Her Royal Morning Coffee

by Georg


15. I Laugh at Decaf

Her Royal Morning Coffee
Procaffeinating (n.) A tendency not to do anything before coffee


Ponyville was odd.  Pinkie Pie claimed that it was because there was only one Ponyville in existence, which went for most towns, so therefore all towns were odd, which made Ponyville perfectly normal.  But other than being numerically odd (and prime by some math systems), there were oddities in Ponyville that other towns did not have.

Gustave’s Fancy Restaurant was one of them.

The Prench griffon who ran the place was a chef of chiffon, a master of marzipan, and a national competitor in baking contests which led to his restaurant being open or closed at erratic times.  Today, it was open.  Customers who had the good fortune to acquire a reservation (or to have mentioned that they were wanting a quiet booth to have lunch with Princess Twilight Sparkle) were scattered around, enjoying the ambiance of the Prench wall hangings and the elaborate meals which the chef personally delivered to their tables.  It was a quiet and intimate location, perfect for an awkward alicorn and a hesitant Dry Roast’s first date together.

There was really no reason for Dry to be nervous.

He had scurried over from the coffee shop at noon, trying to figure out if he had enough time to go home and take a quick shower but concerned enough about missing Twilight to skip that step.  After all, if she liked his coffee-flavored scent first thing in the morning, adding to it would save the concern about what kind of cologne she would appreciate.

Eau de Colomburroin Roast

Greatly relieved that he had made it to the restaurant first, Dry checked his watch, accepted the booth Gustave had reserved for them, and used his available time to practice what he was going to say when Twilight Sparkle showed up.  After a few minutes, he had his words all prepared.  After a few hours, he was considering some different words.

Gustave was a great comfort to Dry’s nerves, bringing him crispy breadsticks and constant assurances that Twilight was very reliable, and that if she was not showing up for an appointment, there must have been a very good reason.  Once Dry was fairly certain she was not going to show, he reassured the friendly griffon that he was not upset, but just in case Twilight were to show, he should tell her that Dry was just going to finish up with his normal day, and she could catch him at his usual places.  He went over to the gym and worked some of his frustrations out on the exercise machines, then wandered back to his house, eating the flowers he had brought for their date on the way.

The walk felt… empty for some reason without either of the princesses at his side, and oddly off-center.  After all, he was having nerves about meeting the pony who had been kissing his lips off at the shop in the early mornings, while being perfectly comfortable with having the Princess of the Moon as his co-worker.  There was something seriously wrong with that.  Or right.

He checked his mailbox before strolling into the house and making a quick inventory of his bedroom, just in case.  Since the house was as empty as Dry had not expected, he took his time showering, made a grocery list in the kitchen, and went to bed.

Alone.

Even his sleep was dreamless.

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

The next morning when his alarm went off, Dry staggered to the edge of his bed and blinked his way to wakefulness, still alone.  It was like the events of the last few years were all dreams, and all those trips in the tranquil darkness of Ponyville mornings with Luna at his side had been fantasies.  He had grown accustomed to her presence every morning, and now without the mischievous princess, or the sleep-deprived one, he was back to a life he had not really realized existed.

He slipped into his slippers and walked into the bathroom to wash his face when something unusual caught his attention.  Dry Roast lifted his hooves in turn, looking at the new fuzzy slippers with a crescent moon adorning the tops, and shook his head.

They brought a perky strut to his progress through the darkness of the morning, although he was careful to leave them tucked under his bed before venturing outside.

It was almost dawn before the bell at the front door of the coffee shop jingled, but instead of a princess of either variety, there was a dark, bat-winged pegasus peering in through the open doorway.  He was an impressive specimen of nocturnal pegasus, with a dark violet mane and the shiny armor of the Night Guard, but did not seem comfortable at all in his current role.

“Pardon me, Mister Dry Roast.  Princess Luna has been called away due to official business, and may not be back for a few days.  She… um… asked me…”  The dark pegasus pulled out a pencil and a notebook, and uncomfortably slipped into the shop to one of the tables where he could write.

“She wanted a report on my date with Twilight Sparkle, I presume?”  Dry took in the dark armor and the rank tab on the breastplate of the Royal Guard before adding, “Lieutenant…”

“Wind Shear, sir.  Sorry about that.  I’m not used to clerical tasks.”  Wind Shear licked the tip of the pencil before reversing it.  “Talk slowly, please,” he managed to say from around the pencil in his teeth.

“Nothing.  Happened.”  Dry paused while the guard wrote, then met his eyes when he looked up.  “Yep, that’s all.  Twilight Sparkle did not show up for our date yesterday.”

“Oh.”  The guard looked down at the notebook and scribbled for a few more sentences.

“Can I get you a coffee?” prompted Dry, moving to the machine and taking a cup off the stack.  “Free for members of the Royal Guard before sunrise.”

“Can’t,” muttered Wind Shear while writing.  “On duty.”

“Well, that makes sense, I suppose,” said Dry.  “I can make you a no-caff for the trip home, though.  Seems a shame for you to make the trip all the way down here just for two words.”

“No trouble,” said Wind Shear without stopping writing for a minute.  “Been doing the trip for a few weeks now.”

Dry was just putting the unused cup back on the stack when the words soaked in.  “Wait a minute.  You’ve been watching me for a few weeks?”

“Technically, we’ve been watching Her Highness,” said the guard, still writing.  “Their Highnesses,” he corrected, then paused, looking up at Dry Roast with earnest golden eyes.  “Um… Don’t tell Princess Twilight Sparkle, please.  It’s just a security perimeter while Princess Luna is making her nookie… I mean nightly visits to Ponyville.  We’re not even in the betting pool.”

Dry Roast narrowed his eyes.  “‘Perimeter’ implies more than just one of you.”

“Twelve,” said Wind Shear once he had quit writing.  “Allowing for proper redundancies and overlap in the coverage, although when the foal, or foals, are due, the security contingent is supposed to rise to twenty-four guards for the night shift.”

“And the same for the morning shift, I suppose,” mused Dry Roast absently.  “Wait a minute.  When the foal is due?  We haven’t even… Well, it’s none of your business, anyway.”  Dry cleaned an already clean section of counter before adding, “You don’t tell…?”

“No,” said the guard while closing the cover on the notebook, but it was his turn to hesitate after he tucked it away into his saddlebag.  The look on his face told just what question he was thinking, and Dry Roast moved to cut him off before the guard could embarrass himself.

“Yes, both of them.  Eventually.  Well, not both of them.  One of them will ‘win’ the right to romance me, and the other will… um… not.  Look, it’s an alicorn thing.”

“I think that applies to a great number of things in Canterlot, sir.”

“Yeah.”  Dry Roast poured himself a cappuccino and gave it an extra squirt of caramel.  “Foals.  I never really thought about foals.”

“Happens with a lot of marriages, sir.”  The guard peered out the window at the growing skyglow of the impending sunrise, then strolled over to the counter and got out several bits.  “I suppose it’s close enough to quitting time.  Cinnamon decaf latte, one shot of peppermint, please.  And I’m paying for it.  You start giving away coffee to guards and they’ll be all over this place like gnats.”

Since he was busy pulling the levers and working the order, Dry Roast really could not do much more than grunt his assent, but he did raise an eyebrow when the guard produced a photograph.

“Wife and three foals,” said the bat-winged guard.  “I really didn’t think about it much either until it happened.  If you and… um… Princess Luna.”  Wind Shear stopped with an expression much like he had just bitten his lip.

“There’s really no subtle way to say it,” said Dry as he put the coffee container on the counter and swept the bits into the cash box.  “If I survive either of them, I’ll worry about foals then.  If by some wild chance, I wind up with both of them, I’m stone cold dead, and won’t have to worry about it at all.”

The guard made a quiet noise of assent and took a sip out of his coffee.  Then, after a long period of silent contemplation, took a longer drink and added a chuckle.  “If she knew how good your coffee is, you’d have Princess Celestia showing up every morning too.”

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

Just in case, Dry Roast left the shop closing to one of the temps again and scurried over at noon to Gustave’s Fancy Restaurant in order to leave word with Gustave (again) that if Twilight Sparkle showed up, to tell her Dry was at the gym.  After a longer workout and a powerful cold shower, he strolled over to the castle in the warm sunshine only to find a note on the door saying that Twilight Sparkle and friends were once again out of the area.  He almost left a note in response, but could not figure out how to phrase it in a way that did not sound accusatory or sycophantic.

When Twilight Sparkle gets back, she’ll drop by the store.  Or drop into my bedroom in the middle of the night.  Or I’ll get dropped into her bedroom in the middle of the night.  Or our dreams… I’ll stop thinking about this now.  

The brisk walk back through town was likewise bereft of princesses and excitement, or at least until Dry Roast walked into his house and noticed a certain change.  He had always traded cleaning tasks with his younger brother ever since moving to town, and been a little embarrassed at how ‘bachelor’ the house looked like because of that, but this afternoon, the kitchen was literally spotless.  Every single box of cereal was lined up on the shelves, the floor practically glowed with wax, and if there was a single speck of dirt in the icebox among all of the fresh fruits and vegetables, Dry would have been shocked.  The walls even showed signs of recent scrubbing activity, with the glass frames of the pictures so clean they were almost invisible.

Upstairs in his bedroom, signs of the mysterious cleaning continued with the addition of remodeling.  His princess-sized bed had been replaced sometime during the morning by a Princess-sized bed, capitalized letters and all, clad in silk sheets and pillows so soft they could have been only woven from baby caterpillars who devoted their lives in some distant monastery to the production of pure softness.

Well, maybe in a metaphorical sense.

There was a noise somewhere in the house that drew Dry Roast’s attention, but it did not sound like a princess in the shower like he half-expected.  When he poked his nose into the bathroom — after a brief knock, of course, just in case Rain Check was home early — Dry looked over the two mares inside with a skeptical eye.

“Luna hired you, I presume?”  It was a fair guess, because both mares were the nocturnal bat-winged variety of pegasi, dressed in suggestive maid outfits that were adorned with Luna’s crescent moon symbol.

“Oh, Mister Roast, sir.”  The older of the two nocturne scurried over to the door and gave a brief bow, spitting out the polishing rag she had been using on the tub.  “Sorry, sir.  We were supposed to be done by the time you got home, but the house was a little bigger than we expected.”

“And a mess, too,” admitted Dry.

“Anyway, I’m Banana Split,” said the older pegasus, sticking out a hoof to be shaken.  “And this is Goose Down, but you can just call us Nana and Goose.  We’re normally stationed at the castle, and Princess Luna was supposed to tell you about having us come over and clean — oh, and replacing the bed — but she got called away on that diplomatic task.  I hope we’re not inconveniencing you.”  The nocturnal pegasus yawned, showing an impressive number of sharp, white teeth.  “Sorry, sir.  We’re up a little late.”

“No need to stay up past your bedtime on my regard,” said Dry, still a little distracted by the presence of two dark pegasi mares in his bathroom.  “Why don’t you break for the day and come back later.”  He yawned in return.  “I need to get to bed too.”

“I thought you were going to be spending the day in Princess Twilight’s bed?” asked the younger of the two mares.

Her physical shape was a little distracting to Dry Roast, because the young pegasus was only about three-quarters of a pony in height and length, but had twice as much membranous wingspan as any other pony he had seen before.  Those huge wings were tucked up to the point where they actually poked out past her cute rump in back and almost to her neck in front, making an ungainly lump on each side.  There was a washcloth tied to each wingtip, as well as both forehooves, and one that she had spit out when her coworker had, so in full cleaning mode, she must have looked a little like an octopus on a caffeine bender.

“Goose!” chided the older servant.  “It is not our place to pry into Princess Twilight’s personal affairs.  Although,” she added with a thoughtful expression directed at Dry, “if Mister Roast happens to become Princess Twilight’s young stallion, I would hope you might consider bringing us in on a work detail for her household.  I’m a fully qualified nanny with training in obstetrics and gynecology, while Miss Down has a great deal of experience with both younger siblings and security.  She’s hoping to become a Royal Guard someday, where she will be required to maintain substantially more discretion.”

“Sorry, Nana.”  Goose Down lowered her head and looked down at the sparkling clean floor.  “Sorry, Mister Roast.”

“That’s quite all right.”  Dry Roast considered the two servants, trying to think of them as employees at work instead of the staff on some mansion, although none of the temps at work had ever dressed up in a maid outfit.  Luna probably would, if he mentioned it, which he planned on not doing.  Maybe.  “Now, off you go, girls.  Back to Canterlot until this evening, please.”

“Very well, sir,” said Banana Split with a brief nod.  “Come, Goose.”

“Can’t I just stay, Nana?”  Goose gestured with one wing, which splattered a trail from the soapy washcloth fastened to the end, but thankfully she moved slow enough not to be a danger.  “I’ve still got half the bathroom wall to get the first washing done on, then the grout brushing and—”

“The master of the house has dismissed us until tomorrow.”  Banana Split put on a very sincere expression.  “We will discuss your objections in private.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dry with a wave of one hoof.  He still needed to use the bathroom before going to bed, but the discussion reminded him far too much of some of his early experiences with employees at the coffee shop.  “If I’m the master of the house—” Dry hesitated while adjusting to the odd phrase “—then I should know what is behind your objection.”

“It’s nothing, sir,” insisted Banana Split.

Dry gave her a quelling look, then turned to the younger mare.  “Short words and simple sentences, please.  I’m very tired.”

Goose Down fidgeted, and when a pegasus squirmed in that fashion, she tended to move her wings, too.  With this pegasus and in the small space of Dry’s bathroom, it was far more dramatic.  Her broad wings unfolded and folded back up like sails on a schooner in a violent gale before she forced them back onto her flanks and stood with head downcast in the resulting breeze.  “I can’t fly.  I’m violently ouranophobic.  I’d have to catch the train to Canterlot, and the next one isn’t for a few hours, and I’d have to come right back to get to work at Moonrise.  It’s easier just to work through the day.”

“I see.”  Dry chewed on his bottom lip for a few moments.  “That’s really nothing to be too embarrassed about, Goose.”

“It is for a pegasus,” insisted the young mare.

“My brother is deathly afraid of thunder, and he’s a pegasus,” countered Dry while thinking about what the town would say when two attractive nocturnal pegasi left his house and walked to the train station.  “Look, we have a guest room downstairs.  My parents use it when they visit.”

“You mean the nursery?” asked Goose.  “We thought it was a good idea to be prepared, so we put the bassinet down there, and the changing table.”

“And there’s a bed,” said Dry as quickly as he could.  “Either or both of you can stay there for as long as Luna has you… assigned here.  Just—”

Dry Roast took a very long look at Goose Down’s expansive wings.  His little brother was a ‘wingpony’ in the worst possible way, and if Rain Check saw Goose’s wings, he was sure to say or try something inappropriate.  Since any maid who served at Luna’s side would also probably be able to tie Rainy into a square knot and toss him into the lake when he got cheeky…

“Just stay out of my brother’s sight, please.”  Dry Roast gave a deep sigh.  “I like Rain Check, and don’t want him hurt.”

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

The next morning — for a given value of ‘morning’ in the house — Dry Roast found himself practically swimming across the new bed to turn off his alarm.  To his mild disappointment, there was no other pony in his bed, either the Lunar or Friendship variety, so he put on his new slippers and went through his typical morning ritual, interrupted only by having a towel passed to him in the shower instead of using his magic to float it off the towel rack.

“Thank you, Nana,” he said once he had gotten most of the water blotted away from his face with the sinfully soft cloth.  “New towels?”

“Yes, sir,” came Banana Split’s voice from outside the shower.  “Your old ones were practically burlap.”

“I was going to put in some new towel racks later,” said Dry a little defensively while drying.  “I’ve gotten pretty good at household repair over the last few years.  Saved us quite a few bits.  Um… the new bed and things, are they coming out of my budget?”

The servant snorted, which made Dry feel a little better.  The exquisite bed upstairs would probably double the property value of the house.  Add in the towels and whatever other Luna-esque items that were starting to show up, and Dry could easily have found himself both dead from princess snu-snu and dead broke, too.

Worth it!

His habitual path out the door for work was likewise interrupted by Goose Down passing him a paper sack with a packed lunch.  It seemed to be something she was used to doing for members of her own family back in Canterlot, due to the distracted kiss on the cheek he received before being pushed out the door by one broad wing.  The new changes in his schedule felt good, and it was not until Dry had the store equipment all warmed up and the first cookies in the hot oven before he realized why.

In college, he had always pursued mares with less enthusiasm than his fellow studious stallions, which he blamed on a late start.  In order to earn tuition money, he had spent several years in the workplace first, thus putting him in with a much younger crowd in his college classes.  Most of the young mares he met there viewed him as less a peer and more a convenient pony to go get the salt for underaged party-planners.

A four year age difference did not seem like it was worth a flicker of an eyelash compared to well over a thousand with Luna.  Still, she had expressed interest in him, both physically and mentally, and he would be lying if he tried to deny his own feelings.  In all of his fruitless years of dating, this was the first time he had ever actually… he was not sure.  Maybe there was more to this princess competition than they realized.  Now he wanted to see if there was a spark of passion in Twilight Sparkle that could be encouraged into a roaring inferno.

Despite, or maybe because of the resulting roasting he would get between them.

There were not many better ways to go, considered Dry Roast while sipping on the first cappuccino of the morning.  Having a foal by a princess was not anything he had really considered before.  Young Prince Perkolator, maybe.  No, too frivolous.  Besides, stallions never got to pick names, or Dry Roast would be named Bottom Line, like his father the storekeeper had wanted.

“Pardon me, Mister Roast, sir?”  The Night Guard from yesterday poked his head in the coffee shop doorway and cocked an eyebrow.

“No date yesterday either,” said Dry.  “I think Twilight Sparkle and her friends were out of town.  I’m sure she’ll reschedule soon.”

“Thank you, sir.”   And with that, the dark pegasus vanished out into the predawn gloom, leaving Dry Roast alone with his thoughts.  There were a lot of young stallions who would be going through nervous conniptions in his place, but Dry had cultivated a panic-free… well, panic-subdued approach to most problems.  He may have internalized the normal running around and screaming that most ponies did during disasters, but it was a controlled reaction that he could drown in coffee and cream.  And the occasional legal consultation with his older brother.

The morning dawned princess-free, and without Applejack either, so Dry’s guess about the schedules of Ponyville’s most famous residents seemed to be fairly accurate.  Any relationship Dry was going to have with either of the princesses was going to be erratic anyway.  If Princess Twilight was not galloping off to save Equestria, Princess Luna was away fighting some nightmare creature or taking care of one of her royal responsibilities.  On the average, it still meant Dry was probably going to die, but with the occasional day or two break in order to give him a false hope of survival.

And the day passed without event.

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

When a second morning dawned without a princess to be seen, Dry Roast caught Lieutenant Wind Shear with his cup of decaf coffee before he could get away.  “Hey, do you know how much longer it will be before Luna gets back?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”  Wind Shear checked a clipboard and gave a brief nod.  “Her trip to Minos was unscheduled.  She’s tied up with something about a maze monster running rampant through their underground city, property damage, earthquakes.  Things like that.  We’re under your nominal command until she returns.”

“So, I can tell you what to do?” asked Dry Roast, considering the brilliant beginning of the sunrise beyond the shop windows and the slow, erratic motion of his customers heading through town in his direction.  “If you weren’t off-duty at the moment, that is.”

“Within reason.”  Wind Shear took a drink and moved to one side for a customer to pass.  “We’re not supposed to kill anypony unless we really can’t avoid it.  Over the last few weeks, it’s been pretty dull around here.”

“You have a strange definition of dull, Lieutenant Shear.”  Dry took a look over his shoulder at the still-empty counter and lowered his voice to avoid attracting attention from Lyra, who had slipped into the shop and was sitting at her usual table.  “Are you sure the Royal Guard is okay with this?  I mean, I’d hate to wind up in a dungeon.”

Well, not that kind of dungeon.  Wait!  Stop thinking that. Luna probably doesn’t even have....  Well, she might, but Twilight probably doesn’t have one like that in her castle.  Stop thinking.  Just stop.  

The impassive expression that the bat-winged guard projected could have been carved out of plaster, but there seemed to be a few small cracks in it.  He shrugged, then looked over Dry Roast’s shoulder at the brilliant glow of pre-dawn as if he were double-checking the time clock to make sure he was off duty.  “You make her happy.  That’s a rare trait.  We all like it when she’s happy.  And so does she.”

“I see.”  Dry braced his shoulders in the doorway, still staying in the path of the guard so he could not just fly out of his shop.  “And how about Twilight Sparkle’s early morning visits?”

The guard’s face resumed a stone-like solidity and he stepped to one side.  “I wouldn't know, sir.  I haven’t seen her.  Ever.”

There was a quite solid bump at Dry Roast’s flank, a push of immense inevitable force that shoved him through the doorway, around the counter, and in the direction of the coffee machine.

The reason for the abrupt propulsion was obvious.  And purple.

Twilight Sparkle had her head down and her eyes closed while she pushed, with more knots in her mane than Dry had ever seen before, and an intense urgency to her grunted order.  It made him float out a foam cup and start pulling levers before he had even stopped in front of the machine, and caused him to urge the machine to greater speed every time Twilight’s hot breath ruffled the hairs on the back of his mane.  He barely managed to get the steaming container of coffee away from the spigots before Twilight latched onto it, lips first, and in a feat of immense stamina, drained it of every drop without coming up for air.

Then she shifted her attention.

Some unknown number of minutes later, Dry Roast swam dizzily back to the real world.  He was flat on his back, which probably kept him from falling over, and Twilight Sparkle was slowly rising to her hooves at one side, which was probably the reason why he was flattened.  The empty foam container floated by his nose, gently bonking against him until Dry managed to grab it from Twilight’s magic and send it swooping in the direction of the coffee machine.  Somehow he managed to stand up while producing Twilight’s second order of the morning, modified by a low grunting noise which he translated out as a reduced number of chocolate pumps.

He floated the resulting coffee order over to the nodding alicorn with a growing worry that she might repeat the process, or even go further than they had back in her bedroom.  Thankfully, she merely took a small sip before staggering in the direction of the shop front door, which gave a merry jingle when she stepped out into the town en route to her crystal castle.

Dry Roast managed to step to the counter once she was gone, and after taking several deep breaths and checking his lips to make sure they were still attached and functioning, looked Wind Shear in the eyes and asked, “So?”

“Didn’t see anything,” said the guard, taking a nonchalant sip out of his coffee.

“And you haven’t seen anything for…?” prompted Dry.

“Any week I’ve been here.”   The guard looked out the window at where the newly risen sun was painting Ponyville in bright colors.  “You’d be amazed at what we don’t see in Canterlot.”

“Uh-huh.”  Dry had to ask.  “Like what?”

“Can’t say.”  The guard took a long drink out of his coffee.  “On account of us not seeing anything, that is.”

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

That afternoon when Dry was getting ready to go to sleep after an extremely uneventful day — other than Twilight’s morning visit — that had even included installing the towel racks in his bathroom, he could hear the distinctive jingle of happy hooves trotting in the front doorway.  It was followed by a brief but intense shower, the sound of brisk toweling, and just when Dry had gotten the new bed good and comfortably untucked and his alarms set, the appearance of his expected guest.

“What an invigorating few days it has been,” exclaimed Luna, kicking out of her silver shoes and dropping her crown on the bedside table.  “The Maze Monster of Minos hath been vanquished, and an emergency visit to the Ponynesian Isles to deal with their volcano gods went far better than planned.  Oh, I love a good luau.”  She slipped into bed with one sinuous motion and leaned up to Dry Roast with a flicker of her long eyelashes against his cheek.  “It was all you could eat.”

“So you’re not hungry?”  Dry decided to press his luck and gave Luna a kiss, which lasted far longer than he expected and involved a little taste of the leftover luau on her breath, which was not bad at all.

“Maybe a little nibbling,” admitted Luna once they broke for air.  “Thou smells of the fair Princess Twilight.”  After a second kiss on her behalf, she added, “Tastes like her too.  Now, tell me of your dates, so I know how far I should be permitted to proceed this eve.”

Oooo, tempting.

“Actually… she stood me up.  Not that it’s her fault,” added Dry quickly.  “I’m sure there was some Harmony crisis or something that sent her and the rest of the crew around the world for the last few days.  But she stopped by the coffee shop this morning, almost at dawn, so she’s back and…”  He trailed off at the look of disappointment in Luna’s eyes.  “I didn’t go up to the castle and remind her about our date agreement.”

“Understandable, but still, you must be punished for your insensitivity.”  Luna gave him a sharp nip around the ear that made Dry yelp, then wrapped him up in her wings and nipped him several more times.  “Naughty, naughty,” she said after spitting out a hair and resuming her nipping.  “I shall use the Elements of Hairmony upon you, vile shedding creature.  Take that!  And that!”

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

They were only a little late getting to the coffee shop in the morning, although Dry Roast’s ear looked red and disheveled no matter how he combed it.  Luna had offered to make the other match, but with as much giggling and happy play had gone on last night between them before snuggling down and sleeping, it might have gotten out of control, so he declined.  There was, of course, plenty of time in the upcoming weeks or even years until what he suspected was his ultimate demise, so there was no need to rush to the end when the trip there was so much fun.  The two of them exchanged giggles all the way through setting up the equipment and getting the first cookies baked, but just when they were about to move to the front door and spend a little special pre-dawn time looking at the stars and talking, the front door bell rang.

It was not Twilight Sparkle arriving to deal with his other ear, as Dry Roast had somewhat anticipated.  Instead, it was another similar pale purple unicorn mare with a dark striped mane, looking vaguely guilty as if she were breaking and entering instead of just getting ready to place an order.

“Hello?” she called out, looking around the empty main room for other customers.  “Are you open?”

“That’s what the sign says.  I’m Dry Roast, proprietor of Java Le Choza.”  Dry put on his best New Customer smile.  “Are you new in town, or just passing through?”

“I’m not sure.”  The mare came hesitantly up to the counter with her head angled up so she could read the signboard.  It always bothered Dry to be looking up the nostrils of his customers, but there really was not any other place to put the menu so it could be seen.  “I’ll have a Princess-sized… You don’t happen to know what Twilight Sparkle orders, do you?”

“Mostly him,” said Princess Luna, who had slipped up beside Dry Roast in a fresh apron and the little paper hat around her horn.  The pale mare looked down for a moment from the menu, then back up… then snapped her gaze to Princess Luna and made a very small squeaking noise.  The big eyes and rapid breathing were getting to be a common appearance in the coffee shop, so Dry shook his head and launched into his usual explanation.

“Yes, she’s Princess Luna, but she has been working here at the Java Le Choza in order to get a better understanding of ordinary ponies, so we would ask you to just treat her like any other employee.”

“But…”  The mare blinked several times and took a quick glance back at the store door as if she were about ready to bolt.

“So, you’re wanting a Twilight Special,” said Dry, hooking the largest foam cup on the rack.  “Double-double espresso latte with five pumps of chocolate syrup, sprinkles, and low foam.”

“Uh…”  The mare blinked her wide lashes some more, her eyes darting between Dry and Luna before blurting out, “That’s… chocolate syrup?  Who puts chocolate syrup in coffee?”

Luna lowered her head and brushed up against Dry.  “If you wish a beverage in the same fashion my fellow princess consumes her morning… desires, chocolate syrup is all that you shall have.  The special topping she desires is a matter of contention betwixt us.”

“I just want a regular coffee for myself.”  The mare held a hoof to her chest, still seemingly entranced and awed by Luna’s presence.  “I was over at the castle this morning because I couldn’t sleep, and Twilight was stumbling around the kitchen like some sort of zombie, trying to put the coffee grounds basket back in the machine and mashing it into a pulp, so I thought I’d zip into town and grab her a coffee.  That’s what friends do, right?”

“I think we’re about to have a friendly visitor.”  Dry Roast sprinted back to the storeroom and emerged a few moments later with a featureless white box.  “Ma’am, if you could run this up to her castle and oh it’s too late…”

The little bell on the top of the door chimed as Princess Twilight Sparkle staggered inside, her wings spread out for balance and her nostrils flared.  She stepped forward in a slow, deliberate fashion that made the unnamed mare move out of the way with a scramble of hooves, then nearly flowed over the counter to embrace Dry Roast, lips first.

It was, by far, the most intense kiss Dry Roast had ever received.

Somehow, he was not quite sure how, Dry managed to keep his eyes open, and in the brief breaks Twilight took for breathing, he got her coffee cup under the appropriate spigots on the machine.  Although when she nuzzled his ear and took a nip, he might have spilled a little.  Coffee, that is.  It took quite a few minutes of nocturnal noshing and nibbling before he managed to get a mostly full cup gently floated over to her, and after a bump or two of the foam container against her cheek, Twilight moved her lips to a different passion of her life.

She must have been at least partially satiated by the kisses, because Twilight only drank half of the coffee before returning to several affectionate nuzzles and one additional sharp nip at the end of his ear that Luna had abused last night.  Then Twilight Sparkle staggered to her hooves and began heading for the front door, which she found after a few false starts, and stumbled back out into the dawn-streaked streets of Ponyville.

It took several tries for Dry Roast to get to his hooves, and he ran a quick espresso with a shot of maple syrup to give his dry throat an emergency wetting.  It was totally unfair the way Twilight could make his lips tingle so much that he could feel them days later, and since she had dropped by the shop yesterday, and Luna had been kissing him last night, it was getting difficult to speak.

Not that he was about to complain.

“What in Equestria was that?” asked the unnamed mare who Dry Roast had totally forgotten about.  She had nervously scooted up to the counter and was peering around the corner as if she expected to find some sort of horrible monster instead of a stunned coffee colt, still rubbing his lips.  “That wasn’t Twilight Sparkle.  That couldn’t be Twilight Sparkle.  Twilight is this nebbish little alicorn who doesn’t have a sex life more active than a few books she keeps in a locked drawer for reference.”

“Really?” said Dry once he had gotten enough of his wind back to speak.

“Yes, really!”  The mare huffed, jabbing a hoof in the direction Twilight had taken.  “I’ve studied Twilight Sparkle, watched her every move for weeks, and learned every one of her habits before ambushing her with Starswirl’s Fourth Chronal Inversion spell.  I know everything there is about her and the Elements of Harmony!  The only time she surprised me is after she turned me away from my self-destructive path and kept me from interfering in the timestream.”

“Uh…”  Dry Roast tried to think, which was difficult.  “When was that?”

“A few days ago, after Twilight and I almost-kinda-sorta destroyed all of Equestria and the multiverse and… well, it isn’t important.”

“And…”  Dry leaned his head to one side and considered the rosy glow of the impatient sun, which was hesitating under the horizon, then turned to Luna, who had slipped behind the coffee machine into a convenient shadow where she could watch what was going on and giggle.  “Luna?  Break time for your other job.  I’ll see if Miss…”  Dry Roast looked at the young mare, who picked up on the unspoken question effortlessly.

“Starlight Glimmer.  I’m… um… Twilight’s friend.  And ex-nemesis.”

“Right.”  Dry Roast gestured to a booth.  “I’ll get Miss Glimmer a free coffee and we’ll wait for you to get back.”

“Do not start without me,” said Luna.  She hung her apron on Dry’s horn and sashayed out the front door to lower the moon while Dry admired her departure.  Then he grabbed a medium foam cup off the rack and filled it up with coffee.  This was one conversation he did not want to miss.

~ ~ ☕ ~ ~

“So you didn’t just destroy Equestria once,” said Dry Roast once he had listened to Starlight Glimmer give her explanation of the last few days, depending on how one would measure time travel.  “You destroyed Equestria by paradox several times—”

“No more than ten,” said Starlight.  “Or maybe twelve,” she added with a thoughtful frown.  “Chronological folding made them blur together.”

“Let’s just say ten for round numbers’ sake.”  Dry Roast gave a quick look at the counter of the coffee shop where Sugar Lump was dealing with the early customers.  She had been putting in longer odd hours to cover for Dry’s princess interactions, both early and late shifts, and really deserved a few bits raise.  Particularly since the clientele was tending more to the ‘world-ending threat’ of the spectrum.  Then again, he had caught her scribbling notes during a slack time, so it looked like she was writing his unofficial biography out of his experiences.  Still, it would be best to get the raise written down before things got more complicated than they already were.

“Are there any more nemisises…  Nemasi?”  Dry stopped with the tip of his pencil resting on his pocket notebook.

“Nemeses,” said Luna and Starlight in unison.

“Right.”  Dry quickly marked down the raise before he forgot.  “Are there any other ponies who Twilight Sparkle has converted to Friendship who might be dropping by the shop in the mornings?  Discounting Tirek, of course.”

“Sunset Shimmer,” said Starlight.  “She’s one of Princess Celestia’s earlier students who has been imprisoned in a parallel dimension inhabited by humans.”

“Less of a prison and more a vacation spot,” said Luna.  “Twilight Sparkle goes to visit her on occasion, and has brought back the most interesting of stories.  And dreams,” she added with a wink at Dry.

Dry Roast considered his list.  “Queen Chrysalis, Starlight Glimmer, Sunset Shimmer, Luna—” he paused to rub briefly up against her warm neck “—Trixie, and Fluttershy’s… um… friend.”

“Discord drinks coffee?  Here?”  Starlight Glimmer wrinkled up her nose, but Dry had to take a quick look around the dining room before responding, just in case he had shown up when his name was mentioned.

“He’s an excellent customer, even though he drinks the cup and throws away the coffee,” said Dry.  “He does seem to enjoy the company, though.  And he tips well, if you like cheese bits.”

Starlight Glimmer just looked at Dry Roast, blinking several times before slowly shaking her head in disbelief.  “Even put in that context, Twilight Sparkle’s behavior is still weird.”

“Dry!  DRY!!”  Rain Check’s voice was high and frantic, and he burst through the front door of Java Le Choza like his tail was on fire, which would have been quite a feat, considering the amount of water and shampoo suds soaking his pale blue hide.  He skittered across the floor, hooves and wings flying in all directions before skidding to a stop in front of their table with wide white eyes and a growing puddle of bathwater.

“Dry!  There’s a pair of mares in our bathroom!  In maid outfits!”

“I stand corrected,” said Starlight Glimmer into the resulting silence.  “Twilight is starting to look like the only normal pony in town.”