I Couldn't Become Nightmare Moon, So I Got A New Job!

by Ultimus Pendragon

Hair-Brained

Author's Note:

Welcome back, welcome back. Back to it.

Luna sat on the stool with Spike at the front desk, the pair’s observation of the small window of Canterlot society there were given filling their minds with ideas. It was another slow day, and Spike figured it to be just as such, even with their new addition. “So, Luna; I have a question.” Spike wondered about something.

“What’s that?” Luna asked, using her magic to play with her bouncy ball again, catching it in mid-air before launching it back against the front wall of the entrance.

“If your imprisonment on the moon was 1,000 years long, how are you not dead?”

Luna was visibly shaken up by the question, not for what her co-worker asked her, but how he asked it with such a lifeless and blunt expression.

“Beg pardon? I don’t think I follow your question, Spike.” Luna said, stretching a hoof over her head in confusion. Spike stopped looking at the outside world for a second to look at the former princess of the land. Of course, she misunderstood what he asked.

Using air quotes for the parts he wanted her to focus on, he tried again. “I know why you got sent there and all that, but how did 1,000 years not kill you? Did you have water on the moon? Food? And how did you use the bathroom and stuff? Was the moon just one giant latrine?”

“Spike!” Luna blushed a bit, nervous and a bit miffed. “You don’t ask the Princess of the Night those type of-“ Luna was cut off by Spike putting a claw in front of her face, making her eye twitch.

“-Ex-Princess, and you can’t tell me nopony ever came to you and asked you that question after you came back,” Spike frowned, not buying the shtick. When Luna looked away, he gasped a bit. “You’re kidding.”

Luna sighed and adjusted her bow tie with her magic, not really wanting to discuss this, but the pair didn’t have much else to do, and it wouldn’t really hurt to tell him, of all ponies. Spike was the more levelheaded of Twilight’s friends. And he was indeed right about the ex-Princess thing, just a habit she would have to grow out of.

“Well, you are right in that you are not the first to ask that question, but you will be the first one, besides my sister who actually knows the answer. And it’s not something I’m too proud of.”

Spike stopped what he was about to say; proud? What did she do up there? Sacrifice a space animal?

Luna pouted, not really wanting to say this, but her and her sister both knew it was something to be done in a situation where you had next to no options, and this was something that had to be done for a millennia. Luna muttered something as she looked away from Spike, the absolute dread on her face just begging the dragon to know what she did to sustain herself on the moon for so long. “Um, excuse me?” Luna a heard a voice call out to her in the middle of her existential crisis.

“I ate my own hair, okay?!” Luna burst out, the exasperated groan that came out of her mouth afterwards making her to just want to crawl in a hole and die. “My mane has magical qualities, and is where most of the nutrients and vitamins that I consume lie! That’s why I am so small, and that’s how I survived; can you imagine just eating your hair, day and day out-“ Spike held a claw as he had to interrupt her rant.

“You were on the moon, so wouldn’t it be all night in and out?”

“Silence!” Luna returned the claw gesture with a hoof put in front of his face, making him stop and shrug. “Day in and day out, gnawing on your hair like it’s hay; do you know how mentally challenging that is to understand? I basically commited self-cannibalism!”

“Umm,” a voice called out again, only filled with a sprinkle of joy behind it. “I do stuff like that too.”

The pair froze, turning their heads to the customer in question, only to lay their sledges and surprise to mild rest when it was just Derpy, looking as innocent as she always has been. “Derpy?” Spike asked.

Derpy nodded as she looked the at pair, and chuckled. She didn’t mean to overhear their conversation, but Princess Luna shouted out the last part, so she got put into the conversation. “Sometimes I end up eating parchment when I forget I already made muffins,” Derpy whispered to the pair. Luna looked a bit worried as sweat bullets ran down her face as Spike looked mildly interested. “But don’t worry, Princess Luna; I won’t tell your secret.” Derpy said as she put a few number of bits to pay for the flowerpot she had been eying for a quite a while.

“Wait, Derpy. It’s just Luna!” Luna tried to tell Derpy, only she walked out of earshot before she could finish. Scooping up the bits and putting them in the register, Spike had to know one more thing as Luna slumped her head against the desk, her bouncy ball falling out of her magic and onto the floor. “Oh, this is worse than when I sold some of my hair to that restaurant for a month.”

“. . .You what?” Spike asked, his eyes as wide as saucers. “What did it taste like?”

---

A few stores down. . .

“What do you mean you don’t have The Moon Pasta?! That’s the whole reason I called off of work today!” A rather irate Pegasus flared his nostrils at the Earth Pony waiter who was given a verbal assault at their limited time dish. It sold like hot cakes after enough patrons tried it, but since they no longer were able to procure a steady source of it, it made all the more sense to discontinue it.

“I apologize sir, but we are unable to procure anymore of The Moon Pasta.” The Earth Pony chuckled nervously, trying to avoid the glare that he was being given.

“You better find some more before my hoof gets procured in your flank!”