Space, Intentionally Left Blank

by GroaningGreyAgony

[Original Contest Entry]

[This is the story as originally submitted for judging.]

From the deep night sky, stories shone down upon the spires of the city, stories coded in myths and memes, each wrapped in one apt symbol, then pinned to the heavens with nails of light, constellations embodied with spiky skeletons of meaning. Some tales were uplifting, some edifying. A few were dire warnings. Many, far too many, constituted epitaphs, vine-swallowed tombstones, rough cairns full of splintered bones but overgrown with wildflowers…

The lights in the sky were scars. That was her secret.

She stood poised on the highest spire of Castle Canterlot, night colored and night-shaded, as the heavens wheeled around her in a cacophony of twinkling lights, nebuli drifting with millennial slowness across the sky like puffs of smoke frozen in time.

She was surrounded by skreeking, flappery bats. They swarmed around her, settled upon her, became the nightmare persona along with her. Now, she was the goddamn bats. Gone was the veneer of pleasantries and compromises, tea ceremonies and fiscal adjustments… She had wrapped the shadows of night about her as a mantle, and thrilling energy ran through her naked skin.

She poised for the leap under the starwheels above; the time was almost upon her. Almost as a whim, with a casual toss of her head and flash of her horn, she summoned the moon over the horizon and into the night sky, for what would possibly be the very last time…

Then she spread her wings and leaped forward into the night. She plunged down the towerside with wind-whistling speed building upon her, then caught the air fully and swooped out over the grand concourse, passing over street vendors, bored guards, couples dining upon balconies. Stinks of hearthfires and incense smoke and fried foods and unclean gutters whipped by her as she built speed, scooping air with her great wings, faster and faster, until she cleared the parapets at the edge of the city and sailed out over the land, catching the dying thermals from the cooling landscape as she built up a swirling coil of magic about her horn that formed a vortex that whirled about her like a turbine, propelling her towards the remote mountains and the faint glow beyond…

And still it was not fast enough. She cast her eyes to the skies… There they were now! The constellations Monoceros, Pegasus, and Equuleus gathered, reaching down from the heavens with friendly tendrils of power.

The stars would aid in her escapades!

The tendrils entered her horizontal whirlwind, entwined with it, and their combined magic shimmered like iridescence as the swirls grew tighter… then the critical point was reached, and the way was opened before her, and she cried out in joy as she shot forward like a shooting star, a comet tail streaking behind her.

Night-gloomed forests shot by below her, rivers wriggled in silvery gleams and turned swiftly away from her path, torchlit towns loomed over hills and faded behind her. She sped towards the horizon, which kept pace ahead of her, frisky and teasing.

But soon, there was a glimmer of brightness over the remote mountains, then a grey band in the sky, then a reddening as the lower notes of light fought through the air to her eyes… and then, a sunset in reverse, as she caught up with the shining orb her sister had pushed on its way over an hour ago.

Still not fast enough! She spotted some conveniently dense clouds, redlined by the sun, and her eyes flared white as she chanted out a spell, and the clouds swelled and burst, scattering their water into a sparse haze and spilling a pair of sex-and-sleep-dazed pegasi into the sky. The solar rays shone through the mist, angles of reflection meshed neatly, fanning the light into radiant spectra, and shimmering rainbow light surrounded her in glory. She shrieked with laughter and rolled about like a kitten in the sky, bathing in colors, blinding away her demons, a Lady of Light.

The displaced pegasi, flapping frantically to stay in place in the airy turmoil, watched in confusion and awe as her speed spell assimilated this new power that grew around her, glowing and growing, until it shot forward like a coherent beam and carried her off at the fastest rate yet, leaving a tiny lightboom in her wake and a faint afterimage of her winking at them.

Undaunted, undesolate, unnightly, and nigh un-nyaned, she rode the rainbow trail, leaving shimmering clouds behind her and casting flys about her, dreamhooks to the dawn-drowsy citizens, causing chaos, eliciting illusions, touching dreams in the little towns she passed. And above, the fainter stars faded, washed away by blue brilliance, and each constellation that was lost to view was like shedding an old memory… As the light surrounded and warmed her, she felt lighter inside. It was okay to let it go, okay to be free, okay to live only for what might be.

Okay to not be blue.

She flashed across the sky, taking the course of a day in but a few hours, and soon had left the sun far behind her, about to set again in her wake. She’d made very good time!

She allowed herself to relax a bit as she slowed down; the loss of starpower no longer inconvenienced her. She looped about in chromatic coils, filling the sky with defiant obscenities in cursive discourse, of course. She’d no remorse, except, of course, the famous mistread, the last step of her worst downfall, but even that was being shed, as if she had bled her sins into the red light of the star in her wake… Healing by Helious weal, as she wove weftly across the sky…

And there, below her, a wandering poet pondered the dawn upon a grassy hilltop, waiting for inspiration…

And she suddenly wanted his spirit in her. He looked delicious.

She swooped down and grabbed him around his barrel, hoisted him into the sky as he squawked and scrabbled vainly at the air, wrapping him in charms and enchantments and her soothing presence, whispering into his ear to calm and encourage him, as she carried him off to a small and intimate little cloud. And there she took him on, and he took her on, and they took each other, over and over in shuddering exultant joy, until the cloud was dense with the water of their bodies and the magical glow of their lust.

And afterward, she carried him down and dropped him where she’d found him, and he fell and lay exhausted, nose pressed deep into leaves of grass and daffodils. She would never think about him again, and he’d dream of her for the rest of his life.

She flew on with a pleasant lightness in her loins and the soreness left by his teeth at the nape of her neck, the continual dawn left behind her as she charged ahead in a twilight space with twinkles of faint points in the silvery sky–

But not for long, for she had arrived at the other side of the globe, the flipside of the coin, the reverse of the medal, the B side that complemented and redeemed the A side. You wouldn’t know it save by celestial signs, for it all looked much the same as where she’d left. Farmers worked in fields below, citizens built their cities, rivers flowed and forests grew and graveyards filled, it was a pattern that echoed through time like the voices in a fugue. You just had to live long enough to observe it in action, to have a chance of perceiving the growth of an ancient oak or the burgeoning of a stellar cloud of gas, vaster than suns…

The towns and country, the slender palace at the center, might all be called something else here, but it all worked the same. Just as with the sun and moon; it was all the same light when you came down to it.

She settled gently on the tallest parapet, her coat now a shining white. Before her stood a mare as tall as she, cloaked in scarlet and orange, the colors of a setting sun. They stood a while, taking each other’s measure; all they’d ever needed to say to each other had been said vast ages ago.

At length, the other nodded, smiling sadly, and flipped her cloak over to reveal a darker lining. She launched herself off the tower, cladding herself in shadows to escape detection, but shedding sunbeams as she herself undertook her long journey beyond the horizon, to seek out and reintroduce herself to the moon.

The newcomer sat and watched her leave. She had not much in common with her antipodal sibling nowadays, at least not at the surface, but some of their scars were the same.

But let it go, let it go! She drew a great inspiring breath of the clean, clear air under the gray sky, then turned, flaring her horn to greet again the oncoming sun and lift it happily into the sky, a daymare who’d dressed as a nightdream.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

I am not on nearly enough substances to fully appreciate this. Not saying you wrote it while on any, but I get the feeling that there are witticisms and references that went by too fast or too subtle for me to appreciate. Still, thanks for the head trip, and best of luck in the contest.

[Briarpelt]

That was beautiful.

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7352958
Perhaps you could give it another go tomorrow…?
For the record, I do not indulge in mind-altering drugs; I am weird enough as it stands. Thank you for your kind words!

7352985
Thank you!

[Sunny]

So, as best I can tell, its an AU in which Celestia & Luna are more of the traditional Sun-Moon, chasing one another across the sky endlessly?

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7354404
Well… this was written for a contest with the constraint that I use only the Random tag, and it can’t have an AU tag on it as well or Estee will give me a sort of “I should have learned by now not to expect better of people, but against all considered judgement I expected better of you, and look what you’ve just done” look. Thus, I… encourage… interpretations in which this is not an AU fic.

Further than that, I’d like to hold off on talking about what I intended until I’ve heard more of what everyone has to say. The fic has a meaning to me, and I’m curious to see if anyone else picks up on it without any hints.

[book_burner]

Well that was poetic.

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7355300
Well, poets gotta pote.
Or pout.
Or prate.
Or poot.
Or something like that.

[Sunny]

7354514

Well, the other interpretation I see is that Luna is Princess of the Day on one half the planet, and Celestia the other, and at any given point one's racing across the world to allow the other one to take her Day-Place.

Which is still thoroughly confusing in its own right since we see them together all the time in-show.

[iisaw]

Lovely! I love the verbiage and the mythology'worldbuilding.

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7355832
I don’t intend to say much more about what I meant until after the contest has been judged (scheduled for July 10th). Feel free to speculate, meanwhile.

7357697
Thank you!

[horizon]

7355832
Either that, or that there's a single Celestia but two Lunas (or one Luna and one Nightmare Moon?), and the double Luna plays Celestia on the far side of the world, and it's only Luna that's always swapping in and out.

[PresentPerfect]

Wow, what in the actual crap did I read. XD

[Latrans]

From what I read, I am guessing that every once in a long while Luna and Celestia trade off. The global trip was to clear not just the sky which would no longer be hers, but also herself in preparation of being the bringer of light.

Also, congratulations on the contest!

[Illya Leonov]

And suddenly I have no choice but to render this as sound. The poetry in paragraph 17 alone will draw me to it, woven as it is. A beautiful piece GGA. I shall attempt to do it justice. -I

[Titanium Dragon]

I reviewed this story in Read It Now Reviews #90.

My review can be found here.

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7354404
7367178
7435940
I never intended this story to be a puzzle, and if my meaning was unclear it’s my responsibility for not expressing myself well or being too ambiguous. That said, Latrans came the closest to what I (consciously) intended. Thanks to everyone who was interested enough to comment!

For the background… I am imagining that there is another civilization on the opposite side of the world, comparable to canon Equestria. Each has an alicorn in charge of day and of night, and they keep the sun and moon swinging between the two sides. Every few millennia, a pair of them switches roles, the night of one side trading with the day of the other. This keeps things from getting too boring, and may permit a fresh start, particularly if things have gotten wearisome or life has become overburdened with bad memories.

As to the events of the story… Luna takes this opportunity to practice having some fun, and leaves a good deal of accumulated baggage behind her. She is giving herself permission to forget her old life and take on a fresh and sunnier outlook. This could also be read as leaving one’s bad habits of depression behind and forgiving oneself for past misdeeds and failures so that one can get on with living.

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7434344
It is what it is. Thanks for the positive review!

7439081
Thank you for the review.

7438212
I suppose this counts as a review, in a way. Thank you very much for the compliment!

[Illya Leonov]

7477298
Wow, this leads to all sorts of interesting ideas. Such as whether Celestia and Luna have told the real truth about Nightmare Moon to anypony. If Luna was never banished to the moon well, who would know? 20 years ago Celestia gets together with Luna and they invent Nightmare Moon and nurture along a gullible student to "defeat" her.

[PaulAsaran]

You can has review!

[Zaid ValRoa]

[GroaningGreyAgony]

10184746
Thank you kindly! I'm glad that people still like this story.

10189418

[Latrans]

I just read over this again and found so very many references and jokes that I had completely missed the first go-round. Was definitely worth the re-read.