Part 1: Drowning Fire

You.

You are the descendant of a tiny primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist. You came from nothing and you are going nowhere.

In short, you are a human, and your existence, your present life, is so aptly seen in the swift flight of a sparrow through a dining hall on a winter’s day. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall: outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. The sparrow flies swiftly through one door of the hall and out through another. While inside, he is safe from the winter storms, but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which it came.

You have seen this in your dreams, human. You appear in this land, on this earth, for a little while, but of what went before this life or what follows, you know nothing.

So, human, how could you be so bold to pray to your god every night for protection from the clutches of primeval creatures such as me? You proclaim to the masses that you are a special creation of a good and all-powerful god, a string maker that pulls taut the thread of life. It was you, all of you, who said that you were created in your god’s image, with the capacities to think, feel, and worship that set you above all others.

You declared that you differ from the animals not simply in degree but in kind. You said that not only is your kind unique, but that you are unique among your kind. Bold statements followed, such as, “Our creator loves us unconditionally and so intensely desires our companionship and affection that has a perfect plan for your life. If you are willing to accept his salvation, you will forever be his beloved child.”

But where is your god in your dreams, human? Where is your god when your mind is freed from the bonds of thought and allowed to drift aimlessly into the void of voids, the empty space of the mind that your subconscious so wishes to fill with your dreams? It is your dreams that promulgate my existence, human. I exist within you. To destroy me you must destroy yourself.

I know you have thought of this, human. I know it surfaces in your mind every night before you go to bed. And you are afraid.

Be afraid, human. Be afraid.

For I will never leave you. You will forever be my body, my soul, until the end of days.

Find me, pathetic child.

Five hundred words exactly. I counted them when the dreams began to repeat over and over, night by night. Five hundred cryptic words that lulled me to sleep but kept me from rest.

It knew my name. It called me every night, and for months, years even, I searched and searched for the place that it wanted me to go to. It was as if it had left a calling card of sorts in my mind whenever I woke from restless sleep, but never could I find that place that it wanted me to find.

And then suddenly I knew.

Equestria.

Of course. Why wouldn’t it be there? Why wouldn’t the demon that haunted my soul and sucked freely the life from my body be in the land of happiness and friendship? A juxtaposition, yes, an endowed evil in the unlikeliest of places, but where else?

Of course, at this point you could pull Occam’s razor out of your ass and tell me that it’s impossible, ludicrous, unthinkable that I would assume a demented phantom of my own mind to be manifested in a children’s cartoon world, much less a world of happiness and friendship.

But a friend once told me that the brightest eyes have cried the most tears.

You may scoff, but I may not care.  

I knew the ponies were real. I knew Equestria was real, and I had been dying to go there ever since I found out about the ponies. But now, I had to go for different reasons.

I was certain that it was there. It could be nowhere else. It hated this world, my world, so where else could it be? The land of the pegasi and unicorns, that’s where.

My mind was set, my nerves taut. I had to go to Equestria. That’s where it would be. That’s where I would face it.

Now, to actually get there.

Once a month I would slip out into the darkness of my neighborhood and steal away to the forests that flanked the cul-de-sac on which I lived. Clad in nothing more than my boxers and a T-shirt, I would hop the fence, walk into a clearing in the middle of the forest, and sit down, feeling the grass slowly rub against my bare legs.

Then I would look up, hoping Luna would come.

I knew she would, I just didn’t know when. When I looked up at the full moon I imagined her staring down at me, wondering if it was worth her time to appease this puny little boy and take him on a journey to the land of ponies. I imagined her wracking her mind to make a decision. Would she violate some code of law that had been set down in Equestria for a thousand years? Or would she treat it like it was no big deal?

All those stories of humans in Equestria, they all involved the human somehow getting hurt or otherwise upset in order to get to the land of the ponies.

But could it be as easy as just asking?

So I sat there, one night a month, praying to the moon. Occasionally crickets would leap into my shorts and frogs would try to lay eggs on me, but I didn’t care. I waited and waited, because I knew she would come.

And she did. September 3, 2013. Exactly 12:00 A.M.

I was only a little surprised to see her, as she detached herself from the woods so fluidly, so easily, that it was as if she had been a part of the shadow that surrounded me. Nowhere were her royal pegasus guards or her chariot. It was just her, just the mare in the moon.

Luna.

I stood out of respect, and she gazed upon me like a little girl would curiously inspect a puppy in the pet store window. I was a new sight to her, an unexpected guest, a blip in her nightly routine, whatever it might have been. She did not seem surprised to see me. It was as if she was expecting me, and yet I noticed a hint of reluctance to approach any further, like she was afraid of me.

I cleared my throat and uttered three words I never thought I’d say in my life.

“Hello, Princess Luna.”

She remained silent, always watching me like a beautiful hoofed falcon. Her lustrous flowing mane drew my eyes off of hers, and only when she spoke up did I snap to attention.

“For many nights I have seen you here, human. For what purpose, I do not know.”

“You watch our world from our moon?”

“You presuppose that the moon is under human control,” Luna said. “The moon is shared by every world it orbits, be it yours or mine.”

“I see.”

“You have appeared only on the nights of the full moon. Why is this?”

“Because I need your help.”

Her face tightened with confused realization. “My help? Why?”

I drew a breath. “Princess, there is a—a creature that has inflicted onto me injury upon injury since the day I was born. This creature is my nightmare, my inconsolable demon that lives only to torment me. It is in the eyes of my enemies, the mouths of my detractors. It is in the foot that kicks my chest and the spit that my face so helplessly bears.”

Luna was listening patiently, but I could tell she wanted to know how this all involved her, so I continued.

“This creature is not corporeal. It exists only as a phantom, a shapeless ghost that haunts the vestiges of my mind. It exists only in my imagination—as do you.”

She perked up. “What do you speak of, human child?”

“The demon exists within me. Only I can destroy it. And to do that, I must go to Equestria.”

“What?! You speak nonsense!”

“Indeed, my words seem a non sequiter. But you must understand this, Luna…if I may be so bold as to call you by your name alone.”

“It matters not. Continue.”

“I am merely a human, one of seven billion on this planet. You have no more reason to help me than you do a parasprite with crushed wings. But I know you will help me. You must.”

“I must?”

I nodded. “Do you wonder why I waited for you, and not your sister?”

She said nothing.

“I waited for you because of what Nightmare Moon did to you. You know what it feels like to have your body usurped, your mind wrenched from your control as an evil being uses you as a vessel for its misdeeds. It numbs your heart, separates you from your body. You exist as meaningless space, mere atoms in the farthest reaches of your usurper’s mind. You know how this feels, as do I. This demon has done such things, and far worse. And it will wreak havoc upon your land, upon my mind, until I face it alone.”

The princess of the night began to pace. “Why do you assume this creature to be in Equestria?”

“Because Equestria is what makes me happy,” I said, sighing. “The ponies of Ponyville, Canterlot, Appleloosa…all of them. They all brought happiness and pleasure back into my life, and the monster seeks to destroy it all.”

“But did you not say that this monster is a part of your imagination?”

I nodded. “I did say that, Princess. You are a figment of my imagination as well. When this is over, if I defeat the evil within your land, you will fade to the outlands of my brain, only surfacing when I see you on television or on the Internet. But not now. Now you are my only vessel to your land, my one chance at ridding myself and the world of this creature.”

Luna stomped her hoof on the ground. “You think it so easy? Nopony as ever done this before!”

“That’s why it’s going to work,” I replied slyly, suddenly picturing Keanu Reeves in my head.

The princess’s eyes softened, just a little bit, and she stopped pacing. Looking up at the moon, her moon, she sighed and spoke.

“You do not seem to be a being of cruel heart or spiteful mind. And something in me tells me that what you say is true. But how will you find this demon? And how will you defeat it?”

I looked at the ground, averting my eyes. “I’m not going to find it. It’s going to find me. And I will defeat it in the only way I know, in a fight to rid it from my mind.”

She stared into my eyes for the longest time, and I never blinked. I could imagine the cogs working in her head, trying to come up with a decision. Should she help me? Why would she?

“Alright. I will take you.”

I did not expect her to come to a decision so quickly, and she must have seen it in the way my eyes lit up at her words.

“You ponder my decision, human.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement. “I believe you. I believe that my ponies are in danger, that all of ponykind is in danger from this monster that you speak of. But I cannot ignore the doubt in my mind. How do I know you will not bring a monster to a land, instead of taking it with you?”

“You bring me, a monster, to your land, and I take the other monster away forever.”

“But how?”

“I will fight it, in whatever way it wants.”

“Fighting is abhorred in my world, human.”

“Well I’m not from your world, am I?”

I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but she didn’t let it slide. Eyeing me suspiciously, she turned around, and her mane glittered in the moonlight.

“I will take you, human. And you will rid my world of this demon.”

“That I will, Princess. That I will.”

And ever so faintly, she smiled. It was a shadow of a smile, just barely visible in the moon’s glow.

She carried me in her hooves over the forests and cities of my world, the human world, her wings motionless as we soared through the air. The wind bit at my face, but I hardly noticed it. Soon we were above the clouds, and at that point Luna abruptly changed direction, flying up toward the moon.

Something began to tug at my skin, and I could see little streams of white light following us as we pierced the sky. The light became brighter and brighter until it was too bright, too white for me to see. Luna disappeared. The night vanished without a sound.

It was in the spectrum, the world between worlds through which universes and timelines were connected, that for the first time I felt velvet fingers of time. They were like sand flowing across my body, brushing my skin with their cool waves. Time herself soothingly caressed my face as Luna pulled me through nonexistence. I could almost see the shining eyes and diamond lips of time through the haze of the void.

And then time, she disappeared.

I realized that I no longer held the princess of the night, for I had grown wings of my own, feathered, crystalline wings, twin blades that ethereally extended from the backside of my sweatshirt. And then my eyes could see, and I could see fire, drowning fire that never reached my skin. It was fire that was not fire but something else, some unknown energy that seeped from an impossible chasm in the middle of existence, and yet as it burned, it choked itself, engaged in a cycle of life and death where no outcome ever surfaced.

We entered the drowning fire, and Equestria unfolded below us. From above the land looked like Earth, with rolling plains and craggy mountains, but this land was far more idyllic than any land in my world. From twenty thousand feet in the air, I could feel its warmth and comfort, and it called to me, called for me to hold it, to embrace…

I let go.

She did not seem overtly upset that I had severed my grip with her hooves, and in a matter of moments she was a black speck in an azure sky, shrinking with every passing second.

I fell.

And then I landed.

Wouldn’t you know it, I was in Ponyville, and the many equines that had gathered in the town square looked at me in awe, gazing upon my gray sweatshirt, my blackened pants, my single black glove, and my wings of glass.

I looked up and heard a familiar voice.

Welcome, child.

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