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// 1 Morning Rituals  
// Story: Day Dreaming about Nightfall 
// by technicscratch 
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Day Dreaming about Nightfall


My eyes slowly opened, the subtle scent of morning air grazing my senses. It was early, and the sharp blade of reality was slowly cutting away at the veil of grogginess that clouded the lucidity of the coming day. Birds chirping, the modest townsfolk who awakened before the sun, natures beautiful awakening tones that empower all pony kind to partake in a productive day. I was not one of these ponies, the droning headache of being torn from the most comfortable of dreams was always a drag… Throwing the covers off of my bed I partake in the mundane morning rituals. Eating, grooming, a quick pep talk… “A soldier has to be prepared for the worst possible outcomes.” I repeated to myself in the mirror, adjusting my helmet before closing my eyes and taking in one last breath of the fresh morning air to savour. This was the life I lived, working by day, dreaming by night, about night, about my princess… her highness. I smiled, the thought of the royal mare filling me with determination. Perhaps she would reward me with the beautiful sight of her content smile again. I can only day dream, until the moon shatters the innocence of light, and I am bathed in the purifying radiance of Luna’s orb of night.

I was never one to boast my position, and certainly not my stature. I never sought attention while walking to the castle, I held my head slightly lower than the average pony, made no effort to showcase my slightly muscular build, and saw myself as representing pony kind, not a higher authority. Unfortunately as I pass by nopony sees me as what I truly am… To them I’m antisocial, frightening, or at best ‘mysterious’. I let out the smallest of chuckles as I arrived at the palace gate, I take no shame in admitting that the final point mentioned was something I had a guilty pleasure for. I never asked for people to notice me, to know my story, and in a way I was getting just that. However I am required to change my posture as I approach the castle, lengthening my stride I raised my head to greet the gate guards with the typical “You got stuck with the front shift again…?” gaze. It was a mystery to me, either they enjoyed it, or simply didn’t have the backbone to say something. I wouldn’t blame them if the latter was the reasoning, Shining was a total hard plot at the best of times. Speaking of which… “Sir.” I stood my ground, saluting with my right hoof to commander Shining as he passed, Loli tagging closely behind him. “Didn’t even care to make eye contact…” I sighed, something was undoubtedly already going wrong with the new recruit. I continued down the red carpeted hallway, a fellow co-worker pointing out that a small strand of my blue mane has managed to slip from my helmet. A small tuck, and exactly 47 steps later I was where I would spend a good portion of my day. I looked up the golden archway that made up the giant door to the princess’ throne room, amazed at how well trained our maintenance team had performed as usual. There was never so much as a smudge on the entire structure.

Hour three, Celestia has had meetings with several different ponies, two of which I would describe as ‘clearly never done this before’ ponies. It’s funny how little our population really knows about our princesses. For instance, they don’t expect you to appear at the castle in a finely trimmed suit, or a dress that seemingly tries to overtake her highnesses beauty itself…. If that’s even possible. Although I have heard that some of Rarities custom orders have been mind-blowingly gorgeous. Anyway, no, simply being clean as you enter will suffice, there is no point in dressing yourself up. Another mistake a lot of ponies make is they treat speaking to the princesses like writing an academic paper. They write notes, make speech cards, and its painfully boring for both the scribes and the princesses to listen to. Unless you’re here on military business detailing an attack plan, you can simply speak with our rulers, no need to complicate things. “Dust, let’s go we’re swapping out” Timber approached me, descending the stairs to my right. I looked to him with slightly glazed eyes and he shook his head “Listen I know nobody enjoys door guarding but try and look like you’re proud to be here…” I nodded, surrendering my position next to the throne room door, and begrudgingly heading up the stairs. However as soon as I was out of sight a smile crept onto my face. Timber was right, nopony enjoys door guarding, and the only thing worse was Sanctuary… but I loved Sanctuary, and because the squad thinks I hate it and they thing it’s hilarious to do everything in their power to put me there. I suppose the jokes on them.

Sanctuary was a lot like door guarding, except instead of getting the one pleasure of being able to see other ponies and fellow co-workers as they passed you were completely isolated. My fellow squad has always questioned why Sanctuary is necessary because we never actually see anypony go in or out of the room we’re forced to guard. The reason being that Luna, her highness, never cares to use the door. She prefers a more direct route to the Sanctuary, a more private way through teleportation so that she can keep to herself. Just like my efforts while trotting along to work. I first found out about her highnesses activities one day while helping Loli. She was Shining’s assistant, but more often than not was used as a spare hoof around the castle for everypony. She was a beautiful mare, grey with a brown mane, glasses always resting on her snout, and far too young for her position. Anyway, on this particular day Shining had ordered her to clean up the Sanctuary as there had been an accident inside pertaining to an angry Ex-guard. I had decided to help her once my shift finished as the poor girl always had so much on her plate. The inside of the sanctuary was half library and half open space, and until I realised its use it had confused me. Either way we had finished picking up the scattered books and scrolls when we heard a book drop off of a shelf across the room. Loli had looked at me and I knew she was fighting off the urge to mention something about the paranormal. When we went to look we found our princess of the night, she had simply dropped a book, and reaching down to pick it up for her was what granted me her smile. Albeit a slightly awkward one, I was an earthpony so I physically had to pick the book up and offer it to her when in hindsight she probably could have picked it up with her magic. Anyway it turns out that this is where Luna spends her time to get things out of her system. Typically by reading or studying and performing ancient arcane magic’s, which is what the empty space was used for. I came across this discovery by peeking into the room on occasion while on shift, always stealthily of course and besides, the doors could only be opened by the princesses … and strangely me… so they wouldn’t suspect a thing, right?

The final hour was ticking by at a snail’s pace, but I knew I had just enough time to take one last look at Luna before Dust or whoever else would take my place would come up and tell me to get out of here. I placed my hoof on the door and it slid open without any noise. I saw Luna laying on a cushion with a book next to her, she had fallen asleep. I smiled, taking in how beautiful she looked, there was something about her mane that always trapped my gaze, it was like looking up at the stars on the clearest night of your life. It was absolutely stunning. I put my hoof on the door to gently close it again when I felt a hoof poke my slightly exposed side. I slide the door the rest of the way shut quickly and turned to see the confused brown eyes of Timber “How”. I was stunned, I couldn’t speak, and when I could what would I say? How would I explain that I can open the door. “Answer me Dust!” I cleared my throat

“I put my hoof on the door to rest for a moment, It just opened..” I continued to stare into his eyes, there was nothing else to do, as looking away would surely set him off even worse

“Yeah you just set your hoof on the door to rest? What?” He raised his voice as I shrank slightly “Nopony can open this door… Only the Princesses, and you just rested your hoof on it and it opened?” I nodded stupidly “You do realise that I have to report this to Captain Shining yeah?” I blinked, cringing a little as I thought of my commander’s face “I’m not risking my job by withholding information.” He turned and I finally got my first break, so I looked down. I messed up… bad.