Home Sweet Home
• • • •
It was day 364,635 of Princess Luna’s banishment to the cold, barren, Sun-forsaken moon, and court was in session. The immortal goddess of the night sat atop her breathtakingly ornate throne of compacted moon dust, hooves clapping together, head atilt, and bloodshot eyes drifting in two separate, distant directions. As it had become increasingly clear to her legion of loyal and loving subjects, their princess had gone quite, quite mad.
For nine hundred and ninety-nine years, she had been the sole ruler of the moon, and for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, she had lived an impossible, abstracted, fevered dream. As much as she appreciated her subjects’ regal professionalism and heartfelt devotion, literally every single thing about them had terrified Luna well beyond the capacity for rational thought. At a certain point, she had come to simply embrace the sheer rimshot lunacy of it all.
Luna giggled to herself with demented glee, bobbing her head in tune with the dubious ministrations of the royal troubadour and its merry band. Charcoal ponies playing charcoal instruments, chirping out bizarre and erratic sounds in a half-remembered muddle of music. Were she in her right mind, the princess might have noticed how these jaunty tunes only ever went on as long as she could recollect, how they were always songs she had heard somewhere before. Sometimes the band would even play a song she had made up herself, in her head! Her ponies were quite the talented little improvisers!
“Wondrous! Wondrous, my ponies! Oh, how you have pleased your princess on this most auspicious of occasions!” Princess Luna rolled onto her back, laying her head upside-down over the side of the throne, her tangled, knotted, overgrown mane falling against the floor. “Wouldn’t you agree, Regent Pippindandy?” She flashed a manic smile to a strange, towering, vaguely-draconian beast that sat to her side, watching with delight as it laboriously clapped its heavy, bony claws.
The beast slowly nodded in agreement, returning a wide, fangy smile. The Regent was always smiling, actually, now that she thought about it. Oh! That was because its face was an enormous dragon skull! Skulls always looked like they were smiling, didn’t they? Ahah! Ahahah! Well! Be that as it may, Luna was quite sure it had just smiled, in its own way. Princesses could just tell.
With a tilt of the head, Luna stared intently into the Regent’s yawning, empty eyes, past the bone and to the grey powder behind. Since their war had began, she had come to find the etherbeasts of the Eastern Mare Frigoris deliciously strange. As with all things, they were almost entirely composed of the moon’s animate grey powder, but their bodies were haphazardly littered with the bones of very old, very dead dragons. The princess had always meant to ask if they wore the ancient fossil as a sign of respect. Perhaps it was a trophy! She certainly had never seen a living dragon on the moon, in all her time here. And she would know! Many, many, many times she had combed the moon’s surface, looking for anything but the same, desolate, empty grey waste. Not a thing! Nada! Oh, she could scarcely wait to ask the Regent where he had even FOUND such exotic artifacts! They had so much to learn from each other!
Spinning herself upright, the princess rose off her throne and onto her hooves. With two short stamps of the hoof, the minstrel ceased its shrilling melody and fell into a deep bow, just before dissolving back into the floor. In its place rose the familiar face of her beloved hoofservant, Primrose Path, his charcoal hoof holding aloft a charcoal platter with little charcoal chocolate treats. Bending into a slight bow, the specter cantered between his princess and the Regent, offering the snacks.
With a squeal, Luna popped one into her mouth, beaming with a wide grin at the chalky, bitter taste of carbon as it dissolved against her tongue. “I had my ponies collect these from the Molochi Crater, just south of the castle! The way the light dips into the valley gives the powder the most exotic pungence. They are simply heavenly!”
The Regent clutched one of the chocolates between two long, sharp claws, opened wide his jaw, and tossed it inside. The charcoal treat dissolved into his charcoal maw. The Regent made a slow, practised chewing gesture, before gurgling his approval. Luna giggled, clopping her hooves together.
“Well! Shall we get things underway, then?”
Regent Pippendandy nodded, then turned his head to look at the courtroom. The walls and the floors began shifting about, dissolving pillars and chairs and dust ponies and walls into a swirling whirlpool of powder. As Luna descended the steps leading to her throne, the room stretched and grew around her, a long table with rows of chairs surging out from the floor before her. Without batting an eye, the princess plopped herself down on the sizable throne at the end of the table, then watched in a daze of lunatic glee as the walls took shape, a chandelier descended from the ceiling, and royal guards grew from the floor to stand by each newly-formed doorway to nowhere. A vast cavity billowed out along the side of the room, opening the entire wall to the lunar surface outside, and the stunning expanse of Equestria floating above.
The Regent settled in beside Luna, facing the opening. Across from the enormous beast sat Primrose Path. The two exchanged a long, empty stare.
Pouring herself a tall glass of charcoal from the charcoal wine bottle that sat atop the charcoal table, Luna raised a toast. “To peace, and an end to the hundred-year war that has commanded our undivided attention for so, so blessedly long!”
A matching wine glass formed in the Regent’s claw, and they clinked charcoal, drinking deep of the grey nothing. Luna chewed her charcoal loudly, swallowing with a brisk lick of the lips. Mmm! Definitely a good year.
After a moment’s silence, a sour, cavernous voice gurgled from the Regent. “It was a good war, princess. Certainly one of our best.” He lowered his head. “I am... saddened, to see it at an end.”
Luna boomed with laughter, slapping a hoof on the table and sending particles of dust floating into the air. “Indeed! Indeed it was. Invigorating! Thrilling we might say! We must have another!”
The Regent grumbled. “I would like that.” He fell silent for a time, placing his glass on the table. "If only there were time."
In a slow, deliberate gesture, he rose his head to gaze out at the barren grey lunar expanse before them. Luna knew this to be a formality, for her sake — their kind had not eyes with which to see. She turned to stare out at the desert of charcoal powder before her.
Three enormous claws, made of dust, extended from the ground, diligently sculpting yet another statue for her castle. Like a craftsmare giving form to a shapeless lump of clay, the moon pressed and shaved and dug, revealing the imposing figure of a grey alicorn mare. Ornate, curving plates of armor stretched across her chest and atop her head. It was a design she had seen him return to often.
Luna began hugging her long, frazzled, tangled mane, running her hoof through it mechanically. A long, heavy silence befell the conference room, a silence so pure and vacuous it could only exist here, hundreds of thousands of miles away from her home. Her eyes widened with each stroke of the mane, her smile collapsing into a gawking, horrified gape. She just stared at the Regent, trying her hardest to, once more, truly consider the beast. She did this for what seemed like a very long while.
There were times when she wondered how much of this was real, and how much of it was sheer delirium. She wondered if, perhaps, all dreams lasted this long, and if we just never remembered it all when we awoke. Where would she be when she awoke? On Equestria, back in her bed chambers? Or had she simply always been here, with him?
Luna shook her head violently, clearing her mind as best she could. No! No she would not feed those thoughts again. By the stars, she was a princess! She had an image to uphold! Her guest could not see her in such disgraceful aberration!
With a few hard, heavy thumps of her head against the table, Luna chased the thoughts away. “Question! The question! Thou shalt mind the terms of our agreement, you cur!” She thrust a hoof at the idle Regent. “If thou should win the war, we would answer a question of thine. If we win the war, thou would answer us.” She planted her hooves on the table, pulling herself very, very close to the Regent’s left eye. “Now, we will ask thee but once...” She spoke in a sharp whisper to the dust that lurked behind. “Where did you find that enchanting hat?”
After a moment’s consideration, the Regent turned to look at her. With two long, bony hands, it grasped its head, and lifted it off like a mask. Placing the skull at the center of the table, it turned to face her. For a moment, she was earnestly surprised to find that it wore Primrose’s face. Of course. His was the only face that remained, this many years in.
They had once all had different features, her ponies, each echoing those she had once known in the old kingdom. But, they had faded, as her memory had. Even her loyal hoofservant’s guise was a dull approximation of what it once was.
“You will find their remains everywhere, if you dig deep enough.”
Luna frowned, resting her head on her hooves. That was rather cryptic. Certainly not particularly entertaining. “We are... surprised, thou hast waited so long to show us such a thing.” She gazed into the empty skull’s eye sockets. “We have their kind on our world as well.”
The Regent was still. “I know.”
She sighed, letting her glass drift into the air for a moment before poking at the base, watching it spin lazily in the low gravity. “A dreadfully secretive bunch, the dragons. In all our years, in all our dealings, their kind has revealed nothing to us beyond the obvious.” She turned up her head in a huff. “At a point one simply ceases to wonder!”
The beast peered at her for a time, then stirred. “There was one story. In the forest. When the world was young.” The ashen face shifted and stretched into that of a vaguely familiar dragon. Thorin, of the Knotwood Forests. She had met the drake a long, long time ago. “Do you remember?”
Luna gave him a distant stare, rocking slightly in her throne. She had told the inscrutable growth every story she had, a thousand times over. In nine hundred and ninety-nine years they had discussed quite a bit. She couldn’t think of a single thing she might say that had not already been said.
She chewed on her mane as she thought on the matter. The moon was everywhere, and it was within everything. It was in her mind. It knew what she knew, and it saw what she thought.
She remembered how it had initially found the very act of conversation quite the novelty. The moon wasn’t used to talking, only knowing. Over the centuries, she had come to understand that it simply enjoyed hearing her stories, even if it already knew how they all ended.
She stared at the skull before her, blankly gazing at the jutting horns and jagged teeth. There was always something so... otherworldy, about the dragons. They seemed built for another, more savage time. She found it hard to imagine Harmony would have ever abided such an era, in her world of warmth and benevolence. It was a question to which Luna expected she would never find the answer. The dragons were the oldest living beings on Equestria — some older than even she — and they simply never talked about the old days. The most she or Tia had ever gotten from their kind had been a lone myth; a gift, as thanks, from Thorin of the Knotwood Forest, after they had vanquished Discord from the land.
A long, delighted grin crept across Luna’s face as the memory came back to her. Plucking her glass from the air, she raised an eyebrow. “Ah...” She leaned in, giving the expressionless phantom a piercing glance. “We cannot believe we had not told thee this one, yet.”
The Regent was still. “I believe you were saving it for last.”
She held a hoof to her chin. There certainly had been some reason she’d kept this one in her back pocket. She vaguely recalled deciding, in the early years of her banishment, that she would squirrel it away, somewhere deep down. The reason for this had been lost, as all her plans had, in a haze of pure, gallivanting insanity.
She shrugged. “It is a bit absurd, really, but... well, we believe thou might enjoy it.” She thrust a hoof into the air. “Gather close, my ponies! Your princess hast declared story time!”
The Regent settled in beside her, eager for the tale. By her side, Primrose turned to listen, flanked by the guards, who had also drawn close. All around her, ponies rose from the floor and molded out from the walls, surrounding the princess like fillies around a campfire.
With a loud, arresting clearing of the throat, Princess Luna sat straight, placing a hoof to her chest as she loudly wove the tale.
“The dragons of old speak of a distant, mystic realm that once floated in the heavens above Equestria. A world where their people once thrived, as a young race, learning much of the elements and of the unseen magic that guides them.” With a grin, she spun around the dragon skull, turning it toward her audience and planting her hooves atop its head. “But theirs was not magic as you or I know it. Neigh, the draconian element was governed by a will not of Harmony—” She shook her hooves menacingly above the crowd. “—but of another. One who rested idle in the wind and the rain and the soil of their world, as all magic does.”
Noting the rapt attention of her ponies, and of her guest, she beamed with pride, thrusting a hoof into the air as she boastfully chronicled the myth, her voice rising in volume and bravado with each word. “As with all new frontiers, these drakes of old set out to conquer, to harness and control the fantastic power of magic itself!” Her wings spread as she brought to bear the full dramatic tempest of the Royal Canterlot Voice. She loved story time.
“Onward and upward the fools soared, concocting new and exotic ways to bend the very elements to their will!” With a flick of the neck, she wrapped the horrid, untamed mass of her mane over her shoulder, the low gravity releasing errant strands of hair across her face and her snout. Luna’s eyes burned with a passion. “A maelstrom of greed festered from this new power, idle curiosity turning to ugly ambition, and ugly ambition turning to bilious war!” Her foreleg trembled in righteous fury for a moment as the words dissipated into the vacuous silence. She paused, then held a ponderous hoof to her mouth, considering the matter for a moment.
Her volume dropped several degrees of magnitude, settling to a curious pontification. “We believe it was for territory or gems or some such ridiculous thing... we can scarcely remember the reason.” Her eyes closed, she dismissed the question with a wave of her foreleg. “Hardly matters, we suppose. They have never needed much reason to fight. The dull beasts rather enjoy it.”
Her eyes crept open into a sly, menacing glance. “But, as the legend goes, their magic was not content to simply ignore this barbarism, as Harmony has done. It felt their squabbles grew fierce and bitter, their clashes burn ever more torrid...” She leaned in, casting an eerie Equestrian light about her muzzle. “... and it seethed with resentment.”
Jumping to her hooves, Luna began to walk between her subjects, her head low and her tone ghostly. “Will against will, magic pitted against magic, a god turned against itself... no sooner had one magister woven a spell, then another came to rend it asunder. Torn in a hundred different directions, the elemental force grew furious, its frustration mounting and boiling until, at long last...” She flashed a wicked smile. “...it awoke.”
She surveyed the blank faces of the crowd, trying to discern if her story had carried the desired effect. She chose to believe they were all quite petrified. With a satisfied grin, she held her head high and closed her eyes, waving a hoof about in feigned disinterest. “Their war became quite simple after that. Draconian magic poured itself into their strongest, largest warrior, and did as it wished, without hindrance, and without mercy.” Her eyes flew open in a fierce glare, cast upon the crowd. “The fools became but kindling for their own blasted fire.”
Her ponies seemed to stir, glancing at each other in a gesture she quite adored. It knew her all too well. She smiled, trotting back to her throne. “Some say the mad god is still up above the stars, hurtling through the ether, clinging to its dead world in wait. The dragons have many names for it, dramatic as they are...” She waved her hoof about as she rattled off their theatrical titles. “ ‘The Red Blight,’ ‘Suen The Harbinger,’ ‘The Nightmare Moon’... we lack the syrinx necessary to actually pronounce most of the others, but there was one we always particularly liked the bite of...”
The Regent rose its head, looking to the lifeless ash that stretched to the horizon, and the vibrant, lush world beyond. “Oni. The one within all.”
* * *
• • • •
Gilda snorted awake to find herself face-down in an enormous pile of white powder. Apparently it had been one of those parties.
Giving her brain a moment to register the full, unthinkable atrocity of her searing hangover, the young griffon planted two claws beside her head and shoved herself to a sitting position. A long trail of drool curved from the face-shaped indent left in her bed, slowly bending to pool against her chest. She teetered in place for a few moments, beak hanging open, eyes shut, gurgling a low, defeated croak. Her head absolutely killed. What in the blue kalla did she do last night?
With a lazy smack of her beak, Gilda cracked open an eye and slovenly rolled her neck from one side to the other, taking in her surroundings. She was in her apartment, by the looks of it. Her skylight was open to the cool night air, and a long trail of sugar wound from the window, over her desk, across her papers, and into her bed. Slowly, her other eye crept open as she gazed at the scene around her.
The narrow, pony-sized twin bed was utterly buried in opened bags of sugar, lemon candies, large clawfulls of cake, and what appeared to be the severed head of a chocolate fountain, encrusted with hardened fudge. Her beak clasped shut, drooping into a long, miserable frown. The landlord was going to murder her for this.
A dull click jolted her to full alertness, her hunter’s instinct exploding into high gear before she had time to register the fact that oh, right, it was just her stupid alarm clock. She watched as a tiny wooden rabbit clutching two tiny hammers wailed on two tiny bells, its sprightly jangle like sandpaper against her brain. With a harsh clasp of the claw, she silenced the alarm, lifting it before her wrathful eye to read the time. Six o’clock. Crap. Work.
Swinging her rear paws onto the hardwood floor, she stretched her wings to their full breadth, hearing a string of successive pops and cracks from the bones that ran within. Falling into all fours, she staggered over to her desk and attempted to wipe off as much of the powder as she could. Gods, it was over everything.
She rolled her eyes as she shook out her messenger bag, a clump of hard candies clattering to the floor. After batting the satchel against her chair a few times, she inspected the inside. Clean enough for now.
Setting the bag onto the chair, she started rolling up her scrolls and stuffing them into the satchel. She blinked, scanning the tops of the papers. Five. She was supposed to have six.
Grasping the sides of the desk, she dragged the unit away from the wall, peering over the back and hoping to Anzu that the missing scroll had just fallen into the crack. Nothing. She swallowed, feeling a pit in her stomach. Those things were enchanted with a courier excursion spell. They couldn’t make those. They had to go grovelling to some unicorn outfit in Manehatten and shell out the bits, and there was nothing the patriarchs loathed more than grovelling before ponies. You did not lose those scrolls.
Gilda cursed under her breath.
Scanning the desk once more, her eye passed over the slightest hint of a familiar green glow, peeking out from under an overturned pile of feather quills. She winced as she brushed the feathers aside, revealing a shard of gemstone flint for igniting the courier spell. It had been used. The scroll was gone. Grasping the flint between her talons, she slowly turned it around, staring in abject terror at the word that burned along the bottom. ‘Cloudsdale.’
Gilda facepalmed. She had fired off a first-class, emissarial drunk text to Rainbow.
Her butt hit the floor with a defeated thump, and her wings fell limp against her sides. With a deep, crushing sigh, she deflated into a listless heap on the ground. Gilda wrapped her claws around her head, and pictured the prismic mare combing her mane amongst a breeze of cherry blossoms, hearing a flutter at the window, and staring in awe as a scroll popped out of a coiling emerald wisp, falling gently to the foot of her bed. Rainbow would hold the scroll curiously in her hooves, unlatch the official seal, and unfurl the aged golden oaken paper to find a flurry of positively filthy intentions haphazardly strewn about the page. Very possibly, Gilda would have drawn pictures. They would have been quite inappropriate.
She burst into laughter, dropping her claws to grip her quivering stomach. She laughed harder than she had in months, her face burning with a mixture of morbid embarrassment and gallivanting hysterics. She probably would never be able to face Dash again, but by the gods, she could not get that image out of her head. Part of her couldn’t wait to tell Joe, after work. That doofus would absolutely love this.
She allowed herself a few minutes to bask in a perfect storm of shame before her splitting headache forced her onto her feet, and into the bathroom. Time for the other kind of magic. Drugs! Gilda slid open the medicine cabinet behind her mirror and grasped the bottle of Coltrin IB, tapping out a small pile of the pain relief capsules and shoveling them into her beak with a wash of water.
Closing the cabinet, she stared blankly at her reflection. Her eye was bloodshot, lined with thin, dark bags from the five or so hours of sleep she’d gotten. Eyedrops would probably be a good idea. She turned her head to inspect the other one. It was a dark, cloudy texture with a brilliant pink ring around the iris. She blinked a few times, gazing into the shimmering light. Huh.
Slowly, Gilda pulled away from the mirror, looking between the two eyes. One had the band of light, the other didn’t. That was... normal, right? She had a weighted moment where she just stared into the pink ring, trying to place whether or not something seemed off about it. Gods, she must be in worse shape than she thought. Of course her eye looked like that. Everyone's did.
She shook her head, breathing a deep sigh. Shower. She needed a shower. Creaking the tub’s porcelain handles and pressing the little lever with the back of a talon, she watched as the water from the showerhead sputtered on. Gilda’s feathers stood on end as she eyed the tiny bathtub. This whole apartment would probably have been considered small even by pony standards. Gilda wasn’t a great deal larger than most equines, but she was bigger, and just enough so to make everything irritatingly claustrophobic. She couldn’t lean on tables or desks without tipping them over, she couldn’t open her wings indoors because they were too long, her paws dangled well over the edge of her tiny bed, and on more than one occasion, she had almost gotten her ass wedged in a couple of their bathrooms. It had always been very clear that this country was not meant for her. She quite literally did not fit in.
Feeling that the water was hot enough, Gilda scrunched herself into the tub and began lazily preening her feathers. The water felt really, really good. She took a moment to close her eyes and just let the jet of warmth wash over her face, dwindling her headache from a pounding throb to a dull pang.
Grasping a bar of soap from the caddie, she went about trying to scrub off some of the glitter that still clung to her chest feathers. She scowled as it stubbornly fought with her. That stupid little brat and her stupid little drawing. She’d be sure Pinkie went out of her way to drive her crazy if she wasn’t equally sure that the shrieking gremlin was incapable of that kind of forethought.
Sliding the bar of soap onto the caddie, she ran her brush back and forth over her hindquarters and her paws, scrubbing the sugary gunk out from clawfulls of her fur. There was this image in her head that she could not seem chase away. Pinkie Pie and Princess Luna, sitting on the royal bed, their lips locked in a kiss. It was the most ridiculous thing. She knew it didn’t actually happen, because really, come on. The Equestrian diarchs were these weird, sexless goddess-spirits, more concerned with keeping the planet going than any kind of mortal affection. And Pinkie... she just seemed... well, retarded was a bit strong, but Gilda had never gotten the sense that she even knew what kissing was. The mare was like a living sock puppet, a three-year old doing a caricature of Siduri the party goddess. What bugged her was the naked fact that, if the kiss wasn't a memory, it had to be something the griffon had dreamed herself. And she really, really did not like the implications of that.
Putting aside the irrefutable fact that Pinkie was the most annoying living thing on the planet, there was something truly, fundamentally awful about fantasizing about a mare like her. It felt like she didn’t deserve it, strange as that sounded. Gilda didn’t buy for a second that the way she pranced about was anything more than some stupid act, and she hated to think that had made her somehow interesting. Maybe Pinkie was terrified of being boring, or maybe she needed everyone to like her. Who knows. She shouldn't care. And yet, evidently, she did.
Whatever her angle was, Pinkie’s lame, needy parade of sunshine and lollipops had managed to trick Dash into picking her over Gilda. She’d won and she didn’t even have the twisted decency to rub it in Gilda’s face.
She sighed, washing away the suds and turning off the shower. Her talon hung on the handle for a moment. Pinkie would be out of her life and back home to that dumb little town soon enough. Wasn’t worth thinking about.
She toweled off, did her eyes, fixed her hair feathers, flattened her fur, and brewed a cup of coffee from the small sack of Seaddle blend she’d bought off Joe. With one last look around the sugar-soaked apartment, she grasped her messenger bag and squeezed through her skylight, onto the roof above. She took a moment to take in the view with bland disinterest. Same old night sky along the horizon, same old freakishly enormous moon hanging overhead, same old red light, bathing the same old Canterlot in a light pink mixture of luminescent white moonlight and red ephemera.
Unfurling her wings, she took flight, drifting over the cobblestone streets of the residential quarter and past the Canterlot Archives. As she approached the castle, she saw a vast gathering of ponies ahead. After a moment’s consideration, she glided to the ground just outside of the crowd.
Something seemed kinda weird.
For one, it was like dead silent. All of the ponies were completely still, rigid in some sort of trance. Across their backs, in their mouths, and bundled between their forelegs were pastries, sweets, and bags of sugar. She started sweating. Was she supposed to bring some kind of offering? She tried to remember if she’d ever done something like that in the past, but her recollection was patchy. It was almost tiring to think about, like she had to drag her brain uphill to get it to thumb through her memory.
Gilda watched as an orderly line formed around an incredibly large pile of sweets, stacked at the bottom of the golden ramp leading up to the royal throne. She glanced about the castle for a moment, thinking it strange that the throne was visible from the outside. In fact, she’d somehow not noticed it before, but the entire front portion of the castle was missing. Everything before the throne room was just gone, excepting the checkered marble floor, and further, the throne room was completely open to the outside. The roof was sheared off, and the walls seemed to sink from their vaulted height to the floor, just after the golden platform.
Her eyes followed the long, ornate red carpet back up to the throne. Princess Luna sat idle, her legs tucked under her body and her eyes a lazy, clouded vacancy. She was probably still feeling crappy after being sick for a whole damn week. Chances were, Gilda would be meeting again with Princess... Princess uh...
Gilda held a talon to her chin. Princess something. The one with the... like... the wavy...
She stared at the marble floor, trying to recollect the mare she had talked to just yesterday. Her mind was completely blank. She could not recall a single clear memory of the living goddess around which her job had revolved for the past year.
Placing her coffee on the ground, she clasped her claws around her head, and just stood there for a minute, in a world of darkness, trying to build the image from scratch. She started with Luna. This big, gangly pony with a waving mane of stars. She concentrated on the mane. It was split into like eight different... strands? The mane in her mind separated into eight long tendrils. She wasn’t blue, either, she was much lighter. Like a brilliant, marble... bubblegum... pink...
She chewed on the thought for a moment. So... the princess of all of Equestria... was Pinkie Pie. That certainly felt... stupid. That meant she willingly worked with, and regularly paid respects to, someone she absolutely loathed. She must really, really hate her job then, right? She supposed that felt about right.
Gilda slowly pulled her claws away from her eyes, and looked to the pile of sugar. It surged and shifted, affected by a force deep within. Along the sides, she could see several wiggling tendrils of pink hair peeking out, wrapping themselves around cakes and popovers before retreating back into the pile. The ponies that surrounded her took one step forward, edging closer the heap of sugar.
Gilda scowled as she picked up her cup of coffee from the ground, taking a long, bitter sip. Okay, seriously, what was all this crap? This could take hours.
She glared at the pegasi and moori that crowded the airways above. This was probably another one of their happy-go-lucky harvest festivals or something. Knowing Canterlot, that probably meant she was going to have to white-knuckle it through a round of musical numbers today. Ohhh boy. If she'd known they were going to be clowning around with this malarkey, she would've spent another hour or two passed out in her junk food cocoon.
Screw this.
Spreading her wings wide, Gilda gave two heavy beats of the wing and hovered into the air. With flat irritation, she forced her way through the crowd, shooting challenging glares to those she pushed aside. They returned no emotion, or even acknowledgement. She frowned. What was with these people?
As she shoved her way through the gathering, she chewed on an idea. Winding up her claw, Gilda gave a spirited backhand swat upside some moori's head. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the stallion was simply hovering at a slightly downward angle now, the bag of sugar he clutched trickling out from the inclined top. That was... not normal.
Glancing ahead, she could see the sucrose stockpile fast approaching. Might as well try one more. She pulled back her claw and forcefully slapped some grey pegasus mare's flank with the palm of her hand. THAT would get a reaction. Gilda whirled around to drink in the pony’s abject shock. Nothing. This was officially freaking her out.
Holding a baffled look on the wall-eyed pegasus, she turned to gaze down at the vast mountain of sweets below her. The pink tendrils were now sticking out from all sides, waving about excitedly. Gilda narrowed her gaze, trying to make out what, exactly, the buck, they were. The pegasus to her rear lazily approached, emptying out a saddle bag filled with half-melted strawberry ice cream. Gilda watched as the clumps of cream dribbled to the front of the bag, clung to the buckle, then dropped.
The tendrils suddenly bolted out in all eight directions, rigid with alarm, before the sugar pile surged and a horrifically large, bubblegum pink, pony-faced monstrosity exploded out of the top of the pile to catch the glob of ice cream in her wide, fangy mouth. Gilda’s eyes went wide as she beheld at the enormous mare, watching as pegasi and moori dumped trays of sweets over Pinkie’s face like some kind of gumdrop and cupcake bukkake. With a spirited giggle, Pinkie Pie licked her lips with a long, forked, reptilian tongue, flashing her iridescent white fangs in delight. Her two wobbling antennae twitched in approval.
Every single instinct Gilda had screamed at her to get far, far away. Her eyes briefly darted around for an opening in the crowd through which to escape, but Gilda fiercely squashed the impulse. That was the princess, you idiot! You did not turn tail and run from some frilly pony princess, no matter how perfectly, nightmarishly terrifying she might be. If she knew one thing about diplomacy — and she knew exactly one single thing about diplomacy — it was that you never, ever showed fear. Gilda swallowed, lowering herself to eye level.
Pinkie’s eyes were huge, plate-sized things, draconian in shape but equine in color. Beyond the fangs, the antennae, and the lizard tongue, the rest of her seemed pretty normal. For a pony goddess. If you could get past all of the sharp and slithery bits, she was almost cute, in a terrifying sort of way.
She cleared her throat. “Hey, so uh...” Alarm bells went off in Gilda’s head as the razor cerulean irises locked on hers, pulling the princess’ full attention to the minute griffon. Pinkie’s smile was as big as she was. She tried not to think about those little cupcakes, shredded to bits in three short bites. “...is this some kind of holiday or something? I mean, that’s cool, if it is, but can I just... you know... just like...” She swallowed, dripping with sweat. Pinkie’s long, weightless ethereal mane had slowly begun to creep its eight waving tendrils of curly hair toward her. Gilda stiffened in panic.
“Whoaaaa...” Pinkie cooed, wrapping one of her tendrils around Gilda’s lioness midsection. With a sudden but smooth motion, she flipped Gilda upside down, then to the side, then upright again, inspecting her like a toy figure. Gilda’s world tumbled around her, pulling the coffee out of her cup and the air out of her lungs. With a sharp gasp, she pressed out with her wings, trying to break free. The hair only pulled tighter. “What kind of pony are you?”