Luna looked out into the haunting night. A beautiful tableau that she had created, having put real effort into the work for the first time in one thousand years. An almost velvet darkness broken by the brilliant light of the stars. A work of art. One that all too soon would loosen its grip on the sky.
She knew this night sky down to its minutiae, she’d held the image of it fully formed in her mind for the past month, moving stars by minuscule amounts in hopes that she might find perfection. So it was with some irritation that she could not see what her sister now squinted at in the midst of her beautiful night.
“Sister-“
“Call me Celly.”
Luna's face scrunched in mild disgust. Celly? They hadn’t used that name since they were children.
“Lulu, please.” Celestia said, offering a hopeful smile even as the face of her sister worsened after exposure to her own nickname. “As I’ve told you before: In those thousand years of loneliness, the thought that kept me pushing forward was our reunion. In those daydreams it was not a reunion of Celestia, Princess of the Glorious Dawn with her powerful sister Luna, Princess of the Opalescent Moon.” Celestia smile became nostalgic and pained as she remembered the old titles. “No. It was a reunion of Celly and Lulu. Two sisters together against the world, unaware of the greatness that would soon be thrust upon them.”
Luna’s face drifted back to a neutral expression as she turned slightly to the side and looked into the middle distance. She felt a chill night breeze on her coat and remembered what it felt like when she'd had a normal mane that those breezes could ruffle. She took one slow deep breath and smelled the pies that the kitchen was making in honor of the first Summer Sun Celebration since Luna’s return. She heard the sounds of the city coming alive in the darkness of her spectacular night as they prepared to go to her sister’s performance of raising the sun.
Thoughts sprang into her mind, but she did not voice them. Instead, she pondered on them in silence as she stared out into a pristine cloudless night. Her night. It had felt… important that this night be one of her best efforts. In spite of the fact that soon a holiday would be spent cheering its destruction. Or, Luna now realized, perhaps not in spite of that but because of it.
“I missed this. Every night I missed it.” Celestia said, her voice sidling alongside Luna’s thoughts with unnatural ease.
“The night?” Luna queried with uncertainty. No, she realized immediately before Celestia had so much as breathed, there would’ve been a night in her absence. Even if, trapped in the moon, she had been unable to see it. “My night?” Luna asked, correcting her previous guess to something more likely.
Celestia hummed absentmindedly as she mulled over the question. “After a fashion, I suppose.” She paused a moment in thought before continuing. “I missed our stargazing sessions. I missed you. So yes, I also missed your night. In your absence I saw the hole that was left behind. We had been inseparable, and I didn’t realize the extent of that until you weren’t there anymore.”
Luna looked to Celestia. Celly. For a moment. Then, out to where she had been gazing moments before. She saw now what Celestia had seen from the start, not the presence of something but the absence of it in the night sky. It struck her like lightning, the words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I forgot our birth star.”
The truth in the words terrified her, how had she forgotten?
“It was the first sign I should’ve noticed when the nightmare was taking root in you.” Celestia’s tone was mournful in remembrance of the event.
And now Luna remembered it. The night where the angry bitter voice in her head had convinced her to remove the star from the sky. It was so long ago that it felt like another pony’s life. She’d never put it back. She’d forgotten it so thoroughly that in all her careful planning to make this night perfect it had never so much as crossed her mind.
Their birth star had been the first thing they’d shared, long before countries, castles, and armies. Ever since Luna’s birth they’d shared that star.
Tears burned on Luna’s cheeks as the revelation came together in her mind. She felt terrible, to think she’d taken their star away!
Then, like a hammer, a single thought stopped it. No. Simply, no. The tears she’d wept still wet her cheeks but no new ones joined them. It had been the work of the nightmare using her weakness. And, what was more, she could fix it.
Without an ounce of hesitation she reached into the night sky and began to create. She’d gotten the start of it when she realized her memory of the star was lacking. She couldn’t remember it. Not perfectly. And if anything in the night sky needed to be perfect it was this.
Suddenly she felt the gentle magic of Celestia joining hers, asking for permission to help. She agreed eagerly and felt the memory of the star come to her from Celestia’s magic. But this too was incomplete, it had been one thousand years after all.
Desperately, Luna compared it to her own fractured memory. Then, she could see it. The two images combined could be used to recreate it. The parts missing from both could be predicted from their surroundings. Her horn burned with overglow as these two images were merged and placed into the night sky.
When at last she opened her eyes she saw it, twinkling as if being lost for one thousand years had hardly been an inconvenience.
Both sisters stared at the star and knew that it was their star more than it had ever been before.
