There was something about the stained glass window—one depicting Luna’s return—that intrigued Gosling, but he didn’t know what it was. The past few days had been busy ones, hectic ones, and preparations for the school’s holiday gala were in full swing. When that was concluded, the Winter Moon Festival would be soon to follow, and Hearth’s Warming. But all of these things were in the background for Gosling, who had something of a mystery on his hooves.

Beans and Toast were playing cards with one another while Gosling stared up at the window, and he wore the most curious expression. His serious mien was absolutely ruined by the sweater he was wearing, another one of Luna’s creations. This one was charcoal black and luscious pink, and Gosling somehow made it look good. Oh, sure, he was ridiculous, but he was a very good looking ridiculous.

“Been a bit fixated on the glass,” Beans remarked and his sister nodded her head.

Having endured a bit of ribbing from his assistants, Gosling nodded, but also chose to respond: “There is a mystery here. Something that doesn’t add up. Upon Luna’s return, she was reborn through the Elements of Harmony and was revived as a filly.”

“Right.” Toast sounded as though she was humouring Gosling.

“Not long after that, she is seen as a full grown mare in the town of Ponyville to celebrate Nightmare Night.” Gosling gestured up at the stained glass window and the image of the small blue alicorn filly it presented. “Princess Luna is the undisputed master of illusion, with only the House of Lulamoon as her rivals. Moonlight Raven, Luna’s disguised counterpart, is such a finely crafted illusion that when she cries, her mascara runs.”

Beans and Toast both went still and in an eerie moment of synchronicity, they both turned to look at Gosling. “Oi, then, what are you going on about?” they both said together in perfect timing with one another.

Gosling, who was mostly fine with how creepy his assistants tended to be, ignored the shivers that had an impromptu relay race up and down his spine. “These illusions are so powerful that they force your speech patterns to change… I know this because I’ve experienced it. I’m not strong enough to fight it, but I do wonder if a master of illusion might try to change the spell somehow or force the illusion to change to adapt to new needs… if such an illusion could be changed.”

Toast cleared her throat, looked her brother in the eye, and dropped her cards down onto the pile on the floor. She then got up and moved to stand by Gosling’s side, so that she too, could look up at the stained glass window, perhaps trying to see whatever Gosling saw.

“I win,” Beans muttered to himself as he cleaned up the cards.

“I need to get into the archives.” Gosling sidled closer to Toast, who stood beside him, and he gave her a sidelong glance. “I don’t understand the archives though and I don’t know where to look. If I ask for help, they might catch on to the fact that I am on to them.”

“Them? They? Who?” Toast gave Gosling an incredulous look along with a snort that blew his mane to the other side of his head.

“It’s a conspiracy.” Gosling shook his head to straighten out his mane and then stepped away from Toast, lest his good looks become unsettled once more. “I’ve been reading just a little now and then. Luna is an immortal entity, sort of like Philomena, Celestia’s pet bird. If something somehow destroys her body, she is reborn… and she was reborn. She came back as a filly after the nightmare was destroyed.”

“Right. She did vanish for a time from the public eye, as I seem to recall. ‘Course, I don’t really remember it, but I do remember reading about it. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna vanished from the public eye for a while on a sabbatical of sorts.” Beans began to rub his chin and his eyes narrowed as his face took on a thoughtful expression. “So, off to the archives then?”

“To the archives,” Toast agreed.

“Yes”—Gosling nodded with much enthusiasm—“to the archives.”

Sitting amidst scattered piles of research material, Gosling let out a sigh and shook his head to express his displeasure. Feeling that this wasn’t enough, he pressed his lips together and forced more air out, causing a flatulent-lip-flappy-horsey sound, but this just wasn’t satisfying either. No, nothing would be satisfying until he had results, but there seemed to be no results to be had.

“Nothing,” he said, bemoaning the situation. “Nothing at all. Not a darn thing. Or even a damn thing.” Waving his hoof, he gestured at the canisters of microfilm and stacks of books around him and his assistants. “The press ruthlessly stalks every member of the royal family… there is stuff here about Blueblood acting like an ass out in public. Princess Cadance’s shopping trips are thoroughly documented. Princess Celestia sneezing in public makes headlines and ponies predict the end of the world… but there is a huge blank spot when it comes to Luna.”

“I was going to say something about privacy, but then I recalled that the press doesn’t really respect privacy.” Toast flipped through a heavy, dusty tome of condensed press releases with only her furrowed brows revealing her frustration. “Luna’s so called ‘coming out’ does seem to coincide with Nightmare Night in Ponyville and after that point comes a deluge of relevant information. Every public sighting is documented—”

“But that doesn’t help us make sense of the blank space that spans almost two years,” Beans said, finishing his sister’s sentence. “So Luna returns to much fanfare, there are a few photos taken of her as a foal under the careful care of Princess Cadance, and then she just vanishes.”

“It’s a conspiracy.” Gosling hated himself for saying it, but he said it anyway. He had never been one for crackpot conspiracies, no, he only believed in the obvious conspiracies, the ones that were clearly and obviously true. “The lack of evidence suggests that—”

Toast cut Gosling off and sounded very much like a prim schoolmarm: “The lack of evidence for conspiracy is not evidence of conspiracy. If we followed this bit of reasoning, we’d be finding conspiracies in bloody everything.”

“But sister,” Beans interjected, and he cringed a bit when his sibling cast her stern glare upon him. “We can clearly see a hole. Just because there is nothing inside of the hole does not mean that the hole doesn’t exist. The evidence of a hole’s existence is that there is a big clump of nothing all gathered into one place.”

“Shut up, Beans, you’re making my brain ache. You can see a hole by what is around it.”

“Yes, and we can see what is around Luna missing from the public eye for almost two years and then suddenly reappearing one night as an adult… as a grown mare. I see a hole.”

Huffing in annoyance, Toast began putting the books back into their proper places all while rolling her eyes. Gosling watched her, feeling both frustrated as well as amused, all while wondering how much time they had just wasted in pursuit of this particular bit of folly. This place had no windows and was cut off from the outside world, making it quite easy for the hours to slip away unnoticed.

“Something is amiss, Sis.” Beans began to help his sister clean up the mess they had made together and he ignored her withering glare. “Look at little Flurry Heart. Every moment of her growth is somehow given documentation and every possible moment of her foalhood is documented any time she appears in public. The papers talk about how much she’s grown, how much larger she is compared to normal foals her age. The media consumes every conceivable detail and documents every precious moment they can capture. So why isn’t there any record of Luna’s growth? Do you really think that the papers somehow missed out on this goldmine?”

Toast said nothing, but did spend a moment looking her brother in the eye. The siblings seemed to be exchanging some means of communication that Gosling did not understand, and try as he might, he could not eavesdrop on their conversation. This was a little frustrating, which piled in atop the rest of his frustrations, and he began rubbing and tugging at the collar of his garish sweater.

“Have you thought about asking Luna?” Toast asked.

To which Gosling replied, “Of course I have. If I thought she’d tell me, I wouldn’t be doing this.” Squirming inside of his sweater, Gosling felt hot and itchy, even though the archives were as cold as an icebox. “Maybe all of this is a waste of time.”

“Perhaps you should try talking to her,” Beans suggested and Gosling cringed at these words. “Just come right out and ask her about all of this.”

It took Gosling a moment to prepare his reply; first, he had to bite his tongue to avoid sarcasm; second, he reminded himself that Beans was his friend and assistant; and third, he took a much needed deep breath. Then, he had this to say: “I can get Celestia to talk about almost anything, but it is difficult to pry secrets out of Luna.”

“So talk to Celestia about this.” Toast let out a sniff and began returning microfilm canisters to their proper locations.

“Amendment.” Gosling spat out the word as if it had a foul taste. “Celestia will tell me almost anything. She can be tight lipped about Luna, which is immensely frustrating, because knowing certain things would really make it easier to help Luna out.”

“Respecting another pony’s privacy isn’t a bad thing,” Toast began.

“And there can be a tight bond between siblings,” Beans finished.

Then, both spoke together: “Sometimes, being tight-lipped does more harm than good.”

Having nothing worthwhile to say, Gosling remained silent while his assistants cleaned up the mess that they all had made.

Late for supper, Gosling offered up an apologetic grin to those around the table as he sat down. Tonight, his tablemates seemed like an odd smattering of familiar faces. Moon Rose and Flurry were here, but there were no signs of their parents. Sleet was missing as well, and Gosling guessed that Flurry and Moon Rose had been left in Celestia’s care.

Celestia herself sat at the head of the table, as usual, but there was no sign of Luna. Raven was here, but there was no sign of Blueblood, which Gosling found a little odd, but not too out of place. Sometimes, Blueblood just stayed busy. Next to Raven was an older mare that Gosling barely knew: Professor Inkwell and he wondered why she was here.

“So nice of you to finally join us,” Professor Inkwell said to Gosling as he sat down.

“I was busy—”

“Doing what?” Celestia asked as she leaned forward to have a better look at Gosling.

“Archival research,” he replied while he stared down at his empty plate.

“Oh…” Celestia drew out the word, stretching it like so much taffy, and Gosling could feel her eyes on him. “About what?”

“I’ve learned something amazing.” Gosling scrambled to change the subject and make it sound like an answer, but without actually lying, because he had learned many things from the archive. Celestia failed to be specific about what he had learned today. “It seems that every time you get pregnant, the borders of Equestria expand. I’ve noticed quite a pattern. You annex and you conquer when you are in a delicate condition.”

When Celestia began to giggle, Raven and Inkwell both looked somewhat annoyed. Gosling’s eyes darted to each of them, trying to discern their feelings, and he suspected that they were onto his subversions. Thinking about it, he doubted that he had fooled Celestia, but at least she was playing nice.

“My nesting instincts cause me to be a wee bit expansionist,” Celestia confessed, almost sighing out the words. “Nothing wrong with picking up a bit of territory when others fail to utilise the land to its fullest potential. Well, that and Equestria’s enemies always seem to think that I am weak for some reason when I find myself expecting. They push in, I push back, and I find that I have to take a little bit of what was once theirs for compensation.”

Flurry, who was bored of such conversation, began to blow spit bubbles, while Moon Rose tried her best to be polite. Gosling wiped his sweaty frogs against his sweater and eyeballed the door, wondering when the food was coming. It was his fault that the meal was delayed, and he felt rather guilty about it.

“So, Gosling, what were you studying today?” Celestia asked in a voice that dripped with syrupy sweetness. Leaning forward, she batted her eyelashes and did her best to look quite fetching, which she did with staggering ease.

“Oh, just stuff,” he replied in a noncommittal tone. “How goes the preparations for the hero-themed gala?”

“Oh, quite excellent.” Celestia seemed amused, and this left Gosling somewhat worried. If she found this funny, could she already know? It seemed possible. “Gosling, will you take me to the dance?”

Flustered, Gosling had no wings to flap about to cool off and his naked nubs were hidden beneath the thick, woollen sweater. If sweaters were to make one sweaty as their namesake seemed to imply, then this one was doing a good job because Gosling could feel beads of moisture rolling down the back of his neck.

Two unicorn servants came into the room, with one bearing a wheeled cart loaded down with food and the other carrying a platter loaded down with hot, steaming pies. As they approached the table, Gosling found himself burning up beneath Celestia’s sunlamp-stare. Something about her eyes left him feeling heated, and the two mares across the table had started to snicker.

“I wanna be a princess!” Flurry blurted out, causing Gosling to let out a startled whinny. “Pretty dresses! Big castles! Handsome prince! Gimme gimme!”

Covering her mouth with one perfect hoof, Raven began to chortle from Flurry’s outburst and Gosling’s reaction. Professor Inkwell had composed herself, but now sat smiling. To Gosling’s right, Celestia looked delighted, and off to his left, Moon Rose had a bad case of the giggles.

“Say, Moon Rose, where are your parents?” Gosling asked, hoping for a more suitable distraction.

“They went out with Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor,” the filly replied, sounding quite prim and maybe a bit proud. “Princess Celestia offered to be my foalsitter.”

“Handsome prince for dinner!” Flurry shouted while she clopped her front hooves together.

“Flurry, I think you mean, ‘have a handsome prince over for dinner.’ We must be careful with how we say things.” Raven, who was beside Flurry, reached out and stroked the filly’s cheek to calm her down. “An ogre might have a handsome prince for dinner though and a little filly for dessert.” At this, Flurry shivered, went quiet, and Raven’s chortles turned into full blown laughter.

As the food was being served, Gosling too, found himself laughing at the exchange.

Author's Notes:

There is a mystery loose in the castle!