//------------------------------// // HopeStar Night // Story: To Serve Bronies // by Fuzzy Necromancer //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle regarded the sumptuous feast dispassionately. The first day had been the toughest. She'd had to keep off the grass, force herself to walk past every flower stall, and avoid even looking in the direction of Applejack's farm. On the second day she'd read every cookbook twice. Now the hunger pangs had eased and food didn't seem real somehow. She crammed a fuji apple into the "mouth" of a realistically-sculpted seitan bull. With a small grunt, she levitated it onto the spit. The dandelion-mushroom stew wouldn't be done for a few minutes. The elderberry pudding sat steaming on its plate. Everything was fine, right? Twilight Sparkle donned a helmet hammered out of old cider cans and took up a historically-authentic recreated spear. She winked out to the roof. The storm-lantern shone bright. She made a show of looking around and waved her spear. A flash of violet light near the Everfree Forest caught her eye. The trees rustled, but nothing came out of them. Maybe it was a discharge of background magic. No wyverns flew forth, no dragon emerged, and there were definitely no changelings. There were never any changelings abroad during HopeStar Night, or so it seemed. Then again, how would she know? Twilight shivered, made a mental note to look up Everfree Forest phenomena later, and winked back inside. This holiday was a little less fun after the wedding. Shining Armor had loved playing sentinel on HopeStar Night, but he was celebrating with Cadence's family this year. How would she feel around this time? Would Shining still celebrate it, or would it bring up too many painful memories after the time he spent loving that thing? She winked around the tree house. All the windows were shut tight, all the doors were locked, and the black paper King was safe in the basement. She sat down and relaxed for a moment. Then she sprung to her hooves and checked everything again. Twilight stirred the pot and sniffed. She'd been so proud the first year Mom had let her watch over the stew. Of course, she'd let it boil too long, but the stew was supposed to taste watery and horrible. Twilight sniffed again. Her eyes shouldn't be watering. Sure, this was her first HopeStar night away from home, but she'd been living in Ponyville for a while now. The stew hissed and bubbled. Twilight yanked it off the stove before it could overflow. She panted and turned to her second-edition copy of Princess Platinum'f Booke of Royale Recipef for Fpeciale Celebrationf. She double-checked the hourglass next to the fried green hay. They still weren't ready. She browsed through the other items. Really, it was more like a short story anthology or a family history than a cookbook. The hay fries had a nearly-accurate account of the Seige of HopeStar Tower right in between the ingredients list and the instructions. SharpSpear's recipe for crabgrass candy contained a comic tale of the recipe's accidental discovery during a birthday celebration where the sugar supply had been ruined by an errant pegasus's raincloud. The curried bear had been invented during Chancellor Beetface's coup, when the political in-fighting kept earth ponies too busy to export more than a few strong spices. Despite the badly-written epic poem about the bravery of the royal huntsmares, Twilight noted that the ingredients assumed cub-sized portions or old meat needing to be tenderized. Four loud knocks rang out. Twilight scampered to her feet, grabbed a cooking knife, and ran to the door. Rarity grinned at inside an emerald-encrusted helmet. "Oh please, please, I beg you to let me in before I am torn to shreds!" "You could be a changeling!" Twilight barked. "Expose your heart and prove yourself!" Rarity reared up on two hooves, lining up her chest with the heart-shaped peephole in the door. Twilight lowered her spear and pressed it against the tip of her skin. # Rarity swallowed and started to take a deep breath. Twilight pulled back the spear enough to keep Rarity from puncturing herself. Rarity let out a tight, nervous giggle, and then waved her hoof in an "alright, I'm ready" gesture. "Straight from my heart, Twilight Sparkle, I threw a complete temper tantrum on my eighth birthday all because I wanted a Canterlot Embroidery Kit instead of a kitten." She shuddered violently and Twilight pulled back the spear further. "I shouted at my parents. I called Opal ugly and said she was the worst birthday ever! Of course, my father was absolutely speechless and mother sent me to my room, but I didn't realize how completely horrible I'd been until I heard Opal yawling and Dad trying to calm her down." Rarity dabbed her face with a silk handkerchief. "I am Rarity." "You are a true unicorn," Twilight sniffled. "Enter the safety of our castle." Twilight flung aside the spear. She unbolted the door and Rarity cantered in. At least Rarity had only been a little kid when she'd learned about ingratitude. "I didn't have to use a real flint-tipped hunting spear," Twilight said. "We just used a rubber one." "Oh, but I really appreciate you going all-out for my first Hopestar Night," Rarity said. "I don't know that many other unicorns in town, and my parents were never interested in pre-equestrian traditions." Twilight Sparkle peered into the night and checked her clock. “About that, are you sure you don’t mind Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash joining in?” “Of course not,” Rarity purred. She pulled out a few thin blue booklets with runic inscriptions and a stylized image of a star in a tower. “I even got in these instruction pamphlets with non-magical alternative captions from-“ Rarity’s words were drowned out by a low rumble. Twilight glanced out the window. There weren’t any storms planned for tonight. When she looked back, Rarity was watching the roast from a few inches away. She ducked her head and pawed the floor, blushing. “Incidentally, Twilight dear, this feast you’ve prepared is an absolute work of art." "Well, I suppose it's up to standard," Twilight sighed. She winked over and blew out the fire under the sizzling green hay. Rarity pranced along sniffing at every holiday treat. "Oh no, Twilight dear, don't sell yourself short. The stew smells more wonderful than mushrooms and dandelions have any right to smell, the hay fries are to die for, and I can tell you used fresh elderberries instead of canned ones. The only way it could be more authentic is if you had a real dead bull!" She stared at the vegetarian bull-substitute and dabbed her mouth with an embroidered turquoise handkerchief. "I did my best," Twilight Sparkle said, blushing. "Anyway, Owlowiscious and Spike did most of the preparations." Rarity glanced at Spike's empty cot. "He's at the sleepover party with Scootaloo," Twilight Sparkle said. Rarity shrugged and adjusted her helmet. "So is Sweetie Belle. She just doesn’t have much interest in her heritage." A loud rapping sounded at the door. "I'm being pursued by a swarm of changelings. I can hold them off for a while, but you'll have to let me in soon!" Rainbow Dash shouted. Twilight Sparkle leveled her spear again. "Expose your heart and prove yourself!" There was a pause. Rarity flipped open the cookbook. She could stick to the fasting diet of a few mouthfuls of moss and vinegar-water a day, but she couldn't stop thinking about food. An item between horseradish-larkspit salad and ivy-apple casserole caught her eyes. The chiefs of the rival unicorn tribes would only submit to a mare who proved herself an able huntress and provider. To this end, Princess Platinum invited them to a feast at which the main course would be the most dangerous game in Equestria. Princess Platinum hunted down these cunning animals singlehoofedly, scoffing at their spears, traps and flaming sticks, without any help from her royal magician at all. When they saw the proof of her courage and tasted the sumptuous feast, all seven wild stallions swore allegiance to her kingdom and agreed to be her faithful consorts. Some chefs claim that minotaur is an adequate substitute, but it's bullish heritage renders it too gamey for this recipe, and the sight of fire-roasted hooves may offend those of a delicate temperament. Although rare, this dish can be tracked down by a dedicated huntress, and there is no truth to the rumors that predation of this tenacious species is risking the extinct- "I said expose your heart and prove yourself!" Twilight shouted. "Sorry," Rainbow Dash squeaked. "What do I do again?" "You have to reveal a deep personal secret, something that proves who you are," Rarity called out. She abandoned the book and glared at Rainbow Dash's exposed chest. "Otherwise we may be forced to condemn you as a changeling spy and stab your heart." "What if I don't have any secrets?" Rainbow Dash said. Rarity narrowed her eyes. A reverse-lightning storm in the Everfree forest flashed against the sky. Rainbow Dash cleared her throat. "I swear by my heart this is true. Back when I did my first sonic rainboom, I got so excited, that I completely forgot about Fluttershy!” Her wings dropped and she pressed up her chest against the peephole. “I didn’t even check to see if she was okay afterwards. I mean, sure, her air bladder would have protected her from the worst, but she still could have come out with broken bones, and I knew she wasn’t a good flier, especially when she panicked!” Twilight winced and lowered the spear. “I’m not done. Right after that day, I promised to her I’d never ignore her again.” Rainbow Dash offered up a grin weaker than spun-sugar armor. “The first time I broke that promise was a week later.” She blinked hard and sniffled, “I am Rainbow Dash.” “You are a true uni--a true pony,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Enter the safety of our castle.” “I’m not crying,” Rainbow Dash said. She trotted in and glared behind her. Rarity averted her eyes from Rainbow’s watery gaze. Another hammering came at the door. Rarity took up Twilight’s spear and rushed over. “Oh for the love of Celestia, please please PLEASE let me in before these changelings suck all the love out of me, and then I won’t have any love left to give to Celestia! So let me in!” Pinkie Pie squealed. For a second Rarity wondered if there were changelings after her, but no, she was all alone. “Are you a changeling yourself? Expose your heart and prove yourself!” Rarity said, rubbing her hoof across the tip of the spear to throw sparks. “Straight from my heart, Rarity, I ate thirty-seven corn cakes. As soon as I tasted one, they were just so corny, and you know how much I love corny things, and I couldn’t stop until they were almost leaking out of my ears! Also, somebody died the last time I broke a Pinkie Promise. And, um, even though we were supposed to stick to a fast diet with nothing more than vinager diluted in water and cave-moss, in honor of the ancient unicorns who had to starve while the siege blocked off earth pony food shipments and kept hunting parties from roaming, but instead I ate a whole pound of dough, a big patch of clover, and a bunch of honeycombs.” She finished by burping out a few bees. “I’m really really really really sorry!” Her ears drooped. Rarity scratched her ear. She hadn’t quite caught that mumbled part in the middle, but tradition had been satisfied. Rainbow Dash fluttered over, eyes wide. “Pinkie Pie, do you want to talk about--“ “Nope! Can we eat now?” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing over to the hay fries. “I’m starving and all of this looks super-duper-delicious! Why do you have a giant hunk of food with Iron Will’s head?“ She laughed. “That’s just silly!” Rarity nodded, wringing out her drool-soaked handkerchief. “Yes, silly,” she laughed. So far Iron Will was the only minotaur in Gryphonia brave enough to venture into territory inhabited by his natural predators, and even he wouldn’t set hoof inside the bounds of a unicorn-intensive area like Canterlot. “Well, the original siege ended with the sacrifice and consumption of a live bull, but the consumption of other ungulates was outlawed at the start of Princess Celestia’s reign.” Rainbow Dash skidded in midair. “You guys used to eat live bulls?” Rarity blushed and laughed awkwardly. “Well, not us personally.” “Bulls, bears, and two-legged deer all used to form part of the unicorn diet, back during the pre-equestrian era. Of course, now we don't need to supplement our diets thanks to earth pony magic growing large amounts of vegetable food, and the two-legged deer went extinct from overhunting. ” Pinkie Pie frowned, reached over, and pulled back Rarity’s lips. She darted to Twilight Sparkle and stuck a hoof down her throat, feeling around. “That’s just crazy,” Pinkie Pie said. “You're less than half as big as a full-grown bull. How could you gobble them up?” Rarity was staring at the seitan-bull and Rainbow Dash’s stomach was growling, but she looked curious too. “This isn’t some weird unicorn in-joke is it?” Rainbow asked. Rarity waved her tail in a never-mind gesture. Twilight trembled with the need to share esoteric knowledge and pulled Pinkie Pie's leg out of her mouth. “Actually, it’s easier than you think. The thaumic charges in our second stomach make us able to digest animal protein much faster than vegetable matter, and allow a proportionate distention. Usually the whole hunting pack would bring down one bull for food, but in times of famine a single unicorn could demolish a small two-legged deer or bear cub and live off the fat stores afterwards for up to a season.” She grinned proudly. “Isn’t that fascinating?” Pinkie Pie nodded and squirmed. She banished a mental image of Twilight Sparkle sinking her teeth into Daisy the cow’s husband. These things were all a long time ago. Rainbow Dash burst out laughing. “Oh Nightmare Moon’s fangs, that’s awesome.” Twilight tilted her head. “You think so?” Rarity leaned close to her. “Such language! But really, don’t you think it’s a little uncouth or disturbing?” “Naw, I won’t judge. I used to go fishing with my d--my parents, all the time back in Cloudsdale. If you don’t think pegasi are gross for eating fishsticks and sushi, then I won’t bring up the meatier parts of unicorn history. Besides, if I could do it without getting sick I wouldn't mind roasting that long-eared jerk for the way he treats Fluttershy. Just don’t tell her about the bear curry, okay? “ “I assure you, we know better than to do that. Isn’t that right, Twilight?” Rarity said, giving her a nudge with her horn. “Of course not,” Twilight said. “I Pinkie-Promise. Now, Rarity, would you do the honors and begin the feast?” Rarity levitated the non-magic-user instruction pamphlets to Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. She shifted her hooves with delight and trotted up to the delicious vegetarian roast. She levitated up a jagged flint knife and pressed it against the “neck” of the fake bull until a drop of cranberry-sauce filling dropped out. “For the fallen, for the lost crown, and for the wishing star!” she cried out. She yanked the blade across, tearing through the imitation meat several inches deep. Sour sauce, salty juices, and moist stuffing gushed into the clay bowl. Pinkie Pie pulled back her tail and shot like a party cannon towards the food. Rainbow Dash accelerated in front of a small mach cone. Rarity took a huge, juicy bite just as Twilight Sparkle burst out of the vegetarian bull substitute’s back with a flash of magic. Rarity tried to slow down but ended up swallowing the half-severed head in a single bite. In the few seconds it took Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie to reach the main course, their unicorn friends had stripped more than half of the “flesh” down to the wooden frame bones. Twilight Sparkle and Rarity lumbered out of the way, their bellies distended and round. Twilight licked the bits of stuffing off her hooves while Rarity tried to stifle a loud belch. “I guess you guys didn’t cheat on your diets,” Rainbow Dash said after she cleaned up a flank of seitan and several platefuls of stuffing. Twilight levitated out equal portions of hay fries, good honest grass symbolizing their shared stake in the enduring unicorn culture. “Well, it’s the good old unicorn metabolism. Our appetite goes into overdrive after a prolonged period of a low-protein diet. We’ll both be eating a little more than our share for weeks to come.” “And after the hay fries, we get to slay felt-puppet changelings and the one who defeats the most gets to wish on the 'HopeStar’,” Rarity sighed. She paused for a very small mouthful of fried hay and dabbed fastidiously with her napkin. She knew exactly what she’d wish for.