(Forest) Fire of Friendship · 11:05pm Oct 16th, 2022
Twilight slumped back on her throne in Canterlot Palace. “You know, Spike,” she said, “this isn’t really what I thought ruling Equestria would be like.”
“Oh yeah?” He glanced down at the schedule in his talons. “Your next appointment is in five minutes, by the way.”
“The first time I held court, I thought it was going to be exciting.” She continued without regard to Spike’s warning. “I read the legends of the court of Solopon, the Iron Debates of the Court of Kiria, the epics of the courtly duels at Veneighice. I thought it would be all, deep, meaningful struggles over the fate of the nation. Courtly intrigue, powerful oratory, dramatic action, maybe some duels or an assasination.”
“You want to be assassinated?”
“No.” Twilight sighed and turned to look up at the ceiling. “And Solopon threatened to cut a baby in half, which is pretty messed up when you think about it. That filly probably needed therapy after. But I thought it would be, you know. Meaningful. Instead, it’s all just petty personal disputes.”
With a sharp gesture, Twilight indicated the empty palace floor where the last group of petitioners had stood. “It’s all, this mayor accused that mayor of saying something racist, this senator is banging that senator’s wife, everypony is very afraid of zombies so the government needs a ‘Tough on Zombies’ policy despite zombie attacks being at a historic hundred-year low.”
“Crime, Twilight,” Spike corrected. “They wanted you to be tough on crime.”
“Are you sure?” Twilight lowered her head to glance at him. “I was sure there was something in there about zombies.”
“That was the dispute between the Necromancers Local 122 Labor Union and the Vampire Trade Association, I think you tuned out clear through two different meetings.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “Did I mess up? Do I need to do anything?”
“No, you just nodded. I’ll get it right in the forms. You can just sign them.”
“See, though, this is what I mean.” She spread out her wings, in a futile attempt to become as relaxed as possible in what was truthfully a very uncomfortable chair. “I’m signing things without reading them. Not that I don’t trust you, not that you won’t do an excellent job. But it all matters so little that I don’t even really need to mentally be here. It’s all such petty nonsense.”
Then Twilight made a mistake. A terrible, profound mistake, whose consequences would echo throughout the ages.
“I wish,” she said, “that ponies took politics more seriously.”
It was at that moment, precisely five minutes from Spike’s five-minute warning, that the universe answered her. The door to the throne room flew open, and on the other side was Starlight Glimmer, a bundle of charts and graphs floating beside her.
“No,” Twilight said, before Starlight could so much as breathe a word. “No, no. No. We’re not doing this. This is going to be the gun-control debate all over again. I can see it on your face. I’m not arguing about gun control with you again, Starlight!”
“There’s no time to talk about gun control, Twilight,” Starlight said, stepping into the throne room and producing her graphs. “This issue is far, far bigger. There need to be sweeping changes in how—”
So Twilight leapt off her throne, spread her wings, and took to the air with a single mighty flap. Mid-flight, she curled into a ball and shielded herself with those feathers, and like a cannonball shot from its barrel, she crashed through the palace’s stained-glass windows and out into the courtyard.
The sound of shattering glass reverberated over the stone. Loose shards slowly shook themselves out of the frame, tinkling on the floor as they finally broke.
“Wow,” Starlight says. “Mare keeps fit. And she really does not want to talk about public policy.”
“It’s fine.” Spike pulled the velvet cord by the throne to summon the servants and guards. “The Princess is having a ‘Celestia Moment’ in the garden,” he said to those who appeared. “Could you bring her back please?”
After the guards ran off, Spike offered Starlight some tea.
Starlight waited for Twilight in the palace’s conference room. Eventually, several burly members of the royal guard dragged Twilight kicking and screaming into the room and duct-taped her to one of the conference chairs.
“Twilight, I don’t want to be rude,” Starlight said as she sipped her tea, “but I think you’re being kind of dramatic.”
“Every single time we talk about politics, you ruin something.” Twilight said, trying to itch her nose with a wing before she remembered she was an alicorn, and could itch her nose with magic. “I said that I loved the view off of the old Canterlot Cliffs, so you told me that restrictive zoning laws and historic building regulations were making the city unaffordable for young ponies.”
“Housing prices are a major source of generational wealth disparity,” Starlight agreed.
“Then, I said what fond memories I had of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, so you told me that race-exclusive educational institutions are a major source of discrimination against other tribes, and that graduates from that school I love are 67% more likely than average to hold bigoted views of earth ponies.”
“Not all students,” Starlight said quickly. “You turned out fine after all. But when you think about it, how good can it be for a young unicorn to grow up without ever seeing an earth pony who isn’t a servant cleaning the dorm rooms?”
“Then I said that Applejack’s apples were delicious, and you talked about the effects of all the pesticides she sprays on them, and made me spend two hours looking at mutated frogs.”
“I understand she’s probably still mad about losing the south field to those weevils,” Starlight grimaced. “But you saw the one with two heads, right?”
“I did.” Twilight sighed and lowered her head. “So what is it this time, Starlight? What wonderful, precious, beautiful, treasured thing in my life is secretly evil and destroying the world?”
“The Elements of Harmony cause carbon emissions.”
Starlight stared at Twilight. Twilight stared at Starlight. Spike refilled their teacups.
And this is why I'm asked not to start conversations at family events anymore.
I mean, Starlight. Why Starlight's asked not to start conversation at, uh... friendship events.
Yeah.
Eh, with the level of control they have over weather, that's not really a problem for Equestria. As for the rest of the world... Twilight's not in charge of them. Yet.
As I noted to Jaxie in our discussions, everything will be fine once Twilight discovers a way to offset the carbon emissions through the cooling power of sarcasm.
"Everything I love is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. "
--Dorothy Parker
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See, you made the fundamental mistake of trying to converse with family to begin with.
This is why Celestia bought back Luna - not because Luna is her sister, but because Celestia figured she could dump 50% of this work on Luna.
Luna took one look at it and said "No, No, Nope, hells No", so then they had a collective decision, abdicated and dumped it all on Twilight.
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Rookie mistake. Happens to the best of us. I spend most of my time at family gatherings helping in the kitchen or minding the children. Last one to eat, first one to clean up or start on the diapers.
Never get a chance to get dragged into anything by anyone older than 7.
"Thankfully I already have a solution that will allow us to fix two problems at once! Now, when you think about it, Windigos are an endangered species..."
Now this is a riot
This is a nice short story and it's given me the energy I needed today.
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And kids' arguments are more fun anyway. They say the darnedest things.
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Yeah sure, that will work out great
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and everyone is just waiting for the end.
Indeed, but is it actually worth mentioning?
If you think about it, the whole world is just a cycle of dumping responsibilities to the next generation after we had enough.
No, seriously, I like this simple world without everyone being irresponsible, which is why I don’t find it funny when people make jokes about the princesses being useless.