Bad Moon Rising

Blood Moon

Twilight opened her eyes and looked up at the sky, and felt her pupils dilate.

They scoured the canvas above for any of the light she knew should be there, pupils expanding as they adjusted to a vast expanse of black.

“...Why?” was the only word that came to mind.

“I wouldn’t waste my breath attempting to explain to you. You are nothing in all of this.”

“Well… why don’t you try?” Twilight asked, looking into eyes that stared back at her with a terrifying madness that seemed to defy all reason. Like nothing Twilight had ever seen.

But there was something that flashed within them, for just a second. Some twisting moment of a mourning, keening need to be seen. Like there was a pony still living behind the mask of insanity and unrestrained hatred that regarded Twilight.

“Why don’t you just try?” Twilight asked again.

“I… it doesn’t matter. I am not answerable to you, and even were I to be… I don’t think for a single second that you’d see it.”

“You could try though? Right? You could try to make me see?”

And the mask seemed to fracture for just a second. The forehead un-creased, the lips unthinned, the hatred dulled.

And, of course, those pupils dilated.

“I… it’s, I don’t… I can’t quite… remember…”

But it didn’t matter, because it was done.

Twilight had been playing for time, and she was beginning to rise off the ground. Her, five ponies from the village, six worthless, pointless stones from a time long forgotten all rising in magic that filtered and refracted the mad, wild light all pouring from those eyes. Eyes that never broke Twilight’s gaze.

And any glimpse of equinity vanished as Nightmare Moon realised what was happening, her pupils returned to feline slits and her fangs bared as she lit her horn and jerked her neck, and she seemed to try to wrench the moon across the sky.

Where she planned to take it,, Twilight didn’t know. The rainbow of the elements reached the nightmare long before she was able to do much of anything.

And everything was brought roughly back to sanity.

XXX

“Are you sure, princess?”

Luna listened to the little unicorn fret behind the door. She almost certainly didn’t realise that everything she was saying was quite audible. Celestia had done this in their old palace too. Dignitaries and diplomats would conduct a surprising amount of conversation just before heading in for a meeting.

One could glean a tremendous amount from being able to hear their whispers through surprisingly non-soundproofed doors.

Celestia was always one step ahead of most.

“My dear sister, please bring the poor thing in already,” Luna called out.

The hushed conversation stopped abruptly and, after a few seconds of embarrassed pause, the unmaker of the tyrant of the moon poked a decidedly blushing face through the doors.

Luna smiled warmly at her.

“My dear, you do not have to look so out of place, I asked my sister to invite you along to this…” Luna waved a hoof lazily, trying to conjure the right word.

“Debriefing,” finished Celestia, appearing round the door and offering Twilight a friendly yet decisive nudge to take a seat.

“Debriefing! Precisely, thank you my sister.”

Twilight slowly took her seat on the opposite side of the table, regarding Luna with a wariness that she doubtless must have thought she was covering quite well.

“Princess Luna, I must confess… you seem uh…” Twilight began, but seemed to wilt when she realised that two princesses were looking at her, patiently waiting for her to finish her thought, “Actually it doesn’t matter, I’m just here to take notes.,”

“Is that right?” Luna asked, raising an eyebrow at her sister.

“Of course not,” Celestia replied, gently taking Twilight’s quill and parchment in her hooves and prising them from Twilight’s grasp while the little unicorn impotently tried to reclaim them, “Twilight, I’ll handle note taking for this meeting, okay? If you’ve got something to ask Luna, please! She’s only spoken with me and some royal guards these last few days, I’m sure she’s quite ready for some more stimulating conversation.”

Twilight looked over at her reappropriated quill and parchment, trying and failing to suppress the shadow of a pout. It was short lived however, as she was able to turn her attention to Luna.

She still didn’t speak, though.

“Twilight?” Celestia began, “You’ll make Luna impatient, what were you going to ask her,”

“I… I uh,”

“I think she may be nervous, dear sister,” Luna offered, “I probably threatened to kill her more than once when I was, ah, shall we say ‘indisposed’?”

“Do you really think this is the time for making jokes about it, Luna?” Celestia replied tersely.

“Who was joking? Not I. I’m sure your student is wary of me, and I wouldn’t blame her,” Luna countered, before turning her eyes back to Twilight, “Twilight Sparkle, you are under no obligation to say anything and I understand fully your trepidation around me, if you just want to listen and make notes, then that’s fine. I’m sure we can find something to trade with my sister to buy back your stationery. I believe the cooks downstairs have prepared red velvet cake. That should prove a more than satisfactory bargain.”

Celestia rolled her eyes, but Luna wasn’t paying attention. She was more concerned with how a flicker of a smile tugged at the corner of Twilight’s lip. Luna likely would have won herself a small chuckle were it not being held back by the young pony’s suspicion.

“Of course, it may cool your nerves slightly if I were to reveal that it was myself who specifically requested your presence here. I wanted to at least have the chance to say thank you in person.”

Twilight leaned forward slightly, near imperceptibly. She probably wasn’t even aware she’d done it. But it was all Luna needed to see. And, as expected…

“I was going to say that, you seem a bit more… effervescent? That I expected,”

“I think what Luna is trying to-”

“Sister please,” Luna politely, but firmly, interrupted her sister, “I am able to field my own questions. Well, Twilight Sparkle, you raise a good point. I spent my first few days walking around looking as sullen as I could muster, because I felt like it was the way I should be feeling. But, honestly, the truth is I feel good… great even. I spent longer than the lifetimes of you and all your friends combined trapped in that broiling nexus of insanity and, for the first time in a long time. I feel like I can think clearly.

“If I seem happier and lighter than you expected, that’s because I am! And one thing that this experience has taught me, far too late in my life, is that I shouldn’t pretend to feel one way when I don’t feel that way.”

Twilight looked at the princess, seeming to mentally chew over her answer.

It may have been Luna’s favourite moment since she was rid of the nightmare when Twilight’s suspicion seemed to ebb, and she favoured the princess with a small smile.

“You can call me Twilight, Princess Luna, no one calls me Twilight Sparkle really,”

“Well sadly, almost everyone calls me Princess Luna, but my friends call me Luna. So how about you call me that, and I’ll call you Twilight?”

“Luna,” Celestia interrupted, sliding a hoof in front of Twilight, “We still have to get through this debriefing.”

Luna regarded her sister neutrally for a moment.

“That we do. So who’s got the first question?”

“Why?” Celestia said, and the humour seemed to drain from the room.

They had flirted with this a few times over the last week, but each time one of them seemed to break. Sometimes Luna got too upset, sometimes Celestia backed down before Luna could even speak.

She guessed this was something they needed to get out of the way.

“Twilight, why do you think I did all of this?” Luna asked, holding a hoof up to prevent the protest she knew Celestia would have.

Twilight seemed to shrink in her seat, and looked to Celestia for approval. The elder alicorn took a couple of seconds, looking between her sister and student, swapping between reassuring and disapproving looks as appropriate.

In the end, she relented.

“Luna shouldn’t be making you do this, Twilight,” Celestia lectured, the subtleties of the way her voice changed as she flitted between sovereign and teacher weren’t lost on Luna, “She should be more considerate of your feelings, and best interests. But you can answer if you’d like to.”

Luna had to bite her tongue to the point it nearly bled.

“I thought it was because you were feeling underappreciated pri… Luna, I thought that you thought ponies didn’t care about your night.”

Luna looked at her sister, she was so much a statesmare. She’d always been the more gifted of the two of them in the arts of politics and rhetoric by a considerable margin. And then she watched as that mighty hoof that had lived so many countless thousands of years gently stroked Twilight’s back, and Luna saw how it made the unicorn relax. How it soothed her mind.

Luna had always been the more tender one between the two, and yet the table was so large, she would have only been able to lightly brush Twilight’s hoof, and they’d have to be at full stretch.

“And so the story goes,” Luna replied with a sad smile, “Feelings of underappreciation certainly made my situation worse, but I’m not sure that’s the reason why I did what I did. Madness would be a better word, it was like something had been whispering in my ear for so very, very long… and you know, it’s strange. When I was trapped within the nightmare it all made so much sense, and now it’s gone, and the insanity subsided, it’s like something written in a different language. I think that… that I…”

Celestia leant slightly further in, but it was Twilight’s voice that sounded first.

“Yes, Luna?”

“It just felt like I wanted everyone to see the world like I did,” Luna finished, looking squarely at her sister.

The room seemed slightly bigger than it had done when everyone had first arrived. Twilight squirmed in her seat. Luna looked at her, she forgot sometimes how little they were, when she really regarded them. It was something she did far too infrequently. She hated how she was making the poor thing feel.

It brought up unpleasant memories.

So even though she wanted to keep on explaining this, she decided it could wait until she was alone with her sister.

There were more important things than how the two of them felt.

“Twilight, my sister tells me you’re one of her most promising students! I hope that, in some point in the future, I can show you my notes on astronomy,”

Twilight immediately perked up.

“Oh that would be amazing princess… sorry, Luna. I can’t imagine the level of insight you have!”

“Well, one does one’s best,” Luna replied, a practised and effortlessly affected false modesty, perfectly conspicuous, once again making Twilight giggle, “Besides, thanks to you there’s a second alicorn in the world again, you might as well see some benefit from it.”

“Well, three alicorns,” Twilight pointed out.

Her smile told Luna she didn’t think she’d said a single thing out of place.

But, of course, Luna didn’t spend too long looking at Twilight, her head snapped around to look at her sister, feeling her pupils constricting. Celestia looked for all the world there was nothing amiss.

Luna knew her better than that.

“Twilight, my sister and I have a few things we need to discuss, but it’s a lot of boring information about the evolution of tax codes. It would seem that, for my sins, my first work in the new administration will be in revenue and customs, and I wouldn’t dream of burdening you with the same dry knowledge. However, when we’re done, I’d love to show you some of those notes. We can do it in the astronomy tower!”

“Oh I’d love to! I could show you the new telescopes we have and-”

“Twilight,” Celestia gently interrupted, “Aren’t you forgetting we had a lesson planned for this evening?”

Twilight’s ears folded onto her head as dreams of an intense astronomy session crumbled before her, she looked back at Celestia, sad and doe-eyed, pupils stretching out.

Luna couldn’t stand to look at her.

“My sister is right, Twilight, we can do our astronomy work another time, we’ll make a night of it, I’ll get the cooks to make your favourite cake… just give Celestia and I a little bit of time, okay?”

The unicorn nodded effusively, now salved by the knowledge her studies were protected. She gathered her notes and quill and offered her farewells, hastening out of the room with an absentminded clumsiness that seemed diametrically opposed to the cool, calm mare who had faced down an angry god just days prior.

Luna waited until she heard those hoofsteps span the corridor, still keenly aware of how leaky the door was to conversation.

“What did she mean, three alicorns,” Luna hissed at her sister, who rolled her eyes.

“It’s nothing like that, sister,” Celestia replied breezily, a hoof idly waved only served to darken Luna’s mood, “Cadence is… she is not a true alicorn.”

“Explain,” Luna growled.

“She was meant for the Crystal Empire, whenever it should reappear, I would not disadvantage them with a sovereign who will simply die in a generation, they need more stability than that.”

“So you made this alicorn?!” Luna gasped, face a mask of horror.

“She is not a true alicorn!” Celestia whispered harshly, leaning in while shooting a quick, cautious look to the door, “She is a… well more of a winged unicorn, she will live far longer than a normal pony, but she is not an immortal… she’s not like us,”

“For everyone’s sake, I truly hope not,” Luna replied, running a hoof through her mane, “I can’t believe you could be so reckless,”

“Reckless?!” Celestia barked, clearly affronted, “I was the reckless one?! You were away at the time, dear sister, as you had been for a millenia,”

“And you knew I would be back.”

“Are we quite done?” Celestia snapped, rising from her seat, “I have things to which I need to attend.”

“No we are not done,” Luna replied, getting up from her seat and stamping round the table to face her sister more closely, “I can see you are wary of my getting too close to your student, sister, something to hide?”

“What are you implying?” Celestia retorted, eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Inconsiderate of her best interests, eh?” Luna spat, “No, we’re not done because I have one last question for you, sister… where were you?”

“I did my best, Luna, I had no idea of what was happening in your mind.”

“No,” Luna interjected, “No I do not care about a thousand years ago. I meant that night, when I returned… where were you?”

“I… I don’t understand, you were saved?” Celestia’s mouth hung, apparently in a rare millisecond of being caught off guard.

“You could have given Twilight and her friends safe passage through the Everfree, you could have simply kept me busy so she was at less risk. You let her walk through that hellhole without you, and didn’t appear until after the nightmare had been banished. Do you know what the nightmare was going to do, sister? I was going to destroy the sun, not just leave my moon up there forever. I was going to make it so no one could ever raise it again… and you were nowhere to be found.”

“Oh yes?” Celestia replied, eyebrow raised, “And what stopped you?”

“I stopped me, the part of me that remained. I kept it distracted, kept it insane, I shudder to think what it might have done had I not… now, don’t change the subject. I know our subjects think I had you captured, and I decided to not refute the rumour because, to my mind, it’s easier than to explain that you chose to not reveal yourself… why?”

“Twilight is going to be very important for this country, sister,” Celestia countered, steel returning to her eyes, “I knew she had it handled. I would never let her get into any real danger.”

“So you were watching her? That night?”

“Of course I was, Luna, what do you think of me? I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want Twilight to feel like she hadn’t done this on her own.”

Luna looked up at Celestia, and felt so very, very tired.

She had spent a millenia hating her sister.

She didn’t want to fight anymore.

“I hope you consider her best interests, and refrain from making any big decisions without me,” Luna said, allowing her weary head to flop down unceremoniously into the warm fur of her sister’s chest, and feeling her breath steady when Celestia’s forehoof wrapped around her.

“We owe them that much, Celestia.”