She was cornered! Her tail pressed against a rock face and all around her advanced a green wall made of tall, hairy, spear-wielding vegetables. When they seized her, Tiara knew better than to try to beg for mercy; the Okra warriors were fiercely loyal to the Eggplant King. Without a doubt, she would be brought with all haste to his lair. Although the thought of being subject to his torture devices was frightening, it would at least mean that she would no longer have to endure the nauseating, slimy touch of the Okra warriors. She almost welcomed the speed with which they bore her.
The putrid smell of the gorgonzola moat surrounding the fat, top-heavy spires of Shitake Castle make her heart sink and her stomach churn. Every breath she took was a struggle to keep from retching. Only someone as revolting as the Eggplant King could stand to live with such a stench! But she did not have to hold her breath long, for crossing the gorgonzola moat led directly to the Mush Room and the Toadstool Throne of the Eggplant King.
The Okra warriors marched in the Mush Room and threw her down before the dark purple, ovoid body of the Eggplant King.
“So, we have the one who made our slaughter in vain. Why have you treated my brethren as garbage and considered us abhorrent?” The Eggplant King adjusted his gold stem-crown forward to give him a more severe appearance.
Tiara shrank under his angry glare. “I never meant offense, I- I just don’t like the flavor or texture. It makes me gag. It’s involuntary.”
“Liar!” He boomed, “You willfully spat us out and refused to make any serious attempts at accepting us as the nutritious and healthy food we are. We provided ourselves abundantly in your mother’s garden, yet you disdained our kind from the beginning!”
An Okra warrior placed a tray loaded with a plate full of fried okra and a steaming bowl of mushroom and eggplant soup in front of her.
“Yet we are still willing to forgive, if you will now accept our offering and eat all that is in front of you.” The Eggplant King said magnanimously.
Steam curled up from the tray and rose to her face as she tried to imagine the food before her was appetizing. The odors assaulted her next. Tiara gagged and pulled away. “I can’t!”
“You won’t even try!” The Eggplant King slammed his fist down, breaking off the side of the Toadstool Throne.
“No, it’s not that I won’t, it’s that I know that I can’t.”
“Enough!” The Eggplant King shot up from his throne. “Take her to the kitchen! Prepare her the same way she has done to all of our brothers before!”
Slimy hands grabbed her and lifted her up and carried her through a large door into the kitchen.
Tiara couldn’t even bring herself to protest. She was guilty of their accusations, and deserved everything that they wanted to do to her.
The kitchen was dominated by a central island whose entire surface was smooth hardwood. They wasted no time thrusting her upon it. Huge vegetable peelers were then pulled out from underneath the hardwood and scraped all over her body. Each pass of the peelers efficiently removed her mane, tail, and all fur and revealed a smooth, dark purple skin.
After she had been stripped of her mane and coat, one of them ducked under the chopping block and brought up an enormous chef knife, nearly as long as her. Before she could even gasp in horror, the Okra wielding it brought it down on her foreleg, neatly slicing it off just below her shoulder. She stared at the wound, agape, for the amputation was painless, but also because her flesh and bones had taken on the appearance of the inside of an eggplant. More chopping sounds caused her to whip her head around. Astonished, she saw her other legs lay disembodied and those stumps too bled tiny droplets of clear fluid from their whitish cut ends, just like freshly cut eggplant flesh. One Okra used a paring knife the size of a machete to lop off her ears and horn. “I’m an eggplant,” She whispered to herself, “I’m a disgusting eggplant.”
Angry voices brought her head up to see several Okra arguing over how she should be finished. Some wanted to slice her into wafers using a massive mandolin. But others wanted to use their chef knives and dice her into cubes. Back and forth they argued with no signs of consensus. Meanwhile, all she could do was lie there. Her present limbless condition keeping her securely in place.
“Be still!” Screamed an irritated feminine voice. And all of the Okra immediately stopped and stared. Tiara too, craned her head around and gasped. Nightmare Moon, resplendent in her battle armor strode by her without a passing glance. “Thou dost pollute the air with your meaningless prattling!” She rebuked the Okra. However, they were not in the least disheartened, but pressed together around the Nightmare like eager children gravitating toward their hero. “We will tell thee how this one must be terminated.”
“No.” Tiara squeaked out, feeling pinpricks of a cold sweat break out all over her body.
Nightmare Moon lowered her head and whispered to the crush of Okra gathered in a crescent around her.
“Please, no.” Tiara rasped through a throat suddenly gone dry. She couldn’t hear a word of what was said, but she didn’t need to. She knew what her end would be. The icy caress of fear slid up her spine when the Okra looked up from their conference with Nightmare Moon and over at her with wicked grins and hungry anticipation flickering in their beady eyes.
“NO!” Tiara screamed at last. Desperately she squirmed and contorted her body to inchworm away from the advancing Okra, but it was no use. Their slimy hands were again upon her, lifting her up, and carrying her to the swinging double-doors at the rear of the kitchen.
“Stop! Please, stop!” She begged and wriggled in their grasp. However, they paid no attention to her pleas. They burst through the double doors into the soot-blackened brick and stifling heat of the Great Fire Place.
“To the pot, to the pot, to the pot!” The Okra chanted and cackled as they rushed up a ramp leading to the rim of a giant kettle. Bright flashes and white-hot sparks shot all around the bottom and ignited bundles of rolled paper and thin sticks of kindling stacked underneath a mammoth, black iron kettle. A three-footed kettle that looked tall and wide enough to swallow a two-story country cottage. Yet despite its enormity and the incline of the ramp, they had reached the top in the time it took to finish the fifth repetition of their chant. Only then did they stop and all of them silently contemplated the watery bowels of the kettle from the vantage of the broad metal rim.
Tiara felt her heart thumping wildly and her sides heaved like bellows. The sight of the black innards of the kettle was like being perched in front of a great chasm. The water level may have only been about halfway full and as calm as a sheltered pool, but in her limbless condition, it was like staring at the center of the deepest ocean during a tempest.
“Well, well, well,” Nightmare Moon’s mocking voice sliced through the silence, “pray tell, what causes thou such consternation?” She glided past and set down gently on the rim just off to the side so she did not block Tiara’s view of her eventual path into the kettle. “Is thy present condition truly so mortifying? Thou art simply denied the use of thy limbs and set before a bucket of water.”
“Please,” Tiara panted and licked her dry lips, “please don’t do this. I’m truly sorry. I’m really very sorry I did that to you. You didn’t deserve it and I wish I had never done it!”
“Dost thou believe that thy actions deserve this?” Nightmare Moon swept her wing forward and then down, pointing her primary feathers at center of the pot.
Tiara ignored the gesture and kept her gaze locked on the cold, reptilian eyes of the Nightmare, searching in vain for mercy, for hope. No answer she wanted to voice came to her mind. As the silence between them stretched out, she felt tears roll down her cheeks.
Nightmare Moon sneered. “Cast her in!”
“Please, no!” Tiara managed to scream before being tossed up and falling with a lazy backward-flip into the water below. She entered the cold water headfirst and vertical; a nearly perfect dive that sent her straight to the bottom and forced her to raise her head and arch her back to keep from hitting face first. As her chest brushed the iron bottom of the kettle she noticed it was noticeably warmer than the water all around her. Her eyes went wide in horror as two realizations hit her. One, the fire underneath the kettle must be raging to heat this massive amount of metal so quickly. And two, it was now a macabre race to see whether her end would be from drowning, or from scalding and heat stroke.
Death by drowning was much closer, Tiara recognized quickly, as her panicked state required a steady supply of air, and large amounts of it. But submerged, her lungs were rapidly depleted and demanded more, now, if not sooner! By contracting her body and head, she pushed off the bottom with her muzzle and hindquarters and started her ascent. But the water depth she estimated to be at thirty hooves or more! It didn’t appear probable at her current rate of ascent for her to be able to hold her breath long enough. She craned her head up and tried to think buoyant thoughts. Float faster, float faster! Her mind chanted. She concentrated on the approaching surface and the precious sweet air that waited just beyond the water’s boundary.
However, her body impatiently and incessantly clamored for immediate breathing gratification. She tried to placate it by puffing her cheeks full and then sucking that air back into her lungs. But that subterfuge was quickly rejected. She couldn’t restrain herself any longer. She had to breathe! She started exhaling slowly, attempting to meter the amount through pursed lips. She watched the bubbles floating up and breaking just above her. Fresh air was so close. She had to hold out just a few seconds longer - a few interminable seconds until she could have all the air she wanted. But her lungs were empty now, and they pulled at her throat for refilling. Tiara’s eyes grew wide as she tried by force of will to hold off her body’s demand for air for those last seconds and somehow float herself up more quickly to the precious air just beyond her reach.
There! Finally her muzzle broke the surface. With a desperate sounding gasp, Tiara sucked in the air her starving lungs craved. Relief flooded her senses as she reacquainted herself with the simple pleasure of being able to breathe at will. Her face cleared the water next and she blinked away the excess in time to clearly see an Okra throw what looked like a white box right at her head. It narrowly missed and splashed right next to her cheek, sending a wave rolling over her head. Tiara clamped her mouth closed to keep from inhaling the water. That was no easy task, as she was still huffing and puffing like a winded sprinter after a race. Fortunately, she bobbed at the surface and was gulping air again after the wave passed.
Tiara again blinked to see clearly and looked over at what was thrown at her. It was a potato, a cube the size of her head. Astonished, she looked back up to the okra warriors on the rim. They were all holding impossibly-sized slices of vegetables! An eighth of an onion bulb came down next; it hit just in front of her and sent a geyser of water into the air. She once again had to painfully halt mid-breath to allow the wave to pass. Then a shower of carrot slices the size of dinner plates rained down, of which, the flat sides of two struck her muzzle. The impact sent her head just below the waves.
The decision of whether she would drown or boil had been made for her. She was meant to drown. And the Okra had made a game of it. But even though the thought of her death being made a sport sickened her, she couldn’t help but fight for air! Tiara thrashed her head from side-to-side, angling her face like a paddle to try to reach the surface again. Those meager gasps of air she had had weren’t enough! In the nick of time, she bobbed clear and gulped air between the waves of the now turbulent water. Her vision cleared just in time to widen in horror; a thick slice of zucchini rushed at her. She held her breath and winced.
The impact sent her under and somersaulting backward. Her rotation stopped with her head underneath her body. Even as she wagged her head and tried to right herself, Tiara knew she wouldn’t make it to the surface this time. Her lungs forced an exhale before she had made any positive progress at righting herself. She was about to discover what it was like to breath water.
A shimmer of purple light caught her attention. Princess Luna flew through the water right up to where Tiara hovered inverted. “That’s enough,” Luna spoke clearly.
Tiara stared, forgetting even her desperate need to breathe as she marveled how Princess Luna could speak perfectly while underwater.
“Tiara Dreams, it’s time for you to wake up.” Luna commanded.
Everything faded to black: the water, the Okra, the vegetables, and finally, Princess Luna. Tiara found herself standing, upright, on her own legs, and stared all around in wonder at the impenetrable blackness.
“Tiara Dreams, it’s time to wake up.” The voice said again.
Tiara felt herself floating up, faster, and faster, until it seemed like she was racing through the blackness.
“Tiara Dreams, wake up.”
Tiara’s eyes flew open and she startled, breathing in a terrified scream. She struggled for a couple seconds to stand, but she had fallen asleep lying flat on her left side and apparently hadn’t moved since then; those limbs had gone completely numb. Reality dawned on her only after her muddled brain picked at her present situation piecemeal. There was no danger of her drowning, as she was lying under a woolen, military-green blanket by a tree, not floating in a giant water-filled kettle. Her mane and coat were wet, or damp, but from an anxious sweat caused by her nightmare, not from immersion in water. Most significantly, her horn, mane, coat, and all of her limbs were present and still attached. A sigh of relief escaped and she relaxed. That terrifying sensation of being helpless and immobile had felt so real to her either due to a lack of circulation, or to normal dream-state paralysis.
Fully awake now, she squinted up against the sunset and saw Princess Luna staring back at her. She went cold. Her breathing and heartbeat had started coming down from the fear-induced adrenaline rush caused by her nightmare, but now everything in her body stopped cold.
“I know what you are thinking,” Luna said in a gentle, calming voice as though she were waking a child, “but what you have just dreamed was manufactured by your own subconscious. There was no effort made by me to torment you. I arrived only to wake you, for I have resolved to tolerate no further delays of my pursuit of the whole truth regarding you and Silver Chalice.” Luna gestured over to a tall, medium-sized tent erected near the edge of the lawn. Tiara recognized it as one of the elegant privy tents they used for formal outdoor events. “I ordered toiletries to be provided and a hot bath prepared for you. I am allowing one hour for you to perform your necessities. Afterward, we will depart.”
Luna lifted her head. “You will not rush her, but neither will you allow her to sleep.”
“Yes, Princess!” Two female voices answered in unison.
After one last glance down at Tiara, Luna turned and left.
Tiara closed her eyes after Luna was out of sight and breathed deeply. A metal point jabbed her hindquarter before she had finished exhaling.
“Hey!” Tiara looked back at the noctala guard who had prodded her, “didn’t she tell you not to rush me?”
“I’m not rushing you, but I am following Princess Luna’s order to keep you from sleeping.” The dark purple noctala guard smirked, clearly enjoying herself. She expertly twirled the spear around and leveled the needle-sharp tip with Tiara’s eye. “If I was rushing you, I would have used this end!” She stabbed the air.
“Ah!” Tiara yelped and flinched in surprise when the spear tip brushed her eyelash. She cowered behind her hoof as that guard and one other snickered. A pointed metal endcap prodded her other side. Tiara half-rolled and peeked out from behind her protective foreleg.
Another noctala mare whose coat shone an ominous color of dark-red blood in the fading daylight, glowered back at her with the same fierce countenance as the first. “No sleeping!” She barked, and used her spear’s endcap to snatch away the blanket.
Tiara reflexively curled up into a fetal position at being so suddenly exposed to the chill of the late day air against her damp coat. That reaction made her guards snicker even more, which set her cheeks aflame. A scrap of defiance set her jaw and made her struggle to stand. Her numb left side protested her moves with sharp, needle-like sensations that traveled down and through her legs. Nevertheless, she persisted. Weak limbs were forced to work despite the prickly feelings and the wooden movement. At last, she stood face-to-face with her sneering guards.
“You had better watch yourself! Both of you,” Tiara snarled, “I am here because I abducted Princess Luna!”
“We know!” The purple guard scowled back.
“Do you expect us to be scared of you?” The red guard asked.
“Think about it, if there exists a brain between you,” Tiara snapped back,” if I will take on Princess Luna over some ill-treatment I received in order to get even with her, then how much more will I certainly get even with a couple of whinnying, bat-winged, nags who have to carry their pricks?”
Her noctala guards exchanged a disbelieving look at her insult, then faced her again with violent intent set on their faces. “You’re going to regret that!” The purple guard hissed. Both of them leveled their spears on Tiara.
“Aiiiya!” Tiara screamed and fell over backward, “Please don’t hurt me anymore!” Her noctala guards stood immobile in shock at her unexpected outburst.
“Alarm! Courtyard! You two, stay where you are!” A Palace Guard bellowed. A dozen guards surrounded them in short order.
Tiara had to cover her face with her hooves until she could smother her grin. The Palace Guards remained as hypervigilant as ever. “Please, don’t let them hurt me,” she wailed and crawled toward the nearest guard using her right legs only. “They kept prodding me with the butt-end of their spears. I-I tried to stand and move, but my left side is numb, and they just kept poking me. Then they turned their spears around. Please don’t let them hurt me!”
Her noctala guards went from angry to incensed and started forward. “Why you lying, little-"
Tiara cowered and screamed again the instant they moved which prompted four other Guards to jump in and restrain them.
“At ease!” A unicorn Palace sergeant commanded.
“She lies!”
“I said: At. Ease.” The Sergeant’s severe tone carried his warning so effectively that all present assumed the proper stance. “Did this pony in your charge attack you?”
“No, but she threatened us.” The purple guard answered.
“Did she threaten you physically? Or magically?” The Sergeant asked.
Her two guards glanced about nervously. “She said that she would get even with us.”
“Did she try to disarm either of you?”
“No, but, she also insulted us.” The purple guard answered.
The Sergeant looked like he was losing patience. “Are you telling me that your charge wakes up from magically induced sleep. Then she – unarmed and without provocation from you – makes a vague verbal threat that you found so troubling, that you both felt the situation demanded a response with deadly force?”
Both of her guards found something on the ground to stare at.
“I’ve heard enough. You two are relieved. Drop your weapons.”
Her now former guards glowered at Tiara, burning with their humiliation by her cunning trap. Reluctantly, they complied with the Sergeant’s orders and set down their spears.
The Sergeant turned to the Guard across from him. “Corporal, take these two into custody and keep them separate for questioning.”
The Corporal passed orders to the four Guards nearest him and the five of them led the noctalas away.
“You, on your hooves.” The Sergeant said to Tiara.
She stood up as quickly as she could manage, wobbling like a yearling taking their first steps, but she held her head up and looked the Sergeant in his hard, azurite-colored eyes.
“Do you have anything you wish to add?” He asked her.
Tiara nodded, and proceeded to tell him everything. The whole truth, including her threat as she remembered it, her insult, and how she used that to engineer the scene she created.
The Sergeant listened without interruption, scribbling continuously in a notebook as she related all of the details. And even for a minute or two longer after she had finished. “You are one crafty…mare.” He said, obviously omitting the profanity he wanted to say.
Tiara tried but couldn’t smother her grin this time.
He folded up his book. “I appreciate your honesty, but I would have rather not had this headache today.”
He looked her over with a head-to-hoof glance and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I should remind you that you have a time limit. If you want to be somewhat presentable when you have to leave, you had better get your filthy hide in that tent.”
Tiara’s grin faded instantly. She hadn’t expected him to be so curt with her.
The Sergeant turned to another guard. “You and two others, escort this mare to that tent and stand post until relieved.” Then he walked away without another glance at her.
No longer feeling even a tiny bit smug over her victory, Tiara took stiff, graceless steps on her way to the tent, flanked by her new guards.
The tent she entered had been set up using the best appliances: a porcelain coated reclining bath filled with steaming water, a hammered gold washbasin atop an ornately carved ebony vanity, and a full length gold-framed mirror. Tiara almost spun around and left out of habit, for these accouterments were preserved for use by palace guests, VIP’s and occasionally by the Princesses themselves, but never for use by staff! Yet she knew Luna and the Sergeant had pointed to this tent specifically; there was no other. She stood there, just inside the tent flap pondering her options and her growing sense of uneasiness.
“Will you be using the bath, Miss?”
The voice from directly behind her caused Tiara to jump forward. “Goodness, Gigi!” Tiara turned with an embarrassed grin to the slightly shorter earth mare “You nearly startled me out of my skin.”
Gigi was everyponies affectionate nickname for Gleaming Glow; an elderly soft pink mare with an earth brown and rose red mane that were streaked with gray. Rumors circulated that the palace floors gained their ‘always wet’ shine only after she was hired by Princess Celestia some thirty years before she transferred to Princess Luna’s staff. The grandmotherly Gigi was Tiara’s first friend at the Palace and as such, she had heard many of Tiara’s complaints and had comforted her after especially difficult nights with Luna. The last time was about a year ago, the shift before Tiara decided to stop complaining and start plotting revenge.
Without bothering to acknowledge Tiara, Gigi gestured to the tub. “I’d recommend using the bath now, Miss, as that will allow me just enough time to get your undertail properly laundered before you must leave.” She sounded every bit the grandmother she was: tender, caring, and loving. Her tone almost matched the warm smile frozen on her face.
“Miss?” Tiara’s own smile faded at her formal, unfamiliar, address, “Gigi, don’t you recognize me?”
“You look familiar,” Gigi answered, “indeed, very similar to somepony that I thought I knew. But I remember her as a loyal and dedicated servant of Princess Luna. I don’t think that we have ever met before, Miss.”
Tiara felt her heart sink. “Gigi, I –"
“My name is Gleaming Glow, Miss,” Gigi interrupted, “and I’ll take your undertail to be laundered now.” She took the laundry bag from her back, opened it, and looked at Tiara with an expectant air.
Numbly, Tiara did as she was bidden. Her undertail dropped down her hind legs to the tent floor. She stepped back, captured it in a magical aura, and levitated it up between them. For a moment, she worked her jaw trying to think of something – anything – to say. Ever the professional servant, Gigi stood there silently wearing the same friendly mask with infinite patience.
Tiara gave up her search for words and put her garment in the bag. “I’m –"
“I’ll take this straight to the laundry now, Miss.” Gigi cut her off, picked up the laundry bag, and turned to leave.
“Thank you.” Tiara said without thinking.
Gigi stopped mid-step and turned her head, her mouth a thin line and her ears flattened back against her head. “You may keep your thanks,” she said, her voice noticeably bitter despite the sweet veneer, “I am here to serve Princess Luna.” Then she disappeared out the tent flaps.
Tiara collapsed back on her rump, certain that her heart had stopped beating. There was no doubt that she no longer had a friend in the whole world. Of course, she knew that she only had herself to blame. All the poor decisions that she made without considering the ramifications and their injurious effects on others alienated her and caused her oppressive loneliness.
She swallowed. A great painful lump in her throat refused to budge. She grit her teeth against the mounting pain wondered how she had been so blind. Yes, she had been mistreated, but nothing done to her came close to the evil she wrought. Her mind, recovering from all those dreamless nights of useless sleep, turned on her and accused her mercilessly. Stupid! Selfish! Idiotic! Evil! Hateful! The assault was brutal, and there was nowhere she could run.
Her vision blurred and she angrily tried to hold back her tears. They abandoned her anyway.