Of Villains, and Glitterbugs
Lovelight the Lovely stared down the street, her brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. All around her the buildings of the city stood empty, save for the little bakery where Mrs. Hanky Panky lived and worked. The residents would be hiding there. But not from Lovelight, or from the other members of the Moonie Brigade, standing around her, and ready to face off against their arch nemesis: Nightmare Moon.
"You wretched fools! Do you not know who you stand against?" Nightmare Moon lifted a hoof to her chest, then swept it in a wide arc. "I am the Mare who haunts your dreams, I am the lingering fear, and the—"
Silver Saddle tipped over in the middle of the tirade, the victim of an accidental tap of Luna's hoof. The city of New Cantercourt faded away, and the street with it, leaving her standing in the middle of a set of five dolls facing down the larger, midnight-blue blue doll clad in black leather; Nightmare Moon, arch villain of the Moonie Brigade series of stories.
She paused to right the doll and cleared her throat, turning her attention back to the showdown straight from the first book. The pillows and sheets making up the street faded away again, and she was standing again in the wide street, facing down the tall, dark, and villainous mare.
Nightmare Moon continued her tirade, "—and the long shadow that reaches across the street! You would never have seen me coming if it weren't for that silly little filly!"
Lovelight stepped forward and put herself between the little filly and the enemy. "You wouldn't have won anyway, Nightmare Moon! You will never win!" She stamped a hoof down in the center of the street and gathered her magic for a spell. "You may as well give up! I, Lovelight the Lovely, shall take you down!"
"Foolish filly! Do you think you can take me—"
"Prepare to face the Lovelight Lance! No villain has ever been able to stand before the light of its love!" Light spiraled in streamers and sparks up Lovelight's horn to gather in a bright ball at its tip. "Do you yield?"
Nightmare Moon cowered before the brilliant light. "I-I give up! Please, not the Lovelight Lance!"
Lovelight let the magic fade away and sat back, smiling. "Good. I don't like to resort to violence." She looked behind her to where the little filly still cowered and then back at Nightmare Moon, her brows set firmly in what she hoped was a grim expression. "Still, you did steal the names of all of these fillies and colts. You must be punished."
Nightmare Moon only hung her head and flopped to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut; beaten.
Luna dashed back to her room—and reality—to pick up the silver and obsidian circlet she wore for state occasions. It wasn't the crown her mother wore, but it would have to do. In the vivid world of her imagination it wasn't her drab circlet anymore, but the magnificent golden, amethyst-crusted crown.
Her room faded away again as Celestia, Guardian of the Realm, Avatar of the Sun, and First Princess of Equestria strode down the street to where Nightmare moon lay prostrate before the five others that still kept watch over her.
"Nightmare Moon." She coughed and deepened her voice. "For the crime of theft, for stealing the names of foals, and for terrorizing my citizenry I hereby sentence you to the moon. There, you will serve out the sentence of..." What would be a good sentence for her? "One day. Do you have anything to say for yourself, Nightmare Moon?"
The beaten villain hardly stirred when her sentence was pronounced, but Celestia couldn't bring herself to feel sorry. Sure, being stuck on the moon for a day was bad enough, and boring; but it was lenient, compared to what she'd done.
"Very well." Celestia's wings spread wide, and she stood up, trying her best to look impressive. "But one last thing. Will you give the little filly her name back?" Celestia looked down at the beaten foe, then back at the little filly with no name.
Little Filly stepped forward and brushed against Celestia. "She can't give it back. I took a different name. My name is Little Filly."
"Very well." Celestia nodded once to Little Filly, then turned her attention back on her beaten foe. "Nightmare Moon, unless you have something to say, your sentence begins now."
When no answer was forthcoming, Celestia lifted the frozen villain into the air with a spell, and flung her to the moon. At least, that's what she meant to do.
Luna broke out of her imaginary world as the doll flew too high and slammed into the ceiling before clumping down to the moon pillow.
Her heart froze for half of its trip across the room, and then she was dashing after it. Celestia's warnings against playing too rough with her toys sounded loud over the muffled clatter of her hooves on the carpet. She crouched over the doll, then gently picked it up with a spell and turned it over.
The seams of the doll were a little strained, but the rough treatment hadn't done it any damage that she could see. She would have to be more careful; her magical prowess and strength were getting more pronounced every day. Even the weak spell she'd used felt like it was too much.
She rubbed away the stinging ache in her eyes with the back of an ankle and hugged the doll to her chest with both legs. Nightmare Moon might have been the villain of the series, but that didn't mean she didn't deserve attention. Maybe she just needed somepony to listen to her. Just like Luna's mother listened whenever something troubled her.
Still holding the doll to her chest, she rocked backwards and rolled over to her side on the moon pillow and looked out over the lumpy surface. The short, flickery shadows cast over its surface by a glitterbug lantern set on her windowsill lent an eerie, not quite real feeling to the pillowscape and sent long shadows that flickered with edges of golden light. She wondered, briefly, if the real moon looked anything like what the surface of her pillow did.
Probably not. She pushed against a hill with one of her hind feet.This moon is made out of fluff and stuff, not rocks and dust.
She twisted about and looked over her shoulder at the moon just starting to crest her window's bottom edge, and the lantern standing in front of it, with its fluttering glitterbugs aimlessly bumping into the glass walls of their cage. Sometimes, she felt the same way in her room at night, pretending she was some great heroine with her dolls.
But she couldn't play with her dolls elsewhere. It wasn't that Celestia frowned on it. Her mother had actually encouraged her to do something during the tedious and boring meetings of state that Luna was obligated to attend, if not actually participate in.
She'd tried, but the looks the councilors and courtesans gave her made her stop playing with them. They hadn't said anything. Not with her 'sister' right there, ostensibly approving of Luna's playtime; but their looks said all they needed to. With a barely hidden sniff, a subtle roll of the eyes and a dismissive flick of an ear, they went back to what they'd been at before.
The message came across as clearly as if they'd slapped her and told her playing with dolls was silly and foalish. She'd stopped bringing her 'Tia doll to the state functions after she'd heard some of the servants of the Solarium chatting in a storeroom about how "Luna is supposed to be a Celestial, why would she want to play with dolls?"
That had been months ago, and Luna had sulked for a long month afterwards. She wondered, there on her moon pillow, if maybe that had been the reason why Celestia cried herself to sleep at night.
A month ago, on that wonderful day she'd spent with her parents as their daughter for the first time, she'd learned that she was born just like any other pony, and not just a living vessel for the Celestial she was named after. Realizing that had made the feelings of inadequacy born of wanting to just be a foal and play with her dolls and toys seep away.
She was a normal pony. She could play with her dolls and imagine things. She could play with her toys and not feel silly.
Just not in public. She sighed. Some things hadn't changed, and there was more danger lurking in every action than ever before.
She prodded the lumpy landscape again and shook her head. The danger was always there. But you know about it now. She thought of the looks she'd seen members of the Solarium cast at her in the last month. She couldn't tell if they were more, or less, antagonistic than before, or if they held some hidden meaning or some secret knowledge behind those inscrutable expressions.
Don't think about that now. She snorted away the worry and let go of Nightmare Moon.
She clambered to her feet and set Nightmare Moon down more gently in the center of the pillow. "Just because playtime is over, don't think that you can get out of your punishment." Nightmare Moon didn't say anything of course. Luna left her there to wander down the makeshift street of sheets and pillows to the playhouse sitting at the other end that her mother had given her.
It was a sizeable playhouse, with a hinged front and tiny furnishings that had looked well loved even before it'd been given to her. It would have even been big enough for her to sit inside; if there hadn't been all the pesky floors and walls in the way. It was big enough for even an earth pony to reach in and move the little pieces with a hoof without knocking things over.
The little wooden ponies stood here and there in the house, held upright by the little wooden disks they were glued to and frozen in the same positions as the last time she'd guided them through their lives.
She sat down, opened the front, and moved the ponies around the house with a touch of magic. The feeling of their lives playing out in miniature refused to resurface, the magic gone from their imaginary lives. It was all boring.
Noble Thought was upset that her sister, the silly and slightly crazy Crass Thought, kept leaving the door open to let the bugs in, never cleaned the dishes, or did the laundry. It was a boring problem with a boring resolution. She didn't even bother to try and talk it out between them.
Luna closed the boring front of the boring house and flopped backwards to lay her head on a boring pillow that made up a part of the boring town in her imagination. The pillow-building wasn't much larger than she was and, looking down her front, it was easy to imagine that the entire town was smaller than she.
She giggled at the thought of being bigger than an entire town, and lifted a hind hoof, then pushed it against the pillow across from her, collapsing a part of the building across the street. She kicked the one next to it, and watched as that whole side of the street collapsed under the weight of the blanket.
She laughed, then sighed. With the street demolished so easily, there was nothing left for the giantess, Luna, to toy with; at least, nothing that wasn't breakable or precious to her in some way.
That was fun, but it was too boring. Leaning back, she looked at the window upside down and giggled again. The lantern was clinging by magic to the sill, and the moon was falling away from it. Maybe it would be more fun in the dark.
She could feel the moon's song humming against her horn, still thanking her for raising it not quite an hour ago. She closed her eyes and focused on filtering out all of the other stray magics drifting through the ether, taking only a minute that time to bring her focus to bear on the song drifting through the magical medium.
It was faint, but beautiful and intricate, just like the spell used to raise and lower it, full of harmonics that she could barely grasp, and a steady feeling of adoration pulsing throughout it like a steady, faint drumbeat. Or maybe that was the sound of the glitterbugs bumbling and tapping against the glass walls of their cage.
Wouldn't they like to fly free and dance in the moonlight? Her thoughts halted as she listened to both the cadence of the music thrumming through her horn and the bumbling tinks as they ran into the glass in seeming mindless flight.Can they hear the song?
It almost seemed to her as though they could. Their previously aimless, bumbling flight took on a new cadence as she stared at them. The song whispering through her horn seemed to direct their flight, sending the silvery glowing bugs to and fro within the confines of their cage.
She glanced at the door, and the shadow staying steadily still under the bottom edge of the door, and flipped over to her front. Quicksilver was a good guard, and one of the few who knew the secret of the relationship between she and Celestia, and he knew she liked her playtime private. Well, she didn't, but she didn't want him thinking she was just a foalish filly anymore.
She tip-tapped over to the desk and climbed up the chair, then made her way to the window and pulled open the panes of glass. Iron bars like the slats on the lantern kept her from going very far, but she didn't need to. She pulled up the cloth backing holding the bugs in place, and pressed the cage against the bars.
They didn't need a lot of encouragement. The fresh breeze and the open window stirred most of them, and they fled towards the open spaces and freedom of outside.
There were still some sleeping in the bottom of the lantern though. They must just be really sleepy. She set the lantern down on the desk beside her, and looked away from them quickly, her throat tightening. The glitterbugs dancing in the moonlight pushed away the thought of the dead glitterbugs in the bottom of the lantern out of her mind; mostly.
A dark blur swooped past the window and several of the glittering bugs disappeared.
She jumped up and pressed her face to the bars to look and see what had just happened. More of them disappeared, a few at a time, until there was just one glittering bug fluttering around her window.
"Get back in here!" She shoved her leg through the bars up to her shoulder, feeling the anti-magic spell in the iron bars itching across her coat. She waved her hoof frantically, then stilled when the bug came closer. She wanted it to land on her hoof, not to squash it. Something landed on her hoof alright. It was fuzzy and cute... and had just eaten the glitterbug.
It was a bat.
She shrieked and threw herself away from the horrible monster that had just eaten the pretty bug. Luna landed roughly on the table, sliding backwards until she almost slipped off.
Her guard burst into the room, swift as his name, wings snapping open and hooves raised for battle. "Princess!"
"Luna!" Celestia charged in just after him, her horn glowing brightly, and a gut curdling snarl fixed across her muzzle. The shouts and the fiery golden light startled the bat away from the window. Celestia stopped and looked around, then nodded to Quicksilver. "Luna, are you alright?"
Quicksilver bowed to Celestia, and left, closing the door behind him.
Luna lay half on the desk, her hooves braced awkwardly on the seat chair's beneath her. Tears ran down her muzzle and tickled her nose before dripping to the chair. "Mom..."
"It's okay, Luna." She wrapped her daughter up in a warm cocoon of golden light and lifted her gently from the awkward position. "Come here, sweetie." Celestia met her halfway across the floor and replaced the magic holding her with a warm hoof tucked around her. "What scared you so badly?"
"I wanted to let the glitterbugs out of the lantern so they could go and be free to live out there. And then—" She pointed a hoof at the lantern and clutched her other foreleg around her mother's neck. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to let them out just t-to—"
Celestia tucked her daughter's head close to her neck with a gentle touch of her chin and held her close while she cried. "Shh-shh."
Luna cried all the louder with her muzzle pressed against the warm, white curve of Celestia's neck. "I-I'm so sorry!"
"It's okay, Luna. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Nothing wrong? But..." She lifted her head from the comfortable space under her mother's muzzle and pointed a hoof at the lantern. "I-I killed them!"
"What?" Celestia walked over to the table and sat Luna down gently on top of it, but didn't lean away from the still tight grip her daughter had on her neck. "Luna, I want you to listen to me. You may have made it easier for them to be eaten, but unless you ate them yourself, you are not to blame. Please don't look at it like that."
Luna looked up at her, tears still trailing down her cheeks. "But I—"
"No buts, Luna. This is an important lesson for a princess to learn," Celestia said in the firm mother's voice that Luna was becoming more familiar with.
"What lesson?"
"The lesson every ruler needs to learn: how to exercise power over your subjects." Celestia's horn glowed brightly and an answering haze appearing about the bars. A cloud of glitterbugs surrounded in the same golden haze flowed through the bars before the glow around the bars winked out. She put the cloud of glitterbugs in the lantern and let the weighted cloth backing fall closed. "You have the same choice again. These little glitter bugs are your subjects. You can keep them safe, secure, and trapped inside the lantern for all of their lives."
"I want to do that! I want to keep them safe." Luna tugged on the cloth with a spell.
"Shh. I wasn't finished. Or, you can let them decide their own fates and fortunes. They won't be as safe, and they may not listen to you when you warn them against harming themselves, but their lives are not yours to control once you let them go." Celestia kissed Luna's ear gently. "But they will almost always be happier than if you kept them locked up."
Luna let go of her spell. "What should I do?"
"Ideally, a little of both. We do have laws, and those laws are like a cage, but not quite. More like a sieve." Celestia shook her head. "But the decision must be yours to make, Luna. You must understand the consequences of ruling too tightly, but also the consequences of ruling too loosely."
The circlet sitting on her desk, not a few hooves away, pulled at her attention. The weight of the responsibility it represented sent a chilly shiver down Luna's back. She knocked it away with a flick of her tail and buried her muzzle in her mother's neck.
Celestia nipped her ear, drawing her attention away from her fears. "Don't let it worry you, Luna. If I have anything to say about it, it will be years before you need to face any decision like it."
Shaking her head, Luna buried her face more firmly into her mother's neck while Celestia spent a few precious minutes grooming her mane in the old way, using tongue, teeth, chin and cheek to lavish affection on her. It wasn't something a big sister would do, and nothing she could remember Celestia ever doing for her before.
But a dim memory, more of an impression of a feeling, bubbled up from the past. "Mom?"
The grooming paused. "Yes, Luna?"
"Have you done this before?"
"It has been a long time. Does it bother you?"
Luna shook her head. She'd seen new mothers treating their foals the same way, even mothers treating older fillies and colts that way in what were meant to be private moments of affection. Those moments, Luna crept away from. It felt like she was spying on something she should have let remain private.
Celestia rested her chin between Luna's ears and tucked her daughter's head in closer to her neck. "I love you. So much."
"I love you too, mom." She nuzzled her mother's neck and looked down at the lantern. "Will it always be like that?"
"No, Luna. Not every decision we make will be life or death. Most will not be. But you need to realize that whatever you do, whatever you say, even whatever you wear will have unforeseen implications to those who watch you. I may not always be able to tell you what to say or do."
"Why not?"
"Because I might not know, either." Celestia ducked and nosed Luna's head towards the lantern with the glitterbugs flittering about inside. "What do you think you should do for your subjects?"
"I want to keep them safe."
"So do I."
"So what do I do?" Luna pulled away and scooted around to face the lantern, then lay down to contemplate the puzzle. "I don't want to let them be trapped either."
"Nor do I."
Luna felt her mother's head settle to rest on her flank and looked back. Celestia gave no further answer, and only looked back at her, then glanced at the lantern.
That, at least, was a familiar look. She sighed and turned back to the lantern. Celestia could be frustratingly vague sometimes.
I don't want them to die. I don't want them to be trapped, either. She looked at the window, still open, and at the swooping dark forms of bats flying out in the darkness, and the little stars that disappeared, only to reappear elsewhere and disappear again.
"The bats are going to eat them if I let them out."
Celestia only made a throaty noise that could have been an assent or a negation.
"I can't keep the bats from doing what they need to do."
"No, they have their lives and their reasons for doing what they do."
"I could try to negotiate with the bats?" Luna looked back at her mother, smiling.
Celestia cracked open one eye and looked back at her. "Don't look at me. I don't speak bat." She closed the eye again and resettled her head on Luna's flank.
She stared at the lantern, then at the dim shapes of bats swooping to and fro outside, sometimes making a little speck of silver light disappear, and sometimes not. Sometimes two silver sparks merged and descended, like falling stars, to land in the courtyard's grassy expanse.
"Let me give you a hint. Where are the bats?"
"The bats are outside." Luna looked outside again, then at the windows, and smiled, pleased with herself. A simple spell closed the windows. Celestia said nothing more, but Luna could feel her mother's smile against her flank. She lifted the cloth backing and let the glitterbugs out.
"Very good, Luna."
One of the glitterbugs landed on her nose, its flashing silver butt lifted for a moment, then it flew off again, leaving behind a tiny present on the tip of her nose.
"Is that...?" Luna sneezed and scrubbed her nose with a hoof. "Ew!"
Laughing, Celestia pulled a corner of blanket up from the floor, ruining what was left of the street, and scrubbed her nose. "Not all of your subjects will be grateful for the freedom you give them."
Luna used a spell to drag the glitterbug that had pooped on her nose back into the lantern and closed the cloth backing again. "When they poop on royalty, they should be punished."
"Perhaps." Celestia stood up and canted a leg. "But do not judge too harshly, Luna. Do you think the glitterbug knew that your nose was not a ledge? You are so much larger than it that everything you do is world shaking to it."
The moon in the corner of the room, home to a lonely Nightmare Moon, pulled at Luna's attention. Using her mother's leg as a stepping stool, she hopped down to the chair to sit, and looked up at Celestia. "Do you think that maybe sending Nightmare Moon to the moon was too harsh?"
"She did steal the names of all those fillies in the books." She looked over the remains of Luna's destroyed, blanket-covered pillow town. "It looks like she did a bit more than that today. What do you think was appropriate?"
Luna hopped down the rest of the way and trotted over to the pillow to look over the lumps and fluffy valleys that, she was assured, resembled the actual moon. Nightmare Moon lay half atop one of the hills, just where Luna had left her.
"I don't know. I do know that I'd be awful lonely, with nopony else around."
