Aphelion

"You can do it, Luna!" Celestia cheered her little sister on from a short distance away. She had lowered the Sun to the horizon's edge to make it easier for Luna to raise the Moon in its place, and was now accompanied by the legion of unicorns who were surrendering a particular task to one filly.

"I know I can. I have to!" Luna replied, words that from any other pony were usually retorted as a cutting snap or quivering resignation instead radiated pride and determination as they passed from the younger filly to the elder.

The inherently jubilant little alicorn felt bigger than Equestria itself, as big as the Moon she attuned herself to in order to control it with her magic. Deep in her heart, she knew that failure simply impossible. However, that didn't mean the task itself was easy. Raising the Moon by herself for the first time was like taking her first steps. It took everything she had, and there were times when her magic slipped and dropped the celestial body a bit. Little by little, however, the reluctant rock finally elevated to its proper place in the sky, and Celestia allowed the Sun to dip below the horizon. This only served to highlight the appearance of Luna's cutie mark on her flank.

"Ha! See? I told you I was r-" Luna's cheer was interrupted as she was swept into a loud, smoky teleportation.

"Well done, Luna. I'll be waiting here for you." Celestia said sotto voce in the direction of the small cloud of smoke her little sister's disappearance had left behind. Having just had a similar experience a few decades ago, she had a pretty good idea of where Luna was going and what she believed Luna would see when she got there. She was wrong.

* * *

"-eady for this!" Luna finished upon reappearing at her new location, continuing the thought her teleportation had put in stasis. She was greeted with deafening silence, and looked around to find herself not only alone, but in a completely different location.

"Celestia? Celestia, where are you? Celestia! This isn't funny!" Luna was standing in a vast desert of bone gray dust and rocks, and their formations. A staggering vista of illuminated emptiness and reaching shadows stretched out in all directions around her. It wasn't the appearance of the Moon's surface that was terrifying Luna. She found everything about it beautiful, most especially the clouds of lunar dust that she kicked up as she ran in brief bursts in random directions as she tried to get her bearings. If it wasn't for the staggering desolation and loneliness the silence threatened to crush her with, she might have been able to simply enjoy the dust clouds' ballet as they reacted to her every movement and breath.

That last thought made her stop breathing for a few minutes as she thought. Luna realized that the Moon's silence was due to its complete lack of air, meaning she had been breathing her own magic the whole time she had been running around in a panic. In school, the Princess had learned that while Unicorns were capable of sustaining themselves with their own magic for short periods, it was a strongly discouraged practice due to the risk of causing insanity. It was believed this also applied to Alicorns.

Now that her mind was on insanity, it decided to flood itself with the ridiculously long list of things that could drive a pony to madness. Loneliness for example. Fear. Stress. Silence. Too much of any emotion, really. The sight of blood. Trying to self-sustain (Horned ponies only of course, Pegasi couldn't do it and it didn't bother Earth Ponies). As she thought of these things, Luna started to notice that the Moon's shadows were moving.

"Horseapples." Luna said to nopony, starting to think that she was losing it. Trying to defeat her growing fears by confronting them, the little Princess trotted over to get a closer look at the nearest large shadow and quickly fell into it. It turned out that the shadows were actually portals to the nightmares of Equestria's residence. Discord's reign was a troubled time, so naturally the dreams fed by fear and despair were both numerous and powerful. They also more often than not featured beings of power abusing it to hurt ponies. Discord. The Dragons. The Sirens. The Ursas and other beasts. The Changelings. Exceptional ponies, especially Alicorns. Especially...

Luna's shock at the realization had snapped her out of the nightmare she had visited most recently. The idea that she would be the star apparition of terror for so many ponies broke her heart, and might have done the same with her mind. Whatever the case, she had no track of how long she had lain in a crater, sobbing. However, when she recovered and stood, she found herself standing in and staring down at a pool of lunar dust and Alicorn tears. The images shown to her by the pool made her forget her loneliness and fear, as both were smothered by sights of unparalleled beauty and terror.

Luna found herself completely transfixed, losing possibly hours to gazing into the pool. She wanted to look away, felt like she needed to in fact, but she couldn't. The pool showed her landscapes she had never seen before, and probably wouldn't have been able to imagine. She saw rocks that seemed to rival all of Equestria for variety of color, but in the pool were shown to be merely grains of sand. That imagery paled, however, to the pool's reaction to a slight twitch of her head. The sand turned out to be a beach upon which strange creatures in strange clothes were doing terrible things to one another. The screams, shouts, and various other loud noises, in accompaniment to equally horrific sights, were enough to break Luna partially free of the pool's spell. In her effort to turn away, she found herself spinning and landing on her back, staring up at the black sky of her own world as it appeared beyond the Moon. The enchanted liquid clung to her mane and her coat, then before it occurred to her to get out of it, the pool took hold of her mind once again.

The first thing she saw was a Sun, as might be seen from the Moon of another world, perhaps even the one she had seen most recently. Unlike what Luna had come to call Celestia's Sun, this one wasn't warm and radiant, but rather harsh in its blinding glory. Luna could not look at it. However, since she refused to look at that accursed place's surface, she was instead shown the night sky. On and on it went, a darkness so vast that even the Sun she had just seen seemed a small, faintly flickering light in comparison. Luna felt at once very powerful (after all, her domain was so much bigger than Celestia's!), and very, very insignificant. The night sky she viewed seemed to stretch on for eternity, and every bit of it was as dazzling as a Siren chorus under a half dozen rainbows. The pool finally released her as she realized what she must do.

In a fit of clarity, Luna teleported herself back to the place where she had first tried to move the Moon.

* * * *

At a prolonged break of dawn, Princess Celestia smiled awkwardly as she deflected complaints and offers of help alike from the Unicorns, who she was starting to notice were seething at the loss of their role in pony society. She was going to have to find something for them to do, or this ascension was going to come back to haunt both Princesses. What made it worse was that Princess Luna was taking a little too long in both parts of her new job, and the ponies were unhappy with the unnecessary length of the transitions. Dawn and dusk were equally capable of being enjoyed, but nopony wanted two or more hours of twilight happening on one day, let alone several. Except for some of the fillies. They found it romantic for some reason. Everypony else just thought they were a big hassle.

Princess Luna appeared just as Princess Celestia was about to cave, her return significantly more dramatic than her departure.

"Luna!" Celestia shouted with joy, then dashed over to give her little sister a big hug. "I've missed you!"

"Sister, I do love you, but I've only gone for a handful of-"

"Days!" Celestia interrupted, eliciting a gasp from Luna, as she had not been aware of the true passage of time. "I feared a full week might pass before your return!"

"Days? You've been here all this time?"

"Of course I have! I couldn't just leave you with nopony to return to!"

"But where did you sleep? What did you eat?" Luna demanded, unaware of the fact the same questions were better asked of her.

"The Lunar Legion got bored of waiting, so they went and assembled a camp!" Celestia replied with pride and some amusement as she gestured to the meadow a good half mile away, upon which sat enough large tents for a circus. Everything of significance Luna could see was emblazoned with a large sun symbol, similar to Celestia's Cutie Mark, which strangely seemed much larger than it had when she left. In contrast, Luna's crescent moon was small and partially covered by black clouds, almost as if representing some kind of omen.

"Did you-"

"Enough about me, this is your big day! Let's go eat while we talk about what kept you up there long enough to miss dinner six times." Celestia didn't mention the party she planned for Luna's return. The ponies were strangely prone to resisting the idea of showering Luna with the kind of praise and adoration they were drowning Celestia with. The notion might make Luna sad, and in Celestia's opinion, it had already been too long since she'd seen Luna's smile. Far too long, especially considering that Luna had returned.

"I can't really describe what I saw up there, except that there was a lot of it and it was big." Luna replied as she opened the flap to the tent Celestia had been subtly guiding her to.

This was it, the moment Celestia was waiting for. A great feast had been prepared for Luna's return, made possible by Clover's organizing of the three pony breeds into coordinating their talents a few decades ago to bring about prosperity for all of them. Now, rather than starving, the ponies most often had far more food than they ever knew what to do with. So now they had frequent celebratory feasts for just about any event the participants found noteworthy. For Celestia, Luna's return was like finding a favorite blanket on a cold night, even though it was more accurate to say that Celestia was the blanket and Luna was more of a heart warmer. In any case, it had been nearly half a minute since Luna had been given an opportunity to take in the wondrous sight prepared just for her. Luna was sure to smile soon.

Any second now...

Luna was not smiling. Celestia never noticed just how ubiquitous the solar symbols were in the camp the ponies that would come to found the Canterlot Nobility had assembled. Likewise, she would not have noticed if there were instead moons everywhere. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, symbols didn't mean anything to Celestia, so she often simply overlooked them. On the other hoof, Luna noticed. However, she loved her big sister dearly and wouldn't have minded if she was buried in tributes to Celestia. What she did mind was the other ponies present. She had seen herself appearing as a Nightmare to all of them, save one. His Nightmare was, rather, a tyrannical rendition of Celestia who banished and imprisoned anypony who disagreed with her. That one she hated more than the others, which was saying something, since a couple of them had even dreamed of becoming great heroes by killing her.

"Is this... all for me?" Luna asked hesitantly, forcing a smile so obviously fake it probably would have scared small children and some adults.

"Why yes!" Celestia replied, interpreting Luna's awkwardness as a symptom of being shy. "Everypony is just so happy to have you back! Right?"

The pause before the gathered ponies answered in the affirmative was almost long enough for Celestia to notice what it really implied.

"Well, I hate to disappoint everypony, really. But I've been awake the whole time I've been gone. So while I am thankful for all your hard work, I'm afraid I need sleep more than food." A small storm of emotions swept across the gathering as Luna struggled to keep her yawn polite and turned to ask Celestia for permission to leave. Several of them had gone to great lengths, expense, and even risk to acquire the deadliest poisons known to pony with the intent of sneaking them into the portions they intended to serve to Luna.

"Um, begging your pardon, Princess." One such pony, a stallion by the name of Brilliant Gleam, hesitantly raised both a protest and a caramel apple so toxic he was afraid to touch it with anything but his magic. "We have worked very hard on this feast, and would be very grateful if you might find it in your heart to trouble yourself with the fruits of our labors."

"That was a terrible pun, sir." Luna said, alarming Celestia who was used to her laughing at any joke, no matter how bad. In fact, the grim seriousness of Luna's demeanor since she returned from the Moon had the elder Princess torn between the impulse to flee from her little sister and one to pull her into a fierce, long hug.

Nevertheless, Luna walked over to Brilliant and took the offered caramel apple with her own magic, and ate it. She disliked the taste of it, but she didn't want to be rude, so she ate all but the core, which she set on an empty plate while everypony present save Celestia flinched. The white Alicorn remained silent as she realized there was something very wrong with the situation, and unable to imagine why, sat down and tried to sort out what it might be.

"I guess I'm hungrier than I thought. A little snack won't hurt." Luna said, then summoned a little black bib with a moon on it, the only item so decorated in the tent barring Luna herself. "I will take a little of what everypony here has to offer."

As the would-be assassins watched in growing terror, Luna ate a big enough "snack" to comprise a small meal, and in the process enough poison to kill a small town. She thanked each of them for their efforts, trying to hold in any commentary about how bad the dishes that did not have tasteless, lightly-flavored, or deceptively pleasant-tasting poisons were. This gratitude, offered in sincerity, added guilt to the terror of the other ponies present.

Whispered rumors of the failed assassination and probable immortality of the Alicorn Princesses spread like a fire as Luna slept off her ordeal during the course of the day. The actual attempt to kill her might have failed, but the damage to her reputation was irreversible. Everywhere she appeared, she would be greeted with fear of her. And that was before the Court taught her to shout when she spoke. To make matters worse, once they were formalized after the defeat of Discord, the Court kept the Sisters apart by occupying Celestia with political matters that she couldn't know didn't actually need her direct attention. From that day forward, Luna would know only loneliness.

It was only by sheer miracle that this effort eluded Celestia's ears for so long. Granted, that meant her finding out about it was merely a matter of time, a prospect that led the original party to start spreading other outrageous rumors that would eventually drown the incriminating ones. Celestia was quite possibly the nicest pony in the history of ever, but her demonstration of power meant that her wrath was something to be feared. Absent the news that would invoke it, however, Celestia had another priority in mind. Giving Luna extra time to rest, she took over the transition from day to night and visited the Moon.

"Huh. No wonder Luna couldn't describe what she saw here. The only thing there's a lot of here is nothing. That must be why she's so sad. Having a boring job must be depressing."