The artemis... A massive spacecraft designed to save the population of equestria from a cold death by our dead sun.

After an incident with a spell, the sun began to rapidly die... So several massive spacecraft were built to save as many as we could.

Twelve were made... Each resembling gigantic cylinders, within resided something akin to a city.

I lived aboard the artemis, habitat 9... The craft ruled over by the daughter of princess Luna, Sefkhet.

We enjoyed a pretty well rounded and fair society similar to what equestria may have been all those centuries ago, albeit with some tweaks to make it work better in our society.

I lived in an apartment in one of the lower levels of the city.

I didn't have a job... At least not yet... The colony was built such that it was viable to live without income... Mainly because the bare essentials needed to survive were piped around the ship so it could be freely accessed by anyone aboard.

The population of our ship was composed of Ponies, griffons, and zebras, in roughly equal quantities, as such interbreeding was very common, with a larger and larger population of half and partial breeds cropping up each year,

Personally I was a pony griffon hybrid... Mostly pony, but with some distinctly griffon attributes... Mainly my wings, legs, and diet.

I had a mostly pony phisique, but my body was more sized like a griffoness, and a big one at that... My wings were that of a griffon, as were my legs, taking the shape of talons rather than hooves, and my hind legs lacked hooves, and instead posessed padded paws where they would be... Much to my benefit, this allowed me to be almost impossibly quiet despite my large frame. The fact that my talons and wings were very owl-like (at leat as far as i could find in the books) only helped this fact, especially my wings... I couldn't fly terribly fast, but i could do it very quietly, and letting my coat grow long only helped it more.

My diet and eating habits were Very much griffon in nature...even though I had teeth they were more like that of a pony, and i had to eat meat as part of my diet to sustain myself and my teeth weren't the greatest for doing that, so i was pretty much forced to forcibly tear chunks from my food and swallow them because chewing it wasn't really worth the effort... I actually preferred eating this way... And since I wasn't that fond of hay or grass, that just made my life all the more bearable when I did have to eat it. I had other oddities that i had to get used to but with time they fit in with my life just as well.

I woke up sometime early afternoon and clambered from my bunk.

I walked passed some things my ancestors passed down to me, all arranged on an old metal shelving unit.

I went to the sink, brushed my teeth, grabbed some food from the dispenser on the wall and prepared for the day.

Even though I didn't have any sort of official job, I made money to buy the nonessential things by foalsitting... Usually for my neighbors, Shining star and Moon Ray, watching over their colt Meteor.

I picked up my Magic manipulator cuff and strapped it onto my right foreleg just above my claw... It was pretty basic in terms of functionality, but for heavy lifting or just convinience of the range of simple spells it could use really helped out in my day to day life. I couldn't afford one of the fancy high end, and high power head mounted units... But my bracer worked just fine for me.

I activated its computer function and looked at my appointments today.

As I expected it was meteor's place again, today was Saturday after all, and his parents usually liked to go out for the day.

I put on my trusty old bags and left.

I walked my way over to their place three doors down. And rung the doorbell.

"Its Tauria

"Come in Tau, it's unlocked!"

I pressed the button next to the door and it slid smoothly open with a soft whirring noise.

I walked into the room, Meteor was sitting on the couch playing with a toy spaceship, probably pretending to be like the tv shows he loved.

We shared a love for that kind of thing... Heck I usually brought along an old remote control spaceship i repaired a few years back after finding it in a bargain bin in an antique shop.

As soon as he looked over he jumped up and ran over to greet me.

"Auntie Tau!"

"hows it going buddy?"

"Amazing! We got to see a movie yesterday! It was so cool!"

"Thats nice... So, what d'ya want to do today?"

"didja bring that spaceship?"

"Not today... I have to replace some parts on it, but I could give you a ride around downtown again?"

"YEAH! Can I call up my friend so we can go play fighter pilots again? PLEEEEEASE!"

"Sure, lemme put my stuff down first while you do that."

I watched him excitedly run off into another room while I took off my bags and set them down in the kitchen.

His parents came up to me.

"So same as usual then?" his mom asked

"yup, same rate as always"

"Great, We should be back by tonight."

"Seeya later then"

They both left and Meteor ran back in with a huge smile on his face.

"She said Yes! They'll be there in ten minutes!"

"Get your gear then, Ill get the harness ready"

"Okay!"

I pulled a homemade harness out of my bag and strapped it on... Its main purpose was to keep him from falling off of me, i made it from some old synthetic straps from an old tram. I tested it with far more weight than it would ever need to carry and it held fine, so it had no problem supporting the foal's weight.

He came out with a toy astronaut helmet a little toy laser gun and his own safety harness.

"ya ready?"

"Yes!"

"Okay Hop on!" I knelt down and let him get on, I heard a solid click as he latched his harness to mine via a tough lifeline about 2/3 of a meter long.

I stood up and walked out the door.

Once we were outside on the 'ground level' I spread my wings and gave a powerful flap to get myself airborne, I climbed up until I got to maybe a hundred meters.

I leveled out and let myself silently glide towards the park we always went to... Aka the only park with any reasonable airspace above it.

The ship was built as a giant cylinder built to handle thousands of inhabitants, the dimensions of the inside were mind numbing... 20 kilometers in diameter and 54 in length, with the true outer size of the ship being unknown...lost to time over the several thousand year voyage. The view was stunning. At the ends of the cylinder sat two massive spires approximately 12 kilometers long with six smaller spires half its length and a third the diameter surrounding it.

Sitting between the two spires was the artificial sun a long cylindrical magic reactor that provides power to the ships interals as well as light and heat to the living secton. Flying over the skyline was breathtaking... Seeing the skylines, farms and the massive cylindrical sea between the two halves... More like a channel really. And the sight of cities almost painted on the inside walls of the massive area was breathtaking.

I found the park and slowly decended to the ground where I saw Meteor's friend and her mother.

I glided in and landed in the blue-green grass nearly silent.

The daughter was named snowflake, a unicorn , and the mother named Snowstorm, a Pegasus.

"Hows it going snowy? Ready to get beat again?

" Im thinking that Im gonna break that three time winning streak you've got going."

"You're on"

The game was essentially laser tag... The guns did all of the thinking, it would fire a harmless magic pulse, if it hit the pony wearing the corresponding band then it would count a hit and the band would vibrate while illuminating the hit on the body of the one hit, and it was such a fun game we would get together almost every weekend to play it, even if we didn't have the young ones with us.

We decided that the 'aircraft would be able to take a dozen hits before we had to land back at the park and wait for at least 30 seconds before taking off again, and the 'pilots' would be able to take three before being 'knocked out'

I strapped on my band and meteor did the same, snowflake and Snowstorm donned their gear and we all turned everything on.

"3...2...1...go!" Snowstorm yelled before leaping into the sky and shooting off above."

i spread my frankly pretty huge wings and took off. I was a very strong flier, speed just wasn't my strongest suit because of the drag I produced, but given enough time to accelerate I became more like a flying freight train.

Snow squared took on a very fighter like fignting style... Fast, maneuverable and usually pointing the gun forward, meteor and I adopted a strategy more like a gunship... Slower and less maneuverable, but meteor would be able to swivel all around to aim while I focussed on not getting hit.

Once we were both about a kilometer up the fight really began.

I looked around to see where the others were... I heard meteor start shooting, the plastic gun made audible 'Pew' sounds every time it fired a brightly colored bolt of magic, i heard a few bursts and looked above me.

Team snow was diving at us, shooting a barrage of bright blue bolts while meteor returned fire with a stream of orange.

I dodged left and watched as Snow looped back up for another run.

We danced and swerved around each other, colorful beams of light flashing around like fireworks until one of us was hit... We landed and ascended again, we kept at it for a a solid two hours before we decided to call it quits and go home... The "Sun" began to fade to its night cycle...

We landed and began some idle chat while we all packed up.

"Good game!" i said.

"that was probably one of the best yet... Nice job..."

"Thanks...not too shabby yourself."

"You ever think about becoming a mother? You're great with the foals you sit, so why not take it a step farther?"

"Eh... Not really my top priority... I like taking care of them every so often, but I could never do it full time...just not my cup of tea I suppose... That And I really dont want to deal with being pregnant... Heck... I dont even know whether I lay eggs or give live birth..."

"Well...to each their own, anyway, Ive got to get going, seeya round!"

"Seeya"

After meteor's parents returned home, I headed home, shoved some food in my face and watched the sky core fade to only a soft glow while a holographic image of the stars outside was projected across the sky around it.

I fell asleep a while later after playing some video games and watching TV for a couple hours.

Author's Note

First new story in what feels like eons,

I was inspired by Rendezvous with Rama and the story H'ven Sent.