The words didn't make any sense to him and the music was just that of a harp, wasn't it? Still the moment he heard it, Teatime stopped in his tracks and couldn't move another hoof forward. He didn't think about how long he was standing there, and didn't even hear the dishes on his platter shaking until Princess Celestia touched his shoulder and levitated the platter.
“It's alright, I'll carry them the rest of the way.” Teatime couldn't think of anything to say in response he nodded and retreated quickly.
Celestia carried the platter into her sister's room where Princess Luna sat with her head bowed over her harp gently strumming the strings as she sang sadly in the language of the time of Discord. When Celestia placed the platter on the floor, Luna stopped singing and opened her eyes but did not look up. For a time there was silence as Celestia looked expectantly toward her sister and Luna stared down into the ripples of the tea.
Luna spoke slowly and quietly in that most ancient language, “Will it ever stop?”
Celestia looked down to where her sister was staring, “Probably. For a moment, definitely, but forever? No.” Celestia looked up at her sister, “but the tides in a teacup isn't what is really on your mind, is it?”
“No.”
“I won't force you to talk if you are not ready, but it seems like you want to be heard.”
Luna sighed and another long moment passed before she spoke very quietly, “They are doing it again.”
“They never stopped.”
Luna looked up at her sister tears forming in her eyes, “But they did, I saw it. I wouldn't be here – I couldn't be here, if they were still hurting each other.”
Celestia stood up and walked around sitting beside Luna and nuzzling her. “What you saw, was not our ponies not hurting each other, but our ponies learning to forgive each other when they were hurt by one another.”
Princess Luna took a quick breath and let it out, “But they are doing it again, I felt it. When I tried to destroy Equestria it was to end the suffering of my children. They are hurting each other, and I can't stop them. When they hurt each other, they hurt me. When I try to stop them, I always end up hurting at least one of them... thus myself, the very pain I wish to stop.”
Princess Celestia waited a moment before she spoke letting her sister know that she had heard and felt her words, “Life has pain and it is part of life just as pleasure is: inseparable. From the moment our children are born we know they will suffer, but we also know they will be happy. No life can exist without both. Knowing this, would you have the smiles and the laughter and the memories never exist just to snuff out the pain?”
Luna choked and sniffled, the tears falling from her eyes to hit the rim of the tea tray below her as she quietly whined out, “No, I could never do that again, but I am sad and it hurts so much I am crying.”
“Then cry, dear sister.”
“What does crying do? It just hurts more.”
“Crying is healing of the soul, and it hurts more because it is the work of mending what is broken instead of the dishonesty of pretending nothing is wrong.”
As Celestia laid her wing over her sister and pressed her head to her neck Luna began to choke and sputter. Her jaw clenched a few times and then she lifted her head in a wail. Luna cried for her foals who feared they had no friends, she cried for the lame, broken in accidents, she cried for those whose lives had ended in terror in the jaws of predators, and she cried hardest for the ponies who hurt one another through their ignorance and pride. Friendships had been shattered, enemies had been made, families had been broken, and lives had been made to suffer and lost, all because of ignorance and pride. It hurt just as much now as it did a thousand years ago. Princess Celestia's hot tears on Luna's coat let her know that she wasn't alone.
All the light of the day was gone before Princess Luna had finally stopped crying. Now laying on the floor, she dried her eyes with the napkin from the tea tray, the tea long since gone cold.
“It is time to raise the night sky, dear sister.”
Without opening her eyes Luna replied, “I have no more strength. Raise the moon for me as you did in my absence.”
“I would, but Star Gazer has gone up to the mountain tonight. She has taken her telescope with her. If I raise the moon and the stars it will not have your touch, and she is expecting to see your beauty. Do you want me to disappoint her?”
Star Gazer was one of the thousand that Princess Luna was most fond of watching in her exile from Equestria. On the first night that Luna had raised the night sky after her return, Star Gazer looked up and gained her cutiemark as she gazed upon eternity. Like all ponies back then, Star Gazer was not much better than any other pony, but over her lifetimes, she learned and grew in kindness, laughed and cried, and like the rest of Luna's thousand, Star Gazer grew in the soul so her laughter grew sweeter and her tears fewer, but neither her time of laughter nor time of tears came more or less than any other lifetime.
Luna slowly stood, Celestia's wing sliding off of her, and made her way to the balcony. She looked up and raised the stars and the moon from within herself and hung them in the sky. Then she began to paint the sky with new forms. She painted with her love and she painted with her sadness and she painted with her memories and she painted with her hope. If the night sky was all she could give her children without taking away from any other, then she would work past the pain, because the pain would be there regardless, the stars, however, they were her gift to give.
