>>42564194
>Knocking on the door, you waited as the muffled voice of Star Swirl called from inside.
>"Enter."
>Pushing the door open, you stepped into the midst of Star Swirl's research.
>Books and scrolls littered every available surface: magical theorems and treatises which were withered from centuries of neglect.
>Star Swirl sat with his back to you, hunched over a desk as he scratched away at a piece of parchment.
>You moved through the mess with a practised ease, careful not to disturb the carnage as Luna awkwardly picked her way behind you.
>He barely glanced at you as you entered his field of view.
>"Finally found time for me I see..."
>His tone was sharp, not even bothering to hide his annoyance as he dipped his quill.
"Well - you know, I just wanted to run over things myself first. Didn't want to make a mistake."
>His icy-blue eyes flicked up from the parchment, side-eyeing you with a look that cut right through you.
>With a mild grunt he turned back to his writings, pausing only briefly to pull out your creased sketches from the carnage spread before him.
>"Time that would've been better spent with me, but at least now we can - "
>A sudden avalanche of papers from behind made him startle, cutting off his sentence.
>Both of you turned to see Luna being showered with priceless manuscripts, wincing slightly as they bounced off her head.
>"Sorry..."
>She mumbled sheepishly, causing a weary sigh to escape Star Swirl.
>He lowered his head in what had long become a practised move, the bells on his hat jingling softly.
>"I take it there's a reason for your being here?"
"She's with me."
>He glanced between the two of you but seemingly brushed it off as he turned back to your diagrams.
>An assortment of various models of the solar system and the lunar cycle.
>Helio-centric, geo-centric - even half-remembered religious explanations of celestial motion and the lunar cycle.
>To you, they were nothing out of the ordinary.
>But to him? They were what he'd spent his entire life searching for.
>Whether they actually meant something here though, was debatable.
>For now at least, it kept a roof over your head.
>"If this is the way of things in your world, then where did they come from? Surely there is more?"
"Well no one actually really knows for sure where they came from, not for certain anyway. Just that they've been there from the beginning."
>You hated giving him answers like that.
>Not just because it was unhelpful, but because it revealed just how little you actually knew.
>The moment he realized that, would be the moment you outlived your usefulness.