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// Chapter 4: Comfort 
// Story: A Time to Think 
// by The Sonic Mage 
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“Thorax?” Pharynx was walking down the hallway towards the Royal Chambers, “you weren’t in the Throne Room. Is everything alri-” He was cut off by the sound of weeping on the other side of the door. “Thorax? Brother, are you okay?” It was his turn today to worry about his adopted siblings’ well-being.

“Go away!” Thorax shouted. He sounded like a foal. Normally, Pharynx would switch into military mode and tell him to “grow up” or “pull yourself together”, but he knew better then that. Still, he had to get in there.

“Brother, please. You’re not going to feel any better if you don’t talk to someling about…whatever’s eating you. So please, can I come in?” Pharynx heard Thorax sniffle a few times. He thought it would take more convincing, but fortunately it didn’t.

“Okay” Thorax said in a small voice, still sounding like a child.

“Alright, I’m coming in.” Pharynx took a deep breath, bracing himself. Surely the room wasn’t as bad as he thought, right?

Wrong. The room was a mess. Mainly the bed where his brother lay sniffling and crying. The sheets and blankets were a wrinkled, balled-up mess. The pillows ranged from a few spots, to damp and wet. And in the middle of it all, lay Thorax. His eyes were puffy, his nose red, and his face was stained with tears that had long since dried, with only a few stragglers to speak of. At the site of this, Pharynx really went into “big brother mode”.

“Oh, bro what’s wrong?” His voice was still gruff and grizzled, but was comforting. It made him easier to talk to. With a sniff, Thorax told him what was wrong.

“I-I broke,” he whimpered, “I broke. I yelled, I screamed, and I let myself go. I snapped in front of Chrysalis, when I was trying to be kind. I didn’t act like the level-headed king everyling expects me to be.” Pharynx knew what this was: Thorax wasn’t meeting his own expectations. That and he was angry at himself for yelling at Chrysalis (for one reason or another). Fortunately, he knew how to remedy this.

“Hey, bro it’s okay. It’s not bad that you yelled.” Pharynx said as he pet the top of Thorax’s head.

“H-how can you be sure?” Thorax said his voice was shaky, still trying to recover from his long minutes of weeping.

“Because, you’re not the first Equestrian ruler to let themselves go.” Pharynx had the perfect idea, “You know who else has yelled at their guests?”

“Who, King Sombra?” Thorax said, managing a small attitude through his sadness.

“Nope,” Pharynx said with a smile, “Princess Celestia.” Thorax looked up with a bit of surprise.

“Yep, I should know. I was there after all.” Pharynx made the statement with a tad of pride, as he put a hoof to his chest.

“You were?” Thorax’s voice and eyes had gained a bit of childlike wonder. With a prideful nod Pharynx recounted a tale from before “The Great Change”, as it was called, of when he was on an espionage mission, and Celestia had torn into a particularly annoying nobel-pony. Thorax couldn’t help but laugh when his brother told the story. It made him feel better.

“So you see, every ruler snaps at some point. And it’s okay.”

Thorax managed to lift himself onto his hoofs. “I guess…but I-” he was stopped by his brother.

“Look, take a shower and go clean yourself up. I’ll make us some tea, and we can keep talking about this, okay?” Thorax nodded and the two hugged each other a two siblings would. However, as Pharynx began to make the tea, and he started the shower, Thorax wondered how he would explain what he wanted to do about Chrysalis. The warm water helped.