I was alone in the dark and the cold. For all of time I waited for someone, though I knew none would ever come. But then you did. And I was so happy, words could not express my endless joy. And you spoke of a great new dawn, Luna. Of a new dawn where we would be the king and the queen and we would rule over all. I believed you. Of course I would. You could have told me that my whole life had been a dream and I would have believed simply because I wanted to. Because I wanted to think that you could stay with me your whole immortal life, that I would never be alone again.
The moon is such an unforgiving place. It is so barren, so cold, so cruel. It sucks the last bit of warmth out of you and replaces it with only ice. I was born out of the moon and the sun and the stars, older than time itself. Others came after me, brothers and sisters, so many of them. Yet I was the first. We gathered together and formed the planet you live on, Luna. Your precious land, sea, and sky. We made it all for you. And many of my brothers and sisters died for it. Some became the grass you walk on, others the trees that shade you, still others became the food you eat, the air you breathe. And yet there were three of us left. The greatest and the oldest three of all, Luna. And there would be one to master each of what gave birth to us, what had caused our very existence. One sister chose the moon, the other sister the sun. I was given the greatest of the three, Luna. The stars. Those pinpricks of light that sparkle with such beauty and that represent all we know of the night.
The three of us went down to your planet and every night my sister and I raised the moon and the stars and my other sister raised the sun every day. But they were plotting all along. They wanted to be rid of me, for they felt the moon and stars should be risen by one and that only two should have such great power. So they plotted and all along I trusted them. Until they day they betrayed me. My sisters formed six jewels, harnessing the power of some of the elements. They included honesty, laughter, kindness, everything they were throwing away. Both attacked me, each wielding three of the six elements, banishing me to an eternal prison.
Days, years, centuries, millenniums passed with no change. I observed your race, Luna. I watched them grow and I watched them prosper. And I watched them worship the sun and shun the moon. My heart grew as cold as the moon I was stranded upon. It twisted into something evil beyond recognition. I watched my sisters grow older without aging, as I had done and as I continued to do. And then I watched them choose two males from among your population. Both males were remarkable with stunning powers. And I watched as you and your sister were born, growing from fillies to mares. My sisters gave their powers to you and finally began to wither away. For without a purpose, they were nothing. Yet I lingered on. I had no heir to give my powers to and I remained as powerful as ever. In fact, I could have destroyed your world, Luna, as easily as you stamp your hoof.
But my hate had been focused on my sisters. I was bitter towards them, hated them, despised everything they were. I had wanted them to die. But you, Luna, you and your sister killed them so I loved you. Wildly, passionately I loved you. My closest bond was to you, for you and I had the same tie. The moon and the stars. The night. Celestia possesses great beauty, of course, but she commands my enemy, the day. However, I cannot forget that she killed one of my sisters, as did you, Luna, so I spared her all these years.
I did not make it easy for you. I wanted to see if you and your sister were as filled with hatred as my sisters, so I tested you, dear Luna. My powers were great enough that it was quite easy to do so. I sat upon the moon, bending the very fabric of chaos into a being, a being made up of multiple creatures, a being I named Discord. I forced him upon your world, knowing you two would use the Elements of Harmony. But would you use them to aid Discord as he tried to take over Equestria or would you try and defeat him? You both surpassed my expectations and I was quite proud. I left you alone for several hundred years, but ponies change. So, Luna, I wished to test both you and your sister once again.
I let the cold winds of the moon blow over your heart, let a fraction of my jealousy of the day invade your mind. And you responded as I had known you would, Luna. You attacked all that was the day, spreading the night. Yet I could gaze into your mind and read your every thought and there I saw no jealousy of your sister, no intention to harm her. Instead, you had set your eyes on the sun and the daytime, struggling not to hurt any physical forms. And your sister acted admirably as well. She did not allow any feelings to dissuade her from doing the right thing in saving her kingdom.
Even I could not see what she would do, dear Luna. You can imagine my surprise when you appeared next to me, crying and alone. But you were not alone. I was there for you. I comforted you in your time of greatest need, when all others had abandoned you and you would not see your precious world for a thousand years. I understood your pain, your agony, your desire to die. But the Great Beings such as you and I, Luna, are hard to kill. We are made to survive and survive you did. I had never seen a will so strong.
I am sure you remember, dear Luna, how I told you everything was not alright as you lay there at my hooves, sobbing silently. I told you I did not like to lie and pander to the weaknesses of those foolish enough to believe that, no matter what their situation, everything would be alright. And so I did what I could. I spread my wings over you and lay beside you, giving what comfort I could from touch alone. I remembered my great love for you and I held you closer, stroking your mane as you sobbed.
You did not look as you did down on your planet. When I corrupted you you grew as black as the blackest night, your mane billowing everywhere in a mass of stars. Your eyes were sharp and evil and you had ebony armor. But when you arrived on my moon, my home you looked as you had before. Your mane was short and blue and your eyes rounder and filled with so much sorrow. You cried and I held you closer than I had held any pony ever before. Without even knowing who I was you responded, shrinking closer to me, holding me tighter and I could tell that you loved me. But it was not a real love. Not yet. This was a love born of desperation, of the sheer need for comfort after all that had happened to you.
It took many hours for you to quiet down, for calm to finally overtake panic. And throughout it all, I sat with you, offering my silent comfort. When you stopped feeling only grief you began to talk to me. You asked no questions, and you showed no fear, just pain and anger. You told me of your planet, of the palace you had grown up in. You told me of your sister and of my sisters, your mother and aunt. You told me of your father and of your job of raising the moon and the stars. You spoke of the ponies you had met and the things you had done.
And through all of this I listened. I loved listening to your sweet voice describing the things, places, and ponies you loved best. You painted pictures with your words and it was as if the moon was as bright as the sun for a moment, shining with it's own light. And that light was you, Luna. You were the first since my sisters to speak to me, and it was beautiful. I could have stayed in that moment forever. It was not meant to be. You made me break my silence. It had been so long since I had last spoken that I had forgotten the sound of my own voice, and I could not remember how to form words as elegantly as you did.
You asked me questions. You asked me my name, where I had come from, who my mother and father were. I told you only who my parents were. I told you that the moon and the stars and the sun had formed me, and you believed me, trusting little filly that you were. But I could not tell you my name. For if I did, you might have recalled the Ancient Legends, and then you would run from me in terror. I knew my sisters had impressed those Legends upon you for I watched you as you studied them.
It was not long before you began to tire and be weary. You lay down next to me, and I was surprised at your gesture for I was not used to contact with anything but the surface of the moon. And you were so much warmer, Luna. Your eyes closed and you slid into sleep, but I stayed awake and I watched you. I watched the soft rise and fall of your ribs as you drew breath and I watched your eyes flicker behind closed lids. I recalled that it had been long since I had tasted the air you were partaking of. And because of you, Luna, I began to breathe once more.
Air slid into my mouth and my lungs expanded as they tasted the life giving oxygen. It felt as if I had been transformed from a dead creature into a living one. And I had been changed, Luna. But it was not the air that had done that. It was you. You had rekindled the tiny spark of life that had still smoldered in my heart and I felt a sensation I had not felt in a very long time. Love. For so long it had been hate and anger and pain. Watching you from afar I had thought I loved you. But it was not until I felt you next to me that I realized how much I did love you.
As you slept I kissed your mane, your eyes, your cheek. I kissed away the tears still drying on your face and I kissed all of my love into you. I was scared for you. I was frightened the moon would take away anything you had left to give, so I promised myself I would do whatever it took to keep your emotions alive. I would fan the flame of happiness, rekindle desire, and help you discover love. You might have thought you had known love before but I would teach you what the word really meant. I would teach you the subtle nuances of it for I was the Master of the Night. And love was always meant to be for the night and the night alone. It is one of the many things given to the cloak and concealment of darkness.
When you awoke, I noticed a change in you. Your eyes were no longer dull with grief and instead shone with a light of inner peace and contentment. And then you looked around you and the pain and sorrow came back into your eyes, obscuring any hopes you had had of it being all a dream. I wept for you, Luna. I did not wish this level of grief and I recalled my promise to keep you happy. So I told you that I loved you. You looked so surprised as if you had thought you were beyond ever being loved again. You asked how I knew that when I had only known you for such a short amount of time. I told you that I was the night and the night was the master of love. Love takes only a second to fall into, but I had known that I had loved you since your birth.
Again, you looked surprised as if I had said something you did not expect. But how, dear Luna, could you not expect me to love you? You were the most beautiful and lovely pony I had ever known and I watched your race since it began. You surpassed them all, leaving them in a cloud of stardust. And then I kissed you and it was more than I had ever known or will know. You and your whole being swept through me in that instant and my mind opened up to you, letting you see my past, my loneliness, my pain. As I kissed you, I knew I was begging your acceptance. I had accepted you and was asking you to do the same. I was laying my soul, my being out for you, knowing I could be rejected.
But you embraced me and you kissed me back. You accepted me.
You may wonder, my dear Luna, how we came from here to there. From love to hatred, acceptance to scorn. And the answer is quite simple, really, if you look back through the years of joy and of pain.
We spent the years talking, scheming, plotting, and loving. We had all the time in the world. Or, at least, as much time as I decided to give you. For I could send you back after 1000 years had passed. I had this power. And I told you of it. And we formed our plans around it, dear Luna.
You told me you wanted revenge this time, not just of the day, but of all ponykind. I supported you, for I allowed all my hatred to spill over into the form of one brilliant Master Plan. It was one of the true masterpieces of all time, but you ruined it. You and I both. It was perfectly written and perfectly executed until you deviated from it. The deviation was not your fault. I see that now. But for many years I nursed a dangerous grudge against you. Now, truly, it was not all your fault for I had greatly overestimated your strength. Foalishly, I had believed you could beat what even I had not been able to beat. The Elements of Harmony. But you could not. Of course you could not. It was beyond unfair for me to ask it of you.
Our plan, if you do not remember after all these years have passed, was this: you would return to your planet as the still-savage Nightmare Moon. Once you were there you would wreak havoc and invite me back. For that is the only way I could return to your planet. I would allow myself to come back and make night reign eternally, as you had first wished. Then we would rule forever in our gorgeous and fantastic night.
It was a brilliant plan. The above, of course, is a massively abbreviated version of our long talked over plan. I do not wish to bore you with all the details, though I myself go over them many times to see if the outcome could possibly have been different.
But I shall not dwell on the negatives much longer, my princess. Instead I will turn to happier details of happier times. Such as the times we were connected in the most beautiful way. I loved the way you moved, the way you looked, the way you laughed, smiled, touched. Everything about you was more beautiful than words can do justice. And so I won't even try to describe all those magical times we shared together. I loved every minute with you.
I wished for our plan to succeed so I could be with you forever. Eternally. But then you had to go and ruin it with your delays. You could have summoned me the minute you ran into the Elements, but you with your stubborn pride had to take them on yourself. You should have known you had no chance of defeating them. But you could not help yourself, filled with rage as you were.
I watched in horror as they took you from me forever, remembering all we had shared, thinking of everything we would never share again. I wished I could protect you, bring myself back. And I could have turned you again, I suppose. But I would not do that to you. You were distressed enough the first time and now that you had tasted the bitter poison of revenge it would make your stay on the moon even more unbearable though I would do all I could for you.
Despite my initial fury, I still felt all the old love for you. That, Luna, will never go away, not after a trillion millenniums in which I will watch from my still cold prison, made all the more a torture by the brief warmth you brought. I shall watch you and your sister for the rest of your lives, remembering with fondness all that you meant to me, all that you forced me to rediscover. I shall writhe in the grip of the knowledge that you and I could have been but never will be. And I will love you from afar.
For what many of your subjects do not, and will never, know is that on that cold, bitter moon there was not just a mare.
