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I slipped into the unlit porch. Shabna had pulled her feet up onto the rocking chair. Her breathing was ragged.

I sat on the love-seat next to her and looked out over the town. It was still too soon to say anything.

After a minute, she sniffled and said, "Omar, do you love me?"

Now there was a loaded question, and not where I wanted to go. But there was no way around it. "Yes."

"Then why doesn't James?"

I sighed. Simply denying that he didn't wouldn't get anywhere. I gathered my thoughts for another minute. "I had an idea for the fic. I'd like to run it by you."

She sighed, then laughed slightly. "If you want."

~~~~

Celestia and Luna were rulers of Equestria. In the day court, a group of ponies came to Celestia and proposed a new holiday in her honor: the Summer Sun Celebration. Celestia was greatly pleased, and said they could have it.

That evening, Luna looked over the court record from the day and noted this. In the morning, she asked her sister about it. Celestia talked it down to avoid hurting her sister's feelings.

But over the next several days, new details were invented for this holiday. In particular, the notion that the sun should be raised at midnight, and held up to the next midnight. And Luna soon found out. Celestia, seeing the magnitude of the event growing, proposed to the celebration organizers that there also be some sort of Night celebration, from noon to noon of some other day.

They replied that the day brought many benefits, and they listed them. Celestia allowed that those were true, and advised them to go ask her sister about the benefits of the night.

She assumed that they actually did - and they certainly did not correct her in this error. They had no wish for a night celebration, and did not wish to hear reasons to want one.

Now, Luna was able to take it when some silly ponies preferred her sister. She was used to that. But on the evening before the evening of the celebration, she was feeling a bit extra down about it. She asked her sister, "All this talk about how wonderful the sun is. Aren't there many good things about the night?"

Celestia replied, "I thought it more your place to argue in favor of the night." Now, Celestia meant that she could not be as good an advocate for it herself as Luna could be - but Luna took her to mean that she had no interest in it.

So Luna said, "Then send them to me!"

Celestia said, "I thought I did. Yes. I definitely sent them to you!" She stamped a hoof in anger. Anger at the petitioners for not following her request and anger at herself for not checking that they had.

Luna took her to mean that they very well had come visited her and Luna must be lying. Deeply offended, Luna was at a loss for words.

When Celestia went on, "I should have checked.", well, Luna couldn't fit it into her understanding of the situation. It stuck out. And she was too agitated to slow down and think. So she was simultaneously angry at her sister for saying that she was a liar, and for not being careful.

"You didn't care enough about me to even check?"

Imagine loving someone for thousands of years. Your sister. And you've made a signficant error, and are coming to grips with that. Now, everything you do, she sees as more evidence that you never really loved her. That's not how she should be thinking, you think. And so you get angry. Of course, this isn't the best thing to do, but it's very hard not to. So Celestia finally did get mad at Luna. Things degenerated rapidly from there.

Left to stew overnight, Luna rationalized madly, and succeeded more in 'determining' that her sister was unloving and unfair and generally wrong, than in detecting her own errors. And in the morning, she did not let the sun up. In the confrontation over that, the argument spiraled further out of control, and she took on the person of Nightmare Moon. She held the sun down all day, and was defeated only at midnight. Celestia made the sun rise.

Celestia herself would have cancelled the celebration, but she had already done her part, and let the ponies have their fun. And every year thereafter, she wondered, "What could I have done better?"

~~~~

Shabna did not respond right away. "Did you just make that up?"

"No, I was going to work it into the backstory somehow."

"So, I'm Nightmare Moon."

"No, You're Shabna Mistry. And you have a chance to do much better than Luna did."

"He screamed at me."

"Only because you oh-so-calmly stabbed him in the heart. Heck, it hurts when you suggest I don't care, and I don't love you a quarter as much as he does. Love is vulnerability. You know that, or you wouldn't be hurt yourself."

She stared out numbly, the spinning search-lights over the circus playing on her face. "So, what, he breaks a ten-generation heirloom and screams at me, and I'm the bad guy?"

"Candice is talking to him, and in their conversation, I'm sure he's the bad guy. But here and now, we're focusing on what you can do differently."

"You're sure he was taking blame on himself?"

"I'd lay a thousand to one odds. Candice too."

She picked some dirt out from between her toes. "Well, that's good, I guess. He still needs to learn some simple fucking mindfulness."

"Yes, and he agrees with you on that. I'm sure it can be mended, somehow. Not as good as new, but pretty good. Are you ready to go in?"

"Give me a minute."

---

Nightmare Moon drifted from total unconsciousness to delirium. Moments from the fight drifted back to her. Mainly, the last moment, when Jadis caught in her hand a lightning bolt Nightmare Moon had hurled over her shoulder, and directed it into Nightmare Moon's back.

Jadis grinned widely. "Oh, excellent. I love it when you come to for this. Your helplessness is so much more sweet when you can appreciate it yourself."

She brandished a serrated knife, and reached forward with her other hand. She seized Nightmare Moon's horn. Like all the other times, she tried to struggle, but nothing happened.

Jadis slashed with the knife, the huge motion producing a tiny nick on her neck, the twenty-second in a neat line. Then she pulled the princess's horn back, opening the cut wider. Blood welled out, and she began licking it up.

Eventually, she was done. Her bloodstained face came into view. "Delicious as always, my pet. So much to drain, and so very much time to do it in."

Then she scraped a paste off of a leaf into her prisoner's lips. Nightmare Moon's vision went dark.

All right. Wait a minute for her to go. It's full moon. My best chance to make it. Next time, I'll be way too weak. She felt the moon beating down on her body, pouring in strength, like a watering can into a vast desert. It wasn't much, but it was enough to reach out to the stone of cold fire.

And she had nowhere near the strength needed to wield it, nor anyone else to pay the price for her. Despair filled her, and she could not reach through enough of it to find the fire and its clarity. Everything was meaningless. Conquest was meaningless. Equestria was meaningless. The balance of night and day was meaningless. Revenge was meaningless. Love was meaningless. Embarrassment was meaningless. Pride was meaningless.

One constant remained - for good or for ill, the one everything had always been about - "Oh, sister..."

She was in a strange palace courtyard, on the ground. Celestia was on a bench above her, also looking ill. Elephants, including two in crowns, and an elderly female human, were sitting about as well. It was evening, and the stars were beginning to come out.

Celestia picked up her head. "Luna?"

She didn't care.

Celestia said, "Look at the stars. Can't you feel them humming?"

She complied without intending to. She had loved the night, once. This moon bore the mark she'd placed.

Celestia went on, "These stars are suns in their own right. The moon rises in daytime. Here, our domains include each other."

More seriously: "You need to know when you are, don't you?"

She closed her eyes, and Celestia felt what she felt.

Celestia murmured, "You need more than the date! I'm weak, sister, but I will do what I can."

Luna's head began to clear, and she began to see again - and she could move more than her eyes.

With strength, I can break free. But what then? I do need that date, too. And there she is, in the world with this moon! They know these things! Luna started, "When..." - She made sure she said it only to Celestia, not saying it out loud where Jadis could hear, as Jadis had lately shown signs of comprehension - "When did Tycho crater form?"

Celestia repeated this out loud for the benefit of the elephants, who could not see her hallucinations. One in a red and white suit whipped out a pad of some sort and began tapping at it. His answer was indistinct, but Celestia relayed, "One hundred and eight million years."

Luna reached out to the planets around Celestia, found six, and memorized their locations. "Thank you."

The courtyard collapsed as Celestia fell below delirium and Luna rose out of it. She stood up, shakily, and hobbled away as quietly as she could. One hundred and eight, less how far we've come, is... ten and a half million years. I can work out the precise date from the planets once I'm vaguely close. And Omar thought that would be a problem!

She paused. Omar... She felt no echo, not even from the other world. Gone. The emptiness she felt about that took its place next to the rest of the emptiness that was only slowly draining away.

Feeling stronger, she spread her wings and flew. Even if Jadis could track her, she could not catch up.