//------------------------------// // Crullity, Abuse, and Murder // Story: Ghosts of Whitetail Wood // by Biochi //------------------------------// Luna’s eyes fluttered open as she felt the call of her moon.  Upon reaching consciousness, a small, private smile crossed the divine mare’s face.  “Just one more night and then I’m to Ponyville and Twilight,” was the accompanying thought. While not normally a quick riser, this evening Luna sprung from bed like a foal on Hearth’s Warming morn.  With a bounce in her trot she entered her bathing chamber to carry out her daily ablutions.  As she brushed her teeth she chuckled at the memory of her initial confusion upon her return.  During her first week back she had convinced herself that the chambermaids had been protesting her presence by withholding chamber pots.  Many potted ferns gave their lives that week.   Luna nearly laughed out loud imagining the expressions of horror that must have graced the staff’s faces at the discovery of the repurposed pottery.  She actually guffawed, spraying toothpaste across the mirror, while imagining a week’s worth of whispered debates among her staff.  Perhaps they even drew straws to choose the unfortunate soul tasked with informing their beloved solar princess that her rescued sister was stricken with madness and was giving her servants daily gifts of crockeries full of night-soil. Luna wiped up the worst of the splatter as she shifted to flossing, an innovation she detested but understood the benefits thereof.  The hygienic chore completed, she turned her attention to the shower.  With a flick of her aura, the alicorn started the miniature waterfall and marveled, as she did every day at the water flowing fast, thick, and hot enough to steam.   Her pleasure from the torrent of nearly-scalding water washed all thoughts away along with the sweat and dust her body accumulated since yesterday’s shower.    She was reminded that these efforts were, technically, unnecessary luxuries.  She was a divine being and therefore not truly made of flesh and blood.  The microscopic animalcules that rotted pony teeth could not ablate her enamel, although halitosis could still be a problem.  As for dirt, she could easily release the current manifestation she occupied back into the aether and create a new body for herself in a matter of seconds.  The new body could be utterly pristine and her maids would sweep up the pile of dirt and salt that the old body evaporated out from underneath.  But all these acts served a purpose to her mind; they were mortal activities. As a goddess she need not eat, sleep, bathe, or even breathe.  She had abandoned such mortal trappings during her time as the Nightmare, disparaging such actions as beneath her divine status.  The brief thought of her former persona was enough to rob her of the languorous smile she had adopted while under the shower’s spell.  “I had forgotten so much in my anger,” she said to the shower-head.  She now knew that, back then, she had forgotten the need for connection and in her rage she had severed the last remaining ties she had to ponydom and became a monster. Refusing to allow the memories of ancient mistakes to ruin her good mood, Luna forced her thoughts away from the Nightmare.  As she stepped, dripping, from the shower she began cataloging the activities available within the environs of Ponyville for a couple’s weekend.  Central Equestria was unseasonably warm these last few weeks, noted the alicorn  She wondered if Twilight would enjoy a day spent at one of the ponds for swimming found near the town.  “Perhaps a hike into the cooler air of the mountains?” she wondered.  Of skygazing there was no question, most likely every evening would include at least an hour of telescope time.  Whatever the plan, Luna resolved that ice cream would have to play a prominent role. Smiling once again, she magically lifted the water from her coat and guided it to the drain set into the floor.  As the water flowed into the maze of pipes running through the palace she shook her head at the everyday miracle. Indoor plumbing was so common in the cities that nopony even acknowledged that subtle wonder anymore.  She was reminded of Twilight in that instant.  One of the reasons she was so fond of the mare was that she also didn’t take these small miracles for granted either.  She tried to remember Twilight’s description of how the plumbing system worked.  She hadn’t understood the treatise on water pressure but she could clearly recall the comforting cadence of Twilight’s voice while waxing eloquent on the endless technical minutia. Cleaned and mentally prepared to face her last day of work this week Luna turned her attention back to her moon.  The sun had set while she was in the shower and her celestial orb was slightly miffed to be kept waiting.  The princess knew, in an intellectual manner, that she took a long time with her showers.  However, in her heart of hearts, she didn’t feel like the experience was completely finished until there was no more warm water left within the system.  The remembered lecture from Twilight disparaging this behavior as selfish and wasteful would have carried more weight if the unicorn had been less cute with her mane soaked and dripping with cold water.  Luna’s thoughts lingered upon the memory of the two of them making up later that night.  Twilight had been convinced to forgive her for the transgression, repeatedly and enthusiastically, later that night. Tearing her mind away from the extremely distracting memory, Luna walked out of the bathroom wearing a lop-sided smile.  While passing back through her bedchambers her eyes fell upon the empty blue and violet vase perched on her fireplace’s mantle.  She had purchased the vase a few months ago for displaying the flowers she used to regularly receive from Twilight.  After a moment’s pause, Luna chose to ignore the depressing implications and continued on to the balcony and brought forth the moon.  Her technically mindless counterpart instantly forgave the tardiness as Luna wrapped her magic around her charge and lifted it into the sky. She sighed happily as the world was bathed in its cool, silver light.     Changing her focus from the sky to the city below her, she felt a thrill pass through her as lights and motion filled her field of view.  The bustle of activity below in Canterlot town still filled the indigo goddess with excitement.  Before her troubles the nights had been nearly deserted.  Candles were expensive back then so only unicorns had spent any time awake after sunset and even they soon tired of having to supply their own light.   The nocturnal city was even more active than normal, thanks to the current heat wave.  Even during the summer, Canterlot nights tended towards the chilly due to the altitude.  But the excessive warmth of the daytime had tempered the evening drafts into balmy breezes and ponies filled the nighttime streets.  Below her ponies in the finest couture were exiting playhouses and restaurants.  The lower classes were still filtering into drinking establishments while the young amused themselves by simply loitering within squared dedicated to public monuments.  The city at night was alive and tonight it was teeming. Tearing herself away from her night, Luna placed her tiara upon her head and moved to leave her private chambers, shuffling into her formal shoes as she walked past the place where they had landed when she had kicked them from her feet yesterday.  As she neared the silver-chased ebony doors that demarcated the limit to her personal realm she remembered a similar set of doors from an entirely different palace lost to dust long ago.  Their old home, the castle built by the ponies to honor the royal pony sisters, now lay in ruins within the Everfree.   That majestic pile of stone had been designed and built with the diarchy explicitly in mind.  Each half of the castle consisted of architecture thought to symbolize each goddess and their personalities.  Celestia’s sector had been crafted of great, golden blocks of polished limestone that emotionally evoked Celestia’s immortality through sheer mass.  The halls and chambers were huge, supported by the most audacious archways ever designed.  The southern walls were graced with giant windows each glazed with stained glass. The technology for that art was in its infancy then and each pane was a masterpiece.  The passageways themselves were dedicated to Celestia.  Their width allowed platoons to march through at once and their arrangement was such so that shadows and shafts of light turned that wing of the castle into a giant calendar celebrating the solar cycle. In contrast, Luna’s portion of the castle had been a warren of twisting, passages narrow enough to force ponies to travel them in single file.  The architect had been a dear friend to Luna at the time.  He was the singular sort of lunatic that blended genius and madness in equal measure and her wing of the castle reflected this perfectly.  His subtle art had crafted a maze unequaled in the entire world.  Hallways entered and exited on different floors, triangular motifs were created where all angles were 90 degrees, and passages seemed to pass through the same space without ever touching.  Any petitioners seeking the moon goddess’ wisdom had to navigate this impossible labyrinth.   Contained within this maze were wonders and horrors in equal measure.  Each room was dedicated to some aspect the moon goddess and her architect’s genius ensured that she could subtly guide those who sought her out to either sort of discovery.  The moth atrium was a wonder equal to any of Celestia’s windows.  Her firefly garden gave ponies a taste of what it felt like to dwell among the stars.  The amphibian chorus of the singing ponds moved anypony lucky enough to hear it to tears. As her nature darkened and the Nightmare grew within her heart, Luna began guiding more and more petitioners to the more dangerous portions of this maze.  At the time she had told herself that the ponies seeking her had to “earn” their audience by surviving the more dangerous parts of the labyrinth.  Chambers where frost grew like ferns cut and froze ponies.  Strange, luminescent fish with more teeth than scales swam in black pools that supplicants had to cross.  In the end, she had unlocked the doors to the deep chambers allowing slithering horrors to roam the halls and feast upon those unlucky enough to come across them.   Across this arc of personal history, one thing was constant about her old home; it was a place of secrets and whispers.  As she opened the double doors before her, Luna smiled ruefully at the contrast before her.  Ponies bustled along wide, clean hallways perpetually lit by the bright glow of modern electro-magical lighting (another beloved invention).  Not only was her wing of the palace bright and crowded, it was loud.  Office workers chatted amicably as their typewriters clicked and clacked.  Middle managers shouted directions as pneumatic tubes shuttled paperwork from office to office.  Rising above the dull roar was the never-ending sound of sawing and hammering as acres of office space were added every month but never quite kept up with demand. A muscle-bound giant of an earth-pony stallion approached her with obvious trepidation...and paperwork.  As he stood in front of her she could almost see the stallion’s brain stripping gears in an attempt to remember the proper forms of address to royalty.  Eventually he went with, "Your Lunar Worshipfullness, it is an honor and a privilege to be given the chance to serve you," said in the limping cadence one only achieved by using words that were far longer than one was comfortable with.  His thick accent marked him as somepony from the Manehatten underclass. Luna tried to smile at the obviously new hire in a calming manner.  This was a talent in which her sister excelled and Luna utterly lacked.  The result was a sallow and ill-looking rictus creeping onto her face.  The stallion’s discomfort increased. Switching tactics, Luna spoke to the stallion.   "Thank you, Mister..." "Yous can call me Kneecaps, Your Majesty," He replied while holding out the roll of paperwork in the hopes that the goddess before him would take them in sacrifice and spare the mere mortal pony before her. Luna grasped the paperwork in her aura and tucked the roll underneath her wing, to deal with at a later time.  “Welcome aboard, Mister Kneecaps.  And please, its just Princess or M'lady here. "Yes, thank you, Your..Prince..Lady."  The giant froze as his linguistic mangling worked its way through his prodigious skull to his solidly armored brain. "Its fine. You'll get the hang of it soon enough," Luna said in an attempt to have comfort the poor overwhelmed (and overgrown) colt.  "I do, however, have a favor to ask of you." He made a strangled "Mmmm-" of titular indecision. “In the future, please leave paperwork headed to me with my secretary.  He’ll make sure it gets to me, after my breakfast."   Kneecaps’ eyes bulged in horror at his faux pas and he fled back to the meager protection of the cubicle to which he was assigned.  Fillyish giggles soon erupted from the adjacent workspace, betraying the identity of the mares that had set Kneecaps on this particular collision course with embarrassment.  Luna mentally noted from which cubical the titters came.  Good-natured ribbing she considered harmless but she did want to keep track of the antics in case the pranks crossed the line into hazing or bullying. Despite the stallion’s social clumsiness, Luna was still proud of him and she smiled far more naturally as soon as he was back inside his workspace.  Only a month ago, Kneecaps had been a notorious enforcer for a loan shark operating out of the Manehattan docks.  Upon his arrest, Mr. Kneecaps had been convinced to turn crown’s evidence in exchange for his sentence being reduced to community service within the lunar bureaucracy.   Upon her reentry into government activities, Luna had immediately run into the issue that all of the experienced government bureaucrats already had jobs, working for her sister.  Efforts to hire ponies from outside the government into her civil service ran afoul of the nocturnal hours her court would be keeping.  Very few of the ponies with the necessary skills and backgrounds wanted to work from sunset to sunrise and her staffing problems languished for several frustrating months.   About the time her problem was appearing unsolvable, she nearly literally stumbled upon the answer.  One day (and rather tired and cranky since it was day) she had been down in the civil-service warrens underneath the east wing of the palace in order to file some procurement order herself.  It was then, while her sister's own servants did not know of or even expect the presence of one of their diarchs that she had heard them complaining about the terms of their employment.  One of the mares had described it as a form of punishment. While it was Luna's observation that ponies were generally better behaved in this age of peace, crimes were still committed on a daily basis.  Equicide or other unforgivable crimes were vanishingly rare in this era but crimes of mendacity and greed were just as common now as they had been millennia ago.  So, from that night on, when ponies fitting a particular profile were convicted in her courts they were offered a choice between prison time or joining her civil service.   She had discovered that embezzlers made excellent accountants, loan-sharks made the best tax-collectors, and that some pimps were well-suited towards careers in Equine Resources.  There were hiccups along the way, as expected, but every now and again one of her involuntary recruits found that they enjoyed the work performed, the nocturnal hours, the regular paycheck, and the fact that back-stabbings were far more metaphorical while working for Luna’s government.  These souls requested to stay on within her service after the completion of their sentence and formed the core of her administration. Celestia's parallel civil-service had been predictably aghast, something that Luna quietly enjoyed.  However, it did bother the alicorn that the rapidly changing set of affairs had not yet prompted Celestia to come over and confront her little sister about the rapidly increasing number of convicted felons within the palace.  "It isn't like her." Luna thought to herself as she left her staff offices behind, heading to the small dining room in which the princesses shared their private meals.  "Does it mean that she finally trusts me or does she think that I'm doing all this just to get a rise out of her?"  She quickly readjusted her face, away from the glum expression her thoughts had prompted since ponies still tended to overreact when she let her countenance reflect her true feelings. "Not that I wouldn't mind getting a rise or any other reaction out of her these days." The dining room she entered was only small and intimate by comparison to the massive chambers used for state dinners. The table was bedecked in crisp, white linen and, as befitting the sunset meal, silver dining implements.  This particular room had not yet been renovated for the use of electro-magical lighting and the illumination came from a platoon of ornate candelabras marching in formation down the middle of the table.  At this table, which could comfortably seat a dozen ponies, sat a single being, her sister.  Luna could see that Celestia had not yet noticed her entrance.  The elder mare seemed to be fussing with her glass of water and the nearest candelabra.  She could see a faint, golden wisp of her sister’s aura grasp the two implements and position them with great precision and concentration.  Luna quietly and slowly crept up towards her sister’s position, not wanting to interrupt whatever bizarre behavior Celestia was exhibiting. Once Luna was within a few feet she could see that her sister was using the water-filled glass as some sort of lens.  An elongated and inverted image of the candle flame appeared on the table’s surface as Celestia shifted the glass.  As her sister moved the drinking vessel to a new position, the image compressed into a single point of light many times brighter than the original flame.  Luna pulled her eyes away from the point of light and looked at her sister’s face. There was no emotion there, just a fey kind of blankness as the thrum of magic began to build around her sister.  While her sister’s fur was sill gleaming white, there was a slight red tint to her corneas and puffiness in the skin beneath the eyes.  Celestia’s foreshortened horn no longer bore the scorch marks or bandages that had resulted from her encounter with Chrysalis and only the close st of examinations would reveal the scar from the re-attachment procedure.  Despite all this scrutiny, her sister’s attention was still absolutely focused on the glass before her. The path of the candlelight waivered and bent as Celestia flexed her will.  The bright spot on the tablecloth shrank down to an eye-searing pinpoint that rapidly darkened and released a thin curl of smoke. “Tia!” Luna exclaimed as a small flame began to dance above the blackened spot. As Celestia’s concentration shattered, so too did the glass gripped in her power.  The water within cascaded from the broken vessel and soaked the tablecloth, killing the flame instantly.  The solar diarch’s face was a portrait of guilt as her eyes shot back and forth, as if seeking witnesses to a crime. “What in Equestria were you doing?!?” the younger sibling asked. “I…I apologize.  I was lost in my thoughts,” the elder replied. With a glance to the other end of the table, Luna summoned the flatware intended for her use to her current location.  She intended to dine beside her obviously distressed sister.  She nodded to the steward, signaling the beginning of their meal. “Celestia, beloved sister, you know you can tell me anything, do you not?” Luna implored. The older sister’s lips curled in an approximation of a smile but her eyes remained mired in sorrow.  “I…” she started but then hung up on that syllable. Luna thought she could see some strange measure of guilt troubling Celestia and so reached out a wing to her sister, gently stroking the larger alicorn’s withers.  The goddess of light flinched subtly at the touch but then leaned into the younger, changing the gesture into a hug. “What troubles thee?” Luna asked, imploringly. Celestia’s voice returned to its usual composed alto. “I am melancholy, that is all, and your embrace cures it.” Luna knew that her sister was choosing to conceal whatever it was that was bothering her, but she chose to not press the issue.  “She can keep her secrets, if her damaged pride demands it,” thought the alicorn. It was at that moment that the steward returned with their preferred beverages, tea for Celestia and coffee for Luna.  After a quick tightening of the embrace, Luna broke off the hug and gave her steaming mug of black ambrosia the attention it was due.  The nocturnal goddess griped a teaspoon in her aura and used the implement to add a single mounded scoop of sugar to the opaque liquid.  Three stirs clockwise followed by the same in reverse was her ritual before bringing the thick ceramic to her lips. Coffee had not been known to her prior to her banishment, the trade routes to Zebrica were not well enough developed at the time for the fragile bean to make the trip unspoiled.  Her introduction to the beverage had happened during the early days of her friendship with Twilight.  As their relationship deepened into something more, Luna’s appreciation of the brew had followed the same trajectory and was now viewed as an absolute necessity by the alicorn.  The first taste of coffee for the night was always the best and as the warmth, flavor, and caffeine spread through her, Luna sighed with pleasure. Luna opened her eyes as she heard her sister chuckle at her response to the beverage.  A genuine smile now graced Celestia’s lips as a paper-thin porcelain saucer loaded with tea, milk and sugar hovered beside her.  “It’s good to see you happy, Luna,” her sister said warmly. “My nights are not without strife, dear sister, but I am making a point to enjoy what is before me,” replied Luna. A queer look crossed Celestia’s face.  “How are things going with you and Twilight?” Luna took a moment to frame a reply.  During that pause, the staff brought out a dish involving polenta and roasted tomatoes for Celestia.  A firmly built brown colored unicorn stallion in a white chef’s jacket came forth from the kitchen and placed a large platter of various doughnuts before Luna.  Celestia quirked an eyebrow at the younger mare’s breakfast. “I am most of the way though “D”.” Luna answered the look. “What I’m more surprised by is that you are keeping to this ridiculous diet,” her sister replied. “It isn’t technically a ‘diet,’ I am obviously not eating a platter of doughnuts for their nutritional value,” Luna countered in a dry tone. “Preparing an alphabetical list of foods I can expect of Twilight Sparkle but why are you going along with this?” Luna hesitated before answering.  “She didn’t know that most of the dishes that I was familiar with were no longer eaten by ponies,” Luna explained, “and that many dishes she thinks of as common fare were invented or imported over only the last few hundred years.” Celestia sighed, “Great, now you have me missing defruitum.” Luna gave her sister an arch look. “What?  It’s not like the lead in it could harm us,” Celestia replied. "Well, it certainly did harm to the minds of the nobles who imitated us," Luna countered. "You cannot prove that it wasn't mearly the inbreading," the elder sister joked. The brown maned stallion’s eyes silently widened as he followed the sisters’ banter. Luna attempted to pull the conversation back onto topic, “I found that I lacked sufficient information to choose any restaurants or even any dishes for our dinner dates.  So, as is her pattern, Twilight took my lack of input as a lack of interest in her or our outings." “The five stages of Twilight Sparkle?” Celestia prompted. “Disbelief, embarrassment, panic, overkill, and then copious checklists,” Luna reviewed the list they had compiled one night over a bottle of wine.  "This was her proposed solution...after the fight was finished. Remarkably, there does seem to be some merit to this approach as I have discovered several modern dishes that I enjoy.  Aloo gobi was delightful and crepes were a week-long pleasure.” Celestia smirked, “Just make sure to warn me before kimchi night.” “Why?” asked Luna, suddenly concerned and utterly ignorant as to the meaning of this strange word. “Just…do me that favor, if you will,” Celestia answered enigmatically.  “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”  The solar diarch smiled devilishly as she thought back to the epic battles that took place between them at the dawn of the world.  Luna’s refusal to eat her cabbage as a filly had resulted in several extinctions and extensive orogeny. Luna's hatred for the vegetable was legendary. Cabbage was eternally banned from their old castle in the Everfree and upon her return Luna had immediately reinstated the ban. Celestia's smile grew as she remembered the existence of a scroll containing several odes disparaging the poor vegetable, written by a young and overly earnest Luna. It lurked deep within the restricted section of the Library, an ancient relic of teenaged angst. "A perfect Hearthswarming gift for Twilight," she thought to herself. Luna’s lips made a moue of displeasure as her sister's smile widened.  Her track record with Celestia’s humor of this sort was somewhat painful.  Her older sister may love her dearly but she wasn’t above the occasional ‘big-sister’ prank. “Despite the monotony of eating one’s way though the dictionary,” Celestia said as she lifted one of the pastries in her golden aura, “It would be un-sisterly of me to not assist you in your culinary homework tonight.” A fork, wrapped in a dark-blue aura, stabbed the doughnut hard enough to pin the errant treat to the table and vibrate.  “It would be remiss of me to delegate this duty bestowed upon me with such care and forethought by Miss Sparkle,” Luna said in a light tone. The stallion started backing away from the table, hoping that he could exit the room without attracting any divine attention. “Sir Joe, what is the title of this here pastry that doth bleed amber upon the tablecloth?” Luna asked the unlucky pony. Celestia interjected before the stallion could reply, “Luna, it really is more of a name than a ‘title’.” “Um… it’s just Joe, your Majesties.” Doughnut Joe said as a means towards regaining some composure.  Normally, he would swear at this point but Joe decided that blaspheming only a few feet from those particular gods was bad for business, karma, and everything else in his life.  “That one,” he gestured to the skewered and oozing mess, “is referred to as a ‘bear claw’.” Luna was silent for a moment as she rotated her head, quizzically.  Finally she gave up, “Why?” “Um…” said Joe. Celestia sighed before rescuing the pony, “Because it looks somewhat like one?” Luna turned her eyes back to the item in question for a few more moments before answering.  “No it doesn’t.” Celestia applied a modicum of force upon the transfixed pastry, tearing about a third of the bear claw free.  After devouring and washing down the morsel with tea Celesta quipped, “Nor are bears usually filled with delightfully rendered apples.” “Do the griffons still celebrate the feast of saint Ethun?” Luna asked from sudden rememberance.  “They used to put apples inside anything for that holiday.” “And anyone unfortunate enough to have been captured that week, even bears” Celestia added. The chef made small strangling noises as he fought for composure. Celestia continued, "But no, I do not think that griffons, in the main, do so anymore." "Do you think the etymology derives from this custom?” Luna asked Joe as she ate the remaining two-thirds of the bear-claw.  “Are they a Griffish culinary innovation?" A whimper from the stallion was all the answer she received.  “Perhaps you should move on to the next variety,” Celestia suggested in a bid to rescue Doughnut Joe from the in-depth interrogation regarding the cultural origins of bear claws. Luna selected another pastry from the tray.  She lifted it in her aura and examined it as if it were an entomological specimen.  This variety was pale and soft, lightly glazed, and graced with a spiraling set of ridges.  “What is this one called, Mister Joe?” "It's called a 'cruller,' ma'am," Joe replied in a strained voice. "Oh, I can see why!  Very aptly named indeed," She spouted with surprising pleasure as she turned to face Doughnut Joe. "Is it?" was all the utterly baffled stallion could bring himself to say. Celestia fought desperately to keep from laughing at the awkward exchange.  Not to preserve either pony’s dignity, but in order to not attract any attention as she surreptitiously levitated doughnuts, one at a time, from the tray while her sister’s head was turned from the pile of golden fried, glazed, and jelly-filled treasures. Luna continued apace, "Of course, the name says exactly what you have to do to make it." "I crulled it?" he said, handling the term like a live viper. "The verb is 'krullen', I take it that you've never studied Old Earth-Equuish? "Sorry, ma'am, I've never had reason to," he carefully replied. Luna gave the stallion an arch look that communicated quite clearly her belief that everypony should learn as many languages as possible.  She then returned her attention back to the pastry tray.  Her dark brows furrowed as her suspicions rose. She looked over to her sister, accusingly. “What?” Celestia said innocently with a pastry-muffled voice and through sprinkle-coated lips. Luna growled but chose not to pursue the theft further.  She took a bite of the cruller.  "Mmmn, it doesn't taste much like an earth-pony recipe.  It is so light and fluffy. She licked her smiling lips, "Delicious." With some of his confidence restored by the complement to his craft Joe helpfully added, “It’s sometimes called a Prench cruller.” "Ah, this must be a yet another wonderful example of culinary fusion.  The pastry tastes much like Pâte à Pantanelli."  She took the all of the remaining doughnut into her mouth with a large bite which her sister watched with undisguised envy. Finally back on more firm conversational footing, Joe found himself correcting the goddess.  "It’s called 'Pâte à Choux'." Luna's eyes widened and she spit the chunk of half-chewed pastry across the dining hall.  "Cabbage?!?" "Ahhhh!"  Joe screamed in reflexive panic. "Cabbage!” Luna shouted again. “What?!?” the pastry chef shouted back. “You said it's made of cabbage!" clarified the wrathful deity. "No I didn't!  I said it's made of Choux!"  The panicked unicorn seemed ready to bolt. Luna froze and scowled at the chef.  "You don't speak Prench either, do you?" she said, turning to her sister for moral support. Celestia froze, mid-chew, with bulging cheeks and chocolate-smeared lips.  She blinked and forcibly swallowed something that was far too big for comfort before answering with an even more innocent tone. "What?” Luna gave her sister her best withering stare. -------------------------------- Luna sent the distraught chef away, pried the tray of doughnuts away from her sugar-addicted sister, and fled to her office.  "Pâte à Choux, my left hock." she grumbled as she stalked between rows of cubicles while munching on pastries she was now lacking the names thereof.  The newest additions to her staff froze in their work and bowed their heads while those used to her appearances merely nodded informal greetings.  At the back of the room were a pair of crescent-moon bedecked mahogany doors, she swung them wide with a pulse of her magic and closed them smoothly behind her.  She immediately regretted the noise insulating spell she had had woven into the wood as her eardrums were nearly burst by a wall of sound. Her attention was immediately grabbed by the massive tangle of brass, chrome, and copper that loomed behind the desk of her personal secretary.  Or rather, normally it loomed.  Looming would have been fine.  She was used to it looming.  At this particular moment the “Brass Beast” was issuing forth an ululating approximation of a Tirekian death-cultist about to strike.  Luna's ears immediately clapped down onto her skull in an attempt to save her inner ear bones from being shaken into dust.  By reflex she began gathering her arcane force around her, preparing to crush the metal thing into a sphere dense enough to bend light.   She would have done it except for her personal secretary standing between her and the machine.  He was on his hind legs, frantically spinning knobs and throwing valves.  Low Rent was a brown unicorn stallion with three small white crystals for a cutie mark. He originally came from the bleak mountains north of Trottingham but had become somewhat famous in Canterlot's 'alternative pharmaceuticals' scene prior to his arrest.  Shaking his black mane out of his eyes, the unicorn manipulated the machine with the focus of a concert pianist - utterly missing the fact that the goddess of the night, his boss, was standing behind him and had barely restrained herself from violently breaking several laws of thermodynamics to utterly destroy him and his "coffee maker." The Brass Beast has started as an innocuous little thing that had merely sat upon the shelf behind his desk that made passable but weak coffee upon request.  She had placed her office's coffee making duties into her secretary's hooves with no inkling that it would have lead to this state of affairs.  "Perhaps," she reflected, "I shouldn't have encouraged his early interest in improving the devise and the resulting brew."  But given the stallion's state of mind and the process of addiction recovery, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. The series of manipulations accelerated into a frenzied crescendo, shooting gouts of steam into the rapidly warming air of her office's antechamber.  The ululation changed into a wail whose pitch dropped from the top to the bottom of the range of audible frequencies in less than two seconds.  The sound died a chuttering death that sounded suspiciously like a vulgar and anatomically improbable proposition in the language of Cetacean.  After a second of silence, the Brass Beast began sputtering from a tiny nozzle positioned above a miniature coffee mug.  Droplets of liquid, darker than Erebus' soul-stuff, began to fill the crucible.  The aroma quickly traveled the distance to Luna's and the vapors alone were potent enough to cause the goddess' heart rate to double and her nose-hairs to curl.  Before Luna could recover her composure, the unicorn drank the concoction down in a single slurp. "It's bigger!" Luna shouted over the ringing in her ears. "Wa'?"  The stallion started and turned around.  His outline began to blur from vibrations as the caffeine took hold. "I said, 'it looks bigger than it did yesterday!'" A broad smile creased his face, "Aye!  I stayed here all day workin’ on ‘er.  I figgered 'ow ta goose tha effeciency by annotha tan pracent by pu'in in a counter-current heat exchange!" "Tell me how that is a good thing, Mister Rent!" Irritation stretched Luna's lips into a thin line as she waited for an answer. "I could drink tan pracent less o' tha coffee?" he offered up, hopefully. "Did you?" asked the goddess. His smile became a guilty one.  It was all the answer she required. "Mister Low Rent, we've discussed this before.  I encouraged your 'coffee' making in this office because it has been a great help in weaning you from the other substances you used to produce, sell, and consume.  I understand that the urge for stronger hot beverages may be difficult to control but I want you to keep in mind that if you manage to turn innocent coffee beans into something hazardous to yourself or the general population, we will have to wean you off them as well.  Have I made myself clear?" "Ya, Princess," he answered.  Subconsciously, but not unnoticed by Luna, his left fore-hoof slid protectively around the tiny porcelain receptacle that they mutually agreed to call his coffee mug due to the lack of a better term in Equish. She had heard that one of her sister's favorite secretaries was also a chemist but she doubted her sister ever had to deal with situations like this.  She pinned him in place for a few moments with the 'Traditional Canterlot Glare' to let him know that she was serious about this.  Finally her turquoise eyes released the yellow and bloodshot ones that called his skull home and she deflated a bit.  "Does that thing still have a normal coffee setting?" She asked him while rubbing a temple. ------------------------------------- Her senior staff was mostly made up of ponies that had proven themselves to be talented at their new civil-service jobs and had chosen willingly to stay in service after their sentence was completed.  The two exceptions were the Captains of the Canterlot City Night Watch and the Equestrian Night Guard, respectively the bat-ponies Frolicsome Meadowlark and Sunshine Smiles.  These two old and stalwart friends didn't particularly like the ponies she had chosen to surround herself with but over the past few months even they had to admit that some of her unusual recruits were very good at their jobs. Luna kept their chatter light and inconsequential while waiting for the others to arrive.  She didn't want to go over her decision to skip town again and again as her officers trickled in from various points around the palace.  The first to arrive was a male, middle-aged Zebra wearing an Equestrian style business jacket and collar.  "Good evening to you, mistress of the moon," he said as he pulled up a chair. Luna and the two bat-ponies winced at the almost-rhyme with which the Zebra greeted her.  It was a strange and rare for a zebra to be bad at poetry since, at a minimum, they would get a great deal of practice.  The zebra before her was a strange anomaly.  He was not merely bad at poetry.  He was quite possibly the worst poet in the world. "Good evening, Ponzi. Would you care for some coffee?" Luna asked, politely. Luna often wondered about this strange creature’s life and tonight was no exception.  “Was his total incompetence with words somehow related to his unusual talent with numbers?” she mused.   He was once an esteemed banker and investment guru, until the law caught up with his elaborate and elegant network designed to defraud investors. "If strange be the brew, it would...make me...blue."  He struggled to reply. "It's normal coffee, this time. I even tried some and it is very good...and safe." The zebra nodded, pushed his glasses higher up his snout and poured himself a half-cup from the carafe. "Are y'all sure you ought to be doin' that?" a low but feminine voice said from the conference room doorway.  "Last time you had a cup o' that devil-juice we had to peel you off the ceiling." Ponzi glared at a heavily made up and elaborately dressed pink, pegasus mare with a heart-shaped cutie mark posing dramatically in the doorway.  "I've been assured by the Princess that this batch is safe.   He then realized that he hadn't rhymed and hastily added, "And I trust her to keep me...la da...safe."  Everyone stared at the zebra, rubbernecking while the entire art of poetry died a violent and horrible death. Shattering the macabre moment, the pink mare batted her fake eyelashes in mock sympathy and declared, "Now that there was just sad," and flounced her way over to the table.  "M'lady," she greeted Luna with a curtsy. "Miss Play," Luna replied.  Luna had learned the hard way that the mare from Los Pegasus insisted on the Miss, despite the fact that she was nearly the same age as the zebra.  While she had claimed to have been an actress in her youth, she had been convicted of operating a very successful brothel as well as several counts of blackmailing city officials who were regulars at said brothel.  Since her sentencing, she had proven surprisingly adept at formal hospitality within the court; a fact which brought Luna no small amusement.  She had awarded her talent with the title of Chamberlain and additional duties seeing to the needs of visiting dignitaries and delegations.  The princess deliberately did not ask about the full variety of entertainment available to these rich and powerful persons but they always arrived at her office smiling, relaxed, and ready to compromise. "Oh good, there's coffee," a brash, young, yellow earth-pony mare with a black mane observed while rushing to the table and pouring herself a cup.  After taking a deep gulp of the scalding hot liquid she seemed to notice the other ponies around her.  "Oh, you," she said as she realized she had inadvertently sat across from Miss Play.  "Got your hooks into anyone new tonight?" "As if I would tell you about my social calendar," the hospitality expert sniped back. "I was talking about your work calendar," Broadsheet quipped back. The pegasus answered by way of a glare that promised death but only after a long period of suffering. Luna disliked the fact that she needed an officer to handle publicity and myriads of newspapers that published within Equestria but she could not deny that Broadsheet was adept at handling these issues.  The Fillidelphian earth-pony had developed a reputation as a muckraker back in her home town.  But what had eventually landed her in Luna's employment were a series of exposés on corruption within the city government.  Several ponies had lost their jobs and others lost their next elections.  But it turned out that Ms. Yellow Broadsheet couldn't actually get anyone within the corruption ring to talk to her so she invented a fictional, deep cover source.  Her guesses were accurate enough to have destroyed the corrupt administration but when it was discovered that she had invented her interviews she was promptly fired, sued, and criminally charged. "Don't mind the young ruffian, Miss Play.  If need be, I'll defend your honor in a Duel Magistus."  An elderly unicorn stallion with a grossly inflated Canterlot accent and waistline waddled into the conference room.  If there was a member of her inner council who Luna could be said to actively dislike, Doctor Ponderous Talent Maj.D. would be him.  He had been drummed out of Celestia's School for Talented Unicorns when it was discovered that he was falsifying his research and had used his research grant money to instead finance his decadent lifestyle.  He was pompous, arrogant, horribly smitten with Miss Play (who loathed him), and generally unlikable.  He was also an extraordinary intellect, a gifted magician, and a talented administrator.  Luna tolerated him by constantly reminding herself that he had been cursed with the name Ponderous Talent since his birth to a pair of working-class unicorns with aspirations. "I'm sure that won't be unnecessary," the pink pegasus replied. "Yep, totally a lost cause."  Broadsheet chimed in. "Now, now; play nice kids."  The last of her cabinet, her chief of staff, sidled into the conference room and took the seat at the foot of the table, opposite Luna.  The grey earth pony with a scythe cutie mark nodded to his boss and then turned his attention to the other officers scattered about the table.  "Now, if we're done fooling around here, I believe our Princess has called us here for some important reason or another." Wheat Cutter, known within his former peer group by the more ominous sounding "Cutter," had started out as the sixth child of a poor farming family outside of Trottingham.  Despite having no access to school, he had taught himself how to read soon after leaving his family's farm.  The charges for which he was indicted were racketeering, mail fraud, banditry, sale of stolen goods, the operation of a criminal organization, and failure to pay taxes on income.  Due to lack of direct evidence the only charge for which he was convicted was tax evasion. For which, he received his assignment to Luna's civil service. When Luna had noticed Wheat Cutter’s success at managing the fractious and difficult ponies she had filled her offices with, she realized that in many ways the skills he had developed for managing a criminal enterprise were still quite valid when dealing with her oddly constituted bureaucracy.  The pony had created an empire managing thugs, pimps, fences, and drug dealers.  He was essentially doing the same job for Luna except that now he had health insurance (including a dental plan), a generous pension, and a much lower risk of back-alley assassination. Her officers quickly came to order and Luna had their undivided attention.  "Thank you for coming so promptly," she began.  "I know I ask much of you but I'm afraid that I must ask a little more tonight.  Due to personal issues unrelated to the diarchy or the kingdom, I'm going to be taking a short vacation.  I’ll be away from Canterlot for a long weekend, starting this morning." All of her officers began talking at once producing a perfect babble.  Cutter cleared his throat and the room went silent.  "Might I ask if everything's alright?" he asked Luna. "More or less,” she equivocated.  “It's a personal problem and of no matter or risk to the nation." "Will you continue raising the moon or do we need to get Celestia to cover for you?" he followed up. "Yes, I'm only going to Ponyville.  I will be able to continue my lunar duties without any trouble.  I should also be reachable via dragon-flame.  I have a candle in my office attuned to Spike the dragon and you should be able to send letters immediately using that method. "Will you be ruling by correspondence then or is this more of a break from the daily grind?"  Miss Play asked. "I was hoping that this office would be able to continue functioning without my oversight for a few days," Luna answered.  "If something out of the ordinary occurs I want you to contact me but for routine business I would appreciate it if it was handled here, without me, and giving us…me…some time to address my personal business." "I think I speak for us all when I say that we hope you have a productive and restful vacation.  Just leave the busy work in our hooves and everything should be fine for a few days," Cutter said while the rest nodded "Thank you for your flexibility in this, it means much to me," Luna said with a genuine smile.  "Now, Mister Low Rent, please pass out the documents I've prepared.  Listed here in this chart are the major events scheduled for this weekend, I'd like to go over each of them in advance so that you can implement my wishes while I'm gone."  From there, the meeting descended into the minutia of government and didn't end until dawn.