The Artistry of Night
Luna closed her eyes. This was her favorite time, the only time she felt she honestly deserved the false title of “Princess.” She knew, of course, the power she carried. She knew how the ponies of the Night Court looked to her for leadership, and she knew how the Royal Guard swore themselves to her service, no matter what, but none of that mattered. She was always the little sister, the one turned to when Celestia was too busy. The one hiding in the shadows of the day.
But here, at the twilight when both sun and moon hung, slivers in the edges of the horizon, when the blue sky gave to pink, then finally to clear, allowing the clear blanket of night to shine through. The as-of yet empty blanket. The blank canvas waiting to be painted with bright pinpricks of light that hinted at the vastness infinity above.
Luna could see it all in her mind. She saw the way the stars wished to be seen. She saw the intertwisted galaxies, and the stars stuck out alone--like she had been... She saw the comets, and how they wished to fly that night, dancing between the stars like pegasi through the clouds. Everything felt right in her mind, stars set in paths rarely changed over the course of millennia.
The blue alicorn reached for the magic within, ready to shape the night sky as she had done every night, even during her exile. The power was there, a globe of warmth and light deep within her, and the knowledge was there, the never failing road map of the heavens painted sharp and clear as a picture upon her memory.
But nothing came. Try as she might, the Princess of the Night could not will the stars into the void as she had done ever since assuming the mantle.
This was nothing new, every once in awhile Luna knew that her mind just needed a break. The sky did not need to be formed this very instant, she could afford a moment or two to relax. She closed her eyes, letting the magic slip away as she took a deep breath, filling her lungs as full as possible before slowly letting it out.
A few more repetitions, and Luna felt ready. She reached once again for the magic, for the unbridled power residing within, eager to show her celestial creations to all of Equestria.
She pulled, she shaped, she pushed... and nothing happened.
This... this was new. Never before had she failed twice in a row like this. Princess Luna got up, shaking her hooves in a sort of bouncy dance. She jumped up into the air, stretching her wings as far as she could on the small balcony off of her room. Alighting on the cold stone below, Luna reached once again for the power.
She pulled, she shaped, she pushed... and something appeared. A fizzle, a small spark of power no larger than a bit slowly meandered it’s way out of her horn and popped in front of her muzzle in a small explosion of almost nervous energy.
Things were getting desperate now. Her sister was lowering the sun fully, the bright orb descending into the ground as the moon slowly rose up to take its’ place. This was it, she had to try, one last push. Luna reached deep, straight into the core of the power within her. Using all the techniques she had learned over her long life she coaxed a small strand of the power out, spreading it across the map of the heavens in her mind before pushing forward, focusing the enlightened string of energy through her horn and into the air.
Quickly, as though sensing the urgency, the stars spread from the center of the sky out across the whole world. Luna sighed in relief, leaning against the iron railing before her. She closed her eyes for a brief second, the perfect picture of tranquility before a face appeared in her mind’s eye, forcing her to snap to attention to prevent the painful memories.
Princess Luna stamped a hoof, accidentally chipping part of the stone flooring. Her head shot up, eyes darting towards the door as the monoliths of wood slowly clicked closed.
“Sister, you do realize that chips like that are ridiculously expensive to repair, yes?” Princess Celestia asked, giving her sister a half smile that conveyed more than her words. The white elder alicorn looked smaller devoid of shoes, headgear, and necklace. If one ignored the horn or the wings, and the eternally-flowing mane, she could almost be a normal--albeit large--pony.
Luna shot back her own crooked grin, though one filled with more mischief than good-willed humor like her sister’s. “Of course Celly, I have seen the repair orders for the spa, specifically near the massage tables...”
Celestia blushed. They had sworn to never speak of that incident again, and since the file warmer had been installed, a repeat had not yet occurred. “Hush.” Her gaze softened, and she walked to stand side by side with her sister. The white alicorn gazed at the blue, a softer expression falling on her face. “Are you okay? The stars and moon were slow today, I was getting worried,” she said with a voice full of concern.
Luna looked down, idly examining the chip with her eyes and hoof. “I... have had better days.”
The white alicorn nuzzled her sister. “I understand. I miss her too.”
“No! It is so much more than that!” Luna shouted, glaring at her sister for the briefest of seconds before backing down. “Sorry. She just meant so much to me. It almost feels... empty now.” The midnight alicorn looked down for a moment before looking back up, smile on her face a direct contrast to the sheen of tears in her eyes. “She could name almost everything I pointed out to her. We would sit out under the stars on top of the North Tower and just... talk. Hours on end, Tia, into the earliest hours of the morning when she would fall asleep, and I would carry her back inside, and tuck her in.”
Celestia stood closer, using her wing to pull her younger sister in a hug. Luna huffed for a moment before leaning into the contact, token protest out of the way. “Loss is always hard, dearest Luna, especially when you are close.”
“I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon,” came the soft reply some time later.
“Nopony did. It shouldn’t have happened,” Celesita said. ”I should have been watching, should not have let her do it.”
“Don’t start,” Luna said, wiggling out from under her sister’s wing until she could stare her in the eyes. “There is no way you could have known what would happen. She should have been able to. Nopony is to blame.”
Celestia dropped her head, unable to hold Luna’s gaze any longer. She looked out into the canvas of the stars, names and locations and history popping in her head faster than it was possible to acknowledge. Luna said something, drawing the sun alicorn from her daze. “Sorry, what?”
Luna rolled her eyes in mock indignation. “Of course, ignore the little sister. I said the funeral is tomorrow.”
Celestia nodded once. “I know. I spent all day preparing it down in Ponyville.” A rueful grin spread across her face. “It is probably more than she wanted, but I couldn’t help myself.”
Luna grunted in reply, looking out at the star-filled sky. “Do you think she can see them?” she asked softly a short while later.
"Hmm?”
"The stars. Do you think she can see them?” Luna looked at her sister, gaze suddenly intense.
The elder sister draped a comforting wing over the younger once again. “I’m sure she can, and I’m sure she thinks it is beautiful, as she did every day in life.” This was apparently the right answer, for the younger alicorn returned her gaze to the heavens. The stars winked and flashed, oblivious to the pain below, as always.
Luna had returned that way, cold and distant as the stars and moon. After all, it was difficult to return to a world you had tried to conquer, a sister you had tried to dethrone. “It was the astronomy lesson...” she mused to herself.
“What was the astronomy lesson?” Celestia asked from beside her.
“Do you remember back to when all six of them were here in Canterlot?” She waited for Celestia’s nod. “She asked as demure and sweet as could be if I would give her a lesson about the stars. She said that she had been curious of them since she was a little filly, and had often spent hours staring up at them. It melted my heart, Tia. I think that was when it started...” A single silent sob wracked her frame. “...and ended a short, short year later...”
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost...”
“Quiet. You know as well as I the pain of losing a loved one.” The silence was all the answer needed. Minutes passed, both alicorns gazing up at the stars, both lost in thought. Luna’s eyes grazed over a nebula, small smile growing across her lips. She pointed a hoof at it, drawing her sister’s attention. “She designed that one, you know.”
“Really?” Celestia asked, genuine interest flitting through her voice.
Luna nodded. “It was sort of a joke. One night she came to me and said she would make a better princess of the night than I, so I jokingly told her if she was so good she could do it herself. And she did. I left the room for a couple of minutes, pretending I was mad at her, and when I came back that was there.” Luna shook her head in awe. “I left it, of course, how could I take it down? Especially since I don’t know how it got there.”
“The Elements work in strange ways, sister,” came the sage reply from beside her. The two stared up at the small, but intense, swirl of color and light in the sky. It started in the middle, light pink swirls gradually becoming deeper as one looked across the edges until it faded into a deep, deep blue, almost blending in with the void beyond.
Celestia yawned, no longer able to hold in it. She stretched like a cat, “accidently” bumping her sister’s head with a wing in the process. “Well sister, I must get to bed. I shall see you tomorrow in Ponyville?”
Luna gave her a rueful smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” The white alicorn nodded, nuzzling her sister’s forehead before leaving the room as quietly as she had entered, leaving the room much, much emptier than it had been before.
Luna gazed up, unwilling and unable to go to sleep. “Do you think she can see them?”
"I’m sure she can, and I’m sure she thinks they are beautiful, as she did every day in life.”
The midnight alicorn stood up, inspiration flowing freely through her mind. She pictured it in her head, a new constellation. A deep nebula of purple, filled with a dark blue much like her coat, and twinkling with stars like her mane. She pulled from the ball of energy within once again, and this time the energy flowed as easily as it had for centuries.
She shaped it in her mind, no pattern for it to mimic this time, and cast it from her horn into the heavens. Right in the middle of the sky, almost as large as the moon, it formed. A line of purple stretched out, forming one, then two, then three, and four, and five, and finally six points in a star.
The line of magic then reached in, beginning to swirl around, spreading a dark blue inside of the lavender mold. Stars sprung into life in the magic’s wake, making the new creation glitter as if made of rhinestones. A small white crescent moon formed in the center, before the bolt of magic shot up, forming five smaller stars of white directly outside the larger one of purple and blue.
And across the edges of it all, written in small comet trails, barely visible without a telescope were written the words, To My Dearest Twilight. I Will Love and Remember You Always.
And maybe nopony would look up. Maybe nopony would ever care about her sky the way her Twilight had, and that was ok. Because somewhere out there, Twilight was missing Luna just as much as Luna missed Twilight.
Dedicated to Blake.
I said I would write your OTP
I just wish I could have before you could no longer read it.
RIP
Author's Note
So, as it stands, this story is finished. I wrote it because Blake, a friend of mine, recently died in a car accident. One thing she had always wanted to see my write was a TwiLuna, and I told her I would write one for her. But, I heard on Saturday, the 19th of January, that she had passed away in a car wreck. Thus, I dedicate this to you, Blake. A sad TwiLuna to match your sad fate.
I may add another chapter if you guys want, but as of now I have no plans to.
The March of Time
Large golden doors closed behind Celesta as she strode into her personal chambers. She stretched and, with a burst of magic, doffed her regalia onto the stand next to the door. She then stretched and groaned, feeling her muscles unclench after a full day of wearing solid metal.
She strode further into the room and, out of habit, glanced at her calendar. Not that there was much point, she knew what day it was.
As was her custom on this day, Celestia walked over to her balcony, threw open the doors, then stepped out. With a stroke of her powerful alabaster wings, Celestia took to the air.
Celestia spun in loose loops up the rest of the tower that contained her private rooms. Once at the top, she flapped to a neighboring tower, taking the same lazy circles down until she spotted another balcony. With another graceful flap, Celestia landed and opened the doors leading back inside.
Inside, Luna was curled up on a large, frayed purple cushion, staring at a large easel covered in swirls of color and dots of light. Celestia approached, quietly, and forced her way onto the cushion next to her sister.
“Good evening, Luna. Making a map for the stars tonight?”
Luna pretended to struggle against her sister’s invasion, but quickly gave up and made room. “Yes, sister, for you. I know how memory tends to degrade in old age.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I told you to take better care of yourself.”
“Yes, but there is a surprising lack of those... multivitamins, yes? A surprising lack of multivitamins on the moon.”
Celestia fluffed her wings out in a shrug.
The two fell silent for a moment. “How much time until sunset?” Luna whispered.
“We have time,” Celestia lied. After all, it’s not like anypony would know, exactly to the second, when it was supposed to fall today. Sure, some ponies had pretty good estimates, but they were never entirely correct. Luna nodded and turned back to her sketch.
It was beautiful, as always, a painting of a thousand thousand pieces, all revolving around a six pointed star, right over Canterlot and Ponyville. Of all the parts of the night sky Luna rotated in and out, that bunch of stars had never left.
“It’s almost that time of year again,” Luna muttered, her eyes dark, fixed to the same point.
“Yeah.”
“It never gets any easier. Two times a year, it gets worse.”
“Yeah.”
A shaking sigh escaped Luna’s lips. “We should probably get started.”
Celestia stood, bumping her sister with a wing as she did so. Obediently, Luna burrowed under, and the two walked over to Luna’s balcony in step. They stood interlocked and abreast, and begun the ritual that allowed them to move the sun and moon.
It was a complicated spell, but made easier with experience. Any more, it seemed their duties kept them apart, but they always made time together at dawn and dusk to move their charges together. That, and their insistence of dining together in the morning, had kept them close throughout the years of Luna’s return.
Powerful tendrils of magic enveloped both mares, linking them to one another and to the world as a whole. Celestia went first, pushing her charge down below the horizon. Luna came next, coaxing the moon high into the sky. As was custom, they always left ample room for twilight.
As the full force of their power dwindled, until it was needed in the morning, Luna slumped. Her gaze wandered over to the space between towers, where Ponyville nestled at the bottom of their mountain. The town was growing steadily, in a few more years it might even need a new rail line.
“Shall I have a chariot take us down tomorrow? It’s almost time,” Celestia whispered, voice muted.
Luna nodded. “Another year has passed already. I can hardly believe it.”
“Nor can I.” Celestia squeezed her sister once more, then leapt into the sky. She hovered above the balcony for a few moments more. “I shall see you in the morning?”
“Of course. Sleep well, sister.”
Luna knew Celestia wouldn’t.
The moon was well past it’s midpoint in the sky when Luna finally escaped from the audience chamber. She meandered her way out of the castle, towards the expansive gardens. This was another ritual, one for her alone. She plucked a small wicker basket and a pair of shears, and set off through the winding gardens.
There was never a plan, a set of rules or guidelines. Luna wandered for several hours, plucking flowers at random. Many of them didn’t even fit well together. She had never been much for flowers, but it always felt wrong to visit and not leave anything, no matter how fleeting a decoration it was.
A few hours after that, a package wrapped in lavender tissue paper joined Celestia and Luna for breakfast. They ate in silence, a rare thing for the breakfast nook, and quickly too. A carriage was waiting, driven by the most discrete and loyal of the Royal Guard. It took them down to Ponyville, just in front of the public library, leaving the two sisters behind. A pickup time was already arranged.
One year, they had invited Spike, now the local librarian, to attend. He had declined, of course, but it had seemed wrong not to ask. Their visit today was not as princesses, but as simple ponies. There was no parade, no speeches, no pomp, no honor guard, and the residents of Ponyville understood that.
Their destination was a ways out of town. The land had been bought by the sisters and turned into a beautiful park. It, like the town library, was paid for by a stipend from the royal treasury. Two gardeners worked full time to ensure that everything was in order, year round. The patrons only visited twice a year, but it was, technically, a public park.
Celestia and Luna walked through the park slowly, exploring every corner again. They knew it all like the fall of their fetlocks, but it didn’t matter. Luna carried the lavender package along on her back, checking often to make sure it hadn’t fallen.
At last they arrived at a single, simple statue. The shape of a mare, carved out of amethyst, with an equally simple engraving. At long last, Luna removed the package from her back and, unwrapping it, placed the newly-picked bouquet of flowers into its designated spot beside the statue.
The two princesses sat in the grass opposite the statue, leaning on another for support. They had talked for a time, not with each other, but with the statue, catching up.
After a few minutes of silence, Luna finally turned to her sister. “I miss her.”
“As do I.”
Luna let out a shudder. “But sometimes... I forget. To miss her, I mean. Sometimes, for days or even weeks, I just... forget.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Celestia whispered in reply. “We aren’t meant to hurt forever.”
“It feels wrong, like a betrayal, somehow.”
“I doubt she’d see it that way. In fact, if she knew we’d done all this, she would be... quite angry.”
Luna chuckled wetly. “Probably. But it’s only natural, isn’t it? After all, she was one of the Elements of Harmony, and--”
“And our Twilight,” Celestia finished softly.
“And our Twilight,” Luna agreed.
The blue alicorn raised her head to the sky, up where she knew a bright constellation would be tonight. Years ago, she had removed the words from the sky, deciding instead to etch them in stone for all to see, on a simple, plain statue in a park on the outskirts of a small town.
They sat in silence for a few minutes longer, both of them knowing that time was drawing short. The march of life and time moved ever onwards, and they could only afford to stop for so long before being left behind. Sharing a sigh, the two stood, brushed grass from each other’s coats, and once again donned the raiments of their position and stature. A shadow betrayed the approach of their chariot, and the two moved to where their driver’s hooves wouldn’t tear up the ground.
In silence they boarded, in silence they flew, replacing sad thoughts with happy memories. It would have to do. After all, life goes on.
Author's Note
A conversation with a woman at work prompted this, I think. Several days ago, someone called into the tech support line where I work because someone gained access to her sister's email. A sister who had passed just a few days prior. She wanted it to stop, so I defied the rules we had in place, logged into her third-party email, and blocked the sender.
I took an early break that day, pulled up the contacts in my phone, and stared at Blake's number for the full ten minutes. I knew the woman's pain. I know that calling that number would probably just connect me to a stranger, but I could believe, just for a minute, that if I called Blake would pick up.
I thank you all for reading, from the bottom of my heart. I didn't write this for you, but the knowledge that something good came from this is worth it.
-thehalfelf
