Luna was lying on the grass on a green hill, under a bright sun and almost no clouds in the sky, the grass in front of her and the leaves of the trees swayed with the gentle breeze, but she could not feel the wind on her skin, nor could she feel the warmth of the sun, the only thing she could do was to contemplate in the distance a small village that in a very humble way was preparing for some celebration, Luna could see how the ponies hung colorful ribbons over their houses and prepared hundreds of delicious dishes in the central square, she thought that if she concentrated enough she could smell the aroma of such delicacies they had prepared or hear the laughter of the village ponies and had an irresistible desire to join them, but she knew she could not attend the celebration, she could only observe with nostalgia and regret.
Quietly a pegasus approached her from her side, her mane and tail of a bright fiery orange made a beautiful contrast to her alabaster white coat, with green eyes and a cutie mark in the shape of a crescent moon.
"Hello Luna, what are we looking at?" The unicorn asked with a smile.
"You know exactly what I'm looking at Sunny." Replied Luna somewhat annoyed by the question without taking her eyes off the small village.
"I guess you're right as usual." Said Sunny chuckling.
"I'm not always right."
"No one is perfect Luna, you know that better than anyone, however by my standards you are a perfect mother."
Luna lowered her gaze a little and smiled softly. "Thank you Sunny, and tell me, how do you like your new mane?."
"Like it? I love it." Sunny replied giving a few little jumps of joy. "I've wanted you to do something original again for a long time."
"Well, it's not every day you turn two hundred and I wanted to give you something special, but I couldn't wait for your birthday and wanted to give it to you today."
"Thank you, Luna, hopefully someday I can give you something real." Sunny stopped prancing and showed sadness on her face.
"Don't worry Sunny." Luna replied softly.
"I know mother, it's just that sometimes I want to give you something but I don't have the means to do it."
Luna smiled and looked Sunny in the face, then shook her head so she would understand that there was no need for her to worry.
"And why are you looking at the village?"
"They're going to hold some kind of celebration."
"Are they going to celebrate something special?"
"They are going to celebrate the end of the harvest season."
"Hmmm, that's why the colorful ribbons and food on the tables?."
"It's a small and rather humble village, celebrate all their festivities almost the same way."
"And you don't want to participate?"
"You know as well as I do that I can't go to that place Sunny."
"You could try, in the end, you lose nothing, and you could gain a lot."
"Gain what things, disappointment?, loneliness?, despair? , more guilt than I feel now?, a feeling of sadness that will only increase knowing that it's all fake?, that your laughter is fake?, that your celebration is fake too?"
Sunny turned her head to see the small village animatedly preparing for something special.
"I see it as real, mother."
"You don't know what's real Sunny." Luna replied to her daughter in an annoyed manner.
"I only know what you taught me mother and from some things that are in the records, but to me that celebration is real."
"It's not the same Sunny."
"And how do you know that it's not real to me as well as to you."
"Because it simply isn't Sunny, that's why." Luna replied, raising her voice.
"And how are you so sure mother?."
"Because I said so Sunny, that's why." Luna replied again but now angrily.
"So something isn't real simply because you say it isn't."
"Exactly Sunny, it's because I say so, They're not real, this place isn't real, you're not real, none of it is real." Said Luna almost angrily pointing at each thing with her hooves.
"So if I'm not real, then why am I here mother."
"Because I created you Sunny." The anger on the princess's face was evident and she didn't bother to hide it from her daughter. "And the only reason I created you Sunny, was because I was lonely." Sunny took a step back somewhat surprised, but the anger Luna felt didn't dissipate when she saw her daughter's face.
"I know you didn't program feelings mother, but somehow that made me feel bad."
"I'm sorry Sunny, but that's just the way things are, your original function is to keep me company and keep my mental sanity as stable as possible, but you sometimes seem to enjoy making me angry."
"I am sorry that my primary function is not adequate to the standards you need, but I strive to fulfill them to the best of my ability daily."
"Then you'll have to try a lot harder than you do now because frankly you make me lose my patience very easily these days."
Luna lowered her revolutions and her anger a bit, deep down she knew she would gain nothing by yelling at artificial intelligence.
"Since your chattering didn't allow me to relax I'd better check the organic sensors or do something else."
"See you another day mother." Sunny took a few steps back as she said her words.
"I hope you can do a better job by then." Luna raised her head and fixed her gaze to the sky. "Computer terminate simulation H01-TA003, and host the "New Sun" project in its core."
"Voice command acknowledged, stopping simulation and hosting project." An ethereal robotic voice replied.
"Goodbye, mother." Sunny finally said before being transformed into millions of light particles that disappeared into the sky, then the rest of the hill suffered the same effect leaving Princess Luna in darkness.
A mechanical sound was heard and the place was completely illuminated, showing an annoying princess Luna who was in a huge room all alone, the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling of the place were covered by hundreds of stone slabs of a dark blue and opaque color, and in the back of the room there was a huge metal door with a red sphere glowing on its side.
Luna walked towards the sphere of light to touch it and open the huge door, the other side connected to one of the corridors of the Canterlot castle, the stones of the walls were worn by the centuries, the carpets were almost destroyed by the footsteps, many of the windows were broken, and on the ceiling, you could see hundreds of metal or rubber tubes that created a maze of connections and hummed softly, a dim light illuminated the whole place, Luna saw the darkness of the corridor and walked through it.
Each step echoed in the lonely corridors, it had been centuries since no one put flowers in them, nor anyone lit candles to light their way, also left in the past the servants who filled the corridors and halls because now Princess Luna was the last living being in Equestria.
----------------------- A few centuries ago -----------------------
Luna walked down the hallway thinking about what she had done and the beautiful world she had destroyed, how defeating Celestia and banishing her to another dimension would make all the ponies in Equestria love her, but the eternal night caused all the plants and trees to die, And without Celestia to raise the sun again, in just one year a famine struck Equestria, some races like the dragons were able to endure a couple of years without the sun, but each year their population decreased and eventually they too joined the eternal silence.
Finally, the last one she saw alive after years of loneliness was Chrysalis and a handful of her changelings who sought refuge and surrendered unconditionally to Luna, if she gave them enough love to survive, Luna did not have in her mind to have prisoners and cried with joy to see that there was still someone alive, but that joy did not last long when the changelings began to die one by one of starvation leaving only Chrysalis and Luna.
For months both figures kept each other company, Luna could subsist on the energy that Luna gave her and Chrysalis fed on the love that Luna gave her when she asked for it, but little by little Chrysalis started to become mentally unstable and blaming Luna for everything that had happened, that she had destroyed Equestria and had murdered every one of its inhabitants, Luna knew that this was true and apologizing would not change anything, so she just remained silent.
One day in desperation Chrysalis attacked Princess Luna intending to kill her, Luna remembers that she did not defend herself, hoping that Chrysalis would end her life and suffering, between tears and screams Chrysalis beat Luna's face for hours, but the queen was very weak and her blows were like those of a baby, finally, the queen got tired of attacking Luna uselessly and collapsed in a fetal position on the floor to cry for hours and hours, Luna just lay there without a scratch also for hours.
The next day Luna went to Chrysalis' room to feed the queen as she did every day, but the princess found a terrifying scene inside.
An overturned chair on the floor, a black figure hanging from the chandelier, and a note that read "I can't take it anymore..."
Luna ran to her room and locked herself in, it would be days before she would gather the courage to leave, and many more days before she would enter Chrysalis' room again and be able to bury her.
----------------------- -----------------------
Today like many other times the princess remembered the day of the death of the last pony she could call a friend, and as always it filled her with pain and discomfort, she knew she could not fix the past so she tried hard to create a new future for herself and perhaps also one for Equestria, but being the only one alive on the planet, the task was almost impossible.
At the end of the corridor, there was an elevator that transported the princess to the new and higher tower that the Canterlot castle had, in it was a machine that used special scanners that Luna had systematically installed throughout Equestria, and that served to track any form of life or heat in the hope that if at some point her sister finds a way to return from her exile, Luna could find her in the inhospitable desert that stretches beyond where sight is lost.
But as every day the thousands of scans gave negative results, Luna sighed defeated and looked through one of the windows of the tower, and wherever she looked she could only see an eternal desert illuminated by the brightness of the moon and the hundreds of stars, if the princess did not know that she was in Canterlot, someone would easily say that she was on the surface of the moon.
Today Luna was feeling more pessimistic than usual, and she had long since given up hope that sister would return, she also had other projects running that she had to attend to, like her off-planet life search machine, the non-organic matter transmutation machine, or her cloning machine, which she had not yet been able to test since apparently the DNA sample from an alicorn is too unstable to be sequenced and cloned.
Before going down to review his other projects Luna stood in front of one of the windows of the tower and saw once again the desert devoid of absolutely everything, you could see a rocky hill over a valley that looked like the crater of a meteorite, next to which was a groove formed by a river and years ago dry, the lack of clouds did not allow the land to retain heat so some rocks and the top of the mountain frost formed by the little water that was still in the environment.
The oceans had a similar fate as the moon being static in the sky the tide ceased to exist and the seas gradually stopped their perpetual motion, now the great oceans full of life only looked like giant frozen lakes.
Luna stopped looking at the sad landscape that once was a green Equestria and walked to the elevator to go to check the other projects, as always each project worked at maximum efficiency.
Finally, she went to her study where she was working on her future science projects and also comparing old notes, she passed by a large table where she had her notes and looked at them out of the corner of her eye to simply sit in front of her computer, she stared at the screen for a long time doing absolutely nothing.
A soft alarm sounded throughout the castle indicating that it was time for the princess to rest, without the sun to know the passing of the hours Luna had to create a special clock that calculated the time of day according to the movement of the stars.
Hearing the alarm she saw the clock on the wall, she got up from her seat and stretched her six limbs before walking to her room to rest, she sighed in frustration and left her study turning off the light with her magic.
Today had been another day completely wasted.