Luna's First Winter Back Home

by September

First Winter Back

The snow swirls before me, the wind lifting it up again and again, and it only reaches the ground when the wind pushes it there. Clouds almost completely cover the sky, and they catch the moonlight and and spread it all over the sky.

My shoulders slump. My eyes close, and I allow myself to lose the royal poise I try to maintain.
I never remembered signing papers as being so hard. Off course, I had never really done it in the past. Sure I had sat in court, but I never paid attention. I left that to my older sister. Meanwhile my thoughts would wander, and I would make adjustments to the stained glass windows when no one was looking, although, my changes always seemed to change back.

But I had never really had work before. I was used to not having to do anything.

Tonight is the winter solstice; nobody really cares much, and I don’t either. Supposedly it is my season now. Celestia has summer, and I have winter. It’s not really official, but you can judge the season by the amount of time the sun and moon get. The nights have been getting ever longer, and now they will wane.

Thoughts swirl in my mind, but I’m too tired to think clearly. My brain is muddled with political affairs and memories of the moon. I need clarity. I stretch out my wings and feel the cold wind. Flying helps clear my mind.

I leave the ground, and the cold air shoots through my coat chilling me to the bone. The wind is strong, but my wings are stronger. I’m freezing in a couple of seconds, but I’m too tired to care. I’m high enough to close my eyes and fly blind, something I often do, but not tonight. Something holds me back. Something tells me I am not free enough.

I catch a snowflake on my hoof and examine it as much as I can before it melts. So much beauty in every one, and tonight there are millions. I catch another. I fly up beyond the clouds, and I see the stars in full. The clouds block all the light from the city, so the constellations are covered by the vast amount of stars.

These are the kind of nights I live for; nights with beauty everywhere.

Because the world may be cruel, but it’s also beautiful.

And nobody understands because they too are cruel, nobody cares enough to look at the night with me.

But it doesn't matter because there is still beauty all around. In all the snow. In all the sky. In all the stars.

If only my sister could see this beauty. If only she could know…

I fold my wings and plummet.

She only knows how to be harsh. Her first step is always extreme. Her sun is blinding. Her season burning.

But I guess she's not the only one who can be harsh.

She can say she loves me, but she doesn’t understand me.

I spread my wings inches before I hit the snow.

The storm seems colder. The wind starts to blow faster.

And I’m not sure if I’m giving up, or if the storm is just too strong. I plummet again, and I don’t pull up this time.

I awaken, so frozen that my immortality was probably the only thing that kept me alive.

I scream into the howling wind, and it carries my voice away.

Nothing has changed in a thousand years. In am still not understood. I am still jealous, still bitter.

The snow is now like needles of ice, slipping between my coat and feathers, sending ice straight to my bones, which are already cold.

I might as well stay here and banish myself. Here I can keep myself from rebelling.

I stand up, but I collapse again. Nothing can combat this cold in my heart.

I close my eyes, and I can feel the weight of snow on my body, building and building. Burying me in a million individual pieces of beauty.

But I don’t quite give up hope yet.

The sun breaks through the clouds and I can feel its warmth on my back. Warmth does not belong in winter.

Winter is made to harden the ground and toughen the trees. To make rivers that won’t yet be released. To water flowers that have not yet been planted.

You could say that spring is the season of hope, but really it is winter. When the world has turned dark, things are happening, you simply cannot see them. Hope is that the seeds will be planted, not seeing that they have. Hope is what you cannot see until the blossom pushes through the snow.

I feel warmth. Because I haven’t yet given up hope. Not yet.

The sky is still grey. The sun is now nothing but a slightly brighter area of the sky.

I begin to walk.

The wind is like an icy breath that forces itself down my throat filling me with cold.

And then it is.

I look up and standing before me is a windigo. Its eyes are glowing, and they make the clouds look even darker. It fades into the storm.

I see another one. They slowly start to circle me. Another one shows up. And another.

Soon it’s like a wall of cold air.

And it occurs to me that this is my bitterness swirling around me. I don’t know how to fight it. I don’t know how to win.

But I don’t give up yet. I will stand strong in the storm of my own bitter thoughts.

The wind only gets stronger. Minutes, maybe hours pass. Snow drifts against my legs.

But I don’t know how to escape.

Time blurs together.

The answer must be somewhere.

But I already know where it is. Don’t I?

I keep standing, but I close my eyes and dream.

My dream first takes me to a time long ago, when windigoes had trapped six ponies in a cave. They had been frozen, but at the last second, they had come together. And then the “fire of friendship” had ignited inside of them, and it destroyed the windigoes.

But how can I “come together” when I am alone

My dream shifts. The sun was just beginning to rise The sky become a million different colors stacked in layers of clouds. Celestia flying up with the sun held in her magic. As it goes higher in the sky, it finds a resting point and stops. Celestia comes towards me.

“Sister, why do we raise the sun and moon?” I ask in a voice that is too high pitched to be my own. At least not any more

Her voice is slightly annoyed, but it becomes more gentle as she continues. “Because, if we don’t, who else would?” she stops, but seeing I’m looking for more of an answer she continues. “Ponies need sleep. But they also need light to work by. This rising and lowering gives them both.” She looks at me again, and sees that I’m still not satisfied, but she doesn’t know what more to say. My dream shifts again.

There is a pony I don’t know standing in our court. Or maybe I do know him. He holds brushes, and their dripping with paint, but he isn’t painting anything.

Then I remember him, he was the painter who did our royal portraits shortly before I betrayed my sister.

Betrayed… how can I be mad at my sister after all I’ve done? After I left her, attacked her.

But can knowing that someone is undeserving of your hate stop you from feeling the fial emotion?

Celestia is nowhere around, and the court is completely empty. All the decorations and windows are removed, letting the wind howl through the openings.

I step forward to address him, but he speaks first. His voice is like an artist of words instead of an artist of paint.

“You understand beauty don’t you?” I don’t remember speaking to him. In fact I specifically remember not talking to him. “Don’t you Luna.” He swings the three brushes hanging from his mouth, and as drops of paint come off, they change color.

And then I am standing on an eternity of canvas. Alone.

But the color crashes around in a wave, spreading over the canvas.

“You could call something beautiful,” his voice says, “But it is nothing by itself.”

The sky darkens. It covers the canvas in black, and soon there is nothing left but darkness. There is nothing left but shadow.

This isn’t what I wanted though; I wanted the moon and the stars in the sky.

The world is split in half, one side being white and the other dark. The contrast between the two is so intense it hurts my eyes.

But the line softens, and blurs, bringing a thousand different shades of grey. And then there is color, spreading down the line and blending into the greys and bringing a million new shades.

It all starts to condense and soon everything is collected in tiny dot.

“The beauty isn’t all in a single image; it is in the way it will change. A flower will open, an apple will be eaten. And there are infinite ways to know those things as they are changing. Blue turns to red and there are infinite colors in between them.

“The leaves on a tree will start to turn and then they will slowly crumble. Ice will coat everything but spring will come and flowers will push through the ice and those dead leaves will help them grow. And then the summer will come. Winter and summer are both beautiful, but most beautiful things happen during the change, the most beautiful things happen when two things are brought close enough to mix.”

The voice stops, and says nothing more. I stand there a while my dream takes me from one place to the next.

“Like winter and summer,” I say out loud.

“Like moon and sun.”

And that’s it. I can start to feel the cold wind wrapping around my body. But I still don’t know if this is enough. Can beauty beat my bitterness?

They are swirling around me again. A thousand hooves running across the wind.

But I begin to think of very beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The sunrise, the sunset.

Spring and fall.

Grey and rain and stars.

The moon and the sun. Hope.

The rolling sea and the towering mountains.

Twilight and her friends who brought me back.

Lastly I think of the eternal black. Nothing but me and a dark sky. But I can't be alone in that dark world anymore.

I open my eyes, and the wind still blows. But my heart isn’t frozen and black anymore. The windigos are gone.

I spread my wings and start to fly back to my sister. Back home.

It was what I valued most all along. Beauty. But I guess I was fighting for what I didn’t know. I cannot be beautiful alone. Because there would be nothing to be beautiful with; only a single pony in a world of black.

I try and figure out how I figured it out. Did I know all of this once before and I had just forgotten? Maybe. But I think I can feel those words that were said in my dream, said by someone else. Someone I have long since forgotten.

Or maybe it was just my coming back from the moon. After all there is beauty in generosity and kindness and honesty and loyalty and laughter and friendship, and none of them can be done alone.

Maybe it was because I tried to isolate myself, cut myself off from the world because they couldn’t understand me that my vision became warped, that I thought there was only one type of beauty. But understanding isn’t what I need. What I really need is beauty.

And now I see it everywhere, especially in Twilight and her friends.

I get back to the castle, and go to the court. I don’t see Celestia anywhere, and I ask around. Apparently she went to the gryphon kingdoms for trade negotiations. I start to sign papers and argue with my advisers, hoping she’ll be home soon.

When she does get back she comes and sits down, like nothing has happened, and I suppose from her perspective nothing has.

We continue to sign papers and argue with our advisers.

Soon my shoulders ache and my mind is dulled, but I sit up straight. I must fight for her.

Because even though she doesn't understand beauty, I have none without her. She is what I must fight for in the dark days of sitting and listening to countless ponies as they propose to us their ideas.

I wonder if she fights for me.

Comments

[LiveLife]

This is amazing!!!!! I absolutely love this!!!!

Have a Spike

[September]

5099162 Thanks!
*takes spike*

[LiveLife]

5100179
Treasure him forever! Or else!

[the dobermans]

Added to Sad Luna

[September]

5107599 oh thanks
although I'm still debating weather its sad or not

[princessmercury]

Enjoy it a lot! Well written.

[September]

5109808 thanks!

[Kritten]

It really wasn't required to make an entire blog for it, but here you go your critique.

[HorseApparatus]

Thanks a bunch for featuring my art! My friend and I read it, we loved it. The symbolism was excellent, and the ideas all flowed into each other smoothly. You really captured the feeling of conflict well, without falling into the whole angsty Luna schtick. If I had to give one critique though, I would probably say that almost every sentence feels like a closing sentence. The poetic effect of it kind of wears off as the story goes on. And when you've got concepts as genuinely thought-provoking and fascinating as the ones on display here, the last thing you'd want to happen is for it to seem like you're trying to be deep. This was an awesome read on the whole though, I'm glad I had at least some rudimentary part in helping it come to be;)

[September]

5132694 oh thanks
also thanks a bunch for the critique. That's something I really need to work on.

[RandomBlank]

...and Celestia blind as a bat just like a millennium before.

[September]

5152642 lel Celestia's as blind as a potato
even though she has eyes, she cant see anything

[RandomBlank]

5152646
Don't drink and comment K?

[Southpaw]

5152646 Isn't this simply Luna's perspective, though? She's going through a lot of turmoil, but even she realized that she hadn't thought everything through. It would be nice to see you write this from Celestia's perspective as well - no doubt there is a lot to learn from her voice.

Anyway, nice work. I enjoyed reading this.

Totally inconsequential: I don't know how you resisted the temptation to compare stars above in the cloud of the galaxy with the snowflakes below.

[September]

5162570 thanks! I'm thinking of maybe writing something from Celestia's perspective, but idk.

also, I did compare stars and snowflakes in the first draft, but I cut it because it didn't fit. I meant to weave it back in somehow, but then I forgot. I'm going to work on it a little in the next week-ish, so thanks a bunch for the reminder.

[September]

5189386 Yah, I'm horrible with titles and descriptions as well.

[spideremblembrony]

Okay, so I just read the First Winter Back. A very weak title for such an interesting story. This could have probably been called “The Secret of Beauty” or “What is Beauty?” or something to that affect because that was the whole thing was the discovery of what is beautiful. What makes Equestria beautiful. That was the whole point of this story and a title needs to fit what is the main focus of the story. I admit I’m not great with titles, either, but First Winter Back just didn’t seem strong enough for what the story was about.

First thing I want to say, it was interesting, because I’ve read stories like this before. This isn’t really anything I haven’t seen. So, for me, it was kind of predictable. I’m not saying it was bad in that sense, I’m saying that it wasn’t really that engaging because I’ve seen so many of these that, there wasn’t an outcome I didn’t expect. So, to me, that kind of hurt it a little bit because it didn’t intrigue me to know what was going to happen, it didn’t really play with my expectations that much.

And sometimes, that’s okay. So, this is more of a personal thing, but I felt that it could have been more engaging and giving the audience a reason to see where it goes.

Another thing I wanted to point out was the descriptions, I thought what you brought in to the descriptions, was very good for the most part. I thought that there was enough that I could see everything, but there wasn’t too much of it. There were a couple of scenes that I felt could have used a little more.

Like the scene with the painter, I love that idea. I love the idea of Luna learning from this artist about the beauty of every color. Every color has a purpose. Every line, every stroke of the brush has a meaning and it’s only together can they make something. I loved that scene, I wanted more of that scene.

The windigos thing. I didn’t really like it. I felt that it didn’t really need to be there to feed on Luna’s dilemma. I felt there were other ways that this could have happened. I was thinking the set up for the paperwork and the meetings that she is forced to go to, that was great. I really liked that. I felt that it gave her a really good reason to be upset and she was faced with a challenge that she lacked in.

And her sister would overpass her because she’d been doing this for a thousand years. I wanted more of that. That would have been interesting to see Luna and Celestia talking about it and Luna getting frustrated and Celestia trying to calm her down. And, granted we get hints of that, but I would have loved to see more of this scene.

The windigos I felt were just a waste of our time. I didn’t think they added anything that wasn’t already there. I don’t think that it gave us something that couldn’t have found another way. By the end, I forgot that the windigos was even there, that is how much of an impact I think it had on the story. I just think it wasn’t necessary.

There were a couple of things I spotted that jumped out at me that broke my reading a little bit.

But can knowing that someone is undeserving of your hate stop you from feeling the fial emotion?

It is supposed to be foul there? I looked up the word “fial” on the dictionary and I didn’t get much. So, if that is a word and this is an error, please let me know.

The sun was just beginning to rise The sky become a million different colors stacked in layers of clouds.

Missing period and “The sky become”? I think it’s supposed to be “The sky became”

For the most part, I felt that things that I though could have had potential wasn’t focused on enough and the windigos were pretty pointless. But overall, the story was decent. It had some good description. It was easy to understand. I think that if it had been dragged out a bit, I think that it would have made more of an impact as a story. Personally.

It was easy to see why Luna was frustrated, though I would have liked to have seen more of it. The painter scene was great, but again, too short for my taste.

A decent fic. I think that there are really good ideas in this story and I think that it really shows your talent as a writer. I just think that there needs to be more of a focus and expanding on things that I felt could have made a stronger story.

I know this was written for a contest and I won’t claim to know what those rules are, but I felt there was so many ways this could have gone and most of the samples were good, but it craved me wanting more of the stuff I liked.

[spideremblembrony]

5196049 Sorry. I was just being thorough.

[Star Brush]

5196044 Rude! I really liked this story! I thought that it was a good change from most of the comedy on this site. It was well written without any grammar mistakes and I thought it was good.

[Star Brush]

5852074 Still, this was more intended to be more poetic. At least in my mind.

[Star Brush]

5852678 Meh. Opinions and opinions.

[Draco Dei]

She only knows how to be harsh. Her first step is always extreme. Her sun is blinding. Her season burning.
-This doesn't seem to match the reunion scene in episode 2, but I guess there is a plausible explanation in the alter part of the story. Also, I think she set up the events of the first two episodes, which qualifies as "fighting for me" although the present tense might be Luna's issue.

[September]

5854479
5852678
I kinda have to agree with Breeze ark. nothing actually really happens in this story its pretty much just me rambling bout luna and making her all artistic. And like people can enjoy that, but they don't have to.
And I sorta made breeze ark read this so hes definitely entitled to dislike it
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
bringing up dead conversations like a champ

[Star Brush]

6124736 Yes, you certainly can bring up dead conversations...

[-Brutus]

This was definitely beautiful but yet short read. Good job!