Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
- Equestrian Foal’s Rhyme, Traditional.
Long ago, when the world was young and all the grand powers that be were still aptly described as adorable, the sky was blank and empty. It had no sun, it had no moon, and it had no stars. Strange features occasionally appeared in it at the whims of the powers, but save an aurora in the north, none proved permanent.
In the last days of the blank sky was born one of the youngest of the powers. She was a blue-maned alicorn filly, and she was the spirit named Tyranny. We look on Tyranny’s greatest work frequently, yet you will find no word of her in books, for her name is one forgotten. How can we look upon something as awful as tyranny and know not what we see? Very rare is the pony who understands the true nature of stars.
Tyranny was unhappy with the world she found herself in. The other spirits had made the world already into a lush canvas of life, but they had only just started with creating lesser souls to inhabit it. Such few as they made they kept close to themselves. There was nopony to admire Tyranny as she wished to be admired, and she herself did not know the secret to creating life.
It was while thinking this that she stared at the long and empty void overhead, and realized that even though creating life was hardly in her nature, she knew well that she could bend others to her will. The void was such an endless space for magic to be worked in. It looked like it might truly be infinite. Would not the grandest expression of her nature be to craft utterly inevitable events? Perhaps she could craft a less lonely fate for herself with them. These are the thoughts she later claimed sent her questing after the northern aurora, the brightest part of the blank sky in the days before the sun and moon.
She took snow from the ground, and packed it into a ball. She packed it tight until it became an icy gleam in the shifting light provided by the aurora overhead. She breathed on it, and it gleamed vastly more. What had been snow became a shining light, almost unbearably bright with its proximity. She hugged the light to herself as she thought hard about her desires for the future. ‘This star will be the moment when the first mortal ruler will take power over a country of her own, scarcely influenced by any divine spirit at all,’ she decided. Perhaps a new world of mortals would be less lonely than this current world of gods.
Tyranny lobbed the ignited snowball tentatively up into the night sky. It acquired a silver trace as it flew through the air and out from the planet, and it hung low and large in the sky. Subtly did the world change as that magic shined back down upon it. Tyranny clapped her hooves together giddily as she felt it, and then she closed her eyes and stilled herself. For a moment she listened to all the world.
She could hear the new star whispering even to the other powers divine across the world. They were not immune! They would hear, and not knowing that they heard, they would lose their leashes on the souls they shaped! She had hardly dared hope that she could have that kind of influence over the powers of the world.
Energized by a success that was everything she had hoped for, Tyranny hurriedly set about gathering the snowy field into an entire field of snowballs. There were so many events she wished to ensure. She had a great deal of work to do.
If the spirit called Tyranny was one of the youngest spirits in creation, the spirit called Pride was one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest of all. The difference between oldest and youngest was not so grand yet as you might imagine. She may have been the very visage of age, but she was still naught more than a filly, white-coated, her mane a pure and innocent pink. That young alicorn was named Pride, for she was prideful indeed. She had seen the world form around her and she accepted nothing as impossible or inevitable.
She created much and many things in the new world, but there was one thing she would not do. Pride knew well the secret of making life, but with it she made no lesser souls for herself. It wasn’t that she found the work repugnant. It was more that... she found her own projects sufficient, compelling even, and that she was never lonely while she had so much to do. Thus was Pride content only to watch, curious and distant, as the other gods created them first.
What she saw them do with those souls appalled her.
When she could bear no longer to watch suffering distantly, she discovered she had not the power to cast down the other great spirits of the world by herself alone. She was cast down thrice in learning that lesson. No injury she suffered burned so terribly as the shame of awful failure. Thus it was that under the first star of night, Pride thought that she might take her tactics beyond confrontation. She learned to hide and skulk, and to choose wisely when she made her approaches.
The skills the star whispered to her were ones that none could anticipate. An alicorn of glowing white is not at all what one expects stealth to look like, not even when she is small, but what is more hidden than a thing unthinkable? False humility made the spirit called Pride more dangerous than any degree of fiery wrath had ever been able, for such scheming gave her a weapon that would work against the mighty. She knew now to start by approaching the very small.
She went to the souls that the other spirits had created and spoke to them. To those who knew her already, the beautiful Pride whispered of ambition and discontent. To those who knew her not and suffered most, she whispered of love and reassurance. To all she could, she taught the lessons of harmony, and spread ideas heretical to the other spirits. She turned their creations against them.
A stream of refugees fled to the north. Pride had shown them they could be more than the toys for strange gods, and though they knew little of harmony and often fought, still they looked with fresh wonder upon a world that seemed to have no end of potential as they set out for freedom.
Perhaps the thing about which they wondered most were the gleaming stars far overhead. Every night, new stars streamed into the void, the blank sky dying under Tyranny’s efforts. It was from the north that the stars entered the sky, and so it was that Tyranny served as an unwitting beacon to the lost and hopeless who fled their former masters. The dark alicorn did not yet know it, but the stars she crafted to enforce her whims whispered even to her.
When Pride had gathered enough to her banner, she set off for the north as well, leading the largest group of the refugees from the other gods. Engrossed in her own plans and flush with victory, she kept her hooves on the ground, and looked at the sky hardly at all. It was enough to know the world went well with her. All the world circled around her, and she was at the center of all things. Surely there could not be a thing of importance that she failed to notice.
Pride did not once notice the font of stars as she travelled north. She did not acknowledge it at all until she found the place where most of those who fled north had stopped. They were gathered just shy of the northern wastes. The starfont where Tyranny worked to fill the night sky was near at hand. There Pride as well declared her court... and was indundated with questions about the stars. She told her subjects what she had told herself.
She was the center of all things. Surely there could not be a thing of importance that she failed to notice.
Her followers went away unsatisfied, perhaps hearing too much of their old masters in these words of Pride. Yet Pride herself was not so dense as to think the answer sufficient when she had been challenged on it. She noticed the font of stars now. So near it seemed that stars streaked off into the sky. She thought to herself, ‘What is being done to my beautiful sky?’
Few know this, but Pride is the first owner of all things. There is no shortage of artisans in this world who have created their greatest works simply to feel the fondness of Pride, having never a greater purpose in mind for what they create. The world is vast, of course. Pride owns few things forever. It is merely that she owns all things first.
As far as she was concerned, no one had yet proven a claim against her on the sky. These shining lights were an act of trespass.
She set out just a little farther north, and came upon a field covered in countless small frozen orbs. It sparkled in the twilight of the world’s youth.
“Hey! I heard that. You did that on purpose.”
"Perhaps!"
By far the most wondrous thing in that field was the dark blue pony sitting in its middle. For there sat Tyranny, using her hooves to shape snow into yet more of the countless orbs piled around her.
“Thy works have made of the ice a light to mirror the ones taking over the sky. Prithee tell, be thy efforts in praise of the lights high above, or be they source for them?” asked Pride as she approached.
“Prithee?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Prithee?”
“Admittedly, they weren’t even speaking Equestrian, so there’s no point in me using an archaic variant.”
"So no prithee?"
“No, but your reaction makes it far too amusing to regret. Hm, fine. I’ll try that one again.”
“Your works have made of the ice a light to mirror the ones taking over the sky. Please tell me, are you praising the new lights with your work, or are you making them?” asked Pride as she approached.
Tyranny looked up from her work, pausing where she sat, a snowball held between her hooves. “I call them stars. The sky above is endless and wasted. This is only what I am due,” said the little filly with a voice dissonantly loud.
Pride laughed at the sound of that voice and bounded nearer. Tyranny was not wrong; Pride had done nothing with the sky. Not only was it being made into something beautiful, the incongruency of the voice and its owner amused Pride so much she decided instantly that she liked the smaller alicorn.
The feeling was not reciprocal, at least not yet. That laughter drew a deep frown. Tyranny glared at the snowball she was holding. She breathed on the snowball and ignited it, then lofted it high in the sky. It was the first star to spring from the starfont that evening. It whispered of a long and petty vengeance for Pride’s laughter.
All those pranks, all that teasing, food fights that could have fed a regiment... They all started there. Don’t laugh. Not every destiny is grand.
“Laugh? I wasn’t even aware of it. History books don’t... I can’t even... No, it’s all obvious, why was I starting to think Pride and Tyranny were you and your sister? Haha, no, silly me, you’re talking about some other pair of alicorns. Who get into food fights with each other.”
Not knowing the embarrassing doom that awaited her from this star, Pride watched with glee as it sailed to its site in the skies, a silver streamer stretched behind it. “The sky is to be wasted no more!” she announced. “Do these ‘stars’ have function beyond adornment?”
“Every star marks an event that will happen in the future,” said Tyranny. Her horn lit as she brought to herself a snowball she had already made. “This one will be a joyous marriage between two souls, long and unmarred by strife.” Tyranny breathed upon the snowball and ignited it, then used a hoof to throw it high into the sky.
Pride stomped her hooves ecstatically. “That’s wonderful! Make another one!”
“This one will be an artisan who suffers greatly to complete a hard project, but who has no regrets once he sees his success,” said Tyranny as she brought another snowball to herself, breathed on it, and then tossed it up into the sky.
Pride applauded in a more reserved manner for this one. She did not like the idea of anyone experiencing great suffering, but if the artisan was happy in the end about the way things turned out, it was still a good thing. “That is very interesting. Show me another!”
“This one will be the long misery of a stallion who lies about love to me, and it will be the ruin of everypony he has ever cared for,” said Tyranny as she brought another snowball to herself, breathed on it, and then was tackled by Pride.
“Why would you do that!?” demanded Pride angrily. The newborn star shone brightly between them, a beauty belying the horror of its nature.
The dark alicorn glared at the bright one. “It is a punishment for a bad pony. He deserves it!”
“You can’t know that he’ll betray you!”
“I saw it in the stars!”
“The stars you made! He... he doesn’t exist yet! These stars are all things that wouldn’t happen at all except that you keep putting them up there,” said Pride.
Tyranny’s glare softened into confusion. Pride sounded... hurt. The fate of this unborn stallion almost seemed personal to her. That didn’t make sense.
Silence stretched between them. Pride broke it, saying, “If he’s fated to do it, how is it his fault at all? How would you like it if YOU were the one fated to lie about love?”
“I would never lie about love,” shouted Tyranny angrily, her voice cracking. She tried to squirm out of the hooves of Pride, but the elder Pride was stronger and held tight to her.
Pride smashed her hoof through the shining star between the two of them. It shattered into stardust, and Pride’s horn glowed golden as she reformed the star into a new shape. The reshaped star blazed a bright blue, far brighter than the soft white shine Tyranny had given it before.
She let go of Tyranny then, and Tyranny’s struggles threw the two of them apart from one another. Pride, who had intended for that exact result, was back on her hooves in a split second. She tossed the star behind herself and then starbucked it-
“‘Starbucked’? Really? Something tells me this isn’t how you told the story last time.”
“I am not too old yet to take inspiration from the world around me. And how are you so sure I have told it before, hm? No more interruptions, please...”
Pride tossed the star behind herself and then bucked it as hard as she could, launching it out over the horizon and far, far away from the world.
“No! What have you... what have you done?” said Tyranny sadly, holding a hoof after the stolen star as she watched it carve a blue wake through the sky. It went so much farther than the other stars that it nearly vanished entirely. Were it not brighter than they, it would no longer be visible at all.
“I remade that star so it will turn your mane blue,” said Pride, looking angrily at Tyranny.
Tyranny gaped at her disbelievingly for several seconds before she gathered her wits enough to point out, “My mane is already blue!”
Pride blinked, and then said, “A different blue! A blue filled with stars!”
“Oh. That sounds like a fine thing,” said Tyranny, her anger melting once more under confusion. What was this strange white alicorn doing? Pride made no sense at all!
“...”
“Hm?”
“...”
“Speechless?”
“Well, what was-”
“Tsk tsk! I said no interruptions.”
“Gah!”
“That’s not the point!“ shouted Pride, her pink mane starting to flow in a non-existent breeze as she gathered power to herself. Tyranny’s loudness had prevented Pride from noticing that the smaller alicorn wasn’t really shouting at her with that last line.
Tyranny looked expectantly at Pride. It took a little longer for the silence to break this time, and Pride looked abashed as her mane settled back into being normal hair once more.
“The point isn’t that it’s good or bad. It’s that it’s your fate now. Just like the stallion was fated to betray you, and you to be betrayed. It's all in the stars, isn't it?”
Pride had never made a star before. She wasn’t actually sure if she’d done it right, and she didn’t know how to check. After a moment’s hesitation, Pride shook her head and pushed forward with the explanation. It didn’t really matter if the star ‘worked’, it just mattered that she could use it to teach the other alicorn what was wrong with fating things.
“I threw that star much farther than I’ve any hope of bringing it back from. There’s nothing either of us can do about it now. Your mane will turn starry blue, even if you’d rather it turn pink like mine.”
Tyranny had been staring after where the distant blue star twinkled. “I’ll never wear pink,” she said, her gaze drifting as she was briefly distracted by that mental image. She shook her head and looked resolutely at the new star. “Thy trickery has won nothing,” said Tyranny, pawing at the snowy ground and giving a heated snort. “That star will fall.”
Pride looked on in alarm as Tyranny’s horn lit brightly, and then brighter still. The smaller alicorn focused hard, bending as she poured everything she had into her horn. A blue aurora wavered through the air far above, briefly damping out the northern aura and turning the whole snowfield blue with its light. The distant new star was untouched. After several seconds, the light around Tyranny’s horn flickered and then broke.
“I can’t move it!” shouted Tyranny as she looked up at the sky. Then she did it again. The blue aurora sprang back into existence... and then broke once more. “I can’t move most of them!”
Tyranny whined and panted for breath for a few moments, but then she took a deep breath and went absolutely quiet and still. Pride started to say something to break the silence, but Tyranny raised a hoof at her to shush her. She listened to the new voices of the starry sky. The stars sent countless whispers to the world below as they warped events to fit Tyranny’s plans for the future.
Tyranny’s eyes went wide, and then narrowed into pinpricks as she stared aghast at the stars. She’d thrown most of the stars well past the range of her own magic. She could hear them whispering to her, warping her as well, and she could do almost nothing about it. Maybe, because she could hear them, she could resist them. She knew that they would try to twist even resistance into service.
She could fight some of them all of the time, and all of them some of the time, but not all of them all of the time. Tears dripped unheeded down her cheeks.
Pride watched Tyranny, mirror to the other’s sorrow. She gave the small, dark alicorn a gentle hug and nuzzled at one of the lines of tears.
Tyranny brought a hoof up to her other cheek and felt the tears on them. “What should I do?” whispered Tyranny.
Pride, rarely caught short of new plans, answered with reassuring confidence. “I threw one of those stars myself. Others may learn how eventually. I think the night needs you to guard it more than it needs you to make plans for it.”
Tyranny sighed deeply and closed her eyes. Pride gently unhoofed her and gave her back her space. At which point Tyranny raised a hoof proudly and shouted to the starry heavens, her voice cracking again, “I, Tyranny, do henceforth declare that time shall see my mistakes corrected! No further shall Tyranny bind the world in an inevitable web of fates! Instead, I shall guard the night, and cast a light to dim the stars! And for showing me the error of my ways, I do hereby swear sisterhood with! With!”
Tyranny looked at a deafened Pride, whose ears were bent back by the force of the declaration that had issued from the smaller alicorn. “Thou never told me thine name.”
“My - name - is - Pride,” shouted Pride, struggling to speak over the ringing in her ears.
“Pride! Henceforth, Pride and Tyranny shall travel as sisters forever! I love you, big sister!” said Tyranny, hugging Pride tightly. Stunned as she was, the sudden motion of the smaller alicorn took her straight to the ground.
“S-sister... I didn’t... intend to have a sister,” mumbled Pride.
Tyranny hopped off and scrambled over to one of the piles of snowballs nearby. She crushed up several of the snowballs into one huge snowball.
Pride got weakly to her feet and shook snow off of herself. She looked curiously at Tyranny. “What are you doing?”
“Thine eyes looked with love on the eve’s first two stars! I do not mean to make more tonight! Not more save one! I will fix it in the northern part of the sky, big and bright and wondrous!” Tyranny said excitedly as she struggled to lift the big snowball. She breathed on it and it ignited, as the others had before it.
“But what is it going to mark?”
“THE ETERNAL BOND BETWEEN US!” shouted Tyranny. So much strength did she gain from the joyous proclamation that she hoisted the huge star far into the sky, the trail behind it catching fire as it shot out towards its place in the sky.
Thus was born Ponaris, the most fixed point in the sky, symbolizing the bond between my sister and I. So big was the new star, and so hard did Luna throw it, that it broke apart as it burned its way to its new home in the sky. Yet so very far did she throw it that only the very best telescopes can spot the secondary stars ringing the main.
Two seconds later, a snowball smacked the triumphant Tyranny in the side of her head. “Hey!” she said, looking over at Pride.
That’s when I said-
“You had a snowball fight?” asked Twilight Sparkle, looking disbelievingly at her mentor. “You had just stopped Luna from wrapping the world in countless horrible fates...” Twilight paused and thought about that. “No... You had just FAILED to stop Luna from wrapping the world in countless horrible fates, because you only got there after the sky was speckled all over with them, and...”
“They aren’t all horrible,” Celestia said chidingly. “Her name may have been Tyranny back then, but many of the fates Luna created truly were beautiful. Indeed, the stars that make up Ponaris are one of the fondest things in life to me. I would grieve were they to fall from the sky.”
“You are telling this story again! Ooh! You should have told me you were telling this story again!” shouted a voice from behind the teacher and student, emitted from a grinning Luna who had snuck up upon them. Her efforts were rewarded when they both jumped and whirled to face her. Most particularly, her efforts were rewarded when a cup full of jasmine tea shot straight up and shattered against the ceiling.
Twilight Sparkle glanced between Celestia and Luna, and then sipped smugly from the cup of tea in her magic's grasp.
Celestia put up a brave pretense of jasmine-splashed normality. "Your grammar has improved," she said approvingly. “Little sister, you are standing far too near for us to truly believe you just noticed. How long were you listening?”
“Long enough to know that you are as terrible at mimicking my voice as you have always been. Oh! But we should continue. The last few lines of this story are my favorite,” said Luna.
“Very well,” said Celestia, and she pitched her voice to imitate her younger self once more as she said, “‘You didn’t even ask me first,’ I said, lobbing another snowball at my sister. It went wide. ‘You’re supposed to have permission before you make somepony your sister!’”
Luna cleared her voice and said, “The grand spirit of-”
A frazzled lavender alicorn cut her off. “Please! Luna! If you’re going to tell part of the tale, do it more quietly...”
Luna frowned for a moment, and then nodded. She resumed at a reasonable volume, “The grand spirit of Tyranny laughed at this rejoinder even as she dove for cover behind another pile of the snowy orbs, just as a barrage of thrown snowballs sailed past where We had been moments before. Yet even though they were prepared for a very different purpose, this one seemed far more cheerful. The entire pile of snowballs behind which We had hidden was grasped in Our magic and raised into the air. ‘I regret nothing! Have at thee, Pride!’ We shouted as We advanced upon Our new sister, happier than We-I, happier than I had ever felt before in my life.”
Twilight Sparkle looked between Luna and the notebook in which she had been busily recording what she heard. Guilt at spoiling the almost silly expression of happiness both of the sisters were wearing warred with irritation that they’d reacted to her research with silly jokes and implausible, unverifiable stories. Irritation won. “Sooo... Yeah. You had a snowball fight,” said Twilight Sparkle, snapping her notebook shut and stalking off muttering.
“Did we overdo it?” Luna asked Celestia, in what she almost surely thought was a whisper. Twilight Sparkle broke into a brisk trot to get away faster. The gentle laughter of Celestia fell behind her as she went.