Uneasy Lies the Head

Celestia slumbered, drawing deep snores that could be faintly heard by the guards standing just outside her chambers. Her covers had been put somewhat askew from writhing in her bed during the night, and the light shining in through the large glass windows along the wall stretched across her shape, plastering her shadow along the floor and up the wall. She rolled over and faced the ceiling, slowly allowing her eyes to creep open.

Suddenly, a stern hoof threw open her chamber doors. The great gates swung upon their hinges, crashing loudly into the walls and then somewhat pathetically wobbled back shut as an annoyed Princess Luna stepped in, completely awake.

"Sister! Rise from your nightly grave; your duty is upon you." Luna bellowed as she walked over to Celestia's bedside. She lowered her mouth down to Celestia's ear. "I am getting very tired of waking you up every morning. Your childish tendency to sleep well in is most unprofessional."

Celestia lazily tumbled over onto her right side away from the door and yanked a sheet to her face. "-and sister, your tendency to yell is most unbecoming. I will be awake shortly."

The covers were yanked violently from the bed and strewn across the floor of the room, taking with them a few of the small objects placed upon the chest at the bottom of the bed. Trinkets clattered to the floor as the blanket slid to the wall.

"No! You are going to wake up and get ready." Luna leaned down towards her and got closer to her ear. "Now!" She prodded Celestia in the back with her horn.

Celestia jumped away from the prodding, scooted over, and rolled off of the edge of the bed allowing her momentum to carry her body upwards after her hooves hit the ground. She groggily walked over to the window and viewed herself in its reflection. Using her magic, she lifted her brush up off of the nearby table and began brushing her mane as she stumbled back to the bed, lifting the water glass on the night-stand to her mouth.

"If waking me up frustrates you so, Luna, I don't see why you continue to do it." She indignantly turned away from Luna and put her nose up. "Every princess needs her beauty sleep."

Luna stomped her hoof on the ground and angrily jumped forwards.

"And every kingdom needs her ruler. That is you during the day, and sleeping all after-"

"-noon won't make any of that- so on and so forth," Celestia finished, and then sipped her water once more. She placed the glass back on the nightstand and walked over to the dresser in the corner, lifting her necklace from it and placing it around her neck. "There is a time to be serious, sister, but surely you know it is not always. Equestria is not in an urgent state of affairs and so I do not wake with urgency. Allow your mind to rest."

She turned back to the nightstand and stared for a moment, then opened the top drawer, then the one below. One by one she opened the drawers, then the small box on the floor to their right. She pushed the box against the wall with her front hoof and began looking frantically around the room.

Luna laughed, and then said, smugly, "Misplaced something, sister? Are you but a filly again, unable to account for her things?"

Celestia shot her a harsh look and continued ransacking her chambers. She pulled back the mirror and the nightstand.  She pulled out the books on her book-case. She looked underneath the bed.

"Have you seen my crown, Luna?" She looked up at her sister, her mane once again completely mussed up.

Luna let out another small laugh, and then said, "A crown is a princess' own responsibility, sister. I am not the keeper of your crown."

Celestia leaned across the bed. "This better not be a trick, Luna. You better not have hidden it. This isn't a game. That crown is more important than you know."

Luna leaned towards Celestia the same small amount and stared back at her. "Well, excuse me, your royal-"

Princess Celestia placed her front hoof over Luna's mouth. "I'm serious Luna. We can't let that crown go missing." She removed her hoof and stared at Luna for a moment, and then she walked towards the window yet again, looking out over her kingdom. It was a beautiful kingdom, indeed. The great spires standing from the castle walls. The ponies going about their daily business, like ants all working in a giant hill towards the greater good.

She turned back to her sister. "That crown was forged before our time and contains one of the greater secrets that remains unknown to most of Equestria. We can only hope it stays that way. We must find it. Immediately."

Luna said nothing, but now nodded.

Celestia walked a small circle around her bed and arrived at Luna's side. "Do you remember what father told us?"

Luna lowered her head. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

Celestia shook her head. "He told me, 'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.' We must find it, sister. We must find it quickly."

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A young filly marched proudly along the sidewalk. Her lavender, unevenly cut mane flapped in the breeze as she trotted, occasionally threatening to blind her by falling over her luminescent blue eyes. She smiled occasionally to those that she passed, revealing her front, buck teeth, holding in them a small bag filled with vegetables. The bag flopped against her chest, shining in the sun reflecting off the front of her pink coat.

She had just finished her biweekly spending of the ever growing collection of abandoned coins. Every day, she spent a certain amount of time wandering the busy streets of Ponyville and its market stalls, looking for dropped bits lying in the dust. Ponies could be so careless, they'd sometimes leave bits lying right on the edge of the picnic tables in the area, or simply drop them on the ground without even turning back.

Little Sunny Day, however, never, ever dropped a bit. Every bit, to her, was her ticket to food the next day. Her ticket to necessities. Her only ticket to life.

She lived on the outskirts of the Everfree by herself, hunkering under a small cloth tent pitched against the side of a large tree, hidden from the civilized world. That was the place she had learned to call home. She was headed there now, to store her new found bounty, and later, what would become her dinner.

But, as young Sunny Day walked along, luck would have it that she stamped down on something hard. She stepped backwards a little and looked down. A bit! Today really had been an extraordinarily lucky day!

Sunny gently laid down her bag and bent down to snatch the coin and, as she did, a flash of light blinded her right eye. She laid the coin in the bag and picked it up, then went to seek the source of the flash in the alley between the two buildings to her side. She looked around a bit to see if anyone was watching her, and entered the alley slowly. She squinted at the barely open dumpster, surrounded by a few abandoned cardboard boxes, in front of her. She climbed up onto the largest one near the dumpster's front side.

The dumpster groaned loudly as she pushed it open with her front hooves, revealing a small, purple, diamond shaped jewel resting atop an overturned basket.