"Legacy"

by Novel Idea

"Legacy" Day 7

Day 7
Eulogy.

Luna paced the stadium that her Sister had constructed in the town square at her request. She had made a promise to Silk… silent or otherwise. The sun had yet to rise on this moonless night… the seventh.

“One full week…”

She thought looking up to the lonely stars, they cried to her pleading for their moon to return. Luna felt a pang of inherent guilt. The Stars had aided in her escape from imprisonment, but now she was for the first night of her own will disallowing them their moon. Her brilliant aqua eyes turned to view the statue frozen Silk… the dim star light made the marble encasing him glow slightly… casting her body in an eerie light.

The dawn would be upon her soon enough. The Princess knew this all to well. Luna looked to the statue again and moved forward her hoofs touching the wooden platform lightly… she didn’t want to break the silence of this night.

Looking down at the envelope that she had yet to open… His Will… His Testament… What He had left for her… The Princess fought off the tears, the pain. She had been alone for a long time, another time of loneliness was something she could handle. At least this time the future prospects were more in her favour. The wait would be long and painful… but it was her wait, and his choice.

The morning would come soon… and it would be time to open that letter. Read Silk’s writing to the people… read his words… Luna looked at that piece of paper for a hard moment. It was the enemy, another tie to him that would twist the knife in her heart; she knew this. But it was his wish and she would do this much for him… or it would have all been for not. She dragged her eyes away and looked him in the face.

She would make sure that his price had been worth it.

XXXXXXXXX

Ripe rolled himself out of bed with a violent crash. Sadly the aging stallion found this was the only way to truly wake himself up for a long hard day at the store. No one would ever accuse him of being a morning pony.

Ex-detective be damned.

Stretching his bright body slowly he felt his muscles stretching over bone with a delightful pain that only one who is exceptionally lazy could understand. Ripe yawned and licked his lips a bit pushing himself up and taking a whiff in the air; the delicious scent of grilling strawberries assaulting him.

“Mmm She’s too good for me.” He said absently to himself as he hobbled his way to the bathroom to wash his face and clean up his beard. After he felt he was tidy enough to deal with traffic all day he made his way down to the kitchen. The kids were about making a racket but by this time in his life he had come to terms with the ability to only pick up on sounds that meant the hustle and bustle of their everyday life was about to shift.

He passed the window that he and Silk had looked into just two days before at his new filly-friend attempting to help in the kitchen.

Silk.

A shiver ran down his spine, cold and sobering. For a moment he was no long Ripe Pickins a friendly, smiley merchant with a large family in a small rural village… he was that detective again, hardened and cold to a city filled with death and violence. It was a part of himself he thought long dead, and it filled him with instinctual dread. A feeling like that didn’t come along for no reason.

Ripe did the best he could to push it out of his face, Daisy hated that face… it scared her. And he knew his kids wouldn’t know how to react to seeing him that way.

But today… today would be a different day for sure.

He kissed his wife and snuck a strawberry into his mouth before prancing away from her swings and echoing words of “waiting till the food was ready”. It was a daily game, Ripe knew that she put some just out of her reflexive reach for him to nab every morning but it was part of what made their relationship work so he had no complaints.

Opening the shop door he took in the clear air… it was invigorating… he remembered a time when this air would have been a godsend to his younger self… foreign.

“I’m just full of nostalgia today aren’t I…?” He asked the air ominously. Shaking his shoulders he leaned down to grab the paper which was at his feet… but there was a paper on it… a town address.

“There will be a public announcement to be made
By Princess Luna of Equestria this morning
At 10 a.m.”

Ripe looked at that address for a long time before walking back into the house to get Daisy, leaving behind the paper.

“Kids, no school today stay home and help Dill run the store.” He said in that tone of authority an alpha had over his pack. “Daisy come with me.” Ripe very rarely used this tone, and his kids took it not as a day off school but a day of hard work. Dill looked like he was going to question but Ripe and Daisy had left before he had a chance to.

Ripe was practically dragging Daisy who still had an apron on from cooking as she scrambled to stay upright and with him.

“What’s going on dear? Is everything okay…?” she breathed hard keeping pace with her husband; a much faster pony then she ever was.

“I don’t know… but I think not…” he said… it was his old voice.

A voice that spoke volumes with every word.

XXXXXXXXX

10 a.m. Could not have come soon enough.

Luna was still pacing, though now behind a drawn red curtain. The stadium her sister had constructed was impressive… essentially just a stadium for her to do her business but with a wide enough stage and a curtain hung about it.

Her aqua eyes looked out to the crowd and she was certain that almost everypony in the town was gathered there…. And there…. Was that Ripe and Daisy?

Luna had a moment of panic… she knew those two they were not the same as strangers. It would be so much harder to break this to them… did they already know? Had they always known…?

Taking a deep breath she remembered Silk, remembered his instructions on how to talk…how to act as best as she could. Magic, feel the magic. There was safety in magic…it was a part of her that was static… constant. It was a warm, homely feeling of peace. It flooded itself out from her horn, coalescing through her shimmering midnight hair and up along the curtain.

Magic pulled it aside to reveal her and a tarp covered statue.

They did not need to see him yet.

“We have called you here today!” No, quiet… we can’t yell at them. We were Nightmare Moon not that long ago… they fear us. “I- I mean… I have called you here today… for the public reading of…” Hesitation, the ponies before her had seemed to recover from her shouting they looked less afraid now. “Of the Last Will and Testament of Silk D’Rouge.” There was a general murmor through the crowd… did Daisy gasp? Luna couldn’t tell, she was busy forcing the couple from her mind and sight.

Focus on the will, open the will, read the will. It was levitated before her eyes and with her magic she opened the sealed vessel. The thick papers lifted from within and opened themselves before her.

It was his writing… Luna felt a part of herself break as she read the first part silently.

“The Last Will and Testament of
Silk D’Rouge, the Gray-Night”

Choking back her tears she started to speak as he would have spoken… That silk edge to his voice seeming impossible to replicate at the moment. The first line was to her, she chose it best not to read it out loud.

“This may be hard Luna… but do your best. Do not forget these are your people, you are their Princess. You command them and demand their attention. They’re listening to you.”

She closed her eyes hard for a second, found her voice.

“I Silk D’Rouge, the infamous Gray-Night of the burning desert city of Calomere leave this to be my last words and wishes to be carried out upon my death…”

Luna paused where the letter paused, he seemed to had added the next part as an after thought.

“Or become unable to manage my own estate. I would like to first apologize… To all of you here. ”

Another of his deep pauses… Luna tried to swallow and wet her dry throat. It had been so long since she was before her people… would it always be this hard after her isolation… Would she be ready for Silk.

“I have been stealing from you all for years now… I’m sure many of you know this. And I’m sure you know I meant you no malice. I stole out of habit… Which probably worsen my crimes in your eyes. For I stole not of need… not for a long time now. Which brings us to the first matter of my recompense.”

There was a long pause now and Luna took it as a moment to breath, in brackets was a line to her… just for her. “You’re doing excellent… they’re enthralled by now aren’t they? Hanging on your every word.” They were… she couldn’t help but smile sadly. He truly was a pony of a class all his own. The pause passed and the words began to move of their own accord.

“I can never return the rarities I’ve taken… The heirlooms and precious gems handed down through the families that you believed to be… “misplaced” but I will try my hardest to make up for them. Included with this will is a map of my mansion and grounds. For each family I have stolen from is a plot, a piece of treasure and unique gifts that will help to recover some of which I had taken.”

Luna paused and gauged the reaction, some were surprised and others seemed relieved as if all their fussing over a lost item suddenly made sense to them.

“Ah my mansion now… That needs to be taken care of…of course. My Mansion I leave to Ripe and his family…”

That got a gasp, from Daisy… Luna was sure though she didn’t look over to them… unsure of how to handle it.

“You had been a friend to me Ripe before I was willing to accept that fact and after I had come to terms with it you were there in a way nopony else ever was. Now I’m sure you’ll complain to yourself about the commute to work… and Daisy I know it’ll be hard waking up to a home without a garden for a while but I want to make sure you all are taken care of. So I have left a rather large sum of money for you all to help take care and raise your children…”

Luna couldn’t help but look now. Daisy was crying her face borrowed into her husband’s neck trying to hide it. Ripe himself looked on the verge of tears.

“You will occasionally get letters from all over the world… I have let a book on how to reply to them in your new bed. Sorry for the added maintenance but it’s crucial. The letters will explain how and why.”

There was a moment of pause… The first page was almost over.

“To all here, you may be curious for what crimes was I punished…I have stolen the moon from the sky… and my Legacy will live on. The Grey-Night.”

As the line was finished the tarp over his statue was removed by Luna’s forceful magic revealing the body of the frozen thief. There were more then a few gasps in that moment…

“This Statue… will rest in Canterlot.” Luna said and walked towards it. Pressing her horn to him…to Silk the magic coalesced around him; writhing in its entirety. A second statue formed from the magic a perfect clone of the first. “And this statue shall remain here a token for the land which the Gray-night lived the last of his days.”

Then the group eventually dispersed…the statue was emplaced there in the town square; the makeshift theatre removed, and the Princess teleported the statue and herself away… without another word to the people there.

XXXXXXXXX

The next night…

Luna lay in her bed, alone… the moon had just been risen into the sky by her command. In the dull moonlight she read the last page of the will over and over again… the page that was hers alone. She had done little but read that letter over and over again, sitting not far now from where Silk’s statue rested.

“To you my dear…dear Luna. I leave my body and my most heartfelt apologies. I hope by now you understand why I needed to be captured and punished… I proved that it was possible to steal the moon from the sky. I had to prove that one could not GET AWAY with it… I hope I have cut any other attempts at your person cold now… As was always my intention. In however many years I have been stoned for I will awaken to find you, my Princess. My Legacy will have lived on for me, grown larger for me. The Gray-Night will be a name of awe and fear, the type of name that the new foals are taught when their parents wish to teach them good behaviour. I will be a better stallion…the best stallion for you. I will be a man you can look over to and know you are with a Stallion who is there for you. When I wake up…I will be…”

Luna stopped reading and looked over to the statue. She pressed her lips to the stone and whispered into the ear. A soft whisper that was for those ears only…before she lay beneath it’s protective form. An act that would become all too commonplace to the Alicorn.

XXXXXXX

Deep within a plane of unconsciousness, disembodied and asleep. A bestial version of myself, the instinct and animal part of my subconscious was stirred. A voice reached through cold space and through the walls of magic to reach my ears.

Distant yet clear.

The voice spoke to me but a simple sentence and it renewed my sense…my sense of self. I existed. I would exist again among that world. And till then the memories of that week would always be with me. Every moment with Luna would be there with me.

I listened to the sentence and let it play over and over in my mind. It spoke to the core of my soul on a level like no other word could

It reminded me the reason I was here. The reason I had to live.

My voice reached out within the empty plane, for my own senses to detect; though they felt separate to me.

“Yes.. When I wake up more… I will be more. When I awaken. I will… I will be… Legend.”

Comments

[SteampunkBrony]

is this the final chapter?

[Novel Idea]

36020 This is the final chapter for "Legacy" but it's not the end of the story

[SteampunkBrony]

36218

okay, i'm glad because leaving things there would be bad in my books. When can we expect more?

[Novel Idea]

36695 I'll be taking this down shortly to edit and convert into one eteader friendly file then submiting it to EQD THEN the sequel so a week to two I have many essays to write be gently on me.

[Super]

I dnt think that there's another story like this. I thoroughly enjoyed this, sir. Well done.

[Disguised]

Seems like I stumble upon the best stories 6 in the morning after a sleepless night.