//------------------------------// // Aug. 17th, 2019 - The Stars Are Gone // Story: RoMS' Extravaganza // by RoMS //------------------------------// “What do you mean, you just sneezed?” Celestia said, her tone sharp and steady. A closeby trio of guards retracted their heads inside their helmets and breastplates as the princess loomed over her sister. “Sister, we talked about this. Could you not use your Canterlot voice on me,” Luna replied, a scowl spreading her lips apart. She pushed her sister back with her hoof on her breast. “I mean, I just sneezed—right now—but! We’ve been inside the castle this whole time. This might just be a coincidence.” Celestia arched her brow. “Really, sister?” Luna flicked her mane in order and shooed her sister away with a motion of her hoof. She pivoted on her haunches and crossed her forelegs. “Don’t you Rarity me away?” Celestia replied to the offense. “Hey!” the aforementioned burst in the background. Luna huffed, her muzzle pointed at the ceiling and a prompt smug cast on her face. “I hold dominion over the moon, Celi’, not the stars. I’ve never, in a thousand years moved one—and I’d be incapable of it anyway.” “You could hardly move anything the past thousand years, if I recall.” Luna snapped her eyes wide open and glared at her sister with pinpricks pupils. She gave a noticeable sniff next to her sister’s neck and cackled at the chocolate brownie smell. “And you could hardly move, cakeflank.” Eyelids shrunk to slits and magic sparked. Fire crackled along the length of Celestia’s horn, answered in kind with minuscule twirling comets revolving around Luna’s. “Princesses,” a lone, assured mare’s voice called. Celestia flared her wings. Luna cracked her pasterns. A tiny pony came into view of the light cast by the alicorns. “Princesses?” Celestia and Luna stretched up, convoking their whole might, flowing manes, and magic regalias. They stared at each other, muzzles teetering a hair’s width apart. “Princesses!” “What?” they shouted, snapping back at the mare at their side. Raven Inkwell, Celestia’s aide, pushed her large black-framed glasses up her muzzle and cleared her throat. She looked down her notebook, sparsely lit by the glow of her horn. “I’m afraid the Yakyakistan emissary has severed the power cable line to the Castle Hall on the way to his bed.” She grimaced and looked up with a sigh. “You’re both looking at a switched off chandelier.” The two sisters glanced up then down at the tiny unicorn. Raven’s tired eyes stared beyond the two sisters at the trembling guards. She tilted her head quickly and they went away. Raven sucked air and sighed. Her horn lit and a brook of magic flowed from her horn to snatch up a trove of discarded bottles. A cloudy liquid swished down the bottom of a few. “No more Yakvavit sampling during impromptu diplomatic reunions.” Raven turned around and gazed with annoyance at the pack of paparazzi and spectators. “During the gala most of all.” The princesses blinked intermittently as many unicorns lit with their horns the colonnade of the Canterlot main hall. Its large golden door loudly creaked open and faces swiveled to the culprit. “Where is the Academy of Equestrian Lettres?” Rarity hollered back, ready to slip in the gate’s slit. “I must ensure my name is not neologized!”