Chapter 18
The world was full of wonders, some beautiful, some terrible. One of the great marvels, one that had fascinated Willowbark since he could read, was the way plants, animals, and all the speaking folks worked. There was perfection in the way the feathers of wings moved, there was grace in the way bones danced, there was wisdom in the balance of humors.
And now, for the first time, he could somehow see these things come into being.
His eyes followed the black fluid that crawled up along Chrysalis’ wings, contouring transparent veins covering the surface, sprouting thin tentacles that shivered as they longed to become primaries.
It was an infinitely fascinating spectacle. A somewhat stomach-churning one too, but he had seen enough things during his apprenticeship as to not be particularly disturbed. There was no suffering here, no pain, no misery. Nothing that would affect him.
Chrysalis had her eyes crossed and her tongue sticking out on the side. A frown of deep concentration adorned her face.
“Good, remember the picture I’ve shown you.” Willowbark leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the forming feathers. “Very good, you are getting better. Now make them a bit longer.”
The tentacles flattened, and minuscule, hair-like appendages came out from the sides. The color began to shift, transitioning from deep black to gray.
And then a cramp-like contraction traveled through them. They withered for a moment, before settling in a definitive form.
Willowbark closed his eyes and sighed. “You did good. You were on the right path, and these feathers are more similar to those of the pegasi than any others before.” He opened his eyes again and stepped back smiling. “Not quite there yet. They are still roc feathers, but quite good.”
With a huff, Chrysalis turned her head and looked at her wing. “Uhm, are you sure?” She flexed her wing. It extended and folded again, sending a shiver down Willowbark’s back. There was something ineffably wrong with it, something that rung all kind of alarm bells in his head. Chrysalis tilted her head and said, “Are you sure it’s not good enough? It’s like Garvino’s wing.”
“I fear not. Any pegasus seeing it, and many unicorns and earth ponies too, would immediately recognize that the wing isn’t right.” Willowbark sat down and tapped his chin. “You are getting better, though, so maybe it’s just a matter of practice.”
Chrysalis pouted. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s a feather. What’s the difference?”
“Hmmm, well, you see, a roc is made of air and…” Willowbark froze. There was the ember of an idea smoldering in his mind. “You are good with mathematics, right? Master Sottile told me you had a lot of talent for it.”
“Math is fun,” said Chrysalis while nodding enthusiastically. “Numbers make sense and I get them, and then you put them just together and it works. Why?”
“Mathematics is very complicated, but you get it. And that wasn’t the only time. You… you can learn when you can imitate or if you understand all the elements that make things up. Maybe I know how to help you make better feathers.”
The pile of scrolls in the niches smelled of dust and time. Willowbark hadn’t needed them for a while, leaving them to rest until the time he would be allowed an apprentice of his own. They would serve again sooner than he had expected, not for what he had expected, but still to teach a young mind. He pulled out a specific one, the carvings on the wooden disks on the sides indicating the contents. With a smile, he returned to Chrysalis and put the scroll down. “Here, this could be the key for you.”
Chrysalis unrolled the scroll with exaggerated attention and looked down at it. On the paper were detailed drawings of wings, bones, and feathers. Surrounding them in fastidious cloud-script were formulas and descriptions. The text flowed and danced on the page in complex patterns almost as important as what the words themselves said.
Willowbark pointed at the drawing of a wing joint. “These are the scrolls given to me by my master when I was learning the Art. Master High Wind was an astounding physiologist aside from being a very talented apothecary. He always told me that to heal we need to understand, and I think that is true for your transformation too. So study these diagrams, learn all that I learned about the pegasus form, and then we shall try again.”
There was a knock at the door. Willowbark briefly looked over his shoulder before returning to Chrysalis. “Read the scroll, it talks about pegasus wings. And when you’ve finished with it, you can ask questions. I have to go outside for a moment.”
Chrysalis looked up. “I will do it. Just, uhm…” She looked down at the scroll for a moment. “Can’t I learn about griffins?”
For a brief moment, Willowbark considered how it would be easier. But then there was wisdom in Master Sottile’s decisions. There always was. “You’ll learn about them, but for now it’s important that you learn about ponies. If all goes well there may finally be a chance to give you more freedom.”
“All right.” Chrysalis nodded, then laid down in front of the scroll and began to trace the whirling lines with her hoof. “Stupid words…” she muttered.
The scene was, all in all, quite heartwarming. It brought Willowbark back years, to simpler times. Times with fewer responsibilities. He shook his head, turned around, and left the room. He carefully closed the door behind him, not wanting to disturb his student, before facing Fidelis who leaned against a column of the arcade. “So, did something change?”
Fidelis nodded. “You and Master Sottile were right. The… the thing in the cistern, it’s still bound to little bug. It never stopped growing down, down in the deep. But today it changed. It became smaller for a short time."
“Are you sure?” Willowbark sat on his haunches. The chirping of crickets celebrated the warmth of the late summer, a chant of praise raised to the sun by those who couldn’t truly understand how it worked. It was a strange sound for monumental changes in the understanding of reality. Or a really appropriate one. WIllowbark wasn’t sure. “I asked Chrysalis to become bigger. She became heavier too, I put her on a scale.”
“I’m sure. Convincing rocks to talk about something happening in a short time is hard, getting them to complain is easier. They like to complain about emptiness below them. Makes them itchy, they fear it means they will move fast. And they complained when some roots of the thing disappeared.” Fidelis leaned out from the arcade and plucked a stalk of grass. He put it between his lips and asked, “is that what you expected?”
Exalt something you didn’t understand. Were they doing that? Those were questions Willowbark had asked himself a bit more often lately. Master Sottile said asking questions was good. “No, maybe, I don’t know what I expected. I stopped expecting things from Chrysalis a while ago. Going with what comes is easier. It’s better too.”
“You’re becoming wise. Makes me feel old.” Fidelis grinned. “Now what?”
“Now we know teleportation can be done. And we know that when Chrysalis changes form, she becomes that thing. So I teach her to become a pegasus, and then she’ll learn to live in the Concord too. And we won’t have to fear somepony seeing through the lie, because there is no lie to see through. No illusion to breach.” Willowbark snickered. “Cutting through the knot with a sword indeed.”
Chryssi waved from around the corner to Master Sottile, as he left the house. She heard Tia and Lulu’s voice from the outside bidding him goodbye, and then the drums that once again started their rhythmic beat along with a mass of hooves and occasional cries from the guards. It took a while before it all disappeared into the distance, and before the rest of her family came back into the house.
“When it’s my turn, I don’t want drums. They are kind of nice for a while, but hearing them all the time is far too loud. I want flutes.” Lulu walked to the table and sat down. “Flutes are better. They stay nice even if you hear them all day.”
“You can’t travel to flutes, everybody knows that.” Tia skipped in behind Lulu and took a place at her side. “And it’s never gonna be your turn.”
Lulu blew a raspberry. “Shows what you know. I’m gonna be Master too and then I’m gonna be called to be a Judge too.”
Donna Copper Horn came in the kitchen along with Meadowsweet, who was carrying Radish on her back. The minotaur gestured to Chryssi and pointed to the table, then went to the shelves and reached for one of the jars with herbal mixtures. Chryssi nodded and took place near Tia.
“No, I’m gonna be a Judge, my Cutie Mark says so.” Tia pointed at her flank. “See? Right there. Sun.”
“Yeah, well, Master Sottile doesn’t have a sun. He has half a crystal ball lying on a parchment. No sun there.” Lulu concluded her argument with another raspberry and turned her head away.
That seemed like a pretty definitive rebuttal of whatever Tia was saying, so the moment was as good as any other for Chryssi to ask, “What does a Judge do?”
“That is an interesting question, isn’t it?” Willowbark’s voice made the fillies turn around and look at him as he stood in the frame of the door. “Master Sottile put me in charge of your education while he has been called away, so consider this the beginning of our lessons. What does a Judge do?”
Lulu glanced over to Tia. “Tia says you need a sun on your butt to be a Judge, so she knows what a Judge does.”
Tia mumbled, “Traitor.” She turned around to face Willowbark and was practically sweating sour uncertainty. “A Judge, they… They judge as the name says. So when somebody has done something bad, a Judge looks at it and then decides what the punishment should be. And the sun means knowledge of the books, and in the books and scrolls there are the laws. So a sun as a cutie mark means being good at that and so it’s good for judging.”
Willowbark walked to the table and sat down. “Hmmm, there’s a bit of truth in that, but it’s not everything. Luna, explain why the mark is not everything.”
“Because being a Master of art is more important. Because a Master knows many, many things. So I can become a Master and then be a Judge too.”
Ideas were weird things. Chryssi was good at remembering stuff, but ideas were not just about committing them to memory. Master Sottile had been very insistent on that. He had passed a lot of time teaching her to get ideas out of things. It was still difficult, but she had become better at it. And now as she was chewing on the things Tia and Lulu said, something seemed out of place. Which was wrong. Things Lulu and Tia said made sense, but here the story felt incomplete. She fidgeted with her hooves, trying to impose an order on the vague confusion she had in her head.
“Yes, Chrysalis? Something bothering you?” Willowbark’s voice broke through her musings.
“Nothing. It’s… it’s nothing.”
Willowbark smiled. “I don’t think so. Tell me what it is.”
Tia and Lulu both looked at her somewhat expectantly. Chryssi glanced over to Donna Copper Horn pouring hot water in cups. “Why aren’t Meadowsweet and Donna Copper Horn Judges? When we do something wrong they punish us, and they know lots and lots of stuff.”
“Right, why aren’t we Judges?” Meadowsweet sat down next to Willowbark, a grin on her face and the sweet stickiness of being entertained floating around her.
Tia and Lulu looked at Meadowsweet, then at each other. Tia raised her hoof, opened her mouth, snapped it shut again and frowned. Lulu chewed her cheek and scratched her ear.
The silence was interrupted by Donna Copper Horn putting down the cups of herbal tea. “You know, I’m curious too why I’m not a Judge. Harmony knows I have opinions I’d like to share from such a position. Why don’t you go and find out the reason? I’m sure Willowbark knows where the relevant scrolls are.”
“Why, that’s a wonderful idea!” Willowbark took the cup between his hooves. “Now drink and then we shall begin.”
Chryssi didn’t even need to taste the air and sample the emotions there to feel Tia and Lulu’s glares. They were quite pointy. She took her own cup and tried to hide in the steam coming up from it. The smell of thyme and honey filled her nostrils, in sharp contrast to the weird conflicting things she was feeling. It seemed, after all, that this thing about ideas wasn’t all what it was cracked up to be.
Luna adjusted her medal of office. The gold was heavy, as was her duty, and as her duty it elevated her above the petty mundanity, so that from the height of her station she could serve and dispense concord. Oh, it pained her that she had to be called upon this. Wouldn’t it be a joy if no pony nor other member of the speaking races broke the peace? If there was no need to examine and dissect fights and disagreements. If her titanic intellect hadn’t to be challenged again and again to find solutions to those issues.
Radish, sitting on a pillow in the middle of the room, threw his hooves up. “Chryssi, save me!” He began to giggle, then leaned to the side and tumbled over.
Tia, sitting on Luna’s right, leaned forward and glared at him. She stomped her hoof on the bench in front of her, the sound of the impact echoing like thunder in the room. “Silence! The Accused will respect the Judges or face the consequences.”
From Luna’s left, Chryssi whispered, “Should I save him? We didn’t train for that, but I think the whole evil-castle thing was similar.”
They hadn’t even started and already things were getting out of control. Well, not this time. Luna leaned towards Chryssi and whispered, “No. But we have to keep it in mind for the future.” Then she put a hoof on Tia and pushed her softly back, before turning to Radish and, in her best impression of cold authority, said, “The Accused is only aggravating his position and is risking, on top of what the Judges shall decide, additional exile from the future activities of the members of this court.”
There was a moment of silence, Radish blinked, then laughed even louder.
Luna leaned forward. “If you aren’t good, we won’t play with you later.”
The sad “Oh” came both from Radish and from Luna’s left, but it seemed her threat had obtained some effect. Radish climbed onto the pillow again and sat down. The process could finally begin. Luna nodded, then turned to Tia. “Master Celestia, read out the accusations and how the peace has been broken.”
Tia cleared her throat, raised a wax tablet, and said, “The Accused, Radish, son of Meadowsweet, member of the House Sottile, has broken the peace by repeatedly chewing on wax tablets and parchments of translations made by the disciples of Master Sottile, rendering void hours of hard work. He also stands accused of becoming a colt, which is widely known as a sure way of seeding discontent and dirt.”
A glance at her own wax tablet confirmed the next step. Luna looked Radish in the eyes and said, “Willowbark, son of Meadowsweet, Apothecary of House Sottile, offered to speak in favor of the Accused.” She turned to Willowbark, who was grinning. That smelled like a trap of some kind, but then the scrolls said that this was the way it had to go. “Willowbark, do you want to speak up?”
“I certainly do.” He stepped forward and stood next to Radish. “I want to begin by questioning the legitimacy of the Judges. None of you is a Master, you all are well acquainted with the accused, you are the — heh — the accusers of Radish, you are all of the same House and, even more importantly, you live with him. None of you have been called from the council of the town, you avoided the proclamation and you haven’t called out to the citizens of the town to watch the proceedings. And, just to conclude, you are missing a pegasus in the triad. Oh, and Radish is too cute to break the peace.”
From the end of the room came Millet’s shout, “Tell them, son.”
She hadn’t expected that. Not at all. Luna looked at her sister. Tia seemed as confused as her, and was grasping some of the scrolls in her magic. They floated over to her and unrolled. They were tightly packed with writing in Hornscript, and it didn’t take Luna much to find the part about the proclamations. There didn’t seem to be any help coming from them, despite Tia pulling over more and more of them.
Chryssi leaned over and whispered, “I can be a pegasus if you want.”
Luna felt her stomach close, a shiver ran down her back, and she could practically see the scene in front of her eyes. “No!”
The way Chryssi seemed to shrink was almost worse than the memories. Luna closed her eyes for a moment and said, “It’s alright. Sorry, it’s… you can be you.”
“It’s not alright.” Chryssi shuffled her hooves. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
Neither had Luna, but now she did, and she was doing it as fast as she could. Lying would be useless, and a bit mean, probably. And it was true that things weren’t fine. She loved Chryssi, and she was a sister in all but name, but the transformation — it was simply wrong. Or it felt that way. And if she had learned one thing, it was that the way she was feeling wasn’t always correct. It wasn’t now, as it hadn’t been as she had betrayed the secret of Chryssi’s existence years before. It was all so confusing, unclear, different. And now wasn’t the time for dwelling on it. There were more important things to do.
Luna took all the unease, the fear, the ugly memories, and pushed them down. Deep down, where they couldn’t do any damage. She concentrated on the love she felt and smiled. “No, it’s not alright, but I’m getting better. And you can stay you.”
“Uhm, well, if you say so. But what do we do about the things Willowbark said?”
Right, that. Luna turned around and stood up. She glared up at Willowbark and said, “Why did you say all those things? You said we should try it out to understand it! And now you do…that! It’s unfair! And Chryssi can be a Judge too.”
Willowbark nodded. “I can concede that, but if you had read the scrolls better you would have remembered that a challenge to legitimacy can and does happen very often. You should have thought about that.”
“Oh.” Tia looked up from the scrolls. “He’s right. It says so here.” She pointed with her hoof at a passage in one of the treatises. “It also says that if the challenge is met, then it’s kind of a point against him. And he said that he conceded our point, which we agreed on even before this thing. That means a defeated and spur — spursi — a fake challenge. I say he is on thin ice.” Tia grinned. “Fellow Judges, don’t you agree with me?”
Chryssi whispered in Luna’s ear, “What has ice to do with —”
“It’s a turn of phrase, means he messed up and we can punish him if he behaves badly again.” Luna raised her voice and sat straight. “Why, I agree with you, very thin ice indeed.”
Chryssi mumbled, “Oh, so like what we are all the time.” She looked at Luna and Tia, then turned to Willowbark and said, “Yeah, that thing.”
“They got you good, son!”, called Millet from the back of the room.
“I’d argue that I have been quite accommodating and that maybe Master Sottile should teach you more rhetoric,” Willowbark said, then smiled. “But I’m already on thin ice, so let me bow my head to the decision of the Judges, and then let us proceed.”
Luna was now sure there was something wrong. It was too easy. What Tia had found had been useful, but it still felt like a trap, she just had no idea which one it could be. She frowned, then leaned to Chryssi and whispered, “What does Willowbark taste like? I mean, what does he feel?”
The flicking tongue was almost so fast as to blink and miss it. At least if one didn’t expect it. Luna did and tried to see if Willowbark had noticed it too. She guessed not, as he was in a staring contest with Tia, a little distraction that came exactly at the right point.
Chryssi whispered back, “Eager, satisfied, expectant. Amused too.”
A trap of some kind alright. Luna still had no idea what kind, but now that she was certain that something would happen, she could be ready for it. Willowbark wouldn’t trick them, they would trick him. Luna grinned. “Let us proceed. Willowbark of House Sottile, how do you defend your brother’s actions?”
Willowbark broke eye contact with Tia, took a step back, and said, “I am glad you asked. Let me begin with defining Peace…”
Being Judges was boring.
“…and as Bright Spark in his treatise on how the world proceeds from Strife to Love said…”
In hindsight, the trap was obvious. The sun had moved through almost a quarter of the sky, and Luna, Tia, and Chryssi had been sitting there all the time hearing Willowbark talk, and talk, and talk. They had been prisoners, unable to stop him or leave. If they interrupted him without some good counter they would lose, and both her and Tia hated to lose. He knew that. She wagered he had counted on it.
Radish was taking a nap. No way they could use him as an excuse.
“…and we can see how this brings us back to how the humors balance. Now, keeping that in mind…”
“He already talked about the humors,” whispered Chryssi. “He did it near the beginning. Then he talked about mood and such, and that was when he defended Radish chewing on paper.”
Luna rolled her eyes and whispered back, “Yeah, I know. He didn’t specify it, but he skidded along the argument a third time when…”
Chryssi asked, “When what?”
There was something important Luna had to remember. It something she had read, a little fragment of knowledge sitting in the back of her mind and screaming about salvation, about a way out. What was it? Beads of sweat formed on Luna’s forehead as she tried to dig through all the things cluttering her thoughts and her feelings. Right through —
Luna jumped up and shouted, “I got you!”
An instance of silence followed, while Radish blinked and yawned on his pillow. Willowbark tilted his head. “Uhm, what is it, Luna?”
“First, that’s Master Luna. Secondly, I got you. Hah! Tia, I need help with scrolls. There was the one with the thing Master Broad Shoulder said when she judged Silvertongue. It was one of the older ones.” Luna giggled. “Oh yes, I got you good.”
Tia looked at her like she had lost her mind. Not that the idea of snapping was too much out of the realm of possibilities, but that wasn’t the case. Luna felt sharper than she had in hours. She whispered to her sister, “Help me here, I know how we can win and stop the lecture.”
No further encouragement was needed, and a short time later Chryssi shouted, “Found it! I think.” She squinted at the scroll, moved her mouth, then said, “Yep, it talks about one pony with broad shoulders and another with a silver tongue.”
Luna grabbed the scroll and danced her eyes over it until she found what she needed. She put it down in front of her and looked Willowbark right in the eyes. “You returned again, for the third time, to the humors of the body, along with a line of reasoning similar to those you followed before. That means you have been leading the Judges in circles. Master Broad Shoulder said that such a thing constitutes a breach of peace, and she put the Pony speaking for the Accused under accusation.” Luna pointed her hoof at the relevant part of the scroll. “And Master Broad Shoulder is an accepted source of precedents —” Her grin was almost hurting by now. "— and that means that you, Willowbark of the House Sottile, are now accused of breaking the peace. You shall be put under our judgment, and as your talking is the thing that put you there, you will have to be silent, and choose somepony else to talk in your place." Something rose from deep inside her chest, bubbled up, and then escaped in the form of mad cackling as Luna threw her hooves up and let it all out.
Being a judge was awesome.
Celestia leaned sideways and looked at the group sitting in the middle of the room. Ginevra was tossing and catching a laughing Radish. Willowbark was pouting, while Millet was quite evidently trying to contain his mirth. Not that he had, according to Celestia’s humble opinion, much success with it, at least judging from the number of times he brought his hoof up and giggled behind it. Garvino was snoring on another pillow, an empty ewer and a cup at his side.
Once they had got the hang of it, adding to the Accused had been easy.
From the back of the room rose a wail. “My sons and my husband, all of them being judged. What a shame! What a disgrace on the family! How can I live with such a black mark on my reputation?” Meadowsweet swooned and held a hoof to her front. Then she fell on a heap of pillows on her side. “By Harmony, how can my name as an honest mare survive such a tragedy?”
It was the third time she had said that, and it was starting to become a bit distracting.
Millet turned his head. “Sweetheart, it’s not my first time. And it wouldn’t be your first time either. Remember when we–”
The pillow hit him square in the face. Meadowsweet hadn’t even stood up and yet her aiming had been sure. She glared at Millet, a grin peeking out from the sides of her mouth. “That’s all your fault. Our sons! In front of Judges. It’s your bad influence.”
“I know!” Millet put the pillow down. “I’m so proud of them. Radish is truly precocious. A natural talent, I say.”
Willowbark groaned, grabbed the pillow from Millet, and lay down on it.
The number of Accused had grown, their fate in the Judges’ hooves, but Celestia felt that the general mood in the room missed the proper seriousness such a situation would call for. Maybe she and Lulu hadn’t shown the right amount of iron-hoofed discipline. Or they had shown too much. A glance on the wax tablet in front of her confirmed that they had already charged the Accused with everything they could. That didn’t leave much leverage for further threats. And Chryssi hadn’t been too invested in it anyway.
Donna Copper Horn cleared her throat.
Right, there was that too. Celestia sighed internally, no need to show weakness, and craned her neck back to look Donna Copper Horn in the eyes.
The minotaur stood right in front of the three Judges, her arms crossed on her chest, a bit of flour still on her hands.
“We have to judge them,” said Lulu. She held her own wax tablet filled with mouth-writing up. “Look at all the breaches of peace they have been accused of. They did everything they could do! We have–”
Donna Copper Horn raised an eyebrow.
“–we may review it and can certainly discount some of the things.” Lulu glanced over to Celestia.
That was a form of retreat. It wasn’t acceptable. They had the power, and ceding it would be almost a defeat. On the other hoof, defending that point of view would require Celestia to take the word and become the focus of Donna Copper Horn’s scrutiny. Which was probably a bit worse than conceding a bit of leeway. Celestia leaned forward and began crossing off things from her list.
“Right, we can do that. But still, there’s a reason all these are there. Willowbark tried to lead us around in circles, Millet laughed through all his defense of Willowbark, Ginevra said we were too cute and small to be serious, and Garvino sat down himself and said he wanted to take a nap. That goes all from willfully misleading to disrespecting the Judges, and those are all breaches of the peace.” Lulu held up a scroll. “It says so here!”
Donna Copper Horn frowned.
Lulu looked at Chryssi, who was doing her best to disappear. She had already taken on the color of the wooden floor and sat immobile.
Maybe Celestia could do something here. “Maybe we have been too eager?” The sound of the words was like ash in the mouth, but was also soon forgotten as Donna Copper Horn moved her attention to Celestia. The filly gulped, and reminded herself that she was doing it for her sister and her friend. “We can leave all the disrespect stuff out.” Her magic passed over the scratches in the wax tablet, smoothing them out.
“Heard that, sweetheart? This time I won’t have to skip town!”
Donna Copper Horn leaned down and looked Celestia right in the eyes.
“And Radish is innocent too! Willowbark was very convincing.” Celestia gulped down and put the tablet down. “That leaves just Willowbark, right? Lulu, Chryssi, let’s just decide about him and then we’re done, right?”
Donna Copper Horn snorted.
Being a judge was fraud.
The wind softly whispered outside, the crickets chirped in the warm night, and outside the window, fireflies glowed and danced.
Celestia fumed.
At her side, she could feel Lulu turning in their bed. Chryssi laid curled up against her side. It had been a long day, and Celestia supposed that they had learned something.
According to Willowbark, they had experienced many of the finer issues of being Judges. In what had felt like an unending lecture they had learned the need of virtue, to apply the customs, and to wield the powers that come with the position. About how one had to rise above their own pride, and how one needed to respect those one had to judge. How justice was a subtle and complicated art, how one had to earn deference, and how frail it all was. And, in the end, how one had to be strong in front of fear and intimidation because otherwise, everything would collapse and nothing would come of it. Then dinner had mercifully brought an end to it.
Celestia would have to think about it all a lot, because at the moment she felt the only thing she had learned was that if one smelled a trap one should avoid it altogether instead of thinking one could break it from the inside.
What she needed right now was something to distract her. “Lulu, are you sleeping?”
There was some shuffling before the answer came. “No.”
It was as Celestia suspected. “Chryssi?”
No movement this time. “Yes, Tia?”
“This whole Judge thing, it all was… We wasted the day. It was silly and is useless. The summer will end, and we didn’t do anything really big or fun yet.”
Lulu leaned against Celestia’s side. “I don’t know. I think there was something there, but ... I like Master Sottile better when he teaches stuff.”
Chryssi rolled away. The room was filled with shadows, the meager light coming in from the outside doing little more than outlining some of the furniture. In that darkness the suddenly-glowing green eyes were like lanterns, painting details in an unreal, dreamlike tinge. “I learned I don’t want to be a Judge ever.”
“Chryssi?”
“Yes, Lulu?”
“Why are you glowing?”
The two eyes darted left and right for a couple of moments. The whisper was so low Celestia had to turn her ears to hear it. “I ate some fireflies.”
“Ah.” Luna flicked an ear. “Makes sense.”
Celestia nodded. “Right. Back to the important stuff, the summer is going to end, and we didn’t do anything important. I — Chryssi, you said you could be a pegasus. How good can you be a pegasus?”
The light flickered as Chryssi blinked. She raised a hoof and tapped her chin. “Willowbark said that I was almost there. Can’t fly yet, but as long as I glide and don’t flap my wings I should pass as a pegasus.” She sat on her haunches and tapped her hooves together. “Flapping is difficult, I can’t get it really right, and Ginevra says that the griffon way of flapping is different. You can do it as a pegasus, but then it seems all wrong to ponies. She said there was this one pegasus adopted in a flock as a tiny foal, and then when she went to live with ponies years later they all thought she was weird because she would fly like a griffon and that made ponies scared because they are a bunch of wimps and have no sense except for a couple of them like Master Sottile and then she started to argue with Willowbark and then it started to get complicated but I think it went well because later they shared some of that weird stuff Master Sottile makes.”
“Right, so we can go out with you as long as you don’t fly.” Celestia turned and pulled Lulu in a hug. “I think we can work with that. I have an idea how we can salvage this summer.”
Lulu curled up and asked, “What do you want to do?”
Shuffling a bit to find a comfortable position, Celestia said, “The whole Judges thing was a waste of time.” She reached out with a free hoof and waited for Chryssi to come and lean in on Lulu. After adjusting a pillow with her magic and rolling up around her sister and her friend, she said, “We shall go to war.”
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Ah, Chryssi, it seems you need a teacher to help you with your transformations. I have just the thing.
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/532/575/1e8.png
And thus the seed of Nightmare Moon was planted.
pfff
I foresee no way this could go poorly.
THat sounds adorable.
Idea?
Hm....
Gotta love it.
This will be fun.
You make an outSTANDING point.
*snort*
You're gonna what?
9428739
I think Abathur would take one look at her sequences and run like heck. He knows perfectly well that some things oughtn't be messed with.
Cry havoc, and let slip the bugs of war!
9428739
ING NOPE
NOPE NOPETY F
"he could somehow see these things came into being"
"he could somehow see these things come into being" or "he could somehow see how these things came into being"?
9428739
I have no idea what that is but it looks hecka cool
"He also stands accused of becoming a colt, which is widely known as a sure way of seeding discontent and dirt."
Guilty!!
those poor colts won't know what hit them.
Mildly concerning.
9428996
That, or fall down on his knees...tentacles...whatever and worship the peak of evolution.
9429026
Yes.
9429622
That is Abathur, the Evolution Master, from Starcraft.
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9428996
9429026
9429622
"Adaptability: limitless. Evolution: out of context."
"Evolution is tasty"
"... Tastyness: negative trait. External selective pressure required."
"No, no. No need for that. Evolution is tasty on its own."
"...Consumption of concept: impossible."
"Uhm..."
"Explanation: underlying ontological process--"
"I don't get it."
"You can't eat evolution!"
"I didn't! I just nibbled a bit at it. It was in a hidden part, I swear. You won't notice the difference."
9430081
The joys of interacting with paracausal beings...
Oh I thought Celestia would at least grow up before going to war. Oh well
Donna Copper Horn sure has a way with junior Judges abusing their powers.
9430809
No, remember that was the writing process. the acutal draft copy was scrawled on a napkin which was used to mom up the spilled beer and thus the only thing readable was " insult .... ea@# ch tri%e Bonk on them..head "
Its a working title !
9428741
It's not like NMM would jump out fully formed from a split head.
9428750
It's a perfect plan.
9428848
Celestia has great plans that never, ever backfire in any way.
9429015
Well, we will once we properly explained the idea to the bugs. Last time we use hugging related euphemisms and things got weird.
9429108
Fixed, thank you
9429624
And completely unrepentant on the top of it.
9429647
Whatever hit them, the only point they agreed on was that it was adorable, at least some of the times.
9429683
Why would it be concerning? I mean, it's Celestia's plan, and those always work, right?
9430292
She is two years older. It's a completely different situation
9430358
It's all a matter of educating them. And of being Donna Copper Horn, that helps too.
9431489
Actually the first draft got lost in the beer accident. What they salvaged were the production notes for the post-mortem.
9431707
You're welcome. :)
9431701
What you did there, I see it.
War! Waaar!!
Raise the balustrades! Swab the hatches! We're going to war!
Excellent chapter.
Not sure which of those two is the worse things..
Yup. Makes totally sense.
9437558
Thank you
9445385
They are nothing if not perfectly rational fillies.
9437558 To war! To war! To war we gotta go! A Heidi-Heidi-Heidi-Heidi-Heidi-Heidi-ho!
9454873
9455782 More like...
fanwithamovieyammer.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/duck-soup-10.jpg
Ah, I remember those days in the 30's, back when I was still a young, strapping lad of 200 or so. A couple hundred more years and this old body will be wearing a bit thin. Especially after I fight in the Troll War between Tumblr and 4chan, which will threaten the entire universe.
25.media.tumblr.com/bdf3ed67052a98f2e728f12bd3b7970c/tumblr_mxbpj8IONJ1sj14mjo7_500.gif
War Owo
9428739
Who dat? I feel like it’s Zerg or Tyranid.
Having binged this beautiful hunk of horse words over the past couple days, I can firmly say that it is one of the Best Stories I Have Read. Please sah, can we have some more?
9473899
Evolution master abathur from Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm.
But who judges the judges?
... This can only end well.