Least Squares looked at the second pile of reports, his quill in his field and the summary-report half-written upon his desk-stand. *Most* of the central districts reported third grain harvest complete, but there were a scattering of complaints of sunlight shortages and damp, unharvestable fields in the western tier of districts. No, irrelevant. There was always a period of clear skies, they could catch up the harvest in that week of grace.
The southern towns and villages were mid-way through their fourth harvests, and the reports were - terse and irate. For many, especially those not so far south as all that, it had been a harvest too many, and all the warning signs were clear as print, clear as cursive, clear as the scattered dots on the charts he kept pinned to his study walls. He got up from his desk, and added another rank of said dots to the charts in progress, adjusting on the fly for their usual weighing-factors, based on their latitude and control-district assignments. Almost no-pony outside of the Academy could follow his adjustments schedules, and many in the Academy were merciless in their disdain for his abstracted weighing criteria. Arbitrary, said Confirmed Bias. Opaque, cried Peer Review. Utterly undocumented, denounced the fastidious Prior Art.
The weighing factors had never steered Least Squares wrong, and he had done the math, in his apprentice days. And once again when he had been a journeypony under the late Curve Fit. And one last time at his master's defense, while the board had watched him, chalk in field, scrawl out the equations, board after board, erasing as he needed for the additional space, and explaining as he wrote. The old pegasi had stared stonily at this upstart unicorn with his arrogant, ambitious linear regressions of fundamentally nonlinear systems. But his solutions worked *better* than their clumsy nonlinear approximations of the behavior of the data-sets.
Because they were wrong about the world being fundamentally, elementally chaotic. He knew this was true - it was what his cutie mark had whispered to him, how it had sang him to sleep all those long, lonely nights. He was Right, which is why he was where he was today.
The charts and the summaries complete, he bound up his reports and rolled up his charts.
The council would be convening soon, and he needed to be there beforehoof, to put up the charts, and lay out the summaries and the agenda, already pre-written.
He had known what would be decided before he had laid eyes on the reports. It was time.
The Council of the Seasons met in an ancient, wrought-stone chamber in the oldest wing of the palace, a quarter that the Princess and her retinue never entered, let alone visited for any period of time. The tapestries were more like old banners, pre-unification tribal standards preserved by ancient magics renewed every generation or two by journeyponies from the Academy's archival training sections. And if the old tribes were active in any component of Her Highness's government, they were here, on the Council of the Seasons. The seats were held, explicitly, by balanced members from the three major tribes, plus the administrative aide to the Council. An aide who traditionally had been a pegasus, until the cometary career of Least Squares had displaced the usual appointee to the position.
First to arrive was the United Grange Council's representative, Sub-Chairmare Deep Wells. Scurrying in behind her was the other earth-pony organization's representative, Under-Secretary Latex Grommet of the Associated Trade Guilds. Deep Wells' crony, of course. Unless you'd consider 'lackey' a better term for their relationship. The two organizations were expected to be completely orthogonal to each other in relationships as well as interests, and yet, ponies being what they were, the representative of the Granges had managed to maneuver her client into the position. The seasons just didn't matter enough to the Guilds for the post to be anything other than a sinecure from their point of view.
Next to arrive was Dean Golden Mean of the Academy, with her own pile of reports floating in her ironically bronze-colored field behind her. She wasn't in maths, being from one of the equinities colleges, but she tried her best, bless her heart. She never quite got the equations down right, and although she always tried to make it a fight, Least Squares knew how to spin her upside down before she got going. And after all, he was Right, and she was usually wrong, excepting those sessions when they found themselves in agreement.
The pegasi arrived after the Dean, Propraetor Glide Path of the Cloudsdale Council and Head Foremare Solar Gears of the Factory. Surprisingly enough, the pegasi rarely gave Least Squares any problems. When they did, it was for material concerns which were difficult to finesse with equations or mathematical trickery. Water supplies and energy budgets were what they were, and could not be argued out of their positions with clever figures.
Last to arrive was- Archmagus Soul Mirror. That was a bit of a surprise. Usually she sent Magus Half Light or some other underling to act as her proxy, having never really taken much interest in her nominal role as head of the Council. Despite its control over the most puissant rituals still in the hooves of mortal ponies, she just hadn't thought it worth her time, or at least, that was what Least Squares had heard in confidence from the Magi who appeared, session after session, to give the Archmagus's regrets and to rubber-stamp the decisions of the Council.
This probably meant something, and Least Squares resisted the urge to grab his copy of the agenda and the summaries to see what he had missed.
The Archmagus gaveled the Council into session.
"Master Squares, please summarize the summaries, if you don't mind?" belled out the Archmagus in that ripe, round accent that made Canterlot such a pompous, self-involved place to make a living in.
"But of course, Your Eminence. As you will see from the copies passed out with the agenda, we are definitely coming to the end of the growing season in most parts of Equestria. As you can see here, in this chart of the reports of field pests and yield declines, we have passed the point of diminishing returns in the majority of districts. We could squeeze another grain harvest in the northern tier, but the losses in soil fertility in the south and central districts," Least Squares waved a pointer at the relevant, utterly cryptic scatter graphs on either side of the main chart, "Would more than wash out the gains northern farmers might make in chasing that last half-harvest."
"Grain isn't the only metric we have to keep in mind," growled Deep Wells. "There are truck crop farmers and fruit orchards throughout the northern and central tiers that could still pull in that last few dozen bushels out of the fields and groves. This tail-end of the season is their margin, it can be the difference between a profit and another year in debt to the banks."
Least Squares resisted the urge to sigh or roll his eyes at the interruption. "And yet the grain harvests still out-produce the truck croppers and orchard ponies by five to one. Even those ponies have largely diversified into grains in the last two generations as new fields opened up. They'd be losing almost as much as the monoculture grain farmers to the fertility decline curve."
"Water supplies are short," barked Solar Gears. "And mostly tied up in the west. We're working on wringing that mess out, but we'll need an extra week to transport the maldistribution eastward."
"Thank you, Head Foremare, I was just getting to that. The preparations for and the Running itself requires a good week of clear skies. How will that effect your logistical concerns?" the administrative aide pivoted, somewhat prepared for this particular interruption.
"Makes it difficult, of course. You can't move water without moving clouds, and clouds in numbers are kind of the opposite of 'sunny skies'. Propraetor?"
"Obviously!" harrumphed Glide Path, a rare stallion in government. "We could, I suppose, transit in corridors, and maybe avoid the major ritual centers?"
"The ritual courses," said the Archmagus, "Are located in deliberately central regions where the effect can most efficiently and effectively cover the countryside without gaps. You cannot 'avoid' such a deliberately distributed series of courses. How rapidly can you transit without serious, neigh, dangerous consequences?"
The Propraetor blinked in surprise, his ears folded down. "We could, I suppose, organize a derecho, and roll the lot eastward in a single bound, but I wouldn't want to guarantee the surface integrity of the path taken."
"The surface integrity of the path taken?" asked Dean Mean, confused.
"He means the derecho would tear down trees, rip roofs off of homes and shops, and generally make as much of a mess as a hurricane landing," Least Squares snapped, irate at having lost control of the session. "The point of the Council is to *avoid* the necessity of such radical corrections in course."
"Only if they can be avoided, Master Squares," chided the Archmagus. "And there are extraneous factors which, I think, you have not included in your calculations this year."
Least Squares frowned, caught flat-hooved. What would the Archmagus have access to, that would require such improvident haste? Magic harmonics, of course, reports of dark magic outbreaks. The distribution of dark-leaved saplings and spontaneous wild magic eruptions had, of course, been taken into account in his calculations, there was a set of charts over to the right, and he turned around and scanned the scatter-graphs to see if he could spot any ignored trends the Archmagus might have been talking about.
"Master Squares, if you haven't included them, why would they be on your charts? Unless you've factored in the return of the lunar princess?"
Least Squares blinked, completely nonplussed. "Princess Luna? The little alicorn Her Highness brought back with her from the Summer Sun Celebration? What does that have to do with-"
"Master Squares, why do you think we even have this Council? Why do we go to all of this trouble to interfere in natural processes which otherwise would govern themselves, in their own times, under their own self-guidance?"
"Magic, of course. Earth pony magic, that distorts the processes of the soil, pegasus magic, that warps the courses of the winds, and unicorn magic, which unbalances the elemental harmonies," Least Squares cited textbook dogma at the governor of dogmas and the publisher of textbooks.
"Yes, magic. And when our returned Princess first fell, her Fall smashed us utterly flat. Dark forests from Baltimare to Vanhoover, monsters erupting from every crossed pair of ley lines in the nation, and unicorns run mad in every family, ruining every good thing and making every terrible thing worse. Nightmare Moon was a *catastrophe*, and her carrier has now returned to us. A small seed, true, but she will grow great before you will even be able to blink. Even yesterday, I spotted a star winking in her tail," said the Archmagus, balefully.
"No, the returned princess is full of power, uncommitted, dangerous power. Our imperious Princess, Sol Invictus - Celestia is well-controlled by her own will, her own self-training. She couldn't derange Equestria if she tried. And judging from some of the recent Galloping Galas, I sometimes suspect that she does try, from time to time, if only to test her own self-bounding," the Archmagus continued.
"But you don't know about this Luna, Archmagus?" asked Least Squares, tentatively. This was all politics, and the sort of politics that might put an unwary bureaucrat in the dungeons from the sound of it.
"It's what I *do* know that worries me, Master Squares! We must reinforce our defenses and tie down any wild magic before it has a chance to be… influenced by new factors!" The Archmagus was positively shrieking by this point in the discussion. Least Squares' ears were not the only ones to be pinned flat by this display of uncontrol.
"OK then! Early Running of the Leaves it is then! Thursday next sound good to everypony? I'll be sure to make sure the farriers get out their supplies of running shoes as soon as we're done here. Good meeting?" chirped Latex Grommet, grinning wild-eyed at the snarling Archmagus.
"You actually need to hold a vote," said Least Squares with his horn digging a hole in his copy of the agenda, unable to meet the eyes of the members of the Council.
"All in favor?"