//------------------------------// // 2.5 Years Before // Story: The Fall of Nocturnia // by HypernovaBolts11 //------------------------------// Selena lay awake in bed, though the sun shone outside and the curtains were drawn, for all was not yet right. But what was wrong? What could possibly be wrong? She smiled faintly as the sleeping form of her husband shifted closer to her, and placed a delicate kiss on the tip of his nose. She was reunited with the love of her life, carrying his son, and unable to find justification for her lack of comfort. She rolled onto her side, so her back was turned towards Nocturnus's slow moving chest, and snuggled against his charcoal coat as she corrected the blankets to compensate for the noticeable bulge in her stomach. Perhaps she was still irked by Chrysalis's actions towards Nocturnus, baffled by her decision to rape him. She had raped him. It still didn't sit well with her. Chrysalis had hundreds of potential suitors where she was. Why go through so much trouble for one day of passion? Had she let it slip that he was a ravenous lover, and Chrysalis had taken it upon herself to verify those claims? Well, he wasn't particularly skilled, but he knew her, as he always had. She closed her eyes, and sighed as she was drawn back into memory. Selena had summoned one of her potential jesters after an especially draining night, a colt unknown to the city of Nocturnia, and one of the poorest citizens to ever apply for an imperial job. He was thin, sickly in appearance, with a jet black coat. His eyes were a sort of hazy brown, with four pointed stars for pupils, and his voice had never found him. He was a mute, an orphan, and a child. He was ragged, with a shaggy mane of silver shade, ears much larger than the average pony, and leathery wings, which he clutched to his sides, bearing scars and gashes too many to count. His eyes held pleas that he not be thrown back to the streets, where his peers would find him, only to inflict more wounds, not for any reason other than his lack of ability to retaliate, due to his lack of speech. He was impoverished, scarred, and alone. He stood there, his fiddle held to his heaving chest, through which she was able to count his ribs, and its bow resting alongside it. The instrument was perhaps better presented than him, made of a magical wood, a dark spell having been placed upon the tree from which he had carved it his own. He'd spent his short life crafting, learning, maintaining, and playing the one possession he had. He bowed his head low, having just played for the Matriarch, and waited. He awaited her dismissal, her disdain at his appearance, her dislike of his music, or something worse. He lifted his head when he heard hooves clapping frantically, and found the Matriarch applauding him. She had clapped for a while, then spoke, her voice brimming with delight, and her eyes filling with joy, "'Twas fantastic!" She had cleared her throat, then collected herself, sitting up straight. The colt had stayed still, unable to believe his ears, and nodded. He had swallowed hard, and awaited orders, which she had quickly provided, "Play again, if thou so desires." How little she had known that day. How little he had known. The sickly colt had grown into one of the greatest diplomatic minds in the world, and now, as puffs of his breath tickled the fur in her ear, he was barely the same pony as that impoverished musician. He had gone on to save lives, marry the very pony who had called for his audition, and sire her son. How the world had changed. How the world did change. How the world was changing. How the world still changed. She had, in light of his reelection, found herself considering the possibility that Nocturnus might not live to see their son grow up. It pained her to think about it, but still she forced herself to confront it. Perhaps Nocturnus could have fallen in battle. He hadn't, thank Goddess, but she still found herself staring the idea in the face. The child would be the first of its kind, a mix between a common pony and one of the three demigods. Perhaps it would outlive its father. And even if the child didn't have an extended lifespan, it would likely be by her side when its father passed on. Nonetheless, Nocturnus would, eventually, die, and she would be left a widow, and a single mother. Her eyes snapped open as her distended stomach moved, and she found herself smiling. Something eclipsed the right side of her vision. Nocturnus's soft lips kissed her cheek for a moment, and his soothing brown eyes focused on her green ones. She turned her head to deepen the kiss, and rolled over. They remained still for a few moments, simply gazing into each other's eyes, until another sudden movement caused Nocturnus's eyes to shoot towards the space between them. She smiled at him, and softly said, "Kicking already." She took his hoof in hers, and guided it to the soft fur on her underbelly. "'Tis quite energetic, similarly to its father." He smiled warmly at her, and gently brushed his muzzle against her neck, draping his right wing over her left shoulder, adding more insulation to the heavy blankets that he'd insisted she use. She would have told him to stop pampering her, but the cooling sensation of his ectothermic wings convinced her not to. After all, there were worse ways he could have reacted to the symptoms of her pregnancy, and less fortunate mares who dealt with it. She had the resources with which to manage her symptoms, from extra food to incredible doctors. She had a supportive and understanding community of followers who were willing to forgive a bit of distraction on her part, as many of them had children of their own. She had the most caring and compassionate husband, who would entertain her when she needed it, and drop whatever he was doing at the tap of a hoof. Others were not so lucky. As she contemplated this, her eyelids grew heavy, and she sank into sleep. A lone changeling limped its way through the streets, passed by the rich and powerful on their carriages, and avoided by the homeless and hungry. Its eyes never opened, and the pointed ears that resembled those of the local populace in shape and size were constantly pinned against the sides of its head. Somewhere in the world, she knew, she had a father. She had to find him. Whether or not he would care for her was a different matter for a different time, but she had to at least meet him. He was the only connection she had outside of the hive that despised her, and he was the pony most likely to take pity on her. She staggered under the weight of history, but she didn't know that. History had its eyes on her, in that moment, when her legs gave out, for if she had collapsed a moment or two later or sooner, or had flown in a different direction, or been blown off course by a single gust of wind early enough in her journey, history would have told a very different story. But she didn't know that. She only knew that there was pain, and that she hated it. The carriage that had been mere moments away from running her over, from altering history entirely, from changing the fate of the very city in which it had always been parked, screeched to a halt just in time. It had stopped because one of the passengers had been digging through his bag, leaving his spouse free of conversation, and she had turned to look at the road just in time to stop the distracted driver. The driver had been distracted by a shooting star, which had only been visible because of how carefully and precisely a few pieces of ice and dust in space had collided in a very specific way, so that it had careened toward the planet at just the right angle, and glanced off the atmosphere at just the right time. And if anything had been different, in the way that dust had moved, in the direction the driver had looked, in the force of the wind that had brought the changeling, in the passenger's habit of arranging the contents of his bag in such a specific way, none of the rest of history would have been the same. But it all came to a head around a passerby, who rushed out into the street to pull the fallen changeling out of the road, who could have simply kept walking, who could have avoided sleeping in, and passed this location before any of this had happened, who could have done anything differently. And so the spotlight of history focused around him, and he lifted the unconscious changeling onto his back. And the changeling would find comfort in a hospital bed in the palace, where the most important pony in the whole city would walk past her on the way to a scheduled appointment, that could have happened at any other time. And she knew more about this changeling than even the changeling did. And so, the gaze of history shifted again. Selena stood at the foot of the white bed for a moment, blinking in disbelief as she tried to understand the whole thing. Chrysanthemum remained sitting on the bed, eyes focused on a white plastic cup that contained more water than she had drank in the previous week, attempting to simply down the fluid without her fangs getting in the way. The pair of them met in a myriad of coincidences. The changeling bit down on the edge of the cup, tipping her head back, spilling water onto the clean white bedsheets and her own neck, messily gulping down the most essential liquid to all life, and pulled the cup away from her fangs, which had pierced the thin plastic. She looked up, and scarlet eyes met green. How improbable to us this must now seem.