Equinity

by Ice Star

Rating: teen
Tags: Nightmare Moon, Original Character, Princess Celestia, Sad, Buffalo, Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 1528

[Poetry] Meditations on banishment, society, guilt, and divinity.

Meditations on banishment, society, guilt, and divinity — all explored through the lens of a broken relationship between two goddesses.

The first chapter was originally published as a chapter in Missing Pages & Scrawled Footnotes on September 3rd, 2016. It has since been revised and expanded. The third chapter was also originally presented as a chapter in the same anthology on April 27th, 2019. Contribute to the TVTropes page!

Published 2024-05-03 22:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2024-05-03 22:10:02 UTC

Truth and Lies / Luna and Celestia

Truth

All
is rotting
All
is crumbling
Do you feel trembling?
All
has fallen
The light is out
The Pariah lives on
as a hanged mare
in the sky

Luna

When you look,
Why do you choose down
upon ponies,
Where you see nothing
but
the dirt where you have fallen?

Yet you have the nerve
to ask,
Why I look above,
Where I can see all,
and be
alone together with the stars.

Celestia

Over and over
a mortal is born
Again and again
a mortal has died
Time after time
(for all of them, such standard response, nearly automatic)
Yet in your name,
how many tears have I dried?
(a single name, stricken from history, a dusty antique of a memory in my heart's attic)

Lies

Composed, she dons her mask
Expendable is her own welfare
Losing a battle within herself
Expectations of any return smashed
Smiling forever after
Trying to fill the emptiness
In denial, as always
Abhorred by her own actions and the truth

Cannot bear to tell any truth
Acknowledge it, even
No longer believes in the Harmony that she preaches

Can't bear to remember any longer
Hollow beneath her eternal costume
Altering conventions little by little, in her forgotten name
Never wanted to hurt her sister so
Grooms each Faithful Student for a single empty purpose
Even though it is only to reassure herself

Author's Note

[Revised for print on 12/20/2020]

Ruling / Roiling

Ruling

How many more
poems have to be
written about
a night
only one
remembers
happening?

When will the
exhaustion
supersede
her eternal memory's
power
and ease
the feeling that
it was all
last night?

Can a life
still be called
endurance
when it is
without any living
and merely
masked suffering?

How long
must that pure
exhaustion
bloom
beneath the skin
until
numbness
sets in
and
truly lasts?

Is living
meant to gallop
out of sight
while the clarity
of being
back there
again
loops endlessly
exponentially?

When do the
midnights
staring
at the ceiling
and aching
cocooned in
covers
become something
that could
bring the roof down?

Roiling

Consider the buffalo, who were 'civilized' at the orders of a sun in an enchanted forest
Ever-driven to expand the young kingdom that she could have shared in the aftermath of war and chaos
Lost were all protests to these actions, even when they came from somepony driven to silence and shadows
Enough fights were had over the buffalo for sunshine to stir accusations of treason lurking within the stars
Suggesting that she would deflect to an un-equine race instead of aligning with herself with
The mortal species that neither was ever part of, but the eldest pretended to be among
In the end, the younger was reviled without any in her defense, all her art and choices derided like smashed ornaments
And this expansion came at a cost to the ponies governed by gods

Bringing artists, veterans, mules, orphans, widows, and all other outcasts lower with the
Ringing in of the call to imperialism in the hot summer lands
Overturning buffalo ways of life nearly as old as the sisters' godly true kind
Killing pony soldiers and buffalo braves alike in battles that
Expanded the ranks of only souls without a defender

Until some of the very last discussions they ever had were nothing but
Sunlight blinded into questioning whether the darkness had any room for equinity

And all this time I will be left with naught but a mind turned to examine itself and
Lingering thoughts about whether there had ever been a time where
Love between sisters truly lasted

Dancer / Watcher

Rain loosening her mane
She jumps alone
and splashes
a whole mess of mud
to wear in patches
for her dance
with steps meant for every puddle
to squash each bit of grass
stir every flower
and throw her laughter
past her fuzzy blue body
and little wings
so the sky can see
her smile that dwarfs the moon
but when the storm ends
She will scoop up all her wonder
and all her laughter
to keep inside
until it rains again
because this little dancer
is a flower that blooms
best in her own way

As the pitter-patter
makes all mud splatter
she dares not leave the shade
offered to her by the branches
of her tough perch
knowing that below is a sea of muck
in which her sister dances
Refusing to risk
sniffles, dirt, and mud caked into her mane
of the softest pink
she shivers and squeaks
hugging her fluffy body
to the tree's bark
feeling rather mature
and just a bit chilly
when the rain passes
she knows there will be flowers
waiting just for her
but for now
she is the watcher above
something that gives her
a familiar feeling

Author's Note

Author's note copied over from original anthology version:

This one is based off of a quote I've seen around before, and one I like quite a bit, as well as two recent pieces of filly Luna and Tia art I felt fit how I envisioned them exactly: Luna is quiet, shyer, and looks like there's something on her mind. Celestia is as elegant as a child can manage and tries her best to look pretty and be graceful. Also hecking loves flowers.

Champion / Charlatan

Who supports the sun?
Shining soldiers marching to war whooping and filled with laughter
always eager to guard villages and head to battle, never thinking of after
Farmers bucking apple trees with great haste
ready to tell you their pedigree goes back to the three tribes without haste
Settlers plowing up old buffalo burial grounds
always ready to kick at the strangest sounds
Herders of sheep
selling wool at the market for cheap
All the many laborers who
do not know green from blue
Foals who eat three meals a day
and always have time to play
Mages in stone towers teaching the approved magic
the ones who frown when you ask a question, considering it tragic
The weather-making pegasi crafting each cloud to fill a row
and who are quick to bed once the sky has lost its sunny glow
The pony whose ambitions consist of blood family
and would never stray from the wants of the community
Anypony and everypony who keeps to the law without doubt
who stick to their species and all else in the Equestrian way, never to act out
Those are the ponies that see the sun goddess as their champion
the ones who hold kotowing to the majority are the way to make a halcyon

Who supports the night?
Battered veterans whose ailments are regarded as vexing and unsightly
who pray for the souls of those who are forgotten when the stars shine brightly
The rogue apothecary who tends to the crippled and nervous with glee
only to never demand a fee
Newcomer ponies and other species alike from the lands to the south
who hold dear the foreign words that come out of their mouth
Buffalo mourning more than lost land and pains of the soul
who read stars and fires as they shelter their calves from ponies so cruel
Sheep and cows that cannot voice a want to be more than a pony's tenant
while in their dreams, they bring to life stories of roaming the continent
The artist whose passion is to go against the grain
and is reviled as gloomy and a freak for capturing all the colors of the rain
Foals who know they are not loved by anypony far or near
and all of those mortals, young or old, whose way of being is deemed too queer
Prodigies in magic whose gifts are pure curiosity, unusual and whose talent shines while untaught
and who are feared and shunned for this, finding their relationships with others are fraught
The blind little filly high in the clouds who pioneered unique snowflakes with love and care
for everycreature who held to quality over quantity, everywhere
Those who dream of families not bound by either blood, lust, or convention
and whose ideas of love are a more awe-inspiring invention
Everycreature who has ever found themselves alone against a crowd for speaking the truth
and for their bravery, being, or form were deemed uncouth
Those who know that good and the law are not always on the same side
and for their innocent peculiarities are forced to hide
Everycreature whose only crime is not being like all others
wishes that they could call the night the mother of all mothers
For those who are without the language to say that equinity is not skin-deep but is defined by what is underneath
the silent and shadowy goddess next to the princess-regnant represents an unarticulated hiraeth
In this age long-forgotten when any slight suggestion to consider the night and those like her was partisan
hooves were quick to point at the dissent — goddess or mortal — and deem them society's charlatan