Celestia munches happily on her pancakes, greeting Luna with a smile and a wave of her hoof.

Something seems off.

She rubs her face with a hoof, yawns, then rubs her face again. Celestia is eating her pancakes. Instead of dollops of whipped cream, freshly plucked pony eyes are placed on top. She gives Luna a smile and a wave, her teeth squelching the eyeball as she bites down, fluids dripping down her chin.

Luna is sitting across from her at the table. She doesn’t remember walking there.

Celestia is eating pancakes. The pancakes are bleeding. The blood pools in her plate, dribbling down and smearing on the table as she eats. Pony teeth aren’t made to eat meat, but Celestia easily tears through the flesh and gulps it down happily. The sun shines through the enormous tall windows flanking them.

Luna lets out another yawn, picking up and taking a sip of her coffee. It’s ice cold and dull, as if it had never been hot in the first place. When she looks into the cup, there isn't coffee, but a thick black sludge. She takes another sip. And another. And another.

The viscous liquid clumps in her throat, and she feels like gagging. But Luna knows she can't go about her day without her coffee.

She goes to put her cup back down on the table, but there is no cup. There was no coffee. Only a distant, metallic taste in the back of her throat. She coughs, and her spit comes up black. She thinks nothing of it, even as she hears a pony screaming in the distance.

Celestia is eating something, but it doesn’t look like pancakes. Large circular slabs of flesh, still adorned with pristine white pony fur, are stacked neatly on her plate. The one on top is adorned with a cutie mark, only slightly speckled by the blood around it.

Celestia is covered with blood. It clots in her flowing mane, stains her royal armor, and dribbles down from her eyes and chin as it burbles from her throat. She picks up a flesh slab and rips off the fur with her teeth. If Luna looks behind her sister, she could see that one of the guards that normally guard their dining room was lying on the polished floor, desecrated and ripped apart, with calculated carnage. As his blood pools, and the stench permeates the air, the guard beside him is trembling. He has to do his job. If he doesn’t, he may be the next.

They all go one day.

Luna doesn’t look at him. There is no dead guard, only a rotting pile of bones. The windows are cracked and shattered apart, and the silent wind brushes her mane from her face. Vines crawl up crumbling pillars, the once shining place dull and rusted away, blood still caked dry on walls and furniture. It’s light outside, but not sunny; neither the sun nor moon had risen to the sky, leaving it a dull, lifeless grey, expanding out forever beyond. Nobody had worshipped the birches for centuries.

Luna rubs her eyes.

Celestia is eating Twilight Sparkle. She doesn’t use any implements, just her mouth. Twilight’s horn had been lopped off at the base, and Celestia took no mercy as her blunt teeth ripped through fur and flesh. With a grunt of effort, Twilight’s hind leg bone snapped in her jaw, and Luna flinched away as she screeched in agony. This doesn’t seem right.

The sky outside is dark, pitch black darkness, and the table they’re sitting at was carved with phrases in a strange language. Luna moves her hoof slightly, ignoring Twilight’s pained sobbing as she bent down to read.

“N'gha mg nglw'nafh 'bthnk naflnw y-sgn'wahl nnnlw'nafh uln, naflebunma hupadgh nnnnog li'hee lw'nafhagl uh'e f'sll'ha, r'lyeh ngkn'a phlegeth ngthrod.”

Luna nods wisely, hoof tapping her chin. Ah, yes. Of course.

(She doesn’t know what that means, but the words fill her with a chilling fear. Twilight’s blood flows into the carved-out words, covering it and everything else in red.)

She looks up.

Celestia is eating pancakes on top of Twilight Sparkle. Her torso had been ripped open, mouth open in a silent scream even in death. The room’s stench is unbearable. Celestia’s maw is still dripping with blood, and it mixes in with the syrup in her pancakes. It might as well have been blood in the first place.

Twilight takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her neck snaps in multiple places as her head spins to face Luna. Her eyes are gone. Celestia is enjoying the feeling of them bursting as she chews.

“Oh, you really are a card!”

As she blinks, the scene changes.

Celestia is speaking, but her voice is coming out stilted, the sound not leaving her mouth the right way.

“I really enjoy doing it. It's a small way to say I care. It's a small way to say I care. It's a small way to say I care. It's a small way to say I care. It's a small way to say I care. It's a small way to say I care.”

With every repeated phrase, her body begins to crumble, mane falling out in clumps, fur rotting away and dulling to a dark grey, flesh sinking into bone as it disappears. Her eyes pop out and roll across the table, one of them bumping into Luna’s hoof. Her purple irises shine in the moonlight. The moon is far too close for comfort. After a few seconds of staring, Luna sighs and gingerly places her hoof on top of her sister’s eye. As she is still babbling, crumbling into a rotting pile of moldy flesh, Luna crushes it under her hoof.

It bursts with a quiet splurt.

Luna wakes up in bed.

Her eyes dart around the room, looking for signs of syrup, eyeballs, or bits of pony flesh. There is none. Her gaze drifts to the many vases strewn about her room, all holding the comforting scents that help her sleep after her shift. Leaning over, she gives a cluster of them a sniff, only to wrinkle her snout and pull back.

Removing her blanket with her magic, and leaving it neatly folded on her pillow, she takes the plants out, to closer examine them. While she had thought she put lavender in her room, the plant had an off-white coloring on its leaves, and it took Luna a second to put the pieces together.

She had put salvia in her room instead.

All day and night long, she had kept dozens of bushels of it in her room, the smell cloying everything else, and causing her to have those awful nightmares.

Shaking her head, she opened all the windows, breathing in the cool air and letting the room itself air out. It was quite early in the morning, so she decided to at least say her hellos to her sister before going back to sleep.

Putting a hoof to her mouth, she stifled a yawn, and opened the large double doors leading out of her chambers. As she neared the royal dining room, she smelled a familiar scent in the air, and smiled to herself.

Celestia was making pancakes.

Author's Note

this is super experimental writing for me, so it's definitely not for everyone; but if you read this i hope you enjoyed, and that you'll stick around for future stories! <3