Prologue - Birth of a Star
When Sea Salt met Delta, the sky was blue and bright. The loud and brazen girl barked her way into the royal barracks and demanded to be enlisted. It was the first time anyone had volunteered for service in decades, since the Great Sorrow pervaded the land. Delta was instantly enraptured by her, gaping like a fool. Sea Salt largely ignored him.
"A good omen," one of his soldiers reassured him, nodding, sage, towards the clear sky. "Lady Sun surely shines her blessing upon you this day, she does." Delta held his halberd a little tighter, straightened his neck a little further, and prayed Lady Sun would, at least, cast Sea Salt's shadow his way.
It seemed, for the time, that she was insistent on claiming every first she could reach. There were no bat guards in the royal platoon, there never had been. They admitted her because it would cause a scene to deny her. She had caused her own scene anyway. Bats were new and foreign additions on Equestria's green planes, and were largely unwelcome ones. Sea Salt was scruffy, her sharp tongue painted alongside the greyed colours of her hair and coat, complimentary. Her slit eyes seared red circles into the backs of Delta's eyelids, and when nobody was looking, he would often blink rapidly to hold them in his vision. She was raucous thunder, flashing teeth - and yet, he saw the grass dance along the ground beneath her hooves wherever she walked. His soldiers likened him to having seen a star for the very first time, but he knew better - Sea Salt was no star. She was blazing sunlight.
She was harsh, and good at fighting. Not built for combat with her small frame, but she clawed respect from those unlucky enough to spar with her until nobody else was willing - save Delta. She beat and bloodied him relentlessly, but every morning at dawn, he would climb the flagpole hill to see her standing atop it waiting for him, and he knew he had made the right choice.
Come dawn, her face was at peace. Painted in the colours of the sunrise, Sea Salt was the wind.
Over time, they would speak at the birth of every new day.
He taught her, calmed her anger, and bore the brunt of it when needed. In time, her standing waxed, her temper waned, and cooled to something molten just beneath the surface. Her face was stoic, but her eyes would flash whenever she was irritated. Delta began to know her emotions. The year turned on its axis, and she was promoted, to stand alongside him as his second. "I am proud of you," he told her one morning, on the hill beside her. She fixed him with a level, blank sort of look, which he knew to mean he had said something foolish.
"All that I have done here is thanks to your own efforts," she said quietly, looking back out at the rising gold tinge of the sky. "Be proud of yourself."
Delta afforded himself a small smile. "Perhaps I will be proud of the both of us, then."
Sea Salt hummed, the closest she ever got to laughter. "Perhaps."
When they wed, the night was clear and dazzling with tiny lanterns. Bats inhabited Lady Moon's domain, Sea Salt said, and so all of their formalities were done under the moon. Their marriage was a small event that was promptly gatecrashed by dozens upon dozens of soldiers, bearing gifts and blessings for their lives as one. Sea Salt shocked her comrades by smiling the entire evening, without a hint of malice or insincerity. Her wing tucked into her husband's, she was truly happy, for the first time in her life. She had found where she belonged, and he loved her back. From that night onward, her ruby eyes glittered with a touch more joy.
On the frigid winter day their first daughter was born, a snowstorm brewed in the early hours and had enshrouded the entire city by the time Sea Salt went into labour. The birth was difficult on her, and no nurses could make it to their home through the blizzard. Delta sat dutifully by the bedside for hours, holding onto her hoof and begging the Divines not to take his wife and child from him before they could meet. As night fell, the snow settled into gentle powder, and their tiny bat daughter struggled her way into the world. Her hair shone silver, like her sire's, and Sea Salt wearily named her Moon Sugar as the dark, silent world outside swallowed her namesake with clouds.
Moon was a quiet, loving child. She seemed to have taken on the more pleasant social aspects of them both, which relieved her mother greatly. "I spent much of my youth full of hatred," Sea said one day, watching Moon traipse about the small backyard of their new home on wobbly toddler legs. "It is my wish that she has a life free of the struggles I faced." Sea did not speak of her past even to her husband. She believed that their home was a sliver of peace, just for them, where the Great Sorrow could not reach. She would not disturb it with talk of pain.
As Moon Sugar grew, Sea Salt and Delta desired to have one other child. With each passing month, Moon Sugar became a little taller, and her parents grew a little more worried when nothing happened. The town doctor confirmed their fears - the harsh birth of Moon had left Sea Salt unable to concieve again. Saddened by the news, they gave all they had at raising Moon, and she grew into a gentle and graceful girl. She had a smile saved for everyone. She entered the local school, making friends naturally. Sea Salt and Delta were able to return to their posts. Despite their happiness as a family, Sea Salt longed for a second daughter, a sister for Moon to watch over. She would often imagine them playing together, in their yard - another little girl, perhaps with pink hair, like her own, and her father's eyes. Delta sensed her sadness, and shared in it, though he comforted her in silence - he had learned from her that great hurt sometimes required it. He sat beside her that night, his large feathery wings encircling her, as she begged Lady Moon to give her another child.
The morning before Sea Salt discovered she had indeed fallen pregnant for a second time, she barricaded herself in the bathroom and vacated her stomach for what felt like hours before allowing her concerned husband to usher her to the hospital. She cried when the doctor placed his large hoof on her belly, beaming brightly at her and saying words she didn't hear. Sea cried endlessly in the small office, her face turned upwards to the heavens in silent thanks. Delta had not once seen her weep in all the years he'd known her.
The night their second daughter was born, the Divines held a small life in Their hands, surrounded by Their many stars, Their children. The stars shifted and danced, and sang of the little life in joy, for the time had finally come to complete the Eight. From Their finest stars, of which there were naturally Eight, only one remained - the smallest star, twinkling brightly in its navy basket. Its brothers and sisters woke it gently, and carried it over the sky to the new life. Within this Eighth star was both a wonderous power, and a terrible burden. Like the Seven before it, the Divines gifted the new life with this star, and entrusted it to her, to carry out its purpose on Their land.
The sky turned a dark, violent grey in the night and wept with joy as she came into the world, her hair shining bright around her head like a halo. This birth was far easier on Sea Salt, for their new child was too small. She had come early to a land that could not wait for her. Weak and tiny, she nevertheless breathed her first breaths - the clouds parted to reveal a swathe of the night sky, ablaze with stars, and as Lady Moon smiled her light down onto the new arrival, Paper Stars received her name.
The day they came to collect Delta was sunny and clear, and too soon after Paper's birth for Sea Salt to accompany him. She stood at their front gate, her youngest daughter bundled close to her and her eldest beside her, as her husband disappeared up the road in his royal armor towards the castle. Delta had never been called into service like that. The Great Sorrow had changed their home in terrible ways.
The afternoon she received the notice of Delta's death, merely a week later, it had already been raining for three nights. He had been lost in combat, though they had no remains of him to give back. He took Sea Salt with him, the joy leaving her in one large, elongated exhale of nothing. There was nothing, and she heard nothing. No wind, no warmth. Gone was her happiness, the place she belonged. The hollow shell that remained disappeared out of their front door after him, after their life, and consigned herself to the heavens to follow him.
Their eldest daughter, barely past school age,kept her sister as best she could for almost a month before they decided Sea Salt was gone for good. Too young to legally keep their family home, it was sold by the city, and the two sisters sent to reside in the only orphanage - Sea Salt's family were lost with her past, and Delta had no relatives to speak of. There was nobody willing to claim two small bats. Lost in the sea of regular ponies, they were alone and forgotten, left to rot in the orphanage at the mercy of cruel eyes and disgusted sneers. "Of course," one unicorn woman scoffed lowly, not attempting to disguise her words, "just like a bat to bed an Equestrian stallion and then abandon the children." Their words dug into Moon Sugar like sharp icicles, stinging her skin. How anyone could speak that way of her lovely, tiny sister was enough to make her eyes sting.
Slowly, she shed her gentleness and became hardened, and angry. Moon bore the relentless bullying from other ponies in the orphanage alone. She allowed them to call her horrible names, to speak ill of her parents and her kind, as long as little Paper was left at peace. Her hatred for her mother festered inside her heart as the seasons passed, but she did not allow any of that hatred to seep into Paper, whom she raised with a tenderness she kept locked away to all others. Attempts by adults to separate them - a baby bat may still have appealed to someone for adoption - were met with violence, with terrible shrieking growls and snapping teeth. She would not be torn from the only family she had left. It was then that Moon Sugar knew they had to leave. In the dead of night, under Lady Moon's watchful gaze, she gathered Paper Stars up and stole out a window, leaving the orphanage far behind.
"One day," Moon said to Paper, holding onto her front hooves as the toddler balanced haphazardly on her hind legs, "you and I will leave this awful city. We'll go somewhere far away, live our own lives. Nobody else." Paper, a near-silent foal, just beamed back at her elder sister with a mouth devoid yet of teeth. The attic they'd holed up in was cold and blustery, but it was dry, and they were fortunate to have it at all. The entire downstairs was a bakery, and the owners had allowed Moon and Paper lodging as long as Moon promised to work for them. The smell of years of bread was baked into the floorboards, sacks of flour piled in random places across the room, but it was home enough, for a time. Paper Stars learned to walk in that attic, babbling as she tottered shakily over the worn wood towards her big sister, with the kindly baker and his wife watching behind her. They were elderly pegasi, too old to know or understand what others thought of bats.
For a time, their life was finally happy again. The elderly couple retired, leaving the bakery to Moon Sugar, and she turned it into a candy store so she could pursue her dream. Paper Stars grew older, approaching school age, and Moon had begun to look into homeschooling her. Soon, however, destiny came loping after them, and the Divines demanded change. Their smallest star still lay sleeping within the younger sister, and it awakened one summer day as she held a misshapen origami star out to Moon. "For you," she said, and the star emblazoned itself upon her skin and her fur. Again and again she folded the little stars; again and again she gifted them to the bakery's customers, trying desperately to gain favour her kind hadn't yet seen. At first, she got wry half-smiles. Then, people began to show up asking for "the little bat with the stars". Moon Sugar glowed, seeing the small fan club her sister had built, and how the store thrived with her in it.
They said the stars were special, that they could grant wishes. Many recipients claimed that recieving a paper star had made all their dreams come true, had healed chronic pain, or won them lotteries. Crowds would form every day before the bakery opened. Kind smiles turned ravenous and greedy, reaching out towards Paper and shouting over eachother.
The night they came was oddly still and stuffy, the air wet, and heavy. The pack formed long before the sun was due to rise. They came with torches, they came with a terrible, low hum of anger that crept into the small store and roused its inhabitants harshly. Hooves pounded on the shop door and on the front windows. Some had dying relatives. Some had lost their jobs. Others simply needed extra money. Again and again they shouted their wishes towards the attic. The sound of shattering glass echoed off the neighbouring houses.
"Run," whispered the little star, and so Paper ran.