Impudent
Dear Ms. Slate,
The answer to your exactingly passed-along request is 'No.' There won't be any need to relay that, as I'll be contacting the initiating party shortly after I finish drafting your letter. Which is probably going to take several drafts. I feel it's best if I tell her myself. I also just wanted you to know what the answer was, AND that she was going to receive her own copy. This will prevent her from trying an end-gallop around me by claiming she privately received permission.
Now, when it comes to the details of that decision:
I recognize that a number of parents have concerns regarding both supervision and the presence of other parties during the meeting, which is part of what allowed her to try that request in the first place. Let me try to answer a few of them.
First: the press will not be there. This is, for the most part, in spite of their best efforts, as a press corps which seldom finds reasons to fully agree on anything tends to unite behind the single issue of demanding access. In this case, I have several reasons to close them out, not the least of which is that I want this meeting to be between your students and Cerea: not a number of fillies and colts, a single centaur, and several dozen adults who alternate between calling out their own questions and writing down notes. The writing can be oddly loud.
I also had to consider the possibility of instigation. At least two different kinds, because I don't trust Wordia not to subtly drop a lit firecracker behind a nervous student any more than I trust Raque not to encourage a trembling filly away from the first hoofstep of brief physical contact and into the more open-minded, welcoming, and probably trauma-triggering embrace of a full hug. Also, there's every chance the trauma would wind up being triggered on both sides.
However, I also understand the desire for some public record of this meeting to exist especially since I'm already sick of reading the protest letters sent by those who have some very detailed ideas of what might happen when innocents are left alone with a centaur. So I'm going to be trying something new.
The palace will be filming the whole thing.
This wound up creating some additional requirements. We need to set aside a place for the meeting which can accommodate a single cinema camera, along with the necessities for recording sound: the current plan is to either use one of the larger Halls or a Courtyard. As for choosing the ponies who will be operating the equipment -- that was something which led to an argument in the press corps, because certain portions of it wanted to be the ones who assigned those posts, and their choices were the ones whom certain others wouldn't trust not to manipulate the editing.
After the fights were broken up discussions were sorted out, Princess Luna and I resorted to one of the oldest compromise tactics: something best suited for use with those incapable of normal reconciliation. We took two mares ponies at the extreme ends of the coverage spectrum, then asked each to name somepony whom they trusted to operate that equipment. The palace contacted those parties, brought them together in a small room, told them they weren't getting out until they had an agreement, and asked them to name the ponies who would actually record the meeting.
As tactics for reaching compromise go, it has a rather surprising rate of success. It might even have applications in the classroom and in that setting, would probably avoid the typical follow-up headache which comes from having to track multiple accusations of bribery. In this case, it has given us a fairly reliable crew. Because we won't be doing any editing for the recording, the film should be duplicated and provided to your school by late afternoon on the same day through express courier. Any parents who wish to see how things went can watch for themselves at that time.
I realize this isn't a perfect system. Film captures illusions (at least when they're cast by ponies), and so the possibility for fakery will always exist. Having certain parties accuse the palace of such is more of a certainty. But when it comes to a public record of the meeting -- something which can be reviewed by anypony in the world -- this is the best I can offer, along with a promise that the crew will be placed out of sight. They will play no direct part in the meeting.
Given the ongoing difficulties in finalizing the one-sheet, I'd also thought about the possibility of a full film. Something around the two-reeler level, which would introduce Cerea to any part of the population willing to sit through the mandatory short subject before the main feature began. Namely, I thought about it right up until the moment when Princess Luna inquired as to whether, given the typical pony's reaction to seeing Cerea for the first time, I had any ideas for a sequel to the government's own premiere horror movie. Possibly something centering on riots.
I'm also expecting at least one pre-meeting "opinion" article on just why the author feels a centaur should never be in the same room with children, with the option to upgrade into a full series.
Now, when it comes to adult supervision, I fully understand why some of the parents would want to be there. But once again, we're trying to limit the number of visible participants, because we want everypony (and everyone) involved to feel that they can act as themselves. Children in the presence of their parents are sometimes prone to behave in the way which they feel the adults wanted, or as trotting extensions of their elders. Let your class declare their own feelings: not those of another.
So when it comes to adult supervision: no, I will not permit the parents to attend. You'll be there the whole time, as their teacher: I'd never ask you to leave. And if they naturally feel that additional adult presence is required. please assure them that Princess Luna and I will both be in attendance. I personally feel that we qualify.
You probably aren't familiar with the ongoing Prance belief that all of their ambassadors are supposed to perpetually regard and treat me as if I'm in late adolescence, especially since I just managed to learn about it two years ago. Let's just say that if spending nearly thirteen hundred years on this planet doesn't qualify me for adulthood, then I really don't want to know what would. And I especially don't want to know about it from anyone who hasn't managed a respectable fraction of that number. Incidentally, I'd be the one defining 'respectable'.
Again: Cerea is essentially harmless. The Diarchy's task in supervising the meeting is to reassure all parties that everything is fully safe, and that very much includes reassuring a very nervous centaur. Princess Luna and I will be speaking to her shortly, because she has expressed a number of concerns about meeting your class. She is, put bluntly, terrified -- and what she's terrified of is scaring them.
About the request to consider postponement: I'm sorry, but I can't. It's been hard enough to find a date between your own schedule, that of the palace, and the demands of Guard training. The only other time I had remotely considered was almost immediately after Cerea's graduation from the training program (should that happen), and that's already been set aside for what might wind up as another type of meeting. I understand that you have concerns: you wouldn't have a teacher's mark if you weren't constantly looking out for your students. But I can promise you absolute safety in getting your class in and out of the palace. They'll never come near the protestors, and the same will apply in reverse.
And the longer we wait, the more protestors there may be.
The world, through the eyes of your class and the camera alike, needs to begin truly meeting Cerea as soon as possible. There are ways in which we simply can't afford to wait any longer. So the date and time I'm attaching to this letter is firm barring the actual assortment of potential semi-random disasters unless government business intervenes.
In conclusion: the passed-along request has been turned down. There will be an adult presence at the meeting. But it will not be the pony who asked you to pass along those words, while asking you to make sure I didn't realize you were doing so. Nor will it be any of her friends. Perhaps a 'chaperone' is required and if so, the Diarchy will stand in that role. But when it comes to 'somepony who is accustomed to dealing with potential chaos and the disruptions caused by the presence of monsters' -- no. I'm amazed that she managed to leave 'stopping wild animal attacks' off her own qualification list.
I hope you'll continue to contact me with further concerns and ideas for addressing them. But that one is not going to come up again.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
With hope,
Princess Celestia
The alicorns were waiting for her to talk and in that, Cerea already felt as if she was imposing on them.
She didn't have any right to... well, strictly speaking, she hadn't summoned them. All Cerea had done was mention a few of her own concerns to Nightwatch, doing so in the strict confidence which you were supposed to find when speaking with a friend. It... just hadn't worked out that way.
Nightwatch had no problems with keeping some of Cerea's secrets: anything truly personal would be held in the pegasus' exclusive custody, never passed along to another living soul. The centaur understood that. What she was having trouble with was finding the line between 'truly personal confidence' and 'something which may interfere in the execution of duty'. The former was the dominion of her friend: the latter plummeted into the territory occupied by Superior Officer and hit hard enough to leave cracks in the barracks floor.
Cerea would be meeting the class not just as a terrified girl who feared that any given word or movement would set off another panic, but as a representative of the palace. The secondary factor was what had led the little knight to snitch, and now the centaur was in front of the alicorns again, hooves awkwardly shuffling in place on the silver-shot marble of the Lunar throne room.
It was about thirty minutes past sunset, and her ongoing desperate attempt to find anything she could say was threatening to make it forty.
The white horse cleared her throat.
"This won't take long. We were told about your concerns, and I wanted to provide some general advice," the Solar Princess softly said, taking a half-step forward as she moved away from the ramp which led up to the throne. "Nothing designed for your specific situation, just because... that situation hasn't come up before."
Cerea still didn't have a grasp on the full range of pony expressions. The sounds which were closer to horse-normal already had their place in her vocabulary, and so there was a moment where she swore the dark mare had just repressed a snort.
"One might claim a degree of sarcastic gratitude," the Lunar Princess decided, "for living in a world in which it remains possible to encounter a unique situation --"
She stopped, dark blue ears rotating a little more forward at the same moment Cerea's went back. Hoofsteps were rapidly approaching the closed doors of the Moonrise Gate: unarmored, not too heavy, trying to make up for lack of mass with raw force, something which wasn't being fulfilled by the demands of the march --
-- the right-side door opened, because there were things which Guards stood ready to block and there were others when it was best to pass the Go Away over to somepony with a little more authority. It allowed the new arrival's scent to reach Cerea just before the piercing voice did, and served as a minor redirecting for the purpose behind her now-vibrating arms.
Scent meant that she had been trying to keep her hands from coming up to cover her eyes. Sound had turned her ears into the preferred option.
"I wish to know," the sharp tones demanded with carefully-measured outrage, "the reason why I had to learn of this via the streams of rumor! For the purpose of this meeting is to discuss Etiquette, is it not? The Proper Stance, both physical and verbal, which shall be required for the encounter with --" there was a hint of tremble in the next word "-- children! And as the palace's recognized Expert in all things Etiquette, I clearly should have been part of this gathering from the Very Start --"
"-- stop," the dark mare stated.
Four hooves immediately ceased all forward advancement. The rest of the mare swayed back and forth above them before centering again, then held the new position of obedient frustration about two meters away from Cerea's right flank.
"Ms. Manners," Princess Celestia gently said, "as the subject happens to be children... I do have a request. It's something only you can do."
The old earth pony squared both shoulders and hips, doing so against the force of an oddly-placed trembling. Waited.
"Would you please tell Cerea," the white horse requested, "about your theory for the ideal way of raising foals? From the absolute beginning."
The mare blinked.
"...really?"
There was something special in those syllables. Tones of wonder were just barely contained within the sounds, and had only been prevented from filling the entire room by the eternal bonds of Dignity.
Both alicorns nodded, and the grain of the grey-white fur spontaneously smoothed itself out.
"This is the ideal only, you understand," the old mare clarified. "A thought exercise which exists only in the realm of Theory and the most refined of dreams. I hardly expect that any of it would ever be put into true practice. And of course, I am personally beyond my birthing years, so any actual advancement into the bounds of Reality would have to be done by another."
More nodding.
"Well," Ms. Manners regally began as her tail adopted a posture of near-total equine contentment, "if we are to start from the true beginning... I am among those who believe in Natural Birth. Which in this case, means a total absence of potions and medications of any sort, unless they are essential for the health of the foal. Nothing which alleviates the pain of labor, for a True Mare should be capable of maintaining her Dignity even when locked within the worst of agonies."
Cerea watched her instructor in Etiquette, and so nearly missed the next set of nods.
"Additionally," the earth pony went on, "in order to make the transition into the next stage easier, the ideal birthing place would be a windowless stable. One with solid walls, to prevent any from having to watch the birthing itself. And a single door, with even more solid locks. But of course, there would be a single gap in that door. Something about the width of a serving tray, and perhaps a tibia's worth of height. Roughly an adult's sight line above the floor, and covered with a dark cloth."
The nods were becoming somewhat more uncertain.
"Now," Ms. Manners continued, "upon finishing the birthing process, the mare leaves the stable. The foal, quite naturally, remains behind, and the locks are on the outside of the door. All food is passed in through the cloth, along with educational materials. And of course, there is no trouble in having words travel into the stable. The key is to have the foal isolated in such a way that Proper Behavior is all which can reach it, through a gap which is too small for the foal to get out. The parents speak through the cloth. They educate. They make sure that there is no Contamination from those who do not understand proper foal-rearing, which very much includes --" and that was where she rather politely shuddered "-- the corrupted progeny of their own insufficient efforts. All such Education takes place on an exacting schedule --" hopefully "-- which I would require some two hours to describe in full detail --"
The alicorns mutually shook their heads. Cerea hadn't blinked for two paragraphs.
"-- very well," the earth pony regretfully said. "In the interests of time, then. The key to the Procedure is to reach the foal's age of adulthood without undue contact. At which point, they are tested on what they have learned. Should they demonstrate their ability to exist as a pony of manners, the locks are undone and the new adult is welcomed into the world. But in the event of what would naturally be a rather regrettable failure, in order to hide away the results from years of sadly wasted effort, one only needs to seal a single opening --"
"-- Ms. Manners?" the dark alicorn casually interrupted.
It didn't produce a glare, because the interruption had been made by a superior. There was, however, the most subtle of full-body twitches.
"Get out," Princess Luna stated.
The earth pony blinked.
"I fail to see --"
"Yes," the Lunar Princess nodded. "That would be one of the many, many problems. Get out."
Movement took place. There was a fading hint of Dignity about it, along with rather a lot in the way of Vibration. And once the closed door had stopped shaking in its frame, the white horse cleared her throat again.
"Surprisingly," the taller alicorn observed, "she's single."
Cerea finally blinked.
"And I say 'surprisingly' because I know there's a number of ponies who are attracted to exactly that degree of control," the white mare added. "I know she's been in a few relationships. It's just that all of them seem to stop well short of marriage."
"The true halt likely comes at the entrance to the bedroom," the darker presence failed to snort. "As it is rather difficult to conduct the proceedings required for conception in full Dignity." Several mane-held constellations exasperatedly shifted into new alignments. "At any rate, that is why she was not invited to this meeting. Children often exist as creatures of honesty -- and as Honesty lies well outside Etiquette, Ms. Manners has forbid herself from anything but the most minimal interactions with either."
"There's guidelines I can offer you," the white mare gently said. "But this is something which is happening for the first time. It means there aren't any real rules."
This time, the dark mare did snort.
"As I recall, she responded to what she saw as something happening for her personal first time through attempting to institute rules. In the first week."
The Solar Princess winced.
"They were rather thorough, especially given the limited amount of time she had in which to compose them," the younger alicorn went on. "Regardless, I prefer an environment in which it does not require a full two minutes of reciting your title prior to offering a simple greeting. But at least that could be memorized. I have yet to decipher the hoof pattern required for passing each other in a hallway." The left forehoof briefly ground against the floor: fresh marble dust fountained across dark fur. "The most common one. There was a secondary for encounters in the Lunar wing, and she had mentioned minimal progress on something designed for 'neutral ground'..."
Pastel borders visibly twisted for a moment, and then the white mare's mane and tail were still again.
"I can give you advice," she told Cerea. "But rules may serve as nothing more than a trap. We all need to be ready to improvise, because childhood is something which exists in a state where the rules are imposed from the outside. Just about every foal resents that. We need to make them as comfortable as possible when they meet you, and that's going to mean letting them set their own pace. No rules about who speaks and when, for how long, or what they can say. They have to be free. Because if they aren't..." The white head dipped. "...they might start to feel trapped."
The girl felt as if she was forcing every breath, and the newest sweater (light blue, and a little heavier to fight against the oncoming winter) stretched out from multiple sources of pressure.
"You said... this is a first," she shakily checked. "There were centaurs before Tirek..."
Both mares nodded.
"A scant number," the dark mare said. "But they did not reproduce so much as appear. I recall no true families --" and glanced at the white horse.
Who shook her head. "None," the Solar Princess verified. "No groups, nothing approaching a herd. A few scattered individuals, and none of them were ever citizens. The last one, prior to Tirek... he passed through Equestria on his way to the true destination, intending no harm. He startled many, because it had been so long since the last of his kind had been seen. But he didn't mean to scare anypony, and did whatever he could to calm those around him. Once the palace understood that he was simply traveling, the path was smoothed. And whatever he found, once he left our borders... he was either content to stay there, or he never reached the end of his journey, or something happened when he tried to make his way back..."
The huge rib cage shifted across the duration of the soft sigh.
"A long time ago," the white horse quietly stated. "Long enough to fade into something close to myth, when most never bother to look into that part of history at all. And with no citizens, none who ever became a true part of Equestria, with none of their children growing up among ours..."
It reached her then, and not for the first time. She couldn't think about it for long, she kept trying to push the thought away -- but it always found its chance to come back.
I will never have a foal.
It forced endless weight against her spine, made arms which would never cradle her child fall limp at her sides --
"-- Cerea?"
She looked up. Met the worried gaze of the Solar Princess, and squared her shoulders again.
"We're trying," the white horse said. "Please know that we are trying. For everything under Sun and Moon, there's a first time. Even when for so many of those going through them, their greatest wish is to have never been part of it. But until we can send you home, we have to make it possible for you to live here. Not survive: live. And the next stage of that... is meeting children."
The girl just barely managed to nod.
She was still learning expressions. But she knew enough to recognize that the dark mare was thinking about something.
"We may be still able to draw on experience," the Lunar Princess suggested. "Your own. From what we have been told, this is the second time you have been introduced to a society. Was there anything within the first occasion which we might apply to our own situation?"
I saw the yellow vests.
I didn't understand what they meant. Even in the herd, there were fashion trends. Someone would come up with a new look and because it was anything new, someone else would copy it. That might keep happening until it wasn't new any more, and then... it was back to the usual. So a lot of yellow vests was probably just humans deciding that yellow vests looked good. They just... stood out, because the color made it so easy to see them.
And then I couldn't see anything else.
She didn't sense the bitterness in her words until they reached her ears and by then, it was too late.
"Keep it away from the public."
And then she realized the mares were staring at her.
What was on my face just now?
Do they even know how to read my features?
They can't really recognize my scent...
"I did not mean to offend," the girl quickly said. "Limiting the scale and scope of exposure was already part of thy plan --"
"-- Cerea?"
She managed to focus on the white mare again, and so spotted what felt like a strangely uncertain position of head and tail.
"What happened?" the Solar Princess asked.
She wasn't a Guard yet. It felt as if she might never reach that goal. And yet, the words came across as an order.
Knights had to learn how to be very careful with orders.
"I was a token part of the initial group," Cerea stated. "My mother brought me along because there was a request to display a range of ages. Several adults, a few juniors. None younger than adolescence. I never had the chance to speak. The formal introduction was made in public, by the adults, before an audience composed entirely of adults. There was no sorting of those attendees, and some within it reacted poorly. And as the loudest, they became what anyone remembered."
It was the truth, because she had been given an order. It just didn't need to be the whole of it. And if they couldn't read her well enough to recognize that...
They can't know what I'm feeling just by taking a breath.
That particular thought also wasn't arriving for the first time.
"Understood," the dark mare slowly offered, wings rustling at her sides. "At least as far as it applies to the current discussion. So you did not meet any children at that time."
"Do you want to play?"
There was concern in the white horse's tones. The disc never had any trouble in rendering that. "Cerea?"
The blonde tail swayed. Twitched, and then stilled.
"Not then."
"And afterwards?" the dark mare inquired. "When you had become a student?"
It almost made her smile.
"Those meetings were -- largely dictated by the parents, when it was the youngest children," the girl softly remembered. "The friendliest had a way of reacting, which..." She hesitated. "I... don't know if this is going to translate. It probably doesn't even apply here and if it does, it might come across as -- offensive..."
"We shall consider ourselves warned," the dark mare solemnly stated. "The typical nature of such interactions?"
"Horsie!"
There were seven very different girls in the household, and that state had maintained in spite of Cerea's occasional wishes for something (positive) to happen which would bring the numbers down. She had been the third, and discovering a pair of rivals already in place had been bad enough: seeing that number more than double over time hadn't felt as if the population increase was doing anything to help her prospects. And that was just with the ones who lived there: kick in the members of Zombina's squad, then add all of those encountered on the street who seemed to feel that having so many liminals going after the same human target meant there had to be something worth pursuing...
Seven very different girls, each of whom had their own way of looking at the human world. There were times when the new society had equally differing treatments offered to the exchange students, especially when it came to its younger members. Things which happened when adults weren't present, or before they could intervene.
The experiences were different. But there were individual trends.
Miia and Rachnera had the most trouble with children: the lamia hated that, while the other idly spun webs between her fingers while claiming not to care. But it was something neither of them could control. Each of those bodies had traits shared with a species which was likely to set off a phobia -- and those fears could be particularly strong in children, who had yet to learn how to mask or control them. Snakes and spiders: the foreign touch of scales and chitin, a singsong mutual designation as creepy-crawlies. Some of the very young saw those two liminals as nothing more than their terrors grown giant and given clutching hands. All the better to drag their victims into the dark.
Mero generally got the best of it. When she was in her wheelchair, with fingers tightly pressed together and tail completely concealed under the skirt... when she was forced to be on land, she could pass for human. The reactions weren't always normal there, because there was still a wheelchair: pity was frequent, revulsion occasionally manifested, and more than a few people directed something close to baby talk at the chair itself because an inability to walk had to go along with an equal lack of capacity for understanding full sentences. But once she was in the water, she was a mermaid. The species which didn't get all the best myths, at least for those who cared to read the original versions -- but they did seem to wind up with the best movies. Mero typically met girls who had dreamed of being her, and with the boys... all she had to do was explain that she was still looking for her prince, he didn't have to be named Eric, and she didn't even like sheepdogs.
Lala tended to be uncertain around the young: the dullahan liked to pass herself off as something which could be feared -- but was reluctant to trigger the emotion in those who didn't know how to deal with it. By contrast, Papi and Suu were at their best around children: the youngest at heart, the most playful, those who could still truly relate on the level of youth. (With Papi, saying the playing field had also been intellectually leveled was... accurate.) Very few children looked at Papi and saw the talons: they focused on feathers, and so saw the dream of a bird who didn't fly away in fear at every approach. And with Suu... she was simply gentle, patient, mimicked their actions in an attempt to understand, and that duplication helped her fit in.
But when it came to Cerea...
The most common reaction usually came from the girls: the minimum age was around two, while the cutoff point typically stopped well short of twelve. They would look at her and, with the youngest, their arms would stretch out towards her legs. (She was just over two meters tall: they couldn't reach anything else.) They would stare up at her, eyes wide and pleading: something which required her to back up somewhat before getting a true view. And that most common reaction would be accompanied by a simple request.
They wanted to ride.
She... hadn't understood, the first few times. The innocent dream had come across as an insult. Centaurs didn't just allow anyone to ride them! The partner had to be worthy. Finding someone whom she could trust to be on her lower back was one of the reasons she'd come to Japan in the first place, and she'd been expecting her match to be, put bluntly, taller than a single meter. She wasn't a beast of burden, or something approaching a slave which had been bound with ropes to trot in a circle while hoping someone paid for a feed cup. She was a noble warrior, someone who dreamed about having the potential of a knight and to be greeted with a cry of "Horsie!" --
-- was a form of love.
They... were just reacting to the first thing which someone that short would see: her legs. And when they looked further up... the dream was still there. They didn't want to ride her as a form of conquest or domination, but because there was a horsie on the premises and riding was fun. The fact that their ride had a human upper torso and head just meant that this time, their ride could talk to them.
He'd had to explain it to her. That for the youngest and those who had taken the dream from a different media into their hearts, she was simply a source of joy. After all, when the only thing you had was images on a screen, you didn't understand about sore muscles and having to compensate for the jolting impact of hooves and finding a place to hang on...
She'd learned to stop pulling back. To stifle the instinctive rise of anger at having been disrespected, to understand. After a while, she'd even learned to welcome that reaction, because it wasn't one of -- the other ones.
But she'd never provided a single ride.
How? had always been a consideration. She didn't exactly go into public while wearing tack, and anything she would have considered commissioning would have been for his size. Even if she'd had a child-sized saddle... she was tall, didn't trot in the endless circles of a pony ride (and realized she could never, ever tell the Princesses about pony rides), and she didn't come with safety gear either. A rider had to shift their body weight in concert with her movements: a child didn't know how. Her lower back was broad: it meant they couldn't sit comfortably, they needed to grab something and that would mean her blouse or hair or -- well, the youngest had short arms and would be more likely to be clutching at her waist, but things moved up and forward with age.
Even after she'd understood, learned to welcome the simple greeting as an expression of the most basic love, she'd been afraid to allow any children on her back. Even with her beloved walking at her side, watching at every moment, there was the chance for a child to fall. To become hurt. She didn't want to risk that, she never would have been able to live with it, and --
-- it was the way the children reacted.
There were times when nearby parents looked embarrassed. Corralled their offspring while muttering apologies, scurried them out of sight. Others turned... fearful. Scooped up the youngest, placed them partially over a shoulder, and ran.
Fleeing in a way which allowed her to watch the faces of their children during every desperate step. Looking at arms which were still stretching towards her.
That was the most common reaction, and it usually came from the youngest. The majority of those were girls. But with others, or when they became older...
Some stared.
The teenage females tended to sneer.
A number tried to clutch.
And with so many, the jokes would begin to fly.
Sometimes it was insults.
And then it was anger.
She didn't have to tell them everything, and she didn't believe they could scent when she was holding something back. In any case, when it came to explanations, "Horsie!" was awkward enough on its own.
Eventually, the white mare managed what felt like a rueful sort of smile.
"It... doesn't really apply here," the Solar Princess allowed. "Not with our own children. There's a few biped species, but... for the most part, our respective sizes don't allow for riders unless we're dealing with the very young. That much is the same. But a pony wanting to take a ride on a centaur's back... I don't think we're going to see that reaction. So all I can do is provide you with advice."
Cerea nodded, tried to fight back the last of the blush, and waited.
"The first step is minimizing your size," Princess Celestia said. "This is --" and for the first time, the girl saw a tide of red beginning to underlight white fur. "-- something I have experience with. You're already taller than every other adult. It's worse with children. It's easy to loom, even by accident. If you lower yourself to the floor, it's that much less for them to deal with. I'd rather not build a ramp or have you standing on a lower level, because I want them to see all of you. Putting them at your eye level means they're only perceiving the unfamiliar. If you're on the floor, they have the option to start with your fur and -- work their way up."
The girl nodded, and thought about a food stall. Something which had been the opposite of what the Princess was suggesting: a few minutes in which all the humans had been able to see was the familiar...
"Do you want to play?"
...had she frozen again? Were her hands clenching? She hadn't heard that voice in memory for so long, and now it had come back twice in less than an hour. She'd thought it was gone, and the Princesses were just looking at her...
"I can do that," she quickly said, and immediately decided it had been too quickly. "What else should I try?"
"Based on my own experience," the white horse eventually continued after what felt too much like an evaluation-based delay, "if there's going to be any physical contact, let them go first. Some of them will ask, and others won't. If it's something beyond a touch, then nopony's expecting you to stay still and allow yourself to be kicked. Even with the gentle ones, you may have to tell them where they can't touch you. Calmly. But if they're brave enough to try and make contact, it's a good sign."
The dark mare's tail twitched.
"You are being given advice," the younger alicorn said, "by a mare who has been known to present herself to foals as something they can climb." And before Cerea could truly react, "In her case, that generally means resting on her side, as ponies generally make for poor climbers and no matter what she does, foals tend to tumble into each other. Especially once she starts giggling. But the principle maintains. To present no threat, to allow yourself to be seen as something which can be approached, or even explored. Unfortunately, neither is something we will be able to invoke at the party --"
Interrupting was rude. The girl knew that, and in the wake of that single, horrible word, was still unable to prevent the inevitable.
"-- party?"
Centaur vocal chords allowed their possessors to express themselves across an impressive vocal range. In this case, it took the disc a moment before it could successfully translate from the near-squeak.
"Yes," the white horse calmly offered. "I spoke to Fancypants yesterday. Currently, his plan is to wait until after your graduation: that allows him to partially frame the event as introducing the gathering to the newest class of Guards. And in order to counter those who'll say the party was for you alone, he intends to eventually create a tradition: welcoming parties for future classes. So that much is set, Cerea. But not the date, because he's been doing a lot of traveling lately: it'll take some time before he can commit to any specific part of the calendar: I was lucky to pick out one day we might be able to use. Fortunately, that gives us time to commission your dress."
The purple eyes briefly closed.
"We're... looking for a designer," the taller alicorn added. "We had one in mind, but..."
"There is an issue," the dark mare firmly stated. "We are attempting to resolve it. But until this can be accomplished, we will continue to search for a secondary source. Ms. Garter has done what she can for you, but we are hoping for a dress. Something which presents you at your best. And we have accumulated sufficient evidence to show that when she is asked for her best, her first instinct is to move into the realm of lingerie."
She didn't mind some of the lingerie. The bras held, and with the other pieces...
...she's a good corsetiere. I know she's worked with species which have breasts, because she understands support. Display. How much cleavage to show, which should probably be just enough to hint that a pull of a tie will reveal more. The fabric is soft, it moves with me, and...
...I wish I could have worn it for him. Maybe he would have reacted. Maybe he would have...
They were enticing designs. There was just no one to entice.
"But that's some time away, Cerea," the white horse told her. "And we need that time, because adults are going to be harder to deal with. Today, we're planning for children. And that's most of what I can tell you from experience: make yourself smaller, allow yourself to be accessible, and let them make the first moves. The rest..." A slow, weary-seeming head shake. "They don't grow up looking at your picture and reading about you in their first history books. I loom, sometimes when I don't mean to -- but even on a first meeting, I'll be familiar. You're something new to them, and that means there's only so far my experience can take you."
It still felt like good advice. As long as she was careful about where they tried to touch her...
...as long as none of them tried to kick...
The Solar Princess seemed to have finished, and so Cerea turned to the Lunar.
The dark mare took a moment to notice. Blinked, and --
-- why did she pull back?
It couldn't have been fear. The alicorn had never been afraid of her. It was almost as if she hadn't been expecting Cerea to look towards her at all.
"...I," the dark mare slowly began, "have very little to say regarding the matter. I seldom meet children. Part of that is due to my normal hours: very few youths are awake during my portion of the cycle, and those who are generally have other concerns. Avoiding their parents, or simply finding somewhere to be sick which is not their bedsheets. And when I do encounter them..."
The stars in twisting mane and tail were dimming, doing so as the white horse instinctively moved closer to her sibling. The dark mare, gaze low and focused on nothing which Cerea could see, didn't appear to notice.
"...perhaps we do have something in common," she went on. "After all, there are those who take pleasure in being scared. But..."
The wing joints visibly loosened.
"...there are also the ones who truly are frightened. We can expect a number to be afraid of you. It would be fortunate, if some only pretended to be. And should that degree of commonality occur..."
It was a moment which burned itself into Cerea's memory. The distance in the dark mare's voice, accompanied by the white horse trying to physically cross a gap which suddenly felt as if it could never be bridged.
She remembered it because it was the first time for witnessing those emotions, at least from the alicorns. To see the Lunar Princess... drifting, while the Solar raced towards the edge of terror.
"...please let me know of any means you might find to sort those states."
The dark mare turned away. From Cerea, from her sibling, from marble and throne room and world, in the last second before the final words emerged.
"The actual screams are -- difficult to distinguish. Good night to you."
Her horn ignited. The corona flashed, and she vanished.
Dear Fluttershy,
Nice try.
No.
The clubhouse near the edge of the apple orchards wasn't really used any more. When it came to those who had originally restored it, there were simply too many bad memories packed within the walls, and they tended to crowd out the possibility of casual visits. They were veterans of that clubhouse, and it had been for a war where most of what they'd done there was make exacting plans regarding their inevitable, single, final, and decidedly ultimate victory.
At least, that had been the plan. The reality worked out to carefully-sketched blueprints of endless failures, not all of which had been public. Some of the smaller disasters had taken place within the clubhouse itself, to the point where it could feel as if the walls themselves were laughing at them.
There had been multiple sources of laughter during the years of failure, and one of them was currently trotting in at the unicorn filly's left flank.
"It's pretty bad," said the pink earth pony with the white-streaked mane, glancing around at the failure-stained (and scorched, and peeling) walls, because learning some degree of empathy had not provided a matching improvement in tact. "For what it is. But that's why it's a good place to do this: because nopony else would come here for any reason. It makes this safe. So it's a good choice."
"...thank you," the unicorn filly half-whispered. "Just -- pick a part of the floor."
"It's all dusty."
"We ain't been usin' it," the soft yellow filly quietly explained as she entered. "Ain't been a good reason. An'... Ah know the place ain't jinxed, but it was really easy t' pretend that for a while. But now it's like y'said, Diamond. It's a good place, because there's a good reason. So let's do this."
The orange pegasus youth finished her glide (because there was a high, thick branch on a nearby tree and she always had to practice), swooping through the doorway and turning just in time to manage a smooth landing in front of the others. Gave them a single hard nod, and immediately settled onto a familiar patch of wood. One which was now a little too small.
Truffle carefully made his way in, thin legs having some trouble with the entrance ramp. Cotton quietly picked out a spot. The yellow filly took a place, and the unicorn sank down next to the pink visitor.
"We could wait a bit," the yellow filly proposed. "Ain't sure this is gonna be everypony."
"We're not waiting on Silver," the pink firmly stated. "She told me what her parents said when she gave them the permission slip. She tried, but -- she can't sell them on it." A soft, not-at-all angry snort. "Selling... isn't her thing. And they didn't listen to me when I asked for company, because they were so scared for her."
"Kinda surprised you're in this," the yellow admitted. "After what happened at the end -- " which was immediately followed by a massive tail twitch, something hard enough to travel up her spine and jolt the mane bow. "Ain't what Ah meant, Diamond! Not 'bout bein' scared! Jus' -- with your dad, when he was almost up t' you when it happened! An' Sweetie, y'know Ah would never..."
Diamond's lips changed position. It wasn't quite a sneer, and it was something less than a quirk. Whatever the expression truly was, it had a hint of resignation about it. There was the pleasure of getting one over on your parent, and then there was the sadness of realizing that the pony you'd seen as the most intelligent in the world was eventually going to be surpassed.
"-- 'confrontation therapy'," she told them. "That's how I sold it. I can't get to him, so -- this is the next best thing. It took a while, and he still really didn't want me going. Then he was trying to go with me. But Miss Cheerilee got that last scroll, and now we know he can't come. That'll... make things easier."
The solid form shifted to the left. Pink fur pressed against white.
"...for everypony," Sweetie softly agreed, the two-tone tail slowing its fresh tremble. "It'll just be us and her, won't it? Us and her..."
"The Princesses will be there," the orange pegasus reminded them, and did so with what would have once been surprising caution.
Truffle's eyes narrowed.
"That doesn't matter," the colt fiercely declared. "We're just talking, right? What are they going to do, clamp their fields on our mouths because they don't like the words?"
Cotton's wings vibrated. The sleek body curled up a little.
"That's it exactly," Diamond told them, and they listened because hers was a powerful mark -- when she chose to use it. Talents for leadership were rare, often subtle in their operation, and hard to stop -- but in the end, so much of it was about where she chose to lead them. Where and why.
They all had the same goal. It was her responsibility to bring them there. To make sure it was all done properly.
"The only thing we can really use are words," she reminded the group. "So this is when we figure out exactly what we're going to say."
To make it hurt, and to do so on behalf of the one who wasn't there. They never got any updates on his condition, no matter how often the question was asked or who was doing the asking. They had all been there, Diamond and Sweetie had been right next to each other and...
They owed it to him.
Stats
Page generated in 0.062 seconds
Total duration
1,071 users online
1,964,311 hits today, 2,205,040 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
(I think the husband would have no problems with Ms. Manners views on birth. I noticed he was not mentioned in the actual delivery, although his role in the conception was quietly paved over with concrete.)
Thus disproving the theory, "There's somepony for everypony." Unless you consider solomogany, in which case it still stands.
Well. That ending was not expected.
That's some plan they got there. Sure wasn't expecting that reaction.
How will things go wrong? They're going to... Wait, how much do they know about her lack of powers?
Is this what Discord needs??
So weird, yet sensible events...
Who the heck is cotton?
Centaurs just appear, passing through? So Tirec isn't a magical monster like Discord. He's still unusual because if any of them could manipulate magic on that level it would have come up earlier.
AB and DT haven't technically had an exchange but I will die for the ship dynamic that so far only exists in my head; namely, that since AB is annoyed because of their past and DT is trying to be a defrosting Ice Queen but they still like each other, they are both each other's tsundere abs so far in denial.
10488766
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/5/10/623151.png
10488776
Daw, I love her!
10476483
It could also be a side effect of a cartooney personality getting treated with realistic consequences. Though I haven't finished the story either, I started reading it at the library computer and-- I know its not actually porn but that distinction was very hard to make at the time and librarians are not a receptive group.
I foresee an upset centaur.
I'm so happy this is a thing
I love moster musume and best girl is the main character.
Oh boy. The young are going to be worst than meeting adults. They will make this hurt. Who thought THEY should be the group to meet her? They are obviously involved with what happened with Tirek.
That won't end well and Cerea will be hurt. Again.
And why do I feel Fluttershy would loose her ability to use the Element of Kindness if she ever met Cerea? Because she certainly don't have any for ANY Centaur, I feel her being unjustly unkind would make her stop being the Element of Kindness.
Would it be possible to loose the use of an Element because you stopped representing said Element?
10488744
There was somepony for everypony, and then Joyous got cured.
10488845
Not locally, as the place runs on a much harder magic system than the show. I think she'd have to go insane for it to be severe enough to sever the link.
10488918
Celestia and Luna did loose the ability to use the Elements so I wondered if it wasn’t something like that.
10488845
Considering that Equestria learned fuckall from the Wendigos...no.
I WANT to believe that Fluttershy just wants to give Cerea a hug. I WANT to believe that the Chaos Brigade just want to have words with the inept diarchy.
But this is Estee's Equestria. Where EVERYPONY is an irredeemably speciest, racist cunt.
So... are the foals planning to berate Cerea because of Tirek? Or interrogate her about him? They definitely have an agenda here, but I can’t figure it out. And what was the bit with Fluttershy? Intriguing chapter.
10488921
No, they're just real people. Jeez, read 500 Little Murders. Fluttershy's just dealing with the death of a friend and PTSD. Seeing as they aren't trying to make her life worse and are dealing with actual triggers as opposed to the general panic the general public is engaged in, I'd just let them stay separated. (I'd feel similarly about the local Canterlotians and people who actually fought Tirec, but it's the protests numbers are probably being supplemented by people just panicking or looking for a chance to hate on the Sisters.)
10488919
True, but that could have been severed by the other Bearers dying of old age, or Starswirls decent into Dexter-style madness.
Yeah at this point I'd say it's safe to say that the clubhouse is definitely cursed.
Funny thing about tailored insults though, as with any other tailored thing they prove most ill-fitting on anyone but the intended recipient. Curses aimed at Tirek might not strike so well against Cerea.
And hey, at least she doesn't need to be worried about them being afraid of her...
10488937
Discord was nearly killed by Tirek. All of them —Fluttershy and the Ponyville children— are very unhappy about that on a personal level. We still don't have much information, but the pieces we do have suggest that Discord was specifically trying to protect the children.
That's also the deal with Fancypants and his traveling. He believes himself responsible for Discord deciding to do whatever it was he did. There's leftover chaos magic in the world and he's been hunting it down. It's helping, but not enough.
10488940
He's only mostly dead. And mostly dead is partly alive!
10488957
"I am the crisis! They will deepen their bonds through uniting against a common enemy! Which is me!"
I'm reminded of a couple of quotes. (I've no idea who said them, or where I first read them.)
"Childhood is insanity, because insanity is the reasonable response to terror." and "Childhood is the illusion of fantasy. Adulthood is the illusion of control. And each tries to reach towards the other."
This isn’t going to end well. More than a little curious about where this idea came from, or rather, why exactly the ignorance behind it is still there.
10488917 Um... True, in a literal sense. Also, Nightmare Fuel.
Huh.
I would never have expected Fluttershy of all ponies to be hostile to someone who she had not yet met, and who was not in turn hostile towards anyone. (Someone who squashes a firefly, yes, but it's going to be hard to get Cerea to become hostile to even an insect...)
Clearly there's something which she is taking very hard. And presumably this something has to do with Discord's current state.
And... are we going to see the CMC being actively hostile? Is that going to be more or less destructive than them being simply themselves?
"her child fall limp as her sides"
"her child fall limp at her sides"?
"the dream from a different media into"
"the dream from a different medium into"?
Well, interesting times in the past and future it looks like. Just interesting for the readers, but for the characters... a curse does come to mind.
I continue to enjoy the story; thank you for writing. :)
I would hope that the children’s plan would go as off the rails as their usual plan hatched in the clubhouse, but this time they’re being led by an expert in making words hurt. They don’t seem to be holding on to any lessons learned from the Babs Seed incident about considering what others might be going through before lashing out in retaliation, but I hold out hope that being being good ponies will win out before too much damage can be done.
10488940
I had the impression that, much as in the show, Tirek drained every pony he could find of their magic, so pretty much all of Canterlot were directly victims of his attack. I don’t know that there is anyone left to protest despite it not being personal.
10488941 10488919
I would assume that using the Elements themselves against your only fellow bearer would be the final straw in being able to access powers rooted in Harmony. Still, assuming that the original encounter with Discord played out in much the same way, it would seem that the Elements do stop working for their bearers if they turn too far from their signature trait.
10488940
The basic concept of a centaur would be an actual PTSD trigger for most of the general population. Tirek's draining wasn't just a thing that people brushed off in this setting, remember.
IMO, at this stage of technology pony film cameras are the size of a breadbox on a tripod & require a great deal of light + there's technical issues with recording sound as well. IRL, it wasn't until post WWII that hidden camera tech really developed
Oh that ending.... ominous cliff hanger yay...
For Ms. Manners, I remember something Bill Cosby said
"When I was young, I had no kids and a million theories on how to raise them. Now, sometimes it seems like I have a million kids and no theories left."
So, Rarity has problems with centaurs? Not surprising, really.
10488845
Would it be possible to loose the use of an Element because you stopped representing said Element?
Possibly. The Elements didn't work in Return of Harmony but there were other factors at work (like Dash being absent).
10489410
Both those assumptions are wrong in Estee's world. We don't know how Celestia banished the Nightmare to Moon, but it wasn't with the Elements.
Hmm the TOUCH of scales is NOT scary... The THOUGHT of the touch that may be... But the actual touch... it is NOT what the majority of people expect.
10489160
In fairness, Fluttershy has been denied any opportunity to meet her. She is much like the others. She only knows there is a centaur. Not who she is, what she wants, what she's feeling.
I wonder how long Cerea will cry after meeting the children. My guess is a long time. I don't know how it will go. Will she run? Will she sit silently crying until they've finally said their piece? Will they notice her tears? Will they feel remorse before it's said and done, or remain overcome by vitriol and hate towards the innocent soul before them until well after they've departed? Will they make amends?
Also my best guess as to why they employ Miss Manners at this point is just to keep the general public safe from her, she doesn't appear to have anything of value to offer. Unless Cerea really wants confrontation therapy regarding her childhood trauma.
10489837
Well, yeah. But Fluttershy is the last pony I'd expect to be tarring one person with another person's sins.
As for the confrontation? I don't think it'll lead to crying at all. Sure the children are hatching a nasty plan - but it sounds like they're hatching a plan to be nasty to Tirek, or someone who knows what it's like to act like Tirek did. I'm sure that the words they come up with would be incredibly hurtful to a repentant Tirek...
...but Cerea is a very different person. She does have some emotional weak points, but they are not the same as a repentant Tirek's emotional weak points. So I guess that the first things that the foals say will be greeted with mostly bewilderment by Cerea. Diamond will probably be the first to notice what's wrong, and the first to adapt her script on-the-fly...
...I have no idea how it's going to end. But I don't think anypony's plans will be working out. Especially not the foals' plans.
10489304
reminds me of a line in the Diskworld novel "The Truth": "oh, you pulled a pen on him?"
(he threatened to write a negative story)
10489860
I doubt bewilderment. She knows exactly what all of Equestria thinks of her. This could very well simply be yet another nail in the coffin for her hopes that she'll ever be anything more than HIM to the ponies. The children themselves that might have the least bias in their hearts, scorning her even worse than adults have yet done.
(Also sorry, I didn't mean for the entirety of that comment to be directed at you)
Huh, this is the first time since ICR when that one of your stories didn't get featured.
It occurs to me
Celestia's letter promised "princesses" as chaperones. Wonder if this includes Twilight?
On the one hoof, she has experience fighting centaurs (& this is good)
On the other hoof, she has fought centaurs (& this is bad)
It occurs to me that Too Much Occurs To Me
10490117
Twilight fought a centaur, and as a scientist, will (we can hope) acknowledge that her sample size of one is just that.
Twilight's depth of experience with vicious, duplicitous, and malicious adversaries should allow her to recognize quickly that Cerea is none of those things.
10490117
Apparently, Twilight doesn't yet trust the word of both Princesses that she's not bad, or that she's been there for however long without her herself intentionally harming anypony. (Temporary incapacitation in the course of training doesn't count, though it should strengthen the point: if she wished to harm ponies, she could have done so much worse.) So she's researching a thing with Trixie, both to research the thing and to keep her away.
Because "The Times They Are A-Changeling" didn't happen in this continuity to teach her the necessary lesson, and she's not socially intelligent enough to come up with it on her own.
I kind of realized that a parallel to Cerea story about 'Horsie' could be applied to a Diamond Dogs being called a 'doggy' by a very young foal. Problems is, she hasn't met a Diamond Dog yet.
10490188
I'm old
If there's ONE thing that life has taught me, it's
SHOULD =/= WILL
10490389
And that's why I qualified that statement with "should."
Chance of clusterf
k is non-zero.
10490425
Since this is Estee writing,
"Clusterf
k probability approaches unity"
beware children can be cruel
honestly i interested to see how this plays out, the kids are expecting a centaur like tirek, how they react to Cerea is going to be interesting
10490882
Well, considering Cerea's expectations and her previous experiences in meeting juveniles of another species, she'll either be proven correct in her assumptions or proven wrong in a good(ish) sense.
Confronting her on Discord's behalf. There's a certain amount of irony in that. Maybe even hope. It's not that long ago that he was monster everyone feared. It might even give Cerea and them a bit of common ground. If she can see through the rest, she'd agree with them that they deserve to know what happened to him.
Welp the youths is gonna be dicks.
Understandable with what was insinuated, but not reasonable.
Could imagine they say, "if you just didn't exist he would have... "