//------------------------------// // Prologue | Mooned in the Morning // Story: Big Celly's Day Off // by B_25 //------------------------------// Princess Celestia's BIG Day Off B_25 for NC Princess Luna opened her eyes already with the sensation everything was about to go terribly wrong. It was a gut feeling. Change in the air and how things appeared in her bedroom. Lazy mane bunched on the pillow as the magical fan went 'off' during sleep to save on magical electricity. It'd been night, and for some reason, she'd been asleep.  “You look tired Lulu. Try a nap. I can watch until dawn for you.” The offer had been suspicious but the expression appeared genuine. Luna had walked backward with a nod, eyes never leaving the sister, weary for a trick at the first turn. She had yet to be burned for that call. But a feeling of terribleness was on the horizon.  The mare lazily rose onto her front, bottom lowered and chest raised, stretching like a feline, feeling busts of knots and such developed throughout the night. Her head whipped to the side to look through the glass of her balcony doors. The mountainous horizon loomed out beyond the fields, a dimness to its mountains, the shape too odd in particular, so large as to appear through the darkness, dusk instead of dawn—something was wrong.  “Maid! Servant! Guards!” The doors blasted apart as the foreleg shot through it, enough to rattle the troops at its side, the maid spraying a vase, the servant walking past. Those here looked to the princess in the gown instead of a crown. “I need the assistance of you all!”  The five scampered in circles with some crashing shoulders in their appearing and lining together on the rug of the hallway. Red like scarlet and vast to serve as a decent runway. Everyone saluted in place—attempting to not make eye contact with the teddy bear clung to the princess's chest. “Princess!” “You!”  “Me?” “Other you!” “Me m'am?” Luna growled as energy surged upward in her chest. “Nngh! Maid!” “Y-Yes!?” “Please see to fixing the affair of my room at once!” “Yes!” The maid blasted into the room. “Servant!” “Ready captain!” “Excuse me?” “Sorry sir!” “Another jest?” “Not at all!”  Luna's head lowered before the height of the guards and her eyes shone upward like stars. Burning blue and ready to shoot into the first to act like a fool. “The kitchen. Now. Earl Grey done sweetly enough to make me lose some teeth. Understood?” “At once your highness!”  The servant fired like a bullet down the hall, either to make his break of the place, or to return with the tea deciding what remained of his fate. Princess Luna sighed and shook her head. Inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly; collected and calm once more.  “As for you guards.” Luna raised her head and returned to looking down at the duo. “Have any of you bore contact with my sister in these last few hours?” Both looked at each other with eyes communicating in the form of a deal. Luna's pair narrowed on the gaurds. The golden boy spoke first. “C-Case of miscommunication ma'am. She was to appear at night court but apparently had a tasting at the kitchen first. We contacted the chefs. Princess Celestia reconvened for a later time to meet with nocturnal ambassadors. Those were left ignored with a letter stating—“ “With a letter stating she was somewhere else and not exactly there?” “Precisely that.” “And how long has she been gone?” “Not even an hour after you retired.” Luna's hoof flew into her face with the same force her plot struck the ground. It kept planted to her features even in rolling her head back. Groans were muffled into the sole. Defeat of a tired girl charged with some bullshit and craving to go back to bed instead.  “Celly... whuh awre ywe uwp to noaw?” “Uh ma'am?” Both guards leaned into view from either side of her hoof, a pair of fools, somehow prompted, highly into the bracket. They attempted to speak even when Luna was like this. “What do you suppose we should do now?” “Whuha I wuant ywoa to do now,” Luna's hoof slid from her muzzle and caught itself with a clop on the ground, “is explain to me why I was not woken with this matter as it happened.” Both guards turned to each other to engage another deal.  “The one on the right this time!”  The brown stallion gulped a lung and turned around. “Um. T-That's the thing. Princess Celestia told us you were not to be woken until you had your morning coffee.” His muzzle dipped as he entered deeper thought. “She ensured to explain it could not be morning until the morning sun came up. Her highness told us a bit more after that. You being a monster before mornin' or before you had your coffee. Seemed like she was speaking for our sake.” Luna's face imploded into itself as anger erupted lava to pump throughout her veins. “How did you two dolts ever become guards?!” The one on the left stepped in and spoke up for his pal on the right. “See. Now that's the thing.” He shrugged and smiled with a sort of mirth discovered in simplicity exclusively. “We ain't even guards. Just a couple of farmers needing some extra seeds for crops this season. Princess Celestia said we looked honest like. Promoted us to official guards of doors at once. First day on the job by the way.” He held out his foreleg with an encouraging titter. “Black Diamond by the way; a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Luna gave up on life and hope as she looked to the ground and nodded her head. With bunched lips, she took his hoof, shaking it, accepting defeat. “Name's Luna. I'm a princess. But you probably haven't heard of me.” Black Diamond looked over his shoulder and at his pal. “Doesn't she sound familiar to you?” The other shook his head.  What good deed am I being punished for to have you as my sister? “Ain't it time for the sun to come up though?” The stallion followed that in turning back around. “I mean it can't be morning because the sun isn't up. But it feels like it should. Or maybe I'm going crazy?” “Rest assured it's only me being pushed to insanity today.” Luna hugged the teddy bear tighter to the fluff of her chest in strolling forward, nudging her snout for the others to follow along, at her sides rather than behind, the cause to get angry non-existent. “But let us see about the sky first. The rest of this drama can be handled later.” “There's a play happen' today?” Luna bunched her lips and looked down and wanted to giggle to spite it all. Before they unfurled the spaciousness of the hall, walls far apart, stained windows left, staggering portraits right, everything leading to the towering doors afar.  They reached it, the guards gunning forward to slam into it, pushing, the towering frame pulling away. Nod to them before strolling onto the balcony, it was round with a ground of marble, tables and chairs like the outside of a restaurant. The princess strolled to the railing with her nightcap tugged over an eye.  She gazed into the distance to see what was different. Darkened lands below the city as the view travelled to the planes of land sweeping to Ponyville and the spread of the rest of the landscape. Once more, though, it was the mountains. They'd caught her. Their shape beckoning. Something about them feeling sexual.  What... what is this feeling? Dusk meshed hills into the same shape and even the front of mountains blurred together. Yet there was something different about this set. Large and alabaster and voluminous in their spherical appearance. Darkened by the night and feeling like objects in a dream. Squinting eyes and narrowing gaze did nothing to tame the scene. Where did they end? Darker as they went up, unable to see their tops or ends, rather their form meshing into the blackness of the sky.  And then it came. High above the round pair. The glowing of gold in a swirl like a tower. Something moved in the mountains. Behind or around or to the side. Great as to render its movements a monumental shaking across the landscape.  Luna narrowed her vision, the magic of her horn, zapping onto her eyes, glowing them into seeing the world below like binoculars. Her gaze swept over fields to see the shivering of hills. Trees shaking before breaking across the scope as their crashes awakened the nearby wildlife.  Her view stole to Sweet Apple Acres, the thumping in the distant, slow and constant, powerful in its trembles, jostling the orchard. The woods shattered into each other as the mass of trees cracked and crashed to incessant pounding.  Just... what in Tartarus is going on? Luna returned her view to the mountain for golden beams to illuminate the scene. She whined. Turning away her head and blinking to readjust. She returned to looking at the mountains now only to see something different.  Immense. Utterly gigantic. Swells that gobbled the land. Round and pushing out had been their fronts of creamy white. Smooth in both the surface and their curve going up, the twins set between each other, stacked together, a sole line dividing them.  Luna lifted her head from her chest as stoic horror dressed her next expression. She blinked as another tremor quaked the world. Beyond the horizon in the orange painted sky, rose the neck of the serpent, one able to warp around the planet, long and thick, soft and proportional to her.  The sun-kissed the sky on its gradual rise, though the land was taken to darkness again, in less than a second flat, as the head of the massive mare passed over the object. It'd turned to look at them, lazy mane to a cocky expression, a look of utter satisfaction. “T-Tia?” Luna wobbled back from the railing until tripping—caught, in a series of forelegs, by the twins holding her. She continued to look out to the majesty of her sister who used the morning sun as a halo. The immensity of her muzzle loomed in darkness in which its details couldn't be seen through. “What are you... b-but that means...” Luna looked back to the mountains. It seemed strange to see the flanks stacked on mountains, those no more hills in comparison, fissures borne throughout the rock, unable to withstand the monumental weight of greatness. Greater cracks broke underneath the buns as the snowy peaks couldn't match her coat.  From their sides emerged a wing that claimed the sky, those arching wingtips set to curve around the rump, and in so doing, generated powerful winds, currents blasting forward, crashing through the surrounding density of black clouds, a single whip, a slice through, to reduce the cloudy sky into a curving trail of a wisp. Those tips spread across the thickness of the swells in needing to go miles out to follow its curves. In tracing its inward slope, they slid into the dusky, towering, warm crevice—exposing and revealing more of its diamond depths. Wingtips, much like hills to the round and vertical landscape, sunk into its flesh, deeply so, disappearing into its plushness, their following impressions, impressive, in a downward arch across the side of the cheek. They pulled and slowly parted the monstrosity. Incalculable force to peel away a largeness beyond the capture of their vision. More teased in the snug valley between the white velvet of softness.  Luna looked back in time to see the muzzle of her sister now sticking out her tongue, plump and pink and round it was, a bulldozer able to dangle and destroy a castle. It remained cute despite those properties as Celestia pulled down an eye with a hoof.  The giantess had curved away from her bottom, knowing the morning nation watched her, revealing enough to put on a show. Her wing flapped away to the forward crash of violent winds. Scattered trees pulled up and huts yanked from the ground, collecting in the air and shooting forward, everything crashing across the land.  “D-Duck!”  The trio fell backward as a large tree blew like a bullet over them, over the doors to a circle window, stained glass to the thick branch travelling through the hallway. It stopped, eventually, swallowing the hall in its size alone.  Those on the ground quickly jumped up, forced to stumble around, then, as jostles quaked through the land. The cheek pulled free crashed back into its sister, the two wobbling away in hefty rises, their crashing into the mountains pounding dense rocks into dust. Vastness of protruding white, falling through, slamming into the ground, the downward crashing of her cheeks at the first impact carving a crater, one deepened in every smack of the softest of white, its bubbly shape drove into the ground.  Celestia laid forward for a second more as the wobbles faded into ripples across the round surface. Slowly her body lifted into the sky, returning the light, at least the beams allowed to shine between the pillars of her legs. Arching her bottom low and chest high, further than the smaller princess, the mare strode off, rocking the world in her steps, off to the waters that awaited her at the edge of the land.  Luna stood on the center of the balcony with a face amazed and crazed into the depths of sadness. Eyes wide and starting to burn at being denied to blink for the last minute. With a swallow she turned around, spotting the tree composing the hall, a great oak, carried through winds, launched like nothing by her sister.  She turned back and focused on the railing again. Every step forward was a jostle for, at the same time, another did the same in the distance. Every time she took a step, already the ground rocked, handling the one from her sister, the shock of each, never losing their greatness, to the point of throwing her to the floor.  "Is she...” the guard spoke up from behind “...headin' to the water?” “It would appear that is the intent of her direction.” “What is she gonna do in the water?”  Luna looked back at them, holding the railing for support, doing her best to smile. “I hope none of you like Manehatten.” She closed her eyes and sighed and at once was on a plan to make everything right. “Can both of you fetch me a scroll and a quill? Perhaps Cadance can help me knock some sense into my sister.” “Miss? Were you mooned by your own sister?” “That doesn't sound like hoofsteps—“ “Can't you hear them afar?” “—fetching a quill or a scroll.” “Yes!” They blasted off.  “How can this day get worse?” Someone approached her side. “Here is your coffee miss!”