The villain they remember
The sister I can't forget
“I’ve almost completed a new poem, Princess!”
Celestia looked down with a smile at the court poet, a white unicorn with a lilac mane, a great-great-grandson of one of her own long-gone foals. “Oh, have you? Well, then, Shining Scroll, we must hear it.” She beat her hoof once on the dais of her throne, and the gold stuck the marble with a ringing tone.
At once, a hush fell across the court and everyone turned to listen.
“A new poem from my court poet, my little ponies,” Celestia smiled down at them all. “I think the rest of our business can wait a few minutes while we hear the latest from Shining Scroll’s quill. I am sure that whatever it is will be being read by everypony in Equestria before the year is out.”
Shining Scroll stepped forward, beaming. He was truly talented, but one of the things Celestia most valued in him was his humility. Even after three years at court, he was still genuinely thrilled at the acclaim his poems rightfully earned. “Tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of the defeat of Nightmare Moon,” he said loudly, so everyone could hear.
Celestia felt her heart sink within her. Oh, no. Not this.
“Every year we celebrate Princess’ Celestia’s glorious victory over the greatest evil in ten thousand years,” Shining Scroll went on. “And to mark this most important anniversary, I have composed a new poem. This is only a work in progress, but I wanted to share it with you today. I think it will have the right impact.”
Celestia looked away from him and tried to school her face to impassivity. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.
With a gleam of pride in his eyes, Shining Scroll unfurled the parchment he held in the amber glow of his magic, and read aloud in the strident voice he was so well known for.
“As Luna falls in screaming plunge
Celestia, tearful, prepares to lunge.
One cries "Vengeance!"
The other "Wait!"
But both are drawn toward their fate.”
The moment the first line was read, there was an intake of breath. Luna — now known almost universally as Nightmare Moon, despite Celestia’s best efforts to quell the cruel name — was a topic avoided in polite society.
This was dangerous territory for a court poet, but Shining Scroll was a stallion keen to make a name for himself. He wanted to push the boundaries of his art. That’s all it is. Celestia tried to hold firm to that thought.
“The heavens split, night eternal falls
The dark Queen screams and Nightmare calls.
Mortals quake
Sunbeams fade
But the Princess will protect us all.”
Celestia felt tears pricking at her eyes. Fifty years ago now, she had used the Elements to banish Luna. What other option had there been? But to hear her described as a villain, to hear that Luna had hated her. It stung.
The ponies of her court were silent, spellbound. To hear event that only the oldest among them were able to recall raised up, mythologised in poetry, was to see history in the making.
Shining Scroll’s voice rose to a crescendo as he neared the climax of his poem, the sound thundering through the white marble pillars of Celestia’s throne room.
"Dark meets day, moon and sun,
Two exist in a space for one.
The world turns red,
The sky is gone,
Magic flashes and night is done.”
Shining Scroll’s voice dropped to a sombre whisper for the last two lines. The instant he was done, he looked away from his scroll to Celestia’s face.
She looked around her newly completed Solar Court, all gleaming white and gold. No blue or purple, none of the cooler colours Luna had loved. Nothing that could trip her up, remind her of the sister she had loved and failed and ultimately lost. But nothing that would keep the Princess of the Night present in her ponies’ minds, either. Already, they had forgotten who she was. The music she had loved, the wonders she had made for them.
All they remembered was her darkest self. The mare she had become for those last, awful hours.
It had hurt too much to stay in the forest where she and Luna had build their home and lived together for so many thousands of years. She couldn’t bear to roam the empty halls, or go to Luna’s empty room. She had moved her castle and her court to the mountains, and her little ponies had built her a new capital for Equestria. Canterlot, she had named it.
She looked now at the ponies gathered at the edges of the throne room, looking up at her, waiting for their cue. She returned her gaze at last to young Shining Scroll, and remembered his great-great-grandmother, her daughter Morning Breeze, a little white unicorn filly.
Luna had been with her all through the day while she laboured, ignoring her own sleep schedule. After Morning Breeze was born, it was Luna who first held her. She had looked down at her little neice and smiled sadly. “She looks just like Clover did when she was a baby,” she had said, though of course Morning Breeze had looked nothing like Clover. Luna had loved Morning Breeze and had helped to soothe her when she cried. And yet now, here was Morning’s descendant, describing his great-aunt as a monster.
As the pause lengthened, Shining Scroll’s expectant smile faltered. He looked up at Celestia uncertainly, and Celestia returned to herself. Shining Scroll had been born decades after the fight with Luna. He had no knowledge of her apart from the fear with which his parents described her. It was not his fault.
Celestia forced a smile onto her face and clopped her forehooves gently on the floor in appreciation. “Thank you, Shining Scroll. That was a very striking description.”
At once, the courtiers and nobles broke into applause. Shining Scroll beamed and relaxed again. “Thank you, thank you, everypony.”
He was surrounded at once by ponies seeking to congratulate him and ask questions on his work, and Celestia heard him explaining that he hoped to expand the poem into an epic — it would be his finest work, he said. He said he was going to speak with survivors of the battle to ensure his poem was accurate and captured the essence of what had happened.
Celestia did not let her head droop as she wanted to, and made herself keep smiling and nodding as her little ponies asked questions of her. It was not Shining Scroll’s fault, after all.
It was nopony’s fault but her own.
