Moving On

by Bad Horse

Nothing

"Please wait here, Miss Sparkle," the usher said, halting in front of a plain wooden door on the last landing at the top of the tower staircase. He headed up the final section of stairway and through the trapdoor to the roof.

The maps, books, and telescopes, Twilight knew, were in a donut-shaped room behind that door, circling the staircase. If he'd let her wait there, she could have distracted herself studying the star charts and the fine mechanical astrarium that the sisters used to precisely plan sunrise, sunset, and every other astronomical event years in advance. Celestia called it "the world's most inconvenient clock."

She'd had no problem getting this far. It turned out her name had been written years ago on the list of ponies who should be admitted to see the princesses. She could have come at any time. But the list, unlike princesses, couldn't change its mind over time.

She looked around, squinting in the flickering light of the wall sconces to study the slight depression worn in the center of each wooden stair. She noticed where the mortar was crumbling between the stones in the wall, which piqued her interest, but she saw with a glance that there weren't enough stones to conclude with confidence whether the decay had a Poisson or a power-law distribution. She looked up at the trapdoor and wondered how it could be secured from the inside if the hinge was on the outside.

Always with the questions. If you could just stand here quietly for five minutes and be bored like a normal pony, she scolded her inquisitive mind, I could have a normal life.

The trapdoor finally opened. The usher came down to the landing, said, "Princess Luna will see you now," then turned around and walked back up. Twilight followed him up into the night air.

Princess Luna stood in the open air on the roof of the south tower, which was about forty feet in diameter. Before her was a folding table. Several astronomical instruments lying on it gleamed a dull silver in the white moonlight, though they were probably brass. She was levitating an astrolabe before her in a way that suggested she hoped this would not take so long that she would have to set it down.

The only lights were the moon and the stars. Standing atop a tower high above the city, behind crenellations that blocked much of the light and noise from below but none of the wind, they were as immersed in the night as if they stood on a mountaintop. Luna scoffed at astronomers who "observed" through windows. The temperature, the humidity, and the wind were an important part of what she was orchestrating. Twilight had heard that the only concession Luna made to the harshest thunderstorms and blizzards was a very un-regal wide-brimmed hat, rumored to have once belonged to a royal gardener.

Twilight noticed the absence of guards. She knew Luna could take care of herself, but it still seemed strangely intimate. Celestia rarely went anywhere with less than two guards, and often four within the castle grounds, even though they would only get in the way if anything dangerous happened.

The usher stood at attention just in front of the trapdoor, facing Luna. "Your majesty. Twilight Sparkle, head librarian of the Canterlot Public Library."

"We are well acquainted with Miss Sparkle," Luna said in a regal voice that would ordinarily come from somepony much larger. "It has been too long since our last meeting."

"I beg your pardon, your majesty," Twilight said, curtseying. Goodness, that was more stressful to the knees than she recalled.

"And what brings you to our humble observatory today?"

Here came the awkward part.

"Well, you see, your majesty...."

"Yes?"

"It's just...."

"You require funds for the library, and my sister would not grant them."

"No, nothing like that. It's ... this is going to sound a little bit silly...."

Luna raised one eyebrow at the usher and then glanced downward for a fraction of a second. He touched hoof to horn in a crisp salute, and quickly removed himself down the stairs, closing the door after himself.

"Speak."

Twilight steeled herself to tell Luna everything she had realized in the donut shop. That she was sorry she had tried to cling to the way things were, that she'd come back to Canterlot instead of going to Hoofington and becoming the brilliant mage they'd intended for her to be, that she'd blamed her friends for staying behind instead of staying herself or making new friends. That she couldn't be who they wanted her to be anymore.

"It's nothing," she finally said. If Luna only wanted to hear from her as head librarian, then there really was nothing to say.

Luna's nostrils quivered ever so slightly. "We have much to do and many observations to make before allowing the moon to pass to the second quadrant of its arc tonight."

Twilight sighed. "I just ... wanted to see you. I'm sorry I disturbed you. Please forgive me. I'll just let myself out." She glanced towards the trapdoor and waited for Luna to dismiss her.

"Let us be certain we understand," Luna said. "You came up to the castle. You passed in at the gate, had the porter ring us and waited with him there, walked to our tower, walked all the way up the stairs, waited again for us there, without having any official business to conduct? No report, no petition, no favor?"

"Nothing," Twilight said, lowering her ears.

Luna set the astrolabe down on the table. She looked at Twilight with a steady, unreadable gaze. Then the corners of her lips turned up shyly in a hopeful smile.

"Really?"

Comments

[DeadHead]

That last line, Perfect

[Lavalier_Mike]

Heh. I don't know about anybody else but I'm really enjoying this.

[Legendary Emerald]

I love this story so far. As DeadHead pointed out, the last line in this chapter was just perfect. In just five short chapters you've managed to craft more memorable lines and moments than most 30k word stories. I'd offer criticism if I had any, but my only complaint is that I have to wait to read the rest.

Thank you for writing this story.

[DirePony]

I'm sure that I could find flaws with this story if I wanted to.
Truth be told, I don't. I want to see Twilight realize her despair and overcome it. To see what the power of friendship can truly be.

People move on. People change, and grow, and falter, and die. But Twilight? She's still the same as she once was, and realizes that the world is moving past her. Hopefully she will draw meaning from her crisis, and come out a better person/pony.

And if she can't? Her pain will be something that I, as a human, can relate do.

I want to read more.

[Bradel]

To echo what has already been said, that last line was perfect. I was a little worried I was going to find your characterization of Luna disagreeable until that line, but this is the Luna I know and love.

This was an enjoyable chapter, but something of a cliffhanger and without a whole lot happening in it. I'm kind of disappointed I'll have to wait another day for more, but I can find other things to do.

There is one thing I feel almost pathologically bound to bring up, though.

She noticed where the mortar was crumbling between the stones in the wall, which picqued her interest, but she saw with a glance that there weren't enough stones to tell with 95% confidence whether the decay had a Poisson or a power-law distribution.

First of all, I'm only aware of the spelling 'pique'. Second, and I have a feeling I may be the only person around who's going to nit-pick this point, but it must be done... You're describing a confidence level for a decision problem. It's probably not utter nonsense. If you gave me an hour, I might be able to string together some abstruse bit of inference for which you could talk about being 95% confident in the decision you've made with a testing problem. But it would be a pain, and more importantly most methods that would result in talk about confidence levels are inferences about parameter values when a true distributional structure has already been assumed, but you're talking about making a choice between two competing parametric frameworks for the data. Something like the following wouldn't rub me so wrong. "She saw with a glance that there weren't enough stones to reliably test whether the decay had..."

[alexanderhunt88]

For an image like that you would expect to have a "dark" or "tragedy", or even a "sad" tag.

[Toraka]

Moving On, eh? It couldn't be that this story already appeared somewhere else, could it?

But enough of past sins. And let's Move On to present ones. For instance, am I wrong to expect that a story that is finished gets uploaded as such? Come on, you say it yourself that it is, so why exactly are you delaying updates? Views? Incentive to favorite, so that you can brutely force your way into feature?
Don't do that, really. If you do, at least mask that you are only publishing already finished chapters.

[Horsemumbler]

2233392
I think it has something to do with his being evil. Giving his fans what they want, when the want it would be bad for his image.
2233359
What do 'dark', 'tragedy', and 'sad' have to do with extreme 'D'awwwww'?
th02.deviantart.net/fs71/200H/f/2012/275/6/1/princess_luna___my_little_pony_by_xoxogabbygums-d5gmutm.png

[alexanderhunt88]

2233496
They don't really but the image seems unsetteling. It's anything but happy.
Still a Twilight X Pony-Joe fic seems good to me.

[Toraka]

2233496 Tsk, screw the Evil League of Evil.
Actually, even they have honour, and this is a case of simply that. You can be a douche all you want, but if you go around not uploading stuff that's already finished for no reason, not even the douchiest of douche douches will want to walk with you.

[Bad Horse]

2233392 I posted an earlier version on ponyfiction archive a year ago, as I already explained in my blog post.

>For instance, am I wrong to expect that a story that is finished gets uploaded as such?
Yes, you are wrong. You are wrong to feel any kind of entitlement to what I write or how I post it.

>Come on, you say it yourself that it is, so why exactly are you delaying updates? Views? Incentive to favorite, so that you can brutely force your way into feature?
Various reasons, but that's one. I still want to make some changes to chapter 6, but I'm not using that as an excuse.

[Bad Horse]

2233188
>I'm only aware of the spelling 'pique'.
Oops.
>most methods that would result in talk about confidence levels are inferences about parameter values when a true distributional structure has already been assumed, but you're talking about making a choice between two competing parametric frameworks for the data.
Argh. You're kind of right. I /could/ however talk about 95% confidence for rejecting either distribution.

[Dementia Ravenmane]

2233665 You know what i say? Quality over quantity.

[Bradel]

2233719
You... hrm. It's a dodgy word here, 'confidence'. You can test and reject a null model, and know that you wouldn't have rejected 95% of the time if that null model were true. I mean, to some extent there's some slop to work with in that 'confidence' really doesn't have a solid mathematical definition. But frequentist hypothesis testing and significance testing really only get you P(data|model), not P(model|data) like you want. Bayesian hypothesis testing can get that for you, but it's going to require prior assumptions about parameter distributions. I think you ought to be able to compare competing models of different parameterizations like that, but the Bayesian framework doesn't hang on arbitrary values like 95%, it's just about making the most reasonable decision given data and prior beliefs.

The conventional 95% confidence (or credibility) stuff is really just for evaluating the range of parameter values for a pre-specified model that would be consistent with the data, so...

You know what? Artistic license. You're probably better off just going with whatever sounds good to you. I'm thinking of suggestions, and I don't know that there's anything I can offer that's close enough to your passage for you to like the style. I'm probably the only one who cares here, anyway. And (1) it's not really important for your story, (2) a lot of people in my field have trouble with this, even at the PhD level, so (3) honestly, it's believable that Twilight could say pretty much anything, because she doesn't have to have perfect understanding of every subject area.

[alexanderhunt88]

more
that is all

[Toraka]

2233711 Well, I did not read your blog, and it'd feel wrong to argue with you on that point considering that I abandoned that site some time ago myself.

Anyway. I know that it is your fic and I cannot tell you how you should upload it. I can, however, tell you how you could do it without looking like the honourless person you pretty much state yourself to be. If you want me to be slightly impressed with your story being in the fuckbox, maybe it should be due to actual quality and/or new updates.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Oh, Twilight. So tragically have you withered, atrophying without the influence of your friends. Hopefully this is the first step to your recovery and, now removed from the shadow of Celestia, your transcendence. Not the literal kind with wings, but one where you can step beyond the role of student and define yourself for yourself.
...
Sorry. It's early and I haven't gotten all the pretension out of my system. Great story, looking forward to more.

[TheCloudtop]

Anything that I could say has already been said by the other comments.

This chapter is really good, and I am looking forward to more.

[Wroth]

Favorited, must see more!

[Blue_Paladin42]

And from this point on, I am pretty sure it's all new to me.
What happens next?

[Themaskedferret]

But the list, unlike princesses, couldn't change its mind over time.

Oh ow.

[mishun]

"Really?"

I was ready to say that Luna should relax a bit (and maybe could even use some fourth F), and then --- bam!