The lost soul

A cradle was made to keep me safe and I constantly was with Princess Celestia even in her most important moments. I always slept next to her, it was like a mother constantly watching her children at work. At day she fed me and change me diapers and by afternoon I was in her reunions or even at some meeting with her guards and finally at night, before putting me to sleep and after another diaper change, she read me a story about the history of Equestria. It was like that for many moons, until something happened.

One night her sister, Princess Luna, returned from space... I think... she said something about dominating the world by making the night last forever or similar things. She initially was precarious in the castle, finding her way out in it. In one instance she found me and she freaked out. She ran into Celestia to warn her. I can remember the conversation even to this day.

“What is that thing doing in our home sister?”

“That’s a human Luna, and-”

“I need no explanations sister, I know what he is. But don’t you remember?”

“He’s an orphan Luna, he doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

“Sister... we know how these creatures are.”

Luna approached to the nearest window and narrated.

“70,000 years ago humans were insignificant animals. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. Their impact on the world was very small, less than that of jellyfish, woodpeckers or bumblebees. We often look for the difference between us and them on the individual level. We want to believe that there is something special about the human body or human brain that makes each individual human vastly superior to a dog, or a pig, or a chimpanzee. But the fact is that one-on-one, humans are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees. If you place me, a human and a chimpanzee together on a lone island to see who survives better, I would definitely place my bets on me and the chimp. The real difference between us and other animals is on the collective level. Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. But cooperation is not always nice, of course. All the terrible things humans have been doing throughout history are also the product of mass cooperation. Prisons, slaughterhouses and concentration camps are also systems of mass cooperation. They are the only animals that murder their fellows for fun, which ultimately costed them their position. So much destruction, so much death... just to proof to the rest you’re better at an insignificant task?”

She turned around to her. “And now, when I finally come back from my punishment, you’re raising an offspring?”

“...I know how you feel Luna... but this little kid has no home, no parents, no place to go. What was I supposed to do?” She paused. “And when he grows up, he can help us in our diplomatic relationships with humans. Please sister, you need to understand.”

Silence was present, they just stay there looking at each other for a while.

“Fine. He can stay.”

“Thanks Luna, I promise he’ll be an excellent and prodigious member of the royal family-”

“I said he can stay, not that he’ll be my nephew or something similar.”

She left, Celestia knew she had to make her best effort to make this experiment work.