budged. And yet budge they did. Moondog kept pulling. With time quantified exactly the same way as any other sensation rather than passing, it didn’t know how long it pulled, but it never thought of stopping. Slowly, the gap shrank. Moondog plucked little bits of energy from itself to accelerate the process. It’d grow back. Meadow needed to wake up.

After an eternal instant, the gap was nearly closed. Moondog kept pulling, harder and harder. Thoughts and actions met and-

SYSCALL--Error; the memory could not be read. Rebooting...

-suddenly Moondog was back in the collective unconscious. Meadow’s door was gone, as if she’d woken up. Moondog was tingling all over. It shook itself off. Gah, getting thrown out of a dream when the pony woke up was a terrible feeling.

Moondog examined the space where Meadow’s dream had been. When somepony woke up there was never any indication that their dream had existed in the first place, and this was no exception. Well, if she woke up normally, that was a good sign. Moondog wished it had felt the dream in the split second before Meadow had woken up, but it had all happened too fast. Well, time to check in in twenty-four hours or so and see what had happened.

Although it was probably best that Mom know about Meadow, too.

“You what?!” shrieked Mom.

“Mom, Mom, calm down, I-”

“I learn that you inserted yourself directly into a pony’s unfiltered unconscious,” Mom bellowed, “and you expect me to calm myself?! Have you the slightest inkling of the risks involved? To you or her? Or did you simply dive without thinking?”

“Mom! We-”

“You need to restrain yourself! You cannot simply do as you please with your access to ponies’ minds! Within this realm, you and I can only be held accountable by ourselves, and I should hope I will not be constantly required to step in to keep you on the straight and narrow.”

“Mom! Let me-”

“I let your earlier impropriety against those robbers slide, as they were ultimately criminals, but now I wonder if that was ideal. You were fortunate they followed through.”

“For the last time, if they weren’t serious, I wouldn’t’ve told anypony!” protested Moondog. “What kind of person do you take me for?”

Mom sighed and her voice softened. “In all honesty? I do not know. I did not give you any sort of legal knowledge, and yet you knew that robberies were wrong anyway and still told somepony. I told you nothing of writing, and yet you took it upon yourself to personally help a struggling author.” Her words regained their edge. “And in spite of those, you decided that directly interfering with a pony’s unconscious was acceptable.”

Under her withering glare, Moondog stared at the lack of floor beneath its hooves. “It’s not that simple,” it muttered, painfully aware of how weak a protest that was.

“Oh?” Mom raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Mom, I-” Moondog took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’ve never said this before, but…” It raised its head to look Mom in the eye. “I love you. I really, really do. I was an accident from day one, and you didn’t just- shut me down. You set me free, you’ve let me grow, you’ve answered every question I’ve had… You’re always there for me. Always. And I- When I looked at Meadow, it’s- She knew none of this was real, that she might never see her family again, and- I couldn’t imagine that happening to me! I- I couldn’t not help her.”

Mom twitched and pulled her head back. “You… I…” She looked away, her mouth moving soundlessly.

“I- I know it… that normally it’d be… bad,” said Moondog. “But- But it was the only thing I could do!” It flapped its wings and danced in place. “I- I- I couldn’t even just ignore it, my entire point is doing something for dreams, and-” It hung its head and its wings went limp. “I just wanted to help,” it mumbled.

self.wrestle(self.getEmotionalState());--Error; ObjectOutOfBoundsException e--Error; ThoughtBufferOverflowException e

“I’ll… just… get to the next dream,” it said quietly, turning away. “I promise I won’t-”

“Wait.” Mom reached out with a wing and lightly pulled Moondog close. Lightly enough that Moondog could, if it wanted, simply walk away or even plant its hooves and stay put.

Moondog shuffled next to Mom and buried its face in her mane. “I’m sorry, Mom,” it whispered.

“You are forgiven,” Mom said, stroking its mane. “I am partly to blame. I ought to have remembered that you lacked full knowledge of dream etiquette. I… merely assumed…” She sighed. “Again, it is easy to forget your origins, at times, and that you still have much to learn.”

self.wrestle(self.getEmotionalState());

“You ponies spend years just learning how to talk,” said Moondog. It tried and failed to grin. “It’s not my fault you’re so slow.”

“Still, impulse control is hardly a strength of yours.”

“No.” Moondog rubbed its head against Mom’s neck.

“So how did you do it?”

Moondog looked up, frowning. “Ten seconds ago, you were peeved that I did that,” it said, stars burning brightly in its mane, “and now you want me to tell you how to do it?”

“You did the equivalent of passing a burning match through an unknown gas, which most anypony could tell you is less than intelligent. But if we can understand what you did, know how it works, we can do it more safely. Awakening somepony from a coma is certainly not something to be ignored.” Mom frowned slightly. “Even if your method of testing it was less than ideal.”

disentangle(momHug);

“Alright.” Moondog pushed away from Mom, flowing around her feathers. “It’s easy. You know the magic we do to get into dreams? I just did that on the next subconscious level down. You get into the-”

“Pardon?” Mom’s wings twitched and her brow furrowed in confusion. “The… next subconscious level down?”

Moondog tilted its head. “Yeah. The place dreams come from. Where else?”

“That… portion of the mind is incomprehensible to ponies,” Mom said slowly. “It is impossible to navigate.”

“I comprehended and navigated it just fine,” Moondog said with a shrug. “It was hard and I totally don’t wanna go there again, but I could.”

“My own spells cannot access it.” Mom’s words were direct half at herself. “And you simply used the normal dreamwalking spell?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I guess I, uh, kinda… tweaked it. It’s hard to describe.”

“Can you not try?”

“Well, it’s the best I can do. Can, can you gimme a sec so I can think?”

ponder();

It wasn’t long before Moondog got it. “How do you move your leg?”

Mom opened her mouth and promptly closed it again. She raised her leg, looked at it. She wiggled her hoof back and forth, frowning. “…I can see the difficulty,” she mused.

“Really, I just go in,” said Moondog, miming a dive with its hooves. “I can’t get a better description than that.”

Mom stared up and made small popping noises with her mouth. “Perhaps, as a creature of the mind,” she said, “you can understand the mind better than I. I wonder…”

“Maybe you should just lock me in some researcher’s head for a week so she can study me,” Moondog joked.

self.setSerious(TRUE);

“No, really,” it added, “I wouldn’t mind learning more about me, as long as it doesn’t hurt too much.”

“Hmm.”

Almost as an afterthought, Moondog added, “I’ll swing by Meadow’s dreams tonight and see how she’s doing. I didn’t really get a chance to check earlier, ’cause of, y’know, reasons.” It needed to do this, even if something terrible had happened to Meadow’s mind.

“Let me know how she fares.”

As a partially-mental world, the dream realm could naturally get skewed by its inhabitants’ state of mind. When Moondog dreaded being forced to see what it had done to Meadow, time slowed so it wouldn’t have to see. When Moondog dreaded being forced to wait to see what it had done to Meadow, time sped up so it wouldn’t have to wait. Although Moondog was perfectly used to that sort of thing, it definitely made the wait itself a huge hassle.

But Meadow had finally fallen asleep and Moondog was in front of her door. It looked exactly the same as it had before, only now the lines that were supposed to be straight up and down were straight up and down. Just like every other door.

evaluateSafety(door);return: SAFE.Completely

“Okay,” said Moondog. “So far, so good, so don’t turn back.”

self.psychUp();

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. “Here goes nothing,” it muttered.

self.setLocation("adwl://dreamer.uncn/surface?hexID=4d6f6f6e6c6974204d6561646f77&lucid=n");

The dream felt like a dream: the idle flights of fancy of a well-ordered mind, with no fake feeling of lies. This particular dream was an ocean. Endless, featureless, completely flat, perfectly mirroring an utterly white sky. Strange, shimmering, almost lepidopteran songbirds flew carelessly above it. And easily twirling on the surface of the ocean without casting a single ripple was Meadow.

flock.selectRandomActor().approach(self);

One of the “birds” detached from the flock, flew over to Moondog, and landed on its outstretched hoof, exactly as directed. No painful surprises. No weird slips. The dream was a dream, it seemed, it seemed. As the bird preened one of its four glittering wings, Moondog glanced over at Meadow.

bird.feedLines(self.getThoughts());

“Oh, just get over there, you wuss,” squawked the bird, and flew off.

“Am I really that mouthy to myself?” Moondog muttered. “Oh, well.”

self.inhabit(dreamer.getReflection());

Moondog quietly slipped into Meadow’s reflection. With no fanfare, the mirrored pony stopped copying Meadow’s dancing and simply watched her. She didn’t notice for several moments until she happened to look down and realized her reflection was sitting down and she was standing up. Lucidity hadn’t fully kicked in yet, so the weirdness didn’t register. Meadow smiled. “Hey.”

Moondog smiled back. “Yo.”

“What’s it like down there?”

“Down here? No, you’re the one that’s down.”

Meadow looked up and pondered this. In dream logic, it made perfect sense. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default);dreamer.allowLucidity(TRUE);

She looked back down. “Sorry.” Then she blinked and frowned. “Hold on. You’re…”

Moondog, back in its usual shape, smirked. “Yeah. I am. Why do you think this is up and that’s down?” It dove through the surface of the ocean and alighted on the same side as Meadow. “So what’s it like out there?”

Meadow stared at Moondog for another few moments before the question registered. She smiled and blinked glistening eyes. “It- It’s… real. Thank you.” She started laughing; blue began to blur into the white as the featureless background dissolved into an almost-clear sky. “It was…” She wiped her eyes. “I, I saw… Mom was sitting at my bed when I woke up, I think she was telling me about her day so I’d have something to hear, and then she saw that I was awake, and I’ve never seen her so happy, and…” She tackled Moondog in a bear hug. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Um. Sure.” Moondog reached out, froze, and awkwardly stroked Meadow’s mane. “You, you don’t feel insane in the brain or anything?”

“No, my brain’s fine.” Meadow squeezed tighter. “I feel great.”

“Glad I could help.”

self.disentangle(meadowHug);

Moondog flowed around Meadow’s legs (leaving her to fall over from the sudden lack of support) and alighted on the ocean. “So, now that you don’t have the specter of death ominously looming over you like an exam you haven’t studied for, do you want anything?”

“You don’t mind?” Meadow asked as she got to her hooves. “You’ve already done a lot for me and I’m fine now.”

Moondog shrugged. “It’s literally what I was born to do. What, did you think you not being comatose anymore meant I’d avoid your dreams?”

“If…” Meadow chewed on her lip and pawed at the ground. “If you really want to do it, I… I’ve always wanted to be a hippogriff. I mean, it seems really-”

dream.settle(MOOD.Soaring);dreamer.setAppearance(SPECIES.Hippogriff);

The surface beneath Meadow vanished. She plummeted down through the clouds that had once been reflections and towards towering spires of rock that appeared below. She started screaming, scrabbling at the air with her claws, beating her wings to slow-

When she started hovering, she gawked at her wings for several long moments. Then she gawked at her claws for several long moments. Then she tried to gawk at her beak, but its short length meant she had trouble seeing it; she settled for poking at it with her claws.

Moondog dropped into her field of view, hovering upside-down without bothering to flap. “So?” it asked, smiling. “You like?”

“OhCelestiathisisamazing!” squealed Meadow. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” She folded her wings and swooped beneath a rocky bridge, screaming in ecstacy. She scrabbled up a spire-

self.setLocation(mountainTop);

-and twitched to find Moondog already perched on top of it. “You’re welcome. Flying is pretty common, but hey, it’s hard to argue with that. Anything else?”

Meadow opened her mouth, paused as if she was thinking, then said, “Well, uh, I, um, I’m gonna be in the hospital for a while longer, and I can’t really go out ’cause I’ve got two broken legs and need to do physical therapy, so, uh, do you think you could… stop by sometime soon? If, if you’ve got the time. It’s…” She ran her claws through her mane. “I won’t be able to get out much, and you can…” She grinned and flared her wings. Then she frowned, flexed one, and stared at it. “How am I using these so well?”

Moondog laughed and ruffled Meadow’s mane. “Kid, I can swing by every day if you want me to.”

self.getLeg().setIntangible(TRUE);

“I’m fifteen,” growled Meadow. She grabbed at Moondog’s leg, but her claws passed straight through. “Don’t call me ‘kid’.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want, kid, and you can call me whatever you want.”

“Fine, Doggo.”

“Doggo it is. Woof woof. So how often?”

Meadow pushed away from Moondog. “Once every two or three days is fine. I need to get used to reality again.”

Moondog saluted and rolled down a piece of the sky, revealing an exit door behind it. “Sure thing. I’ll see you around, and don’t let reality get you down.”

“Don’t worry!” Meadow yelled, leaping from the summit. “I won’t!” She plunged through the clouds and was gone.