- - - ch 14 Day 5 part 2 - - -
Tiger Lily trailed behind the prince. With her dad and Lentil trotting ahead, she didn’t want Clover to fall behind and get lost. She really didn't want to have to go looking for him if he wandered off. The museum was tucked between both the palace and the college, and the idea of having to go into either scared her. Fortunately, he was keeping pace just behind her sister.
As they approached the entrance to the museum's massive lobby, Tiger walked closer to the others. The place always intimidated her, even if most the of skeletons were just models.
The house-sized beasts didn’t bother Clover. He was almost giddy as he trotted around, looking up at the giant skeletons looming above them. He paused a moment when they walked beneath a dragon’s ribs. He seemed to recognize the creature, or at least be appropriately intimidated by it. “What is?” he asked, looking to her dad for an answer.
“Dragon,” he said, carefully pronouncing the word.
The prince tilted his head in confusion. “Spike dragon. Spike no…” Clover’s voice trailed off, shrugging, he pointed to the giant skeleton.
“Who’s Spike?” Lentil asked.
“He’s the baby dragon that lives with Princess Twilight,” her dad answered.
Tiger looked around. Spotting a colorful plaque, she motioned for Clover to follow her over to it. Stepping aside, she watched him study the pictures of various dragons and their growth cycle. Clover looked from the pictures to the skeleton with an expression of disbelief. Stepping back, he got a better view of the life-sized model, then mumbled something she couldn’t understand. Taking his eyes away from the dragon, the prince looked around at the smaller skeletons that were also on display, then trotted off to look at the manticore.
“Where should we go first?” her dad asked, following the prince.
Lentil bounced on her hooves. “I want to see the stuff about the minotaur war.”
Green Bean chuckled. “We can do that. What do you want to see, Tiger?”
“I’m fine,” she said, trotting to catch up to the prince.
Catching her with a hoof, her dad pulled her into a soft hug. “I’m the foalsitter here. You relax and have fun. Now, I know you wanted to see the new Princess Platinum exhibit.”
“If we have time…” Tiger tried not to sound too excited.
Green went over and nudged the prince, motioning for him to follow. “We’ll go there on the way to see the military section.”
Along the way, they paused to let Clover explore the history of magic section. Clover seemed fascinated with every little thing there, but none of them really knew what they were looking at. Even the display on earth pony magic was alien to her. Green tried to explain a bit of it, but Lentil was anxious to move on to the more interesting rooms.
Around the corner, the ornate entrance to the new exhibit shone. Tiger grinned at the displays she could already see. Accent furniture and gleaming gems begged for her attention. Trotting forward a bit, she stopped to look back at her family and Clover.
“Go on, we’ll catch up,” her dad said, grinning and waving her forward.
Smiling back, Tiger walked up to the little sign hung at the exhibit's entrance. “The Canterlot Museum would like to thank Princess Luna for donating these artifacts from her personal effects,” it read.
Tiger again looked back at the prince, suddenly imagining him at home, eating off plates from the pre-unification era. She had to giggle at the thought. Turning, she wandered into the dimly lit room.
Inside, Tiger skipped from one display to the next. There were so many beautiful things here, and all of them from the time of the unification: a few pieces even had damage from windigos. Rounding a corner, she found Clover studying Princess Platinum’s crown. It was far different than how it always looked in the plays. Instead of the heavy lobed thing she was familiar with, it was platinum lace that crested to a point, with only a single gem decorating the crown. Sitting on the crown’s peak was an uncut sapphire which looked like a chunk of summer sky.
“It’s really pretty, isn’t it?” she asked Clover.
Prince Clover tilted his head, giving her a confused look. Tiger felt silly for a moment, she knew he couldn't understand her. Looking around she spotted her dad, watching them from the corner. He had the stern look that he always pretended to have when he was working as a guard. She couldn’t find her sister, though.
Clover stood, and walked over to a corner, where an old wall clock hung behind glass. Much to her surprise, it was still running. Giving the crown one last look, Tiger joined Clover by the clock. It was a simple thing of wood and brass, but there was still an elegance to it. The amazing part, was that it still ticked. Sitting down, she closed her eyes, and focused on the clock’s ticking. Once, long ago, Princess Platinum had listened to that very same sound. Who knows who else had also listened to it.
Movement beside her made Tiger open her eyes, only to find her sister staring at her with a silly grin.
“What ya doin’ in the corner with Clover?” Lentil asked in singsong voice.
Tiger blushed, suddenly aware of how close she was sitting to Clover. “We… I was just looking at the clock.”
Lentil giggled. “Sure…”
“Don’t be mean, he’s our guest.” Tiger said.
Lentil rolled her eyes. “Relax. He can’t understand me, and I was just picking on you. Did you see the scepter? It’s pretty cool,” she said, motioning towards the mentioned artifact.
“No,” Tiger said. She hadn’t yet ventured into the little rooms that made up the center of the exhibit. Looking towards where her sister had pointed, she started to stand, but as soon as she turned her head, something touch her cheek.
In front of her, Lentil’s face was scrunched up like she had just seen something gross. It was only when the soft touch moved away, that Tiger realized that Prince Clover had just kissed her cheek, and was now prancing away from them, innocently humming some tune.
“Eww…” Lentil said, her face still contorted.
Tiger stood, and let her mind wrap around what just happened, then giggled. Clover had understood more than what her sister had thought. Without looking back at Lentil, she trotted off to the inner rooms, to see the scepter her sister had mentioned.
Navigating the chain of rooms, Tiger studied all the little artifacts along the way. These were the personal things that used to make up a pony’s daily life; many of them looked no different to what was in her own home. Along the way Clover found her again, but moved on, seemingly uninterested in the personal effects. Her sister also passed by, making sure she had seen the scepter, before vanishing out of sight.
Walking away from the last display, Tiger looked again for Clover and her family. Out in the main exhibit room, she found them standing near the exit. She felt a bit bad for having made them wait. Her sister was obviously antsy to move on, while Clover entertained himself with some little interactive display just out in the hall.
“Sorry,” she said, trotting up to them.
Lentil perked up, her boredom vanishing in an instant. “Can we go see the armor now?”
“I’m ready if you all are,” Green said.
Clover perked up, leaving the interactive map, he stood beside them, waiting for somepony to move.
The military wing was a small museum unto itself. There wasn’t much here to hold Tiger’s attention, but her dad liked reading the journals kept here from soldiers long ago, and her sister couldn't get enough of the shiny brass and steel. The long line of uniforms dating back to before the unification were neat, but she’d seen them enough that they were now familiar.
She didn’t complain though. As Lentil trotted off to look at a collection of swords and spears, she watched Clover trail slowly behind her. The weapons seemed to captivate him, but he didn’t study each blade like Lentil did. Rather, he looked the collection over as a whole, with a mix of curiosity and revulsion.
Leaving the others to meander about the exhibit, Tiger made her way to a wall covered in pins and buttons. She’d never really paid them any attention in the past. Medals, insignias, awards, and common buttons alike were arrayed on the wall. A little note beneath each one told a story about where it had come from. Some found, some donated; they all spoke of a powerful moment in some pony’s life.
After studying a few dozen labels, Tiger’s head hurt from all the reading. Many of the words were strange to her, and all the text small. Turning from the wall, she went over to where her dad was watching Lentil and the prince stroll between the armor-covered ponyquins.
“Anything interesting?” Green asked.
Tiger nodded. “Some of them.” Taking a seat next to her dad, she let her mind wander. Her sister’s voice would occasionally snap her out of a daydream, as Lentil cooed or commented on one thing or another. She had almost fallen asleep on her hooves, when her dad’s voice called her out of her stupor.
“About time to go,” he said, then waved at Clover and Lentil to come along.
Tiger stood up along with her dad, and followed him over to the exit. Clover and Lentil both caught up to them before they were half way to the door. While she was sleepy, her sister and Clover were buzzing with energy. It was a contagious energy that ate at her sleepiness, but it was the crisp air outside that finally woke her up.
Feeling better, Tiger trotted up to her sister’s side. “See anything cool?”
Lentil beamed a smile, and started to say something, but a snowball whizzing over her head interrupted her. They shared a puzzled look for a heartbeat, before tracing the snowball’s path back to its origin, only to find Clover readying a second. Grinning at each other, both sisters dove towards the deep snow, and gathered the biggest ammunition they could.
Green Bean halted in his tracks, as snowballs began lobbing across the street. For every one that Clover was throwing, he was getting hit with three. The colt was laughing at every moment of it though. It was a truly foalish laughter, something that made him want to laugh along with him. Thinking two against one wasn’t fair, Green decided to make it a game of colts against fillies.