Author's Note

Constructive criticism and grammar/ spelling corrections welcome.

A few notes for the story.
'Thoughts, Text, Sounds'
"Speech"
'Telepathy'
"ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE"

Inspired by Silverwolfdemon's 'Hyrulequestria'.

I haven't heard back from my editor in almost a month, so I'm just posting it.

The proposed idea is a framework I thought up, I have no idea if this is how they work in real life.

Food, Blood, History, and an Idea.

We arrived in the kitchen and Luna immediately washed her hands, then I did so after her.

"Alright, so what should we make Krystal?" Luna asks me with a bright smile.

"Mmm, how about spaghetti and bread sticks?" I suggest.

Luna looks confused before excitement overcomes her. "Oh! What's spaghetti? Teach me how to make it Krystal, please." She asks happily, a smile on her face. Her wings twitching in excitement and her tail swaying gently she waits for my answer as if I would even say no to her request.

I smile at her enthusiasm. "Sure Luna, just let me check if we need to make any of the ingredients first. We need spaghetti pasta noodles, tomato or spaghetti sauce. How do you feel about meat, hamburger specifically?" I ask.

"Oh! Ponies are omnivorous, we just don't eat meat as often as others. Meats are fine as long as it doesn't come from a sapient creature, this was agreed upon by all races on Rulii." Luna informs me.

"O.K. We'll also need diced tomatoes, peppers of your choice, and onions. Making the bread sticks should be easy enough." I list off the basic ingredients to a decent serving of spaghetti.

We search around and easily find the required ingredients. The sauce and other ingredients come in clearly if blandly labeled jars, boxes and bags. We find all the required ingredients and I start to teach Luna how to make spaghetti.

"Alright Luna, first how about you dice the vegetables and brown the hamburger while I start the noodles and prepare the dough." I order. Luna nods happily and begins her tasks. After I start the water boiling I make the dough and leave it to rise a bit.

I go over to help Luna chop the remaining vegetables. 'ss' I look up and see Luna cradling her finger, she notices. "Just a cut, although the onion juice stings." She says showing me a small cut with silver blood leaking out. She lights her horn and the cut heals, then she washes her hands again.

"Is silver blood a common thing here?" I ask as Luna gets back to chopping veggies.

"No... well a little. Those who have normal colors like red, green or the like are mortal and will eventually succumb to the ravages of time. Those who are ageless which also includes most legendaries and some of the lesser gods have silver blood. It is sort of a indicator of station, that whoever has silver blood flowing through their veins is in some way important to the running of the world but could be replaced or are the half-children of gods. However those with gold blood are essential to the running of the world and without their presence the world would be doomed or damaged, lesser gods like Uxie, Mesprit, Azelf, Cresselia and Darkria and of course the greater gods like Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Xerneas and Yvetal. Nayru, Farore, Din, Hylia and Arceus rule over them all as the creators of the world and it's peoples." Luna lectures.

It takes me a second to parse her explanation. 'So Luna and her sister are ageless and somehow important to the running of the world?' I question to myself. "So if you are ageless what is your... duty I guess it could be called?" I ask her.

Luna looks at me searchingly before taking a deep breath losing herself to nostalgia while she answers. "I may as well tell you about my early life because it fits well with the story of how I came to my duty. I was born one thousand five hundred and some spare years ago. My sister is three years older than me. We were named differently then, I was Lumea and my sister was Cenia. I was a blue pegasus with a cornflower mane and Tia was a light rose unicorn with a pink mane." She takes a breath while she hands me the chopped veggies before starting on the hamburger.

"We were born orphans into an era of chaos. Lady Eris, a benevolent and helpful goddess who had been leading the world in a golden age for five hundred years, had been corrupted and twisted by an evil entity. She spread debauchery and insanity of all sorts and laughed as people ran in fear from her distorted and corrupted imaginings made reality. The myriad parties and feasts were some of the only reasons anyone ever had anything close to a stable diet aside from hidden farms, the caves were the only places she didn't like to go." She takes a calming breath, while making sure the meat doesn't burn.

"The underground cities lasted a century or so before they were found by Lady Eris' agents, cultists who worshipped her distorted alter ego. This is when my sister and I were born into. We lived in an underground city named Kloise until I was seven years old. The cultists found and planned an attack on the cities, backed by abominations." Luna pauses to wipe a tear forming in her eye and to calm her emotions. I add the noodles to the pot and start to shape the dough with Luna helping.

"All the cities defenses were sabotaged and almost every emergency exit was sealed. Me and sister managed to run to an abandoned tunnel that was left unfinished because the rock they were planning to mine into turned out to be a poisonous form of limestone, I can't remember what it was called... We managed to squeeze through the air shafts that lead to the surface, Tia had been taught how to use climbing gear you see." Luna says with a small half smile. The meat finishes browning and I mix it with the spaghetti sauce and the vegetables.

"The next five weeks were hard on us as we didn't know much about surviving, barely enough to start a fire and gather a few types of edible berries. In the middle of our sixth week we ran into a group of survivors, the group of twenty took us in as if we were their own." She takes a breath here and smiles as she recounts her time with the group, while I put the bread sticks in the oven..

"The matron of the group, a unicorn named Juradia, was a very kind and considerate woman. She taught us skills we would need to survive in the wild and taught Tia some magic that would be very helpful in the years to come. I was taught weather magic and flying maneuvers by a hyper hippogryph named Kelda. We lived, worked, learned and played with the group for five years before we parted ways. They had found a secluded vale they wanted to settle in, Tia and I discussed and decided to search for other survivors and maybe creating another safe haven. When we left the new village numbered seventy seven as others had joined us over the years as well as a few babies born." Luna smiles at the memory before continuing with a frown.

"We set out with the blessings and gifts of the village and wandered, searching for sane survivors for two years, then disaster happened. The world went dark for what seemed days, not even the moon or stars shone in the black sky. We didn't know what to do, until suddenly Tia startled and yelled, apparently a unicorn named Stell was contacting every active magic user he could reach to come to the mountain he was living in, to try to bring back the sun and moon.

"We travelled for a while, following the pull of his beacon. We arrived at a grand ruin in the side of a mountain. The crowd of dragons, centaurs, kirin, unicorns, deer, and various pokemon like Ninetails, Rapidash, Braixen and Delphox were gathered in the huge circle. Myself and others who couldn't actively use magic were gathered in the rest of the main hall. After a while a unicorn stallion came out of a side room, and after a short speech and a small argument gathered the magic users and started the ritual. Shortly after he called out that their wasn't enough magic. He activated some more runes on the ground and instructed those of us who couldn't use magic actively to stand in the circles, we did so and I felt myself getting weaker, but I also felt a connection to two powerful ancient things, so old it was felt." She says with a bit of awe in her voice.

"After a long and tiring minute, the ritual circles stopped glowing, and we all collapsed to the floor. It was done. The sun and moon were back. I crawled to Tia and we lay there recovering from the ordeal. Stell recovered first and congratulated us all, but then he noticed something, every one of us had changed in some way, half of us were slimmer, and were almost unnoticeable in the shadows. We had darker coat, scale or skin colors. Slitted eyes, bat like wings, thicker coats, or for the dragons dark spikes and horns grew along the old ones and they had course hair growing around their horns and down their spines and tails. The other half was slightly taller, had much warmer bodies, as if running high fevers, they also had much lighter coloration, and glowing eyes that see life energy. The few dragons had feather manes and their wings were now much more birdlike in appearance." Luna pauses to check the bread, it was half way to finished already! "This oven is the best I've ever baked with! The cooking time enchantments are very high grade!" Luna praises the stove.

Seeing the state of the bread, I check the noodles and see that they are done, I strain them and leave them to cool a bit. "So, the ritual had after effects? Were they permanent?" I ask.

"No, at least not all of them. The different colors and thicker coats stayed, and so did the dragons different wings, horns and hair or feather manes. On the rest of us the wings, eyes, warmth, stealth and body differences were spotty in who kept what. I stayed slim and kept a lesser version of the stealth and a slightly thicker coat. Tia kept the height boost and warmth as well as a very limited form of the eyes effect of seeing life energy, losing the glow." Luna answered.

"After the panic of the changes died down we celebrated our achievement into the night. When we woke up the next day, Tia and I noticed we had our cutie marks! We were stunned, then in our excitement we attracted the attention of the elders among the group. When Stell saw us he almost fainted at the implications of what our marks could mean, he asked us if any thing was different aside from the obvious. We listed off the sensations we were feeling when we came upon the answer of what our marks meant. We were still connected to the moon and sun!" She exclaims.

"We all rested for the evening as we were exhausted from the ritual and found the next morning that some of the changes were fading already. We ate breakfast and discussed with each other our lives and how we lived, or about how were coping with losing the cities. Many were lost on what to do now other than survive." Luna explains.

"Tia and I were discussing with a dragon about our gathering survivors and hoping to form a new city somewhere when Stell came over with an offer to use the ruins and the cavern they ran into as a starting point for our village. We accepted and many of the others there would join our cause and help us search for others. We explored the cavern and found that it was massive! Large enough to house hundreds comfortably and had access to fresh air and fresh water in the form of an underground river. Ruins there indicated that the ancients had used the cavern similarly, they had even possibly excavated the cavern." Luna checks the bread again and we finds it's finished, pulling the pan from the oven I lay it on the stove top to cool.

"The others who wanted to join excitedly started to build simple homes, and gather stores of food. Stell took on a leadership role, organizing search parties and the building of a structured town. Tia and I got to relax a bit, since we were younger. After the town was established we started noticing that the moon and sun were getting slower in their orbits. Tia being the more magic sensitive of the two of us noticed the sun was getting tired, it and the moon needed help to move.

"We performed a modified version of the ritual to move the heavenly bodies. Tia and I felt our connections with them get marginally stronger. However, after a month of this participants in the ritual started to notice they lost a tiny bit of power with each moving of the sun and moon. Tia and I were unaffected by this and were actually ever so slightly less strained with each ritual. We obviously couldn't stop doing the ritual or else the day and night would eventually stop, so this continued for months without a answer to the problem." She pauses to get a drink of water.

"Until, one week, a sickness rolled through our city. Almost every magic caster was incapacitated, only ten weren't affected by it. We all gathered and started the ritual, after a couple of minutes it was clear that we didn't have enough power to complete the ritual. One by one the casters dropped until it was just Tia and I left. We gave it all we had, pushing ourselves past what we ever had before. Until with a flash and a gonging sound we appeared in a beautiful plane of stars and dust clouds. We looked ourselves over and noticed we both had a horn and wings. A gold orb and a silver orb appeared before us. The gold orb spoke with a male voice and the silver with a female voice. They told us that their names were Sola and Lunis, and that we had fully connected with them. We were now the stewards of the night and day, and we were now alicorns to reflect our status. Ageless, powerful, and connected to each other in a way that few could understand, two halves of a coin. When we came to we noticed we were slightly taller and had indeed become alicorns." She finishes. "So, is the food done? I'm eager to try it!" Luna segues.

I blink at the sudden change of topic before answering. "Um, yes just need to plate ourselves." Doing so, I serve myself and dig in. I move to lighter topics like what education she had at the time. "So, what did the average person learn in your village?"

"Oh! During all that, Stell and others had taken us and other young people on as students, teaching us about math, history before the fall of Lady Eris, the world, agriculture, wilderness survival and more. Also specialty classes like weather management, magic, apprenticeships for building, forging, tailoring, things like that." She answers as she serves herself. She takes her first bite and hums at the taste, exploring the flavor. "This is a tasty dish, the sauce has a certain zing to it that goes well with the meat and the cheese. The noodles tie it all together nicely." She critiques.

We finish our plates off and place them in the sink before going to the living room to relax. Before I sit down I go to the record player and choose something with a happy tune to it. After I find a song I sit next to Luna and she immediately moves to sit in my lap, nuzzling into my neck. I hug her close in surprise, before melting into it.

"What brought this on, not that I'm complaining." I ask, running my claws through Luna's mane enjoying the slight tingle from the magic running through it as well as rubbing her still round if much smaller stomach.

"Just wanted to." She answers, humming in content at the petting. We cuddle for a while, just enjoying each others presence.

After about half an hour we exit the Ever-Pack to travel for a few hours.

We have been walking for a good hour or so, making small talk and commenting on strange or funny looking plants. The sky starts to darken when Luna gets my attention.

"You know Krystal, if we want to restore the population in any way that leaves you with free time, we have to find a way to impregnate hundreds a day," She states. I think about the problem and any solutions I might know of, before it comes to me.

"I've got it. Sperm banks! That would solve the problem, I would have to be the donor for a good while but that wouldn't be a big problem. Learning potions to increase virility and fertility would help immensely. Others could eventually donate to the bank and I wouldn't have to donate as much." I say with a smile.

Luna hums in thought. "How would the system work? Would the donors get to see their children if they wish?" She asks.

"O.K., so donors would have to take an intensive medical exam to screen for diseases, genetic diseases, mental illnesses or even bad personality traits in some cases as well as be asked questions like whether they would be open to being a part of their child's life or not. The genetic disease tests might be a bit hard to do depending on technology levels unless magic might have an answer. Prospective mothers would then look through files of the donors, pick one and be artificially inseminated with her picks semen. The mother-to-be and the donor work out if the father would like to be part of the family." I explain to her.

Luna thinks about it before a smile crosses her lips. "This seems like a wonderful idea, hundreds could be impregnated a week. The samples could easily be stored in a cooled stasis room, and the mothers could undergo the same tests as the donors, we wouldn't want the children to be sick if we can help it after all." She says. Luna looks at me with a bright smile. "Krystal, this idea may save us yet!" She hugs me as she finishes, I happily hug back.

We continue walking until it gets dark and we start to hear the howls of wolves in the distance getting closer.

"Timber Wolves! The forest must be in it's open phase, quick Krystal in the bag!" Luna urges. I comply, placing the Ever-Pack against a tree and opening the flap. I hear the thuds of paws on the ground and the barks and growls as the pack of wolves moves closer. Luna quickly hops in the bag and I move to follow.

I jump in the bag and the last I see of the outside world is a large number of green lights headed my way.