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// Windfall - Enlightenment Day 
// Story: The Forging of Harmony 
// by The Sweezlenub 
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	“So,” coughed the mustachioed Professor.
He paced the dusty classroom agitatedly. He adjusted his toupee fervently. His cutie mark, a gleaming silver “B-plus” quivered on his mustard-yellow flank as he scanned the room. Nopony had stormed out yet. Two weeks, he thought. I’ve gone two weeks straight. Can’t drop the ball now.
“So, as you see, young ponies, that’s, err, well, that’s our problem in a nutshell.” Professor Windfall cringed as he peered through his spectacles from face to flabbergasted face. “You know, you’re actually taking this better than I—”
“—We don’t know?” Interrupted an incredulous student. “How is that possible?”
“Well, we used to know—that is, we, err, thought we knew.” The Professor stammered, wringing his hooves together. 
His words were promptly swallowed by the frosty silence. “That is to say, we were all once under the impression that we knew. At one time. And so we thought that—erm—for some time. Yes. But it was later that we, well, discovered that we knew, err,” he began to trail off as he looked morosely past the class, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall. I am in a meadow, he thought. I am in a quiet place. Some of the students peered at him curiously. “. . . Nothing.”
But now his words seemed to have turned the frosty silence’s stomach and were regurgitated.
“So you’ve just finished telling us,” squinted the incessantly inquisitive mare, “that everything you’ve taught us thus far has been a lie?!” She gave a derisive laugh. “That we not only don’t control the sun and moon, but that we don’t even know what they are?!” A murmur drifted through the class. They were becoming restless again, and Professor Windfall found himself extremely tense. He hated it when they became restless. His nervous tick was back again. It was like this every year on Enlightenment Day. Actually, it was increasingly like this every day.
“No! Okay? No! We’ve never known!” He shrieked. “The sun and moon bewilder us!”
The silence hung in the air like bricks. The professor smiled crookedly at his class.
“But, sir, isn’t it wrong for us to—”
“—Hey,” He commented. “Good job. Today. Erm, Sol. Good class. That will be all.”
He stood stiffly and awkwardly, rather like a bat hanging from the floor, as his students filed out of the room, demoralized yet again by the experience of his class. He sighed. All he had said was sadly true, and though nopony had actually gotten up and left his class, he felt strangely worse than if they had. Because once again he was reminded of the fact that he was a puppet of an imposter society. The unicorns were about as close to understanding the sun and moon as they were to discovering a cure for bad teaching. And neither of those things would happen for a very long time.
Fortunately for them, the unicorns lived in such desolate seclusion that this discovery was unlikely to be made by outsiders, who believed wholeheartedly that if the monks of Stormchant were not appeased, ruin would be brought to them all.
It was also true that the unicorns had believed they controlled the sun and moon, but that had all been due to a misunderstanding between the tribes regarding some of the strange superstitions of the Earth Ponies. The superstitions in question were that the unicorns were descendants of an ancient pony goddess of the sun (something their elders had referred to as an “Alicorn”), and thus had dominion over the celestial body through the combined labor of their magic. It was foolishness, naturally. At least, the unicorns knew that now.
It had become clear to the archmonks of the third age of the pre-pre-classical era when, out of spite for the River ponies (whose princess had recently refused the hoof in marriage of a unicorn prince), they attempted to exact their revenge by smashing the sun into the Fjordlands. In addition to the much later revelations surrounding what the sun was (and the other implications of what exactly that course of action would have brought about) the unicorns made the startling discovery that the sun was by no means under their control.
The unicorns were in luck, however, for this devilish plot—which was quickly disposed of by the clergy—remained unbeknownst to the other tribes. The other ponies continued to believe that the unicorns were responsible for the bringing of day and night, and to the unicorns’ great fortune, this common belief was never formally challenged. And so this age of relative harmony between Earth, River, and Magic persisted.
It pained Professor Windfall’s heart that the livelihood of his people was based on a lie, but then again, he knew that starving from the ensuing embargoes in the wake of this discovery being made by the other tribes would likely pain his gut. He had noted in the past that when it came to problems like this, his gut often won out. But despite the fact that in the case of such embargoes the alleviations on his heart from a vastly lower fats intake would be astounding, his gut had won again. So, like the others, he went along with the great fabrication, despite his displeasure in prolonging it.
All this difficult thinking about his gut had made him rather hungry, he realized, and he decided to walk to the market for a hot  meal.