Chapter 28
“—it’s funny that you should ask about that, Twilight. You see, the animosity between ponies and dragons began when one very smart dragon convinced one exceptionally dumb pony that rubbing butter all over their pelt would leave them shiny, sleek, and beautiful.” Pausing, but only to draw breath, Celestia ignored Twilight’s stupefied blank stare, and kept going. “All of a sudden, butter farmers became rather well to do, as there was a market run on butter, you see. Ponies were rubbing themselves down in butter, slathering themselves, and they were, indeed, sleek and shiny.”
Raven, sitting across the table, held up her hoof so she could snigger behind it.
“And then one day, this smart dragon shows up, he breathes a little fire, and he has himself a fine meal of hot, buttered ponies. Self-buttered ponies. This destroyed the dairy market, you see, and I was livid. And from that point onwards, there has been some mistrust between us and the dragons.”
“Auntie,” Blueblood said, raising one fine, well-groomed eyebrow. “You forgot the part where the ponies ate bread and apples, so they would be self-stuffed when roasted.”
“And the institution of marriage was threatened because colts had trouble catching greasy, buttery fillies.” Raven pulled her hoof away, and made a dismissive wave. “I love this story, it’s amazing. It was always a great day in school when she told it.”
Blinking once, Twilight recovered, but only just a little. “I can’t even right now…” she murmured, and then she shook her head from side to side, staring up at her mentor with wide, confuzzled eyes. With each slow, deliberate blink, her mental status seemed to be slipping more and more.
“Mmm, butter,” Raven said, and there was a sultry note of longing in her voice.
“Later,” Blueblood said, and something about his lone-spoken word made it sound like a promise.
“Gross!” Twilight whined, and she sounded like a creaky-voiced filly once more.
In a moment that defied her serene, composed character, Celestia let out a throaty laugh…
She was still laughing when Gosling sashayed into the dining room, and laughed even harder when Raven muttered something about butter. He didn’t do his usual pause in the doorway, waiting for adoration, but rather came sauntering right over to where Celestia was sitting. The laughter came to an abrupt end when she noticed the expression on his face.
“You need to go and apologise to your sister,” Gosling said in a matter-of-fact sort of way.
“For what?” Celestia asked.
“Something you said a long, long time ago. It’s still bugging her. It still hurts her. She thinks you were being prophetic when you called her—ahem—Stain.”
“Oh, no… no I wasn’t! It was just something stupid I said—”
“Newsflash, Princess Sunshine, stupid stuff still hurts! Now go own up to what you did, ‘cause yous was a bully.”
“I know that, which is why I’ve stopped doing it!” Celestia’s face became pained, and her horn glowed while she announced, “Excuse me, I must go look after my sister.”
Then, Celestia was gone, having departed in a brilliant flash of sunny yellow magic. Gosling stood there, blinking, somewhat blinded, as he had been looking right at Celestia when she left. When Raven cleared her throat, he turned to look at her, still blinking, still trying to get the floating spots from his vision.
“That was a little blunt,” Raven said to Gosling, and she looked him in the eye.
“I was instructed to be blunt,” he replied.
“Oh.” Raven now had an expression that almost looked like guilt for sticking her snoot into a place where it perhaps didn’t belong, but Gosling, still blinking, still somewhat blinded, didn’t see it. “I suppose Celestia wanted direct input instead of just gracefully dancing around an issue. It is good to be honest and blunt, if the relationship will endure it.”
“Indeed.” Blueblood sounded meek and subdued, which wasn’t natural for him.
“Trouble in the spank dungeon?” Gosling asked, cottoning on that something might not quite be right.
“No, nothing like that. Raven and I, we’ve been blunt with each other lately, and we’ve realised a few things—”
“Things we can probably work through,” Raven said, interrupting. “And that’s all we have to say about it.”
“Yes… all we have to say about it.” After yanking out the cork, Blueblood drank directly from the bottle, and emptied it in one long pull. It came back down upon the table with a thump, and Blueblood smiled, his lips stained with red wine. Whatever trouble there was, it seemed to have passed now, and the reprobate prince stared into Raven’s eyes with a look of perverted longing.
Gosling sat down just as his mother came through the door, but there was no sign of Cadance, Shining Armor, or Flurry. Not long ago, his mother had come and ‘rescued Flurry from his clutches,’ and he had been sad to see her go. Foalsitting her hadn’t been any real trouble at all, and Gosling suspected that Cadance was trying to prepare him for fatherhood in small doses.
After spending a little time at the spa, Sleet was glowing. There was no other way to describe her appearance. She was such a stark shade of winter white that it was painful to look at her in direct lighting. Her mane and tail? Perfection. She looked the part of the Royal Nanny, and best of all, she looked happy.
“Son!”
“Ma!”
“You didn’t mess up with Flurry.”
“Thanks, Ma!”
“She didn’t learn any new vulgar words, near as I can tell.”
“I tried, Ma.”
“You didn’t drop her out of a chariot and she didn’t get a flat place on her head.”
“One of my many services I provide, Ma.”
“I was actually upset, because I couldn’t find anything to complain about—”
“A son could just die, Ma.”
Grinning, Sleet crossed the room, stood near her son; mustering all of the affection she could bring to bear, she headbutted him, and almost sent him sprawling from his chair. While he was helpless, subdued, she hugged him, slipping her forelegs and her wings around him, and then began squeezing with enough force that Twilight became somewhat alarmed from watching.
“You don’t seem so mad, Ma,” Gosling said to his mother in a woozy sounding voice. “You make a little peace with everything?”
“What choice did I have? As a husband, you have an obligation to follow your wives anywhere they might go… even into spooky houses.” Sleet squeezed harder, and all of the air in Gosling’s lungs came out in a long, whistling wheeze. “Seeing you all messed up got to me. I’m your mother, and seeing you like that messed with my ability to be objective. I’m proud of you for what you did, even if I hate you just a little bit for doing it.”
“Thanks for being honest, Ma.”
“A mother could just live, and face her old age with dignity knowing that her son did right.”
“That’s the dream, Ma. If you die right now or too soon, you won’t get to know the grandfoals. And then I’ll have to tell them that I shamed my Ma to death.”
“I wouldn’t want to do that to you,” Sleet said while she pulled away. “But that would give you a valuable weapon in your arsenal to make them behave.”
“Yeah it would, Ma.” Now, Gosling was grinning.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Sleet sat down where Celestia had been sitting, at the head of the table. She fussed, she fretted, and she checked herself over for errant dark hairs after hugging her son. Twilight, sitting to her right, looked quite disturbed, no doubt because somepony was sitting in Celestia’s spot.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Sleet said, and she sounded wistful. “It’s all I can do lately, is think about those horrible apartments we had. Those… coops. I longed to be elsewhere, I thought about moving to Vanhoover, or even Ponyville once… I did think about it a lot.”
“What stopped you?” Twilight asked, and her face was twitching with interest.
“The lack of culture,” Sleet replied while she studied her own hoof, looking for any signs of imperfections. “Manehattan was awful, but it had culture. Even the very poor could mooch a little bit of the culture that the rich had created for themselves. Opera houses, theatres, museums, art galleries, performances in the park, concerts. Gosling needed these things. I felt that he had to have them. I felt that if he was cultured enough, it would open doors for him.”
“It did, Ma.”
Scowling, Twilight now looked sullen, and she leaned back in her chair. Her dark scowl intensified when she crossed her forelegs over her barrel, and she let slip a snorty sigh. It seemed that being told that Ponyville was an uncultured backwater did not agree with Twilight, and she had nothing she could say in defense of her own demesne.
All Twilight could do, was plot, so plot she did.
Shining Armor entered first, with Flurry sitting on his back, blabbering away about her most amazing afternoon and all of the fun she had with Gosling. Cadance followed, looking amused, but also looking exhausted. Whatever it was that she had done, it had been taxing. Flurry, excited by a room full of ponies that she adored, began using the back of her father’s skull as a makeshift drum, and she pounded away, thumping out a funky rhythm with her hooves striking bone.
In that moment, Shining Armor deserved to be an alicorn…
Seville stumbled in next, looking a bit dusty and cobwebby. He coughed, and when he did, Cadance turned around to face him. Horn glowing, she gave the earth pony a good dusting, fixed his mane, and then smiled to celebrate a job well done. Seville gave a nod of thanks, and then followed Cadance and Shining Armor to the table.
Reaching the table, Seville sat down next to Twilight. Turning, he smiled at her, and then with a weary sigh, he collapsed back into his chair and closed his eyes. His front hooves were still stained with ink and there was a faint chemical stench to him, the sharp tang of printing solvents.
Sniffing, Twilight took notice. “Methanol, xylene, toluene, and methyl ethyl ketone… glycol ethers”—she sniffed again, and stuck her tongue out—“and trichloroethane. Ah, the smell of journalism, publishing, and print.”
Opening his eyes, Seville asked, “How do you do that?”
“Oh, that…” A furious blush took over Twilight’s cheeks. “I’m cheating, I’m afraid. I learned how to modify a spell matrix for chemical detection and then I cast it on my nose. When I sniff, the spell inputs the knowledge of what I am smelling directly into my brain—”
“NERD!” Shining Armor shouted.
Rolling her eyes, Twilight shook her head at her brother’s utterance, and then countered: “How many hours did you spend playing role playing games in the basement with your friends, Shiny?”
“We should get a game of Ogres and Oubliettes going,” Cadance suggested while she attempted to stuff Flurry into a high chair.
“I like the smell of ink,” Twilight said to Seville in a most peculiar voice. “I like the smell of printing, and of bookbinding, and I love the smell of paper, and I think these are the best smells in the world—”
“They are!” Seville’s exhaustion departed, and he became quite animated. “It’s funny… the smell of ink, that smell that a newspaper has, it can be the smell of truth or the smell of a lie… but sniffing it is not enough… no, you have to get your eyes involved, and your mind, and it takes all of your senses to make a sniff test, to determine what is true, and what is false. The scent of ink is just what engages you. The scent of ink is an olfactory promise that your brain is about to get a workout!”
“It is, isn’t it?” Twilight responded, and her head bobbed up and down in agreement.
The conversation halted when Seville and Twilight noticed everypony present at the table staring at them. Even Flurry had stopped her squirming and her struggle to just stare. It was now so quiet that the sound of ponies blinking could be heard, and with each passing second, Twilight’s face purplefied, reaching new, previously unknown colours in the purpleosity spectrum.
When Gosling opened his mouth, his mother cut him off. “Gossy, don’t you dare, or you’ll catch one right in the kisser.”
Slumping in his seat, Gosling said nothing, keeping his precious kisser safe.
“Sit up straight. Don’t slouch! A mother could just die! Do you want Flurry learning that posture?”
While Gosling was faced with his mother’s sudden mortality, Twilight turned to look at Seville. “It isn’t often I get to talk about this stuff. I try with with my friends, but they don’t understand. They don’t understand that ink is the medium of intellectual engagement.”
“Yeah,” Seville replied, and exhaustion crept back into his features. “We should engage with each other sometime…” His words trailed off into nothingness and there was a soft click when his teeth clacked together.
Twilight’s colour spectrum shifted from purpleriffic and right into the red spectrum. She stammered, speechless, her wings flapping against her sides, and she was so distressed that her brother, Shining Armor, looked worried rather than amused. Cadance reached out and gripped Shining Armor’s leg, preventing him from getting up from his seat to rescue his sister.
“I’m sorry, that came out wrong… I’m tired,” Seville said to Twilight, making a weak apology. “I shouldn’t say anything when I’m tired. To avoid any further social faux pas, I am going to shut up now.”
“I… would…” Twilight sounded as though she was strangling, and she was now in a fierce battle to get the words out. Gulping, she then kept going: “I would like to get together and talk about our mutual love of ink sometime. Please. I’d like that.”
The moment, as tender and heartfelt as it was, was interrupted by Celestia’s sudden appearance in the door, along with Luna. Celestia seemed subdued, but Luna seemed giddy, and both were watching Twilight Sparkle with a great deal of interest. After a moment of intense silence that was fraught with emotion, Celestia moved forwards.
“Sleet, you’re in my seat…”
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Or, as we called them around my house, hand cleaners. "If it ends in -ene, it's good to clean." my father said.
8304190
Eh, these are also common chemicals used in printing.
Are you SURE you want to use the word strangling like that right there?
8304205
Yes, because of nervous response, her throat is constricted, tight, thus making it difficult to breathe or speak. She does, in fact, sound as though something is around her neck and squeezing, as sometimes happens to people who are undergoing an intense emotional response or reaction.
The response itself is supposed to make us stop talking, stop communicating, and focus on breathing, so our brains can get extra oxygen, boosting our situational awareness. so we can figure out what is going on. Fighting against it can make the throat further constrict, and we feel like we are choking, or are being strangled.
8304213
Yes, but that means she sounds strangled, and not as if she were strangling somebody else.
8304239
Strangling is also descriptive.
Ah, Trichloroethane! - there goes the ozone layer...
Awww... dorky love.
The Breadnought? You know everyone despises puns, so good on you for going against the grain.
Hah, that was a nice foreshadowing for the events of "Ink"
If Seville thinks Twilight likes the scent of ink on his hide, he should try butter.
Shiny be like
THAT WAS SO ADORABLE
For pony's SAKE, buck already Twilight, Seville!
It's hard to watch Twilight and Seville interact, knowing that they won't get together until five or so years later.
8304539
You can’t rush the nerds.
You’ll spook them. Stop.
Celestia, in her youth, doesn't seem to have been the nicest pony around. Bullying her little sister, calling her names...
...I wonder if the Nightmare Moon scenario would have happened if somepony had been able to use that perspective-shifting artefact on the Two Sisters in their youth, like Pebble did for the Nuance/Radiance issue.
Looks like the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, even if the tree itself has grown for so long and changed until it no longer even looks like an apple tree anymore.
8304587
Can't scare the wildlife. Got it.
8304670
She was just a kid. A jealous little kid that resented not being the center of attention.
Only the end chairs are sufficiently reinforced for the royal posterior. Would maud break the lesser chairs i wonder?
Because the struggle is real. To stop that is an epic feat. Book horse is best tomato.
8305303
Are you saying the large horse's chair is...
(Wait for it...)
... Maud to order?
: facehoof:
8304670
You can't judge a child whose circumstances are similar to but also uniquely different than any human's, by a human adult's perspective and views of right and wrong, compadre. We all threw little fits as children when we were unhappy, it's how we dealt with being unhappy. The ones who didn't lash out still had internal bouts of their own issues. You either got huffy, internalized problems, or cried.
They grew, they matured, and like most things surrounding the Nightmare Moon debacle, Celestia did not know what the problems involved were. She just apologized a thousand-several thousand(?) years later because she hadn't done so before. Not because she didn't care, look at her run herself ragged trying to show she cares, she loves Luna so much it hurts to read about sometimes, knowing what Celestia's done and doing to herself internally from guilt which she has excessively applied to herself, yet still makes the emotional room to provide love for Luna and others.
Laying the Nightmare Moon issue at Celestia's hooves, or basing even her then-personality as a child without full agency on a foal's outburst, is unfair and goes against good logic.
Fortunately for Sleet, the lack of something to complain about is in fact something to complain about.
And instead they didn't have that weapon, and just look at how everything turned out in the future.
It begins.
You spend every waking moment coming up with gems like these, then write the story around them. Don't try and deny it.
MEK? The chemical that strips any one thing from any other thing? A dangerous profession for Mr. Orange.
I wonder just how instrumental Cadance was in making this chapter possible.
I love you to death, self buttered ponies are the best ponies
oh my Shes channeling colonel Kilgore
8304311
Everyone except me. I happen to absolutely adore them