Author's Note

IV - Waxing

Moonlight lanced through the air from the heavens to the shore, and melted into a stream where it touched the water, like the train of a wedding dress laid out over the surface of the sea. The waves were gentle, lazily rolling in and out without foam. The sand was black, and the shoreline stretched out in both directions with barely a curve. The beach stretched infinitely behind Luna, though she did not turn to look at it, and the sea stretched infinitely ahead of her. She descended a curved staircase of white marble, placed upon the sand without the rest of the building it belonged to, and stepped onto the beach.

Nightmare Moon stepped across the water towards the shore, walking on air and parting the sea in her wake. Her body was a brushstroke of darkness blacker than the starlit night, and her mane a piece of the cosmos stolen from beyond the reaches of ponykind's eyes. Her eyes were pools of moonlight reflecting the sea, and her armour was wrought of alien metals fallen onto the world from the stars. She was all things mysterious and obscure and tantalising in that way only the deepest recesses of our desire can be, and she was beautiful like only a dream can measure up to.

She moved like the tides and her voice was like the wind in a storm, powerful and grand and filling all the space between the earth and the sky. "So you have come back." The words may have sounded mocking had her tone not been so sweet and filled with longing.

Luna looked down at that, unwilling to address her actions. Nightmare Moon was on her in a blink, moving soundless through the air at the speed of dreams and shadows to stand before her, her breath hot on Luna's neck. Luna shivered in the tempered night air.

"My, my, little Luna. There's no need to be shy. There's no judgement here, you know that." She leaned her head down farther to be eye level with Luna. Her fangs glinted in the moonlight. "Go ahead and tell me why you're here."

Luna swallowed, then slowly lifted her head to gaze into Nightmare Moon's slit-pupil eyes. A blush spread softly on her cheeks. "I wanted to see you," she managed to say without stammering.

Nightmare Moon smiled. She took a step closer and her chest pressed into Luna's, armour and peytral both melting away so they could touch coat against coat. Her body was heatless, but not cold. It was like pressing into a block of wood, just slightly less unyielding. Had she possessed a heart, Luna would have felt it beating in time with her own as it sped up. Luna's neck lay over Nightmare Moon's shoulder, and Nightmare Moon wrapped her own neck over Luna's, and inhaled deeply of the starlight in her mane. "I have missed you too, more in these last few days than in all those before."

Luna hesitated, considering if she should pull back, but then leaned more into the embrace. It wasn't warm, but it was sturdy, and that was comforting in its own way. She closed her eyes and smelled the cosmic void Nightmare Moon carried with her. Her wings stretched out, just a little, not yet reaching for a hug but relaxing at her sides. "I think I missed you too." She just hadn't realised.

"It is good to have you back." Nightmare Moon pulled away, and her armour was on her chest again. She extended a wing, and a feather soft like an evening breeze delicately stroked Luna's chin. "Shall we have a walk together, my dear?"

Luna looked up at her, blushing and bashful like she was a little filly again. "I would love it."

Nightmare Moon smiled. She turned and took a few soft steps on the sand, then looked back to see if Luna would follow. She allowed her to catch up, and together they walked side by side along the shore, Nightmare Moon's longer strides coming in a bit slower to accommodate for Luna's shorter gait. The sea rolled tirelessly in and out, its gentle rhythm a pleasant backdrop to the sound of their breaths. Finally, Nightmare Moon broke the almost silence with her voice. "The night has always been beautiful," she said, looking around at the sea and the sky and then at Luna herself.

Luna smiled at that, giddy with a simple joy she hadn't felt in so long. Was it really wrong to indulge her own happiness when she saw her subjects doing the same, and so often guided them towards it? "It really is," she replied, eyes fixed solely on Nightmare Moon's strong, elegant body.

When describing beauty, most may say a pony looks like a statue, a body carved to perfect shape and devoid of blemishes and imperfections. Nightmare Moon was different. She was rather a painting, or a poem, if one needed to compare her form to art. Her body was not one any sculptor could carve into rock or metal alike, light and yet powerful and curved in ways impossible to replicate when looked at from different angles. She was colour, and emotion, a vibrant flash of imagination ever shifting, ever living, beautifully alive in ways not even Celestia with her radiant, statuesque fairness could compare to.

"And such a shame it is others still so rarely see it for what it is," Nightmare Moon continued, hooves leaving crescent groves in the sand where she stepped.

At that, Luna darkened slightly, and looked away. It was true, and yet she knew better than to let herself be swayed by those words. No more of it. She should call the whole thing off. Yet she kept walking, as Nightmare Moon did the same beside her, silently. She looked up at the sky, stars tracing impossible patterns, a dark canvas painted in constellations no mortal ever had seen nor would. It was truly beautiful, enough to soothe her soul of worries and convince her she wished to stay there. She sighed wistfully.

Nightmare Moon stopped, and turned slightly towards her. "What troubles your heart, little Moon?" Her tail and her mane curved on winds unfelt, forming with her body a crescent around Luna.

Luna did not look at her at first, then sighed and turned to stare her in the eyes. "It's... this. You know what it is."

"Have we done anything wrong?" Nightmare Moon asked. She leaned forward. "Is there anything wrong with being happy, or wishing for it? Would they have you believe it's wrong to dream, after already refusing to wake and witness the night?"

Luna's breath came even and deep. She wordlessly opened and closed her mouth, then swallowed. "You're right. We haven't done anything wrong." She took a step closer. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin the moment."

"No. No need to apologise." Nightmare Moon's mane and tail closed in a circle behind Luna. "You didn't do anything wrong. It's good of you to think of your subjects. Always the loyal servant of your ponies. But here, you don't need to worry about that." She smiled, a scythe blade of silver hanging in the darkness of her face. "This is for you. For us." A step closer herself.

Luna peered up into her eyes. They were deep, bottomless wells, and the more she looked the more the colours changed and fractured, blue shattering into a kaleidoscope of shades and shapes that was the ever changing flow of dreams. It was a spectacle she could fall into, one she felt she could admire for ages. Every fantasy of the heart sketched into vision, given shape and colour and feeling enough to feel lived, enough to take over the mind for a spell. It was the right and duty of all ponies to dream, after all.

Nightmare Moon's breath washed hot against Luna's face. "This is for what you want."

Luna breathed deep. It smelled of seawater and freshly baked bread, of adventure and the comfort of home, and it smelled of ozone like the upper layers of the atmosphere she'd pierced through when she'd gone to grab hold of the Moon. And it smelled of things impossible and unreal, a smell that was a feeling and a fantasy, a concept without form or reason that only could exist within a dream. It smelled of freedom, and comfort, and possibility. Luna smiled. "What shall we do, then?"

Nightmare Moon spread her wings wide, and all the stars fell down around them and their winds blew away the sand and the sea, until they were standing on nothing within a sky full of floating lights surrounding them. "Whatever we want, my dear. Anything at all you wish, so long as the time permits."

Luna took in the spectacle around them, and Nightmare Moon in the middle of it all. "Then let us be happy, together the both of us. Let us be free."