Forty Minute Fantasies

Princess Celestia woke to the glimmer of moonlight on her eyes.  It wasn’t exactly an uncommon awakening, but it did mean that her slumbers had reached their end, and she muzzily rose from her bed, her head clearing as she stepped over to the balcony doors.  Once on the balcony, she turned, facing the moon, and half-bowed to it and the dark scar burned across its surface before sparking her horn into life.

Slowly, the moon sank below the horizon, taking with it the last vestiges of silver light.  An ancient proverb popped into Celestia’s head, about it being ‘darkest before the dawn’, and a small smile graced her lips as she looked out over Canterlot, contemplating that.  Without the light of either sun or moon, the land was indeed wrapped in a deep darkness.  And into that darkness, Celestia gazed.

The gentle night breezes played with Celestia’s mane as she stood there, simply looking over the quiet darkness of Canterlot.  The stars above shone, and here and there, an occasional early lantern showed.  (And one late one - Celestia made a mental note to gently chide Twilight for spending all night in the royal library again.)  Still, these little pinpricks of flame and magic couldn’t roll back the drifting tides of the night.  As the Princess of the Sun, Celestia should, perhaps, have felt bad about that.  Instead, she took comfort in it, remembering days of long ago, days when the darkness hadn’t been something to fear, or to cast aside.  Days when the night’s gentle curtain wasn’t a veil concealing monsters both real and imagined, but was instead a comforting blanket, an invitation to rest after the labors of the weary day.  “Soon, Luna,” she muttered, half to herself.  “They’ll understand, I promise you.”

One moment stretched to two, to several.  Celestia could have stood there for much longer, meditating in and upon the darkness, but strident duty commanded her, in more ways than one, and so she sighed, lowering her head as she stepped to the other side of the balcony.  There, she once more sparked her horn into life, calling, and the darkness gently gave way to rose and azure as the sun peeked over the horizon.