Hide and Seek had never been Summer Sun’s favorite game – at least, not when she played it with her sister. The basic premise involved separating herself from Blue Moon for a long period of time, and she didn’t like that at all. Having to be “it” was always the worst, but hiding was no picnic either. Either way there was always that fear in the back of her mind that she may never see her sister again. It was a silly thing to think, of course – it was just a game, after all – but she’d never been able to shake the feeling. It just bothered her, and there was nothing she could do about it.
The big problem was that Blue Moon loved to play Hide and Seek. It was just the sort of challenge she enjoyed trying to overcome, one that tasked her attentiveness, her skill, and her patience. She knew it sometimes troubled her sister, but there simply wasn’t anypony else around to play with; so from time to time Summer gave in and agreed to play.
Now was such a time. Summer was “it,” and Blue Moon had been hiding for nearly an hour. Her search had led her deep into a nearby wood. The trees grew thick and close together, their broad trunks covered with moss and ivy. Vines hung from overhead, and the foliage below was so dense that she often found herself crashing wildly through the green in her efforts to forge ahead. By now her soft yellow coat was flecked with dirt and covered in tiny scratches.
She was quite lost; of this much Summer was certain. It had been a mistake playing Hide and Seek so close to the woods, she now realized. The forest was frightening and unfamiliar, but she had been determined to find Blue Moon as quickly as possible, and so she’d made the reckless decision of charging in unprepared. Only just now did she come to see how great a mistake that had been.
It was getting late. The orange sun sank to edge of the horizon, and in the gloomy evening the woods seemed even more frightening than ever. Gnarled, twisted trees leered down at her from all sides, and their shadows grew deeper and darker as twilight began to fall.
At last she could take it no more. “Blue Moon? Where are you?!” she called out, her voice frantic. “I don’t wanna play out here anymore! I’m scared!”
“I’m right here, Summer.”
Summer wheeled around at the sound of her sister’s voice. She spied Blue Moon’s head rising from behind a huge fallen trunk.
“I’m sorry, sis. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She climbed over the log and quickly made her way to Summer’s side. “We don’t have to play this anymore if you don’t want to.”
“It’s just these woods,” said Summer, glancing at their surroundings. “I didn’t wanna play so close to them. I don’t know how to find my way around.”
This was true for both fillies: not long ago, their family had moved closer to Canterlot for reasons that had not been made entirely clear to them. Blue Moon suspected that it had something to do with the visit Princess Celestia had paid them a few months ago, but of more than that she was unsure. Their new home had a wide backyard that ended at the edge of this unfamiliar forest. It was a very pleasant place to live, but it was all new to the two sisters and they had yet to learn their way around.
“I wanna go home, Blue,” Summer continued, “but I’m pretty sure we’re lost.”
“Don’t you worry, sis. I drew us a map. We’ll be home in no time!” With that, Blue Moon reached with her mouth into the foal-sized saddlebag she wore and drew out a folded piece of parchment.
“A map? When did you make that?”
The dark-maned filly laid the map on the ground between them. “I’ve been working on it for a week,” she explained. “See? We’re still just on the edge of the woods.” She indicated a large tree marked on the map, then pointed to a nearby elm. “If I’m right, that tree’s got a hole on the other side of it facing home. All we have to do is go that way.”
The two walked around to the other side of the tree; and sure enough, a great hole opened in its trunk. Birds appeared to be nesting in it.
Upon seeing this, Summer sighed in relief. “Thanks, Blue,” she said. “It’s amazing how you’re always thinking ahead. I was afraid we’d never find our way home.”
“You won’t ever need to worry about that,” Blue Moon replied with a smile. “I promised I’d take care of you, remember?”
Summer returned her sister’s smile. “Of course I do! You’re always taking care of me, sis. Thanks.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Summer. It’s what I’m here for.”
Guided by Blue Moon’s map, the two fillies started to make their way towards home.
Corona awoke feeling a little confused. Though her curtains were drawn, daylight still streamed into the room from around their edges; but it seemed too warm and too bright, not like the pale yellow light of early morning. Curious, she rose groggily from her bed and walked to the balcony door. Still too sleepy to bring her magical energies into focus, she simply pulled back the curtains with her mouth. Immediately her suspicions were confirmed: the sun was already high overhead, the sky was a bold shade of blue, and the air was warm and breezy. It was mid-afternoon.
Now she knew something was off. Had she simply overslept? It certainly felt that way, for her sleep had been so deep and restful that it must have lasted for many hours, conceivably all morning. But why had no one awoken her earlier?
She thought back. Vague memories of yesterday arose in her mind as sleepiness subsided. She recalled last night, chatting with her sister, and raising the sun together…but after that, nothing. She must have fallen asleep then.
A soft growl disturbed Corona’s thoughts. She glanced quickly about her room, searching for its source, only to realize moments later that it had been her empty stomach. She’d barely eaten a thing all yesterday because of her long flight training session, and now she found that she was starving. Breakfast was called for – or rather lunch, at this hour. Taking a moment to don her regalia, she left her room and climbed quickly down the tower’s long staircase.
Near the base of the tower was a modest-sized private dining hall, reserved for the princesses and their personal staff. It being mid-afternoon, too late for lunch but far too early for dinner, there were no other ponies in the hall save for a royal chef. He happily prepared a meal for Corona, which she ate alone and in silence.
Her hunger sated, Corona decided at once to find her sister. Aurora was usually there to greet her when she awoke, explaining her plans for the day and keeping Corona’s mind occupied. Without her sister close at hoof, the sun princess felt rather aimless – though she had flight lessons scheduled again for later in the day, there seemed to be nothing to bide her time until then. Surely Aurora would have something for her to do.
First she checked the throne room and found it vacant. Some guards were posted near the door; when asked, they said that Princess Aurora and Glass Eye had been about much earlier in the day, but had since departed. The Royal Court, where the princesses’ council of advisors now convened, yielded similar results: no one there had seen Aurora recently, or had any idea where she might be found.
Soon Corona was reduced to wandering up and down the palace hallways, sometimes passing guards or other ponies and asking them if they had seen her sister. (Nopony had, or else it had been many hours since they last saw her.) The long passageways all looked more or less the same: round-roofed and walled with white stone and golden candle-holders, and richly-colored rugs spread across the floor; but as her wandering dragged on they seemed less and less familiar, ending and intersecting in places that didn’t seem quite right in the princess’s memory. Before long she realized that she was lost.
Since coming to live in Canterlot, her presence had only been required in a small number of places: the throne room, the main hall, sometimes the Royal Court, and so on. She had never taken the time to truly explore the vast and labyrinthine building in its entirety. Now, standing at a bewildering four-hallway intersection, she wished she had done so a long time ago.
“Blue Moon? Where are you?” she called out – she had little hope of actually finding her sister at this point, but she didn’t know what else she could do. “I’m lost! This place is huge!
“I’m right here, Summer.” With uncanny timing, Aurora stepped out from behind a corner.
“Blue!” Corona cried in happy surprise. “What’re you doing here? How’d you find me?”
"Good guesswork, mostly," her sister replied with a sly, knowing smile. "This is the exact same part of the palace where I lost myself earlier today. It’s pretty confusing around here.”
"You got lost here too? What were you doing out here?"
"Trying to find the library."
"We have a library?!"
Aurora nodded. "I didn't know about it either until Glass Eye told me. I've always gotten my magic books from the Arcane University's library, so I've never had to use the royal one. But it's here – well, actually, it's over there, just down the hall." She motioned with a hoof, indicating a doorway some distance down the hall from whence she'd come. "Glass Eye offered to take me to it, but I told him I'd rather find it myself…which is, of course, how I got lost. I stumbled across the library by luck.”
Now Corona's curiosity was piqued. "Why did you need to find the library, anyhow?"
“For research,” said Aurora. She started to walk back down the hall towards the library doors. “Come on, I’ll show you. And don’t worry about getting lost again – I’m drawing us a map. We’ll have this place figured out in no time.”
Once inside the library, Aurora filled her sister in on the morning’s events. After waking up and finding her sister still asleep, Aurora had gone to see Glass Eye; he had spoken with the advisory council about finding ways for the princesses to make themselves useful in running the country, and had even gone so far as to select a task for them.
“Ponyville,” said Aurora, laying open a thick brown tome upon a library table. The title page read: "Ponyville: History of a Small Town," with a black-and-white photograph of a group of ponies standing in front of an old town hall. “This is the town the council has selected for us to assist personally. It’s not big or politically important, but its history is rich. I wanted to get a better understanding of the town we’re going to visit beforehoof, just in case we need any background knowledge.” Her horn lit up, and using her magic she flipped forward through the pages one at a time.
Corona stood at her side, marveling at the images and words on the pages before her. She and Blue Moon had come from a rather small village themselves, but she never would’ve imagined that so modest a community could have been so important in the history of Equestria – at one time, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony had dwelt there, which Corona found amazing. The town seemed to have a rich history of its own, too: among other things, it was home to the oldest apple orchard in the known world, maintained for the past thousand years by a single family line.
After a while Corona spoke up. “So…what’re we gonna do when we get there? I mean, what kind of problems do they need us to solve?”
Aurora's horn glowed again and she summoned a scroll she had set across the table. "They're listed in here," she explained, unrolling the scroll and levitating it at eye level for them both to read. She frowned at the first item. "This first issue is the one that really troubles me. There's been a spike in foalnappings recently."
“Foalnappings?” Corona’s eyes widened.
“Yes,” Aurora said, more than a hint of anxiety in her voice. “Nearly a dozen foals have gone missing in the past year, mostly on the border of the Everfree Forest.” She returned to the book on Ponyville, magically flipping back through it until she found a large map spread across two pages. Corona took a look: just outside of Ponyville’s borders stood an enormous forest, thick and dark-colored, extending even beyond the borders of the map.
“Ooh. Looks spooky,” said Corona. “What kinds of things live in that forest?”
“There’ve reports for years of everything from hydras to manticores,” Aurora replied, rattling off some of the information she had picked up from her talk with Glass Eye. “But nothing that would account for so many disappearances. The letter said that many in Ponyville were blaming it all on a ‘local legend,’ but it didn’t go into any further detail than that.” She issued a heavy, resigned sigh. “So yeah, we have practically nothing to go on until we actually get there.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” Corona turned her eyes back to the scroll. “What else is on the list?”
Again, Aurora raised the scroll to eye level. "Second, their town hall is in serious need of repair."
“And they want us to fix it?”
“No,” said Aurora. “They just need us to see what sort of shape it’s in, and decide whether or not Canterlot can spare a team of builders to come and fix it.”
“That sounds easy!”
“Not necessarily. I spoke with Glass Eye about this earlier. The Canterlot Corps of Engineers is quite busy with large-scale renovation the city of Manehattan at the moment. It would inconvenient and expensive to take any of them from their work there and bring them to Ponyville.”
“Oh. That sounds less easy.”
“I know, I know. From what I’ve gathered, this is what a princess’s duties entail: looking at complex situations and making tough decisions.” Aurora’s face darkened and she looked aside in thought. Her voice sounded weary and troubled. “We haven’t really done any of that since we came to the throne. I wonder if anypony in Equestria even thinks we know what we’re doing. That’s why this job is so important. We have to give Ponyville a good impression. We have to make sure Equestria knows we can handle things ourselves.”
"Oh…okay," said Corona, taken aback her sister's suddenly dour mood. At this point, she also noticed several dark, sleepy rings under Aurora’s eyes. The gears in her mind started to turn, and an upsetting realization struck her.
“Hey, sis?” Corona said.
“Yes, Summer?”
“How much sleep did you get last night? Err…I mean, this morning?”
“I got enough,” Aurorareplied curtly.
“Really?” Corona’s voice bore an edge of skepticism. “‘Cause we went to bed right after the sunrise, which I think was sometime around six. And then when I got up, just after noon, you’d already been awake and doing stuff for a while.”
“Well, there were things that needed to be done. I couldn't keep Glass Eye waiting.”
"But you can’t just go without rest!" Corona protested, the skepticism in her voice giving way to worry. "You've seemed kind of…I dunno…edgy lately. You get really down and worried every time something big comes up, and that can’t be good for you. Don't you think maybe you're not getting enough sleep?"
“I’m getting plenty of sleep,” the moon princess insisted. “As long as I’m able to keep studying, training, and doing what needs to be done, then I’m getting all the rest I need.”
“Oh c’mon, Blue! Just relax a little! You just seem so worried all the time lately – first about your magic training, and now about this Ponyville thing. It’s…it’s kind of making me a little worried. About you.”
Aurora froze. The irate response sitting on the tip of tongue died the instant her sister spoke those last two words. Her face fell and she looked sadly at the floor. “I’m sorry, Summer,” she said in a low voice. “I never wanted to make you worry about me. But you’re right…I have been worried lately, about a lot of things. I’m sorry if I took any of it out on you.”
“Oh no, it’s not that, sis. You’re doing fine. Well, okay, maybe you’re just a tiny bit grumpy sometimes, but that’s okay. I’m just sorry you’re feeling so worried.”
“Thanks,” said Aurora. The urge to pace overwhelmed the dark-maned princess, and she rose from her seat at the table and began to walk back and forth across the library floor. “I’m worried that Equestria won’t accept us as leaders. I’m worried some other noble will call us inept or inadequate, and try to seize power for him or herself. There’s…there’s just such a huge burden on my shoulders now. It’s like nothing I’ve ever had to deal with before. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or how I’m going to handle it. I just…I….”
Corona was amazed; Aurora’s voice was beginning to break. Immediately she rose and went to her sister’s side. “You don’t have to handle it,” she said. “Not by yourself. You’ve got a co-princess, remember? And you’ve got a sister who loves you. That’s something, right?”
For a few seconds, Aurora said nothing. Then, without speaking another word, she wheeled around and pulled her sister into a tight hug. “Thank you, Summer,” she said softly, holding her sister in her forelegs and resting her head against Corona's shoulder. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”
“It’s okay, Blue,” Corona assured her. She leaned back into the hug. “It’s no big deal.”
“Yes, it is,” Aurora insisted. “I’m supposed to take care of you. I promised I would….”
“Yeah, and you have. But remember to take care of yourself too, okay?”
Aurora nodded, then let go of her sister and stepped back. “Maybe…maybe we’d better call it a day. We don’t leave for Ponyville until much later tonight, so I guess I have time for a little more rest.”
“Sounds great!” said Corona, her face and tone of voice both brightening. “I can go talk to Glass Eye instead, if you want me to.”
“That’s fine,” Aurora answered. She turned and made for the library exit. “If anypony needs me, I’ll be in my chambers. Probably asleep.”
"Okay, sis. You just relax, okay?" Corona said, levitating the Ponyville letter from the table and carrying it with her as she followed her sister from the room. At the intersection just down the hallway, Aurora paused to give Corona basic directions for how to get to the Royal Court from there. The sun princess nodded happily and set off on her way.
Once she was satisfied that her sister was headed in the right direction, Aurora heaved a tired sigh and headed off in the direction of her bedchambers. By now it was early evening, and the sun hung low and red in the sky and glowed through the palace windows, casting the hallways in a warm orange light. The walk back to her bedroom was long, and Aurora was slow and sluggish; it was as if her body sensed a nap in its near future and was preparing for sleep in advance.
At last she came to the foot of the tall tower, and the door to the spiraling stairwell that led up to the princess’s bedchambers. A guard pony, a tall sturdy pegasus with a white coat and a dull red mane, was posted in the hallway, standing at solid attention just across from the door. Aurora didn’t make a habit of befriending the guards, but this particular one was so often assigned to guard her tower that she’d built up a level of familiarity with him.
“Good afternoon, Lantern Jaw,” she said, a tired smile on her face.
“Good afternoon, your highness,” he replied stiffly. Though on good terms with both princesses, Lantern Jaw’s cold, stone-faced demeanor never faltered.
“Glass Eye will probably come along later this evening,” Aurora told him. “Make sure to let him up, or else I might miss the train to Ponyville.”
Lantern Jaw's cold, stone-faced demeanor faltered. His eyes widened just a tad – it was only for a second, but it was long enough for the princess to notice. She eyed him curiously. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing, your highness,” he said. When she didn’t stop looking at him, he spoke up again: “Well, you see…I’m from Ponyville, your highness. I grew up there. I’ve heard about the foalnappings and I had been wondering if anything was going to be done.”
A tinge of fear bit at Aurora’s heart, Lantern Jaw’s words rang in her ears. ‘I was wondering if anything was going to be done…’ The night princess often found herself wondering how many of her subjects were thinking the same thing about problems in their own lives. She’d been so inactive since taking the throne –
No. Immediately she cut off that line of thought. It was making her worried again, and at the moment that was the last thing she needed. Now was a time for rest, and she wouldn’t get much if she was too busy tossing and turning in her bed with her mind full of racing thoughts and her heart full of worry. She forced herself to relax, and brought her mind back to the topic at hoof.
“So you’re from Ponyville?” she said to the guard. “If that’s the case…perhaps you could help me out.”
Again, Lantern Jaw’s eyes widened in surprise. “Me, your highness?”
Aurora nodded. “In the letter I received, it said that the locals were blaming the disappearances on a ‘local legend,’ but it didn’t go into any more detail than that. Would you happen to know what ‘legend’ they were referring to?”
For just a moment the guard pony seemed to hesitate. “…yes,” he said at length, his eyes shifting. “It began no more than two years ago, just before I joined the Royal Guard. Ponies around the Everfree Forest claimed sightings of…something in the forest, something that was said to capture foals.”
“Something?” Aurora echoed, her curiosity piqued.
“Yes, your highness,” continued Lantern Jaw. “Especially during thunderstorms. There would be lighting, and the smell of smoke, and…” he paused for a brief moment, seeming to turn the thought over in his mind before resuming. “...and a winged unicorn would appear.”
“Really,” said Aurora, not even trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice. To her knowledge, she and her sister were the only alicorns remaining in Equestria; there had never been evidence of any more.
“Well, yes,” the guard resumed. “I realize it’s improbable, but there were many witnesses, many respectable, reliable ponies who saw it. Even the head of Sweet Apple Acres, and her family line is renowned for its honesty.” His voice dropped several decibels. “In fact, she said that it almost resembled…well….” Though he had been hesitant before, now Lantern Jaw seemed to clam up entirely, completely unwilling to finish his thought.
“What? What did she say?” Aurora prodded him.
“Now, I’m sure she was just confused,” said the pegasus, sounding almost defensive of his hometown’s citizens. “All of the sightings were at night, and there was never any photographic evidence – ”
“Lantern Jaw,” the princess interrupted him, speaking in a firm voice. “What did she say it looked like?”
Lantern Jaw cleared his throat. “Nightmare Moon, your highness,” he said at last. “She said it resembled Nightmare Moon.”
Silence fell. For several moments, Aurora merely stared at the guard, her face inscrutable. Eventually he spoke up again:
“I know it’s ridiculous, your highness. I don’t put much stock in it myself – ”
“Thank you, Lantern Jaw,” the princess interrupted him again. Her voice was blunt, yet neutral. “That will be all. I’m going to rest now.”
“Yes, your highness,” replied the guard, recovering his cold, stone-faced demeanor.
Aurora climbed the stairs to her bedchambers, looking fretfully down at her hooves the entire time. Once in the privacy of her room she removed her regalia and crawled into bed for a nap. She tossed and turned for over half an hour before finally falling into a fitful sleep. Unpleasant foalhood memories, stirred by her conversation with Lantern Jaw, bubbled up from the deep recesses of her mind and plagued her dreams.
Her sleep was not restful that evening.