“Noble Heart, are you listening?” his governess demanded.
He nodded and once again forced himself to look at the math she had on the chalkboard.
“Now as I was saying, the transitive property of equality states…”
It had been a month since his father placed the zipped-lips spell on him. It had also been three weeks and three days since his parents had found a private tutor to teach him after they pulled him from Queen Celestia’s School of Gifted Unicorns. And it had been three weeks and two days since he had been confined to the interior of Castle Platinum.
Noble Heart fantasized about going outside to feel the frosty grass under his frogs. He yearned for the biting late autumn winds caressing his mane and tail. He pined for the feel the sun on his back. But most of all, he ached walk and talk freely.
The colt exhaled and stared blankly at the chalkboard. Who knew when he would experience outside again?
“Do you understand all the properties, Noble Heart?”
‘Yes. I’ve only read the entire textbook front to back.’
He nodded obediently.
“Very good,” the governess said without any hint of sincerity. “I want you to complete these practice problems. If your answers are satisfactory, I will test you on the material after supper. Am I clear?”
He nodded again. What else could he do?
Noble Heart did his school work and completed the quiz before supper, and surprise, surprise, he passed with flying colors.
“Since you’ve done so well, I suppose it’s time to move onto the next subject.”
The colt would have bashed his head against his desk if he still had the ability to feel disappointed anymore.
“Today, we will cover astronomy. Now as you learned in history, unicorns were once masters of the sun, moon, and stars before Discord broke our connection to the heavens over 1,500 years ago…”
Noble Heart straightened and genuinely focused. Night Light taught astronomy, and didn’t he mention something about the moon?
“… and even though she defeated the god of chaos and undid most of his enchantments, the one thing that Queen Celestia was unable to fix was our connection to the heavens. Nevertheless, most unicorns to this day study astronomy as a part of our heritage. We will begin the phases of the moon.”
That’s right! Night Light mentioned the Mare in the Moon. But what did he say about her?
The colt kept his ears pinned to his governess and tried to jog his memory about the conversation he had with the Sparkles a month ago.
The Mare in the Moon, the Mare in the Moon, Discord! The Mare in the Moon and Discord were connected, but how?
“Now take a look at this chart detailing the phases of the moon. You can distinguish the waxing cycles from the waning cycles by the way the Mare in the Moon is shown. If she is slowly being revealed night by night, then the moon is in its waxing cycle. If she is slowly disappearing, then the moon is in its waning cycle.”
That’s right! Night Light said the Mare in the Moon didn’t appear in any of the scrolls from the Discordian era! No, the pre-Discordian era.
For half a second, Noble Heart thought about asking his governess to show him some old moon charts, but he quickly let go of the idea. She was hired not only to teach him, but to spy on him. There was no way that he was going to alert his family to his sudden interest in pre-Discordian astronomy. He didn’t want them to ruin any connection he had with the Sparkles, however distant.
He went through the motions of the class and supped with his tutor like he always did. But the moment her shift was over, Noble Heart trotted to the library.
If he had been anypony else, he would have been at wits end trying to locate what few pre-Discordian scrolls remained in Equestria. But Noble Heart was a Platinum, and Clover the Clever, most loyal and honored servant of House Platinum, had so generously protected their knowledge from the chaos god’s reign.
Noble Heart started pulling out books and scrolls before him, both ancient and recent.
The more he looked, the more he realized that Night Light’s observation had been correct: the Mare in the Moon simply did not exist until five hundred years after Queen Celestia had ascended to the throne.
The colt pulled away from the dusty tomes and rubbed his temples to quell his mental fatigue. Just where exactly did the Mare in the Moon come from? Just who was she?
Noble Heart tiredly searched through the library, looking for a book on old Equestrian myths.
‘Equestria: Myths and Legends’ seemed like a promising start.
‘The Mare in the Moon: see Nightmare Moon.’
Noble Heart narrowed his eyes. Now that he was getting his memory jogged, he did remember hearing Twilight mentioning that the Mare in the Moon and Nightmare Moon were connected.
He flicked ahead to Nightmare Moon’s entry.
‘Nightmare Moon: Ancient goddess of nightmares and darkness. Defeated by Queen Celestia with the Elements of Harmony and sealed in the moon. King Sombra’s mother.’
Who was King Sombra?
Noble Heart went back to the K’s of the book. When he didn’t find King Sombra, he went to the S’s.
‘Sombra, King: God of shadows and fear. see Crystal Empire.’
He turned the pages until he found the entry on the Crystal Empire.
‘Crystal Empire: Long lost city state of Smart Cookie and Commander Poesy (see page 963). Disappeared after being cursed by King Sombra.’
Noble Heart pulled away from the anthology and started pacing about, trying to get rid of some of his pent up energy.
Noble Heart was no stranger to Nightmare Moon, as he had seen plenty of mares dressing up as her to frighten young foals on Nightmare Night. Still, neither he nor anypony else he knew ever seriously researched her. She was just a character used during the holidays, right?
The colt went back to the encyclopedia and read Nightmare Moon’s entry again.
Ancient goddess of nightmares and darkness.
Hey, wait… Wasn’t the Summer Sun Celebration a testament to Celestia’s victory over darkness?
Noble Heart sighed. Night Light sure did stumble upon one doozy of a mystery.
He went back to skimming through titles in the library.
When he had a decent of research materials laid out before him, he started looking through them again.
Most of the other entries were of a similar fare as ‘Equestria: Myths and Legends’ and he dropped his head on a tome, mentally exhausted.
Yawning, Noble Heart put most of the books back where he found them, save for a couple he meant to read later.
Carelessly throwing his texts and scrolls into his panniers, he made his way to the kitchens.
When he got there, the chefs were preparing for the next day.
The head chef cantered up to him and dipped her head. “Ah, my young lord, how may we serve you? Are you hungry? What should we prepare for you?”
Noble Heart shook his head and walked to a less traversed corner of the kitchen and sat down on a stool.
“Are you trying to do some homework? Would you like help?” she pressed, following him to his seat.
He shook his head again and pulled out a book.
“Let me at least get you a table.” The head chef left before he could refuse her.
On many occasions, Noble Heart would slip into the kitchens at night, if only to be in a brightly lit place in the presence of other ponies. He never really communicated with them, but they all seemed to understand that he liked to observe them work and talk from the corners.
From time to time, they would forget he was even there and speak and joke around freely, but usually they behaved themselves in front of him. Noble Heart had considered ‘telling’ the head chef that they could act as freely as they normally did when he wasn’t around, but common sense eventually got the better of him. Ordering somepony to speak freely was an oxymoron.
The head chef plopped a small rickety table in front of him and even lit the torch above his head so that he could read better.
He nodded his thanks and opened up a book about old folktales.
Slowly, his servants were dismissed by the head chef until it was only her remaining. Eventually, even she finished with her work.
“I'm going to leave a few torches lit for you, alright?”
He nodded and watched her leave.
When he could no longer hear the clip clop of her hooves, he felt loneliness descend upon him. How he wished he could speak.
Noble Heart looked down at his text and yawned.
‘Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…’
He was so tired. Maybe it would be best to curl up in the front of the ovens and sleep. The chefs were pretty good about gently waking him up when they needed to bake bread in the morning.
Noble Heart dragged himself and his things in front of the oven. In the flickering light of the torches, he laid down to read one more story.
‘Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together…’
The colt laid his head down in his book. Never mind. Sleeping was a bett—
He suddenly jolted up.
Since when were there two sisters ruling Equestria?
He continued reading.
‘…there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land.
To do this, the eldest used her alicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn. The younger brought out the moon to begin the night. Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their queendom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies.
But as time went on, the younger sister became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night.
One fateful day, the younger alicorn refused to lower the moon and make way for the dawn. The elder sister tried to reason with her, but the bitterness in the young one’s heart transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon! She vowed she would shroud the land in eternal night.
Reluctantly, the elder sister harnessed the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony! Using the magic of the Elements of Harmony, she defeated her younger sister and banished her permanently in the moon.
The elder sister took on responsibility for both sun and moon and harmony has been maintained in Equestria for generations since.’
He flipped back to the beginning of the book to find the date when it was first written.
853 A.D.
Noble Heart set everything down on the floor and flipped through the other anthologies to see if they had the same story. Try as he might, he could not find any mention of Nightmare Moon being Queen Celestia’s sister, but the books he was skimming through were much younger, having been written centuries after the old one.
He referred to his moon charts.
The old scrolls seemed to verify the ‘Story of the Heavenly Sisters’, showing the Mare in the Moon after the 800’s, but not before the 500’s.
He went to open a copy of— ‘Predictions and Prophesies’?! When did he pick this up?
Noble Heart sighed in frustration. He must have accidentally grabbed it instead of an encyclopedia. There was no way he was going down to the library; it was too dark and scary to see anything properly. He slumped down and rested his head against the offending tome.
He’d have to look at it tomorrow.