//------------------------------// // Chapter One - Nightmares and Nightmares // Story: Echoes of her Guilt // by wingdings //------------------------------// Every time Nightmare Night or the Summer Sun Celebration came around, Luna felt a fresh wave of guilt. What’s worse came the bitterness. Why must these ponies celebrate her wicked deeds and tell frightening tales of her alter ego? Celestia’s celebration was delightful. The Summer Sun Celebration was a joyful and merry festival. Nightmare Night was based around terror, not festivity. She felt that all-too-familiar jealousy creep around her chest and constrict, her hooves digging into the ground and her eyes narrowing.  She knew Celestia also carried her own burdens for the solar holiday. The anniversary of Celestia banishing Nightmare Moon was a little difficult for Celestia to celebrate.  Both solstices made Luna grit her teeth against the negativity swelling in her heart. This year it was the hardest to bear. As she raised the moon on the shortest day of the year and saw the citizens of Canterlot string spiderweb streamers across the streets and set out pumpkin lights, she felt it again. The dual-sided knife, twisting. First the resentment, then the remorse. Anger, then guilt for feeling entitled.  Emotions were complicated, and Luna did not enjoy them. She never had. She envied her beautiful stars and constellations, which softly glowed in the violet sky, turning brighter as the moonrise progressed. Stars were not frightening, nor could they feel jealousy towards their brothers and sisters. Each star was a part of the sky, and each was unique. They were all part of constellations, and each constellation was part of her night.  Canterlot was a bad place to look at the stars. The lights from the city drowned them. It was even worse in Manehatten, where the light pollution was too great to see them. Luna felt conflicted over those large cities. The lights were always bright, and blocked out her sky, but they were on because ponies there worked at night, and were awake to witness her gentle darkness. She was proud of those ponies, the nocturnal ones, working in the night so that in the morning, all would be well. They were like her.  But it seemed nopony truly understood Luna, or her stars.  Nightmare Night was starting, and Luna was struggling to stamp down her resentment towards the holiday. No matter what her friends and sister had said, it felt like a cruel joke. A mockery. A night to seal Luna forever as a scary monster.  Swallowing thickly, the princess of the night turned from her balcony and retreated down the cool corridors of the castle. She lit her horn and levitated withered lavender from their wall sconces, replacing them with fresh blossoms. These lavender bushes were not in every hallway, only the major ones, and next to bedrooms. She paused momentarily, and her magic grip on the old lavender tightened, crushing some of the dried blossoms. As if anypony would sleep well tonight. No, they would stay up late, and then have nightmares. It had happened often; Luna calming frightened fillies who were scared of her own wicked reflection. She had fought off Nightmare Moon many times.  No matter what she did, Luna could not shake her restlessness and frustration. Everything was reminding her of Nightmare Moon. But tonight, she was not feeling guilt, as she often did, she was feeling anger.  Emotions were complicated, but Luna had felt this one many times. She knew it well. It was hot under her hooves and made her stamp them, it was hot behind her eyes, which watered and made her muzzle twist like she had bitten a lemon, it was cold in her heart, which tightened and beat quicker. Everything was thudding. She could feel her own pulse.  Luna levitated some of the lavender she had crushed underneath her nose and took a deep, long breath of it through her magic to calm herself. Perhaps she needed rest. That was all it was. A little sleep before she had to do her job, before the littlest ponies went to bed and needed her in their dreams. Teleporting to her bedroom, Luna stepped out of her blue shoes and levitated her crown and yoke off herself and onto a shelf, then into her crescent-shaped bed. She shut her eyes and felt unshed tears slide down her cheeks. They were hot on her face.  Everything was hot. Her sheets were itchy. The air was stuffy. She tried to bear it, but after a few minutes that felt much longer to Luna, she gave up and teleported outside, onto Canterlot Castle’s roof. The spired roofs were difficult to reach through normal means, but Luna was practiced at perfectly teleporting herself onto the steep shingles. The cool air helped, but there was still the hustle and bustle below. Luna opened her wings and allowed the breeze to rustle her wing membrane.  Unlike most ponies with wings, Luna’s weren’t feathered. They resembled bat wings, with long dark fingers webbed with a slightly translucent skin. One of the physical leftovers from her transformation. She gracefully leapt from the spire and soared upwards silently, heading for the clouds.  Luna flew, and her mane flowed behind her. It carried miniature stars in its magical field that lagged behind slightly, pulled by strands of magic. She broke through the clouds, dousing herself in a sprinkle of rain, and settled on the top of a large, puffy cloud that sloped down like a hill. Tucking her wings in and resting her head on top of her forelegs, she shut her eyes and tried to sleep once more. This time, the soothing cool of the night air and the angelically soft texture of a cloud, almost incorporeal and loose like a water bed, yet fluffy and light, easily lulled her to sleep. Luna’s turquoise eyes opened and her hide prickled immediately. She didn’t have to deal with her own dreams and nightmares often, but her acute sense always tipped her off that she was still in slumberland. She stood up and her knees buckled in the soft cloud. Her hooves were much longer than they should be. She felt as though she were standing on stilts. The sky was pitch dark.  Celestia’s voice rang out from underneath her perch in the sky. “Nightmare Moon!”  Luna’s body chilled. Hastily, she pulled water from the clouds around her and held it in a flat, circular shape with her magic, then gazed into the reflection.  Her reflection. Her dark reflection. All her selfish desires and jealousy and capacity for cruelty stared back at her with the same turquoise eyes, but the pupil was long and slitted, and the expression on her face was one of vanity and malice.  Celestia burst through the clouds, wisps of white trailing her. “Nightmare Moon, you have no place in Equestria any more! You should never have returned.” The white alicorn lowered her head, aiming her long pearly horn at Luna’s heart as she hovered in the air. “Sister, it’s me,” cried Luna, taking a wobbly step backwards on her cloud.  “You cannot trick me.” Celestia’s horn glowed golden and a beam of bright light hurtled towards Luna. She was barely able to leap out of the way. Her long bat wings snapped from her sides and pushed her upwards, into the air. Her mane, now longer and wispier, a trail of stardust and magic instead of a solid mass, streaked behind her like a comet.  “Celestia! Stop this!” Luna lit her own horn, and magic bubbled up into it. She meant to manifest a shield or a screen of energy to protect herself, but it was as if she had slipped on ice. The magic flowed straight to the tip of her horn and shot out as a beam of energy towards Celestia, who thankfully dodged the accidental attack. “See? All you do is hurt ponies,” Celestia sneered. “You need to be stopped.”  Celestia didn’t say things like that. Although the words cut deeply, they weren’t her sister’s. It helped ground Luna. This was just a nightmare.  But it was much more difficult to face her own demons than it was to drive away others’. Luna swooped downwards and planted her long legs firmly in another cloud, then focused on her magic again, trying to take control of the dream and change herself back. Her magic swirled in her horn for a moment, but once again, slipped, and Luna fired out a beam of magic into the air. Celestia charged, horn aimed to gouge at Luna. She turned to run, but– curse this new body! She stumbled, and Celestia’s horn scraped across her side, drawing blood.  Of course, it didn’t sting at all. It was a dream. But Nightmare Moon was injured, and now Luna had even less control over the body she was piloting in the dream realm. If she was just in a more familiar form, this would be easier, but she hadn’t been Nightmare Moon for years, and hadn’t had her magic for thousands of years while imprisoned in the moon. Luna pawed at the cloud, causing wisps of it to break off and float in the air, then took a running start into the air to escape Celestia’s third charge. One more try. Squeezing her eyes shut, Luna channeled her magic into her horn and forced it to obey her. Transform. Transform. Her magic enveloped Nightmare Moon and shrunk her, shoved the pitch-black mare into herself like crumpling a piece of paper, and refolded it into Luna. Luna’s eyes shot open and she teleported herself out of the way of Celestia’s magical attack.  “Celestia, it’s me! It’s your sister, Luna! Stop your attack!”  Celestia turned in the air. “Luna… Nightmare Moon… The difference between the two is growing blurrier. No matter your form, you will always be bitter. You will always be jealous. It will never be enough for you. You have done unforgivable things.” The Princess of the Sun’s horn glowed, and Luna prepared a shield, but Celestia didn’t fire another beam. Six gemstones floated upwards through the clouds, and Celestia brought them to her side. Luna’s horn pulsed with magic as she tried to control the dream. In others’ dreams, she would have been able to shape it easily. Control the entire dream realm, fold things down, just as she had molded her form back. Within her own dream, it was more difficult to shape. Like carving a statue from the inside of the stone. “You...you can’t use the elements of harmony. You’re not their bearers any longer.”  The dream gave a little bit more.  Celestia didn’t lose her composure. Her horn glowed brighter as she teleported Twilight Sparkle and her friends into the air. She held the three that couldn’t fly, but the rest hovered in the air without assistance. Each of the gems was given to each pony, and with a flash of light, they transformed into their new appearances - necklaces with the gems inset into them, and a crown for the Princess of Friendship.  “You’re a bad friend,” Twilight said, grief on her face.  With one last surge of magic spurred by emotion, Luna, at last, managed to take control of the dream. It felt like striking the finishing blow with an axe and toppling a massive tree. The elements of harmony and their bearers vanished, and Celestia fell onto a cloud below her, all her power gone. “This isn’t you.”  The nightmare tried one more time. “You’re a bad pony. You’ll always be a bad pony. You’re angry. Good ponies don’t get this angry. You should never forgive yourself for what you did as Nightmare Moon. If you were truly a better pony now, you would remember that. You wouldn’t feel this way.” Celestia’s face warped. It was hard to tell who Luna was looking at. Some combination of faces she’d seen before. The voices all blurred together.  “If you’ve really changed, you wouldn’t feel this way.”  Luna folded the dream on itself, closing it. Her eyes flew open. She was still on that cloud. It had drifted away, and shifted its shape slightly. Alighting from her soft bed, she flew downwards, back towards Canterlot.