AN ELUSIVE SLICE OF CAKE
Celestia had enjoyed many cakes throughout her long, long life. Only one, however, had been perfect.
The perfect cake’s very existence had been an accident. A serendipitous occurrence that came about when four pastry chefs, each one of them a master of their craft, happened to take the same overnight train to participate in a baking contest. The ride met with disaster, and after their respective desserts had been sabotaged by the competition they’d been left with little choice but to work together. Together they assembled the winning dessert from what was left of their own.
But fate is a fickle beast. Celestia, as lead judge, had been given a single slice of the monstrous thing before Pinkie had come crashing down on it. Pinkie had devoured it so quickly Celestia sometimes wondered if she’d even tasted it. She could only assume that she had not, for she’d given no sign that she fully comprehended how delicious it was. Or perhaps she had; Pinkie’s mind was an ineffable mystery, even to her.
After a single taste, Celestia had been happy to declare the impromptu team the winner, but she’d never revealed the full truth. The cake was not good. It was not great. It was truly perfect, a word that Celestia wielded cautiously as she was fully aware of the implications. This was the cake to end all cakes. A cake that, with a single bite, might cause a pony to go mad from the chocolatey revelation. It took all her willpower not to scarf the piece down as Pinkie had, heroically saving her kingdom from the fudgey apocalypse that would inevitably ensue as brother turned against brother in deadly struggles over every crumb.
Instead, the slice of cake was carefully hidden. She summoned forth all her unfathomable power and tore a hole in the fabric of reality to a place outside of time (so that it wouldn’t go stale, you see) and placed the mightiest guardians she could bind to her will to watch over it. From that day forth, the cake became her guilty little secret. The only way to safely dispose of something so inconceivably wonderful was to allow herself a single bite of it at a time, preferably after her longest and most trying days.
Today was shaping up to be such a day. It began with what should have been a simple anniversary procession through the streets to commemorate the eight hundredth birthday of one of Equestria’s greatest generals. Which struck her as odd, since she remembered him as something of an idiot whose ‘victories’ were a great deal more attributable to strokes of good luck than any sort of inherent tactical brilliance on his part. That’s politics for you, though, and she’d been obliged to attend the parade through Canterlot. Which meant that she’d been stuck along with the rest of the procession when a small bridge gave out under the weight of her chariot and dumped her into a dirty river. Perhaps the solution to a problem of excessive weight was not a sugar-based one, but logic and the Royal Bathroom Scale could go hang for all she cared. It was only one bite. She trotted into the royal kitchen and the chef fumbled with the pan he’d been whisking away at.
“Oh, Princess! Did lunch get moved up in the schedule? I’m afraid I wasn’t aware, but I’m sure I can make something to tide you over while—”
Celestia held up a hoof to cut him off. “No need for that. I only require a fork and a quick look inside the refrigerator.”
“Of course, Princess,” he replied, opening the silverware drawer with his magic. Celestia selected one of the larger ones. Just because she was only allowing herself one bite didn’t mean it had to be a small bite. The chef quickly returned his attention to his sauce and Celestia wandered over to the refrigerator where the dimensional fold was anchored in three dimensional space, right behind the jar of mayonnaise. Calling upon forgotten arcane powers never dreamed of by even the mightiest of archmages, she rent a gash in the space between dimensions, to the small pocket of the Between she’d cordoned off specially for this purpose.
From across the room, the chef tried to concentrate on his work. He’d been working at the palace for almost six months, and the air of inapproachable reverence that he’d initially felt towards his boss and co-ruler of the nation was starting to fade. Of all the palace staff, the kitchen workers learned the quickest that Celestia was, in fact, a pony much like any other. The cognitive dissonance that resulted from catching your deity with a guilty look on her face as she tried to sneak a cookie out of the Royal Cookie Jar made short work of even the most worshipful attitudes.
Every once in awhile, though, he got a reminder of the many ways in which Celestia was not an ordinary pony. The Royal Canterlot Scream that issued forth from the refrigerator was one such reminder, and the sheer pressure of the sound blew the pan full of sauce off the cooktop and into a wall, leaving a spatter pattern that might, if marketed correctly to the right galleries, enjoy a second life as a piece of abstract artwork.
“LUNA! I’M GOING TO BUCKING MURDER YOU!” she screamed as she raced past the forgotten chef and towards her sister’s bedroom.
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Luna scraped the last bit of chocolate frosting off the clean plate with her fork as she scanned the pages of the novel she was speed reading. “So the terrorists have blown up the palace and murdered both my sister and me, and for some reason this leads to a minor cabinet member being elevated to the rank of Princess? I am not certain that this ‘Tom Prancy’ has any idea of how politics actually work.”
Hey musings were interrupted when her bedroom doors burst open to reveal the enraged white alicorn on the other side. Celestia opened her mouth to say something, but then her eyes locked on the plate and she froze.
“Oh, hello sister,” said Luna, returning her attention to her book. Her ears perked up at a high-pitched whining noise that was suddenly present in the previously-silent room, like air escaping from a cracked pipe at a tone that would be inaudible to most ponies. “Do you hear that? I do hope the new gas line running to my fireplace hasn’t sprung some sort of leak. That would be most troublesome.”
Celestia both heard and was the source of the noise in question. “You... You ate my cake.”
“Hmm?” asked Luna. “Oh, yes. I felt like a late morning snack before I turned in for the day, and found this in a small subspace rift behind the mayonnaise. I assumed it was up for grabs.”
Celestia could only stare dumbfounded at her sister. “Up for grabs. The cake that was concealed in a timeless pocket dimension, and guarded by a legion of oath spirits. A legion of souls who swore service to Equestria even in death and would strike down any who dared to threaten their charge. And most importantly, who are incapable of eating cake. And you thought it was ‘up for grabs?’”
Luna shrugged. “Perhaps leave a note next time.”
Celestia was struck speechless for several seconds. That cake should have lasted a decade, properly rationed, and now it was gone forever. She sneered at her sister. “Well, I hope you at least enjoyed it.”
“Meh. It was adequate. A touch too rich for my taste, really. I give it perhaps a six out of ten.
The corner of Celestia’s eye began to twitch.
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Three days later, when the fires had finally been brought under control and ponies had begun to pick through the smouldering wreckage of that wing of the palace to see if anything was salvageable, the press asked how, precisely, the fire in Luna’s room had started.
The official explanation was that there had been a gas leak.