Indecent Relations
THE MOON GLOWS GENTLY
INDECENT RELATIONS
The echo of Luna’s voice slowly faded from the conference room, leaving only her gasps for air as she took deep, heaving breaths at the end of the long wooden table. Her forehooves dug into the surface, bearing most of her weight as she leaned forward towards the two groups seated there in stunned silence. On her left, Chief Heartsong of the buffalo, and on her right, Lord Rufus of the diamond dogs, along with a retinue of advisors and counselors. All of them stared at her, too stunned by the eleven-minute, venom-laced tirade she’d just unleashed upon them to speak. As she calmed down, Luna became aware of another sound; the scratching of the Royal Stenographer's quill as she tried vaiently to keep up.
“Sorry, Princess,” she said, looking up at her with desperate apology written in her eyes, “I got as far as ‘feed your immortal souls to the stygian hell beasts that live between the stars,’ but everything after that is a bit of a blur. I’ve... I’ve never heard some of those words before, and I definitely haven’t heard them being used like that.”
Luna silently prayed that, somehow, the depth and variety of the profanity she had let loose might induce some sort of highly-targeted short term memory loss. Because otherwise, Tia was going to kill her.
“I’ve never been so offended in my life. That outburst was completely uncalled for,” said Chief Heartsong as her hopes faded away.
“Yes, pony princess is very rude,” agreed Lord Rufus.
Luna perked up. Okay, silver lining here. This was the first time during the eight-hour marathon negotiating session that had slowly but surely pushed her temper beyond its breaking point that these two had agreed on anything. She could always spin this as a brilliant, unconventional tactic to give them a common focus, a tool to break the logjam that threatened to—
“It’s due to your obstinate refusal to compromise, you know,” said Chief Heartsong.
Well. Never mind, then.
“Our refusal to compromise? We were there first. What gives you the right to come in and demand we change our ways?”
“Your excavations have made the land completely impassible. Not to mention the damage to our cultural sites.”
“Damage? They were already in ruins when we started digging!”
“Enough!” shouted Luna. For a moment she felt another angry rant rising in her throat, but she forced it back down. “This is getting us nowhere fast.”
“And you, Princess,” said Rufus. “You make demands that diamond dogs and buffalo make peace, drag us away from our homes to come to your city, and then insult us? Galling.”
Luna smoldered under the accusation. It was nearly dawn, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in her study with a good book and something that was mostly ethanol by volume. She wasn’t picky about what. “You forced our hoof when your conflict began to spill over our borders,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “This is no longer a private matter, as far as my sister and I are concerned.”
“I will admit, this has been a waste of time so far. All we seem to be doing is rehashing the same tired arguments over and over again. Forgive my skepticism, but I don’t know what you expected to happen,” said Heartsong.
“Where is other pony princess? The one who knows what she is doing?”
Luna’s eyes snapped open. That particular barb had found its mark. “Let’s stop here for the day,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “We’ll pick this up again tomorrow night.”
“I see no reason to bother if—”
“TOMORROW! NIGHT!” Luna shouted, cowing the larger buffalo into silence. Without waiting for an answer from either of them, she stormed off. She paused at the threshold of the room, and her horn glowed as the transcript was snatched out of her stenographer's grasp. She rolled it up and regarded it for a second, then with a little twitch of her eye the whole parchment went up in blue flames until it was nothing but ash.
Happy to have the excuse of needing to lower the moon, she stepped out into the cool evening air just in time to feel the sun pressing from below the horizon. Taking her cue, she forced all of her unspent rage and frustration into her art, and the moon jerked downwards quicker than she’d meant it to. As she gasped at the void left behind when all of that poured out of her, a tear trickled down her cheek. “The one who knows what she’s doing, my flank,” she whispered. For just a second there, she’d felt a little bit of that old jealousy from... the bad times.
She knew who she needed to talk to, knew said pony was too busy to be disturbed right now, and knew that she was going to go do exactly that anyway. Celestia would never forgive her for not coming to her right away.
The walk to Celestia’s bedroom felt like it took longer than usual, or maybe she was just dreading the conversation that was waiting for her there. She took a moment to gather her composure and pushed the door open without bothering to knock. Her sister was seated before a full-length mirror with two hoof maidens attending to her. One was polishing the crown on a nearby table while the other ran a brush through her flowing mane. Celestia spotted Luna’s reflection in the mirror, and smiled. “Good morning, sister. To what do I owe the visit?”
“We must speak,” said Luna. The hoof maidens made no move to leave. “Privately.”
The pegasus working on the crown gave her a small frown, but didn’t leave. “Begging your pardon, highness, but we need to make sure everything is just so. It wouldn’t do for your sister to arrive in the Crystal Empire this afternoon in anything less than perfect condition.”
Luna glared. After the night she’d just had, the last thing she was in the mood for was backtalk, and from a servant no less? “You wish to stay? You think yourself worthy of the secrets that pass between your princesses, when they have deemed it otherwise? I have lived for over a thousand generations, and I have seen things. I have looked into the hearts of monstrosities that would reduce our bravest warriors to gibbering wrecks with so much as a glimpse. I could speak words, no, syllables to you that would roll your eyes back into your head and drop you, convulsing, to the floor. So when I tell you that I wish to speak to my sister privately, I suggest that you stop what you are doing and gallop as fast as you can, lest I hold my tongue no longer and you go mad from the revelation.”
The two hoof maidens just gaped at her, until Celestia cleared her throat and brought them back to reality. “Well, that does sound important. It’s alright. Please, give us the room?” The two mares rushed with indecent haste to get away. When they closed the door behind them, Celestia sighed. “Laying it on a bit thick today, aren't we? What’s the matter?”
Luna tried to force the words out of her mouth. To convey, in one concise little phrase, the full extent of all the myriad ways she’d utterly failed in her duties as Princess of Equestria. Concern appeared on Celestia’s face as she felt her lower lip start to tremble. Buck it. “I don’t wanna host the peace summit!” she whined. With that, she fell to the floor and covered her head with her forelegs. She whimpered as she felt a great white wing lay across her back.
“Surely it can’t have gone that badly?” asked Celestia. Luna looked up at her, and couldn’t help but feel a little sting of jealousy at the way even though she’d just woken up, Celestia was the model of the poised, collected, self-assured princess that Luna never felt like she was.
“I may have threatened both of them with the prospect of committing some light genocide,” moaned Luna. “I’m not actually entirely sure. I was on something of a roll at the time.” She shuddered. “I suppose tempers were running a bit hot.”
“Evidently. Well, we knew that it would be a challenge from the start. Their feud has been going on for nearly a century now. Nopony is going to solve it in a day.”
“You could,” muttered Luna. “You should be the one in there talking to them. You wouldn’t have blown up like that. Not like me.” She looked away. “I lose my temper and you’re stuck cleaning up my mess. It happened a thousand years ago, and now it’s just starting all over again. You’re the one they want, anyway. You’re always the one everypony wants.”
“I have the utmost confidence in your ability to handle this, Luna. I wouldn’t be leaving for the Empire in the middle of it if I didn’t.” She brushed a hoof along her back as they sat there together, quietly. “I asked you to do this for a reason, you know. Do you remember the last time we negotiated diplomatic relations with the diamond dogs together?”
Luna had to laugh at the memory. “Things were a great deal simpler back then.”
“When Count Fido challenged us to decide ownership of Saltlick Plateau with a drinking contest, I very nearly died. Not you, though. You agreed to it for both of us without even thinking about it. If I’d had my way, we’d have spent decades quibbling over mineral rights and the like, and ended up with perhaps half of it. But you had the courage to go for it all.”
“The Royal Liver proved victorious on that day,” agreed Luna cheerfully. “A shame you don’t remember any of it.”
“Well, to hear you tell it I passed out before things got really interesting, anyway,” said Celestia. She gave Luna a gentle kiss on the forehead. “My point is, even when you don’t necessarily think things through before you act, you always listen to your heart. I’d say it’s guided you pretty well all these years.”
“It’s certainly never been boring,” said Luna. She frowned. “But it doesn’t seem to be working all that well for me now.”
“Hmm,” said Celestia. “Why don’t we try breaking down the problem into its fundamental components?”
Luna rolled her eyes at the suggestion. “What a spectacularly dull-sounding endeavor.”
“Not such a bad quality when your troubles stem from the self-inflicted cuts of a sharp tongue,” replied Celestia. Luna, Princess of the Night Sky and Keeper of the Stars, summoned up her full regal bearing as she stuck the very tongue in question out towards her sister and blew a defiant raspberry. “Truly, Luna, you can’t possibly imagine that you’ll cow them into obedience with a loud voice and empty threats.”
“What makes you so sure they are empty?”
Celestia gave her a wry look. “Come now. That may have worked in a less civilized age, but the diamond dogs and buffalo aren’t our enemies. Their leaders are proud, and making them combative will only leave them less willing to make the concessions that we need from each of them.”
“I ask again, what makes you so sure? I’ve always found that liberal promises of decapitation are an invaluable part of the diplomatic toolbox.”
Now it was Celestia’s turn to roll her eyes, but she followed the gesture with a gentle nuzzle to Luna’s cheek, and Luna didn’t protest. “Let’s just say I’ve had ample time to observe that same sort of pride in a mare who’s rather dear to me.” A clock chimed the hour, and Celestia furrowed her brow. “Luna, I really do need to get going. I’ll send you up a little something for the day that should help, how does that sound?”
Luna’s grin was as bright as any sunrise her sister had ever overseen. A treat! Exactly what she needed after the night she’d had buried under the unending waves of petty minutia that underpinned this ridiculous conflict. Perhaps a bottle of wine from Celestia’s private cellar, or maybe she’d picked up on the not-so-subtle hints Luna had dropped to her about which of the bodyguards employed in the Solar Guards she felt would be most eligable for a... special assignment. Helping their Princess blow off steam was absolutely vital part of maintaining national security, was it not? “That would be most appreciated. Thank you, Tia.”
“It’s my pleasure,” said Celestia as she rose to leave, “just go in there tomorrow night, keep a level head about yourself, and remember one piece of advice that’s served me well over the years: you can’t ever control what other ponies say, or do, or think. The only thing you can control is how you respond.”
“I will strive to keep that in mind,” agreed Luna. She brushed a loose strand of Celestia’s done-up mane that had escaped all the ties and bindings holding it up in its frankly ridiculous position, a far cry from Luna’s looser, free-flowing style that drifted every which way at the slightest breeze. “Enjoy your trip. I do know how you enjoy being used as a prop to assuage the meaningless concerns of citizens fretting over worries that are as unlikely to come about as they are to influence the outcome.”
“It’s not a meanless trip, Luna. It’s a public goodwill tour to reinforce that we stand in solidarity and friendship with the Crystal Empire during their labor dispute with the weather pegasi of Cloudsdale.”
“Yes. I believe that is what I just said. We both know that the weather factories are posturing, they will extract a few token concessions, and the climate will continue unimpeded.”
Celestia frowned. “Results and the process by which one achieves them are equally important things, Luna. Sometimes a gesture, even a silly or apparently meaningless one, pays dividends years or even decades later. Perhaps some tiny, insignificant gestures of camaraderie between the buffalo and diamond dogs a century ago could have prevented these negotiations from ever becoming necessary at all.”
With that, Celestia walked out the door to meet her waiting chariot, unable to see Luna scowling at the back of her head. The door closed behind her, leaving Luna alone. “Or perhaps they’d turn out to be exactly as tiny and insignificant as they appear,” she muttered to nopony in particular. Luna rubbed her eyes against the bright and vivid decor of her sister’s chamber. She found herself pining for her own, far darker chambers rather than the vision-searing gaudiness her sister favored.
The only detour she allowed herself was what should have been a quick, low-profile trip to the kitchen for a snack. But even that couldn’t be easy; she was held up three times by assorted nobles. Apparently the collective ability of her court to read their princess’ mood was still in dire straights, but she heeded Celestia’s counsel and did her best to hold back her ire. Why, one of the nobles wasn’t even sobbing by the time she was finished with him! Surely, that constituted some degree of progress?
Looking in on the kitchen, she found the chefs hard at work gussying up the absurdly ornate dinners-as-breakfasts that were apparently the only thing diplomats could survive on, what with their ever so taxing duties of sitting on their plots around conference tables and yelling, mostly at her. There was even a four-tiered cake being topped with artisanal globs of sugar. What a shame her sister had been called away to the Empire and wouldn’t enjoy it. Scanning the fare, her nose wrinkled as she caught an unpleasant smell from over by the grill. Somepony in the foreign office had gone through the trouble of securing some pork cutlets that were cooking away watched over by one poor chef who was doing an admirable job not gagging on the fumes. Luna knew first hoof that consuming red meat was pleasing to neither to her palate or her digestion, knowledge that had been hard won centuries ago when a field commander with a somewhat disdainful view of royals had presented her with a barely seared ‘delicacy’ on her visit to their camp out on the frontier. The look on his face as she’d wolfed it down without hesitation and proclaimed it delicious had been well worth the hours retching into bushes later that night, and not a single stallion or mare in that unit wouldn’t have volunteered to accompany her into the depths of Tartarus at her request afterwards.
With nopony who she cared to so impress tonight and no desire to emerge from the shadowy archway she haunted and be fawned over by the busy cooks, she merely tore a chunk of rustic bread from a nearby loaf and slipped away, back towards the solitude of her study. But when she arrived at the door to her personal lair and saw what was waiting there for her, she froze. Just for a moment, though, before letting loose with a string of profanity in a half dozen long-dead languages. When she was finished, she capped off the display by switching to Modern Equestrian once again.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
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Rescued from the scrap heap!
I'll post the other half tomorrow or, more likely, Saturday.
Cliffhangers and Princess d'aww. I love it!
From this story:
From that story:
Recursive?
4110831
The two are meant as companion pieces to one another. The night is the sequel to the day is the sequel to the night is the etc. etc. etc.
4110831
*You spin me right round, baby
right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
4110874
*ahem*
Luna is leaning towards the Putin method of politics?
Heres something to do that will break any ego based kitchen worker. Tell them if they dont have a table pantry of simple food stuffs in your room, that you will order out since they are incapable of following their rulers request, never mind order.
Worse case occupant of the room? Blueblood.
Well, in any negotiations, Luna is the natural to play Bad Alicorn to Celestia's Good Alicorn. And to be honest, she actually *did* get them to agree on something: Celestia. Now to take that one point of agreement and run with it. "I can't possibly disturb my busy sister with this unless I can get you to agree to restoration of certain of the buffalo cultural sites, and of course, a few concessions in return from you..."
an invaluable part of the
diplomaticsocial toolboxWaitresses will never forget your order again!
Glad to see this cycle completing itself finally!
Ah, a day in the life of Luna. I can't wait for the second half. A shame even that partial transcript of her rant was lost to posterity. I'm sure it would've inspired generations. Mostly, it would inspire them not to abuse the Royal Patience.
4110868
Well, it seems that either could take place after the other, so you've definitely gotten that right.
4110868 Thats...
poetic. And beautiful. Did I mention beautiful?
4112388
I've always seen the two princesses as having a very yin and yang relationship. They have their own strengths, but rely on one another to be truly complete.
Dude, did you make that cover page? Because it looks awesome :D
4112625
It is awesome, but it isn't my work. Click the source link, which will take you to the actual artist
Dang it! Cliffie! Now I'm going to be on tenterhooks waiting for the rest of the story!
I've always thought that you need a special sort of psychology to be a diplomat - to deal with idiots day in and day out who seem to think that their country's (or, more commonly, just the leaders of those countries') little quibbles, petty pride and ancient grievances are somehow relevant in the face of the possible loss of thousands of lives. To smile when you're dealing with someone who won't see any other point of view but their own and are willing to kill thousands of people to (except themselves) to back it up. I'm not sure Luna is a pony with that psychology.
Celestia has learnt that, sometimes, you just need to remind them of what you are and what you can do when pushed. Maybe Luna will need to learn the opposite lesson: to swallow her pride and accept a loss because the alternative would mean thousands of dead.
Hey, I remember this from your scrapyard.
You're doing it after all?
4112982
Too much potential to just give up.
phnglui mglwnafh Luna R'lyeh wgahnagl fhtagn.
"OFF WITH THEIR HEADS"
I think this should be "eligible" and "meaningless".
Hopefully it's not raw material for rainbows they're after.
4113064
She was still Queen of Hearts, just saying.
I'm looking forward to finding out what Celestia gave Luna as a "Treat."
4110868
That's a great excuse for a typo.
Also, this story really made me truly sympathize with Luna. Enough adorkability, it's time to RAGE OUT AND GET ELDRITCH, AAWWW YEAAAAAH!
Once again its proven, Luna is best Pony.
Ouch.
If only our politics were more like this. I think I'd watch C-SPAN more.
The trick with threatening to decapitate ponies, regardless of it's moral evilness, etc, etc is that you have to be able to follow through. If you have the personal power to vanquish an entire nation alone then perhaps you can consider doing that, but otherwise the consequences will be worse than dealing with the previously alive pony.
Awesome story! Is there any chance you could make the picture a larger size? Would love to make it my desktop background, thanks!
4117912
Check the source link to the artist's DA page.
SHITAKE MUSHROOMS!!!!
Getting drunk solves everything!
4117979 Thanks, didn't see that there!
So, when does this get [completed]?
Yaaay, I finally too the time to read this!
I absolutely love this kind of Luna...I can't say it enough.
Now, what is the present? I honestly don't know whta to expect from you, Eakin.
This is a comma splice. There should be a period between sugar and what since they can start and end independent sentences. I suppose a semicolon could also be used here, but not a comma.
Other than that I like this story and can't wait to see the conclusion.
Well done. I look forward to the next chapter.
4122294
Meant to finish it yesterday, but it's gotten a bit stretched as I can't stop filling it out. Hope the finished product is worth the wait.
4123843
Good call! Fixed.
If it's a chessboard I'll laugh my arse off.
I really love the way you write the Princesses in their day to day lives.
was still in dire straights
Isn't it supposed to be "dire straits"?
I think the word should be "valiantly".
Awesome job! I love these fics and your style of sarcastic and chaotic storytelling, to top it all off we have the Royal Sisters going on a fantastic plot. Keep it up!
4110868
GENIUS!