Moon Beam (MLP fanfiction)

Chapter 3 Housefinding

Luna was awakened by a beam of sunlight that had poked its way through a gap in the curtains to fall across her face. She was relieved to find that, although a bit stiff in her legs, she was free of pain. Looking over to the other bed, she saw that it was already made, and only then did Luna wonder just how much of the morning she had slept away. Getting out of bed, Luna started to stretch, then froze when she saw a mirror on the door. Walking over to it, Luna stared at the strange pony it showed. She knew she was seeing herself in the looking glass, but she still felt compelled to try to fake out her reflection. Starting with opening and closing one eye, she moved on to waving a hoof in front of her face, and then finally resorted to sticking out her tongue and waving her head back and forth. There was no doubt about it, she was the pony in the reflection.

The hardest part to accept, for her to come to grips with, was that there was no horn on her head. She missed her wings too, but she hadn't used them all that often. Most of the time she had been in the royal castle where it was considered rude to fly through the hallways. If she went out with her sister, they usually took a cloud chariot. But her horn? She had used her magic all the time. Just manipulating and carrying small objects was something she had done without thinking constantly. She had brought a telescope and writing materials with her - but without the fine control magic allowed her, she would at best be a clumsy operator, and at the worst be a complete klutz.

"Oh, good! You're up and about! tell me, do you feel dizzy or have any sort of a headache?"

Luna jumped slightly in surprise. She had been so deep in thought, she hadn't heard Feather Down come up the stairs.

"No, I feel much better, and I'm not dizzy at all. Why do you ask?" Luna inquired as she turned to face the other pony.

"That's what the doctor told me we should be wary of when you woke up. Those are signs that your head might have been hurt. I think the word he used was concussed?" Feather Down shrugged. "Anyway, you should let us know if you start to feel like that, okay?"

Luna nodded. "I most certainly will. I don't think we'll have to worry about that. I'm feeling much better today. Nothing that stretching my legs some won't fix, I'm sure." Luna looked around the room. "By the way, what time is it? Just how long did I sleep?"

Feather Down chuckled. "It's a little past eight right now, so close to fourteen hours? C'mon down when you're ready, we have some breakfast waiting on you. After you've eaten we can make some plans and figure out what to do now that we've got you feeling like a pony again."

Spike the dragon teetered precariously at the top of a ladder, looking at various books. "Kettledrum's Collection of Conjured Costumes? Is this it, Twilight?" he called down to his unicorn friend, who was looking through a different shelf of volumes.

"Sorry Spike, but no. It's Teakettle's Tome of Transformations we're looking for. Pull that one aside anyways, would you? It might give us some insight into magical disguises." Twilight looked around in frustration. The two of them had spent most of the morning searching for the book that Princess Celestia had written about in the letter they had received just after breakfast. "I'm certain I saw that book around here somewhere before. If only the shelves didn't seem to throw every book onto the floor twice a week, we'd have a better chance to keep things organized. Okay, let's take a break for a moment, give our eyes a chance to rest."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Spike said as he climbed down the ladder. He took the book he had just found and put it on top of a small stack in the middle of the room. "That gives us five books to look through to learn about magical disguises, at least. Are you sure that's what Princess Luna is using?"

Twilight shook her head. "At best, it's just an educated guess. It would cause too much of a commotion if she went somewhere without one, I think. And there's no way to easily hide yourself using just a cloth and thread disguise. Magic just makes more sense, at least to me."