//------------------------------//
// Session 3997-a, Winter 
// Story: The Council of the Seasons 
// by Mitch H 
//------------------------------//

The Council, or rather, that sub-quora which had managed to show up on such short notice, waited impatiently upon the Chair who had called a supplemental session.  Well, sighed Least Squares to himself, technically it was a supplemental *to* the current session, not a new one in and of itself.  There wasn't even a procedure for the seating of an extra-seasonal session.  He wasn't sure what exactly the effect upon the Council's charter if they had actually tried to implement an extra-calendary – it might even break the charter, and the seals and empowerments contingent upon that very, very binding document.

So, a supplemental meeting *of* the 3997th.  Technically sessions didn't have to be solitary consultations, the Archmagus would just gavel back into session as if they had simply retired, rather than a proper adjournment.   The Council's unusual irregularity of convention left this gap wide open in its charter, especially when a session-in-progress broke up as it did last moon, with irregularity of procedure ladled over top of the inherent irregularity of the charter proper.

The Propraetor had been replaced by the new Praetor, elected or chosen by Cloudsdale's impenetrably obscure and involuted process in the moon since the last meeting of the session.  The terrible scramble necessitated by the Council's hasty decision had turned pegasi politics upside down and shook it like a half-empty bushel full of half-rotten apples.  Some of the bad apples stuck to the bottom of the bushel, and the rest tumbled out of office, good and bad alike.  The new Praetor had sent a starchy lawyer named Blown Sheets as her proxy.  

Sheets refused to meet anypony else's eyes, just sitting there in front of her pile of reports and copy of the agenda.  She also held the proxy of the new representative of the Weather Factory.

Deep Wells and her sidekick Latex Grommet had weathered their own travails more smoothly than the pegasi.  There had been remarkable little damage from the quite minor derecho they had voted for, and nopony on the ground had made the connection between the windstorm and the responsibility of the Council membership in ordering that (very minor) disaster.  And the Running of the Leaves had been a great success as these sorts of celebrations go.  It had gone absolutely perfectly as an event, at least in Least Squares' opinion, as well as in the eyes of the general public.

Well, outside of Cloudsdale.

Least Squares really had no idea why they were here, honestly.  Some further mad start of the Archmagus.  He flipped through the thaumic and monster summations, looking for trends one last time as they awaited the absent unicorn's pleasure.  Admittedly, there had been a recent rash of outbreaks, but extraordinary?  Not by historical measures.  A rather distressing upward inclination, but these things had natural variance.  No scatter-graph mapped to a flat line, up, down, or horizontal.  There were… ups and downs.  But it was only a few weeks' worth of reports!  That was barely enough for a inference, let alone a conclusion.

Soul Mirror finally breezed into the council chamber with Dean Mean on her heels.  

"Thank you ladies and – well, gentlecolt, I suppose now, Master Squares.  Thank you for appearing at such short notice.  I am now reconvening the – Master Squares, what session is it?"

"3997, Winter, Your Eminence."

"Right, reconvening the 3997th session of the Council of the Seasons.  We had hoped that the scheduling of the Running ritual in a timely and enthusiastic manner would have settled our business for the session, allowing a leisurely convening of the 3998th in a number of moons, but further events have proven that the new grand thaumic environment is still quite unstable and requires further heroic treatment to contain the energies wracking Equestria's over-strained ley lines." The Archmagus barely bothered with the formality of the gavel, irritably picking it up and rapping it on her copy of the agenda at Least Square's unvoiced pleading gesture.

Least Squares settled back in his seat, and looked again at his copy of the agenda, realizing that it said nothing of what the Archmagus was going on about.  Apparently they would be operating totally off-agenda, then.

"Cloudsdale has had quite enough of ‘heroic treatment', Your Eminence," observed Blown Sheets in a distinctly frosty manner.  "Your last mad start has pushed both pega- that is to say, has driven two members of this Council out of office in some disgrace.  I hold the proxy of Praetor Crimson Blaze and the Weather Factory's management, and you can be quite sure, all of your credit has been spent in Cloudsdale.  You are now, informally, upon a cash basis with the Weather Factory."

The pegasus leaned forward, her wings spread forward and cupping around her glittering eyes. "Cash. On. The. Barrel."

The Archmagus was unimpressed by the lawyer's bluster, her body-language relaxed and dominant. "Please, Miss Sheets.  The Weather Factory will do its duty, as it has for a thousand moons.  What would you do otherwise?  Their own charter is dependent upon the continued authorization of this Council.  A word to the Weather and Forestry Councils and Cloudsdale's monopoly could be broken in an afternoon.  You have no idea how little leverage your grasping managers have left to them among the chairmares.  I've been discussing the matter among my peers.  It's quite surprising how badly the situation has degenerated while the Thaumic Councils have been… distracted. You have made yourselves quite unpopular."

Deep Wells snorted in irate agreement, eyeing the unsettled lawyer and her wilting, fading dominance posture.  "How dare the pegasi sent one proxy for two seats," sniffed Latex Grommet so that her patron didn't have to do so.  "Is there even a council member from the Factory, or haven't they gotten that ironed out yet?  You can't be a proxy for an abstraction, there needs to be a pony seated."

"Precedent suggests that a pony sent thus as a ‘proxy' be seated as the member official," suggested Least Squares.  He owed the pegasi a good deal for their tolerance of his anomalous position, but that that much.  It wouldn't harm the lawyer to enjoy proper and official status.  Might even be a useful line on her CV down the line.  Assuming that the Archmagus didn't get them all thrown into the Princesses' dungeons for lese majeste.

"You can't do that!" objected Blown Sheets.  "We don't have a quorum!"

"I count four members of six, plus a prospective member awaiting seating," said the Dean.  "Either you're the proxy of the Praetor, and the prospective member from the Weather Factory, or you're an interloper, and it is the duty of Least Squares to call the bailiff and have you ejected from the chamber."

Least Squares looked up in alarm from his copies of the monster reports.

"Oh, relax, Squares, look at her, she's going to take her medicine, isn't she?" smirked Golden Mean.

"Fine, whatever.  My career was ended as soon as the Praetor ordered me to Canterlot," surrendered the outnumbered pegasus.  She was quickly voted a seat and sworn in.

"The agenda!" barked the Archmagus.  "The Running wasn't enough to tie up the fresh surges of wild magic across the land!  We need to – hrm, co-opt the new princess!  Make her a *part* of the cycle of ritual."

"There isn't any room for princess participation in the minor autumn and winter rituals," began Least Squares, "And the grand ritual for the Wrap Up is explicitly egalitarian, it won't work at all with a royal element."

"Which is why I'm proposing we co-opt Nightmare Night," said the Archmagus.

"Are you mad?" demanded Least Squares.  "I thought you were *afraid* of the return of the Nightmare!"

"It's a folk festival!" objected the Dean.  "There's no *ritual* there!"

"It's a festival!" yelled the suddenly-defensive Soul Mirror.  "They all have rituals built into them, it's just a matter of finding the narrative flow.  And there's a proper redemption aspect built into Nightmare Night!  It could work, really it could!"

"I don't know about any of that, but Nightmare Night is good for business," observed the Sub-Chairmare of the United Grange Council.  "It's a proper harvest festival, it is.  Or could be, if we didn't rush the Running like we did this year.  Doesn't quite work out when Nightmare Night comes *after* the Running like it did this year.  Gonna be too damn cold for the foals, you know?"

"I don't know that a festival about the new princess chasing foals about and gobbling them up is going to do anything but upset the new princess and earn at least *some* of us time in the dungeons if somepony were fool enough to mention it in open court," opined Latex Grommet.  Soul Mirror glared at her, but the Archmagus wasn't the Under-Secretary's patron.  She was a loyal client; she only toadied to one pony at a time.

Least Squares relaxed, clearly the Archmagus's wild start was, well, a non-starter.

Then the Dean spoke up.

"Princess Luna isn't the only new magic in the land.  We've got these six mares with their magic jewelry running around causing trouble.  Why don't we co-opt *them*?  There's just the right number for the pageant ritual, isn't there?"

"I don't know, Hearthswarming is so esoteric, the balances are strange, and there's so much variance from district to district," equivocated Least Squares.

"Good thing you don't get a vote," laughed Deep Wells.  "Sounds like a hoot to me.  And much less likely to get us all thrown in an oubliette!" 

The Archmagus fumed, but was out-numbered by the less-obsessed members of her Council.

"Shall we put it to a vote?"