The morning sky was as bright as a moonlit night, the landscape of Equestria being dimly lit by the halo of sunlight that shone around the edges of the giant space cabbage. It was visible as a great greenish ring that took up a quarter of the dark sky.

Luna strode onto the Grand Solar balcony, wearing her bunny slippers and bearing a coffee mug with the slogan “Let’s Get Sidereal.” She yawned, and her herbivore’s morning breath, laced with caffeine, killed a passing moth. She shook her head, and jerked the moon perfunctorily into the sky, where it shone with an uncannily bright silver light that spread thinly over the lands below. The bats retired to their eaves and caves, the birds started to sing, and the world came awake, or at least as awake as Luna felt right now.

She turned and shuffled back into the palace, the bunny ears on her slippers waggling, and snagged another cup of coffee from an attendant as she made her way to the Grand Study. On a whim, she cast a spell of silence about her scuffing slippers and tiptoed almost to the door, then made a small chuffing noise against the doorjamb and entered, watching as almost every pony in the room tried not to look as if they were jerking to attention.

It had been a year since the space cabbage had appeared in orbit to block the light from the sun, and Equestria’s brightest scholars had gathered to seek a solution. Luna strode past the bleary and frantic paper shufflers and approached the two ponies in the room who weren’t trying to pretend not to have noticed her–Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer, who under the pressure of their enormous task had fused their talents into a shining diamond of intense inquiry, working together so well and so closely that Luna had fallen into the habit of thinking of them as one entity named Sparglim.

“Any progress?” inquired Luna. “I cannot force the moon to mimic the solar radiance forever, and Tia grows increasingly… disassociated.” From far off in the castle came a shrill laugh of hysteria, and most of the ponies in the room shuddered.

Sparglim looked at each other. They were naturally hesitant, having tested the Diarch’s patience with many creative but ultimately unsuccessful ideas to remove or bypass the cabbage, including the Mock Suns and the Giant Mirror and the Space Probe Full of Parasprites.

“As it turns out, some long term research is bearing fruit,” said one or the other of them. “We’d noticed that there are markings on the side of the cabbage that faces Equus, and that these markings appear to be more highly ordered than random chance would allow. We’ve been comparing old photos and determined that the cabbage appears to be altering the markings, very slowly, in a manner tied to the seasonal cycles of Equus.”

“We’ve concluded that it is in fact trying to communicate with us,” said the other one, “and that by manipulating the weather patterns of Equus on a truly massive scale, we may be able to talk to it.”

Luna drew breath to speak against this insane idea, but recalling how unhinged Celestia was growing from her thwarted connection to the sun, at last gave her consent.

A great convocation of Pegasi, known historically as a “PegMoot,” was convened to implement the plan. Stationed across the face of Equus, they prepared to alter the weather at Royal command, according to the calculations of Sparkle and Glimmer. It took weeks, but finally the message was spelled out in winds, rains, and hurricanes across the land: “Please stop blocking the sun! We need it!”

Days later, in the Canterlot observatory, the Diarchs awaited the results as Twilight trained a brass telescope on the oleraceous intruder. “Yes, I can read its reply!” she cried. “It’s so unhappy that it hurt us. It’s going to–Oh, no!”

For the cabbage had already burst! Tiny bits like Brussels sprouts fell from the sky, and golden sunlight flooded over the land as before.

“Oh, I wish it hadn’t turned out like this!” cried Starlight. “That poor plant!”

“Sad,” said Luna, “But not unexpected. For, as told in prophecy, When Sparglim writes the clouds, glum slaw rains o’er Sun-block’d horse!”

For a long minute, there was utter silence. Celestia glanced at Luna, intelligence slowly returning to her unfocussed eyes.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”