When I woke, it took my brain a second to register I was still in Equestria. I lazily looked to the clock and saw it was a little after seven in the morning. I was lucky that there were no headaches the second morning after the big switch. I got out of bed, did some stretches to get some energy pumping through my limbs, and then went outside to greet the morning. The smell of fresh dew permeated the air with the cool sensation of damp masonry under my hooves made me feel alive.

A couple minutes later, three firm knocks came from the door, followed up by an authoritative voice. “Your Majesty, Princess Celestia requests your presence in the dining hall.”

I went over and opened the door to find a white pegasus stallion dressed in Romanesque, gold-coloured armour complete with galea helmet. “I trust you slept well?”

“I did, thank you. I hope you had a good night too.” Hopefully simple courtesy was within Luna’s character.

“I’ve been patrolling the halls during the night for some time,” he said. I wasn’t sure if that was something Luna already knew. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to the dining hall.” I closed the door behind me and followed the guard, which allowed me to get my first proper look at the castle.

The halls were as wide as they were tall, curving further upwards to end in an arch supported by thick wooden beams. The walls were decorated with tapestries depicting–including but not limited to–wars, landscapes and castles, portraits, meadows, as well as sun and moon themes. They weren’t just for decoration; they were thick enough to prevent heat from the sconces from escaping, keeping the corridors nice and warm. A thick, ruby-red rug muffled our hoofsteps against the cold floor. How long can one rug possibly be? I wondered as we came to a four-way junction. The guard went left and I followed. We went down a corridor that had multi-coloured rays of sunlight pouring in from stained glass windows lining the corridor, and some ways down the guard opened a door for me with a polite usher.

“Good morning, Luna,” Celestia said with a smile as I walked in. “How are you feeling?” She was sitting at the head of a long communal table in a massive dining hall, a large hearth with a crackling fire behind her and torches adorning each supporting pillar

“A lot better. Thanks for your concern.”

She raised a curious eyebrow when she looked up, her eyes scanning me for some reason. “Why are you not wearing your regalia?” I glanced at Celestia, noting she wore a golden tiara, peytral with a set gemstone, and shoes that extended up her forelegs. I supposed I should have realised that Luna had her own regalia to wear.

“The guard fetched me from my room moments after I woke up, so I had little time to prepare. I can go back up and change if you’d like.”

“After breakfast. I can start the proceedings in the throne room, then you can join me.” Celestia punctuated her double entendre with a wave of her hoof towards a place set for me. I went over and sat down, where I balked at the exaggeratedly fancy spread. I was half tempted to ask for simple bacon and eggs on toast, but realised horses couldn’t eat meat any more than humans could eat grass.

Next to the food that was dressed up to the point I couldn’t tell what half of it was supposed to be, there was a hearty stack of pancakes. I took a few samples from each unknown dish and put them on an empty plate next to the pancakes. “Any idea on what to expect today?” I asked, since Luna’s journal failed to mention anything specific.

“Conflicting land arguments, a few cases of accused thieves, and so on. It should take up most of the day, sadly,” Celestia said.

I speared some food with my fork and eyed it for a second before eating it. Eggplant? I had no idea, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t delicious, and the pancakes were as fluffy as a cloud! I was cautiously excited about holding court with Celestia; it was a big test to keep Luna’s character in check. We finished breakfast in peaceful silence, mostly because I was too busy enjoying the food while Celestia looked on rather amusedly, then she excused herself to go to the throne room while I went back up to my room to put on my regalia. I spent a few minutes rifling around in the closet before I found Luna’s crescent moon peytral, black tiara with blue trim around the edges, and light blue shoes, then took a few moments to brush and tidy up so I could hurry to the throne room.

I left the bedroom after a while and followed the same route to the dining hall, hoping I would find someone I could ask to show me the way to the throne room. I saw a maid stoking the sconces, so I asked her.

“Of course, Princess,” she said cordially. On my way, I paid mind to where we were going to learn my way around the castle; the architecture, tapestries, paintings, and stained glass windows were all beautifully decorated, giving the castle an antiquated, yet distinct homey feeling. When we arrived, the throne doors were wide open, sitting at the top of a ‘T’ junction. Looking out, Celestia was sitting on the left, a sun-themed tapestry hanging above her throne while a lunar orientated one hung above Luna’s. Correction, mine.

Two stallions, one with the picture of three ears of corn on his flank, who was wearing a worn cloth vest and a tatty straw hat, and a well-groomed unicorn stallion with a shiny, charcoal-black coat and slicked back silvery mane and tail who simply radiated “pompous twat” at first glance were both standing short of each set of stairs leading up to the thrones. The farmer (I assumed he was a farmer from appearances) bowed slightly, yet politely when I walked to my throne. The unicorn with the crystalline blue and white compass star on his rear simply eyed me as I went by.

After I took my seat (making me feel like top dog at the office), I let out a heavy sigh I didn’t realise I was holding. Keep it together, I told myself. Be professional and follow Celestia’s lead.

“Now that my sister has arrived, shall we begin?” Celestia announced.

Was she trying to make me feel even more uncomfortable?

“Thank you,” the black stallion said through a relieved sigh. He cleared his throat. “This farmer has been stealing crops from my fields, and I demand recompense.”

“What does the accused have to say?” Celestia said.

“Your Majesties,” the farmer began sincerely, “I’ve already sold off a few sections of my land to other nobles, and what I’m left with provides me and my family with enough food and money to live on. I live comfortably with my lifestyle, so I have no reason to steal another’s livelihood.”

Celestia looked to me expectantly. It was now or never. “Names?” I asked.

“Mine is Harvest, Princess,” the farmer said respectfully.

“And I am Lumen,” the decidedly pompous bellend declared.

“Who do you represent?” I asked Lumen.

“I own land in the same area as this… farmer, shall we say.”

Well, if that wasn’t the rudest thing you could’ve said.

“What makes you think otherwise?” he amended.

Oh please, you don’t have a single spec of dirt on you. I let his comment slide for the moment. “Call it a hunch. Now, what has lead you to believe that this stallion has been stealing your crop?”

“Our lands border one another, so it’d be easy for him to trespass and acquire seeds.”

“If I may interject?” Harvest said. I nodded. “I’d never cross onto another’s land unless it was business related, a simple misunderstanding, or for a social call.”

Lumen snorted derisively at that and gave Harvest a sideways glance. “Is it a possibility that wind could’ve simply blown the seeds over and into his land?” I asked

Lumen opened his mouth but I cut him off. “What makes you so adamant to assert that he’d brazenly steal your crop?” I looked to Harvest. “How much of his crop has been growing on your land?”

“It keeps spreading. I try to pull up and incinerate it to make room for corn, but it’s proving tenacious to deal with,” he said. Lumen was aghast at that.

“What kind of compensation are you asking?” I said.

“Simply the section of land on which my crop has been growing,” Lumen replied pointedly.

“Your Majesties!” Harvest blurted, “if that were to happen, I wouldn’t be able to provide for my family!”

This ‘case’ was child’s play. I grinned. “Humour me for a moment, Lumen. If a fence separated my neighbour and I, and his apple tree hung over the fence, I am well within my rights to dispose of any fruit that I do not want on my property. Also consider this: Harvest has doing his best to keep your plants off his land. If he has indeed been stealing, why would he also be destroying them?”

Lumen opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t find anything to say.

“Who do you rule in favour of, Luna?” Celestia asked me.

I turned back to the stallions. “Lumen, Harvest has every right to rid his land of your invading crop, and it is up to you to keep it contained, so please do so. Anything that blows from one plot of land to the next and vice versa, so long as it’s not done deceitfully, the owner of that land has freedom of choice whether to cultivate or destroy.”

“Motion carried!” Celestia said with a firm stomp of her hoof, and looked to me with a wink. Her voice carried over the throne room, and the noble just stood in place with the most horrified look on his face while the farmer looked beyond relieved.

I looked the noble in the eye. “Before you say anything else, know that further attempts at subjugating land like this will mean you’ll be compensating this stallion. Clear?”

Lumen forced a bow. “Of course.” He promptly turned tail and left, much to my amusement, leaving Harvest behind.

“Thank you, Your Majesties,” Harvest said with a sigh of relief.

“I have more respect for the working class than those who think they can skate through life by having others do it for them and reaping the benefits,” I said.

“Your kind words are not lost on me, but I’d hesitate to say the same for my... friend back there.”

“Take care. If any other problems occur, these doors will always be open to you.”

Harvest bowed in finality and left. The rest of the ‘cases’, loosely put, were fairly mundane and easy to decide. It was like mediating a bunch of bickering children in school. A few thieves were put in the stockades (I was surprised we even had those), one was put in the cells (I hesitate to say dungeon) until he was able to, shall we say, cough up what he stole. I somehow doubted the owner of those gold coins would want them back, though.

The lack of an institutionalised justice system was definitely surprising, so that left me wondering if everyone that had a grievance came to see Celestia and Luna for it to be settled. Probably. However, it meant I could potentially implement and discuss a proper court system with Celestia at a later date. A more hands, or rather, hooves-off approach. I was fortunate that there wasn’t anyone accused of more abhorrent crimes; I doubted I had the fortitude to pass that kind of decision. Hopefully I’d be long gone by the time they came up.

As the day went on, stallions and mares came and went setting their petty squabbles and affairs. Celestia closed the doors over noon so we could get some lunch, then we were right back at it for the afternoon. The line to the throne room began to dwindle towards the evening as I became weary from sitting all day, so Celestia figured it would be a good idea to retire for the evening.

“I’m heading to the library before dinner. Would you like to join me?” she asked when everyone had dispersed.

I was right, they did have a library! “Sounds like a plan,” I said, trying to hide my enthusiasm, and dutifully followed Celestia. I made a mental note to find out if it was possible to send books through the portal. After all, what’s a holiday without a souvenir?

I was eager to see what kind of books ponies had, and maybe look for one that was interesting enough I could take back to Earth. When I went through the doors, I was taken aback by the sight. Several long rooms connected by arched frames that stretched to the ceiling, and long tables that sat in the middle of each mini-room with blank parchments, quills in jars, all sitting around small bottles of ink. I thought the library would have been a simple room with a collection of written books, but no, I was proved otherwise.

It was weird, really. Despite modernised bathrooms, the lack of pens or pencils, and the fact that these books looked like incunables, it was difficult to draw any parallels to one single time period on Earth.

Celestia went off to do her thing, whatever that might’ve been. I wanted find out what system these ponies used to catalogue books. I walked through each passageway, and eventually found a large cabinet that looked like a library card index. Jackpot. Each drawer had names for a large variety of things: medicine, history, mathematics, spells, but nothing on law in the sense that I thought. However, one drawer caught my eye. It was a titled “Grimoires”, and the cards within the drawer had several different categories. I picked one out at random and took a good look at the card, noting the location, and went to find them.

The shelves were in the furthest room from the entrance, underneath a window. The books were bound with covers of wood, what looked like leather at the spine and corners, and langets with rivets holding everything together. I picked one off a shelf and saw it had a raised symbol of a ram’s head stamped into the cover. I was fascinated by how archaic it looked, and when I opened this particular one, my lips pursed in silent fascination as my eyes widened.

There was no order to how this was written; notes and blocks of text dotted the pages around sigils, characters, and diagrams. If I could fly around in the dream realm using already existing muscle memory, then it stood to reason I shouldn’t have to learn how to read and write from scratch if it’s something Luna already knew. As I flipped through the book, it opened to a diagram titled Teleportation. It detailed how to teleport objects from one place to another using two sets of parchment, almost like a two-way walkie talkie. My curiosity piqued, I decided to give it a try.

I picked up two rolls of parchment, dipped a quill in some ink, and went about following the instructions as best I could. Hopefully this little experiment wouldn’t wind up like the teleporters from The Fly. Yeesh… Once the circles and runes were drawn, I put each parchment at opposite ends of the table with the quill in the centre of one. The book said I needed to ‘charge’ the diagrams, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. Was it like what I did with the powder puff?

I figured I’d try that, so I lit my horn and the parchment, and almost immediately, poof. The quill disappeared in a flash of light and reappeared at the other end of the table. My face lit up in wonder. Holy shit! I started giggling to myself like an excited schoolgirl and joyfully cantered down to the quill, making sure it was still in one piece. Fucking magic, man, this was the sort of thing you could only dream of! I was over the moon! What else did the book have?!

I opened the book to a random page and, unless I was misreading the title, settled on a... gravity canceller? Sounded rather confusing; how do you cancel gravity? It looked more complex than the last, so I took it as a challenge. I carefully transcribed the sigil onto the back of one of the parchments I already used, and set an empty ink bottle in the middle. I ‘charged’ the thing, and almost immediately the jar rocketed upwards with a flash and shattered against the ceiling as I let out a small shriek. Seconds later, Celestia came through the arch closest to me.

“What was that?” She walked over to see what I was doing and stopped when she saw the parchment. “You’re playing with gravity spells?”

“...Maybe?” Celestia spied the broken glass, then used her magic to pick up all the pieces, and I mean all the pieces to put them in a wastepaper basket in the corner. Talk about dexterity. She stared curiously at the parchment before she spoke.

“That shouldn’t have happened… It’s designed as a means of levitation without user input.” She flipped the parchment over and that knowing “oh” look dawned over her face before she chuckled. “Stacking sigils like that isn’t a good idea. Your magic gots confused as to which spell to run off, and that’s what caused the bottle’s acceleration.” At the time, I couldn’t get over the fact that I essentially created a rocket propelled bottle, and I was beaming. “Just be careful it doesn’t happen again, alright?”

“I was just trying to save on parchment is all.”

“There’s more where that came from. In any case, you’re due to raise the moon after dinner, so I’ll come get you.” She gave me a soft nuzzle which, as much as I hate to admit it, felt kind of nice. Celestia left to finish up what she was doing, and the moment she was out of sight, I dove back into the book in a frenzy. There was no way I could raise the moon on my own! Maybe the book had something that’d help? I flicked through every page, and while I found some spells and sigils definitely worth trying, couldn’t find anything that I saw would aid me.

I must’ve been at it for a while, searching through that book and a few more, because the next thing I knew, Celestia was knocking on the frame on the archway to get my attention. “You can take that book up to your room if you’d like. It is a library, so make sure you bring it back tomorrow.”

I made a mental note to come back tomorrow to find out what other spells I could combine, though I’d likely have to be careful which ones. I quickly scrunched up the used parchment rolls and tossed them in the bin, then picked up the book in my magic. After dinner, we went up to my room. I put the grimoire on the desk, then followed Celestia out to the dais.

Celestia lit her horn and bowed her head with closed eyes. The sun’s glow dimmed as the dark blues and blacks of the night sky became more prominent. “Go on, it’ll be alright,” she gently ushered.

If I screw up, then Celestia will think something was wrong. If I pass it off again, she’ll get suspicious. It was now or never, so I followed her example.

I closed my eyes, dipped my head, and concentrated as hard as I could. I remember feeling the energy that radiated from the moon last night, so I tried drawing on that again. The powder puff likely weighed a few ounces, but this was a celestial body weighing billions of tonnes! The whole time I kept thinking It’s just a powder puff, it’s just a powder puff… at least trying to out-psyche myself.

I strained, pulled, and tugged, and it was no secret that Celestia could tell I was having a hard time. I just hope she didn’t question it. I felt a wing drape over my back, and then came a soft whisper. “Don’t overdo it, just let it come naturally.”

I drew a breath through my nose, held it, then breathed out, which helped clear my head. Eventually, I felt the strain release and I opened my eyes. I was being basked in the radiant glory of the full moon. I stared up in wonder and perplexed confusion as to how the actual fuck I managed to do that!

Celestia gave me a small peck on my forehead. “Father would be proud,” she said with a smile. “Come, it’s time to rest.” I looked behind me to the clock. It was only eight! I typically didn’t go to bed until about midnight on Earth.

“It’s still early,” I pointed out.

“The life of a princess starts before sunrise,” she said with a nuzzle. “We both need the sleep.”

“I think I’ll stay out here a little bit. I like the scenery.”

“By all means. Just don’t go to bed too late, alright?”

“Alright,” I repeated. Her wing still around me, I felt her pull me into a brief, tight hug, before releasing me and walking over to the door to see herself out.

After she left, I sat under the moon’s calming light for what felt like hours, basking in it’s majesty. Eventually, my head began to dip slightly from how tired I was becoming, so I decided to call it a day and crawl into bed, shutting the doors behind me.

Sleep came easily, and there were a few nights where I had wished I’d stayed up just a little bit later...