//------------------------------// // Hayburger helper // Story: House of the Rising Sunflower // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle had all of the tell-tale signs of being a good mom. Sundance sort of watched her, it felt wrong to observe such private moments. Mostly, he looked at the dining room, which was small, intimate, and just like the previous room, rather plain. The only decorations on the walls were the artwork of small foals, crayon drawings and watercolours that needed extensive explanations to understand. Well, most of them; one of the pictures was a remarkably detailed carrot, which just so happened to be sticking out of the head of a six-legged stick-pony. The carrot was of exquisite detail, with rudimentary, somewhat crude shading.  In the midst of his intense observations of the remarkably well-done carrot, Sundance noticed that he couldn’t find the source of light in this room. It was disturbing, really. The room was well-lit, but nothing, absolutely nothing cast a shadow. Everything was bathed in light, though there was no obvious lightsource. With the carrot now the furthest thing from his mind, Sundance tried to figure out this disconcerting mystery, because the lack of shadows felt most unnatural to him.  “Is something bothering you?” asked Twilight whilst she bounced the gurgling infant.  “No shadows in this room. At all.”  “Sorry about that… the illusory shadows haven’t been properly established yet.” Ears pivoted forward, Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “We had to eliminate every shadow in the castle. The rats kept making incursions. They appear in shadow, and can, at least in theory, teleport to anywhere there is shadow. So all the darkness in the castle is now artificial… illusion. Mostly done by Trixie Lulamoon.”  “So the shadows I saw in the other rooms and the dark closet, none of those were real?”  “Did it feel real?” asked Twilight.  “I fear I don’t know what real is anymore.”  “Reality tends to be whatever Trixie makes it to be.” Ears now splayed out in a more neutral position, Twilight looked down at the wiggling filly in her protective embrace. “It’s quite malleable, you know. If the senses believe something is real, it is. Trixie can cast illusory fireballs that aren’t real but cause real burns… and even death. Though the flames do no damage to inanimate objects.”  More than a little intrigued, Sundance wanted to know how this worked. “How is that possible?” In response, Twilight shrugged. “I don’t know. To be honest, and at the risk of damaging my all-knowing mystique, I barely understand it. Illusion magics and I just don’t get along.”  “It’s a little unsettling.” He hoped he wasn’t being rude when he mentioned this. When he lifted up his spoon with his wing, he saw nothing beneath it, not even the merest hint of shadow. It was the sort of thing that almost made his head hurt, and he couldn’t help but feel a little stupid.  “When fighting the lich, Dim made the illusion of sunshine. The ceiling cracked open, stone blocks fell away, and the sun came shining in. Now, there was absolutely no ultraviolet light, but the lich still burst into flames and took extensive damage. The lich was so panicked that it could no longer cast spells, but ran around shrieking while trying to extinguish itself. I was able to finish the undead abomination off because it ceased all efforts to fight and focused on self-preservation.”  Unable to do anything else, Sundance sat there, blinking in astonishment.  “I might be the Element of Magic, but there is magic that I don’t understand,” Twilight remarked. “Illusion might not even be magic… at times, I believe it is an advanced form of psychology that is beyond my comprehension. At least, I tell myself this to ease the sting of my own shortcomings.”  “Why tell me this?” asked Sundance.  After a prolonged moment of silence, Twilight’s expression turned thoughtful. “I want us to be friends,” she said slowly and with each word carefully spoken. “Celestia cultivates an air of all-knowingness. She’s mystical, aloof, and a bit of a goof. You will never quite know where you stand with her, because she wants to keep you guessing.  “For my own ends, I need for us to be friends. For my brilliant plans to work, I need you to trust me. For you to trust me, you need to know that I am not all-knowing, all-seeing, and that I am fallible. Do my shortcomings make me relatable? Have I won just a small measure of your trust? If not, then I have some work to do.”  Princess Celestia a bit of a goof? Sundance mused over Twilight’s words while absentmindedly flipping a spoon into the air with his wing. It was a marvellous display of dexterity and the fact that he did it without thinking or looking made it extra-impressive. Up and down it went, caught and thrown with skilled primaries that never missed, never fumbled. Twilight too, was a bit of a goof, but an upfront, forthright one.  “Just what is that big plan?” he asked.  “Lunch first, then proposal,” was Twilight’s terse response.  “Fair enough.” To prevent his inquisitiveness from getting the best of him, Sundance changed the subject and asked, “So if an alicorn reflects their nature, what might a pegasus-focused alicorn look like?”  Twilight’s head lifted and her gaze leveled on Sundance. “Why, Prince Gosling of course. Thin. Slight. Aerodynamic and built for speed. Not that different from the standard alicorn body-form. Cadance embodied it when she was younger… back in the days when she was my foalsitter. She strove for balance though, and achieved a semblance of it.”  “Aren’t you worried that you are out of balance?” Too late, Sundance realised that his words might be offensive only after he’d said them.  If Twilight was offended, she didn’t show it. Instead, she laughed, a hearty chuckle that echoed through the mostly empty room. She said nothing—but she didn’t need to say anything at all. Right before Sundance’s eyes, her body began to change shape. Her muzzle narrowed, became slender and shapely. Above her muzzle, her eyes enlarged and took on a new form. Twilight’s ears elongated, but the withered ear remained injured, as did the rest of her face. Her body changed, grew slender, her forelegs turned willowy, elegant, graceful. The transformation was smooth, gradual, beautiful, and not at all unsettling.  “Celestia can change her appearance with illusion, but I can change my body through sheer will. It’s a trick that even Celestia can’t do… not in the same way that I manage it. As the embodiment of magic, I’ve become something of a metamorph.” As she spoke, her horn vanished, shrinking away into her forehead until it was gone completely. “This body is crude matter, a mere reflection of what is within.” Twilight was something that was almost a pegasus now, but that was changing too. “I don’t even need to be a pony. Transmutation is an awesome power… with it, I can turn rocks into magnificent top hats, apples into carriages, and my body becomes anything I desire it to be. Not an illusory form… but wholly real.”  “Isn’t that just making you more hungry?” Sundance focused a critical eye on Twilight and watched as her body flowed into new forms. It was impressive magic, though he lacked the imagination to understand how useful it might be. For him, it was a magic trick, and a spectacular one at that.  Much to his surprise, Twilight nodded.  “I do hope that lunch hurries up,” she said while her body continued to reshape. “I’m famished!”    The foal grew fussy once more, as foals were wont to do, and Sundance watched as Twilight prepared to feed the irritated tot a bottle. More confetti was sneezed out, a few screeches were made, and the disgruntled infant smacked the bottle away with her front hooves. Exasperated but patient, Twilight tried again, though this time she made reassuring promises.  “It won’t be like last time, I promise. New formula. It’s a new formula—oh, what am I doing… you don’t know what I’m saying.” Shoulders slumped, Twilight sighed and shook her head while she tried to get the bottle past the filly’s tiny kicking legs. “Oh come on… I’m the one who stayed up all night with you while the gas passed. Don’t fight!”  “What’s wrong?” Sundance immediately worried that he’d made the situation worse, because Twilight shot him a look that he couldn’t read. Frustration, perhaps.  “She has an allergy to milk,” Twilight replied after recovering her composure. “Can’t nurse. It broke Pinkie’s heart. We keep experimenting with new types of synthetic formula, but a recent batch caused tummy troubles. Now she’s scared of the bottle.”  “Want me to try?” he asked.  First Twilight’s expression went blank, her ears went slack, and then her face turned deadpan. The filly kicked and thrashed, and with a sigh, Twilight looked down at the fidgety foal left in her care. Sundance saw something different with Twilight now; she wasn’t a princess, or an alicorn, but a tired mother in need of help. He saw this often with Hollyhock and Express Delivery.  Without warning, the filly was dumped into his care once more, and the bottle set down beside his empty plate in front of him. Twilight seemed sulky, or maybe defeated. She sat with her forelegs crossed over her barrel, and the corners of her mouth drooped into a saggy frown. Maybe this would be easy-peasy. Perhaps some sort of magical knack would kick in. Extending his wing, he picked up the bottle, flipped it around nipple down, and moved in to feed.  The bottle was kicked from his grasp and went flying.  A second later, the bottle appeared upon the table, right where it began. Sundance picked it up once more, flipped it nipple side down, and this time, he made silly faces to distract the filly while he maneuvered the bottle closer. Everything was going according to plan, until she sneezed out a blast of confetti that almost blinded him. While he was still in recovery, she noticed the bottle and kicked it free from his primaries a second time.  With a glittery flash of light, the bottle appeared upon the table.  This time, he didn’t reach for the bottle. Not right away. No, he waited, and bounced the filly up and down, because she seemed to like that, if her coos were to be trusted. What might his mother say? This was a side of himself that he did not expect. He rather liked this, though perhaps it was the newness of it, the novelty. There were newborns back home that he sometimes cared for, briefly, and he never minded. But this was somehow different—it awoke something within him, something he liked, something he felt good about.  “Confetti shot out of both ends,” Twilight remarked. “She’s just like her mother. If you think you know your friends, Sundance, wait until they have kids. You’ll start noticing all kinds of traits you somehow failed to notice before. It’s quite a thing.”  Sundance felt his scalp tighten. “Both ends?” When he picked up the bottle, he did so without confidence.  “Both ends.” She nodded while this was said, and her eyes grew distant. “The best thing that friends can do is settle down and raise a family together.” Her eyes grew even more unfocused. “Sure, it’s not a romance story like my brother and Cadance. But that doesn’t make it any less important. When you do settle down, Sundance, I hope it is with a friend. Romance is fine… great even. But friendship is good too.”  When he tried to give the fussy filly her bottle, it was once more kicked away.    The door opened and Sundance looked up from the filly that hesitantly suckled. Across the table, Twilight’s ears pricked, and for a brief second, her slender orange tongue was visible when she licked her lips. Beyond the door, there was a unicorn, white of pelt, with a pink, orange, and blue mane. Bespectacled, somewhat annoyed, and pulling a wooden cart behind her, she shuffled into the room whilst she muttered to herself.  Right away, the room smelled strongly of mouthwatering grease and salt.  “I kept everything hot and fresh while it was processed,” the young unicorn mare said as she trudged to the table with the wooden cart behind her. “I still think that you should just decree that Hayseed’s Hayburgers open up a franchise right here in your castle.”  Somewhat embarrassed, Twilight dismissed these words with a casual wave of her right front hoof. “Miss Strudel, this is Lord Sundance.” Her head bobbed. “Sundance, this is Miss Strudel. She’s quite a find.”  Just as he was about to respond, he noticed the young mare’s mark: a toaster of shiny, glinty chrome. This distracted him for a moment, but he was quick to recover. “When you say quite a find, am I to understand that you’re trying to set us up? Are we to be friends, or something else entirely?”  There was a snort, and then Twilight’s face turned a darker shade of princessly purple. “Oh… oh goodness… oh, no, I didn’t mean that. No no, Sundance… I couldn’t let you take her away from me. She might very well be my Raven. Which is what makes her quite a find. Miss Strudel is my assistant. My helper. My—”  “Her hayburger handler,” the young mare deadpanned. “I joined CivServe to make a difference and what do I end up doing?” Her eyes narrowed whilst her ears pitched forwards. “I fetch hayburgers by the dozen and keep them warm.”  “And you do an excellent job, Miss Strudel.”  “I don’t have an assistant.” Sundance said his thoughts aloud whilst his eyes lingered upon the gleaming chrome toaster. It was spectacularly shiny for a cutie mark, and he wondered if some strange magic made it so eye-catching.  “Would you like one?” Miss Strudel asked.  “No!” There was panic in Twilight’s voice and she waved her forelegs around. “No, this isn’t what I intended at all!”  Lifting a brown bag that glistened with grease from the cart, Miss Strudel placed it upon the table. Then, she lifted another bag, and another, followed by several more. She could have easily lifted them all at once, but she made a show of it, all while smirking in Sundance’s general direction. He found himself rather in awe of her confidence and subtle snark, which he supposed were valuable qualities indeed if Twilight wished to keep her.  “Everything has a lingering enchantment to keep it piping hot,” the bespectacled young mare said. “The hayburgers, the wheat-meat nuggets, the hay tacos, and the fried apple pies. If anything gets cold, gross, or soggy, summon me. I can make things toasty. That’s what I do. Who would have thought that a living toaster would end up working for a princess? I certainly didn’t.”  While all of this was intriguing, Sundance was curious about something else. “What’s CivServe?”  “Oh that.” Miss Strudel’s eyes twinkled with mischievous glee. “That is a Crown-sponsored agency that young mares join to find a husband. At the time, I wasn’t doing anything else with my life. I was poor, unschooled, untrained, and the Crown changed all that. Now, instead of working a dead-end job like frying hayburgers, I instead bring hayburgers to a hungry, hungry princess… and occasionally, I burn intruders in the castle to a crisp. After all, a toaster is just a death ray with an inadequate power setting.”  “I also stumbled into a government job,” Sundance said to the smirking young mare that set everything out on the table and made it presentable. “Completed a genealogy project that showcased my skills as a natural-born beaurocrat.”  “Oh, this is nice.” There was relief in Twilight’s voice. “You two are friends. How wonderful. Friendship is good… an admirable end. Whew.”  “Still looking for a husband?” asked Sundance, which caused Twilight to audibly gulp. “I mean, is that still what you want?”  Miss Strudel clucked her tongue and shook her head from side to side. “Not at the moment. CivServe’s training and education convinced me that I had value. That I am worthy. It put my eyes on the future and gave me a sense of… professionalism?” Here, she paused for a time, her head tilted off to one side, and she spent a moment in thought. “I have something to offer the world. Me… a nopony from the ghettos of Las Pegasus. Twilight”—she pointed at the flustered-but-proud alicorn slouched in her chair—“sees value in me. I am indispensable to her work. Not bad for a nopony.”  Much to his own surprise, Sundance discovered and realised that he could talk to mares now. This fact sank into his brain like a dropped anvil. No longer was he the awkward colt he was in school—he was something else entirely. At some point, he’d grown up, and in doing so, he’d changed. His confidence soared as high as the noonday sun and he felt good about things: life, himself, his general existence. Even more exciting was the fact that the mares he spoke to seemed to like him and wanted to converse with him.  He was sorely tempted to show Miss Strudel his wingspan.  Instead of making a fool of himself by showing his wings to a unicorn, he chose a far more cerebral approach. “The big city has a way of making you feel worthless. I did delivery work, but I couldn’t see any sort of future in that. There’s always delivery work for pegasus ponies, but that’s not much of a future unless you somehow get lucky. Factory work seemed like a dead end. I am totally unsuited for police work.”  “I know what you mean,” Miss Strudel replied. “Honestly, I thought my best future was getting married. But the local options for husbands lacked appeal. Prostitution is always an option… I guess… but not for me. I couldn’t degrade myself like that. There’s a reason why I didn’t marry some gangster or some cheap hoodlum. I couldn’t see any sort of future for myself.” After a pause, she added, “It’s bleak. There’s no choices, just survival.”  “Which is why I asked Sundance to come today.” Almost smiling, Twilight tapped her front hooves together. “Both of you are aware of the problems we face. Princess Celestia specifically chose Sundance because of his experience in the inner-city. This is the same reason as to why I chose you, Miss Strudel. If I am to implement solutions, I need to be able to understand the problem.”  Eyes now wide, ears pricked at attention, with all of her snark gone on a sudden, unannounced vacation, Miss Strudel’s attention focused on Twilight. For a moment, she seemed as though she might say something, but that moment passed with nothing said. As if by magic, Miss Strudel somehow seemed more youthful—younger in some mysterious way—and there was a great deal of emotion to be seen in her eyes.  “I cannot possibly secure Equestria’s future on my own.” After a solemn sigh, Twilight’s ears fell down and came to rest against the sides of her face. “Celestia is busy ensuring our world has a future, and that’s a mighty big job. Luna deals with all of the threats that lurk within our own borders, as well as a host of supernatural otherworldly threats. Gosling has declared war on poverty, and his goals align with my own… though at times, his goals seem more focused than my own.  “Cadance and Shining Armor deal with the consequences of securing the world’s future and the war against our great enemy, Grogar. Blueblood maintains the eyes and ears of our nation”—she hesitated for a moment, grimaced, all while she shook her head—“his job might actually be more complicated than my own, and he’s working with an even smaller pool of resources. I feel bad for Blueblood. As for Dim… well, I’m not actually allowed to speak of his job.”  At the mention of Dim’s name, Miss Strudel shivered violently and Sundance wondered why.  “Is something wrong, Miss Strudel?” asked Twilight.  “I’ve heard stories about Dim.”  “I’m sure you have.” Deep furrows appeared upon Twilight’s brows.  “Is it true… is he a wraith?”  A tremendous amount of air whooshed out of Twilight Sparkle, which made a brief raspberry, followed by a frustrated sigh. “He’s not undead. Celestia would never tolerate such a thing. Miss Strudel, you’ve met him. Did he seem undead to you?”  “Maybe just a little,” the young mare replied whilst she shuffled from side to side.  Eyes rolling, another exasperated sigh escaped Twilight.  “He’s very creepy,” Miss Strudel said in her own defense.  “I don’t think the Lord of Nightmares should be normal.” Twilight’s right and left front hooves waved about as if they had a mind of their own. “Equestria needs solutions if it is to have a future. The both of you will be an asset. It is serendipitous that the two of you get along, and because of that, Miss Strudel, I’ll probably have you act as my liaison for all those times when I can’t meet with Sundance in pony.”  “I’d like that.” This was said with an enthusiastic bob of the young mare’s head.  “There’s still a lot to be accomplished today… I’d best get started.”