Nightmare Night, Recanted
“You are the Hero of your own Story.”
It was a moment’s work to read the spell, here in the silence of the emptiest wing in the royal archives. Another few minutes, and Luna had extended the time limit from moments to days.
Focusing on arriving just when she intended, though, that took half an hour, and those thirty minutes spent in quiet concentration left her feeling completely drained. She only had one chance to do this, after all -- she had to cross over a thousand years and land in the right few days. Every instinct told her to hurry, while the voice of reason told her that she had all the time in the world; it wasn’t as if the past were going anywhere. Then again, that same voice treacherously insisted that she was wasting her time.
Shut up.
==========
It was one of those stifling-hot days that even the very finest weatherponies couldn’t avoid completely, and the crowd of petitioners in the chamber of the Sun Court pushed the ventilation past what even the most gifted architects could wring from stone. Even the fans, glowing gold as they filled the room with their soft whirr, couldn’t push away the muggy heat, and there wasn’t a pony present without at least a trickle of sweat.
Everypony but one, that is. But then, Celestia was, after all, intimately linked to something several thousand degrees hotter. Still, even though the heat itself did not bother her, the atmosphere felt as suffocating as trying to breathe through a blanket, and every breath laboriously taken felt as if it had already been taken by two or three other ponies before it reached her, emptied of anything vital.
“Next case,” she ordered with her most convincing air of cheer, and then decided that this would be the best time for a break. “And we’ll follow this by a one hour recess, so those not involved in this case are invited to relax a little in the courtyard downstairs.” She certainly wasn’t going to make her ponies suffer in the heat while the next plaintiffs played their usual legal games. “So. You two. Again.” Her tone was full of the same sweet care she customarily used, with only a slight tightening of the jaw or tenseness to the stance to convey anything to the contrary.
Flim lowered his hat to his chest and beamed at her. “And a pleasure to see you again, Your Highness! And to see you in such fine health, as well. Warms the very cockles of my heart, I must say.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, brother,” Flam piped up. “To know that our kingdom is in such fine hooves always helps me sleep at night, indeed it does. And I hope that we can let you get back to the ruling thereof posthaste.”
“That is to say, without delay!”
“After just a moment of your time, oh monarch of mine!”
She coughed gently, interrupting the two before they could spend the next hour explaining how they didn’t want to waste her time. She was, after all, hoping to have less hot air in the room when her little ponies returned. A golden radiance wrapped itself around a sheaf of papers and held them before her. “That’s very gracious of both of you. Then we should get right to the point, should we not?” She hurried on before they could take several more minutes to agree. “This seems to be a fairly standard patent infringement suit. You say that the defendant here infringed on your improved apple press.”
“Indeed we do! If you’ll note, the turbulent flow he uses expressly mimics our design.”
“That there press has been in our family for nigh three generations,” the farmer objected as he came to his hooves and rapped against the desk before him.
“Please, Mr. Gold, you’ll have a fair chance to air your side, I promise you,” she assured him. He sat down, mollified.
She turned back to the brothers. “This may be a case of prior art.” It was just her move in their game, though. Somehow they’d have an angle; those two always did. Still, it wouldn’t be right to dismiss their case arbitrarily. If she wanted them to turn their intellectual gifts toward more legitimate ends, she’d have to show she was playing by the rules, too. And, she had to admit to herself, simply dictating judgements offered no feel of victory.
“Indeed we do! If you’ll note, the turbulent flow he uses expressly mimics our design.”
“What?” She looked at them, confused. “You’ve already said that.” Her eyes widened as the scene around her swam back and forth in fits and starts.
“Indeed!”
“-amily”
“note-”
“-atio-”
“turb-”
There was a flash as she turned space inside-out around her, appearing in the library before the case papers hit the ground. The air was a little cooler in the gentry’s genealogical wing, and smelled not of sweat but of ancient books barely warm. Celestia’s aim had been good, and a scant few feet away she saw the prince’s genealogical volumes on the shelf, the records of his vaunted ancestry all neatly in place. Telekinesis would have left no mark in the dust on the exposed covers, but there, on the shelf -- tracks where books had been dragged out and then replaced.
If someone had used the spell to go back just a month or two, even she might not have noticed. The kind of ripple in time that she’d just been through had to be from a very long jump -- hundreds of years at least.
But she knew it wasn’t mere hundreds. Only one other pony she knew had the kind of raw power needed to cross centuries, and her destination would lie further than that. The genealogy books merely confirmed it.
She strode toward the chamber door, then broke into a gallop, filling the hall with the thunder of her own hooves upon the marble. There was nothing she could do, but she couldn’t not try. She was the Diarch of Day. Avatar of the Sun. Sol Invictus. And completely powerless to help the one pony dearest to her.
It wasn’t the first time she’d failed her sister, and a thousand years had not buried the last deeply enough.
When she slowed to open the genealogy wing’s door she caught the scent of sweat again -- but this time, her own. As she passed through the entry hall, a flare of gold from her horn tore the restricted wing’s gate from its hinges before she hurtled past the startled guards and plunged inside.
==========
The cool autumn night found Celestia in one of the tallest towers in the Castle of the Two Sisters, locked in desperate battle with her most implacable foe. With grim determination, she raised her quill for another desperate thrust. A minor agricultural and trade tax benefit for that new town... “Manehattan,” yes, that was it. Local merchants will call foul, and they have a point, but we need the port, and the port needs a town. It’ll boost trade for the whole kingdom eventually. And a town needs food as much as currency… Local agriculture would be the most secure... But even earth ponies can’t raise crops without water. She became aware of intruding hoofsteps, which decades of familiarity told her belonged to her personal attendant. At the mood she heard them carry, clearly he wasn’t here to offer her a late-night spot of tea. She looked up with a questioning frown. “Yes, Burns?”
“A petitioner, Your Highness,” her valet announced with an air more of regret than hesitation.
“It’s after hours,” she complained.
The other, a dapper pegasus she’d known since long before his copper muttonchops were streaked with grey, looked less than his normally unflappable self. “She says it’s most urgent.”
“Of course she does, because no matter who or when, it’s always urgent. She didn’t give a reason, did she? Plague? Invasion? End of the world? Pastries not flaky enough?”
“No, Your Highness. But…” The stallion hesitated, and frowned slightly. “She seems quite overwrought.”
The unspoken plea didn’t fall upon deaf ears. “Then I suppose that, either way, she needs help, doesn’t she?” She looked down at the books and scattered pages before her. “And I was just getting into this irrigation plan; how ever will I tear myself away?” She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “Send her in, please.”
“Very good, Your Highness.” And he clearly meant that literally, giving her a small smile back as he left. He felt free to advise her like few did, and even when his unofficial guidance was flawed, she still found the honesty refreshing. His usual advice was that she worked herself too hard; this late visitor must have made quite the impression, then.
She checked her desk for sensitive documents but, unless the unexpected guest really wanted to know about future irrigation plans for that little hundred-pony town of Manehattan, there wasn’t much to hide.
A dusky unicorn mare walked in uncertainly and, though she hid it well, an alicorn of tens of thousands of years could tell when a pony had been weeping. “Your Highness.”
“Be at ease, please, my little pony. I’m afraid I don’t recognize you….?”
“I am a visitor, Your Highness. And thank you for seeing me.” But the newcomer was practically pacing in place, her weight shifting between hooves as if she might bolt at any moment.
Just asking her to relax again probably wasn’t going to help any more than it had the first time. “May I offer you some tea? Any kind at all. Seriously, if you’ve heard of a variety, my kitchen has it.”
The levity took the mare by surprise, but, instead of being put at ease, she cringed as if struck. “It is about your sister, Your Highness.”
The alicorn strode forward, her heart suddenly pounding. “What? What has she done?”
“Noth… Nothing. Nothing,Your Highness. But she will, and soon.”
“She… will?” Fear shown baseless turned easily to anger, and she left the words to hang there while her expression hardened. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I can assure you that my sister is not a problem. I admit that she and I are having some trouble at the moment, though I don’t know how it’s become public knowledge.
“I will tell you what I told the other mare to reach me with such concerns. I have known my sister since before the birth of the most distant ancestor you can name. She is not and never will be a threat.” She held the mare’s gaze as her own eyes narrowed. “Or any other pony’s concern than mine. Unless you have evidence otherwise?”
“I… I do not.” But the visitor, incredibly, trembling as she was, refused to back down. “But I know it nonetheless. She will do things, terrible things, unless you appease her, or stop her however you can.” She flung herself forward toward the alicorn, pleading. “Please! Your words alone won’t be enough! Another celebration of night! A gathering of astronomers! Anything!”
“No.” Celestia hadn’t resorted to the Royal Canterlot Voice in her private chambers in, literally, ages. “You overstep your bounds, little pony. I will handle my sister.” The door to her chambers flew open, a pair of barded unicorns charging inside and then, seeing no threat, coming to a wary stance of attention. “You, on the other hand, will leave immediately, or you will leave with the ‘assistance’ of these guards. I have better things to do than to listen to the ravings of a… a madmare.” She strode toward the unicorn, now looking down. “Do I make myself clear?”
The unicorn seemed to shrink in on herself, somehow. “You do, Your Highness.” She started out, slowly, then turned her head. “May I make one request?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Your Captain of the Guard -- please send him away for a few days.” She took in the look of bafflement on the princess’s face and caught her gaze. “Please. If only to ease the mind of a poor ‘madmare.’”
“I’ll… I’ll think about it.” The answer surprised even herself. She turned toward the guards. “Silver Arrow, please see her to the exit. Glimmer, please remain a while.”
After the odd mare had left, the princess spoke softly. “Glimmer, please tell the patrols to keep an eye on her, and ask the hospital to send a counselor when one is available.”
She received a nod and a salute before the guardsmare left. And then she stood there, shaken and not quite sure why. She was again interrupted by a set of familiar steps.
“Your Highness, I cannot apologize enough…”
She waved the rest off. “There is no need for an apology, Burns. She was clearly as distressed as you thought, and hopefully she can soon get the help she needs.” The princess turned away, and then back as she found, if not a reason for her disquiet, then at least a label. She felt… vulnerable. “You’ve known my sister and I since you were a colt. Why do you think all this fear has sprung up around her?”
Uncharacteristically, her attendant was hesitant to offer an opinion. “I can only assume that you know her far better than we, Your Highness.”
She nodded absently. “Yes, I suppose.” She shrugged, and relaxed as she moved back to her desk. “Well, I suspect that I also know paperwork better than anypony else. A desk is its natural habitat, and it breeds there until properly filed.” She sighed melodramatically. “Alas, I alone wage a one-mare war to prevent it overrunning our earth and drowning us all beneath its thin, dry malevolence.”
He took too long to rise to the bait, but rise he did. “Would tea help Your Highness in her valiant crusade?”
“Indeed. You may have just helped save us all from the most dreadful of demises. And on a night like this, perhaps the old, reliable favorites are best.”
“Darjeeling it is, Your Highness.”
==========
The guards tried to keep track of her, but she knew the castle better than any one of them. She helped build it. And, while she didn’t remember their patrol schedule from that long ago, she did remember the general pattern. By seeing where the guards were, she had a pretty good idea of where they wouldn’t be.
It was a darkened area just inside the curtain wall. There was no permanent guard here, for there was no gate, and the patrol was elsewhere at the moment. The unicorn stretched into something else before she slipped silently into the air.
It was a long flight, but not a long distance. The cave had to be nearby, but the landscape had changed. Truly, she didn’t visit the castle or its surroundings often since her return, but even those infrequent visits, after her long absence, made this terrain half-alien to her. She banked and dipped in the smooth night air as she tried to ignore trees that weren’t there but her memory insisted should be. That river… no, it’s moved. But that hill… There it is.
This was the cave -- the cave where her sister had come, a couple nights before Nightmare Night, to plead with Luna once again. But, somehow, the Luna of this time wasn’t there.
Of course she isn’t here. You can’t change the past.
Shut up.
She checked the stars, but she couldn’t remember what constellations she’d used back then, no matter how she tried. Certainly not well enough to tell the date. She should be two days before Nightmare Night. Her nightmare self should be here tonight, hiding from the world she thought had rejected her.
Too early? Too late?
Too late. A thousand years too late.
Shut up!
She looked at the floor; hoof-marks covered it, too many for her to have left since she got here, no matter how frantically she’d been pacing. And there, in the corner -- depressions in the dirt, as though a pony had slept there. A big pony, with indentations left from wings and a horn.
She settled down in the same depression, waiting. Surely, if Nightmare Moon saw her own self there before her, she would listen. Wouldn’t she?
She would. She had to. This had to be made right.
You can’t.
Shut up!
She told her heart to quiet just a bit, to give her peace to think. She told her breath to calm. She told herself to either stop shivering or at least stop sweating in the cool cave. She wouldn’t listen.
Do you ever?
==========
The Captain of the Royal Guard gave his morning tea another gulp before looking over his paperwork. The former was hot, very sweet, and perfect. The latter was disheartening in its volume. “More transfer requests?”
His aide, a bat-winged mare, smiled grimly. “At least I’ll be seeing more of my old friends around.”
“Possibly not. We can’t leave the Night Guard depleted, Andromeda,” the azure stallion explained. He grimaced at her look of dismay. “I’ll talk to Her Highness again.”
“Do you really think it will help this time?”
He gave her a brief glare, but immediately exchanged it for a glum nod. He didn’t like the implication, but she was absolutely right. “She’ll understand, Andie.” He saw the doubt on her face and sighed. “I have to make her understand.”
“You’ll have an opportunity. She wants to see you in fifteen minutes.”
==========
“Your Highness?”
“Captain! Thank you for seeing me so early. But it’s good news, I assure you.” She beamed at him. “You’re getting a week’s vacation. I wanted to test your second in command for a week while it’s quiet. My apologies for the surprise, but that was rather the point.”
This good news didn’t seem to make him at all happy. “Princess? Pardon me for speaking out of turn, but are you sure this is the best time?”
She didn’t ask why. It seemed that everypony was suddenly paranoid about her sister. Still, this pony had been with her through thick and thin, and if he was a little overcautious at times, well, sometimes that went with his job. “This is the perfect time, Captain.” Particularly if it lets me sleep tonight better than I did last night. “Pack and leave immediately for Manehattan. Never heard of it? It’s a quiet little town to the east -- with truly fascinating plans for irrigation, I can tell you.” He stiffened, looked straight ahead, and opened his mouth, but she made sure that, whatever was going to be said, he didn’t get a chance to say, and, more importantly, she didn’t have to hear. “You’ll love it -- and that’s an order.”
He gave her a look. There’s something you’re not telling me. He opened his mouth again...
“Dismissed,” she ordered, in a tone she hadn’t used with him in decades. It was as good as confirming his suspicions, but she couldn’t help that. Because whatever she wasn’t telling him, she didn’t know it, either.
==========
Luna started out again as a little unicorn, a bit before dawn. She would get back to the castle and petition again. She’d tell the princess the truth this time and, if she was thought crazy, well, that wasn’t that much of a difference right now, was it? As a last resort, she could always show her true shape, right? And as for consequences to history… Tartarus itself could take the consequences.
She didn’t know why her… other... hadn’t shown up. Maybe she had changed the past already, somehow. It could all be another roll of the dice -- both heartening and terrifying in the infinite possibilities, but it was hard to imagine things actually turning out worse.
Then, as she neared it, she saw ponies fleeing the castle, and that ugly voice inside her told her once again that she’d failed before she started.
It’s not fair! It can’t happen early! But there she was, in the sky, Nightmare Moon wrapped in her dark barding, her darker jealousy, and all of her terrible power. The little unicorn was almost to the curtain wall when, with a sudden sound of furious wings, a white alicorn soared upward from the other side, her horn shining almost too brightly to look at with dark-adapted eyes. Celestia’s muscles stood in relief as the silver wings stroked down hard, not with their usual grace, but clawing her way desperately further into the sky.
“Sister!” Celestia pleaded, a world’s worth of precarious hope in that one word.
“No longer!” The dark alicorn’s magic lanced downward, but wildly missed its mark. The little unicorn shifted long enough to vault the curtain wall, and heaved a sigh of relief that the errant bolt hadn’t hit anypony. Maybe she’d saved him?
“No longer content to shine only by your light. No longer willing to toil away the night, unappreciated and unknown by ‘our’ little ponies. It’s been too long.” The voice caught for a moment, the non-sound seeming to echo impossibly from the castle walls. “I will be ignored no longer. They will see me the only way they can -- in the dark.”
“Please! Think of them!”
“On all other nights, I have, but I’m through being their slave. For one night, I will think of myself. And such a night that they cannot help but think of me as well.”
“They’re innocent!”
This was met with a laughter holding even more honest scorn than the flowery words had been able to contain. “They are anything but innocent.”
The little mare gazed upward, then closed her eyes. I should show myself. But no… If I distract my sister at the wrong time.. She forced herself to look upward again, trembling. It’ll be soon.
“Sister… Please! I can arrange more celebrations! We can get astronomers! We can make this right! I’m begging! I’m… I’m sorry.”
Another shadowy spell caught the princess of day by surprise and scored along her wing. She spun and dropped as her ears caught a scream of pain and despair from somewhere below. Her wings worked frantically but in vain before she slammed into a tower, then flailed uselessly against the air as she crumpled into the ground below.
“Your little ponies, celebrating because you told them to? I don’t want your charity! I want what is mine!”
A nondescript little unicorn ran to the princess’s side, fearing the worst. She has to be all right. She’d survive things that would slay almost anything. I remember her being all right. She has to be all right.
The princess lifted her head. “You? How did you know?”
“I knew she wouldn’t listen in the cave, Princess. Why didn’t you call out the guard then?”
“The… cave?” The princess looked back, bafflement showing through the pain.
Did I imagine the visit from my sister so long ago? Was I that crazed even then? “There is no time,” the unicorn said, tears running down her eyes. “The Elements! Use them now!” Her horn glowed as she teleported the gem-laden crown to the princess. “Please! Hurry! Every second counts.”
The princess shook her head. “Not yet. I’m not going to risk my sister so easily.”
“Please, right now! It has to be now!”
The alicorn bowed her head in silence before shaking it. Then she looked back at the younger mare. “Whoever you are, you need to get clear. It’s too dangerous for you to be here.”
It wasn’t worth an argument she was clearly going to lose, and the little unicorn trotted away. A thin grunt of agony sounded behind her as the princess took wing again, her horn glowing to support the injured wing.
“Still trying to deny me my place? I’ve finally realized the burden I’ve carried for so long. Let me share the feeling with you, dear, sweet Celestia, just long enough to slow you down… ” Another dark spell slammed with a sound like thunder into the already-damaged tower and it buckled, stones spilling from its side like sand as it collapsed toward the princess. The unicorn raced back. If she could keep the princess clear, keep her unimpeded, maybe she could still make a difference...
Or maybe… She shed her protective powers as she ran into the rain of falling stone. Let it be me, not him. Me, and no other. My sister can show her the body, and that should be the end of it. By this the gods of fate, no matter how bloodthirsty this night, should be well and truly satisfied.
Once upon a time, some ponies had worshiped the sisters as gods. Celestia had been dismayed and Luna amused, but they’d both gently discouraged the practice. Now, though, as Luna silently asked for Celestia’s forgiveness for leaving her alone, it felt for all the world like a prayer.
She heard a shouted warning, and then felt an impact… but too soft, and from behind. Flung forward, she heard the sickening crunch of bone and a shocked gasp of agony behind her. She knew before she turned whom she would see.
“No!” She reached the dying unicorn, thrashing about frantically as he tried to escape the heavy stone that had crushed his hindquarters. Her horn lit to take hold of his life and keep it bound to him. “You weren’t supposed to be here! She was supposed to order you away! Why are you here?”
“Good… Good thing I was… eh?” A lungful spent, the Captain of the Royal Guard tried to take another, but something deep inside him rattled and gurgled and tore. He convulsed, making horrible choking noises as blood rather than air poured into his lungs. Wild eyes looked at her, and she didn’t know if there was anything but pain behind them or the silent plea they held.
She could keep him alive as long as she wanted; she had that power. She didn’t have to be a murderer, and live with that fact for untold millennia. But the body before her was broken far past the art of any to heal, leaving her a choice of giving him a life of agony or oblivion. More suffering on his part, to maintain a mere mockery of innocence on hers. She sent him to sleep, before her horn quietly died, her hope quietly died, and, shortly afterward, so did he.
Through hot tears she gradually became aware of the diarch who stared, frozen, at the stallion’s body. She leapt to her hooves and turned in sudden rage, pounding her hooves against that alabaster chest. “Why didn’t you listen to me? You were supposed to order him away! He was supposed to be safe!”
“I did.” It wasn’t a defense. It wasn’t an excuse. It was a little whisper of fact held up to the long night where everything sure and solid had been swept away from beneath her.
A dark glow gripped the crown once more, holding it, shaking, before the princess. “Use them. Now. Before anypony else is on your conscience.” The words were as harsh as she could make them, fairness or justice be damned. I only read about the one. How many others might I have never heard about?
The princess took the crown and found her sister in the newly night sky, silhouetted against the moon. Tears running, she waited…. and waited. “I can’t.” She flung the crown down with a flash of gold. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her again. I’m sorry.” She leaped into the sky a third time, gaining altitude slowly as she favored her wing.
And then Celestia flinched as a stream of color swept close past her. Recognition and realization sent terror through her, and she mouthed an impotent protest before every hue in the rainbow struck Nightmare Moon and swallowed her, her betrayed shrieks, and all her fury like hapless sand beneath an incoming tide. When the light hurtled upward toward Luna’s namesake, it left behind a quiet sky that felt more empty than Celestia had ever thought possible.
The princess of day -- no, the only princess, now -- didn’t quite fall from the sky. She was barely aware when she landed, though, and almost didn’t recognize the crown where she’d left it. The sockets were empty; the gems themselves lay dead on the damp grass.
The mysterious, crazy, and horribly prescient little mare stood nearby, not looking at her. “They will think you did it, Your Highness. They wouldn’t even believe you if you said otherwise. I’m not sure the Elements themselves could believe what just happened. The banishment? I must have hated that creature even more than I knew.” She looked back at the alicorn. “Are you going to attack me, for what I did?” The question held only mild curiosity, and not a trace of fear.
The alicorn shook her head. “How?” One question covered so much.
The answer covered less. “Because the Elements were as bonded to me as to you.” She sounded so hollow and tired. No, not tired. Defeated. “Listen to me. Listen to me like you would not listen before.” The words sounded harsh, but, when the unicorn turned, her eyes only held desperation. “On the longest day of the thousandth year, that monster will escape. What you need to do then will not make any sense, not to you now or to the ones you will send her way, but you will do exactly as I am about to tell you, regardless.
“First, you must send your student…”
==========
When Celestia slowed to open the genealogy wing’s door she caught the scent of sweat again -- but this time, her own. As she passed through the entry hall, a flare of gold from her horn tore the restricted wing’s gate from its hinges before she hurtled past the startled guards and plunged inside.
A dusky unicorn mare lay in the center of the room, completely still, and for one terrible moment the princess thought she was alone again, before the figure drew a shaky breath.
A quick spell sealed the doors. Another left a note, reassuring and asking not to be disturbed except in the direst of emergencies.
She lay next to the unicorn, barrel to barrel, and froze when the unicorn flinched away. She moved next to her again, hesitantly, and nuzzled as she saw her sister resume her normal form. “I’m sorry, Lulu. You never should have gone through that even once, let alone twice.”
“You knew?” It wasn’t just a question; there was an edge to it.
“As I said, I’m sorry. I only suspected, but, with what we’ve seen in all our days, there were still too many other explanations. Also, that spell is supposed to only allow a few moments in the past, though I shouldn’t be surprised that you were able to extend it. But even if I knew, I couldn’t do anything. You know the spell as well as I -- any trip to the past sets its future. If we truly had a spell capable of changing what was, do you think we’d keep it in the library with only a locked gate and teleport wards for protection?”
“I knew.” The dark mare’s eyes were dry, but her voice thick. “I had to try, because… I never knew about him.” It wasn’t a protestation of innocence, but an accusation against impartial reality and unconscionable fact. It said, “I didn’t know, but I should have -- somehow. This was the kind of thing that should have made itself known.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I thought I was unstained by innocent blood. I thought you’d saved them all.” And, a little quieter, “I thought you’d saved me.”
“It was an accident.”
“I collapsed a tower in a castle -- the risk should have been obvious, no matter how empty the area looked. And if I had not been stopped, it would have been the end of all...”
“No. No, let me talk. You and I, we’ve both judged ponies who have done terrible things, and at times we’ve found them mad beyond culpability. Then we’ve faced the friends and families of their victims, to help them them understand. Now I must help you understand. You were beyond reason, and you never intended to kill anypony.”
“But I did kill one, accident or not. And they would have died, all of them, in the long night I would have brought.”
“But you only meant to bring the night,” came the quiet answer. “You were not responsible for what you did to him, or to me. And that pony died as he lived -- a hero.”
“And all his descendants…”
“I granted our title to his daughter, if not our station, and it’s been passed down from eldest to eldest since. They all know that he sacrificed his life for another. Many of them become the nobler for it. A few, well…” She smiled, but not happily. “The ones who feel entitled by their position and their ancestor’s deeds, I make many allowances for.”
This cheered Luna not at all. “More lives I have ruined, then.”
“Their lives, sister. Their choices. Every pony is the hero of his own story. In any case, I am not without blame. After tens of thousands of years, I assumed I knew everything about you. If even my most trusted friends worried, well, then, they must be wrong, perhaps even disturbed, and I must be right. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.” She heaved a great, ragged sigh of her own. “I was arrogant. And I will never forgive myself for that. Even today, some part of me doubts that you acted entirely of your own accord.”
“I would give anything to believe that,” came the dejected response. She lay her head down on the floor, before demanding, in a voice barely audible, “Send me back.”
“The time-travel spell only works once for anypony, and it wouldn’t help, no matter how many times…”
“No.” She swallowed, turned, and looked Celestia in the eye. “That is not what I meant. Or where.”
A shudder ran through the elder. “No. No. That wasn’t you.” She held the gaze steadily. “That was a sick mare who had to be sealed away for the greater good, even if I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And if I couldn’t banish her, do you really think I could do that to you? Even if I could do that now, I wouldn’t be sending her to the moon. I’d be sending the sister who tried to sacrifice her life to save another.” She shook her head, slowly. “In any case, I… I can’t do this on my own. I can’t. For all that I try to be strong for our subjects, I cannot spend the millennia alone. I need you, little sister.”
There was no response from Luna for the longest time. “I was going to lecture our little prince. He was his usual self, but to an unusually impressionable young servant of mine. I knew the prince had an ancestor to be proud of, one I could hold up as an example.” She closed her eyes, tightly, before continuing in a strangled whisper, “But I had forgotten the name.” She swallowed, then looked back to her sister. “True Blue. The name of the pony I killed was True Blue.” She shuddered and choked down a sob as tears spilled freely to the floor. “I need to tell Blueblood. I need to tell him, and to beg his forgiveness.”
“That would be unwise, dangerous...” The elder sighed. “And I won’t stand in your way. I’m sorry the spell didn’t work. It never does. Unfortunately, it seems that even we need to live with our mistakes. We don’t get another go-around anymore than any other pony; everything we do, we only do once, and, in the end, we just have far longer to collect regrets. But while we cannot change the past, it is up to us to face it, and I cannot deny you your choice as to how you do that. So you can tell him whatever you need to tell him, whenever you need to do so.” She reached over to nuzzle again. “I’m sorry. And, for what it’s worth, I’m proud to be your sister.”
That sent another sob through the younger mare, but slowly, visibly, she relaxed. “That is worth everything, and it always should have been enough.” She sighed. “You did not get the day / night cycle quite right for a while on your own, did you?”
It seemed an odd question at an odd time. “I… wasn’t at my best. Why?”
“I went back the right amount of days, but not the right amount of time. I just figured it out.” She shook her head. “But even if my destination had been true, it would not have helped. I knew it all along, but I had to try.”
After a brief silence, Celestia spoke up. “There is something your past self accomplished.” At the younger’s questioning eyes, she gave a very small smile. “For a thousand years, I lived knowing I could get my sister back. I don’t know if I could have lived that long, without that comfort.”
“It wasn’t worth the price,” said the other somberly.
The white alicorn knew what she meant, and didn’t take offense. “No. No, it wasn’t worth a pony’s life. In any case, trying though you know you cannot succeed? I understand that much perfectly.”
That earned her a different look. “Are you sure?” It wasn’t an accusation… quite.
The elder looked at the page that held the spell, then back to her sister. “Positive.”
And the dark mare smiled, for the first time in too many days. “You visited her... me in that cave, didn’t you? And I wouldn’t listen.”
“Exactly one year after your banishment. When I finally, truly understood how long a thousand would be. And, to answer your next question, I saved two fillies that night from stagecoach accidents during the evacuation -- the same trade he would have made. ”
That brought a nod, a very slow nod, and then a question in a shaky voice. “And now? From princess to madmare to murderer to princess again -- how does Inconstans Luna face them all now?”
“‘Inconstant Moon?’ The same way I face them. Some call me ‘Sol Invictus’ -- the unconquerable sun. Really, it doesn’t mean ‘unconquerable’ -- it means ‘unconquered.’ And they’re wrong. I was defeated long ago, when I was unable to help the one pony dearest to me. And, worse, I was brought low by my own pride; I set Canterlot atop a mountain so that I could see the Everfree Forest every day, and every day remember. I should have trusted my friends. I would have had your company for a thousand years if I had trusted the Elements to free you from madness rather than turn you to a stone reminder of my loss, and I cannot apologize enough to you for that. It’s little surprise that the Elements chose new bearers. I will never forgive myself, but, every day, I strive to do better. And to live up to the noblest examples our ponies can show us -- such as his. Day by day, I continue.”
Luna lay silently for a while, as if listening to another voice, then finally nodded. “And I must do the same, night by night. But the journey of another thousand years must begin with a single step. So... what is our next step, you and I?” She was unable to hide a tremor from her voice.
Celestia considered. “I believe that modern tradition requires us to consume massive quantities of ice cream and romantic comedies.”
She was rewarded with half, possibly even three-quarters, of a surprised giggle. Her little sister sighed, then flew the spell back to the shelves. “And we must not live in the past.”
“The present and the future. One day -- sorry, one night at a time, the same as everypony.”
“Then... I might as well start now.”
“Are you all right?”
“No. No, ‘Tia, I may never be ‘all right.’” It was said somberly, but followed by the ghost of a smile. “But now I think I will be better, someday. With a little help from my dearest friend.”
The sisters stood, together.
