The first night of a new life
The halls were lit by torches. Strange halls. Halls that had never existed in her memory before. They stretched and turned, winding around the various ballrooms and sleeping quarters that made up the entirety of the Canterlot royal castle.
It was all so… organized. It was practical, simple, there was not a room in this whole place that did not serve a specific purpose. It was so… Tia.
Even the art on the walls had her sister’s identity practically scrawled all over them. Mainly portraits, with some pony of importance here or there, near or far. The portraits were even labeled! The names and titles of these ponies engraved onto a plaque underneath the portrait, all written in a meticulous, easily legible text. So many faces… and Luna did not know a single one of them.
Honestly, Luna had not thought so much could change in a thousand years. However, she had also thought that she would never see the world again, so, it really showed what she knew.
These thoughts, this remembrance, began in Luna’s new room, given to her by her sister Celestia. It was a quaint room; modest, just like every other room in this castle… but it was dark, stuffy, empty. Luna had been so overwhelmed by that empty room, which had taken upon itself to fill with only the darkest of memories, that she had simply been forced to leave. She had to get away from those feelings.
So now she found herself wandering the empty halls of this castle, still feeling those memories. She couldn’t escape that room, because the whole castle was that room. A castle that had not existed before, in the middle of a city that had once been nothing more than a town on a cliff. That town… that was where Luna belonged, because that was what she could remember. There was not a single thing in this place that she could recall, that she could grasp onto.
Well, actually, there might be one thing…
Luna picked up the pace, almost galloping all the way through the white hallways to the room that she thought, if she could remember the map Tia had shown her, to be her sister’s room. Arriving at the painted blue doorway she sought, Luna knocked lightly on the door with her hoof.
For a moment there was no sound at all coming from within that room. Yet after a few seconds Luna heard a quiet “Come In” muffled by the doorway. She pushed open the door, and was surprised to see the moon and stars staring back at her. That beautiful globe in the sky… her home for a thousand years, her prison for a thousand years, but still beautiful.
She had remembered raising it just this very night, for the first time in an eternity. It had felt… familiar. Like an old friend greeting her back after a long journey. So taken was Luna by the sight of the night sky, her night sky, that for a few moments she stood there, staring. It was the approach of another pony that broke her out of her spell.
“Luna, I am happy to see you here, dear sister.” Celestia said this as she walked from an adjoining room to see her little sister in the doorway. She wore none of her regular regalia, no crown, or special horseshoes, she was feeling a bit out of it. Completely understandable, a lot had happened in only a little space of time. She found pleasure in times like these by contenting herself with her work. No outside duties or appearance, just work.
Luna was snapped out of her daze by her sister, and this had given her a chance to observe the room she was standing at the entrance to. This was not her sister’s room, it was her apartments. Where she stood now was an entryway, lit not by torches but by the light of the moon, which had been visisble because of opened doors that lead to a balcony outside of the room. Tia was standing in the doorway of another room. For a moment Luna felt a wave of relief. This was what she had been looking for; something familiar. In a thousand years Celestia had not changed in appearance whatsoever, she still looked just like her sister had all that time ago… if only it could still be then.
“Luna, is everything alright?” Celestia asked, noticing the deeply troubled look on her sister’s face.
Luna looked at her sister for a long time without saying anything, “everything is fine. I was just wandering the castle, and I wanted to drop in and see what you were doing.”
“Oh, well then, come in, let me show you.” Celestia lead Luna into the other room, where she had been before her sister had visited. This room was a proper bedroom, with a bed, dressers, a nightstand with some books on it, the regular stuff. On the wall hung a painting of a pink alicorn, wearing a smaller crown and standing next to Celestia in what looked like the ballroom of the castle. Both ponies in the painting were smiling. Beside this hung a landscape painting of Canterlot, the sun setting in the background.
Celestia was standing at the other end of the room, though this room was lit with the moonlight through another balcony there were a few candles lit at a reading desk placed against the pale wall of one side of the room. On the desk were stacks of papers and books that almost reached to the ceiling, all of them seemed to lean precariously, as if they were tottering just on the edge of falling. The flames of the candles were blowing to the side, moved by the light summer breeze that came in from outside.
Tia motioned for Luna to come and join her by the desk. Upon doing so Luna was faced with a very long checklist, lying on the table. The checklist was a long scrawl of items, with numbers written by a quill next to many of the names of objects. Here and there were little notes, written in small letters describing various changes needing to be made to the number values on the list.
Tia looked down at her sister, “I was not doing anything special. I’m just taking stock of what we have in the food and resources reserve. I need to make sure that this place is fully stocked at any given time. It’s a lot of work with numbers, very relaxing.”
Relaxing, just looking at the page gave Luna a headache. Only her big sister could be excited at the prospect of doing math! However, looking at the chart struck something deep in Luna. This was what a queen did; a ruler kept track of the resources in her kingdom. Celestia was ruling this place, had been ruling this place without her.
Any more of Luna’s thoughts were interrupted when Celestia spoke again. “I know it’s late, but would you like some tea? I could use the energy boost, and I’d love to talk with you about… well… anything really. I just think that we should talk.” Celestia said all of this in a calm and happy tone, she seemed pleased to be able to speak with her sister again.
To Luna, tea sounded like a splendid idea, it gave her something to do. “Yes, I would love to partake in some tea, big sister.”
“Great! Just wait here, I will be back in just a few minutes.” With that, Tia walked out of the apartment and into the hall, off to acquire some tea to drink with her sister.
While Celestia was gone, Luna took the moment to look around at the things inside of the room. On the night stand sat a few novels, a few of them involving some Daring-Do character. She looked at the painting of that pink alicorn with her sister on the wall. Who was she? How did she know Tia? She couldn’t help but think of that face as familiar, like a pony that she had seen a long time ago. Not knowing where to look next, Luna tossed herself onto the bed, landing on something hard underneath the covers. Lifting the blankets with her hoof, Luna saw that it was a book, though larger and wider than the rest she had seen in her sister’s room up to this point. Opening the book, she saw it was a scrapbook, filled with pictures from Tia’s life. On the very first page was a rough drawing of herself, made with the same meticulous detail that her sister often left in her drawings. The next several pages also included drawings, and even small paintings of Luna and Celestia together… happy.
However, as Luna flipped through the pages she began to see less of what she could remember, and more unfamiliar faces. Tall and short ponies, big and small, young and old, and all a mystery. In most of the pictures Tia was somewhere in the scene, usually standing next to the pony smiling. Occasionally she saw more of her sister’s drawings in the pages, many more of which were landscapes rather than portraits. She was a very unique artist, her sister. Multiple pages included Celestia standing with an orange-yellow unicorn with a very odd mane. After this came a pony that Luna had not expected. That purple unicorn that had used the elements of harmony on her. What was her name? Twilight- something. Luna saw page after page with that purple unicorn. Some pictures of her alone, some with Tia in them, but in all of them Luna’s sister looked happier than in all the other pictures before these.
Luna dropped the photo book, which fell to the floor with an audible thud. This was everything she had feared and worse. In a thousand years, she had forgotten about her. Her sister had moved on, been happy. In fact, the whole kingdom had been happy, happier than she had ever seen it when she was around. She wasn’t needed, wasn’t remembered!
Luna was breathing heavily. The walls seemed to close in around her. It was like she was sinking deeper into the room, a room that she did not know, filled with ponies that she had never met. It was all too much to take! Without hesitation, Luna rushed out onto the balcony and took flight into the night breeze, her wings flapping sporadically from the frustration she felt. She needed to get away, she needed to go somewhere familiar.
***
Celestia walked back into her apartments with a smile on her face, the tray floating and sparkling in the air behind her as she walked. After all this time, her sister had returned, and they would finally get a chance to talk. Yet when she walked back into her bedroom she found it empty.
This was very odd, where was Luna? Celsetia used her magic to move aside the papers on her desk and placed down the tea tray there. The candles had gone out in the time she had been gone, and the moon was now the sole source of light in the room. Upon observing the room, Celestia noticed that there was a book lying on the ground. Picking it up with her magic, it turned over to reveal her photo album, which she had been looking at the other day before she went to sleep. The page it was open to showed many pictures of herself and Twilight, both smiling at the camera. There were drops on the page, something wet had been dripping on it. With a seemingly physical crash, everything that was happening slipped into place, and Celestia realized what had occurred while she was gone.
“Oh no!”
In a panic, Celestia ran out onto the balcony, looking to the sky, as if she could spot her sister from there. This was terrible! Her sister had run away, and she knew not where.
Or, maybe she did.
Thinking about it for a few moments Celestia listed the only places that Luna would know where to go from here. With another startling realization, Celestia found that she knew exactly where Luna would go.
She just hoped that she was right.
***
It was a dark place. It was a dank place. It had not been once.
Once, the rooms of this place had been full of life, full of excitement. She and Tia would play in its corridors for hours on end without a care in the world. When had it changed? When had it gone from a home to a ruin? The answer was, of course, when she had changed.
She had loved this place. Its walls that spun, its slides and passages. Its great organ, whose music had always filled her and Tia with delight.
Luna pressed down on one of the keys. In response a crashing wave of sound rolled from the many pipes before her and moved on, to echo throughout the castle. It sounded like wailing, the wailing of missing words in a novel. The wailing of the incomplete, severed from its whole; aware of its loss and screaming at its failure. There was nothing whole left here. This place was dead, and she had killed it.
Perhaps it was better that the world had moved on. It had forgotten her failure, but remembered her demise. It was not fair! Why should this place have been destroyed, forgotten! Why should she have been?
Tia had been happy without her. Had she been happier than she had been with her? Didn’t Tia deserve to be happy? Didn’t she?It was all so unfamiliar, this world she had come to. Everything about it was different, the landscape, the ponies, her sister. Was her sister different? She honestly couldn’t tell. She was beginning to miss imprisonment. That dark abyss. No thought, no worries, no pain, that’s what imprisonment had been like. It had been a lot easier than this… this… hell.
In one day, her life had gone from a happy reunion to a living hell. How could it have possibly happened that fast?
Luna looked down at the organ keys in front of her. They were wet; covered with her tears. She put both her hooves down on the keys, pressing as many as she could. The sound that emanated from the organ was a thunderous scream, the pain of entropy wearing the sound to make it like a cry of death from an injured animal. After a long time the sound subsided... leaving only loud sobbing in its wake.
“I thought you’d come here.”
Luna looked up from the keys to see Celestia standing next to her. She looked the same as she had in the royal palace, but her eyes seemed deeper, sadder than before. Luna didn’t care anymore about how her sister looked, she just stared at her, continuing to sob.
“This place was alive… and then I killed it… It had so much to it, LIFE had so much to it… and then I killed it all… I broke everything… and now I’m here, in a world a thousand years older than I remember it… but it feels like it’s only been a day… It’s like there was this whole world here, and I was in it, and I’ve blinked my eyes and everypony has forgotten I even existed. It hurts so much Tia… it hurts because I know that this is all my fault!”
Luna continued to sob where she was sitting, but as she did her sister was able to draw close and pull her sister towards her, wrapping her in her hooves and wings.
“Oh, Luna, not a single thing here was your fault. It was mine. I had a kingdom… I had a sister. But I chose the kingdom over you. I just wanted to rule like Starswirl had shown us… but there was so much to do… so much responsibility and I… I forgot about you in the process. It was so hard when I banished you... it was like a piece was missing… and I had torn it out myself… even Starswirl took it really hard, you know… we were like his kids… and I had failed him… I had failed you.”
“No” Luna said, but was drowned out by her sister, who was now sobbing as well.
“You were gone… and I gave up… I stopped ruling the kingdom… I just wallowed and wailed… I ignored everything around me… I didn’t even notice that Equestria was falling into madness… When I did finally look, It was almost too late. I just grabbed everything; all the pieces of the kingdom that were floating away, and I pulled them all back together… I didn’t have anything else to do… so I just held them together… I rebuilt, and for a thousand years everything held strong, except for this hole in my chest… a part of me was missing because I knew that you were gone, and it was my fault… I should have cared more… I should’ve… I’m so sorry…”
Celestia continued to weep loudly. She wanted to say that the hole had never healed but that would be a lie. She had found something that had started to heal her, something in a little purple unicorn that she had taken under her wing. She had thought of her like a daughter… worse, like a sister! It was so horrible. In her selfish need she had tried to replace Luna with Twilight, and it had been working! Even now she still cared deeply for Twilight. Even now, with her sister before her, she still cared. She disgusted herself too much for her words to allow her to describe, she was a monster.
“How could I…” Celestia sobbed.
Luna looked up at her big sister, and it only hurt worse that she was sobbing so much. Had Tia really blamed herself for all of this for a thousand years? That was awful. She had to make her feel better. Let her know that she wasn’t responsible for what had happened. She had to say something.
“No! You never did anything wrong Tia. You had a kingdom to care for, and I had become a monster. I had lost my love for everything, I thought that everything had abandoned me, when it hadn’t. I thought you didn’t love me, when you probably loved me more than anything in the world. I had been overcome by my fear, my sadness, my envy…”
And something else…
“And it made me into a monster. I made me into a monster, not you… so you are not allowed to blame yourself for what I did, you hear me?... I am so glad you chose to banish me… because the kingdom mattered more than me. I am happy that you chose to save the world… and look… it all turned out right… didn’t it?” She could not continue. She was crying too heavily for that.
It was not true, not all of it. It was not Tia’s fault, but part of Luna wanted it to be. Deep inside part of her said that she deserved more love than she got. That the world, that her sister, had abandoned her and that her actions had been justified. Part of her thought she was right to become that nightmare.
To be faced with that thought. That after all the pain she had caused she still thought she was right disgusted Luna to her core. She hated herself for it. Yet all she could say was…
“How could I…”
The two princesses looked at each other. They saw deep into each other’s eyes, into each other’s pain, and they wept. They wept and wept for the rest of the night.
It was not happy… it was not fixed… the problems were not over…
But it was a start…
And that meant all the world to them.