Eclipsed

     What's wrong with me?

     I should be happy for her.

     Why am I not?

     If I knew, I wouldn't find me asking my self what's wrong.

   But here I am.

   And nopony else knows about it.

   Not even Luna.

   Not even Twilight.

   Not even Cadence.

   I'm on my own. Completely and totally on my own.

   Ever since the wedding a year ago, Luna's been getting more comfortable with our subects.

   A part-time princess. rarely actually at the palace except during nighttime.

    Her husband shows her his old haunts all day, three times a week.

    I can see them taking off from their tower now, actually.

    Their daughters are becoming wondeful princesses, and Prisma helps me and Twilight with a fair amount of royal duties when her mother is gone with her father.

    Aura's usually with her sister, but today she decided to take a cloud bath. She's up there splashing in the clouds.....how does something that's not a liquid splash anyway?

    I had no idea a thousand years ago, and I'm still clueless a thousand years later.

    But I'm getting distracted. I delved into my mind to figure out what was wrong with me, not reminisce about the good old days when a princess could wear a floppy hat with googly eyes in public, wear sunglasses and socks to a court meeting to drive the wrinkly old bats insane, and when a princess could take a cloudbath in a public cloud bathhouse.

    I've reached a conclusion. My mind is at war with itself, dancing and twirling around it, trying not to touch the subject most touchy for me at the moment. My sister's wedding.

   She's grown distant from me. It's painful. Mentally painful and physically painful. I know she loves him, but I wish we could have some sister-sister bonding time again, like we used to once or twice every month. It's been one year, and nothing of the sort has been suggested by either of us.

     I gave myself all sorts of excuses at first. It was just the strain of being a mother. It was just settling in. It was just having to protect her husband from the press.  It was just teaching her daughters to be proper princesses. I had many different theories, ranging from stupid things to major things to small things.

    Anything but the probable and painful truth.

   Anything but the fact that maybe......just maybe,.......she....didn't......love me as much anymore.

   Anything but the fact that maybe her husband was closer to her than I was. That she might be closer to him than she was to me.

  Anything. Anything else. Just not that. Not that train of thinking. I couldn't handle it then, and I still have to be careful. The last time I let myself just think, well.........I'm still having issues explaining to everypony that the red dragon eyes and the flames that had made up my mane and tail were just an experimental illusionary spell, performed on me by Twilight.

   And the simple fact tht it was there, in the back of my mind, behind the regal mask. Behind my everyday facade. The emotionless, always in control ruler that my subjects know and see frequently. The gentle, regal pony they all looked up to.

   It whispers to me, and I can see now why Luna became Nightmare. There was too much bitterness to hold in, and it couldn't be properlyvented through tears or words.

    It could only be vented by action. So my little sister had acted and ended up on the moon for a thousand years, agonizing over her poor choices when the Nightmare let her go, raging at me and my little ponies when it held sway over her body.

    Should I resign? Is it even possible? Every ruler before me ruled till the people lost faith in them and they faded. Till our immortal equivalent of death.

   But wait. I know what's wrong now. Why I can't get a good night's sleep anymore. Why I have less confidence than usual. Why nothing ever seems joyful or bright to my eyes anymore.

    It's a feeling I'm familiar with from Luna's thousand-year exile.

    It's depression. I'm depressed. Why?

    Maybe, just maybe because you have been separated from your little ponies as your sister got closer to them, a little voice in the back of my head nagged at me, the voice of the tyrant I could be if I let it take me as Luna had been taken by the Nightmare.

   Shut. Up. I told it, reasserting control over myself, body, mind, and magic.

   But at least I knew what the problem was. I levitated a quill over, an inkwell and a rather large roll of parchment coming with it, and settled onto my plush, elaborate (to say the least), purple and gold embroidered couch.

    Dipping my quill into the inkwell, I began to write out my formal resignation to my subjects.The parchment glowed golden as my magic swept the quill lightly across its surface.

     I would no longer be an active ruler, just a noble or minor royalty. And maybe it would help me tackle my depression if I wasn't being thouroughly watched all the time.

   Press. Guards. Friends. Family. A whole nation.

    All watching me closely. All the bucking time.

    I cringed as the rather unpolite word swirled around my mind, echoing and resounding multiple times. The thing that was a  nightmare me shifted in its corner of my mind and snickered at my actions, but it stayed silent.

   As I paused my writing to mentally scowl at the creature, I added to my mentaal checklist: Find duplicate personality remover spell. It might be in the library, but I bet it'll be in the Archives instead. Most likely. And probably in the Starswirl the Bearded wing, no less.

    I set my quill back to the paper. I had an important legal document to draft, revise, keep secret, finish, and submit to the court I'd set up when I first became a monarch, a ruler of my ponies, an icon as frequently grouped with the sun as a hammer and a nail, or a fish and a fishbowl, or pond, or whatever.