“HONK!”
“Oh!” Lady Smuggington jumped, her teacup dropping to the rug as the loud noise made her lose control of her field. The richly-attired unicorn turned around on her chaise, her expression one of both shock and bafflement. “Princess Celestia, was that…” She stopped short of uttering the unthinkable question. The elegant alicorn who stood before her, one hoof upraised with perfect poise, could not possibly have made that hideous noise, of course.
Celestia could tell what had stopped the high-bred unicorn’s question as clearly as if she could read the pony’s mind.
“Was what, Lady Smuggington?”
“Oh, ah, did you hear that?”
Celestia tilted her head, allowing an expression of gentle bafflement to cross her features. “Hear what?”
“There was a…sound.” The lady now looked even more confused. Celestia circled back around the chaise. One hoof, with calculated precision, just tapped the fallen teacup, sending it silently rolling beneath the chair Celestia herself had occupied before engineering an excuse to get up and circle the room.
“I didn’t hear anything of note,” said Celestia calmly.
“Oh. Well. I mean, I thought…”
Celestia put a soothing wing across Lady Smuggington’s withers. “Nothing to be concerned about, I’m sure.” Meanwhile, as this put her head out of the lady’s field of view, she swiftly lit her horn and whisked the teacup out from under her chair and toward the window. There was a brief pause to allow for a mental calculation of angles, and then...release.
The cup tumbled through the afternoon air, unseen, falling from the window of Celestia’s formal tea parlor to the canal, where water from the spring that lay beneath the palace flowed from a series of fountains to the great waterfall that tumbled to the city below.
Celestia continued her informal interview with the noble owner of Canterlot’s worst purveyor of yellow journalism, but inside a secret little glow thrilled through her--the deep satisfaction of a task being crossed off her list.
Steal a teacup and drop it in the canal