A drop of fuel for a Nightmare

The next few weeks were much of the same. Wake up, make Luna some form of breakfast, then spend the rest of the day assisting her in whatever she felt appropriate. In many ways, it was a nice life - you were well paid, well fed, kept warm, were slowly making friends with Shadow Shield, and simply had to follow orders. If assisting your princess wasn't a fulfilling job, then what was?

You were fully aware, though, that you didn't seem to be making much progress on the other half of your job description. Cleaning Luna's bathroom wasn't getting you any close to "making friends" as Celestia had so simply put it. As if that was going to be easy.

Today had been a day like any other. You'd finished Luna's breakfast a little early (A simple meal that morning, dried hay and milk) and got to watch her reshape the sky to her whims. The night sky was becoming more interesting to you, though the sheer scale of it still proved impossible to comprehend.

Watching Luna create it, though, was something else entirely. The way she floated in the air, wings outstretched but not flapping, with her mane and tail flowing even stronger than usual as she concentrated, building the sky and bringing up the moon, was truly beautiful. Spellbinding, in fact. Not that you had any desire to look away - there wasn't a pony in the land who would deny that the two princesses were gorgeous. The moon slowly rose up, silhouetting her and exemplifying her form, showing you the way her body curved and turned.

You had to look away, worried the princess would notice your interest in her went beyond simple professional courtesy. It saddened you for a lot of reasons that Luna couldn't open up - not just because it meant you were failing at your job, but on a more personal level too. She seemed so alone.

Celestia had been right when she said that Luna didn't talk to many ponies. Nobody else ever came up into the tower, and Shadow had told you he was under instruction to deny access to everybody, with the only exception being you. Celestia, of course, was an implicit exception to every rule. Though you didn't mean to, you often surprised her as you moved around her tower between chores, finding her lost in reading, or inspecting treaties with other nations Celestia needed her approval for, or many other tasks. Sometimes, though, she was doing none of those things, and was just sitting there staring off into space. You'd have loved to ask her what she was thinking, but she wouldn't have appreciated it.

You looked at your list of chores. First up was reorganising the previous week's reading. Luna was slowly working her way through a millennia of history, literature, art, and culture, but she hadn't yet mastered cleaning up after herself. That meant you had a huge pile of books, each of which lived somewhere along the bookshelves. They were organised... in some manner, though not one you'd managed to figure out just yet. It was long, tiring work, involving a lot of climbing up and down ladders and staring at tiny print to figure out where things were best kept. You thought you had better get started earlier rather than later, then.

An hour or so, and a small fraction into the first pile later, you heard Luna quietly talking to herself. Straining your ears, you listened in.

"So... they named bad dreams after me? Is that what they think of me now? Am I a caricature of what I wanted, now?" she whispered, staring down at the book she was cradling in her hooves. From the way she was holding it, you could see the cover - you recognised it, you'd read it yourself. It was far from your favourite, but it had been the book that had first gotten you interested in the legend of Nightmare Moon, entirely because of it's biased and unfair portrayal of a historical figure as some kind of demon. It had seemed so damning it couldn't possibly have been true.

Most of that book was discredited ages ago, you told her, it's one of the least fair representations of the legend you'd read. You could recommend some others if she was interested, ones better written. It was only after a few moments that you realised you'd said all that out loud, without asking for permission to speak, and without ending your sentence with ", Princess." Curse your love of Equestrian history getting the better of you.

"Oh?" she exclaimed, raising her head, "You know of our tale?"

Of course, you admitted. It was a fascinating story, and one far less black and white than many sources made it out to be. While you certainly didn't agree with what Nightmare Moon had done, you thought Luna's reported downfall 1000 years prior was less cut and dry than too many ponies considered it. Though you were interested in all Equestrian history, her tale fascinated you the most.

"How fascinating, we are surprised a non-pony has taken such an interest in ancient politics. Come, tell us of these recommendations, we have yet to see an accurate depiction of events and have been considering writing a complaint to many of these authors." she exclaimed, turning to face you and inviting you to take a seat opposite her at the large stone table.

The next few hours were spent almost tutoring the princess, guiding her towards more balanced retellings and books generally accepted as factually correct. Her voice was as curt as ever, but this time she was using it to ask for your opinion, not give orders.

"So, subject. What does our kingdom really think of us?" she suddenly asked, midway through reading a chapter on the immediate political fallout of Nightmare Moon.

You knew that that was a difficult question to answer, especially so for you. Most of your knowledge came from books, and given that living in Manehatten was an exercise in avoiding others your knowledge of current popular opinion was limited. Regardless, everything you knew about it pointed to one thing: distrust. Not through malice, but through ignorance - Nightmare Moon was a tale used to scare fillies, so having even something tangentially related return to the kingdom was worrying for a lot of ponies. It was all made worse by Luna's lack of public appearances.

"We... can't." Luna slowly admitted. "Even within the castle, our presence is met with fear and suspicion. The kingdom is meant to love us, must we really enforce it upon them?"

You didn't have an answer to that. All you could advise was that it would probably get worse the longer she left it.

"We did not ask your opinion, subject." she snapped. And it was going so well, too.

The moon was high along its arc through the sky, and it was about time for lunch, so you apologised and excused yourself. Halfway through preparing the meal, however, you heard a knock on the kitchen door - highly unusual. Nobody else ever came into the tower, and Luna never knocked. Ever.

"Subject?" she called through. You wondered when, or indeed if, she'd finally learn your name. "What would you do in our hooves?"

That was as close to 'asking your opinion' as she was likely to get. So you told her, and the rest of the day was filled mostly with her picking your brains about all of the aspects of recent history she hadn't managed to catch up on - you'd never thought a passive fascination would turn out to be so useful, but Luna practically hung on every word.

By the time the night came to an end, both of you were stifling yawns, and she decided it was best to call it a night and begin again tomorrow, just like every night. Unlike every night, however, the door lingered a moment before shutting behind you as you left, giving Luna time to call through.

"Good night, subject"