Gateway
The single most nervous pony in all of Equestria was making the rounds of the Lunar Kitchen. Compulsively. She did circuits around each individual station, not particularly noticing each time her shifting wings nudged things slightly off-perfection. However, every one of those little position changes was spotted on the subsequent inspection, often with a little poorly-repressed gasp of horror, followed by a twitchy adjustment and quick glare at the offending item as she tried to figure out how it could have possibly been ruined that time.
The lone other pony in the room did what he saw as his job: said nothing, stayed out of her way, and occasionally glanced at the clock. Every so often, he would politely nod towards the pile of sweat-absorbing towels which he'd stacked up just after they'd entered and she, currently heading for the pasta station as the next move in her perpetual just-in-case, would ignore him.
"Where are they...?" she muttered, her left wing nudging a mortar to its proper location just before her lashing tail sent it back to the wrong again.
"It's still early, Chef," the young stallion politely offered.
"Anise, Stock, it's Anise, especially tonight..." Soft yellow eyes managed to temporarily focus on him, a moment which he used to indicate the towels again. She ignored that part and continued her pacing, unmopped sweat slowly building in the light green coat. The short-cut white mane had already begun to curl and frazzle in the increasing humidity of the kitchen, most of which she was directly responsible for. "The only titles in this kitchen are going to be theirs... Sun and Moon, why did I agree to this...?"
"It was an order?" the earth pony proposed. It hadn't been, but he was trying to give her a way out -- at least emotionally. There was no escaping the sentence she had been placed under, and the approaching hours would be hard time indeed.
"It was a request," she sighed, incidentally sending two pepper mills ricocheting towards the edge of their tray. "It just felt like an order. And it was both of them making it, which makes it into a full double law... a thousand years of chefs in the Solar Kitchen, I don't know how many before that working for both, and I --"
Calmly, "We."
"-- have to be the ones to go through this... why couldn't they just leave well enough alone, we were happy..."
She glanced at the clock. Two hours past sunset. The Lunar Kitchen had already served the first meal of the night (occasionally called dinfast by some, although that word now triggered bad memories in nearly everypony else), followed by promptly clearing down, cleaning up, and clearing out everypony who was not she or Stock. They had been requested. Not ordered. Although in the end, it was pretty much the same thing, at least in the mind of the youngest head chef in palace history, very recently cross-acquired (or, as a certain somepony kept loudly insisting, filched) leader of the Solar Kitchen, and the single most stressed-out citizen of Equestria to currently exist, which really meant something when compared to a certain trio of earth ponies who resided a single gallop away in Ponyville, all of whom were currently claiming Post-Eclipse Spontaneous Collapsing Syndrome as their latest reason for nearly fainting during every other hoofstep.
Anise would have cheerfully given up half her flight feathers for an excuse that good. Half-fainting twenty times on her way down the last hallway on her approach to Career Death would have kept her away from this.
Her attention focused on Stock again.
"You have no right to be that calm."
"I've seen worse," the off-white junior sous chef evenly stated. "I worked under Ramshead when he had the Solar Kitchen. And there were other things, and -- well, now, everything else can barely get up to second place. Chef --" dodged the glare "-- Anise, it's just an hour, maybe two. They asked us, and they did it personally. We should be honored."
Starkly, "We should both be halfway to the Griffon Republic, reeking of fresh fur dye and trying to forget what our original names were." Another compulsive check of the clock. Two minutes...
...and then there were hoofsteps in the Hallway Of Doom. Along with voices, and an argument which had gone past the point of caring about who overheard them several dozen repetitions ago.
"It was a simple temporary transfer."
"Then transfer her back."
"She can go back any time she wants to, Luna."
"And she will not. Because she is afraid to. Since the pony who initially requested that she move from one kitchen to the other happens to be one-half of the Diarchy and to shift back would be seen as a studied insult..."
Calmly, "And the second pony involved is the other half."
"Oh? In that case, sister, I hereby order that you give her up. I wish the return of my head chef. Immediately."
Stock carefully picked up a towel in his mouth and began to closely trail his superior, wiping the froth from the eight-pointed organic-looking star on her flanks.
Bemused, "You can't order me to return her. She's not my property. She's a castle employee."
"She was my employee first! On the Lunar staff!"
A long pause, more than enough for eight hooves to get that much closer to doom, along with granting Stock the time to fetch another towel.
"I hired her," the elder finally said. "I assigned her to your staff. But in the sense that I hired her, you could argue --" the tones were beginning to openly reach now, much like the argument "-- that in a way, she might have been our employee all along, which means that directing which half of the staff she works with --"
"You hired my entire initial staff," the younger pointed out. "Does that give you the right to take all them away? Feel free to double your Guard complement: I shall be only too happy to do without. Also, you may have my accountants: quite frankly, they only get in the way. And while I am at it, the Night Court? Yours. The poseurs are once again your responsibility, joy, and you can even use 'property' if it would mean the right to sell them off to Saddle Arabia. Otherwise, your having to be awake for twenty hours in every cycle in order to attend to all of those duties should be no trouble at all."
There was nopony else in that hallway. Not a single extra occupant of the Lunar Kitchen: just the mare waiting for the virtual swoop to impact the back of her neck and a stallion who, while able to deal with many things in calm and aplomb accompanied by surprisingly good reaction time, hadn't been working in the palace long enough to get used to this. No other ears to pick up on what so many would insist on seeing as impossible strangeness...
Firmly, "You're being ridiculous."
"I am making a point."
The dry towel supply was starting to run low. The used towel supply was beginning to stream unabsorbed excess across the floor.
"It's a ridiculous point."
"Then transfer her back."
A silence which was both much too long and far too brief, at the same time.
"...maybe I like the change in my food."
"Ah-ha! The truth will out!"
"...but if you would just find me somepony just as good, then..."
"Stop filching my --"
-- and the edges of a rapidly-twisting, not-quite-substantial multi-hued pastel mane came into view in the doorway. Its owner quickly followed, and the angry sibling keeping pace alongside slammed her own mouth shut and fumed all the way in. It brought the local atmosphere to the point where it felt as if a thunderstorm could break out at any moment and for Anise, that would have been the happier option.
"Chef Anise Verum," Celestia politely nodded to the statue-still mare as the last sodden towel slumped to the floor. "Blending Stock. Thank you for agreeing to see us this evening."
"Yes," Luna tightly added. "It was rather gracious of you." A hard head shake, one which made the constellations in her mane rearrange themselves. "We recognize that this was an unusual request, and are grateful that you saw fit to fulfill it. And speaking of requests, while we have a moment, I wish to ask you if --"
A very large white wing nudged Luna's side.
Actually, it was more of a shove.
Luna glared at her sibling, and the only reason it wasn't glaring up was because her own wings had just flared out and flapped, letting her hover at exactly the right altitude for direct eye contact. "-- we are going to finish this."
Celestia did not sigh. She did not roll her eyes. Neither of those things happened and the two cooks in the kitchen, being completely loyal to the Diarchy, had already decided that was how they would respond to all inquiries for the rest of their days. "Later?"
With great reluctance and a distinct feel of static gathering in the air, "...later."
Anise swallowed twice and finally checked the bare spot where the towels had once been, then silently wondered what had happened to them all. "Princesses... welcome to the kitchen. Which is your kitchen... Um... Princess Luna's kitchen?"
Celestia gently smiled. "Anise... please relax." This did nothing. "We're in your territory." That somehow managed to do less. "And that's why we're here."
Luna nodded. "Recent events have called what some might see as a regrettable gap in our mutual skills to our attention --"
"-- we can't cook," Celestia cut in.
The younger touched down again, doing something which that same level of completely unbiased reporting never would have described as muttering to herself.
"And we agreed it was time we fixed that," the elder continued. "It was Luna's idea, actually." That with a smile towards her sister. "I just thought she was right. We're more than overdue."
"As you are the current Solar head chef," Luna forced out, "we further agreed that you were the best qualified to teach us. In privacy. With deference and a vow not to discuss any of the night's words or events, which Princess Celestia informs me you willingly took. And since it would be a harsh job for a lone pony to attempt... Stock has given us reason to trust him, and so he will assist." The stallion managed a smile of his own.
"We will meet twice per moon or more, as our schedules permit," Celestia continued. "And we will continue to do so until you both feel our skills have at least reached the point where we can do more than grab a few leftovers or see what's available from the raw bar." A nod towards that part of the pantry which stocked the fruits and vegetables which could be consumed with little to no preparation at all. "We're pressed between your hooves. Do what you can -- Anise? Are you feeling well? You're practically drenched with sweat, and there's some froth in your coat --"
"-- I'm fine, Princess," the chef lied. "It was a hot kitchen tonight. Just give me a moment to groom and preen --"
"-- and she could use a drink," Stock broke in.
"A drink," Anise repeated. "Yes."
Luna frowned. "If you have taken ill, we can simply postpone for a time..."
The expression which flitted across Anise's face suggested the only thing worse than having the death sentence carried out would be seeing it postponed and having to wait for the end times all over again.
"...or we can simply wait for you to freshen yourself," Luna decided.
Anise managed a nod, and Stock braced her form as she staggered to the entrance for the mare's restroom, where he had to abandon her.
The door to the temporary sanctum swung shut rather quickly. It still wasn't quite fast enough to block all the sounds of vomiting.
Anise hadn't recovered, exactly. She was still doomed, for nopony in that sad position could have escaped their fate. She had simply reached that certain point in waiting for her death where she had seen its inevitability and so decided that any action she took would simply hasten things along. There was something to be said for cutting down on the waiting time, and so she launched into her prepared speech with the enthusiasm which only came when the doomed realized that once it was finally over, there was very literally nothing worse which could ever happen to them.
"Some say," she began with a completely borrowed imperiosity, "that all acts of cooking -- not just mere baking, ha-ha..."
The laugh had been entirely fake. The brief narrowing of purple eyes at 'mere' had been real, but Anise ignored it as the memorized words marched on towards the newest form of death.
"...could be described as simple chemistry." Another brief bout of false mirth, and her tones tilted even more towards that of a stallion, with a Prance accent beginning to work itself in. "And in truth, no matter how much some among us might try to deny it, that is all we deal with: chemistry. We create our mixtures in the proper proportions, working with precise temperatures. We experiment, and there are times when we serve as our own test subjects. But unlike true chemists, the only explosions we are trying to create shall come within those we labor for. Eruptions of joy, blasts of rapture at a taste they had never before encountered? Some might call that the goal. But I say they are fools, ha-ha. For as chefs, we are the gatekeepers. Not just to the pleasures which can stem from that portion of a pony sensorium, but we hold the keys to the past. For there are those who would say that of all the possible experiences, even with everything a pony might ever go through in their lives, smell and taste remain the surest passages to memory --"
"Anise?"
"...Princess Celestia?"
"Who said that? Because you're not a Prance-born stallion with an extraordinarily bad fake laugh, which means I'm entirely certain it wasn't you."
"...my first-year teacher for my master classes..."
Another one of those gentle smiles, which made Anise's intestines try to hide inside each other. "We asked you to be our teacher. Not him. I'm sure we'd rather have you teach us your way."
"All right, he was a little pompous sometimes," Anise rushed. "But --"
Luna snorted. "A chef from Prance who was only a little pompous. Any miracle quota for the night has now been filled."
"-- he had experience, and everything he ever taught me was --"
Celestia smiled again. "How would you start, Anise?"
The way he would set up base camp in her mind and prepared for the one-way trip into the wild zone. "With a return to the familiar."
Luna raised an eyebrow. "Your meaning?"
Which was when Anise realized the base camp contained no copy of her will for those who came after to discover, and she helplessly glanced at Stock.
The stallion bought her time. "Very few ponies have no experience with food preparation," he calmly said. "Even little things, snacks and the like, which we make for ourselves... those can be our first experiences with creation. Or simply childhood dishes, things made for us, where the taste has almost become part... of... us..."
Bright green eyes focused on the two mares in front of him. The oldest mares known to exist, the focus subjects of a history which seemed to feel they had come into the world exactly as he saw them now...
Stock felt his words venturing onto the edge of blasphemy, and there was nowhere left to go but over the cliff.
"Is there anything you -- had as a favorite dish when you were... young?" He had replaced the towels. He could not reach them.
Anise stared at him with purest horror.
The Princesses simply blinked, and it was not anger which the cooks saw on their faces. Confusion. Shock at the asking of a question so simple, nopony would have dared to voice it at all.
And then both of those royal expressions became thoughtful.
Reminiscent.
Pained.
"We didn't... eat much in the way of prepared food," Celesta softly said. "Not when we were young. There wasn't time to cook, not all that often. Sometimes, when things were calmer... yes, then she would start a fire, and the spices... that needle-shaped one with the red point at the narrow end, it would splinter into dust if you tapped it just right, she loved the heat it gave. It was so subtle... just this light warmth to start with, and it built up as you ate, spread into your body, but never turned into an inner fire. It never hurt. It just made you feel warm... for a little while."
She.
"A needle-shaped spice?" Anise shakily asked. "I've never heard of --"
"Cantomile," Luna named it. "But -- it is extinct. So many of the species Discord created vanished, plant and animal alike. Without his magic helping them to hold their place in the world, many slipped away in time. For some, it was almost instantaneous. And with others... ponies who realized their origins worked to stamp them out, cleansing the land of whatever he had wrought, even if that thing might have been beneficial. We -- did not work hard enough to stop it..."
"But she always had some," Celestia went on, and the purple eyes briefly closed. "No matter what she had to risk for it. Just going to where she could find it..."
"The other ponies called her foolish, do you remember?" Luna quietly said. "Stupid for venturing that far to acquire a mere spice."
And the impact shook the kitchen, every little piece of equipment Anise had micro-adjusted going full hoofwidths offline as the reverberations from the impact of Celestia's left forehoof continued to work across the room, went deep into the minds of the two chefs and refused to leave.
"That," and it was so close to a snarl, "is the least of what they said about her --"
Her. Sun and Moon, they're talking about the Discordian Era, we may be the first ponies in generations to hear the Princesses speaking of their mother --
-- and Celestia stopped.
The pepper mills slowly lost the last of their vibration. One crashed to the floor, where it was promptly ignored.
"Well," the elder smiled, "we can hardly work with ingredients which no longer exist. I understand your point, Stock: a -- memory -- for some, that would become the ideal base to build the rest on. But for us, where so much has been lost..."
Luna snickered.
Her sister's head spun, moving far too fast. "Princess Luna, you had a point to make?"
"Well," Luna began, and the snicker broke in a second time, "there's always -- Hurry-Up Mix." A deep ruby glow began to manifest in Celestia's cheeks: Luna made a point of overlooking it. "I know for a fact that every part of it is still available in this modern age. I performed the check myself, mostly in the desperate hopes that a vital portion would have gone missing. Sadly for all who might experience its rebirth, every last ingredient remains extant -- but if you wish to build on a memory, a composition you do know how to make, sister, or at least so the theory went before being proven false time and time again..."
That glow was starting to approach a state closer to full-scale burn, and the air in the Lunar Kitchen was becoming subtly warmer. "I am not doing that."
"Generations of not-fleeing ponies yet to come thank you," Luna smiled. It was a smile and not at all a smirk, at least not from one carefully-chosen angle, if viewed through eyes squeezed mostly shut in fear.
"Hurry-Up Mix?" a lightly suicidal Anise inquired.
"It's... a trail blend," Celestia slowly admitted as the temperature increase started to sharpen into a small spike. "Fruits, nuts, and grasses which are available -- still -- in the majority of Equestria. You could put it together just about anywhere without losing a single ingredient, at least in late spring through early autumn. It was just something to -- get through the day with."
Anise decided to gallop with whatever she could get. "But that might be ideal for a first lesson, Princess!" she forced a gush. "A good trail mix may not require any cooking, but it still involves the balancing of ingredients. Countering sweet with savory, making sure there isn't too much bitter or sour... it's about creating a full experience of taste. A truly expert blend can match any snack I might be able to make from the pantry, and if all the components still exist, I'm sure we could try some in a few minutes! Hurry-Up Mix... I've never heard of it. Was it meant to provide quick boosts of energy? High in sugars, with some natural caffeine?"
Celestia silently shook her head. The Solar Princess was looking away from the head chef. Was looking at anything in the kitchen which wasn't a pony, and so had chosen to focus her attentions on a very old-fashioned churn near the center of the large room.
"Then how did it get that name?" Anise verbally threw herself off the cliff.
And from Luna, the second false stallion voice of the night, a merry one tinged with an accent which the cooks had never heard before and never would again, sounds lost more than a millennium in the past. "'Let's hurry up and see if we can reach some kind of inn at the next barricade point, or she might try to make that mix again.'"
The moment froze.
Celestia's eyes closed. Long seconds passed, turned into an epoch of a minute, and they did not open again.
"...sister... I am sorry... I should not have..."
"Forget it." And still her eyes did not open: they simply moved behind the lids, slowly, looking at things which no longer existed. Instead, she simply whispered "A vow not to discuss..." and took a slow breath, one which made her sheer mass seem to loom over all of the kitchen.
The warm eyes opened again, and that smile came back. "If I may make a suggestion?" Both cooks nodded, and rather quickly. "Perhaps for a first lesson, we should each simply learn how to make something we truly enjoy. For me... well, it's hardly a castle secret that it would have to be something baked. With Princess Luna..." A glance in that direction.
With open relief almost lost within rising enthusiasm, "Ice cream!"
"Ice cream," Celestia smiled. "Would that be suitable, Anise? Stock? One of you assisting each of us? We divide and make our first attempts to conquer this kitchen?" The answering nods were even more fervent, with the accelerated motion doing nothing to push any of the previous words away. "Then all crowns and regalia off, lest we get them covered in flour and sticky melt -- and let's begin!"
Typically, the Lunar Kitchen hosted many secrets, several of which would have made the gossip columnists of the realm dizzy with glee as they took custody of things which could be turned against the thrones and none of which, until tonight, had actually mattered. Chief among the lesser category of locked-away knowledge was the younger's love of ice cream. Also her extreme fussiness when it came to the stuff, and that second factor was beginning to approach something close to legend.
Oh, it had nothing to do with the flavors: Luna would try just about anything rendered into ice cream, at least once. It was all about the consistency. Luna insisted -- and at the start, that insistence had been both rather loud and partially electrical -- that proper ice cream had to have a certain weight, texture, and density. Also that any variance from that ideal result was a crime on a level just below full treason against the thrones, and while pony heads would not roll for the commission of that crime, false results would be field-slung into the Lunar Courtyard to melt their way into well-deserved oblivion.
A dozen Lunar chefs had labored to discover just what in Equestria was wrong with their product. Experts had been flown (and sometimes teleported) in from all over the continent. Conferences had been held. Some of the more desperate failures had turned those meetings into group therapy sessions. But in the end, they had figured it out, with the ancient solution given a place of prominence in the Lunar Kitchen. (Towards the center, where it tried to take up most of it.)
Luna had been excited at the prospect of making her own ice cream, openly delighted at how simple the process seemed to be. Stock had seen the sheer joy in the dark eyes as the younger Princess began to internally plan out non-secret kitchen raids which would be just a little more involved than usual. She had blended the ingredients with fervor, almost laughing at the basic nature of the whole thing, how something which seemed as if magic had to be involved in its creation just worked out to elementary science. She had boasted every check mark of success across the breadth of the kitchen to where a slowly-fuming Celestia was meeting with something much less than early victory. Luna had been thrilled, triumphant, and superior throughout the creation of her chosen flavor, a state which had maintained right up through the moment when she'd been taught what was required to turn it into ice cream.
Actually, she had remained happy after learning that fact, at least for the first four minutes. But it had all been downhill from there, including her grumbling that installing such an incline in the kitchen would at least make the endless pacing a little more interesting.
The younger alicorn spat out the handle again, focused her glare on the oak cask in the center of the room. It was a rather tall vertical piece, about two-thirds the height of the average pony, looking like nothing so much as an old-fashioned liquor barrel with a crank on the top. A crank with a handle which bent out to the horizontal and stretched well into the necessity-created aisle, where it eventually stopped at the perfect height for gripping by the average pony mouth. Said average pony would then take the handle in their mouth and walk. In a circle. For a very long time.
Luna was not average. While nowhere close to the height of her older sibling, the younger was still one of the tallest ponies known to exist. To grip the handle in her teeth required a very awkward neck angle accompanied by a shuffling trot conducted with all four knees partially bent. A state she had been forced to maintain for that same very long time.
The ice had begun to spread across the floor in the eighth minute. Distant thunder had sounded during the eleventh. Dark clouds had started to gather around the ceiling during the last two, but a hard glare from Celestia broke most of them up.
"I fail to see the necessity of this," Luna repeated for the fourth time, using a low-pitched tone which probably didn't reach more than three-quarters of the palace. "Simply trotting... I could freeze this with a moment's thought..."
Stock, normally calm in the face of adversity, stress, and the occasional coup attempt, looked as if he was about to need a personal towel supply. "Princess, it's about aerating the mixture. If the air doesn't move through the blend in exactly the right ratio..."
"And what is so important about getting exactly the right ratio? What fool of a pony said that was the single most crucial portion of the process?"
Stock swallowed. "...you?"
"I."
"...yes."
"And your proof of that is?"
"The seven bales of ice cream which melted on the press benches?"
Celestia giggled. Luna's glare immediately focused in that direction. "You have a point you would wish to make, sister?"
"Just an agreement," Celestia replied. She had been holding a very awkward position herself, belly and barrel pressed tightly against the kitchen floor, neck twisted to the only degree which let her peer through the enchanted quartz panel and regard the oven's contents. The dough had to rise eventually. That was the theory. And despite the last two tests having fallen through, with the second actually plummeting through the bottom of the tray, the theory was exactly what it remained. "One which agrees that it is your fault. You're the one who insisted on ice cream with exactly the same consistency you were used to from -- before, and the only way to get it was by using exactly the same equipment."
A long moment of silent denial that any degree of Luna's suffering could possibly be her own fault was followed by a huffy "I could rotate it by field instead of mouth. The single most simple exercise of magic..."
"No, Princess." This from Anise, who was currently using what little sight line remained over Celestia's left shoulder and thus felt slightly protected, or at least committed to an exact form of demise. "Even our unicorns do it by mouth. You have to sense the change in the vibrations as the resistance builds up in the cask. They say that's almost impossible with a field."
"My field is on the sensitive side," Luna insisted. "I can not only pick up armor while an entire small battalion is still wearing it, I can detect the exact warring party through the embossing of the design. If you would simply allow me the attempt..."
"That's for the texture of whatever you've surrounded," Celestia corrected her with no small joy, "not vibration. This is the old-fashioned way, Luna. The way you insisted was the only right one. So put the handle in your mouth and trot, the way a real chef would."
Luna glared at her sister. Then at the handle. "Something else which would be a rather simple exercise of a field?" she muttered. "Lifting this to a great height and then dropping it..."
"Don't," Celestia advised.
"Because?"
"Palace budget? Another six moons of complaints about the ice cream being wrong and all the sick leave which got involved with that the first time around? The fact that whenever somepony destroys an antique which only seems to exist for causing some level of pain to those who use it, ponies will spontaneously materialize, sometimes gathering from gallops away, simply so they can complain about the senseless act of destruction? If we had a proper dungeon to clear out and implements to melt down, I would get protesters telling me I was being unkind to elegant iron cuffs and brass restraints which had only been doing their jobs, and nopony in the group would accept a single tenth-bit in raised taxes for the creation of their demanded museum. And you don't want those ponies to take things for floor or wall space in their own homes, just in case a collection becomes involved. Your chosen recipe, Luna, your equipment and quite frankly, your neck cramps. Enjoy the one and only true consistency when it comes out, and maybe you'll have a little more appreciation for what your own kitchen goes through so you can have it."
A lower mutter now. "Your cramps would be worse than mine."
With more than a little merriment, "Yes, well... you might have noticed that I'm baking."
After a final "Oh, is that what you are calling it...?" Luna silently took the handle up between her teeth again and resumed the half-crouched, wing-hunched shuffle. Ice crystals slowly spread out from the center of the room. Fallen peppercorns glistened.
Celestia, after a second used to evaporate the closest encroachment, returned her attention to the viewing pane. "I don't understand why it's not rising."
Anise sent another dollop of saliva to join the churning mass in her stomach. "Did you -- use the yeast this time?"
Frustrated, "Yes."
"Did you use enough of it?"
"I can guarantee I didn't use too little." Celestia frowned at the non-rising mix. "Incidentally, Anise... is this murder?"
"...Princess?"
Calmly, "Well... you're aware of the ponies who are the most proud of our herbivore status, I'm sure. And even though the intelligent omnivores and carnivores of the world eat nothing which talks or thinks, we still get ponies waving signs outside their embassies and screaming -- through the grips, no less -- that any act of meat consumption is only following up an act of murder. And you told me yeast is alive. Some portion of it may survive the oven, but I doubt it would get through my digestive system intact. So every time I eat something baked, dozens to millions of little yeasts have to die. I really don't know how many were in that portion I dumped out..." A thoughtful pause. "You know, given my lifespan, even using a single yeast per baking would make me into the greatest spree killer in Equestria's history. Which newspaper do you think would work that into the best offensive, deliberately misleading headline?"
"...I... Princess, I can't see how..."
This smile was a true one. "I'm teasing, Anise. I know you're nervous. I even understand why. Some ponies are thrilled when they get the chance to teach a Princess. Others live for a chance to lecture. Correct. They feel it brings us down through showing we don't know everything. And they're right... we don't. But others are afraid to correct us, to do anything they see as putting a hoof out of place. They not only let us make mistakes, they allow us to believe those errors were the right things to do -- until everything goes wrong, and they blame themselves for it."
Her mane shifted, the twisting energy draped across part of the floor. The motions seemed to be much slower overall with the crown removed.
"We are here to learn," Celestia gently said, "and you have to teach us. Telling any student that every error was entirely proper, or that all fault belongs with the teacher, are two of the best ways to learn nothing. Or to learn all the wrong things. Anise, I've had more than a thousand years of life... and I haven't picked up the skills you learned over four years of culinary school. In this room, you are the superior. So please relax, as much as you can. Correct me when I've done something wrong. If I'm being stupid, somepony has to let me know. It's the only way I'm going to learn."
More than a thousand years... For the first time all night, Anise smiled. "You had -- other things to do."
"Yes," Celestia admitted. "And to gather the energy for too many of them, I found myself at the raw bar. Now, if this dough isn't rising after all this time, I must have done something wrong. Let's work it out."
"Well..." Certain words had just been given permission to penetrate. "...you said something about a dump --"
"-- it is done!" Luna shouted. "Despite my sister's supposed shorter required creation time, I have finished first! Gather near me, the two of you, and behold my initial creation on the path to chefdom!"
Stock looked up from where he had been hoof-chipping away at some of the thickest floor ice. "Princess, it -- it should have taken at least another fifteen minutes."
"And yet it is done," Luna smiled. A traveling muscle stretch worked its way from forelegs to tail, then doubled back and spent a long vacation in her neck, where it completely failed to accomplish much of anything. "Sister, do we have a masseuse on staff? If not, that annoying vacancy shall be filled well before morning, and I will do the hiring myself, with no filching allowed... come closer, all of you, let us all sample the product of my efforts. We may need to gather more of the staff: I tried for quite a large serving to start, in case things went well -- as I was certain they would..."
Celestia and Anise carefully trotted closer, with the Solar Princess clearing the ice along the way. "Luna, if Stock says it should have taken another fifteen minutes, then --"
"-- clearly I have a natural talent," Luna finished. "After all, this is but chemistry and of the two of us, who was always the superior scientist? Perhaps if I had been permitted to explore my natural inclinations --"
"-- your natural inclinations were to either grab something off a bush, find some grass close to your reading spot, or let somepony else do the work." Celestia was staring down at the frosty cask. "Or to just keep going until somepony who loved you shoved food towards your mouth at the exact moment you slumped forward towards it, in the last moment before the exhaustion faint."
"I have matured," Luna imperiously stated.
"If that's what you call having more ponies than ever waiting to catch you. You always do this, you haven't changed at all..."
"I work myself to exhaustion? This seems to be a night for recollection, sister, and when it comes to ponies slumping forward because they foolishly neglected to attend to their own needs while looking after everypony else, it is my honor to be addressing our nation's all-time grand champion in the eternal sport of hypocrisy --"
Celestia took one more hoofstep forward, ducked away from a few hanging utensils, and her horn's corona ignited at the partial level, surrounded the lid of the cask. It tugged.
Then it tugged again.
She glanced down to her left, towards Stock. "Is there a latch I'm missing?"
"Here and here, Princess."
A flicker of sunlight flipped them, just before the third tug failed. "Any others?"
"No... that's all of them..."
The corona intensified by a lumen or so, and the lid shot into the air. The oak circle floated in place just a little below the ceiling. A long, dark, glistening stalactite hung below it, occupying the entire gap immediately beneath the light fixture. Strange reflections danced about the room.
All four of the ponies in the kitchen stared up at the thing.
After a moment, a pitted cherry fell off the end and, with a precision which could only be dreamed of by lesser fruits, jammed itself onto the exact tip of Luna's horn.
"Well," Luna slowly began, "as you can see, the ice portion of the proceedings has succeeded beyond all doubt..."
"Yes," Celestia patiently said. "If I were to search for a word to describe your result, ice would be the first thing I would find in the dictionary. Also the only thing. Luna, what did you do?"
"Well... I had decided to attempt black cherry, as it is the single most impressive of the flavors..."
"The. Freezing," Celestia slowly countered. "Even if I had somehow forgotten what you tend to do under stress, you've provided any number of reminders since the Return, including tonight -- along with a full refresher course on what you can create on purpose. You decided to build up the resistance in a hurry, didn't you? Just a little touch of Moon-linked talent..."
"The aeration was taking forever!"
"And thank you, Scootaloo!" was the scathing reply, one which actually placed a touch of blush into Luna's coat while seeming to make the icicle vibrate above them. "And what about that aeration? How, in your opinion, is air supposed to move through a completely frozen mass?"
"I am not stupid, sister!" This with a sudden fierceness and just the faintest touch of white around the edges of Luna's eyes. "You believe I did not account for that? Stock was very clear on how vital it was, mixing the proper amount of air into the concoction! I made sure the atmosphere could spread in a way which might prove effective!"
The mass was trembling faster now. It might have been in sympathy with the cooks, who had each just taken half a hoofstep back.
"Might?" Celestia blinked. "What do you mean, might?"
Another cherry fell down. The oak lid was starting to hum.
"You may be my superior in the execution of pegasus magic, Tia, but I have always bested you when it came to any kind of theory!" The original cherry was angrily scraped off on a ceiling-hung sieve. "If the movement of air through the mass was required... there was already air present, quite a quantity when you consider it on a microscopic scale. I simply reached out to it and -- encouraged it to move faster. Doing so at the same moment I froze the mixture!"
The crackle of static through the air made them all look up again. The first appearance of sparks around the now-smoking lid kept their attention focused there.
"Oh," Celestia said in a distant sort of way. "So you're saying you decided to aerate the ice cream through creating a miniature storm system inside it."
"Yes," Luna offhoofedly replied, her focus now on the horizontal discharges grounding themselves in ceiling-hung pots and pans. "Did I err?"
The icicle, feeling it had something to say about the matter, exploded.
Hours afterwards, when her mind had pieced together enough of the memory to have any degree of certainty regarding actual events, Anise would recall the fur on her back shifting from the wind kicked up by an extremely large wing moving across her back at a speed no limb ever should have achieved, followed by the tip curling down across that side of her torso as Celestia simultaneously dipped, pulled her in, and raised the shield with a flash of desperate sunlight, one accompanied by Luna's darker energies forming a second dome over the first as the younger alicorn moved to cover Stock with her own body...
But that was hours after. In the now, there was a flash, a boom, twin visual surges of energy which she had no ability to feel, and a very long echo, changing over and over as it bounced off all the metal which was plummeting about the room.
After a while, the surprising weight of Celestia's wing lifted, and she was able to move again. Anise's first move was to look around the Lunar Kitchen. Also her first mistake.
The explosion had -- misplaced things. Those which belonged on ceiling hooks were on the floor. A few were embedded within each other. An oversized mortar, the only one they'd miraculously been able to find which was suitable for Celestia's hoof to grind grains, had cracked into four equal non-miraculous pieces. There was salt everywhere on the floor, except for where there was pepper. The other spices had mostly been in their racks at the time and so were now mostly on the walls. Every surface which held none of the above had been taken over by dripping dark bits which probably still qualified for some form of ice cream, in whatever state that substance would exist in after being flash-cooked by lightning. Some of it had a sort of crust over the outer surface, one which stood out to her because until that moment, she'd had no idea it was possible to cook ice cream at all...
Luna slowly forced herself away from Stock, took a whispered moment for checking on the status of the mildly-squashed cook before getting back up on all four hooves. She took two shaky hoofsteps towards one of the largest portions of crust, regarded the little bit of drip running down from it.
Her head arced forward. She took a tentative bite. Chewed. Swallowed.
"It is... interesting," she declared. "If we could find an oven which would reach that level of heat at speed... or why use an oven at all? Sister, I believe I may have a new application for your own talents..."
Celestia staggered to her own hooves. Stared at Luna. Took the deepest breath Anise had ever seen --
-- and eight Lunar Guards piled up at the door.
Some had flown towards the sound of the explosion. Others had galloped. All were now jammed into a single shocked mass, one which had no collective idea what to do next.
Both sisters turned. Looked at them.
"We are cooking," came the Diarchy's chorus. "Go away."
Helmets shifted. Wings fluttered. Hooves beat across stone. And the doorway was empty again, although somewhat scuffed around the edges where armor had tried to grate its way in.
Anise stared at that for a while, mostly to keep her away from the other options. It didn't help.
"You..." She slowly turned, looked at Princess Luna -- no. Looked at the intruder in her kitchen. The experimenter, the one who thought she could take shortcuts, and if you wanted to be completely frank and decidedly blasphemous about it, the idiot. Anise took a small hoofstep towards the single biggest cooking moron it had ever been her agony to experience. Then another. "You..."
The younger alicorn pulled back. Just a little. And then a little more. "Chef Anise, I -- I am aware of the damage, believe me, I was simply making an observation, one that the experiment may have created something worth replication. Baked ice cream... a dish fit for both thrones, if we can but --"
"-- you... you little... you big... you..."
Luna retreated a little more, and this bit of strategic withdrawal put her in brief contact with the only hot oven in the room. She yelped, jumped forward again, her tail lashing at the little burn.
It got Celestia's full attention. "Luna, let me... I'll pull the heat out, you ice it down..." A pair of coronas briefly flared. "Better?"
"Yes, thank you..."
Anise was still trying to find the right words. Taking a cue from the moron's last one seemed fitting. "You... you..."
Stock had trotted up to her now, still looking a little squashed around the flanks. "Chef, listen to me."
"I -- she... that..."
"The oven -- what's in it?"
Anise blinked, forced herself into focus. "The Princess -- she was making bread... just a basic pan loaf... her third attempt: the first one didn't rise evenly, the second didn't go up at all, and on the third, she..."
The Lunar head chef looked at the oven's clear pane, or at least what should have been an unobstructed view of the interior. All she could see was a dark brown mass pressing against every hoofwidth. And an oddly bulging door.
The words came. "You dumped the yeast."
Celestia was now staring at the oven herself, expression more than a little concerned. The added force of a second gaze failed to push the door back. "...yes."
The calm was an odd one, as if all the heat had been shifted from her own body to join the forces now trembling within the oven. "How much?"
"It didn't rise properly the first time," Celestia weakly protested. "Or at all on the second."
Almost a whisper, "How much?"
"So since I knew I did all the steps properly, I thought the recipe might have been off somewhat... a small adjustment seemed necessary, Anise..."
"How. Much?"
"...all of it?"
The oven, which had only been waiting for a suitably dramatic moment, also exploded.
This time, Anise didn't wait for Celestia to move away. Instead, she somehow found a surge of strength, one not even an earth pony should have managed, and pushed the sheltering wing off her, her comparably tiny body somehow locating enough raw force to not only shift the elder, but force her back a full hoofstep, and those hoofsteps just kept right on coming as Anise advanced and Celestia backed away from her, purple eyes wide...
"You two," Anise shouted, "are the biggest idiots I've ever seen in a kitchen! In any kitchen! You know why you haven't cooked before this? Because that part of your minds which always thinks about what it takes to rule Equestria wanted to keep the rest from destroying it! Lightning storms within ice cream! A whole dump of yeast! I can almost understand the lightning because any truly idiotic pegasus would have still stopped herself before doing anything that stupid, but the yeast..."
Luna landed between them. The whole of her eyes had gone white. "Thou -- you shall not speak to my sister thus! You have no right!"
"So who's talking to your sister? I'm talking to both morons in the room, Princess! "
The shock would only come hours later, the reel and near-faint waiting until she reached her own bathtub. For now, all she knew was that there was a pair of morons in front of her and she had them backing up in concert. It made her happy. It made her reach down into her battered body and find still more decibels to work with. "Princess of experiments, of theories, of destruction! And I'm still talking about both of you! Do you know why your mother always did the cooking? Why anypony you've ever been with made sure you didn't try to create anything more than trail mix? Because they were trying to save pony lives, save every life there had ever been, and now I have to join their ranks!"
There was a hoof against her right shoulder. Stock. She shrugged it off. And then there was a sound of scraping metal and multiple pony bodies trying to jam through the same small space. Her left eye briefly glanced in that direction, as did all four from the sisters. Twelve Guards evaporated.
And Anise didn't care, except for the part where it meant the siblings were momentarily no longer listening to her.
"I don't care if you fire me!" she shouted, and was happy to get their focus back. "I don't care if you keep my last pay voucher or badmouth me to every eatery in the realm and I never work again! It's worth it to tell you that you're morons, kitchen-destroying shortcut-taking explosion-causing simpletons, the biggest heads in Equestria carrying the smallest brains! Not one explosion in a night, two, and whatever you think of my old teacher's words, they were good words, he was a great teacher, and if he was here and you two were his students, he would -- he would..."
Her slow advance had just planted her right forehoof in a huge glob of hot, soft dough.
She looked down at it.
She brought her hoof up again. Then back.
Her aim was perfect. Both times.
The moment froze.
Anise would often come back to that split-second in her dreams. Her, just an ordinary pegasus with a mark and talent for cooking, who had been lucky enough to be hired into the palace staff directly out of culinary school because the elder sister had felt her just-Returned sibling was best off trying the work of the new. The break of a lifetime granted to a pony who could hardly believe her luck, who had nights when she still couldn't fully accept the place and status she'd been gifted when she'd just been hoping for a learner's post at the garnish station.
Her, having just expertly kicked two large globs of dough onto the noses of Equestria's rulers.
The globs were only half-cooked. Not enough to crumble. Just about enough to drip, but only in large, sliding portions which moved with the speed of gravity-resistant sludge. The larger of the pieces had landed on Luna, and it took five full eternities for it to make its way down her snout before plopping to the floor, where it landed in the last shreds of Anise's career and smothered them in probably-dead yeast. The smaller (but still steaming) piece had gone to Celestia, and a large chunk of it was clinging just under the right eye. Some of it was surrounding the eyelashes. Some of it had eaten eyelashes.
"Princess... Princesses..." No words would ever be good enough. Nothing would ever sway a jury, not that there would be one. They were going to start with the step immediately beyond the Moon. "I..."
Luna's field exerted, surrounded and removed the dough from Celestia's face. The elder's picked a piece off the younger's hoof. They both looked at Anise.
"You're right."
It had been a near-chorus. Only the 'you are' from Luna had marred it.
"...I...?" Past the point of protest, of understanding, of anything but waiting for the consequences to begin.
"We made mistakes," Luna said.
"Stupid ones," Celestia added.
"What were you supposed to do?" Luna asked. "Claim all the fault was somehow yours?"
"Keep it inside?" Celestia went on. "Let it fester, let us just keep on screwing up while assuring us every idiotic error was perfection itself?"
"Stop trembling, Anise," Luna said, taking a small step forward. "Please... You are not fired. You or Stock. You are still head of the Solar Kitchen -- at least until I can get you back."
Celestia seemed to ignore the last part of that. "You're allowed to be angry. We did just destroy most of the kitchen." One last frying pan, which had been waiting for what it saw as the right moment, crashed down through the final surviving pieces of the Royal China. "And I never liked that pattern, please don't fret about it... The two of you are all right, and that's the only important thing. We can replace the equipment. Nopony is losing their jobs. And we learned... not to be so hasty. Not to take shortcuts before we even know the shape of the road."
Silence again, with nothing left to fall.
"Princesses..." It felt like the only word she had left.
"However," Luna said, "that does not change the fact that you just kicked dough in my sister's face."
And her field slung the glob back at Anise.
The impact was true. It dripped into her left wing, melded flour into feathers in a way which would take hours to remove.
Anise stared at the younger, and the words which finally emerged carried touches of a Prance accent. "You just threw food at your teacher."
"Yes," Luna calmly admitted.
"And what are you going to do about it?" Celestia asked, just before the second yellow-surrounded glob hit the right wing.
Anise nodded, exactly once. "Stock?"
"Chef?"
"If you wouldn't mind?"
She felt the stallion's answering nod. A split-second later, she saw the cover fire go past her flanks, heard the sisters yelp as they tried to dodge, but they were two very large targets and couldn't possibly hope to get out of the way for everything, a fact Anise found herself eager to prove time and time again as she scoured the kitchen for new missiles to kick, dough and baked ice cream and clouds of pepper kicked up to create sneezes, learning quickly to aim away from the manes and tails (unless she wanted to hit whichever sibling was sheltering behind them), everything she could find to work with and all of it coming back at her in turn...
She would never remember exactly when the laughter started. She would only recall it as going on for a very long time.
The kitchen had been mostly cleaned. A full restoration was going to take several shopping trips plus a major reshuffling of the palace budget and inspection of ancient frozen confection preparation equipment in antique shops across the continent. But most of the dough was gone, and the Solar shift would find the rest when they stepped in it. Celestia had sent a note down to the Pony Resources department, letting them know everypony was going to be using the main Solar facility for a while, and that nopony should ask about why. At least, not more than once.
Luna had turned out to be a natural with a scouring pad, and refused to talk about it.
They were three hours past the time when the lesson had been scheduled to end. And yet Anise had no intention of letting them leave.
"I," Celestia wearily announced, "am tired. These are Luna's hours, Anise... not mine. Contrary to what I know is a very persistent rumor, both of us require sleep..."
"And I want to end this night on a success," Anise insisted, for she finally had the courage to do so, along with the need. "One of you is going to make something before we all head out, it'll only take a few minutes, you're going to do it right -- and that somepony is going to be you, Prin -- Celestia?"
A nod, but it was a confused one. "How am I going to make something in just a few minutes?"
"By having it be something you've done before." Anise tilted her head towards the pantry entrance. "You said late spring through early autumn...? It's just a little past midsummer now. I'm sure if we checked, we'd have all the ingredients."
There was no way for the elder to hide the blush. "Anise... I like it, or at least that's what I told myself at the time, but everypony else..."
"We teased," Luna quietly said.
Celestia slowly turned to face her.
"Mostly teased," Luna clarified. "There were times when it was truly horrid. That one grass you experimented with... I feel as if I should be wiping down my tongue just from thinking about it. But at others... it could almost approach tolerable, sister. If you will make it... then I will eat it."
The elder sighed.
"I don't know if I remember --"
"-- you remember all of it. And more."
The siblings looked at each other. Anise and Stock waited.
"All right," Celestia finally admitted. "But just us to start. Now I know why cooks always taste their own dishes before serving: to save everypony else. If you're willing to risk it, Luna, I'll accept that... but Anise, please -- let us try it first."
Anise nodded. The sisters trotted into the pantry.
It was fragrant, almost too much so, and Celestia admitted there had been times when she'd refused to try preparing it for fears of drifting scent giving their position away. It was truly basic: as Celestia had said, the ingredients could be gathered from just about any wild zone fringe for any pony bold enough to try, and the fact that she had spoken of the mix as trail food said so much which Anise couldn't quite ask about.
There were four small bowls on the lone surviving table, which was only the proper height for the cooks. Two of those bowls were being stared at with the expression of ponies who had bid a guest farewell long ago, moved several times, changed settled zones, changed careers, changed names and lives -- only to find their old friend camped out on the most recent doorstep.
Well, an old friend for one.
"Hurry-Up Mix," Luna groaned, wrinkling her nose. "With some things, it is a comfort to know they have not changed in a thousand years and more. And with others, it is simply a crime. Sun and Moon, Tia, that smell..."
Celestia took a breath, held the air. "It really hasn't changed at all, has it? None of it. I haven't put this together..."
"Yes, well, I am not certain that status should have changed, but as it is what Anise wishes her student to do..."
No fields were exerted: horns remained dark. Instead, two snouts went down.
They chewed. They swallowed. They straightened their necks and legs, stood stock-still.
"Well..." Luna quietly said, "I have found yet another thing which has not changed."
"Which is?" Celestia asked.
"You are still one of the only ponies in the world who regards boysenberry as a fruit instead of granting the thing its proper status as poison."
"I like boysenberries."
"Yes, I am quite aware of your insanity. Ever since the first time you insisted on including it as a ingredient..." The dark eyes closed. "It was at the cliffs of Drover, was it not? I can see them now... I can almost smell the salt in the air..."
"Trottingham's there now," Celestia softly said. "Not anywhere near so wild. But they still have boysenberries. Still growing on the cliffs. And if you're standing on the edge, you'll see the blooms, but with the way the wind moves there, almost always coming from the ocean, you won't smell them until you're right on top of them. And then you get the denser growths, the gorse behind the fruit..."
"Not so dense," Luna gently replied. "Thickets. But thickets with hollows. A very large body could hide in there if it wished to. And did."
"Who saw the horns first?" Celestia asked. "I remember the shout... she did, didn't she? She was the only one who knew what they meant. For everypony else, they were legend. But he was trying to look up, see what we were, and his horns poked over the top of the cover..."
"A shout?" Luna contradicted. "No, it was an order. Battle formations, and we didn't even know what those were yet, much less how to assume them..."
"He knew, though," Celestia's distant voice continued. "It put him on alert, oh, all the ways that almost went so horribly wrong, before..."
"...our first minotaur, the very first who..."
This time, they both stopped.
"Well," Celestia said, "I can testify with total assurance that I have, in fact, recreated Hurry-Up Mix, and as I'm one of only two ponies in the world who could even try to say that, please take my word for it. You're welcome to try it if you like, both of you. Just please... don't expect too much. And now if you'll excuse us..."
Slowly, Luna nodded. "Yes. I believe this first lesson is over. Perhaps even ending on a qualified success. However, I do ask that you both keep your vow in mind at all times..."
Celestia nodded, and the sisters looked at each other again. Then at Anise.
"In two weeks?" Luna asked.
"If you're still willing?" Celestia added.
Anise nodded. A pair of fields recovered all ice cream and dough-coated regalia, and the siblings made their way out of the Lunar Kitchen.
Stock began to move forward, started to open his mouth. Anise raised a shushing hoof, rotated her ears towards the doorway. And she strained, she tried for every sound there was... but all she could register was that speech was there: not what any of it contained. At least, not for the words within.
Finally, the hoofsteps faded.
Anise turned towards her own bowl, nodded to Stock, who did the same. Both snouts went down.
Eventually, "It's -- edible," Stock decided.
"You mean it's almost terminally unbalanced towards grains," Anise said.
"...yes. But it's still edible."
Anise managed a small smile. "It might be possible to do something with it. Still... I don't think our Solar Princess has much of a palette. She's a strong eater, but when it comes to judging how flavors work together... that's something she'll have to learn. Slowly. Let's clear down and get out of here -- we both need baths. Very long ones."
Stock began to return the unused items to the pantry -- then paused. "Chef? May I ask you two questions?"
"I'm surprised it's only two. And it's still Anise."
"Why did you let Princess Luna leave without a success?"
"Because she already had one. A stupid, purely accidental, moronic success... but how much of cookery was discovered by pure accident when somepony tried something too dumb to believe? Baked ice cream -- or flash-fried... I tried some of that crust, and now I want to try it again, in all kinds of flavors. Wait until I make her try to recreate it, Stock. We'll figure out how the process works. From a great distance."
He thought about it, nodded -- and then moved to the real question. "When they left..."
"Yes?"
"Just before... They were both talking again, and some of what they were saying... Drover? I never knew Trottingham had any other name, ever: it's one of the oldest settled zones in Equestria. And there have never been minotaurs in that area, they're gallops upon gallops away... plus she... who was this other...?" He looked at his head chef, and every strand of fur in his coat radiated helplessness. "What happened?"
Anise had heard none of the words from the hallway. But every last one of the tones had registered. Thoughtful. Reminiscent. Pained...
"Because taste and smell," she told her junior sous chef, "remain the surest passages to memory..."
...happy.