My Dear Nightmare Moon

by Scarith

Where to now?

"As much as I do not wish to, I must admit, I have no idea where in Equestria we are." Nightmare Moon huffed in annoyance as she looked around the endless sea of grass stretching out for miles and miles in every direction. She had laid there with Spitfire for a few hours after their last conversation, the hot-colored mare having fallen silent and slipped into a half-rest. While still aware of Nightmare Moon, and any noise the alicorn made, her body still demanded she not do to much. Only now that Nightmare Moon spoke up, did Spitfire's ears perk up and she let out a tentative response.

"Well um, were not really in Equestria." The words slipped out of her mouth with care. The annoyed tone of the alicorn had her worried, and she really did not want to make her more annoyed.

Nightmare Moon shifted her head down to the mare with a raised brow and flared nostrils as she took in a surprised breath. That breath however, brought with it kick of salty sweat smell coming off the smaller mare. It was unmistakably the scent of fear, likely from her initial fright upon first waking and meeting Nightmare Moon and having stayed clung to her as they'd laid here this whole time. While Spitfire was not trembling this time around form head to tail, the tentativeness in her voice gave Nightmare Moon pause and reason to modify her tone a bit into a more controlled, questioning tone, "Where then, are we Lady Spitfire?"

"Ah, well, nearer to the Minotaur Lands." She answered with a bit of stumbling over her words at the start. The change of tone along with being addressed so formally caught her off guard. Spitfire had been addressed formally several times in her life, the prestige of being a Wonderbolt Captain received its due even from the Princesses after all. However, she was a rather casual mare, some even called her abrasive at times, though that came with being an instructor for new recruits as well. True, high class formalities were not something that was in her day to day life, and having it come from somepony from haunting tales of the dark just made it even more awkward for her.

"The Minotaur Lands?" Nightmare Moon asked with a raised brow and a new touch of surprise in her voice, "Unless the geography of Equus has changed severely during the past thousand years, which as I speak of it, it most certainly could have, the Minotaur Lands are just over two thousand miles from the furthest borders of Equestria."

"T-their not as far as that now. Still, over a thousand though." Spitfire's voice gained a light stutter now as she was 'questioned' by the alicorn. It wasn't an angry question, she knew that, but the draconic eyes of Nightmare Moon still made her feel an instinctual nervousness with the sharpness and raw force they held even at ease like this. What kept it to only a light stutter however, was the fact that even as strong as those eyes were, they still held a raw beauty to them just like the rest of Nightmare Moon. That just was how alicorns worked in a way, they were the epitome of might for all ponykind, but they all held some kind of beauty or grace to them that was probably quite literally magical.

"Even still, this is a long, long way away from Equestria. Why did you venture so far forth from home to attempt such a feat as what you had? Even the legends I know of the 'Sonic Rainboom' did not describe it with such power that it would cause danger to others for hundreds of miles around." Her tone was very inquisitive now, and she'd turned her entire head to regard the mare now.

"Ah, well, y-y-you s-see..." Faced with the full attention of the alicorn, Spitifre's stuttering flared up and a harsh wave of embarrassment and nervousness both washed over her, driving a fierce blush into her cheeks.

"Lady Spitfire, your cheeks are blazing as harshly as your name implies your breath does. What have I stumbled into with saving you, hm?" And now the more playful nature of the alicorn came forth, a sly grin completing the picture of a teasing mare. She wasn't all might and power of royalty and darkness after all!

"So nopony could see me if I bucking failed again, which I did!" Spitfire spat out in a hiss of anger, not actually aimed at the alicorn, but rather herself. The mare curled up her body as tightly as she could without tugging at her injured left side.

Nightmare Moon's head reeled back after what was clearly a display of pent up emotions. The dark mare bit her body lip, not having meant to drudge up hidden pain. All she'd wanted to do was get a little fun embarrassing the pegasus and find out a bit more about her 'charge'. Well, she was at least succeeding in the later option, just in a rather closely-held-personal-issues manner rather than anything more mundane like sh'd wanted. With a frustrated sigh at the situation, Nightmare Moon gingerly brushed her left wing back and forth against the smaller mare in an attempt at 'comforting' her. It was awkward and foreign to her, and made her spine tingle from her neck down to her flanks. She said nothing more for a time as she kept up the feather-light brushing of her wing, anything that came to mind was either more teasing, or would come out as blunt and insensitive and make the situation worse. So, she just held her tongue for the time being.

The resulting silence was absolutely fine by Spitfire. She'd yet to speak about her problems to anypony yet and she certainly didn't feel like opening up her heart to Nightmare Moon of all ponies, regardless of the fact that she'd saved her life. However, that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate the attempt at 'comforting' that the alicorn was giving her. As awkward as it was, the stroking of a wing along her neck was a common form of comfort between pegasi, and with that familiarity it did its job of helping her to calm down bit by bit. After several lengthy minutes of silence, the fiery maned pegasus lifted her head from her wing, with the flush of her cheeks down to a light pink instead of the bloody crimson it had been. With a deep inhale of air that brought a rush of fresh oxygen to her lungs, she nodded lightly to Nightmare Moon to signal that she was a bit more stable now.

Upon seeing the nod from her fellow pony, Nightmare Moon retracted her wing with a huff. While the experience wasn't painful for her at all, the awkwardness of being so soft had left her with a bit of a bitter taste in her mouth. Brushing it aside, Nightmare Moon spoke to the pony as she began to rise, "From the sounds of it," She began, only to interrupt herself whit a groan of relief as her legs gave several loud cracks and pops as they stretch for the first time in hours. "Mmph, ah, better. Now, it seems both of us have our own personal reasons for not wishing to return to Equestria post haste." Her eyes cantered down to Spitfire for confirmation, which she received via a slight nervous nod.

The larger mare brought her right forehoof to her lips as they pursed into a frown, intense thought written all over her face. Would the Minotaur lands be any kind of safe haven? Their stubbornness matches even Celestia's and perhaps not in any way that would be welcoming to me. Her nostrils flared as a small hint of her rising frustration. In all truth, there is not a place on Equus that is likely to be all that welcoming to me. Not unless some far off corner of the world forgot about me, Equestria barely held onto my history. Perhaps there is somewhere?

As the alicorn drifted off into her own thoughts, Spitfire was left in uneasy silence. Despite the.. well at this point downright weird interaction she had with the alicorn she'd grown up hearing scary stories of, it had only served to dull her fear of the mare a touch. Her gaze drifted down to the ground, watching some of the grass in the far off distance sway to and fro in the gentle breeze that had fallen over the plains in their time sitting there. Sitting next to the Alicorn of Darkness, lost in a remote middle of nowhere, she felt now more than ever in the past few months she'd been fighting a growing depression, that she couldn't fall any further without being dead. She'd wrecked her own life bit by bit, losing sight of what it meant to be a part of the uniform that she wore. Pushing bad policies and outright going behind the back of one of her teammates when they were hurt, she should have been fired a while ago.

"But.. I wasn't." She mumbled, though black coated mare next to her didn't hear the words. "And i'm not dead..yet." Yeah yet, if she pulled something like the other night and fucked it up again she would be dead. Her snout scrunched up as a new mindset started to settle into the mare, a budding determination of sorts. Fragile to be sure, however it was a start. She cautiously turned her head up towards the alicorn besides her and considered what she was about to do very carefully before she opened her mouth again.

"L-Lady Nightmare Moon?" She tried, entirely unsure what title to use for an alicorn that was right now, most certainly not officially recognized as Equestrian royalty.

"Hm?" The direct address of her with a title and her full name was enough of a surprise coming from the formerly sunken mare that it drew her out of her thoughts to stare at Spitfire with a deer-in-headlights expression, her thoughts completely derailed now.

"T-thank you for saving my life." She said quickly, before her courage fled her. It was not to say she thought any better of herself, but she did think a bit better of the mare next to her after taking the time to think about everything. "There are a c-couple independent settlements supposedly around in these grasslands. Perhaps they might be of a more neutral standpoint for both of us?"

The words of Spitfire came completely out of he blue, at least for the much older mare, because she never expected to hear those words aimed at her anytime soon. All the fear and uncertainty that Spitfire had expressed upon waking up had pretty much confirmed in her mind that her reputation would remain first in pony's minds for a long time to come, even when she did something drastically different from her acts during her madness long ago. She simply stayed there, slack jawed for far to long for someone that held themselves with the dignity of royalty. The silence grew heavy as time went on and Spitfire was left to look at the ground wondering what the hell she'd been thinking saying anything at all. That is, until Nightmare Moon managed to close her jaw and work it a bit to remove the tension that had developed, and finally speak.

"You are welcome, young Spitfire. T-th-thank you, for these words." Her reptilian eyes shifted away, a faint blush having slipped into her otherwise pitch black cheeks.

Author's Note:

Comments

[Lord BLACKHUNTER]

This story is off to a good start but it's pretty much dead. I would love to read more but it doesn't look like it will happen.

[DesertD1am0nd]

I'd love to see this story continue, but it seems to be dead. That nothing more will happen. 😔