Crowns, Clowns, and the Eternal Sun

Chapters

I: Jump
II: March
III: Eclipse

I: Jump

I: Jump

When I was twelve years old, I had this absolutely brilliant idea. I was going to sneak out at night, climb onto the roof of Starswirl's Academy for Gifted Unicorns, leap off, and then land in the small pond out back. I'm not sure what demon possessed me into thinking this was ever a good idea, but it must have been one seriously persuasive demon.

For starters, I didn't have wings, so this was less flight practice and more of a daredevil stunt. The building was nine stories high, which, while not a certifiably fatal fall, is big enough to cause some awful repercussions if you mess up. The lading point, if the pond was missed, was inevitably going to be stone, as that was all there was in the backyard of Starswirl's Academy. And even if one did manage to land in the pond, hitting water is not a painless endeavor, especially when the pond was, at most about 6 feet deep. And I was all alone, I didn't tell my sister or anyone else about my little stunt, meaning that if I got seriously injured and damaged my horn in the process, I was probably going to end up bleeding to death.

For the longest time I simply sat on the roof, debating with myself about whether or not I was actually going to do it. I was probably up there for about twenty minutes, but the way it felt, King Re could have returned from his banishment in the time it took for me to get over my conflict of interests. The smarter side of me wanted me to go back to my room; not only what I was doing dangerous, but if I got caught by one of the school staff, I would be severely punished (note: ‘severely punished’ is a politically correct way of saying that the headmistress or one of her cronies would beat the shit out of me,) but my inner dumbass daredevil won out. So I counted to three, moved back to give myself more leverage and then ran off the edge like there was no tomorrow.

For a few seconds, I was airborne. I felt like this was as close as I was ever going to get to experiencing what it’s like to be a Pegasus, and it felt wonderful. Even though it was only for a few seconds, it was a magical few seconds. Real magic, not the Starswirl Academy “you get a D on your test because you don’t know how to turn an apple into an orange,” kind of magic. From that moment onward, I had an affinity, an admiration towards not just Pegasi, but all creatures that could generate lift, be they anything from griffins and winged dragons, to hummingbirds and bumblebees. Even some 1200 years later, I still remember the sensation like it was yesterday.

And then I hit the ground; and all I could feel was pain.

I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream, I didn’t move, I didn’t even do anything really. All I could do was lay there, with my head spinning so violently you’d think it was a dreidel, as I managed to squint my eyes and get my rapidly blurring vision to see just well enough to notice that my left foreleg was essentially bent backwards from the knee down. It also appeared to be broken in a couple other places as well, although my memory fails me as to exactly where that was. I could also feel a liquid beginning to pool around me, and while my vision was way too damaged to be able to make out any details; considering that I missed the pond by at least twelve feet, it was pretty easy to assume that wasn’t water.

I should have died that night. If there is a God, she had no justifiable reason to keep me alive after that awe-inspiring display of idiocy. But somehow the thud I made when I collided with the stone was noisy enough to wake up some ponies; and the next thing I knew I was in the Starswirl Academy hospital, where this fat nurse proceeded get spit and chewed food all over my coat as she yelled at me in incoherent nurse-lingo.

To this day, I can’t pinpoint the exact reason I remember that night so well. I don’t have the slightest clue as to what I was doing a month before that night, or a month after that night (actually, a month after I was probably in the Starswirl Psych Ward because nobody believed me when I told them I wasn’t trying to commit suicide, but I digress,) and yet as far as that one night goes, my memory is nigh impeccable. I could tell you the day it was (24 April, 961AC,) the date of the week (Wednesday,) the weather (about 20®C, partly cloudy, high air pressure,) and, as seen above, all of the little minutiae that any ordinary pony would have forgotten by the next morning. And despite that no defining reason has ever struck with “this particular detail is why that night is indelibly etched in your brain.

Could it be because I discovered my love for flight? Possibly, but it was hardly the only moment I experienced that love. Could it be that this was my first real rebellion against the rigid conformity of Starswirl’s Academy, and Unicorn high-society by extension? Well, I certainly took quantum leaps towards that direction that night, but from the time I was born, I was never Miss Goody Two-Shoes, despite what certain members of the current royal family would have you believe.

I suppose the closest thing I’ve ever come to a real answer regarding this topic of conversation is that 24 April, 961 perfectly exemplified just how lucky I’ve been throughout my life. This was the first of a ridiculous amount of near-death experiences I had. Even at twelve years old, once I regained consciousness and remembered everything that had happened, my thought process was “I should not be alive right now.” And yet, alive I was, and alive I remain to this day (provided you’re reading this at the time of this book’s release and not 3000 years later).

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My birth itself wasn’t that interesting. I was the middle child, the third daughter out of what ended up being five. Apparently I was significantly larger than my two older sisters were at birth, which is hardly surprising considering that, according to an earth pony named Crazy Stats, I’m apparently the sixth tallest pony in the history of Equestria. Fifth was King Re, the psychopath who burned half the country down, so it’s nice to know whose hoofsteps I’m following in.

Anyways, my actual date of birth has been guessed at many times over the years, ranging from fairly accurate to numbers directly removed from somepony’s orifice. For the record, the actual date is Monday, 20 April, 949AC (yes, that April 20. Trust me when I tell you that date will get a lot less funny as you continue reading). Apart from the inevitable weed jokes that will follow, there’s nothing really that spectacular about my birth.

What is interesting is who my parents are. Princess Tau Sunflare, usually just shortened to Princess Sunflare, was the second wife of Midnight March. Yes, I said second wife, more on that later. She is widely recognized as one of the most powerful unicorns to ever exist, and legend has it she even killed an Ursa Major. As someone who spent the first seven years of my life by her side, I can say that, while the even supposedly happened before I was born, I wouldn’t doubt for a second if it was true.

Sunflare was an interesting mare. She could be mean, harsh, or even a bully at times, but she could also be very kind, warm, and welcoming. She certainly wasn’t ‘cold and emotionless,’ even if that was the face she liked to put up around the other nobles. But whenever there was a more passionate situation, whether it was because she was doing something she loved, or if she felt she had to protect someone or something, her true colours began to show themselves, no matter where she was. Besides, it doesn’t matter how rich and powerful you are, taking care of five children is never easy, so she deserves commendation for that alone.

The one thing that confused me about my mother when I was a filly, though, was that she would constantly complain about. And not just complain in the usual “god, this pony gets on my nerves sometimes” kind of way. No, she would say vicious, nasty, hateful things about that stallion directly to our faces, and I didn’t know why. Of course, she wouldn’t say any of that when were in public, or in the rare times when March was actually around, but otherwise she wouldn’t hesitate to casually call our then-King an awful piece of shit.

This confused me to no end at the time. ‘Shouldn’t mommy and daddy love each other?’ I thought. My rationalization when I was a kid was that Sunflare really did love March, she was just often fed up with him and inappropriately vented that frustration towards her children. Looking back, it didn’t make a ton of sense, but it was the least unpleasant justification and you can hardly blame a child for wanting to think that her parents don’t hate each other.

As I grew older, and I began to understand the meaning of the word ‘cynicism,’ my rationalization changed to ‘Sunflare realized she was in a loveless marriage, but doesn’t want to leave because divorce was still frowned upon at that point in Equestrian society, especially among royals, and Sunflare didn’t want to have to go through that.’ This explanation was more plausible then my childhood fantasy justification but it was ultimately still just that, and I eventually learned that the reason Sunflare didn’t leave was a lot more fucked up then anything I possibly could have imagined.

Midnight March, on the other hand, was much easier to paint a picture of. He is, without a doubt, one of the strongest mages, if not the strongest mage, to ever walk the face of Equestria. But that’s the only reason he became king. He didn’t have any connection to past royalty, becoming leader through forged documents and an excessive amount of bullying and intimidation, and as for how well his performance as ruler of Equestria, well…

Okay, I’m not going to keep you in any real suspense as to what I think about my so-called father. I need to get it all off my chest right now, or else every mention of his name will result in me seething with rage. So, for the record, Midnight March was an immature, spoiled, cruel, narcissistic, misogynistic, sex-crazed, power-hungry, glory-obsessed, disrespectful, excessively violent parody of a leader, who wanted to reap all the benefits of being the leader of a nation (namely sex with beautiful mares and the ability to tell others what to do without consequence,) but wished to shirk any and all responsibility that came with that power, and, on top of that, is just an unpleasant pony to be around. Which is all a euphemistic way of saying screw that guy. Perhaps that seems a little bit harsh. It won’t.

But all of that came later. In 949, I was just a foal, a foal born to the King of Equestria and one of the princesses, yes, but still just a foal. I had two older sisters at the time, Phoebe, who was three years older than me, and Jovia, who was one year my senior. Both were there alongside my mother when I was born. March was not, apparently he had more important things to do.

So, for the first year or so of my life, I was the baby of the family. I don’t remember very much from those early days, but I do remember my older sisters being not very nice to me, which usually resulted in them getting whipped by Sunflare for it. But apart from that, nothing major stands out from that time.

Luna was born on 6 June 950, which meant that from this point onward in my life, I know had my own little sister to abuse. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before I found out that nobody bullies Luna, or at the very least, nobody bullies Luna twice. For example, one day, when baby Luna (or Lulu as I called her,) was innocently playing with a small train, I decided, for a reason only my two-year-old brain could understand, to take the train from her, and quickly ended up with a black eye. Luna and I got in a nasty fight (or, at the very least, as nasty a fight as babies could get in,) and we both punished by our mom. Well, it was mostly me getting punished, actually. From then on, we were basically best friends.

During our early childhood, Luna and I developed a reputation around Midnight March Castle; around all of Bluville for that matter, for being troublemakers. Usually it was for pulling pranks, mostly on either our goody-two shoes older sister Jovia or on Princess Uranium’s bratty son Richie, who was about the same age as Luna. Sometimes; however, it was for full-on fights, which we would not only get into with each other, but also with other ponies, including but not limited to Richie or Terran, another young colt around the castle who had an even more nefarious reputation than my sister or I.

Sunflare was, not surprisingly, initially embarrassed to have such rowdy kids, but eventually got over her premeditated expectations and basically decided that we were who we were. Jovia never really stopped looking down on us, as she was ‘mother’s little angel’ after all; but every once in a while we did get her to have fun with us, so having her as a sister wasn’t a total loss.

Phoebe, on the other hand… Phoebe never really talked to us much. She was always a bit of a loner, she mostly left us alone and we mostly left her alone. Sometimes I would attempt to follow her around to see if she was doing something interesting, but she never was. 95% of the time she was by herself, often doing some seemingly inconsequential activity like taking a walk, buying food, practicing magic, or sometimes just relaxing in her room. I often wondered what her deal was, although obviously never to her face, as she could be kind of scary at times.

And that was my family (my youngest sister, Rio, was born thirteen years after Luna and thus grew up in an entirely different world). For the formative years of my life, I never really questioned this, it just seemed like it was the way it was supposed to be. However, not long before my seventh birthday, my world would be altered forever.

Author's Note

I think I should probably clarify exactly what this story is. This story is meant to be a memoir/autobiography, written from Princess Celestia's perspective, chronicling her life, from the time she was born right up until the present day in Equestria. Obviously that's a long space of time, so I'm mostly covering the major events.

II: March

Unicorns are a silly race. Sure, they like to think of themselves as dignified, sophisticated, and perhaps willingly up their own asses, but once you see past the snooty pretentiousness most Unicorns, specifically the ruling elite, are just a bunch of goofballs.

I’ve always wondered, even as a filly, why having a horn on your head made you a more sophisticated pony than those with wings, or those with neither horns nor wings, but Pegasi and Earth Ponies have their own semi-useless ideals and traditions as well. Still, being a Unicorn growing up, our customs were always the ones that stood out to me the most.
Unicorns seem to have a great reverence for great influential figures in Equestria’s past, which isn’t a problem in unto itself, but only, it seems, if they’re Unicorns. And often, being just an influential Unicorn isn’t enough; they have to be either royalty or a mage.

Names like Clover the Clever, Starswirl the Bearded, Sage the Wise, Mourning Dew the Mysterious and Kevin the Zebra-Killer get schools, libraries, research centers and even spells named after them (don’t bother asking how that last guy got his name, although you could probably hazard an educated guess). Hell, Clover the Clever, the first unicorn to ever travel time (which admittedly is pretty fucking cool,) gets time itself named after her. Well, sort of; the term Anno Cloverus, which is used to describe any year that follows the founding of Modern Equestria, has been adopted into our modern calendars. And it probably won’t take a philologist to figure out where that word came from.

As for royalty? All you had to do was take a quick venture into Midnight March Castle and you would find the line of kings, queens, and princesses who once ruled Equestria under their hoof, from Princess Platinum all the way up to Midnight March. Okay, a few of the severe nutjobs were left out (like that King Re fellow I keep referring to,) but what was notable about the rulers is that they were all Unicorns. Every. Single. One.

And there was no totalitarian regime at work here. It’s not like we were being instructed in school every day about how Unicorns are the Master Race and other ponies are dirt. That was just the way it was, the Unicorns were the rulers, and they were the ones who were in a position of power. They made the best rulers, or at least everyone within our little bubble in the castle believed that.

Needless to say, Unicorns had very little reverence for members of the other races. This is true to a certain extent to this day, but it was absolutely the case at the time, perhaps more so than any other time Anno Cloverus. Nowhere in any predominantly Unicorn kingdom, city, or village will you find shrines to the great Pegasi and Earth Ponies of the yesteryears. Whether you’re searching for one of the four other founders of Equestria, or simply an all-time great Wonderbolt, you will not find it.

Hell, when Intelligus Perseus Knightley released his book ‘100 Most Influential Figures in Equestrian History,’ 77 of them were Unicorns, compared to 17 Pegasi and just 6 Earth Ponies. Admittedly, Unicorns do tend to be the most recognizable faces of major movements within this nation’s past, so I can understand there being a bit of a disparity but the numbers should not be this extreme. Then again, expecting intelligent, thorough, non-biased historical analysis is probably something that shouldn’t be expected from a stallion with a name like that.

And whenever Pegasi became high ranking members of a kingdom or a community, which was a rare occurrence in unto itself, it was generally either a smaller city or an all-Pegasus one; no one could ever see a Pegasus ruling Manehattan or the Crystal Empire. And Earth Ponies? If they became anything more than simple farmers in their lives, then that's considered to be an accomplishment for them, as far as us rich, spoiled Unicorns were concerned. Nopony ever put an Earth Pony in a position of power, unless they had absolutely no other options.

Was this racism? Absolutely. Was it mean-spirited? Most Unicorns didn’t think of it as such. But I did say that racial divisions were never higher in the post-Windigo era of Equestrian history than during March’s reign, so for him, there most likely was a little bit of malice involved.

I did have Pegasus and Earth Pony friends growing up. Bluville was, at the time, both the capital city of Equestria and its largest city apart from Crystaya (which purist ponies don’t like to count because of the Crystal Empire’s tenuous position as a part of Equestria,) and cities that large, even during the March years, couldn’t be effectively segregated.

I was two years old the first time I ever actually met a non-Unicorn. I had seen and heard of Pegasi and Earth Ponies before (I wasn’t that sheltered growing up!) but it was at that age that I was introduced one of my mother’s friends, an Earth mare named Heather. I remember this story because my mother never passed on an opportunity to remind me of the time when I boldly walked up to Heather, cleared my throat, and asked her “excuse me madam, what happened to your horn?”

I suppose you can consider that your ‘kids say that darndest things’ moment for this compilation of captivating tales.
Now, it’s at this point that I have to bring up the fact that, while I said I had Earth Pony and Pegasus friends, I probably wasn’t as close to them as I could have been. That wasn’t my fault, really, as a small filly I wasn’t really supposed to be outside the castle grounds without adult supervision, and since Tau Sunflare was often preoccupied with business and all the caregivers she hired either left or got fired within a short period of time, so often months went by without me ever being outside the castle grounds. Yeah, when I said I wasn’t that sheltered, that didn’t mean I wasn’t sheltered at all; quite the opposite, actually.

Luna and I did sneak out a few times though. Sneaking out has always been a weird experience for me, no matter how many times I discreetly snuck away when Sunflare or a nanny turned a blind eye, I would always get that rush of adrenaline that came with doing anything exciting shortly followed by a sense of dread over what would happen if I got caught. Of course, whenever Luna was around I made sure to look like sneaking out was no big deal to me either way, because it didn’t affect her in the slightest (either that or she had a phenomenal poker face,) and I’ll be damned if my little sister is going to have more balls then me.

But, interestingly enough, the pony outside the castle walls we were most interested in seeing wasn’t another filly or colt, although there were plenty of those. It was actually Rivers, a venerable old Earth Pony and before that sounds creepy, allow me to explain.

Rivers was a storyteller. He told absolutely fascinating stories of times long before the reign of Midnight March, of a time even before Clover and Starswirl, when Equestria didn’t exist and the three races only communicated with each other when absolutely necessary (so, in that sense, like March’s reign except without the PC bullshit.) He told us of the Windigos, ancient evil spirits who had the power to utterly destroy an ecosystem if there was an overabundance of war or death. They could be defeated by the spirits of harmony and friendship, which I believed was the corniest thing ever at the time but the longer I lived, the more it made sense.

He told us of Princess Platinum’s mysterious disappearance, of the terrible ripple effects that it caused throughout the country. He provided a detailed, perhaps too detailed, account of King Re and his psychotic desire to burn Equestria and recreate it in his own image. He weaved memories of the Crystal Empire and their ongoing separatist struggle, which was on-and-off for the better part of 600 years before they finally came to an uneasy truce within the last century. He brought to life a time when dragons ruled Equestria and ponies of all races lived in terror of their overlords (this story was regrettably anti-climactic, as it turned out there was no great hero or heroes who came and saved the world, rather it was the dragons getting tired of all the little rebellions and their subjects despising them in addition to their desire to conquer a new land, so they just up and left).

Admittedly, his stories may have been more colourful and exotic than how history actually played out but they were never completely fabricated. You’d think getting a history lesson from an aging Earth Pony would be dull and boring, but Rivers found a way to keep us entertained. Particularly Luna, who listened intently to every single one of his tale’s with her eyes the size of craters and a smile on her face big enough to cause irreparable muscle damage. Compare this to Sunflare, who tried to tell stories but ultimately ended up looking like a twelve year old filly from Hoofston attempting to recreate one of Sage’s masterpieces. Oh well, at least she was trying.

Perhaps what I appreciated the most about him was that he didn’t pull his punches. He didn’t try to neuter his stories because his audience was two royal fillies. He understood that we were mature enough to learn about some of the harder, crueler, more morose aspects of Equestrian life, and I cannot thank him enough for that. He always said it was fantastic that two young fillies, particularly two fillies that could end up being in positions of power one day, should be the audience, as these were tales that needed to be passed on. Granted, history was nothing new and they did teach you about most of the stuff that Rivers elaborated about, but very dryly and rarely with an unbiased perspective. And certainly not with the passion and eloquence that Rivers embodied every time he began dumping exposition.

What was also interesting about Rivers is he was a hardcore Starswirl purist. That was really his one major bias. He believed wholeheartedly that Equestria would be the utopia no one thought was possible if we followed Starswirl’s Manifesto to a T. That opinion was something that I didn’t think about much as a little one, but as I grew older I began to vehemently disagree with. Some of the stuff in Starswirl’s Manifesto was pretty weird, like forced breeding between the different races, elimination of all kinds of currency, elimination of ‘beauty’ as any kind of standard and a belief that all things should be measured purely on how utilitarian they were, elimination of any kind of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, and other well-intentioned but somewhat loopy ideals like that. However, Starswirl’s Manifesto was still an improvement over Midnight March’s life goals, which essentially consisted of “get money, power and bitches.”

And speaking of that last one…

Yes, I suppose I have to address the elephant in the room at this point. It’s frantically waving it’s trunk around while shouting “I’m here, notice me,” so ignoring it any longer would basically be akin to leaving you in the dark about a rather important subject.

I said that Tau Sunflare was March’s second wife. That didn’t mean that Sunflare was the second mare that March married, although she was. What that meant is that March ranked his wives in a hierarchal system and Sunflare was second on that list.

In case you missed the implication: March had a harem. Not a banging the bridesmaids, not mares on the side, not even a herd, a full-fledged harem. With numbers.

Now, herding and polyamorous relationships do exist in Equestria so this wasn’t as weird as it might have been in a predominantly monogamous culture but the way it was set up, what with the arbitrary hierarchy and March’s casual disregard for the health and safety of said mares, especially those lower on the totem pole, that pushed March’s relationships purely into ‘creepy’ territory. And that’s not even including all the females he slept with on the side, some of which weren’t ponies, or even ungulates.

March’s first wife was the previously mentioned Princess Uranium, who was allegedly a direct descendant from Princess Platinum. She wasn’t as intelligent, dignified or magically adept as my mother but she was incredibly sexy, so on the one level I can see why March liked her so much (and, during my teenage years, I may or may not have frequently thought about her while getting off).

So, apart from power and perversion, what else was March interested in? Well, there was one piece of Equestrian lore that utterly fascinated the then-king, fascinating him to a point where he would abandon his royal duties and sometimes even his sex life (I know, right?) just to look into this myth, and that was the Alicorn. Midnight March, having already been established as the most powerful Unicorn to ever walk the face of Equestria (in his mind, at the very least,) had made it his life goal to achieve Alicorn-status. It wasn’t, of course, going to be easy, as no Alicorn had ever actually been confirmed to exist up until that point. Even Rivers, the masterful storyteller who would often expose a truth behind what was thought to be merely an old wives’ tale, said that no Alicorn had ever existed, and no Alicorn likely ever will exist, regardless of March’s desire. A part of me, the part that had listened to my father waxing poetic about the Alicorn and order three large statues to be built of a winged Clover, Starswirl, and himself, wanted to prove him wrong, but ultimately I just wasn’t sure how. I tried to ask Luna if she had any ideas, but the Alicorn conversation had completely lost her hours ago.

I thought about taping fake wings to my back or something along those lines, but even as a five-year-old filly I realized how incredibly stupid that sounded (although Luna liked the idea, mostly because she just thought it looked cool). Still though, Alicorns had to be real. There was no way March, who I held in incredibly high reverence at the time, could be delusional, or even worse, outright lying, about his dream concept. Surely he would one day truly discover the history of the Alicorns, discover what it meant to be an Alicorn, and maybe, just maybe, even become one himself.

It never really transpired that way. And knowing what I know now, I couldn’t be more grateful it didn’t.

Author's Note

Admittedly, I'm not entirely satisfied with the way this chapter turned out, but I had a lot of exposition and world-building to get through and some parts of that are inevitably going to be boring. I still think it's a decent chapter, just not as great as it could have been.

III: Eclipse

In today’s Equestria, receiving a Cutie Mark is perhaps the most important day in a young pony’s life. And with good reason, we think of a cutie mark as an often abstract reflection of one’s true calling in life. Once a young pony discovers something that they love, and usually also that they have a natural affinity for, and then proves to themselves and generally others that they can do this particular skill, a Cutie Mark will likely appear shortly after and said pony will forever be connected to whatever their Cutie Mark represents. But the great thing about a pony’s Cutie Mark is that they are often unidentifiable without context, meaning it’s very difficult to determine the character of a pony just by looking at their butt. You have to get to know the individual first, and the meaning of their marking will begin to make sense.

That wasn’t always the case. In pre-Equestrian and early-Equestrian society, Cutie Marks were just bizarre symbols that usually vaguely related to a pony’s name. Other than that, their only real purposes were to look pretty and, in the case of mares or gay stallions, gave one’s partner a clear place to smack to their heart’s content without humiliating them in public. Suffice to say, it didn’t have the same importance as it does now unless you were an extreme nymphomaniac.

Of course, there were theories on what a Cutie Mark actually was. The most famous early theory being the one created by Pegasus philosopher Pandrus, better known both back then and today as Pansy, the timid mare who tagged along with Commander Hurricane in their quest to create Equestria. But in her later years, Pansy theorized that Cutie Marks were representative of a biological hierarchy within Equestrian life. The prettier and more elaborate your Cutie Mark was, the further up in Equestrian society you deserved to be.

Essentially, if your Cutie Mark resembled a great, historic work of art, or something that could be passed as a great, historic work of art to the untrained eye, then you were fit to rule, or at the very least take a position of high authority. Conversely, if your Cutie Mark looked like a triangle drawn by a four year old, then you were probably destined for prostitution or selling insurance. This line of thinking never caught on during Pansy’s life, partly because she had gained a rather nefarious reputation throughout her later years, but became hugely popular about a hundred or so years after her death, particularly among Pegasi, and there are some (not many) that still believe this to be the case even today.

But Equestrian society didn’t begin collectively re-defining what a Cutie Mark was until about 150 years before I was born, give or take. This was when pony society began placing a greater emphasis on discovering the imprint that would eventually take its place on your flank, and we began to inch closer to the modern definition.

Unfortunately, during my early years, we had the definition backwards. Society had correctly determined that your Cutie Mark was correlated to your true calling in life, but they had the order reversed. To clarify, instead of the pony defining the Cutie Mark, at the time, the common belief was that the Cutie Mark defined the pony. Because of the abstract nature of the Cutie Mark, this forced countless ponies into occupations they had no business being in because “it’s what my cutie mark was telling me.”

So, where does my Cutie Mark come from? Well, it didn’t come from any great achievement or even any truly fascinating moment of self-realization but it is rather interesting nonetheless, especially with the benefit of hindsight.

As is generally the case, this particular life-changing event started out on a pretty normal day. Luna was five and I was six, and we were playing outside in what was our attempt to recreate a magic duel. This lasted for, oh, two or three hours, until the sky darkened immensely. I knew it was still afternoon, so I wasn’t sure why this was happening. Now, today I know that this was because a solar eclipse was taking place, but little me was freaking the fuck out.

“The sun is gone!” I shouted, “What happened to the Sun!?”

I continued rambling, wondering why there wasn’t a national emergency taking place. And by wondering, I mean crying hysterically. But what’s strange was that I wasn’t really sure why I was so upset. Okay sure, no sun means the slow and painful death of all life as we know it but that wasn’t what was going through my head at the time.

No, my thought process was more along the lines of the sun disappearing was a horrible disturbance of nature in unto itself, like I felt some kind of kinship to it and it’s disappearance meant that a part of me had disappeared along with it. This great, flaming ball in the sky was always up there, and I don’t think I ever began to truly appreciate it until it briefly vanished. During the moments when I believed it may never come back, that was when I realized not only how important, but also how beautiful and majestic the Sun really is. Then again, this is an adult’s interpretation on something that happened 1200 years ago, so perhaps everything you just read was all a bunch of crazy talk.

Know what else was strange? Throughout my quasi-nervous breakdown that seemed to only be getting worse the longer the shadowed sun remained, Luna, the fidgety young filly who always seemed like she was either ecstatic or pissed off, was in a state of serene-like calm. It was a little bit unnerving. No, it was a little unnerving to a filly. To a detail-oriented eye it probably would have been full-on terrifying.

“Does this not bother you, Luna!?” I asked.

“Am I supposed to be bothered by something?” Luna responded.

“The Sun! One minute it was there, and then all of a sudden it's gone. Are you not seeing that? Am I going crazy here!?”

“I’m seeing it, but I don’t think it’s so bad. Less sun only means more time to look at God’s beautiful night.”

My focus then shifted to worrying about the fate of the sun to angrily staring down Luna. “No it doesn’t, it means that the day will be gone forever.”

“And we don’t need it,” Luna responded, “The night is amazing. It’s too bad more ponies don’t appreciate it.”

Now, what would a mature, rational pony do in this situation? Well, a mature rational pony would have responded by saying that without the Sun, we don’t get enough heat and warmth and we all die as a result. Or, said pony would have agreed with Luna that yes, the night is beautiful, and then thrown in that the day is beautiful as well. Or even better, perhaps they would have realized that Luna, like myself, was experiencing a previously unknown phenomenon and therefore was confused, and likely afraid, and no one thinks coherently when they’re afraid, so they would have tried to diffuse the situation by changing the subject entirely.

However, I’m not a mature, rational pony. I wasn’t then, and I’m still not sure if I am today, so my immature, irrational brain decided to take the course of action that it found the most appropriate: punching Luna in the face.

Luna stared at me, bug-eyed and incredulously, a million thoughts seemingly racing through her mind, “What was that for!?” she screamed.

I had difficulty finding an answer. I didn’t want to hurt Luna, I don’t know why I hurt Luna; I just… did.

“Luna… I… I don’t-”

I never got the chance to make a full response; however, as before my ramblings got off the ground, I was starkly met with a hoof to the nose, and Luna looking like she wanted to tear my head off and mount it on a flagpole. But before she had a time to follow up on her attack, I countered by kicking her in the stomach full force. Luna doubled over, and I thought I had won, but she then promptly jumped on my back and starting flailing her forelegs wildly, hitting everything she could in the process.

I struggled mightily to try and knock her off, but her hind legs were wrapped pretty tight enough around my neck that I couldn’t get her to fall simply by moving fast and cutting, and if I tried to pry her off using my forelegs that would give her free range to attack my face, so the only thing I could think of doing was running towards objects and then crashing into them. And sure enough, running full speed into a redwood did accomplish the desired result. Unfortunately, it also may have given me a concussion.

Ignoring what ailed me, I decided that melee may not be the best approach, so I used magic to levitate the blue unicorn. However, since my magic was rather limited at the time, the best I could do was get her to hover about four feet off the ground for a few seconds before Luna broke free from my spell and pounced at me. I lined up to kick her but only got a piece of her shoulder; not enough for her to jump on my once again, this time managing to tackle me to the ground and start wailing on my face. As soon as she took her forelegs away from me; however, I was able to easily shift my weight on top of her, being both older and bigger than she was, which meant that it was now my turn to repeatedly punch her in the face. And it wasn’t as easy for her to shift back on top of me because, as I constantly liked to remind her in our childhood, she was a “midget.”

So I kept attacking her, and Luna kept attempting to counter whenever possible (I say attempting because I was a much better fighter then her; and I still am,) and this raged on for, oh, a good six or seven minutes. After that time, Luna had a developing black eye and several cuts all over her body. I, of course, was unharmed… well, admittedly I may have broken a rib or two, but I was less hurt than Luna and that’s what matters.

Anyways, just as I had Luna pinned down and unable to move, and I was going in for the metaphorical kill, I paused.

“Lulu, why are we fighting?”

“I don’t know,” Luna said, “Something about the sun… and the moon… and the moon covering the sun.”

Luna and I looked up at the sky, to find that the sun was back, and there was no trace of it ever having been blocked out.

“Well, the sun’s back,” I said.

“So, our fight was completely pointless?” Luna asked.

“Yup,” I said, and we both began rolling on the grass laughing. Although given the fact that we’d just spent the last seven minutes beating the piss out of each other, that didn’t feel too great either.

Also, spoiler alert: that fight wasn’t pointless. Not by a long shot. If it was, then I wouldn’t have put it into this book no matter how detailed my memory of it was, as Luna and I fighting was hardly a rare occurrence and even if it was, it wouldn’t have really been important enough to talk about unless it had some long-term consequences, which is what I’m getting to in a moment.

So we went back inside, our mother spanked us for fighting and then tended to our wounds, and we weren’t allowed to play outside again indefinitely (for the record, ‘indefinitely’ when it came to Sunflare meant “until I forget about your punishment,” which was usually either the day after the incident, or the day after that. In short, don’t feel too badly for us). Jovia, of course, felt the need to chime in about how “we, as future princesses, shouldn’t be fighting outside like a bunch of ruffians, especially over matters so trivial,” and we promptly told her to shove it. Well, we were fillies, so those weren’t the specific words we used but it was definitely still the sentiment. And, to my mother’s credit, she did at least explain to us what an eclipse was, probably in hopes of preventing another situation like this one as much as it was actually about us learning.

But that night is when things started to get weird. I was in my room, fixing my hair or something like that, looking into my mirror. I remember lamenting that I wasn’t prettier. I remember wishing that I was a little smaller (I’d always been big for my age,) that my light pink mane clashed less with my white coat, that my tail was shorter and less of a chore to brush, that the bright yellow sun on my flank wasn’t so large and intrusive, that the…

Wait what!?

I couldn’t recall any bright yellow Sun being there before. I knew it wasn’t there that morning, so where did it come from? How and when did I get it? What does it mean?

But as for what it was, that wasn’t a question. I knew that either somepony was playing an elaborate prank on me, one which they would pay for dearly, or I had just gotten my-

“Cutie Mark!” Luna burst into my room without knocking; something which I’d frequently reminded her not to do, “Look Tia, I just got my Cutie Mark!”

Luna turned around to show me the small, crescent moon that adorned her flank, which was shrouded by a beautiful black background, which flowed smoothly into her light blue coat.

“Isn’t it cute?” Luna asked.

“Well, it is called a cutie mark,” I answered.

“Looks like you’ve got yours too!” Luna said enthusiastically, “But what do you think they mean?”

“Well, I think they represent the Sun and the Moon.”

“You don’t say,” Luna replied sarcastically, and I growled at her.

“What I meant to say is… what do you think they’re telling us to do? And for that matter, where did they come from?”

I pondered my sister’s words for a minute, taking my sweet time to answer much to Luna’s chagrin.

“I think they came from our ‘eclipse fight,’ I answered, “As for what they mean, um, maybe we were meant to be weather ponies?”

“That can’t be right, can it?” Luna asked.

I paused and looked around for a while. We were sisters, so having one of us be the sun and the other be the moon was kind of fitting. And Luna as the moon was about as obvious as you can possibly get. As for myself as the sun, well, Celestia means ‘heavens,’ but going from that to sun wasn’t much of a stretch. But beyond our neat little naming conventions…

“I don’t know,” I answered, “I really don’t know.”

Author's Note

Okay, so for those of you wondering how you can have an eclipse when both the Sun and the Moon are controlled by sentient beings (as it was established that even before Celestia and Luna the night and the day were cycled by Unicorns,) just think of it was the pony or ponies who were responsible for controlling the moon had a few too many rum and cokes and decided it would be hilarious to raise the moon in the middle of the day and block out the Sun. Midnight March disciplined him accordingly (probably by cutting his balls off).