Foreign Service
Grand Vizier. It was a nice title.
It had been awarded to him by the nicest young princess.
It came with a nice room in a beautiful crystal castle.
It was most certainly nice.
The ferret certainly thought he had gone to ferret-heaven. He had his own personal pegasus trainer who just adored the little weasel.
Raindolph, however…
It was not that his work was too strenuous. Raindolph was used to getting up early to avoid his fellow students and their tendencies to practice curses and hexes on him. He was used to studying late at night to force tiny bits of knowledge into his dense mind. He no longer had to check under his sheets for exploding runes, or examine his pillow for brain-eating leeches.
In fact, he missed it. Just a little. A mage who was not on their toes was soon to be a toad, or so they said. Or croaked.
Even finding himself transformed into a unicorn when he emerged from the mirror portal was not too bad. A tail was a remarkably effective flyswatter, since he certainly was not going to try any flyswatting spells with his wand. Unicorn magic was even more natural than his own somewhat erratic spellcasting, so he could both hold a book and illuminate it for reading at the same time. And with effort, a lot of effort, he could temporarily transform back into his knobby-kneed and scrawny human body, just in case he needed to scratch.
“Just a little higher, Raindolph.” Lyra, a light green unicorn who seemed unusually friendly to him, rested her head in his lap and sighed at the continuing ear-scritches. “Yeah, that’s the ticket. Those human fingers are like magic.”
“Well, I am a mage,” said Raindolph a little defensively. He shifted positions on the park bench and looked around at the colorful pony town, who had been treating him with considerable respect and a lot less anxiety than if some unicorn wizard had suddenly shown up in the middle of his school. Such an odd student might not have lasted a week before being rendered down for parts, but Raindolph had been here several days before his arm… or foreleg had been fully healed, and the worst thing so far he had to endure was a stomachache from his ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party.
No more cherry chimichangas with hot sauce. Ever.
“I thought you were supposed to be teaching me about unicorn magic,” said Raindolph, following Lyra’s unspoken command to scratch a little further down her neck.
“Later,” she said with a grunt. “Oooo, yeah. Right there.”
“Hi, Lyra.” A young unicorn mare with a coat tinted a shade of pinkish-magenta that could never exist in reality came trotting up to their park bench and regarded Raindolph with a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. “Hi, Raindolph. Is this a private bench, or can anypony join in?”
She leaned forward over Raindolph’s lap and permitted a long, slow scratching at the base of one ear, which made Lyra nudge her.
“Hey, I saw him first. I’m supposed to be teaching him about unicorn magic.”
“Not much teaching going on that I can see,” said Sparkler, nudging back. “Tell you what, big guy. You scratch my ears and I’ll teach you all about Equestrian unicorn magic and how it relates to enchanting gemstones.”
“I’ll play you a solo,” said Lyra with a grunt as she pushed her competition off Raindolph’s lap.
“All the gems you can eat,” purred Sparkler as she head-butted Lyra to one side and coincidently jabbed her thankfully blunt horn into Raindolph’s ribs.
“Girls!” Both Twilight Sparkle and Rarity appeared to have been out for a walk, and strolled over, side by side to give Sparkler and Lyra matching disapproving looks.
“Humans do not eat gems,” scolded the young alicorn in a stern voice. “And if you both were teaching my vizier unicorn magic like you were supposed to, tell me why he’s not in his unicorn form.”
“Darling!” Rarity moved to place herself between her friend and the two unicorns trying to occupy Raindolph’s inadequate lap. “The day is warm and beautiful, and you want your handsome young human to stay inside, studying?”
“Well, yes, actually,” said Twilight Sparkle.
“Honestly, Twilight!” Rarity moved a little closer and rested her head on the little bit of lap that Raindolph had left. “There is a time for ear scratching and a time for studying.” She flicked one ear up against his hand. “Any time you want.”
By stretching the thumb and little fingers of one hand, Raindolph managed somehow to scratch both sets of ears while still having one hand free for a third, but he cast a despairing look at Twilight Sparkle anyway.
“Well…” Twilight looked over her shoulder, then moved closer to lay her head down next to Rarity’s. “It has been a long day, and that looks so comforting.”
“That’s not exactly what I was trying to say,” protested Raindolph, but he did add a few ear-scratches for Her Highness of Friendship and Granter of Titles to Dimensionally-Disconnected Dimwits. “Besides, it’s not even noon yet.”
“Less talking, more scratching,” said Twilight with a sigh.
* Ω *
Quite some time later when Raindolph had been all scratched out and had ‘accidentally’ turned back into his unicorn form (because with hooves, he would not be begged for ear scratches until sunset), he found himself strolling casually back to Princess Twilight’s colorful crystal castle with the princess in question walking alongside. If nothing else, being stranded in this dimension was improving his finger strength. Ear scratching had quickly become one of the major responsibilities of Ponyville’s first Vizier, and he could not go out for a human stroll without one unicorn or a dozen giving him one of those big-eye, mournful looks.
“So, Princess Twilight,” started Raindolph, uncomfortably aware of how close the purple princess was getting during their walk, and the way her wings kept ‘accidentally’ brushing up against the parts of his creamy golden coat that the tidy black robe did not cover. To be honest, his coat was the one part of him that Raindolph was fairly proud of, since his mane and tail had maintained the sparse pinkish-red of his human form. “I was wondering if you had made any progress in finding a way to un-make my wand.”
“I still don’t know why you’d want to do that!” Twilight fixed him with what she obviously considered to be a fierce, intense expression, but only made her look a little like an irritated chipmunk. “There are so few working wand-type devices in Equestria that destroying one would be practically a crime! Besides, your wand seems to be much easier for you to control in our world.”
Raindolph considered the statement and tried to come up with an adequate argument that ‘only’ blowing out one of the back walls of Twilight’s crystal castle with a minor fireworks cantrip was somehow not ‘easier to control’ and fit more into the category of ‘pre-emptive catastrophe prevention.’ It was a far cry from demolishing the entire testing range at college with a simple blasting charm, but he would feel much safer as a lowly Ponyville ear-scratcher than a powerful vizier who would attract powerful enemies, or worse, mages from his home dimension who would want the unique wand for their own.
It did bring up a different question, though.
“Well, putting the wand to one side for now, maybe you could investigate why I’m so popular with itchy-eared ponies.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Twilight with a twitch of her own ears. “You’re just so comfortable to be around. Why, a girl can lay her head down in your lap and be perfectly safe. It’s a very— Nice. It’s very nice,” added Twilight with a flick of her tail that brushed up against Raindolph’s side.
“I thought it could be from when I first made the wand,” mused Raindolph. “Creation of an attuned item requires the mage to share their essense with the item. It’s much like when I got my familiar. He has some of my essence, so he can talk, and I have some of his, so… Well, I’ve never quite figured out what I got from him, but since his essence was so much smaller than mine, it might not be detectable.”
“So in a way, the wand became a part of you. Hm…” Twilight even managed to frown cutely. “Rarity didn’t say anything about you turning into a unicorn when you first visited. All she said was that you were looking for some ‘special’ spell components, and after she found out what you wanted, she got it for you, and saw you leave. What exactly was it you were looking for, Rain? I mean Mister Raindolph,” she hastily added.
With a short glance at his own tail, and the tail of the alicorn princess who just happened to have the same color tail hairs as he had imbued into the wand, Raindolph turned his head back in the direction he was going before he ran into something. “Just a few minor this and thats,” he managed. “Nothing special, but I couldn’t find them in my dimension, and you have them all over the place here.”
Behind just about every pony.
“I know, I know,” huffed Twilight Sparkle. “It’s some sort of secret that you can’t tell even me. After all, it’s what your cutie mark represents.” She took a not-so-brief look at the slim wooden wand symbol on his rump, nearly identical to the deadly wooden wand he was carrying inside his robe pocket.
“It’s the only major working that I’ve ever accomplished,” admitted Raindolph. “Back when I bribed my way into the school, my best hope was to become some third assistant to the waste disposal branch sorcerer of some small kingdom in the south, preferably one with running water and a vague notion of hygiene. By the time graduation was looming, even that position was starting to look like a fever dream.”
“You can’t be that bad of a student,” insisted Twilight once they reached the castle. “You just need incentive to study. You really focused on making your wand.”
“True.” Raindolph nodded.
“And with effort and concentration, you could master its use,” continued Twilight Sparkle. “You could even discover a whole new field of magic and ascend to become an alicorn! Wouldn’t that be great?”
Raindolph stopped in the castle corridor and looked behind the two of them, where their tails were intertwined.
“Oh! So sorry!” Twilight blushed darker beneath the purple of her coat, looking so cute and adorable that Raindolph almost could not breathe.
* Ω *
The Grand Vizier was invited to dinner with the Royal Family, which consisted of one Princess and one Dragon who fell into that odd category between adopted son and little brother. It felt more comfortable to keep his human form, despite a constant feeling as if his fingers were turning into hooves, or at least getting stiff from his second job. The ferret was back from his trip to Fluttershy’s animal-filled home and chattered incessantly about his visit, through the main course to the dessert, a light strawberry sorbet that the dragon had prepared.
It was a pleasant atmosphere to talk about school experiences, both his own uncomfortable ones and her strange ones, and once dinner was over, he retired to his comfortable room with a few books on Equestrian magic for company.
“So, still no luck?” The ferret cocked his head to one side and watched Raindolph switch back to his unicorn form in one swift, natural motion. “Maybe you should just stay that way. Unless you can’t pick your nose with hooves, that is.”
“Oh, hush.” Raindolph used his unicorn magic to spread the books out across the desk and concentrated on a translation spell. “The wand is just too powerful. The sooner I can find a reliable way to destroy it safely, the better off I’ll be.”
“Uh-huh.” The ferret darted over to the door and peeked out into the crystal hallway before running back to Raindolph. “You still haven’t told Princess Powerbutt that you used her—”
“No!” hissed Raindolph. “I’d die of embarrassment. And Twilight would be mad at Rarity. That might disrupt their friendship magic artifact thing, so the next monster that attacked Equestria—”
“You’d have to fight it,” said the ferret with a weasely grin.
“We’d have to fight it.”
The ferret’s grin vanished, then returned in force. “Oh, don’t worry about Rarity being angry. A couple scratches and she’ll be putty. Fluttershy said all the unicorn mares in town are lining up to get their ears scratched by our handsome hero.”
“Really? Who’s that? I didn’t see anybody else scratching ears today.” Raindolph cast a curious glance at the ferret, who promptly face-pawed.
“Just study your books until bedtime,” said the ferret, curling up on a nearby shelf. “I’ll just be right here, doing familiar stuff. Very complicated.”
* Ω *
In the middle of the night, Raindolph suddenly awoke with the feeling that there was somebody else under the blankets on his bed, most probably due to the quiet wrapping of a pair of warm forelegs around his neck and the gentle nudge of another unicorn horn against his.
“Raindolph?” whispered the soft voice of Twilight Sparkle right at the end of his nose. “Are you awake?”
“Yes?” he whispered back, trying not to to wake up the ferret who would take this so much out of context.
“I was trying to sleep after studying tonight, and I just couldn’t.” Princess Twilight Sparkle nudged him on the side of his cheek with her warm, velvety nose, so much like a horse, while she nuzzled her way up his face. “I need it.”
“Did you try a glass of warm milk?” asked Raindolph in the futile hopes that his expertise in that particular field was desired.
“No, milk just won’t do it. I need you.” Her hot breath filled one of his ears as she continued, “I just itch something terrible, and the more I tried to sleep, the worse it got. I’ve never felt like this before, not with another stallion… or human, that is. It just kept building until it overwhelmed me until I had to sneak into your room. Please, you have to help me get relief from this terrible desire! I’ll do anything!”
Several minutes later, after Raindolph had shifted back into his human form and began to scratch Her Highness’ ears, he was just starting to get his wits back. It did not help that the ferret was watching from the other pillow and quietly snickering, or that Twilight was giving off passionate groans that sounded entirely too human.
“Oh, that’s the spot,” she moaned, flopping down until she nearly covered his entire lap. “Yes! More! Oh, harder! Uhhhh. Closer to my horn! Don’t stop! I never want you to stop! Give it to me! Both hands!”
The nearby lamplight, which he had lit with a unicorn spell before switching to a more effective ear-scratching form, highlighted the bed in golden light. It gave the purple coat of Equestria’s youngest alicorn a glossy sheen and kept the rest of the room in shadows, except for a few glitters of light from the ceiling. It was as if Raindolph were in some inverted unicorn-catching expedition at home, where intrepid collectors would hire some virgin village maiden to go sit in a moonlit forest glade and complain about her sexual inexperience until a male unicorn—
Technically, an alicorn was just a winged unicorn.
Raindolph looked down at his occupied lap.
Twilight most certainly was laying her head there.
To go along with tradition, this would be the point where the group of burly men with silver shears would sneak out of the woods and shave the unicorn nearly bald in order to sell the mane, tail, and other hairs to enterprising mages to make into potions and overly powerful wands. Raindolph had managed to get the steps backwards, much like most of his magic practice.
He did, however, keep scratching until Princess Twilight gave out a deep sigh and rested her sharp chin on his thigh.
“I can’t believe you want to give this up and go back to your home,” she murmured.
She had a point. Well, other than the one on her chin.
“I really don’t belong in a world without humans,” he started. “Normally, I can’t change into a unicorn at all. I just barely squeaked through Transformation at school. I managed a bunny once, and it was just luck that the teacher walked by then because I never was able to do it again.”
“Are you sure I can’t talk you out of it?” Twilight turned to give him a languorous look from beneath lowered lashes, her eyes looking dark and dangerous in the shadows. “I found a spell that I’m fairly certain can take apart that wand without hurting you.”
“No, I’m positive,” said Raindolph, feeling anything but. “If you can take apart my wand so it’s not dangerous any more, I’ll see about traveling back to my own dimension. I may not be able to find much of a job there, but at least I’ll be sure to wake up in my own body every morning.”
“Oh.” Twilight brushed her head against him. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m… sorry too,” admitted Raindolph. “This is a very nice world, very accepting, and my ferret is going to get so fat he’ll explode if he gets spoiled any more by your friends. But I really need to be among my own kind. Even if they are mostly jerks.”
The ferret gave a subtle fuzzy thumbs-up from his resting spot on the shelf.
“I don’t want you to go.” Twilight straightened up with a sniff and got out the bed. “You’ll be much better off here.”
“That sounds—” Raindolph shifted position, only to hear the clinking of heavy chains from the manacle attached to his leg with the chain snakeing over to a glowing blue ring on the wall.
Princess Twilight’s horn flashed twice, and the wand floated in front of her. For one terrifying second, Raindolph thought she was going to take it over by the gruesome ritual of dismembering the present owner and bathing it in his blood. Then she said something worse.
“I put an exclusion spell on you and your wand, so it can’t get all the way to you. When I get back from downstairs, I’m going to destroy this wand, and you’re going to stay in Ponyville. Obviously, it’s affecting your mind, and once it is destroyed, you’ll see how correct I am.”
He tugged at the chain around his ankle with little effect. “And if I still want to go home?” he asked despite a small voice inside screaming for him to shut up.
“You won’t.” The Equestrian princess turned on one hoof and strode for the door. “Wait here. I’ll be right back, and we’ll see about getting that wand destroyed.”
The wand remained hovering in place just out of reach after the alicorn left and closed the door, but the ferret was off the shelf like a shot. “Time to bail,” he said, darting to the window and struggling with the latch. “Come on you stupid hunk of—”
“Wait for me.” Raindolph shifted forms into a unicorn, only to find the manacle changed with his body. “Nidwicks,” he snapped. “Maybe if I changed into a rabbit.”
The ferret stopped trying to open the window and shot him a look of limited amusement.
“True,” grumbled Raindolph. “If the chains changed once, they’ll match anything I can change into. Let me see if I can use a rust spell…” He trailed off as his pinkish magical aura formed around the hovering wand and slid off, like water off a duck.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered the ferret. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He scrambled out along a crystal shelf, gaining speed as he scurried until launching himself to land on the floating wand. It wobbled under his weight, but with a little flailing, he managed to get it pointed in the rough vicinity of Raindolph’s chains.
“Watch it!” admonished the occasional target of the wobbling wand. “Do you even know how to use that thing? Can you even cast a spell on your own? How do you know you won’t take my leg off?”
“Questions, questions,” muttered the ferret, who shifted his weight and gauged the wand’s generalized direction by a nearsighted squint. “There’s only one way to find out. Brace yourself.”
Raindolph threw himself to the end of the chain, which silently parted under the rust spell.
As well as most of the end of the bed.
Much of the castle wall.
And if one were to squint in the moonlight, the clock tower near the city center was noticeably off-center, much like it had suddenly gotten shorter.
“Hey, it worked.” The ferret bounded over to the hole and scurried down the wall. “Come on, boss. I can see a train over at the station.”
“Are we dead yet?” whined Raindolph from under the blanket at the other end of the bed.
* Ω *
The midnight train ride up the Canterlot mountain went far smoother than Raindolph expected, with no crazy alicorns ripping open the top of the train car to kidnap him back to a cell in Ponyville and no questions from the rest of the snoozing or drowsy passengers. Thankful for the moment that he could be an ordinary well-dressed unicorn in the middle of so many other ponies, he kept silent until the train pulled into the station.
Once he started to stride down one of the darkened streets with his horn providing a wan illumination to prevent injuries from potholes or inconveniently placed buildings, he could no long stay quiet.
“Why this way?” he hissed at the ferret, who had taken lodging in a robe pocket which thankfully was not the pocket that the wand had just ‘turned up’ inside during the trip.
“Didn’t you pay any attention to the girls?” The ferret popped out of the pocket and pointed up at the silhouette of the castle towers. “Princess Twilight Sparkle isn’t the only alicorn around here. They’ve got some sort of day/night deal with Princess Luna watching over the night—”
“While Princess Celestia, the greatest alicorn in all of Equestria, all perfect and wonderful and smart and wise, reigns over the day,” finished Raindolph. “Of course I listened. I couldn’t help but listen. I haven’t heard that kind of hero worship since Instructor Valentine lectured about Hyssop the Disemboweler⁽*⁾. You’d think Celestia raised the sun⁽¹⁾ or something.”
(*) Not all graduates of the school turned out to be good mages.
(1) Thus you see one reason why Raindolph had such poor scores in school. Selective hearing.
“Yeah, yeah,” said the ferret. “This place is weird.”
To be honest, Raindolph expected some sort of difficulty getting into a castle where the rulers of an entire kingdom lived, perhaps ranks of guards and a officious appointment secretary who would arrange for an appointment five weeks from never. In actuality, there was a single bat-winged pegasus on guard at the front gate, who simply nodded and allowed him through once Raindolph managed to choke out, “I’m here to see Princess Luna about—”
In hindsight, he should have asked for directions. The castle was huge, with most of that space going up or down stairs and dark shadows lurking around his path that even his unicorn hornlight could not banish, and he certainly was not going to use the wand to make a light. He was just passing the same shadowed stained-glass window about for the third time when one of those shadows moved to stand in front of him.
“Urk!” Raindolph stumbled backwards, and with twice as many feet to trip over, the inevitable happened. “Ooof!”
The shadow loomed closer, and even though Raindolph thought he was about to die, he kept his hand out of the pocket containing the wand. The looming figure resolved into a concerned-looking alicorn, much larger and darker than Twilight Sparkle, with a flowing mane encompassing the starry night and extremely large eyes.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, extending a hoof down to help Raindolph to his multitudinous feet. “Beg pardon, kind sir. We were occupied, and not watching where we walked.”
“We were a little distracted too,” said Raindolph, shaking his head to clear away the stars from where he had bonked it against the cold tiles. “We were looking for Princess Luna.”
Realization swept across Raindolph like a cold wave of ice, much like the cold expression that appeared on the royal alicorn. “Art thou making fun of our speech?” she asked, taking a step forward until her cool nose was almost against his.
“Naa, he’s just an idiot,” said the ferret, who popped up out of Raindolph’s pocket. “Hello, Princess Luna. Sorry for not writing ahead for a reservation, but we had a psycho princess try to lock us up for eternal ear-scritches.”
The dark princess was set back a step and looked down on the ferret, then up at Raindolph’s perplexed face. “Oh, thou art the ‘human’ which Twilight Sparkle hath written about. Strange, though. You seem much more akin to our little ponies.”
“Oh. That. Um. Just a second.” The sensation of hooves turning back into fingers and toes was getting to be far too common for Raindolph’s good sense, and he was looking forward to getting that blasted wand destroyed so he could stay in his human form and safely go home. That, and not having to worry about blowing himself to bloody fragments with even the smallest spells from it. “Ah, that’s better,” he said, shaking the sleeves of the robe out and digging into one of the pockets for his shoes.
The princess watched while Raindolph slipped back into his shoes and nimbly tied his laces. All of the older students had proper curly toed velvet slippers for the school hallways, but he had always preferred something that would not slip off at high speed while frantically attempting to get to a class or run away from a lab experiment gone wild. The princess seemed impressed by the simple task, and bent close to watch him tie his second shoe.
“How in the stars do you keep track of which finger is doing what?” She lit up her horn and lifted one of Raindolph’s hands for a more in-depth inspection. “Does this have anything to do with these ‘scritches’ which your creature didst speak of?”
She moved closer and used her magic to gently move Raindolph’s hand to the top of her head.
* Ω *
It took a while to explain Twilight Sparkle’s obsession with human ear scritches, describe Raindolph’s determination to return to a world where toes outnumbered hooves, detail the frightening capacity of his wand, and say just what was the exact relationship of the ferret to Raindolph’s magic. During their discussion, Princess Luna guided their path through the dark castle, along the corridors and stairs, until they wound up in a shadowed alcove with lighting so dim that Raindolph could only see vague outlines of his surroundings.
Although what he was sitting on felt suspiciously like a bed, and Luna was resting her heavy head on his lap.
He kept scratching her ears. He really did not want to know what would happen if he quit, only that he would not like it. He did slow down after a while, once it seemed the heavy princess had passed into slumber, and tried to ignore the silver threaded cable that had seemingly formed out of moonlight and wrapped around his hind leg.
Well, one of his legs. And since he had not changed out of human form, it was by default a hind leg.
Raindolph really was wanting to get out of this dimension and go home, even if he had to dodge power-mad mages trying to kill him for his wand there. At least they would not have him scratch them behind the ears and snuggle down in his lap…
Wait a minute. There’s something wrong with that.
Well, getting the wand un-made would allow Raindolph to travel through his world without being in constant deadly peril, while staying in Equestria — with or without the wand — would leave him shackled to an alicorn’s bed in order to sate her unnatural desires. For scratches, that is.
Freedom and poverty would be far better than imprisonment in a gilded cage, no matter how well the caged bird was fed. There should be at least some way for an enterprising mage who survived school to eke out a living at home, even if Raindolph had to put on a silly hat and perform tricks at birthday parties.
Which still left him shackled to a bed with a night princess curled up on his lap and a ferret curled up on a nearby shelf when the sun nudged up against the horizon outside.
Then after a certain amount of time, it nudged up at the horizon again, much like a glowing cat bumping up against something sitting on the edge of a table.
“Luuuuuna…” There was a voice from outside the room, growing louder. It was a nice voice. A pleasant voice. A voice that perhaps had the authority to order Princess Luna to untie his leg from the bed and allow him to escape. Which, after very little thought, became obvious just exactly who that would be.
“Luna,” scolded the tall white alicorn who strode into the bedroom with all the authority of a parent. “You left the moon up this morning, and— Oh!”
By the light of Celestia’s horn, Raindolph could tell the room he was in was most certainly a bedroom, and from the glittering starfield spread across the ceiling in precious gemstones and the rich, dark woods of the bedroom set, it could only be Luna’s bedroom.
That would be Princess Luna.
The one in fact who had her head stretched out across Raindolph’s lap, taking up all the space.
The one who was half of the ruling family of this kingdom.
And the other half had just walked in the door.
The sense of power radiating down on Raindolph was palatable, which meant that he could not only feel it, but taste it in the back of his tongue, like licking a red-hot knife. He had missed Luna’s sense of power at first because it had surrounded him like the darkness. Celestia’s power was like the rising sun, a blast of warmth and heat that should have burned him to ashes and left Luna’s head unsupported, which was probably the only reason she had not roasted him.
“Oh, you must be the Mister Raindolph that my student… I mean my fellow princess has written to me about. Don’t worry, sir. We’ll have all this resolved shortly.” Celestia smiled, and all of Raindolph’s worries went away.
Well, other than being tracked down and murdered for his wand.
* Ω *
Raindolph managed to scurry along next to Princess Celestia without actually breaking into a run. His considerably shorter pony legs would never have been able to keep up, but human’s had a brisk stride, particularly this human when striding away from potentially being imprisoned as Her Royal Highness’ Personal Ear Scratcher for the rest of his life. Still, he had to look over his shoulder every once in a while to make sure they were not being followed.
“Thank you for undoing your sister’s magical chain spell,” managed Raindolph.
“Think nothing of it.” Celestia gave out a brief giggle and rolled her eyes. “I remember being young and having some handsome lad scratch behind my ears. Still, I never tied the poor thing to my bed. I must have words with the two of them later, but for now, I think we should see about your safety.”
Raindolph slowed slightly and started to subtly look for side doors in the castle corridors to sprint out of. “You’re not going to chain me up for ear scratches too, are you?”
“Oh, no.” Another door in front of them opened, and once Celestia had urged him inside, the door closed behind them with a very solid sound. The only other item in the room — besides a nervous mage and his familiar — was a silver mirror which burst into brilliant light as Celestia strode toward it. “Come along, young one. I think we shall find the answer to your problem by consulting an expert.”
By slowing his pace slightly more than Celestia, Raindolph remained on the Equestrian side of the portal for a brief moment after she had passed through.
“So, do we trust her?” asked Raindolph. “Every other alicorn I’ve met so far has tried to tie me to the bed and have their itchy way with me.”
“Can’t hurt,” managed the ferret through Raindolph’s tight grip. “You could just leave me here, though. Or just not quite hold onto me so hard.”
“Not a chance.” Raindolph got a tighter grip on the slippery little weasel before bracing himself to lunge forward, through the portal and to an uncertain future. “Twilight Sparkle and Luna both would use you to track me down, and you’d help them.”
* Ω *
The first thing Raindolph noticed in the room on the other side of the portal was that there was no other side of the portal, just an emptiness where a return surface should have been.
The second thing was the tall, radiantly beautiful woman dressed in a gauzy white gown which allowed her waist-long pastel hair to hang free.
It took a few moments for him to tie ‘Celestia’ to ‘Oh, God! She’s beautiful. I wonder who she is?’
It took a little longer for him to realize where he was.
They were standing in a shop, only much like a shoe shop would have a few dozen pairs of various fashioned footwear displayed on little stands, this shop had wands. Boxes of wands, crates of wands, loose wands tossed onto shelves, stuck into the tops of coffee cups, and laying around on tables in various states of assembly. Guarding this collection of arcane woodwork was an elderly man with frizzy white hair and thick sideburns, who was paying Raindolph about as much attention as a bit of dragon dung on a shoe.
Although with the human form of Celestia in the room, Raindolph really did not expect much attention.
“Your Highness!” The elderly man bowed deeply and straightened up with a pleased expression, taking in Celestia’s statuesque form with a growing smile. “Oh, it does my old eyes good to see you again, M’lady.”
“It is good to see you again too, Mister Ollivander.” Celestia took his old wrinkled hands in her own and touched her lips to the back of his fingers. “I fear my time here is limited to business matters, however. Raindolph, please show us your wand.”
He had to release his two-handed grip on the ferret to bring out his wand, which inevitably resulted in the little weasel making a mad dash for freedom among the dusty boxes in the small shop. Raindolph handed his wand over to the shop owner with more than a little trepidation, but buttressed by the idea that if the man wanted a wand like his, he would have made one of his own by now.
“Interesting. Very interesting,” murmured the old man. He turned the wand over in his hands, then gave it a flick of motion that made the ferret bounce up from behind the dusty boxes it was hiding behind. “I’ve never seen such an elegant three-way linkage on a wand before. Where did you purchase it?”
“Actually… I made it myself,” admitted Raindolph.
“Hey!” objected the ferret from somewhere behind the dusty boxes and crates of wands. “I helped.”
“You held the pages down,” said Raindolph. “And you splattered one of them with mouse guts.” There was a brisk chasing sound among the shadows of the shop, punctuated by a small but frantic squeak, indicating that the ferret was not intending on defending his creative role, but had decided on lunch instead.
“Have you made any other wands?” asked Ollivander, still turning the simple stick in his thin hands. “Any artefacts, perhaps?” he added at Raindolph’s shaken head. “Potions, maybe?”
“None that you’d want to drink,” admitted Raindolph. “My spellcraft has always been weak in school. Until I made the wand last week, I don’t think I ever successfully cast more than a handful of spells correctly.”
“Last week?” Ollivander looked up, his blue eyes wide and both greying eyebrows almost vanishing up into his flyaway hair. “Child, are you telling me you went all the way through school without a wand?”
“Yes?” Raindolph looked between the subtly smiling Celestia and the stunned older man. “It’s normal where I come from. Wands and staffs… or staves, I always get that term confused, are for focusing magical power. Any good mage can cast whatever they want without the crutch.”
Mister Ollivander sat down rather abruptly, although a nearby chair scooted itself under him to prevent a nasty fall. “Son,” he managed in a raspy voice, “if you had a door made of stone that you could barely open with all of your strength, and one day somebody replaced that door with a piece of painted paper…”
“What does this have to do with my wand?” asked Raindolph cautiously. This was the point in school where instructors had a habit of presenting an example, and most often the example was him.
No reply was immediately forthcoming, because Ollivander had picked up the wand from where he had dropped it and returned to examining the tiny lines of runes around the middle that Raindolph had painstakingly copied out of his book. Finally, he gave a grunt and stood up, rummaging around in several of the drawers until he found a pair of small golden rings.
“That should do it,” he murmured, sliding them onto Raindolph’s wand and giving them a small tap with a fingernail, which fixed them in place. “Here you go, lad. Let’s see something simple, like a light. You never can go wrong with a simple light spell.”
Raindolph gave the altered wand a long, studious look, as if he had any kind of a clue what the old man had done to it, then extended it carefully and tried the smallest illumination charm he could work.
A small spark floated off the end of the wand and hovered in place.
Nothing exploded, or caught on fire, or caught on fire and exploded.
He cautiously opened one eye, then fed a little more power into the spell, which blazed up to about a candle or two before he lost his nerve and let the spell lapse.
“Much better!” The old man rubbed his hands together and smiled. “The restrictor rings should let you cast more powerful spells than simple cantrips. Without them, the wand’s core would overload and rip out all of your magic in one blast. It would be an impressive sight, but one that I’d rather not see any closer than a few miles away.”
“Rip out all of my magic?” Raindolph held the wand out at arm’s length. “Fatally?”
“Oh, yes. Quite messy indeed. Bits and pieces flying all over the place.” Ollivander turned to Celestia, who was still standing in the sunbeam coming through the shop’s window. “Very astute of you to bring him to me before the explosion, Your Highness. Of course, there still remains the matter of my payment.”
“I seem to have forgotten my purse.” Celestia inclined her head to the shop windows, which promptly shuttered, shaded, and curtained, with the sign at the front door flipping over to ‘closed’ with one wink. “I presume the usual will suffice?”
* Ω *
There were many jobs that Raindolph had considered attempting after the inevitable happened and he was kicked out of school.
Farrier was not one of them. However, he did seem to have a knack for it.
“A little more off that hoof and we’re done, Raindolph,” said Ollivander. “Make sure to keep all the shavings in the bowl and put them into storage with the tail hairs.”
“Oooo,” moaned Celestia. “Take as much as you want, just as long as I can still walk.” She shifted her head in Ollivander’s lap and stretched to allow his fingers easier access to a particularly itchy spot behind one ear. “Garrick, you still have it for this old mare. Are you sure you don’t want to retire to my world?”
Ollivander did not reply at once, but simply devoted his attention to finalizing the Royal Ear Scratching until he gave Her Highness a slight nudge. “No, I don’t think so. The last few years have been quite an ordeal, what with the Dark Lord and his ilk causing such trouble, but he’s dead now, quite dead, and I think the new generation of wizards will need my services for many years to come. Now if you will please get up, Princess. My knees aren’t what they used to be, and I believe it is time for you to take your guest back home.”
“Grandpa!” came a voice from the back of the shop. “I brought the Montenegrin Muleberry branches you wanted. Is this your ferret?”
A shortish young woman with mousy brown hair that frizzed into a full set of split ends and tangles walked into the shop’s main room from the back, holding onto the ferret and rubbing his tummy. She looked up and started, nearly dropping the ferret and tripping over her own feet as she started backing up. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had customers.”
“We were just leaving,” said Celestia, who straightened up in her human form and stretched with a happy smile as the window shades rolled back up and the ‘Open’ sign flipped over. “Come on, Raindolph.”
“Just a moment, Princess.” Raindolph put the bowl of hoof shavings where Ollivander directed and wiped his hands off on the nearby towel. “If I go home, some other mage can still—” he cast a quick glance at Ollivander and the young woman “—do what we discussed to get control of my wand, correct?”
“Certainly.” Celestia sat down for a moment and struggled with getting shoes onto her human feet. “They would have to be total fools, though.”
Since ‘total fools’ did define the vast majority of magekind, Raindolph plowed ahead. “Mister Ollivander, would you be needing an assistant? You know, to collect materials and help out around the shop. As long as that ‘Dark Lord’ you mentioned is really dead and gone, that is.”
“Quite dead, lad.” The old man scrutinized Raindolph’s face, his scraggly beard, and the look of desperation before giving a brief nod. “I believe we can find a position for your talent, if Her Highness will vouch for you.”
“Just keep him away from unicorns, and I think he will work out fine for you, Garrick. Until we meet again.” Celestia smiled, and the sunbeam coming through the window wrapped her in an infinite light that blinded all of them. When they had blinked away the dazzlement, she was gone.
“The old gal can sure make an exit,” mused Ollivander, or more correctly, Mister Ollivander, Raindolph’s new employer. “You begin today, at a hundred galleons a month, plus room and board. You can start by helping my granddaughter bring in those muleberry branches, and put down that ferret, Oleander!”
“Sorry, sir.” The ferret took a long leap to one of the nearby roof supports and scurried up to a dusty shelf. “Did you want me to dust while I’m up here? And keep the place clear of mice?”
“Ah… Yes,” said Mister Ollivander, casting a sideways look at Raindolph that gave him the impression that ferrets in this world did not generally talk. “Now go on, you two. Hogwarts will be open soon, and I want to be ready for the students. They’ll need fresh wands, and we’ll be busy as bees.”
The young lady had a brisk stride which Raindolph struggled to match while they walked to the back of the shop where several bundles of thick brown branches were securely tied up, only twitching and struggling a little under the heavy straps. He held his arms out while Oleander loaded and followed her back into the building to a small room where a number of baulks of timber were curing. Since he had been getting into so much trouble by opening his mouth lately, Raindolph was trying his best to be the strong, silent type.
Oleander had no such hesitation.
“So why did Miss Celestia say we should keep you away from unicorns?” she asked while tying down some of the thicker branches and avoiding their jabs and pokes. “Grandfather takes me with him every time we need unicorn hairs. They’re really quite noble creatures, if you treat them right.”
“I can turn into a unicorn,” said Raindolph’s mouth before he could stop it. What was worse, when Oleander turned her dark blue eyes on him, he had an irresistible… well, he could have resisted the urge, but with the alterations that Mister Ollivander had made to his wand, Raindolph really wanted to see if the only spell he had been able to reliably do still worked.
And it did.
“Oh, you’re adorable!” gushed Oleander. She sat right down on a bundle of sticks and pulled Raindolph’s head into her lap for a gentle ear scratching, which paralyzed his vocal cords as well as any ability to resist. “I wonder if I can braid your mane,” she murmured into his ear. “Grandfather won’t mind. He had an assistant with a bone through his nose for a few months, but he eventually went off to harvest some dragon heartstring from a Ukrainian Ironbelly and never came back.”
“Oleander!” came Mister Ollivander’s voice drifting through the shop. “I need your help sorting Kneedles whenever the two of you are done with putting that wood away.”
The lap under Raindolph’s head vanished as Mister Ollivander’s granddaughter abruptly stood up, and the contents of said lap fell onto the floor, changing back into a gangly pink-haired mage in the process.
“We better hurry,” said Oleander while shoving the last struggling branches into the curing bin. She slammed the bin door and helped Raindolph to his feet, giving him a smile and nudging him along the path to the waiting Kneedles, whatever they were.
Things were looking up for Raindolph.