Awakening
Solocitizen
47th of Planting Season, 10,044 AC
“But I don’t want you to go!” Little Lumina stomped her hoof on the floor and shouted at her mother: “It’s not fair!”
Lumina’s mother set her bags down next to the door. She turned to her daughter and sat down next to her.
“I know it isn’t fair but I don’t have much choice.” She put her hooves around her daughter and pulled her in for a hug. “Listen, I know this is hard, but this is the way it has to be. And I’ll see you twice a month. I’m not leaving you, remember that, I’m not going to disappear on you. We’re going to see each other soon.”
“No, don’t go!” Lumina sobbed into her mother’s mane. “It’s not fair!”
“Hey, listen closely, I’ve got something to show you.” Lumina’s mother rearranged herself in an awkward position on the floor. “This is something you can do whenever you’re feeling upset. The way I’m sitting now is called the Lily Lotus Position, and sitting this way is the first step in clearing your head.”
Lumina picked her Twilight Sparkle doll off her back and sat down the same way as her mother.
“Next, you clear your mind and focus on a big bright light shining down into you.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Then you picture it shining through you and lighting all the dark places inside you up. You can do this anytime you’re in a troubling place in life.”
“And will that make everything better?” Lumina sniffled and picked up her Twilight Sparkle doll.
“No, it won’t, sweetie,” said her mother. “But it will give you a little peace away from your troubles and help you face them when you’re ready.”
Hoof steps pattered up from the nearby hallway. Lumina’s mother glanced in their direction, rose to her hooves in a hurry, and slung her bags over her back.
“I have to go now, but I’ll see you again on Saturday.” Lumina’s mother leaned in and gave her one last kiss. “I love you very much, sweetie.”
“I love you too, mommy.”
And with that she was out the door.
Her father stepped into the entranceway and stared at the door.
Lumina held her doll close, and didn’t cry, she kept the emotions in and bottled them up next to her heart.
“Come, Lumina, there is a lot we need to talk about.” Lumina’s father trotted off towards his office and the little filly followed.
The desk in her father’s office was ginormous, and adorned with model FTL ferries she was not allowed under any circumstance to touch. Her father lowered himself onto his big chair and propped his hooves up in an arch. With a flick of his horn, he motioned for his daughter to take the seat on the opposite side of his work desk. The sharp edges of the desk, the odor of laser scribed documents, and the ticking of the clock in the back provided her nothing but unease, so Lumina turned to her Twilight Sparkle for comfort and squeezed it tight.
“I know how difficult this is for you.” Lumina’s father spoke after a long time. “My parents -- your grandmother and grandfather -- separated when I was very young, right about your age, in fact. It was hard, yes, but I like to think I’m stronger from having gone through it. Your mother and I, we had our differences and we simply couldn’t remain together. I’ll tell you more about that when you’re older. The important thing is that we can get through this together, as a family.”
“And mommy?” Lumina asked.
Her father sighed and shook his head.
Lumina couldn’t help it; she broke down and cried, and cried, and cried.
“Oh sweetie.” Her father trotted over to her and held her close. “There, there, it’s all going to be alright.”
“No it’s not!” She pushed him away and bolted from her chair. “You’re a liar! And I hate you!”
Lumina galloped out of her father’s office and up to her room and slammed the door shut. With a scream, Lumina cast the Twilight Sparkle doll off her back. She kicked and she stomped and she yelled until the stuffing was as lumpy as her father’s icky mashed potatoes.
“I trusted you." Lumina wiped her eyes dry.
She gave the doll one last kick, just for good measure.
After a few minutes of staring into her floor, she got out her storybook, and with the help of her Reading Learner, she started reading at the beginning of the first story, and she didn’t stop reading until she turned the last page.
A vivid image of Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony stretched out over the fancy end page. They stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, with Princess Luna and Princess Celestia rounding out the middle ground. The background itself was an illustration of a library with massive stain windows running across the walls; it looked like someplace in Canterlot Palace, but Lumina had studied every image in the book, and found nothing that quite matched it.
At some point, Lumina fell asleep, with her book open to the image of the library.
* * *
“Lumina, wake up,” the voice of a mare called to her. “It’s not time for you to sleep.”
Though her words never rose above a gently whisper, the raw authority behind the voice snapped Lumina awake in a heartbeat. She pulled her head out from between the pages in her book, and glanced around for the source.
“Twilight Sparkle, is that you?” she asked.
“No, I’m not Twilight Sparkle.” The voice chuckled ever so slightly. “But she’s over here, if you’d like to see her.”
Swirling mist ebbed and flowed out of the crack between her door and the floor, and with it came light, pure and jovial in its color. It called Lumina closer, and she ventured toward her door. Her hoof falls fell in silence on the hardwood floor.
She stood before her door, debating whether or not to take the final step and let it in. The light poked through the crevices in her doorframe as radiant pillars.
The second Lumina put her front hooves on the doorknob and turned it open, the door flung out into a place straight out of fairy tale. Bookshelves, filled end to end with every conceivable manner of written text ran in rows further than her eyes could see. Walls reached up into blue sky before fading away entirely. Music crept into Lumina’s ears, and the smell of old books tickled her nose.
She slammed the door shut. If the library was real, and not some dream, it’d still be there when she opened it again. Lumina grinned and giggled and threw the door wide open.
That time the light was gone, and the music had disappeared, and in their place were the khaki walls of her house. She didn’t give up, and tried opening and closing her door for a long time. Calling out to the mare on the other side didn’t work either, and after a while Lumina gave up.
She hung her head, crawled into bed, and went to sleep.