Luna walked around the kitchen as she recollected herself and she tried to think of her next course of action. Her mind was still focused on this supposed “previous mother” of hers. She remembered what this mother looked like, a pegasus with ultramarine fur and a mane that drizzled down her face. It was just one scene that played out in her mind that seemed almost like a mental photograph of a tragic event. She could only remember that whatever this moment was it had to relate to something bad, something that her small filly brain couldn’t understand. The dark gray eyes of her mother almost looked apologetic or perhaps guilty. The type of guilt that a guardian would feel for not trying hard enough.
She remembered this single moment happening in some forest and it was early in the morning. The sun shone through the green leaves in that solid instant of time. From looking around the surroundings, it looked like they were deep in a pre-civilized Equestrian forest and she could visibly see her mother’s bones showing through her malnourished skin. That’s all she could remember, just that one scene. All of the context was gone.
As she continued to pace around the row of the oven for the twentieth time she noticed a piece of paper underneath one of the pots. She located the pot before levitating the paper with it. The paper was old and its normal white had turned into a tree-bark brown but the words were still intact. It read as follows:
Today I asketh mine mother, “who is’t the mare I keepest seeing in mine headeth?” The lady hath said yond oth'r moth'r wasn't yond imp'rtant in the grand'r scheme of things. The lady toldeth me yond mare gaveth me to h'r fain. I still und'rstand not wherefore the lady hath seemed so disgruntl'd by the mention. I knoweth not wherefore but the bethought of h'r continues making me feeleth a c'rtain emotion, the emotion yond a young foal wouldst feeleth at which hour those gents exp'rience a traumatizing nonce. But who is't am i kidding? i haven't exp'rienc'd aught lacking valor with mine own new moth'r, well at least i bethink i didn't.
The Princess of the Night didn’t understand why a piece of her diary had been left out in the kitchen like this. The placement of it seemed intentional, almost like that faceless abomination was playing with its prey. But why? She never knew the answer to that question, like so many questions she asked herself about this creature that she had been fascinated with since foalhood. This thing was truly an enigma in her eyes. Or maybe it wanted her to understand. Her mind focused back on the old words on the paper. The old Equuish she used to speak made her chuckle, the thought of how the modern Equestrian language was much more understandable compared to its past form.
The old language was so simplistic and in retrospect very hard to read with the current accent she had adopted. Then her mind suddenly shoved those things away. Her eyes were now focused at the exit of the kitchen as the thought of the ancient Equestrian language was replaced with the voice in the back of her head telling her find more.
Luna was now at the west side of the castle where the ancient pool lay. She had taken a route that the castle’s staff did had access to, it was tough to get there, and was a small tunnel which they walked to get out to the old pool. She opened the rotting wooden door, which promptly fell off its hinges as she opened it. She toppled herself out of the small cramped tunnel and looked at the once beautiful pool. The elaborate walls had vines that had grown over them and some of the old statues lay in the overgrown grass with other small chunks of stone. The walls had small Gothic spires that reached up towards the skies, or at least they did. Now the spires were mere rubble and dirt in the ground. Only the skeletal structure hinted that they were even spires to begin with. In the pool itself was now a pond. A pond that was overgrown with algae and had turned many shades greener. She walked around until she stopped at the center of the bottom corner of the pool with her hooves crunching in the vibrant Fall leaves. Under the light of her horn, there laid another piece of old paper. She lifted it up and it read:
So the present day, me and mine own sist'r hadst seen the weird mare again. This timeth we did get to seeth a bett'r behold at t rath'r than a m're glance from a distance. T hadst the most strangest of robes and t barely hadst any visage on t. I wilt sayeth yond t did act intrigu'd by us and oft wast fixat'd on the peasants than about us. Our fath'r hast been insistent on us staying hence from t. The creature hast been consistently harassing the villag'rs and making foals disappeareth coequal some griffin envoys has't recount'd tales of seeing such a creature in their landeth. T intrigues me yond such a creature couldst beest seen in m're than one continent. And yet… t remains a mare. T doesn’t seemeth to beest did shape by the whisp'r'd w'rds of intelligent sentient creatures liketh ponies n'r doest th're seemeth to beest any variety on compliment extern 'r behavi'r, it’s too consistent to beest fake.
Luna remembered the letter clearly and her thought process while writing it. She didn’t even know at the time what this creature wanted from her, nor did she know this in the present. It hadn’t been written down but she felt suspicious about her father. She remembered her father staring at it from the backyard, almost like he knew the creature. She still felt like something was missing from the picture and that she couldn’t really remember what she did remember something. Something that was more like a fill-in that she remembered, a feeling about context: it was a certain type of fear that seemed to be a theme that made the world of her foalhood fall apart, like her little self had discovered a horrendous truth that would break her young mind. And yet, she didn’t know.
She turned her head back to the main entrance to the pool and opened the intricately carved wooden door and closed it behind her. As she walked down the halls with the old stained glass depicting the various different creatures and their place in the natural magical ecosystem she gained a memory. The memory was of her apprentice Star Swirl the bearded lecturing her on how the study of zoology related to the study of the nature of harmony. But then there was one phrase that he said in this regained memory that made her stop in her tracks at the center of the hallway, “Well, mine own booketh on the nature of harmony may not totally beest c'rrect. Mine own studyeth of this feareth of charm may beest partly inc'rrect and wherefore i consid'r this the case is yond the magical floweth seemeth to leadeth these malintend'd spirits wh'rev'r t flows.”