Suspended in a Sunbeam

A Mote of Dust

A countdown clicked its way down in empty air.

It made no sound.

There was no air on the moon for it to make a sound, but it could be felt through the control board as clearly as if it was shouted in open air.

A figure sits, in a chair that looks halfway between hoofmade and manufactured, inside a cabin composed of jury rigged parts, most of which had been invented on the spot.

I cannot fail this time, thought the figure. I've come too far to fail this time.

That's what the figure always tells herself. That's what Luna tells herself, every time she tries this, for the last 150 years.

The cabin begins to shake, blurring the view of the lunar crater where this ship sat.

Luna has long since given up on talking to herself. There is no atmosphere for even her to hear, and it only makes her sad, feeling it rattle around in her own head.

The vibration of the ship reaches a crescendo. Luna grips the rock she holds in her hoof even more tightly. It is a meteorite, a very special meteorite. It did not come from the depths of space. Instead, it had been orphaned of Equestria, long ago, in some long-forgotten cataclysmic event.

Like her.

She has cleared the crater by now, and the ship's gentle rotation brings a field of wreckage into her view. Every one of them a former prototype of the ship she was in right now. Every one of them a failed prototype, too heavy, not balanced, not strong enough, not enough thrust, too much spin. Wrecked ships dot the landscape as far as the eye can see, each one stripped of useful components, and whatever could be put into the next.

Checking a gauge next to her, she has reached farther than she ever has before, a full two and a half minutes of acceleration upward.

Luna looks out the window again, she has never been this far up, this close to freedom. She can see the stars glittering now.

To think, just a hundred years ago I was rejoicing at just getting up over the edge of the crater.

The crater dwindles in the distance as Luna is left with her thoughts of the last several hundred years.

The joy of the first thing she built out of lunar dust, the excitement of smelting iron, simple electronics, a radio telescope, the discovery that drove her to strive for the stars, the taxing puzzle that was solid fuel motors. Every tiny step has brought her here, miles above the lunar surface that have been her prison for longer than she can remember.

Equestria turns its way into her view, and she looks away from it. She tries to forget, and squeezes the rock even harder than before. She stares at it for a long moment.

Do I even need this now?

It is a plain rock, marred by exit and re-entry from Equestria and save for the rarity of being on the moon it is worthless. A thousand years ago, she would have kicked it aside without even a second glance. It is a reminder of home, her only friend for the longest time.

I don't need this anymore...

Luna feels a lurch as the final stage rockets separate. She is floating free of the feeble lunar gravity. She looks back at the rockets floating away into space and makes a decision.

Unbuckling herself from the chair, Luna weaves her way through the ship, past thick hoofmade wires and around delicately assembled components.

This feels somehow liberating.

Her heart tells her she shouldn't be doing what she is doing, but Luna made up her mind long ago.

Luna finally makes it to her destination, an airlock that didn't lock any air, because there is no air, inside the ship or out.

I'll always regret it if I don't do it now.

Hesitating at every step, Luna opens up the airlock and casts the rock out into space. Tears gather around her eyes as she does so, forming bubbles that float around of their own accord.

Luna sits for a moment, staring out at the rock as it dwindles into nothingness with distance. Equestria comes into the view again and Luna finally looks away. It looks smaller now than it did before.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Luna makes her way back to her cabin and straps herself down into the chair. She cries for a long minute about a future that never was, and a past that could have been.

Finally Luna gets a hold of herself and presses a button on the ship's console, and the ship spreads its wings to catch the light.

Luna had debated about whether or not to do this for a very long time. In the end, she thought it was the best thing to do. Especially after her discovery.

Her discovery was unique, she knew that. It was the culmination of every field of science she had discovered on the moon. It was the result of a massive equation she had to work out over the course of an entire year. It was...

Freedom.

The ship’s internal batteries drink in the starlight in silence for a time as Luna prepares herself for what is to come. The ship itself has been accelerating ever since she left the atmosphere of the moon, and she can feel it now pushing her back into the chair.

Hours later, a light goes from green to red.

This is it.

Luna extends a long thin spire on the nose of the ship, the point of which is only atoms thick. It is her invention, and it has taken thirty years to manufacture it alone. It is a faster than light star drive. And it uses the gravity wells of stars to move in and out of the universe.

A flip of a switch charges it with energy from the ship's batteries and it begins to glow gently.

As Luna charges her horn, feeding even more power into the drive, she cannot help but look back...

At Equestria, now only a pale blue dot in the distance. Her home.

Her... former home.

Luna turns away.

I'll probably never find it again.

The drive reaches its peak as a hole is torn at the point of the spire.

And the stars aid in her escape.