//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Sun and Daughter // by brokenimage321 //------------------------------// Luster knocked twice at the door, then used her magic to turn the knob and push it open.  “Hey, Mom?” she asked. “Are you ready for—?” Suddenly, the door slammed shut with a deafening bang. Luster jerked back in surprise and yelped. A moment later, the doorknob rattled, and the door swung partway open, revealing a chagrined Celestia.  “I’m sorry,” she said, stepping into the hall, “I didn’t scare you, did I?” Luster shot her a nasty look. “You did,” she said. Celestia deflated the slightest bit. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I… I know it’s only been a few months, but it’s been quiet around here, and—” She swallowed and shook her head. “What did you need?” she asked.  “I was going to ask if you were ready to put our Hearth’s Warming dolls up on the mantel,” she said grumpily. “But, now…” Luster’s eyes flicked significantly towards the door frame, then back up at her mother. Celestia pursed her lips, but her gaze remained steady. Luster watched her for a moment, then glanced at the door frame again, then raised her eyebrows suggestively. Celestia tilted her head to one side and let out a little sigh of exasperation. Luster widened her eyes, and gave the slightest, trembling frown— “Oh, alright,” Celestia said, stepping away from the door and pulling it open. “Just don’t go poking around too much, and I mean it. There’s some really confidential stuff—” “I know, I know,” Luster said with a roll of her eyes. “Secrets and lies, secrets and lies…” And Luster trotted forward, into her second-favorite room in the house.  Celestia’s study had been built, as far as Luster had been able to tell, as a living room of some sort. It was one of the largest rooms in the house, and it even had its own fireplace for the winter. But then again, Mom was pretty big herself, and needed lots of space to spread out--especially if you did the sort of work she did.  As she entered, Luster took a deep breath of all the smells: old paper, fresh ink, and rosewater perfume, all tinged with the faintest hint of woodsmoke and warmth from the rays of the sun. Luster trotted over to the windows, which took up most of one wall, stood up, and put her hooves on the windowsill. From here, she could see all of Bobsled spreading out below her, with a ski lodge high on the mountain above, and the dark serpentine of the train tracks disappearing behind another peak. She’d seen this view dozens of times, but never got tired of it.  In fact--and the realization made her blink in surprise--she liked it even better than the view from Canterlot. At the time, she had thought she hadn’t been impressed because of her nerves about her upcoming meeting with Princess Twilight. But now, she knew--it was because she had almost the exact same view from outside her mother’s window.  Behind her, Luster heard a rustle of paper. She turned, and saw Mom hurriedly sliding a sheaf of papers into a drawer of her desk.  Luster rolled her eyes. “C’mon,” she said, “I told you I wasn’t going to go digging.” “And I told you,” Mom shot back, “I have some confidential stuff in here. I trust you,” she added, “but still, there’s some things I don’t want you to see, even by accident.” Luster hopped down from the window, then trotted over to the desk. It was massive, almost as large as a full-size kitchen table. Even so, nearly every square inch of it was covered in stacks of papers, with more tucked away in the drawers and locked away in the rich walnut filing cabinets that lined the walls. The only real space left on the desktop was a small clearing for Mom’s typewriter, a mug overflowing with dull quills and half-broken pencils, a small vase of wilted flowers, and--Luster crinkled her nose--an old, discolored photograph of the two of them, smiling up at the camera. Luster’s mane stuck up all weird, she had something on her face, and her grin showed off several of her missing teeth, but Mom was hugging and kissing her all the same.  “So,” Luster asked, looking over the vast towers of paper, “who are you pretending to be now?”  Mom sighed and shook her head. Then, she bent down and pointed at one stack with her horn. “That,” she said, “is a Waterworks production.” Luster rolled her eyes again. “Let me guess,” she interjected. “Lonely unicorn princess trapped in tower seeks single earth pony stallion for brief but passionate fling?” Mom smirked. “Almost,” she said. “This time, it’s a pegasus mayor, but you get the jist of it.” “That’s the jist of all of them, Mom.” “Which is probably why Waterworks isn’t much of a bestseller,” she replied. “But Wanderlust—” she pointed at a fresh stack “--well, for this installment I had to do a little more research. But her travelogues are always popular.” She sighed. “I just wished I could get away, make them into actual travel guides—” “And who’s this?” Luster asked, picking up a sheet of the top of another stack in her magic. “Campaign Colors…?” “War historian,” Mom said, pushing the sheet back down with her own magic. “Covering the griffon unification wars of the sixth century--at least,” she added with a smile, “as well as I can remember them.” Luster grinned. It was a shame that Mom never went out for Nightmare Night, because she was a master of disguises--at least as far as her writing career went.  Mom had a thousand years worth of personal savings, not to mention a stipend from the Palace, and so had no real need for a career of any sort. But Mom had told her that--despite the fact that she loved Luster with all her heart--she found herself starting to get bored during the day, when all the laundry had been done and all the dishes had been washed and Luster was lying down for a nap. One day, perhaps missing the time she spent lecturing students, she had dashed off a quick review of a novel she had just finished reading, and, on a whim, signed it Saddle Stitch—a bookbinding term she must have picked up somewhere over her many years. She sat on the review for a week or two, then, unsure of what else to do with it, sent it to a newspaper in Salt Lick City. As it turned out, they liked it quite a bit, and were more than happy to pay Ms. Stitch for any other reviews she might want to send along.  And so, Mom’s empire of pseudonyms had been born. Each time she decided she wanted to write something different, she just invented a new author and went to town. Waterworks wrote sappy romances, Wanderlust did travelogues and brochures, Potato Casserole catalogued exotic recipes, Rip-Roar penned adventure tales, and Campaign Colors handled war history, apparently--to say nothing of Deep Hoof, Politique, and Firebrand, who wrote policy advice, political theory, and manifestos, respectively.  Quite a resumé--but Luster suspected that Mom wrote even more than she let on. After all, there were all those filing cabinets… and Mom rarely let her in her study without good reason, after all.  But Luster still loved the study all the same. For one, it was always exciting to be so close to where so many books had been born. And she loved being at her mothers’ side, for another. But there was more to it than that… Luster turned and trotted to the fourth wall of the room, which was composed entirely of books. Well, bookshelves. The smile on her face slowly grew as she let her gaze wander across them. The warm, brown wood held hundreds of volumes, ranging from ancient leather-bound treatises on politics and science to cheap paperback collections of mysteries and science-fiction. Like Luster herself, Mom had left some spaces for the occasional curio--a crystal ball, a small golden statue of an alicorn, a set of long, tawny-brown feathers, a stone carving of a unicorn looking at the stars--but Luster barely noticed. It was the books that she loved. A whole library, right here in Mom’s study!  And then, something caught her eye. She leaned forward and peered closer at it. “Luster!” Mom snapped. “Get away from there!” But Luster frowned and lit her horn. With a little effort, she pulled something free from where it had been stuck between a thick reference book and the wood beside it. It took her a moment to recognize what she was looking at: a Hearth’s Warming card from several years ago, judging from the yellowing around the edges.  “Luster—!” Luster opened the card, and her frown deepened. Inside lay a photograph--a family portrait, by the looks of things. In it, a stallion, slate-gray with leathery wings, stood knee-deep in the snow. His expression was half theatrical smile, half grimace of pain, a fact explained by the colt chewing affectionately on his ear. The colt, standing on his father’s back and wearing a matching sweater, couldn’t be more than three or four years old. A filly--the colt’s twin, by the looks of it--hung from her father’s neck, squealing in delight at the snow below her. And--Luster blinked--behind them stood another pony, nearly twice as tall as the stallion, her coat the indigo of the night sky, her eyes shining bright as stars.  ...eyes that, somehow, she thought she recognized…  “Luster, what are you—?” A shadow fell over the picture, making Luster start. She looked up to find her mother looming over her, and felt the blood drain from her face. However, Mom’s eyes were no longer angry. They looked almost--what could you call it?--far away. She lit her horn, and plucked the card and the photograph from Luster’s grasp. She looked at it for a moment, then took a deep breath and let it out.   “That’s…” “Princess Luna,” Luster interjected. “I know.” “Your Aunt Luna,” Celestia corrected her gently, her voice grave. “Luna, and her husband Echo, and their two children…” Luster blinked in surprise, then looked down at the photo. “I have cousins?” she managed to ask.   Celestia frowned. “Of course you do,” she said. “You remember your cousin Cadance?” Luster huffed. “You know what I mean. Prin--Aunt Luna has kids?” Celestia nodded. “Yes, she does. So that would mean you have cousins, yes.” She hesitated. “You’ve met her a couple times, you know,” she added.  “Not that I remember,” Luster insisted.  “No, you wouldn’t,” Celestia confirmed. “Not most of them, at least. But she told me she visited you once or twice in your dreams…” Luster looked up at her in alarm. “That was her?” she squeaked. “She was--she was creepy!” Celestia nodded. “Then that was almost certainly her. She tries to soothe nightmares and bad dreams when she can--but if you’re not expecting her, yes, she can be somewhat alarming.” “She told you about that?” Luster asked.  “Yes, she did,” Celestia said simply.  Luster turned back at the photo and frowned. The four of them looked so happy— “Mom?” she asked. “Why haven’t we visited them? Or—” she swallowed. “Why haven’t they visited us?” She stared at the photo for another moment--before it began to drift upwards. Luster turned and looked up at her mother, who was staring, eyes fixed, on the picture as she pulled it closer to herself.  And, as Luster looked at her mother, her eyes widened. Celestia’s expression was--it was one that she had never seen before on her face. Never expected to see. It was deep and lonely and sad, full of mingled sorrow and pain and regret. It was the first time, in all of Luster’s years, that her mother looked old.  “Mom?” she said, her voice trembling. Celestia did not react.  “Mom?” she repeated, reaching out a shaking hoof, and touching her mother on the shoulder.  At her touch, Celestia jumped. She dropped the card and looked around the room, her eyes wild, almost as if she had forgotten where she was.  “Mom?” Luster said one more time.  Finally, Celestia looked down at her daughter, and her eyes seemed to clear. Her panicked breathing started to slow. And, with some effort, she swallowed.  “Yes, Sunshine?” Celestia asked.  “Is everything okay?” As Luster watched, Celestia seemed to grow even older, withdrawing even further inside herself. “Of course it is, Sweetie,” she said. Both of them heard the lie.  Luster looked up nervously at her, and took a deep breath. Celestia nodded weakly. “Go on,” she said.  “Mom…” Luster began shakily. She lit her horn, then picked up the card from the floor and passed it back to her. “Is this like the newspaper thing?” she asked.  Celestia took the card and, absently, put it back on one of her shelves--but, Luster noticed, she did not look at it again.  “Yes,” she said, looking away. “Yes, it’s like the newspaper thing.”  The two of them stood there uneasily in the silence for several seconds. Finally, Celestia smiled an uneasy smile.  “So,” she said, “you wanted to—to put up our dolls?” Luster nodded. “Yeah. I-if you’re ready,” she added.  Celestia returned the nod. “Yeah,” she said, “of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” She walked to the door and opened it. She very nearly walked through, but she stopped and turned back to Luster. “Come on,” she said. The two words barely held back a sea of emotion: nostalgia, fear, anger, love, and a dozen others that Luster had not learned the names to.  Luster swallowed, ducked her head, and hurried from the room. Celestia followed her out, then locked the door behind them.  Cadence helped find a place for Celestia in Bobsled--somewhere nice, but out of the way. Somewhere where she could have all the conveniences of life in modern Equestria, but where the paparazzi might have a harder time finding her.  That was just as well, because Celestia didn’t feel much like being found. Celestia was miserable. She could have sworn that somepony had told her, once, that pregnancy was easy, almost pleasant. She wanted to find whichever mare had told her so and throttle them. For eleven months, she was so sick she could barely keep anything down. What she could keep down raced through her, as her foal treated her gut as their own personal punching bag. She was so sensitive to smells she could barely even shop for her own food, and her hormones were so out of control that, most days, it was all she could do to keep from crying.  She never wrote Captain Halyard. She should have--he had a right--but something in her kept her from telling him. She had gotten herself into this predicament, and she didn’t feel a need to make somepony else feel sorry for her. Or brag to his friends that he had sired a foal with the Princess. She needed someone to care for her, not use her to stroke their own pride or ego. And so, the only ponies she kept around her were the ones she trusted with all her heart: Luna, who could never betray her again, and Cadance, who had been through this suffering before. The only bright spot in her life was that she barely showed. Many mammals bloated up like balloons before they bore their young, but ponies had the good graces to keep their pregnancies hidden until they were nearly full-term. Even so, Celestia’s frame was so large, and her foal so small, that Luna almost didn’t believe she was with child until Celestia’s teats began to swell with new milk.  Compared to the pregnancy, giving birth was a dream. Excruciating, unimaginable pain, of course--but surprisingly brief. Celestia’s womb was made to bear alicorn-sized foals. In comparison, a regular pony filly was almost easy. And so, barely an hour after she woke Cadance and Luna with her screaming, Celestia gave birth to her foal, just as the sun began to rise. She had spent no small portion of the last eleven months trying to think of a name for her child. Perhaps a name from myth, like Bucephalus or Phaeton or Sleipnir. Maybe something traditional, like Glory, or Sunbeam, or Sparkler. Or perhaps even Laurel, after her own mother.  But, as she held her filly, the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon, she could think of no more fitting name than one that memorialized that very moment.  She named her Luster Dawn, for the beauty of the sun that had once been hers.