A Moon and World Apart

by Evilhumour

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Walking back to Ponyville had been mostly quiet, which she hadn't minded, but as Sunset looked around Town Hall, both inside and out, she couldn't help but wonder where everypony was.

"Hello?" she called out, looking around for anypony.

"Oh, there is somepony," the oddly accented mare appeared with her friend, turning from a corner. "Have you seen anypony yet?"

"Um, no," Sunset said. "I'm supposed to be meeting with Mayor... Ivory Scroll?"

"It's odd," the stallion, an Onyx Plate if Sunset recalled correctly, said as he looked around the empty streets. "We were talking to Applejack and a few other ponies on our way back to her farm, and then suddenly everypony just... vanished. We came back here to try and see what was going on."

"I just got back myself," Sunset said, looking around. "It was like the place was deserted when I arrived."

"I think we should go to that tree; it looks like it's another one of the public buildings," Onyx said. "Also, I'm fairly certain I hear some voices inside, though I can't quite tell what they're saying."

Sunset tilted her head, then nodded. "Works for me," she said.

As the trio headed towards the tree, Twilight - that was her name, Sunset recalled - took a few steps head, peering at the sign next to the front step, and then her eyes lit up.

"What is it?" Sunset asked.

"It's a library!" Twilight practically squealed, and Sunset's own eyes lit up.

"Really? That's great!" She grinned. "I wonder what new books they have in it."

Twilight looked at her in interest. "You read a lot too?"

"Absolutely," Sunset told her. "I spend a lot of my time just studying, when I'm not spending time with my teacher or her niece."

Twilight smiled. "I. Love. Reading," she said. "I can't wait to see what they have in there."

Sunset grinned back as the two mares hurried ahead and opened the door simultaneously.

"SURPRISE!"

And then were promptly blown backward by the sheer force of the yells from inside, tumbling head-over-fetlock.

Getting back to her hooves, Twilight helped Sunset up. "What was-"

She was cut off when Pinkie was suddenly in her face. "Hiiiii!" she said excitedly. "Come on in, the party's waiting for all three of you!"

"Party?" Sunset shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. "What party?"

"Your Welcome-to-Ponyville party of course, silly filly," Pinkie said with a grin. "You gotta come in and meet aaall the townsponies!"

Then she grabbed all three unicorns and darted inside with them.

Inside, a number of familiar faces could be seen, including three of the four ponies Sunset had had to check with for the Summer Sun Celebration preparations. She couldn't see Fluttershy anywhere, but given the mare's shyness earlier, that didn't surprise Sunset.

As much as the crowd was friendly to her, and she was doing her best to interact with them on a proper level, she found herself staring at the two other visitors, who had gathered their own crowds.

Onyx had managed to gather a crowd of mares clearly interested into the happily married gay stallion, a fact she had gleaned from a few conversations she had before they had reached the tree library, and was also clearly less than thrilled about the situation. Twilight, meanwhile, was politely trying to escape from her own crowd of ponies interested in the newcomer and move closer to the bookshelves so she could see what they had available, a completely understandable desire in Sunset's opinion. She couldn't wait to get over there herself and have a look.

Then she heard something else that caught her attention, and quickly excused herself to go speak to the pony she was looking for.

As she trotted over to the mare with a tied-up scroll for a Cutie Mark, she cleared her throat. "Excuse me, are you Mayor Ivory Scroll?"

The other mare turned and smiled. "I am," she said. "And you must be Princess Celestia's representative, the one she said she was sending our way. How is everything?"

"If I had thumbs, I'd give you two of them up," Sunset said. "Everything's been great so far. All that needs to be done now is the weather, and that's just waiting for the scheduled time."

Mayor Scroll smiled again. "We're very glad to hear that," she said. "Oh - didn't Princess Celestia also say you'd have an assistant with you?"

"He should be here soon," Sunset said. "He had another thing to go to earlier, so I came ahead."

"Mm. Understandable."

The two exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then went their separate ways, Sunset heading towards a bookcase to browse.

She was reaching for one book when her hoof bumped into another's, and she looked up to see Twilight, who blushed. "Sorry, didn't realize you were there," she said.

"It's okay," Twilight told her. "We don't have these books back home and I was just curious to see what it was as it sounded fascinating."

Sunset nodded understandingly. "It is one of my favourites; though other ponies find it kinda dull."

"They don't know what they're missing," Twilight told her. "Learning is fun."

"You know that, and I know that," Sunset replied. "But some ponies just don't think that way." She sighed. "I remember this one pony from my old school who couldn't wait to get out of class everyday and try to forget everything they were trying to teach him."

"That's..." Twilight looked very disturbed. "What happened?"

"Somepony pointed out that he only hated learning because they were forcing him to do it," Sunset said. "If it was his idea to study something, he might enjoy it. In the end, he did."

Twilight smiled.

"So, how are you doing?" Sunset asked.

"It's okay," Twilight told her. "I'm... not really one for large groups like this, to be honest." She gestured. "I appreciate the effort Pinkie put into it, but crowds just aren't my thing."

"Yeah... yeah, I know what you mean," Sunset said. "I don't have as big a problem with them, but I can get why some ponies would." Twilight smiled gratefully with Sunset smiling back. "So how long are you and your friend here for?" she asked.

"A couple of days," Twilight replied, tilting her head at Onyx. "We didn't make much plans, to be honest, but we'll probably leave a day after the Summer Sun Celebration at the earliest."

Sunset nodded. "I see. So where are you going to be staying?"

"Um." Twilight blushed. "We... hadn't thought about that yet."

"Well, perhaps you three can stay here?" Hearing the voice of the mayor startled her, but Sunset quickly calmed herself and turned to see the older mare.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

Mayor Scroll nodded. "Our last librarian moved out after she retired a few weeks ago, so there are certainly enough vacant bedrooms upstairs," she said. "You're all more than welcome to use the space."

Both girls' eyes lit up.

"We'd love to," they said simultaneously.

"Love to what?" Applejack asked as she came over. "Howdy, madame Mayor."

"Hello, Applejack," Mayor Scroll replied. "I was just telling two of our three newcomers that they'd be more than welcome to stay here, in our library's living space, while they're in town."

Applejack smiled. "Sounds lahk a good deal to me," she said.

"And myself as well," Onyx said as he managed to slip away from the crowd and join them. "Thank you for the offer, madame Mayor."

"You're quite welcome, young man," Mayor Scroll replied. "And I do hope you all enjoy your time in our town."

"Oh, we will," Sunset promised her.

When she'd trotted off, Sunset turned to see Applejack speaking quietly to Twilight and Onyx.

"Ah'm really sorry about suddenly disappearin' on ya earlier," she said. "Pinkie moved a little too fast for me to react. One minute Ah was talkin' with ya, an' the next Ah'd been pulled in here."

Both ponies nodded understandingly, accepting her apology and thanking her for everything.

---

Twilight yawned a few hours later. It had taken a while for the party to wind down, but in the end, everypony had gradually said their welcomes and goodbyes before drifting out of the library and heading home. Some had stayed a little longer, helping clean up everything, but in the end the last of the stragglers had left just a little while ago.

With one exception, and that was because he was here to stay.

Sunset's assistant slash little brother had finally turned up, and both Twilight and Onyx had been most astonished to meet him when he came in. Twilight had read stories about his kind, of course. But she had never in her life imagined she'd be meeting a real, honest-to-goodness dragon. Let alone one who was smaller than she was. Spike was nice though, and he'd offered to fix them all a little something for dinner before they went to bed. They'd all accepted the offer, and he was working in the kitchen now while Twilight, Sunset and Onyx each found a room where they could settle in for the night.

Well, Onyx had decided to prepare for that; Twilight and Sunset had found several books and the two were in the midst of a study review while they waited for Spike to finish fixing dinner. Twilight found herself amazed and delighted to find a mare so much like her; Sunset's love for research and magic all but matched her own.

And the knowledge the Equestrians had was so fascinating. While they didn't have anywhere near the same level of technology as the Republic, they had made so many advances in magic that she hadn't seen before, and it really made her excited.

Thankfully, the white lie of being from a small village seemed to be enough to divert any question about her lack of knowledge, though she was unhappy she couldn't tell Sunset the truth.

What she could do was ask Sunset about the ponies she knew, in between questions about magic and related things.

"You're not asking the right pony for this," Sunset blushed, shaking her mane. "My former foalsitter is much more the social butterfly than me. It's still really only recently that I learned how to appreciate others and how everyone fits in together." Sunset chuckled painfully, looking away. "It wasn't a pleasant lesson for me to learn and I nearly lost everything from it."

Twilight could tell this was a sensitive subject for her, and so just nodded. "I see."

"Do you have any close friends back home?" Sunset asked.

"Well... probably my closest friends are my big brother, and my friend Moondancer," Twilight said. "She keeps me from burning out when I get hyper-focused on something and forget to do things like eat and sleep."

Sunset chuckled. "Sounds like Spike, since we started bonding," she said. "Really, I don't know where I'd be without him."

"Probably lost in a library," Spike commented as he came into the room. "Dinner's ready, you two." He looked around. "And Onyx too - is he still upstairs?"

"I guess so," Twilight said. "Give me a minute, I'll go get him."

The two were soon back down, joining Spike and Sunset at the dinner table, and Twilight took a few minutes to let Onyx lead the conversation.

Again Twilight was thankful for Luna in assigning him as her partner; he was able to flow into the conversation with ease and deflect any probing questions about their home much easier than she could have. It was also lucky that Spike had asked most of the questions and they were broad enough that any simple answer was enough.

"So," Sunset suddenly asked Onyx as she took another helping. "How long have you and your husband been together?"

Onyx's startled reaction was clear. "How- when-" He glanced over at Twilight, who shook her head before he could say anything.

"I told Rarity earlier, after her little misunderstanding," she said. "But I haven't said a word about it to Sunset."

Sunset nodded. "Neither of you said it outright, but I figured it out when we were on our way over here earlier," she said.

"Ah," Onyx said. "Well, to answer your question, we're going on ten years and by the stars, we hope to go for many more years."

Sunset frowned at that, pausing to finish what was on her fork. "That's a really odd phrase, Onyx," she said, looking at them. "Not many ponies in Canterlot actually want to acknowledge what happens after Princess Celestia sets the sun. Is it really that different in your village? And what is its name; I never caught it."

Both Twilight and Onyx suddenly looked nervous, but Onyx recovered quickly. "We didn't say," he said with a chuckle, undoubtedly trying to put her at ease. "And yes, it is rather different. While some are justifiably nervous about what might be out in the night, we have found that the night itself is nothing to fear."

"What are your thoughts on the night, if you don't mind me asking Sunset," Twilight said before she looked at Spike and amended with. "And you as well."

Sunset raised an eyebrow at that, but she replied, "Well, I've never had any particular problem with it. And if there is anything dangerous out there..." She lit a tiny spark on the end of her horn. "Spike and I are both pretty well equipped to handle it."

"If there was anything actually dangerous in the night, I'm sure you would have read up about it by now," Spike said with a smile at the mare.

"I have," Sunset shot back good-naturedly. "Starbeasts, timber wolves, manticores..."

"Starbeasts?" Twilight asked with interest.

"Large, semi-translucent animals with fur that makes them look like the night sky," Sunset told her. "Like Ursa Majors and Ursa Minors, or Canis Majors and Canis Minors. Some of the more out-there, anti-night types say they are pieces of the night sky that somehow came to life as monsters. Others think they're just animals whose inherent magic helped them adapt to blend in at night." She shrugged. "I tend to go that way, personally. The actual magic required to do the former is astronomic, much more than any one pony could do and if they did work in teams, it would become very noticeable that they were doing it." Sunset paused to take a bite of her food before she continued. "Though the biggest point against the former idea is answering the question of why anypony would do it."

"Because they were jerks who wanted to cause trouble?" Spike suggested. "Besides, I thought the going theory those guys were putting out was that it was the night sky itself that was coming to life, not that it was being brought to life. Not that I believe it either way."

"That's disturbing," Onyx muttered.

"I agree," Sunset said. "But some ponies will go to any extent for an excuse to hate something and act like it's bad."

"Well it is good to see that it is only a small minority who think that way," Onyx said.

Sunset nodded. "My old foalsitter is part of a group who've been working to prove that kind of thinking, about the night being bad and all, is a load of roadapples," she said.

Both Twilight and Onyx were lucky they weren't eating or drinking anything at the time, or else they'd have snorted it out through their noses from laughing so hard at her remark. Still, they both had to cough and sputter a bit before they could calm down.

"You don't say," Onyx finally managed. "That... that is very good to know."

Talk turned to other things, and finally Onyx excused himself to go to bed once everything had been cleaned up, while Twilight and Sunset went into the main room to chat some more.

"Does this place even have anything on the stars?" Twilight asked, studying one shelf.

"I'm not sure," Sunset admitted. "Not that I can see..." She skimmed one shelf in the E section, noticing a book that looked of interest and pulling it out for later. "Does your village study them or something?"

"Or something," Twilight said. "Hey - when I was upstairs earlier, I saw there was a telescope in one of the closets. And there's a good balcony up there. Want to study the skies the way I see them?"

Sunset smiled. "I think I'd like that," she said.

"Then come on," Twilight told her.

It only took the two a short while to get things set up, and then Twilight peered through the telescope. "It's so beautiful up there," she whispered.

"Yeah," Sunset agreed. "All those balls of gas, burning billions and billions of miles away... kind of like our sun, but not needing any magic to keep them ignited and moving like ours." She looked at Twilight. "Incredible, isn't it?"

Twilight nodded. "It really is."

Then she glanced at Sunset. "You have kind of a thing for fire, don't you?"

Sunset shrugged. "Fire magic's a big part of my special talent, what can I say?"

Twilight smiled as she looked at her own cutie mark. "I understand completely." she said before looking at Sunset again. "How did you get yours?"

"Well, I'd applied to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns," Sunset started. "One of the tests they do sometimes is to try to have the applicant hatch a dragon's egg. I was focusing my fire magic on it when all of a sudden there was this massive explosion outside. It startled me so I lost control, and I put so much fire into the egg that it hatched right away." She smiled. "And that's how I got Spike."

"Something similar happened to me too," Twilight said. "I was working with my parents on a magic lesson when I saw this massive rainbow shoot across the sky; it kinda clicked something inside of me."

"You think it was the same thing that startled me?" Sunset asked with Twilight shrugging her shoulders.

"It could be," she said. "That'd be neat, us getting our marks on the same day and at the same time."

Sunset nodded. "Wonder if anypony else was affected by it."

"Maybe." Twilight peered through the telescope. "Hey, there's something."

Sunset looked up at it, and saw a tiny speck in the distance. "What is that?" she asked.

"It's one of the comets," Twilight told her. "Every so often, they make long orbits and come into view. This one hasn't been seen for... close to seventy-five years, and it's still a few years from reaching its perihelion, but when the time comes, we'll be able to see it without mechanical assistance."

"Wow." Sunset looked at Twilight and smiled. "Thank you for showing me," she said.

Twilight smiled back. "It's good to share things like this with somepony who appreciates their wonder," she said.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." Sunset smiled, then peered through the telescope again.

The two spent at least another hour up there, studying the skies. Twilight resisted the urge to look towards the moon while Sunset was there, despite wondering if she could see the domes from where she stood. But she made a mental note to try it at some point when she didn't have company.

Finally, both of them yawning, Twilight and Sunset headed inside and went to bed. Twilight could hear Sunset whispering "Good night" to Spike, who'd set up his own little basket nest by her bed earlier, as she closed her door, then headed to her own room.

Peering out the window and up at the night sky, she gave a fond look towards the moon, wishing it and all its occupants a good night before she pulled her covers up and fell asleep.

Comments

[Tunnelspark]

I see the sunset sparkle is strong in this one and it has me grinning enough to make discord jealous.

[RegMoDII]

there is a lot of good ship material here

[Comickook]

Again, this was a great chapter. Greatly adored the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up in all the right places. Really loved Twilight and Sunset admitting to so much common ground (including the thought of both of them in a big library) as well as the reactions to Pinkie's welcoming party, some more bits of deductive reasoning from Sunset, Twilight's first meeting with Spike (in this universe, anyway) and the theories as to the origins of the night creatures (and, yeah, given the nature of the multiverse, it wouldn't surprise me if the "more out there" theory turned out to be true, unfortunately - especially since we know there ARE jerks out there nasty enough to try to create reasons to "fear the night").

Quite certainly looking forward to more of this.

[New Rebellion]

That's a good foundation to build a friendship upon. I especially enjoyed on how Sunset was able to suss out at least SOME of their secrets from casual conversation. I wonder if she's actually picked up on more than that but is holding them in reserve for some reason? And finally, i really like the stated differences and strengths of the two nations. Equestria has unrivaled magical knowledge but the Republic is possibly centuries ahead in terms of technology. A nice dichotomy of the pair, just like their rulers.

[Asolem2]

"Ah'm really sorry about suddenly disappearin' on ya earlier," she said. "Pinkie moved a little too fast for me to react. One minute Ah was talkin' with ya, an' the next Ah'd been pulled in here."

Understandable

Sunset nodded. "Wonder if anypony else was affected by it."

Oh, one or two individuals

[Dorath]

Hmmm ... Luna is herself, but Celestia needs the Elements, and we're doing an AU take on the first episodes ... so is Luna going to be taken by NMM when she comes to see her sister, or is NMM a completely separate entity in this 'verse? Oh, oh, maybe the "avengers" will kidnap Luna and the Elements will come together to rescue her?

10794447

Oh, one or two individuals

[Comickook]

10794644
Actually, at least one of the other chapters kind of implies that the main villain is going to be Discord (as he is the one Celestia and Luna seem to be the most worried about needing the Elements for).

[Eternal Samson]

"Mm. Understandable."

Have a great day