Nothing was more of a temptation to Luna than secrets.
It began with having some place to put blankets. That’s all Luna wanted. Silver Shoals was a somewhat popular beach resort in the summer, but during the winter, ocean winds and rains kept Luna constantly cold.
And all that was keeping her from her goal of a dark mahogany chest, intricately carved, flush hinges, filled with blankets, was that stupid enchanted lock.
She should have known that something was wrong with it when the conservators of the Royal Collections told her that the chest was locked and they didn’t have a key. Luna was as stubborn as her sister, with a knack for getting into forbidden places. So she told them to bring the chest anyway. It had taken a crew of three earth ponies, two pegasi, and a unicorn to get the chest off the cart, into the villa, and to its place in the living room due to the chest’s sheer weight. It had taken Luna another hour of testing the lock to determine that it had not been idly locked and forgotten about; the lock was magical, it had been sealed on purpose.
Which only meant there was something secret inside.
Hours later, Luna had finally figured out the lock. It had been made to resist picking by magic. Against physical picking, however, it was just like any other old lock, particularly vulnerable to a skeleton key, of a type which Luna just happened to have kept from her millennium-earlier years of foalish mischief.
The lock surrendered with a click. Luna wasted no time in opening the heavy lid of the chest. The hinges squealed in protest; Luna made a mental note to oil them later. It was then that she noticed that the chest was already full, which likely explained its heft.
The first layer was a cloth-covered piece of wood that fit almost perfectly into the top of the chest. Luna pried it loose with her magic, sneezing at the cloud of dust that kicked up, then set the board aside while she went to get old towels to put the contents of the chest on to contain the dust. With a workspace laid out, she dug deeper into the chest. Inside were bundles, wrapped in yellowed, brittle linen cloth that could easily have been fifty or a hundred years old; Luna carefully pulled each one out and set it on the towels. Now emptied, the chest would do for blanket storage. But Luna had a more interesting task at hoof now.
She opened the smallest bundle, and found an armored shoe. Though similar in style to the decorative ones used by royalty, this one was much thicker, and its sole was caked with dirt. It was gold in color, but Luna saw a few scratches that revealed the shoe was only gold-plated; underneath was solid steel.
Luna opened more bundles, finding the other three shoes, and then more pieces. All were forged from steel with gold leaf carefully hammered on. Some of the pieces had leather straps on their reverse, but the leather had long ago crumbled into pieces (which made Luna thankful she’d had sense enough to lay down something over the living room carpet).
Opening the largest bundle answered the question of what Luna had found: an ancient suit of pony armor.
And not just any pony’s armor. Her sister’s. For in her magic was a golden breastplate, a circular sun motif with two supporting alicorns hammered into the steel, with some of the gold leaf looking like it had been rubbed or scraped away near the collar.
The second-to-last bundle held a golden semicircle of laurel leaves—a war crown. The last was a long staff in two parts that screwed together, at the top a golden crossbeam. And in the final wrapping, a long, curved steel blade that fit into the top of the staff.
So Luna had her answer, and the price was a bunch more questions. Luna had missed a great deal in a thousand years of lonely exile, but she thought she had caught up on what she missed. Her sister had been a wise and careful monarch during those centuries. So when, and why, did Celestia need a suit of armor? And against what? She’d obviously worn it into the field, perhaps into battle. The dirt in the shoes and the missing spots of gold leaf were proof of that.
Luna took a second look at the board that had been at the top of the chest. She found the edge of the linen cloth that wrapped it and pulled it away. Underneath was a second layer of cloth. But this one was deep scarlet with golden threads: an ornate border, Celestia’s solar mark, a phoenix, sheaves of wheat, stylized clouds, the vague outlines of a map of Equestria.
Then she turned the board around. It was her sister, clad in this armor, holding this spear, waving this flag.
She’d never seen anything like this painting in Canterlot’s extensive art galleries. The fact that this painting had been done on wood, instead of canvas, indicated that it, too, was ancient. Perhaps as ancient as the suit of armor it depicted.
Just then, Luna heard the door open behind her. “Sister! I’m home!”
“I’m in the living room,” Luna replied. “I found something interesting in that chest I found! Come see!”
“Luna, you didn’t have to buy a new thing just for the living room. There’s plenty of chests in storage. I’ll help you find one.”
“Already found one. And it looks like you had some armor in there, big sister.”
“Armor? I don’t—”
The sound of a glass falling to the floor behind her scared Luna. She turned and saw Celestia, a look of pure horror on her face. Luna saw her sister’s lips trembling, her forehoof shaking. “W...where did you…”
“It was in the chest. Honestly, Celestia, you looked good in this! How come I never—”
“This is mine. All of this is mine. You are to touch none of it. You are to tell no one you saw it! Do I make myself clear?”
The last time Luna had heard her sister yell at her with such fury was before their last physical fight.
The one that had ended with Luna in a thousand years of exile.
“Celestia…” Luna said, her voice barely above a whisper, tears welling in her eyes. “What… why… I’m sorry, what did I do?”
In a flash of blinding light, Celestia, the chest, and everything that had been inside of it vanished.
Luna heard something massive reappear upstairs, and then the slam of a door. She bolted up the stairs to her sister’s bedroom. She crept up to the door, and put her ear to it. From inside, she heard loud, wailing sobs.
Luna knocked, hesitant. “Celestia? Are you alright? I didn’t mean to do—”
"GO AWAY!"
Heartbroken, and close to tears herself, Luna left the door.
An hour later, Luna had picked up the towels and cleaned up the dust. She sat in the living room, watching the sun setting over the ocean. The moon would be up soon, she realized. Waxing half tonight. She no longer had to worry about that.
Luna thought of asking her sister to come down and join her, but the occasional sobs she heard from upstairs made her think better of it. So Luna sat, by herself, in the living room, alone.
She felt cold. A familiar, anxious, sad loneliness wrapped itself around her heart. “Please, Tantabus, not now,” she whispered, and her inner darkness relented just a bit.
She thought back to how she’d made the Tantabus, how she’d cleaved off a part of her own worst feelings, to tie down her mind and remind her of her worst moments, so that she would never again become the horror that was Nightmare Moon.
It had nearly destroyed her. It had nearly destroyed the land.
We all trust you, Luna! Do you trust us enough to believe we're right?
Twilight Sparkle, Celestia’s pupil. One of the many small gifts she had given in the course of learning to become a Princess. For that was the question that let Luna know she was no longer a monster, no longer a threat, no longer desired to rule the world alone in night eternal.
No longer needed the Tantabus. No longer needed to regret her existence.
It was in answering that question that Luna realized she, too, could forgive herself. That was something she had to do every day, and some days that was hard, but it let her live again.
And it had been her special charism, her power of dreamwalking, that had made her healing possible. Even her sister would later marvel at how Luna was able to spend so many nights alone walking through the dreams of others.
I walk where I am needed, Luna thought. And tonight, my sister needs me.
The key to dreamwalking, Luna knew, is to make oneself inconspicuous. To let the dreamer see the dreamwalker is to change the dream, starting a slow cascade of changes, noticings, and coverups, that would inevitably end in the discovery of the dreamwalker, or the end of the dream, or both.
So Luna, when she appeared in the dream, moved carefully. The scene was a military camp, with guards (but strangely, not all Royal Guards) trotting and flying to and fro. All were clad in armor, of a style she had seen before her exile. So Luna inverted her colors, shrunk her height, and conjured up a suitable disguise that also covered her wings.
It was mid-day. Ponies of all tribes, some clad in armor, some wearing regular peasant clothes, some in finery, were all crowded around a single tent, set on a hill where they could all see. Celestia was there, clad in the golden armor Luna had seen in the painting, surrounded by other ponies. Luna watched as her sister stood up to her full height and projected her voice.
“Mares and Gentlecolts of Trotteymede, hear us!” A hush fell over the crowd. “For the peace and security of the realm, we inform you that a peace has been reached. For the Crown, the Royal Counselors, the Marquis de Montmarency of the Unicorns, the Lord Fitzstorm of the Pegasi, and the Lord Cornstalk of the Earth Ponies.”
Luna examined each of the figures Celestia named, sitting just off to her left: a white unicorn with a black mane, a blue pegasus with a close-cut scarlet mane, and a goldenrod-colored earth pony sans mane.
“For the Several Nobles, the Baron Redskies, the Lord de Verity, the Lord Westwind, the Baron de Haye…”
As Celestia read off a much longer list of at least two dozen names, Luna could see that these nobles, seated to Celestia’s left, were clustered around a dusty-brown pegasus with a red-streaked white mane and a scarred eye. None of the other names had caught her attention, but Redskies had featured prominently in the history books she had read to catch up on her missing millennia of history. Long ago, there had been a great conflict over the powers of the Crown. Redskies, and the armies of the loyal barons he led, had cornered Celestia and her army of Monarchist supporters at Trotteymede. But before any fighting could break out, the Princess and the Barons had negotiated the Summa Carta. The High Charter, the foundation upon which centuries of written laws and unwritten traditions were made.
Each clause of the Charter was read, first in proper Equin, then again in common Ponish. Each clause was met with shouts of approval from the assembled crowds.
“Huzzah!”
“Save the Princess!”
“Let it be so!”
The guarantee of a Royal Council, which Luna knew would in time become the Equestrian Parliament. Celestia maintaining the power of Royal Assent, without which no laws could be made, but giving the powers to raise taxes and armies to the Council alone. Preserving the liberties of villages and towns and cities and Canterlot itself. And these famous words: No freepony shall be taken or imprisoned or attainted or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon or send upon them, except by the lawful judgment of their equals by the law of the land. To nopony will we sell, to nopony will we refuse or delay, right or justice.
Luna stayed, silently, watching the reverie over the peaceful end of the conflict, until she saw Celestia break away from the crowd and return to her tent, and she discreetly followed. She expected to see her sister in a celebratory mood, journaling, getting ready for bed, having a late-night discussion or gossip session with her close friends or advisors.
But this night, Celestia had been alone, still clad in her armor. Luna could tell that something had weighed heavily on her sister’s heart.
“Seven hundred ninety four… one hundred fifty six…” Luna heard Celestia saying to herself, but context eluded her. “Please… tell me I did the right thing. Please tell me this will all be worth it. I don’t…”
Luna saw a shimmering, white form appear in front of her sister. It was indeed her sister, but… wrong. Fangs for teeth, black eyes, a mane of fire.
Daybreaker.
She had seen this monster only once, briefly, in her sister’s dreams, the only other time she had ever Dream-walked with her sister. As Nightmare Moon had once been Luna’s inner hatreds given form, so too was Daybreaker, her sister twisted and corrupted. Haughtiness, cruelty, malice, given form in a being of fire and hatred.
“No.” Celestia said, firmly. “I renounce you. I renounce ruling. I guide, I serve, I advise, I warn, I encourage. But I will never rule. Which means... neither will you.”
The Daybreaker growled, and vanished. Celestia was left alone in her tent, the embers of a dying fire in the firepit at its center.
Luna heard the rustling of fabric. The white unicorn (Montmarency, Luna remembered), walked into the tent.
“Marquis.” Celestia acknowledged, speaking in Equin. “I’m sorry it had to end like this. But this war had to end. There are other ways. I’m going to be new at this myself, so—”
“I know what you did.” Montmarency hissed at her in guttural Ponish. He held up a letter in his hoof, his horn lit, and the letter burst into flames. “You told Redskies where to find us. You told him what you wanted in that damned charter. You have been playing us for fools this whole time.”
Celestia turned to face him. “I tried to tell you. I tried to tell you and Fitzstorm and Cornstalk, and none of you would step back and listen. I don’t want to rule alone anymore. I can’t. Redskies and the others were right. There was a whole feast before you, good things beyond measure. And you only wanted to drink poison.”
Montmarency’s face was lined with barely controlled rage. “You stupid sow! Royal Decree is the only thing keeping the tribes from tearing each other’s throats out! We will never know harmony! You have doomed us all to endless war!”
Celestia rose to her full height. But there was no hint of command or of anger in what she said. “The Wars of the Tribes have been over for a century. Pegasi and Earth Ponies and Unicorns are intermarrying. Foals are being born to these marriages. The tribes are dying. A new kingdom is being born into this land. It cannot be ruled over. The ponies there must rule themselves. And they will, I will ensure that now. You may prosper by this, or you may stand aside. But none of us can stop it.”
“So you say.”
Before she could respond, Montmarency teleported behind her, unleashing his magical fury. As Luna saw her sister memories’ pass in slow motion, Montmarency continued blasting Celestia with magic in a white-hot rage, as Celestia flipped in the air to face her one-time counselor.
And then, from the shadows on the other side of the tent, a blue pegasus with a scarlet mane flew straight at Celestia, who was so focused on countering Montmarency she didn’t realize she’d been flanked.
Steely anger in his eyes, Luna saw Fitzstorm, who had Celestia’s golden halberd firmly in his hooves, blade out, flying straight at his Princess.
Luna saw Celestia raise her head. Then, as if considering things for a moment, she closed her eyes and bared her neck before the oncoming blade.
Luna screamed.
Celestia turned quickly towards the scream. In an instant, the dream stopped, freezing Fitztorm in mid-flight and Montmarency in mid-spell. Even the flames in the firepit froze in place, giving off eerie light without motion.
Luna watched Celestia peel herself out of the dream, out of her own memories, into a present dream. A ghosted image of a past Celestia remained, but the Celestia that walked toward her, clad in gold armor, was still very real.
“Luna! What are you doing—”
Luna threw hooves and wings around Celestia in a giant, panicked hug. “He tried to kill you! He tried to kill you and you nearly let him!”
Luna felt her big sister sitting backwards, but not from her hug. This was another weight.
“Look up, Luna,” Celestia said. “Look to the sky and tell me what you see.”
Luna did so, looking through the hole in the tent roof, to the moon of the age. She recognized her own dark, incorporeal, sullen form, spread across its surface.
Luna felt a single tear falling from her cheeks. “It… it’s me. It was me...”
Celestia nodded. “In the moment you saw, I was ready to die. I thought I deserved no better. Montmarency and his whole rotten crowd would take the blame as regicides. Equestria would be safe. The Summa Carta would keep the Kingdom going, I’d be justly punished for exiling you, and Daybreaker would never come to pass.” She sighed. “That moment… it still feels like a thousand years of my own.”
Luna sat down next to her big sister. “So why didn’t you?”
“If I let them kill me, I’d never see you again. I wouldn’t be able to help you. I’d be a martyr as a princess… and a failure as a sister.”
A thought came to Luna. “Those numbers. Seven hundred ninety four, and one hundred fifty-six—”
“The years and the days until you would be freed. I counted every one of them.” Luna heard her sister’s voice break.
Luna sat next to her sister in silence among still dreams for a long time. “So what happened?” She asked.
Celestia let her memory continue. The ghostly form of her past rose straight, just as Fitzstorm’s flying spear thrust deflected off the royal armor, sending him out of control and into the heavy cloth wall of the tent. Her instance then teleported away for a brief instant, and when it reappeared, it was in a straight line: a Celestia, a distracted Montmarency, and a stunned Fitzstorm all in a straight line.
One magic blast shot forth from the Princess’s horn, and both conspirators were blasted through the wall of the tent.
Luna left her present-day sister’s side, just for a moment, to see the aftermath. Montmarency was thrown upside down into the branches of a tree. A reeling Fitzstorm swooped away overhead, the halberd falling from his hooves. Loud cries sounded from the surrounding tents.
“Alarm! Alarm!”
“Protect Her Highness!”
“Assassins! Traitors! Guards be on watch!”
“Treachery!”
In seconds, the Celestia of memory was surrounded by Royal Guards, bearing shields of metal and magic, weapons drawn and at the ready. Other guards soon rushed towards the stunned Montmarency, dragging him to the ground, and binding his hooves and horn in chains.
In the present dream, Celestia and Luna sat side by side as Celestia’s memories played out.
Luna heard her sister take a calming breath. “Montmarency was brought to Canterlot in irons and confined to the dungeons for high treason, while Redskies, the Council and I debated his fate. But he must have had friends; he escaped two months later. We heard rumors for years that both he and Fitzstorm had been sighted in far-away places. Abyssinia, the Dragonlands, Griffonstone. We sent spies to investigate, but all returned empty-hoofed.”
“And what about Cornstalk? Tell me the earth pony had sense enough not to go along with… with an assassination!” Luna shuddered at the thought.
“I never was able to ask Cornstalk. He had been seen drinking heavily that night. A patrol found his body at the bottom of the Aberwyvern Falls some days later. Whether he fell, or jumped, or was pushed or thrown over by other conspirators… no one ever found out. ”
“So why not just tell the truth? Element of honesty, and all that?” Luna asked, puzzled.
“I wanted to. I desperately wanted to. But Redskies and the rest of the Council held that public knowledge of an attempt on a Princess’s life would only inspire more attempts, and in the future one might succeed. And…” Celestia paused, briefly. “We all swore ourselves to secrecy, and I promised that I would tell only after all that generation had passed. That’s why I locked the armor away, and the painting, and the banner. All of them had been gifts from the conspirators, trying to build up a myth around me. Too late did I see that they were only using me as a shield against unfounded fears. But ages passed. Ponies prospered, I could look up every night and count the days until I had a chance to bring you home. And… I had to be the Princess everyone wanted me to be. I didn’t want to wreck everything, to put myself into any position where I would rule. I didn’t want to risk letting Daybreaker take me like Nightmare Moon had taken you. So I smiled, and waved, and kept all my secrets, and pretended everything was fine. For seven hundred ninety four years…”
Celestia bowed her head. “Every night I thought of you. Every night, I let out my own Tantabus. To remind me.”
Celestia fell to the ground, her wings covering her tear-streaked face, while the past of that day at Trotteymede continued to play out around the two princesses, both adrift in time and memory.
“Oh, Luna,” Celestia whispered in a small, cracking voice. “You must despise me for what I did to you.”
Luna laid down in front of her sister, opened her sister’s wings with her own, and touched her horn to her sister’s in a gesture of profound love.
“Never, sister, never. You did what had to be done. Nightmare Moon left you no choice. And don’t forget, when the time came, you found a way to save me from the darkness. To bring me home.”
Luna felt Celestia’s warm breath mingling with her own.
“You never stopped loving me, even when I stopped loving myself. That love is why you arranged that charter, so you’d never have to control anyone. That love is what kept you going. That love is what kept Daybreaker at bay for all those lonely years. You are a good pony, my sister. And a wise pupil of yours told me what I’m telling you now. Forgive yourself. Be kind to yourself. Love yourself the way you love others." Luna looked deep into her sister’s regret-washed eyes. “Can you do that? For me?”
Celestia nodded. “For you, little sister.”
The dream ended in a soft light.
The sisters awoke as the sun was rising, and almost ran into each other, so great was their desire to see each other, not through a dream but face to face, another secret shared, another burden lifted.
“Come on,” Celestia said. “I’ll make us breakfast while you clean up that old chest.”
While Celestia made pancakes with fruit-faces, Luna took care of the chest, which was once again back where she had intended for it to be, 800 years of dust wiped off inside and out, and the complaining hinges oiled.
Over breakfast on the deck, overlooking the sea, Luna complimented her sister’s pancakes. “You make the best comfort food, sister.”
“A good breakfast can save a kingdom,” Celestia replied. “Ever since that day at Trotteymede I made it a point to make breakfast for each of my councilors and prime ministers and cabinets whenever I thought they needed some encouragement. I just wish I had tried it with Montmarency and Redskies before things got out of hand!”
Luna laughed, but gently. “So, what about what we found? I can think of a lot of ponies who’d be very interested in the history of what really happened all those centuries ago. Twilight alone would write an entire book!”
“Knowing her? Multiple books.” Celestia sighed. “The painting goes in the fireplace, though. Red and gold look horrible on me.”
“Tiaaa!” Luna exclaimed.
Celestia smiled, and winked. “No fire, I promise.” She exhaled. “And I really do not want to keep this hidden forever. I will speak with Twilight, you have my word. But for now, can it be just our secret? Between sisters?”
Luna, thought for a moment, and nodded. “For you, big sister.”
