The harsh rays of the noontime sun fell heavily on the imperial capital of Canterlot, seemingly focusing them solely upon the citadel at the city’s heart, leaving its pure white walls aflame. Amongst the palace’s many bejewelled turrets a single tower stood out prominent, therefore left most exposed to this siege. From its side a balcony jutted out, a stage high above the court and courtyards far below, tall glass doors leading to the realm within. Across this podium the light beams charged, battering against its closed panes, demanding that they yield to their entrance. Inside however thick curtains stood firm against the assault, holding the breach mostly firm, save for the tiniest crack at their centre. Although small however, this was still enough to be a noisy invasion, at full tilt striking the bed set central in the chamber and the lone occupant enwrapped by its covers.
Celestia huffed as she rolled onto her back, feeling the lash of her charge’s burning fingers. Her tired eyes fluttered open in increments, pierced by stark white with each movement, blinking away dancing stars. She was too hot, proof that her being had laid corpse-like and still. Despite this she had been denied sleep, again, her mind’s tumult chaotic in antithesis to her form. She could not however raise the will to summon up her magic and seal the fissure in the curtains’ veils, nor move any further than throwing off her copious sheets. Instead she remained sunk on the mattress, caught and pinned under the sun’s glow, but unmoving to save herself from it.
The princess’ gaze was her only part which felt remotely capable of action, therefore letting it rove, exploring a world already too well known. The bedroom was not truly a mess, but rather unkempt, much like the sovereign herself. On each side of her, stood on the pair of her bedside tables, a pile of tea trays loomed, formed from the remnants of many a solitary meal. An equally crazy totem formation had grown to cover her desk, rolled parchments spilling from the surface’s edge in a dense mound, their crimson seals unbroken. Everywhere else was simply lacking, left to slip beneath the usual standards of its grandeur, gold embellishments unpolished and lacking lustre. Her royal jewellery was in this state scattered, dropped and left unceremoniously before her dressing mirror, unworn for some time.
It’s been a week, one bucking week in an eternity of others still to pass, so get up and get over it!
The week had been “long” from its inception, only seeming to stretch all the further the longer it went on. Quickly it had grown to be infinite, as but one in an unending gauntlet of others. Like a mere foal, retreat had been her only response, from which she had yet to return in spite of the ever growing calls for her to do so. Each day the regular hoard of courtiers and petitioners came clamouring at her door, demanding an audience only to be turned away by her gold clad sentries, for whose loyal vigilance she was ever more grateful.
You can’t just remain here like this, eventually you’re going to have to return and the longer you leave it the harder it’s going to get.
‘But why bother?’ Celestia thought back. ‘What’s the point?’ The already ancient alicorn had no illusions, she was well aware of her own foalishness, but in this she felt trapped. The more she dwelt on her crime the more heinous it became, the more its weight of guilt pressed against her heart and the less she wanted to bear the crown, feeling unfit for the commanding circlet. At the same time her inner self was right: the longer she remained immobile the worse she in turn felt, adding the abandonment of her subjects to her list of failures. In this way she was caught; one self-reproach cyclically begetting others, descending in a viscous spiral. It struck at her every drawn out day, each time she was forced to fulfil her sister’s duty in her stead in raising the moon, always cutting deep like a fresh wound from which there was no escape.
---
The carved portal of an oaken doorway swung open in a violet corona. A figure followed in her magic’s wake, form disguised under a long trailing cloak and pointed hat, bells affixed to its rim frantically jingling in transit. She made no pause on the threshold, not waiting to hear the door’s closure at her back, set on a straight path through the maze of the library’s shelves. Swiftly she whisked her way between their ranks, making for the very back of their number, her steps switching to clicking as they hit a snaking staircase.
Twilight came to a halt as she finally reached the sanctuary of her bedroom, its curtains unhelpfully open and bathing the space in the moon’s pale light, as if the lunar body were gazing directly in at her window. In a flash of purple magic she drew them sharply closed, whilst at the same time roughly throwing off the pieces of her costume, letting her horn be the only illumination in place of anything else. A blue and star festooned cape, a matching hat with its further ringing adornments and a false beard each flew off in turn, collectively landing in a careless heap. Foregoing any further interruption, she threw herself towards the bed, collapsing into it before burrowing deeper to drown in its quilted recesses.
The lavender unicorn let out a sigh, burying her head in the pillows, further huffing ineffectually into them. Ostensibly the evening had been a resounding success, yet for some reason it felt far from it. The crumpled remains of her “checklist” (which had in fact morphed into an extremely complex flow diagram of stages, with a multitude of different colour-coded lists to fit its various different sections) was testament to this, part filled in but eventually left screwed up in one of her cape’s many pockets. She felt down, not crushingly so but still oppressively, not truly sad but nonetheless without. From this she drew back, very much needing the safe haven of her familiar cocoon of blankets.
There’s no reason for your melancholy. For all intents and purposes it went really well; the practicalities of your extensive written plan notwithstanding.
Her mind’s words were both rational and correct, yet despite these usually reassuring facets they had little impact. Nightmare Night had indeed been a success in a variety of ways, both big and small, most focused squarely on the evening’s patron: the Lunar Princess herself. Its beginning had been shaky, her detailed research into authenticating an effective likeness of Starswirl the Bearded falling on the deaf ears of her uncomprehending audience. This reaction (or lack of it) had initially put a major dampener on her spirits, a tad more than a little bit disappointed. Then however, Luna had made her surprise appearance, the event excising all encroaching shadows from the unicorn, even whilst most others in contrast timidly cowered.
For Twilight in memory the rest of the celebrations had passed in a rapid blur, undulating in crash dives between soaring elation and aching sadness, both interspersed with a fair amount of abject panic. On an admittedly petty level (but one her mind now seemed fixated) Luna had recognised her costume, the navy alicorn’s compliments despite their slight nature bringing a hot blush to her cheeks even now. In turn in antithesis to everypony else’s reaction to the “traditional Canterlot voice” she had found the princess’ failures in etiquette kind of cute in a weird way. These feelings however became their opposite, changing to pained sympathy at the alicorn’s flight and then growing worse on finding her on the cusp of tears before the statue of her nightmarish likeness. Twilight was well versed in feelings of social inadequacy, but the image of the other mare again collapsed and tearful struck her far deeper than simple sympathy. There had been a need, an all-consuming need, to do something, to fix the beautiful features creased by sadness. After this only more of the same, even dipping to become akin to anger at others continued fearful judgements (even Fluttershy’s), as if they grazed her core as much as Luna’s. Then finally there was a smile and the faintest happiness in understanding.
For the rest of Nightmare Night there was only joy, the younger unicorn celebrating in each and every further smile which graced the princess’ lips. From there on in there was little else until the present, as if her mind had recorded nothing beyond, deeming it all in contrast unimportant. But then it abruptly petered out, fading in Luna’s departure with a final warming, but in Twilight’s eyes far too short, embrace. An afterglow of events had for a while remained, setting her elatedly skipping homewards beneath the stars, all shining as if for only her. By the threshold though it was gone, dissipated, leaving her (in her own mind greedily and therefore guiltily) only wanting more. More of what was not clear, but simply more nonetheless.
The objective of your list was friendship, and in that you undoubtedly succeeded.
Twilight could not help but feel foalish in the face of these rational words. Still though she felt how she did, depressingly so, down without a clear way out. Drained on a variety of levels she drifted off into sleep, curling the covers tighter about herself, her subconscious forgettably in its final waking moments imagining she was in fact held in Luna’s wings.
---
‘Will I never be rid of you?’
All around, a world still strange to the one who sat surrounded by it, even the most basic of features seeming stark. The gnarled trunks of ancient trees stood tall around a clearing broken in their number, their tops swaying lightly in a breeze. This said same wind played across Luna’s fur, but here its touch seemed far rougher, sending its chill deep into her bones. High in the night-time sky mere slivers of her charge’s light broke through a thick cloud cover, doing nothing but cast the princess in shadows, crushed beneath a statue’s silhouetted form. A stony visage glowered down from above, solid, strong and stern, a monument whose subject she knew more intimately than anypony: her nightmare. In marked contrast her own face felt cold, cheeks streaked by the icy trails of tears, the weak antithesis to that of her opposing unmarred opponent.
This was not the first time by a stretch that the Princess of the Night had succumbed to crying since her return. Her tears had been guilty ones when faced down by the Sun and the Elements of Harmony incarnate, becoming only joyous in her sister’s embrace, after so long their hug alone going some way in curing her many wounds. These had flowed freer as time went on, pooling droplets accompanying her eyes in each reacquainted memory, everything illuminated by the fog lamps of still tender senses. Then there was pain again in loss, struck by a line-up of half familiar faces. In this respect the well overdue reunion with her Lunar Guard had been the hardest, many of their number bearing the features of those she had once known and called friends, by now long gone. As in all things what similarities which remained only made the differences far worse.
A shiver arced up Luna’s spine, her fur bristling. It was strange. She had for so long been alone in absence, but now when her exile was over and she was comparatively subsumed by company she still was trapped in loneliness. The evening so far passed had been an effective proof of the distance there stood between her and everypony else. She was an other, in whose presence all cowered, set apart in stuff even as basic as speech. As far as the world was concerned she remained in the twisted form of the demonic statue which overshadowed her, the monument’s very existence hammering this point home.
The navy alicorn brought a forehoof to her face, wiping away the darker patches beneath her eyes. She had once wished that she could go back and change each one of her many glaring mistakes, but such foalish fantasies had been eaten up by the emptiness of her lunar prison. Now however she just wanted to change herself; in a word she wanted to be better. She wanted back the love of her subjects, that tiny spark which she had cast aside in want of more, to be there as she always should have been and trusted in that duty. She wanted the Sun to know and see all this, and therefore through it to know that she was sorry. Although the older sister had already accepted her apologies, the other alicorn making her own needless confessions in return, if she could recapture some sliver of Tia’s pride then maybe she could accept them herself. More than everything else however, at the front of her mind another stood out for whom she wanted to be different.
When she had finally emerged from the depths of her long inhabited pit, taking her first tentative steps out from the darkness, the first thing to meet Luna’s gaze had been a pair of gleaming violet eyes. To her surprise they had not been Tia’s, instead belonging to a young lavender unicorn, the unknown mare carrying herself with a neatened prettiness and an unprepared smile. Weeks of conversations, rediscovering her lost world from within the palace walls, had then brought her a name: Twilight Sparkle. Initial intrigue already perked by her sister’s pupil (not least of all by the fact that her alicorn counterpart had chosen to take on another personal student at all), it had only been furthered the more she learned. It was for this perhaps that she had bowed to advice and made her first public appearance at Ponyville’s Nightmare Night, going against much of her better judgement.
The princess rose to her hooves, reaching out a forelimb to her twin as if she were testing its reality. Despite what others tended to read in her form, Luna was by no means as young as she looked. In her earlier years, before everything changed, there had been a few who she had let in to varying degrees, so she was aware that her interest in the other mare was probably just passing fancy, very much stoked by a millennia without. Still though, an allure was there. That evening as her carriage descended from the heavens it had been only Twilight who had not cowered away in fright. Even as she had failed miserably to garner anything other than further terror for her efforts, the unicorn had remained at her side, only seeming to want to help, although such kindness was probably just born of pity.
Luna’s head bowed, her forehoof falling back to the floor, fresh tears pricking at the corner of her vision. She wanted to be more; she wanted to elicit more, but the monument before her towered as a testament to what had happened the last time she indulged similar desires. It was like she was trapped on the wrong side of the glass, able to see and sense yet never grasp what lay so close on the other side. The feeling hurt like a wound. ‘Will I never be rid of you?’
‘Princess Luna?’
The sharp crunch of hooves on gravel from somewhere behind drew away the alicorn’s attention, turning her on the spot. Two violet eyes met Luna across the clearing, shining only timidly with a concerned light. Simultaneously their viewer was both touched and pained, drinking in the support they willingly gave, yet hating that she marred their viewer with anything but happiness.