//------------------------------// // 11- The Mare On The Moon // Story: Approaching Apotheosis // by KKSlider //------------------------------// Luna giggled madly as Tiberius ran between her hooves in circles. The little possum was the pet she had picked out last night with Fluttershy’s aid. We sat in one of the Palace’s sitting rooms, awaiting the therapist to show up. “Tiberius, play dead!” Luna commanded. When the animal flopped over, Luna clapped her hooves wildly, “Hahaha! Oooh, Phasma! Look at him! Look!” “... ‘S lovely, dear,” I mumbled, resting my head on a hoof. “Tiberius, you are such a good boy! H– By Faust’s bones, you’re not even looking, Phasma!” I lazily raised my head and blinked several times, “... Very cute, Luna.” Luna shook her head and nuzzled me, “Fret not, you will get used to appearing functional on days when duty calls for the sacrifice of sleep.” “I don’t want to get used to them,” I whined. “I’d rather go to bed. Why, in the nine heavens, did this have to be scheduled for eight fucking A.M., Luna? We went to bed five hours ago. How are you doing so much better?” “Faring better,” Luna corrected. “It is because I am excited! I have Tiberius now– look at him! I have never seen a pair of souls become faster friends than Tiberius and I. In addition, I drank half a barrel of coffee.” “Not drinking coffee,” I sighed. “I tried. I hate the taste, and the smell reminds me too much of home.” “Then you shall have to endure every biting hour of restless morning,” Luna said, letting Tiberius crawl up onto her hoof. “I shall try to be as joyful as possible for the both of us.” “Mmmmmeh,” I groaned. “At least be my pillow. And maybe paint some fake eyes on my eyelids for me, like they do in cartoons.” “Why would they….? Ah. To create a façade, I see. Do others buy into this illusion?” “Cartoon logic,” I shrugged. “The same kind of logic that lets people talk to animals.” Tiberius squeaked as he ran across Luna’s foreleg. “What great boons your people have been deprived of,” she lamented. “... Scoot your chair closer, you may rest against my shoulder.” “Love you.” Luna chucked, “All it takes to procure those honeyed words from a stallion is physical comfort. A tale as old as time itself.” “You got me. I’m in this only for the snuggles,” I said as I moved my chair closer and rested against Luna. Just as I closed my eyes, there was a knock on the door. “That would be the therapist,” Luna pointed out. “I hope you have gotten as much rest as possible.” “Noooooooooo!” The door to the sitting room slowly opened and a pair of green eyes peeked through the doorway, “Is this a bad time?” “Not at all,” Luna greeted the mare. “Please come in.” Luna sat up straight as Sweet Dream entered, nearly dislodging me from my place against her shoulder. Tiberius went from Luna’s left shoulder, across her withers, and then onto my head. I shot upright, wide awake, as the possum crawled over my fin. “Princess Luna, King Phasma,” Sweet Dream greeted us. “It’s an honor to meet you, Princess.” “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sweet Dream. I have heard great things about your skill,” Luna returned. “Please, make yourself welcome. Or… stay professional? I confess I have never done anything like this.” “I’ll keep things professional, if you don’t mind,” Sweet Dream winked and took a seat across from us. “Oh. I see there’s a third joining us today.” Luna grinned, “His name is Tiberius! He is a gift from Fluttershy, and Phasma helped pick him out. He is a clever little possum, most assuredly! And well behaved! Isn’t that right, Tiberius?” Tiberius squeaked from his place atop my head before I felt him scamper down my neck and back across to Luna. “I see,” Sweet Dream mused. “Normally, I ask for all pets to be absent for my sessions…” “You’ll make an exception,” I said. “Of course,” Sweet nodded. “Now. This is the first group session we have scheduled– and your first ever session, Princess Luna. Your relationship is far from a normal one, as I understand it?” “At the very least, how it was established was unusual,” Luna conceded. “A political alliance and one-sided power dynamic. Thankfully, that catastrophe was averted.” “Yes, and Princess Celestia tells me that there might be some issues when it comes to separating your duties of keeping an eye on King Phasma from your feelings for him.” “That’s no longer an issue,” I said. Sweet leveled her stare at me, “... Definitely still together, judging by the fact that you are still holding hooves, so then somepony else has taken over that particular duty?” “Cadance,” I confirmed. “Well. That makes sense,” Sweet conceded. “Anything in particular spur this change?” “No.” “Yes.” Luna and I glanced at each other. She explained, “Somepony tried to assassinate someone.” “Assassinate?!” Sweet gasped. I shrugged, “Before we met, I killed many people, Sweet Dream. Between that first session and this one, I’ve only tried to kill someone once. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a drastic decrease in my homicide rate.” The therapist rubbed a temple as frustration ebbed from her, “... I’ve got my work cut out for me, that much is certain. Very well, then. If the Princesses are aware of that situation, then we will simply have to address it at our next personal session. For now, let us return to you two.” “Actually,” Luna interrupted, “I would like to take this session as an opportunity for myself. I… would like to talk about some things with Phasma present. I do not think I could speak about them alone.” “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” Sweet said, with all the enthusiasm that came with switching the conversation topic. “Let’s get started then. What is it that you wanted to talk about?” Luna’s grip on my hoof tightened as she coiled her foreleg around mine even more. “My banishment,” Luna said quietly. Sweet Dreams slowly nodded as Tiberius coiled up in Luna’s lap, as if also sensing the distant, turbulent storms of emotions that churned within the alicorn. “As you know,” she began, “one thousand years ago, I became possessed by Nightmare Moon, the cruel parasite that preyed upon me when I was at my most vulnerable. Due to my… emotional state, I was taken by it. During our time together, my actions and theirs were… one and the same. When we stood against my sister, she used the Elements of Harmony against us and banished us to the moon.” She let out a shaky breath, “One thousand years. That is how long I spent on my moon. It was… it was… it simply was. There is no one word that can condense a millennium of isolation. No single idea can capture what I experienced. For though I was mostly Nightmare Moon, the Nightmare had quieted down after a short while. It’s cold up there. And quiet. You can’t even hear yourself scream– only Faust knows how long I tried to. With all the power the Nightmare possession had given to me, I could not even scratch the confines of my prison. I could feel it, though– spells and magics greater than I could understand were keeping me on my moon. I was… alone.” I gave Luna a slow, reassuring pat on her shoulder. She grunted and leaned closer to me. Every word that she faltered on, I felt the accompanying painful emotions that held her tongue. Emotions that even tasted delicious to changelings soured as Luna struggled with the memories being brought to the surface. “I had every single conversation with myself that I thought was possible. I counted every star thrice. I tried mapping the surface of my moon– though I had abandoned that task when it became apparent that there was simply nothing to map around. No landmarks, no towns, no forest, no mountains, no rivers, no lakes…. Nothing. Just dust and rocks. I had counted rocks until I simply grew too bored with the effort of reciting each number to continue. Four million, by the way.” Luna shook her head, hissing in frustration. “That was just the first ten years. Nine hundred and ninety to go. Not that I knew that. I had, by that point, accepted that I would never leave my moon; it was to be my tomb, for always and eternity. So I spent the next ten years building. At first, I drew pictures in the sand. Every painting I cared to remember. Hundreds more that I made up. Then I sculpted. Then I constructed buildings. One such building was a fort that I have already mentioned to Phasma. I decorated my tomb with cities of dust and rock, inhabited not even by a gust of wind. “The silence was maddening. Truly maddening. Even when I crushed a castle for the fun of it, all I could feel was the rumble in the rock beneath my hooves. That all took about… fifty years, maybe? By that point, time stopped mattering. My torment was eternal. My hatred, loneliness, and sadness were my only companions. I….” When Luna started to cry, I went to give her a hug. However, she shrugged me off, determined to continue. She held onto my hoof, though, unwilling to let go. I couldn’t recall feeling so much sadness, anger, and hopelessness during my time as a changeling. I was being whipped around by the sheer depth of the sour emotions. For Luna’s sake, I kept silent and present. “That’s when it truly began. When I had run out of things to do. When I had nothing more to scream about. I wandered. I slept. I remembered. That was all I did. Every single conversation, real or imagined, I relived. Every battle, I fought a hundred times again. I slept. I dreamt. For an entire age, I stared at the stars. I imagined the future. What I– what we would do when we returned to Equestria. I imagined the world I would build, brick by bloody brick. I slept some more…” At her silence, I asked, “Are you… do you want to take a break?” ‘I definitely could use one. But–’ “Nay. Tis just… At this point, I believe I was well and truly mad. I cannot remember everything. I cannot account for my actions for what had to be centuries. I have found some scars across my body that refuse to heal, ones that I have no recollection of. I remember one thing, though. Alone. I was alone. Yesterday, I was alone. Today, I am alone. Tomorrow, I will be alone. A year from now, I will still be alone. When Celestia’s sun dies, I will still be alone. It was hell. No matter what I did, no matter how much I pleaded, no matter how much I screamed or cried, I was and always would be alone!” “Luna!” I gasped, reaching out for her with both hooves. This time, Luna did not spurn my embrace. She turned to me and practically leapt across the armrests of our chairs to hug me. I felt her shaking in my hug as she worked through the memories and everything that followed them. At last, Luna must have found the bottom of the chasm within her. Through waves of despair, small sprouts of joy and love wormed their way out. I was internally remarking that the feeling was similar to seeds sprouting up after a forest fire when another blast of sadness rocked the thought loose. My grip on Luna tightened. “I’m…” Sweet Dream tried to say. “I am sorry, Princess. I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Luna nodded slowly against my neck, “... But then something changed. A vision came to me, not one I had thought up nor conjured in madness, but something truly different. A field of white petaled flowers, ‘neath my moon. It was an image which was placed in my mind by a visitor. I crawled towards the feeling and image’s source, long since past the point of dying from the isolation. I was a husk, dead and back again, with a trickle of sanity and strength returning to me.” I frowned. That scene was… familiar. I didn’t say anything, though. I was still disorientated from the vast quantities of sadness and anger that had washed over me. I would have certainly collapsed if it wasn’t for the fact that I was sitting down already. Instead, I swayed side to side in my seat, still clutching Luna. It was like I was on dry land after spending an hour or two out at sea or in some kind of wave pool; the sadness had receded, but I still felt its pull. “A mere touch of the world that I had been cast out from was enough to draw me back to reality. I awoke on my moon, having slept for uncounted years. I paced back and forth as I plotted. I practiced spells I had cast a million times in boredom. I reached out and felt the confines of my prison… and found them wanting. It was possible, I realized, to escape. “When I felt the presence reach out once more, I reached back with all the strength I had. One could compare it to a boat in a roaring storm out at sea. An oasis of something different. It was a dream. I… had no connection to the Dreamscape in my time on my moon. It was so far away, yet… it was a dream. I plunged into it, greedily drinking in the experience. There, I found him.” She leaned back and smiled at me, “Phasma. Though he introduced himself as Chrysalis, the cunning knave. He spoke to me, bending to my whims like a blade of grass bends in the wind. Somepony spoke to me. When I awoke again, I found myself feeling that much stronger, that much more alive! The days between our meetings felt longer than the centuries I had spent between bouts of madness! “Then…. it was over. I, Nightmare Moon, broke the spell that bound us to my moon when it was at its weakest. We sought out the Elements of Harmony and sought to destroy them. We did not succeed– thank Harmony– but before I could meet my savior, he was gone… I thought Phasma was dead. We all did. So when I found him at the mercy of a Nightmare, I… I grabbed onto him and never let go. Even though all you did was form an alliance with a monster, you still were the being that saved my life. Thank you, Phasma.” I exhaled slowly, letting the wild emotions out that had left my hooves shaking, “And you picked a hell of a time to find me. What that Nightmare did was… worse than dying. I could fill a hundred books with terrible, sappy poems about a literal angel coming to save me at my darkest hour… Instead, I will just say: thank you, Luna.” “It’s every mare’s dream to rescue a stallion in distress,” she returned. “But a poem or two wouldn’t kill you.” I snorted, “Hey! My poetry is probably far worse than my skills at being a damsel in distress– so I’ll stick to what I’m good at, thank you very much.” “Mmm, you do that,” Luna whispered. “Now. Uh. Shall I pick up where I left off? I imagine you will want to hear the whole story about our relationship, Sweet Dream.” “I need a break,” I interrupted before Sweet could say anything. “I… feel like I’m going to throw up.” Luna blinked, “Phasma? Are you okay– Oh my stars, you’re an empath! I honestly forgot! Are you– I didn’t mean–” I silenced her by pressing my nose against hers for a second. Then I leaned away and coughed. Sweet Dreams and Luna watched with morbid curiosity as thin trails of blue smoke left my mouth. “Ah, shit,” I muttered. “That explains why I feel so nauseous. I must have drank in a lot of that sadness there. Urgh, usually my internal reserves are full of love, but I had to empty them to help feed the Hive, and…. Ugh. Yeah, I’m gonna need a minute.” “I think we both could use a break,” Luna agreed, still shaking slightly. I forced the quill to steady itself as my magical grip around it quivered. ‘It’s okay. Breathe. Just breathe.’ Reflexively, I held tighter onto Luna, who was asleep on my lap. The alicorn smiled in her sleep and snuggled into me further. That seemed to do the trick, as my control returned and I continued writing. I was still processing everything. Hearing everything that Luna went through was… it was painful. But I did more than hear it. I experienced just a little slice of that hell. As a changeling, I was used to sensing emotions and not quite caring why the ponies were feeling them. The pure love I frequently felt from Luna had been the first real break from that distancing. It was something wonderful, and it was something just for me. I was loved and wanted. Now I had a chance to taste the horror her own soul had been through. The mare who cared for me so much also went through pain beyond imagination. The memories that echoed across her emotions were, in every meaning of the word, terrifying. ‘How does someone recover from that madness? Or any madness, for that matter? Even just a few minutes of it has left me shaking…’ I didn’t have the answers I needed. I didn’t even know if I was asking the right questions. I couldn’t rest. I wish I could have been content with simply squeezing Luna like a big teddy bear. I wish I could take away her pain like she took away mine. A soft tap tap tap at the door shook me from my thoughts. The door opened shortly after the quiet knocking ceased. Celestia walked in and looked around. When she saw us, she half-smiled and slowly walked over to where we sat. Currently, both Luna and I were on a small couch in the corner of her lavish office. I was working on paperwork, abusing telekinesis to grab paper and fresh ink pots when I needed to. “At this point, I thought that you were incapable of smiling,” I whispered. Celestia rolled her eyes and nodded towards her sister. “I have no cause to be mad at her. How was… therapy?” “Exhausting,” I said, as if the mare happily snoring on my lap wasn’t clear enough. “She ran out of coffee and burnt out.” “While you kept working,” Celestia pointed out. “... One would have thought that you would join her in the Dreamscape. Especially considering how late you two arrived last night.” “Guess I’m full of surprises,” I muttered as I returned to reading the stack of papers placed by the foot of the couch. Celestia continued to silently stare at me and judge me as I worked. I carefully rubbed my dry eyes as I reread the same page for the third time– only to find that it had been plucked from my magical grasp. Celestia froze, page halfway towards her, “Ah…. may I read this?” I sighed and shrugged. She brought the page the rest of the way towards her, “Sorry. I’m still getting used to having… Wait a second. Grain imports to Las Pegasus?” Celestia quickly retrieved two more pieces of paper from the top, “The report on the deficit of foodstuffs to Vanhoover? Phasma?” She whispered, “This is the crop crisis Luna and I are managing! What on Equus are you doing reading it over?” “Assembling a plan of action,” I returned, lifting up a thin packet for her to see. She took it from my telekinesis and flipped through it, “... Well, it’s certainly far from acceptable, but more than enough for a rough draft…. Why did you do this? You’re busy enough as it is with your own nascent kingdom. Why pile on more work?” I looked down at Luna, “To help her.” Celestia growled quietly, “You went from ordering assassinations one night to bending over backwards out of the kindness of your heart the next night! You….!” She trailed off as she struggled to keep her voice down. Tiberius stirred from his place on Luna’s desk, nose twitching as he sniffed the air and ears flicking around as he roused. “Go on,” I goaded her. “What about me?” Celestia sighed, “You confuse me so much. Years from now, you’re going to be an amazing friend. But right now, I can’t help but think about what will make you snap next time. Please, just… keep trying. Keep doing more of this.” Luna stirred, freezing Celestia in her tracks. When she didn’t wake, Celestia started again, “I came here to tell you that we’ve finished inventorying everything recovered from Division-P. We’ll go over it tomorrow.” I grunted a reply, so she continued, “... How is Luna? What did you two talk about?” “We told Sweet Dream everything about how we met. Mostly, Luna talked about her banishment. As a changeling, I got front-row tickets to the hell she was put through.” I didn’t need to be an empath to see the sorrow Celestia felt. She half turned to the door and remained silent for a minute. Tiberius settled back down, curled up, and went back to sleep. “... Does she blame me?” “If she does, she hasn’t said as much,” I said. ‘But I honestly doubt it.’ I was petty enough to keep that part unsaid. At least for now. “How bad was it?” She asked. “Do you really want to know?” “Yes,” Celestia said without hesitation. “Then ask her when she’s ready, and she’ll tell you.” She nodded, “I won’t fail this time. I’ll help you. Both of you.”