A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pageant

by D G D Davidson

3. The Naughty Part

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pageant

by D. G. D. Davidson

III. The Naughty Part

“My life,” I said, “is passing before my eyes.”

It had been only six in the morning when Aaron, my uptight, stick-in-the-mud bunkmate, had rolled me out of bed and told me I had guests. By that hour, of course, he was dressed, groomed, grinning from ear to ear, and cheery as could be. He had probably even prayed Lauds already, the bastard.

Me, I preferred to climb out of bed around noon, but since that wasn’t possible in my line of work, I got up at six-fifty, which gave me enough time to scramble into my cassock and make daily Mass with a minute to spare. I didn’t actually wake up, however, until about eight-twenty, which was when I was usually starting my third cup of coffee in the rec room.

So I was bleary-eyed and grumpy when I stepped into the hall and uttered my first dismayed sentence of the day, the first of many. Had I been more fully awake, I might have added some epithets.

Standing outside my door was Lyra Heartstrings, just as bright-eyed and cheerful as my obnoxious roommate, and with her were seven ponies I had hoped never to see again. Ever.

“Well,” said Lyra with a giggle, “you wanted me to recruit, right? I wrote straight to Ponyville, and they all came to Canterlot on the overnight train.”

Dumbstruck, I marveled at the speed of the Pony Express, which had taken mail to Ponyville in only a few hours, and at the inefficiency of Equestria’s train system, which had taken a full night to bring Lyra’s gaggle of friends the short distance from Ponyville to Canterlot.

The previous summer, by means of a bald-faced lie, I had convinced the bishop to let me travel with Lyra to Ponyville, where she had introduced me to these friends of hers. I had spent three days in torment before finally dragging myself back into a train car to contemplate the dire consequences of lying to bishops.

These so-called friends were a bundle of extremes, and their favorite pastime was bickering with one another. There was Berry Punch, who was as disreputable as ponies came, and beside her was Carrot Top, who in a kingdom full of prudes took prudery to new heights and made it an art form. Next to them stood Bon Bon, Lyra’s Pony Friend Forever, whose claim to fame was a perpetually bad attitude.

Beside Bon Bon, much to my shock, was Equestria’s unlikeliest family. There was the walleyed Derpy, a flying disaster area, who had come with her daughter Dinky and husband Time Turner.

Last of all was Minuette, Time Turner’s apprentice and the only pony out of this bunch whom I could get along with.

After my first utterance, the whole lot of them merely stared at me, blinking. Bon Bon’s lip curled up in a sneer.

“I am speechless,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s a first,” said Bon Bon.

“Hey,” said Berry Punch, who walked to me and nuzzled the back of my hand. “Your special somepony said you found a new way to mix sassy. Izzat true?”

“Berry!” Lyra cried. “We’re just friends!”

“Honestly, Berry Punch,” muttered Carrot Top with a sniff, “that’s not quite decent.”

“If we could get started, please,” said Time Turner as he checked his heavy pocket watch, “I suggest we do so. We are being most inefficient.”

And so it had begun.

---

I certainly wasn’t on Earth anymore. Back in my homeland, if a group of pretty girls had made their way into the dormitory of a seminary, it probably would have sparked a new Inquisition. Here, it was Tuesday.

Of course, the “seminary” was in a wing of Princess Celestia’s school, so there was simply no way of keeping girls from coming and going as they pleased. Besides that, all but three of the seminarians were human, and every last one of the girls was a pony, so the bishop had apparently elected not to fret about the remote possibility of scandal.

With my herd trailing behind, I made my way into our rec hall, which was the only room in the seminary large enough to accommodate us comfortably. I passed a few early risers on the way. I waved, and they stared, but they didn’t ask questions. They probably just thought to themselves, Jack is up to something again.

When we moved into the rec hall, we found Bishop Van de Velde himself, clad in his bishop’s cassock, pectoral cross, and pellegrina, sitting at a table and muttering over his breviary. He looked up over his reading glasses and gave all of us a grandfatherly smile.

“Jack?” he said. Legions, multitudes were in that word. Most everyone who had ever been in charge of me in any capacity had sooner or later learned to freight that one syllable in manifold ways, with suspicion or condemnation or threat or frustration or everything at once. The bishop, with his thick accent and mild voice, had that syllable fully loaded. I shuddered involuntarily.

Of course, the bishop would keep his cool. He always did. He never chewed anyone out, because that’s what he had Sire August for.

But today, I had an alibi. “Early morning rehearsal,” I said. “For the pageant.”

His face brightened as he answered, “Don’t let me distract you.” Then, with many sighs and wheezes, he made his way to his feet, tucked his breviary under his arm, and headed for the door. He had to pass my row of ponies on the way out, so he dutifully sniffed noses with each of them as he went. They didn’t bother to exchange names, for this was Equestria, where names were secondary to scent.

After the bishop left, I did the polite thing and sniffed noses myself. Usually, I couldn’t tell one pony from another, except perhaps by her perfume, but each pony in this crowd was distinct. Even at the butt-crack of dawn, Berry Punch carried the pungent, spicy aroma of sassafras. Carrot Top smelled like carrots. Bon Bon had a sweet smell to contrast with her sour personality. Derpy smelled like baked goods. Time Turner and Minuette both smelled of machine oil. And Dinky . . . well, Dinky was the one pony in this crowd who basically just smelled like a horse.

After the greetings were finished, I faced the ponies, clasped my hands behind my back, and paced. “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here,” I said.

“You didn’t,” said Berry Punch. “Your girlfriend did. To help with your play.”

“Berry!” cried Lyra.

“Can we get on with it?” said Time Turner. “I estimate that everything we’ve done in the last ten minutes could have been done in three.”

I stopped pacing, sat down on the corner of a table, raised a finger, and said, “I have called you here for a Christmas pageant.”

“Criss moss?” Carrot Top asked. “Is that the kind that drapes off the branches?”

With an impatient whinny, Lyra jumped to my side and said, “Listen, everypony, Jack and his little club have a prince, and the prince is having a birthday. We’re going to help out.”

Berry Punch scratched herself and belched. “It’s a birthday? You don’t celebrate birthdays with pageants. You celebrate with cake.”

“Berry is right for once,” said Carrot Top. “I’m not sure this is decent.”

Time Turner, who had been staring at his stopwatch all this time, now shut it with a loud snap. “I must say, I remain uncertain if I wish to aid and abet an organization well known for advocating sedition. I fail to understand why Princess Celestia tolerates it.”

Dinky, who was nestled against Derpy, looked up at her mother and whispered loudly, “What’s sedition, mama?”

“That’s where you sit too much and don’t get your exercise, sugar muffin,” Derpy whispered back just as loudly.

At that, Time Turner released a decidedly longsuffering sigh.

Once again, I found myself unexpectedly speechless, and Lyra was no help, since Derpy’s comment had sent her into a fresh fit of giggles. But then Minuette came to my rescue: she coughed into her hoof and said in a flat, brusque voice, “Chronomaster, I have studied the teachings of this club, and they do escape the charge of sedition on a technicality. Although the club’s members consider themselves citizens of another kingdom, they believe they won’t enter it until their deaths. At any rate, they instruct their adherents to obey Celestia, but to refrain from taking her name in oaths. In that, their doctrines are not altogether different from those of our own Order.”

Time Turner snorted and flipped open his watch again. “Oh, very well, Minuette.” He glanced at his wife, and a smile briefly flitted across his face. “Derpy was set on coming anyway. She wants to be in a play.”

With a whoop, Derpy flew up into the air. Without even a change in his expression, Time Turner merely wrapped a fetlock around Dinky and slid her out of the way before Derpy crashed back into the floor.

Not knowing what else to do, I tugged at my Roman collar and said, “All right, let me give you the lowdown. Your standard Christmas pageant takes two stories of the birth of Christ and blends them together—”

Bon Bon pounded a hoof against the floor. “Who’s Christ? I thought this was about somepony named Jesus.”

“I know!” Lyra cried, raising a hoof and dancing back and forth as if she were in class and asking to go to the bathroom. “Christ is his second name. Jesus Christ. It’s like Razzle Dazzle or Banana Fizzy.” She stuck out her chin and closed her eyes with a smug smile.

I tugged on my collar again. “Lyra, sweetheart, ‘Christ’ is a title.”

“Like ‘princess’?” asked Berry Punch.

“If you like.”

“Ridiculous,” said Bon Bon. “Then it should be Christ Jesus. You don’t say ‘Celestia Princess.’”

“Good grief, will you ponies shut up? If you don’t stop talking, I’m never going to get through this.” I jumped off the edge of the table and, with hands clasped behind my back, began pacing again. “Here’s the Reader’s Digest version. There was a woman named Mary. She was a virgin, but she was pregnant—”

I immediately slapped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late. This was what I got for trying to do anything important before I’d had my morning coffee.

Berry Punch burst into loud guffaws. Bon Bon dropped her jaw. Derpy’s cheeks turned pink. Even Time Turner and Minuette raised their eyebrows.

But Carrot Top turned bright red from the base of her neck right up to her forelock, and she clapped her front hooves over little Dinky’s ears. “This,” she hissed, her voice coming out like steam from a kettle, “is not decent! I did not come all the way here to be spoken to in this manner!”

This was Equestria, where there were two subjects that nopony spoke about in public. Ever. And I had a bad habit of casually mentioning both of them on a regular basis.

I glanced at Lyra. She looked disgusted, but by now she was used to me. She shrugged.

I sat down on the corner of the table again, gazed up at the arched ceiling, and reflected. It was not easy to spread Christianity in a kingdom where everyone considered it the lowest depth of depravity ever to mention anything having to do with sex or death.

And now I had to consider how to put on a Christmas play in which I couldn’t use words like virgin or pregnant.

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

This was Equestria, where there were two subjects that nopony spoke about in public. Ever. And I had a bad habit of casually mentioning both of them on a regular basis.

I feel kinda bad that my first thought was "Deej...are you projecting?" This just keeps getting more interesting.

[D G D Davidson]

3604667

Depends on what you mean. There is indeed plenty of me in Jack.

[Ms_Fruit_Bat]

This is a most glorious story to be written for the holiday enjoyment of all!
Much praises to you, oh great Deej!

[Derpmind]

3604927
I suspect that you're projecting in every way it's possible to be projecting in that sentence.

[EternalStrifeOfLife]

Well... this went smooth. *sips tea*

*Raises a brow in a restive manner, lower my cup of tea and rests it in my lap*

Well, come on, what are you waiting for Mr. pen-slave!? Get on with it and imprint some prosodic magic that will divulge to us, your eager readers, the next turn of your delightful Christmas story.

PS: with much respect of course.

[Jake The Army Guy]

I'm liking the almost jaded view Jack has about Christianity. Very realistic, I think.

Can't wait for more!

[djthomp]

I'm glad I got Chronomistress read recently, it was nice to know the Turner/Colgate/Derpy backstory when they popped up.

“Can we get on with it?” said Time Turner. “I estimate that everything we’ve done in the last ten minutes could have been done in three.”

Nice.

[D G D Davidson]

3607190

A character who is not jaded would also be realistic. We have all kinds.

3608897

Yes, this is a semi-sequel to Chronomistress, and also to "Forever," though I've altered details of the Chronoverse since I wrote that one.

[Dragon Turtle]

Normally you portray Equestria as being a very different place, and sometimes seemingly superior. It's a nice break to see some limitations in Equestrian thought process. Really you guys? You can't imagine a language simply putting a title at the end?

I suppose I may as well bring up one of the problems I had with Chronomistress here, since you described this as a semi-sequel. I'm glad it's just "semi," because I can't imagine this Time Turner being the colossal prick from back then.