When the Moth Loved the Flame
When the Moth Loved the Flame
When the Moth Loved the Flame
by Present Perfect
Have at thee, wretched Sun Raiser!
I shuddered at the voices freshly ringing in my ears.
Night's vile harridan! I shall be your bane!
The light drizzle pelting the stones of the castle balcony couldn't worsen the chill in my bones.
"Twilight, are you out here?"
The voice was there, behind me, with me. It was Luna's, but...
Woe betide! Darkness shall swallow thy odious day!
From the fires of creation, I stab at thee!
It took effort to keep myself still as hoofsteps rang behind me. Her wing, familiar, draped across my withers, and I measured my breaths to calm the shaking in my heart.
"How much did you see, my love?" she murmured.
I closed my eyes. Balefire, viridian and terrifying, flashed behind my eyelids. A stained glass window depicting two alicorns triumphant before fleeing windigoes shattered and was rendered whole in the same heartbeat. Etheric vortices spewed forth armies of unknown beings to do battle in a room the size of my fillyhood home.
"Enough to be very... very scared," I whispered.
Forelegs wrapped around me, pulling me in close. I didn't resist. I wanted to.
She cooed. "Am I truly so frightening?"
I wiped at my eyes, wiped rain from them. Only the rain. I shook my head. Luna gave me a squeeze. Her breath against my face was worlds away from the thundering mien of a dark destroyer. How could I even consider them to be the same pony?
"Tell me what is on your mind, love. Perhaps I can alleviate your fears."
"It's just..." I sighed. I knew better than to speak before thinking. I clamped down on the whirling anxiety, the pounding curiosity, the fear clawing at my throat. I scrubbed at my face again. "What was that? Back there."
"Siblings squabbling." Luna hummed. "A mere tiff, such as we have had before. Nothing to worry over, I can assure you. We made up afterward."
She smiled, and I could have laughed; I might have lost all control if I did.
"That was not a tiff." Fear, anxiety and confusion came rushing up, and I breathed to beat them back. "You didn't destroy Celestia's throne, Luna, you unmade it."
"And my sister remade it." Luna shrugged. "When we know others are present, Celestia and I typically avoid use of the power cosmic. You were..." She faltered, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Not meant to see that, Twilight."
"That's my point." I shook my head, pulling away some. "The energies you and Celestia were throwing around, they're..." My words shivered in my mouth.
"Twilight, you are a princess now." Luna pressed her nose against my neck. "Such displays of power should not shock the former Element of Magic."
Did that term still have meaning? The Elements hadn't been used since we released Luna and Celestia from Discord's plunder vines, the very event which had brought Luna and me closer together. As we got to know one another, we'd found we more than enjoyed our company. Since then, I had stopped thinking of myself as an "Element". My friends had as well, if any of them ever had in the first place. These days, I was...
"You've been princesses for hundreds of years. I've been one for..." Calendar pages riffled through my mind. "One year, seven months, twelve days. I've had to adjust to having wings, new responsibilities, ponies looking at me differently... Our relationship has been wonderful, but only now am I realizing how much more there is for me to learn?"
Gazing out across Canterlot's rainy night, I felt the droplets run down my muzzle to plop on the balustrade below my chin. "I've never been afraid of knowledge. But what I saw back there..." I jerked my head to the side and stared into Luna's eyes. "There's so much more to being a princess, to being your lover or even your friend, than I ever imagined. I haven't thought everything through. It... frightens me."
Luna frowned, but said nothing. The need for her to speak, to say anything, tugged at me harder than ever before. I longed to hear her voice, but what form would it take? Soft, like the Luna I loved? Lightning and thunder?
"You're playing on an entirely different level than I am, Luna!" I stood and paced, my eyes on the wet flagstones. "I may be a princess, but I don't see the world the way you and Celestia do, not if that was a regular occurrence for you. Inside, I'm..." I gave half a laugh. "I'm still just a regular old unicorn. A unicorn who can't begin to understand the things she's seen."
And who would have to have a similar talk with her former mentor as well, I realized with a shiver.
As I turned back to Luna, my heart sank. Her sopping wings brushed the floor. I felt a pull toward her, a desire to reach out, but I resisted. No reaction, no appropriate response, came to mind.
"Please," I croaked, my voice hushing, "help me understand." I shook my head slowly. "If I even can."
"I do not know if I, in turn, can truly understand what you are going through," Luna said, her voice low as mine. "Relationships are built on understanding." She closed her eyes. "You are not the first, but I had hoped you would be different. Do you..." Luna's voice broke. "Do you no longer wish to continue our relationship?"
"Why would you..." I drew in a breath through my teeth. This was not going in a direction I liked. I hadn't even been considering... But then, she would always be three steps ahead, wouldn't she? The hurt was plain on her face, not deep so much as worn, like ruts in a road.
Yet the question needed to be asked. I was so used to being the younger partner in this relationship, the one who required reassurance and guidance more often than not. But that didn't mean I couldn't be the adult for once.
"Let me help you understand," I said softly.
I sank to my belly beside her, to look up into her eyes. Her gorgeous eyes, fierce and clear and frosty: I could imagine them as portals to infinite star-swathed reaches of the outer cosmos. At that moment, they were merely sad.
"You..."
My throat knotting, I reached out and placed my hoof on her foreleg. I could not bring myself to smile; I hoped only, as her eyes met mine, that I did not look too somber.
"You've seen moths circling a lamp at night."
She nodded slightly.
"You're the flame." I gave her leg a squeeze. "I'm the moth. I love flying around you at night." I smiled, and she returned it. "You bring light, and warmth, and watching you dance is... entrancing."
Luna had danced for me once, in private, on my birthday, about two months after we started dating. "Entrancing" hadn't begun to cover it.
"Now imagine a moth flying too close to that flame, being burnt." I swallowed. "I'm a moth who, for the first time, has witnessed one of her kind be immolated. I've just come to understand that this... This constant source of light and warmth, this dancing, beautiful thing that I've loved all my life is also unfathomably dangerous." Shuddering, I drew in a long breath. "And with that realization comes the knowledge that I don't have the faintest clue what fire is. Only that I'm small, and scared, and easily burned, and I don't know what to do." My voice gave out on me.
We lay like that for minutes on end, me idly stroking her fetlock while she gazed... Well, my head seemed to have grown heavy while I spoke.
"I will not burn you," she said at last, quietly, almost timidly, like the sound of her voice might scare me to flight. It was a fear not outside the realm of possibility. "I am not harsh like that lamp flame, little moth."
I looked up, thankful for the rain. I could pretend she wasn't crying.
"I am cold," she said, but immediately shook her head. "I mean to say, I am chill." She grimaced, then gave a short, pleasant laugh and looked at me fondly. "I am not so good at metaphor, perhaps, as you. But I better understand your feelings. I pray only that you understand what I am trying to say."
Breathing took on a purpose of its own as something squeezed in my chest. I brought back the image of that battle -- that epic war in the throne room, waged by two beings both singular and ineffable -- to gauge my reaction anew. Huge spheres of destructive energy rocked the air. I shook.
"I could never hurt a friend, let alone one so very dear to me as you, Twilight," she said, low and calm like a lake in winter. "I hope I have made clear in our time together how much you mean to me."
My mouth went dry, but I nodded. "You have, Luna. I don't doubt you for a moment."
A tiny smile flickered across her lips. "Doubt not, then, my words when I say that I will never harm you."
I opened my mouth, but her hoof was on it in an instant, and she shushed me softly.
"Not even in passing. Not even unknowingly." Her face grew solemn. "I cared for you long before I loved you. You are important to Equestria, to my sister, to your friends and to me. And that is why I, Luna of the Night, shall protect you, Twilight Sparkle, whenever you cannot protect yourself, with every fiber of my being, if it take that much."
There was... not an edge to the words, exactly, so much as an aura. Was this more of her untold power, transforming words of promise into... some sort of geas? My worry must have shown on her face, for her ears drooped anew, her voice growing husky.
"You are... still having second thoughts, are you not?"
I let out a long breath. I couldn't dodge the question any longer. "I have been all night, if I'm being honest." Quickly, I added, "But I don't want to break up. Honest. I trust you when you say you wouldn't hurt me.
"But at the same time..." Face drawing taut, I lunged forward and wrapped my legs around her neck. "I don't want you to hold back the real you just for me!"
Tears came to me then, hot and humiliating. It was like middle school all over again, my hormones roiling, mares and stallions enticing in equal measure. When I felt like I had to choose one or the other, and hid myself behind books to avoid facing the fact that I had no idea what I wanted anyway.
I wanted a book.
"Twilight," Luna said, wrapping her wings around me and laying her head on mine, "do you not see? It is only in the presence of my sister that the 'real me', as you put it, can ever come to light, lest ponies react as you have. I am always holding myself back, for the sake of all ponies, not just you. Were I not, I dare say the atmosphere in Parliament would be more considerate."
She chuckled. I did too. I shouldn't have; the implications were too horrible to consider. They were yet another sign of that entirely different level she was on.
"But..."
"No buts, Twilight my love." She lifted my chin, and I was again the moth before the beautiful, unknowable flame. "I hold myself back so much that the pony you saw in the throne room may as well be false." She smiled. "And I am enriched. One such as I not allowing herself to experience love, friendship, kindness, or heartbreak is..." Her voice hitched. "Lives in exile to the moon for a time."
All went still. No fluttering in my chest, no tears, no aching in my lungs or throat, no fear, anxiety or confusion. I gazed into her eyes, and all I saw was a mare truly afraid the pony she loved was going to abandon her.
I could have, right then: left her, left the incomprehensible power she wielded, left the entirely different level she inhabited where ponies' lives could idly be threatened and effortlessly destroyed. I could have protected myself, cushioned my heart in the warm comfort of my friends, and turned my face from Canterlot for...
However long, I supposed.
Instead, I pressed my lips to hers, and she responded with a long sigh over my mouth. I felt tension leaving her body.
"I'm sorry," I said at last, when our lips parted and I felt I could smile again. "For doubting you."
"You are wise to," she said, returning my smile. "And I am sorry I frightened you. Though I think it was good for us to have this talk."
I nodded, and she raised her wings.
"Let us escape this drizzle, yes? I could do with a long, hot bath."
I laughed and led her back into the suite we shared whenever I visited Canterlot.
We stayed together. The memory of that horrible battle never left me, but the trepidation abated as time passed. When one has a goddess in one's bed, real and immediate and warm, one tends to forget the full extent of her power.
She called me her "little moth" from then on. But every time she did, I couldn't help but think it was a penance, a Tantabian self-flagellation to remind her just how fragile I was in the light of her fire.
Author's Note
The original version of this story was called A Mere Tiff, and it placed 47th out of 93 in the January, 2015 writeoff, "All In".
Why the AU tag? you might ask. Well, I don't feel like "the Princesses are actual goddesses" really fits with canon anymore. It's an idea I don't mind playing with from time to time, but as an actual, defensible thing? It just doesn't work anymore. Hope folks enjoy this regardless, it's a very old idea that I've finally brought to light. :)
Thanks to Titanium Dragon, horizon, Bad Horse and Pascoite for feedback. Thanks to Briarpelt and iisaw for supporting this story! You can help choose my next fanfic to publish by voting here!
