Chapter 5: Duties
Chapter 5:
Twilight was awoken early in the night, just a few hours after she had finally drifted off. For a moment Twilight reverted back to the ways of a foal, pulling the blankets over her head and waving a hoof at the pony trying to wake her up in the vain hope that they would go away. It didn’t work though and she begrudgingly climbed out of bed, taking a moment to rub the sleep from her eyes. The open curtains in Luna’s room showed the sun slowly moving on its last stretch to meet the horizon.
“Come Twilight, I have something to show you.” The blue alicorn told her. Even though Luna had spent two years sleeping at night and waking for the day, she had instantly reverted back to her more nocturnal ways. Twilight nodded at the mare, still blinking away sleep. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it soon enough.” Luna continued, noticing the large yawn that Twilight released.
Luna led Twilight quietly through the depths of the castle and immediately Twilight knew where they were going, memories of a previous dream rising within her.
“Tell me Twilight, did you ever see Celestia raise the sun?” Luna asked as she continued her fairly fast pace across the tiles, the rhythmic ‘tick-tick’ sound of their hooves on the floor following them as they went.
“No, actually. I was usually never awake at the time when she did raise the sun or when I was, she wouldn’t let me follow her, she told me that ‘one day you will find out, my pupil, but not today’. Well, save for the Summer Sun Celebration of course, but there wasn't anything involving a room.” Twilight replied, remembering how Celestia would always pause whatever she was doing at that time and disappear off, and then ten or so minutes later she would be back, and the sun would be rising.
Luna smiled, that did sound like something her sister would do, she was always such a teaser.
“Well, seems like today is that day she was talking about.” Luna told her, Twilight’s eyes widened as they always did when she heard something piqued her interest on such an intellectual level.
“You’re going to raise the moon now?” Twilight asked, Luna nodded, slowing down. She came to a stop outside the familiar tapestry before pulling it gently, almost reverently aside, and stepping through. This time Twilight didn’t hesitate and swiftly moved through the wall, though she couldn’t help but flinch as she passed through. Luna was making haste towards the room, speeding up now that the destination was in sight, she seemed excited after two years of shirking her duty of raising the moon.
Twilight eventually caught up as Luna stood outside the room, waiting for the purple unicorn.
“Let’s give this another try then.” Luna said as she stepped into the room, turning around to face the doorway again. Twilight could still see the sort of mist that was obscuring any details from within the room, she would have to go inside. She took a breath, closed her eyes and tried to step in. She felt no resistance and followed through with the rest of her body. She slowly opened her eyes and took a look around the room. When she looked back at the doorway all she saw was another part of the wall, though she assumed it was like the wall behind the tapestry and gave it no further thought.
Looking around the room she could see that she had been correct in the dream, the room was indeed circular, but for the winding corridors they took to get there she couldn’t work out from which tower it was from. It must have been high up though as the view from the window didn’t show any other part of Canterlot Castle. And that window, it was something else. It seemed to be constructed from a single pane of glass, bent to shape the cylindrical shape of the room and so methodically polished that it seemed almost invisible. The concave shape of the glass meant that no matter where the sun was in the sky the glass focussed the sun’s rays onto the column in the middle of the room. At the moment, since the sun was so low on the horizon, half of it already gone, the column was lit up at the top as the rays came up from the skyline to the room. The column itself appeared to be made of some sort of crystal, the light diffusing through it and casting mesmerizing reflections about the room.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” Luna said, snapping Twilight out of her reverie. Twilight nodded, in awe at the simple beauty the room commanded. It was actually sparsely furnished, with nothing but a small, yet regal, chair occupying any space. Luna noticed the chair and frowned slightly in confusion until she worked it out and smiled. “Tia must have brought that for you.” Luna said, gesturing to the chair, Celestia always went out of her way to do things for others with little in return. Twilight gave a nod, still casting her eyes around the room as she slowly revolved on the spot. Once she was satisfied that she had scoped the cylindrical area out she sat herself down on the chair, a lone rectangle against the round wall.
“I guess I should explain some stuff first, huh?” Luna said, walking towards the crystal, Twilight nodded in reply. “I’ve taught you about the five different types of magic before, but we focussed on elemental magic after that. So now let’s do a bit on alicorn magic.” Luna reached that crystal and turned to her pupil just as the sun dipped below the horizon, the last dregs of sunlight still giving the night sky a reddish hue. “As powerful as alicorn magic may be, there is no feasible way to actually move the sun, moon and stars just on our own. It takes a whole population of unicorns to perform that feat. No, we have to get a little help. Alicorns draw our powers from whatever domain we control, so I get mine from the stars and moon. Now, this power we receive is what gives us the semi-immortality and the resistance to disease. It also gives us the ability to control our domain to a small extent, though not to actually raising and lowering the sun and moon. That’s where this crystal comes in, without it I cannot raise the moon, though I can still add or remove stars upon command and extreme concentration.
“What this crystal does is reverse the power flow. Instead of giving me power, the power I have is sent back to the moon, and with a lot of practice I managed to control the movement of it.” Luna finished her explanation and looked at Twilight as if to say ‘any questions?’. Twilight wished she had a notebook, what she had just heard was not in any of the books she had ever read (and she had read a lot of them) and she wished to write it down, to commit it to paper. However, she would content herself with waiting until she had some free time. She could also see that the sun had gone down a while ago, and she was certainly eager to see the crystal in action, but there was question that was burning in her mind.
"So, how come Celestia can raise the sun without the crystal during the Summer Sun Celebration?" Twilight asked, thinking back to when she was just a filly, watching Celestia rise into the sky and bring the sun with her.
"Ah, I forgot about that," Luna confessed, "in much the way the unicorns of old raised the sun and the moon, so does Celestia on that day. It was originally meant as a show of her power to reassure her subjects that their princess was still strong enough to rule over them. However, as the years went on, ponies forgot about the crystal, and the reason behind that day and it just became a festival. Also, due to the massive amounts of unicorn magic needed for this job she can only do it once a year." Luna finished, Twilight nodded in reply. Luna, now finished with her lecture, turned back towards the crystal.
Luna’s horn began to glow, not with the violet magic that she and Twilight shared, but with a deep blue the colour of her coat from when she was in her proper form. The blue aura spread from the horn and into the crystal, imbuing it with a navy hue. The crystal took up the glow and intensified it, the glow almost becoming too bright to look at. As Twilight looked on she saw past the crystal and out over the land, and there at the skyline, at the opposite side of the ground where the sun had just set, was the moon, rising in its place. The moon took its place among the stars that had come into view as the sun had disappeared, the magic was complete. Luna raised her head slightly and opened her eyes, the blue aura fading from both her horn and the crystal.
Twilight had watched the whole thing in awe. As she was connected to Luna, even though it wasn’t through the alicorn magic, she had still felt the immense power that Luna had commanded at that the moment, the crystal acting as a magical feedback, sending the magic back and forth between itself and Luna until it was powerful enough to move the moon itself. Twilight couldn’t imagine the raw strength Luna had needed to put up with that, nor could she ever think of doing something like that herself.
Luna didn’t seem to be exhausted by the effort though, in fact she seemed invigorated by it.
“Come, Twilight, we must make haste to Night Court.” Luna said, for a moment reverting back to her old Canterlot dialect in her excitement. “It has been too long since I last felt the moon, it feels good to be connected once more.” Twilight nodded, trying to imagine the ecstasy of the magic from such huge celestial bodies running through her veins, powering her up. She failed. Twilight stood from the chair and smiled at Luna, sharing the excitement and the two made their way out of the room and towards the main hall.
“As Rainbow Dash would say, ‘That was sooo awesome!’” Twilight said to Luna as they walked.
It didn’t take too long to get to the main hall, or at least it seemed that way. Twilight recognized the room from the Grand Galloping Gala and shuddered slightly. There was already a few ponies milling about the room, waiting for their needs to be seen to and Luna quickly strode towards the awaiting seat, a plump cushion set to the side of it, presumably for Twilight to sit on. Twilight sat herself down and admired the comfiness of the velvet cushion. The first of the ponies in the room made their way towards the seat that Luna was seated on.
The first pony was a stallion, a weedy character with a shock of blue hair atop his brown head.
“Umm... Hello.” He said nervously before remembering his manners and swiftly dropping into a bow, rising again a second or so later. “Yes, uh, I am here to ask about the death of my dear sister. She, um, she wished for her body to be blessed by you before being buried.” The stallion hesitantly told Luna, never looking directly at her. All the while Luna listened intently, a worried expression on her face. Twilight wondered whether all of their meetings today would be about death. Luna spoke quietly to the stallion, speaking in a level which no other pony could hear save for the two of them. Whatever Luna had said seemed to have comforted the stallion as he visibly relaxed, nodding intently.
“Tomorrow at midnight would be great, thank you.” The stallion said, backing down the stairs, a smile now on his nervous face.
‘Don’t worry, not all of them are about death, that’s actually quite a rare occurrence.’ Luna thought, sending out over to Twilight, who nodded slightly in return.
And so Night Court continued, luckily there weren’t any other talks of death. A fair number of the ponies approaching the princess welcomed the princess back to the castle, though barely any took notice of Twilight. She wouldn’t even be doing anything unless Luna didn’t take an active effort in asking for her ideas on a matter, which Twilight appreciated wholeheartedly. It wasn’t until about two-thirds of the way through court when one of the ponies, an old stallion with a wizened face and greying hair asked Luna about Twilight.
“So, who’s this pretty young mare then? Some smartie from the university?” The stallion asked, looking down at Twilight through his thick spectacles, pressing them further up his muzzle with a hoof.
Luna glanced over at Twilight before replying, considering whether she should tell him. She decided she should, after all, Celestia was going to tell all of Canterlot in a couple of days anyway.
“This here is Twilight Sparkle, she’s a former student of Princess Celestia and is now my marefriend.” Luna told him, waiting patiently for a reply. The old pony tilted his head to the side in a mixture of confusion and surprise, he certainly hadn’t been expecting that answer.
“There was certainly no filly-fooler princess when I was a young’un.” He stated with another push of his spectacles, he didn’t seem disgusted or anything, just a little surprised. He quickly concluded his business, his shop needed to be renovated and he was looking for a grant, before leaving the hall.
As they had talked with the old stallion, Twilight had noticed one of the ponies further back in the group, he looked up when they had started talking about Twilight. Once he had heard that Twilight was Luna’s marefriend, he cast a disgusted look at the two of them and left, muttering to himself. Whilst Twilight and Luna waited for the next pony to be ready Twilight turned to the alicorn.
“Luna?” Twilight asked concernedly.
“Hmm?” Luna replied.
“When we were talking to that old stallion, did you notice that other pony, the light blue one that left?” Twilight continued, Luna nodded. “Do you think he left because of me, because of us?”
“I’m sure he just remembered he had something important to do.” Luna said dismissively, but wasn’t fooling anypony, least of all Twilight. Twilight looked at her pointedly until she relented. “Okay, he did leave because he found out that I’m with you, but he’s just going to have to live with it, don’t let it get to you.”
Twilight finally voiced her fears that she had held since they had arrived in Canterlot.
“What if ponies don’t approve of us? You saw how that pony acted, what if everypony is going to be like that? The ponies of Canterlot aren’t as accepting as the citizens of Ponyville.” Twilight said.
“Then that’s their problem, we know who we are and we’re not going to change that for everypony else.” Luna said forcibly, this was obviously a subject that she had thought about herself. Twilight nodded, but while there was truth to Luna’s words, it did little to assuage her fears.
Finally Luna decided to stop Night Court for that session, dismissing the other ponies before rising to her hooves, taking a moment to stretch out. Twilight followed her motions.
“So, what do you think?” Luna asked as they made their way out of the hall.
“I liked it, some ponies had some really foalish things to ask a princess about but overall it was quite mentally challenging.” Twilight replied, Luna gave a nod.
“You certainly handled yourself well.” Luna said, Twilight grinned sheepishly, “Anyway, I closed Night Court a bit early today so we still have an hour or so before we should head off to bed. Anything you want to do?” Twilight shook her head. “Me neither. I guess we could just sit outside and enjoy this fine night? It’s been some time since we’ve just lain back and relaxed.” Luna told Twilight as they neared their room.
Luna led the way to her balcony, where a bench sat. The couple made themselves comfortable on it, leaning against each other and looking up to the heavens that stretched out across the night sky.
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Why do i have a slight feeling this wont too well...
Awesome chapter btw, I liked the court scene a bit more than the moon rising scene but thats just my opinion.
1408120 The two scenes were split 50/50 in terms of word count so there wasn't really a main focus on either of them in this chapter, that's why it's just called 'Duties'
1408179 i never said anything about the words
But does Celestia not raise the sun without the crystal, at the summer sun celebration?
A nice, relaxing chapter compared to other stories i'm bound to read tonight. These kind of chapters are nice to read after a sad-story binge, like the one i had last night, apparently.
1408232 Thanks for reminding me about that, I was going to make mention of that during Luna's explanations but I forgot, basically she can only do it once a year because it requires so much power, that's why it is such a spectacle even though most ponies don't even know of the crystal.
1408228 I know, I was just saying that neither event is the focus of this chapter so it doesn't really matter which event people preferred.
. She slowly opened her eyes and took a look around the room. When she looked back at the doorway all she was another part of the wall,
is something missing here?? or its just me
Edit:
nice chapter i cant wait to see more
great chapter. keep it up.
Umm... Didn't Twilight see Celestia raise the sun at the summer sun celebration when she was a filly, I'm pretty sure that's what made her want to get into magic.
*looks around*
Now where did I put that epic Brohoof I had??
aww love the ending of the chapter cant wait for more
Excellent chapter! but then again i love any chapter that has Twilight and Luna cuddling.
1409039 Yep, as I explained to Lord Fedme, unicorns can also control the sun and moon but it takes the whole population of them. I was going to put in a bit about that in Luna's lecture but I kinda forgot, but basically the summer sun celebration originally came about as a show of Celestia's power that she can move the sun and moon using only her unicorn magic, but over the centuries ponies forgot about the crystal and forgot the main reason behind the celebration, which due to the massive amount of magic needed, Celestia can only do it once a year.
1408516 Whoops, thanks for pointing that out, I'll go fix it in a bit.
Suddenly Twilight tries to raise the moon with help of the crystal and transforms into an alicorn being and they both live happily ever after.
Huzaah!
If I were Twilight, I'd be less worried about general approval for her type of relationship and more worried about approval for her apparent new position of influence. There's the danger that ponies will see her as someone who slept her way to the top, and resent the idea that when they bring business before the court then the Princess's mistress gets to chime in and sway her. Very nasty opinions are made about such people, and any mistakes she makes or lack of knowledge she displays would reinforce the idea that her qualifications aren't applicable to the throne room but to the bedroom.
Hopefully her relationship would be seen as legitimate enough that some level of joint rule would be expected... But sitting on a pillow next to the throne doesn't really inspire that image, so much as a that of a favored pet.
I'm definitely curious to see how things go with this transition, where any trouble will come from and what form it will take.
1411528 Sadly no, the crystal just reverses, intesifies and then sends back to where they draw it from, magic. So in Twilight's case, all that would happen is that she zaps the floor a bit.
1412129 That is a very real concern, but Twilight isn't really the sort of pony to think about things that way. However, that issue will have to be addressed.
1412577
I don't really expect Twilight or Luna to think that way as they both know who she is and why she's there (although I suppose Celestia might know better if the court is rather catty about rumors and scandal... It's telling that Celestia was planning a controlled public announcement after all.) I did want to facepalm though at Luna's lackluster introduction for Twilight as "a former student of Princess Celestia and is now my marefriend.” Now the early word is out and likely spreading, focused solely on the fact that the Princess of the night is in a same-sex relationship with some mare and giving her a position of influence over the government.
Poor Twilight's never been good at talking up her own accomplishments and so Luna likely doesn't want to embarrass her, but if she had first been introduced as "Celestia's beloved protege, bearer of the Element of Magic, three-time savior of Equestria, the one who freed Luna from the influence of Nightmare Moon and the mare who had won the Princess's heart" then the story going around Canterlot about their relationship would be significantly different, I would think. If ever there was a time for Luna to drift into some archaic and poetic speech, that likely would have been it. Letting the news spread early without all of the impressive and pertinent details strikes me as possibly some very bad P.R. and politics.
Of course, since seeing the two tackle the complications of their relationship is the major source of fun for this story, I'm not at all upset that they might have made such a gaffe. I look forward to seeing what kind of court environment you've dropped them into and how they end up navigating it all.
1412934 I had thought of having Luna initially make a speech before starting Night Court, but I decided that it wouldn't create enough problems.
What I actually meant was you said that Twilight hadn't seen her raise the sun before.
1413578 Doh, this is what happens when you write whilst trying to do French at the same time. The two languages don't mix. I should have added in that she hadn't seen Celestia raise the sun save for the Summer Sun Celebration, which I had also neglected to mention in my haste to upload before going to sleep. Anyway, thanks for reminding me and I've gone and added that in now.
In case any of you like twilestia as well, there's actually a good fic called Duties
That aside, nice chapter, your explanation for the movement of celestial bodies was actually really interesting.
Awesome as always. I simply love Oldnew Luna.
1451114
That Luna loses her (near)immortality because she's in a relationship with Twilight...
Hey!
What if they break up? Then what?
1451123 In the words of Ciel Phantomhive, 'Something once lost will never return.'
1451141
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Boomerang.jpg/300px-Boomerang.jpg
What about this?
On topic:
Bummer
1451200 Bah, you don't lose a boomerang when you throw it, unless you really suck at throwing boomerangs, in which case it wouldn't return anyway :P
1451240
I sometimes feel the need to make a joke, no matter how bad it is xD
1451284 Jokes are always good, even when they are bad
When shall we next have a chapter. I started reading this ages ago, then created an account and couldn't find it. Now i have im happy
1511056 Thanks! Also, I'm working on some major grammatical revisions with Ultra for Oldnew Luna so, it may be for some days yet. Sorry
1511063 Well at least its in production. Oh. thinking about it i should get started on chapter 7