Shift with the Tides

*Week 4 following the eclipse*

“I can’t do this, Sister,” Luna said anxiously, “I just can’t do this.”

“Nonsense, Luna; you’re going out there, you’re going to stand at that podium, on that stage, put on the phoniest smile you can muster and tell Equestria what it needs to hear!” Celestia said.

“It certainly wouldn’t’ve hurt to actually know how this happened, though,” Rainbow Dash replied from the corner of the room.  “I mean, don’t you think it’d be best to wait until you yourselves actually knew what the heck’s happened?  Everypony out there is gonna have one question on their minds: ‘HOW did Luna become pregnant?’”

Celestia, Luna, Twilight and the rest of the Elements of Harmony’s representatives were huddled up in Luna’s room.  Each pony had taken a liking to a single spot in the royal living space; Rainbow in the corner, Fluttershy by the windowsill, Rarity on the feather-down pillows of Luna’s giant bed, Applejack and Pinkie Pie in chairs placed by a wooden table on the other side of the room, and Twilight—naturally—pacing back and forth in front of the two alicorns nervously.

“I’m afraid we don’t have that kind of time to spare,” Luna replied to the cyan pegasus.  “I want to get the news out as soon as possible; like I’ve said before, the longer we wait, the less confidence Equestria will have about this baby’s being intentional or not.”

“But it wasn’t intentional, was it?” Pinkie Pie asked absentmindedly.  She zipped her lips when Twilight stopped from her pacing momentarily to glare at the pink earth-pony.

“The main problem is that we don’t even have any leads,” Celestia said.  “…It’s been two weeks since the board meeting, and while all the mayors have prepared their towns and cities for the news, Luna and I have made zero progress on figuring all this out.”

“Whattya mean by ‘preparing the cities and towns’?” Applejack asked.

Before either alicorn could respond, Twilight cut in to explain, “Well, as you can expect, there’s going to be mixed views on one of Equestria’s princesses being pregnant.  The mayors have stationed insider ponies in different areas scattered around their respective boroughs—essentially a ‘plant’ that will contribute to conversations or inevitable gossip, but will purposefully alter the general view on the subject to a more positive output.”

“…wait…they’re growing gossiping plants?” Rainbow questioned.

“To put it in layman’s terms,” Celestia interjected before Twilight could give so much as an exasperated look at her pegasus friend, “They are pony ‘spies’ placed out for us, to tell everypony not to freak out about what’s going on.”

“Oh,” Rainbow said, almost disappointed that there weren’t any actual talking pony-plants.

Rarity glanced from Luna’s bed to the clock on the nearby nightstand.  “Only ten minutes until your speech, Princess.  I certainly hope all those ruffians do not get out of hand.  Granted, it is nothing more than a simple announcement, but I’m sure many ponies will freak out nonetheless.”

“I don’t get it,” Pinkie said, speaking up again, “What’s the big deal, anyway?  I mean, sure, Luna’s gonna have a baby, but that’s not anything to get this riled up about!  …Is it?”

Twilight sighed; she quit pacing and sat down abruptly, making a light thump when she did.  Looking down at the thin lines in-between each of the wooden floorboards, the purple unicorn simply said, “Sync bursts.”

“Wat?”

“A ‘synchronization burst’—or ‘sync burst’ for short,” Rarity replied.

“It’s a phenomenon that occurs with magic-carrying unicorns,” Twilight added.  “As I’m sure any mother could tell you, childbirth is a bitch.”  The unicorn’s friends all cringed at the curse-word; though Twilight didn’t want to resort to such language herself, she couldn’t think of a better way to get the point across.  “During such an event, the most any earth-pony or pegasus can do is grit her teeth, perhaps grasp her husband’s hoof so hard she starts to crush it—and let’s not forget the screaming.”  Twilight’s description of a mother’s pain in childbirth certainly didn’t lift Luna’s already-damp mood.  “But when a unicorn goes into labor, something entirely different happens.  A sync burst is the ‘synchronization’ of a unicorn’s magic with her physical pain.  During childbirth, most unicorn’s will unwittingly release their magic randomly, performing spells ranging from shifting the pillow beneath their heads an inch to the left, to completely inverting the force of gravity in her hospital room.  Fortunately, unicorn nurses are specifically trained to counteract the sync bursts of a mother during the entire labor process, so any serious problems from these events are seldom nowadays.”

“But if tha’s th’ case,” Applejack began, “can’t’cha just get a nurse for Luna an’—”

“Normally, you would simply get a nurse,” Rarity cut in, “But this isn’t some common unicorn.  This is an alicorn.  An alicorn that has the power to control the moon.”  The fashionista said this as she pointed a hoof at a nervous and sweaty Luna.

Rainbow considered for a moment the consequences that could ensue.  “But then the sync burst…she could send the moon flying into the earth or something!”

“A very stupid thing to worry about,” Twilight replied, “but it’s going to be something most ponies will worry about anyways.  As if Luna could cause any catastrophic damage!  Besides, Celestia could easily counter anything Luna may accidentally toss our way!”

“…I’m not going to lie, Twilight,” Celestia confessed, “Successfully suppressing all of a soon-to-be-mother’s sync bursts throughout the dozen hours of labor is not an easy feat.  Most of the time, nurses take shifts to give themselves a break for a while, but I’m the only pony in Equestria that is even close to having the ability to suppress Luna’s magic.  I don’t know how long I could go on my own.”

Twilight’s expression changed from mildly annoyed to severely concerned.  “What?  But—surely it shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it?”

“We can only hope that Luna’s sync bursts will be seldom and mild,” the white alicorn replied ominously.

Luna looked down at her front hooves on the floor.  “I can’t do this, Sister, I simply can’t.  How about you do this for me?  I—I can’t do this.”

Celestia cocked an eyebrow at her sister, unamused.  “You can say that all you want, but you’re the one who was stressing for this in the first place, so now you have to finish what you’ve started.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Luna replied flatly.

“Five minutes,” Rarity said from behind the Princesses, looking again at the clock.

“It’s going to be the longest five minutes of my life…” Luna said aloud, though to no one in particular.

She could feel all eyes on her as she slowly walked up to the center of the open-air stage in the Canterlot Gardens.  It wasn’t as if invitations were dropped all over Equestria from the sky—instead, Celestia and Luna called a spontaneous meeting on a whim, at least as far as the residents of Canterlot knew.  There wasn’t much point in trying to spread the word, anyway—the princesses knew that word of mouth would handle that on its own.  One would think that it wouldn’t be the best idea to have Equestria find out from the words of other frantic ponies, but the ‘spies’ planted around each city were prepared to take care of such in one fell swoop.

Despite the reassurance, though, Luna felt terrible.  She was about to tell Canterlot that she was pregnant—not the best of situations to be in.  Her vision was blurring just the slightest bit; she felt the same as she did early in the morning, where a bowl of Sugar Cube Crisp would normally be sitting in front of her to break the fall between her face and the tabletop.  But today she had to fight back the darkness welling up on the edges of her sight, swallow her fear and face her problem head-on.  She really did feel ready to collapse, and the symptoms from pregnancy, though mostly repressed by the spells her new doctor had shown her, were still affecting her, and it certainly didn’t help her current condition.

After what had felt like an eon or two, Luna found herself in front of the massive crowd that had come to hear her announcement; most were Canterlot unicorns that happened to have been in the vicinity when they heard about the small statement Luna was going to make in a few hours.

Luna could feel hear heart beating in her ears.  She could barely see out of her eyes, and her hooves were slipping in her glass slippers, they were so wet.  Celestia and the mane six were standing on ground level with the crowd, right next to the steps up the pony-height open-air stage.  Celestia happened to notice her sister’s steadily-declining condition.

“Oh crap,” the white alicorn said as she hastily walked up the steps to her discombobulated sister.

Luna’s nervousness had taken a big chip out of her stamina.  She was barely conscious, swaying softly from side to side as she blankly stared out into the crowd.  “Now…I have an important announcement to make, everypony…” the alicorn said loud, but vacantly.

Celestia tried not to look like she was in a hurry, even though the opposite couldn’t be more true.  ‘Luna, please shut up—now’s not the time to announce this, not when you’re like…this…’

Just as the sun princess walked up to Luna’s side and poked her on the shoulder to get her attention, Luna shouted:

“Equestria, I AM PREGNANT!  I.e. I’m bearing a child, and it’s my child.”  Celestia gritted her teeth in horror to Luna, then she turned and looked at the extremely confused onlookers.  “I simply wanted Equestria to know, as that’s the right thing to do, right, Sister?”

Halfway through saying “Sister”, Luna’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she fell onto the floor of the stage; all the ponies watching immediately started to murmur and stood up to get a better look at the princess.  Not because of her announcement, but because of what was suddenly on all their minds: Luna just COLLAPSED on the ground.

Luna awoke to the sound of her alarm going off.  She didn’t open her eyes, though; she simply laid in her bed and listened to the alarm continue to blare.

*Beep.  Beep.  Beep.*

Wait a minute.  That’s not her alarm.

“—and this isn’t my BED!” Luna exclaimed as her eyes flew open, and sitting up, she realized that she was in a hospital room, lying in a crummy hospital bed with some of the thinnest bed sheets colored the worst shade of green imaginable.  The heart monitor continued its constant beeping, synonymous with Luna’s heartbeat, which started to rise a bit.

“Woah there,” Celestia said, standing on the edge of Luna’s bed, closest to the moon princess.  Luna glanced around and noticed that Twilight and Fluttershy were in her room, too; nobody else was there, though.

“The others couldn’t make it,” Fluttershy said softly to Luna, noticing how the alicorn was glancing around the room.

“More like they ditched us after finding out you were going to be okay,” Twilight said in a scolding tone to the other four ponies that weren’t there.

Celestia walked over to the half-open door of Luna’s hospital room.  “Doctor Hysteric, Luna’s just awoken,” she called to someone in the hallway.

Celestia stepped away from the doorway and looked at Luna and gave her sister a reassuring smile.  “Luna, you remember your doctor, right?  How’re you feeling?  Do you need anything?”

A middle-aged earth-pony mare walked into the room, nearby knocking the door into Celestia’s backside as she swung it open.  She was a very light brownish-orange and a straight silver mane.  If one looked closely, they could see the dark shadows under her deep-green eyes.  Of all things a pony could have a picture of on their flank, this mare had the monitor of a sonogram.  “Let up Celestia.  It was a simple panic attack, nothing more.”

“A…a panic attack?!” Luna exclaimed.  “But…”

“I think it doesn’t take any more than three tries to guess what the cause of it was.  I saw the little stunt you pulled, Princess.  IMO, that was a terrible idea.”  Hysteric pulled up a chair next to Luna’s bed and sat down in it, eyeing the alicorn.

“I needed to let Equestria know about my inevitable child!” Luna shot back in defense.

“I never said you couldn’t tell anypony,” the doctor replied, “I advised you to make sure you didn’t do anything too stressful, though.”  She spoke in a very strict tone.  “There’s plenty of other ways to go about telling everypony this side of the ocean, but a live public announcement?  What on earth were you thinking during the whole planning process for this?  That you’d be perfectly fine—that you could go about giving such news on your own?” she scolded as she glanced at several papers in a folder she had carried in with her.

“I don’t know…” Luna said weakly, “I just wanted to do it myself!”

“And look where it’s gotten you,” the doctor said in a flat mock.  “Just rest up here for a few hours and sign out whenever you feel better.”  She closed up the folder and stood up from her seat.  “Oh—and if you have any other questions about your pregnancy, don’t hesitate to ask.  Just don’t ask me anymore questions about how it happened, okay?  I already told you the different ways conception occurs, and you’ve strictly denied all of them.”

“Well, obviously, this isn’t some natural conception, then!” Luna argued.

Doctor Hysteric gave Luna a look of dull amusement.  “Hey, don’t tell it to me.  I’m not the one who has any answers, Luna.”  And with that, she walked out the door, having plenty of other ponies she needed tending to.

“…Just out of curiosity,” Twilight began after the doctor was gone, getting the attention of the other three ponies in the room, “When did conception occur for you, Luna?”

Celestia and Fluttershy looked from the purple unicorn to the royal-blue alicorn in the bed.  Luna only stared blankly at Twilight, though.

“…Princess Luna?” Fluttershy asked.

Luna was staring off into space, thinking hard.  “…I…I don’t know,” she said finally.  “I have no idea when the first day even was.”

“Perhaps we should’ve started off there, Sister,” Celestia said.  “Before figuring out how it happened, we probably should’ve figured out when it happened.”

“Well…when did symptoms first appear?” Twilight asked.  “Symptoms of your pregnancy, I mean.”

Luna looked up at the ceiling in thought.  “…I suppose it was about three weeks ago that I first staring feeling the muscle cramps; a different doctor we saw before Hysteric said that I was most likely showing advanced symptoms that were showing sooner than normal, so we also have to put that into account.”

“If I’m not mistaken, most symptoms appear around one to three weeks after conception,” Twilight added.  “More or less.”

Fluttershy shuffled her hooves as she stared at the ground.  This caught Twilight’s attention.  “Fluttershy?  Is there something you’d like to add?  Anything could help.”

“Well, it’s not really anything…more of a comment than information…” the yellow pegasus whispered.

“What did you want to say?” Luna asked.  “Go ahead, I don’t mind.”

“Well, I was just thinking about how, um…well, it almost seems like…we all agree that conception occurred within the past month?”

“I suppose so,” Twilight replied, eager for the passive pegasus to get to her point.

“…Doesn’t that kind of match up with when the eclipse happened?  Are they, maybe, related events?”

“………”

“Mother of Equestria,” Twilight said.