A Flood of Starlight

by Shaslan

Luna alone

Celestia’s breath sighed from her mouth in one long, mournful exhalation. The passage of the air ruffled the pale blue mane of the filly lying before her. The bed was piled high with midnight-blue cushions and silken sheets, and the little alicorn was tangled in several of them. Her limbs sprawled carelessly in the childish ease of sleep, but her expression was calm and restful.

Leaning low over her, Celestia studied the face before her as though she was seeing it for the first time. Her eyes flickered over every pore, catalogued every strand of downy-soft fur, every twitch of the eyeballs behind the thin blue lids. The two of them stayed that way for a long time, one unaware, one drinking in the sight of the other like a pony starved of companionship.

“A thousand years,” Celestia whispered, her voice as soft as a dream. “A thousand years alone. How I have missed you, Sister.”

She glanced up at the velvet curtains, hanging in rich folds down to the marble floor. It was well past the time that sunset should have been tingeing the sky red, but the full light of day still glared past the edges of the curtains.

Celestia’s nostrils flared slightly as she sighed once more, and reluctantly stood to leave. She was needed elsewhere, but her golden-shod hooves almost dragged across the floor as she left her sister’s side. The door opened silently, wreathed in the glow of her magic, and closed behind her.

The room was dark and still once more. Not a sound could be heard.

Glowing blue eyes snapped open.

Luna stretched, catlike, her limbs aching from holding the pretence of peaceful repose for so long. She stumbled to her hooves, kicking the satiny tangles of her sheets away from her. She took a few steps and turned to look over her shoulder at her room.

Centuries of loving care had been lavished upon the lunar tower. The floors were glossy black marble, the pillars obsidian, the ceilings inlaid with swirling silver designs and faithfully rendered constellations. Those of her books that had survived the destruction of the Castle of the Two Sisters had been lovingly cared for by generations of archivists, rebound time and again in deep blue covers. The bedding was all the finest Saddle Arabian silk that bits could buy, only spun last year, in the final throes of Celestia’s preparation for her return. The lunar tower had stood empty for over nine hundred years, but Celestia had cleaned it every week with her own magic.

The whole thing was a monument to how Celestia had mourned and longed for her beloved little sister. A thousand years of waiting, of hoping, of dreaming.

Luna shut her eyes and turned away. It was like a tomb. A shrine to her sister’s memories of her. She was smothered in her sister’s love, hemmed in on every side by it. Even now, it clung to her as strongly as Celestia herself did, although the white alicorn was absent.

And those times were scarce enough. In the month since Luna had…returned to herself, Celestia had left her side only for minutes at a time. Who knew how little time she had now before her sister returned once more?

Luna was…glad to be home. Of course she was. To be free of her prison, purified of those centuries of rage, of hate, decade after decade screaming her empty, futile anger into the void. To have her mind be clear at last. But to have returned into the warm, feathered embrace of her older sister, while desperately wanted at first, was fast beginning to feel almost like a different kind of prison.

Celestia hovered constantly. She was by Luna’s side as she ate and slept. She made anxious attempts at conversation and nervously showed Luna the things she had done while she waited for her. It seemed not a moment of Luna’s banishment had been spent idly. Celestia had been plotting her recovery from the very beginning. The construction of Canterlot, a new capital city for them to share. Forests planted on the mountainside with silver birch and oak, Luna’s favourite trees, to create an ancient woodland ready for her return. Experimentation with the Elements, to see if they would accept their old mistress. And after their failure, a programme of encouraged courtships, matching magically strong unicorn bloodlines together, even interspersing them with a selection of royal-born foals, spread carefully over the centuries. All to create a unicorn strong enough to have a chance at being able to wield the Element of Magic that rejected Celestia so firmly. That little project had many results, from what Luna could tell of Celestia’s slightly garbled explanation; one runaway to another dimension, a few rogue wizards, a defunct idiot of a great-great-great nephew, and a little pink unicorn talented enough to merit ascension at the tender age of fourteen, though not strong enough for Harmony’s tastes. But finally it had met its end in Twilight Sparkle and her five equally carefully curated and raised friends. Luna’s saviours, and the result of seven centuries of Celestia’s careful manipulations in the lives of her little ponies.

Luna was grateful. To the Elements, and to Twilight Sparkle, and of course to her sister. But she was also overwhelmed. She wanted to rest, to breathe. To spend an hour without Celestia’s anxious gaze, watching to see if she would corrupt herself once more. To try and remember who she was — who she had been, before the rage and the hollow space behind the stars had filled up her soul.

But Celestia’s every waking thought for a millennium had been directed to securing Luna safely back by her side. And she would not, could not relinquish her yet.

And Luna, cowed by the enormity of what her sister had done for her, could not bring herself to refuse.

She looked down at her reflection in the gleaming marble floor. In its inky depths, her deep blue coat almost looked black, and she shuddered. Only her eyes offered any reassurance; twin blue orbs with gleaming black pupils as round as the moon. No slitted pupils or vast irises. Just normal, simple pony eyes. She let out a shaky breath. She felt empty, numb. She looked into her own eyes, and tried to see into the mind behind them. Who was she? Not Nightmare Moon, no. Not any longer. But not quite yet Luna either.

Luna, Princess of the Night, had stood twice the height of a pony, her lofty horn as long as a sabre. Her mane had held the very stars themselves. Ponies had wept when they laid eyes upon her dark beauty.

The little pony that Luna beheld was barely a head taller than the very smallest of her sister’s subjects. Her mane hung limp and pale across her forehead. She looked years younger than the pink alicorn that called Celestia ‘Auntie’.

Pulling her gaze away at last from the sad little filly in the marble, Luna walked slowly across her room to the curtained window. Instinctively, her horn lit with a trembling blue glow to pull the drapes aside, but she flinched at the sight of the magic and it sputtered out. It had been too long since she used her power for anything other than to maim and kill.

She shouldered the curtains aside with her wings and padded outside.

The sky was blood red, fading to purple above the palace, and Luna let out a long exhale as she looked up at it. It had been so long since she had looked up from her beloved Equus, rather than screeching her endless fury down from the far-distant sky.

The sun slipped below the horizon, and the first star appeared. Luna’s breath caught in her throat. Little Anseres, the outermost wing feather of the Fausticorn constellation. It looked so different from down here. She remembered it as a harsh, glaring star, full of anger. But now, it was calm. Peace suffused its gentle light, and Luna’s eyes filled with tears. She remembered when she had created Anseres, when she had lit its little spark all those thousands of years ago. She remembered what it had been, before they had both changed and then changed again.

And as she remembered, Luna heard Anseres begin to sing. As the sun slid lower, other voices joined it. A tear, silver like the starlight, slid down Luna’s muzzle. Her stars were singing to her, for the first time in eons. Not the screaming war cry that had haunted her every moment as the Nightmare, but the songs as they used to sing, in the times before.

Perhaps singing was the wrong word. But nopony but Luna had ever heard those heavenly tunes, and she could think of no closer description for those soft and lilting, unearthly melodies. Tunes and harmonies she had helped to write, yet only half-remembered.

The interweaving songs synchronised and blended together, a perfect union of all Luna’s beautiful children, and she could only listen, enraptured, as they built to a wondrous crescendo. Finally there came a new voice, a stronger call, almost an echo of Luna’s own, and Luna’s mouth fell open in a gasp. Leading the chorus, her old friend, her first creation. No longer her silvery, barren prison. Restored, as she was restored, to how they had both been at the very beginning.

Luna was uncertain no longer. She knew what she must do, what she had done a hundred million times before. She lit her horn once again, and this time her magic did not falter. She reached out for oldest companion, and it reached back for her, and she wrapped it in her love and in her magic. She lifted, and it was effortless, and she felt it rise for her.

There was a brief founder, as Luna’s spell lifted her silver sphere away from another magic, a golden touch of incredible strength yet little subtlety. The moon sprang to Luna, forsaking the hated stranger at once for its true mistress, and the golden mage did not resist. Luna felt a slight tinge of happiness, of sunny golden joy, but then the fire-magic slipped away from her, and her focus snapped back to her most sacred task. Her one true calling.

She lifted the moon above the mountains, and it soared into the air like a silvery phoenix, its light brighter and richer than it had been for hundreds of thousands of nights. It bathed the land in its light, and its song swelled to fill Luna’s whole soul. The stars’ melody rose above it, a perfect soprano counterpoint, millions of voices joined as one.

Luna tipped her head back and let the moonlight wash her clean at last, let the stars sing to her of who she was, who she had been, and who she would become once more. The magic of the land came to her at last, after she had reached for it in vain for so long, and the world was bathed in the embrace of the night. Not a night dark and filled with terror, as a twisted fragment of her mind had once wanted to inflict. No, a night as Luna had created the night to be: silver and shining and wondrous, a thing of matchless beauty.

Her strength flooded back into her like a rushing tide, and Luna sang to the stars as they sang to her. The final shreds of the bad dream fled from her, and she threw her wings wide. The little form that had trapped her gave way before the surge and Luna burst back into herself. Her mane erupted from its earthly confines and streamed out behind her, a glorious flood of darkness and starlight. The crescent on her flank flared brighter even than the moon itself as Luna took to the air. The nightmare was ended. The night was restored.

Comments

[iAmSiNnEr]

heresy! One of your favorite princesses? Why isn't she your favorite princess?
Jokes aside, great story as always!

[BleuBlooms]

I like this it is very passionately written. The craftsmen ship is excellent. I am moved and yet something holds back...

From loving it.

Why?

Often and I find rather strange that Luna even in her defunct state of being would joyful at the manipulation of her little ponys.

I assume tone was important and did not hit with flow of the work.

Yet?

No, could acknodledge that generations were breed into existence. With the royal blood? As is in she had a child just to save her sister? Am I understanding that correctly.

I know I am supposed to gloss this fact but, when no names are mentioned. Little poniee are not as shown benevloently cared for but used?

That is tyranny. Who speak for the dead?

Is worth it?

It just that at the end of breeding manipulation centuries of cruelty. because it was a order under sweet promises no less.

That Celestia really has not changed. She usedher power to get what she wanted most in the world, her sister.

Screwed over sunset, blueblood, even twilight who all ALL could have had better lives. Celestia is very unimaginative if she figures she can only just throw money at a problem and make it go away....

I open to criticism, i enjoyed your work. These thoughts here are such that I have seen. We told Celestia is benevolent. Yet, often in some fics I bave read Celestia has cruely manipulated her little ponies way to give diginity to a people, or in some does not seem to remember her children names. Because that is a excellent sign of caring.

Have a good kind day and I open to discussion and dissagrement of the above points.

[Ice Star]

This was very interesting to read. The little details about how Canterlot has been furnished and the singing stars were fun to see and you showed them off with very nice prose. That said, it definitely earns the dark tag with the idea of Celestia selectively breeding her subjects via manufactured consent in order to get a destiny-says-so Harmony Hero and... basically everyone else, apparently.

You can also publish some segments of larger stories as standalone works. I’ve discussed this with site staff before and have done it myself.

[Key frame]

Poetic :D

[Mystic Sunrise]

Celestia hovered constantly. She was by Luna’s side as she ate and slept. She made anxious attempts at conversation and nervously showed Luna the things she had done while she waited for her. It seemed not a moment of Luna’s banishment had been spent idly. Celestia had been plotting her recovery from the very beginning. The construction of Canterlot, a new capital city for them to share. Forests planted on the mountainside with silver birch and oak, Luna’s favourite trees, to create an ancient woodland ready for her return. Experimentation with the Elements, to see if they would accept their old mistress. And after their failure, a programme of encouraged courtships, matching magically strong unicorn bloodlines together, even interspersing them with a selection of royal-born foals, spread carefully over the centuries. All to create a unicorn strong enough to have a chance at being able to wield the Element of Magic that rejected Celestia so firmly. That little project had many results, from what Luna could tell of Celestia’s slightly garbled explanation; one runaway to another dimension, a few rogue wizards, a defunct idiot of a great-great-great nephew, and a little pink unicorn talented enough to merit ascension at the tender age of fourteen, though not strong enough for Harmony’s tastes. But finally it had met its end in Twilight Sparkle and her five equally carefully curated and raised friends. Luna’s saviours, and the result of seven centuries of Celestia’s careful manipulations in the lives of her little ponies.

Okay, seriously. WTF are you high on when you came up with the ugeneics program Celestia had going on? That goes against literally everything we know of her.

I get it's an AU. But that only works up to a certain point, before the suspension of disbelief becomes too much. And it did here for me. It killed what chance I was going to give whatever this is meant to be apart of.

Story works fine on its own, don't get me wrong. But WHY?

[Shaslan]

10463861
I don't know, for me seeing how carefully Celestia trains and raises Twilight in the show, how many years she invests into her, and how she clearly was grooming her for alicornhood from the start suggests that she has done this sort of thing before. She has a school exclusively for personally tutoring the most magically gifted unicorns. When you're an immortal being with a lot of time on your hands, you can spend time choosing and raising your intended successor, and it seems to me at least that's what Celestia was trying to do with Twilight. A lot like how Discord engineered Grogar in the final season to be a test for Twi, I think Celestia could have solved a lot of the 'dangers' Equestria was in herself; I mean, she can raise the sun. And if she can do all that to train Twilight up, why not extend the premise a little further and have her planning for and working toward Twilight from a few centuries earlier?

[Mystic Sunrise]

10465251
Because that makes her no better than every other villain in some ways. Celestia may not be perfect, I agree. But this is pushing it for me.

No I'm not sorry about sharing my opinion, to those who will say that I should keep my mouth shut. I will never be sorry or apologize for saying what I think.

Take all of that away, I did like the story. Don't see many with Luna this far back.

[Shaslan]

10465292
I don't see how it makes her villainous honestly. It's an extensions of Celestia doing what Celestia does in the show - benevolently guiding and watching over her little ponies, suggesting what she thinks is the wisest course of action to them.

This is just my headcanon, and you're entitled to disagree. I'm glad you liked the rest of the story, and I'm always happy to debate equestrian politics and headcanons, even if someone's opinion doesn't mesh with mine But in future you might want to temper your language a little - your first comment came across as very abrasive, rather than opening a discussion.

[Pete100]

Ok, I’m a little confused.