The first thing you have to know is that Celestia tricked me. The second thing is that I want to go home. The third thing? I'm not quite sure yet.
It all started yesterday. Well, that's oversimplifying things a bit. We'd been fighting for a while then, but we'd always make up, and retreat into our respective apartments. Things would get back to normal, and we'd forget we'd ever fought. I'd thought that had happened yesterday, but it didn't. She refused to forget.
We were having dinner, and Celestia was discussing Twilight Sparkle's progress. You've heard of Twilight, I'm sure. Bearer of the element of magic? Celestia's private student? My first true friend in a thousand years? You have to understand, that my feelings for Twilight are almost as strong as Celestia's. I'm not jealous, or hateful of her.
We were arguing about Twilight's future. See, Alicorns are created, and not born, that's important. Very important, because Celestia wanted to make Twilight an Alicorn. I was very opposed to this idea. Twilight wasn't ready. You had to be ready to be an Alicorn. I remember the day that I became an Alicorn. I won't forget it, not for a million years.
See, our town of... well, that I have forgotten, had been chosen to host the annual Chaos Festival. This was of course back in the days when Discord ruled. It was a big deal, the Chaos Festival, as big as the Summer Sun Festival. Discord would choose one town to host it, and that town had to destroy itself in a manner that Discord found aesthetically pleasing. It could take years for a town to recover from hosting the Festival, and that's assuming that it did.
Another thing I should probably tell you, is that Celestia is twelve years older than me. All of the drawings of the two of us in foal's storybooks, where we're both cute little fillies at the same time? Fake. Celestia was already out of the house by the time I was born. That's why I was born, I think. My parent's wanted to have the pitter patter of little hooves through the house again.
It wasn't a bad life, I was happy, Celestia was happy, and my parents were happy. Celestia was a magic Unicorn, and I a mere Pegasus. I wasn't the fastest racer, or the best weather mare. I was just Luna, a sixteen year old blank flank. That's important, I think.
If you haven't figured it out already, I think a lot. I had a thousand years of nothing but thinking. Having an experience like that, it makes you think a lot. I learned a lot about myself in those thousand years. It made me the Alicorn that I am today.
So, where was I? Oh, yes, the festival. This is important. You'll just have to trust me on that.
Celestia, or Sun Butt as my dirty little mind decided to dub her, was the Princess of Chaos for the Festival. It was her job to conduct Discord around, and show him the excellent Chaos that we'd turned the town into on his behalf. I loved Celestia, not as much as I do now, but a lot. Yeah, I was bitter about the whole blank flank thing. You've seen the horrible things that foals do to blank flanks, so I don't have to open up those memories again. I don't go there very often. I can't, it's far too painful.
More painful than what I'm going to say next, and that's saying a lot, I think.
We'd put a lot of work into our Chaos. I can't remember my parent's faces, or the name of the town, but I can remember filling clouds with chocolate milk. Discord loved the idea of chocolate milk rain.
There's something that you have to understand. It's important, very important. Discord wasn't evil. He is beyond us. Far beyond us. He doesn't live in the same way that we live. He may always have existed. He may be older than this world. He may even be older than the Departed Goddess.
Who is the Departed Goddess? Why would a goddess such as myself even worship another? Those are good questions, I think. In the old days, before the rise of even Discord, she was worshiped as the Mother, the creator of all, and it's benevolent ruler. Some say she was the first Alicorn, others that she wasn't even a pony. No one is sure either way, and even into the time of Star Swirl the Bearded, there were still holy wars fought being fought over her nature. Some say she left on her own, to give birth to more interesting creatures, others that she was forced out.
Our parents, and most of the ponies in our town, worshiped the Departed Goddess as an Alicorn. I remember lighting the beacon fires for her on the feast days, and always expecting her to come before the end of the night. Never mind that thousands of ponies had light thousands of beacon fires for thousands of years. I knew every feast that she was coming. She'd see the light wherever she was, and come. She never did.
Later, the Nightmare would make use of this belief. She'd throw my prayers for the Goddess to cleanse me back at me, and use them to torment me.
"I'm still here, I guess your Goddess is still gone!" She say every morning.
I endured this for seven hundred years, prayers turning to begging, and then ultimatums. I never could stop believing. It just wasn't who I was. I had to believe that there was something out there, something that had a plan, that knew the what and how.
Celestia never believed. She was never there at the fire ceremonies, and she'd make fun of little "Woona" for believing in silly childish things such as Gods. She may have destroyed the Church of the Departed, or it may have died on its own. All I do know is that Celestia, and I are now worshiped in the Goddess's place.
Okay, so Discord came to town. Our chocolate milk clouds offended him, and he covered the town in a sea of molasses, which he proceeded to drop peanut butter balls the size of houses in to. My wings had been soaked in molasses, and I was barely able to fly. My first instinct had been to pull Celestia to safety, and I used almost all my strength to pull her to the top of one of the peanut butter balls.
Discord was swimming around in the molasses, like there was nothing wrong. He was surrounded by drowning ponies, and he just did the backstroke. I dove at him, and attacked with all of the power, everything that was me. He snapped a single finger, and that was it. His one little finger hit me harder than the elements would. I was ten thousand feet in the air before I could straighten up and dive again.
One of my legs was broken, and my wings were killing me. Back then, I thought it was some miracle of the Departed that my wings didn't get torn off. I dove again. All I could think about was destroying Discord, and saving my parents. I don't know why I didn't actually save my parents. I probably could have. But I didn't. There's a story there, I think. I've spent the last thousand years asking what it was, but it may be there somewhere. No, I know it-- I just don't want like to admit it. Celestia's the lover, I'm the fighter. All I could think of was ending Discord. I made two more attacks, getting more and more injured each time.
On my fourth attack, Discord did something different. He his snapped his fingers in Celestia's direction. Something was building in me, and the next thing I knew, there was a horn sticking out of my head, and I could do magic. I went after Celestia, only to discover that she had wings.
"Discord! You have hurt your subjects. You have abused your power, and mistreated those weaker than you." I said.
The voice came naturally. So did the elements. I can't tell you where they came from, or what they were. For a while, I liked to imagine that they were the souls of the townsponies that had died in the attack. I'd talk to them, tell them how my days were, and what Celestia and I had done. Part of me wanted them to talk back, but they never did.
We were busy at first, learning the magic to raise the sun and the moon, and I didn't have a chance to think about things. As Alicorns, naturally we became the rulers of Equestria.
I'll admit it. I've always been jealous of Celestia. We had a bit of a rivalry thing going on. Well, as much as a foal can be rivals with someone who is grown up. Everyone always loves her, and she is so perfect. I never got any of that love. Ponies even started associating me with the things that they didn't like about the government. Legend said that I ran the tax bureau, and that I set the weather schedule (or at least I did when they didn't like the weather). Finally, I just couldn't take it. I wanted to be Celestia. I wanted the love that she got so easily.
Love that she was unwilling to share. She could have dispelled the myths. She could have made it more clear that we were co-rulers, and that I was more than just her bratty little sister. The final straw was when I heard her talking to one of her courtiers. She didn't argue when he told the story to the Griffon Ambassador, placing all the glory on Celestia.
So, I went into dark places and I did dark things. I became the Nightmare, and the rest is legend. You've heard it, you know it, and I don't want to talk about it. Actually, no, you don't know it.
Everypony imagines it as some epic battle. It wasn't. I ran to my apartments, and grabbed the elements. I felt that glorious swell of energy as I put them on. I was invincible, I was more powerful than even the Departed. Then I realized that I couldn't control the power. I was its puppet. It took all of my hate and anger and fed it into the elements. I was me, and it was something else.
It used me to attack Celestia. I remember standing there, across the throne room from her. The entire court was cowering. She looked angry for a few seconds, then she became kind.
"Luna, we can sort this out. How about if I tell the ambassador all of the wonderful things that you did to help beat Discord?" Celestia said.
"Will you also tell him how you did nothing? You could have saved our parents, sister and yet you didn't!" It said.
"Will you tell him how you let our subjects ignore my night!" It added.
"Luna this isn't you! Fight it!" Celestia begged.
It was too late. I couldn't, and the only thing it wanted to fight was Celestia. It charged my powers as she looked on helplessly. I should explain-- I never wanted to make it night forever. That, I assure you was a mere folktale. I wanted to reign as the sole ruler of Equestria.
"Sun Butt, I think it's time you got a little better acquainted with that sun of yours, since you love it more than me." It cackled.
"No!" I shouted into whatever bit of my mind it had imprisoned me in.
"What, you actually want that monster to win? She hates you!" it told me.
There was a burst of light, and the elements flew towards Celestia. From my prison, I gave thanks. There was a rainbow cascading towards us. It struck, and I was buried in Moon dust.
There's a moral here. Being an Alicorn, it isn't easy. You screw up, and ponies will suffer. No way out of it.
So, back to Twilight. She wasn't ready to have this power. Celestia didn't even know if she wanted it. She needed to mature for a few more years. But, Celestia was insistent. Twilight had to be a Princess, and it had to happen soon. I tried to talk her out of it. I couldn't. We started to fight over it. The fights turned nasty-- remember, we were fighting over what we felt was the future of Equestria, and more importantly for Twilight's future. That led to last night.
"You're trying to replace me!" I screamed.
I hadn't meant it. I was angry. All I could see was Twilight laying waste to the countryside. I didn't care about the damage that she was doing to innocent ponies, all I could see was Twilight, in pain, yet unable to control her fury. That had been me. A creature of pure fury and anger. I didn't want anypony else to suffer like that.
Celestia looked at me with this look, I was certain that she thought the Nightmare had returned. She left the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I went out to my balcony, and I sat and watched my night. I kept expecting Celestia to come, and talk. We'd always talked things out when they got bad. It's important for ponies to talk things out, I think.
I did my dream walking then, and I spent the night halfheartedly vanquishing nightmares. I didn't get too into it, I kept expecting Celestia to come. She never did. Finally, she raised her sun, and I lowered my moon. I headed to the dining room to have breakfast, but Celestia wasn't there. I didn't eat, I just went to bed.
Around noon, Celestia woke me up.
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"Okay, better now that you're here." I replied.
"Do you still feel sick?" She asked.
"A little. I don't think it's the feather flu anymore. I think it's something more minor." I said.
I was trying to figure out where she was going with this, and I couldn't come up with where this was going. She could have waited till I woke up if all she wanted to do was talk. Of course, not having made peace with me might have been eating at her, but even if it was, she'd normally wait.
"Is there something wrong?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing. It's just when you said you were sick, I made an appointment for you with Twilight's doctor. I wouldn't want my little sister to suffer needlessly. Well, you could use a checkup, even if you aren't sick." Celestia said.
"If we wanted to see a doctor, we can make our own appointments. We are not a helpless foal!" I replied.
"Luna, I wasn't sure if you were fully aware of the advances of modern medicine, and it's ability to help ponies. I wasn't sure if it would occur to you." She said.
She had a point. My natural response to being just a little sick might not have been to call a doctor. Who knows. What was done was done, and I figured that the best way to make peace was to go along with Celestia. If she was still mad at me, then I'd only make it worse if I didn't cooperate.
I followed her out of the castle. We didn't bother taking the guard, no pony had ever tried to hurt one of us, and if we were attacked by something else, the guard wasn't going to be much help. I followed Celestia through the streets, as she smiled benevolently down on her subjects, and gave alms to the poor that we passed. I hid behind her. I wasn't quite used to this whole modern princess thing, and I never knew how to act among the commoners except for on Nightmare Night.
We were in the monument distract of Canterlot, that mess of grand squares, and triumphal arches where Celestia threw the various monuments to her accomplishments over the years. There wasn't anything that suggested that I'd existed, or how I'd helped in some of those victories. For instance, the carvings on the obelisk telling the story of the defeat of Discord featured only Celestia. Oh, I'd been on it originally, but sometime over the centuries, some carver had removed me from the monument. She'd said that she did it so that ponies wouldn't hear of the Nightmare, but that rang hollow after how she allowed Nightmare Night to be celebrated. She'd always been an attention horse.
We were in front of a large building. It was a massive pile of red bricks that someone had placed a very out of place colorful clock tower on. The tower was painted in all of the colors of the rainbow, favoring the brighter and cheery ones. The face of the clock was painted with a wedge of color marking the space between the hours. The clock chimed 12:30, and a figure of a Pegasus on a metal rod emerged from within it. The figure did a loop, and was withdrawn back into the clock.
Celestia was halfway to the front door, over which a sign read "Royal Canterlot Hospital for Sick Foals."
"Sister, we are not a foal!" I said.
"Well you aren't fully grown either." Celestia said. "Look, Twilight's doctor is very good. He's promised to take very good care of you."
I was seething, but I followed her. I wanted to make her happy, and the only way that I felt I could do that was by cooperating. It wasn't that I minded seeing a doctor at a hospital for sick foals, it was that Celestia had made plans about my health without consulting me. Between that, and having to look at the monument, I was in a foul mood. I still wanted to make Celestia happy.
I followed her inside. We registered, and the two of us went through the motions of modern medicine. Wait there, get called, then wait somewhere else. It took two hours for us actually be seen by a nurse. My already foul mood was rapidly getting worse.
"Alright sweetie, why don't you step on that scale for me." The nurse told me.
The scale was something designed for foals. It was painted with pictures of various characters from foals stories. Now, we were in some hallway with rainbow colored walls and a pink floor, so the entire place was foalish.
She read the weight off the scale, and clicked her tongue disapprovingly.
"55 pounds sweetie? You need to lose a bit of weight." She said as she hoofed me a pamphlet.
The cover said "Your Weight: A totally radical, awesome guide to eating right."
"I! Am! Not! Fat!" I stammered.
"I didn't call you fat, sweetie. I just said that you needed to lose a few pounds. It's not healthy." She replied.
Never mind that I was bigger than a normal pony. No, I was above some magic weight number so I needed to lose weight. But, Celestia looked upset by my outburst, so I calmed down. I followed the nurse into a room, and Celestia followed me. The nurse pointed to a low table in the corner, and I lay down on it as comfortably as I could. That wasn't very comfortable, but I tried my best.
I got poked and prodded for a few minutes, and then I was left with Celestia again.
"Luna, you are acting very maturely." Celestia said.
She'd meant it as a compliment, but it was really an insult. Let's put it this way, no one ever had to tell Celestia that she was acting very maturely. I spent some time trying to think of an appropriate response when the door opened, and a green Unicorn with a brown mane entered.
"Luna, this is Dr. Foally. He is Twilight's doctor." Celestia said.
"Pleased to meet you." I replied.
I was trying hard to keep the vitriol out of my voice, but of course, some inevitably crept in. Dr. Foally sat down on the floor, across from me.
"Did you tell her why she was here?" Dr. Foally asked.
"I didn't think that was wise. It was hard getting her here in the first place. It would have been harder if she knew the reason she was here." Celestia said.
"I'm not going to sugar coat it, Luna. your sister said that Nightmare Moon was a product of you mind, a sort of creature of your madness, correct?" Dr. Foally asked.
"Yes, that's all true, and I fail to see how it's relevant." I said.
"Celestia thinks that Nightmare Moon is coming again. She says that you've been paranoid and jealous, and that you're taking your rage out on Twilight Sparkle. Is that correct?" Dr. Foally added.
"That is not correct" I said as loud as I could.
Dr. Foally shrunk back to the walls in a panic. Even Celestia flinched. I got to my hooves, and tried to jump off the table. Celestia moved faster. She blocked me.
"Luna you will get back there, and you will listen to the doctor. I am not letting the nightmare take my sister again. This is your best hope! Listen to me, the elements cured you this time, but who knows what they'll do next time! I don't want to lose you!" Celestia said.
I shouldn't have listened to her. I should have walked out. I should have explained things. But I didn't want to make Celestia angry. She tricked me, she betrayed me, but there is a third thing you must know. Celestia is my sister, and I love her, and I'd do anything to make her happy.