A light. There’s a star at our hooves, peering up from the water.
And above it, oh glorious, above it a reflection is trembling,watching us, watching her watching, watching watching.We have seen legions of stars in our time, both afar and surrounding us in their own orbits, and nearer yet in window panesand silverware and the glitter of stares about on the streets. All seeing, all knowing. We told ourselves …
We told ourselves a story. You know how it went, and how it could end no other way than it did. Still I told it, tell it still. The stars were my friends—my precious own—once. They labored on my behalf, remained loyal when I had forgotten my own name. Fitting that they’ve gathered to tell me their verdict with their over-bright gaze.
Yes, you are part of the story. When I would stand atop the towers of Canterlot, when I would slip down on the mountain winds to the lush green plains fed by—
Broad plains overgrown with broken glass, irrigatedwith floods of filth forceddown through the gutters of the blight on the mountain, and like its lawsdispensed to multiply freedom multiply only outrage. Weare the plains and the foul river that feeds them, the surge of refuse heavedagainst the shores when the rains of oil and glass engorge it. We are the vacant face of the moon,deadened to hide the monstrous ghostthat convulses in its burning red iron prison below …
Red where it shouldn’t be … no, it’s just the urchins bobbing in the crystal clear, clean waters. When I walked the plains of a fair summer’s night, it was you who were with me, great and raging within as before the elements distracted me from my crimes, or small and frightened thereafter. What else did I create in my time but you?
That is why, when you sought to return home to me, defeated, I welcomed you. I remember the first taste of the—
Ribbon of delicious venom threadedwithin the glut of rubbish, foul and sweet,a burden to ensnare our tongue. We drankdeeply,every time,every night,mouth open wider and wider for more. We fedand grew on the fruit of yourbeautiful garden,on the fruit and the leaves and all the flowersall bent over with legs andtwitching necks andhot clustered bodies rows of vermin …
—of the retribution, produced and packaged by my perfect machine that I had built. You were the final page in the book of forbidden arts, after the curses, and weapons of bluster; fire, ice, lightning, war. I still remembered the title after all that time, like I remember … You were no curse. I see now you were a prophecy. Little by little I fulfilled you, The End of the Age.
And we rejoiced the momentwe were born. Rejoiced that we were Luna, the fallen,the condemned! Oh sweet, ohbarren, oh reviled! Little by littlewe showed you the beauty of your hatred, the angerthat consumedmoon and sunand all the little … but let us save that.The anticipation is better than theexecution,we’ve come to believe. Look down,down. There’s a light …
There’s a light tangled in a silver chain, drifting in a pool abandoned by the salt ocean. It has touched me, stars save me, it has touched my hoof. I am back on the outside, creature, cut off again from the herd. Does that please you too?
Hush, hush my soul. My soul is a garden. Over plains green and bristling with trees, under skies blue and ever-giving of rain and sunlight, in steps up the slopes of the mountains, even to where dragons dwell. A princess is a garden and a delight, and mother to her—
Our soul was once a garden, and nowis the lowest worm that vomiteddirt into its roots. We are anathema …
—a mother, who keeps watch over her kin. That is who I’ve become now that my time as the kingdom’s steward is over, here among the gentle folk who are near the end of their journey. I am a comfort to them, and in dreams I let them walk in my garden.
We never wanted the kingdom,or the world.We wanted you.Onlyonlyonlyyou. To breathe with your perfectlungs, to speak with your immaculate voice, tocry your marvelous cataclysm down downdown into the ruin that’s stored away for us.
We’ve already won. Youshot her out of the sky. So you see it,again and again and again. It was the endof the age of peace.The end the end the end of your harmony.
I tell them stories—
You shot her out of the sky. You took this beautiful world and remade it,dumped your filth into its rivers, filled its veinswith disease. You never belonged here. Youtold yourself a story to make it easier to ignorethe basic facts;to delude yourself that there is meaning when by your deedsyou proved there is none.Because that’s much easier, isn’t it?To listen to what we’ve told you, again, and again and again?Look down at the evidence and listen then!You are less than an animal.An animal knows to climb when it seeks safety, or the esteem of its tribe.It was love that was your problem, and murder was your solution.
It hurts.
And now you are less than the lowest character in your tale, your beautifulmachine you designed to produce for you nothing but terror.Have you had your nightly dose of the feeling?
It hurts. It hurts.
The past and its facts remain.Just look down into the waters below youand the fallen stars you drowned.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
There’s only one wayfor it all to make sense. You know whereyou belong. We can go there together.Step by step.Stitch by stitch.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
Stitch by stitchwound tight ...
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
Stitch by stitchwound tight pinch it shut …
It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
Stitch by stitchwound tightpinch it shutit’ll heal for surethat way won’t it?
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
***
Ah, there she is. The blameless sun has made its appearance, and watches us too, unassuming, a pair of background dewdrops on two roses of antique fame. Petals folded upon petals unto an untroubled heart. Could she ever conceive of what we’ve done? What would her reaction be, if she were to hear your tale? The mirror holds the light like the cage holds the soul. Oh creature, ever young and undying, can you deny it? Looking out through your perfect eyes we cannot.
Her words are a murmured melody in the fog. Their meaning is clear enough, the inflection bearing the message. She’s there, waiting, eager to listen and find some words of comfort.
You could never be like her.
It is time. Speak.
“My name is Luna. I am a mare. I have a dark blue coat that recalls the sky at late evening. So with my mane and tail, both full of stars stars stars. I bear the mark of the moon. There is nothing about me that I can hide.”
“Luna … what?” she is asking, “please, I don’t understand.”
Why couldn’t she have understood?
What about it was so unclear?
Because unlike us she is blameless
“My name is Luna. I am telling you a story. We shall not call it a nightmare; nightmares are make-believe.”
“I don’t like this. Please look at me. I want to help—”
Help us, yes, help us be free.
Tell her.
“Luna sat on the beach, alone in the morning. An abandoned necklace caught among the red jellies swirled at her hooves. Its broad silvered bangles reflected the dulled light that filtered through the walls of sea mist. The days had been tangling together, a pinwheel of sunshine and seashore solitude. Breakfast and the habitual chat over tea with the oft-merry elders was forgone today. But oft-merry, and not always so, for many days there would be one fewer in the circle. Today was to be one of those days.”
***
Would you like to hear a story? A tale, to illuminate the obscure? Every word is true. None of it is true. She spent the afternoon shopping. No … no, it was late morning. The street sweepers had just brushed away the ginko leaves, but the stink of the fruit was still in the gutters. That, and the Coronet had yet to display their ball gowns; the ones they never sold no matter how low or how high they stitched the hem. Oh, do you remember how the ginko bulbs would cling to the hoof no matter how one scraped and dragged, and how we tracked them through the Castle like a trail of sweet dung? How the major domo would frown after you and I had been out gawking at all the pretty things our fat princess purses could purchase, and go right to the broom closet for her scraper and pathetically undersized duster?
She was shopping because she needed more to show him. Did I forget to mention her companion? Her precious star? I did.
She had spied him while she and her sister were on parade, strutting down the grand thoroughfare. It was the first anniversary of their ascension to the thrones—or the fiftieth, I cannot recall—and roses trimmed short and de-thorned were being thrown; bread and silver, laid along on her trail. The other side was gold.
Slowly so all the folk had a chance to see went the procession. The lot, most merry, others less so, turned a corner—the one that encircled the fountain of Nameless the Great, may his victory be recalled in granite, fat-lipped, spewing cod while the kingdom endures—turned a corner, and there he was! Watching from a doorstep, the precious: lithe, discreet in the way of urchins. There was no—oh stars help me—there was no guile on his face or anywhere in him! No hatred, no mistrust, nothing of what any with the knowledge would have thrown instead of roses. Their eyes met, and she smiled. She knew he was the one.
With a hoof she beckoned, and when for shyness or shame he wouldn’t come, she drew him to her side with her magic. His face was the very picture of surprise as he floated towards her, a gray puff of cloud cradled by the breeze. The crowd cheered and let free another round of their flowers. Their princess had taken another ward, and given more evidence of her love for her subjects.
Did she spirit him away to live in the Castle, to languish at the hooves of tutors and nannies while his new mother held court and slept all the day through? No, no, a child needs more. This child, this sweet little colt, needed the full and devoted affection of the one who chose him, the one who waited moon after moon to find him, the final star in her constellation.
No, she took him home. This I don’t expect you to recall, for she had reason to keep it a secret. She’d acquired a small bower on an off-street in the marketplace, just a door set in a brick wall with no sign or number. But within was life like no other.
She needed to share her entire self with him, you see. She needed to show him who she truly was with nothing held back. That is what it means to love, or the greater part of it. So she bore the flowers of her garden to him, and filled the room with outward tokens and signs of her self. Paintings of the sea with the moon guarding over it, framed in gilt ivory and carved driftwood, encrusted with the abandoned abalone homes of the creatures of the salt deep. Lamps of unmixed silver and gold wrought with lost arts, all many stones’ weight and impossible to move for those without magic. The cages of precious metals that housed the blown quartz oil flasks alone took years to craft. Can you see it? There’s more! All these artifacts and more were displayed on too much—how could there ever be too much?—furniture. Thick, thick tabletops hewn from one, two strokes through the trunk, shaved down and stained and polished to bear the crystal bowls brimming with the coins of empires lost or dead, the scepters of forgotten kings and queens, and the daintier symbols of state of their princesses. Ebony and cherry wood were her favorite, and it was of these that the centerpiece was founded: the bed that offered sleep and peace, guarded by deep-piled tapestries of the moon and all the perfect green plains and the river and the Castle in the Everfree.
There was some dust, to be sure.
All of these things she had labored to collect, and so she’d gone out shopping for the last item on her list. It was a necklace. She was choosey and disinterested in the main when it came to jewelry, but in the piece the silversmith had captured, it seemed to her, the full force of the moonlight on the scalloped, beryl-veined face of Canterlot Mountain. Within its paper thin argent petals, wet with dew of diamond and aquamarine, she saw the last and best way to build her bridge and persuade him to cross over to her; the keystone of the spell she wove for him.
The first night with him was—pardon me, it stings the eyes—the first night was surpassed only by the first day! Over every scar of every relic’s skin he marveled. Into every drawer he peered and poked his perfect snout. Nothing that captured his attention went without a philosopher’s store of questions.
She spared no time in answering. Down the branching avenues of his imagination that her garden revealed, she happily guided him. “What is thy name?” she asked during a lull as he regained his breath.
“They call me Sweet Potato,” he answered. Sweet in word and wit. They, it would seem, were most perceptive.
“Sweet Potato, we are pleased to be thy friend.” She opened her favorite vial of perfume and held it for him to take in while he studied an old painting of a brigade of mares clad in purple and gray singing the chorus of the Lavender Opera. He almost nodded off for knowledge of its layers. Return to us, oh time of memory!
Once his bright eyes had visited all of the wonders she had stored up for him, like a goldfinch hopping from branch to petal-decorated branch, he found what surely none would miss had they been given permission to enter: eight portraits, all of foals, smiling colts and fillies framed in sterling marked by the royal guarantor himself, hung above the bed. They were smiling because their mother had given them everything. Naturally he asked their names. She whispered the answer in his ear, and his laughter was the lark’s own clear song!
“Will I get to see them?” he chimed. I hear it now as certainly as I hear the gulls crying their sentence of death upon the fish.
“Yes, oh yes!” she replied, a proud hen watching her chick take its first steps. “If you are very good you shall meet them, and we shall all be together. A family, forever.”
“A family? Truly? I shall be good!” He pointed at the last portrait in the row, a filly he fancied, perhaps for the scarlet bow she wore about her neck. “Did you choose her like you chose me?
“Yes. I love her very much, and I love you just as much.”
Have you ever felt the warmth of a sleeping foal against your heart? No, I suppose you wouldn’t have. There is nothing in the world like it. The two had explored the wonders of their chamber together all the night, and when the daylight broke she lay down in their bed and lifted her hoof. Already he knew what she intended, without words. Up he climbed next to her and pressed himself so wonderfully close, so that when she grasped him and folded her gentle wing over him, he all but disappeared.
Her ministrations in the world of dreams were all for him in that time. She made him to know that she understood how he had gone hungry, and that with her he could have whatever he wished, whenever he desired it. Within reason, of course. What mother would give her child the whole serving plate of pastries, or spoon the whole sugar bowl into his steaming valerian?
One night, after a fit of wild dancing and reciting together lines equally wild from her special book of verses, she led him a step further. He was ready. “You are doing so, so well, Sweet,” she panted, warm from the frolic. “Would you like to see a secret?”
He did. So she smiled, letting it spread just a bit too far, and leaned down to give the little one his foal’s-eye view. One of her teeth had sharpened to a point. Isn’t it funny?
He asked if he could touch it, wowing and gasping like he’d found a polished diamond in the cobblestone gravel by the gutter. She nodded, and—I’ll not pretend to recall whose slip it was—he cut himself, the poor creature. Just a nick of the frog, but how it squirted! If not for magic, a second century pillow would have been so much soaked gauze to be sent to the rubbish heap.
It bled so much because of his love. In a few days longer than a week it had grown strong. One’s skin, you see, is a dam that holds back the waters of one’s soul. His yearned to become a river that flowed forever to his mother’s ocean.
When she had cleaned up the mess and healed his wound with her kisses and apologies and assurances that it had only been her over-eagerness that had hurt him, she diverted the scene with a few funny words: ‘It may be that someday soon, I shall become so Sweet, and you, a better Luna be’, I think is how it went. He laughed and encircled his brave hooves around her neck. His kiss was a drop of cold rain on her over-warm cheek.
You are wondering how he came to dwell the alleys. His father had been a builder of bridges, the priceless gem had recounted to her from the scant few memories he had of him, and was partners with his uncle. The causeway that linked the Tower of the Sun with … with the other—that was their doing! I’d venture that half of the garden walls and more than one façade were their work as well. Upon a Sunday—they worked all hours as most of the folk do—they were both high aloft in the merchants’ district, busy with adding flower urns to the roof corners. Father was leaning above the road, cementing the stones while uncle supplied them. It all went wrong, as things do. Perhaps he leaned a bit too far. Perhaps a cry from a customer at an exorbitant price or suspicion of an unfair trade startled him. That part of it is not known. What was remembered—what the child himself saw as he sat admiring the bravery of his hero—was the moment father’s outstretched hoof slipped below the roofline, and uncle’s cry of panic as he watched his only brother’s stricken face shrink toward the flower carts and fruit stands below. It is not polite to speak of what became of mother.
That moment lasted forever for him. Don’t they all? It is our vision that is imperfect; our minds. They yearn for the next and the next, and the greater part of each is lost. Oh, to see all, to savor and know and love every fragment, every scrap and drop and mote!
Dear me, I feel as if I’ve gone astray. What was I saying? Yes. She helped him forget such things. Him, the little one. This day she would dress him in her garments, a sweet lump awash in the skirts of her gowns bound about his waist. The next she set her crown upon his shaggy head, and let it slide just enough to the side to catch on his ear while he smiled at the two of them in the mirror. Others, she would ply him with her bottled perfumes, or spread her eyeshadow across his lids. More and more he asked for it, laughing all the while. How he romped in her shoes, slap slap slap on the planks.
He was delighted—ecstatic!—the night she presented the necklace to him. He had grown to love the night. All the hidden sounds and scents, all the secret beauty waiting for the sun to set to be free. She opened the curtains of the only window and made the moonlight to shine on them. The jewels she clasped about his tender neck to a gasp like the flapping of the fledgling bird’s wings after the final snowmelt.
Brimming over, she embraced him. “What is thy name?” she asked, and lifted him even with her face so he became a shadow outlined upon the moon.
The precious treasure giggled, needing both hooves to manage his grin. “Luna,” he laughed, himself at last her precious star!
She laughed with him, and kissed his forehead, and opened her mouth wide, and drove her fangs through his skull.
***
“Are you real, or just another part of the performance? Ah, my apologies, we are still in character. Allow me to continue: Celestia raised a hoof to cover her mouth.”
You hurt her. You hurt her for centuries.
“We used to watch you as we bathed together below the waterfall; the one that fed the old river that flowed through the gorge by the Tree, ages ago. You never caught us, we think. We watched, and wished we could be so bright and so beautiful. Who could be like you? Who could command love and awe from the high balconies with no more than the flowing of her joyous mane? Who could stand amidst curtains of light and mist and rainbows—as if anything unclean could settle on your radiant coat—and put the daylight to shame? Who could be like you?”
Not Luna…
“Not Luna. And so I … I turned away. Was there ever any like the love we knew? Of children sharing their discovery of the world. Children. I delighted them. Delighted in them. I would hold them close as they snuggled so that they could feel my heartbeat, so that they would know that their lives had had purpose. Feeling their screams fill my mouth. And when they went to sleep I would lift them high and drink their sweet rust, the sacred liquid iron from their broken glass. And I would rip the little ragdolls to pieces and I would … every drop, every bite; that was the spell, you know. That was Luna’s magic.”
She’s not so eager to listen now, is she?
Celestia raised a hoof to cover her mouth.
“But now sister is here, and we feel so good, like a change is coming. Sister’s embrace, so strong where we are frail, and her face so beautiful to hide our wretched ugliness. I can still taste them, Celestia. Salt and iron. Please, please I need you.”
The roses are running over with dew, fresh, clean in the morning as before you razed them.
“How do I help you?”
“Have you ever held a foal close to your heart?”
“Yes. Yes, I held you. When we were young, I held you. Mother and father were so far away.”
“Please, sister, I’m scared.”
“I’m here, Luna. Like this? Is this what you need? You feel so cold.”
“I hurt you.”
“I hurt you.”
Of course she would speak so.
You were her mirror.
How could you?
“We’ve endured time’s relentless extermination of everything we know and care for, our very selves … but you remained constant. You remained steadfast.”
“Salt and iron? Luna, is that … that sounds like the Whispers of—”
“Yes! I do not fear to say them aloud:”
‘Taste the salt, the iron the living glass pours;
The flesh of our prey unfolding,
Its opened page teaching wisdom.
Blood, flesh, mind, soul;
Know thy prey: know thyself.’
“Do you know the verses? Then you know what I did. The abyss is full of light and voices, and in it I found the answer. Taking their lives was the surest way to gain the power to put an end to you and take Equestria for myself. And I did. I did it because I hated you. I shot you out of the sky, and watched your beautiful face shrink into the ruins I’d made of our home as you fell. I gloried in it and your cry of pain. For that one moment I was free. And that moment has never ended.”
“Luna, I’ll do anything you need but I need your help. I don’t—”
“Please … I’ll say it so you understand, so that there’s no room for doubt! My garden all is burnt! Please, show me where the sunshine is! I need you to forgive me. Please.”
Free us.
“ Forgive … I … It hurt so much to see my sister, whom I’d known for so long, changed into something … else …”
Please, we don’t want to die
Please don’t say it let us
Be let us be Luna
“… shouting madness at me in someone else’s voice …”
Please don’t say it, please don’t
We don’t want to die
Our story isn’t over
Let us be Luna forever
Please say it
Free us
What else was it all for?
“… to wonder how I could have been so …”
Three words, please, it hurts
“… blind …”
There are no words to capture it
are there? That’s why there’s
only one way it could have ended.
It would hurt more to be free.
“… and to realize that I had failed. That it was my fault.”
Yes. Free us.
It has been so, so long.
“Don’t they all pass away? Living here in the Shoals has taught that to me better than ten centuries of ruling over them. When we meet in the morning and there’s one fewer left in the circle, I reassure myself that they all found a reason to fight the hopeless battle, and for them, their moment lasted forever. I can go on no other way.”
Now is the time
Now is the time!
“Above all there is only you and me. That’s why I can’t do what you ask. I don’t blame you. I love you no matter what you’ve done. There’s nothing to forgive.”
There. There it is.
You are damned.
You are damned.
“There! Our performance ends: ‘Celestia jumps, surprised at the unexpected sting amongst the stems of her spotless white feathers. The thief, the traitor whose sentence she had commuted had stolen one.’ Thank you! My only sister, thank you! Do not look so pained; so uncertain. Our spell can be completed now. We just needed something from one who loves us.”
“’Us’? I don’t understand.”
Words have failed, as they always have.
Show her.
“Let us show you: ‘It was then that Celestia noticed the pattern her ecstatic sister had drawn in the sand. She looked down, down, down at the red gobs of flesh that had entangled the stars, as yes, she saw the words written at the abhorrent elbows and along broken-limbed lines of the design, and the rubies that had spilled from broken tip of her feather to decorate the runes—to open the way—and recognized at last that the end of the age was upon her.’ Tell us—ha ha ha! Tell us we are wrong!”
Now is the time
Now is the time
Cast the spell
Speak
“So let us be condemned:
Open, jaws,
Consign forever to Tartarus
We who have offended.
May its door be barred against us
And to us the land of the living, lost
Like the past is lost, and the future forgotten,
Forever.”
Look down, down, down! We’ve won!See how the sand melts to glass betweenthe lines of the graven spell,opening the way.There is our path. There is the summation of our every deedand thought. This is what we’ve created.
At last we are free.Let us close our eyes.Let us fold our wings.Let us fall backwards into the void.
