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// Chapter 6 
// Story: Scootaloo: Princess for a Day 
// by RaylanKrios 
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Lunch proceeded as normally as a humble lunch between a filly and the most powerful alicorn in Equestria could, until it reached its near ending.

 “Would you like to talk about your mother Scootaloo?” Celestia asked after Scootaloo had eaten her remaining hay fingers.

Scootaloo swallowed the last bite of her food and glanced around uneasily. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful Princess. I know that my mom works very hard and I know she loves me; I just wish I got to see her more often.”

“What does she do?” Celestia asked gently.

“She works at the weather factory in Cloudsdale, but we live in Ponyville because I can’t fly yet. So she has to fly forty five minutes to and from work every day and she works a lot of double shifts and late night shifts so I don’t get to see her very often and I just want to see her more and…” Scootaloo sniffled loudly as she realized that she was fighting back tears.

Celestia draped a wing around Scootaloo, hugging the orange filly. She didn’t say anything, opting to gently rock the filly back and forth until she felt the tears subsiding.

For all the actual magic that Celestia could wield, the power of touch was in some ways the most potent, and it had nothing to do with her being an alicorn.   For Scootaloo it simply felt nice to be held by another pony. It didn’t matter that she was being embraced by the most powerful mare in all of Equestria; the only thing she was focusing on was that there was another pony who, at least for the time being, was there for her. It was a sensation she didn’t realize how much she was missing until she burrowed into Celestia’s coat.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I started crying,” Scootaloo said, wiping the tears from her eyes as she broke away.

“Why are you sorry? I was unaware that crying was an offense.”  Celestia replied.

“You’re a princess, you have better things to do then listen to me complain.”

“Scootaloo, if I have the time to listen to two neighbors fight over lemons on a tree, I believe that I have the time to listen to a filly who just wants her to see more of her mother. You are a princess, it is important that we princesses support each other.”

“It is?”

“It is.  I always make it a point to carve out some time for Luna, should she need it and she extends the same courtesy to me.”

“Oh.”

“If you were sitting in court and somepony told you what you just told me, how would you rule?”

Scootaloo pondered the question, looking at the ceiling as though it might hold some answers. Unfortunately it remained a blank slate of marble. “I..I don’t know.  Could I make the weather factory pay her more so she could work a normal shift?”

“You could, though that might anger the other workers on her shift, and workers in other weather factories, and other ponies who would wonder why a weather factory employee gets paid more so she can spend time with her daughter while they toil on their own shifts.”

“What if I ordered that everypony everywhere should make more money?”

“That is a complicated question; trust me when I say that such a seemingly benign thing would create a lot of problems.” Celestia said, not wanting to get into an economics lecture. 
 
Scootaloo thought some more, but was unable to come up with any other solutions that wouldn’t make other ponies mad.  A part of her thought that it didn’t matter what other ponies thought, as long as she got to see her mother more often, but if the morning had taught her anything it was that Princesses should strive for some standard of fairness. “Well then what should I do?” she asked, looking up at Celestia.

“I do not know,” Celestia admitted.  “For now you should enjoy your day as a princess, and I promise, princess to princess, that I will do what I can to help.”

Scootaloo heard those words from Princess Celestia and for the first time in a long while, she felt something that she might dangerously call hope.