Lundance AU w/ Cupid!NMM and Psyche!Cadance [T/E?]
Author's Note
Basically what it says on the tin. I started an AU story in the style of a creation myth that didn't really go anywhere. It had the four princesses as all one species/type of being (not how I usually write them) where they are primal sorts of gods instead of the usual kind that I write. The magic isn't as complex, and a lot of familiar characters I write aren't present. Mostly Sombra.
After writing two chapters (what's here) it just... flickered out. The way the plot was going for this story of what was going to be about... twelve or less chapters was going to be very much like the legend of Cupid and Psyche, as the title says, with Twilight and Celestia as the side characters.
Every time I try to write actual Lundance shipping it dies... darnit.
Lundance AU w/ Cupid!NMM and Psyche!Cadance [T/E?]
The first creatures to walk the world of Equus were the sun goddess and the moon goddess, first of four goddesses. They had wings, horn, strength beyond any that would walk after them, and heart. Nature itself stirred their incubation, siphoning power from the moon, stars, and sun to create the first sisters.
Celestia was the eldest of all the goddesses, and her coat was as white as the snow that blanketed a barren world. Century by century, she attempted to inch the distant sun close enough to warm their vast and lonesome home. Because she was not born as most life was, she stepped into being elegantly and fully grown, the seeds of loneliness already starting to grow in her, for the planet she lived upon was nothing but snow, stone, and sky, with an empty ocean of dark churning waters.
The dark was what helped shape Celestia's younger sister, Luna. She was mad slowly, stirred from stardust and shadow and snuck into being as a small blue maiden, a surprise to the already ancient Celestia, who had faint notions of creating other life in her head.
Where Celestia was sill and serene, Luna was curious and keen of mind. It was she who held godly wisdom with the growing wonder of a child as she beheld a world with chilly eyes, as blue as the daytime sky that Celestia was slowly crafting, and a color unlike any the two mares had seen: green.
Celestia was a mare like the world's glaciers, slow and patient. She pulled the sun closer with groaning-slow inches.
Luna was a mare of the closest thing to adventure in this new world of Equus, and she loathed passive waiting. She rolled a ball of snow and stone bigger and bigger while her sister waited, continents away, and the grown mare was surprised when the young filly tossed such a thing into the sky, knocking Celestia's sun far, far closer to the world than she could have dragged it at her pace.
Luna called it the moon, and the sun's flames seared it and marked it with spots. It glowed ivory to the sun's gold, and was Luna's own creation. Compared to Celestia's gradual magic and constant caution, Luna felt no border between life and magic.
Their world grew warm, and wind wore away stone. Thus sand and rivers spilled into their world, and Celestia rotated the sun, still thinking about life other than them.
Luna ran wild where she pleased, the wilds of the world following her and being visited by her presence. Trees, kelp, vines, moss, and the diversity of plant life followed. On bad days, she hammered canyons into the world, and at her highest moods, ran jovially about, leaping into flight and carving the mountains with her movement, magic, and thunder of her voice.
Her heart was happy, and she overflowed with love for their world.
Slowly, and in the scorching southern deserts, Celestia fashioned the first life of Equus other than herself and Luna, now marked with their 'toys' upon their hindquarters: the sharp crescent, stars, and shadows of Luna's night, and the soft rays of Celestia's sun.
Celestia was slow to act, mulling over and sculpting part after part in tedious attempts to create a whole, and when she wove each together in her attempt, she poured a generous amount of magic into her creature, knowing that magic was vital to all life, and that nothing was without it.
She beheld her creature, who spoke his own name, and he was Discord.
Calmly, Celestia explained to him his purpose: to bring about order in the world and to wrangle Luna and help her calm down, if she was to be a proper goddess, she would need to create life, and Celestia had an idea for how to make more.
Luna simply needed to be ready.
The excited and eager to please creation allowed himself to get lost in the world as he agreed to do Celestia's biding. Luna was a mare of shadows out ruling light, but light all the same, and she came and went as the light of her moon, drawing darkness when she needed to live.
She knew she was being tracked, and wished to retain her freedom. If her sister wanted her, then her sister would need to get her and finally see the world and do more than count the shifting grains of the sands.
North, south, east, and west, Luna evaded the creature, allowing the world to be overturned in the process by Discord as he chased her. Noise only pervaded so much of the world, in the whipping of winds, the grinding of the earth, and the cascades of water. To distract and confuse Discord as she was chased, Luna tossed out little chunks of haphazard, icky life into the world as she went, scattering the eggs and larvae of insects as she once scattered seeds of plants.
Their racket was horrid! Now the creature of Discord had to turn over even the smallest stones as he was chasing shadows in an attempt to find the unruly goddess. And, oh, how proud she was, with the chorus of new sounds, and plenty of distraction for Discord, the proud mare could sing in peace, all the songs of the world coming from her throat.
While Celestia waited in the south, for the first time in eons, her eyes grew heavy as she shepherded the sun across all she knew of her world now: the great sand dunes.
Unwilling to give up her duty, she batted away this pesky malady that seemed to be creeping on her with the world's first yawn, and thus it was lost to the winds. The mare who would never no sleep continued her task.
Sleep sailed the breezes, hoping to plague another, and stumbled upon a strolling goddess among a flock of moths. She knew no home but the world she lived, and came and went forevermore. She defended herself with skill and ran from whatever she saw fit to run from.
And then sleep grasped her, and with a curious yawn her steps began to grow sluggish. Within mere hours, she was snoring on the rock face of a mountain.
With the invention of sleep, Luna could not run in the world she knew, instead, sleep showed Luna the underside of the world, a void with few lone visions swirling about in it.
She grabbed onto one, and saw her sister as she tirelessly steered the sun, not knowing Luna had her spirit pushed to the ends of the earth, dreaming the world's first dreams.
Curious to learn more, Luna latched onto another vision, holding it carefully, and what else should she see but the creature Discord scooping up her comatose form?
She was shocked, her own freedom to be violated so? And what for, so Celestia could simply talk to her?
Celestia knew she would be angry too, didn't she?
Out of spite, Luna plucked a few more visions, and was struck with sights of things yet to be. A purple creature that called itself a drake and the shadows of two thing purple and pink, veiled by the fog of sleeps' edge.
Luna viewed the images of things yet to be that littered the vast expanse of her new, dark world while Discord snaked his way across the chaotic world on the long, long, long road back to where Celestia waited.
All the while, Luna saw each glimmer of something called a village that was small and sad looking. She looked upon it and brainstormed the improved idea of a city instead. She witnessed a single cloud in the uncluttered sky, and spent her time pondering the invention of weather instead.
When she arrived, dropped onto the sand before Celestia, the maiden-not-quite-a-mare faced her sister with a new face, a dark one, and a maw of teeth unlike any Celestia had seen upon her sister.
Luna was crowned with a dark coat, a great height, and all the shadows of the dream-void that had grown bound to her, for she knew the idea of queen and Celestia knew so little in comparison to her now. She knew the terror and beauty of some ideas; she knew dreams and imagination. She was Nightmare Moon.
Celestia greeted her with caution and a smile, and told Nightmare Moon about her idea for mares and presented Nightmare Moon with the small sandstone images of the first statues.
Nightmare looked at the soft images, and how docile they looked, how colorless. Discord stood on quietly watching Nightmare Moon mock the wingless, hornless, and spineless female things that Celestia had created in such pinkish sandstone.
Now, Celestia watched with a frown. She asked Nightmare Moon what could possibly be wrong with her creation, that she had spent so many centuries on. They would be good followers, and worshipful, humble, and plain.
Nightmare Moon laughed and pulled a small statue away from Celestia. She sculpted her differently, her stone becoming a vivider pink, her face and eyes brighter. She gave the mare strength and carefully poured a few songs of the earth into her and the feeling of grass underhoof. Carefully, she gave her more magic, and pulled stardust from the depths of space and fashioned it into something that Celestia had forgotten to give any living creation that she showed Nightmare Moon, but Luna and Celestia both had: a soul.
Celestia watched as true light sparked in such a creation, and got the idea to stick the image of grass upon her flank and the notion of farming in her head, but the black hoof of the Nightmare slapped hers away.
Squeaking, Celestia's given mark fell away, lost to the world, but the notion stayed.
"Whatever was that for?"
Nightmare Moon summoned up a sack of infinite possibility, shrouded in the dust of space and the infinite mystery of darkness and she withdrew only twenty marks, some unknown to Celestia, and tossed them about the world for the pony.
"Now really," Celestia said, "what was that for? I was about to give this mare an unshakable destiny, and then you do not even allow her to have infinite possibility, but only twenty one? If you are not giving out absolute, rigid order or the utmost chaos, what is it that you see to bestow our poor creation that you see fit to call a gift?"
Nightmare Moon looked coldly at Celestia. "Free will," she said scornfully, before giving the little mare her last spark and watching as she galloped off into the world.
Wanting to see what was being done by Nightmare Moon, Celestia watched as she remade another. She gave her a different face, made her shorter, and plucked a few of Celestia's feathers, sticking them on the back of the mare. The same mare, she called pegasus and gave thirty possible marks, altered bones, different magic, and then allowed her to live.
Celestia and Discord quietly scooped up the spare bits of feathers and made an array of creatures just as equal to the pegasus that Nightmare Moon had made: avians.
Celestia sculpted them carefully, and even put a bit of fire in one species, and Discord gave them variation Celestia wasn't all that fond of. Nightmare Moon, however, gave them souls and magic.
Nightmare Moon sculpted another mare, one with a short horn chipped from one of Discord's, and sharp eyes. She too, was gifted with magic both in her and around her, a soul, and a limited amount of cutie marks before she was brought to life and allowed to go live and talk to the other two mares.
Out of boredom, Celestia and Discord shaped dogs, fish, serpents and other creatures out of bits and bobs, scraps and more. Nightmare Moon, however, made sure that each was given a soul and that none got to live without a bit of magic.
Then, they both watched as the fourth mare was made. She had the brightest eyes of them all, a stomach that craved less food, hooves that could work and sprout crystals, and a hard glossy coat that would protect her from almost all cold, that made her look crystalline.
From an old cut, Nightmare Moon poured just a bit of ichor into her heart, so that she would hold a strange gift that might prove as infectious as sleep. She would sense her kin's plight closely.
Soul and magic, she was allowed to live.
Seeing the boredom of Celestia and Discord, Nightmare Moon showed them something new: bluish stone that she had sculpted differently, with a squarer jaw, and differences from the mares, for like Discord it was male. He too, got marks, magic, and a soul. This particular creation was a stallion, Nightmare Moon explained, and she watched as the crystal stallion trotted over the mare.
"That," Nightmare Moon said, "makes them ponies."
Celestia and Luna worked to sculpt more ponies to give the creatures a population. Most were sculpted out of blue and pink sandstone, that was magic-touched as it needed to be, but there were quite a few that had blue bodies and pink heads, or pink bodies and blue heads. Others had purple, gray, and a few other varieties heads.
This seemed to effect their souls, and only became obvious in what the ponies said, did, or felt. Discord changed each one so that they could have curly, straight, and other kinds of manes and different appearances.
He wasn't able to make his own creations, but he aided Celestia and Nightmare Moon, the goddesses, in sculpting creatures like minotaurs, dragons, and goats.
With their creatures created, Celestia and Nightmare Moon stood eye to eye again while Discord shooed away the creatures that had gathered to go off into their lives.
Celestia was unsettled by the transformation of Luna into Nightmare Moon, and the grotesque grin that the tall creature gave her, because this was not her sister. Her little sister was exactly that - little, a young maiden.
Now, she stood before a distrustful creature, a sister reborn in a world she had no knowledge of, and never would.
The mare who did not sleep tried to look calmly at the mare who ruled it.
"I would like Luna back, Nightmare Moon. Your hold over my sister is not eternal, and I think that this could be resolved peacefully if you were to forfeit her as your puppet."
It was all she had. She cared for her sister, and things like war, civilization, and weapons had not been invented yet. If they were to be, Celestia had no knowledge of them.
Nightmare Moon's cold sneer did not change. "Stay in the south, Celestia."
While Celestia's expression was one of hurt for the first time since her creation, behind Nightmare Moon's cold front were thoughts of the drake she had seen in the world of dreams, and how dragons had been created.
The future would hold two new goddesses, and Nightmare Moon would use this knowledge how she pleased. She knew of all the things Celestia didn't, and would further have access to an entire would. Two sisters, and two more sisters could spell all sorts of problems.
"But, Luna-"
A raised forehoof silenced Celestia's pleading quickly. "You wished to abate your loneliness, did you not? Now look, you have ponies all around you. I shall take half of them, the strong earth ponies, for they are the closest to me in spirit, and the resliliant crystal ponies north with me. They shall enjoy the perk of longer nights, too. Should we meet again, it will not be on good terms, sister."
Swallowing, Celestia kicked a hoof in the sand, her ears lying flat against her skull and rose eyes woeful. "...As you wish, sister," she whispered.
So the herds were parted, and the pegasai and unicorn herds remained in the warm, sunny southern plains and deserts with Celestia, and Nightmare Moon took the crystal ponies and earth ponies to the northern mountains, forests, and tundra.
Discord, seeking to divide the mares as different from one another as the day and night and comply with the request of Celestia to aid in protecting her ponies, circled the globe, slithering around it like a serpent.
Basking in the longer days of the desert, Celestia would look over her peaceful ponies and know one thing: of all the things that had made this way into this world, she hadn't counted on betrayal.
...
The second sisters of the four goddesses sprung not from the primal cosmos, but from the heart of the North and South. As though the world had learned from the solitary creations of the sisters before, who sprung into the world with knowledge clinging like mist in their minds both ancient and new, the next two goddesses entered the world with less of an inkling of it, and they were divided as the two hemispheres.
To the south was the younger goddess. The scorching sands and rolling plains were warmed by the sun and the caring nature of Empress Celestia, a soft-spoken and modest goddess who watched as her ponies shaped towns and villages. She saw the shining waves of grain in the country side of her agrarian nation with each tour she went on, and from behind the curtains of her palanquin, she could glimpse the shadows of great cloud structures looming above the fields of her nation.
Since their creation, pegasai had always had the closest connection to Celestia. They lived in great cloud communes that were often shaped by whatever way the wind blew, having little talent for real construction as the unicorns did. Fraternity was a value above all to them, and their social nature drove many to steroype them as the most talkative of ponies.
Market vendors, public speakers, weather ponies, town criers, mailponies, shop keepers, and most common trades in the average town of the Sol Nation ended up being managed by pegasai.
It was pegasai who had to do a fair deal of the nation's farming too, with the northern territory that wasn't plains of grasslands being canyons that were unable to be farmed. Pegasai were notably poor farmers too, having to have thousands of acres with average crops to make up for their less than green hooves. Unicorn assistance was always in high demand, which led to most of the nation's known magical skill being on botonay, and weather and earth based magics.
The unicorns that managed more conventional towns and canyon monasteries devoted to Celestial activities and worship had crafted numerous manuscripts on flowers, herbs, and proper farming technique - as far as unicorns could manage - to help the pegasai.
And of course, she saw other faces among her subjects through those gauzy curtains - only the capital city, Humility, truly saw Celestia's exuberant social nature in full - like the other races that had long been integrated into her empire after the Discordian colonies fell. Minotaurs, buffalo, breezie, and zebra had all united under the standard of the First Phoenix, Philomena, and lived happily. Potion-making, an art form of the zebra, flourished in the nation, for it needed it sorely.
Empress Celestia of Sol met the fourth and last goddess of the world when she witnessed something unbelievable, even to her eternal, kohl-rimmed eyes.
It began with Philomena stirring on her wither, and how Celestia's usual soft songs did nothing to ease the bird's reactions. Even after centuries, the phoenix still disliked being bought on tours in Celestia's palanquin with gilded tatzlwurms coiling around the pillars.
She had discovered, that in her life, only she would last. The creations of ponies and creatures and plants from eons ago all withered before her, but she had never been unaccepting of that, because it was her who let them go.
To look upon a pony shriveled up over centuries, who knows not their own name, who can do nothing, and is on the verge of utter mortality was the first horror she had known.
So, Celestia had invented death. Celestia, great goddess of the Sun was goddess of the Purge of death too, and thus she knew herself to be the goddess of Purity.
It was in that moment, her magic that she used for little beyond shepherding the sun flicking the gauzy curtain so idly, with Philomena squawking non-stop in her ear about how great and terrible the whole ordeal was that the goddess of purity thought a little, if she might be able to comprehend death, if such a headache was within her being, then could she not personally fathom death?
It was a question that would go unanswered; the call of a dragon, a pained roar found her aching ears instead.
The dragons were a species ponies feared, and they did not mix with one another. Even when life other than Celestia, Discord, and the sister she had not seen since her betrayal at Mortal Creation, the dragons and ponies had never mingled.
To hear a dragon was to hear murder. Murder was not like the death that Celestia had brought. Murder was the bite of a beast that sucked all the undeniable frailty from the inferior mortals she never stopped caring for. Without murder, accidents, disaster, and a host of other things, the mortal husks of ponies withered endlessly, and that is why Celestia, the White Mare brought death upon the world.
With all the speed a mare of her size could muster, Celestia flew out of that palanquin without haste, the veil attached to her crown flying away in the wind, and revealing her worried eyes.
The last squawk of Philomena and the gasps from the palanquin-bearers upon seeing their usually docile empress behave so impulsively were all she heard, wind and determination overwhelming her.
Celestia found the source of the roar with ease, the worried beat of her heart quickening at what she saw when she landed, perched on a rock above it all, sunlight casting down upon her.
A quarry eel was coiled tightly around the purple egg of a dragon, no doubt having slithered up from the canyon Celestia passed not long before. Its teeth were embedded into the leg of a grown dragon. By the shape of its shining violet spines, Celestia could tell that this dragon was female, and must be the mother. This particular dragon had no wings from which she could use to fly away from her attacker.
It was terrible to witness the blood of the young dragoness mother being spilled so distant from where Celestia stood above them, and to see a meat-eating creature sink its teeth into another like that was so barbaric from the usual sights found in Celestia's empire of peace.
What amazed Celestia was not the bellow of the purple dragonness, but the second, dragon, the one that could fly swooped down from above. Gravel was disturbed and flung everywhere as the blue drake reared up, and breathed a torrent of fire into the sky.
Since their creation, dragons were creatures that gathered for two puposes: to fight one another and mate. They held no hatred for one another, but had no fancy either. No other bond existed between the dragons beyond those two.
But to see them work together, the way that the drake and dragoness pried away the fangs eel was a camaraderie that Celestia had never witnessed before, a strange courage that she felt no need to intervene in.
The teeth were not the only part of the eel, and it shifted its cools and slithered about, rearranging itself in ways that the furious dragoness and drake could not anticipate.
Like a spring, it wound itself... and Celestia's eyes widened when she saw where it was to pounce...
...and it threw itself at the wounded dragoness, her leg crippled from the ghastly bite...
...the dragoness hit the ground, the quarry eel's maw wrapped around her throat, teeth red.
And the egg?
That thought was enough to pull Celestia and the feral drake out of their trance, goddess and dragon caught sight of the precious purple orb rolling away from the site of battle and to a ledge, nearing the ravine from whence the eel came.
Celestia took off like a firework, golden light radiating from her, and the dragon was close behind her, but it was clear one thing was on their mind: to save the unborn, now orphaned dragon inside.
Hooves and claws touched the ground together, determination strong on Celestia's usually soft face, and her horn lit as she began to race forward, hoping to snag the egg in the telekinises she used everyday, skidding to a stop and feeling her heart stop... along with the quick steps of the drake beside her... when the egg teetered on the edge, mere paces away from the white mare, who closed her eyes, worried, and reached out with both her magic and hooves, leaping forward without any attempt at dignity to scoop the unhatched baby into her waiting forelegs.
Instead, she felt the soft fur of a stranger. Opening her eyes yielded only purple fuzz, so Celestia pulled away, sat up, and brushed herself off before getting a good look at the strange.
Encircled by a pulsing magenta glow, Celestia stared down at the tiny mare with eyes to match the strange light she radiated, and a mane that waved much less dramatically compared to Celestia's, its purple, pink, and sparkly hue so flashy in comparison to Celestia's soft pastel.
Her lavendar coat was not covered in dust, and almost blended in with the spotted egg she hugged lovingly in her forehooves.
The little mare smiled up at Celestia through her bangs, and spread her wings - the feathers blended into the Twilight sky behind her, at the cliff's edge. Her horn was prominent compared to a unicorn, but lesser compared to Celestia's.
Celestia looked carefully at her. "Hello, Twilight," she said calmly. "I am Celestia, the Eldest. It has been so long since I have seen another of my kind, and I extend my companionship to you, goddess and Sister."
There was a small spark in Twilight's eyes at that, and she smiled happily. "Hello, Celestia! My name is Twilight Sparkle, and it looks like I have a lot to learn, for I am the Youngest of the Four, and I know so little. What I do know is that to learn more about the world and the Friendship that I defend, I am ready to be your Student!"
Celestia laughed her first laugh, because though she was kind and good, she was not as merry as she wished. Patience, indecision, and eerie tranquility ran through her, along with the constant small thought that something might be missing, and she had never known her own laugh, or that it sounded like bells.
This too, made Twilight smile.
"Of course, Twilight Sparkle, you can be my most Faithful Student and-"
Celestia, ever likely to take something slow, was going to say 'friend'.
Instead, quick Twilight scooted forward eagerly, the spark on her flank now clear to Celestia, and cheerfully blurted out: "Consort!"
Celestia gaped at her, and thought how unusual this mare was, and how speedy little Twilight Sparkle, whose eyes sparkled like a unicorn's aura and whole body just glowed with energy, was going to stir the sleepy slow sands of the South.
Of course Celestia was hoping for that, eventually, there was something so likable about this little mare, with fuzzy dimples and a perky smile. But she had wanted to take things slow, because of course she would. She was Celestia the Pure.
She also knew that 'Fourth' was something she needed to fear, because for Celestia to be the goddess of Purity, its paladin, and the Eldest, and Luna to be the goddess of Wiles and What-Celestia-Knows-Not, and the Second-Shadow, and for Twilight Sparkle to be the goddess of Friendship and Unity, the Youngest, that meant that there was a Third that the young one had sensed, and a Third was something Celestia did not know and her love Twilight's eyes were innocent of.
For while Celestia had two Sisters, she had only one sister.
...
The Third came much earlier than Twilight Sparkle, and the Third goddess was Mi Amore Cadenza of the land unknown to the goddess of the Sun and all its Light, because that light shed only upon the South.
The North was everything the South was not. Its ruler was Nightmare Moon, who knew to be both Queen, mighty and regal, and God, with her ancient Helm that she has known from dreams. She was a goddess of Wiles whose heart was as dark as the long nights. With the first scythe she had cut the sky apart so that the color of dreams bled through and rippled across the sky and land, from it, ghosts of memory and peculiar hauntings of the psyche walked among the crystal and earth ponies she ruled with distance and powers. Mysticism and superstition made true hung heavily in the many citadels of her nation.
The earth ponies were strong, and shaped the stone and mountain into cities as proud as their ruler, with halls carved deep into the throats of mountains and mines running through the veins of the Nightmare's proud creations from liftetimes ago, when she was something they knew nothing of, and their pickaxes and the stomps of their hooves were a harsh song.
They were better farmers than any of the ponies in the south, and even if they found themselves looking at a plot without much land, their harvests were bountiful. They did not work the land, they had always worked with it.
Earth ponies were the closest to Luna, and felt some nature with their goddess. She was the mare of the night, the mare of Wiles and of War. She was stubborn, and so were they. Their goddess, the Nightmare had more fighting spirit than all their tribes united. They united rarely, completely satisfied with their relative individuality, but if needed, they would unite eagerly under their queen.
Earth ponies and crystal ponies wore their marks with pride. Names, professions, clans, and cities were given in that order as a badge of honor, bearing themselves before their kin.
Crystal ponies were artisans that created unrivaled artifacts of the arcane and great cities across the tundra. While they had no gift of strength and will as the earth ponies did, they herded ewes and and tended to their lush cities. If an earth pony entered a mead hall to have a drink and spend their coin betting on a fight, it was a crystal pony whose singing filled the hall up to its rafters.
There was no grand capital among cities of timber, stone, and crystal for ponies to flock to. Instead, their queen lived away from the her subjects, only walking among them bedecked in her armor when she was doing her duty.
For Nightmare Moon, whose frosty social style was contrasted with mystery and privacy of solitude and extreme isolation when she was away from her ponies, she dwelled within a structure only she could acess and warp to her whim.
Past wild snow and windigo-stirred winds was the fortress of the Nightmare, crafted from storm clouds that loomed above the ill-maintained skies. The walls crackled with lightning and it was said that the hoofsteps of their queen formed every thunderclap that rang throughout the queendom.
With ponies left to their own craft in the north side of Discord's coils, and bards plentiful, legends arose about a peculiar madness that effected their dark queen, leaving her soul as impure as fleeting firelight and waning as the moon.
Could anypony say for sure? No, they could not. Clans were bound in camaraderie; houses with blood, sisters and brothers were united by oaths, but the Nightmare Queen was a goddess unbound by near all mortal concern. Throughout her entire reign, no great companion had walked her thundercloud halls, even if earth and crystal ponies could. She had none who held any fathoming of what lay beyond her mysterious demeanor.
Her fortress in the sky drifted across the vast stretches of her realm, and there the Nightmare would sit, brooding among the stars and mulling over the predictions and prophecies she had learnt in her world of dreams and visions since her sister's betrayal.
Often, Nightmare's toxic form, tall and harsh and that of a true warmistress, had rarely wavered, and it simply never did around ponies. When her shadowy guise was pulled away, the shadows still clung to the form of a dark blue maid with a mane like the clearest, starriest nights and sharp eyes of unusual hue that pondered every puzzle piece her dreams of destiny and otherworldly ventures had gifted her.
She knew what mortals would not know, whether she stood as forgotten Luna or the wicked Queen Nightmare Moon.
She knew, no matter the phase of her moon, when her mind waned with her, that the Third of the goddesses would be a Sister but not a sister, though of the latter she would have one of her own.
She lacked any knowledge of what this goddess would be like beyond the images of snowflakes dancing across the mountain winds that chilled a city built by her crystal ponies, with distant fires flickering merrily within the colorful dwellings.
That was what the mare who slept in storm clouds knew. The Third of Four would have something to do with the first of the crystal ponies' cities, the one that was built in the shape of a snow flake, yet held no center, and founded by the proud Crystalline house of Snjórinn.
Nightmare Moon did not feel the same kinship with the crystal ponies as she did with the earth ponies she knew were truly hers, for they were her first children, in the same way the pegasai should have grown to be Celestia's own, and the unicorns would grow to belong to the Fourth or Third... and the crystal ponies, too. She had a strong suspicion of how all might play out if only two goddesses were to remain unborn.
Nightmare Moon, who watched the world from above, harnessed her magic and prepared for the move, shifting her stormy domain so that it cast its shadow over the city of her dreams.
And then she waited.
...
When Nightmare Moon was Luna, and the world was newer, knowing only Celestia, her, and Discord every mountain and fissure had been a product of Luna's journeys. She pulled stone up from the ground, she hammered it with her hooves. The world was reformed because of her.
She had sung as she did so, too. When she was young and innocent, when she was Luna, she had looked up at the stars that were like snowflakes stuck up, up, up in the sky and the way they twinkled in her young eyes had inspired her and her songs.
With her voice so great and loud, she had sung up at that dark sky, before the world knew betrayal and Discord, who still quaked with all the discontent that mortals knew every now and again.
That singing had struck the sky, and one of those bright and far away stars had fallen down, down, down it had fallen, and that star was buried deep in the stone of a new mountain. As time went on, and the First Betrayal led to the founding of the North and South herds. Nightmare Moon knew not what the extent of her sister's herd had become beyond what dream-glimpses offered.
But she knew that star had fallen, and she had seen it. The whole star had long since become wrapped up in rock and dragged into what had grown into the Crystal Mountains, encircling the First City of the crystal ponies.
One of those mountains, blurred by snowstorms, the hints of memory tainted by her 'new' magic, and the shadow of her great fortress.
Night after night, she stalked the dreams of the city's inhabitants in search of any sign of the Third. Dream after dream held only memories of love and light. The ghosts of smiling family and friends taunted her from where she peered at the smiling dreamer. Oh, how she tried to concentrate on the visions of the future and how the dream realm tempted her with knowledge, but instead she was forced to look upon happy, smiling ponies!
And so, the Nightmare would indulge a little, washing and swatting away images of home and hearth with fearful apparition of her own creation before scattering such pleasant thoughts into the thick fog of dreams with beats of her mighty wings. Each good thing and feeling she would strike from the dream world itself and into the waking one.
Now parted from their dreamers and tangible, the dreams and memories of light and love fell to the world in the form of crystalline teardrops, hitting the snowy ground of the city and surrounding mountains with a series of whisper-soft plinks before dissolving like snow.
Through snow and stone, the magic in these happy memories were drawn to the enchantment of the buried star, and let the powerful magic of the lonely and forsaken thing absorb all of the cheer and love inside, polishing the star and restoring it to its former beauty.
Filled with all that was bright once again, the star hummed and sang happily where it was, buried deep beneath the earth and knots of mountain. In the morning, when the ponies of the First City awoke with foggy recollections of terrible dreams - something they had never known - and the star-song vibrating under their very hooves.
Urged by the whispers of happiness and love that felt so familiar, and yet so new, the subjects of Nightmare Moon, who loomed above them still, began to labor in the crystal mines with great speeds and eagerness, unknowingly in search of a song as they all banded together, drawn by magic.
Day and night, in shifts and in excess, they would toil in the mines, striking into stone to dig out a song they could just barely hear.
And above them all, the Nightmare stalked her stormy halls, gloating and brooding alike, her emotions torn. The arrival of the Third goddess would not be long. She need only wait. Still, her thoughts strayed to images of the past and when she first caught the dream world impressions of purple and pink, two mares yet to be. Which of those mares would she be facing? Which of their new eyes would she stare into? What is it they would hold away from her and claim in this world?
All the Nightmare could do was wait.
One day, she needn't wait any longer. The pickaxe of a crystal pony had struck the stone just right, and cleaved open the crevice of the world that cradled a singing star. Free from its pocket, song and light overwhelmed the weary workers, and they brought their labor-dulled hooves to their eyes so that they might not be struck blind, for what they took to be a sign of Nightmare Moon's divinity laid within, did it not?
The merry, flute-like, and high whistles that were heavenly and straining to the ear grew louder as the bluish-white light grew brighter. They did not squint; they did not blink. The crystal ponies gathered around their once-dim fissure would have believed the sun itself was standing before them by the way the light touched their thick coats. But, no matter what, they kept their eyes shut tight.
They did not hear her hoofsteps at first, but that was not a loss, for they were few. A bell-like whinny rang out, and everypony heard that, awe-struck to their stardust-spirit. In their bones, they knew that this mare - her voice was that of a mare's, her call feminine - was just as much a goddess as their queen.
She leapt out of the earth in a burst of light, her coat a bright pink and her eyes new and pure. Soft, rippling curls of color like the stripes of color not unlike the lights of leaking dreams the Nightmare Queen had ripped into the starry sky. They fell long and glossy, hanging as freely as she smiled at the small ponies before her.
Upon her flank was the shining symbol of the star that was part of her, and gold twining around it. Gracefully, she extended her forelegs in a bow, her wings folded carefully as she greeted every pony gathered around her.
"Hello to all of you, my lovely ponies. I am not sure why you gasp and point, for my heart is telling me that I am not the only mare like this you have seen. Would you all be so kind to take me to the mare you know?"
Nervously, all the crystal ponies looked down toward the glittering star-mare before them. A few shook their heads woefully, and one stepped forward to say what the other mortals found their tongues too knotted to speak. "We cannot, Dear Mare, take you anywhere at all. The other like you, she is dark and fearsome, and loved through awe. Our queen is a strange and distant mare, the great Nightmare Moon, who lives in the great big cloud in the sky, and we have no wings, Dear Mare. There are none in this land with wings save you and her, O Nameless Goddess."
The pink mare of stars and an innocent, ancient heart rose as they bowed, a joyous smile upon her face carrying all the innocence that would be expected of a child and all the beauty of any young maiden. "That is fine, my lovely ponies!" she said with a bright laugh, "I am sure that your kind queen shall not mind me visiting her, and it is such great news that I can test out my wings! Oh, this will be so fun! Maybe your queen even knows my name!"
Before any of the gathered ponies could answer her, the Third had already taken off, her fresh wings flapping as she soared through the mines, and her laughter ringing through the mountains.
Song of Myself [T] [Original Version] [Archive]
Author's Note
TSong of Myself
Luna is many things: a goddess, princess, and wife. What happens when she has a secret that threatens to unravel every one of those things?
Ice Star ·
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This is the original version of the story on my main account. I am keeping it here for storage and archival purposes. Duh.
Song of Myself [T] [Original Version] [Archive]
Luna had never believed in breezie tales. There were many reasons for this. Among them, from the moment her extended, divine foalhood had started to pale, she had been told in a thousand different ways that she was not the sister who was meant to have a happy eternity. So Luna had endured being the feared and forlorn goddess whose art was left to languish, and her along with it.
That was a catalyst of madness, for what was her art but a reflection of herself? How could she turn to anything else in a backward age that imposed medieval mortal social confines upon the divine? She spent ages perfecting a craft that was dear enough to be her irreplicable talent and honing her equally unique dream-craft, in an effort to have the dual dance of escapism and the one thing she loved.
Her art had lost itself before she had lost her mind. Celestia had always known all the constellations that Luna had invented. Luna had only been telling their sagas to her sister since she could first make a story. When the only thing Luna had in her heart was despair and envy that she was unloved as her sister was lauded, Luna let her stories reflect the tragedy on her mind.
In all that time when Luna could only offer calls for help, Celestia never asked her why Orion was slain by Scorpio or why Orpheus was longing for his love. Instead, her elder sister asked Luna why the star-creatures were always male.
The second reason was one that revolved around a matter of encouragement. Breezie tales told primitive ponies not that dragons existed, for they already knew that. They existed to also say that dragons could be beaten, as the old adage goes. Legends nurtured embers of hope, and she had always needed something to hope for.
Luna had always preferred experiments with magic over the company of others. Meditation was an activity she held dear to her heart, and adventure had much meditation in itself. Thus, she loved all that she could do alone. Her art was the sole exception, for though she crafted it alone, it was her lifeline.
Unfortunately, Luna cast her lifeline into a world where her only friend had ever been her sister and expected it not to be trampled. When she cast it within herself, she hadn’t expected to pull back the thought of a dragon who could not be beaten.
This was the dragon whose hoard was all of the worst of Luna. It was only fitting that when she thought of what could be the most wrong, most vile thing about her life, Female in all its cruelness reared its ugly head. None could see Female the way Luna could. To everypony else, it had been invisible just how harsh the torment of the Female monster was.
Nopony else saw how Luna did not find it normal to be addressed with such a curse, she was numb to it for reasons no book or being could find a name to. Who could see the fangs around Luna’s throat every time she heard her own voice? How was it that Luna wished the Female beast would cast its wings over her so that she might be shadowed from her own looks?
Why could she not have that mercy? What was it about the words she mumbled out that made Celestia send her to a physician that only half-paid attention to her? She pleaded over and over with the parade of ponies her sister assigned to ‘treat’ her that she needed no tonics to get her humors balanced and that she did not hate her body so drastically that she was convinced she was the size of a whale or some other malady.
All Luna had ever wanted was to rip away the curses that mares had. She wanted to watch herself wither away to ashes if only it meant that she could be pieced together again with all the things that hurt her less… a broad jaw to bring about recognition when she looked in the mirror… a voice that let her recognize her own words… a body that conveyed anything but the weak desire to crumple, except when it had too much Female lies to show her… and a mind that did everything but drown in all the worst parts of itself, whispering with all the terrible things Luna should do and all the ways she would never be able to shed her skin.
Eventually, the doctors prescribed a new round of herbs and concoctions. They informed her that she possessed melancholy and dysmorphia of the body. Her prognosis was simple: take all her medications, confront her aversion to femininity, and get rid of all her unhealthy babblings about why being female is supposedly awful to curb her self-loathing.
Celestia was quick to tell Luna about how she was delighted all baby sister had to do was take her medicine, and that there was little reason for good ol’ Tia to have invested in so much worry in the first place.
Luna was at the point where she was ready to beg Celestia to worry about her every waking moment, if only it meant that Celestia would not let her do something rash and really, truly pay attention to her. These were the same experts that Celestia had sent Luna to when Celestia felt there was a cause to be worried over Luna’s lack of lovers.
Luna had told them she felt no physical stirrings for stallions and was promptly diagnosed with lesbianism. When she informed them she felt no such irrational cravings for mares either, the diagnosis was revised to lesbianism with frigidity as a result of internalized homophobia. At that time, Luna was advised to take different medicines and that her homosexuality was nothing to be ashamed of.
All Luna was told was that her problems were not at the magnitude she reported, and further visits to doctors were only done out of hopelessness. They provided the only real social contact she had, and yet, because they were her subjects they still feared her on some level.
She knew she was waning.
She told anypony she could, even when Celestia urged her not to be too dramatic.
Five years later, there was nothing Luna could say.
Not from the moon.
I stared at Sound Mind tiredly, awaiting his answer. Doctor Sound Mind quietly adjusted his glasses and patted his salt and pepper mane. To the average mortal, his gesture might be mistaken for one befitting their conception of a pretentious scholar. With his fondness for somber hues and sulking overcoats in equally austere colors, he fit easily into such a foalish presumption. If ponies only knew that he dedicated his talents to the most experimental of deeds: being the first and only mortal to truly attempt to therapize the divine. Would ponies enact such poor judgment upon him if they knew that?
My appointments were draining for both of us. The chance to talk about anything I endured was not novel, but the idea that anypony truly listened to me was. My words were not heeded except by my dear husband, those I ruled, and the friends I had in Shining Armor, Cadance, and Sound Mind himself.
“Your Majesty, when you tell me things like this, what makes you continue to think that my suggestion is incorrect?”
I looked to his wall, wishing the landscape paintings hanging there held more vividness to them. He always called me by my title or my name, though I preferred the latter, even if it had always been slightly off. Never pronouns, thank my stars. Tia told me that she always had the curators of her health address her with the same professionalism she required of all other subjects. Such stiff formality never sat well with me, nor was I a ‘Just Twilight Sparkle, Please’ type like a certain demigod I shan’t name.
“I’m unsure if I understand the full meaning behind what the condition is. Just how certain can you be?”
“Luna, since I have begun to know you, I have been able to match you to every diagnostic criterion for gender dysphoria. Despite your asexuality, you have still admitted that all aspects of female anatomy have repulsed you deeply, creating a fractured perception of yourself.”
“Aye…” I mumble, and the softness in my voice wounds me. “That is so, yet, what possibility is there that I might be troubled by another ailment? How can this be my true disorder when I have spent my eternity being told that all else under the heavens is what plagues me?”
When every mortal has tried to name the beast in my head, and how she gnaws at me, who is that speaks truly?
There is another sigh from Sound Mind, though this is not one of annoyance. I hear no trace of it in his breath. “You have been told for ages that you are nothing more than a defective mare?”
“Aye,” I murmur, “and everything else that comes from this nation so drenched uppitiness over the mere idea a creature is female. How it mourns the mere thought of a tomcolt, or any perceived loss of femininity! I shan’t cease to let everypony know what a busybody Equestrian culture is about gynocentrism until my sister’s sun burns out and we have found other stars to call home.”
I am watched as I wave my hooves for dramatic effect. How else is the maddening impact of this all to be made known? Even the dawn of Equestria, it was breathed down one’s neck if their femininity was decidedly ‘broken’ as mine was. A stallion in touch with the supposedly fairer sex was both brave and normal. Any semblance of masculinizing is nowhere near as condemned, though its disapproval is still as strong as a corset’s obvious awfulness.
“In every instance of you giving wickedness a ponification, I have noticed you describe them as female.” His eyes find my throat, so lacking and slender. “And never have you had a female friend, Princess Cadance excepted. Do you realize how many of our sessions have been devoted to me having to coach you on how to understand female social differences?”
“Are you suggesting that there is anything in nature quite as incomprehensible and fickle as the female?” I make sure he follows my eyes to his desk, where there is a framed photograph. In it, Sound Mind stands by his little daughter. The half where his ex-wife now stands has been calmly trimmed away.
A small cough leaves Sound Mind. “Point taken, Your Highness. But I think the time for foal steps has lessened, don’t you?”
“I… I do not know…” My breathing has grown thinner and smaller, and more than ever I wish my voice would fade. At least the Divine Voice of high gods gave me the power to sound truer to the ghost of me in my head. “What does this ‘gender dysphoria’ even mean?”
Sound Mind watches my hooves fly about again, soaring about his office where diplomas shine with quiet proudness upon the walls. I love my regalia and how it sparkles, not because there is any shred of femininity to it, but because I chose it myself. There is a decisiveness to the clear form and darker colors that warms my heart, for I find that elegance has no gender.
“What do you think it means?”
“‘Tis clearly a modern ailment,” I offer, guessing with a shrug. My ears flick and I draw back into the wideness of the comfortable chair I am perching in. “For I never heard of it in the days before.”
“That is true. Nopony knew what gender dysphoria was before your absence.”
“Is dysphoria not merely another word for discomfort?” I ask, my wings itching for flight, though not out of any impatience. “Surely the discomfort with gender is normal? Who would want to be drowned in the world of mares when the surface lies above?”
I spy a twinkle in Sound Mind’s eyes, just behind his glasses. How curious.
“In a game of ‘hot and cold’ that answer would be a very ‘warm’ one, Luna. Gender dysphoria is a condition with a strong neurological origin. All sapient creatures can be impacted by it. We call ponies with this condition ‘transgender’ because their gender and sex are misaligned, leading to a stressful mental disconnect.”
As soon as those words leave his mouth, I feel something trying to crawl up my tightening throat. My mind is the haze of somepony nearing the earliest stages of crying, and I cannot place exactly why. Falling to the chair’s edge, I let my gaze find where I have folded my forehooves. There is such weight upon my withers, and I cannot tell if it has been here since I walked in, or if it just settled over me.
“Trans… gender…” The word comes out low and my tone is confused. “Why are they called such? Do their genders change?”
“Not at all, Your Highness. Altering a sapient creature’s brain over such a peculiarity would be a heinous crime and bring them no peace. Instead, the creatures with this condition modify their sex and presentation.”
I said nothing for some time, letting my mind turn itself in and out of my storm of thoughts. I am not blind that Sound Mind does appear to be framing a conclusion he wants only for me to name. He has told me on previous appointments that what makes me both easier than any mortal client and equally impossible to handle. As I let my tail wind around my hooves I am left with the thoughts of all that has been as good as make-believe to me.
There have always been non-mammalian creatures in this world who have parallel behavior to this puzzling condition. Not once have I heard of any experiencing distress for their biodiversity, and this gender dysphoria still manages to sound so alien from what Sound Mind describes.
“Does this gender dysphoria mean I really am a defective mare?”
“Yes,” he begins, “if you are willing to see stallions as that.”
I can immediately feel my brow furrow. “I beg your pardon? What is the explanation for your confusing answer? Is it not I who am supposed to be the one with words both clever and mysterious?”
Laughter is a rare response from Sound Mind, but I am able to elicit the truest depths of mirth from ponies in ways Tia never has. Not all are giggle-snorting and ever-beaming Pinkie Pies as my sister would think. Sound Mind is very much like that; I get little scoffs from him and another glimpse of shining behind those glasses of his.
“I have long had a hunch that you are a transgender stallion, Your Highness. Thousands of years to let something like that fester… I can only imagine you’re incredibly confused or completely certain that you would desire to begin your transition.” He coughs briefly into his forehoof. “That is something I would like to discuss with you for future appointments.”
“...How does this ‘transition’ you speak of even work?”
The chestnut aura of Sound Mind toys with his cufflinks. “For those who are certain they are transgender, the first steps are always to get confirmation from somepony like myself, and then a referral for medical treatment. The vast majority of transgender ponies—”
I clear my throat briefly, and firmly. Instantly after I do so, Sound Mind looks over all my Alicorn-ness, my visible divinity. His eyes widen with the understanding of his error.
“—transgender creatures seek adjustment counseling alongside hormone replacement therapy. There are some spells and sexual reassignment arcane procedures that are also sought out…”
“So am I to understand that this ‘transgender’ would mean I am a stallion who risks being entombed in the body of a mare? And just what is this arcane reassignment you speak of?”
Sound Mind made a subtle, odd wince right after nodding. “I cannot speak much there, but this is not easy magic like changing mane colors. This is very intensive, piece-by-piece, and not wholly perfect realms of the arcane. But we can talk about the, ahem, lower surgeries if you ever wish for them.”
“Lower?” I echo, cocking my head to the side, utterly confused. My dark mane hangs like a waterfall, flowing just right to match my inquisitiveness.
Sound Mind stares at me, unblinking. His expression is hard to puzzle out.
“Are all that genders a pony not lower?”
“Luna,” Sound Mind says, using the same tone Sombra used when I could not pick up on something. “That may be true, but I speak of a specific lower region I know that you would not find much use in, so to speak.”
“...Tail extensions?” I guess. “I’m quite fond of having longer hair, though I suppose I could always seek to re-style to something more appropriately masculine and less androgynous…”
“Genital-altering surgery, Your Highness. You don’t strike me as somepony who would find much use in phalloplasty based on our conversations.”
“Oh!” I gasp, bringing a forehoof close to my muzzle. “My apologies, I merely forget that is something ponies think about.”
“That is fine, I should know to be more on the muzzle with that by now. Unfortunately, the ability to construct something like phalloplasty with even the best arcane-infused operations is still very primitive…”
“I…” My words start as a faltering whisper. “Sound Mind, how am I to take all this?”
That damned twinkle has returned to his gray eyes, and the mischief there is now so clear to me. “You seemed to take to it very well just now, wouldn’t you say?”
“My stars, it does appear that is so. How pleased you must feel, doctor, having duped a high Alicorn.” I twiddle my forehooves, letting them twirl and fidget around one another as I give a small chuckle.
“Oh, maybe just a bit.” Sound Mind’s tiny smile showed sparkling white teeth. “Though… don’t you think it is worthing discussing? How well you did right there? The last time you took so easily to something was talking through pre-proposal jitters and preparations for your Ponyville Nightmare Night visit.”
My reply was to duck behind my forelock and pull my mane in front of my face, hugging it tightly.
“Phppthmpppff,” I protested, my half-raspberry, half-meaningless sound being unleashed into my mane.
Past the thick world of blue and sparkling hair, I had plunged myself into, I could hear Sound Mind chuckling.
“Hppphpppfttplp!” I insisted, all the more loudly.
“Is there anything you wanted to close this session with, Your Highness?”
Using my turquoise aura, I pulled my mane away just enough to expose my eyes. “...Just how shall I tell Sombra… that I… I might be transgender?”
Having all of dream magic under my hoof, and my hoof alone has gifted me with a second life. My dreams have always been completely lucid and utterly wondrous, for who else but the god in charge of dreams would have the best ones? In them, I am able to preview the various worlds lushly crafted by my own mind. Those I return to have a multitude of stories to share, and the new worlds within that I find myself entering always have endless possibilities in the new stories I could make.
Tonight, I found myself free from investigating the dreams of others. All around me was a familiar scene made fantastical, for my mind could stand none of the notions of ordinary life. Not when there was magic to be found in everything. Thus, the pillars of Canterlot Castle’s ballroom were trimmed with vines and floral garlands of vibrant hues too ethereal to be any plants found in the waking world. Punch was served from a crystalline fountain, with troughs of sparkling cider that truly lived up to its name as it flowed like a river, winding under small, picturesque bridges.
Even the clothes were transformed by the will of my mind. The faux wing trend I remembered being in style at the time of this particular Grand Galloping Gala was done away with. Instead, the sweeping gowns of mares were replaced with finely tailored suits, all in gay hues and with true, iridescent wings at their sides. The sound of all the flittering wove in wonderfully with the orchestra – which was playing something much more lively and intriguing than the plain ensembles Tia would hire.
I took in the gorgeous fantasy my mind had crafted for me. In every corner of my dream was a sight to get lost in, unlike actual Grand Galloping Galas, where I truly wanted to be lost and unnoticed. I remember the Gala of this day being a horrible cacophony of chatter and the prison of a new gown that Tia had ordered for me.
Knowing that the best part of my dream was yet to come, I wandered through the crowd of ponies. Here, their chatter was kept to bearable background noise, blending in with the babble of the cider-brook. A giddy, freeing feeling was building in my chest. Not once have I ever had a joyous experience at the Grand Galloping Gala, and I know that Tia was always disappointed to never have me around at these beloved parties of her.
Could anypony blame me? They truly were the same old song and dance. At least back before my banishment, the carriages of the brave noble-ponies would have to travel with armed escort along the only road through the treacherous Everfree Forest. In that age, I was able to don my armor and travel alongside our subjects, aiding in their defense. Now, I have been so used to hiding the truth that I can no longer imagine actually putting my hoof down to Tia and her gifts of a million-billion gowns and other frilly garments. I know it would break her heart, and she has never stopped reminding me that my refusal of her tokens of sisterhood would crush her.
It is not that I do not wish to be her sibling, for she is gracious and good to be. I just wish she were not a mare with such busybody tendencies and that I was not her… sister.
I took a deep breath, momentarily letting the lightheartedness of my dream’s atmosphere relax me again.
I suppose I know now why that feeling has weighed upon me.
The thought is not as unwelcome as I felt it would be. After a few heartbeats, I know it has passed, and I push out a calming exhale.
Here, I was not burdened by any unseemingly female garb. Instead, I could hold my head high in the sleek military tailcoat, its silver buttons twinkling like stars. Atop my head was a somewhat bolder crown, made all the more masculine by the angular shape.
I trotted up to a nearby ice sculpture, a calm smile on my face as ponies parted when I neared them. The pleasantly wide berth they gave me allowed me to be the only one to approach the dragon. My dream decided to ensure the sculpture was made all the more fun by animating the dragon; flakes of snow fell from its mouth with each foggy breath.
The sound that came from the icy creak of its joints was oddly inviting, and I approached it with delight. Peering into the polished scales, I caught sight of myself. In dreams, my features were always smoke and mirrors. Not once did I have to be bothered by the soft curve of my jaw or my eyelashes cursed to be so naturally long. I had been told how desireable my features were endlessly and had numerous reasons to detest such treatment. Now, I find myself content to see the blur of blues and know that it is me.
Any sight more detailed and I would feel that creeping wrongness snaring me again. Instead, I take pride in knowing that I blow the silliest raspberries the enchanting frosty hue of the ice. Unlike the actual Grand Galloping Gala this dream is distilled from, I do not have any cursed lace cape draped over my withers – another gift from Tia – and its absence of it was so freeing.
When I was done, I whirled around, only to see that all the ponies that had been dancing and celebrating before had vanished without a trace. I grinned, relishing in being able to do so in comfort at last! Could this dream get any better?
I flared my wings without a care in the world and let my mane take up as much space as I wished for it to flow. Tonight, I had no need to be made small and forgotten. Just as I saw myself in the ice dragon, the rest of my form was… hazy and uncertain. I would look down at myself and just see what I knew to be me. My body didn’t have to hurt me tonight, not when all was so splendid now that I was the only one in sight and the light of my stars fell throughout the ballroom. Without ponies, it was as free as I was.
I took to the air, following to where my heart and my memory of the waking dance beckoned me. When I spotted a topiary cut to look like Princess Cadance, I landed. There was such fun in letting my tailcoat flare out and fly with me. I wonder, if Tia would ever not insist on us matching in public, would they be just as fun in the waking realm? Sombra has a few, and he looks absolutely splendid in them – would he ever let me try one on if I asked? Or would he insist on knowing why I wished to borrow one?
Would that be worse than having to return it?
I averted my eyes as soon as I caught sight of the topiary’s face. Just like the one that had been on display that night, Cady’s jaw was too square in shape. I know now that if she had been visiting Canterlot with Sombra for that Grand Galloping Gala, she would have been mortified at the sight. As accidental as it may have been by the gardener Tia had hired, I was glad that Tia could not have seen that quiet envy bubbling up. She is poor at picking up on emotions – especially mine – but Cadance would have known right away the emotion I was suppressing if I had known about her what I know now. And over the physique carelessly displayed in ornamental shrubbery! The very physique that Cady did not need to be reminded she once had…
...but I, guiltily, would wonder if she had ever been handsome…
...and how I might have looked, had I been cut from the cloth she had been before she had looked into magic, hormones, and surgery before I had met her.
After my visit with Sound Mind, I knew I had to disclose my hunches about this modern discovery of gender dysphoria to somepony. Cadance keeps secrets that would fall too easily from the lips of other mares, and I thought she might have advice for me. What I had not expected was for her to confess the level of understanding she did on top of having the advice to share.
I hadn’t expected to be given such generous amounts of encouragement from somepony who understood me, though her experience was parallel to mine. Only Sombra had shown such an intimate understanding of what I relayed to him before. For Cadance to do so was shockingly anti-familial…
…At least with my experiences of ‘familial’.
‘Tis good to know that there is another princess who will understand me. Sombra’s words on this night make so much more sense now.
’The pink one knows what being an outsider is like.’
…
I tippy-hoof eagerly to where the werelight shines on the illuminated side of a white-and-lavender pillar of marble. The warmth of the light is enticing, and in my clumsy original experience of this dance, I had stumbled here because it was the best place for a wallflower to sprout. Let the sunflower command all the attention for the evening, and may everypony never look away from her if it means that for once they may never see me.
I had no pink carnation friend waiting in a corner for me – and on the first Gala since my return, this was the corner where Cadance had uprooted me. Even she had sensed that I found no fun in parties, and I spent the whole night showing her how star-crafting worked from the castle balconies instead.
Now, there was somepony else waiting in my corner, much to my surprise. I halted my movements as soon as I saw him, one hoof still raised in mid-step.
Stars, he looked splendid. His suit was dark and plain, and designed with only timeless elegance in mind. He wore no tie and bore no dreadfully extravagant ruffles that fit the dull caricature of the most vile vampyre – thank all my stars he had some taste. He had long, silky fetlocks that instilled the temptation in me to scoop up his hoof and hold it. The stallion bore a tailcoat so much finer than mine but still stood at an angle that I could see his cutie mark: a hefty, closed grimoire engulfed in magic and shadow.
The stallion looked up from his book, crimson eyes narrowing coldly. “I don’t look this good for free you know.”
Memory flooded my senses, and I went with the swirl of emotions growing in my chest. I let myself flow into my part just as easily as I had then. I remembered how I had focused on how his gray ears were oddly fluffy. Does banishing a stallion once and approving his chance for redemption later give me the permission to at least pat them? They did not look nearly as good upon his initial resurrection when I last saw him. With the anxiousness tickling me from my stomach outward, surely such a harmless gesture would be allowed?
“I-I know you,” I stammered, only slightly less awkward than I had been that night. How exactly did he wish for me to greet him?
“Is that so?” He was barely keeping those crimson eyes from falling back to his book. I could tell. “Then let’s hear it. What do you have to say about me?”
Had somepony been cruel to him during the night? Was that why he was standing to the side of all festivities or was he simply content to do so? I know that Cadance felt that assigning him to attend various social events was a way to boost his reputation. She was his reformer, and I trusted her, yet if somepony were bothering Sombra, how was that to help him adjust?
“Your mane looks lovely,” I said, at last, folding my wings at my side.
Sombra looked at his flowing black mane, which was barely pulled into a low ponytail. He frowned. “This? It takes less than five minutes to do. Is that really the best you have to offer?”
“No, no,” I murmured, impulsively reaching out a forehoof to pat his disheveled black bangs. “I meant this. I rather like it. Do you cut it yourself?”
Sombra recoils from me in the same way a cat does when something that brings displeasure is placed on their head. He frowns harder and lays his ears back, trying to growl and show off fangs he no longer has. All that came out was a pissy rumble and the red in his curved horn shone brighter, as though there was magic on his mind.
I was instantly saddened, withdrawing my hoof immediately. “You have my apologies, Sombra. I meant you no discomfort! You… well, regardless of what you may think of me, you do look rather sharp. All of this…” I gestured to his whole form, “...is much better than your previous garish affair.”
Sombra tucked a ribbon marker between the pages of his book, all without tearing his irritated gaze from me. “Forgive me if I wasn’t exactly in my right mind when coordinating my previous regalia.”
I looked down at my hooves. Though Sombra may be scarred by dark magic permanently, he was far from an ugly stallion. He was terribly lucky his cutie mark was not severed after over a thousand years of its poison. Most would have lost it – and their lives – after a much shorter time. But Sombra? He got away with scars – mental, physical, and magical – and the immortality he craved; the immortality of the gods like me that old stories of fire-stealers and prideful sorcerers seeded in his mind. That was something that nopony else could claim to have accomplished.
I at least knew that much about him when we met at that Gala. Really met.
“Sombra, I do mean what I said. Perhaps I ought to recant my previous statement – for I really do know so little about you.”
Sombra’s eyes narrowed further. His magic’s grip intensified on the book. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“I… I would like to get to know you. More than I want to know anypony else in this ballroom.”
Sombra’s expression slipped into something stony, save for how he raised one eyebrow. “Don’t you have ponies in this hall that would trample each other just to look at you?”
I looked around; my dream-self knew everypony was gone. Sombra was crafted from heart and memory. On this day, at this moment, the ballroom would still have been teeming with ponies.
“Of course; there are always such sycophants. They gab and prattle about everything I have no wish to do with. You, Sombra, want nothing to do with anypony. Is that not correct?”
“Very correct.” He glared at me the way a furnace would regard the most pathetic scraps of ore.
I had no smiles to offer him; all I could do was show him the sincerity and relief in my eyes and hope he understands. “Then you are my perfect company.”
Sombra rolled his eyes, every bit of him poised as the picture of cold pride. “Oh joy.”
“Sombra?” I asked quietly. With great care, I found a place to sit on the floor, on the side of the daemon that was not taken by the pillar he leaned so close to.
“What?” Sombra huffed. His upper hip curled haughtily. Bits of his thick winter coat poking out around his collar bristled with irritation in the most ridiculous fashion that even in my dream, I had to giggle at the sight.
“Could you at least tell me what your book is about?”
A curl of crimson magic tucked a stray strand of his long black mane behind his ear. Sombra regarded the cover boredly, tilting it toward me so that I could get a good look at it. As soon as I caught sight of the glittering foil helmet upon it, my eyes widened with delight.
“Oh! An Arcadian helmet! How splendid!” I peered closer at the title. Large, admirable letters were pressed into the hardcover, just above the lovely image. As I did so, I was very aware of Sombra wordlessly scrutinizing me. “With a title such as The Song of Roan Beauty and Charger I can only imagine that is a hero-tale. You had not struck me as the type to favor such a genre.”
“How presumptive of you,” Sombra droned, and I had to resist smiling when I caught him scoffing and rolling his eyes again.
“I think not – I simply adore surprises. Would you mind telling me what the book is about?”
For a moment, Sombra’s gaze strayed from his book – and certainly far away from me. I followed his movements, hoping to puzzle out why he was looking right at the marble pillar, as though it would vanish the longer he stared.
“Little Miss Sunshine and Pinkbows offered it as a recommendation. I figured that it was likely to be more bearable than having to feign tolerating for anypony here. The two heroes are a lesser Alicorn and his companion who are heading to war.”
When Sombra looked out of the corner of his eyes, I caught a moment of genuine surprise show on his face and the slight widening of his pupil when he saw my pleased, expectant look.
“What else happens? Is war their only struggle?”
“Hardly,” Sombra replied tersely. Giving a sigh, he decided to sit down beside me. I watched as he inched closer to the cold marble of the pillar when he felt he had seated himself too close to me – and yet, when I scooted closer to him, Sombra offered no reaction or resistance to the gesture.
“Go on,” I urged him, offering a small smile. “Wouldn’t you rather spin something as magical as a story instead of immersing yourself in the tempest of chatter just over yonder?”
While my hoof was outstretched, I scooted closer to him.
Sombra stared daggers at me.
I grinned at him.
In return, Sombra crossed his forehooves without breaking the intensity of his glare – if anything, he increased it.
“Please?” I asked, quiet and giving Sombra a generous view of my best pout. “I am as bored as you are. Surely we can have a truce to last the night?”
Sombra exhaled sharply, finally relenting to my pout. “Fine. Roan has to struggle with his nature and whether he’ll fail his Alicorn teacher, who has a prophecy against him. Charger has to protect their relationship.”
“Oh stars!” I gasped, bringing a forehoof up to contain my gasp. My mane flicked with surprise. “Was their friendship attacked by those they thought they could trust?”
I am unable to decipher the flat stare that Sombra gives me.
“Friendship,” he echoes flatly, raising an eyebrow.
“I… yes?” I look away, biting at the inside of my cheek. Had I said something embarrassing? This emotion was dimmed and distant in my dream, but never drained away. “Are they… not friends?”
“Oh no,” Sombra scoffed, voice dripping with sarcasm. “They’re the best of friends.”
I stared at my hooves, too frozen with embarrassment to even toy with my mane. Most of the time, I found that twirling with it and combing it could help me concentrate.
Silence passed between Sombra and I for some moments before he finally set the book off to the side. Feeling him prod at my wither pulled me from my small stupor, though I still recall just how scrawny I felt next to him. I always felt so scrawny next to stallions, though I was taller than any of them.
“Where is the master of magic that banished me? Tartarus, you don’t need to get so upset. Are you truly so naive that you couldn’t understand what I was saying?”
He calls me a master of magic, not by some prim and proper princess epithet? He does not even bother with speaking of me as goddess-this and goddess-that?
I certainly cannot recall the last time somepony spoke of me so.
“Is it going to be too much to ask for clarification?”
Sombra offered an indifferent frown, brushing some of his bangs aside. “In the saga, the two stallions are lovers. One is fairly typical – he’s strictly attracted to other stallions. The other is… less inclined to stick with only one option.”
I blink, both in understanding and to take in how Sombra shifts his focus to me and me alone as he hesitates with the last part. He does not make any move to stop me when I scoop up his book.
“I simply adore the sagas of legendary stallions, whether they find romance with the fair, noble gender or with mares. Or perhaps even none at all.” I shrug, passing it back to him. “Did you know that this modern age has such fun words for the deepest bond of male camaraderie? ‘Tis called the ‘bromance’ and it is such fun to say! Oh, were the world kinder to stallions I am sure such stories would be treasured all the more! Say, why did Cady suggest it?”
“She gives me various book recommendations to keep me from razing the Empire to nothing. As long as she continues to provide me with reading material that is within my range of interest, I will curb using her subjects for blood sacrifices.”
“How marvelous!”
“Junior Queen Candy Dance doesn’t have the worst grasp of literature either. The pink one knows what being an outsider is like. Now that I am more of one than ever, her suggestions have managed to incorporate that.” I spy a bitter streak in his words, one that runs too deep to ascertain the root of.
“Aye. Sister was very clear about how much Cady felt out of place when she first got her magic and moved to Canterlot.”
Hindsight is something that brings me much hope and amusement in my dreams. Such goodness staves off the dread that so often lurks in the waking world. While my dream-self is immersed in the flow of what had been, I wish I could chortle at all I know now. Sombra knew before I did what Cadance’s heart conceals.
Sombra’s neutral frown falters to something more earnest. “I wouldn’t mind starting the book all over again. At least, I wouldn’t mind too much.”
“Whyever would you do that?” I ask, tilting my head so far to the side that Sombra stares at me peculiarly.
“We should read it together,” he suggests.
The dream shifts, though not in a way that brings about tunnel vision. To use such a term is to cheapen the flow and emphasis that happens in such an art like the dreams I know. My dream weaves itself in a most spectacular end, shaping itself as a grand finale of how I would have felt when the memory first solidified. It all begins with the warmth and weight of my tremendous budding joy at his suggestion. I can feel the telltale mirth of the smile spreading across my face in the memory throughout my whole dreamscape.
All of it finishes grandly, making the small, crooked smile that Sombra gave me the center of the world. That night was the first of many such smiles, and our truce has not just persisted – together, we have crafted a world worth more than this dream and many others.
I would hate to be the one to destroy it all.
Stars, if I had approached Sombra in the outfit of my dreams, would he have talked to me at all that night?
...Would he even have thought I was handsome?
An affectionate prodding lured me from the lull of sleep, and that was how I knew that the world was ending. Sombra never woke up early. I was always the one up to enjoy the pre-dawn hours and stroking his mane. That was a sign of balance in the cosmos. To feel Sombra gently nudging me awake meant that it was he who was up and that every single one of us would be doomed. What reason did he have to wake?
I gave a few blinks, letting the first blurs of the world filter through. Lamplight greeted me, and all the dark shadows of the pre-dawn hours lurked around it. The haze quickly left my eyes and out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the long, silky gray feathers attached to his forehoof, the very one that was giving me a light shake into wakefulness.
My vision finally cleared, its colors easing into something constant. Sombra sensed how I tensed up right before I rolled over, and he shifted to accommodate me. My smile was immediate as I stared up into his crimson eyes peering tiredly down at me. I traced his warm, crooked smile with my eyes because I never wanted to wake up to anything else.
Seeing an opening, I lit my horn and my magic darted up to Sombra’s face. I combed through his jet black mane, toying with his bangs and giggling when he leaned down to nuzzle me with his delightful fuzzy face.
“Good morning, Sombra,” I managed between my giggles, placing a kiss on his cheek.
Sombra nuzzled back and nickered. “It will only be morning when you make way for it.”
My sweet husband felt like the only creature in the world who knew that sunrise could not happen without the movement of the moon preceding it.
“Mmm, perhaps,” I said, wrapping my forehooves around his neck and squeezing him in a hug. “What if I wished to keep the dawn away for just a while longer? Students everywhere shall thank me, shall they not?”
Sombra’s response was to have his eyes widen and paw at my forehooves, making a sputtering and gagging protest noise.
“Ah, stars!” I gasped, releasing him and rubbing his crest, ruffling his mane as I did so. “Forgive me, Som. Sometimes the awareness of my own strength still escapes me.”
He only lessens his grouchy glare when I give him a kiss. Although, Sombra being Sombra still decides to give my closest ear a soft nip afterward.
“Som!” I protest, and I catch the gleam of pride in his eyes and how he is just about to say something. I take this as the prime moment to pout and watch with budding mischief as any stubborn reply absolutely melts from him.
I watched as Sombra levitated my forehooves off of him, folding them over my chest and slipping his own over them. I couldn’t refrain from smiling at the gesture.
“What were you dreaming about?” Sombra asks, flicking one of his ears inquisitively.
I bite my lip, knowing that even though I do not lie to anypony, I could not ever succeed in misleading him… or desire to. The feeling I could now name as dysphoria was already crawling up my spine and pouring outward from me. Never before had that happened when Sombra and I were just enjoying one another’s company or when I had corrected my figure by piling layers of blankets over myself.
The next look Sombra gives me is a careful, analytic one. I knew immediately that he was trying to puzzle out what motivated my reaction. Sombra was a stallion who sought such insight into things, in the best of ways and even some that were more sinister. He was drawn to higher magics like dark magic in the first place because they were a solitary study, one filled with that which could sate that sharpening insight and the hunger of ambition, producing results and forbidden knowledge no kind or gentle energies could ever provide. It was a confession he and I were quite alone in, and I think that the blend of solitary insight and scarring is something that dysphoria has inflicted on me as well.
Perhaps Sombra would understand that, if I could will myself to believe anything more than the rapid grip of fear crushing and clawing at my heart.
“I take it the dream was a good one, then?” Sombra never said that cursed word, finding the term derived from my mask to be just as hurtful as I did. “I saw you smiling and I thought…”
He looks at me, equally concerned and expectant of an answer. I breathe quietly, keeping my mouth closed tightly as if my jaw were wired shut, for I can feel my heart in my throat.
“Luna, do you want to tell me after dawn?”
“...Yes,” I whisper dryly, letting my eyes fall to the plain necklace hidden among the fluff of his neck.
Upon that silver chain was his wedding ring, shining brightly and beautifully. It hadn’t been able to fit upon the unusual curve of his horn, and the Equestrian custom of never wearing them past the honeymoon was one we had abandoned and Sombra scorned. We never stopped wanting to let the world know he and I were husband and…
...married. That we were married.
…
In the parlor adjacent to our bed chamber and the room leading to our tower balcony where I raised and lowered the moon, Sombra and I settled into a ghost of our early routines. The palpable anxiousness brought by this particular brand of silence kept us from really doing anything, except to try and instill some ease in the other.
Sombra’s parlor desk (because he had to have the fragment of an office everywhere outside of his grand office sanctum) did not see his presence for long. He drifted over to where I was, slinging myself across one of our chairs with all the elegance of laundry thrown from the other side of the room. Cadance had always declared this to be the ‘gayest’ mode to seat oneself in, and I was never sure if she meant happy or queer by that usage until now. Perhaps she had been teasing me and I had never picked up on it, for Cadance teases and laughs like most ponies breathe.
I was trying to give myself an air of distraction for my own sake, in order to make my thoughts that much easier to coalesce. I would only get one chance to tell him. Twilight Sparkle would be the one to turn to what I believe is called ‘overkill’ in times like this. I can easily imagine my sister’s former student dipping into time travel and redoing everything if she had to come out and something had not been absolutely perfect.
As cursed as my nervous mind can be, I think the mere thought that somepony would possibly do that is heartbreaking.
I spy an ever-welcome guest peer over the top of the chair to watch my distracted doodling. I toss aside my charcoal and sketch pad as soon as I see Sombra rest his chin curiously atop the back of the plush chair.
“Are you ready to talk yet?”
“Yes,” I offer, anxiety still lurking in my voice. “I think so.”
My hooves are shaky with nothing to occupy them, and I busy them by combing them through my thick, cascading mane. There is a twitchy, hopeful flow to it right now.
“Were you having one of your foredreams?” Sombra asks immediately, his eyes shining with sparks of worry.
I hadn’t even thought about speaking, and here Sombra was, wanting to already be on top of whatever was wrong.
“Nay,” I mumbled, “what I had was a very pleasant dream… I was just reminded of…” I brought one forehoof away from my mane, waving it around in a circle while I reached for the right words, “...a different situation.”
Sombra raised an eyebrow. “When did this come up? Should I still be concerned about the dream?”
He was the only one who took a genuine interest in my dreams. Some time ago, he had uncovered a product of my magic I was inflicting upon myself for a maelstrom of reasons. Sombra was the only one in my life who took any tact in approaching the matter. Celestia forever whispered about the Tantabus by name, even though that name made ill feelings seize my stomach instantly after it was spoken, and memories play at the edge of my mind. Originally, all Tantabus-related counseling sessions with Sound Mind had Sombra and Celestia there with me.
That arrangement couldn’t last. Thankfully, it hadn’t. The discretion that I got from Sombra was so different from the awkward writings of ‘You-Know-What’ or the stutters and sideways glances Cadance used to try and convey the subject whenever it came up.
“No, there is nothing to worry about in this dream… You needn’t look at me like that. I promise, Som. Recently, I have been discussing a… a new development has come up at therapy. One separate from all the talk of my Tantabus and banishment, and yet at the heart of everything that has truly gone wrong in my life.” I bite my lip, swallowing loudly as my throat tightens. The first hint of a damp feeling is already forming at the corner of my eyes, and I look to Sombra pleadingly. “Som, you know I don’t exaggerate when I say things like this, do you not?”
I couldn’t bear for him to react like Celestia did when I told her of the intensity these feelings brought ages ago. Stars, may my own husband not show the same dismissal, downplaying, and disregard for the way I have always voiced my thoughts not fall upon me twice. I have accepted that my relationship with my sister will always be that of Sisyphus rolling his stone at its heart, even if it has softened some.
Having that horrible dynamic with my dear Sombra, who has always been able to understand me unlike anypony before him, would only rob me of the light of my life, one that exceeds the moon and stars. I have chosen him as my eternal companion and husband, and only wish that he will think of the same vows of fidelity, love, and loyalty we took.
“Sombra, could I have one of your suits?” My words leave me with the hesitance of a mouth trying to get on the good side of an ursa major. I sound more like a mare than ever, and the accursed femininity is now unmasked as nothing more than a sharp, grating evil in my mind. In a world that elevates mares beyond pedestals, how can I tell him that what damned, poisonous matriarchy falsely sees as g-good is naught but my prison?
In response, Sombra narrows his eyes, not out of anger. Instead, I see something much closer to a sharp, unimpressed suspicion in his gaze. The very sight of it has my heart trying to force its way up my throat.
Oh my stars…
“How many do you want?” Sombra asks, and my chest does not lose any of the panicky feelings that were overflowing from it. He knows that I can sense the critical edge to his voice, the one he had never shown directly to me before, but I was always familiar with it.
The dryness in my mouth will not permit me to breathe in any manner suggesting composure. I waste no second thought on forgoing whatever last bit of it I might have been clinging to. “Any of them. Whichever one you would be willing to part with.”
Sombra won’t shift his gaze, but he no longer regards me so critically. I watch him shrug, wishing the tension that has my head ready to explode and spill the torrent of secrets I’ve kept everywhere. I can feel the heat of sweat on the side of my face.
“Go pick out whichever one you want, then. Whatever makes you happy, Luna.”
In a second, I am utterly transformed with a wide grin stretching from ear to ear and bring my forehooves together in a great, joyous clap. “Splendid! I shall go grab-”
“On one condition,” Sombra adds, a self-satisfied smirk settling snidely on his muzzle.
...And with that, I am left feeling gray and worried all over again. My smile has vanished as if it never were and my mane does not burst with sparkles of excitement any longer. The singing of my heart has ended more abruptly than the breaking of glass.
“Why?” I ask, immediately biting my tongue afterward when I knew I should have said ‘what’ in its place. Such a question would be less suspicious.
The smile that Sombra gave me was the kind that a snake might give a mouse, albeit he had it drained of all cruelty for me. “Tell me exactly why you want them.”
My expression crumpled, the dampness of my eyes finally breaking. A trickling start of what threatened to be a true trail of tears started sliding down my cheeks.
When Sombra saw that, all his pride vanished. “Luna, what’s wrong?”
“Som, do you think that there is anything wrong with me?”
I didn’t have to finish; Sombra was already shaking his head in a firm ‘no’ and keeping a careful eye on me. “Luna, what does any of this have to do with suits? If you want them so badly, you can have them. I don’t think any of them will fit you that well, but if spending the national budget on mare’s suits would solve this, then let’s sell the whole kingdom while we’re at it. I, for one, would enjoy having to do an ungodly amount of laundry instead of dealing with ponies who think that they know anything.”
“No, no, no!” I buried my face in my forehooves. “I don’t want mare’s suits! I don’t want to be a princess or a sister! I don’t want a mare’s ANYTHING! I knew something was wrong when Tia and I were small and I felt like a toy soldier among dolls! Something has been wrong my whole eternity and all that has ever happened was this horrible mare-drunk culture telling me that I could be as pretty, sweet, and perfect as my sister if I just tried.”
Sombra lays his ears back, watching my half-effort to shield my face with my forehooves. My words are like a chain that I have to pull out further with each awful sob, and every time I free myself of one, I feel another twist of pain from deep in my chest. Is that not where all these words are coming from?
“Marehood is a prison, and all mares are merely the invasive needles that demand everypony defective be sewn this way or that. Having to walk among them as this stranger hurts. Every day at court or outing with Tia is a stage I don’t want to be forced to play encores on any longer! You were the only male ruler in history!” I bring a tear-drenched hoof to point at Sombra, watching how startled and confused he looks. “As awful as that time may have been for you, do you not remember how you were tormented just for being a male who wished to lead? To have ambition instead of masks of smothering amity and disguised avarice that mares clutch so tightly? Or how they shamed you for your capacity to love all as improper and nothing more than a false caricature of male brutishness?”
I see Sombra’s jaw tighten and knife-sharp anger come to his eyes. Neither gesture was for me; they were only a reflex at the mentioning of the awful memories prior to his discoveries of dark magic. Those who desire power are shown little resistance, so long as they are female in some capacity.
If I am to go through with this modern transitioning or disclose what I really am, I am not sure what the extent of the ridicule would be — only that it shall be inevitable. What Cadance did is considered empowering, brave, and beautiful. Mares like her are given special celebrations and rivers of praise and gossip alike. Wishing to be a mare or the slightest shred of femininity and frills in a male is acceptable — even if it is feigned in an attempt to deter the passive-aggressive malice that mares have.
Stallions like me are seen as slugs, and the world is salt.
“I feel like as much of an outsider as I am sure you did in those times.”
Sombra approached me, not hesitating in nuzzling my tear-dampened cheeks. My post-sob breathing was rough and ragged. Stars, I just wanted him to hold me. I wanted to wrap myself in twelve cloaks until I no longer had to behold my own frustratingly female slenderness. Seeing it made me feel like the monster I had been, not because of her dark coat, her fangs, or the gloom and misery she was born out of…
...but because Nightmare Moon was crafted as a female in order both encapsulate and worsen all my misery in the only way I knew how to convey it, and I could think of nothing more miserable than a mare, and the most wildly feminine one possible at that!
Was I to create my happiest self, the utter inverse of her, then a stallion I would be.
“You’re like Candy Dance, aren’t you?”
Unable to keep from sniggling and shuddering, I nod and pull Sombra into a hug by his neck. There, I close my eyes and squeeze him into a divine-strength embrace until I can feel him pawing at me for air.
All is constant between us, I suppose.
...
I watch Sombra’s horn light with crimson aura. When he passes me my mug of mead I accept with a small smile, mouthing the the ‘thank you’ my sore throat cannot manage right now. He was the one pony in the world who never made me feel like a monster, even accidentally, and I do not put an iota of exaggeration in that statement. I focus on keeping my breathing steady and watch Sombra sip his coffee.
Everypony in the royal family favors a different beverage. Cadance loves smoothies and Shining Armor likes new-fangled sports drinks. My sister sticks to her predictable choice of tea, tea, and more tea. Sombra has grown accustomed to black coffee. Blueblood will not touch anything that isn’t a cocktail. Though they are closer to extended royal family than any that are direct, authoritative kin, I have it on good word from Cadance and Shining Armor that Spike and Twilight Sparkle both like root beer floats.
Of them all, I was the only one who refused to be tethered down to one favorite. I smiled as I took a long sip. I could be having anything else right now: wine, hot chocolate, milkshakes, or even a magical concoction unknown to mortals. As constant as all else was about me, there were little aspects that made for excellent mischief.
Once I set aside my drink, I find that my dear Som has been watching me the whole time.
I blink and see him flick his ears in response. “Som? Is there something wrong?”
“Is there any reason you didn’t tell me sooner?”
“Oh…” I murmured, ducking my gaze slightly so that it fell to his throat. “I… I was at a loss of knowing whether or not you would still love me.”
Sombra’s brow furrows and his eyes are absolutely smoldering with confusion. I immediately recognize his baffled state as one Cadance told me was called ‘bisexual confusion’ and I knew just what it suggests he thinks I meant.
“You know stallions have always been an option me,” Sombra says, letting his eyes travel to my jaw, face, and the span of my withers. He was looking at me the way I have long looked at myself in mirrors, thinking about where real, masculine features could be instead of this false female haze. “In fact, I think you would be an excellent one if those hormones work as well as you say they do.”
Goodness, I can’t recall the last time Som has made me blush so.
I’m unable to hide my reddening face or bite back the tiny smile that breaks across my muzzle. “Oh Som, I just wasn’t sure if you would even see me as a real stallion. For if I am not really a stallion, and if I am a defective mare, who would love me?”
Sombra frowns, and there is no malice in the gesture. I do think I spot a splinter of hurt in it, and that wounds me as well. “I love you, Luna. That will never change.”
Stars, I feel myself sniffling again.
“And I shall always love you, Sombra. Perhaps my worries were mare-monsters made bigger by smoke and mirrors in my thoughts. ‘Twas not that I had no trust for you… I just…”
What is it that I can say that would make sense?
“Luna, I understand. I never told anypony about what I was before telling Cadance.” A faint scowl crossed his features. “You know how nosy many mares can be, and how they will stick their muzzles where they never belonged in order to find something that they could use as they pleased. She's the only one who hasn't done that. In any other circumstances, I could have counted you and her together... I expect now I'll have to correct myself.”
I try not to think of any specific faces of the thousands of mares I have known across my lifetime that could fit that description. One always had to be rather on guard around those types, ever-vigilant of what they sought to pry. The mere thought of them brings the familiar mantle of anxiety over me.
“There are far, far too many mares with that venom in them,” I whispered, shuddering.
Sombra makes a small scoff in the back of his throat. “Many more acted like they had no poison in them at all. Gods, I’ll take a stallion’s show of toxicity if I could avoid the humiliation that a mare’s share can weave.”
I nod, looking quietly at Som. In the past, I was either neglected or made into a monster long before I had crafted my own. His ordeal at the hooves of the Crystal Empire was a much more public affair, and one I think I would have snapped sooner dealing with. What hurts me more about was when he admitted that I was the only one who had never blamed him for shattering under those circumstances — all that came afterward is a very different matter.
“I take it that you’re going to want a new name?”
I… I had not thought of that…
My eyes meet Sombra’s and take in the unbothered understanding he has for me. “I would eventually. Unfortunately, I cannot say I have even the inkling of what I would want it to be. Switching pronouns is all I can say that I am ready for…” I bite my lip, staring into the depths of my mug again. “Even that can only be within the right company.”
“Not Celestia,” Sombra answers, nodding.
“Hush, Sombra. You must not say it like that. She won’t hate me. Tia could never hate me… I just don’t think that she shall suddenly begin to understand me, and certainly not through something as complex as modern sex-changes.”
“I have a better relationship with the plague that is philequinistic attempts at philosophy than you have with your sister.”
My innocent whistle is unconvincing as a refutation of Sombra’s statement.
“When is your next appointment?”
“Hm? Oh, with Sound Mind? ‘Tis this Thursday.”
“Would you let me come with you?”
“...To walk me there?” I ask, readjusting how I had folded my wings. We really ought to get better chairs for our parlor table; they’re positively awful if I lean back in them with my wings folded.
“I would like to be present at some of your appointments — I can’t pretend to understand this transsexuality instantly and if there is anything that would help me help you, I want to do it.”
And he wants to do it best, or he is not Sombra, who is the uncrowned king of pride itself more than he’ll ever be the dethroned king of the Crystal Empire.
“I am told the term is ‘transgender’ only,” I correct gently.
Sombra blinks. “Who got the idea in their head to make it sound like a creature who is modifying their sex is changing their gender? For Tartarus’ sake, I’m no expert on this, but I don’t think it takes one to realize that the thing that isn’t changing shouldn’t be in the name meant to describe the thing being changed.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea why the name is so puzzling either — and yes, Som. I would love to have you with me.”
Sombra shot me a crooked smile that brought a comforting warmth to my chest. “Frankly, I should have probably suspected that you were my husband at some point.”
I cock my head to the side, blinking curiously at him and ruffling my wings with the same owlish air. “What might have helped you know my condition before all this?”
“As soon as I realized Tartarus would freeze over before you could cook.”
I breathed in the crisp air of the Royal Archives. The whole tower was inlaid with layer after layer of preservation enchantments and climate-controlling spells, courtesy of Sombra and I. This way, the precious tomes and artifacts could all be stored with ease in perfect conditions. There was always a chill hanging over these halls as a result, one that I found most welcoming, but drove most others away, save for the archive division of the Royal Guard. However, that was only a reason to breathe easier — there was no great loss.
Even though I could not even flex my wingspan in any of the corridors of the numerous archive rooms, there was a wonderful, vast feeling to see the spines of books and cases of scrolls stacked so. All here was utterly unnatural to the public libraries who strove for easy appeal and safe atmospheres. I wouldn’t trade this rich, timeless Otherness for anything.
Next to me, Sombra was trying to find the best spot to hang our firefly lantern. His little frustrated grumbles were always an absolute delight, and not merely because I liked hearing the masculine cadence to his voice.
“Here, love. Let me have that,” I told him.
Sombra sighed, brushing at his bangs a bit before his magic relented the lantern. I took it with a quiet smile, slipping the handle over an old torch scone. Once it was there, Sombra stepped forward and let the aura on his horn grow more pronounced. The fireflies’ lights soon glowed with the same crimson hue. Eventually, his amplification spell settled, and the area illuminated by the fireflies was multiplied tenfold. This way, we would not need to constantly swap between hornlight and the lantern to view only to partially see one scroll or part of a shelf.
Some would see the reddish glow as ominous, yet I could see little else but an alien warmth to it. I let my wings rustle contentedly and folded them again at my sides. Sombra had already selected an old book from the shelves, carefully brushed off the dust, and flipped open the deckled edged pages. From in between a couple, I spied what fell from among the pages. An intricate star-chart had unfolded, one boasting rich designs and the horrid inaccuracies that happened during my banishment.
Sombra spotted a rendering of Orion on the fold-out that gave the monster-hunting stallion a crooked belt of five stars. His eye twitched, and I could only giggle at his disgust. Such things that the so-called ‘scholars’ did, and the fact that even I could not tell whether this was done for style or borne out of ignorance.
“What specifically are we supposed to look for in all of this?” Sombra asks, casting an uncertain look to the shadowed tops of the shelves.
“A name!” I beamed, kicking up my forelegs in a small prance. “Here are all the most useless of texts on my domain. When Tia moved castles, she saw fit not to bring the ally scrawl of the peasants who thought themselves ‘astronomers’ in the day, but all that is make-believe in dealing with what I control.”
My husband’s ears swivel sideways and there is nicker of confusion buried in his throat. “Ponies made up stories about the moon?”
“Nay, Sombra, not just ponies. Creatures who lived in lands that did not have the luxury of bordering Equestria had to resort to legends. Can you recall a time when the Crystal Empire possessed no knowledge of the gods?”
“Not at all,” he replied, shaking his head. “All of that would be prehistory. I do remember reading about the Crystalline race imposing idols on others under their control. Yet, those were discarded around the time Equestrian interactions began.”
“And was that not around the time the history of your ponies began to be recorded?”
“Those ponies,” Sombra corrected sourly, “and yes. There is little that preceded the Northmares first contact with your, err, Southmares?”
My giggle at his guess was enough for him to keep going. The united tribal ponies truly had no name before Celestia and I ruled them once their tribe leaders died. The non-crystal kin that the tribal diaspora left back in the northern wastes — the Northmares from whom Sombra was descended — had little polite words for my subjects.
“Are you saying that these creatures tried to create gods? Do they have any idea how ridiculous it is to try and construct an idea of something one has never encountered? Worse than that, did they expect this to be a good idea?”
“I know not why those mortals did what they did, just that they created idols based on what they could fathom of the eternal, as well as a world of stories for them to inhabit. We shall scour these shelves for a proper name!”
Sombra lays back his ears and pauses, only looking back at me once he had given the whole room a worried, sweeping look. “Isn’t naming an immortal dangerous and important?”
“Aye, that it is. I do not doubt that there is a name I might be able to claim lying around here, though.”
Sombra’s magic snatched up a scroll and clutched it tight as it floated about him. “You told me that no immortal before me ever had to bend to language for their name.”
“While that is true, I cannot be forced to bear a name that is ill-suited for a stallion.”
He lowered the scroll to shoot me a flat look. “You were also the one who told there were consequences to trying to claim a name wrongly.”
“Yes, Som,” I replied, my tone shrinking to something much quieter. “Your words hold truth. I am still sure we shall be safe in looking for a name here. There are always other archive rooms we can search if this one yields nothing. I truly do understand your worry, and if that is so, I can delta the claiming ritual until we are certain. Shall that bring you peace?”
He was right, though. Language bent to immortals, not the other way around. No such word was derived from anything resembling my sister’s name before she was Celestia. Nor did my name have any meaning like ‘moon’ or its many variations
“Some,” Sombra admitted, exhaling. “I just couldn’t stand if anything happened to you…”
“I know, Som.” I stepped closer to nuzzle him when I wasn’t sure if my assuring tone was enough to comfort him. “I promise you we shall be well.”
“I just don’t want to lose you. Not when all you want is to be is yourself.” He bit at his lip. “Not when I’ve lost everything else before you.”
“We shall be fine.” I wrapped a foreleg around him, pulling Som close enough to place a kiss on his temple.
Som’s eyes meet mine. Though he is never one for unwarranted optimism, I no longer see the fire of anxiety threatening to burn through him within them. I let him lean forward to give one of my ears a delightful nibble.
“Very well, Prince Charming,” Sombra says, sauntering away with unyielding pride in his posture. He thinks that his horn’s glow does not illuminate the way he smiles so slyly as he retreats among the shelves.
…
“What about this one?” Sombra asks, thrusting an open book under my muzzle.
My chest is light with excitement as I peer at the pages. On one page was a richly detailed illustration bearing a large-horned yak bull. His coat was colored pure white and he was wearing gleaming golden ornaments and horn caps. The chariot he rode in was pulled by two grand comets with magnificent tails. The colors may have lost some vibrancy with time, but this albino yak’s majesty was still apparent.
I peered at the name of the idol listed below and read the name to Sombra.
“Máni was among my favorite of mortal-wrought stories. I cannot say that his name feels fitting for me…” I scratched under my jaw thoughtfully. “‘Tis a character of Yakyakistani breezie tales and would be just as inappropriate if my sister decided to name herself for a solar icon, be it one ponies or other creatures had.”
Sombra glanced down at the illustration, a careful frown tugging at his mouth. “Is there anything else you don’t like about it? I would have a better idea of what to look for
“Aside from that… hm, I just feel that this one is ill-suited for me. I cannot see anything of myself in it. I feel that the sound is off, though the gender is certainly right.”
Sombra has one delightedly smug smile in the frown’s place. “I’ll have you know that I accept tips for all my hard work.”
“Oh Som,” I murmur, lighting my horn to scratch him behind one of his ears properly. “What would I ever do without you?”
“Nothing interesting, I’m sure.”
Grabbing the book from him and wielding it with feigned anger only makes Sombra’s smirk bigger and its insolence increase exponentially.
…
The stack of scrolls next to me was only growing larger, both in rows and in size. I had unrolled one and carefully smoothed it out for ideal reading. The feeling of poring over ancient scripts was one of finding home. My eyes could not grow tired from viewing such delights. Fauns bearing lyres and robed minotaurs with a sarissa in their hands decorated the margins. Olive branches decorated amphorae.
The boldest feature of the Arcadian artifacts was a white faun, her torso clad in a chitoniskos and an elegant bow was gripped within her paws. The idol’s silvery mane was pulled from her face and into a bun.
Sombra was reading over my withers. “I take it Artemis won’t work as a name?”
“Nay, ‘tis a largely female one. To call myself such a thing would be foolish indeed.”
I felt Sombra’s muzzle nuzzle past my wither to get a better look. Smiling, I let him continue reading from his cozy new spot.
“Siproites could work, couldn’t it?”
I let out a strained little sound somewhere between a hiss and a gasp. “I would think not.”
“Why not?” I felt Sombra’s flicking ear brush against my own. “He’s the colt in the story, isn’t he? That’s not the same as being the idol.”
“Aye, as true as that may be, you ought to read further before saying such a thing.” With a careful gesture of telekinesis, I gave his ears a good, playful flick with my magic.
Shifting himself, Sombra squinted more closely at the story. “He was a colt… that was turned into a filly in order to avoid being struck down by the wary idol.”
“Oh Som,” I said, patting him on the top of his head kindly, “I would rather not have my name be such a curse. The sound is rather fine, the fable attached to it would only burden me with a taunt of all I want to escape.”
In return, I feel Sombra nuzzle my cheek warmly before slipping away, all in order to return to searching. “We’ll have to keep searching, won’t we?”
I nod quietly. In my heart, I can feel the thrill of all this searching being pared away by the minute and falling away, shred by shred. This was the seventh name we had looked at.
...
I can feel my breath come in quickly, a knot rapidly forming in my chest as I inhale. The book resting atop my folded forelegs is an old one, with its spine weathered to sinew threads and scraps. The remains of its leather cover were authentic — a chilling relic of a time when the practice of skin covers was a staple, be they imported from griffons or from other animals, such as moles and shrews. The half-faded calligraphy is still readable to my careful eyes, and there is a single word that jumps out at me, demanding focus.
Why, I can feel it lodged in my throat too. ‘Tis like a butterfly, all fuzzy and awkward as it crawls up, threatening to escape me too soon.
“Sombra!” I call instead, trying to keep that feeling from abandoning me. “Come here, and quickly! You must see what I have found!”
One flash of red later and Sombra was standing at my side. His ears were pricked forward and his eyes were bright with alertness. As soon as he caught sight of the book, Sombra bounded over to my side with a few swift, cantering strides.
“Let me see!” Sombra exclaimed, nudging his way over to the table I was seated at.
I levitated the book over to where the pages could be viewed in the luminous glow bathing the archive room. He needn’t even ask for me to do so. I had even made the glow of my magic more pronounced over the term of interest, giving it a sparkling highlight.
One thing that I would never stop finding adorable about Sombra — however much he denied the quality — was the precise manner in which he narrowed his eyes to read. There was something delightful in following not just the motion of his eyes, but the subtle movements in his expression. I knew just what part he was at by the slightest shift of his jaw, a twitch of his ear, or tilt of his head.
That was how I knew he was approaching the section I had emphasized — because only Sombra would read the whole page first. Thus, I was fully aware I could surprise him right before he found it.
“Lune,” I said, letting the name take flight. A whole firecracker of joy was unleashing in my chest, warmth, and joyful dizziness washing away all my worry. “‘Tis an old Prancian word for ‘light’, particularly the light of my foremost domain. Not a shred of femininity can ruin that name. Is it not wonderful?”
A dreamy sigh escapes me as soon as I am finished, and my smile is too stubborn to abandon me. I simply can not help myself! The lovely ring to it still buzzes in my ears.
Sombra frowns, and I hone in on the sight immediately. What could provoke such a reaction from him? Even I must admit that this particular frown of his is one he would wear at his most reticent, and I cannot place the emotion.
Oh stars…
“I can’t say that this name has no downside, Lu.”
My muzzle crinkles and I immediately feel a pout threatening to burst.
Lu? Som has never called me such a silly thing before.
“What… downside?” I dislike the way the word tastes upon my tongue, especially when speaking of my own name!
“It’s Prancian,” Sombra says, letting his aura tap upon the weathered pages for emphasis. “Other than that… I see no problem.”
When he sees my harrumph, his unique gloating serpent-smirk returns in full force.
“Did somepony think that I was going to refuse my darling prince a name?”
He keeps grinning like he still has the fangs to bare so brilliantly; as a result, I absolutely must pout.
“Sombra, were you not my heart, I would have cast you back to shadows.”
A single dark gray forehoof rests upon his chest with a dazzlingly adorable pompous gesture. Curse him!
“Great gods, what am I to do with the great Prince Lune threatening my splendid existence?”
As I am about to stick my tongue out at him, Sombra decides to surprise me by scooping me up into a kiss. My reciprocation is enough to tell him that he has more than made up for his oh-so-heinous crimes against me.
I can think of no better way to end the long chapter of Luna in my life an usher in a better one: that of Sombra and Lune.
Dear Cadance,
My apologies to not writing to you in some time. Though this city knows it not, much has been uncovered and admitted within the castle walls. I have told Sombra of my condition, and we are going to work together every day to banish the false female aspects of my form in all their foulness. Every day I still bask in his love and acceptance.
Together, we are making the first steps toward planning for hormones, spells, and surgeries. He attends my appointments with Sound Mind when dysphoria is the matter at hoof. Why, Sombra even brings a notebook! He is doing what he can to look into the science of dysphoria and has been reading many medical publishings that were stored in the castle’s archives. I know that helps him contextualize why I am this way and the knowledge contained within their pages aids him in being able to listen to me from a place of understanding. Personally, I like looking at all the diagrams of the before and after of masculinization.
The warmth it gives my heart is worth dozens of letters of its own. To see those kinds of results on myself would make me feel completely alive instead of this sleepy half-state. I will begin taking the medicine that will make me whole in the coming year. To be able to tell you just how much hope things brings me is going to have to fit in my next few letters. Oh, I swear it to you on all my stars that before Sombra and this modern diagnosis, I could only hear how much I was told that happy eternity was something only for my sister. Now, I am taking the steps towards a breezie tale of a life and dear Som is already calling me his Prince Charming.
Before the thoughts escape me, there was a matter I wished to discuss with you. Sombra and I learned that going through with these spells and procedures would render me infertile. We never had the foal talk before, and now we are looking into preservations for any necessary material on my part so that I may never carry one. In your previous letters, you have told me that your only regret in your transition was how the age you began at left you barren. I recall you alluded to other complications too, and I shan’t pry about them.
Though, I do ask, would an offer to a share of materials I will not have use for be of any interest you? You have fawned over motherhood as all mares are wont too, and you and your prince would make darling parents. I would desire nothing in return, and the ghastly procedure for harvesting eggs has a step where a spell can increase the yield. I would never need so many as either part of the procedure could produce! ‘Tis too many, and neither Sombra nor I see any issue with offering you, should you two also find a willing surrogate mare.
Give my regards to Shining Armor, and may your health be fair.
Sincerely,
Lune
P.S. Do you have any idea how I could ever tell Celestia this? I have kept the knowledge of this quiet as a grave, letting none but you or Sombra know.
