The slice of cake sat in front of her, staring blankly at the princess as she returned the gaze hungrily. The sweet confection was easily just as glorious and regal as the alicorn that was about to devour it. Celestia absentmindedly licked her lips, casting a hungry stare at the small slice of heaven. It called to her, beckoned her with scrumptious sugary lace and delicate chocolate ruffles.
The princess hadn't had anything close to such innately crafted perfection in several centuries (bakers who could make sweets good enough for a goddess were, after all, a rarity) and was teetering on the edge of over eager anticipation, nearly falling face first into headlong obsession. The cake was her wont. It was her desire.
It consumed her.
She was almost scared to pick it up and disturb it from its perch. Her taste buds, however, screamed with the voice of an a manticore for the sweet, velvety lace to grace her palate and quench the burning desire for a mid-day treat that raged in her heart with the intensity of a wildfire.
Her pupils dilated with anticipation as she gingerly levitated the sliced bliss towards her. Slowly, so as not to disturb the fine etchings of design worked into the cake, she brought it to her mouth.
Her mind begged for release. Begged for her to just shove the whole darn piece in at once and end the taunting wait.
No, she chided herself mentally. This opportunity wouldn't come again for a long while. She needed to make it last as long as possible. After all, she thought as she gave a ravenously refined gaze at the slice of cake, this was worth savoring.
Once again, she began her approach. Chin arced, mouth quivering but open, she let out a ragged, animalistic moan of delight, preparing to taste heaven at long last.
"Oh sister, no!"
No. No no no no! She was so close! Celestia turned to see a playfully scolding night princess behind her, trotting out onto the royal balcony with a joyous skip in her step.
Forcing a sisterly smile, she growled a polite, "Hello, Luna." Her tone was dead, every last shred of material happiness being torn away the moment the lunar goddess made her presence known.
"Tia! You know you're not supposed to eat sweets! It'll ruin your figure." As Celestia watched, horrified, her sister yanked the cake from her magical glow with a darker, more ambient aura of her own. "You should know better."
With a quick tut-tut towards her elder sister, Luna turned her stare to the slice of cake she had so greedily stolen from her sister. "Let me take care of this for you."
Luna opened widely and unceremoniously tossed the cake into her mouth.
A million tiny mirrors shattered in Celestia's addled mind. Their shards numbed her, tore into her very being. They shredded her will, her power, her resolve, her will to live. All across Equestria, ponies looked up in shock and terror as the sun, their one solitary rock of life and sustenance, flickered like a faulty light bulb. The sun princess's heart was wrenched from its place in her chest, spiked into the ground, and trampled on by an army of buffalo. A million changelings screeched in her ears, their deafening cries reverberating within her bones like they were a million tiny jackhammers, pummeling her emotions into the dust, leaving nothing but a charred husk of an alicorn in their wake.
"Ooh, that's good," Luna moaned. "I'll have to find whoever made this and give them a medal." She turned to her broken sister. "We can do that, right?"
In response, Celestia hardly batted an eyelash at her kin's quandary. Her mind was instead focused on the great, looming ball of dust and rock that she was slowly raising behind her. The sickly, pale light that reflected off the great orb cast a daunting shadow behind the solar sister, bathing her outline in a white, mysterious glow. Her pupils contracted and her posture stiffened, giving her a crazed look to anypony that might have gazed upon her.
Luna took on a look of distress both at her sister's demonic appearance and at the rising sphere of light behind her. "Tia... Why are you raising the moon so early? It's hardly three in the afternoon."
"Heehee, oh Lulu." Her voice was deathly horrifying, a creeping wave of malice that sent shudders down Luna’s spine. "Always the clueless one." She sounded just as her soul felt at the loss of her precious confection; hollow, broken, vengeful.
She spoke again. "Tell me... Did you enjoy your last banishment to the moon?"
At this Luna recoiled. Neither of them ever talked of her banishment. It was a blight on her normally spotless persona, a moment of weakness that lead to a millennia of untold anguish and sorrow. It went without saying that the lunar princess did not particularly enjoy reminiscing about such an event.
"Uh-no. I didn't like it at all. I thought we agreed not to speak of my... banishment." Her gaze, though fearful, flared for a moment in spite. "Why must you bring up such painful memories?"
Celestia grinned, revealing the smile of a ruthless mad pony. "Oh, I just wanted to make sure that your punishment is... fitting." Her horn flared with a bright flash that rivaled the sun in luster.
"Punishment? Tia, what on earth are you-"
She never got the chance to finish. With a deafening boom mirroring thousands of simultaneous thunder claps, a gloriously terrifying aura of pure, unblinking magic surrounded the younger sister, trapping her in Celestia’s dark spell. There, paralyzed in terror and confusion, Celestia catapulted her into the moon with the speed of a hundred wonderbolts. As the seething magical prison and the moon collided, the sky went dark.
The sun refused to shine.
The stars themselves sputtered and died.
The world was cloaked in a suffocating blanket of inky darkness. Complete, encompassing, it smothered, however briefly, all life in the world.
As the magical pulse faded, the earth found color again. The sun coughed back to life, pulling on the dredges of its energy to light the world once more. All across Equestria, life breathed a collective sigh of relief as their world was once again bathed in a precious, life giving glow.
On the balcony of the great Canterlot Palace, home to the sovereign ruler of the vast land of Equestria, a regal looking white alicorn breathed a soft sigh of satisfaction.
As she turned to walk back into the palace and address her distraught people on the horrifying "accident" that had unfortunately locked her sister in the moon for another millennia, she mumbled to herself, "Perhaps another thousand years up there will teach you not to steal my cake."
Moral of the story: Don’t steal Celestia’s cake, you dummies!
