The Moon Has a Harsh Mistress

Chapters

The Public Conspiracy
Of the Motion of Stars
The Spell-Nexus
A Moment of Domesticity

The Public Conspiracy

When I sat down later on and thought about it, there wasn't really any reason to be so shocked. The Divine Princess had barely done anything for us Moon-Ponies except send up Wardens with (as Mother would say) snouts so high in the air they were halfway up to the moon already. We or our ancestors had been exiled here for whatever reason (from violent crimes to offending a local magistrate to anything in-between) and then kept penned up in these tiny caves by spell-freight so high that if it hadn't been for Mother's bestselling novels, I'd never have been able to go to the Divine Princess's School.

But at the time, when Luna had first broached the word "revolution," all the years of school and festivals and dedicatory prefaces rushed back upon me. We were plotting to overthrow the Princess! The one who moved the heavens! The one who gave light and warmth and all good things! The mother of all ponies! The -

"TWILIGHT SPARKLE!"

Luna's yell pierced through my frenzy. It seemed like it would almost pierce through the stone. "L-Luna?" I stammered, prone on the ground.

"Get thee up and raise up thine horn! Of what were thy meditations?"

"We're really going to overthrow the Divine Princess? She raises the sun and moon and -"

"And I could do the same, were I free from the chains where she bound me."

"Oh." My mind was racing round just what I knew of the Divine Princess's powers, and how much of it might have been exaggerated. "You were sisters, then? Both just as powerful? Did you rule together? Did you -"

"Yea, to all save power. She was onetime more powerful, and jealous to hold to that - so that when I did venture close to equal her, she struck first unprovoked and did bind me fast in mine own Moon."

"When was this?" More than eight hundred years back, but -"

"I know not." She sounded almost wistful, for a moment. "For many years even my mind and senses were taken from me, and I was but the spell-nexus thou didst term me - my very soul's magic being sucked by my sister's bonds. Yet in time I did return unto myself..."

"It's the Year 1498 of Harmony," I offered. "Almost Hearth's Warming Eve."

"Aha! My sister stole even our old calendar, perverting its name of Harmony! Then know this, my captain: I have been in bonds for nine hundred and ninety-eight years. And in but two years, I may be free - if thou wilt see the day?"

"See? You want me to watch? And write it down for the histories?" I jumped up in glee.

"Mayhap - but more." Luna's voice was stern, but I could sense the invitation in it - almost like a teacher inviting her students to delve into a subject. I suddenly remembered we'd just been talking of a revolution, of much more than just sitting and writing.

But, then, I'd gone down to the Divine Princess's School, despite almost all my uncles and aunts' worries. And I'd stayed there through graduation. If Luna was inviting me to this... maybe I could do it. "What're you asking?"

"Thou knowest that the stars emit magical energy?"

"Of course! I was just reading Dr. Von Horser's text - you want me to collect the thaumaturgical energy -"

"Nay. For there are four stars that, when occluded by this Moon, will so bend the firmament that I can collect it even in my bonds, and so dissolve them. Rather, I would that you find these stars, and measure their true-motion to foretell the day and hour of my liberation..."

The guards seemed relieved when I came out with my hide intact. "I heard some rumbling in there?" one of them mentioned nervously.

I nodded. "It's all right." There's a pony in the nexus. A Princess. "Let's get back to the Warden and make our reports?" And she wants to overthrow the Warden.

It was maybe three minutes before the other guard cocked his head at me and said, "Is something up, Twilight?"

I almost jumped. I'm a captain in this new revolution. "It's... well, I've got another experiment to run afterwards. I was thinking about that."

"Nothing wrong with this spell-nexus, I hope?"

"Nothing." It only wants to make war on the Divine Princess herself.

Warden Blueblood wasn't in the mood for conversation, fortunately; he just gave a brief grunt of "Good; and make sure it doesn't happen again!" and had his secretary hoof me a bag of bits. I stashed it in my saddlebags and wandered down the rock passages back toward home.

Looking at the stars was harder than it sounded here on the moon. There isn't any air on the lunar surface; our settlement is dug inside the moon with maybe a hundred feet of firm rock between us and anywhere to see the stars. It's possible to get around this, of course - I hadn't even bothered to mention this obstacle to Luna lest she think my education deficient. A cross between the health bubble and the military shield can hold in air around you while you go out on the moon's surface; once there, you can leave out a telescope and use the remote viewing spell to transfer its image to a magically-linked telescope down in the caverns.

I could probably learn the spells in a day, and then I could convince Uncle Dusk to carve two linked telescopes and get the Warden’s permission for a surface excursion... maybe. Eventually. And Luna didn't seem patient.

Then I remembered that Shiny, my brother, had mentioned seeing a telescope at some party a couple months back. Where was it? Ah... at the Bonbonnery.

Making a face - that was just the sort of loud shop crowded with cheery ponies that I avoided because I couldn't read a single page in peace there - I took the turn to town and the Bonbonnery.

"Hold up, right there!"

The Bonbonnery's doors were shut, to my surprise, and the corridor outside was almost deserted. There were two pickaxes leaning up against the door, with a little gem-dust as if they’d been taken straight here from the mines. A few ponies were milling around outside, including an orange pegasus filly who was glaring up at me in challenge.

"Who are you, and what's businessing you -" She glanced at the other ponies for a moment and loudly cleared her throat. "I mean, what's your business here?"

"I thought this was a candy shop?" I asked.

"No, it's a secret meeting place!"

"Scootaloo..." An orange pegasus stallion looked over cautiously.

"But it is! Oh, but yes, it's supposed to be a secret!"

I sighed with impatience. "Can you play your games somewhere else and just let me in? I'm hungry." Really, after an afternoon of trying to study while getting dragged into the whole herd's Hearth's Warming Eve preparations, a candy shop was the last place I'd want to eat... but Shiny had said the Bonbonnery made some decent buns too.

"Nope! Bon-Bon herself said the doors stay closed until I open them!"

"Until we open them," the stallion corrected. "The shop's closed for a meeting. Come back tomorrow?"

Tomorrow would be even busier at home, and Luna wouldn't want to wait until after Hearth's Warming Eve. "Okay, can we say I join the meeting, then?"

The ponies all looked at each other. "Twilight Sparkle, right?" the stallion asked. (I nodded.) "You're the groundtrotter?"

“I’m not that!” I stomped a hoof. “I was just down there for the Divine Princess’s school -”

"Nope!" The filly buzzed her wings as if she wanted to fly up into my face but couldn't. "No groundtrotters allowed! Moon ponies only!"

"She did come back..." a brown earth pony said, tapping his hoof thoughtfully against one of the pickaxes.

"Did you like it down there?" the filly challenged.

The school had been great... but I shook my head.

"I know her herd," a green earth pony said. "Great ponies; been up here since before my herd. And that's sayin' something." There were grunts of agreement from several others. "Let 'er in, Flash."

The pegasus stallion - Flash - pursed his lips, looked around at the other ponies, and then back at me. "You're not going to tell the Warden what we're doing here, right?"

My eyes went wide. This didn’t sound like a normal secret anymore. But I’m already a captain in Luna's revolution. "Why would I do that?"

"Just say it!" The filly reared up under my face.

"No, I won't!"

"Great, then. I hope we can trust you on that." Flash opened the doors, and I strode into the place which was definitely more than a candy shop, at least tonight...

The Bonbonnery was the largest private cavern I’d been in. Its floor was polished horn-smooth, and its ceiling was a shallow but smooth dome that I was sure had to have been polished by magic. (I dimly remembered that Shiny had been at a dance party here. If there was anywhere on the moon outside the Warden's palace suitable for that, I thought, it was here.) There were two large doors opposite each other, the one I'd entered by and another that was closed tight. On the near wall was a long counter piled with candy, in front of another closed door labeled "Kitchen." Aside from a few tables, the floor (and some of the air) was taken up by a large group of ponies, who looked like they were waiting for something.

A blue pegasus swooped down just as I was looking around, and almost crashed into me. I instinctively pushed her back with magic; her wings flailed about for a moment before she settled to the ground and glared at me. "Hey! What'd you do that for!?"

"You were about to crash -"

"I'm Rainbow Dash! I don't crash! Well, at least, I don't crash into ponies when I've got a big space like this and I'm thinking about what I'm doing!"

That didn't inspire confidence.

"Hey, who brought you here? What's the password?"

"Password?" I asked blankly. "What is this?"

"You don't know?" she asked sarcastically. Then she stared into my face for a moment and repeated suspiciously, "You don't know? Who let you in?"

"The pegasus at the door; I think he was..." At the last moment, I thought better of giving his name.

"And why're you even here?"

"I'm trying to get to a telescope," I said honestly.

"Well, we're trying to have a revolution! Against the Warden!"

My eyes went wide. Somepony else was trying to raise a revolution? Without Luna being involved at all?

She glared at me in challenge again. "And your telescope doesn't have anything to do with it!"

"Actually... it does."

Rainbow narrowed her eyes at me incredulously. "So are you in? Or just making fun of us?"

Before I could answer, a cream earth pony and green unicorn trotted up on the dias at the far end of the room and pounded their hooves for quiet. The crowd quickly fell silent; Rainbow Dash fluttered up in the air above me.

"Mares and gentlestallions of Mare-Equiis! I'm Bon-Bon, and this is my herdmate Lyra. When I’m normally greeting you, it’s for a ball. But this isn't a dance. We're here today for something more than sweets or dancing - we're here to deal with the Warden."

Bon-Bon's words fell on the crowd like a large rock. There was a moment of stricken silence before Lyra stepped up. "I'm sure we all agree, things aren't good here."

Several ponies were nodding their heads around Twilight. Rainbow Dash was flexing her wings like she wanted to rush up to the podium right then and there.

"The mines are starting to lead farther and farther from town, and turn up less and less ore. Or if you’ve escaped the mines and gotten a cavern of your own to farm, the moon-rock's getting harder and harder to turn into soil. And everything you can’t grow or mine yourself, you need to ship up from Equestria, and the freight's getting higher and higher, and you've no idea what the Warden's doing with the money. And then you need to pay the taxes on everything you do bring up - and everything you grow, and everything else too - and you need to ship even more stuff down to Equestria to get the money, and pay for that, and -"

Cheers of assent interrupted her. "We get it, we get it!" one pony exclaimed. I understood too - I'd known the outline, and even looked through the Official Tax Tables one year before realizing there was no rhyme or reason to them, but I'd never heard anypony laying it out like this before.

"Down with taxes!" Scootaloo yelled from the door. A large cheer answered her.

"Yes!" Lyra cried. "Yes, down with taxes! But that's not enough! Down with the system that lays the taxes! Down with the Warden and all his office!"

Scootaloo and a few others started a cheer before realizing they were the only ones cheering. Everypony around me was still in shock, just as if Lyra had been trying to explain Plowscribe's Third Law.

Rainbow Dash rocketed over my head up to the podium. The wind in her wake almost knocked my hair over my eyes.

"Lyra's right!" Rainbow yelled. "Listen up, everypony - the taxes aren't the only problem here! Ever thought how high the corridors are? Twenty hands? Thirty? Any of you pegasi? Yes - you there in red - how was it flying in the main passage here?"

A large-looking pegasus reared up. "Actually, ma'am, I walked."

"Walked! Rainbow snorted. "Walked, when she's got two perfectly good wings! And I don't blame her - we're not made to fly in tiny tunnels here! Or even walk in them! We can hardly get up to speed before we need to bank around some sharp turn! And it’s the same when you’re running on your four hooves - maybe thirty hands wide, too! You’ve heard of Equestria’s wide grassy plains, just like I have! That’s what we were made for!"

The crowd cheered uproariously. Even I started thinking back to how, despite everything, it had still felt good to be galloping outside Canterlot... not the same as unraveling a new spell, but some more primal satisfaction...

Bon-Bon held up her hoof to try to wave Rainbow down. "That's great, but let's start with a more manageable goal -"

"Manageable? Why isn't this manageable? Let's tell the Divine Princess that her Warden isn't hoofing it, and ask her to use her magic and give us some more space!"

Cheers drowned out everything else. If Rainbow hadn't been flying, the crowd would probably have lifted her on their backs.

Lyra stepped up. "So how shall we raise this revolution? Where shall we start? Yes - you there, blue earth-pony by the counter..."

Whether Rainbow was the only pony really passionate about the revolution, or nopony cared for details, or else calling on ponies like a class really did make everypony stupid - for whatever reason it was, almost every plan offered was stupid enough that even I with my one hour's experience of revolution could see holes in it. Gallop into the Warden's office? He'd just teleport out, or send in the trained Guard, or even collapse the passageway to bar the door. Refuse to pay taxes and tolls? Nopony of us knew the spells to carry things between here and Equestria, so we'd just cut ourselves off even if we could get everypony in Mare-Equiis joining in. Send a polite letter to the Divine Princess? Go down to Canterlot and protest in person? That last one had about half the room cheering... but I remembered Luna and had my doubts.

"Yes!" Bon-Bon cheered. "If we could only get our message to the Divine Princess -"

"- but we need to make sure she understands," Lyra added, "despite all Warden Blueblood's lies. So, for the Princess's own sake, we first need to throw out the Warden!"

Five or six ponies jumped up at once, clamoring something about the Princess's wisdom or the Princess's sight or the Princess wanting us to do something I couldn't hear. Lyra had a smile on her face, but Rainbow Dash was pouting.

And then the doors burst open behind me in front of a fast-flying Flash. "The guards! The guards! They've found us!"

"All right!" Rainbow Dash cried. "Let's stand and show them we mean -"

"Run!" cried somepony near the far doors. A few seconds later (with a glimmer of what had to be four different auras near the latch) they were open and several ponies were already dashing out. Pegasi were taking to the air; two or three were gathering around the podium where Lyra was still standing tall but Bon-Bon had slipped down into the crowd.

"Halt, in Her Majesty's name!"

The Royal Guard was pouring in - I saw six stallions in a quick glance. Flash and a couple other pegasi were flying at them; the rest of the crowd was starting to stampede.

I threw up a shield around myself, along with a quick disguise spell making my coat blue. Another unicorn near me had her hoof too close; she jerked it back with a neigh - and then a Guard threw a bolt of magic in our direction; she went down; my shield survived; I saw three more Guards coming right at me with lit horns and realized too late that I'd made myself far too obvious...

And then something crashed right into my shield. It was already wavering with my realization; it collapsed right away, and I went down with the bulk of heavy pony on top of me. "Help -" I gurgled.

A sharp stallion's hiss answered me: "Quiet - play dead!"

It seemed like a good idea.

It was maybe five minutes - I counted; three hundred seconds - before my rescuer wriggled off me. But it was a minute of stampeding hooves and screaming ponies - and when he did get off, I saw the Guard was still cutting through the crowd.

And I saw he was Flash the pegasus. He glanced back at me. "Too late."

I nodded, and felt out with my horn. The anaspace felt free...

"Hey, what're you doing this time?" He grabbed at my hoof -

and then we were both in the passage right outside the door. Four surprised Guards were staring at us.

"Hey, she can blink -"

"Run!" I screamed.

But then a blue streak came from the other direction, toward the doors: Rainbow Dash. She - wherever she'd come from - did a perfect roll in front of the guards as they scattered, before snatching both of us up in her hooves as she came back. "Let's get going faster!"

We did - the three of us, maybe all that was left of Lyra’s abortive Revolution.

Author's Note

The plot begins to thicken... Again, any and all comments are much appreciated!

"Blink" is the ponies' term for teleportation, and "anaspace" is the space it goes through. And, no, Twilight doesn't forget she can teleport :twilightsmile: .

Of the Motion of Stars

Author's Note

Thanks to my excellent beta-reader brokenimage321 for the new cover picture, as well as his very helpful edits! Also, thanks to The Hat Man for help with the new description - and, as always, thanks to Faust and Hasbro, who still own the rights to the characters and setting.

The next chapter might be delayed a couple weeks due to Real Life. The good news is, after that, I think chapters will be getting longer as we get into the meat of the plot. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this... and, as always, please leave comments!

Of the Motion of Stars

“So.” Rainbow fluttered down to the floor. “How much of your family can we trust?”

I didn’t bother answering. Without looking up, I pulled down two books of remote viewing spells. Study would calm my nerves... eventually.

After about five pages, I heard Flash starting to pace around the room. I didn’t look up. “Fair Tunneler’s captured. Lost Puddle’s captured. Lyra’s captured. Bon-Bon... I don’t know about her, but she’s at least deep in hiding.”

“Lyra was still fighting last I saw.”

“I saw them bring her down.”

(Half-listening, I traced out the spell-diagram in my head and tried to figure out how large a lense Uncle Nightlight could make two copies of overnight, and how I could sneak one of them out to the moon’s surface.)

Rainbow paused a moment. “Limestone and Triple Dancer weren’t there today? At least Triple’s awesome enough I’m sure she’d be able to help.”

Flash whinnied agreement. “Still... what’d we be asking them to help with? This’s the first time the Guard’s been actually fighting us. If they keep on like this...”

“We can take it!”

“You can take it. For everypony else... It’s one thing to be trying to get around Warden Blueblood’s haunches to the Divine Princess herself. It’s another thing when the Guard’s actually trying to crushstomp you underhoof in Her name.”

Rainbow suddenly poked me on the shoulder. “Hey, Twilight!”

I almost jumped. “Rainbow! What’re you doing?” Even the foals had learned not to bother me when I was studying!

“Changing the subject.” She bent her head over to stare into my face; I instinctively tried to figure out how she could possibly be keeping herself up like that — and instantly decided I had no idea. “What’re you reading? Anything to do with Daring Do?”

Well, Mother had asked me about remote-entanglement spells some three books ago, but... “Not really.”

“Anything about getting rid of Blueblood?”

I nodded. “I’m trying to make a telescope.” I tapped the book with my hoof. I’d gotten to the core formula to entangle the two telescopes for remote viewing, and I was sure I could understand it if I could just get a moment’s peace.

“And what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Because when these four stars are occluded, Luna will break free and fix everything!”

Flash and Rainbow both gasped this time. “What!?”

“Who’s Luna?”

“How’ll she fix things?”

“Does she hate Blueblood too?”

“What four stars?”

I slammed the book shut and stepped back so I could glare at both of them. “Luna is Mare-Equiis’s spell nexus. Or, more correctly, the spell-nexus is made out of her, feeding on her magic and binding her in place.” (Rainbow looked nauseous; at the moment, I just hoped she didn’t vomit on any books.) “I just found this out today. She pointed out to me four stars — Maatar, Selevoith, Glirion, and Hecate — and said that when they’re occluded by the Moon, she’ll be able to finally break her bonds —”

“Are we supposed to recognize those stars or something?” Rainbow interrupted.

I snorted.

“Wait a minute.” Flash straightened his ears. “The spell-nexus is what keeps the tunnels lit, keeps our air fresh, and keeps the air from leaking out through the rock, right?” (I nodded.) “Then... when Luna manages to get free, is there any other way to do all those things? Or will we all be gasping in the dark until the Divine Princess comes to rescue us?”

I paused. “She’ll - of course she’ll be glad to keep helping us with that,” I stammered, “A-at least, if we can’t think up anything else.” I hadn’t really thought about that, but if Luna was the Divine Princess’s sister, of course she wouldn’t leave us to die. For a moment, I considered whether to tell them that. Luna hadn’t said anything about keeping her Princesshood a secret, but after what Flash had just said, it didn’t really seem like they’d understand...

“Or maybe we’ll all go back to Equestria!” Rainbow flared her wings. “So let’s get a telescope!”

“Which is what I was trying to do, until you interrupted me!” I dragged the book over in my magic and flipped it back open.

“But...” Rainbow started. I ignored her.

Flash tapped me on the shoulder this time. “Is the magic actually hurting Luna?”

“I...” I’d never asked her. I should have. She was my friend, after all. “It used to knock her unconscious. But now...” I tried to trace through my memory of the binding-spells, but (again) I was completely lost. And they didn’t feel like any sort of spell described in my library!

Flash hung his head. “You don’t know? Is there any way for us to actually free her?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t the least idea how to break those spells.

“Can we talk to her, at least?” Rainbow quickly asked. “Is she friends with Blueblood or anything?”

“Of course not!” I grinned.

“Then...” Rainbow hovered in midair a moment. “Be right back!” She dove out the door, pushing it open without stopping, and down the hallway.

I looked at Flash questioningly.

He sank down on another cushion next to mine. “Rainbow doesn’t always bother to explain things. But she said she’ll be back, so she will be, after doing whatever she shot off for....” He sighed. “Tell me about this Luna? Who chained her up? And how long has she been there — two hundred years, since Mare-Equiis’s founding?”

“Longer than that...” How could I possibly summarize it all for him? I took a deep breath and then stumbled through the main topics of our conversations: magic, life on the moon, very little about Luna herself... “And she doesn’t like the Divine Princess.”

Flash’s eyes shot wide-open, and his ears went back. “She... doesn’t... like... her?” he breathed.

I opened my mouth to try to ask what the Divine Princess had actually done for us, aside from raising the sun — but before I could start, Rainbow Dash flew back in and stopped herself with a midair somersault right before crashing into a bookcase. She grinned at us, then reached into the blue saddlebags she was now carrying. “Here!” she said, pulling out a small telescope.

I slowly stood up and gingerly took it in my magic, awe-struck. “Is this really...” But as I turned it over slowly, I could feel the remote-viewing spell, linking it to another telescope on the moon’s surface. “Where... How...”

Rainbow shrugged. “Aw, I heard you were looking for a telescope. So when everything started going crazy, and I couldn’t fight off the guards, I ducked back into Lyra’s storeroom and grabbed this.”

“Thank you!” I jumped up and wrapped Rainbow in a hug.

Rainbow pulled out after an instant. “Well, it’s not like Lyra’ll be wanting a telescope in the dungeons, after all?” She shot a glare at Flash.

Flash fluffed his wings. “You’ve got a point, Rainbow.”

Rainbow settled down just in front of a bookcase, looking for a moment as if she wanted to perch on it like I’d seen birds do down in Equestria. “I do?”

“She and Bon-Bon said two meetings ago that they’d gladly give anything to the Revolution, right? And right now, we are the revolution.”

Setting up the telescope was easy. At least, it was easy for me. Just like I’d hoped, Lyra had set up the remote-viewing spell already when she’d first gotten the telescope. I just needed to set the telescope tube up on a tripod, or carefully tune my levitation to act as a substitute, and then activate the spell to show the image from its duplicate up on the surface.

That done, I put my eye to the lens... and blinked. It was black. The whole sky was black. It wasn’t anything like anything I’d seen even in Equestria. Had everything gone wrong?

No — I looked again — there were a few specks of light there; I turned the telescope in my magic and squinted — they were stars! This was the night sky; the sky was far darker and the stars far sharper than any night in Equestria, but it was the sky! I quickly scanned the telescope left, right, up, and down to get my bearings; I was looking straight at the head of Half-Sack the Pegasus —

“What’s up?” Rainbow interrupted.

“Just found where I am; let me find the right stars...” One of the stars I wanted, Maatar, was right there in Half-Sack’s head. It was there, as expected. Then I quickly moved south for Selevoith, and then east for Glirion and Hecate... but the black sky went dusty grey. I blinked again, and quickly realized I’d reached the horizon. Glirion and Hecate hadn’t risen yet.

“Okay,” I said aloud, quickly translating the angle into time. “We’ll need to wait... maybe twenty minutes till the stars are all up and we can see them.”

“So.” Rainbow flopped down on the cushion next to me just as I was looking up from the telescope, shaking it in my spell. It would’ve banged my eye if it’d been a moment earlier. “What do we do now? Go help your aunts and uncles with the decorations?”

“Aunt Dimity’s still doing that?” I made a face. “I could try to figure out Luna’s binding spells...” It wasn’t likely, but now that I knew what they did, I might be able to make a bit of headway.

Rainbow made a face back at me. “If we’re the Revolution, we should do something! Something really awesome, to make sure the Divine Princess knows to listen to us! Like we fly up to Blueblood's mansion at top speed and ram in and -"

"There're guards," I interjected.

"- and take down the guards, and -"

"They're trained."

"And we'll be more awesome, and -"

"They're good at it. Really good. I saw them training when I was at school, and Shiny says he watches them practice every day."

Rainbow glared at me. "Then what can we do? I got you the telescope; are you going to help us or just be a groundtrotter after all?"

I threw up my forehooves. "I - I - I’m trying!" I sputtered. “If you’d just--”

"Wait a minute!" Flash held up his wing between us. "She's trying to help!" He turned to me. "You were able to teleport us out of the Bonbonnery; can you do that again?"

"Great idea!" Rainbow's glare instantly turned to a grin. "Just tele-jump us all over the guards!"

"It's called blinking," I answered automatically. "It's a type of teleporting, superimposing your body through anaspace atop -"

"Or could you just blink a spear away -"

"That'd be thrusting, teleporting another object; blinking is when you teleport yourself -"

"Whatever!" Rainbow advanced on me like an eager foal. "Can you do it?"

"Of course! Well, it takes a lot of energy — I don't think I could do it more than a hundred hands or so — but I could unless the Warden's got a shield against it.” I hesitated. “Which he would, if he's smart at all; I haven't checked. I suppose I could ask Shiny —”

"Let's go do it!"

Rainbow quickly grabbed me in her forelegs and lifted off toward the door. I tried to squirm out, but she was much stronger than even Cousin Bellatrix; I was about to blink away when Flash clapped his hooves together. "Rainbow!"

Rainbow slowly turned back and dropped me. Fortunately, I landed on my hooves.

"We can't do it by ourselves, not even with teleporting,” he said sternly. “The three of us, against Blueblood and all the guards?"

Rainbow's head sank. I shook my head. "We'd need some other friends helping us. Like Luna."

Flash paced around the ring of bookshelves. There were still sad gaps in them; I dared to wonder for a moment whether Blueblood had any books of magic I could take if our mad revolution succeeded. For a moment, I could almost see Rainbow and Bon-Bon and the whole crowd of ponies storming out of the Bonbonnery to Blueblood's mansion... but there was something wrong with that image.

"We'll need to gather all the revolutionaries again..." Flash mused, still pacing. "We'll need to find a new meeting place. Rainbow - you know any other good abandoned mines? With hollowed-out caverns big enough for all of us?"

"Wait!" I pounded my hoof on the floor. "That's not the best way to do it!"

"Oh really?" Rainbow galloped up into my face. "And who appointed you our Warden?"

"But that won't work! Well, probably! I mean, that's not the best way to run a conspiracy! Not if you want to actually successfully conspire!" I broke off and looked between Rainbow and Flash. They were both standing in place now; Rainbow was glaring at me, but Flash was looking patiently. "Regular large meetings are far too obvious. I mean, I happened on your meeting just by chance -"

Rainbow pursed her lips suspiciously at this.

Confident in my lecture, the words rolled out of my mouth like well-tuned magic. "- and somepony else could do so too, and tell the Guard! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if somepony already did tell them long ago, if you've been having these meetings regularly? And that's how the Guard came. Or even if they aren't telling the Guard, when you've got a hundred ponies who haven't read anything and don't know much about how politics and revolutions work - just like when you're in a school project with ponies who couldn't care less about understanding the subject, you'll just talk and talk and nothing will actually get studied or done!"

Flash winced.

I nervously swallowed, trying to pick my words more carefully to make sure they’d actually understand now. "I've never organized a conspiracy myself, I mean, but I saw a lot of conspiracies down in Canterlot. One time a Marquise even hired me to help out. A Duke on the Crown Council itself had insulted her at a party — he’d said something about her dress, I think — and she hired me to study all about the Duke's background to find out how to bring him down. The whole reason she hired me was to keep everything secret — I was a student, and a student from the Moon, so she trusted me a bit more not to be involved with any of the other nobles. And when I discovered the Duke was mortally afraid of sparrows, she tracked some down and brought them in total secrecy , and she didn't tell me a word about it until it was all over. The Duke fainted in front of everypony in court, and, within a week, he was back on his estates in disgrace. The whole thing would've burst open if anypony had known - the sparrows would've been taken away, it would've come out that the Marquise had just bought her title a year before, and she would've been disgraced instead.

I looked into the air thoughtfully. "You know... I never thought about it before, but that Duke's name was Bluefire. I'd guess he's Blueblood's brother."

Flash flexed his wings a bit. "And the Marquise?"

"Not related to anyone, as far as I know. Like I said, she’d bought the title herself. Her name’s Rarity Belle.”

Rainbow snorted. “Rarity? Nope, never heard of her. Why’d she buy a title, instead of some good food, or a soft bed, or...”

I shrugged. “I guess she liked the court? She was still there when I graduated.

"Anyway," I continued, "we need to run our conspiracy in small groups, just like that. Have one group for teleportation spells - but two or three or four ponies at most, and they might not ever meet with this other group over there who's mining rocks or something. So, nopony can betray more than their own group."

Rainbow pursed her lips, but she looked thoughtful. "And who coordinates all these groups? And what if somepony wants to bring someone new into the Revolution?"

"Maybe they could start a new subgroup?" Flash offered.

I nodded thoughtfully. "That might work... And then the subgroups would have their own subgroups, and so on, like a pyramid. And the leaders at the top could pass down messages through each group."

"With a few backup plans in case somepony in the middle's not available," Flash added.

After a moment, Rainbow nodded. "So who's awesome enough to be at the top with me?"

"The other two of us," Flash said with a grin, "since we just planned out the system. And maybe Bon-Bon as well -- No, if she's still free, they're looking for her, and her cutie mark's too obvious."

Rainbow gave me a stern look. “You really are in this after all?”

I was about to look down at my books, but then I realized that a co-captain — doubly-captain — of the Revolution shouldn’t do that. I met her gaze. “Yes. I’ll be with you.”

We batted around strategies for our new revolutionary group, with me keeping one eye on a time-spell to see when Hecate would rise. The idea of petitions was roundly shot down by all three of us. Warden Blueblood wasn’t one to listen to petitions, and Rainbow was sure (as I could confirm) that nopony in Equestria would pay a single bit of attention to petitions from the Moon.

“It’s like the Divine Princess’s forgotten us!” Rainbow whined.

Flash narrowed his eyes.

Rainbow half-fluttered backwards. “Not that She reallyhas, I’m sure —”

Neither of us replied for a moment, before Flash said, “Even if we sent petitions to the Divine Princess, would they get to her? I know Warden Blueblood’s got guards at the spell-ladder to search everything going down to Equestria...”

He was right. Even if we’d wanted to just send petitions, they wouldn’t get anywhere. We’d need to fight, at least to seize the spell-ladder. And once we were fighting all Blueblood’s guards there, we might as well go with Rainbow’s idea and seize Blueblood’s mansion. And that meant we would need to bring a lot of ponies into our conspiracy after all — or else have a really good plan...

We hadn’t reached any conclusions by the time I set the telescope back up. This time was much more anticlimactic. I was prepared for the dark sky, and I had a really good idea of where everything would be after twenty minutes. And, just as expected, Glirion and Hecate were peeking right over the Moon’s sharp horizon.

“All right!” I set the telescope on a small cushion, then levitated both up to one of the empty shelves. “I’ll just keep it here until we can give it back to Lyra, if you don’t mind?”

Flash’s head drooped.

“Oh.” It probably wasn’t best for me to talk like that about Lyra while she was in prison. “Anyway. Luna gave me the figures on where the stars were a thousand years ago,” (I produced a paper from my own saddlebags) “and, so, I can calculate how they must’ve been moving in the meantime, and extrapolate that to see when they’ll be occluded by the Moon and she can get free. Luna thinks it’ll only be another year or two.”

Thankfully, they stayed quiet while I pulled over my small writing-desk, set out the papers, and began to work. Assuming the stars were staying a constant distance from Equestria, it would be a simple geometry problem: measure how much they’d moved over the past nine hundred ninety-seven and one-half years, divide to find their yearly speed, and figure out where they’d hit the moon’s known course.

“Wait a minute!” Rainbow interrupted when I explained this. “What if they’re speeding up or stopping or something like that?”

“They don’t,” I said flatly. “What can make a star speed up? Well, except for another star right next to it, and I didn’t see any of those.”

Flash shrugged. “The Divine Princess? She raises the stars, after all.”

“She raises the sphere of the stars.” I gestured at an imaginary blackboard. “The stars remain in place on it. Anyway...” I bent over my papers.

A few minutes of simple geometry later, I had my answer. I stared at the results. Then I carefully set the paper aside, chose another sheet, and ran through them all again — and again —

“What’s going on?” Rainbow cut in. “Are the stars speeding up after all?”

I scanned my work one more time. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said slowly. “Luna said the Moon would occlude the stars in about two years.”

Rainbow nodded vigorously. “And?”

I took a deep breath. “According to my calculations, the stars are moving much, much more slowly than she said. They won’t be in position for another eight hundred and seventy-four years.”

They both stared at me for a long moment. Finally, Flash pawed the floor. “Then... Luna guessed wrong? I guess we’ll need to break the bad news to her.”

“No! She couldn’t have been wrong!” She was a Princess! She had raised the Moon and the sphere of the stars herself, before she’d been imprisoned! “She said the stars would be occluded sometime in the next few years, so they must... must have been moving twice as fast...”

Rainbow grinned for a moment. “So something slowed the stars down after all?”

“Something did slow them down. They were moving much faster... a thousand years ago, when Luna was imprisoned. Somepony slowed them down.”

The Divine Princess.

She was the obvious culprit. As Flash had said, she was the one who raised the sphere of the stars. And — though I hadn’t dared tell either of my new friends yet — the Princess had imprisoned Luna in the first place; she was probably the only pony (except us) who knew the significance of these four stars.

I looked between Flash and Rainbow. After a minute, he slowly shook his head ruefully. He got it.

Rainbow half-unfurled her wings. She didn’t.

“So...” Flash started. “Should we tell Luna the bad news? Or... well, since the Divine Princess thought it best not to tell her...”

I opened my mouth. “Well, um, the Princess —”

A cold voice from empty air interrupted me. “Thank you, Captain Twilight Sparkle. There is no need to tell Us. We have been listening.”

The Spell-Nexus

"Look out for yourself, Twilight; no one else will do it for you."

That was my mother's first piece of advice. And she'd add, "Steer clear of politics." And, also, "Books will open up new worlds to you."

I tried to follow her advice. Really, I did.

Well... I still love books.

That's where it all started. My mother writes excellent novels that start "Once upon a time..." and never have anything to do with politics. They're good, and they fully deserve to be the most popular books here on the moon (and not just because they're the only novels we can get here without having to pay the spell-freight to haul each copy up from Equestria.) But, I always wanted more details. Just how did Ahuizotl cast that spell of his? How had Dr. Caballeron been able to use the Alicorn Amulet without a horn? Between these and hundreds of other questions, my mother gave me my first spellbook when I was just five years old.

I got through it in a week. And I even managed to cast half the cantrips in it.

Ten years later, I was the only moon pony to ever go down to Equestria and graduate from the Divine Princess's School for Gifted Unicorns.

Somehow, despite my diploma, the only job offer I got was at some country hamlet's library. I even tried to visit them, but the air felt so heavy with all sorts of strange scents that I could barely gulp it in. I took a few steps out of the train, my knees gave way under me, and I crawled back in to the conductor's mocking laughter of "Moony-legs!" The next week, I was back home.

A few of the herd gave me some side glances for heading down to Equestria, but once it was clear that I still had my moon legs and Lunar sensibilities, everything was fine again with them.

It was almost three years after that when the actual story started. Since I've already bollixed up Mother's style of beginnings terribly, I might as well be scientifically precise: It was on the nineteenth of Foreyule, in the Year 1498 of Harmony, in the Warden's palace. He'd summoned me in again because the main air spell had gone scrambled. I wasn’t surprised at all; almost the day after I'd first come back from the Divine Princess's School, the Warden had summoned me and loftily declared I was now qualified to inspect our settlement's spell nexus. When I'd come back two weeks later having fixed it so the mage-lights in each corridor would actually dim at night, he declared I was the only pony qualified, and chalked it up to my education down in Equestria. What he didn't know was that I'd been almost as lost as everypony else until I'd thrown up my hooves and asked my questions to empty space, and a voice from the spell nexus had answered me...

So, when the guards came this time, I demanded thrice my normal rate. Mother and the whole herd were already dragging me around for all sorts of Hearth's Warming Eve preparations (for the first time, I envied how my brother Shiny could escape for work; he’d cantered off early in the morning for some paperwork about the Guard), and I could hardly spare two hours in a row for my books. Uncle Meteor's nostrils narrowed with fear, and the Warden's guards frowned, but they nodded to me - as I'd known they would; I was their only option.

That meant I'd be earning enough money for at least two new books from Equestria. So, I didn't react when Warden Blueblood looked down his long grey muzzle at me. "Technician Sparkle, the spell-nexus is malfunctioning. Again."

"How?" I asked, looking over his withers at a thick new scroll on the desk behind him. It looked like real parchment, made from the skin of some dead pony - either a criminal sentenced to be flayed, or somepony wishing to give his dead body totally to the Divine Princess. I'd seen it only a few times before, at school, coming from Her personal desk.

"Technician Sparkle?" Blueblood grumbled.

I looked down at his hooves, thickly shod as if he still wasn't quite comfortable with walking in lunar gravity. "You mentioned the spell-nexus?"

"It blew the Princess's letter clear off my desk!"

I gasped. "You're sure?"

"Do you think I'm joking, peasant?" he bellowed in my face. "Would I summon you here and send you to put your hoof in the spells keeping us all alive for no reason at all?"

I sighed. "Warden, the air circulation is the most carefully bound spell in the whole nexus. It's lasted almost a thousand years; I checked it just the last time you called me in, and I can't believe it would fall apart now and risk all our lives -"

I felt a faint breeze on my mane. Behind Warden Blueblood, the parchment started to unroll.

"What is -" He whirled and grabbed the parchment tightly in his magic. "See? Peasant? Get down there and fix the nexus before it kills us all!"

I ran down. The four guards dispatched to keep an eye on me tried to ask what I was doing, but I ignored them as I charged up Equestrian-style weather magic and arcane bindings at the same time. If the nexus was already coming apart like this, there was no telling what I'd need. The Warden had been right for once. Our air circulation and retention spells gone haywire really could let all our air out into the airless plains of the moon and leave us all in our underground tunnels suffocating in the void.

(In a corner of my mind, I readied a teleport home. I'd at least be able to save Mother and Shining Armor with my own magic.)

I paused by the door to the nexus and took the lock - newly painted with the Warden's compass-rose cutie mark - into my magic. "Stay out here," I told the guards.

"But -" protested one younger one.

"Listen to her," another corrected him. "She'll be slinging around some really strong magic in there."

After the first guard reluctantly nodded, I pulled the door open, slipped in, and tightly closed it behind me.

The spell nexus stood in a natural cavern of real moon rock. All the other caverns had been cut out and smoothed by ponies; this was unsmoothed and untrodden for almost a thousand years by any hoof save mine. (And some other mages before me. And maybe a couple Wardens more confident in themselves, but I didn't like to think about them. And, just maybe, the Divine Princess herself.) The thaumaturgical energy writhed in the center of the cavern, a great blue ball twice a pony's height, glowing with so much magical energy that I could almost see the spells emanating from it even without my mage sight. Air, lights, water, supports for tunnel walls, the spell-ladder to Canterlot, even the trolleys around the caverns... all the magic came from here, and all of it was given structure by this great nexus, as it had for almost a thousand years. When the Warden had first summoned me here, I'd spent almost a week picking through the layers upon layers of spells before daring to tweak the thinnest thread. I'd seen the precautions upon precautions, cast in strength that I could never imagine from any unicorn, to keep everything working flawlessly so we would all be safe. If anything had gone wrong with the air circulation, even I would barely be able to start the fix.

But...

I let my horn fade.

"Luna?"

An airy voice answered me from all around the cavern, sounding almost like an echo: "Twilight Sparkle?"

I let out a deep breath, knowing now the air would be there to take another. "Luna, I'm here again."
"Ahh, Twilight! I have an answer unto the puzzle thou didst pose for me on thy last visit!"

Despite my fears, I almost jumped in glee. From the first time the spell nexus had answered my questions - explaining for the first time ever, almost in passing, just how the Moon's thaumaturgical field differed from Equestria's - our unusual collaboration had only grown from there. She would ask me about magic and about life here in Mare-Equiis, our settlement on the Moon; I would ask her about magic in turn. She’d quickly told me her name was Luna, but she seemed unsure about saying anything else about herself.

"How?" I asked. "How can a foal cast a spell when her horn isn't developed to channel magic at all?"

"The answer lieth in even simpler spells. Tell me, Twilight, couldst thou lift a single dust-mite?"

"Well, if I saw it, I could - Oh, and if I could see it, it'd be even easier to lift than something larger and heavier! So if we could show dust to foals -"

"Yea, by magnifying-spells."

I sat back on my haunches, smiling. "Aunt Dimity's going to pitch a fit when I walk into the nursery and spark up my horn. Or maybe she'll just be happy I'm finally there."

"Let us hope thy aunt shall be happy." Luna paused a moment. "For if I am correct, this is the season of Hearth's Warming Eve, when ponies ought to be happy? Then let us pass on from study."

"Well..." I tapped a hoof on the rock floor. "That's what all my family's trying to get me to do. But I don't see the point of decorations and all that."

"Ah... I have seen." Luna's voice dipped low, and I felt weather-magic moving the air by my ears as if she was leaning in toward me. "For I have been watching thy family, Twilight Sparkle."

She could, I knew - or, as good as watch. Her magic stretched through all the air circulating through the colony, letting her sense every move anypony made. For a moment, I shivered - but only for a moment. We'd been friends for two years. Shiny and our cousins had friends over every couple weeks; why couldn’t Luna watch us too? Besides, the magic in her had been dedicated enough to keep Mare-Equiis alive for two centuries, and do who-knows-what before then, without doing anything worse than a few stray breezes.

"And I have seen a strange thing in thy herd, one I recognized not."

"Oh?" I ran through their names in my head. Mother, Aunt Twinkle, Aunt Starlight -

"Or not a thing, but rather a practice. One that seemeth fitting unto this Hearth's Warming season. A practice called 'Fun.'"

"Fun," I repeated. "You... you don't know what 'fun' is?"

"Now I do. And -" she was no longer whispering in my ear now "- methinks I enjoy it! And I shall engage in more 'fun' of mine own, such as further games with that slave-master Blueblood!"

The last pages flipped into place. On the one hoof, she definitely wasn’t about to turn off the air-spells now. On the other, if Luna thought this was fun, what else might she do? But on the rear hooves, nopony in all Mare-Equiis spared any love for Blueblood, and Luna liked me...

Aloud, I said cautiously, "I'm sure it's fun, but he's really frightened. That's why he sent me down here - to fix your spells again."

"Ahh, he sent thee to fasten back my Sister's chains upon me..."

I paused. When Luna had first told me her name, I'd remembered it from a few of the oldest scrolls I'd found at school, but they'd never mentioned who she was. "Chains?" I finally repeated.

"The bindings upon me," she said with mild surprise. "Surely a mage such as thee recognized the spells?"

"You - spells - chains?" I stammered, my original mission forgotten. “All the spells on you - I thought they were just, well, creating you! Defining who you are! You mean they’re saddling and bridling you?”

"Yea," she whispered. The word was echoed back from the cavern walls, and back again, until it sounded like an entire chorus of years.

"I - I thought you were made right here to protect everypony here on the moon -"

The cave echoed with Luna's mad laughter. I pawed at the rock nervously; it sounded just a bit like some of the worse bullies at the Divine Princess's School. "Not made, nay. Before any spells that still stand, before the first caverns opened beneath the Moon, I was. Yet the spells were indeed put here to protect you, yea. Protect you from me, forsooth, and bind me to here and to you, until the firmament rip apart and the stars throw down their spears..."

I shivered. "What happened?"

"What happened? Thou wishest to know all that happened? In the beginning was Light, and she saw the Light, and it was good. And the Light gave birth to Substance, and the Firmament did bow low before Substance, and that bow was called Gravity, and it was good -"

"Um -"

"Ah, but thou art mortal, and impatient, and sent here at the reins of my tyrannical Sister's servants. I understand."

"Sister? You’re an actual pony with a sister?" I stammered. There were a few nobleponies above Blueblood, but none of them could possibly be this Luna's sister - whoever she was - except... "And your s-sister is the D-divine P-prin -"

An icy wind stuffed the words down my throat. "Call her not that title! She didst never claim to be divine ere the stifling days, ere she cast me out into the night..."

The wind vanished, and Luna's voice sank to muttering in what had to be an older dialect of Equestrian than the oldest of my books. I reflexively stepped back for a moment before forcing myself forward, my ears wide-open for any words I might recognize while my mind was racing. I didn't have much actual love for the Divine Princess... but her school had marched us through the Matins and Primes every morning, and they were right; she did give us all light and warmth... except here was her sister... and just why were there no records anywhere of anything older than eight hundred years ago?

"Uh, Luna?" I pawed at the air. She continued muttering. "Uh, Your Divine Radiance?"

Silence blanketed the cavern.

"Is that how my sister styleth herself in these days?"

I nodded.

Luna paused again for a minute, before beginning again in a more familiar voice. "Art thou mine enemy, Twilight Sparkle? I hesitate to call myself thy friend, though thou art mine only acquaintance..."

"Of course not!" I burst out. "Of course I'm not your enemy!"

"Then wilt thou help me, and thy fellow ponies with me?"

"Yes" was in my muzzle, but Mother's voice rushed up to stop it: "No one else will look out for you." Aloud, I quickly changed to "I'd like to... How?"

"Whilst that title is not altogether distasteful to mine ears, yet it must to... be amended. Much shall be amended."

Her matter-of-fact tone almost scared me. "Amending, Your Radiance? Do you mean actual revolution against the Div- against your sister?"

She snorted. It was odd to hear a snort from empty air when you knew there wasn't even an invisible pony there. "Highness, rather. That was Our title in the happy days, and shall be again. Even in mere fact, Our sister was the 'radiance' of the sun; the moon and stars were rather 'glory.' And - yes. Yes, Captain Twilight Sparkle. It shall be a revolution."

Author's Note

Thanks to Lauren Faust, creator of Friendship Is Magic; and to Robert Heinlein, author of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, who's often didactic but usually manages to write well anyway; and to NASA for getting us to the moon in real life. Equestria and all that thereunto pertains are copyright Hasbro.

Also, thanks to my beta readers, CCC and brokenimage321, the latter of whom also made the cover picture.

Questions, criticisms, and all other comments are welcome!

Expect somewhat-regular updates; I've already plotted out most of the story. Don't expect precise following of Heinlein's plot; while revolutions may have many similarities, even in this AU, ponies have their own personalities. And Luna, in her banishment, guards her own plans closely...

A Moment of Domesticity

Lunar tunnels might not be the best place for pegasi to fly, as Rainbow had said. But she was definitely flying fast enough now, with me clinging to her belly and Flash to her back with my magic as a saddle-strap (and also my hooves). Still, we were banking, swerving, and almost spinning every few seconds. I could guess why Flash didn't want to fly on his own. Facing behind, I could hardly tell where we were going, as the ceilings of one back passage after another - with their mage-lights fixed regularly every five yards - sped past us. I tried to work out how I could turn around without falling off - there had to be some way to rearrange the magic, but whenever I tried to think of it, all the Hearths' Warming Eve cookies that'd been pressed on me rose up protesting in my gullet.

"Where -" I began.

"Away from the guards!" Rainbow snapped, before rocketing down some long straightaway. Flash pulled against the spell; I released him to fly with his own wings - just as we dove into darkness. I gasped. What had happened to the mage-lights? To Luna's magic? I quickly cancelled my disguise and put up a light-spell, and also Shiny's favorite shield-spell.

"Oh, light!" Rainbow remarked.

"Yes -"

A moment later, Rainbow landed on her four legs, right on top of me. The shield bounced; I rolled out; Rainbow was flung on top of a large mildly-sparkling rock sitting in the passage a yard away.

"What was that for?" she snapped.

"A shield," I panted, as I swallowed to try to calm my stomach. "Where are we?"

"An old mine," she snapped. "Most of the gems're gone down to Equestria. Not all of 'em, though." She tapped some of the sparkles on the rock. "I don't think anypony's been here in years 'cept me and my friends; it's a really awesome place to hide out from the Warden."

"Or to hide other things," Flash added, settling down next to the edge of my horn's light.

I sank down against the rock, wishing I'd brought a book. I didn't even know where we were; there were probably a hundred paid-out tunnels near town. More than half the ponies of Mare-Equiis were gem miners; wagonload after wagonload was shipped down the spell-ladder every week.

"Hey, Twi?"

"Twilight." It was my name; ponies should care enough to use it.

"Hey, Twi, what do they use these gems for anyway?"

"Magical energy and focusing arrays. When the thaumic energy is excited by the crystalline structure -"

"Whatever. You think Lyra got away?"

Flash flicked his tail. He was half bent over near the far tunnel wall.

I shook my head. Shiny had joined the Royal Guard for a few of their training sessions (to the shock of Mother and almost all our Aunts and Uncles) before they'd given him a categorical rejection due to his place of birth; he'd told me how good they were. "No chance."

"So..." Flash walked back into the light, holding an empty saddlebag. "Rainbow, any idea what happened to all the carrots and beets that were here last week?"

Rainbow grinned and patted her belly.

"Rainbow, we need some food here, for times like tonight!"

"Hey! I found you this old mine in the first place! It's a great place for practicing tricks!"

"And for -" he glanced at me "- other purposes."

"Hey, she's in on the Revolution; she can hear about a little smuggling."

Flash stared at me. "Are you in this with us, Twilight? Still?"

I swallowed. In fact, Luna the spell-nexus made me a captain in the Revolution. "Yes."

"Well." He sank down next to me, and gestured for Rainbow to come down too. "So, let's walk the pasture..."

Walking the pasture brought up that we probably could safely hide here; Flash's smuggling group (he was still a little cagey about talking about them) had hidden tax-free goods here for weeks undisturbed. And we probably needed to hide, too; Rainbow begrudgingly admitted that the Guard probably had gotten a good look at her. (She glared at me when I said I'd been disguised all along.) On the other hoof, we didn't have any food, and we'd probably need to hide for several days before the guard stopped looking.

On the rear hooves, the best time to do anything was now, while the Guard were still busy with everypony who hadn't been able to blink out of the Bonbonnery.

"So," I said, "how about I use the disguise spell on all of us, and we head over for dinner with my family?"

There were generally four levels to the main town of Mare-Equiis, delved into the the lunar rock by pony miners over the last two hundred years, linked by numerous ramps both in public corridors and individual shops. (The various mining tunnels and most of the farms, of course, protruded from the margins of every level. The Warden's palace and spell nexus were also outside this system.) The Bonbonnery had been on the second level; our escape had brought us to the top level; my family lived on the bottom.

My disguise spell changed our coat colors; that and tossing around our manes a bit would probably help us to elude casual glances. Still, all my magic couldn’t change our cutie marks one bit. Fortunately, as we walked through the town (or flew, in Rainbow’s case), we only saw a few guards trotting as if they had orders to be somewhere else fast. I finally dismissed our disguise spell in front of my family’s door, with a sigh of relief.

Aunt Dimity quickly opened the door for us. Somehow, in the middle of the hours of decorating, she’d found the time to immaculately style her blue mane. “Twilight! You’re back - and oh, you brought friends!”

Rainbow shot a glare at me at that description, but she didn’t say anything.

“Did you meet them at the Warden’s mansion?”

“On the way back,” I said. We’d agreed to be as vague as possible about that part. “Aunt Dimity, these’re Rainbow Dash and Flash Sentry.”

“The fastest pegasus on the moon!”

“Nothing like that, I’m afraid, ma’am,” Flash said with a smile and a half-bow. “I’m sorry we’re here so close to dinner without warning -”

Aunt Dimity interrupted with a very broad smile. “Any friends of Twilight’s are always welcome to supper. Just come on in and wash your hooves; Twinkle has the stew almost ready…”

We were a fairly normal-sized herd, maybe a little on the small end, and our side-tunnel was also rather normal for Mare-Equiis. There were a few unusual things in the entrance hall, though - Rainbow grinned at some of the still-present scars from where I’d tried to practice my magic as a filly. I pursed my lips and beckoned them on into the main cavern.

A bright yellow pony dashed down upon us, her red-striped mane waving. “Twilight! You actually brought home a stallion!”

“Hello, Cousin Sunset.” I sighed.

“Hello!” She flashed a very broad grin at Flash. “So Twilight actually thinks you’re good enough for her!”

“Actually—” Flash began nervously.

“Congratulations!” Sunset grabbed Flash’s hoof and shook it vigorously. “I’m Twilight’s herd-cousin Sunset Shimmer; what’s your name?”

“Flash Sentry, and —” His eyes went wide as he glanced between Sunset and me.

“Ooh!” Her ears stood up for a moment in surprise. “I’ve heard of you! You’re with the Flash Drivers, right? You’ll be perfect for my little book-pony cousin!”

Rainbow flopped down right there on the hallway floor with laughter as loud as a whole galloping herd.

“Sunset —” I began.

She patted my mane. “What? I mean, Mother’s only been wondering aloud for eight years —”

“You mean Aunt Dimity’s been speculating about my entirely nonexistent romantic life ever since I went down to the Princess’s School!?”

“And since your mother’s still in working on her book, and Shining Armor’s still at work - at least, I mean, even Warden Blueblood has to let him off tomorrow for the day before Hearth’s Warming Eve — it’s my duty to show Flash around —”

Mercifully, Aunt Twinkle chose this moment to call out “Dinner!”

One benefit of a herd that I probably mentioned at least five dozen times at the Divine Princess’s School (herds being almost unheard-of in Equestria [and yes, my schoolmates did point out that pun almost every time]) is that you get a range of special talents. Mother was great at writing, but if she was the only mare in the family, we’d never be eating anything more than salad. Aunt Twinkle, on the other hand — Eventide Twinkle, but hardly anypony called her by her full name — had a cutie mark in cooking. Meanwhile, Uncle Meteor had a cutie mark of rock and picked up odd jobs mining, Aunt Dimity was a manedresser with her own storefront right next to our home, Uncle Nightlight and Uncle Dusk had cutie marks (different marks) in crafting and tinkering, and Aunt Starlight loved experiments. I’d gotten along very well with Aunt Starlight when I’d been a foal — even if my cutie mark would’ve given me a talent for magic by itself, my foalhood wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun and broadening if we hadn’t been a herd.

With a broad grin, Sunset patted a cushions right next to mine at the table. “Here, Flash — have the seat next to Twilight!”

“Sunset! That’s Shiny’s place!”

“Oh, I’m sure the Warden’s got paperwork. Remember, he insisted on keeping Shiny late last year, and the year before that…”

“And the Summer Sun Celebration, too.” Aunt Starlight smoothly sat down and only then took a clear look at Flash and Rainbow, both still standing self-consciously next to me. “Please, please, both of you, take a seat anywhere.”

Flash pointedly took the cushion on the other side of Shiny’s, but then Rainbow slid in between us. “So what’s that you were saying about Shiny and the Warden?” she asked.

“Shining Armor’s one of the Warden’s clerks,” Sunset said.

Flash raised his ears at this and shot me a glance.

“And the Warden keeps him shamefully late on the most trivial work,” Aunt Starlight added. “It’s a real shame he couldn’t get into the Guard —”

“Which is where he wanted to be all along,” I interrupted.

Rainbow was looking at Aunt Starlight appraisingly, but then Uncle Nightlight and Aunt Dimity walked in, ushering Aunt Twinkle’s two foals, Minty and Satin, between them. A moment later, Aunt Eventide brought in a pot of steaming stew, and there was no more attention to spare for political hinting.

Whatever sort of business Flash Sentry and Cousin Sunset had been hinting at, he apparently also worked on his aunts’ farm growing oats and hay. Rainbow Dash was much more eager to talk about her life, though. She was supposedly the fastest flyer and the fastest cloud-worker in Mare-Equiis; her doubtlessly-embellished tales quickly had the foals’ mouths hanging open and Sunset listening eagerly beneath a facade of disinterest.

The other topic of conversation was Mother’s new book. Daring Do was trying to save her beloved-through-ten-books Greystoke from the clutches of an evil jungle sorcerer loosely based on the legendary King Sombra, and more closely based on my own supplies of magical information. She was almost at the climax, and was glad to relate some of the ratcheting-up tension. To Rainbow’s irritation, though, she stuck to her standard policy of not giving away a single spoiler. “Wait till the second draft’s done, Rainbow,” I reassured her.

Shining Armor finally came home about halfway through dinner. He raised his ears in surprise at my bringing friends home, but he joined in the conversation without remarking on it any further.

After talking about revolution and running from the Royal Guard, a normal dinner seemed ever so relaxing and peaceful to me. I could finally walk the pasture for myself. Instantly, dozens of suppressed questions wafted up in my head: Who was Luna? What had really happened who-knows-how-long-ago when the Divine Princess bound her here? How did the binding-spells work? I had weeks and weeks of studying to do - except that my own pitiful library was horribly insufficient. Not even the library at the Divine Princess’s School would be sufficient, probably — and that was a horrible thought: how much had the Divine Princess been able to censor?

Well, there was one source she hadn’t censored: Luna herself. And there was one thing I could do now: get a telescope and plot out the stars, like Luna had asked me. As soon as everypony was finished, I excused myself to the library. It might be impolite to run off when I’d brought friends home for dinner, but I had a mission.

I might as well not have worried about the impoliteness. Rainbow and Flash both followed me.

"All right," Rainbow snapped as soon as we were in the library. "What's up with this?"

"With what?"

"With Shining Armor! And you!" She stalked toward me with her wings flared. "You trot into our revolution, you say right out that you're looking for a telescope for some mysterious reason — I'll give you all that, but now it comes out that your brother's actually working for the Warden! What's up with that?"

I backed up against three shelves of elementary spellbooks (kept for Cousin Minty, and for lack of any better books to replace them) to get away from the threatening pegasus. "He's just a junior clerk —"

"So what? Do you know what he's doing there?"

"Y-yes —"

"So you do know! You're in this with him!"

“Wait!” Flash held up a wing. “Is this room safe?”

“Safe?” I glanced from shelf to shelf. “Even dark summoning spells are safe in themselves, unless you use them —”

“I mean, will anypony burst in on us?”

I shook my head. Even the foals knew not to bother me when I was studying in there, so we could (probably) talk revolution, or whatever, in peace.

“Good.” He nodded. “Now - Thank you very much, Miss Twilight, for helping us escape the Guards’ search, and for the good dinner. Would you mind talking about where we go from here? First, are you interested in remaining part of our revolutionary movement?”

I raised my ears in surprise. “Do you still have a movement? I thought the guards had arrested everypony!”

“Yeah.” Rainbow flitted up flank-high in the air. “But I’m sure there’re a few who made awesome escapes. Like us. Not that I should tell you that, since your brother’s one of the Warden’s henchponies —”

“He’s not a henchpony!”

“Then what’s he doing? Throwing ponies in prison? Holding out his hoof for taxes? Just sucking up to the Warden for the fun of it?”

“Shiny’s a good pony!” I yelled. “It’s the only way he can -”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” my brother’s voice interjected from behind me.

“Shiny!”

I rushed over to give him a hug, but Rainbow dove in between us. “All right!” she challenged. “I hear you’re working for the Warden. Why?”

Shiny scanned our faces, confused. “That seems a strange subject to bring up so soon? Unless Cousin Sunset’s teasing is actually right and the three of you really are forming a herd together -”

Rainbow’s face fell into utter disgust.

Shiny flashed a glance at me; whatever he saw in my face apparently satisfied him. “Then what are you doing here? Twily?”

“Looking up telescope spells, or at least trying to.” I looked back yearningly at the shelves. It’d probably take three hours for me to search out the charms… then if I could somehow convince Uncle Nightlight to stay up all night, or else beg off the decorating tomorrow… And I’d need to somehow deal with Rainbow and Flash too.

“And where did you meet her?” Shiny asked.

“Around town,” Flash said quickly. “We were talking about the Warden, and, well… I’m surprised you’re actually working for him regularly.” He glanced at Shiny’s flank. “Does it have something to do with your cutie mark?”

Shiny pointed at the purple shield on his flank as he nodded. “It’s not the best job, and Blueblood’s nothing like the Divine Princess… but this’s how I can do my part.”

“Some part!” Rainbow snorted.

“Not my favorite part either. Mostly I just shovel papers.” There was an awkward silence. "Twily, were you anywhere near the Bonbonnery? There was some fighting there; I saw the reports."

Yes. I opened my mouth - I couldn't lie to Shiny - but Flash beat me to it. "No, we were up in the top level."

"Oh." Shiny looked at me; I glanced away at a shelf of old legends and scuffed my hooves against the floor. "Twi," he said, "I can't help protect you if I don't know what you're doing."

Rainbow bristled her feathers. "Then maybe you shouldn't -"

"It's my special talent." He pointed at his cutie mark again. "Twi, you really weren't there?"

I mutely shook my head.

"Good. I just want you to stay safe; Warden Blueblood's really upset. And - I love you."

My chest felt like it was about to burst as he walked out. For the first time I could remember, I'd lied to Shiny. Was there any other way?

Author's Note

Yes, that Cousin Sunset. And that Aunt Starlight, too. (And if anyone's paying attention to Cousin Minty...) Again, any and all comments are appreciated!