Duskmaker

by I-A-M

Prologue: The Sun's Glare

“Sister, are you certain?”

Luna looked up from her packed belongings. The pile of luggage wasn’t as voluminous as one might expect from a traveling dignitary, and certainly not as large as one would expect from a Princess, but Luna had never been particularly materialistic.

“I am,” Luna replied after a moment.

Celestia regarded Luna quietly from the threshold of her room.

The chambers were kept in endless starlit darkness by a permanent enchantment. Luna had always preferred the low-light of the evening, both for its beauty and because she claimed it was easier on her eyes despite the fact that they were both immortal nigh-deities with ageless bodies.

“Is there something I should know?” Celestia asked, and Luna had to bite back a sigh.

“I am not a bullied foal to be shielded by her sister’s wing, Celly,” Luna replied tersely, earning wince from her elder sister as Celestia averted her gaze. “I’m not fleeing the palace, I simply feel it may do both of us a measure of good for me to take a sabbatical.”

“Luna, if this is about—”

“Don’t, Celly,” Luna cut her sister off with a glare.

Celestia bristled for a moment, her hackles going up and, briefly, the temperature around her rose better than a dozen degrees.

Then it passed, and Celestia drew back looking down.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

Luna let out a soft nicker and dropped the latest parcel she was packing and trotted over to her sister, leaning in to click their horns together.

“I know,” Luna replied, lighting a gentle nudge of cobalt energy under her sister’s chin to raise Celestia’s head. “But you’ve been used to ruling alone for too long, and I’m not sure I have a place here anymore.”

“Luna, please.” Celestia’s voice was a wan, shadow of her usual authoritarian strength. “I’ve only just gotten you back.”

“A few years we’ve ruled ‘together’, aye,” Luna said quietly. “We’ve looked after more than a few disasters, but let us be honest with one another…”

Turning, Luna shot a spark of power at the wall of her bedroom, turning it translucent, and from the ovoid portal she magnified the city beneath them, sweeping past boulevards and thoroughfares, street faires and marketways.

And each and every one of them bore a unified scheme of colour and shade. Golds and whites abounded. Marble polished to a gleam reflected the sunlight in scatters of rainbow light. Sun-In-Glory insignias adorned murals on walls, and mosaics across the ground, all glorifying one, and only one pony.

Aurora deia Nova Celestia

Goddess of the Sun and sole Princess of Equestria.

“I’ve tried,” Celestia said, and Luna could hear the raw strain in her voice. “I am trying… but I cannot so easily upend a thousand years of cultural tradition. If there had been another way I would have taken it, I swear it.”

“I know.”

Luna looked down over the city not with jealousy or hatred as she might have a thousand years prior. Now she looked and felt only regret.

“You did what you had to do,” Luna said, looking up and banishing the visions of the city. “You erased me, and I understand why.”

The Princess of the Sun does not cry. Or if she did, she would not do so in public. A Princess must maintain a certain decorum in front of the staff at all times, and so Celestia did not cry.

“I won’t be gone for a thousand years this time,” Luna said a bit more softly this time. “I’m simply going to visit the nation whose growth I missed. It may simply… take me a while. It’s not as though the Night Court is much oe’rcome with supplicants.”

“Petitioners, Lulu,” Celestia corrected, looking tired but at least she was smiling now. “We call them petitioners, now, remember?”

“Thy modern tongue vexes, sister mine,” Luna said with playful causticity. “But yes, I do recall.”

The conversation faltered as Luna stepped back and began packing her things again. She’d already sent for a porter to start ferrying them all down to the train station.

True, she could simply teleport them to her destination, but that was an exhaustive waste of magic considering she still had to travel beyond the Walls of Sleep each night to do her duty to the citizens of Equestria. Besides, taking the train would allow her to see a little bit more of the world, and the steam engine was an invention from well after her exile which she had only had brief moments of time to examine.

It would be… fun.

At least, Luna hoped it would be.

“Is anyone going with you?” Celestia asked, clearly trying to bridge the gap. “Or are you…?”

“I’m traveling alone for now,” Luna replied as she tucked a few more things away. “But I am not averse to the notion.”

“I see,” Celestia drew back, then sighed and lit her horn to start helping her sister pack.

She didn’t try to strike up the conversation again, for which Luna was grateful. They had repaired as much of their sisterly bond as they’d been able to in so short a time, considering their lifespans. They took broke fast and took dinner together more often than not, and in the past year their conversations had grown easier and easier.

But that one unspoken wedge still lay between them.

The yak in the room, as it were.

The truth of the matter was that, regardless of how contrite Celestia was about how the Nightmare Rebellions had begun, and how regretful Luna was about how they proceeded and ended, nothing could change the fact that Equestria was a nation that still worshipped one Princess above all.

Save for a relatively small faction of nobles and a bit of grassroots support out of Ponyville, Luna was still the black sheep of the royal family.

The porters arrived in good order, and within the hour all of Luna’s traveling luggage was on its way to the station, leaving her room almost as bare as it had been when Celestia had first had it commissioned in the hopes that her sister would one day occupy it.

“I had hoped to never see these walls so empty again,” Celestia said quietly.

“I’ll be back,” Luna promised, turning to her sister to offer an affectionate nuzzle. “Thou art still my sister, Celly, as I am thine.”

“Your diction is slipping again, Lu,” Celestia admonished with a soft, slightly teary laugh.

“Oh hush,” Luna chuckled as she wrapped a wing around her sister and wrapped her in a hug.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll write,” Luna promised.

“It won’t be enough,” Celestia said, her voice cracking as she buried her face in Luna’s flowing starlight mane.

Luna sighed and rested against her sister for a long moment before finally pulling away. By the time she did, her sister’s mask was back in place. What tears may have come were banished, and the regal countenance of the Princess of the Sun was intact as if it had never known a moment of wear.

“I’ll give thy— blast it— your love to Cadence and Shining Armor,” Luna said. “And many kisses to our little niece as well.”

“Assuming she doesn’t flare and blow you through a wall,” Celestia remarked playfully as they stepped out of Luna’s room and began making their way to the closest balcony.

“Bah, I would endure,” Luna scoffed, flicking her mane over a shoulder in a huff. “Besides, I’ve always thought walls were there for putting holes in.”

“That explains much.”

“Silence, thou grubby snoutband,” Luna riposted, shooting a glare at her sister.

“I do miss the old insults,” Celestia said wistfully.

“Aye,” Luna groaned. “Calling our lagabout nephew a ninnyhammer is significantly less satisfying than it ought to be when nopony knows what it means, and explaining rather ruins it.”

“Perhaps spends some time among the youths while you’re wandering, then,” Celestia supplied. “I understand they’ve come up with some rather clever slang terms and I’ve no doubt a bevy of colorful new insults is among them.”

“Mayhap.” Luna looked thoughtful at the notion. “Although I’m still lost on the provenance of the word ‘yeet’.”

“Some things are best left unknown, dear sister,” Celestia replied with a laugh.

The cold air of Canterlot and the surrounding winds that coiled about the Canterhorn Mountain to which it clung swept across the twin goddesses as they emerged into the bright, sharp, midautumn sunlight.

They spread their broad wings with synchronised snaps, and just as they were about to take off, Luna shot her sister a playful smirk.

One that Celestia was already returning.

Parting may be sorrowful at times, but siblings tend to find their way back together. After a thousand years, Celestia knew that to be truer than most, and so she did not grieve for her sister leaving her side once more.

She did, however, indulge in one more race.

Comments

[Jade Dawn]

“Mayhap.” Luna looked thoughtful at the notion. “Although I’m still lost on the provenance of the word ‘yeet’.”

“Some things are best left unknown, dear sister,” Celestia replied with a laugh.

[Bigwig6666]

Luna saying yeet is just what I needed this week

[MisterEdd]

An excellent opening