Two straight years without the sun. Some were still not accustomed to using moon phases to tell which day it was, or rather, what night it was. Nightmare Moon basked in the radiant light of the full moon. All of Equestria imagined her being no more weary of having the moon perpetually hang in the dark star-freckled sky than on that fateful day, when she first refused to lower the moon.
Crickets sang a tired ringing melody to the steady rhythm of Princess Celestia’s breaths gusting in and flaring out through her tiny nostrils. A gentle click from the closing balcony door did nothing to disturb the foal innocently slumbering before her younger sister’s somber jade eyes. A dark blue sleeper warmly wrapped around all four of Celestia’s hooves, zipped from her left hind leg up close to her neck, and a blue pacifier with a silver moon on its button lay stiff in her muzzle, attached to the sleeper by a pink clip. The clip and her young pink mane contrasted with the colors of her foalish attire. Blankets that once shrouded her naturally found their way kicked into the corner of her crib.
The black mare trapped herself within her own meanderings, gazing upon her older sister now adopted daughter. If she were to wake in that moment, it’d be with bright eyes, a wide smile, and her hooves reaching for a mare she loved like a mother, even if this mare looked like a monster. Nightmare Moon was a towering shadow that mimicked uncertainty, obfuscation, and darkness; the deepest fears within the hearts of ponykind. But a toddler who had this shadow as her mother wouldn’t know the difference.
Nightmare Moon’s reign was the edge of a blade dancing with Equestria at a precipice; live under the rule of Nightmare Moon or else. This blade had dulled over time, but it was still a blade nonetheless, a blade dulled by remorse: Times were so much simpler when Nightmare Moon and her sister were still practicing magic under the tutelage of Starswirl The Bearded; before they both were entrusted with raising the sun and moon every single day, and then being the Princesses of Equestria.
It started with their sleep schedule; the two sisters barely saw each other each day merely by shift change. They simply didn’t have time to spend with one another any longer, and if they ever did make time, it’d always be a strain on one of them, whether it’d be Celestia staying awake during the night with the weight of waking up at dawn still on her, or Luna being awake during the day after only three hours of sleep. They pushed through their struggles at first, but there were points when a huge issue that required both of their presences would interrupt the other’s slumber. When they were confident they could handle big issues on their own, they didn’t wake one another unless it was absolutely dire.
The shadow of an amalgamous beast, frozen in a fit of raucous laughter, glazed over the passing pink-maned alicorn. Her tour with her foreign ambassadors came to an end earlier than she wanted. There just wasn’t enough time in the day, and the petrified stone figure of Discord that served as a trophy to her and her sister’s greatest accomplishment was the ultimate conclusion to her tour.
Celestia remembered when her battered sister woke her in the middle of the night. Or was it day? Or was it both? Such a detail she hadn’t really figured out for sure, and especially not in that moment when their castle was suddenly flipped sideways. Celestia suffered her own share of wounds from falling furniture in her own bedroom collapsing upon the panicking alicorns. The two sisters managed to escape through Celestia’s bedroom window and narrowly dodged the jagged, disorienting, upside-down castle rooftops.
The two sisters didn’t even know what to make of it all: Fish swimming through the air, houses floating in the sky, and checker-patterned ground all over. It was all an absolute mess. Luna shamefully confessed that he was too much for her to handle alone. The two would soon figure out that this conjurer of chaos would be too much even for both of them. He acted like an absolute fool, but Discord was capable of doing literally anything. How his magic was so powerful was beyond them.
It was almost as if he was just a child at play; a child at play unaware of what else happened in the world around him. Celestia and Luna used this to their advantage, and while another flight through their warped castle was a task, the key to their victory lay secured in a shrine, unaffected by Discord’s obfuscating magic, within the Sanctuary Of The Elements.
Celestia and Luna dramatically walked toward the draconequus sitting in a throne atop a purple checker-patterned hill. The throne spun while Discord was in a fit of laughter, breaking himself out of it to proclaim how much fun he was having, and then proposed a game of Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Pony. Celestia stood undaunted in the gaze of his red irises swimming in his murky yellow sclera, but astonishment took hold of her at the pink “play” tail that shimmered in the grip of his paw. Both the sisters had to glance back to confirm that, indeed, Celestia’s tail was no longer attached to her body. The older sister tried suppressing it, but a reactionary gasp found its way out of her.
“Playtime is over for you, Discord!” She said, immediately shaking off his stunt and furling her brows, Luna following suit.
“Oh, I doubt that,” he replied while callously flailing about a bag of black seeds he was eating from, many of them falling to the ground. He tantalizingly offered some, only to be answered with stern unmoving glares from the two princesses. Six relics, all doused in lights from their horns, levitated out of the sisters’ saddlebags. Discord couldn’t even stay upright in his throne when he threw himself into a fit of laughter. “You should see yourselves right now~ The expressions on your face~ So intense~ So sure of yourselves~” He wanted to morph his face literally into their own scowls to show them, but he was too choked up. He grew still and silent under a majestic rainbow shower.
Celestia spent her chariot ride back to the Castle Of The Two Sisters, dismayed that she wasn’t able to tell this story. After defeating Discord, Equestria was immediately back to normal, including the sisters’ duties. No celebration; it was merely another job well done. It was around this time Luna started growing painfully detached from her sister. Celestia didn’t have a moment to really take notice; as soon as she raised the sun every morning, she was up to her eyes in politics and various issues with which she had narrow windows to resolve, which kept her busy until sunset.
However, Luna would raise the moon every night drowned in her sorrow. Everypony was heading to sleep. She had to push through the loneliness that ached to keep her from her duty of safeguarding dreams. Each night, she’d take longer breaks, then it got to a point where she wouldn’t assume her nightly duties until many minutes after her shift started, sometimes even hours. A decade passed before she started seeing futility in doing so. She would still help ponies through their nightmares, but they’d forget about them as soon as they woke up, and it wasn’t herself who was there to greet them every morning. And under an ebbing light, Luna would resent her sister’s sun and cry herself to sleep.
Celestia’s hooves ached as they graced the carpeted hall leading to the sisters’ quarters. She was surprised her sister was not in their throne room to greet her. She heard a guard’s distraught voice echo through the hallway. The batpony known as Nightlance expressed his considerate apologies, knowing Celestia usually retires for the evening at the crack of dusk, but concerningly informed her that Princess Luna hadn’t even stepped hoof outside her room yet, and any attempts to convince her to do so were met with a victimized voice breaking from tears, wishing to be left alone, and soon after, complete silence.
Luna’s hooves were drenched in tears. A pool formed underneath her on her bedroom floor. Her sobbing rendered her deaf to the taps on her door and her sister’s pleas to let her in. Growing impatient, Celestia’s horn glowed its usual sunlight gold to gently open the door, and she slowly placed herself within the doorway. The sobbing mare lay absolutely shattered with her head covered by her hooves, unaware of the pitiful gaze upon her. Celestia’s purple eyes wandered to the floor while she briefly collected her thoughts before her approach. Luna had been admittedly growing distant for the past few- How long has it even been? The toll from Celestia’s tireless days of work began to dawn on her; so many days and issues she just wanted to be over with and forget that they all just came together into a blurry amalgam in her memory.
“Hey,” the white mare said with a cheery tone, a smile, and her hoof raised in salutations.
“GET OUT!” The blue-gray alicorn said with tears streaming down her cheeks. She threw herself out of her pool of tears and stamped her hooves on the floor before her wide-eyed sister.
“What!?”
“Get out! Leave me alone!” She screamed at her sister. Celestia furled her eyebrows; even her patience had limits, and after a long day, she couldn’t help becoming agitated.
“Luna, what in Equestria has gotten-”
“You think you’re so special! Everypony needing you to solve their problems!” Celestia shook her head while struggling to come up with a fitting response; she certainly didn’t expect an outburst quite like that.
“Luna, I don’t understand.” With another rearing, Luna slammed her hooves into the floor.
“Get out of my room and get out of my life!”
“But Sister-” A blue aura slammed the door before Celestia’s tear-flooded eyes. She couldn’t believe it; it was just so immature of her, her century-old younger sister, to act out like that. She was genuinely worried for Luna, but she shook her head and sniffled to dry up her tears. In good faith that Luna would come to her senses after a night to take her mind off her trouble, and in the face of being exhausted, Celestia retreated to her own bedroom and threw herself onto her bed to sleep under a fresh moon climbing the night sky. She almost didn’t even take off her royal accessories with how loudly her bed was calling for her.
Princess Luna gazed upon her night sky with the same feelings of dread she felt every night the past few weeks; emptiness, loneliness, and a bitter envy of her sister. Everypony at this point in the day would be preparing for bed, and with the Lunar Guard on duty, the only one to truly appreciate the night, which, like her sister, she took dedicated ownership for with her duty toward it, was herself.
Luna spent that entire night pacing around her and her sister’s throne room, occasionally taking a seat. She didn’t even peruse through other ponies’ dreams; only through her own desires, of wanting things to change. Celestia would never understand her struggle of being awake only during the night to battle other ponies’ problems in their dreams, having those ponies then wake up to worship her sister and her sunlight. If only they never woke up to sunlight.
And like that, Luna’s sorrow turned into machinations. But machinations against her own sister? From their thrones, She watched her night sky fade away through the windows. Night turned into day.
“You can retire now, Sister.” Celestia said, her clipping hooves echoing in their throne room. In lack of a response from Luna, Celestia gave a sigh and looked up into Luna’s eyes. “Luna, this can’t wait. What is wrong?” Luna gave her sister a glare before her lips curled into a smile, and then she burst into maniacal cackling.
“Good one, Sister. You had me there, making me believe you actually care about me.”
“What? I do care about you.”
“If you truly cared, you wouldn’t need me to tell you what’s wrong. Then again, I suppose it’s hard to pay attention to anything; with how much everypony loves you. How inconsiderate of me to think you could break yourself from all that attention?”
“Is that really what this is about? You’re jealous?”
“I am not jealous! I just want the reverence that’s rightfully mine; the reverence that you steal from me every single day!”
“Luna,” Celestia said as she took steps toward her, “you’re being ridiculous!”
“Not another step!” A halt in Celestia’s hoofsteps brought a brief silent pause into the room, a moment that made Celestia’s apprehension come to show. “Do you really think I’ll sit idly by while they bask in your precious light? There can be only one princess in Equestria, and that princess will be me!” She reared, and her front hooves slammed on the edge of the platform, sending a large crack shimmering through the hall and opening a massive hole in their throne room’s ceiling, through which sunlight pierced through. Celestia watched her sister’s horn glow brightly, pulling the moon to totally eclipse the sun, shrouding Equestria in shadow once again.
Cackling echoed across the black night sky, ringing in Celestia’s ears. Before she knew it, her sister had completely changed form. Luna’s dark grey coat was now pitch black, her silver hooves now azurite and accompanied by a color-matching brooch and a battle helmet that was once her crown, and her mane grew more translucent. Luna casually walked toward her sister through a thick cloud of dust from the debris of the marred ceiling.
“I now realize that the only way for everypony to truly appreciate me is if your precious light is never around for anypony to bask in ever again! And I would rather die than feel the bitter loneliness from your precious light ever again.”
“Lower the moon.” Celestia ordered firmly while furling her brows. Luna had to suppress a chuckle.
“So serious. But I’m not going to waste time talking to you only to reach an impasse. Like I said, I would rather die than feel that loneliness again. Equestria is mine and the night shall last forever! And I’d love to see you try and do something about it.”
“Luna, I will not fight you! You must lower the moon! It is your duty!”
“‘Luna’? I am... Nightmare Moon!”
Celestia’s wings flapped reactionarily to avoid the blue beam of light charging toward her. A golden sphere wrapped around the white mare to aid in her escape through the hole in the castle ceiling. Luna tantalizingly called out to her, asking where she was going, and gave chase. Celestia felt the rumbling of her shield giving way to her sister’s spears of light coming from behind. Celestia wielded more power than she let on, but truthfully, she wasn’t a fighter, and she quickly felt the stress on her shield take a toll on herself.
Her horn glimmered strongly as Celestia broke herself out of the dogfight and flew fiercely toward Luna to close firing distance. Both the auras encompassing the two alicorns repelled them from each other as if they were like magnetic poles. Luna frantically took advantage of the distance she had to have her horn collect the light around her to fire another beam, one which Celestia reflexively used her own aura to put up another shield for, but quickly dispelled it in favor of dodging, flying toward, and then colliding with Luna.
In a brief rolling entanglement, Celestia gave a loud gasp, realizing her eclipsed sun peaked out from behind her sister, the blackened alicorn’s hoof stayed her in a helpless position. Celestia felt two hind hooves thrust into her midsection to send her into the mercy of gravity. She quickly shook off the tingling nerves from her solar plexus to force her wings to keep her from striking the ground and carry her out of the following ray of blue light beaming down upon her.
She serpentined through the Everfree Forest trees to avoid the rain of lightning, her teeth gritting in reaction to the limits she was reaching. Another mighty flap of her feathery wings brought Celestia above Luna. With her sister’s blue beam inching toward her, Celestia’s wings sent a startling gale that not only stifled Luna’s ray of light, but left her vulnerable to a golden pillar of sunlight forcing her down to the ground.
Luna found herself hindered little by her older sister’s power, still mightily airborne and with enough energy to fire another ray of light from her horn. The royal sisters’ clashing magic radiantly eclipsed the moon, their very power forcing Celestia’s tears to fall from her face skyward. A blood-curdling roar from Luna sent the colossal ball of light toward her sister. The white alicorn closed her eyes in a vain attempt to push it back.
She felt her body tumble and flail about, striking the ground before she fell limp and crashed through stone, perhaps a wall. She opened her eyes, seeing the door to the Sanctuary Of The Elements now rubble, with a soft trail of white feathers and scraped blood leading up to her. In her periphery, a lavender relic in the shape of a six-legged star fell beside her. The scarlet stained glass window above what was once the door began to grow nightmarishly blue.
Celestia’s horn gathered light once more, the same light wrapping around the Element Of Harmony that fell beside her as the window shattered, putting up no fight against Luna plummeting toward her sister. Celestia closed her eyes and knew what she had to do… But how could she?
Hooves fiercely planted into Celestia’s chest to pin her body against the Shrine Of Harmony. The dark alicorn raised her hoof once more but was stayed by her gaze upon the star bathed in her sister’s light. In disbelief, she carried her gaze over to her horn holding the same glow and Celestia’s flooded purple eyes.
“Why?”
“Sister…”
“Why do you hold back!? You could do anything to me with that right now!”
“Because you’re my sister!” Luna lifted herself off of Celestia, wearing an expression of skepticism. The Element fell to the ground. “And you’re right to be angry with me. I never truly realized how much pain you’re in; worse, I even saw signs and didn’t do anything about it.”
“You don’t understand my pain one bit!” She replied with bearing in her voice and a fierce glare. “Everypony is so stuck in their ways; they only see the night as something dark, something to be afraid of, something they want to shun with sleep until morning, completely ignoring what makes my duty beautiful, what makes my duty just as integral to their lives as yours.” She brought herself close to Celestia again. “And when I make sure you’re out of my way and that your precious sun never rises again, everypony will have no choice but to marvel at my beautiful night sky.”
“You’re right, Luna. Other ponies should be grateful for your duty just like I am. They should love you too, just like I do. But you’re loved so much more than you know.” Luna stepped away once more, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I love you Luna, and I don’t care if you don’t love me back.” Celestia gave a few groans in pain, finding herself too hurt to stand up. “We still have a chance, Sister; we can still make this right… But if you- If we don’t stop this right now and other ponies see what you are now, you’ll never get that chance again. You must lower the moon… Please, Luna.” The darkened mare stumbled through her thoughts and her words before gritting her teeth and roaring back.
“No! You don’t get to do that! You don’t get to apologize and act like this is nothing! I won’t let you! You had over a century to make things right!” Her blue aura held the star-shaped Element before her sister, closing herself in face-to-face once more.
“Sister, please listen to me!”
“I should destroy you, but I’m better than that. I’m better than you, Princess Celestia. And there’s only one way to convince you of that; to make you learn. And I’m going to make sure you learn.”
Celestia felt her nerves tingle and watched her helpless body shrink within the embracing magic. She pleaded with her sister to stop. Nightmare Moon stood made of stone as she gazed into the filly’s beady purple eyes. The alicorn foal already felt her motor skills atrophy, then her ability to properly annunciate, and finally, her memories started to fade. Shortly, the foal lay on the cold stone floor, her tiny mind now vacant of even her fight with her sister. She only wailed in response to her aches and the cold touch of the stone ground. She was consoled by Nightmare Moon’s wing incandescently embracing her.
“May I enter, Princess?” A scratchy male voice said softly. Nightmare Moon turned her head toward the source of the voice. The unicorn entered lightly as to not wake the foal, placing himself comfortably close to Nightmare Moon with a confident bearing, almost as if he had already gotten a response.
“Yes, please. Thank you for coming, Adamance.” The stallion wore a night-blue robe that matched his eyes and contrasted with his red-orange slicked back mane and his beard tied. Adamance was Nightmare Moon’s appointed wizard, but despite being proficient in magic, he made a name for himself as a physician. He had been one of Nightmare Moon’s consults and Celestia’s on-call doctor since her reign. Though, everypony was on-call to Nightmare Moon. “You said that memories start to develop at age two.” With a harsh sigh, Adamance replied fearlessly with a tone one normally wouldn’t take with a princess, and especially not with one as intimidating as Nightmare Moon.
“With all due respect, Princess, don’t summon me just to have me tell you what you already know. Yes, memories in foals don’t develop until 2.5 years. Yes, I’m certain that she won’t remember anything before her regression; while a lot about magic is still unexplained and unpredictable, especially with the Elements Of Harmony in play, the brain is not developed enough to retain memories before said age, which include memories formed even after the brain is developed enough to do so. In this situation, I trust science more than magic.”
“Adamance. Always so sure of yourself.” She said, looking down once more at the soundly asleep foal.
“Of course. If one isn’t always certain about oneself, then there aren’t any real answers. Doubt is a double-edged sword; you’re always making sure you’re right, but you’ll always think you’re wrong.” He wore a smile, but he wore it genuinely enough to mask how proud he was of his words, but wiped it clean in lack of any kind of response from Nightmare Moon. “What are you doubting yourself about, Princess?” Nightmare Moon raised her eyebrow and turned her gaze back toward the stallion.
“Sometimes I feel like you read minds just to show off.”
“It’s not mind reading per se. If it were mind reading, I wouldn’t need you to tell me specifics.” He waited for her to give some sign of acknowledgement; a chuckle, a huff, anything aside from her blank gaze. “Talk to me, Your Highness.”
“I thought I’d be happy having my eternal night.” She broke eye contact, telekinetically opened the balcony door, and started walking back out into her moonlight. “I thought by now, everypony would truly appreciate me and the beauty I bring to the world, and that I’d have a disciple that looked up to me. Instead, everypony still reviles me.” Adamance gave a pondering hum in response while following her out. “That and I’ve spent the past two years being kept awake with constant crying and smelly diapers. I’m the only princess in Equestria; the only one left who gives light for ponies to bask in and I’m still alone.”
“Why are you telling me all this instead of your advisor?”
“Because, Adamance, you tell ponies what they want to know and not what they want to hear.” His head turned toward her with a smug smile, then back down to Canterlot below.
“Alright then. As much as I support your reign, and I really do, it is quite a step to expect everypony else to. Even if Princess Celestia was a tyrant and you regressing her was poetic justice, a sister usurping power from another sister is never something looked upon in a good light.”
“So you’re saying I was wrong? About regressing my sister? About all of this?”
“Right and wrong are abstract concepts determined by perspective. Reveling in the glory of your achievements and accepting the consequences of your mistakes are also judged solely by perspective.”
“Adamance, stop with the philosophical mumbo-jumbo.” The two fixed their gazes toward one another again. “Do you think I’m right, or do you think I’m wrong?” The unicorn took a breath and released it with a thoughtful sigh and a lighter change in his tone.
“I think… You were wrong for the right reasons.” He turned away and started walking back into the foal nursery. “Like I said before, if you usurped a tyrant, you still usurped your sister; that affects ponies’ perspectives more than the truth, and perspective is more powerful than fact.”
“Well, with the way perspective is, I’m sure they’ll never forgive me for what I did. I thought I’d be okay with that, but I guess I’m not. And it’s not like forgiveness is something I can just ask for.”
“I know that feeling all too well. I sense that you’d like to be left alone now, Your Highness?” Adamance replied without looking back, proceeding to let himself out.
“Yes… Thank you, Adamance. Thank you for everything.”
“My pleasure, Princess.” Nightmare Moon listened for Adamance’s hoofsteps to echo on the stairs down to the foyer before she retreated back into the nursery herself.
“The truth is that I wanted to raise you anew to teach you how I would’ve ruled Equestria.” Nightmare Moon peered over into Celestia’s crib once more. “I would’ve let you rule beside me instead of in my shadow. I would’ve looked out and cared for all my subjects, and I would’ve never let you suffer the same loneliness that I did. And yet, I became the very thing I don’t want you to become.” Nightmare Moon’s voice started to break, and she found breathing more difficult. “I’m sorry, Sister. I’m so sorry. I could’ve set things right back then. I should have set things right.”
Her forehead fell onto the side of the crib. Her remorse was carried through two currents running down her face that pooled into drops that fell to the floor. The blackened mare gave into sobbing under the realization that the Elements Of Harmony would only be able to restore Celestia’s adult body and not her mind, and if she raised Celestia on her own, everypony would be convinced she had her brainwashed. Pieces of Nightmare Moon started to fade away. She forced herself from the crib and walked herself back out to the balcony as her shoes turned silver again. When she stepped out to gaze over Canterlot once more, her helmet hit the ground with a reverberating evanescence instead of a clank. And just like the sunlight dyeing the sky a new color, her pitch-black coat tinted into a dark gray.
Princess Luna continued to cry relentlessly in the majesty of the first sunrise in two years; it was so beautiful, but it was so vacant, as if it missed a certain touch of light that her sister always brought. It was in that moment that Luna realized there was only one thing she could do to truly make this right.
Her magical aura alight from her horn as she put herself beside the crib once more. The magenta star relic floated beside Luna and bathed her in its precious light. She always kept one of the Elements Of Harmony on her person in case she really needed it, though never fearing that anyone would dare attack Nightmare Moon. She struggled to keep the spell cast through her tickling nerves, almost tingling like her very cells were merging. She watched her own body slowly shrink, soon unable to fit her accessories any longer, and her coat shed its dark gray in favor of an azure blue. When small enough, Luna used what was left of the strength in her alicorn wings to settle herself in the crib beside her older sister… Younger sister… Older sister again.
The magic from her horn shorted and its spark dissipated. The star made a loud tap against the floor.
Luna completely forgot why she was crying, and soon found herself not crying anymore. The azure blue foal then nuzzled warmly against Celestia’s warm body encased by her fleece pajamas, and closed her eyes slowly.
Author's Note
"夢が枯れてもまだ愛せるの? (If your dreams wither, will you still be able to love?)" -Dir En Grey, "Lotus"
