//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9: Luna's promise to her new friends 
// Story: Princess Luna’s Unconvincing Disguise 
// by SockPuppet 
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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.