The March of Time
Large golden doors closed behind Celesta as she strode into her personal chambers. She stretched and, with a burst of magic, doffed her regalia onto the stand next to the door. She then stretched and groaned, feeling her muscles unclench after a full day of wearing solid metal.
She strode further into the room and, out of habit, glanced at her calendar. Not that there was much point, she knew what day it was.
As was her custom on this day, Celestia walked over to her balcony, threw open the doors, then stepped out. With a stroke of her powerful alabaster wings, Celestia took to the air.
Celestia spun in loose loops up the rest of the tower that contained her private rooms. Once at the top, she flapped to a neighboring tower, taking the same lazy circles down until she spotted another balcony. With another graceful flap, Celestia landed and opened the doors leading back inside.
Inside, Luna was curled up on a large, frayed purple cushion, staring at a large easel covered in swirls of color and dots of light. Celestia approached, quietly, and forced her way onto the cushion next to her sister.
“Good evening, Luna. Making a map for the stars tonight?”
Luna pretended to struggle against her sister’s invasion, but quickly gave up and made room. “Yes, sister, for you. I know how memory tends to degrade in old age.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I told you to take better care of yourself.”
“Yes, but there is a surprising lack of those... multivitamins, yes? A surprising lack of multivitamins on the moon.”
Celestia fluffed her wings out in a shrug.
The two fell silent for a moment. “How much time until sunset?” Luna whispered.
“We have time,” Celestia lied. After all, it’s not like anypony would know, exactly to the second, when it was supposed to fall today. Sure, some ponies had pretty good estimates, but they were never entirely correct. Luna nodded and turned back to her sketch.
It was beautiful, as always, a painting of a thousand thousand pieces, all revolving around a six pointed star, right over Canterlot and Ponyville. Of all the parts of the night sky Luna rotated in and out, that bunch of stars had never left.
“It’s almost that time of year again,” Luna muttered, her eyes dark, fixed to the same point.
“Yeah.”
“It never gets any easier. Two times a year, it gets worse.”
“Yeah.”
A shaking sigh escaped Luna’s lips. “We should probably get started.”
Celestia stood, bumping her sister with a wing as she did so. Obediently, Luna burrowed under, and the two walked over to Luna’s balcony in step. They stood interlocked and abreast, and begun the ritual that allowed them to move the sun and moon.
It was a complicated spell, but made easier with experience. Any more, it seemed their duties kept them apart, but they always made time together at dawn and dusk to move their charges together. That, and their insistence of dining together in the morning, had kept them close throughout the years of Luna’s return.
Powerful tendrils of magic enveloped both mares, linking them to one another and to the world as a whole. Celestia went first, pushing her charge down below the horizon. Luna came next, coaxing the moon high into the sky. As was custom, they always left ample room for twilight.
As the full force of their power dwindled, until it was needed in the morning, Luna slumped. Her gaze wandered over to the space between towers, where Ponyville nestled at the bottom of their mountain. The town was growing steadily, in a few more years it might even need a new rail line.
“Shall I have a chariot take us down tomorrow? It’s almost time,” Celestia whispered, voice muted.
Luna nodded. “Another year has passed already. I can hardly believe it.”
“Nor can I.” Celestia squeezed her sister once more, then leapt into the sky. She hovered above the balcony for a few moments more. “I shall see you in the morning?”
“Of course. Sleep well, sister.”
Luna knew Celestia wouldn’t.
The moon was well past it’s midpoint in the sky when Luna finally escaped from the audience chamber. She meandered her way out of the castle, towards the expansive gardens. This was another ritual, one for her alone. She plucked a small wicker basket and a pair of shears, and set off through the winding gardens.
There was never a plan, a set of rules or guidelines. Luna wandered for several hours, plucking flowers at random. Many of them didn’t even fit well together. She had never been much for flowers, but it always felt wrong to visit and not leave anything, no matter how fleeting a decoration it was.
A few hours after that, a package wrapped in lavender tissue paper joined Celestia and Luna for breakfast. They ate in silence, a rare thing for the breakfast nook, and quickly too. A carriage was waiting, driven by the most discrete and loyal of the Royal Guard. It took them down to Ponyville, just in front of the public library, leaving the two sisters behind. A pickup time was already arranged.
One year, they had invited Spike, now the local librarian, to attend. He had declined, of course, but it had seemed wrong not to ask. Their visit today was not as princesses, but as simple ponies. There was no parade, no speeches, no pomp, no honor guard, and the residents of Ponyville understood that.
Their destination was a ways out of town. The land had been bought by the sisters and turned into a beautiful park. It, like the town library, was paid for by a stipend from the royal treasury. Two gardeners worked full time to ensure that everything was in order, year round. The patrons only visited twice a year, but it was, technically, a public park.
Celestia and Luna walked through the park slowly, exploring every corner again. They knew it all like the fall of their fetlocks, but it didn’t matter. Luna carried the lavender package along on her back, checking often to make sure it hadn’t fallen.
At last they arrived at a single, simple statue. The shape of a mare, carved out of amethyst, with an equally simple engraving. At long last, Luna removed the package from her back and, unwrapping it, placed the newly-picked bouquet of flowers into its designated spot beside the statue.
The two princesses sat in the grass opposite the statue, leaning on another for support. They had talked for a time, not with each other, but with the statue, catching up.
After a few minutes of silence, Luna finally turned to her sister. “I miss her.”
“As do I.”
Luna let out a shudder. “But sometimes... I forget. To miss her, I mean. Sometimes, for days or even weeks, I just... forget.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Celestia whispered in reply. “We aren’t meant to hurt forever.”
“It feels wrong, like a betrayal, somehow.”
“I doubt she’d see it that way. In fact, if she knew we’d done all this, she would be... quite angry.”
Luna chuckled wetly. “Probably. But it’s only natural, isn’t it? After all, she was one of the Elements of Harmony, and--”
“And our Twilight,” Celestia finished softly.
“And our Twilight,” Luna agreed.
The blue alicorn raised her head to the sky, up where she knew a bright constellation would be tonight. Years ago, she had removed the words from the sky, deciding instead to etch them in stone for all to see, on a simple, plain statue in a park on the outskirts of a small town.
They sat in silence for a few minutes longer, both of them knowing that time was drawing short. The march of life and time moved ever onwards, and they could only afford to stop for so long before being left behind. Sharing a sigh, the two stood, brushed grass from each other’s coats, and once again donned the raiments of their position and stature. A shadow betrayed the approach of their chariot, and the two moved to where their driver’s hooves wouldn’t tear up the ground.
In silence they boarded, in silence they flew, replacing sad thoughts with happy memories. It would have to do. After all, life goes on.