//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: The Moon Kingdom Chronicles // by Rehlia //------------------------------// Keeping the flower alive proved harder than Luna thought. She had entertained thoughts about an entire field of flowers, overgrowing the moon with verdant life as a signal she was here, something to be seen across the distance between the moon and home. Instead, the flower had started to droop after moments. There was no air, no warmth, no nutritious soil and only the faint glow of the moon surface for light. The moon was simply not made for life. Luna planned to change this. The moon was hers after all, she raised it and lowered it, moved it across the heavens each and every night - or at least she did, before her banishment. Raising and lowering now probably fell to her sister. It was bitter, that the result of her jealousy was her sister being the sole focus of everyone’s attention. Luna had declared herself the only Princess of Equestria, but now it was her sister who filled that role, controlling both sun and moon as her duty. Exactly the opposite of what Luna had wanted. Still, the moon was originally hers, and thus it fell to her to change it if she felt like it. Since she could not affect anything outside it’s atmosphere, she had decided to change the moon. She had rested in preparation, barely allowed the air bubble to persist so she wouldn’t spend more magic than she absolutely had to while drawing on the energy the conjured oxygen provided her. Inside the bubble, she curled up and focused all of her power inside herself, waited until the first pinpricks of light appeared in her mane again. Luna was still weak, and stretching an atmosphere across the entire moon would take a lot of time. Then again she was banished - time she had in abundance. She lay in her bubble and sparked her magic, pushing the boundaries of the magical barrier further away. Then she rested once more. Over and over she continued like this, until she lay under a high arching dome the edges of which she was barely able to see. Stretching it and by extension her magic in all directions at once was no longer feasible. The bubble, once created, would remain stable unless she dispelled it or it suffered great damage - as long as there was an anchor for it. In her mind, she split her magic into two, one tendril focused on maintaining the bubble, the other reaching into the ground in front of her hooves. The moon rock began to bubble and boil, then stretched upwards until it had formed a thin, elegant column topped with a graceful sickle moon. Runes etched themselves into its sides, glowing with the magic she infused into them. Then she combined the two strands of magic again, tethering the atmospheric bubble to the newly created runic pillar. When she pulled away her connection to it, she was covered in sweat and breathing heavily, but the bubble remained stable. Doing this had taken out more of her than she thought. A two-way split was normally beyond easy for her. Even a six-way split she could manage without too much effort under regular circumstances. Her magic had to be split twentyfold before she began to notice the strain. It bothered her, that she was so weak. She was used to feeling powerful, to wielding her strength freely and with barely any hindrance. The many rests she needed now made her antsy. Still, it was better to do this while rested. She forced her muscles to relax as she waited and felt her magic return, although she did not have the patience to wait until it was fully recovered. That would have taken far too long. Slowly she wandered to the edge of the bubble and pushed more magic into it, growing it larger into one direction. Like this she began her long and solitary march, broken up only when she raised another pillar or when she needed to lie down and recover once more. Like the first time she had wandered, it was difficult for her to tell how much time was passing. The endless night offered no clear hints. She could have tried guessing it by watching the planet above her, but she dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came. It would be nothing but a bitter reminder of her situation. The slow trot was monotonous and allowed her mind to wander. She thought about the fight with her sister and felt ashamed, but she didn't feel shame for the things that had led up to it. It had been unfair, tremendously so. They had been meant to rule together, but nobody had really cared about Luna and her night, about her court or the laws she proposed. All attention had gone to Celestia, all the love, the devotion, the loyalty, and that had been the worst really. Luna had poured so much of her own loyalty into her kingdom and her subjects as the wielder of the corresponding element - was it any wonder that she snapped when she got nothing in return? It wasn't, not if you asked her. Of course Nightmare Moon had been going too far, even Luna could admit that. But the events leading up to Nightmare Moon - no, nobody would be able to say she hadn't been in the right. Hopefully, she would be able to prove this. There was some calculation in her decision to cover the moon in plants. As a signal, it was not the most effective way to do things. She could have just carved a giant “I am here” into the moon's surface and be done with it. But for one, she didn't want to deface her beloved moon so terribly, which led to two, it would have been unlike her. And after Nightmare Moon, she needed to make it abundantly clear that her signal was from Luna and nopony else. It needed to be so unmistakably hers that there would be no doubt in her sister's mind so she would come and free her. And then they could talk and work out a fair solution to the problem of their co-rulership. So it had to be something unique and reminiscent of her. She needed to enhance the moon, not ruin it. Giving it an atmosphere, water, plants, the means of supporting life and beauty in within her night was exactly the right thing, as tedious and time-consuming as it was. Luna did glance up once a while as she worked, after she had already walked for a long, long time. She had lost all concept of time anyway, and as long as she didn’t start counting now it didn’t matter much. Sometimes she would be lucky, and look up just as the planet's rotation showed her Equestria. The continent looked beautiful, but so unbelievably small and far away. She wondered what Celestia was doing, if Equestria continued to be peaceful, if her subjects were safe and happy. Once her heart began to ache with homesickness she looked down again with newfound determination to complete her task. At other times when she looked up, she would find herself on the dark side of the moon and see nothing but inky black, dotted with silver stars and the occasional comet. A different kind of beauty than her homeland, but it made her heart ache nonetheless. How could they have ignored this? The grandness of the cosmos at night? It was incomprehensible. Thanks to her many breaks, her mane completed its transformation back into its ethereal form. What had began as soft pinpricks of light and a shimmer of movement after her initial exhaustion strengthened each time she rested, even with all the magic she used to create the atmospheric bubble and its anchors. Soon there was once more a living piece of the night sky weaving gently in her peripheral vision, engulfing her in the beauty of the night she loved so much. A spring returned to her step and her hornwork became quicker, more confident and less laboured. She felt her power thrumming underneath her skin and enjoyed the feeling of pushing large quantities outwards without feeling tired. Pillar after pillar grew in her wake while she moved in a slow but steady spiral pattern. Finally, she began to see an end. The gap in her atmospheric bubble, between the dark expanse of space and her own blue magic was clearly visible for those last moments she needed to finish her work - then the edges melded together and the bubble was finally complete. The sky now appeared tinted in a blue hue, barely perceptible against the black of the night sky. It was a disturbance to the pure beauty of the night, but a necessary tradeoff. A quick scan on the nearest of her anchoring pillars allowed her to check the entire network. There was not a single hole in her bubble. The moon had an atmosphere, magically created air and warmth that would replace itself at a steady rate. All created and maintained solely by her magic. It was an impressive feat by itself and Luna considered it a great shame that nopony was around to witness it. The groundwork was done. Now began the fun part. Luna spread her wings and took off, quickly seeking out one of the deep craters that littered the moon surface. She rubbed her hooves together in anticipation. It would strain her magic to its limit even now that she was once more at the peak of her magical strength, but the result would be oh so impressive. The atmosphere had only been the beginning. The tip of her horn began to glow a soft blue, then grew brighter, finally reaching a blinding, silvery white that surrounded her horn entirely as Luna focussed her magic. When she had gathered so much magic there that her horn began to smoke with the generated heat, she held the image of her desired result in her mind, released the energy forwards and pulled. Within the artificial atmosphere upheld by runed pillars and magic, a deafening roar reverberated over the moon surface. Luna felt the vibrations of this sound deep within her being, shaking her down to the core, and couldn’t help but laugh at the sensation. It reminded her of a drumming performance she had seen thousands of years ago when ponykind had still been in its earliest stages and it gave her a deep, primal sense of joy. The roars grew louder and louder and she began to see its cause: water. It still appeared as nothing but puddles in the distance, but it was swelling. In time, it would fill the craters and cover most of the moon surface, a new ocean to give water so that things might grow. How much water should she create? She felt the magic pour out of her in torrents, barely held back the rush before it threatened to take more than she could reproduce. It was straining her, but it didn’t deplete her. As long as she kept this steady flow, she had time to think how much she wanted to make. A small ocean, with more land? An even distribution? Or did she want to emulate her home and make the ocean bigger than the land? Yes. The latter was a safe model that had already proven that it worked, and besides, it was a big, visible change that would serve nicely as the first signal to her sister that she was here, alive and awake and capable of thought and magic. She flapped her wings harder and rose until she reached the edge of her atmospheric bubble, almost touching the seal that kept her on the moon. From this new vantage point she had a better idea of how much water there was on the surface. It crept over the dusty moon rock inch by inch, connected across distance to form streams, rivers, lakes and seas. She idly occupied herself with naming them as she watched them form; the Sea of Serenity, the Sea of Clouds, the Sea of Vapours. One very deep part continued frothing and swirling as it filled with water, this one she called the Ocean of Storms. It was a game, almost, to pass the time until she had reached her goal, a long, long time after. Most of the moon surface was now covered with water. Of the remaining land masses, the largest formed an irregular, downturned crescent shape dotted with circular lakes. A moon on the moon, wasn’t that something? Some smaller continents stretched from the tips of this crescent and another sat right in the middle of the largest ocean. Numerous smaller islands dotted the coasts of this ocean. It was pretty. Entirely different from the coastlines of her home. Luna glanced up to compare them; she could not currently see Equestria, but even when comparing her creation to the other continents of her home planet the difference was immediately visible. The thought of what all the sentient creatures would think, looking up at the moon only to see it so changed, made her smile. Let them wonder. The more they looked at what she did here, the more likely it was that she would be rescued. Until then, there was more to do. She stilled her wings, lowered herself and started to trace the coastlines, then turned inland to follow the rivers that had formed. Some rushed in mostly straight lines from their springs to the sea, others slowly meandered their way downwards. There were waterfalls emptying themselves over cliffs into dangerously fast streams and into calm and pristine lakes. The rims of former craters now formed riverbanks and lakeshores. Other craters had been high enough to remain undisturbed by the water, their white and grey cliffsides rising like mountains into the sky. Her horn sparked again as she flew in lazy circles, leaving a trail of budding blue grass in her wake, filling the ocean with algae, all modified to thrive under the dim light conditions. She stopped on her way in regular intervals to add more; a sprinkle of moon flowers here, a bush of Brumansia there, Wisteria floribunda and Polianthes tuberosa, Night-blooming Jasmine and Angel’s Trumpet, all the wonderful plants that flowered only under moon and stars. No reason to leave it at that, though. A wave of her horn produced bushels of green stalks winding upwards in a spiral pattern topped with curled black filaments. In a spark of inspiration she gave it access to a trick normally found more commonly at the bottom of the seas: bioluminescence. The plant glowed a faint green, basking the surrounding plants in the softest of lights. It looked lovely. Luna wanted more of it, so more of it she made. She grew towering blue mushrooms whose undersides glowed a warm, rich yellow, as if they were hiding rounds of cheese under their caps. Orchids the size of trees whose pink light fell like spotlights on the ground beneath them. Small flower cups shining in the softest blue, fragile lavender blooms dotted with glowing golden freckles, thick velvet red blossoms shot through with iridescent white veins. Like an artist she covered her moon in soft, pleasing colours and shapes with the gentlest of brushstrokes. It was pure beauty, imagination come to life by nothing but her magic and she flew in loop after loop as she hollered her joyous laughter at how wonderful it was. Finally, after all these years, there was nothing restraining her, no Celestia to tell her no, to tell her not to go overboard with her imaginings, nopony at all to suggest that she couldn’t just bend nature to her will if she felt like it. An entire world created to exist under moonlight, and it was as beautiful as she’d always dreamed it would be, and thanks to her magic it worked. She had known it would. As soon as Celestia came to her rescue, her sister would finally have to admit that Luna had been right all along. All of them would see the wonders she had created. They would fall in love with the night. They would respect and love her. In her giddiness about her creation and her daydreams, she almost forgot to add measures to allow the new plants to survive. True, there was an atmosphere now, and the artificial warmth it produced would allow for rudimentary weather patterns, evaporating ocean water to form clouds and rain - a crude, wild weather without the efficiency and precision of Pegasus control, but it would work. What she had forgotten about was reproduction. Many species relied on something other than wind to pollinate and propagate. It was an easy enough fix. From her horn erupted a flurry of colourful, rapidly fluttering wings. Moths of all sizes and shapes and colours spread and began travelling to their preferred species of flower. She didn’t want only moths though, so she added some hummingbirds for good measure. And because she was already at it, she recreated some other nocturnal species as well, owls and bats, mice and hedgehogs and sugar gliders, bunnies and cats and badgers, chinchillas and crickets and fireflies, frogs and toads and scorpions, foxes and skunks and spectacled bears. She filled the new oceans with fish and dolphins and even the odd whale. And all the while she kept making the slightest tweaks, more bioluminescence and better adaptations for a life in perpetual night. Luna only stopped a long while later, after having created entire ecosystems out of things she had known from home and those she had invented herself to fill some of the gaps. She stood on a lush meadow, the sweet, heavy smell of flowers in the air, watching some of her hummingbirds feed from their blossoms. It allowed her a feeling of peace she hadn’t known for years. Maybe even centuries. She looked up to her home planet once more, elated to see Equestria this time. The moon had changed so drastically - her sister would not be able to ignore this. It was Luna's masterpiece and it would set her free. All she had to do now was wait until she would be released. It wouldn’t take long. For the last time, Luna sparked her horn. From underneath the grass, a white column of rock emerged, bent over and formed itself into a bench with a comfortably rounded seat and gently curled backrest. She lowered herself onto its surface and rested, watching the stars blinking around her home planet while she waited.