[Snippet] The Ponyville Numbers Station · 10:54am Jul 30th, 2019
Sunset Shimmer set about unpacking her things. Though still reluctant toward the idea of staying in Ponyville long-term, she was at least going to make sure she was comfortable here during her visit. After a solid couple hours of work, the previously-bland master bedroom had been transformed into something far more cozy. The bed was made, her spellbooks and theory texts placed snugly on a bookshelf and magically sealed just to be safe, her clothes and dresses went in the closet, and her grandmother's traditional Neighvajo pottery was hanging on the wall over her headboard. Pokey the cactus initially went on the nightstand beside her alarm clock, but after a sudden realization, got relocated to the top of the dresser. After that, it was just her other various bits and bobs to strategically scatter about the space, except there was in fact nothing strategic about it at all. By the time she was done, night had fallen in full, with the moon a needle-thin crescent looking in through the skylights.
And finally, there was the radio. Setting it up on the desk and checking to make sure it was undamaged, she flipped it on for a test. A blistering wall of static hit her first, and she nearly jumped out of her seat in surprise before scrambling for the volume dial. Once the noise was less... noisy, she turned to the tuning knob; uncertain as she was about what sort of music or news to expect from this paradoxical town, now seemed like a good time to find out. There was some reporting on a hoofball game... Weather scheduled for partly cloudy tomorrow... Luna's voice listing off some numbers in monotone... A relaxing acoustic folk ballad...
Wait, what?
[https://youtu.be/6Wjv7UY8kqo]
Turning the dial back to the previous station, Sunset's brow furrowed as she listened; though distorted by the radio's tinny speaker, there was a cold feminine voice that didn't sound all that dissimilar to Luna's clipped tones. Enunciating clearly, she read off a seemingly random list of numbers, pausing at inconsistent intervals for chimes to ring in almost lullaby-like melodies before the numbers resumed.
Shivering despite herself, Sunset glanced out the screen door to the backyard; under the heavy treetops, it was virtually pitch-black, and she could almost trick herself into thinking she saw shapes swirling in that darkness. Shaking her head to clear the mental image, she instead looked southwest; the skylights provided a decent angle to see the lingering glow on the horizon outlining the highest mountains. Beneath the orange outline, though, there was a distant red dot, a small light framed by the tall peak behind. It blinked. Sunset blinked back. It blinked again. Sunset didn't blink. It didn't blink. The numbers droned on.
Turning upward, she looked at the moon. The crescent was impossibly thin, bordering on nonexistent, yet also wide open. Sunset could see craters, rises, dark spots, open secrets, concealed truths, the dark silhouette of a mare's head. The moon was looking in through the skylight.
"End of message. End of transmission." The voice stated, and Sunset snapped back to reality. The moon was just a moon. The red light in the foothills blinked thrice, and turned off. The neighbor turned on their back porch light, sending fingers of illumination through the fence slats to dispell the swirling shadows in the backyard. Once again the radio was just spouting white noise, until Sunset turned it off.
Despite how long and exhausting her day had been, she didn't sleep well that night.
I'm certainly intrigued should you choose to expand this.