//------------------------------//
// Dawn (10/2/2016) 
// Story: A Pony a Day 
// by OfTheIronwilled 
//------------------------------//

The gray world lit up. Slowly, so slowly, a little ball of candlelight broke out over the dirt. It was small, and it was pale, and it was weak. But for the first time in years, it was there. Sweet rays of sunlight pooled over the earth, showing how dark it was, how dead it was. Mangled shadows curled across rocks.

Rainbow Dash felt the heat on her face. Beside her, Rarity's lip trembled.

In front of them both, their Queen, their Goddess, lay broken on the ground. Blood pooled around her cold legs. Her diamond eyes were glassy.

Rainbow thought that she should probably be glad. Didn't have to take orders from her anymore. But her wings-- no, not her wings. These-- these freaky slabs of leather and cold skin-- still itched like mad. Her hooves felt heavy. Something hot and volatile burned her lungs, her throat, her eyes. All of this time, all of these years, and Nightmare Moon was gone. And Rainbow Dash couldn't feel anything but anger, still.

Rainbow Dash screamed. 

Rarity flinched at the sound, and her cold eyes watered even worse. That was... one reaction, she supposed. She couldn't blame Rainbow Dash. Even when the pegasus smashed her hooves onto the warming ground and kicked up dust, even as she smashed her hooves onto the Nighmare herself.

Rarity looked up to the sky again. When she did, she felt that squirm in her heart. Oh... dear Celestia... she could go home. She could finally... she could finally find Sweetie Belle again.

Rarity cried.

The both of them screamed and cried, and felt the sun on their faces, for seconds. Minutes. Possibly an hour. They drank in the sweet warmth, and the taste of a new day.

Eventually, on the horizon, they saw a shape. A lumbering, limping shape trudged in the sunlight. It was too bright, and their eyes hurt, and so the two friends couldn't see who was coming until she was closer.

Celestia's shadow, once so big and imposing, was tiny now. It fell over Rainbow and Rarity's faces, but just a bit. The alicorn's downy white feathers spread wide over the little ponies, parting the sunlight and breaking it into grapefruit-pink rays. In the pose she was standing in, she should have been tall. She should have been powerful, and loving, and motherly, and the symbol of Equestria.

But she wasn't.

Princess Celestia looked at her two little ponies, smiling softly. Then she looked down, where Nightmare Moon's corpse chilled under the alicorn's shadow.

Rainbow Dash stopped screaming.

Rarity stopped crying.

The two of them bowed.

And then Celestia collapsed, sobbing, over her sister.