The View From The Window
Introduction: Disturbed Reverie

Reverie Dreamflight stared out through her train cabin window at the picturesque vista, trying to ignore the comparatively dull reflection that was laid atop it.

This wasn't altogether difficult, as the landscape rushing by was mostly composed of vibrant summery green tones, which easily blended away her teal coat color, allowing it to be ignored. Less easy to miss, however, was the mass of cold blue-gray mane that framed her teal-coated face and fell off to the left in a lazy braid - unless one had a view that opened out onto the ocean.

This she'd had on her way in to Manehatten, as opposed to the current return trip. It had been a lovely morning train ride, at just the perfect time to place the sun low over the water so that it cast its light onto the wavetops and formed a sparkling golden road to the horizon. She'd even made a sketch of it, to commit it to canvas when she returned from her trip.

Now that she was returning, she wasn't sure she was going to bother. There was no ocean view this time, at least not unless she wanted to leave her cabin and go stand in the hallway to look south, an idea that held little merit given the drab, overcast weather. Granted, if she really wanted some sun, she could just fly up above the cloud layer and sprawl out for a warm nap once she got home, but such ideas were relegated to the few distant parts of her mind that weren't currently rented out en-masse to her annoyed brooding mood.

The showing had gone well, really. They usually did, considering the sort of ponies that were recommending her to the Manehatten galleries, and this one had been arguably her most prestigious yet, given it had been held not two blocks from the Giggleheim. She hadn't been the only painter on display - she'd yet to have that happen, and idly wondered if she even cared if it would - but her work had unquestionably seen the most traffic.

One would expect, not unreasonably, that this sort of development would please a professional painter. And yes, it indeed would have, had that traffic been for the whole of her displayed work. She'd had six pieces showing: three of them had been obsessed over, while the other half were barely noticed.

It was exactly as she had expected - exactly as it always happened. It was also entirely unsurprising, as these had been the paintings that had made her name in the first place.

They were called Dreamscapes. And that's exactly what they were - wild, untamed imaginings from the depths of the subconscious, shaped by hope and dream and desire unchained, and then rendered in oils with no reservations.

She had hung her three best, just like the gallery had asked. The same three that were always asked for, and yet strangely never attracted permanent buyers.

The set had opened with Rampant Pandemonic: a rough-stroke and harsh-color depiction of a shattered world. Floating stone islands among the clouds, broken and fallen towers in Canterlot architecture, and both the sun and moon in the sky at the same time, while off to the left of the center sat Princess Celestia, her crown crooked, sipping chocolate milk from a fluted wineglass, her mane turned dull gray and eyes in a glassy stare...

Following that had been the most provocative: Master of Harems. A carefully sculpted palette of soft colors rendering a chamber both massive and egregiously ostentatious, tapestried in royal blues and loaded to bursting with gold everywhere - oh, and over a dozen very explicitly sexualized mares, all lavishing their sultry attention on the sole stallion seated high on the central throne, presented as a singular paragon of masculinity. Special focus was also given a particular white unicorn mare, who had pride of place laying next to his throne, her eyes closed in delirious ecstasy simply because he had a hoof laid on her shoulder.

And then, finally, viewers set their eyes upon Light of Moon and Fire.

This was her opus, her pièce de résistance, according to everypony who had ever been asked. It was a brooding, seething canvas of extremes; a bright white full moon central to the heavy black night sky that yielded only to the light that rose from below, where a studiously detailed Canterlot was being consumed in blazing conflagration. The particularly sharp eye could pick out a subtle shadowy figure above the city, poised in victorious triumph, almost as black as the smoke-and-ash-choked sky.

In the beginning, when she had first unveiled these portraits - the eldest only a few years past - there had been more than a few critics who had thought that her Dreamscapes were little more than elaborate contrivance, pandering for shock value on canvas - a few of the portraits had even been described as 'depraved pornographic titillations'. Still others had inspired debate about the mental stability of their creator.

Those voices had been quickly drowned out by the aficionados, with their cheerful cries of avant-garde! and other such enamored compliments.

The great irony, of course, was that those long-since silenced critics had been exactly right all along. The Dreamscapes were in many cases depraved, almost always titillating in some way or another, and occasionally yes, even pornographic in content - Master of Harems especially. And their creator most likely was - in a few cases absolutely was - a little unbalanced.

Reverie lost no sleep over those statements, accusatory though they had been, as she had already been busy losing sleep over something else; the fact that she was unwillingly seeing those depraved dreams, as they ran through the repressed unconscious minds of their true owners.

And she would wake up in the morning, commonly feeling only annoyed and a little in need of a shower, but sometimes...sometimes she would wake up sickened, and shivering, and revolted at what she had seen in someone else's sleeping mind, and the only way to get it out of her own was to pull it out of her thoughts kicking and screaming and trap it on canvas, lest it somehow infect her.

This was because, as her name quietly implied, Reverie Dreamflight didn't just enter the dream world at night, like any other pony. No, she traveled it, her wings taking her from one mind to the next until they hit something that weighed them down enough that she had to endure it. This would at least have been somewhat redeemable if she had any choice in the matter, but perhaps in cruel fate, perhaps in destiny balance for her virtuoso brush skills, she had no choice as to where she went in dreams.

All too often it was somewhere she regretted.

These were the Dreamscapes she painted. These indignities she witnessed, these fantasies and secret desires of which she learned, these night terrors she at times only narrowly survived.

These were the paintings that everyone adored her for.

Sometimes she managed - somehow - to forget that. She would have none of her own dreams stolen for a little while, and she would see something like that morning-sun-over-ocean and be inspired to paint a lovely vista, perhaps embellished with a personal impressionistic touch. And she would step back from the canvas, and stare at it while the paint dried, lost back in the moment she had first seen the portrait form in her mind, and she would remember why she absolutely loved to paint.

And then a viewing would come up, or on those not-quite-rare occasions a Manehatten gallery showing, like the one of the past few days. And she would pack up these vistas and emotive portraits in broad strokes, her paintings, even though she knew the galleries wanted to hang the Dreamscapes - the portraits that she painted, but that were never hers, though Celestia be thanked for that...

And she would hang her paintings in the gallery, and then she would hope. She would hope that somehow, though the ponies came to see the Dreamscapes, that they would linger on her other works, that something in those would call to them, and she would be appreciated for her own sense of artistry, her own idea of beauty, and not just as a revealer of dark and sordid secrets.

It never happened that way, in the end.

Reverie Dreamflight stared out at the picturesque vista, trying to ignore the comparatively tear-streaked reflection that was laid atop it, wishing the bleak gray clouds would just rain.

It would be so much easier to ignore the tears if it were raining.