Luca - 1

>Dusk of the First Day.
>Fireflies blink against the black void of Hollow Shades' landscape.
>Eerily quiet, the only sounds breaking such fragile silence are the soft flaps of batpony wings.
>Tonight, there was no moon.
>No light to seep through the leafy canopy of Hollow Shades' forest.
>As it does once every month, the moon was taken from the sky by the Princess of the Night to be cleaned and waxed, so it can shine brighter.
>That's what you've always been told anyway.
>It was a rather intriguing bedtime story, but it was nothing more than an old mare's tale.
>As a child, that was Luca's favorite story, but there was never evidence of any truth to it.
>So she looked for it.
>In historical texts, in memoirs, in other fairy tails.
>She never found any evidence to back it.
>However, her search led to a passion for reading and collecting books.
>It led to a love of history and mythology.
>Best of all, it led to an enjoyable career as a librarian.
>Ring-a-ding went the bell above the doorway to her wonderful, fantastical world of literature.
>Click-a-clack went the hooves of a batpony just ready to explore their imagination, or read about the wonders of the world at large.
>Luca smiled and waved as he walked by.
>The library wasn't very large.
>It was a humble, two-story building carved into a tree facing the central square.
>Luca could see everything happening in the library from her little desk, where she spent hours sorting books to be reshelved.
>"You have an awful lot of books about the moon."
>She turned to face the stallion as he shuffled through a large stack of books.
"Is it wrong to take interest in such a wondrous heavenly body?"
>"No. Just a tad strange."
"What is strange about collecting books?"
>The stallion turned to her, holding in his mouth a book she had never seen before.
>"Such a large collection missing a keystone."

>She had not seen him walk in with that.
>He had no saddlebags, nor anything that could conceal a book.
>Maybe he had tucked it under his wing?
>Regardless of his methods of hiding the book, she was curious.
>She needed that book.
>"A donation."
>The stallion tossed the book onto Luca's desk.
>She looked down briefly before looking back up.
>The bell above her door rang, and she turned.
"Wait! What's... What's the catch?"
>"You'll find out."
>Luca stared, curious as the stallion trotted out.
>She rushed to the front window to see where he was going, but he was long gone.
"Strange."
>Even stranger was the tome that lay on her desk.
>She approached it with caution.
>A wary hoof poked and prodded at it, but it showed no signs of danger.
>Its cover was unassuming; bound by wood and twine.
>A hoof flipped the cover open, revealing the first of many yellowed pages.
"Our Moon."
>Luca had cross-referenced so many dozens upon dozens of fairy tails relating to the moon, just to try and find any truth behind them.
>Nearly all of them pointed her in the direction of this very book.
>She sat back and started to read it, flipping page after page.
>It detailed the life of a very young pony, from every day mundane things, to some of her more exciting accomplishments.
>Unfortunately, the story was short-lived and unfinished.
"But... But this doesn't tell me anything!"
>She darted over to the stacks of books the stallion had stood by.
>Quickly pulling the one about the New Moon out, she rushed back to the desk.
"The New Moon. Every month, Princess Luna takes the moon out of the sky to polish, clean, wax, and make beautiful. During her banishment as Nightmare Moon, the markings of the Mare In The Moon were a residue formed of negligence to clean and purify the moon. While Nightmare Moon lived there, she coalesced the filth to create the image shown on its surface for a thousand years. After her return to Equestria, the moon was cleaned and shone brighter than it ever had."

>Furrowing her brow and scoffing in disappointment, Luca looked over to her brand new copy of Our Moon.
"I don't understand... Why are you unfinished?"
>She turned the pages again, but they just repeated what they had said the first time.
>Up to the mare discovering her special talent.
"The young mare, sister to the young princess of the sun, had finally learned to control the moon. In her excitement, she and her older sister raised the moon together."
>Luca grinned to herself and started moving the stacks of fairy tales over to the desk.
>In between helping ponies that wandered into her library, she re-read her books for the hundredth time.
>And as she did, the wood-bound book's yellow pages filled out with words that hadn't been there before.
"You are so curious. What manner of book remains unwritten, but writes itself in the company of old fairy tails? Are you a biography, or just another of your fantasy brethren?"
>She read all through the night, but by the time she was ready to pick up another book, the sun was breaking over Hollow Shades.
"I guess you'll just have to wait til tomorrow."
>Luca yawned and shoved the old tome into a cubby under her desk.
>She locked the door to the library and trotted upstairs to the few rooms she could call her home.
>The bathroom was her first stop, so she could brush her teeth before bed.
>Toothbrush in hoof, with a bit of cleaning paste, she started to brush.
>Foam created from the paste and water mixing bubbled up around her muzzle.
>She giggled at her reflection.
>Her sunshine-yellow eyes shined as they glanced over her gray-brown coat.
>Modestly long honey-orange bangs fell over her eyes; the back was tied up in a bun.
>Luca was nothing out of the ordinary; not homely, but not beautiful.
>Spitting the paste from her mouth, she rinsed with a cup of water before spitting again.

>The room in which she slept was found at the end of the hall.
>A room she hurriedly trotted to, ready to fall asleep so she could continue her research the next night.
>Shaking her mane from its hold, she planted her head into a soft feathered pillow.
>And away she went, off to a land of dreams and adventure.