No. Not there. She's not on the moon.

by waste

Celestia

A large chamber. Sixty meters high, thirty meters wide, stretches out somewhere to the entrance. They stand about fifteen feet from each other. Both mares. Staggered stripes of moonlight through the windows. The room is lit in cold light, the mares transformed unto death in four legs. Death in the fractures in the wall, death bleeding from the pile of guards, death in their stares.
Blooms of blood amongst the rubble.
God blood sweating from scars.

“Luna you’re bleeding”

Nightmare moon takes three steps left. Dull sounds of glass stepped on.

“I’m nightmare moon.”
“Really? Luna how old are you? Make the decision to grow up.”
“You’ve made your decision. To ignore those ponies I hear at night.”
“You think I don’t know? I suffered as well Luna. You think I haven’t?”
“You can’t hear the night-time prayers of the starved or hollowed deathbeds surrounded by the fevered prayers. You can’t hear a mother beg you to kill another in place of her sick daughter. All night I hear ugly prayers and desires while you have your false sermons. Do you understand this? There’s not a light in our hearts but a hole. A pit”

Celestia stares at a stranger not a sister.

“Luna. Just end this. Please.”
“When this night stays for years then a realisation will come. That in the dark we are all alone inside of it, that all things said and thought in the dark are real. That fear of dark is a fear of what’s real, a fear of what we truly want.”

The frayed shadows of rubble, formed into dark teeth. It grows around the nightmare, jaws of darkness and unmade despair. The dark we hate and love.

“You spend another eternity in there. You realise that darkness can’t be dissolved by the light, only fended away until light dies. That starlight is the last swan song of a forgotten corpse of hot gas. My night isn’t beautiful but a gallery of the dead. We all stare at dead things, things that never wanted the names we gave them, which could never be what we want it to be. To fall further is to realise a final thing. That to make an endless night is the only choice I can make. It’s the only choice any of us can make. Everything falls closer and closer to the dark. The sick, the old, the young, the evil, the good, mountains, seas, suns. That if your sun collapsed it will only be another swan song swallowed. What else can I do? What else does anyone do?”

How many nights did it take her? Alone letting the abyss devour chunks of her. How many nights in the company of yawning blackness. Blackness that takes more than light.

“We’re sisters. We’re blood. Luna we’re the same blood. For the love of all things Luna we’re the same blood. I’m your family. We need to stop this.”
“Convenient. You need me after leaving me alone in the dark.”
“What do I need to do? Luna what needs to be done? I’m begging tell me. Tell me.”
“You have two choices. You kill me because you love me, send me to the darkness I want, lay to rest the little sister you loved but can’t get back. Or you kill nightmare moon. The villain that has taken the sunlight, bring justice.”
“They’re the same thing.”
“Good. Now you’re beginning to understand.”

Crippled thoughts unsaid. Anger rises faster than want needs to be heard. Celestia takes a step forward. Ethereal light touching the edge of curves. Elements of harmony arrayed like a crown of weapons.

“Do you want me to use them Luna?”
“I don’t want anything. This fight, this conversation, this endless night. It’s a result. The elements of harmony will make no difference.”
“Don’t you remember what it did to discord?”
“Don’t you remember discord?”
“No Luna. No. Not again. It’s just us here.”
Nightmare moon reaches out. She cleaves her own throne in two, the gravelled stench of night magic.
“It’s just you now. Is this what you wanted?”

Scars and bruises traded between the two. The floors and walls bitten and worn. Chunks of marble and stone.

“If you don’t stop this night, ponies will starve.”
“If you don’t stop me ponies will starve.”
“Luna just stop this.”
“You do it now. Or I take you. Then I start what must happen.”
“I’m going to send you to the moon okay? Just a small while. You need to think.”
“You need to stop trying to please everyone.”
“Luna this night hasn’t ended. I’m going to send you there. I’m telling you.”
“I’m telling you, you’re a coward.”
“Just for a month.”
“Coward”

The elements gather. A colour faded then intense. A flash of fire.

Half dead sunlight painfully rising behind the decayed horizon.