//------------------------------// // Where to begin? // Story: My Dear Nightmare Moon // by Scarith //------------------------------// The emerald sea that Nightmare Moon had been left on flowed with all the elegance of any body of water. A thousand thousand different waves of grass moved in a thousand thousand different directions with no guidance whatsoever in their journeys. It was a chaotic beauty that matched oh so perfectly to the emotional state of Nightmare Moon as she sat floating among it all, admiring all the wonder around her and yet, completely confused on what to do or where to go in this endless emerald sea. Her eyes swept over the planes before her as she attempted to sort through her emotions for something useful to give her a sense of direction at the very least. "Where do I go?" Nightmare Moon mused aloud to herself and the world that she was apart of once again. Her lips pursed into a serious frown as her emotions slowly simmered down From the raw inferno of her previous emotional state, emerged only a few flames that still burnt brightly, but were at least ones she could think through. A bit of fear still burnt inside her, of the past and what she had once been. Her last waking memories were being ripped apart from the only being she had and true remembrance of being close with. It was the only time in her own memories, not Luna's, that she could recall not feeling that dread of being alone forever, of being completely forgotten about and left to rot. However, even though she was technically alone right now physically, she didn't feel alone after being given such a direct message of love and compassion from her father. Love certainly burned the brightest in her, not necessarily for herself or her situation, but for the opportunities that she had been blessed with. To meet her father, even as odd as it had been, and to know that there was someone that had love just for her specifically still out there was an amazing feeling to have. She was certainly grateful to have her own body as well, even if it was starting to make her remember what being hungry felt like. And with a loud and quite undignified growl of her stomach, hunger pushed away the other few emotions rolling around inside her and demanded to be her first and most pressing thought. "It.. has been a long time since I actually ate anything, hasn't it?" She spoke with a crack forming in that serious frown of hers. As if in response her stomach gave another loud growl of need. "Alright, food first, and then more thinking." Nightmare Moon said with a firmness that wholly directed at her mind to make it be quiet. Her head dipped down to the long blades of grass directly in front of her to begin a more dignified grazing that her stomach had initially prompted with its growls. Regardless of the fact that only now was this body hers to call her own, it was still an alicorn body, and as far as she was concerned it meant that she should hold herself to certain standards even when alone. And so she simply sat there grazing bite by small bite for a time, letting her mind go blank and enjoying the wonderful sensations of a physical body. A roar of sound from high above her head eventually yanked her attention away from her pleasant meal and drew her gaze skyward. Her eyes were drawn to a yellow-green blur blazing downwards towards the ground, a stream of lightening clouds following in its wake as it went. In a stroke of confused curiosity, her head gave a little tilt to the side and her ears perked up as she studied the sole disruption to the otherwise clear starry sky. What is a pegasus doing all out on their own like this? Nightmare Moon pondered to herself as the blur of a pegasus continued its sharp descent, and she soon realized, was gaining quite a lot of speed as it closed the distance between open sky and hard, flat ground. And why aren't they slowing down? Her thoughts took on a darker tone as the pegasus just plummeted faster and faster as time went on. A pang of worry swam through her mind and drove her to stand up and take a few tentative steps forwards, ears pinned back against her head now. As the blur of a pony continued its straight dive towards the ground, a white cone began to form around the pony's leading edge. The faster the pegasus' descent took it, the narrower the cone became around its body. Faint memories flipped through Nightmare Moon's mind, recollections of an old tale about a spectacular aerial feat that started with the very cone that she saw forming, where a pony would travel so fast they would outrace sound itself. The cone was the air around the pony being compressed in front of them as they neared the speed of sound, but what happened after they broke that speed, she couldn't quite recall. As much as such a feat would be quite the proclamation of her return to Equestria, and she would love to witness something even Luna had not, the pony was nearly at the ground, only a few hundred feet left to go by her judgement. Her breath caught in her throat as the pony came lower, and lower, and lower until when it seemed it might complete such a feat, the ground became a harder barrier than the speed of sound, one the pony wouldn't break. There came a deafening boom as the pony crashed and a shock wave erupted forth, enough to carry a wall of dust and grass across the plains and smack Nightmare Moon square on and send her sprawling out onto her stomach. A firm hack coughed up a small cloud of dust and dirt from her muzzle after the shock wave traveled past her and dissipated off in the distance. Her entire front was coated in brown and green patches of dirt and grass, blemishing her pristine ebony fur. With a hard grunt she pushed herself to her hooves again, having to add some strength from her rather ruffled wings as she shook off a touch of shock from being thrown to the ground. A firm shake of her head brought a clearing of her senses and her eyes sweeping up over the sea of grass to a small plume of smoke wafting up into the air, the remnants of the pegasus' trail of lightening clouds now almost completely cleared out. "Oh buck." Nightmare Moon cursed, before her horn glowed brightly in her pale blue aura and she winked out of existence, teleporting to what she hoped wasn't just a pony-sized smear in the ground.