The Starlit Promise
The stars were watching.
They waited in the darkness. They gleamed, and they talked with one another in a language long forgotten by ponies: a language of moon whispers and comet song. Their bodies resembled those of ponies, but with glowing golden coats, brilliant silver eyes, and manes and tails made from light. Their hooves shone white. The older stars wore armour crafted from scraps of the Sun, along with bracelets of delicate light spun from the silk of gravity spiders.
One of the brightest stars of all, a stallion named Arcturus, sighed from his perch in the sky. Every night for over a thousand years he had returned to this spot: it was the task of grown-up stars to watch over Equestria and protect it from the terrors beyond, from the shadow giants, the void creatures, and the ravenous hunger of the Great Attractor. Every night, stars stationed themselves across the length of the sky: so, it was only these brightest stars that most ponies were familiar with. The rest of the stars – families, foals – remained hidden. They lived so deep into the night that they could only be seen through binoculars and telescopes.
“Heya, Dad! Watcha doing?”
Arcturus flinched, then looked to his left and saw somestar he hadn’t expected: a young filly, a mere two centuries old, and who came up only to his neck. Like most fillies her age, Vega’s mane and tail were bronze, and her eyes were sapphire bright (they had yet to change from blue to the usual silver of a grown star-mare).
Arcturus recomposed himself. His voice was deep, reassuring – but stern. “You shouldn’t be here, Vega,” he said. “It’s forbidden. Back to the nursery-nebula with you.”
“But Dad—”
“No excuses. You’ll be seen by ponies. Go.”
Vega pouted, and sat stubbornly on a patch of sky. She shot her father a look that dared him to send her back to the nursery.
“Vega, I’m serious. This is no time for games.”
“You’re up to something,” Vega said. “You all are – you, and the rest of the Night Guard. I wanna know what’s going on. I wanna help.”
Arcturus was taken aback; secretly, he marvelled at his daughter’s defiance. To a pony, it must have seemed that Vega was sitting upon nothing at all – however, stars have the talent of seeing more than there first appears: of knowing where the shadows are strong enough to support their weight, and of feeling out pathways of air along which to gallop through the sky. So, in the same way that he sensed sturdy shadows beneath his hooves, Arcturus saw that his daughter knew far, far more than she let on. Probably, she already knew the answer to her own questions, and was testing him.
He decided to play along.
He glanced down over Equestria. “OK, you’ve got us,” he said. “We are up to something. But you can’t help.”
“It’s to do with the Mare in the Moon, right?”
Ah-hah! Arcturus thought. So you do know…
Out loud, he said, “Yes, Vega. Us stars have a long-standing agreement with Princess Celestia. About a year from now, there will come a night when we shall unlock the doors of the Moon, and finally release our prisoner.”
“Then Nightmare Moon will make it night-time forever, and I’ll be able to shine all I wanna. Ponies’ll love me!”
A dazzling smile spread over Vega’s face, and she skipped circles around her father. But Arcturus held out a hoof – and Vega halted, and gulped.
“That,” Arcturus said, “is not something they teach in nursery school.”
Vega swung her left foreleg back and forth; she flicked her tail. She didn’t meet her father’s gaze. “Um, I think I heard somestar talk about it once,” she said. “One of Mom's friends. Or Grandpa's.”
Arcturus raised an eyebrow.
Vega broke.
“OK, OK!” she wailed. “It – it wasn't my idea! It was Spica’s. She made us do it.”
“ ‘Us’, Vega?”
Vega gulped again, realising that she was getting more friends into trouble than intended.
She shook her head vigorously. “Um, I meant me and Spica, just me and her, nostar else. Promise.”
Arcturus nodded, taking care not to betray the pride he felt that his daughter so readily put her friends before herself. (Spica, of course, was fair game. In the past two hundred years, there was barely an incident that hadn’t led back to that filly’s hooves.)
“OK, so it was just you and Spica, and nostar else,” he said. “Certainly not Capella and the twins. What were you and Spica doing near the Moon?”
A nervous star is a dull star – and, to judge from how Vega’s coat dimmed, from how swiftly her hooves lost their lustre, she was a very nervous filly indeed.
“Everystar in nursery school says the Moon’s haunted. Me and Spica wanted to see for ourselves, so we dared each other.”
“And what did you find there?”
Vega shuddered. Arcturus didn’t blame her. He didn’t blame the other star-foals for believing that the Moon was haunted, and for spinning ghost stories about it – maybe the same tales he himself had heard as a colt.
The Moon was ancient.
For all anystar knew, the Moon had witnessed the beginning of Equestria. It was older than the stars – for the first stars had been pony explorers who had wandered into the sky. But more than that, the Moon was a palace. Inside were halls upon halls connected by miles of lonely corridors, tiled with white marble and lit by glow-shine crystals hanging on golden chains from the ceiling. There wasn’t a star or pony alive who knew who had built the Moon, and what purpose it had once served.
Now, at the request of Princess Celestia, the Moon was a prison.
A prison for one.
Vega drew in a quivering breath. She fixed her eyes on her hooves. “There wasn’t anything,” she whispered at last. “We couldn’t find a way inside. But… then she spoke to us. Nightmare Moon. I dunno how, but all five of us – sorry, just me and Spica, I mean – we heard her voice in our heads.”
A chill ran through Arcturus, like nothing he had ever experienced. The nearest he could think of was when he had faced the frozen frost dragons of the Snowflake Nebula.
“What did Nightmare Moon say to you?” he asked, fighting to keep the shiver from his voice.
Vega brightened a little. Her hooves shone marvellously again, and the sparkle returned to her eyes. “She said you guys were finally gonna let her go. She said she’s gonna banish the Sun and make it night ’til the end of time!” Vega peered up with hopeful eyes. “Is it true, Dad? Is she really gonna do it?”
Stars have the gift of seeing more than there appears. Arcturus sensed that Vega’s hope was real – but also tainted. Perhaps, partly, it was because of how shaken the Moon had left her: but Arcturus knew his daughter, and so he knew that something deeper troubled her as well, a feeling she couldn’t put into words.
Suddenly, he realised, as well, that he wasn’t in the slightest bit mad at her for what she had done, and for breaking the rules and sneaking to his side: he wasn’t mad at her for proving herself to be a daring, curious little star-filly. But neither did he give her the hug she was clearly hoping for. Rather, he knelt on their patch of sky-shadow, placed a hoof on her shoulder and said, “Endless night, huh? What part are you most looking forward to? Is it all the shining you’ll get to do? Is it showing off to ponies how bright you are?”
Vega looked at him with the absolute seriousness only a determined child is capable of. “I’m gonna be the brightest star you ever saw. I’m gonna shine for all the world to see.”
Her mane and tail glowed so intensely that there was no question that, young and small as she was, somepony, somewhere in Equestria, must have seen her blazing.
“Sounds good,” Arcturus said. “What will you do then?”
“I’ll grow bigger and bigger and shine brighter and brighter.”
“What then?”
“I’ll… shine even brighter?”
“Who for?”
Vega dimmed. “What d’you mean? For the ponies, of course. For Equestria.”
“Even when everypony is frozen in ice?”
When Vega didn’t respond to this, he continued. “Will you carry on glowing even when their plants have died, when their lands are barren, and the sky is filled with windigos? Who will spot you through the storm clouds, Vega? Who will remain to see you shine?”
Vega fell silent – Arcturus could tell she was picturing storm clouds in her mind, imagining ponies cower as their hooves froze fast to the ground, their breath turned into ice, and their homes were buried beneath miles of snow. Vega was a young star indeed, so young that she had yet to undergo the traditional journey all stars must make, when they conceal their glow, take on pony colours, and spend a decade living amongst unsuspecting Equestrians.
Yet, even at her young age, Vega was aware that night in Equestria brought the cold. Given enough time, endless night would mean endless freeze.
The star-filly stammered. “B-but – that wouldn’t really happen, would it? Nightmare Moon wouldn’t do that to her own kind. Right?”
Arcturus peered down over Equestria. Vega looked too. They could see all of it: blankets of forests, shadow-shrouded mountains, moonlit oceans, and rivers of silver like snakes meandering over the continents. Towns and villages glowed like star clusters, orbiting the brilliant yellow galaxies that were the ponies’ largest cities. At the end of each night, Arcturus returned home to the nebula – and always, Vega demanded to know how brightly he had glowed. She needed to know that everypony on the ground had seen her father. And with all of her soul, she longed, one night, to shine even brighter.
“Say it’s not true, Dad. Say Nightmare Moon wouldn’t do that!”
Arcturus shook his head.
Vega stamped a hoof in the sky. “I knew it!” she cried. “When she was in our heads – I knew she was lying to us, I knew it! Spica said I was wrong. She said endless night would be the best thing ever.” Vega’s body dulled even more. Her mane dimmed, and softly shining tears welled in her eyes. Her voice dropped to a shaking whisper. “I wanted to believe Spica was right, but… I dunno. I tried, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.”
Arcturus knelt again. “It’s OK, my little star-pony.”
He reached out a hoof, but Vega glared at him and stepped back. “If Nightmare Moon’s gonna wreck everything, why are you letting her go?”
“I told you. Because we made a solemn promise to—”
“So what?” Vega’s heart beat wildly. She lay her ears flat. “Why would Celestia wanna free her? That doesn’t make sense!”
She scowled. Thinking of Celestia made her queasy, for Celestia was the one who raised the Sun and banished the night. Vega hated the Sun. She loathed how brightly it shone – a ball of fire so desperate for attention that it hogged the sky all to itself. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair!
And yet, Vega had met Princess Celestia.
They had met often, in fact.
Once a year, at midnight on the autumn equinox, Celestia galloped into the sky and thanked the stars for their service. She even visited the nursery-nebula to meet with the young star-foals. She talked with them, played with them, and it was always one of Vega’s best nights of the year: for Celestia had the gift of patience, of listening, of understanding. It was enough that, for one night of the year, Vega forgot that Celestia was in charge of the Sun, and instead loved her with all her soul.
Vega spoke in a whisper. “If Nightmare Moon's gonna destroy Equestria, why would Celestia make us promise to release her?”
Her father’s response was quiet, yet it contained the power of a solar storm which sweeps through space and causes the sky over the Equestrian poles to erupt with light.
“Nightmare Moon,” he whispered, looking his daughter right in the eyes, “is Princess Celestia’s sister.”
Vega sat on her haunches. Her voice was weak. “Celestia’s the Princess of Ponies… she’s the Queen of the Sun…”
“That she is, Vega.”
“How can they be sisters then?” Vega pressed herself against her father’s side. “I don’t get it!”
It was too much to process.
It was impossible.
Arcturus threw his forelegs around her and kissed her on the forehead. Vega buried her face into his golden coat and thought of storms and ice-buried ponies: ponies who would never see the stars glittering above. Ponies who would forgot what it was to feel joy – who would forgot what it meant to look to the stars and hope.
Just then, Arcturus unwrapped his forelegs from her, wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, “Do you trust me, Vega?”
She tilted her head. “Yes?”
“And do you trust in Princess Celestia?”
“Y-yes?”
“Then you must trust that Celestia knows what she is doing – that she knows her sister like we stars know the sky at night. You must trust that she loves her ponies and wouldn’t allow them to suffer. In return, I won’t tell Spica’s parents where the two of you were this night.” He grinned at her. “I won’t tell Capella’s mother either, or the twins’ grandparents – not that they were with you, of course, despite how inseparable you all are. Deal?”
Vega’s mouth turned dry. Even so, she managed a small, uncertain nod. “I – I don’t get it, still,” she said. “But... I promise I’ll try.”
The two of them looked to the small white disk gleaming in the distance like a monstrous eye: the Moon was rising over Equestria, and the two stars felt it watching them. Vega wondered if Princess Celestia ever visited it. Did she canter up in secret to speak with Nightmare Moon? Did she know the way into the halls of that ancient, mysterious palace, where her sister had been imprisoned for longer than she, Vega, had been alive?
Her father snapped her from her thoughts. “Vega. You… don’t have to go back to the nursery tonight. Not if you don’t want to. Do you maybe fancy staying here with me?”
Vega’s ears perked up. “Is – is that even allowed?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “I know this is a few hundred years before schedule, but… just for tonight, why not introduce yourself to Equestria? See how brightly you can shine! Ponies are going to love you, daughter. They’re going to adore you.”
Vega flung her forelegs around her father with such force that she nearly knocked him over, and she held him for dear life. Her eyes filled with tears again – tears as bright as comets.
“Thank you,” she whispered into his coat. “Thank you.”
Together, father and daughter shone in the night. They glowed so brightly that every waking pony in Equestria saw them, and everypony who was already fast asleep dreamed of them.
She was, Vega thought, making a promise. To be sure, it was an uncertain promise: she couldn’t grasp why Nightmare Moon had to be set free; she couldn’t understand the minds of grown-ups. Yet it was a promise all the same.
We’re watching over you, she thought. I promise. I promise that I'll trust in Celestia, and that the night won’t last forever.