//------------------------------//
// Pageant 
// Story: Mister Cook Goes to Canterlot 
// by Dave Bryant 
//------------------------------//

Among the oldest, and to me most familiar, districts of Canterlot was the complex within the city walls and around the royal palace. In recent decades, I’d been told, many of its narrow streets and narrow buildings had been renovated or even demolished to make room for parks and greenbelts. Certainly its current whitewashed and spacious appearance contrasted sharply against other cities of similar age in my experience—but then, as the city spread up and down the mountainside over the centuries, the need to pack so much into such little space waned. Moreover, to the city’s denizens, it was just home; making changes to suit new conditions, even when they involved centuries-old buildings, often were regarded as routine.
Walking amid the throngs streaming into the neighborhood from the open gate was nerve-wracking. I expected any moment to be recognized by a passing member of the court, whereupon the jig, as Raven put it, would be up. When at last I reached my destination without incident, I breathed a covert sigh of relief and joined the lively queue of families and other groups awaiting the evening’s performance.
The pair of palace guards detailed to tend the doors were strangers to me, but their soldierly professionalism was utterly familiar. The burly, grizzled earth-pony sergeant never allowed his scrutiny of the herd to falter, even in the festive atmosphere, as his wiry young unicorn corporal examined each ticket proffered up. Neither stallion in issue greatcoat and plumed shako, both garments black with red and gold trim, showed any sign of recognizing me in return when it came my turn to pass over my ticket. I received the same distant military deference they extended to all the line-standing civilians, including a slightly gruff holiday wish from the sergeant as I passed.
Once inside, I ambled with the rest of the crowd up the center aisle of the long vaulted chamber until I spotted an empty mid-row seat about halfway to the apron. After an upstream struggle to reach it, I settled on one of the rugged, if thin, square cushions that filled much the same role in pony society as sheet-metal folding chairs did back home. That feat accomplished, I took the chance to look around the dim and heavily garlanded gallery.
I had no idea what the hall’s original purpose had been, but its conversion to a small stage theater did not seem new. Perhaps it had been some sort of government annex once upon a time. The historical scenes portrayed by the tall and seemingly ubiquitous came-glass windows at intervals along both sides looked to be generally, but not always, from the formative days of the realm.
More intriguing was the design and construction of the stage. The flat house floor posed a difficult problem of visibility, especially for the audience at the back; adding a rake clearly would require so much rebuilding as to render moot the whole point of using the existing structure. Instead the stage was raked to raise its back higher than its front. The only other place I’d encountered a similar design was a reconstructed early-modern theater I visited during a summer break in one of my university stints abroad. According to the docent, it was the source of still-common expressions such as “upstage” and “downstage”.
My survey revealed no lurking surprises of the sort I experienced at Peak Place or the concert hall. It was possible I simply had missed somepony familiar thanks to the low lighting, the capacity crowd, and the lack of rake to the floor, but then, the same factors made me equally difficult to spot. Well. If it happened, it happened; the day was nearly done, after all, my self-assigned informal mission mostly accomplished.
An old-fashioned lung-powered brass fanfare sounded. It was showtime.


A couple of years ago, I understood, the crown’s invitation had been extended to a not-yet-royal Twilight Sparkle and the circle of friends she’d found in Ponyville. Overheard snippets of conversation indicated those performances had acquired a certain retrospective notoriety, but I suspected the actuality had been more typical of pageants past—if possibly a little rough around the edges given the youth and exuberance of the fillies involved.
This time around the troupe was listed as “The Method Mares and Company”, which was a story in itself. Some of the names listed under that grand page banner I’d seen before, buried in the police blotters, and a single short article, of the Manehattan paper. Former con artists who’d turned over a new leaf under the impetus of a daunting encounter with the judicial system, the quartet made ends meet with paid engagements and teaching gigs, but played small community venues for free under the terms of their probation. Likely this pageant season was one of the latter, though winning a crown invitation and being named as headliners hinted at royal approval of their rehabilitation, besides being worthy achievements in their own right.
The now-familiar tale unfolded before me. For a watcher accustomed to the understated, nuanced performances enabled by video media, the acting seemed broad and stilted, a classic illustration of the ancient phrase “playing to the gallery”. In the present context, however, it fit perfectly—and not simply as a means of ensuring even those seated in the back rows could see and understand all the doings onstage. Blind passions and all-or-nothing stakes couldn’t help but make the narrative larger than life, even leaving aside the exaggerations and distortions inevitable after more than eleven hundred years of telling it.
I found myself wondering just who those ponies had been, the personalities behind the icons so stridently or quietly proclaiming and declaiming on stage. Celestia and Luna had mentioned a few of them, and their contemporaries or near-contemporaries, to me in passing, but rarely in any detail. That reticence, I was sure, arose out of respect for the memory of those who, in the end, had risen above prejudices and habits of thought to bring a new united identity to the three tribes, but I resolved to find out what more I could. The forensic approach to history, archaeology, and similar fields that had arisen in my own world was in its infancy here, so only the royal sisters’ living memory was likely to be capable of providing an unvarnished, if incomplete, perspective.
The narrator’s booming voice abruptly filled the auditorium once more, recapturing my attention, as the curtains slid aside on a new scene. The flats and props, I realized, were simple and stylized, but fine and graceful in execution. I wondered if they were new for the season, comparing them to a framed albumen print I’d glimpsed in the palace: Twilight and her friends in costume, beaming proudly, under a painted wooden sun with crooked rays and backed by rather rough-looking scenery. Perhaps the previous sets had been retired, too shopworn for further service, or perhaps the current crop of performers and stage staff had aspired to a greater polish. Or both; they need not have been mutually exclusive.
With a wry shake of the head, I put aside the wayward thoughts. The admittance had been a gift and the Method Mares gave every indication of genuinely enjoying their new vocation. It behooved me to honor both with my full attention.


I limited my participation in the final carol, led by the assembled cast, to a low humming along. However charming and infectious it might be, I couldn’t forget this wasn’t my holiday. Whatever my pose, I was not in fact a tourist from elsewhere in the country. I had friends here, firm and fast ones, but the fact remained I was a visitor, an alien, on foreign soil. Still, by the time the subsequent applause had faded and the happily chattering masses began filing out, I was smiling as much as anypony around me. The performance capped off what was undeniably one of the most enjoyable, and in some ways informative, days I’d experienced in years.
The lacy veil of a gentle snowfall greeted me as I emerged from the warm vestibule and paused in thought; around me clumps and flocks unraveled to go their separate ways on the drift-edged streets, all the while filling the freezing air with parting holiday wishes carried on puffs of steaming breath. I was of two minds about sharing it all with Sunset. She might enjoy hearing about her home country and the city where she’d lived before in effect emigrating, yet I hesitated to prod any homesickness she still harbored. Well, I decided, I’d wait to share it when and if she asked.
If I had any lasting regret, it was the inability to take back with me anything more substantial than memories. Identifiable souvenirs were, for obvious reasons, out of the question. Photography still required bulky, balky equipment and long seconds of stillness, unable yet to capture and preserve candid or fleeting moments. All that was left to me was the written word, and I had no doubt there would be many thousands of those. Some, as I’d promised Spitfire, would be delivered unto my superiors. Some I would retain for myself, having developed the means and ability after so much practice writing reports for others. At least in the latter I could give full rein to the poetic bent that occasionally got me grief when it sneaked into more formal and official—for which read stuffy—prose.
I heaved a sigh half of satisfaction and half of weariness. It was by now quite late, but if I found a cab promptly I still could catch the last train of the evening.