Letters From a Little Princess Monster

by Georg

23. Evaluations, Stations, and Recommendations - Part Four

Trixie slipped out of the coffee shop office door with a subdued smirk and a quiet chuckle that she managed to keep totally suppressed until the door was shut and she was standing by the packed-up educational testing materials. It took a few minutes of snickering into one hoof to recover her composure and realize that the room was decidedly empty, with no signs of the adult volunteers other than the packed boxes, and no sign of the little students other than a lot of serious whispering from the second floor seating area.

Trotting upstairs past all of the black-and-white hearts and floral decorations that seemed to have taken over the coffee shop, she wedged herself into the group of little unicorn students who were looking out into the plaza with their faces stuck out of the open window.

“Hey. Menace. Scoot over.” It took considerable wedging before Trixie managed to get squeezed in between Monster and Oz so she could look out the window at the stage in the distance and listen to Mayor Mare’s voice waft over the crowd. “What’s up?”

“Mom and Tallgrass are getting married tonight.”

While the rest of the students babbled about the outdoor reception that was going on after the announcement and who they wanted to dance with that evening when the party got into full swing, Trixie considered all of the nervous ‘tells’ that the little alicorn was trying so badly to hide. From the hints of both sadness and joy in the tone of Monster’s voice, to the peculiar hunch of her shoulders, it was obvious that she wanted to be out with her adoptive mother and really weird father figure even while the idea scared the horseshoes off her.

Trixie tilted her hat forward to shade out the noon sun while she squinted at the ponies on the stage, taking in the obvious signs from Zecora that a city-wide celebration was not quite what she had in mind when she had most probably asked the beaming Mayor Mare at her side about a wedding license. There was something insane in the town that could turn even a simple checkers game into a full parade with marching band and giant cake, and that insanity just happened to be pink.

The town residents even said that Pinkie Pie would party at the drop of a hat, and although Trixie had a hat, she had never held it out and dropped it just to test the theory.

There was a certain envy that dug at her soul to see a stage without a certain Great and Powerful presence, but she was trying to change, and charging out to grab the microphone away from the mayor was not part of that change. After fighting down a sharp criticism of the placement of the ponies on stage, she continued.

“You’re part of her family too, Menace. Shouldn’t you be out—”

It took a bit to recognize the little unicorn filly with a red cape standing next to the two black and white striped ponies, but even from a distance, Trixie could tell her colors were off, and the little ‘unicorn’ was obviously enjoying herself too much in front of the attentive crowd. After all, if Twilight Sparkle were really standing on the stage… Trixie swallowed once and cursed her overactive imagination, trying to get the image of the prospective Ponyville Crater out of her mind before continuing.

“I asked Peep Sprout.” Monster reached out with one rear hoof and touched the cardboard box behind her as if it were a turtle shell awaiting the rapid retreat of its naked occupant. A familiar tattered and patched doll was already draped across her small shoulders over the cape, and the rest of her friends seemed to be keeping close, just in case she needed anything. It brought another tinge of jealousy to the surface of Trixie’s mind, which she crushed relentlessly even as a warm spike of some misplaced happiness struck through her heart when the little alicorn leaned into Trixie’s side to stroke the back of her head against the taller pony’s neck for reassurance.

Swallowing dryly, Trixie cleared her throat and asked, “So, did your parents fill out their paperwork for the wedding license yet?”

“There’s a test for that?” Monster looked up at Trixie with a dangerous inquisitive sparkle growing behind those large, dark eyes, probably as an escape from her present stressful situation.

“Oh, yes.” Trixie nodded, slipping into her routine. “Equestria fairly runs on the smooth flow of paperwork, with forms for each and every possible governmental activity. Why, I’ll bet the mayor got so caught up in the party that she hasn’t even gotten around to starting the process for your parents’ marriage license. Fortunately, I just happen to be an expert in the field of forms, and have a little time free this afternoon since Greenie is tied up.”

“Princess Luna tied Green Grass up?” asked Sweetie Belle. “Neat. Twilight was telling us about them.”

“Um…” started Trixie, jolted out of her patter by the unexpected comment.

“I didn’t say anything about sex,” said Monster with a slow nod.

“Right!” said Trixie in a frantic grab for the thread of the conversation. “There’s nothing going on in the office between Greenie and Princess Luna now other than some preening. Wait a second!” Trixie’s pink magic caught Featherweight by the tail as he tried to swoop down the stairs and dragged him back to the group. “It’s a private preening. No onlookers permitted. Or photography. Particularly no photography.”

“˙ʇɐɥʇ ʇnoqɐ ʎɹɹos 'sdoO” Even upside-down in front of Trixie, the little colt still had an uncanny ability to use his big brown eyes to deadly advantage, and she scrambled for some other activity to keep the eager little hooves out of trouble other than paperwork.

“Coffee!” she exclaimed. “Yes, of course. While Menace and I go over to the mayor’s office and find the correct forms for — um — two non-natives of Equestria with a dependent who reside inside a huge tree technically just inside the Everfree Forest and… Where was I?”

“Coffee,” prompted Oz.

“Oh, yes,” said Trixie. “Since this is a coffee shop, why don’t the rest of you go downstairs and brew up some coffeenotSweetieBellecomebackhere!”

Dropping Featherweight, Trixie managed to grab Sweetie Belle by the tail just as she dove down the staircase, dragging her back and placing her rather firmly by the older and probably safer Oz. “I promised Zipporwhill’s father, whatshisname, that we would not be setting his new business on fire before he’s had his first customer. No fire.” She turned to Firelock. “No fire. Let me hear you say it.”

“No (mumblesmerglfemph).”

“Good enough.”

The mayor’s assistant was more than happy to show them around the temporary office and provide forms for their project, with fascinating titles like ‘Declaration of Residency’ and ‘Certification of Birth (Alternate)’ that Trixie passed back to Monster as she received them. The process was like a huge puzzle with words and arcane rules where one form required two other forms which referenced a fourth form that could not be completed without a completely different form having been filed first. There were even forms that substituted for forms that had gone out of print, and forms that showed that other forms were not needed. Apparently there was only one form that had been needed to be submitted to replace all of the forms that had burned during Nightmare Moon’s attack, and that form had brought huge stacks of other forms of every type and kind that the little town could possibly need for the next century, or until the next disaster burned down the reconstructed Town Hall, whichever came first.

Once they had the wedding license forms all filled out, they would be copied and ‘filed’ for others to read later, a process that Monster found nearly as fascinating as books. Memories of everypony’s lives back to the founding of Ponyville could be accessed by just opening a folder, well, that is once the duplicate copies of the Ponyville archives arrived back from the centralized Canterlot archives. The assistant said there were caves in the archives that had been filled to the top with carefully preserved and organized forms just like this back to the first Union of the Three. He said those oldest forms were chiseled onto slabs of stone instead of paper, but he laughed in a rather peculiar way when she asked how the Copy spell could work on them if they were inscribed on stone.

Monster liked the Copy spell that Trixie had taught to her, even though she had issues with her copies being wobbly and smeared a little, but she actually could use the spell a little better than Trixie, whose copies tended to trail off in little faded patches when her concentration wavered from lack of coffee. The assistant even included some extra forms called ‘Governmental Crossword Puzzles and Word Searches’ for the rest of her friends, and Monster knew she could make copies that they would be happy to fill in, even if they did go outside the lines sometimes. Well, all of the times. And Scootaloo would call it homework, like that was a bad thing.

Despite the heavy load of papers as armor across her back while they returned to the coffee shop, she could feel the weight of the world pressing in on her again. It was difficult to imagine going back to that time of constant fear and pain before she had friends, even though some of the memories from that time were etched in her mind with such crystal clarity that the smallest word or object would cause them to crash back over whatever she was doing at the moment. Trixie was such a good big sister with the way she cared from the bottom of her heart despite her protestations, in a different but similar way than mom and Tallgrass, and different than her friends. Sometimes she just wanted to gather them all together and hide in the middle like a queen bee in her swarm, but that idea always reminded her of the dying changeling queen who had driven her hive to destruction at Monster’s rage.

If a true princess has no fear, then I should not feel anger or pain either.

Fear’s touch was a part of her, much like the rage and pain that had filled her life before. It had all been turned to smoke and air by the Element of Magic, but it still lurked out of the corner of her eyes when she least expected it and ran sharp talons through her heart at the most inconvenient times. As long as she kept herself filled with the happy thoughts from her friends, there would not be space for the monster she once was to return, much the same way Tallgrass had told her of the love that filled all of the changelings now. They worried too that someday that love would fade and they would return to their aggressive ways like a repaired vase falling off a shelf again. She could feel her own metaphorical cracks shift as they walked, blinking in the bright sunshine as a thought exploded into her mind.

Yes, that would work. It was perfect. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Monster poked her nose into the kitchen of the coffee shop and looked down at a huge collection of pipes, tubes, cans, corners, flanges, and all sorts of other metallic gadgets that looked more like the back of scoot’s workroom than a place that made coffee. Opened boxes lay scattered around with little unicorn students rummaging through them, and a rather frustrated Scootaloo and Apple Bloom were holding a set of instructions up and squinting as if that would force the little words to make more sense. Wheat Shock occupied a central position in the room and had taken charge by sorting through shiny pipes of all different sizes with ‘valves’ and ‘gauges’ carefully arranged by length and diameter while Oz was opening boxes and bags.

“Hey Wheatie, what does raw coffee look like? This stuff smells like it, but theres no instructions.”

“This would go a lot faster with Sweetie Belle,” complained Scootaloo, turning a page of the coffee maker instructions upside-down and frowning. “She can read all this fancy writing.”

“It’s not Fancy. It’s Cavellian,” said Firelock, pointing at the instructions with one hoof. “There’s the word for boiling, and for steam, and for danger⁽¹⁾. There’s a bunch of those.”

(1) Firelock knew every fire-related word in over ten languages. Eleven if you counted the seapony word for fire, which translated out as ‘warm water.’

“Awesome,” said Oz. “I never thought coffee could explode.” She scooped up a clump of little brown beans in her magic and took one out to nibble on it. “Yuck. How do adults drink this stuff? Twilight, you were drinking coffee this morning out on the train platform. How did you get it?”

“Um.” Monster shuffled into the room and looked at the parts of the disassembled coffee machine peeking out of dozens of boxes and scattered around Wheat Shock up to his shins. “Trixie has a machine. It’s little.”

“Well, that will work in the short term,” said Wheat Shock, sorting through a box of angular flanges of some sort. “The older ponies were going to use the coffee shop as an indoor resting area during the wedding dance, and we can use that little machine to make coffee for them until we get this one set up. Um…”

“Tootsie Flute, Snips and Snails,” prompted Oz.

“Yeah. Can you three go over to the library and bring back that coffee machine with Spike?” Wheat Shock looked at the pile of parts that took up most of the floor space in the kitchen. “This could take a while, and we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Both Zecora and Tallgrass stiffened briefly while shaking hooves in the crowd of ponies which had formed around the stage. In an almost synchronized fashion, they each put one forehoof against the ground and twisted slightly, casting identical looks of confusion back through the crowd where a cardboard box appeared to be making its way through the ponies with frequent bumps and muffled exclamations of, “Excuse me? I’m sorry.”

In rather quick order, the box worked its way up to ‘Flower’ before rising up and engulfing the little pony. The box sat quietly by their side, being watched by zebra and ponies alike, until it bumped up in the air again and disgorged a much messier and rumpled little alicorn filly, who took a moment to tuck her wings under her cape before leaning up against Zecora’s side with a muffled, “Sorry, mom.”

“My Flower who I love without any doubt, can you tell me why you went from within to without?” Zecora leaned down to look her ‘Flower’ in the eye with a concerned frown that gradually turned into a smile as the changeling-guided cardboard box bumped and thumped its way back out into the crowd.

“Family,” she whispered. “I should be here.” The little alicorn looked out into the happy crowd of ponies and shuddered, although she did not look away, and actually held her head up and waved back as some of the adults waved to her. “Big party.”

Zecora nodded and moved closer. “Yes, my Flower, that is true. I’m sorry that it disturbs you. We only planned for a small celebration, with a few of our friends and some light libations, but the town is quite determined a party to throw, so Pinkie Pie is here and away we did go.”

“Your mother…” Tallgrass stopped and looked embarrassed. “I mean your adoptive mother.” He stopped again as Monster reached up and put a hoof gently on his chest.

“In here.” Monster turned her hoof and placed it against her own chest. “And in here. Space for two moms.” She squinted a little while looking into the changeling’s blue eyes. “Not sure about dads.”

“That makes two of us,” said Tallgrass, tucking one of her rumpled curls back with one hoof. “But it’s still a few hours until sunset, and—” he hesitated for just a beat and smiled “—your mom says the stars will be aligned perfectly for our wedding then. Are you sure you don’t want to go someplace calmer until then?”

“Not afraid. Not tonight. Want to be with my family.”

Zecora blinked back a tear and bent down to look her adoptive daughter in the eyes. “I’m so proud of you, Flower, as if you were my own child, for my heart nearly broke when I found you in the wild. While your body has been healed and your days greatly changed, I’m so glad you are here while our lives rearrange.”

Trixie and Monster had gotten all of the paperwork spread out over a large table by the window, sorting the forms by type and color while Trixie flattened her ears against her head every time the sound of thumping and hammering came out of the kitchen. There was obviously coffee involved in the noise, as Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were gliding around the main floor of the shop on roller skates, each of them with a carafe of coffee in their mouth to refill the cups of the gossiping old ponies sitting around the shop. Whenever they would run out of coffee, they each would check their rump for a ‘Barrister Cutie Mark’ before sighing in frustration and skating back to the kitchen to refill.

Trixie had just scooted her chair back to stretch a kink out of her neck when the front door of the shop slammed open and a very disheveled Baron Chrysanthemum stomped inside. His mane and coat was rumpled and sticky with foamy perspiration, and he glared at Trixie in a way that made Monster slip under the table in pursuit of a wayward dropped form.

“Where’s my son?” The baron kept his eyes on Trixie as he strode up the stairs, his lips drawn back in a thin line and a certain unhealthy color to his face that indicated a sedentary pony who had just done a considerable amount of manual labor.

Trixie looked back with her face as calm and tranquil as her teacher, giving a cordial nod to the sweaty baron and saying in her best Canterlot voice, “Good afternoon, Baron Chrysanthemum. What a pleasure to see you here. Are you staying for the wedding?”

The baron jerked his head to look out the window with a short gasp, a little fleck of foamy sweat dripping off his chin at the abrupt move. “No. Greenie didn’t.”

“Actually, no, he didn’t. Menace’s adoptive parents are getting married this evening. Say hello to Greenie’s father, Twilight.”

“Hello,” said a very quiet voice from under the table. “We’ve met.”

“If you would care for a cup of coffee,” continued Trixie, maintaining her calm tone with obvious effort, “you may take a seat and help us with their paperwork until your son is done with his meeting.”

“What meeting?” The baron stopped at the edge of the table, his ragged breath moving little pieces of paper as he glared at Trixie. He didn’t see her move a hoof under the table and place it over Monster’s mouth, but he did catch the glitter of amusement in her eyes as she glanced over at the closed office door. Moving with exceptional speed for a middle-aged stallion, the baron darted down the stairs and over to the closed office door before yanking it wide open.

And froze.

His mouth remained open as if to shout, but there was a certain abrupt paleness that appeared across his face and made his white coat seem even whiter. After waiting for a sufficient amount of time for the sight to impress itself on the older unicorn stallion’s permanent memory, Trixie reached out with her magic and quietly closed the door.

He stumbled back up the stairs and over to the table, taking the coffee cup that Trixie pressed on him without looking at it and draining it dry. “Was that Princess Luna?” he wheezed when done.

“Yes. More coffee, Baron?” At his rapid nod, Trixie poured another cup for him and added a more generous helping of bourbon than the first one.

“Was he… preening her?” Baron Chrysanthemum tossed back the second cup of coffee and held out the empty cup as Trixie poured.

“When last I checked.” This time when the cup was refilled, the baron remained standing by the table, holding the cup with only a faint trembling showing on its ebon surface. Monster reached out with her magic and picked up the pot, bringing it back and filling up her own cup. But without the bourbon.

There was something about her sister that made Monster think even harder about what just happened. Trixie did enjoy ‘tweaking’ other ponies (which was far different than ‘twerking’ as she had explained), targeting mostly ponies who considered themselves to be superior to everypony else, but there was a defensive quality to her actions today that did not quite match the way she defended Monster. It was almost as if she liked the strange skinny unicorn magic teacher, and thinking back to the way they had walked together on the way over to the coffee shop, maybe they had sex back when they were in college and were still attracted to each other.

No. That did not explain her flustered response to Monster’s perfectly logical suggestion, which meant that maybe they had been attracted to each other in college and had not had sex. No, then they would have wanted to have sex now, only Princess Luna had ‘dibs’ on him today until his wedding tomorrow to another pony, with whom he probably was going to have sex until they had foals.

Monster shook her head and took a drink of coffee, very glad for the time being that the Element of Magic had transformed her into a young alicorn instead of an older one. Being old and having sex was too complicated.

All three of them looked up as the door clicked quietly and Green Grass slipped out of the office. Trixie recovered first, with a cheerful, “All done with preening Her Highness, Greenie?”

“Yes. She fell asleep on me.” Green Grass scowled as he walked up the stairs and deliberately around his father, pulling a box of student folders over to the table and slumping down in a seat next to where Trixie was working on the wedding forms. “Coffee, please.”

The baron sat back and watched Trixie while taking several short breaths to compose himself. His eyes narrowed as he looked back and forth between the suspiciously controlled student pouring coffee and the quiet teacher working his way down a page with a red pencil until inspiration seemed to strike, and he leaned forward towards his son with a low hiss.

“I don’t know what hare-brained scheme you’re cooking up to get out of this wedding, young colt, but if you plan on dragging—” Baron Chrysanthemum lowered his voice and glanced back over his shoulder to make sure the office door was closed “—Princess Luna into it, I would advise you to think again. Your escape hatch is gone now. Friday and I have moved your Tartarus cursed heavy wagon out from where you hid it and over to the library. We chained it down, and he’s waiting over at the train station now just in case you try to catch an early train somewhere other than Canterlot.”

“Wagon?” asked Monster, poking just her eyebrows and horn above the table edge.

While Green Grass ignored his father and remained silently scribbling away with his pencil on the student evaluations, Trixie leaned down and whispered in a voice that could be plainly heard at the other end of the room, “Greenie always was a bookey nerd. We used to kid him about pulling a little red wagon full of books around college.”

“It is not a little red wagon,” said Green Grass, spitting the red pencil out of his mouth before talking. “It’s my home when I’m out teaching. It has a sleeping area, and every book that I thought I would need for finishing my master’s thesis. And it’s blue.”

“Oh, my stars!” said Trixie, turning with a gasp. “You actually did it? That’s a new level of nerdity even for you. Does it have a cosy little study area in it so you can invite sweet young things in for a night of ‘tutoring’ and other activ—”

She stopped at a pained wince from Green Grass as he picked his red pencil back up and started working on the student paper again. “I teach foals, Trixie. Little bitty unicorns her age—” he jabbed a hoof at Monster, who ducked back under the table “—who most certainly do not go anywhere alone with an older male teacher, particularly one of my kind.” The tip of the red pencil snapped off as he jabbed it at the paper, and he paused for a moment before spitting the pencil stub out and picking another one out of the box, returning to his grading as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

His father did not seem to be satisfied with his response, and snapped, “Stay out of this, Beatrix. This is a family matter. If Princess Celestia had not ordered my son to this town, he would be safe in Canterlot instead of traipsing around the countryside where anything could happen to him.”

Trixie waved a hoof. “Oh, pul-lease. This is dull old Ponyville. Nothing ever happens here.”

“Nightmare Moon,” whispered Monster from under the table.

“Other than that,” said Trixie.

“Don’t give me that, Lulamoon. The Everfree Forest is just outside the city limits, and there are terrible monsters in there with no respect for the borders. How Ponyville has survived this long without everypony being eaten is a mystery to me. I’m going to sit right here with my son until he finishes his work, and then I’m going to drag him back to Canterlot, in chains if I have to, so that he can be properly protected and taken care of for the rest of his life. Canterlot is safe!” A faint twitch appeared on his bottom lip and he took a deep breath. “All I want is for him to be safe.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Monster from under the table,

“Look. Baron Chrysanthemum.” Trixie seemed to try wiping the false grin off her face but only managed to smear it a little into a smirk. “It looks like you’ve had a hard day, and all you’re doing here is annoying your son and frightening Menace. Just a minute.”

She flagged down Scootaloo as she roller-skated past with an empty pot of coffee perched precariously on top of her head. “Can you have Spike escort Baron Chrysanthemum over to the library so he can get showered and cleaned up a little? I promise I’ll keep an eye on Greenie and not let him escape matrimony. Again. He’ll be right here waiting for you when you get back.”

The corridors and rooms of the huge cold castle were like a maze to the wisp as it soared and glided along behind Philomena, ducking through doorways and through open windows like it was her own personal play area. Some of the things that Philomena thought were ‘funny’ did not seem very humorous. In fact, they seemed painful or embarrassing to the target, even though the ponies who were targeted would laugh just as loud as his new friend. ‘feather’ had been much nicer than Philomena, only with the ability with his flashing box to capture the moment of embarrassment for others who might not have seen the event where a little pony fell into a mud puddle or caught a face full of pollen.

Still, there had to be something more ‘fun’ about the activity that the wisp was seeing. It was nice to have somephoenix to play with, and Philomena seemed to be having the time of her life, the ‘guards’ in their cold metal shells seemed to enjoy the attention, and the little unicorns running around the corridors laughed while chasing them, shouting something about “Philomena has a coltfriend!”

The little unicorns loved Philomena, competing with each other to run their hooves gently along her beautiful plumes. Several of them even sported small red feathers tucked behind ears or by horns, and those seemed to gather Philomena’s attention the most. It seemed that she had given them ‘gifts’ of her own body in appreciation for their attention, and as the wisp followed the small herd of ponies into a small room, it considered the idea. After all, she had few objects other than her own feathers to give away to friends, and the small cold creatures seemed to rejoice in decorative ‘stuff’ nearly as much as small consumables or even the ‘buks’ that they all carried.

The wisp watched Philomena slip up behind the adult pony at the front of the room and find a good place from which to duplicate the motions and facial expressions of the ‘teacher’ as he scratched symbols on the wall and gestured, each motion duplicated in an extravagant fashion by the phoenix. All of the little unicorns seemed to think her motions were very funny, and their fires burned brighter inside as they snickered and chuckled. When the teacher caught on to the prank, he was not angry, but laughed just as loudly as the students. He invited Philomena to sit on the desk while he pointed to various portions of her body and talked, drawing the occasional image on the wall at the front of the room as an illustration.

The wisp moved from little student to student, looking at them as they looked back, each just as fascinated as the other. One smaller student in particular drew its attention, due to the intensity of her fire and the coloration of her hairs. The wisp had seen winter snow before, as well as the shining whiteness of Tia, but there was an icy sheen of blue to the edges and top of the pony that made the white seem like frost formed in the coldest of winters, and the blue of her eyes was somehow the color of pure ice while still being as warm as the wisp’s solar home.

She even had her name inscribed on the ‘buk’ that was laying off to one side, making the wisp consider the brilliant roar of her internal fire and the contrast it made with her name.