Hovering high in the sky of Canterlot, higher than Cloudsdale itself, as high as the two strongest flyers of the Night Guard, who had volunteered to patrol with her throughout the night, could reach, Luna allowed herself to look upward for a moment, and silently sighed. That night, only the few of them would have looked at the spectacular sky she had drawn for the night of Hearth's Warming Eve. Beneath her, the clouds formed an almost uninterrupted sea that covered all Equestria. In the moonlight, it looked like a stormy, windswept ocean, hurled against the few mountain peaks that rose, like islands, above the waves.
Luna felt for a moment as she could even hear the backwash, before recalling that it was the rhythmic beat of the wings and the heavy breathing of the two ponies at her side that she was hearing. Luna looked at them. Slit eyes gleaming in the darkness, gazing to the sea of clouds beneath. Sharp teeth snarling, reacting to her state of mind, as if they were ready to throw themselves against the storm. It was an inequine effort what they were doing to follow her so high, just because they understood that, in that night, Luna would not have wanted to be left alone. But, Luna knew that, if she had flew even higher, they would have still tried to follow her. They would have thrown themselves even against the Sun if she had ordered them, and they would still have called themselves lucky to be at her command, as generations of their ancestors had instead continued to swear loyalty to a disgraced Princess that even their grandparents had never seen, and to be hated for that.
Beneath the three of them, the rest of the Night Guards were no more than dark spots against the background of clouds, flying in 'V' formations just above them. Their task would have been the more important that night.
Luna was feeling a bit of gratitude for the only creatures who could follow her in her night patrols, and a touch of envy too. It would have been nice, sometimes, to have to follow orders, instead of giving them, and not feeling like the Princess of the Night was In that moment, much more helpless than a pony sent alone to face a continent-covering snow storm.
Because it would have been easy. It would have required only a glimpse of her power, to disperse the clouds, to calm the wind, and allow all her subjects to enjoy the most awaited night of the year as they had planned to do. But what was easy, it was not possible. There was no need for Celestia to say anything to her that time. One who plays with the forces of nature since fillyhood, learns these things alone. They had not created the world with which they were playing. And this was done so that sometimes its mechanisms left no way out. Sometimes corrections were not feasible. You have only to let nature take its course, to prevent worse problems in the future. 'You are their ruler, not their mother, and they are not your foals. They look after themselves better than you think, even if you do not care for them all the time'. The caveat with which Celestia had tried to hold her back in the castle that night, to spend a happy night of Hearth's Warming Eve with her beloved sister, was still sounding in her ears. To accept what could not be changed, was the lesson that Luna had never learned.
That's why, if fate had decided for that to be a cruel night, The Princess of the Night would have used her powers to concentrate the light, to shift her vision to the UV, to pass through the clouds, and see. See the sufferings to which her impotence condemned her subjects, and, since she was no more a monster, at least share those with them.