Celestia rested her forelegs on her balcony rail and gazed up at the moon that had been her sister’s.

[i]Has it been five years already?[/i] she asked, her thoughts her only companion.

The head of an alicorn mare stared down, silent and unblinking.

She looked away. Remembering that night — that long, near-interminable night when she with sorrow in her heart cast her closest friend into Lunar exile — was never pleasant, and she strove to avoid it when possible.

For her failings — failing to consider her sister’s needs, failing to even try a peaceful solution until too late, failing to maintain harmony when it was most needed — this was to be her penance: to rule without her sister’s assistance for a thousand years.

And even for an immortal who could draw up and carry out plans that lasted for decades, one thousand years was a [i]long damned time[/i]. Her subjects had already drawn up a new calendar dating from the banishment and begun using it, despite her desires otherwise.

Well, they would do as they wished, and making them wish otherwise was a fool’s errand once they decided to do something. All she could do now was consider how to continue on.

The hole in the sky caused by Luna’s extended absence was one she had already patched. Celestia had never had her sister’s artistic touch, but she could at least maintain the designs that were there and give the moon its push and pull when necessary.

The hole in the government, while substantial, was also solvable. Many more ponies would be required to fill the roles that Luna had juggled seemingly effortlessly, but ponies with the necessary specialties existed, and it would be good for the nation in the long run.

The hole in her heart would be much harder to fill.

She had taken lovers before, some for longer than others. But they had all passed on, as was their wont as mortals, and they had never fully grasped the burden of immortality and the burden of ruling. Luna had known both with the familiarity of long experience, and there was no other with whom Celestia could share her frustrations and expect a response of true understanding.

The thought of creating another alicorn had occurred to them both, but their previous efforts had been fruitless. Clover had been uninterested, and Starswirl had been unsuccessful, and Celestia knew of no finer theoreticians in all the history of Equus. If the Bearded One himself had failed, what chance did others have?

She had seen Starswirl’s notes herself, and suspected that given time to fully study them, she could succeed. The fault as she understood it was twofold: Not only did it require raw power on a scale that only the strongest unicorns could match, that power had to be directed in very specific ways, lest it cause more problems than it solved. But it would take even her some years to craft the spell, and those were years her nation could not spare.

No, all that was left for her was to push through.

[i]‘Twill be a long millennium.[/i]

She sighed, then turned and left the balcony.

[i]Best get to it.[/i]