//------------------------------//
// I.5 - The Man Who Rebuked the Sun 
// Story: Night 
// by Revenant Wings 
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	I woke earlier than the sun the next morning.  The suite was still dark though I could see through the windows the first rays of sunlight.  The sun was at a standstill below the horizon, as though waiting to be released onto the land, and created a soft purple light across the sky. As much as I felt I could fall back asleep comfortably and easily sink back into the blankets, my mind was too restless, always thinking back to the conversation I had with Shining Armor and Cadence the previous day.  I got up and put on some clothes with the intent to get some questions answered, then headed out and to the dining hall.
While open, no one was in the dining hall except for a few guards.  They paid no attention to me as I wandered about, going by each of the windows as I looked out among the gardens.  I stopped by one, wondering if I would be able to catch Princess Celestia before she got too absorbed by her work for that afternoon.
She caught me.
“Hello there, Nemo,” she said gently, even slightly amused.  I turned around to find she was standing a short ways away from me (how the heck did she enter without me hearing!?).  “Not many are up so early with me in the castle, especially not on a day of rest.  I was going to take some personal time for myself this afternoon.”
“I wanted to ask you a few questions, Princess Celestia,” I said, bowing out of respect.
Celestia smiled.  “I feel you might want to keep this conversation private,” she asked.
“Perhaps, though I don’t know how much you have discussed with others.”
“Plenty, but I can answer a few questions.  Come with me to the gardens; they’re beautiful in the early morning.”
I walked out with her and into the lush green gardens, filled with the scents of many wonderful flowers that opened as she passed by them, only to close when she went too far away.  Celestia led me to a large oak in a secluded part of the gardens and sat down in the grass underneath it, motioning for me to sit next to her.
“What is the matter, Nemo, that you are up so early?” she asked.
“Princess… why was I brought here?  Why me, of all people?”
Celestia’s smile faded slightly.  “You were here because the conditions in your own dimension were not favorable towards you.  I was afraid of things getting much worse, and pulled you here to bring you somewhere safe.”
“Have… have others lost their memories like I have when they were brought here?”
Celestia’s smile was almost gone, as though she was struggling to keep it on her face.  “No.  All others have kept their memories since the time they were born.  You are a most unusual case, Nemo, in the fact that you can’t remember what happened before you were brought here.  Now, please, tell me what is really bothering you.”
“…are you keeping information from me because you want me to stay?  Because you don’t want me to go back?  Is this three months of time no more than a chance for me to want to stay here enough to not want to leave?  I ask because everything I’ve gone through since I came here reminds me of how different home is, how much I want to go back there, and what things are similar enough to home make me want to go back.”
Celestia sighed, her smile gone though her patience and gentleness remained, and that was probably worse than anything she said.  “In part, yes, I do want you to stay.  You are the first that has wanted to go back, and it partially pains me to hear that.  I thought I was doing you a favor, giving you a life that could help heal you and give you friends and family.  And yes, keeping you in the dark was a part of my plan in order to keep you from reliving what you had gone through.”
“Is that any better from taking someone away from the only home they’ve ever known without their consent?  Could you not have asked me first?  Maybe I would have told you ‘yes, please, take me away from here!’  But no, you came and took me away and brought me to a strange land that I want to get out from, then keep me in the dark because you want me to stay.  Where in the world of morality does that fall to you?  What part of your right mind resorted to kidnapping me and taking me…”
My voice had risen enough to where Celestia was showing signs of fear, but my emotions had risen with them and I could not bear to continue, instead kneeling down on the grass and crying.  I felt the sun rise and its warmth touch me gently and tenderly, and I looked up to see Princess Celestia in front of me trying her best to smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said.  “Please.  I promise.  Three months really is the time it takes to prepare the spell for its casting to send you back home.  As soon as it’s ready, I will take you back to where you feel you belong.”
I was not satisfied.
“What about Shining Armor?  What part has he played in this?  Has he been working as part of this plan too since Luna is as yet non-compliant?”
Celestia’s smile faded again and I felt it become cold.  “Yes… yes, he was.”
“I trusted him… I trusted him!  He actually felt like a friend to me, and all you wanted was for him to create enough of a connection with me so that I could stay here instead of wanting to go back?  Is that what you wanted?”
“Y-yes…”
“Then… perform the memory spell on me!  Make it where I can remember all that I’ve lost!”
“…I can’t.”
“Why not!?”
“Suffice it to say that now is not the right time.”  Celestia was visibly struggling with the words.  “Later, when you are ready to go back, I will reveal what you have not uncovered on your own.”
I felt hurt, betrayed.  I walked out of the shade of the oak and walked back through the gardens towards the castle.  I could hear Celestia walking close behind me in the grass and quickened my pace, though all it took for the alicorn to keep up was increase her pace by nowhere near so much as I had to.
“Nemo, please…”
I turned around to face her, now really angered with her; the look of pity on her face didn’t help me any.  “‘Please?’  Oh, so you have to say ‘please’ in order to get me to do something now?  What do you want from me, princess?  What do you want to do, as my savior, for this kidnapped soul?  How about sending me back!?”
“But I can’t…”
“…because of your little spell that takes three months to charge, I get it.  You, according to pretty much everyone I’ve talked to, are the most powerful pony in the entirety of Equestria, and yet you can’t do something as simple as plop me right back in my own dimension when you could do the crossing day after day after day for a month to watch me?”
“I have never had to carry someone back across before.”
I just stared at her in disgust.  “Are you kidding me?”
“No one has ever left.  Then again, no one has ever wanted to leave.”
“Well… I do.”
I left the garden and Celestia behind, going back through the castle to my suite, where I closed the door and decided I wasn’t to come out until someone came to give me an explanation, no matter how long it took.  I ignored requests from the guards to come down to dinner and even to give me my supplement for the day.  I never felt so angry, so betrayed in my life, and it hurt me more than anything else, even more than the fact that I couldn’t go home.

*	*	*

Two important messages came that day among the attempts to get me out of the room.  The first was from a guard.
“Nemo?” the guard called.  “It’s Revenant Wings from Shining Armor’s troops.  Are you in there?”
I didn’t respond.
“Nemo?  I have a message for you.”
I remained silent.
“Princess Luna has set a start date for your teaching.”
I gave him an ear.  “Continue.”
“Tomorrow night, you will go to the observatory once you have finished with dinner.  Princess Luna will be teaching you every other night for one and a half hours on modern Equestria history, taking place over the last thousand years.”
“She doesn’t have to teach me.”
“She has agreed to by order of Princess Celestia.”
“Fine.  Tell her whatever you want to by way of response.”
Revenant Wings was silent for long enough I thought he had left.  He eventually did give an answer.  “Um… I shall tell her you received the message.  Apologies for disturbing you.”  Then he left, and I could hear his hoofsteps as he walked down the corridors.

*	*	*

The second message came from Shining Armor.
It was after nightfall when he came around.  I could hear his hoofsteps come up and a long period of silence before he knocked on the door.
“Nemo?” he called in.  “Are you alright?”
“Why do you want to know?  Has Princess Celestia asked you to check on me?”
“Wait… what?”
“I heard everything from Princess Celestia.  She’s keeping me in the dark and has been using you as someone to interact with me so that I don’t want to leave.  I’m sorry, Shining Armor, but… I just can’t speak with you right now.  Not after you betrayed me.”
“Nemo, wait!”
I wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
“Nemo, please, listen to me!  Yes, it was that way at first.  But… yesterday, I realized that was wrong!  I took you to the Wonderbolts show with me and Cadence because I wanted to be your friend!  I… I’m sorry.  I didn’t want you to figure out that way, but I wish you could have just waited and let me tell you!”
“You were too late.”
I heard a sigh, then a sniff, and I wasn’t sure if they were mine or the unicorn’s outside the door.  “I’m sorry,” Shining Armor said.  “I’m sorry…”
He left, and I didn’t care.

*	*	*

That night, I heard a weird voice in my dreams, one that was unfamiliar, strange… and gentle.
“I still want you to leave.  But that does not give my sister the right to do what she did.”
"For now, just rest.  But do not think I will go any easier on you."