Absolute Lunacy · 1:45am Mar 27th, 2021
Sisterhood meant a certain inescapable togetherness, for better or worse. For Luna, this often slid towards the worse end of the spectrum, though not always. There were moments when things were utterly fantastic, when everything was moonbows and roses. This particular moment was not a high point, but neither was it a low point. It was just a moment, and a rather sleepy one because she was up far too early, at the unalicornly hour of three of the clock in the afternoon.
Of course, being awake at this dreadful hour posed certain risks, such as being abducted by one's sister, getting dragged away against one's will, and held captive in an overbearingly pleasant room with far too many windows. The sunlight? Absolutely wretched. The room? An abomination and an assault upon good taste. It was the small parlour adjoined to Celestia's office as Headmistress. Everything about the room was designed with foals in mind, and not adults, with foal-friendly colours that assaulted the eyes. The furniture? All of it foal-sized, which of course meant enduring severe discomfort if one happened to be an alicorn.
Celestia of course, was fine with it, and somehow made it work.
Luna, on the other hoof, had no such luck.
The tea service was criminal assault upon Luna's refined sensibilities. She hated the teapot in particular, which was a swan with a swoopy long neck and an open beak. Pouring the tea made the swan vomit hot brown liquid into the teacup—which was somehow made worse by the fact that the teacups were all little cygnets. Horrible, wretched things, with big bulging eyes and vapid, doltish expressions, whose heads doubled as handles. Celestia loved them because she was the fun sister, adored and venerated by all, and worshipped by her students.
Of course, the unspoken truth of the matter was that Celestia was a silly pony.
There were other tea services, some of which were no doubt student favourites. Like the toilet tea service, where the teacups were all little toilets. Luna's dignity suffered grievous injury when she drank from the toilet, and insult had been added when Celestia served brownies with tea. Even worse, the brownies were festooned with bits of candy corn, and Celestia thought herself the cleverest mare in all the land. Of course the foals loved it; how could they not? Celestia wasn't being clever, not at all, not even in the slightest. She was merely appealing to the base natures of her students.
What irked Luna more than anything else—what really tweaked her nose and honked her goose—was that she, not Celestia, was the former bearer of the Element of Laughter. Luna knew that she should be the fun sister, but no. She was the grumpy sister with the imbalanced humours. For that matter, modern medicine was questionable at best, for it was now said and believed that humours didn't exist. If that were true, then why did Luna's own humours suffer such an imbalance? Why did her moods fluctuate? Because of her humours, duh. It was painfully obvious to anypony that had even a basic understanding of how the equine body functioned.
"Twilight Sparkle grows ever more powerful," Celestia said with good cheer. But while her words were good-natured, there was something about her eyes that betrayed her. "She has thwarted both the changeling invasion of Canterlot and defeated King Sombra upon his return. My student has exceeded all of my expectations. Truly, it can be said that she is the embodiment of magic, and with her mastery of magic, she has become a powerful agent of harmony."
Luna, not fully awake, pondered these words. There was much to say, but that required her being a bit more alert. Her thoughts came in fragments, little pieces, like an urn now shattered. While some might hear Celestia's words and think that she was boastful about her student, Luna heard something else entirely. What Luna heard was a warning, a cry suggesting that there was danger ahead.
"You've learned nothing, Sister. Nothing at all. All these years, and nothing—"
"What do you mean, Luna?" Still sunny, still cheerful, but that gleam in Celestia's eye intensified.
"Harmony is not on your side," Luna whispered, and she demanded that her mind wake up enough to deal with this conversation. "It is a set of scales and your own over-generous behind upsets them. Our existence upsets them. You and I both."
"Luna, not this again. Please, must you—"
"I must," Luna replied and she leaned in close over the tiny, low table. "Harmony this, and harmony that, and harmonious existence… phagh! Harmony must be balanced with chaos. Good is countered with evil. Creation is kept in check with destruction. You speak of harmony as this inspiring force for good… but when a plague sweeps through the land and hundreds of thousands… or even millions die… is this not harmony? Will you sing its praises then? This… this, dear sister of mine, is the balance which you champion. And for you to say that your precious student is to become an agent of harmony, it chills me to my very marrow."
"Luna, must you be so bleak?"
Yes, Luna replied within her own headspace. Because somepony had to focus upon the reality of the situation. But she wasn't awake enough to settle this properly, so she chose silence. Surely, at some point, Celestia had come to realise that for harmony to be truly restored to this world, she would have to depart from it. Luna herself had realised this long ago; in fact, it was one of the things that caused her to tumble into darkness. But now, she just tried not to think about it, and she resented all of her sister's discussion of harmony, which was just salt in the wound.
Luna knew the truth; she and her sister upset the scales far too much.
"I just want to be happy," Celestia said with just a hint of crossness intruding into her dulcet voice. "I want to celebrate and feel good about life. Must you be so dour, dearest Luna?"
"I am not yet awake," Luna replied, and then she felt a pang of self-loathing because she chose to mollify her sibling rather than prove her point. "Pay no attention to me."
"Have you thought about taking on more duties?" asked Celestia. "In the school, I mean. I don't mean to pressure you, truly I don't, but things are… still in a state of crisis. Not enough teachers. We have older students teaching the basics to the younger. Which is"—she interrupted herself with a smile—"a good thing, really. A great thing. So many students getting cutie marks for teaching. Harmony in action. Filling a pressing need. But… have you thought about what we discussed?"
Filling a need? Harmony in action. Indeed. And all it took for harmony to take action was most of the teachers in the school to go missing, never to be seen again. While many held out hope for them to be found alive, perhaps secreted away elsewhere, Luna knew the truth. They were, without a doubt, dead. The changelings had much to answer for, and if Luna were but allowed to do so, she would visit her wrath upon them.
But Celestia worried that such a thing might upset the delicate balance.
Celestia, once the bearer of the Element of Magic, and a champion of harmony, was creating alicorns as a hobby. She'd already made one, and had her eyes on the second. Somehow, this was fine. This was good. But for Luna to tug down an asteroid and drop it upon the changelings, that was bad. That… that would upset the balance. It infuriated Luna, but she dared not voice her concerns because doing so would cause another fight to break out.
And fighting was the worst.
As much as it pained her to admit it, she loved her sister, and hurting her was the worst.
Celestia was Life. She was also Death Incarnate. Luna, however, was everything that happened in between. To Luna, the tides had been given. All the power of the seas, the ebb and flow of the cycles of life itself. Storms. Wind. Where Celestia was creation, Luna was unbridled destruction. Light and darkness. They were made to balance one another—but Luna could not help but wonder, what existed as a counterweight to their existence? For that matter, if Celestia turned Twilight into an alicorn—which seemed to be Celestia's intentions—what terrible thing might come about to counter Twilight's elevated state of being? What horrible monstrosity might come slouching into the world to restore balance?
Surely, a collision would happen.
There had been collisions in the past. Luna had collided with her sister—which made Luna wonder if she had any say in the matter. What if harmony had pitted them against one another? Even worse, what if it did it again? What if, for the sake of harmony and balance, Luna was forced to fall yet again? Or if Celestia was to take a turn. What if destiny conspired to turn them against one another?
Deep down, in a hidden place that Luna dared not acknowledge, a part of her believed that the world would be better off without magic. Without harmony. No shackles of destiny to bind them. No incomprehensible forces conspiring against them. No more uncertainty of how harmony might keep balance, only the blessed uncertainty of the absolute unknown. It would be, at least, an uncertainty of her own choosing. Yet, Luna was a being of near-infinite magic. An agent of destiny. A creature born of harmony. This duality tugged upon her like tidal forces, and was no doubt one of the reasons why her humours were never balanced.
To have humours like the tides was surely a curse.
The tide of black bile washed over the bleached beach of Luna's soul and she felt a full moon of melancholy coming on. Eventually, the tide would go out and Luna's beach would be left bare yet again. What horrors lurked in her tidal pools, her secret places left moistened by the black tides. A terrible ecology that ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned, the unpleasant clockwork that ruled her biology.
Yet, for all of her hatred of it, she could not escape it; she was Luna, the Moon.
So, just a little preview of what's to come. I'm sorry, Constant Reader, to apply blunt force trauma so early on the story. But that's just how it is. I'd love to hear your feedback, but keep in mind that this might be kinda rough still. Surely, there will be changes.
Also, Yeats.
Oh, no! Not the Yeats! Anything but the Yeats!
5484156
Only in the story, Luna is Mare Anarchy. (Well, attempted anarch) And the slouching is a reference. I don't know why I do this.
5484191 *gurgle* *gurgle* *THUD*
(Another tragic victim of drive-by poetry.)
5484191
Now I can't get the image of Beast and Luna slouching due to a lack of coffee (which still sloshes in cygnet-cups, somewhere in the distance) out of my head. (Sorry, my brain is weird today)
5484267
"Yuck. This coffee looks like a cup of black bile. Send it back to the kitchen at once!"
Excellent. More, please.
You had my curiosity.