I used to think that everything could be defined like the flip of a coin: it was one side or the other.
Either or.
This or that.
Right or left.
And still, I so desperately wish things were to be so. The world would be much kinder if all were light and dark.
I had thought that since foalhood, where there was nopony to correct me, and if there had been, I am not sure I would have listened. As the eldest, I believed I had no reason to listen to her in the silly and foalish mimic debates we would have, nor did I eventually think of the world she kept in her, unseen and unspoken when the debates of fillyhood were over and adult dreams had veiled her. She was never offended, and those were the days when we respected each other for our differences, while still teasing one another like crazy. The youth of Alicorns can be centuries and more, but now I fear those centuries have been treated as nothing but blinks by me.
It never stopped the teasing, not until recently. Oh, in our two thousand years, only centuries have been taken up by sourness and bile. Yet, it is those centuries that broke us.
We grew older and the way I thought became set in stone. I hate to say that I did nothing to change this, even when everything around us did, for it was I who always believed the most in change.
Nothing I saw or did was defined in shades. Neither were the thoughts, words, or actions of others.
King or commoner.
Clear or clouded.
Cold or hot.
Elder sister or younger.
Is this really how others think? Now that the curtains have been snatched from my eyes, I can see that it is how our ponies — now ponies — have been thinking for a great long time. And I have only helped them in this way of thinking, though I meant no harm in doing so, not when all I have ever wanted is to protect them.
These were the ponies, my dearest and most devoted subjects, who told me I was right to do the things I did.
Even with how I treated you, they told me I was right, and for me to be right, I thought that would make you nothing else but wrong. Of all the voices that have ever spoken to me, yours has been in my life the longest, and I think it is the one I must have listened to the least.
I would tell myself I was right, just like all my subjects did, and pat myself on the back for this. Now I am sickened by such actions that did nothing to divide myself from our sisterhood and add me to the world — at the cost of subtracting you from it.
I kept trying to justify these things and play the goody-hoofed champion as if I were trying to play the schoolmarm's favorite filly for the whole world to see. That world, a world I describe as a whole, only ever had two halves in it.
Light and shadow.
I never even tried to think otherwise and that shadow grew over the one I loved while I hogged the ever-growing light in this terrible game. I had not even though that for me to keep be the winner of the games of crowns our ponies — my ponies — have assigned us, that it was you who would end up being the loser. I just thought about competing with you, and for the love of others, no less!
I, the queenly cold of the two of us, was so blind, and let others get hurt for my actions. Could you really be the only one wronged by my neglect? Am I wrong to wish so?
It was not considered too poisonous from the start, though perhaps no such routines start out that way. In fact, it was almost like the fairy tails I would tell her.
There was The Hero, a shining beacon of morality and goodness who could do no wrong. That perfect, humble Hero had to save everypony else from the other weight on the scale — the Dragon whom the Hero deemed so unkind, and enduring all the same.
Well, a metaphorical dragon of course. I am afraid that after what Discord put us through, there is no dragon, however contrary and hostile that I can see as the great destructive beasts of all time that our mortal ponies must be concerned about, regardless of how they have razed our cities in the past. This was the cackling, puppy-kicking monster who had never been anything but that. This kind of Dragon, he toyed with and hurt the other characters of the tale who were nothing but pitiful and weak saps, each of the poor dears were absolutely perfect and good innocents as well. In comparison, they were nothing but objects for the Hero to rescue and protect, to treat kindly as a gentry filly prizes her dolls.
I told her these stories and every tired incarnation under my sun, and it was I who believed them. Even worse, I tried to make her live them in later years... when I paid attention to her at all.
I was shallow in how I forgot her, as were all the ponies that I trusted, my own lovers among them! I should have been cheering every time she raised the moon or spoke her mind, even though I am now entirely sure I was the chief reason she did otherwise. She never much cared for the other ponies, who were just as cruel, but all the years of near-total silence from her happened when I had this castle stronghold built.
But my ponies were not her sister, and now she hangs, sealed away in the sky.
I bet she is taunting me right now, and if she is, I would rather hear her mocking me in all her rage right now than never have to hear her again.
There truly is no sign that I will ever get her back. The very Elements of Harmony the World Tree gifted us are dead, petrified stone. The Tree of Harmony no longer speaks to me and dims when I visit it, no matter how much I have begged it in the days since I have lost you.
I can not decide which would make me feel me even guiltier: have her sealed forever, or have her return but not as herself if she could return to me at all.
There is nopony to wield the Elements now, and I doubt there will be again, not when you and I were the only divine who bothered with them. None of the other Alicorns left wish to speak with me.
I can see why she was Honesty now; I embraced lies both in my own mind and my own heart while she saw nothing but the truth and spoke it... when she bothered to speak at all.
She was Loyalty because she was true to herself and what she believed in even it meant being ostracized and left to rot in her own silence. She could have left me, Celestia, the Sun Goddess, and Princess of Equestria. Of the two of us was the one afraid of being alone, it was I, and she knew and could have deserted me at any time. Instead, she was loyal to a fault.
She would have been better off leaving me.
I wish she had if only so I could have peace of mind knowing she probably would have burned every letter I sent. Now, I cannot contact her at all. My sister, as eternal and undying as I, is now quieter than any grave.
She was Laughter because when my sister would laugh... or do I mean laughed? Oh, when was the last time I heard her do so? Was there no more lightness in her heart, she who managed to dream in the day-hours while I let the crown keep me grounded?
Well, in the ages when she had, it was for all the right reasons. Nopony could get her to laugh at party jokes because it was proper, and all the finest festivals of this nation started off as little suggestions we had managed to make together. When the war against chaos was over, I had no thought for holidays and heart, not when the laborers were without homesteads and peace was still not yet upon us. She made others laugh when others told her that they were lost to darkness, and could probably connect to them in ways I never could. I know, because I was among those who dismissed the shadows of ponies she breathed such life into once again. There was had been something so witty and cheeky about her that is only memory now — and my memory alone. Even though my sister was hardly the most optimistic pony to live — if she ever considered herself an optimist at all — she managed to have and know what real happiness was... and it was not what adoration I am left with.
That is why she was Mirth.
She was a flower, my sister, even though she may have been a wilting in the shadows, she was still a flower.
I have to live with the knowledge that I was the most guilty in bringing about her downfall.
It hurts more than I know how to put it into words.
I feel like a coward.
If by some miracle she returns, and all of that malice can be peeled away bit by bit... I swear on everything I know, however inadequate it is. Now that I have lost what is most precious to me, I shall be a better sister, even if I never deserved to be one in the first place.
She is the bravery to my cowardice, and I will always admire her for that.
Yet life goes on.
I would really wish it otherwise; that the world would freeze for me. Then I will get to say I have had more of my sister in my life than I have had my life without her. Only then will I be able to blame me less.
It still hurts.
I never should have been Kindness, for I was never kind to the one pony who needed it most, I was greedy for the thoughts and prayers of others, not Generous, and now I am only left with thoughts. A goddess has none she can pray to.
Magic is merely a reminder of what I... of what I h-had to do, and what I can never believe in again.
I so desperately and selfishly want a Real Hero, not for my own sake but for the sake of my quirky, smart, and thoughtful sister. But what can bridge together the gap between Day and Night?
Day and Night... are they doomed to be yet another pair of absolutes to rule me?
Is that all this world will be filled with? Tyrants and martyrs? Sombras and Lunas?
She can not hear me whether I speak, shout, or even sing.
I will be surprised if she even forgives me... that is if she could return... and if she would even be herself...
Impossible and possible. Two other absolutes I am not fond of, because I have only tried to illuminate the favorable side. Which is this tragedy doomed to be?
It has not stopped. She would say that this is not even the beginning of the first act, for it is not I who has ever seen merit in the scoundrels who call themselves the actors and playwrights.
By every one of your lovely stars, which are as neglected as you were...
Luna, I am sorry.
Author's Note
[Revised for printing on 8/30/2020.]
