It was a cold winter's eve; Equestria lay white under a thin covering of powdery snow, frozen winter-rains lined every unsheltered piece of ground with treacherous ice, and the skies were crystal clear, glittering with thousands of stars, but deceptively chilly, without clouds to offer any slight cover.
Of all the various settlements across Equestria, from the mountainside extravagance of Canterlot to the dusty shacks of Dodge-Junction, the quaint town of Ponyville had, much like a dim puppy, bitten the sharp end of the stick. The combination of slippery cobbles and frozen mud tracks made going outside a ankle-y-suicidal effort, and so, the already-limited nightlife had all but died.
But the night could be as brutally frigid as it so wished, because, as far as one young pony was concerned, everything outside her room may as well have ceased to exist. Said pony lay softly snoring in front of a roaring log-fire, face, belly warmed by the flames and face literally buried in a book she had long-since adopted as a pillow.
The room was quiet and warm, and the only notable movements were her ears unconsciously twitching at the occasional crackle of sap on the fire. Life was cosy and she was content.
There was a knock at the door. She snorted, still asleep.
A second knock came, louder this time, causing her dozing eyes to flicker open. Unforgivable.
The third knock was cut off halfway as the door was flung open with Tartarus' Wrath.
"What d'ya want? I was having a brilliant dream that you just interrupted!"
A royal bat-pony stood outside, a sealed scroll tucked under his wing and a look of amusement and shock on his face at the positively arctic frown he was receiving from the small filly, "Well, uh, ahem, young miss, are your parents home?"
"Who's asking?" Her eyes were comically suspicious.
"Messenger Nightsight, on behalf of Princess Luna. Miss..." He pulled out a clipboard and scanned down it quickly, "Meadows, correct?"
"Yup, but what's Luna want me for?"
"She'd like to invite you and your family to her very special party here in Ponyville: The Longest Night festival.
Her brow furrowed and she frowned in concentration for a moment, nearly causing the hardened guard to Squee in adoration. "Does that...Do I get to stay up all night?" She asked eventually.
He chuckled and passed the scroll to her, "'Course you do, Miss- Princess Luna herself says you can!"
Instantly her frown turned to a wide smile and her eyes shone, “Cool! Say thank-you to her for me, Mister.”
“Sure, Mi- Oof!” He was cut off as a door slammed in his face, smacking him on the nose. It opened again, revealing two shining eyes, wide and brimming with tears, “I’m so sorry, Mister. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay, I’m sure it was an acci- Ow! Again?!”
-
A week later, after Equestria had thawed somewhat due to Royal Decree in preparation for the festival, the shortest day began with a bright dawn and a low-level cloud. The sun cast a weak, watery, but welcome light, and as such, everypony was out and making the most of it. While everyone went about their days, scores of foals played in the school grounds, unofficially on a day off thanks to preparations taking away most of the teaching staff, leaving the young ponies to amuse themselves in the snow. It had nearly been a whole hour after they had all arrived there before a snowfight had broken out. As any good teachers had, the couple that remained had joined in with vigour.
The snowy free-for-all quickly became organised warfare between foal and staff. And the tactics had quickly gotten dirty.
Viridian Meadows knelt behind a small mound of compacted snow, gathering a pile of loose flakes to her. She looked behind, receiving a totally serious look of affirmation from a classmate behind a similar, yet much larger, fortification, and then she gritted her teeth and turned to her target.
She rolled forwards through her gathered pile, giving herself a white camouflage coat, then slithered off on her belly, wriggling forward slowly and stealthily. Snowballs flew overhead as she snaked her way across the battlefield, sneaking behind the more substantial ice-block wall the staff had constructed.
“Hello, Viridian.” A white mare with a crimson mane, striped with candy pink, lay on a blanket behind the wall, way too relaxed for the situation. She pulled a carton of juice out of a ditch in the snow, “Nice cold juice?”
“Damnit, Miss Warmheart, we’re enemies!” She accepted the juice nonetheless, pouting as much as she could with a straw in her mouth. The school nurse just tittered.
“The others already went in ahead to warm up, we were just wondering when you rabble were going to twig it.” She said, “Warm classroom sound good right now?”
Viridian’s teeth chattered even as she emptied the carton, just coming to realise how cold she was now the fog of war had left, “Y-yeah.”
“Alright you lot!” Warmheart yelled over the barrier, ducking down again immediately to avoid several snowballs, “Battle’s over! Warm cookies in the classroom. Leave your soaking clothes by the door.”
In an instant, the playground was deserted.
-
“So, I know you’re all very excited for tonight’s big celebration. The Princess has asked us to give you all a short briefing, so it can run smoothly.” A young plum-purple mare, the newest teacher to the school, stood before the class, her name, Cheerilee, a friendly smile on her face. The classroom was warm, as promised, and the cookies were plentiful. So the foals were quiet and as attentive as they could be with snow outside and sugar in their bellies. “Before I begin, I just want to remind you all that you need to be very well-behaved and respectful towards Princess Luna. It’s her first big celebration in thousands of years so I hear she’s quite nervous.”
Now she had the attention of the entire class. That a princess could be nervous, that was something worth paying attention to.
“As I’m sure you know, it’ll be a very late night for everyone-“ She was interrupted by an excited cheer from everypony “So you’ll all be having the afternoon off-“ Another cheer, “-to have a few hours to sleep before the big event.”
“But what is it?” Viridian Meadows asked, hoof in the air, “I mean, I got a letter yesterday from a guard but it didn’t say anything like what’s happening.”
“Good Question Viri. To be perfectly honest, nopony really knows exactly what will be happening. Luna will be raising the moon for us, and she’ll do it specially, but that’s all we’ve been told.”
There was quiet for a moment as a fresh flurry of powdery snow drifted down outside the windows, instantly turning every pair of foals’ eyes.
“Alright you lot, I can take a hint. Go on, get out and play, just remember to get some rest before this evening.”
She finished speaking to an empty room.
“Hmph, tough crowd.”
-
The sun was just approaching the horizon as the huge crowd of ponies marched as a group towards the hilltop just outside Ponyville. A single tree marked the top of the hill, and atop the tree, balanced on a single hoof, stood the Princess of the Night.
Everyone fell silent as they arrived, watching the graceful figure as she stood perfectly still. The other Princess, Celestia, stood beneath her, silhouetted against the sun as she lowered it, horn blazing with golden light. She spoke quietly, but with such total authority and warmth that everyone listened intently,
“I’d welcome you, my little ponies, but this is not my show. Please show my sister a kind welcome.”
The crowd sat, and then the night came. The sun disappeared, bathing all in perfect darkness. Then the stars started to shine. Tiny pinpricks of light far, far away in the sky.
Luna flared her wings, surrounded by a blue aura, and rose into the sky. Her horn shone with magic and the air thrummed with the raw power. The pearly eye of the moon glinted on the horizon, to a chorus of awed sounds and coos from the public. It rose further, huge, and white, full in all its glory, and hung in the air, slowly inching its way higher.
For nearly an hour, the crowd lay about it perfect silence, watching the miracle, but then, as foals do, one pony had to speak the crowd’s mind:
“That’s pretty, Miss Princess Luna. It’s getting boring now though.”
The silence that followed that was quite different. More a terrified, pregnant silence in expectation of something terrible than the quiet awe from before.
“Stand before me, foal!” The dark princess commanded, and so, Viridian Meadows stood up and walked over nervously. Luna dropped from the sky, leering over her. Her voice dropped to a whisper, “What would you have us do, pony?”
“We need a show...Like, something to watch, more than the moon, I mean, Miss Luna.”
“We have a short play for everyone to enjoy at midnight, the ponies of Ponyville volunteered most heartily, would that be to your wish?”
“But there’s no way everyone would be able to see it all here. There’s no pit or stage or anything…” Viridian looked down in thought, before squeaking and falling back as a blinding white light caught her eyes. Luna stooped to help her back up, but she backed away, blinking away the blindness. And then an idea struck her, “That crystal on your necklace, Miss. It shone the right way and I saw the moon super close up, and it was really bright. Could we…Use something like that to…Display the play? Everyone could see it then!”
“An optical illusion, yes, foal…That’s an excellent idea! But where would we shine it?”
“We need some curtains or something…
-
Later that night, the ponies performed, at the hilltop, though many ponies further down the crowded area could not see. An enchanted prism crystal hovered around them at a careful angle, and a soft, golden light glowed from behind them.
Up above, an enormous sheet of material, hastily stuck together with magic from the various blankets, mats, and sheets that anypony could find, was pinned against the tree, stretched taut and flat. The crystal suffused its surface with a warm, yellow light, and on that was silhouetted the ponies’ play.
Everypony cheered as they watched the live action from wherever they lay, and the entire scene was back-lit by the great moon to remind everyone of the purpose of it all.
Luna sat with her sister a short distance away, enjoying the play from both the cloth screen and the actual performance.
“That filly’s idea was marvelous. I’m almost ashamed I didn’t think of it myself.” She tutted.
“You think it’ll catch on?”
“Who knows, it is an excellent way for everyone to see.”
In the crowd on the hill, unbeknownst to herself, a little filly with a grass-green mane earned her cutie-mark that night, but she and her friends were too excited to even notice. It wasn’t every day a foal invented something new, after all.
Author's Note
Just my entry here. I'll apologize in advance for any of the numerous mistakes I expect to see in this fic- Typing at maximum speed late at night does that. I'll be cleaning it up at a later date, I promise.
