//------------------------------//
// Puddinghead's Secret to Being So Wise 
// Story: The Grand Illusion and Other Short Stories of Pony Wisdom 
// by Knowledge 
//------------------------------//

Equus November- Equestria - Canterlot - Market Square 

Chancellor Puddinghead had recently came out of hiding. A thousand years ago, when the alicorn sisters took power, she didn’t want to give them the pleasure of disposing her. The Dreamweaver Arachne the First, whom Luna had imprisoned with all her future descendents out of jealously underneath Canterlot Mountain, had saved the Chancellor by creating a Dream Realm where dreamers could live in peace and never grow old. A week ago, the vengeful dryad Birch and her apprentice Twilight Sparkle had stolen the enchanted dream quilt in Celestia’s vault. They freed Arachne the Second, the First’s granddaughter, from Luna’s prison with it. Along with the dreamweaving spider came all the dreamers like Puddinghead who had stayed alive the whole millennia in the Dream Realm.

The ponies of modern Equestria knew of Puddinghead from their Hearth’s Warming stories; however, these stories painted her a babbling buffoon who endangered her people and stubbornly didn’t listen to her advisors. History was truly written by the victors, and the alicorn sisters were those victors. The Chancellor’s fellow dreamers who have lived the millennia with her took it upon themselves to restore her reputation as a wise and caring leader.

It was a bright Sunday in the Market Square when a bunch of curious foals have heard that Puddinghead was wise found the emaciated mare in a pile of bananas. Puddinghead had starved for her people before entering the Dream Realm and it showed. She only been free for a week and had yet to regain her legendary pudge.

“Puddinghead, we wish to know how to become wise,” the foals declared.

“That is simple. Use good judgement,” the mare replied matter-of-factly.

“How do we get good judgement?”

“Experience.”

“How do we get experience.”

“Bad judgement,” Puddinghead answered and groaned. Looking at all the banana peels around her, she had definitely exercised bad judgement that day. The foals laughed at her expense like foals had been doing for centuries in her absence.