“A few decisions?” asked Twilight, looking incredulously at the scene of carnage that was supposed to be ready for a welcome reception in a few hours.
Spike shrugged awkwardly. “Well, maybe more than a few, but I had good intentions! Honest!” He cast a guilty glance back at Cadance. “Until I . . . didn’t anymore.
“I’m sorry, Twilight. I guess I got a little carried away. It – it just felt so good to have ponies caring about my opinions on such important matters. I guess I was just enjoying feeling like a princess.” He shrugged again, dejectedly.
“Well, Spike,” Twilight said, with the glint in her eyes that showed she was considering a lecture – “one of the most important things a princess can do is realize when she’s made a mistake and fix it.”
“How do you do that?” Spike looked helplessly around at the situation that looked quite unfixable to him.
Twilight sighed. “Something like this.” She walked up on what was left of the dais and addressed the assembled angry mob.
“Everypony, can I have your attention, please? As I think you all know, I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle, and it seems there’s been a bit of a communication problem between me and my assistant, which caused a lot of you to have some rather bad summit experiences already. I want you all to know that I’m extremely sorry this happened, and I will do everything I can to set it right with each of you. But” – she grinned apologetically – “because of this communication problem, I’m actually not entirely sure of everything there is to fix. So what I’m going to need you to do is form a line here and tell me what your grievance is, one by one. Then I’ll get to you as soon as I can, okay?”
*
“Well, it certainly stopped the water flowing”. The repairpony walked around Cadance’s impromptu crystal plug in the water main, eyeing it skeptically. “I just don’t know if I can work with that to fix it. I’ll have to fetch a longer piece of replacement pipe and then put that in instead.”
“How long will that take?” Twilight asked him, trying to keep a positive attitude.
He hemmed and hawed. “Coupla hours, I think. Perhaps three.”
“Oh, that is good,” Twilight said. Behind her Fancy Pants nodded his assent. Spike stood on her other side, looking despondent.
“I’ll get on it first thing after I come back from vacation, okay?”
“What, vacation?”
“Yup. Matter of fact, my train for Aberferlen leaves in an hour now, so I really need to go home and get my bags.”
“Princess, there are eight city blocks without water right now,” Fancy Pants said severely.
“Okay, don’t panic, we can fix this,” Twilight said, more to herself than to the assembled ponies. “Do you have any coworkers who knows how to repair water pipes?”
“Oh, I’m so, so sorry,” said Spike to nopony in particular. Nopony in particular took any notice.
*
The pony who had opened the door shrugged. “I see your problem, ma’am, but the thing is it’s my day off, and I’m actually having plans to spend it with missus and the foals.”
Twilight groaned inwardly. Apparently this was the one pony in Canterlot with certification from the water works who was presently in town, didn’t have a broken leg, wasn’t on cold medicine that disqualified him from operating a welder, and wasn’t about to leave on vacation.
“I understand,” she said. “But we’re in a bit of a fix here. Can I offer you anything to make it worth your time?”
“I don’t know. Do you mean bits? We already got what we need, don’t we, Sweetplum?”
His wife, who had appeared behind him, nodded.
“Well, how about . . . hmm . . . a family weekend in Ponyville, staying at the Friendship Castle?” Twilight suggested in desperation. “You can’t buy that. And, um, breakfast with the princess?”
“Ooh, I’ve always wanted to meet a princess!” Sweetplum said. “My cousin Peachbottom, she keeps talking about –”
Her husband rolled his eyes, but knew when he was outvoted. “Tell you what,” he said to Twilight, “throw in a tour of the castle and you’ve got a deal.”
“Deal!”
“That’s wonderful, Twilight!” gushed Spike on the way back to the castle. “And I can give them that tour!”
“No, Spike. I’m pretty sure they expect the princess herself to do it.”
*
“I hope you understand, princess, that my carefully prepared talk was completely ruined by this mix-up!” The Manehattan delegate snorted indignantly.
“That’s exactly how it was, mine too,” agreed his Whinnyapolis colleague. “Whatcha gonna do ’bout that?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry for that,” replied Twilight smoothly. “Let’s see how we can fix that. I think I can get you both a slot on Tuesday to give your speeches again, one at a time this time.”
“Hrmpf. I suppose that will work,” agreed the one from Manehattan. “But how will anypony know to come? It’s not in the program.”
Twilight thought for a moment. “Don’t worry. We’re going to announce the alteration at the banquet, right after Luna’s dinner speech. Would that work?”
“Yes, that sounds wonderful. Thank you!”
“Hey hey hey,” interrupted his colleague. “That might be all well and good for him, but I need to be leaving on Tuesday morning. Can’t ya get something earlier?”
Twilight looked to Spike, standing to the side. He shook his head.
“I’m afraid we simply don’t have any room before then,” she said tiredly. “What would you suggest we do?”
“Well, there’s a pinch alright. But now that I get thinkin’, what I’m thinkin’ is we have this annual pastry fair in Whinnyapolis, don’tcha know? It sure could do with the publicity of a princess opening it, if you get my drift . . .”
*
“Twilight! There you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
“Wha– . . . Spike?” Twilight found herself passed out on the floor of the assembly hall. “I – I got the Citizens of Equestria statue put back together, and then I think I just wanted to relax a little bit before going on . . .”
Spike looked up at the statue, just as delicious-looking as he remembered it. “It’s beautiful, Twilight. But, wait, when did you get it put together?”
Twilight whirred her head. “I’m not sure. Four o’clock, perhaps. Or five? Six? What time is it now?”
“Almost nine. Come on, Twilight, we need to get you into a real bed.”
Twilight jumped to her feet. “What? No. The panel on Magical Lessons from the New Crystal Renaissance begins at nine, and it’s the only event I’m going to where I’m not supposed to be hosting or moderating. I can’t miss that! Spike, how almost nine is it?”
She made it to the panel and found a chair in the back of the audience. Then she promptly slept through all of it.
*
“Twilight, I’m really really sorry for all that.”
“I know, Spike. It’s the twenty-seventh time you say that.”
The summit was over and they were on the train back home to Ponyville. It had been considerably more hectic than Twilight had expected, as new little consequences of the afternoon-nap fiasco kept popping up. But one way or another she had got all of them fixed, with Spike looking on contritely from the background.
“Why wouldn’t you let me help fixing it? It was all my fault.”
Twilight sighed. “Yes it was. But, to be honest, all of those ponies wanted the princess to fix things for them, not another attempt by someone who already messed up once.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shirk the consequences . . .”
“Twenty-eight. Well, sometimes the consequences of a mistake are that you need to fix it. At other times it is that you get to watch somepony else do the fixing.”
“But that’s worse! And you didn’t do anything wrong!” Spike insisted.
“Perhaps I didn’t, personally. But it says in the princess manual –”
“Wait – there’s an actual book about being a princess?”
Twilight nodded, a bit sheepishly. “Cadance loaned it to me. A Pragmatic Guide to Effective Public Administration, by Wether and Privy. It says on page 180 that a leader has to take responsibility for every mistake her staff makes, because it is up to her to choose staff that will to things right.”
“I see,” said Spike. “Does that mean that I’m . . . fired?” He looked at her misty-eyed, fearing the worst.
“Of course not, silly,” said Twilight with a warm, if tired, smile. “Ponies make mistakes. Dragons too. If only you’ve learned something from all this, I don’t think I heads need to roll just yet.”
“Oh, right. Definitely!” Spike was trembling with relief. “Thanks, Twilight.”
“Twilight?” he asked a bit later. “Could you perhaps remind me what it is I’ve learned?”
Twilight sat up halfway and thought for some time. “Well,” she said at last, “I think you’ve learned that there are some mistakes you can’t fix by being sorry for them and working hard to set them right.”
Spike nodded. “Sounds about right.”
“So try not to make too many of those. And you’ve learned that making decisions for ponies is not just a matter of having them do whatever you say. You also end up with the consequences if it’s a bad decision.”
“Yes.” Spike frowned. “But what if you don’t know what the right decision is?”
Twilight shrugged. “Then you do your best, and end up with the monkey anyway if it’s not good enough. Why do you think half of those ponies came to you – or me – for decisions instead of making them themselves?”
“Huh. Never thought of it that way.”
“But first and foremost,” Twilight said, “you’ve learned that if you ever need a plumber on his day off, then you’re really in a fix.”
