The first time it happened, I assumed I’d been abandoned.
It was hardly the first time a lover left me by the time the sun set the next evening. I had been officially declared Princess for a mere fifty or sixty years at that point, and most ponies were undecided whether to think along the lines of “Luna is a mare in a powerful position, and must therefore be looking for a suitor who will help relieve her of some (or all) of that burden, responsibility, and authority,” or “Luna is either too young or too old to be within courtship age, and since she is an alicorn we shall not ask which because she looks like she could have gotten her cutie mark a few moons ago, and has looked like that for as long as our parents can remember.”
This had the unfortunate side effect of granting me a mix of both rabid suitors who did not wish to know Luna the Actual Pony the moment court was no longer in session, and a host of ponies who reverently declined any advances I attempted to make, for to them I could only ever be Luna the Alicorn Princess.
I wasn’t entirely certain which category my latest guest had fallen under, but I’d long since established a protocol for dealing with such ponies who’d gotten my hopes up, and I couldn’t be bothered with puzzling it out one way or the other.
“Captain Ferros,” I grumbled towards the door of my chambers, rolling myself away from the squintingly bright light of sunset, which, due to a slight spatial miscalculation, left me tumbling off the far end of it.
“Yes, Highness?” The guard outside of my room turned sharply on the edge of his hooves to face my rumpled bed. I would have been embarrassed if I’d had any dignity left to lose, but the guards who aided me directly after I awakened were different than those who tended to Celestia’s needs after the moon set. I was sure they’d swapped stories, but they’d stopped there, by royal decree and on threat of being Celestia’s coffee delivery pony for the rest of their career.
I spat out the corner of my pillowcase. “When did my company leave yesterday? I wish to note down his name and profession, so that I may warn my sister appropriately.” It was a pity, he hadn’t been terrible company, and while I doubted Celestia did more than glance over the list of names I’d been appending onto, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she kept a closer eye on them for safety and future teasing reasons.
Ferros saluted smartly, and I tiredly wondered if he’d ever knocked his own helmet off while practicing in front of a mirror. “Nopony left your chambers by wing or by hoof, Highness.”
“Are you sure? He wasn’t a unicorn.” I peeled away the blanket that had managed to get a decent stranglehold on me in my restless sleep as I made a valiant attempt to think the matter through.. “I… I did have somepony in my chambers last morning, right?” I didn’t feel especially hungover, but it never hurt to be certain.
There was a brief pause before he answered. “You had a stallion by the name of Limerence in your company early in the morning. He had a warm grey coat, a light yellow mane, and golden eyes. His cutie mark was in the shape of an hourglass, and his gait suggested that he had a twelve hooflength long d-”
“Thank you, yes, I remember,” I said, suddenly more awake than I’d intended to be. “And you didn’t see him leave?”
The captain gave me the patient frown of a pony who’d been assigned to babysit royalty. “No, Highness. I did not see nor hear anything suspicious last night.”
“Excellent. Go…” I waved my hoof towards the door while I waited for the rest of the sentence to form in my mind. Why must sundown arrive so early each evening? “Go find where he went, then.”
Ferros’s brow crinkled, mane shifting stiffly under his helmet. “With all due respect, he might be hiding in your room. I would like to request a search of your chambers before consulting the local citizens. He might be a threat.”
“Sure. Do what you must.” I contemplated the state of my mane, then decided to deal with it later. None of the stuffiest members of the court could be bothered to deal with me this early in the evening. They’d learned their lessons long ago. “I will be at my usual seat should you need me.”
“Of course,” he said, and saluted again as I sluggishly made my way towards the dining hall. A gentle rustle told me that he’d already begun searching for the mysterious stallion as soon as my back was fully turned.
That was fine. It would sort itself out. If that Limerence pony wanted to harm me, he could have done so while I was asleep. My greatest priority was, naturally, breakfast, and nopony would dare stand in between me and a decent meal. Most of them had learned.
The youngest officials often expressed a strange measure of shock at the fact that I slept at all. I was just a pony, and whenever the sun was in the sky, I found my strength draining from my body. My sister felt the need to rest during the nighttime just as I did during the day. In that manner, we were balanced.
There was not nearly as much for me to do during the night. I always had the option to dreamwalk, but I found little pleasure in sifting through countless dreams that even I could rarely make heads nor tails of. The worst dreams were from those that were hurting, and I was painfully aware that I lacked the experience necessary to ease their pain. It was much better, I’d decided, to keep well away.
Sleeping had its benefits, however: it was the perfect way to skip time during the dreadfully bright light of day, and it was through my repeated complaints that the concept of the sleep mask was born. My sister had flatly rejected my initial solution, claiming rather insistently that dimming the sun was impractical.
That argument had not ended well, but in my defense, I had just woken up then, too, in the middle of the day. I gave myself a bit of a reputation for being thoroughly unpleasant soon after waking, but most of the time it benefited me. It meant that when I arrived at the dining table, I found a plate piled high with food and a fresh mug of tea waiting for me, and - best of all - nopony I was required to make conversation with.
The peaceful silence lasted all of twenty or so minutes, during which I resolutely ignored my guards marching through the corridors and steadily made my way through the delicate wisps of melon slices layered between clover leaves that the chefs had so painstakingly prepared for my evening meal. I was just, in fact, making a mental note to thank them when Ferros returned, gingerly clunking his way into the stone room.
“Your Highness, there’s a mare at the door who’s requested an audience with you.”
“Whamph?” I took a drink of juice to clear my mouth, and another to wake up my mind a little more. “I don’t believe I have any appointments scheduled, correct?”
“Yes, your Highness, but we found…” The way he trailed off made me a bit nervous, and I took a moment to brace myself for whatever mess I’d get to resolve before the moonrise.
“You found Limerence?” I said, running a wingtip through my mane in an attempt to straighten the constellations a bit. “I take it he was not, in fact, hiding in my room?”
“No, your Highness.” Ferros slumped slightly in his armor, the closest to exhaustion I’d ever seen him display. “We think we’ve found him in the outskirts of Canterlot. He works at an inn, and, uh,” The captain cleared his throat, visibly working out how to say something. “He said he’s never met you in his life.”
I pursed my lips together and stared hard at my mostly-finished breakfast. That was a new one. I wasn’t sure what to do with flat-out denial. “You said you think you found him?”
“Yes. Highness, there’s no easy way to say this, but I’d seen the stallion and I swear on my post that this is the correct one, but…” Was he sweating?
I downed most of my tea. “But what? Spit it out, Captain, I don’t have all night.”
“His cutie mark changed.”
It was, in immediate retrospect, a mistake to take another long dreg of tea at that moment. “Cutie marks can’t change, Captain,” I choked out. “Barring Cutie Pox, they’re an unyielding part of who we are. If his cutie mark is different, then he’s the wrong Limerence.” Maybe I’d gotten close to his twin brother, or somepony had played an elaborate prank for some indiscernible reason.
“I would normally agree with you,” Ferros said, deceptively calm for somepony who’d announced the impossible as though it were the midnight menu. “But the mare that’s insisted upon meeting with you has the same cutie mark that Limerence possessed.”
I snorted into my tea, for lack of a better response. It was far too early in the night to deal with impossible things, but there was no way I was going to let Celestia hear about this ordeal until I solved it or she would never let me live it down. “Very well. Give me five minutes, and I shall meet her in the throne room.”
“... Highness?”
“Yes?” I was halfway out the door.
“You have a comb stuck in your mane.”
“Ah.” I regarded it with a cold lack of amusement. “Make that ten minutes, Captain.”
“As you wish, your Highness.”