The sun has just gone out. This could be the end of Equestria. Or just a bulb.
The sun has gone out over Equestria, sending Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends off to Canterlot to deal with whatever new villain has caused the disaster.
...thankfully, it turns out to be a far smaller problem than anticipated.
The end of the world (in Equestria, at least) started not with a bang, but a small popping noise.
Just after noon, when the sun had ascended to the highest point in the sky, it vanished, and darkness covered the land.
An event such as this was inevitably noticed.
In Ponyville, the Flower Sisters all fainted. Barnyard Bargains put out their ‘Disaster Discounts! 20% Off!’ sale signs. Blighter the Lamp Lighter began to make his rounds, turning on all of the street lamps.
And once they had checked the train schedule and realized the next train was not due for some time, the Elements of Harmony galloped to Canterlot.
- - ? - -
Several hours later, six sweaty mares traveling at a somewhat slower gallop reached the Canterlot castle and the lone Royal Guard standing casually outside one of the towers.
“Thank the stars,” gasped Twilight Sparkle. “We’re still in time! What happened?”
The guard nodded. “Greetings, Princess Twilight Sparkle. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are—”
“More stairs?” wailed Rarity, looking up at the towering tower. “But we just got up here! Now we have to climb more?”
The guard pointed to a sign on the door.
Royal Metaphorical Storeroom - Alicorns Only
“Oh,” said Rarity.
- - ? - -
About a million steps later, Princess Twilight Sparkle came to the top of the staircase, having passed several doors with odd nameplates inscribed in golden letters reading Royal Titles H-L and Moonshine Ageing. She paused to catch her breath, which was probably still about five flights of stairs behind her, and looked at the open doorway to a closet. It was really all she could see, because there were two alicorn rumps sticking out of the open door, and a mixed hornlight which filtered back into the small attic room where Twilight was panting.
“Here we— Oh, it’s another box of your stars, Luna. I don’t see why we need so many spares.”
“They’re critical, Celly!” Luna sniffed and there was a rustling sound of boxes being moved around. “So many of them go out each night, I swear I spend half my time plugging in replacements.”
“And the other half plugging in new ones. If you keep it up, eventually the whole night sky will be one bright light.”
“I’m just making up for the ones you let go out while I was indisposed. Proper maintenance keeps things like this from happening. It’s your responsibility to have a regular replacement schedule. Your carelessness probably is going to get your student all upset too.”
“Um… Princesses?” Twilight craned her head from right to left, trying to see around the royal diarchs to what was inside the apparently small room, but all she could see was the ends of the princesses she had not really looked at before and was trying not to look at now. “What are you doing?”
“Oh! Twilight!” Celestia shuffled her hooves and coughed once. “Sorry. Dust. It’s nothing serious. You can go home. We’ll have this all worked out in—”
“Celly let her bulb burn out,” said Luna.
“Bulb?” Twilight redoubled her attempts to see past the one-alicorn-wide door with two alicorns in it. “What bulb?”
“It will only take a minute for me to find a replacement,” said Celestia.
“You said that two hours ago when you went tearing out of court,” said Luna. “The royals were starting to get restless. Seriously, this place is such a mess for somepony who only has to worry about one bulb.”
“Well, if there weren’t so many stars in here, I would have found it by now,” said Celestia in what sounded like a little bit of a huff. “Ah-HA! There we go. Found one.”
“Nay, Celly. That is one of ours. See the wattage rating?”
“Oh, twelve gigawatts. Darn.”
“You need a petawatt bulb or ponies complain about the day being too dim. I thought you were supposed to tidy up in here while I was gone.”
“I was busy, okay? Here, let’s get some of these out of the way.”
Several cardboard boxes floated over the two alicorns and landed in the small attic room Twilight was standing in. She looked down at them, then looked again.
“Red dwarf? Blue-white giants? They’re light bulbs. Are you trying to tell me the stars are just—”
“Not just light bulbs, Twilight,” said Luna. “Lights of the highest quality.”
Twilight took a good, long look at the faded cardboard boxes bearing stickers reading ‘Buy two, get one free’ as well as ‘After Hearth’s Warming Sale’ and ‘May contain lead’ in small print. There were even several lines of Neighponese and Prench, as well as an expiration date several centuries ago visible under the dust.
“Really?” It was the only word Twilight could think of at the moment.
“It is only wise to stock up when there is a sale,” said Luna, floating several more boxes out of the small closet, and then several more, all of which Twilight read as she stacked them to one side.
“There it is!” cried Celestia, swishing her tail in excitement. “Help me with this, Luna.”
There were more rummaging noises coming from inside the small closet, then Celestia backed up into the attic with an enormous light bulb the size of a pony’s head hovering in her magical field.
“You only have two more in the box,” said Luna from inside the closet. “Should we not buy some spares?”
Celestia shook her head. “They’re good for a few thousand years, Luna. We should be fine for now.”
“This… is the sun?” said Twilight, looking at the enormous light bulb. “You must be joking. Tell me you’re joking.”
“It’s not the whole sun,” said Celestia, somewhat defensively. “There’s the plug, and a very long cord, of course.”
“Don’t dally, sister,” called Luna over her shoulder as the sounds of more rummaging came from the room. “Go replace it before every pony in Equestria panics and thinks I’ve gone Nightmare Moon again.”
“Very well.” Celestia opened the nearby window with her magic and bent down to whisper into Twilight’s ear. “If you’re not too busy and as long as you’re here, could you help Luna tidy up a little? After all, someday you may need to do this.”
Celestia flew out the window and up into the darkness with Luna calling out after her, “Don’t forget to dust before you plug the new one in!” She sighed and looked back at Twilight while shaking her head. “She can be so messy at times, but I love her just the same.”
As Luna (or at least the front half of her) vanished back into the closet, Twilight just sat on her rump and blinked.
“So,” she started very slowly, “the sun is a light bulb.”
“Of course!” declared Luna. “What did you think it was, a giant planet-sized ball of gas and fusion?”
“Well…”
“Here, hold this box of red dwarfs, please.” Another box proclaiming ‘Authentic Chromatic Fading Action!’ floated out of the closet to Twilight. “I might as well sort the shelves while my sister is out. If I go back to court before she gets the new bulb plugged in, the royals will just get all shouty.”
Twilight silently passed boxes of planetary objects and stellar illumination back and forth to Luna for quite some time in the relative darkness of the attic until light burst into the room from the open window.
“Finally!” declared Luna. “And that’s the last box. Thank you, Twilight. Hm…” She floated a light bulb much the size of the previous one out of the closet and asked, “Twilight Sparkle, do you think we should change the moon’s light too? It has been a long while, and these do not last forever. Twilight? Where did you go?”
- - ? - -
Several evenings later, the Castle of Friendship was nearly silent in the middle of the night with only the sound of Twilight Sparkle’s quill against parchment and Spike turning the pages of his comic book.
Then there was a pop somewhere up around the ceiling, and the room became significantly darker.
“Oh, fudge.” Spike stood up and put away his comic book. “A bulb blew. I’ll go get a spare.”
“No, I’ve got it,” said Princess Twilight Sparkle. She got up from her studying and took a deep breath before walking to the closet. “After all, I need the practice.”
Celestia sat huddled over her desk amidst the warm darkness of her castle bedroom, with a pair of candles by her side providing the only light. There was a sense of urgency to her motions as she scribbled away on a note with a quill clenched between her rigid teeth and an intent gaze that never left her frantic writing for a moment.
Well, she was applying ink to the paper, but 'writing' was probably not a good description of her activity. 'Slowly turning her own coat into Princess Luna’s color by way of splatters' probably was more fitting. Her entire muzzle was ink-black with little rivulets of ink still dripping onto the table as she wrote, and several empty inkwells lay scattered nearby, with their contents having been poured into a water glass so that the Princess of the Sun could dunk her tightly-clenched and somewhat frazzled quill in without tipping it over. Again.
With a faint creaking of the door, Princess Luna proceeded slowly into the bedroom, casting a bright hornlight around herself as she paused for a moment to watch Celestia write in such an awkward fashion, then strode slowly up to her side.
"So..." said Luna, casting a long, evaluating look over Celestia's head, and in particular, her un-lit horn and limp pink mane. "Power's out again?"
"Fuse blew," said Celestia, somewhat muffled due to the quill in her teeth. "Didn't want to take a couple hours to go looking for a spare in the desk drawer downstairs. This is too important."
Luna giggled. "Fear not, sister of mine. I hath been careful to always carry a spare." With a glow of indigo magic, Luna removed a small metallic object from her mane and floated it over to the base of Celestia's horn. It only took a few moments to install, and the golden light of Celestia's magic filled the room once more, allowing her to spit out the dripping pen.
"Thanks, sis!" Celestia gave Luna a quick inky nuzzle across the neck and pulled another fresh quill out of a box with her restored magic.
"Think nothing of it." Luna scooped up a wad of tissues in her magic and started mopping at her damp neck before the ink could dry. "Although I have to ask. What's your hurry?"
"I just remembered I never told Twilight about alicorn fuses, and I wanted to get a letter to her before—"
A coil of dragonfire smoke curled up in front of Celestia's horn and resolved into a wadded-up mess of sodden parchment, dripping with ink and embossed with a great number of exclamation marks. It plopped to the desk, slowly adding its own ink slick to the splatters and blobs of ink Celestia had already spilled, but quite clearly scribbled at the top of the crumpled sheet were three familiar words, although in an unfamiliar fashion.
DearPrinccFsssCe1azTja!!!!!
There was a long moment as both alicorns stared at the dripping piece of parchment, then a brief frustrated sigh as Princess Celestia turned to her sister. “Luna, do you think you could—”
"I'll leave you to your task," said Luna, sweeping gracefully out of the room. “Good luck!”
"I'm glad we're celebrating Princess Luna's return to the throne with a new silver bit," said Princess Twilight Sparkle, trotting alongside her mentor. "I just don't understand why it took so long. And why are we going into the palace instead of the Royal Mint?"
"I didn't want to spoil the surprise while you're in public," said Celestia. "I know how you get when discovering new things."
"I do not!" protested Twilight, then immediately backpedaled. "I mean if you think it's appropriate for us to view the proofs in private before the official ceremony at the Mint, I'm not going to argue, because you know best about these things. Not that I over-react to discovering that entire sections of the world that I thought ran in some rational fashion are actually completely wacked. I mean different."
"I'm just glad to have some help with the national treasury again," admitted Celestia. "All of those golden bits across the nation and no real way to make change. I was afraid Luna would want her silver to be ten-bit coins, but she surprised me. Quarter-bits do make far more sense, and her Moon is far more productive, since it is closer."
"Moon?" Twilight's steps faltered, then she ran to catch up as Celestia made a turn into the Royal Gardens. "She mines the moon for silver?"
"Not exactly. We're almost there, and you will understand far better with some visual aids."
"Oh, of course." Twilight smiled at the thought of pie charts and bar graphs, with explanations written in large letters. Nothing was more relaxing than a long presentation on fiscal policy, and she fairly danced on her hooves as Celestia made several more turns through the garden, headed to a section Twilight had never seen before.
And as they came out from an opening in the path to see rows and rows of trees organized into a neat orchard, she realized exactly why.
"It took quite a bit of cross-breeding and alicorn magic," continued Celestia as she walked, with Twilight stumbling along behind out of pure inertia. "The original seeds from before Luna's banishment were no longer any good, so we had to cross-pollinate my trees with several wild varieties until we came up with a suitable cultivar. I had originally thought about doing much the same when you became an alicorn princess, but you were in Ponyville, and I really couldn't think of what a friendship coin would be valued at, so I put it off until later."
Celestia nodded at where Princess Luna was using a brush to gently dust the glittering silver blossoms of one of the smaller trees, most likely performing the pollination task that Twilight could not get her mind wrapped around.
"In any event, we finally used some of Princess Cadence's root stock from the Crystal Empire to get the quantity up, and they've been producing long enough for us to introduce them into the economy." Celestia tapped one hoof against the silvery trunk of a nearby tree, caught the glittering silver quarter-bit that fell out of the foliage, and presented it for Twilight's examination. "The Mint will have to polish off the stem marks and weigh them to ensure uniformity, but I have to admit, they're just as perfect as the bits Equestria's been using for a thousand years."
"Urk!" managed Twilight Sparkle as her eyes darted from the silvery orchard they were standing next to, over to the towering golden trees nearby, and back again, over and over.
It had been over a year, but Celestia was still getting used to having her sister back. The habits of many pony lifetimes made her fight off the urge to use her magic to raise the moon at night once she had put her own sun to bed. Her attempts had not always been successful, thus the balcony she preferred to use for that occasion had eventually gained a sign, although Celestia had not been the one to put it there.
My moon. Hooves off. Love you.
Today the Day had been quite busy, leaving the Princess in charge of the chaos moving at a brisk clip from dawn to the present, and although all Celestia really wanted was to stagger back into her bedroom and sleep until time for her sun to emerge, there was a greater desire that swept over her in the darkness. She stood there for a while, looking up into the sky while counting the stars and considering their rearrangement, as if somepony was moving the furniture around in their house.
No matter how tired Celestia was, she would not be able to sleep until she found out just why the heavens needed to be shuffled tonight. It certainly was not for dusting, because Celestia had been quite conscientious about keeping the night sky clean during Luna’s thousand year absence. Although the first thing her sister had done upon returning was to scurry about in the night sky with a dustrag in her mouth to chase invisible flecks and complain.
Celestia did not mind in the least. Sometimes, Luna was the happiest when she was complaining.
All the musing she was doing did not get Celestia one step closer to solving the dark conundrum, so she heaved a sisterly sigh and turned her path to Luna’s tower with long, slow strides. It was a longer walk than she liked, but flying in the darkness was just tempting fate, particularly when so many of the stars had been shuffled into new locations. The bedroom door was open to promote a cool breeze through the darkened room, which Celestia picked her way through cautiously, far too aware of a Minotaurian toy manufacturer’s gift of ‘Princess Luna’s Lunar Fortress With Working Asteroid Projectors And Light-Up Moon Signal.’ Thirty-nine thousand pieces of tiny plastic blocks⁽*⁾ now littered the carpets and floors of the castle, turning a casual night stroll into something akin to wading through a minefield. The Royal Guard was even rumored to have purchased several of the plastic block playsets with the intent of using them as caltrops in the event Canterlot was ever invaded again, although Celestia suspected their main purpose was to give off-duty guards something to do in the barracks under the excuse of ‘wargaming’ or ‘strategic tactical exercises performed in restricted space environments.’ (*) Some assembly required, HA!
“Celly!” called out her sister. “Be careful where you step. I dropped a piece out of the Intruder Fun Slide Into The Pit Trap Of Doom, and I’m not quite sure where it went.”
“Here you go, Luna.” Celestia floated the slightly flattened piece of plastic over to her sister and limped onto the balcony with her. There was really no delicate way to approach the subject of stellar rearrangement, so she added, “What are you doing with your stars this evening, dearest sister?”
“Progressing into the modern age. It hath been far too long since I have cleaned up the obsolete constellations and expired prophecies,” explained Luna while moving another star.
“Ponies are used to the constellations where they are. Perhaps you should leave some of the more popular ones,” said Celestia slowly while fighting back a well-deserved yawn. “And what was that about prophecies?”
“Of course.” Luna gestured with a loose star, which probably caused some astronomer to have a bad case of vertigo. “Certainly you remember how we inscribed the events of the future into the stellar firminent in order for the peasants… I mean common ponies to be prepared.”
Celestia thought back and nodded. “The practice has fallen out of favor in modern times.”
“Merely the clutter,” said Luna, turning back to her task. “Once a prophecy hath run its course, there is no reason for the announcement to remain. After all, the weather schedule for the city only lists the current week and month, not all years back to the first cloud being manipulated.”
“Quite true,” said Celestia with a short nod as she watched the stars move into their new locations.
“Plus it gave me the opportunity to bring the sky into compliance.”
“Oh?” Celestia frowned slightly while looking up into the sky, her lips moving as she spelled out the letters.
