Thirty Years Gone By
Do you still remember what it was like when you were an only child?
Oh, yes. I mean, this would going back a very long time, not long after the three tribes formed their alliance, but I still remember those early days. And they were earlier than you can probably comprehend, not that I blame you for that. It was all strange to me, as a filly—I'm sure you're trying to imagine what I must have looked like at the time.
A lot shorter, I suspect.
That and the fact that I did not have my crown yet. I wouldn't get it until many decades after—you know—my foalhood had come to a close, and it wasn't exactly like that time of my life was short. For the little ponies, foalhood lasts about ten to fifteen years; it used to be shorter, actually, because back when I was a foal myself the little ponies were expected to start making families of their own at younger ages, so by eleven or twelve you were considered to have reached the proper age for such a thing—as a female, anyway.
And what was life like for you during that time? When you were a filly.
In as few sentences as I can manage, I would say it was like one of those dreams you have on the occasional night—maybe also during an afternoon nap—that you remember the feeling of, but you can't recall much else about in terms of sounds and visions. Because you have to understand, this was well over two-thousand years ago, and frankly there was not a whole lot to remember from that period of time in the first place. The world was revolving at a much more leisurely pace, or at least it felt that way. I can remember little moments, and I am still not sure why I remember those moments and not others, but they remain in my mind all the same.
One of those moments was when I met this pegasus General—I can't remember his name, although I don't think I ever got it in the first place. But I was very little at the time, and he was this older stallion with a graying beard that went all the way around his jaw, and looking back on it he was quite a handsome fellow. Of course, I was the one who was actually the older of the two, but time works in funny ways. So I asked a lot of questions about what a General was, what the military did usually, because I did not really understand these things.
That's understandable.
Naturally. So this gentlecolt showed me around the base that he worked at, and we talked with each other and with a lot of lower ranking soldiers and some officers, and I think one of the younger soldiers found me cute. I cannot say for sure, but I suppose it will always be one of those little mysteries, won't it? He was pretty cute as well, or at least I thought so, but I didn't bother him with any verbal indication of my affection. I don't think it would have worked out.
How old would you say he was?
About fifteen. The minimum age for joining the military at the time was fourteen, and I do believe he was a Private. I looked about maybe twelve or thirteen—definitely no older than thirteen. But still, I must have been quite a looker.
You still are—if you don't mind me saying, Your Highness.
I do not mind, my little pony. Anyway, this was all shortly before the birth of my sister, who turned out to be quite different from me.
Do you remember the day when she was born?
How could I not? It snowed that day, and I remember that fact because it was also on an otherwise normal day in February. It was snowing outside, and this was the days before the advent of air-conditioning, so we had to keep ourselves bundled up indoors. My sister, though, she got practically mummified in clothe on the day of her birth, and you could barely see her tiny horn sticking out of the top of that ball of warmth. I was there, of course, during the first hours of her life outside the womb, and she did not willfully open her eyes until the next day.It was such an adorable sight.
Do you remember how your parents felt at the time?
They could not have been more pleased with themselves. It's strange, thinking back on them, because we don't even have any portraits of them in the castle—or anywhere else for that matter. They continue to exist in what memories I have left, along with [pause] hers. And there are also quite a few pieces of artwork portraying their likenesses; I am assuming you have seen a few of those.
Before, yeah. You look a lot like them, your parents. Especially your mother.
Oh, I agree. Anyway, it should have come as no surprise to me that my sister would steal all the attention I had previously kept for myself. That is not something I would ever blame her for, mind you; it's just a fact that in most families the parents fawn over their most recent baby, and ours was not any different in that regard. It sparked a bit of a sibling rivalry between us, which is also natural within families, although I've gathered that my sister and I had it better than most. A lot of siblings don't love each other, and a good fraction of those siblings can't stand to be in each other's company. We were quite different; we had our disagreements, and in those early years there was a lot of resentment coming from my end, but ultimately we played with each other a great deal and grew to love each other.
The first word my sister ever uttered—at least as far as anypony knows—was something she said to me one day. She was about a year old, although from the viewpoint of little ponies this would have been around three months of age, and we were playing a game just outside the family abode, in the courtyard. This was on a fine day in mid-April, before the summer would set into our bones.
So we were playing a game where I would say a word—something simple, no more than a syllable in complexity—and my sister, small and undeveloped as she was, would try to replicate the movements I made with my mouth to say the word in question. She giggled and laughed a lot, which was only to be expected from a baby, and admittedly I found it pretty amusing myself. We had been playing for a while, as there was not much else for us children to do in those days, when my dear sister said out loud a word I had just told her.
"Who," she said to me! Although since she had no concept in her mind as to what a question was, she said the word as if it were a statement, or maybe a sound effect you would read in books.
"Who?" I asked of her, not asking her a question but rather questioning what I had just heard.
My sister must have picked up on the increase in pitch one makes when stating the end of a question, because this time she said, "Who?"
She sounded like an owl that had gotten a squeaky toy stuck in its throat, and then she giggled her little head off. She giggled so much in fact that she lost balance and fell onto her back, and her toy-like wings had spread wide on the ground. I didn't find it funny, but I did find it to be an incredible moment, even at the time, even though I was not yet old enough to understand the importance of a baby's first word.
From what I gather, then, you two had a pretty long foalhood, huh?
In objective time, yes, but I wish it had lasted longer. Sometimes I wonder if I would have more memories of that time in my life if I had gotten more time to experience it, but—well—it was probably enough time for me already. Little ponies, their foalhoods go by so quickly by comparison; I'm honestly amazed by the fact that they get to appreciate theirs so much.
The memories of your sister, when you two were fillies—are those the ones you come back to the most often?
Ah, you have got me figured out. Yes, those are the ones that I look back on with the most frequency, and also the ones I look back on with the most fondness. The adult years have unfortunately been a mixed bag. Once our parents ascended to somewhere far beyond this life of ours, we were expected to take up a lot of duties.
Both of us.
Our parents were previously the ones responsible for raising the sun and moon, and so my sister and I had to do our part in making sure those fundamentally important tasks continued to be practiced. It is for the good of everyone, not just everypony. And, as if our duties with the natural world were not straining enough, we soon found ourselves in the positions of royalty. The tribes wanted us to become their leaders once we had come of age, and who were we to deny them that responsibility?
And that arrangement between you and the tribes worked out fine. Until...?
Until a certain event happened. Well, maybe it would be unfair of me to call it an event; it was in actuality a chain of events, not a singular happening. I was not the only player in this chain of events either, but I can't help but feel as though I was by far the most important one, and therefore should be burdened with most of the guilt.
You feel guilty about it?
Why should I not? Are you meaning to tell me that you would not have felt the same way?
It is hard for me to say, Your Highness.
Right. Well, it mainly had to do with the uncomfortable fact that among our subjects, I was the favored one; I guess that will remain the case until the end of our days. So I was the favored one, and my sister was not. As much as I would love for our subjects to treat us as equals, I have this terrible feeling in my stomach that that will never be the case. Not as long as there are two of us—and do not try to treat her as a non-pony, because there will always be two of us.
My sister took care of raising the moon, but the little ponies rarely ever appreciated her nightly duties. Most to our subjects sleep during the night, and even those who are nocturnal feel that the raising of the moon is nowhere near important as that of raising the sun. I disagree with their opinion, of course, having to raise both these past few decades by myself, but even so there was a disquieting lack of fanfare for what my sister was doing for both our country and the world at large.
I remember finding her in her chambers on some late evenings, and she would give me this peculiar look. It is difficult to describe, because before seeing this expression of hers that I had never seen it in anypony else. It was like the face of somepony whose masterpiece had gone unnoticed, but there was something else to it. There was something to that face of hers, that particular frown and sullen look in her eyes, that troubled me at my core.
And yet I did next to nothing about what my sister was going through. Every once in a while, in the long minutes between getting into bed and falling asleep, I would think to myself about that face of hers. I would attempt to justify doing [pause] nothing about it, about not taking any kind of action that would have diverted my sister from continuing on her path, but every time I fail to find one of these justifications. I simply cannot conjure up a valid reason as to why I did what I did—or rather did not do.
My sister endured these bouts of loneliness by herself for what must have been years on end, and yet I had never talked to her about it. I never brought it up in conversation whenever we had tea together, or even in stressful times when either of us was being downcast or brutally honest. The subject never arose.
Keep in mind, this was before my sister came down with the terrible illness of [pause] Nightmare Moon. She was still very much herself; she looked like herself; she acted like herself; she sounded like herself; she still possessed a childlike kindness that I had lost with maturity long ago. I may be an adult, and I certainly think of myself as one, but my sister was still practically a teenager. Maybe it was because of her status as a teenager from my perspective that I failed to take her suffering with more than mere passive seriousness? I might have assumed that it was a phase, that she would "get over it" and cheer up. So I failed to do anything.
Then, on a night that would become infamous, she let Nightmare Moon take over her body. When my sister stood at her weakest, when she was in her most vulnerable state, the Nightmare invaded her being, and she allowed it take control. In a moment, everything about my dear sister had changed. He coat had turned blacker than the depths of an ocean, her mane had transformed into a ghostly twin of its true image, and she grew these [pause] wretched teeth that seemed modeled after shards of glass. They were beastly teeth; they were not designed by a benevolent creator.
In this new form of hers, my sister adopted an attitude that was evidently harmful to those around her. Nopony died under her supervision, but I vividly remember seeing castle servants get treated for bite marks, their wounds having to be stitched shut. Some of them suffered worse. My sister, under the influence of the Nightmare, had turned into a cannibal.
Finally, I could no longer keep my sister in the country, even within the confines of the castle.
Is that why you chose to banish her?
There were not many alternatives at the time. Tartarus would have been too much for my sister, even in the malicious state that she was in. I also could not, no matter how legitimate it might have seemed at the time—well...
The "K" word?
Yes. I could never have done that to her. She threatened my life repeatedly, and yet I still could not have brought myself to end my sister's life. She would have left me forever, and that [pause] is not something I want to think about too much.
How does it feel, then, to be the sole leader of Equestria now?
Incredibly lonely, if I had to use just two words. Incredibly lonely. After many centuries of this life, I hae come to find that any one pony will know many others, but there will only be about half a dozen ponies who hold a special place in that one pony's heart. So let us assume that of the many ponies you get to know in your life, you will end up only truly caring about six of them. For most, one's parents come to mind, so the first two spots of those six will have already been filled; that is the case with me as well, as I love my parents deeply. That leaves four left, then. My sister would be the third, and Starswirl the Bearded would be fourth.
He was a brilliant stallion. I went to a lecture of his a few years ago, and he left me floored.
Indeed! And yet with my parents ascending, my dear sister being banished to the moon, and the recent passing of Starswirl—it feels like all of my closest companions in this life have been spirited away from me. I do not know what force could be responsible for this, but I have to admit to you that I hold it in near-infinite contempt. If this force were a pony, I would knock on his or her door and demand them to bring my companions back. Being in charge of a country is such a dreary existence without them.
Most of all, I would like to have my sister back; I would like to see her as she was, before the Nightmare corrupted her being; I would like to talk to her about feelings, not just her feelings or mine, but feelings in general. It would be nice if we could talk and play again.
Any other questions, then?
Do you think there is any chance of Princess Luna returning from her banishment within my lifetime?
Who?