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// Chapter 58 
// Story: The Perilous Gestation of Swans 
// by kudzuhaiku 
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Luna appeared shaken, but Gosling wasn’t so sure it was just pre-show jitters. All of the tell-tale signs were present and accounted for, and the fact that he could now sense them gave him a sense of accomplishment. He started to say something, but the illusion vanished and Luna became her younger, gawky counterpart again. She gasped for air, like a swimmer finally breaking the surface, and then stood there, legs in a wide stance, her body in a most inelegant pose, her wings slapping against her sides from the force of her heaving.

Knowing that Luna was a fickle creature, Gosling gave her some space. Watching her drop the illusion and then react in such a way confused him, terrified him, it unnerved him in ways that he could not give voice to. The very fact that she needed to drop her illusion to deal with such emotion was disturbing, and he could not help but think of all of the times she hadn’t dropped the illusion, but had held everything in.

As awful as it was, this was a good sign, though Luna would exhaust herself by having to recast the complicated spell. It was draining to the extreme and though he understood very little of magic, his sympathy burned strong. Much to both his surprise and alarm, Luna advanced on him with great speed; before he could react, she was embracing him, clinging to him, and gushing tears. At first, he just stood there, too stunned to react, but sense and feeling returned to his leaden limbs. He slipped his wings around the weepy filly and did his best to comfort her, though he had no real idea what Luna found comforting.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, risking the floodgates, as well as the flood that lurked behind them. If he wasn’t careful, the waters could come and sweep him away. Perhaps it was because he was male, but Gosling found it difficult to deal with raw, hot emotion. Or maybe it was because he was emotionally immature and lacked exposure. It was impossible to tell.

The sobs that wracked Luna’s body made it impossible for her to respond, and she wept against Gosling’s neck, coughing out the most embarrassing of raspy, throaty honks. It occured to Gosling that this was the sort of vulnerable crying that fillies and mares did around those they trusted most, because it was just awful to witness. Just listening to it made him squirm and wish that he was elsewhere, because it really was just that terrible. There had to be some kind of fancy word for what he was feeling right now, the shared embarrassment, the shame, the complex swell of emotions that made him want to flee.

But being a stubborn creature bound by duty, Gosling remained rooted to the spot.

Though there was no window, Gosling could feel the sun dipping lower, that weird, peculiar feeling that seemed to grow stronger with each passing day. Seville had said it was some kind of sympathetic magic, and that Gosling was becoming more attuned to his wives’ moods, which seemed reasonable enough, but he lacked a means to substantiate his friend’s claim.

The soft susurration of pelts rubbing against one another, accompanied by the faint swish of feathered wings, Gosling associated these sounds with comfort. He thought of his own mother, a clingy, affectionate creature, and with the sounds of Luna weeping loud in his ears, he wondered what sort of parent he might be. Parenting meant understanding how to care for something utterly helpless, something that depended upon you, and with this in mind, he thought about Luna’s special needs, her physicality.

“If you tell me what’s wrong, I’ll preen your wings for you so you’ll be a little more relaxed for what’s to come,” he offered while rubbing his neck against Luna’s.

“I spoke to Trixie…” Luna’s words were hitching, halting, hard for her to say. “It gutted me.”

“Do you feel better for having said it though?” he asked, his concern growing.

“Y-y-yes. I do. But it hurts. It hurts me so. I had to hold everything in… I had to be the matron they deserved and I’m not so sure that I am. But I put on a good show… I put on a good show because Trixie deserves better than what she is getting.”

Gosling found that he actually understood, and he began nodding. “It’s that recognition thing that you struggle with. That whole standing in your sister’s shadow and not being recognised for all the hard work you do in the dark. You see that in Trixie, don’t you? Twilight got the limelight, but I’m guessing you think that Trixie got the shaft. Am I right?”

“YES!” Luna blurted out, and she squeezed so hard that Gosling’s bones creaked almost to the point of breaking.

“You know, Luna… about that whole recognition thing…” He strained to speak now that violent waves of searing pain coursed through his body. This was a hazard of the job, so to speak, and though he said nothing about his hurt, he hoped that Luna—stuck in her current emotional state—would remember just how fragile he was compared to her. “Miss Loveletter wants me to find a way to praise you and give you recognition for all the things you do that others do not see, and she wants me to find a way to do this that isn’t patronising or treating you like a foal. And I gotta confess, I’m stumped.”

Sniffling, her eyes sodden and her eyelids puffy, she pulled away from Gosling to look him in the eye. Gosling gazed upon her, as if seeing her for the first time, and saw a creature that was the opposite of Celestia. Something in the back of his mind whispered that Luna, being the opposite of everything he loved in Celestia, might just be the sort of pony that got under his skin, the sort of pony he found irritating, maybe even unlikable, so he’d better hurry up and broaden his horizons. The very thought pummeled him and left his emotions in a raw, irritated state. The opposite of love wasn’t hate, was it?

She pulled back a little more, extended a wing, and said, “You can start by preening me. With actions, we can do more than words can say. I must confess, I crave your affections and your comforts right now.”

He almost said something in reply, something flirty, something canny, something that might have made Celestia blush and become flustered, but caught himself, and for now, he kept his mouth shut.





An expectant hush fell over the crowd while the sun dipped ever lower. Gosling was feeling pretty good about things. Luna seemed to be sorted out and she had recovered enough of herself to project her fun-loving persona. She stood beside him on the raised dais on his left, with Celestia on his right. It was cold, but the mood was such that nopony seemed to care. The crowd was far, far larger than expected, with most of them being earth ponies, though Canterlot’s elite could be seen scattered about.

Leaning over to his right, Gosling whispered, “You making loving easy, I just thought you should know that.”

To which the mare on his right replied out of the corner of her mouth, “Did you just call me easy, you brazen little peacock?”

The mare on his left suddenly had a contagious outbreak of the giggles, and Gosling found that he was infected almost immediately. Though a struggle, he tried to explain himself. “I meant to say… what I meant to say was that loving you is straightforward. You have simple needs—”

“And now you call me a simple mare,” said Celestia from the corner of her mouth once more. “I don’t know if I should feel flattered or insulted about my glorious lack of complexity.”

Now, the mare on his left was near to having fits, and she chortled almost to the point of coughing. The cold no longer stung his ears, because they were on fire, and Gosling, perhaps not the brightest of pegasus ponies, began to seek out a shovel so that he might dig himself in a little bit deeper. His problem, in no uncertain clinical terms, was that he was a poor judge of when to shut up.

“It wasn’t like the combination to the Royal Vault was hard to figure out,” he whispered, now also speaking from the corner of his mouth to the mare on his right. “A little to the left, a turn to the right, twist to the left, and then go right until you feel the tumbler pop. Oooh-oooh-aaah.”

A most curious reaction took place; Celestia became as pink as her scheduled sunset. It wasn’t a pale pink, no, but a lurid, temperamental pink, a capricious storm of profound pinkishness that caused the stray snowflakes in the breeze to sizzle into little curls of steam when they landed upon her.

It was in this condition that Celestia stepped away, made a gesture with her wing, and the band began to play. Luna too moved forward, leaving Gosling standing all alone, and the two sisters turned to face one another, with Luna still quite overcome with the giggles. The both of them had trouble looking one another in the eye, and there was a wry, secretive smile that graced Celestia’s pinkened muzzle.

The sisters bowed to one another, Celestia first, with a return bow from Luna, and what was supposed to be a solemn exchange had surely been ruined by Luna’s ceaseless, unstoppable giggling. Perhaps ruined was too harsh an outcome, because Gosling could see the impish mischief in Celestia’s eyes and he knew, he knew that she was enjoying this, because she liked it when social functions just so happened to become a little lively.

Both sisters danced, circling one another, their shod hooves clicking against the dais. An intricate series of movements called The Dance of the Celestials, a dance that had not been performed for about a thousand years or so. It was more than a dance, so much more, Gosling’s ears went rigid from the sound; each hoof striking the dais was done with metronome-precision and it was almost like the perfect mechanical tickings of a clock. When had the sisters even practiced? For surely such an act would require hours of practice, but they seemed to be doing this on a whim.

Even the heavens seemed synchronised with the dance; at last, the sun dipped down beyond the distant horizon, leaving the sky awash with the cold, blazing fires of winter. In the east, the sky purpled, darkened, and the achieved gloaming was absolute perfection. The band faded into a low background and when the pipers took over, a strange, haunting tune charged the atmosphere. Gosling had always found bagpipes to be irritating, annoying, but not now. At this moment, they were perfect, they were the only instrument that could possibly capture this mood, this orchestrated gloaming, this changing of the celestial guard.

An exchange took place in the skies as the hues of daylight surrendered, retreated, and the deepening purples and blues continued their solemn march. The dance continued, intricate movements, the clattering of hooves, extended wings made complicated gestures. It was, for Gosling as well as so many others, a restoration, a continuation of a time thought lost to history. For the First Tribes, this was the restoration of the Covenant, a concept that he barely understood, but through his efforts, his trials, he had reestablished.

Try as he might, he had trouble understanding just what he had done. It was too immense for him, too grand of scale, it went beyond just any one pony and he had help. Purple Party had a hoof in this, and so many others. Tears froze in the corners of his eyes and a dreadful tightness encircled his barrel, robbing him of breath. Not only had Luna returned, but the first real step to restoring the balance had been taken this night. Summer’s Sun and Winter’s Moon.

While day gave way to night, Gosling felt his faith renewed and a glimmer of understanding about his purpose teased his mind. He had been selfish with his faith, thinking only of his own beliefs and what they meant to him. In thoughtful repose, his heavy eyelids half-closed, he thought of those dreadful moments in the library tower when he had felt his faith flicker and come to the point of extinguishment.

He was a fool.

His purpose, his allotted task as Confessor, was to tend the flames of others, and in doing so, his own flame would be nurtured. Faith had to be restored, not just in Luna, but in the sisters as one entity, as a singular whole. Too much separation had taken place, too many ponies saw them as individuals, favouring one over the other, himself included. To accept one, but reject the other was to cast aside both. In a moment of perfect clarity, Gosling understood, and he did so in such a way that nothing else in his life had ever been this clear.

It was not enough to accept one; this was the test of faith. One had to accept both, wholly and completely. Closing his eyes, Gosling began to search his heart and was lost in the moment. For this to be done, he needed to grow as a pony, he needed to broaden his mind, expand his horizons, he needed to see as far as night was from the day. The pipes became a living drone in his ears while his thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, bring him down to his knees.

When he opened his eyes again, Gosling was not the pony he once was when he had closed them.