The oaken door latched shut behind her as the last of her classmates filed out. Diamond Tiara looked around at her twenty or so classmates that had accompanied her to “Twilight Time” with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. All of them moped down the street to their respective homes.
“The princess should be ashamed,” a voice said next to her ear. “Look – Rumble is so depressed that the clouds he flies near are turning grey! No princess should be allowed to get away with hurting so many young ponies like that.”
Diamond Tiara stood on the doorstep to Twilight’s library. She didn’t move, and she didn’t reply to Silver Spoon’s comments.
“And telling us to leave? I mean, we’re practically the next best thing to royalty, right Tiara?” Silver Spoon turned to her and waited for a moment.
“Right?”
“It doesn’t matter now!” Diamond Tiara snapped. Silver Spoon’s input was nice sometimes, but sometimes she just didn’t know when to keep quiet. Spoony had no idea how bad it was going to be for her when she got home to mother. Grounded for weeks, certainly, but for blowing an opportunity to associate with a princess? She could kiss her allowance goodbye forever, for one, and she would probably be given menial chores to do every day, like she was “some common pony”. Her mother had a way with twisting actions and words that just sent a chill down her spine when she thought about it.
A single, tiny drop of rain hit the side of her muzzle.
Silver Spoon just slanted her head. “What do you mean, Tiara?”
She glared back at Silver Spoon. “Leave me alone!” With that, she turned away and started off for her own home. It didn’t take her long to find herself inside the iron fence of one of Ponyville’s largest and most decadent manors, especially since the Rich family lived reasonably close to the center of town. Phrases that her mother had uttered about being “close to the center of things” briefly swam about as she paused in front of the door.
She knew what would be on the other side. The door was now the only thing standing between her and her mother’s endless disappointment and ire. She took a hesitant breath. If she didn’t open the door, then she wouldn’t have to greet her mother, she wouldn’t have to tell her how she blew her golden opportunity to associate with Princess Twilight Sparkle, and she wouldn’t be grounded for a small eternity.
She sighed.
As much as she wished that things would stay normal, and that she could forget that Twilight Time ever happened, time was marching on with or without her. She would have to open the door eventually. She decided against a smile. Anything incongruent with Princess Twilight Sparkle’s upset dismissal of her and Silver Spoon, alongside the rest of the class, might just give her mother the idea that she was trying to play her. The last time that she had done that, when Spoiled Rich realized it, she had been torn between delight in her daughter’s manipulation, and her four or five most favorite punishments.
She held out a hoof and turned the ornate brass handle on the door to her home. As it swung open, she laid eyes on the harbinger of her demise. Her dread of the moments to follow stole away her will, and a deep chill set in her bones. If she had other options, she might have given way to the urge to run. She didn’t, though. She was her mother’s daughter, beholden to the expectations of Equestria. Even if she ran, she had no way to escape her mother’s wrath.
“Hello, mother.”
As expected, Spoiled Rich was standing in the foyer, as she did often when her precious daughter returned from school. “Hello, dear. How was Twilight Time?” The words were soft-spoken and accompanied with a smile, but they were anything but warm.
Diamond Tiara’s throat locked for a moment. This was exactly the moment that she didn’t want to happen. One deep breath later, she forced the words out. “The princess cancelled it.”
Her mother’s smile was gone.
She continued a little more. “She was angry that nopony was there to learn anything.”
“And you just... let it happen? Surely you tried to convince her to let at least a few of you stay?”
Diamond Tiara hung her head. “No, mother.”
“Diamond Tiara.” Cold and sharp, her mother’s words bit hard. “Do you mean to tell me that you no longer have the good graces of Princess Twilight Sparkle, despite having such a wonderful chance to both earn them and show her that you’re more deserving of them than the rest of the class?”
A gulp. “Yes, mother.”
“Have I not told you about the importance of associations with ponies of high status?”
She closed her eyes. “You have, mother.”
“Is the princess not a pony with an extremely high status?”
She could feel the daggers in her mother’s glare. “She is, mother.”
“And you cast all of that aside.” It clearly wasn’t a question. “You should never have let it come close to falling apart. You must always think several steps ahead. Subtle moves work far less conspicuously than direct manipulation, but they won’t work unless you make them soon enough. Clearly you did not.
“Common ponies don’t think far ahead. Common ponies don’t understand how important it is to have relations with significant ponies. Common ponies don’t put in the effort that it takes to form these relations. Clearly, you are thinking like a common pony.
“If you are thinking like a common pony, then you can spend the next few weeks acting like one.” Her mother took a moment to give her a look of disgust. “Go to your room.”
The next two weeks passed about as poorly as Diamond Tiara had expected. Any hope she had that her father might not go along with any punishments that her mother had planned out were dashed when he came home from work the first night with Randolph in tow. He told her that her allowance was suspended and that Randolph would be providing her with chores to do every day when she got home from school. To set the punishment in full motion, her mother laid out the details of her grounding at dinner, complete with a threat of taking away every one of her tiaras with no exception, even during school time, if she failed to comply with the entirety of her punishment, and “worse”, if she continued beyond that.
It took most of her energy to let out a barely-audible whimper and clear her plate of salad.
Helping Randolph was easily one of the most pointless pursuits in all of Equestria. Most of her chores involved dusting rooms, and those that didn’t involved wiping down the various smooth surfaces in the house that might collect smudges, smears, or spots. At the start of the second week, Randolph started assigning her to rooms that she had already cleaned. Then it was beyond pointless; it was just insulting.
There were still opportunities to blow off steam during school, though. The Cutie Mark Crusaders had a hoof in messing up Twilight Time, and she had no qualms with reminding them of that fact from time to time. Even so, their reactions stopped providing her with much satisfaction after the second or third time, when it looked more like eye-rolling than embarrassed squirming. After that, she and Silver Spoon reverted to teasing them about their endless lack of cutie marks, which never failed to elicit some form of satisfying response.
Telling Silver Spoon about her punishments was hard, mostly because she didn’t have a lot of time after school, and absolutely nopony else could know. Silver Spoon was a liability for the second fact, but after a couple of days of indirectly emphasising it, she was reasonably certain that it wouldn’t slip out of her friend’s occasionally loose-hinged jaw. The effort that it took was annoying, but it was refreshing to have at least somepony on her side.