Unlike the main story, no alicorns were hurt in the making of this.
"Can I read it yet?"
"No Luna, I haven't even finished the first five chapters."
"I'm not Luna," Nightmare retorted.
"It doesn't matter who you are, I'm not letting you read an incomplete story and a first draft at that."
Celestia shook her head at the hallucination's belligerence and tucked a few strands of her limp, unkempt mane behind her ear so she might continue the adventure of the protagonist in her story. So far it was just a novella, but due to the present conditions Celestia was sure it would grow to be a much bigger tale and she really did want to flesh out the world and mystery that made up her plot as much as possible.
"Are you really going to spend all your time writing, Celestia?"
Calmly, the former princess set down the pen she had been writing with. "Well, yes. If I'm not writing, I'm probably going to be reading or sleeping."
"I'm bored."
"We both are," Celestia responded wearily.
"I don't want to be bored."
"Well then by all means, please find a way to entertain yourself because you see I'm quite invested in this story and-"
"I bet your story isn't even that good, Celestia, it doesn't even have a proofreader."
Celestia exhaled as loudly as possible so she might show off her irritation, before bursting out in an oddly pleasant smile. "Well! I never! If you think that I'm such a poor author why don't I lend you some of my paper so we might have a little sisterly competition-"
"I'm. Not. Luna."
"Just a regular competition then, to see who is the better author since neither of us are going to get a proofreader in these circumstances. I'll be kind enough to give you some of the paper I have quite a bit of so you can write some stories of your own."
"Gah! Whatever, just quit treating me like your little sister!"
Celestia smiled kindly as she used her magic to float a stack of paper with a pen atop it over in the other alicorn's direction. "You said it, not me."
"Nopony understands me!" The dark alicorn shrieked before grabbing the paper and retreating to her own corner of the room. "Not you! Not anypony! I'll show you all, just wait until my magnum opus is complete and we'll see who's laughing then.
The grandfather clock nearby quivered from the ruckus before each mare turned to the literary task before them, Nightmare Moon lost in the grip of word vomit scribbled paragraph after paragraph while Celestia faced the unfinished manuscript on her busted desk adding a paragraph here and there every now and then before a reverie claimed her for a few moments.
Many hours passed and Celestia found herself brought out of her latest reverie by a stack of papers being thrust in front of her muzzle and a voice barking, "Read them."
"Them?" questioned Celestia.
"Yes, while you were getting lost in dream-land I wrote an entire series that you are going to drop whatever you are currently doing because I said so. You also have to read the really important side stories-"
"Are you telling me there's second-tier side stories as well?"
"Yes."
"You had that much time?"
"Oh whatever, but after you read all those you have to give me extremely specific feedback which I will then ask for more because you probably won't have given me enough."
"Umm..."
"You have to give me speculations too."
"Just give it to me, and I'll see what I can do."
Nightmare gleefully passed Celestia the stack of papers before skipping back to her corner and watching everything with a grin that was too big to be natural on any equine or even a shark. Her eyes bored into the back of Celestia's head and had anypony else been in their room they would see the lifespans of entire galaxies play out in a single second of her joyous gaze. Every hour or so Nightmare Moon would ask Celestia if she had finished reading and made sure to do this repeatedly.
After what could have been days, Celestia finally spoke.
"I'm done."
She was met with a perfectly appropriate and not horrifying screech from Nightmare Moon in the Royal Voice that near murdered the white alicorn's ears and whatever feeling of happiness and bliss she had known in her life. "OH MY, PLEASE DO TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! TELL ME EVERYTHING! AND ONCE YOU'VE DONE THAT, TELL ME EVERYTHING ELSE!"
"Well...umm..."
Nightmare Moon smiled even wider, and somewhere in this vast, cruel world an entire galaxy died.
"It was special to say the least."
"Go on," Nightmare whispered, still grinning at the cost of many more civilizations somewhere in the vast realm of the cosmos.
"Okay, for starters I'm entirely sure that the mysterious, grumpy, and all-around snarky protagonist is really just your self-insert. Everything else was just-"
"Glorious?"
"Terrifying to the point I no longer have an adequate amount of fear for your mental state, or any mental state at all. I haven't been afraid of sleeping since we were fillies but this strange and eldritch tale of yours has left me afraid of being awake."
"So it was good then?"
"It was special. That's all I can say."
"So, umm, what are you writing Celestia?"
"Please don't ever write anything ever again."
"But how am I supposed to write the sequels?"
Celestia's gaze went blank before she crumpled to the ground, papers scattering around her comatose form.
Nightmare stared at the white mare on the floor of the shabby room before she carried out her true plan, now that Celestia was out of the way there was nopony to stop her!
When Celestia awoke to an empty room the next day she would find that every eighth adverb had been changed to 'butts' and semicolons were removed entirely and replaced with a '&'. Upon viewing such a massacred piece of a first draft, Celestia sank to the floor once again.
Author's Note
Fainting doesn't count as hurting them...
