Sun & Moon Act II: A Crown Divided

by cursedchords

Chapter 1: The Twin Thrones

“A Princess is more than just a leader. She is a shining light of hope in times of trouble, and a rock of order upon which the law relies. She is an unwavering guardian of all her charges against whatever foes await them. She is the very model upon which her country is built.”

- Journal of Princess Luna

“And so, it is my great pleasure to declare the new Baltimare bridge officially open!” Princess Luna declared, hefting a novelty-sized pair of scissors with her magic and cleanly snipping the bright red ribbon that stretched across the eastern end of the bridge in two. The action was met with polite applause from the modest crowd of ponies which had turned out for the event, braving the oven that this midsummer afternoon had turned into. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze in the air, so the Sun’s full power was felt by all out on the ground. Even Luna was having a hard time staying as cheery as usual in the heat.

With the ceremony finished, Luna diverted her attention to the journalists in the crowd, all marked out by their open notepads. “I have a few minutes to take some questions,” she said. She had a banquet to attend later in the evening which she would need to prepare for soon, but it was crucial that she connected with the thoughts of the average ponies, primarily those away from the capital.

“Front Page, Baltimare Sun!” cried an orange earth pony in the front row. Luna gave her a calm nod, and she opened up her notepad. “Princess, the Baltimare Bridge was planned and developed six years ago, when the Silverwater was otherwise impassable. Yet, with the drought, the river can be forded now in several places. So what purpose does this bridge still serve?”

“Good question. While it’s true that the river has receded several feet in recent years, surely you know that the recent drought has been a weather anomaly. An extended one to be sure, but a temporary situation all the same. When the weather, and the river, returns to its normal state, this bridge will once again be the only way to cross.” Luna ended off with a meaningful smile for the reporter, who seemed to be satisfied with the answer.

In truth, she had hoped that she could perhaps avoid thinking about the drought today if possible; it was the only thing that anypony wanted to talk about these days, or so it seemed. Granted, it was certainly an important issue, but answering the same questions over and over again did get tiring eventually.

A sea of hooves shot up from the crowd as she turned for the next question. This time she pointed to a lanky cyan unicorn in the second row, the political correspondent for the Equestrian Times if she was remembering correctly.

“Concerning the drought, some ponies tell me that if we had more trained and certified weather ponies in the country, things might be a bit more livable. Do you have any comments on that, Princess?”

Despite the critical question, Luna didn’t let her smile slip. “Well, naturally if we had more trained pegasi in the country, things would be better. That is why I’ve created the Royal Weather Academy in Canterlot, in the hope of increasing the size of our weather forces to a point where they can manage the country.” The Weather Academy itself had been in existence for a number of months now, but it was always a good thing to remind ponies about it.

A hopeful murmur passed through the crowd. “And how long do you think it will take before the newly trained pegasi can put an end to the drought?” asked the Times reporter, furiously scribbling notes on his pad.

To this Luna sighed. This was the part that she didn’t like having to say, true enough that it was. “Unfortunately, no amount of pegasi can create rain out of nowhere, well-trained even though they might be. With a large enough force, I hope to be able to control the winds, but as far as ending the drought goes we must still trust in the inevitability of rain.”

The unicorn nodded back, signaling the end of his questions. Right beside him, a soft pink earth pony mare stood up. “Your Highness, one of my sources told me that in fact you have a sister.”

A muted chuckle passed through the crowd. “Yes, I believe that I may have heard that rumour too,” Luna replied, relaxing a little now that the topic of the conversation had changed.

“It has been months now since we last saw her in Baltimare,” the reporter continued. “Years even, if my memory serves correctly. Why exactly are you the only Princess that ventures forth from Canterlot whenever there is an event to be conducted?”

Luna gave her own chuckle at the question. Celestia never believed it when she was told how much the citizens wanted to know about her. If she ever did decide to leave Canterlot for an evening, it would be a national event.

“My sister and I each serve Equestria in our own ways. If you ever have the opportunity to travel to Canterlot, I recommend that you take a moment to visit the Senate while it is in session. There you’ll get to see everything that Celestia does as part of her responsibilities. Personally, I’m more than happy to let her deal with that work, since it means that I get to spend more time out here with you. One day, perhaps, I shall convince Celestia to join me for another bridge opening.”

There were nods about the group, but more than a few knowing shakes of the head from the more experienced members of the press corps.

One day, Luna thought, maybe if Canterlot burns down or something.

She was just about to point to another reporter in the crowd when Luna felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She turned to find a tiny pebble there, held up discreetly by the magic of Steady Brow, the leader of her personal guard. The heavyset unicorn was standing off to the side of the stage, and with a subtle lifting of his left eyebrow he indicated that there was something she needed to know. “Excuse me one moment,” she told the crowd, before taking three quick steps down from the platform and ducking behind the bridge’s near support.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

Here behind the bridge the rest of her personal guard was gathered: Brow and Lieutenant Heart were the unicorn members, clad in gleaming mail that was lacquered a dark purple. The guard also included three pegasus scouts, although they weren’t usually at her side, instead sticking to the airspace to watch for incoming threats. So Luna was surprised to see Guardspony Swift on the ground behind the bridge, his sandy yellow mane somehow still flat to the scalp despite his time in the air.

Swift snapped her a speedy salute before answering. “I’m afraid not, Your Highness. I’ve caught sight of a large dust storm developing several miles to our north. I believe that it’s turning our way. We have about fifteen minutes, maybe, until it’s on top of us.”

Luna cast a look up at the sky’s northern horizon, but for now it still seemed clear. Dust storms had grown frighteningly common in the plains of western Equestria, and they could occur suddenly, even on a clear summer afternoon. She turned back to Brow. “Is there a weather-pony detachment out here that can deal with it?”

Swift spoke up again. “I already thought of that, but there is only a bare skeleton crew here. Enough to wrangle what moisture they can out of any clouds that go by, but none with storm training. And on my own I would be useless against a system this size.”

Luna took a step away from the group, turning back until the skyline of Baltimare was in her vision, just around the stone pillars of the new bridge. She had seen what the larger storms could do, the whole sky turning black with dust, the wind whipping the grit into every exposed space. Ponies could do nothing except shutter their windows and hunker in their basements, waiting for the storm to pass. And all the while the topsoil was ripped away, and everything that had been growing was torn up by the roots.

The thought made Luna shudder. This wasn’t the way that ponies were supposed to live, in fear of the whims of the weather. As a filly, she had learned that they were supposed to guide the winds, shape the atmosphere, and keep things peaceful for the rest of the nation. In part, that was what she had hoped to restore in founding the Academy. The thought of another city’s crop lost to a random storm was simply too much for her to bear.

“It wouldn’t be just you,” she said, turning back to look at Swift determinedly. “Together we can stave this off. Captain Brow, I’ll need you to placate these journalists while we’re gone, Lieutenant, I want you to…” She stopped when she saw the look in Brow’s eyes: concerned and solemn.

“I’m afraid that I can’t recommend that course of action, your Highness,” Brow replied. “While I have every confidence in your abilities, and that of Guardspony Swift, my job is to keep you alive.”

Swift nodded, though he too looked disheartened. “Maybe if we had a whole platoon of storm specialists, we would have a chance, Princess. Maybe we could divert the storm. But it would be a huge risk.”

Luna lowered her head as she weighed her options. If she ordered it, they would have to follow her, and do their best to protect her against the storm’s wrath. It was Brow’s job to keep her alive, not decide how she should spend her time. Yet, at the same time, he did have a point. Nopony would be served by her risking her neck in the skies, and there was a high risk of injury, which carried its own problems.

“Okay,” she said solemnly as she made her decision. “Let’s get everything tied off here, and then we’ll head back to Canterlot.”

The guards all nodded before briskly trotting off to warn the crowd and get things prepared for her departure. A gentle breeze blew out of the north, blowing Luna’s mane into her eyes.

Out on the horizon, she spied the storm’s first feelers, wisps of black that seemed to hang in the distance. Underneath them, she knew, whole fields were being stripped bare. This late in the season, there would be no chance of replanting them, and nothing would grow without rain anyway. Another loss in a record that was growing longer and longer.

Luna shuddered again. Most of the time, she was thankful that she didn’t have Celestia’s job. Staying cooped up in the capital every day would be maddening. But at least her sister didn’t have to deal with the results of the drought firsthand. Hopefully, her day had at least gone well.

---

Celestia banged her gavel, the crack of the wood resonating around the square chamber. “The chair recognizes the Senator for Canterlot’s Fifth District,” she intoned, turning over a small hourglass to mark off the Senator’s time.

Across the room, there was a grating sound as a chair was scraped back, and the Senator got to his hooves.

Pensive Prose was one of the ranking members of the committee, the roots of his deep brown mane rapidly going grey. As he stood, he arrayed a few parchments on the low lectern in front of him.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” he began, his light, silky voice echoing off of the white stone walls of the committee chamber. “As this committee is aware, the plight of the citizens of our nation continues to worsen as each day passes and no rain falls. Our stores run shorter, food prices rise higher, and hope, though ever present, shrinks just a bit more each day.”

Despite the grave words spoken, Celestia tuned out the senator as he continued with his speech. It was going to be more about the suffering of the nation under the drought, and how the Senate really ought to help by doing what he and his cronies wanted. Celestia never regretted establishing the Senate; it was, as she had learned in her youth, the most effective way to ensure the government stayed accountable to the citizenry. It just meant a lot more work for her.

In addition to chairing this committee and several others, Celestia presided over the Senate when it was sitting, and served as the chamber’s legal adviser, since nopony knew the Equestrian legal system better than she.

Luna always wondered why she never found any time to take a break from the capital, but Equestria needed her, and Celestia wouldn’t have chosen another job in the world, even with all of this one’s annoyances.

Across the expansive chamber Celestia picked out a plump yellow earth pony, Senator Ink Stain of the Canterlot Foothills. Ink was doing her best to look busy shuffling the parchments about on her own lectern, but every once in a while she would steal a surreptitious glance at the chair’s hourglass. She wasn’t alone. Pensive’s long winded speeches were something of a legend about the chamber.

This time, the Canterlot senator was proposing the creatively named Food Act, a resolution to alleviate the tight food supply by having the government buy the upcoming harvest and then distribute it equitably to the citizenry.

It wasn’t a bad idea, and likely necessary given the state of things, but it would be another stack of parchment on Celestia’s desk this evening, waiting for legal amendments. It would join three other resolutions which had emerged from the Appropriations and Revenue committees this morning.

Finally, the sand ran out. Celestia offered Pensive a slightly irritated gesture to wrap things up. Even so, he still took a sweet minute getting around to his conclusion, and moving for a vote on the Act. It passed without any objections.

In the courtyard outside, the evening shadows were growing long. “The chair moves for adjournment,” Celestia said. With no objections, she cracked her gavel again. “The committee shall reconvene in three days.” With that, everypony in the room gathered up their parchments into their satchels and made their way hastily to the exits.

“I still don’t know how you do it,” came a voice from behind her.

“Luna?” Celestia turned and offered her sister a quizzical look. “You had a dinner scheduled for tonight. Did something go wrong?”

“Dust storm, and good evening, by the way.”

Celestia stretched out her forelegs high over her head, and was unable to stifle a long yawn. She heard distinct cracks from several of her joints. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “No longer than usual, mind you, but well, usual is still pretty long.”

In answer Luna only gave her a bemused roll of the eyes. Celestia found her sister a baffling enigma. While spending all of her days in committee was exhausting, surely it was nothing compared to the travel schedule that Luna had adopted. Almost every day had her out tackling public work in some other part of the country. And that was when she wasn’t up at her Academy, working all day training pegasi. At least when Celestia made her way up to her chambers at the end of the day, she only felt as if she had been run off of her hooves.

“We’ll have to take supper in my study, I’m afraid.” Normally the kitchen would prepare something more special whenever the two of them dined together, but since Luna had come back early they would only have Celestia’s usual working dinner prepared.

“I expected as much.” Luna got the door for her sister as the two of them exited the empty room. The rest of the senators really had cleared out quickly. “So, how goes the fight?”

“Oh, the usual grind,” she answered, feeling somehow a little more refreshed now that they were in the hallway and moving out of the Senate’s wing. “Sadly, it appears things are growing a bit tense with the harvest so close. Tell me, how’s everything in the west looking?”

Luna shook her head solemnly. “Not good. There are rare patches that look like they might yield something, but they are very few. Elsewhere, whole fields are bare. Without rain very soon, the whole crop looks to be a failure.”

“We don’t have the stores to last another winter,” Celestia noted, some of her previous tension returning. “How about the Academy? Any luck there?”

“I wish that I could say so. But there’s a problem with teaching a lost art, you have to figure it out first. We have no shortage of talented pegasi, and they’ll make excellent weatherponies once they graduate, but as for creating rain, we don’t even know where to start.”

According to the ancient histories, pegasi had once been able to do more than simply move clouds around, and had instead been able to use their magic to create clouds and rain out of literal thin air. Windcasting had been essential to the pony nation’s survival in pre-Equestrian times, but during Discord’s reign the art had been lost. Luna had founded her Academy in the hope of rediscovering it.

“Well, I don’t have to tell you to keep at it. I don’t want to say that you’re our only hope, but—”

“I’m not,” her sister answered, resolute despite the situation. “Rain can still come.”

Celestia nodded. Her sister’s stiff upper lip was always a welcome help, especially in such trying times. Up ahead of them, two silent guardponies stood in burnished armour around an ornamented set of double doors.

Celestia tipped them a weary smile, and received two silent nods in response. The guard on the right unlatched the door, and together the two sisters stepped into Celestia’s apartments.

The elder Princess had a three storey tower all to herself, clustered with Luna’s tower and a few other administrative offices in its own wing of the palace. The lowest floor was a stately sitting room and a grand dining room, both for entertaining senators and foreign dignitaries when necessary.

Celestia and Luna both stepped right to the stairs, though, climbing up to the second floor landing. Celestia’s study was a wide, semicircular room taking up the whole western half of the second floor. A huge window facing west looked out over all of Canterlot, including the foothills and out to the countryside beyond.

On the distant horizon, the Sun gleamed a golden red. The rest of the study was filled floor-to-ceiling with books and parchments on every subject imaginable, stacked and sorted with painstaking care, with not a speck of dust anywhere in sight. On the wide reading table in the centre of the room, a steaming tray and tea service sat alongside an ancient, worn map that Celestia had weighed down with a few paperweights. The scent of the food set Celestia’s stomach growling. Even so, she poured Luna’s tea first.

The younger Princess took a seat in one of the two chairs that faced each other across the table, taking a moment to study the map. “That’s not Equestria, is it?” she asked, taking a sip of her tea.

Sitting down across from her and adding two spoonfuls of sugar to her own mug, Celestia smiled coyly. “It’s a bit to the north, actually, though the scale is all wrong. Clover was a gifted pony in many ways, but it turns out that cartography wasn’t one of them.”

“Then this doesn’t have anything to do with the drought.”

Celestia's eyes jerked up in surprise, then she laughed. “Sorry, Luna. I suppose I started in the middle there, didn’t I? This is a little personal project of mine, for when I get a spare moment.”

intrigued, Luna picked up one of the spring rolls on the dinner tray and took a restrained bite. Her eyes wandered to the stack of legal documents that sat on the far side of the table, several inches high. “I imagine that isn’t very often,” she commented dryly.

“A moment here or there, whenever I can spare it,” Celestia answered. “It’s such a welcome respite to be able to take my mind off of governing whenever I can. I don’t suppose that you’ve ever heard of the mystery of Star Swirl the Bearded?”

To her credit, Luna thought for a moment about it. “Maybe once, long ago. Talented unicorn, right?”

“Oh, talented doesn’t do him justice!” she answered with a glow of excitement. “Magic theory advanced farther under his tenure as Court Mage than at any other time in history. He was one of the most celebrated stallions in the whole Unicorn Kingdom! He’s mentioned in every history book and chronicle of the time period, no matter the author. But then…” she paused for a dramatic moment, “he disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?” Luna asked, another spring roll now in her hoof. “At some point he would have to have passed on.”

“See, that’s just it,” Celestia replied, smoothing out the parchment map on her desk. “It’s been centuries since then, but not a single chronicle mentions the death of one of the most important unicorns in pony history. In fact, nopony even mentions him retiring or growing old. One moment he’s the centre of everything magical in the kingdom, and then suddenly he's just gone, almost like he'd never been there in the first place.”

“And you think that you can find him?”

“Well, I certainly hope so.” With a hoof Celestia indicated a few of the markings that she had made on the map. “The pony tribes came south after the Sunless Summer, following this route, as near as Clover’s recollection holds.” A dashed line snaked down out of some of the mountains near to the parchment’s centre, meandering for a time before disappearing off of the map’s southern edge. “Star Swirl disappears from the chronicle around that time, give or take a year or two. I think that if we can retrace the tribes’ steps, we’ll very likely find a clue as to what happened to him, or maybe even his final resting place itself!” She looked up again at her sister, the excitement painting a wide grin on her face. Luna was smiling too, though there was something other than historical curiosity to it.

“Well, once the current situation has passed,” Luna said, “I think that we could do just that. Make an expedition out of it perhaps.”

Her smile was still earnest, which made Celestia pause for just a moment. While travel was certainly in Luna’s wheelhouse, archaeology usually wasn’t. “Have I made a historian out of you finally?” she asked, smirking deviously at the implication.

Luna guffawed. “Heck no! But this sounds like an opportunity to finally get you out of the palace for once, even if it will be for historical study. I could never let a chance like that pass me by.”

Celestia let her grin turn wry. “Well, it’s a plan then. Once things are settled down here in the kingdom, the two of us are taking a holiday up north.” She began delicately rolling up the parchment, and in the process grabbed a spring roll for herself before Luna could take them all. She knew that Luna wouldn’t exactly think of such an expedition as a holiday, but it would be time away from work if nothing else.

Reminded of her current task, she caught another glimpse of the stack of parchments on the other end of the table, bound together in red twine. Pensive’s flowery script marked the top one, which was nearly twice as thick as the others. Indeed, a holiday did sound pretty good right about now.