Letters From a Little Princess Monster

by Georg

80. Dominoes - Part One

Celestia was bored.

Oh, she was busy. There was no end of paperwork to do, most of which would have been much easier to simply attach a note and send back to the governmental agency that generated it, requesting for them to ‘Do it right, please.’ At times, she thought the Equestrian government was the largest elementary school in the world, and she was stuck grading papers and settling playground fights. It would have been nice to actually be in charge of a high school instead, where the students knew how to spell and could add a column of numbers twice and get roughly the same answers. Still, there were times when she was tempted to get out her special bottle of red ink and ‘properly’ grade the paperwork she was given. About one bottle per page would do it. And a match.

At least the yearly budget was taken care of, despite the best efforts of the Royal Clerk’s office to nitpick it to death yesterday. And she managed to clear up a problem⁽*⁾ with a leftover barony in the process, so she chalked that one up in the win column.
(*) The One Who Got Away

Technically, her heat was over, so there was nothing stopping Celestia from slipping out of her room and resuming her Royal Duties without endangering the moral fibre of the guards or random stallions in the vicinity. No matter how much fun that would have been. Well, and she had promised Luna a week’s worth of solo (sans paperwork) rule. The first hoof she set outside the door would mean an end to the relative peace, as all of the eager petitioners who had been bothering Luna would in turn switch back to bothering Celestia without even a pause for breath.

Putting aside one of the interminable reports about turmoil in the griffon lands, Celestia opened one of the books she had requested from Doctor Horsenpfeffer on ordinary mare physiology and flipped it to the section on pregnancy. After all, since Luna was pregnant, and Celestia had never really anticipated having to deal with a pregnant sibling, a little research was warranted.

It really was a fascinating read, particularly the section on sympathetic pregnancy, where a stallion could exhibit much the same symptoms as their pregnant spouse. Celestia had wondered a little about that over the last few days. There had been those unexplained food cravings for spinach in particular, which she never had really liked before, and a totally unexpected loss of appetite for cake. The deep ache in her… nursing parts had arrived totally unexpectedly, making her recline slightly off to one side so her sensitive bits would not be pressed up against the cushion. At least when Luna gave birth, she would bear the burden of feeding the infant instead of Celestia, so the psychosomatic urge would eventually fade. And then the—

Celestia hopped out of her cushioned spot and dashed for the bathroom, blessing the porcelain pot with the remains of a breakfast spinach quiche. Afterward, she wiped her mouth and returned to her reading. Seriously, her body was taking this sympathetic sharing of sibling symptoms far too seriously.

At least the stellar wisp sharing her body had been very quiet lately, so it was not also having whatever an immaterial immature spirit from the inside of the sun would experience from sympathetic pregnancy. Celestia closed her eyes and reached inside to where the wisp liked to hide and watch. It was such a curious little thing, all sneaky and nosy at once, so much like little Twilight Sparkle. They had obviously rubbed off against each other in their twelve years of shared existence, making Celestia’s heart yearn for some way to go back and fix that tragic day. If she could have found a way to have kept the wisp from triggering Twilight’s uncontrolled flare, or taken the tiny stellar fragment of power inside her own form, the agony and pain of Twilight Sparkle’s life could have been…

No, time spells were far too dangerous. She could easily destroy the world by accident. Even saving Luna by manipulating time had been off the table. Starswirl, the greatest mind who ever lived, had warded his experiments with the most powerful spells, but even he had returned from one of his jaunts through time looking ten years older and with nothing to say about it other than “Too many fragments of myself are scattered through the timestream, never to be rejoined.”

That spell in particular had been destroyed, but the few kept in the locked wing of the library were only accessible with Celestia’s direct supervision, and that had not been granted since Starswirl’s mysterious disappearance several years later.

The greatest champion in Hide-and-Seek of all time, wherever or whenever he is/was/will be.

Perhaps Luna’s foal would someday rival the wisdom of the old codger. At least a physical foal would be easier to find when playing Hide-and-Seek than the wisp. Celestia ceased her musing and concentrated even harder on locating the hiding wisp. It was far too powerful to conceal itself well, and had been healthy in a wisp-fashion when she had last looked in on it… a week ago, come to think of it. Death was a possibility, but the resulting burst of power would have flooded Celestia’s senses, and no such surge had happened. Likewise, it had not left, because the disunion of their magics would have awakened her, even in the deepest sleep.

She looked further inside than before, drifting through the depths of her spirit until Celestia’s eyes snapped wide open of their own accord.

Something deep in her belly had given a yawn and rolled over when her magic touched it.

Princess Luna was anything but bored. She was, however, tired.

Morning and Evening court had been improved markedly with the addition of an egg timer. Where Celestia had been far too willing to let petitioners drone on for literally hours, Luna had reduced each one of them to the duration of a properly cooked egg, and the resulting brevity had improved the mood of their court immeasurably. Even the petitioners had remarked on how much more effective the process had become, with several of them managing to make their points in much less than three minutes and passing the remainder of time on to others. It helped bring attention to the pleas which the rest of the court realized were important without snubbing the blowhards too much, particularly when Luna found the petitioner for the Little Dickens Multi-Ethnic Adoption Center and Orphanage in Manehatten had been given over a half-hour in small slices to speak.

She had instead borrowed a large hat from one of the other petitioners and passed it around, sending the orphan matron back home with twice as much funding as she had been requesting, as well as several offers of long-term assistance from the wealthy ponies in the audience.

Although Cadence had started the trend, the news of a second Royal Foal had unlocked a great fund of charity in the hearts of Equestrians, and that generosity was spread about the lands with great enthusiasm. Too much, at times, because the castle staff had become almost too obsequious for Luna’s taste. Thankfully, Doctor Horsenpfeffer had not changed one small bit.

“So you say your mechanism may be able to focus upon my foal more accurately with these additions, and gainsay a photograph with more precision than the blurred blotch from last time,” said Luna to the rump of the good doctor, who was practically buried in one of the examination chamber’s control panels. “Why did you not try this with Princess Cadenza’s foal?”

“I didn’t have to,” filtered out Horsenpfeffer’s voice from under the console. “She’s not nearly as powerful as you are, so there’s less interference. Plus this gave me the opportunity to put in the heavier fuses that I’ve been meaning to install. She’s due any day now, and I’d like the chamber to be ready for her delivery, in case we need it. It’s the first alicorn born in all of Equestria’s history, after all, and I want to make sure the delivery has no complications.”

“I know, I know,” grumbled Luna. “Many are the complaints that you hath spoiled the birth pool with your announcement of the foal's gender and variety. I was even denied the opportunity to purchase options on the name pool.”

The dark batpony lurking in the test chamber cleared her throat, the flat sound echoing out of the intercom system. “Because you can influence Princess Cadence’s name choice.”

“Modern names have no sense of drama to them. A princess should have a name that draws the eye and inspires a sense of majesty to all who see it. It should send attentive ponies to ancient history books to look up the lineage of the name and speculate if the current bearer will exceed the expectations of fate.” Luna examined the nearby display showing the insides of her hoofmaiden in the testing chamber in far too great a detail. Despite herself, she let out a quiet noise of disgust, countered by Doctor Horsenpfeffer’s coo of adoration when she wriggled free of the console’s metallic embrace and took a long look at the display.

“Oh, Laminia. Your foal looks adorable.”

‘Adorable’ was not in the top ten words that Luna would have picked to describe the oddly shaped little creature in the display. Nor the top one hundred.

“Look at that, princess,” continued the doctor, using a pointer to highlight spots on the display. “You can see its wings there, and its leg development there.”

“He looks…” Luna struggled for words that would not offend her hoofmaiden. After all, that was Laminia’s job. “Well-endowed.”

“That’s the umbilical cord,” said Horsenpfeffer. “Thankfully. She looks perfectly normal for this stage of her development. If you want to step inside, Princess, we can get the second look at your foal that you were asking about.”

Luna most certainly did not.

She did not want to step inside the brass-framed chamber. She did not want another look at the tiny creature inside of her. She did not want to be anywhere except hiding under her bed. Perhaps with a plate of cookies. Sugar had been proving quite the calming draught for her upset tummy as of late. Her sister had always been the one with a sweet tooth, while Luna had to settle for more practical foods such as kale and spinach that kept well in the kitchens when everypony else in the castle was sleeping.

The thing is Luna had asked for this indignity. Politely. It was her responsibility to smile at Doctor Horsenpfeffer while trading places with Laminia, and likewise remaining calm and tranquil in the echoing metal chamber while rays of invisible aetheric force swept undetected across her body. The picture, of course, would only be shared with her oh-so-calm sister, who never was flustered or upset. It bothered her, although not too much. Luna had an excuse to act up now, be as moody as she wanted, and generally become the Princess Demandypants that Celestia had once called her over an unshared toy many centuries ago.

There was a tiny fleck of shared flesh in her belly that stopped that thought cold.

She was going to be a mother. There were so many things that motherhood entailed. Things that Luna had never considered. Names were the least of her concerns, and whatever the nattering nitwits at court thought about who the father was mattered even less. Um, except for her secret lover Graphite, who had taken the news by giving her a private promise that he would stand by her, recognition or not, no matter the cost, even if he was not the father.

Whatever remaining embers of Nightmare Moon smoldering deep in her heart had been quenched firmly by his honest sincerity.

Running around in panic would not help Luna’s situation. She needed to be focused, to be the Princess of Equestria that her little ponies needed now, and the mother that her soon-to-be-born foal would need. That would take patience. Discipline. A certain degree of flexibility. The ability to laugh when things became stressful. Planning. Calm.

“Discord!” shrieked Princess Celestia as she yanked open the door to the testing chamber. “Luna! Discord! Foal! Out! Out!” Celestia rushed into the chamber and pushed Luna out with her head, not even using her magic and jabbing Luna painfully in the flank with her horn. Then she scurried back inside the metal-lined room and called out, “Doctor! Do the thing! Use the machiney thingie on me! Hurry!”

Luna used her magic to quietly close the heavy door to the chamber, then looked over at Doctor Horsenpfeffer, who was at a momentary loss for words. Laminia, who was standing on the other side of the room as she had been ordered (so she would not be able to look at the machine’s display and make snide comments), merely shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“Doctor,” said Luna in her best calm voice. “I think my sister would like you to use your scanning device on her.”

“I can’t!” Doctor Horsenpfeffer jabbed a hoof at the colorful display which only showed smears of various colors in a generalized pony shape. “She’s pacing. She has to hold still if I’m going to use the scanner. And why is she even back here?” added the doctor with a puzzled frown.

“Well, she’s not pregnant,” said Luna with a thoughtful frown of her own. “Obviously, she thinks whatever you do with your clever artifact will resolve some hidden issue she is struggling with. Sister,” she added after placing one hoof on the intercom button and peering through the window into the chamber, “please hold still. No, pacing in place is not holding still. Just… stand there. And don’t flap your wings. Or toss your head like that.”

“Ah,” said the doctor once the machine began humming, but she did not say anything else that helped Luna understand what was bothering her sister.

“I’m afraid you will have to be more specific,” said Luna, still looking at her aggravated sister through the window. “Not you, Celly. Just continue to hold still. And stop thrashing your tail. Don’t you roll your eyes at me, sister. You’re the one who wanted to use this clever artifact, so button your lip and take it like a grown mare.”

Luna paused and took her hoof off the intercom button. “Are you done yet, doctor?”

“Um,” said Doctor Horsenpfeffer. She prodded a button on the console, making a second clever device begin printing a color photograph above the holding bin containing Luna’s pictures, then swept a hoof across the controls and turned them off. “Yes,” she added. “There’s nothing wrong with your sister, but I’m going to need to check some reference materials, Princess. Can you two please wait in my office?”

Luna found herself in the unusual position of smoothing her elder sister’s frazzled nerves for a change, sitting in the doctor’s inner office and trying not to be jittery at the scent of the odd medicines and potions of the modern age. “She said there was nothing wrong, dearest sister.”

“I felt… something in me,” gasped Celestia from around a wad of tissues. “I don’t know what it is, and the wisp is missing. Could Discord have implanted me with some terrible parasite? Did he think you turning into Nightmare Moon was funny, and gave me my own dark avatar? I could turn into… Nightmare Sun or something. I could wind up—”

“Sorry for the delay.” Doctor Horsenpfeffer scurried into the room with a tense but somehow happy expression, along with two extra boxes of tissues to replace the empty box that had fallen on the floor, as well as a padded display box resting on her back. “I had to get my charts and the plastic models.” She shuffled the boxes in her magic before each of the princesses claimed one tissue box, leaving the table free for a presentation.

“As you know,” started Horsenpfeffer, “the miracle of life is a great responsibility for mares. It is the burden and blessing that our own mothers brought us through, and their mothers before them. Today, you have started on your own journey down that honored path. It is a great change in your life, and your body will make similar changes over the next few months as the new life grows inside you. Together, you will—”

“Doctor,” said Luna firmly. “I already know I’m pregnant. We are here for my sister’s problem.”

“Um… Yes.” The doctor brought out a colorful cardboard sheet with several pictures of adorable foals on it, along with a series of increasingly pregnant mares in a line. “Princess Cadence has provided an extraordinary glimpse into the development process of infant alicorns, which I did not expect to… Yes. Ah.” She manipulated the pregnancy development sheet several times before placing it on the table, and put a photograph beside it.

“Ordinary ponies have a gestational period of eleven moons,” started the doctor again, only to be cut off by Celestia.

“Yes, yes. We know that,” she snapped a little harsher than Luna expected. “Plus a week for unicorns, minus a week for pegasi. Get on with it.”

“I’m getting there. Various species have various gestational times,” continued Horsenpfeffer more rapidly, backing up a step from Celestia’s fierce glare. “Smaller creatures like mice gestate more rapidly, while elephants may take as much as a year and a half to come to term. Princess Cadence has actually gone well over the expected date for her delivery without displaying any sign yet that she’s ready to foal, other than the complaining and the desire for sugar,” said the doctor with an obvious glance at a nearby bowl with a few heart-shaped candies scattered around the bottom.

“Sorry, doctor,” said Celestia, still chewing on the candy she had picked out but showing no signs of hesitation as she scourged the bottom of the bowl with her magic for one more piece.

“Anyway, this is a photograph of Luna’s hoofmaiden and her foal.” Doctor Horsenpfeffer tapped the cardboard gestational chart with a pencil. “She’s about six months along, so she’ll be due sometime in the early Spring. Luna—” The doctor hesitated with the second photograph, then placed it back in the box. “Her Highness is around three months along, if she is maturing at the same rate Cadence progressed, thus putting her due date after the Summer Sun Festival next year.”

“Just a moment, Doctor.” Luna reached into the box with her magic and produced a photograph, which she placed on the table between the three of them. The foal inside the alicorn was quite larger than the batpony’s, even adjusting for size. Luna looked down, then back up at the quiet doctor, then back down at the photo. “That’s… better than the previous blur,” said Luna. “Quite a bit larger than I expected.”

“You’re keeping quite trim regardless,” said Celestia, bending over to examine the photo next to her sister.

“A larger alicorn seems to result in a longer gestation period,” said the doctor rapidly. “This is why I would place Luna’s delivery date somewhere just after the summer solstice, plus or minus. Then there’s…”

Horsenpfeffer fidgeted, but Luna picked up the plastic gestational chart and examined it next to the photo with humorous intensity, moving it back and forth as if to check the exact size of the developing foal.

“It is good indeed that you are not pregnant as well, my sister,” said Luna with a low chuckle that she hoped would relieve some of the tension obviously tying Celestia up in knots. “For your great stature would allow the foal to linger in your womb for years, and you would give birth to a teenager ready to graduate from your school.”

“She is,” blurted out Doctor Horsenpfeffer. “That’s Celestia’s picture.”

Complete silence reigned in the room. After a minute or two, it abdicated the throne and departed for places unknown. In the upcoming weeks, Luna would grow to miss it.

“I’m…” Celestia touched the photo, then shook her head. “There must be some mistake. You said I was not pregnant just last week.”

“You weren’t.”

“And now…” Celestia picked up the photograph and turned it over, perhaps looking for an unpregnant side.

“You are,” said the doctor. “Seven months or so along.”

Unable to say anything Luna plucked the picture out of her sister’s magic and placed it on the table where it could be examined more closely by the both of them. After a certain period of sisterly consideration, Luna managed, “So that’s where your wisp went to, Celly. She’s a beautiful little filly,” added Luna, mentally counting the statement as less of a lie and more of an expectation of the future. “And such detail. Look, you can see the umbilical cord here.”

“Now that is not an umbilical cord,” said the doctor.

King Silence the Second returned to reign for a while, keeping the doctor’s office calm and peaceful for a time as both alicorns scrutinized the unborn foal’s image.

“Wings.” Celestia’s voice was nearly inaudible, but it broke the spell of fascination they were all under. “He has wings, but no horn.”

“They’re called pegasi, dear sister,” said Luna with a nudge. “He shall be as handsome as his mother, and…” She failed in her frantic grope for words, settling for resting her head against her sister’s warm neck and remaining silent instead.

“I’m afraid. I don’t understand. I’ve faced monsters and terrors beyond description, but this.” Celestia tapped the photo with one trembling hoof. “This frightens me to my core.”

“You raised a foal before,” said Luna, spreading a wing across her sister’s back. “Trixie turned out… Well, I can see your point. At the rate your little pegasus is growing, he will be born this eve, and demanding to join the guard by the end of the week.”

“It’s not funny, Luna.” Celestia ran a shaky hoof down her side as if to catch the flutter of tiny wings. “I’ve given guards orders for centuries. This is going to be a… colt. One of the little ones that poop and pee and you can’t give back when they’re dirty and grow up into little colts who think fillies are yucky and want to collect worms and bugs until they suddenly come to the realization that fillies are fun to be around and start keeping dirty magazines under their beds and leaving sticky tissues in the trash and cutting their manes in what is supposed to be the fashion of the day but only leave them looking as if they had a bad encounter with a lawnmower until they meet the filly of their dreams and get married and have colts and fillies of their own and move out and get a job in some other city where you don’t get to see them more than once or twice a year as they get older and get grey hair and corns and can’t get around the way they did when they were young and then they’re gone and you didn’t even get a chance to know what they were like and you have to make a speech at the funeral and you can’t think of anything to say other than what you say at every other funeral and you come back to the castle and eat cake that night and go to bed with a stomach-ache and raise the sun the next day from your bed because you can’t get out of it and I don’t want to be an old mare, Luna! I’m Oooooooolllldddddd,” she wailed.

Luna could not say a word, but the doctor was frantically paging through her notes until she stopped at a page with a sharp nod and began to read. “Let’s get through the next fill-in-the-time months first, young lady. Your little filly-colt circle one will arrive when they want to, and you need to be ready. First, we have a series of prenatal vitamins and we need to schedule your return visits until that blessed day arrives when you can see your little one face to face. Don’t forget to ask about the insurance and give special instructions to mares over forty about possible complications.”

Luna felt comforted that she was not the only mare in the room who was nervous over Celestia’s upcoming motherhood, but there was a more personal issue she wanted to get resolved. After sufficient nose-blowing and back-patting, as well as sending Laminia out to get a tub of Celestia’s favorite peppermint ripple ice cream, she managed to get Celestia into a more calm state of mind and settled back down on the doctor’s couch.

“Not that I’m being competitive, doctor,” said Luna, feeling anything but honest about her statement, “may we see my photograph so that we can compare foals?”

“Oh!” Doctor Horsenpfeffer nearly fumbled the box with the photos in it before removing the top one and holding it face-down. “That’s… um… a different subject, Your Highness.”

“I’m fine with my sister giving birth first in her own special way,” said Luna in a very calm tone despite a certain amount of regret over the situation, and a twinge of growing fear. “There’s nothing wrong with my foal, is there?”

“No!” Horsenpfeffer fidgeted with the photo in her magic before placing it on the table, face-down. “They’re fine. In perfect health, as far as I can tell. Perfectly fine.”

“They?” chorused Celestia and Luna in harmony. Their magic fought over the photograph before flipping it over and placing it next to the other one, showing one larger foal in Celestia’s womb and two smaller foals tucked up inside Luna.

“That’s… um… two,” said Celestia with growing volume. “You’ve got two, Luna. Two of them. That’s twins, right? You’re having twins!” she screamed, turning and giving her little sister a crushing hug that quickly turned into a panicked expression. “I didn’t hurt you, did I, Luna? I mean you’re having twins!” she squealed again, only this time with a shorter hug. “Do you know what this means? Do you?”

Luna stared at the photo, then ran a hoof down her chest while taking a deep breath. “Two cribs. More diapers. Learning how to take care of a colt also,” she added with a squint at the photo.

“That is an umbilical cord,” said Horsenpfeffer, who seemed to have regained a small portion of her traditional calm at the sight of her royal patients not somehow self-combusting at the news of their potential parenthood. “And two darling little horn nubs, there and there, as well as the beginnings of wing formation on each of them here.”

“Alicorns.” Luna held a hoof firmly to her chest to control her breathing. Breathing was important. She was not going to lose it. Princess Cadenza was going to go nuts with this double-dip of news, though. “Doctor Horsenpfeffer, we think it wise to inform our niece of this news forthwith. Do you know where she is?”

“She had an appointment this morning.” Horsenpfeffer checked the clock. “She’s running a few minutes late. I hope nothing’s wrong.”