Forgotten

Celestia walked through the large, white, silent halls of Canterlot Castle, her hooffalls echoing throughout the space in a truly splendid manner. The architect of this building had certainly done well at what he had been attempting to do: make it as easy to be heard as possible. This helped when capturing intruders, as their hooves' impacts were so magnified that most of the guards heard them as if they were coming from right next to them, as well as helping should the princesses need to lift their voices for any reason. For Celestia, however, it was little more than a mild annoyance, something to distract her from her thoughts even when she did not desire it.

The Princess of the Sun turned a corner, and spotted her destination. A small, shabby-looking door at the end of a pristine white hallway. Celestia could not stop her pace from slowing slightly as she took in the sight of the door. It's hinges were rusted, and the fine oak wood had grown mildew and just begun to rot. How sad, she thought, as she continued down the hall, that something of such importance should fall into such disrepair. She reached out with her magic, and grasped the handle of the door. The princess hesitated, but only for a moment, before pushing the door open carefully, so as not to damage it further.

The sight before Celestia's eyes was one she had not seen in a long, long time. It was a small room, with shelves on either side, and a table set against the far wall. On the shelves and table sat candles, enchanted so that they might burn for all eternity, and between every candle sat a picture, creating a lovely display of interspersed candles and frames, and always ending with a candle on the edge of the shelf. Some of the pictures were paintings, some photographs, but each one was set into a small frame that could easily be held in a single hoof. There were also several frames on the shelves that remained empty, waiting for a picture to be placed inside. The table, however, only had four candles set upon it, and three frames, each in between two candles, much like the ones on the shelves. One frame, the frame on the left, was empty. The one on the right held a painting of a white unicorn stallion with a white coat and long white beard, in combination with a star-speckled hat with bells all around the rim, and a single one hanging off the point. But the one in the center held a picture of a plain, gray-coated mare, an earth pony, with nothing striking about her at all.

This was the picture Celestia made a beeline for, occasionally glancing at the other portraits around her, but always coming back to the one that appeared to be the centerpiece for the room. Once she reached it, she stopped, and simply stood there for a moment, looking at the mare in the picture. After a while, she stretched out her wings, picking up the old painting with her prehensile feathers, and brought it close to her. She then sat back on her haunches, picking up her forehooves and wrapping them around the picture, bringing it to her chest as a few small tears threatened to escape from her eyes.

"I thought I would find you here." The sound of her sister's voice surprised the Sun Princess, but she managed to keep calm and put the picture back in it's place. She then turned around to face her sister, Princess Luna.

"Do you miss her as much as I do, sister?" Celestia asked after a moment.

"Of course I do. How could I not?"

"I just... after I had to banish you to the moon, I had no one. I came here often during those thousand years."

"I'm sorry for that, sister."

"No... no I'm sorry. I was the one who didn't see how jealous you were becoming. I was the one who did not act, even when you began acting out. I was the one who banished you to the moon."

"Sister, you cannot blame yourself. It was, after all, I who chose to become Nightmare Moon. If I had not let my jealousy get the best of me..."

"We are both at fault for what happened then. But it would have been easier for me if she had been there. Indeed, none of that might have happened if she had been there."

Luna looked as though she wanted to disagree, to say nothing would have been made different just by the presence of one pony, but she could not bring herself to think otherwise. She had always been there for them. She could have stopped her from letting the ponies' love of sunlight get to her. She could have prevented Nightmare Moon from ever existing. But she was gone, now, and she had been for so many years.

"Sister, I'm sorry, but I miss her greatly, and wish that she could be here today." Celestia said.

"As do I, sister. Yet you know as well as I that she watches us still."

Celestia nodded, and turned back to the picture, listening to Luna's hooves approach from behind, until she came up beside her. She briefly wondered how the Princess of the Moon had approached without her hearing in the first place. Had she been that wrapped up in her old memories? Or had Luna simply flown through the halls? Perhaps a combination of the two.

"Sister, have you ever considered... changing our names? Back to what they were supposed to be?" Luna asked the larger mare.

Celestia could do nothing but stare at the picture that had been the cause of the discussion, and ponder the question that her younger sister posed to her.