At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Chapter 20: The Vital Importance of Snacking
Midnight knocked on Hope’s door, with Chestnut standing beside her. In two boxes at their hooves sat their dinners. The boxes were made of cardboard, and liberally waxed to keep anything from leaking out.
“Good evening,” said Hope, opening the door.
“I’ll get Sorrel,” said Chestnut, reaching out to knock on the adjacent door. The red pony was waiting for them with his own boxed dinner, and soon the foursome was eating in Hope’s room, with the door open for propriety.
Hope for her part had rounded up clean cushions for them all to sit on, and a pitcher of water and wide-mouthed glasses for them to drink from.
“This is really nice...I’m sort of glad we’re out here. A lot of the adventurers seem to be...intense to interact with,” the unicorn explained, spearing a chunk of delicately seasoned artichoke heart. A tiny drop of cooking liquid fell from the piece and landed on the waxed cardboard, where it contracted into a hemispherical shape. Midnight started splitting her attention, between the conversation of the other ponies, and playing with the properties of waxed cardboard.
“Hmm...yes, I agree,” said Sorrel, picking at his salad. “A pony, even an adventurer pony has got to be able to unwind.”
Chestnut expressed her assent by nodding, her attention focused on the rather cheesy casserole she was eating.
“You know, I didn’t actually expect to meet that many friends or relatives of would-be adventurers when we set out for the Inn,” said Hope after eating a carefully lifted spoonful of roasted grains. “I thought I’d sort of be alone here.”
“It’s not that unusual,” said Sorrel. “Our family has been sending a pony here to the Inn at least once a generation. And it just doesn’t seem right not to stand by the candidate on the way to the Inn. We all are capable, after all; it’s just that, well, most of us are needed for the family business.”
“I’m here out of curiosity, really,” said Midnight. “Hope is more of...a friend than a servant.”
“We can tell who’s pulling the strings,” Chestnut said, her eyes never leaving her meal.
Midnight bristled. “I came here to find out how the process of becoming an adventurer works—it’s fascinating to me. I’ve actually made this cloak to help me observe the process, hopefully without forgetting it all.”
Chestnut and Sorrel looked each other with a smile, sharing some sort of private joke. “Pretty simple, really,” Chestnut said. “Go to sleep, wake up a couple years later…”
“...Get the big bag of bits from under your bed…” said Sorrel.
“...And go home!”
The pair laughed.
“And do the members of your family usually make it home?” Hope asked quietly.
“Usually,” said Sorrel.
“Oh, I know how the process works from our point of view,” Midnight assured. “I’ve heard it and watched it happen. But I am curious about the spirits and how they function. I’ll let them do what they want, but I am curious about how the magic energy...the flow of everything.”
“Curious? Curious?” The stallion laughed good-naturedly. “Inn ponies are not supposed to be curious. Very much against-the-rules.” The last sentence was pronounced in a curious accent.
Chestnut laughed out loud. “Oh, your Chief is so good!”
“Chief?” Midnight asked curiously.
“The Chief of Police back in Maneport. Such a stick in the mud.” Sorrel raised an eyebrow above his grin, daring Midnight or Hope to pursue the matter further.
Hope rubbed her chin with one hoof. “I suppose you don’t have that much objection to adventurers, do you?”
Sorrel shrugged. “That depends. They’re a system, like all the others. A little bit is good. Too much...not so good. Why, are you two plotting to take down a vast overarching system of laws and regulations?”
“‘Cause if you are, we’re in!” exclaimed an excited Chestnut.
Midnight seemed to ponder the statement for a bit, while chewing her food, before pointing her fork at Hope. “Take down...I wouldn’t say take down...but, maybe shove our heads in and get as much a look at the inner workings as we can? We’re not looking to hurt anyone. We’re just trying to figure out how it works. Maybe make it better? Maybe if it can’t be made better, throw a few rocks at it?”
“An excellent way to correct a system—or a corrupt mayor,” noted Sorrel.
“In...fil...tration!” exclaimed Chestnut.
“One of my sister’s favorite words there: infiltration,” said Sorrel. “Nothing better in the whole wide world.”
Hope leaned her face on one hoof. “So, like, are you part of the Guild back home?”
The siblings exchanged a glance. “Miss, we are the Guild back home,” Sorrel said proudly.
“I knew it!” Hope exclaimed, springing up. “One thing I always lamented in my previous life was that I never got to meet any of you ponies back home. You always had the best stories written about you.”
“Well, a good public relations department is essential to our self-preservation,” Sorrel admitted.
Midnight looked around, befuddled. “Did I miss something? What Guild are you talking about?”
The three of them laughed.
Chestnut put one hoof up to her forehead. “Alas, the Mistress is too l...lilly white to know!”
“Thieves’ Guild, My Lady,” explained Sorrel with a smile. “We probably had business with your family’s valuables at some point, if they were a family of any reputation whatsoever.”
With a gasp, Midnight dropped her fork. “No!” she gasped, putting a hoof to her mouth.
Chestnut and Sorrel laughed uproariously at her reaction, rolling on the ground and holding their sides.
Midnight then stopped and squinted at Hope.
“You would have wanted to meet them in your past life? Really? That seems backwards to me.”
Hope sighed. “They have a code of honor, Midnight. One they hold to a good deal more rigorously than the majority of aristocrats I have ever met. Their ideals are...well, far more anarchistic than I would prefer for a society that is…”
“Stratified?” suggested Sorrel archly.
“Stable,” provided Hope. “But believe it or not, they do have their uses.”
“I am flattered by the lady’s high opinion!” Sorrel said, easily affecting a Unicornian accent.
“So...have you two already...? Hope, should they know, if they’re getting in on the plan? I mean...” Midnight, lost in a social situation in which she was the least powerful and least aware of the ponies present, deferred to her friend rather than retreating back into eating her meal.
“Not too much,” warned the orange mare.
“Chestnut’s right,” said Sorrel with an apologetic smile. “We owe our allegiance to a higher authority. It’s best not telling us anything you don’t want the rest of the Guild knowing.”
Hope frowned, not happy with having to keep secrets from her new friends.
Sorrel reached out to gently lift her chin. “Don’t fret,” he told her. “We’re used to operating with little information.”
“Or outright lies,” added Chestnut.
“Lies are what makes the world go ‘round, after all.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you there,” Hope said quietly.
“But...wait for just a moment. Would the Guild knowing be a bad thing?” Midnight asked softly. “What if that helped? This is a unique situation, and their knowledge could be used to test this all as well...”
“There’s knowledge, and then there’s knowledge,” said Celestia, practically Equestria’s master of the distinction between the two. “I wish to take down the whole adventuring system, bring this world back to where it once was. There’s more than that, matters of my motivation in the matter…”
“Which is none of our gods-condemned business, yes?” asked Sorrel.
“I wouldn’t have put it that way...but yes. Is that enough knowledge for them, Midnight?”
“I suppose...” she sullenly agreed. “It’s aggravating to be unable to tell anypony about it though. I wish my little brother was around, he’s always good for a chat.” She went back to her waxen experimentation, scraping the coating back with a knife and seeing how a little water flowed and pooled from one region to another.
Hope sat quietly for a few moments as she pondered her words. “I think he and Water Cooler would have got along splendidly,” she quipped.
“Oh don’t you start,” warned Midnight.
“What can we do?” Chestnut asked, interrupting them.
Midnight set her knife back down. “Well, first of all, do you know of any secrets regarding the Inn and how it communicates with the other side, where the Pla—”
She stopped, took off her cloak, scooted very close to Hope and Sorrel.
“Where the Players live?”
Sorrel and Chestnut shared a glance, with the red stallion nodding at the orange mare. “Neat trick,” Chestnut said.
“Our family’s got a fair number who are like Chestnut here,” said Sorrel. “Speaking problems. Hearing problems too. Turns out we didn’t need no fancy unicorn magic—lip reading works just as well.”
“But it’s a foreign language,” protested Hope.
“So’s Thieves’ Cant. So’s Griffish, and the seven major dialects of Dragonic,” said Sorrel. “Understanding what’s being spoken in front of you by those who think they are hiding secrets in plain sight...well, that’s a very useful skill to have in our profession. Once we knew they were doing it, we hung around them enough to pick up most of the terms from context.”
Chestnut chuckled. “Playing dumb.”
“Oh yes,” said Sorrel, gesturing at his face. “Our family is blessed with really simple looking faces. So let’s see...what can I tell you... They’ve got their own world...and they’re fat. They talk about food all the time. They go from place to place in pulled carriages—”
“Automatic!” Chestnut butted in.
“Oh hush, Sis. We don’t know that at all.”
“I can’t tell if you’re crushing my dreams or giving me everything I need,” Midnight sighed. “They talk about food a lot, like what? Are we talking about...great feasts and such? Ambrosia?”
“Snacks,” said Sorrel.
“Planet of the Snacks,” said Chestnut with a giggle.
“They spend most of the time when they’re not being the characters talking about what they’re eating. What they will be eating. What was wrong with what they just ate. I imagine that they’re...sitting or standing still controlling us. For hours on end.”
“It makes sense,” Chestnut insisted. “Can’t eat a feast and talk at the same time.”
“Yes,” said Sorrel with a nod. “They control us with their words, not with thoughts or gestures or what have you. What else can they do under the circumstances, but snack?”
“I just...snacks?” Midnight asked helplessly. “We can’t beat them with snacks! At least, I don’t think so. What else, like, who makes these snacks? Do they have servants who make them?”
“Can’t beat them with snacks?” asked Hope. “You, obviously, know nothing about my sister’s disastrous snicker doodle recipe.”
“You’re right, because I hadn’t even been born when she last made them,” Midnight said with a roll of her eyes, before clamping her hooves over her mouth. “Um....I mean...Yestheyaredelicious.”
The siblings looked at each other, and rolled their eyes in unison.
“Well, what shall I critique first?” Sorrel asked himself. “How about the servants? There are no servants. Or maybe they have some taboo regarding speaking of them while adventuring. They get their own snacks. That’s another advantage of that particular food type—they usually require very little preparation time and...and this is a very odd subject of conversation that we have wandered into. Is there anything you want to know that isn’t snack related?”
“Yes! How can we separate their power from our world?” Midnight asked determinedly.
“Chestnut!” Sorrel exclaimed.
“Yes, Brother?” Chestnut replied.
“How can we steal all of Miss Midnight’s fortune from her family estate?”
“I dunno,” Chestnut said, putting on a thoughtful expression. “She somehow ne...neglected to tell us the combo to her safe in casual conv...conversation!”
They then proceeded to look at Midnight like she was an idiot.
The unicorn blushed deeply and got very, very interested in finishing her meal, silently.
Eventually, she recovered enough to tell the pair of her plans. Chestnut immediately agreed to getting a cloak, and the siblings even had a suggestion of how to modify it to make it much less conspicuous.
“An aluminum-coated hat? I guess I could make one...” She conceded as she walked them to their rooms.