Children of the Sun

by Silent Whisper

Don't Shoot the Messenger

“Take a deep breath,” said Pinkie, sounding a lot calmer than I felt. One of her hooves gently wrapped around my shoulders. I tried to listen, but even slow, deep breathing wasn’t doing much to quell my panic.

She’d taken the news well, better than I’d expected. Or at least, she sounded like she had. All I could see was a blinding white still, and my body and sides ached from falling down the stairs in the Solarium. About halfway through my description, she’d asked me to pause and called for a doctor.

After a careful look at my body (I’d have bruises tomorrow, hidden under my purple coat), Redheart declared my loss of vision to be temporary, and would heal within a few days. From the lack of questions regarding how I’d gotten this way, I suspected she was a part of the Church of Daylight. Probably under my High Priestess’s direct orders not to ask.

I resumed telling my tale after she’d left, my eyes bandaged and some sort of cream applied over my eyelids. It took me a few tries to get the wording right, but Pinkie was patient. She only interrupted to ask a few questions, towards the end. When I’d finished she got up, and her chair creaked from behind her desk.

“So, we’ve got ourselves a problem, haven’t we?” she mused, and I heard a couple of papers shuffle. “We’re on the moon.”

I started to nod, but my head ached more when I moved it. I was just glad no one else could see me like this. “Why wouldn’t my Goddess tell us that?” Why hadn’t she told ME that? “Do-” I hiccupped. “Do you think she knows?”

Pinkie hummed thoughtfully from her desk, before the unmistakable sound of a quill scratching against parchment began, punctuating her words. “I don’t know. Maybe she thought it was safer if we didn’t know. Maybe there’s something she’s protecting us from. She’s gotta know that we’re up here, right? I bet she’s got her reasons. Or… maybe she didn’t know, but now she does because you know. You’re her Prophet, so you’re all mystically and magically connected.”

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, but if my High Priestess thought my Goddess wouldn’t abandon us, then who was I to question that? Actually, who was I to question my Goddess at all? Pinkie was right, she probably had her reasons, even if I didn’t fully understand them.

Still, that left another pressing question. “How in Equestria are we going to explain this? I mean, we’re on the moon, somehow. This changes everything! There’s probably no way we’re supposed to be alive, but we are, and we’ve gotta explain that too, don’t we? What are we going to tell everypony?”

The sound of the quill scratching stopped. I heard her take a deep breath, then the faint clack of her setting her pen down. “For now, Twilight, nothing.”

“What?” I struggled to my hooves. “We have to say something! We’re on a completely different planet, for Goddess’s sake! We can’t just-”

“Twilight,” Pinkie said in a quiet voice that I’d never heard from her. A few shudders ran up my spine, and it was only after a few seconds that I realized that my mouth was still hanging open. I closed it again, swallowing anxiously. “We aren’t going to tell anypony. We’re going to keep absolutely quiet about this, for now. It’s a complicated situation, and I need to figure out the best way to handle things.”

My hoof found its way to the frayed edge of my robes. “But we can’t just keep everypony in the dark!”

She sighed, like a caretaker soothing an upset foal. “Think about it, Twilight. What would happen if we told everypony right now that, whoopsie-doopsie-daisy, we’ve been on the moon this entire time. That everything we know is wrong? How do you think they’d react?”

Sniffling, I curled my robes around my shoulders. I hadn’t even thought about that. “They’d probably be pretty upset.”

“Yes, just like you were, right?” She gave me a sympathetic hum. “And what do you think they’d do when they found out that we had no explanation regarding why we’re up here?”

I wrapped the robes tighter around me, the warm felt providing a comforting pressure against my shoulders. It felt kind of like a hug. “They’d get angrier than they are already.” When she didn’t say anything, I went on. “They’d… probably strike? Or do something even worse, maybe? I don’t know. Why hasn’t the Goddess-”

Her hooves brushed against my cheeks, wiping away tears I didn’t even notice I was shedding. How long had she been standing that close, watching me cry? I pictured a concerned expression on her face. “We’ll find that out. I’ll try to piece together some more things on my end, and in the meantime, you just keep quiet, keep listening for a prophecy or anything from our Goddess, and get better.”

That… made sense, sort of. I could do that. For my Goddess. She’d know what to do. I let go of the edge of my robes and winced at the tender ache of my ribs. At least most of it didn’t show, minus the bandages around my eyes. I gave her the most confident smile I could muster. I was the Prophet, the chosen one of the Goddess, and she had to speak to me soon.

“Let your Big Boss Pinkie Pie take care of things for now. Just don’t. Tell. Anypony. Okay?” Her voice turned chipper again, as much of an end to the conversation as I guessed I could expect. “We’ve found the Sun, and we’ll find the truth, soon enough. Ah, here’s Ditzy Do! Ditzy, could you lead our dear Prophet down to her room, please? She hit her head earlier, and needs to get better. We wouldn’t want her to get lost again, now would we?”

---

The walk down the main corridor was quieter than usual. It made it much easier to follow close behind the messenger pegasus. She was humming something, though I couldn’t quite place the tune. It wasn’t any hymn to the Elements that I knew of. Maybe it was a Hearth’s Warming carol, or something.

I hadn’t taken the time to listen to one in years, and had stopped attending the various parties and celebrations long before that. The High Priestess never stopped sending me invitations anyway, though she’d shown remarkable restraint in the amount of glitter contained within the last few she’d left in my room.

“I hit my head once, too, a looong time ago,” Ditzy said, jolting me from my thoughts. I didn’t realize she’d stopped until I ran into her backside. She must not have seen the look I’d given in her direction, because she didn’t sound phased as she continued. “It made my eyes go funny, but nopony made fun of me for it. I kept waiting for them to laugh at me, because I looked different, but they didn’t. Ponies here can be pretty understanding. If your eyes go funny too, I’m sure they’ll be kind.”

“Is that your sacred Element, then? Kindness?” I asked, righting my robes and trying not to huff. It wouldn’t do for me to look undignified. The hallways sounded empty, judging by the lack of whispers and gossip. I was certainly above feeling relief that nopony was laughing at me, of course, but a part of me couldn’t help but feel relieved anyway.

“Oh, I haven’t really picked one, but that sounds like a wonderful choice, doesn’t it?” The faint clop of her hoofsteps was my only signal that she’d started moving again, down the gently sloped hallway. “It’d be a better world if everypony tried to be a little Kinder to each other.”

I could hear the smile in her voice, and it put me a bit at ease. Kindness it was, then. Maybe she’d been centering herself on it without realizing it. “I’ve chosen Loyalty. A Prophet must be loyal to the Goddess, and where would anypony be if I weren’t Loyal to the Church of Daylight?”

“That’s a good one, too. We’re turning right, here.” A gentle brush of her wing guided me down another corridor.

I turned and waited for her to take the lead again. “Where is everypony? I knew the High Priestess had told the Acolytes in the Solarium to take a break, but I thought we’d have run into somepony by now.”

“Oh, Pinkie’s had us host a party further down. It’s a big thank you for everypony’s hard work this past month, and we’ve been hurrying everypony there since you went into the Control Hub. Some of them were a bit confused, but nopony’s going to say no to time off and a party, right?” The sound of her hoofsteps became uneven for a moment, and I presumed she was doing a little prance.

“I guess.” I frowned as a thought struck me. “Do you know what I was doing, before I, you know, hit my head?”

Ditzy gasped and spun around to press a hoof against my forehead, under my horn. “Did you forget what you were doing before then? I remember what happened before I hit my head, but my doctor said it would’ve been bad if I’d forgotten. Do you know if you forgot anything else? Or, wait. Would you remember what you’ve forgotten if you had?”

I gently brushed her hoof away. “No, I remember. I just was curious. Did the High Priestess tell you what I was doing?”

The pegasus hummed as she thought. “Mmm, no, I don’t think so. If we needed to know, she’d tell us. She’s pretty good about saying everything we need to know. It was probably important Prophet stuff, and I’m not a Prophet, so why would she tell me?”

“I don’t know. Sorry, we can keep going, I was just thinking.” I tried to smile reassuringly, but I wasn’t sure if it had the desired effect, since I couldn’t tell if I was facing the right direction. “It doesn’t bother you that she doesn’t tell you everything?”

“Hm. You like the Elements, right?” Her voice was lilting, gentle. “I think, if it was really important, she’d be Honest about it. She cares about us enough to know when she’s giving us more information than we can handle, and I don’t even know how she keeps track of everypony like she does, but I do know that she knows us well enough to know what we need to know. Does that make sense?”

“No,” I mumbled. “But thank you for trying to answer.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a mean laugh. “It’s okay. Sometimes, when I’m having trouble figuring something out, it helps if I sleep a little bit. When I wake up, I either realize that it wasn’t as complicated as I thought it was at first, or I forget what I was so worked up about in the first place. Either way, it’s a lot easier to deal with. We’re almost to your room, by the way. It’s just down to your left. Follow my voice, okay?”

“Alright.” I tried to figure out where we were in my mind, but everything seemed further apart than I remembered it. “Did Pinkie tell you where my room was?”

She led me to the left, shuffling her wings against her sides. “Mm-hmm. I don’t think I’d be able to guess which little space is yours. You know, some ponies say you’re lucky, getting your very own place that you don’t have to share. I’m not sure I’d like it very much. I’d be lonely, sleeping all by myself.”

“I’m the Prophet, that’s all. The High Priestess says it’s so that nopony will disturb me if the Goddess speaks to me in my dreams.” I could hear snoring from one of the rooms we passed. I still didn’t know who slept there, but I recognized that particular noise drilling into my eardrums.

Ditzy cleared her throat, and I turned towards her, slightly disoriented. “Has that ever happened to you?”

“Not yet, but if she says it could, then it’s probably happened to a Prophet in the past. I wouldn’t be surprised. The Goddess does as she wills, and it is my job to listen, even if it’s inconvenient.” She could never be inconvenient to me, though, I thought, feeling the corners of my mouth creep upwards.

“I guess that makes sense. We’re here, by the way..” Her hoof gently led me past the curtains on my doorway. “Your bed’s to your right. Do you need help getting all tucked in?”

“I’ll be okay.” My bed. That sounded divine, a gift from my Goddess herself. I tried not to stagger as a wave of exhaustion hit me. “Good night.”

“Good night,” the pegasus said gently, and I could hear her voice move towards the entryway again. “Sleep well, Twilight. I hope you feel better soon.”

“I will.” I felt vaguely like I was forgetting something. Oh, right. “Thank you.”

She didn’t respond. I cocked my head towards where she’d gone, but I didn’t hear anything, not even hoofsteps. She must’ve left before I’d said it. I sighed before reaching blindly out towards where I calculated my bed was with my magic. There, I could feel my blanket, and I stumbled blindly towards it, barely remembering to remove my robes before collapsing into the mattress.

The way my body was feeling, I’d expected to fall asleep the second my head hit the pillow, but a thought nagged at the back of my mind. Something about what Ditzy had said was still bothering me, aside from the insane revelation of being on the moon.

Ah, that’s what it was. Honesty. She’d said that she trusted Pinkie to be Honest about what was important. Wasn’t this important enough to tell everypony about? Or, at least, somepony? I was Loyal to the Church of Daylight, of course, but Honesty was an Element, too. Wasn’t it important to be Honest? At least to some ponies? Maybe not everypony, but there had to be a few that would understand.

And then there was the whole being-on-the-moon thing. I was giving myself a headache just thinking about it. I felt like I needed to think about it more, because it didn’t make sense. Even though it was what I saw, maybe it was just too much to think about all at once. Everything I thought I knew was wrong. That was an awful lot to wrap my head around.

Perhaps Ditzy was right. Perhaps it would sort itself out by the time I woke up.

Comments

[PhycoKrusk]

The plot hasn't really thickened, but I'm interested all the same. I wonder if Pinkie knew, somehow, or if she at least knew that whatever they found was going to be a doozy. I suppose we'll find out.

[Soaring Symphony]

Is this fic a reference to Gurren Lagann? It seems really similar in concept

[Golden_Reflection]

11004911
I can just see as soon as twilight makes it to the stairs and takes the first step, Pinkie starts rocketing and bouncing around the control centre while acting like a phone getting a call while on vibrate shouting about a Doozy.

[Silent Whisper]

11004928
You're not the first person to ask that, but nope. Haven't seen it. I've heard it's really good, though, so I'll take that as a compliment!

11004911
Don't you worry, it will. I'm super glad that you're along for the ride!

[FanOfMostEverything]

Prediction: It will not have sorted itself out by the time Twilight wakes up.

Still, hopefully Pinkie thinks of something by the time the upward excavation crew's next shift starts. There's only so many ways to hide that they're on the wrong object. And unless there's an unspoken time delay between this story and its counterpart, rescue's a long way off. At this point, the word of Celestia may be the only thing that holds off total anarchy.