//------------------------------//
// 22 — Lunch Part II: Awkward During 
// Story: Ms. Glimmer and the Do-Nothing Prince 
// by scifipony 
//------------------------------//

The interior of The Hooflyn Delicatessen had authentic graffitied walls... well, except that I knew all the gang signs in Hooflyn, Manehatten, and Baltimare (part of my former job) and the wavy stenciled mare with a melting three-dimensional T H D over it wasn't one of them. The frame around the smoked glass window looked like a roll-up crash gate. Lamps like you’d see in a warehouse or garment district sweat shop illuminated dented galvanized ventilation pipes in the ceiling. Black café tables resembled those outside. The waiters wore artfully-stained grey aprons, bar mop pocket towels, black ties, and red bandannas.

I sat to Moon Dancer's right. Having worked weeks in Hooflyn before and after Carne Asada had been stabbed, I knew the cuisine by heart.

I asked her, "Did Prince Blueblood do something to you?"

She tensed and shook her head, holding the menu stiffly, sliding it slightly so she put it between herself and Twilight. "No. I'm pretty sure I never met him."

"He seemed interested in you."

"You spoke to him about me?"

"It came up."

"What did he ask?"

"He seemed happy to know you were happy and interested in learning magic."

"Aunt Seas says I inherited my talent..." Her voice trailed off. She ordered corned aubergine with coleslaw on rye. I ordered zucchini pastrami with potato salad on braided egg bread, slathered with hot brown mustard.

When Moon Dancer glanced at Twilight, who was in a deep conversation with Streak examining the pegasus' armor, I said, "My parents died on a mission for Princess Celestia when I was four." Despite Celestia having given me hope they might still live, she'd offered no hard proof, especially for my mother.

Startled, Moon Dancer said, "I'm sorry."

"What happened to your parents?"

She put both steel-shod hooves flat on the table with a clink-clank. "The Windigos."

I gasped. I remembered that horrible storm, which had torn up trees and dumped seaweed high up in the piedmont where Sire's Hollow lay. I'd been dispatched to help clean up the shoreline and harbor town afterward, the little Lady directed by her guardian Proper Step to make a proper caring show. Grin Having abutted the Duchy of Horseshoe Bay.

I nodded. "I remember the storm."

She said, "Right. You're the Earl of Grin Having. You attended their funeral."

"I-I-I don't remember."

"We were little."

I nodded. "I remember my parents' funeral. Lots of adult ponies being nice and condescending at the same time, and the Princess giving an unwelcome eulogy."

"I might have been there. It certainly describes what I remember of my mother's funeral, although the Princess was very broken up. Princess Celestia was my mother's godmother and is my aunt's best friend. I remember that

What I remembered most was that Princess Celestia had visited the manor after quelling the storm, and had stayed the night without my knowledge or permission. I blamed her for my parents' death and I'd hated her intrusion, and felt violated. She'd probably not yet learned the full extent of the damage, nor that she'd lost her goddaughter.

Moon Dancer rummaged in her saddle bags. I expected a textbook that she might divert both of our attentions with. No. She brought out a pearl-faced silver locket with a broken chain. She pressed it, revealing a picture. 

I had no pictures of my parents. Embarrassing. My mother had been a famous opera singer, so I could find her on album covers. Oddly, we'd had few pictures of us as a family, and when I'd run away from home, grabbing a keepsake had been the least of my worries.

Then I focused on the picture.

The mare in the small photo looked familiar. Right! She resembled the mare in the prince's photo out front of the Flying Horses Carousel. The mare with the swaddled foal.

Had the prince known Moon Dancer's parents? Well, of course he had to have. He'd been sent to study under the Duke and the Duchess of Horseshoe Bay, Proper Step had reported, only to be rejected in the strongest fashion. I wanted to ask more, but our sandwiches arrived with dishes of sauerkraut and crispy dill pickles, speared with pimento green olives on a toothpick. I'd ordered an egg cream, which foamed up with a chocolaty scent as I stirred the syrup into the soda and oat milk.

Sunset started talking on my right and I lost the thread, though I suspected Moon Dancer probably resented my bringing up the subject in the first place.