//------------------------------// // sunder // Story: Once, She Was a Princess // by Astrarian //------------------------------// She comes back to herself slowly, lost in a vision: Luna springs forward and they embrace, manes intermingling. Luna is warmed by the contact, and they weep in the flushing hues of the finest daybreak she ever crafts. For an infinitesimal moment everything is fine. Then she remembers death. She raises her head and looks at death and death kicks her in the chest. Somehow she does not die. So she looks away. She struggles upright in bloodshot moonlight instead of a pink sunrise. She breathes deeply to steady her legs. Her breath snags in her throat. She stands up and her stomach bolts for it up her throat and she splutters and heaves and swallows. There is all manner of stinging inside her and none of it feels like accidentally eating nettles under the dappled trees. She staggers to one side. Several crunches shatter the quiet. Her hooves have crushed already-broken orbs of discoloured stone. She spreads her wings instinctively for balance. Their tips are rounded, not pointed, and she wonders if Twilight Sparkle can tell the difference when one brushes her lifeless back. Non-existent wings are barbed nonetheless. She must not look away. She has to bear witness to this loss and she has to understand death so she can move on. She must move on now. If she does not, there will be more death. She has to understand. She looks away. Charred paper and hair and feathers flicker and swirl in the sky. Huge clouds of ash and smoke mature around her as she pursues the Nightmare. Her ponies are crying. She listens. It is her duty to listen. She weeps soundlessly as she bears their suffering; she listens, and listens, and listens, and there’s so much, the crying is endless. She cannot bear it. Yet she has to listen. She has no choice. The wind rushes past her ears and the more effort she puts in to listening, the louder the wind gets, calling and crying and moaning. She plunges into the thick clouds. She prays for silence. Instead she can’t breathe. She drops out of the smog and looks down at the upturned faces praying, and she continues to choke. Doesn’t a phoenix rise from the ashes of its previous life, burning so bright that even the sun goes blind for a moment? Thus filled with ash and embers, Equestria might be able to do the same! She searches and calls for her friend as blindly as that bedazzled star. A small body lies across the railway tracks. She looks away—no! She looks back. It’s not a body, you foal. It was a phoenix, it is a phoenix: a battered, dead phoenix. It’s Philomena. She’s never seen those fluttery golden flames be still, never seen them riven with that colour of red. It’s not red, don’t call it red, call it what it is. It’s bl. . . She looks. It’s red. She can look, but she does not need to see. But it is her duty to see. She waits. She doesn’t want to watch. Still, she does. The air is filled with ash. The moon turns vaguely blue, as though it is suffocating. Ash in the sky and Philomena’s cold feathers still the most vibrant of any bird, even in death. Now she knows there is no ash when a phoenix’s life ends prematurely, violently. Philomena is gone. She will not rise again. She follows her sinking heart to her ruined castle in Canterlot and finds tresses amongst the stained glass: pink, blue, white, golden, red, red, red— Again she does not fall to the kick in her chest, and somehow her heart lurches without exploding, spewing forth a raging torrent. Disgusting. How can it not? She is their Princess, and they are dead, and she isn’t breaking even though they were broken as easily as fragile pottery in a tempest. If a Princess cannot break for the suffering of her subjects, what will she break for? She looks north. The horizon is haemorrhaging. This isn’t how things are supposed to be. But it seems Fate no longer has anything to say to her about Equestria’s future. Stars wheel endlessly over her head. How did everything go wrong? Surely it was Fate’s will that the Elements of Harmony, wielded by six young and kind-hearted ponies, would reunite her and Luna. Yet they have failed and they are gone – they are dead. They must have done something wrong. She’d overestimated her protégé. The Elements needed embodiment, not simply wielding. They needed a spark and Twilight had failed to provide one. No. Nothing her ponies did could be responsible for this. Even if any of that were true their deaths are still her fault. She is the hoof through which Fate works. She should have given Twilight Sparkle more time. But how could she have failed? Fate is surely impervious to equine error. An opposing force, perhaps. She was misled by inaccurate visions of another alicorn princess, visions that are now insufferable dreams, nightmares inflicted upon her from afar. Of course. The Nightmare killed her sister, then those who should have borne the Elements of Harmony. Now it tries to destroy her and become the new hoof of Fate. The Nightmare stops frequently to shower death on landscapes Luna once loved, but the distance between them is ever-widening. It hurts to pursue the Nightmare. Whenever she stops to catch her ragged breath, everything aches. The Elements of Harmony were Equestria’s highest power. Now their power belongs to the Nightmare. She cannot rout the Nightmare without them. But she is the Princess. If Fate can turn away from her, then she can defy Fate in honour of her lost subjects. She can try. She can try. . . Equestria wanes under her wings. She strains instinctually to raise the sun higher than the moon. The ocean surges below her, rushing and roaring. She pushes and the Nightmare resists. She pushes and the Nightmare pushes back. She pushes, and the Nightmare pushes her down to the dry, cold sand. The ocean settles. A deathly silence falls. The corona around the black orb of the moon glows intensely. The sun must wait until she can try again. She hears the silence. No one is crying. Everypony must be gone. Call it what it is: dead because their Princess failed them. Dear Princess Celestia. . . A thin wail rises in her ears. The sun can keep waiting. If she lets the Nightmare kill her, though, she will have failed again. She must bear the tragedy of Equestria for the rest of her days. This, too, is her duty; perhaps her only duty.