Evening Star Also Rises

by Starscribe


Chapter 12: Doing it Better

Hayden found herself alone on the roof of her tower that night, staring up at the stars. She hadn’t bothered with clothes, hadn’t bothered with a blanket or even a pillow for resting on. She just sat on the floor, with the phone in front of her. She’d rigged a stylus for it by wrapping a thin rod in a little metal foil taken from a gum-wrapper, and that worked well enough so long as she was careful. Her solar charger still worked, though she knew even that had a limited lifespan. If she stayed in Equestria for any length of time, everything she had brought would stop working. Even working for her entire lifespan, whatever that ended up being for Equestria, would not get the society anywhere close to the level needed to maintain what few objects she had brought. It was the work of whole generations, and there simply wasn’t time.

But that doesn’t matter. At this rate, Luna won’t keep me around. And maybe I should just ask to go back anyway. True, Luna had argued to keep her after this one disaster. And maybe its rare circumstances would prevent another one in the future, now that Hayden knew the danger.

Hayden probably should’ve felt guilty that the pony she felt most sorry for was herself. Nightbreeze had been such a loving assistant, shepherding her for over a month, teaching her how to be a pony. She’d been an excellent lover, and Hayden had looked forward to having a girlfriend again. Looking forward to correcting the mistakes that had ended in her relationship with Elizabeth disintegrating the way it had.

But all that was gone now. So far it seemed Luna had escaped the rumors that would spell the end of Hayden’s time in Equestria, but for how long? If even one servant suspected, if even one had peeked through a hole or a window when nopony else had noticed… that might be it. Eventually, the weight of public opinion would force Luna to act.

“What do I care if she has to send me home?” Hayden asked the empty balcony. “It’s not like this world wanted me here! It’s not like I’ve really done that much good!” Yet as true as those statements were, there were others boiling just under the surface. Such as the knowledge of the world waiting to receive her when she returned. She’d certainly been declared dead by now. Perhaps her assets had been distributed, or soon would be. If she returned to Earth now, it would be picking up the pieces of a broken life. And I could never tell a soul what had happened, or else end up in a mental hospital for the rest of my life. Or worse, if she returned not as herself, but in the body she occupied now…

“But if I stay, I could make a difference. Not just helping the princess be better with her subjects… not just the jobs she wants me to do. But what I know.” She wasn’t really talking to anyone, though the phone was right in front of her. She could’ve recorded an audio diary if she wanted to. “I could stop living in a tower and try teaching some things.”

Hayden was no scientific polyglot, but she knew a great deal. Her kindle had tons and tons of reference books, kept there more because she never had to delete anything than because she expected to read them. And she knew enough about basic fields—germ theory, construction, even the monetary system and currency. All those things might improve the lives of ponies in quite tangible ways.

Something settled onto the tower behind her. Hayden didn’t look back, though she knew it must be a winged pony. One wearing shoes, judging by the sound of metal they made when they touched down. A guard, perhaps.

“The stars give you solace, do they?” asked a voice. Not a guard’s voice, or a stranger’s. Princess Luna’s. She walked slowly across the wooden deck, before settling down into a comfortable sitting position a few feet away. “I often stare up at night, searching for significance in their patterns. Those who ordered the first creation must surely have hidden their secrets there, if only I could find them. Perhaps they arranged events so that their light passing through the eons would speak to me when it came time for critical moments in pony history. If only I watched at the right moment, I might see.”

Hayden chuckled. She didn’t look up, didn’t bow as was proper. But there was nopony around to see, and anyway Hayden was quite bad about formalities. Nightbreeze had to constantly remind her to keep using them when they weren’t in public. But so long as there was nopony around to see, Luna didn’t seem to much care.

“I don’t think that’s what the stars are, Princess. But I think you already know.”

Luna’s amusement momentarily mirrored her own. “Yes, I do. Better than most of Equestria, anyway. We have greater concerns. Soils that overflowed with riches a generation ago now grow fallow. Cities sicken and die faster than ponies can flow into them. The constant threat of invasion on the north, one we might not be prepared to meet.” She looked down, over the edge of the balcony and into the city. It was a beautiful city; however small it was. Harmony, the capital of Equestria and home of all its most important elites.

“Ponies today look out and see Harmony and they are filled with awe. But Equestria is only a shadow of itself—a specter ravaged by war, a vulture surviving on the bloated remains of a greater civilization now destroyed.”

That sounded a little too dramatic to Hayden, but she didn’t say so. She did say something else. “I might have some ideas. Simple concepts from my world that yours hasn’t discovered yet. There’s no reason that they couldn’t be useful to ponies as well.”

“You mean like that room of yours? All that effort just to have hot and cold water whenever you wish it. A fantastic luxury at so high a price.”

“Well… it’s not the most useful thing I could teach. But the idea of sanitation that’s behind it might be. The reason your cities are so sickly, for instance.” Medicine in Equestria went only as far as unicorn healing spells. Some of those could do miraculous things, but others seemed entirely fictitious cures. Hayden hadn’t been out of the castle to know how much of each one was present. “Maybe if you’d give me a few days, I could prepare a… presentation or something. I don’t know if you have an executive board, or nobles or whatever…” But she did know.

Luna did not rule as Celestia did, who oversaw almost the entirety of the nobility. Luna owned the allegiance only of those nobles who lived on her land, the so-called “Shadowed North” for its poor soils, long winters, and frequent broken ruins of ancient structures made from crystal.

But aside from these handful of nobles ruling over the least-productive land in Equestria, Luna only had the army. Which based on what she’d seen so far were underfunded and undermanned at a time of severe risk. Ponies would rather have parties than send food to the army.

Luna sat back and seemed content to let Hayden chew over these facts one at a time, saying nothing until Hayden finally spoke again. “There are some changes that might be implemented by a… does your army have anything like a corps of engineers? A group of special soldiers who build bridges and infrastructure and stuff?”

“Never heard of it,” Luna said. “We typically call on locals whenever the army needs skills other than fighting. It’s rare enough that we need to. Which of Equestria’s difficulties did you mean?”

“Let’s… step back from thinking about the whole country,” Hayden said. “I know that’s out of my scope. But maybe… are there any cities in the Shadowed North?”

Luna stamped and pawed at the ground in front of her, hissing with frustration. “Even you have to call it that?” No wait for an answer. “Yes, one. The capital of the domain of the Flurry family, Icefalls. The northernmost reach of Equestrian society. Poor Nightbreeze won’t even reach it for another day, at the earliest.”

Hayden winced, suddenly looking away from the princess. “If I thought apologizing would…”

“It would not,” the princess answered, preempting her. “Besides, I cannot blame you. I created you to change, to improve my abilities. Celestia is always having secret dalliances from ponies the world over. I suspect they might even be part of the deals she strikes with her nobility… It would be good to… be able to act as she does, with such dispassion.”

“That isn’t what Nightbreeze and I were,” Hayden said. Her voice had lost any of its meekness and subservience, lost all emotion at all in fact. She only sounded cold. But Luna hadn’t noticed. “We’ve been getting closer since I got here. It wasn’t a relationship of convenience, or desperation. I really liked her. It’s not fair that she’s the one who loses her lifelong position and I’m unharmed.”

“I shouldn’t be so surprised,” Luna said, her voice bitter. “And neither should you. Life is unfair. There is no justice in our course, only the slow inevitability towards death. We keep the void at bay as long as we can, but not forever.”

Hayden sighed. Princess Luna had particular dominion over such things, or so ponies believed. She had a personal role in the death of ponies. Whether or not that was true, Hayden had severe doubts. She hadn’t really investigated any closer than the claim that they both moved the sun and moon. Obviously preposterous, so why question it? Earth had its Sun King, there were just two of them here.

“Well, I still think it would be a good idea. Maybe you can get me… some soldiers or something, who know how to build. Or city magistrate, or…” She trailed off, eyes widening as a more coherent idea formed in her mind. Plotting and scheming had never been Hayden’s strong-suit, but this might’ve been her second plan in one day.

“I don’t have to be with you to improve. If I get better, you do too. Isn’t that how it works?”

“Yes,” Luna said, raising her eyebrows. “Though as you should realize by now, your safety is paramount to my own. I would suffer permanent harm if you were killed.”

“Nobody wants me to live more than I do,” Hayden said, grinning at her. “Why don’t you send me to Icefalls too? Give me the authority to act on your behalf, plenty of soldiers who don’t mind becoming engineers, and the bits to pay for it all.”

Luna laughed again—not a quiet, subtle gesture, but so loudly and energetically that Hayden was surprised that none of the guards walking the walls on lower levels could hear them. “Forgive me… for as clever as your plans seemed earlier, Hayden, a question like that… You realize you cost me my best and most loyal steward today? You realize you very nearly cost the success of this entire plan? Now you want me to give you resources and authority over…” She trailed off, grinning at her. “Are you sure you aren’t a stallion? The balls on you.”

Hayden didn’t say a word. She hadn’t realized what Luna was now pointing out to her, though of course it made perfect sense. The princess was right to refuse her. But if I can’t really do anything useful here, maybe I should try and get home.

Luna stopped laughing, coughed, then straightened. “Let’s say that I’m intrigued by what you managed to accomplish in your quarters, but that my trust is yet granted only provisionally. I will allow you to meet General Sunspot from the army. She handles provisions… I suspect you met her on your first public appearance. Convince her, and she is free to act with all the resources afforded her as she thinks will best serve the armed forces of Equestria. I will not imply she is under any obligation to use any of what you suggest. If you can convince her, and if your ideas prove successful… then maybe we’ll talk about Icefalls. Until then… it’s the only city ruled under my banner.” She looked down, glaring at the floor. “I’m certain they’d rather have Celestia just like everypony else. Sending you in to introduce sweeping changes you haven’t even explained to me… no.”

“That’s fair,” Hayden said. “I understand. And I would understand if you preferred to send me back to my world as well. Getting rid of me like Star Swirl suggested did sound like it made sense.”

“You want to go?”

“I want to go eventually,” she said. “But after months already missing, I don’t know that leaving at this moment would be worse than leaving a year from now. But…” She hesitated, but not for long. “Do you think when you send me back, I’ll return in the body I had?” She lifted a hoof. “I didn’t have these, and I actually was a stallion. I’d like to be put back the way you found me.”

The trace of a smile returned to Luna’s face. “Really? That explains…” She cleared her throat. “Well, yes. I haven’t asked Star Swirl about this, but I will do so at the next opportunity.” She rose to her hooves again, spreading her wings. “The night’s duties call to me. My new steward will arrange your meeting with General Sunspot. Assuming he doesn’t just forget. We didn’t choose the most qualified candidate.” She left into the night.

I wonder what she does up there. Nightbreeze had spoken as though Luna created the displays of stars and galaxies and auroras visible at night, and that was why they were so beautiful. Hayden doubted that very much, but not enough to ask Luna why ponies believed it. It wasn’t her place to change Equestria.

The next day, Hayden set about the plan she had proposed to change Equestria.

Explaining the basics of germ theory and expecting ponies to take it on faith were far more than she could hope for—beliefs about the sun and moon notwithstanding. So, she prepared a long list of required ingredients and forwarded it on to the steward. He got them all to her—eventually. Ponies already had everything they needed to make microscopes—they already had clear glass, and sufficiently fine metalworking to hold everything. So, Hayden built one, a basic light-reflective piece that would use simple slides to put the microscopic world on display for ponies for the first time in their history. She would also recreate the pasteurization experiments, to show how food treated with salt or stored in airtight containers would resist spoilage.

Least desirably, she had obtained samples from the city of Harmony’s “waste disposal” gutters, for display on her microscope. It took nearly two weeks to get everything right, but that was about how long it took the new steward, Nightcap to get her an appointment with Sunspot anyway.

As she had expected, Hayden’s presentation of purely practical matters to a purely practical pony like Sunspot went well. And she left promising to gather her own inferiors together later that same week to make some changes to the local military complex. “And if this can really stop our grain from going bad before it reaches the border, we wouldn’t even need as much from the farmers! If we could grow it anywhere and transport it ourselves, we’d only need one part of Equestria to be cooperative!”

After that, it was just the matter of waiting. Waiting to see if what had worked for humans could work for ponies as well. Who knows? A few years down the road, maybe they’ll trust me enough that we can start a proper industrial revolution. There were many factors that might go into something like that, and most of the historical details were lost on Hayden’s memory.

But that didn’t matter. If her simple proposals about sanitation could be observed—maybe followed up with a few key inventions to make plumbing scalable in pony cities—that alone might save tens of thousands of lives. It seemed like a good start.