Luna slipped the final sock on and waited patiently; her hooves hardly felt different, but she did not ever want it to be said that she was resilient to change. Their wondrous properties she was well aware of, thanks to Celestia, but of them she felt none; she was beginning to wonder why her sister had given them to her.
Then, tired, she moved her besocked hoof forward and let it land on the floor.
The fabric pushed up against her soft hoof and gently caressed her nerves, a sensation that she had only ever felt in the very deepest recesses of her dreams where she had felt the little words of her foalhood that compelled her as though she were clockwork before her soul and grown around it and break free but it was not freedom but it was living in itself expelled from the womb of the universe and she let her magic be held up by one much like her own which she called sister and together they raised the sun the first time and then the moon and she felt it on her flank and cried out in joy as she saw the mark and they made the first joke and played together among the lilac fields that day under the cold sun and burning moon and felt the fire of purpose and they lived and spoke and thought and felt the sensation of the world being hers but as they stood in the fields and spoke forever they became similar and as they became similar their company was without worth and so they sat there until Celestia told her of the truth and told her well and picked from the field a blossom and her horn glowed like her sun and pushed life into it and the first pony came from the might of the dawning sun and she called it a ‘mare’ and Luna tried to do the same but could not but did not face her shame and instead made an illusion like the moon and she took Celestia’s creation and distorted it like the sun’s rays and called it the ‘stallion’ and called it her own and Celestia did not object and only smiled and raised from each flower a new species and Luna did not object and raised from each its spear and felt the terror of inadequacy but her sister took her and told her that she was perfect and she knew it was true for she knew she was a child of the moon then, to reflect and awe and give nothing but its sight, for she knew her power’s brilliance came only from its antiunicity and for the longest time before then she set her hair like any other pony might and then she knew the beauty of white lies and poured her magic into her mane and perhaps as she grew the stars took root in her beatific mane and the illusions became as though they were lives unto themselves and lived for the sake of themselves and not for her aesthetic yet she still stood above them stars all her life sustaining them like the zamindars among the cows whose males she had made, yes, to give nothing but herself, and perhaps she stood among the lilac fields in the night sometimes and spoke although her voice was lost but not her power and so perhaps once she pushed her hoof up against one and felt the screams of a billion dead under the appendage of a careless god but she did care and yet could not show for her soul was as though it were a conduit for their pain and their loves and their fears and their hopes and she snuffed them out for her curiosity and felt then the terror of murder in her heart and reeled back and cried that day where not even Celestia could raise her from her tears and she learnt the veracity of illusion and dealt in it and felt it and saw the truth of herself and saw herself reflected in the eyes of her terrified subjects and she knew herself to be unreal and she knew she was nothing to them but a fact of life just as she was to her hair and yet she was but an illusion giving nothing to them but meagre light to be nothing but a shadow to the brilliant day and she knew that nopony ever came to her because she did not show herself, she did not play on that stage like any other illusion—and what is an illusion that is never seen?—and so she gathered her energy and cried her last and damned the world to the fact of her reality and just as she had made those untold millions perish against the strength of her might so these would and her sister came to her and begged her and told her of those days in the beginning as she stood and felt the strength around her as the illusion grow into reality and the power enclosed her and hugged her deeply as though she were a little foal once more in the bosom of reality and her mirror of darkness becoming an entity unto itself and a sacrament unto infinity and she did not hear the truth but only that true illusion and it spoke to her and asked her and she knew then that she was not a child of a moon but its master, yes, when she would shine just as Celestia did or should she exist yes and she said yes she felt the strength from the voice and she said yes as it came upon her in the lilac field and first she felt the darkness around her limbs and she heard she would live in eternity yes and it asked her if she would live as an entity and not as a shadow and she said yes she said yes she would yes and she knew next only the terror and the pain and sometimes the fear and she came to and felt that magic that she called her sister once more and longed for the beauty of those lilac fields once more.
Luna cried out in fear, rearing her head up and setting her horn alight as the socks burnt almost immediately to embers; the thoughts came in an instant and filled her immortal mind, her entire life laid bare in a single moment.
She walked over a bit before deciding simply to turn on her side and fall onto the nearby pillows, a hoof reaching out to take her abacus and cradle it; as she did, however, she heard a knock on the door.
“Who goeth there?” she asked, and she realised at that point that her voice had the timbre of fear. She shook her head, hoping to give off some convincing pretence of nobility.
The door opened without her consent, and the Princess of the Sun entered, grinning. “So, how were the socks?”
Luna glared at her. “Thou hast of this planned, didst thou not?”
Her sister giggled foalishly. “It’s really a very simple spell. I should teach it to you. I take it that I’ve won this April Foals’ Day?”
“Thou hast not, sister. The night is not yet pale.”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. What could possibly be better than making you relive your entire life in an instant?”
“I have mixed compounds of a pruriginous quality unto thy products of intimate cleansing.”
She stepped back a bit, suddenly becoming aware of a very slight itching in places that should not itch. “What?”
“If my calculations are correct, they shall take their full toll within the next second.”
The narrator then graciously drew the curtain upon the unfortunate scene that was to follow, for Luna was very accurate with pharmaceutical calculations.
