It was just a few weeks before the Summer Sun Celebration. Princess Celestia was currently residing in a summer cottage she never got around to stay at. It was quite relaxing, being away from the comically large stacks of documents she had to sign. Those stacks had to have been cursed, by the time she stopped paying attention to what she was signing she usually ended up signing a fake marriage agreement form sent from Discord.
Quite the opposite of relaxing; having to pry yourself out of a fluffy, hot pink, chocolatey wedding dress while inside of a funhouse with constantly moving floors that make you trip so much you can't even drink punch without spilling it all over your body.
But, what was Princess Celestia doing now?
Well, the co-ruler of Equestria- besides relaxing in a summer cottage -was playing a nice relaxing game of *Klondike. She was currently almost done, as she was sorting the cards into the correct ace discard decks. By the time she placed the last king in the last deck, Her trusty assistant Miss Derpy Hooves already set out a requested game of **Pyramid. It was one of the few things she was good at- setting out cards. As soon as Celestia told her she was finished Derpy shoved the deck of cards back into a light brown, jewel encrusted case so fast she forgot to place them all face down.
Princess Celestia placed a king into the discard pile. Following the king were two other cards- 8 and 5. The princess continued the same process- placing cards in the discard deck -until she was left with a single card. It was a queen. The princess sighed.
"Miss Derpy?" The crowned alicorn began. She noticed the cheerful pegasus jumped from whatever she was doing (it looked like she was reading a book upside down). The cross-eyed mare accidentally thrusted herself into an archway leading into the cottage's kitchen as she trotted over to the royal alicorn. The yellow-maned mare smiled as she waited for the princess's request.
"May I ask of you, do you have any idea of where our guest is?" Princess Celestia added slowly. Her voice sounded tired, and Derpy could hear a small yawn buried in her words. She couldn't blame her, it was early in the morning and she was playing solitare- which can really make you think.
Derpy rubbed one of her soft, grey pony hooves across her grey pony chin. Her body language showed she was in deep thought. Only a few seconds later, she raised her hoof into the air, and a small magically lit comical lightbulb appeared above her yellow mane. She answered with a high pitched, slightly squeaky, young voice.
"She must be playing in the snow!" She exclaimed with her bubbly, sweet voice that could make anypony smile. Princess Celestia stared at her to proccess what the grey mare had said.
"...Derpy, it is not currently snowing," The princess slowly told her, worried she might hurt the sweet pony's feelings. But Derpy seemed unfazed, infact she probably never felt happier, for some reason. She questioned the princess as she pointed one of her hoofs out a nearbye average-sized rectangualar window.
"then why is there a ton of green blobs all over the ground?" The lightbulb above her head was still glowing, infact it was glowing brighter.
"Sweetheart, that is grass."
The princess felt sorry for the pegasus, moving around with distorted vision had to have been extremely diffecult.
"Ooooooooooooh! Derpy's glowing lightbulb vanished into thin air. Despite this, she still smiled. "Well than I guess I don't know where she might be! Who knows, maybe she is just running late...?" She continued.
The princess nodded. "Perhaps," The then looked down at the lonely queen card that still layed down on the table infront of her. "May I have another game? Perhaps you would like to play a round of GoFish?" The assitant's smile grew even larger as she immediantly picked up the lonely queen and the many cards in the discard deck. Derpy somehow shuffled them and then started to pass out the cards into sets of two, the cards the two would start out with.
"Seven cards or Ten cards?" The bubbly mare asked. After a reply from the princess, the mare stopped dealing at seven. Then she troted over to a box in the corner of the room and grabbed from it an Earth-Pony-and-Pegasus card holding stand. She sat in a seat and told the princess she could go first. Princess Celestia asked her if she had any threes. Derpy replied with "Go fish!"
The game carried on for about 20 minutes. During that time, Derpy got 3 books and the solar princess got 4. Derpy congratulated the princess, and then Derpy trotted off into the kitchen to prepare for the lunch buffet they would be having around noon. It was polite, expecialy since their guest was coming from far away. You wouldn't expect it, but Derpy was actually a pretty good cook.
Then suddenly, a loud knock could be heard from the oak door near the table Princess Celestia sat at. The princess jolted then got up from her seat to open the door. She would have done it successfully if Derpy hadn't beat her to the door. The royal alicorn watched as Derpy looked through the hole in the door. Derpy quickly opened the door and Celestia threw her hoof on her forhead to shade her eyes from the bright, organic summer light. When her eyes adjusted to the light, a tall dark grey insect-ish pony stepped inside. There was a nuetral look on her face, which had a small chunk of teal hair covered a little less than an inch of her left eye. Her mane, which was long and almost touched the floor, was littered with holes. Her tail was her mane's twin, and her enormous horn was ragged and twisted. A green carapace hugged her stomach tightly and her hooves reminded Derpy of swiss cheese. A small, thin, black and dark teal crown thingy rested upon her head, and her curved ears layed flat. Who was this peculiar pony? Or perhaps she is a changeling? Yes, let's go with that. Who was this peculiar changeling?
Well, She was not just a changeling. She was the queen of the changelings, of every single one of them. What was her name? Her name was Queen Chrysalis, of the changelings. Why was she here? Well, she was the guest! Yes, that guest. The one Derpy was cooking for! She was here to have quite the interesting kind of meeting with Princess Celestia. She was the one who requested the meeting as well.
...The meeting was a tea party.
The two royals stared for what seemed like centuries; a millennia or two, perhaps even three. Derpy started to drift off to La-La land.
...
...
...
...
"...So how was your trip? I heard your homeland is quite far from here, is it not?" The solar princess tried her best to keep the awkwardness away, but what the changeling queen replied with just started the stampede.
"It was a long and painful journey, I had to travel through the Everfree forest. Animals repeatedly attempted to nest within the holes in my horn. The most grueling part was whenever I had to spend the night just outside the Everfree, a manticore tried to eat my hooves," Chrysalis frowned. "I guess my legs really do look like swiss cheese." She sighed.
"...well...good thing you are here now, then..!" Princess Celestia added. "Well....uh.....anything interesting going on at your hive?"
"No." the queen stated.
Princess Celestia looked at her for a short moment. Surely there was something, but she wasn't letting it out. Think, Celestia, think... "Well over in Canterlot, I think today was a sweet young filly's birthday....!" She continued awkwardly. The ragged-horned queen looked at her with stern confusion. The distort in her voice just made it slightly freaky.
"What is the point of celebrating birth? It just reminds everyone, including you, of the day you left the sweet warmth of life before life, the consciousness that we were all gifted with possibly even years before we were even born. A vast world of imagination, and powers that could rival Discord's at your very grasp. But we are banished from this world forever, for we are gifted a new world, one that princess Luna is quite familiar with- the Dream Scape. We are given this world the moment we are brought to Equestria. But, however this world can be easily corrupted by the forced not one pony enjoys- nightmares. When we are born, we lose and gain. Am I correct?" Chrysalis asked.
Oh gosh.
Celestia stared at the changeling queen, a bit worried. It's the fake marriage forms all over again! She whimpered. What was she supposed to say? That she was right? That she was wrong? That she didn't know? That she would think it over? I guess I'll just have to go with-
"APPETIZER'S READY!"
Derpy rushed through the archway that leads to the kitchen, and she had a rather large platter of something, and she was carelessly moving around and practically threw it onto the table that two royals were chatting awkwardly at. The grey pegasus smiled from ear-to-ear and set down forks and knives, then trotted off to the kitchen. She later returned with two purple and green drinks. Whatever it was it had to have been, it must have fit under 'creative', in Derpy's head. The yellow-maned pony trotted off, and told the two she would start on the actual lunch then. Celestia got a good look at the appetizer. It was an extra large, elephant-sized platter of fries. Sweet potato, regular, salty, every kind.
Chrysalis claimed the seat across from the solar alicorn, where her silverware and drink was. She eyed the drink. "Do you have any idea what this liquid is?" She asked the royalty across from her.
The princess studied it for a good few seconds. "...No...but we should still drink it...Derpy made it herself. But I don't now how she made a liquid two different colors at the same time. But then again, Derpy is quite a peculiar pegasus." Celestia smiled. Chrysalis nodded. There was a short silence, then suddenly the queen's horn glew a bright, saturated, light green. A single fry suddenly glowed the same color and lifted from his buddies, and then was chopped into tiny bits by the changeling's teeth. The lonely fry was never seen again. This process was repeated many times with different kinds of french fries. Apparently Chrysalis was either a fry-fan, or she was so bored the only thing that could entertain her was eating. Either way, she was still eating the fries. A few minutes passed and she paused.
"Isn't this supposed to be a tea party?" Queen Chrysalis raised a brow as she spoke. Princess Celestia suddenly jolted and called, "Derpy? Can we have some tea?"
...
...
"Sure! What flavors..?" Celestia looked back at Chrysalis and whispered.
"What do you want?" The changeling queen replied with a quick "Oh, anything."
"Anything!"
...
...
"Okay!" The royals stared at the archway leading into the kitchen for a few split seconds, then exchanged glances. The royal alicorn princess decided to go ahead and make things interesting.
"...Would you like to play a card game..?" She asked the changeling queen.
"Yes please." The queen responded. Celestia smiled. Following the smile was her horn glowing and magically levitating the small card case over to Queen Chrysalis. She started setting out a small 4x4 group of cards. She set the rest of the cards next to the smaller group of cards. She began explaining the game.
"The game is called Ace's Square," Princess Celestia smiled. " The objective is to only have aces left in this square. To remove cards, you have to match two cards with the same suit and the same column or row. When you remove cards you have to replace them with the next two cards from the draw deck. If you run out of cards to match, you lose. Does it make sense?" The solar princess questioned.
"Yes," said the queen across the table. "It does."
"Great!" The princess replied. Then the game begun. A few minutes passed and finally it looked like Chrysalis somewhat lost. Celestia got up from her seat and trotted over to her. "Looks like you got an unlucky play. It's not because this is your first game, this game focuses not just on skill, but also luck. I myself played this game hundreds times now and I only won about seventeen of them!"
The queen smiled at her. "Thanks for letting me play," she spoke. "Back at the hive, nopony really knew how to play to many games, except a few hatchlings. I usually get bored, having to stick to books and such." The alicorn princess nodded.
"When I was younger, I had to be protected at all times since the alicorn race was endangered. I hardly ever got to go outside, the only times I actually did were when I had to raise the sun. Same with my sister, Luna." Princess Celestia added.
"Very interesting," finished Chrysalis. The princess grinned. Not a second later, Derpy entered. She told them what wonderful patience they had, and that they were going to enjoy their tea. Speaking of tea, she the two drinks down on the table the two royals were obviously sitting at. She suddenly started whimpering. The princess looked worried.
"What's wrong, Derpy?"
Y-You haven't been drinking the special drinks I made for you!" Derpy cried. Celestia looked shocked and ashamed, she forgot to try the drink.
Chrysalis spoke. "I greatly apologize, Miss Derpy, but we weren't able to try the drink, we were to busy eating these incredible fries. Would you like us to try them now?" Derpy smiled a small smile then nodded rapidly. "Okay then!" Queen Chrysalis reached over to her cup of liquid and took a long sip through the straw that was included with the drink. After tasting it for a few seconds, Derpy told her something.
"I made it with poison ivy!"
This caused the changeling queen to freak out so much in less then a few seconds she swallowed the straw. She immediately started choking. Just as fast Celestia jumped out of her seat and into the air, accidentally knocked over her two drinks in the process. She flew rainboom-fast over to the choking changling and thrusted her to the ground. She started to push her hooves down into the other royal's stomach repeatedly. Weird rasping sounds came from the poor queen's throat, and Celestia could see her face turning slightly blue. She started panicking.
"DERPY QUICK CALL 911!" Celestia hollered like a banshee. She could take this much longer, she was running out of breath, her guest was choking, it was only somewhere around twelve O' clock, and her guest arrived there only about 45 minutes ago. BEST DAY EVER OR WHAT!?
Finally after what seemed to be hours an ambulance finally arrived (It was actually 4 minutes, Derpy just overreacted when she was talking to the driver), and the changeling queen was taken to the hospital. She was scheduled to come back to the cottage after a few hours, but the straw wouldn't come out so she had to go to the E.R., which meant no Chryssi for an extra 2 hours.
"Boo, hoo,"
~Discord
