October 27, 1000 ANM
I woke from a dreamless sleep, feeling refreshed and confused. Was I not awake for several days in a row? I had naturally assumed that the required recovery would comprise a full day at least, but for once in my life I was mistaken.
As soon as I awoke, Blueblood pounced from his continuous circuit of pacing beside my bed. “Mother!” he exclaimed, condescending to give an undignified nuzzle. “I’ve waited here for hours for you to wake up.”
I decided not to question why he had felt it necessary to spend so much time in unresponsive company. “Only hours? That seems impossible. I have been awake for days, and only a single night is required to regain my strength?”
“It’s more than that,” he tried to say, “it’s your —”
“Ah, it matters not,” I conceded. “I shall have to speak with Sister Dearest directly. It seems she has the right to know the details of this Chrysalis debacle, even if you have informed her of the general situation.”
“Actually, I assumed you could explain it best, so I’ve left it to you."
“But of course.” I ruffled his elegant mane in a gesture of affection, and his head wobbled under my hoof. “You have accomplished a great feat, have you not? Standing hoof to hoof with Chrysalis and the stolen love of millions of ants, you drew upon your dark heritage and provided a display worthy of the ages. Still, I must confess an ounce of disappointment regarding the violence of your assault.”
“I know.”
“You should have shown far less mercy than you did, and crushed her like the insect she is!”
“I know.”
“For what quarter should be allowed to a villain who has endangered one’s family in the pursuit of her own selfish aims?”
I could not place his expression. It was far too troubled to be attributed to the glory of defeating a would-be conqueror.
We made our way to the dining hall, where Sister Dearest was taking a long, deep draught that seemed impossible with the use of a mere teacup. Mi Amore Cadenza was nowhere in sight. I supposed that princess was plotting some nefarious plot with her pink fluffy bunny to terrorize the populace with sunbeams and puppies.
“Sister!” I called. “We must have words!”
Her eyes traveled calmly to rest on my countenance. Then they widened, and my vision was suddenly obscured by a magnificently forceful jet of tea.
Allow me to make one point clear: I have never liked tea. It is an unpleasant concoction, and no amount of honey or milk can completely weaken the many layers of bitterness that lurk within. In truth, it is another thing to fear love her for, which should not be a surprise. For how can any being, alicorn or otherwise, manage to consume as much of that foul liquid as she has without so much as batting an eye? In truth, it baffles me. I could never stomach such nonsense, and the discrepancy between our tastes causes me to wonder at times if we are truly bonded by blood.
The point I present here is that I was already less than fond of tea. Finding my magnificent countenance drenched with a particularly strong brew did little to increase my dislike, and in any case it has certainly not been the worst indignity I have endured.
“Oh, Luna!” Suddenly Sister Dearest stood before me, dabbing at my face with a napkin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make such a mess. It’s just … well, look at you! You took me entirely by surprise.”
“I am thrilled that I inspire the sort of surprise that provokes ponies to attack me with jets of sickness and saliva,” I said shortly, though I could not resist leaning ever so slightly into her attention. The ruffling of my fur reminded me of our days as fillies, when she would assist me in removing tree sap from my coat.
“Don’t worry,” she assured me. “It was for a very good reason.”
I could not think of any reason, good or otherwise, for reacting in the way she had, so I said nothing.
“Really, Auntie Celestia,” Blueblood protested, “isn’t that a bit of an overreaction?”
She smiled at him. “If you were in my position, could you honestly say you wouldn’t do the same?”
He opened his mouth, but hesitated. She quirked an eyebrow at the delay.
“This exchange is highly amusing,” I lied, “but that is no reason for me to put off my morning meal. My current mood for food is somewhere in the gray area between famished and ravenous.”
“I think you’ll want to see this, though.” She conjured a tall pane of glass out of nowhere, then set it before me with an expression bordering on mischievous. “What do you think?”
I considered the sudden situation. Before me, through the portal of glass, stood a figure who resembled myself, albeit before the fiasco with Nightmare Moon. She was a tall mare, with a mane and tail studded with stars that flickered gently in those tiny cuts from the cosmos. I scrutinized her with all the focus I could muster, and she regarded me with confusion in return.
“Ah!” I exclaimed, making Blueblood jump. I looked at Sister Dearest with new understanding. “This is a strange turn of events, but of course it becomes clear without delay. The changelings managed to contact you already, have they not? They are certainly being more diplomatic about it than their sorry excuse for a queen. It is quite flattering that their ambassador has taken my form, but in hindsight it was not entirely unexpected.”
Sister Dearest blinked, and her mouth adopted the shape that would invite bugs. For the first time in forever, she was truly flabbergasted.
“Do not be so surprised!” I consoled her. “I find that I am much sharper in wit than even I can tell, at times. Now, cease your fretting about the matter, for I will discuss the situation with her. I need practice in my skills in diplomacy after the events with the sloths.”
I turned to the mirror again. The changeling must have been speaking with somepony out of sight, for she did the same. We considered each other for a heartbeat.
“Greetings, noble insect!” I stated dramatically. “As princess of Equestria and your recent liberator, I hereby extend the hoof of friendship to your humble ruin of a once-proud nation—”
I ceased speaking suddenly, for despite my obvious pride I had realized that she was attempting speech at the same time. As I paused, she quickly ceased her chatter as well, clearly realizing her faux pas.
“Luna,” Sister Dearest tried to say.
I held up a hoof to cease her words. On the other side of the glass, the changeling did so as well. I wondered if their populace had yet realized that they need not mimic every last action of the ponies they were impersonating. “Be calm, sister,” I said. “I have the situation well in hoof.”
Then I frowned. My double had been attempting to speak at the same time. Clearly she did not understand how events such as this were supposed to occur.
“Your sense of timing is deplorable,” I told her with a measure of kindness. Then I grimaced, for her lips had moved in unison with mine yet again. Her expression immediately matched mine; clearly she was just as unamused with the situation as I was. “Stop that!” I commanded, exactly at the moment that she offered me an authoritative, though unheard, shout. “You are becoming a nuisance. I am being exceedingly patient with your shenanigans. Cease your nonsense at once. Stop that. Stop! Do not speak when I was speaking, you chitinous foal!”
She failed to comply with my reasonable request. An inarticulate noise rose in my throat, voicing the frustration that I could not put into words. I leaned toward the glass with hackles raised and wings spread in a gesture of impatience; she responded in kind.
“Mother,” said Blueblood, sounding appalled, “please stop throwing a tantrum. The servants are staring.”
“This is not a tantrum,” I corrected him. “This is righteous indignation at obvious mockery. If the servants do not have the presence of mind to allow such a thing, I will allow them mercy even in their fault.”
When Sister Dearest next spoke, her words were kind and cautious. “Luna. What makes you think this is a portal?”
“What else would it be?” I scoffed.
“If it is, don’t you think you would be able to walk through it?”
She had a point. “Very well,” I said, relenting. “I will make the matter a physical one.”
And so I lifted a hoof and brought it forward. Unfortunately my double was not yet done with her near-perfect impersonation, as my hoof met hers with a clink.
“Celestia,” I said serenely, “I would be pleased to learn of a reason why not to destroy this portal and be done with it.”
“Look at your hooves.”
Having little else to do in this situation, I did so. Nothing changed in their state of matter; they remained as blue and perfect as ever, shod in their regalia as ever even as they suggested an iron grip worthy of tyranny.
Then I noted a discrepancy. The coat on each limb was colored the same shade of night-blue. Just as strange was the fact that, though the perfected alicorn beyond the glass was certainly taller than my adolescent form, the two hooves were precisely the same size.
I considered this. Then my eyes traveled upward (or perhaps downward), and I noted that my moon-emblazoned torc, while still fitting me perfectly, seemed of a more appropriate size to fit a full-grown alicorn. I glanced over my shoulder at the curtain of stars and night sky.
“There appears to be an anomaly,” I said. “I am, in a word, enormous.”
The breath was squeezed out of me as a broad white wing wrapped around my torso. “It’s really happened,” Sister Dearest affirmed, nuzzling me. “And far earlier than I’d expected, too. Congratulations, Luna.”
I could not find words to speak. They had all fled as the realization made itself known that my glory had at last returned to me. There I stood, beautiful and terrible as the dusk, a noble pony of benevolent might who could with a sweep of her horn call forth meteors and moonbeams … at least, such might be the case in the future. Like an unused muscle, my strength would likely take some time to return to its full potential. But as things were now, I was the perfect picture of loveliness, no longer saddled with the curse of lanky adolescence.
I adored myself. So much so, in fact, that I could not resist preening then and there.
“Mother,” Blueblood said, “I must ask you to stop. This is not proper behavior for a princess.”
“A princess may do what she likes,” I managed to reply from behind a mouthful of feathers. “And what I like is to enjoy these massive wings for the first time in a thousand years. You would not understand this feeling, my son.”
Once I had satisfied the part of me that was a pegasus, I cast one longing look at my reflection before returning my attention to an amused Sister Dearest. There was a flash of magic as she sent the mirror back to whence it came.
“At this development, I am as pleased as a pony,” I said. And now, I was also pleased at having coined a new phrase that would surely be echoed by my subjects for eons to come. “I am wondrous to behold, am I not? But I bear a story, sister, which you likely desire to hear. That it comes from a restored body will make it all the better to listen to.”
Saying this, I launched into the story of the changelings. Not the entire story, of course — there was no reason to indicate that much of the incident was due to my desire to overthrow her — but there was enough to give her the gist of the tale. For her part, she did not interrupt even once as I spoke, though part of me wished she would grace the sound of my words with a look of rapt attention. Still, I suppose I cannot fault her entirely for lacking a complete awareness of the nuances of the Dreamscape.
This is not to say she was perfectly serene, of course. Her brow furrowed a little in disgust at the news of Chrysalis’s blatant thievery of love, and even her mouth opened into a dainty circle when she learned of how I had been impersonated over the past several days. More than once I saw her suppress a shiver.
As I finished, I found myself trapped in her embrace again. “You are quite fond of harassing me with your affection,” I noted, and my voice was muffled by fur and feathers.
She did not seem to have heard. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so, so sorry. I should have known something was wrong, but I failed again … failed to notice obvious signs that something was wrong, and that you had been replaced the whole time. I am truly an incompetent sister.”
I felt a wave of indignation at this. She was incompetent, yes, but not as a sister. “There is no need to fret, Celestia. It is in a changeling’s very nature to deceive, for what other function does their shapeshifting serve? Even as Dreams, they bore no faces of their own. I do not blame you for putting your trust in a cunning foe.”
“The queen fooled us all,” Blueblood agreed, flipping a golden lock out of his face. “If she hadn’t slipped into such a casual matter at the critical moment, I would have remained none the wiser, and there is no telling where we might be now.”
Sister Dearest sniffed. “Well, we will keep an eye out for them,” she said. “Though from what you mentioned, Luna, most of them don’t seem to bear Equestria any ill will.”
The two of them discussed border policies and other uninteresting details. On my part, I devoted my attention to breakfast before inviting them to watch Mi Amore Cadenza’s amusing failures on the tennis court. They readily agreed, and the rest of the day was spent in delightful idleness as we enjoyed each other’s company.
To myself, I make a note that my changelings must be watched. They have made themselves scarce today, but it seems unlikely that they are able to return to the Dreamscape after the exodus, so I shall not worry excessively about the situation. Indeed, it may be that the question of how I will pass this Nightmare Night is the more urgent matter. The decision will be important, for is it not good for my public image to show myself to the ponies on the night set aside for a monster wearing my face?