Never the Final Word (Vol. 2)

by FanOfMostEverything

Monarch Dodora's But What if They Have a Piece of Fruit? (horizon's "You Are What You Wheat")

Author's Note:

[Comedy][Random]

This is a continuation of horizon's You Are What You Wheat (3,478 words, [Comedy][Random])

YOU ARE WHAT YOU SPOIL: Private Parade Rest asks how a wheatgrass reserve can strategic. What follows is a strange interlude of Celestia's past mistakes, LARPing with Discord, and Equestria's greatest thief denying he ever did anything.

Duty, propriety and a perfectly-justified fear for the safety of her eardrums allowed Parade Rest almost three days' resistance against her morbid curiosity before it dragged her, internally kicking and screaming, to the entrance of Princess Luna's chambers and knocked her hoof on the door.

It was mid-morning — that stage of the working day when people at work finally buckle down and look for real excuses not to do anything — and it occurred to Parade Rest that this was not a convenient calling-time for ponies whose duties included the stewardship of the night only when the door flew open to reveal the Lunar Princess wearing pajamas, a sleeping mask pulled up onto her forehead, and an expression best described as a Royal Canterlot Face.

"Yes, guardsmare?"

Parade Rest snapped to terrified attention. "Ah, forgive me, Your Highness!" she said. "I didn't mean - I'll come back at a more convenient time - "

"Believe me, guardsmare," Luna said, rubbing an eye, "thou shalt not improve this situation by making mine awakening pointless. Speak."

Parade Rest fumbled. "Well," she said, "it's just, uh..."

Luna waited. Parade Rest swallowed.

"Well, I had a very, uh, strange experience a few days ago..." She glanced off to the side. "Like, really strange." Her eyes went distant. "If I'm honest, I'm not sure how much of it was just an odd tale by Princess Celestia and how much was a mind-rape by that God of Chaos nopony seems to mind having loose about the place."

Luna raised an eyebrow.

Parade Rest shook herself. "Anyway!" she said. " I experienced some weird things, Your Highness. And I'm fine with that! I'm okay with seeing a pony-snake-thing explode into a shirt, or saying a word so often it developed its own flavour, in fact last night I even slept without screaming once, Your Majesty, as I'm sure you're aware what with watching our dreams and all, haha - "

Luna raised an eyebrow more.

"But you see..." Parade Rest fidgeted. Scratched the back of her head. "I can cope with all of that, but the one thing that's bugging me... the one question I can't get out of my mind is..."

She shuffled, and finally looked up.

"Your, ah, personal armoury, Princess. Is the best weapon you possess really a... a pointy stick?"

There. The question was out, and she cringed instinctively even as the last absurd syllable took flight. Some small part of her wondered if the way her ears flattened was a defence evolved through the millennia against angry Canterlot-Voice-wielding princesses, and then dismissed the idea on the basis that an evolved defence required its progenitors to survive. She saw Luna blink as she parsed the question — saw her pupils actually contract in astonishment at the idiocy of it — and then —

"Eee! Finally!" Luna squealed, hopping from one hoof to the other, "a guardsmare with an appreciation for the exotic weaponry!" And she spun and pranced back into her chambers. "I do indeed have a pointy stick! Come, come, thou must see it!"

Parade Rest opened her mouth, discovered that even three days had not been nearly enough time to recharge her depleted whatage, and eventually followed with the kind of shuffling step usually reserved for approaching the gallows.

The chambers were exactly as she recalled / had been told (she was still fuzzy on which one it was): obsidian flooring; wheatgrass through the far window, swaying in the breeze; and, yes, the weapon rack, full of notched and blunted blades, and as Parade Rest watched, Luna poked about with her telekenesis, extracted the same dull and ordinary piece of wood from before, and held it aloft with a reverence fit for an heirloom.

"Is't not wondrous?" Luna sighed, and gazed enraptured a moment before her expression turned sly and she looked sidelong at her guest. "Wouldst thou like to hold it?" she whispered conspiratorially, hovering it over. "But do be careful; it is very pointy."

"Um... thank you, Your Highness," said Parade Rest, chancing a look around for hidden cameras. "Truly a, uh, marvel of engineering."

"Indeed!" Luna said happily, but the look she cast at the other contents of her weapon-rack would have stripped them of their varnish had they been varnished in the first place. "And it galls me that such a finery as this should share its rack-space with these... these mediocrities of warfare. Oh, which reminds me: I have a requisition form for replacements from the armoury. Thou canst deliver it for me!"

Parade Rest continued to look at the stick in her hoof as Luna trotted to her desk and buried her head amongst the piles of paperwork. "Forgive me, Your Highness," she said cautiously, "but how exactly does one fight with a pointy stick? Do you just, uh, give the forces of injustice a swift poke?" She picked it up gently in her teeth and swished it around once or twice.

Luna's laugh was musical. "Of course not, my little pony!" she said distractedly, still opening drawers and rummaging through papers. "The poke is merely a... crowd-controlling manoeuvre, like striking with the flat of one's sword! To poke in true combat would be simply disrespectful to such a weapon!"

"Fo wah-" Parade rest moved the stick to the side of her mouth and tried again. "So what do you do, your highness?"

"Confound it," Luna muttered, overturning folders, "where did I put that thing... what do you do with a pointy stick? Why, you point with it, of course!"

Parade Rest looked again at the stick, and back up to Luna; but Luna continued to rummage, and seemed disinclined to embellish. And so Parade shrugged, looked at the window, gripped the stick in her lips, and pointed.

---

"And that, Sister," said a bald and soot-covered Luna, "is why we no longer have a Strategic Wheat Reserve, and I no longer have a bedroom wall. Please stop laughing."

Comments

[Cerulean Blue]

That .. that does rather explain a lot. :)

[CrystalWaters]

The pointy stick is a thing of brusque and brutal beauty.

In fact, there are a great many 'b' words which can be used to describe the pointy stick; bruising, brutal, blasting, 'bliterating...

[FanOfMostEverything]

Context for the chapter title:

[horizon]

Parade Rest really should know better by now than to ask questions to the Princesses about slightly inexplicable but apparently harmless Canterlot phenomena.

[Monarch Dodora]

9430688

You could say she should

MAKE A POINT OF IT

I'll leave now

[B_Munro]

You really need to work your way up to pointy sticks.

[Monarch Dodora]

9427639
9430688

(Also it should not have taken me a week to day this, but: Thank you for the feature! I'm glad you enjoyed. )