Hearth's Warming, twelve days previous
Luna walked through the streets of Canterlot, relishing the cold bite in the wind, and the crisp crunch of snow underhoof. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best day, and maybe it hadn’t been the best year, but she couldn’t help but take a small pleasure at the way her breath frosted in the air in front of her. There was just something about the winter that she loved, all the silence and the solitude and the snow
Of course, on Hearth's Warming eve, in Equestria’s capital, there was very little of the first two to be found. The streets were filled with ponies, the windows with light, the air with merry laughter and distant floating song. It was beautiful, but a different sort of beauty than the kind found on a mountain, when the snow fell in sheets and the whole world was hush. Luna supposed it was her more outdated sensibilities.
Already, a small throng of ponies had started to trail her at a distance, tittering amongst themselves at the sight of their much more solitary princess. She just lifted her head in a dignified manner, and continued towards the blazing lights of the Canterlot Operahouse.
While in other towns, the Hearth’s Warming play was just a fun little tradition, the Hearth’s Warming Pageant in Canterlot was spectacular yearly production. The actors were some of the best in Equestria, the sets were beautiful, the music wonderfully written and beautifully sung. Other cities tried to keep their own pageants up to par, but the only true one could be found in Canterlot, attended by the princesses themselves.
Normally, Celestia would have accompanied her, biting her tongue and forcing a smile for what had to be her least favorite holiday, but the past two years, ever since Twilight had gone, she had declined. Even though it meant that Luna had to go alone (Iit would be scandalous if neither princess showed up), she didn't blame Celestia for her decision. It had been hard enough on her dear sister before.
She climbed the steps to her box seat, flanked by guards, as the orchestra warmed up in front of the stage. The hall was packed, like usual, but Luna got to watch in comfort. The likes of her private room, with it’s padded, cushion laden couch, and every thinkable amenity, were not available to even the most well funded of the Canterlot elite. She was gracious, of course, but none of it could quite suppress the fact that she would rather not be there. Luna just wished that the whole Hearth’s Warming story had faded into obscurity, like most everything else from the time before Discord. Just like Celestia had intended it to. Instead, Hearth’s Warming had clung stubbornly to the memory of ponies, changing, yes, but remaining just true enough that Luna had been forced to see her sister biting back tears every time they put on the stupid, flamboyant production, painful memories shining behind her eyes.
Luna waited, the babble of the ponies below her fading to a soft drone as she lost herself in thought. Then, silence. The curtain raised.
She had heard the whole opening spiel of the play so many times that she could have recited it by memory, had she wanted. Time before harmony, three tribes, strife, snowstorms, and so forth. Yes. She knew. She had lived it.
Then came the meeting of the leaders of the tribes, the arguing, the barbed comments and insinuations. There would be an entire musical number about it, Luna knew, all focusing on the pettiness and stupidity of the leaders. It took all her self control not to curl her lip in a disgusted sneer. She had known these ponies. Not as well as Celestia had, not even close, but she had known them well enough to see that they had been good, and noble, and kind. Of course time, time and the fickle memory of the public had twisted them, turned them into warped, laughable shadows of what they had been in real life. Luna bit her lip in frustration, watching it.
Her gaze settled on the pony playing Princess Platinum, who was currently speaking in a high, whining falsetto. No, no. Wrong. Platinum Polish was not that pony.
Platinum had been a strong, charismatic pony, who had cared for everypony, a bit too much, probably. She had brought out the best in ponies, buffed even the most unlikely of individuals to a brilliant shine. When Platinum Polish spoke, ponies listened. She may not have been the best strategist, or tactician, but she had made up for it ten fold with the sheer dedication she had put into her work. She had treated everyone as an equal, from her lady in waiting Clover sShine, to the lowliest unicorn peasant. Luna had been too young to have really known her, but she could still remember seeing Platinum in the castle, and the enormous respect she had felt for her then.
She sighed and shook her head, as actress portraying Hurricane Flash took center stage and began to sing, cuing the beginning of the first musical number in the program “Different and Strange”. Even though she knew how much it hurt her sister to force herself through the Hearth’s Warming Play each year, Luna half-wished that Celestia were there with her, if only so they could suffer together.
Hurricane Flash stormed about the stage, singing, stomping, and puffing her wings out aggressively as others began to join in in chorus. The actress had clearly spent time mastering the angry, hot headed, unsympathetic demeanor always seen in the character, year after year. All wrong, wrong, wrong.
Hurricane had been bold, yes, she had never backed down from a fight, yes. Hurricane had been taught from a filly’s age that might meant right. All true. But Hurricane was also the bravest pony you would ever meet. She would have fought a dragon with her bare hooves if it meant protecting her friends. She would have died rather than let anything harm her fellow ponies. Hurricane hadn’t worked her way to Commander’s rank by luck, or accident. She was a leader, and she inspired the respect, and even love, from the ponies she commanded. Luna had only met her once, but she had known from that very first meeting that Hurricane was the kind of pony that other ponies strove to be like.
As the pegasi finished their chorus, the earth ponies, and the pony playing Chancellor Puddinghead, began their portion of the song. Chancellor Puddinghead pranced about the stage, tripping over herself, and making slapstick jokes, and singing a whole verse about chocolate before one of the other earth ponies tapped her on the shoulder and reminded her that they were talking about the snowstorm. Luna grimaced. They were definitely playing up the “village idiot” shtick this year.
Pudding Pie, though she had often been called puddinghead, had been a sweet, good hearted pony, who wanted nothing more than to keep the people of her village happy. Even though her special talent had been baking. If Luna was to be honest, Pudding really never should have been in politics. But when her father (who had possessed a talent more conducive to leadership) was killed by a manticore, it had fallen on her withers, as his eldest daughter, to take up his mantle...And she tried. She tried so hard.
Nopony put more of their heart and soul into leading than Pudding Pie did because, despite her inexperience, and lack of skill, she couldn’t stand to see the ponies in her community suffer. So “Puddinghead”, the chancellor/baker tried her best. Again, and again, and again. When Luna had first met her, she had almost been able to see the goodness in her, shining out like a light.
Did Hurricane and Platinum and Puddinghead fight? Of course. They were three different ponies, who were scared out of their minds, scared for their people, and carried several hundred years of tribal tension ever-present on their backs. When the three met to discuss the storm, they fought like dogs. They fought for what they believed was a noble course of action in a dark, frightening time. They didn’t fight like they did onstage, just shouting angrily because they were petty, or cruel, or stupid.
The musical number ended, the audience applauded, and Luna grit her teeth. As she watched, the lights went down, and there was a quiet shuffling as the stage hoofs worked to change the set pieces. Then the spotlight blazed on again, now setting the scene in the pegasus city, where Commander Hurricane was screaming something at the terrified Private Pansy. On stage, the two were total opposites.
In life though, the two had been like family. Pansy Bloom’s mother had been an earth pony, an incredibly rarity in those days, and it had marked her as a subject of ridicule and derision from the moment her father had brought her to the clouds. Everything from her earth pony name, to her weak flying skills, to her reserved nature, had just set her further apart from the other pegasi. All except Hurricane Flash. None of the other pegasai could fathom why the commander kept a private who couldn’t fight, with the special talent of hospitality of all things, as her second of command in the military, but Commander Hurricane wasn’t the type to abandon a friend.
None of the six founders of Equestria had been.
The lights went down, and the scene changed to the unicorn capital, spotlight shining on the actress playing the part Clover the Clever. As the apprentice to Starswirl the Bearded, she was fittingly introduced through a song about magic.
Starswirl himself was a footnote, really, in the Hearth’s Warming play. His name was dropped a cursory two times throughout the course of the play, and then he was never mentioned again. Luna supposed it was because they didn’t have much to go on. Starswirl’s research and spells had survived the millennia, but his personal life had faded into obscurity. She suspected the only reason he was mentioned at all was as a shout out to his small following of magic geeks. It was a shame, really...or maybe not. He had not exactly been an...easy...pony, in life.
There was no denying his brilliance of course. Starswirl had been a genius, plain and simple, and anypony who claimed otherwise was dead wrong. He was the founding father of modern magic, and had a hoof in over half of spells today. Every single pony who ever broke a bone had Starswirl to thank for the healing charm that mended it. Over the millennia, the only unicorn that had even come close to his power was Twilight Sparkle.
That being said, most of the magic buffs who worshipped Starswirl’s name would have been sorely disappointed by their idol in the flesh. He probably wouldn’t have even bothered coming out of his lab to greet them. Luna remembered how, for many years, he had coldly rebuffed the affection of even one of his only friends, Clover the Clever.
Luna, though, Luna had known Starswirl well, and not just the cold, uncaring side he displayed to most of the world. He had been a good pony, really. Though not many other than Clover Shine might have agreed with her on the fact. Not many ponies, even at the time, knew the reason he had been shut in his lab all the time, the reason he threw himself so wholeheartedly into magic. Only a very select few knew that the spells he had created were just happy accidents, the unintentional by-products from his never ending research into his true goal: saving his little sister’s life.
Moonglow, eight years his younger, had been born with a rare disorder, one still untreatable even over one thousand years later, which caused her immune system to attack her own natural magic. Instead of the normal magic surges that occurred in unicorn foals, she had seizures as her body fought the energy that was trying to be channeled through her horn. At the age of five, Moonglow had been fitted with an inhibitor ring to prevent the attacks, but that didn’t solve the bigger problem. Her body had also been busy eating away at her own life force, the latent supply of magic all ponies are born with, that connects them to the universe, and keeps them alive.
Eventually, left unchecked, it would kill her. But Starswirl wasn’t the kind of pony who took no for an answer.
Luna closed her eyes, a small shiver running down her spine. No, Starswirl had been a pony of contradictions, capable of both boundless love, and uncaring cruelty, filled with equal amounts of kindness and spite. He was a pony who had spent his whole life balanced on a razor’s edge between light and darkness, who had been both exalted by his greatness and trapped by it. It was probably for the best that most of him had been lost from history, because while Luna had loved him, she knew that others would not. She wasn’t sure if she could have stood seeing him twisted like Platinum, or Hurricane, or Pudding pPie.
Sighing, Luna gathered herself and looked back to the stage, now in the earth pony village. At least, she thought, they had gotten Smart Cookie about right. She had been just about the same. Practical, level-headed, the perfect down to earth mind to balance out Pudding Pie’s flighty idealism. Those two had been made for each other, really. A perfectly paired set of friends.
Luna smiled, just slightly, her eyes softening. They had done Clover the Clever pretty decently too. Out of all of Equestria’s founders, Luna had known Clover Shine the best, and she was just as smart, and resourceful, and kind a pony as they had portrayed. Probably just a little bit better actually...tThey had met when they were just fillies, both of them, and even though Clover was older, they had been fast friends since that very first moment. Clover had been different. She didn’t act all gruff and stern like Starswirl, or loud and mean like the other foals in the castle, she had been the only one who had treated Luna like a pony, and not the strange anomaly everypony else had seemed to think she was. It had felt, Luna remembered, as if her life had suddenly opened up. All thanks to Clover.
Luna bit her lip, blinking. She didn’t know why she was getting so worked up, she had seen this awful pageant nearly four hundred times and she’d probably see it thousands more until the Equestria crumbled or the story was finally worn fully away from ponies’ memories. Whichever came first. Maybe it was just the timing of the thing. The second year anniversary of Twilight’s disappearance was only a month or so away, and Celestia hadn’t been taking it well. Just last week marked one of her and Luna’s uglier fights in recent memory, and while things had stabilized, Luna could see Celestia slowly fraying. She wished that she could just erase the whole, ugly situation. Rip it from everypony’s memory like all the other ugly things they had ripped from history. Luna couldn't even tell what was right anymore. Nothing was right. Nopony was right. Right had simply ceased to make sense to Luna ever since the time before Discord, where everything had gone wrong and just gotten worse by the century. All she knew is that when Twilight had been around, Celestia had been the happiest that Luna had seen her since they were both young, and now Twilight was gone and her sister was falling apart at the seams. Luna just wanted everything to be right again. She just wanted to go back to before Twilight, before Nightmare moon, before Discord, before the Celestia-damned Elements of Harmony, to when things had been okay.
Luna sobbed softly, wings shaking slightly. She closed her eyes and pressed her hooves to her damp cheeks, ears flat against her head, whimpering slightly. Then she remembered herself. Swiftly wiping her eyes, Luna horn and turned to her guard, his concerned expression instantly turning blank the forgetfulness hit him. She mumbled a soft apology as his eyes crossed and then refocused.
“Did you say something, Princess?”
“...No...N-nothing. Thank you.”
Wiping her eyes with a hoof, Luna returned her focus to the play. It was just about wrapped up, thank Celestia. All the ponies were coming out on stage to sing the final song of the play, the Heart Carol. There was no denying that it was certainly a cheerful note to end the pageant with. Nopony really knew what happened to the founders after that. There was nothing in the history books, no mention of them anywhere other than their single adventure defeating the windigoes. Many ponies doubted that they had ever existed at all, except as a cautionary tale about compromise and acceptance. Again, Luna thought it was probably for the best. She felt that, if ponies knew what happened in those years after Hearth’s Warming eve, they might not think of Clover as a hero. They certainly wouldn’t portray her as kindly in her Christmas pageant.
Luna wouldn’t have blamed their judgement, but at the same time, she disagreed. Clover had been a good pony. She had been a hero.
Clover hadn't known, when she and her friends discovered the magical source of that fire they had conjured, the giant crystalline tree buried deep inside the cave, that it would tear apart their lives. She hadn't known, when she devised a spell to harness that ancient magic to defend their young Equestria from monsters, that her ‘Elements of Harmony’ would suck the very life from her as she used them. She hadn't known, when she asked their friends to help her with a spell she thought could save her life, that she would be cutting her ties to mortality, and sentencing them to early deaths. She hadn't known, when she married Starswirl, that it would fall apart as soon as they discovered that her spell wouldn’t work on his sister, that he would turn to much a much darker power to save Moonglow’s life...that he would succeed.
Maybe she should have known, she should have guessed, she should have been more careful, but Luna couldn’t hate her for it. She just couldn’t.
Because, from the moment they met in Platinum's castle, the young apprentice and the sick, outcast filly, to the moment Clover married her brother, to the moment they met again, both carrying wings and heavy hearts, they had been more than sisters by friendship, or sisters by marriage, or sisters by fate. Moonglow and Clover might as well have been sisters by blood.