There was silence as I pulled myself out of the snow. Only light crunches could be heard as I put weight on the icy powder. Pushing up against the ground with my arms, I was briefly blinded by light as my head broke through the snowy crust. The clouds had dissipated and sunlight was streaming onto the snowflake-dusted training field once more. No pony made a sound as I stumbled to my feet, a light powdering of snow sliding off my shoulders and down my back as I carried myself upright through the snowbank.

I looked at the stunned congregation. Guardsponies stood loosely and the princesses were wordless. All the while, I panted quietly in the snowdrift. God, that process was disorienting. Feeling a wave of dizziness pass through me, I tried desperately to cling to consciousness while wading through the snow. Throwing my spindly legs wide, I tried to lower my body as I lost my sense of balance. The last waking thought I registered was the feeling of my head impacting the snow once more.

---

It was dark. I was surrounded by an inky void that might have seemed like space, had there been a single star. I was standing, but on no floor. I was not flying, but felt no fall. I was breathing, but felt no air. Only this lingering, unpopulated existence surrounded me. Grimacing, I tried to sit down and collect my thoughts. Surprisingly, I was wholly able to do so. My spindly legs folded cooperatively under me, a femur clicking against a patella. Finding the circumstances to be relatively relaxing (or at least not immediately distressing), I tried to focus on what this place might be and how I could get out of here. I remembered getting blasted by Celestia, then Luna calming me down while I was that thing, a windigo, they had called me. I was mulling the word over when I heard a voice in the void.

“Brian!” There was a pause, "Brian!" Was that Luna calling me?

I shot to my feet and span around, looking for her. Behind me, in the distance, I saw pinpricks of light forming. They were far and dim, like tiny stars. But they were growing in intensity and getting closer. Then, at their heart, I saw her.

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Bringing stars to space, art to the void, I saw Luna trotting in my direction, her mane of constellations billowing in her wake. She had seen me and, with a great grin, rushed in my direction.

“Brian, thou art here! ‘Tis excellent!”

“Luna?” I looked at her, then did a little spin, trying to make sense of my surroundings. “It is you, right? Where are we?”

“Thou art dreaming, Brian. Thou didst collapse and, thine body wert carried back to the palace after”–she grimaced, looking away from me–“thou turned back into a living being.

“I’m dreaming?” I asked incredulously. I wasn’t a lucid dreamer and this was all a bit much to take in. Jolting, I fixated on Luna, exclaiming “wait, you can go in dreams?” She was apparently the princess of the night, after all. I had seen her lift the moon. Was this just another facet of her power? Luna, for her part, just nodded energetically with a wide smile. She did seem to love it when people showed an interest in her nighttime abilities.

“It is so, Brian. This place is the manifestation of thy dreams. In these places, everypony has space to actualize their imaginations. They can create anything or be anyone.” Luna explained, lifting a hoof. Without a lumen of light in her horn, I watched an apple appear in her hoof, which she proceeded to take an appreciative bite out of, nonchalantly. “Thou didst cease to be, Brian. We saw your body turn to ash. Art thou”–Luna winced–“alright?”

“I’m fine.” I answered, patting myself as if to be certain. “Are you okhay?” I motioned to Luna’s general chest area and the peytral she wore over it. Luna’s cheeks burned bright red at the reminder that she’d been cut as well.

“We are perfectly fine, thine claws did not cut us deep. Our sister keeps a box of ‘bandage aids’ in her room and she did tend to our cuts.” Luna looked down at her fluffy chest and, furrowing her brow in concentration for a moment, made four pink heart-shaped adhesive bandages appear on her chest in the approximate area where I remembered cutting her.” Seemingly satisfied with herself, Luna shot me a sidelong glance, “‘Tis usually good sportsponyship to end a duel after blood has been shed.”

I felt a bit embarrassed, but decided to try and play my moment of mindlessness off, “Sure, after your bloodh was shed, maybe. I am”–I did a quick wave of a hand, gesturing from my legs to my head–“a bit harder to damage.” Truthfully, that momentary loss of sensibilities was terrifying to me, as were many changes that had come with this body. But I wasn’t sure how to even begin addressing them, let alone try to deal with them.

Luna snorted, but conceded the point with a roll of her eyes. “We suppose thou art thick-skulled.”

I gave a half smile to her retort, “I’d have stayed further away from your sphear if it was not held in youhr magic. I shuppose it caught me off guard since I said, ya’know, no magic.”

Luna’s eyes shot wide and her ears quivered for a moment, before she puffed out her pink-bandage covered chest and reaffirmed herself.

“The Canterlot Academy of Magic has classified telekinesis as lifestyle magic for over a thousand years. We agreed to no battle magic, no battle magic.” She was really stressing the minutiae here.

Luna looked indignant for a moment, but quickly collapsed in giggles. Conjuring a tower of pillows into the void behind her, she did a quick jumping loop up in the air and landed belly-first into the makeshift bed, which accepted her like a cloud. Just enjoying herself for a moment, Luna took a second to calm down. Sighing, she leaned upwards and looked at me.

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“All of the stallions we have interacted with are guardsponies who just agree to whatever we say. It is infuriating.” Luna huffed, “if we are agreed with when we are right and agreed with when we are wrong, then we had might as well always be wrong! Thou art a breath of fresh air, Brian.” I just chuckled with her.

“You shaid this was a dream? That I couldh be anything?” I queried after a moment, peering around.

Luna looked at me inquisitively, tilting her head.

“Thou can conjure or be anything thou canst imagine.” Luna answered softly. I was limited only by my imagination?

I opened and closed my mouth twice, bobbing like a fish but finding no words to say. Regarding the palm of my right hand, claws and all, I brought it to my face and delicately brushed at the skull above it. I could imagine it. I could remember it all so vividly. I dropped to my knees.

Like water flowing out of a cup, I felt the shape of my form fundamentally change. It was not a gristly mutation, no crunching of bones and stretching of flesh. No, instead I just noticed parts of me existed that had not before; and parts of me didn’t, ones that I had never had. I was shorter, weaker, less stretched. No claws tipped my fingers, no fangs my mouth, no horns my skull. A shuddering breath escaped me and I felt tears form in my eyes, I was human again.

“B-Brian?” Luna was behind my shoulder, a full witness to my transformation. I couldn’t focus on her though. I could still remember it all, I could see it so clearly. I jumped to my feet, the proper body proportions were welcome for the sense of balance they gave me. Spreading my arms wide, the dreamscape shifted. Suddenly, we were on a rocky Vista, overlooking a vast, undetailed wasteland. Then, a dense forest stream, light flooding in between treetops. I rolled my arms, changing the landscape to my childhood home, the door left inviting and open. Finally, the terrain roiled and soaring skyscrapers burst out of the land, swallowing the scenery in an ambiguous human metropolis. People, people like me stood frozen in imaginary tasks invented by my mind. I huffed, imaginary air filling imaginary lungs. Then I turned to Luna.

“Human, this is what I used to be, Luna.” I announced, no growling slur of my ghastly form polluting my speech. “This is what we look like, this is the planet we live on.” Luna was still wordless at my sudden transformation.

“Brian, thou art- thy people are-” Stumbling over her words, Luna took a step towards a nearby hotdog stand and marvelled at the people around it.

“We’re not monsters.” I insisted, speaking over her. Running a hand through my hair, I marvelled at the sensation that had once seemed so natural to me. “We’re people, this isn’t what we’re supposed to look like.” I waved a hand at Luna, only to shrink away as I found it warped and clawed once more. Shouting, I stumbled back away from the appendage, tripping over my feet and falling on my back against the pavement with a thud. All around, rumbling filled the metropolis. It was like a thousand tunnel borers were all surfacing at once under the city. Luna spread her wings wide in agitation, and turned to face me.

“Careful, Brian!” She called out, trying to take my attention away from my arm. “Thy mind is turning this realm into a nightma-” Luna was cut off as the bit of pavement she was standing on, hotdog stand and all, collapsed under her. She plummeted into an inky void. All around me, the city was collapsing. Towers were tumbling like dominos or collapsing in on themselves. Great spidery rifts spread across the streets, leading back into that formless void.

Pulling my legs up under me on the floor as the metropolis imploded, there was a warmness in my heart. Luna didn’t have to worry about me. I knew that I was still in here, if only in my dreams. The floor fell out from under me.

I woke up on a bed.

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