Everypony, no matter their gender, race, or position, has had a bad day, and Blueblood was not an exception to this rule. He might have been of royal blood, and he might live in a castle with servants and all of the bits that he could ever need, but he had his good and bad days just like any other pony, and some of those bad days were worse than others. Way worse.
After he and Fleur had taken their unexpected flight through the air in their little row boat, Blueblood had somehow managed to break his leg in three places as he and Fleur crashed bow-first into a maple tree. With a broken leg and in a great deal of pain, the prince had had to drag himself away from the tree and toward Shining Armor, who had been helpful enough to carry him all the way to the castle, where a cast for his leg, an irate Princess Luna, a worried Cadance and Celestia, and a concerned Anny had been waiting for him.
Unable to get out of bed or do anything productive at all— like find Fleur because she had somehow managed to disappear after they had crashed into that tree— he could do only one thing to help stave off the crippling boredom in between the parts of the day when his friends and family members visited him: think. But, after everything that he had happened, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
Why couldn’t he have talked down Fleur sooner? Where and the heck had the supermodel gone? Was she alright? Was she someplace safe? Why in the name of all that was holy did he agree to get in that stupid boat?! And who and the hay had thrown them into the air like that?! When were those nurses going to come back into his room and give him more of that horrible healing potion?
These questions and more ravaged the poor prince’s mind and even body. He had trouble sleeping, he barely talked to anypony when they visited him and if he did he was short-tempered and harsh, and everyday he was eating less and less as he worried more and more while wallowing in his own self-pity and guilt. In his mind he believed he could have done something, anything, to stop what had happened from happening. He should have never let Cadance talk him into going along with Fleur. He should have told Anny and Celestia that Fleur was going to try to ruin their date. And he shouldn’t have gotten into that stupid boat!
And if that wasn’t enough he had no idea where Fleur was or if she was even okay. If his broken leg was any indication, there was a good chance that Fleur didn’t walk away from that crash unscathed, and even if she did where was she going to go? Princess Luna still had a warrant out for Fleur’s arrest so she couldn’t openly walk about the city without the guards swarming her, she couldn’t go back to her mansion since the place was being watched and had been boarded up tight, and there was no way in Tartarus that any of the other nobles were going to take her in with a bounty on her head.
And was Fleur going to lay low and wait for cooler heads to prevail? Of course not! In her eyes she had been wronged by Celestia, and even if everything was stacked against her there was no way in heck that the supermodel was going to back down. She was going to try again and again and again to win Anny over and rub it in his aunt’s face, and she probably wasn’t going to stop until somepony got hurt!
...Well, somepony other than him...
He would have gone completely bonkers in his bed if it wasn’t for the visits that be received every day. Some days it’d be Luna, other days it might be Shining or Cadence, and maybe once or twice a random noble might come in to see how he was doing, but no one else visited him as much as Celestia and Anny did. At least once or twice a day the two would be knocking on his door to see him. And, even though he appreciated their visits (they always made the day seem to go by quicker) it left him in a bit of a bind when they wanted to know exactly how he had up and broken his leg out of the blue like he did.
Even on a good day Blueblood was not the best of liars, especially when he had to lie to his aunt, a thousand year old being that had seen and heard it all and had the almost supernatural ability to tell if a pony was lying to her or not. But, somehow, someway, the prince had managed to make up a semi-believable story about how he slipped on an ice cube and fell down the stairs!
...Well, actually, both Celestia and Anny thought that his lie had been a bunch of horseapples the second he told it, but he had insisted that that was what had happened and Cadence had stepped in and vouched for him, so the two had no other choice but to believe him. So at least that was something!
With his story now believed (though he could tell that his aunt still took it with a huge grain of salt), Blueblood had reflected, as the days drew on and Anny and Celestia continued to see how he was doing, on how hopeless Fleur’s “quest” was. The human and alicorn were now practically glued to each other now after their first date had been a success. They laughed and joked and smiled far more than two average people should, they were always sitting or standing next to each other whenever they visited him, and Blueblood could have sworn that he had seen the two of them holding hands/hoofs as they were leaving his room one afternoon.
The air around them was charged with excitement and happiness, and even though their date had gone just a teeny bit wrong in the end the two of them, along with Cadence, Luna, Shining, and even Blueblood himself, considered it a smashing success. And, from what Blue could see, this was just the first of many happy and successful dates no matter what Fleur did to try to stop it.
And, seeing all of the lovey-dovey-ness happening between his aunt and Anny, Blueblood couldn’t help but feel a teeny bit... jealous.
Though he felt just a bit selfish, he wanted to feel what they were feeling right now. He wanted joy to sweep through him as he looked up and smiled at his special somepony, who was smiling back at him. He wanted to feel the butterflies flapping in his stomach whenever he and his special somepony shared a look or held hooves or just sat around talking the day away. He wanted to look that somepony in the eyes and feel happiness and comfort whenever he held them close...
Love, that’s what it was. That was what he wanted and that was what was happening before him. He might have been seeing it from a different perspective and he might be full of horseapples because it was far too early to call it that… but he had never seen his aunt look at anyone, anypony, or anything (even cake) like she looked at Anny. And if it was love, Blueblood knew that Fleur would not come out of her “crusade” the same mare. She was already angry and bitter about what had happened, but what would happen after she realized that she was doomed to a human-less future?
What if—
“Hey Blue, you decent in there?”
Blueblood almost jumped out of his bed in fright as Anny poked his head through his bedroom door and stared at him with his usual bright, cheery smile. Without meaning to the prince hoisted his bed sheets a little higher on his chest, an angry frown on his face as he looked at the human.
“Don’t you ever knock Anny?” Blueblood demanded. “One of these times you poke your head through my door I might not be decent!”
“Well you are… so can I come in?”
“No you cannot!” the prince snapped, trying to shoo him away with a hoof. “ I’m more than a little irritated with your insistent barging into my bedroom at all hours of the day and I’d like to get a little sleep before those horrid nurses come back in here and terrorize me, thank you very much!”
Seeing a pouting prince glaring at him, Anny quickly showed the white stallion the carton of blackberries that he was holding. “I brought you something to snack on,” he said, giving the carton a little shake. “I know how much you love these things so I went down and got you a whole bunch.”
Blueblood’s frown deepened and his eyes narrowed as he stared at Anny, who continued to wiggle around his tasty bribe, before letting out a disgusted and defeated snort. “…You may come in if you’d like,” the prince mumbled, watching as Anny threw open the door and walked right in. “But I am not going to be happy about it…”
“So how’s my favorite prince doing?” Anny asked, dragging a chair over toward Blueblood’s bed and sitting himself down.
Blueblood, still frowning, ignored the human’s question and snatched the blackberries out of his hands. Licking his lips the princess then proceeded to cram a hoofful into his mouth, groaning in pleasure as he chewed. “Oh sweet Faust have I missed being able to eat something that isn’t drenched in healing potion,” he moaned, ignoring Anny’s chuckles as he inhaled his treat.
“I’d go easy on those, Blue,” Anny advised. “You’re going to mess your stomach up, and--”
“Then those blasted nurses can deal with me when the time comes. Now be quiet and let me eat my feast in peace, you wonderful human you!”
Anny frowned as Blueblood, realizing that stuffing the berries into his mouth wasn’t the most effective system of getting them into his pie-hole, proceeded to simply shove his muzzle into the carton.
“Why did you have to--eh, nevermind…”
Finishing the carton with a satisfied sigh after a minute or two, Blueblood dropped it onto the floor with a groan, patting his belly contently. “Faust bless you, Anny. I needed that,” the prince said, eyeing the human. “Now, what brings you here to my humble abode?”
“Celestia wanted me to come up to the castle for lunch and I decided to come up here to see how you were holding up,” Anny told him, looking over the unicorn expectantly. “So, other than all of the bad food and the whole ‘not being able to move’ thing, how are you doing?”
Blueblood couldn’t help but smile. While he would have believed that a few days ago, he knew for a fact that that was not the whole truth. While he was sure that Anny did care about how he was holding up it seemed to him that the human was trying to gather something from his visits. Blueblood knew that he had been a bit of a grump lately (more like a great big grump but to each his own) and one did not come back into an angry prince’s room day in and day out without wanting something.
What he wanted Blueblood hadn’t the slightest clue, but he was sure that Anny had his reasons for doing so… Though he wished that he’d just go ahead and spit it out if he wanted to know something.
“I’m doing fine, Anny.” Blueblood smiled. “How is my favorite human doing?” His smile turned just a teeny bit sly. “Did my aunt finally tell you when and where your next date is going to be or are the two of you just going to go ahead and skip to the wedding?”
To Blue’s delight, the human flinched, a bit of red coming to his cheeks. “She says that it’s going to be soon,” Anny muttered, trying to ignore the prince’s playful pokes to his shoulder. “She won’t tell me where we’re going but she got me to go and get fitted for a suit the other day so I’m thinking it’s a heck of a lot more fancy than what I did.”
There IS that orchestra coming to the city in a few days, Blueblood thought, giving Anny one last teasing poke before laying back into his bed. Maybe Auntie’s going to take him to that… show him a bit of the royal life and whatnot...
Anny frowned when he saw the calculating look in Blueblood’s eyes. “…Do you know where she’s taking me?”
Blueblood’s mouth twitched, but other than that his expression may as well have been made of stone. “No, I can’t say that I do.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am positive, Anny.”
“…Pinkie promise?”
The prince opened his mouth, only to shut it a moment later. After that an awkward silence filled the room, Anny trying to catch Blueblood’s eye while Blueblood did his best to look anywhere but Anny.
Sizing up the unicorn, Anny leaned forward in his chair. “Come on Blue, I know you know, or at least know that you think you know, so why don’t you be a bro and tell me?” He gave the prince his best puppy dog eyes. “It’ll help me get prepared for the date and everything. Please!”
While this might have been a perfectly reasonable, though a bit underhanded, request, Blueblood’s lips were sealed. Telling Anny what he thought about it might have been all right and in no way traceable to him if his aunt wasn’t a millennia old alicorn and was just a normal mare, but being related to one of the oldest and wisest creatures in the planet made what was normally a simple request into an impossibility. Or at the very least a dangerous request if Celestia really wanted this date to be a surprise.
Blueblood could almost see it now: his aunt would find out somehow that he had told Anny (even if his guess was wrong and they did something totally different), she’d be upset that her surprise was ruined, she’d come stomping into his room and yell the horn off his head, and bam! Straight to the moon.
So, for the sake of not becoming the first unicorn astronaut, the prince just shook his head. “I have no idea where you’re going and I couldn’t even begin to guess where she would take you!” he said, his voice laced his just a bit of fear. “Now why don’t you let me recuperate by getting out of my room and going to this lunch of yours!”
“But!--”
“OUT OUT OUT!”
Raising his arms up defensively, a disappointed Anny stood up. “Alright, no need to get upset, I was just asking,” he said, picking up the chair and carrying it back over to the table. “It’ll just have to be a surprise then…. Dang it...”
Feeling a little bad for snapping at the human like he did, Blueblood said, “Anny… just trust me that wherever my aunt is going to take you is going be wonderful; for her and for you… and… I apologize for yelling.” The prince looked down in shame. “ You came here to see how I was doing and I just start yelling at you…”
Anny smiled, walking back over to the prince and patting him on the head. “Hey, I’m sure I’d be grouchy too if I was cooped up in my bedroom for days at a time,” he said reassuringly. “So it’s no big deal, Blue.”
Giving the prince’s head a final pat, Anny looked up at the clock that Blueblood had on the wall. “Hey, I really do gotta go to lunch with the princess. See you tomorrow Blue!”
:…~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~...:
“—And as you can see, if we being the second stage of my proposal here in the winter then we can—“
Luna sighed as she shifted around her throne, trying her hardest not to outright yawn in front of her subjects out of sheer boredom. While she actually enjoyed attending court with her sister there were times when a mare or stallion would bring in something that was as worthless and boring as it was time-wasting. And, to her horror, this looked like one of those times.
“--And after we have the Pegasus team move the batch of clouds over to the eastern part of the city--”
It looked like one of those times times a thousand.
The stallion below her had been speaking for the past three hours and, by the life of her, Luna had no idea what the heck he was talking about. So she did what anypony would do in a situation like this: pretend to listen while she let her mind and eyes wander around the room.
She snorted when she saw a nobleman wearing a hat that may as well have been a helmet with a chicken on top of it, she frowned when she saw a stallion trying to force himself further along the waiting line (a discrete burst of magic put him in his place though), and she made sure to glare at a pair of guards who looked like they were about to sleep.
If she wasn’t going to contribute in… whatever this pony was saying she could at least make sure that the rest of the day court was running smoothly, something that required a lot of frowning, nudges with magic, and quiet, but angry, muttering to various guards. But, as she looked over at her sister, Luna couldn’t help but crack a smile.
Though Celestia was smiling like she always did when she had to go into “princess-mode”( a run-of-the-mill practiced fake smile) the big white mare looked and was acting a little different today from her usual act of caring ruler. Her eyes were glazed over slightly, she was tapping a hoof against the marble floor almost impatiently, and Luna, if she looked hard enough, could see her sister’s smile was a heck of a lot more forced than usual.
Tia must be doing something with Anny after this, she thought, hiding her smirk behind a mask of royal dignity.
Leaning over, Luna gave her sister’s side a poke. Taking another second to enjoy Celestia’s surprised ‘eep’ and slight jump, she said, “Dost thou have some place to be, sister mine?”
“What the hay’s wrong with you, Luna?” Celestia whispered/yelled with a bit of an embarrassed blush coming to her cheeks. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
Luna, ignoring her sister’s little outburst, smiled. “We apologize that we interrupted thy day dream, Celly,” she said with a mock bowing of the head. “We were simply wondering if thou were going to rush out of the room and furiously make out with young Anny.”
The Lunar Princess almost burst out laughing when she saw her sister stiffen in her seat and heard the squeak that escaped her lips, leaning in and waiting for her sister’s answer. During bore-fests like these one needed to make their own entertainment, and what better fun was there than teasing a family member?
Keeping her eyes glued onto the talking stallion, Celestia gave her sister a slight shove with her wing. Not enough to be noticeable to the ponies below them but it had enough to almost knock Luna off of her throne. Luna, ever the graceful princess, managed to recover herself with barely a stumble, poking her sister’s side with a hoof.
“Anny and Celly sitting in a tree—“
Celestia’s eyes widened in panic, though she somehow managed to make the rest of her appear calm, cool, and collected. “Luna! Shut your trap right this instant!” she demanded, trying to keep her voice to a whisper. “We’re in the middle of court right now and—“
“--K-i-s-s-i-n-g! First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes—“
Luna grunted in surprise when the back of her head was smacked with a wing, glaring up at her sister, who kept her eyes down and forward.
Now frowning slightly, she raised a wing of her own and retaliated, slapping her sister’s leg. Celestia answered with a hoof to the shoulder, which in turn Luna answered with a jab to the stomach. This quickly escalated until the two princesses were having the mother of all slap fights.
After a minute or two of the sister’s quiet grunting and the sounds of hooves hitting hooves filled the air, many ponies, noble guardsmen, and commoner alike, couldn’t help but notice the spectacle going on in front of them.
Each and every one of them reacted to this in different ways. Some of the nobles scoffed, looked on in horror, and even passed out for having witnessed their beloved rulers acting like a bunch of foals. To the nobles of Canterlot the great and powerful rulers of the sun and moon were not mere ponies. They stood as the pinnacle of the greatness of equine kind, and the pinnacles of equine kind weren’t supposed to be doing something like… this!
The guards, ponies who worked with and knew their princesses the best, either chuckled to themselves or smiled knowingly at each other. The sisters teased and pranked each other all the time around the castle so what they were seeing was nothing new to them. It might have been a bit odd that they were acting like this in front of the commoners and nobles, but nopony was getting hurt by their little slap fight and, to be fair, the stallion that was speaking was about as interesting as watching paint dry, so they just stood there and watched the whole scene unfold in front of them.
The common pony had the most diverse set of reactions when seeing their rulers act like a pair of children. Some started up at the alicorns in shock, some averted their gaze, others silently cheering the two on, and even a pony or three started taking up bets on who was going to win this impromptu duel.
And, to the surprise of everyone in the room, the stallion that was speaking still somehow didn’t notice what was going on in front of him and continued to speak about… whatever he was talking about.
Truly, this was a royal court for the ages.
“Luna! Stop this right now young lady!”
“Nay old hag! We will only concede when thou hast admitted to wanting to rain kisses upon Anny’s face!”
Celestia growled, eyes burning with righteous fury as she did her best to slap some sense into her sister. “You’re going to have diplomat greeting duty for the next dozen world summits for this, little sister!”
Luna just smiled her cheeky smile, weaving through her sister’s flailing hooves to boop her on the nose. “Then we have nothing to lose, Tia!” The crowd of ponies in the throne room let out a cheer as Luna let out a booming laugh. “Now, prepare for the slaps to be doubled! And—“
“Excuse me, your Majesties.”
Celestia and Luna froze, looking away from each other and toward the one of the guards, who looked like he was trying his hardest not to fall over laughing.
Still looking at one of her little ponies, ever the gentlemare, Celestia slugged her sister in the ribs before easing back into her seat and looked down at him.
“Yes, my little pony?” she said with a smile; a smile which only became wider when she saw her sister give her the stink eye while she rubbed her ribs.
“The court is about to adjourn in a minute or two. ”
Nodding and rising out of her seat, Celestia looked over to the crowd of ponies still waiting to be heard by her. “I’m sorry, my subjects,” she said apologetically. “But it appears that court is finished for the day. Please come again tomorrow and my sister and I would be more than happy to hear you. Good day to you all.”
The crowd groaned, bags of bits changing hooves as ponies quietly left the throne room.
Luna, still rubbing her side, said, “Yes, our dear subjects, we will see thee on the morrow. But now our sister has to go and—omph!”
~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_
Thunderlane trotted into his house with a weary sigh. Being Canterlot’s weather director was a tiring job but somepony had to do it, and Thunder happened to do it, and had been doing it, for many, many years.
Unlike like many of the other cities around the country, he and his crew were finely tuned machines, able to whip up a snowstorm or stop a tornado in the blink of an eye. Canterlot was where the country’s best and brightest came to live and work so it was obvious that even the weather team, a usually plain and simple job, needed to be stocked with the best of the best.
... Or so Thunder always told himself. Calling your weather team the best and a bunch of weather machines sounded a heck of a lot better than him and a bunch of lazy Pegasi who just flew around and tried to look like they were busy. Heck, to be honest his job wasn’t even that important in the grand scheme of things. He just needed to sign some weather forms and yell at a stallion or two…
But hey, that didn’t mean that he didn’t love his job any less! He loved his job and took it very seriously. It was the only thing that kept his bills paid after all, and being good at one's job tended to keep one’s higher ups from canning your fanny whenever they thought they could hire somepony else. And good at his job he was. Under his watch the weather in this fair city, and all of the little towns around it, was tightly scheduled and planned beforehand. The winds blew a certain way, there were only to be this many clouds in the sky during this part of the day, and it was only supposed to rain this hard on these days.
One would think that planning something out like this would take a lot of time and effort, and you’d be right. Scheduling for the weather was a horrible, faith-testing experience that Thunder did every single year and it made him hate one single thing more than anything else in the world: ponies trying to get him to change his weather schedule. He usually spent months working on the schedule, he’d lose sleep over the schedule, he’d have to make so many trips to Cloudsdale that he started to hate the place, and some love-struck mare would come up to him and ask him if he’d be kind enough to not have a rainstorm on this day, or maybe if he could have a teeny tiny snowstorm in the middle of June because she thought it’d be romantic! Needless to say, most ponies were practically thrown out of his office if he or she had the nerve to ask something like this.
Unfortunately for him, Princess Celestia was no average pony. The princess, not a messenger, not some official or even a noble, but the princess herself, had come down to his office to ask that he reschedule Saturday’s thunderstorm and just have a nice, bright sunny day. While he would have preferred to simply shout the princess out of his office, he had decided to keep his mouth shut and listen. She was the one that signed his paychecks every week and as a rule of thumb Thunder never bit the hoof that fed him. So, since she was an extra special case and somepony that he had to respect and treat like an equine, the old stallion had to sit down, offer the princess a chair and some tea, and tell her why he wasn’t going to do that and why she was dumb for even asking him to consider it.
Imagine his surprise when the princess had not only managed to talk him into it, by pulling a revised weather schedule from out of nowhere, but she had even offered to raise his and his staff’s wages for the next four months if he agreed!
So, as tired and grouchy as Thunder was, the stallion couldn’t help but smile as he set his old cap on his coat rack and trotted into his living room, wondering what the hay he was going to use all of his extra income on. The old prude in him considered saving a huge portion of it in his bed (aka the First National Bank of Thunder) but had been eyeing that new fishing boat that had come on the market a few weeks ago. He could get one of those, get a couple of days off, and head right up to Trottingham to get some bass finishing in while—
“Excuse me monsieur, might I have a moment of your time?”
Thunder froze, violently wrenched out of his fishing related thoughts as he frantically searched around for the phantom voice.
“Over here sir!” The voice almost sing-songed from the kitchen.
Though every instinct was telling him to turn around, run out the door, and go and get a couple dozen guards, Thunder found himself slowly making his way into his little kitchen. In there, instead of the ghost of burglar that he was expecting, was the famous model/noblemare Fleur de Lis sitting at one of his tables with two other equally beautiful mares, all whom were quietly drinking tea.
Faced with this impossible and surreal experience, Thunder said the only thing that came to his short-circuited mind.
“Umm… Hello?”
Fleur looked up from her tea, her eyes flashing briefly for a moment, smiling up at the stallion. “Oh, there you are, Mr. Thunder,” she said cheerfully while one of the mystery mares rose from her chair and started to walk toward him. “We were wondering when you were going to arrive home.”
Thunder, realizing that something was wrong with Fleur, these mares, and this whole situation on general, tried to take a step back away from the oncoming mare, but, to his horror, he found that he was rooted to the ground where he stood. He tried to open his mouth to say something when the beautiful mare that had been leisurely walking toward him had turned into something… else. Something black and bug-like and whose eyes he could look away from.
“My assistants and I would love to speak to you about something… If you don’t mind of course.”
##~~@@~~##
Celestia had always considered herself an upstanding and model princess, one that was always graceful always charming, and one that never rushed anywhere…. At least while in public… usually. One might be able to gallop away from their workplace after all the working was finished with a happy shout but that wasn’t her. When she was finished with her daily pile of paperwork and her daily crowd of complaining subjects she always left the throne room with an elegant smile on her face and at a leisurely pace.
And today was no different! She may have been walking a little faster than normal today to go and see Anny in the royal kitchens but she wasn’t running! It was more of a power walk really. To be fair though, she may have been a little excited about having finally completed all of the task necessary for her date to go smoothly. The tickets to the opera had been purchased—wonderful seats in the middle of everything— she had picked out a wonderful little eatery in the nicest part of the city, and she had even gotten outfits for both her and Anny. Now she just needed to go and tell him the good news.
This date is going to be wonderful, she thought as she made her way into the kitchen, smiling in delight when she saw Anny waving at her. A familiar warmth spread through her chest as the human smiled at her, Anny’s eyes teeming with happiness and delight as she made her way over toward him. It might not be what Anny did for me but hopefully it’ll be the next best thing.
After the two shared a hug, Celestia took a seat next to Anny before saying, “Oh, Hello Anny. I was wondering if you happened to be busy this weekend? Because I just so happened to have a pair of tickets to…”