The moon glowed like a beacon in the night.
Luna looked up at her precious sky, and pondered responsibility. When she'd suggested an arctic week to her sister, she hadn't thought that Celestia would go for it.
She'd underestimated Tia's desire for a nice long vacation.
And so, tonight was the first dayless day, the first sunless night. Luna's first night in charge, by herself. There were six more long nights to look forward to, until the elder princess returned from her week in Mexicolt, and the deep chill of Equestrian winter would be allowed to thaw.
Normally, they did this by manipulating Celestia's sun, weakening the solar furnace's rays, limiting its time in the sky. But Luna had been travelling through the mirror portal, and had been inspired by something she'd seen in a 'television documentary' about that world's northern permanent ice-fields.
The idea of it, the romance of the sunless winter, the nightless summer - they'd agreed to do something similar around the time of the next Summer Sun Celebration, the other way 'round. Seven days of near-moonless days, the midnight sun. A year of polar opposites! But naturally, properly - under rigid and careful control.
The pony way.
But now, they were partway through the first night, the night as it would have been if there weren't an entire other day of night to follow. That night-long darkness had brought upon the sleeping world a gorgeous, biting, arctic chill, the sort that only comes in that still pre-morning moment before dawn. A delicious coldness which made Luna think of her long-ago foalhood, living with her sister and mother - before the horn, before Tia's wings - of long nights when they had huddled under blankets in their mother's oaken tree-home, and braided each other's tails, and looked out on the vast, deep snows that blocked all travel between that humble, snug tree and the great fortress of the Unicorn King.
Luna closed her eyes, and looked into the dreamscape, to see how their ponies were dealing with their first day of night. Pony by pony, minds were dropping out of her dreamscape, sleepy souls slipping from the bourne of her realm. Meanwhile, many drowsing ponies still dreamed all of their myriad dreams, if only for one second more, safe and warm beneath crisp sheets and scratchy wool blankets.
More than a few of their ponies were suffering from anxiety nightmares, disturbed perhaps by some of the more alarmist newspaper accounts and commentary denouncing the sisters' plan. Well, she could do something about that. She dived into their nightmares, one after the other, splitting her attention, and speaking to each of the shivering doubters as if she was talking to a choral composite, a single pony of ponies. She reassured that aggregate-them, that plural pony, that there was nothing to fear, that darkness would have an end, that the sun would return after her brief absence, rested and glad with shining promise. That there was, truly, a promise of summer even in the darkest and coldest depths of winter.
The two sisters had known better than to spring Celestia's vacation on Equestria as a surprise, or to hide her absence. Even so, all the advertising in the world, and all the best-intended preparation, still demanded some reinforcement, required some patience. And gave the opening for neighsayers to weigh in with their fear-mongering.
Well, newsponies. Allowances had to be made.
The yellow press aside, Luna thought she'd gotten to most of her doubters, assuaged their fears, possibly even won some of them over to the novelty of the idea. They'd see, she hoped.
It wasn't as if those fears were groundless. In the bad old days before the two princesses had found their talents and taken over the governance of day and night, there had always been that niggling fear in the depths of winter that the sun truly would not return this year. Back then, the advent of the sunless days meant that the unicorn choruses had come to the end of their strength for the year. When they couldn't sing the sun back into the skies, in the depths of hungry winter. They had to rest, and recoup, and sleep until their strength returned, in hopes that after this rest they could gather once again to sing a new year's song.
Ponies sometimes called it 'the black month', and sometimes 'the long sleep'. Every year, it became ever more of a necessary rest for the increasingly tired, weaker, and more burnt-out choral singers. And the long sleep had grown longer and longer as the unicorns capable of singing in the choruses had become rarer and rarer, their communal strength weaker and weaker.
But for Luna and Celestia those careless, endless nights had been romantic and wonderful. Foals were horribly selfish things, and rarely understood the dearth and the despair underlying those happy breaks in their usual, dreary daytime routines. How often did today's foals delight in the snow-days that kept them from their proper studies, and left them home and free to frolic in the deep drifts? Their parents knew better, as they cursed the pegasi for their scheduling failures, and counted the losses from their days not spent in productive labor in the factories and offices of Manehattan, or Baltimare, or even Canterlot City.
For little filly Luna and Celestia, the slow death by inches of their world was nothing but a grand sort of snow-day. Luna knew as well that her own nostalgia for those long-dreaming, lightless days of night was selfish, and foalish, and ill-considered. But even to this day, her soul delighted in the thought of endless nights, wreaths of starry light braiding in the skies above, and a brilliant moon caught in those stellar cats-cradles like a ball caught in a tree's winter-emptied branches.
Luna felt the moment when the sun wanted to return to its accustomed sky, the tug coming from somewhere far south, down in the balmy ever-warm territories south of Southern Equestria, where Tia kept a cabin for her little vacations. Luna felt her sister keep hold of her own celestial object, kept it from returning to its accustomed round, and allowed Luna to swiftly rotate her own moon around the heavens, until it was in place to rise once again.
The princess regnant strode out to the balcony adjoining her suites, and looked down into the great unlit void beside that side of the palace. The palace and the surrounding castle hung precariously high over the cliffs below Canterlot, and a pony could see for dozens and dozens of miles in the daylight, as far as the distant delta of the Canter River, the Everfree beyond it, and all the farmlands, villages, and small towns in between that dotted that fertile plain.
Luna put out the lights in her suites, and then, thinking, reached out with her magic to extinguish all the lights in the residence and the walls below, leaving only the guards' flickering torches. She smiled at the chatter rising up from her surprised guards and servants.
The darkness was deep, and without light but for the tiny flickering stars above. The sky itself grew oddly luminous, as even the smallest of stellar lights grew great in the absence of the greater light of the night.
They'd figure it out in a minute, Luna thought as her eyes adjusted to the darkness outside. With the torches lit, you couldn't see the vista unfolding before her. Only the darkness, and the twinkle of pony-homes here and there with their own lights answering in their little ways Luna's stars.
But once you gave up your own illumination, you could see the darkness more clearly. Those things which were lost in the narrow glare of your own little world, drifted into view when you stopped trying so hard.
Light illuminates that which is close, but hides from view those things which are distant, and small, and obscure. Darkness is needed, to see that which can not easily be seen.
And the distant fields, farms, and woodland lots came slowly into view, as her eyes adjusted to the smallest of glints and gleams. Snow deep-piled seen from the distance of miles, looking milky-white in the reflected glory of her gleaming moon.
The moon princess held her breath, and wondered how many of their little ponies would look out into the darkness, and see.
And one by one, as if in response to the lights of the palace going out, Luna saw the sharp glittering points of light extinguishing themselves, as each home turned off their night-lights, and turned down their lanterns, and let the subtle night unfold before their own little darkened vistas.
For a long moment, Luna relished the sublime view below, and communed with those unseen ponies behind their glassed-in windows, knowing that they shared this beautiful night together.
But every moment, no matter how lovely, no matter how stirring, must come to an end, until there is an end to all moments, in the fullness of time. And this one did, too, eventually.
Her moon was once again, in place, and she set it on its course, to peek over the horizon, in the place of the absent sun. And if moon seemed brighter for having left the stage for a moment to renew her makeup and take a breather? Well, that was almost certainly in the eyes of the beholder.
Between the darkened homes so far below, little glints sparked, and began to move about, as the ponies that held them struck out into the now re-lit darkness, moved about by the light of the resurgent moon. Luna watched her little ponies with their little lanterns sallying forth to do the work of the sunless day.
Luna flexed, and her moon brightened for her little ponies faring out into the blackness of the deepest winter Equestria had known for a thousand years. The day might not come, but the work of the day still must be done, and if sun was not here to guide the way, well, moon must work harder.
The depths of night glowed brilliantly beneath a moon bigger and brighter than ponies had seen in a thousand years, and the ponies of Equestria got on with their lives, however tentatively, however uncertain they might be of their currently regnant princess's promises.
More than a few of them remembered Nightmare Moon, after all. Luna most of all.
But this week was her opportunity to shine, to prove that the the long night was not, indeed, the end of days, but rather, a reminder of how precious both day and night could be.
Luna looked out across her moonlit world, and saw that it was good. Her work was done, and as more and more of the slugabeds awoke from their lazy long nights, fewer and fewer required her dream wardenship. Her work for the night was done, but for the necessary existence of a princess regnant, to prove that there was a monarchy in Equestria, even in the depths of winter.
Luna looked out across the wintery fields, intently. And there they were, the colts and fillies emancipated from their warm homes, sent forth bundled safely against the cold and chill by loving parents, to scurry about in the bright moonlight for slopes to sled down, and fresh snow to stock up for their all-night-long snowball fights.
Oh, the temptation was so strong.
Well, what was life, if you didn't occasionally give in to temptation?
Luna went back into her bedroom, to find a hat and some ear-muffs, and maybe a scarf. She would descend from the high mountain-side, and find a couple good snowball fights before the night was complete. There was no Court of Day without the day, after all. And there were six more days of night in which she could be responsible. There was time enough for play, tonight.
And maybe the nobles would take a hint if she posted a sign.
Luna went off to get a marker and a bit of posterboard. Would 'court called on account of snow night' suffice?
Author's Note
This story was my submission for the 24th Speedwrite contest, 'Braided Tails/Sunless Winter'. Thanks to Moonshot, Zontan, Alea Jacta Est, Flashgen, and KorenCZ11 for their feedback on this during the speedwrite contest a couple weeks back.
But most importantly, all thanks to Shrink Laureate, who parachuted in at the last minute when I proposed resurrecting this draft and publishing it first thing, 2020. He knocked me on the head, and got me to clean it up properly. He's been a true editor for years now, and I abuse his services shamefully. Seriously, thank you so much.
