Long Night 14th 3473 EE

Today Blue Mane delivered the best possible reminder that life goes on, even in the bleakest of times. Tomorrow, or rather the middle of tonight, is the Winter Solstice, and our nephew Blue Blood is just in time for it. The mid-wife may have dealt with expectant fathers before, but I don't think she ever had to deal with two panicking alicorns.

Yes, Luna and I were stomping around outside, sneaking peeks via my Solar sight, and swearing blind that neither of us would ever be in such a messy and painful position. Fortunately, the birth was relatively easy and quick, and soon Margrave Blueblood of Maresia was breathing Equestrian air for the first time.

He was absolutely adorable! He's a white unicorn like his mother, but with Atlas's blond mane and tail, though it was barely stubble when we first saw him. It redoubled our intention to one day return his father to him. Blue Mane was in the blissed out state that new mothers seem to attain, and Blue Blood was quiet.

It occurs to me that I haven't really mentioned the Dowager-Duchess in my previous entries. Theoretically she should have been living at the Keep, but without a staff of servants to maintain it, and with us all over Equestria most of the time, it was simpler for her to stay with her father.

I'd intended to provide something grander, but Blue Mane, though sweetly spoken, is one of the most relentlessly practical ponies in existence. At least we got her to accept a maid, even if she had to take lodgings next door. She still works at her father's store; ancestors preserve us, despite the fact that she never has to work again. However, I'd be the last pony to rail at a noble doing honest work, and I can understand the impulse. She's been keeping busy for the same reasons we were.

It occurs to me that we messed up; we should have spent some time with her on Ancestor's Night. Another demonstration, as if it was needed, that just because you're an immortal Alicorn, it doesn't mean you'll always get it right. Well, at least she had the rest of her birth family to support her, and if we weren't there then, we can be there now.

I think Luna has something special planned for the Winter Solstice celebration, which in Maresia at least is also going to be a celebration of the new member of our family. There's a full moon, bigger and brighter than usual, and I thought I felt her doing some tinkering with some nearby smaller hunks of rock that are drifting around. I suspect we are in for the most spectacular meteor shower in living memory.

While I'm going to be out there with the others, drinking hot mead, eating roasted chestnuts and cheering wildly, it does highlight a problem. I did mention in my last entry about the need for us to be less obvious in using our powers. While it was vital this past year, in future I hope to reduce the amount of direct intervention.

There we agree, Luna doesn't believe we should or can solve everything ourselves, but where we differ is in the degree of remaining intervention. It came up first in the law codex I'm compiling. Fascinating work, but makes designing a cloud reifier system look simple. The problem was specifically in the subject of evidence. With our Solar and Lunar Sight (Luna likes the name too) we can be aware of any crime that occurred under the sun. In seconds we can determine the guilt or innocence of a criminal.

Simple enough, but it is, by it's very nature subjective evidence. We're basically saying, this pony is guilty or not. Also, the scope of the problem is problematic. If we have to view thousands of crimes, it will take hours even if we're just sitting there going, 'guilty', 'innocent', and so on. Showing the events, which only Luna can do, would take even longer. For all our powers, even we can't make more hours in the day… well technically we could, but it would spoil everyone's sleep patterns and make everyone grouchy.

This is why when I was writing that part of the codex, I required other forms of evidence or proof. There must be ways to apply the same processes we use to find new discoveries in the laboratory to finding facts about a crime, and we will need guards who are dedicated investigators, rather than just doing it as a part of their job.

I will not have a pony condemned on some-pony's say so, even our own, at least, never again. That clique of nobles was as guilty as sin, and under the conditions then obtaining there would have been no other way to call them to account for their crimes. Even so, I feel guilty as what I did as the Pitiless Sun. The Equestria I want to build, that these laws are trying to build, has no more place for private justice than privilege, private law.

Luna disagrees. I can understand her feelings, more crimes happen under the moon than the sun, and she desperately wants to bring those responsible to justice. I know she's occasionally gone after particularly bad offenders herself in recent months. She believes we can build in checks, some sort of truth spell to verify our sight, but our very power level makes that a difficult proposition. Like all other spells, they will tend to bounce off, or be absorbed without effect.

Over the last month, this has turned into a more general disagreement. I believe we should make no use of our special abilities beyond those of any other pony except in case of dire emergency, or a specific request of the legal or administrative parts of the government. Luna believes we should use our powers to help where we can. If we see a problem, we should try and fix it.

I already talked in my previous entry about the feelings of other ponies. As I said before, the other part of this equation is that if we use our powers too freely, too arbitrarily, they would fear us. That would lead them to feel anger for making them live in fear, and eventually they would come to hate us. Enough ponies do that already, and I don't wish to add to that number.

If it was the only way to deal with the problems that face us, I'd accept it as part of my penance, but it isn't, and I never want to have Luna suffer like that again. Enduring ridicule from her peers back when we were foals because of Atlas and I was bad enough. I saw how much it hurt her, and this would be worse. I just don't want to have her desire to do good turn it's horn against her.

Though in truth, I fear less for Luna acting inappropriately than myself. She's the sensible one, methodical and precise. These last few months I've hauled my soul out for a good old inspection, and I'm not sure I like what I see. Luna's the sensible one, whereas I have a tendency to go off on my sudden enthusiasms, without working things through.

If I'd spent more time working on contingencies for the power-sharing ritual, more time thinking about how things could go wrong, the destruction it wrought might have been averted. One of the parts of me I don't like very much wants to blame Luna for not catching my mistake, but _I'm_ the ideas mare. She was working to my plans, and she trusted me to get it right.

For now it's a moot point. Our powers will be needed over the next few years to make sure things remain stable in the stable, and compiling this Codex will take as long. Not to mention it will take decades for the implementation. It will remove one of the basic rights of the nobility, the low and high justice and they will fight it hoof and tail.

Maybe we can compromise between the two of us. I think this is the deeper meaning behind the display tonight. She's showing me that we can use our powers beyond spinning up the planet and maintaining gravity without it being a disaster, or causing every-pony to fear our presence.

With Luna as my conscience, a limited amount of power use may be acceptable. We shall have to see. Maybe we should make it a regular event, a way to use our powers that harms no-pony, and which every-pony cane enjoy. A 'Winter Moon Celebration', that has a nice sound to it. I'll have to start thinking of something similar for the Summer Solstice.