...para Frāgum
Strawberry hummed as she looked into her cellarette.
She'd been collecting liquors over the years and now she found herself with a cabinet just a few bottles shy of being full. Not the kind of problem you'd expect in Ponyville, where monsters attacked monthly, disasters struck once a week and those three brats were causing havoc every damn day.
Yet here she was, needing to open up some bottles if she wanted room for the strawberry and cherry wines she'd set up.
Of course, she wouldn't have an overflowing cabinet if she drank more... but she wasn't really the type to drink alone.
And well, Ponyville really loved cider, while she really didn't, so there weren't that many ponies interested in drinking with her. They could be counted on two hooves, in fact: Rarity and Rainbow.
Strawberry hummed again and fluffed her wings.
Rainbow had brought her a crystal berry wine from her last trip to the Empire. Courtship was going great for sure. Her cheeks warmed up just thinking about it!
But she wasn't here today. Twilight had roped her into yet another friendship crash course.
Strawberry knew it was for the yaks, because Twilight just wouldn't shut up about it for the past month. She was just glad she hadn't roped the whole town into it, too.
She stopped checking the griffon brandy and stroked her chin with her wing.
That would have meant she'd be with Rainbow right now. Maybe she should have volunteered... but the yaks probably didn't come here to watch courting pegasi. No matter how nifty a sight that could be.
No, they were here to learn how great it was to have friends, from the Princess of Friendship herself!
Because obviously yaks never had any friends. Obviously they couldn't possibly be friends with each other.
Strawberry rolled her eyes.
Yeah, the brandy would do. She didn't know how griffons did it, but you could always taste their mood in their drinks. Probably something to do with their 'proud' capital city being a total dump.
And she just got into a mood herself, alright.
She may be a pegasus used to the wonders of the sky, but clouds had nothing on gardens.
Or on anywhere with plants, really. The sky was pretty and all but every cloud looked the same after a while. Always the same depressing gradient of white-to-black except during twilight. Sky itself at least had some actual colors, but they were also always the same by now.
The same blue dawn and the same pink dusk for decades. The same azure day and the same black night. A far cry from nature... Even without flowers and their million colors, trees and shrubs seemed to be in an endless contest to see who was more vibrant.
Strawberry sipped more brandy. She didn't taste the griffons' mood anymore.
Then again, how could she? Surrounded by wonderful colors everywhere, while thinking about even more marvels.
If there was one thing she was grateful to the Elements for, it was bringing back Princess Luna. To think it had always been the same sky every night before that. She shuddered just at the memories.
Now, every night rivaled the beauty of nature. Shooting stars and wide nebulas as far as the eye could see. Even the canvas itself dropped its constant black to dabble in so many blues, sometimes some purples.
She wasn't sure pegasi ever had a greater gift than Princess Luna's return. 'Getting drunk on the night sky' had become a popular idiom, well, overnight. Fittingly enough.
Would explain why most paintings and sculptures in Cloudsdale and other pegasus cities gave her top billing rather than Celestia. Took centuries after she was thought dead before artists focused on the other Princess instead.
Strawberry finished her glass.
Probably explained why pegasus towns didn't have a Nightmare Night too.
She smiled at her garden and her fields beyond.
So many colors everywhere. Sure, her strawberries didn't exactly show a lot of variety, but it still was something beautiful to take care of them, to dote on every seed until they bloomed.
You couldn't grow anything in clouds, after all. Couldn't make the miracle of life happen, only help it with a little bit of rain or sunshine.
Strawberry licked her lips.
And they were so tasty too!
She wasn't quite sure how long she'd been here, what with having taken the day off. Just that it was long enough to have finished the brandy and replaced it with that perry from Vanhoover.
To be fair, that bottle had sat around in the fridge for quite a while, it needed to be done with at some point.
She didn't even feel dizzy. "Just because we've got a light weight doesn't mean we're lightweights!" as the pegasus joke went.
There were also many jokes about featherweights but they didn't like talking about that.
There was a scream in the distance. That had happened a lot since, well, since the yaks were here. This specific one sounded like a declaration of war, for some reason.
She didn't know for sure if they were mad. Sometimes you couldn't tell if pegasi were celebrating or if they were seconds away from jumping you. What would she know of the yaks?
A lot actually, if she'd bothered to read the books Rainbow had pawned off to her. But Strawberry and Twilight had very different definitions of light reading. Those seven volumes weighed more than her wheelbarrow, and the thing was made out of freaking steel.
So all she had to go with was memories of high school. Pegasus history remembered yaks as a fellow warrior culture they didn't have much contact with, because there was the Crystal Empire in the way, and neither country wanted to deal with 'those complete psychos.'
She wasn't sure how the glorified mood rings up north could have gotten this kind of reputation, but she also wasn't sure how you could have enough artillery to just shoot an entire cloud city out of the sky. And well, Trot certainly wasn't there anymore.
Guess Sombra did a real number on their spirit when he took over.
More screams. A little closer this time. Made her think of an avalanche, come to think of it. Not that she'd ever actually heard one, but that was probably fitting for yaks.
And here they came. Three yaks stomped by, real mountains of fur and, no doubt, muscles under that. Stylish beards, even more stylish clothes and jewelry, and horns wide enough that a small part of Strawberry's brain wanted to hang a clothesline between them.
They looked, well, mad.
So Strawberry did the thing any self-respecting pegasus would do if they saw an unstoppable war machine with a chip on its shoulder bigger than it was coming towards them.
She waved the perry bottle at them with one wing. "Hey, you look like you could use a drink!"
Strawberry popped a fourth perry open with one wing and a seventh brandy with the other. Well, her overstock problem wasn't a problem anymore for sure.
Gotar, the one with the muzzle ring and the cute beard pompoms, snatched the corks out of the sky with practiced ease and added them to his growing castle of corks. Who needed houses of cards?
She refilled her glass and their mugs. Then went back to her clothesline. Stokul had the widest horns, it was only fair to pick him. Flowers worked better with his braided beard though, so that was what she hung on the thread.
Rutherford, the one with the bling, all but inhaled his drink as he finished retelling yet another farce from Twilight's crash course.
"You serious?" Strawberry said.
"Yaks ALWAYS serious!"
"You travel all the way from Yakyakistan to rediscover Equestria, and she tries to make Ponyville into Yakyakistan two point zero?"
Gotar nodded from behind his tower of corks. "DISCOUNT Yakyakistan two point zero."
"As opposed to making Ponyville feel like Equestria?"
Stokul nodded too, making the flowers bounce like colors in the wind. "Ponyville and Equestria BEAUTIFUL! When no friendship princess and friends around."
"When the entire reason you came here was, again, to see what Equestria was like, rather than seeing half-baked Notyakistan?"
Rutherford smashed his mug into the table. He didn't even dent it, because furniture that couldn't hold off a horde of ravenous bears if used as a barricade wasn't worth Strawberry's money.
"YES! Pony understands!"
Strawberry hung the last flower and hovered back into her seat. "Yeah, that's the Princess of Friendship alright."
She tasted the mood in her brandy again. It seemed to be mocking along with her.
Stokul opened another bottle and Gotar took another cork. The three mugs and one glass were refilled yet again.
She wasn't quite sure where she got mead of all things but she wasn't complaining.
Rutherford downed his drink first. "This REAL start of great friendship between ponies and yaks!"
He inhaled the mead again, because Stokul had dutifully refilled his mug.
Then the three shouted together. "FOR ONE THOUSAND MOONS!"
And after that, Rutherford turned to her with a smile on his face. "Me happy yaks no have to declare war!"
Strawberry scoffed and waved a hoof away. "Oh please, I could totally take you."
Twilight thought she'd at least have some time before the horrors of war and Celestia's disappointment came to Ponyville.
But then all too familiar hollers came from the marketplace, along with pegasus war cries.
She'd have been certain her heart beat itself out of her chest if she didn't know that was scientifically impossible. The yaks had decided not to wait for reinforcements after all!
She flew as fast as she could. She wasn't sure the whistling came from the speed or from the internal screaming.
Twilight arrived to a battlefield, as expected... between only two combatants, not as expected, with the war cries turning out to come from an audience of pegasi above a makeshift arena of fences and crates.
Unicorns and earth ponies were watching with cheers too, and so were those other two yaks. One of them noticed the Crusaders hopping about to get a better view of the duel, and he scooped them up to put them on his back.
The other yak had... a clothesline pegged with flowers rather than clothes between his horns. Against all logic.
As for the field of honor, there was a pegasus. Twilight didn't actually know her name, but if she remembered correctly, she was that mare who was always puffing up her chest around Rainbow Dash, for... whatever reason.
And she was freaking scorpion-holding Prince Rutherford.
"YAK NOT BEST! YAK NOT BEST!"
"WHO'S BEST!?"
"STRAWBERRY BEST! STRAWBERRY PLEASE LET GO!"