angel of light
The worst part about being the princess of dreams was that Luna could never forget she was in one. Could never pretend, even for a second, that the mare before her was more than a mirage.
Every night since her reformation, Princess Luna had dreamt of a faceless mare.
And the dreams were always the same.
She was standing with her in the old Everfree Palace.
It was empty except for the two of them, restored to the glory it had been in before the sands of time had crumbled it away, before the Everfree had crept its way inside, before she and her sister had destroyed it in their final battle. A storm howled outside. The panes of stained glass flex and heave. Branches and leaves and small stones alike clattered and pinged off the sides of the palace and its windows.
The mare said nothing to her. They were facing one another. Faceless as the mare was.
Luna did not know what she wanted the mare to say to her. She needed her to say something.
There was an intense rumble from above; the walls shook, the windows buckled and shattered, and the roof came off, drawn up into the sky—which was a vacuous, ravenous void, bearing down to consume the world.
The mare still did not speak; Luna stepped closer and wrapped her in her forelegs, wings coming next to envelop her. Her muzzle pressed up against hers.
As the walls collapsed and the throne behind them was wrenched from its stone mount, the mare looked into Luna’s eyes, her lips inches from her, mane whipped in the cataclysmic winds.
The mare opened her mouth to speak—
And Luna opened her eyes.
Every time she awoke like this—and she always awoke like this—Luna was left with a gut-twisting saudade. It was not only this that pained her. Without an identity, the great sense of displacement and nostalgic longing the mare instilled within her felt hollow and empty. It felt downright ingenuine, and Luna was left with the lingering sensation of having committed a grave error—a feeling she was quite used to.
One evening, right as Celestia was about to set the sun, Luna awoke with a name on her lips.
She had spoken the name in her dream. The faceless mare had her face painted back on the second the words left Luna’s tongue. Her delightful emerald eyes, her thin and delicate lashes, the tiny laugh lines around the corners of her mouth, her canary yellow mane—and Luna could feel her now. The heat from her body, the way she was shaking ever-so-slightly as she held her in the grasp of her wings...
“Aether Glow,” she whispered to herself out loud.
Right before Aether could speak, Luna had woken up again.
She raised a hoof to her cheek. It was wet.
Luna found little sleep in the week that followed. She snapped at every little word said to her, re-arranged everything neurotically in her bedroom and cosmomancy tower every hour or so, and missed most of her meals. Memory after memory of Aether Glow was flooding back to her. She didn’t need to sleep for that to happen now.
Still, she was scared of going back to sleep. Scared of seeing Aether Glow again.
It was too much to bear.
After three sleepless days in a row brought her to a full week since first speaking Aether’s name, Luna found herself in the palace kitchens clumsily peeling an orange. Her aura slipped on the fruit’s surface every now and then. She hadn’t wanted to eat; the past forty or so hours of her stomach gnawing away at nothing reminded her of the eternal hunger beset upon her on the moon. That was when she felt it would be best to force herself a small bite of something at the very least. Shoeing away the cooks and various palace help that she’d found upon first arrival to the kitchen, she now found herself alone, struggling with her fruit. All as planned.
“Luna? Why aren’t you in bed?”
Luna yelped. Celestia had caught her completely off guard. The sun princess was standing on the other side of the prep table, her head held slightly askew, her expression far too concerned for Luna’s tastes.
“O-Oh, it’s you,” Luna grunted, her mood immediately souring further. “I am just getting myself a midnight snack, as I believe it is called.” She turned from her sister, raised her head indignantly, and popped the scraps of orange peel into her mouth one by one.
“Luna, you look exhausted. Also, it’s 1:24 PM.” Celestia left off the seconds and etcetera. One of the quirks of raising the sun left her with flawless knowledge of the exact time at any given moment. “Have you been having trouble sleeping?”
Luna laughed unconvincingly. “Oh please, you worry too much, sister. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have important matters to attend to.” She turned to leave the kitchen, and in her delirium immediately stumbled over her own hooves. Her side smacked into the prep table hard, and sent a cutting board hurtling—knife and all—towards Celestia.
Celestia easily caught the cutting board, knife, and the half-sliced carrots in her aura. “Luna, what’s wrong?” She asked, gently levitating what had been left behind in the hurried exodus of the chefs down to its home on the table.
Luna groaned. “I suppose you won’t stop bugging me until I tell you, will you?” One of her wings twitched painfully. It had been caught between her side and the prep table.
“You know I won’t,” Celestia said, smiling at her. Luna’s grimace deepened.
“Well, it’s... there are some things that just... I am having a difficult...” Luna fell back to her haunches with a small, strangled noise and slapped her hooves over her eyes. “Never mind. I do not wish to talk about it.”
“Luna, you’ve been through a lot; I won’t press you if it’s really too much for you, but I’d like you to know that you can tell me anything you need to.”
Luna peeked at Celestia from underneath her hooves. Slowly, she let them slip down to lay on the floor once more, and she immediately began to sob so hard her entire body heaved.
Celestia’s eyes widened. “Oh dear.”
“I-I,” Luna gasped. “I remember her, Tia. I remember Aether.”
Celestia felt her heart drop out the bottom of her chest. Oh no.
“What happened to her?” Luna sobbed. “After I was banished—what happened to her?”
Celestia chewed on her lip nervously. “She resigned from the court after you were banished. She had some... choice words for me when she did so, all of them harsh and painful...” She paused for a moment before letting out a tiny sigh. “And true.”
Luna was no longer fully sobbing, although tears were still flowing silently from her eyes. “And then? What became of her then?”
“Luna, you of course have to know—”
Luna’s glare was a knife pointed directly towards Celestia’s eyes. “Of course I am aware that she is dead, sister; I am not a foal. I have no delusions about this!” Luna’s voice had begun to peak, her horn sparking more than once as she intoned her syllables as flying daggers. “I want to know how she lived the rest of her days; I want to know what she did, how she went about her day, how she entertained herself, if she still continued to practice alchemy; I—”
Luna took a deep breath. Celestia watched as her sister’s sparking horn slowly died.
“I want to know if she was happy.”
Celestia did not meet Luna’s eyes. “I’m afraid that I’m not entirely certain about any of that, Luna. She hated me after you were banished. She didn’t exactly keep in touch.”
“And I suppose you went to extreme lengths to do anything in your power to contact her in spite of that,” Luna said, rolling her own.
“Luna, things were very intense politically and emotionally at the time, and I had—”
“I do not want a history lesson.” Luna waved her hoof dismissively. “If you know nothing else then I have wasted my time with you. Goodbye, sister.”
“I...” Celestia bit her lip. “I do know one other thing.”
Luna gave Celestia an unimpressed look. “I am listening.”
“I am aware of where and when she passed.”
Luna’s expression did not change.
Celestia stared at Luna, her heart thundering in her chest.
“This is one of my greatest shames, Lu—”
“’This’ is not about you, dear sister,” Luna spat with all the venom in the world. “Every night since the Elements had purified me of Nightmare Moon, I have dreamed of her. Faceless, and always waking when she was about to speak. And now, now that I remember who she is—who she was to me—now, after every restless sleep, something new about her returns to me: a memory, an emotion, a scent, a taste, a feeling...”
Luna turned from her sister. She refused to reveal the watery sheen of her eyes to her.
“And now it hurts too much to sleep.”
Luna raised her head and scowled at Celestia, wiping at the corner of her eyes with her hoof. “Take me to where she lived.” She paused as she glared at Celestia, her horn sparking slightly. “Take me to where she died.”
And so she did; at nightfall, after the sun had been set and the moon had been risen, Celestia took her to the old stone house where Aether and Luna had spent their summers in secrecy. It was appropriately situated on a small bluff overlooking Luna Bay, surrounded by sea grass and sand dunes.
“Remember how this place got its name?” Celestia said. She was trying her best to inject a little bit of levity into the moment. She was not doing so very well.
“Yes. I was mad that you got a whole sea named after you so the naming was unveiled to me as a consolation prize.” Luna rolled her eyes. “Thank you for reminding me how foalish and petty I was.”
Celestia was silent. Luna stared at the wreckage of the cottage.
“She moved out here because it reminded her of you,” Celestia said after a moment. “And because the best times of your lives together were spent here.”
Luna cast a glance backward. “Do not purport to know what the best times of my life have been.” Her voice was cracking.
Luna wandered around the ruin. A thousand years by the sea had left it as little more than a few stone walls. She stared down at the sand covering what had been the floor, too deep to feel the original stones.
“There is nothing left.”
“We’ll need to hold still for a bit,” Aether said to her. “And on the count of three, I want you to cast the brightest light spell you know how with me. I know it seems strange—trust me, this will be fantastic.”
It was then that Luna discovered she was wrong. She squinted. It was barely noticeable as nothing more than a small off-white tip poking out from the beige surrounding it, but it was there. Her horn sparked. She gently yanked the buried object with her magic, pulling it free from the beach, grains of sand cascading from its surface.
There was a flash of bright light. The two held the position there for a few timeless moments, Aether’s lips pressed so delicately to Luna’s hoof. Luna became briefly aware of how silly it must look. The thought left her mind as quick as it had come. She did not care how long she had to remain still as long as it meant Aether was there with her, hoof in hoof.
It was old. A little over a thousand years old, to be exact. Luna had no idea how it was still intact. Perhaps there was latent magic, perhaps it had just been dumb luck. There was a small bit of fire damage in the bottom right corner—as if somepony had held it over a candle in a fleeting attempt to destroy it and stopped almost immediately. It no longer carried its supernal, otherworldly, almost heavenly shine it had had when new—but there was no mistaking it for anything else.
Aether was unable to contain herself. Giggling and prancing over to the box she had mounted before them, she nodded back to Luna. “C’mon! Follow me down into the cellar. We need almost total darkness to make sure we get this right.”
“Luna, I'm so sorry.” Celestia took a step forward, and reached out her hoof—
“I got the idea from the Astera Obscura,” Aether said to her in the darkness of the cellar. “The way the astronomers used the apertures in the ceiling to let light through in a way that allows them to study the sun, the moon, the stars—” She smiled at Luna, hardly visible in the dark, but its presence known all the same. “—the way they project an image of themselves onto the floor... I figured there was some way to reverse-engineer it, and capture a moment in time on a mirror-like surface.”
Luna’s wing slapped back against Celestia’s hoof. “Save your apologies. This is for the best, is it not?” She sighed and looked up at the moon. “This is for the best.”
“And then I realized: it didn’t have to be a mirror-like surface at all. Or rather, not what actually captured the image, anyway. I knew from my work that there are some alchemical solutions that are very sensitive to light—silver iodide in particular.”
“I deserve worse.”
“But developing it takes a very long time, like that. Hours, sometimes. I needed something quicker. It wasn’t until I was playing around with mercury in a completely unrelated experiment that I understood the fumes of quicksilver could be used to get that image to present all that much faster.”
Celestia took another step towards her sister. “Now, Luna, you know that isn’t—”
Luna watched in awe as the image shimmered to life within the solution Aether had sunk the paper into. As the solution of salt the alchemist had prepared beforehand stripped away the negative of the silver iodide, a perfect image of the two of them remained.
“We both played a part in the death of Aether Glow, sister.” Luna’s gaze was hollow and cold.
The moment was there, taxidermied time, eternal as long as its medium persisted.
All was quiet save for the crash of the ocean.
“Way faster than a painting, right? And more accurate too.” She smirked. “Not that I’m trying to put painters out of a trade or anything. It’s just much more convenient this way.”
Luna wandered down to the shorebreak, the moon high above, illuminating the ocean and beach in a serene silver shine not unlike that the picture had once possessed all those years ago. The picture which, now faded to a dull sepia, bobbed alongside her as she made her way to the waterline.
“I call it a ‘photograph’.”
She drew a line in the sand with her hoof, right before the break of the waves—
And watched as it was washed away by the tide.
She stepped forward and placed her hooves in the shorebreak. Focused her gaze on the photograph once more.
It was almost like she was still there.
Luna closed her eyes.
breathe in.
breathe out.
Her horn started to glow—
The shorebreak slowly moving further and further up the beach—
Luna built a growl in her throat, rough and raw and vibrating. Her hooves dug into the sand.
Slowly, the growl escalated into a scream—and then erupted to a bellow of rage that echoed across the water. The ocean heaved and pulled, rising into a titanic wave. Luna felt the coursing power of the tide within her, her wings splaying out, her hooves leaving the sand.
“LUNA!”
Luna opened her eyes, her horn still aglow with the intensity of supernova.
Celestia was hovering about ten feet from her, in the shadow of the looming tsunami’s crest.
Luna meets her sister’s eyes, the world slowing down around them.
The wave was lapping at Celestia’s hooves. Celestia’s expression looked like she’d been bucked directly in the gut. “You must hate me.”
Luna burst into tears. “What do I have to hate you for? It is I who left her. Left her all alone here, with nothing but memories of me. It was I who killed her—or, at least, I might as well have.” The wave howled, roared around them, the might of the ocean seconds from breaking free of Luna’s grasp.
Luna’s face was salt-soaked from foam and tears alike. “I have to let her go. I have to start over.” She couldn’t face her sister’s gaze any longer. She turned to look down at the arc of the wave.
“That is not my life anymore.”
She turned her head to face Celestia once again.
“I will have one final dream about her today, and when I awake—I will be a new alicorn. You will not see anything different about me, but the Luna I was will be gone. I cannot be that filly, who died on the surface of the moon long ago. I have to be a new mare. A new mare in this new world.”
The wave collapsed in on itself. Water rushed up the beach, pouring into the remnants of Aether Glow’s old home.
The worst part about being the princess of dreams is that Luna could never forget she was in one.
The royal sisters returned to Canterlot in silence.
Could never pretend, even for a second, that the mare before her was more than a mirage.
Luna lowered the moon. The brilliant lustrous oranges and rosy hues of pink that foretold the sunrise crept across the cold, violet sky.
Every night since her reformation, Princess Luna has dreamt of a faceless mare.
She left her cosmomancy tower and went directly to bed.
And the dreams are always the same.
She wanted nothing more than to have this be over as soon as possible.
She is standing with Aether in the old Everfree Palace.
It is empty except for them, restored to the glory it had been in before the sands of time had crumbled it away, before the Everfree had crept its way inside, before she and her sister had destroyed it in their final battle. A storm howls outside. The panes of stained glass flex and heave. Branches and leaves and small stones alike clatter and ping off the sides of the palace and its windows.
“I’m so sorry I left you alone,” Luna said, tears welling in her eyes.
Luna didn’t know what she wanted Aether to say to her. She needed her to say something.
There is an intense rumbling from above; the walls shake, the windows buckle and shatter, and the roof comes off, drawn up into the sky—which is a vacuous, ravenous void, bearing down to consume the world.
Aether still does not speak; Luna steps closer and wraps her in her forelegs, wings coming next to envelop her. Her muzzle presses up against hers.
As the walls collapse and the throne behind them is wrenched from its stone mount, Aether looks into Luna’s eyes, her lips inches from her, mane whipping in the cataclysmic winds.
“I love you.”
The winds have reached a fever pitch. Luna feels her wings being pried from Aether. She grips tighter, tries to hold on, even if it means her wings break, and she is still sliding from her feathered grasp.
“And I forgive you.”
There is a flash of light.
Luna awoke.
She hadn’t known what she wanted Aether to say to her, but that had been the most painful thing she possibly could have. The ending of the dream, the mare she loved most slipping from her grasp, was burned into her mind’s eye.
Luna groaned and sunk deeper into bed. The inside of her chest felt as if it were being chewed and torn at by a manticore.
She levitated out the photograph—the final memento, the last physical reminder of Aether’s existence—from her bedside table. She studied it, expression blank. She looked at the both of them held there forever in time. In the photo, Luna looked regal and aloof. And yet...
Luna remembered how she had felt. She remembered the way her heartbeat had quickened, she remembered the brief embarrassment that had been washed from her by Aether’s endless elation and excitement, she remembered the feel of her hoof in hers. Even with the fire damage to the corner—that corner Aether existed inside of, the only place she existed any longer—she was still as breathtaking and heartaching as she had ever been.
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Glad to see this published! I think it's got a lot of cool ideas in it, and I'm glad I was able to help bring those out!
This was swell from writing to the lingering haunt of a breath - stolen. Pacing and focus where excellent stuff! I rather liked how it really was just about a mare that she loved you know? No twist's and that I think with your fine story telling...make this.
Ps. My bitter gremlin heart wanted her to say otherwise to luna....just to have that sweet sweet consquences.
Wow. That was heartbreaking. But told so well. Kudos, Regi.
This is honestly really inspiring for how it can incorporate science fiction into romance and vice-versa. It's something I really love, and it's something I see a lot of people try and not succeed with, let alone just crush like this.
I'm going to put a line break here and put spoilers for the story after it. I really recommend reading this story first - you won't regret it, it fits a lot of ideas into a really short space. But I really love this story and I want to talk about it.
Like, usually when I see science-fiction romance approached, the focus would be the alchemist. It's about them trying to find a way to impress someone. Worse to me is when the science is pure technobabble, because it's only relevant as a character trait, a shorthand for them being brilliant and thus desirable to someone, where the science fiction elements are props and set-pieces.
Why I think this is so good is because instead of being science-fiction-romance, it focuses on the best way to approach each genre in isolation, and then synthesizes them. I think romance is at its strongest when you understand what two characters give each other, and get from each other, that can't come from anyone else. It shows you how the relationship improves both people in it.
Even with - or maybe even because of - one of the characters in the relationship being totally absent from the story, you feel that intensely. You sell the relationship not on showing what Luna gets from the Alchemist, but from what she's lost without her, and you feel that loss intensely through the entire story. It's an amazing tragic romance because of that. And then, at the end, she gives Luna one last thing that nobody else could have given her.
I also think science fiction is at its strongest when it causes you to look at a problem you haven't considered before, and realize how significant solving those problems could be, and the broader impacts. Like, too often it gets into the trappings of technology, of gadgets, which really misses the point. It's why I love retrofuturism so much - it's usually not about presenting new technologies, it's about seeing the impact existing technologies would have had on a different social context. How the context changes the solutions.
I just had to explain that to justify calling this science fiction, because I really feel like it is. There's a ton of stories about Luna remembering the past, but I don't think there's much about her forgetting it. And the detail of solving that problem, of the process of solving it, and of the importance of solving it, and how profound that impact is makes it really good science fiction. And in showing how admirable that is helps make you feel the Alchemist's loss so much more deeply.
This would be a really good story if it was just one of these two elements, but the way the two reinforce and build off each other is just phenomenal, and it makes this a really exceptional piece. I love it a lot.
Oh gosh, this was lovely. I'm always delighted when you drop a story, and that you posted one on the longer side made it more of a treat. There was so much more space to here that a crutch like brevity will cripple, and this goes to show that you have awesome ability in world-building and characterization when they become your focus. Combine that with your strong sense of emotion and atmosphere, and this becomes an incredibly underrated piece with imagery I swear I could have felt. You haven't written a Luna story in a while, and I really adore the strong sense of moodiness and sentimentality that you give her, and the contrast between somepony who truly understood her being gone in Aether Glow, while Luna is 'guided' by somepony who has no real insight into her in Celestia.
You may hate proper fuckin' syntax with your frustrating Eternal Lowercase Syndrome, but I sure don't hate this story. It's almost like you should write more of them, Regidork.
An excellent story, Regi. A very emotional piece. Congrats on the Featured!
should of been titled - untitled romance novel
11554120
damn pls forgib me daddi gira
11554600
pbs.twimg.com/media/FtfRnFaaUAEl766?format=jpg&name=900x900
This one is a bit hard to judge for me. It is a melodrama, I think that is a fact that can be established. I have nothing against melodrama, I can even love them at times. The thing is that melodrama requires time to earn that onslaught of emotions. I cannot say that you didn’t try to develop the story, there is certainly a good set-up, presentation, preparation and conclusion. I do very much appreciate that effort. However, I can’t help but think that you still rushed in for what you were trying to accomplish. I want to make a case here: keep in mind the strong emotions that the story is demanding of its readers. Characters are crying, screaming, suffering intensely. A well known character such as Luna, for whom we have a variety of feelings built up over the years, can elicit such emotions in the reader, at least the necessary sympathy to evoke them. However, their source here is a character we know very little about. That’s a huge hurdle to overcome in how we perceive them, particularly in regards to the feelings expected of the reader.
I want to make clear that I don’t think this story’s premise is bad. Luna coming to terms with the ponies she left behind after her banishment is a great idea. Her having had someone this close to her, a lover, whom she lost is also brimming with potential. However, it is the execution where I find the biggest problem. It’s too grandiose, too emotionally draining in a way that is very hard to sell to the reader, at least to me, because of how much needs to be established first. It was a daring approach, but I can’t say it paid off. I think this would have worked much more effectively if you had gone for a more subdued, nuanced approach. It does make sense in-universe that Luna would feel this devastated over the loss of her lover, of course. But thinking of this as a piece of wart meant to elicit emotion I think you should have compromised and tried for a quieter angle, and it could ironically been much more potent.
Celestia’s presence seems important for such a story, but aside from exposition dumping I didn’t get much use out of her. I think this is the kind of story Luna should have faced alone. Sad to say, I didn’t really like the dialogue exchanges between the sisters. Most of it were preparations for the real conversation, which is natural, to include, but in such a short story every word should count much more. Also, I regret to say that their dialogue was somewhat stilted, too direct and lacking in subtext, and added on top of the melodrama. If you had focused on Luna’s inner monologue I think you could have provided a stronger, more emotionally honest narrative.
I’m not trying to bash your work or anything, I believe there is potential. The premise of a romance between an OC and a canon character is always bound to be controversial, but I don’t think it was the problem here. I liked what little of the OC you made you showed. She seemed like a character with potential, and the bits of her personality made it believable that Luna would fall for her. Seeing her through Luna’s nostalgic lens also added another layer to her that kept me intrigued. The main problem for me is the decision to make this an explosive melodrama that seems to be trying to force the emotions out of the reader rather than planting them and waiting for them to sprout. For this approach to have worked we would have needed more time with the OC, knowing her better so that the full impact of the tragedy could be felt. With this length, I think that leaving more to the imagination would have been better, rather than showing the character carrying their emotions on their sleeve.
Basically, I think this story’s premise holds promise, but it's overzealous implementation made it suffer and curbed its potential. I do appreciate the honesty of the writing, and I think you gave it a good try and that you meant everything that you tried to do. I just believe you could have done better. It might just not be for me. I can clearly see I'm in the minority, so take this with a grain of salt.
11842706
Thank you very much for your review! You are correct, a lot of my stories suffer from being far too brief and this is no different. This is a much more condensed version of a longer story I intend to write. I'll take what you said into immense consideration for the longer-form. I tend to write in ways that I tend to feel—I am an explosive and melodramatic person. That sells my stories for some people, and for others it does not. That is an unfortunate barrier for both my abilities as a writer and the audience I appeal towards. That does not make any of your assertions or observations incorrect or unwarranted or unneeded—quite the opposite. I think you've hit the nail on the head in a way I hadn't considered before about a good varied aspects of the story, and now haven taken a step back as it's been two and a half years or so since I've written this particular iteration, I find this review incredibly useful. Thanks for taking the time to have read it and gone over it, I really appreciate that.
If you have any interest in reading the longer story when it's written, let me know. I have no clue when it will be, but it would be interesting to get your views on one that spends more time with the concept and execution and takes a subtler route.
11842803
Thank you as well for such a kind and measured response. I am happy that you've found my critiques to be helpful. There clearly is a market for melodrama, as your successes demonstrate, and being an author who carries their emotions on their sleeves can lead to great works as well. So, all the more power to you. I am glad to have been able to offer you a different perspective. This being an older story surely must have helped in giving us both the needed perspective to engage with the work critically, even if you are clearly far more invested and have grown far from from it than me, who only recently first engaged with it.
I can't promise I will read the longer story when it's out because I'm kind of fickle in my interests to pone nowadays, but if you wanted me to give it a look I could try. Thanks for counting on me.