The day had come.
Luna strode forward with purpose through the castle, and her hooves clicked with urgency against the marble floor. Her destination was a place sequestered in the heart of the castle, where no pony other than she or her sister may enter.
Luna pondered, what is a gift if not a thought of another individual given life? Somepony like Luna was never satisfied with mundane things such as cards or small tokens of affection. Nay, Luna embodied an Alicorn Princess, Divine of the Night, and she would never stoop to delivering a simple trinket as evidence of her favor.
She stopped at a pair of stone doors marked with the sun and moon. The forge of the royal sisters was where she and her sister once toiled to bring peace to Equestria. With a touch of her magic, the doors ground open, and she slipped inside into the cold darkness of a furnace that had laid dead for centuries.
With a deep breath, Luna drew upon the power of the moon and stars before stamping her hoof, channeling the power of her birthright into the surface. In an instant, the darkness roared into light, the kiln transforming from frozen stone to violent inferno. Luna let herself grin with satisfaction before returning to her task.
Hammer and steel, brute instruments used to fashion weapons of war turned to another task—a battle more subtle, yet full of its own terrors. Fires glared from the forge as Luna worked, her coat lathered from heat and strain as she cut into a stone she excavated herself from the roots of the earth.
For those ponies of the Earth do toil their soils, it is they who cleave gems from stone, metal from ore. With the might of the races of Earth, Luna struck the stone with her bare hooves, mining it for the materials she desired. With a flick, she sent her chosen hunks of ore tumbling into a vat which hissed and spat angrily, quickly dissolving the metals within.
Luna watched closely, but never once channeled her magic, for this was the domain of Earth and she dare not trespass. The alchemical solution, naturally heated by the fires of the forge, bubbled and hissed, slowly changing from clear to a dark purple. With practiced timing, Luna tipped in another alchemical cocktail, and the mixture frothed, the surface turning a silvery hue.
With a tip, she drained the solution away, and at the bottom sat a small lump of pure platinum. Luna allowed herself a small content smile, touching the platinum with her hoof and feeling it to be true—the metal that was the sun and moon, the unadulterated ore of twilight. Carefully, she lifted the precious metal and placed it within the crucible of the forge. The alicorn aspect of Earth had been fulfilled.
She turned and touched her magic, molten wax springing to life in streams and weaving into intricate patterns never before realized. She channeled the pool of arcane energy within herself; the shifting form of her soul, she poured into the sculpture she lovingly rendered.
The ponies of Magic shape the world to their vision; it is they who enact their will upon the world to form it in a way they see fit. Luna shut her eyes and thrust into existence what sang in her heart. With a blast of ice cold wind, she froze the form in place, and with another flick of her horn she wrapped her intricate work in layers of plaster, hardening each one with a pulse of magic.
She lifted the plaster mold into the furnace, and watched as the wax slowly melted away, leaving a hollow shell. She set down the mold with satisfaction, within her heart’s design permanently written. The alicorn aspect of Magic was satisfied.
She looked down in the crucible, the palpable heat slapping against her as she stood near the heart of the furnace. A mere mortal would be turned to ash in seconds, but Luna was no mortal. Without hesitation, she threw open the furnace and stepped up to the crucible.
Ponies of the Air were the closest to the wild, rapid heartbeat of life. Their ancestors stood as fierce warriors who gave no quarter, honorable but vicious to the very last. For every drop of blood they lost, they would take back tenfold, but blood given willingly held a sacred meaning between pegasi, a pact beyond the water of the womb.
No sword could stay sharp in such heat, so Luna instead pulled from her magic a blade of unbreakable starlight. Without hesitation, she drew it across her foreleg, drawing the silvery ichor that was her blood and watching as it fell into the crucible, mixing with the molten metal within. The Pegasus warrior spirit within her watched in grim satisfaction the sacrifice of her lifeblood and grew content.
With each of her aspects fulfilled, Luna stepped out of the furnace with the crucible in hoof. Carefully, she poured the molten metal into her mold. With her magic, she tapped on the plaster to force out the bubbles and waited anxiously for her finished product. It would not do to have something go wrong at this final, critical stage.
After the metal cooled, Luna set about carefully chipping away the plaster mold from her work. She fussed over the small nooks and delicate joins, using a small scrubber to clean the metal and make it shine. The platinum gleamed a brilliant silvery white, glowing softly from Luna’s offering of divine blood. With a small smile of relieved joy, Luna carefully lifted the brooch and placed within its mounting: a hoof cut, polished moonstone.
And so, came the most harrowing part of all—the giving of the gift. While Luna had been lathered from exertion as she had worked on her precious piece of jewelry, she now found herself sweating for an entirely different reason as she stood in front of the door of whom she loved more than anypony else in the world.
Her nerves jumped, mind rife with uncertainty as she knocked, and the approaching hoof steps felt spaced by eternity. As the door creaked open, she shakily held forward her gift, a different battle being fought in a different kind of war.
“Happy Birthday, my love.”
Author's Note
With this, I foray into a strange new world where symbols are fractured into words and stamped into sentences. I invite you, reader, to join me as I explore this difficult new terrain.
Thank you for reading! I hope you return for the next I bring.
Who Luna loves is left nebulous on purpose, but those who know me well could probably guess who I had in mind.
