Dark Paradise: the TwiLuna Group Collab

by Habanc

Impossible Annoyance - TheLastBrunnenG

Written by: TheLastBrunnenG

"Impossible!" Luna growled as her hoofstamp echoed through the vast gold-domed cavern of the Royal Observatory. "A pox on the entire Astronomers' Guild!" As she sat snarling over a tangle of charts and reports a tiny voice broke the midnight silence behind her.

"Everything okay, Luna?" came the small and trembling words.

Luna's ears perked and she sat bolt upright before snapping her head around. "Twilight Sparkle?" She took a few trotting steps to meet the diminutive unicorn as the barest of grins rose on her muzzle and faded as quickly as it had come. "Yes, I - no, Twilight. I am frustrated. Annoyed, in truth."

Twilight shifted on her hooves, the weight of a heavy saddlebag dragging her aside. She glanced out the observatory's open dome, past the great brass telescope that dominated the room and into the star-strewn night. "Still trying to fix the stars?"

Luna nodded as her nostrils flared. "Indeed. Upon my return I found my precious stars scattered 'cross the heavens, my own skies barely familiar. 'Twas but two short years ago, and e'en now the task eludes me." She stalked across the room, Twilight in tow, and settled to her haunches on the observatory's balcony, now open to the evening air. "Verily, I cannot blame my dear sister. She was much occupied with sundry more pressing tasks, and tried her best with unfamiliar stars. With her attentions elsewhere, the state of Equestrian astronomy fell to disrepair. Neither can I blame the Guild, I suppose, for they could not rightly be expected to investigate stars whose movements may change year to year, or night to night, as Celestia's attentions waxed and waned."

"Speaking of which," Twilight muttered as she sat down by Luna and set aside her saddlebag, "where are the Royal astronomers, anyway? The staff said I'd find you here, but on a perfectly clear night like this I expected they'd be fighting over the telescope."

"Gallivanting about Canterlot on account of some holiday or another, it seems." Luna snorted and silence crept over them as Twilight seemed to shrink back a little. She shook her head and pointed a hoof at the star-marked saddlebag. "So what's this burden you've brought tonight, Twilight?"

A soft magenta glow from Twilight's horn opened the saddlebag and lifted from it a heavy tome, thicker than her hoof and plain-bound aside from a pair of stars stamped on its cover. "This is…" she began, her voice mouse-quiet and faltering. "I, um, I brought this for you." She levitated the book toward the alicorn and deposited it feather-gentle at her hooves.

Opening the book in her own indigo magic, Luna sifted through page after page packed with charts, diagrams, and notes in a script both dense and precise. "Star charts?" she asked as she ran a hoof over the reams of data, "and… more, it seems?"

"A chart of stellar drift over the last thousand years," Twilight said softly. "I dug up old star charts from the Archives and compared them with observations over the last thousand years. I sorted them by magnitude and spectral class, starting with the brightest. Using this, you should be able to restore most of your stars to their correct positions relatively quickly." A smile almost dared its way across her face before she looked quickly down and away. "At least, the first thousand or so. That’s as far as I got."

"The impossible seems suddenly less so," Luna said quietly as she slowly closed the book and eased a hoof across its cover. "Twilight, this book represents hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours' work. All of this you did… just for me?"

Twilight inhaled deeply and bit her lip. Looking up to meet Luna's eyes with her own, she whispered, "Happy Hearts and Hooves Day, Luna."

Comments

[Skeeter The Lurker]

What a sweet little gift for her.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[PonyJesus]

Of all the chapters thus far, this one contains the most d'aawww. I like it!

[Loeden]

Brilliant. Just.. Beautiful. D'awww!

[Vermillion Prose]

First story in the set to make me d'aww. Bravo!