//------------------------------// // 23 A special dinner // Story: For science - Book three // by Znegil //------------------------------// “Everything looks great, relax.”, I tried to calm down Twilight who was checking the positioning of the silverware for the third time since I had come back. “Everything has to be perfect…”, she argued. “That's why…” “Everything IS perfect.”, I replied to her. “We still have an hour before the princess arrives, how is the food coming along?” She looked at me blank faced. “Food…” “The food for the dinner with Celestia. Don’t tell me you have been re-arranging silverware all afternoon but we don’t have any food to serve?!” “Well… I…”, she tried to answer while tears started to form and I felt her despair. I took a few deep breaths and drew her into a hug. “It's okay, we can do this, but we have to stay calm and avoid to panic. Can you do this for me, my love?” She silently nodded in reply. I brushed through her mane. “Good. Let’s check what we have to do and who will do it. Let’s make a list.” As I had expected the sentence ‘Let’s make a list’ helped her focus again. Quickly a scroll and quill appeared and she was ready to write. “Where is Spike?”, I asked. “Gem-hunting with Rarity”, Twilight replied. ‘Well, there goes a big part of our work resources’, I thought. “Have you told Chrysalis and Lavender about dinner with the princess?”, I asked her. “Not yet, I wanted to do that once the silverware was perfect…”, she answered but her voice got very quiet towards the end. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Fine, fine… Here is what we still need to do, write it down. We need food! We need to tell Chrysalis and her marefriend what's happening. We need to clean the living room. We should put away the rest of the books laying around our home. The dining table is perfect, we won't touch it.” She quickly wrote everything down, the simple act of writing a list seemed to have calmed her down a lot. “Here's my plan.”, I continued. “One hour is not enough time to shop for ingredients and make a nice meal, so I will order at 'the Dancing Butterfly' instead and bring the stuff over. You tell our houseguests about all that and they can help you do the rest from our list, please let Lavender do only light stuff since she is still recovering. Does that sound good?” “You're so good at organizing.”, she replied with flushed cheeks and I felt her arousal through our connection. I would have liked to react the way she wanted, but there wasn’t time for that right now. “Okay, I’m off to the restaurant to order a nice menu for us.” With these words I left the library, leaving a disappointed Twilight behind, I would take care of her needs later tonight. … About one hour later I returned with several covered trays of food, two unicorn mares from the restaurant were helping me transporting all of it, once again I was thankful this restaurant was so close to our home. As I entered I instantly noticed how clean the whole library looked, apparently the others had put a lot of work into it. The unicorns left after I had given them a tip. Twilight and Lavender helped me to arrange the trays on the table, we left the trays covered so the food would stay warm until the princess arrived. “Where is Chrysalis?”, I asked them. “She's in the kitchen preparing a dessert for later.”, Lavender replied. I was quite curious about that and was on my way to the kitchen to see what she was doing when there was a knock on the door. I peeked at the clock… of course, the princess was right on time as always. Twilight opened the door while Lavender and I waited in the living room to greet her. “Hello you all, it's so nice to see you again.”, Celestia addressed us as she entered. We all replied to her equally polite and Chrysalis left the kitchen just a moment later to greet the princess as well. We all sat around the table and begun our meal. “This looks delicious.”, Celestia commented as I took the lids off the plates. “Your visit had been a bit on short notice, so we had decided to order in the restaurant nearby instead of cooking ourselves.”, I replied. “Sorry for not informing you a day earlier, but it's quite hard to plan for a bit of free time in my schedule.”, the princess explained. “So as an ambassador canceled his appointment I had to take this opportunity to visit you and see how everything is going.” “You're always welcome and your visits are never a bother.”, Twilight hurried to tell her. Celestia gave her a warm smile. “Thank you so much. So how is the research coming along.”, she asked. “Excellent.”, Twilight replied. “Chrysalis is so open and helpful to us, the changelings are a fascinating race.” “That's so good to hear.”, the princess said while smiling toward our ‘test subject’ and using her magic to fill her plate with different food items. Chrysalis moved uneasy in her chair, she clearly was uncomfortable around the princess, which wasn't surprising considering what she had tried to pull in Canterlot. We all filled our plates and started to dig in. … “How is the ‘blinking’ of your hand coming along?”, the princess asked me after she had finished eating. I used my ‘magic hand’ to quickly pick up the salt and sat in down a few inches to my right, my hand disappeared right afterward. “Better and better.”, I explained. “I'm able to let it appear for about a second now without really straining myself. I hope with continued training I can extend this to a much longer time.” She nodded. “Really impressive. I hadn't expected something like this. You sure are one of the oddest creatures I have ever met in my life.” She smiled at me as if she just found a gem within a pile of rocks. ‘Wow, that's something coming from someone with her lifespan.’, I thought to myself… which reminded me of something Chrysalis had told me before, I wondered… “When was the last time you had sex?”, I asked Celestia. Twilight choked on the potato she was just eating, as she spat it out it missed the princess head only by an inch. My marefriend looked at me as if I had just murdered somepony. Chrysalis showed an amused grin while Lavender’s face was pure surprise. Celestia meanwhile showed a gently smiling poker face, I was sure she had used it in many negotiations with other countries before. “What makes you ask this question?”, she asked without any noticeable emotion in her voice. I briefly tried to use my ability to read her emotions but found myself completely blocked. ‘Of course, she would be prepared when being in a room with the changeling princess.’, I thought. “It's something Chrysalis told me earlier today.”, I honestly replied. “She said you must be bored out of your mind for being a princess for thousand years and only having polite conversations, so I asked myself what question no pony ever would ask you.” She kept up the smiling poker face for a few more seconds before there was a sad desperate sigh coming from her. “I had never expected a changeling would be the one creature understanding me.”, she told us. “It is tiresome to always uphold the facade of the perfect princess no matter how I feel at any day.” “Then why keeping it up?”, I asked. “You should be able to do whatever you want.” “It's not that easy.”, she replied. “It calms my subjects to have a leader who looks perfect and without fail, it gives us a better position against other countries as well. Two hundred years ago I used a curse word in public after badly hurting my knee, Equestria had been in turmoil for days.” “Well, we're not your typical subjects and I believe we all are willing to keep a little secret for you.”, I said and looked around, I saw everypony nodding in agreement. “How about you being just Celestia for the rest of your visit, without the whole princess stuff?” “You're all sure about that?”, she asked surprisingly insecure. “Yes. Just relax and be yourself for once.”, I replied. Twilight was the only one who looked a bit uneasy. Finally, she used her magic to remove her crown and golden yoke, then she kicked off the fancy golden horseshoes one by one. She leaned back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. “This feels really nice for a change. Do you have some wine?”, she asked after a few moments. “Sure, just a moment.”, I stood up and walked to the kitchen. I felt a strange mix of curiosity and fear coming from my marefriend. I guessed she was excited to discover this new side of the pony she idolized so much but feared what she would discover. I found a selection of four wines in our kitchen and couldn't really decide which would meet Celestia's taste, so I decided to bring them all in a little basket. “I wasn't sure which wine you would like, so I brought a selection.”, I explained to the white alicorn. “I don't care much, I just want to get drunk for once.”, came the surprising answer from her. She instantly used her magic to open one of the bottles and poured herself a drink. Chrysalis opened one of the other bottles and filled all of our glasses. Celestia downed half her glass immediately and seemed to be in a state of total bliss. Chrysalis disappeared into the kitchen for a moment and came back with a tray of her secret dessert, she put it on the table between us. We all stared at what she had made. It looked like glass bonbons, something was in the middle of them. “Is this actual glass?”, I asked confused. I hadn't seen anything even remotely close to what was in front of me right now. “It's sugar.”, Chrysalis explained to us. “If you heat up sugar to the right temperature it will look like glass once it's cooled down. It's a changeling delicacy, I just exchanged the love goo in the middle with applesauce.” “They look incredibly complicated to make.”, Lavender stated after picking one up and looking at it up close. “Yeah… but in my two years working as a sugar baker in the hive we made a lot of these, so I have a lot of experience.” Now every one of us had picked up one, they really looked one of their kind. “How do we eat these?”, I asked a bit confused. “Won't we get hurt just biting into them?” “You bite into them very slowly.”, Chrysalis explained. “There will be a crunching sensation but your saliva will instantly start to dissolve the thin sugar layer.” I carefully tried it, it was a strange feeling but even the sugar tasted like apples. We all ate our sweet treats and enjoyed them a lot… except for Celestia who was just staring at hers. “It's not poisoned.”, Chrysalis stated after a few more moments. “Oh yes, I'm pretty sure of that since we all randomly took them from the plate.”, the princess replied. “Pretty sure…” “I eat yours if you don't want to.”, I suggested. “No… no, it's fine. I eat my own after waiting just a bit longer.”, Celestia stated. “Why did you work as a sugar baker for two years?”, she addressed Chrysalis. "A princesses and possible future queen of the hive has to know exactly what her subjects do, so every princess works two years in every possible job. All jobs combined that's 34 years. Teacher, Guard, Special Forces, Construction worker, blacksmith, gravedigger, sugar baker and many more.” “That sounds surprising interesting and useful…”, Celestia mused. “Maybe we should set some time aside to learn our subjects professions as well, it would certainly be very interesting and I'm pretty sure Luna would love that as well.” After watching all of us closely one last time she took a bite of the sweet as well. “This is indeed something special… maybe you can show me someday how you do it.” “Gladly.”, Chrysalis responded, her face full of surprise. “Now back to the question that made all of this possible…”, Celestia continued. “Which question?”, I asked slightly confused. “Your sex question.”, she replied. Twilight sudden jumped from her chair. “I think I have to finish a report.”, she told us red-headed and stormed out of the room. Celestia groaned. “See? That's the typical reaction when I fail to stay in my role.” She took another sip of wine. “Well anyway… It has been about two months.” I was surprised, I had expected something in the realm of years. The princess continued: “Since ponies would freak out if I had known sexual activities I use my magic to change my appearance every few months and go to town to search for some fun. I'm usually a unicorn mare searching for a stallion but I had tried all kinds of combinations over the years.” “So you had been a stallion as well?”, I asked smiling. “ALL possible combinations.”, she explained. “It's hard enough to keep things at least a bit different after all this time.” “Well, Stella would be quite different to anything you had before.”, Chrysalis suggested grinning. “Indeed she is…”, the princess mused, her gaze wandering over my body made me nervous and I began to shift uncomfortably in my chair. Suddenly Chrysalis started laughing. We turned our heads toward her in confusion, curious what she found so funny in this situation. After a few more moments she was able to explain. “You change your appearance to get love and sex from ponies, you sound like a changeling.”, she told Celestia still smiling. “Did you have sex with somepony we know?”, Lavender asked very slowly. “No!”, Celestia answered immediately… and much too fast to be true. I was curious about that, but at this moment the front door was kicked open with so much force I was surprised it didn't just explode as it hit the wall. A scary looking mad Fluttershy stormed into the room got close to me and addressed me right away. “HOW DARE YOU TO KILL A HELPLESS LITTLE BUNNY?” She had a fire in her eyes I had never expected to see. A little robin was flying after her tweeting something. I was so confused by all of this. “I didn't kill anything, I swear!”, I replied while the others looked at me confused as well. Fluttershy was listening to something the robin was telling her. “What do you mean by ‘not this Stella’?”, the yellow pegasus asked bewildered. “There is only…” The robin interrupted with a longer explanation. “Three Stella’s with firesticks?”, she repeated in disbelief. “I believe the bird is using ‘Stella’ as a proxy for ‘human’...”, I explained and felt cold as the room started to slowly spin around me.