A Princess by Any Other Name
A Princess by Any Other Name
* * *
A Princess by Any Other Name
Jeffrey C. Wells
with both thanks and apologies to Ghost of Heraclitus
* * *
"All right, Doctor Abacus," said Dotted Line, Chief Operating Officer of the Equestrian Bureau of Names and Standards. "Tell me what we're dealing with, here."
The unicorn enchantress dithered for a moment, tapping the tips of her forehooves together[1] and shriveling under the young bureaucrat's rather intense gaze. "We don't... ah, that is, we don't entirely know, sir."
Dotted grunted. "You're a university wizard. Isn't it your job to know things?"
"A popular misconception," replied Doctor Abacus, leaping at a familiar screed not unlike a catamount leaping at a rotund, and possibly disabled, hyrax. "'Knowing' implies a sense of absoluteness, and the higher one rises into the echelons of academia, the more one realizes that 'absoluteness' is a convenient and comfortable fiction thrown on by the world so that it can function on a daily basis while remaining ignorant of true truth." She waggled her eyebrows conspiratorially at Dotted. "My thesis adviser," she said, "doesn't know anything at all. Tremendous scholar."
"Is that all it would take for the world to actually function on a daily basis?" said Dotted. "Absoluteness? My goodness, so that's what we've been missing all these years. If your job isn't actually to know things, Doctor, can you tell me why the Department of Administration thought it was a good idea to send you here?"
"Our job isn't to know things. It's to theorize things with greater or lesser degrees of certainty."
"Wonderful. Could you please theorize, with as high a degree of certainty as possible, exactly what is going on in my interview room?"
"As best as I can tell, what your building is experiencing is a Class Seven Undigenous Meta-Emanation focused around the brass codex that the young Princess brought into the office with her today."
"Right. So all the weeping, liquid voices moaning away from patches of empty air demanding that we 'free' them. Class Seven Undigenous Meta-Emanation. Does it get worse or better as the numbers get higher?"
"It isn't a scale," said Doctor Abacus. "A seven is a seven."[2]
Dotted was unimpressed. Originally a chemist by trade, he intensely distrusted numbers that just sat out there in the world not relating to other numbers. There was just something unsporting about it. "These voices. Are they... trapped in the book, somehow?"
"No, that'd be a Class Seven Conventional Undigenous Emanation. Easy mistake to make. Ha, I wish it were a Conventional Seven; we'd just get a tub of ponydrake-infused vinegar, dunk the book inside, slap a few glyphs on, and presto, as it were. No, this is a Meta-Emanation. The power of the artifact in that room is actually reaching out on a quantum level to other artifacts that are spiritually linked to her being."
"So we send a search team into her quarters at the castle and find the thing that's actually throwing the spirits into fits and causing them to drip all over my acoustical tile. Yes?"
"She may not even know of its existence yet," said Doctor Abacus. "On a quantum level, all events are happening at once, the past and the future are simultaneous, and each and every moment has an effective duration of 'forever'. She may currently own the actual spirit-trap, she may come across it tomorrow, and she may have glimpsed it in a museum fifty years ago. When you start getting quantum, the possibilities are literally endless."
Dotted found himself idly wishing that all events were in fact happening at once, because that would mean that his much-needed afternoon tea break was occurring right at that very moment. Sadly, the interconnectedness of all things failed to provide him with a decent oolong[3], and he was forced to soldier on without. "Right," he said. "What can we do?"
"Well, you have a number of options. One, you could remove that codex from the building entirely. That would solve the problem."
There came a pregnant pause.
"And?" asked Dotted, after a time.
"That's all I can think of," said Doctor Abacus.
"You told me there were a number of options."
"Technically, 'one' is a number," replied the Doctor, a bit defensively.
Dotted took a moment to think over the situation. Two years ago, he had been brought in to the Bureau of Names and Standards on a routine chemistry consultation, to make certain that the platinum-iridium cylinder intended to exemplify the kilogram was as pure as conceivably possible and would not degrade over time, thus throwing off the standard. Two years later, he was effectively running the entire operation. Technically, he was outranked by the Director, a fuzzy-minded stallion by the name of Pigeonhole; but poor Pigeonhole had gotten a bit odd in the head after fifty years of staring at genealogical tables and heraldry manuals and slide rules and such and had gone off on an extended fact-finding mission to "determine how many miles there were". The apparent interminability of this mission suggested that the answer was "quite a lot of them". Dotted was, therefore, very used to making the sort of executive snap decisions that would be expected of a bureaucrat many years his senior. He was, he had to admit to himself, quite good at them.
"I like option one," he said.
* * *
"I can't get rid of it," said Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. "It's the closest thing I've got to a birth certificate."
Dotted inspected the weighty tome for a moment. Grudgingly, he had to admit that the codex was a work of considerable craftsponyship: a great pile of thin-hammered brass sheets scored with twining arcane runes and inlaid all over with shining rhodochrosite hearts. The whole stack was rather dubiously stitched together with strips of crumbling oilcloth which were clearly not as old as the "pages" they had been assigned to, and which would themselves soon presumably be replaced with more trustworthy bindings to last the document for the next two hundred or so years. The cloth strips had a tendency to yield and split, allowing the plates of the codex to slip and fall completely out of alignment, and this transformed the already-cumbrous piece into a positive monster of impracticality. Furthermore, the book was busily shedding an oily-pink magical aura that set Dotted's teeth on edge as it industriously tinkered away at the laws of physics in a one-centimeter bubble immediately surrounding itself.
His gut didn't much like the artifact, either, for two additional reasons. One, Dotty had been raised as a good Deocrat, and the sudden introduction of a second alicorn into Equestria several decades ago—God 2: Niece of God[4]—had caused something of a kerfuffle in his devoutly-religious family. A tiny part of him was still unable to see anything but pagan, blasphemous, positively heretical sigils in the tome's cheerful pink ornamentation. Two, the thing would be almost impossible to file properly. It should be enlightening to the character of Dotted Line that the two objections were on roughly equal footing in his mind.
Gingerly, Dotted picked up a pencil in his mouth and used it to flip open the front cover of the codex to avoid contaminating his telekinetic field with the book's unnerving corona. He squinted for a moment at the eye-twisting eldritch runes scribed into the surface of the brass, runes which seemed to swim and flow across the surface of the pressed metal. Then, he cleared his throat and, in a deep and commanding voice, spoke the incantation he saw written there.
"Our... Baby... Book," said Dotted Line.
"Apparently, my actual birth records were annihilated in the same metaphysical calamity which wiped my rightful empire from the face of Equestria," said the Princess, with an offhoofed gesture. "This is as good as you're going to get. It's an unbroken nine-hundred year chronicle of my foalhood under the care of the Sisterhood of Song in the ancient fortress-city of Reduit. It contains height, weight, dietary information, medical data, and far too many picture plates and anecdotal accounts for my, or anypony's, taste."
Dotted flipped several pages into the meat of the book. "'And Lo, on the Thirteenth Hour of the Thirty-Fifth Day of the Year of Sheep, the Princess-Goddess did request the Camelopard Song be sung to her so that Her Radiant Self could Settle Down for Nap-Nap Time. And then She did request it Again. And Again. And Lo, once more, Again. Then did Sister Euphonium declare that she was Quite Fed Up with the bloody Camelopard Song already, and, in speaking thusly, did set down the Dictum: It is Meet that Good Little Deities shall request no more than Two Successive Repetitions of the Camelopard Song before their Nap-Nap. And then she did make further Proclamations regarding Evening Cups of Water, to wit...'" Dotty turned over a few more pages. "Oh, and here's a very nice etching of you sitting on a little stool."
"That's, um, not a stool."
He blinked. No more diapers! proclaimed the enthusiastically-embellished lettering beneath the etching. The sheer volume of joyful illumination attached to the script suggested very strongly that the scribe responsible had, in her off hours, been intimately connected to the Princess-Goddess's changing-rituals and was quite frankly glad to see the end of them. Dotted harrumphed and quickly shut the codex. "Yes, well," he said.
"It's not ideal," said the Princess. "Especially since some ponies tell me that its status as a sacred relic and centuries-old object of worship have given it a limited degree of sapience and an unpredictable aura of wild magic, but I have to say I haven't noticed anything unusual."
...fRrReEeEeEeE uSsSsss..., said a voice, as a gout of brackish seawater fell from the ceiling and shattered into droplets against the waxed surface of the interview table.
"Wow," said the Princess, chuckling and glancing upward. "That's some plumbing you got there."
"Well, you know, these old government buildings. The Inexplicable Saltwater Pipe is forever leaking," said Dotted, hastily. "You're absolutely certain you want to go through with this, Highness? You wouldn't just rather terminate the process immediately and put your somewhat, ah, disquieting birth records back into the runic vault they undoubtedly came from?"
"I'm sure," said the Princess, with a serene smile. "I really need this name change to go through, Mister Line. In case you haven't heard, I've just been assigned an ambassadorial post to the City-State of Cloudsdale, and it's the most important job I've ever had. I need a clean break from old, boring 'Princess Cadence'. I want to be somepony glamorous, sophisticated, new. Somepony who exemplifies Love's power to change the world. Somepony who can really take her place in the modern world. Somepony special."[5]
Well, the client was immutable, thought Dotted. That left only the "B" plan of ushering Her Highness through the required paperwork as fast as equinely possible. "Very well, then," he said, selecting a pen from the holder in front of him and simultaneously unscrewing the lid from a small container of very good Hindi ink. "What are you interested in changing your name to?"
"Princess Cadance," said Princess Cadence.
Dotted set the pen back down, his telekinetic aura flickering out. "Pardon?"
"Princess Cadance," repeated Princess Cadence.
"One more time."
"Princess... Cadance," she repeated again, louder and slower.
Dotted Line ran a hoof through his mad black tangle of a mane, barely managing to do so without hitching. Earlier, outside the room, Doctor Abacus had suggested that—per the quantum nature of time—this meeting was technically going to last for the rest of his entire remaining life, and he was beginning to feel that she might have been on to something.
"Not 'from'," clarified Dotted. "'To'."
"Ca-dance," cross-clarified Cadence. "C-A-D-A-N-C-E, not C-A-D-E-N-C-E."
Dotted pursed his lips for a moment. Then his horn flared in its typically subdued fashion and he gingerly plucked a ream-thick document from the saddlebag on the floor, setting it carefully on the table next to the baby book.
"I have delved greedily and too deep into the historical forms archive, and have awoken a terror of paper and ink," announced Dotted Line. "What you see before you is apparently CV-451, the Official Petition for Change of Name for a Princess Alicorn (Non-Regnant) of Equestria. I have never seen this form before. I did not know of its existence. Before your Preliminary Application for Official Petition for Change of Name for a Princess Alicorn (Non-Regnant) of Equestria was filed with our office last week, I had very little concept that I would ever, in my lifetime, have need of a Form CV-451."[6]
"Yes," said the would-be Princess Cadance. "And the Preliminary Application said that I had five days from the original filing to complete all required documents, and unfortunately, it took me a while to obtain my birth certificate, because I had to fly all the way out to Reduit to get it[7], and then there was this big ceremony that had to happen, and, well, one thing led to another. But! Here I am, five days later, ready to complete my Petition." She folded her hooves perkily before herself.
"This document," explained Dotted Line, on the off chance that the Princess had forgotten to wear her contact lenses that morning, "is five hundred pages long. According to your timeline, we are supposed to complete it by the end of the day. And Your Highness is doing all this... to shift a single vowel in her name four positions up the alphabet."
A faint note of adolescent testiness crept into the Princess's voice. "Yes, and the Preliminary Application was a full fifty pages, and I'm not looking forward to having to start the process all the way over again from the beginning, so may we please get a move on?"
Drip, drip, drip. ...fRrReEeEeEeE uSsSsss...
Dotted pinched his muzzle between his hooves. He had a great deal of respect for Equestria's two princesses. Really he did. As a cradle Deocrat and as a loyal servant of the Tiara, showing deference to the alicorn gentry was writ more-or-less into his blood. But there were times, just some times, when it came to the younger of the two, when he wished that... that...
...well, never mind what he wished. Dotty was nothing if not a creature of duty. Stiffening his lip, he lit his horn and picked up the pen once more.
"We're going to feel so good," said Princess Cadence, "when we're all done with this."
"Amen to that," murmured Dotted Line, touching his pen to the ink and lifting it to write.
* * *
Three hours into the process, diplomacy was beginning to break down.
"'Signature of legal guardian'?" exclaimed the Princess, whose mane was beginning to come disheveled, with bits of it slipping loose from her little teal bow. "'Signature of legal guardian'!?"
"A requirement of having ticked 'Resides Under Another's Auspice' twelve pages back, I'm afraid," said Dotty, whose own disheveledness was less noticeable for the simple fact that he was never particularly sheveled.[8]
"I don't have a legal guardian! I'm nine and a half flipping centuries old! Oh, and look, they want it notarized!"
"Not a barrier, Your Highness. As it so happens, I am a Notary Public."
"Really?" said Princess Cadence, resting her chin on her hooves with feigned incredulity. "And are you a necromancer as well, Mister Line? Is death itself not a barrier to your powers? Because I can tell you where thirty entire generations of my legal guardians are located: the lych-yard of the Abbey at Reduit. The last one who could reasonably have been considered to be a guardian of mine was laid to rest twenty whole years ago. Shall we disinter Sister Aeon, sir? Get her to set her cold hoof to this nightmare?"
Dotted licked his lips, nervously. "Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia, then."
"Yes," said Princess Cadence, a bit snippily. "Fine. Let's skip over that bit for now, and when we're all done, we can take it to Aunty and get her to sign it. Are you able to notarize a Princess's signature?"
"Yes," said Dotted, in all truth, skipping over the fact that asking the Equestrian State to certify that Princess Celestia was indeed Princess Celestia was something of a ridiculous concept. If the reigning monarch of all Equestria was not, in fact, herself, the Equestrian State had more and bigger problems than a single Notary Public could solve.
"Great. Next page, then, and please remember we have to finish one of these every thirty seconds or so to keep pace."
"Thankfully, a lot of this is boilerplate," said Dotted, leafing past several pages in sequence, always keeping half an eye on the ominous baby book lying nearby. "Boilerplate. Boilerplate. Boilerplate. Aha, here's some content." He cleared his throat. "'List, singly, all relevant dental records, using the space below.'" Dotted frowned, turning the paper this way and that, and then set it back on the stack. "That's what it says, I'm afraid."
"All relevant dental records?" said Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, shaking her head in wide-eyed disbelief. "Are some of my teeth more relevant than others? Incisors and molars, perhaps?"
"Haven't the foggiest."
"Guess!" she shouted, throwing her forehooves wide.
"'Guessing' is not survival behavior in either of my chosen professions, Highness," said Dotty, sternly. "Bureaucracy is an awful lot like chemistry. Pressing ahead despite uncertainty tends to make things explode. What you need to do is set this paper aside, and then when we're finished here, you go to your current dentist and get her to fill in whatever information she feels would be an adequate answer to the question, then have her sign her name, making certain that she lists all her professional credentials after her signature. That way, if it's ever contested, you can reference—"
"No!" screamed the Princess, cutting Dotted quite off. "I will do no such thing! I hate this form, Mister Line! Hate, hate, hate it! And, since I am the Immortal Paragon of All Love Already, that really means something!"
The functionally-young alicorn pushed herself away from the table, her chest rising and falling as she stared red-hot molten venomous exploding daggers at the offending document.
A momentary softness tripped across Dotted's visage. He stood from his seat and crossed over to the Princess. "When I hate a thing," he said, "I find that it is time for tea."
The Princess looked up at him. "Is it time for tea?" she asked, her voice small.
"Constantly," replied Dotted Line.
* * *
"You know," said Cadence, sipping daintily at a cup of nice conventional Assam Black, "all I can think of while we're doing this is how many pages we're falling behind."
"You are able to think," Dotty grunted. "This is an improvement."
Cadence thought about this for a moment. "You're right."
"Yes," agreed Dotty. "I am. Soon you'll be back to loving and tolerating your required paperwork, and when that happens, we will return to it, refreshed, and make up all our lost time."
The alicorn stared miserably into her tea. "And how am I supposed to know when that happens?"
Dotted produced an expression that, on a lesser face, might have been described as a smirk. "One might think you'd be the expert. Aren't you the Immortal Paragon of All Love Already?"
"Maybe. But if I happened to be the Immortal Paragon of Turning On The Hot Water, it still wouldn't make me a master plumber."
...fRrReEeEeEeE uSsSsss...
Cadence laughed a little. "Which it sounds like you're very much in need of, given those pipes."
"Yes," said Dotty, fidgeting. "The pipes, of course."
"But seriously, though," said Cadence. "I can sense love. I can manipulate love. I can change the course of love, comb out love's tangles, set a twisted love true. But what good is any of that if I don't actually understand what love is?"
"Personally, I don't need to understand the plumbing. I'm happy if the water comes out hot."[9]
Cadence gazed at him thoughtfully for a moment.
"Dotted Line," she asked, "what's the meaning of love?"
"Love is a proper Equuish breakfast. Soft eggs, stewed tomato, beans, mushrooms, hay bacon cooked to the shatter point, tea, and fried slice."
"Don't joke."
"All right, very well," said Dotty. His eyes went a bit distant, and when he next spoke, his words were touched with a faint Northerner accent that Cadence hadn't heard there before.
"Love... is the end of a thesis," he said. "Years of research and scrupulous recording, answering constant challenges to the viability and necessity of your work, holding true to your one, battered vision. And then, suddenly, it's done. Your defense is successful, the relevant copies have been filed and sent in for publication, and you've got the very last form in your hoof, a simple little single-page Application for Graduation. The moment you turn that form in to the Registrar, there comes a feeling of bliss and contentment like nothing you've ever experienced. I think that if you could find somepony in this world who made you feel that way, who always seemed to you like the happy end to a long, hard journey, you'd find love."
"So, love is...?"
"Completion," said Dotty, shrugging. "Or completeness. One or the other. Both."
Cadence gazed at him for a time.
"No," she said, at last. "No. Not quite it."
"Sorry," said Dotted, not knowing quite what else to say.
Cadence waved a hoof. "Quite all right. It's just that my first teacher once told me that when I found the stallion who could answer that question to my satisfaction, I'd find the stallion I was meant to marry."
"Just as well, then. I'd make a poor prince."
"I'm not so sure," said Cadence, with a sad little smile. She took a deep breath, then, shaking herself out and ruffling her feathers. "All right, I'm feeling it now," she said. "Shall we tackle the rest of this beast?"
"Certainly." Dotted levitated the tea service back over to a convenient sideboard and picked up his pen once more. "Resuming. 'Section One Hundred and Eighty-Seven: Please consult your Preliminary Application.'"
"Got it right here," said the Princess, levitating the smaller ancillary document out of her saddlebag and floating it over to Dotted.
"Excellent. Now, this one's easy; all we need is to copy the official routing number and timestamp from the Preliminary Application over to the Petition. Foal's play. Even a child could do it."
She smiled. "Sounds wonderful."
Dotted dipped his pen into the ink as he briefly skimmed the top page of the Application, then floated it over to the Petition.
He froze.
The nib of the pen, suspended in mid-air, dripped once onto the page.
"The timestamp," he breathed.
"Yes?" said Princess Cadence. "Is something wrong?"
"The opening remark on the Preliminary Application. It calls for a five-day turnaround on the Petition."
"Yes, of course. I filed the Preliminary Application last Wednesday. Wednesday to Thursday, Thursday to Friday, Friday to Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Five days."
Dotted swallowed. "Business days," he muttered.
"Sorry?"
"That's five business days, Highness." Dotted tapped with the butt end of the pen at the Preliminary Application. "This... this calls for calendar days."
"No," said Princess Cadence, snatching the paper away from him. "No, it can't be."
"Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. The Petition was due two days ago, Highness."
The Princess began trembling like an extremely angry leaf.
"No," she repeated. "This can't happen. This isn't happening."
"Deep breaths, Your Highness. All we need to do is get a fresh copy of the Preliminary Applic—"
"It was fifty pages long!" shrieked Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. "I am not starting over! There has to be a way to fix this!"
"There is," said Dotted. "What we need to do is get a fresh copy of the Prelimin—"
"No! Change the timestamp, or something!"
"That would be completely contrary to the entire point of a timestamp."
"What if... what if you notarized it?"
Dotted's mind boggled for a moment. "Notarization doesn't give me the power to declare something true, Your Highness."[10]
"Why doesn't it? What's the point of notarizing things at all?"
"It's the machine," said Dotted. "The great machine of bureaucracy that says we don't actually have to trust each other, only the government."
"It's a bad machine!" shouted the Princess. "You, sir, are a cog in a very bad machine!"
"The machine is what the machine is. I have been nothing but solicitous to Your Highness's needs in this matter—"
"'Solicitous'? Why didn't you tell me about the 'calendar days' thing before we spent three hours on this monstrosity?"
Dotted took a deep breath. "That instruction was on the Preliminary Application, filed before I was asked to become involved with this case. I trusted, apparently erroneously, that you had thoroughly perused it."
"You should have known how the process worked without me showing you the form!"
"I've never seen any of these forms before in my life!" bellowed Dotted, breaking at last. "We've never needed them, because we've never had an alicorn Princess so all-fired trivial as you!"
And, there it was, out in the open. A shocked silence descended over the conference room.
...fRrReEeEeEeE uSsSsss...
"Oh, shut up!" snapped Dotted, at the ceiling. He turned back to the Princess. "Er, I mean, which is to say, Highness—"
"No, no, I understand," said the Princess, composedly. "You want me to be more like my Aunty. Scheming. Condescending. Manipulative."
Dotted's tiny inner colthood fundamentalist bristled, quite against his wishes. "The Princess of the Sun and Moon," he recited, "is the all-loving, omnibenevolent—"
"—horrible, tyrannical—"
"—sovereign leader of both our nation and the entire free world."
"And a Grade One pain in the dock. You haven't lived with her."
"It would seem best not to disrespect her, is what I am saying."
"You know what? We're done here," said Princess Cadence. "I want you to flip to the back and start signing things. I'll bear the fallout on my own wings."
"But—"
"Do it."
Dotty nodded. A Royal Order was a Royal Order, after all. Dutifully, he levitated every paper in the stack save the last over to the "completed" pile. Squaring it on the table before him, he began to read.
After a time, the Princess spoke up. "What? What is it?"
"You aren't much going to like this."
"Read it to me."
"'To my wonderful little niece,'" Dotted began. "'Congratulations on completing this ridiculous form. By now it has possibly crossed your mind that the process of changing one's legal name, even for a Princess of Equestria, cannot possibly be so complicated as to require a five-hundred page manual. You would be absolutely correct in supposing this.'"
Beneath the pink of her coat, Princess Cadence's face went livid.
"'This lesson was one of patience and humility in the face of frustration. Many ponies of our beautiful land are quite set in their ways, as is the nature of our species. As a Princess of Equestria and future Ambassador Extraordinary to the City-State of Cloudsdale, you must always show respect to the traditions and procedures of your chosen country, even when they do not always seem to make a great deal of sense to you. If you are reading this at the completion of a long and difficult voyage through the legal channels, or have merely (and quite wisely, I might add) perused the entirety of the task ahead of you before starting in on it, you have my commendation and congratulation.'"
Dotted tried to swallow away the hard knot forming in his throat. "'If, on the other hoof, you are being read this after becoming a holy terror and taking out your princessy frustrations on a helpless and quite innocent civil servant of some description, we have more to discuss. Please report to me at your earliest convenience. Signed, with love, H.R.H. Celestia Sol Invicta, Voice of the Mountain, Princess Regnant of Equestria, Defender of Canterlot, Warden of Everfree,' et cetera, et cetera." Dotted folded the paper and placed it in a tent shape on the desk before him. He rather wished he could hide in the little structure thus created.
"The troll," whispered Cadence. "The horrible, horrible troll."
Dotted took a moment to compose himself. "I think," he said, "what the Princess is trying to say, is that—"
"Thank you, Mister... Line, is it?" came a mellifluous voice from the direction of the door. "But I won't be needing your interlocutory services this afternoon."
Dotted hit the floor so quickly that he ended up cracking his horn on the edge of the table. "Your Majesty!" he stammered. "We are... singularly unprepared for a royal visit today!"[11]
Celestia of the Sun and Moon chuckled musically. "Sometimes, I like to see what my little ponies are up to when they aren't prepared for a royal visit," she said. "You've done well in Director Pigeonhole's absence, Mister Line. I've not graced this office with a visit for several decades now, and I must say, the Bureau appears to be running more smoothly than ever."
"Yes, we pride ourselves on our efficiency in making sure that... things are... er... defined." Dotted winced at the way his words seemed to be spilling out all over the place, as though from an upended coffee cup. Celestia preserve me, he thought. Celestia preserve me from herself.
"And doing a splendid job of it," said the unquestioned monarch of all Equestria. "On that topic, please forgive a Princess for playing about in the historical forms archive for a bit and substituting some of my own creations for the existing documents. There were several more bureaucratic snares and pitfalls laid there for my niece, but rest assured they are all now disarmed, and your efficiency should encounter no further tangles."
"Thank you, Your Highness."
"And as for you, Mi Amore," said Princess Celestia, turning her patient gaze on her niece. "Truth be told, I expected better of the pony who once got two entire warring houses of the Canterlot nobility to set aside their differences and enter into alliance."
The younger alicorn kicked at the leg of the table and muttered something under her breath.
Celestia smiled. "That said, congratulations on your successful change of name, Princess Cadance-with-an-'a'."
Princess Cadance looked up. "But... but we didn't finish the petition."
"The petition was, as noted, entirely spurious. Your actual change of name has already been processed."
"How?"
Celestia winked. "I slipped the documents into your ambassadorial commission paperwork. Another lesson for you, Mi Amore: always read and understand each and every paper you are asked to sign before you sign it. You have been 'Princess Cadance' since you woke up this morning, and therein is found my final lesson for you to-day." Celestia gestured serenely at Dotted Line, and he felt the strong urge to dive bodily under the table. "It wasn't 'old, boring Princess Cadence' who pitched a fit at this loyal civil servant today. It was in fact 'glamorous, sophisticated, new Princess Cadance', the one who 'exemplifies Love's power to change the world'. Is my lesson clear, Mi Amore?"
"My image," said a despondent-looking Princess Cadance, "isn't as important as what I do."
"Very good," said Celestia, wrapping her niece in one enormous wing. "And now, I believe we have monopolized Mister Line's time quite enough for one day."
"Sorry, Dotty," said Princess Cadance, smiling sheepishly at him.
"Quite all right," said Dotty, silently begging the world to provide him with an interview room completely devoid of incarnate deities in the very near future. With a dance of feathers, the newly-minted Princess Cadance was ushered out of the room.
Celestia alone returned a moment later. "Mister Line, thank you for the part you played, however unwitting, in our little shadow play to-day."
"Think nothing of it," said Dotted. He himself would be valiantly attempting to think nothing of it absolutely as soon as possible.
"You're a good administrator," said the Princess. "I get the feeling that you and I will be sharing some interesting times."
Dotted stifled a whimper. The phrase "interesting times" featured prominently on his personal list of top ten things you never want to hear spoken by your head of state, ever.[12] "I'm sure we will," he managed at last.
Princess Celestia nodded to him. "Walk in light, Dotted Line," she said, and then she, too, was gone.
Dotted did go ahead and crawl under the table at that point. All in all, it had been a pretty poor day for an extremely little pony who very much liked to keep his head down and make things function with a minimum of fuss. But, with any luck, the rest of the day would be pleasant, productive, and free of the presences and machinations of alicorns.
Just as he was thinking these words, he heard the drip of saltwater on the surface of the table above him.
...fRrReEeEeEeE uSsSsss...
"Of course," he said. "Of course they forgot the baby book."
Dotted Line wasn't sure of it, wasn't sure of anything, anymore; but there, crouched under his own interview table and listening to the pitter-pat of undigenous meta-emanations on the wood above him, he began to have the sneaking suspicion that he had just experienced a moment that would last for the rest of his life.
Author's Note
Read more about the Equestrian Civil Service in Ghost of Heraclitus's excellent "Whom the Princesses Would Destroy..." and "A Canterlot Carol". If you enjoyed this work and would like to be notified of future stories as they are posted, consider joining the "Cadance of Cloudsdale" story group! The cycle continues with "The First Time You See Her".
