Prompt #407: Everypony’s Equine
The press conference was about to begin. For a building in Canterlot, the ceilings were remarkably low. Princess Celestia could barely stand up without brushing her horn on the ceiling. Her faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, was at her side, their wings lightly brushing. Celestia always kept her around for these events to calm her down.
“You’ll do awesome, as always.” Ensured Twilight. “I know, I’m just always nervous for these things. What if something like that time a media pony threw a horse shoe at Luna happens?” Wondered Celestia. She knew it was foalish and that those things almost never happen, but the sun princess could only wonder.
“It won’t” replied the smaller princess, with an almost unnoticeable roll of the eyes. Lately Princess Celestia had been acting nervous about things like this, twitchy when nopony was looking. In events like these, though, that could never get in the way. If Equestria saw their mane ruler nervous, the country would be in chaos.
As the lights dimmed in the back of the room, Princess Celestia stepped out behind the divider of the room and to the podium, the solar winds from her mane making the flags of Equestria behind her flutter. With a clear of the throat, she began, “Good afternoon ladies and gentlecolts. If you can all take a seat please now, I’d like to start the conference. Now, I’d like to first address…” As the snow-white princess started, she glanced behind the divider to see Twilight’s shining face, a place of comfort in the room of skepticism.
Behind that face though, different thoughts were going on. According to her calendar, this was the fifth press conference this month! To add to that, Twilight had heard Princess Celestia crying in her chamber before the meeting. Mumbles that sounded like, “What is going on?” and “How could this happen?” were also audible to the lavender alicorn. The princess had also seemed rather stressed recently. While these conferences always went along the lines that Equestria was stable in the world and that there were some boom economic times, the princess of magic couldn’t help but wonder.
All her life, the pony had blindly adhered to the system behind her country. While there were a few times of trouble in it (not mentioning any names *cough ‘discord’ cough*), the land faired much better than others around the world. Saddle Arabia had that cake-eating locust swarm, the Crystal Empire was running low on gems and so on.
With these new observations, though, it seemed that Equestria might not be the perfect land it was made out to be. But if the country were in trouble, wouldn’t Celestia have told Twilight? With the Elements of Harmony as her friends, she most certainly could help protect it. Or was the seemingly perfect sun princess not so? Was she cracking under pressure too great for the people to handle? Maybe she just didn’t trust Twilight with potentially dangerous information.
With a now-glassy-from-thought stare at the ruler of Equestria, Twilight pondered this scenario. While all the scenarios she was imagining could be possible, she knew deep down that it was a slim chance that they were. Just like Celestia before the conference, she was imagining the worst-case scenarios. Maybe the princess of the sun was finally being caught up by the stress of ruling a major country. Anypony would if they had her job. Because, after all, everypony’s equine.