Moonlit Mare

A brief excerpt of a scene written for /moon/ on /mlp/

-T.E.

 

She could feel her. Hot breath washed over the nape of her neck. Cruel drips of saliva heated then cooled in terrible kisses on her navy fur. She was stock still; her knees locked in a fruitless effort to prevent them from trembling, adrenaline rushed through her veins to the beat of her quickening heart as blood pounded in her ears and drowned out the quiet callings of Canterlot.

 

“To think I could yet be so irresistible, even after all we’ve been through. You always were prone to extremes… No wonder your little protégé turned out the way she did.” A voice, barely audible at first, until whispers started to take shape, forming into a familiar voice that made her blood run cold. The tone was mocking and dark, a reminder of past transgressions that could not be undone. As the voice grew stronger, so did her sense of dread, until she was paralyzed with fear. Words flexed in tone and inflected until they were as sultry, saccharine, and alluring as they had been the very first time she heard them. As the first time she had spoken them.

 

“You…” Her chest grew tight, fretful thoughts racing through her mind. “You are not real. Not here. Nothing but a… Figment.” Luna had tried to speak boldly, confidently, but her best attempt to produce a booming statement came out as an unsure whisper that fell pitifully from her lips. Her words were but a single line of hope cast into an unforgiving dark. An attempt to pull herself back from the brink which only revealed the horrific reality that this hopeful lifeline had gone slack. The truth of the matter was, she was scared. Frightened. Not only of the black-coated mare standing just over her now like a predator upon its prey… But of what her sister might do, and how she might react to this dabbling and bending of the mind. Had she gone too far?

 

“Ah, but I am here. And I am so very, very, real.” The apparition retorted, the unnerving reverberation of her hoof against the marble floor corroborating her words. “And we are reunited at last, my little pony.” She savored the words, tasting them on the tip of her tongue, basking in the sensation. She strode about the mare, appearing to take in the sights of Luna’s private study and even tested the warm lick of filtered sunlight streaming in through a cooly-toned blind with a foreleg.

 

“Damnable witch… Have I not suffered enough under the auspices of your guidance?” She spit, her temper flaring as she fought to regain a standing against this ethereal foe. “A millennium imprisoned with you!” The dark-coated mare feigned offense at the smaller pony’s words, the charming smile she wore with its jagged, pearl, peaks snarling back at her in perverse delight. Luna was snarling herself, eyes boring into the other mare with a seething hatred. “What more is there for you to gain now? Punishing me further cannot and will not bring you back.”

 

“Punish you? Why I’m not here to punish you, dearest Luna! You’ve called me to help you.” It was Luna’s turn to appear shocked, though her surprise was much less feigned than her alter ego’s brilliant performance. “That is why you’re here. Alone. Talking to yourself in the depths of this most private sanctum. I do so love what you’ve done with the place; I had always thought it was a bit too spacious and empty.” Nightmare Moon chose her words carefully. With a surgical intent to carve and cut her way closer and closer to Luna, her hooves trespassing nearer and nearer until the two were face to face.

 

Hooves capped in gleaming, azure armor gingerly met the blue mare's chin and tilted her head up. A helmeted visage above turned her own gaze downward in a synchronous duet and met with the dampened eyes of the princess. Eyes that gazed up in a mixture of petty defiance and ages of pain.

 

"There's the brave little filly I remember," the helmeted figure said, her voice clear and purposeful. As she spoke, tears streamed down the princess's face, sparkling like diamonds in the pallid light. The figure lifted a hoof, and a soft glow emanated from her armor. The tears floated away from the princess's face, carried aloft by the gentle magic. It was as if they were in the weightless expanse of space, propelled by a horn, as black as the starry ocean itself, steeped in cyan magics.

 

"You can't help but be what others think of you," the figure continued, her voice low and soothing. "But you don't have to let them define you. You are more than the sum of their opinions."