Towards the Sunrise
By Pearple Prose
Change.
Many know it as “chaos”; complete madness, without restraint. Change, to a lot of ponies, is wrong. To them, change is an insane, twisted thing, with a certain affinity for crazy cotton candy clouds and chocolate milk.
And it was true, in a way. Chaos is, for all intents and purposes, change.
But without change, there is only stagnation. Without change, order and stability lose all meaning. Without change, there is no future.
Take, for example, the train running along the mountainside. Its purpose? To move forward. Always forward. Occasionally, it would stop and rest, drop off its passengers, and then it would return to the tracks.
There was something particularly odd about this train, however; namely, the little blue lump that lay on the roof, wrapped up in a blanket.
The lump, despite the powerful winds buffeting it, simply refused to budge. Even though the huge monster of iron beneath it was roaring along the rails at incredible speeds, the sleeping form didn’t move; in fact, if anypony had been up there next to it, they could have sworn they heard it snoring away, rather adorably.
The train let loose a deafening blast from its whistle, and the sleeping pony atop it shifted, before finally stirring, and cracking open its cosy cocoon. A bleary, teal-eyed mare with terrible bedmane poked her head out into the world. Yawning, she peeled back her moon-patterned blanket and stretched her untidy wings until they popped.
*****
“Luna!” Luna turned to see her sister standing there, glaring at her. She noted the anger in her posture.
Luna glanced at her, then returned to watching the night. “Yes, sister?” She preened her wing idly.
“Don’t ignore me, Luna.” Celestia spat. “You know very well what you’ve done, sister, and I am very disappoin-”
“Oh, yes, the princess is disappointed in her delinquent of a sibling. How very tragic. Celestia must always get her way, after all. Everything else is just a minor concern in comparison. ” Luna took a mental snapshot of the stunned look on her sister’s face, then returned to tugging on her feathers.
She heard the rhythmic tapping of metal-shod hooves against marble. “I never said you were a delinquent, Luna,” Celestia said, in that serene tone of hers that made Luna want to vomit, “and the world doesn’t revolve around me, as crazy as it sounds. I just want the best for my little ponies.” An alabaster wing brushed against her own in a feeble attempt at reassurance. “That’s why I want to know, Luna. Why? Why did you do it?”
*****
Luna shivered slightly. Fall had only just arrived, and there was already a crisp chill to the night air, one that quickly sobered the sleepy alicorn. She yawned loudly, then levitated her mug out from her nearby saddlebags, along with a tea bag and an old wineskin full of water.
With only the barest amount of magic, Luna had a softly steaming cup of tea sitting in front of her. She anchored it to the roof of the train with a quick spell as she brushed her mane.
It'd taken her a while to decide on what she would take with her, back in Canterlot. At first, she'd packed everything she had —just in case— and ended up with several briefcases full of luggage, and it was only after she remembered that she was going incognito that she decided to leave a few things behind.
In the end, she'd decided on her favourite blanket, embroidered with her cutie mark, with a matching mug, and a plentiful amount of tea, alongside the essentials —namely, food and a small collection of books.
She'd chosen not to take any money. Sure, it would be more difficult in the long-run, but it almost felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
Luna smiled. She was free. For perhaps the first time in her long, long life, she was free.
*****
Luna batted her sister’s wing away, turning to face her with a snarl crossing her features. “Why did I tell her? Because they needed to know, Celestia. I couldn’t just sit and watch you lie to them anymore!”
Celestia stomped her hoof angrily. "Damn it, Luna, it was none of your concern!”
“None of my concern? They are my subjects too, dear sister. I was under the impression that we were equals. Is that not true?” Luna was perfectly aware that she was pushing the boundaries of Celestia’s almost infinite good will, but enough was enough. Right now? She could barely look at her own sister’s face without feeling sick to her stomach.
“Yes. We are equals. But I need you to cooperate with me, Luna, for the good of Equestria.”
“I’m afraid your version of the “good of Equestria” does not coincide with mine. I fail to see how twisting lives to your own design is anything but unacceptable.” With that, Luna returned to watching from her balcony… or, at least, she tried to.
*****
Luna wondered if Celestia had found her letter yet. She hadn’t hidden it at all, just left it sitting on her bed next to her regalia, waiting to be found.
Of course, it was entirely possible that Celestia had decided to ignore her for a few days, as an unspoken punishment. It was another manipulation tactic, Luna had figured, to make her feel guilty, and therefore susceptible to her sister’s subtle coercion. Or maybe Celestia had already read it, and figured it wasn’t worth the hassle to go and find her.
There were many possibilities, but Luna knew how her sister worked. As long as she maintained a low profile, the world was her oyster.
It was for that very reason that Luna had neglected to actually find out where she was going, beyond “very far away indeed”. It was all up to fate to decide her destination, if it even existed at all.
And who knows? Perhaps she would return at some point. They wouldn’t miss her in the interim, now that they had Celestia’s protege.
Luna’s mood plummeted at the thought of the newly ascended alicorn. She wondered how she was holding up now…
She shook the bleak thoughts from her head. It was no longer her responsibility, after all.
*****
A golden hoof grabbed her by the shoulder and wrenched her head back around to face two burning magenta orbs. “How dare you,” Celestia hissed, “Tell me how to rule my country. I’ve sacrificed everything —everything— to make Equestria what it is, and I will not let an ignorant teenager like you ruin everything I have created.”
For the first time since this entire debacle began, doubt began to worm into Luna’s mind. Had she gone too far? Her sister blinked, as if she had just realised what she was doing, and promptly released her iron grip. Luna dropped to the floor, and didn’t bother to get back up.
Celestia’s look of shock brought a bitter smile to Luna’s face. She had been right after all. There was no place for her here.
‘Luna… I-” Celestia froze. Luna watched her, puzzled; she was staring with abject horror at something out the window. Perking her ears, she could just barely make out the sound of crying.
Before she knew it, Celestia had gone. Luna lay there on the balcony for a while, then got up and looked at what her sister had seen.
A lavender alicorn ran along the city streets, tears trailing down her cheeks. Celestia was standing nearby, head bowed.
Luna watched them for a while, then turned to leave.
Off in the distance, she heard the sound of a train approaching.
*****
Luna stared into the brownish liquid inside her mug. A teal-eyed mare with terrible bedmane stared back. She noticed idly that, with the absence of her tiara, her powder blue hair fell over her eyes somewhat.
She liked it. It made her look different, somehow. Like a new mare. Light struck her eyes, blinding her slightly, and she turned to see the sun rise over the horizon.
In the end, Luna didn’t know if she had done the right thing, really. For all she knew, Celestia was right; maybe change was a bad thing. Maybe Luna should have just kept quiet; maybe she should have let Celestia keep their —her— subjects in blissful ignorance, incapable of realising just how much potential they truly possessed.
Luna realised that she didn’t care. Not anymore. She was a new mare now.
Her new life was off towards the sunrise, and that's where she was headed.
Author's Note
I don't even know what this is.
All I know is, I enjoyed writing it.
~P. Prose
Epilogue
Celestia watched.
There wasn’t much more she could do, after all. Not anymore. She was inconsequential now, as irrelevant to the world as any mortal. Perhaps even more so.
She shifted slightly on her cloud, kicking up a few wisps of water vapour. She watched them dissipate in the thin atmosphere of her perch, before returning to watching the land far below her.
Her sister had been right, it seemed. Ponies were capable of so much more than she’d ever realised, when they were given the right encouragement. Celestia was certainly not that encouragement. In fact, her removal from the equation was that encouragement.
She watched her little ponies scurry back and forth through the paved streets of the sprawling supercity that was Canterlot. She saw the palace, and wondered how her student was doing these days.
She felt the resentment build inside her, and she quickly redirected it. No, Twilight wasn’t to blame for this. If anything, she was the victim.
Celestia knew who did it. She was all too aware who ruined everything, all those years ago.
A stray voice whispered inside her head, But she didn’t ruin everything, did she? She ruined you, and only you.
Celestia barked out a laugh. Of course, she was only deluding herself. She was the monster here. It just took her longer to figure out than everyone else; even after her sister left, it took an intervention from her most faithful student to knock some sense into her.
She looked down at her hooves. She remembered, vaguely, that she used to wear gold on those hooves.
It had been rather normal, at first. She’d taken her student’s words into account, given her ponies some leeway, stepped back from the proceedings. She had tried to stay, tried to keep them on the path she’d set for them.
And when she had eventually left, she had tried to be happy for them. Even though she had lost everything except her name —a name that had long since transcended history and become legend— she was still happy for them.
But as proud as she was of her little ponies —she still liked to think that she was their mother sometimes, watching from afar— she still couldn’t stop asking herself that one impossible question.
“What happens next?” she whispered, in a voice torn by time.
“That’s for you to decide, sister.”
Celestia’s heart froze. She turned to see an ancient, teal-eyed alicorn with terrible bedmane, smiling a smile that she hadn’t seen in a very, very long time.
“Did you miss me?” she said.
Celestia wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to shout. She wanted to laugh, and keep on laughing until her flesh faded and her bones crumbled.
But most of all, she wanted to cry.
Her sister smirked, donned her cloak, and turned to walk away through the field of clouds.
“Don’t leave!” Celestia hated herself just for saying it, but she couldn’t stop, “Take me with you!”
Luna glanced back over her shoulder at her sister. Slowly, she pointed at the sun as it rose over the horizon.
“Come, sister. Come with me towards the sunrise.”
