Present Day
We left that meadow forever. Or at least Luna did, I think. Discord did. It's not like he cared much. Mentally, I never did. There is a part of me that stood there on those hills as the days came to a close and the shadows keep growing longer. That part of me was one I had no idea what to do with. Mentally, I built a wall around that child. She is alone, but at least she cannot infect anypony and her growing shadow can stop when it hits the stone. That filly inside me is no longer waiting, she is simply still in the state of shock that comes with a first abandonment so profound. I did everything to purge the feelings, to mask them, to throw them out, to channel them somewhere else, and I could not manage to. I could not express them, that was how Luna worked. I've never been that way.
Luna wouldn't stop crying, you know? She cried so much... for an entire month, she would burst into sobs on and off. I counted every day. I did not have much of a choice in what else I could do. Every unbearable day I masked myself and tried to pretend I knew exactly what to do to comfort her. You killed me. Do you hear that?
Hmm?
Noctus and Lumina... if you were still out there, if you still exist, you broke the heart of your only daughter that day.
The one that never gave up.
And still hasn't, even if I wish she would with all my heart.
Even though she has returned to me from what I thought was a permanent loss, she asked me about you two. This was the mare who spent her adolescence under Starswirl trying to escape his tutelage and start questing for you again. When we migrated south after the Tribal Lands became uninhabitable under the windigo, I knew she still had not given up and that she wanted to stray but felt trapped in all the years prior to the decay and mental breakdown that lead to her banishment. I was of no help to her then, much to my shame. There was something about knowing that even in what I perceived as her decay and unsuitedness for the throne during that time, that inside, she had not given up. The survivalism in her disgusted and frightened me, as much as it made me deeply envious that she remains undying while I, an immortal, have still been put through what lies beyond giving up far too many times in my life. I have never managed to recover, and I mask it as well as Luna endures. She endured a banishment I never could have, and one of the first things she asked me on her second night home was if there had been any news about you two.
You two, who left us with silence, and took all the family we had with you, save Neptune. I had not even known that he was alive until centuries into my own rule. And oh, how he has changed...
But then again, I have changed too. That little filly is not the only defective and aborted version of me walled off in my own mind anymore. Luna is an excess of herself, which is part of the reason behind her moodiness and sensitivities. I have fractured myself in an effort to maintain a perfect whole without the dreadfulness of authenticity and the genuine ability to withstand confrontation that Luna has. Her radical ability to exist would hurt me, and I have fractured myself in my avoidance.
And it all started in that meadow, when the mask was still optional and my shadow was so much smaller and obstructed.