Somnambula chewed her lip as she stared at the castle spires. There was something serene about this approach to the castle, at least at the end. The old mountain pass was clearly not regularly used by the ponies of today, and had been trickier than she remembered. The dilapidation and disrepair made it dangerous to anyone without her sure hooves, and wings for if those hooves failed her.
But still, by approaching Canterlot this way, she had avoided all of the crowds of ponies. Oceans of moving bodies, moving in unspoken shared tides. Marketeers, tourists, commuters, all pushed flank to flank; the risk of one of them wanting to talk to her? The risk of one of them recognising her?
She would have taken the mountain pass any day.
However, as she got to the end of the trail and found the old, back-entrance to the castle, Somnambula did a double-take.
In the hours it had taken her, she could have counted the ponies she’d seen on her four hooves, so she had been expecting guard presence to be light. Maybe a single, bored initiate, foisted into the unenviable task as some sort of hazing ritual. And even if such a guard hadn’t a abandoned their post, she would have bet her house on them having fallen asleep by this point.
Honestly, she had been half expecting their to be no guard presence at all.
Well, she’d been half-right.
Because there were no guards.
What there was, however, was the pony she had come here to see, the pony with whom she’d made her appointment.
Princess Luna sat with her back to Somnambula, and was staring into the quickly darkening sky. There was an odd, implacable serenity to her. Less about calmness and more about constancy. It looked like she could simply sit there and stare into that sky for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Thinking about it, Somnambula thought that probably wasn’t too far off the truth.
“Somnambula,” the lunar princess called out, sensing her arrival before anything had been done to announce it, “I’m glad you came.”
The palace gardens were quiet at this time, just like the mountain pass had been.
Though Somnambula assumed the princess had probably planned that.
“How did you know where to meet me, Princess?” she asked, and Luna carried on gently walking alongside her, apparently in no hurry to answer.
“You’ve still not told me why you made this appointment,” she said, clearly deciding there were better places for this conversation to focus on.
“Well,” Somnambula began, slightly put out by the sudden change of topic, “I’ll admit the last few months have been…testing.”
“Mhm…” Luna replied simply, leaning forward to take the scent of a light blue rose.
Somnambula sighed. The princess wasn’t going to make this easy then.
“I have to be honest, I think the times may have caught up with me, in a way. I thought that maybe it would be good to speak to someone who could understand that? Leaping through time in a heartbeat to find oneself in a world that’s all but forgotten your own… well, there’s not many ponies I feel could properly empathise.”
Somnambula regarded the princess warily as she explained. The circumstances of Luna’s own time jump had come from decidedly less benevolent intentions than her own, and while she didn’t judge, she also didn’t want to bring up anything too painful for her walking partner.
But Luna was a picture of contentment, continuing to smile at the various flora and fauna in the gardens. And, upon detecting Somnambula’s pause, the princess turned and wordlessly gestured for her to keep going.
“It’s just… ponies fawning over me. Being treated as some sort of ‘hero’ for doing what I did with the pillars… it’s all felt a little-”
“Like you’re not quite real?” Luna asked, and Somnambula let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“...Yes. It feels like my only place in the new world is to continue to be… well, a pillar. Something constant, like a statue on a plinth for ponies to gawk at. A relic… I’m not quite sure how to be anything else anymore.”
“You asked how I knew where to find you tonight,” Luna began after a moment of quiet contemplation, “Does the idea of trying to be something else feel too hard? Does it feel insurmountable?”
“... It does,” Somnambula confirmed, knowing in her heart that this was good for her, but feeling slightly uncomfortable at being so openly analysed all the same.
“I knew how to find you because I knew you’d never consider another way of reaching Canterlot, Somnambula. All those years ago, you went into the Sphinx’s lair completely alone. You sealed yourself away for the good of the world, when you could have simply lived a comfortable life. And tonight, you wandered a dilapidated, broken mountain pass, when there was a perfectly good road leading to the front of the castle. Does being something other than a relic feel like it would be too hard, Somnambula?”
“I just don’t feel like the world wants me to be anything else,” Somnambula admitted, cringing at the sound of what she was saying, “So… yes. It feels too hard, princess.”
She bowed her head, only to find her face being tickled gently by Luna’s magic, as the princess gently lifted the pegasus’ chin.
“And to that I would say, when have you ever done things the easy way, Somnambula?”
And Somnambula found, to her confusion, to her surprise, and eventually, to her relief, that she didn’t have a reply. Maybe Luna was right. Maybe it would be the hardest, most treacherous path of her life. But Somnambula liked to hope she might be able to make the journey.
“Just something to think about,” the alicorn said with a kind smile, it was the sort of kindness that came from understanding, “Will you walk with me a while longer?”
“Yes, princess. I think I’d like that.”