//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Monday // Story: The Night Princess and the Day Off // by Crossed Quills //------------------------------// Luna Implaccibilis, the Unrelenting Moon, She Who Kept the Secrets of the Dying, surveyed the carnage that she had wrought. All about her foes lay about, damning her eyes and beweeping their losses. Her triumph would be sung by the heralds and told of in tale and song for generations to come. Truly, she was great and terrible in victory, reigning supreme over all that she did survey. Figuratively, of course. Rather more literally, Princess Luna had managed a victory, but only in the political sense. Many were the ponies that had forgotten that Equestria had once had warrior queens – before a certain softening had been called for. Rule by consent and compromise was less efficient, but far more effective. So while it was still allowed, legally, for the diarchs of Equestria to simply declare that a new law was so, with a constitutionally backed ‘wanna make something of it?’, things tended to be much more friendly if one followed the processes outlined for legislation in Equestria Law. It was a right pain in the flank, mind you. Both the Commons and the Lords had to approve a bill, and then ratification by the Senate. Both Luna and Celestia had to approve it also – they were still the reigning diarchs, thank-you-very-much – but given that the piece of legislation in question had been drafted by them(1), that was hardly a hurdle to surpass. (1) With the assistance of a team of lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats that had taken upon themselves the affectionate nickname of ‘Draft Horses’. They were a hoot to do crosswords with. Getting a Workers’ Rights bill through the Commons was so simple as to barely bear description. The good ponies of Equestria were politically minded, and their elected representatives, if they failed to represent the interests of the common pony on the street, would be out on their flanks so quickly that their cutie marks would likely be temporarily replaced with skid marks. Whether their successors were any more successful in their roles was rather an academic question, really. Likewise, the Senate, although an appointed position, was filled by ponies who, although theoretically representing the chamber of sober second-thoughts, realistically did very little indeed to block the passage of legislation that was not obviously criminal. As for the Lords’.... It wasn’t that the nobility of Equestria was unconcerned about the common pony. Some of them were surprisingly egalitarian, even by modern standards. Nor were they, as a whole, especially cruel, or corrupt. If pressed upon the subject of rights, they were all for them, applied in moderation. “À chacun son goût,” as they said in Prance. In practice however, they were the most miserly and jealous bunch of argumentative souls on the face of the planet, incapable of giving up a single scruple of power without having it all but wrung from them. And from their perspective, the bestowing of new rights upon the ponies under their authority was a diminishing of that authority. After all, the argument went, the nobility of Equestria held the reins of the nation. They had been schooled from birth – and indeed, for generations – to administer justly and fairly, showing neither hesitation before difficult tasks, nor indeed pause before sacrificing all for the good of the nation. By ceding authority, it was quite clear they would be creating a world in which ponies with no idea what was best for them would risk endangering themselves with rights that they neither understood nor could properly utilize. It would be like giving a foal a sword. Celestia had, evidently, only managed to abolish serfdom in Equestria by virtue of couching that same argument back at them, with ‘the authority of blooded nobility’ replaced with ‘the authority of the crown’. Chastised, the House of Lords had been humbled before their ruler, vowing to remember the lesson for all the years to come. Regrettably, that lesson in humility had been six, or in some cases seven generations back, and had not bred true. In truth, it wasn’t as if the employers of Equestria were as a rule harsh in the treatment of their employees. Nevertheless some of the inherent rights that everypony possessed had lost some of their meaning in the years since. True, everypony was still allowed days off on official holidays, but as Diarch – or later Celestial – worship had waned, many of these had been stricken from the calendar, reducing the guarantee of at least a day off every week or so to Hearthwarming, Hearts and Hooves, and the Summer Sun celebration, along with a few various and sundry other holidays that even Celestia, who had her hoof in their creation, could recall neither the meaning nor origins of. Nightmare Night, while still widely recognized as a festival, was not actually a holiday recognized by the State. Luna had objected to that on general strength of principle.(2) (2) There were no shortage of Nightmare Moon cultists who held it to be a holiday. Checking work absences had therefore been a shockingly effective tool for discovering their identities, which pained Luna. Having cultists which she neither needed nor wanted was bad enough. Having stupid cultists, somehow, was worse. The new bill guaranteed limited mandatory hours. It guaranteed safe working conditions. It guaranteed a fair minimum wage. And thanks to a combination of political string-pulling, the careful setting of various factions against one another, occasional compromises with the most dissenting voices, and in one case something which would have greatly resembled blackmail if the relevant authorities had seen fit to prosecute one of their diarchs, it was guaranteed to pass the House of Lords. Of course it was a Monday. What better day for such a victory than the day of the moon? And what more symbolic a day for deals made under the cover of darkness? For the good of all, of course. How strange that rule by constitution is in its own way, no less fierce than rule by the sword. Luna reflected. On the other hoof, definitely less time spent cleaning one’s mane afterward. Less wear and tear on weapons and armour. Probably a trade up, on the whole. The vote came and went, and the carefully orchestrated dramas that served as guarantors of success played out precisely as orchestrated. Almost. Lord Clearing House, recently removed from public service due to inconsistencies in a routine audit for the committee he had chaired, was nevertheless entitled to his seat in the House of Lords, to the great exasperation of the majority of the House. Nevertheless, his small bloc of supporters had been badgered into voting ‘properly’, and it served him no particular good to show any dissension within those ranks. The bloc as a whole, hated Luna. She had a fondness for numbers that Celestia had previously hired other ponies to crunch for Equestria, and hunted down dishonest accounting like the most tenacious of bloodhounds. Since her return, Clearing House’s bloc of Lords had gone from ‘getting away with many of their cartoonishly self-serving plans’ to ‘getting away with very little’, and had been subject to a great deal of scrutiny besides. In equal measure, the Day Court received petitions that Luna be denounced as the tyrant Nightmare Moon, and that her oh-so-valuable services might be better utilized doing most anything other than subjecting them to that scrutiny. And the petitions arrived at a rate of three or four per week. Clearing House himself had the ambitions of a megalomaniac, the greed of a dragon, and just about sufficient combined charity, good will to ponies, and brains to fill a walnut. A small walnut. Still, he was no novice to political interplay, must have known that he had been played, and yet... was smiling. There was a word, in Old Eponian, which bore no concise translation in modern Equestrian. The nearest translation that could readily be found would be ‘the feeling that you get when, upon finally lowering your defences enough to gather water from a nearby oasis, you realize that the stones upon which you kneel have a particularly alligatorish quality to them’. It wasn’t the sort of word that one said around children or the faint of heart, and while Luna regretted that it had no modern day analogue on general principles, she found herself missing it in particular at just that moment. “Truly,” Clearing House began, claiming the floor after the vote, “we have seen the virtue of non-partisanship today, with differing ponies with differing sets of values putting aside their differences for the greater good.” It is just as well, Luna reflected, that my bid for Equestrian domination, once upon a time, was unsuccessful. Otherwise, I might now be in a position to simply have someone arrested for cold-bloodedly using the term ‘the greater good’, without the slightest comprehension of its literal definition. She paused. Which would be a bad thing. Obviously. For some reason. “Indeed, under the provisions of the act,” Lord House chuckled, “even our own beloved diarchs might have to take a little bit of well-deserved time off.” What? “After all, no pony is, under this act, allowed to do more than twenty-four hours of work in the course of a single day. The ‘Starswirl the Bearded’ clause – and as rare as time manipulating magics may be, their abuse would no doubt do great harm to those ponies under our guidance.” The lord smiled. “And while I’m sure that our diarchs wouldn’t dream of messing around with time, I can’t imagine how else they get so much done! Please, join me in a round of applause for our diarchs and their forward-thinking policies!” There was a course of laughter through the House of Lords, and a round of applause. Luna’s mind was racing. Being a Princess of Equestria was a twenty-four hour job. Even asleep, Luna was still technically doing it. It wasn’t like she ever really stopped being herself. But with the part-time shifts that she picked up at Starsbucked, she was doing a second job at the same time – and by drawing a wage, even a small one, she was double-billing. Any argument to the contrary could be easily dismissed with a very basic knowledge of the numerous separate occasions where she had helped to ensure the defence of the realm while grinding beans and brewing coffee. Also known as: doing more than twenty-four hours of work in a single day. That unutterable slime ball. But that was the fact of it. Never mind that she had gotten the House of Lords to agree on a matter, considered by some to be one of the qualifications for divine status (in addition to her immortality, and control over a heavenly body). Never mind that she had cajoled, pleaded, bribed and threatened for the good of the nation. Lord Clearing House would take her to task because her having a part-time job offended him. Because, when it came down to it, her existing offended him. Luna Implaccibilis, The Unrelenting Moon, looked upon the field of a battle that she had thought won, and saw, in place of conquest, an awful lot of alligators. * * * It was later. Celebration had happened, among the lawyers and the legal experts, the bureaucrats and the busybodies, all those who had helped to arrange for the coup of getting a major step forward for progressive treatment of workers in Equestria. Luna had gone, although Celestia had begged exhaustion. Tied as they were to the celestial bodies that they controlled, the sisters had difficulty functioning well past the rise and fall of those bodies, although caffeine and centuries of practised willpower could carry them a considerable distance. Luna had excused herself over a stomach complaint. Mostly an imaginary one, but a combination of anger and stress made good the lack. Paper Weight, Luna’s social secretary, had accompanied her to her office and quarters in the palace. The dark blue mare had noticed the Night Princess’ mood, and had excused herself to follow after her. Although initially serving as Luna’s minder in a world that was complicated and new, she had proven quite capable of managing a princess’ appointment schedule as well, and her neat copperplate hoofwriting was considered vastly superior to that of her employer by an order of magnitude. In short, she had made herself indispensable to the Princess, both as an aide as well as a friend and confidant. Luna had felt bad that Paper Weight was missing the party, but upon reassurance, had begun grousing at length. Paper Weight reflected, not for the first time, that semi-divine though the sisters of Night and Day might be, they had their faults. Celestia was notably lazy at times, and Luna... Luna held a grudge like nobody else. Not surprising, really. “So you’ll have to give up your job at Starsbucked?” Luna frowned. “Aye. That or face scorn for failing to abide by my own legislation.” The frown deepened into a proper scowl. “I’ll not give him the satisfaction of running me out of my own job! But... I also can’t go back on the legislation. I can’t do that to the ponies that are relying on it, and I can’t do it to all of the ponies who helped us to get this far.” Pulled between poles, and one of them obviously the weak one, but while Luna wasn’t above losing in the short term for the good of the long term, losing to that idiot rankled her every nerve. Paper Weight sighed. “So why not just issue a proclamation that this law doesn’t apply to you? You’re clearly not working yourself into a state of exhaustion, and you set your own hours. The fact that there’s some kind of sophistry through which you’re in violation of the legislation is pretty much just a fluke.” Or enemy action. It would probably be possible to go back through the minutes of various meetings and find out exactly how the ‘Starswirl the Bearded’ clause had come to be included in the Worker’s Rights act, but Paper Weight was willing to wager a month’s salary that Clearing House had a hoof in it. It was fairly uncharacteristic for the aristocratic stallion to read a bill he was voting for, and the fact that he had been able to quote it without even having it in hoof sent shrill klaxons skirling in her brain. Luna’s scowl deepened further, to the point at which she rapidly approached ‘more scowl than pony’. “Then they’ll say that I lack conviction, and use it to score political points on me every time I try to accomplish anything for the next century or two. And the press will probably run with the idea of ‘Princess Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do’ if one of those buffoons gives it to them.” She gave a rueful grin. “I would rather think myself to be a hippos-crat than a hypocrite.” Paper Weight declined to give Luna the groan that her wordplay unquestionably warranted, but to the Night Princess, the extremely patient look that her subordinate gave her was just as good, if not better in some ways. For the first time since her retreat to her private chambers, Luna grinned a little, the humour flowering on her face, before wilting again into a sour look as the realities of her situation returned to haunt her. Paper Weight ran a hoof through her mane. Long, unwieldy, and inclined to the ‘just rolled out of bed’ look in all cases short of containing enough product to qualify as a can of hairspray, the mane immediately flopped back to its original shape. “You could try taking a day off? It’s not like your sister can’t cover for some of your duties, and she would probably be willing. She doesn’t like Clearing House much better than you do.” Luna began to reply, and then paused, considering. “I could do that. There’s no reason I couldn’t. I’m only really doing occasional shift-work at the coffee shop right now. I wouldn’t even have to take that much of a break in order to come down under the twenty-four hour limit, on average.” She nodded, the idea building steam. “Yes, I believe it can be done!” She flashed her secretary a fearsome grin. “I think I have a copy of the Equestrian constitution on the bookshelf. Pull it out, and let’s see what kind of behaviour I have to avoid in order to qualify for having taken ‘a day off’.” Paper Weight busied herself at the bookshelf. Yes, there had been a reversal, but the day had been a good one. And now that Luna had a plan, it promised to be an interesting week.