> Lunar Eclipse for Vanilla
>  by Star Sage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Tiny Times
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

         “Okay, let's see here,” said Luna, as she looked over into the book. The thing had various scribbles all over every page, most of them incomprehensible due to bad hoof writing, while others were written via magic, so they were perfectly done, along with pictures and diagrams to help. Unfortunately, the overall effect from the two styles were very confusing, even to the Princess of the Night.

“Um?” said the white earthpony in front of her, but the blue princess ignored him while she read. Her mind had to be focused, and she blocked out all distractions. Vanilla just stood there then, nervously eying Luna as her horn shone with the power inside it. He'd of course, volunteered to be her test subject, both because the money in this was good, and just to be able to be around her for a while, but the way she seemed to be having trouble with the spell made him nervous.

“Alright, so it goes like this,” she said, finally rising from her book, and turning to face him, her face looking quite determined.

“By the Power of Ash Head Bone,” she began, her horn stabbing at the air, and somehow cutting into it, leaving a glowing line behind that formed a circle in front of her.

“Combined Might of Land, Flame, Air, Sea, and Soul!” she said this while moving her horn inside the the circle, stabbing at the air, and creating weird looking designs inside it. The power from the magic was actually starting to create a pressure even Vanilla could feel, making him wonder if he should try and move, but found he was stuck to the ground, the spell was holding him, as it worked its wonders upon him.

“EXION PEREMPAS!” she shouted the last, and made a swirling motion with her horn above, before stabbing it towards Vanilla, who guarded his eyes as the glowing circle exploded outwards. The magical lines of energy from inside it wove through the air, coming straight towards him, slamming into his chest like hooves in a fight, causing the air to wheeze out of his lungs, even as it felt like his chest was burning where they touched him.

Yet oddly, it didn't hurt. It wasn't pleasant, but it didn't actually feel painful, just weird. Other sensations followed, a dizzying spin that forced him to close his eyes tightly against the rotation that threatened to make him sick. Then there was a feeling like falling from a great height, until, at last, it all faded away, and he flopped down onto the floor, breathing hard to get some air back into his lungs.

Gasping for breath, the white pony opened his eyes, and then shut them again to try and blink away the spots before them. Nearly blind, with a ringing sound in his ears, he had to get whoozily to his hooves, still half blind, before he could finally get rid of the spots, and take a look around.

The spell had apparently worked. It was supposed to send him to another world, one from which Luna would retrieve him in a few minutes. Around him now was a flat, broad plain that stretched away into infinity. He couldn't see where it ended, and that made it all the harder to look outward, his instincts protesting that he should at least be able to see some form of mountain or wall or something.

Still trying to quite those bits of his mind shouting at him, the stallion found himself knocked onto the ground as a tremor ripped through it. The thing felt like an earth shattering quake, and forced the pony to spread himself out to keep from being knocked around. When it stopped, he found himself looking around, expecting something to have disturbed the plain around him, but it seemed to be fine. At least, until the next quake rippled through the land, and he was forced to hold on, while whipping his head about.

Then he saw it come into view. It was a shape that was too massive to exist, a huge thing that dwarfed any mountain he remembered. It stood high into the sky like a monolith of blue. It took his eyes a moment to follow it upwards, his eyes seeing only blurry images for a moment, before he was able to blink it away, and take in all of the object he was seeing as it came closer, and then finally fell towards the ground, creating another quake as it slammed into the earth.

It was Luna's leg. It was big. Like bigger than anything had a right to be. And it moved too, which nothing larger than mountains should. Her other leg came into view then, swinging closer, and then slammed down with that same slowness. Again, the tremors rocked his world, these worse than ever before, causing him to be tossed around this time, despite his attempts to stay still.

Another step, and he was sent flying, his eyes wide open, looking from some way out of this, only to cast their gaze upward, and stopping all thought in his mind. Above him was Luna's head as she looked down towards him. Her eyes were oceans of limped light, boring into the ground with a gaze that would make a dragon cry. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed at the ground, creating a breeze for him, and her face seemed scrunched up in concentration.

“Y~E~S!” she said at last, a whispered declaration of success to her, a huge explosion of sound to the tiny pony in front of her. Her hooves rose upwards into the air, and like a little filly, clapped together in front of her, their clopping sounds like deafening thunder to Vanilla, who tried to shout out to her, only to have his voice drowned out by the merest movements of her body.

She leaned closer to the ground then, her face soon filling the sky over him. She was a world unto herself, and she drew so close he was afraid she was going to slam into him, squishing him between her and the floor. She stopped though, many miles overhead, causing him to just stare up at her in awe, wondering what she was doing, with her nose literally pressed against the floor.

Then she sniffed. It was, to her, just a way to get the scent of the spell she had cast, to find out what world he might have been sent to. To the one in this tiny world, the sniff was like a hurricane. Winds whipped at his body, and he had to brace himself against the stone to be kept from being torn into the sky, and then sucked into those two massive caverns of flesh on the end of her muzzle.

She sniffed again, and then a third time, Vanilla only barely keeping his grip, so that when she was finally done and turned away, the air currents from her motion finally did pull him off the ground, causing him to be rolled around on the floor, before skidding to a stop after several seconds, his thoughts completely derailed, and unable to find a track to put them on for several seconds.

When he at last came to himself again, it was as he was glowing. His body had gained a rather unhealthy light within it, his coat and mane shining like he had become some kind of living glow stick or something. He wondered what was wrong with him, even considering for a moment that he might explode, when his world again turned inside out, with a familiar falling sensation, which forced him to close his eyes as the world spun around again.

This time, used to his predicament, he was able to come to his senses just after landing, this time on a warm open field. The land beneath his hooves was firm, but soft enough that it gave a little under his weight. More importantly, it was warm which felt nice after the cold stone floor. Of course, he then had to wonder where he was, and so his gazed whipped around, taking in the sights about him.

He was in a vast plain of grass, knee high, and a dark blue shade. Looking around, some more, he tried to figure out where he was, and what direction to walk in, when something rose into view. It looked like a piece of the night sky, rolling into view like a blanket. Of course, the edge of it, a dark blue border, told him that what we was looking at was a thing of magic. Specifically, it was the tail of a certain Night Goddess, upon who's plot he was apparently standing.

“ODD, HE SHOULD HAVE REAPPEARED!!!” he heard a booming voice say, forcing him to cover his ears with his hooves. He attempted to cry out, but before he could make so much as a peep, the world violently spun around, and he was forced to grasp at the grass....hairs around him, his hooves finding them hard to grip, but enough to keep him from tumbling from Princess Luna's shapely plot, down to the cold, hard floor many miles below.

The clacking sound of her hooves on the floor was almost as bad from up here, despite his increased size. Worse, the world about him moved not like an earthquake, but more like a rolling ocean, with ripples and tides that threatened to knock his grip loose, which caused his panicked fueled mind to grab it all the tighter. So he was bumped, bounced, and bamboozled, but still able to keep his place as she walked forward.

Then she stopped, mercifully, and Vanilla was able to collapse in a heap, gasping for breath, and trying to take stock of everything around him. Still looking around, he was suddenly startled when the world above him grew darker, and he turned to find a massive hoof in the air overhead. That massive thing fell like a comet, too fast for the tiny white pony to do anything but curl into a ball.

Luckily, the hoof stopped just above him, and then, with a pull from inside it, he was dragged into the air by the appendage, held against its flat surface by magic as it was drawn around the Princess' body, and then before her gaze. Luckily for the tiny pony, white was not a normal color for bugs, and so, Princess Luna brought him closer to her eye, to gaze at the figure.

Vanilla, seeing a chance, popped himself to his hooves, and began waving at her, causing the princess to start a bit at the thing in her grip, before realizing what must have happened, and chuckling to herself. The breezing from her laugh was nice, but more importantly was that warm feeling that, as he stood there on her broad, flat hoof, that he had been found, before he could be squished, stomped, or anything else that happened to tiny things. That at least made this traumatic experience have a happy ending.