Celestia seemed far too sombre for such a festive gala. Gosling watched her, studying her face, trying to read her mood, trying to understand this mysterious creature. Casting a quick glance to his left, he saw that Luna was dancing with Twilight, and the two of them were dancing as though nopony was looking. Satisfied that Luna was having a good time, he returned his attention to Celestia. Something about the way her mane was billowing about was off somehow, or maybe it was just the distant look in her eyes, the way that she wasn’t staring at anything in particular, just staring.
She was alone in a crowded room.
Adopting a dashing demeanour, Gosling saunter-sidled up beside his mate and when she failed to notice him, he bumped into her to jar her from her thoughts. Nearby, a glass ladle clunked against the punchbowl and raucous peals of laughter could be heard. A floor shuddering rumble resonated from deep within Celestia’s barrel and this was accompanied by a muffled, polite snort.
“What’s on your mind, Sunshine?”
“Equestria’s wealth,” she replied, leaving Gosling both puzzled and perplexed by her response. “I fear that I’m counting my chickens before they hatch. Perhaps that is not a good turn of phrase when little pegasus ponies are involved. Eleven months from now, when winter has left the land cold and lifeless, there will be a glut of births. Look at what we’ve done, Gosling… it’s like we’ve reproduced. All of your efforts to make tonight happen and this will be the payoff. Every life created is a vital asset to Equestria’s continued existence.”
“Everypony is having a good time and you’re thinking about the heavy stuff, Sunshine.”
“Gosling, this is my good time.” The big mare shuffled on her hooves and her golden shoes clanged against the floor like spoons dropped from the supper table. “Mister Mariner did incalculable damage to our nation. I’ve been fearful about our ability to recover. But then, tonight happened, and I was reminded of how much these little ponies love life… and making new life. They’re resilient, Gosling. Sometimes, I forget that.”
Now, it was Gosling who stared without looking at any one thing in particular. There were a lot of dancing couples—and even a few herds. For the first time, Gosling had trouble relating to them, and he knew why after a mere moment of thought. He was now responsible for them. It wasn’t that he was above them, but he was obligated to ensure their continued existence. This understanding was humbling, sobering, and now he too had a sombre expression.
“I think,” he began, his voice low while he spoke to his mate, “that every mother fears for the worst when her young scrape a knee or bang their heads on something. My mother certainly had her moments. I’d get hurt and she’d start yammering on about a trip to the doctor’s office. But, eventually, she’d calm down and remember that I could take my lumps. She’d be a bad mom if she didn’t worry about me, but she’d be a terrible mom if she kept me tucked beneath her wing all the time. At some point, I had to leave the nest, and that meant getting hurt.”
There was no response from Celestia, none that Gosling could discern. It occurred to him that whatever wise words he could think of saying, she had probably heard them or said them herself. Making things even more complicated, he was one of the ‘little ponies’ that Celestia fretted over, and he began to think about what that did to their relationship. There were moments when she treated him like a foal, or took a more maternal approach rather than a spousal approach. What was a spousal approach? He had no idea; he had neither been married long enough or had been an adult long enough to be certain.
Much to his dismay, he saw a potential spot of trouble in the road ahead.
It was hard for her and his brain screamed at him about this fact. She was the oldest and wisest of them all, and then every position she held only further encouraged a maternal bent—it was even demanded from her. It was even suggested in her title of ‘Matriarch.’ After a bit more thought, Gosling couldn’t imagine her any other way. She was an amazing teacher, not just to the many foals attending her school, but to him, Cadance, Shining Armor, Twilight, Blueblood, Raven—everypony currently in orbit around her. No life in proximity to her was left untouched. How many times had he seen her pace the floor, losing sleep and wondering how to help somepony?
No, to judge her would mean to become her, and that was impossible.
The best that he could do would be to follow her wise, patient instruction and to be her helpmate. To become whatever it was that she intended him to be. Not just for his own sake, but for those who might benefit from this, the little ponies that Celestia spent her life obsessing over. It was too fine a night to be so thoughtful, yet here he was, contemplating what he might become if he let go and allowed Celestia to guide him to some greater place, some greater state of being.
Unable to stop himself, he thought of all of his fellow guardsponies that she had sent to war. Seeing her as the matriarch that she was, he at last had some inkling, the barest hint of understanding of what suffering she endured sending them to war, throwing them into the meat grinder conflict. Celestia was not the pony that the public thought her to be. To the public, she was whatever her carefully crafted image demanded her to be, and ponies like Raven and Blueblood maintained her thespian’s guise. But Gosling, he knew different and sympathised with her suffering.
Holding his head a little higher, adopting a regal pose, he stood by her side, resolute.
While Twilight Sparkle suffered from the hammered hiccups that wracked her wine-soused body, Luna seemed to be intoxicated from something else entirely: the love of the crowd. This was her night and the limelight was all hers. She was laughing, giddy, affectionate, impish, and the room echoed with her bellowed blessings for the newlywed couples. Whatever fear that ponies had of Luna was gone—at least for tonight.
The same could be said of Luna as well; her hangups, her fears, worries, and doubts, all of them seemed cast aside for the night. She was free to be herself, to be boisterous, to behave in a perhaps untoward way, because decorum was one of the many things to be discarded this night. Luna was free to yell, “Beest thou most excellent to one another! Fronk one another frequently and without reservation! Excitest thine genitals against warm, eager recipients eager to take seed or give it!”
Luna, Celestia had said, was moon-drunk, Twilight was wine-drunk, and Cadance… Cadance was downright tipsy from the love of the gathered crowd. Gosling too felt something that was a lot like drunkenness, but he had no idea what it was. The sensation grew in intensity until it had permeated his every cell and now… he was in the mood to par-tay.
No longer content to brood beside Celestia, unfulfilled from hoof-gazing, he sashayed through the crowd, his backside swaying in a seductive, suggestive wiggle, and he beelined right for the second-prettiest pony in the room with the intention of establishing his dominance. It was a pegasus thing, and he didn’t expect for others to understand.
Getting right up into Cadance’s face, Gosling struck a pose, his wings out, his lips puckered and pouty, with his tail swishing from side to side to reveal his generous… assets. Cadance’s response was understandable: she grew aggressive and angry, as any pegasus would when so challenged. Her face turned a darker shade of pink and her eyes blazed with a fierce, competitive inner light. She inhaled, puffed out her barrel, and allowed her floofy chest scruffle to poof free. Cheeks bulging, she matched Gosling’s dominating pose with one of her own.
“Oh snap,” said Rainbow Dash from somewhere behind Gosling. “Everypony stay back!”
Cadance unfurled her wings, angled them so that the undersides were forward on display, crooked her neck off to the left, and tilted her head back so that her jaw formed a smooth, sloping curve with the line of her neck. This drew gasps from the crowd and there was a thunderous crack when Twilight Sparkle’s wings shattered the air around her with a supersonic whip-crack.
She was not the only one with rigid wings.
Wasting no time, Gosling went right for the good stuff. He chose a peacock fan display, raising his wings over his back until they met above his spine. Then, he flared each feather, spread each primary, and fluffed himself out as much as equinely possible until he had a perfect peacock display, which he shook and shuffled at Cadance in a most provocative way. Swaying from side to side, he flexed his flight muscles for all to see, causing them to twitch enticingly.
Shining Armor started to say something, to intervene, but Cadance shoved him aside with her wing while silencing him with a look. When she returned her gaze to Gosling, violence could be seen in her eyes, violence and mischief. A primal response had been invoked, but also something foalish, as this was the sort of buffoonery that pegasus foals got up to in the schoolyard.
Only this wasn’t the schoolyard; Gosling had chosen to throw down in socialite central.
Cadance’s wings bent and she stroked her sides, a sultry, evocative move that brought her femininity into play. She ran her wings reverse against her pelt, creating static and causing the hairs to stand out, making her look bigger, fuzzier, erasing her fine, distinct lines and blurring her outline. Tucking her head back, she caused her neck to swell while cooing in a dovelike manner. With her wings, she did the feather duster shuffle, which was not only visually appealing, but also had a soothing sound that caused many ears to prick in delight.
It wasn’t fair, having to compete with feminine wiles, but Gosling was resourceful. In a shameless display of vanity, he mimicked every single one of Cadance’s movements, fluffing himself out and even cooing to heighten the effect. Casting his masculinity aside, he perfectly produced the feminine pose and thoroughly enjoyed the flustered, peeved blush now seen on Cadance’s face. He had crossed the well-defended gender wall… and discovered the other side wasn’t so bad. He rather liked how he felt right now, how soft and pretty he was. His feminine side was pleasing to explore.
Just to further aggravate her, Gosling batted his eyelashes at Cadance.
Grunting, grinding her teeth together, Cadance joined the role-reversal, and adopted Gosling’s peacock fan display, a decidedly masculine gesture—peahens need not apply. She brought her full martial bearing out to play and even adopted a wide-legged stance that suggested that she was loaded down with equipment that she did not possess. Wide-eyed with terror, Shining Armor backed away while shaking his head from side to side.
“Cadance!” Celestia’s voice was almost screechy with some as of yet unknown emotion. “Stop that at once! ‘Tis most unbecoming! What are you doing?”
But Luna took a different stance upon the issue, and stepped forwards in support. “Maintainest thine own strength, mine niece, and fearest not the oppressors of gender!”
Gosling tried a come-hither display and plunged even further into his feminine exploration. He raised his wings up in front of his face, fanning them with smooth, inviting strokes, and peeked out from between his spread primaries whilst wearing his most exaggerated come-fronk-me face which could only be seen in brief snatches from behind his wings. It was the sort of move that would make almost any stallion present his pike for inspection and there was a lot of uncomfortable shuffling from the observers.
Celestia was rolling her eyes now while making a lemon-sour face.
“We art confused,” Luna announced for all to hear, “and We suffereth from a most curious and confounding arousal! Huzzah! Dance for Us, mine pretty pegasus, and moisten Our secret and unseen places!”
“I wish I knew what was going on—”
“No, Shining Armor, you don’t.” Celestia, still rolling her eyes, let out an exasperated sigh and then added, “This will all be front-page headlines tomorrow, I just know it.”
“Yes, Luna’s moistness will get the big bold print—”
“Twilight, I am shocked!”
“So am I, Princess Celestia. What possessed me to say that?” Twilight punctuated her words with a hiccup that was remarkably like a question mark, something that she alone was aware of in her current state of inebriation. “Speaking of moist—”
“No! No! I can’t listen to this!” With an explosion of glittery sparks, Shining Armor vanished just as Cadance reared up on her hind legs to do gyrating pelvic thrusts while pumping her wings with furious downstrokes.
“You can’t win, Gosling—”
“Says yous, Princess Busybody.”
“Yeah, my body is busy kicking your hindquarters into submission!”
“I wonder if I—”
“Twilight, no! Preserve your purity. Do not sully your public image like these two have.”
“But I—”
“No.”
“If I could only—”
“No.”
“But I wanna—”
“Twilight, dearest one, you are a terrible dancer and one shudders to think of what your plumage displays might do.”
“—Hiccup—”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“But I could be Twerklight Sparkle, Princess of Dancing!”
“Enough!” Celestia shouted, her wings unfurling from her sides. Smacking both Gosling and Cadance aside, almost bowling the smaller ponies right over, she moved between them and performed a plumage display so fantastical that it could not be described. Her wings wove hypnotic patterns in the air that mesmerised and captivated all who witnessed it, including Twilight Sparkle, who stood in cowed submission with her mouth hanging wide-open.
All who witnessed this display would never be able to say exactly what had happened, only that something had happened, something profound, something meaningful, something that had changed their lives forever, altering them in ways that they could not comprehend. The sight of Princess Celestia performing a lewd plumage display was forever seared into their retinas, imprinted into their grey matter, and etched into their very souls. Only Shining Armor, who had the good sense to depart, was spared.
As for Gosling and Cadance, the pair of them slunk away, heads down, tails tucked, and wings folded submissively against their sides. Both of them had been humbled and neither could contest Celestia’s dominance. For a time, shocked silence ruled the night, as not even the music dared to play, no doubt fearing the consequences of interruption. But then, riotous laughter filled the room: maniacal laughter, the laughter of lunacy. With her eyes rolled back into her head, her ears erect, and her uvula on display for all the world to see, Luna brayed with laughter while clutching at her sides with her wings.
The goddesses that dwelled atop the Canterhorn were in fine fettle this night.