I was told I’d been found on a street corner of an earth pony village, in a bustling marketplace. There was nothing particularly fantastic about my discovery; a filly, too young to fly but old enough to stand, simply waiting. Some couple noticed me, and was intrigued. They considered taking me in as their own, but thought better of it, and called on Celestia to deal with me.
I was almost blessedly unremarkable. A smooth gray coat, a gray mane, even eyes colored like stone. Shaped almost like any other filly of my age. Beyond physical appearance, I was difficult to notice. Ponies often looked right through me, unaware of my existence.
Save the curious curse of both a pegasus’s wings and a unicorn’s horn, I was altogether forgettable. Comfortably so.
Yet when Celestia learned of me, knew me to be like her, she flew to the poor village that had apparently been my home on her own wings, not wishing to be delayed by one of her gleaming carriages. She carried me the hundreds of miles back to Canterlot, fast as her wings could carry both of us. I have lived within its wealthy halls ever since.
It was surprisingly simple to blend in. Beyond the initial curiosity of a handful of the closest royal officials, most ponies simply assumed I was some bit of removed family. It felt strange, to be so near Luna and Celestia and unseen, but luckily I was left in the wake of all the attention belonging to the rulers of our realm.
Ironic, that only the two most powerful beings ever more than glanced in my direction. Celestia’s attention was sparse, yet powerful. At first, she had tried to introduce me to anypony present, but noticing how I shied away from others and how others hardly knew how to respond, she quickly stopped explaining my presence.
That isn’t to say she didn’t acknowledge me anymore. On the contrary, she redoubled her efforts with unexpected kind words and additional time spent attempting to teach me the intricacies of magic and the wonders of flight. I was as close to her as I possibly could be, as close as any lifeless stone could reach towards the sun. I rarely spoke around her, yet longed to be at her side whenever nopony else was.
Luna was different. When I was young, I attended a celebration with Celestia. As always, rulers draw royalty and with it, crowds and commerce. I was attempting to blend with the hordes of ponies as I always had, without straying too far from Celestia. She respected my wish to be unseen, and would mostly leave me alone for the course of such gatherings. As I distanced myself, I noticed something that perhaps only the young and ignorant might. Initially, a small crowd floated around both Celestia and Luna, making them difficult to miss and impossible to see. After a while, the crowd remained around Celestia, bumbling farmers making sure the sun would be there to warm but not scorch their precious earth, prestigious nobles desperate to have the attention of someone above them instead of someone beneath them, and everypony else. Luna’s followers, in the meantime, dwindled. Few business ponies had a vested interest in the nighttime or the moon, and with every awkward comment or pause, another clump of ponies left. Soon, Luna was very alone, surrounded by lesser ponies who were too awed by her to address her themselves.
I saw opportunity in her loneliness. I walked over to where she stood, looking uncertain and unhappy, and stood by her side, resting my head on her leg. She seemed shocked, and unsure of what to do. I cared little; it was for her solitude that I came nearer. Instead, I found a friend.
Luna was majestic, but not like her sister. Celestia was beautiful to behold, and Luna intimidating. Celestia drew ponies, Luna terrified them.
This was simple to observe. Anyone brave enough to watch the younger sister in all her might saw the tremble, the hesitation of speech, the awkward phrasing. Most were more impressed to read about her, preferring the occasional mention in the textbooks to actually acknowledging her. For such high royalty, Luna knew doubt and loneliness like few other ponies ever could.
Naturally, when other ponies tried to befriend Luna, the reaction was that of hostility. Most ponies that had seen under the mirage of power and prestige dismissed any compassion they’d felt for Luna when their kindness was returned with rebukes. Others never forgot the depths they had seen, but unsure of how to help the dark princess, lived their lives with the secrets of a princess.
I had no such luxury, living between palace walls. After my accidental kindness, she began to talk with me. Her sister flew about the whole country, while Luna remained unneeded. Boredom led to desperation, and she began teaching me whenever Celestia couldn’t. I ignored her stumbles and painfully uncomfortable conversation, and learned to enjoy her insight beyond the words she used. I forgave her occasional pointed remarks meant to embarrass or enrage, knowing her bitterness had been collecting long before I presented an opportunity for her to release it.
Unlike Celestia, Luna was somepony I could comfortably talk to. It wasn’t that Celestia wouldn’t listen; on the contrary, her eagerness to hear me would squelch any desire to converse with her, let alone correct or question her ways. I owed Celestia too much to waste her time with my own petty wants. Having given me love enough to heal any hatred I may have held for my unknown parents, the world, or anything under Equestria’s bottomless skies, her time was more important than my petty wants.
I saw Luna as a relative equal. Save a few thousand years, we were quite alike. Her experience earned her little respect from me. My wings may have been smaller, my skill in magic much weaker, but I bore no scars of gratitude from Luna’s actions.
Oddly enough, Luna adjusted to my insolence with relative ease. After finding so few ponies would talk to someone so high and noble, she settled for being just another anypony.
Luna and I shared secrets, what few we had to offer. I told her the things I’d seen in fellow ponies, the quiet victories and agonies that most were so painfully blind to. In a cacophony of a thousand colors, the mural of a thousand voices, most assumed everything was as it was seen. Private stories, joyous and tragic alike, were swallowed up in the background noise. I did not gossip, as I knew no names, but simply lightened my own burden by sharing secrets painful to keep alone. So many of them seemed alone with their secrets, so many separated from friends and family to wander among endless meaningless faces. Some gathered with friends and forced smiles, pretending to belong rather than acknowledging how detached and empty they felt.
The worst to see were often the blank-flanks. The youngest ones were still accepted, ponies told themselves that they were just going through a “phase”, that there was nothing wrong with them. As the ponies grew, absence of a cutie-mark became a stigma, a deformity. Older ponies were given sidelong glances and talked about, often well within their earshot. Blank ponies would pretend not to hear derisive conversations, but they weren’t oblivious to the stares, the refusal of others to talk to them, aware that they had been exiled by their lack.
Their problems extended far beyond brushes with other ponies. A cutie-mark was a place, a purpose, an identity. Whatever public problems they endured, far worse came into the minds of the un-marked. Purposeless did not mean stupid, and even if it did, to lack what almost every individual around you had was not hard to notice. In crowds, the gifted were a perpetual reminder of failure to the ungifted. As a result, blank-flanks avoided other ponies about as much as other ponies avoided them.
It was ironic, really. These ponies only needed an image fixed to their person a fraction as much as they needed somepony to talk to. Their illness was one part unfortunate circumstance and three parts hypochondria; the belief in their separation was most the ailment. Cutie-marks are rarely earned in solitude.
A lucky few forgot their unlucky handicap and simply continued with their lives. Contrary to popular opinion, many ponies were born, lived, and died, never finding their supposed “special talent”. Some never let go of their dejection; others simply forgot and went on living among good friends and happy family.
Once I made a trip with Celestia to one of the poorer parts of the land. The earth there was dry, most of it useless. Few attempted to farm the land as most crops never broke the surface. Those that managed to farm successfully became masters of the dirt and sand, employing the other inhabitants of the land to work for scraps of food. This was not so much cruelty as it was necessity; the owner of the land worked as well, and received little more than the workers.
Most of these poor farmers were destitute earth ponies, yet for whatever reason a single pegasus came here to work. I saw this particular pegasus in a field of turnips, and noticed he was blank. He looked as though he had journeyed a long way, not only because his coat was tinged brown and his wings looked rough, as though a few feathers had been misplaced along his way, but his eyes seemed tired, sick of travel, weary for rest. As he finished his work for the day, placing the last of the crop in the farmer’s wheelbarrow, he turned to see something quite strange. Where once had been a mud-stained tan patch of fur, the image of a wheelbarrow baring an assortment of vegetables sat.
For pegasi, field work was the lowest possible occupation one could fulfill in life. It was not noble, brave, or fast. It was not interesting. It began and ended in earth, which most pegasi made their life goal to avoid. So strong was their hatred for the ground that they were born with wings with which to escape it. Though most pegasi could swallow their loathing of dirt and their pity for earth ponies long enough to trade for the much needed food, their aversion to the land was legendary.
This particular pegasus would probably go on to be ignored by most of his kind, rejected by his closest friends and family (assuming there was any left to speak of), and ultimately shunned by everypony he ever met gifted with wings. Most would choose to remain blank all their life, rather than be chained to such a menial fate. The shame alone could permanently banish him from his homeland.
Noticing the change, the pegasus looked for his employer, flew with all possible speed...
And thanked him, weeping for joy.
Luna’s secrets were of a different nature. Ruler of the night, the dramatic occurrences in the lives of the day’s inhabitants were foreign to her. She hardly knew her own kind; being awake when nopony else was left Luna isolated from her brothers and sisters.
This isn’t to say Luna was alone. Simply because it lacked the flesh and blood of day, most ponies assumed night was empty of waking life. In shadows they only saw absence and lack. Despite inability to see them, the shadows were teeming with life and activity, perhaps even alive themselves. These creatures consumed nothing tangible and changed little that watchful eyes would notice. They danced unseen, hiding behind pony’s shadows in day and everywhere at night.
Their differences with ponykind went beyond their lack of bodies. Shadows thought strange thoughts, and were difficult to understand at the best of times. Without the basic needs of food, water, or sleep, incapable of owning anything tangible, the shadows were enigmatic even to their ruler.
Perhaps the strangest part about the shadows was that they never died. Death was beyond comprehension to them. That isn’t to say they were infinitely wise. On the contrary, their memories usually lasted less than an average pony’s lifetime. They never bothered to remember or maintain any sort of identity, and when Luna found them neither knew when and where the shadows had come to be.
It was hardly surprising Luna struggled so much to deal with other ponies. Her company chattered and whispered to her almost perpetually, what would have perhaps driven a weaker being into madness. The hisses of ten thousand invisibles made the lightest small talk a burden.
Not that they meant to undermine Luna’s chances to befriend others. Ironically, it was often their encouragement that drowned their masters ability to speak kindly. The Shadows loved Luna; they were her servants, willing to perform her every whim, far more powerful than her magic when united. Their words to her were often praise. When they weren’t adoring their leader, they tended to mimic what she said and felt in reverent awe. These reverberations made Luna arrogant, her arrogance left her detached, and her detachment left her depressed.
The Shadows would silence, if Luna asked them to. Such was their adoration that if Luna even hinted at their nuisance, they might not speak with her for years to come. Luna was a caring leader; she could never injure her citizens so terribly to save herself an inconvenience.
Once, she tried to let me hear and see them as she did. We sat in her quarters, which naturally had little light beyond a singular candle in the middle of the room, casting a weak circle of clarity and only giving hints of what lay beyond its domain. She lowered her horn, and as it glowed, I saw the world with new eyes, and heard it with new ears.
The room went black. Not black as in nothingness, but swirling, vast infinite black. Black that dripped and oozed and crawled and consumed. Black as deep as a thousand wells and wide as a million oceans. Black that seethed and whispered and chattered, meaningless and endless and loud and mindless and mad, mad for attention, for love, for anything and everything. I ran as fast as I could, even tried to fly out of the darkness. I found myself eternities later, weeping at Celestia’s hooves and under her kindhearted watch, begging them to leave me be, safe at last.
I didn’t speak with Luna for weeks afterwards. I was not angry at her: my appreciation for her as a ruler, my pity for her, and my devotion to my closest friend was stronger than ever before. She told me that her spell may have made me far more sensitive than she had ever intended. I suspect she was lying, and even if she meant what she’d said, I was also told I’d spent little more than a few minutes before I stumbled into Celestia’s meeting with the lesser rulers of Equestria and fallen at her hooves sobbing. Luna knew several lifetimes worth of the shadow’s chatter. I couldn’t withstand minutes of it.
Luna knew what she had done. I only wanted to talk to my friend again, and hoped that Celestia would forgive her as well.