Celestia and Luna have lived long and suffered greatly. Luna, still insecure in her newfound grace, is anxious to secure herself against any further suffering. She sees in Twilight Sparkle (and in many others) the roots of ten thousand tragedies. Celestia proposes a wager.
There was a space between herself and the music, Celestia noted. Perhaps there had always been that space, keeping her from a final and complete enjoyment of the old music, and only now that it had been filled from time to time did she truly understand her own incompleteness.
Specifically, in Luna’s absence, listening to the old works and to the geniuses that came after seemed a little more hollow until at last she had forgotten all of her previous joy.
Sitting in the royal box, she felt again that space--filled, at present, by Luna of the sharpest eye and roving spirit--and wondered if it were something beyond mere loneliness. How adrift she had been without the dark to balance out the day. She wondered also if perhaps the world must change. But only for a moment. It was pointless to speculate much, and besides: she had already determined to enjoy these outings with her sister without any tiniest shadow of the past or its discontents to hang over her. They had apologized enough, and sat awkwardly enough, and generally done all sorts of things that were not enjoying one another, and it was high time they find something else to do.
Tonight was the symphony. She was going to introduce Luna to that one bar on Saddle Street in a few weeks, once she was sure Luna could stay in character. Maybe even that particular club beside it… Well. It would be more Luna’s style, honestly. In theory. But it was a bit scandalous and she was if nothing else given to an abiding and occasionally boring sense of propriety.
Luna stirred slightly, and Celestia watched her with interest. The face she watched so intently for any sign of expression was more or less a stoic mask. It was hard for the Sun to understand the Moon’s mercurial nature, but she did at least recognize it for what it was. She remembered in equal measures those times when Luna appeared to be moved and those when she did not, and had found in both cases that there was always more beneath the face her sister wore than what was at first visible.
It was that mercurial depth that had been both their undoing, really, hadn’t it?
She pursed her lips and returned her focus to the music.
Another night, and Celestia sat alone in her study. It was late--far more late than she was usually wont to keep herself alert and up, and yet the usual wariness of a long day full of work did not come. It was nice, she supposed ruefully, not to feel worn down. It was not nice to not be able to sleep because of it.
She turned the page of her book, and the noise was like thunder in the quiet.
Reading was familiar. She had, after all, been reading almost as long as there had been letters or symbols by which to read. It was something she had shared for untold years with her sister, as they both gleefully poured over the rare scroll in their endless young journeys. Later, it had been a point of connection between herself and Twilight, that most precocious and worthy of fillies.
History. Reading about history had always been strange. Reading about oneself is, after all, a bit odd. Why had she chosen this? What had led her to--
She stopped reading as soon as she felt the new presence step silently out of the darkest shadows of her study’s corner.
“Good evening,” she said, not looking up. She smirked into her book. “From whence do you come, sister mine?”
Luna’s voice was flat. “From going to and fro along the earth, and from walking through the aether, if you truly wish to know.” She did not yet advance from her corner and so sat in the darkness beyond the reach of Celestia’s glow. “You are up late.”
“Yes. Sleep eludes me, I fear. It happens from time to time.” Celestia cast about for a bookmark and saved her place before stretching. She smiled at the glittering eyes of her sister in the darkness.
How unalike they were, an in how many ways. To those outside their world of two, Luna appeared very different. But in private they were themselves more often. Celestia let some of her glory slip and she shone softly. Her eyes were like searchlights and her mane felt like the touch of fire. Luna sank into the shadows, first simply by choice and then before your eyes she would seem softer somehow, as if she were fading, and then at last her eyes would watch you from the darkness and her body would be unascertainable. Celestia alone could illuminate the depths of Luna’s true darkness, but more often than not she chose not to. It was, to be frank, rude. Also, a bit unpleasant for her little sister to endure up close.
“I could help,” Luna said.
“I’ve no doubt you could.” Celestia smiled at her more fully now. “I didn’t wish to disturb you for trifles, and I was enjoying wearing myself out with a book. How has the night passed?”
“It passes strangely and in deepest thought.” Still, her tone was flat. Celestia found it, firstly, odd. “As to my duties, Court was light. The Inspection of the Night’s Guard went rather well, I’d say. Your suggestion to open up recruitment to the other tribes has not backfired yet, though the reception was mixed.”
“Traditionalists?” Celestia asked, leaning forward to rest her head on her forelegs. “Of course. There are always traditionalists who haven’t quite grasped how fleeting their traditions have proved.” She sighed and tilted her head to the side a bit. “And what are your thoughts?”
She was always careful not to look directly at Luna when her Glory shone through. Her lighted sight saw through most everything, and in more ways than one. It was a bit rude, really, she thought idly.
“In the past, it seemed foolish to expect of dayponies to watch the whole night,” Luna said, losing some of her flat aloofness. The workings of her guard had always delighted the younger princess. “And yet, I have found that the world has moved on even in this. You spoke the truth when you said to me once that ponies now rise at all hours of the night. The new conscripts have a few unicorns in their number and I found them satisfying.”
“Good. I’ve tried to keep the Nightwatch in mind so that I might give it back to you as a gift.”
She could not see Luna smile, but she knew that she did. The Sun saw all things, after all. Just and unjust alike.
“You’ve something on your mind,” Celestia said.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to speak about it? You know that I am always here for you.”
“That is why I have come,” Luna said.
There was a brief silence. Celestia looked at everything, never focusing anywhere near Luna for too long. They both knew this was to Luna’s own benefit. Her sight illuminated much.
What a strange picture this would be to her little ponies. Even to Twilight, freshly minted a princess as she was. It had taken Cadance a few years to become used to Celestia’s aura of Glory. She was still not entirely comfortable with Luna’s almost material darkness.
Her study was divided right down the middle between searing light and deepest darkness. From behind her desk, enchanted against her own blisteringly hot touch, Celestia shone like the sunrise from five feet away. She had blinded a pony this way before. Several, in fact, and all at once. The one and only time she had lt slip her fullest aura during her long reign, the only witness had died. And beyond the boundary of twilight somewhere along the nice modest rug there was an ever more solid wall of midnight. It looked solid to the touch, like a roiling oil that billowed. Like it was alive. It was, in a way. Celestia tried not to think about it.
“I see things,” Luna began, slowly. Carefully. “I see many things, and I am alarmed at them, amazed at them. The world has changed much since last I walked among ponies, but not in ways that I like.”
“Things have always changed.”
Luna snorted. “Yes, I know that as well as you. Speak not the obvious, dearest and largest of candles.”
Celestia smiled and waited for Luna to tease out the rest of her argument.
Another difference: the sun saw and was constant. Mostly. The Moon jumped and changed and altered. The Moon’s fury could die or become something else entirely with ease, but the Sun’s anger when at last it was woken was as eternally unbearable as the height of summer. So Celestia was patient. Luna was not.
“But a curious mood came upon me recently as I listened to the things that our servants say when they believe we do not hear them. And I found that the more ponies I listened to, the more the feeling grew.”
Celestia frowned at last. “And what have you heard?”
She thought again of her sister’s fury. “They know not who guards them! I, whom they despise, no matter how hard she works for their peace!”
“Treachery.” Luna growled then, wordless. “Sister, I confess to you that I begin to see a shadow over the hearts of so many. They treat you less as their liege and more as a granddam upon which they dote. You are loved, yes, but not respected. This I could perhaps ignore as merely a product of an age of soft living…”
Celestia made to interject, but Luna’s pause was short. She rushed on.
“But what concerns me most, and it pains me greatly to say so, is that I fear the possibility of corruption arising from this laxitude. It was not until the land grew peaceful that the seeds of my own discontent were sown. I worry that history may repeat itself… and not with me playing the part of the fallen.”
Celestia’s careful admonitions, all planned out, fell apart then. They collapsed suddenly and completely. “What? You’re worried that… soft living will breed betrayal? That’s a bit of a stretch.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps--but I pray you listen, I have had my ears to the ground and to the walls, and I do not like what I have heard with them.
“What have they said?”
A short pause. Luna coughed. “The nobles grumble—”
“As they always have.”
“The guards are prone to faction—”
“Of political sort? Because if this has to do with the rivalry between squadrons, I’m well aware. It’s harmless.”
“But these are trifles. They were the appetizer and I too dismissed them,” Luna cut in, sounding frustrated. “Will you not do me the courtesy of listening?”
Celestia thought about the space between herself and the music. The empty aching.
“I’ll listen.”
Luna sighed. “Good.” The darkness seemed to move about her, but Celestia could not see why. “The nobles have let themselves become complacent in regards to your power, and so think of you as somepony to be toyed with. Of course, you are not, and certain houses have always vexed sane folk, but in the days of our youth such ponies did not dare to stand against us for they knew our power and our wisdom.”
Celestia snorted at wisdom. “I would agree to the first, at least. They feared the hammer of Selene.”
She imagined Luna grinning, her fangs flashing. She almost thought she saw them. But she did not see either of these things. As always, she saw only what she might see at midnight in the mirror: nothing that suggested form but frustrated it.
“The way they see you—see us, I might add—now,” Luna began slowly, “is dangerous. It is dangerous not because they will succeed because the houses are shadows of their former selves in every way, but because they may yet find themselves in the perfect time and place.”
“Be specific.”
The eyes in the darkness, so like stars, seemed to draw back further in. “I cannot be. It is more dread than suspicion. I cannot abide this variable. We must test our new comrades. We must know they will not… will not do as I have done. Anypony is fallible.”
Celestia took a deep breath. Ah. She saw where this was going.
“You think they’ll try to get to Twilight or Cadance. Or her daughter, eventually.”
“I think that it is inevitable that some malcontent will try, or that perhaps… perhaps they themselves…”
Celestia shook her head.
“Luna, this is absurd. For a variety of reasons, I can’t go down this path with you. Firstly, why would Twilight or Cadance turn against you or I? I know for a fact that Twilight loves me and that she considers you a dear friend. Further, I have ponies who were once students of mine in the Crystal Palace. They gossip aplenty, and from them I have determined that my--our--niece is not simply a delightful and happy mare but a decidedly good-hearted ruler with little tolerance for the proud and the haughty and endless patience for the weak and the hard-pressed.”
“Cadance I could perhaps be persuaded about,” Luna said. “She is older, more stable. Tied down by marriage to a pony who spent years in your devoted service… yes, I will concede that battle to you, but the campaign continues. Twilight Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle--what can there be made of her? You say she loves you… and I believe it. Would I not also love the goddess who hedged about my life protection and who gave me all good things whenever I wished?”
Celestia’s patience thinned, but did not break. “Luna, as I love you, you will remember that we both owe Twilight a great deal.”
“I do not mean to attack her.”
“You come closer and closer.”
“Then hear me say also that I love her dearly as my first friend in this forsaken age,” Luna grumbled. As if ashamed. No, Celestia thought suddenly, as if affronted that anypony had dared to question that such was ever true. “But as I love her, if you are to speak of the bonds of affection, so I also fear her and for her. She is impressionable and young. Malleable, malleable, all too malleable. Changing, more so than we three. I ask you again: you say she loves you, but does she love you, or does she love the dawn-colored hoof that proffers all good gifts?”
Celestia, builder of cities and giver of good gifts indeed, squeezed her eyes shut and thought. She paused for the space of a second, but within her mind worked feverishly.
Twilight had been her student in one way or another for fourteen years. Admitted at six, graduating through the first five years in three, becoming her primary student at thirteen and her only student at fifteen. She was extraordinary.
And over time, Celestia had heard ponies insinuate what her sister spoke openly. They did so with every bright student who found him or herself in one on one lessons with the mare who spoke to the sun. It was an inevitability, as much as ponies imagined the day was. She had borne it and helped her precious young pupils to ignore such suggestions of favoritism.
But it wasn’t as if that suggestion was without foundation.
Yes, like any endeavour carried out on Earth, Celestia’s tutelage of the best and brightest of the three tribes within her principality sometimes faltered. Students who should have done great things did not—some lost faith in themselves, some lost faith in her—and there had been those few, those damnable few, who had been false in the end. Who had truly only loved the gift and not the giver.
Every single one had wounded her heart. The absence of their letters she felt even hundreds of years later like the loss of a child. Because, honestly, it was the loss of a child. Each student that turned from the light to pursue their own greed was a foal torn from her warm embrace.
By that accounting, she had lost many foals. The last had been Sunset Shimmer.
“Twilight is…”
“Sacrosanct, more or less,” Luna said.
“Her person? I assure you, she has been in danger.”
“Yes, dangers she was well equipped beforehoof for. How convenient. Think! Think, I just wish that you would think with me a moment. Every challenge, every door, a key has lain waiting for her merely to grab it when at last she saw. Indirectly, I will give you that. But you have plucked her out of every fire and soothed her burns with honeyed kisses and silver words.you have put her a little lower than ourselves in the order of things without having ever truly tested her.”
“Luna…” Celestia sighed. “What else do you want? I tested her ability and her lore. I tested her courage. She tested her courage independently of me. Sister, for goodness sakes, Twilight has proved her mettle and her heart already.”
“She has proved that she is gracious in victory. She has proved that she has courage and great heart… in the first blush of danger. But she has not had to face the only trial that matters.”
Celestia tried not to grind her teeth. “And that would be?”
“Failure. Utter failure. Total defeat. Absolute loss.”
Celestia did many things to channel her frustrations and her annoyance. When she sat in Court, she massaged her temples and closed her eyes. When she worked alone in her office, she doodled rude pictures. When she was in her natural state, shining as the sun, she turned up the temperature.
It was already hotter, but with every passing moment it felt as if the sun was dancing closer and closer.
“I am not going to do something irreversible to Twilight in order to appease your unreasonable worry,” Celestia said, trying to balance steel with calm. “You know that it’s wrong. It would be a betrayal not only of the trust that our power is a sign of but of Twilight’s own trust in us. In you, personally, as her friend and ally… in me as her former teacher and as he friend.”
“Then I will do it. I never intended for you to do anything.” Luna sniffed. She seemed to edge further back into the darkness as the room began to simmer. “You know that my realm is my own and is inviolate.”
Celestia did know this. She knew the nature of things.
But she growled. “Luna, you would also betray me, then? Even while you ramble about others doing the same, you will do so to Twilight and I in a single fell swoop.”
The shadows dissolved with shocking suddenness and Luna stepped forward with wild eyes. “Nay! I would rather that you would listen and not force my wrath! Will you not for a moment question your own choices? Even if only to safeguard us all?”
“There is wisdom, there is discernment, and then there is a lack of faith. A lack of trust. A lack, sister, of love.” Celestia struggled to bring herself back under control. The room cooled slightly.
Luna looked away. “I do not wish to lose another. Do you want to see Twilight banished to… to… I do not even know what the Elements would do to her.”
“Stone, most likely,” Celestia said softly. “If I had to guess.” She too looked away.
“If you know of a way to help guard Twilight’s heart from the burdens that come with power… if you know some charm or spell that can soothe the heartaches of longevity or make meaning of the repetition of the sufferings that it brings…” Luna shrugged.
Celestia was silent.
“Twilight Sparkle is my friend,” Luna continued, “but I am afraid. Did you not think that I too was once your friend? Your confidant? Your sister? And yet…”
“Please don’t,” Celestia spoke at last.
“If I do not, then you shall never be prepared.”
But her sister refused. She shook her head. “You’re only going to rile up our mutual friend and hurt both of us in the process. I can’t stop you if you go that route and I know that won’t listen. I just want you to be prepared.” Celestia stood up straight then, and looked Luna in the eye. “And I will extract an oath from you.”
Luna’s brow furrowed, but then smoothed. “Speak your oath.”
“You will not touch Twilight’s person. You will do no physical harm, and you will try to minimize any damage in the world beyond dreams to others or Twilight herself. I’ve seen your work,” she added.
Luna flinched.
Imperiously, Celestia rolled on. “You will have three nights, and then you must swear to me that you will be satisfied. Three nights. Four, if you will go to her at the end and confess what you have done. I will not make you swear to do so, so do not bother with bickering.” Her voice softened. “I will tell you, however, that it would be the right thing to do.”
They watched each other for a moment, and then Luna bowed slightly. “I swear to you these things, that I will not hurt Twilight nor will I by inaction let her come to harm because of my trial. I will keep Twilight’s trial confined to her alone. And when the three days of her suffering have come to an end, I shall confront her myself and reveal my part in her sorrows, and we shall deal face to face.”
There was a tense moment where perhaps they both thought, as one, that this would be where they began to erode the bonds of growing trust. Celestia could do nothing, by the ancient law, older than herself. Dreams were Luna’s to command. Luna was bound, however, by her word. The geas placed on her was strong.
Celestia and Luna, Princess and the advocate of darkness. Locked circling one another once again.
Celestia thought of the hollow feeling between herself and the music.
“Do what you will,” she said, and then returned to her chair. Luna vanished hurriedly. No, she fled. Celestia slumped and her light dimmed. “Do what you will,” she told the empty study.
It was just nightmares. Dreams never hurt ponies.
So why did she feel that she had let some terrible thing occur right under her nose?
Tirek was gone, as was the library. Most of town was history. Had Twilight cared enough at that moment to lift her head, she would have seen small fires sputtering along the path as the few ponies who had remained behind worked quickly to put them out. She might have seen the village square torn up by Tirek’s magic, and the great furrows he had dug trying to shoot her down.
She didn’t really need to see Ponyville to know what state it was in.
But… but it could have been so much worse. She knew that, even if she couldn’t feel anything good about that fact. Most of the town had gotten out alive, after all. Tirek hadn’t shot her down, he hadn’t broken her…
If she had had the strength or the inclination to get up and survey her ruined home, she might have seen them arrive.
Applejack arrived first, haggard and worn, her face dark with ash that soiled her down past her coat where it rubbed her skin raw. Her hat was gone. A trifling detail, sure, but it was the sort of thing Twilight noticed, when the world was just a bit off its balance and the numbers not quite lining up. Her hair was singed and her brow split by a nasty cut that had scabbed over. A loose, poorly--applied bandage had been applied but it was caked with blood already.
Two mares, and no words. Applejack stood next to the reclining Twilight in the ash for a few moments, working her jaw like it was sore, and then she left. Twilight heard her rummaging for something in the other rooms. Were they rooms if the ceiling was gone?
Something ripped. She heard running water. Of all the things to still work. The sink. Amazing. Just… just amazing. She shifted a bit, her wings fluttering weakly in protest as agony crawled up her side.
Right. That was why she wasn’t moving.
Applejack returned. Twilight thought she recognized the new bandage around Applejacks’ head for a moment--her sheets? An old pre-ascension dress she’d held on to? Who knew? She didn’t, or if she did the absolute absurdity of caring about it at this juncture defeated her.
Applejack sat against what was left of the wall. She settled in, keeping away from the more splintery, jagged parts of the old tree’s base. And she watched. She waited.
More silence.
Silent enough to hear the other two coming along, in fact. One’s steps were heavy, forceful, as if she were trying to stomp something out rather than merely walking. The other’s were timid, as if this were the last place their owner wished to tread.
Twilight waited, and then lifted her head.
Rainbow Dash was to her right. Fluttershy, downcast, to her left. Applejack ahead of her. They waited. She supposed they waited for her, so she spoke.
“Well. It’s done.”
“So it is.” Applejack coughed and wiped her chin. “Reckon there ain’t much left.”
“How bad? I was a bit caught up.”
Applejack just snorted. Nopony said anything for awhile.
“A lot of town was on fire,” Rainbow answered, catching the thread. “Most ponies got far enough away. A… a couple didn’t. A few.”
“About two dozen,” Applejack said.
Twilight watched lazily as Rainbow winced. “Yeah. Yeah, about that many. Most of the shops are burnt up into nothing, about half the town at least is unrecognizable. It was better than it coulda been, I guess.”
“Like hell,” Applejack growled.
“It was,” Twilight cut in. “It was better than it could have been. We’re alive. All six of us, firstly, and most of the town. But that’s not important right now. I’m just… I’m glad you girls are safe.”
Applejack, who had half-risen, sat heavily again. “Well, I could say the same. I’m glad you girls are safe. Glad you made it out, Twi. It was touch and go, there.”
“Spent most of it losing.”
“Hey, you were pretty awesome.” Rainbow smiled down at her, but it faded. “Just… I guess it was just a little more than we expected. I mean… I don’t know. I just didn’t see it happening again.”
“Nopony did.”
“You think so? Y’all really think that?”
Three heads swiveled. They waited for her to go on, but mostly they all saw her for the first time. Her chest heaved, her face flushed with a barely contained fury. Twilight winced pre-emptively, wanting to say something, anything to cut off the storm she could feel coming, but nothing came in time.
“Cause I wonder just how much I believe that,” Applejack continued. “I mean, think ‘bout it, Twi. They knew all about him, didn’t they? They knew to give you all their power last time, and they had a plan. This time? Where were they? Where was Celestia and Luna when we needed ‘em?”
She spat.
“Applejack, wait--”
“No, I’m kinda with her on this one,” Rainbow said. “I mean, I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe? I don’t know. I just know that they weren’t here, and we really could have used them.”
“And, yeah, if I’m gon’ entertain the notion that they genuinely had no clue what might be comin’, then I hold this against them--that they never showed hide nor tail here in Ponyville where it all went down. I know they can get here fast if the need’s pressin’, and where were they?”
“It’s not that fast,” Twilight said, but Applejack rolled on.
“Is it cowardice? Or is it somethin’ else? Were they afraid? I can understand bein’ afraid. Hell, I was afraid and I was here! Seein’ a thing usually makes it easier to turn back towards it and go down fighting. It’s the thinking that kills ya, the not-seein’, the not-knowing. But I coudl almost forgive that, but it ain’t that. No, the more I think it the less sense it makes. It don’t fit their character. I mean, yeah, she ain’t been exactly quick to jump into the fray since you came along, but she never really hid so much as sentcha.”
“If you think that fear would keep Celestia from helping her little ponies,” Twilight began, forcing each word to be hard and crisp, “then you’re so wrong that I’m honestly not sure where to begin.”
Twilight struggled to stand. In that moment, just for that moment, all the enmity was gone. They surged forward to support her trembling, to set her hooves atop the ruins. But as she steadied, she gently pushed them aside and continued her speech.
“When Tirek came the first time, they gave up their power in desperate hope that I might be able to save Equestria. That hope was so small, so remote, so dependent upon me. They chose to give up everything that protected them in order to save everyone.”
Rainbow frowned, but Applejack stomped her hoof and leaned back in. “Maybe, but I could argue they were throwin’ the scent off of them and onto you.”
“And you’d be wrong, AJ. Dead wrong. When they did that, they did it for all of us. Even if you think it was a bad plan, you have to see that they were trying. We can move on from there--Celestia has spent so long keeping Equestria safe that you and I can hardly imagine it all.”
“And gettin’ richly rewarded, too.”
“Where is this coming from?”
Applejack seethed. “From… From… Hell, Twi, look around. You seen this town? It’s gone. Ponies are dead, and they sat pretty in Canterlot in sight of us.”
“We don’t know that they just sat there at all,” Twilight said. “Tirek didn’t come like he did last time. He didn’t fight like he did last time. There wasn’t any power-stealing. Whatever that artifact he had was, it changed him. Don’t you remember how the princesses both helped me with that evacuation plan? You know, the one that helped most of us get out alive?” Twilight pointed a hoof at her. “Applejack, you think I don’t care? I do. This is my home. I’m in the literal ashes of my actual home. Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“What could they have been doing, then?” Rainbow Dash cut in. “Where were they?”
“I don’t know.” Twilight swallowed. “I don’t know. And you know what? Neither do you. Do you know? Did you see them? Did you know what they were doing then? Do you know now?”
“I mean, no--”
“Then just say you don’t and stop there. You don’t know. I can go off what I know for sure, or I can idly speculate about… about b-bullshit until the sun goes back down. We all can.” Twilight’s chest was heaving. She had advanced on Rainbow, who had scooted back. “What are you trying to say, anyway?”
And, at last, Fluttershy spoke.
“I think… I’m sorry, Twilight. It’s just that… It’s just that you were the one who was there for us, after all. Not Luna or Celestia or the Royal Guard. It was you.”
Twilight’s hoof dropped.
“I was the one closest. It’s my home. And I let it burn.”
“Oh, not at all. You were defending us all the while.”
“You girls helped. Where… where’s Pinkie?”
“Cheerilee’s with her,” Rainbow murmured, looking down at the ground.
“Rarity too,” Fluttershy said. “Twilight, why shouldn’t we be upset? Did you know that Pokey Pierce, down the street, is dead?”
“I… I didn’t.” Twilight swallowed again. “I wasn’t sure who all…”
“Our friends are dead,” continued the shyest, the quietest, the kindest of their circle. “And when they were dying, the ponies we loved and trusted more than anypony else simply… weren’t there. But you were. Twilight, you were there.”
“And we trust you, sugar. We trust you.”
“Those two can go… whatever. I just know I trust you. You’re the only one we can trust,” Dash said. “Just you.”
Fluttershy nodded. They all leaned in. They hugged a stock-still Twilight, who couldn’t bear to look down and meet their eyes.
“I… I appreciate that,” Twilight said as delicately as she could. She hugged them back.
What was there to say?
It was ridiculous. It was foolish and childish and reactionary and… and…
And, see, there they came--the images. The heat of battle. Herself, soarin upwards at a towering Tirek as his hands burnt with balefire, as his eyes burnt with malice, as her home burnt. The smell of seared flesh and smoke, of uprooted earth and burning thatch roof. The sky absent of sun and devoid of moon, just red--crimson red, blood red, whatever words seemed more fitting--
And it really had been in sight of the castle, hadn’t it?
Would there be a letter? Would Celestia come down, parting the clouds? Would she crack the sky like an egg, hot like lightning from Heaven, to shield her beleaguered student? Would Luna come to hide her from the heat of the day?
She didn’t know.
But she said yes, regardless.
“They’ll come.”
They looked at her, and she cleared her throat. Her eyes burned.
“They’ll come. Now, or later, and we’ll know. I don’t have the answers you want, girls. I don’t, and I’m sorry. But I know Princess Celestia and I love her. I know Luna and I trust her. If they weren’t here, there was a reason. And if they don’t come? Then I’ll go myself. I’ll ask her. Because I know, I really, truly know, that she’ll answer me.”
Luna detached herself from the dream and without ceremony it dissolved. She grimaced into the aether, and it did nothing back. It was expressionless, blank like a stoic face upon the first water.
It had been a poorly constructed illusion, and a poorly conceived test. She would have to try harder, be more stern. She would have to reach deeper.
This proved nothing, really.
Luna drifted past other dreams, still holding Twilight Sparkle’s sleeping spirit between her forelegs. It was dimmer now, recovering and preparing for its next dreaming sight. Dreams expanded and faded, like a breathing chest of a sleeping mare. She remembered once how Celestia had asked her if they were like living things, and she had shook her head and said--no, sister, they are living things. They live like ponies live for they are ponies in ways that words cannot express, that only seeing can understand, that only touching can comprehend. And only she, in these remote and distant future days, still walked among dreams and touched them.
This was the place where she felt most herself. This was the sanctum.
And in her sanctum, amidst the dreaming, teeming masses, Luna felt the pricking of doubt along her spine.
Yes, her dream had been hamfisted. Sure. It had been artless. She was out of practice! Such was a first attempt at a careful task after such a long hiatus. Twilight’s answer had been perfectly acceptable. It just wasn’t satisfying.
And why did she care? Why, really, was she so worried?
Something pulled at Luna and she blinked before looking away from Twilight’s dream.
Luna lived severally, one might could say. One would be wrong, of course, but it was easy to see where the idea would come from. She slept, but she was wide awake. Her body was still and her eyes were closed, but her spirit burned brightly in the space between spaces. So when her sister stepped into the center of her ornate ebony chamber, Luna felt her coming long before she let her mask slough off.
The Night’s Shepherd did not immediately rise to greet her sister. She returned her attention to the glowing dream. Twilight’s dream.
She felt something, looking into the roiling chaos of fractured, writhing light. Something a bit like regret. With a sigh, Luna leaned in and kissed the surface. It tasted first of water, then of wine, and when she pulled away she could almost hear laughter. In her grasp, the dimmed dream glowed brightly again and inside Twilight flew high in a beautiful blue sky.
It wasn’t much. It wasn’t complicated or calculated or rehearsed, but somehow it felt deserved. And it was nice, wasn’t it? Luna loved to fly. She prefered to fly in less harsh light, true, but she loved the wind in her mane and along her wings. Surely Twilight would as well?
With that, Luna let Twilight’s dream go and she was once again in the material world. She opened her eyes.
Celestia’s mask was gone. She shone with Glory. Luna’s own bounds, so comforting to mortal eyes, were loosened. Everywhere but where her sister stood, the room was shrouded in a darkness so thick that it seemed to blot out the idea of light.
“How passes the night, sister?” she asked into that darkness, and Luna regarded her.
“It passes strangely, and in deepest thought. You are awake at a late hour.”
“I had trouble sleeping.”
“You might have come to me, and sought a cure for your ailment.”
“Yes. And you think I do not have that on my mind already?”
Luna paused. Ensconced in her Glory, she could tilt her head and regard her sister with suspicious looks unhindered by the prospect of discovery.
“I doubt it.”
“I was considering it. But you know what I would first ask of you.”
Luna ground her teeth together.
In old days, experimenting with wild magic, she had changed her form many times. In crafting her perfect hunters and huntresses of all the things which stalked in darkness, she had used herself as the proving ground. The fangs had stayed. Hidden, usually. But she’d kept them. They were useful, from time to time. Now was not one of those times. She felt the bottom ones dig into her lip and she held back a little yelp.
“Speak,” Luna said. “I have been to and fro along the earth, in the immaterial world, and seen many things there.”
“Yes. I know. And you’ve seen Twilight too, I take it. Unless I have erred.”
“I saw her, yes.”
“Then, have you reached some conclusion to this matter? Surely you’ve seen that all of this was for nothing, Luna. Twilight Sparkle trusts you and loves you, as I trust and love you.”
Luna sneered from her bed and without a second thought she stabbed at the light with words. “Yes, tell me again how you wished for my help in sleeping well this night, most trusting sister.”
Celestia flinched. There was a long silence.
“She has not renounced us yet,” Luna allowed.
Celestia did not answer.
“I… I gave her a dream of flying.” Her voice sounded so small, so very small, and Celestia just stood there like a statue, like a painting. “It was… I hoped it was a nice dream.”
Celestia took a deep breath, and then… didn’t say anything. Emotions warred across her face and found themselves locked in stalemate. There was no breakthrough, and no answer.
“I have to know,” Luna said, hoping for something. “I must know beyond all doubt.”
“There is no spot beyond all doubt.”
“There must be some sort of certainty.”
Celestia shook her head and closed her eyes. “Luna, if you demand an absolute answer of all things then you will forever be disappointed. That is not the issue between us at present.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“I cannot.”
“But you still want to interfere.”
“For your sake, yes. This is foolish and self-destructive.”
Luna growled. “I need only two more nights, and then I will be satisfied.”
Celestia’s eyes for the first time that night found her in the darkness. For a brief second, Luna felt as if their light might tear her aura away. “And are you certain of that? You who would want certainty, who would demand absolute evidence, are you certain? Do you feel that you are on a path to satiation now? Will you have had your fill of discovery in two nights?”
“You don’t know.”
“And you know less than I. More and more, this is clear to me.” Celestia squeezed her eyes shut. Luna watched as she took deep breaths. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Will you still speak to Twilight when it is done?”
The bonds that kept each sister from wanton invasion of the other’s domain tightened around her. Luna felt them like chains and she winced as she answered, knowing the singing universe would hold her to it: “Yes, as I had planned already.”
Celestia stared at her for another moment. She bit her lip.
“Fine. Just… Please, Luna. I release you from any oath you might think you’ve sworn that would compel this. I repudiate anything I might have said that has driven you to doubt so severely your friends. It isn’t just Twilight. You’ve barely spoken to me in two weeks. You hide from your seneschal and end your court early. I love you. Please, just see that.”
“I do.”
“If you did, you would not do what you do.”
“You don--” Luna stopped, and turned around.
“I’m sorry.”
“I am also sorry.”
Celestia still glowed, still burned behind her, hot like the sun. Her back felt like it was midday, and her front felt like the surface of the dead moon.
“I will retire. Please try to get some rest, sister,” Celestia said, her voice slipping back into a stoic, formal tone before it softened again. “I’ll see you at breakfast?”
A question.
“Of course.”
And then there were no more words. Celestia trotted out. She closed the door carefully.
There was once in the town of Ponyville a mare named Twilight Sparkle.
She lived and loved and sang and talked and walked and raced and read, as ponies are wont to, and she did these things in contentment. That she was, strictly speaking, a princess did very little to change this. She was by all accounts blameless and upright, doing good and shunning evil as best as a pony could be expected to--and often with more success than the average pony could claim.
She owned a castle in the center of Ponyville, and lands beyond the forest that were a gift from her once-liege. Some said that she was the greatest pony that had lived in centuries, but she never said this of herself. She hosted her closest friends in comfort and security every week, feasting them and asking after them, and often she gave them gifts, crafted by her own magic with love, for she was ever saying in her heart that a mage’s work was never done.
On this day, that had so often found Twilight of Ponyville up bright and early with coffee in hand found her sitting in bed, rubbing her eyes.
Waking up and bursting into tears is not a good way to begin a day.
Not that she understood those tears, really. She’d laid in bed, feeling strange, and then had come the rushing sadness, and then the scrambled thoughts of breakfast and Spike and the old library and the smell of books and the sound of the stairs beneath her feet and the coughing as the ashes hung in the air…
It had just been a lot to handle. But she was alright now. Not in that she suddenly felt happy again, because she didn’t. The morning was sort of spoiled, but it wasn’t as if a spoiled morning was the end of the world. She’d lost a lot to Tirek, and she’d had nightmares for weeks. One day, they would stop for good--all of the other threats and monsters had faded. So would he. They all did. She was always the last one standing.
Twilight sighed for perhaps the fifteenth time since she’d sat down, and at last Rarity could stand it no more.
“Twilight, I say this with all due love, but if you sigh even one more time I will be forced to take drastic measures.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow at her. “Drastic measures?”
“Very drastic.”
“So are we talking--”
“We are going to talk about nothing but what is troubling you,” Rarity said firmly.
Before Twilight could object, the third member of their party coughed and both mares paused to look at her.
Fluttershy sank slightly into the bath before straightening up and clearing her throat. “If Twilight doesn’t want to tell us, we shouldn’t bully her into it.”
Rarity gave both of them a sheepish grin. “Perhaps.”
Twilight spared a grateful smile of her own at Fluttershy before turning back to Rarity.
“Honestly,” she began, “it’s alright. Stars know I should be fine talking about it, especially with you girls. It’s… dreams, really.”
There was a beat of silence as Fluttershy shifted in the water, and then she spoke. “Well, um… what sort of dreams, Twilight? Bad dreams? Oh dear… What about?”
“Tirek.”
Rarity huffed. “Ghastly.”
Twilight smirked. “Yes, that’s as good a word as any. It’s… I mean, it isn’t that big of a deal. Nightmares can’t hurt you, after all. When Tirek was gone, and my house and… I had bad dreams for a while, and that was normal, and then they stopped.”
“But it leaves you out of sorts,” Rarity offered. She hummed. “That also seems natural, darling. Perfectly so. Do you wish to talk about it? The attack, the library?”
“No, no I’ve dealt with all that.” She shrugged. “I just feel… I don’t know. Down.”
“Well, that’s no good. We’ll have to rectify that,” Rarity said.
“Aloe’s massage can outdo any bad dream,” Fluttershy said, and chuckled. “We can distract you. And if you don’t feel better with us, we can always take you to Sugarcube Corner.”
“Yes, Pinkie is sure to dash any nightmare’s stranglehold,” Rarity added, sliding closer. “And besides, you’ve been cooped up all week! I say we make a day of it. I know I have no pressing plans.”
“I’m okay with that,” Fluttershy said.
And Twilight smiled at them both. “Thanks, girls. I’ll shake it off.”
In strangest climes Luna lay dreaming. Around her--mostly void, partially dreams.
They hung there like bizarre ornaments, as if the aether were dressed for holidays that never came. Or, perhaps, they were like clouds, amorphous and journeying towards whatever final destination awaited them at the wind’s will and whim.
Luna did not watch them for long. Her gaze slid off.
The one dream she could not lose track of was secure once again between her hooves, shining and brilliant.
Twilight’s dreams were bright, usually. Luna had always liked that about her. Some souls dreamt in chaotic, dim fuss. Others were shockingly lucid. And then, lastly, there were souls like Twilight’s that dreamed in vivid color. These souls were the curious and the brilliant, the creators and the artists. These she remembered.
Luna rarely found the silence of the Aether bothersome, but now it irked her. It was so… so very full.
The Aether bent and she conjured up an image of her sister. Shining, regal even here, Celestia smiled.
“Good evening.”
The voice was… no, it was accurate. Perhaps, at most, a bit too saccharine. Such was the nature of a simulcrum, of course.
“Hello, sister,” she said.
“Where have you come from?” Celestia asked her, or rather Luna asked herself with the puppet whose eyes were bright.
“To and fro,” she told Celestia and herself. “To and fro among the many earths that ponies can imagine.”
“Have you considered my servant, Twilight?” the Puppet Celestia asked, and her voice became mocking and sharp. “How she is blameless and perfect and untouchable? How she is faithful? Oh, no one can question her. Absolutely, her faith is assured and I trust her with everything.”
The puppet went rigid as Luna warred with herself. There was a long silence.
“And why shouldn’t she be faithful?” Luna asked, at length. Each word came out ponderous, slow. “Have you not provided for her? No, that is not what I mean to say. What cause has she had to grow suspicious of the world?” Another long pause. “No. Let me begin again.”
“Does Twilight fear Celestia for nothing? Fear and love, of course. Has anything been taken by your hoof, and have you spoiled any of her living? What lonely nights she has had, contemplating her place in the fears of ponykind. Yes, of course, what authentic faith and devotion has she to harmony.”
Luna sighed and did away with simulcrum.
It was the second night. It was time.
Truth be told, she could stop. She could simply be happy with Celestia’s words and Twilight’s friendship. She could try, if nothing else. With time, the sidelong glances would seem less searching. The shuffling hooves would seem less nervous. The whispers would just be whispers and nothing more. They would not mean anything.
But in the end, as she had done every night for so long, she refused.
There was a part of her that longed for the Tantabus. But that was a dead end. It was too dangerous, too volatile. She had tried, a month after the incident in Ponyville, to create a second one. At first, she told herself it was nothing more than curiosity. She was simply testing her own limits, seeing if she could have prevented the near-tragedy of the Tantabus.
Twilight and her friends… she wasn’t sure anymore. Certainty dried up like a river in the desert, given time. Their words had meant something then, but with every night they had sounded hollower and hollower.
And the yawning pit, the ever-hungry thing that lodged in her bosom kept yearning. It kept calling, and the more she starved it the more it insisted, and if she could not feed it with the Tantabus’ torments she would find something else.
She began to spin a dream for Twilight.
Perhaps… yes, perhaps a great tower in the frigid north. As far north as she could fly before the air itself froze her wings into solid useless blocks. She would build there a great prison and wander it for centuries. A maze of cold stone and sharp blades. A babel of agony. Or maybe if that would not serve, if that would be too inward-seeking, she would do her best to recreate it. Perhaps if she barked more at the servants. Perhaps if she met the wondering glances and let just the tiniest bit of her Glory show, that they might see or feel…
She finished. This dream would be better than the first. Far better. It had to be.
And, with a gesture, she set the vibrant soul of Twilight Sparkle spiralling. And she watched. And she waited. And perhaps, there was a part of her that prayed for what she could not guess at, some sort of peace.
When we think of ascension we think in terms that are absolute. Generally, in absolute surety that what comes after shall be whole and beautiful, or that it shall be complete and powerful, or that it shall at the very least be unblemished. It makes sense, after all. There’s a correlation of sorts between rising and fullness—a foal grows up after all. As a thing increases in stature so it increases in skill and guile and might, so the thinking goes.
Not often does talk of growing up or growing greater engender in the mind the possibility of failure—at least, not to the uninitiated, or at least not at first. Few think of growing older and immediately think, as a child, of the slow decline of years that leads a pony towards feeble legs and feebler mind. Few parents see their foals grow and dwell often upon how accident or disease might take away their running or their flying or their magic or warp their bones.
But Luna thought sometimes on these things, and now so would Twilight.
Her ascension was the cause for much celebration. Canterlot rejoiced—no, more than that, it exploded with joy as every street was filled with onlookers eager to catch a last glimpse at the newest princess before she entered the holiest place in all of the principality. One final glance of it’s favorite daughter was what the whole of the ancient city wished for, before Twilight Sparkle gave up her old form and was reborn.
Twilight stood before the gilded doors, shifting from hoof to hoof.
“Nervous?” Celestia asked from beside her.
Twilight looked up and saw her radiant, matronly smile and slowly she stilled.
“Obvious, huh?”
“Very.”
“I’m just… It’s kinda big, you know.”
“Of course,” Celestia said smoothly. Her hoof touched Twilight’s shoulder softly, just out of sight of Twilight’s eyes, for the door took up her whole vision. It was like that door just warped the whole world around it. “It’s only natural to feel some trepidation, my faithful Twilight. It’s perfectly reasonable, given what you know. How about this: even though you must enter the chamber alone, I promise you that you will be safe and sound. I will protect you from harm, so much as it is within my not-so-insignificant power.”
Twilight smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. I trust you, obviously. I know you wouldn’t let anything happen. I’m sorry I’m so nervous.”
“There’s no need to be sorry.” Celestia nuzzled against her cheek. “Go on, Twilight. Go to your destiny. I’m so proud of you.”
Twilight, flushed, nodded. She stepped forward.
The door opened with a push of Celestia’s magic, and when she had passed through, it closed behind her with finality.
Twilight lay as she had lain for days: groaning, broken. In the dark of the sanctuary, where little light entered, only two a few disturbed her agony.
And it was agony. Pain that was both searing and deep, both omnipresent and intermittent--there was always the dull pain in between peaks of intense suffering as her body struggled to right itself. It could not, or had not so far.
The attack was at its peak. Her horn was afire—not merely figuratively, but literally aflame with raw, wild arcane energy. Her malformed wings tried to extend and failed. Her legs, twisted by magic that her body had not been equal to and burned from within, spasmed.
Fire was the only way to describe the experience. Fire in her veins. Fire in her wings, in her hooves, in her eyes. It was like feeling every square inch of her body whilst on a pyre.
And eventually it passed. They always did. The fire left her. The magic died down. Her body slumped back into a limp waste.
Twilight Sparkle panted in the darkness, glad that her suffering was not witnessed. Sometimes, it was. Sometimes she had visitors.
There would be a visitor soon, at least one. There was no way for her to tell which of them it might be, though she supposed they came regularly. Keeping track of time was difficult at best. Day and night were equally dark and equally marked by flare-ups.
Sweat rolled down the faithful student’s face slowly, itching the whole way down to the floor, but she couldn’t do much but shake her head weakly. It didn’t help. Her mane, also soaked through, shifted and clung to her cheek.
That was about when the door opened.
Twilight closed her eyes, but she still saw the lights from outside for a brief second and writhed.
The door shut quickly, and then silence returned apart from her own ragged breath and sounds she recognized easily—two others were with her in the sanctum, and she had an inkling as to which two.
“No Celestia?” she said.
A low chuckle. “Of course not.”
That would be Sunset.
“She’s a busy mare, and you are… Well. You’re not exactly a top priority for the ruler of the Empire, are you?”
And that would be Starlight.
“Hello, girls.”
“I won’t lie, Twilight, it isn’t exactly a pleasure to see you like this,” Sunset said. Twilight’s eyes were still closed, and so she heard rather than saw the mare’s progress. “When was the last attack?”
“I don’t know,” Twilight answered. “Soon? Not long ago?”
A soft humming noise in her ear. Sunset on her left, Starlight before her. The clacking of hooves on tile.
“Your fallen estate has left you rather imprecise, hasn’t it?” Starlight tsked and Twilight felt the light touch of somepony else’s magic on her coat. She tried not to think of it. She tried not to think about magic at all, to be honest. “That’s to be expected. Not much has changed here. What do you think, Shimmer?”
“Much the same, Glimmer.”
“It’s a shame, really, don’t you think?”
“A shame.”
“To see the high and mighty—”
“—fallen so low.”
Twilight ground her teeth together. “Are you done?”
“Never, it seems,” Sunset said.
“What, do you want Celestia to come?”
Twilight opened her eyes.
Starlight Glimmer, junior student of the Empress of the Eternal Sun, leered at her from only a few paces away, face close to the floor so as better to grin with her flat star-point teeth in the gloom. “Pining?” she asked. “Hanging on to the hope she’ll come by again?”
Twilight tried to curse but coughed, and one cough became two and soon she was heaving and the two ponies who had come to her had backed up.
She did not stir when she was done beyond saying, “Are you done?”
“Hardly.”
“We have a check up to finish, after all.”
“You’re here to torment me,” Twilight said. Her voice was not flat, because that would imply she could control her tone at all. It was like sandpaper. It sounded like what a perforated face looks like.
“One torments a pony, not a curiosity,” Starlight said, and her horn lit up again. Twilight tried not to think. Again.
“A bit on the nose, at least, don’t you think? Come now.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“The routine doesn’t usually get that bad.”
There was a moment of silence.
“So, you expect Celestia,” Starlight said. Again.
“You always have,” Sunset added.
“And yet here you are.” Starlight hummed and from the dark she summoned parchment. Diagrams, notes, all sorts of things whirled about her. “Limp like wet noodles, cold as ice, with no sun. Honestly.”
“She comes to see me,” Twilight said. “You know she does. Don’t pretend she doesn’t. We both… know she does.”
Starlight shrugged.
“She does many things. Who am I to keep track of her days?”
“I won’t be shy. I am one to keep track of her, days and ways alike,” Sunset said, this time from the opposite side. “I am noticing some deterioration in the wings. Do you see that reflected in her aura?”
Starlight just grimaced.
“Why do you do this?” Twilight asked.
“Because you need to wake up,” Starlight said.
“Because someone’s got to show you that she’s…”
But Sunset never finished that sentence. Twilight tore her eyes from Starlight’s charts long enough to see the shadowed face of Sunset twisted by some memory that passed.
“She doesn’t really care,” Sunset said, tone softer now. “You do know that, right? Not really, really care.”
“At least, not about you,” Starlight grumbled.
“Because you’re out of the way now, don’t you get it?”
“You’re a non-entity.”
“A non-threat,” they said together.
A strange thing happened. Twilight watched as they went stock still, like abandoned puppets, before jumping to attention with new concern written across their faces. Or, well, across Sunset’s face. Starlight’s smirk faded into a grim line.
“Twilight, we do this because it’s better if she thinks that the two of us hate you. That we’re just…”
Starlight snorted. “Mindless. Bitches with issues, as I believe its been said.”
“I think there’s a bit more honesty with her than with myself,” Sunset said, stepping closer, hesitating, stepping again. “Twilight, we see things.”
“Things you’d see if you’d open your damn fool eyes.”
“Just… listen.”
Twilight stared. This was new. This was beyond new. It was practically incomprehensible.
“It’s not to say that I don’t dislike you,” Starlight said. “Because I do, a lot. You’re high and mighty, whether you mean to be or not. You’re always lording it over everyone! Look at me, Celestia loves me, blah blah. Et cetra. So no, I don’t like you. Your blind to your own position of power.”
“And we’ve never really been friends,” Sunset said, and now the two tormentors stood together. “But I don’t dislike you. I have found you frustrating before. I have, perhaps, resented your share of the sunlight. But now that you’re here…” She shrugged. “My heart isn’t in it, past convincing the Empress. And she stops listening after a while.”
“You need to start asking why this happened,” Starlight said. “You need to stop hiding from the truth!”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Twilight said, and winced. “Please, just… say what you mean. Or go away. Please.”
“Haven’t you wondered why this happened? Even a little? Things happen for a reason,” Starlight insisted, eyes afire. “Lyrae, that guides the steps of mares, but you are dense. Celestia walks you to this very room, sets all of this up, decides that you are to ascend. You, the special one, above all of us others… and then it goes wrong. Does that not seem suspicious to you?”
“No!” Twilight said, as forcefully as she could. “Not… not the way you mean! She swore to me.”
“Did she now?” Sunset perked up and leaned down to look her in the eye. “What did she say, Twilight?”
Twilight took a deep breath and tried not to release it in pained shock. Even breathing hurt, even that. She tried to make sense of what was happening right in front of her.
The routine. The routine was simple. When Sunset and Starlight came, they gloated and provoked and questioned her—things happen for a reason, don’t they? You must have done something wrong. Or been wrong somehow!—and they took their measurements and then left. Celestia came sometimes, and she sat in the darkness with Twilight, except that it wasn’t dark when she visited.
It started that way, didn’t it? But when she sat down, always right in front of Twilight, the Empress of All Equestria began slowly to glow, and as she settled herself the light grew until she shone like the sun whose image she bore. She would say such lovely things. She always vowed to find some cure. She…
“She said she would keep me from harm,” Twilight said.
“Did she?”
“She said,” Twilight continued as if she had not heard, “that she would find a way to save me. That she works and her students work and the archmage himself works, all of them working. Tirelessly.”
“And you believe her?”
Twilight flicked her eyes up to Starlight for a moment. “You two are here, aren’t you? Like… clockwork.”
Sunset shrugged. “Fair.”
But before Twilight could press, Starlight leaned back into the attack. “Yes, here under orders and all, but let’s not pretend that anyone looking at our charts knows how to read them.”
Her companion nodded. “Right. This isn’t the sort of problem either of us know how to fix, but you already know that. What might elude you is the fact that none of us know what we’re doing. Only one pony has the knowledge required.”
“Only one has the skill and the control and the insight.”
“And that one sits upon her golden throne while you, Twilight, languish. Perhaps this is the throne she meant for you, hm?”
Twilight closed her eyes again and laid her head as flat against the floor as she could. This, too, hurt.
She tried to speak but her throat was dry, and so while she gagged, Sunset made a last advance.
“At the very least, she’s failed you. Can’t you see that? If you’re going to say that she wasn’t the one driving the ascension, that it was the room or the ceremony or whatever, then don’t. She didn’t prepare you adequately. She could have prevented this, and that’s only if you buy that it was an accident.”
“This is ridiculous,” Twilight said. “Why would she cause it? And… and it isn’t her fault. I just…”
“You just know, don’t you, that she didn’t cause this.” Starlight groaned. “This is why you frustrate me so much, Twilight Sparkle. Blind and eager to please. I can’t believe you’re the one who used to teach me.”
“She has a point,” Sunset said, and she shrugged. “C’mon Twilight, don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, at least the stupid have an excuse,” grumbled Starlight. “Let’s just go. We can talk to Tri—”
Twilight felt a pressure building in her throat, and only her anger prevented her from calling out before it was too late. So lost was she in pinning her tormentors down with words, wrestling with them over her diseased body, that she didn’t notice the burning sensation that spread from her chest to her extremities.
Her jaw clamped tight. Magic gathered along the length of her horn and creeped, alive, down her face and neck, like liquid eletricity. She writhed as it stung her and pushed and pulled her. She writhed when the pain of moving required some sort of outlet and her jaw was clenched shut and would not come open.
“Star! Star, I think she’s—”
“I see it.”
“What do we do?”
“Nothing. You feel this, Twilight? You were her greatest student,” Starlight hissed. Twilight only barely heard her. The magic was taking her sight and her hearing again, plunging her into an deep, dull roar. “She either did this to you herself, let it happen, or couldn’t prevent it. And you’re alright with that, aren’t you? You’ll just take it, because you’re a glutton for punishment if she’s the one brandishing the whip!”
Sunset stepped forward. “Star, we should—”
“We should just let her suffer. Like her teacher,” Starlight said, cutting her off. “She’ll see. She’ll ask the right questions and when she does, maybe she’ll finally grow up—”
Twilight woke suddenly in her bed, eyes opening wide and seeing nothing.
It was the featureless blackness above that really grabbed her wildly beating heart and crushed it like a grape, not the dream but the horrible fight-or-flight right after, as she tried to move and found herself wrapped in a maze of covers. Her struggle only seemed to make things worse, and with a frustrated grunt Twilight Sparkle found herself rolling off the side of her bed and hitting the hard floor.
She lay there, dazed and astonished, wings freeing themselves and half-extending awkwardly. How much noise had she made? In the moment, everything had seemed so loud but now it seemed so…
So empty. Silent.
Twilight was alone.
Luna released Twilight’s dream with as much gentleness as she could. Unfortunately, she could afford little gentleness. The dream shattered, and she had no energy or focus to waste on it.
She seethed. The Aether around her roiled, stormlike, flashing and chaotic. For a moment, its incoherency seemed almost to coalesece into something. But with a few moments, a few long and deep breaths, Luna regained her composure enough that the immaterial world around her settled back into its incoherent, gentle drifting.
The dreams floated on, winking in and out. But Twilight Sparkle’s dream did not join them again for some time. She looked for it, hungrily searched, and when at last Twilight Sparkle had arrived she gently captured the dream and brought it to rest with her and she guarded it and she blessed it. And she began to worry.
It was not about Twilight Sparkle that she worried.
It Is the Spirit In a Mare Which Has Understanding
Another day, and another night. Luna had roamed to and fro along the earth and among the shining dreams.
Twice now, the question had followed the night’s shepherd and hounded her: Have you considered my servant, Twilight? Celestia had come to her twice, before each night’s dream, and their confrontations had been similar each time. Celestia protested, but was unable to intervene outside of the rules of engagement established both intangibly by the nature of sisterhood and tangibly by the laws of the firmaments in their governance.
Celestia had said: She is blameless and upright, sound of mind and strong of heart, loyal and loving. This is a pony that shuns evil in every guise it wears as soon as she finds it, who delights in the truth and whose soul wrestles with deception. Though you have incited her to doubt and to suspicion, she has bested you. Perhaps she has bested me. Twice now you have done your work and she has held with integrity.
And Luna had replied, more or less: Skin for skin. Dreams! There are dreams and dreams, and both find themselves falling short. I do not pretend that they are fullproof. I will have my satisfaction, and know the truth. If she truly delights in it, then let her be found worthy. A mare will give all she has to save her miserable life, and I’ve not touched that. Nor will I, she would have hastily added.
And silently, she had replied: Even if you were to offer yourself up as a sacrifice on the ancient altar that I smashed in Lunangrad so long ago, I would not be parted from my final night with Twilight Sparkle.
It was need that drove her, yes, but not the kind she could yet put into words. Not words that would make sense to one such as her sister.
They shared many things. They shared many millenia, in one stage of life or another. The wonders of the old world and the mysteries of the new they shared. But they did not share all things, nor could they. Beneath their bonds of love and kinship there was an inviolate difference. A chasm which could not be bridged, as Luna had thought of it before her…
Her absence. Yes, before her absence began.
One way to describe this inviolate isolation was to think of the sisters in terms of the element they embodied. Celestia was the Sun, in more ways than the obvious. She shone, yes. What did that mean, really? It meant that she illuminated, she exposed, she explored. Celestia doubted as much as any mortal pony did, but she was rarely cowed by her own doubt. She pressed forward. She kept shining, like the sun which burned forever. She beat uncertainty down and threw it out, if not all at once than relentlessly over time.
But Luna? The moon generated no light. It borrowed. It shadowed. Half of it faced the sun and shared in its light, and the other was turned away and forever in darkness. Luna herself was in two parts. One part faced upwards, and this was the part which smiled in the concert booth and painted in the long columned halls of the Palace, throughfare and hoof-traffic be damned. One part faced downwards and it knew everything. Neither the light nor the darkness could understand each other with ease.
So she fumed.
Celestia would come again tonight. She knew it. Celestia knew it. (Surely she must, for she conformed to the patterns that Luna expected so often, and this was her way. To confront. To reason.) And yet she had not appeared. It was nine of the clock, and the night was in full force now. The sun was gone. Her duties were ended. Luna’s own brief court had been seen to and for once had gone smoothly. She had blessed the works of two budding artists who would attend her new conservatory in the following year, heard a petition of the batponies of the Old Colony in Ghastly Gorge, and recieved a few minor dignataries. Not busy, but satisfying. She had been…
Well, she had been peaceful. She had been peaceful until she realized that she was, in fact, peaceful. And then she had not been.
Luna waited. Her glory seeped out. The room was inky blackness, not just of sight but of touch. Any poor hoofmaiden who had made the mistake of stepping into her apartments at that moment would have been reduced to gibbering madness. She knew this for a fact--she had done it before to others. The darkness, when she was in such a state, was no longer merely a thick smog but liquid. It was like oil, viscous and dense and heavy, smelling of decay where before it had suggested spice and the lightest musk.
Still no Celestia.
What could it mean?
She had ideas.
Most of those ideas were unpleasant. Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps Celestia was too weary to visit her yet again for what would surely be a futile conversation. That was certainly a possibility. Luna understood weariness. But it might be more than a desire for rest. Perhaps Celestia did not wish to see her out of disgust? Luna understood that as well. Perhaps Celestia was furious, already deciding her fate. And Luna also understood that. She accepted it. She invited it.
What dream would she weave for Twilight Sparkle the Faithful, on her way to her lofty bed in unassuming Ponyville? That was at least a little better to dwell on. It involved something other than waiting and speculating. It was active.
Her first dream had been weak. Twilight had already suffered the loss of her home, and she bore it again with an injured steadfastness. Her second foray had been better, but still Twilight had not relented. Suspicion was not the way to go. That much was certain. Where other ponies shied away, Twilight seemed to operate under a basic formula: trust, but verify. Twice she had refused to throw away her allegiance or her affection without at least speaking to her mentor or to the other princesses. She looked for answers, not for satisfaction.
How maddening.
Fine! Fine. So she would drop that track. No more conspiracies, no more dark hints. She needed something else. Something that would strike to the core of the matter. Whatever it was. No more games. No more waiting and adjusting. One last push.
And it was then that there was a knock at her door.
Luna blinked. There was another knock.
“I… who calls?” she asked. Celestia would not have knocked again. Or she would have knocked and come in anyway.
There was a short pause, and then a voice.
“Um… hi. Aunty. Aunt Celestia said you weren’t feeling well, and I was, ah, here. So I figured I might come by.”
Cadance. Cadance of the Empire, now, and with a wavering voice like a hoofmaiden on her first day. Luna snorted quietly, and then shook her head. “I see you value privacy a bit more than my sister.”
“Y-yes. I…” More hesitation. “Might I come in? Just for a bit? Would that be alright? I mean, I don’t want to be a bother or anything. I’m sure you’re busy.”
Luna regarded the door, and considered the voice. But only for a moment.
“Come in, Cadance.”
But she did not, not at first. There was a shuffling noise on the other side of the wall, and then: “Ah, about that. Your aura. I can’t really…”
Luna frowned. “Truly?”
Silence.
Feeling uneasy, Luna began to draw herself back into something a bit less intimidating. “It is alright. Come in.”
Cadance opened the door, and Luna saw her own uneasiness reflected. The idea that her niece, her own kin, would not be able to easily bare her unfettered glory was dismaying at best. She tried not to let it show. It no doubt showed.
“Good evening,” Cadance said, uselessly. Limply. She smiled, and Luna thought that part was real, perhaps. Mostly.
Luna gestured to the ornate couch on the other side of the room, one of a set. “Sit, niece. Might I offer you something to drink? Wine or mead? Tea, if like my sister you rarely partake of life’s finer things?”
“Wine is nice,” Cadance said. “I’m a fan.”
Luna hummed, rising from bed and retrieving two glasses and a bottle from her private stock. As she did so, grateful for the distraction, she tried to understand what exactly had occurred. Cadance was here. Cadance was not in the empire, firstly, and secondly she had never truly been close to Luna.
Which was only part of the story and Luna knew it.
Coming back to find yourself possessed of family that had never heard anything about you other than the painfully held secret of your existence and a single portrait was jarring. She could understand, as much as it was possible for her to understand another pony, how having one’s powerful aunt almost literally appear out of nowhere and change everything might be daunting.
And, bless her, she had tried. She really, truly had tried. Tea in the gardens, cheerful conversation at dinner, questions and gifts of books and music and even art. It had worked, in some ways. Luna’s bewilderment had turned into something a bit less alien. She was distant, yes, but not cold. Merely far away.
She returned and found Cadance seated upright on the couch. She chuckled as she laid on her stomach and tucked her legs in properly. “Is that how ponies prefer to engage in comissatio these days? Hunched awkwardly?”
Cadance blinked. “What?”
Luna sighed and rolled her eyes. “Lie down as I do. No comissatio, and I assume no convivium. You are… hm. Perhaps you know of the old pegasus rite. Symposium?”
“Oh! Yes. I know about that. Pegasus drinking party. Not that I’ve been to one. I mean, I have, but it was a long time ago and I was a bit of a lightweight.”
Luna chuckled. “I’m glad somepony still enjoys them. I have found that the rites today much tamer than once they were.” She poured wine for them both and then twirled her glass softly, to see the red life clinging to the edges of the glass before it faded back into the tiny sea. “Why are you here so late, good Cadance? Though I am pleased by your company, it is a bit odd. Are you a wanderer of late night halls, perhaps?”
“Aunty told me that you were feeling down, and I was here so…” She did not watch Cadance shrugged but knew it occurred.
“Hm. Of course. You cannot bear our Glory. I do not say it accusingly,” she said quickly, softly, as Cadance began to protest. “It is not a matter of what you wish but of your capability. I saw your eyes as you entered. Might I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“What is it like? To be one thing and yet another? Consider my interest personal as well as professional.”
Cadance frowned. Luna did see this, for she turned when there was a beat longer of silence than she had expected. Cadance did not frown at her, but rather at the wine in her glass. She drank.
“I’m not sure exactly how you mean that,” she said.
Luna saw herself and the room, then, as an answer bubbled up in her mind. She saw herself in repose, wine on her lips, moonlit and mysterious, smiling perhaps in a way that answered without giving anything away, eyebrow raised over eyes that stabbed through the heart and drank of the spirit’s blood. What an enticing creature. What a mask.
“Being an alicorn, but being different from ourselves. My sister and I,” she said. “It occurs to me now, as I ask, that perhaps I have asked beyond what was prudent.”
“No, not at all. It’s a fair question. I mean, we’re family.”
Well played. Luna smiled more genuinely, even if it hurt a bit. “So, tell me, youngest.”
Cadance looked into her glass for a few minutes, and Luna once again waited. Yet this waiting was easier. Softer. Shorter, certainly.
“Well… it’s a bit like having a weight on your back. Like having full saddlebags, maybe. Except it’s not just a physical weight.” She gestured with a hoof, turning it over and over, as if trying to roll out more to say. “Spiritual? Mental. It’s harder to think, and you feel like any moment something or someone is just going to…”
She didn’t finish. She gestured again, vaguely, and she took a slightly longer drink.
“It is a burden, then,” Luna said.
“It’s not the word I would use.”
“Hm.”
Cadance shrugged. “Think of the sun. You can’t look right at it. Or a candle, how looking right at it from very close is unpleasant. Yet these things in of themselves are not.”
Luna smirked. “I have never been a, ah, ‘fan’ of the sun, myself.”
Cadance chuckled. “I don’t know if it will help, but I tend to find Aunt Celestia’s unmasking very hard to bear. It always makes me feel… inadequate. Both of you do. But I’m getting better about it.”
“You have none of your own? I confess, I have not asked after your heritage. Not because I did not care, but because it seemed unimportant. You are my niece, and that was all I needed to know.” She smiled. “But I am curious now. Do you have your own?”
Cadance, to her surprise, looked away. She flushed, buried her face in her drink again.
“Yes.”
“Ah. And…? That was an odd reaction.”
“I’m… it’s different.”
Luna raised an eyebrow.
“Very different,” Cadance grumbled.
“Perhaps I shall see it soon,” Luna said, and smiled.
Cadance sighed. “I’m just… you and Aunt Celestia are so… imposing. Powerful. As I grew older, my aura manifested and it was very different. It’s weaker, yes, but its just…” she shrugged. “It’s different.”
“To be different is no crime, child,” Luna chided softly. “You’ve emptied your glass. More?”
“Sure.”
Luna poured. Cadance stared at the wine for a moment, and then looked up with a determined face.
“What has been bothering you, Auntie? If it’s alright to ask.”
Luna was silent.
She considered trying to explain it all. She honestly did. What would it look like? Would she just babble on and on, sinking deeper and deeper into the haze of dry, bitter, blessed intoxication? It felt unseemly, though she knew that unseemliness among friends and between family was sometimes the point of the comissatio, of talk over drink in the late hours of the night. And perhaps, just perhaps, it would be good. It was possible that in her ramblings she might hit upon the heart of the matter and find it out for herself even as she explained.
She made no decision. She just answered.
“I am worried.”
Cadance waited, and then asked: “About what?”
Everything. “Twilight Sparkle. But mostly risk and reward, and how the former is easier to come by.”
Cadance’s brow furrowed. “Twilight? What’s wrong with Twilight?”
What was, indeed, wrong with Twilight? What wasn’t wrong?
“It’s less that something is wrong with Twilight and more that something is right,” Luna said slowly, carefully, like a foal who imagines that to fall off her perch is to perish. “She is a wonderful young mare. But she is young. So young. Perhaps, perhaps, too young.”
“You think she isn’t ready?” Cadance leaned in, frowning. Recognition was in her eyes, or at least wine shone there, and the tones of one about to explain swelled in her voice. “Well, I mean, its very likely that she isn’t completely, uh, one hundred percent yet…”
“I have been thinking,” Luna said, striding along. “Often. Deeply. About what it is to be as we are. And more and more the thing that comes to mind, sweetest Cadance, is that we are dangerous. To ourselves, to others… and Twilight is a dangerous mare. She is a wonderful, kind, intelligent, and… and horribly, horribly dangerous… mare.”
She faltered. Stumbled.
Cadance seemed lost. “But… but she’s just Twilight.”
“Indeed.” A pause.
“She… what are you saying? I’m not sure I understand you, Auntie.”
“I was once just Luna,” came the answer, sudden like a hangmare’s noose. “Just… Luna.”
Celestia came unto her, as she walked in the places where only alicorns walked.
The palace has many floors. It has innumerable rooms and vaulted ceiling’d halls and nooks and boltholes. It had many things. It also possessed a floor which until very recently, only one pony had ever walked.
Like Everfree Castle before it, like the fortress of Solitude before that in the far north, like the high apartments of Jannah, like the well of the firmaments near the dawn of time, it was only trod by the hooves of those who had heard that creation song of the universe’s birth.
Luna walked it, back and forth. To and fro. She saw the strange, half finished, all abandoned works of Celestia’s unfettered power. The shapes that bent impossibly, the lights and colors which could not be categorized.
Celestia came upon her there, standing in a vaulted hall.
“You leave many things unfinished,” Luna said, quiet.
Celestia, behind her, said nothing.
They stood as they had when she’d spoken. They stood there for what seemed like years. It was only a few moments.
“I had forgotten your works, and the way you—”
“You were right.”
Luna turned then, and she knew that shock was written across her face like a royal decree in the common square. “What?”
“That I hide myself from unpleasant truths. That I hide myself from the things I have made. Behold, my gallery. The one before you, of yourself in Maldon’s Field, I tried to craft from light itself. Light made solid. But I did not finish. I abandoned it. How typical. See? Perhaps you see true.”
Luna began to panic. She knew this because at that moment she was split. One part of her simply stared, shaking her head, heart pounding. The other was aware of herself as a thing in the beginning rush of panicked negation, watching her Glory writhe around her like a cloud of doom.
Celestia held up a hoof. “It had not, in fact, occurred to me to give as much thought to what you obviously have. Of… nightmares. And hearts. And the act. Creation, I mean.”
Her face was stone. Unchanged, unchanging, flat with flatest eyes.
“No! No, you don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
Luna ground her teeth.
NO YOU DO NOT. I LIED. I AM A LIE.
The Glory that the Night had given her freely broke. It did not expand so much as it exploded. It rolled over the unfinished godworks. It destroyed the statuary made of sunlight, half-finished, Luna and their friends a hundred strong all unfinished, the paintings made with colors which no mortal could see, the walls, the ornate hallways, the workshops and the galleries. It washed over Celestia, and she did not resist. But she did not yield. She simply stood, and the current raged about her on either side.
It was not fury but absolute refusal.
But it was also spent in moments, and Luna stumbled backwards. She felt sick, weak. Small. Celestia strode towards her, and for a moment she was back in the ruins of Everfree, freed of her own self-created madness as her sister strode again imperious and she knew—
Celestia knelt. For the second time, her sister knelt beside her.
“Luna, I love thee.”
Luna shook. She had released so much.
“I broke your things,” she said.
“Luna, I love thee.”
“I have accused your servant, your friend. My friend.”
“Luna, I love thee.”
“Thou shouldst hate, always and forever,” she said. She sang it, for it was a language before language, the bare heart bleeding into the air, as it was before Equestria, before ponies built towns and lived in harmony or chaos at all.
“And yet I love. I do not understand you, Luna.” Celestia held her. She nuzzled her warmly, frettfully. She fussed at her mane. She kissed Luna’s forehead, her cheek, the ridge of her nose between her eyes. Her glory shone brightly and yet it did not hurt her sister’s eyes. “I wish to understand. I do not need to know everything to know that I love you. Do you know this?”
“I know this.”
“Please. Please, let me help you. Or tell me I cannot and let me love you regardless.”
“I wish you would not. Only sometimes, yet I wish it and should be damned.”
Celestia shook her head.
Luna continued. “I have to go to her tonight. I know I will not find what I seek. I know it now, but I must. I have sworn it.”
“Before the Song, on the Well?”
“Aye, both and cannot cry off.”
Celestia stroked her cheek. “Aye, and you cannot cry off.”
“Tia, what am I? Who am I? I see in the mirror a face I hardly recognize, and sometimes think that it cannot be me. For I too was your faithful student when we sang, and your sister so long, and now I see myself in history books and I find myself a spectre which haunts the dreams of foals. I am not a sister but the Adversary. I am not… I am not Luna but the Moon, but the Nightmare which lingers on after waking. It will all happen again and again. It will all…. All…”
She lost her voice. Celestia rocked her. The darkness began to fade, but in its wake there were only shattered images.
Words are strange things. Luna had always found that words were more powerful than could be explained, and less useful than anypony could ever hope. Words changed the world, not by altering the material circumstances so much as by altering the way in which the mere material stuff of existence was seen.
And, to be honest, sometimes they did alter the material. Or seemed to.
Cadance’s voice whispered like the wind in the void that she floated. It was not the wind, for all was still. Here she had no need of breathing. Truth be told, she never had. Celestia had needs she did not, but she had strengths that Luna would never understand.
So the problem of difference remained. The tyranny of distance, as it had been put to her so long ago. Even in the trifles, the distance ached. Luna did not know what it was like to suffocate. Morbid, yes. She did not know what it was like to hold her breath and feel the clawing need for air. She did breath, of course. It was habit now. Not breathing felt strange, for she had been breathing all along, but she did not desperately need air, only crave it.
Which might perhaps seem trivial, but it was not, for few things ever are. Every instance of distance, of difference, served as a painful reminder of separation.
Perhaps that was the problem.
No, it wasn’t that. It was something else. Mere difference could not account for the way her stomach churned, or for the dagger-like anxiety that stabbed up her spine. It worried, yes. But that alone could not possibly begin to encapsulate the madness that had driven her to this point.
“What are you afraid of, really? Because you say you fear betrayal, but you defend Twilight as being your friend, you insist that she is your friend even as you worry over her future evil.”
Yes, ‘twas the question. It was the problem. It was the mystery.
Truth be told, she had an inkling. One cannot spend so much energy on mysteries as she had and not have some answers. But she did not like the answer. She would ask Twilight. Twilight would tell her the truth, and perhaps that answer would be the one she needed and sought, one that was better.
“At some point… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound rude. It’s just that at some point you simply must trust somepony, Aunt. Even if it means trusting yourself. Not blindly. Never blindly. You have to know yourself.”
Which was, of course, impossible.
No. No more Cadance, young, timid, brave. No more Celestia, watching, hoping, comforting. Only Luna and only Twilight now. Only one more dream, one more grasping, and then…
And then the Audience.
The question was, of course, what nature of dream?
A bad one, that was the obvious answer. A terrible one. Traumatic, fearsome, horrible. Except… no, she needed something perfect. Something that might wash away all doubts and prove Twilight Sparkle the mare the world hoped she was. “Bad” would not cut it. “Bad” meant merely bad, merely unpleasant. Many mares had triumphed over the unpleasant and the difficult and been craven and corrupted in the end. It could not be merely a test of will or of strength, for many powerful ponies were also vile.
What would prove Twilight Sparkle incorruptible? And was “incorruptible” something could exist in the guise of a pony beyond even the shadow of night’s doubting?
She shifted gears and left the void. The myriad dreams returned, shining brightly, shining with life. Luna swam among them, brow furrowed in deepest, loneliest thought.
What if the answer was not to batter her with troubles? What if that all along had been the wrong idea? Trouble, sorrow, adversity… these things tested souls, yes, but also refined them. Strengthened them, often. Crushed them, certainly. But not as often did they tempt except in the weakest of wills. No, she saw it now.
After all, it had not been her isolation that had driven her to…
To what happened. Had it? It had been the memory of when things had been diffeent. A foal who has never heard of cake eats bread and is content, she reasoned, but one who has seen into the bakery and seen what could be possible is no longer able to return to his stale crust in the same way. Now he is changed. Now he is in despair.
Despair was an old friend.
What was it?
Exile can mean a lot of things. It means death, sometimes, to some ponies. Prison. Loneliness. To one who had dreamed and not dreamed, bound within the lunar aether itself, Luna thought it meant Time. Exile meant time to think, and with that time she had tried many hypotheses. There had been many such trains of thought, a dozen at once, all of them Luna but none of them guided by her, her mind blindly working along.
She had wondered which was more fitting—that despair was more properly understood as the exclusion of anything beyond the self, or if it was the refusal to accept the self, or if there was any real difference. But she did know how it began.
It began with discrepancy. Inadequacy. It began with distance between what one was, or what the world was, and what wished to be—or how the world in fact was. Twilight had seen surprises before. She’d had failures, yes, and sorrows.
She knew what to do.
Luna found Twilight easily. In fact, her dreams came easily now, as if ready for her. Perhaps they were.
She touched the surface of the dream gently, so gently. As one might touch the cheek of a lover, so did she caress the surface of Twilight’s heart. Once, she had tried to describe to her sister the process by which she had swayed so many to her baleful cause. But, despite her efforts, the right words proved elusive. It was blind, but not in that she was ignorant of what she “touched”. She had some idea. Perhaps not the idea of the dreamer, the “touched”, but some idea.
She searched, or rather she stumbled about in the intense brightness of Twilight Sparkle’s soul looking for something she could take back into the comforting black of the Aether. Dreams, aspirations, preferences. She felt flashes of sensation, confused and confusing, tastes and smells and sounds and they were all one taste or sound or smell.
And she dug deeper. Something. Something that Twilight Sparkle valued above all things. No, not what she valued, what she hid. Luna kept digging.
She found something. Something which stung to the touch. Embarrassing. Half-forgotten. Not dealt with so much as discarded, thrown into a chest and kept in the attic. Secret, and moved on from, but also compromising. The chance of the old leaking into the new. She caught ahold of it, and felt—
There is a state that is equally horror and feverish joy. Rapture gets close, but Luna did not know what to call it. It was the best possible thread. It was the worst possible one. It was, in every way, very much the last argument. If there was ever something that would prove what kind of mare Twilight of Ponyville and late of Canterlot was, it was this, she was sure of it.
And if there was something that would prove what sort of mare she herself was, perhaps this was also it.
She hesitated. To her credit, she hesitated. The thread was secure in grip, and with a tug she could pull it free and plunge Twilight’s idyllic, formless light sleeping into something very, very different. She needn’t design it, needn’t build a thing. No lines, no parts to play, no setting, all action.
But, to her credit… to her credit, Luna was not completely clueless as regarded amity. This would hurt. Almost certainly.
She needed to know. She did not know what it was she needed to know.
Luna perhaps, most of all, needed to know if she would pull the thread.
And, after a pause… she did.
So much had changed!
Where to begin? She’d become a princess, for starters. That had been pretty big. She’d lost her home, but then gotten a palace. Adventures, here and there. New responsibilities, new challenges. Learning to fly had been weird. Even a new student!
Twilight chuckled to herself. “New” student. More like, first-and-only. She was more scatterbrained these days, but in a good way and for a good reason.
After all, what was more distracting than dating Princess Celestia herself?
That was the biggest change, and the best. It had been so… so perfect. It had been almost exactly as she had imagined it, as a filly. Correspondence and friendliness deepened into intimate trust. Twilight was soon in Canterlot almost every weekend, and work was merely an excuse. Sure, she had responsibilities now, and she of course loved to be helpful. Learning what being a princess meant was exhilarating and novel. But these things were excuses. Balls, concerts, meetings, all events became excuses to be in each other’s company.
At first, she’d simply enjoyed her former mentor’s presence. The old dreams of romance with the sun were just that, old dreams. She no longer aspired to such a station. Truth be told, she’d rarely felt attraction to mares besides Celestia as she grew up, or really to anyone. Romance had been a distraction from the pleasant mind-numbing hum or work and study. Rarity might gasp and protest, but Twilight was happy alone. She had her friends, and she had a world of discoveries waiting to be made, and these things made for a fulfilling existence.
And yet.
And yet, she found herself attracted all over again. Falling bit by bit back into her old fillyhood crush, only to find that it had grown with her. Celestia was not perfect. She was a pony. A pony of a peculiar and high caliber, yes, but a pony. She could be argued with and even loved. Every moment that Twilight saw her teacher without the mask of regality, her crush deepened.
And Twilight had been content. There was an aesthetic pleasure in the idea of romantic attraction, really. One could enjoy merely the surface, merely the feeling engendered in oneself. So she did enjoy it, expecting at any moment to wake and find it gone and replaced with the gentler sort of friendly affection.
And yet.
It was inexplicable. Twilight had not let love pass her by, and for the life of her she wasn’t sure what had happened. But she was so, so glad that whatever had changed in her had in fact changed.
She hummed, smiling at all the guards and maids and dignitaries. She saw them, but did not see them—there were bigger and brighter pastures to graze. Or fish to fry. Rainbow said that once. Pegasi were weird.
She giggled. Her, Twilight Sparkle, giggling like a lovestruck filly in the corridors of power. What a world! But it was such a good world.
She came to the doors that separated Celesta’s apartments from the more public areas. These were the doors that, as a filly, had been the gateways to all good adventure. It had once meant magic lessons. Philosophy, mathematics, science, art, all things which she had learned to love. She supposed, as she stood before them, it meant learning even still. It was just that the lessons she learned inside were very different, these days.
She smiled at the guards by the door. She knew them, in fact. Vigilance and Stout Heart. “Afternoon, gentlecolts. How goes the watch?”
Stout smiled back. “As always, miss.”
“Boring as can be,” finished Vigilance.
“Of course, less so now that you’ve arrived,” Stout said. “Princess wasn’t expecting you until later, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you. I think she’s in a meeting, actually.”
Twilight’s spirit wasn’t dampened. She shrugged. “I kind of expected that, being early and all. But I was looking forward to the weekend, and I was ahead of schedule on everything else. You know how it goes!”
“Can’t say I do,” Stout said as Vigilance looked on, quiet but smiling. “A guard’s life rarely involves being ahead of schedule.”
“Never early, always on time. I remember. Shiny used to talk about that all the time. Well,” she paused, enjoying the conversation but eager to get inside. “Well, if you fellows wouldn’t mind letting me in?”
Chuckling, Vigilance and Stout Heart stepped aside and pulled the grand doors open.
Twilight entered and found the comfortable reception room much as she remembered it. Little here had changed since her childhood. It was a comforting place—it was meant to be, as Celestia had explained. “The first thing, after a court appearance, that any visting dignitary sees is this room, Twilight. It is designed to make them feel at home. Why? Because productive conversation requires the right atmosphere as much as it does the right individuals.”
Celestia was full of wisdom like that. It must come from the long roll of years. Smiling, Twilight found the kettle stashed safely where it always was, and used her magic to brew some tea. Another affectation, another kernel of wisdom from the mare she loved: tea was the proper response to most anything.
It was quiet, not that she minded. Celestia enjoyed quiet, and Twilight found that she did as well. Her stomach was still full of butterflies, and she was still giddy, but that would pass. It was probably for the best.
Twilight stirred her tea. Two sugars, a little dash of milk, as she had since fillyhood.
Truth be told… she was trying to put away childish things. She had been able to do so long enough to confess to Celestia, but it was so hard to get out of the mindset of princess and pupil. Saying merely Celestia, and not Princess Celestia. But she was trying, and to her what mattered was in the heart. And her heart was far more interested in Mere Celestia, as the princess called herself with smiles soft and wise.
A sip. Another sip. Time rolled on.
Celestia seemed a little sad when she slipped, but they had talked about it, and she knew that Celestia knew where her heart was. Understanding was, all the books agreed, was the foundation of any relationship. She was glad they could talk frankly. More than that it was just… she felt so full about it, so happy that she could talk heart to heart with the mare who had been her mentor and teacher and who was now finally with her without barriers. Soul to soul, heart to heart. She had been happy before, but now she was…
Well. She would find a word for it. She—they, such a wonderful word!—had all the time in the world with each other.
So Twilight filled an hour, humming to herself, sipping tea, admiring the gentle painted landscapes of places she’d never been. She did not notice an urgent spirit in the walls. She did not feel that she was anything other than alone.
But she did grow restless eventually. Once again, as she always had, ever since she was small. Twilight Sparkle was not one for waiting.
So, still smiling, still eager to see Celestia, she got up and wandered the vast apartments.
The apartments were not just her rooms. They were, in a way, public property, belonging as much to the Principality as to the Princess who ruled and guarded it. Her private quarters—more butterflies just thinking about them!—were far removed. Reception areas, a few offices that were empty, which she found a bit odd. The balcony where Celestia and now some times Twilight took their breakfast overlooking the city. A small library and sitting room. Her private gallery… even the old practice room where Twilight herself had learned so much. She lingered at the door there for awhile, smiling still, seeing herself straining and Celestia standing watchful and proud.
She continued, until she was at the door to Celestia’s private chamber.
Just a drop of doubt. Just a drop. Wasn’t she in a meeting? Yet, Twilight had heard no conversation, and she’d seen no official or visitor. In fact, strangely, Celestia’s seneschal had been absent from her little office. It wasn’t even four yet. Celestia’s inner ring of staffers usually worked quietly but determinedly until four every day, weekends too unless the Princess herself shooed them out.
Oh. Of course. She rolled her eyes. “Meeting”, indeed. So far, their relationship had been secret, and of course she’d said she had some sort of prior engagement. She was talking about Twilight herself, obviously!
Twilight tugged open the door with magic, and opened her mouth to call out a bright, loud hello.
Time slowed to a halt.
Celestia was there. And she was, as always, a sight worth seeing. She was groaning in pleasure, as Twilight had heard her before, in a way she knew intimately and lovingly despite having only heard it thrice before. That was a part of her new normal.
The pegasus mare was new.
Celestia was on her back. Twilight couldn’t see her face because at present she was lying on her side and away from the door. But she could see the other pony as she turned, midway through some comment, face frozen between shock and bliss, face flushed with carnal knowledge and desire, eyes pinpricks, hair mussed from sex.
Twilight stood in the door as this other mare and Celestia separated with a burst of magic and twinned shouts of alarm. The mare she did not know ended up in a heap on the floor in a heap of hooves and feathers, scrambling to release herself from the tangled, luxurious sheets.
And Celestia? Celestia sat on the bed, trembling. Her face was flushed. Her wings were spread as if any moment she take off out the door. Her hair had returned to its soft pink, the soft pink Twilight had thought only she was blessed to see in the comfort of her lover’s chambers.
The rank-yet-oddly-sweet smell of sweat and lovemaking hit her before any words did.
“Twilight?”
She stared.
“Twilight? Twilight, I… I… I thought you were…”
Twilight sank back onto her haunches, still staring.
“I thought… you…”
The pegasus bolted out the open window, past the balcony where she had shared her first kiss with Celestia.
She tried to speak. She really did. She wanted… she didn’t know what she wanted. The world shook around her. The walls were coming apart. The floor cracked. Mount Canter exploded in fire and the skies were red. This was the end of the world.
But none of that happened. There was no apocalypse. Just her. Just Celestia. Just a messy bed and the scent of sex and her own heart stuttering in her chest.
“Why?” she asked. Her voice was faint. Almost uninterested. Distant. As if she weren’t asking what she was asking, as if she was barely there.
“I… She was so…” Celestia made to move, but Twilight retreated, and so they both stopped and stared again.
Celestia shielded her eyes. “Twilight… I was going to tell you I had met somepony. I was. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“Oh.”
Urgency. “You have to understand, she was always so natural with me. She never called me…”
Princess. Right.
“...and I just… Twilight, we couldn’t work. I was going to talk to you about that tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Our… I mean, you and I, we weren’t moving past teacher and student. Didn’t you see that? Surely you’ve had doubts about that. Twilight? Twilight, please… I never meant to…”
Twilight, detached, had no frame of reference. No world left to inhabit. She never had, really. It all made sense. It was easy. Math-easy. Hadn’t she been so good at it? Variables and the like. Hadn’t she been so good at figuring out what was missing? Ah, but everything was. Of course Celestia could not hold on to what little there was of the mare called Twilight Sparkle. Unworthy of being more than a passing fancy, a moth before a candle, soon forgotten. Of course. It really…
It really fit, didn’t it? Celestia was saying something. She didn’t hear it. All of her sense had come to a single point. There was hardly room for anything of Celestia in that point.
Of course. A mare like Celestia had lived so long, done so much. How could somepony like Twilight ever be enough for her? She was a novice in the art of love, at best. A laughable one. A shaky, inexperienced virgin with a mountain of insecurities who couldn’t stop her calling her by a title when she deserved to have a name. Of course.
Of course.
The dream fell apart as Twilight Sparkle wondered how lovely the palace would look like on fire, with herself as the kindling.
Luna awoke in her own chambers. She rose.
She hit the floor and stumbled.
No. No no no no. No. Her whole body shook. This was wrong. This was evil. She was wrong. She was evil. At once, she tried to rally: I didn’t know! How could I have foreseen? She made the dream, not I! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t choose that.
And, implacable, out of her own comforting darkness, out of the storm: You pulled the thread. You felt the wound. You needed to know just how far it was from the edge.
And now she did.
Luna did not breathe. She… waited. Surely, any moment now her sister would come like the sun in its wrath to burn down her door and chain her in bright, hot agony for the sin she had committed. Surely now, any moment Twilight would appear in a flash of magic, ready to put her down. The elements. The guard.
But there was nothing. Just herself. Not breathing. Just the room, silent. Just the softly beating heart of the night, and a single thought.
Enclosed, please find my next move in our eternal war masquerading as a chess game. Also, a reading list I think you might find tantalizing, as well as some of my notes on spells of the ninth formation, which I would love some feedback on.
I’m hesitant to ask you, but I have a personal request. Well, personal but also professional. It’s mostly personal.
I know you’re probably very busy! Princesses are busy, as I’ve learned. I mean, I knew that already, but now I really know. Anyway, you’re certainly hard at work dealing with so many pony’s dreams every night that I hesitate to ask this, and I wouldn’t if it weren’t important.
First, I’ll explain myself. I’ve been having nightmares. Yes, I’m bothering you with trifles, I know. Or, maybe they aren’t? I don’t know. I don’t want to presume or anything, but I also don’t want to come off as if dreams aren’t important. I’m still fascinated by the things you can do with and in dreams!
But I’ve been having nightmares almost every night this week and it’s starting to get to me. To be honest, after the one last night, I didn’t sleep at all. I tried. Okay, no, I didn’t. Sorry. I really should be honest here, because I’m asking you for help. I was a little afraid of sleeping after the last nightmare. Does that sound silly, a grown mare and a princess to boot, afraid to sleep because of nightmares? I feel silly admitting it. I’m probably being ridiculous.
But, just this once, could you set a watch for me? I think knowing that you will be there just in case will do wonders. Again, I wouldn’t ask for any special attention if I weren’t losing this much sleep, and if I weren’t seeing my performance suffer. I fell asleep halfway through breakfast this morning, and I worried Spike. Worrying Spike… I’ve done it enough. He deserves a Twilight who at least mostly has it together.
I hope this letter finds you well. Oh! I almost forgot. I just wanted to say, and forgot to say last time I wrote you, that Applejack sends her thanks. Apparently you helped Applebloom with some nightmares awhile back? I told her that she should write you herself, and that of all ponies she should know how much appreciation for hard work can mean. She’s shy about it, though. Said she didn’t want to bother you, and so on. Ha, kind of like me at the start of this letter. So, from both of us, thanks. We appreciate the hard work you do, and I especially know what sorts of things lurk in dreams. Not everything magical is good, after all. And after tonight? Well, I can definitely appreciate what being shielded from nightmares means.
To be honest… I guess, regardless of whether or not you can help, I’ve learned from this experience. Dreams are kind of like… looking in a foggy window on yourself.
With warm regard, your friend,
Twilight
Celestia glanced over the page, and considered what she would say next.
Luna did not wait for her to speak.
“I am the most miserable, distasteful creature that has walked the earth, sister.”
Celestia, still considering, blinked. The mask of a thousand years of ruling alone sat comfortably in place. Behind it, as if she sat in council of war, the sun’s shepherd considered her next move. There were several answers lined up and ready to be fired like a javelin in some ancient unicorn’s magic grasp. They ranged from the most diplomatic and detached to the acidic and frustrated. With care, she regarded her sister’s low estate, eyes hidden and form slack as she laid against the breakfast table.
She settled for somewhere in between. “I wouldn’t say that just yet. Discord is alive and well, after all.”
There was, for a fleeting instant, something like a smile from the mare who currently took up most of the table.
But it died. “Tia, I went too far.”
“I know.”
“How?” Luna stirred, rising a bit.
Celestia put the letter down, folded it neatly, and returned to her donut. It was, perhaps, not the most regal nor graceful of breakfasts. Her cook had been a bit put-out, surely, by being upstaged by Donut Joe. But she had seen this conversation and this morning and perhaps even this letter coming, and knew she would need the fortitude only indulgence could supply.
“Because, and I say this with all love, it is what you do.” She ate and let that linger in the air a bit. “You push. When we were young, you were the impetuous one. Yes, I had my moments, but I never was able to surpass you. I rolled the dice, but you tended to set the whole game on fire.”
Luna wilted even further, if such were possible.
“I have… I have done something terrible.”
Celestia hummed.
Truth be told, she was less in control of herself than she appeared. There were two warring instincts within her, primarily. The first was the older of the two: shield Luna, comfort Luna. The other, younger and insistent, was harsher: Defend Twilight. Be harsh with your sister.
She tried to keep the middle path. Twilight was her own pony, and she did not need Celestia to hover. Luna was her sister, but she needn’t be coddled. Leaning too far one way was injustice. Sitting in the middle was still choosing. A thousand years alone, and still she found that the world cooked up paradoxes that vexed her. Some days, she found it a bit exciting. Today was not one of those days. Today was a day where she wished quite fervently that life would be easier, and that love was easy.
“Perhaps.” Luna would explain herself in time. She always did, one way or another. The trick was to wait, to give her room to maneuver, wait for her to set up battle lines, and then encircle. That was how one found out the truth.
“Something is deeply wrong with me, sister.”
“Luna, what happened? Not just last night. With all of this.”
“I have dishonored the task that was given me. I did to a pony that thing which I swore so long ago to defend all ponies from. I… I went too far last night, farther than I intended. Much, much farther. I didn’t mean… no I did, I…”
Celestia sighed, forgot breakfast, and laid a hoof on Luna’s mane. Together, like this, in a place too open for Glory but perfect for the intimacy of family, neither wore their regalia nor did they disguise their forms. Luna’s light blue mane was short again, as it had been the night she was freed.
And so, for a few moments, the conversation stalled. Celestia stroked her sister’s mane and waited, and hoped, and doubted.
“I thought about the Nightmare,” Luna began at length. “And how my resentment formed. The difference between what was and what is, as we talked of once.” When Celestia nodded, she continued with even pace. “I had to find a way to engender such a conflict in Twilight, or so I thought, and only then would I have satisfaction. It was beyond selfish. I, myself, am beyond selfish. I was blinded. Not once did I pause to consider what it was I meant to do.”
“You touched her spirit, then, I take it.”
“Yes.”
Celestia sighed again.
“I found… I found a thread. Something which hurt to touch, something secret and compromising and buried, and I… I pulled.”
“And you built a dream using it?”
“No. It built itself. I know better. I should know better. I can create dreams, yes, but I can also prod the dreamer to create their own. You remember this, surely.”
“It comes back to me, yes.”
It really did, all coming back at once. You could do a lot of things with suggestions, hints, subtle words… You could do a lot. That’s how it had all started. Unchecked rumor and unanswered suggestion. How had the great schism ended? She remembered what ponies who had been bathed in her sister’s glory looked like.
Celestia fought a grimace. She could not be too swift to say anything. At least ponies subjected to Luna’s aura lived.
Luna groaned softly, and nuzzled her sister’s hoof. “Twilight created her own dream, born of this secret long hidden and long buried, this private shame, and with it came a host of insecurities. But it was I who let those insecurities free.”
Celestia withdrew her hoof slowly, so as not to be mistaken, and reached with her magic. A parcel came floating from deeper in her chambers, and she laid it on the table before a puzzled Luna.
“I too received mail around dawn,” Celestia said, her tone as gentle as she could manage.
She wasn’t angry. Or, rather, she wasn’t angry enough to let that anger motivate her. Anger was often a useless emotion, destructive more than constructive, binding more than freeing. She was frustrated. Disappointed. Perhaps sick at heart. It had been easy, with separation, to forget how troubling it was not to be alone.
Luna shied away from the papers. “From Twilight? Oh, sister, than you know.”
“I do.”
Luna shielded her eyes. “I do not have anything worth saying.”
“I am not sure of that just yet. There are things yet to be said.” Celestia unfolded the letter and read, keeping her voice even.
Dear Celestia,
First, I hope you enjoy the notes I’ve attached to this message. I’m sending Luna a copy of them as well, and I would love your input. I’m trying to find a workaround to the old problem of the Ninth formation. Energy use and loss. Nothing more invigorating then cheating entropy, really. It’s been a good distraction.
And I needed a good distraction.
I’m not really sure how to write this letter. I’ve tried several times (I had a lot of time to try) and I’ve gone back and forth about what to say and why and how and when, and finally I’m not sure if I can stand to write another draft, so this one will have to do or else I’m going to lose it. So, I apologize if it comes across as rambly or strange. It’s been a rough night.
I had a nightmare tonight. It was… bad. But, because I couldn’t go to sleep, I thought a lot.
My nightmare was about you. And me. And somepony else. No, I should start at the beginning. I was going to say, “you probably didn’t notice” but I’m almost positive you did. I mean, hello, we both know how much you notice, especially about your students. Looking back, I realize you were always nudging me towards making friends! I guess I was just too boneheaded to take the hint. Sending me to Ponyville was kind of the last ditch effort, but hey, it worked! So no complaints there. I’m glad you did.
I had a massive crush on you when I was young. Like, the biggest. And I guess, if I’m honest, it continued into my teenage years. It didn’t die naturally so much as I just sort of bottled it away and aggressively buried it, mostly just because I was gangly and awkward and insecure, like any filly my age… and because I guess I idolized you. I mean, not that I don’t think the world of you now!
But I know you better now. Before you get worried, I’m not coming on to you.
I kind of just wanted to admit that for my own sake, because I turned something that was probably natural into something that certainly wasn’t. This huge inferiority complex disguised as romantic longing that was probably unhealthy. So what does this have to do with my dream?
Well. My dream was that somehow, you and I were… together. Okay, please don’t judge too harshly, I know this is ridiculous to read. But we were. And I was so, so happy. I was coming to Canterlot every week to see you and everything was wonderful. But I came early, and you were in a meeting. The meeting wasn’t a meeting so much as it was a rendezvous. Of the carnal kind, you know? Not with me, who you were with. In the dream, I mean.
Okay. I’m going to move on from that because it was kind of traumatic but also its super embarrassing, I realize, to tell somepony, “oh by the way I had a dream we were together and you cheated on me, isn’t that neat?” because it’s pretty weird and a little uncomfortable for everyone involved.
You didn’t give a reason, I don’t think. I’m not entirely sure, some of the memory has faded. But what I do remember is how it was hard for me to remember to call you Celestia, instead of Princess, and that’s what I dwelled on most of the next three hours. And, you know what? The rest of it is bonkers, but that part is true. I think it might be important. So! This is a friendship report, I guess.
Tonight, I think I learned a lot about myself. Bottling up your insecurities, being down on yourself all the time over silly things, all that dumb mind game stuff, is a load of baloney. And it’s bad. It can hurt you and your friendships with other ponies, because you can convince yourself that they don’t want to be your friends, and furthermore that you don’t deserve to be their friends.
And you know what? I think that’s really foolish. So, I’ve resolved not to keep doing that. I can’t just fix everything all at once. I know that. You don’t just become not shy or not nervous by saying you aren’t and “toughing it out”. But I think that you can try to be better for your own sake, and trying is important.
I’m going to stop calling you Princess forever, if that’s alright. (I mean, if it isn’t you should totally tell me because I mean, I don’t know, maybe you’d rather that? I mean, lots of ponies have two names and prefer one, and I guess princess is sort of like a name?) I’m going to try my damndest not to get so hung up on myself. Let’s be friends. I mean, we are, but there’s so much I don’t even know about you and that isn’t right. Like, and this is true, the third thought I had when I woke up was: does Celestia even like mares? I don’t know! I never asked! Do you? Is it weird to ask that in context?
I guess my point is… You’ll always be my Princess, Celestia. You’ll always have been my teacher and mentor. And you’ve always been my friend, in one way or another. But tonight I learned that I’ve not been the best friend in return. What I was worried about with my Ponyville friends, that having a fancy title would make me seem distant, I kind of turned around and stuck on you. That’s not fair. Friends should talk, and not just when there’s business or a national crisis or something. If I had a friend, or worse yet someone I was in love with, who always called me princess and never Twilight... That would be sad. Not sure how else to put it. Too tired.
So, next time I have a free weekend, how does tea sound? I’ll bring Go. No one plays in Ponyville and I’m dying to play. Do you know how? Probably, but if you don’t, I’d love to teach you. Also, if you do, prepare your A-game because Spike has gotten really, really good from the several dozen times I’ve made him suffer through this week and I think the idea of me having a new partner might be the best news he’s had all month.
Your friend, forever and always,
Twilight Sparkle
Celestia folded the letter and floated it gently back to its resting place inside, on her private desk.
“For the record,” she said lightly, “my tastes as far as the carnal have changed little since we were parted, and I do in fact play Go. I am very good. I am quite looking forward to that.”
Luna was silent. Confused, possibly. But mostly silent.
So, she kept talking. “Luna, you went too far. You injured your integrity, yes, but the mare I see before me is very different from the one who twisted ponies before. The one I see, sharing breakfast with me before she turns in for the day, is hurt. Very deeply hurt. Imperfect, yes, but not beyond help. If I truly thought you could not somehow mend this breach... “ She shrugged. “This conversation would be different. I hope you believe that.”
“I… are you not dismayed by the revelation?”
“To be honest, I am unsure how I feel. I did know, when she was growing up.” Celestia allowed herself a smile. “Truly, it was rather endearing. Many young fillies and colts have crushes on figures of authority, ponies they trust and like and want to be approved by. Teachers, mentors, and so on. I thought she’d grown out of it a long time ago. I’m humbled, if anything, and I’m grateful that despite going through this, she has proved herself to be as thoughtful and as honest as ever. I do not think you have done any lasting damage, sister.” A thought occurred, and the smile slipped away. “Though it was painful to read that even a pale imitation of myself would do such a hurtful thing to a pony I love. Twilight learned a lesson, but I myself have been thinking on why I was sparing when choosing lovers.” She glanced down into her mug. “Perhaps too sparing,” she said.
“I am sorry. If I had known for certain… If I had been able to alter the thread-dream in anyway, I would never have let such a lie take place.”
“I know. I knew before you told me, sweet sister.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
Celestia nodded, and sipped at her coffee--again, for fortitude--before she finished. “But I do think that you should consider long and hard what you will say to her. Tonight?”
“Yes. I could not bear another night of waiting.”
“I do not think I could either,” Celestia said softly. Then, a bit louder. “Be that as it may, I urge you to be honest with her. Twilight is just as imperfect as you are. But I believe in her. I think your real satisfaction still lies with her. Just not in the way you expected.”
“I think you are right. I fear the audience.” Luna sat back in her chair. Slouched, really.
As you should, a part of Celestia thought. She continued to sip, and said nothing. The part of her that was vengeful was glad. The part of her that was merciful was sated. The part of her that loved waited hopefully.
But she had faith in Twilight. After all, had she not once said to Luna: have you considered my servant, Twilight?
And she chuckled. Well, not a servant. An equal now, finally. As she had been all along, though it took pain to see it at last. Twilight was right on one count: when she wished to be, few ponies could match her for sheer boneheaded tenacity about the worst things. Sometimes she needed a push.
She and Luna were alike that way.
Not that she appreciated the nature of the push. But castigating Luna for an act she was already so miserable about was neither profitable nor wise. No, as emotionally fulfilling as lashing out could be, it was far better to heal. She just wished healing wasn’t so messy.
And, further down, she wanted to apologize to Twilight herself. Though there were tied that bound her, ancient oaths and laws of the deeper magic, she had never been denied the power of her words. In some other world, perhaps she had turned Luna from this and saved them all the trouble. Perhaps tonight she would ask and see what might have been.
Between coaxing Luna into eating and mentally preparing herself for the day, Celestia daydreamed of board games, and she smiled. Perhaps there was hope yet.
Of course there was. Twilight Sparkle had overheard Rainbow talking about it at lunch. She’d been there, but more in spirit than in truth. She’d not slept in days, and it had showed. Rarity had spent most of their weekly lunch date fretting over her, and frankly Twilight had sort of not minded. Partially because minding took effort, and she had little energy for effort. Partially because she was… rattled. Rattled was a good word for it.
She hoped it hadn’t come across in her letters. She fervently hoped it didn’t. Her mantra as the sun slowly rose over a sleepy Ponyville had been keep it together, Sparkle, keep it together.
It was stupid. It was really, really stupid. Nightmares are things that vanish when one wakes. The others had been that way. But last night… last night was different.
She’d woken in a cold sweat, fumbling for her own name. Every little thing had been frightening. The sound of her hooves against the cold floors, the rustle of her own sheets as she left the bed, the sound of tea brewing. All of it. The scratch of her own quill had threatened to drive her mad.
Of course, even such a state as that did not linger without some alteration. She’d gotten better.
But as soon as Rainbow had mentioned that storm… for a moment, perhaps for the first moment, the powerful temptation to abuse her new royal privileges had been overwhelming. Twilight had opened her mouth to call it off, and stalled as an eager Rainbow Dash was halfway through describing how “awesome” it was going to be to a bemused Applejack.
And then she’d gone home, made sure Spike kept everypony politely out of her mane, and slept all day long.
And that brought her to here. To this moment. Sitting at her private desk near the window of her own bedchamber, looking at Luna’s reply.
Twilight Sparkle,
There will be no more dreams. I will see you tonight. I pray you sleep well.
Luna
And that was it. That’s all she wrote.
Twilight read it for the twentieth time. She had counted. Precision was important.
It wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped for. Yes, Luna had said she would help. The letter was technically affirmative. But it was also laconic, and that was troublesome in a wholly new way. Luna’s correspondence had always been delightful precisely because it was so florid and passionate. This was the mare who drew all over her missives, including everything from unflattering but frankly hilarious caricatures of her sister and various dignitaries to, twice now, full portraits of herself and of Twilight and oil paints. She had written reams in complicated, archaic verse—in another language, even!—and expected prompt replies. Twilight had found it insanely difficult, taxing, and deeply enjoyable.
And here was a letter that was a single line on a page. Well. Three lines. One was actual body-text, and the other two were just names. So basically one line.
The point was that it was unnerving.
A quick glance around the bedroom—still brightly lit, possessing perhaps one of the only windows through which light still shone at this hour—and saw nothing. No threats, no monsters, no dumbfounded Celestia. Just the room.
When she had been small, Twilight had learned to calm her fears this way. What are you afraid of? And then focusing on the present. It was easy, too easy, to fear what may or may not come.
Luna said there would be no more nightmares, and Luna would be the one mare who could say that with the most unshakeable conviction, and that should be enough. It would be enough. Her gut feeling be damned, Twilight Sparkle would take it. Or she would aggressively try to and lie in bed worrying about it until she wore herself out. Which was, functionally, the same thing. Probably.
With an aggressive suddenness, Twilight pushed away from her desk and stood on her own four legs for a moment. She turned stiffly towards her own bed, stared at it for a moment, felt incredibly silly about her own worry, and turned in for the night.
And outside, the storm continued.
Luna, in Highest Canterlot, stalked the private galleries of her sister like a revenant.
Celestia, for the first time, joined her. They did not speak. They had spoken already. Instead, Celestia watched her sister inspect the damage her outburst had done, and look to the other pieces. One by one, she approached them, taking measure of her sister’s craft.
Her preferred medium had been paints and charcoal, but Luna was no stranger to the shaping of primordial forces. She herself had played with fire and ice as a simpler, happier alicorn upon an ancient tableland.
If she were honest, some of the allure of more traditional forms of expression had laid in how they were received. Her elemental creations had always… troubled. That was the word. They were troubling.
Another difference, she thought sourly as she admired Celestia’s statuary. She recognized the scene—another of Maldon, their worst and greatest hour, back to back upon the beaches stained with blood, captured forever in onyx that glowed with pleasant, low light. The light gave it a strange quality, hazy yet likelife, as if the small Luna with her hammer held high was not merely a graven image but a small mare on the move. Ah, she saw how it was done now. The stone was but a canvas, the light an illusion. No, not an illusion. She was confidant that it would be solid to the touch.
Celestia had always played with light, and she had always reveled in darkness. Both had felt secure in safe in their choice, both enjoying wholesome and honest in their manipulation of their Glory. The older sister found being fully exposed to the light calming, and it baffled the younger sister who lounged in thick shadows and felt safe and at perfect peace.
They understood that there was no harm in opposites. Others had not been so understanding.
Maldon. She had been far happier before that lonely island and its proud city. It was a tale she might tale some other time, to some other pony, for her sister knew it as well as she. Words flowed from her easily, from some other place.
Thought shall be harder, hearts the keener Courage the greater, as our might lessens.
And Celestia, continued in a voice so soft that perhaps only Luna could have heard it from where she stood, slipping back into the old tongue they had sang in those days. “Old in age am I; I will not hence. By my lady will I die, my lady dearly loved.”
“Aye,” Luna said evenly.
“She was a wonderful mare.”
“She was. And to see me in my current state would have driven her to mad grief, sister.”
“She would have shared in your sorrow, Luna.”
“Aye.”
“Is it time?”
“Almost.”
They were silent again. Luna moved on from the battle, moved on from the visions of the past where she held aloft a hammer which felled cities and drank delight of battle with her peers. Those were long gone times. No more returning.
“She is probably asleep by now,” Celestia said. “Are you ready?”
“No.”
“That’s unfortunate. But you are going, are you not?”
Luna winced. There was steel there. Not a lot. A little. Enough.
“I am going. I do not yet know what I will say. Some of what I will say, certainly. But… but how one frames a thing is important,” she said. “How one explains it. How one…”
“May I offer a suggestion?” Celestia said, softer now.
“I suppose. Proceed.”
“Perhaps you should put the pageantry aside. All of this… mess,” she paused, hesitated for just a moment, “All of it arose out of your need for pageantry, Luna. Trials and tests, invoking the Deep Magic. If you would choose a starting point…”
Luna nodded stiffly. “Perhaps.”
“Be that as it may… the hour is late.”
“Aye.” Silence. “Tia?”
“Yes?”
“You, ah… You mentioned to me that you had trouble sleeping. On the first night.” Luna looked down at the ground. “Would you—”
“Yes. I would appreciate your blessing.”
Luna looked up, startled. “You would?”
And Celestia smiled at her. “Yes, I would. I will count on you for good dreams, Luna. As I did before.”
“As you did before,” her sister replied faintly. She leaned forward as Celestia bowed her head, and their horns touched briefly. She glowed, but only for a moment.
“I will retire now. Shall I see you in the morning?”
“I hope. I am sorry, sister.”
“I know.”
Outside, the storm raged unabated.
Luna looked out into the night, and saw the storm. Something in her approved of its savagery. She shared the pegasus’ love of the wild wind and the pounding rain.
She’d stalled. She’d waited and waited and the night had sunk deeper and the storm had raged and…
Now was the time.
She strode to her bed and laid down, still looking out her balcony, still watching the rain and the occasional lightning, still watching the curtains buffeted by strong winds. She did not close the doors. She cared very little about such trifling things. Her mind was already somewhere else. And soon, her body followed.
The Aether, shining and beautiful, filled with the dreams met her but she felt no joy. She hardly noticed most of them. She had already visited her sister’s dreams and crafted them with all of her heart, but it had not helped her mood much.
She swam to Twilight, and Twilight’s dream rose to met her from the field of sleepers.
She did not touch it. She did not alter it. This time, she dove in, squeezed all of herself down into the small infinity of Twilight Sparkle’s dreaming.
Twilight Sparkle was back in her library again, sorting books. Curiously, she never seemed to run out of books. The pile beside her never shrank. But this didn’t bother her.
Nor did the storm outside.
Until, all at once, it did bother her. Deeply. Everything did. She dropped the book that she had been shelving, and stared in disbelief as it hit the floor and evaporated. She turned to the pile to see the same volume lying on the top. More than that, that every book in the stack was the same copy. The shelves—all of them the same book over and over.
She stepped back, confused. “What? What is this? I… I’m dreaming.” She blinked. “This is a dream. I… I know that. I was lying in bed, and then…”
A crash of lightning. She jumped.
“R-right. Right, it’s storming, of course I can hear it. Do dreams work that way? Like…” she shook her head. “I’ll ask Luna next time I see her.”
She looked around, still unsure. Everything was just slightly off. The table in the center of the room was too small, and the old bust on it too large. The books were all the same—she tried not to think about that too much, it made her a little anxious—the windows were warped. The stairs actually hurt her eyes to look at because she was mostly sure what she was seeing was not possible. Angles didn’t work that way.
She looked away quickly. Right! Dreams. That was interesting. Only one mildly disturbing thing so far, which to be honest in her usual line of study was actually pretty great progress. Magic got a little unfortunate some times.
Now, if only the storm would die down, so she could go outside and see what the town looked like…
Maybe not, if the stairs and their uncomfortable twisting was any indication. Still, it would be nice if she could find some way to talk to Luna. This was already better than the last three nights, but now she had several hours of nothing to do but sit. No books, in an environment she didn’t understand.
Well, it was a dream. She cleared her throat and spoke to the air.
“Luna? Hey, if you can hear me… I’m guessing you did this. I appreciate you answering but, I’m not sure what’s going on. Could you come down here?”
Nothing. Obviously. She sighed.
Twilight laid down on the floor and thought of her two letters again. Celestia’s reply had been wonderful, even if she’d been so nervous reading it. So gracious, even with Twilight’s weird twisted confession. Twisted is a bit harsh, don’t you think? She thought, frowning.
Still. It had been awkward, and then it had been wonderful. Young Twilight may be a bit put out about not being the Princess’ purple paramour, but she would have been giddy at the idea of being honest to goodness penpals with Celestia. So, all in all, it was a win-win.
More time passed. She tried again.
“Luna? Hey… are you there? I mean, this probably won’t work. I don’t really understand how your powers work. Actually, in hindsight, I’m amazed I haven’t pestered you to distraction about that yet…” She coughed. “Anyhow, it would be awesome if I could get some explanation here. Or… I don’t know, anything? Cause I was also wondering about having nightmares back to back. I mean, I didn’t wanna say anything, but don’t you usually keep that from happening? At least, I think you do. Annnnd I’m talking to myself. Because it’s just me. Alone. In the weird dream library. Awesome. Well, I—”
There was a crash of lightning so loud she had to cover her ears. Twilight cried out and shied away from the noise, but it was everywhere.
Which was what her library wasn’t after another crash.
The walls didn’t break up so much as dissolve. It was as if some god had plucked her library like a flower from the ground. It just… left. All of it, at once, tearing up from the foundation and littering the air with debris. But none of it came back towards her.
The winds howled. It wasn’t a storm.
It was a whirlwind.
She could see it all now, without the walls to muffle the sound and the fury. The town was in shambles, pieces flying off to join the great cloud wall bearing down on her. She tried to pick herself up and run, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. Something was here. Something beyond the whirlwind, heavy and imposing, something that warped the world and bent it to a new shape to fit its own design. Absurdly she thought of the world as a great sheet stretched out with a cannonball dropped in the middle.
The tornado plowed right through Sugarcube Corner, and a terrified Twilight whimpered as it came closer and closer.
“Luna? Luna! LUNA, FOR STAR’S SAKES!”
It ate up the street. It flung doors and crossbeams. It devoured the thatch roofs of quaint Ponyville. Closer. Closer. Shards of glass like knives flitted through the air.
Twilight had never felt what she felt now. Terror, yes, she knew it well. Fear for life and limb, certainly. But awe of this type was new. This was power. It was raw, devestating, apocalyptic power. The old ponies had worshipped many things, and some worshipped still the stars in the sky and named them one by one, but this was a power that deserved terrified worship.
It was going to swallow her whole without even knowing.
“Luna? Luna, please, where are you? Answer me!”
She struggled to her hooves. It stood at the door, or where the door had been, once. But her legs would not obey her fevered commands to flee. The storm marched, and she screamed Luna’s name as it devoured her.
But she was not destroyed. She was not harmed.
The storm was everywhere now, and she was in its heart, wind and smoke and lightning and detritus flying. The storm answered her.
“You called for me.”
Twilight stared up, hoping to see Luna, but saw only a growing darkness, formless, shifting. Nothing made sense. It was as if her eyes had simply failed. The storm, the darkness, none of it. She comprehended nothing.
“Luna? Luna, where are you?”
Luna answered her. “I am here, Twilight Sparkle. I have come as you asked, to give you the answers you wished but would not seek.”
“What? What the h-hell are you talking about?”
Lightning. “Ask yourself: why else would nightmares come to you, most beloved of Ourselves as the catalyst of our salvation? Three nights of nightmares without rescue? Ask yourself what this could mean!”
Twilight grit her teeth. “I don’t understand! If you were angry with me for asking for help, then why—”
And then she arrived. She being the last mare Twilight had expected, the one she had hoped not to see again.
Nightmare Moon fell like a shooting star, wrapped in billowing smoke and ashes followed in her wake. Where she landed split as if torn by earthquake, warped as if strangled with magic, and began to come unglued. Reality itself around her—as real as a dream could be, and Twilight felt it was very real—phased and twisted in accordance with her progress as she strode towards the still struggling Twilight.
“No.” Twilight shivered as she said it. She repeated it again and again, as if that would change anything. “You… you can’t! Please, Luna, don’t tell me… I don’t know what’s happened, but we can fix this! We can…”
“It is time for you to be quiet,” Nightmare Moon hissed. “And it is time for you to listen. I will explain myself to you.”
Twilight, and she was ashamed to admit it, whimpered.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Luna… what does this all mean?”
“I have tested you. Three nights and three trials. Behold!”
And, striding out of the storm, came two mares: Luna and Celestia. Celestia was different, strange and foreign. She shone like the sun. Her eyes were fire, and her hooves were burnished bronze. Her mane was color itself. Her wings were gold.
And Luna was a creature the likes of which Twilight had never seen. Fangs peeked out from her lips and around her pooled night itself. Her mane was full of stars and her eyes were black as onyx.
Nightmare Moon circled and stood beside her. Twilight shivered, but the spectre of evil did nothing to her. “Listen,” she said, and like that the roar of the storm faded to a distant rumble. “One day, two sisters spoke to each other, the older ready to retire for the evening and the younger coming to present herself.”
Celestia, with a smile that was equal parts imperial and familiar, spoke. “And where have you come from, sister?”
And the Luna before her answered. “From roaming to and fro along the earth, and in dreams, back and forth. I have seen many things and delighted in none of them. The world is a trick.” She almost sneered it. It was shocking to see Luna so…
“Ah. And have you considered my servant, Twilight? There are few like her, blameless and upright, possessed of integrity without question and courage without faltering. Surely this would please you.”
Neither noticed her. It was like watching a play. Luna answered, again with a sneer. “Ah, does Twilight not fear her princess for nothing? Have you not put a hedge about her house and a guard at her door? Have you not paved a path for her through every wilderness? You have blessed the works of her hooves and horn, and multiplied her possession tenfold, set her up in a palace all her own and given her every honor. Ah, but if you were to retract your aegis but for a moment…”
Luna shrugged. Celestia frowned. “Very well. Ask her yourself if you must, and try her with words, and you will surely see what she is made of, sister.”
But Luna shook her head. “No, words are for the weak and the dying, the little ones that rot away with time. But if I were to reach out and strike what she has, not even overturn but upset it, then perhaps she would curse you to your face.”
Celestia’s aura no longer glowed. It was not light but fire. She seethed in a way more intense than Twilight had thought possible, and had she been able she would have cowered. Already just being near them was starting to weigh on her. What was this? Why did they appear so, and act so? What did this mean?
“You will not touch her, nor strike her, nor in anyway will I allow you to harm her.”
“Ah, but you know the Law.”
Celestia stomped her hoof, and fire spread from the cracks she left in the library’s foundations. “I know the Law, the Deeper Magic. So do you! Leave off this foolishness.”
“I will not.”
“Then I bind you: you will touch no hair upon Twilight Sparkle’s head, nor harm her surroundings or her friends, nor shall you wound in anyway a single pony in the material world. I cannot stop you in the realm you rule alone, but if you bring your madness into mine--”
“Then I will not,” Luna cut her off.
Celestia seemed to want to say more. But before she could, the images vanished, and Nightmare Moon took her place before an astonished Twilight.
“So the wager,” she began. “Aye, so I touched no hair upon your head nor dealt any wound to your loved ones, and yet still I tested you. I am Luna, Luna as she has always been.”
“No, you’re a nightmare,” Twilight said. “Luna, this… if this is you, stop all of this and just talk to me!”
“I need to know how you endured,” Nightmare Moon continued. “How? Even when I went beyond the bonds of decency, even when I broke the oaths I made to myself, even then! Why does your heart stand fast? Why do you not…” the Nightmare growled. “Why will you not yield to yourself?”
“Because they were dreams!” Twilight shouted. “And they didn’t happen! They aren’t real!”
“But you did not know that at the time.”
“And because this is stupid! Luna, please, just…”
“I have come to you as I am. This is closer to the truth. I have sought answers from you and found none! What helped you to stand fast where… where…”
She stopped. The Nightmare… No. Luna’s chest heaved. Twilight saw her fully now. Her eyes were wild. Dressed in armor and taller than what Twilight was used to, fearsome in every way, and yet. And yet.
So she softened her tone. “Luna. Please release me. Don’t… you don’t have to impress me.”
The Nightmare flinched. “I have not done this for you!”
“I didn’t say you had. I said you don’t need to impress me. What I probably should have said is that you don’t have to hide from me.”
The Nightmare flared with magic and the storm increased.
I AM NOT HIDING.
“Yes you are!” Twilight struggled to keep from shouting. “You are. I… okay, so you gave me nightmares because… I don’t even know! You’re stuck in some kind of weird need to play a part and you don’t have to!”
The Nightmare seethed.
“You don’t have to. Just be Luna, and I’ll just be me. Explain it. Explain yourself.”
Her tormentor backed away.
“Please.”
And, bit by bit, the storm died. The winds stopped howling. The flying debris vanished. The lightning did not strike and the thunder did not sound. Nightmare Moon remained herself.
“You form.”
“It is fitting.”
Twilight sighed. “Can I move? Yes, okay, I can move my legs… thank the stars. Luna, what is the meaning of this?”
“I don’t know!” It was not what she’d expected because it was raw and almost maddened. “I don’t know!”
“You know. I mean… you put all this effort into it.”
“Because I was desperate! Because I… I…”
The Nightmare dissolved. Luna diminished.
She looked like she had before, small and fragile. She looked like the Luna that Twilight had first seen, shivering on the floor of an ancient ruin. “Because if I could lose myself and be as old and as experienced and loved as I was, then why can’t you? You… You don’t understand.”
Twilight closed the gap between them, and knew she was right. She was in the dark. But she saw pain and she reacted with blind uncertain bravado. She hugged a stiff, panicked Luna.
“I don’t. Tell me. Why did you do this?”
“I don’t know,” she said, miserably.
Twilight released her. “Then I’ll wait until you do.”
The scene changed.
Luna lay again on the floor, but bound like a criminal. Twilight sat upon a high seat, like an ancient warlord in judgement.
Luna spoke. “Have you ever done something so awful that you wanted to die?”
Twilight sputtered. “N-no? No, I haven’t.”
“Something so great that not even a city could cover it?”
“Luna, is this about…”
“Don’t call me that. Please.”
“It’s your name.”
“It was. When I was Just Luna. Merely Luna.”
“Your sister forgave you.” Twilight refused to be apart of this charade. This was ridiculous. She left the chair and started to pull on the chains, but they refused to move.
“She shouldn’t have!”
“Isn’t that her choice?”
The scene changed.
Twilight knew this place. Everfree, in its old glory. Celestia, flat upon the ground. They stood on either side of her body.
“I am a kinslayer,” Luna said hoarsely.
“And yet she lives.”
“Aye, but she might not have! Not because I spared her!”
“And yet she lives,” Twilight repeated. “She forgave you. The past is done with, Luna.”
The scene changed, but this time a frustrated Twilight tried to alter it herself. She thought of herself and Celestia, after the debacle with Smarty Pants. She visualized it, focused on how it felt and what it was like.
They stood on either side of a miserable unicorn Twilight and her disappointed teacher.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Twilight said. “It could have been worse. This isn’t a comparison. But she forgave me too. I shamed all of her teaching, betrayed the trust of my neighbors, played with ponies like toys. She forgave me too.”
“It isn’t the same.”
“It’s not. It doesn’t have to be! Don’t be stubborn. Please don’t,” she added. “Luna, do you not trust me?”
“I want to.”
“Do you trust your sister?”
“Yes.”
Twilight sighed and sat. Celestia lectured silently between them and she tried not to look. “You decided to test me. But why? Because you thought I would betray you or her or…”
Luna also sat. Celestia and her student faded. They were in the library, pristine as it had been.
“I am no longer sure,” she began. “At first, I told Celestia that I feared you would make my mistake because you were young. I thought surely I could tempt you in dreams and a bad reaction would prove my case. I did not want to discredit you, or so I thought. I merely wanted to show my sister that her trust was too blind.”
“But why? Do you really worry that she’s wrong about me?” Twilight tried to keep the hurt out of her voice but failed. She looked away. The idea of Luna really believing that any moment she would turn on her friends, turn on Celestia was painful.
When Luna didn’t answer, Twilight looked up.
And then it was Luna’s turn not to meet her eyes. “No. No, I think perhaps I wanted her to be less sure of me.”
“I thought, with the tantabus… hadn’t we…”
“Not all troubles are worked out in one go, like knights at tilting,” she replied with something like a smile. “The more I try to explain myself to myself, the more I come back to how easy it was. To come back fueled by my old madness and be forgiven so readily. How do you live up to that? But it is worse than that even still.”
The scene changed.
Twilight stood in Ponyville’s town hall, and Luna was on the balcony, the one she had stood on so proudly, so defiantly the first time Twilight had ever seen her.
“Do you remember? Filled with ambition, yes, but with something darker still. Despair is a powerful thing, Twilight. Insidious, aye, but we make too much of that sometimes. Methinks perhaps its true nature is closer to fangs at the throat.” And she bared her own again, and Twilight shivered. “I felt a kind of burning madness, but I was frightfully sane. Like wine without the dulling of the senses, all force and no motive but to kick at the legs of the world until it broke.”
“And you changed.”
“Have I? I reached in your heart and drew out the first agonizing thing I could find, with little regard. I was so overcome by my need to, I don’t know, either best you or pull you down to dwell with me below that I overstepped all bounds. Once, I did just what I did to you. But you experienced it once, and they a thousand times. Did you feel different in the morning?”
Twilight felt cold. “Yes.”
“Aye, so you should. Weak, perhaps? Frightened? Confused? Cold? So did they, again and again. You think of me as a boon companion, but what do you know of me?”
“I know that you’re my friend. I know that you’re better than this.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.”
Twilight growled. “Luna, what do you want? For me to hate you? Do you just want me to tell you that you suck? Is that what you want? Because I’m not going to do it.”
“I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“Alone? You have a sister! She lives in the same palace!”
“And she’s blind. But you aren’t anymore. You know what I’m like now! You know what I’m capable of, don’t you?” Luna asked. She leaned over the balcony.
They were silent for a bit. Luna deflated. She sat back on her haunches. She covered her eyes.
“Twilight,” she began again. “I am struggling. I’m so… I am so angry. I do not know why. I am not even angry at you, but at myself. I came here to apologize and all I’ve done is frustrate you and be… aggrandizing.”
“Then stop it. You don’t have to. I don’t bite.”
The corner of Luna’s lips turned up, but then her expression flattened again. “I spent the majority of my waking hours vacillating between pathetic misery and righteous loathing, both directed at myself, over myself. As you have noticed, I lack my sister’s self-control.”
“Ponies are different. You don’t have to be like Celestia.”
“Such words you speak, and yet!” Luna chuckled weakly, and Twilight flushed.
“Okay, I get it. That’s a bit rich coming from me, but honestly who else would know better?”
“That is a valid point, I suppose.”
“So you want to trust me, but feel you can’t. You trust your sister. You wish she wouldn’t trust you. You’re afraid of what you are and who you are. Am I getting this so far?”
“Aye.”
“You came here to apologize, and you were afraid to do it. I was going to ask if I was right, but you’re nodding so I’ll keep going. What frightens you so much about Celestia loving you?”
“She loved me last time.”
“Don’t you think you’ve learned from last time? You aren’t that pony anymore.”
“I want to be. She was whole!”
Twilight flared her wings, took to the air, and landed on the rim of the balcony beside Luna. Glad that its easier to balance in the dream.
“No you don’t. She was a you that didn’t have what you have. Namely, the knowledge that you gained the hard way.”
Tentatively, carefully, Twilight reached out and touched Luna’s foreleg. When Luna did not pull away, she continued.
“I’m hurt. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m hurt that you didn’t feel able to trust me. I’m hurt that instead of just asking me for help, you went through all of this… as if I wouldn’t have always wanted to help you. And, yes, you kind of dug up some unfortunate stuff and aired my dirty laundry.”
“Dreams formed from the threads… ah, you would not know. The dreams woven from what I find in a pony’s heart I do not make myself. I was trapped in it much as you were. When I realized what lay ahead… I do not know how I can ever undo it.”
“You can’t,” Twilight said, and then took a deep breath. “You can’t, but you can be sorry, and you are. You know what? If anything, I think it shows you’re not the only one who's got insecurities locked away. You aren’t some solitary broken being in a world of perfect statues.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” she did not say it angrily. “Do you really? Because I don’t think you did. I think you acted without really thinking, without stopping to wonder how much of what you perceived was true and how much of it you were forcing to appear true, because you were hurt and angry and frustrated with yourself and you lashed out. And, yes, I feel a little betrayed.”
Luna whined softly.
“But…” Twilight sighed. “You can’t drag somepony down to be with you. You don’t even belong there. You haven’t been testing me. I think you wanted to test yourself, and I think you failed. Is that fair?”
“Yes.”
Twilight chuckled softly. “You know, I used to panic about tests. Even when there was no way I could fail. Celestia said something to me when I was younger that I should have remembered, and that I try to remember, though usually I do a poor job of it. She told me that when I failed, it wasn’t the end so much as it was a beginning.”
“She said the same to me.”
“See? Just pulling out all the old lessons now. If you failed here, there is no reason you will fail again. There’s no reason you necessarily must fail again.
“All along, you’ve been so afraid of what I might do, or what Celestia might do, or what you might do, and all this time you never bothered to just ask us. You’re so convinced that she shouldn’t trust you, or that she should not have forgiven you, but isn’t that for her to decide?
“You asked why I ‘stood fast’. I can tell you pretty easily: because I love Celestia, just as I love my friends, and I love you. Yeah, even you, scary night princess. I know, somewhere, that loving ponies is hard and that there’s always the possibility they will disappoint me gravely. I mean… think about all of this.”
“I wish I could stop thinking about it.”
“You will. But you know what, you were right about one thing. Problems don’t just roll over and die everytime. There’s so much to go into with the Schism that I honestly don’t know where to start.” She sighed and shrugged. “I don’t. But I know that this isn’t the way. Even if you don’t think you’re better than this… I think we both know you’re smarter than it.”
“Insulting my intelligence is a bit much,” grumbled Luna, who slouched over the balcony rail.
“Maybe. Luna, sometimes the answer is both much simpler and much more complicated than we’d like. Celestia forgave you and she loves you, and that’s it. The more you doubt that, the more you try to poke holes in it, the more holes you’ll see. Not because they were always there, but because you convinced yourself they had been. Doubt is the first step towards truth, but it’s just the first step. Eventually you have to accept.”
Twilight leaned against the railing.
“I’m sorry,” Luna said. “I’m sorry I doubted you. I apologize most fervently for having tried to drag you into my own insecurity.”
“I accept that apology,” Twilight said softly.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Luna said. “I’ve made a mess of everything, and now find myself without a stage and it is discomforting to realize just how much I relied upon showmareship. How much of all of this has been vanity? Just playing a role instead of living as myself? How much of this was some twisted need to play Tartarus’ advocate?”
“That’s fair. Maybe all of it. Maybe only some. You don’t have to be that.”
“I’m not sure what else there is of me,” Luna said with a smile. “Scratch me and I bleed hubris and shallow art, and then what? I knew a farmer once who swore that he could taste the quality of soil. A bit strange, was he, but I remembered it. I taste of myself nothing, and find little to cling to. If I cannot become by playing the role, then what am I, Twilight? I’m just a husk with a long list of sins.”
“Forgiven sins, I would add.”
“Yes, forgiven, as if that fixes them.”
“Maybe only mercy can,” Twilight said, remembering another mare in another place, telling her just the same. “If we paid for everything there would be no one left to pay, I think.”
“And so we end with what? Nothing?” Luna shook her head. “How dissatisfying.”
“No, not nothing. We’re still friends, I think.”
“If you say, then I hold no desire to part from you.”
Twilight hummed softly. “What is the Deeper Magic?”
“A division of realms,” Luna grumbled. “Oaths carved into our spirits by the world itself to regulate our sovereignty. There are places I cannot go and things I cannot do, and it goes likewise for her. There are rules to how we can act, limits to what we can do to check one another. Only existential threats bend them.” She paused. “Well. Only such bends them without immense consequence.”
“Ah.”
“It is of no matter. It explains little. I thought Celestia was bound by the Law not to hold me by force, but perhaps she knew I would waste myself like a foal against the wall and she let me fall into your clutches.”
“Or maybe she just doesn’t want to lose you,” Twilight said. “You act like she plans everything.”
“Doesn’t she?”
Twilight chuckled. “Sometimes, I think she’s rolling the dice.”
“Ha. She was a poor gambler in our days.”
“I can believe it.”
Luna stirred. “Twilight, I would swear to you an oath, and bind it by the Deeper Magic, that I might never break it.”
Twilight started. “What? Whoa, slow down. I still don’t—”
But Luna silenced her with a gesture. “Hear me out. I, Luna Songbourne, Shepherd of the Moon and Defender of the Night, swear on the Law and the Deeper Magic beneath the Field of Arbol itself, that I shall not enter the dreams of Twilight Sparkle nor disturb them in any fashion, without her consent. I shall not interfere ever again with her heart and it shall travel in the Aether unmolested until she relieve me of this oath whilst awake and in her sound mind.”
Luna glowed, but only for an instant.
“There,” she said. “It is done. You are the one soul in all of creation above my reach. If you will forgive me, then I will try and be worthy of it.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Twilight said, but she felt… better. Safer. And she did not know how to feel about that.
“I did, actually.” Luna shrugged. “It is only right. After what I have done, even if it is as you say, and there are no lasting effects, I have still stepped my bounds and there must be some consequence.”
“That’s fair.” Twilight smiled. “As for what happens next… nothing and everything, I guess. I didn’t have a nightmare tonight, for starters, so we’re on the right track. You wanted to accomplish something, and whether or not you meant to, you accomplished this: I’m more aware now than ever what troubles you. I’m not happy it happened like this, but I’m also glad it did. I’m glad that all I had were nightmares.”
Luna smiled back, a bit more hesitantly.
“Having done a poor job of my apology, the least I could do is leave you with some happier dream. Do I, ah, might I? And when you visit our sister, might you and I speak at length? I need to talk to somepony who is not her, who I will not run around in circles with about the sickness of my heart.”
She reached out a hoof. Twilight looked at it, met her eyes. She touched it with her own.
There was a mare in Ponyville named Twilight. She lived in a palace, and knew her neighbors, and loved her friends. She was steadfast and faithful, no longer a student but a mare in her own right and a princess beside.
And she slept soundly most nights.
One night, she wrote a letter and sent it to Canterlot by Spike’s fire. It was a short letter, formal and written with care.
That night, she had the most beautiful dreams. Ones that a pony almost would not wish to wake from, but she did. And she was happy, because something felt whole about them.
Something felt mended about the one who made them as well, she thought. She hoped. She hoped many things, and had faith in many things.
One of the things that Twilight put her hope in was a princess named Luna, and she was not disappointed.
