or, You must Overcome your Fears, Luna
Imagine all the warmth inside of you – your joy, your love, your excitement, and everything that has ever made you smile, all swirled together into one beating pulse. A golden glow emits from it – not quite heat, but a feeling that brings you to smile, no matter what mood you are in.
Now imagine that this beating pulse is created into a single living creature. It is one that is small, yet vibrant, with a light that seems to light up the sky like a mini star itself.
This is a firefly.
Luna reaches out one hoof and lets it alight atop the silver shoe she wears, attempting to suppress a smile as it buzzes its wings together, making a small twinkling sound. She smiles, and spreads her wings to make room for more, allowing them to land atop her feathers. They light her up like a decorated tree on Hearth’s Warming Day, and she relishes their beauty.
“Oh, little ones,” she coos ever so softly. “You know the true potential of the cycle, for you only arrive in the night.”
Her night. The night that she had created, for all the ponies to enjoy. Though she has made the night for others, sometimes it seemed that she is the only one that enjoys it. However, she tries not to think of this now. The last time she dwelled on this subject for too long…
The alicorn looks around her, basking in the moonlight, forgetting her thoughts and unfurling her wings, making a truly majestic figure in the dark, silhouetted by the moon. “A shame nopony is out here to enjoy you, little one. Thee are quite lovely.”
A shame indeed.
Luna’s ears prick. “Who hath said that?” She feels her voice slipping back into the oldern Canterlot dialect but she cannot help it now; with a few powerful beats of her wings she turns back and forth, looking for the one that has spoken to her.
You know me, Luna.
The voice sounds eerily familiar. Luna blinks teal eyes in confusion and settles upon the ground again, scuffling at the ground with one silver-shoed hoof. The fireflies continue to flutter, undisturbed by this clear disturbance. Luna admires their bravery.
Are you just going to ignore me like that? So rude. So rude.
“I would not ignore thee if thee would show thyself to me!” the princess calls out. For a few minutes, there is no reply, and Luna takes in that it is very cold outside. She hasn’t noticed this before, and shivers.
The fireflies twinkle on and on, unfazed.
You don’t want me to show myself. Or maybe you do? How am I to know?
It can’t be. It cannot be. Luna shakes her head, breathing starting to come quick and harsh. “I am thy Princess of the Night! I do not take orders from thee!”
Silly Luna. Whoever said I was ordering you to do something?
A bead of sweat trickles down Luna’s forehead.
After all, you were the one that brought me here.
The alicorn’s muzzle wrinkles; she stomps one hoof on the ground as if to relieve stress. “I will not let thee stir up memories! I will not!”
But Luna, the deep voice purrs, as content as a kitten. You already have.
The alicorn grits her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, trying not to listen. Where is Tia when she needs her to chase the nightmares away? And they always come back, the nightmares. They haunt her in her sleep, and they haunt her in the day. But Tia always makes them vanish.
Now, there is no Tia.
And Luna is helpless.
Weak. You are weak without me. A princess that cannot fit into her own country. A pony too afraid to show her face to her subjects. A pony that cannot take action when is needed; a princess that requires her sister to save her from every step.
A tear trickles down Luna's face. True. It is all true. She is a weakling. She cannot hold her own against the nightmares. She needs a body to hide behind, somepony else to show her how to live and speak.
And you miss the days when the night was the day, and the night was forever.
No. That is a lie. Luna scuffles her hoof across the ground, chest heaving as the tears fall faster.
You welcomed the power then, and you would welcome the power now.
Why had she gone out alone in the first place? Luna regrets her decision, one that had seemed such a good idea a few hours ago, instantly. Her skinny figure trembles; her wings ruffle nervously. Now she was subject to this, this horror. This nightmare. This fantasy gone horribly wrong.
How can she escape it? How does she get away without succumbing to its taunts?
Do not try to escape me. I am everywhere, Luna. I am you, and yet I am not. I am the part of you that is better, stronger, a ruler. You know who I am.
Luna bends over, a pounding headache searing through her mind, like a red-hot coal imprinted on her brain.
I am Nightmare Moon, and I have never left you. All these years, I have remained, lurking...lurking...
"Leave," Luna trembles.
Nightmare seems to laugh. Leave? Me? Like I could, now that you've so graciously accepted me in your mind without a second thought.
"I...said...leave." Each word sounds like it weighs a thousand pounds, nearly impossible for the alicorn to get out.
Getting pushy here, aren't we? Now it seems like Nightmare is taunting.
"I want you to leave," Luna says, jerking her head up and staring up at the moon. She knows that Nightmare is no longer imprisoned there, but it seems like the appropriate direction to face when speaking. This tone of voice is icy calm. Her tears have not stopped; they are still there, glowing in the moonlight.
Let me think about that for a few seconds, the voice simply crows, like it's a small filly enjoying a rather simple game. How about...hmm...no. You will become me, and I will become you, and together we will rule Equestria. There's nothing you can do to stop me, Luna.
Is Nightmare Moon right? Luna's horn alights with a powerful glow, attempting to decipher the code to unlocking her mind and extracting the voice. There is no such luck. The glow stops.
Your precious Tia isn't here anyways.
Tia. She can go and get Tia!
Spreading her wings, Luna prepares to take flight...
...but stops.
Something has caught her eye.
What is it, foolish one? Nightmare taunts. Too much of a weakling to even call upon your precious sister for help?
Luna says nothing, but turns around instead, reaching out one hoof and keeping her wings extended. Slowly she begins to walk towards a patch of what appears to be glowing stars, hovering a little bit above the ground in an almost star-shaped formation. She smiles as she sees them, and keeps her hoof in the air, extending it toward the patch of stars.
Nightmare seems confused by this turnabout. What are you doing? Though her voice is not shaky, it is most certainly confused, which is a step up from her earlier snarkiness.
Luna bites her lip and watches, a small smile on her face, as a single firefly lands atop her hoof.
Instantly she can feel its warmth spreading throughout her veins, her bones, her every particle in her being. Strength fills her, and the smile broadens as the cold seems to vanish from the air. She can remember. She can remember everything good that has ever happened to her.
Early days with Tia, when they were sisters with both horns and wings and nothing more...
Defeating Discord and Sombra together, and the corruption beginning...
The thousand years spent on the moon; a thousand lessons learned...
The first Nightmare Night, where she met and became acquainted with her teacher's pupil, Twilight Sparkle, one of the kindest mares she ever had the pleasure of meeting...
Though she knows it is all theoretical, all in her head, and that some of these events haven't taken place for thousands upon thousands of years...
...isn't Nightmare only in her head too?
Turning around, a grin aimed directly at the moon, Luna announces, "You are a figment of my imagination, just as the warmth of this small creature is. If I can feel the warmth and embrace it..."
Nightmare is silent, but a wave of panic seems to appear in the alicorn's mind, caused by something not her own, and Luna knows she is succeeding. This only causes her to grin more.
"...I can shut you out, and banish you as well!"
Her horn glowing with a dark blue light, Luna rises into the air, fireflies clinging to her wings so that she is illuminated against the darkness, until she is almost directly in front of the moon. When she spreads her wings, her eyes glow with immense power, a golden light unlike anything she has ever experienced before, even when being an Element of Harmony.
There is an everlasting scream in her mind - No. No, please. You can't. No. No, Luna...nooooooooooooooo! - as her horn shoots a beam of dark blue out towards the moon, the aura large and spherical and almost wispy, like a ghost, almost as if it's holding something inside.
The magic hits the moon with a colossal explosion unmatched by anything Luna has ever seen before.
Luna smiles.
The world is dark, but only for a second - one second of pain and suffering gone, like a terrible weight lifted from Luna's shoulders forever.
And then the night is quiet.
There is no one there but Luna.
Luna and the fireflies.
Author's Note
Something I whipped up after seeing the image. Not very edited and the pacing is probably pretty bad, but I really like it for what it is. I'm not part of One-Shotober, but you could consider this one of my up and coming one-shots I will be releasing in this month. Just not 31 of them. XD
