Masks
The western horizon was a muted palette of rose, pale salmon and violet, shot through with errant streaks of red and indigo. The soft and fading light washed the face of the newly risen moon the color of ripe pumpkin, highlighting and deepening the patterning of marias that formed the shape of a unicorn’s head. Far below the waxing moon, in a high spire of the white castle perched like an eagle on the side of the mountain, a tiny unicorn colt leaned precariously over a balcony railing, staring up into the star-strewn skies.
“Blue!” A aura of golden magic, bright in the dimming colors of the twilight, plucked up the colt and swept him up in the air to dangle before the pale face of the princess. Giggling, the white foal paddled his legs in the air like he was swimming in an invisible sea. “How many times have I warned you not to lean out like that?” Celestia scolded affectionately, drawing the colt in until her warm breath stirred his golden mane. “You might fall! You don’t have wings!”
“Someday I will,” asserted the foal with the blunt honesty of the very young. “And then I’ll fly up to see the Mare in the Moon and sleep on clouds and—”
Celestia’s breath caught, a tiny hitch of air. “The Mare in the Moon? Where did you hear about that?”
Still swimming in the air, Blueblood offered his aunt an innocent, joyous smile. “Miss Roots took us down to the statue garden and told stories about all the statues.”
Celestia blinked. “All very well and good, my little one, but what does that have to do with the Mare in the Moon? As far as I know, there are no statues like that in the garden.” As well she should, considering what lengths she gone to in erasing their very existence for close to a thousand years. There were some scattered in towns and villages across the vast land, but she would not venture out in search of them. Nightmare Night was a night she spent mewed up in her chambers, drowning her sorrows in golden wine and pretending very hard she could not hear the joyous laughter and screams of over-excited children in the streets of Canterlot. For all that she tried to take pleasure in their youth and innocence, all it did was remind her that once she’s had a little sister who had laughed like that. She shook herself out of the memories and returned her attention to the colt.
Blueblood had tired of swimming in the air and managed to somehow turn himself upside down in her magical grip, back parallel with the floor and all four hooves sticking straight up in the air. “Nuh-uh,” he told her cheerfully, stretching his little legs to their fullest extension, like he might be able to touch the ceiling. “But one of the girls said Miss Roots wasn’t telling the whole story of the statue of you in the Lilac Grotto. She said her mother had told her that a really long time ago you had fought a Nightmare and locked her up there on the moon, and that it’s the nightmare looking down at us that’s the Mare in the Moon! Did you really fight a Nightmare? What’s a Nightmare look like? Were they really strong?” Blueblood tilted his head so he could look Celestia in the eyes from his topsy-turvy position, blue eyes bright with curiosity.
Celestia cleared her throat. She did not want him to know how close to tears his innocent questions had brought her. How easily she could break, this close to the day she had lost everything. “And what did Miss Roots say?” She briefly deliberated where she could send Grass Roots. Didn’t she have a sister in Fillydelphia? Perhaps a nice, extended family vacation until Blueblood had forgotten this line of questioning...
“She said it was all an old Pony Tale,” Blueblood chirruped, paddling his forelegs again. “That it was just a really old story. But you could beat a Nightmare, right, Auntie? You could fight the biggest of all Nightmares, right?”
Sighing, Celestia righted the foal and lowered him until his hooves touched the floor. “Of course I could.” She lowered her head to offer him an affectionate nuzzle.
He returned the gesture with enthusiasm, standing up on his hind hooves to throw forelegs around her neck in a hug.
“I fight Nightmares all the time, as does every pony who has them.” She shook her head gently free of his grasp. “Every bad dream is a Nightmare, and we all fight them in the dark of sleep.”
Comprehension lit Blueblood’s eyes. “O-oh...”
Relief filled her.
“So you’re telling me Auntie Luna is just a bad dream, then?” The colt’s innocent smile morphed into something infinitely more sinister and his blue eyes darkened to black.
Celestia staggered back, her hooves unsteady beneath her. “W-what—?” This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to soothe Blueblood’s childish fears and tuck him into bed. That was the way of it!
“Or maybe she’s just something you discarded when you didn’t need it any more. The royal sisters, hah! You did just fine without her for all those years, so you discarded her without a thought, changing her into the monster of Nightmare Night.” He stalked closer, growing with each step until he loomed over her, a massive foal-shaped monster. “Like you discard everything you no longer need. You scatter ponies in your wake like fallen leaves, because that’s all we are to you, leaves fallen from the trees when the sun turns her face away from us. Will you throw all of us away?”
Celestia screamed, flailing up out of her bed in a panic until she stood splay-legged beside it, shaking in every limb, ribs heaving with gasping breaths that bordered perilously close to sobs.
Another nightmare. Another night of broken sleep, while night terrors stalked her dreams. Drawing a deep, gasping breath, she flung open the balcony doors, letting the cool of night wash over her coat like a benediction of peace. Still trembling, she made her way out to the balcony, letting the silver light of the moon soothe away her fears.
Closing her eyes she tipped her head back, letting the cool breeze cool her face. “More nightmares...”
She opened her eyes and gazed on the serene face of the moon. The Mare in the Moon glared back malevolently.
Darkness encroached and wrapped around her limbs, holding her fast beneath the coldly hateful gaze of the Nightmare.
Screaming, Celestia struggled against the bonds trapping her. She hit the cold tile with a painful thud.
“Finally awake, sister?”
Screaming, Celestia flung herself backwards, away from the dark mare looming over her. Her legs felt like they were weighted, dragging through glue.
“Oh, for pity’s sake...”
Brightness flared and dozens of lamps lit themselves. The light dazzled her eyes for a few critical seconds.
Magic, cool blue and as familiar to Celestia as her own, eased the constriction around her legs, and Celestia realized belatedly that it was her own silken sheets that had twisted themselves around her limbs like rope.
Luna gazed down at her, worry in her aquamarine eyes. “Are you awake now?”
Celestia heaved herself to her feet, panting as the last vestiges of the nightmares faded in the bright, welcome glow of the lamps. “Luna...” her voice cracked, raw from screaming.
Sighing, Luna levitated a glass of water over to her. “Drink and calm yourself, sister. Before you bring the rest of the guard down on us, ready to defend you.”
Celestia took the glass and drained it, slowly taking in the fact that several of her guards stood at the ready behind her sibling, alert and searching for enemies. Several of Luna’s thestral guards had taken post at the doors to the balcony, their slitted eyes scanning the darkness.
Sighing heavily, Celestia let all the tension drain out of her muscles, lowering her mantled wings and letting her head droop. “Forgive me, my little ponies,” she murmured apologetically. “Apparently I am not immune to bad dreams.”
Luna tossed her head and whickered a soft laugh. “None of us are, sister. If we were there would be little work for me in the guarding of dreamers.” Luna shook her ethereal mane and turned her attention to the guards. “Dismissed. Return to your posts.”
The gray-coated thestrals were gone with the swiftness of thought, plunging off the balcony into the night sky. The white stallions hesitated only momentarily before saluting and withdrawing. When the door had clicked shut behind the last of them, Celestia let herself slump all the way back to the floor, legs too watery to hold her weight any longer. She heaved a shuddering sigh and looked back up at her sister imploringly.
Tsking, Luna enveloped Celestia in her magic and lifted her into the air. Her magic swiftly straightened the tangled bedcovers before depositing Celestia squarely in the middle of the huge bed. “Rest.”
Shuddering, Celestia stretched out one white pinion toward her sister. “Stay?” she implored.
Luna huffed, but her smile was gentle. She lofted into the air with a single beat of her wings and settled as lightly as a feather beside Celestia. One dark-blue wing stretched out to drape over Celestia’s withers, the warm feathers comforting and soothing. “Foolish Tia. Did you think I would leave you?”
Celestia curled her neck over Luna’s forelegs, fitting her head against the warmth of Luna’s breast. She could hear Luna’s heartbeat, steady and grounding, and let her breathing slow to match.
“I was not aware you dreamt so evilly that you would wake screaming and be afraid of shadows,” Luna mused softly, resting her head on Celestia’s neck. “I was not dreamwalking, Sister, to know what harried you so. What was it?”
“Foolish things,” Celestia murmured. “Memories twisting and taking a shape different from the reality. Nothing but shadows.”
“Tell me.” There was something of command in Luna’s tone and Celestia found herself reacting to it on an instinctive level.
“Blueblood.” She sighed and closed her eyes, pressing closer to her sister’s chest in an effort to make the dream— and the memories— less real.
“The letter?” Luna’s voice held no censure, only sadness mixed with interest.
Celestia winced away from the memory. “No. I-I remembered when he was young... when he had first come to live here. He was so young, all bright eyes and curiosity.” She couldn’t help but smile. “He was adorable, and made me happy. For a time, I could just live again. Just... be a pony— not the princess, or the mover of the sun, but just Auntie.”
Luna nuzzled her. “I would have wished nothing more for you. What changed?”
Sighing, Celestia fought the urge to tuck herself into a ball and cover her head with her wing. It had been her response to things she did not want to think about since she was tiny. How often during various altercations with surrounding countries, she had retreated into her tent or base and hid for a space until she could bring herself to deal with negotiations, declarations of hostilities, battle and the inevitable list of those lost. War hungered, and like all things, it fed.
She shook her head. Bad enough, her own cherished memories turned to nightmares. She had seen enough nightmares of flesh and blood and bone in battle, and would not like to relive them.
Luna nudged her. “What happened?” she repeated sternly.
Celestia stayed quiet, wings clamped tightly to her sides in unhappiness.
Teeth closed painfully on her poll.
Celestia jerked away from the pain, eyes wide with disbelief. “You bit me!”
Luna spat out a strand of shimmering mane and fixed Celestia with a wicked grin. “Indeed. And I will do it again if you continue to evade my questions.”
Ears flattened to her skull, Celestia glared at her sister. “You bit me,” she reiterated. “What are you, a foal?”
“Nay.” Eyes crinkling in amusement, Luna wrinkled her nose at her. “More like a mother, punishing a recalcitrant foal, I think, sister.”
Flattening her ears, Celestia shook her head vigorously.
Luna whickered a laugh. “Now, if you do not wish to be bitten again, I suggest you answer my questions.”
Celestia huffed, but didn’t move away from her sister’s warmth. She lowered her head to her forelegs and stared into shadows of the past. “What changed?” she repeated quietly. “He began to ask questions.”
“Is that not the perogative of foals? To ask; to learn all they may of the world around them?” Luna draped her head over Celestia again. “I have walked the dreams of many young ones and beneath childish fears, there is always that desire; to learn, to grow.”
Celestia turned her head, yearning to tuck it under a wing and hide. Questions. Luna’s questions and Blueblood’s. She could not escape them. “Yes. Questions I could not answer or ones that had no easy answers.”
“And that is also the domain of the young. To question what came before and force us to think.”
“About things I did not wish to think about!” The words burst out of her throat unbidden.
“Ah, and here is where we get to the crux of the problem,” Luna chided. “He asked, and you did what?”
“I—” Celestia clamped her teeth shut, closing her eyes. It did no good, the memories parading behind her eyelids.
“You—?” Luna prompted.
“I prevaricated.” Celestia breathed the word on a long, painful sigh. “I changed the subject whenever possible, or dodged the questions and directed his attention elsewhere.” She shivered convulsively. “I did my best to avoid answering him, to the point of only telling him selected bits of the truth. Eventually he stopped asking. And before I realized it, he had pulled away from me.”
A tear escaped her tightly closed eyelids and trickled down her muzzle. “He called me a liar, you know, when he... he left. He wasn’t altogether wrong.” Her voice broke on a sob.
Luna’s wing shifted around her, warm feathers covering more of her shaking body. “Lies of omission are still lies, sister. No matter the good intent behind them.” Her sigh gusted warm air over Celestia’s coat. “Believe me, that’s a truth I know all too well. So many times I hesitated to tell you of the bitterness and anguish growing inside my heart. How many times could you have turned me aside from my path of self-destruction, had I only confided the truth. So I said all was well, and continued that half-truth until I broke.”
Celestia felt a sob welling up in her throat and could not contain it. It emerged, the wail of a heart broken far too many times. “What h-have I d-done?”
Luna’s embrace tightened and she murmured soft words that Celestia couldn’t make out over the sound of her own agony.
Celestia wept unabashedly, like she hadn’t since the first night she had to raise the moon and look upon the profile of her sister— when she had realized the true extent of what she’d been forced to do to save her world from the darkness. She poured out all of her misery— compounded for a thousand years and recently reawakened by her nephew’s departure, into Luna’s soothing embrace. She cried until she had no more tears left and could only lie there, sniffling and aching.
At last she opened red, painful eyes and forced herself to lift her head. She was a princess of Equestria, a pony whom others looked to for guidance and comfort. She could not let them see her like this.
The mirror on her vanity showed the cold, hard truth; the broken wreck of a mare, huddled in her sister’s wings. Eyes inflamed from weeping, tear trails drying in her fur, and her breathing thick and loud from congestion, she was hardly the image of the unflappable sun-princess. With a forced chuckle, she said so aloud.
Luna’s wings withdrew with a rustle of feathers. She rose gracefully to her feet and took several steps to stand beside the mirror, studying the golden crown resting beneath it. “I think,” she said carefully. “That you have worn that mask too long. You told me Blueblood left to find himself, that he said he had become the mask he wore. I believe you should do the same, to find the mare beneath the perfect mask of a princess.”
Aghast, Celestia gathered her forelegs under her and shoved herself into a sitting position. “Luna, I can’t just go wandering off. I am Princess, a leader. I have to be here for my little ponies.”
Luna pinned back her ears. “As am I. Do you still trust me so little?”
“No!” Celestia protested, distraught. “No, I never meant that. But I have to raise the sun.”
Luna’s ears came back up. “I’ve no doubt I could do it if I were minded to, but that is not my point. Perhaps you should take some time to discover who you are outside of ‘Princess Celestia, sol invictus.’ Raise the sun, but take some time out. Meditate if need be, but... look for the mare behind the mask.” Luna sighed and just as suddenly offered a wavering smile. “I would like to meet her again.”
“What?” Celestia could only stare at her sister in befuddlement.
“You are not the pony you were before I was banished. You are still my beloved sister, but... not. I expected some change, yes, but not this controlled mare who looks at every situation as if it were a chessboard and she contemplating strategies. I had a sister who loved me, but was not afraid to correct me when I was wrong, or teased and pranked me to draw me out of a sulk. You act as if you are afraid that if you say one harsh word, I will become a monster again, and you have forgotten how to have fun.” Luna regarded her, unblinking, that small, fragile smile fixed upon her lips. “I would like to see that mare again.”
Shaken, Celestia took a deep breath and met that tiny smile with one of her own. “Perhaps I should find her.”
Luna’s expression could have risen the sun all by itself. “Perhaps you should.”