The sunlight streamed in through the window, barely catching on the flimsy curtain that waved in the breeze. The light fell upon Moondancer’s eyes and for a moment she didn’t quite realise what was happening, the brightness overwhelming her and leaving her incapable of movement. And then, suddenly, she realised what was happening, and scrunched her eyes up as tight as she could, rolling onto her side to keep the light at bay.
Moondancer did not like mornings. Sure, she might rise early on most days, but that was out of necessity: Moondancer needed to reach the library at opening time, or she’d miss out on valuable minutes of access to research materials. It certainly didn’t mean that she liked rising with the sun, and Moondancer would probably be the first among the ponies of Canterlot to complain about the noise of the morning commuters, were she not forcing herself to be one of them.
But this morning Moondancer was not in Canterlot, nor was she a forty minute commute from the library, and for once in her life that meant she didn’t need to be awake.
Sighing, Moondancer threw the duvet off the bed, letting it fall to the floor with all the softness of a piece of paper that had been dropped from a desk, lightly crumpling as it landed. She rolled herself onto her hooves, letting her weight pull her over the edge of the bed and onto all fours as she picked up the duvet in her magic and threw it haphazardly across the bed.
It was then that Moondancer remembered that she was a guest in somepony else’s house, and that she really ought to make the bed with a little more respect for that position. She tried to tuck the duvet neatly around the mattress and, after a few moments of struggling, let it fall back in its organic, unaligned place. She was no good at this.
She let her hooves pull her out of the room, being dragged through the door like a dog on a leash, and quietly made her way downstairs (for she had no clue what time Lyra and Bon Bon rose, but if the noise they had been making the night before was any indication then it would certainly not be for a few hours) in search of coffee.
Finding the kitchen, of course, was the first step. It didn’t help that Moondancer had literally seen only two rooms of the house: she had no idea where any of the doors in the hallway lead, and one of them looked almost like it was out of use, surrounded with various bits of paraphernalia—she was pretty sure she had seen two sets of wellington boots, lined up neatly along the base of the doorway, with an umbrella propped up against the frame. There wasn’t actually a door in the archway—not in the traditional sense of the a bit of wood on hinges, with a handle—but rather a few strings hanging down from the top of the archway, large, wooden beads hung on them. On the other side, darkness: Moondancer decided that perhaps the other doors were a better first guess.
She knew where the living room was, and although she wasn’t entirely sure where the second door out of it lead to she was pretty certain that it wasn’t a kitchen, if the cushion that Lyra had pulled out the day before had been any suggestion. She pushed lightly at the other door, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that maybe she shouldn’t be here, and that maybe this was a bad idea, and tried to look through the gap.
The room on the other side was dark and seemed to be much larger than the living room,. The walls were lined with cupboards, though, and stacks upon stacks of boxes covered the floor; it was so crowded inside that the large space looked small and cramped. Moondancer shut the door, quickly. She had no idea what was in that room, but for once in her life she had no desire to find out.
Well, at least not until she had gotten some coffee. Coffee would probably make things better.
Retracing her steps, Moondancer wandered into the living room, carefully making sure that she didn’t make too much noise. She felt as if every step was booming, as if every breath was a hurricane. Every few seconds, she would find herself stopping still in the middle of the floor, and she would stand as quietly as she could, breath held in anticipation, as she listened for movement elsewhere in the house. And, inevitably, there wasn’t any.
Slowly but surely, Moondancer made her way through the door into what seemed to be a dining room. And there, with no door to separate them, was the kitchen—the other side of the long, glass table, sitting just below wide, open windows, there stood a freezer, an oven and a sink… but most importantly of all, cupboards, hung on the walls, filled with the possibility of coffee.
It took all of Moondancer’s strength not to gallop across the room. Instead, she walked calmly across and reached out with her magic. She could systematically check each cupboard for coffee, and while that would probably be the sensible thing to do it was certainly not the fastest. And right not, Moondancer needed coffee as fast as she could get it: she grabbed ahold of all of the cupboard doors at once, and pulled towards her.
At once, the room was alive with noise, and Moondancer winced at the sound of four cupboards creaking open all at once. Why did ponies never keep their hinges oiled? It wasn’t as if she could talk—she hadn’t done anything that remotely resembled housekeeping since she had moved into her little, broken home—but it annoyed her nonetheless.
A brief glance around showed her that the coffee was in the cupboard on the far left—which was, incidentally, the cupboard she would have opened last had she systematically checked them all. Smiling to herself, and knowing that despite all the noise her plan had worked out for the best, Moondancer trotted towards the coffee and pulled it down to the worktop with her magic, already feeling just that little bit more awake.
The next part of her plan was probably the hardest to manage whilst remaining quiet: boiling a kettle. But the noise was hardly Moondancer’s biggest concern anymore—after the doors had slammed open, she had finally allowed herself to relax after every breath, and to not see it all as a potential noise that would wake up Lyra and Bon Bon. Even the boiling of a kettle, and the shrill, whistling sound that Lyra’s old model made, would be just another noise to her, now.
But sweet mother of Celestia, was that whistling annoying.
Mugs. Where did they keep the mugs in this house? She glanced around frantically, looking over every inch of every cupboard. But all she could see was empty shelves, and the occasional packet of dried food packets, or spices and herbs. This kitchen was surprisingly bare, even by her standards.
Now that she thought about it, crockery seemed to be completely absent. There was no hint of a plate or bowl anywhere, that she could see, let alone something as simple as a mug. She tried pulling at the lower cupboards, searching beneath the workstation only to find plumbing and cleaning supplies, and pulling out the drawers to be greeted by cutlery and other tools (a particularly rusty pair of scissors caught her attention in one drawer. They were almost large enough to be shears, the kind of thing one might expect to find in a haberdashers’, but the layer of deep, orange rust that grew almost organically across the blade fascinated her. She ran her aura over the surface, just once, feeling each little bump and crease in the surface, and revelling in the texture of it all, before remembering the boiling water that was in desperate need of a mug).
It took her the longest time to realise that there was a strange little set of hooks, made of a light, smooth wood, set into the wall above the sink. From each of the hooks hung a mug, their weight strangely distributed so that they hung at an angle Moondancer would never quite have expected. It looked too steep to be deliberate, yet too shallow to really be due to gravity.
This was a question for another time. The question of the hour was, of course, how soon could she make herself a coffee—and the answer was: “immediately”.
---
“Good morning, Moondancer.”
The words were stretched out, almost a yawn in and of themselves, and if they weren’t immediately followed by one Moondancer might have thought that they were. She smiled at the cream-coloured mare who was dragging herself into the kitchen.
“Good morning, Bon Bon,” she said, politely. “It’s good to properly meet you.”
“Pah,” Bon Bon spat. “‘Properly.’ Lemme get some coffee first, then we’ll meet ‘properly’.”
Moondancer tried and failed to hide the smirk at Bon Bon’s sentiment, although she was well aware that only a few hours before she would have been much the same. Thankfully, the other mare was sleepily navigating her way around the chairs to the kitchen, and didn’t see her expression change. She doubted Bon Bon would mind even if she had seen, as she seemed as if she weren’t even awake enough to notice.
Lyra was only a few minutes behind her marefriend, stepping into the kitchen with the kind of boundless morning energy that made Moondancer thoroughly upset and only the tiniest bit jealous. How could anypony be so excited this early? And, what was far more important, why couldn’t she?
“Morning Moondancer,” Lyra called cheerily, smiling as she almost bounced over to Bon Bon and wrapped her forelegs around the grumpy mare’s neck. Planting a quick kiss on her cheek, Lyra whispered something quickly in her ear—Moondancer watched, trying once more to raise her eyebrows, as even in her tired, unresponsive state Bon Bon managed a small smile.
“Any plans for the day, Moondancer?”
Moondancer stopped and considered this for a moment. She knew what she wanted to do that day, which was the same thing she did every weekday: visit the library and research something new. But she wasn’t in Canterlot anymore, and while the Golden Oaks library of Ponyville was world-renowned for its unique architecture, it certainly wasn’t particularly well-known for organisation. Or, for that matter, having a particularly wide stock.
But was that the question Lyra was really asking? Did Lyra want her to go the library that day, or was this question nothing more than a gauge to see if she would be up for some activity her old friend had planned? Moondancer wasn’t certain.
“I don’t know,” she said, slowly, feeling out her answer as she gave it. Worst came to worst, she could always pretend that she suddenly decided to make a detour to the library. Lyra knew how much she loved libraries. “Did you have anything in mind?”
“Nah,” Lyra said, dismissively. “I just figured you’d be off to the library. I’ve never known you to last more than a day in a new town without stopping by to see one, even on school trips.”
Moondancer raised her eyebrows in surprise, before pulling her emotions back into control. Of course Lyra would be able to guess that much—they had known each other since they were little fillies, and even though she might never have been particularly close to her friends at school she had always been close enough for them to know and recognise her hobbies. There should be absolutely zero surprise in Lyra’s ability to read her like this.
“Heh,” she said, weakly. “You got me.”
Lyra grinned and shot her a brief wink. “Of course I did. Do you know the way, or do you want me to show you? Once this silly filly has gotten her caffeine dose, that is?” Lyra gestured sideways with a slight nod of her head at Bon Bon, who made a small noise that sounded almost like “i heard that, you know” but came out more as a grunt.
Moondancer nodded. “That would be wonderful,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see Golden Oaks for myself. Is it particularly small?”
“Small?” Lyra scoffed. “That place is no Canterlot Library, but it’s pretty big for a small town like Ponyville. Heck, it’s got a bedroom in there somewhere—apparently, it’s been a tradition since the library opened for the librarian to live in the building, and to keep it open whenever they could. Trust me, that place is not ‘small’.”
Moondancer’s eyes widened, not in surprise but in excitement. It had been too many years since she had gotten to visit a new library that could truly keep her interest, and although the incident in the Crystal Empire had made her wary of becoming too excited for any new libraries, Moondancer was always hopeful that one day something would come along that would at least match Canterlot Library on either scale or grandeur.
Even though she could hardly contain her excitement, Moondancer waited patiently for Bon Bon to finish her coffee and to allow the effect of the caffeine to settle in. She watched as Lyra and Bon Bon exchanged quick jokes at each other's expense, each trying to make their guest feel at home whilst at the same time having a bit of fun with each other. In some ways, Moondancer felt, it looked like the kind of thing that would be a lot of fun: spending time with somepony and getting to know them so well that you can afford to make quick jokes and jibes at them, and know that they know you don’t mean it.
But another part of Moondancer was feeling as if she was slipping back into old habits. And she didn’t mean starting to think of other ponies as friends—she was certainly not at that stage yet with either Lyra or Bon Bon, for although the two mares had been nothing but kind to her since she arrived she knew that they were little more than guest and hosts at this stage. She had barely known Bon Bon a few hours, after all, and Lyra herself had lived so far away for so long that Moondancer had almost forgotten what she was like. While she might not have changed, Lyra certainly had moved on in her life.
What worried Moondancer was her tendency to observe. She was comfortable sitting here, watching the couple exchange their silly little jokes, and in some ways it made her happy to be there on the sidelines. But she didn’t have any desire to join in: and not just because she felt that it would be too soon, or not her place. Even when she was talking with Lyra the day before, she would have much rather just listened to the other mare talk than say anything herself, because inevitably the moment she said anything she would undoubtedly mess it all up.
It was an old habit, one she had formed in relatively early childhood. She’d never had much of a chance to take center stage, or to even share in conversation as equals with anypony her own age—she always had her muzzle in a book, or was too busy thinking about what she might want to read next. But perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing. Perhaps she could simply enjoy being there with ponies (after all, she certainly enjoyed it often enough when small groups of ponies were whispering amongst themselves in the library, for she could always just sit and listen to their conversation and lose herself trying to figure out who was who in their little gossip. There was one group in particular, came in every Thursday at around 2pm, and chatted about a few mares whom she’d gathered were in the year above them in university—it took Moondancer about a month to realise this was the very same group who came in every Tuesday morning and gossiped about the stallions in the year below!)
After what seemed like an age, despite her patience, Moondancer finally stood to follow Lyra out of the door. Even though they’d waited for Bon Bon to finish her coffee, the other mare had decided that she would rather stay in and read the newspaper. It took Moondancer a second to quell her anger—did Bon Bon not realise that they had been waiting for her so that they could leave? But then she realised that maybe Lyra just wanted to wait so that she could have a few more minutes with her marefriend in the morning, and she had to admit that that probably wasn’t so bad—even if it did delay her trip to a brand new library.
She’d forgotten how bright the sun was. As she stepped out into the cobbled streets of Ponyville, Moondancer found herself turning her head down to the street and half-squinting to keep the bright light out of her eyes. How could it be this bright? It was only a few degrees above freezing, and the very middle of Winter—the sun certainly had no business being this bright when the streets around were covered in snow.
In fact, the snow was probably making matters worse. Moondancer found herself staring intently at her own shadow, as sunlight glanced off the snow that surrounded her, each crystal shining almost as brightly as the sun itself, like a tiny little star in the bright white sky. At least in here shadow, the stars weren’t going to blind her, but it did rather mean she couldn’t see where she was going—and sometimes, when they took a turn in a particularly awkward direction, Moondancer couldn’t even look at Lyra’s shadow, and had to try to find some snow-less surface to look at instead.
The trek to the library, though nowhere near as much of a hassle as her daily commute in Canterlot (despite the snow making the journey twice as arduous as it needed to be), was longer than she had anticipated, and by the time they reached the edge of the town square and Lyra was stopping to give her further directions, Moondancer was ashamed to find herself shivering with the cold.
“I have to head off to Sugarcube Corner,” Lyra was saying, though Moondancer could barely hear her above the chattering of her own teeth. The noise was loud and painful, coming as it did from inside her head, and every now and then her teeth wouldn’t quite align and she would feel the sickening scrape of enamel on enamel. “Bon Bon needs me to pick up some stuff. You’re okay finding your own way from here? It’s just down that road… Moondancer?”
Her breath was hanging before her like a cloud. Moondancer had never really appreciated that imagery before: breath in cold air usually dissipated, and blew away on a breeze. It didn’t tend to form anything that looked much like a cloud at all, but rather like her own, private little piece of fog. But here, her breath really was forming a cloud—the little pieces of moisture sticking together and clumping up in the air, making a single whole that didn’t blow apart but rather drifted slowly away from her muzzle. For a moment, Moondancer simply watched it as it flew away.
Then, before she knew what was happening, there was a pressure on her shoulders and something was tickling the underside of her chin. It was scratchy and itchy, and just pushing at the one place that made her feel like it was inside her throat, clawing at the underside of her skin. But of course, it wasn’t, and when Moondancer looked down she saw that Lyra had wrapped a scarf around her neck. It was strange, but she couldn’t quite feel it all the way around. Maybe it was loose?
“You need to warm up,” Lyra said, all hints of lightness and friendliness in her voice gone, and for a moment Moondancer worried that maybe she’d done something wrong before she came to the conclusion that Lyra was simply being serious. It was strange, but in all the years she’d known the mare, Lyra had never once taken anything particularly seriously. Maybe that was Bon Bon’s influence? It was too early to tell. Moondancer resolved to find out, one way or another, before she moved back to Canterlot.
Not quite hearing Lyra’s directions, she nodded anyway, sure that the way couldn’t be too hard and certain that she could figure it out from the simple hoof gestures that Lyra had made in the air. It was just down this path, then take a left and a right in quick succession, and then one final right, that much she knew—just exactly which lefts and rights she couldn’t quite tell. Still, she knew roughly where she was going, and she was sure that if she just kept walking for long enough…
A-ha! There, just above the thatch roofs, Moondancer could just make out the green leaves of the library poking out from beneath a blanket of snow. Lyra’s directions promptly forgotten, Moondancer willed her legs to work for just a few more minutes, and pushed herself into a light jog in the hopes that she could get a little bit of blood circulating.
But the back streets of Ponyville were twisting and wild, and with every house looking just the same—thatch roof, wooden beams, white walls that blended into the snow and were just as blinding—Moondance soon found that heading straight for the tree was not, ironically, the most direct approach. If anything, it seemed to lead her more and more astray, taking her into alleyways and dead ends thet didn’t quite make any sense to her. But then, with all the snow on the ground, she couldn’t easily make out where most of the roads were.
She was lost. Somehow, even though she could see her destination through the gaps in the houses around her, Moondancer had no idea how she could possibly get there. She had tried every angle—it felt like she had circled the library at least twice now, though she knew that couldn’t be right. She remembered, clearly, how the library was always on the very edge of the town, in every photograph she’d seen, just sitting up snugly on the path from the Everfree.
Soon enough, Moondancer stopped looking for the library: she no longer cared where she found herself, so long as she came across somewhere she recognised. The streets were starting to feel like some sort of twisted house of mirrors: no matter which way she looked, everything looked almost the same, and it was becoming difficult to tell which paths were streets and which were actually somepony’s garden, hidden beneath the snow.
Then came the wind.
It was light at first, a mere breeze that nipped at her nose and toyed with the tassels of her scarf as if a child playing with a dangling mobile that was just within their reach. But soon enough it grew, and the nips became bites, and the bites became nothing more or less than a raging, howling wind that filled her ears and smothered her skin. And the air was full of snow, and whether it was falling from the sky or being picked up by the sheer force of the gale Moondancer could never tell, but it filled her eyes and trapped itself between strands of her mane, slipping down to her roots and chilling her scalp.
And somehow, despite the storm and the snow and the cold, Moondancer stumbled face first into a dark, rough bark. For a moment she wondered if she had perhaps made her way to the Everfree, and found herself rooted to the spot. But then, right above her head, she saw a window, and the bright, warm light the glowed from it told her exactly where she had found herself.