The Sun, the Moon, and the Hunt

by PonyPear4262

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure, Princess Celestia
Length: 6919

Bright Eyes, on the eve of his first Hunt, seeks the long-forgotten library for guidance.

The world was not always as peaceful as modern Equestria now knows it. Long, long ago, there was a race of immortal beings known as the perytons, who have long since been relegated to the footnotes of history.

Some believe that they still exist, somewhere, tucked away into a corner of the world. Some say they still return every decade, to take their tribute.

Meanwhile, in a little village, Bright Eyes prepares for his first Hunt.

Written for the May World-Building Alliance Writing Competition v2.0

Currently considered 'Complete' as of time of publishing, but I wish to return to this story in future, hence the "Incomplete" tag.

Big thanks to Aragon for his words of wisdom.

Published 2015-05-16 00:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-05-16 00:00:02 UTC

The Eve of the Hunt

The library was a decrepit, dusty thing – “the black pit of blasphemers” the Hierophant called it, usually with a bit of spittle flying from her lips, and while the Hierophant wasn’t really someone whose words you took to heart, it was definitely something that the village tended to agree upon. The library is for the Faded, was the rule. And nobody wanted to be Faded.

Bright Eyes wasn’t Faded – not yet. His tenth birthday was tomorrow. His first cycle was tomorrow. His first Hunt was, therefore, tomorrow. And this was the thought that followed him home from his lessons, poked at him as he roosted, troubled him when he slept.

“Oh, no,” the thought whispered. “I am so doomed.”

Bright Eyes was typically rather good at tests. He appreciated it when things made sense, and he liked the security and satisfaction that the comprehension of facts and concepts gave him. He knew the rules of the Hunt like the tines of his antlers – avoid ants, beware of birds, careful of cockatrices, and don’t even dare with a dragon…

Thus, Bright Eyes was also perfectly aware that, of all the perytons in his village, only a sparse handful had ever returned shadowless. Those perytons didn’t stick around for very long. The Faded rarely do.

Yet, despite everything, Bright Eyes was deeply, greatly, unfathomably, wing-rufflingly terrified, for no real justified reason other than that he had no idea how to hunt.

And so it was that Bright Eyes, on the eve of his first Hunt, found himself creaking into the decaying library. His thin, twig-like legs shook on the uneven wooden floor. His wings fluttered and he was struck by a sudden sense of claustrophobia.

“Why is this even here?” he said aloud. The library didn't respond. Still, he thought, it was a good question. What use did a peryton – a proper peryton, that is – have for a cramped old cabin, where the sun doesn’t shine and show the strength of their shadow? He certainly hadn’t seen any perytons come in and take any of the books, not in his lifetime.

Other perytons probably aren’t as stupid as you are, to be fair, his thoughts reminded him. His thoughts had a good point.

Bright Eyes stepped closer to the bookshelves, which seemed to teeter visibly when given only a stern look. He sighed, and resigned himself to perusing the spines of the books from a wing’s reach. He'd rather not make too much noise in here. He doubted that he would actually get in any trouble for daring to look at books,but it would definitely raise a few questions if he were discovered.

A title caught his eye - "The Sun, the Moon, and the Hunt." He blinked at it. A storybook? He swept his eyes to the left, across all of the books he'd already checked. Most of them were leathery, ancient beasts, written with words he couldn't understand. All of them were basically useless.

Except for this one! Maybe. Hopefully. Bright Eyes reached out gingerly and tried to slip the thin little book from between its hulking forebears via his awkward young hooves.

Suddenly, yet inevitably, one of the rusted nails that glued the slab of old oak to the wall snapped, and the shelf tipped to the left. The books tumbled and fell like an avalanche upon a greasy mound of fur and feathers in the distant, darkened corner.

Bright Eyes froze. He held his breath and listened carefully to the silence of the forest outside. He couldn't hear anything, but that didn't tell him much - perytons didn't always have to make a noise when they moved, if they had the will or the magic for it.

After a few seconds, Bright Eyes emptied his lungs with a sigh, then stepped closer to the mess in the corner. He found his little book quickly, and lowered his head to pick it up with his teeth.

Immediately, he was struck by a putrid stench. He gagged. The feathery pile began to shake and shift and Bright Eyes could hear low groans and moans, as if something was in pain.
He stepped back and watched as the dirty heap rose, steadily if haltingly, until it stood taller than him.

The first thing Bright Eyes noticed when he looked at the filthy peryton was its stature. Its legs trembled like leaves, and they were as thin as Bright Eyes' own despite their height difference. Bright Eyes could see the peryton's ribs clearly through its papery skin. It looked malnourished. Its wings hung despondent by its sides, feathers uneven and curling. Even as he watched, dead feathers dangled then dropped from its wing into a pile on the floor.

Whoever it was, it had been in here for a very, very long time.

Bright Eyes turned and ran to the door. It didn't open when he yanked on it - the old thing had gotten stuck in its frame. He glanced over his shoulder. The peryton hadn't moved, just stood and swayed in silence. It looked at him. Its eyes were flat black, like pits. They didn't look malevolent, Bright Eyes realised. They just looked hollow.

Outside, there was the sound of four hooves landing on hard-packed forest floor. "Hello?" a sweet, sonorous voice chirped through the door. "Is somebody in there?" Bright Eyes recognised that voice - Moonfeather had been something of a babysitter for him all his life.

Bright Eyes didn't respond immediately. A sunbeam had poked out from behind a cloud and caught the mangy peryton in the eye, causing it to flinch away.

And it had been so fast that Bright Eyes almost hadn't noticed it, but it was there. Or rather, it wasn't there. The peryton left no shadow.

Before he really understood what he was doing, he had already called out, "It's me, Moonfeather!"

"Bright Eyes?" She sounded concerned, but far from surprised.

"Yep!" As he spoke, Bright Eyes gestured wildly at the peryton in the corner, who just stared at him blankly. "Just, uh, looking for a book."

"You were making a ruckus in there. Are you alright?" The door rattled as Moonfeather began to push it open.

Bright Eyes shot the peryton a look. Something flickered in its empty eyes, and it lay back down in a heap and went very still. Bright Eyes pulled the door open and looked up at Moonfeather’s surprised face. She blinked at him, then glanced past him into the room. Bright Eyes managed to avoid following her gaze, and he relaxed slightly when her soft and anxious expression didn’t warp into a shriek of horror.

“The door was stuck,” he said. “But I think it’s okay now.” He smiled convincingly.

Moonfeather raised a graceful eyebrow. It was rare to see her look anything other than serene, but Bright Eyes could see clearly the nervous frown on her delicate features. “I see.”

“Um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be in here long, but it’s just... Well, you told me to make sure I was ready for tomorrow and…”

Moonfeather’s other eyebrow rose, then, in realisation. “Oh, Brighty. You could have just asked me or anyone else for advice, if you’re that nervous.” She sounded chiding, but relieved. Bright Eyes nodded chastely, as if he were apologetic (which he was, sort of – Moonfeather’s sincerity had a way of getting to him like that) and he slipped out from behind the door, closing almost fully shut behind him.

Bright Eyes flinched and blinked beneath the sun’s glare. How long had he been in that dank little den? He looked at Moonfeather, now that he wasn’t peeking out through a gap in the door, and noted the pair of little birds roosting upon the tines of her antlers. He still didn’t know if they were her pets or if they just flocked to her as she passed, but she was rarely without them.

“Did you find the book you were looking for?” she asked him. Bright Eyes looked down at the little book in his hooves and nodded absently. “There was really a book on the Hunt in there?”

Bright Eyes looked at Moonflower in confusion. “Well, wouldn’t it be strange if there wasn’t? Isn’t the Hunt, like, the most important thing ever for a peryton?”

Moonflower gave a tentative nod. “I suppose it might be, but I didn’t think any peryton actually built that library.”

“Why is it here if nobody built it, then?”

Moonflower lifted her beautiful brown wings into a shrug. “I’m not sure. Memories get fuzzy after so many cycles.” Bright Eyes was sharply reminded that he had no actual idea how old Moonfeather was. But he supposed it didn’t really matter in the end – the Moonfeather that stood here was probably quite different from the Moonfeather of only ten years ago, let alone a century.

Moonfeather continued, “Perhaps something else built it shortly before we arrived. Perytons don’t like libraries, you understand – libraries are for lonely creatures, and a lonely peryton… well.” Something dark flickered across her face for a brief moment, and she abruptly turned away and looked up at the bright blue sky through the forest canopy. “It’s a nice day today. Let’s think of nicer things, shall we, Brighty?”

Bright Eyes was staring distantly over his shoulder at the library until the sound of his name snapped him back to reality. “Oh! Um. Yeah. Right.”

She glanced at him, a patient smile on her face. “Why don’t we fly back and read your storybook?” Moonfeather sat down and opened her mighty wings in invitation, the sunshine casting the shadow of an enormous owl upon the forest floor before her. Bright Eyes’s face lit up with a smile, and he ran over, leapt onto his mentor’s back, and wrapped his arms around her neck.

Moonfeather began to walk. Then run. Then sprint. With a leap, she was in the air, and with two beats of her powerful wings, she was soaring.

Bright Eyes yelped with excitement. Moonfeather laughed like a song.

But even as they left the ground, the grass, and left the little library behind, Bright Eyes turned and stared back at the open door. He caught a glimpse of a shadowless shape stepping out into the sun, spreading its wings, and flying off towards the distant horizon.

Bright Eyes never returned to that library again.

Perytons, as a people, had an affinity for the outdoors – for the bright sky and wide open air wherein they could fluff their wings and fly. Bright Eyes’s particular hunt had lived in the depths of the forest (they didn’t know its name, and they didn’t really care either way) for numerous cycles, long enough that most of the adults couldn’t remember precisely where they had come from, which was something that didn’t particularly matter in the end – they’d all come from somewhere or other, and they’d all gathered here, and it was where they would remain until they inevitably felt like going elsewhere. It was just how everything worked.

Moonfeather and Bright Eyes landed on the branch of an enormous tree, where she usually rested. Roosting birds quickly fled when they arrived, but many stayed behind and chirped happily when Moonfeather walked among them. Moonfeather paid them little mind, and instead led Bright Eyes to her nest, stowed in the bough of her tree. It was quite bare, carrying only one or two of Moonfeather’s personal possessions, but she only ever slept here at night, and never stayed in it for long.

Bright Eyes and his hunt rested in groups, as a rule, but it wasn’t hard and fast – peryton rules rarely were, at least for them. Perytons liked sleeping alongside others. Most of them carried the shadows of social animals, and as such they found it uncomfortable being alone for long periods of time.

Moonfeather was no different. She sat down and made herself comfortable in her nest, then opened her wing in an invitation that Bright Eyes accepted without comment.

The storybook sat between them in the nest. They stared at it with some trepidation.

“So, this is your book?” Moonfeather asked. She used a wisp of magic to gather it up and hold it to her face, reading the cover aloud, in a halting voice.

“Y-Yeah. I think it’s a storybook,” Bright Eyes gently took it from her grasp and held it, almost protectively, in his hooves. “I’m hoping it has something to do with the Hunt. I don’t see why it wouldn’t, if it’s a peryton story.”

Moonfeather rested her head and watched Bright Eyes frown and flip through the pages of the book. “Do you want me to read it to you, little one?”

Bright Eyes snorted. “As if. I’m ten years old, Moonfeather; I’m not a child anymore.”

“Ah. Yes, you’re right. You are ten, after all.” Moonfeather’s voice warbled when she spoke, but Bright Eyes didn’t notice.

“Yep. So, I’m going to read it to you instead.” Bright Eyes flipped back to the first page, cleared his throat with a pronounced ‘ahem’, and began to read.

"The Sun, the Moon, and the Hunt"

Once, when the world was very young, the Sun and Moon wandered the world as sisters. They were only fillies then, but they were already far, far older than the ponies they protected. They were very clever fillies, and so the ponies loved them, and the Sun and Moon taught them about magic and fire and friendship, and they were happy.

There weren’t very many peoples on the planet then – the ponies were, they believed, the smartest and most advanced of any creature, and were content to stay in their little towns. The Sun and Moon, however, were as curious as they were clever, and they wondered if there were other creatures in the world to befriend.

The Star Siblings set out one fresh spring morning, eager to explore, and travelled North. It was a very pleasant journey, at first, for the grass was at its greenest and the sky at its most blue. But the further north they went, the sky clouded over as the grass became sparser. The world became colder, the sisters realised, shuddering around their campfire, but they were very strong little fillies, and they continued to travel.

Eventually, they came to a small village nestled in the icy peaks of the Frozen North (as the fillies had since named it) filled with ponies much like themselves. They were not the same, however, for they were a very bitter people, with eyes like glass and skin like stone. The fillies spoke to them of the sunlit fields of their home, but the strange stone ponies were only more embittered and envious at this revelation. The fillies were saddened by this, and almost considered returning home.

But then, they discovered another little filly, even younger and smaller than they were, who looked just like them – two wings as well as a horn – and who begged them to help the ponies of her village. She showed them her magical rocks, and whispered to them of how they mysteriously shone like the sun on occasion. The star siblings then thought of their home, miles and miles away, and they were surprised when the magical crystal lit up like stars.

It was love! Love was the key, they told the filly, love that made crystals glow. And not just glow – even as they watched, the snow around them began to melt, and the world seemed a little bit brighter.

The three little fillies showed the stones to the rest of their village, and demonstrated their power. The village, shocked and awed, smiled with great happiness as more and more stones began to shine, until all the ponies themselves, including the siblings and their new companion, were burning like beacons.

The siblings waved goodbye to the crystal ponies, hugged the littlest filly (whom they adopted as their littlest sister in celebration) and returned to their village, happy knowing that they had made new friends.

The star siblings set out again, on a sweet summer’s day, and went East. The journey was easier, it seemed, than their previous trip, for the sun was warm and the rolling hillocks and fields of their home were a mainstay. Eventually, however, they came to the sea, which seemed to go past the horizon.

“What do we do?” the Moon asked the Sun (for the Sun was the oldest and wisest of the two).

“It looks like we’ll have to fly,” the Sun replied, and so they did.

The flight was long, and hard, but the fillies were very strong. They flew for many hours without pause, and so eventually they came to another great land. The soft fields and hillocks of their home were replaced with sunbeaten grassland and mountainsides.

It was here that the star siblings found a wandering tribe of strange creatures, half-bird and half-lion, with spears and bows and sharp claws. They were very wary of the ponies at first, but their caution soon turned to curiosity. They invited them to speak to their leader, a homely hen of sharp mind and sharper tongue. She spoke to the fillies as equals, for she knew cleverness when she saw it, and soon the fillies learned that these gryphons were at war with another tribe of gryphons. When the fillies asked her why, the hen told them that they wanted to hunt for food without the other tribe competing with them.

And so, the star siblings led the tribes to one another. They convinced the leaders to ask each other what they wanted. To their great surprise, they both just wanted to hunt freely! They realised, then, that their fighting had been for naught, and so they joined forces peacefully. The gryphon leaders thanked the fillies for their help. They returned home, happy knowing that they had made new friends.

The star siblings set out again, in the midsts of autumn, and went West. When they arrived at the sea again, they decided to travel further south, and eventually they came to a great open desert. The fillies walked for a time, and found the journey gruelling.They decided to fly into the air and look past the endless dunes in a sea of sand, and by doing so they found a tiny patch of tents. As the fillies approached, they could see large shapes moving in the sand.

They were buffalo! Huge, powerful, yet peaceful creatures, they greeted the little filly sisters warmly, offering them refuge from the dry heat of the desert inside their cool, shaded teepees. The star siblings accepted their hospitality with grateful joy.

After refreshing themselves with some of the buffalo’s rations of water, the fillies asked the buffalo why they lived in such a dry and desolate land. The buffalo told them stories of the great oasis that their distant ancestors had settled on, providing them with enough food and water to live peacefully. Alas, the buffalo mourned, the oasis was dying, as the buffalo had become too populous for it to sustain.

The sisters looked upon the remainder of the oasis with frowns on their filly faces. If the oasis is gone, they asked the buffalo, then why don’t they move somewhere else?

The buffalo shook their heads and sang to them of the many, many buffalo that had disappeared in dribs and drabs over the years, vanished into the desert and never seen again. They didn’t even know if there was anywhere else to go, for they had lived by the oasis all their lives. And besides, they whispered in frightened tones, there are beasts in the desert. They could see the shadows on the surface of the sand as they flew overhead, and they could hear the rustling of the desert at night, and they were terrified.

The filly sisters, clever as they were, knew exactly what to do. They reminded them that, however frightened they were of the unknown, they were also buffalo, a mighty and proud people that should be respected. The key, they explained, was to stick together, for friends and family are always stronger together.

And so, bolstered by their words, the buffalo, together with the little fillies, stampeded across the desert, together as one roaring beast, until they came to a wide-reaching plain covered in delicious grasses and bordered by a great winding river. The buffalo celebrated with song, that night, and whispered numerous thank-yous to the filly sisters, who slept peacefully in the buffalo camp, exhausted yet happy knowing they had made new friends.

The next day, instead of returning home, the star siblings decided to go further South, for the buffalo had told them old stories of strange and terrifying creatures that dwelled at the edge of the great land they called home. Intrigued, the sisters set out on their journey, the songs of the buffalo still singing in their souls.

The trek was long, and arduous. After crossing a steep spine of crags and cliffs, the fillies found themselves in a deathly silent valley that went on for many miles. There was little food there, for nothing could grow in the rocky, blasted earth, and there was very little water. The Sun and Moon were as sturdy as they were strong, however, and so they made good progress through the Badlands (as they had since named them).

They were halfway through the Badlands when the Moon noticed something trailing distantly behind them. She narrowed her eyes and peered at it, but could only make out a tall, winged silhouette, watching them silently. She turned to get her sister’s attention, but when they both turned to look, it was gone. The Moon apologised and told herself she must have been imagining things, and they continued on.

But, after only another sparse handful of miles, two more of the creatures appeared, this time directly in front of them, at a similar distance. The star sisters, as smart and strong as they were, became quite worried, for none of the other animals they had met behaved like this.

The two mysterious creatures gazed at them further, then turned and flew away. The star sisters continued, albeit more cautiously.

As they travelled, they spotted more and more of the creatures. At first, they remained distant and aloof, watching them with something akin to curiosity. However, by the time the fillies had gotten close enough to the end of the desolate wasteland that they could see the fringes of a great forest in the distance, the creatures were swooping overhead and following behind them close enough that they could hear sonorous, vaguely mocking laughter.

They looked like the gryphons, almost, the sisters thought. They all had huge wings held proudly aloft, but they had the rear end of a bird rather than the beak and body. In lieu of a lion, they possessed the body, head, and cloven hooves of graceful deer. Their eyes glinted a strange colour – a burning gold.

The star sisters eventually left the Badlands behind them, allowing them to breathe a sigh of relief, and they came to the mouth of the enormous forest. Their entourage had disappeared while they weren’t looking, but they could see more of the deer-birds flying far above them. They weren’t sure whether they were ignoring them on purpose or if they had simply stopped caring.

At the heart of the towering forest, the Sun and the Moon found a vast collection of large nests, perched on the boughs of enormous trees, and in these nests sat the creatures. The laughter was entirely gone now, leaving only a profound and unnerving absence of sound.

“Hello?” the Sun spoke aloud. The Moon was huddled by her flank, watching the creatures with wide eyes.

“Hello!” the creatures chirped in response. “Who are you, little fillies?”

The Sun, mistaking their mockery for friendliness, responded, “We’re the Sun and the Moon, and we’re here to make friends!”

There was a pause. The deer-birds exchanged glances, then began to giggle to themselves. “Is that right?”

“Yes!” the Sun said, smiling widely, for she had again misinterpreted their laughter. “We have travelled such a long way to meet you!” The Moon, again, said nothing.

One of the creatures took wing and glided deftly down to a low, thin branch on a nearby tree, upon the end of which dangled a large, tasty-looking fruit. “Well, if that is the case, we shall offer you this delicious fruit, as a welcome gift.” And he dropped down onto the branch, his weight bending the branch until the fruit hung right over the Sun’s head.

“Oh! Why thank you very much!” The Sun stood on her hindlegs and reached up with her hooves towards the fruit, which was just far enough away that she had difficulty grasping it properly.

And then, with a bark of harsh laughter, the creature took to the air again, suddenly, and the branch swung up faster than the Sun could react. She yelped, and fell onto her back. The Moon cried her name while the creatures laughed and laughed and laughed.

The creature that had tricked them alighted upon the forest floor and smirked at the sniffling fillies at his hooves. “Do you know what we are, little ponies?”

The Moon looked up and shook her head. This close, she could see that their eyes weren’t so much gold as a sharp, sickly yellow.

“We are perytons,” he said, chuckling merrily to himself. “And we have no want nor need of your friendship, for we are far more ancient and powerful than even you, who take the stars’ names in vain.” The perytons in the nests above them giggled and boo’d at them.

“But why do you have to be so mean?” the Moon asked them. “If you didn’t want to be friends, why couldn’t you just say so?”

“Because that would be boring!” The peryton (the leader, the sisters assumed, for he was taller and larger than the rest) grinned at them. “Now, pick up your pathetic sister and go home. We aren’t some shambling, squabbling species waiting for you to save us. We are the perytons, and we will live forevermore.”

The Sun got back to her hooves and sniffed sadly, turning to walk away. The Moon, however, growled, lit her horn, and cast a mighty curse at the contradictory creature.

The peryton just laughed. Shadows crawled along the tines of his antlers, reached out towards the curse, and swallowed it up whole. “I will pretend that you didn’t just try a silly thing like that, and you can go home unscathed. How is that for a deal?”

Beaten, broken, and humiliated, the star siblings returned home, miserable knowing that they had failed to make new friends.

That night, while the Sun slept in their camp (which was hidden away under a rocky overhang), the Moon went out and glared at the distant forest. She was angry. Furious, even. For the first time in her filly life, she wished genuine harm upon the foul perytons and their wicked ways, for it was not enough that they should trick and bully the filly siblings – she could hear her sister crying softly in the tent, purely because she blamed herself for pushing the perytons away.

It was this knowledge that made the Moon grit her teeth and resist the urge to shriek at the heavenly bodies like a wild beast. Her anger struck three ways – at the perytons for their cruelty, at her sister for her softness of spirit, and at herself for huddling and hiding like a newborn when she needed to be strong.

I cannot let this injustice stand, she thought to herself. But what could she do? The perytons, for all their bragging and blustering, were indeed far more powerful than she could handle, and had lived for many centuries more than they had. The shadows themselves bent to their will.

And then, the Moon had a terrible, terrible thought. If the darkness of the night is my domain, she pondered, would that not make me their superior in all but name?

The Moon lifted her horn to the heavens, where the stars looked on in dreadful anticipation, and she spoke to her symbol in the sky. Burn brightly, my moon, and cleanse the shadows from the night.

And so the Moon’s moon – for they were both the same, and yet not the same – rose and burned with an eerie light, so bright that the world below was cast into a sharp relief. The shadows of the trees and rocks were so deep in the oppressive light that they looked like solid shapes such that if one were to look upon them at the right angle, they would appear to move independently of their host.

The Moon watched the forest intently. Darkness seemed to flicker and writhe in the gaps between the branches, before vanishing. After a few moments of silence, the Moon heard a distant, anguished keen that filled the night for several long seconds before tapering off.

The Moon nodded to herself, then returned to her tent.

The next morning, the Sun and the Moon continued the long trek back to their home in silence. The Sun’s eyes were shot through with red – only partly due to exhaustion – and the days of travelling were starting to take a toll on her pretty white coat and hooves.

The Moon was little better. Her soft blue mane hung limp and her saddlebags were beginning to tear from her time off the beaten path. Unlike her sister, however, she carried with her a certain energy of spirit, as if she had just gotten her second wind.

After an hour or so of walking, the Sun stopped, looked about her at the empty wastes, and asked, “Where are the perytons?” Her voice trembled almost imperceptibly upon the last word.

The Moon looked back at her and grinned. “Oh, they’re probably too occupied to bother us.”

The Sun raised an eyebrow at her sister. “I see.”

The Moon set off again at a canter. “Come! We should make the most of this opportunity to escape unscathed!”

The Sun was suspicious, but her relief at getting away from the nasty perytons overcame it. The sisters continued on.

To the Sun’s great surprise, the star siblings made it all the way out of the Badlands and into the realm of the buffalo without seeing a single peryton. So ecstatic were they that they galloped all the way home, laughing at their good fortune. When they arrived at their village, the little ponies greeted them with great joy, for the sisters had been away from home for much longer than they had been before, and so their friends and family had been anxious over their return.

The sisters smiled and laughed and assuaged their worries with stories of their travels with the buffalo, which they told around a great bonfire, with the occasional burst into beautiful melody, as per the buffalo way. The ponies of their village were awed, as they had been when they had heard the other tales of the star sisters’ exploits, but this was tempered by their curiosity.

“That sounds like an amazing adventure,” they told them, and then asked, “but if you have been to the North, and the East, and now the West, then will you next travel South?”

When they had been asked this question, the sisters exchanged nervous glances. “We did try going to the South, but there was nothing there,” they eventually lied. “Only an enormous wasteland that extends as far as the eye can see.”

The ponies of their village were disappointed by this news, the sisters knew, but better disappointment than terror. For who knows what the perytons will do, given the incentive? The thought made the Sun shake in her shoes.

The Moon, however, was less worried. “It’ll be fine,” she promised her sister. “The perytons would not bother us, for they are cowards, and will stay to their forest for fear of the outside world.”

The Sun was mollified by this, somewhat, and the sisters slept peacefully that night, while the Moon’s moon burned brightly in the sky.

In many variations of the tale, this would be where it ends, as a tale of friendship, of adventure, and of the simple truth that not everything in the world is capable of being rationalised with. But there is an ending to this story. It goes like this:

For many months after forging friendships with the civilised creatures of the world, the star siblings and their village went about their simple lives in peace. On occasion, the sisters would travel out to resolve a dispute, or deliver a message, and in turn a member of another species would come bearing gifts or words of thanks. The sisters, alongside their governing of their home and their ponies, took the time to build relations between the other species as well.

Slowly, the world was becoming closer together. Life was good for the star siblings. Life was good for everyone.

Or so it seemed.

One day, the Sun and the Moon awoke to find the villagers gathered in a huge crowd, mumbling and arguing with each other and pointing at something in the centre of the group. Curious, the sisters approached and asked them to step aside, which they did (albeit very nervously).

In the centre of the circle was a pony, one of their own, who had collapsed onto his side. At first, the sisters wondered if he had fainted, or fallen asleep, but they realised that his eyes were still open, staring forward blankly.

“What’s going on?” the Sun asked the gathered ponies. “Are you hurt?” she asked the fallen stallion. The crowd looked at each other and shrugged. They were as curious as she was.

The stallion blinked, lazily, then raised his head and looked up at them. “Hello.” His voice was very flat, and toneless. The Moon noticed the dull drabness of his coat, and gave the Sun a queer look.

“Hello, my little pony,” she said, smiling gently. The Moon stood at her shoulder and stared at him uncertainly. “Why have you fallen?”

The pony blinked again, then looked down at himself. “I do not know,” he admitted, before climbing back to his hooves. “I must have not been paying attention. I apologise for causing any worry.”

The ponies did not seem mollified. They muttered and grumbled and shot him nervous glances. The Moon blinked, glanced at the crowd, then examined the stallion more closely. She gasped.

Her sister looked at her questioningly, and the Moon pointed at the ground by his side.

“Sir?” the Sun asked him, after several moments of silence. “What is your name?”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “Sunny Meadows, I think.”

“How are you feeling?” the Moon asked, with trepidation.

Sunny Meadows stared back at them, his expression as mute and unchanging as solid stone, and he said, “Empty.” Without another word, he nodded politely and walked past them.

The town watched him go with fear, for the stallion left not a trace of a shadow upon the pavestones as he passed.

The world seemed to descend into madness from there, or at least that’s what the sisters must have believed. Sunny Meadows, once as cheerful as his namesake and now a hollow shell of a pony who was rarely seen outside his home, was only the first of many cases to come. Every day the sisters awoke, there was another pony stumbling through the town with a colourless coat and lifeless eyes. The ponies who retained their minds were once terrified and then disgusted by the cursed ponies, who were once their friends and family, and treated them as less than dirt.

The worst part of all this, the Sun and Moon realised, was that the cursed ponies didn’t care at all. Not for their abuse, not for their situation, and, it seemed, not for their own lives. They just wandered, lost, like a ghost, or a piece of machinery.

Faded, they began to be called. As if their essence had been erased and only the shell remained.

It was not limited to the sisters’ village, however. A month later, crystal ponies came to their village, telling them of the curse that robbed their people of their smiles and returned the world to its eternal winter.

The next month, the gryphons came to their village, warning them of the disease that stole their will and war-spirit, leaving only prideless husks in its wake. The hunters would not hunt, the leaders could not lead, and the tribe was once again threatening to shatter into civil war.

And, finally, the buffalo came, stampeding across the grassy meadows like rolling thunder, wailing a despaired dirge as they ran. They told the sisters of their plight – their fellows, as they had done not so long ago, were disappearing into the desert without a word, their heads hung low and their eyes empty of emotion, of empathy, and of energy.

The star siblings did not sleep very often, in those days. They were running out of food, for there were fewer ponies working the fields. The unrest amongst the gathered races was almost palpable, hanging in the air like a dense fog.

Why, was the word on everyone’s lips. Why was this happening?

And then, as if fate was pulling a cruel, sick joke, the answer turned up almost literally on the star siblings’ doorstep.

It was, to the Sun’s surprise and the Moon’s horror, a peryton. She was a far cry from the regal beings who once lurked in the South – her wings hung by her sides, mangy and filthy, and her eyes were akin to dull glass, instead of their usual unnerving yellow. She stood tall, however, and strong, and stared at them without fear despite being surrounded on all sides by ponies, buffalo, and gryphons, who stared at her with instinctive caution.

“Why are you here?” the Sun asked, with a harsh glare. “You’ve already made it clear that you do not wish to be friends.” The Moon, as before, just stood silently.

“I came to retrieve what you have taken from me,” the peryton said. Her voice trembled like a leaf, but it contained an ancient beauty that made the creatures around her shift uneasily. “From all of us.”

The Sun blinked. “But we have taken nothing,” she said, head tilted in confusion.

“Not you.” The peryton pointed at the Moon. “Her.”

“Leave my little sister be!” the Sun said, standing in front of the Moon protectively. “She has done nothing to you! It is me who has angered you!”

The peryton shook her head, and the sisters did not know if she did it with sorrow, anger, or resignation. “We will not leave until we regain what we have lost.”

And it was then that the Sun looked down, at the peryton’s cloven hooves, and saw the shadow that stretched out in the summer sunshine – it was Sunny Meadows.

The negotiations were surprisingly amicable.

First, the Moon told her sister everything. She admitted her crime – how she told her charge to take the perytons’ shadows and toss them to the four winds, for she knew they were the source of their power. She explained to the Sun her anger, her sadness, and her desire to see retribution upon the creatures that dared to make her cry.

The Sun was silent, for a long moment, following the confession. Then, in full view of the ponies, the gryphons, the buffalo, and the remnants of the perytons – who sat apart from the rest, and guarded their stolen shadows as a dragon with its hoard – she kissed her sister’s tears away and hugged her.

“It’s not me whose forgiveness you must seek,” she told the Moon, “it is the beings you wronged.”

The Moon, who respected her sister’s wishes above all else, prostrated herself before the perytons and requested their forgiveness. The perytons refused, and again demanded the return of their shadows.

“I cannot return them,” said the Moon, “they are lost. They have been adrift for too long in the aether.”

“Then we shall keep the shadows we have taken as tribute,” said the perytons, “and we will leave your species well enough alone.”

The mortal creatures argued this, demanding the return of their friends. But the sisters, for they were the wisest of ponies, allowed this, and stated that at the end of every decade, the shadows would return to their true owners, and the perytons would be free to seek new shadows as they pleased.

They turned to the perytons and asked them if they could find it in their hearts to lend their magic to assist the mortal races, who needed help gathering food for the coming winter in the absence of their Faded population. The perytons reluctantly promised their assistance, at least until they were no longer needed.

It was an uneasy agreement. But it was an agreement, and so the sisters went to sleep that night, satisfied that they would be at peace.