Luna sat on a plush cushion as Celestia circled her. Celestia looked displeased in that subtle way that Celestia had. Luna loathed to have it turned on her, that motherly scorn meant to be directed at naughty foals. "Do you know why you are here?" asked Celestia.
Luna shook her head. "I am afraid I do not, sister. I was only performing my duties."
Celestia sighed softly. "Let us begin with the new pony that now lives in Equestria."
"Of his own volition," spoke Luna. "There are witnesses. By the treaty of--"
"Luna," spoke Celestia, cutting her off. "That treaty was rescinded six hundred years ago. The other tribes of the world feared that Equestria would consume them, not in war, but with magical conversion, be it through kindness or subversion."
Luna's ears twitched. "I did not know. Why is the spell still legal?"
Celestia gestured towards a wide window. "For the average pony, a species changing spell would hardly last a week at best. It is only with alicorn might that it can be made to endure. Even Twilight Sparkle could not manage a permanent change until she better controlled her new princess status, but she knows better."
"Untruth!" spoke Luna, striking the ground with a hoof. "The lady Sparkle had her hooves on him first, and left him as a hybrid."
"Then tell me," bade Celestia. "I am still your sister. I want to hear your side."
Luna nodded. "Very well. The human David was victim of a species spell cast by an under-graded unicorn, one Lyra Heartstrings. She used his friend, Rough Draft, as a template. This was the second poorly woven enchantment put on the human since his arrival in Equestria. He happened upon Twilight Sparkle and she attempted to undo the mistake. For reasons I know not, she did not undo the damage to his aetheric net, and simply applied overwhelming force to the situation. Human David was left in a hybrid status, half pony, half human."
Celestia nodded slowly. "That was... regrettable thinking, though his body would have eventually healed on its own. That did not require your intervention."
Luna waved a hoof. "That is only the start, not the end, dear sister. Lyra was emotionally uncentered when she laid her spell, and it affected Human David strongly, increasing his attraction to ponies, Lyra in particular."
Celestia's reaction was strong as her serene visage gave way to worry. "Was he?"
Luna shook her head. "They did nothing untoward, though they had plans to become a herd. Fortunately, her earth pony friend, Sweetie Drops, was a voice of reason and kept either of them from acting on their base urges. A group of concerned ponies took note of Human David's enchanted state and brought him in for help. That is when I arrived to find him being examined by one Trixie Lulamoon."
Celestia perked an ear. "Lulamoon. She has had an interesting background. Was she behaving?"
Luna nodded then. "She was quite professional. She made an accurate assessment of the situation. I then offered to turn the human David back to normal, with his attraction removed, but he denied it. He claimed he'd rather be able to see ponies as people and possible lovers than to live on in isolation." She shrank a little. "I asked him why he did not simply become a pony entirely then."
Celestia gave a soft sigh, moving up and wrapping a wing around Luna. "Your heart was in the right place, my sister. According to law, you should return him to his former state, but this is impossible."
Luna looked surprised a moment, but then nodded. "Ah, of course. There is no human template to use."
Celestia pointed at Luna with a hoof. "Exactly so. There are no humans left, and there will likely never be. Let us move on. Why a foal?"
"That was his idea," said Luna defensively. "He wanted to start again. I saw little harm in it, if he truly wished to learn the ways of Equestria from the start, the body of a foal would serve the purpose."
Celestia moved around to sit in front of Luna. "Luna. Do you know how many great and wonderful ponies I have watched die over these last thousand years?"
Luna trembled in place, but did not reply to this question. There was no good answer that came to mind.
"Too many," said Celestia. "I dare not use that magic. If I spare one pony the cruel lash of age, then by what right do I deny the next? It is too great a responsibility. We are not gods."
Luna flicked her ears back. "He was not a pony."
Celestia nodded. "No. No he was not. Since the law does not cover humans, which no longer exist, we can forgive this." Her wings gently drew around, pulling Luna's snout upwards to look Celestia in the eye. "I love you, Luna. Please don't do that again."
Luna smiled, then drew a curious device from a pocket. Changing the topic quickly, she held it up for Celestia. "Look at this. The human David had it."
Celestia raised an ear. "He gave his things willingly?"
Luna shook her head a little. "He has given himself to us entirely for thirty years. He belongs to the crown, as the unicorn colt Silver Lining. I claimed his things and he did not object."
Celestia looked at the strange artifact. "What does it do? It is shiny on one side, and dark on the other. I see no obvious function for it." She depressed the buttons she could see on it, but the phone made no response, its batteries long dead.
Luna set it down gently. "I have no idea, but there is more." She drew out the several cards, and the rubber ball. "This in particular. Human David--"
"You should call him Silver Lining," interrupted Celestia. "Silver Lining is our squire for now, and lives on."
"Yes, Silver Lining said this." She pointed at the rubber ball. "Has many of his possessions from his home world. I was thinking to summon him and have him explain each thing's use."
Celestia peered into the ball, and the desk contained within. "I see some books, and many things I do not recognize. Are those dolls? What strange world did Silver Lining come from?"
Luna extended a wing. "I visited his dreams several times. They offered glimpses of it. They used frightful magic with a casual indifference, but his dreams were so scattered and disjointed, I could not say for certain where the dream ends and truth begins. Asking him seems the expedient route."
"I would like to know as well. When will he be here?" asked Celestia.
Luna looked towards the window. "He was in the care of Trixie Lulamoon and Rough Draft and they were told to enroll him in school here, in Canterlot."
Celestia smiled gently. "We'll let them settle. Extend an invitation for a brunch over the week's end and maybe we can get some answers, and properly meet our squire. Tell me, is he cute?"
Luna snorted out a half chuckle. "Sister, he is adorable. For being a former adult, he has taken his new youth well. He was laughing with joy when he couldn't stand properly. You don't intend to make him an active member of the court, do you?"
Celestia shook her head. "A colt? Of course not. But if he did swear to be property of the crown for so long, he will be of proper age soon enough. We will show him the kindness of Equestria, but he will work for his keep as well."
Luna seemed to agree with this. "A new perspective to look at things could be helpful. I hope that he adapts to his new life well."
It occurs to me that Silver Lining is brown like Rough Draft, and has a silver mane and a horn like Trixie. That should spare them some awkward questions (and encourage different awkward questions) Did you do that on purpose, or is it just a coincidence?
5693339 It all worked out delightfully well. He's brown because Luna used Rough Draft as a template. It seemed a prudent idea to make him take after said guardian. This is also why he looks like Rough Draft's son so well.
You used "cast" twice. If you replaced the highlighted words with "named" it would be clearer.
brute-forced (although I think Luna would say something more like "applied overwhelming force to the situation")
either "a foal" or "the body of a foal"
5693341 I was mostly referring to the fact that, despite her protestations, he also resembles Trixie.
5693411 Tis true. I did not even think of Trixie's silver hair until you brought it up today. My thought stopped at 'Silver lining, silver mane, it makes perfect sense!'. I blame my subconscious for being a sneaky bastard.
5693406 All fixed! What do you think of the tale thus far?
5693474 Nothing big has happened yet, but from here you can go anywhere. He may get some grief from other foals, but his adult mind should make it easier for him to deal with that stuff than a normal child. If you plan for this story to have any full-on adventure, you can easily set Silver Lining up to be the "unlikely" hero. Everyone will ignore him because he looks like a foal, but he knows lots of grownup stuff and is pretty genre-savvy too. The unexpected thinker is one of my favorite archetypes.
Compare to http://www.fimfiction.net/story/55531/school-of-hard-knocks
Being that this is the beginning, there's a lot of potential regarding where this could go.
Personally, I'm slightly nervous regarding the issue of him being a "squire" at the alicorn sister's court. Not because I think it's a bad idea, but because I think that it's a good one that might be hard to utilize. It's difficult to imagine a five-year-old, no matter how mature he is, taking any sort of significant role in court intrigue (and the idea of court intrigue at all in Equestria is foreign...which is a shame, since it's so much fun).
That said, I'm also slightly nervous about the small flood of OCs that are going to be unleashed on us in the form of Silver's classmates. That's purely reflexive on my part, though. Still, I did like seeing Fleur here - so pretty, she is!
5693531 If there was a good reason for him to be somewhere else, really only Ponyville would spare him the flood of OCs, though if he was in Manehattan still, he could have been with Babs... that would have been amusing.
As the sisters mentioned, he is far too young to join the court properly. It would be most unseemly to have a colt around, and he has school to attend beside.
I do hope my characterization of the royal sisters was reasonable.
5693540 Welcome aboard! And I sure do, though I'm ahead of schedule. I couldn't stop myself from doing a second chapter with a recap of the situation and Celestia and Luna getting on the same page. I'm sure some were wondering what it was exactly Celestia was upset about.
5693550 The interaction between Celestia and Luna was intriguing. It was rather surprising to see just how unequal their relationship was, with Celestia taking Luna to task and making her explain herself. True, she's older, larger of stature, probably more powerful, and she doesn't have Luna's "checkered" history...but to see her take such a dominant role in their "power dynamics" was surprising. I was under the impression that the two of them were supposed to be equals, but that definitely wasn't the case here.
Though she was still wrong to do so, interactions like that one make it slightly more understandable why she rebelled against Celestia a millennium ago.
5693572 It does, but I'm not trying to paint Celestia as an evil overlord. She does care, and she is trying to avoid an incident that could cause a great deal of trouble. The general populace does not need to hear of how converting not-ponies to ponies is suddenly OK, or that rewinding a pony's age is also on the OK list. She is a loving mother, though this can mean an overbearing mother at times, even at her 'little' sister.
Liking the story so far ^^
5694295 Glad to hear it, and welcome to the herd! Feel free to poke me if I wander off track, or suggest things, or ask random questions. I'm pretty hard to annoy.
Missing capitalization?
5896671 Fixed!
This is a fallacy, methinks. Doctors also agonize over not being able to heal everybody. That doesn't mean they should heal nobody. Neither should they deny aid to criminals.
6400022 Sure, but this is no accident or twist of fate. Once it becomes OK to turn back the approach of age, how does one draw a line?
6400121 i foresee gamer luna in the future.
6513499 Alas, neigh.
Wow in my opinion the princesses are dicks
6551764 You have barely begun.
(Corrections without malice...)
Getting on a computer so I can actually easily mark all of them to show you why I wasn't doing every single one before...
Quotes that should use periods, not commas, before them:
"Yes, Silver Lining said this." She pointed at the rubber ball. "Has [this one has the commas wrong on both ends, for putting the not-a-speech-tag in the middle]
Because there were, like...five? seven? that were correct use of commas with speech tags, or used a period because it wasn't a speech tag.
This story has a 'written by committee' feel. Some of whom had axes to grind, or maybe it was just a way to write yourself out of the corner you'd written yourself into.
Trixie being a better and more skillful caster than Twilight? No, that doesn't work. I like Trixie, but no. The Changeling thing goes nowhere, and rather than being done up for assault, the biped haters are commended.
But the worst of it was this chapter. Luna not knowing the laws, okay I can barely swallow that, and charging him a high price for his transformation, okay that makes sense, but acting like he had a choice, no.
She did her thing and only then said, oh and the price is all you have and thirty years indentured servitude. At no point was he given a chance to back out.
Luna is a douche in this.
7025955 It was a committee of one.
When was Trixie better than Twilight? I don't recall this becoming an established fact. Do you mean Trixie claimed to be better? That's kind of a thing Trixie does.
Luna was gone for a 1,000 years! You think she instantly gets a refresher course on the legal adjustments during that time? How is that reasonable?
7025955 Twilight has unimaginable magic power and a wide array of spells. She never needed to learn how to do with "just enough". She wields a hammer basically.
Trixie is weaker, yes, but is it so hard to imagine her using what she has as a scalpel?
And that is how you k ow nothing will go well.
7083198 No, that's how you know FRIENDSHIP is going to happen and there will be many an adventure c:
I love the little excuses for typos in the authors note
Such a creative idea
I am not certain on alot of things in this story.
I read the first one and some of the story decisions disturbed me a bit. In particular the ownership thing and some of the flow (alot of the decisions seem to be just go with the flow and agree... Not alot of dissent as far as I can see by the characters.
Which I think detract from story resolution in my opinion).
But I am still reading. It isn't all bad. Plus we are starting to go through the more slice of life things I think.
What I really like so far early on in this story is Celestia addressing some of it.
I didn't follow up on the sequels after finishing the first story for awhile so now I have quite a bit to catch up on.
Happy reading.... Not sure why I posted this. Maybe a bit on the meds.
8429986
There's a few problems with this remark, one of them is that Luna is 1000 years out of 'practice' and Celestia has had to be a monarch rather than a diarch for that entire period, there's going to be some looking down on Luna for her part. Realistically Celestia can't overrule anything Luna does without a backing from some lower seats, the court for instance. Luna's heart is in the right place, which makes her a just and fair ruler, of the two I feel she's the more level headed one, she is logical and views things from an outsider's perspective, Celestia sees things as if she were a god because of her age and status and how ponies have treated her over time.
So Celestia is completely ignoring the crimes of her sister, keeping to the oath of a mentally impaired individual as a life of tantamount slavery, and keeping items obtained from said mentally impaired individual while completely ignoring the possible ramifications and repercussions those foreign objects might have upon the kingdom and indeed the entire world? Wow. That is criminal in the extreme. Somebody needs to do something about this. Unfortunately I get the feeling that the polar opposite will occur.
9347483
Actually, "mentally impaired" how exactly? I mean they detected only one such problem which made him desire to have sex with ponies more than usual. Ok, removed and turned into complete human. What were his options anyway? Heck, he got second childhood, magic, guaranteed employment and high social status out of this. They also treater him way better than any our government would treat a single pony which end up on Earth somehow. We also would take any possessions of that pony and try to replicate whatever alien technology our magic we'll find there. And with way more negative consequences. How you even decide that some tech is way too advanced and dangerous for current society without investigating and understanding how it works and what it does first? Which is pretty much exactly what Luna decided to do with his possessions, BTW.
9384456
One point: OUR government is honestly the worst excuse of a government in exisfence. Theyve done mang crimes against their own citizens, bent and broken their own laws flat out in the open and refused to answer for it, not to mention do shit like test Bio-Warfare weaponry on its own citizens. Repeatedly. Equestria being kinder than our government isnt exactly a crowning achievement.
9559395
Hm... Two years later, but anyway. First of all there's no "our" government thankfully. There's many governments and while most of them likely bent the laws for one reason or the other (that's something all politicians do eventually) they just can't be all that bad. Besides, it's always specific people that responsible for specific crimes. So, saying that specific government did some serious shit 50 years ago doesn't meant anyone there will consider doing the same thing right now. Our governments are our employees. We grant them power and resources since we can't properly rule an entire country without a centralized government. But it's our power and resources, so we can and must take them away from misbehaving elements until it's to late and government becomes openly hostile towards everyone including own people. Take modern ("People's" Republic of) China , North Korea or Russian "Federation" for example.