Creation

by Nachtschwalbe

Her

She flew pretty high and her vans cut through the icy air. The moon and the stars shone brightly causing the clouds under her to glisten in their light. She did it again! I can't believe it! How dare she to treat me like a foal in front of everypony?! And why can I never come back at her?! Her home lay several miles behind her by now and her ire-fueled wing beats drove even more distance between them. She began to feel for every movement of her muscles allowing her to soar through the sky. Concentrating on the blissful exhaustion she stopped flapping them in the pace of fury and instead slowed the semi-circle movement but gave every gentle stroke enough power to hold her velocity. She soon lost herself in the feeling of flight.
The scenery below began with lush meadows spreading wide along the edges of the woods she just came from. Slowly, the further she flew, hills began to grow from the plain and after enough time they became pointier and higher and soon she passed the first mountain. That made her realize how long she had flown. It would only take around three hours for the moon to set and the sun to rise and suddenly a huge yawn escaped her. Deciding that it was time to head home she let out a sigh and set her wings to make the change in direction. That was when she lost control. Her pennons, used to one form of motion and worn from the hours of flight overdid the angle. The suddenness of the turn took her off-guard and her instinctive try to correct it only made it worse.
She was falling now, trying to catch herself and regain reign over her body. She wasn't falling in a ninety-degree descent but more like seventy-five and it would let her crash straight into the side of the mountain.
It was two-hundred meters till impact.
She tried to flap her wings synchronous but failed badly.
One-hundred Meters.
In desperation she just closed her wings.
Fifty Meters.
When she felt the right angle she snapped them open and the following pain assured her that she had caught herself. She let out a deep sigh and looked down at the mountainside. There something unexpected was caught in her view. There was a hole. A hole in the mountain. Though the proper term probably was cave. An idea struck her mind. She was tired and her wings still ached from the mid fall catch; so why not glide down there to seek a little rest? She decided in favor of her thoughts and floated towards and through the entrance.
As she landed she found herself in a wide but low-ceilinged cavern. Hardened dust and gravel scrunched under her hooves as she slowly made her way inside and looked around. The light which shone quite a few yards through the entrance made it possible for mosses and lichens to grow. Though the plants and fungi were able to survive even further in than the purview of light, the illumination stopped pretty soon and behind it only inky blackness was seen. Except for some blinking reflections a little distance into the cave.
Curiosity took hold of her and she trotted on, examining her surroundings. There was no hesitation when she crossed the light-line and soon enough her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She passed dense rows of stalactites - which caused her to duck more than once - , stalagmites - which she tripped over way to often - and stalagnates - which blocked her way enough times to get annoying. Then she reached one source of the gleaming. It was a pink crystal high enough to make her look up slightly and thick enough to make it hard to hug it fully.
She slowly circumambulated the glassy stone. It looked very much like cut rose quartz though something seemed of. Crystals these sizes were normally found in the eponymous empire far in the north.
She came to a halt in front of the stone again and tilted her head sideward. She slowly raised one of her forelegs and gently touched the object. She furrowed her brow when she felt a light tremor emitting from it and lowered her leg again. This was going to be interesting. She began to trot away, still looking at the crystal.
The further she went the more of these crystals grew from the stone around her. They mostly appeared in small groups in hollows in the basalt which bore a great resemblance to geodes. Though one of those stony bubbles had and opening in the back and she cautiously made her way towards it. She tried to look into the darkness behind it but this deep into mountain not even her eyes were able to amplify the residual light. She slowly climbed through the hole and ignited her horn, illuminating the room before her.
It was same kind of giant geode itself. Those crystals were everywhere, growing from and into every direction. They carried the magical light even further than it originally could have shone. And that's how she saw the ball. It sat there only a dozen yards away, held between crystals forming some kind of pedestal. It also was surrounded by step-like stone slabs adding an altar-like flair. That all gave it the feeling of being supposed to sit there, just like somepony or something had placed it. This place really seemed awfully artificial.
And that made her suspicious. Who would or even could have done something like this? What was that orb? Why did somepony think it was worth the amount of work needed to create this chapel?
I probably should come back later. Maybe I should discuss this with my dear sister. She blinked. No. Why should she? That would only support her sister's opinion on her and she needed to proof to her that she was no foal anymore to finally gain some respect.
Her mind made up she firmly walked towards the globe. It looked like it was made of some kind of semiprecious stone. It was green with thin red veins and slightly oval. As she reached it she looked at it from every side and it really seemed like it hadn't grown but been placed here. Though that happened probably a very long time ago because some of the crystals holding it had grown around it. She warily touched it but couldn't feel anything except for its perfectly smooth surface. She furrowed her brow in contemplation and after a few seconds nodded to herself. She took a few steps back and reached out with her magic cautiously caressing the ball. Nothing happened. She let go off the breath she'd held and thought about what she could do else than just look at it. She could think of something but the spell hasn't been properly tested yet and she didn't really want to risk a cave-in. It was something she had observed her bats doing to navigate in the dark. It was an intricate spell because it didn't just produce some sound but also built a filter which used the sound to show the image. What was even more difficult was to get the right pitch and note otherwise the object to be scanned could get damaged.
In hesitation she slowly circled the pedestal. She bit her lip while she played chess with the pros and cons. Eventually a thought pushed itself further and further into her consciousness until it overwrote any other one and she muttered it under her breath. "Screw it."
She began to concentrate on the spell and slowly raised the two-layered projection-field. Then she built the second layer of the spell under the first in the form of a hemisphere which was connected to a cylinder which would work as the equalizer. Then she activated the spell and began to search for the right sonority. It took a little fiddling but in the end she received an image. It showed the surface of the orb.
Frustrated she let out a huff and amplified the sound and this time it showed what an inch into the sphere was. It looked somehow fluid but had no matter. This is magic! This stone is filled with pure magic! She scanned two inches deeper and there she saw a disturbance. It was a long rope-like thing that was curled up in the middle of the ball. She looked at it for only a few seconds then she caught sight of something pulsing. Not sure if it had been a fallacy or not she stared at it for several seconds longer. And the pulsation repeated itself. What is that? It took several more pulse beats for her to get near the realization. With the eighth one her eyes grew and her pupils shrank in cognition. With the ninth her spell fizzled out as she stumbled back with shock on her features. It's alive!

She had sat there for at least an hour, her mind reeling around the impossibility of something like this until she noticed that she began to refer to it as an egg. At that point the full meaning of what she just had found out caught up with her.
What am I supposed to do?! Her eye twitched. Oh this was all her fault. Why did she have to let her curiosity get the better of her? Look where it got you!, she scolded herself. She should just turn around and fly back home. It had been a ridiculous idea to fly off in the first place. Why had she done it, again? Because she was angry that her sister had embarrassed her in front of all the ministers? What a pitiful reason! She had acted so..childish...it...
It hurt. It hurt so much. She was sure that wasn't her sister's intention. But somehow that hurt, too, if not even more. She so wanted to forgive her but it became harder every time. They had their moments when they shared their daily experiences and joked around. They also tried to eat together which was difficult because of their different schedules. But then there were those times when they argued fiercely though these altercations were mostly concerning subjects that no normal pony would care for. And then her sister always found a way to make herself the look like the reasonable one despite the fact that mainly she started them.
Desperately trying to derail that train of thought she looked up at the egg and started thinking. I could just leave. No, she wouldn't be able to sleep without further investigating this thing.
I could take it with me. No, she didn't know if it would have an effect on the egg.
Then what?! Shall I just sit here and wait till it hatches?! She let out a frustrated huff and stood up. She walked towards it and asked it directly: "What shell I do with you?" Of course there was no answer. She let out a heavy sigh and lay down. Slowly she levitated the ball down and in front of her, still trying to figure what to do.
Maybe she could think of something when she wasn't tired. And so she lay down her head, closed her eyes and quickly drifted off into sleep. Without her magical light the cavern was again filled with blackness and not a single sound could be heard. Though it wasn't some wearing quietude but a warm and reassuring tranquility.
A crack disturbed the silence of the cave and it soon was followed by other ones. Startled her head shot up and her mind out of the dullness of slumber. Her gaze quickly went to the source of the noise. Oh, of course it would hatch now! Why not?! She jumped up and watched as the fissures in the head-sized orb became wider and wider. She realized that it wasn't necessary for her to ignite her horn because the cave already was illuminated by the green glow from the leaking magic from within the egg. She watched in awe as the shards slowly hovered away from the heart of the glow and orbited around it. The brightness of the incandescence increased and she had to squint her eyes to at least see something. Then everything stopped and it all got sucked right into the center and the cave was poured in darkness once more.
Slowly a blue luminescence emitted from the tip of her horn. She still stared at the place where the light show had just happened. But instead of the egg there now lay a creature. She couldn't tell if it was breathing so she leaned closer to it. She still wasn't able to tell anything so she took a step closer and leaned down.
It was a snake. Before her lay a snake. It didn't belong to any kind she'd heard about though and she was sure that there weren't any kinds which backs were covered in tomentum. And she still couldn't tell if it was breathing! Somehow that unnerved her deeply and she reached out with her magic and gently tapped the creature with it. And really it's unusually expressive eyes opened and it blinked several times. It raised itself high enough to nearly touch her nose and tilted its head. It then leaned forward and poked her muzzle. She smiled and puffed through her nostrils into the face of the serpent. Thereupon it recoiled slightly and gave off a light hiss. That reminded her that this creature might have poison fangs. Her eyes went wide and she recoiled, too, which startled the snake even more and it slithered away, trying to hide behind one of the crystals.
"Uhm...H-hey! I'm sorry! I didn't want to scare you!" She cautiously trotted towards the crystal behind which the reptile had vanished and took a peek around. There it cowered and looked up at her with wide eyes. What am I supposed to do? ... Why do I keep asking that question? Because of her renewed indecision and the serpent's wary stiffness an awkward silence fell over them and neither one seemed to be going to break it.
Thinkthinkthink! What shell I do?...What does it want me to do? Retreat? Stay still?? A hug??? She let out an exasperated sigh and turned around. Her head hanging she walked towards a comparatively soft looking spot on the cave floor and lay down to rest for she still felt tired and exhausted. Even more so since the excitement from before ebbed away.
Meanwhile the snake began to relax and its natural curiosity got the better of it. It crept around the crystal and watched her as she lay down and closed her eyes. It wiggled towards her while very now and then it cautiously stopped and watched. Eventually it reached her and sat in front of her nose. It slowly reached forward with its head and then poked her again.
She opened her eyes to look into the expectant ones of the creature which birth she had witnessed and raised an eyebrow. A small smile played at the corners of her lips. Somehow she found the worming pearl serpent adorable. She had always liked children for they still carried innocence and purity and it never was a burden for them. And she also could see these things in the eyes of this newborn animal. No, not animal. This one is too self-aware. Her smile grew and she poked back while blowing a gust of air in its face. Its response was to open his mouth wide, hiss, close his mouth and then nuzzle her. Somehow that made her grin. Then it did something even cuter. It slithered to her chest and curled up against it. It yawned and then drowsily lay its head down though still looking up into her eyes.
She had watched it with raised brows and an amused smile. Then she noticed something. I can't call it it the hole time. I need a name...and a gender...Which I surely won't find out without showing it to a veterinarian. She let out a groan but immediately stopped as she felt movement against her chest. She looked down again and saw the worry in the serpents green eyes. She bent her head down and nuzzled the creature reassuringly. "Sorry, but you'll have to wait for your name." She watched it calm down and drift off into sleep. And by the way. "My name is Luna."