Chapter Eight: The Wait
At Twilight’s suggestion, we left the castle and are now standing outside of it, waiting for her lie-sensitive friend to arrive. I experiment with how to sit as a quadruped. Bending my two back legs and extending my two front limbs seems to work. “What’s it like to sit now that you’re transformed?” the Princess asks.
“Somewhat odd,” I muse. She watches me for a while, as if expecting more of a response. I won’t give any. After getting used to walking on four legs, sitting with them is not all that interesting. It hasn’t distracted me from the approaching problem of the question that will be put to me, however. Am I evil?
Twilight sighs, “That’s it?” I give a nod. “When Celestia said you were from another world, I guess I didn’t think you’d be this boring.” Me, boring?! I shall display how incredibly inaccurate that is!
“I’m hardly boring,” I proclaim, “My company is building a hotel in space!”
Twilight shrugs, “Did you design the hotel?”
“No.”
“Will you help build it?”
“No.” I can see where this is going, but I don’t believe I have a way to alter the course of the conversation.
“Was it your idea?”
“No.”
“You’re still boring,” she decides. How infuriating. Just because the hotel is not something I’m personally involved in executing, she thinks I can’t take credit for how interesting it is.
Searching for something interesting about myself, I come up with, “I had experience building hotels on the ground.” At this Twilight looks up and smiles.
“Finally, something about you!” she says.
I decide to elaborate, “My whole business began when I renovated a cheap building into a hotel. I worked at an antique shop nearby, but the repairs took more than ten months with my salary there. I got a better-paying job working at the ice cream aisle of a grocery store, and used what I could from it to eventually build my next hotel. I opened it and in the same manner built a five hotel chain. It was small, but it was all my hard work.”
Twilight nods, “That sounds like the time Applejack and her family worked hard and made enough cider for everypony. I knew you had a good side!” A good side that profited significantly from the chain once it grew beyond five hotels. Those were the days, living a truly carefree existence when I was wealthy enough for some comforts but not to the degree that I had a mansion yet. I originally thought expanding my business would further ameliorate my living conditions, but it also came with a set of problems. “We’ll see how big that side is now!” Twilight yells with a bit too much exuberance. I sigh and look over to where the dragon servant is returning. It would do me some good to appraise the lie-detecting friend of the princess. She’s orange and wearing a cowboy hat. Somehow I never suspected that there were country ponies in Celestia’s paradise, but apparently she can tolerate them better than I. However, it is possible I am judging the situation without enough information. At least she doesn’t have an-
“Howdy y’all!”-accent. I dislike accents with a passion. They make it so difficult to understand people!