A Hard Morning
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
by NavyPony
Chapter Seven:
A Hard Morning
Princess Celestia leapt into the sky, spread her wings, and raised the sun.
When she dropped back to the Astral Dais, the horizon was ablaze and the Solar Princess was beaming just as brightly. More immediately, Nightlight was once more permitted to speak – propriety demanded silence during dusk and dawn, and the pony with whom he’d been conversing was a stickler amongst sticklers when it came to propriety. “Mister Slopes?” He turned to the Head Steward while the two alicorns shared a few words. “You were saying?” the young unicorn asked, fighting off a yawn.
“Yes, I received your message saying which times you were free to observe and help conduct the hiring interviews, but I wanted to confirm it personally. I sense there may have been some miscommunication, you see.” Slopes’ expression and tone remained entirely uninflected as he pulled a slip of paper from his vest pocket and began to read it. “‘The interviews will have to wait,’ it says, ‘because you need to… do… Mister Noon Nap first. Also, because the Princess wants to ride your flank, and you don’t know how long She’ll take.’”
‘What.’ That was wrong. It was all wrong. “I-”
The Head Steward wasn’t finished. “You continued by saying: ‘Then you have to get busy with the Night Stewards, and you also need some time with one of the librarians. And then you’ll be too spent to take care of anypony else,’ it concludes.” Slopes refolded the note and slipped it back into his vest pocket. “Mister Nightlight, I don’t really take you for such a cavalier fraternizer, nor one to admit to it so casually. Am I safe to assume that you weren’t the one to leave this message with my secretary?”
It was fortunate for Nightlight that the Princesses had a lot to talk about, because he spent more time collecting himself than it had taken to read the message. When he was finally able to form words, he explained. “No. I mean yes. Yes, it’s safe to assume that, and no, I wasn’t the one to speak with her.”
“Is that so?” His question was the same monotone that he normally used. “You had somepony else do it?”
“I… Yeah. Yes, I mean. I was busy and couldn’t find a good moment, so I asked another servant to do it for me,” Nightlight admitted with a twinge of worry that needled through his fatigue. “Ugh, and I had the same servant send a message to the librarian telling her I wanted to see her… This was a huge mistake, wasn’t it?”
The older steward was taken aback at the question, recoiling just slightly. “No. By all means, Mister Nightlight, delegate the trivial so that you can focus on the essential. It’s part of weighing importance and urgency. Assign your tasks to somepony else, if you can, because there will always be more things that you have to do personally,” he explained, nodding resolutely. “But you’ve started to figure this out, no?”
Nightlight certainly had noticed the fact. Being the Lunar Hoofservant was akin to drowning in a sea of problems, but… “B-But that message, i-it’s wrong!” he stuttered. “The-there’s no doing or flank-riding or anything else like that. I should’ve told your secretary myself.”
“You should’ve chosen a different messenger, Mister Nighlight.” Slopes sentence was chastising, but his inflection was calm. “And that’s the extent of it. We’ve lost a couple hours putting together the interview schedule and it might inconvenience the interviewees a good bit, but it shouldn’t affect the Princesses,” he reassured. “It will, however, become a much bigger problem if you don’t tell me the actual message now. I do have to put this together. So tell me: what time is best?”
He nodded unthinkingly, trying to reconstruct and paraphrase what he’d originally said. “I don’t think I’ll be free until afternoon. Princess Luna wanted to speak with me about something, and I don’t know what it’s about or how long it’ll take. I have business to take care of with the Night Stewards after that, and then something to address with Her Librarian.”
The Head Steward harrumphed, but it sounded good-natured; it was probably as close to a real laugh as the older pony had made all year. “Your messenger certainly had a way with words. So that last bit about being… spent, I think the word was… that was the assumption of your messenger?”
“Hmm? No, I- yes, but no. I mean…” Nightlight was unable to suppress his next yawn, and had to stop to cover his mouth. “Sir, I’ve gotten about three hours of sleep in the last… long time. In the last thirty-six hours, I think. I’m dead on my hooves and I’m running on fumes.” Caffeine and adrenaline fumes, mostly. “By the time I finish with everything else I have to do, I won’t be useful to anypony until I get some shuteye.” At this point, he was fantasizing about sleeping for days on end, but failing that, he needed at least a couple hours. “That’s why I wanted to wait until the afternoon, sir.”
“Oh?” Slopes probed, his expression deepening the creases between his eyebrows. “But if you were less tired, you could attend them earlier? The sooner the interviews are finished, the more time the new servants will have to prepare before starting their jobs. That means better performance.”
“I… I suppose so,” he conceded, yawning yet again. “But sir-”
There were no ‘buts’ about it. Slopes’ horn lit up with baby-blue light and much to Nightlight’s surprise, he found himself awash with a foreign magic. But as awkward as it normally felt to be the recipient of somepony else’s spells, this magic was strangely refreshing. He felt good, like he’d just had a short nap, a long stretch, a filling meal, a mug of strong tea, a couple aspirin, and a shot of bourbon. Maybe two shots, in fact. Nightlight had never heard of, let alone experienced, a spell quite like that one. ‘It has to be fifth level, at least,’ he considered.
Though only one syllable escaped his mouth, it expressed his thoughts perfectly. “Wow.”
“Thank you,” the senior steward responded, a proud grin smoldering beneath his cold exterior. “So, if you were less tired, you could attend interviews earlier?”
“I… Yessir. Um… I’ll probably get done by nine-thirty.”
“Very well. Interviews will take place in the Salon of Enervating Blues unless circumstances preclude it, so I’ll expect you there before ten. If you think you’ll be delayed, send word as soon as possible,” the older stallion directed, returning to his typical stony demeanor. “Do you have anything else?”
“I… was about to ask you the same, sir.” Nightlight joked with a subdued laugh. “I don’t really know what to do right now.”
It felt uncanny to be doing nothing for a moment, even if it was for just a moment. Ever since he’d been awoken that Monday evening, he’d always had something to do, but now… he had nothing. ‘Well not technically, but there’s nothing you can do,’ chimed a little voice in his head. ‘You’ve got loads to do. You just… can’t do it. Typical, yeah?’ It was. Princess Luna was going to want to speak with him in the next minute or so (presumably about all the things that’d been clopped up all night), so he couldn’t address any of the things he had stacked on his plate and, if only in some sense… there was nothing. For the first time in forever and a half, Nightlight had a second of respite.
Very awake. “That spell you used - what was it, sir?”
“It’s a family tradition, you could say. Me, my father, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, her father… it goes back about as far back as the Slopes do.” The older pony allowed himself another minute smile. “As the story goes, Princess Celestia taught it to Her first Head Steward, if you believe it.”
“That… explains a lot, I guess,” the darker steward muttered, rolling his eyes from behind the cover of his mane. “So you don’t actually need sleep?”
“Absolutely not; I can push the need for sleep back, but everypony needs sleep. Pushing it off, like this spell does, is a tricky and precise process,” which meant that Nightlight probably couldn’t learn it, “and it can’t be used repeatedly,” which meant that Nightlight couldn’t count on receiving its benefits very often. “On that note: do get some sleep as soon as you can. That’s an order, by the way; stay up too long and you’re apt to keel over.”
“Oh…kay… ” So when Slopes said ‘can’t be used repeatedly’ he really meant ‘dangerous’. “When should I be worried about that?” Nightlight asked, immediately wondering what the side effects of this spell might be. “When should I get some sleep?”
Slopes blinked twice at the question; it was totally unexpected. “Well, once the benefits outweigh the risks, of course. Keep asking yourself how you can best serve the Princess, and when going to sleep is the best way to do that, go to sleep,” he said seriously. “It’s just like everything else you do.”
“But keel over? When am-”
Nightlight was interrupted by not just one, but two goddesses. Having finished their conversation with each other, they were departing the Dais, and both were seeking their servants as they did so.
“Snowy?”
“Hoofservant.”
He responded automatically, his head snapping towards Luna so fast that it made his mane flick. “Your Highness?”
“Come.”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Instead of dismissing him immediately, Luna had Nightlight stay for almost an hour after they arrived at the Lunar Bedchamber. The word ‘weird’ did not nearly begin to describe it. “Draw Us a bath,” she commanded upon their arrival. “See it more heated than ‘twas hitherto.”
‘Bath. Hitherto?’ Nightlight paused to interpret Her words, and then again to realize the implication. ‘What did I do yesterday?!’
“Make haste,” the Princess uttered, marching with a ‘click click click’ across the hardwood floors and towards Her bedside. Doffing Her regalia while Nightlight scurried to the adjoining bathroom, Luna placed Her shoes, tiara, and breastplate in a small pile before sliding onto the bed to wait. She stayed there for a while, rubbing her hooves on the plush covers as the Lunar Hoofservant began his newest task.
The first thing that struck him upon entering the bathroom was the sheer enormity of it. It was huge. Beyond huge, even. Sure, everything in the room was built with an alicorn in mind, but this place was larger than the communal bathrooms in the servants’ wing and far nicer to boot. The walls and floor were cut from black marble, and all of the same vein if Nightlight guessed correctly. The spigots and knobs on the plumbing were all sterling silver and an enormous silver mirror covered one full side of the chamber. There were counters and washbasins and shelves galore, all furnished with towels and soaps and mane-care products, but next to the sheer size of the bathroom it was the bathtub that was most impressive.
The same way Luna’s bed dominated Her sleeping chambers, the bath was the focus of this room. Instead of being a separate appliance, it was literally cut into the floor so that a pony could walk down into it, and combined with its sheer size, the thing was more akin to a small swimming pool than a bathtub. Whether for reasons aesthetic or practical, it had a dozen spigots at varying intervals around the tub, and at the far end was a quartet of dials to control the water flow.
Nightlight hadn’t ever seen a bathtub that needed more than one knob to manage the water, but everything was well-labeled and in no time at all he had every tap spraying hot water at full-blast.
The young steward knew little enough about fluid dynamics to be impressed by the bathtub’s incredible water pressure, but he knew enough about time-management to realize it would very quickly be filled. Figuring he’d be ordered to do so, the young steward busied himself by collecting towels and shampoos and placing them within hoof’s reach from the bath. By the time he’d gathered everything the he could think of, the bathtub was full and the air thick with steam. He shut the water off and exited the bathroom. “Highness? Your bath is ready.”
The princess rose and moved towards the bathroom without speaking. Hooves unshod, Luna’s gait lacked its usual menace. Instead of the ominous click, click, click, to which Nightlight had become accustomed it was a simple clip-clop clip-clop. She walked slowly, paying heed to neither her surrounding nor her company until she arrived at the water’s edge. Staring dubiously at the steaming pool, Luna dipped a single hoof into the water.
She turned to face him with the same unreadable glare which she so often used. “Hmmph. ‘Tis sufficient.”
The princess waded in up to her neck and Nightlight released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. If he’d done this right, that meant she didn’t have to yell at him for it, which meant he could take care of everything else on his plate. “In that case, should I-”
“Stay,” Luna preempted. “We desire to speak with thee.”
“Y-yes?” Nightlight caught a gasp in his throat. If she could- ‘No. If she could read minds she’d already have banished me or something. She…’ He swallowed his fear of banishment, followed quickly by any hope he’d maintained of getting to his other obligations before long. “That- I mean, of course, Your Majesty.” He ambled to the edge of the bathtub and dropped to his haunches, and he tried not to look angry as he did so.
To describe it as difficult would be an understatement. Nightlight simply sat in place, waiting for Her Highness to speak to him so that he could go about the rest of the day’s obligations, while Luna did nothing. Literally, nothing. She simply soaked, not even washing herself, and gazed listlessly at the water’s surface.
Oh, Snowy Slopes was going to be so mad.
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
“Hoofservant.”
“Hmm-uh?” The unicorn shook himself from his reverie, finding the bathroom unchanged but for the absence of steam rising from the bathtub. “Princess?”
There was not even a ripple in the water as Luna spoke. “What thinkst thou of our staff?”
Nightlight’s mouth opened more out of surprise than actual intent. “Uhh, y-you want my opinion of the staff, Your Highness?” Not only was this the first time she’d ever asked his opinion of anything, but also…
She scoffed without moving. “As We have tofore said, ‘tis desired that thou givest an estimation of our staff. What thinkst thou of the ponyfolk that serve the Night?”
There it was again. She’d said ‘our staff’. It was plural, and not in the royal sense. Not ‘Our staff’, but ‘our staff’. Furthermore, it was quite clear that she hadn’t dropped the royal we, on account of her use of-
“Hoofservant.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Nightlight snapped himself from the recesses of his mind. “Yes ma’am. The Night Staff. Our staff, I guess. Umm… what, what would you like to know?”
“Thy judgments thereupon,” she said tonelessly, “of both element and ensemble. In short, what dost thou know of the ponies who serve Us? What dost thou perceive, assess, and appraise?”
“I… What?”
“What,” she barked, finally turning to face him, “is thy opinion?”
“I…” he stuttered, floundering. “I m-mean, that is, what should I say? What… what do you want me to tell you?” It was as much to say: ‘What do you want my opinion to be?’
She could tell, and just as significantly, she wasn’t happy about it. Luna’s voice was unchanged, but Nightlight could’ve sworn the air temperature dropped ten degrees. “The truth, hoofservant, elsewise thou disserve Us and there be no wit to the inquiry. Now speak, afore Our bath falls cold.”
That didn’t leave him much time, seeing as how steam had long ago stopped rising from the water. “Yes. The Night Staff. Umm… Well, there’s… uhh, a lot of problems?” he tested, hoping it was the answer She wanted to hear. Her expression remained impassive. “Or no, I mean they… they’re very good, and they just… umm… good?” But no, no they weren’t. “I mean… uh…” What he meant was that Snowy Slopes or one of his sisters would know the right way to put it. ‘Buck, even Berry Punch would know the right thing to say. And I’m…’
The princess turned about in the tub so that she could look out the windows on one side of the tower. The sun blazed vibrantly enough to illuminate the entire room. “Hoofservant, what, praytell, deem thee to be Our purpose in this colloquy?”
“Colloquy, Your Highness?”
“Keh.” She scoffed loudly enough that Nightlight couldn’t have possibly missed it. “Conversement,” she said derisively.
“Conver- conversation?”
“That.” Luna pronounced the word as if it were distasteful and she wanted to get it off her tongue as soon as possible. “Now, wherefore dost thou think We… converse with thee? Unless thou art so ignorant as to misgrasp the strangeness of the occasion?”
“I…” Nightlight, as he ever did when he lacked either assumption or lie, resorted to the truth. “I noticed it, but… I don’t know.” Truthfully, there were a lot of things about the Princess that he didn’t understand, and he’d just thrown this one in with the rest of them. “I… I presumed that you would tell me if I needed to know.”
“Thou art correct,” the alicorn pronounced, her head inclining a fraction. “And furthermore, little dissimilar from Us. We find it peculiar as well.”
“Then why-”
“Hah.” Her scoff was deep-throated and unamused; it spoke more of self-mockery than true scorn. “‘Tis because Our sister entreats Us. ‘Speak with the Lunar Consort,’ she appeals. ‘Learn more about him,’ says she. ‘Find out what it is that concerns, bothers, and interests him. Be familiar with the frivolities and petty dealings of his life. After all, if you are to know about your servants, choose him first, for he-’ ehh. Our sister is irate with Us. We have miscarried her expectations by not understanding thee.” Thou Luna’s words were directed at him, it was clear that she was speaking more to herself than Nightlight. “And now she steeps in it, and it pains her, and it is Our failing. We could, you realize, never attend to her requests and she would never again address them, but she would henceforth have only guarded smiles and halfheld kinship. And there could be nothing worse. It would be as horrible as having never returned from Our moon. It kills.” Luna sighed and slid forwards in the water so that only half of her face showed above the surface. “We could spurn the squabbling of the peerage, janus cloth that they be. We might endure the weepings of the citizenry, for they have never known Us. Our friends, allies, foes, and retainers… anypony and everypony might be ignored, excepting my sister. And she is angry. It kills me, hoofservant.”
Nightlight knew he was supposed to say something here – he knew it – but he didn’t know what. There was, after all, the possibility that he was wrong in the first place, and that silence was actually the right choice. He did, however, feel confident that looking at Luna was the last thing he wanted to do, and just as likely, it was the last thing she wanted him to do. He tilted his head forwards and decided that between the likelihoods and outcomes of saying something right or wrong… it was best to remain silent.
And at the very least, Luna didn’t yell at him for his quiet. She whispered. “So speak. Be it about the staff, or thyself, or whatsoever the humors push through thy thoughts, speak, that I can unwound my relationship with my sister.”
“R-really, Your Highness? You want me to talk about… the Night Staff, or something?”
“It seems a suitable choice, being common to the pair of us.”
“Well the Night Staff is buc-” He almost had to bang his head into the bathroom floor to stop himself. One did not swear in front of an alicorn. “-I mean, broken. It, uh, has a lot of problems, to be honest.” Nightlight shot a surreptitious peek from beneath his mane, but if Luna had noticed his faux pas she didn’t show it. “Like, lots of problems. I think half of us quit since You-, well, in the last couple of days.”
“How curious. We desire to know the precise number. Inform Us this eve.”
Nightlight cringed internally at the order, but his face remained passive. “Y-Yes, Your Highness. I’ll find out and report back.”
“Then continue about our staff. Some ponies remain, nay?”
“Umm, a few, yes. But most of them are…” Nightlight wanted to say ‘crazy’, but that sounded less than respectful considering they were all there to serve Luna. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t want to start calling himself crazy just yet. “Anyways, we’re hiring more ponies today – this afternoon, in fact. A lot of courtiers and servants, as well as a new Chief Maid and another astronomer, I think.” There was another important role being filled, but Nightlight couldn’t remember what it was. “Do you have any… um, guidance, I suppose, about what kind of ponies you want?”
“Good ones, certainly,” Luna announced demurely, rising to a standing position. Her mane maintained its usual indolent wave despite being visibly waterlogged. “Speak to me of the ponies whose posts are yet unquit. But most of them are…”
The way Luna imitated Nightlight’s hesitant tone was creepy, to say the least, and it took him a few awkward blinks to get over the surprising accuracy. “Yes, well, they’re…” They were still all crazy, but crazy was still the wrong word to use here. He finally settled upon, “They’re somewhat mixed. For a lot of them, for a lot of us, I suppose, we kind of ended up in our jobs because we were the best fit.” The most apt description, Nightlight thought, would be an analogy involving square pegs and round holes. ‘And some octagonal pegs, a few triangular ones, and maybe a rhombus or two for good measure.’ Nonetheless, the analogy sounded too modern in his head to be helpful for Luna and he decided against its use. “What I mean to say, is that most of us worked in similar jobs to the ones we’re currently filling, but nowhere near on the same level. Like Your maids, who are no longer with us, or-”
“The Chef?” Luna began wading to the edge of the bathtub, the ripples from her passage camouflaging the little twitch her wings had made when she spoke.
“Umm, yes, that.” He’d still not gotten things sorted out with Harvest Moon and Ala Mode, and between the Head Chef’s disdain for the younger mare and Harvest’s wishy-washy temperament, Nightlight had spent more time running around the kitchens than anywhere else last night. And, of course, Luna had been displeased with everything presented to her. “There are a few problems, but-”
Luna sighed quietly as she climbed out of the tub. “Now that is truly an underestimation Our sister would find humor within. But as for these problems, see them attended to and resolved afore moonrise. We shall no more abide what has occurred these last few days.”
Nightlight levitated a plush towel to her as soon as she was all the way exited from the bath. “Excuse me, but how do you mean, Princess?”
“Dismiss her.”
“What.”
“Dismiss her, hoofservant.”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
‘Clop me. Clop me. Clop me clop me clop me, motherbucking clop me with the moon.’ The thought played through Nightlight’s mind like a simple refrain when he exited the west wing of the castle. ‘She wants me to fire Harvest Moon?’
It wasn’t right. The mare in question might have been the most peculiar pony with whom he’d ever shared words (and that was saying something, he wanted to think), and she might have had the attention span of a sugar-binged gazelle, but Princesses damnit, she actually tried. She was one of the only ponies on all the Night Staff who was actually trying to do her job, despite all the trouble the Head Chef had been giving her, and Princesses damnit, she was getting fired and it wasn’t right. Most everything she’d been blamed for – all the late and unsatisfactory meals – wasn’t her fault. If anything, the blame belonged to-
“Nightlight, where the hay’re you going?” Noon Nap may as well have teleported right behind Nightlight for the way he seemed to appear out of nowhere. “This week’s maintenance logs are in all sorts of disarray, our requisition forms are tardy, and the filings behind. Oh, and last I checked, the Night Stewards’ office was this way.” The secondary Night Steward motioned with a wing behind him. “Unless you’ve conveniently ‘forgotten’ about your other duties now that you’ve become-”
Nightlight didn’t stop walking. “I’m kind of busy right now. If you’ll wait thirty minutes or so, I-”
“That should be ‘I’m kind of busy right now, sir’, and you’re ‘kind of busy’ because you’re bad at time management. And I’m sick of it.” Grunting as he did so, the sky-blue pegasus took a great leap into the air and landed in front of Nightlight, blocking the narrow path with his body. His cloudy mane bounced when he landed. “Seriously, turn around. You were supposed to do this stuff days ago, and it’s just piling up without you.”
Noon Nap was, technically, still his boss, and so he, technically, still merited the term of respect. “I’m kind of busy right now, sir.” The honorific, however, was the only compromise Nightlight was ready to make; he made to push around the pegasus, only to be foisted off with a wing and Noon Nap’s best attempt at a scowl. “Ugh, Noon, I have to go take care of something for the Princess. I’ll come back once I’m finished.”
“Do it afterwards,” Noon said with his nose in the air. “You’ve been putting this off for way too long, and this week’s report can’t be started until you finish last week’s. You do realize that, right? This is last week’s report that we’re talking about. Do your princess stuff after it’s done. It’s not like the princess is going to wake up in the next two hours.”
“Look sir,” Nightlight hissed, “I’m not going to talk to the Princess, I’m coming from talking to Her, and if I wait two hours, the pony I’m supposed to be talking to right now is going to be asleep, and I’ll waste even more time trying to take care of her. The paperwork, on the other hoof, isn’t going anywhere, so if you’ll just-”
Noon Nap interjected with a dismissive scoff, finally showing his true colors. “I don’t care. And I’ll feathering get Star Quill if you don’t follow me back to the office right now.”
“That… I…” The sound of Nightlight’s teeth grinding against each other became audible in the hallway. “Clop it, Noon! Just give me thirty minutes and I’ll be there!”
“Do this thing afterwards.”
“I don’t know where she’ll be two hours from now!”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Every word was caustically punctuated, and Nightlight couldn’t remember the last time (if there was a last time) that the Secondary Night Steward had been so fervent about anything. This really must’ve been bothering him. “You’ll either follow me back to the office and file everything you’ve been putting off for the last three days, or I’m going to go right now and wake up Star Quill.”
“Noon…”
The senior steward shoved his way past Nightlight and headed back the way he came. “Well, I suggest you think of something convincing to say before she finds you. Star doesn’t much like being awake in the day.”
‘Moonrocks.’ Why did this have to happen now of all times? Why couldn’t Noon couldn’t have slept in for another five minutes or gotten sidetracked with something or… anything. Then Nightlight could’ve finished this task, taken care of his work with the Night Stewards, and been on his merry way to do everything else on his plate for today. ‘But no. Now I’m stuck doing this, all the night staff’s going to go to sleep, and I’m going to have to go hunting for everypony I need to speak with, and I’m going to show up to Slopes’ hiring-thingy even later than I should. Buck me.’ But if he didn’t do this now, he’d have to put up with Star Quill’s antagonism, and another pony working against him was just about the last thing he needed right now. Especially if that pony was the highest-ranked member of the Night Stewards.
Nightlight swore in his head before swearing aloud. Then he conceded. “Fine, Noon, you win.”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
“And make sure you file the rush paperwork alphabetically by department instead of alphabetically by date.”
“I know,” Nightlight growled, doing his best to order everything with his telekinesis. “It’s not my first time doing this, you know.”
“Be that as it may, I figured you must have forgotten, seeing as-”
“Shut up.”
Surprisingly, the pegasus did so, shrugging his shoulders and giving a dismissive tsk before leaping onto a nearby bookshelf and, rather unsurprisingly, laying his head down to sleep. There was, after all, a reason that Nap’s cutie mark was of a sleeping pony.
But despite Nightlight’s initial pleasure at having the acerbic steward stop breathing down his neck, he soon found the silence to be even less pleasant than his boss’ unnecessary comments. Sure, he didn’t have to deal with Noon breathing down his neck, but now the only pony around to bother him was himself.
And he had a lot on his mind.
‘So, Night,’ he couldn’t keep from asking himself, ‘have you figured out what to do about Harvest Moon?’
It was an easy question. ‘Obviously not, or else I wouldn’t be asking myself about it, would I? Still… it’s not like I have much choice about it. Luna told me to fire her, so that’s what I’ve got to do, right?’
‘You tell me,’ quipped back the little pony in his head. ‘You wouldn’t be asking that question if there was only one answer.’
‘But there’s only one right answer.’
‘And does firing Harvest Moon seem right to you?’
It didn’t, but disobeying royalty – and not just royalty, but an alicorn princess –didn’t seem right, either. ‘Princess Luna wouldn’t order me to do something wrong, would she? I mean, she’s-’
‘She’s been out of touch with society for a millennium? She’s not aware of everything that’s going on in the castle? She’s more distracted by the problems she’s facing with her sister than-’
‘I was going to say that she’s a goddess but… you know, if you don’t think that counts for anything…’
The devil’s advocate in Nightlight’s mind grumbled crossly and changed the subject. Not even his subconscious could argue against the rectitude of divinity. Wrong as that might have seemed… ‘Well then. Have you thought about how you’re going to fire her? I mean, it’s all very well and good to decide that you will fire her.’ It wasn’t, actually. ‘But there’s also the matter of how you’re going to go through with it. I mean, you could just go up to her and say ‘Oh, hey Harvest Moon. I hope you like being unemployed, because you are,’ but I can’t really recommend it. I don’t suppose you have any ideas about how to go about this?’
Nightlight didn’t. He could come up with dozens, if not scores of ways he shouldn’t fire Harvest, but not a single way that seemed proper, and that assumed there was a way. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the likelihood of a positive outcome is somewhere between zero and none.’ After all, it came down to the question of disobeying an alicorn goddess and ruining a pony’s life for something that wasn’t her fault.
‘You don’t know that it would ruin her life.’
‘True, but I don’t know that it wouldn’t. I mean, my life would be pretty messed up if I was fired without any sort of warning.
‘You’ve been getting plenty of warnings – in fact, you already quit at least once, and I’m surprised you haven’t been fired again. Ish.’ He rolled his eyes, which was very much a useless gesture when he couldn’t see himself doing it. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. The real question is what to do with Harvest Moon.’
But there was no real answer, and between the issue with Harvest Moon and the mounds of paperwork he was trying to sort through each problem started getting mixed with the others. It wasn’t long before everything stopped making sense. Over the course of the next six weeks, three of the castle’s grand pianos would inadvertently be donated to charitable foundations, a dozen nobles would arrive to assist the Head Groundskeeper with a landscaping endeavor (all but one of them later cited it as the worst garden party they’d ever attended), and several ponies were going to have their annual bonuses replaced with an enrollment in the Ponyville Jelly of the Month Club.
Just as Nightlight was misfiling the last of the piano restoration forms, however, another distraction presented itself.
A reticent clopping sound issued from the office’s door, like somepony wanted to knock but didn’t want the office’s occupants to hear. It was the kind of knock a shy servant might have made to fulfill the letter of an order but not the spirit – the kind Nightlight had been used to making. Strangely, it was accompanied by a quietly voiced “Knock-knock?”
“Hello?” Nightlight called in response, only halfway roused from the numbness of his paperwork. “Come in. The door’s open.”
The office’s door swung open with a quiet creek and painful slowness to reveal a purple pegasus mare with a greyish sort of mane and a folded paper star for her cutie mark. “You, umm… wanted to see me, I was told?” The mare spoke so quietly that she’d almost have gone unheard in a library. It was somewhat fitting, considering that she was supposed to be Princess Luna’s Royal Librarian.
It was kind of the chief reason he’d asked her to come find him in the morning… and kind of not. “Yeah, um, I did,” he said as he motioned to a nearby chair. “Sit down, would you?”
“Y-yes, sir.” The mare did, giving an uncomfortable glance around the crowded office. Her gaze travelled all about the office, lingering on everything from the cluttered bookshelves to the sleeping pegasus on top of them instead of facing Nightlight. Then she stopped, eyes locked on the mountain of paperwork before him. “Umm… you have the date wrong on that form, you know… And that one… and that one, too.”
Nightlight blinked a couple times and took a second glance on the sheets he’d been filling out with yesterday’s date. In ink. In triplicate. Bucking hay. “I… thanks,” he growled, setting the pages aside to recopy later. “But anyways, I called you because-”
“And that one, too…”
One of the young stallion’s eyes twitched involuntarily as he struggled not to push all the papers off his desk. Clearly he was going to have to redo every one of the forms. “That’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Of course not, I just thought you’d want to-” Origami was cut short by the dark expression on Nightlight’s face.
“I…” This was not going well, and certainly nothing like he’d planned. He’d called the mare to come speak with him because Luna had told him to address problems with Her librarian earlier in the night, and Nightlight only had half a clue how to ‘deal with problems’. ‘Of course, if you can’t give a simple chastisement or something, how can you expect to fire another pony?’ He couldn’t, of course, so he had to get through this conversation without looking weak, and that meant not banging his head repeatedly on the table, no matter how much he was inclined to do so. “Origami… do you... do you have any idea why I might’ve called you here?”
The violet mare gulped, her eyes widening slightly. “Umm, yes?” But the expression on her face said ‘no’. Or it said, ‘Please let me go, I’m so sorry and I won’t do it again because-’ Okay, so her eyes were widening a lot more than slightly.
It was almost enough to frighten Nightlight, which he’d have found somewhat ironic if he’d been thinking a little bit more rationally. It looked like the pegasus was afraid of being fired. Or imprisoned. Or banished. Or sent to the moon, and that was just silly, considering... ‘Considering what? Considering you’ve been scared silly of just that for the last couple days? And now…’ He sighed, and he only vaguely realized that it was something he’d been doing a lot of in the last three nights. “Origami, Princess Luna is…” He paused, trying to pick the best wording. “I mean, I am… that is… Origami, do you know what your job entails as ‘Royal Librarian’?”
The purple mare’s face clenched in what had to be irritation but her wings slumped to the ground dejectedly. “I thought I would help Luna translate or cross-reference or… or something. I mean, She’s doing so much reading and research about how Equestria has changed, or something, but She doesn’t want any help. She just…” Origami slid forward, her elbows on Nightlight’s table and head in her hooves. “…She tells me to go away and that She’ll find everything alone. Then I get yelled at when She can’t find something. Then I get yelled at when somepony bothers Her. Then I get yelled at when-”
“Ac-actually,” Nightlight interrupted with a wave of his hoof, “that’s the thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
Origami’s expression could best be described as ‘pouting’. “The yelling?”
“No, well yes, kind of. I wanted to talk about the um, the reason for the yelling. It’s just that the Princess is kind of… less than thrilled with…”
“She’s mad at me.”
He dropped his quill down without bothering to blot it out. “No, me.”
“You-” Her eyes went even wider than they already were. “You’re mad at me?”
What? That was ridic- Well, no it wasn’t entirely ridiculous. Nightlight was more than a little bit upset with the mare. “No, I meant that Luna’s mad at me, and so I’m… you know, this talk isn’t going the way I… well, hoped.” He’d been going to say ‘expected’, but he didn’t actually have much in the way of expectations. “What I’m trying to say is-”
Origami nodded twice in rapid succession and rose to her hooves. “Is that I should leave and we can talk some other time when you know what to say and when I know what’s what and when you’re not…” She trailed off, her eyes sliding down to the table between them. “Dripping ink all over your papers! Oh, and those are 86-59-87 Forms! Those are last week’s book requisitions!” She immediately snatched the dripping quill from the table and began blotting the papers with her wings. “And look at the splotches on this one. And this one, and… this one’s wrong… misfiled. This one, too.”
“Huh?”
“Look, you’re routing it through the Supply Division when it ought to go straight to Logistics. And this one needs a copy for Finance. And this form is… wow, you’re not very good at… uh, I mean… Sir, are you maybe new at this paperwork, sir?”
Nightlight gave a subtle glance up at the still sleeping Noon Nap above the furthest bookshelf. “What? No, normally I could do this sort of thing in my sleep.” Which wasn’t entirely true, else he’d have done it yesterday or the day before. “I’m just… ugh… distracted.” He pushed a pile of apparently incoherent paperwork away, just for the pegasus across from him to snatch it up and begin shuffling through it.
“But this stuff’s…” She trailed off, but the look she sent Nightlight’s way suggested that she really could do this sort of thing in her sleep. Or else it meant she wanted to say that but she was afraid that he’d do something unthinkable to her for the suggestion. “You, umm, must really be distracted. What’s wrong, um, sir?”
Nightlight propped his head in one hoof. “Don’t… you shouldn’t call me ‘sir’ – it sounds weird. And yes,” he admitted a bit louder, “I… ugh. Origami, what were you doing before you were Her Librarian? Your previous job, I mean?”
“I was the Head Librarian’s secretary. I, umm… did inventories and bookkeeping and managed her schedule and stuff. I’m the one that filled out these 86-59-87 Forms, you know.” She delicately tapped a couple of papers with one hoof. “I… I mostly do, I mean did, paperwork and… that kind of thing. Sometimes I ran deflection for her. Just things, really – nothing important. And before that I was just another of the librarians.”
And suddenly Nightlight had a slightly better understanding of the pegasus talking to him. She was a lot like him, really, except with a little bit more form-filing and less manual labor… so maybe a little bit more responsibility and more logistics. “So your job’s completely different from what it used to be, huh?”
“You could say that, I guess,” the purple mare responded with a half-hearted roll of her shoulders and a sigh. “Is that why you’re so distracted, then? Your job’s different, too?”
“I used to be an entry-level steward, Origami, and now I’m her…” Somehow, the word ‘hoofservant’ didn’t seem to properly convey what Nightlight did as well as certain vulgarities. “Whatever. I’m in trouble for everything that everypony does the littlest bit wrong, and now I have to fire somepony.” Nightlight drooped his head down, allowing his long mane to hide his face. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
Nightlight wished he could have plucked his last two sentences from the air just as soon as they left his mouth – Origami’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and she began to hyperventilate. “Please don’t fire me?” It came out as more of a question than any sort of request. “I mean, just because the Princess told me that I… that I… I mean, I can change! Really, I’ll get better!”
Noon Nap gave an especially loud snore in response to the mare’s outburst, and Nightlight rushed to assuage her that no, she didn’t have to be afraid of getting… ‘Well buck, maybe she does? I mean, if Luna wants me to fire Harvest Moon because she thinks she’s doing a horrible job as her chef, then… But on the other hoof there’re others with whom she’s way more upset, chief amongst them being… ’ Nightlight sighed, gesturing with a hoof for her to quiet down. “What? No. No, it’s not you. Anyways, I’m pretty sure that I have more to worried about in that department than you.”
His words did little to assuage the look of fear plastered on Origami’s face, but her breathing slowed down slightly. “I’ll get better… I promise.”
Nightlight pushed the chair in which he was sitting away from the table and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling with his forehooves hanging limply. It surprised him how many cracks were running through the ceiling. ‘And how in Equestria does a ceiling get stained like that?’
It didn’t matter. He took a deep breath and rolled off the chair, glancing up to the bookshelf on which Noon Nap was still sleeping. Then he turned back to Origami. He’d called this mare here to… well, not yell at her, but tell her to start doing a better job, or something, and now… she was doing that to herself. In fact, she looked like she was as close to cracking under the strain as anypony he’d ever met. “Origami,” he said, maintaining a mostly level tone. “I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about somepony else. In fact, when I was talking to the princess earlier today-”
Origami gulped loudly.
“-you were only mentioned in passing.” Which was technically true.
“Then why did ask me to come talk to you?” Even as she spoke, her eyes were flitting about the bookcases and shelves and the general chaos that composed the Night Stewards’ Office as if searching for a hiding place.
He wanted to pound his head on the floor or something, but that would have probably resulted in cracks in the floor, too. “I saw you were having problems last night and-”
Origami gulped loudly.
“-the Princess didn’t say anything about them to me.” Which was a complete lie, and made all the more egregious by the fact that the librarian had probably still been in earshot when the Princess started speaking (such was the nature of the Royal Canterlot Voice). Whether that were the case or not, however, Nightlight’s words seemed to have something of a calming effect on the young mare. “But I wanted to talk to you about them.”
“Okay…” Instead of looking frantically about, Origami closed her eyes. “What is it?”
Nightlight explained. The problem was that the library, as Luna had informed Nightlight, was to be a place in which she expected nopony to bother her without good cause. It hadn’t been much of a problem the previous night; after the first servant got a taste of the Canterlot voice, word spread like wildfire and Luna was pleasantly surprised with how quiet the library had been. At least, so Nightlight had been told – that was the night he’d been Stared.
This last night, however, had been worse. While most of the lower-level servants were still cowed, many of the castle’s couriers and petty nobles had decided it time to curry favor with Equestria’s newest princess, and there were a lot of those nobles. The first of them had convinced Nightlight to her through, claiming ‘important business’ with the Princess. She’d left tail between her legs, bellows of anger trailing in her wake. The second did the same, and left the same as well. By this point, Luna had called Nightlight to her, and in certain terms informed him that no more of these ‘ludibrious bits of janus cloth’ were to waste her time.
Then number three had arrived.
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Nightlight had just been exiting the library to fetch a genealogist (Luna had never explained why, precisely, but it was apparently urgent) when he encountered a kind of pony that the Night Stewards didn’t often see – a noble.
“Umm, can I help you?” Nightlight asked of the white mare as she approached. “I think you’re in the wrong part of the castle. This is the library.” He suppressed a yawn. “And it’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“Yes, well,” the unicorn had said with the uppity accent of somepony who lived much closer to the Castle than Nightlight had grown up. “My name is Lady Beige, and I desire to speak with Her Highness the Head of the Midnight Court. Let me pass,” she ordered, tossing taupe-colored mane with a flick of the head.
Nightlight permitted himself a weary sigh. Seriously, what was up with all of these ponies wanting to talk with the Princess? Hadn’t they learned anything? “Miss Beige, I’m sorry, but-”
“That’s Lady Beige, servant.”
And that was one of the reasons Nightlight had joined the Night Stewards instead of their daytime counterparts. He bowed his head anyways, because it was what he was supposed to do. But nothing in his training said he couldn’t grit his teeth as he did it. “Well I’m sorry, Lady Beige, but the Princess has specifically instructed me not to let… ahh… less-than-urgent business distract Her.”
“This is urgent.” The noblepony flipped her mane once again, her curls bouncing rather more merrily than the face she presented. Then, when Nightlight remained stationary she added, “Stand aside.”
He didn’t. “Lady Beige, I know you probably think your business is urgent, but, umm…” The mare glowered. “You see, Princess Luna might have a… uh, different idea of what is urgent. I mean, what’s urgent to her and what urgent to you-”
“Servant, what’s your name?”
It wasn’t until after he’d spoken that it struck him not to answer. “Nightlight.”
“Well, servant Nightlight, when I speak to Her Highness I will be sure to inform her of your actions, and I expect she will be furious. You should probably pack your things.” She turned around with a ‘harrumph’ and walked away.
‘Thank goodness. Thank the goddesses.’
“She’s coming back, you know.”
“Huh-whuh? Nightlight’s jumped almost a foot in the air when the soft voice appeared behind him. “Who’s there?”
“Please don’t yell,” she said. “You’re in the library. Kind of. Technically. Well, I think the doorway counts.”
“No really, who’s- Oh.” The purple mare shrunk under Nightlight’s gaze. “You’re… you were here last night. Ah! You’re Luna’s Royal Librarian aren’t you?”
“Yes, umm, I’m…I’m Origami,” she whispered. “And would you please be a teensy bit quieter? It’s like none of you realize that libraries are supposed to be quiet. Nopony. Nopony at all…”
“Origami, I’m Nightlight and I-”
“Her Hoofservant. Yes. She’s been, kind of, umm… loud about all of that.” Her head was almost touching the floor. “But umm, you know she’s coming back? She had that ‘Oh, you’re dumb and I’m smart so I’m going to make you think you won and actually just come back later’ look to her. Nobles are like that.”
Ergo, Night Stewards instead any job that had to deal with nobles on a regular basis. “Uhhh, yeah. Look, I need to go and-”
“Find a ‘documenter of lineage’, or something?”
“Yeah, that. Look I need to… I don’t know how the buck I’m supposed to do… that… but anyways, can you help me out with this?
“No.” Over the last seventy-two hours Nightlight’s scowl had become remarkably more intense. “I mean yes, of course.”
“Good. Alright, I have to find out if there even is a royal genealogist, and then wake him up if there is one. In the meantime, I need you to keep these nobles from bothering Her. Can you do that?”
“N- well, maybe?”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
He’d never found a genealogist, and when he finally reported thusly, the Lunar Princess seemed almost unbothered. “Hmmph. We then find Canterlot unsuitably misdight, but that is of minor import. Shouldst thou be unable to corrade such a documenter, We shall address Out sister on the subject.” Nightlight heaved a sigh of relief when the Princess spoke, cold as it was. Then he changed his mind when She followed it up with a hiss, “But We are overcome by another matter.” That was a bad sign. “We recollect a conversement regarding these… keh… malagrugrous peers. Hast thou forgotten?”
He winced.
“We have since been grotesquely approached by a series of these ponies.” She turned a page in the tome which She perused, using a hoof instead of magic. “Thou shouldst know, ‘tis an unseemly squandering of Our time for which We blame thee.” She slammed the book shut and snapped around to face the little black unicorn, her ethereal mane hardly moving as She did. “Most interestingly was a mare that informed Us of an obstacle which befell her – a retainer whose description might have been tangled with thine.”
“Yes! I mean, I stopped her and-”
“Hadst thou done so, We wouldst have remained unperturbed, and yet WE WERE!” The little pegasus behind the library’s desk shrunk out of sight, and Nightlight would have done the same, weren’t the blazing eyes of the Goddess of the Night glaring down at him. “WHEREFORE? ENLIGHTEN US!”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
There had been something about ‘nailing one’s courage to the sticking plate’ – Nightlight didn’t fully recall – but he thought it was spoken of Origami and not of him… not that there hadn’t been things spoken of his character as well. “Well, you need to be more… forceful,” he explained to Origami, her eyes still wide as she heard the events from his perspective. “Luna needs you to be more forceful. Like, you need to be the bucking definition of force.”
“Yeah, but…” Her wings and head drooped simultaneously, both of them touching the floor. Whether or not Nightlight’s vulgarity contributed to Origami’s behavior, it was impossible to tell. “But yeah…”
And again, it seemed like something was going right for once, and Nightlight was almost pleased enough to allow himself a smile. “Great. Then I’m going to just finish up this paperwork and…” And said bookkeeping was taking rather longer than it should have, he remembered.
That fact was particularly emphasized when another stallion, one of a very similar color but much larger than Nightlight, stuck his head into the Night Stewards’ Office. “Mister Hoofservant?” the familiar, gravelly voice inquired. “I bear a message.”
Aided by her wings, Origami’s surprised jump took her several feet into the air; Nightlight merely turned his head. “Lieutenant Midwatch?”
“Ugghh,” the guard sighed and rolled his eyes, shaking his head and turning a lip up in disgust. Nightlight suddenly became starkly aware of the fact that the pony with whom he was speaking was without his armor or any other symbol of rank. “I’m not a lieutenant. I’m just passing a message: one Mister Slopes wants me to remind you that-”
Nightlight went deaf and his heart stopped when he looked up at the clock on the wall. It was half past ten, which was to say that Nightlight was more than thirty minutes late. “Clop me. Clop me, clop me with the-”
While Origami continued to blush, the lieutenant-turned-envoy just walked into the office. “Mister Hoofservant,” he said, “pull yourself together and come with me. The Chamber of Enervating Blues is this way.” He gestured over his shoulder with a thick hoof. “And you’re expected, sir.”
Nightlight despaired. “But I need to be there and I still have all this paperwork to do and he-” a slim hoof motioned in the direction of one still-sleeping pegasus on the highest bookshelf.
“Tch. Bureacracy.” Midwatch shook his head in a way that Nightlight was all too familiar with. “It can wait.”
“Yeah, but-”
“It can wait,” he reiterated, waving for the steward to follow him. “I was tasked with bringing you to the other wing of the castle and I intend to do so, sir.”
“But-” Then he thought about it. ‘But nothing. You’d already decided to do it later if necessary, and now it is necessary. This plot-plowing nonsense has taken long enough that you’re already showing up late to the hiring you’re supposed to be at, you’ve only just finished with the librarian, and you haven’t even started with Harvest.’ That was, admittedly, something he was a little bit grateful for, seeing as how much he dreaded it. “I guess you’re right, it’s just paperwo-”
“No!” That single syllable was louder than any sound that had come from Origami’s mouth that week. “We need it! Without paperwork, nothing would happen! We couldn’t keep track of everything – of anything! How else can the departments communicate? How else can the castle stay organized? Why, if we didn’t have our paperwork, Canterlot Castle would be Discord’s playground!”
“It already is,” scoffed Midwatch from the doorway. “Besides, I thought idle hooves were-”
“That’s ‘Discord’s playthings’, not playground,” she corrected before turning to scan the assortment of documents burying the table. The disarray made her grimace. “But doing this will also help with that. All of this needs to happen.” She waved a hoof over the pile.
Midwatch’s response was impassive compared to Origami. “So do the hiring interviews, Miss, and he needs to be there.” He stared the mare down coldly. “Is there anywhere you need to be?”
“But… but… ugh.” The mare slumped her shoulders in despair. “It’s probably for the better anyways, seeing as how everything’ll get all messed up otherwise.” She pulled a strand of her mane away from eyes and marched over to the side of the table in which Nightlight had been working. “Fine. Get up and I’ll do it.”
Nightlight paused to process the words he’d just heard. Origami’s tone was as disparaging as Noon Nap’s always was, but she was actually offering to do work and that made it sound infinitely better in the steward’s ears. “Really?”
Midwatch and Origami spoke simultaneously. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
It was good enough for him. “Fine. Thanks. Midwatch, let’s go.”
“Aye.” The large stallion turned sharply and stepped out of the office, Nightlight cantering ahead.
As they left the office, a tiny grumble left the mare’s mouth. “I totally deserve a raise for this muck.”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Nightlight would have been sprinting if not for the steady march that the larger pony maintained. Also, the things Midwatch had said as Nightlight began to run ahead. “Hoofservant. Sir, you shouldn’t run where other ponies can see you. It makes you look unprofessional – like you’re not in control of the situation.”
Nightlight abstained from nickering in frustration at the guardspony’s statement. “That’s fine, because I’m not in control. I’m running around the castle playing catch-up with things that need to already be done, I’m showing up late to these interview things, and I’m trying to figure out how to do something I’ve never done before and don’t want to do,” Nightlight said in a single breath. “So, I think it’s okay to look like I’m not in control.”
“Composure is very much the illusion thereof, Mister Nightlight. Putting on the appearance of calmness will help you maintain it, and sometimes that’s enough to make a difference,” the older stallion responded listlessly, not bothering to look at the steward walking with him. “But that doesn’t mean you should pretend to know what you’re doing and just run about until everything collapses around you. Ask for advice from somepony you respect.”
“Who would you recomm- Wait.” A funny thought struck the dark steward. “Am I asking advice about asking advice?”
Midwatch snorted, the corner of one lip turning up slightly, and only slightly. He was a member of the Royal Guard, after all. “I suppose so.”
Nightlight didn’t waste time; there was something big that’d been bothering him all morning. “Well let’s skip that. I need some advice.”
“I might advise you not to take my advice, but if you want I’ll do what I can. Ask.”
“Princess Luna and I talked this morning... and She wants me to fire a member of the Night Staff.” Nightlight paused, and the hall remained silent but for the steady clip-clop of the two ponies’ steps. There were, thankfully, no servants in this section of the castle, although Nightlight couldn’t imagine why. He continued. “But the thing is, she didn’t do anything, really. She’s getting blamed for things that I… well, a few ponies did wrong, me included.”
Midwatch responded with a completely noncommittal noise and Nightlight took that to mean he ought to continue. “So I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’ve never fired anypony before – I’m just a low-ranking steward, and now…” He sighed. “And she’s really good at her job, and she loves it, too. It feels… wrong.”
The larger stallion stopped in the middle of the hallway, right in front of one of the large paintings which adorned the castle. This one was Painting of Celestia #38 – it had been rendered only Celestia herself knew how many hundreds of years ago, and it was definitely from a different era than the one they were in. The Solar Princess, in all Her furious glory (or at least the artist’s best rendition), gazed down at Nightlight. It might’ve been created back in the times when Equestrians still knew that She could Stare, and it was almost certainly the reason this hallway was so desolate.
Midwatch didn’t take his eyes off the painting when he spoke. “Mister Hoofservant, I don’t think you want my advice.”
Nightlight had to jerk himself out of the painting’s stare to answer. Frightening as the image was, it seemed hypnotic. “But I do.”
“No.” Midwatch shook his head, but continued to stare up at the image. “You gave me all the reasons not to follow Princess Luna’s command, but no reasons why you should, and that means your problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do. Your problem is that you don’t want to do what you know you should do.” The stallion breathed out a sigh that sounded like it belonged to a much older pony than Midwatch looked. “You want me to tell you that you should take the easy way out, and I won’t.”
“That…” The younger pony dropped his haunches to the marble floor. It was cold. “Oh.”
“You’re sworn to serve Princess Luna, and She gave you an order.” Midwatch slowly faced about, his gaze terribly akin to the one framed behind him. “Do as She commands.”
“But…” Nightlight said aloud the unthinkable. “But the Princess is wrong”
It was at that moment in which Princess Celestia stepped from around a corner.
“Well buck me.”
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It updated
, YES!
Keep going, bro. Little by little, we advance a bit further with each turn.
[insert obligatory IT'S ALIVE comment]
WORTH STAYING UP FOR!
I see you're posting them all up now, just want to wish you well and MUCH thanks for the not one, but THREE story updates!
Take care and stay safe! <3
NavyPony is best pony
And I like him a lot
and also
his most excellent of le stories.
Thank you for this.
Why do the best stories always have to follow the worst release schedules....or maybe I only notice the wait on good stories and confirmation bias fills in the rest, either way its been a long, yet strangely worthwhile, wait. A wait I will gladly do if you keep the story this great.
You *do* realize I have work tomorrow , and it's 1:00 AM right?
...
Priorities!
*starts reading*
Super grateful for an update, this is a fantastic fic!
I started thinking about Office Space when I read that part. This guy sounds like a very angry Bill Lumbergh.
Oh man, just the other day I was looking at this and about to give up hope that it would update again, but I thought "no, it might come back."
Huzzah!
Nightlight is clearly not the sort of pony who is mollified by the excuse 'I was only obeying my orders'.
I'd actually have asked Luna precisely when she met with Beige. I'm guessing that she caught up with Luna somewhere in the castle.
Glad to see this updated.
Poor Nightlight still having a bad night/day. Hopefully one of the positions he's interviewing for is his old job so noon Noon Nap will stop wasting his time with paperwork that is now several levels below his actual responsibilities.
It's a great development that he and the princess are starting to talk.
I'm looking forward to him growing into his new responsibilities over the next chapters and hopefully he realizes that the head cook needs to go not Harvest Moon.
My only criticism is that the way you move into a flashback. It leaves me confused for a few lines before I realize what is going on.
I like all the back and forward timey wimey wibbly wobbly changes because it makes the scene more chaotic which is exactly what is going on. I love it! I love this story! Keep going!
I sure hope Celestia has some good advice, that kooky cook is one of my no.1 ocs in this story and is would suck badly if she ended up fired.
The saddest part is that you're leaving and we won't see the end of this.
How can Nightlight have any superiors besides Luna? Considering that all he does is either a direct order from Her or directly affects Her it should be top-priority, meaning that he is top-priority, meaning that he has two bosses and a senior, of which he can indirectly dismiss two. And he desperately needs to grow a spine, it's painful to watch him wince and squirm and stammer his way through something that's fairly simple if he could just cut straight through it. That doesn't even require a spine, just a slightly faster mouth. Put some jet-fuel in that trap!
<- Getting ready to talk a mile a minute.
"Buck me", Buck him, Buck us more like it what a evil Cliffhanger liked the update a lot.
I love this story. Thanks for a new chapter!
Ehh, that could have ended much worse, it could have been Luna that walked around the corner instead of Celestia. He might even get some useful advice out of it.
Nightlight still hasn't figured out delegation. I was almost yelling at my screen during the entire conversation with Origami that he needed to delegate the paperwork to her.
So is Luna finally going to be put in her place, or do we have to look forward to more chapters with her being a total, royal bitch who deserves nothing but a one-way return ticket to the moon? One would think Celestia would have done something about half of her staff getting abused by this point, but she just watches it happen, which seems quite out of character for her to me, even if the one abusing is her sister. =/ Though there's also the question of just how much abuse Nightlight is going to take before he finally grows some balls, snaps and says: "Well, 'your highness', since you apparently seem to know how to do everything better than me, DO IT YOURSELF! I QUIT!"
Oh you are just evil! Welcome back by the way.
Well..Oops..
Celestia is understanding, of course but Nightlight needs to understand what his role is and that he is in charge of Luna's well-being and that may go before her wishes.
What can be done and what must be done is different and it is Nightlight's role to call the shots, even against Luna's wishes if need be.
Poor guy just can't catch a break, can he?
YAY! Finally!
Still liking this.
I realize this is the 'raw' file, since you're shipping out, but DAMN, was this enjoyable anyway!
Be safe, and come back soon! I for one will be here waiting eagerly for the next installment!
Poor Nightlight has not realized what his role is yet. Nightlight, at this momant is technicly Noon nap's boss. If it comes down to it, he follows one ponys direction, and no others. Hes not realized that the idiots causing him trouble, he has authority over them, just because of what he is, he is not a steward, of any sort, or a servent really of any sort, he is the interface between his princess and everypony else. Untell he actualy understands it, hes not going to be able to really deal with things. His job is actualy two fold, he basicly expresses what the princess wants to the staff, and, at the same time, he should be telling her why things are not being done. THeres not a whole lot he can do if the day cook refuses to let the night cook do her job, but, he can tell Luna, and get the authority to deal with the siduation as needed, and, technicly, he has the authority to fire just about any pony he wants.
Take the cook siduation, he should march into the kitchen and fire Ala Mode, thats the idiot thats been messing up Luna's meals, not the night chief.
Also good to see this update, its a very good story so far.
Why did I have a fic this epic under 'read later'?
I read this stuff to escape thinking about the frustrations of being a divo, this story did not help. Guess that means its pretty good if you can relate yourself to the characters.
I so DO hope that he said it aloud and we will hear Celestia comment to it :)
Is it just me or has the main character shown zero growth? It's been 60,000+ words and Nightlight is still the same cowardly loser he was at the beginning. I don't see any forward motion.
You know, I have to ask... are we going to see any real character development here? I mean, at the start of this story, Nightlight was a wishy-washy pony, Luna was a royal b*tch, the bureaucrats are bureaucratic jackwipes who are nothing but roadblocks to work (wait, that's redundant with "bureaucrats", isn't it?), the staff gave Nightlight continual problems with getting his job done. And that describes every chapter since then, including this one.
Nightlight can't even quit; he tried that and was mind-raped into doing his job anyway. I'm feeling I need to go back and re-read some chapters because I know somehow he felt he had to make another try at the job, but I an't really see why. So far I feel like I'm watching a soft-core snuff film: Nightlight isn't getting killed, he's just choked to within an inch of his life before he's given a moment to catch his breath, and then the squeezing begins again. This is pretty close to Hell on Earth, being Responsible without Authority. He somehow has to shoulder all of these burdens but is given no authority to accomplish tasks handed to him without having to wheedle every single pony he comes across.
So... is there going to be any payoff, at all? The characters don't change, the situation hasn't changed, and Nightlight is being driven into an early grave. I really like this story, or I did; now I'm not too sure, because frankly it's starting to feel like I'm reading someone's clop material who's into being treated like the town bicycle. The amount of abuse is growing to fetishistic levels, is what I'm saying, and it's really beginning to wear on me and make me genuinely dislike all of the characters. So is there going to be any change at all? Is Nightlight ever going to grow some kind of a backbone? Hell, even a person with the slightest bit of self-respect would have either told Noon Nap to f*** off or just decided that the job isn't worth dying over and quickly left town for Appleloosa or Dodge Junction without leaving a forwarding address just to get away from the mind-warping boss and the sociopathic coworkers.
Because right now, I'm betting Nightlight is going to commit suicide to escape the Hellish existence his life has become.
2708307
It's not you; I just posted a similar comment.
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Yes, you're right. Nightlight has yet to show any major growth. But I assure you, it's coming. People (and ponies) aren't shaped by the easy times, but by the tough. I'm sure I could make an overly florid simile about forging a sword and purifying flames and something, but the fact of the matter is that Alyeskabird has the situation pegged. Night is actually tied with Slopes for third most powerful pony in the castle (with Celly and Lulu tied for first/second). He just hasn't made this groundbreaking realization... yet.
From personal experience, I (and Navypony) can say that when one is thrust into a role of authority with no warning, no prior training or teaching, nothing, you get walked over, used, and left dazed and confused. Give him one more chapter, and you'll start to see.
2709527
I'm willing to give him one more chapter, just as I've been giving him one more chapter for the last two. The story started out well enough but you can't keep circling in a holding pattern forever. As the saying goes, "either s**t or get off the pot".
Like I said man, it's like... fetish-fuel levels of woobie-ism. When a story starts to reach Japanese Harem Manga levels of angst and flat, boring characters that remain the same, that's a big warning sign, and any conscientious reader should be willing to stand up and say "uhm, excuse me, but maybe you shouldn't be running the Titanic at full speed through an iceberg zone?"
I like this story, a lot. Or I did; I'm starting to lose my sympathy for a protagonist that has all the mental fortitude of a wet sponge. You say he got thrust into a situation he had no warning over and no training for? That he's going to get bulldozed a lot? Fine and good, that's perfectly acceptable... for the first 40-50k words. That's half of a modern novel, longer than many classic short stories, and we've had zero growth and change in the character, other than occasional tidbits that hint at something good later down the line. At some point, however, you have to start building on those changes, and we have yet to see that at all.
Take this recent chapter, for instance, where Origami displays a freakish knowledge of and mild affinity for paperwork (she might not like doing it, but feels it's at least worth doing). It took Nightlight having that rubbed in his face by a deus ex third party to even get that into his noggin. Now, sure, don't have him recognize it right away, leave him grasping for straws, but have him make the connection in his mind, show us that he is learning and adapting and changing, even by this tiny marginal bit where he learns how to delegate something small and unimportant, like paperwork he no longer should do because he's A PRINCESS' FRICKEN MAJORDOMO. He was told to delegate, after all. But we get nothing of that, only the same meat puppet still dancing to everyone's tunes but his own.
Dynamic characters are interesting characters. So far no character here has shown any major change, save a few marginal improvements by Luna and some slight advancements forced upon Nightlight by third-string bit players here and there. But when you can describe the characters with the same sentence 65k words in as you could at the beginning... that's not a good sign.
So yeah, one more chapter. Whenever that will be. But if there's nothing but more of the same I'm probably going to have to drop this and flip my thumbs up to a thumbs down. I know that doesn't really mean much, as I'm just one faceless voice amongst the teeming masses and you couldn't give a rat's rear end about my opinions, but someone has to stand up and say something when they see someone about to walk over a cliff edge, now don't they?
2709726
You under estimate how much Navy cares about all of 'his little ponies.' He would never say it as such, but yeah. Pointed criticism is valuable. More valuable than empty affirmations of love, that's for sure.
I hope you enjoy what comes, and if you don't - well, your reasoning and criticism is valid. Best of luck, and love and tolerance forever.
- Dire
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At no point in the show is "love and tolerance" ever uttered. In fact, it's shown that you should not tolerate some people when they're in the wrong or just mean-spirited and spiteful. Example: Gilda.
But that's just me nitpicking. Like I said, I do want to see more and I'm hoping for something good. It's just that when we wait 6 months between updates and the next one we get is more of the same it's kinda disappointing, yanno? "Yay, new chapter! And... why do I feel like I've read this already?"
I know I shouldn't be one to talk, since that's how long since I last updated a story of mine, but at least I'm trying to make the next one have new and interesting things and events for the characters to do and react to and cause.
Anyway, know that I complain because I care; this story is good, and I'm just afraid that it's going to jump the shark if it keeps going on the same path it's been going.
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Whether or not it's ever mentioned in to show doesn't mean it's a bad philosophy :)
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"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil."
-Thomas Mann
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"Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties."
-Oscar Wilde
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"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
-Oscar Wilde
Great chapter, can't wait for the next.
I don't get it. Nightlight allows all this shit to happen to him and takes everyone's crap. He is basically in charge of all the day to day operations of not only the night court but he functions as Luna's personal attendant as well. Despite being held responsible he is either given no real authority. After 60,000 words he has yet to take charge of anything. Luna.has directly stated that he is in charge and yet everyone believes they are above his station? And when asked to give his honest opinion he says nothing of import and is now distressed that this misunderstanding cost someone their job? Dude needs to get a grip and soon. I'm a bit tired of the same old song and dance with everyone giving him advice and yet nothing happening.
2713113 You just answered your own question. Luna GIVES him that authority, no one else RECOGNIZES it, but when something goes wrong, Luna mainly strings HIM up by the balls. Everyone else gets their share of flak, sure, but HE gets more than HIS share. Luna holds HIM responsible when things don't work as she wants them to because he's acting on HER behalf, but there's only so much HE can do when no one ELSE recognizes his authority.
It's not that HE needs to grow a pair, it's that Luna needs to see the situation for what it really is.
Oh, and it probably would have helped had he communicated this to her earlier when she directly asked him about his opinion on the other Night Staff, so he could say, "No one recognizes my authority and that's why nothing you want gets done." So I guess he does have a bit of courage to summon but it's easy to feel absolutely helpless in this kind of situation, so I guess it's understandable.
Nightlight has been handed the largest stick in the castle, known as the 'Princess Stick.' It is his own darned fault for getting into such situations where he refuses to use it. Then again, it is a stick that should be used with caution, because it has two ends.
"Yes, sir. I shall return to Princess Luna and inform her that you are incapable of carrying out her orders. Expect me to return within the hour. It has indeed been a pleasure working with you, and I sincerely hope that you will be able to find employment somewhere in Equestria after Her Highness dismisses you, with prejudice. Good evening."
2723352 What good is it when no one believes him? He couldn't fire anyone or give anyone any kind of instruction because nobody seems to acknowledge he's speaking on Luna's behalf. Nobody takes him seriously. He's one pony. And he's not Luna herself, even though he's had that authority bestowed upon him by Luna herself. Nobody cares until Luna herself gets involved, and only then do they acknowledge him in any way - and by then, it's already too late for him.
Thanks for your story and your service. I look forward to more when you return.
Have a... I dunno, pleasant cruise? What do you say to someone that says "I hope the time you spend on a Navy ship is as devoid of unpleasantness as possible, including nobody shooting at you, even though as far as I know there is little likelihood of anyone shooting at a US naval vessel at the moment, but I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing even though I should", but without sounding like a babbling idiot? Because I want to say that.
I'm really enjoying the story. I'm looking forward to seeing both Nightlight and Luna grow.
Typo: "Thou Luna’s words" where I think "Though Luna’s words" is meant. Too much typing "thou" for Luna's dialogue? :-)
Nightwatch needs to use more words with Luna.
Cliffhanger!
And now the wait begins.... again. Keep it up!
I don't know why do I like this story this much. I mean, yes, it's well-structured and engagingly written, but plot-wise not too many things happen in each chapter -- although to be fair, in the latest chapter Nightlight finally started to show signs of manning up, or (dare I say) maturing. Despite the seemingly slow flow of the fic (or maybe because of that; I don't like rushing character development), I really enjoy each and every chapter: this one too, even if I had a pretty long break between chapter seven and eight.
This fic --in my amateur opinion, at least-- is a prime example of a well-executed slice of life fic; it doesn't need world-changing, climatic events to remain engrossing. On a personal note, I find it has a rather interesting aspect of slice of life: Nightlight's days are pretty different from what one can read in other SoL fics (focused mainly on Ponyville's denizens), yet it retains the distinct flavor of MLP, while still remaining easily relatable, which is a great boon. Retaining the mood of My Little Pony is all the more of a feat, since the story uses very little canon material: not counting Celestia (who appears only occasionally), Luna is the only major canon character, and even her personality is rather different from the one we seen in her canon episodes -- yet it makes sense, as her canon personality is, in fact, the result of this fic's events, so there's no OOC-ness here. It's truly a credit when one can write original characters interesting enough to hold the readers attention through (as of now) 65 thousand words. Well done!
On a personal note, it's unrelated to everything above, but I kind of expected Nightlight to tell Luna --if in his timid and submissive manner, but still tell her-- that Harvest would be a good workforce, but her superiors are keeping her back. This way she could be promoted or at least given the independence she needs to actually do her job, which results in an improvement in the Princess' dining, thus adhering the spirit of Luna's request ("Fire my chef to improve my meals!") without doing something he doesn't morally agree with.
Well, those were my thoughts on the chapter. Take care and... it would be selfish to say 'hurry back', wouldn't it? Then just simply take care, NavyPony!
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2709726
I beg to differ. (Oh boy, I always wanted to say this expression!) Maybe it's just me, but I do see the improvement in Nightlight's character. Sure, he's still prone to grovel at the hooves of everyone, but he learned prioritizing and I see that spine-seed growing in him (for example, he was able to tell Slopes that he doesn't care, he's going to sleep even if he's wanted at the interviews. Now you could see it as just him being too tired to actually care, and thanks to Slopes' spell, he wouldn't even get his sleep, but hey, it's something!). Yes, we keep expecting him to burst out in a "You have a problem with what I'm doing? Go to the Princess and get Her to order me to finish the paperwork!" and he keeps defying our expectations, but I for one can see the difference by now.
Besides, in a slice of life fic like this, Nightlight's character development is basically the only plot of the story. As soon as he matures up and becomes able to do his job without problems, the story ends. Now I admit that after 65k words, it wouldn't be a rushed step, but right now, I'm more than comfortable with this pace. I know that I'm probably the minority with my opinion, though, but it all boils down to just like that: opinions.
2941116
Lucky Roll, I've just gotten home on a friday night, after twelve and a half hours at work, which is the shortest amount of time I've spent at work all week. I had the intent to come home, play an hour or so of some video game, and go to sleep so I could go in to work tomorrow. Maybe, just maybe, I might've tried working on one of my other stories.
But when I read a comment like this... I really don't have a choice but to think about tMiaHM, and with any luck, put some words on the pages.