Finally, the Brightlands seemed to fall behind them. It had been days since they had seen a single mutated tree. Tulip became more and more relaxed, and began to talk more freely to Luna, and even to sing.
Luna delighted in music, a concept she had not heretofore conceived of, and made Tulip sing her every song she knew. Her absolute favourite was the one about the moon that Tulip’s great-grandmother had taught her.
“The moon is silver and the light is soft,
The stars shine and mothers watch
As little foals sleep and dream of play
Ready to greet another day.”
It was a lullaby, Tulip explained, something parents would sing to their children to soothe them to sleep. The song bought them onto the subject of dreams — Luna could not understand it.
“So you pretend about things…while you’re asleep?”
“Yes!” Tulip laughed. “Luna, you must have had a dream before!”
“I haven’t,” Luna answered honestly. In her three months thus far of life, all of her sleeps had been as dark and empty as the void where she and her sister had begun. “But why did ponies sleep at night? The night is my favourite time!”
Seeing the little sphere floating below her, bathed in the silver light of moonshine, pulses of subtler magic rising and falling from the surface, had been her greatest pleasure in her life before.
Tulip paused to think before answering. Luna was aware that the mare thought her very strange.
“Well, I suppose it just made sense. There was more to do during the day, when everypony can see better. Farming, fighting, visiting other ponies.”
“Hmph,” Luna said. “I bet the moon was plenty bright enough for those things, if the ponies back then had tried.”
Tulip chuckled. “Honestly, what is it with you and the moon? You’ve never even seen it. Nopony has.”
Luna didn’t answer. She had learned that Tulip was a bit perturbed by her differences, and didn’t want to alienate the pink unicorn.
Tulip was moving quickly, and Luna had to move at a trot so fast it was almost a canter to keep up. Tulip was grinning from ear to ear. At last, they were in the forest she knew well.
“Less than a day’s journey to Hollow Tree,” she said, a grin splitting her face almost from ear to ear.
Luna beamed back up at Tulip, her face beginning to ache from reflecting Tulip’s brilliant mood all morning. But what did it matter — they were finally here! Other ponies, other foals to play with, like in Tulip’s lullaby. Luna could make friends all of her own. Tulip had promised to show her the house where she and Cloudburst lived. There was a second room, she said, small, but she could make Luna a bed of her very own. Luna bit her lip in excitement.
And most importantly of all, there was a chance — a small one, Luna knew, but still a chance — that her sister would be here waiting. She shut her eyes, imagining it just for a moment; Cloudburst would be standing there and Tulip would hug him, and then he would move aside, and a foal would be stood behind him, with wings and a horn just like Luna’s. And Luna would look into her eyes and know it was her sister, and then the barriers around her mind would break and their thoughts would rush into each other at just the moment when they rushed into one another’s hooves.
A badly-placed tree root sent Luna sprawling, and the hard impact of the ground against her chest shocked the breath out of her. She opened her eyes again to see Tulip looking down at her with surprise writ large on her face. “Oh, dear! Are you alright?”
Luna bounced back to her feet without the need for Tulip’s proffered hoof. “I’m fine! I’m so excited, Tulip, really — I can’t wait to see my sister. I hope she found Hollow Tree too.”
Tulip bit her lip. “Luna, sweetheart, I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she said gently. “Hollow Tree is just one tiny village in a huge forest. Nopony else goes far from it. If your sister is lost in the woods like you were…no one may have found her.”
Luna gulped, her eyes widening in sudden fear. The thought of her sister wandering alone in the twilit woods was frightening. What if she never found her way to other ponies, who might take her to Luna?
Tulip saw her expression and hastily waved a hoof. “No, wait! I meant to say that nopony from Hollow Tree may have found her. Not nopony at all.”
Luna didn’t meet Tulip’s eyes and kept her gaze on the ground. The joy of the day was suddenly gone. She knew it was almost impossible, but she had wanted to believe. She missed her sister with an ache as constant as breathing.
Luna began to walk again, plodding past Tulip with her mane drooping across her eyes. Tulip kept pace, looking down at the foal with regret. “Luna, dear, I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I know you must want to see her very badly.”
Luna nodded mutely, tears pricking at her eyes. Tulip stopped walking to put a gentle hoof on her shoulder, and Luna let herself be drawn into a soft embrace.
“There, now,” Tulip comforted her. “It will be alright, I promise. We’ll find her.”
Luna sniffed and blinked her tears away, wiping furiously at her face under the cover of the hug. She didn’t want to spoil this day for Tulip. “I know,” she said, trying hard to sound brave. “I’m excited to meet the rest of the village too.”
“That’s the spirit,” Tulip said encouragingly. “Do you want to ride for a while?”
Luna shook her head. She wanted to arrive in Hollow Tree under her own steam. It seemed somehow important to make a good first impression on Tulip’s family.
They pressed on for a couple of hours, and Tulip grew more and more excited. She told Luna about some of the different families who lived in Hollow Tree, and though Luna tried to pay attention, the names slipped away from her like water and her smile wouldn’t quite stay put.
“And then of course there’s the monthly feast,” Tulip said eagerly. “It must be nearly time again. We all come together, and everypony brings all the best food they’ve gathered or grown that month, and we all eat together and then dance together until we can barely stand any more. You’ll love it, Luna, it’s so much fun. All the foals sit at a table together and talk about whatever they don’t want the adult ponies to hear — I bet you’ll enjoy that, sharing secrets with foals your own age.”
Luna nodded dully. She couldn’t imagine what secrets she would want to share with somepony other than Tulip — and she knew for a fact she would prefer to sit with Tulip than a bunch of ponies she didn’t even know. And maybe nopony in Hollow Tree would like her anyway. Maybe she would look too weird for the other foals to want to talk to her.
“And on market days, everypony brings out what they have to trade; some ponies make clothes and saddlebags, some grow fruit that nopony else can grow, I have my flowers, of course—”
“Hey!” called a voice from above. Luna flinched and flung herself towards Tulip. The voice was loud and rough and deep, nothing like her own voice or Tulip’s, and Luna thought it must have come from some sort of monster. She imagined the corrupted bat-lion coming towards them and speaking in that horrible voice, and tried to hide under Tulip’s tail.
“Who goes there?” the voice called again, and Luna heard the sound of wingbeats. “This is Hollow Tree land, you know!”
“Watchword, is that you?” Tulip called out breathlessly.
Luna peeped out carefully from between Tulip’s pale pink hairs, and saw a flash of steely grey overhead.
“Tulip!” The pony cried. “Stars, Tulip, we all thought you were dead!”
Tulip laughed aloud. “Well, I’m back!” she called up. “Go tell everypony!”
“I will!” Watchword shouted, his voice receding. “Hurry!”
Tulip turned at once to Luna, beaming. “We’re only about half an hour from home now, Luna! Oh, I can hardly wait!”
Luna gave a tremulous smile in response. She wanted to ask why Watchword’s voice was so deep and rumbly, but she somehow felt like now was not a time to bother Tulip with questions. Besides, her whole body was thrumming with a much bigger questions. Was her sister there waiting? Could Watchword be telling her even now?
And behind the desperate, improbable hope that her sister would come, there was the nagging worry that if she were not, if Luna were the only winged and horned foal there, that the village might not like her. What if they didn’t want her to come in? What if they sent her back into the forest all by herself?
Tulip wasn’t waiting, and Luna jerked herself out of her reverie and hastened after the receding magenta hindquarters. Whatever the risk, she had to at least try to stay with Tulip.
Tulip was almost galloping now, and Luna had to push herself hard to even keep Tulip within sight. She was panting hard, but Tulip didn’t seem to hear, and Luna didn’t want to ask for help. She would enter the village under her own steam, as she had planned.
There was the rumble of hooves — lots of hooves — and then Tulip gave a wordless cry of joy.
“Tulip!” sang out multiple voices, and then Luna burst through a bush and skidded to a halt and the cries of reunion were abruptly silenced.
Luna crouched panting for a moment until the black dots left her vision, and then raised her head, trying to put on a pleasant smile though her eyes were tight with fear of this ominous silence and the humiliating knowledge that she must be absolutely purple in the face with exertion. Not at all the good first impression she had wanted.
Watching her in stunned silence was an enormous crowd of ponies, and as she tried to count them the numbers Tulip had taught her wavered and vanished out of reach. There were just too many to count. Old and young, all the ponies wore the same expression of shock and horror, and all had the same feathered wings.
The only two not looking at Luna were Tulip and a pale blue stallion with a long white mane woven into dozens of thin braids, who were wrapped in each others arms, their eyes shut tight. Luna waited, weak at the knees, her lower lip trembling, for somepony to say something.
The blue stallion broke the silence first, pulling out of his hug with Tulip to gaze into her eyes. “I missed you so much…you were gone so long! Nearly eight months, Tulip!”
“And I missed you every day of it, Cloudy,” Tulip murmured, her eyes alight as she looked up at him. “I promise I won’t leave you so long ever again.” She leaned close to rub her muzzle against his.
One of the ponies in the crowd flicked a glance at her neighbours, then at Luna, and then cleared her throat.
Tulip jumped and looked around her, then coughed and smiled. “Sorry, Bluebell!”
“Tulip,” Bluebell said carefully, her eyes still on Luna. “Who is that?”
Luna eagerly examined the face of every pony they passed, searching for a hint of her sister. But Tulip recognised each and every one of them, and none of them looked at Luna with anything more than curiosity at her strange appearance. There was no recognition, no spark with any of them. No meeting of minds or touching of thoughts.
Crushed, Luna hardly took in any of their names. The only thing that registered was that none of them were her sister. She was glad when Tulip’s indeterminably long conversations with the small group of elderly pegasi ended and she was led over a shaky rope bridge to a treehouse clearly marked out by the pink tulips growing in wooden boxes beneath the windows.
Tulip led her to a small room with a thin straw mattress on the floor, and Luna slumped into it. When Tulip tried to whisper reassurances to her she turned her face to the wall. Even Tulip was a stranger to her right now, just another pony who was not her longed-for sister. Oh, why couldn’t she have been here? Hadn’t Luna struggled on alone for long enough? Being trapped in this corporeal shell was bad enough — limited and finite, with almost no senses — but to be here alone was beyond torment. It was enough to drive her mad.
Tulip finally stopped trying to speak to her, stroked her forelock away from her face, tucked a blanket laced with her familiar scent over her, and shut the door quietly behind herself.
Luna stared at the wooden planks of the wall, listening to the rush of blood in her ears and the thumping of her single, lonely, sisterless heart.
The clop of hooves on the platform outside the window, and a quiet knock at the door. Muffled voices. It was one of the old ponies from before, Luna thought dimly. Not that it mattered. All the ponies seemed horribly uniform to her just now. None of them were the right one.
The voices became clearer. “And you don’t think she’s one of…his creations?”
“No!” Tulip’s voice sounded shocked. “Of course not, Bluebell. She fought off dozens of those creatures to save me.”
“The Sun Above knows that he is not above deception and tricks, Tulip. I am worried that the foal is…well, not natural. Nopony has ever been born with a horn and wings. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“Maybe she is just the first. New things don’t necessarily bring ill — and besides, just because you have never come across a more…unusual foal doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“But you say she came to you totally mute, and learned to speak within a matter of days? Tulip, that just doesn’t happen. You’re too young to be a mother yet, but if you had borne foals you would know that it takes years for them to learn.”
Luna stiffened beneath her blankets. Was Bluebell accusing her of being a monster like the duck-rocks? And to be judged for her quick learning, which Tulip had so praised her for, nettled her pride.
“Bluebell, times are dark, but I always thought this village was the exception,” Tulip said earnestly, the hurt clear in her voice. “You accepted me, and I’m no pegasus. Luna is no different.”
“That was very different, and you know it, Tulip!” Bluebell scolded. “Unicorns are not pegasi, it is true, but we know they exist — and besides, Cloudburst vouched for you. We could hardly deny him.”
“Well, now I am vouching for Luna!” Tulip insisted. “I feel very strongly about this, Bluebell. Luna is nothing more than a child; a sweet, normal child. Besides that, she saved my life, and is the strongest magic user I’ve ever seen or even heard of. If we turned her away, who knows what would become of her? She needs us to protect her. If you have accepted me as a member of this village, the way you say you have, you’ll give her a chance.”
“You feel strongly enough to leave us over this?” Bluebell sounded shocked.
“If I weren’t willing to give up my home to save a defenceless little filly, what sort of pony would I be?” Tulip retorted. “And I don’t think Cloudburst would linger long anywhere I wasn’t welcome. And Grey Petal and Windwhisper would probably feel the same way — and who knows how many others.”
“You would split the village over this?” Bluebell said, aghast. “Tulip, if we use those sort of threats we are no better than the unicorns and earth ponies.”
“Her magic isn’t chaotic, Bluebell,” Tulip said forcefully. “Trust me, after being in that place last week, I know it when I see it.”
Bluebell let out a breath, clearly defeated. “Have it your way. The foal may stay, but we will be watching her carefully.”