The Traveling Tutor and the Royal Exam

by Georg


Chapter 20 - Final Hurdles

The Traveling Tutor and the Royal Exam
Final Hurdles


“Morning, gents.” Green Grass slipped out of the Royal Guest suite with a yawn and regarded the two bulky Crystal Guards and the rather muted form of Papercut sitting to their side while tucking away a book. “Good morning, Papercut. Here you go.” A thick calendar was hoofed over to the servant, a practical forest of colorful sticky notes giving it the air of a somewhat mashed and confused flower.

“So glad to see you up and about on your hooves, sir. Did you sleep well?” asked Papercut with a note of bland disinterest, regarding the changes to his tidy schedule with a certain disdain, but still maintaining the good sense not to move any of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s notes.

“About two hours.” Green Grass yawned again. “Twilight and I were up all night.”

“Don’t want to hear about it, sir,” said Papercut, awkwardly sticking the calendar into his sidesaddle using his teeth.

“She’s just unstoppable now since she’s become an alicorn,” continued Green Grass. “All night long, over and over. I was hoping to get some sleep in the train on our way to Ponyville, but I think she’s wanting to do it again, just to be sure. Maybe twice.”

“Not for me to hear, sir,” said Papercut, looking at the floor to make sure he had not dropped a sticky note.

“Crosswind helped, but she conked out around midnight. Poor thing. Nowhere near the stamina of either of us.”

“I’d rather not — Miss Crosswind was in there with you?”

“Yeah, I needed as much help as I could get.” Green Grass yawned again. “We were going to have the guards send for you too, but Twilight said you should get some rest. It’s your turn on the train while Crosswind sleeps.”

“Train?” Papercut’s upper lip trembled. “Do you think that wise, sir?”

“No, but my opinion in this matter is only incidental. I argued against it, but she bargained me down to just once on the train so we can get some rest during the rest of the trip. All of our work is going to be useless anyway once we get to Ponyville and all the rest of the Elements of Harmony come over to the library. That’s going to be when the real work happens. I’m going to need you right by my side then, Papercut. We’ll likely be up all night again.”

“That’s…” Papercut swallowed. “Not quite what I expected out of the job, sir.”

“Me neither,” said Green Grass, “but that’s what happens when a half-dozen extra griffons get dropped into the seating chart of a perfectionist at the last minute. At least the emperor isn’t going to be showing up at the wedding. With only two weeks left, I don’t think we could squeeze in all the spots to accommodate a foreign dignitary of his stature and his escorts. At least the date for this thing is fixed. Anyway, go make sure the servants are ready to pick up everypony’s luggage and get it onto the train, review that schedule, and try to brace yourself for the seating chart changes that Twilight wants to make. And grab some breakfast, dude. You look white as a sheet. We’ll be out in about ten minutes.”

There was a faint click from the door as Green Grass vanished back into the suite, an expansive sigh of relief as Papercut finally exhaled, and a low chortling from both Crystal Guards, ending only when Papercut fled the field of battle for the sanctity of the preparations for departure from the Crystal Empire and a return to good old comfortable and sane Canterlot.

...with only two weeks until the Royal Wedding, the social scene in Canterlot has come alive with all of the pageantry that our capital city is known for. The newest Royal Couple has finally returned to Canterlot for a gala season’s worth of parties and extravaganzas that seem determined to top Princess Mi Amore’s wedding! In these last few days of celebration, every single Royal House in Canterlot is bursting with pride and determined to outdo each other in a party scene that may never be seen again in our lifetime. Today’s schedule includes a fundraising breakfast at the mansion of Jet Set and Upper Crust benefiting Zebrican orphans, followed by a series of brunches with various civic organizations, lunch with the Saddle Arabian diplomatic delegation, an afternoon in the Canterlot Southern Park hosting the annual Kite Day and Sky Carnival, and four different dinner engagements, but later this week they kick it up a notch with a masked ball at the estate of Fancy Pants, and midnight fireworks over the Canterhorn…

A smiling Green Grass waved as he climbed into a carriage, and he kept waving out the window until the estate of Lord and Lady Whiffenpoof was a respectable distance behind them, only then collapsing onto the seat with a ‘whoof’ of exhalation. Turning to the rather taciturn dark green stallion already sitting on the other end of the bench seat, Green Grass nodded at the quill Papercut was holding in his magic. “I see the doctor gave you the hooves-up on taking off the horn restraint. Any residual damage?”

“Only minor bruising,” he replied, floating his watch out to check the time. “And no more brain damage than one would expect as your appointment secretary. We’re actually two whole minutes ahead of schedule, sir.”

“I fled the field of battle prematurely rather than be engaged in a battle of wits with their little darling Whiffenpoof. He’s gone through five magic tutors now and still no cutie mark. I had no desire to be a sixth.” Green Grass made a show of wiping his forehead and looking at the schedule. “I think I have determined just how you and Crosswind plan on keeping me from marrying Twilight now. You’re going to work me to death first.”

“Whatever would give you that idea, sir?” Papercut extended out several pages of the schedule in question, neatly arranged in fifteen minute slices all the way up to ‘I do’ and a rather vague section afterwards marked ‘Freedom’ in large block letters. “We were only doing our jobs by accepting so many invitations. Certainly you would not want to turn down any of the Royal well-wishers, would you?”

“Not counting sleep, your schedule gives Twilight and myself approximately fifteen minutes together until we get married in the Royal Back Yard in just a little under two weeks.” He gave Papercut a dry look. “We may have to reintroduce ourselves before the ceremony. Heck, if I see her for more than three minutes at a time before then, I’ll have to check to see if she’s a changeling.”

One of the drivers turned his head over his shoulder and called back, “Coming up, sir.”

“One moment, Papercut.” Green Grass stood up in the carriage and opened the door, holding it steady as the wind whistled by.

“Sir?” He was trying not to sound concerned, but if Green Grass threw himself out of the carriage, Papercut was fairly sure he was going to get all of the blame and none of the satisfaction. The carriage slowed, eventually coming to a stop somewhere over Canterlot as a second carriage slid alongside, pointed in the other direction but also stopped. Both doors were open, and Green Grass leaned out to catch Princess Twilight Sparkle in a long and impassioned kiss.

“We’ve got a minute and a half,” gasped Twilight when they finally broke for air.

“Not nearly enough time,” gasped Green Grass, giving her an extra kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you too.” Papercut managed to catch a glimpse of Crosswind and Spike in the other carriage, rolling their eyes and making faces before the Royal Couple broke their cinch.

Green Grass wrinkled up his nose and grinned, matching Twilight’s smile tooth for tooth. “Our two naughty appointment secretaries have outdone themselves on our schedule. I think they were listening to ‘Gotta Keep ‘em Separated’ while they were working.”

“Oh, that reminds me.” Twilight floated a folded piece of paper out and stuck it in one of his pockets. “Don’t forget to talk to my Aunt Aura at your next event, the Association of Archaeologists, Hippopologists, And Ancient Architects. I wrote her a note about the thaumic parallelization problem she’s having when dating potshards.” She followed it up with an extra kiss.

“Gotta keep ‘em carbon dated?” added Green Grass with a nose-rub. “Don’t forget to compliment the Dutchess Wildwater on her Anthurium plants and suggest that she might want to put a little more potassium in their pots. Dad says she frets over them more than her husband.”

“Silly Dutchess,” said Twilight, nuzzling up one ear. “Plants can’t kiss back.”

“Time,” called out one of the drivers.

“Gotta go,” whispered Green Grass. “Later. I promise.”

“Me too,” whispered Twilight, giving her fiancé one last kiss before the two carriages separated from their unscheduled rendezvous and headed onto their destinations.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Stop fussing, Papercut! I just need to drop by the DRR for a few minutes and pick up a coronet. Ambassador Flintrock’s reception over at the Greystone mansion is supposed to last two hours, so if I’m ten minutes late, it’s no big deal. Besides, the Greystone family will understand. They’re very down-to-earth unicorns. I even got to tutor some of their kids.” Green Grass paused. “Weird kids. Weird, but nice. The second youngest one particularly. Vanishes right into the woodwork if you don’t keep an eye on her.”

“I shall endeavor to come up with a suitable excuse for your tardiness, sir,” said Papercut from his seat in the carriage, showing no interest at all in following his charge into the looming stone building bearing the name of ‘The Royal Mint’ carved into its grey granite exterior.

“I think I can feel a cramp in one wing,” suggested one of their Royal Guard drivers, extending the feathery appendage.

“I’ve always gotten lost easily,” added a second. “Maybe we could ask directions at this convenient building?”

The first Royal Guard gently clopped the second over the helmet with one hoof. “Idiot. We need a believable excuse. Asking for directions? Nopony would believe that.”

Green Grass chuckled to himself as he trotted through the door and into a maze of twisty grey passages, all alike.

* *

“Hello? Is anypony in here?” called out a fairly strong but male voice that echoed through the stone corridors of the Department of Royal Regalia, filtered around a number of dusty cubicles, and into the ears of a elderly stallion dozing at his desk. It did not sound important. He went back to his nap.

“Sir, the reception at the Greystone mansion most certainly has already started, and we are running considerably late,” said a second voice, a melodious high tenor that nonetheless still had a small thread of shrillness in it, like a piece of wiregrass in an otherwise tasty salad. Still nopony important enough to be worth interrupting his nap.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to ask Princess Celestia if I can borrow one of her old crowns out of her closet,” said the first voice, with enough intentional emphasis on the real Princess of Equestria to make Stuffy Fossil, Head Curator for the Department of Royal Regalia, snort in derision.

Name dropping fool. Probably not even a Royal.

“Please don’t, sir,” said the second voice with a distinct wheedling whine to it. “She’s likely to take you up on it. Besides, I don’t think she even has any crowns other than hers in the castle. This office was created for just the purpose of categorizing and storing the various crowns, tiaras, coronets, diadems, and circlets she accumulated as gifts in her first few centuries of office, so technically, this is her closet. The use of the office by the rest of the Royals came along later.”

Well, that was worth heaving himself to his creaky hooves and seeing what was going on. Nopony ever seemed to appreciate the care and effort that went into maintaining The Vault, as he preferred to think of his proud office. Stuffy Fossil arranged his rather dusty Hat of Office atop his head, aligning the notch carefully against his horn and checking his dapper reflection in the mirror. Every inch the Head Curator now, he strolled casually out of his office and over to the front counter in order to observe the two impatient unicorns standing and waiting, two blotches of mismatched green in an otherwise colorless office. The somewhat shorter and more bulky of the two seemed to be in charge, and to Stuffy’s approval, was wearing a hat, a worthy habit that the shiftless young of the city seemed to be casting away as of late.

“Good afternoon, gentlecolts.” Stuffy blinked several times until the figures came into sharper focus. “Dropping off or picking up?”

“Picking up,” said the palest green unicorn in a rapid cascade of words. “We need a simple coronet, something thin and unobtrusive that doesn’t need to hook over a horn. I have an order in over at Cartiara’s to make one, but it won’t be ready until a week after the wedding, and that’s too late, so we just need a loaner for about two weeks.”

Stuffy drew himself up to his full swaybacked height. “Sir, we here at the Department of Royal Regalia do not loan our collection. It is held in the highest trust in the most secure vault in Canterlot exclusively for the Royal families who have placed their precious heirlooms into our care, and access to the stored items in The Vaults is highly restricted.”

Particularly anypony who wishes to make a withdrawal.

The pale green stallion paused, then put on a remarkably warm smile while extending a hoof. “Beg pardon, Curator Fossil. I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Lord Green Grass of House Chrysanthemum, and I’m engaged to be married to Princess Twilight Sparkle in eight days, nine hours, seven minutes and—” he checked his watch “—forty seconds, at which time I will gain the title of Prince Consort, and with that title, comes a hat.” Lord Green Grass wrinkled up his nose, looking remarkably as if he had just bitten down on a lemon. “Apparently my existing hat isn’t ‘Royal’ enough, so I need to find something gold and unobtrusive, preferably a loan from one of the failed House Minors who had no inheritors when their property reverted to the Crown. I was hoping to resolve this earlier. I sent several letters.”

There was a rather comfortable mailbag that Stuffy had been using for a pillow at his desk for several years now, and once he thought about it, there were a few newer and more stiff letters in it recently. In fact, the name Green Grass seemed familiar too. It had been in the crossword puzzle of the Canterlot Times under ‘Groom’ for some reason, as well as Princess Twilight Sparkle, who had taken up nearly the entire row across.

“House Chrysanthemum,” he muttered, opening a hefty ledger and running a hoof down a list of entries. “No, we are not currently storing any regalia from your family.”

“I know that,” huffed Green Grass. “Dad hates this place. I need to borrow a coronet from one of the failed House Minors for two weeks, tops. I have a letter of permission from Princess Celestia and Princess Luna right here. After two weeks, you can have it back and everypony is happy. Capisce?”

“I’m sorry, Lord Green Grass,” said Stuffy, closing the book with a puff of dust. “Items entrusted to us can only be removed by the express order of the senior member of the House. Even the Princess does not have the authority to order them ‘loaned’ for any reason.”

“But all of the failed House Minors don’t have any living senior members of their house, or even junior members for that matter. They’re dead,” said Green Grass in a plaintive tone. “What am I supposed to do, bring their bones into the office?”

The darker unicorn stallion to his side quietly cleared his throat. “Princess Celestia rather frowns on necromancy, sir.”

Stuffy Fossil shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. My decision is final. Perhaps one of the other Houses would loan you appropriate regalia for your upcoming nuptials.”

Now it was Green Grass’ turn to shake his head. “No, I don’t want to start this marriage indebted to a particular House.”

“You could always call it off,” suggested the servant.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Three meetings, two coffees and a cutecinera later, the two Royal carriages once again paused in their headlong flight across Canterlot for the Royal Couple to exchange a few words and personal affections, as well as for Papercut to float a note over to his counterpart about scheduling.

Once the initial round of frantic Royal Couple kissing had slowed and before the second wave of kissing could begin, Green Grass gasped, “Wasn’t able to get a coronet from the Vaults.”

“I’ll make you one,” said Twilight with a kiss. “It’ll take five minutes and a short stack of bits for materials.”

“No.” Green Grass paused in his application of stress relief to his overstressed fiancé in order to get both hooves on her cheeks and look deep into her soft violet eyes.

After a few moments, Twilight said, “Yes?”

“No. I mean…” Green Grass looked away and took a deep breath. “I can’t think like that. Anyway, this is something I’m going to do on my own. Like my hat. It’s a symbol of what I do and who I am. If you make one for me, that’s… not me.”

“I understand.” Twilight Sparkle tucked a hoof under his chin and brought his blue eyes back up to look into her own gaze. “That’s why it took you so long at the jewelry store to define exactly what you wanted, even though they kept wanting to make it bigger and more ornate. And why you insisted on paying for it out of your own pocket. Don’t worry. Even if you have to wear a bucket or make a coronet out of paper and glitter for the wedding, that’s good enough for me.”

“Oh!” Green Grass kissed her on the nose. “Wonderful idea, dear. Tomorrow morning, first thing before breakfast. How would you like to see the attic of House Chrysanthemum?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

House Chrysanthemum was not a particularly large house, having been established in the lower middle section of the ‘Unicorn Belt’ of manor houses that clung to the side of Mount Canter like barnacles, or at least that is how Green Grass described the positioning. There were many larger manors and no few the same general size, even though ‘general’ was not an adequate description for the exhaustive status ranking system of the unicorn Royals where not only the number of baths, bedrooms, salons, music rooms and birdhouses were counted, but the specific instruments inside the music rooms, the types of birdhouses, etc… There was also a multiplier effect as to altitude, although after a series of excessively high flagpoles with huge flags in the area had become a hazard to pegasi navigation, Princess Celestia had put one gold-clad hoof down quite solidly in that regard. Still, a small manor higher on the mountain in the Heights was worth more ‘points’ than a large manor next to earth pony dominated Central, and absolutely nopony who was anypony in the Unicorn Royals would be caught dead considering a mansion around Cliffside where the Pegasi Royals congregated.

So in that regard, Green Grass’ childhood home was ‘average’ for the lower Canterlot Royals, sufficiently low enough that the upper crust could pretend they were not even in the same pie, and high enough that the lower crust could still curry favor and pretend to the crusty heights of living that they would never reach. A mere four stories tall and barely wide enough for a both a well-lit conservatory and an extremely small ballroom on the first floor, it had certain meritorious features that Green Grass’ mother, Spring Fresh, was more than happy to detail at the slightest urging. With both an antique harpsichord and glockenspiel (worth more points than a mere piano-forte) on the first floor, the main living quarters for the baron on the second floor, rooms for the children on the third, and a sparsely populated servants quarters on the fourth, one would think bragging rights were thin, but Lady Spring was able to push those small selling points with the skill of an expert real estate agent until a visitor was unsure if they were being given the tour or being evaluated for a possible sale.

It was the attic of the old house that had Twilight Sparkle’s attention this morning, although ‘attention’ was thready and ‘morning’ might be disputed by one Royal sister not willing to release her night yet and one Royal sister who was still soundly asleep. There was a significant difference between ‘early-rising’ and ‘carried out of bed while still sleeping and waking up in the dusty attic of an old house with your husband-to-be so deep in an old chest that all you could see was his cute plot.’ The faint rustle and clunk of his fellow conspirators at various distances disturbed the dusty air in accordance to what she vaguely remembered as Green Grass’ plan for searching the attic for the rather odd artifact, although it appeared that the chest that Greenie had tackled was just slightly larger than he had expected.

From Spike’s delighted voice, the little dragon was somewhere nearby in the maze of dusty boxes and tarp-covered objects, having discovered a treasure trove of comic books, and the slightest push to a tracking spell she had put on the saddlebags of their appointment secretaries revealed the scheming duo a few aisles away, but what truly seized Twilight’s attention and brought her out of her drowsy musing was the welcome aroma of fresh coffee drifting up to her nose.

She staggered to her hooves, floating the hefty foam container of coffee up to her lips and taking a long, long drink. Liquid energy pooled in her belly, surging out to her limbs and horn, and eventually as she slurped down the foamy bottom of the coffee mug, lifting both eyelids to sharpen her view.

It was a very nice view. Greenie was easy on the eyes, no matter which end she looked at. Dropping the expended foam coffee container to one side, she picked up the second one (because Greenie was uncommonly well-trained) and took a much shallower sip.

The foal is going to be born wanting to nurse out of a Starbucks cup.

“Oh, good. You’re up, dear.” Green Grass’ back legs wriggled in a futile attempt to get out of the large chest, finally stopping and asking, “Dear?”

She levitated him out of the chest with a yawn and looked around the dusty attic, or at least as far as she could see in the box-strewn corridors. “Any luck?”

“You bet, Twilight,” came the voice of Spike from several rows over. “Silver age and some of the limited editions. They even have the original origin story for the Power Ponies.”

“Be careful with them, Spike,” called out Green Grass over the piles of boxes. “Those are probably Regal’s. I wondered where Mom had stuck them when he went off to college.”

“Actually I stuck them up here, Greenie. Hello, Princess Twilight,” said Martel Chandler, Green Grass’ father as he huffed up the narrow staircase into the attic. “His mother wanted to throw them away, but I can remember when my mother threw out my first collection of oak leaves, and nopony deserves that.”

“You collected leaves too?” Twilight Sparkle lit up with a broad smile.

“All kinds. I think I even have a few Library Oak leaves from Ponyville.” Green Grass’ father yawned. “They’re a vanishing breed, I’m afraid. So what brings my beautiful future daughter to our humble home this—” he made a show of checking his watch “—hour of night?”

“Dad!” Green Grass kissed Twilight with a grin. “Stop trying to cozy up to the princess.”

“Greenie said something about looking for something for the masked ball tonight or something…” Twilight trailed off and took an additional slurp of coffee to reignite sleepy brain cells.

“It’s nothing, Dad. I just thought I might be able to find that crafts project I made back in fifth grade. You remember? The tiara?”

Martel chuckled and cast a mischievous look at Twilight. “Who could forget?” Momentarily wiping the grin away from his face, but leaving the twinkle in his blue eyes, the older unicorn continued, “My talented and handsome young son had a school project where everypony in his class got to construct a crown for Mother’s Day. His siblings got him to model it for them. They took pictures.”

“Dad!”

“I think I still have them in the family photo album. Would you like to see them?”

Dad!” Green Grass held his hooves loosely over Twilight’s ears. “Pay no attention to my old and quite senile father, Dear. In fact, I’m not sure this really is my father. Maybe some elderly stranger has wandered into our house and is just making up tall-tales of my foalhood.”

“You were eight,” said Martel with a wink as he turned his back and trotted down a dusty attic corridor. “Besides, once I heard you were dating Her Highness—”

“Twilight!” said Twilight. “Please.”

“—I put all of our photo albums into the house safe,” the baron finished. “Ah, here we go.”

Flipping aside a thick tarp revealed a rather heavy chest, which eventually yielded to the baron’s magical touch and opened up. “Your mother put a number of the children’s little projects in storage up here. I don’t think I’ve looked through it in years.”

A welter of small cardboard boxes and tissue-wrapped bundles were gently levitated out of the chest as Green Grass rummaged, slowing as he peeked inside their protective shells. “Hey, Dad. Here’s that coffee cup I made for you. And the nametags for your school visit.” He examined a crinkling piece of yellowing paper with a distinct sniffle before hoofing it over to Twilight and returning to his search.

“You were quite the poet,” said Twilight, trying not to laugh. “I wouldn't have even thought of rhyming ‘effervescence’ with ‘quintessence’ when writing a poem about my mother. Are all of these yours?” She gestured at the growing collection of small bundles that had been removed from the chest.

“It was a very crafty school,” said Green Grass, pausing as he tried to stuff a few pieces of dislodged macaroni back into a bag. “Come to think of it, nearly all of this is mine, Dad. Where’s everpony else’s stuff? Or am I secretly an only child?”

“You’ll have to ask your mother. Ah, this looks promising.” The baron’s soft blue magic unwrapped a glittery assembly of twisted wires that had been extracted from inside a cardboard shoebox. The words ‘#1 mOm’ could be discerned, if squinted at carefully, and little flakes of glitter released by the age-weakened glue fluttered down as the baron turned it in his magic for inspection.

Twilight gently picked the tangle of wires up from her future father-in-law’s magic and lifted it to her own head, placing her horn inside the exaggerated ‘O’ of the front and resting the assembly on her head. “How do I look?” she asked, taking in the look of suppressed laughter from Martel and the admiring grin from Green Grass.

That’s why I fell in love with you, Dear. You’re the spitting image of my mother. Except purple where she’s yellow, gently rounded where she’s skinny, and feathered where she’s bare.”

“Son, I’m surprised you’ve lived this long if you’re going to use the words ‘gently rounded’ to your future wife.” As their two appointment secretaries came around the corner, escorting Spike with his arms full of comic books, the baron began to pack the collection of youthful memories back into the chest while shaking his head. “You’re not seriously going to let Princess Twilight Sparkle wear that ratty old thing to Fancy Pants’ Costume Ball, are you?”

“Nope!” declared Green Grass, delicately removing the tiara and storing it back in the cardboard box. “I’m wearing it.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The stubby pencil scratched across the boxes of the Canterlot Times crossword puzzle, leaving little trails of illegible letters behind as Stuffy Fossil proceeded to close in on his lifetime goal of completing the puzzle before he erased through the newsprint like normal. Today was particularly easy, since Seven Across, ‘Disguised as something else’ turned out to actually be ‘Costumed’ as he had guessed, but Four Down was giving him troubles. ‘Also Royalty’ was supposed to be nine letters long, but ‘Unicorn’ was only seven, and even ‘Unicorns’ stretched it out to eight. ‘Alicorn’ had the same issue, and even ‘Pegasus’ shortened when turned into a plural. Even ‘changeling’ was ten. Maybe it was a badly-spelled Griffon. Gryphon? Griphthon? No.

The tinkle of the bell above the office door stirred a sense of annoyance in the elderly civil servant. There had just been somepony in the front office just yesterday, and now there was another one. He tried to ignore the annoying customer, but the insistent ringing of the bell made his horn ache as he erased yet another misspelled word in the crossword puzzle, and eventually he put on his official hat to go tell off the bell-ringing idiot in person.

“We’re closed for lunch!” snapped Stuffy as he poked his head out of his office and regarded the two unicorns standing at the counter. The shorter of the two, Lord Green Grass if Stuffy remembered the name correctly, and he always did, stopped yanking the door open and closed under the little bell and turned with a broad and totally fake smile.

“Curator Fossil! I just wanted to drop by and tell you the good news. I found a coronet to wear at my wedding, so you don’t have to dig up one of those old crowns out of storage. Isn’t that good news?”

“Wonderful,” groused the elderly unicorn. “Enjoy your wedding, sir. The door is right over—”

“But I knew how busy things are going to get after the wedding,” continued Green Grass, just as smooth as if he were selling life insurance to a terminally ill cancer patient, “so I wanted to get the paperwork out of the way for storing my wedding coronet once Cartiara’s jewelry store delivers the permanent replacement. After all, there will be historical significance to it by then. Only the second Prince Consort coronet in centuries, and I think Shining Armor plans on keeping his in the Crystal Empire, like he’s ashamed of it or something.”

Stuffy paused in his shuffling progress back to his office and the incomplete crossword before turning for the filing cabinet and heaving a thick sheaf of papers onto the counter. “Let me get you the paperwork, sir, and you can pay the filing fee now. That way you can properly store it in the Vault when you’re ready. What kind is it?”

“Well, it’s… Hm. I’m really not certain. I brought it along, and you’re the expert, so you can tell me.” The pale green stallion took a rather ragged cardboard shoebox that his servant levitated to him and placed it on the counter, where Stuffy peeled back the protective tissue paper and stood in shocked terror at what was revealed.

“That… It’s a… What…”

“Do you like it?” Green Grass picked up the tangled mass of wires and held it in his hooves, ignoring the little flecks of gold paint and glitter that flaked onto the spotless counter. “I thought about going into jewelry design when I was little, but I never was able to—”

“What kind of sick abomination is that!?” blurted out Stuffy, managing to point a hoof at the… thing and wondering if he should grab a fire extinguisher or a flyswatter to beat it to death before dropping it into a trash can.

“Well, since you wouldn’t let me borrow one of the failed House Minor’s regalia for the wedding, even with permission from Princess Celestia and Luna, I decided to use one from our family. One that I actually made, in fact.” Green Grass placed the tangled wire tiara on the counter and rotated it around so that Stuffy Fossil could see the wobbly ‘#1 mOm’ on the front.

“You can’t be serious!” Stuffy pointed at the piece of trash and backed up a step. “It’s… It’s…”

“It’s the coronet that I’m going to wear at my wedding to Princess Twilight Sparkle,” said Green Grass with a tight smile. “In front of the entire court and every diplomat that Equestria can fit into the castle gardens. And when anybody asks me about it, I plan on telling them the truth. That I came here. That I talked to you, Head Curator Fossil. And you turned me down. By the end of the day, I don’t think there will be a living creature in Canterlot who won’t know the story.”

“They’ll have my head,” gasped Stuffy. “I’ll be fired! I’ll be worse than fired, I’ll be—”

“Famous,” said Green Grass, idly buffing a rusty wire on the tiara and endangering its structural integrity by some significant value.

“Y-you’re bluffing!” stammered Stuffy.

“Master Green Grass does not bluff,” said Papercut with a resigned tone, stepping up to the counter. “If you persist in your recalcitrance, in seven days time, Princess Celestia will be placing that—” Papercut shuddered and looked away from the collection of wires “—thing on his head in the middle of the second and possibly last Royal Wedding of our lifetime.”

“It’ll be a disaster,” whispered Stuffy. “The Princess will be a laughing stock.”

“She’s immortal,” said Papercut just as levelly as if he were discussing which wine to serve with dinner. “She will outlive it. Master Green Grass simply does not care what the Royals think of him, and Princess Twilight…” Papercut paused, his lips pursed as if he had bitten into a lemon. “She has become corrupted by his entirely inappropriate sense of humor. Were it not for the fact that she already possesses a crown, I believe she would wear it to her wedding.”

“We could trade, I suppose.” Green Grass paused to consider. “No, tourmaline is just not my color of gemstone.”

Stuffy trembled, first looking at the lunatics who had escaped from the asylum and taken refuge in his peaceful office, then down at the creamy pieces of paper embossed with the Royal Sun and Moon symbols that Green Grass pushed in his direction. He wanted to believe it was all a bluff, but both of the unicorns looked deadly serious, and the servant even seemed somewhat desperate at the thought that his master would voluntarily debase himself in that uncouth fashion. The letters were an easy out, a Royal Excuse, as it were. As much as he was reluctant to release one of the treasures in the Vault to the unwashed hooves of the nobles⁽*⁾ for public display and possible damage, the alternative would be far worse. A scandal like this could cause all of the Royals to withdraw their carefully-preserved regalia from the security of the Vault. Some might even be stolen. Or lost. Or even — he shuddered — worn.
(*) Stuffy Fossil was of the opinion that collectables were meant for collecting, not for pawing over and waving about. In his home, he had a large temperature controlled storage unit with over a thousand sealed comic books, unique toys, and first edition books, all of which had been retained in an unopened and pristine condition for decades. It was quite fortunate that he was not married.

“I suppose with proper security, the office might permit a public display of one of the lesser pieces,” he started, picking up the letters in his magical field and giving a quick read through them in hopes of finding a loophole. “Some of them are quite elegant and are insufficiently exposed to the public for the amount of crafting talent that has gone into their creation.”

“No,” said Green Grass. “Something simple, that I pick. No gem-encrusted fancy and heavy golden neckbreaker. A coronet, preferable in the late Eponox style.”

Stuffy Fossil regarded the green stallion through narrowed eyes. “I’ll be the judge of that. I am the expert, after all. First, we'll need to measure the length of your horn."

“That’s easy.” The light green stallion swept his hat off to reveal a very round and extremely hornless head. “Zero.”

Stuffy was speechless. The servant, less so.

“You really should quit doing that, sir,” chided Papercut.

“Why?”

“Well.” Papercut considered his words while Stuffy just sat and blinked. “Eventually you’re going to trigger a heart attack.”

“Naa,” scoffed Green Grass. “Your heart is nice and strong. I read your file.”