3. Get the sun moving again.
So, who was she supposed to create this time? Who was supposed to deal with the sun?
A princess…
No, that didn’t make any sense. Princesses dealt with political bodies, not celestial bodies.
Hmm.
There was a princess that controlled the sun. She remembered that, vaguely. But…
…
It didn’t feel right to create a pony to control the sun.
Why was that?
…
Her gaze was drawn to the sun’s twilight. The sky was dominated by a spectrum of pinks and orange. There was a sharp line where the night sky of the ground cut through the sun. Shining bright light permeated her world, making life possible.
All of it was her wish, her wish from so very long ago. The wish for life and light.
…
This was her world, and that was her sun.
…
Yes. Yes, that makes sense. There would be no other pony controlling the sun. It was her sun. This world was her world. She was a princess, and she would control her own sun.
She focused.
The stars moved beneath her, forming a bright, straight line that started with her and ended beyond the horizon. She let her magic flow through this chain of stars, letting it lead her to the ball of fire, ever so far away.
She gasped when she felt her magic connect. She could feel the sun. It was an incredibly vast and deep well of power, of potential energy, and now it was part of her magic. It was nothing like telekinesis—the sun was an extension of her own being. The sun was her.
Now to make it move. She poured all the magic she had in her possession through the stars, powering the sun and willing it to set. It was like trying to wake herself out of a deep slumber—the sun was her, but it was still immensely difficult to control.
She willed it with all her might, pushing with all her mind and magic. Let. The. Sun. Set!
The sun sparked, shifted, groaned, and then dipped below the horizon.
The world was immediately cast into darkness. She waved a hoof in front of her face, but she couldn’t see it.
She swore loudly.
Okay, clearly moving the sun wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had, she thought as she nearly walked into the side of a building. Again.
Heh, “brightest”. Ugh…
A hastily-created lantern was hanging around her neck. She had thought that the lantern would provide sufficient light to get around, but instead the magical flame only lit the way about a foot and a half in any direction. After that, the light was just absorbed into the blackness.
If the ground wasn’t now covered by earth and vegetation, the glow from the stars beyond the sky-glass probably would have been enough to light the way. Unfortunately, patches of sky-glass were becoming harder and harder to come by. If she didn’t know any better, she would have no idea that there even was a glass sky beneath her.
Huh? What are you talking about? I can’t see the stars, sure, but I can still feel the magical energy radiating off of them.
You can?
Uh, yeah?
Oh, um, that shouldn’t… uh, never mind. Let me rephrase this, quickly…
If the ground wasn’t now covered by earth and vegetation, the glow from the stars beyond the sky-glass probably would have been enough to light the way. Unfortunately, patches of sky-glass were becoming harder and harder to come by. She could still feel the swirling stars beneath her, but their light no longer accompanied her.
Right now she was just kind of wandering aimlessly. In theory she was trying to make her way back to her treehouse, but that plan was looking pretty much hopeless at the moment. It was nearly impossible for her to get her bearings or to ascertain her trajectory when the only things she could see was what she was about to crash into.
This pitch-black nighttime was going to be a problem. Once the sun rose again it would be light and normal out, of course, but then twelve hours later the sun would set and she’d have to deal with this blackness all over again. And again. And again. She would not let that happen!
(Of course, this was assuming that the sun was still moving on schedule below the glass, even though she wasn’t actively pumping it with magic. She chose to believe that the sun would rise again in twelve hours, because the alternative was too horrifying to think about.)
So. A new objective:
4. Light the night.
Hey, it rhymes! That means it must be true!
Anyway, how was she supposed to light the night?
Well, it’s rather obvious, really. How did I light the day?
Well, with a sun, of course.
So how should I light the night?
…With another sun?
You’re an idiot.
Heehee, a moon it is, then.
She imagined a big red pen scribbling out the step “light the night” in her mental checklist and instead writing beneath it:
4. Make a moon.
Aha! Alliteration was almost as awesome as rhyming.
Hmm. Making a moon…
Ah! Of course! She would make a princess to create and control the moon. After all, the moon was merely a reflection of the light of the sun, it wasn’t important enough for her to waste her own magic on. Yes, yes it made perfect sense to make a princess to deal with the moon.
That… doesn’t make much sense at all. It actually sounds rather forced.
Oh, come on! Stop arguing with me over every little thing and just shut up! I’m in charge here!
Now all that needed to happen was, in her aimless wandering, for her to somehow find some castle or fancy building somewhere that she could create a princess in. Royalty always needs a castle, right? Hopefully she’d run into something…
…
She reflexively brought her hoof up to her muzzle, rubbing it and to trying to dull the pain of accidentally running face-first into the side of a building that had suddenly emerged from the darkness. When she said that she hoped she ran into something, she didn’t mean it like that!
Grumbling, she removed her hoof from her face and looked up, trying to see what she had run into. Then she grumbled again when she remembered that the lantern around was practically useless and allowed her to see no more of the building than the part she had impacted.
Speaking of which, the part she had impacted was a door that was flanked by wooden support beams located on the outside of the building, painted purple and pink in swirling stripes that made her think of a candy cane. At first she thought she was at the bakery again, but then dismissed the idea because she didn’t feel like talking to Pinkie Pie right now and so chose not to believe she was anywhere near her.
Magically removing the lantern from its place around her neck and lifting it up above her, she saw the name of the place emblazoned above the doorway: The Carousel Boutique. Lifting the lantern farther, she noticed that the building design resembled a castle tower, with white wood stretching skyward forming multiple levels until it peaked at the very top.
Amazing. She asked to run into a castle, and she ran into a place that looks like somebody had cut off a portion of a castle and dumped it in the middle of nowhere. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that happy coincidences like this were happening on purpose!
She shook her head to try to clear her thoughts—which instead gave her a slight headache—and opened the door of the partial-castle, surprised by the light that greeted her as she entered. Blinking a few times, she found herself in the waiting room of some clothing store or something. She noted with amusement that the part of the room customers would enter, reaching from the door to cashier table, was completely and utterly clear of even the smallest speck of dust, likely clean enough to perform open-heart surgery in. However, the room beyond the cashier table, while mostly hidden by curtains, appeared to have a hundred types of clothes and fabrics flown all over the place, as if someone had decided that the best way to organize their stuff was to make all of it visible in plain sight. It was an… interesting contrast, to say the least.
So. This would be the home of the princess. Was this place really fit for a princess, considering the place appeared as if half of it was lived in by a college student and the other half by a pony with OCD? There must be fancier places available for a princess—
Stop…
Hm? No matter, she didn’t really have a choice, now that she thought about it. It was too dark to go back outside and—
Stop!
…
Why am I doing this?
…
Why am I doing this?
Why does any of this matter?
What are you doing to me?
Why am I making ponies in the first place?
Why am I living here in the first place?
Why does everything feel so empty? So meaningless?
…
What is so wrong?
What is my problem?
What am I doing?
…
Am I depressed?
Am I lonely?
Is all of this just a lie? A big prank?
…
What is my problem?
How can I solve it?
Why should I solve it?
When did I start to obey without thinking for myself?
When did I start to believe that all things could be made better by just dabbing a little starlight on them?
…
…
…
Eh. She’d applied starlight to every other problem she’d had so far; one more time couldn’t hurt.