The story
Our story begins a very, very long time ago with a very young mare. One day, the lonely mare spotted an old rusted spaceship shaped like the sun holding a small star foal.
"What's your name? Are you lost?" the mare asked the star foal.
"I'm Luna, and I'm waiting for Mama. She's coming for me on a comet!" said the star foal, who had been waiting for countless days and nights.
"Don't worry. I'll wait with you," the little mare promised Luna.
At nightfall, the little mare borrowed her father's telescope and peered into the sky. She looked and looked for what seemed to be hours, but she saw nothing.
Hours turned into days and then years, but still the void sky revealed nothing in their sight.
Finally, the little mare sighed and said to Luna, "If we stay here looking much longer, I'll be an old mare sooner than you know it." But then she had an idea. "Why don't we go out there and find your mother ourselves?"
The mare and Luna fixed up the rusty spaceship, and then the two set sail into the starry sky. And this is how the search for the celestial mother began.
Days passed with no sight of the comet, or even a single planet. Instead, asteroids extended for as far as the eye could see.
"If I had known it was going to take this long, I would have packed more jam," said the little foal, above the rumble of her belly.
Before they left, she had packed all the essentials that they needed: telescope, butterfly net, stuffed bunny, bread, milk, jam, and apricot-flavored tea, but...
"I forgot to bring water!" At this, Luna started to burst into gales of laughter, and the mare began to pout.
"As long as I have Star Bits, I'll be fine," said Luna. "Want some?"
The little mare couldn't stay mad after hearing this. Luna continued to laugh, and the mare couldn't help but join in.
"All right, maybe just a nibble." Leaning far out of the ship, the pair began to collect Star Bits with the mare's net. They almost fell out a few times, but they kept a steady balance after awhile and kept on collecting. The Star Bits tasted like honey.
A beam of light pierced through the ship's window. Thinking it was the morning sun, the mare peered through the window, only to find a turquoise blue comet shimmering over her spaceship.
The little mare shook the sleeping Luna awake and shouted excitedly, "We HAVE to get to that comet!" The pair descended on the comet and found that it was made of ice. They looked high and low, but Luna's mother was nowhere to be found.
Exhausted, the little mare sat down with a flop, utterly unable to take another step.
"Look!" Peering down at the icy ground where Luna was pointing, the mare suddenly noticed clusters of Star Bits encased in the ice.
"Pretty good, huh? Finding Star Bits is my specialty!" said Luna, beaming. "There's ice here, but it's so warm, I'll bet there's water here too." The two decided to stay on the comet for a while.
Riding the turquoise comet, the pair continued their search for Luna's mother.
One night, the mare dreamed about her own mother.
"Where are you going?" she asked her mother's retreating back. Without turning, her mother replied, "Don't fret, dearest. I'm not going anywhere. I'm always watching over you, like the sun in the day and the moon in the night."
A wave of sadness washed over the mare. "What about when it rains, and I can't see the sun or the moon?"
Her mother thought for a moment before responding. "I will turn into a star in the clouds and wait for your tears to dry."
When she awoke, the mare's face was damp with tears.
"You have Star Bits in your eyes!" said Luna to the mare. Wiping her face, the mare replied, "These are tears, not Star Bits. I'm crying because I'll never see my mother ever again!"
At this, Luna began to cry as well. "Mama, oh, Mama... waaaah!"
The pair traveled through the starry skies, and though they encountered many other comets, not one of them held Luna's mother.Luna was despondent.
"Now, now, Luna. The rain clouds won't go away if you keep crying," the mare said, giving Luna a squeeze. "I'll give you a present if you stop." The mare closed her eyes and said gently, "I'll take care of you." With these words, she felt a small spark in her heart.
"The Kitchen will go here, and the library will go over there," the mare said busily to herself.
"We'll put the gate here." Ever since the mare took Luna under her care, she'd been bustling about at a feverish pace.
"It's a lot of work, but it's worth it to make a happy home." It turned out that Star Bits weren't the only things buried in the ice. There were tools and furniture unlike any they had ever seen, and the mare used them to build a home. Looking at the completed house, Luna remarked, "Don't you think it's awfully big for just the two of us?"
With a library, bedroom, kitchen, fountain, and gate, it was certainly spacious, but still, something seemed to be missing. "If only my father, brother, and mother were here," the mare said wistfully.
Indeed, the house was too large for its two small residents. That night, clutching her favorite stuffed bunny close to her beating heart, the mare fell asleep in the starship.
Then one day, while the mare sat sipping tea, a tiny apricot-colored planet appeared on the horizon.From the planet, another Luna of the same color emerged.
"Do you two know each other?!" the mare asked the two Lunas gleefully. Despite the mare's excitement, they seemed uneasy.
The two Lunas neither drew closer nor backed away from each other. Instead, they just stared. Then one Luna broke the silence.
"My mama!" At once, the apricot Luna parroted back, "My mama! My mama!" "My mama!" "My mama!"
The two Lunas began to dance around the mare frantically, and neither showed any sign of stopping.
The mare was so charmed by this adorable scene that she couldn't help but laugh. And that's when something very strange happened.
Suddenly, more Lunas began to pop out from the apricot planet. They were different colors, but they all shouted the same thing. "My mama!" "My mama!" The sight of all the shouting Lunas only made the mare laugh harder.
"What am I going to do with all these Lunas?!" The Lunas just stared blankly as she doubled over laughing.
"I guess we'll have to name each and every one of you." Tomorrow, once she had finished naming them all, she would begin moving all the Lunas into the new house.
After seeing their 100th comet, a sudden thought popped into the mare's head: "I wonder if my home planet is still as blue as it was."
That's when she remembered her father's telescope. Peeking into the telescope, a tiny blue dot floated into sight. It was smaller than a Star Bit.
"How strange... It's so far away, but it feels so close." She twisted the knob of the telescope, and the blue dot grew until she could make out a grassy hill dotted with flowers. It seemed very familiar to her. Zooming even closer, a terrace on the hill came into view.
"I used to go stargazing there when I lived on my home planet." She remembered rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she followed her father up that hill to look at the stars... She remembered how she and her brother would sled down that hill... She remembered having picnics with her mother on that hill on bright and windy days... And...
"I want to go home! I want to go home right now!" The mare burst into tears, and the Lunas didn't know what to do.
"I want to go home! I want to go back to my house by the hill! I want to see my mother!" The mare was shouting now, her face wet with tears.
"But I know she's not there! I knew all along that she wasn't out there in the sky! Because...because..."
"She's sleeping under the tree on the hill!" The girl's cries echoed through the stars, and a hush fell over the area.
Though usually quite cheery, one day the mare became sad again. Luna drew close and tried to comfort her. "Mama, you still have me!" "And don't be sad about your mama, because she's a part of you! That means she's always close by!" "It's like me. I love Star Bits because they remind me of my mama."
"No...no..." the mare said, unable to stop the tears that ran down her cheeks.
A lonely look flickered across Luna's face, but it was soon replaced by a wide grin. "I have an idea!" "I will transform into a comet, a soaring comet that can carry you all on this journey!"
With that, Luna, trailing bands of white, soared high into the sky and just as quickly started to plummet back down.
KABOOM! KABLAM!
The ground shook, and a bright light poured out of the crater that the Luna had created. The bands of light twisted together to form a comet tail. And then Luna emerged, reborn as a comet. The mare could scarcely believe her eyes.
"But...how?" she kept asking herself the very question.
"Our destiny as Lunas is to transform into different things," said a red Luna who had suddenly appeared.
"Stars, comets, planets... We can become all of these things! When I grow up, I want to become a star that makes somepony special smile," said a green Luna.
A blue Luna chimed in, "That Luba turned into a real cutie of a comet, didn't she!"
All of the Lumas together said, "No more crying, Mama!"
"Thank you..." said the mare in a whisper, and she pulled the Lunas close and hugged them.
From that day on, Star Bits no longer fell from the mare's eyes. The comet set forth for the mare's home planet, its long tail blazing proudly behind it.
With its many Lunas and telescopes, the comet was quite a sight to behold. The mare and the Lunas were proud to call it home.
At a welcoming party for a new Luna, the mare gathered everypony in the Kitchen and said in a louder voice than usual... "All right, everypony! Let's make a cake! A cake sprinkled with Star Bits! Then it will be a star cake!"
The Lunas excitedly began to gather the ingredients. As she watched the Lunas scurry about, the mare smiled and thought to herself, "This is my family now, and I will stay with them until they're ready to leave the nest. And when they do leave, I'll see them off with a smile. Because that's what makes a mother happiest."
That night, when the mare lay down to sleep, a soft light enveloped her and reminded her of the blue planet she once called home.
"But it would be nice to return home once every one hundred years to nap in my favorite sleeping nook."
The comet carrying the Lunas and the mare continues on its journey to this very day. With more "family members" in tow than can be counted, it's said that the comet visits the mare's home planet once every hundred years, its proud white tail glittering in the sky.
-The End-