//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Wednesday // Story: The Night Princess and the Day Off // by Crossed Quills //------------------------------// It was a good day to be Butterscotch Ripple. An atypically warm day for spring, and Canterlot Beach had been packed in the morning, so the enterprising mare had dusted off her ice cream cart, and trundled it down the winding paths most directly connecting her small storefront to the road leading to the beach. There had been a pretty good noontime rush, and she’d have been turning a tidy profit even if she hadn’t sold another frozen novelty all day. She’d been set up right outside of the North Gate to the beach, and catching the ponies as they came and went. The winter long, being an ice cream salespony was about as popular as retailing fleas to diamond dogs, but then the sun, the blessed sun, sweet gift of Celestia, would come back and heat the world, and suddenly there was nopony more popular, nopony more beloved and respected. If this was an indication of the kind of summer that they could expect, she might be able to afford that ski vacation this year after all. And then the Miracle had happened. Ponies, earth, unicorn and pegasus, had come streaming from the beaches. The waterfront had been closed, for some reason, and everypony there had been evicted until it was safe again. Some were grumbling, some were groaning, many were still wet from the lake, but all of them had wanted something to do on the off chance that the beach might re-open. And ‘something to do’ rapidly became ‘enjoy a frozen treat’ as soon as Butterscotch Ripple started ringing the little bell on her cart. Butterscotch wasn’t sure what had closed the beach, exactly. Really, nopony seemed to know – well, everypony ‘knew’, but unless the number of beach-closing disasters that had occurred was equal to the number of ponies present, Butterscotch was willing to wager cold hard bits that some ponies were guessing, someponies were speculating, and someponies were just pulling stories out of their... picnic hampers.(5) 5. It bears mentioning here that Butterscotch, while not bothered by strong language, was aware that her shop served as a hub for colts and fillies after school hours. Her language was so scrupulously clean as a result that even her internal expository monologue found suitable substitutions. So no, not actually picnic hampers. But on this, a day in mid-spring, usually still down-time for an ice cream pony, Butterscotch Ripple was selling out. As a result, she caught only snips and pieces of the conversations happening around her. It wasn’t as if she was deliberately eavesdropping, after all – and it would have been impossible to do so, anyway. All of the points of quiet in one conversation were filled with excited jabbering from another one. Still, a basic narrative slowly began to take form. “So I was standing down by the hayfries cart, when suddenly a massive explosion from the water-” “Did you see that creature?” “Eeeyup.” “Three stories tall, and covered in tentacles...” “Dread Nx’Y’pthtklyp, arisen from their watery tomb!” Butterscotch noted that group of ponies were all wearing slightly soggy cultist robes. Well, it took all kinds... “And then someone screamed...” “Yeah, the Princess!” “Eeeyup.” “She screamed ‘Are you kidding me?’” “Wait, Celestia was there?” “Eeeenope.” “No, it was the other one, her sister.” “The pink one?” “No, hay-for-brains, her sister. Princess Luna, of the night? Formerly Nightmare Moon? It was in all the papers...” “So who’s the pink one?” “Don’t you follow politics at all? You live in Canterlot for Ancestors’ sakes!” “And then the monster started to wade up onto the land...” “I think it came from the Lost Continent of Seaponies!” “Lost Continent of Seaponies?” “Yeah, see, it was lost when it sank beneath the waves because of hubris! I read about it in my conspiracy fanciers magazine. Princess Celestia hushed it up. It’s amazing the things that they don’t tell us.” “Sure, sure. And the palace contains a portal to other worlds.” “It does! My cousin who knows one of the janitors...” “If it’s a continent of seaponies, then they didn’t lose it because it went underwater. If anything, that’s the Gained Continent of Seaponies.” Butterscotch tuned out the rabble to deal with a pegasus who couldn’t make up her mind between rainbow swirl and cotton-candy flavour, quite certain that the debate about the naming of Terra Incognito would go on for a bit. So one of the princesses of Equestria had visited the beach? That might have explained the hubbub so early in the season. Canterlot was a government town, and while only the society elite were social climbers per se, everypony would turn out to brush shoulders with royalty, given the chance. When her attention was once again free – or at least, free enough, as she could handle most transactions with about twenty percent of her active attention – it became clear that she’d missed a vital narrative step among the raconteurs. It was possible that somewhere in the crowd, the bit she’d been distracted for was still being told, but the milling ponies had shifted, and it wasn’t within earshot. “With a HUGE blast of magic...” “And the monster howled, and every piece of glass on the beach shattered at once...” “And she flew down and plucked the ponies from its tentacle-grasp!” “Eeeeyup!” The cultist ponies again. “Really, I think it’s for the best. That was not what I thought it was going to look like. Did those tentacles look like frogs to anyone else?” “And then she kicked it RIGHT in the spines!” “What, like a porcupine?” “No, I think it just had like... four backbones. And two heads!” “And she was like ‘Pew, Pew! Trouble not the mortals under my protection!’” “She actually said ‘Pew, Pew’?” “I need a drink.” Butterscotch Ripple didn’t realize that she’d spoken out loud until her voice reached her ears amid the slurry of other ponies’ voices. Sure, she’d made a lot of bits, but there had been a monster attack, on Canterlot Beach? Even if Princess Luna had defeated it, Butterscotch Ripple was a quiet pony, who liked ice cream and sharing it around for a healthy profit. She didn’t go on adventures, she avoided the darker and scarier parts of one of the cleanest and most crime-free cities in Equestria, and she held her breath during the scary parts of movies. Having been that close to a major incident rocked her.(6) The rum raisin called out to her. But there wasn’t much of it left – or anything, really. The ponies had fallen upon her considerable stock like a swarm of parasprites, leaving only empty tubs and a considerable pile of bits in their wake. Well, that was one mark for ponies above parasprites – the little pests never paid. 6. Butterscotch had been out of town during the Changeling Incident, and well-meaning friends had gone to considerable trouble to shield her from it. “And then she was like ‘By The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak!’” “Bound the big critter up like it were just a huge birthday gift!” “Eeeeyup.” “And then, having smote the beast, she did banish it back to the hellish dimension from whence it came, ne’er to be seen again... an we be favoured by fortune.” “’From whence it came’? Who talks like that?” “It be the tongue of the sea, ye scurvy land-lubber!” “And then the captain of the guard was like ‘thank you, Princess Luna, for your stalwart defence of your subjects!’” “It WAS nice of her to lift a hoof to help. Seriously, why do we even pay taxes in this town?” “And then she just sort of... looked broken, and left.” It was a considerably wealthier, but extremely thoughtful Butterscotch that pushed her cart back up the steep, winding paths that would get her back to her shop in time to close up for supper. It was true, crises happened in Equestria with alarming regularity for a place that was considered by many to be a very safe place to live. On the other hoof, nopony ever really seemed to get irreparably injured, and if there was one thing to be said for crises, it was the way that everypony clubbed together to do right by their friends and neighbours. It was almost... nice. Terrifying, mind you, but nice. It reminded you that there were ponies out there that cared, enough to put themselves to inconvenience, or even... even to risk, on another pony’s behalf. And of course, there were the diarchs. People sometimes wondered what they did, all the day long, living in the palace like the divine beings that so many thought them to be. Maybe there was more to it than that. Clearly, the ponies at the beach had been impressed. Maybe she would go and sign up for one of those first aid courses. Be able to lend a hoof, if needed... Talk less, and do more. So lost in thought, Butterscotch barely noticed that she had a customer waiting for her when she got back to the store. A consummate professional, she didn’t let surprise or shock show on her face even when she realized that the pony standing patiently in front of the counter was none other than the Night Princess herself. “Y-your majesty?” Luna was dripping slightly, although a dark blue unicorn with a towel was carefully mopping up behind her. The Princess of Pure Math’s mane had lost some of its ethereal quality, as well as much of its volume, charred in some places and matted to her skull and neck in others. “Pray. Tell me that you have some of the rum raisin left?” * * * Shining massaged his temples. “I don’t suppose you need me to tell you that acts of heroism, in defence of the realm while technically the purview of all ponies, ‘be they true of heart and noble of spirit’, are very hard to spin as ‘un-princesslike’.” Luna tried very hard to look chagrined. “It’s true. But... well, as we said yesterday, ‘tomorrow is another day’. I’ll keep at it. It needed to be done, of course. An aspect of a Dread Beast isn’t anything to be taken lightly. And besides...” A ghost of a smile flitted across her face. “You never know what a good example might accomplish in a weary world.” Cadance popped another fig into her mouth. They were sitting in one of Canterlot’s most successful bistros, in a private room – and she had little doubt that the main dining room was now packed, after word of their reservation had spread. “So, Auntie... what’s up next for the Mare Who Can’t Take a Break? Extreme sports? Some distant tropical island paradise, where you won’t be tempted by the day-to-day grind in Canterlot?” Paper Weight had seen the Smile before. It was tired and triumphant, the smile of a mad genius who was sure that this was the plan that would get her a job in time for Hearth’s Warming this year. It cracked a little manic around the edges. Inwardly, where nopony would ever see, she sighed. She liked her employer. A lot. As an employee, a subject, and a friend, she would be there for her. But the Smile didn’t usually precede plans that were conventionally successful, or even conventionally sane. “No, Cadance. Tomorrow... I do my laundry.”