1. Messy Houses and Thwarted Revolutions
Moon Dancer waved goodbye to her friends -- Friends, she thought happily. I really have friends now. What a strange and wonderful thing! -- and closed the door. Some of what had been solid oak, now infested with dry rot, sifted down onto her untidy mane.
I suppose I should get that door replaced, she thought. There was a big hole in it where Twilight Sparkle had accidentally shoved her hoof right through a panel. This was not so much due to Twilight Sparkle's Alicorn strength -- though she was bigger and stronger now than she'd been at seventeen -- as it was due to the door's own dilapidation.
Moon Dancer regarded her front room with an unusually-critical eye. It seemed dingier and dirtier and altogether messier than before. She remembered her fillyhood, when things had been neater. Of course, back then the whole family had frequently visited this house, when they weren't at the main townhouse or the country estate. They'd paid servants to clean -- Moon Dancer hadn't seen the point of doing this in a long while, even if it wouldn't have eaten into her budget to buy rare books. Since the family had given her this home, she'd managed the place itself, with regard only to her own priorities.
Maybe she should spruce it up a bit now? After all, now she had friends; she might want to have get-togethers, and the house was in no fit state for a party, even an informal one. She could buy new bookshelves, rearrange her collection, maybe move some of it into the basement ...
... but that would interfere with her special projects. She tried to feel the importance of those special projects, but somehow it did not matter as much as it once had. They were fascinating, but not as much fun as playing with her friends. When she was with them she didn't want to talk about how corrupt and decadent and unjust was society -- they wouldn't understand her, especially not the hyper-optimistic Minuette. Twinkleshine was just plain happy and innocent, as she'd always been, though maybe it had been more excusable when they were all fillies. And Lemon Hearts, of course, was part of the system, working so closely with the Palace.
They were fun, though. They reminded her of the few happy times of her fillyhood. When she was with them, she didn't want to think about the Meaning of History and the Dialectic and the need for a genuine Revolution ... it all somehow seemed unreal and unimportant, though of course it was the most real and important thing around. And now, when she thought about the glorious day when the Masses rose in fire and blood to sweep away the Old Order, she wondered if Minuette and Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine -- surely as clear examples of the Old Order as she could imagine -- would be okay. Unworthy thought! Yet she could not avoid thinking it.
And Twilight Sparkle -- Moon Dancer sighed when she thought of her. Twilight was so brilliant, so charismatic, so intelligent, so powerful. Yet there was no sign that she had ever really considered the Meaning of History. She was very obviously a total supporter of the status quo: of Celestia's false utopia. Not only was she rich and high-born, but she was Celestia's former personal student. And from everything Moon Dancer had ever heard, incredibly loyal to her former teacher, unlike -- but Moon Dancer didn't want to make the comparison.
She sensed that Twilight was a kindred spirit. She'd sensed that before, and seemingly been wrong, but maybe it was just that Twilight had been very busy the last five years. She knew that Twilight had pursued advanced magical studies, saved the whole Realm more than once, and from forces that would be even worse for Ponykind than a continuation of the current corrupt regime. Twilight had come back; she'd gone out of her way to be friends with her. She'd hugged her -- surely the warmth Moon Dancer had felt had been no lie? Maybe she should have reached out to Twilight before, instead of waiting for her to reach out to herself.
2. Her Fillyhood
It was difficult for Moon Dancer. She'd never been at all close with anypony other than her sister, and not even all that close with her. Father had always been too interested in his friends -- and now, she knew, his mistress -- to pay much attention to his daughters, though she had vague memories of a time when he'd been more affectionate, when he'd gotten on better with Mother as well. Those times were now a sun-drenched, indistinct memory, in the back of her mind to help keep her from the darkest possible thoughts when she felt especially depressed.
So had Mother, really. Again, she'd been more interested in Moon Dancer when she was little, but when she failed to blossom -- failed to make friends -- Mother had lost interest, become more involved with her friends. And, she suspected, with a lover of her own. Why not? All the proper Unicorn gentry did this, at their country parties with only their dearest friends, and careful arrangements of the guest bedrooms, and room keys quietly-tendered on silver platters ... and then they held themselves up to ordinary Ponies as models of propriety!
Moon Dancer had been just the right age to see her parents' marriage come apart, and it had scarred her. She'd gone through an adolescent phase of being angry at them for that, and they in response had given her this house and access to the interest from a trust fund, and simply avoided her. She'd become inconvenient to them, and they had simply tossed her aside with some money to keep her happy. It had, of course, kept her well -- happiness, alas, had eluded her.
She was no longer all that angry at her parents in particular -- she'd was no longer quite so naive as she had been six years ago, and she had grown a lot since then. She'd read Warrior Marks and Peacelord Angels. She had come to realize that both her parents had been corrupted by a decadent society, by the demands it placed on them in order to continue to support the class structure. They were still married, technically, though they slept in separate rooms and were never more than cordial to one another at public events. Divorce would have been a public scandal.
Perhaps in the world to come, when the New Ponies emerged, Ponies like them would have stayed together, continued to care for their daughters. Or never come together at all. In either case, Moon Dancer wouldn't have suffered the loss of their love; in either case, the sum total of joy in the world would have been greater.
She'd help make a better world for those who came after her. One in which Ponies like her wouldn't have to feel so much pain. She'd push on forward toward a brighter future ...
No matter if she had to march fetlocks-deep in blood through a pile of corpses.
3. An Anticipation of Joy
But it no longer seemed so important, now. She had friends. Surely in time she could convert them? Or, failing that, at least learn from them, learn how ordinary Ponies thought and felt? She'd never quite understood how they worked -- how they could be so incurious about their world save for the tiny little bit of it that took place under their muzzles, how they could fail to care about the distant past and the possible future? Why didn't they care about distant places? Or the social injustices that took place even in their own cities? They just didn't understand her, either.
Maybe Twilight would? She loved books, just as did Moon Dancer herself. Twilight was interested in the past, fascinated by the future. She liked to travel. She was so smart -- one of the few mares Moon Dancer had ever met who was anywhere near her own equal. Surely, if Moon Dancer set it all forth for her, showed her the books, works like On Investment-Heading and What Can Ponies Do?, Twilight would agree with the only obvious conclusions? She'd be so useful to the Cause!
But no. She shouldn't push too far, too fast. Twilight was a Princess now; she'd be even more of a traditionalist than she'd been when they were fillies. If Moon Dancer tried to convince her of everything, all at once, Twilight might reject her. She couldn't take that, not a second time. Having known real Friendship, to be cast out into the void once again would be unberarable.
She needed to move more slowly. Twilight had promised to teach her the Haycartes Method, and that would involve seeing her, and maybe when she saw Twilight they could do something fun together. Like explore a book, with the Method. Or go shopping for rare books together. Or organize Moon Dancer's book collection. Or something else ... some of the things that other Ponies did together that didn't involve books. Something sociable but fun, like taking in a play or a movie or just eating out together and talking. Twilight was a lot of fun to talk to, more so than anyone Moon Dancer had ever known.
When she thought about seeing Twilight again, she couldn't muster up that much enthusiasm for revolution. She was ashamed to admit it to herself, but when she had such thoughts she found it hard to even get angry over social injustices. She just wanted to enjoy Twilight's company. Was that so wrong?
Well yes, she reminded herself. Of course it is. I have a role to play in History. The more so because of my privileged birth. I cannot just give that up for friendship.
Herself remained unconvinced. But this is what I've wanted for so long. Surely I deserve some happiness?
Her answer was wrong by the standards of the Dialectic, by her own role as a vanguard intellectual (surely a Moon of the Canterlot Moons could be nothing less in The Revolution). But it was the answer of her heart.
She thought about seeing Twilight again. Talking to Twilight again. Hugging Twilight again. She wriggled with joy at the memory of that warm hug they had shared. Nopony had held her like that since she'd been small. She wanted to be held like that again.
She wondered if this meant ... but no. She'd never been attracted to mares. Nor to stallions, really, not in real life, as opposed to within the pages of some of the steamier novels she read. That was a part of her that existed only in fantasy, it being rather obvious that nopony was ever likely to love her. A base urge, and a rather embarrassing one, to be dealt with by herself in her room with the curtains drawn. This was a side of her she felt she could never express to anypony else.
She had no idea what it really felt like. She'd never even been kissed by anypony, neither male nor female, not that way. (Save for that one time -- but that was quite the opposite of romantic). She could have found somepony for that, to kiss and more than kiss, but she knew that her partner wouldn't have loved her Strange as she was, egalitarian as she felt she must be, she was still a Moon, the daughter of a proud and ancient Family, and she would not buy a counterfeit of love, even were the mercenary nature of the exchange disguised.
She'd had the opportunity. It had come after the world had become strange.