Icemoon

Luna strode to the top of the gangplank and looked across the crowded pier. The cheer that met her was cautious, not the roar her sister or Cadance would have received.

Even here, her reputation preceded her.

Under the early-morning sun, perhaps two hundred humans stood on the pier to greet her ship. A modest turnout, but then again, Arendelle was a modest kingdom, except for that one thing.

Luna tapped her hoof and flicked her ears. Humans. Her stomach soured and her tail tucked tight under her belly. Why had Celestia chosen her, her of all ponies, for a mission this important? This was Luna's first trip outside Equestria since before her little detour to the moon, her first trip to the human lands in over one thousand years, and the wizard-queen of Arendelle was powerful, indeed. Ensuring an alliance was too important to Ponykind. Why had Celestia entrusted such a cosmic fuckup like herself to—

The cold breeze off the fjord billowed her bespoke Rarity-original robes, cut to every curve and bend of her body, sewn from the most opulent silver silk and moonstones. Despite this sartorial elegance, the robes' expense a noticeable hit to Equestrian taxpayer, Luna felt once again like the gawky half-grown teenager at her coronation, tripping on the hems of oversized hand-me-down regalia.

"Princess?" Sunburst asked. "Is something wrong?"

"The queen. Point her out, please."

Sunburst pushed his glasses up his nose and frowned at the crowd. "At the bottom of the gangplank. Tall, blond hair, sapphire dress, smiling at you, hands clasped behind her back. The princess is... oh, wow... is the redhead next to her."

"Of course, of course. They seem... tall?"

"Queen Elsa is a tall woman."

The humans were all clad in heavy winter cloaks against the wind, but the queen wore a simple dress, and the wind billowed it against her body's curves—

An exhibition of magic. The cold didn't bother her in the slightest, and wearing a light summer dress demonstrated that.

"Sunburst?" Luna said.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Let us begin the assignment my sister has entrusted to us." She straightened her black crown and peytral, and then strode down the gangplank, her muzzle high but her heart racing.

Well after midnight, just after a long bath, Luna trotted the castle's corridors, trying to burn off some energy and get sleepy enough for bed. Yet another reason she was the wrong choice for diplomat! She hated the day shift. Hated, loathed, despised, abhorred. Cadance should be the one here in Arendelle, but with the Crystal Empire less than a month returned, and Cadance's marriage less than six weeks past, Cadance was both busy and busy with Shining Armor...

Bah! Luna excelled at her dream duties, why could she not be left alone with them?

An occasional Arendelle guard braced to attention as Luna trotted passed. She nodded politely to them. She also mentally kicked herself for forgetting to pack her slippers, walking on the carpeted runners in the middles of the corridors. With her regalia removed for the night, she had nothing to protect her unshod hooves.

She sniffed, raising her nose to the air wafting up a stairwell, and her stomach rumbled.

The kitchens. Yes! She'd barely eaten any dinner, the Arendelle banquet chefs apparently having ignored the diplomatic notes regarding pony dietary preferences. Fish! Meat! More fish! Different fish! Yech. An after-midnight snack, that was exactly what she needed. She'd burned quite a lot of magic that day, mostly keeping her temper in check, and her body needed calories to replenish her reserves.

Luna trotted faster, following her nose.

Elsa stood in the basement kitchen, whisking the batter, singing to herself and thinking of fractals. She summoned a speck of ice with her left hand and tossed it onto the waffle iron. The ice popped instantly to steam. Perfect!

She removed a handful of frozen strawberries from their container, chopped them, and folded them into the batter. She popped another strawberry into her mouth. The tart sweetness ran over her tongue as the ice melted, freeing the sweet juices of the soft fruit. She closed her eyes and allowed the taste to sit on her tongue for several seconds.

"Does the cold not bother your teeth, Majesty?" came a soft voice behind her.

Elsa gagged, choked, spun, and saw Princess Luna standing there. Deep blue eyes looked up at her. Elsa pounded herself on the sternum, coughed out the strawberry onto the floor, and gasped, bent over at the waist.

She caught her breath and straightened up. It was her first time seeing the pony without her regalia or formal robes. In fact, the pony was naked. Luna was smaller than she had seemed with the robes and silver hoof shoes. Luna took a step. The lamps cast shadows across her glossy coat, Luna's every movement emphasizing the lean muscles of her legs and flanks.

"Your Highness." Elsa dipped her head.

Her ears flicked. "Let us be merely Luna. We are in private."

"May I be Elsa?"

"What are you cooking, Elsa?"

"Waffles. Do ponies...?"

"Yes!" Luna smiled. "Indeed, yes! My sister makes exquisite waffles and pancakes. Cooking is a talent I lack, no matter the earnestness of my attempts. The castle chefs threw up their hooves and despaired!" Luna stood and flailed her forelegs, then trotted to Elsa and closed her eyes, her nostrils flaring with a deep inhalation. Her wings lifted a few inches off her flanks.

"Not everyone can be good at everything. Hungry?" Elsa held her breath, hoping the answer would be—

"Famished," Luna said, her eyes still closed. "That smells wonderful. The vanilla extract is most appealing to me. I also scent cinnamon."

Elsa ladeled batter into the iron and closed its lid. Sizzling and the smell of the browning waffle filled the kitchen.

I'm too tall, Elsa decided, and looked around for a stool. The conversation would be better if she wasn't looking down at Luna the whole time. There were two stools on the far side of the kitchen. Elsa took a step toward them—

—the stools teleported across the room.

Luna flapped and landed on her stool, sitting on her haunches with her forehooves planted between her inner thighs. Her tail wrapped around her hooves.

"That's impressive magic," Elsa said, sitting down and crossing her legs, hands folded in her lap. They looked into each other's eyes, now perfectly level, the stools having raised Luna's height and lowered Elsa's.

Luna tapped her horn. "'Tis trivial for an alicorn to teleport an object," she said.

"Teleportation..." Elsa said. "I'm envious that you grew up somewhere sorcey wasn't something they burned at the stake."

"'Magic,' not 'sorcery.' Sorcery has such ugly connotations."

Elsa nodded.

"Not all ponies have such magic, of course. Teleportation is a rare gift, indeed." A pause, and she lowered her eyes to the floor, whispering: "Would you believe I was born a pegasus, and came into my horn and my magic as an adolescent? In human terms I would have been... oh, thirteen, call it. Adolescent physically, but mentally still a child."

"Is that common?" Elsa asked. "To gain a horn? Sorc—magic?" Her eyes widened as she realized that, for the first time in her life, she was conversing about magic with another person, as she might converse about cooking with the chefs. This was someone who cast spells with the same nonchalance as breathing. Someone who might even... understand?

"Nay," Luna said, frowning. "There are but three alicorns in the world, discounting fossils, although we anticipate that my sister's student will soon... oh, never mind." She waved a hoof.

Elsa's heart raced and her hands grabbed her braid, nervously stroking down it, then moving back to its top to stroke again. "What was it like to learn magic? Did you have teachers?"

Luna's face darkened, like a moon suddenly eclipsed. "No. I ascended during the time of famine and chaos, of strife, already orphaned, living in a camp. I was under the guardianship of a cousin barely an adult herself, and overwhelmed with the care of the infants. The other teens and I, unsupervised, were the terror of the other refugees."

"Refugees?"

Luna rubbed the tip of her nose with a hoof. "Dark days, long forgotten. Thank goodness."

"No teaching at all?"

"My third cousin, Ceres. He was a unicorn, half a year younger than I. He taught me what magic he could, but a child of no great talent or education himself, tutoring a child who has gained unwilling demigodhood..." Luna shrugged her wings. "A most embarrassing incident occurred, and our lessons ceased. Our friendship ceased. We had been betrothed as infants, but with our parents dead, it was no longer binding. We never spoke again." Luna sniffled and wiped her nose with a wingtip.

"I'm sorry," Elsa said.

"I miss him." Luna blinked several times. "He was my best friend."

Elsa opened the waffle iron slightly, peeking in at the batter. Not done yet. "How do you like your waffles?"

"Still moist," Luna said.

"Did Celestia have the same problem? Suddenly a horn, suddenly strong magic?"

"No, thank the moon. My sister was born a unicorn, and was educated from early foalhood. Before the deaths of our parents, the best tutors in the world came to Celestia."

If only there had been tutors here, Elsa thought, biting her lip. Mother and father would certainly have sent for them.

"To come into my magic, magic of apocalyptic power, as a teenager subject to the whims and hormones of that age... it drove me to my wits' end. I damaged so many things, both inanimate and living." Luna sighed and ruffled her feathers. "Fifteen hundred years later, I still am the humiliated teenager, and not the regal princess, in the private corners of my mind."

Elsa closed her eyes, breathing deeply. "I understand. I nearly killed my sister. I was tiny, a spell went wild, struck her in the head. Then, last year, again, but in her heart. I always tried to conceal my magic, but it comes out, eventually."

Luna's horn glowed. A soft smell of calming lavender filled the kitchen, mixing with the scent of the waffles and woodsmoke. "I can commiserate. Believe me."

"I do." Stroking her braid, Elsa asked, "If you don't mind me asking..."

"My cousin?"

Elsa nodded. Luna ruffled her feathers again, along with an ear flick, and Elsa wondered exactly what her body language meant.

"'Tis a story of embarrassment, mostly. Six or eight months after my horn came, I accidentally discovered my ability to enter dreams. I was of the age when young mares think with the amorous places under their tail, not with their heads."

Eyes widening, Elsa clapped her hands over her mouth. "Did you have a dream about him?"

"Worse," Luna said, with a shake of her head and a small frown. "He and I went to my sleeping bag, and we had each other's innocence. Such was the way in the camp, with no adult supervision. I unwittingly sent the sights, sounds, and sensations of that night to every sleeping pony within two hundred leagues. Much bedding was washed the next morning."

"That hardly seems fair, for him to disown you."

"His performance was... entirely brief and unsatisfactory. He was deeply chagrined."

"Oh." Elsa leaned forward, reaching out a hand, and hesitated. Her instincts had been to pat Luna's shoulder, but this was a pony, and what could she... what was offensive, what was a violation of personal space, what was an insult?

Would Luna even want to be touched?

Her hand remained there, a few inches from Luna, the air between them dead silent except for the sizzling of the waffle.

Luna dipped her head and brought it up under Elsa's hand, and closed her eyes. Elsa rubbed the mane just behind Luna's horn, and then scratched her ears. "Our betrothal had been my one constant, my one touchstone, my one bridge to a future of hope, in that era of sorrow. And then, because I wanted my lust slaked, it was gone."

"My sister and I," Elsa said, scratching the other ear, "we were so close. When my magic came, when I hurt her and we hid my magic from her, well! I lost not just my sister, but my only friend. I'm thankful we've patched that up, now."

"You are fortunate, and it makes me glad to hear that my story is not repeated." Luna purred and rubbed her left ear against Elsa's hand. "Being out of Equestria is nice. I must maintain a regal mien at home. 'Twould be a scandal if I was seen to allow my ears to be scratched like a pet! But... I appreciate it, Elsa."

"It's just us tonight. Everyone else is asleep."

"Indeed?" Luna crossed her eyes and lit her horn with a soft blue glow. "No. Twelve of your guards are awake, and four of mine. Two chambermaids play dice, awaiting summons. Your sister—yipe!" Luna jerked upright, breaking contact with Elsa's hand, and her deep blue eyes widened to half the size of her face. She covered her snout with her forehooves and blushed.

Elsa leapt to her feet, knocking the stool over. "What? What about my sister?"

Luna levitated Elsa's stool back into place and smiled. "Your sister and my aide, Sunburst, are both awake. Together."

"What? Where?"

"In her bedchambers."

"What are they doing?" Elsa said, frowning but sitting back down. "She knows I'm handling the negotiations and formalities."

"They are engaged in informal negotiations," Luna said.

Elsa plated the now-golden waffle, spreading whipped cream before giving it to Luna. After pouring a second batch of batter onto the hot iron, Elsa said, "I do not approve of her going behind my back with your delegation. Did you put your assistant up to this?"

"I assure you," Luna said around her first bite of waffle, "his activities are freelance. This tastes wonderful!"

"Well," Elsa grumped, "what are they discussing?"

"Few words pass between them."

"Charades? Anna loves charades."

"Much gesturing and non-verbal communication occurs," Luna confirmed. "This waffle is exquisite. My sister is a chef of great skill, and you give her competition."

"Thank you. What are Sunburst and Anna doing, then, if not undermining our negotiations?"

Luna closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "They make great strides forward in the relationship between our races and nations."

Elsa stared at her. "I'm simply not understanding. You're implying something, but I'm not getting it."

"Sunburst," Luna said, "is pounding his erect penis into the depths of your sister's welcoming vagina."

"Oh." Elsa sat very still for a few minutes. Luna finished her waffle.

Luna cocked her head to the side, horn glowing brighter. "Sunburst is now ejac—" Her spell collapsed. "I shall cease checking on them, and respect their privacy."

They sat in silence for a short while longer, Luna levitating up the plate to lick it clean. Elsa opened the waffle iron.

As Elsa plated her own waffle, she asked, "Is my sister having fun?"

Luna put her plate down, licked a last dollop of whipped cream off the tip of her snout, and smiled. "Yes! Sunburst is a skilled and sensitive lover. Your sister shall be spoiled henceforth."

The first bite of waffle, hot but soaking with chilled whipped cream, melted in Elsa's mouth. Wow, that was good. The tartness of the strawberries contrasted with the fatty cream. Her eyes closed and she nodded happily. After swallowing, she said, "Well, Anna has always been a bit... pent up... but I haven't suggested she take her beau as a lover, because a Royal pregnancy would have been a scandal. Perhaps a pony is the correct compromise...?"

"I've experienced Sunburst myself, many times. Anna shall be most relaxed tomorrow, although probably limping. He is disproportionate, in certain respects."

Elsa's smile disappeared. "I see..."

"We are in no relationship," Luna said, flapping her wings. "He is more than free to take whomever he chooses, even if he's one of my favorite stallions."

Elsa cocked an eyebrow. "Favorite stallions?"

Luna met her eyes for several seconds. Then, "I find my mares much harder to choose favorites among."

"Is that... common?" Elsa asked. "In Equestria? To take lovers of both... both..."

"Yes," Luna said. "Ponies' relationships are their own business. Nopony else dares comment on one's choices, if the pony, or donkey, or griffon, or what-have-you they choose is kind and treats them well."

Elsa chewed her waffle, slowly cleaning her plate. She used a finger to collect the last few crumbs and bits of strawberry, and then sucked on her finger, eyes narrowed and staring into space.

Eventually, Elsa whispered, "I didn't know it was physically possible for ponies and humans..."

Luna shrugged her wings. "Both species are intelligent and amorous. Ways can be found. Man and mare is easiest, I am told, but stallion and woman is not so difficult, either."

"Told?"

"I have never experienced a human," Luna said. "I've experienced hippogriffs, griffons, deer, kirin, and donkeys. The races that talk and think will always find a way to express their physical affection, when there is mutual desire."

Experienced? Elsa thought. Luna's language was so archaic. "My position in the Palace means I've never been with a man."

"I cannot say I am surprised. Royalty often must sacrifice their own desires for the good of the realm. My sister is celibate, much to her regret. Equestria would benefit if she could relax."

"I can't imagine what that's like," Elsa said with a frown.

"I once recommended Sunburst to Celestia, but because he was previously a student at her school, she found my suggestion offensively unethical. Then she declared she was married to Equestria and bapped me over the head with her newspaper."

"I've also never been with a woman," Elsa said.

Wings shuffled. Feathers ruffled. "Indeed?" Luna asked.

"Hypothetically," Elsa asked, "could a stallion and a man... or a mare and a woman?"

"Both have precedent."

Elsa wiped up spilled flour and drips of batter with a wet towel, then washed her hands at the sink. "Let's get these strawberries back in the freezer."

"Freezer?" Luna said. "Magic, I presume?"

Elsa held her left palm upward. Snowflakes swirled above it, rainbows flickering as the ice crystals caught the light of the lanterns. "It's how we can have strawberries this time of year. And many other sweet treats."

"Please show me your magic."

Luna followed the human across the castle's kitchen. Elsa wore a filmy nightgown, and the movement of her buttocks underneath the pale-green silk drew Luna's eyes.

This young queen was not so different from Luna herself. Magic that burgeoned as a teen, the accidents and incidents. Friends and family injured, the blossoming self-hatred.

Bitter memories crashed down on Luna. At least Cadance... like Luna, Cadance had been born a pegasus, but Celestia took her under her wing the very day she ascended, tutored her vigorously for years, herbs and spells dampening her magical surges, saving Cadance from the mistakes Luna had made fifteen hundred years before. Twilight would ascend soon, any day now, but she already knew control, not even twenty but already wielding her magic like a scalpel, trained from her earliest formative years in Celestia's school.

It seemed, thank goodness, that Equestria would never leave an adolescent alicorn to her own devices again, Luna the last to ever have suffered that fate. So strange to have to go to the human lands to find someone who understood that particular pain... This human, so far as Luna knew, was the only other being in the history of the world who had tasted Luna's own mistakes and pains; who had been cursed with power but not control; whose lessons were measured in regrets, disasters, and injured family.

"How do you think Anna and Sunburst are... progressing?" Elsa asked.

"I shan't check in on them again," Luna said. "Sunburst is my friend, and his lovers are his private business."

Elsa reached a heavy stone door on rollers, and leaned her full weight against an inset steel handle. Her leg muscles stood out through the filmy silk of the ankle-length nightgown, and her arms tensed.

Nipples, too, pressed against the silken fabric. This reminded Luna that humans kept their mammaries in an odd place, but it certainly had its... aesthetic advantages.

Her tail lifted, and she forced it back down, cursing herself for stupidity. This was a diplomatic mission, not a drunken vacation to Las Pegasus!

"Heavy... stupid... door..." Elsa grunted.

"May I?"

"No magic," Elsa warned, wagging a finger. "It's lined with sky-fallen iron, to keep the spell in. Magic will rebound on you."

Luna's heart stuttered and her ears drooped. Meteoric iron? The humans knew that much magic? Indeed, this mission had paid for itself already, just from that little tidbit! Magic was Equestria's ace in their deck, and ponies needed to stay ahead of the humans' knowledge of it to ensure no nation tried anything untoward...

Filing away that fact for later, Luna nosed Elsa out of the way, pushing her snout against Elsa's left thigh. The silkenness of the nightie and the smoothness of the skin under it rubbed against the peach-fuzz softness of Luna's nose, and Elsa squeaked.

The smell of Elsa filled Luna's nose, and inflamed her sensitive olfaction. The human smelled good, absolutely enticing...

Dammit! No! Celestia would send her back to the moon. Or to the sun, perhaps, if the mission failed because Luna—

Standing on her rear hooves, wings flared, Luna pushed the door open. Frosty air billowed out and fog swirled around them.

"I'm not familiar with your species," Elsa said, "and forgive me if this is forward, but you seem very athletic."

The door slammed fully open, seating into its alcove. A dull clang echoed through the basement kitchen. Luna dropped to all fours. "My foalhood was during a famine, so I've remained in the habit of light meals and heavy exercise. My duties as a princess also require a high degree of... physicality? At least once a month, I am out of the Palace, rehoming a manticore or hydra to the deep wilderness, away from my subjects' villages."

Luna trotted into the freezer, looking at the shelves upon shelves of delicacies. Her breath fogged.

"We won't stay long," Elsa said. "You must be cold."

Luna began to chuckle, which turned into belly laughs. She sat down, her rump on the freezing stone of the floor, and wrapped her forelegs around her ribs, tail thrashing and wings spasming out of time with each other.

Elsa put the container of strawberries on a shelf, crossed her arms, and frowned. "I don't understand what I said that was so funny."

After wiping her eyes with a wingtip, Luna said, "I spent one thousand years on the moon, caught between alternating raw sunlight and interstellar cold. Surely a kitchen freezer is nothing compared to the black hellscape of the eternal void, where the last gasp of air trapped in my lungs hath frozen into ice harder than granite?"

Elsa's eyebrows rose. "Oh." She tapped her front teeth with a fingernail. "Oh. You... you don't mind the cold?"

With a smile, Luna lit her horn. The blue glow lit the fog from the inside, and she flapped, hovering a few inches above the floor. Her eyes closed as she drew together both pegasus and unicorn magic, combining water from the air with cold from the dark face of the moon, alicorn magic binding the disparate spells together into one...

Her hooves dropped back to the floor and she opened her eyes. Held in her cobalt aura was an ice sculpture, about ten inches tall, of Elsa and Anna standing next to each other, hugging, smiling forward.

Elsa's hands shook as she took the sculpture from her levitation and turned it around. "It's... it's flawless," Elsa said. "It's like looking at my sister, or into a mirror. You have such control over ice?"

Her wings shrugged. "Not nearly so much as you," Luna said, "But enough for a parlor trick like this. My magic appears broader but shallower than yours."

Elsa's eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat as Luna talked. She swallowed several times, her teeth grinding. She looked at the pony, with her green-blue eyes and dark-blue coat... those eyes, as deep as the sea beyond the fjord. What laid behind those eyes? Wisdom and intelligence. Magic and power, but insight and... Elsa looked at the sculpture in her hands, and placed it safely on one of the shelves.

There was tremendous kindness behind those blue eyes, a kindness born of past cruelty, yes, but all the more sincere for it. Luna had recognized that nothing mattered more to Elsa than her sister, and chose a sculpture of the two of them together as the single gift that would strike Elsa's most effectively.

"Show me some magic," Elsa said. "Not ice magic, something I've never seen. Please?"

Luna cocked an eyebrow, then stood on her hind legs and pushed the door shut, her every muscle standing out, defined under her coat, the lines as clean and sharp as a marble likeness of an ancient Greek goddess.

Of course, Elsa realized, this creature is more like a goddess than not. Fifteen hundred years old, but perpetually in the body of youth, wise beyond centuries and powerful beyond legends.

The door slammed, and they stood in darkness.

Elsa rubbed her eyes.

Over the course of several minutes, the freezer went from pitch black to dimly lit. Above her, where she knew the stone ceiling had to be, glowed a soft starscape. The constellations were different than Elsa remembered, but similar.

"Equestria's sky? You're rather south of Norway."

"Equestria's sky, of my foalhood. Fifteen centuries gone. Stars move, slowly."

"Luna, they're beautiful."

"I miss them. Here, let me make it more like Arendelle..."

The sky jumped into life, flowing sheets of aurora above them. Green, blue, red, and all the combinations thereof.

"The sky's awake..." Elsa whispered. "Luna, can you teach me such magic?"

"My sister would not approve, but I do not care. This embassy of mine is scheduled to last a month; today is but our first day. We have time to see if such lessons are possible, at least. Your magic may be too different than mine. Perhaps even orthogonal, if we are unlucky."

Elsa sat down on the floor, and then lay back, pillowing her head on her arms. Luna curled up, lying down next to her. The soft rustling of feathers was deafening in the stillness.

Elsa scooted a few inches, until their flanks touched. The pony's warmth suffused Elsa's left side. They both stared at the illusory sky.

"I love the aurora," Luna said. "We don't get it in Canterlot. Sometimes I will fly north to the frozen wastes and stand on a mountaintop, enjoying the night. The shimmering and the patternless regularity, the perfect randomness calm me. In the late hours just before dawn, when the dreamers are quieted but the sun has not yet arrived, the mistakes of my past come bitterly to me, and a distraction is welcome."

"I do the same thing, from the balcony of my room. When the memories..."

"I tried to darken the entire world," Luna whispered, her voice cracking. "With malice aforethought."

"I froze my entire kingdom." Elsa took her left hand from behind her head and extended it, touching Luna's wing. The feathers were cool in the freezing air, but after a moment the warmth beneath came through.

"Thine touch is... welcome," Luna said.

"You're dropping back into archaic speech."

"We... ahem, I, do that, what I'm discombobulated."

"Discombobulated?"

"You are unlike anycreature... anyone I have ever met before," Luna whispered. "To experience something wholly new after so many centuries of ennui..." The wings shrugged, and the sound of rustling feathers filled the room again.

A hoof gently touched Elsa's belly, and its warmth soaked through her silk nightie, and she felt warmth moving down toward...

"Luna?" Elsa asked.

"Yes, my friend?"

"Can I suggest something to alleviate your ennui? Something you said would be new to you?"

"What's that?"

"Teach me to make love."

The aurora flared noontime-bright for a moment as Luna's horn popped.