I fucking love oats, me. Not even joking. Put some oats in front of me and I’ll eat the shit out of them. They’re great. Splash some milk on there - fantastic.
Maybe I’m dead and this is heaven? Plentiful oats, minimal responsibility, pretty lady who likes you. The evidence is strong.
Then again if this was heaven, shouldn’t it be a pretty lady-lady not a pretty horse-lady?
Maybe this is saying more about me than I’m prepared to admit.
Let’s just leave that aside for now and focus on finishing breakfast. Mmm, oats. Fucking love oats, me. I’ll have a banana too, while I’m at it. Living the life, that’s me.
“You’re being very quiet,” Celestia said, snapping me to the there-and-then.
The smile she had at that moment was a gentle one, a favourite of mine. And at close range! The table might have been ludicrously big - almost all of them were around the place - but we were sat on one of the corners. Because it would have been silly otherwise.
Spoon in hand I pointed to my bowl.
“Just contemplating my oats,” I said.
The smile remained, though did change in tone. I should really start making notes on what these different nuances conveyed. I had vague ideas, but still hadn’t quite mastered all of them yet. This one, I think, was kind of amused puzzlement. Or something to that effect.
“I do wonder what goes on inside your head sometimes,” she said.
“It’s not that interesting, I assure you.”
“Hmm,” she said, in a way that suggested she disagreed but didn’t feel like saying so, before returning to her own breakfast.
What was going on inside my head? Not a whole lot.
The problem with asking that question is that, once asked, all thoughts immediately cease and I’m unable to pinpoint anything. Does everyone get that? Probably a sign I shouldn’t be worrying about it.
What I should be thinking about was what I was going to be doing today.
Pretty soon Celestia would be off to do her job - that whole ‘co-running the place’ gig - and I would be left to my own devices. Being a man of leisure and a kept man of leisure at that was nice and all, but had started wear thin on occasion. I had a lot of time and next to nothing I needed to do with it.
Which in Ponyville was fine. There I was hip-deep in friendly folks I could hang around with or help out and there always at least something I could throw myself at. Canterlot? Not so much.
Don’t get me wrong! Lovely place! Very pretty. Good architecture. And Celestia lived here, too, which was a plus in my book. Just not a whole lot for me to do on my own, is all.
Actually, now I think about it, before I’d departed Ponyville for here Twilight had given me what basically amounted to homework. Stuff to assist my continuing efforts at learning to read. More kids books, that sort of thing.
At the time I’d been quite put out by this, but thinking about it now it actually seemed a pretty good option.
Alright then, I’ll do that. That’ll work! Productive and a good way to eat up time. Thanks Twilight, whatever you’re doing right now.
By then I figured I’d been perhaps too quiet for too long again so piped up:
“So apart from dull petitioners with grating voices is anything else of interest happening? I always kind of feel that life is passing me by around here,” I said, pushing my now-empty bowl away from me.
Celestia thought a moment, wingtip tapping her chin.
“Actually, no, not really. Nothing much at all is happening.”
Honestly not what I’d been expecting.
“But this is a land of magic and adventure! That’s what the brochure said!” I said, aghast
“I’m sure if you wanted some adventure you could find some, but as for especially spectacular happenings right now there doesn’t really seem to be anything. This is a particularly tranquil period of mine and my sister’s rule, for whatever reason.”
“‘Cos I’m here, obviously,” I said, reaching for the orange juice.
“Yes John, that must be it, yes,” Celestia said, magically nudging the orange juice so I could actually reach it. I mouthed thanks and then started pouring.
“I’m invaluable,” I said, raising a glass.
Got a wing to pat me on the head for that one.
“Yes John, yes. Invaluable.”
Should we be paranoid that everything was hunky dory? Wasn’t that usually the presage of terrible things? The calm before the storm and all that? Or was that just because things tended to happen one after another?
Again, probably not much use in me worrying about it.
Instead, I drink me some orange juice, put down my glass and the shuffle my chair around the table until I’m sat next to Celestia. For her part she watches me do this without comment.
“Hey, look over there,” I said, flat as anything. I then waited a full second before raising my arm to point to the side.
To her immense and enduring credit Celestia sold this bit as though her life depended on it, gasping in shock and looking over in the appropriate direction, giving me ample time and opportunity to lean in and give her a kiss on the cheek.
She gasped again and turned to me, scandalised.
“It was a cunning ruse,” I said.
“And I fell for it!”
Further kissing followed, not restricted to cheeks, and continuing until both of us had the most sudden and uncanny impression that we were no longer alone in the room.
And indeed we weren’t, for when we came up for air we found, sitting across the table from us, Luna. She had a mug.
Neither of us really knew what to do at this point. Other than stop the kissing, obviously. I schooched my chair back to where it had been originally but this just made a lot of noise and was probably not the best thing I could have done. But I did it anyway.
“Good morning, sister,” Luna said, finally breaking at least a bit of the tension. She didn’t sound mad...
Wait, what am I even talking about? We’re adults! We can do what we like!
We just, uh, both know we shouldn’t really have been doing what we did and were doing because we said we’d make an effort to slow things down. And had been caught not doing that. That’s why we’re concerned, yes.
I get it now.
“Good morning, sister,” Celestia repeated, also giving a tiny bow of the head. Solid as a rock, her, not ruffled at all! “A quiet night?”
“Very,” Luna said, slurping.
Luna slurping was a very disarming thing to see. And hear, I suppose.
Another moment of silence. Celestia then stood up, chair scraping.
“I have day court to prepare for,” she said.
“Don’t forget the crown, it’s important,” I hissed from behind my hand.
Her expression held almost perfectly, but I did get a glance, which I appreciated.
“He’s right,” Luna said, mug raised to her lips. Thanks for the backup Luna, that was actually pretty slick.
“I’ll do my best,” Celestia said, more relaxed now than she had been mere seconds ago, looking from Luna to me and then back again. “I’ll see you later, sister.”
“Indeed,” Luna said, sipping quietly and not slurping.
“John,” she then said, pausing only briefly before going in for a quick nuzzle before clip-clopping her way out of the room, leaving me and Luna still sat at the table.
We both watched her go and then Luna took another long slurp. She did it quietly a minute ago! She was doing that on purpose!
“There’s something oddly cloying about watching the two of you together, but it is difficult to put my hoof onto exactly what it might be,” she said, once Celestia was gone and the door shut behind her.
What a fine and fancy way of saying good morning.
“Well hello to you too, Luna. Yeesh.”
“Apologies. I am quite tired. How are you, John?”
Ah, I couldn’t hold it against her. She likely wasn’t wrong. And she backed me up on the crown thing - comedy initiative! Valuable.
“Top-notch, me. Yourself?” I asked.
“Tired, as I say, but otherwise good.”
Early-morning small talk. Agonising.
“I take it my sister and yourself slept in your bed in the grounds?” She then asked. Straight to the point, her. That’s quite admirable, actually, and one of the things I rather liked about Luna - directness.
And in a shed in the grounds, technically. A shed which inexplicably had a first floor.
“Do you even need to ask?”
“Not really, no,” she said, lightly. I sighed. Smart lady, Luna.
“Didn’t think you did. But just for formality’s sake yes, yes she did. Uh, sorry?”
“Why are you apologising?” Luna asked, eyebrow quirked. Quite the eyebrows, too.
“Because we kind of...said we weren’t going to do something like that?” I ventured.
“I honestly expected the two of you to have done something like this sooner.”
Huh. Well at least she’s realistic.
“So we exercised restraint is what you’re saying?” I asked.
“That may, perhaps, be going too far. But you have at least demonstrated an awareness of restraint, if not a willingness to practise it.”
Sick burn, fuck. That sounded practised. Did I walk into that one? Had she set me up for that? Kudos Luna, kudos, that was pretty good.
“Well you got me in a box on that one, I guess. Both of us. Though it’s probably more my fault.”
“You should not put sole blame onto yourself for things for which you were only partly responsible. It is unhealthy and unhelpful.”
She’s on the ball for someone who’s been up all night. I’d try talking about the weather to lighten the mood but I suspected she’d find some way of turning that back on me. Sharp as a tack, that Luna. No bad thing!
“Uh, suppose you got a point there, Luna. So, ah, things as quiet during the night as they are during the day I hear?” I asked, scratching my neck.
Skillful subject change there, son. Didn’t hear gears crunching or nothing.
Luna did not seem to have the energy to point this out though, so just went along with it, shrugging lightly.
“Things are much as they always tend to be, whenever there is no great catastrophe,” she said, yawning. Then: “And how is life in Ponyville? Have you found a house yet?”
My desire to and feeble efforts at doing so being something I’d previously mentioned and which she was aware of.
“House, no, not yet. Still looking! But Twilight makes it kind of difficult to leave. Everytime I go back she’s just made my room nicer! Lovely girl. Fantastic host.”
You’d almost think she didn’t want to be rid of me or something. Which wouldn’t make sense.
“So I’ve heard. And what of her friends? You are still assisting them, I take it?”
“Oh yeah, yeah, helping where I can. Lovely girls - friendly to fault. Applejack threw a rope around me. It was pretty great.”
That had happened. Practise for something? It was actually alarming what Applejack could do with a rope. Pretty sure some of it should have been physically impossible.
And there’d been other stuff too, of course, but that went without saying. I was always off and about doing something when I was back there.
Luna nodded, swirling her cup.
“It is good that you have been keeping busy, John.”
“That it is, that is it is. Heh, kind of weird how much more of an active interest you take in what I do with spare time than Celestia does.”
Luna raised an eyebrow.
“Is it now?”
Okay, probably the worst way to have worded that, my bad. Sounded a little like I was obliquely throwing Celestia under the bus there - not my intention!
“Well I guess when she and I are talking it just kind of comes up more naturally,” I said.
As opposed to being drawn out of my via questioning. I can believe that. That sounds about right.
Another slurp from Luna. How much was in that cup?!
“What do you and my sister typically talk about, just out of curiosity?” She asked.
I drew a blank, mostly because the question just caught me off-guard.
“All sorts. Anything that comes up. The weather. Breakfast. Other stuff. Sometimes our conversations can get a little, ah, abstract, I guess?”
“Abstract?”
“Yeah, abstract.”
Which was my way of saying that mine and Celestia’s conversations often get very esoteric and disconnected, flitting hither and thither from subject to subject with no link obvious between them unless you happened to be either her or me.
Most of that was my fault, though. I’m a little scatterbrained.
For example, yesterday I had launched - apropos of basically nothing - into a surprisingly full-spirited rant about the discrepancy between the sizes of commonly-available bins and the binbags you could put in them. This served as a springboard rant for a longer, more agonised holding-forth on why binbags are so fragile and how this is a serious failing in design.
Celestia had found this all very amusing, and I’d only really noticed that I’d been talking freely about something very much from back home once I’d been doing it for some minutes without any discomfort on my part, and only once I noticed this did the headache start.
My memory issues are basically the millipede problem. If I concentrate, it’s horrendous. If I do it without thinking, it’s fine. Because that’s how brains work? Maybe?
Magic! What a farce.
Still, I don’t know, me and Celestia just seemed to kind of run on the same frequency a lot of the time. We talked a lot of bollocks, but we enjoyed talking a lot of bollocks so it worked out.
Certainly, I always enjoyed it.
“I see,” Luna said, in a way suggestive of perhaps seeing it from an angle entirely separate to mine. Which was fair, given I’d explained jack shit.
“That wasn’t a very useful answer, was it?”
“Not especially, but you have no need to justify yourself. While I am still of the opinion that the two of you would benefit from rather more patience you are both adults and I am not going to tell you what to do. You seem happy, at least.”
It would be very easy to dismiss Luna as a party-pooper and be grumpy about it but she did mean well, I knew, and I could also tell where she was coming from.
Me and Celestia maybe kind of probably might have had a tiny bit of a habit of getting wrapped up in a separate world consisting only of ourselves and whatever was nearest and comfiest to snuggle on.
Which isn’t...awful, you know? It’s just, uh, maybe a little myopic sometimes…
Good to be grounded every now and then. Even if it doesn’t feel good.
“Plenty happy, me. Living the life, me. You’re probably right. I’ll, uh, she and I’ll talk later about it. Work something out,” I said. No idea what I meant by it, but such placations just fell out of me from time to time.
“As you say,” Luna said, yawning again. My turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t you be getting to bed anyway? Drinking coffee seems a bad move.”
“This is hot chocolate,” she said, tilting the cup so I could see into it. She was not lying.
“Is it? Ooh, nice.”
Would explain why I had smelt chocolate and not coffee. Probably should have worked that out sooner.
Had I woken up properly yet? Too many oats, I bet.