At first, she did nothing but scream.

Curses and spittle-flecked rants of rage, the wails and moans of self-directed grief, the hoarse moans of bitter regret, the pitiful cries for a pointless forgiveness.

It was all the same. The roars of a wounded animal lashing out at the world and its enemies and itself.

But there is nothing much to scream at on the moon and after a time she tired of the empty, unlistening air and became still.

That is when I first spoke to her.

"Is this not what you wanted?"

Then the air was once more filled with screaming, for now little Luna finally had a target.

[hr]

When the screams died down again I did not at first approach, for I too tired of the empty air. And so we sat a while in the humming silence and felt the turning of the ground beneath our feet, saw the lights of her sister's charge curve around the horizon in patient loops.

After a time she spoke, and the quiet of it seemed to echo through the black skies.

"How long?"

I pondered the heavens, thinking of the many times I had watched them pass, and found her answer. "Near a quarter century now, I should think."

Collapsed in sheer exhaustion as she was she did not sag, for there was nowhere for her body to go; but what little light had remained in her eyes seemed to dim a little. I confess I found it vexing.

"Leave me be, spectre."

Her words were quiet but I found no jest in them, and so left her to her misery.

[hr]

When once I happened upon the princess again the skies had moved around us a hundredfold times more than when last I had seen her, and I found her much changed.

It appeared that she had not moved overmuch from where I had left her, for her once glossy coat now hung heavy with moondust, silky trails of silver streaming from worn feathertips. She sat on her haunches, hunched forward like an old nag, half planted in the ground like some withered tree after a landslide, now clinging to the dull earth with only the deepest and bitterest of roots.

I waited. She did not move.

Eventually, I asked again:

"Is this not what you wanted?"

I waited. She did not move, but instead made some small noise, like the rustle of her old silken gowns over stone castle floors. I realised after a moment that she was laughing - it seemed the dust had coated even her throat, and so she sat and quietly laughed, the wheezing huff of a mare before the gallows.

I misliked that laugh, and asked her again, forcefully now:

"Is this not what you wanted?"

The laughing stopped. She did not move.

Eventually, I left.

[hr]

When next I returned to where the princess sat the dust had risen to her chest. Her mane, once the envy and muse of every artist, resembled more the crumbling gravel walls of a long abandoned mine than the skies above us.

I kicked her.

Time and neglect cannot touch an alicorn, and I have no doubt she barely felt the blow, but to be touched by something other than the stillness and slow weight of burial clearly startled her, for she flinched, dust spilling away onto the barren ground and scattering into the air.

"Is this not what you wanted? A world of your own, a place to rule without standing in her shadow?"

She turned her head, slowly, more dust cascading downwards as she tilted wide eyes, focused for the first time in four hundred years, towards me.

It is unnerving to so thoroughly hold the gaze of a goddess, but what need does a shadow have to fear the light that casts it? I met her gaze.

"You told me in the quiet hours of the night of the new world you would build if just given a chance. You have a world, Luna. Now build it."

She stared at me, unmoving. I had passed years in what felt like days as I wondered the mountains and valleys of this empty world, but those next few seconds felt like an eternity. And then in one smooth, deliberate motion, Luna stood up.

The accumulated weight of four centuries of stillness burst into the air, swirling in clouds and plumes of shimmering refracted starlight. Her blue coat gleamed like new, and her mane and tail seemed to reach forever out into the everspinning sea of stars above. A goddess risen anew from the grave.

"Come then, Nightmare," she said, looking out at the untouched horizon. "Let us build."

[hr]

The city was dead, but it was no less glorious for it. No civilisation had ever walked these halls, but its splendour rivaled the grandest of any bygone kingdom's halcyon days. Grand cathedrals in her name, spiralling towers reaching towards her everdistant home, deep caverns hiding the treasures of this worlds deepest places, murals and statues and glittering jewels. It would be the crown of any empire, the anointed jewel of any people, the envy of all who beheld it.

Only I was here to see it. Only I ever would.

I walked through the city, down deserted streets of polished marble, under arches adorned with carvings of plants this place would never see grow. 

I met her in her tower. The centre of her citadel, taller and more magnificent than anything else she had built, her castle to watch over her kingdom. My princess stood under the pale earthlight and turned to look at me with such serene joy that I could hardly bear to speak.

"It is done."

"It is."

She turned away, and gazed out at all she had wrought. "Do you like it?"

"How," I asked, "could I not?"

She looked to me again, smiling sweetly. "I am glad". She turned her head back to the city, then tilted it slightly upwards, towards her distant home. "How long?"

I did not answer.

She laughed. "Not long then." We looked at the earth then, she and I, in shared stillness and companionship.

"Stay with me?"

"Always."

"Kiss me?"

"...Of course."