Intoxicating Innocence

by Celly Da Pancake

Someplace new

Previous Chapter

Breath.

In and out, in and out.

It felt natural. A feeling that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Something had changed. What was it? She didn’t know.

She opened her eyes and grey met it, happily. Why was it happily? Grey wasn’t the last color she remembered seeing, and that was a good thing, somehow. The other colors weren’t as good. They weren’t nice. They promised bad things.

The grey belonged to stone, and the stone belonged to a wall. The wall was everywhere, like a box. A relatively large box, but much smaller than the last place she had been. That place was like a box too, but also unlike a box in every conceivable fashion. It was so unlike a box that she wondered why she made the comparison in the first place, but then she remembered: boxes held things. The last place held her too, and she couldn’t get out of it. But somehow, she did, for she wasn’t there now. Somehow, she got out of that box, and if she could get out of that box, she could get out of this one.

Standing up, she surveyed her box. She wasn’t the only thing in it. Light shone through the shattered ceiling, illuminating all. There were tables scattered around and banners, yellow and blue, sun and moon, that hung above the exits. Hallways branched out, leading into the unknown, some collapsed by stone, others, engulfed by darkness. She had a sneaking feeling that they led to more boxes.

She took a step. It was her first step in this new place—her first step in a long time, apparently. A voice within her yelled that this was monumental. In an effort to determine whether the voice was telling the truth, she unlocked a memory. It wasn’t recent, for it wasn’t in the last place, which she had been in for a long time.

No, it was in this place. This… castle. In fact, it was in the very box she was in right now. Purple eyes, a white coat, a flowing mane. A pony. Finally, she had something concrete to base something off of. She was a pony, and the white one was a pony like her.

There was a yellow beam. “Luna!” something screamed—the white one, most likely. When it reached her, it burned. It burned terribly, and then, there was only darkness.

Luna. The white pony had called her Luna. Was that her name? Was that the name of the yellow beam? Perhaps an abstractive profanity, loosed from frightened lips at the pure brightness of the beam?

What did it all mean?

Luna frowned. She would try to find out, as soon as she found her way out of this castle.

She searched her memories once more, hopeful to find something of use, and find something she did. The memories of the time before the last place were surprisingly forthcoming, but when she tried to think of what was in the last place she had been, or what she had been doing there, or even how she got there in the first place, she came up blank. Not because the memories weren’t there, but because there was a wall in front of them. There was a box. It held the memories, and stopped her from seeing them.

Fuck boxes.

“...Fuck boxes?” Luna said aloud, flinching at the sound of her own voice, as it bounced heavily off the walls. That wasn’t her thought. But, if it wasn’t her thought, who’s thought was it? She wasn’t sure but she found herself nodding in agreement.

FUCK BOXES!” She said again proudly, because boxes seemed for all intents and purposes to be the bane of her existence. It was loud though, as though her voice had listened to her emotions and flipped into a vocal range more befitting of it. Curious.

Shaking her head, she foraged onward, navigating her way through the castle using the old memories to determine her way. Every box she went through, unlocked more and more memories, to the point where she learned that the boxes were actually not called boxes, but instead, rooms. Such a silly little detail, but she shelved it, along with many others in her exponentially growing collection of memories.

She was Luna. Luna was a princess, and so was the white pony. Luna’s job was to raise the moon and stars every night, and then, when the night ended, she would lower the moon, and her sister, Celestia, would raise her sun.

It was nearing night time. Luna knew because the sky was getting darker.

“Where is the ceiling?” she asked curiously, but nobody responded, not even the owner of the foreign thought from before. It must have gone away. The walls had gone away too.

She turned around, and the gaping wound of an entrance into the castle met her. Apparently, she was in the outside now. How had she not noticed?

Fuck boxes, the thought went again, but this time, Luna didn’t respond.

The outside was filled with noises. Chirping, howling, growling, and everything in between, they assaulted her ears in cacophony.

Luna frowned again. Why was everything so loud? It wasn’t supposed to be this loud and the memories agreed with her. Shaking her head, she turned her gaze back to the sky. Dusk, another memory said. It was dusk.

Raise the moon, several memories said at once. Right. Luna was supposed to raise the moon every night, and because she was Luna, that meant it was her duty to raise the moon.

Instinctually, her horn lit up and energy channeled through it. She looked for the connection. There should’ve been one, if the memories were correct.

She found it quickly, but there was something else as well. Another presence that had latched itself onto the connection.

Her anger was profound. Who was messing with her moon? With ease, she batted the other presence away.

Fuck boxes, the thought said again, and this time, she told it to shut up. Now was not the time.

Her memories did the rest of the work. Her horn began to become so bright, that she had to shut her eyes, as it was surely as bright as the stars she was raising, and for the first time in over a thousand years, the moon and stars rose into the Equestrian sky, guided by the magic of the Princess of the Night.


Author's Note

Sequel to be expected. This is just the beginning.