//------------------------------// // Chapter Seven // Story: To Swoon the Stars // by LucidTech //------------------------------//         To say that shared meals were tense between the princesses would be an understatement. Even when the wind was fair and all was right in Equestria, there was always an uneasy tension that crawled the room, lurking in the shadows cast by the words. Even more so now, given how sharp the situation was proving to be. They enjoyed each other’s company regardless, but that enjoyment was crippled by the mutual cold emotions that haunted both immortals.         Luna glanced sidelong at Celestia, pretending to simply look at the food on the table. She grabbed something near where her gaze landed and levitated it over, placing it carefully on her plate, then replacing it on the table, hoping the simple act would dissuade her sister from thinking anything was wrong. Luna wanted to ask her about several things; well, several things all tied to one thing. She was afraid, though, that it would anger her sister if she were to learn of Hendrick’s upcoming proposal.         She wouldn’t be angry outright, of course. Luna knew this in the same way she knew that if she reached for those potatoes one more time, she’d give herself away. In fact, any anger it caused would probably die away in merely a month or two. But with the changeling situation going on, Luna didn’t want to distract her from the important decision she had to make. Only recently had she agreed to meet with the rest of the castle staff, but she still did everything in her power to further herself from the general populace, an act that Luna couldn’t scorn. She knew how it felt.         Rather than putting the both of them through that turmoil, Luna was content to imagine answers to the questions she had and fully devote her magic to making a perfect spiraled hole in the mashed potatoes for a gravy volcano. She spun the fork around and around in a tight circle, pushing aside all foolish mushy vegetable that dare stand in her way. Then, without even a thought, she ate those few brave chunks of potato that clung tightly to the prongs of her drill. She poured the gravy and, instead of eating the food, grew distracted and began to knock around some peas that had wound up on her plate, as if suddenly feeling a growing guilt for the victims of her merciless reign on the food. “Luna,” Celestia said idly, buttering a piece of toast with her magic as she read through a long scroll, the words grasping to the lobes of her brain for but a brief moment before being taken away by the waters of her morning stupor. “I may be almost entirely out of pace, overly devoted to a solution, completely distracted from everything around me, and somewhere far beyond groggy from an early awakening...” Here, she glanced at her sister and her eyes took on a benevolent shine. “But if you think you’re hiding anything from me with your sideway glances, then you’re very mistaken.” Luna tore her gaze away and took a quick snap of her potato volcano, wanting nothing more than for her sister to drop the question that hadn’t even met the air yet. Celestia looked at her and offered a tired smile. “What’s wrong?” “I didn’t mean to disturb you, sister,” Luna offered immediately, but with no tone of fealty, only one of respect. “I’m merely not hungry and I just sought to see what else the table might offer that I could convince myself to eat.” “And each time, you decided, ‘Aw, to heck with it; I’ll just have more potatoes?’” Celestia offered with a jovial grin before taking a bite from her toast with a satisfying crunch. She smiled again when she finished chewing and dabbed some butter from the corner of her mouth. “You’re free to ask me whatever you need to, Luna. Perhaps, all I really need is to step back from the situation at this point, before coming at it with renewed vigor in an hour.” “I…” Luna started, deciding to cast caution to the wind. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m scared and nervous, and my mind is all muddled, but in a strange way that doesn’t seem to handicap my actions. Just... always at the back of my mind, ever present, like a pebble caught on your horseshoe. Not heavily frightening, just always uncomfortable.” Luna sighed, letting the confusing thought of trying to explain her emotions float away. “I…” She stopped herself and looked at Celestia, who nodded on encouragingly. “When I went to see Hendrick last night, I found an engagement ring. That means he intends to propose to me or someone else, and either option is incredibly frightening.” “Oh. He hasn’t proposed to you, yet?” Celestia said through a mouth half-full of toast. “Something about it must be incredibly threatening to him, then, if he’s still hesitant on it.” She paused and finished chewing her food. Her voice took on an air of drama as she spoke again. “Then again, it would be proposing to the Mover of the Moon, the Guider of Dreams, the... oh, what was it those nomads called you once?” “The Beauty of the Stars.” Luna offered, regret immediately filling the words. “Yea, that’s the one.” Celestia smiled again. However, the smile was swift to fall as she noticed that Luna didn’t share in the humor. “Luna, give him time. I assure you, he loves you. He is simply too nervous to go through with it.” “How do you know?” Luna’s tone was broken as the words dripped from her mouth. “How do I know? Maybe I’m being deluded again, so desperate for love I’m just imagining it.” “Luna. Stop.” Celestia had finished her toast in the same way that, even after only a phrase, she was finished with the path that her sister seemed intent to go down. “Hendrick loves you; I can vouch for that. I wasn’t sure myself. Not even a month ago, I still doubted his intentions. You’d always talk about this other side of him that I’d never seen before, that he didn’t show others very often. But, ah, I hope he doesn’t mind if I break the promise I made him. “Luna, about three weeks ago now, before this entire changeling debacle, Hendrick came to me to ask me a question.” Celestia’s face was dour as she spoke, as if to enforce on Luna how serious she was being at this moment. “He brought with him some fifty pages of small type, but he didn’t reveal what it was until we’d gone past the opening greetings.” Celestia paused to make sure Luna was paying full attention to her words. “Each and every single one of them held paragraph upon paragraph of heavily edited reasons as to why he should be allowed to propose to you. Every, single, one. I kid you not, Luna. The words used fit perfectly and flowed as a whole, while maintaining a solid base and removing any kind of tangent you would expect such a set of papers to go on. Like, for instance, many of the nobles who come to us seeking aid in petty affairs. Hendrick shamed every single one of them that day.” “And when it was all over, even after this massive flood of verbs and nouns, he still asked me, pony to pony, no threat or anger in his voice, if he had my permission to propose.” “He asked you for permission?!” Luna said, her tone incredulous. But she suddenly paused, her face falling into thought, before it flashed back to its former pose. There was a far more surprising part of that sentence that had been merely glossed over by the speaker, something that was more implied than said. “No wait, ignore that question.” Luna was shaking her head to add emphasize how little her prior query mattered now. “You said yes to him?! Why?!” Luna had entirely given up the food on her plate, it hardly mattered in comparison with this new information. Now, all her attention was fixed firmly on Celestia. Celestia nodded her head lightly with a smile and took another bite of the toast, taking a sip of tea before the food was entirely gone from her mouth. “I thought about it for several hours, letting Hendrick leave with the promise I would respond soon. As much as he and I don’t see eye to eye, I recognize that he tries his best to be the most moral stallion he can be. A rare feature, even across the several generations I’ve been alive.” She swallowed the toast easily, taking the rest of the tea with it, and wiped the ever persistent slight smears of butter from her lips. Her face turned serious, and she looked at Luna. “Luna, if Hendrick truly makes you happy, if you truly love him as he so obviously loves you—and I think it’s clear that you do—then I would have to be an inconsiderate witch to stand in between you two any longer. And in all honesty, I regret being as stubborn as I have all this time. “What I saw when Hendrick showed how much he was willing to do just to ask me if I gave him my permission… I really should have seen it sooner.” “Tia…” Luna’s muscles began to loosen a tension she didn’t know she’d had. The very last thing she’d expected was for Celestia to bless the relationship, especially after all she had done before. Then, feeling in the moment and deciding proper behavior to be overrated anyway, she wrapped her sister in a tight hug. “Thank you.” Celestia’s face started out surprised, taken aback by the sudden hug and kind words, then slid into being uncomfortable by the contact, some part of her brain rebelling to the situation. That part was quickly voted off the island by the majority and replaced by a happiness of sorts that slid into each of her facial features, turning her serious face into one calm and kind. It was a look that hadn’t been seen on the solar princess’s face for, at the very least, one thousand years. They stayed like that for a while, and no one could truly fault them for not moving away. For though Luna had come back to Equestria a few years ago, only now were the sister’s truly being reunited, and neither had the heart or the desire to destroy this one of a kind moment. “You aren’t a changeling spy, right, sister?” Luna said suddenly, keeping her head cuddled into Celestia. The words were sudden, but they didn’t break the loving tone in Luna’s words. Celestia couldn’t help but smile at that. “You’re free to check, Luna, if it’ll make you feel better.” There was a soft glow from Luna’s horn, and it quickly died away. “That’s good. It seemed too good to be true, and I just...” “It’s fine, Luna. I can’t blame you for it.”