Twin Moon

"C'mon, this really, really isn't that bad"

"Rainbow, this is Equestria. EVERYTHING is designed to be used with hooves. My loss of functionality is basically zero."

"Best guess... well, i have some friends. Said friends are very strongly into transformations, and believe that the physical body isn't the same thing as one's identity, or form. So they do spiritual ritual, or imposition, or what have you, to make their chosen forms stronger, make them feel it. Now, this stuff isn't usually... uh... magical? But i guess it ends up working the same way as a spell, but doesn't have the power to do anything, so it just sorta sits there? Then, when you used magic to lift my hand, it just triggered a boatload of them at once? Not an expert, mind you, but that might be how it works."

"Yeahhhh... Just going to out with it, that would be Princess Luna."

"There was really no good way to say that."

"Your highness... In my world, you exist as... a character, in a story. it's a bit hard to put, but you are a figure, a concept, and not... a person. Sometimes, people choose to emulate a concept like that, because it makes them happy. Now, the enchantments are news to me, kinda, but the core... desire, remains."

"To be you, I suppose. Princess, I... was never happy, as I was born. My body felt wrong, and the way I was raised put pressures on me that wore away any sense of attachment I had to myself. It was hard to love myself, and harder to care. You see, I was... well, among bad fellows for awhile. And when I did eventually find good people, they were people who... weren't exactly human, inside. Who chose to reject what they were born as, who they were born as, and assume or make new forms for themselves. Eventually, through time and exposure, that desire came to me. It wasn't you at first, funnily, though I greatly admired you. It took a false start and a month, but... Eventually, I realized I was unsatisfied. I had been actively rejecting things I thought would be too close to what others have done, or too strange, or concepts that had existed already... I was limiting myself. So, on a bad day, I stopped trying to force out the thoughts I wanted to think... and there I was, as you. It felt better. It settled right on my bones, like a velvet glove... It quelled my anxieties, it made me feel strong..."

"Well you, as a concept, embody a lot of things I strive to involve myself with. When the story showed you lashing out, I understood how that felt, as much as a story can tell. When I saw your guilt, I knew how that hurt, from painful experiences growing up... I started seeing myself in the character. And soon enough, I started seeing the character in myself."

"Princess, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen back home was no dazzling artwork or grand accomplishment. When I was younger, and visiting my grandmother, I peered out a window at night. My grandmother lived in a small town, much, much smaller than the city I knew. In the city, when you looked up at night, if you were lucky, you would see the moon and a couple of stars, against a jet-black, closed off sky. But when I peered out that window, what I saw wasn't a paltry handful... I saw a grand blanket of cascading silver stars dotting a blue-tinted sky, the thin murk of far off clouds only making the glow seem brighter... I stayed up for hours, watching those stars, watching the sky like I had done years before... Your highness... When I took that name, I do not think it was a lie. I truly believe, that in that time and hereafter, that is who I am."

"Stranger and stranger things happen most ev'ry day, do they not?"

"Luuuuuunaaa..."