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Chapter 12,308 words
Chapter 21,969 words

Chapter 1

The note was simple. Printed on plain cardstock, it bore an address and a time, along with her initials and a stamp of her cutie mark.

What was particularly intriguing was the hour of the invitation, which Blueblood allowed himself to call as such because there was really no other way to describe it. It was an invitation, and it was scheduled for Wednesday at three.

In isolation, this fact certainly didn’t mean much, but everypony who was anypony in Canterlot knew that Fleur Dis Lee kept a absolutely private and seldom-missed personal appointment on Wednesday afternoons.

Those in the social circles that were disposed to gossip often offered tantalizing explanations for why one of Canterlot’s biggest names would insist on completely disappearing from the public spotlight for several hours each week. Of course, the most popular one was the most scandalous: a weekly rendezvous with a secret lover, hidden from Fancy Pants’ eye.

Blueblood admitted to himself that the thought did put a bit of an excited flutter in his chest. Fleur had never stopped being a lovely mare, and if she wanted a break from that charlatan, Fancy, then Blueblood could surely find it in himself to generously comply. It would be just like old times.

But when his carriage driver dropped him off in front of small and rather dingy-looking bookstore in western Lower Canterlot, he found himself more than slightly confused. Blueblood checked the address on the card again, before he reluctantly stepped out of the carriage.

A gaudy little bell dinged merrily as Blueblood opened the door to the shop and stepped in.

For three or four heartbeats, he patiently waited to be properly greeted by whoever ran the tacky little establishment, but all was silent, save for the occasional whisper of a page being turned. Surely somepony should have noticed him by now.

Confusion quickly soured into irritation, so Blueblood relented and looked around the room in earnest.

Bright lights meant to facilitate reading highlighted a couple of year-old stains in the thick maroon carpeting. Bookshelves were deliberately arranged to create cozy little corners furnished with chairs and sofas.

An older earth pony stallion with a forest-green coat and a gray-speckled beard sat behind a cash register, lazily flipping through a paperback novel. All the while, an old black tomcat with shaggy fur growled at Blueblood from his perch on a shelf between two encyclopedias.Cat hair thickly coated most nearby surfaces.

The prince frowned and approached the stallion.

“I,” said Blueblood, “am Prince Blueblood.”

The pony who Blueblood assumed was the storekeeper looked up from his book.

“Welcome to Buy the Book.” he said through a Prench accent, as Blueblood cringed at the store’s name. “Let me know should you have trouble finding what you need—my name is Encré Vert.” His eyes dropped back to his book.

“There are ponies,” said Blueblood, “who are reading your books.”

The storeowner regarded the prince with a befuddled expression. Slowly, he looked around the stop at the handful of customers who were cozied up with novels and tomes.

“Yes,” he finally said. He gave Blueblood a confused smile.

“You’re allowing them?” Blueblood blinked in confusion. “How do you expect to run your business if everypony in Lower Canterlot reads your books free of charge?”

“They will pay if they finish the book.” Encré smiled again. “It’s store policy.”

For a moment or two, Blueblood wondered how he could best explain why absolutely nothing about those sentences was sound business practice. But instead, he closed his mouth and came to the sad realization that nothing he could say would do any good to somepony so far gone. Instead, he forced a polite smile.

“Right,” said Blueblood, nodding in false agreement. “Store policy.”

Blueblood sauntered up to where Encré was seated. Evidently, the old tomcat found this offensive, because it reared up and hissed, tail bushy and darting back and forth, dangerously.

“Stop it, Gigi!” Encré scolded. He shot Blueblood an apologetic look. “He often does not like new ponies.”

The feeling is mutual, thought Blueblood as he eyed the ugly old animal.

“Noted,” said the Prince with a princely turn of the nose. “I am here to meet a mare. Her name is Fleur Dis Lee.”

Encré Vert’s eyes narrowed just a little. “Are you?”

“Yes,” said Blueblood. With an impatient flicker of his horn, he retrieved the card from Fleur. “This is the correct location and time, is it not?”

Encré studied the card, and nodded. “Yes, this is the correct place. And this is her hornwriting.” Seemingly satisfied, he gestured towards the back of the store. “She is usually at the table, in the back. Next to the Classics section.”

“Much appreciated,” said Blueblood. With a curt turn, he strode into the maze of shelves before him.

It did not take long to find the table Encré described, but Blueblood almost did not recognize the pony sitting there. Her mane was done in a little bun to keep it out of her eyes—a far cry how it usually elegantly draped the edge of her face. And perched on Fleur’s nose was a little set of reading glasses, with thin lenses and a gold wire frame.

Fleur was muzzle-deep in one book, and another thick volume sat on the table next to her with several bookmarks in it. They both raptly held her attention, even as Blueblood approached her table.

Blueblood was beginning to feel entirely sick of being unnoticed, so he subtly coughed into his hoof.

Fleur Dis Lee blinked, and when she opened her soft violet eyes again they, made their way to him.

“Oh, Blueblood. How do you do?” she said, getting up from her seat.

“Much better now, in fact, ” he said, wearing his most practiced, most suave smile.

Fleur touched hooves with him and quickly placed a chaste kiss on each of his cheeks. It was an innocent and common way to greet friends in a big, multicultural city like Canterlot, but Blueblood still savored the brief moment of contact.

“Come,” she said, walking back to her seat. “Find a book, and sit next to me.”

What he would need a book for, Blueblood had no conceivable idea. But whatever Fleur was planning couldn’t be so terrible, could it? Still wearing his smile, he turned towards the nearest shelf and began to—what was the word?—browse it.

A series of titles and authors flashed by his scanning eyes. Several names held some familiarity with him, from his days as a colt studying under private tutors. Distantly, he recalled that Encré said that this was the Classics section.

A thick book caught his eye; it was an anthology of short works, credited to Heart Wisp.

Ah, what’s this, auntie?

Princess Celestia had written under many, many pseudonyms over the years of her reign, and if she is to be believed, most of them are still undiscovered. Heart Wisp was a very prolific writer of fiction and poetry in the late eighth century, and although scholars had long speculated it, the Princess only recently admitted that this author was one of her own aliases. Which meant, of course, that Heart Wisp’s bibliography all the rage at the moment.

A sputtering hiss jolted Blueblood out of his thoughts.

The old black cat from before crept up from a dark corner. Blueblood flinched away as it climbed the shelves with a practiced arrogance and the start of a growl in its throat the whole time. It settled awfully near the Heart Wisp book, stretching its claws in an almost protective fashion.

Blueblood did not have time to waste negotiating with a scraggly furball over a silly old book.

“Shoo,” muttered Blueblood under his breath as he lit his horn.

The cat hissed and clawed at empty air as it was picked up in a nebula of magic and pushed unceremoniously to the side, allowing Blueblood to fetch the book. Blueblood continued to hold the feral feline in place for a moment longer as he made some distance between them before he released the cat with a shove.

The cat, clearly spooked, tumbled off the shelf and dashed away.

“That was not very kind of you,” said Fleur. She was frowning and looking at Blueblood from over the top of her little spectacles.

Blueblood’s heart flipped for a moment, but he regained his composure before its next beat.

“Forgive me,” he said, putting on an apologetic look. It wasn’t as well-practiced as his other expressions, but he knew it would still do the trick. “I’m afraid I’ve never quite had a way with creatures.”

“Gigi can be difficult at first. But once you get to know him, he shows his pleasantness,” said Fleur. For a moment, there was something wistful about the way she spoke. “Much like many ponies, I suppose.”

“I’ll take you at your word.” Blueblood said, as he took the seat next to her.

Expectantly, he waited as Fleur settled back down and found her place in her book again. Mirroring her, Blueblood flipped open the Heart Wisp anthology to a random entry. He glanced up for just long enough to see that Fleur was once again engrossed in whatever it was she was reading.

Trying to distract himself, he turned back to his own book and dragged his eyes across several lines of text.

It was a poem—and as far as Blueblood could tell, it was about a phoenix. A phoenix’s ashes, kept sealed in a jar of water, so that they could never reignite.

It was all incredibly silly and more than a little over dramatic. Even pretending to read it took all of his concentration.

What didn’t help was that damnable cat, which was apparently still offended by Blueblood’s presence. Every once in a while, he heard it hissing from a different corner of the room or jumping to a new vantage point from which to watch him. It took a great deal of effort not to break composure and turn to face the devil whenever it screeched at him.

Finally, huffing in frustration, he gave up. He closed the book and gauged its thickness. The anthology was big enough to contain hundreds—if not a thousand or more!—entries in it, and all were likely just as vapid as the one he just read.

How in heaven’s name did Auntie find the time to write all of this nonsense?

The Princess should have had better things to spend her time with than a writing a big book of balderdash, and to be perfectly frank, Blueblood had better things to do than reading one.

“Pardon me,” he said, breaking the silence of almost half an hour. He turned to Fleur. “It’s not that your lovely company is not enough, but I do find myself wondering why exactly you’ve called us here.”

He capped off that sentence with a winning, roguish smile.

Fleur blinked once, then twice.

“I thought it obvious. We are reading, are we not?” She smiled too, but tentatively.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” he admitted.

Something similar to disappointment briefly washed over Fleur’s features, but it was gone in a moment.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve been asking me what I do with my Wednesday afternoons. I take the time to spend them here, with a book. And I thought you could join me, this week.”

“Every week?” Blueblood found himself asking, almost before he realized his lips were moving.

“Yes,” said Fleur, with a touch of embarrassment. “Every week, in this very seat, in fact.”

And just like that, one of the juiciest mysteries of Canterlot’s most affluent social circles fell to pieces before Blueblood. The experience as a whole was equally novel and disconcerting. Blueblood felt his mouth open, he closed it, and then finally he opened it again.

“Well, anything done with you—even reading—is a pleasure,” he said. It was more difficult to fake a smile this time, and he had an inkling that Fleur noticed. so he decided to distract her. “I was only thinking that the editor of the Equine Enquirer might go mad if she learned about this.”

Immediately, Fleur’s expression soured.

“Please don’t tell me you read that worthless rag,” she said.

“No,” said Blueblood, “but you know how it is. Everything the Enquirer writes tends to percolate down through the upper society.”

“I recently have had an epiphany regarding the upper society and how much I ought to care about its rumors.” Fleur pointedly turned her attention back to her book and turned a page. “I’ve concluded that the exact right amount, is not at all.”

“Well, what about me?” said Blueblood, injectly a little playfulness into his voice. “Surely my opinion matters to you, despite the fact that I, by the nature of my position, am in the thick of all things upper-class.”

“Don’t worry, Blueblood.” Fleur smiled idly. “I still remember that you have your moments of insight.”

Blueblood couldn’t help but grin, and this time it was genuine. The victory he won was a small one, and it was silly of him to feel this way, but his heart still flipped excitedly in his chest as he flipped through the pages of his book without looking at them.

He was in such a thrill that he barely noticed that the windows had grown dark and that the old shopkeeper was beginning to shoo customers out the door.

“Will you be here next week?” he said, finally breaking the silence.

Fleur paused for a moment, as if in contemplation.

“Yes,” she said, getting up and lighting her horn to put away her own books. “It was pleasant to talk to you again. If you can, perhaps you’d like to come again soon.”

“I’d love to,” said Blueblood.

Well, perhaps there was a little bit of hope after all.

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The Great Derpsby

The Great Derpsby #1 · Apr 24th, 2018 · · ·

I wonder where things go from here. Assuming keeping it "incomplete" wasn't by accident.

Bachiavellian

Bachiavellian #2 · Apr 24th, 2018 · · ·

8883835
Yep! Dreadfully incomplete right now, expect new chapters soon(ish)!

Dafaddah

Dafaddah #3 · Apr 24th, 2018 · · ·

I absolutely love this! What you’re doing with Fleur is wonderfully intriguing, and where is she intending to lead Blueblood? I can’t wait for the next chapter!