Our story begins on the day before the Millinium Festival, an event held on every thousandth night. This festival celebrates the different races of ponies in Equestria, and consists of free food, a dance floor designed by Luna herself, and the traditional Hearthswarming Eve play, depicting the founding of Equestria by the different races, those being the earth ponies, the pegasi, and the unicorns. Afterwards, the princesses tell the guests to try and converse with at least one pony of a different race. This way, they are all better able to understand one another and live in Harmony, and often new friendships are made.
A few years ago, the princesses took a new pony under their wing, a unicorn with powerful shape-shifting magic known as Dragon Charge. Of course, no pony is anything without friendship, so they allowed Dragon's best friend, an earth pony known as The Critic, to stay with them as well. Luna trained her pupil well, but he was not yet at his full potential.
On this particular day, Dragon's teacher gave him a very peculiar task. "Use your unicorn magic to help decorate for the Millinium Festival.", Luna had instructed him early in the morning, "Then go to the festival and enjoy yourself. Critic, too." But Dragon had no interest in any sort of silly party. Still, he did as he was instructed. He got up from his bed, went to the castle's dining chamber, made some coffee, woke up his friend(With water ballons.), and then went to the castle grounds to begin helping decorate. Fortunately, a rare(but always welcome in his book) visitor was there to liven things up.
"How come Gods of Chaos don't have festivals?" Discord questioned to himself while cutting the nearest hedge with a chainsaw.
"Maybe they do, but you're just too cool to show up." Dragon said, smiling and waving.
Discord grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Makes sense to me." He replied. "So, Princess Nightlight dragged you into this, too, huh?"
"Yeah.", Dragon admitted.
"Where are you going to be at the festival tonight.?" Critic asked.
"Oh, I'm not going.", Discord stated.
Critic snickered. "Gonna watch your stories?"
"Umm... of course not!" Discord said defensively.
Critic smiled as he continued joking. "So you're not going to find out whether Hammy and Sadface get together or not?"
Discord immediately shot back, "For your information, Hammy is secretly dating Sadface's twin sister, but neither know it ye... dang!"
Critic laughed. The three continued decorating, and when the were finished, Discord fashioned sleighs and created an ice track around the castle. Finally, he had the hedges, which he had trimmed into the shapes of horses, pull the sleighs, the three friends racing around the castle.
When they were finished, Discord returned everything as it was after the initial decoration, left, Dragon and Critic waved goodbye, and the two ponies returned to the dining chamber to await the festival.
"This tea tastes funny. I think that mare over there messed with our drinks.", Critic joked, pointing at the young maid across the room.
"Oh, no, Mistah Critic", she said shyly, "I made it just like you asked."
"Hey, I'm messin' with ya." he said. "Could use a bit more sugar, though.", he critiqued, handing his cup back to her.
"You know she could easily spit in that and you would never know.", Dragon warned. Critic chuckled.
"Who, Karen? Nah, I'm sure she's just as bored as I am."
Why, yes she was, if you consider doing all of the cooking and cleaning for the royal guards, as well as the princesses, and on top of that keeping the area clean, not that she minded it. Honestly, she was just grateful to be living in a nice castle.
She arrived with Critic's tea not long after he asked.
"This isn't cold tea", he told her, then Dragon smacked him in the back of the head.
"What?"