Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon: Bullies

Bullies
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon

Over the hills, and only technically a part of Ponyville according to the zoning board, lived a young princess, her father the King (of low, low prices), the Queen, and an old family friend, Randolph, the butler. Together, they hid away from the sleepy middle-class village in their over-sized vista: Stinkin’ Manor (which has since been renamed to Rich Manor, even though the original name stuck far better).

Once upon a stormy night, a long time before the following events, the town they were only technically a part of burned in a great and terrible fire. Thankfully, the town has since risen from the ash, and repaired as much of the damage as possible, but that great and terrible inferno in town hall took three ponies from their families.

Tragically, the Queen was one of those ponies.

Randolph watched his business partner’s son stare at that mound of dirt, tie unwound around his neck because he’d never learned to tie it himself. The bags under his eyes sucked the light from them, chained to the spot on the stone below her name that read “And I always will.”

“Might I suggest,” Randolph said in his Canterlotian accent, “you retire to the manor, master?”

Filthy Rich let the rain sponge through his suit. “... I’d like to stay, Randolph.”

To that, he nodded, giving him the umbrella. He left with the rain licking his curly grape-popsicle mane to his forehead.

As it happens, that night was the first of many happily ever afters for him. When he returned to a Stinkin’ Manor, dragging in a trail of water he’d be sure to clean before Master Filthy returned, it sung with the frightening chorus of a thunderstorm in full-tilt.

A barely-there cry sounded deep from within- and Randolph almost missed it, but a break in the thunder betrayed sobs coming from three stories above.

Refusing to abandon his drink, Randolph took his glass to investigate. What he and the cup found together would change his life forever: he’d forgotten the foal.

A sopping Randolph stood, brandy in teeth, at the nursery door. The pinkish, smallish foal shrieked every time a brute pegasus decided their loss needed ambiance. Lightning threw the bars of her crib on the floor. He set down his glass on the dresser.

He took her soft, warm bundle in his hooves, and shushed. Another crash thrashed through the house, rumbling through the floors. Diamond Tiara screamed. Biting his tongue, he held her to his chest. Tight.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he tutted into her freshly laundered blanket, smelling the newness of her little head. “Oh, no, no ...”

The storm lasted long into the next morning.

When the princess was about nine years old, it came time for Randolph to consider the unthinkable: tuck-in time was for foals.

Thankfully, the miss either ignored this fact, or had yet to realize it, but the older and more independent the princess became, the more likely she would, at some point, relieve him of his night-time duties.

Tonight in particular strung him out to dry with the terror of this hideous idea.

He dusted her silken bed curtains.

“Can you believe her?” Diamond Tiara set her name-sake on the tasseled pillow on the bedside. “Silver Spoon acts like she’s so cool, then she goes and says something like that. She’s always been rooting against me.”

Randolph sighed. “Isn’t she your closest and most trusted friend, young miss?”

She sipped the glass of milk and put it next to the pillow as he removed the covers. She sat, and he covered her again. “That’s what I thought, but it just goes to show you how cruel ponies can be. And after I’d been so nice to her.”

“Your too generous with your kind, loving nature.” He smoothed the covers, smiling.

“Clearly.”

“If you don’t mind, “ he said, reaching for her stuffed kitty, “what was it that I cannot believe?”

“Silver Spoon said she wanted to come up with the names we’d call the blank flanks today.” She growled, sitting up, ruining the nicely made bed. “As if.”

Randolph fluffed the pillow for Diamond’s head. “I’m sure she’ll come around. She’ll soon realize the error of her ways, come crawling back, and so on and so forth.” He pushed her down by the torso. “She always does, doesn’t she?”

“She did it again!” She slammed her tiara onto its pillow. “Who does she think she is?”

He blew out her bedside candles, holding his tie to his heart and turning the room from orange to blue. “She’s always had a thin grasp on her affect on other ponies.”

“She’s gone too far this time.”

He raised a fuzzy brow.

“Silver Spoon’s been acting so awful, I had to get rid of her.”

He squashed a velvet throw pillow like an accordion. “And... er, of course, by that you mean... ?”

Diamond Tiara pushed her lips to the side, eyelids raised to half-mast; the epitome of the word‘...Really?’ She snorted out an eye-roll and climbed the treacherous cliff-face that was her excessively elevated king-size bed with her stubby foal hooves. “I ditched her, obviously.”

“What did that accomplish?”

“Lots of things. She learned not to stab backs. Or conspire against me. Or get in my way. Now she knows her place. After all, if I don’t punish her, she won’t learn, Randolph.”

“I suppose she wouldn’t.”

Diamond Tiara walked in and Randolph closed the door. She put her crown down, he fluffed her pillow, and her head hit it. She curled towards the opposite wall. The blanket rode up to her chin.

Randolph’s cheeks pressed against his flat frown. “A bit knackered, young miss?”

The lump of her shoulder twitched up.

He sat on the bed.

“I think I’m being too hard on Silver Spoon,” she told the pillow. “I can’t go back on anything now, but, I mean, she’s gone crazy. She’s actually spending time in public with those lame-o Cutie Mark losers.”

She bit her lip. “I might’ve broken her.”

He nodded. “Then, is it best to let her back in?”

It was amazing how nasty of a glare Diamond Tiara could throw over her shoulder with only one eye visible to its recipient. “Don’t you listen? Silver Spoon has always been, like, the worst friend, and all she ever does is try to undermine me. I’m fed up with it. I can’t keep letting walk over me.”

He brushed back her mane around her bent ear.

The farmhouse bent under the rain.

Applejack rapped on the door. She raised an eyebrow into a dimly lit room, saying with a hush, “You hearin’ this?”

Applebloom rubbed her face. “I can’t believe the weather ponies made it so loud.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep, neither.” She hustled up onto the other end of the bed. “Too weird, ya’ know? Rainbow Dash says weather patrol can’t make heads or tails of it. I woulda’ thought it came on through the Everfree forest, but she was saying how it came in from the other way all sudden like.”

Applebloom shivered. “Freaky.”

“I reckon it’s got everypony spooked tonight.” Thunder banged above to illustrate.

Applebloom made a face. “I hope my sleepover with Silver Spoon and the girls don’t get rained out tomorrow.”

Applejack sat back, smirking and shaking her head. “I still can’t wrap my head around it. You always told me she was so horrible to y’all. You turning to friends so quickly seems, well, quick.”

“You’re telling me.” She giggled, eyeing the blankets between them. “But, I don’t know. She finally had enough of Diamond Tiara telling her what to do, and jus’... left her. It ain’t like she apologized or nothing, but after being away from all ‘a Diamond Tiara’ meanness, she was easier to talk to. Least, for Sweetie Belle. That filly needs to stop feeling so bad for everypony.”

“Well, seems like it worked out. I know you ain’t best friends or nothing, but I wouldn’t expect you to be. I think it’s real admirable that you fillies could finally make peace.” She rubbed her sister’s mane. “Proud a’ you.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

“And, hey, who knows? Maybe Diamond Tiara will realize the error a’ her ways, too.”

Applebloom snorted. They laughed together.

Thunder rode through the sky like a charioteer in the beginning. Wild, but distant. Before long, it sent tremors through the sky itself: an earthquake overhead. The nasty, guttural noise of it was enough to turn the stomach. Lightning blistered after, flaring through windows and marking up walls.

The rain wailed and whined on the roof and window panes like an insatiable foal. Randolph’s ears bowed to the sound. He moved toward the room.

Lightning cast a shadowy cape over Diamond Tiara’s empty bed.

He frowned. “Young miss?”

A head poked out underneath the curtain at the bottom of her bed. “Randolph! You dolt!” Thunder broke her voice. “What took you so long?”

Prying her out, he took her in his hooves. Tight. “I was busy cursing out the weather patrol as requested.”

Diamond Tiara didn’t acknowledge that. Instead, glaring, she’d made a spot on his suited chest warm and damp. He held the back of her head.

He waited. The windows warped, melting, taking hits from a violent and inebriated wind. His hooves held a trembling little filly who flinched at every sound, and scowled harder. She shoved him away after long enough, even with so little strength in her hooves. So, he took her to the bed, laid her in it, and sat with her, hoof over hoof.

“Go away,” she said, though she gripped him hard. “I don’t need you.”

His eyebrows drew in. “I know.” Her unreadable eyes bore into him from her fuzzy pink pillow-set, tucked into a lovely satin comforter in her big, extravagant room.

Randolph gave the same look back. “You don’t need anypony.

“But we can’t all be like you.” He watched the candle melt and pool around itself for an odd amount of time. Then, almost more to it than to her, he said, “You know, there once was a silly business pony, who thought he had it all figured out. He and his partner sold to clients from far and wide. The pair of them made different decisions in life, but neither could be happier with their own until one day that silly business pony realized he was an old stallion. With nopony but his partner by his side.

“It’s a funny thing, though. His partner, at least, had a family. He would certainly never father a child at his age. But, perhaps he needed to feel, even for a while, that he had.”

He expected a leer or a scoff, or even a full-out gag. Instead, he was treated to the gentle rise and fall of a sleeping filly’s back.

Author's Note:

Edited by the incredibly kind Noakwolf!

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