//------------------------------// // 13. The Quiet One (Luna) // Story: The Twilight Zone // by Bad Horse //------------------------------// The palace sun room had not been designed or decorated with viewings in mind. Professionals would consider its skylights and white-and-gold decor insufficiently somber. But it was the only room on the ground floor of the palace that had both a front and a back entrance, and was large enough for the coffin. The room was normally not used at night—it was not night, according to the grandmother clock near the entrance, but the skylights were still black mirrors—and so four portable gas lights had been brought in and one placed in each corner. Their quiet hissing seemed loud in the silence. Every few seconds, the two honor guards at the front entrance let ponies in; sometimes one at a time, sometimes an entire family. Outside, in the darkness, the line of waiting ponies, standing in hushed little clusters, stretched out through the palace gates and far down Main Street, back towards the city gates. Two more guards stood at the exit, and a final pair, one unicorn and one pegasus, both white with blue manes, stood at attention against the wall by the feet of the enormous gold-plated coffin. They kept watchful eyes on each pony as he or she came in and stood a few moments before the head of the closed coffin. Some sniffled; some cried freely; a few wailed loudly. Some pursed their lips tightly together, so that only short bursts of low whinnies escaped. Nopony noticed the guards, except now and then, when they would gently but firmly drag an overwrought mourner out. They did notice the dark, metallic-blue alicorn brooding over the opposite side of the coffin, gripping its edge with her forehooves. She never raised her eyes from the casket. She ignored them all so completely that some ponies wondered whether they had not been admitted by mistake. “Three days, and not one tear,” the pegasus guard whispered, eyes still straight ahead. The unicorn briefly turned his chin sideways to a barely perceptible degree, the palace-guard equivalent of a shrug. “I’d just like to see some decent, pony feeling,” the pegasus went on. “Her own sister laid out before her. Dead three days, and still warmer than her.” He glanced across the room at Princess Luna, and shivered. “Princess of the Night,” the unicorn whispered back. “What did you expect?” An elderly unicorn mare wearing a black veil stood before the coffin. Her hoof began to shake violently as she tried to blow her nose. The two guards watched her with professional detachment, until she managed to stow the used hoofkerchief in a pocket and exit without incident. “When she’d walk by in the morning,” the pegasus said, “she’d smile as she passed me on her way in. Just the one smile, you know, but it lasted me the whole day. It was like—like honey, or warm mead.” “Or hot melted butter,” the unicorn said. "I remember." Both glanced briefly across the room at the night princess, still frozen in the same pose, staring without seeing. No one in the room spoke for the rest of the evening. When the last pony in line came through the doors, the honor guard shut it, gently, with a quiet click. Only after the last mourner left did Luna take her hooves down from the lid of the casket and leave through the rear doors, holding her head high and moving at a stately walk. The guards kept their eyes straight ahead. She did not look at them as she passed. Then the two guards at the rear doors shut those after her, and the five remaining guards were left alone with the body.  Not long after, six fresh solar guards relieved them to stand the night vigil. One of the new guards let out a startled whinny and spooked sideways as he passed the casket. The others swivelled their heads around quickly. “I didn’t do it!” he brayed. “It was like that when I got here!” Where the Princess Luna had been standing, the edge of the casket’s lid had been crushed, stripping off the gold leaf and splintering the wood beneath into two hoof-shaped depressions.