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// Chapter 6 - Still, the Moon's Light Shines 
// Story: The Moon Has Two Faces 
// by Ether Echoes 
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In more ancient days, ponies would weave tales and spin yarns of impossibly old alicorns, painting an image of vast beings with a hoof at the pulse of fate itself in all of its workings. An exaggeration, but any alicorn worth her salt had learned early on to keep a weather eye on the horizon for signs and portents, omens and fortunes. To Princess Luna, it felt as though they came far less often than they had in the time before her exile, but the sensation was no less real when it came. A stirring churned in her gut, a faint tingle, as if another pony had stepped on the grave that, with some luck, she'd never have to face herself.
It came very near to interrupting her raising of the moon, and she was grateful the only ponies around to watch her stumble were her faithful guards. After gazing up at it for a minute, watching its cool, silver light bathe the countryside, she turned from the parapets and descended into the dim hallways of her castle. Its slender spires jutted from a mountain far from Canterlot, and it stirred with life as she walked through its stately halls.
Vespers, the precious velvet-winged ponies who had adopted her as one of their own long ago, stirred like bats in the belfries, descending from hammocks and kicking open the doors to their rooms to yawn in the shelter of night. One by one, they leapt from their perches and spread their wings to glide through the halls to stream out into the countryside. They called her name, wishing her well on her evening journeys, and she could not help but smile back and bid them well in turn.
Whisper Lark awaited her in the antechambers to her bedroom, as close to an office like her sister’s as she had, the mare shuffling through letters on the polished desk. She was in a delicate condition, as they might have said in Luna’s more reserved day—pregnant, in this modern age—her rounded belly just peeking through her ceremonial cape. “Good eve, Highness.”
"Fair night, Whisper. How are you and the girls?" Luna came around to open a silver tray, offering half of the meal there to her majordomo. "Please, help yourself. My cooks must be in league with my sister; they always prepare far too much for a pony such as myself."
As ever, Whisper waved it off with a pale wing. A pair of her clansmares rested almost invisibly in the rafters above, white wings closed. The alabaster-winged Moonflower clan were not the only ones dwelling in the castle, but they were the only ones to call it their ancestral home, and the only ones who attended her within its walls. "I wouldn't dream of it, my princess." She draped a wing over her swollen form. "Evening Gleam and Autumn Glory are restless. I sing in their formless dreams, but they are impatient to meet the air." She met her eyes, curious. "Have you ever given birth, Princess?"
"Me? No." Luna chuckled, searching through the papers on her desk as she nibbled at the salad. "I've known lovers, of course, in the ages before my banishment, but the time never felt right for a foal of my own. My sister has evidently had the same reticence, though at times I wonder about Twilight Sparkle."
"Doesn't she have a known mother?"
"You would be surprised at the lengths to which my sister could carry on a game." Luna laughed, though she tried not to dwell on the possibility. "Speaking of my sister, has anything critical come up?"
"Just the usual. Requests for your attendance at ceremonies, offered slots at court, inspections of the frontier."
“Decline them all.” Luna bit back a faint sigh. “Not that I am displeased with my sister’s attempts to reintegrate me into the government, but it oft feels like busy work. I’d rather dive right back into dreams.”
“We will do our best to support you as ever.”
Luna smiled. “Yes, my friend. The vespers have stepped up beautifully, and you have my regards. In a way, I’m pleased you do so well managing Equestria. It allows me to look beyond our borders.” She frowned suddenly, her tail twitching back and forth as a wave of nausea raced through her.
"What is it?" Whisper Lark came to her side. "Is it that premonition you mentioned some time ago?"
"Yes. I've just had it again, very powerfully. Have any letters come asking my aid that seem serious? I don't see anything that seems critical here."
"Just the usual deluge of requests for good dreams, the occasional puerile message I dispose of 'ere it ever reaches your eyes, and the sort of incidental nightmares you typically find and deal with on your own." She swished her white tail. "Were you expecting something?"
"Yes. Put out a notice in the papers. Nothing alarming, but ask for information on anypony who might be experiencing unusual or discordant dreams and sleep schedules. In fact, send out a message to the clans to keep an eye out. There's a pony out there who is in great distress, but no matter how hard or how long I search, I cannot seem to locate them. It's like they simply disappear from the dream world."
Stepping from the desk, she pushed her remaining meal to Whisper Lark. "I insist you finish this. You're eating for three, and I won't have you going hungry just to attend me." She passed into her bedroom. "Consider it an order from your princess."
"As you wish," she said, scooping up an orange and digging her fangs in to suck out the juice. She watched her go, eyes bright in the dim light. "Fair winds on your nightly journey, Princess. Be advised that the Moonflower clan will insist on you eating well when you return. I will find this mysterious pony, if they can be found."
Stepping into her bedroom, Luna shut the door and inhaled with her wings held in. The aura of her spectral mane and tail faded, almost transforming back into strands of blue hair, and then billowed out as she exhaled. Her wings drove stars about the chamber, and into them she rose, gliding through the walls as the material world fell away.
In truth, her body remained where it was with knees locked, but her spirit fared forth among the silver trees of dreams.
After a quick survey to ensure that no serious nightmares or monsters had taken root, she weaved in and out through the glittering void, trying to find some hint or clue of what had passed through her.
And this time, much to her surprise, she actually found one.
It was subtle, but to her the trail was unmistakable. Gnarled and tangled branches grew in places, places she’d never seen them before. Luna had seen every kind of damage that the delicate substrate of the soul could sustain, or at least so she'd thought, because she had never seen fear and pain twist the wires without a nightmare present like that before.
Lowering her horn, she sniffed and felt with her magic. The damage purpled the core, just a bit, and a few paces away more damage shone through. Down she went, horn testing, sniffing for a faint odor of burned cinnamon and stranger things her mind couldn't interpret, following it all the way back to the root, as though something had plummeted down with great force, banging all the while.
Every tree of every living, dreaming thing on Gaia sprouted from the pale reflection of her moon, and she hovered before that mass. It was without pockmarks, an unblemished disk of white in the primordial ocean of darkness that extended in all directions.
Her mother had warned her, in an age long since turned to dust, to be wary of that boundary. The tabula rasa from which all things sprung could be swum by the experienced dreamrider, but strange and alien worlds awaited, ones that might be far from the light of Harmony and more dangerous than anything she could imagine.
Whoever it was had already crossed, multiple times, and the thin thread of purple rot leading down through the moon from the Equestrian tree was the proof.
Luna could not allow any of her subjects to brave that darkness alone, let alone risk further damage to the trees. She'd spent too long trapped in her own hatred and let down too many of them already. After all the work she'd done to prune the worst of the threats that faced dreamers in her world, it could get along without her for a time while she searched for the lost dream. By the time she returned, Whisper Lark ought to have some information for her.
Taking another deep breath, Luna dove into the numbing sea of possibility, raced through the light of the moon's soul, and vanished from thought and time with hardly a ripple.





To speak of the space between worlds requires words that have not and never shall be invented. Luna held her identity as tightly as she could while she followed the faint trail of some other's violent passage. Her astral body had gone, stripped away by the formless void that undergirded all creation, all worlds, but Luna was no casual dreamer.
Even so, the passage left her weak and shaking when she came out the other side suddenly and without warning. It was closer than she had imagined, a world close enough to almost touch through the timeless gap. As a wisp she hovered, unseeing, until she could build up her dream self again.
When she could see, she almost wished to go back on the spot.
From the nearly black surface of the new moon, dry and thorny branches of tangled darkness sprouted into a sky of dim stars. So many of the jewels she witnessed were dull and lifeless, or else cracked and riddled with nightmares. Everywhere she looked, the hellish landscape persisted. Only the gentle, pearl-like dreams of the youth and some resilient adults still sparkled, clutched among the weeds.
It wasn't unlike what she had first experienced delving into dreams for the first time as a young filly many millennia ago. Only a few beings could walk dreams, and they had all battled with the thorns without success until she took it as her task. She had cultivated her midnight garden night after night, transforming it over centuries into a shining place of peace and rest, just as her sister had forged warring tribes into a nation governed by kindness.
Here was a world that had never known or had lost a princess of the night of its own, and her heart ached for them.
Still, she couldn't afford to get absorbed in gardening. A lost soul had fallen here, somehow, and she followed the trail of its passage. It was harder here, considering how much damage the dream world already bore, but she was patient, starting from the roots and lowering her horn to feel the faint threads of something coming back and forth through the abyss with increasing violence. It took her out onto a winding path with millions of souls gleaming in sleep. Some were shattered and empty shells, their light gone out, and she shuddered at the sight—a terrible fate she would wish on no one—but she couldn't find the lost soul there anymore than she had in her world.
Hovering there, she frowned to herself. If they weren't asleep in her world when she left, and they weren't asleep in this world when she arrived, and all she could catch was a faint flicker when they did, it could only mean one thing.
They never really slept at all.
Shuddering from horn to tail, her search turned rather more desperate. Someone who never slept could never fully recover. It didn't make sense, though. Certainly, a dreamer could occasionally pass through the veil to briefly touch other worlds, but to disappear entirely on the other side meant they had something to root themselves here.
"A body?" she whispered to herself in a vast echo. "Two dreamers?"
Without one of her own, and without the dreamers lingering, she couldn't do a thing to help them. For a time she floated there, considering the problem. Obviously, if she could find the pony on her side, there might be something she could do, but Whisper Lark could find them better than she. Without access to both, though, any solution would be incomplete, if not impossible.
It was a body she needed, a way in. She hadn't done it in many centuries, but there was a trick she could employ with a suitable dreaming soul.
Searching among the dreams nearest, gliding through fruits great and dark as they dangled above and below, she paused by a few, only to find herself drawn to one that shone faintly in the dark. She had noticed it earlier, along with a few others, as it glowed much more brightly in the dream realm than most of the rest, but now it was like a beacon beckoning her near.
Approaching the jewel, she found not a dream, but the glimmering motes of deep meditation. There was something of the moon in its jewel-like depths, something that called to her, and she smiled and dove right in. It was perfect for her needs.
Maybe she didn't have a body here, but she could borrow one.





Princess Luna's eyes opened to a darkened room, the woody scent of incense in her nose. Carefully, she shifted her body just so, becoming accustomed to its strange contours. Clothing draped a form of smooth skin, recently shaved, and she was relieved to find it possessed four limbs and lungs. She could have wound up some hideous monstrosity, but the number of eyes and standard limbs were familiar. It lacked wings and a horn, but she could live without for a time.
It was the proximity, she wagered. Being from a realm close to hers suggested similar attributes.
Standing, she found it awkward to rest on all fours. The forelimbs ended in fingers like those possessed by minotaurs, so she carefully balanced upright. Every motion sent long hair, necklaces, and bracelets swaying. Further examination confirmed the initial impression that she had come to occupy a female of the species, though from the size of the breasts she feared she might be pregnant. That would be embarrassing.
Balancing on two legs took some doing, but she had the grace to manage, and searched about. Fat candles rested in glass, and curtains had been pulled over windows. The layout was familiar enough to the new style of Equestrian homes that she found a tiny bathroom without much trouble, and fumbled with the light switch until a dim, shaded bulb revealed her borrowed face.
A primate woman gazed back at Luna in the silvered surface of a mirror, her bare skin, long hair, and eyes all different shades of dark brown. She wore some homespun garb with numerous bangles and beaded necklaces. Placing her hands on either side of the sink, Luna met her reflection's eyes and smiled.
"I apologize for this intrusion, Miss. I assure you, it is only temporary. There is somepony in your world who is under my care, and I require assistance from a local to find them. If this imposition is too great to bear, please let me know at once. Rest assured, though, for I never forget my debts, and while I am not entirely sure how I could repay you at the present time, I am certain we can work something out."
Her reflection twitched. With some degree of shock, the image realized she could move, though when she accidentally knocked the soap to the messy, tiled floor, it simply reappeared when no one was looking. "What the… who the…" She tried to reach through the mirror only to find it just as impermeable. "Oh my gods. I'm being horsed!"
Luna couldn't help but giggle. "Horsed? What an interesting choice of words."
"It means to be ridden by a god." She gasped for air, gripping the sink on her end. "Oh my gods. Oh my gods. I actually did it."
“Ah. This was a desired result, then?”
The reflection put her head in her hands and pushed back her wavy hair, catching her breath. “I mean, not this exactly, but something like this. I’ve been hoping and praying and meditating for any glimpse of something, and here you are!” She lifted one of her many necklaces, which depicted phases of the moons cycling about the amulet. “I felt you as you came in, like a breath entering my lungs and spreading throughout my body. The moon was the most powerful image in my mind at the time. Do I have the honor of addressing Selene? I’ve… I’ve called out to you several times over the years.”
“Selene?” Luna picked up the amulet on her end, examining it. “I was called that by some distant people a long, long time ago. Such a curious thought. Why did you seek me—or someone with my name—out?”
Her mouth worked for a moment, but she cleared her throat and stood upright. “Well, to learn from you, of course! All my life I’ve pursued... mysteries and magic, but I’ve always felt like it was just out of reach. I meditate just about every night, searching for someone to guide me. You’re the first goddess I’ve had the honor of addressing, but I've always been drawn to the moon. I know that's almost cliche for a witch, but I've spent my whole life gazing up at it.”
“Have you no gods of your own to speak to?” Luna asked, frowning to the side. “I suppose that explains the state of your dream world.” She shook her head and met the other mare’s eyes. “What name do you go by? I would like to know who my companion is for the night.”
She straightened. “Luna Cabrera. I am a witch and a psychic.”
Princess Luna covered her mouth. “Really? That’s—well, I’m flattered. Luna, as it happens, is the name I go by in this era. Perhaps that’s part of why we were so drawn together, what with your meditating on my aspect and carrying my name as you were. Well, Luna the Witch, I would be more than happy to share what knowledge I can with you in return for the temporary usage of your physical body."
Luna the Witch seemed almost beside herself with ecstasy, kissing the amulet. "I would be honored. I… I understand you're looking for someone? Is that what you need me for?"
"Yes, one of my subjects." Princess Luna nodded. "As one of their… well, goddess shall suffice for a term familiar to you. As one of their goddesses, I am responsible for them. I believe they reside near you, but I was unable to determine their exact location. Dreams that are proximate in acquaintances are linked, but it's a little hard to determine more precisely than to say I believe them to be within the same general location."
"Somewhere in Philadelphia?" The reflection frowned thoughtfully. "Do you have a name, anything?"
"No, I'm afraid not. Not yet, at least. I have friends seeking further knowledge where I came from." She mused aloud, "Philadelphia? That's a very familiar name. It could narrow down the search on my end."
The reflection regarded Princess Luna with deep interest bordering on reverence. In other words, the way ponies normally looked at her. "You're not what I was expecting, but I shouldn't try to let my preconceptions blind me from a moment of personal gnosis."
"That's the spirit, young witch. Trust me—my memories stretch back thousands of years, and even I still have much to learn. Much about where you live is a mystery to me, but I am confident we can navigate it together." Luna placed a hand over her heart. "Do you have any idea of how I might find one suffering from severe discordant disturbances? I believe they could be a youth, which has always been a particular concern of mine."
"Mani, the moon god of the Norse, was said to adopt stray children who had nowhere else to go. I wonder if you inspired that as well." She shook her head. "Sorry. My brain feels cottony, so I was thinking out loud. Can you clarify what you mean by discordant?"
"Unsound in body, mind, or soul. Someone who may manifest random or mysterious magical ailments. In particular, I believe this person is suffering from a lack of an ability to dream."
The reflection pursed her lips. "That sounds like mental or physical illness. If I had to guess, then, I would say the city's psychiatric hospitals, or, well, its homeless population. I sometimes volunteer to work with at-risk youths, the sort who are in and out of unstable homes. I can also put feelers out to other witches and psychics in the city. If someone has seen a patient with that problem, we could probably find them that way."
Luna couldn't help but smile at her host. "Your concern for children is another point in your favor, young witch. I look forward to speaking to you in better times. I could have much to share."
The reflection blushed, just as a knock came at the bathroom door.
"Luna?" a young woman's voice called. "Are you okay? I can hear you talking to yourself."
"I'm fine, Moira!" the reflection called, to no answer. "Oh. She can't hear me."
"Only I can, and only then in a reflection." Luna offered her an apologetic look. "Who is this?"
"Moira, my roommate, also a witch. She's a good person, just not very serious about the craft."
The pounding came again. "You left your candles and incense on while you were meditating. I blew them out this time, but if you start a fire again, I swear to the goddess I'm going to be so freaking mad."
Nodding, Luna turned to the door. "I'll handle this."
"What?" The reflection blinked at her and tried to follow as she stepped out.
Moira was a petite example of her species with thick, curly red hair pulled back with a cord. She dressed in a much less airy style than Luna, with a shirt depicting some manner of musical group and a pair of black, canvas pants. "Finally. You could have said something." She stepped back as she made eye contact. "Whoa… you look…"
Bowing her head regally, Luna addressed her as she would a foreign dignitary. "My humble apologies, Moira the Witch. I was conversing with your roommate, whose body I am making use of for the time being while I embark upon important business in your world. You may address me as Selene, to avoid confusion with your friend. Should you be able to assist me, I would be happy to offer the same deal I made with Luna the Witch."
"What are you doing?" Luna's reflection squeaked from the edge of an unusually large and flat television. "She's going to think I've gone insane!"
Moira's eyebrows rose up and up. Settling her hands on her hips, she eyed Luna up and down. "When did you get your grubby hands on some psilocybin, and why didn't you share any with me? You know I always make a point to spread my stash."
"Ah, you believe me to be partaking of a psychogenic compound." Luna nodded. "I see. My host has expressed some worry that you will regard me as some manner of delusion." She examined her hands thoughtfully, the five nails painted dark blue and fitted with rings. "I'm afraid the typical means I might use to prove my identity are unavailable. I can scarcely feel the breath of Harmony, and so my flashier forms of magic are rather lacking."
Her reflection paced back and forth in the black screen, unseen by Moira, and she pulled at her hair. "Tell her I'm horsed, please!"
Nodding to the screen, she looked down at Moira. "Luna the Witch wishes me to inform you that I am 'horsing' her—a term I find entirely too amusing. She thinks this will soothe your concerns for her mental well-being."
If anything, Moira's skepticism only grew as she turned to look at the television suspiciously and then back. "Okay, 'Selene.' I guess I can at least buy that Luna is in a trance state and thinks she's channeling a goddess. You're doing a better job than those dorks at the bonfire meetings, at least."
"It will have to do." She nodded. "Moira, would you happen to know how to find someone in your world without knowing their name or other identifying features? Primarily, I need to find someone suffering from a lack of dreams."
“Not… really? I mean, I got a mean googling strangers game, but you’re going to need a little bit more to go on.” She shrugged. “I guess I can look online.”
“I have faith that means something to a local. Thank you, I appreciate your assistance.” Luna went to the door. “As for us, we shall be visiting the local psychiatric hospitals and underprivileged youth. Fair winds.”
“Wait!” her reflection begged from a hutch by the door, voice faint with the thinness of it. “Don’t forget my phone! And a scarf; it’s cold out there.”
“Ah,” she said, pausing at the handle. “Fair point. I’m not exactly in my own divine form at the moment. What is a phone, however?”
“It’s…” Her reflection stretched for how to answer. “It’s a handheld device that, uh, communicates with unseen frequencies of light, allowing it to communicate with other, similar devices.”
“Ah! A portable radio. How charming.”
Moira watched her half of the exchange with more than a little concern, though it turned to amusement as she watched her have to refer back to her reflection for directions to where she’d left the phone. Along the way, she picked out a shawl and draped it about her neck, then grabbed her purse. Within was a compact with a mirror they could use to keep in touch.
“How does this work?” Luna asked, turning the little bar of plastic wrapped in rubber. She found the button and turned it on, then let her reflection walk her through the code. “My! I know a few unicorns who would die for the chance to take this apart. They’ve been working on ideas like this for some time.”
“Please, don’t, Selene,” her reflection begged. “It was already a big expense, and I don’t bring in a lot of money.”
“Have no fear, I would not deprive you of your possessions without great need.”
Moira, leaning in the hallway, cleared her throat. “I dunno what game you’re playing, Luna—sorry, ‘Selene’—and I thought it was pretty hilarious, but now I’m worried you’re going to get your ass killed or imprisoned out there. I peeked around online and left some comments on some occult websites asking about kids that might not be able to dream, but since I found nothing, and you don't have a vehicle yet, why don’t I drive you around?”
“I would be most grateful to ride in your chariot, Moira,” Luna said, peeking up from her investigation of the device. “I’d imagine you must hire somepony to haul it? You don’t seem quite sturdy enough to pull one yourself; no offense intended.”
Moira stared at her for a moment. “Okay.”
She couldn’t seem to formulate a more complicated response than that, grabbing a coat with a faux fur-lined collar and some gloves before heading out. They lived in a small, one-story house on the outskirts of a major city. With over a million souls, it was only a fraction the size of Manehattan, but somehow it felt meaner. Even though she couldn’t freely exercise her magic—at least, not to the same degree, and she might have to experiment to be sure—nothing had dulled her mystical senses. Something about the city jangled her nerves, and she suspected that the condition of the dream world was reflected in its material conditions as well.
"Oh, you meant an automobile!" Luna proclaimed as they came to a beat-up pickup truck parked on the side of the road. She ran her hand along the dusty hood. "After we parted from our parents, my sister and I lived in a castle together, and I constructed many mechanisms and traps to bedevil her. I've had a fondness for clever little machines since."
"That doesn't sound like Selene's mythological history," Moira said dubiously as she opened the driver's side door and slid in.
"I cannot account for how stories of me may have been garbled over the ages. Would you believe that, after a mere thousand-year absence, my own subjects believed I would devour them alive? And that from the very beings I ruled over." Climbing into the passenger side, Luna gazed out at the apes—or, she supposed, they simply used the generic "people" for all thinking beings—walking up and down the sidewalks. "I confess I'm a little surprised that you have legends of me at all."
Placing her phone in a holder, Moira side-eyed her. "So, did you or did you not put a shepherd named Endymion to sleep so you could marry him and have tons of kids in his dreams together?"
Luna scoffed, drawing herself up. "Young lady, control yourself! That is hardly an appropriate way to address a goddess." She huffed. "Endymion was a fine stallion, but I have no husband, and even if I did I would be loathe to share intimate details of my liaisons with you nor anyone! Such secrets best die at the bedchamber doors."
Snorting and laughing, Moira pulled out onto the road. "Okay, wow. Luna never shuts up about her sex life, so maybe you're the real deal. Where to first, then, mighty goddess?"
"I'm never going to live this  down." Sighing, Luna's reflection in the rearview mirror tapped for attention. "Lady Selene? The hospitals would be closed to visitors at the moment, and they wouldn't discuss patients, but if you look on my phone's map I have a few saved locations for when I do my volunteering runs."
It took her a moment to find what she was talking about, but Luna had always been quick to master new things—excepting perhaps modern social mores, which in her opinion could stand a cold shower. Nopony seemed to appreciate the simmering passion of courtly romance anymore.
Replacing her phone with Luna's, Moira took off into the late afternoon light. "How long do you plan on keeping this up, by the way? Most medium sessions would be done by now."
"Well, I'm in no grave hurry to return home, and, as I said, my retainers need time to search there. I'm not entirely sure how you measure time here, nor how it varies between our separate frames of reference, but I imagine I would check back in after a few days and find out."
Luna's reflection gasped from the mirror. "That long? But I have a shop to run! If I miss my rent, I'm out on the street, Lady Selene."
"Oh. Luna seems concerned. Fear not, I plan to spend much of that span in the dream world. I'll call on young Luna frequently, but with respect to her needs."
"Uh huh," Moira said, pulling up to another curb several blocks from their house. "Well, you do you." She leaned over and frowned at the location, a disused lot behind several other buildings with a shell of a building and dense graffiti. "How will you know if the person you are looking for is there?"
"I will sense them. That, at least, has not been stripped from me." She leaned out the window.
"What… is all this?" Luna asked in quietly dawning horror as she took in the filthy canvas and boxes clustered there. Shopping carts filled with stuffed trash bags were strung with tarps to form temporary shelters, and the sight of a young girl hugging a doll and watching strangers pass by with dead eyes and a sign wrenched her heart. "Where are their homes?"
"They're… homeless?" Moira scratched at her jaw. "That's what homelessness is, Selene."
"I didn't think it was so literal. It's just temporary, though, right? Their houses were destroyed, but they—" She broke off. "I sense your and Luna's grim silence enough to know that isn't the case. How… how… barbaric! Who is responsible for this state of affairs?"
"Government? Landlords?" Moira shook her head. "Fuck, I don't know. I just work at a bookstore."
Opening the door, Luna marched out and came to crouch in front of the girl. Her sudden approach frightened her enough to skitter back, but something in her eyes arrested her motion as they met.
"Have you nowhere to go, child?"
"Selene!" Moira hissed, grabbing her arm and glancing around. "Leave her alone!"
When Luna's eyes met Moira's, she froze in inexplicable terror at the sight of them and released her arm without having to be told.
The girl rubbed her runny nose and sniffed. "My, uhm, sometimes I stay at my aunt's place, but she doesn't like having me around."
"Doesn't like-!" Luna repressed a strangled outcry of indignation, smoothing her nerves to continue to address her in a gentle tone. "Where is she? I'll set her straight."
Neither Moira's muttered complaints, Luna's reflected uncertainty, nor the girl's fearful silence could deter her from having the girl lead her by the hand to a small apartment a block down. It was a poorly kept building with crumbling infrastructure that would have been a cause for shame and action on any street of Equestria, but it was a sight better than the street with winter's chill advancing.
The mare who came to the door was overweight and overworked. Inside the apartment, four children already sat around a table, writing out some sort of assignment.
"Sobrina!" The mare reached forward, grabbing her hand from Luna's and glaring at her.
She hissed in a language that went by too quickly to follow at first, but Luna found she recognized it with some surprise. Most of the locals appeared to speak what sounded like a dialect of modern Equestrian, but this tongue was spoken by griffons of their southern lands, and there wasn't a living language on Gaia that Luna didn't speak.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked in the same tongue. "I didn't catch that."
The woman glared defiantly. "I said, don't you dare touch my niece ever again, you piece of shit." She made to close the door. "If I ever catch you around here again, there won't be enough for the cops left to dig up."
Luna's body wasn't as strong as the one she was accustomed to, but as white hot anger surged in her she caught the door and thrust it back, slamming it hard enough to bury the knob in the wall and shove the woman back. "How dare I? How dare you!"
The woman made to respond, a vociferous swear bubbling to her lips, but it died in her throat as fear drained the color from her face.
Luna advanced, putting all of her host's height to work in looming. "Your niece told me about how she wasn't allowed to stay here."
"That's-that's not true! She can stay here, it's just that I have four kids to take care of, and she's supposed to stay with her good for nothing father—"
"Are you not her kin?" Luna roared, her voice projected. "Do you not see the scratches and bite marks adorning her innocent flesh? If another is to care for her and has neglected his issue, then they will suffer, but you have more than enough room here to house a child such as her!"
She leaned in, the mare quailing back. "I will check on her. If I find that she has been mistreated in any way, mark me, you shall not experience one dream that is not haunted by the darkest nightmares. Inform her father as well. This outrage ends today."
She didn't wait for the mare's whimpering acknowledgement, marching out to the street with a stunned Moira in tow. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she looked out at the city.
"Uh… Selene?" Moira asked with the sort of caution a mare might approach a ravenous lioness with. "You okay?"
"There are so many. How can you stand it?"
"I… I guess you just get numb to it." Moira rested a hand on her arm. "You can't… you can't help everyone, Luna."
"This Luna cannot, at least as she is. I can." Luna laid a hand on hers. "I didn't find who I was looking for, but… stars help me if I didn't find something that has shaken me."
They weren't Equestrians. By rights, their own alicorns—their own gods—should have cared for them.
But they didn't have any.
Her first priority was still her missing subject, as their fate was spiraling out of control, but Luna never could limit herself to just the ponies under her direct care.
"Can I continue to count on you, Moira, in the tasks ahead? I fear they may be more numerous and compounded than I initially imagined."
"Yeah." Something seemed to have been jarred loose in Moira, a light of hope that had long lain dead returning to her eyes. "I… I'm still not sure you aren't crazy, but… okay, Lady Selene. I've got your back."