A howl from somewhere in the darkness caused Moondancer to halt her ascent. She held her breath, scanning both the moonlit path ahead, and the winding trail behind.
Seeing little more than scrub and stone, Moondancer adjusted her glasses and glanced back down the mountain toward Canterlot. As always, the city shone with elegance and splendor; even in the dark of night, its alabaster spires were bathed in light from common street lamps, as well as less mundane sources.
She paused to mutter a curse about that sheer oppressive brightness. She added a curse for the illumination cast by her own horn’s glow, though it was necessary to carry the large, almost pony-thick telescope she was bringing up the mountain. Then she cast a brief glance at the starry sky, picking-out a spot where she was on the verge of missing something beautiful.
Moondancer shivered despite her dark grey sweater; the night was cool and crisp, and it was only getting later. “No time for this,” she muttered, and resumed trotting as quickly as she dared.
She rounded a stony outcropping at the mouth of a wide ledge after several minutes punctuated only by the sound of small rocks crunching underhoof and the pulse of blood pumping in her ears. Moondancer smiled, sighed, and allowed her shoulders to relax a little. During certain parts of the year, the ledge afforded a clear view of some of the more interesting known celestial phenomena, while also being far enough from Canterlot to minimize the city’s light-pollution. And on a truly perfect night, the mountain itself would block excessive moonlight.
But then she noticed the candles.
A large circle of tiny, guttering lights had been set up in one of the prime spots to place her telescope. And something glistened on the ground below the candles. Moondancer squinted, adjusting her glasses again. The substance, whatever it was, seemed painted-on, as if to connect the candles to each other, and also criss-crossed the space in between…
...where a dark figure sat, motionless and obscured by darkness.
Moondancer shook with dread. A circle of candles? And the substance… was it blood? Canterlot itself was kept safe by the Princesses and guards, but who could say what might lurk in the mountains beyond...
“Who’s… there?” she called, her voice wavering.
The figure jerked upright. Moondancer heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Begone from this place,” the figure intoned. It paused for a moment. “You’re ruining the vibe.”
Moondancer blinked, trying to process what she’d just heard. The voice was gravelly but nonthreatening. She scanned the ledge again, hoping to spot any other clues about what might be going on, and was rewarded with the sight of a paint can and brush half-hidden behind a pile of stones.
She furrowed her brows. “What are you playing at?”
The figure sighed. “I’m not ‘playing,’ I’m connecting. With the darkness. You... wouldn’t understand.”
Moondancer jerked her head toward the telescope. “Look… what I understand doesn’t matter. There’s going to be a planetary alignment in a few minutes that won’t happen again for hundreds of years. If you could just let me set up my telescope in your circle of… I’m sorry, I have to make sure... that’s just paint, right?”
The figure sighed again. Moondancer took the impression that the pony she was dealing with must be accustomed to sighing frequently.
“You may not,” the pony said. “This is a personal retreat. It’s bad enough having some random pony come and disturb my solitude… um, no offense.”
Moondancer rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Look, please, I’m sure there’s lots of nights when you can… do whatever you’re doing up here. But try to understand, this is the one night in my whole life when I’ll have a chance to see this alignment!”
“I do understand,” the figure said. It rose and stalked toward her. As it approached, Moondancer saw it was a mare; a unicorn, with an off-white coat and a slick black mane that curled around her horn in front. She wore a long black cloak that covered most of her body, including her cutie mark. Her eyes were lidded with a dark blue pigment, and were rimmed with heavy eyeshadow.
The mare put a hoof on Moondancer’s shoulder. “I understand better than most ponies do about the brevity of life… the suddenness of death… and the emptiness that claws at everypony’s soul.”
Moondancer gingerly removed the mare’s hoof. “Look, please… what’s your name?”
The mare narrowed her eyes. “Moonlight Raven,” she said at length. “Though there are those who call me… Mistress of the Dark.” She affected a dramatic, wide-legged pose that Moondancer might have found threatening, were it not for the situation’s sheer absurdity.
Moondancer gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Pleased to meet you. My name is Moondancer, and I’m sorry about disturbing your…”
“Dark communion,” Raven finished.
“...Right. Again, I’m sorry, but I have some hypotheses about the alignment that I can only validate by watching it. Ordinarily I would have tried to make it up here earlier so I could claim this spot, but…”
The pale pony rolled her eyes. “Truly, the rapaciousness of mortal yearning knows no bounds. Are you not content to spend the day engrossed in toil to earn the food and drink you need to stave off death another day? Now, labors done, must you go forth to defile Luna’s perfect night with your scientific ‘progress?’”
Moondancer frowned. “What… are you talking about?”
Raven raised her eyebrows and tightened her lips. “It isn’t personal. It’s just the folly of our time, to hail the march of ‘progress’ even as our ‘civilized’ world tends to push out the unique, the wonderful…” She paused, giving Moondancer a significant look. “The strange. And all this, in the name of more accepted things that sacrifice substance, and relevance, upon the altar of being inoffensive.”
“Are… you saying that you won’t let me set up my telescope because you’re… philosophically opposed to scientific progress and its influence on society?”
Raven rolled her eyes. “I’d say that’s oversimplifying it, but yes.”
“I… look, first of all, me and my telescope have nothing to do with scientific progress at-large…”
“Yet you hasten to its defense.”
“No… I’m just trying to learn more about a very rare phenomenon. I’ll admit my work might be redundant given that the Royal Observatory will also be watching this tonight... but it means something to me that I’m out here, doing this myself.”
The pale pony fixated on the Observatory, which, being one of the tallest structures in Canterlot, stretched high above the city walls. “They shut you out from the halls of power, relegate you to solitude.... and the worst part is, they make you think your life is better for it. Because only the best ponies should be allowed to serve the majority, yes? Never mind what would be better for the individual…”
Moondancer bit her lip. “Look, I can respect somepony taking an iconoclastic view of society and its institutions.” She waved a hoof. “Truth be told, if the alignment wasn’t imminent, I might be interested in talking about this more. But for right now, please just let me set up my telescope before it’s too late!”
“I suppose it’s just as well.” Raven shook her head. “Your so-called medical ‘advances’ make society lose sight of life deriving part of its meaning from the transience and uncertainty of life itself.” She shrugged. “Few things give me more enjoyment than these dark communions, but I suppose that having one cut short is tantamount to that same kind of impermanence.”
Moondancer smiled at the implicit agreement to let her set up the telescope, but then paused, realizing that the other pony’s morose demeanor might be coming from more than just her apparent fixation on the melancholic side of life. Moondancer cleared her throat. “You must walk a lonely path, if all you love is darkness.”
“It’s not the only thing I love.” Raven looked at Moondancer. “I… can’t argue with your larger point, though; my only real friend is my sister, and she’s not exactly the type to come out and enjoy the blessed darkness with me.”
Moondancer furrowed her brow. “You do realize, of course, that one advantage of scientific advancement and its impact on mortality is that there’s actually a better chance of finding ponies with a broader range of obscure interests, right? I mean, you might not even need the experience of premature death to serve as a more common unifying social influence.”
The other pony fell quiet, and turned to look at the city below. A long silence fell, soon lasting longer than Moondancer could bear. She swallowed, and pranced in-place a tiny bit, as she began to contemplate whether anyplace nearby could offer a decent view of the alignment. That was, of course, providing she could get to one of them in time…
Raven’s words sliced through her reverie: “You said you might be interested in talking more when this… alignment is over?”
“Sure. I know I’ve kind of got a one-track mind right now, but honestly?” She smiled. “I think you might make an interesting friend.”
A timid hint of a smile crossed Raven’s face. “If I could find somepony who was willing to bear with me on the whole…” She paused, frowning, looking at the nearby bucket. “Candles and fake-blood thing… I guess I could try being their friend.”
Moondancer’s horn lit up again as she began to lift the telescope. “Friends, then. Now, uh…”
“Of course,” Raven said. “I’ll extinguish the candles…”
Moondancer shook her head. “I don’t think they’re bright enough to be a problem.” She paused, and smiled at Raven. “They might even add something to the experience.”
“A touch of the macabre?”
Moondancer laughed. “A little bit of your thing, even though we’re kind of ending up doing my thing this time.”
The pale pony settled on her haunches as Moondancer began to set up the telescope’s tripod. She watched Moondancer adjust each leg in turn before fitting the telescope into its mount.
After a moment, she spoke: “So, what makes this alignment so special?”
“Well, it’s a rare kind of event called an ‘occultation’, where a larger celestial body obscures our view of a smaller one…”
Raven held up a hoof. “You can stop; I’m aware of what an occultation is.”
“You… do?” Moondancer paused, furrowing her brows. “I didn’t know you were a fellow student of astronomy?”
Raven tossed her mane. “Well, of course I’m not. But as the Mistress of the Dark, I’ve made extensive studies of the occult.”
Author's Note
If you like what you just read, the friendshipping continues in Ghost Dusters!
