First Winter Back
The snow swirls before me, the wind lifting it up again and again, and it only reaches the ground when the wind pushes it there. Clouds almost completely cover the sky, and they catch the moonlight and and spread it all over the sky.
My shoulders slump. My eyes close, and I allow myself to lose the royal poise I try to maintain.
I never remembered signing papers as being so hard. Off course, I had never really done it in the past. Sure I had sat in court, but I never paid attention. I left that to my older sister. Meanwhile my thoughts would wander, and I would make adjustments to the stained glass windows when no one was looking, although, my changes always seemed to change back.
But I had never really had work before. I was used to not having to do anything.
Tonight is the winter solstice; nobody really cares much, and I don’t either. Supposedly it is my season now. Celestia has summer, and I have winter. It’s not really official, but you can judge the season by the amount of time the sun and moon get. The nights have been getting ever longer, and now they will wane.
Thoughts swirl in my mind, but I’m too tired to think clearly. My brain is muddled with political affairs and memories of the moon. I need clarity. I stretch out my wings and feel the cold wind. Flying helps clear my mind.
I leave the ground, and the cold air shoots through my coat chilling me to the bone. The wind is strong, but my wings are stronger. I’m freezing in a couple of seconds, but I’m too tired to care. I’m high enough to close my eyes and fly blind, something I often do, but not tonight. Something holds me back. Something tells me I am not free enough.
I catch a snowflake on my hoof and examine it as much as I can before it melts. So much beauty in every one, and tonight there are millions. I catch another. I fly up beyond the clouds, and I see the stars in full. The clouds block all the light from the city, so the constellations are covered by the vast amount of stars.
These are the kind of nights I live for; nights with beauty everywhere.
Because the world may be cruel, but it’s also beautiful.
And nobody understands because they too are cruel, nobody cares enough to look at the night with me.
But it doesn't matter because there is still beauty all around. In all the snow. In all the sky. In all the stars.
If only my sister could see this beauty. If only she could know…
I fold my wings and plummet.
She only knows how to be harsh. Her first step is always extreme. Her sun is blinding. Her season burning.
But I guess she's not the only one who can be harsh.
She can say she loves me, but she doesn’t understand me.
I spread my wings inches before I hit the snow.
The storm seems colder. The wind starts to blow faster.
And I’m not sure if I’m giving up, or if the storm is just too strong. I plummet again, and I don’t pull up this time.
I awaken, so frozen that my immortality was probably the only thing that kept me alive.
I scream into the howling wind, and it carries my voice away.
Nothing has changed in a thousand years. In am still not understood. I am still jealous, still bitter.
The snow is now like needles of ice, slipping between my coat and feathers, sending ice straight to my bones, which are already cold.
I might as well stay here and banish myself. Here I can keep myself from rebelling.
I stand up, but I collapse again. Nothing can combat this cold in my heart.
I close my eyes, and I can feel the weight of snow on my body, building and building. Burying me in a million individual pieces of beauty.
But I don’t quite give up hope yet.
The sun breaks through the clouds and I can feel its warmth on my back. Warmth does not belong in winter.
Winter is made to harden the ground and toughen the trees. To make rivers that won’t yet be released. To water flowers that have not yet been planted.
You could say that spring is the season of hope, but really it is winter. When the world has turned dark, things are happening, you simply cannot see them. Hope is that the seeds will be planted, not seeing that they have. Hope is what you cannot see until the blossom pushes through the snow.
I feel warmth. Because I haven’t yet given up hope. Not yet.
The sky is still grey. The sun is now nothing but a slightly brighter area of the sky.
I begin to walk.
The wind is like an icy breath that forces itself down my throat filling me with cold.
And then it is.
I look up and standing before me is a windigo. Its eyes are glowing, and they make the clouds look even darker. It fades into the storm.
I see another one. They slowly start to circle me. Another one shows up. And another.
Soon it’s like a wall of cold air.
And it occurs to me that this is my bitterness swirling around me. I don’t know how to fight it. I don’t know how to win.
But I don’t give up yet. I will stand strong in the storm of my own bitter thoughts.
The wind only gets stronger. Minutes, maybe hours pass. Snow drifts against my legs.
But I don’t know how to escape.
Time blurs together.
The answer must be somewhere.
But I already know where it is. Don’t I?
I keep standing, but I close my eyes and dream.
My dream first takes me to a time long ago, when windigoes had trapped six ponies in a cave. They had been frozen, but at the last second, they had come together. And then the “fire of friendship” had ignited inside of them, and it destroyed the windigoes.
But how can I “come together” when I am alone
My dream shifts. The sun was just beginning to rise The sky become a million different colors stacked in layers of clouds. Celestia flying up with the sun held in her magic. As it goes higher in the sky, it finds a resting point and stops. Celestia comes towards me.
“Sister, why do we raise the sun and moon?” I ask in a voice that is too high pitched to be my own. At least not any more
Her voice is slightly annoyed, but it becomes more gentle as she continues. “Because, if we don’t, who else would?” she stops, but seeing I’m looking for more of an answer she continues. “Ponies need sleep. But they also need light to work by. This rising and lowering gives them both.” She looks at me again, and sees that I’m still not satisfied, but she doesn’t know what more to say. My dream shifts again.
There is a pony I don’t know standing in our court. Or maybe I do know him. He holds brushes, and their dripping with paint, but he isn’t painting anything.
Then I remember him, he was the painter who did our royal portraits shortly before I betrayed my sister.
Betrayed… how can I be mad at my sister after all I’ve done? After I left her, attacked her.
But can knowing that someone is undeserving of your hate stop you from feeling the fial emotion?
Celestia is nowhere around, and the court is completely empty. All the decorations and windows are removed, letting the wind howl through the openings.
I step forward to address him, but he speaks first. His voice is like an artist of words instead of an artist of paint.
“You understand beauty don’t you?” I don’t remember speaking to him. In fact I specifically remember not talking to him. “Don’t you Luna.” He swings the three brushes hanging from his mouth, and as drops of paint come off, they change color.
And then I am standing on an eternity of canvas. Alone.
But the color crashes around in a wave, spreading over the canvas.
“You could call something beautiful,” his voice says, “But it is nothing by itself.”
The sky darkens. It covers the canvas in black, and soon there is nothing left but darkness. There is nothing left but shadow.
This isn’t what I wanted though; I wanted the moon and the stars in the sky.
The world is split in half, one side being white and the other dark. The contrast between the two is so intense it hurts my eyes.
But the line softens, and blurs, bringing a thousand different shades of grey. And then there is color, spreading down the line and blending into the greys and bringing a million new shades.
It all starts to condense and soon everything is collected in tiny dot.
“The beauty isn’t all in a single image; it is in the way it will change. A flower will open, an apple will be eaten. And there are infinite ways to know those things as they are changing. Blue turns to red and there are infinite colors in between them.
“The leaves on a tree will start to turn and then they will slowly crumble. Ice will coat everything but spring will come and flowers will push through the ice and those dead leaves will help them grow. And then the summer will come. Winter and summer are both beautiful, but most beautiful things happen during the change, the most beautiful things happen when two things are brought close enough to mix.”
The voice stops, and says nothing more. I stand there a while my dream takes me from one place to the next.
“Like winter and summer,” I say out loud.
“Like moon and sun.”
And that’s it. I can start to feel the cold wind wrapping around my body. But I still don’t know if this is enough. Can beauty beat my bitterness?
They are swirling around me again. A thousand hooves running across the wind.
But I begin to think of very beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The sunrise, the sunset.
Spring and fall.
Grey and rain and stars.
The moon and the sun. Hope.
The rolling sea and the towering mountains.
Twilight and her friends who brought me back.
Lastly I think of the eternal black. Nothing but me and a dark sky. But I can't be alone in that dark world anymore.
I open my eyes, and the wind still blows. But my heart isn’t frozen and black anymore. The windigos are gone.
I spread my wings and start to fly back to my sister. Back home.
It was what I valued most all along. Beauty. But I guess I was fighting for what I didn’t know. I cannot be beautiful alone. Because there would be nothing to be beautiful with; only a single pony in a world of black.
I try and figure out how I figured it out. Did I know all of this once before and I had just forgotten? Maybe. But I think I can feel those words that were said in my dream, said by someone else. Someone I have long since forgotten.
Or maybe it was just my coming back from the moon. After all there is beauty in generosity and kindness and honesty and loyalty and laughter and friendship, and none of them can be done alone.
Maybe it was because I tried to isolate myself, cut myself off from the world because they couldn’t understand me that my vision became warped, that I thought there was only one type of beauty. But understanding isn’t what I need. What I really need is beauty.
And now I see it everywhere, especially in Twilight and her friends.
I get back to the castle, and go to the court. I don’t see Celestia anywhere, and I ask around. Apparently she went to the gryphon kingdoms for trade negotiations. I start to sign papers and argue with my advisers, hoping she’ll be home soon.
When she does get back she comes and sits down, like nothing has happened, and I suppose from her perspective nothing has.
We continue to sign papers and argue with our advisers.
Soon my shoulders ache and my mind is dulled, but I sit up straight. I must fight for her.
Because even though she doesn't understand beauty, I have none without her. She is what I must fight for in the dark days of sitting and listening to countless ponies as they propose to us their ideas.
I wonder if she fights for me.