GREEN
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2770 15.71 KB 75
2770 15.71 KB 75
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>Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. For her part in this, the eldest sister used her celestial powers to raise the sun at dawn; and the younger sister brought out the moon to begin the night.
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>As time went on, the two delicately maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects— but over time, cracks began to show in all that they had built together with their little ponies.
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>In a noble effort, the two sisters attempted to stymie the growing tensions— but as time went on, the younger sister grew resentful. Most little ponies relished and played in the day that her elder sister brought forth, but shunned and slept through her beautiful night and woven stars.
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>Those that didn’t, her beloved thestrals – the bat ponies – suffered discrimination at the hooves of her eldest sister’s little ponies for their appearance and nocturnal nature. As the pressure mounted, one fateful day Equestria erupted into disharmony as the younger sister refused to set her moon in order to make way for the dawn.
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>Though the elder sister tried to reason with her, the fermenting bitterness in the younger sister’s heart had transformed her into a wicked mare of darkness: Nightmare Moon. She vowed that she would shroud the land in eternal night in order to simultaneously force her sister’s little ponies to appreciate her night; and to provide safe haven for her own.
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>The revolution that ensued burnt for years, until the fateful moment where the elder sister had her chance to harness the most powerful magic known to ponydom: the Elements of Harmony! Armed with their magic, she defeated her younger sister and banished her to the moon; forced to take on her responsibilities alone…
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>It’s with the nudge of a hoof that you shut the book, lifting your head and looking up from your desk with groggy eyes as the sound of the shut book is amplified by the sound of the door opening. For a second, you might’ve forgotten who you are, had the reminder not come so quickly—
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>“Sanguine Moon? You’re still awake?”
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>Your leathery wings ruffle at your sides, and your head sways as you turn to look at your aggressor as she appears at the door – a dark-coated unicorn mare with a ponytail coloured like a peppermint swirl – Her sea-blue eyes are just as tired-looking as yours are, a shared weight to the two of you.
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“… Y— yeah, Corporal Tumbler— er, Petty Officer!”
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>The dissonance in ranks between the Royal Corps is… a little confusing to the laypony (yourself included). The ranks of the Royal Corps of the Sun are best described as ‘infantry’, expanding on the core that the Guard offered in lieu of the Moon’s more ‘navally inspired’ rates: Sugar Tumbler, your section’s Petty Officer, would be equivalent to a Sunnie Corporal at her rate.
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>Although you’d learned the ranks, it was still troublesome to put them into practice at a moment’s notice… especially so soon out of basic training, and on your first unit assignment – where you’ve only been for maybe half a week at best; and so soon after your unit was even put to paper.
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>Her muzzle scrunches before she lets out a little laugh, slipping into the bunk room. Her hind leg moves dexterously, thumping lightly against the door in order to force it to shut.
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>She fumbles her way over to the bunk in order to rest her weary haunches, and her horn glitters alight with an indigo veil of magic as she walks— subconsciously, you rest a hoof on the book that you’d been reading a moment ago as she begins to shed her uniform.
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>“How’s your reading practice going, Enlist?” Sugar Tumbler’s head tilts as she draws to a stop so that she can slip a leg loose of her frock coat’s sleeve, before turning to work on the barren scabbard belt that affixes the coat to her barrel.
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“It’s… going—?”
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>Reading had never been your forte, even before enlisting in the Royal Corps of the Moon— it originally wasn’t such a big deal in this slice of the service, either, or so you’d heard. A lot of reforms have been trickling down the line, and you aren’t quite sure how to feel about how some of them impact you: you were a simple farmpony once, dedicated to your cornfields out in the Badlands and gleefully awaiting each harvest moon, but now you have to tackle so much more than that.
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>The Royal Corps of the Moon is subject to new uniform regulations – like the frock coat and scabbard belt – that replace the ceremonial armour still worn by the Guard, and coming with these new regulations come new training requirements such as ‘literacy’— which you’d managed to side-step in training, having enlisted just before they made it into the pipeline— and an uplifting primer to help educate service members and foment esprit de corps. That was what you’d cracked open in order to struggle your way through the words on its pages…
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>… then again, you’ve re-read the same old lines so many times that they’ve practically been committed to memory. You’re not sure if anypony else would be in agreement, but you particularly like the old mare’s tale that they’ve written into the prologue— easily your favourite read, thus far.
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>Sugar Tumbler has liberated herself from her uniform, letting the pieces rest lazily on the railing of the bunk – weren’t you supposed to fold them neatly when they aren’t being worn? – as she looks to you.
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>“Really? I’m glad that it’s going,” she remarks, with some teasing to her tone, before a yawn pushes through her words. “You should be glad that you don’t have to sit through these annoying meetings.”
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“— Annoying meetings?” You echo, almost subconsciously. Your tone is definitely curious, but you’re not sure as to why you feel a little… disingenuous.
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>You’re interested in the meetings that leadership has to sit through, how they tick and tock or tick and talk— interested in the topics and discussions, the decisions that are made and how they trickle down the line from commissioned officers to non-commissioned officers, and then to you: the rank-and-file.
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>“Yeah,” Sugar Tumbler affirms, while strained by a good stretch in a way that you swear you’ve seen a barn cat do it— she stretches out her back, front hooves stretching farther in front of herself. You’re about to question whether or not it even works, if not for the sequential pops that fill the brief silence of the bunks. “It’s – ngh – a lot of the same-old, for me, uh— making sure that I’m readjusting to the changes in regulations and that I’m not as firm-hoofed as they guess I must’ve been back in the Royal Corps of the Sun.”
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>This stretching gives you a good look at the cutie mark on her flank— a cocktail shaker rimmed with what looks like sugar. A question leaves your lips before you can even properly formulate it, your head tilted like a dog.
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“You… transferred?”
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>“Just as I was about to earn my Sergeant stripes,” Sugar Tumbler’s answer comes plain-as-day as she settles on the bottom bunk, the same one that you’ve been sleeping in since you arrived.
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“Were you… forced to?” You ask, briefly wondering to yourself whether or not she was being punished by higher powers somehow with her transfer of service.
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>“This isn’t a punishment or anything! This is just…” She trails off, considering her answer more carefully. “… wanted a change of pace, I guess. I was with the Guard when I was on the day shift, so it was a lot of wasting hour after hour standing post outside of some tunnel into the palace, or trotting from guard shift to guard shift for the same old report from the same old ponies.”
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>Your brows furrow in consideration as you mull over what she’s just revealed— from what you know (and from what your trusty primer’s told you), the Guards are well-drilled and uphold a strict decorum… are things really going to be that much more relaxed here in the long term?
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>“Getting to ship out with a recently-raised infantry unit sounded a lot better than burning days of my life standing in place and staring forwards, even…” Sugar Tumbler trails off, yawning, “… if it means that I’ve suddenly gotta’ up-end my schedule.”
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>You’d hate to have to do the same. Though it varies from pony to pony, your kind – thestrals, batponies, whatever comes to mind – aren’t really the best pick for broad daylight. You don’t have it the absolute worst, but bright lights usually don’t play well with your eyes or head.
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>“Not all that bad,” Sugar Tumbler muses, “even if it suddenly means that breakfast is in…”
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>She squeezes her eyes shut. You know breakfast times well enough, yourself—
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“It’s about… midnight ‘til one in the morning?”
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>“Close enough. But, hey, waaay better breakfast here than the Sunnies, honestly.”
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“… Really?”
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>“— tch, definitely! You’ve actually got fruits and stuff for breakfast— Sunnies’re more… okay, I can’t think of any time that we didn’t just have a lot of haycakes and hashbrowns.”
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>Haycakes. The ones that you know of best are traveler’s fare – compact, dense disks of compressed hay; a cheaper alternative to processed food bars that you’d seen merchants peddling from the big cities.
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>Not your first pick.
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“… Way better here,” you eventually echo in agreement. Sugar Tumbler shifts how she’s laying, as if in an attempt to get comfy.
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>“Aaanyways— tomorrow’s going to have another meeting or two, I think— company command’s been on the receiving end of some… ‘gentle negotiations’ from somepony higher in the brass, about letting lower leadership in on the general meeting. They’re thinkin’ about sending us out to the fringes for a while, and soon.”
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>The fringes? That could mean a lot of things, ranging from field exercises, community outreach, helping out with whatever, or even…
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>“Specifically, ponies out near the Deepfall Forests, uh – north-east of Canterlot – mentioned that they’d been having some trouble with strays leaving the woods…”
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>… dealing with local wildlife, out north-east, it sounds like? Easy come, easy go… or at least, as close to it as it can get. Since Princess Luna’s banishment a thousand years ago, the Royal Corps of the Moon has been a reservist force— and one that mostly handles things on the homefront that the Sunnies can’t be bothered with, especially if they’re mobilizing like they are now… not to imply that the homefront is any less important.
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>You met one or two Sunnies near the end of your training: they were briefly attached from their own training units to help your training unit with drill, but from what you’d picked up from one of them, they were preparing to ship out to Stalliongrad in the north-east for whatever’s brewing out there.
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>Though Sugar Tumbler continues to speak, rattling on about what she expects of the upcoming mobilization, your train of thought races off in an entirely different direction. If your deployment is out north-east – admittedly, you’re not wonderful with geography: you’re much better with seeing the lay-of-the-land from on-high as you glide than you are reading a parchment-map – then that must mean that Hollow Shades is along the way?
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>(Your ears absently pick up one or two mentions of something regarding the armoury and supply, but it doesn’t exactly take root.)
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>You’ve never been “back home”, but some of your cousins live out there— their families having either remained behind generations ago, or only recently left the networked, subterranean cities of Esther on the cusp of the Badlands’ border long ago to return home. You even have a few leaves on the family tree that were swept away with the winds off to Zebrica, headed out to follow in the hoofsteps of some forgotten enclave or another—
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>You’re promptly robbed of your thoughts as a glittering indigo mist reels something in from the desk, the unicorn responsible still perched on your bunk as you wobble atop your perch on the stool: it’s a piece of unraveled parchment paper.
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>“You were listening, right, Enlist?”
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>Blink, blink.
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“T— totally! I was definitely listening. Hoof to heart!”
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>Something grows behind the Petty Officer’s lazy smile, but Sugar Tumbler doesn’t prod at you further to truly test whether or not you were listening. Instead, she waves a hoof and changes the subject ‘politely’—
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>“Weren’t you going to ask me to help you with something else, earlier?”
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>That… gets you thinking, again— what were you going to—?
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>Right! A wing unfurls from your side, and you turn to look over the desk before reaching out to the quill that sits in its empty bottle. The curl of your third-finger is uncomfortable, albeit brief, as you wave the quill around.
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“R— right, right! I, uh— as… you know, I can’t really…”
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>You trail off, and the quill slips loose of your grasp. It’s caught in glittering indigo, instead, to which Tumbler smiles and stifles a soft snort of amusement.
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>“Keep a grip on something?” She asks, as she turns over the quill in the air.
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>Your response comes a little flatter, eyes narrowed faintly as you speak.
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“… Write— with ink,” you admit. “I can’t really hold a quill like I could a pencil, and writing a letter in pencil isss—”
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>“Not socially acceptable?”
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“It isn’t when you actually care about the recipient,” you clarify, feeling yourself shrink briefly on the stool— still, you find it in yourself to sit up a little more, so you can rest your hooves between your legs.
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>“I’m sure we can stay up a bit longer for me to play ghostwriter, or, uh— scribe for you, just for a bit. I don’t think it’s afternoon yet, anyways.”
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>You offer up a smile of appreciation as she flashes one of reassurance, and your mind trots back in an attempt to recapture what you wanted to write about— you’d had plenty of inspirations for your service, with a family lineage that supposedly spanned as far back as a couple of entries into the annals of history of the Order of Old Canterlot, yet for all of a fraction of a moment, you find yourself as a squeaky-voiced little filly back on the farm with fluffy, tufted ears and more energy than a wind turbine churning close to rated speed, buzzing around the cornfields and… stopping in to visit the old mare that lived a little ways beside you.
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>She was a retiree with her fair share of stories, and more than enough reason to share them with you without any foals or grandfoals around: she’d served in the Night Guard once upon a time, and after that was with the Royal Corps of the Moon for the rest of her service. In her younger years before her service, she was a singer of some shred of renown in Fillydelphia.
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>All of those stories helped to sculpt your imagination as a filly, and—
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>“Well? I’m ready whenever!” prods Sugar Tumbler, her magical aura glittering over a quill and parchment as you’re forcibly stirred back into the present.
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“H— huh—? Right, right!”
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>With careful hooves, you lift the bottle of ink from the desk in order to transfer it over to Sugar Tumbler’s magic. Her telekinesis is diligent, shedding little focus to keep all three objects afloat at once even as she brings the bottle over. She pops the cork off with her teeth, scrunches her nose at the smell of ink in such close proximity, and dips the quill…
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>… then nothing. She stares at you for a moment, and it takes a fraction of another for you to stir into action again.
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“Dear Princess Celes—”
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>Something tightens in your throat and you flinch at the words that squeezed their way out, as Sugar Tumbler stifles another soft giggle fit. Your muzzle scrunches, disgruntled and embarrassed— that wasn’t right! You clear your throat and try again.
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“… Dear Lieutenant Commander Penumbral Song…”