When the Night Danced For Us
Princess Luna landed on the moon, kicking up a cloud of dust that swept away from her and became a storm that would have swallowed mountains, had there been any on the moon for it to swallow. The alicorn smiled and exhaled, her breath circling in the stellar void for a few moments before rushing back into her lungs. It was a familiar feeling, almost nostalgic in a way; she had spent a thousand years on this desolate rock, recycling a single deep breath to keep herself alive.
At that thought, Luna beat her wings suddenly, and erupted into laughter when she very nearly left the moon's atmosphere. How many times had she tried to do this, how many fruitless spells and pointless wingbeats had she hurled from within the iron-clad enchantments of the Elements of Harmony? And now, to escape so easily, to come and go as she pleased with as much fanfare as a common earth pony might go to market... It would have been enough to bring tears of joy to Luna's eyes, if not for the vacuum of space.
Still, she had more reason to be here than to taunt her past with the successes of the present. Tonight, the citizens of Equestria would bear witness to a celestial event that had not graced the night sky in over a thousand years. The sun, the moon and the planet itself would come together in glorious synergy to create a total eclipse of the moon.
When Celestia had broached the subject at court, the question of the day had quickly become, "Why a lunar eclipse?" To Luna's surprise, the majority of her sister's advisors believed a solar eclipse would be a far more popular spectacle with the ponies, and a much better way to endear Luna to her subjects. Evidently, there were not many historians in Celestia's court.
Nevertheless, the plan had gone ahead to orchestrate a lunar eclipse. It had taken months of planning, weeks of tossing around hypotheses, and several days of watching Twilight Sparkle work her dubious magic on a pair of inverted calendars, but the long-anticipated night had finally arrived. Princess Luna touched down on the rocky surface of the moon, and looked up, or perhaps down, at the planet of Equus. Her glorious continent of Equestria was utterly shrouded in darkness, and it warmed the princess's heart to see the veritable seas of torchlight. The ponies were up and about at this hour, all of them waiting for the show to begin.
And oh, what a show it would be.
Luna stood there for about an hour before the signal came. The sky above Canterlot blazed suddenly with her dear sister's insignia, and a quick glance around the edge of the planet confirmed that the sun was in position. Luna fired back a signal of her own, imposing the symbol of a dark crescent moon over the Canterlot signal. With confirmation sent both ways, Luna squared her shoulders and spread her wings. It was time to begin.
The bolt of light flew up from Equestria like an arrow from Chiron's bow, striking the Princess of the Night squarely in the chest. She allowed the spell to crawl all over her, exploring and locking on to every individual cell in her body. Once the spell had gathered all that it could, it coalesced into her horn, as if insisting that she return fire. Luna complied, returning the tracking spell to Celestia. With the last of the pleasantries only a breath away from being complete, Luna began to dance.
Now, in Equestria, dancing was simply a matter of stepping from place from place to place in the most graceful way possible, usually to the tune of music. But on the moon, where gravity is much lower, dancing becomes as much about the air as it is about the ground. From the first step of her dance, Luna was floating. A tiny little push with her wings allowed her to glide for a few more feet, and as she twirled softly to a stop, her legs were already bunching up for the next leaping step.
The dance was slow and serene, poetry made flesh, much like the eclipse it was shepherding. Every movement was a brief flight, a blissful arc that came to rest on the rocks of the moon with such lightness that scarcely a mote of dust was shifted. Luna put hardly any effort into the dance, and her muscles began to feel as though they were moving through molasses. Luna had neither need nor want for haste this night, and might have been content to drag the eclipse on for ten years, if not for the fact that she would be reduced to only moving a single hoof-space every five days. As it was, Luna knew that the first part of the dance, the Darkening, could last for several hours if done right. And she was most definitely going to do it right.
Beneath her hooves, the moonlight faded little by little, replaced with a chilling black and crimson. It wouldn't be visible to the ponies below for at least half an hour, but to the princess it was already a roaring, blazing ocean of blood-fire. Luna looked forward to hearing about all of the little colts and fillies who would be terrified at the sight of the moon bleeding.
That thought gave Luna pause for a moment, and she looked up at Equus. As her body leaped into its seventeenth twirl, her mind vaulted across the aether and settled over Equestria like a blanket. She poked and prodded, searching for dreams and nightmares. No point in slacking off, after all. But to her shock and amazement, Luna's third eye saw so little it may as well have been blind. In all of Equestria, there were maybe fifteen ponies who were asleep. Even on the night before the Summer Sun Celebration that would have seemed like madness, but for everypony to be awake on a night like this?
Something awakened within Luna. It swelled up within her chest like a fiery balloon, and her dancing became even more flamboyant and stylized. It took a moment for her to realize what it was; the Princess of the Night was feeling an overwhelming sense of pride. Pride in her work, pride in herself, but most of all, pride in her subjects.
Spurred on by this feeling, she danced the light off the moon, then danced it into utter darkness, then danced the light from the sun to the moon just for good measure. And for the final moments of the dance, Luna sent the stars in the sky into a mad and chaotic dance of their own. She raised her horn, and it glowed with a light so bright that the moon became the sun for a brief and shining moment.
The night's revelry was only beginning.
Author's Note
2015-09-27
Supermoon. Lunar eclipse. Blood moon. It was freaking awesome. That is all you need to know.
