Chapter 24
The castle seemed somehow calm and sedate as the noontime hour approached. Sure, there was a lot going on. There was a press crisis, but there was always a press crisis of some sort going on. A very special visitor was coming in from out of town. There was the quiet talk of sabotage and the growing threat to the Empire. Many blamed changelings, as talking about the Equalists felt far too scary and changelings were a familiar threat that everypony could understand. Even during its most calming moments, life in the castle was like life in a pressure cooker. There was always something going on here. This was not a home, not a refuge, not a place where one went to seek solace from the world. This was the beating heart of the Empire.
And truth be told, Celestia thought about leaving it for a while. Oh, she couldn’t, of course—there was far too much to do, threats to look after, the Empire had to be managed. But she thought about it. She thought about how nice it might be to take both Gosling and her sister, then go off somewhere pleasant and spend time together. Still, it might be nice.
Perhaps it might be nice to pay the Crystal Empire a visit. She could get ahold of Cadance’s ear and then she could…
Oh, ho ho ho… Celestia reigned in her maternal thoughts. She had to respect Cadance, even if she didn’t agree with Cadance’s doings. Cadance had her own way of doing things, a unique perspective that had been developed during her time as a foalsitter. Cadance was the sort that made foals want to take their medicine, she was wily, clever, and crafty. Twilight in particular was a troublesome foal when it came to medicine, and Celestia felt a shiver along her spine when she thought about the dreaded calendar dates that marked when Twilight had to take ear mite medicine. Twilight took having burning liquid poured down her ears as a personal affront and defended herself as though she was fighting in an active war.
Looking back upon it all, it was easy to see why Twilight had grown up to be known as Equestria’s Warrior Princess, and it was all Cadance’s fault. Yep, Celestia felt confident that all of the blame for that could be placed squarely upon Cadance’s withers. She made a mental note to tell Raven; from here on out, all future problems would be blamed upon Cadance, as per new official policy.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Celestia trotted off to have lunch.
As Celestia entered the room, the first pony she saw was Kibitz. Celestia loved Kibitz. He was polishing his glasses and talking to Gosling. She felt her spirits lifted—Kibitz would be a good role model for Gosling, a seasoned advisor, and a pony that Gosling could trust. Raven was gnawing on a breadstick and there was no sign of Blueblood. For this, Celestia was grateful. Lunch would be awkward with Blueblood, because Celestia kept wondering if he was right.
“Back from Baltimare? I thought you’d be gone longer.” As Celestia spoke, she sat down. She sniffed, hungry, and looked around the table. Breadsticks and salad were already set out. Feeling ravenous, she emptied out most of the salad bowl and took a half a dozen steaming breadsticks. The salad looked and smelled delicious. Dandelion greens, spinach leaves, walnuts, slivered strawberries, alfalfa sprouts, and little bits of stinky, mouth watering crumbled feta cheese all tossed with a boysenberry vinaigrette.
“The labour dispute settled itself,” Kibitz replied, his bushy eyebrows furrowing. “No sign of outside agitators.”
“Labour dispute?” Gosling asked.
Kibitz’s head turned and his mane, tied into a ponytail, bobbed against his neck. “The cities transportation workers went on strike. Cab drivers, chauffeurs, the heavy haulers that keep goods moving, basically everypony that pulls some sort of wagon behind them. I was sent to mediate.”
“That’s hard work. My mother tried that for a while in Manehattan. She’s a pegasus though, and she couldn’t compete with the earth ponies.” Gosling shook his head. “Those ponies deserve a lot more respect and better wages. They get treated like dirt and everypony tries to stiff the cabbies. It’s become a sport.”
“Yes it has,” Kibitz replied, nodding his head in enthusiastic agreement.
As Celestia tucked into her salad, she saw Kibitz turn and look at her. His eyes were intense and merry. She saw him take a deep breath, and then she heard him say, “It will be nice having a member of the royal family that is in touch with the working middle class.”
Chewing, Celestia found herself in agreement, but good manners kept her from making a verbal reply. She nodded her head while crunching up a walnut, savouring the taste of sweet and bitter.
“My Ma and I, we were never part of the middle class.” Gosling shook his head, his eyes narrowing, and his brows crinkled down as his ears pitched forwards. “Ma made sacrifices because she wanted me cultured and educated. So we stayed poor. Our apartment was a pigeon coop apartment on the top of a twenty floor walkup in a bad neighborhood—”
“Pigeon coop?” Raven asked.
“It’s an apartment that only pegasi can reach. No stairs. They’re illegal, the landlords, they build a few more levels on top of an already existing building to squeeze in a few more apartments. They’re dangerous fire traps—”
“That’s awful,” Raven muttered, “shameful.”
“—and nothing is done about them because a pony has to live somewheres.” Gosling’s Manehattanite accent thickened a bit as he continued. “The rent is seventeen hundred bits a month for about three hundred and fifty square feet of living space. The shower sits over the toilet and there is a drain on the floor. Ya sleep in a cubby, not a room. It’s an actual cabinet. It ain’t so bad, I guess. Ya fly in through a big window cause there’s no door. And ya live there cause it’s cheap.”
As Celestia listened, she realised that Gosling’s speech had been coached and corrected. As a communications specialist, his heavy accent would be a detriment. But in his current, state, it poured out. She found it endearing and she liked hearing him talk.
“They’re wooden shacks stacked on top of one another on top of a big brick walkup. They’re slums… the sorts of places that other ponies tease ya about living in and say you’re a schmuck for living there, what sort of schlimazel lives in those places, anyhow? I’ll tell you who lives there… some overworked single mother that works two, sometimes three jobs and her son, that’s who. And every time some poor pony begs for a raise, a great big fight happens and you get a bunch of putzes trying to remind the nebbishes that their lives don’t matter. Fuggedaboutit.”
Lifting a breadstick, Gosling’s lip curled back from his teeth as he bit into it. He chewed in silence, looking angry, and to Celestia’s eye, perhaps a bit bitter. This was a different side to him. She decided that she liked this side. She ate more salad, her eyes locked on Gosling, and hoped that she could hear more of his voice, his actual voice. For a moment, Celestia imagined a gaggle of foals running around the castle with thick, Manehattanite accents. Her foals. They would be adorable little muggers out to shake down the castle staff.
“This is the kind of insight we need if we ever hope to make changes,” Kibitz said to Gosling. “Mayors and politicians never make reports about these kinds of things. These are the things swept under the rug. We know that these problems exist, but it is difficult to gain insight into them.”
Gosling did not reply. He sat chewing his breadstick, looking sullen and angry. There was something almost predatory about his eating and Celestia watched him with interest. He nipped, then ripped the breadstick, the cords in his muscular, but slender neck standing out in sharp relief. A moment of realisation settled over Celestia. Gosling wasn’t thin, slender and delicate, at least not in the way that she thought him to be. He had probably grown up malnourished in the inner city, and was stunted. The thought made it difficult to swallow her salad. With this realisation, she now had a greater understanding of why he wanted to take care of his mother. How many meals had she missed to keep him fed? How many days had she laboured on an empty, growling stomach, starving so that her son could eat? She wondered how old Gosling had been when he understood and knew what his mother had been doing for him.
“Changes need to be made to the system, and we need a champion for this cause,” Raven said to Gosling in a soft, suggestive voice. “If one of the princesses were to do so, it would be seen as patronising… after all, what does a princess know of deprivation and suffering? What does a princess know of pigeon coop apartments? Any attempts made by the princesses to understand the needs of the lower class would be seen as insulting.”
Celestia’s ears stood up when Gosling swallowed and looked at Raven. She waited, her mouth full of salad, her breath in her throat, she waited with her ears straining, wondering what Gosling might say. She swallowed and felt the sharp edges of unchewed walnuts scraping her throat.
“What, yous wants me to be some kinda figurehead for reformation or sumptin?”
That voice! Celestia made a mental note to get Gosling more worked up and emotional more often. She had to hear that voice. What had the sergeants done to him in prep camp? Why was this marvellous accent drilled out of him? Why oh why did he have to go into communications and have that wondrous accent corrected? That voice made her feel moist in places that had been dry for too long. That voice brought rains back to her dry, dusty valley. That accent made her toast feel buttery. She shivered when she thought about Gosling whispering sweet nothings in her ear with that voice as he clutched her neck and she could almost feel him sliding over her back. Oh, he would be a little rough and clumsy, but that voice, that accent would more than make up for it. Not only was her toast buttered, but now she felt sticky with jam. She was ready to be put on a plate and served.
She coughed and for a moment, she thought she might have to go and excuse herself.
“A lot is expected of you,” Raven replied in a flat voice. “More is expected of you than you can possibly understand at this moment. You are being introduced to your new life by degrees. Your new life will be a life of servitude of the highest order. For now, we are merely determining what you have to offer. You will be evaluated and anything that is an asset will be appropriated, exploited, and used to benefit the Crown.”
“So, yous sayin’ that I’m back in the jungle,” Gosling replied, his eyebrow arching.
“Call it what you will, but this is a cutthroat place.” Raven gave Gosling a nod.
Eating another bite of salad, Celestia worried that it would become musky in here if this kept up. Her brain was doing its best to betray her, and so was her body. Her thoughts raced and she thought about three little foals, an earth pony, a pegasus, and unicorn, all with their father’s most delightful accent.
The thought put her mind back to an earlier time. She and Luna had once birthed a nation. After Discord’s fall, there had been too few. Far too few. With her and Luna’s ability to birth three foals, one of each tribe, they had spent decades in various states of pregnancy together, trying to restore what had been lost. Looking back, Celestia realised that she missed those days. Oh, maybe not the suffering, the starvation, and the death, or the lack of sanitation, or that the female orgasm was viewed as a thing of myth and legend. Those things could stay in the past. Celestia realised that she wanted to be fat with foal again. She wanted to be big, with a huge, ponderous belly that could be worshipped and adored. She wanted to be revered as a vessel for life. She wanted zebra witch doctors to paint fertility symbols on her stomach and slather her down with sacred mud so that she would be a fount for life. She wanted artisans to carve statues of her in a pregnant, pudgy, chubby, roly-poly majestic state, statues that other mares would rub in the hopes of increasing their own fertility. She missed her role not as the Goddess of the Sun, but as one of the Goddesses of the Renewal Cycle, a role she shared with Luna. She looked at Gosling and thought it might be time to revive a religion. She and Luna had once orchestrated the sun and the moon in a never ending cycle of oestrus and birth that had restored a nation.
So lost was Celestia in her own thoughts that she missed the conversation between Gosling, Raven, and Kibitz.
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Methinks I detect a hint of maiesiophilia, belike?
VERY interesting chapter I can so see those apartments. Why do i get the feeling there is something similar for earth ponies maybe apartments where the bedrooms are subdivided into barely enough area for a pony to sleep
Well, this changes toast.
Me too! Can we get 'em hitched, already?
7180400 Yes. Yes it does.
images.memes.com/meme/400331
7180419
7180424
7180419
Oy, it's like buttah!
7180428
Butter... the Southerner's (and apparrently Alicorn's) lube.
For the longest time i thought you replaced Kibitz with Raven, cause I like his character a lot as well. And Luna's micro comic is best Micro comic. Is Tibles in this universe?
And wow! Gosling got that trained out of him!?!? In my own head, when it full on switched is was really thick on it.
uh.. I have one question- where's the hell is Sleet? I'm just dying to know what her take on the pending three-way marriage is. What ever it is I'm sure it will be entertaining.
(Yes, I'm being impatient)
Oh, and I don't think I'll be having buttered toast anytime soon.
7180514
That's actually quite common. Communications specialists, in both military and civilian jobs, have harsh accents scrubbed out. That's why you hear so many people on television with bland mid-western accents. Communication is a vital field and when doing public speaking or sending a message, clarity is a must. You don't want a person no one understands trying to keep order or provide needed information.
7180549 wow, what a shame...
7180542 The tears make the butter extra sultry, I mean salty.
7180542
Sleet is off doing other things. Gosling is working, as are the others, and Sleet doesn't have clearance to be eating at that particular table.
7180551
But, clarity of communication is important. Yous gotta understands that guy and what he be saying in a time of crisis.
Oh great she's making a new mafia gang
7180559 i know, although i do find people woth accents easier to understand than the bland blank voice.
7180566
La Cosa Nostra.
Don't ask about it...
7180556
Some how, I'm sure that the whole pending three-way marriage based upon very old laws has been brought back to the court of public opinion by now (Twilight's rant against the newpaper ponies not withstanding) and I'm sure Sleet knows about it. I just can't wait to find out if she's in support of it or she starts boxing ponies ears over it. If it's the later, I can easily see her taking a swipe at Celetia's ears over this and Celestia letting her connect.
Otherwise, I'm sure she's off having a nice lunch somewhere with a nice, older Pegasus gentlepony (or two) in the common dining area. (What? I'm sure she's getting along well with the castle staff.
)
7180573
She and Gosling will have a talk about it. It's coming.
Blame Cadance. Always a good idea.
7180635
Damnit! Now you've got me trying to figure out how to change Blame Canada into Blame Cadance....
Now I'm thinking of those tough guy unicorns from Foster's Home.
This is officially my new head canon voice for gosling .
Think Celestia is getting a little too wrapped up in her fantasys. She can barely pay attention to anything and now dreaming of re-enacting an old fertility religion. I think a lot of ponies would be worried to know what is and isn't going on in her head.
7180767 Blame Cadenza. Right number of syllables.
7180570
Hmm wouldn't it be something like La Ladro Casa for MLP?
*Grogar attacks*
It's all your fault Cadance!
*Out of cake*
That's your fault too!
I never thought of toast as a sexual food.
7182733 It was already addressed Celestia told Gosling that it was because Candence was born a pegasus and not an Alicorn.
1) Twilight Sparkle, Equestria's Warrior Princess. Yesssssss.
2) Blaming Cadance does seem quite reasonable.
Pigeon coop apartment, that's an interesting bit of world-building.
This seems like a good use for Gosling.
Dang, Celestia, get a hold of yourself.
Ok I would love to see a story about their foals doing this!
I like how you wrote Gosling's dialogue in a matter that both suggested a New York Accent (Manehatten) and was still easy to read.
img.photobucket.com/albums/v404/wargy/avatars%20ect/orson-clapping.gif
The fun really got started when Celestia began picking up Gosling's combination Yiddish and Manehattanite accent and mannerisms while presiding over her royal court...
A bunch of muggers running around the castle, holding up the staff
priceless