The Moon Looks Strange Without Her There
Rainbow Dash grumbled to herself as she flew through the sky. She hated working the night shift. Staying up this late meant that she slept in late the next morning. That would then cut into her afternoon nap time, either throwing it off in her schedule or worse yet, causing her to not be tired when it came time to have it. A missed nap like that could just ruin a pegasus’ whole day.
She hated when her sleep schedule cut into her nap schedule.
Still, for all her grouching and complaining, she realized it was only fair to her co-workers that she pickup part of the late shift. She had had the privilege of spending the past few days at functions and parties in Ponyville and up in Canterlot celebrating the return of Princess Luna, leaving Thunderlane, Flitter, and Cloudchaser to pick up her slack. But, the sooner she could get done, the sooner she could get to bed and the sooner she could be napping on a nice sunny cloud the next day.
So occupied was she with those thoughts that she almost missed seeing the purple unicorn trotting over the hills to the north of town into the forests.
Dropping one wing, the pegasus circled back around quickly, dropping in a controlled glide to a perfect four-point landing just behind and off to the side of her newest friend. “Hey, Twilight! What’re you doing out this late?”
That earned a yelp and started jump from her fellow pony. The long, rectangular box balanced across Twilight’s back and saddle bags almost slid off and crashed to the ground before it was caught in a magenta aura and tucked securely back in place. Rainbow’s good-natured smile was met by an expression of mixed annoyance, bemusement, and tentative happiness as Twilight turned to face her.
“Rainbow! You snuck up on me! It’s... nice to see you, if a bit unexpected.”
“Eh, what can I say?” She shrugged her wings. “We pegasi tend to drop in unexpectedly sometimes.”
“Well it’s-it’s good to see you! Yes.” Rainbow couldn’t help but shake her head at how easily Twilight could get flustered sometimes. “So, um, what brings you out here? At this time of night?”
Dash gave her head an indifferent nod to the side. “Work. Cloud placement for early morning showers tomorrow. Actually, I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Oh. I see,” Twilight replied, her ears drooping and whole posture wilting. “How much of the sky are you going to cover?”
“I’ve got the north quadrant; Thunderlane, the south; Flitter and Cloudchaser, east and west. Whole Ponyville area is scheduled for a moderate sprinkling tomorrow, but it should be cleared up by late morning. We’re not deploying anything heavy tonight. Why are you asking?”
“Well, it’s just...” Twilight chewed on her lip as she trailed off, shooting a glance over her shoulder to the woods behind her and the sky beyond. “It’s just that these last few nights have been so wonderfully clear but we’ve all been so busy and I haven’t had the opportunity to get outside. I finally have one tonight and I’ve really been looking forward to setting up my telescope and taking a proper look at the sky. I need to find some place good and dark, too, someplace nice and out of the way. Ponyville certainly has a lot less light pollution than Canterlot, but I want someplace where there’s as little light as possible so I can get accurate observations of everything that’s changed.”
“What do you mean?” Rainbow asked with a puzzled frown. “What changed?”
“‘What changed...?’ Rainbow, have you looked at the sky these last few days? Don’t you realize what’s happened since she got back?”
“Well, of course I do,” the cocky pegasus replied, puffing out her chest. Still. “But, what exactly do you mean?”
“I mean ‘have you looked at the sky?’” Twilight’s eyes were twinkling and a wide grin was spreading on her muzzle. “I thought I knew the sky, Rainbow. I thought that I knew what the moon and the stars were, but I was so wrong. Until a few days ago, I didn’t know what they really were at all.” She trotted up beside her blue friend and turned her gaze to the heavens, waiting until Dash had followed suit. “Look at the moon. Do you realize that we are the first ponies in a thousand years to see that moon?”
Dash cocked her head to the side and considered. The moon was a flat grey disc hanging in the night sky, only a half-dozen large craters featuring prominently on its face. It looked so plain, so boring now. “Well, I will admit it is... strange. Not seeing her there anymore. The Mare in the Moon, I mean.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Dash,” Twilight replied with breathy enthusiasm. “She’s gone. She’s been there all our lives, all the lives of our parents and grandparents. You have to go back almost forty generations before you find a time she wasn’t looking down from the heavens. Your great-grandparents ten times over were the last ponies before us to have seen the moon like this.”
“That’s...” Rainbow had problems wrapping her head around time spans that long. “That’s a really long time.”
“It is. Princess Celestia is the only living pony who has seen the moon as it was and how it is now. She’s the only one who really knew that this is what it’s supposed to look like.”
“Huh?”
Twilight turned to the pegasus, her muzzle open in a huge, enthusiastic smile and her eyes shining under the pale blue-purple of the moonlight. “Don’t you get it, Rainbow? The last thousand years were an aberration. They were never supposed to happen. What we’ve grown up thinking is normal, what thousands and thousands of ponies before us thought of as normal was something that was never supposed to happen! The moon, the sky, the stars, all of it, is finally back to the way it’s meant to be for the first time in a thousand years. The way that it was for hundreds and thousands of years of pony civilization before Nightmare Moon’s banishment.”
Not waiting for Dash to comment, Twilight turned her gaze back to the sky. “You just have to look at it now and you can sense it. This is the way it’s supposed to be. It’s like eating your first daisy sandwich when all you’ve ever known was dried grass clippings. You realize, for the first time in your life, how wrong things were and that you only thought them proper because they were all you knew.”
She spared Rainbow a quick glance. “Princess Celestia has written me about her sister’s progress. While she’s still weak and slowly regaining her strength, Princess Luna has insisted on taking on at least some of her former duties when it comes to the night. You can see it in the stars tonight. They shine more, they twinkle more. I saw two streaks of shooting stars so far tonight. Even this close to town with the naked eye you can see how much more... alive the sky seems.”
While she hadn’t quite understood what Twilight was getting at, the more the unicorn talked and the more Dash looked up at the sky, the more she could sense that it was right. The moon wasn’t strange, it was just different. Right. She just hadn’t realized that before. The stars did seem more vibrant, the constellations easier to pick out, too, even from her place on the ground.
“I’ve looked at the night sky almost my whole life,” Twilight continued. “From the first time I gazed through the telescope on Princess Celestia’s balcony, I was fascinated by it. I even spent nights at the Cloudcroft Observatory out in the Foal Mountains studying the stars because I wanted to see them better and learn all about them. The Princess always told me stories about stars and the constellations, how they were fashioned and controlled by her sister. She always seemed so happy talking about them, but there was still some sadness, too, that Luna was no longer there to help craft the night and shepherd the moon.”
“I guess it’s a good thing that we came along when we did, huh, Twi?”
The pegasus’ bravado brought a delighted laugh from the unicorn, and her gaze back to earth and the pony beside her. “You’re absolutely right, Rainbow.”
“Still, it’s a bit surprising that in all this time, Princess Celestia never put her own mark on the night, that she never sought to improve things.”
“I don’t think she saw it as her place to try those things,” Twilight quietly confided. “I overheard her talking to Princess Luna on their first night after being reunited, and Princess Celestia told Princess Luna that she would continue to be the night’s caretaker only until Princess Luna was ready to resume her proper place.”
“Maybe that’s why Princess Celestia did such a lackluster job compared to her sister,” Dash suggested with a smirk. “So that when Princess Luna was back we’d appreciate it being done properly.”
That earned another merry laugh from the purple unicorn. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t let her hear you say that!” Dash joined in and the pair continued to laugh a few moments more before falling quiet. “You know, I suppose I should be letting you get back to your work,” Twilight admitted, her ears falling and gaze going back to the dark woods ahead of her. “If you have to get the clouds up for tomorrow, I don’t want to keep you longer than necessary. I’ll have to hurry to get what in observations I can before then, too.”
Rainbow Dash huffed theatrically and considered. “Well, if that’s the case, I’ll tell you what. I still owe the rest of the crew for slacking off with all the celebrations back in Canterlot, so I’ll go around and help them with their quadrants. That should buy you, oh, a couple hours. Then when I get done with all of that, I’ll probably need a break before starting on my quadrant, so maybe I can drop in again and you can show me some of those changes you’re expecting to find. Deal?”
Twilight was beaming, practically vibrating on her hoofs in delight. “Yes! Yes, that sounds fantastic Rainbow! Thank you so much!”
“Eh, don’t mention it,” the pegasus replied, waving her off with a hoof. “Now, for a good spot to stand... you want to go into the woods about a hundred yards. You’ll find a creek bed there. Follow it east for about... a half mile and that should take you to a clearing that should be perfect for your stargazing.”
“Thank you! That sounds perfect!” Twilight threw a hoof around the shoulders of her friend and gave her a quick hug and nuzzle before excitedly trotting off. “I’ll have a thermos of hot tea waiting for you when you get there!” she called out before vanishing into the treeline.
“See you in a few hours!” Rainbow called back. Shaking her head, she crouched and spread her wings for takeoff. But before she did, she couldn’t help stealing one more glance up at the moon. While it looked much emptier without the Mare in the Moon on its face, it also looked… proper. How it always should be.
With a grin on her muzzle and a final shake of her head, Rainbow Dash took off into the night sky once more. “Oh, my naptime is so going to suffer for this...”
