Auntie Tia's Matchmaking Service

by Shaslan


Chapter 19

“Gah!”

The sound of smashing crockery made Raven Inkwell start. She put down the stack of paperwork she had been holding and cocked her head, listening carefully.

There was the sound of swiftly-pacing hooves, and another muttered expostulation.

It was enough to make Raven Inkwell’s decision into a simple one. The Princess needed her. She stood, much more carefully than she would have done once, and began her slow progress from her desk towards the outer door.

She paused for a moment behind that last wooden shell of protection, listening to the Princess’ furious pacing, and then pushed her way out into the storm.

Celestia looked over at once and saw Raven Inkwell, but did not immediately acknowledge her. She returned her gaze to the letter in front of her, her eyes skimming over it and narrowing as they went.

“Princess?” Raven asked. She made her slow way forwards and settled her old bones into a seat. She couldn’t stand upright for very long these days, but she prided herself on the fact that she had never needed a cane.

Princess Celestia muttered something that Raven Inkwell couldn’t quite make out, her words hissing like acid into the desk before her.

Raven Inkwell tried again. “Is it something I could help you with, Princess?”

Celestia met Raven’s eyes at last. “I’ve received a letter from Cozy Glow,” she said flatly.

“Ah.” That was all Raven Inkwell needed to hear to grasp the situation in its entirety. In the few short weeks that Cozy Glow had been a client of Auntie Tia’s Matchmaking Service, she had been the cause of more stress and anger than almost the entire decade preceding her arrival.

Celestia ground the letter into the desk beneath her hoof; not quite hard enough to tear it, but not gently either. “I have not…had a pleasant week, Raven, and this — this foal is the most — the most insufferable little creature that ever lived. She has rejected thirty-two matches! And of the two she has deigned to meet with — both have been disastrous.”

Raven Inkwell frowned sympathetically and leaned forward a little in her chair. Sometimes the most helpful thing she could do was to simply offer a listening ear to let the Princess talk through the problem she was facing. Raven’s spine creaked alarmingly as she moved, but she paid it no mind. Her body was always falling to pieces these days; she had learned to ignore it and focus on the task at hoof.

Celestia was speaking again, her words clipped and hurried out of her mouth by frustration. “One of her matches she reduced to a quivering bundle of nerves and traumatised to the extent that he left my services altogether. As if I had already not lost enough clients recently.”

Sagely, Raven Inkwell nodded. She remembered the disaster with Prince Patrician well. There had been some particularly nasty threats of legal action from an irate Prince Blueblood, which had continued until Raven Inkwell had taken him aside and hinted gently that if he wished to continue receiving his royal stipend from Celestia’s estate — the one Raven personally administrated — he might wish to reconsider.

Celestia turned away from the desk and began to pace the room, shouldering the furniture that blocked her path aside like so many pieces of kindling. Her long legs ate up the tiny distances with ease, and she had to stop and turn after only three or four paces; something which did not ease her irritation as far as Raven Inkwell could tell.

“And now this one!” Celestia completed her lap of the room and spun immediately into another. “Every word a complaint! She lists every detail about Rose Bloom that she found to be ‘substandard’.”

Raven Inkwell sighed and offered another consoling frown. “Cozy Glow is a hoof-full and a half.”

“Yes,” sighed Celestia, covering her eyes momentarily with a hoof. “Listen to this.” She lifted the letter in the golden field of her magic and began to read aloud.

“Powerful parents and aristocratic connections do not a successful marriage make,” Celestia spat. “My mate must have ambition and an appetite for success. They must be my equal, not a quivering mouse.” Celestia dropped the letter in disgust and coldly watched it drift to the floor. “After everything Cozy Glow has done to Equestria — after all she put us through! To comport herself like this, as though she were some sort of prize—!”

She cut herself off, breathing hard, and whirled back to Raven. “She writes that she is losing faith in my abilities. Mine!”

That was too far. Raven Inkwell shook her head emphatically. “She’s a fool, Princess. You have made over nine hundred successful matches ending in marriage only in the years since Princess Twilight Sparkle took the throne. And hundreds more in the years before that! And those are only the ones that I was witness to; I wouldn’t even be able to guess at the numbers of marriages you had a hoof in over the course of your reign.”

Celestia ground her teeth audibly together. “But what use is it, what use is all that, if I can’t match her? I can find the right partner for anypony. Making connections, managing situations, helping ponies onto the right path — it’s what I do. What I’ve always done.” She slumped into a chair, looking more defeated than Raven Inkwell had ever seen her. She turned her hooves upwards and stared blankly into them. “Am I losing my touch? What if I can’t do it? What if Cozy Glow is one challenge too far?”

Raven Inkwell surged forward out of her armchair, her age and arthritis forgotten for one wondrous moment as she went to her Princess’ side. “You mustn’t think like that, Princess! You can do this. You can do anything.”

Celestia snorted air through her nose, but her hoof came gently to rest on top of Raven Inkwell’s head. “Thank you for your belief in me, my little pony.”

“Just think about it,” Raven Inkwell said urgently, almost begging. She couldn’t bear it, seeing her wonderful, infallible, ageless Princess beaten down in this manner. “Just consider the problem.” She fumbled through the papers on Celestia’s desk and pulled Cozy Glow’s file out of the mess. She flipped through the pages, one by one. “What does Cozy Glow need most?”

Celestia sighed and stared over Raven’s head into empty space. “Dominion over lesser creatures. Ponies to bully. Ponies to fight.”

“But how does that translate into the real world? Into day-to-day life?” Raven persisted. Even when she couldn’t see the answers, she knew that if she could just find the the right questions to ask, Celestia would know what was the right thing to do. It was a dance they had performed countless times over the years.

“Hmm,” Celestia’s chin rested on her pastern. “What is it she really wants? Ambition. Success. Wealth. Power.” Her eyes flickered rapidly.

Raven Inkwell held her breath. “Princess?”

Celestia’s hoof suddenly slammed down onto the arm of her chair. “A challenge. What Cozy Glow wants — all she’s ever really wanted — is a challenge. All the rest of it doesn’t matter.” She caught her breath. “It’s just like Luna said. Cozy doesn’t want somepony subservient; she wants somepony strong. She just wants somepony that has a chance at beating her. An intellectual equal — somepony to match wits with.”

Raven Inkwell nodded. She could see that Celestia’s mind was racing. Her Princess was back on her hooves, thundering along the right path. “Who can you think of that is her intellectual equal?”

Celestia’s eyes flashed and she leapt to her hooves. “I think I might just know.”