A Home Under the Moon
Chapter 1: A Terrible Day…
It was horrible, this day. Novus was sure.
She had started her day like any other. Waking up, prepare a slice of bread for the morning meal, grab the market basket, and the pouch of bits, and take up her travel cloak for to walk into the market central of Semper.
Semper was often considered the centre of Equestria. Mayhap because all maps started here, or because the Sisters made home in the castle overlooking the whole settlement. She didn’t know.
But it wasn’t the walk, nor the trading within the market, for t’was Spring Harvest, and many foods stuff did she get with such limited bits. No, it was at home Novus cursed this day.
For her mother, bound to bed, had grown worse. She was the reason young Novus was out in the market, gathering food for a soup to heal her.
Her mother was a fair thestral, lavender in colour with a light pink curtain of mane and tail. Her eyes had dulled, due to sickness, but Novus remembered a young time in which her mother’s eyes shone like Mistress Moon’s stars.
Her skin had turned pale, and she had garnered a temperature to match summer. Her eyes lay unfocused as she stared at the roof before her, yet it seemed to gaze much farther than the roof. A heavy sweat lay her drenched in her bed, the hay and linens soaking it up and leaving a permanent stench in the room. What more, her mother had yet to bathe for a good while.
By her mother’s side sat her father, a unicorn stallion, still quite spry for his age, yet heavily sombre, considering her mother's condition. His coat, while matted and covered in dust, was yet a magnificent butter yellow, with hair upon his own as a fiery orange sitting down, flat. His eyes held a saddened look, yet the deep magenta in them would often be called to match his daughter, or the Lady Sun herself.
She was a young unicorn herself. Sharing her mother’s coat, but her father’s eyes, while her mane and tail seemed entirely her own. Navy in colour with two stripes of pink and purple. She shared in some of her mother’s thestral traits. Like her really good hearing.
She had yet to gain her Destiny Mark, but fathers showed itself as an anvil, and a hammer striking at it, with half of Magic’s Spark atop the anvil. Her mother, however, had on her a woven basket with an opened lid, as if in a crescent moon.
But Novus had hoped that this spring, would her mother recover, but that hope seemed to run dry.
When her father had noticed her arrival, He had started to speak in a slow tone. The sound of his voice, hoarse and telling of the depression upon his soul. “Novus. How art thou this morn? T’was no trouble?”
“Good eve, father,” Novus responded, taking seat at the bed’s foot. “Nay, no trouble upon Semper town, this day. How fares mother?”
“Tis naught good. A stallion of apothecary hast cometh by. Says he, tis immedicable. She hast naught but a day,” he answered. Her father then ushered her outwards, calling out one last thing towards her. “Avaunt. Prepare the pot. Tis fitting for one last meal.”
With no hesitance, but much sorrow, Novus turned towards the metal pot that sat upon the cooking fire. She grabbed at a large vase, one that held their days’ worth of well water, and poured in some of its contents, to fill the small cooking pot. She then took up the basket of market greens and sat on the hay-covered floor, cutting up the plants and herbs with a seax held aloft by her magenta magic.
As she sat, cutting up the ingredients for her mother’s last meal, her thoughts roamed around that very mare, and her heritage. T’was not uncommon to happen upon a thestral in Equestria, far from it. but t’was that they were ever either travelling, or lived here, in Libria Semper. Or so says her mother.
“We live here, daughter. Under Princess Luna, the Mistress Moon’s, protection. She shalt be our shepherd, here to rule evermore.” She remembered her mother saying. And, while young, Novus was confident in her intelligence. She had thought that the reason they all needed protection was-
Something, a shout carried all the way from the Sisters’ castle, broke her thoughts. But the tone was different. For, when the Royal Voice was used, it was announcement. This was proclamation.
What’s more, the room had darkened, only light being from the cooking flame. Looking out the window, Novus saw a scene that matched the royal proclamation. For night had come early and the words rang through her head as she rushed through outside.
“This night shalt last, forevermore!”
And then, the castle upon the hill, overlooking the town like a stalwart protector, blew up.
Screams rattled Semper streets and faint shouts of the ongoing sisterly battle carried upon the wind. Soon, Novus’ father ran up to her daughter from inside, panic clear upon his face.
“Novus! What hast happened!” he cried out from behind.
Novus, eyes never leaving the castle, shrank a little as she spoke up in stutters. “T-the Moon! Methinks she is angry!”
Her father moved up to protect and usher her inside. But before either could clear the doorframe, a great hum shook the air, and an even greater light lit drew their gaze back upon the castle.
A rainbow shot the sky, and a loud scream tore the night. Worse than any ever heard. Novus thought she could hear her mother weep from the cry of anguish unleashed upon the world.
After the light dissipated, utter silence permeated Libria Semper. Not a living soul dared make a sound, in fear of the wrath of Lady Sun and Mistress Moon. The whistling wind appeared absent from the sky, too.
A low glow upon the moon grabbed at the attention of every pony, griffon, deer, dragon, and other. Stuck there, on the very celestial body she swore to govern was the very mare of the night, trapped in the moon. A mare in the moon
Novus looked on in fear of the fate of her mother’s guardian. Her father quickly pushed her past the door frame and closed the thatch-woven door before he moved to embrace her and spoke to her in a reassuring, quiet manner. “We shan’t worry anent that. Not this day.”
Grabbing a wood-carved bowl in his magic, her father moved over to the pot of brew in the making. He dipped the bowl within the liquid, drawing a helping from the warm broth, and gave it off to Novus to take within her own magic. “Avaunt, mine dear daughter. Deliver this to thy mother. I shalt wander abroad to Semper. Mayhap others must know of the Sister’s plight.”
“Aye, father,” Novus said as she took the bowl in her magic to take to her bedridden mother.
She heard the door open and close as she walked up to her mother, still lying upon the ground eyes now closed. She walked up to her mother’s side and place the bowl by her head before laying beside her. This close, she could see the slight shivers of her mother. She would not last the day.
“Mother. Thou must drink. T’will be thy last, methinks.” Novus moved the bowl towards her mother’s lips, yet she didn’t move herself.
“Tis true, then? Princess Luna hast fallen?”
The sound of her mother’s voice was a surprise to the young mare yet brought a new wave of depression. Because she knew that the answer to her question would not be one her mother would want to die with.
But she wouldn’t leave her mother, on an unanswered question. “Aye,” she said, “tis true. She be with her moon, now.” Novus paused for a good while, thinking her incoming question with strong thought, before she spoke again. “Art we safe?”
Her mother was thrown into a coughing fit, lasting a few seconds, another sign of her limited time. After it passed, she opened her eyes and stared her daughter in the eyes. Although her gaze was weak, her eyes were resolute.
“Hast thou princess truly fallen to Death?” asked her mother, voice weak but firm. And, while Novus herself did not know the answer, she couldn’t help but shake her head, no. Her mother nodded her own head weakly before continuing her piece. “Then she shan’t leave thy self. Mayhap shalt she be saved.”
Finished speaking, her mother leaned her head as far forward to the bowl, still held aloft by Novus’ magic, and slowly sipped at the warm contents. By the time the wooden bowl was empty, Novus had wished her mother a goodbye, quelled the cooking fire, and covered the small pot with a small lid, and started for the outside.
Upon stepping back upon fresh grass, Novus noticed something she didn’t while inside, despite their window-less window frames. The moon was gone. And with it, the princess. But, how? Was it not Princess Luna in charge of the moon? Who stole it from her?
No. Like father had said, she could worry on the morrow. First, she had to find him.
There was something different about walking through the town of Libria Semper. There was an uneasiness about the settlement. Everypony outside looked sad and forlorn, particularly the thestrals around her. Yet they all were heading towards the castle wall.
Following the crowd, Novus found herself at a place she never thought she would ever get to. The castle gates.
After spending some good time searching the crowd for her father, Novus found herself, and others around her, stopping as a pony upon the gates started to speak.
“Hear ye, hear ye! By order of Lady Sun, Princess Celestia herself…”
In that moment, Novus understood the one reason thestrals like her mother were protected. Why she herself needed Mistress Moon. The looks of some of the guards as the pony atop spoke. They were telling enough.
She was feared.