“Sorceress Maeve Rosethicket, are you feeling better?” Princess Celestia asked as Maeve seated herself at the breakfast table.
“I was feeling bad?” Maeve replied, raising one thin, fiery orange eyebrow.
“Your -ahem- private issue.”
“Oh… that...” Maeve blinked a few times and she looked over at Princess Celestia. “That, uh, cleared up yesterday and it seems to be gone. There goes four days of my life I don’t want to remember.”
Clearing her throat, Princess Celestia held her head high. “Sorceress Maeve… Red Russet’s family is going to be taking a little vacation. They have been working very hard, and they are in need of a respite from their daily toil. There is a vacation cottage off in the Unicorn Range where I sometimes go when I need time to myself. I have made arrangements for you to go with them. Would you like to go?”
“I’d love to go… wait… will there be guards?” Maeve asked.
“Yes, guards are necessary, but they will remain out of the way and you will seldom see them. The cottage is secluded and the guards have their own guard tower. It is a very restful place, so it is a chance for a few lucky guards to get away as well,” Princess Celestia replied.
“I guess Luna won’t be going?” Maeve picked up an orange and began to peel it, pulling off pieces of rind, her nimble fingers making short work of the task.
“No, Luna would not be going. But she and I have talked about this. She wants you to go.” Celestia watched as Maeve peeled the orange; the girl did not even need to look at what she was doing, her finger dexterity was marvelous, which made it a real pity that the rest of her was so clumsy.
“Are you sending me away because I keep wrecking your castle?” Maeve pulled off a wedge of orange, slipped it between her lips, and stared Celestia in the eye as she chewed.
“Yes, that is the reason I am sending you away. You have wrecked my castle for the last time and you are hereby banished, never to return,” Princess Celestia said as the corners of her mouth curled upwards towards her ears.
Maeve swallowed and then pulled off another orange wedge. “I see.” She popped the second wedge into her mouth and chewed with noisy abandon. After gulping down her half chewed food, Maeve said, “I’m sorry about yesterday. It really was an accident. I sneezed and fell down the stairs… I don’t know why you have to have tables with expensive vases at the bottom of a staircase.”
Unable to stop herself, Celestia tittered. “The vase was fixed. With a little magic, the pieces were all put back together and mended. How is your knee?”
“Purple, blue and green,” Maeve replied around a mouthful of orange. “Like your mane. Only ugly bruise colours.”
“Princess Twilight Sparkle, when she was just a little unicorn, was the clumsiest creature I had ever met in my long existence, until I met you.” The smile upon Celestia’s face was full of warm affection and her eyes glinted with emotion as she reminisced. “There was one occasion where Twilight Sparkle tried to get a book off of the top shelf in the royal library. Her telekinesis surged; she ended up knocking the bookshelf over. That bookshelf hit the one next to it. After that, it was like dominoes and there were thousands of books upon the floor. I was quite cross as I recall.”
“So there have been other castle wreckers?” Maeve asked.
“Yes, Maeve my dear, there have been other castle wreckers. And each of them have gone on to do extraordinary things. Well, most of them anyway. I am still waiting on one to redeem herself, I know that she will, she just needs a little time,” Celestia replied.
“So hopefully I don’t wreck your vacation cottage.” Maeve picked up a hard boiled egg sprinkled a little salt upon it.
“I will be understandably grumpy if you do.” Celestia watched as Maeve stuffed the whole egg into her mouth. “Several shorter skirts and tunic tops have been made for you, as well as a few dresses that aren’t quite so long. The cottage is nestled under a great many trees, but the sun is still an issue for you. I have already had a suitable bed sent to the cottage—”
“I don’t need a big bed. I like sleeping all curled up.” Maeve looked Celestia in the eye.
“You are a tall creature. Should you ever desire to stretch out, you need a bed of suitable length.” Celestia shook her head and lifted up her steaming teacup. There had been many times that Celestia had found Maeve curled up in the seat of an overstuffed chair, sleeping. Maeve was catlike in some of her habits, but not in her movements. Celestia had never seen a clumsy cat.
“When are we leaving?” Maeve asked.
“Mid morning,” Celestia replied.
“Thank you… for doing this… for making this possible,” Maeve said.
Clearing her throat, Maeve announced her presence to Princess Luna. One did not sneak up on Princess Luna and startle her, the consequences were disastrous. Maeve was the same way, and the pair shared a mutual understanding of one another’s feelings.
“Maeve.”
“Luna.”
The alicorn lifted her head, turned, and looked over at Maeve, who stood in the doorway. “You’re leaving. Good. You need time out of this wretched castle. I am happy for you.”
“I don’t know how I feel about being apart from you,” Maeve said as she entered the room.
Luna bit down upon her lip, turned away from Maeve, and then her mouth opened a bit as she released her lip. “Maeve, I will not always be here. There are times when my duties will take me away from this place. You will need to learn to get along without me.”
The red haired girl scowled and shook her head. “And who will look after you?”
“Maeve… I do not know,” Luna replied.
“What do I do if I have a nightmare?” Maeve asked.
“Rose Gold will be there to comfort you. So will Red Russet and Quickie Cob,” Luna replied.
“And who will comfort you if you have a nightmare?” Maeve wished that Luna would turn around so that Maeve could look into her eyes.
Luna did not reply right away. She sighed and peered around the table, looking for possible places to place her piece of the picture puzzle, or possible pieces that could be picked up and placed somewhere. So far, only part of the outer edges were finished. When she found an edge piece, she lifted it in her telekinesis and put it aside with other edge pieces.
“How many pieces this time Luna?”
The night blue alicorn sighed. “Ten thousand pieces,” she replied in a huffy voice.
Wincing, Maeve shook her head. Princess Luna’s moods could be measured in puzzle pieces, and this was not a good sign. Luna would be a prisoner in her room for days, weeks even, and Maeve began to suspect that it was because she was leaving.
She thought about not going.
The only way to get Luna to come out of her room while she was working on a puzzle was to help her finish the puzzle, which was easier said than done, bribing her out with treats, which might not work if Luna’s mood was bad enough, or physically dragging her out, which Princess Celestia had done several times.
“This one is double sided, meant to confound mere mortals…”
“Luna!”
“I need something to distract me!” Luna stomped her silver shod hoof. “Some ponies drink. Others smoke tobacco. Some ponies do various alchemical concoctions of dubious quality… I do puzzles. Puzzles keep me sane. While I was chained up in that horrible stable I daydreamed of being able to do puzzles once more.”
Cautious, Maeve approached the table. “Luna, come with us… please?”
“I cannot. I have duties here,” Luna replied.
“Hard to do your duties when you are stuck in your room working on a puzzle.” Maeve folded her arms over her chest. “You can move the moon from anywhere you know.”
“Maeve, I would be a bad time waiting to happen… I would be a wet blanket. I would dampen everypony’s spirits. I would bring misery to all around me,” Luna said, trying to explain to Maeve all the reasons why it she could not go.
“Then don’t be miserable. Come and have fun.” Maeve, now standing beside Luna, was tempted to do the unthinkable and horrendous act that she had thought of, but had never dared to try.
“No Maeve, I will remain here,” Luna replied.
“You leave me with no choice,” Maeve said in a low determined voice. Reaching out her hand, she snatched a puzzle piece from the table and then took of running, hoping that Luna would not cheat.
Using magic was cheating, and cheating was dirty pool.
“RAPSCALLION!” Luna thundered as her wings flared out from her sides. “PUZZLE PIECE STEALING CHURL!” Princess Luna, now incensed, took off after the wretched thief that had stolen one of her puzzle pieces. “I cannot solve the puzzle if there is a piece missing!”
“Come back here, wastrel!”
Her arms pumping, Maeve ran faster and hoped that she would not trip over her flowing dress. Reaching down, she grabbed her skirts and hiked them up. Luna was fast, but Maeve was more maneuverable. Maeve rounded the corner at full speed, almost took a tumble, hopped on one leg sideways a few times, her teeth gritted as she braced for impact, recovered, and took off running.
Luna’s hooves cast sparks from the floor as she ran.
Maeve let go of her skirts with one hand, reached down into a pocket on her bodice, fished out a handful of hard, sour lemon candies, and tossed them down upon the ground as she ran. She let out a breathless giggle.
“Oh you dastardly child!” Luna cried as her hooves scrabbled around on the floor and she struggled to keep herself upright. “Come back with my puzzle piece!” Try as she might, Luna lost her balance because of the little round candies and she went tumbling down to the floor in the most unprincesslike manner one could imagine.
Being a smart girl, Maeve did not slow, she used this time to get some distance between her and Luna. She sprinted away, pulling up her long skirts with her free hand once more, and didn’t even bother looking back.
“GRRRRRRRR!” Luna, now up on her hooves once more, took off at a full gallop. Celestia’s rule about no running in the castle was now forgotten.
Hanging a left, Maeve went down the stairs, taking two or three at a time, hoping she wouldn’t trip again and fall on her face. Near the bottom, she vaulted over the banister, landed on the tile floor, caught her balance at the last moment, and took off running.
Princess Luna lept from the top of the stairs, soared through the air, her wings only half unfurled, and lept down the entire length of the staircase. She crashed into the tile floor with a -THUD!-, snarled, and then took off running once more with her teeth bared.
A poor hapless maid, who happened to be dusting, took one look at the charging human girl with the snarling Princess of the Night right behind her and she fainted, falling over limp.
Maeve crashed through the double doors, lost her footing, and went sliding. The floor was being washed and waxed. Everything was wet and slippery. She tossed out her arms, windmilling them around as she struggled to keep balance.
Behind Maeve, Luna hit the wet floor and began to slide, skating over the tiles.
It was then that Maeve saw the most horrible sight in the whole wide world. Princess Celestia came around the corner with Raven. Maeve shrieked, waving her arms, but she was unable to stop sliding.
Behind her, Luna had the same problem. Luna had turned herself around and was trying to run in the other direction, but her hooves found no traction on the wet floor.
Just as Maeve thought she was going to crash into poor Raven, Princess Celestia’s secretary, she felt her body stop, held in place by magic. She gave Raven and Princess Celestia a sheepish grin. Behind her, she heard Luna as Luna tumbled down to the floor with a clatter of silver shod hooves and a splash.
“She stole my puzzle piece!” Luna cried.