The palace sun room had not been designed or decorated with viewings in mind. Professionals would consider its skylights and bright white-and-gold decor to be insufficiently somber. But it was the only room on the ground floor of the palace that had both a front and a back entrance, and was large enough for the coffin.

The room was normally not used at night—it was not night, according to the grandmother clock near the entrance, but the skylights were empty black mirrors—and so four portable gas lights had been brought in and one placed in each corner. Their steady, quiet hissing seemed loud in the silence.

Every few seconds, the two honor guards at the front entrance let a group of ponies in, usually one at a time but sometimes an entire family. Outside, in the darkness, the line of waiting ponies, standing in hushed little clusters, stretched out through the palace gates and far down Main Street, back towards the city gates.

Two more guards stood at the exit, and a final pair, one unicorn and one pegasus, both white with blue manes, stood at attention on the side of the room opposite the enormous gold-plated coffin. They kept watchful eyes on each pony as he or she came in and stood a few moments in front of the coffin. Some sniffled; some cried freely; a few wailed loudly. Some pursed their lips tightly together, so that only short bursts of low whinnies escaped.

Nopony noticed the guards, except now and then, when they would gently but firmly drag an overwrought mourner out. They did notice the dark, metallic-blue alicorn brooding over the opposite side of the coffin, gripping its edge with her forehooves. She never raised her eyes from the casket, and seldom blinked. She ignored them so completely that some ponies wondered whether they had not been admitted by mistake.

“Three days, and she hasn’t shed one tear,” the pegasus guard whispered. “Nor raised her sister’s sun. Disrespectful, is what it is.”

The unicorn shrugged.

“I’d just like to see some decent, pony feeling out of her for once,” the pegasus went on. “Her own sister laid out before her. Dead three days, and still warmer than her.” He looked over at Luna and shivered.

“Princess of the Night,” the unicorn whispered back. “What did you expect?”

An elderly unicorn mare wearing a black veil stood before the coffin. Her hoof began to shake violently as she tried to blow her nose. The two guards paused to watch her with a professional detachment, until she managed to stow the used hoofkerchief in a pocket and exit without incident.

“When she’d walk by in the morning,” the pegasus said, “she’d smile as she passed me on her way in. Just that one smile, you know, but it would last me the whole day. It was like—like honey, or warm mead.”

“I always thought of hot melted butter, myself,” the unicorn said.

“It’ll be a cold and quiet palace now, mark my words,” the pegasus said. “I’ve half a mind to ask for a discharge.”

“Don’t talk like that. We’re royal guards. We’ve been through worse than cold looks.”

“For her. That one, she don’t even know my name.”

“First Corporal Wind Racer,” a husky voice said from the other side of the room.

The pegasus guard jerked to a more rigid attention, his eyes and nostrils wide and his breath silent, and his ears flicked up and down, struggling with themselves to stay upright. Luna looked up slowly from the coffin and fixed her eyes on him without changing expression. “You are relieved of your watch for today. Go and inform the Captain of the Guard that any member of the Solar Guard in good standing who no longer wishes to serve may receive an honorable discharge.” Then she looked back down, her demeanor so unchanged and remote that it seemed to the two guards that they might have only imagined she had spoken at all.

Wind Racer blinked at the princess uncertainly, but she did not look up again. He glanced at his comrade, then saluted to Luna, clicked his rear hooves, and marched out the exit.

No one in the room spoke for the rest of the evening. When the last pony in line came through the doors, the honor guard shut it, gently, with a quiet click. Only after the last mourner left did Luna take her hooves down from the lid of the casket and leave through the rear doors, holding her head high and moving at a stately walk. The guards kept their eyes straight ahead. She did not look at them as she passed. Then the two guards at the rear doors shut those after her, and the five remaining guards were left alone with the body. Not long after, six fresh solar guards relieved them to stand the night vigil.

One of the new guards let out a startled whinny and spooked sideways as he passed the casket. The others swivelled their heads around quickly.

“I didn’t do it!” he brayed, staring at the casket. “It was like that when I got here!”

Where Luna had been standing, the edge of the casket’s lid had been crushed in two places, stripping off the gold leaf and splintering the bronze beneath into two hoof-shaped depressions.

Author's Notes:

This is a complete rip-off of a scene in the Gordon Dickson story "Brothers", which I haven't read in at least twenty years but still gives me a chill. This post by TheJediMasterEd is responsible for dredging it back up from my memory.

This is a writing exercise I sometimes do: Try to rewrite a story that I haven't read in many years and only remember the plot line of, and then compare what I wrote to the original story. But now I can't find the original story.

This is the fastest I've ever written: 820 words in just over 2 hours.