Silver roused to a noise of effort, or was that pain? Before he could get his bearings, the door suddenly slammed open, revealing Samantha.
She bee-lined for their bed even as Rough and Trixie began rousing from their own sleep. "It's time."
Time? Silver sat up, his wits coming to him. "What do you need me to do."
Samantha raised a brow at him. "Stay out of the way, mostly." Her magic wrapped around Night and hefted the grunting lunar pony into the air. "I'll return her better than she left, promise."
Silver slid to the ground, only to find that he was far from the only one. His parents were there. With silent consensus they followed after Samantha as one.
Trixie rolled her eyes. "As if we'd abandon her in her moment of need."
Rough bobbed his head. "Trixie would never forgive me."
"No she would not." Trixie thudded against his side as she walked. "Fortunately that will not be needed."
In single file, they entered the infirmary. The doctor and nurse were already there and looking ready to go. They helped move Night to a padded cradle and began talking her through it. Silver let out a little breath. Having the other medical professionals made things a lot less tense.
He reached with his magic and gently pet through her mane and around her ears. "We're here for you, Night. The whole family."
Night forced a little smile. "G-great, so we can take turns making a foal happen?"
A little polite clop came from the door before Sunny Days entered, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "I came as quickly as I could."
Rough nodded at her. "You barely missed anything. Thank you for coming."
Silver had felt what it was like to push a new life into the world, though Night had to do it twice. He didn't know magic to help with that, and feared to experiment at such a delicate time. No, he could be a good husband. He remained within her reach, spoke gently, and stroked her.
Night was a healthy pony, physically active and whole of body. As the doctors guided her through the process, she met the challenge with grim determination. She didn't cry until her first foal began to come into view, then she wept, but they were tears of relief and joy. Silver shared them with her, pressing close. He felt an urge to just... reach in there and help extract the foal, but that felt immediately like a childish and impulsive idea, so he quelled it.
They were soon proud parents of two little foals. One he immediately recognized. "Morning Glory," he whispered out when his eyes first fell on the lunar unicorn colt.
Night twitched an ear at that. "What was that?" Her eyes rolled suddenly. "Do you have a name for both of them?"
Silver fixed his eyes on the other. She was a larger foal with no wings or horn. A lunar earth pony. They were both unique in different ways. However, the female was not the Clear Twilight of his dreams.
As if she could see his thoughts, Sunny approached and leaned in, whispering into an ear, "It won't always match up."
He nodded to her, then pointed at the filly. "I called dibs on one. It seems proper you have the naming rights to this one. What will our adorable little filly be called?"
Night seemed to become pensive a moment. "Clear Twilight."
Silver tensed a moment before he nodded.
"Don't like it?" Night huffed. "I'm a little tired. If you re--"
"No, no, it's fine." Silver leaned in and kissed her. "It's a lovely name for a lovely filly. You did it, Night. You're a mother. We're parents."
Night smiled gently. "We did it..." She spread her wings and drew Silver closer.
Trixie sniffed softly, dabbing a few tears from her eyes. "Her husband will be just as supportive when her time comes, of course."
Rough nodded with a renewed determination. "Of course." He twitched an ear towards her. "How soon is that?"
Trixie smiled. "Soon." She looked over the happy couple. "You realize this means the foals Trixie has will be uncles or aunts of your foals, despite being younger. They will also be sisters and brothers in-law to you." She flashed a smile at Silver and Night. "Our family is as interesting as we are."
Sunny stood up. "How do you feel, Night? Do you need space to relax?"
Night looked around at her family, even including the pony that wished to join her herd. "No..." She carefully slid up to her hooves and began her morning stretch, if measurably slower than usual. "Everything did as it should. I feel a little tired, but I'm not hurt." She moved to nuzzle her little bundles. "I'm torn between wanting to hide them away forever and showing them to the world, screaming from the highest point."
Trixie giggled at that. "She would recommend more of the latter and less of the former. Why shouldn't you be proud to display your foals?" She put a hoof to her chest. "And now your Generous and Caring parents will make themselves available to you. You won't hurt for a foalsitter until at least my own joins them."
Samantha suddenly let out a little manic giggle. She was looking over some papers with the other doctors looking over her shoulder.
Silver raised a brow at the crowd and dared to approach. "Did you find something?"
The doctor shook his head. "You don't see it? Two lunar sub-species, and neither of them pegasus."
Samantha clopped her hooves. "It's even more fantastic than I thought!"
Night reached for her glasses, setting them properly on her snout. "My foals are not your experiment."
The nurse was quick to raise her hooves. "Oh no! Of course not."
"They aren't?" Samantha looked baffled.
Silver put a fetlock over his face. "No they are not. Sorry, they're members of our family, and will be raised properly and with love, not under investigation."
"That doesn't mean I can't see them, does it? They still need a doctor, right?" She smiled hopefully. "I was a good doctor for Night Watch, was I not?"
Night shook her head a little. "You were fine, Samantha, just remember you're here to serve and save lives."
"Serve and save, right."
Sunny smiled at her would-be family. "If you're sure you're alright, Night, perhaps we could celebrate the day? There certainly is enough to be in good cheer about."
Night suddenly snorted and smiled brightly. "Surprise would never forgive us if we didn't go to her place first."
It was quickly agreed on. With the foals bundled up securely, they proceeded as one family unit to Just Desserts.
As they went, Silver turned an ear towards the others. "Where I came from, this would be basically impossible. The very idea of moving a baby this soon?"
Trixie raised a brow. "Are human foals so delicate? She's glad ponies are a little more durable than that, though it is not unusual to let foals be still and recover for several hours after the 'event'."
Night gently nuzzled each of the bundles at her side. "They're sleeping now. That's normal, but they'll wake soon and then we'll wish they'd go back to sleep." A fanged smile spread over her snout. "They'll get into everything, twice if it's something we'd rather they didn't. Welcome to being a parent." She thrust a hoof at Silver. "And your little Morning Glory's a unicorn, sharing the proud heritage of Trixie Lulamoon and Silver Watch. I have no doubt he'll get into trouble at the earliest convenience."
Trixie only seemed tickled by the warning, beaming proudly as she walked with her eyes closed. She absorbed the praise, double-sided as it was. "Trixie will take great pride in training him and her own foal."
Rough nudged against her gently. "Yours might not be a unicorn."
"What?" Trixie waved it off. "As if Trixie would make something else. Don't be absurd."
Silver flinched a little. "You're jinxing it, mother. Whatever tribe your foal is, we will welcome him or her with open hooves."
"But twice as much if they're a unicorn," grumbled Trixie.
Night tilted her head a little. "You could check beforehoof?"
Trixie waved off the idea as strongly as the idea of not creating a new unicorn. "Trixie does not believe in such things. Destiny does not like peeking. If we were meant to know ahead of time, mares would come with a window."
Rough stuck out his tongue a little. "That would be interesting..." He advanced and opened the door to Just Desserts for the others.
"Are those new babies?!" Surprise emerged from the building, leaving a crowd of curious ponies that peered out behind her. "Awwwwww! Look at them!" She giggled with the same manic energy of Samantha, but it was one born of pure positivity. "You two must be so proud! Oh! You two are grandparents now! Oh oh oh, so many things!" She thrust her hooves against her cheeks. "Come in come in come in!" Giggling non-stop, she bounced back into her eatery, leaving the family to trail after her.
"Attention everypony!" Surprise threw her forehooves wide. "Happy birthday to..." She looked to Silver and Night.
Night cleared her throat. "Morning Glory and Clear Twilight."
Surprise bobbed her head. "Morning Glory and Clear Twilight, newest citizens of Equestria and cutest little foals in here!"
The crowd clopped in applause, which was enough to rouse the foals. Morning Glory began to wail, but Clear Twilight seemed calm and collected, looking around placidly.
Silver plucked up Morning Glory carefully in his magic and nuzzled the little colt. "It's alright. Sorry for the noise." The crying quickly stopped, as if he were understood, and soon he had a foal attached to his snout instead of sobbing. Silver giggled with delight. "That's my boy..."
Night took Clear Twilight in her wings, nuzzling and cradling the filly even if she didn't seem to need calming. Her affections were returned with a few little happy coos.
Rough let out a little happy sigh. "Look at them..."
Trixie smiled. "We'll be just as adorable with our own." She held up a hoof. "She hopes you'll be happy with just one. Trixie is already behind in her plans."
"Plans?" Surprise tilted her head at Trixie curiously. "Are you gonna be a big huge star?"
Trixie put a hoof to her chest. "She already is! It's just a matter of letting the rest of Equestria know that."
Sunny began gathering party hats that Surprise had tucked behind the counter. Each hovering, she placed them on ponies' heads one by one with a little smile. "Let the party begin."
Surprise gasped with surprise. "You're taking my job! Oh hey, I don't think we met." She thrust out a hoof. "I'm Surprise."
Sunny met the hoof with a hoof. "Sunny Days. Nice to meet you, though I'm certain we did meet once?"
"Oh sure, but I was way too busy planning like a kajillion parties." Surprise waved it off. "So it's nice to meet you properly this time."
They celebrated the newest members of the family, and all was well.
You're a bother - You're a mother
I think that sets the record for the most subversive typo ever!
Will comment more later, had to get that out right away.
"I was a good doctor for Night Watch, as I not?"
"I was a good doctor for Night Watch, was I not?"
Also you may consider replacing a few of Trixie's 'She's with 'Trixie' since she doesn't refer to herself even once during this chapter by name.
7081205 she only changes her last name... ... come on you have to agree he is still too much of a push over, i thought that the entire point of the dream was to change that and make him not intrested in a relationship
7081232
7081220 Typos shooed away from the new foals. I've been scorned for too many Trixies and now not enough. There is no winning.
7081235 Lost me. He only changed his last name to match Night's. They are a married couple sharing a last name. That's... really standard. Mister and Misses Watch. The Watch family.
7081220 lmbo...I vote he leaves it as-is
7081265 what kind of watch, because night watch, you know watches out for bad things but silver watch, is he watching out for silver or he is a silver watch
This makes me incredibly happy on an otherwise dreary Thursday.
I have one stray thought that I have not seen anyone else pick up on though. Where is Princess Luna? She's in the friend zone but she should be invited to celebrate, yes?
7081261 In a conversation the first time she refers to herself (if not in first person) should include her name and any subsequent times may be either by name or by a pronoun such as 'she her or hers'. New conversations, or new participants to said conversation should then feature Trixie using her name, as if introducing herself to them during the conversation.
"Trixie demands to be a part of this conversation! Her reputation is at stake and she refuses to sit by the sidelines without a demonstration of her MAGNIFICENT POWER-- err, her proper method of referring to herself."
"Hi Trix--"
"TRIXIE DID NOT TELL YOU TO SPEAK! -eer. She means hello!"
Also, it's comical and slightly worrisome that Samantha knew Night Watch was in labor nearly before Night did. She keeps teetering between best doctor and creepy.
DAVID SILVER NOOOOOOOOOO YOU JINXED IT WHY!!!!!
Joking aside do you think when the foals are older will they get like a side story that's more slice of life then drama or even their own adventure?
Samantha had a seriously effective set of diagnostic spells fixed on Night Watch to pick up the onset of contractions before conciousness was triggered.
Hope dealing with teh foals is going to be relatively simple, such as juggling.
But for that, you really need three foals.
7081441 Trixie will soon have one to lend. Let the juggling commence!
This was a very cute chapter. And yes David, you did jinxed it with that line in the author's notes. Well done there, you have invited a whole lot of problems to happen in the next few chapters.
Okay, I'm finally all caught up!
So, here we had the return of Morning Glory and Clear Twilight, though the latter seems to be the same in name, and sex, only as the one from Silver's mostly-but-not-totally-a-dream world. Another hint that what he saw was hints of the future obscured by his and Luna's perceptions.
Speaking of which, this chapter is a brief distraction from the ongoing drama with Silver's quasi-relationship with the royal sisters. So Celestia/Sunny Days is in a provisional period as a potential co-wife; her reasons were unsurprisingly straightforward, but my suspicion is that she does have a secondary reason, which is to help nudge Luna along. There is, quite simply, no way the timing of her announcement is coincidental - the only other viable excuse would be if Celestia has wanted to do this for a long time now, but held back out of respect for Luna, and I don't think that that's the case.
I'm also somewhat leery of Celestia's explanation that she applied to join the herd just because she wanted a friend. As Luna noted, that's going much further than is necessary for friendship; a marriage is based in part on presumed sexual compatibility, which is why being married comes with the implication that a sexual advance from your spouse(s) is allowed (albeit with the caveat that it can still be rejected). If Celestia just wanted a peer, then she should have been pulling off her "Sunny Days" stunt quite some time ago. For all of her talk of not wanting to deceive, which I agree is the best move, there's simply more to this than that. That she's going this far, and doing so now, means that there's something else afoot (ahoof?).
Insofar as Luna goes, she's acting pretty much like a teenage girl would, vacillating between longing for who she wants and running away from them. It's adorable, even if she's dragging the process out quite a bit (though that's not unintuitive for a pony that's millennia old). That's largely why I think that Celestia is doing this, since she's rightly perceived that Luna needs a push - or rather, an example - of what to do. That's not exactly completely helpful, since Luna tied her hooves together by promising not to press for anything more, but at least there's some movement in the right direction. Normally I'd chastise Celestia for doing something like going after her sister's crush, but as she so blithely said, there's no reason they can't engage in sororal polygyny. (Though I doubt it'd ever happen, that can lead to all kinds of sexy dreams where Silver gets to do both sisters at once.)
It's been nice seeing Trixie and Rough again, but they've been around for a little while now. I have to wonder how long they're staying in Canterlot. At this point it honestly feels like they're moving in, and I'm waiting for someone to mention that having your parents living with you is cramping your style. At some point, now that the foals have been born, Silver and Night will want to get frisky at bedtime again, and that's hard when you're sharing a room with your folks. That said, I suspect that's less of a concern than having a pair of foalsitters handy, so we're probably going to see them for a bit longer.
Not-Pinkie, er, Surprise seems kind of redundant. It's like the story wanted to have Pinkie there, but couldn't figure out how to do it without any baggage, and so very awkwardly lifted her out of Silver's dream. I'd have thought the Mirror Pool would have figured into things somehow, but oh well. Where her character's concerned, she doesn't really do anything for me. Being so one-note ("parties!") with a few moments of existential angst isn't really enough.
I also have to comment, Silver's new role is ambassador to the humans, rather than ambassador for the humans. That's a subtle but important difference, since it emphasizes that he works for Equestria and thus answers to Equestrian law, rather than being beholden to a foreign power (even if that power is unreachable from there). That makes it more questionable as to exactly what powers he has (e.g. if he has any sort of legal immunity now), but it calls into question his loyalties, in the event of a conflict between a human and the Equestrian government. While that has little practical ramifications, it could conceivably be a thing in the future: his role isn't to advocate and protect humans first and foremost, but to advance the royal sisters' agenda specifically where humans are concerned.
It's good to be back!
7081748 Welcome back! We missed you. Here's your cookie. I've, uh, been waiting... maybe a new cookie is in order.
Surprise tells me she has a fresh batch of muffins, so here you go.
Speaking of her, she's not strictly 'from' the dream. She lived outside the dream, which is why she exists at all. She went on to do One Step, Pink Step, a whole other story. When she came back from there, her original world, gone... Silver had woken up. She couldn't go there, so she followed the 'scent' to where Silver was and flopped into the 'waking' world, where she was lost and miserable for some time until she did find Silver and friendship happened! Yay!
I rather like Surprise. She is not-Pinkie, and I mean that. She has her own life, and it's not a bad life.
Luna and Celestia surely have unfinished business with this herd and their place in it. Will it work out as well as Celestia seems to have in mind to make it work?
Aw who cares about that, it's foal time! The foal he thought he lost forever turned out to come out alright, with a big sister to watch over him. What sorts of trouble can the two get into?
and now we have to new pony's to ad to this herd and to the story over all.
finally Silver Watch has a some what normal life lets try to keep it that way for a bit.
Silver's like, "that was anticlimactic"
We wonder if clear Twilight cascaded from the dream too? That would be interesting...
Keep going! ;)
7081807 i have also caught up, funny how me and alz did the same thing.
7081297 It's all in the duplicity, that's what makes it brilliant!. Love how Surprise is even surprised.
Well, that was an awfully smooth, painless birth.
What?
Oh... Teen rating. Right.
7823021 If more pregnancies were horrible affairs that resulted in death than not, we would not exist. Modern media is kind of hooked on the idea of traumatic births of horror.
7823137
I wasn't even going that far. My impression of the average labor is that it's still a massive struggle, and can take quite a while. And, because of this, the new mother is more often than not, completely worn out afterward. Night, however, immediately went out for celebratory treats after birthing two at once.
Equestria really is the land of milk and honey, if birth itself is so easy.
I'll laugh if Trixie's foal is a Pegasus.