Perhaps I was destined to be second best.
Perhaps it was I, who was bound to suffer, tirelessly, in the wake of my declamatory sister's shadow.
Upon the surface of my darkly ravishing visage, I was grateful for what I was given.
But below the masque, I was seething.
Not even our birth givers understood me in the least. The second born from mother's writhing placental fluids, I had been placed in a carriage with numerous blankets, forced to brave the cold side of the world where there were no hugs, no kisses, no demulcent sighs or coos of fidelity and adoration. It was I, in that carriage, as a newborn filly, who fought death in the first minutes of my very life, while my older sister, whom they named Celestia, was possessively held in their tight embrace throughout the days and nights.
I would have rotted away in my crib.
Had it not been for my wet nurse.
It was she who gave me a childhood.
It was she, who gave me my name. My real name.
They named me Selene, for my powers would be tied to the moon when I finally rose from the covenant of my parents' constrictions. But my wet nurse, whose warm, blessed teats I sucked hungrily on, desperate for the affection she so generously bestowed upon me, decided that Selene did not fit me.
"Look here, Selene." She said, her voice turgid and loud, yet I found such a sound so utterly consolatory that I never wanted her to cease whispering to me. "Your cutie mark is starting to form. Isn't it beautiful?"
I nodded, not knowing what to say. I never cared about my cutie mark. I never cared about anything, but receiving attention of any kind. I would grow to deny such a fact, but the truth was, in the days of my youth, it was imperative, that I was loved, seeing as I acquired none from my parents, for all their time, energy, and judgment was reserved for Celestia. I savored each word the wet nurse said to me.
"I must say." She declared, preparing me for my bath, a royal basin sitting in the next room and filled with steaming hot water. "I despise the name Selene."
I blinked. "Why?" I whispered, my fragile voice trembling. "It's the name my parents gave me."
"The king and queen may have given birth to you, but they know nothing about you as their daughter." She said, her opinionated girth personified in her tenor.
"I like my name." I lied. I only kept it, because it was the last piece of my parents that I had, and something told me to cherish that.
"Well...how about we give you a nickname, then. How about..." The wet nurse glanced outside the Machiavellian styled window at the rising moon.
"Luna."
For the first time in my short life, I smiled. 'Luna'. It had such a pretty ring to it. Simplicity, yet profundity, all in a single, two syllable title.
Like an idiot, I proudly spread the word that my new name was Luna.
My parents were infuriated by the ideas poisoning their youngest daughter's mind, though I doubt they cared about me so much as the fact that I was being influenced by something other than their neglect. And so they rid the castle of the wet nurse, and her outspoken fashion of caring for me was no more. Her discharge left a gaping hole in the center of my heart, and I fell into a deep depression. All I did was study, and gaze through my telescope, pointed at the moon and exquisite stars above. Late into the night, I surveyed the realm I was soon to inherit, finding my adoration for such a domain grow and grow, until it transformed into an obsession.
Celestia may have taken on the duty of the rise and fall of the sun. She may have realized that the whole of Equestria depended on her. She may have known its basic functions and had an infinite amount of wisdom for the horses over whom she would soon rule.
But me...
I possessed the passion.
I grew to cherish my lovely moon, its sheer elegance, enchanting me every night, so much, that I had become nocturnal, sleeping during the day, and spending the whole of night, wandering the floral gardens of the palace whilst gazing heavenward into the aphotic darkness of the sky, forever tracing that marvelous orb with my glittering eyes.
"Luna..."
I turned one night, to see Celestia standing the doorway to my room. I was once again so entranced by the moon that I did not notice her presence at first. I tilted my head in inquiry.
"Why are you awake, sister?" I asked her, my words direct, even somewhat harsh. But she, and her boundless cognition knew not to take my offense to my tone.
"Are you always up at this time?" She asked, glancing curiously out the window. "Gazing at the moon?"
I nodded slowly, never blinking, the intensity of my stare threatening to consume everything in its path.
"Please...go to sleep at the correct time." She said gently, pleadingly.
I narrowed my eyes. "Of course you assume that your time, is the correct time. Such closed minded thinking."
I went back to watching the moon. And she left.
Like a film, my life passed by. Celestia and I grew steadily into the mares who would receive the sun, and the moon. Beautiful, comely mares. Rumors spread about our beauty, even mine. I had caught my likeness here and there, and I could never help but smile at each glance. I was magnificent, really. No one else would think so, say I was being compared to Celestia's bright burnished refinement. But there was a certain iniquitous grace that I myself had possessed, that Celestia did not, and I took a secret narcissistic pleasure in this.
It was more than a duty, to raise the moon. It was a sublime fixation, and I enjoyed each time I took part in it. I was the only one however, who apparently savored the night, the shadows that danced across the trees, for the creatures I had came to eventually look down upon, slept through the ecstasy that was my precious darkness. After dusk had fallen, I took another one of my numerous walks through the gardens of Canterlot, on outside admiring the way the soft moonlit glow gently caressed the floral bounty. But oh, how notions of the sinful breed flowed through my poignant mind.
I hated them. I hated them all. I hated the king and queen. I hated myself, for being so worthless.
I hated my sister.
No, no.
I truly loved my sister. Deep down, in a place where the developing hostility had not yet touched. She was wise, caring, and incredibly power. If anything about her was worth respect, it was her strength.
I coveted that strength. I coveted that power, that she had. That enchantment, that she held over the land, and its inhabitants. I wanted it for myself. And even more, I wanted the love, that she so effortlessly acquired from every living soul who knew who she was.
And so, I vowed to have it for myself.
Another century passed. I watched as everything withered, died, and was reborn once more, the circle of life washing over the world like it always had. And I had conceived my plan, whilst immersed in my dream that wreaked of avaricious longing. I refused to let the moon descend one night, and the uproar was astonishing. Awe inspiring. During my reign I transformed into a fiendish creature. I gazed at myself in the pools of the gardens, and grinned maliciously at my appearance. I was stunning. Baronial. And most of all, frightening. Now, I thought, should my subjects refuse to give me the respect I so rightfully deserve, they would be forever shrouded in eternal darkness. The most amusing part of it all was, I intended, anyway, for the land to be dark, whether or not they admitted their reverence. It was a sickeningly wonderful feeling.
The king and queen threatened to execute me for such belligerence, and like a bull headed monster I challenged them to try, but my sister stepped forth, begging them not to kill me, and in turn, begging me, to end my tyrannical dominion.
I'll never forget her face, as she pleadingly expressed her wishes. Her eyes, her beautiful, aching eyes. It was obvious she was at war with herself; decision had to be made.
To serve her country.
Or to save her sister.
The princess of the sun chose her country. And even through the resentment I felt for her, I could not blame her.
We battled amidst the stars. Her bright luminosity emanated throughout the sky, mocking my marvelous night, and I became unfocused, a brutal harrowing umbra whose only cognitive urge was to kill, and be victorious. It mattered not that she was my sister. That she was on the path of righteousness, and doing the right thing is not always easy. In my quiveringly primordial state, she used her wisdom and logic against me, and I fell to her sword, so to speak.
"Do you surrender?" She asked me softly. While my labored breath escaped my throat in heaves, she did not seem to be weathered at all. My strength was abysmal compared to hers, despite all I had done to raise myself up to her level. I knew it was because she fought for the good of everything; nothing selfish about her in the least, unlike me.
And I despised her for it.
I spat in her face, my saliva running down the side of her cheek. She did not so much as grimace.
"I will n e v e r surrender to you, or your pathetic subjects." I hissed, a serpent's leering malevolence agleam in my despicable countenance.
It was the strangest thing I had ever witnessed. Celestia, with an expressionless visage, let a single, glimmering tear, escape from her duct. A lucent tear, shed just for me.
She loved me.
I loved her.
But I hated her.
She knew what she had to do.
And so she harnessed the blasted elements of harmony, to vanquish my corruption. Imprisoned me, in a place, where I could spend forever with my moon, but have no control over it whatsoever. I was to spend until the end of days there, watching the world pass me by, and having nothing, but my own hatred, to feed my withering body, and my decaying mind.
They say, that bitterness is a mirror, silvern and merciless in its reflective nature. Like a cold temptress, it flows down the curves and grooves of the land, cutting into the soil, a vengeful rapier, a dagger held so skillfully, poised in a deadly stance above my heart, ready for sweet, bloody, carmine insertion. For that was what it was akin to, my banishment, my exile, my ostracism for what I thought, what I believed, was fair. Of course I realized that fairness is not always what is truly right, but care I did not. I was selfish, I was bombastic, I wanted to rule this beautiful country of ours, and while I found myself ascending the moon during each precious night, the delicious darkness embracing the lands like a mantle of woolen shadow, everyone slumbered, slept, like the ignorant fools they were, the parsimonious, meager creatures who coveted my sister Celestia's flaming sun and shunned my resplendent moon, the frigid, glacial beauty that I created with my bare hooves, and a sharp, yet otherworldly mind.
It was then, that I started to contemplate, whether or not I even truly belonged in Equestria. Perhaps I was fated to recede into the ether, where I would forever be alongside my treasured moon, the lilliputian planet in the sky, white, soft, pale, and arctic. My heart, poisoned by my grasping yearnings, still remembered my sister's face as she incarcerated me with the grandest breed of magic. How strong, determined, and utterly sorrowful she looked, as she sent me where I would fester like a neglected bloody laceration. It was like she planned the whole state of affairs, and that only led to more enmity within me.
I succumbed to insanity's clutch. Throughout my studies, I vaguely remembered how long a confinement in the moon would be. A thousand I had to do was wait, bide my time, all while nurturing that rancor, that spawned and writhed inside my guts and entrails like the brew of a witch. For this is what I had become, a bereaved sorceress, whose greatest punishment, would be her lament, and onslaught of madness.
For a thousand years, I let the lunacy overcome me.
For a thousand years, I planned my escape.
For a thousand years, I vowed my utmost, ruinous, revenge.
I love you, Celestia. And that is why, I must kill you.