How come ponies’ bad dreams so often revolved around school? Tests you hadn’t studied for, being late to class, being naked at school (and that also being bad for some reason)… Moondog decided it would have to ask Mom about that. Or maybe just do some studying itself. (Heh, studying about school.)

Moonlit Meadow was having one of those “not studied” dreams. She was sitting in the middle of a gymnasium-sized classroom, staring feverishly at the confusing mass of foreign languages, illegible runes, esoteric symbols, and tax laws on her paper. All the other desks were empty, except for the teacher’s, far at the front of the room. The teacher herself was some malformed combination of pony and dragon, gazing at Meadow as if she were her next meal. Which was entirely possible, given the context.

“One minute left, Ms. Meadow,” the teacher boomed disapprovingly. Meadow squeaked something uncouth as sourceless clock ticks grew louder and louder.

self.inhabit(teacher);scramble(test.getHeader());

Moondog-teacher picked up a sheet of paper on the desk; its eyes widened. “Aww, booger,” it said. “Pencil down, Meadow. I’m afraid this test is invalid.”

Meadow tentatively looked up, her ears slowly rising. “Um. What?”

“I made a most horrendous typo and the entire test suffered for it,” said Moondog. It limped to Meadow’s desk held the paper up. “See? Right here.” It pointed at a line in the top right corner labeled Your Naem. “The entire test must have seemed quite unreadable thanks to that error.”

“Um…” Meadow looked at the first question: Pse ndalove së lexuari tregimin për të përkthyer një fjali të rastit? “Yeah. That error’s the reason I was having trouble.”

“And so, to make up for my grievous error, I’m afraid I have no choice but to give you an A-plus. Plus. Also-”

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

The teacher’s body dissolved, swirled, and re-solidified back into Moondog’s. “Hey,” it said, grinning. “Sorry I wasn’t here earlier.”

“Moondog!” Meadow’s face lit up and she tackled Moondog in a hug. “What’re you doi- Hold on.” She pushed away, frowning. “I’m not comatose again, am I?”

“Nope! As far as I can tell, you’re a-okay. You feeling alright in the head?”

“Yeah. Nothing weird or anything. I told my parents and doctors what happened, and-” Meadow looked down, pawed at the ground, and flicked her tail. “Mom and Dad didn’t know what to say, but I’m pretty sure they believed me. I mean, on the one hoof, magical dream not-pony helps wake me up from a coma, but on the other, it’s not that out-of-place for Princess Luna, and it’s… It’s just… weird, you know? No offense or anything!” she quickly added.

“None taken. I am weird, and I’m loving every minute of it.”

Meadow giggled. “So what’re you doing here?”

“You wanna learn dream magic?”

Meadow took a few steps back, as if she’d been struck. “Wha-? Dream-? I can do that? But I’m just an earth pony! I can’t do any cool spells or-”

“And that, my friend, is one of the neatest catches about dream magic,” said Moondog. “It doesn’t matter what tribe you are, or even what species. Take a race with no innate magic in the physical world, and as long as they can dream, they can use dream magic.” Moondog smirked and tapped the side of its muzzle. “It’s being aware that you’re dreaming to train yourself in dream magic that’s the hard part.”

Moondog quickly wrapped a wing around Meadow and pulled her close. “So!” Moondog twirled a baton into existence and gestured all around the room. “You wanna be the master of all you survey? Have complete control over everything you see? Make your own worlds night to night?”

“Totally!” Even half-pinned at Moondog’s side, Meadow was nearly a superball bouncing with excitement.

“Too bad! I can’t offer that. But I can make it look like you’re doing that!” Moondog lightly poked Meadow in the chest, the baton kaleidoscoping into nothing as it did so. “None of this is real, remember.” It released Meadow and stepped away. “First, we need to remove all distractions.”

dream.set(NULL);

Moondog raised its head and its horn sparked. The entire room and everything in it twitched and twisted as if they were being wrapped around a spindle. The floor pulled itself out from beneath Moondog and Meadow while the walls caved in. Everything rose in the air, caught in a windless tornado, and collected in a swirling ball above the two of them. It twisted into a whirlpool and vanished into Moondog’s horn. All that remained was an empty expanse of white, holding just the two of them.

Meadow turned in place, spinning around and around and around. “Hellooooooo!” she yelled. No echo. She came to a halt facing Moondog. “I don’t have to, like, make a mountain range, do I?”

“Of course not,” said Moondog. “Not yet, anyway.” It was sorely tempted to just drop down a mountain range off in the distance for fun, but, well, that’d be distracting. It extended and curled its wings into a wall around itself. “Now, we’re gonna start-”

self.setAppearance(auntCelly.getDefaultAppearance());

“-with shapeshifting.” Moondog flared its wings outward, shedding its skin like a fire shed sparks as it replaced its body with Aunt Celly’s, crown and peytral and all. Examining its horseshoes for imaginary dust, Moondog said, “It’s kinda neat.” Dang. Aunt Celly’s coat was super white. How much time did she spend keeping it looking pristine? A few specks of dirt in the wrong places could ruin her whole look.

“Shapeshifting,” Meadow said flatly, folding her ears back. “We’re. Starting. With shapeshifting.” Her mouth moved, but she didn’t say anything more, as if her indignation quota had already been exhausted.

“Of course!” Moondog stepped out of the dust cloud that Aunt Celly’s body turned into. “It’s the easiest part of dream magic, believe it or not. You know your body, so you know how to change it, what works for you and what doesn’t, what changes feel like, and so on.”

“I…” Meadow furrowed her brow and frowned. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Of course it does. That’s the way dreams work.” One of the benefits of dream magic used within the dreamer’s own head: an awful lot of things ultimately boiled down to “it’s a dream”, one way or another. (Twilight had been sorely disappointed when she’d learned that.) “Now, who or what do you wanna be?”

And immediately Moondog regretted forgetting that overchoice was a thing that existed. Faced with the possibility of being anything, most ponies chose to be nothing. Meadow was no different. Moondog could almost see the smoke coming from her ears as she tried to choose which out of infinity choices was the best. “I dunno,” she said eventually.

“It doesn’t need to be much. Just pick something that’s not you.”

Meadow pawed at the lack of ground. “I dunno. …Pegasus.”

“Pegasus.” Moondog nodded. “Good. So, close your eyes…”

“Close my eyes,” whispered Meadow, doing so.

“Breathe in…”

“In.”

“Breathe out…”

“And out.”

“Empty your mind…”

“Empty your mind.”

“No, your mind…”

“My mind.”

“Give yourself wings…”

“Wings.” As Meadow said that, a pair of wings bloomed from her body.

Moondog grinned to itself. “And, finally, open your eyes.”

“Open your-” Meadow’s eyes snapped open and she looked over her shoulder. She spread her wings wide and flapped them once. “Oh, Celestia, this so awesome! I can’t- Wait a minute.” She turned back to Moondog. “I- I didn’t do anything!”

“Obviously, you did,” said Moondog, pointing at Meadow’s wings.

“But-” Meadow turned back to her wings and flapped them again. “But then I should get rid of them if I-” She squeaked as her wings dissolved into glimmers of golden dust.

“That’s half the trick of it,” said Moondog. “Dreams don’t really work if you try to explain them. If I gave you some mumbo-jumbo about holding an image of your desire in your mind or something like that, it probably wouldn’t work. But when I just tell you to do it, you forget that this is a dream and, well, do it.”

“Huh.” Meadow looked at her sides. Once again, a set of wings blossomed outward, as smoothly as if they were emerging from water. She flapped them, and the feathers fell away to reveal the leathery wings of a batpony, as supple as the real thing. She examined her tail and flicked it; a rainbow of colors cascaded across it like a wave. “Cooooooool,” she whispered. Her grin was wide enough to swallow a watermelon. “But if working with dreams is this easy-” Her coat gained a metallic sheen. “-how come you and Luna are pretty much the only ponies who can do it?”

“Context. Right now, you’re working in your dreams in your mind. Everything in here is just an extension of your will. Doing it in somepony else’s dreams, where the mind might not want to behave? That’s where things get tricky.” Moondog sat down and spread its wings. “Come on. Try to change me.”

If Moondog was being honest with itself, the reactions of ponies realizing just what they could do in dreams could get a bit repetitious. Meadow was sent reeling yet again. “Change you? Like- turn you into something else?” She rocked back and forth on her hooves, like she wasn’t sure whether to take a step forward or back. “But what if I hurt you, or- do something wrong, or- get you stuck between two shapes, or-”

But Moondog just laughed. It was a strange line ponies walked in lucidity, apparently half fully aware that they were in a dream, half forgetting that dreams weren’t reality. “Hurt? Kid-”

“Don’t call me ‘kid’!” bristled Meadow.

“-if I don’t change shape once every half an hour, it’s a slow night. Being half one thing and half another thing happens all the time, in all the fractional combinations you can think of, including the impossible ones. Seriously, you can’t hurt me. C’mon.” Moondog flexed its wings and grinned as punchably as possible. “Hit me with your best shot.”

Meadow chewed on her lip. She looked away for a moment. “Okay, um… I’m… sorry if this… does anything bad or… anything.” She raised a hoof, hesitated, then closed her eyes and put that hoof on Moondog’s chest.

The only times Moondog had had dream magic worked on it before, Mom had been the mage, so those moments really didn’t count. Now, it felt a tiny tingle where Meadow was touching its chest, like its body was trying to change without Moondog initiating the change. It was, if Moondog was being honest with itself, more than a little creepy; at least with Mom, everything happened so quickly and smoothly it was over before you knew it. And considering so many ponies’ nightmares had them not being in control of themselves… Hmm.

catalog();

But although Moondog stayed as hooves-off as it possibly could, Meadow’s efforts didn’t do anything. The tingle never grew into anything more than a tingle. It was always on the cusp of change, never actually changing. Meadow clenched her eyes tight and gritted her teeth (which meant she was trying too hard, but it’d be a learning experience). When she finally stepped back, panting, Moondog was utterly unchanged.

“See?” said Moondog, flaring its wings. “This me-” A line ran up and down its body, like it was being scanned. “-is part of my own little private mental dominion. It’s biased towards me. So it takes you a lot of work to change me, but I can change me just like-”

self.setAppearance(dreamer.getDefaultAppearance());

Moondog disintegrated into a copy of Meadow. “-that,” it said with a stomp.

“Okay, but-” Then Meadow’s mind caught up with her and she squeaked. She tilted her head. “I don’t care if this is a dream, looking at myself like this is really freaky,” she said.

“So don’t be yourself, obviously,” Moondog huffed. “Here.”

dreamer.setAppearance(self.getDefaultAppearance());

Before Meadow could respond, it yanked on her mane. As she stumbled forward, her entire body came apart at invisible seams like cloth, exposing Moondog’s body beneath. Already off-balance and suddenly over a foot taller, Meadow’s knees started shaking. She spread her legs wide and took long breaths. “Don’t do that!” she squeaked.

“Dreams can change on a whim. Literally.” Moondog shrugged. “You’ll need to learn to react to quick changes sooner or later. So why not start now?” That, and seeing ponies’ shock was kinda funny every now and then.

But Meadow wasn’t that gullible. She squinted at Moondog like the cookie jar had gone empty the last time she’d seen it as she slowly pulled her legs back under her. Once she was used to her significantly longer limbs, she turned her leg over and over, staring into the stars painted across it. “Why’s your coat so weird?” she asked. “And how come you turning me into- you is so… easy?”

“I’m just good at dream magic,” Moondog said. It waved a hoof, sparks trailing from its tip. “I can push harder than your subconscious can push back.”

“Oh. Huh.” Meadow closed her eyes and rippled back into her normal shape. Moondog obliged her by slipping back into its normal shape. Meadow looked at her hoof and split it into a griffon’s claws.

“See? Told you it was easy.”

“Yeah.” Meadow turned her claws over. “So now what? Are you gonna teach me how to make stuff?”

Moondog shook its head. “Not tonight. I’ve kinda got a job, y’know, and I can’t stay away from it too long. I’ll be back tomorrow. But if you want to learn how to lucid dream and try stuff out on your own, here’re some tips to start off with…”

Meadow hadn’t mastered lucidity when Moondog stopped by again. She hadn’t journeymared it, either. Or apprenticed it. Or even noviced it. Moondog wasn’t that surprised; Mom had said that it could take ponies months to fully learn it. But Meadow’s dreams were just different enough, in those subtle ways most ponies wouldn’t notice, that Moondog knew she was on the right path, or at least its trailhead.

Moondog was clearing the dream away when Meadow asked, “So do you do this a lot? Teaching dream magic, I mean.”

ponder();

Moondog bit its lip as it swept the dream that had been beneath a carpet of space. “You want the truth? Mom told me that doing this is actually kinda risky,” it said. “You might start hating the real world ’cause it’s not the place where you can do literally anything. I haven’t taught anypony else dream magic. But, sorry to bring this up, but I figured that you already knew the value of the real world better than most ponies because of-” Moondog pulled at an invisible collar around its neck. “-ehm, reasons.”

Meadow laughed nervously. “That’s one way to put it.”

“So I already knew you wouldn’t lose yourself in escapism. Which makes you wise beyond your years and more mature than a lot of adults! That’s a plus, right?”

This time, Meadow’s laugh was much more natural. “Yeah.”

“Now, tonight you’re gonna learn how to lean against stuff that isn’t there.”

Meadow’s grin slipped off her face. She blinked and cocked her head. One ear went flat against her head. “Seriously,” she said flatly. “Invisible walls? That’s it? It’s- Last night I was shapeshifting, and now…”

Moondog shrugged. “Making nonexistent surfaces is the step between shaping yourself and shaping not-yourself. You can still feel what you’re doing, but it’s not really you you’re changing. Also…” Without flapping its wings, Moondog pulled its legs up and rolled over in the air onto its back. Crossing its rear legs at the ankle and its front legs behind its head, it grinned an upside-down grin at Meadow. “It’s nifty as ----.”

Meadow waved a hoof beneath Moondog. “I dunno. I think shapeshifting’s cooler.” But the sight of Moondog floating like that had sparked something, and it was hard to miss the anticipation building inside her.

“To be honest, it is. It’s just that this is still important.” Twisting its body one way and its head the other, Moondog alighted on the lack of ground again. “Now, all you have to do is not fall.” It smiled, as if that were the obvious thing in the world.

It took skill to nod sarcastically as well as Meadow did. “Uh-huh. And I guess that to fly, you just need to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

“That’s called orbit, kid, and it works fine.”

“Pretty please stop calling me ‘kid’.” Meadow closed her eyes and reared. She spread her front legs apart for balance. “Could you catch me? I know it won’t hurt, but…”

Moondog’s mane spread itself out behind Meadow like a blanket. “You can still call me ‘doggo’, you know.”

“Nah.” Meadow took a few deep breaths and threw herself backward. It didn’t work and she landed in Moondog’s mane. It caught her like a trampoline, depressing for a second then lightly tossing her up again; she landed on her rear hooves in the same position she’d fallen from.

“Want me to give you the right kinda surface to land on? Just so you know what it feels like?” asked Moondog.

“Not yet,” said Meadow. “I bet I’ll get it this time.”

Twenty-eight tries, four invisible-surface demonstrations, seven partial successes, and two full successes later, Meadow put a shaky hoof on thin air and pushed herself up a step. “This is so weird,” she whispered. She hauled herself up another few steps.

“Get used to it. It’s gonna get weirder.”

self.getHappiness();return: 100.0

Yeah. Meadow was doing nicely.

After she’d gone up the equivalent of a story, Meadow closed her eyes and took one more step forward. Rather than going up, she toppled forward, like she’d stepped off a platform. Right before she hit the lack of ground, she stopped in the air, landing on her back. Her eyes snapped open in near-panic, but her breathing soon slowed back to normal. “Whoa,” she said. “I…” She giggled, the kind of giggle that’s the only natural reaction when you’re giddy. “I can’t believe that worked!”

“I can. You’re really taking to this.”

Meadow lay sprawled in empty space like it was an overstuffed bed, laughing contentedly. “Oh, wow. This- thing is so soft.”

“Of course it is. You know how nothing’s softer than a cloud?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, what are you relaxing on now?”

“Noth-” Meadow closed her mouth almost as fast as she’d opened it and fixed Moondog with a glare. “There’s a mistake in there somewhere, but I don’t know what.”

“The fallacy of four terms!” Moondog said cheerfully. “I’ll spare you the formal-logic lecture and just say that ‘nothing’ is referring to two different things-”

“Why?”

--Error; InterruptedThoughtException e

Moondog hit itself on the head several times; a few sizzling sparks flew out of its ear. “Why what?”

Meadow managed to roll onto her stomach. “Why’re you skipping the lecture?”

“Be- cause…” Moondog tilted its head. “You want to hear about formal logic?”

“Sure. Why not?” Meadow shrugged.

Huh. Who would’ve guessed? “Well, okay. We’ll need to start from the beginning. A syllogism is a type of formal logical argument-” Moondog stopped talking and waited for a response from Meadow.

Which turned out to be a tiny scowl and a, “Keep going…”

“A syllogism is… You know those logic statements that go, ‘if p, then q’? Well, a syllogism is when you take another one, like ‘if q then r’, and…”

“…which is called a Celarent argument. And when-”

Meadow boggled. “Do all logical arguments have stupid names?”

“The syllogisms do.”

“And ponies get paid to study this?!”

“Yep.”

“Daaaaaaaang…”

Meadow’s dreams were growing more and more lucid, requiring less and less help from Moondog to fully pull her into the dream realm. Very nice.

“And tonight,” said Moondog, “we get to the hardest part of basic dream magic: environmental manipulation. This is probably what most ponies think of when they think of dream magic, and with good reason-”

settleDream(MOOD.Grandiose);

Moondog flared its wings with such force as to blow a shockwave out. The dream disintegrated; Moondog and Meadow were left standing in the spotlights of a stadium, the crowd roaring down at them, Meadow’s shocked face decorating the jumbotron. “-it’s the most dramatic,” finished Moondog.

self.setStatus(SMUG.Somewhat);

Meadow swallowed. “I don’t have to make this, do I?” she squeaked.

“Ha! No, no, you’ll be starting small.” The stadium vanished into the usual white void. “Think of something. Anything.”

“Anything?” You could almost see Meadow’s brain begin to shut down. “Uh…”

Stupid overchoice. “A coffee table! Good thing. Simple. Visualize a coffee table. Any coffee table.”

After staring at Moondog for a moment, Meadow closed her eyes. “Okay…”

“Remember the feeling of giving yourself wings? Making claws? Do that, but turn nothing into the table.”

“Okay.” Meadow gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as possible.

“You’re trying too hard,” Moondog said with a wince. “Just let it flow out of you. Smooth. Easy. Don’t push.”

“Easy,” Meadow said to herself. “Easy.” She took long, deep breaths.

Nothing happened. Not even the slightest wrinkle in the fabric of the dream. Meadow cracked an eye open. “Did I do it?” She looked around. “Nope.” She closed her eye. “Okay. Again. Easy.”

But it didn’t work. Time and again, Meadow tried to make a coffee table; time and again, the coffee table obstinately failed to be made. When her eyes snapped open for the twentieth or so time, she said, “I don’t get it! I’m doing everything you say, but nothing’s happening!” She waved a hoof through thin air as if the table had been made and was just invisible.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Moondog, waving a wing dismissively. “It’s a bit tricky to get the hang of. You’ll figure it out sooner or later. Wanna take a break for a sec?”

Second night.

“C’mon, give it another shot. I bet you’re getting there.”

“But…” Meadow groaned. “I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. How do you do it?”

“That’s… Hmm.” Dream magic had been Moondog’s existence since Luna had first started making it, so that was a trickier question than it seemed. It was like asking a pony, “How do you walk?” Maybe being a teacher for oneiroturgy wasn’t the best idea.

improvise();

“It’s all about willing what you want into being. It’s kind of abstract, but remember what it felt like when you were shapeshifting? Kinda like that.”

“Okay…”

“C’mon. Don’t give up now. You got this.”

Third night.

“Maybe a coffee table’s too complicated. There are lots of things out there that could be defined as a ‘coffee table’. How about a cube? Black. This big.”

“A… Just a cube?”

“You need to start somewhere, don’tcha?”

“I guess.”

Fourth night.

Even cubes were proving too difficult. Meadow was sitting on her rump, sulking at the lack of ground, as Moondog paced back and forth, trying to keep its anxiety down. What was she doing wrong? What was it doing wrong? “Okay, um,” it said, “let’s, let’s try this again.”

“Just like every other night, right?” mumbled Meadow. “You know, insanity is doing the same-”

“Except that this time will be different.” But Meadow looked as convinced as Moondog felt.

Dream magic wasn’t a science, like thaumic magic. Dream magic was an art. That is, it relied a lot on feeling and intuition, there were a lot of ways to do it properly, there were hugely more ways to almost do it properly but fail to stick it, and it was hard to say what somepony was doing wrong if they fell into that almost. Moondog didn’t have a clue what Meadow was doing wrong, and so couldn’t correct her. But it felt that she was almost there. She’d forget all about this funk once she was out of it. She just needed a push. “Look, Roam wasn’t built in a day. If you keep trying-”

“It’s not that easy!” yelled Meadow. “You say ‘keep trying’, but I just can’t do it. I don’t even know what I’m trying to do! Everything else just happened. I…” She folded her ears back and her head drooped. “I’m a failure.”

“Hey,” said Moondog softly. It put the tip of its wing under Meadow’s chin and delicately lifted her face up until they were eye-to-eye. “You wanna know something?”

“Yeah?” said Meadow hopefully.

Moondog’s voice was bright as it said, “You are absolutely a failure.”

Scowling, Meadow shoved Moondog’s wing down and turned away. “Gee, thanks,” she mumbled.

“But!” said Moondog, flowing around to stand in front of Meadow again. “You’re still one of the most skilled ponies in dream magic in all of Equestria. Because failing means you tried. Look-”

makeDataTable();

Moondog peeled away a sheet of space, revealing a chart hanging in the air. Each ranked row had a picture of a pony, their name, and a percentage. (The vast, vast majority of them were placeholders to get the point across, but Meadow didn’t need to know that.) Right at the top was Mom, with a shining gold 100%. Moondog itself was below her with a 99.9999999999725%. The numbers dropped precipitously after that, falling to less than 10 within thirty ranks. “If you compare ponies’ skills in dream magic with Mom’s, you’re-” The chart scrolled up rapidly, rocketing off into the lack of sky. “-right here.” Moondog pointed a certain row: 18131: Moonlit Meadow — 0.3792%.

“Great. I’m number eighteen thousand.” Meadow rolled her eyes. “So skilled.”

“Number eighteen thousand-” Moondog reared, spreading its legs and wings wide. “-in a nation of millions. Seriously, think about it. You’re not just in the ninety-ninth percentile, you’re in the ninety-nine point ninth percentile.”

“What’s a percentile?”

“You’re better at dream magic than ninety-nine point nine percent of ponies. And you’ve barely started! You can’t stop now, just because it’s hard!”

“But I barely got anywhere yesterday! I was shapeshifting in seconds the first day, and now I- This should be easy! And-” Meadow stepped back and pointed way, way, way, way up. “Look at how good you are! I’ll never get close!”

destroy(dataTable);

Moondog ripped the chart from the air and, in spite of its length, rolled it up within seconds. “So what?” It squished the scroll into nothing. “I’m a construct purpose-built to use dream magic. Of course I’m great at it. I’d be a pretty terrible person if I wasn’t. Besides, just because you can’t be the best at something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. And I know this is dream magic, but you’re not gonna learn it overnight, wah wah waaah. Even I didn’t.”

“I- I know that. But I don’t know if I can make myself keep going.” Meadow stared at her hooves. “I don’t wanna- Look, I mean, thanks for the lessons, they’re cool, but- This isn’t something I’ve always wanted to do. You- just- popped in a few days ago and asked if I wanted to do it. It- You- I-” She clamped her mouth shut.

“C’mon,” said Moondog soothingly. “I won’t be offended.”

“I only started learning dream magic because- you asked me,” whispered Meadow. “What was I supposed to do, say ‘no’?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t’ve minded.” Of course, making that clear from the start would’ve been nice.

“But- And then it was cool, but now it’s hard again, so- why keep going? I don’t wanna have to do homework while I sleep!”

Moondog almost went off on a long tangent about the importance and benefits of keeping the mind active even if the body was resting, but Mom had said ponies didn’t like being lectured in their dreams (and although she never said so, Moondog suspected she’d learned that from experience). Instead, it took a different tack and said, “Well, you don’t have to do it for me, but you wanna be better at something than Princess Celestia?”

You would’ve thought Meadow had been stuck with a cattle prod, she looked up so fast. “What?” she whispered. “That’s- But- She’s Princess Celestia!”

spill(cellySecret[3]);

“And she’s Princess of the Day, not the Night.” Moondog sat down next to Meadow and draped a wing over her withers. “What’s said in the dream realm stays in the dream realm, but… Aunt Celly’s kinda crap when it comes to dream magic. It’s just not really her thing, so she’s never worked at it. But you?” It lightly poked Meadow in the chest. “You’re still trying to get better. If you keep at it, I bet you’ll be twice as good as her before the year is up. At least.”

But Meadow wasn’t that receptive to the pep talk. She squinted up at Moondog suspiciously. “You’re just saying that to get me to keep practicing, aren’t you?”

It was kind of amazing, how far ponies could go to justify themselves and their actions. Moondog wasn’t making stuff up or even exaggerating. One last try, in a bit of an unorthodox direction. Moondog patted Meadow on the shoulder. “No, but I get it.” Not really. Why leave something incomplete? “If you don’t want to keep going, okay. I won’t push you. But if you do, I’ll be here as long as I have the time, no matter how often you screw everything up.”

--Error; PhrasingException e

But Meadow didn’t even notice the faux pas. She looked down as if she was ashamed. “I…” She ran a hoof through her mane and mumbled, “I don’t know. It’s… I…”

“Do you just want a day to think about it? Or two or three or more?” Mom had said that ponies often needed to step away from a problem if it was getting them angry and frustrated, then come back to it later with a clear head. Sometimes their mind could come up with a solution after a tiny bit of prodding, but sometimes their dreams needed to be as far from it as possible (which meant no hurling it into the sun). And Moondog was willing to bet that having the second-greatest dream mage of all time waiting on your decision wasn’t the best environment for choosing to take up dream magic or not.

“Yeah,” Meadow said, obviously relieved. “That’d be, that’d be great. Could you… Could I have a week?”

“A week’s fine. I’ll leave you to it.”

Waiting was one of the weirdest things Moondog had ever experienced. It had been made with a purpose, a goal, an objective. And when it needed to wait, the only thing it could do to fulfill that purpose was to do nothing. But that came with depending on other people, and Moondog had only ever depended on somepony else (not counting Mom) when it was first pulled out of the dream realm, which was hardly normal. Still, it’d told Meadow it’d wait. So it waited.

Out of pure curiosity, it blipped into her dreams two of the nights it was waiting, but never let her notice. Her dreams those nights weren’t that lucid, so she wasn’t trying to work on her own. Moondog was fine with that; she had every right to not lucid dream every night, and not taking advantage of dream-shapeshifting meant she still had a healthy reality/dreaming balance. Good.

And then, the night before Meadow was going to give her answer, Moondog had a brainstorm. In trying to teach Meadow about manipulating environments, it’d been doing things completely wrong. No wonder she was having difficulties. It almost made Moondog burst into her dream early, apologize profusely, and beg her to keep trying. But if Meadow was going to quit, Moondog would let her quit.

“I don’t wanna quit just yet.”

Phew.

Moondog had returned to Meadow’s dream all a-jitter, but nearly (literally) exploded with glee upon hearing her response, even though her voice wasn’t that optimistic, even though she continued, “I might give up if I can’t do anything tonight, but… just one more try.”

“Good, because I royally screwed up.” Moondog pulled its mane forward and ran both its hooves through it, like it was braiding it. “I was asking you to change the world-”

--Error; PhrasingException e

“-I mean, change as in- alter, not…” Moondog shook its head. “YouknowwhatImean! But because I kept blanking out the dream, you didn’t have a world to change. I was basically asking you to make everything from scratch, and, I mean, well, yeah. That’s my bad.” It smiled nervously. It suspected it’d be blushing if it’d had any blood. “Um. Sorry.”

Meadow’s jaw went slightly slack. She pointed at Moondog. “You…” She put her hoof on her chest. “Me… This… Oh, Celestia.” She put her head in her hooves, but she was laughing. “Wow. Just… hehe… wow.”

“So for tonight, we’re gonna work in this library.”

“We’re in a library?” Meadow looked up. They were sitting at a table in a small, old library, bookshelves lining the walls, a fire crackling away merrily. “When did that happen?”

self.addToAppearance(new Wristwatch());

“About, oh…” Moondog glanced at its fetlock. “Fifty-five seconds ago.” It plucked a book with a red cover from the wall with its mane and set it on the table in front of Meadow. “We’ll start small again. Actual small. Turn the cover of this book blue.”

Meadow looked at Moondog, then at the book. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I can do this.” Staring at the book, she tilted her head one way. Then the other. She blinked a few times. She put a hoof on the book.

And after a second, it turned blue.

It was uneven, looking more like someone had spilled a paint bucket over it than actually being properly colored. The color was haphazardly tinted, making awkward “patterns” on the cover. In parts, it was a bit purplish, like the red was still trying to break through.

None of which changed the fact that it had turned blue.

Meadow blinked. “That…” She picked up the book and turned it over. Blue all around. “That was easy,” she said.

“Like I said, I screwed up. It’s not that hard when you’re starting with a base. Turn it purple, now.”

And so it was. Even better, the purple was cleaner than the blue had been.

“Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!” Meadow slouched in her chair, hung her head over the back, and laughed in relief. “If I’d known it was gonna be this easy…”

“I said I screwed up already,” scowled Moondog. “Anyway, changing the size of something isn’t that different than…”

It wasn’t long before Meadow had redecorated a good-sized chunk of the library. It wouldn’t hold together under close scrutiny, but neither one of the pair cared. Meadow looked like she was getting high on life as she dragged a hoof across the wallpaper, changing its color in her wake, while Moondog just sat back and smiled. “And one of the neat things about patterns is that, since you know what they’re supposed to look like, your subconscious will fill in the gaps for you. That’s why your clouds look so puffy.”

“Uh-huh.” Meadow flicked her hoof. The image of a blue sky streaked across the wall. “Awesome. So if I can change things besides me, now…” Meadow turned to stare at Moondog, chewing on her lip. “And… you’re…”

It wasn’t that hard to guess what she was thinking. Moondog spread its wings. “Go ahead. Hit me. You got this.”

“Yeah,” Meadow said to herself. “I think I do.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and put a hoof on Moondog’s chest.

A wave of crude magic rushed through Moondog and its body began twisting.

--Error; OutsideInterferenceException ee.ignore();run();

The feeling of being sculpted by someone else (who wasn’t Mom) was… alien, to say the least. Not painful, but teetering on the brink of skin-crawlingly unpleasant. It wasn’t much; if Moondog had been resisting, it could’ve thrown the effort off immediately. But it waited and let it happen. If Meadow could do it-

Meadow pulled her hoof away and stared. “Oh, Celestia,” she whispered, covering her mouth. “Oh, Celestia, I did it.” She bounced on her hooves, grinning like a little filly presented with candy. “I did it!” Laughing, she pumped a hoof in the air and began prancing around.

Moondog didn’t need to look to know that she had. It was a griffon, with fur and feathers as shiny and black as obsidian. It spread its wings majestically, half to let Meadow admire her handiwork, half to be sure it still had control over itself (it did). “Nice,” it said as it examined its wings. They were big, bigger than most griffons’, and very smooth and muscular. “Very nice, very nice indeed. No doubt, no doubt, cool cool cool cool.” It stretched to see what it felt like; one way or another, the body Meadow had constructed felt entirely natural. Maybe that came with itself being a blob of mental magic and technically not having a body to begin with, but Moondog gave Meadow the benefit of the doubt. “You do a lot of stuff with griffons,” it observed.

Meadow froze in her prancing as if transfixed. “Well, I-” She blinked and looked away. “I just think- griffons are- cool,” she said quietly.

“Hey, I ain’t judging.”

self.setAppearance(ALL.Default);

Moondog shook its coat off like so much coal dust without any difficulty. “Congrats, by the way. You’re now a better dream mage than Princess Celestia herself.”

“I am?” Meadow perked up again. “Yes! Eat it, princess!”

“Of course, you’ve still got a lot to learn,” said Moondog, fighting the urge to poof a disapproving copy of Aunt Celly into existence (there was no way Meadow would fall for it). “If you want to keep-”

“Well, now that I can do something more, yeah! I wanna keep going! Just- not every night, okay? Like, once a week?”

“That’s fine. Especially since we’re getting into the trickier stuff now, so you’ll need to do some actual work, like-”

Meadow blanched. “Like homework?”

“No, not like homework. More like you can’t do everything instinctually now. We’ll have-”

settleDream(MOOD.Tense);

Thunder boomed outside, casting Moondog into shadow. “-lectures. Where you need to pay attention.” Its smile was fanged. “And work on your technique.”

“Oh boy,” whispered Meadow.

“But tonight, we’re still small. You wanna learn dream telekinesis? Or how to bring something to life?”

“So when’re you gonna teach me how to get into other ponies’ dreams?”

“Heh. That is a royal privilege. Not until you become an oneiroturgy intern.”

“…So you’re saying it’s possible?”

“In your dreams, maybe.”

“Boooooo. How long have you been waiting to say that?”

“Too long.”