Crowns, Clowns, and the Eternal Sun

by HipsterShiningArmor

III: Eclipse

In today’s Equestria, receiving a Cutie Mark is perhaps the most important day in a young pony’s life. And with good reason, we think of a cutie mark as an often abstract reflection of one’s true calling in life. Once a young pony discovers something that they love, and usually also that they have a natural affinity for, and then proves to themselves and generally others that they can do this particular skill, a Cutie Mark will likely appear shortly after and said pony will forever be connected to whatever their Cutie Mark represents. But the great thing about a pony’s Cutie Mark is that they are often unidentifiable without context, meaning it’s very difficult to determine the character of a pony just by looking at their butt. You have to get to know the individual first, and the meaning of their marking will begin to make sense.

That wasn’t always the case. In pre-Equestrian and early-Equestrian society, Cutie Marks were just bizarre symbols that usually vaguely related to a pony’s name. Other than that, their only real purposes were to look pretty and, in the case of mares or gay stallions, gave one’s partner a clear place to smack to their heart’s content without humiliating them in public. Suffice to say, it didn’t have the same importance as it does now unless you were an extreme nymphomaniac.

Of course, there were theories on what a Cutie Mark actually was. The most famous early theory being the one created by Pegasus philosopher Pandrus, better known both back then and today as Pansy, the timid mare who tagged along with Commander Hurricane in their quest to create Equestria. But in her later years, Pansy theorized that Cutie Marks were representative of a biological hierarchy within Equestrian life. The prettier and more elaborate your Cutie Mark was, the further up in Equestrian society you deserved to be.

Essentially, if your Cutie Mark resembled a great, historic work of art, or something that could be passed as a great, historic work of art to the untrained eye, then you were fit to rule, or at the very least take a position of high authority. Conversely, if your Cutie Mark looked like a triangle drawn by a four year old, then you were probably destined for prostitution or selling insurance. This line of thinking never caught on during Pansy’s life, partly because she had gained a rather nefarious reputation throughout her later years, but became hugely popular about a hundred or so years after her death, particularly among Pegasi, and there are some (not many) that still believe this to be the case even today.

But Equestrian society didn’t begin collectively re-defining what a Cutie Mark was until about 150 years before I was born, give or take. This was when pony society began placing a greater emphasis on discovering the imprint that would eventually take its place on your flank, and we began to inch closer to the modern definition.

Unfortunately, during my early years, we had the definition backwards. Society had correctly determined that your Cutie Mark was correlated to your true calling in life, but they had the order reversed. To clarify, instead of the pony defining the Cutie Mark, at the time, the common belief was that the Cutie Mark defined the pony. Because of the abstract nature of the Cutie Mark, this forced countless ponies into occupations they had no business being in because “it’s what my cutie mark was telling me.”

So, where does my Cutie Mark come from? Well, it didn’t come from any great achievement or even any truly fascinating moment of self-realization but it is rather interesting nonetheless, especially with the benefit of hindsight.

As is generally the case, this particular life-changing event started out on a pretty normal day. Luna was five and I was six, and we were playing outside in what was our attempt to recreate a magic duel. This lasted for, oh, two or three hours, until the sky darkened immensely. I knew it was still afternoon, so I wasn’t sure why this was happening. Now, today I know that this was because a solar eclipse was taking place, but little me was freaking the fuck out.

“The sun is gone!” I shouted, “What happened to the Sun!?”

I continued rambling, wondering why there wasn’t a national emergency taking place. And by wondering, I mean crying hysterically. But what’s strange was that I wasn’t really sure why I was so upset. Okay sure, no sun means the slow and painful death of all life as we know it but that wasn’t what was going through my head at the time.

No, my thought process was more along the lines of the sun disappearing was a horrible disturbance of nature in unto itself, like I felt some kind of kinship to it and it’s disappearance meant that a part of me had disappeared along with it. This great, flaming ball in the sky was always up there, and I don’t think I ever began to truly appreciate it until it briefly vanished. During the moments when I believed it may never come back, that was when I realized not only how important, but also how beautiful and majestic the Sun really is. Then again, this is an adult’s interpretation on something that happened 1200 years ago, so perhaps everything you just read was all a bunch of crazy talk.

Know what else was strange? Throughout my quasi-nervous breakdown that seemed to only be getting worse the longer the shadowed sun remained, Luna, the fidgety young filly who always seemed like she was either ecstatic or pissed off, was in a state of serene-like calm. It was a little bit unnerving. No, it was a little unnerving to a filly. To a detail-oriented eye it probably would have been full-on terrifying.

“Does this not bother you, Luna!?” I asked.

“Am I supposed to be bothered by something?” Luna responded.

“The Sun! One minute it was there, and then all of a sudden it's gone. Are you not seeing that? Am I going crazy here!?”

“I’m seeing it, but I don’t think it’s so bad. Less sun only means more time to look at God’s beautiful night.”

My focus then shifted to worrying about the fate of the sun to angrily staring down Luna. “No it doesn’t, it means that the day will be gone forever.”

“And we don’t need it,” Luna responded, “The night is amazing. It’s too bad more ponies don’t appreciate it.”

Now, what would a mature, rational pony do in this situation? Well, a mature rational pony would have responded by saying that without the Sun, we don’t get enough heat and warmth and we all die as a result. Or, said pony would have agreed with Luna that yes, the night is beautiful, and then thrown in that the day is beautiful as well. Or even better, perhaps they would have realized that Luna, like myself, was experiencing a previously unknown phenomenon and therefore was confused, and likely afraid, and no one thinks coherently when they’re afraid, so they would have tried to diffuse the situation by changing the subject entirely.

However, I’m not a mature, rational pony. I wasn’t then, and I’m still not sure if I am today, so my immature, irrational brain decided to take the course of action that it found the most appropriate: punching Luna in the face.

Luna stared at me, bug-eyed and incredulously, a million thoughts seemingly racing through her mind, “What was that for!?” she screamed.

I had difficulty finding an answer. I didn’t want to hurt Luna, I don’t know why I hurt Luna; I just… did.

“Luna… I… I don’t-”

I never got the chance to make a full response; however, as before my ramblings got off the ground, I was starkly met with a hoof to the nose, and Luna looking like she wanted to tear my head off and mount it on a flagpole. But before she had a time to follow up on her attack, I countered by kicking her in the stomach full force. Luna doubled over, and I thought I had won, but she then promptly jumped on my back and starting flailing her forelegs wildly, hitting everything she could in the process.

I struggled mightily to try and knock her off, but her hind legs were wrapped pretty tight enough around my neck that I couldn’t get her to fall simply by moving fast and cutting, and if I tried to pry her off using my forelegs that would give her free range to attack my face, so the only thing I could think of doing was running towards objects and then crashing into them. And sure enough, running full speed into a redwood did accomplish the desired result. Unfortunately, it also may have given me a concussion.

Ignoring what ailed me, I decided that melee may not be the best approach, so I used magic to levitate the blue unicorn. However, since my magic was rather limited at the time, the best I could do was get her to hover about four feet off the ground for a few seconds before Luna broke free from my spell and pounced at me. I lined up to kick her but only got a piece of her shoulder; not enough for her to jump on my once again, this time managing to tackle me to the ground and start wailing on my face. As soon as she took her forelegs away from me; however, I was able to easily shift my weight on top of her, being both older and bigger than she was, which meant that it was now my turn to repeatedly punch her in the face. And it wasn’t as easy for her to shift back on top of me because, as I constantly liked to remind her in our childhood, she was a “midget.”

So I kept attacking her, and Luna kept attempting to counter whenever possible (I say attempting because I was a much better fighter then her; and I still am,) and this raged on for, oh, a good six or seven minutes. After that time, Luna had a developing black eye and several cuts all over her body. I, of course, was unharmed… well, admittedly I may have broken a rib or two, but I was less hurt than Luna and that’s what matters.

Anyways, just as I had Luna pinned down and unable to move, and I was going in for the metaphorical kill, I paused.

“Lulu, why are we fighting?”

“I don’t know,” Luna said, “Something about the sun… and the moon… and the moon covering the sun.”

Luna and I looked up at the sky, to find that the sun was back, and there was no trace of it ever having been blocked out.

“Well, the sun’s back,” I said.

“So, our fight was completely pointless?” Luna asked.

“Yup,” I said, and we both began rolling on the grass laughing. Although given the fact that we’d just spent the last seven minutes beating the piss out of each other, that didn’t feel too great either.

Also, spoiler alert: that fight wasn’t pointless. Not by a long shot. If it was, then I wouldn’t have put it into this book no matter how detailed my memory of it was, as Luna and I fighting was hardly a rare occurrence and even if it was, it wouldn’t have really been important enough to talk about unless it had some long-term consequences, which is what I’m getting to in a moment.

So we went back inside, our mother spanked us for fighting and then tended to our wounds, and we weren’t allowed to play outside again indefinitely (for the record, ‘indefinitely’ when it came to Sunflare meant “until I forget about your punishment,” which was usually either the day after the incident, or the day after that. In short, don’t feel too badly for us). Jovia, of course, felt the need to chime in about how “we, as future princesses, shouldn’t be fighting outside like a bunch of ruffians, especially over matters so trivial,” and we promptly told her to shove it. Well, we were fillies, so those weren’t the specific words we used but it was definitely still the sentiment. And, to my mother’s credit, she did at least explain to us what an eclipse was, probably in hopes of preventing another situation like this one as much as it was actually about us learning.

But that night is when things started to get weird. I was in my room, fixing my hair or something like that, looking into my mirror. I remember lamenting that I wasn’t prettier. I remember wishing that I was a little smaller (I’d always been big for my age,) that my light pink mane clashed less with my white coat, that my tail was shorter and less of a chore to brush, that the bright yellow sun on my flank wasn’t so large and intrusive, that the…

Wait what!?

I couldn’t recall any bright yellow Sun being there before. I knew it wasn’t there that morning, so where did it come from? How and when did I get it? What does it mean?

But as for what it was, that wasn’t a question. I knew that either somepony was playing an elaborate prank on me, one which they would pay for dearly, or I had just gotten my-

“Cutie Mark!” Luna burst into my room without knocking; something which I’d frequently reminded her not to do, “Look Tia, I just got my Cutie Mark!”

Luna turned around to show me the small, crescent moon that adorned her flank, which was shrouded by a beautiful black background, which flowed smoothly into her light blue coat.

“Isn’t it cute?” Luna asked.

“Well, it is called a cutie mark,” I answered.

“Looks like you’ve got yours too!” Luna said enthusiastically, “But what do you think they mean?”

“Well, I think they represent the Sun and the Moon.”

“You don’t say,” Luna replied sarcastically, and I growled at her.

“What I meant to say is… what do you think they’re telling us to do? And for that matter, where did they come from?”

I pondered my sister’s words for a minute, taking my sweet time to answer much to Luna’s chagrin.

“I think they came from our ‘eclipse fight,’ I answered, “As for what they mean, um, maybe we were meant to be weather ponies?”

“That can’t be right, can it?” Luna asked.

I paused and looked around for a while. We were sisters, so having one of us be the sun and the other be the moon was kind of fitting. And Luna as the moon was about as obvious as you can possibly get. As for myself as the sun, well, Celestia means ‘heavens,’ but going from that to sun wasn’t much of a stretch. But beyond our neat little naming conventions…

“I don’t know,” I answered, “I really don’t know.”

Author's Note:

Okay, so for those of you wondering how you can have an eclipse when both the Sun and the Moon are controlled by sentient beings (as it was established that even before Celestia and Luna the night and the day were cycled by Unicorns,) just think of it was the pony or ponies who were responsible for controlling the moon had a few too many rum and cokes and decided it would be hilarious to raise the moon in the middle of the day and block out the Sun. Midnight March disciplined him accordingly (probably by cutting his balls off).

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