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My hooves rustle the blades of glass underneath me. I'm exhausted from a full night of restful work. In the distance I can see my home, Canterlot, but just searching my surroundings, I'm unsure where my wings carried me to this morning. I feel the acid in my stomach burning my throat, the anxiety turning my body into it's own slumbering geyser. A ticking time bomb.
I hum to myself wistfully as I look at the castle in the distance. My home. I turn away and look out at the scenery behind me. A naturally formed lake. A partially cloudy sky. A few trees full of summer life. A small flock of ducks quack among themselves down by the lake shore. I sit down on the fragrant grass, watching the way the clouds reflect on the water, gently crossing the sky.
One thousand years. I missed one thousand years of this. All because of some sort of mistaken pride.
I close my eyes. I breathe in the air around me and exhale.
"Another rough night?" her voice says behind me.
"Of course, dear sister," I reply.
I open my eyes and she trots up beside me.
"Nopony ever said that retirement would be easy," Celestia says, sitting down beside me.
"I suppose this is true," I mumble. "I'm just not sure how to quell all of their fear. Their uncertainty."
Celestia hums to herself, watching the way the wind rustles the leaves in the trees and forms gentle ripples across the waves of the pond.
"Do you think you could be doing Princess Twilight's job better?" Celestia asks gently.
"We've outgrown that phase in our life," I reply quickly. "We- I have done all in my power to remove those illusions of grandeur. It's not about me. It's about what's best for Equestria."
Celestia chuckles gently as she turns to me.
"That wasn't what I asked though," she says in a sing-song voice.
I look to her with a hint of resentment. She looks back at me with only joy and optimism.
"No, I don't think I could be doing Twilight's job better," I reply, looking back to the lake in front of us. "I suppose I just have found myself in this state of uncertainty that has left me perplexed beyond my comprehension."
"That's a lot of words to just say you're confused," she chuckles.
"Are you making fun of my stress and anxiety?" I shoot back, rising to my hooves.
"Not at all!" Celestia responds in that ever so gentle voice. "Okay maybe just a little bit."
I growl under my breath and turn to walk down towards the water.
"Okay okay," she calls, galloping to catch up. "I'm sorry, but try to see this from my perspective, Luna. Aren't you sort of stressing out over nothing?"
"How is what I'm worried about nothing?" I reply, refusing to look at her. "The future is beyond uncertain. The responsibility that digs into the bones in my body is so great that I feel I cannot carry it alone."
"Then why don't you ask Twilight for help?" she asks.
"It's not so simple," I reply, stopping once the dirt turns to the stones that line the edge of the water's surface. "You know how she is prone to anxiety as I am. If I inform her of the morale of Equestria, she will overanalyze herself into self-defeat."
"You're starting to sound like me," Celestia says with a smile.
"That also worries me."
"I'll take that as a compliment," the pure white alicorn giggles.
With a great gust of air, I feel my sister rise into the air and leap into the shallows of the water. Her grace is nauseating. As she descended into the water, there wasn't even a ripple or wave from her entrance.
"You know what I did when I felt anxious or scared?" Celestia asks me.
"No, what?" I respond.
"Oh, come on, you won't even try?"
I sigh and sit near the water's edge.
"You'd... call for mom and ask for help."
"No, I'm pretty sure that's what you did," she teases.
"If you're going to just tease me, you can see yourself out," I reply. "I'm really not in the mood."
"Fine, fine," she says. "I'd look at the moon. And I'd think about what you're doing up there."
My voice remained quiet as she gazed down at the water.
"Even when you were back," she said. "I know it wasn't easy for us to just talk. I'd still look at the moon and think of you. The you that was in my head. And I'd think of that Luna that I knew and loved that I sent to the moon."
"You know I'm still that Luna, sister."
"Are you?" she asks.
I exhale and lay down on the grass.
"I thought bringing you here would help me."
"Am I not helping?" Celestia asks.
"No! You're Not!" I scream at her. "Your funeral is in three hours and I'm still trying to just... Understand."
Celestia raises to the hooves and walks over glassy pond surface.
"Is it because I'm just the sister that you remember?" she asks. "The idealized version that you remember during the good times?"
I sigh and look up at the stagnant night sky I made for my personal dreamscape.
"I could never form a perfect version of you from my dreams. And I just want to know why? Why do I have to keep going? Why do you have to be the older sister while I stay here and just... rot."
Celestia presses a hoof to her chin and sits down beside me.
"Is that even the right question?"
"I don't even know the right question anymore."
"Well, I'm a part of you. So let me ask you some questions from your subconscious."
Celestia pulls a book from thin air.
"Ah!" she says flipping through the pages. "Here's some good ones. Do you still love me?"
"Of course I do," I say. "Every minute of every day."
"Do you hate me for sending you to the moon?" she asks.
"No. I mean. It hurts, but I understand. It had to be done."
She licks her hoof and flips a few more pages, I look up to her.
"Do you forgive yourself for trying to kill me?"
I look to the ground.
"When I became Nightmare Moon, I never thought that I would try to..."
Celestia continues to fly through multiple pages.
"And then after a thousand years on the moon, you still stole my leftover cake."
"Sister."
"What?" My projection asks. "You know you didn't kill me. We kept our relationship strong after our fight. Why does it matter now?"
"Because I wasn't good enough to you. And I never get the chance to try again. You'll never be in my life again and it hurts. It hurts more than I could ever express."
Celestia places one of her soft gentle hooves on wrinkled, tired hooves.
"You look tired, Luna," she says.
"A nocturnal schedule does that to you," I say, deflecting the comment.
"At the end of the day, you have to remember what I told you."
I look up to her.
"My life was wonderful, just for having had you in it. It doesn't matter that you didn't get an A+ on every single social interaction. It doesn't matter that we fought, because we made it better. We tried. And that's what matters. We weren't perfect sisters. But we're the only sisters we had. And that means something. And you already know all of this or I couldn't tell you."
I look out across the lake.
"So," she says. "Could you tell me what's really bothering you?"
I look down to the grass beneath me. I reach a weathered wing around to dab at my eyes.
"I'm not ready to let you go."
Celestia pressed her hoof in mine, and let the sun gently rise.
I approached the podium, with no notes in hoof. Twilight and her friends stood in front. My sister's casket was open, as she requested. I looked out among the sea of ponies that I've helped dream. And I am standing here. Alone. A tired, old mare.
I cleared my throat and heard my voice echo across the distance. This will likely be my last real moment of public speaking. Or, rather. I want it to be. I've never been particularly good at it.
"Princess Celestia, my sister--" I pause. I know exactly what I want to say but I'm not sure how to proceed. There's too much to say. Too many speakers so far. Too many ponies who wanted to make this day about having some grand lesson to learn from all of this.
"Was one of the greatest teachers I ever met. And I met our mother."
A gentle chuckle reverberated through the crowd.
"The history books show that my sister and I did not always get along. And I don't think they'll ever tell a different story. But today I want to share with you a story that won't be written down in any text book. See, when I arrived back from the moon after my thousand year imprisonment and had my evil banished by Princess Twilight and her friends, I was able to reclaim a part of myself that had long gone. Long been buried under jealousy and a lust for power. But even after having the evil knocked out of me, I was still not fully well. I still struggled with handling the Tantabus, a creature which kept me pulling further and further back through my guilt."
I take in a deep breath and look back down at the podium. Someone left their notes from their last speech here. I'm talking a lot about myself. I can feel the spotlight on me and I feel the air thinning.
"But, while occasional attacks or internal strife occurred within the country, Princess Celestia had a plan for everything. And many of them ended up being "Test Twilight" with them. But those plans existed because she had made the decision to put family first."
I gasp, feeling my insecurities lay bare. What am I doing? This isn't about me.
"Celestia believed that you can only take care of others before you can take care of yourself. And you can only take care of your friends if you've taken care of your home and so forth. And we worked together, so much, so hard, to make everything right again after our fight that nearly tore our wonderful country apart. I remember at times feeling so frustrated. Like she was abdicating her duties or forcing things onto other ponies because she wanted to spend time with me asking how I was doing. Or telling me stories of the thousand years I was gone. And now my older sister, who used to have five years on me, now has more than a millennium."
I flip the papers that are in front of me over, because I'm frustrated that there are so many crossed out attempts of jokes on the page. And all of them were sun puns.
"There's so many stories that can be told of my sister teaching others to love. To be free. To love each other. Cadance was sure frustrated about that some times. But the point is, she really was the great teacher of all of us. The Great teacher of Equestria. And for me? Well. She taught me how to be me again. How to be a sister again."
I feel two cold drips cross my face.
"How to be alive again."
A moment of silence passes. A gentle cough from somewhere in the third row snaps me out of my train of thought and I need to wrap this up.
"Princess Celestia forever impacted this country and made it the beautiful, prosperous land it is today. And today, I struggle with the very same problem all of us feel. How can we possibly do her justice? How can we preserve her memory and honor her life and accomplishments?"
I take a deep breath and place a hoof up the microphone for a second.
"And the best answer that I can give is that we will honor the memory of my sister everyday if we teach one another that tomorrow is another bright sunny day. To learn. To laugh. To cry. To love. To admit our mistakes. To grow."
I open my mouth to say something, but I feel my body begin to shake. I have so much more I want to say. They can't understand. The ponies who stare at me can't possibly understand how I feel in this moment.
I step away, and move in front of her casket. She lies in the white box so quietly. So still. So unnaturally.
"I'm going to miss you, Sister. But I did 1,000 years before. I can do it again."
I lean in, and press a kiss on her lips.
Then retake my seat.