Some Postmare

by Peridork

I Love A Mare In Uniform

"Welcome to Carousel Boutique, the home of the most chic dresses in all of Equestria. My name's Coco and what can I help you with today?" Coco Pommel quickly walked out of the back of the Boutique, quickly running through the general greeting that she welcomed all her customers with when the bell announced their entrance into this busy place. She carefully placed a few bolts of fabric near the dress station and turned to face the pony who entered.

She stopped as her mind raced with so many different questions and fears. She had been trying to stop the inner monologues and worries through a bit of meditation and stress relaxation activities, but she was used to using that on unruly customers, the elderly, and foals. And service was a mentality that she had to switch to every moment, not a full on personality trait, even if she loved her job.

She wasn't expecting to have Luna in the Boutique. Alone. Carrying a mail uniform.

"Hello, miss Coco, I have a request that might seem a bit odd, but I was told that you would get the hint once I told you what it was about."

Coco Pommel's heart raced as she worried that this was a dream. "Yes?"

Luna sighed and quickly tossed the mail uniform to the small unicorn. "See, I got a new job and, well, the uniform doesn't fit correctly. My coworkers all said that you could easily fix that with some alterations of the costume and I knew exactly where to go since I am at least an acquaintance of your boss. So, how does Twilight put it? No pressure?"

Coco stared down at the brown mailmare uniform and stood there unable to comprehend what was happening for a moment. "So you actually got an actual job and this isn't some odd prank of somepony's?"

Luna cocked her head. She had spent years back in Equestria and the idea that she was joking about something as important as this eluded her. "Yes, not everypony can be my sister who just decides to retire and jump off tall buildings and blow things up for fun. Some ponies get bored doing that."

Coco nodded, ready just to move on. She was professional and had a few years of running the Ponyville branch of the boutique just fine. She worked on instinct and reaction when her brain took a moment to file away her newest customer. She carefully pulled out her tools of the trade and looked up at Luna. "Okay so eyeing you up, you are a few heads taller than me and about half as wide as Bulk Biceps who had been my last alteration to this basic uniform so just to make sure the eyeball measurements are semi- correct. This will just be a minute."

Luna hadn't actually tried much in the ways of clothing before so besides her dressy shirt she had on right now, she had become used to the regalia of her former role or to go without entirely- which often made ponies pause in fits of sheer confusion. Luna blamed her sister on that front. She had always put up the mask of formality so seeing an alicorn without some form of royal clothing probably made ponies worried that something was wrong.

Though Twilight did say that it was more that she was walking around in "the nude" which confused Luna more. Most ponies didn't wear clothes besides the few ponies in uniforms or the highly vain Canterlot elites.

"-and done. It's slightly close to what I thought. Thank goodness you have wings- with how the post office runs I'd have an actually harder time retrofitting a uniform for unicorns or earth ponies. So, let's see. . .that's about triple the fabric, adding some elastic straps to help with sizing and that's about it. So that comes to about forty bits."

***

Twilight carefully walked through the hall of her castle and sighed. She adjusted her ill filling regalia that she had worn for the last few months, and it still felt odd to her to wear the copper colored jewelry. There was a definite stress that she was going to fail a test of character or some political idea would collapse in on itself as she debated with the aristocracy about some minor inconvenience it would cause them. The new ruler of Equestria stared at her crystal walls and smiled briefly, wondering if the seeds of doubt that filled her mind with worry had caused her mentor and Luna the same amount of strife. Maybe she could ask one of them one day about it.

She stretched her neck and felt her back pop and ache as she mentally noted to get an actual cushion for her chair. She loved the design of it, but the Tree of Harmony had decided to make it almost a throne all those years ago- with every single uncomfortable downside that caused her now.

A slim opossum slunk through the hallway and sat down in front of the purple alicorn, looking up at her with a sense of purpose as it lazily waved its paws at her.

Twilight smiled and leaned down to Luna's odd choice for a pet and carefully pet the marsupial on its head. "Hello, Tiberius, are you hungry?" She tried to get some hint of the creature's thoughts, but she wasn't Fluttershy. She could only guess broadly at the opossum's mood. She had been horrible the first few times she had tried to feed it since she had tried to follow directions from a book on the creatures and Tiberius had tried to bite her when she didn't give him his breakfast the way he was accustomed to.

Luna had walked in the kitchen to figure out the horrible racket and found one frazzled alicorn holding her beloved and normally calm pet at hoof's length with magic and nearly ready to toss the creature out of the closest window with a simple pot of oatmeal starting to boil over on the stove.

Twilight had taken one look at Luna, tossed her marefriend her opossum and teleported to the nearest Hayburger so she could eat a ton of hayburgers to counteract the waves of stress that she had been feeling. That had completely ruined the anniversary date that Twilight had planned for months.

The pet had calmed down considerably in the months after that mess, but she still gave the opossum a side eye whenever the two of them were alone.

Twilight heard the door of her personal castle open and she let Luna's pet run up her leg and perch himself on her back, the opossum running into her slightly ethereal mane, the purple waves a new addition in the last few months. "Hopefully that's Luna, should be though she's running later than usual." Twilight cantered through the halls, mentally checking the list of questions she had for Luna- if she got the job, her hours, her coworkers. Normal things- at least Twilight thought the questions were normal. It was hard to gauge what constituted as a normal question when you were the ruler of an entire nation and had been a bit of a magical prodigy for literal decades at this point. As long as some horrible master of evil didn't invade Equestria, it was a normal day.

"Good news, Twilight." Luna popped her head into the hallway, her voice a few too many decibels above normal. She was excited about her new position, and the walk over to the castle had not been fast enough, her mind racing with possibilities. Well, she had definitely taken longer than expected since she decided to fly to Hayburger and get what ponies might call a ''feast fit for a queen' or princess.

What she hadn't expected was accidentally scaring her marefriend to death.

***

"I saw my life flash before my eyes. Next time, warn me you're going to use a bit of the Canterlot Voice. Especially since it's been a while since the last time." Twilight held a bag of ice in her magic and nursed a bump on her head that was swelling ever so slowly. She had reacted poorly and reflexively flew up away from the loud, unexpected noise- straight into the ceiling.

Luna sheepishly held the bags of lukewarm burgers and fries and offered them gingerly to the purple princess. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't hold in my excitement. I think they liked me a ton. Or at least I got the job, which you said was the hard part."

Twilight nodded slowly. "I mean I figured you might, it's not like I had a sample size of "alicorns that work normal everyday jobs" to figure out how badly you would do. Though it was your idea to get every random power in Equestria to give you references. Which had to be intimidating- I had said the job offer only needed three of those."

Luna blushed. "Well, I thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to 'go above and beyond' as Rainbow might say. And my original plan for references you completely shot down on principle."

Twilight grimaced, remembering Luna's giddy plan to call the spirits of the dead for personal recommendations. "I told you that using necromancy to reanimate your rebellion's captains was a terrible idea. First of all, that's not what Dash means by going above and beyond. And secondly, it'd be hard for Holiday to call up literal zombies if she had questions."

Luna rolled her eyes. "If she had questions, I'd have just summoned them again. It's a simple-"

Twilight facehoofed and immediately regretted it as she remembered she had been shoveling two burgers in her mouth at the time. The burger she had held in her hooves spurted a gout of condiments all over her face and snout. She hummed to herself, carefully counting down from ten as she floated over a roll of paper towels and tried to wipe her face and failed miserably as the ketchup and mustard smeared itself into her coat with a fine layer of grease.

"Twilight, you got a whole lot of. . ."

Twilight's eye perceptibly twitched, her body unused to the microexpressions that Celestia had perfected by ruling for a thousand or two years. "I know that. Food now, shower later. You can't just summon the undead in an office, that'd be a Pony Resources nightmare."

Luna grinned. "Not really, they have a paper golem."

Twilight sat there dumbfounded, a new burger half angrily eaten, as she tried to process what Luna just said. "You're telling me the Ponyville Post Office has a paper golem?"

"They said so. Is that not normal procedure for mail sorting and delivery? It'd make the process so much more efficient."

Twilight mentally wrote a note to herself to show Luna, yet again, that sarcasm exists. "It was probably a joke. I would love to see practical uses for golems in modern society, but Ponyville as a town freaks out when anything out of the ordinary happens. I personally blame the flower ponies for that since I've seen them a few too many times leading crowds of panicked ponies. If the post office had a golem, I'd have heard about it, not because I'd be geeking out about it, but because I'd have a riot on my doorstep.

Luna blinked. "So they don't have one?"

Twilight shoveled the next burger into her mouth. "No."

The blue alicorn looked horribly distraught for a brief moment, her joy at having magical post office creatures shattered. She breathed out and laid her head on the table, looking up at her marfriend with sad eyes. "I was coming up with names for it and everything." Luna slumped in her chair and closed her eyes, worried that the wonder of the post office would be dimmed ever so slightly. That is until she had a wonderful, exciting idea.

She'd just make one.

"Luna, I know that look in your eyes. No, no, no, that's a terrible idea. As a self-admitted mad scientist, I have to say don't make a golem just because there isn't one. Plus, you have to get a soul from somewhere."

Luna waved a hoof. "Is that all?"

***

"Go to bed, Derpy." Carrot Top carefully walked through the dimly lit kitchen and around whatever worried mess that Derpy had out. She couldn't really tell what it was- the gray mare, loved some sense of routine, order, the like, and sorting messes was her way of calming down her nerves. It made their home pretty much spotless, but finding her marefriend sorting clothes at 3am some nights because she had something on her mind was troubling.

Derpy sighed and looked up at the earth pony. "I want to, but Bulk had to keep talking about our new hire."

Carrot rolled her eyes, knowing far too well the excitable stallion and his love of talking. "Wouldn't you be excited if a former princess joined your lowly, underfunded team?"

Derpy grimaced. "Probably, but you didn't see her. She seemed too happy to work in-"

Carrot placed a hoof on Derpy's mouth. "Too excited to work in a post office? What happened to the easy going mare that I remember those few years ago? I mean she wasn't drooling over procedure and scales like how you described our secretly nerdy ex-princess, but I remember you being slightly too into holiday hours. And thinking that shipping yourself in a box was quirky."

Derpy laughed. "I only did that one time."

"Because one rather livid boss of yours told you that shipping full grown adults was illegal."

Derpy sighed and dramatically laid over her chair. "Foiled by age restrictions. If only I was a foal and fifty pounds yet again. Then I could have totally done it."

The pair giggled at the thought.

Carrot Top hugged her marefriend. "It's going to be fine, muffin. And even if not, I'd think having some sleep would be better than none." She ran a hoof over Derpy's wings careful to pull out the few feathers that were decidedly out of place. "And anyway spicing up the mail service might be fun for all of you. I mean doesn't Holiday get the exciting parts? Why not just let Luna mess with her a bit. Be a lot less stressful for you- no need to micromanage every single spell she uses, no need to outright ground her to simple returns. Think of the possibilities."

Derpy leaned ever so slightly into Carrot's touch. "That's a terrible idea and Holiday would totally hate me."

Carrot groaned and rolled her eyes. "She uses your department as the trash pile, of course she doesn't like you. And think of it as a way to get back at her for the holiday party from Tartarus. That was a terrible party."

"It wasn't too bad."

The earth pony huffed. "No, Lofty was pretty fun, but Holiday said my carrot cake cheesecake was awful. Oh and Bulk did drink a bit too much and ended up dancing on a table, but who's counting, I'd have done that too. At least it was more exciting than that terrible charades display."

Derpy smiled. "I told you it was a bathroom brush."

Carrot Top's eye twitched. "I thought toothbrush. Most ponies would have. Not toilet brush. Who in their right mind would remember toilet brushes? I lost out on a month of free groceries for that. Which would have been super useful with how your two wonderful kids eat."

Derpy giggled. "Well at least we tried. That's what counts. right?"

Carrot rolled her eyes and ruffled Derpy's mane. "Right, but if Holiday invites me to another party, it will be too soon." The earth pony yawned and put a hoof to her face to stifle it. "Well good talk, but I'm bushed, I'm heading back to bed."

Derpy nodded. "Yeah. I'll just be a minute."

Carrot nodded and slowly trudged her way back upstairs. Derpy head the hoofsteps recede and she squirmed in her chair, her mind still racing with worry. She carefully breathed out and looked out at the cool, dark night and sighed.

"Tomorrow is going to suck."

Author's Note:

Sending kids by mail used to be cheaper than sticking them on a rail car- helped that there was no laws for a while saying you couldn't stick stamps on your kids and send them on mail cars to their grandparents.

Comments

[Scyphi]

"Yes, not everypony can be my sister who just decides to retire and jump off tall buildings and blow things up for fun. Some ponies get bored doing that."

I get the impression that Celestia was just done with proper protocol and the rules of polite society by the time she retired.

That is until she had a wonderful, exciting idea.

Yeeeeaaaaah, I knew that's where we were going to end up with this.

Sounds like Derpy could use someway to find the joy in her job again...hopefully Luna will end up doing just that in the end.

[lillytheomegawolf]

Plenty of moments to make me smile here.
It's a fun story and Luna continues to lead it well.
Sounds like Derpy and Bulk will be led to a more fun job life soon. And I do wonder when we will see a golem. Maybe something Twilight gets in on too..?
I sense more crazy fun incoming.... I hope to read the next chapter soonish.

[Starlight Nova]

Why is there a Holiday tag, but not a Lofty tag?

[Fatail]

Question. Is... sending people over mail very illegal, or just a tiny illegal?

I want to declare "Greenland, here I come!", but first I gotta know for.. reasons.

[The Fan Without a Face]

Wait I'm confused are Luna and Twilight dating....That's random? And Derpy and Carrot Top? Wouldn't Doctor Hooves make more sense?

[Peridork]

11240963

Thankfully America pretty much decided that sending children over mail was a terrible idea, but yeah for a while in the 1910s or so the chance of people just giving kids to mailmen with the correct number of stamps on them was totally a thing. Because when people aren't implicitly told mailing your kids a few hundred miles to save money was a terrible idea- people will do it anyway.

[Hobbestc]

Don't worry Derpy. Working with Luna is going to be great! It's your boss that's gonna be stressed, lol.

[TheMyth]

derpicdn.net/img/view/2021/11/1/2736514.jpg

[Jphyper]

Dangit, why'd you have to insert shipping into this? It did not need shipping.

[Stet709]

11240831
Yep that's one of the things I loved about Between Dark and Dawn, that what the sisters were interested in was the reflective of their jobs. Doing the same boring things for 1000+ years turns you into an adrenaline junkie (Celestia should hang out with Twilight's mom), whereas Luna, who probably has enough excitement through dreamwalking, in addition to being gone for 1000 years, finds the more modern mundane things fascinating.

[Scyphi]

11241159
Eh, respectively, I think the shipping's not going to hurt it either.

Besides, the Luna/Twilight thing was outright mentioned from the start in the first chapter, so...

[Jphyper]

11241433
I must have missed that part. Anyway, I'm not a fan of shipping. If it's not a romance story, then extraneous shipping is a deal-breaker for me.