The appointed hour had come and it had come too soon, far too soon. Celestia could feel it, despite her sodden coat and wings, despite her bone-weary state. It was like a knife between her ribs, burrowing into its warm new home.
She had felt it all along, of course, building. She felt it--though at the time it was smaller and nameless--when the rain started. But the days of rain had been too much. It was as if the journey had been merely stacking stones on Luna’s back until this last moment when a careless mistake sent them all crashing down. The last straw.
And when she couldn’t hear the miserable splashing of Luna’s hooves in the damp, chest high grass, this all occurred to her in a second. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“We’re lost.”
Luna’s voice was like ice. No, it was more like cold iron, Celestia reflected silently. Like Antenna’s serrated dagger, in Jannah. How many months it had been since then, almost a lifetime ago.
“Celestia? We’re lost.”
It was odd to hear her whole name spoken aloud. Luna always called her “Tia.” Some times she might say “Celly” if she was being facetious, yes, but rarely did they use her full name.
“You never call me that, Lulu,” she said.
“Well. We’re lost.”
“Not really.”
There was silence between them for a time. Celestia stared ahead, out over the dark reeds at the world’s bitter and watery end. She had no idea how close or far the mountains were, that lay in the distance. She only knew that they were ahead of her and that she had to get there. It was important.
Why am I not turning around? Why won’t I address her properly? It didn’t make sense. She should feel alarmed. She should respond to Luna’s challenge, Luna’s plea for some certainty, in kind. Celestia the Comforter. Celestia the Explainer of Things.
Instead, she let the gentle, persistent rain wash down her face and down her cheeks. It collected below her, and soaked her hooves. She found herself numbly glad for her hoofbindings.
“Celestia, answer me with something other than stupidity. You aren’t a fool. How far is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Luna was gritting her teeth, Celestia knew this. She could see it clearly in her mind’s eye. At last, she turned to face her accuser.
The rain had forced upon Luna the visage of the damned. She suffered. Her mane was plastered to her face, as if she had simply stopped caring enough to peel it off. Her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep--there was nowhere to sleep that was not cold and wet. Even the makeshift campsites they made and protected with their combined magic eventually succumbed. She was thin, so thin. Her ribs would begin showing soon, Celestia guessed. It was only a matter of time. Already she looked hungry, less herself. She was a shadow, a hollow impression of what had been. And might yet be.
Perhaps.
“Well? Speak!” Luna demanded. She was in something that looked almost like a fighting stance, but it was far too pathetic. Celestia could not feel anything. Perhaps it was because it had been so long in coming. It had been a year in the making, at least. Maybe more. Maybe it stretched back to the moment Luna had emerged, sobbing into the Song.
Emotion would not come, but Celestia’s mind still raced. “Lulu--”
“Call me by my name. The one I gave myself. If it pleases you.”
“It does,” Celestia said, very softly. “It does very much so, sister mine. Luna, we are not lost. I cannot point to where we are going on a map. I cannot mark the exact spot. But I know where we must go, and from where we have come. I know that we are on a line between the two, following the path. Is that not enough?”
“Is it?” Luna asked.
“I would think so. Do you trust me not?” Celestia asked, and she was tired. The road was long. Her hooves ached. She found herself wondering when they would begin to rot in the water.
“I don’t know. I am unsure, to be honest. If it is, then I’ll keep going. But why should we go at all? What is there to find? It’s just a myth, Celestia.”
“Your grand proof of this, sister?”
Luna huffed. The rain continued as it had since the dawn of time, here at the frayed edges of the map. A drop hit Luna in the eye and she blinked it away with a little growl. “The burden of proof is on you, my elder. We both know that your claims and your search are foolhardy.”
Celestia sighed. “I don’t know this at all. Luna, we’ll never get anywhere sitting.”
“We’re standing.”
Celestia wanted to feel something. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to curse, or stomp her hoof and send up a pillar of water. She wanted to berate her sister. But there was simply no fire in her. There was only aching and steel.
“I concede that. Yes, we’re standing. But we could be moving out of the rain.”
Luna exploded. One moment, she was tensing with annoyance and frustration, and the next she was screaming. Her eyes glowed with an unholy blue light which Celestia recognized well. At last, she felt something. Fear.
“THERE IS NO LEAVING THE RAIN. IT GOES ON FOREVER, UNTO ETERNITY.”
“Sister!” Celestia began backing up, hooves kicking up water behind her. She prayed that they would not be caught in the reeds. “Sister, you told me this would end. You need to calm down!”
“THERE IS ONLY THE RAIN AND WE WILL NEVER LEAVE. IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT. THERE IS NO END.”
Luna was hovering now, her wings defying the rain. Magic held her up, Celestia knew this, but as her sister’s wide wings spread and cast a shadow over her, she was reminded which of them had always been the better flier.
“Luna, s-stop this right now. You told me you wouldn’t! You promised!”
“WE WERE PROMISED THAT THE RAIN WOULD END. WE WERE PROMISED MANY THINGS.”
And then the talking was over. Luna lashed out with a lance of arcane lightning that caught Celestia on the face. The world was white light and searing pain, and she screamed. Sight was gone. She thought she was bleeding but she had no time to check. Celestia hit the water and felt the fetid splash. Her magic rose to the dance, and though she could not see, Celestia could still fight. Her sister burned like a torch in the dark, a magical beacon for everything that slept at world’s end to see and come for ravenously, and Celestia would take advantage.
She swung, and Luna howled, her voice tripling, stretching, deepening in a way that Celestia had not been able to explain when this had happened before.
“Luna! Come back to your senses at once!”
“WE ARE SANE AT LAST.”
Celestia called the water around her up, and in her mind’s eye, free from the blinding pain of trying to see, she felt the outline of the roiling, fetid liquid’s every drop. She knew every particle of it, and it was a part of her for a split second before the deluge was heaped on her sister’s head.
And then Celestia ran.
She could win. It was more than possible. Luna was stronger, yes, and faster. She was the better fighter in many respects. But she was not a creative duelist. Brute force went far, but Celestia had rarely been defeated when they sparred on the Rock of Jannah as youngsters. There was no doubt in her mind.
But she was so very tired of hurting ponies.
The water protested beneath her. It resisted her momentum. The rain beat against her face and invaded her eyes and mouth. Breathing was hard, and she was gasping into the humid air. She cursed the time that moved strangely here at the place where the maps ended, for she did not know how long they ran. It could have been seconds. It could have been years.
She heard something roaring beside her, and she knew Luna was trying to kill her this time. A thousand duels, a thousand thousand weeks and days and works, and here at last Luna was going to kill her before it was finished.
And finally Celestia was furious. As her sight began to come back to her, and the ghostly outline of the mountains danced before her infirm vision, she cursed the Well at Jannah, and her sister, and all the ponies along the way she had loved and hated and lost, and all the days since the Song ended and the circle had been broken. She hated all of it. She hated every single thing in the entire world.
Her hatred was cut short by Luna’s arcane assaults, which shook the ground beneath her. She tripped.
Landing in a heap, Celestia knew it was over. She tried to rise, but her right hindleg cramped and she groaned. It was pathetic. She was going to die because her sister was mad, and had always been mad, with no sun in sight to offer her warmth or succor. It was unfair.
Most of all, she hated Luna.
She turned her head, and Luna--no, it was not Luna, and she refused to call it Luna--stood over her.
“You should have let me die in the streets, Sister. When I held you up,” Celestia spat, and realized she was crying. “You should have let me fall.”
And Luna stared.
And sank.
And wept.
And Celestia held her tighter, because it was who she was. She had little choice. because Luna needed her and that was enough.
“Tia?” She managed. “Tia, I’m sorry. I was angry and the rain…”
Celestia said nothing.
