Twilight awoke to the tune of a pounding head and an aching horn. She was familiar with varying degrees of magical overload and in truth, this wasn’t even in her top five worst cases. Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t make the experience any more pleasurable. With her eyes still tightly closed she groaned and buried her head further into her pillow. The persistent pounding continue, despite her best efforts to bury it. With an annoyed grumble she threw off her blanket and propped herself up.
“Spike, any chance that you’ve already made…” She began, stopping mid-sentence as she realized she was not in her home. “Coffee...?”
Confusion ran through her as she scanned the room, quickly realizing that it was her old Canterlot bedroom. While most of her possessions had long ago made their way to the Ponyville library, just enough remained for the room to still hold that nostalgic feeling. A warm breeze blew in from the open terrace near her bed, and she smiled in spite of her confusion. However the confusion quickly overcame the pleasant feeling of slow breeze. Just as she began to get into piecing together what had happened, she heard a knock on the door.
“Uh... who is it?” She asked, grimacing slightly as she raised her voice.
“It’s Applejack, can I come in darlin’?” A muffled voice outside the door said.
“Applejack? Yeah of course, the doors’ unlocked.” Twilight said, wondering what was going on.
“Thanks!” Applejack replied as she pushed the door open, then closed behind her with a quiet creak. “How you feeling Twi, a good night’s rest helpin’ any?”
“I’m ok, just a bit of overload sickness, I’ve had worse” Twilight said, finally making her way out of her bed to meeting Applejack in the middle of the room. “How did you know I wouldn’t be feeling well?”
“Well, the Princess said tha’ after last night you’de be feeling pretty awful”
“Well she’s not wro- Wait… after last night?” Twilights eyes widen in horror as the previous night’s events came flooding back to her. “oh my gosh, Applejack! Princess Luna! And the thing, it fell from the sky! I tried to catch it and but I couldn’t and and and… I really need to talk to Princess Celestia!”
Twilights eyes took a slightly manic glint as she rushed to the door, the previous night’s stress rushing forward.
“Whoa there sugercube, no need to be rushing off!” Applejack managed to intercept Twilight before she could push the door open. “Princess Celestia an Fluttershy explained everythin’ to me. Well they tried to explain everythin’, I think a lot of it wen’ a bit over ma head.”
“Either way, Princess Celestia said there wasn’t a need for panic” Applejack said as she put a reassuring hoof on Twilight’s shoulder.
“No need for panic?! I watched Luna disappear and-“Twilight started, but Applejack stopped her before she could get any deeper into her tirade.
“I know all that a’ready Twi, the Princess knows it too. C’mon hun, take a deep breath with me.”
Applejack took an exaggerated breath and begrudgingly Twilight did the same. She had to admit, it did help ease the ball of stress that had instantly reformed moments after remembering what happened the night before.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t be panicking? It feels like I should be panicking” Twilight asked as her head dipped lower in sad frustration.
“Ah know sugarcube, but Princess Celestia said not to worry. She sent me to wake you up, and to keep you from workin’ yerself up into a tizzy.” Applejacks explained.
She rubbed Twilights back as the stressed mare took a few more deep breaths. When Twilight had fully calmed down Applejack opened the door she had been blocking and walked into the hall.
“Now the Princess Celestia wants to meet us in her study, we should get go’in. Fluttershy should a’ready be there.” The orange mare said, trotting ahead.
Applejack trotted ahead of Twilight, stopping at the first bend in the hall to wait for her. She waved for Twilight to follow, encouraging her with a big smile. Twilights own mouth curled into a grin, unable to resist her friend’s attitude.
“So what are you doing in Canterlot?” Twilight asked when she finally caught up with her friend.
They made their way through the heart of the castle, with only guard ponies and the occasional Canterlot noble populated the halls.
"I was here delivering a shipment of ma apples to the castle chefs. Finished that this morni’n though, an’ Celestia asked if I wanted to stay, said things were happening and you might need ma help.”
“Wow, Thank you Applejack, that means a lot” Twilight said, sincerity and gratitude clear in her voice. “But I can’t take up so much of your time, you’re a busy mare”
“S’ok Twi, I’ve always got time for you. An’ my friends. Ah always got time for my friends.” Applejack assured her companion hastily. “Besides, if this morning was any sign, the princess was right to be worried ‘bout ya.”
Applejack laughed as she teased her friend, bumping into Twilight lightly. Her infectious grin once again grew, making Twilight giggle.
“I suppose I did need someone to keep me from working myself up into a ‘tizzy’” said Twilight, as the two turned the corner into the private section of the castle.
The nobles had long since stopped lingering in the halls, for this area was the personal living space of the two monarchs. Taking the nobles place were the maids and butlers, cleaning and going about the daily business of the castle staff. The two ponies fell into companionable silence as they made their way through the final halls to Princess Celestia’s private study. The door was ajar and the voices of familiar friends making its way into the hall, along with the smell of…
"Is that coffee!?” Twilight asked, pushing the door open and running into the room.
The suddenly energetic pony was already pouring herself a cup before Applejack could even make it into the room. She brought the steaming mug to her face and breathed in the smell of the roasted coffee beans. With an overjoyed sigh she took a long sip of her favorite morning beverage. As she swayed in her java fueled stupor, an awkward cough caused her to look behind her.
“Oh…hello Princess Celestia, Fluttershy. Sorry about that, didn’t see you there…” Twilight said blushing as she slowly put down the mug of coffee. Fluttershy giggled softly to herself and Princess Celestia smiled knowingly to her student.
“Don’t stop on our account Twilight, I would say that after last night you deserve a cup of coffee.” The princess sat behind her desk, a cup of steeping tea in front of her.
The princess’s usual attire, her crown and necklace laid behind her atop a tasseled pillow. Her hair flowed as usual, and the still rising sun was bright behind her as it shone through the balcony door.
“Thank you Princess” Twilight and Applejack made their way next to Fluttershy, sitting in front of the Princesses desk. “And thank you for sending Applejack to get me this morning. Without her I would be running around in a panic”
“Of course Twilight, I know how my student can get” The Princess looked knowingly at Twilight. “But I’m sensing that’s not all you have to say.”
“Well… Princess Celestia… why aren’t we looking for Luna? We should be sending out search parties and setting up locator spells, anything to help us find her! And that creature, what was it? It didn’t seem violent at first but then it attacked Princess Luna! If we don’t find her soon, who knows what it will do to her!” Twilight looked frantically at her mentor, panic rising steadily as she got deeper into her speech, shocked with how calm Princess Celestia was being. “Aren’t you worried about her at all?”
“Of course I’m worried Twilight, she is my sister after all. It’s an older siblings job to worry about her little sister.” Celestia explained, her calming voice and motherly tone soothing Twilight’s anxiety as she spoke “Do you really think I would be so calm I didn’t know she was ok?”
A flash of emotion crossed Celestia’s face. Had Twilight not known her mentor for most of her life, she wouldn’t have caught it at all. Even then, she couldn’t really decipher what the emotion had been. Twilights ruminations were interrupted when Princess Celestia’s horn began to glow. Her jeweled necklace floated over from its spot beside the crown, landing on the desk.
“This is why I know she is ok my dear student. You see, a long time ago Luna and I decided we needed a way to communicate with each other no matter where we were in Equestria.” She explained, her horn glowed again, popping the purple jewel from her necklace and floating it in front of her. “We had the royal craftsman craft a necklace for each of us. I got this jewel here, while Luna got a platinum carving of her cutie mark, the moon. We put a powerful enchantment on both of them, permanently linking them together. With the smallest amounts of magic, the stones are capable of transferring sound”
Celestia put stone back where it had been and with a click as it snapped back into place. Twilight looked at the necklace in surprise, she had always assumed that the necklaces were just part of the royal garb.
“Well ain’t that a handy thing to have.” Applejack said as she watched the monarch slip the necklace back to its usual place around her neck. “So what has Luna said?”
“Well… nothing at this point” Again a flash of emotion played over Princess Celestia’s face, and once again Twilight couldn’t decipher it.
“Princess Celestia, before she disappeared Luna looked completely drained. Even the spell that made her hair flow and sparkle failed. I think she was completely drained of magic by the creature she had just finished healing. Is it possible she doesn’t have enough magic to use her necklace?” Twilight asked her mentor, still unsure how she could be so calm about this. Princess Celestia looked mildly surprised, before quickly regaining her composure.
“While I admit that news is worrying, it doesn’t mean she is in danger. If the situation ever arose and she couldn’t use the necklace, all she would have to do is break it, and mine would break as well.” Princess Celestia explained, quickly hiding her surprise at this new news. “Twilight, my sister is a grown alicorn and I trust her to handle any situation she could find herself in. While I understand you are worried about your friend, I ask you to trust her, as well as me.”
For a moment, it seemed as if Twilight is going to press further. She looks at Princess Celestia, then to her two friends, one on either side. With a defeated sigh, she nodded her head in agreement.
“Okay, I trust you both. I just wish we knew where she was.”
Andrew’s head was absolutely killing him. Well his whole body was killing him, but the pain in his head was particularly heinous. His muscles where sore, his joints ached and his skin felt like he had the worst sunburn imaginable, but oh his aching head. It felt like someone was systematically hammering railroad spikes through his skull. The only consolation to this miserable awakening was that his pillow was relatively comfortable.
And warm.
And breathing.
“Oh Sweet Jesus!” He shouted when his brain finally connected that whatever he had his head on was very much not a pillow, causing him to jump and scramble away.
As he sat there, breathing heavily from the surprise, he laid eyes on what he had been resting on, and was extremely confused by what he saw. He stared, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide with shock.
“You do know it is rude to stare, don’t you?” The dark blue horse said, without lifting its head or opening its eyes.
“Oh…sorry, my bad.” Andrew responded reflexively, looking around as his mind tried to work out what exactly was going on.
As he slowly recalled what had happened, first falling through the sky, then the landing, his thoughts were interrupted by a peculiar drafty feeling. He looked down, and immediately jumped up in surprise.
“Why the fuck am I naked!?” He shouted, looking around for anything to cover himself up with.
With his hands covering danger zones, Andrew saw something lying on the ground. Picking it up he tried in vain to hold what turned out to be the tattered remains of a bed sheet over his unmentionables.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was naked!?”
“It didn’t occur to me that you would react like this, ponies only wear clothes to special ev-”
“I don’t give a fuck what horses do! Humans wear clothes, period! End of discussion!” Andrew’s mind was being overloaded with confusion and embarrassment, all the while this horse insisted that him being naked was no big deal. He felt moments away from a serious mental breakdown.
“It is ‘Pony’, not this ‘horse’ you speak of.” Luna corrected, failing to understand why the human was making such a big deal.
Despite her confusion she could see just how close Andrew was to becoming manic. She made a snap judgment and quickly cast a repairing spell on the mostly destroyed sheet he was holding. Now holding a full size piece of cloth, he quickly draped it over himself.
“Thank Christ, there is no way I was going to go through this hallucination without something to cover myself up with” Andrews mumbled, before closed his eyes and taking deep long breaths, his heartbeat slowly returning to normal. “So uh… what’s going on? I vaguely remember falling, and I unfortunately remember the landing… but I also remember waking up in a lot of pain… I’m sorry, who and what are you?”
The alicorn giggled, confirming for Andrew that she was a she, the sparkling laughter easing some of Andrews building tension.
“I suppose I could go first. I am Princess Luna, co-ruler of Equestria with my sister Princess Celestia. Together we watch over the little ponies that live there. ” She paused and looked at Andrew expectantly, while Andrew looked at her blank faced. “and you are…?”
“uummm well… I’m uh…I’m Andrew… that’s it, still working on the royalty part”
The human rubbed the back of his head, weirdly embarrassed that he couldn’t give a more impressive title. He shrugged slightly before continuing.
“So uh… you come here often?” he asked, once again looking around in an attempt to figure out where he was. This place looked oddly familiar to him, like he had seen it in a photo or maybe a movie.
“I do actually, quite often” Luna said, another giggle on her lips. “This is my moon.”
“I’m sorry, your what now?” Andrew asked incredulously.
“My moon” Luna punctuated her explanation by pointing her wing up.
Andrew followed her pointing, until he was looking straight up at an orb of blue and green. A planet, which was decidedly not Earth. The sight was too much for Andrews mind.
“You’ve got to be shitting me…” was all Andrew could manage before falling back and fainting.
“So you’re telling me that that six pony girls… stopped the lord of chaos, with the power of friendship?” Andrew asked again, still having a hard time believing what Luna had been telling him for the past several hours.
He had awoken from his ‘nap’ to see Luna standing next to him, poking him in the ribs in an attempt to wake him. He repressed the urge to shout ‘Boo!’ to get her back for what was surely going to be several new bruises.
“Indeed. I can attest to the power of friendship. It is a power unmatched when focused by the elements of harmony.”
Luna had had to explain the elements of harmony, as well magic several times before Andrew had finally said that he believed her story, despite witnessing magic only a short while ago. She suspected he was still highly skeptical. Perhaps he was lying for her benefit.
“And Queen Chrysilis, leader of the shape shifting changlings, was defeated by the power of love? Love she herself had been feeding off of for weeks?”
“That is what we have been saying, yes”
“Well shit, according to you I fell from the sky and landed in a Saturday cartoon” Andrew said enthusiastically.
He was still having a very, very hard time believing any of this. He was managing to keep his cool though, a fact that Luna did not miss.
“All things considered, you seem to be taking all of this in stride”
“Yeah, I am, aren’t I? I think it’s mostly ‘cause I’m pretty sure I ate something moldy and its making me trip balls. I’m probably sitting in the closet, muttering to myself about ponies and the moon.”
“I am quite certain this is real” Luna assured him yet again. “Although I must admit I question how the place you describe could be real as well.”
Luna had listened intently as Andrew described his home and his species. She was shocked by the violence that humans were capable of. Ponies were certainly not guiltless of such violence themselves, but never so consistently.
“Surely you exaggerated your species tendency to resort to violence.”
“I’m afraid not, if anything I downplayed it” Andrew looked saddened by the truth of his description. “Don’t get me wrong though, separately we aren’t that bad. But when we get into big groups, sometimes we can be jerks.”
Luna dropped the subject when she realized how uncomfortable Andrew felt talking about his fellow man.
“I can understand the allure of fear and greed, no creature is perfect.” Luna gave Andrew and reassuring smile.
“Of course not, that would be reeeallly boring!” Andrew exclaimed returning his gaze to the planet hovering above the moon.
“Goddammit I’m so bored!” Andrew exclaimed.
The two had been on the moon for six more hours, waiting for Luna’s magic to recharge. Luna had been sleeping for most of that time, but the adrenaline from learning he was on the moon, along with all the shock from learning what had happened had kept Andrew awake. “How the hell did you do this for a thousand years?!”
“We would like to point out that this is taking longer because of your demand for clothing” Luna pointed out, having also given up on sleep around the time Andrew had started loudly complaining. “And are you always this antsy, or can we add that to the list of symptoms?”
After both of them had gotten tired of talking about their respective homelands, they had tried to figure out what had happened in the hospital. Unfortunately they hadn’t gotten very far, for Luna was abstaining from using magic in an attempt to help it recharge faster, and Andrew knew next to nothing about the matter, apart from a witty reference or two about a "Criss Angel".
“Shut up, you’re just mad because I rock this sheet” Andrew posed, as if modeling the piece of cloth to an invisible camera. “And yes, I’m always this antsy”
Andrew plopped down beside Luna, leaning up against her, looking up at the stars. Luna looked at him as if she was going to reprimand him, something about not being his personal pillow, but decided against it.
“I really shouldn’t be complaining though, a lot of humans would give an arm and a leg to see this view, even more so in the company of a royal alien horse.” He elbowed her gently to let her know he was teasing.
“It is quite a lovely view, isn’t it?”
“Are you kidding me? I mean it’s nice but the view is second fiddle to the fact that I’m on the goddamn moon! Well a moon but semantics hardly matter after a near death experience.”
Andrew shook his hand at the last part, as if he was brushing of a frivolous addendum, rather than the fact that he almost died. He got back onto his feet, a feat that still amazed Luna. She had met a few minotaur in her time, but somehow the human seemed much more fluid. It almost made her jealous. Or perhaps that was nausea.
“Really? Most ponies would see being sent to the moon as a punishment” She said, her voice dropping slightly, despite her best efforts. The lack of love for her moon, as well as her night was still a sore subject for her.
“I mean I wouldn’t want to be stuck up here… No offense” he looked back at her sheepishly, momentarily forgetting her tale of banishment. “But I’m a bit of an astronomy buff so this is like a dream come true.”
“Really? You enjoy our nights?”
“Weeelllll, back where I’m from they don’t really belong anyone, and they certainly aren’t controlled or arranged by magic. But to be honest I’m pretty excited to see what ‘your night’ looks like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen asleep under the summer night sky, it will be interesting to do that under one that changes night to night.”
“We… we will try to live up to your expectations.” Luna looked away as she blushed slightly. She was not used to such an unbiased appreciation for the stars and moon.
“Good” Andrew said simply.
“Regardless of what you night looks like, one thing is for sure” He said after a long pause, wriggling his shoulders. “You make a shitty head rest.”
With a harrumph Luna stood up, and walked away from the human, who was now propped up on his own hands after falling back against the ground.
“-and then he said ‘get the fuck off her, that’s my wife!’” Andrew shouted, hardly able ontain his mirth while he told his joke, and after squeaking it out, he devolved into a roiling pile of guffaws and gasping laughs.
“We do not get it” Luna looked at her giggling companion with skepticism, she hadn’t even realized he was telling a joke until the final line. His laughter slowly died down, and after he had wiped the tears from his eyes, he looked at the princess with mild annoyance.
“Damn, who knew princesses were such a tough crowd.”
Finally, after much waiting, and even more pacing by the human, Luna stood. “Andrew, I am ready to return.”
“Aww just five more minutes?” Andrew whined, doing his best imitation of an annoying brat. He had sat down a few feet away from where Luna had laid, and was half way through building a mini moon castle, complete with empty moat. “I just want to finish the-“
“Andrew, we must return now, stop imitating a foal and get over here.” Luna directed with a scolding tone
Begrudgingly Andrew got up from his creation, mumbling and groaning all the way. When he reached her, he put his hand on her back.
“Alrighty, beam me up Scotty!” With a flash, and a pop, the duo disappeared from the moon.