“What’s that?” Sunset asked, putting a half-melted sword in the umbrella stand near the door. It wasn’t even the only sword in there. The lone umbrella would have felt distinctly out of place among the cutlery, if it was able to feel. It was pink, so no points for guessing who had actually had the audacity to put something harmless in the room.
“You know that report Midnight and Twilight had to do?” Cadance asked. She levitated more popcorn into her mouth, crunching it as she talked and flipped through pages. “They wanted me to answer some questions for them.”
“They asked you?” Sunset stopped, somewhat offended.
“It’s about love, not evocation.”
Sunset felt a little better about that, for the two and a half seconds before she remembered she shouldn’t feel better about it.
“Wait, love? But she’s in kindergarten! She’s too young to have a coltfriend!” What Sunset really meant by that was ‘I didn’t have a coltfriend when I was her age’. It was about half jealousy and half offended by the decadence of the youths, something Sunset was allowed to be offended by now that she had a kid. Sort of.
“Don’t worry.” Cadance tried to contain a laugh and mostly failed. “She doesn’t have a special somepony yet.”
“Thank the stars for that,” Sunset muttered. “Last thing I want is her taking after you.”
“I’ll have you know I didn’t get a special somepony until I was twice Midnight’s age.”
“Twice her actual age, or twice her apparent age?” Sunset asked.
“She and Twilight gave me a big list of questions about something they read in Celestia’s personal diaries,” Cadance continued, ignoring Sunset’s question.
“Wait, even at twice her apparent age you’d still have only been about- wait, did you say Celestia’s personal diaries?” Sunset dropped what she was doing and ran over to look at the papers Cadance was flipping through.
“Apparently they weren’t sure about some of the phrases she used,” Cadance said. She held up a paper.
Sunset read over it, blushing harder and harder.
She managed to force out a question. “With the entire royal guard? At the same time?”
“Apparently! I don’t even know where you’d find a bathtub that large!”
“I think I need to lie down,” Sunset said. She was starting to feel faint.
“Ah, you need some time alone in your bunk with that image? I know how it goes. Do you need any hoof lotion?”
“Cadance!”
“But seriously, I felt that, as Midnight’s guardian, mentor, mother-figure, etcetera, you should help me figure out just what to tell her.”
Sunset was going to refuse on instinct, and almost did.
“I mean, if you want me to, I’ll just give her The Talk on my own…”
Sunset had a good imagination. This was not to her benefit as she pictured exactly what Cadance would say when teaching Midnight about the way two (or more, she amended, thinking about the implications of the entire royal guard) ponies could express their love.
“We’re not telling her about preening,” she blurted out.
Cadance rolled over, unable to contain her laughter.
“What does this have to do with our report?” Midnight asked.
“Strictly speaking, hopefully nothing,” Sunset said.
“We really don’t have time,” Twilight said. “We were trying to practice the oral presentation part of the report.”
“So far we’ve learned not to use words in an oral report that we’ve only read and never actually heard pronounced,” Midnight added.
“This is only gonna take a few minutes,” Sunset said. She paused. “Cadance why did you invite Twilight?”
“Well she needs to have The Talk too,” Cadance said, setting up a stand. As Sunset watched, the unicorn growing more and more concerned, Cadance pulled several cardstock posters out of a bag and flipped through them before putting them on the stand. "And her mom gave me permission."
“Cadance,” Sunset said. She was having all sorts of emotions, but the king of them all was Suspicion, ruling from an iron throne of Disappointment.
“Yes, Sunset?”
“Is that a professionally typeset and printed presentation?”
“I’m the Princess of Love, Sunset. It’s important for me to be prepared at all times.”
“You probably slipped all kinds of weird horseapples into this…” Sunset interposed herself between the two impressionable fillies and started going through the presentation.
“What’s going on?” Midnight whispered.
“Don’t look at me, this is obviously your fault!” Twilight countered.
“You hired a graphic designer?!” Sunset frowned harder. “And you have citations?!”
“There’s a guide to suggested further reading at the end,” Cadance pointed out.
“This is better than some of the reports I’ve given to Celestia.” Sunset sounded jealous. “She never let me hire a graphic designer.”
“Did you ever ask?”
“Well… no,” Sunset admitted.
“Excuse me!” Twilight had her hoof raised. “Whatever happened it wasn’t my fault!”
“This isn’t about anyone’s fault,” Cadance said. “There are some cracks and crevices involved but they’re not geological-”
Sunset elbowed her, hard, in the ribs.
“What I mean is, this is about the questions you asked. About Princess Celestia’s private journal.”
Midnight and Twilight sat up straighter at that.
“We had a lot of questions,” Twilight said. “I didn’t really understand a lot of what she wrote, but I think she and Princess Platinum were friends?”
“They were very special friends,” Cadance agreed.
“Like how you and Mom are friends?” Midnight asked.
Sunset sputtered, her cheeks turning red.
“No!” Sunset gasped, eventually. “Absolutely not!”
“Not yet,” Cadance whispered, winking. “Give me a few more months to work on it.”
Twilight and Midnight looked at each other, equally confused.
“Now, let’s start with part one,” Cadance said. “I call it ‘Shipping and Handling’. We’ll learn about the twenty-six axes of compatibility that need to be taken into account when choosing a special somepony.”
Twilight and Midnight bolted out of the room, screaming about cooties. Cadance watched them go, sighing deeply.
“I never even got halfway through explaining how lust and love are different.”
“The quesadilla pie chart was clever,” Sunset said. “But I think they’re gonna be traumatized by tortillas and cheese for the rest of their lives. I know I will be.”
“But I didn’t even start to explain the answers to their questions.”
Sunset sighed and shook her head. “Sometimes you don’t really want an answer to a question.”
Cadance swooned dramatically. “Of all the things I’d ever think you’d say…”
“Okay, first off, this has nothing to do with what’s between me and Princess Celestia. That’s mostly water under the bridge. Second, I still really, really want answers but I’m smart enough to know that freaking nothing I can do to get answers out of her.”
Cadance hesitated, not quite sure what to say.
“Third, after that mess even I’m starting to think cooties are real.”
“They are not real!” Cadance gasped. “How could you say that?”
“If you say so, Princess of Cooties.”
“Noooo!”
"...And that's why Hoofdini was the greatest magician who ever lived!" The filly concluded, excited. Her partner stood to the side, silent and bored. "Nopony could ever tell how much of his act was real magic, and how much was sleight of hoof and misdirection. Even the number of spells that he knew is widely debated to this day."
"Thank you, Miss Lulamoon," Ms. Wormwood said. "That was very... interesting. I am not entirely sure pyrotechnics were needed during the presentation."
"They were intended to increase my stage presence. As the great Hoofdini said, a magician might cast spells in private, but magic is only created when an audience is given to wonder and awe."
"I assume they were the magical portion of the assignment?" Ms. Wormwood asked.
"No, they were just for fun," the filly noted. "My real trick will require the help of my lovely assistant..." She trailed off, then coughed. "Faery Fire! That's you!"
"Me? Oh." The quiet filly next to the bombastic young Lulamoon stepped forward. "What am I supposed to do again?"
"Just stay right there, and I'll make you vanish!" The filly pulled a sheet seemingly out of nowhere, something that was clearly a bedsheet that had been crudely painted with stars and planets. "Behold, fellow kindergarteners, as I make this filly... disappear!"
She draped the sheet over her, waited a moment, then pulled it away, revealing the filly.
"...I'm still here," Faery Fire said.
"Yes, I can see that," her partner muttered. "Okay, I can do this. Watch as I make her..." She put the sheet back over Faery Fire, counted to three, then pulled it away. "Disappear!"
"Am I invisible?" Faery Fire asked.
"No, you are not," her partner muttered. "You are very highly visible, even though I ordered you to become transparent. Clearly there is something wrong with my assistant."
"I think you cast the spell wrong," Faery Fire whispered. "And was the 'clearly' part a pun?"
"How dare you!" Her partner gasped, flicking the bedsheet aside, where it vanished. "I never cast a spell wrong!"
"You made the sheet invisible instead of me," Faery Fire pointed to the filly's seemingly-empty hoof.
"...If I did, it was what I intended to do all along!" She stuck her nose up in the air and stormed away from the front of the class, stomping back to her seat and sitting down heavily.
"Well, that was certainly something," Ms. Wormwood whispered. "Faery Fire, you can go back to your seat." She paused as she looked at the next group on the list. "Next we have... Midnight Twinkle and Twilight Sparkle. Please come up to the front of the class."
Midnight looked at Twilight and walked up to the front of the class. Seeing the other students give their presentations had filled her with a vague sense of dread. She hadn't actually read over her copy of the report since she'd written it with Twilight, and neither of them had tried to cast the spell since that initial disaster.
"W-we did our presentation on Princess Platinum," Midnight started. "I'm sure everypony is already familiar with the name from the Hearth's Warming story, but there's a lot more to her than just a name from an old story."
Twilight bit her lip, letting Midnight continue.
"Princess Platinum was born to a minor noble family in Old Unicornia," Midnight continued. "She had two sisters, who were, um..." She looked down at her notes.
"Sterling and Gold Lily," Twilight provided.
"Right! But only one of them could inherit the lands of their family, and since Gold Lily was the oldest, she was supposed to get everything. Records aren't clear on what happened to Sterling, but at the time there was a push towards expanding the frontier, because, um... there was a food problem."
"Old Unicornia had very inefficient farming techniques," Twilight said, picking up where Midnight had stopped. "According to several accounts, the soil was so poor from mine waste and poor mineral content that they had to use what we would call hydroponics, though at the time they were extremely inefficient. The peasants had to subsist on a type of bread made from algae, while the nobility was able to afford more expensive, imported food. When the mines started to dry up, they pushed into new lands to try and stake new claims."
"Right, and that was the original reason Platinum came to Equestria. Her sister gave her a loan on the condition that she didn't return to Old Unicornia," Midnight said. "She used the money to found the expedition and come here."
"She didn't gain her title of Princess until much later," Twilight added. "Once she purchased the claim here in Equestria, she was given the title of Countess."
"And, um..." Midnight tried to remember what came next. She read ahead in the report.
"They said she was a fool for wasting her money on a newly discovered frozen land," Twilight said, taking over entirely now. "You all know the story of what happened at Hearth's Warming. However, most importantly, Platinum learned to cooperate with the earth ponies and pegasi that had also come from their native lands. By abandoning her old traditions, all of them were able to prosper together. She gained the title Princess only after the various small states and land claims formally unified, which took another two decades after the Hearth's Warming story, so really we should be calling her Countess Platinum in the play, but that doesn't flow as well as Princess Platinum, and-"
Midnight coughed.
"A-and that's not important," Twilight blushed. "She eventually gave up the throne to Princess Celestia, but retained her own title, even if it was largely ceremonial."
"And she had an army of golems!" Midnight put in.
"She... was well known for having a talent with animating objects," Twilight said. "The rumors of a golem army are unfounded. However, she got her cutie mark for combining magical animation and the principles of clockwork to create complicated automatons, many of which we still can't explain today. Hearth's Warming dolls are thought to be a remnant of a time when wealthy families would put Platinum's works on display during the holidays."
"Very good," Ms. Wormwood said. "And what kind of spell are you going to demonstrate for us? I trust it's nothing dangerous?"
"No, it's perfectly safe," Twilight said. She reached into her pack and brought out Smarty Pants.
"She'll be our beautiful assistant today," Midnight said, glancing back at the filly who was still sulking in her seat. "We're going to cast a spell to make the doll come to life!"
"Stand back," Twilight said. She could still mostly remember the spell. Not having actually cast it, she had to go entirely on memory for what was in the book. Her horn lit up and she closed her eyes, trying to picture it.
The magic slipped away from her, spilling out of the runes uselessly. Twilight's eyes went wide. She was forgetting something critical in the spell! She was going to fail, and the entire class would make fun of her.
"I got this," Midnight whispered. She started forming the same spell. Twilight could feel it on her horn - it had the same flaws and gaps, and the magic was leaking out of the edges.
"It's not gonna work!" Twilight hissed.
"You just have to give it more power!" Midnight said, gritting her teeth. The glow from her horn increased, and the spell shuddered to completion, the magic twisting the misshapen runes into place like a spark jumping a gap.
"Come on, come on..." Twilight chanted, looking at Smarty Pants.
The doll raised her arm before slowly sitting up.
"It lives!" Midnight cackled. Smarty Pants started slowly walking around before trotting over to Twilight and jumping up onto her back.
"And that's the come-to-life spell!" Midnight said. "Right now it's just set to follow around its master, but you can make the spell more complicated and add pre-set commands, kinda like teaching a pet new tricks."
"That's very impressive," Ms. Wormwood said. "I knew you two would do a good job if you worked together. You can return to your seats."
"We did it!" Twilight smiled, as they walked back to their desks.
"Of course we did. It's a good thing I didn't slack off and forget to practice the spell." Midnight smirked.
"You could have tried studying, too," Twilight frowned. "I did much more work than you did on this project."
"No way. The spell was way more important than the report."
"Nuh-uh! The report was more important!"
"No, the spell!"
"The report!"
Ms. Wormwood sighed and opened her desk drawer, looking at the green bottle within. It was going to be one of those days.