A Kindred Spirit

If in the heart of a pony great

A lack of warmth does grow of late

Call upon this tome's power

To bring forth the one within the hour

Who may this sad wrong right

By bringing forth once more

Friendship's light.

I extracted myself from underneath the jack-suspended body of my prized vehicle, bucket of oil in hand. I had been replacing fluids again, a slow process, as I only wanted the best for my baby. I also took the opportunity to cleanse any wayward cakes of dirt or some such filthy substance that dare believe it could contaminate my beautifully poised and relentlessly reliable vehicle, for similar reasons.  The understated little 2 seater, being produced by the masters of understated performance vehicles, was becoming more immaculate by the day, and I took a certain pride in it.

The Honda S2000 I had acquired after much research was a car I dearly loved, with all the practicality and reliability you'd expect from Honda, as well as a window-licking insane, singularity-generating redline of 9,000 rpm and preposterous 240 horses from a 2 liter, naturally-aspirated inline 4--provided by the sorcery of their VTEC system--all coupled to the glorious 50-50 weight distribution chassis with absurdly low body roll and a snappy 6-speed manual gearbox.

Removing my car from the jacks and turning off the blasting mix of house and trance music so graciously provided by the wonders of internet radio, I made sure there was nothing else that needed to be done before she was ready to go in the morning. Since the evil forces of dirty oil, grease, grime, sludge, and general burned or powdered filth had accumulated on me after my ministrations of the underbody, I made the obvious decision to take a long, hot shower. With some Dawn dish soap.

Now I often use my long shower times to contemplate on... well, everything; so after a long and refreshing wash I step out of the steaming shower/bath combo free of general nastiness and instilled with what was sort of the other side of my proverbial coin of my personality. I dry off in the sauna of a bathroom and slip into some loose fitting clothes. I decide to step out into the cool night air.

I laid down on the thin bermuda grass lawn to admire the night sky. I had always enjoyed the night. The calm, cool, and quiet peace was of stark contrast to the busy, tiresome day, especially during the hot beginnings of a Texas fall. I laid down upon the lawn and gazed up at the night sky. The brightest stars were battling to keep visible amidst the strangely comforting pale glow of the full moon. I thought. I began to pick out some constellations, despite the bright white satellite of planet Earth. Continuing my contemplations on society & government, their general corruption, and what I, however bright and mentally age-accelerated, as a random Texas high school student, would solve these problems encompassing America & the world today.

I came to another obvious solution that the world was screwed. Morals will degenerate, virtues will be lost, people will rely on government to feed their lazy asses, all government will fall, anarchy and total savagery will ensue.

But then again, who the hell cares about what *I** thought?*

I almost laughed after screening horribly jaded internal rant. Besides, I was a citizen of this planet and had the ability to do my best as such. Besides, there's so much to learn, see, experience. I had a whole life ahead of me...

The night princess stood on her balcony, staring off into the cold depths of space. She stood, motionless, gazing into, but not at, another of the nights she had brought about.

Everywhere she had traveled these last couple of months, it was invariably the same.

Everypony locked their doors and hid, fearing for their freedom and families. A speech would be delivered on how their Princess of the Night had returned, and how she desired their love and admiration.

Not a single door opened. Total rejection.

From Fillydelphia to Appleoosa, it was always same. Arrive, everypony panics, hides, and doesn't open their doors.

"None of my subjects care about me..."

A single tear fell from her shining sky blue eye.

"Sister, you must stop," crooned a drowsy but concerned Celestia, now at her distraught sibling's side.

"How long must I wait, sister? How long until my people do not cower in fear at the sight of me?" Luna replied.

"Time will run it's course-" she began.

Luna's monumental patience had weathered since her return to the public eye, inexorably raveling down to the very last thread. The line finally broke.

"Time has flowed long enough! The waiting is unbearable, sister! Nopony, save you and a few select citizens of Ponyville, care for me! I wait for a thousand years to be released from the moon and from the grasp of the persona Nightmare Moon to see that the ponies of Equestria could care less about their princess! Is there not a single family that remembers how I cared for them, toiled to make the night skies as beautiful as they could be?!"

The normally placid and reserved night-mare was shaking with the release of months of pain and anguish, tears barely kept behind her anger.

Celestia was distraught. However much she loved her dear sibling, they were so different. They were polar opposites. And she couldn't relate to her sister's grief, her pain. She had never experienced that, and felt all the worse for it. Something lit up in Luna's face; Celestia knew her sister had come upon an idea, but what it could have been eluded her.

Her expression set like concrete. "If you will excuse me, sister..."

Luna left at a speedy but dignified gait.

The solar princess sighed. "Dear sister, what are you up to?"

Luna had an idea, and she needed to see if it had any credence. She hoped it did, or what was left of her steely composure would likely dissolve...

I need somepony to speak to, somepony that *understands** me... Celestia loves me to death, but she just doesn't get  me. Somepony who can look to me without dropping to their knees in fear or in royal reverence... and I don't know how to find that somepony myself.*

The princess of the night's soft hoofsteps echoed softly across the stone path to the doors of the Royal Archives. The guards at the door flinched in a very hard-to-notice manner, and their tone of voice in the respectful utterance of "Princess!" was laced with the slightest indications of fear. None of this was lost on Luna.

"At ease," she quipped, walking through the heavy doors cast open in her presence.

The metallic clinking of shodden hooves carried across the nighttime air of Canterlot Castle.

It isn't like the old times...

The guards at the threshold of the Royal Archives flinched nigh imperceptibly, opened the doors with a hardly visible haste, and hailed "Princess!" in a tone with only the slightest hint of fear. Not a bit of it was lost on Luna.

At this stage, the night-mare's glacial composure, normally as impossible to break as the mountains themselves, was barely held. The minute cues of discomfort in her own guards' actions was another wave dashing against the shattered rock.

Even these descendants of families who I was so close to before--almost familial with--have a frail trust of me at best. I know I must give them the time to let their trust build, their hearts open to me again; but I have not the patience or the stamina to expend on them now.

"At ease." Luna strolled through the open doorway.

"Hark, stewardess!;" she called the librarian to her aid. Although she knew Middle-Equestrian was no longer used, she felt comfortable speaking in the old tongue to the castle attendants. It helped here keep mind of the fact that there were many vestiges of the earlier times scattered about the castle.

A somewhat shaken-looking mare appeared from one of the many chambers of the Archive.

"Princess Luna! What is it that you require?"

"Greetings; dost thou have any tomes for the summons of a companion?"

The librarian looked a bit puzzled; this was an odd request from Luna. Usually a visit to the library would blow over with a requirement of the more recent astronomical research--which she always found lacking--and other general science material. However, Luna's expression remained stoic and unchanged.

"Well, Princess, that would depend on the sort of companion for which you are searching." She took another breath in preparation for another sentence, but Luna's frazzled state made her entirely impatient for this exchange.

"Of the intelligent sort, madam. One with thoughts, feelings, a heart of its own." Her words were more harsh than she wanted them to be, but she could hardly find the empathy inside to care at this juncture. This served to send the librarian into a state that involved thinking of the first and most relevant section of tomes to avoid at all costs seeing if the things that her imagination cooked up matched what actually happened when Luna got very short with a pony.

"A-Ancient scrolls, wing 1A, Starswirl the Bearded section!"

"I thank thee," Luna said tersely. She started for the section at the greatest speed she could whilst remaining dignified.

Recovering her wits enough to realize where she had just directed the princess to, the librarian wanted to warn Luna of the potential dangers of the section to which she had pointed out, but it was too late; Luna was already gone.

Luna stood before the tall shelves in one of the deepest sections of the archives. The sturdy oaken shelves that lined the chamber were filled with old and ornate scroll cases, but Luna cared only to find the one she was looking for; the one to ease her pain. The names of the scrolls were written on the ends of the cases, and all were written in ancient texts lost to most of ponykind. Luna wasn't one of those.

After a bit of searching, her eyes fell on a simple, silver case with several gold inlays snaking across the smooth surface, glinting in the moonlight from the glass roof.

"Awaken Friendship's Fire...

She removed the case from the shelf with a gentle tug of magic and released the cap. The smell of very old parchment wafted up to the princess' nose. Very gingerly, the scroll was removed and unrolled. The only description of the spell's purpose was a cryptic poem. Skimming it did not tell Luna what the spell actually did, however.

That's the problem with these old tomes. Powerful, absolutely, but they don't exactly come with a straightforward summary of what the damned thing *does. I don't have the patience to try to decipher this. I'm going to use it, **now, and it better work.*

Luna took a step back and settled into a comfortable standing posture. She inhaled, and with a small whiff of ozone, her horn lit with a sizable fraction of the power she possessed. The first strange, archaic word flowed over her tongue with perfect pronunciation, and the words written on the tome lit with a golden hue. As more were spoken, the text began to glow brighter and brighter, the soft gold color growing more prevalent by the second. Luna could feel the power siphoning off to the tome, and had to work up more power to keep it going. It had been a while since she'd pushed herself with a spell, and she found it exhilarating.

As her first breath was spent, Luna took another. This one was stinging with the acrid scent of ozone, and from experience she knew it could only get worse.

I should have done this outside, she idly noted.

The spell was about three-fifths completed, and yet again, after another few lines she found that the tome was lacking magical energy. She increased the output again, the magic around her horn having progressed to something akin to a healthy flame instead of the shimmering glow of, say, the usual telekinetic movement. The air was circulating around the tall chamber, the heat being generated rising to the roof and falling again. The convection current was getting to the point where the tome wasn't safe in the winds, threatening to tear the paper. Luna could not allow that. Holding the paper from all sides, the current was only getting worse by the second, until a squeak sounded at the roof of the chamber. Looking up as far as she dared, she could see that the skylights were formed in such a way so that they had hinges facing away from the dome, and the acrid, hot air had an escape from the room, and the cool night air had a way in.

The air of her night left the princess refreshed; a good thing, considering that the ever-growing magic demand had yet again outpaced Luna's supply. She only had a couple of lines left. Grunting, she decided to give it her all for the last lines. The emanations around her horn spiked from a furnace flame to something that looked like that of a jet exhaust, still growing until a deafening noise rattled off the stone walls. The blue hue of her magic had heated the air so much that a blue-white ball of plasma had formed, so bright that the Luna had to take a peek at the lines and then shut her eyes to protect them. Her alicorn body's defenses were doing all they could to prevent the relentless heat from scorching her, and she could only hope the expansion of the super-hot air would not damage the scrolls in the room.

With the sounding of the last syllable of the tome, all of the magic that had been poured into it released, something like a comet erupted from the paper. Luna had no idea what to expect. The object released from the tome paused a moment, and she heard these words:

"I see. Your will shall be done."

The comet-esque object rocketed toward the ceiling, dividing into eighths to fly through the venting skylight--which unfortunately still cracked the glass from the rapid expansion cause by the massive amount of heat--all under the eyes of a somewhat taken-aback lunar princess.

Even when spells speak, it's not like *that*... they don't deem you fit or unfit for what you've invoked them for; they just do it, no questions asked...

Although this was acknowledged by Luna, she did not let it take her attention; the extreme outpouring of magic had ended, and her horn, eardrums, and all other parts of her body not immune to ludicrous levels of heat and deafening roars thanked her for it. She relaxed, taking labored breaths while the cool night air dried the sweat she'd worked up.

It's been forever since I've pushed myself that hard...

Something that had been missing from Luna's face returned that moment before she retired with a flash of dark blue; for the briefest of moments, a genuine smile lingered.

After about 30 minutes of peaceful stargazing, I retired to my bedroom.

Flopping down on the bed in a totally graceless manner, I grabbed my laptop and headphones. Lifting the lid brought the pale blue light of the lock screen to my ink-dark bedroom. In a routine, I typed in my password and opened an incognito tab on Google Chrome, and proceeded to search for videos (and no, not those videos. Rather the opposite...)

A familiar scene straight of of the Girls' Show Ghetto bared itself before my eyes before being struck down with... well, with a rainbow, and some clouds, ironically.

Yeah, I was a closet brony.

Nobody knew, and nobody asked. I used to think bronies were weird, watching a TV show geared towards a predominantly single digit age group of young girls. I had grown up with a 11 & 12 year age gap between me and my half sisters (not that I ever used the fraction), and I probably owed a lot of my early maturity and my rather more sensitive side to that fact. As a curious person at heart, I eventually succumbed to the idea of seeing if I could find out what all the bronies thought was so great about this TV show, and decided to watch an episode. (where nobody could see me of course) It hooked me. It was not a girly girl show, as I suspected, but in fact, it could appeal to young boys as well. The characters were great. None of them were perfect, they all had strong and weak points, the personalities were well developed, though honestly the males could use a bit more representation. What I really loved, though, was that imperfect beings could live in a world where things were happy, and while enemies were powerful, not once did the ponies have to fight opression by their own society; there were no standards to be met, no judgements to pass on a person;(or, uh, pony) everybody (pony) was different, and it was celebrated.

After a few episodes, I closed the window, shut the lid on the laptop, and set it aside. After another consult of my trusty time-telling chronometer, the time was revealed to me as 11:11. I laid back, shut my eyes, and quickly dozed off to the comforting white noise of the ceiling fan to meet dreams of a less confused place.

I was laying on a cloud, my wings stretched out, limbs drooping, watching the endless night sky sprawl out above me. I was deeply relaxed, to say the least. The peace was far deeper than that of the one I had experienced earlier. This peace was all encompassing; I knew there were no issues of great importance to be worrying on. All of a sudden, one star drops from its high perch in the heavens. Another followed, and another, until a full fledged meteor shower was in action. I simply observe. The beautiful golden streaks dive into the atmosphere, never to return to the space from which it came; not any time soon, anyway. I notice a particular brilliantly bright meteor seem to get larger and larger, until I realize the obvious- *It was headed straight for me.** I try to move- this was no space pebble, it was a large stone, and I had no intention of getting struck down by a random visitor from the cosmos-- only to realize I can't move. Some unknown force had completely immobilized me. I struggle, but to no avail. I can feel the stirrings of a storm of panic rise in my chest. I had no intention of dying this way. I struggle some more. The panic has risen by now.*

The meteor becomes blindingly bright. I must shut my eyes. It strikes... and melts?

I wake to feel totally and utterly calmed again, and my fingers and toes tingling- like that of having them tingle from lack of blood flow, but deeper and not inherently uncomfortable. The sensation, to my surprise, did anything but subside. It began to spread up my hands and feet, crawl along my arms and legs, and continue the march up along my core. I had to see what this was, as it was honestly a little disturbing. This is the strangest... I lifted the covers. thing...

"Usually, arms and legs don't glow." I thought to myself.

The glow was a sort of golden-white sparkle; the earlier I had felt the sensation, the brighter the corresponding part of my body. It had also begun sort of "leaking" into my surrounding area.  Again I felt the stirrings of anxiety swirl in my mind-- only to be quelled. This must be the effect of whatever this is, I reasoned. Normally something like this would freak me out; maybe not an entirely bad freak out but...

Hush, mind. Pay attention. This command seemed to half originate from myself, and from whatever was sharing my skin at the moment. Reason told me that there was only my imagination to blame for that sense, but intuition was scaring me with the revelation.

The wave of... whatever it happened to be-- had made its way across my torso. I sensed that whatever this... well, this, was not malicious; it was in essence a... neutral thing. The golden glow made its merry way up my neck. Somehow, I got the oddest feeling I really should grab my laptop and phone on my bedside. I did.

The aura reached the crown of my head.

Everything started to lose focus; everything was becoming grainier except for my own body. It was like watching a TV screen fade from a clear picture to a snowy, static-y mess.

Ironically, the last thing I decided to do before (apparently) passing out was check my clock.

Midnight.