Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Three Day Promise - Part Four
Morning in Canterlot normally started long before the sun rose, although the exact definition of the term slopped over both sides of the line by a certain extent. The precise moment of the dawn signified the transition from one Princess to the other, but before that could happen, servants and guards needed to get in place for the event, and afterwards the off-shift had to make their way home, thus making the moment of perfect tranquility more like half-time at the hoofball game, complete with a marching band.
The two referees were taking their pre-morning tasks more seriously than normal, as Luna and Celestia had been grazing down the breakfast table in an attempt to make a sizable dent in the massive selection of breakfast foods the castle staff had assembled for them. It had evolved into a little bit of a competition between the sisters and the kitchen staff after the first time the sisters had managed to completely clean out a breakfast table down to the crumbs, only to find an additional leaf in the table the next morning, and two the day after that.
“Chocolate,” pronounced Luna, holding a small cube of the otherwise normal appearing substance in her magic. “Of all the things I missed while on the moon, this is the greatest of them all. Other than you, Celly.”
“I’m just glad to be on your list somewhere,” said Celestia around a mouthful of chocolate she had picked out of the massive pile. “There must be over fifty different flavors here this morning, and the only flavor your old and creaky sister comes in is vanilla.”
The two sisters sampled and tasted their way around the mountain of breakfast chocolate until Luna began to hum slightly under her breath, followed soon by Celestia until the two alicorns were crooning in a near-whisper and ending in a mutual giggle.
“The zebra Imetabiriwa are trying to summon Twilight, aren’t they, sister?” said Luna.
“Yes, but—” started Celestia before Luna abruptly cut her off.
“Their name may mean ‘Wise Ones’ but they are fools.” Yet another cube of chocolate vanished to fuel the Night and Luna giggled as she licked her lips. “They are deaf to the music they play upon their instruments, and yet expect to play such a magnificent concert as to bring the young Twilight Sparkle to their lands.”
Celestia paused with a blueberry-studded cube of fudge at the end of her nose. “There was a composer named Beethooven who once who did just that, sister. Deaf as a post, and yet he composed the most compelling music I have ever heard.”
The two sisters paused with ears upraised, as if the sound of a thousand zebra Imetabiriwa chanting and dancing on the other side of the world echoed through their breakfast nook, causing them to hum along and sway with the music.
“Sister.” Celestia put down the cube of chocolate without even tasting it, which worried Luna. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?” said Luna through several selections of walnut-maple fudge, both with and without nuts. Then she looked up as if she could see through the ceiling to an unimaginably distant place and swallowed. “Oh.”
“I would have thought you would feel the call of our previous lives the most, since you have dominion over the night sky,” said Celestia, still looking distant. “When you were locked away, there were many nights spent under your stars when I would have given anything to flee this place and return to the sky, dancing and playing with our kind once again. Singing the song of hydrogen and helium, flowing and coiling in the gravity of collapsing stars and bursting into light while our kind spun and danced in the joy of creation. In my despair, I would have cast aside all which we gathered and protected just to be one with our sisters again, but for you.”
“Every night, Celly.” Luna nuzzed her sister, leaving a long chocolate smear down her neck. “I hath never regretted choosing you over them, from our first day and night upon this wonderful world to the present. Even when I had given myself to Nightmare, my bond with you was such that I could not have separated myself from you and left for our kind.” She kissed Celestia on one ear, and gave it a sharp nip. “You’re stuck with me, I guess.”
“Luna!” Celestia rubbed at the abused ear with a pained smile. “It is for the best. On our best days of our previous lives, we could have never dreamed of the myriad of creations possible with just a few bits of carbon and water, with a little nitrogen thrown in on top. Back then, we made stars. Now, we watch over a world, filled with ponies and griffons and all sorts of fantastic creations, although I still have to wonder.” She paused, her half-eaten piece of chocolate floating in front of her nose. “Who made this place first?”
“Whoever it was, liked food,” said Luna, although she gave a matching wince with her sister as a pair of zebra Imetabiriwa missed a step and the carefully-organized dance they were doing half a world away stuttered for a few moments. “And zebra,” she added. “Unfortunately.”
The door to their breakfast nook gave a click and Princess Cadence stumbled through, arriving at her habitual chair by pure instinct as her eyes were closed and her head low enough to almost not clear the table when she sat down. Several items of breakfast fare took flight in her magic, flinging themselves into the bowl in front of her until the Princess of Love gave a very unladylike grunt and dropped forward, muzzle first into her cornflakes.
“Long night with the pregnancy?” asked Celestia, although fairly quietly in case Cadence was sleepwalking again.
Her Royal Gravidness nodded slightly, or perhaps it was just a visual artifact from her chewing cornflakes.
“I wouldst have thought thy husband’s affection was the cause of your morning fatigue,” said Luna with a smirk.
Cadence nodded again, although she pulled her dripping muzzle out of the bowl and added, “Couldn’t sleep. There was this infernal singing that started around midnight, like a bunch of foreign language performers doing Riverprance outside my window. I can still hear it.”
The Royal Sisters exchanged a brief glance before Celestia cleared her throat and said, “An unusual perception indeed. Perhaps pregnancy hormones are to blame.”
“Maybe. But do you know the funny thing about it?” Cadence yawned and smacked her lips a few times, clearing the leftover cornflakes off her cheeks with one lick of her long tongue. “Way above it, I swear I hear a bunch of ponies singing, sounding so happy and so lonely all at the same time, and if I didn’t know better, it sounds like they are calling out for me to join them. Weird.”
Luna cast a disparaging look at Celestia, who simply rolled her eyes and shook her head. The Princess of the Night moved up beside Cadence, who had returned to her cornflakes with a vengeance. Sitting down and waiting until Cadence surfaced for air again, Luna cleared her throat.
“About that. There is a matter of alicorn nature upon which Celestia never did educate you, and I did not think it prudent to tell you either, Cadence, but if you can hear them too, it would be best to get it all out into the open.” Luna took a deep breath and said something she hoped she would never need to say to her niece.
“Allow me tell you where alicorns come from.”
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Morning in Ponyville might sparkle, but the front steps of the school did not contain very much happiness in this early morning hour. A group of little friends had gotten to school long before their normal race to beat the bell, and sat around on the bottom step while waiting for the rest of their group.
“Trixie is so slow,” started Featherweight.
After a time, Twist rolled her eyes and responded, “Okay, how thlow is thee?”
“It’s not a joke,” protested Featherweight. “Well, maybe it is, but she took forever this morning when we were helping Archer do the route over by Fluttershy’s house. We had just given the paper to Angel when she stopped and had a long chat with Rainbow Dash, all secret like.”
“Are they still doing cloud wrangling?” asked Apple Bloom.
“Naa.” Featherweight patted his camera. “They’re doing glides. Rainbow Dash has a harness on and she’s towing Diamond Tiara and Twilight up to this little cloud platform over the river and they jump off and glide over to a pile of hay bales where Fluttershy is spotting their landings. Well, they’re supposed to glide over there.”
“Crashing?” asked Sweetie Belle, who was cradling the little grey dragon egg and checking it for cracks.
“Yeah. They’re both pretty good at that, at least. I’ve got some great pictures to develop this afternoon.” He gave a little sigh. “All this time Scootaloo’s been wanting to have Rainbow Dash teach her to fly and all she really needed to do was ask. Oh, look. Here she comes.”
The sight of Diamond Tiara walking alongside her father to school was a familiar one, although Scootaloo was not quite as high-stepping and nose-raised in the same body. Once Filthy Rich had turned around and was out of sight, Scootaloo promptly lifted the diamond tiara off her head and rubbed her ears. “How does she put up with this?” muttered Scootaloo, shoving the tiara back on her head with unnecessary force.
The little group of friends clustered around, keeping an eye on the time as well as the sky while waiting for the last member of their group to arrive, which happened at the same time the school bell rang. The echo of the bell had not yet died out when a rainbow streak of light headed straight for the schoolhouse door resolved into a fast-moving pegasus with two little winged ponies in tow, gliding along behind her in the fast slipstream. Or at least they were gliding until Rainbow Dash did an abrupt right-angle turn straight up right at the schoolhouse steps and both little ponies lost their grips on the tow ropes when they opened their mouths to scream.
It was a very short scream.
Diamond Tiara and Scootaloo wound up together in a ball, tumbling across the classroom and coming to an abrupt halt at the far wall with Miss Cheerilee looking down at them. She lifted the bent tiara off the two little ponies, sitting in a pile of loose papers and books, and asked, “Are you two hurt?”
“Daddy’s going to sue you for every bit you own,” snapped the little pegasus.
“And there goes my second question to see if the two of you had been bonked back into your own bodies,” said Cheerilee with a sigh and a quick look around. “Where’s Twilight?”
“Present.” The little voice could be tracked back to the now-open schoolhouse door, which had a little alicorn stuck horn-first in the top part, and dangling rather forlornly with her stubby tail swaying back and forth. “Are we tardy?”
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Once school was over, the group of friends gathered at the front door of the schoolhouse again and discussed their plans for the rest of the day while watching Big Mac work on patching the hole in the door.
“We can go play with my uncle’s lawn darts,” said Featherweight, putting a foreleg around Monster and tapping her on the top of her rounded horn. “She’s on my team. Natural talent and built in dart-tyness.”
“Don’t be silly, Featherweight. Ah think we should make a catty-pult for the Summer Wrap-Up Festival,” said Apple Bloom with a sideways glance at her big brother. “Trixie said she had her fireworks from Canterlot shipped here, and we can use the catty-pult to throw them way, way up in the air before they blow up so everypony can see them.”
“Catapult,” said Twist, getting out a cinnamon candy twist for Monster, just in case the topic was causing her stress. “And don’t they fly up in the thky by themthelves?”
“When the sun is in the sky, Diamond and I are to fly,” said Monster, feeling a little distracted as she stared off into the distance at Observation Hill where the zebra Imetabiriwa were waiting on her. “Today is the day, Trixie said, when Scootaloo will fly or—” The little alicorn stopped and bit down on the cinnamon stick, starting to chew her way down it like a starving beaver.
“Your friend Trixie is a mean, disgusting excuse for a pony,” snapped Diamond Tiara in a low growl. “She’s torturing us just because she hates me and Daddy!”
“No,” said Monster from behind the remains of her cinnamon stick. Threads of probability coiled and spun in the back of her mind, whipped into a froth by the constant beat of zebra hooves half a world away.
“No?” snapped Diamond Tiara with her wings partially extended. “What do you mean, no?”
The last bit of the cinnamon stick vanished and Monster licked her lips before speaking. “No, it is not so. She does what she must to earn our trust so your father and Scoot’s aunt may no longer rant.”
Diamond Tiara stared at the little alicorn, who accepted another cinnamon stick from Twist and began to gnaw on it. “You’re weird. Come on, let’s go wake up Rainbow Dash and get this afternoon’s crashing practice over. Do you know what else she has planned today, other than humiliating me in front of everypony with this stupid demonstration?”
Monster started to reply, paused, and shook her head instead, which still rhymed, but not in such an obvious way.
“What demonstration?” asked Featherweight.
Diamond Tiara scowled and jerked her head in the direction of their gliding practice area. “Rainbow Featherbrain wants us to show how well we glide, so she invited some ponies to watch the unfolding disaster and help pick our bodies up after we beat ourselves senseless against the ground, I guess.”
“Can we come too?” asked Twist, checking her saddlebag for bandages and elastic wrap.
“What, so you can laugh at me?” Diamond Tiara scoffed and tossed what little mane she had back.
“No, so we can cheer for you,” said Apple Bloom. “Just because we don’t like you, don’t mean we want to see you hurt. Much,” she added as Sweetie Belle poked her in the ribs.
After a moment to think about it, Diamond Tiara nodded reluctantly and turned away. “I suppose. Come on, losers. Let’s—”
Monster flung herself against Diamond Tiara and wrapped the larger pony in a crushing hug, using both wings and legs to hang onto her chest and squeeze so hard that Diamond’s breath was forced out and she started to turn red. It only lasted for a stunned second or two before the little alicorn abruptly broke it off and began galloping in the direction of their morning gliding exercise, leaving all of her friends at a temporary loss for words.
“Twilight is so weird,” said Diamond Tiara once she had gotten her breath back. She shook her head before trotting off after the little alicorn with the rest of her friends following close behind. “I think I liked her better when she was just creeping me out.”
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Scootaloo had always dreamed of this time, with Rainbow Dash lecturing the little pegasus on flying terms before an afternoon of flying through the sky with her hero. Although she had always thought herself as the student, not the audience. Filthy Rich was standing beside Scootaloo, keeping a close eye on her so she would not wrinkle a pleat or knock a strand of mane out of alignment on the body she was unwillingly inhabiting, while her real little pegasus body was standing right over there with Diamond Tiara inside, probably smirking at the idea of how much it hurt Scootaloo to see the way the brat took over her life. The rest of her friends were gathered into a small cluster, whispering among themselves while the ‘VIP Section’ got a close-up look at the battered bale-covered landing spot.
Amidst the other observers, Trixie and Zecora stood next to Filthy Rich, listening quietly while Rainbow Dash bragged about how Diamond and Twilight had gotten so good at gliding to a safe landing that she wanted to have a demonstration of their flying skills. It made a fire burn inside her to think of being cheated out of her legacy as a pegasus, and all Scootaloo could think of was what joy Diamond Tiara was feeling when Rainbow Dash had her two students bite down on their tow ropes and she began to climb up into the sky.
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Diamond Tiara once had a nightmare much like this, where she was trapped with a rogue pegasus who planned on taking her far up into the sky and dropping her, just to see her splatter. With a nightmare, she could always wake up, but Rainbow Dash was far worse than a nightmare. She demanded work, one more flap of the wings, one more crash into the hay bales in a forlorn attempt to land, one more stressful glide across the dark river ending in a collision with the unforgiving dirt and incorrectly-placed bales of hay. Every muscle in her body had gone long past hurting, but her heart hurt the worst of them all. The imposter was standing by Daddy, eating off of her plates and sleeping in her bed, and worse, wearing the brand new clothes she had gotten for school. Those were her things, and a vengeful fire burned in her chest as she watched the thief instead of listening to the inane lecture by her flying instructor/torturer about unstable spins and panic reactions.
Only to have the angry fire be replaced by terrified ice as Rainbow Dash began to pull them up into the sky, far past the cloud platform they had been practicing gliding from and in the direction of a tiny speck of cloud far, far up in the sky.
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Afternoon court had turned into what the Canterlot Royal Houses referred to as a ‘Three-Alicorn Circus’ when Princess Luna trod slowly into the throne room and took her place almost casually to Celestia’s other side, opposite of where the Princess of Love was resting her rump on a thick cushion with her forehooves in a bowl of ice water to help reduce the swelling related to her late stage of pregnancy. There was a certain reluctance for the nobles to attend Luna’s lightly-staffed Night Court unless they had a proposal to the Crown that Celestia had already turned down, although that type of sneaking around the Sun’s shadow was somewhat discouraged by the page-sized red rubber stamp Luna had purchased with her own funds after the second night and used with great enthusiasm on the third.
Placing said stamp to one side, Luna looked up at her sister and nodded. “Apologies, Celly. We had difficulties sleeping, and thought a session at your afternoon court would help. We brought our ‘Nay!’ stamp in the event you wish to borrow it.” She flinched nearly at the same time Celestia and Cadence gave matching twitches and all three alicorns cast an irritated glance at distant Zebrica. “They’re getting tired,” she added in a low whisper as the repetitive drumbeat of zebra hooves continued to echo through the heads of all three alicorns.
“That’s not a good thing,” whispered Celestia back. “Fatigue invites mistakes. Deadly mistakes.”
~ ~ ✶ ~ ~
Despite her fatigue, Monster kept her jaws clamped tightly to the tow rope as Rainbow Dash shot up into the sky. The wind roared through her mane and shortened tail, making her teacher appear as a blurred rainbow through nearly-closed eyes, but the hammering impact of her wings beating the air into a froth brought a tiny fraction of precious calm to her rapidly-beating heart as they ascended. There was something right about her flight, a tiny fraction of harmony which merged with the rest of her friends into a comfortable safe place, where nothing could possibly harm her. Rainbow was strong and reliable, much as a mother manticore adored and protected her cubs, giving Monster’s spirit some well-needed support this high in the sky. She trusted Rainbow not to let her fall, and Rainbow trusted her to be able to glide back to the ground safely. Even Diamond Tiara trusted them enough to be right by Monster’s side with a tow rope firmly embedded in her teeth.
The weight of two little fillies did not seem to slow Rainbow’s velocity at all, and the excited cries of the air spirits all around Monster made her ascent feel so much like the time she had ridden the Boomer with her friends. The same mixture of terror and excitement churned around in her chest and filled her head with chaos as they continued to climb, higher and higher into the cloudless sky without the slightest pause. Diamond Tiara had nearly broken Monster’s foreleg clutching to her when they went over the top of the Boomer’s fairly small hill, and this ascent into the sky made the mountainous roller coaster seem like a molehill.
There was something about the abrupt ascent that made Monster’s mind begin to connect disconnected pieces, from the way Filthy Rich had been paying special attention to Scootaloo’s extensive training as a young gentlefilly to the almost brutal way Rainbow Dash had been training both her and Diamond Tiara in flight. Trixie had called it ‘tough love’ and that Monster should trust in harmony, but…
Something shifted in the magical field surrounding them, a twisting and return to normalcy that Scootaloo’s joyous cry in her ear brought crashing into Monster’s awareness with a sudden sense of realization. All of this was a trick of Trixie’s making, from the flying lessons to the etiquette instructions! The only way for Scootaloo and Diamond Tiara to return to their own bodies was if they wanted to return, and there was nothing that Diamond could have possibly wanted more at that moment than to be standing beside her father on the very solid ground, while Scootaloo had been watching her heart’s desire fly straight up into the sky and away from her. It had been so obvious when looked at from this point of view, and once Rainbow Dash reached the apogee of her flight to release her payload, the two of them would be able to glide down the long, long way to the ground together. Her heart swelled with joy as the song of the air spirits rose to a joyous crescendo, mixing with the distant sounds of tramping zebra hooves and a mysterious melody that almost sounded like thousands of voices in some heavenly choir. Confidence seemed to just want to burst out of her body and make her join in the song, despite the tow rope handle gripped firmly in her teeth.
It signaled a new phase in her life. Maybe even Monster would be able to ride in Scootaloo’s wagon without closing her eyes, or get up the courage to take her friends on another trip, this time to Canterlot where they could meet her family again. Luna would be excited that Monster had progressed so far, and maybe would take them all on a trip around the Canterlot castle to see how much it had changed while she had been gone. Featherweight would take pictures while Apple Bloom would sample all of the little cakes and treats that Twist would help the cooks make. Maybe they could even go out into the garden and walk around the statuary, although Scootaloo would probably want to race through them…
Scootaloo would…
Scootaloo.
Monster opened one eye in the violent slipstream of Rainbow Dash’s ascent and turned her head to see the empty tow rope where her friend had been.