Finding the perfect position to sleep in is impossible
Luna yawned.
Princess Celestia smiled at her sister's drowsiness, suppressing a giggle to maintain her royal composure. It was early in the morning, and Luna already wished to sleep.
"Are you tired, Luna?" asked Celestia out of courtesy. It was clearly apparent that she was tired, regardless of the shining sun in the sky that signaled the waking hours for the ponies.
Luna blinked drowsily, nodding her head slowly and leaving it drooped for an extended amount of time. She had every right to be tired, too. After being set free from her evil form of Nightmare Moon, Luna had been invited to countless parties and welcomed by all the citizens of Ponyville. They had given her flower necklaces and a new crown, inviting her as the princess of the night. Some of the ponies had even styled her mane, giving it the sparkling, flowing qualities that it had lost in the transformation out of Nightmare Moon.
After Luna had finished nodding, Celestia led her across the grand castle to the side that used to be hers. For the thousand years that Luna had been away, Celestia owned the entire castle, but with the return of her sister she had to give up the half that belonged to Luna. Celestia had decorated the rooms as she pleased, but had left her sister's bedroom untouched out of respect.
She opened the door, revealing the bedroom that had remained unchanged for the thousand years Luna had been gone. It was dark, with black walls and stars covering the roof. A small bed lay pushed up against the wall with a jet black blanket and fluffy white pillow. There was a large window letting sunlight in on the far side of the room, garnished with curtains of dark purple. The room was designed to look like the night, suitable for the princess of it.
Nearby the bed was a small, circular carpet. It had stars on it, along with a round lining that circled half way around the carpet. It looked elegant, and was an excellent decoration. Directly next to the bed was an empty, wooden nightstand.
Luna looked around the room, the bed in the middle was foreign to her. For one thousand years she had slept on the surface of the moon, and a bed was something she did not remember.
"What is that?" asked Luna, pointing towards the bed.
Celestia laughed, saying,"That is a bed, ponies use it to sleep on. Now get some rest, you have plenty to do tomorrow."
Without another word, Celestia closed the door and left Luna in the bedroom.
Yawning once more and taking long steps to stretch out her legs, Luna approached the "bed", eyeing it carefully as she got closer. She found herself in front of the bed, staring at its side. It was just long enough for her to fit on, and plenty wide to lay down on. However, Luna did not understand how exactly the device was used for sleeping, it looked more like a table if anything. Luna slipped out of her royal hoof guards and levitated her new crown off of her head, setting it gently on the nightstand.
She flapped her wings, jumping effortlessly into the air and landing on the blanket of the bed. Her hooves sunk into the mattress, a soft feeling she had never felt before. She cautiously lifted a hoof and pressed it down again, pushing into the mattress. As she became more balanced on the bed, she laid down, her legs bent beneath her. The white pillow lay at the head of the bed, the blanket just barely covering it. Luna crept up to the front of the blanket and pulled it away from the pillow, reveling it in all of its glory.
It was a nice pillow, plump and soft. Luna rested her head against it, the pillow absorbing her face as she sunk into it. She slipped her legs underneath the blanket, her horn glowing while she levitated it above her body. After her body was underneath the blanket, her horn went dark and the blanket fell on top of her, perfectly covering everything but her head.
Luna had never felt such comfort. The surface of the moon was no mattress, and luxury like the bed was an experience she cherished the second she laid down. She took in a deep breath, preparing for sweet sleep to come to her while she enjoyed the soft pillow and mattress, along with the warmth of the blanket. Suddenly, she felt discomfort underneath the blanket.
Unable to ignore it, she lifted the blanket with one hoof and looked inside. Sure enough, her tail was billowing like it always did, sparkling with brilliance. Each time her tail waved upwards, it would hit the top of the blanket. Luna's horn glowed, encasing her tail in a dark purple glow that stopped it from moving, but she realized that she couldn't keep it up while she was asleep. Stepping out of the bed, she looked around her bedroom for a solution. She hadn't seen the room in such a long time, so she hadn't the slightest clue of what she was looking for. Anything that could stop her tail was a qualifier that encompassed many things.
On a table along the far wall of the room were three bands. Although Luna wasn't sure what their intended purpose was, she stretched the small bands out and brought them around her tail, snapping them tight around it so that it would stop moving. After encasing her tail with three bands, it stopped waving and stood still. With a sigh of relief, Luna trotted back into the bed, sliding underneath the blanket once again.
The warmth overtook her, and her head soaked in the plushness of the pillow. Underneath the blanket with the added heat of the sun, Luna felt her leg become overly warm. She fiddled around with her leg, eventually poking it out of the side of the blanket. Now the cool air of the room brushed over it, bringing it to the perfect temperature.
Luna smiled, but her ear felt slightly smushed against the pillow, so she turned over slightly, bringing her ear out from underneath the pillow and sticking out to the side.
"Ow!" yelped Luna, quickly jolting back to her previous position after crushing her wing underneath her weight. Both her wings were folded nicely next to her body, but they were still a nuisance. If Luna turned too much, she crushed them.
Her one leg outside of the blanket started to feel cold, so she retracted it back underneath the blanket, warming it up once more. She tossed and turned underneath the blanket, looking for the perfect position.
She tried laying flat on her stomach, her hooves curled up beneath her. All was well until she brought her head down, resting her chin on the pillow. She quickly realized that laying her head on the pillow in such a fashion was the least comfortable thing she could do.
Realizing that laying on her stomach would not work, she rolled onto her back, carefully avoiding crushing her wing once again. As she rolled, the blanket was pulled with her. The creases made by this were uncomfortable, and once on her back Luna kicked out her hooves, pushing the blanket up in an attempt to straighten it out.
However, this only created more problems, the blanket folding every which way and becoming less and less workable. Luna kicked all of her hooves out in frustration, her horn lighting up abruptly and forcefully pulling each corner of the blanket out to its fullest extent, straightening the blanket out. She let it go, allowing it to float back down onto her body. On her back, her wings stayed close by her sides and the back of her head rested pleasurably against the pillow. She settled in, convinced that this position would work.
One of her hooves felt out of place, so she moved it slightly to the left. All of her hooves were folded close to her body. Since they extended above her body, they pushed the blanket above her. She didn't feel the warmth of the blanket on her body, but only her legs and some of her neck where the blanket sloped down. She let out a groan, moving her legs around underneath the blanket, but getting nowhere.
Luna rolled over and curled into a ball, her body curving and her hooves contained in between. Her head did not reach the pillow, but she just rested it on top of her hooves. It felt natural and comfortable at first, but as she moved into the position her tail fell off of the edge and she was nearly falling off. The bed was not wide enough to curl up into a ball, she had to lay straight on it. She could not understand why anypony would make a bed so narrow as this one, it seemed as though it was crafted for a filly.
In desperation, she flipped her body back over, hooves resting beneath her body, and lifted her head away from the pillow. Fixing the position of her legs, she planted her face into the pillow, remembering the resting her chin on it would never work.
Her snout dug deep into the pillow, and within a few seconds she was gasping for breath. She pulled her head away from the pillow, taking in a deep breath and sighing, still tired but unable to rest. The blanket stuck to her back, covering everything but her neck and head as she looked outside. She saw the sun almost at the peak of its journey across the sky, meaning it was almost noontime.
She looked back at the bed to find another position to sleep in, but where the pillow used to be there was only a bare mattress. She tossed the blanket off of her back and hopped off of the bed, poking her head underneath the wooden structure of the bed in search of the pillow. Not a single corner of the room remained unchecked after the search, but there was still no pillow.
Luna trotted to the window and gazed outside once more, looking at the sun and the trees. She could see her thin reflection in the glass of the window, barely visible. Bringing a hoof to her mouth, Luna suppressed a giggle, realizing that the pillow had been impaled onto her horn. She sat on the ground and brought her hooves up to her horn, pushing the pillow straight off.
It landed on the ground in front of her, a clear hole made in the middle by her horn. She sighed, realizing that she'd have to deal with it and levitated it back onto the bed.
Trotting lazily over to the bed, her body drained of all energy but her mind wide awake, Luna plopped onto the bed once more, removing the blanket before getting on. Once she had settled onto the mattress and placed her head on the punctured pillow, she levitated the blanket back onto herself and closed her eyes.
It felt wrong. There was no explanation for it, but the way Luna laid on the bed felt wrong to her, and she couldn't remain in the same position. She shifted restlessly, each time finding out that she was just getting more uncomfortable than before. She tossed and turned, the blanket folding up smaller and smaller as she did, and eventually she was forced to spread the blanket out once again. She repeated this for a few hours, her frustration growing every failed attempt. Sometimes she would lay for a few moments, feeling as though she had found the right spot, but then it would just revert back to the horrid condition that was keeping her from sleep.
Each hour was another hour of insomnia. She practically begged for sleep, switching her position faster and faster as the night progressed, cursing silently when she couldn't sleep in the given position. After countless hours of twisting, rolling, tossing, and turning, she finally found a position. A position that didn't feel wrong.
She was laying on her side, her wings spread out just enough so that they wouldn't be crushed and wouldn't take up too much space under the blanket. Her head was positioned perfectly, her ears both sticking out to the side and her snout comfortably supported by the pillow. Her legs bent nicely underneath the blanket, and since the sun no longer shined through the window enough so that the rays came across the top of the blanket, it was the perfect temperature.
Luna's tail remained still underneath the blanket, and her mane was of no nuisance. It was the perfect sleeping position, one that could never be reciprocated no matter how Luna tried. Because she had simply plopped onto the bed, she was able to assume the perfect position. She smiled her eyes shut, sleep starting to come to her as her mind wandered off.
Then there was the itch. A small, tingling sensation on her leg. It was impossible to resist. Although it was only a small itch, it hurt not to itch it. Luna fought with herself, forcing herself to refrain from itching and losing the position. She squeezed her eyes tight, hoping that the itch would just go away. She had never felt an itch on her leg before, it seemed that just because she had found the perfect position the itch had come.
There was no way she could resist, the itch won. Her hooves moved around underneath the blanket and scratched her leg. When they returned to what she thought was the same position as before, she was uncomfortable. Even though she was sure she had brought herself back to the same position she was in before, it just wasn't the same. The perfect position had been lost forever.
Luna yelled out, frustration taking over her. She struggled with the blanket, getting it stuck on her hooves, which just led to more flailing of her hooves. She flung the blanket off herself and then rolled off of the bed, landing on all fours.
"Why are you so uncomfortable!" she yelled at the bed. She pouted at the bed, kicking one of its legs with a hoof. She quickly retracted it, the pain of hitting wood with her hoof buzzing at the tip of her hoof.
"That is it!" she shouted, her horn lighting up in blind fury. Her horn glowed a dark purple, gaining more and more light as she charged it. With a final burst, she fired a magical ball of energy at the bed, vaporizing a hole into its side. It looked as though something had taken a large bite out it and left no teeth marks.
Luna panted, the spell taking the last of her energy out of her. She had not slept in so long, and was exhausted as it was without performing the spell.
"What's all the ruckus?" said Princess Celestia, trotting into the room. Luna looked behind her and moved to the side, attempting to block the burnt bed from Celestia's sight.
"Nothing, sister, just getting to bed," said Luna.
Celestia stood by the doorway, eyeing Luna suspiciously.
"Did you do that to the bed?" asked Celestia, pointing at the hole that was in plain sight, regardless of Luna's efforts.
"Yes," said Luna shamefully, bowing her head.
"Why would you do that?"
"Because the bed was uncomfortable and wouldn't let me sleep!"
"Why were you sleeping on the bed?"
"Because you told us to."
"No, Luna, I told you that ponies sleep on a bed. We sleep on these." Celestia pointed at the circular rug near the bed. "The bed is just for decoration."
Luna looked at the circular rug. "Why did you not tell us this?" she asked.
"I don't know. Must have slipped my mind," said Celestia, a wry smile creeping onto her face.
Luna looked at her sister, who brought a hoof to her mouth as her smile grew bigger. She couldn't contain it any longer, and with a burst of giggles Celestia galloped away from Luna's bedroom, shutting the door.
Luna attempted to chase after her, but her legs were too tired to do anything. She looked out the window again. The sun was almost down, and she still hadn't gotten any sleep. She couldn't even see the sun from her angle in the room.
With her head drooped and her eyes half closed, she trotted to the circular rug and laid down on it. It was warm, and large enough so that she could curl up. She smiled, it was perfect. Within a few seconds Luna found a comfortable position and closed her eyes completely, hoping that sleep would come soon. A few minutes passed, and Luna's breathing slowed down as her mind drifted off into dreamland. Sleep had finally come.
She was jolted awake by a loud bang and jumped up onto her legs, sleep swiftly leaving her. Celestia had slammed the door open and entered the room, towering above her sister.
"Rise and shine sister, it's nighttime!" she exclaimed.
