> Princess Luna’s Unconvincing Disguise
>  by SockPuppet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: The mare at the seminar, four rows down
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everypony is telling us, “It’s so amazing you two got Princess Luna to be the Mare of Honor at your wedding! And Princess Celestia as a guest!”

Everypony is meaning, “How in Tartarus did you, two middle-class mathematicians of no apparent social connections, achieve the social coup of the decade, upstaging all of the Canterlot aristocracy and peerage?”

The short answer is, “We made friends with somepony lonely and hurting who needed a friend.”

The long answer? Well, Princess Luna has given me permission to tell you the story. The entire story. Even the dark bits, from her foalhood. Which, I warn you before you begin, are dark. But I promise the ending is happy—after all, look at our wedding pictures! Have you ever seen a picture of Luna with such a big smile on her face?

So let me start at the beginning: the first time I met Princess Luna and her woefully unconvincing disguise.

I was three weeks into a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Royal University Canterlot, in the most prestigious maths department in the world. The pay was adequate, I had a roommate who paid his rent on time and happily did the dishes, and the professor I was assigned as my mentor wasn’t a stubborn mule (figuratively or literally), unlike the jerk I had suffered under for six years to earn my PhD. 

But best of all, I had a new fillyfriend. Rosie Bayes was a final year doctoral candidate in statistics (which Royal University oddly placed inside the maths department). I’d never dated a pegasus before, but she was petite, pretty, a brilliant scientist, knew all of the good hangouts in the University District, could out-drink a yak, and most importantly, she knew all the gossip and closeted skeletons in my new department. 

Oh, and that thing she does with her feathers...

Never mind. 

Here’s how we met Princess Luna.

Every Thursday afternoon is the weekly departmental colloquium, held in the university’s main thousand-seat lecture hall. The professors always attended to make sure their students and postdocs were in attendance. The PhD candidates were required to attend eight of the ten colloquia every semester if they wanted course credit, and we postdocs were required to attend seven out of ten if we wanted to keep our financial support.

So guess what? We all attended.

Rosie and I sat in the second row from the back. I laid my left hoof on her right hoof, and levitated up a pencil to my notepad. She was left-winged and -hoofed and gripped one of those newfangled ballpoints in her flight feathers on that side.

About five or six minutes before the scheduled start of the lecture, she whispered to me, "Oh ho ho hooooo! Look who just arrived. Ready for the juiciest rumor in the department, newbie?"

I looked into her bright pink irses. "Somebody banging the department chair’s husband?"

Rosie pointed her chin. "Four rows down, seven seats left. Black nerd glasses. Just settling into her seat."

"The big unicorn?" I asked.

"Describe her in one word," Rosie said.

I looked at her. A tall unicorn, with medium blue eyes, dark blue and black mane, and a reddish-purplish-burgundy-ish coat. "She’s tall. The tallest mare I’ve ever seen."

"I’m not the jealous type. One-word description."

She was odd, somehow; aloof; a sapphire-blue cloak hid her body. A yellow silk scarf wrapped her neck. A white star cutie mark was embroidered on the flanks of her cloak. But her face! Beautiful, even with the heavy nerd glasses. She could have been a model. Not a magazine model, but modelled for a great artist of oils or marble. "Stunning," I said.

"Really?" Rosie twitched her eyebrows at me. "You didn’t choose ‘idiot?’"

I cocked my head at her. "What makes her an idiot?"

"What’s she wearing?"

"A cloak."

Rosie said, "A winter cloak. Describe today in one word."

It was nice and cool in the lecture hall, thanks to the university’s magical staff. But out in the streets of Canterlot? "Sweltering. That’s an arctic-weight cloak."

"Okay, you’re not as dumb as you look, but you’re still thinking slow. Two seats right of her, same row. One word description."

A blue-gray unicorn stallion. I said, "Ripped. He’s muscular."

"The stunning mare is named ‘Merlot,’ by the way. That’s the color of her coat. She’s a casual-part time doctoral student. Has a dispensation to only attend the colloquia when they don’t interfere with her day job."

"What’s her day job?"

Rosie covered her face with her right wing. "Oh by Celestia, you need to get over your country bumpkin-ness. What’s anypony’s day job in Canterlot? The government."

"I’ve got a doctorate from Universität Tröttingen. I think ‘bumpkin’ is a stretch."

She lowered her wing and grinned at me. The sexy grin that made me forgive anything, "The second best university in Equestria?" she asked.

"The very same!" I replied.

"Merlot, there, I kinda-sorta know her. A little. I co-taught a class she took last semester, but she missed a lot of days due to her ‘work.’ She was in a cast or bandages or stitched up most times she did attend. One week she had an eyepatch and smelled like gangrene. Claims she ‘teaches fencing for exercise.’ She can outdrink me by a long country trot, too.  Never takes off the cloak, or a half-dozen others similar to it. ...What would you say if I told you she was the most brilliant pony in the room? The most brilliant I’ve ever known in my life?"

I looked around the lecture hall. I counted seven Royal Academy of Science members, six Fellows of the Royal Society, the President of the University, two Neighbel Prize winners, and a Meadow’s Prize medallist. Starswirl the Bearded himself was in the third row, sitting next to Mistmane. This week’s guest speaker was the founder of the Manehattan City Medical School mathematical epidemiology program. That single room probably held half of the top hundred best minds in the world. "I would say, ‘horse apples.’"

"Three seats left of Merlot, one row behind. Describe."

A buttercream-yellow pegasus mare with a short mane. "Ripped. Do I need to start weight lifting to be in this department?"

"Seven seats right of you, closest pony to the door. Unicorn mare."

I side-eyed to my right. "There are some oddly athletic looking ponies in this room."

"There's one more. Find him/her. Hint: earth pony."

I looked around. I said, "Green stallion. First row, by the other door. He’s built like a bison."

"Very good! Those four only attend on days when Merlot is here."

I bit my lip. I knew what she was implying, but it seemed too strange, even for Canterlot. I asked, "Bodyguards?"

"I’m ninety percent sure of this rumor," she said.

"How many ponies are privy to this rumor?"

Rosie bit her lip. "Approximately? One hundred percent of the department, now that you’re in on it, newbie. We’ll know for sure next week."

"Huh?" I asked. "Next week?"

"Merlot is giving her dissertation preliminary exam. She’s the speaker."

"Okay. Rosie, are you going to let me in on this rumor? Or just make my head spin?"

"Look at Merlot’s bone structure."

"She's wearing an arctic-weight cloak."

"Facial bones, pervert."

It snapped into place in my mind, and once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. "Whoa.... You suppose she’s a niece? Or maybe an illegitimate daughter?"

Rosie shook her head and chuckled. "What would a unicorn need a winter weight cloak to conceal in the middle of summer?"

It hit me. I’m smart, but I’m slow. My PhD took an extra year because I work at my own pace. I whispered, "Wings! Are you saying that she’s... Princess Luna?"

Merlot’s ears swiveled toward us. 

Rosie shuffled her wings very slightly, and dropped her voice and whispered directly into my ear. "I think so. You’re going to help me test that theory, tonight."

"!!!"

"Sssshhhhh, they’re introducing the speaker."





After the seminar was over, Rosie dragged me to meet Merlot.

"Rosie Bayes," Merlot said. "How progress your studies into uncertainty quantification and inference?"

"Great, great! Hey, it’s after five o’clock. No talking math. Please meet Proof Pudding, he’s a new postdoc in the department, new to Canterlot, and my new special somepony."

I said, "Nice to meet another of Rosie’s friends," suddenly sweating between my shoulder blades.

The muscular unicorn stallion wandered towards us, eyeing me nonchalantly.

I noticed his saddlebags looked very heavy.

Merlot extended a hoof to me. I bumped it. She said, "Charmed. I would discuss your recent publication in The Journal of Mathematical Magic, but Rosie has declared a moratorium on shop talk. It is nice to put a face to the research, however. Your accent is of the Eastern Shore or perhaps Baltimare city, not Tröttingen."

Whoa! She kept up with the literature. For a casual part-time PhD student, that meant dedication. My paper had come out only a week before. 

...unless she'd been one of the anonymous referees who had read it months back? Stop! Stop, I told myself; trying to figure out who your referees were was a recipe for ulcers and paranoia.

"Good ear," I said. "I got a scholarship to Tröttingen but did my undergrad at at Baltimare College, so I could live at home."

"I was in Tröttingen last year," she said, and lifted her right foreleg to rub her flank, frowning. "Let us not speak of it."

Wow. Her accent—I couldn’t place it, but I could listen to it all day. I felt the intelligence behind her blue eyes. Her deep reddish-purplish coat shined in the sunlight from the windows, offset by the sapphire cloak, which obviously cost more bits than I made in three years. The yellow scarf looked exorbitantly expensive, too, but jauntily offset the other colors. She looked down her aristocratic nose at me, and even with the cloak, where I could only see her neck, chest, and forelegs, her body was obviously solid muscle. Lean muscle, like an ultramarathoner or martial artist, not like a weightlifter. 

Rosie was and is my special somepony, but damn. Looking at Merlot was like standing in front of one of the greatest works of sculpture by the ancient masters. They should have taken a mold of her body and cast it in bronze. 

I noticed her heavy glasses’ lenses looked to be plano—that is, a null prescription. Like they were part of a costume, worn by somepony with perfect vision.

Given the heavy way the silken cloak hung, and the plainclothes bodyguards, I suspected the gorgeous cloak was lined with discrete armor plating. Inside its thrown-back hood, I saw a three-diamond maker’s mark. 

So: probably six times my yearly salary to buy that cloak. 

I levitated up a fold in the cloak. "Is this a Rarity bespoke?"

Merlot quirked an eyebrow. "A stallion with taste and perception. Rosie, do not allow this one to escape. I exclusively pursue pegasus stallions, myself, but I might make an exception for this unicorn if he were suddenly unspoken for."

"My cousin runs a secondhand shop," I said. "I worked there off school. She had a Rarity piece, once, and put it in her front display window with a big sign. It sold in fifteen minutes."

"Rarity would be appalled to hear one of her pieces was given away," Merlot said.

Rosie asked, "You know an element-bearer?"

"Rarity knows all her bespoke customers. She thinks of herself as a designer and business owner, not an element-bearer."

There was silence for a few seconds, and I eventually tried, "An earth pony passed away, and her relatives were all pegasi and couldn’t wear a non-pegasus-cut ensemble, so we found it at the shop."

"Ah!" Merlot said. "Rarity would understand."

Awkward silence again.

Rosie bumped her hips into mine, and slung a wing over my back. Feathers tickled my spine. I love that sensation. Why did I never date pegasi before?!? "Proofie here is new in Canterlot. I’m trying to show him the best places to have some fun. Would you be interested in hitting Celestia Boulevard with us? Dinner and drinks? Proofie will buy, since he’s got a princely postdoc stipend compared to my pauperish doctoral candidate stipend."

Merlot’s lips quirked at that. "Alas, my Thursdays are not amenable to frivolity. I have a... meeting in forty minutes. Tomorrow, however? I much enjoyed our previous outings, Rosie Bayes. I mainly pursue my doctorate to meet intelligent ponies close to my own age. My workplace is... geriatric."

I felt my eyes get wide. "You two have... hung out previously?" I tapped a hoof on the tile, telling myself, She’s Merlot! She’s Merlot! She’s not Princess Luna! Not!

"Dang," Rosie said. "This Friday I’m heading home for my dad’s birthday. What about next Thursday? You’re giving your preliminary exam for your doctorate, right?"

"Unless my duties call me away. They are unpredictable. I have discussed my situation in detail with the chairmare of the department, to obtain special accommodations."

"Want to go get wasted after your exam? I’ve never seen a mare out-drink an entire hoofball team like you did last time. Your metabolism is something else. Proofie here is a country bumpkin and needs to see a classic Canterlot pub crawl. I’ve never had him puking drunk yet."

The unicorn’s face turned pale and she swallowed several times. Her knees actually shook. I thought she was having a heart attack. 

Her heavy cloak wrinkled... as if wings had just shuffled underneath it.

Rosie said, "Merlot? Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?"

Merlot took a few deep breaths. "I... I... no. You could not know. I now attend Alcoholics Anonymous on Thursday evenings. I am headed there forthwith. I would most enjoy getting a tea or coffee with you, and your new paramour," she nodded to me, "but I shan’t engage with alcohol again."

Rosie clapped her wings over her mouth. "Oh my Cel— I’m sorry! I had no idea."

Merlot’s face turned back to its original color. "Of course you could have had no idea. Let us tentatively plan for next Friday afternoon. May I excuse myself? This afternoon’s speaker ran long, and I wish not be late for my meeting of the aforementioned organization that let us not name explicitly again where other ears may overhear goodbye!” and she disappeared in a flash of cobalt teleportation magic.

The alleged bodyguard pony glared at Rosie and I, and whickered angrily.

Rosie looked at me. "You unicorns... can you teleport, Proofie?"

"Nope," I said. "My little sister can teleport, about once a week, it tires her so badly, less than half a mile, and only line of sight. She’s at Celestia’s School."

"That’s an expensive school. Or so we pegasi hear."

"Because my dad’s a disabled Guard veteran, tuition to Celestia’s school is free."

"Huh. Today I learned. Proofie, How many unicorns can teleport to an unseen destination on the other side of town?"

"There are, what, maybe three hundred million unicorns in the world?"

Rosie shrugged. "Last census said two hundred and fifty mill and change. That was twenty years ago."

"Maybe... ten or twenty can teleport blind?"

"That many?" Rosie asked.

"Not ten or twenty million. Ten or twenty."

"Oh."
> Chapter 2: The intriguing unicorn’s candidacy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next Thursday, Merlot stood on the speaker’s dais in front of the department and the Canterlot mathematical community. Every seat was full, and ponies stood in the back and down the edges of the lecture hall. The fire marshal would have gone apoplectic.

The four very athletic ponies looked nervous and displeased. The buttercream-yellow pegasus mare flapped up and sat on a rafter. In fact, there were about a dozen pegasi up in the rafters.

Biggest crowd I’d ever seen for a colloquium. Apparently, Rosie wasn’t the only pony thinking that Merlot was intriguing.

Rosie and I sat in the first row, that week. 

Merlot had two black eyes, a bandage over one ear, and fifty or sixty stitches in her face. Her left rear leg was in a walking boot, with bloody bandages under the boot. Apparently, her ‘duties’ for her day job that week had been strenuous.

And Rosie was right. She was the smartest pony I had ever met. And besides her mathematics, she had magic I’d never seen before, despite my growing up in a heavily unicorn neighborhood and entirely unicorn clan, and with a sister in Celestia’s school. 

Merlot didn’t bother with chalk—writing simply appeared on the chalkboard. She teleported nervously from one side of the dais to the other, with loud cracks! of magic and brilliant cobalt flashes. 

My sister—a gifted unicorn—can teleport once a week. Merlot was teleporting four or eight times a minute. 

Crack! she teleported. "Recall our data matrix X is of size"—crack!—"N by M, for N instances with M observation points"—crack!—"per instance and for convenience we assume"—crack!—"that M is less than N so now we calculate the variance-covariance matrix X-transpose"—crack!—"times X and then the eigenvectors"—crack!—"of this matrix, assuming of course that"—crack!—"the variance of X is"—crack!—"homoscedastic, or can be prescaled as such..."

I whispered to Rosie, "She’s nervous. Those teleports are unconscious. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. If we tell her afterwards, she won’t believe it. Like when I levitate objects while I think. Remember how pissed you were when I was levitating a kitchen knife, and I swore I wasn’t, until you grabbed it out of the air and showed me?"

Rosie’s eyes grew wide. "Oh sweet heavens, she just eigen-decomposed a five hundred square matrix in her head."

I looked at the chalkboard. It was now covered in small but neatly written numbers, two hundred and fifty thousand of them, a five hundred by five hundred grid.

All two hundred fifty thousand numbers had appeared in the few seconds it took me to look down and speak to Rosie.

I could probably have done a ten-by-ten or twenty-by-twenty eigenanalysis in my head. And I’m a very, very, very elite mathematician.

The blood rushed out of my head and I got dizzy. I found I was equally unconsciously brushing Rosie’s feathers with my magic, and stopped myself, since we were in public, and I had recently learned how sensitive pegasi wings are.

Merlot—now hyperventilating with either terror or excitement as she reached the climax of her presentation—pointed a hoof at the numbers near the top of the chalkboard, "and then with classical least squares we can—" and her cloak began to lift away from her flanks. The bodyguard (alleged bodyguard) three seats over from me cleared his throat loudly.

Merlot’s cloak collapsed back to her flanks and she froze, blushing, silent, hoof extended. She shook her head, coughed once, and levitated up a long wooden pointer to indicate the equation she was referring to.

The bloodstain on the bandage on her left rear leg was spreading as she paced and stomped. 

She went on for twenty minutes more. In those twenty minutes, she teleported over two hundred times. I counted. That means a teleport, on average, every six seconds. It was worse than watching a tennis match, as she volleyed herself back and forth across the stage. My neck hurt the next day.

At the end of her presentation, the Chair of the Department took to the dais. She intoned, "A show of hooves from the tenure-line faculty. Shall Miss Merlot and her ‘The approximation of a matrix by another of a lower rank’ be put forward for a doctoral dissertation?"

The faculty vote was unanimous. The chair smiled and shook Merlot’s hoof. "Congratulations, doctoral candidate Merlot."

The stunningly brilliant and beautiful mare smiled, beaming.

I was convinced. That was Princess Luna.

And we were going out for coffee with her tomorrow.

My head got very light again.





Too many ponies wanted to speak to ‘Merlot’ and congratulate her. We couldn’t get within fifty feet. She made eye contact with us, scribbled a note, and actually teleported it, across the room, directly into Rosie’s saddlebag.

Rosie used a delicate flight feather to open the bag and grab out the folded note. "Proofie," she asked me, "can you teleport objects?"

"I’m not a wizard. I can levitate three utensils at once in the kitchen, but that’s my magic’s limit."

Rosie opened the note and read: "Tomorrow, five p.m., Sir Caffeine’s Coffee and Music, Boulevard of the Alliance, Little Griffonstone, Canterlot. My treat."

"That’s nice," I said. "I’ve wanted to try griffon cuisine while I’m in Canterlot."

"No. You don’t," Rosie said. "Griffons eat meat. In Little Griffonstone, stick to the Boulevard. Those are the Equestrianized tourist restaurants. The ones off the main road are for the locals, or for adventurous ponies, which neither of us are. You go to the wrong kind of restaurant and your brussel sprouts will be fried in bacon grease."

I shrugged. "Yuck. Okay, but she says her treat. I’m still getting used to how expensive Canterlot is compared to Tröttingen or Baltimare."

"She’s a friend," Rosie said. "Let’s take my little interrogation project easy, so we don’t embarrass her. I can’t decide if being right or being wrong would be worse for her. Hey, did you see the newspaper this morning?"

"You are a fountain of non-sequiturs."

"Princess Celestia was spotted with a foreleg in a sling and with cuts and lacerations. She looks better than Merlot, however." She pointed toward Merlot’s booted leg. The soaked bandage was now dripping her blood onto the floor, but Merlot seemed not to notice as she spoke to the University president.
> Chapter 3: Coffee and appetizers and problems
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, Rosie and I walked to the Little Griffonstone neighborhood of Canterlot and arrived at Sir Caffeine’s Coffee and Music around 4:30, and settled in to wait. Despite the name, it was more of a pub known for good coffee, good Griffon and Pony food, and cheap beer. We sat in a booth with our back to the wall, watching the front door, waiting. We were the only customers, so the griffon waiter didn't hassle us to order.

One minute after five o'clock, we heard her voice behind us. Rosie and I both jumped. 

"My friends!" Merlot said. 

Merlot slid into the booth, next to me. "Apologies. I had to teleport, so I came in via the mare's room." Still was still stomping around in a walking boot, I saw, but the bandages under it were bloodless today. 

"Merlot!" Rosie said. "So good to see you. And congratulations! Doctoral candidate—feels awesome, doesn't it?"

Merlot closed her eyes—which were still blackened, and her face was still full of stitches, but the bandage was off her ear—and smiled, and she actually purred. The basso rumble from her large torso shook the bench we sat on. "I have earned many things in my life, but far, far too many more have been given to me, undeserved. I am pleased to hold a title that came from my own sweat."

"What do you mean, undeserved?" I asked.

Merlot's eyes opened and focused on me. The scary brilliance burned through again and I fought to keep eye contact. "My titles are from quirks of ancestry, and gifts are given me to curry favor. You are both intelligent ponies. Easily the top thousandth of a percent of Equestrians, or you would not be allowed in the front door of Royal University's maths department. You've observed and puzzled out my four companions, correct?"

Rosie said, "The bodyguards?"

"Aye. Alas, I hide it as well as I can, but I am of the landed aristocracy, the bluest of blue blood, as you no doubt guessed. My clan matriarch requires I be accompanied by professionals, although I can take care of myself—I teach fencing and hoof-to-hoof combat! And never mind my magic.”

“I bet you attended Celestia’s School,” I said.

“Incorrect. Returning to my bodyguards, the forms must be observed, in the matriarch's eyes. She is actually more worried about the pony who assaults me, than she worries about me. My clan’s reputation would be sullied if I accidentally killed a harmless kook again. I suffer magical incontinence at times. The results can be ugly. Regardless, I teleported to the mare's restroom of this place to escape my guards. I estimate forty-five minutes before they track me down. They know my regular haunts. Let us enjoy that time. WAITER!"

I looked at Rosie and she smirked back at me. Clan matriarch, indeed!

The griffon came to the table and took our orders for coffee (Merlot) and tea (Rosie and I). Merlot ordered an appetizer of split, battered, and deep-fried onion, and instructed the waiter, "No meat or grease, please. Pony-style vegan preparation."

The griffon said, "Yes, Madam Merlot," and headed for the kitchen. So: she was enough of a regular the waiter knew her name. 

Merlot continued, "I cannot abide meat or animal products. I eat dairy and eggs for protein, but under protest. They know to use an egg-free batter for my onion. I was not born in Equestria, and before I... came here... as a filly, there was a period of lean winters where I had to choose between meat or death by starvation. Obviously, I am alive, so you can infer what I chose. Never again."

"Then why did you pick a griffon restaurant?" I asked.

"The food is actually quite good, and griffons make coffee with more attention to water temperature, total dissolved solids, and pH than ponies. Good coffee is worth a careful reminder to the waiter. I have discovered that we recovering alcoholics drink much coffee—you should see the coffee pot deplete at the meetings I attend."

"Hey, Merlot?" Rosie said, her ears wiliting. "I'm sorry I suggested we go bar crawling and get puking drunk again. I didn't know you were, you know, pulling the wagon."

The waiter returned, a tray on his outstretched wing. I noticed griffon wings look rather different up-close compared to pony wings. Now that I'd been dating Rosie for four weeks and was such a pony-wing expert, myself.

He put mugs in front of each of us, and carafes of coffee and tea down. "Your onion's been breaded, and it's frying in fresh peanut oil. No eggs, meat, or fish."

Merlot bowed her head and flicked her ears. "My thanks, Glenwood Griffon."

"Leave your usual tip and it'll be even, Madam Merlot." He walked off.

"You're a good tipper, huh?" I asked.

Merlot shrugged. "I reiterate my point: you two are very smart ponies. I shall not waste our precious time in false modesty. Money is as free as air to me. So I try to be a nice pony. I was not always such, previously."

"Well, thanks for offering to treat us tonight, regardless," Rosie said.

"You're most welcome! As I said, I pursue my doctorate mainly to meet ponies closer to my own age."

"Would you be offended if I asked how old you are?" Rosie said.

Merlot's ears flattened. "Despite the enchanted identification card I possessed when we went bar-crawling a few months back... I am nineteen."

I whistled, unconsciously. I was coming up on twenty-nine, and I was typical for a PhD graduate! Given the virtuosity with which she had presented her prelim the afternoon before, she was obviously less than a year from completing her dissertation.

A PhD at twenty? I said, "I knew you were smart, but dang."

She blushed, and the reddening of her already merlot-colored face, underneath the bruises and black eyes and stitches, was horrible to behold.

The griffon approached, with three plates, three forks, and a serving tray that bore a sizzling split-open, breaded, and deep-fried onion.

"It's hotter than the fires of the Dragonlands," he said. "Now that I've warned you, you can't sue."

Ahhh, Griffon customer service. Gotta love it.

A group of colts came in, wearing Canterlot State colors and scarves, and plopped into a booth across from us. One of them levitated a bit into a jukebox and the magic started up, playing some tunes. They ordered pitchers of beer from the griffon. 

Merlot scooped fully half the appetizer onto her plate. "Be most cautious. This culinary atrocity is the most calorically dense appetizer in Canterlot. It has tricked better ponies than us into obesity."

Rosie and I each scooped some of the snack onto our plates. Merlot shook malt vinegar onto hers. "Salt, fat, heat, and now acid," she said, offering the bottle. I took the vinegar in my magic and shook it onto my onion. Rosie shook her head no when I offered the vinegar.

"Wow!" Rosie said after her first bite. "That is rich. Merlot, how do you stay thin?"

She chuckled. "My problem is staying heavy enough. I exercise compulsively. My... clan matriarch often orders me to sit and eat, lest I stunt my growth. Those of our... family... grow well into their twenties. I wear this cloak in public, a personal quirk, but my ribs show when I am unclothed. Especially now that I have ceased consuming alcohol and its empty calories."

"What do you do for work?" I asked.

Merlot quirked her eyebrows. "Would you believe me if I said I was a secretary?"

"Nope," I replied.

"Would you believe me if I said I was Princess Luna's executive assistant and aide de camp?"

"That sounds more credible," Rosie said, with a side-eye at me. "What's Luna like?" 

Merlot's face turned dark. She scowled. "Despicable. The worst pony in Equestria. I enjoy my occasional interactions with Celestia, however. I see Twilight and Cadance seldom, but they are most wonderful ponies, and dedicated public servants, as well."

I said, "I don't believe you. Princess Luna is wonderful."

"You've met her face-to-face?" Merlot asked, then levitated another forkful of appetizer to her mouth.

"Well, no, but the newspapers—"

"You read the wrong papers," Merlot said. "Luna is an alcoholic, a fop, and sexually loose. She has rutted almost every male on the palace staff. Were it not for Celestia’s most strict injunctions, she would have rutted the guards, too. I hate Luna. The Canterlot Sun describes the details more accurately. Celestia, for reasons unknown, loves her sister and keeps the other newspapers on the party line."

"Then why do you work for Luna?" Rosie asked.

"One must do what is required of one's station and birth," she said. "I often envy you of the freeholding and bourgeois classes. Your lives are less constrained than us of the aristocracy."

"My dad's a wounded Guard veteran," I said. "He'll often mention that Luna came into his dreams the previous night. His PTSD is a lot better since Luna returned from the moon and started dispelling nightmares."

"'Tis nothing but her duty and penance for her crimes," Merlot said. "I deal with Luna for my day... night... job. Please, let me think of being out on a Friday night with my friends, instead of her! How did you two become romantically involved? Tell me the story but censor any smutty details."

More groups of college foals came in. Friday night in Little Griffonstone is the place the older high-schoolers and the college kids go to hang out. The coffee shop/pub filled up, the noise swelled as different groups fed the jukebox bits, and the griffon waiter carried a continuous shuttle of beer pitchers to the other tables.

We chatted with Merlot, telling her about our four-week-long courtship, and I described my six years in Tröttingen.

She regaled us with a story of teaching three Guard officers some advanced fencing with live steel. Because, she explained, her frame is too large for standard armor, she had received the cuts on her face and leg. She claimed the black eyes were "unexplained and surprising, indeed."

The coffee shop-pub was getting louder as more kids crowded in. I was glad we'd staked out a booth in the back corner.

"Why maths?" I asked Merlot. "You're obviously good at it, but you're smarter than me, and I'm very, very, very smart. You could have pursued any subject."

She popped the last bit of onion from her plate into her mouth and chewed, eyes narrowed in thought behind her glasses. "I am a talented magician. The University President said I teleported nearly one thousand times during my preliminary exam. I do not remember that, but I have no doubt it is true."

Rosie and I nodded our heads.

Merlot continued, "Inborn talent with magic is one thing, and I overflow with it. If one can tune a spell, tweak it, make it as balanced as a gyroscope and as polished as a diamond... one can punch far above one's own weight, magically, no matter how talented one is. Proof Pudding, your younger sister, or perhaps she is a close cousin, attends Celestia's school. You know all this."

I frowned, "How do you know my sister?"

"Luna visits and occasionally teaches. I accompany. Little Raisin's surname is also Pudding, and her coloration is identical to yours. Magic is, ultimately, a branch of applied maths. I study to make my magic more strong. I sometimes use my magic for the health of Equestria, or the betterment of Ponykind. I wish to have as much skill as possible when the inevitable day comes that I can contribute to the realm. That, and I like math. It is pure and unsullied, a product of nature, a fundamental part of the universe, not made by pony hooves."

"That’s not something I ever thought of," Rosie said. "Magic is a branch of math?"

"Opposite sides of the coin, if you wish," Merlot said. "All metaphors fail eventually. Have you done weather work, Rosie?"

"I got drafted to help break up the hurricane three years back."

"You, and every able-bodied pegasus for five hundred miles. Have you experienced that a tiny shift in your weight or change in your angle when bucking a cloud can greatly enhance, or inhibit, the ease with which it is dispatched?"

Rosie quirked an eyebrow. "How does a unicorn know so much about cloud bucking?"

"Rainbow Dash became drunk and talkative once while visiting Luna. I was in attendance."

Rosie said, "But okay, I think I understand what you mean.”

We heard shouting, and two of the groups of college colts flipped over a table, and squared off. Canterlot State blue and gold to our left, Polytechnic red and gray to the right. 

The unicorns levitated out switchblades and the earth ponies and pegasi slipped on brass hooves.

"Confound it," Merlot said. "My clan matriarch will staple my flank to my bodyguards’ foreheads when she hears about this."
> Chapter 4: Swordplay is best avoided
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two drunken groups of fraternity colts squared off, cursing, shouting, and bucking appetizers at each other. 

Glenwood Griffon perched on a ceiling rafter, shouting at them to “Get out of my pub!” and brandishing a hoofball bat.

Merlot said, "Quickly! Will you attest to my sis... matriarch that I am sober and have consumed no alcohol? She has much justification to distrust my veracity."

"Yes," Rosie said.

"Can I hope our friendship will endure if you two discover I have made white lies to you?" Merlot asked.

"Princess Luna," I said, "we never bought your disguise for a minute."

She blinked once and her nostrils flared. "Well! Good. I have so few friends. I value you two very much. Call me Merlot in public."

She levitated her glasses down to the table, slid out of the booth, stood, and stomped in her walking boot to the edge of the incipient brawl.

She then stepped in between the two skirmish lines. I had never heard a pony speak so loudly. "Stop! I command you."

"Who the bucking tartarus are you?" said the largest Canterlot State unicorn. He waved his five-inch switchblade toward her. "Get out of the way or we’ll cut you up first." His voice slurred, drunkenly.

"Seriously!" said the earth pony ringleader of the Polytechnic colts.

"You wish to drunkenly and stupidly duel each other?" she said. "Fine."

Luna/Merlot took two steps backwards, freeing up the space between the two groups.

Then, with a flash of levitation, she pulled a scabbard out from under her Rarity bespoke cloak, and unsheathed a mid-length katana. It was jet-black, almost fuligin, and drank the light except for its cutting edge, which shined with cruel sharpness.  "But as a Peer of the Realm, I claim my right to duel the winners. The Earl of Canterlot is my vassal, and I shall not accept your insult to the peace of his county."

A particularly drunk pegasus looked at her and said, "Who are you? Did your mom invent a better mousetrap and get named a petty Baronet? And screw your honor and your big kitchen knife.”

The unicorn ringleader sneered, “There are ten of us and you're just you, and you’re limping. Ha!—your face is already cut up!”

Merlot glanced over her shoulder at Rosie and I, and flicked her ears in annoyance.

The flash of cobalt magic stunned everypony in the pub with its brightness. 

When I could open my eyes again, the Merlot glamour was gone, and Princess Luna stood there, fell and wrathful, still in the walking boot, and her face still covered in stitches, her eyes still black. Her wings flared high, lifting up the sapphire cloak. Sparkling with stars, her mane and tail billowed. Abrasions and long lines of stitches ran along her flanks, under her wings. Half-healed injuries covered her body.

Her midnight-blue coat and sapphire cloak complemented each other. Her every muscle strained, tense underneath her skin with readiness. Rosie is my one and only special somepony, but I will remember Luna’s athletic stance, predatory and deadly and beautiful, until the day I die. Even with the wounds, she was more like a goddess than a pony. 

Luna is beautiful.

She levitated the sword to a horizontal guard position just above her eye level, scabbard held vertically above it, ready to batter downward.

Then, Luna spoke. I covered my ears, and one of the windows broke from the volume of her voice. Rosie slapped her wings over her ears. 

"Who am I? I am Princess of the Blood, Grand Duchess of Central Equestria, and too many other titles to count, no spawn of a mere Baronet. My title and wings I earned in war, knee-deep in the blood and ruptured viscera of Ponykind’s foes. I am the Darkness incarnate, come down to the waking world, and my ‘kitchen knife’ I name Necromancer’s Bane. He drank my blood and cleaved open my ribs and my lung before I slew his owner and took him for my own, from the necromancer’s dead hooves. He has drunk the blood of one score and four since he became Mine. I have killed five malefactors just this week; see my stitches and my leg cast and believe my words. Throw down your weapons or Necromancer’s Bane shall drink more blood today!"

The colts stared, gape-jawed, and the really drunk pegasus puked onto one of his companion’s backs.

They dropped their knives and brass hooves.

Luna stood, sword steady, moving not even a fraction of an inch, for five minutes, until a squad of Guards arrived.

The Guard sergeant was a griffon, and her troopers pegasi. Luna saluted her with the sword. The griffon genuflected, and then they placed the drunk colts under arrest.





Luna sheathed her sword and tossed a large pile of bits onto our table. It was more money than I made in a month. "Out the back," she said, trotting through the swinging door to the kitchen. Rosie and I followed. As we escaped into the alleyway, there was a flash of cobalt, and she was Merlot again. She flared up her wings while she hid the scabbarded sword under her cloak, then tucked her wings in and resettled the cloak into place.

Rosie said, "Your disguise doesn’t change your cutie mark."

"Cutie mark magic is not to be used trivially," Merlot said. "In fact, it rather hurts and wears off rapidly. Only my Ponyville friend Starlight has any cutie mark control at all. One cannot change one’s body shape or facial bone structure without excruciation that would be illegal to inflict on a convict or prisoner of war, so I settle for taking my mother’s coloration and name, and a cloak to hide my wings and cutie mark. I am big; my disguise cannot change this. I have attempted changeling magic, but ponies cannot cast it."

She led us at a trot down the back alleys of Little Griffonstone, her cast thumping with every fourth hooffall. Rosie’s legs are short, so she took to her wings to keep up, and I found her straining muscles nicely distracting. 

Griffons stared at us, but Lua returned their stares and they returned to their activities. These griffons were all Equestrian citizens, many generations back, with a high proportion of ex-Guard veterans, so I didn’t really expect them to act with any more criminality than ponies... but I was still vaguely uncomfortable in a neighborhood where, for the first time in my life, I was the minority. I smelled cooking meat from every kitchen window and breathed through my mouth.

"Confound it, I left my spectacles on the restaurant table!"

"It’s good," Rosie said. "Your expression is scaring the griffons."

"Glenwood Griffon is a savvy business owner. He will post the specs to the palace in hopes of me returning to his establishment and giving another ten thousand percent gratuity."

We reached the edge of Little Griffonstone and emerged onto one of the streets in a working-class pony neighborhood. 

"Princess—" I began.

"No! Merlot. Understand?"

I nodded. "Merlot, let’s sit."

Roaie landed and we all plopped down at a table at an outdoor cafe, and ordered mineral waters. We were all hot and winded from the run.

I said, "You didn’t get your cuts and cripple your leg teaching fencing, did you?"

Her ears flattened. "Celestia and Luna went to the Frozen North on Tuesday. Twilight Sparkle came to the Palace and ruled for thirty-six hours. Cadance and Shining Armor accompanied Celestia and Luna into the wastes. A coven witches... thirteen, of course..."

Merlot trailed off, and chewed her lower lips. "My leg hurts from running. Shining Armor injected antivenin and cleaned the wound, and the doctors stitched the sliced tendon, and I heal fast, but it still hurts. The blade reached the bone marrow.”

“Antivenin?” Rosie asked. 

“They bred fer-de-lance in heated cages, and milked the toxin to coat their blades. Were I not of, hmmm, my tribe of pony, so to speak, it would have been be a permanent and life-altering injury. Crippling, maiming. Likely a field amputation.”

"Witchcraft isn’t against the law," I said.

The waiter brought the bottles of water. After the waiter disappeared, Merlot said, "Of course not! Some of Celestia’s best students name themselves ‘witch.’ But this coven explored the black arts of R’lyeh and Yuggoth. They learned things must not be learned, cast spells that must not be cast. Celestia and Cadance offered them parole and forgiveness if they abandoned their pursuits and repented their crimes. Four accepted. Nine did not. They were killed, and the fighting was brutal, close-quarters, and short. Ten seconds, at most. Perhaps six. It is good Cadance detected them sooner, before their power had waxed, and not later. Luna killed five, Shining Armor one, and Celestia three. Cadance held the four who swore their parole under her horn so that they dare not attempt to rescind their surrender."

Rosie began to shake. "Would... would Luna have killed the college colts at the coffee shop?"

Merlot, staring at her drink, looked up. "What? No! No! See, Princess Luna is a monster. Everypony knows this. Her reputation precedes her. However, in this situation, Luna would have used the flat of the blade or her scabbard to daze them insensate. A particularly intransigent individual might have forced Luna to hamstring him, at worst. She would have taken no heads. Their five-inch blades could not kill Luna; she was not in danger.”

Rosie asked, "Did somepony really split your lung open with your sword?"

“Can you speak in third person of Luna to Merlot?”

“No. I really can’t,” Rosie said.

Luna flicked her ears in acquiescence. "Yes, a few months ago, four months, when I was absent from my studies. I was in Vanhoover Hospital for some weeks. My first sucking chest wound. A necromancer is dead and I took his wonderful sword."

"Wait," Rosie said. "You’ve killed twenty-four ponies in just the four months you’ve owned that sword?"

"Twenty ponies, three yaks, and a griffon. My duties to the realm involve much unpleasantness. Ordinary ponies would lose their minds if they knew the dangers that swirl around the edges or depths of Equestria."

Rosie started to speak, but I put my hoof on her withers. I said, "Merlot... why do you hate Princess Luna? Why do you hate..." I looked around, ensuring we were alone, and whispered: "yourself?"
> Chapter 5: Luna opens up
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna swirled her mineral water around in her bottle, absently levitating it for almost a full minute. 

I asked, “Do you hate yourself because of Nightmare Moon?”

"No. Emphatically. Twilight and the element bearers cured me of that particular guilt. I hate myself... because I enjoy killing. Not even Nightmare Moon killed wontonly—she was most pragmatic in her evil and parsimonious in her effort. She wished subjects, not victims."

I looked at Luna, then at Rosie, then back. 

Rosie said, "I don’t think so. You didn’t kill those dumb colts, even though they had weapons out."

"Well, not idiot foals, of course! Even if they were older than me.... but there are certain ponies I actively thrill at killing. And the next day, in the mirror, I see the monster still caged within me."

Wow. I recognized somepony else I knew in her words. "Whom," I asked, "do you like to kill?"

"Necromancers. Rapists. Drug dealers. Their ilk."

I said, "Those seem reasonable, really."

"Would you stand as executioner, Proofie? If a necromancer wended his way through the court system? There was a case in Tröttingen last year—I took his leg and horn and arrested him. He was convicted in open court by a jury of his peers and condemned. Did you put your name in the pool when volunteers were recruited?"

I shook my head no.

"Imagine you were conscripted to pull the gallows’ lever. Do you strut happily afterward? Or vomit?"

I nodded. "Probably throw up."

"I do not."

"Don’t anymore?" Rosie asked. "Or never?"

"My first time... the first time I killed... I have no recollection. Perhaps I vomited. I suffered a simultaneous blow to the head and other injuries. I was unconscious nearly a full day. The second time I killed, outside of open battle, that is, I was enraptured and joyous. That is why I hate myself. What kind of monster kills happily? My victims earned their fate, they were guilty of rape and foal rape, but death’s application should be solemn, not rapturous. It would have been better if somepony else had killed... those particular rapists. I might not have learned to savor revenge.”

I pointed with my horn. "One of your friends is coming." It was the muscular buttercream-yellow pegasus with the short mane.

Luna looked behind. "Ah. Blizzard Walker. How are you?"

She said, "Madam Merlot, you are needed at the family compound."

"My friends here have defeated my disguise with deduction and observation."

"Princess, I told you it’s not a very good disguise. Her Highness Celestia commands your presence and that you explain why you ditched us, again. And I’m hearing rumors of swordplay in Griffontown. Princess Celestia is threatening to have your chambers lined with anti-teleport spells.”

Luna looked at Rosie and I. "Until my eighteenth birthday last year, Celestia held my legal guardianship. I am recently a legal adult, and equally diarch under the law, but I defer to her as I once did to mother. I shall make an exception, here, however, and refuse her command. Blizzard Walker, sit."

"That would be inappropriate, highness."

"Blizzard Walker, sit."

Blizzard Walker sat.

Rosie said, "My name’s—"

"We keep dossiers on everypony who spends time near the Princess, Ms. Bayes. Dr. Pudding."

I shivered slightly. I’d been hooded only ten weeks before, and still I didn’t know how to cope with being 'Doctor.'

"I asked you to sit," Luna said, "because you have sworn to trade your life for mine."

"It’s my honor, ma’am. The Royal house has spent a thousand years—"

"Shush. I am an unworthy scion of the Royal house. Hear the story of how I learned to love killing, and then you may decide if I am worthy of a dedicated public servant like yourself."

“You saved my life in Tröttingen,” Blizzard Walker said.

“Piffle. I can wear much heavier armor, is all. My armor outweighs your entire body by a factor of two. ‘Twas only fair that I take the trebuchet shot. I was without heartbeat less than a minute, thanks to your epinephrine injection, and my bones healed. Listen to the story of my foalhood.”

And then Rosie, Blizzard Walker, and I became the first ponies in a thousand years to hear how Luna had become an Alicorn Princess.

And, by the heavens and the seas and the lands, the tale was dark.
> Chapter 6: The dark tale of how Luna earned her wings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is what Luna told us:





Father died before I was born. I am told he starved so that mother might eat, instead, and have a healthy foal. I was born in the second year of Discord's reign. Many ponies starved. Celestia once let slip that my littermate was stillborn. I wonder if it was my brother or my sister? 

As a twin, my birthweight was low. I was fortunate to live beyond infancy. Medical magic was crude back then, and the germ theory of disease still controversial.

Mother and I lived alone, in a one-room hut in a town. I played with other fillies and colts. I was normal, very smart, but otherwise nopony special. I remembered my elder sister, Celestia, and my elder brother, Mars. They were different than mother and I. Mother and I were unicorns, but Celestia and Mars were something special and different and wonderful.

Mars would levitate me to his back and fly with me. To a four-year-old unicorn, what could be greater?

Discord ruled Equestria. If one can call that 'rule.' Healthy food was scarce, and cotton candy and chocolate milk left me emaciated and sickly. Mother worried but tried not to let me know. But I knew.

Ponies pledged fealty to Discord. Ponies pledged resistance to Discord. Civil war wracked the land, and Discord's sense of humor made it worse. Sometimes, I wondered if he even knew there was a war going on around his ears. He certainly didn't care.

Water became polluted with sewage as ponies lost their fastidiousness. Mother gave me beer, often, because it was more antiseptic. I avoided dysentery, which killed so many of my friends and peers. I lived, but I developed early-stage alcoholism. I have craved alcohol every day of my life since. I blame myself—other foals drank, too, but they did not become addicted. I do not know why I fell into addiction when my peers did not. I suppose I am just weak.

Celestia and Mars became the core of the resistance to discord: Free Ponykind's leaders. They fought under nomes de guerre, as Commander and Captain, and mother and I fled to a cave in the wilderness, that we should not become hostages to use against them. 

Mother's magic was sufficient to keep our cave dry and prevent frostbite, but we were forced to share our blankets and body warmth every night. We suffered lice and fleas.

I was five. I thought snuggling with mother to sleep every night and foraging in the woods every day a grand adventure. We had no beer, so I whined like a little filly. At least the water in the forest was clean.

We had only the mattress, a table, and a few cooking pots, and some magic books. Mother taught me to read, and praised me for how rapidly my magic was coming in. I read with assurance quickly. I memorized the magic books. I attempted every spell. I succeeded at most. Teleportation was beyond me, alas.

I turned six.





When I was six, stallions came to our cave and took mother and I. They wanted Celestia and Mars.

"Tell us where your son and daughter are," said their leader, a white unicorn, "or you can't imagine what will happen."

"I don't know!" mother shouted. "I forbade them to tell me!"

"Liar," said the lead stallion, and kicked me, breaking my left foreleg both above and below the knee. 

I screamed and writhed in agony. I voided and vomited all over myself. My magic went wild, blankets and leaves swirling around our cave. The cooking pots rattled.

"Tell me where they are," the stallion said to mother, "or we'll do worse."

"I don't know! She's a filly, she's only six, don't hurt her! Do your evil to me, not to baby Luna!"

"We'll do to you, soon enough."

The nine stallions raped me in turn, forcing mother to watch, offering to stop only when she told the secrets she did not know. I was entirely innocent of the differences between mares and stallions before that moment, and my education was unpleasant. They broke my other foreleg, and then my nose for good measure. Then they raped mother in front of me. I lost consciousness.

They placed us in a dungeon. Mother splinted my legs, but I healed badly and could hardly walk. After a month, they ceased trying to interrogate mother. I suppose they realized she had no information.

So, for the next year and a half, they used mother and I as toys. We both suffered terribly.

Mother would have killed one, I think, out of simple intransigence, except that they would have killed her in revenge, and then I would have died of hypothermia without mother to curl around me in my sleep. I was but bones and sinew, no fat at all, and I shivered constantly. We had not so much as a scrap of blanket.





One day, while one stallion raped me and another stallion held a sword to mother to prevent her intervention, I teleported for the first time, teleported away, and found myself in the deep Everfree Forest, near a camp.

I crawled into the camp and the Commander was summoned.

The Commander was, naturally, Celestia. My teleportation has never failed me, although it often surprises me.





Celestia held me and cried as I told her the story. Her magic was able to clear me of the venereal diseases, but she lacked the power to fix my misshapen and ruined legs. 

They gave me wine and opium to deaden the pain. In retrospect, I should have kept the excruciation. But I was too weak, and my addictions worsened.

Celestia's band was at the forefront of the fighting. She passed me to another band, where I would be safer, and I travelled with them.

To justify our keep, pay for the food we ate and the water and wine we drank, several other fillies my own age and I serviced the soldiers. They were kinder and gentler than the barbarians who had locked mother and I in the dungeon, but it was still... sub-ideal. I reacquired the venereal diseases.

Because I drank much wine, I had to service many soldiers to balance my account. I paid the price gladly. Wine was preferable to dignity. I see my shame in the mirror to this day; alcohol made me a willing whore. 

By then, I was eight. 





Every few months, we crossed paths with Celestia's or Mars's bands. Their magic cleaned me and the other fillies of our diseases. Celestia apologized that she could not reunite me with mother and that I had to earn my keep with my body, but times were hard and the fighting against the ponies who followed Discord was brutal, beyond anything modern ponies can understand. 

The war had no laws, no rules, no quarter, no mercy. In over a decade of fighting, I do not think one single prisoner was taken, by either side. 

We were animals, then, more than we were sapient beings.

War is hell. Equestria' Civil War is still history's worst.

Those were my most formative years. Is it any wonder I am how I am?





My magic came in strong and fast. I remembered every word of the books. Starswirl tutored me when our bands crossed paths. I was soon working in the medical tent, and spent less time servicing the stallions. I could levitate heavy sledgehammers and drive in tent stakes faster than the largest earth ponies. I was still crippled from my misshapen forelegs and I could hardly walk, but I learned to teleport precisely in lieu of walking.

I consumed alcohol at a rate unmatched by even the largest stallions. I lived in agony every day, and the alcohol deadened the pain of my mishealed leg bones and infected genitals.





In the winter, we were forced to hunt animals for food. I would tandem-teleport with our best spear thrower, bringing him point-blank to surprise and take the animal before it could scent us and flee. Without my magic, many more of us would have starved.





When animals were not available, we ate our own dead. That is why I am nearly vegan, to this day.

My closest friend was Bloom Tender, an earth pony filly my own age. I used my magic—which by then was second only to Celestia, Mars, or Starswirl—to sooth her pain after a liaison with a soldier; Bloom Tender carried me when my broken legs hurt too much to walk. We shared a tent, and would look into each other's eyes in commiseration while soldiers mounted us. 

During the worst hunger winter of Discord's reign, my band and Celestia's band made winter quarters and laagered together. Food was unobtainable and starvation allowed disease to scythe through us.

We ran out of alcohol and opium. The pain in my legs was terrible, but my desperation for alcohol was worse. I was weak. Many of the soldiers were wounded, but they endured their pain. I whined like a little filly.

Bloom Tender died. They cooked her body. I refused to eat. I decided to die, instead of endure pain and disease and starvation and horrors unnameable.

Celestia took me into the falling snow, outside the tent, and I hobbled in the thick snow on my crippled legs. Celestia wrapped a wing over me.

"Luna," she said, "do you think mother is still alive?"

I thought for a few minutes. 

I said, "No."

"Think of what she endured so that you might live. Think of her sacrifice. Will you make her sacrifice meaningless by dying?"

"Sister—how can I endure the unendurable?"

"We'll lay Discord low, Luna, and we'll found a new land. A land where ponies love each other, and work for each other, instead of against each other. Mars and I will rule. That will make you a Princess of the Blood. You will be a scion of the Royal House. You will have many obligations, and to fulfill your duties, you must be alive."

(Parenthetically, I add that Celestia was the single pony unsurprised when I eventually sprouted wings.)

Celestia said, "If you die anywhere but in battle, you'll insult mother's memory. Father's memory."

I ate. I endured. I lived. I turned nine.





As my frame grew, and my ruined leg bones lengthened, my bones weak from malnourishment, I became entirely unable to walk, and was forced to teleport myself everywhere.

"Try to drink less," Celestia often told me.

I tried. I failed. I blame myself. 





One day, in the late spring, the officers of our band discovered that one of our allies, a powerful spellcaster, had betrayed us and pledged fealty to our enemies and Discord. He had delved into the black arts of necromancy, and was ensconced in a walled keep on top of a mountain. He knew our code words, our weapons caches, and our larders. His mouth had to be silenced. Celestia and Mars commanded our band bring forth into the castle and kill him. 

Our leaders debated whether to attack by siege or by stealth. Neither approach had any possibility of success. His castle was guarded by both ponies and the animated dead. There was discussion of tandem teleports, and although no names were spoken, only one filly in our band possessed that skill.

I teleported myself up into the branches in the crown of a tall tree and looked across the valley. The keep stood on top of a mountain, perhaps fifteen miles away.

White stone glistened in the sun. The walls were high and thick, and the lands around the mountaintop clear and without any cover or concealment. It seemed obvious to me—for I was well tutored in war by then—that most of our fighters would be dead by the next day. I would be alone and helpless again. 

What would a nine-year-old filly, who can barely walk, do without her patrons and protectors? I glared my hatred at the keep, and felt my anger and my wrath wax. My horn tingled. A fell sensation came over me, and the hatred made my magic strong. The very air became as thick as blood with my magic.

My horn discharged.

Fifteen miles away, the mountaintop exploded. 

A billowing fireball lifted into the air, flattening into a mushroom. The flash parched my face and burned out my eyes. The airblast knocked me out of the tree, fifteen miles away. My head hit a branch on the way down. I do not remember the remainder of the fall, or the remainder of that day.

I awoke the next afternoon, with my cutie mark and my wings. Everypony called me 'Princess.' I was blind from the flash, vitreous humor matting my face, but my eyes healed within hours. Five others of our band were permanently blind, and most were sunburned. My forelegs flamed with pain as my new magic healed my misshapen leg bones, and my privates burned as the scar tissue inside my reproductive tract healed, and as my venereal diseases were driven out. The blanket I convalesced upon had to be burned, because of the vile discharge it collected from my genitals. 

I have not had so much as a head cold since that day. 

The spell I created entered the history books as "The most forbidden spell." Celestia expunged it from the archives and grimoires of this land. My name, thankfully, is not attributed to it in those few histories that remember it. The only copy that remains is in my head. Even when I was Nightmare Moon, I declined to use that spell for fear of the collateral damage to the kingdom I wished to usurp.

I later learned there had been over a thousand fighters, and several thousand farmers and other innocents, in the keep and its surrounding lands. I had killed them all to get one necromancer. The mountain itself was become a crater, and the next season's rains turned it into a lake.

To this day, I loathe necromancers.

I was nine years old, I had the blood of four thousand or more on my hooves, and I wasn't upset at all. I was pleased to learn how to fly, and to walk without agony in my forelegs, and to pass urine without agony in my loins. 

I became leader of that band, and forbade the soldiers to rut the other fillies, and put the fillies to more moral work, such as washing laundry or changing bandages. I took all the soldiers' rutting onto myself, because I was immune to venereal disease, and far too young for pregnancy.

My alcohol consumption was reduced, slightly, as the pain faded. Then it increased as my new metabolism took hold and a given amount of drink produced far less effect.





Years passed. Discord murdered my brother, Mars. Celestia and I found the Elements of Harmony and deposed Discord. Equestria was re-founded. We fought many battles to rout the ponies that did not wish to acknowledge the new order. Celestia commanded I give quarter and parole and take prisoners. I obeyed, but it was not natural to me.

I spread my wings and alighted on the ground in front of the castle mother and I had been imprisoned under. I blew its door to splinters and entered. 

Stallions recognized me. I recognized my rapists. They drew their weapons. I flung my magic, and their deaths were slow and horrible. I tortured seventeen to death, tortured them to the point their minds broke, and then I freed mother and the other prisoners.

To bring mother out of her bondage was the best day of my life (until the Elements freed me from Nightmare Moon).

I was so pleased to reunite with mother that I did not lose a moment of sleep over the acts I committed. And that lack of regret terrifies me. I think that was the seed of sociopathy that allowed Nightmare Moon inside, later.

I was twelve years old.



 

I ruled Equestria with Celestia. We caged Sombra and lost the Crystal Empire. I turned fourteen. I became Nightmare Moon. I was banished, a thousand years was but an eyeblink to me, I returned, Twilight and her friends saved me, and Celestia forgave me. 

Until a few months ago, I drank uncontrollably. At seventeen, Celestia had me incarcerated for cause for three months in Juvenile Hall. The civil servants were disconcerted to have a princess as prisoner, but the psychological treatment was good for me. I stayed willingingly, and I was sad to be freed on my eighteenth birthday to return to my grim duties. I returned to drink, however, after my first 'sanction' after my release.

My Ponyville friend, Starlight Glimmer, whom I met through the Friendship Map, stands as my Sponsor to Alcoholics Anonymous. She has been sober several years and sets a good example for me. I am abstinent of alcohol for the moment, but I do not know what tomorrow will bring. I will never be free of alcohol, no matter how long I abstain from it. I am weak. I will disappoint Starlight Glimmer and Celestia, sooner or later, I am sure.

I rut any pegasus stallion I can find when I am sober, and any stallion at all when I am drunk. I cannot control myself. None of my rapists were pegasi; my psychiatrist thinks that relevant, but I retort that I simply like the feel of feathers.

I wear the crown, and that means I have duties and obligations. Along with Twilight and Cadance, I am among the most powerful pieces on Celestia's chessboard, and she moves me around Equestria where she must. Celestia takes advantage of my unmatched talent at combat and killing. I both love and resent Celestia with all my heart. I wish I had never sprouted wings, but as I did, I must fulfill my obligations.

I usually regret my killings; make no mistake. 

But, when I am sent to deal with a necromancer, or when I can find a rapist in the dark of the night, or one who gives foals addictive substances, I smile as I take their head. I was not born that way: I allowed myself to become that way.

And that is why I hate and fear myself. Because, sometimes, I smile when I kill. Because I have learned to smile when I kill.
> Chapter 7: Some ponies best serve the world by leaving it
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I took a drink of water, parsing all that Luna had said.

"Luna," Rosie said. "That's a terrible story."

"I am a terrible pony," Luna replied.

"No, you're not!" Rosie snapped. She scooted her chair around next to Luna, threw a wing over Luna's cloaked shoulders, and Rosie hugged Luna around the neck with her forelegs. "It's hardly your fault you grew up in such a time and place. It's not your fault you were given so much alcohol before you could decide for yourself. It's not your fault you were... were... were... raped."

Blizzard Walker nodded her head. "Highness... we know you're a short fuse, ma'am, but we volunteer to serve you anyway. Now that I've heard that story, I respect you even more. We usually move Guards to non-combat positions after two hundred days on operations—a pony has a finite stock of courage and sanity, no matter who they are—and you've spent years on the line. You're as tough as Princess Celestia. I mean, at least she was an adult during your... story."

Luna propped her elbows and the table and covered her eyes with her hooves. "Bah! No one respects me. Your battalion knows my weaknesses. You respect my sister, who deserves such, and you serve her by protecting me."

"Ma'am, Celestia gets more volunteers for your detail than she can accept."

"Nonsense. I choose to believe she has to draft troopers onto my detail."

"No, ma'am. And you did save my life that time. That's embarrassing for a bodyguard to admit."

Luna looked up. "In combat, you are my sister, not my bodyguard. I value you highly and would not trade your life lightly."

I tapped a hoof on the table. "My dad's medically retired from the Guard. He won't tell me what happened, he says it's classified for fifty years. But he does tell me he's proud of whatever it was he was doing when he got wounded. Dad says, 'Sometimes, some ponies best serve the world by leaving it.' I don't think you did anything different."

Luna sipped her mineral water. "You sound much like the castle psychiatrist. She tells me my actions are just, and that some ponies naturally have a killer instinct, and it is commendable that I focus my killing on those who threaten society. She says that the fact that I regret many of my sanctions shows I am not a sociopath."

"Yes!" Rosie said.

"My psychiatrist says my alcoholism is due to exposure before my brain was fully formed, probably combined with a genetic predisposition. She says ponies with intractable pain often become addicted to medicinal substances." 

"My dad struggles with his spine injury," I said. "With... his medications."

"My psychiatrist says those who have been in combat often re-experience it for the rest of their lives—think about how horrifying 'the rest of my life' is, given that I might live a million years, with no Princess of the Night for my dreams."

Rosie hugged Luna tighter.

"She says," Luna continued, "sexually abused foals often have esoteric sexuality as adults, through no fault of their own. She says that my past sexual abuse exceeds that of anypony else alive today, in war-free modern Equestria. I say I am a murderer, a drunk, a weakling, and a whore."

Luna picked up her bottle and slammed it down, rattling the table. She snarled, "I have had to go into my psychiatrist's dreams more than once, because treating my mental illness is traumatizing to her." 

Blizzard Walker said, "Ms. Bayes, Dr. Pudding, I'm in the Household Battalion. You've heard of it?"

"That's 'Celestia's Own,'" I said.

"Amongst other nicknames."

I nodded. "Dad says he stood for selection to Celestia's Own, but failed the tryouts."

"Less than one pony in a hundred makes the cut. Look, okay? Look. Okay. Our combat tempo is the highest in the entire Guard. Look, usually this isn't a conversation I would have around... civilians... but.... look, okay? Princess... I've dropped the hammer on four ponies. I got sick and puked every time, I pissed myself the first time, and I've regretted that they put themselves in the situation where the Guard had to come down on their heads—but I don't regret that they can't hurt anypony else. Because they would have. They were all that kind of pony. The kind who took you when you were six. The kind the world won't miss."

"I am hungry," Luna said. "My treat, if my foalhood story has not ruined your appetites."

Blizzard Walker looked at us. "Princess Celestia commands us to keep the princess fed. She's still growing, and she seldom remembers to eat on her own. And low blood sugar makes her crabby."

"Slander!" Luna snapped. "I am never crabby."

We summoned the waiter. We ordered. 

While we waited for the food, I tried to change the subject. I said, "You're also a Grand Duchess?"

Luna shrugged. "Apparently. I read a list of my titles once and had to take ill to my bed. The thought of exercising civil authority... that is far beyond my skills! Celestia is the most gifted administrator and bureaucrat in history. She employs regents and stewards on my behalf to handle my responsibilities. Once I week I sign a stack of papers, unread. The fucking apparatchiks will even bring that duty to me when I'm hospitalized."

"That's pretty low," Rosie said. “How often are you hospitalized?”

Luna sat silently, and levitated a napkin to wipe a tear from her eye. Instead of answering, she said, “For my recent birthday, Celestia gave me a March on the southern border, facing Klugetown, and named me Marchioness. For her last birthday, I gave her a necromancer's ovaries and eyeballs in a jar of formaldehyde. We are bad at gift-giving. I was gone for so long, we are still re-learning to be sisters, and we both need much practice. Although, last Hearth’s Warming, she gave me a lovely blanket."

That murdered the conversation. The food came and we ate in silence. I tried not to think of formaldehyded ovaries and eyeballs, and only nibbled at my meal. Luna ate my untouched portion, in addition to her own. She paid and left a nine-hundred-percent tip.

"Let us walk," she said. Luna stood and gasped as she put weight on her booted leg. "Earlier, Rosie, Proofie, you promised to attest to my sister I had not consumed alcohol. Let us go to her now. Blizzard Walker, lead off. Please."

Rosie and I looked at each other and we both went pale. We were going to go meet Princess Celestia!
> Chapter 8: Any friend of my sister's is a friend of mine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We entered the castle from a basement loading dock, and smelled the kitchens. Cobalt magic blinded us again and we were walking next to Luna, instead of Merlot, and she unlimbered her sword to hang more naturally across her back. Blizzard Walker bowed and split off, disappearing.

Guards snapped to attention. Servants bowed. Luna raised her head and nodded at them, greeting each by their title and full name: "Hile, Deputy Chamberlain Fast Hooves." "Hile, Platoon Sergeant Wind Striker." "Hile, Garçon de Cuisine Pot Scrubber."  And dozens more. 

I'd been in the throne room once, on a school trip. We'd come in through the foyer of gigantic stained glass windows and marble columns, they'd looked even bigger back then. 

This time we came in through the back door.

Celestia looked up from a stack of parchments, and a uniformed chamberlain levitated the papers away from her.

Rosie and I genuflected. 

Celestia waved for us to stand, and we did.

Luna bowed slightly and flared her wings. "Elder sister." 

Celestia nodded back and flicked her wings, and I saw she had some stitches and a mangled ear, as well. Her left foreleg was wrapped. "Sister. Luna. ........Luna, I heard there was swordplay in Little Griffonstone."

"Sister, I used braggadocio and the Royal Canterlot Voice to prevent swordplay."

"I haven't seen you since yesterday morning. I hear congratulations are in order for your promotion to doctoral candidacy. When will you throw off your disguise?"

Luna snorted, flicked her tail, and stomped. "The day before the hooding ceremony. The department chair and I discussed this at length. Not until I have earned my doctoral hood and all paperwork is signed. I wish no favoritism. I introduce Ms. Red Rose Bayes, known as Rosie, doctoral candidate; and Dr. Proof Pudding, known as Proofie, postdoctoral research associate. They will attest to my soberness."

Rosie and I both bowed.

Celestia said, "Dr. Pudding. Your sister is a pleasure to teach. She's a little firecracker! She's proud of you, by the way. It is my honor to repay your father's service to the Crown by taking your sister into my School. And a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Bayes. Your great-grandfather saved thousands of lives. His death saddened me, and his name is engraved on the Health Ministry's Wall of Honor, as one who died in the line of duty. The hoofpox outbreak killed him, but his intervention prevented a pandemic."

"Thank you, Highness," I said, inclining my head.

"You honor my family," Rosie said, flaring her wings formally.

"Both of your families honor Equestria with their service. My sister drank no alcohol in your presence today?"

"None," I said.

"Just coffee and water," Rosie agreed.

"Sister," Celestia intoned, "If you had brought your guards with you, you could have maintained your disguise and kept Necromancer's Bane sheathed. How long are you sober?"

Luna's face paled. Her wings drooped and touched the ground. She swallowed several times, and her voice was almost too quiet to hear. "It has been three months, six days, and nineteen hours since my last drink."

Celestia said, "Luna... dear... had you been forced to draw blood from one of those silly nincompoops, it would have sent you scurrying back to the bottle. Don't deny that."

"Yes. 'Tis true, Celestia, but I couldn't let them brawl. They were armed with knives and hoof dusters, and drunken beyond reason. The Guard was minutes away. Somepony might have been injured, or killed. I have seen too much blood and death to let it come again preventably. The day I discover I am inured to casual bloodshed is the day I cease to be the daughter mother raised and I become no better than.... her."

Luna's voice was so harsh that I had no doubt who 'her' referred to.

"You care for your subjects' health more than you care for your own. I love you, but I assign Blizzard Walker and the others to you for a reason. You are an adult, now, please act like one. Members of the Royal House are less free than anypony else in Equestria. You are a Princess of the Blood, and Diarch. Your precedence is higher than that of even Twilight or Cadance. Accept that fact, and the constraints it imposes."

Luna bowed her head and flared her wings. "I hear, sister, and I will try to obey."

Celestia stood and came down from the throne. She kissed Luna on the mane, between the ears and just behind the horn. "Next time," Celestia said, "consider an immobilization spell."

"Mine are inferior to Twilight's. Non-lethal attacks are orthogonal to my inborn talents, and practice has only taken me so far. ......I should spend a weekend in Ponyville and take tutoring."

"Indeed," Celestia said. "Stay away from Sweet Apple Acres. Cider season's coming."

Luna's face paled again and she swallowed, then nodded.

Then, Celestia extended a hoof to Rosie and I. We each gave a gentle hoof bump to the immortal monarch of the realm. "Thank you. My sister has great trouble making friends; at least, outside of my political allies, the element bearers, and Starlight Glimmer. You realize you two are the first friends she made without mine, political, or magical intervention? She has been looking forward to this afternoon for a week."

Celestia looked and Rosie and I and quirked one eyebrow. "Luna positively capered around my chambers like a filly last Thursday when she told me she was planning this outing."

"Sister!"

"Do you deny it?" Celestia asked.

"No... but you embarrass me. I told them the story of how I earned my wings. To picture that same Luna of red wrath and fell violence capering around in excitement will scramble their mortal brains."

"You told them that story?!? You are her friends. It took mother and I two years to get that story from her. Be welcome in my house," and Celestia made a sweeping gesture to the throne room. "Any friend of my sister's is a friend of mine."

Then, Celestia sidled up to Luna and threw a wing over her. From her tone of voice, it was obvious she wasn't speaking to Rosie and me. "You never capered when you were a foal, Luna. Times were too cruel. I have been cruel to you since you returned, but I am trying to do better. I'm glad you are learning to caper again."
> Chapter 9: Luna's promise to her new friends
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We went out the back door of the throne room, then to Luna's private quarters. She hung her Rarity bespoke on a concrete ponnequin, and we saw several similar cloaks on other ponnequins. "My cloak contains armor plating," she said, "and weighs more than a large pegasus or a small earth pony. I am fatigued, but it keeps me in fighting trim."

And, yes, her ribs showed. She needed to eat more. 

I smelled a faint hint of litterbox and saw pet toys scattered about, and noticed a silver water bowl engraved TIBBLES, but didn't see the actual animal.

Two owls bleared at us from perches near an open window. The sun was dropping toward the horizon.

Luna then placed the sheathed sword on the mantle above her fireplace, and sat at a table in a cozy nook. "Join me, my friends," Luna said. We sat down, and the chairs were uncomfortably large. I sank into mine and Rosie disappeared into hers. I imagined how cramped normal-sized chairs must feel to Luna. Even with the rest of Equestria being so squeezed and uncomfortable, she still donned her disguise and went into Canterlot to try to pretend a normal life. The poor thing!

A servant in silver and black livery entered and requested our orders.

"What do you have?" Rosie asked.

"Literally everything," he said, his ears perking up indignantly. "This is Canterlot Castle!"

All three of us went with coffee. Decaf for Rosie and I, regular for Luna. "The sun sets, and my duties begin. I shall be awake until dawn."

A unicorn doctor entered, removed Luna's boot and bandages, and examined Luna's leg. The wound was large and hideous. I saw white bone and smelled gangrene. Black and red ringed the wound. He applied salves and potions. Luna looked away from the wound, and breathed through gritted teeth. 

"It looks much better today, highness," he said.

"We walked miles and miles this afternoon," Rosie said. "How did you walk on that?!?"

The doctor looked at Rosie. "Her highness is immune to pain."

"Untrue," Luna corrected. "In Celestia's words, I have the highest 'pain threshold.' My five senses are far superior to non-alicorn ponies, so I feel the pain in exquisite detail. I am simply accustomed to pain because, before my wings came, and after, I suffered so much, and I have learned to function despite it. I will remember every throb until the day I die."

The doctor said, "The princess pulled her own wisdom teeth last month."

Luna flicked her wings in annoyance. "The accursed things keep growing back. Compared to what else I've endured?" She was silent for a moment. "'Tis nothing. And I have commanded you to call me 'Luna.'"

"Yes, highness, you have commanded that. Many times." The doctor wrapped her leg in fresh dressings and replaced the boot. The waiter brought two carafes of coffee and a tray of fresh-baked cookies, and then we were alone.

Luna said, "Need I impress upon you the importance of keeping my secret?"

Rosie replied, "Pretty much the entire department figured it out already, Princess."

"You two, please call me 'Luna!' Ahem. The forms must be observed. I wish to earn my doctorate. The disguise will legitimize it in front of the pony in the street. Please humor me."

"We'll keep your secret... Luna," Rosie said. 

"Luna, will you stop hating yourself?" I asked. "Think about what my dad said, and what Blizzard Walker said."

She sat in silence for several minutes, frowning, thinking. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes, and she wiped with a foreleg.

Can you imagine how much thinking can happen in that space of time, when the pony doing the thinking can solve massive systems of equations in an eyeblink?

What went through your head, Luna?

I'm sure what she said was only the barest fraction:

"I have hated myself for a long time. As Celestia moves me around her chessboard, striking down the most powerful pieces that threaten Equestria, I commit new atrocities to add to my ledger. I fear that if I cease hating myself, I will transfer my resentment to Celestia, and I cannot abide that thought."

She chewed her lip, and stared at the bleary-eyed owls for a few moments.

Luna continued, "Celestia is my last link to the before-time. I love Cadance and Flurry, but Celestia is my last blood relative, until I have foals of my own, which... well, maybe in a decade or two. To turn around the momentum of my emotions is not the work of one night."

"You said two or three times how smart Proofie and I are," Rosie said. "Take that seriously and ask yourself if such smart ponies would want to be friends with a monster, or with a good pony?"

Luna sipped her coffee quietly. "I will think about that."

We chatted about the department and gossipped about the professors. She went to a bookshelf and pulled the latest issue of The Journal of Mathematical Magic, and interrogated me about my paper. The three of us outlined a follow-up publication. (When it was published, the author list was 'Bayes, HRH Luna, and Pudding.' I couldn't believe it!)

"The sun is setting and I must go to my duties soon," she said. "The chamberlain will have arranged a carriage for you. Sadly, I must excuse myself shortly."

"This has been wonderful," Rosie said. "Can we do this again?"

Luna clapped her hooves and smiled. Her voice was fillyish. "I should hate it if we never did this again. You are my friends! May I ask you two a favor, however?"

"Of course, Luna," I said.

"Eschewing false modesty, I am one of the four or six smartest ponies in Equestria, and I am perceptive. Alicornhood enhances every part of the body, including the brain, and I was unnaturally intelligent before my ascension. Believe me when I say, you two are going to be married. You might not realize that yourself, yet, but it is obvious to me. It is traditional for all couples in Canterlot to invite Celestia and myself to their wedding."

"But—but—but—" Rosie said.

"We—we—we—" I said.

"It is equally traditional for us to politely decline ninety-nine point nine percent of the invitations, and send a card of congratulations instead. The last wedding we took the time to attend, the Donkey family in Ponyville, was a calculated political gambit to illustrate how we love minority species as much as we love ponies. I have never in my life attended a wedding for fun!" Luna levitated a piece of parchment and a quill, and scribbled. "This is the address of my personal majordomo. Send the invitation to her, and not the castle's main post office box, and I will be honored to attend."

Rosie and I looked at each other, and we saw in each other's eyes the Luna was correct. It was a year more before we said it out loud, but we both knew it from that moment. We kissed, briefly.

Luna and Rosie then shared a hug. Luna beckoned me to join. As a stallion, I was reluctant to touch a mare who, just two hours before, had told me about her hundreds, maybe thousands, of rapes as a filly at the hooves of other stallions. 

I stood there, chewing my lip, unsure. 

Luna’s horn flashed and she levitated me into the hug and wrapped her wings around Rosie and I.

"Good evening, my new friends! The guard will show you to the carriage. I shall see you at the department colloquium next Thursday," Luna said. 

Still hugging us, her eyes then focused on the katana sitting above her mantle. She frowned, and her ears wilted and her wings drooped, and her head sagged almost to the floor. Her voice thickened with tears and I felt her body shudder. "Unless my duties call me away." 





And that's how we became friends with Princess Luna. She was delighted to be the Best Mare at our wedding. She did so as a friend, as an ordinary pony, and not as some royal social or political obligation. Ponies forget how young she is, and how she experiences so little of the normal life we take for granted. 

We used no social machinations or back-channel bribery or blackmail, as so many rumors suggest. We found a lonely, hurting pony who wanted nothing more than somepony to drink coffee and chitchat with, or to visit her in the hospital when one of her many 'assignments' turned into a débâcle, as happened outside of Somnambula a few months later. We gave this to her gladly. And we asked nothing more than her friendship, in return.