The Canterlot History Museum had a long and storied history, as long as you didn’t look into it too closely. A careful eye revealed that the museum’s founder, Plastic Beach, inherited more money than sense and stuffed his manor full of treasures - most of which had been collecting dust in attics and basements around Canterlot and sold for many times their real value to the young Beach. He obsessively studied and wrote about the oddities that came into his hooves with total fixation until he found his fortune had stopped being liquid and had rather solidified around him, trapping him like a fly in amber.
As his wine and cheese cellar ran dry, and he found himself looking at a fish preserved in ether and wondering if it was still edible, he realized he needed to find a way to bring money in if he wanted to keep his treasure from deteriorating. Also, he preferred not to starve to death. He opened his house to the scholars and curiosity-seekers who had been asking to see the more interesting and unique specimens in his collection and charged them a modest fee for the experience.
Things had refined slowly over time since then. The dusty and crowded rooms had been cleaned, displays set up, plaques placed next to the items so he didn’t have to explain the historical significance of the pottery fragments on his table for the fiftieth time, and the modern museum was invented.
The current museum wasn’t Plastic Beach’s original home, of course - that was old enough now that it was an exhibit itself with guided tours of Beach’s original notes and displays.
The new Museum building was a granite fortress nearly the size of Princess Celestia’s castle and twice as well guarded. Even now, in the middle of the day when most ponies were at work or school, Twilight Velvet had to walk through a small crowd to get to the reception desk.
“Excuse me?” She pushed her way to the front of the line and leaned against the desk. Her patience lasted almost ten whole seconds before she started ringing the bell. “Hello? Anypony there?”
The pony working the desk, only a few feet away and clearly trying to do paperwork, did her best to ignore the bell. “I’m helping somepony else, ma’am. It’ll be just a moment.”
Velvet frowned. “This is important.”
“Please get in line, Ma’am. I assure you I’ll be happy to help as soon as it’s your turn.”
Velvet considered that option and looked at the line of unhappy ponies, then behind the counter. Her horn pulsed for a heartbeat’s time.
“I think I’ll wait here,” she decided.
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you--”
The door to the back office opened, a pale pink pony stepping out and looking at Twilight in surprise. “Velvet, what are you doing here?”
“Good morning, Miss Rose. My father forgot his lunch again,” she sighed. “He didn’t come home last night either, so if I don’t bring it to him, he’ll probably end up working himself into the hospital again.”
Amber Rose rolled her eyes. “I thought he looked like he hadn’t slept. Why don’t you come in, Velvet? It might be good to remind him there’s a world outside the museum.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Velvet said, glancing to the sour pony working the counter. “Somepony here thinks I need to wait in line.”
“Oh come now, you’re practically part of the staff with how often you’re here.” Amber Rose opened a door in the counter to let Velvet in. Velvet smiled a little more as the sour pony slammed a stamp down on the paper with more force than needed.
“Let me guess, my father’s been busy with the new exhibit,” Velvet said.
“So you saw the banners?” Amber Rose asked.
Velvet tilted her head, looking up at the huge, brightly-colored displays hanging on every wall. “Coming soon, relics from the Temple of the Sun’s Heart,” she read. “And in much smaller letters it mentions Veneighs, but I think anypony without perfect eyesight is going to miss that part.”
“Well, the Director is a bit miffed that they found the Temple,” Amber said, leading Velvet away from the public corridors to the quieter staff area. “Apparently some grad student found it all by herself. The worst part is, she came to us for a grant first, and we turned her down. We’ll be eating crow about that for a bit.”
“Maybe I’ll remind my father about that the next time I ask for an advance on my allowance.”
Amber Rose laughed. “It might just work. While you’re here, you should take a look at what he’s been working on.” She opened a door, and they walked into an atrium large enough for a hoofball pitch.
Glass cases had been set up along the walls, lights already positioned for most of them.
“Charcoal rubbings?” Velvet asked, looking at the pictograms. “I didn’t think the Museum displayed children’s art.”
“We’ve got a team working on clay replicas based on the rubbings, but we were lucky to even get these,” Amber said. “It’s a complete set, at least. From what Mr. Moonlight has said, he’s planning on making the room as close to a reproduction of the original as possible.”
“Dad always did like details. What’s this in the middle?” At the center of the room, a huge shape was shrouded by a dusty tarpaulin.
“That’s our prize exhibit,” Amber said. “Here, let me.”
Amber’s magic aura shone around the tarp, and when she pulled it free, Velvet immediately wished she hadn’t asked about it.
“That’s hideous!” Velvet gasped, taking a step back. The statue was twice the size of a normal pony, stretched out and almost skeletally thin, but somehow boneless at the same time, the stone so smooth it almost looked wet and segmented like the skin of an annelid. The face was the worst part, a ridged face like a seahorse surrounded by rudimentary gills and a mane like a filthy and matted mass of seaweed.
“It is rather unpleasant,” Amber agreed. “You can see why they usually leave the tarp on it while they’re working.”
“It sends chills down my spine just looking at it.”
“But there’s something effective about that, isn’t there?” Amber asked. “You have to admit that it’s a powerful work of art, to have inspired that kind of emotion.”
“The artist was a genius,” Velvet agreed. “Though he probably should have gotten professional help if this was lurking in his imagination.”
“Your father has been working hard getting everything ready,” Amber explained. “We want to have it ready for when the Princess comes back from her negotiations in Saddle Arabia. She’ll be the first to get a look at this.”
“So I get to sneak a peek even before Princess Celestia?” Velvet smiled.
“Mr. Moonlight always did say you were his little princess, so I’m sure he won’t mind,” Amber said. “And I think I see him now!”
Past a few hanging curtains sectioning things off, Velvet spotted her father, the older stallion wearing the same tweed jacket he always seemed to have on. She rushed over, her pace slowing to a trot as she neared. He wasn’t alone.
“...you’ll regret it if you don’t follow our advice,” the dark blue pony he was speaking to said in hushed tones. He didn’t look particularly frightening but the shirt he was wearing, black and white checkerboard, implied he at least had a deadly fashion sense. He couldn’t have been much older than Velvet was, and she didn’t remember seeing him around the museum.
“And thank you for your concern but we are not going to close down the exhibit because of threats,” Velvet’s father said, adjusting his glasses and looking annoyed.
“It’s dangerous,” the blue pony hissed. “If you don’t shut this all down--”
Velvet cleared her throat and the blue pony shut up so quickly he nearly swallowed his throat. She gave him a stern look.
“Dad, I didn’t know you were hiring any new assistants,” she said. “We haven’t been introduced.”
“I’m--” the stallion started.
“Just. Leaving.” Velvet’s father said, firmly. “He’s just a, ah, a concerned friend. He had some safety concerns about the exhibit and I’ve been reassuring him that nothing will go wrong.”
The blue stallion looked like he wanted to argue until he looked at Velvet. He nodded after seeing the look on her face.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. As he walked past Velvet, her eyes fell to a silver pin shining on his lapel, a tiny crescent moon with wings.
She tried to remember where she’d seen it before as the stallion left.
“It’s good to see you, Velvet,” her father said, sweeping her up in a hug and derailing her train of thought. “What are you doing here, pumpkin? You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“Dad, you know I don’t get into trouble,” she said, lamely.
“When you say it like that it makes me really worry,” he joked.
“I came here because you didn’t have lunch,” Velvet said. She pulled a wrapped bundle out of her saddlebags. “Here. It’s just leftover pizza, so don’t get too excited. If you want a hot meal you have to cook it. I had to order out last night.”
“Your mother made me do all the cooking too,” he sighed.
“It takes too long for me to tell in advance if I’m doing it right,” Velvet complained. “By the time I know the food is going to burn, it’s already too late.”
“Velvet, you don’t need to see the future to make dinner.”
“I’m not going to cook just for myself,” she countered.
Her father snorted. “I know that tone. When your mother used it, it meant she’d already decided she’d won the argument. I promise I’ll be home tonight, and we’ll find something you can cook without burning the house down, hm?”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, hugging him.
“And then you can tell me what kind of trouble you got into.”
“...and he slipped and fell,” Velvet said. “It was really embarrassing for Sergeant Sky. He should take better care of his armor.”
“It sounds like you’ll have to write him an apology letter,” her father said, while he cut a carrot into thin matchsticks. Their kitchen was large enough that she could sit and watch him cook without getting in the way, which both of them agreed was the safest thing for her to do.
“I didn’t do anything to him,” she said.
“Both of us know that even if that was true, you still should have warned him about what was going to happen.” He moved the carrot to the side and sliced a few cloves of garlic. “Don’t forget to stir that pot, honey.”
“Sorry,” Velvet said, quickly spinning a spoon around in a pot of crushed tomatoes. “I don’t see why it matters. He’s a jerk.”
“He was your mother’s superior officer. He’s practically family.”
“If he was such a good officer, she’d still be…” Velvet huffed, dropping the spoon. Her father pulled her into a hug.
“I miss her too.”
He held her for a long moment, then let go and ruffled her mane.
“Now, let’s get dinner going so you don’t have to yell at me for not having a hot meal!”
“What’s next?” Velvet asked.
“Next you’re going to do some of the work. I got everything cut up, and the rest is going to be easy. Don’t give me that look, you can do it.”
“Fine,” Velvet sighed.
“First, get a pan and put it over a high heat, then put some olive oil and butter in there,” he directed. “We’re going to get the celery and onion fried up and soft.”
Velvet followed his directions and kept the tough vegetables moving while they cooked. Once they’d turned transparent and soft, she added mushrooms, carrots, and garlic to the mix.
“We add the garlic just before the liquid so we won’t end up burning it,” her father explained. “Your mother always threw it all in at the start and the garlic would be little, burned bits by the time the celery was done.”
He picked up the small pot of tomatoes stewing. “Hmm… were you scraping the bottom of this while you were stirring?”
“Uh…” Velvet hesitated.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he sighed.
“I can get it now!” She grabbed the wooden spoon.
“No, that’s burned on there now. If you scrape it, you just get that burned flavor in everything. When you’re in a situation like this, the best thing to do is to be careful not to touch the bottom and try to save the rest.”
He ladled the tomatoes out and into the pan with the rest of the vegetables, exposing a layer of burned paste at the bottom of the pot.
“Sorry,” Velvet muttered. “I told you I wasn’t good at this.”
“Everypony has to start somewhere. The most important part of cooking is learning how to fix mistakes. Anypony can try to avoid them, but a great cook can salvage a bad situation. We’ll just add a little extra broth before we put the beans and pasta in.”
“I’ll clean the pot,” Velvet offered, taking it over to the sink.
“There’s a trick to cleaning burned-on messes like that,” her father said, after turning down the heat so he could step away safely, pulling a few things out of the cupboard.
“Vinegar and baking soda?” Velvet asked.
“That’s right. First, we scrub with the baking soda. It’s abrasive and helps dislodge things.” He poured a little in, scrubbing in small circles. “You don’t have to worry about using too much elbow grease, just make sure it’s rubbed into the mess. Once you’ve done that, you pour in the vinegar and…”
The vinegar foamed up as soon as it hit the baking soda paste, the little bit he’d put in almost overflowing the pot entirely. He swirled it around a few times, then poured it out.
“The reaction neutralizes the baking soda and vinegar and you end up with just water and some salts, but all the foam and energy in it breaks up the clumps so now…”
He revealed the bottom of the pot. There was only a little bit of black stubbornly clinging to the metal.
“You’ll have an easier time scrubbing the rest.”
“Can you show me how to do that, too?” Velvet asked.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I’m not going to do all the work for you!”
“It was worth a shot,” she sighed.