I Am The Night(mare)! And so is Luna?

by LordBrony2040

I Am Thankful For No Good Reason

When we got to Ponyville, the scene was…a lot less destroyed than I was expecting.

While I wasn’t one-hundred percent knowable of the physics of sonic booms, and that was without Equestria magical physics messing with the way things were supposed to work, I was pretty sure broken windows should have been part of the deal. But as I looked around the town with its thatch roofs and intact window panes, I was…eerily relieved to find that ponies really built stuff to last.

Then again, they had tapestries that lasted over one thousand years of wear and tear of rough weather patterns and wooden furniture that still stood in the Castle of the Two Sisters, so what was one little broken sound barrier to a piece of glass made by ponies?

But my confusion only lasted until I found the pony responsible for said sonic boom. This was mostly because she was with a certain purple pony, who was standing on her hind legs while her forelegs were wrapped around in a wonderfully beautiful hug that…well…

“Squeeeee!” I exclaimed as I saw my beyond a shadow of a doubt conformation of TwiDash and galloped up to them so I could sit down and clop my hooves together in excitement. “OhmygoshOhmygoshOhmygosh! The two of you! I knew it! I bucking knew it! TAKE THAT FLASH SENTRY!”

Celestia may have looked at me a little weird as I pointed over to Canterlot, but I didn’t care! TWIDASH WAS A THING!

“Uh…thanks?” Rainbow said. “Now, can one of you princesses please get Twilight off me? She won’t let go ever since I caught her, and she keeps teleporting anypony who tries to pry at her hooves! Applejack has had to run back from her farm two times now.”

As Rainbow’s words made the wedding plans for my favorite couple turn into a mental trainwreck, Celestia stepped into our conversation. “Twilight, what’s going on?”

“No!” Twilight pleaded and a frantic tone. “I can’t! If I let go of Rainbow Dash, I’ll die!”

“WHAT?” I shouted, now totally confused.

The pegasus in Twilight’s grip rolled her eyes and sighed. “Okay so, you remember how Twilight said she was going to make me this training schedule? Well, I miss one day-”

“A day and a half!” Twilight corrected.

“I had Wonderbolts tickets!”

“The schedule is the schedule Rainbow Dash!”

Celestia cleared her throat, stopping all further arguments. “And then what happened?”

“Anyway, I said that Twilight may have read some books about flying and junk, but only ponies with wings really knew what flying was like,” Rainbow began.

“So I found a spell that gave ponies wings made from gossamer and morning dew,” Twilight went on.

All of a sudden, I knew how this was going to end. “And let me guess, you flew too high, and they evaporated,” I said with a deadpan expression before I sighed in disappointment. So much for TwiDash being a thing.

I could feel my heart tear as the ship went down in flames.

Twilight over at me and blinked. “No, I read all the warnings about not to fly near the sun,” she said before a blush covered her face. “I just forgot to account for the possibility of a rogue gust strong enough to affect them when I was flying near the Everfree Forest. It tore my wings to pieces.”

Rainbow perked up. “And then I swooped down and- gak!” she said as she tried to fly up and the chokehold Twilight had her in tightened.

“You caught her, Sonic Rainboom, good job Dash,” I deadpanned before looking back to Twilight. “Twilight, you can let her go now. You’re on solid ground.”

The little unicorn shook her head. “No I can’t! What happens the next time I fall? Rainbow caught me when I fell the first night you were back. She caught me when I fell off the balcony while I was realigning my telescope. She caught me when I fell off the ladder in the library-”

“I was there for the next Daring Do book,” Dash explained at my questioning glance.

“She caught me when a sneeze made me misalign a teleport three days ago, and she caught me today when we were over the Everfree!” Twilight finished. “The evidence is clear, I’m obviously gravity accident prone! Rainbow Dash may be around to catch me nine times out of ten, but all it takes is once, and then it’s all over!”

Once again, Celestia sighed and rubbed the tiny space between her horn and eyes. “Alright Twilight, what if I were to teach you a spell to levitate yourself? Would that alleviate your fears? Luna used it on Nighty many times when they were learning to fly to avoid grievous injury.”

Twilight blinked at the question, and I could slowly see the panic in her mind give way to something else as she thought the question over. “Um…maybe? How hard is it?”

“I’m sure a pony as intelligent as yourself would be able to pick it up,” Tia replied with a gentle smile. “Now, how about you let Rainbow go?”

“Um…but I can’t,” she protested more calmly than before.

I frowned. “Twilight, you’re on solid ground. You’re fine. You can let go. You won’t die!”

The little unicorn blushed a bit at my final words. “Okay, well…I’ll admit that my declaration of how I was going to perish if I was separated from Rainbow Dash might have been a little…overzealous. But I really can’t let her go!”

“Say what now?” the pegasus asked.

Before I could ask what the hell was going on, Luna beat me to the punch. “Twilight? Do not tell us that you have used an attraction spell to attach thyself to Rainbow Dash.”

Twilight slunk down onto the pegasus as her ears flattened. “I-I was afraid she was going to drop me,” she said.

“Uh,” Rainbow Dash spoke up, cutting Twilight off. “Is an attraction spell what I think it sounds like?”

Celestia groaned. “At what strength?”

“…maximum,” Twilight squeaked.

I rolled my eyes and fired up my horn. “Fine. You’re stuck together. Here’s a solution,” I said as I focused on the purple unicorn and then bent space-time to poof her behind me.

“No WAIT!” Twilight managed before she disappeared and I heard the bang of a teleport drop the unicorn behind me. “There! Problem sol-GAH!” I said before I felt the bang of a pony when Twilight slammed into me from behind with enough force to actually knock me down before careening into Rainbow Dash thanks to some unseen force.

Oh…it’s going to be one of THOSE friendship problems. Stupid stuck together cliché. Or magnetized, or…whatever. I could think very well, having just been ran over by a unicorn.

“So…any ideas?” I asked Celestia as I pulled myself off of the ground and looked over to the alicorn. From what I had seen of the spell, it was Twilight that had done all the moving, not Rainbow Dash. So…we could maybe hold her down? Lock her in a room or something?

The question was, just what would that do to her? Just how much force was being applied to Twilight? Was it push, or pull?

Celestia examined the two ponies for a few moments, and looked back to me. “While I don’t know of any counterspells of the top of my head, there might be one in the Canterlot Archives,” she said before looking at the TwiDash. “We’ll take the two of you there on our train so that Twilight can research a solution.”

“Wait! I can’t go to Canterlot! Have you seen how high it is?” the purple pony protested as she pointed to the mountain. “Just look at it!”

“Twilight, you lived there for eighteen years,” Tia told her as she gave the pegasus and the unicorn an easy look. “It will be fine!”

Twilight fiercely shook her head. “Nononono! Please Princess Celestia, don’t make me goooooooo!”

For a moment, both me and Celestia were stupefied as Twilight began to hyperventilate. I looked over to Tia for help while my damn brain said this had all been my idea, and the guardian of Equestria looked about as helpless as I did to stop it. That fall had really shaken the poor purple unicorn up.

“Alright Twilight, it’s alright,” Celestia told her calmly with a look in her eyes that said the alicorn was anything but that. “You don’t have to go back to Canterlot. You can look through Ponyville Library’s magical research section, and I’ll have my best scholar look for a solution in Canterlot, does that sound good?”

As the purple unicorn calmed down a bit upon hearing she didn’t have to ride a train up a mountain, the pegasus of the pair turned a little worried. “But uh…you guys will be able to fix this soon, right?” she asked. “I can’t fly like this, and the Best Young Flier’s Competition is in just two days! This is the last year I can compete. If I can’t get in…”

Hearing that news, Twilight winced. “Sorry.”

Rainbow took a second to frown back at Twilight, and then lowered her ears and looked away with her own sad expression when the purple unicorn gave Dash a guilty look in reply.

“I promise that I will do everything that I can to help the two of you,” Celestia told them gently before she looked up with a surprised expression. “Although…I think for the moment I had best stay and explain things to your friends.”

I raised an eyebrow, and then looked back in the direction Tia had her eyes set on just in time to see Pinkie rushing up with a wagon behind her. “Okay Twilight, I’ve got a crowbar, glue dissolvent, clippers, hacksaw, chisel with mallet, and dynamite. Which one to do want me to try first?”

Twilight groaned at the various tools in Pinkie’s wagon. “Pinkie, for the last time. We’re not glued together, it’s just an increased natural attraction that’s drawing me to Rainbow Dash focused around my forelegs and her neck!”

The pink party pony blinked with wide eyes as her mind worked on that one so hard I thought I actually saw gears turning behind her peepers for a second. “Oh! You cast a hug spell on Dashie then?” she finally said before reaching into her mane and pulling out a little notebook. “Okay, when do you want me to schedule your wedding party?”

“Rainbow?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah?”

“Can you cover my face with one of your hooves? I can’t let go of your neck.”

---

Once we got back to Canterlot, Celestia fulfilled her promise to Twilight by doing everything in her power to find a magical cure for her mystical problem. Unfortunately, nearly a week down South had left days worth of problems piled up, even with Cadance trying to fill Celestia’s shoes. The resulting workload meant that there was very little time for Celestia to look into one mare’s problems in the whole mess that was the Canterlot bureaucracy.

Which meant that I got stuck with the job.

Before handing it off to Moondancer anyway. She was better for that sort of stuff. Which meant that the search for Sunset’s journal was going to be put on hold for another day or two.

Thankfully, Luna didn’t have much in the way of missed work. Minuette and Twinkleshine might have become a little hoarse from all the updates they had to read, and Sparkler filled my next three days with meetings to attend regarding the reforms Luna was trying to implement in Equestria, but it was still nothing compared to Celestia’s schedule.

One thing did stand out about it though…

“Wait a second,” I said as I read the list of chores that Sparkler had made for me over Twinkleshine shoulder. This was mostly due to the fact that she was currently in my forelegs, being held tightly like any good living pony plushie. I had a lot of time to make up for after all, not to mention a decree that would keep at least one of my girls close to me at all times. There was no way I was going to be without a pony to cuddle when away from the castle anymore.

As to what was on the list of things to do that caught my eye, “Rarity’s coming here to show off our princess dresses?” I asked before looking over to Sparkler. Considering she lived in Ponyville, the little unicorn had probably already seen them. “She’s done with them already?”

Sparkler shook her head. “Just the basic design both you and Princess Celestia will be using. I talked to her yesterday, and she’s got about half a dozen different plans for each of your dresses that she can let you choose from.”

With the one damn thing that I was looking forward to today clarified, I gave Twinkie one last little nuzzle to show how much I cared for her, and gently set the blushing pony down onto the ground. “Okay then, let’s go meet with the stupid astronomy guild.”

“Nightmare!” Luna chided me. “I think it best not to say such things about a group of ponies that has come to appreciate my night so!”

I sighed and slowly shook my head. “Sorry Luna. It’s just…you know how this goes. Nopony ever calls on royalty unless they’ve got something they want us to do. You’re the ones that give out the medals, the thanks, and the pats on the head. Not the other way around.”

And so, we headed off to the Canterlot observatory that was located outside of town. In other words, on the mountain that Canterlot was built into. Still, despite the remote location, the building was actually pretty swanky. It was the size of a small palace with walls were made from white marble and a dome of green glass. A giant telescope poked through the side of the building’s roof and faced towards the sky.

Being what it was, this was hardly Luna’s first visit to the place. We had actually come here our first week in Equestria once Celestia was sure we weren’t going to eat anypony. So we were able to skip the tour. Not that I had forgotten anything about a historical pony site.

It had been built during the first year of what was now referred to as the Celestia Era so that ponies could enjoy the night. Of course, this was three months too late for Luna, but the Nightmare Moon incident had spurred Celestia towards making sure there were ponies that enjoyed the stars for when her sister eventually returned.

Thanks to the location, there were actually more pegasi around than unicorns, making it one of the few pegasi dominant places in the greater Canterlot area. Plus, it just seemed that the flying ponies enjoyed the night more than most of the other tribes for whatever reason.

Maybe they liked to navigate by the stars or something. I’d ask Rainbow Dash about it later. Fluttershy really didn’t seem like the type of pony that went out that much after dark.

But enjoying the majesty of the Luna Fan Club’s house was just about the only thing good that happened to me that morning. The meeting with the astrological board of ended up going about as badly as I predicted it would. After a century of Celestia just raising the moon instead of rearranging the stars like Luna could apparently do, there was a long list of complaints about how Luna had changed the position of several stars on top of making new constellations. It didn’t matter that the ‘guidepost’ stars were still in their same location either. Nope, after a thousand years of everything being static, ponies didn’t like any kind of change.

Then came all the grumbling about a meteor shower Luna had made when we were down in Appleloosa to help show the heavens really did belong to the sisters; as if the two of us having the sun and moon do loops in the air weren’t enough. If we were going to make it rain starlight, then the Astrological Society wanted to be the ponies to ‘advise’ Luna when it was best to do so and set up a predictable schedule for the alicorn’s cosmic weather.

Luna…didn’t take the barely concealed demands very well. So not very well that she was actually going on about it for hours after we left to anypony that would listen…

“And then they had the nerve, neigh, the audacity to say that if I wanted to make any new constellations, then it would be prudent to ‘consult with us in order to create proper works that honor truly deserving ponies’,” she said in a mockery of the head astronomer Empty Night’s voice before snorting out a puff of air. “As if our friends were anything but the most deserving ponies to have their marks placed in the sky in generations!”

With the latest reiteration of Luna’s rant done, I took a seat on the floor of the bare room we were using to house our next appointment. As this was to be a more personal meeting, the room was pretty sparse. Beside the pony who had just finished listen to Luna drone on was a small table with tea and cakes on it. Not to mention some rice crackers, but they weren’t for the guest.

No, they were for the other pony in the room. The pony on a diet.

Aside from that, we also had a trio of mirrors to show me off at different angles at the same time parked in the corner for when everything got going.

Princess Celestia reached over and put a comforting fetlock over our back. “They’re just trying to find their place now that you’ve returned Luna. Something I think you can more than sympathize with.”

At that I had to snort. “Oh please, they’re just making a grab for power. It’s been a thousand years since you made that place Celestia, and I’ll admit it did its job. There are tons of ponies that look at the stars or go out on dates after dark. But these days, anypony with ten bits can buy a telescope to enjoy the night.”

“Not to mention their purpose was made in error,” Luna added. That little bit of information got a confused look from both Celestia and me.

The white pony cocked her head to the side. “Pardon?”

Luna made us sigh and roll our eyes. “Pray tell Sister, what does the big plaque at the entrance to the Royal Observatory state that its reason for being is?”

Still confused, Celestia’s answer ending sounding more like a question. “To study the night sky?”

“Nighty, extend our hoof towards the ceiling in exclamation, would you?” Luna told me before I did as commanded. “Exactly! While I am delighted that you made efforts to ensure my sky was enjoyed, the institution you founded went about it all wrong! The sky was not meant to be studied Celestia, it was meant to be enjoyed. Everypony that was to look at it wasn’t to be told what they saw or felt, they were supposed to discover such things for themselves! And such discoveries would be different for everypony that gazes upon them. But instead of letting other ponies figure such things out for themselves, instead of letting them find their own truths, you’re telling them what everything means!”

With Luna finally done with her rant/speech, Celestia blinked. “Well, we do both have our way of approaching something Sister, and several of your pictures in the night sky are quite obvious to see,” she said before standing up a little straighter. “I merely created a guild that would allow everypony to see your work at its maximum potential.”

Although, judging by the rolling of Luna’s eyes, I think Celestia completely missed the point of her sister’s speech. And…I might have started to feel a little bit of what Luna endured growing up with an older sister that always thought she was right all the time.

But before things could devolve further, the door opened up to admit a unicorn that I always enjoyed seeing.

Thankfully, Rarity hadn’t decided to wear anything to our meeting. And I’m not just saying that because she came in the door butt first to give us princesses a full view of her filled out assets thanks to the fact she was talking to someone in the hall behind her. “Careful, careful now. I don’t want a single thread out of place for the presentation,” she said before gasping when something fell to the floor, followed by Rarity’s dramatic scream.

I looked over to Celestia for some suggestions, but the big white pony just gave a little amused smirk at Rarity’s panic while she floated an oversized pony-mannequin into the bare room that we had set aside for our little private fitting session. And, okay I could see the humor in Rarity panicking at nothing. But on the other hand, Twilight Sparkle panic attacks had really killed my ability to laugh at such things.

“Are you okay Rarity?” I called out to the mare.

“Yes! Fine! Everything’s just perfectly fine! Just some sewing equipment in case I needed to make a last minute alterations. They can take a little bump.” And so, I was left wondering why Rarity was the pony carrying all of her equipment when we had plenty of staff to help her out.

Then came two large covered forms on coat racks that were obviously our dresses, although the bar on wheels she was using to hang them on looked a little improvised. But then, Celestia and I were a little tall, anything meant for a pony of normal height would probably mean they would have dragged on the ground.

Celestia and me stood silent as Rarity finished getting her stuff in to hang on the wall and set up before she turned to bow. “Your Majesties, I-”

The little pony didn’t get any further before Celestia cut her off with a groan. “Rarity, there’s a reason I asked you to meet us here alone rather than the throne room. It’s either Celestia, or Tia when we’re in private. We’re friends. I’m not going to make you put on a show when you don’t have to.”

Still, the little unicorn didn’t stop from prostrating herself.

“And rise my friend,” Luna added. Although, when Rarity looked up at us with a questioning expression as if to ask if it was alright, Luna held out her hoof. “Unless of course you wish to indulge yourself with our hoof as you did my sister’s. We shall wait.”

Rarity was back on her hooves in an instant. “Um…yes…about that,” she managed to say with a blush before looking over to the gown she brought. “Let’s um…get down to business, and wrap this up quickly, shall we? No offense, but I am a little worried about Twilight and Rainbow’s predicament. I’m due to play peacemaker with them later today, and if I’m late…”

Those words quickly killed the merry mood. “How are they holding up?” I asked. It was almost sunset after all. The two of them spending the day together might have been cute as hell under the right circumstances, but not in the stuck-on-you scenario.

“Rainbow’s going crazy with the fact she can’t even get off the ground, and seems to be driving Twilight about equally as insane,” Rarity said, the dresses apparently forgotten for the moment in the face of gossip. “Quite frankly, I think they’re going to kill each other if this mess isn’t resolved soon.”

I made a mental note to check in on Moondancer after nightfall.

As usual, Celestia just giggled at the possibility of our two best friends dying. “Oh I don’t think things are going to go that far Rarity,” she said before looking at the dresses on the mobile rack. “Now, our clothes.”

With her mind put back on track, Rarity’s horn lit up and pulled off the coverings to leave the dress hanging on the bar, untouched by the unicorn’s magic.

The was a mix of two colors in diagonal lines that went all the way around, but did so in a way that made the things look quite appealing. And those colors were white and gold.

“Hmm truly a good start,” Luna commented with a nod before she looked over to the unicorn. “Although, I will of course require a gown in mine own colors. Something in black and blue would be nice.”

Celestia looked over at us with a raised eyebrow. “What are you talking about Luna? The dress is black and blue,” she said.

And all of a sudden, I got worried.

Like…really worried.

Armageddon is coming kind of worried.

“Sister, is this one of thy stupid jokes?” Luna asked Celestia with a frown. “The dress is obviously white and gold.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed back at us. “What do you mean stupid jokes? That dress is clearly black and blue.”

Taking a moment to try and save as many ponies as I could before what had been building before Rarity even came in caused the ponypocolypse, I grabbed the little unicorn in Luna’s magic to lift her into the air and bring her close enough to whisper. “Rarity, run! Run and don’t look back!”

With that, I tossed her through the door and slammed it shut.

Then, in an attempt to keep Canterlot in once piece, I turned around to look at Celestia. “Uh look, Tia…you know how Rarity is. She probably thought it would be neat to make a piece of clothing that has a subjective color scheme…or…something,” I said while trying to remember the details of something from my human memory that involved a similar incident. Wasn’t there something about the eye that made the dress appear different? Maybe it was the lighting. I couldn’t recall.

“Art and color aren’t subjective,” Tia deadpanned. “There is good and there is bad, just like there is black and blue! Pictures are what the artist painted, not what the audience sees.”

Luna scoffed. “Oh, so now we’re starting this argument up again?” she demanded. “The eye of the beholder Sister! That which is received is what truly matters! Not the intentions for which the creation was originally made.”

After a second, Celestia let out a groan. “Luna you can’t argue the fact that everypony that has ever created anything knows what it is from the start, and those that don’t interpret it correctly are obviously wrong!”

“Watch me!” the other goddess replied before they began a fight that had probably been going on for centuries, with a thousand years rest in-between.

Shortly thereafter, I was forced to listen to a rather odd debate about the nature of art and the subjective view versus the overall objective one. While I couldn’t really follow everything they said, it did give me an insight when it came to the inner workings of the sisters. Celestia was the scientist of the two. She believed everything having a set explanation from the get go, everything followed certain rules, and it all had a single answer. Luna was the artist. She all about the subjective view that was open to interpretation and allowed for various correct answers.

It put a lot of things in perspective for me when it came to the two sisters. They were opposites that had found a way to work together in perfect…well…harmony was the only word that fit. And all of a sudden, I understood why Celestia had only taken unicorns as students, and failed so miserably to get another one to alicorn status. It was because she had only been playing with half a deck.

That was why Twilight had to live in Ponyville to get her wings. Celestia couldn’t give her the teaching she needed to be an alicorn, and with Luna needing to play catch-up, the purple pony had to get it from someone else. Plus, I doubt the goddess had thought things were all that safe with me around those first few weeks when she hadn’t been sure I wasn’t just luring her into a false sense of security.

But, they didn’t get into a huge fight that ended in an Equestrian civil war between the Lunar Republic and Solar Empire. And on the plus side, we ended up giving the gowns back to Rarity.

She was waiting for us on the other side of the door when Celestia came out with the dresses, only...mostly mangled. “I’m sorry Rarity, but these just aren’t working out for us,” she said. “I know I said I wanted to be surprised, but…to be honest, I’d like something in pink. Varying shades of pink, with some sun decoration.”

“Dark purple for us,” Luna added as she walked up to our friend and smiled. “And forget about that whole same baseline thing my little pony. Both Celestia and I are unique, and should dress as such.”

From her place beside us, the horse goddess snorted. “Luna, we’re sisters born from the same mother. We’re not really that different if you think about the fact that we both came from-”

I groaned and used a hoof to stop Celestia’s mouth from moving. “Oh no, we’re not starting that up again!”

---

It was later that night that I had to stop a lone Twilight Sparkle from falling into an infinite pit of darkness. Of course with such things being absent in Ponyville, it should go without saying that what I was actually doing was interfering with a new nightmare that had her dealing with a newfound fear of heights.

Or maybe it was just a fear of falling.

Was there really a difference between the two?

Well...anyway, since Luna was pretty certain things would be bad for her, we took extra care to keep an ear out for her dreams while going through the paces with our guard training. Then, after hearing the purple pony’s scream across the dream airways, Luna left Nightwing in charge and teleported us to bed.

After we scolded Ace for getting dog hair on our covers, one sleep spell followed by a dream walk later, and I leapt right into Twilight’s dream to find her just waving about in the infinite black.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” she screamed while getting smaller and smaller in the dark.

Since pesky little things like space didn’t matter in the dream world, I lit up Luna’s horn and turned the pony around before speeding her back to me. Although, considering there was no point of reference for the unicorn, Twilight continued with the screaming even after being pulled up and towards me.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”

And she actually kept that up until I brought her in range of my hooves for a hug.

“AAAAAA-huh?” Twilight said as her never-ending plummet came to an end.

I rocked the little pony in my grip gently and whispered into her ear. “Shhhh. It’s okay Twilight. We’re here, you’re safe,” I said before kissing the shivering mare on her forehead and wrapping my wings around her. “I’m here, and you’re safe.”

Twilight continued to shiver in terror, and now that she wasn’t screaming, not to mention pressed up against my body, I could also make out some other things. For starters, her heart was absolutely racing, going maybe sixty beats per minute. And then there was her breathing, taking in maybe two breaths a second. The implications of which were absolutely terrifying.

One of the first things that Luna had taught me when it came to dream magic safety was that while a pony couldn’t be hurt physically in a dream, that didn’t mean there weren’t any dangers involved. Forgetting the hundred and one magical things that could go wrong for the moment, I concentrated on the more human world kind of things. Like the fact that if Twilight’s dream-self was having an increased heart rate and breathing too quickly to get any oxygen, then her real body was probably having the same problems.

“Wake her up,” Luna commanded as her head came over my shoulder to look down at the shivering mare.

I frowned and looked over to little Luna that I had brought forth in her little Woona body. Since I knew going into the dream that Twilight would have probably been terrified out of her mind, I had made Luna’s form all cute and huggable for distracting the purple pony from her fear.

Although, the sudden change in Luna’s usual type of dream intervention made me wonder what she was up to, I touched my horn to Twilight’s head. Even if physical contact was kind of a joke in the dream, it helped me focus, which was the be all and end all of Slumberland.

A flash of light later, and she was gone. With the sleeper awakened, the dream quickly faded as well, leaving me and my shoulder alicorn out in the hall of dream doors where all slumbering minds were connected.

“Good,” little Woona commented. “Now, return us to the waking world, and I will guide our teleport to Ponyville. She will need us to help sooth her mind.”

I nodded, but stopped before looking back to the little horse. “Wait a second.”

“Yes?” Woona asked with the most adorable chubby cheeks and innocent eyes that blinked twice.

The cuteness did its best to deter me from going on, but I managed to get a Will save. “I can manipulate every facet of a dream. It would have been simple for me to turn this pit into a field of daffodils or something,” I told her before I frowned. “You just didn’t want her to see you as a foal, didn’t you.”

My widdle Woona let out an indignant snort. “I still fail to see the wisdom in putting me in such a body when we have a friend to comfort.”

“What?” I asked with a smirk. “You never hugged your favorite doll after a really scary dream or thunderstorm?”

The red on Woona’s cheeks told me that she did. “Just get us to Twilight’s home already. We can only alter our perception of time so much while we’re here.”

---

After awakening, Luna had us draw on the power of the moon for a long-range teleport. It made me arrive in a stumble at the library as I did my best to keep from falling over.

“Twilight! Twilight are you okay? Come on, say something!”

Hearing Rainbow’s frantic words, I managed to shake off the nausea with sheer panic, and made a hop, skip, and a jump up the stairs to open the future-alicorn’s door. Inside, I saw something that made me want to jump for joy as it put a knife through my heart.

On the bed, Rainbow Dash was cradling Twilight’s shaking body with her wings while the unicorn’s head was resting against the pegasus’s shoulder. Even though her magic still kept her forelegs wrapped around Rainbow’s lower neck, I could tell Twilight was doing her best to return the hug.

It was the first time I saw Twilight look so…young, like a little girl that had just seen the monster in her closet. Sure, I knew on paper she was nearly nineteen years old, but pony society created very different adults than my old one did. And right now, Twilight might as well have been a five-year-old girl that really needed a hug.

“Twilight I’m sorry I called you a fraidy-pony. We can sleep downstairs if you want,” the blue pony said before looking up at me with unshed tears.

“P-Princess Luna, help!” Rainbow-freaking-Dash actually begged as tears started to form in her eyes. “Twilight, she started screaming in her sleep, and I couldn’t wake her up, and-and-”

I trotted forward at Luna’s directing before she started talking softly. “Shhhh Twilight Sparkle. You are within thy bedroom, flanked by friends and as safe as any pony under my protection. You need not fear what may come from a fall,” she said as I put a wing across the terrified pony’s back. “Now, steady thyself, and be the master of thy own heartbeat.”

The extra presence helped, and soon Twilight’s breathing started to become more even. As things started to calm down, I looked around and noticed something was missing. “Uh…where’s Spike?”

Rainbow cleared her throat and blushed. “Uh…Rarity offered to take him tonight. She’s letting the CMC sleep over at her place and…um, do you know who they are?”

“We read Twilight’s reports,” I assured Dash. Although I didn’t know if I ever wanted to actually meet the girls. Not that I didn’t think I could survive their cuteness after taking both Woona and Dinky, but…Tirek caused less collateral damage than those kids!

“And what was that you were going on about earlier?” I asked, not wanting to get into the subject of the three foals. Luna’s job would have us dealing with them soon enough. “With the apologizing.”

That made Rainbow Dash wince. “Right…that,” she admitted with an embarrassed blush. “Me and Twilight had a fight earlier, and…well, we had another one when it was time to go to bed because she didn’t want to climb the stairs, and I called her a scaredy-pony and-and now she-”

“It’s okay Rainbow,” Twilight suddenly spoke up in a dull tone with half-lidded eyes. She nuzzled the pegasus for a few seconds, and sighed. “I’m the one who started it all. The Best Young Fliers Competition isn’t stupid. I shouldn’t have insulted something that was so important to you.”

Instead of indulging in my curiosity, I looked down at the purple unicorn. “How you feeling Twilight?”

The mare in question actually pulled herself closer to Rainbow. “…like an idiot,” she mumbled before burying her head in the pegasus’s shoulder. “I just don’t understand. I know I’m safe here. I know it’s impossible for me to fall with Rainbow here. I’ve even learned the self-levitation spell that Princess sent over via Spike…but I just can’t stop shaking when I’m more than a few feet off the ground. I could barely make it up the stairs. What’s wrong with me Princess Luna?”

This time, Luna didn’t chastise our friend for using her title in private. Twilight had her friend, they were attached at the neck at the moment. What she needed was an all-knowing authority figure to offer comfort and security. “There is nothing complex about it Twilight Sparkle. You are afraid, and fear is the mind killer. It dulls our wits and forces ponies to react more out of instinct than intelligence,” she said before having me move down to nuzzle her. “Do not be ashamed. You suffered a close call, it will take time to recover from such an ordeal.”

“Until then, do you want us to do something?” I asked. “Move the mattress downstairs, maybe?”

Twilight nodded after a few seconds of thought.

Keeping Twilight calm turned out to be more of a chore than the mystical labor that we accomplished through levitation. Then, once the soft part of Twilight’s bed was put on the library floor, we went back for the sheets and remade everything just the way Ms OCD wanted it to be. After that, the girls were back under the sheets, and I was laying down on the floor to talk to them softly.

“Is there anything else you need Twilight?” I asked her gently. “Or you Rainbow?” No need to leave my Dashie out of the request for requests. Just because she wasn’t in a constant state of terror didn’t mean the pegasus wasn’t alright. If we didn’t get them unstuck by the end of tomorrow…no Best Young Flier’s competition.

And honestly, the prospect of that fucking terrified me!

Rainbow waved me off with a wing as she drew in close to Twilight. “I’m good.”

Twilight however, wasn’t. “Can you keep me from falling asleep?” she asked in a whimper.

“No,” Luna told her gently. “But I am more than willing to stay with you through the night to ensure your dreams are peaceful. In fact, we could create a lucid dreamscape for you to safely experience heights again if you wish.”

The prospect of going up high made Twilight pull herself next to Rainbow even more. As for the pegasus, she looked over at Twilight and then back to us. “Uh…what about me?”

I shrugged. Although, I could kind of understand what Dash was asking. Being latched onto Twilight all day meant no flying for her. A lucid dream meant freedom. “Well, I’m sure I could give you a dream of endless skies and-”

“No,” Rainbow cut me off. “What I mean is…uh, can you like…put me inside Twilight’s dream too?”

As Rainbow asked her question, I stayed silent so Luna could answer. Because in truth…I didn’t know if she could. Sure, Luna had done it on the show, but I had no idea just how complex that kind of magic was. I had my limits after all.

But Luna didn’t seem to agree with my doubts. “Yes,” she told them after a few moments.

“Rainbow, why would you-”

Dash snorted at the question before Twilight could even finish. “Pfft! Please! I told you when we were practicing I’d catch you if you fell Twilight,” she said before smirking. “It’s so easy, I can do it in my sleep.”

For my part, I rolled my eyes as Rainbow managed to be both reassuring and an annoying braggart at the same time.

As for Twilight, she actually giggled, and then her face fell. “I’m sorry Rainbow. If it wasn’t for me thinking you could drop me, or lose your grip and casting that spell in a panic, we wouldn’t be like this right now.”

Once again, Rainbow rolled her eyes. “You do remember I went to flight camp with Fluttershy, right?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “This right here? Every single night for about a month.”

Judging by the confused look on Twilight’s face, I was pretty sure she was referring to something else, but…the purple horse just let it slide before she snuggled up to Rainbow Dash in this sweet but infuriating to the shipping industry way before I covered them both with Luna’s wing while she guided me through casting a shared dream spell.

For the rest of the night, the four of us spent our time around a dreamscape Ponyville, doing pretty much whatever we wanted. And I mean that literally. I think being able to just swim through the air at will helped Twilight with her fears a little, but…she still had a nervous look on her face just glancing down at the ground from the dreamland version of her balcony.

---

The afternoon after I had helped Twilight get her fear of heights a little under control, I went back to my old post awakening routine. I snagged a light blue unicorn to hug and nuzzle while I waited for my coffee to cool a not-Twilight nerdy unicorn to finish a long winded explanation about how it was going to be impossible to separate Twilight and Dash before the spell ran out of juice without risking damage to the purple unicorn.

So, then came the other options of how we could make sure Dash got to perform in the Best Young Flyers competition…

“Well,” Moondancer said as she held up a chart in her magic with a picture of two ponies and a bunch of math on it that I didn’t quite grasp besides what numbers the symbols meant. “Since simply holding Twilight down with your magic or placing an impediment to her travel back to Rainbow Dash isn’t an option, I’d say the easiest way to get around the problem would be to use a controlled levitation spell on Twilight to make her weightless.”

As I made it look like I was looking over the math, or really just giving Luna a chance to do it, Minuette raised her hoof to block my vision. “But uh…wouldn’t she still create some kind of drag for Rainbow?” she asked before giggling a bit. “Although, seeing Dash do tricks with Twilight stuck in front of her would be pretty funny.”

Luna cleared her throat. “While sound in theory, my gay little Minuette has a point,” she said. “From what I understand, the competition Rainbow wishes to enter is supposed to involve a great deal of activity. I doubt she would be able to win with such a handicap considering her reckless tendencies.”

I managed to console myself with the fact that Luna managed not to flat-out call my little Dashie Rainbow Crash. Otherwise, her royal high-ass would have gotten her picture in the paper tomorrow doing something that would have made her look like a total plot.

But now was not the time for me to be angry at Luna for the things she didn’t do. It was time for me to be miffed at Moondancer for what she couldn’t do. “So…that’s it then?” I asked as the anxiety built in my mind. Rainbow couldn’t miss out on the Best Young Fliers Comp! It would be a crime against pony nature!

“Well…” Moondancer said in that extremely hesitant way that told me there was one other option that I wouldn’t really like. But before I could demand she just spit it out rather than let the suspense kill me, she managed to start talking again. “We could reduce Twilight’s size so that she wouldn’t create a drag, but maintaining that kind of spell would take a lot of power.”

Luna said what I was thinking. “Power that only an alicorn could provide?”

When Moondancer reluctantly nodded, Luna had me roll our eyes and snort. “Such a solution should have been the first offering young Moondancer,” she went on. “Tis true that I was a bit more…aloof in the past, and might have become angry at the suggestion as it is beneath the personal attentions of a princess, but in recent days...I have found that helping ponies provides me a great joy. Besides, as the contest is during daylight hours, tis Nighty’s decision on whether we should attend. And I believe she would be most-”

“Princess Luna! Princess Luna!” a voice came from outside Luna’s bedroom door in a panicked shout.

I looked up to the door with a frown when a brown stallion in palace dress came galloping in. Luna spoke in an exasperated tone. “Oh what is it now?”

“P-Princess Celestia sent me to fetch-I mean,” he corrected when I growled at that. “S-Summon you to the meeting with the buffalo tribe representative!”

The announcement threw my mind off kilter for a second, and I looked over to Sparkler, who had a confused look on her face as she looked through the notepad in front of her. “Uh…that’s not on the schedule,” she said before her eyes widened and she quickly looked up at Luna. “Princess! This isn’t a scheduling error! I promise you, I didn’t know anything about a buffalo meeting.”

Luna was quick to calm the hot pink pony’s fears of job insecurity, then ordered Moondancer to bring her research on the size reduction spell after we were done so that she could ‘walk me through it’ since a princess didn’t need reminders on how to do magic. Since image was everything to a ruler, I didn’t mention the fact that after a thousand years on her own, Luna was probably a bit rusty with the lesser known magics.

With that all taken care of, we headed down the hall, following the nervous messenger. It was one of the few times that I didn’t care how much the scowl on my face frightened a pony. I didn’t know what idiot had decided that Luna needed to be kept out of the loop, but I hoped that it would get back to him just how pissed Nightmare Moon was about it. To help with that, I loomed, a scowled, I sneered, and even snarled a bit every time the messenger looked back at me.

Then, I kicked open the doors to the throne room with my front hoof, and thanks to the distracting question of if it counted as kicking when it was the front hoof since they served as a pony’s hands half the time, the anger I had been so precariously holding onto since it was next to impossible to stay mad at a pony for long went up in smoke. And the annoyance from losing my grip on my anger wasn’t even enough to get it going again.

The throne room was as immaculate as ever with its red carpet and golden everything that wasn’t colored ivory white. Even the damn guards matched the color scheme, and my foreknowledge said it wouldn’t be until shortly before Luna got all the credit for revealing Chrysalis as a Cadance imposter that we would get our gold and light-dark stallions that weren’t even really bluish-black in coat color but were still supposed to represent Luna in the diarchy.

Once I got up to where Celestia was sitting, I could feel she held enough anger for the both of us. And I do mean felt. Although it didn’t show on her face, whenever Tia got really angry, she apparently affected the temperature around her. According to Luna, she even burst into flames when things got really heated.

“Something wrong, Sister?” Luna asked evenly.

Celestia let out a long sigh, and the heat coming from her went down a little. “I’m sorry for this Luna,” she told her sister. “Apparently, some ponies in the castle still haven’t gotten the memo that there are two princess in Equestria now.”

I looked over to the old horse. “And isn’t this a bit early for a meeting with the buffalo? I mean…we just got back from Appleloosa. What’s so big that they had to meet with you all so soon?”

“From what I understand, she came on the transport last night and demanded all morning to see me, only saying that she was the chief, or should I say head representative of her tribe,” Tia told me without her usual motherly demeanor. It was another clue about how pissed she was, although unneeded thanks to the heat. She looked down at the messenger. “You may fetch her now.”

After the stallion bowed and quickly turned to run away, I found my mind in need of something to pay attention to. For a few seconds, I thought to ask if Rarity had decided to stay in the palace for a few days since…well, it was the fucking palace, but with my butt firmly planted on the carpet and me kind of fidgeting around, a new thought came to mind. “Hey Tia…how come Luna doesn’t have her own throne?”

My mouth continued to move on its own accord when I was done talking. “Tis something I have often wondered as of later as well Sister.”

Celestia looked over to us with wide eyes. “Oh Luna, I’m not trying to sidestep you or anything!” she assured the black pony quickly. “It’s just…you know it wouldn’t be just a throne. Well, we could give you just a throne, but let’s be honest with ourselves, it would be a golden throne to go with the rest of the décor. To give you a proper throne, we’d have to redesign the entire palace, then actually go through with implementing the designs and…it’s going to take years Sister.”

I found myself nodding before Celestia went on explaining things in greater detail, which kind of made me agree with her a little more. Despite her charity work and reforms, Luna was still a pretty big outsider in the Equestrian government. Big and quick changes in government always caused more problems than they solved, if they even solved anything at all.

So, in about a year, Luna would begin taking petitioners at the end of the day when Celestia retired for the night. In two years, she would establish her own court that did the exact same thing as she had been doing, but it would be hers instead of just an offshoot of Celestia’s. In three, the castle would finally be renovated to reflect the fact that Luna had returned. Such were the plans of creatures that would be around forever.

In the end, Luna had to park her plot on the carpet as we waited for the big dumb lump of fur that wanted to talk to the sisters for…some reason I couldn’t understand. To be honest, I thought that Celestia had let them off easy after finding out that they tended to butt heads with Equestrian settlements every few generations that ended with the loss of a few pony lives and lots of pony livelihoods before they were driven back and forced to change their traditional route.

Although, I guess Luna getting involved this time made the big white pony change her tactic of not doing anything to solve the long-term problem of another nation that repeatedly performed military actions against another group of creatures they said didn’t belong. But before I could ask Tia just what prompted such a change, the door opened to admit…well…it was a buffalo, but I really doubted it was some bigwig in the tribe.

And I say it because…hell, all buffalo look alike to me. Even the little ones that were about the size of a pony. Which happened to be the size of the one that nervously walked up to the dais where the three of us were sitting. “Um…P-Princesses?”

The voice really helped me ID her though. Being a MLP fan, one of my things was to try and find the particular quadrupeds featured in the show. So while I had been down in Appleloosa, I had of course hunted for the only other buffalo with a name that I had known beforehand.

Little Strongheart was kind of what anyone would expect from a teenager raised in a pretty cloistered society that had just been introduced to new ideas. She respected buffalo traditions, but when those ideas were challenged, she didn’t just bury her head in the sand in an attempt to avoid the argument. As such, she had actually been in the first group to walk out of Celestia’s reservation with the willingness to listen.

Other than that though, I didn’t know all that much about her. To the ponies, Nightmare Moon was a monster that haunted their dreams and showed up once a year to eat foals. But to the buffalo, I was responsible for every storm, drought, disease, stubbed toe and sneeze they experienced in an attempt to stop their migration and bring about eternal night. It made any sort of conversation pretty hard, and after they all had attempted to trample Appleloosa, I didn’t feel like trying all that much to work past the issue.

“Approach,” Celestia ordered in a voice that just screamed ‘I’M PISSED AT YOU’.

LSH gulped, and trotted forward before prostrating herself before the horse goddesses. “P-Princesses…I’m um…I-I’m here on behalf of the buffalo tribe,” she got out before gulping and looking up at us. At least until Celestia frowned even more, then she looked back at the ground.

“Tell us why are you here, and not a new chieftain,” Celestia said in her stern voice that made no buts about the fact that it was an order, not a request.

The little buffalo gulped. “W-We can’t select a new chief until the current one either steps down, or is unable to continue the great stampede,” she said before looking away. “Not that it looks like we’re going to. The rest of the tribe, I mean.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “If your tribe has no new leader, then why-” she let out an irritated sigh. “You’re not actually a representative of your tribe, are you? You just said that to get an audience with me.”

All of a sudden, the guards in the room unfurled their wings and crouched a bit, glaring at the buffalo that was in front of them under false pretenses. After all, the defenseless little child in front of them could have been as assassin or something with her complete lack of magic and weaponry! Plus, it was a fight they actually had a chance of winning. With all the marks that were going to be showing up in the loss column pretty soon, another strike in the win side would help Luna stop from downsizing the active military in a few months when the changelings kicked all of their asses.

“I’m sorry I lied!” Little Strongheart blurted out desperately. “But…but…we need your help!”

Since Celestia didn’t look much in the mood for games, and was admittedly perfectly justified in tossing the little girl out on her ass, I leaned in to whisper in the goddess’s ear. “Oh come on Tia, let’s hear her out. It beats another meeting with the council at least.”

The suggestion didn’t seem to make Celestia any more amicable to the buffalo’s presence. “So I should postpone a meeting with the ponies it is my duty to protect in order to address the concerns of a creature not under my rule that has come here under false pretense?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Okay...yeah look, with you being a national leader my official advice for you is to kick her out. She is not your responsibility in any way,” I admitted. “But on a more personal one? At least hear her out. I don’t think you as a pony couldn’t at least not bother to hear another creature’s cries for help. Luna, back me up here, would you?”

There was a short pause as I waited for the Alicorn of the Moon to either help me out, or pull the rug out from under me. Which she probably would, the night goddess was the more active guardian of Equestria after all. And as of a few days ago, the buffalo had affirmed themselves to be the enemies of ponies.

“We might as well, Sister,” Luna finally said, which surprised me just a little before she went on talking. “Besides, your meeting with the council will have to be put on hold anyway. We must journey to Ponyville and assist Twilight Sparkle with her newest problem.”

Celestia studied us for a moment, and then nodded. “Very well,” she said before looking back to the calf. “Despite your duplicity, I will hear your petition little buffalo. What is this problem that your nation now faces which I can solve?”

Once again, it took some time for the reply to come. Little Strongheart slowly got to her feet, hooves, or…whatever, and looked down at the ground clearly thinking about what she was going to say. “W-Why?” she finally asked as she looked up at us with a frown. “Why did you-why did you do it?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific. If you are asking for the reason why I guided ponies to settle that area, Appleloosa sits on the edge of the San Palomino desert, an area of poorly tended earth that had been expanding these past hundred years. An earth pony settlement there, as well as another in the East, keeps it from continuing to spread across Equestria. The area where the ponies settled was the southernmost point where there was still fertile land they could use, and eventually expand thanks to their gift in growing things,” Celestia replied evenly. She wasn’t meaning to soothe, or even explain in a way that helped let the listener understand. It was a simple statement of fact.

Little Strongheart furiously shook her head. “Not that! Why did you have to tell us about our stampeding?” she demanded, apparently having found her inner fire. “We weren’t hurting anyone!”

That actually made Celestia angry. She frowned, and the temperature around her went up a few degrees. “Is that a fact?” the goddess asked rhetorically. “Your belief system blamed my sister for all of its problems. When we approached your chief, he would not even listen to me speak with Luna by my side. Instead, he insulted her and attacked!”

I gulped as the air got all wavy, the way it did when there was so much heat it distorted the area around it. “Uh, Tia?”

She didn’t seem to hear me, and kept speaking. “Over the years, my little ponies have run across your tribe several times, with a few incidents such as the one in Appleloosa occurring every few decades because they didn’t want to adjust their traditional path for a fence, a grove, or whatever else stood in your tribe’s way before they also attacked the settlement that created it. Then I would meet with your elders, and warn them of the consequences should they attack my little ponies again. Your herd would then adjust its path, and a few decades the new trail that the buffalo ran would become their ancient traditional path that had always been run because none of your elders were alive to remember differently.

“But now, things are different,” Celestia went on. “Now my sister has returned to Equestria, and taken her throne. The great evil that all of your kind so despises. So tell me little buffalo, with Luna on the throne, would your tribe just cause a problem every few years, or would they have become continuous aggressors?”

As the Little Strongheart cowered under Celestia’s gaze, I looked over to the princess with trepidation. While I kind of saw things from her point of view, the big alicorn on her throne speaking down to the little bovine creature was just coming off as a bully.

And yeah, she kind of had a right to be angry. I mean, Luna was the one big rage button Celestia had, and the buffalo had apparently been tap dancing on it with the way they made her out to be this ancient spirit of darkness.

Still…Strongheart was a kind-of cute little…thing. I didn’t like seeing her afraid.

“Tia tone it down a bit. I mean, it's not like she did anything. The calf’s only…uh…” I paused and looked back to Strong Heart. “How old are you anyway?”

The little buffalo looked up to me with about as much fear as she had for Celestia, despite my attitude. Or maybe because of it. I was the dark goddess of evil to them after all. Acting cordial could only get me so far.

“I-I’m four, Your Majesty,” she said.

…

…

…

I think my brain actually shut down for a moment there, or whatever I had that passed for a brain I mean. My memories and thought processes were stored separately from Luna’s after all.

But, I had a good reason for just going into a time-out for a few seconds.

Because…four?

SHE WAS FOUR YEARS OLD?

HOW THE FUCK WAS SHE ONLY FOUR YEARS OLD?

Maturity, speech and all that other junk shouted teen at the LEAST! More if you were a Braeburn and Strongheart shipper! If you didn’t want him going to jail for getting it on with a minor I mean.

And…okay, I could accept the fact that some creatures in Equestria might not have human-standardized life spans like the ponies did. It was just foolish to think that every single species on the planet went on for the same amount of time.

But…four?

How older were the elders supposed to be then, twelve?

Hell, it was no wonder their chief was such an idiot. He was probably wasn’t old enough to know you don’t pick fights with creatures bigger than you. In a metaphorical sense I mean.

As I wrestled with that little fact, Celestia kept the conversation going. Because she apparently didn’t seem to care something younger than Dinky was the representative of an entire nation!

“Little Strongheart,” Celestia said in a hard voice. “You came here saying that your tribe needed my help. But then demanded an explanation to my actions. You do not remain within our presence to air your grievances. Tell us what your tribe’s dilemma is, or remove yourself from our presence.”

The order put the buffalo’s head back to looking at the ground. “G-Great Princess Celestia, I’m sorry for…getting distracted,” she said before looking back up at us. “And yes, we do have a problem. Ever since we can remember, all we’ve ever done is run. We don’t know anything else, and now that you took it away from us…we don’t know what to do! The elders, they tell us to keep running from behind your barrier because that’s all they know!

“But you…you’re the oldest creature alive! So you have to know,” she said in a tone that was bordering on pleading. “How did all of this start? What did we do before we stampeded? Tell me what we did then. What we’re supposed to do now!”

For the first time since the buffalo came into the room, Celestia got a little…uneasy looking. “Well...” she said. “As for your question on why your tribe believes they…turn the world… We ponies control the weather, the sun, the moon, and the land responds to our touch to grow all thing from food to flowers. Stacked against that, what achievements can the buffalo claim?

“But if it was your tribe and not I that was responsible for the movement of the heavens, then everything ponykind had would have been at your behest,” she finished. “The idea kept you all content, so I saw no reason to show you otherwise until the other day, when your beliefs became a source of hatred and reason for violence on what would be a grand scale.”

Strongheart nodded. “Okay…but, what did we do before then?”

For the first time since the meeting began, Luna actually took control of her mouth to speak. “Such information is not for your ears young one,” she told the buffalo.

I revoked Luna’s speaking privileges a second later. “Whoa, whoa hold on a second!” I said while trying to look around at myself, really wishing I had mirror so I could glare at Luna. “What do you mean it’s not for her ears? If you guys know something about buffalo history, I’M THINKING THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO HEAR IT!”

“Nighty,” Celestia said in warning tone. “There are some things the creatures of this world are not meant to know. And that it one of them. It never ends well.” She looked back to the buffalo. “As for the purpose of your tribe little one…that is for all of you to discover together.”

Before Celestia could get going on whatever speech she had up her proverbial sleeve, I stomped Luna’s hoof into the ground hard enough to get her attention. “Hey! We’re not done here Celestia!” I told her. “And your argument is a bunch of horse apples! A society needs to know where it’s been to know where it’s going!”

Tia looked at me with a reserved expression for a few seconds, and then shifted her gaze over to Strongheart, then back to me. “You’re not going to drop this, even if she leaves, are you?”

“No,” I said evenly.

She looked back to the buffalo. “And you Little Strongheart? Do you really want to know the answer to your question, knowing that it will not be pleasant? Knowing that every other creature on this world who has learned of it has wished they hadn’t?”

That was something I hadn’t expected, and actually made me frown with hesitation. Just what the hell was so bad about Tia telling the buffalo what her ancestors did before ponies were around their part of the world?

“I…yes,” she finally said. “This is what I came here for, so…yes. Tell me what I want to know.”

“Then come with me,” Celestia said before she got up from her throne and walked down the steps leading up to it. “The answer you ask for cannot be told. To truly understand, you have to see it for yourself.”

---

As I followed Celestia down the hallways of Canterlot Castle, I found myself a little disappointed that we weren’t going to some hidden chamber of sects that was locked away in the back of the castle. In fact, five minutes into our trip, I had a pretty good guess when it came to our destination.

So to get my mind off my disappointment, I looked down to the buffalo that was walking around with us. At least she could fill in some holes for me. “So uh…you’re only four years old?” I asked.

Strongheart looked up at me as if I had said I just noticed the sky was blue. “Yes. I turned four one season ago.”

“Then…how old is your chief?”

Still wearing a face that said I was some kind of idiot, Strongheart answered my question. “Sixteen.”

“The uh…elders?”

“Most of them are eighteen, but Elder Strong Will is twenty,” she said. “But he’s getting so slow, the herd will have to leave him behind if-well…I guess we don’t have to do that anymore. Not that he’ll be able to leave Princess Celestia’s cage.”

I had to fight to keep from falling over at that bit of information. There must have been a miscommunication somewhere. What I heard couldn’t have been accurate. “Are you telling me the oldest member of your tribe, or your whole species if just twenty years old?!”

How the hell did they even survive as a civilization? I mean…RAINBOW DASH WAS TWENTY YEARS OLD! It would have been like an entire society run by Rainbow Dashes. It…it just wasn’t possible!

Little Strongheart cowered from my question and actually ran to the other side of the hallway. “W-Why are you so angry?”

“Forgive Nighty little one,” Luna told her gently. “She has recently suffered a loss of memory, and does not know things that are common knowledge to most. And for your information my other, buffalo rarely live past the age of eighteen.”

I just lowered my head and shook it at the realization. A stupid animal living for just two decades, I could get. But a sapient creature? That just… Hell, that wasn’t even enough time for humans to legally drink!

And with the morbid place that got my thoughts going, I just had to ask, “So…what happens when a buffalo gets too old to run? Or gets sick, or gets a broken leg or…wait.” I groaned. They blamed all that on Nightmare Moon. “Never mind, I’m not sure I want to know.”

The hides from those tepees had to come from somewhere after all…

And I really wished I hadn’t thought of that.

We made the rest of the trip in silence.

The place we ended up at was Celestia’s science lab, or maybe alchemy lab would be more precise. Sure the big pony had beakers and test tubes, but a most of the stuff the things she made had effect science just couldn’t explain or duplicate. I don’t care how much aphrodisiac someone drank, it did not make a guy say words like shmoopy-doo.

Tia’s real lab made the one she had in her back room look like a kid’s chemistry set. There was wall to wall potions, ingredients, vials, tubes, Bunsen burners, and even some things that were still moving inside their jars. Thankfully, Celestia had most of the junk behind wards that not even a jackhammer could get through.

Both me and the buffalo waited while she looked around for a bit, and then took out a good-sized bottle full of some kind of milky white liquid. “Wait a second,” I mumbled to myself as I remembered a certain rhyming zebra giving something similar to Twilight about four seasons from now. “It’s that one of those flashback potions?”

“An odd name,” Luna said to answer my question. “But, yes, it is an elixir of days gone by. With it, the child will be shown what happened in the past as an answer to her question.”

Celestia came forward with the drink held in her magic. “This is your last chance to turn away little one,” she said evenly. “Once you embark on this journey, it will not stop until the truth is revealed to you. A truth you will find no comfort in.”

The buffalo gulped, but nodded. “I understand.”

“You must drink it all to look back as far as you wish to see.” Celestia lowered the container for the kid to take a swig, and then a gulp, followed by several seconds of chugging. When the last drop was finally gone, the buffalo stepped back, and her eyes became covered by a soft white glow.

As Little Strongheart’s face became filled with curiosity, and then wonder, I looked over to the princess. “Hey Tia. I know how this thing’s supposed to work and all, but…what exactly is she seeing?”

“You do not know?” Luna asked me. “I had thought your mind retained such information Nightmare.”

I groaned as my sarcasm reflex was triggered. “Yeah, that’s why I took such an interest in pony history,” I told Luna in a deadpan voice. “Because I know everything that’s ever happened, everywhere.”

Before my landlord could take offense, Celestia spoke up. “The events she is witnessing are the same ones that Luna and I were shown by our mother before her passing.”

The mention of Fausticorn, or whatever the hell Luna and Celestia’s mom was, made me just tense up. Despite all the time I had spent with the goddesses, I had never asked them about that because...hell, I’m not sure I wanted to know. “Uh…what events are those?” I asked cautiously.

“When ponykind first came to this land to plant the Seed of Harmony and give life to this world,” she explained in her usual voice. “Of course, that was back before the upheaval, when the only ponies that existed were alicorns.”

My mouth dropped as Tia closed hers…apparently finished dropping her little badly explained bombshell of the origins of ponykind. I actually waited for a few seconds before she would go on, and when she didn’t I flared my wings out in frustration over the worst history lesson EVER!

“You can’t just stop there!” I yelled at her. “What do you mean one tribe? Ponies were all alicorns to start with? How did that change? What’s the Seed of Harmony? And what’s all that junk about coming here to this world?” The way Celestia talked, it sounded like the ponies were freaking aliens or something!

Luna stopped me before I could keep going. “I thought you knew of the Tree of Harmony,” she said.

I rolled Luna’s eyes. “Uh yeah Lulu! You know I do.” That was one conversation I could remember having.

“Well, where do trees come from?” she asked in that smarmy way, and then went on without giving me time to provide the obvious answer. “With it’s power, our precursors spread life across the land, ignited the sun, and created the moon to help control the tides. And once the world was lush and green for our ancestors, they brought about new life to play and frolic with in the skies, seas and fields.”

Although a little more in-depth than Celestia’s explanation…all Luna’s help did was raise more questions! If all the ponies were alicorns at one point in history, what the hell had happened to change that? Was everything on the fucking planet bio-engineered by a nearly-dead race of talking, flying, magical ponies? If the Tree of Harmony was the source of all life on Equis, would all life on the planet just die if the plunder vines weren’t stopped?

As I tried to wrap my head around everything they had just told me, the little buffalo blinked her eyes a few times, her face turning to horror as the vision ended, and she looked up at the three of us with wide eyes. “You mean…we…the buffalo…we…we’re just a bunch of…TOYS?”

Celestia sighed and looked over to me with a frown. “Now do you see why do not like sharing this information?” she asked before turning her attention to Little Strong Heart. “And I’d say your kind and many others were more akin to pets.”

---

Brunch was…quiet. The kind of quiet it that really made me appreciate the size of the dining hall. Which was too big by the way. Much too big, with windows that were too big, and ceilings that were too high, and a table that was too long. I mean, we were sitting at a rectangular table big enough to fit, like…twenty. A square table would have been better. It still would have been able to seat me, Tia, the buffalo that had just kind of followed us along after learning her entire species were created to be glorified dogs, and Cadance. Cadance had shown up for brunch, but I wasn’t about to burden my best friend with all the heavy shit that was on my mind.

And focusing on the sizing of the dining room didn’t stop me from thinking about it for long, like I had been doing the whole way to brunch.

Despite the fact that Tia and Lulu were being about as vague as could be on…well, EVERYTHING. The fact that ponies had always been on Equis instead of evolving naturally or something did answer a few questions in the back of my mind, like how in the hell did the planet survive before ponies came around if it relied on them to move the sun and the moon.

It also helped me understand Celestia’s position in regards to non-ponies a bit better too, and her…near-callousness towards them. To her, everything on the planet aside from ponies might as well have been a stray dog. Sure, they were talking dogs that could do some interesting tricks, but Fluttershy had a book club of non-speaking animals for crying out loud! When you’re born into a world where everything is smart enough to read, it kind of detracts from the idea that sapient species are precious.

So what if a creature could talk? Hell, Angel was a better friend to the ponies than half of the buffalo tribe had been.

I wondered if that was why the sheep and the cows were so willing to accept places at a farm rather than build their own society. Was there some sort of drive to just sit around and do nothing encoded in their DNA, like some kind of non-pony invisible cutie mark? Were they even meant to be pets at all instead of providers of a natural resource?

And what about the ponies? If alicorns had basically made the planet and everything on it, shouldn’t there have been a hell of a lot more of them? Equestria might have extended across a good part of a continent, but that made things seem a little underpopulated when it came to a race that bioengineered everything with magic. Especially when the story of Hearth's Warming was thrown into the mix. Ponies hadn’t been anywhere near as numerous as they were beforehand so…had Celestia and Luna’s ancestors suffered some kind of near-extinction level event in the past?

Asking either of the old alicorns was an option, I guess. But…

Before I could think any more on the subject, Cadance spoke up. “So, Little Strongheart, was it? Are you feeling okay? You haven’t touched your food.”

“Huh?” she said looking over to the pink alicorn in surprise, then back down to the bowl of sliced apples in front of her, already peeled of course. Nothing but the most opulent for the palace. “Oh it’s just…I was wondering if I should eat this. Only the elders were ever allowed to eat anything but food made from grass.”

I winced as Cadance visibly tried not to blench. I’ll admit, my curiosity on the subject of why ponies never actually ate grass had me trying to do that once out of sheer curiosity since she wouldn‘t even touch hay. Emphasis on tried. Luna had slammed our head into the ground when I tried to take a bite and threatened to tell the girls I was slipping back into my evil ways if I kept it up.

As for Cadance, her horn lit up as she shoved the bowl right under the buffalo’s nose. “Then trust me, you’re in for a treat,” she said before looking over to the big white alicorn sitting across from her. “They only eat grass?”

“Well their entire nation does do nothing but run from sunup to sundown,” I said from my place next to Celestia. Foraging societies weren’t high on the whole development when it came to…pretty much anything.

For some reason, Cadance actually smiled a little at that. “Oh! Well then, you must see a lot of interesting things. I’ve never been south of Equestria’s borders. What’s the land like down there.”

Strongheart looked away from the other princess as Cadance centered her attention on her. “It’s…very dry. Not much else besides grass. There are some forests and swamps, but…the elders say that such places are to be avoided.”

The information made the pink pony a little crestfallen, and Celestia spoke up when Cadance looked back to her own plate of greenery. “You forget that Equestria can only send weather to the south by itself my niece. Nor can we monitor how well the rain we send feeds the lands. Still, it is better than the lands the centaurs rule. They do not allow ponies to help them there at all.”

A second later, the little buffalo took a bite from an apple, and froze. “This…this is amazing!” she said with a mouth that was nearly full, some of her food escaping as she did.

I looked at her askance for a second, and then remembered. Right…she’s only four years old. And considering the age of their chief, I was starting to think that him making the buffalo abandon maybe a century of tradition just for an apple pie wasn’t all that unbelievable anymore.

Ugh…that was still hard to believe.

Okay sure, thirteen was considered an adult way back in human times too, and most guys didn’t make it over thirty five back then, but…to see an entire species with such a short lifespan…maybe that was why the cows and sheep were content to just sit around and do nothing. It would take too long to learn how to run a civilization of their own.

Kind of made me wonder how long the griffons and diamond dogs lived though. I’d have to ask a princess about it later.

I frowned at looked over to Tia, clearing my mind about all those age questions, I focused on something she had just said a minute ago. “Wait a minute, that’s how they get rain down south. The pegasi just…kick it and hope it hits some crops or something before all the water runs out?”

Celestia sighed and looked over to me. “We simply do not have the resources to send weather that far south without putting several ponies in grave danger,” she explained. “Where did you think most of Moondancer’s buffalo research came from Nighty? I have attempted to send expeditions beyond our borders to get a clear picture of what the land is like, but finding safe routes is much too costly in pony lives.”

“Umm, Auntie,” Cadance spoke up. “Don’t the buffalo come from south of our borders though? They must know the areas that need to be avoided, right?”

Celestia blinked, and then the three of us looked over to the buffalo sitting across from us very slowly.

The buffalo looked up from her empty bowl of apples with a mouth full of food.

---

In the end, we sent Cadance down south with Little Strongheart to negotiate a…well, I guess it would have to be called a weather shipping agreement. The buffalo would act as guides, and a lot of pegasi that were in the royal guard would be granted continued employment. Even though the lands to the south weren’t part of Equestria, Tia didn’t want to see them just dry up and die. There was apparently a lot of stuff that lived down south on…what I guess was some kind of savanna or something.

It would be awhile before all the details could get hammered out, but it was better than nothing I supposed.

As for me and Tia, we hopped the train to Ponyville with Moondancer and the rest of my entourage. There was no way I was leaving my ponies back home incase some big emergency came up and I hand to stay away from Canterlot for an extended period again.

Part of me wanted to start demanding answers about the history of pony from Celestia and Luna as soon as we were away from Canterlot, but…my mind kept drifting back to the buffalo. With the extra piece of the puzzle Strongheart had provided, my rational mind found itself working something out as we reached the little hamlet.

“Overgrazing,” I said to myself over the rumbling of the train on the tracks.

Celestia looked up from her tea, something I had noticed her drinking more and more ever since she went on her diet. “Pardon?”

The question made me look up at the princess. “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.”

“About what?” she asked.

“The buffalo. Sorry, to poke holes in your idea Celestia, but…” I paused as I tried to think of a nice way to say this. “The reason for their migration. I think it was to prevent them from eating up all the grass in a single area. They may have come up with that whole ‘we turn the earth on the wheel’ or something, but…early on, at least some of them had to have realized that if they stayed in an area with little rain for too long, they would have eaten all the grass to the point where it couldn't grow back. So, they kept everyone moving and foraging for food.”

Celestia nodded. “Hmm, an interesting theory,” she said after a sip from her cup. “I would suppose that was why they came up north so much as well. Even though they do not tend it as well as the more valued crops, grass does grow better around towns with a sizable earth pony population.”

The screech of the train’s brakes brought an end to our conversation, and Tia just made her stuff disappear in a flash of magic. We made our way out of the train, and only had to endure a little bowing from a surprised crowd of ponies that had no idea we were coming.

After telling everyone to get up, I set my girls off to meet with their friend Lyra and told Sparkler to go home, then we alicorns headed to Golden Oaks with our Twilight recolor in tow to carry the books. Celestia knocked on the door, and we found a little purple lizard waiting for us on the inside. “Ah, Spike is Twilight in? We have a workaround for her and Rainbow Dash’s problem.”

“Oh thank Celesti-uh…” he said before stopping and staring up at the alicorn nervously.

Tia giggled. “Well, Moondancer is the one who deserves the credit. She was the one that came up with the idea after finding the spells. We’re just here to cast them. Now, would you be a dear and announce us?”

“R-Right away!” Spike replied before he dashed off to start calling out the names of the two ponies while Celestia and I ducked into the library to gain admittance.

It took a few minutes for the dragon to fetch the mares. Not that he couldn’t find them or anything. That excuse would have to wait a year for when Twilight got her eyesore of a castle. But…well…they were kind of peeved at him for breaking in on them in the bathroom. With the two of them the way they were, Twilight had to apparently work out a whole new system to…you know.

I busied myself with looking at all the books in the library, and taking note of the missing mattress that had been in the middle of the floor the night before as I did. It was kind of disturbing just how many pony books bore a striking resemblance to human literature. They even had a pony version of A Song of Ice and Fire for crying out loud!

When the two girls finally appeared, Celestia stepped forward to speak. “Twilight, good news. We think we have a way to allow Rainbow Dash to participate in her competition.”

Both of the ponies got the brightest smiles I had seen in forever. “You mean you’ve found a counter to my attraction spell?” Twilight asked happily.

“Yes-gahk!” Rainbow added as she tried to jump into the air, and got held down by Twilight’s gentle chokehold.

The purple unicorn winced. “Sorry.”

Rainbow let out a garbled reply, but it kind of sounded like, “S’allright.”

“Well…no,” Tia told her with a nervous expression. Then, she looked over to the unicorn with the weird hair in the sweater. “Moondancer, if you would explain?”

Which kind of turned out to be a bad idea, because Moony decided to speak to Twilight in Nerdese. I caught a word every now and then, but by the time she was done, both me and Rainbow were tilting our heads in confusion while Twilight looked…absolutely terrified. Her legs shook, and if it wasn’t for Dash holding her up, I think she would have been huddling on the ground in fear.

“Twilight?” Luna asked.

The little unicorn looked over to us in fear. “I…I have to go to Cloudsdale?”

“Say what?” Rainbow asked, which prompted a much more understandable explanation from the little purple unicorn. Being with Dash for so long had obviously made her fluent in idiot, an impressive feat for a genius.

When she was done, Rainbow Dash just blinked, and slumped her ears. “Oh. That’s uh…are you sure you can’t just suck it up and-” she said before Twilight let out a little whine, cutting her off.

I stepped in to save the day. “Twilight, you’d be perfectly safe,” I assured her. “We could…uh, put a shield around you to protect you, and-sleep! I could put you to sleep, and make sure your dreams are-”

“No.” Strangely enough, the word didn’t come from Twilight, or Celestia, or off-color Twilight…and I think Spike ran off to go see Rarity or something, because he was just gone.

So I looked over to the pony with the unicorn attached to her neck. “Rainbow?”

Dash sighed and shook her head. “If Twilight feels that bad about going up there, then…no. I…it’s…it’s just a...stupid contest,” she said forcing the final words out as her ears dipped.

“What?” Twilight exclaimed before she picked herself back up. “Rainbow, I didn’t-I mean.” She looked over to us. “Okay, never mind what I said. I can…I…we can…”

Her legs began to shake again.

The pegasus let out a groan. “Geeze! you can’t even lie about feeling okay,” she said in an annoyed tone before looking back to the rest of us. “And if Twilight isn’t okay with going up, then…then we don’t have to go. So…sorry to make you come all this way for nothing, or…whatever.”

I wanted to call it a noble sacrifice , but…it was pretty obvious Rainbow was pretty pissed about the whole thing. The idea of postponing it came to mind, but…I had no idea if we could even do that. More than likely, it would cause one hell of a logistical nightmare.

“Rainbow,” Twilight said. “I can-”

“Would you cut it out already?” the pegasus snapped at the unicorn before she looked away. “Ugh…sorry.”

Before the two of them to get into it again, Celestia cleared her throat, making both of the ponies look to her. “Are the two of you certain of this, then?”

Twilight shook her head. “No! Princess, I can…I-I can go,” her mouth said while the rest of her body told us she most definitely could not.

The other pony groaned. “Oh come on! You can’t even say it without shaking!” Rainbow shouted at Twilight before she looked back to Celestia, and rubbed her forehead when the unicorn flinched away from her as much as she could. “It’s…it’s fine. I mean, I already did the Rainboom. I know I’m good. I don’t need another stupid trophy to tell me so. And…I can always meet the Wonderbolts…later.”

Hell, even if Rainbow had said yes, I don’t think Celestia would have let them do it anyway.

“Interesting,” Celestia said after looking over the two of them for a moment, making the shorter ponies blink. “A friend that is willing to face what she fears the most for the happiness of another, and a friend who is willing to throw away what she wants the most for the comfort of another. I expect quite the interesting report from the two of you when this attraction spell finally runs its course.”

“The two of us?” Twilight repeated.

“Oh, and Rainbow Dash,” Celestia went on, addressing the blue pony directly. “I know that you're feeling down right now, and this does not come with the fame of the competition, but from what I can tell…any pegasus that is able to pull off a feat only I have been able to do since Equestria’s founding truly is the greatest flier in all of Equestria. Not just today, but in all of its history.”

That seemed to cheer Dash up a little. She smiled just a little, and nodded her head. “Thanks, Princess.”

We stayed for a little while longer, making sure Twilight and Rainbow were okay enough with their living arrangements as we sent Moondancer off to say hello to the rest of her friends. And I made a mental note to check up on the two of them until the attraction spell ran its course. Not to mention make sure Rainbow was sleeping okay. Noble or not, giving up on her trip to the competition had put the pegasus in a really bad mood.

Once we were done at the library, Tia and I went around Ponyville to say hi to everyone and deal with any complaints the citizenry had when it came to how Celestia was running the government. It took us nearly the rest of the day.

When we got back onto the train, sans escort of friends that decided to stay in Ponyville for a ‘Canterlot Friends Slumber Party’ or something, I looked over to Celestia. “So…about this potion that lets me look into Equestria’s past.”

Author's Note:

Probably some typos and a bunch of other stuff that needs to be fixed when I go back to edit it, but made my thanksgiving deadline.

Comments

[The oracle]

And thew butterfly effect continues

[Astropye]

...76 people reading this right now. Huh.

[Dravkwn]

6673084 Briefly climbed to 92 for me.

[Muhanoid]

sixty beats per minute

Listen to your heart beats. Or put a finger to your neck. 60 is one beat per second. 90 can be a good fir fast walk.
120 for a slow run.
160 is racing for jumping up a ladder.
I tested my maximum and it's three beats per second or 180 bpm. That is racing heart while running full speed.

Unless... Do horses / ponies have very slow heartbeats under normal circumstances?

Edit: great chapter!

[Lycanthromancer]

"Sixty beats per minute" is only one heartbeat per second. Really not that fast.

"Two Hundred forty beats per minute" is racing.

Just, y'know, so you know.

Also, well done on The Dress. I laughed.

[wlam]

Minuette and Twinkleshine might have become a little hoarse

I'm pretty sure they already were.

[Astropye]

6673117
I think that's the most people that I've ever seen reading story at the same time.

[PrincessOfTheEnd]

I get the feeling that next chapter is gonna be a ball of fun.

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

not thrilled with the whole origin thing at all.

[SilentMech]

A handful of minor errors around the brunch section. Also, I agree with Nighty about why they first started to migrate. They probably did it instinctually, and justified it by saying they turned the world. The ones who didn't either starved, or got a late start. After all, even if they are a created species, there is a reason why nature made them so efficient while chucking everything including the kitchen sink at the problem of survival, certain things just work better than anything else and thus, evolution.

[Fireeaters]

6673084
6673117
The shit are you on about?

[Fireeaters]

Drinking age is 18 in Canada. It's not "humans to drink" it's "Americans to drink".

[wlam]

For the first time since the buffalo came into the room, Celestia got a little…uneasy looking. “Well...” she said. “As for your question on why your tribe believes they…turn the world… We ponies control the weather, the sun, the moon, and the land responds to our touch to grow all thing from food to flowers. Stacked against that, what achievements can the buffalo claim?

I am really starting to dislike this Celestia. That is such a smug and unbelievably assholish thing to say. And she's telling that to a four year old. "We do everything that's important, you will never amount to anything. Now run along and go be a good little sub-pony somewhere else." That is just plain dickish.

[Fictional Fanatic]

So... this chapter was a bit depressing in a sense...

[Wellwater]

The shipblock... SO META. It is glorious. The tears of frustrated TwiDash shippers are as fragrant perfume!

[LegacyMine]

Twilight is such a baby.

[Krazyfan1]

wow...
all that talk about turning the world and how important they are, and they are just discarded pets...
i can't wait to see their reaction... i wonder how much of that potion is left?

[Archy the Hobo]

Can't say I like the direction you've gone with the history of equestria or the buffalo, but the rest of the story is still pretty good so... yay?

[CDRW]

This is, uh, quite the dystopian society you're writing up.

[Ryiah]

6673132 Quoted from a quick Google search (link to the full article below).

The pulse measures the rate and strength of the heartbeat. A normal resting horse has a heart rate of 38-40 beats per minute, foals (70-120 bpm), yearlings (45-60 bpm) and 2 year olds (40-50 bpm). Maximum heart rates can exceed 180 beats per minute, but a rate above 80 should be considered serious in most non-exercising horses. Heart rates that stay above 60 in a horse that is calm can be a sign of trouble.

http://www.hygain.com.au/know-horses-vital-signs/

[dunnie_172]

6673132 No average equine heart rate is very similar to average human. However 180 is very fast for a human even at full pace. I'm an overweight late adolescent male and mine wouldn't even hit 160 at full out run. I would suggest you get that checked out. At that speed your heart is pumping the blood too fast for the body to process. 160 bpm is high on its own. 180 is a worrying level for anyone

[dunnie_172]

6673243 there's a meter that shows how many people are reading a story or chapter. It's an eye with a number next to it at the top of the page or the bottom of the chapter, can't remember where it is

[Solid Punch]

Why she said "no" to sleeping spell? Attraction will hold her, levitation and shrinking will help RD, and sleep make it easy for her! Problem solved, what the buck?! Why no?!

[Muhanoid]

6673349 Thanks!
Still, 60 looks too calm. Probably due to not knowing those facts beforehand.

6673406
I was testing how fast can it go without having pain / collapsing / other negative effects. It hit 180 and didn't do 181 or anything higher.
Plus, I can have very low heart rate when calm. Like having a gear selector, I almost have good control over it.

[wlam]

6673435
It actually shouldn't apply to begin with, because that has nothing to do with horses as a species and everything with the square-cube law - the volume a heart can pump increases much faster than the dimensions of it. A large animal has a bigger heart that can pump more fluid and therefore a slower heartbeat. Small animals like mice can have average heart rates of around 300 bpms or so. Unless these pones are horse sized, which they are not, it's still wrong.

And now I've used up my "overthinking pointless things" quota for the day.

[Eldrimur]

thanks for the update, good story, hope tough you don´t go too much into world building, lore, etc. Enjoying the interaction of luna/nightmare with rest of the ponies.

[Cracked Egg]

"What are you talking about Luna? The dress is black and blue,"

Fuck.

[dunnie_172]

6673435 Control is good and also relatively common. The high point is just higher than expected for most huans

[pahnazd]

It's more and more convoluted, yet still ends up in such a way that it doesn't break reality... too much. There's going to be a lot of fun if they ever encounter Discord
Well... if you go that far that it.

But still, another amazing chapter, it was an absolute blast to read. I feel like I should thank you for every chapter of this story I read, so, thank you

[Cracked Egg]

Also, is it just me or is this fic outlining my own headcanon about Equeia?

[Syroc]

Y'know, the more I read this story the more I can sympathise with Luna for taking the nuclear option. Celestia is kind of like the absolute worst of science university students, along with a scarily prevalent inability to see things from other points of view. I find myself in the unusual position of wanting Luna to go nuclear again... and win.

[Slayerseba]

6673517 Then there are two of us pal, but let's just hope that our no-Nightmare will be able to make this Equestria into better place after she learn truth about it's begining.

[Blade Dancer]

dunno how to feel about the origin of the ponies here..

[Astarea]

The scary part is, that the Celestia in this story is pieced together from her actions in canon.
If you apply a bit of imagination and creativity, that is.

Also why are you people complaining about the origins of the world?
This is fanfiction, headcanons may apply.

[SilverAlchemist]

That was a nice save with the buffalo, after the shitstorm that got kicked up last chapter. And I'm actually liking how dystopian Equestria is under the pleasant veneer.

[Fourpony]

Luna you can’t argue the fact that everypony that has ever created anything knows what it is from the start, and those that don’t interpret it correctly are obviously wrong!

Ok, this make NO sense when seen with the other two pieces of dialog. It looks like Celestia switches her stance from objective to subjective. "'Art and color aren’t subjective,' Tia deadpanned." and "Pictures are what the artist painted, not what the audience sees."
She completely changes her opinion in one line.

For starters, her heart was absolutely racing, going maybe sixty beats per minute.

Uh, racing? Since heart rate is sorta tied to weight and a human's heart beat is like 80 bpm resting, I would say Twilight is more at a resting or sleeping pace.

They even had a pony version of A Song of Ice and Fire for crying out loud!

What would Geoffery's name be?

any pegasus that is able to pull off a feat only I have been able to do since Equestria’s founding truly is the greatest flier in all of Equestria.

What about Luna? A sonic moonboom, that way Celestia can have a little claim to fame?

If alicorns made all those other races as pets, what does that make humans?

6673477
I remember going into the 170-180 bpm range when running stairs for a cardio class. Though I am also a sprinter so that could change things up.

[PhycoKrusk]

6673250
Well, look at it this way: Would you, personally, care if you shattered the beliefs of an American Bison by telling it that all the really important stuff was done by humans? The answer — most likely — is no, you would not. Because it's just a bison.

It's the exact same thing with Celestia; it's only off-putting because where the example with you is concerned, the bison can't vocalize a meaningful response.

Also note that when Nighty suggests that buffaloes starting running to avoid overgrazing at first, Celestia's reaction is less considering it an actual possibility and more honoring a child that suggested that fairies did it, or something equally absurd. Notice as well that she is physically repulsed by the idea of eating grass, clearly thinking of it as something only an animal would do. An animal, or someone who had nothing else to eat; we'd be physically repulsed by the idea of eating garbage, but if we had nothing else to eat, a whole new world of culinary options would suddenly open up to us.

Celestia's problem isn't that she's a jerk; it's that she's clueless. She's lived in her perfect bubble society for so long, she is incapable of imagining a life that doesn't work exactly the way that she's used to. That would explain her tendency to solve problems by trying a solution, and if it doesn't work, either keep trying the exact same thing in the hope that it will suddenly work, or act as if there was never a problem in the first place.

Nighty doesn't have that same cognitive block, which is why she's able to come up with solutions in some cases that seem novel to ponies, but that seem obvious to us. Apparently, Cadence doesn't have this block either, given that her solution to a problem Equestria's had seemingly forever was an obvious no-brainer, but nevertheless still blindsided Celestia with how genius it is.

Here's maybe a better analogy: Celestia sees the world like a computer program might. She has perfect and prompt answers to everything she has a subroutine for, but when she encounters something that falls outside her required parameters, her immediate response is to declare "Bad command or file name," ignore what just happened, and continue on as if everything is working as expected. Efficient, but also inflexible and incapable of handling any problem not considered "usual."

Really, this raises more than a few questions about the origin of Celestia, Equestria, and Everything Else, and it looks like Nighty's angling to unravel some of that.

[Stardoost]

But, they didn’t get into a huge fight that ended in an Equestrian civil war between the Lunar Republic and Solar Empire.

Is that a reference to what I think it is?
{Harmony Theory? At least I hope so}
You cheeky d*ck waffle.

[rikusorasephiroth]

I only ask you include:
"Hey"
"Yeah?"
"You ever wonder why we're here?"

[Reese]

"the few pegasi dominant places"
"the few pegasus-dominanted places"?

"my coffee to cool a not-Twilight"
"my coffee to cool and a not-Twilight"?

"and a few decades the new"
"and a few decades later the new"?

"With it’s power"
"With its power"

"What’s the land like down there."
"What’s the land like down there?"?

Much interesting stuff in this chapter. :)

[Astropye]

6673243
How many people were reading this chapter when we were commenting on it.

[Fireeaters]

6673987 Didn't check. I just took your word for it!

[Fireeaters]

6673987 wait, I thought you were the other guy who had already responded. Sorry.

[Icarus_Con_Queso]

After a second, Celestia let out a groan. “Luna you can’t argue the fact that everypony that has ever created anything knows what it is from the start, and those that don’t interpret it correctly are obviously wrong!”

I'm afraid you have the names mixed up, because Celestia was the one arguing for strict adherence to single interpretations while Luna held the more fluid approach.

Being with Dash for so long had obviously made her fluent in idiot, an impressive feat for a genius.

this is by some the definition of true genius. to be able to teach a complex subject so that someone without the many building blocks that led up to that understanding can grasp it. There is a reason that there is a whole class dedicated to introducing children to the ideas of addition and subtraction and other base point intellectual concepts.

6673599

Uh, racing? Since heart rate is sorta tied to weight and a human's heart beat is like 80 bpm resting, I would say Twilight is more at a resting or sleeping pace.

A quick google check puts a horse heart rate at a resting 30-36 beats a minute. if that holds for ponies, then Twilight's heart is going the human equivalent of near to 180 beats a minute, and if I recall correctly EMTs need to be present to transport any human being taken to the hospital with a heart rate above 135 beats per minute. My physician was less than pleased with my 120 resting heart rate. Told me to stop drinking energy drinks when i told him I had just downed a can of Monster on the way to the office.

[Fourpony]

6674168
That is a horse which is significantly heavier than a pony. Foals have resting heart rates twice that for horses. I put the resting heart rate of a pony somewhere between a horse and human, but closer to human since an adult human and adult pony are closer in weight.

[wlam]

6673607
That was a giant pile of rambling nonsense.

Well, look at it this way: Would you, personally, care if you shattered the beliefs of an American Bison by telling it that all the really important stuff was done by humans?

No, I wouldn't - because Bisons are just stupid animals. This is an intelligent creature she's talking to. They all are. It's not the same thing.

[Ardwolf]

The stuff with the buffalos was very dark. Still, you have to follow the implications. As for Celestia's behavior toward non-ponies it feels OOC, but then again this is clearly an AU, so never mind...

At any rate, this chapter made a huge number of sobering observations. The fact that Little Strongheart is *4* was the key to the whole thing, natch. But it's not something you're going to be able to drop. This kind of thing is going to have serious implications for the rest of the story.

Good luck.

[ArchAngelGundam]

That would explain a few things. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.

[PhycoKrusk]

6674419
You're right; it's not the same thing. Particularly the part where they were all just like pets in the distant past, and how alicorns apparently played some role in elevating them above that.

If we were to use technology to elevate dogs to intelligence, it wouldn't matter how intelligent they ended up being: To us, they would still be dogs. Sure, you let a thousand or so years track by, and the people around then would likely look at them very differently, because they wouldn't remember the old days.

But to anyone who did remember? They'd still just be dogs. It's exactly the same way here: Celestia remembers when they were just pets, remembers when they were elevate above being just pets, and remembers what went into that. To her, they're just buffalo.

Societal change takes time because you have to wait for those who remember how things used to be — how things are "supposed" to be — to die so they stop standing in the way. That's why we don't see a lot of social changes in Equestria despite thousand years having gone by. Celestia will never die, she will stand in the way to make sure that things stay the way they're "supposed to be," and because she is bigger, older, and more powerful than they are, the rest of Equestria will just follow her example: That's how herd animals operate. It's going to take ponies in positions of authority who don't remember the way things used to be, who are curious about the rest of the world to make any changes start.

Ponies like Nighty and Cadence.

[wlam]

6674556
There are also still people alive today that remember the days when blacks had no civil rights and were called "negros."

That doesn't make them any less assholes if they still treat them that way, though, now does it.