"The Ponies Are Scared, Luna."
Luna, from the bottom of the furry and alabaster chest, craned her neck backward to see her sister’s face. She grew concerned at seeing how serious it looked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying, dear sister...has something happened to Spike?”
Celestia gave no response, still looking across the platform, where all of her subjects were gathered.
Luna sighed at the silence, slipped out of her sister’s grasp, which finally got her to look down, treated to the sight of Luna standing tall before her sitting forming. “I do not recall the little dragon even being present during the battle.” She tilted her head sideways. “Why is it that you speak of him now, Tia?”
Celestia sighed, sealing her eyes behind their lids, and speaking in a hushed voice. “A revelation was made to me earlier today?”
“Oh?”
Celestia sighed again, opening her eyes. “Though it’s one you’d be better off not knowing.”
Luna threw her head in a shake, that was the answer she was neither expecting nor wanting. “That is not fair, Tai! You can’t leave your thoughts only half finished in my mind, especially since it's concerning one of our loyal subjects.”
Celestia kept silent, her magenta eyes focused of the sea of ponies on the other side of the platform, who were all beginning to grow tired, and looking to their Princesses with confusion in their eyes. The Sun Princess rose to her full height, coming to stand next to her fellow ruler, though the other’s back was still turned. “This is a matter we’ll have to discuss later, Luna. For now, we have a sky to clear.”
Still, her sister did not turn around. The dark alicorn's head was bowed as if it were lost in processing the half-finished thought, and that it would take more than just a suggestion to break her out of.
“Please, Luna,” Celestia said in a low voice, just loud enough for her words to reach the other’s ears alone. “I can’t do this alone...I need you.”
Luna’s ear twitched upward, though her face continued to hang low, and her mouth unmoving.
“The ponies are scared, Luna.” Celestia turned slightly to her sister, so that half of her smiling face was caught by the crowd, but the other half that was frowning was caught by the mare in her shadow. “It has been long since the dragon took their sky from them, and right now, you’re the only one that can give them their rays of hope back. Please.”
Silently, growing tired of listening to her sister beg, Princess Luna spun herself around and greeted all the eyes that had been worriedly fixated on her back. Her horn was lit in a midnight blue, several streaks shooting out from the aurora and washing over the platform like a cool breeze, before shooting up into the smoky sky.
“I do this to fulfill my duty,’ Luna said, before paying the taller alicorn a glance. “As well as to help my sister.”
Celestia reeled her head back in surprise, cherishing with all her heart that this smaller alicorn would forever be her sister, before her horn was ablaze with the magic of the sun. Golden streaks pierced the air as they shot forward, developing those present in a warmth that was never overbearing, made perfect by the occasional breeze of its opposite.
Finally, the two currents of magic swirled around one another upward, past the smoke and the sky that lay hidden behind it. Then something boomed high above, shaking the platform and rustling the ponies atop it, as they worryingly looked up.
Their eyes brighten immediately.
The Princesses' magic exploded like fireworks, raining down like sprinklers on top of the layer of smoke and sucking in its wisps, before crackling and exploding once more across the field. It was both beautiful to the eyes and inspiring to the heart, all watching above to the wonderful show being put on just for them.
Though that fact did not last much longer.
Windows lifted opened.
Doors swung wide.
And heads peered out of both, fearful in searching for the dragon terrorizing their city, but finding only wonder when they looked up for him. Those who had locked themselves away in the depths of darkness inside their homes to escape the beast found the brightest of lights in the wake of his defeat, not knowing what exactly had taken place, but saw the stories painting themselves in the crackling lights.
Soon, ponies filled the streets, and some even came to approach the platform. They knew not what to say or what to do, then to sit next to their fellow ponies, and look up to the golden sky long awaiting them.
The show was coming to an end.
Most of the smoke was long since gone.
But when the ponies tore their eyes away from the shining lights.
They found only darkness in the sky.