Equestria, that’s what they’d called this place. I mused to myself, hovering by the edge of Luna’s tall windows into the countryside below and the night sky above. I wasn’t sure how they’d managed to achieve it, but the ponies seemed to be getting by just fine without light pollution obscuring their heavens. The haze of a galaxy and its multitudinous stars, each one visible, littered the inky blackness. I briefly hunted for Ursa Major, maybe Polaris. Something that could point me north, maybe ground my reality in a position I knew. After a minute of scanning, I snorted. It wasn’t there. Or, at least, the stars were not in any configuration I could recognize. I was in the great unknown.

“Alright, that is done.” I was startled out of my daydreaming by the slap of a closing book, and Luna’s announcement behind me.

Turning, I saw Luna floating her book over to a desk while making her way over to investigate my preoccupation. Seeing that I had been looking out to the Equestrian Night, a smile crested over her features and her eyes lit up like I had just brought up her favourite hobby.

“Oh, thou enjoys the scenery?” Luna did a little prance to a balcony door overlooking her chambers. I walked over to her as she pressed the doors wide open, stepping out onto the overlook. I felt a flash of cold across my skin as I stepped out into the night air. Princess Luna, for her part, seemed fine. It was that layer of soft pony fur, I supposed.

Luna looked up to the stars for a second, tilting her head as if evaluating them. Turning away from the balcony to face me, she pointed a hoof out to the distance.

“Wouldst thou like to see the city from afar?” She asked, spreading her wings. The dark plumage puffing out, her wingtips stretched from rail to rail of the balcony. My eyes shot wide.

---

“UUuuAaahhhhhh!” I screamed, held a thousand feet above the ground in the blue aura of Luna as she swooped and glided on a wind-current. I had never thought myself to have vertigo, but this was really high up. Steadying my breaths, I tried to focus not on the absence of any surface below me, but on the blue magic holding me aloft, Luna’s magic. Luna was carrying me. I glanced at the blue pony. She was doing jaunty little turns as she flew, trying to enjoy the process of flying. This was normal to her, she was capable up here. A wave of tension left my body.

Eventually, Luna took us in a gliding circular descent, having found a patch of grass that she wanted to land on. Landing with far more grace than the first time I had seen Luna crash into the ground, she gave a slight flap of her wings just before she touched down. Like a petal landing on the surface of water, I don’t think even the grass she landed on noticed her arrival.

Relaxing her horn, I felt the magic keeping me held aloft. For the second time that night, Luna dropped me to the floor. Catching myself on the ground, I took a second to catch my balance, spindly legs flailing out.

When I evened out, I actually took a second to look around and wow. Luna had taken me to a rocky outcrop overlooking the princesses’ palace-capital. I had seen that it was high up, but the city was impossible. It looked like a Disney-castle jammed into the side of a mountain, but way bigger than anything they could ever build and at ultra-high resolution. Amidst a swirling sea of stars and auroras in the sky, its myriad of torches shone like a beacon in the night. No strips of pavement and streetlights crisscrossed the landscape. Instead, you could only pick out the smallest of outlier settlements and the capital in the inky blackness that had settled over the light. Clawing their way up to the heavens, the shapes of distant mountains could be seen only through the blanket of stars that their outlines blotted out. Breaking my focus, I saw Luna shifting forwards, taking a step towards the capital. Turning her head, she looked back to me.

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“Beautiful, is it not? This is something thou did not get to see when we carried you to our sister’s castle. Was it worth the flight, creature?”

“Brihan.” The voice was foreign, but the name was my own.

“Pardon?” Luna cocked her head.

“Brihan Pohrter, my name.” I rasped.

“Brian Porter, you say?” She smiled warmly, “We suppose that thou can not be called a creature any more. Not many creatures have names that they prefer to be called.”

Silence reigned for another second as I took in the landscape some more. “Luna,”–the pony looked at me–“it was worth it.” She beamed.

“We are glad to hear that. Canterlot, this new castle is”–like a switch flicked, her face darkened and her smile faltered–“not a part of Equestria that we can claim any credit for. But, our night sky, it is good to see that the ponies of the land can still enjoy it, even now.” A fondness worked its way back across her face, but it was subdued.

I looked at Luna for a second, wondering how (or even if) I should try cheering her up. This land, these changes, had brought on so many questions that I was often left at a loss. Even trying to make sense of the smallest of things seemed to only pose more questions. Luna was a bundle of such unspoken words. Why did she speak like that when her sister did not? Why was she only a princess, if the government seemed to revolve around her and her sister? What was her relationship with the pony capital and why did she feel so detached from it? Like cosmic comedy, after finally finding someone who I could talk to and determining the right questions to ask to start building the foundations of understanding of this place, I was left with an overpowering sense that I shouldn’t pry right now, that Luna really didn’t want to talk about the subject that had so obliterated her mood. And, however much I wanted to understand these strange ponies around me, I didn’t think that finding out was worth hurting Luna. In some strange way, I had begun to care about her feelings. So, I settled instead for another question on my mind, of the topic that had brought her joy, instead of sadness. Why did she call it her sky?

“Yourh sky?” I tentatively probed.

Just as I had hoped, Luna took the question well. With warmth in her eyes, she examined me. Beneath the antler skull over my face and the muzzle over that, I felt the little pits of my eyes meet hers.

“We suppose that thou might not have ever learnt, Brian.” She gave emphasis to my name, making sure to call me it instead of creature. To be honest, I appreciated the gesture. It was good to remember that I was something besides this monster. I was Brian, BP. “But we are Equestria’s Princess of the Night. The night is our demesne, the moon our crest. Each night, we shepherd it across the night-sky and give all beings of Equus the serene darkness in which they might fall asleep. In our sister’s day, they may frolic and laugh.” She regarded me with a strange stare that I could not quite place. “Except for thee, we have noticed. Slumber does not seem to lay claim to you. Our night grows long and thou clamour not for rest.”

I was caught off guard by the raw audacity of the statement. Looking me dead in the eyes and without a hint of deception, she had stated that she was both capable of moving the celestial bodies in the sky and that she did so on a regular basis. This is exactly what I had meant in my assessment that asking any questions in this bizarre land only seemed to lead to a dozen more pressing questions. Had I heard the words from anyone besides a magical pony on a magical planet, I would have put on a sweet voice, agreeing with them and making for the exit with due haste. I was accessing a mental bank of credit, mortgaging the sheer volume of disbelief inducing events that had occurred to me in the last day for a sliver of faith in Luna. Finding that she was still staring at me with that odd look, I tried to word a question as neutrally as possible.

“You said that you lift the moon?” I didn’t want to explicitly challenge her, but my emphasis made it pretty clear that more explanation of this would be much appreciated.

“Yes, we do it every night. It will be time to trade places with our sister soon enough. Well, actually”–she closed her eyes tight, concentrating on something internal–“rather soon indeed.” She looked to the castle in the distance. “Perhaps it is better that we skip the flight on the way back. Best not to keep our sister waiting. She has demands enough of her schedule this day.”

Spreading her hooves wide in body language that I had come to associate with horned ponies displaying frightening levels of power, Luna’s horn began to glow bright. With a great ‘pop’, the idyllic countryside disappeared, replaced by the castle exterior. In a moment, we had been teleported to a patio alongside the palace walls, with open-aired columns and a roof above. I would have admired the immense power on display, to have moved us so far in a moment, except that a great heaving in my gut consumed my attention instead. Leaning on a pillar for support, I saw Luna walk away from the palace walls, towards the open skies and moon above. Sparing a glance to me, she lowered her head and gave a supportive wince

“Apologies, that can happen during teleports for those with a sensitive sense of balance. It usually only happens the first few times.” Giving me a second to put myself together, she made eye contact with me to see if she had my attention. “Now, let me show you what it means to be the Night Princess.”

Inhaling, closing her eyes, then exhaling. Luna began channelling power into her horn. She kept going, until her head was a veritable bonfire. Opening her eyes, I saw her fixate on the moon, high in the sky as it was. My jaw dropped wide as I saw her magic glow arc out towards the heavens, towards the moon itself. Grasping it in Luna’s signature blue glow, she wrangled it like a cowboy with a lasso, pulling it down and below the horizon.

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Cold air blew through the columns, striking across my fur. I felt goosebumps rise across my skin, but all I could focus on was the moon, enveloped as it was by that blue glow. Luna’s horn only settled when the moon had fully slipped below the horizon. Huffing, Luna took a step away from the patio’s precipice, sat down on her rear, and waited expectantly. After a moment, an orange hue hit the clouds from the other side of the skies, out of sight. The sun had indeed swapped with the moon, transferring ownership of the skies to the day-cycle. My mind felt shattered. Luna took notice.

“Very few ponies get to see this up close, Brian. Thou shouldst count thineself lucky.” She tittered to herself, beaming at my awestruck expression.

What kind of world was I in?

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