• Published 2nd Dec 2012
  • 21,969 Views, 2,588 Comments

Xenophilia: Further tales. - TheQuietMan

  • ...
133
 2,588
 21,969

PreviousChapters Next
41: And let me play among the stars.

And let me play among the stars.
Chapter published 31st Dec 2013


*****************************

December 1218 AC


As she slowly circled over the sleeping city of Canterlot, her mighty black wings outstretched as she allowed nothing but air currents to keep her aloft, Princess Luna took in the sights below her.

Yes, it was true that the city lacked the hustle and bustle in these wee small hours that it displayed during the day time, and yes, the streets were almost deserted, but that wasn't to say that there was no life to be found.

A thousand years ago a lazy midnight flight above any town or village would have revealed nothing but empty streets, all the nation’s citizens tucked away in their beds awaiting the return of her sister’s sun and the dawn it would bring with it.

But now, there was still life here; guards patrolled the cobbled street, keeping her subjects safe from harm; all-night eating establishments catered to those in need of their services, those either late to bed or early to rise; delivery ponies moved with purpose, carrying letters and parcels from sorting offices to distribution depots; late night revellers unsteadily made their way home, either to their own domiciles or to the homes of whatever new friend - or friends - they’d made this night.

As her meandering flight took her over the western quarter of the city, Luna spied a figure she knew quite well. Huddled on a large flat roof, swaddled as he was in a thick blanket, sat the nation’s only human.

Angling her wings for descent, the lunar princess silently cut through the city’s sky, her own ebony coat leaving her almost invisible against the black of the night.

Though she weighed much more than even the heaviest stallion, her touchdown made not a sound as her hooves came to rest on the roof just a few body-lengths behind her bipedal friend.

For a few moments she just stood there, observing the strange being before her; he had obviously pulled his long legs up in front of himself, wrapping the blanket around his entire form to make a lumpy fabric cone from the top of which only his head was poking out. He was just sitting there, his gaze wandering from the rooftops of the surrounding city to the moon high above them and onto the stars spread all across the sky.

After a few moments a hand reached out from within the mound of thick cloth, snagging a large hooch jar and lifting it to his face. As the human took a sip, the princess recognised the jar, it had been a gift from the Dodge family, as a gesture of appreciation for an assistance he had rendered to one of their own stallions some years ago.

“Greetings my friend,” she said softly, trying not the startle the human as he sat so close to the edge, “may I join you?”

As he turned towards his guest, recognition spread across his features and a smile came to his lips. Letting the jug rest on the roof, Lero patted the spot next to the edge of his blanket, inviting Luna to sit with him.

He did not stand for her as she joined him, she did not expect him to, they’d ignored such formalities for a few years now. Lifting the jug, he held it out to her, offering to share what he had in a gesture universal across almost all species.

“I don’t mind if I do,” Luna said as she slipped off a royal shoe so she could better grip the jug with a single forehoof - ‘tipping’ a jug of ‘shine with either magic or wingtips was not the done thing when your drinking partner could not do the same.

As it came closer to her face, she could see down into the jug’s neck, could gauge its weight. More than a third of the bottle was empty and with what she knew of the strength of Sweet Apple Shine - and she knew more about this subject than most - she was impressed that the human was still sitting upright.

As she put it to her lips, Luna’s alicorn senses could detect the faint warmth still residing around the jug’s mouth, sensing the lingering heat in much the same way that her sister would react to even the most feeble ray of light.

Her nose and her tongue were greeted by a number of subtle fragrances, cinnamon and nutmeg being the two that danced most for her attention. but the underlying taste was...

“Honey?” she asked, letting the liquid fire burn its way down her throat, smooth yet vicious all at the same time.

“Yep,” Lero confirmed, taking back the jug and taking a sip himself, “Honeysuckle left a barrel of it sitting just inside my workshop door a few months back. But by the time I’d turned around to see what the noise was all I could see was her tail disappearing off down the street.”

After taking another small sip he passed the jug over once more.

“She’s still not good at talking to me, but her and her sister leave little gifts at the ‘shop every now and again. I think it’s their way of trying to make amends.”

“Amends are good,” Luna nodded as she took another sip, savouring the taste, enjoying the sensation as it caused a single breath of night air to feel like flames around her tongue. “Even if the two of them cannot move forward, it at least shows that they are determined not to move backwards.”

For a few minutes the two of them sat in silence, swapping the jug back and forth between them while on the quiet streets beneath them the few denizens of city still going about their business at this late hour passed them by, completely unaware of the princess and the human sitting far above their heads.

“So,” Lero broke the comfortable silence, “no night court tonight?”

Luna sighed.

“No. Even now we still only receive enough petitioners to fill two sessions a week, three at the most. I have spent many hours this night playing cards with the court guards and I find I grow weary of working on the nation’s legal and tax reforms, no matter how overdue they are.”

Taking a much longer sip than before - a decent sized gulp almost - the night princess scowled at the city below them.

“So tell me, what keeps you up at this hour?” Luna asked as the ‘shine reaaally started to hit the spot. “Most of my subjects are fast asleep by this hour.“

“Can’t sleep,” Lero shrugged, “got a lot on my mind. Thought I'd come out and look at the stars. It’s a human thing, used to do it all the time back home. Even in your capital they’re much easier to see here that almost any human city - light pollution and all that.

“A lot of your stars are pretty similar to those back home.” Lifting a hand to the night sky he listed off some of those that he recognised, “Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Perseus. There might be a lot of constellations that don't match up but a whole lot of them are still the same. Pegasus for instance, all the same stars, except for Aegis. So I’ve been been sitting here, having a drink with Aegis. He’s my favorite - nice and bright, doesn’t ever twinkle and waver like the others do.”

“No, he didn't,” Luna agreed, a tinge of sadness to her voice, “he never wavered, never faltered.”

And he hadn’t, not even at the end. It was one of the things she’d loved about him.

Turning his head from the stars, Lero could see the pain of loss on his friend's face, the open wound in her heart that might never truly heal

“No, I bet he didn’t,” he agreed, turning back to the brightest star in his field of vision, “Here’s to ya, buddy, wherever you are.”

Lifting the jug he first held it aloft towards the stars then took a large swig, pulling air in around clenched teeth as the burn hit him, overwhelming his taste buds.

From where she sat, Luna smiled. A small melancholy smile but a smile none the less. What would her love have thought of her new friend? Would they have become friends themselves? She liked to think that they would have.

How different history could have been, had her life been touched by more like these two stallions - so different and yet so similar - all the way back then. Had she had just a few more good friends in her life, then the last thousand years could have been so different... for everyone.

“My dad taught me all the constellations when I was a kid.” Lero continued, as much to himself as to his companion, “He used to be in the navy before he met my mom so he knew them all. We used to go stargazing when I was younger, just me and him. We couldn’t really afford to go far or to buy much stuff but we still went. When I was small we’d go as far as dad’s shitty old truck could cover in a long weekend. When I was older, the summer before I went away for college, we travelled around europe together - backpacked for most of it. The two of us used to lay in fields in the middle of nowhere, sleeping under the stars; lush hillsides in the south of France, olive groves in northern Italy, listening to the Atlantic lapping against the great sandy beaches of Portugal. Just me and him, the stars and the moon; going nowhere and everywhere all at once.”

Taking another swig, the human pondered the half-full jug, wondering where most of his newest batch of shine had disappeared to when he hadn’t been looking.

“Heh, about the only thing we were missing was some zen and a motorcycle to tinker with.”

For a few moments silence reigned once more, the princess content to just listen whenever the human felt the need to speak. With his chin resting on top of his knees Lero’s eyes drifted to the moon, hanging proudly in the sky, emanating an air of steadfast majesty as it cast its silvery moonlight down upon the planet over which it eternally kept its nightly watch.

“Look at her,” he murmured quietly, “so similar yet so different... just as beautiful as her counterpart back home.”

Quiet or not, Luna’s enhanced hearing could pick up every word that he uttered. Whether it was the alcohol speaking she did not know, but she impulsively decided to make the human an offer.

“Would you like to go to the moon?” she said suddenly, “I could take you right now if you would like.”

Lero’s brain was taking a few seconds to catch up with that one. It sounded like the princess had just offered to...

“Really?” He asked, several parts of his brain reporting in to confirm that yes, that is what she’d just offered. “You can do really that?” Other, more sensible parts of his brain started to report in as well, “Won’t I suffocate?”

“Yes, yes and no.” Luna replied, “I am the embodiment of the moon after all so in a sense you're sitting a scant flankwidth from her right now. I can relocate my physical form there at any time, with some concentration I could take you along with me, if you wish. And she has a limited atmosphere, enough for you to breath as long as you do not stray too far.”

Lero was having trouble with all that, but he got the general jist of it, which was that Luna could take him and he wouldn’t die a cold and nasty death... which was good.

“Yes,” he said quickly, “yes, I’d like that a lot.”

Beckoning him to stand up, Luna elegantly rose to a standing position, the human doing the same though with an element of alcohol induced wobble to his stance destroying even the remotest chance of his movements being called graceful, his thick blanket falling around his feet.

“Close your eyes,” the princess requested, the human complying, doing his very best not to waver.

Moving around behind him, Luna spread her wings, curling them around in front of her to rest just the wingtips across the human’s eyes. As feathers brushed against his nose and forehead, Lero suddenly felt reeeeally nauseous, his stomach stirring as if he’d just been dropped unawares from the tallest roller coaster eeeeever. As he was wondering if he should lay the blame the whole thing on the jug of shine dangling from his fingers the disorientation and queesyness vanished, though he did still have a fair bit of that wobble going on.

Pulling her wings away from the human’s face, Luna leant forward and whispered into his ear. “You can look now, my friend.”

Slowly opening his eyes, the sheer magnitude of the view awaiting him caused the jug to slip from his fingers, landing upright with a gentle ‘pomf’ in the soft dust by his feet.

As far as he could see was a vista of glittering silver and shimmering grey - rocky crags and immense lunar plains, huge towering peaks and breathtaking craters, their sizes far surpassing anything that his brain - semi-sozzled as it was - could easily process.

While his eyes and brain struggled to take everything in, two things struck him like a hammer to the head. Firstly, that the crater he was standing at the edge of was bigger than the biggest sports stadium he’d ever seen. Secondly, compared to the some of the craters he could see in the far distance - the curvature of the horizon visible as it sloped away from him - this crater was one of the small ones.

Also in the far distance he could see that the moon itself was glowing, moonbeams continuously shooting from the surface and out into space. As he moved his head he could see that the beams were converging on something, something behind him.

Turning slowly in place - half expecting to find an abandoned lunar module or a huge black monolith waiting for him - he finally saw it, hanging there in space, just waiting for him to realise what it was that he was seeing.

This was no pale blue dot.

And it was so much more than a blue marble.

It was a planet.

A huge, awe inspiring planet, all stunning blues and vibrant greens with pristine white clouds dotted all over.

From where he stood Lero could make out the Icy wastes of the Crystal Empire and the Great Frozen North, the oranges and browns of the Arid Badlands and there between them the lush green of the land of Equestria. On the lower east coast he could even make out the great curved ‘C’ of Horse Shoe Bay... from this angle it really lived up to its name.

Closing one eye he held a hand up in front of his face, using it to block out his view of the planet. As he slowly moved his outstretched hand downward it looked like Equestria was gradually rising from behind his fingers.

From beside the loudly humming human came a distinctly non-regal giggle.

“It kinda looks like Earth.” Lero dropped his arm, content to just watch the planet as it ever-so-slowly turned on its axis... but also didn’t at the same time. He wondered for a second why they would be directly above Canterlot when it was essentially midnight the entire planet over. Surely they should be directly above every part of the planet at once.

Briefly he considered asking the question but rejected the idea just as quickly. The princess would probably just give him that sly smile and declare that it was all done with ‘magic, as per usual. On some subjects she could be surprisingly open while on others there seemed to be no way to pry any useful information out of her, and celestial mechanics was one of the subjects on which she would not be drawn

“It is Earth, in a way.” Luna stated, before quickly quantifying, “the ancient name for our planet was ‘Earth’, and from which were named the earth ponies. It is still called so on rare occasions, or even less often as ‘Terra’, the most ancient of names. But now the planet as a whole is most commonly known just as ‘Equestria’ in both custom and practice, after its oldest and most prosperous nation.”

“I always wondered why the word ‘Equestria’ can mean either the nation, the country or the entire planet,” Lero admitted.

“Yes, confusing is it not?” Luna asked.

“Tell me about it,” the human agreed.

Folding his arms across his chest, Lero stood and admired the view. The lunar landscape all around him, the planet hanging above them, the countless number of stars surrounding it all.

While he knew logically that the stars were much closer to Equestria than those surrounding his homeworld, the appearance of distance being created by some of the most ancient and complicated magic in this universe - so complex that Luna had admitted as much to him years ago that even she was not totally sure how it worked - it did nothing to quell the feeling of wonder, the childish joy he felt at just being there.

“I never in a million years” he said “thought that I’d ever get to see something like this. Standing on the moon, looking down at the planet... any planet. Only a few humans ever walked on our moon, got to see a sight like this with their own two eyes, got to stand on the surface on their two feet. No video feeds or television screens, no internets or simulations. This is the real deal, this is what we’d spent all those years working towards.”

Turning towards her, Lero gave the princess a wide grin.

“If only we’d known we could’a hitched a ride with a friendly princess.”

As the human gave an amused laugh, Luna was struck by a question she’d meant to ask a number of times before. She often came here when she needed time to think. One would think that after a thousand years of being trapped here, and nothing but time to think, she’d be sick of it. But in truth, she found it relaxing. From here she could take in the entire planet knowing that as she watched her moonshine was pouring down on the entire planet, bathing in her silvery light every mare and stallion, every filly and colt, every pony, every dragon, every griffin, every living thing on the planet.

And recently she had found herself wondering...

“Why did you do it?” she asked.“Humans, I mean. You had no magic, no innate powers of flight. from what you’ve told me it was many tens of millions of body-lengths from your planet’s surface, but also you tell me that there was nothing there. Why would you want to spend all that time and effort and expense travelling to an empty rock?”

Lero laughed again, just as amused as before.

“Because it was there.”

It would appear that non-answers were not just the realm of alicorns and enigmatic grandmasters.

“I do not understand your race,” Luna admitted.

“No, me neither,” Lero agreed. “But one day we decided we were going, so we did. We’re just stubborn like that. Truthfully there’s more to it than that but in a nutshell that about sums it up. Pure bloodyminded stubbornness... in more ways than one.”

Stepping forward, Lero raised his arms before him, encompassing the planet, the moon and stars, all that he could see.

“‘We come in peace for all mankind.”

“You used that phrase before,” Luna noted, “when we together walked upon your own moon in one of your dreams, the night I made you my viceroy.”

If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon...

Lero grinned as he let his voice float away on the non-existent breeze.

“Yes, I guess we did, didn’t we. It’s a nice phrase, one that I wish that I could honestly say we’d actually stuck to while we were on the Earth and not just off of it. But when it came to space at least, no matter how heated things got on Earth, one thing we at least all agreed on was that the moon wasn’t ours to squabble over, that it was either everyone’s or no one’s. No matter how much we fought amongst ourselves, no one wanted to take our wars to the stars.”

“I may not understand your species,” the alicorn offered quietly, “but I am growing to like them.”

Turning to her, Lero gave Luna a smile and a slow bow. “I can say the same.”

With a matching smile, Luna returned the bow.

“You know, we didn’t even give our moon a name, not really.” Lero turned around to take in the crater behind him, returning to the first sight he had seen upon their arrival.

“We all just called it ‘The Moon’, like it was the only one, the definite article you might say... Some called her ‘Luna’, especially a long long time ago, some still do I guess.” Lero rubbed his chin, the hairs of his goatee bristling against his fingers. “Funny coincidence, right? Come to think of it we also had a roman goddess, the embodiment of the moon, she was called Luna as well. I wonder why I’d never thought much about that before.”

Luna just raised an eyebrow. One thing she had learnt over her long life was that there were coincidences and then there were coincidences.

“And all that time the moon was always there up in the sky, since before humanity even crawled out of the oceans or dropped down from the trees.” Lero continued absently, “We made up stories about her, as she was watching over us, filling our nights with pure radiant light, her glow obscuring her eons worth of battle scars,” pointing a finger upwards he moved it around in a circular fashion, “forever orbiting our world, taking the knocks year after year, century after century, never complaining, often overlooked. We’d have been pretty screwed without her.”

Now there was a celestial body with which the alicorn of the night could sympathise.

As she watched, the human crouched down in front of her. Reaching out he ran his hand across the moon’s surface, grains of super-fine moondust rolling over his fingers like water.

“I know you're not my moon,” he said softly to the ground beneath his feet, ”but thank you anyway.”

Deep within her soul, Luna felt the display of affection, felt the the hand moving gently through the regolith as if it was physically brushing against her own cutie mark.

It made her feel... good.

Filled with the need to share something, to give something in return for this gesture that touched the very core of her being - even if the human could not have know what he had done - Luna opened her mouth to speak.

“Her true name is ‘Selene’,” she said awkwardly, “as her brother, the sun, is ‘Helios’.”

“Really?” The human’s eyebrows couldn’t have reached any higher if they’d tried... and they were trying. “We had a Greek god and goddess called Helios and Selene, they were the embodiment of the sun and moon as well.”

“Well then,” Luna mentally filed these new coincidences away for a later time, “once again, it seems we are not so different, our two worlds.”

“Hang on,” the human’s hand lifted from the surface, dust reluctantly drifting from his fingertips, “you said that you embodied the moon, but she also has a name of her own? So, is she you?”

“Yes, but also not.” Luna replied, knowing any reply she could give would be insufficient, “as surely as you are you, I am her as she is me.”

“...and we are all together.”

Luna smiled again, she did that a lot when she was with him. The human didn’t always make much sense at times, especially when he’d break into random fragments of song much as he had just done. Maybe it was his very own brand of the magic of harmony... though usually he was just enjoying a joke that only he knew the punchline to.

“In a way, yes, that would be true, we are indeed all together.” Luna said, inwardly regretting the fact that any spoken language would be woefully inadequate to explain her true nature. “Though I am afraid I would not be able to explain the essence of embodiment to a mortal who did not have the same frame of reference.”

“So the only way to explain it to me would be if I was an embodiment of something as well?”

“Unfortunately so. Only my sisters can truly understand what it means to be me. In time maybe Princess Cadance as well, but that has yet to be seen.”

Sisters? Lero thought... As in plural?

Retrieving his previously forgotten jug from the dust by his feet, Lero made to pose the question that was pushing its way to his lips, though he was thwarted as Luna suddenly turned her head away, her gaze drawn to the planet behind them

“Oh dear. Please, give me a second. Duty calls.”

As she closed her eyes in concentration her horn began to glow. After a few seconds the usual blue glow of her magical aura was replaced with a brilliant white as from her horn the princess launched what looked like a large white phosphorus flare. As the human watched, the ball of white fire hurtled away from them towards Equestria, growing in size and intensity as it traveled.

Reaching the planet’s atmosphere in less than a minute - Luna’s eyes remaining closed for the entire time - the shooting star entered Equestrian airspace somewhere over the San Palomino Desert. In the scant few moments it took for Lero to follow the fiery and explosive end of its short life it had made it as far as Appleloosa, leaving in its wake a streaming tail of fire that spanned the sky for many miles before fading away as if it had never been.

As the lunar princess opened her eyes, Lero could see moisture in their corners, moisture quickly wiped away by a large black wingtip.

“I’m afraid that time has just caught up with one of my subjects. It catches them all in the end.” Lero could hear sadness in the alicorn’s words, and maybe a touch of longing. “It is a sad duty but one that I am both proud and honoured to perform, to honour their last mortal request to be remembered, to mark their passing with a sign.”

“How do you know?” the human asked, his previous question being pushed from his brain, “that it is their last wish I mean.”

“Because I do.” Luna answered matter-of-factly, “how do you know when it is time to awaken?”

“Is this another frame of reference thing again?”

“Yes. But let us not dwell. The time has come," the princess said, "to talk of happier things:”

“Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings?” Lero asked, grinning like a fool as he raised his jug of hooch, or what was left of it anyway. Luna returned the expression as she took the jar from the human’s outstretched hand.

“If you wish, yes.” The princess raised the jug towards the planet and its recently departed before taking a sip.

“So, tell me of your travels.” she requested as she returned the moonshine.

And the princess of the night listened as Lero told her of his travels, of the wonders of his world that he had seen; of an ancient henge made of stone, of a tower that leaned, of ancient temples and coliseums that had long ago fallen to the ravages of time, of fields of poppies that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Humans really did seem to like old and imperfect things... whatever would they make of her she wondered. Maybe she’d ask him one day, but not tonight, this was a question for another time.

For the rest of the night she was content just to sit and listen to the contented snoring of a good friend, curled up against her side as he was, her wing gently laid over his soundly sleeping form, her body heat keeping him warm in his slumber.

Time would catch up with all of her friends one day, that was just the way of things. But for now, she would just enjoy what time they had, before it was gone.

PreviousChapters Next