Sugarfree

Chapters

Service with a Smile
Housekeeping
Sweet Dreams
24 Hour Party Ponies
Party Like There's No Tomorrow
Home Sweet Home
Little White Lies
The Royal Snogging
Party Foul
Seven Minutes in Heaven
Last One Out
Safe
Gildaville
The Regulars
Public Enemy Number Fun

Service with a Smile

Service with a Smile

Joe yelped in a brief but arrestingly high-pitched screech, vibrating in pain as he held his bow. In an instant, Sunny had scrambled to her feet and swiveled to face her sister. "Luna! What in Equestria is wrong with you?!"

Luna slowly turned to look in Sunny's direction, her eyes cold and empty. She seemed to consider the taste in her mouth as she moved her tongue around the back of her teeth, clearly having expected something much different.

Joe looked at her in terror. "Sunny, i-it's fine, don't—"

"It's not 'fine'! It's as far away from fine as you can get!! Luna you should be in bed right now! You are in no condition to be running around Canterlot sn..." She gestured wildly at Joe's rear, having no idea what to even call what her sister had just done. "S-sniffing innocent colts, willy-nilly!!"

Gilda was absolutely floored. The swinging gemstones on this one! Those were some bold-ass words to hurl at a living deity. Joe jumped between the two mares, waving his hooves at Sunny in a vain attempt to diffuse the situation. "H-h-h-how's about we just... we settle in with some fresh-brewed java, huh? That sound good?" He looked desperately at his princess, praying to Celestia she wasn't just rearing up to devour the both of them for their insolence. Maybe she did this every night, he wondered, and nobody had yet lived to talk about it. Suddenly he could think of all kinds of vaguely feasible Nightmare Night ghost stories he'd never considered might be true.

Luna lazily returned to staring straight ahead. Opening and closing her mouth for a few moments, like she was getting used to her own tongue. Finally, slowly, "Thy coat smells sweet as candy, little one." Joe recoiled in horror, glancing toward the door. He might be able to make it. "But thou tastes of sweat and grease."

Joe swallowed. That was... good?

The diarch’s eyes widened as she seemed to notice something behind the counter. She turned to face him, eyes ablaze with infernal lunar energy. "Donuts."

Joe raised a shaky hoof. "W-well, sure th-thing, your eminence! Let's..." He inched his way over to the counter, wildly waving his hoof at Gilda and Sunny to get back into their seats. "...get you a couple of ol' Donut Joe's..." He gave an enthusiastic half-curl with his foreleg. "...famous ch-cherry-glazed donuts then!"

Luna regarded the promise with stoic indifference, and moved to lay down at one of the nearby booths, near the door. Joe fumbled for his cleanest, fanciest serving platter under the rear stove as Sunny continued to gaze at her sister, baffled. Something was obviously very wrong. When she'd last seen her, an hour or so previous, Luna was running a remarkably high temperature, passed out in a nauseous sweat-soaked heap in her room. She'd done little but toss about in fitful sleep and curse her condition for the past week, unable to carry out the vast majority of her duties. Neither could remember her ever being quite so wiped out by a fever in the past. It was nothing if not concerning. The white mare gasped as she held a hoof to her mouth — maybe her sister was delirious? It was entirely possible, given the disgraceful display she had just witnessed.

The diner doors popped open once more as a frantic moori mare of the Midnight Guard flew inside, desperately searching for her princess. She darted over the counter as Joe started loading the platter with the freshest donuts he could find, idly flapping her batlike wings as she scanned the back room. Joe seemed oblivious as she rounded the panning shelves, poked her head into his trot-in freezer, and flew back out, landing on the counter.

"Joe! JOE! Joe did you see the princess anywhere around here?!" she pleaded in an adorably scratchy, squeaky voice. Joe gave a pale look and pointed his hoof at the princess, who had since fallen asleep in her booth, snoring loudly. The mare collapsed onto the counter in relief. "Oh thank the stars, she's back down."

Hoofing the last few donuts onto the platter and gently arranging them into a decorative spiral, Joe flattened into a sour scowl. "Sissy how do you lose track of the living queen of darkness? You know why they have you guarding her in the first place?! It sure as heck isn't for her sake! It's so you can protect us from her, in case she runs rampant like this!"

His sister pulled back in genuine offense, hovering over the counter. "Weh!" She pointed a hoof at her chest. "I'm not a prison guard, you know, I'm a guard guard! She usually behaves herself just fine!"

"Just fi— she literally just tried to eat me, Seraph!"

Sunny blushed lightly as Joe shook his flank defiantly, showing off the arc of shallow teeth marks peppering the top of his donut cutie mark. Seraph stifled a chortle with both hooves, wide-eyed in shock. "HOLY hayseed, she really took a bite out of crime with you, huh!" She placed her hoof against the bite and pressed lightly, inspecting the light horseshoe of red it left behind. "Think you're bleeding a bit there, big bro."

Joe craned his neck to glare at the row of teeth marks adoring his flank, "I know I'm bleeding, sis! I just had a freaking alicorn try to bite off my ass!" He hissed, "I'll have to wrap it up when I'm done waiting on Princess Vampony over there."

Sunny was appalled. Partially at Joe's blatant disrespect for his princess, yes, but mostly for the horrifying fact that her sister had actually taken a bite out of poor Joe! Not a huge one, mind you, but far worse than the playful nibbles she left on the occasional suitor. Was she... trying to eat the donut? Maybe she really was delirious?

For a moment — a half-second maybe — Joe's cutie mark seemed to flicker. Sunny couldn't be sure if it wasn't just the rabid sleep deprivation playing tricks on her, but she swore there had been something else in its place, ever so briefly. It wasn't a circle, like it usually was, it was thinner, an egg-like horizontal oval, with a smaller circle contained within. An eye maybe? In a flash, Seraph had leapt across the counter and covered his flank with both of her hooves, a terrified look staring right into Sunny's eyes. She turned to Joe. "Ahah! We should... you should go and get that wrapped up, big bro! I'll fly over the princess' nightmarishly high-calorie farce of a meal."

Joe started to push back against her shooing, but stopped dead when Seraph whispered something into his ear. Again, Joe stole a horrified glance at Sunny, then Gilda, before turning his flank in the other direction and trotting backwards, into the back room. His sister waited a moment for him to canter out of sight, then lifted the platter onto her back, walking over to the princess' booth. With a shift of her weight, the platter slid from her backside to the table. "Here you go, Your Highness! Fresh from the oven!" She chirped, loudly, startling Luna from her sleep.

There was a brief moment where Luna seemed confused and a little alarmed, glancing around the diner like she had never seen the place before. Moments later, her eyes glazed over, and she stared down at the donuts. Seraph pulled into the booth across from her, and snuck several glances as the princess slowly, but deliberately, planted her face directly into the pile of donuts. A muffled munching could be heard as she submerged her face in sweets, mechanically chewing, without the slightest indication of pleasure or displeasure. Seraph sighed, putting her chin on her crossed hooves. This was weird.

Gilda leaned over to Sunny, their eyes locked on the unsightly display of militant gorgery. "Gods, she is just packing those things away!" she whispered with an impressed chuckle.

Sunny frowned. The griffon was right, of course. Celestia had her cake-fueled moments of indulgence from time to time, but her sister was never one to allow herself such unrefined decadence. Luna's style of decadence was much more ritualized and elegant, a dignified affair with tiny forks and tinier portions. She'd always been that way, but much more so after she returned from exile, having somehow become much more royal, much more courtly. It suited her, but nevertheless, Celestia wondered where it had come from. Most of her little rituals were ones she'd seemed to have made up herself, with little apparent historical basis. Submerging one's face into a pile of donuts in plain view of the public was decidedly not one of them.

Hopping off of her seat, Sunny trotted across the diner with a will, ignoring Gilda's startled objections. Something wasn't right here. Glaring at the slouching guardsmare dully watching her princess devour her meal, Sunny propped her forelegs onto the table and reared on her hind ones. "Soldier, your princess is visibly ill, acting erratically and dangerously! Why have you not returned her to her quarters?!"

Seraph seemed taken aback, her yellow draconian eyes widening in surprise. "Hey, Her Highness can do whatever Her Highness wants, lady! She's a goddess, for Sun's sake. She can eat some donuts if she feels like it."

Sunny's cheeks puffed in frustration. "Do you not think it's strange that your princess does not even remotely acknowledge anypony? That she seems so distant and dull-witted?"

Seraph flapped into the air, hovering over Sunny in a huff of indignant irritation. "Dull-wi— you're the dull one! If the princess had to respond to every fussy two-bit businessmare in the kingdom, we'd never get anything done!"

Sunny Skies gritted her teeth, eyes ablaze. Who did this impudent little brat think she was, talking down to her like that? It had been a very, very long time since she'd been sassed with such wanton abandon. She was beginning to remember exactly why she'd stopped going on dates in her unicorn disguise. "You are on thin ice, missy."

"Pshh, yeah? What are you gonna do, featherweight? I eat scrawny schoolfillies like you for breakfast!" She flashed her fangs with a hungry smile, landing in front of Sunny Skies and slowly advancing on her.

Sunny shook her head, still amazed by her sheer audacity. "If you think you could possibly frighten me, little one, you are hilariously mistaken. Stand aside, and let me tend to the princess."

"Nothing doin'." Her wings unfurled in that way Celestia usually did when she wanted to make herself look more threatening. She didn't appreciate the gesture. Bracing her hind legs, she stopped backing up and lowered her head, leveling her horn at the grinning moori.

"So be it." Sunny's horn flared as an arc of brilliant light lashed towards the guardsmare, curving sharply and striking her in the side. Seraph yelped, dancing on two hooves as the burn passed. "Yeeow!! You little rat! That hurt!"

With a sharp thrust of her reptilian wings, Seraph launched herself at brilliant speed. In a blink, Sunny had ducked under the first pass and thrown up a reflective ward at her flank, into which the rebounding moori collided face-first. The field wrapped itself in a spiral, bundling the mare in the hard light like a bat-winged burrito. Seraph's hind legs bucked wildly for a couple seconds before she managed to lodge a hoof in the midsection, curling in, then out in a sharp, outward full-body thrust. The field strained, shimmered, and tore, evaporating into ether as Seraph spun to face her opponent, who was already trotting toward the princess.

A sharp, seething hiss tore from her clenched fangs as she scrambled into the air for another strafe. Sunny startled at the sound — a coil like that should've held somepony twice her size! Knowing this week, the spell must not have woven evenly. Why in Tartaurus couldn't she properly cast even a lousy binding spell?

Sunny tried to duck toward and under the oncoming blur, but there was no time. She took a solid hoof to the eye and staggered back, her head colliding with the table. With a shake, she cleared the stars from her vision and molded a middling solar flare, bathing the moori in sunlight and causing her to reel in shock. A spell like that wasn't common, considering its intricacies, but it was effective.

"Gah! No fair!!" Seraph scrambled under the table as the flash lightly burned her exposed skin. Moori didn't take direct sunlight well, especially in concentrated doses. With a flick of her hoof, Sunny clamped a pair of hard light bracers around the base of Seraph’s wings and her forelegs, dropping her to the ground with a thud. That should buy her the time she needed.

She stole a glance back to the front just in time to see a mortified Donut Joe scampering over the counter, having just emerged to find his sister locked in mortal combat with his most beloved regular. Napkins and menus all across the diner shriveled in a blaze of fire from the solar flash, some forming a light cinder twister around the table. He hit the ground running. She only had a few moments, even less with Seraph already beginning to bite through the shimmering light cuffs. With a leap, she clattered onto the table, knocking the platter of donuts from Luna's maw and onto the floor. Sunny filled her lungs and lit her horn alight. "AWAKEN!"

The Royal Canterlot Voice bellowed through the small diner, shaking plates, vibrating glasses, and quaking cups of coffee like a dragon's howl. Joe's hooves screeched as he froze in place, sliding to Luna's side with panic-stricken eyes. Two dark blue hooves scratched at the tabletop from below as Seraph began hoisting herself up from the floor, wings still bound but forelegs freed. For an instant, all three looked to Princess Luna.

She had stiffened in alarm, her spine straight and her eyes refocusing. She blinked a few times, then slowly panned the scene, mouth agape. "We... art..." Her eyes locked onto Sunny. "Sister! How did... when did..." She glanced at the overturned platter on the floor, the half-eaten donuts scattered amongst a light dusting of ashes and napkins.

Seraph managed to pull herself onto the tabletop, finally breaking the binding with her rear hoof, "My Princess!" She scrambled to a salute. "My Princess, I was just about to..." She trailed off, peering into the dumbstruck gaze of Princess Luna, "Do... do you know where you are right now?"

Luna was still staring at her sister, trying to figure out if this was real or not. Certainly felt real. But why in the hoof would she and her sister be in some dingy breakfast diner? She turned to the stallion to her side, a rather dim-looking, yet vaguely roguish fellow in a white shirt. "Art thou the purveyor of this..." She gestured a hoof at the breadth of his diner, apparently having difficulties thinking of the right word to encompass its disheveled je ne sais quoi. "...rustic establishment?"

Joe bowed. "Yes, Your Ladyship. Y-you came in not ten minutes ago for donuts. There was a... minor altercation, during your meal, b-but that's been resolved. Right sis?" He narrowed a glare at the guardsmare as she plopped down on the seat.

"Yeah yeah." Seraph grumbled, rolling her eyes.

Luna moved her tongue around her mouth. True, she could taste something, but it didn't really strike her as sweet. Didn't really have a taste at all, strangely. It was... heavy? And sort of prickly-numb. It certainly wasn't good, whatever it was. She gestured at her guardsmare. "Water, if you would." Seraph snapped a salute, and dashed off to get her a glass.

Joe rose from his bow with a shaky smile. "You... said something about your sister? Princess Celestia? Is Her Highness going to be visiting us as well?"

Luna glanced at Sunny with a raised eyebrow. Behind Joe, the mare waved her hooves some variation of 'no' 'please don't' 'do not say anything' in a wide, wild motion. Luna frowned. "You will pay that no mind, my subject. These donuts were truly dreadful. I'm... unsure why I would have come here. I certainly do not remember doing so."

Joe went completely pale, his legs shaking and his mouth agape. Nopony had ever disliked his donuts. They were... they were perfect! He wasn't being proud or brash when he said that, they were perfect. He had spent his entire adult life perfecting them. That princess of the night herself would find them utterly disgusting was... it was literally his worst nightmare. He must be in Tartaurus.

Sunny looked at her sister in shock, then at Joe, her ears flat against her head in alarm. "L-Luna! How could you say such a thing to poor Joe?!"

Luna blinked, then stared forward for a moment before looking back at her sister. "We're... not sure.." She pawed at one of the discarded bits of donuts on the table. "We certainly didn't enjoy them, but... apologies, for being so crass." She gave a shaky smile at Joe. "If it's any consolation, my sister's vivid descriptions of thy bewitching flank were not exaggerated."

Sunny's jaw dropped. Joe, still processing the horror of her outright rejection, cracked a distant, dubious smile. "P-Princess Celestia said... that? About me?"

Luna nodded, taking the glass of water from Seraph as she appeared from the back room. Her gaze drifted as she took a sip and sloshed the water around her mouth. Swallowing, she placed the glass back down. "We are not sure why we said that, either. You must excuse us, we have not been well this week. Hoofservant!" She bellowed, forgetting her guardsmare was but a few feet away. Seraph startled and flew to her side. "We take our leave."

Joe bowed. "W-well, we certainly hope you'll grace us with your presence in the future, Your Highness."

Luna seemed genuinely flabbergasted by the offer, giving a confounded look as she shook the donut crumbs out of her mane. "It is... unlikely. Fare thee well, my little pony."

Seraph gave Joe a sympathetic look as she turned to pull open the door, holding fast as her princess imperiously trotted out of the diner and took to the sky.

Joe slumped onto the floor, a harrowed look strewn across his face. Slowly and sadly, he pulled his forelegs over his slowly shaking head. "...I cannot believe that just happened."

Sunny laid next to him, pressing her head against his. She sighed. "I think she was just... out of it, Joe. You saw how she was acting!"

"I think she only liked my donuts when she was out of it," he whimpered.

Sunny frowned. That was true. The second she snapped out of her... trance, she was completely revolted by them. "You and I both know you make the best donuts in Equestria. I don't care what anyone says."

Joe let out a long, defeated sigh.

"Hey," Gilda leaned over from her seat, chewing a honey glazed cruller she'd plucked from the open tray. "This is one good freaking donut, Joe." She swallowed, hungrily tearing off another chunk. "Princess bat-brain clearly isn't the goddess of good taste."

Sunny grinned, watching Joe's expression soften ever so slightly, as he peeked out from between his hooves. With a nuzzle, she turned around and trotted over to the counter, plucking a Manehattan Crème from the tray.

"I don't know how anybody can take a bite out of one of these sugary joys and not -HRPH!!" Her eyes bulged as the single most wholly revolting sensation she had ever encountered invaded her mouth. By reflex, her maw opened wide and her head tilted, dropping the half-chewed clump onto the diner floor. Joe practically fainted. She could almost see his heart shattering in those two big, adorable emerald-green eyes, but she couldn't stop herself from coughing desperately as her body tried to force out every horrid crumb.

She shot Joe a mortified look through her watery, reddened eyes. "Sorry! Joe I'm s—" She braced her rear legs as another wave of hacking overtook her. "S- COUGH —sorry!!"

Gilda glared at her with a fury. "What is wrong with you, lady?!"

Grabbing Luna's cup of water from the table, Joe trotted up to the red-faced mare and helped her take a cleansing sip, tears running down her cheeks as she drank. He swallowed. "Is it really that bad?"

She finished the cup and coughed a couple more times, holding her head down as the taste finally faded. With a dismal, ashamed look, she looked Joe in the eye and silently nodded.

Gilda grabbed another Manehattan Crème from the tray and slid onto the ground, taking a big bite as she walked over. "Joe it's FINE! They taste FINE! I don't know what the heck kind of cruel, lame joke she's trying to play on you but don't buy it for a second!" With a twist of her claw, she tore off a piece and thrust it at Joe. "Here! Try it yourself!"

Joe looked at Sunny's red, tear-soaked eyes, then at Gilda's determined glare, and took the piece of donut into his hoof. He gave it a sniff. Smelled like a fresh Manehattan Crème, full of the light, sweet, fluffy filling he'd lovingly mixed together not an hour and a half earlier. With a flick of the hoof, he popped it into his mouth. Spectacular. A symphony of smooth, warm, sugary heaven embraced his taste buds. It was like swimming in a cloud.

He opened his eyes, and nodded at Gilda. She seemed to settle slightly, turning to Sunny in a suspicious huff. She was wiping her tongue with a napkin, her face still beet red with a horrid mixture of disgust and shame. She caught Joe's gaze, and closed her mouth, dropping the napkin. "Joe I..."

He waved a hoof, giving her a sympathetic nod. He didn't know Sunny well — she'd never come by often, before this latest week — but he knew ponies, and he knew a liar. Far, far better than most. Sunny Skies wasn't a liar. He sighed. "...What could it possibly be?"

Sunny shook her head. "I-it's not that it tastes bad, exactly, it's more than it... I dunno... feels wrong. Like it's... I can't describe it, it just feels wrong!" She gave Gilda a desperate look. "I swear to the stars I'm not making this up!" She looked back at Joe, "What did you make these out of?!"

Joe flustered. "Nothing! The same old stuff! Flour, salt, eggs, milk, sugar, butt... er..." He trailed off, turning to the counter. "...sugar."

Cantering to the coffee pot, he poured a quarter-mug and placed it on the counter, alongside the shaker of sugar. Gently, he poured a small spoonful of sweet crystals, then pulled close the mug. With a quick glance at his night crew, he started stirring in the sugar, going one way, then the opposite, then back.

The three of them leaned in, heads lightly butting together, as they watched the coffee settle, and the sugar eerily rise to the surface. Joe stirred it again, but the sugar refused to dissolve.

Sunny looked Joe in the eye, shocked. "It's... it's the magic. The magic that makes up the sugar."

Gilda raised an eyebrow. "Sugar's made of sugar, not magic."

"Magic's in everything. It's in coffee, it's in sugar. The two should... they should work together just fine." She swallowed, shaking her head in disbelief. "I think there's something very, very wrong with the sugar, Joe."

Author's Note

I know Luna seems a bit... forward, but bear with me. There's a reason for that.

Sunny wiping her tongue with a napkin was taken directly from my first-ever attempt at drinking Moxie, when I was like eight. I immediately spat it out, and began wiping my tongue against a dish towel to get the taste out. A decade and change later, I would discover that a bar across from my apartment served a drink that was literally Whiskey and Moxie. They called it the Blackwater. I tried it. It was horrible.

Huge thanks to Luminary for pre-reading, and helping me tighten this up quite a bit. Eakin as well, for taking on the first draft and helping me get my Gilda into shape, and Brawny for doing a final check and tweaking the formatting. You are all shining stars.

Housekeeping

Author's Note

Quick note: This chapter used to be the prologue, but... it's really quite a jarring shift in tone. I probably need to soften it a bit later on, but I felt like it fit here better than at the start.

Enormous thanks to Luminary for pre-reading, and helping me tighten this up quite a bit. Eakin as well, for taking on the first horrid draft and helping me get my Gilda into shape, and Brawny for doing a final check and tweaking the formatting. You are all shining stars.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping
(One week ago)

The frantic clattering of hooves echoed along the vast atrium leading to the royal quarters, its vaulted ceilings swarming with bat-winged pegasi. The dozen or so on-duty members of Luna's Midnight Guard scrambled into formation before the towering entrance to Her Majesty's dining hall, standing at attention as their looming commander screeched to a stop. Blind Dive took quick headcount of his guards, accounting for all but one. He frowned, glaring back down the hallway to watch a panic-stricken mare darting around the corner, armor plate half-buckled and spear clenched between her teeth as she fumbled with the rear latch. With a hurried swoop, she spat the spear to the ground behind the open gap in the ranks and landed in formation, holding a stoic salute. Dive shook his head. "Composers, get to it. Listen as you work."

The handful of unicorns snapped a salute and began whittling apart the messy twelve-layer magic lock that had been hastily cast over the doorway. Their commander slowly trotted along the line of moori pegasi, his missing eye turned toward the unwavering royal guards. "Alrighty cupcakes, we all knew this day would come sooner or later. As you are well aware, Her Majesty, bless her ever-lovin' heart, decided it might be a grand idea to give the living god of chaos free reign to do as he chooses," With a turn, he nodded in the direction of the distant rear wall. A still-burning trail of fire wound from a draconequus-shaped hole to the guest chamber door. "And it looks like he's chosen to seal himself in Her Highness' dining room and start brewing up something nasty. All we know for certain is that there's something very, very wrong with the magic pouring out from that room," He bucked a plated back leg at the door to his rear. "And we're here to shut down his little tea party."

The frazzled guardsmare swallowed as she quietly picked up her spear from the floor and held it at attention. "H-how, exactly, sir?" Dive leveled a stern look in her direction as the eighth seal unwound, falling apart into nothingness. "The Royal Sisters will do the heavy lifting against the big guy, they've done it before. We're here to mop up any nasty distractions he might have crawling around. You got that, kid?" The guardsmare quickly nodded, visibly sweating. The commander continued, turning toward the half-dozen unicorns. "If Discord throws something your way, you redirect. You do not attempt to block. I don't care how good you might think you are, draconian magic doesn't play by our rules. Approach him as you would an actual fire-breather."

With a blast of light, Princess Celestia teleported into the atrium, descending from above with an ethereal grace. Gently touching down beside Blind Dive, she stole a glance at the door. Sixth seal was coming along nicely. Turning to the commander, she motioned for her subjects to rise. "How soon?"

Dive turned to one of the unicorns. "Pixie, time."

The orange mare tilted her head slightly as she shifted the shimmering glyph delicately to the right, a dull click intoning the release of the sixth lock. Her eyes were glued to the door as she wormed her magic into the next layer. "Less than a minute... we're in the home stretch here."

Celestia nodded, taking her position behind the Night Guard. "My sister will be arriving in moments." Her eyes drifted to the bottom of the door frame, where a dull grey growth slowly crept from the room, replacing tile and stone with an unearthly charcoal dust. Pixie stopped for a moment, waving her horn over the growth with a flicker of magic before returning to picking the lock. "Harmless. I don't recognize the spell, but it's eating the floor and twisting it into this powder."

With a frown, Celestia turned to the commander. "I doubt it's focused enough to be considered a spell, knowing Discord. His magic is fairly benign, but if he doesn't reign it in, the growth will spread with impunity. We don't have time to wait."

Dive unfurled his wings, fangs spreading into an excited grin. "You heard the princess! Composers, I want wards up as soon as we're through the door. You protect our fliers until those glyphs are hot!" He turned to the moori. "The rest of you run defense until we've got a foothold! Solar sentries first, then we move forward."

There was a rhythmic crack as the base of a dozen spears clamored against the tile. With a shudder of light, the final lock fell apart like molasses, and the six unicorns began alternatively bucking at the door, prying it open an inch at a time. Dive turned to his guards. "Showtime." He thrust a hoof in the air as he took wing. "Black as night!"

The Midnight Guard readied their spears with a thunderous chant. "Luna's might!"

Pixie gave one last coordinated kick to the door before nodding to her princess. Celestia's horn burned a furious white color as the frame was surrounded by her glow, pried off the hinges, and crushed into a ball. In an instant, a strong blast of wind pressed at their backs, air rushing past them and into the room with a fury. Pixie pulled her head back and retreated out of the door. "No air! No air! It's a vacuum!"

The unicorns pressed themselves against the wall as the asphyxic room pulled in as much air as could fit through the door. Celestia narrowed her eyes, unfazed, trying to make out the detail within. Pitch black. Perhaps the darkest black she could remember ever having seen. After a few moments, the wind seemed to let up a little, and Celestia began to step forward. "We have enough to breathe. Move in!"

The unicorns poured in, their horns aglow as several layers of shimmering hex fields aligned themselves in front of them. The moori followed in a flash, four taking to the sky, four keeping pace with the princess, and the rest scattering around the unicorns.

Seeing no immediate attacker, the dizzied guardsmare latched her spear to the grip on her side and plunged her muzzle into her saddlebag, withdrawing a piece of chalk between her teeth. Time to get those glyphs up. With a flap of her wings, she pressed the chalk against the ground as she pulled into a tight circle, shifting direction in a series of sharp turns. Line by line, the complex magic circle took shape, its deepening glow against the charcoal ground engulfing the area much needed light. With one last flap, the mare skidded to the ground in front of the circle, pressing her nose to the ground and scribbling out the ancient Equestrian lettering necessary to ignite the spell.

Celestia pressed forward, thrusting an orblike solar flare in several directions to bathe the room in light. The darkness was hungry, and granting only the slightest implication of the dining hall’s towering ceiling and monolithic windows. The room was almost entirely consumed by the creeping powder, walls plastered with a faintly shimmering film that denied all light, appearing as a void darkness almost imperceptibly pulsing with hazy, rainbow-colored light. This meager allowance would have to be enough for now.

Before the princess was a towering structure of ornate rectangular pillars and archways, half-formed statues of alicorns, and a staircase that seemed to continuously warp, ever so slightly. She widened her gaze in surprise as she inspected the pillars more closely. It was vaguely similar to the old Everfree castle, in style and build, but not... quite. The wording was gibberish, and though the occasional Equestrian letter would appear, it was surrounded by seemingly random marks and parallel designs. She thought she saw a few draconian characters in the mix, but they too were either missing marks or had too many, a half-remembered approximation. She took to the air and landed atop the pillar, trying to get a better view, but even another series of flares did not show enough to safely move onward.

With a swoop, she returned to the front of the structure and beckoned the commander over. He landed with a small twist, idly watching the dust as it floated for a moment, then slowly, slowly began to settle. "Strange. Is this... what Discord calls home?"

His princess shook her head lightly, "This seems remarkably unlike him. It's much too... ornate, ordered." She pawed at the pillar before her, watching the letter fall off and re-emerge as a random series of lines. "While at the same time, sloppy."

"He is the god of chaos, ma’am."

"He's not lazy, though. At least when it comes to his work. This growth hardly can keep form. If it was one of his manifestations, it would be solid, and real. This is practically raw magic soup."

Blind Dive thought on this as he panned over the field, watching as his moori gracefully wove glyphs into the floor every couple hundred feet. It was nice work, so far. Already the dim solar sentry orbs had been summoned, idly waiting over their circles for something to blast. He frowned. "Draconian magic, the burn trail to the door, his shape in the wall... I find it hard to believe that clown's not the one responsible for this."

Celestia gazed off at the blackened structure, seeing no indication that anyone was there. No sign of activity at all. Besides the hum of magic wards and the skittering of chalk on the dirt, it was utterly silent. This place was completely dead.

With a rush of air, Princess Luna rounded the doorframe and swooped in. She briefly took in the stunning blackness before spreading her wings wide and illuminating a ceiling full of brilliant stars, the room instantly bathed in a strong but subdued nighttime glow. Celestia heard a sharp gasp as her sister suddenly thrust her wings forward, darting backwards in retreat. In her shock, she didn't see the growing pillar of dust that had slowly risen behind her, colliding sharply and unexpectedly before spiraling to the ground.

"Sister!" Celestia barreled toward the collapsing pillar, stammering to a halt as she saw Luna flapping erratically. The powder seemed to wrap itself around her, with apparent intention. She wasted no time grabbing a mindful of the charcoal with her magic and pulling it off her sister. Dive motioned for the unicorns to follow suit, their combined will slowly forcing the powder to release their princess. Luna scrambled out of the heap in terror, her eyes locked on the main structure, now fully illuminated. Celestia started to say something, then met her sister's gaze. It was a temple of some sort, eerily similar to their old home, but bigger, more ornate, and adorned with countless lunar symbols. The lunar motif repeated again and again, on almost everything. The statues shuddered as they tried to keep their pose, menacing shadows of Nightmare Moon.

Luna staggered forward in a horrified daze, before her back legs gave out and she plopped to the ground, wide eyes locked on the monolithic temple, "By the stars... this... this cannot..." She spoke to no one as the statues turned to face her, the dust at her feet silently pooling together.

"Princess!" Blind Dive bellowed, drawing Celestia's attention with a snap. She stared in disbelief as he slowly backed away from an aphonic legion of charcoal ponies, silently rising from the ground. They had no faces or features; empty equine collections of dark powder. One could see the vague silhouette of royal armor on the helm and hooves, but it was mere shape, no form. The commander glanced around the room. "Night Guard! To the princesses!"

Composers darted past as they regrouped in front of Celestia, the moori scattering into a ballet of erratic strafing runs. With a lunge, Dive speared the nearest specter, stumbling slightly as the weapon pierced through completely, to the hilt, without the slightest sign of slowing it down. With a curse, he pulled the spear out and drew it across the feet. The specter seemed to pause for a moment, then quickly reformed the lost powder before continuing its advance.

"Ditch the spears! Put your shoulder into it and scatter them! Fly through them!" He grunted as he retreated a few steps, spreading his wings and finally taking to the air with a sharp forward lunge. The specter collapsed into a plume of charcoal as he passed through it. It worked, but he could already see several more rising from the ground. They might be able to hold their own, but they couldn't win.

Celestia drew a wide arc of light from her horn and lashed across a handful of the beasts in one fluid motion, watching as their bodies evaporated but their legs remained, powder slowly rising to reform the torso. She frowned, glancing at Pixie. "Keep them at bay while I tend to my sister."

The unicorn nodded as she and her fellow unicorns began picking apart the featureless beasts. With a slow rotation of her horn, she drew a field around three and pulled the gravity as high as she could, collapsing them into a single lump of charcoal. The rock vibrated as it seemed to bleed powder, the inky dust already breaking free. Seemed to hold them longer than usual, though. She began to draw another field.

By the time Celestia made it to her sister, Luna was already half-buried in a sort of shimmering quicksand. It spiraled inward, a vortex to keep her in place, pulsing with some kind of multicolored ephemera. Standing at the edge of the pool, opposite the solar princess, was an armored figure with considerably more definition than its comrades. In fact, she recognized this one. 'Primrose Path,' Luna's hoofservant from the old, old days. She'd kept him on after Luna's exile. He'd done good work. Why would this... growth, choose his form to mimic, of all things?

It stared through her with vacant eyes, occasionally blinking, but never in the least seeming like anything more than a dimly animated puppet. Celestia ignored the bizarre distraction, digging deep into the ground with her magic and scattering the powder around her sister in one succinct blast of light. With a gentle grace, she stepped into the recessed crater and gave her sister a reassuring nuzzle. "I'm here." Luna shivered, eyes wide, lost in a world of her own.

The ground beneath Celestia's hooves began to trickle with the same unsettling rainbow haze, individual specks of dust rolling towards the center, determined to coalesce and consume her sister once again. Lowering herself beside Luna, she hoisted the smaller alicorn onto her back and leapt out of the crater, rearing toward the door. "Guards! We take our leave!"

The Composers hastily erected a wide, broad reflection shield and took off toward the entryway. The glimmering solar sentries springing to life as the advancing army of specters plodded after them, emitting tight bursts of sunlight that seemed to momentarily halt their advance. Blind Dive waved a hoof at his soldiers. "Move it out, cupcakes! We are leaving!" Fliers arched into a line, curving along the ceiling before diving through the doorway. Satisfied that he had everyone, the commander nudged the sole remaining terror-stricken guardsmare toward the exit. "Seraph I swear to the stars I will lock you in here if you do not get that flank in gear!"

With a final panicked gaze at the rising sea of shambling charcoal ghosts, the mare bolted for the door like a bat pony out of Tartaurus. The commander was moments behind her, planting himself beside his princess as she gently passed her shell-shocked sister to four hovering moori.

Blind Dive swallowed, eyes darting at the gaping doorframe. "Think we should've saved the door."

Celestia gritted her teeth, horn ablaze as an intense rectangle of light tore along the ground before them. Twelve feet of marble floor and the creeping charcoal growth above it rose into the air as the solar goddess heaved a door-shaped slab of flooring into the air and sealed the doorframe with a scream. Not missing a beat, she clenched shut her eyes and erected a series of dizzyingly complex locking spells. Pixie's jaw fell open as a three dimensional glyph of interlocking ephemeral gears twisted and knotted together, an impossible, unsolvable mechanism tied into itself with a neat little double Gordion knot. With a loud click, Celestia let out her breath, gasping for air.

For a couple moments she just sat there, catching her breath, before turning to the Composers. "I want your best work laid over that seal. Nothing is to leave that room."

Pixie joined with the rest as they laid into a bow. "O-of course."

Celestia turned to Dive with a curt nod. "Well done. Tend to your soldiers."

Blind Dive saluted, stealing a glance at the harrowed, shivering princess of the night. "What of Her Majesty?"

The princess frowned. "Something in there just... overwhelmed the poor thing." She shook her head. "I've never seen her like this."

The commander removed his helmet, knocking some of the inert charcoal powder out of his helm and onto the white tile. "What in the blue buck were those things? Living ash? You ever seen anything like that before?"

Celestia was silent, gazing at the shimmering quantum lock as it lightly ticked, once every second, like a clock.

"The moon." Luna's voice startled both as she seemed to come to her senses. With a subdued wave of the hoof she shooed away her subjects, shakily standing on all fours. Her harrowed eyes were locked on the grey dirt.

"It was the moon."

Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams
(The present)

Sweat poured down Sunny's face as she tried, desperately, to unravel her own maddeningly stubborn transformation spell. She must've cast the blasted thing hundreds of times over the centuries, and never had it been even remotely this difficult to remove. Reversing the transformation usually demanded no more effort than throwing off a dress. Now it was like trying to escape a duct-taped straitjacket. She dropped onto the ground with a gasp, taking long, deep breaths as her red-hot horn cooled from the intense effort. She'd grown a foot or so in height, and gained a few colors in her mane, but she wasn't even a third of the way there. This was the absolute last thing she needed right now.

When she felt strong enough to stand, she trotted over to the looming exit of the courtyard hedge maze and poked her head around the side of the opening. The dawn patrol would make their rounds soon enough. She'd danced this dance enough times over the centuries to know that it would probably be best to wait, and catch her breath until they'd passed.

Hearing heavy hoofsteps in the distance, Sunny slipped back into the maze, tucking her legs under her body as she silently laid on the grass. Through the exit and across the courtyard lay the ornate bench she'd had fashioned out of Discord's big, empty stone slab. She could only pray it had not been an unfathomably colossal mistake to let that weasel loose. She knew trying to reform the living embodiment of disorder had been an absurd risk, especially considering their history, but with Luna back home she... well... the idea of imprisoning someone for another thousand years just seemed cruel. She’d been cruel enough for one millennium.

It was strange. It wasn't long ago that she would've sealed Discord back up and left him to rot in the courtyard without a second thought. If the brat couldn't behave himself in this age, then maybe he would the next. And yet, barely a year had passed before she gave him another shot at freedom. Had she gone soft? The old ways seemed so distantly vengeful to her now.

As the guards finished their patrol of the area and re-entered the castle, Sunny pulled herself to her hooves with a stretch. Time for round two.

Slow this time.

She closed her eyes and lightly lit her horn, guiding the magic up from the ground and out from the air to coalesce within her body. It stirred and spun through her veins, sailing and wandering with a restless momentum. In her mind she pictured the transformation, piecing together a sort of script for the magic to follow. 'Don't be afraid,' she thought. 'You'll do fine. Just as always.'

She called on the memory of countless past transformations, feeling the process begin, then slow, then run errant. It was bored. It understood what she wanted, but getting there was such a chore, so difficult and so futile. It was scared of the spell not working again, and as a result, the spell was again not working. She couldn't think of a way to properly convey this concept of self-sabotage. It didn't grasp things that might or would happen in the future; it had eyes only for the present. Already, the magic was fraying, ready to jump ship. She sighed, letting the spell unwind for a moment as she thought on the matter. It was skittish. She needed to soothe its nerves, distract it from its frustration. A story, or better, a memory, to keep its attention. The elemental Harmony loved nothing more than a juicy story.

Her legs shook as the magic struggled, becoming harder and harder to hold onto as she searched her mind for something fresh and eminent. This had not been a good week. Between tending to Luna's fever, fretting over the moon in her dining room, and wrestling with the very essence of reality to fulfill her duties, memories of something light and encouraging were few. She hardly wanted to think back on it all herself. The only genuine laugh she'd had all week had been... well...

Sunny smiled as she called to mind the memory of Joe's foalish squeak after Luna had chomped down on his cutie mark. It had been an embarrassing, appalling display for all involved, of course, but you couldn't very well run a kingdom if you didn't let yourself enjoy the absurd every now and again.

A soft giggle passed her lips as she recalled his mortified, rigid expression when the princess of the night had run her snout through his mane. He never did know how to deal with royalty, that one. The first time she'd ever seen him, in the delightful chaos following her student's first Grand Galloping Gala, Joe had been an absolute wreck. His entire body rattled with the most adorable skittishness as he'd bent down by her side, a clattering tray of various coffees and teas balanced on his back, stammering out the various blends and brews at her choosing. She hadn't even looked at the display, holding a bemused expression on the nervous stallion as he tried his best to remain perfectly balanced, each well-toned leg braced in a separate direction with spartan rigor.

"Which would your princess find most pleasing, my handsome subject?" She had asked, with a playful smile. The clattering grew ever louder as his trembling became steadily more intense, eyes locked forward and mouth a furrowed line of strained effort.

"Um." He'd met her eyes with a hesitant glance, one she knew had only been intended for the briefest of moments. Yet, one which he hadn't been able to break. The rattling steadied, then slowed to a stop as he'd stared into her eyes with a strange mix of expectation and... fear. As if he was waiting for her to say or do something dreadful. She had been slightly baffled, but held her smile. A weighted moment passed, then he seemed to snap out of it. "T-the Neighgerian blend, your majesty... the dark one, closest to my ear." He gave two little flicks of his left ear, a little smile peeping out from the corner of his mouth.

She could still remember that cup of coffee, even now. It had been... simple, in the best possible way. Lightly honeyed, with a mild bite of acidity to tame the sweetness. For whatever reason, she had expected something more harsh and challenging from the roughhewn colt. She had been pleasantly surprised.

'And then?' she felt the universe wonder with rapt attention. Celestia sighed, opening her eyes to the first trickling of the morning's sunrise. In an instant, she could feel the cycling magic coursing out from within, wandering back into the lawn and the trees and the air. The moon had been put to bed, the sun was awake, and her disguise had been shed. Story time was over.

With a flap of her wings, the princess of the sun took to the air, gliding over the maze and toward the south tower. Court would begin soon. Back to work.

* * *

Gilda's feathers stood on end, her eye twitching with murderous intensity. The waiting room adjacent to the royal court was always a loud, awful, crowded mess, packed with as many delegates, nobles, and representatives as could feasibly be seen by Her Majesty over the next six hours. Gilda didn't care much for crowds, nor did she particularly like being sandwiched between dozens of stuck-up, loudmouthed ponies.

With a scowl, she glared at the clock. It was an absurdly unnatural thing, politics. It put you in places you should rightly never go, and saw you tolerate people you would never, in your most fevered nightmares, engage with. Her eagle half screamed at her to get some distance, anxious at such reckless vulnerability. Her lion half staunchly demanded she slay one of them in a sorely-needed display of dominance.

sproing! sproing! sproing!

It took everything the young griffon had not to cave in to that very impulse as her absolute least favorite Equestrian, the infuriatingly energetic, friendship-destroying Pinkie Pie, leapt about the crowd with a chipper tweedle. It had been two hours since the spritely mare had skipped into the waiting area, and she had not stopped making that infernal noise for a single excruciating moment. She just never got tired.

sproing! sproing! sproing!

Her teeth ground in raw irritation as Gilda pretended to scribble something important into the massive tome she'd been lugging around since yesterday. Anything to avoid eye contact, or Zu forbid, actual conversation with these lame-brained dimwits. Her feather quill wound about in breathtakingly ornate calligraphy, spinning a wild and indulgent self-insertion epic across the book's unused index pages. Thrilling exploits and daredevil stunts adorned each sheet as a daring griffon warrior vanquished the deceitful, ruthless pink siren and saved a beautiful prismic pegasus princess. The margins were lined with foalish doodles of the daring champion standing atop the scribbled-over slain foe, swooning mare in claw. Gilda sighed, adding another couple majesty lines around her avatar for good measure. Gods, she was bored.

"OOOO!! That looks exciting! Did you write all this yourself?"

Gilda's feather quill snapped in half as she froze in rigid horror, momentarily paralyzed with shock as the squeaky earth pony started reading aloud over her shoulder, "The rainbow-maned maiden let out an awestruck gasp! 'An inverted Immelmann corkscrew! Nopony has ever attempted such a bold, dangerous technique and lived to—' " She stopped dead in her tracks to pull in an enormous, full-body gasp, literally lifting two feet off the ground, "RAINBOW's in this too?? Best story ever!"

Gilda's eye locked on the mare with ruinous ferocity, struggling to process the sheer inconceivable audacity of it all. In a flash, she'd slammed shut the book, feathers standing on end in a display of trembling rage. "GET YOUR—WHO in the blue kalla said you could read my... my..." She shook the tome at the grinning pink mare, both claws wrapped tightly around the cover. "This is secret griffon business, you snake!"

Pinkie seemed oblivious to the insult as she pranced in place, from one side to the other, eyes closed in a wide smile. "But it looked so cute! I'm sure the princess will love it to iddy bibby bits when you read it to her!"

Gilda opened her mouth to spit out a long, exotic barrage of obscenities, but held her tongue with a narrow gaze. She could never quite figure out if she and Pinkie were locked in some subtle psychological mind battle, or if the pony was just an idiot. If they were fighting — as in, if this very conversation was a dizzying mind game of deception and feigned emotion — Pinkie was most definitely winning. Gilda was quicker and more cunning than most, but Pinkie didn't even seem to try and she still made Gilda feel like a fool. Of course, if the opposite was true, and Pinkie was just some scatterbrained Ponyville simp, the pony was still winning, because here Gilda was fuming about an imagined paranoid fantasy in silent futility. Naturally, that just made her angrier.

She leveled a glare at the pink mare, trying to detect some crack in her facade. She couldn't tell with ponies. They didn't 'test' each other all the time, like griffons did, prodding around for weaknesses. They might be embarrassingly fragile, but they also were much... simpler. It was not necessarily a bad thing, she had decided.

"I certainly didn't expect to see you here!" Pinkie chirped, punctuating 'you' with a vaulted leap into the air.

Gilda scoffed, flicking her hair feathers with a bored look. "What, I'm not good enough to see your namby-pamby princess?"

"No, silly! In Canterlot! Rainbow said you'd gone back home!"

The griffon's expression grew sour. "Welp, not any more."

"Awww! What about your family?" She leaned forward, shifting her weight entirely to her forelegs and pivoting forward, bringing her eyes waaay closer than Gilda was cool with. "I'm sure they miss you a whole lot! I know whenever I visit home, my mom and dad and three—”

"That's none of your beeswax, Stinky Pie!" She spat the words, glaring daggers. Pinkie dropped back onto all fours with a dull thump, her smile evaporating in an instant. Almost immediately, Gilda regretted it. Which was absurd. But... ugh. Figures, the one time she actually got the grating pest to shut up for half a second, she felt crappy about it.

"So..." She swallowed, feeling the anger dim slightly, "What are you doing up here, then? They finally run you out of that one-pony town?"

Pinkie giggled with apparently genuine delight. "Nope! I'm here to see the princess, dummy!"

Gilda gave her a flat stare. "Yeah, no crap! I mean why?!"

The courtroom doors creaked open as a towering guard marched out, scroll in hoof. "Pinkamena Pie and Gilda von Godric?"

Gilda casually shoved a few noblemares out of the way as she pushed through the crowd. "Yo, right here." She waved her tome around in the air with one claw, catching the eye of the guard. "Who goes first?"

The guard glanced up from the parchment. "Both."

Gilda gave a frigid, silent glare.

Clearing his throat, the stallion moved a hoof between the mare and the griffon. "Looks like you're both here for the same thing, so you'll be going up together. Saves time."

Pinkie and Gilda exchanged a confused look. The guard clearly had no intention of explaining further, providing only a light flick of the hoof toward the open doorway. Gilda shook her head and moved in, followed closely by a paced rhythmic spoinging. Ohhh boy.

As ever, the royal court was breathtaking. The vast, ornate hall was surrounded on all sides by soaring glass windows, each adorned with intricate designs that endowed the room with brilliant pillars of lightly-colored sunlight. Before them sat the immortal solar princess herself, an ethereal goddess whose otherwordly grace and beauty were the stuff of legend. She did not disappoint. The flowing, gentle mane, the warm smile, the impossibly immaculate coat, those two... huh.

Gilda squinted, her arms still bundled around the enormous tome. "Is... is that a black eye?" She lightly scoffed, moving her head to the side for a better angle.

Celestia lightly gasped, touching a hoof just under her right eye in horror. Augh! The fight last night, that hoof to the eye... she'd seen dozens delegates before this griffon!

"...You're kidding. Nobody’s said anything yet?" Gilda shook her head softly, bemused. Pinkie gave the griffon a chastising glance, concern writ across her face.

The princess frowned, looking at the two guards before her. Their stoic forward gaze was unwavering as both began visibly sweating. She sighed. Any other pony would've been barraged by shocked gasps and concerned inquiries if she paraded around the castle with a black eye. Did she really intimidate them all so much?

"No... no they had not. This was from an... earlier altercation." She tipped up her chest plate with a hoof, inspecting the dark bruise in its reflection. Perfect. Just perfect. Gilda gave her an incredulous look, still searching for the right page. Celestia returned a light smile. "You should see the other mare."

The griffon scoffed, fighting off a teensy smirk. Clutching the top of the text with both claws, Gilda stretched forward to offer up the open book, sending Celestia an expectant look.

The princess ran her tongue against the back of her teeth, considering the heavy tome. No way was she going to even try levitating that thing after this morning's struggle. "Guards, if you would."

Both guards snuck a questioning glance at each other before immediately retrieving the tome from Gilda, trotting up to the raised platform and pulling the open page across their shoulders, so that their princess might use their backs as a podium.

Celestia studied the remarkably detailed drawing spread across both pages. It seemed to be a stretch of farmland with rows upon rows of a tall, perennial grasses — sugarcane, if she wasn't mistaken. It was a somewhat new crop that had gradually edged out honey and beets as their main source of sugar. Most of the fields dotted the more temperate outskirts of Equestria's western borders, not far at all from the griffon capital of Elpithasus. Considering her ponies' voracious appetite for the sweet, it had become quite a popular choice for enterprising farmers.

But it was what was cast over these fields that struck her. A vast, reddish-pink aurora bathed the scene in a dim crimson glow, ephemeral strands of light bending from the heavens to settle into the crop. She had seen the northern lights many times in her life, but never had it taken such a bizarre tone, nor had it ever wandered so far to the south. Celestia looked up from the paper, casting a concerned glance at the griffon.

Gilda had assumed a piercing glare. "You wanna tell me what that is?"

Celestia again studied the image, flipping the page and finding several photographs of the event enclosed in a small envelope. They had been taken from roughly the same vantage, though the dark exposure made it harder to discern. Each one was at night.

"Does it always happen at night?" Celestia asked, trying to make out some of the detail on the photographs.

Gilda's eyes widened in surprise, shifting from wariness to indignant anger. "Oh like you don't know! The heck are you guys doing over there?!"

Celestia gave an annoyed look. "You'll watch that tone with me." she glanced over the extensive notes and charts that filled the following pages. It had been going on every day for the past week, always at its brightest when the moon neared its peak. She furrowed her brow. This certainly would explain the taste of the sugar. "Truly, Gilda, this is the first I've heard of it."

The griffon leveled a cynical, 'do you think I'm an idiot' glare at the princess. The two found themselves in a locked stare, the air thick with unflattering implication. Gilda balled her talons, clenching a tightening fist as she welled up a venomous accusation like a thick loogie. Lie to her face, would they? Well, it'd be a frosty day in the pits of Irkalla before she let some ridiculous, prissy hornhead pull the wool over h— GAH!

Gilda stumbled backward in shock as Pinkie exploded into being not two inches from her beak, the griffon landing hard on her rear.

"Maybe it was supposed to be a surprise! Princess Luna even made us promise not to tell anyone! See?" The bubblegum mare beamed a grin as she unfurled her own scroll, containing an enormous, glitter-soaked crayon picture of princess Luna as she shot out scribbly red lines and loudly pontificated, hoof to chest. Gilda took note of the many sharp yell lines coming out of the mouth as she stoically endured the plume of glitter that absorbed itself under every feather.

Celestia brought a hoof to her mouth in shock, turning the page and again inspecting one of the photos. Sure enough, there was a somewhat distinctive alicorn-shaped blur hovering before the aurora. This... didn't seem possible. "You're positive it was this week?"

The griffon futilely tried brushing the glitter off of her chest before blankly resigning herself to bedazzlement. "Yes this week! The patriarchs have been riding me to get some kind of explanation from you people, but every time I try to get an audience with your sister she's conveniently 'sick.' " Gilda sneered, forming a pair of drippingly sarcastic air quotes with her talons.

Celestia returned an annoyed frown. Luna had been completely bedridden since they'd sealed the dining hall. If it hadn’t been for the 'incident' last night, she wouldn't have believed the poor girl was at all capable of flying out that far, the shape she was in. Certainly not every night this week.

"Pinkie, what exactly did my sister say when she visited your..." The princess was fairly certain the spritely mare didn't live on a farm, last she checked. "...forgive me, do you own a farm?"

"It was my parents rock farm! During the off-season they grow sugar for the whole of Ponyville!"

Gilda groaned. "Okay, the 'off-season'? On a rock farm? Seriously?"

Pinkie turned up her head in a huff. "Shows what you know about rock farming!"

The princess smiled, then chuckled to herself with a faint shake of the head. The mare hopped up the platform with one end of the scroll in her mouth, leaving a long, winding train of glitter along the carpet. With a turn of her head, she offered the back of the scroll to the princess, pressing against the front with her forehead. "Now she made me promise not to say anything, but my family's getting super duper freaked out about the horrifitastic pink doom smog! So I wrote what she said on the back instead!"

Celestia scanned the hoofwritten transcript with a will, taking in the flat, dry prose. It didn't particularly sound like her sister, lacking all of the usual flourish and forward bravado, but if Pinkie Pie said she saw Luna, then... it was probably Luna. The transcript was strange. Luna had told the Pies that the red lights were 'a gift from the heavens,' to blossom and accelerate the harvest. That was a little dramatic, even for her.

She passed the scroll back to the jubilant mare, who took it in her mouth and trotted back down beside Gilda. "How fast did the crop grow, after my sister's... 'blessing?' "

Suddenly overwhelmed by an excited response, Pinkie spat out the scroll in mid-turn, sending it rolling glitter-side down over Gilda's head. The griffon seemed to simply stand there, almost imperceptibly quaking with rage.

"Super duper crazy fast!!" Pinkie chirped, springing into the air a solid four feet. "The next day they already had two loads sent out to Ponyville! My sisters had to call me over to help get it all ready." She swallowed, eyes shifting away, then back to meet her princess. "I-I mean, it's not that we're not grateful and all, but it's just a teeeensy-weensy super mega hugemongous bit much!"

For the first time since they'd begun talking, Celestia noticed the dark purple bags under Pinkie's eyes. "How... how much sleep have you gotten since this began, my little pony?"

Pinkie's eyes went incredibly wide as she seemed to zone out completely, intensely staring off into nothing.

"...Pinkie?"

Several more moments of silence passed. Gilda slowly tilted her head to the right, giving her a sideways glance while the scroll slid off her face and onto the floor. Just as the princess opened her mouth to ask further, the mare blinked and began again jumping in place. "Well not MUCH, I don't think! But I don't mind! Since we're pulling in so much fresh sugar, I can have as much as I want!"

Celestia raised a hoof to her mouth in concern. It was troublingly apparent that the pony hadn't slept since this ordeal began, doubtlessly fuelled with ballistic jubilee by her family’s endless sugar reserve. She cleared her throat lightly, waiting just long enough for Pinkie to stop jumping. "Pinkie... Luna has been quite unwell this week, as I’m sure you know. I worry it might not be wise to be indulging in this ‘gift’ of hers, until we have a better idea of what it is."

Pinkie nodded, lightly vibrating in place. "Okie dokie!"

Standing from her throne, Celestia walked between the griffon and the mare, turning to her guards. "I'll be taking them to my sister, so that we may see to this matter directly. Inform our guests that I will be back within the hour."

The two stallions saluted, and cantered off to the waiting room. With that, Celestia lowered herself to the ground, so that Pinkie might leap onto her back. Giving Gilda a slight nod, she unfurled her wings and took off down the hall, the griffon in close pursuit. The royal quarters were close.

"Oooo! What is that?" Pinkie poked her head beside Celestia's as they sailed over the doorway to the royal dining hall. The brilliant, translucent sunlock ticked its way toward expiration, one second at a time, flanked on both sides by hulking guards. For all the work her sister’s Conductors had put into the outlying layer, their seal had almost entirely burned away by now. Setting up a replacement had been troublesome, with the palace unicorns more or less completely unable to command their own magic. The lock would hold, but not forever. Right now, Luna was her only lead on any of this.

"It's a sort of door lock." Celestia replied, as casually as she could manage.

"That's one doozy of a lock!" Pinkie glowed, giving the princess a coy look. "Are you hiding a big birthday surprise inside?"

Celestia gave the mare a delicate smile. "I'd... rather not think about it right now, if that's okay."

“Roger dodger!” Without another word, Pinkie leapt straight into the air, spinning 180 degrees and landing with perfect balance on Celestia’s back. The princess’ heart leapt in shock at the sensation, whipping her head to the side to ensure her passenger was still holding fast. The earth pony seemed perfectly fine, gazing with an inexplicable fascination at the increasingly distant door behind them.

Pinkie's eyes widened with excitement. She couldn’t quite put her hoof on it, but she just had an incredibly good feeling about that secret door. It was an absolute certainty, from somewhere deep within her little pink heart. Wonder what was inside? Must be something super duper important! She wanted more than anything in the wide world to at least take a peek before she left Canterlot.

Celestia’s glance lingered, puzzled by the mare’s interest, before turning to face forward. They had arrived. With a graceful fluttering of her wings, the solar princess touched down outside of Luna's bed chambers, crouching down a bit for her passenger to dismount with an impressive triple somersault. Gilda swooped to a stop beside her, distracted with preening out the endless reservoir of glitter she’d been saturated with.

“Gilda.”

The griffon startled to attention, folding her wings back into her sides and standing dignantly idle. Celestia held a neutral look on her before turning to knock on the burly oak door. She’d come to understand that vague submission was Gilda’s way of apologizing for rudeness. If the young griffon wasn’t making a fuss, she was trying to be polite. It wasn't much — barely anything — but you took what you could get with that one.

A sickly, indecipherable groan gurgled from the other side of the door. Celestia lightly knocked a second time. “Lulu?” No response. “It’s me. May I come in?”

She heard some rustling, but nothing further. After a moment’s hesitation, Celestia moved a hoof to the iron handle and pressed. The door slowly creaked open, casting a single beam of hallway light into a dark, disheveled nest of empty cups, balled tissues, whirring fans, and discarded blankets. At the eye of the bilious hurricane lay Luna, drenched in sweat and splayed disgracefully across her bed, face hanging off the side of the mattress and above a waste basket, red eyes wide open. She clutched an empty bottle of Neighquil with both hooves, glaring into the empty distance between the floor and the basket with exhausted resignation.

Without moving in the slightest, the princess of the night spoke, her words a raw, deflated croak. “Hast thou come to put us out of our misery, sister? Come to free us from this nightmare everlasting?!” With a hoarse volley of coughing, the lunar princess shakily stood in righteous fury, a minor avalanche of tissues and cough drops tumbling to the floor. She thrust her foreleg defiantly into the air, medicine bottle still in hoof. “We welcome the sweet release of obliteration to this cruel indignity!” With a puffed chest, the mare cast the bottle to the floor and brought to bear a pitiful mockery of the Royal Canterlot Voice. “The very harbingers of Tartaurus could scarcely dream of such cruel and viscous humili—HGHK” Her gallant proclamation collapsed into a fit of raw, phlegmmy hacking.

With a defeated plop, Luna crumpled back onto the mattress, laying on her back so that the air from the battery of fans might give her some semblance of relief. She let out a low, adorably pathetic whine.

Celestia offered a sympathetic smile, lowering herself to the end of the bed and nuzzling her sister’s ragged, sweat-drenched mane. “Oh Lulu...”

Gilda surveyed the scene with morbid curiosity. This certainly had not been what she was expecting. Grasping a talon around the side of a nearby waste basket, she tilted the bin toward her and peered in. If this was all some sort of elaborate act, these ponies had done one spectacular job on the gnarly details. Some things you just couldn’t mimic.

“I’m uh...” She held a discerning look on the princess of the night, trying to imagine some possible reason for the deception. Stabbing a balled tissue with her claw, she picked it up off the floor and opened it. Yep. That was definitely a disgusting amount of horse mucus. “...Okay am I going nuts? I swear I saw you stroll into Joe’s Diner last night, princess. The poor guy still has your teeth marks peppering his rear.”

Pinkie gasped in shock, her face bursting into a fierce rancor. “Gilda! That is crazy out of line!!” She turned to Celestia with a disbelieving glare, shaking her head. Her princess’ expression was surprisingly neutral, betraying only mild irritation.

A furious blush exploded across Luna’s face, her eyes locking onto the griffon as she rolled back onto her belly. “H-how couldst thou possibly know about that?”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Uh, I was there? I was the griffon? Like the only griffon in this entire city?”

Luna furrowed her brow. She did remember there being a griffon there, now that she thought about it. She also remembered her sister having been disguised as a unicorn, squabbling with her soldier. That didn’t... actually happen, right? “But... but that was just a dream...” She put a hoof to her forehead, trying her best to remember.

“Well you got some vivid-ass dreams then, because I remember the whole thing.”

Luna shot her a glare that could melt steel. "Mind thy tongue."

The griffon pulled back with a shaky smile. “...Y-your Ladyship.”

Celestia gave a sympathetic smile, laying down in front of the waste basket, so that she and her sister were eye level. “I’m afraid she’s telling the truth.”

Luna blinked in surprise, then slowly, deliberately drew into a facehoof. She struggled to replay the night’s events in her memory, but only bits and pieces came through. “Then we... we truly snogged thine stallion’s flank?”

Celestia burst out laughing, bringing a wide, embarrassed smile to her exhausted sister.

Gilda tilted her head a bit, casting Pinkie a confused look. Her Olde Equestrian was just a touch rusty, but um... ‘your stallion’? Pinkie returned an equally dumbstruck expression.

“T’was bad enough when we thought it simply an unseemly fever dream...” She sighed, looking into the solar princess’ eyes. “Sister... you must know, we would... I would never stake claim to one you had—”

Celestia rose a hoof to her sister’s mouth, silencing her. “That’s quite all right, Lulu. I know.” With a light nuzzle, she stood, turning to Pinkie. “Which... brings us to the matter at hoof. This one tells me you might have been out for more than just donuts, this past week. Do... you remember anything about the red lights?”

Luna frowned, a distant look in her eyes. “I... yes. I had thought it to be a dream as well.” She stared down at the waste basket, running through her memories. Little came to mind. She remembered the light and the field, she remembered saying something to the starry-eyed farmponies. But... as with all dreams, the details had faded moments after she had awoken. She certainly couldn’t remember what she had been doing, or why. “Regretfully, we remember little. If we have been stirring in our dreams, we can only guess at what we might have been trying to accomplish. Certainly nothing sensible.” Luna squeaked a mousy smile at Pinkie and Gilda. “How perfectly embarrassing.”

It took everything Gilda had not to lay into the mare about scaring the griffon capital half to death with her ridiculous, delirium-fuelled... sleep-farming. And yet, it was hard to stay mad at someone so disastrously, humiliatingly sick. The pony had clearly not meant any of it. Gilda could berate Celestia about the whole mess later. She gave the apologetic lunar princess a small, forgiving nod.

Celestia walked toward the open window, gazing through to the sizable balcony from which her sister no doubt took wing each night. “I’d like to move you to my quarters for the time being, if that’s okay. I... think it’s best if I kept an eye on you during the nights, until the fever passes.”

Luna shook her head. “Absolutely not! We’ll not see your nights sullied under the heel of our own dreadful affliction, simply because we cannot control ourselves!”

“Lulu, it’s quite all right... I don’t mind.”

“We shant hear another word!” Her hoof stomped noiselessly on the mattress as the princess rose to her feet, pressing a hoof to her chest.

Celestia swallowed nervously. "Now, no need t—"

“We could never forgive thyself if we ruined OUR SISTER’S HEATED, STEAMY DATE!” The Royal Canterlot Voice bellowed down the halls of the castle, rattling windows, shattering glasses, and turning Celestia an unholy shade of crimson.

“L-Luna!!” Her ears flattened against her head as the solar princess lowered her forelegs in a flat ‘tone it down’ gesture, “It’s not a date! It’s just a party!” She hissed.

Pinkie’s eyes practically bugged out of her head as she pulled into an enormous gasp. “JOE’S PARTY?!” She thrust a hoof at her chest, face beaming with a wide, unrestrained grin. “I’M going to that party too!”

Celestia went pale. Joe had ‘casually’ mentioned the get-together a half-dozen times this week, evidently celebrating his dreadful sister’s ill-deserved promotion to Night Guardsmare. He had clearly wanted Sunny to come, but with everything that had been going on... it seemed the last thing in Equestria she should be considering.

And yet, the party had been all she could think about during the week’s dry, bureaucratic drudgery. As soon as she’d mentioned it to Luna, her sister had latched upon the idea. Now she seemed to have set her heart on seeing Sunny attend. It was... conceivable that she could could swing by as Sunny, once she’d put down the sun for the day. Just for a bit. But to make an appearance as the princess? By Harmony, the thought alone was tiring. “Oh... I’m not sure, Pinkie...”

The mare’s eyes grew deep and sorrowful, a trembling well of tears teetering on the verge of crushing disappointment. Celestia swallowed. “I... I suppose I could stop by for a bit...”

Gilda’s eyes widened in terror. She thrust a pointed talon in Pinkie’s direction. “Hold on, YOU’RE going to Joe’s party tonight?”

“You betcha!” She chirped, springing into the air. “Joe and I are super good buddies!”

Gilda facepalmed.

Pinkie returned a carefree smile, turning her gaze over to Luna, whom she’d noticed had leveled an unsettling, almost hungry look at her. She tilted her head a bit in confusion, letting a weighted moment pass before trotting over to the bedside. “I’m sure Joe would love it if you wanted to come by too, princess! The more the merrier!” She held a fading grin as Luna silently but intensely stared. “I-I mean, if you’re feeling better...” Pinkie swallowed, looking over at Gilda. “... you know... later...” The griffon seemed increasingly concerned by the display. With no small amount of hesitation, she lightly motioned for Pinkie to back away, with two flicks of the claw.

Luna found herself utterly, inexplicably enchanted by this bizarre mare. They’d only barely interacted with each other during her first Nightmare Night since her return, and yet, she felt an incredibly profound connection to her. It was... beyond irrational. Luna frankly found the little one a touch tiring and over familiar. She could scarcely begin to place her hoof on the appeal.

The princess of the night rose her head high, giving the mare a bold, appraising look. What was it about her? She brought her nose inches from Pinkie’s, slowly following an intoxicating scent. It smelled... delicious. Warm. Sweet. She could taste it, without tasting it. And it tasted amazing.

Gilda unfurled her wings, her eyes darting to Celestia, who was gazing at the balcony, seemingly lost in thought. “Uh, princess? Hey!”

Celestia snapped to attention, turning to the Gilda, then to the bed. She gasped, seeing an all-too-familiar scene barreling toward its ghastly conclusion. “Sister?” Luna took another indulgent whiff, licking her lips. “Sister?!” Celestia quickly took a step forward, eyes darting between Luna and the wide-eyed bubblegum mare. “Pinkie! Pinkie step away from her!”

Pinkie Pie smiled, giggling as Luna’s breath pulled several strands of hair forward. She turned to look at Celestia. “It’s okay! I’m sure she’s just noticing my peppermint-twist candytioner!” She turned back to face Luna. “Doesn’t it smell good? It’s made from sixty percent sug—HRMP ”

She found herself immediately silenced as Luna pressed her muzzle against hers in a deep, desperate, aggressive kiss. The mare’s body sprung off the ground, legs rigid in each direction, hovering in mid-air with a voltaic hybrid of shock and horror. A sensation like... chugging a never-ending, immaterial milkshake, overwhelmed the little pink pony. She felt sieged by an electric, powerful, giddy force, yet could sense nothing physically passing between them. Like a warm gale wind, it bore down on her. Pinkie didn’t have much experience with kissing, true, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

With a fierce blast of light, both ponies’ manes exploded into pulsing, ethereal waves of brilliant-orange ephemera. The room quaked and shuddered in the pull of this single kiss, tissues whirling about like leaves caught in a hurricane. Pinkie’s wide-open eyes now burned with an overwhelming power, a force that threatened to shatter the mare like an icicle. Celestia forced all questions from her mind as she struggled against this intangible tide, one hoof after the other, toward her imperiled subject. What had been a moment’s canter was now an impassable river, bearing down on her with unremitting wrath. Her head lowered, horn red-hot with futile strain of magic. She dug her hooves into the carpet and forced her way one more step closer.

Celestia took in a deep, bracing breath. The force had grown, but it surged in waves. She could even see it in the whirlwind of tissues that surrounded them — the wind would tear with impossible strength, then, with a sharp tug, it would slow almost to a stop. The tissues would hang in place for the briefest of moments before the next wave once more pulled them away. She had that moment. Her eyes burned with determination as she locked on the rigid, helpless Pinkie Pie, still floating in terror at the epicenter of this otherworldly maelstrom. She released her breath and dove, feeling the force remit for just an instant, welling up for another wave. It was enough.

Celestia came down on the mare with her forelegs, grasping her by the midsection and collapsing onto the floor. With a surge of errant light, the kiss was broken, and the force instantly ceased. The sky rained tissues. For a moment, the princess lay there, shielding her subject, praying it had passed. Silence. She snuck a glance behind her. Luna lay on the bed, head over the waste basket, in an apparent daze. Across the room, Gilda dropped from the wall, having been helplessly plastered against it by the fury of the storm. She slid to her feet, then stared at Celestia in intense shock. Suddenly, her eyes tracked just slightly below her, then grew clouded. Celestia gasped, turning back to Luna. She too had recovered her senses, but now sat with the same vacant, thousand-yard gaze she’d carried in the diner.

A wave of dread washed over the princess as she released her grasp on Pinkie, and slowly, morbidly looked down at her. The mare wore the most delighted, beaming grin she had ever seen. A smile that begged, nay, demanded to be shared with every pony in all of Equestria. With a blink, she stared deep into the mare’s fiercely glowing orange eyes. Something far behind those eyes, something deep within the mare, reached into Celestia's mind. Suddenly, like a candle going out, it faded. It all faded.

Like waking up from a nightmare, she felt the world come back to her, the terror and the fear disappearing completely. She couldn’t imagine what she'd felt so worked up about, a moment ago. Nothing important, she imagined. Celestia smiled, finding herself looking out at the balcony once more.

“—made from sixty percent sugar! I made it myself!” Pinkie beamed, shaking her bushy mane about so that Luna might smell the candied aroma.

The lunar princess smiled. “It is... certainly potent, little one.”

With a yawn, Luna climbed off the bed to stretch. Puzzling. For the first time in this entire cursed week, she didn’t feel terrible. She had... energy, again, as if the sickness had simply decided it had stayed long enough, and hopped right out of her mouth. “We feel... quite a bit better, sister. Truly, we must insist that you do not sacrifice thy plans for my sake.”

Celestia mulled over the thought. True, she really would like to attend Joe’s get-together, if she could. And Luna did seem to have improved, rather than worsened. She sighed. “If you’re quite sure, then... I suppose I can bolster the guards, and set two on the balcony, in case you have another ‘episode’ .”

Luna clapped her hooves. “Delightful! It’s settled then.” She began nudging the princess toward the doorway. “Now! Back to the court with thee! The sooner you are done, the sooner you can prepare!”

Pinkie and Gilda followed the princess out of the bedroom and into the hallway, the door gently closing behind them.

Gilda scratched her head with a talon. “Hey, so...” She glanced back at the door for a moment, then at Pinkie, trying to get some kind of handle of the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something just... huge. “... you guys feel at all...” She put a claw over her head, the words dancing just on the tip of her tongue, yet still completely, utterly unknown to her. “...like uh...” She balled her claws, then sighed. “...you know what? Nevermind.”

Pinkie leapt onto Celestia’s back as her princess prepared to take wing. “Well I feel really really relieved! Glad we got all of that dealt with!” She hummed cheerily to herself, a wonderful sense of energy and excitement coursing through her body, from itchy nose to twitchin' tail.

Author's Note

Been slow, I know. It's about to pick up quite a bit. Next chapter: Joe's party gets crashed.

Let me know the perspective shifts are still confusing. A couple of commenters have noted this, and Eakin agrees it's a bit jarring, so I'm on the fence. I like to move between different characters, to get different takes on the same interaction, but I don't want it to be frustrating. Worse comes to worse, I can shift to individual POVs, differing between each chapter.

As ever, I wanna give a huge thanks to Luminary, Eakin, and Brawny for pre-reading and giving much-needed feedback on this. The reason I started this story in the first place was to get my writing back up to snuff, and you guys have been invaluably helpful on that front.

Thanks to Nicknack as well, for letting me use Gilda's tribe name from his ridiculously good Summer Days!

24 Hour Party Ponies

24 Hour Party Ponies
• • • •

Author’s note: Slightly changing the way I do third-person perspective. Those four colored dots above signal a change in perspective.

Joe’s apartment was not a large one. Squeezed between the fashion district and the market commons, his building was but one of hundreds that lined the narrow cobblestone streets of Canterlot’s residential quarter. With only a modest living room, an abutting kitchen, and a shared half-bathroom, it wasn’t much, but it was all the home he and his sister had these days. And it had been home enough.

Being siblings, Joe and his sister were used to sharing a single, moderately-sized living area. Joe made do with the couch, while Seraph hung in a hammock that dangled from atop the vaulted ceiling. During the daytime hours, Joe could hear his sister's distant snoring buzzing down from above the three large windows that ran across the entire rear side of the building. She rather liked that spot. Tucked away from the morning sun and Joe's daytime bustle, it gave her some much needed peace and quiet after a hard night's work (or a hard day’s drinkin’).

For his part, Joe adored the way those enormous windows welcomed in the calming warmth of Celestia’s sun each morning; bestowing a glorious, expansive view of the bustling city commons below. One could see right over the notched crenelation of the neighboring building, its base situated low enough into the recessed marketplace that they could even walk out of their window and onto its roof, using it as a sort of balcony.

Naturally, it being a party, they were doing exactly that.

The roof was completely packed with ponies and pegasi, a loud murmur of lively conversation and delighted commotion floating above the constant trickle of ponies moving in and out of the living room.

Joe smiled as he took a sip of ale. It was a good night for this. Warm, clear, and one of the biggest, brightest full moons he’d ever seen. He took a moment to just watch it all, with a broad satisfaction, before moving back into the living room.

With a long, bracing chug of his drink, Joe wound his way to the center of the living room and pulled himself on top of his coffee table. Raising his mug into the air, he spoke to the room. “Gather ‘round, everypony!”

The roar of the crowd settled as dozens of friends and neighbors squeezed around the table and over his couch, beaming jubilant smiles.

Joe pressed a hoof to his chest with mock regality. “Now, I know what you’re all thinking. Believe me, I thought the exact same thing when I heard the news: How in the hoof did my sister get promoted to the Royal Guard? Of all the ponies in Equestria, they’re entrusting the life of the princess to the same mare who got her freakishly huge noggin stuck in her headboard for two hours last week!” The sea of ponies erupted into laughter, clapping their hooves against the floor.

A light blush and a bemused smirk washed over Seraph’s face as she hovered over from the kitchen, drink in hoof. “Weh!!” She thrust a foreleg at her brother as she drew near. “Hey I can’t believe they still let Chef Frankenstallion here run a dang public diner after the horror show he held in our kitchen trying to imitate Quarray eel.” she made a dramatic gagging gesture, much to the delight of the party. “Also! There’s Quarray eel in this kitchen if anyone wants any.”

With a booming laugh, Joe wrapped his foreleg around his sister and squeezed her tight. “Well Celestia help us all, ‘cause public safety be damned, my little sister stuck with it all the way to the top! I’d like to say I’m surprised, but, well, I know her too well for that. Once she puts her little bat brain to something, there’s no shaking this mare until she gets what she wants.” he turned to give Seraph a spirited sideways grin. “I owe an awful, awful lot to that stubborn little heart of yours, sis. I think I speak for Dad and I both when I say I’m proud as buck.”

Seraph squirmed through an affectionate nuzzle, squeaking out a big, fangy smile. “Awww...” she looked up at him with two wide, adorable yellow eyes. “...thanks big bro.”

The crowd cheered, holding high their drinks. Seraph and her brother toasted to their guests before clinking their mugs with a splash of ale, drinking deep. With a rumble of applause, the rooting partygoers followed suit.

With a startle, Joe planted his mug on the table and rose his hooves into the air. “And! Before I forget! There’s been a royal decree to remove all imported sugar from the city — something about a ‘public health risk’ — so we’re in the process of baking replacement goods using my maple syrup instead.” he gestured toward a closed hooflocker to his flank. “Pretty sure I’ve gotten rid of everything that might be contaminated, so in the meantime, we’ve got ale, roughage, and my first glorious attempt at portobello burgers in the back!”

There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd before the party began to build back up to speed. With a firm pat on his sister’s back, Joe climbed off the table and squeezed his way toward the rear of the apartment, ducking under a large group of chattering moori hovering by the entry way and cantering into the kitchen.

Pinkie Pie was firing on all cylinders; a roaring bubblegum hurricane of cracking eggs, whipping batter, and billowing flour. Having balanced herself on her nose, all four legs were busily attending to four separate tasks along the countertop. The sheer ferocity of it all would be terrifying if it wasn’t so spectacular — the little mare was mixing up fresh maple pecan turnovers and cupcakes with fuguelike intensity. Joe had frankly never seen anyone work so quickly. He had been staring into the whirling chaos for a few surreal moments before he came to notice the long, uninterrupted stream of high-pitched gibberish erupting from Pinkie’s mouth, seemingly directed at nopony. He scratched the back of his neck, genuinely unsure if he dared disturb her. She was getting an enormous amount of baking done.

“You uh... you holdin’ up alright there, gumdrop?” Joe leveled a steady gaze at the pink pony, watching her wind a string of cupcake batter around the greased tray with dubious precision, her hooves trembling erratically with excitement. Pinkie’s eyes were wide, bloodshot things, locked onto the task at hoof with ballistic determination. They tore away from the pan for a fraction of a second to meet Joe’s concerned gaze with a lightning-fast squee before darting back to the pan.

“NOPE nooo no no problemo here Joe!! Me and Commadore Snugglebug have been splitting the baking right down the middle! He’s g-g-getting getting ge-pouring the cupcake batter and I’M getting the fritters ready!!” She leapt into the air with the tray in hoof, colliding the top of her head into the cupboard that hung overhead. The cupboard rattled and clinked, jostling several mugs off the shelf and sending them crashing to the ground. Joe startled, raising his hoof in concern, but the mare had already begun simultaneously sliding the tray into the lower oven and twisting the egg timer with her mouth. He wasn’t sure if she’d even noticed.

In a moment of pure terror, Joe watched as a tightly gift-wrapped coffee mug teetered on the edge of the shelf, having shimmied loose from the impact. It hung for a weighted moment, tipping one way, then the other, before seeming to settle. Joe let out a long sigh of relief, lowering his guard at the exact instant the wrapped mug decided that, you know what, yes, it would be plummeting to the floor tonight. Joe’s mouth fell open, his eyes went wide, and he dove, dropping his drink and sliding across the flour-dusted hardwood to catch the mug between his hooves, inches before it shattered against the ground. For a few moments, he just lay there, rigid with shock, until his heart finally resumed beating. He deflated with a sigh. It was safe.

Rising to his hooves, Joe slid the item carefully back into the cupboard, giving Pinkie a chastising glance. The mare gasped in horror, turning to a small stuffed bumblebee she had sitting on the countertop. “Commadore Snugglebug!! Look what you almost did to poor Joe’s mysterious gift!! You should apologize right now!”

With one foreleg still wrapped around a mixing bowl, Pinkie darted behind the stuffed bee, pressing at its back with her hoof and pantomiming a low voice out of the side of her mouth. “I don’t give two shakes of a donkey’s tail about smelly ol’ Joe, Pinkie Pie! We’ve got a job to do and we can’t get distracted by such rigamarole!”

Pinkie gave Joe an apologetic look. “Sorry about him, Joe! Snugglebug means well, but he can be very pushy!!” Without a second glance, the mare had vaulted over the table and began trouncing on top of a wad of dough, flattening it out at fantastic speed. Her squeaky voice wavered as she worked. “I thi-in-ink y-ou-ur d-do-nu-nu-ts are-e d-don-ne!!”

Joe shook his head lightly as he cantered over to the double oven. That mare was off the walls tonight. Pulling open the top door, he glanced in at the tray of perfectly brown maple cake donuts. They smelled heavenly.

Grasping a potholder between his teeth, Joe reached into the oven and pulled out the tray, sliding it along the counter to cool. With a nudge of the hind leg, he pushed shut the oven door, turning to take another long look at Pinkie Pie. He watched intently as she stamped out squares of flat dough by pogo-bouncing on the side of a thin pan, each bounce leaving behind one long line of cut dough. She twisted at sharp, ninety-degree angles to etch out the squares she needed. It was rather uneven, if you noticed that sort of thing.

Joe swallowed, removing a brush and dustpan from under the sink. “Pinkie, really, I can’t thank you enough for doing this... you’ve been a huge help.” The mare seemed oblivious as she frantically folded a row of maple fritters, hammering the edges shut with her hoof at a speed imperceptible to the equine eye. Joe shakily placed a hoof on her shoulder. “So... listen, I’m gonna pop these bad larries into the oven, and I think we should be all set.” He gave her a reassuring pat on the back. “You should get out there and enjoy yourself! I’ll finish up in here.” He held a smile as Pinkie rolled her head to the side, giving Joe a rather intense, removed stare.

“OKAY!!” In a blur of movement, Pinkie stuffed the plush bumblebee into her mane and scrambled over the countertop, leaping head-first into the crowd.

Joe surveyed the disaster zone that was once his kitchen. Globs of dough hung from the ceiling, broken egg shells lay discarded along the flour-drenched countertop, and strings of batter coiled along the floors like a Jackson Foallock painting. Still, the donuts were done, the cupcakes were halfway finished, and the turnovers were well on their way. He nodded to himself as he dumped the last of the shattered ceramic from the mugs into the trash. He could clean the rest later. Not bad.

Pulling a serving tray from the cabinet, Joe arranged the warm maple cake donuts into a neat grid, painting the tops with a thin layer of glaze and lightly dusting them with cinnamon. He took a moment to drink in the savory display, swelling with pride.

Of all the hundreds of flavors Donut Joe had perfected over the years, this one held a special place in his heart. There was something so fundamentally, uniquely donut about these little beauties. The weight, the simplicity, the melty sticky-soft sweetness... they made every other flavor seem somehow misguided, like drowning a mediocre salad in dressing. Honestly, he’d probably have used the maple cake as the template for all of his pastries, had the syrup not demanded so bucking much time investment. You had to tap a dozen or so trees, collect gallons upon gallons of the watery sap, boil it all down for hours, then filter the resulting syrup. As far as simple pastries go, it was rather complicated.

Truth be told, he hadn’t planned on making them for Seraph’s party at all, at least at first. They were meant to be sold at the diner, for twice the price of a regular donut. But, after Sunny’s reaction the previous night (and, naturally, the small matter of the city-wide imported sugar ban), this had been his real only option if he wanted to do this shindig right. Joe supposed that if Sunny still got to try one, it didn’t matter much where she ate it.

Delicately balancing the tray on his head, Joe cantered out of the kitchen and up to the living room table, sliding the platter between the portobello burgers and the wooden keg of ale. He took their dwindling portions as a good sign.

To his right, a familiar one-eyed, hulking moori was refilling his drink. Blind Dive plonked a heady mug of ale beside Joe, picking out a fresh cup from the forest of wooden steins and filling himself another. Joe accepted the drink with a mock salute. “Appreciate it, Cap.”

“Hey, it’s your beer.” Plucking a maple donut from the rack, Dive absently dipped the pastry into his ale before taking a bite. Joe screamed internally. “Your sister pick out this brew? It’s good stuff.”

Joe swallowed, almost physically in pain at the sight of his precious creation so casually defiled. “Y-yeah... it’s from... from the...” he clenched his teeth in a full-body cringe as Dive gave the remaining half of the donut two lackadaisical dunks and popped it in his mouth, swallowing well before the sensation of taste could possibly have entered the equation. Joe’s brain shut off for a moment as he subtly weathered the blinding offense.

Dive waited a few moments for Joe to finish his sentence, then took a long sip of his beer, donut crumbs and all. When it became clear that this was not going to happen, the towering moori gestured toward Joe’s bandage-wrapped flank. “So. I heard about your little run-in with Her Highness.”

Joe frowned, craning his neck to stare at the still-healing bite mark. “Ah... sissy told you about that, huh?”

Dive chuckled. “Oh she told everyone about that, kiddo.” With a subtle, disinterested roll of the head, the moori glanced around the immediate area, then motioned for Joe to move against the wall, away from the crowd. Joe’s ears fell flat against his head. He knew that look. Dive pulled close. “So? Did the spell hold?”

With a sigh, Joe pushed down the wrappings like he was dropping his drawers, showing the top half of his cutie mark. Peeking out from the under the taut bindings was a simple image of an equine eye, half-open, with Joe’s emerald coloration at the iris. Along its fringes, the slight flicker of a fraying illusion spell tried and failed to cover over the mark with Joe’s usual pink donut. “Don’t know what in the hay she did to it, but it’s been getting worse every few hours. At this rate, the spell will probably fry itself out in... I dunno, a day?”

Dive grumbled, putting a hoof against his forehead. “That wasn’t an easy spell to put together, you know. Your dad had a real talent for illusion magic. Expected that thing to hold your entire life.” He frowned, glancing out at the crowd, spying several members of his Night Guard as they chattered and laughed amongst the festivities. “Suppose we could ask Pixie to give it a whirl. You’ll understand if I’m not eager to let any more ponies in on this than necessary.”

Joe nodded, pulling the bandages tight. “Figure I can just leave the wrappings on for now, while we figure this out.”

Dive took a sip of ale, staring at the jagged crack down Joe’s horn. He seemed distracted, visibly mulling something over in his head. After a few moments, he sighed, looking Joe in the eyes. “Been feeling more honest than usual tonight, kiddo. A lot more. Any idea why that might be?”

Joe’s eyes widened, glancing at his horn for a moment. “I... I don’t think so, no.” his ears fell flat against his head in dread. “Are... are you sure?”

Dive glanced to his right for a moment before meeting Joe’s gaze again. He held a slightly suspicious look. “Could be the ale, I suppose.” he took a sip, looking off at the party. “Could also be you.”

Joe put a hoof behind his neck, staring at the ground. There was no way, right? His magic didn’t work any more. It was over. It had been over for years and years. He met Blind Dive’s lone eye with a wash of fear. “You think... I mean... that’s not possible, right?”

The immense moori’s mouth smoothed into an irritated frown. “You’re the first unicorn that I know of to ever survive a shattered horn, Joe. There isn’t exactly a book on it.” he pressed a firm hoof against Joe’s chest, narrowing his eye into a piercing draconian glare. “You’d better not be lying to me, son. I don’t need some second sight to know a liar.”

Joe swatted the hoof aside with a wave of his foreleg. “I don’t lie, you know that.”

Blind Dive scoffed, shaking his head in cynical amusement. “There is literally nopony on the whole of Equestria who knows more about deceit than you!” He flicked Joe’s horn with his hoof. “By the stars, kid, with that thing you must’ve seen a thousand and one ways to spin a lie!”

The baker felt an ugly rage fill his chest. Of course he had. He couldn’t help it. He’d felt all the ways in which all of the world lies and deceives and fabricates, the selfish fictions they wove for the stupidest things. Clenching his teeth, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and held it until the anger passed. This was something he never could quite do before. Close his eyes and, for a moment, shut the world out. Everypony needed that from time to time. To turn it off.

He opened his eyes and gave the moori a defeated look. “You’d be surprised how enormously appealing that makes it all.”

Dive held an appraising look on the Joe, the way he did when he was running through every possible reason not to trust somepony. He had always been this way, as far back as Joe could remember. Vigilant, brash, more than a little paranoid. As much he hated the implication, Joe needed ponies like Blind Dive in his life. To keep him honest.

Placing his hoof on Joe’s shoulder, Dive gave him a resigned tilt of the head. “I really want to believe you, kiddo.”

Joe’s ears perked up as he returned a desperate, pleading expression. “I swear to Celestia, Dive, it’s gone! My magic is gone!” Joe sighed, his face falling in gloom. “...You have to believe me.”

Dive looked him in the eye. “Well, you tell me. Do I believe you?”

“I mean it. I swear. I can’t tell.”

The moori just stared, waiting.

Joe dropped his head, putting a hoof to his forehead. “No. No you don’t.”

Dive loudly slapped a hoof onto the ground, giving Joe a shove with his shoulder. “Hah! Guess you can’t tell, then.”

The baker looked up at him with surprise, then slowly, drew a long, wide smile across his face. “You mean it?”

Blind Dive gave him a shrug. “I do. But if you feel anyof that blasted second sense coming back, you tell me, or by the moon and the bucking stars I will kick your sorry flank from here to Cloudsdale.”

Joe stretched, cracking his neck. “Pshaw, I’d like to see you try, you old sod.”

Dive chewed on the thought for a moment, giving Joe a once-over. “Certainly surprised you haven’t gone soft yet, boy, packing away all those donuts. Been keeping up on your regimen, I see.”

Joe grinned. “What can I say? Doesn’t hurt my chances with these delicate Canterlot mares.” Plopping his mug on the ground, the stallion braced himself for a lunge. “How about it, then? Or is Princess-sitting making you fancy?”

With a bold cackle, Dive slid his drink to the ground, giving Joe an expectant grin. With a sharp, momentous lunge, the two clashed at the shoulder, hooves scraping against the floor in a tense contest of strength. Blind Dive was quite a bit larger, no doubt about that, but Joe was more than a decade younger. Shifting his weight to his left side, he forced the Dive into the nearby bookshelf, giving him the leverage needed to overturn the colossal pony.

Bracing his hoof against a shelf, Blind Dive gave two powerful beats of the wing and pulled into the air, hovering over Joe just long enough for the unicorn to slide under and faceplant into the wall. Not missing a beat, the moori pulled a sharp loop overhead, coming down hard on Joe’s side. The baker staggered backward with an invigorated laugh, scraping forward against the wood in an attempt to break his inertia. As his hind leg came down on the corner of the throw carpet, Joe lost his footing, skittering to a crash next to the front door and falling hard on something soft. Joe heard a surprised, feminine yelp from under his flank. Terror washed over his body as he turned to look at the enormous, brilliant-white alicorn he’d just collapsed onto. Princess Celestia.

• • • •

For a single, flabbergasted instant, Celestia just stared up at Joe in shock. The first thought that went through her head was how much heavier the bulky unicorn was than she’d expected. She wasn’t sure what she expected, exactly, but goodness.

Her second thought was that if anypony saw the two of them right now, as they were, they would see the princess of the sun wrapped around some stallion in a door frame, up to who knows what. She silently pleaded that this exact thing did not happen, to which the universe brought swift and delicious retribution. Across the room, Pinkie Pie pulled in a gasp so loud and intense she hovered above the crowd, drawing a hundred sets of eyes upon the two interlocked ponies. Fevered murmurs of shock and concern fluttered from the legion of partygoers as they drew closer. Celestia could only roll her eyes as she waited for Joe to snap out of it.

She didn’t have to wait long. In a blink, Joe had scrambled onto all fours, frantically stammering out apologies while he helped his queen to her hooves. “Princess! Oh! Okay! Uh! Wow! Okay!! Um!! Sweet Harmony I am so sorry about that! Are you okay?!” The stallion darted around his princess, frantically searching for some sign of injury.

With a flustered smile, Celestia stood and waved her hoof, trying to calm him down. “No no! I’m quite all right! I was—” she cleared her throat, regaining her composure. “I was... just dropping by. Please, no need to... stand on...” she trailed off with a frown as Joe fell into a deep bow, sending a wave of ponies to the floor in similar submission. Utter, crushing silence befell the room. Where once there had been a lively, bustling celebration, now there were rows upon rows of ponies pressed to the beer-stained hardwood in sober reverence.

Across the apartment, suddenly completely exposed to the room, stood Gilda, frozen like a statue with her talon wrapped around the keg spout. With glacial speed, the griffon creaked the nozzle open, silently filling up her stein while keeping an alarmed eagle eye trained on the princess. The mousy squeak of the spout closing shut echoed against the crushing silence. Celestia sighed.

Donning a warm, polite smile, she spread her wings and gave her subjects a deep nod. “You all do me a great honor, and I thank you. Please, as you were. I am here as a friend.” she held the pose for a few moments, until her ponies felt comfortable standing up.

Her eye drifted to the plate of donuts beside the wooden keg, sending a chill of alarm down her spine. Her ears flattened as her turned a cold look to Joe.

"Tell me those are not what I think they are." She glared.

Joe swallowed. "Oh! No no! No, those—" he gave a strained, nerve-wracked smile. "—those are made from my own supply. Don't worry! Here!" he retrieved a maple cake donut from the tray, sliding it into a small plate with a napkin. With a strained smile, he offered the pate between heavily shaking hooves.

Celestia squirmed against the knot in her throat, staring dubiously at the pastry in hoof. She remembered all too well how fragile the baker's pride could be when it came to his beloved donuts. If the princess of the sun couldn’t choke them down after what he’d gone through with Luna and Sunny, just yesterday, the poor thing might very well have a heart attack. With no small amount of hesitation, she brought the sticky pastry to her mouth, taking the tiniest of nibbles. Her eyes clenched shut in anticipation of an onslaught of revulsion. This was it.

At first, she felt nothing. Then, the bite seemed to melt against her tongue, the syrupy sweetness becoming ever-so-slightly moist in the heat of her mouth. She chewed, feeling the pastry fall apart into fluffy wisps with only the slightest token resistance. Before she knew it, the taste had spread all across her tongue, wrapping her taste buds in a wonderfully light blanket of savory smoothness. She sighed in delight, licking the remnants off the back of her cheek.

Opening her eyes, she turned to the baker sitting beside her. Joe was staring up at his princess with big, eager, fearful eyes. Celestia smiled. “My goodness, Joe, these are wonderful.”

With an enormous sigh, Joe clutched a hoof to his chest and dropped his head back, feeling a wave of relief wash over him. The rugged stallion looked as if he’d just woken from a nightmare, with all of his worries vanishing into thin air. Returning his gaze to the princess, he levelled a polite smile. “Your Highness flatters...”

Celestia waved a hoof with a chuckle. “Oh but I mean it, I truly do.” She took another, much larger bite, a wide, satisfied smile drawing across her face. “Simply wonderful.”

“Hooh! Thank the STARS.” Joe let out a booming laugh, shaking his head with elated relief, “I think I would have died, right here in my living room, if you’d felt any other way.”

Celestia delicately wiped her mouth with the napkin, hiding a relieved smile of her own.

With a start, Joe sprang to his feet. “Drink! You need a drink! Let me get you a drink! We have—” Joe surveyed the unsavory entourage of moori huddled around the keg, rowdily swinging about their mugs as they muddled through an old griffon folk song, vaguely led by the visibly inebriated Gilda. He began to sweat, scouring his apartment for a single thing fit for a princess. His was not an apartment well-stocked with things fit for a princess.

Joe’s eyes locked onto the staircase. “—Wine! I have a bottle of Caberneigh from the old house! Stay right here, I’ll get you a glass!”

Celestia raised a hoof to object. “Oh, really, you mustn’t—”

Joe waved her words away like parasprites. “I won’t hear it! Be right back, princess!” Without a second glance, he took off into the crowd. Celesta facehoofed. All she needed to do was say hello to Pinkie, and she could be on her way. She could practically feel Joe’s anxiety from here. The last thing she wanted was to ruin this night for him.

With an agitated twitch of her ear, she surveyed the apartment. It did not take long. By Harmony, was this really it? Joe’s diner was at least twice as big as this tiny little house. Property values must’ve been creeping up again. Celestia scowled at the thought of having to once more ward off urban gentrification. Every century, it was the same blasted thing in this city. Next week. She’d do it next week.

As she turned to face the rear wall, she saw a familiar, one-eyed moori fluttering to the ground beside her. “Glad to see you out and about, Your Ladyship.” The imposing commander Blind Dive gave a short, respectful bow, to which the princess returned a warm nod. “I get worried about you two, cooped up in that castle. The weight of the world riding your saddle.”

“This has... certainly been one of those weeks, hasn’t it,” she muttered, placing her napkin on the coffee table.

A sudden thunder of cheering erupted from across the room as Seraph leapt onto Joe’s back, covering his eyes with her hooves and barking directions. The chuckling stallion feigned a few bucks for effect before intentionally plowing into a wall, trying to shake off the giggling passenger.

“Dive I... I have to ask, are you quite sure about that one?” Celestia frowned. “She’s nice and all, but... I am not sure I would have chosen her myself.”

The commander gave a relenting shrug. “I know, I know, she’s more than a little rough around the edges. But Princess Luna just adores the little scamp, and... well... that counts for quite a bit. Her Highness is withdrawn enough as it is without us sticking her with another couple of mute statues.” He absently swirled his drink, chuckling at the display of sibling horseplay before him. “I wasn’t much better when I was her age, if you’ll recall.”

Celestia hid a smile behind her hoof. This was quite true. An ornery half-blind flyer with no depth perception. The only reason he’d made it as far as the Night Guard was because they needed to fill the ranks after... troubles.

Dive gave his princess a troubled glance, noticing a distant look in her eyes. “...Ma’am?”

Celestia lowered her gaze to the floor. “Was... just remembering. Those two moori we lost routing Rustwing from Hollow Shade... they were her parents, were they not?”

“Aye.” Dive nodded, staring into his drink. “Poor thing was just old enough to hate the world for all that.” He shook his head. “She put Parish through all seven circles of Tartaurus after he took her in, I know that much.”

Celestia frowned. Magister Parish. It seemed obvious now, but she frankly never would've guessed that he had been Joe’s father. He’d been a composer for the Royal Guard his entire adult life, stationed at the Archives. A proud, devoted, handsome stallion, even in his later years. Fifty-five was not a bad run, for a unicorn.

Thinking back on it, she’d always rather liked that one. Perhaps a bit coarse and stubborn at times, but... a soldier of rare capability. She had felt genuinely protected when he was near, a quality that was actually quite uncommon. The Guard wasn’t really there for her protection, when you got down to it. They were far more useful as facilitators and sentries. Ultimately, like all of her ponies, they were hers to protect.

“Your wine, my princess.” Glancing to her left, she saw Joe, standing firm by her side with a serving tray across his back. Just as he had with the coffee. She wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to cross the entire party without some errant flank sending the quivering glass crashing to the floor. It was rather impressive. She kept forgetting that the stallion couldn’t simply float it over with his magic.

With a smile, she graciously accepted the glass, giving Joe a nod as he bowed out to return the platter to the kitchen. Through the windows, she caught sight of Pinkie Pie springing about on the balcony, evidently... talking to herself. Now was her chance. One quick, polite conversation with that mare, and she could duck out for a quick ‘change of clothes.’

• • • •

Gilda quaked with laughter as Seraph chirped out the delightfully embarrassing ending to her infamous Las Pegasus story.

“I cannot believe they did not kick my flank out of the Guard for that. And Pixie—!” Seraph giggled with a scratchy, squeaky cadence. She waved a hoof excitedly at Pixie, who had already gone from orange to a deep, cherry red. ”—she kept asking me where I was hiding all the stallions, like I’d shoved them into the closet and under the bed!”

Pixie’s cheeks puffed in indignation. “Well I don’t know what you get up to! I thought you’d had some kind of depraved four-way! How do two mares make that much of a mess in one room?!”

Seraph and Gilda shared a hearty laugh, the moori waving a dismissive hoof over Pixie with a jovial ‘baaah!’ She shook her head, giving Gilda a smile. “Alright, jeepers. I should probably thank the dang princess of Equestria for coming to my party, shouldn’t I.” She nodded toward Celestia, who seemed to be trying to hold a conversation with the erratically leaping mile-a-minute mare on the balcony.

Gilda gave her a curt nod and a slight smile, turning back to the crowd. She could see Joe coming out from the kitchen with a tray of cupcakes balanced on his back, and another of turnovers gripped in his mouth, both rattling with tenuous grip. Her first instinct was to avert her eyes from what was doubtless to be certain catastrophe. If Joe was going to make an idiot out of himself, that’d be his doing. It would be pretty insulting to go swooping over to save him from himself like he was some inept hatchling.

Her second instinct was, well, screw it, it’s Joe. She walked over to the stallion, grasped both trays in between her talons, and slid them beside the donuts, giving him a roll of the eyes.

“Thanks.” Joe smiled as he pulled himself onto his hind legs and arranged the treats as best he could. Gilda couldn’t help but notice they seemed unusually haphazard for the meticulous baker. The turnovers were all different sizes and angles, and the cupcakes were weirdly shaped. Maybe he was drunk.

She clasped one of the turnovers between her talons, eyeing it suspiciously. It looked normal enough, but every time she’d tried some new kind of pastry at Joe’s diner, it always turned out to be this cruel trojan pony full of weird seeds or fruit or whatever. It drove the griffon crazy.

Joe futzed with the display for about a minute before dropping back on all fours, evidently satisfied. He grabbed his drink off the table and turned to Gilda, just in time to watch her take a large bite. She chewed once, then froze, her eyes wide. Slowly, she opened her beak, and pulled out a pecan from the half-chewed mush. She held the nut up to the baker while she closed her mouth and choked the rest down, leveling a murderous glare.

Joe burst out laughing, holding a hoof over his eyes. The griffon frowned, flicking the pecan across the room and into the overfull trash bin. She took a long gulp of her drink in an effort to wash out the texture.

The unicorn chuckled. “Come on, you gotta eat the whole thing at once. It all mixes together. It’s good!”

Gilda’s feathers stood on end. “Blech! Gods, I’ll never get used to this stupid country.”

“Aw, hey. You make a great Equestrian! You're practically one of the ponies by now!”

Gilda stared at him like he’d just invented a new slur.

Joe shook his head with a wide grin. “Eheh... what I mean is...” He gestured toward her chest with his drink. “...you’re a lot nicer than you were, when you first started showing up. That’s a good thing! Nice is good.”

Gilda looked away, flattening her beak into a grimace. For Zu knows what reason, she felt an overwhelming desire to tell Joe everything about what had happened at the castle that day. She knew all too well that the red lights weren’t the kind of thing you were supposed to go around babbling about to every Joe and Jane in Equestria. Even so, the simple fact remained that it was what she wanted. Maybe it was the alcohol. More likely, it was the naked fact that Joe and his sister were pretty much the only friends she had in this ridiculous country, now that she’d screwed things up with Rainbow. Gilda didn’t mind being alone. She’d always been alone. But it was just... nice, to have someone give a damn. Someone she could actually talk to.

She took another long sip from her ale. She wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this.

“So... yeah.” Gilda put a talon on the back of her neck, turning a little red. “You know that huge, awful drawing I’ve been working on? At the diner? I kind of had to do a presentation on it yesterday.”

Joe scoffed, shaking his head wistfully. “I cannot imagine you in front of a group of businessmares, giving some lecture on... what was it, farming?”

“It was just one pony.”

“Oh, well, that’s not too bad, I guess.”

Gilda nervously rubbed her claw over her upper arm. “...that pony was Princess Celestia.”

Joe snarfed his drink, tumbling into a fit of coughing. Gilda felt a wave of dread pass over her as several sets of eyes fell on them. She rose a claw, her gaze darting around the room, trying to quiet the unicorn down.

Joe gave a loud, clearing hack, then rose with a hoof over his nose. “I would be so bucking positive you were joking if I didn’t know you better.” Reaching for the table with his free hoof, he grabbed a napkin and wiped his snout. “What the hay did the ruler of our entire country want with you?” His face fell. “Oh no. Gilda. What did you do?”

She frowned. “Nothing! It’s my...” Gilda swallowed. “...that’s my job.” She snuck a glance at Joe’s expression. She couldn’t read whatever emotion was writ across his face, but she was pretty sure it was some mixture of disbelief and flabbergasted shock. “I’m supposed to be an emissary for Elpithasus.”

Joe narrowed his eyes, half smiling, like he expected her to throw him the punchline any second. “You. You’re who they picked. Gilda.”

Gilda scowled. “Hey I can be diplomatic if I want to be! I do a great job!”

Joe rose a hoof to his forehead for a few moments, doubtlessly trying to wrap his mind around the very concept. With a relenting shake of the head, he lowered his hoof. “So... so how’d it go? Well, I hope?”

Gilda gave a strained, toothy, nervous smile. Joe knew that look.

“Gilda.”

“It... it went okay! Kind of! I’m...” She couldn’t believe she was telling him this. “I’m honestly kind of freaked out by how close I came to just flipping out on her, at one point.”

Joe’s face contorted in horror. He swallowed. “Are... are you allowed to... flip out? At the princess?”

The griffon bit her claw with her beak, giving him a look that said ‘nope.’ “She’s pretty forgiving. I...” She scoffed, playing it all back in her head. “I genuinely have no idea why.”

Joe leveled another incredulous look at her. “...seriously, you’re who they picked.”

She sighed, staring into her drink. “It’s... kind of complicated. I kinda volunteered.”

“...Why?”

She felt the words tumbling out of her beak before she even had begun to think about whether or not she should tell him. This was way personal. Gods, she must be more drunk than she thought. “I was mar—” Was all that escaped her beak before she clamped two claws over it, holding it shut. This was weird. This was really scary weird. It was like she couldn’t stop herself, like her mind was railroading her life story out of her brain without a moment’s consideration.

She stared at Joe with a wide, panicked look. He swallowed, looking to the side in confusion, before furrowing his brow and holding up a hoof. “Eheh, well, I guess that doesn’t matter, right?”

Gilda looked away, with a sick expression on her face.

“Gilda, look... they wouldn’t have let you do this if they weren’t at least somewhat sure you could.” He gave her a smile. “People get angry. It’s normal. I kind of wish politicians did it more, to be honest.”

The griffon turned back to look at him, still a little pale. “...Really?”

“Well, yeah... I mean, I’m about as far from one as you can get, but... they’re so used to spewing out whatever manure gets them what they want that — especially here, in this city—” He shook his head. “—If I had to deal with them every bucking day, like the princess does, I’d take any shred of honest emotion I could get.”

Gilda rubbed her upper arm, glancing out the window and to the balcony. Celestia had vanished. “Yeah. Yeah I guess she would.”

“Course, I could be wrong. In which case, for the love of Celestia, lie your furry flank off.”

Gilda smiled, and let out a short, but genuine, laugh.

Wow. She... felt a little better. She wasn’t expecting that. A tiny part of her wanted to thank him. A much larger part chased that thought out of her head like a gazelle.

She could think of one thing he might like.

“Dude.” Gilda’s grin grew impish. “Your goddess has the hots for you.”

Author's Note

Second part is going up later today. This chapter was a kerjillion words, so I'm splitting it into two parts.

Party Like There's No Tomorrow

Party Like There's No Tomorrow
• • • •

“Dude.” Gilda’s grin grew impish. “Your goddess has the hots for you.”

Joe scoffed, giving the griffon a bemused look. “Gilda, come on now.” He craned his neck to see if Celestia was still about, but caught no sight of her. That was fast. “The princess barely knows who I am.”

A mock solemnity washed over Gilda’s face as she held her mug over her heart, raising her bent arm and similarly bent wing in the traditional griffon salute. “I swear to my tribe, the spirits, and Anzu himself.” She leveled a stoic stare upon him. “You’ve got a deity looking to jump your bones, dweeb.”

Joe raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out her game. Gilda tended to take that kind of thing pretty seriously. He’d never seen her use it for some bizarre joke. “Yeah, oookay.”

The griffon pulled in her wing and dropped her claw to the ground, giving him a half-lidded grin. “I’ll prove it. HEY STINKY PIE!” She bellowed, her voice echoing across the party. On the other side of the room, Pinkie sped up her intensely complicated story to a high-pitched flurry of squeaks, then waved goodbye to her captive audience of dumbstruck ponies. With three long, impressively high bounces, she landed right beside Gilda with an alarmingly loud thump.

“Yup??”

“Joe doesn’t believe me about the princess.”

Pinkie seemed to just stand there, vibrating place in with slowly building intensity, eyes wide open.

Gilda cleared her throat. “You know... the ‘snogging’?” She grinned, making two small air quotes with her talons.

Pinkie looked up at the griffon in surprise. “Gilda!! We’re not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff!”

The griffon gave a dismissive wave. “Aw come on, it’s Joe. He’s not gonna go around blabbing about it!”

Pinkie returned to her internal la-la land for a few moments before suddenly springing to life again, prodding the little plush bumblebee in her mane while she sashayed her hips, in tune with a cartoonishly dorky, low-pitched voice. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Pinkie Pie! Do you want to tell the story or not?”

Pinkie immediately deflated onto the floor, looking up at her toy. “Commodore Snugglebug! We shouldn’t!”

Darting back onto her hooves, she wiggled the toy around with her head, pantomiming the voice once again. “If you don’t have the gemstones to say it, then I will! It all began—”

Pinkie’s face collapsed into a fierce, challenging glare. “Oh no you don’t! I’ll tell the story!!” she shrieked.

Gilda gave Joe a baffled look.

With a few quick glances around the immediate area, Pinkie leaned in, giving two small inward waves of the hoof. They drew closer. Her eyes darted from one side to the other before she raised a hoof to the side of her mouth. “It’s not even really a story but... okay... don’t tell anypony though.”

Joe nodded.

“We were talking to Luna about this super secret thing? And she mentions off-hoof that she’d had—” Pinkie’s fur stood on end with electric giddiness, like a cat about to pounce. “—one of those dreams, about you! About biting your butt!!”

Joe rolled his eyes, looking over at Gilda.

Gilda chuckled. “Okay yeah, you know that part, but then Luna gets all defensive, apologizing to Celestia for fantasizing about ‘her’ stallion. Like it was this big thing between them. She starts going on about how the princess had already ‘staked claim’ to your rugged ass.”

Joe raised a hoof over his mouth with a quaking chuckle. “Hooo-leee hayseed.” he shook his head, glancing between Pinkie and Gilda. “There’s no way.”

Pinkie nodded with delighted glee, giggling like a schoolfilly while she pranced in place, from left side to right side, then back. Joe turned to Gilda, who had her claws over her beak, similarly amused. Joe chuckled, noticing the familiar white figure of Sunny Skies, who was simply standing there with the brightest, most intense blush he had ever seen.

“Hey! You made it! Gilda! Look! Sunny’s here!” Joe thrust a hoof at Sunny, face alight with childlike excitement. Gilda didn’t respond, distracted by the unintelligible string of gibberish Pinkie Pie had begun speaking to herself whilst spinning in circles. “Okay you have got to try these donuts I made. Come on, they’re back here.”

Joe reached out a hoof and touched her shoulder to guide her to the kitchen. Sunny startled at the sensation, snapping out of her thoughts and glancing at Joe in unpleasant surprise. Joe pulled back his hoof, feeling guilty. No touching. Right.

• • • •

Sunny’s expression shifted to one of guilt. No matter how many times she walked about in 'casual dress,' it still felt incredibly intrusive having ponies just... walk up and touch her. Shake her hoof, bump into her on the street, pat her on the back. It wasn’t like she hadn’t touched anypony as the princess — she did it all the time — but it was always her choice, something she did to them. Princess Celestia could stroll through the Canterlot market commons on Sunday afternoon, and the crowd would clear around her like oil in water. It was inconceivable that one of her subjects might impose a hoof on their goddess; a genuine offense, even. She wasn’t sure when this had began, but it was a long, long time ago.

Even now, in such relaxed times as these, to place a reassuring hoof on one of her ponies was almost always met with nerve-wracked anxiety. She hardly even needed to look at Joe as the goddess of the sun to foster the same reaction. It had become a rather distant kind of normal, for her. Sunny silently cursed herself for feeling so foalishly resentful of Joe for overstepping a boundary she didn’t even want, one he couldn’t possibly know about. Even so. She felt how she felt.

She followed Joe over to the small wooden table on which he’d stacked his beloved donuts. With a smile, she took one in hoof. Joe moved a foreleg between a large wooden keg and an open bottle of wine. "Alrighty, we’ve got beer and wine. What's your poison, sunbeam?"

Sunny stared at the keg. By the stars, when was the last time she’d had a beer? She honestly couldn't remember. It seemed strangely, absurdly exotic to her now.

"I think I need a beer." She smiled, taking a large bite out of the maple cake donut. It was unreal how good those things were.

Joe beamed with pride, seeing her delight. Turning to the keg, he filled a stein of ale and placed it on the small coffee table beside her. With another eager chomp, she devoured the rest of the pastry, delicately licking her hoof to clean off the remaining sugar. With a satisfied sigh, she glanced up at Joe, who was watching the display with the dorkiest, most adorable grin she’d ever seen. She blushed. It was weirdly thrilling, letting him see her with her guard down. She sheepishly burped behind her hoof, turning to pick up her drink.

Beside the mug stood a small, glass-framed photograph of a little colt, tucked into a hospital bed with a moori companion curled up beside him like a kitten. Her drink in hoof, she picked up the frame, studying the image. The colt was out cold, his forehead blackened by a starburst of charred hair branching out from a tightly-wrapped horn. The marking stood in stark contrast to his amber coat and dark orange mane.

“...Is this you?” she asked, looking at the baker with concern.

Joe fidgeted uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

She flipped the frame around. The back was covered with signatures and notes from friends and family. Seraph’s was the largest and messiest, a foalish swirl of adorably horrid hoofwriting, ‘you’d better get better, you dingus!!’ it begged, alongside a potato-like picture of a pony she was pretty sure was supposed to be Joe. Others, she assumed, were his mother and father’s, schoolmates’, and Dive’s distinctive chickenstratch. ‘You’re a fighter, kiddo. Fight this.’

Then, she saw it. In the corner, etched with divinely ornate calligraphy. Hoofwriting that was at once indulgently old-fashioned and perfectly modern. Princess Celestia’s. ‘You are the strongest little pony I know.’ it read, flanked by her tight, wispy signature and a tiny little heart.

Sunny furrowed her brow, trying as hard as she could to remember when, or why, she had written this. It must’ve been fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. That was a heartbeat. How could she not recall something so recent? Her memory sorted through dozens of similarly bedridden foals over the years, each she’d made a point to meet, speak with, and comfort, as best she could. If they had only one year to go, or fifty, they deserved it. Everypony deserved to be loved.

“I was really, really sick, for a while.” Joe sighed, staring off toward the crowd. “I remember feeling myself almost... disappear, a couple times, one night in the hospital. It was the most scared I’ve ever been. Everypony was sure I wouldn’t make it.” she followed his gaze to Seraph, watching as the mare loudly boasted to a captive audience on the other side of the room. “Everypony but my sister.”

Sunny turned the frame around once more, gazing at the curled-up filly snuggled against the colt’s side.

Joe gently took the frame from her hoof. “I know it sounds weird, but... when I lost my magic, I couldn’t feel the world, like I used to. It was like I went blind.” He gazed at the picture, at the blackened, bandage-wrapped horn. “You can’t imagine how alone that felt.” After a distant moment, Joe slid the photograph back onto the table, cracking a tiny smile. “When she was there, I could feel her. Right there next to me. Somepony who wanted me just to be okay.”

Sunny tilted her head, giving the stallion a heartbroken look. “Joe...” Slowly, she raised a hoof, gently pressing it against his own.

Joe pulled away with a flustered, awkward chuckle. “Sheesh, listen to me. You just got here and already I’m dumping all this depressing shlock on you.” He raised his drink and took a sip, looking out the window. “You should see our balcony! The view’s gorgeous this time of night.” He moved to start toward the window, then suddenly stopped, dead in his tracks. For a moment, he held the pause, squinting his eyes in confusion. His mouth opened a bit. “What in the...”

Sunny gave him a puzzled look, then turned. She didn’t quite understand what she saw.

Ponies were slowly pouring out of the room and onto the balcony, their heads craned and their eyes wide with awe. A slowly intensifying moonlight bathed everything in sight, almost as if it was the middle of the day. Sunny noticed an eerie silence had suddenly and strikingly befallen the room, Seraph halting her story mid-sentence to float outside with the rest of them. She stared in utter confusion, trying to imagine what it could possibly be that captivated them so. She turned to Joe, exchanging a baffled look with the stallion.

Joe put down his mug. “Hold on, I’m just... gonna check on what this is.” He started for the open window, but felt a hoof against his foreleg. Sunny stood beside him with a firm glance. She was coming with, whether he wanted it or not. Joe’s ears flattened against his head, clearly displeased, but he didn’t stop her. They pressed into the herd of ponies, squeezing through the open window and onto the increasingly crowded balcony.

Before and below them stretched the open market commons, populated by hundreds of unicorns, ponies, moori, and pegasi. She had never, in all her countless years, seen the commons so crowded at such a late hour. Every pony in the city must have been out tonight, standing or floating in place, their heads craned upward. Sunny swallowed, feeling a hoof on her shoulder. Joe’s voice was soaked with dread. “Sunny.” She felt him gently shake her. “Look.”

She craned her neck upward, and felt her mouth fall open. She couldn’t even... begin, to understand its size. It filled the sky. Utterly, filled it. She pressed several long, deliberate blinks, hoping to grasp its immensity, to mentally step back another few magnitudes of scale. No dice. She started where she could: It was brilliant grey-white, a sky ceiling of vast mountains and deep craters, beaming with a silvery-blue light such intensity it almost hurt to stare at it. But stare at it she did.

It was the moon.

Somehow, against all measure of reason and belief, it had come to them. She couldn’t tell how far from the ground it was, but it was far, far closer than it could possibly be. Miles. Just a few miles away. It was impossible.

“Isn’t he pretty?!”

Sunny slowly followed the voice back down to the balcony, staring blankly at the simple pink mare that sat with her back to Sunny, gazing up at the unthinkably colossal planetoid above. Pinkie turned her head to the side with a smile, her irises burning with a fierce red-pink coloration.

“Commadore Snugglebug said he might drop by for a visit, but I never thought there’d be so much of him!!” her voice had become steady and controlled, yet boundlessly cheerful. There wasn’t the slightest hint of distress or anger, just simple, excited delight.

Sunny swallowed, her ears flat against her head. She hadn’t the slightest idea what to even think about this. Her senses completely failed her. She had no idea why, but she couldn’t feel a bucking thing from the moon ahead. At all. It was like it wasn’t there, like it was made of nothing. But she could feel the air pressing down on her, and see it, see its light brightening up every structure in sight. She knew it was there.

“When he told me all about his birthday, I knew I just had to bring him by! Everypony deserves a party for their birthday!!”

Sunny turned to look at Joe, but he offered no sign of interest. Like everyone else’s, his eyes were locked onto the moon — half-lidded, cloudy, but now burning with a light around the iris similar to Pinkie’s. She pressed a hoof against his chest.

“Joe?” she whispered, her voice taut with terror. He blinked, very slowly, but remained in place. She pressed harder, shaking him. “J-Joe?!”

Nothing.

Pinkie turned to face Sunny, standing on all fours. It was then she realized how much larger the pony had become. The mare now towered above her, at a size at least that of an alicorn. Her gently-waving locks of curly hair growing almost as fast as her toothy smile.

“I thought, ‘what better place to have a party than the castle!?’ Why, they’ve got the biggest, most splenderrific present I’ve ever seen wrapped up in that room, ready to go! Commadore Snugglebug thinks it’ll be just perfect!!” She looked up at the sky with a giggle, bobbing her head from one side to the other, the plush bumblebee in her mane flopping about. A light crept up its little stitched body, from its feet to its big, wavy bee antennae, and slowly, it seemed to melt into her head. Absorb into her. She laughed at the sensation, shaking her mane as it disappeared into her. All that remained were two, long, cartoonishly cute bumblebee antennae, each twitching about with a mind of their own. Pinkie waved them in a lazy circle, eyes turned up to watch them twirl about.

The two antennae perked into the air for a moment, stiff, while Pinkie’s grin seemed to fade. She gasped inward with two sharp breaths, then paused, scrunching up her nose. Finally, she chirped out a high-pitched sneeze. In an instant, the air above them ignited into a reddish-pink aurora, buffering the moon and the kingdom with a blanket of eerie, crimson moonlight.

Sunny’s heart fell as she stared into the light. It was the one from the book. The one her sister had rallied from the sky every night. The one that had snuggled its way into her ponies’ bellies, one cupcake at a time.

The red glow seemed to coil around Pinkie like an intangible whirlpool of quicksand, spiralling in from the sky. Her mane shimmered into a stunning pink-white ethereal wave, each incredibly long curl stretching into a waving tendril of bubblegum hair. As she rose into the air, propelled by nothing but an audible hum of energy, she resembled a twisted echo of Celestia’s Summer Sun Celebration, each band of pink hair its own point of reach. She had only grown larger, now almost the size of a young dragon. Sunny had never seen a single creature like her, and she had seen every living thing on Equestria.

With a grimace, Sunny poured everything she had into her horn, hoping against hope that she might raise the moon into its rightful place, far, far away, as she had every night for a thousand years. She felt nothing. Then, she felt that nothing grab hold of her. It was like all the magic in her body was being forced out by something she couldn’t sense, save for a dull, numb heaviness. With a startle, she pulled back, trying to sever the spell, but it wouldn’t break. It poured through her, a raging, unstoppable torrent of nothingness. Her horn glowed red hot from the stress.

Her flank shook as she struggled against the force building before her. She stammered out the only words she could. “P-Pinkie... please...”

The bubblegum creature spread its glowing tendrils wide, the teeth of her smile an iridescent white. “We’re going to have the biggest, bestest birthday party ever!” she chirped, her sugar-sweet voice swimming with anticipation.

“And everypony’s invited.”

A thin red force bellowed out from the mare, tearing at the ground, obliterating Joe’s roof, and surging through every pony in sight. Sunny felt the air rush against her face, just before it hit. Everything went black.

* * *

A time passed. Years, decades, centuries. An absurd amount of time.

When Sunny’s vision came back to her, she was in a forest. Or... no... that wasn’t right. She was a forest. How this was possible, she couldn’t say, but she had no body or hooves or eyes or ears, just trees and dirt and tiny, strange, alien little critters crawling about.

She could feel the world beneath her, and around her. She felt like maybe she was the world, crazy as that seemed. She also realized, slowly, that this world she had become wasn’t Equestria. She knew that because she could see Equestria, hanging above her in the sky. Every continent, every snow-peaked mountaintop, every yawning body of water, every thing, just floating there in the sky. She stared at it for a while, recognizing the broad landmass her ponies called home. It seemed different, somehow. Younger. There were no towns or cities or farmlands, just forested growth. This was a long time ago. An astonishingly long time ago. Millenia upon millenia. Back before she and her sister had first been called into being.

She soon came to notice a feeling, something primal and ugly, boiling within her. Within every leaf and tree and speck of dirt. Anger, fear, frustration. She felt a tickle, miles and miles away, and with a blink, she could see it. A vast, towering pillar of light reached out from her, from the ground, into the sky, through the void and all the way to Equestria. Within this light she saw dozens and dozens of dragons, of all shapes, colors, and sizes, drifting upward, as high as they could go. They were all following the light, trying desperately to escape the world that raged against them. They had lit a fire they could never put out.

Like remora fish clinging to the belly of a whale, each dragon was flanked on all sides by moori, pressed against their bodies and under their wings, somehow guiding them, or lifting them, she couldn’t tell. It was a corridor. An escape route off this world and onto the one that towered above them.

The rage built, and built, and built. It needed them. It needed their words and their stories and their will, or it would have nothing. Below the pillar of light, a claw formed out of the ground, made of dirt and rocks and trees and coral and every last little thing that made up the world. Vast waterfalls poured off of the widening digits as the planet reached out toward the evacuees, wrapping its inconceivably massive claw around the exodus of dragons and moori. It grasped the pillar of light like a pinecone, and with all its unthinkable might, it squeezed, sending shimmers of errant light up and down the ethereal corridor.

With a glint of the eye, the largest of the beasts turned around, shaking off its dozens of moori servants and barrelling back towards their world with a fury. It tore out the side of the corridor, and immediately began blasting searing streams of white-hot fire against the claw. A fire so torrid, so drenched in rage, all it left was grey charcoal. The claw clenched tighter, sending glowing cracks of stress along the base. Soon.

A furious scream crackled from the dragon’s maw as it pivoted along the wrist, tearing at its base with an uninterrupted stream of nightmarish wrath. Trees and dirt and plantlife evaporated into grey dust, writhing in a fire so hot it turned rock to ash. The claw surged, now without a base, and collapsed into a million pieces. Three more rose from the ground alongside it, reaching far into the sky, and coming down on the enormous drake with a savage weight.

Sunny stared up at the sky, seeing the last of the dragons disappear into the towering, lush world above. It was over. They were gone. She felt the world’s mind blind with fury, and then, blessedly, she awoke.

* * *

It was still night when Sunny gasped awake, half-buried in roof tiles and wooden planks. She coughed for a few moments, clearing the dust and soot from her lungs, shaking her mane to clear the little bits of wood and brick that clung to her body. Slowly, she climbed to her hooves, and gazed up at the sky.

The moon still hung where it had before, and its red lights still shimmered. In the distance, she could just make out the creature Pinkie had become, giggling as she passed over streets and looped around buildings. Below her, in the commons below, she saw hundreds of her subjects slowly trudging toward the castle, all at the same speed, all with the same dull, listless, mechanical tempo. She felt her heart sink. Her little ponies needed her.

She closed shut her eyes, and focused on the memory of her transformation. She knew before she even tried that it wouldn’t work. She could only barely feel the magic of the world around her now. It wandered and fled in all directions, chased away by the drifting red lights overhead. It would run scared, all the way out of the city. She knew it would. Sunny knew magic better than it knew itself.

All around her lay debris from Joe’s apartment. It had held, as all buildings had, but his roof was completely sheared off. The wave had trashed the inside of his living room with the fury of a flood. Ponies, unicorns, pegasi, and moori trudged about, dragging bags of sugar and trays of cupcakes from Joe’s ‘quarantine’ hooflocker into the cobblestone streets outside. She could only guess where they were bringing it. But she had a pretty good hunch.

As she rounded the corner, she could see what she thought was Joe’s flank sticking out from inside a closet. Only, his wrappings had been torn loose, hanging around his leg. She stared at the stallion’s bizarre cutie mark, not sure what to make of it. She’d never seen one of an eye before. She couldn’t imagine what it was for.

With a dull tug, the pony emerged from the closet with a heavy bag of sugar hanging from his mouth. Her eyes widened as his face came into view.

“Joe?!” she gasped, briskly trotting to the dazed stallion. He showed not the slightest shred of recognition, numbly tugging his bag of sugar past the coffee table and toward the door. She felt tears welling in her eyes, pangs of despair tugging at her chest. She watched as he pulled at the bag, barely noticing as it caught on the side of his sofa and tore open, spilling the tainted white powder across the floor. He regarded the mess with bland disinterest for a moment before reaching down and slowly, listlessly burying his muzzle into the pile of sugar.

“Joe... please say something...” Sunny tried desperately to push the stallion back, to keep him away from the sugar, but he pressed forward like she was nothing but a strong wind. She leaned her shoulder into his, hoping and praying to the stars he might stop, that he might feel her. Her hooves scraped along the floor as he swallowed mouthfulls of the sweet powder, like a cow chewing grass. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. “...Can you even hear me?”

Silence. She felt him bend down to shovel another heap of the powder into his mouth. Slowly, heavily, she pulled away to look him in the eyes. Empty, cloudy, vacant things, held down by a burning ring of pink. She closed her eyes and held her horn against his. Her heart ached, wishing she knew a single thing she could do to bring him back. With a dismal sigh, she wiped her eyes against the back of her hoof, and turned toward the door. She was going to fix this. She just would.

“Cub...”

Her heart leapt. She spun around, staring at the stallion with puffy, tear-streaked eyes. He’d raised his head, eyes wide and trembling. Sugar peppered his muzzle. “Joe?!”

“Cubbard...” Joe’s eye twitched, his hooves shaking. His voice was tinged with a guttural strain. She held a hoof to her mouth as the crack down his horn began to glow with a dim but increasingly intense orange light. The surrounding horn heated at a fierce rate, taking on a light red tint.

“G-got -uu... smm... smnthh...” he stuttered. Jolting slightly, rhythmically, like he was about to sneeze, or throw up, or both. His horn burned white.

Sunny turned to the cupboard. It now lay on its side, half-crushed under a mound of roofing. She cast Joe a concerned glance, then cantered over to the destroyed cabinet. Pawing the sides away, a pile of coffee mugs poured out, most of them in pieces. Among the ceramic shards lay a dilapidated ball of wrapping paper. Plucking it out with her mouth, she placed it on the coffee table, and pulled it open with both hooves.

With a tug, the paper fell open, revealing a simple coffee mug. Its handle had snapped off and a deep crack ran down its right side, with several smaller chips lost in the pile. She picked it up with her hoof, and turned it around. Across the front there was a little cartoon sun, smiling as it beamed out rays of yellow light. ‘You are my sunshine’ it read, in big, friendly letters.

She looked up at Joe. He had desperate tears running down his cheeks, babbling confused, strained, random words to himself, under his breath. He blinked hard, several times, trying to clear his head. His eyes were wide with terror. She had seen those exact eyes... somewhere. It was years and years ago. For a moment, just one moment, she had it.

They were on a roof. The castle roof, in a storm. Water bore down on them with a fury. She had stood fast, unwavering against the harsh winds and explosive thunder. Looking down, a flash of lightning had illuminated the amber colt at her hooves, barely holding up his head to stare back at her. Two green eyes, a blackened, shattered horn split between them. Try as she might, Sunny couldn’t recall when it had happened or why. But she would never forget those eyes. A fear so consuming, only a child could know.

“Joe...” Sunny trotted to his side, and pulled him into a hug. They just stood there for a time, feeling his racing heart. His trembling steadied, then settled. His heart wound down, beat by beat. His breathing became regular. She pressed her face into his neck, her eyes closed. She spoke softly into his twitching ear. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

After a minute or so, she felt a gentle hoof at her back as he brought his foreleg around her. He pulled her tight, and let out a long, shaky sigh.

“It felt... felt like... nothing.” She heard him say. He pulled her tighter. “I was just... gone.” The subtle hum of his horn settled into silence. “Then I felt you.”

Author's Note

So, it's going to get a little heavy for the first half of this next chapter, while I set up the villain. Nothing too crazy, but it's a little surreal. I'll be back to the story proper after a quick flashback.

In regards to those dang delightful donuts of Joe's: A few years back, I had a maple cake donut at this place in New Hampshire that taps and refines their own maple syrup. It was easily the greatest single donut I have ever had. Eating one of those glorious wonders was exactly as I've described it here. It was like a religious experience.

Crazy huge thanks to Luminary, Eakin, and Brawny for pre-reading and editing this chapter. There's more than a few rules of writing I still get caught up on, and it helps an enormous amount having that kind of direct input.

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home
• • • •

It was day 364,635 of Princess Luna’s banishment to the cold, barren, Sun-forsaken moon, and court was in session. The immortal goddess of the night sat atop her breathtakingly ornate throne of compacted moon dust, hooves clapping together, head atilt, and bloodshot eyes drifting in two separate, distant directions. As it had become increasingly clear to her legion of loyal and loving subjects, their princess had gone quite, quite mad.

For nine hundred and ninety-nine years, she had been the sole ruler of the moon, and for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, she had lived an impossible, abstracted, fevered dream. As much as she appreciated her subjects’ regal professionalism and heartfelt devotion, literally every single thing about them had terrified Luna well beyond the capacity for rational thought. At a certain point, she had come to simply embrace the sheer rimshot lunacy of it all.

Luna giggled to herself with demented glee, bobbing her head in tune with the dubious ministrations of the royal troubadour and its merry band. Charcoal ponies playing charcoal instruments, chirping out bizarre and erratic sounds in a half-remembered muddle of music. Were she in her right mind, the princess might have noticed how these jaunty tunes only ever went on as long as she could recollect, how they were always songs she had heard somewhere before. Sometimes the band would even play a song she had made up herself, in her head! Her ponies were quite the talented little improvisers!

“Wondrous! Wondrous, my ponies! Oh, how you have pleased your princess on this most auspicious of occasions!” Princess Luna rolled onto her back, laying her head upside-down over the side of the throne, her tangled, knotted, overgrown mane falling against the floor. “Wouldn’t you agree, Regent Pippindandy?” She flashed a manic smile to a strange, towering, vaguely-draconian beast that sat to her side, watching with delight as it laboriously clapped its heavy, bony claws.

The beast slowly nodded in agreement, returning a wide, fangy smile. The Regent was always smiling, actually, now that she thought about it. Oh! That was because its face was an enormous dragon skull! Skulls always looked like they were smiling, didn’t they? Ahah! Ahahah! Well! Be that as it may, Luna was quite sure it had just smiled, in its own way. Princesses could just tell.

With a tilt of the head, Luna stared intently into the Regent’s yawning, empty eyes, past the bone and to the grey powder behind. Since their war had began, she had come to find the etherbeasts of the Eastern Mare Frigoris deliciously strange. As with all things, they were almost entirely composed of the moon’s animate grey powder, but their bodies were haphazardly littered with the bones of very old, very dead dragons. The princess had always meant to ask if they wore the ancient fossil as a sign of respect. Perhaps it was a trophy! She certainly had never seen a living dragon on the moon, in all her time here. And she would know! Many, many, many times she had combed the moon’s surface, looking for anything but the same, desolate, empty grey waste. Not a thing! Nada! Oh, she could scarcely wait to ask the Regent where he had even FOUND such exotic artifacts! They had so much to learn from each other!

Spinning herself upright, the princess rose off her throne and onto her hooves. With two short stamps of the hoof, the minstrel ceased its shrilling melody and fell into a deep bow, just before dissolving back into the floor. In its place rose the familiar face of her beloved hoofservant, Primrose Path, his charcoal hoof holding aloft a charcoal platter with little charcoal chocolate treats. Bending into a slight bow, the specter cantered between his princess and the Regent, offering the snacks.

With a squeal, Luna popped one into her mouth, beaming with a wide grin at the chalky, bitter taste of carbon as it dissolved against her tongue. “I had my ponies collect these from the Molochi Crater, just south of the castle! The way the light dips into the valley gives the powder the most exotic pungence. They are simply heavenly!”

The Regent clutched one of the chocolates between two long, sharp claws, opened wide his jaw, and tossed it inside. The charcoal treat dissolved into his charcoal maw. The Regent made a slow, practised chewing gesture, before gurgling his approval. Luna giggled, clopping her hooves together.

“Well! Shall we get things underway, then?”

Regent Pippendandy nodded, then turned his head to look at the courtroom. The walls and the floors began shifting about, dissolving pillars and chairs and dust ponies and walls into a swirling whirlpool of powder. As Luna descended the steps leading to her throne, the room stretched and grew around her, a long table with rows of chairs surging out from the floor before her. Without batting an eye, the princess plopped herself down on the sizable throne at the end of the table, then watched in a daze of lunatic glee as the walls took shape, a chandelier descended from the ceiling, and royal guards grew from the floor to stand by each newly-formed doorway to nowhere. A vast cavity billowed out along the side of the room, opening the entire wall to the lunar surface outside, and the stunning expanse of Equestria floating above.

The Regent settled in beside Luna, facing the opening. Across from the enormous beast sat Primrose Path. The two exchanged a long, empty stare.

Pouring herself a tall glass of charcoal from the charcoal wine bottle that sat atop the charcoal table, Luna raised a toast. “To peace, and an end to the hundred-year war that has commanded our undivided attention for so, so blessedly long!”

A matching wine glass formed in the Regent’s claw, and they clinked charcoal, drinking deep of the grey nothing. Luna chewed her charcoal loudly, swallowing with a brisk lick of the lips. Mmm! Definitely a good year.

After a moment’s silence, a sour, cavernous voice gurgled from the Regent. “It was a good war, princess. Certainly one of our best.” He lowered his head. “I am... saddened, to see it at an end.”

Luna boomed with laughter, slapping a hoof on the table and sending particles of dust floating into the air. “Indeed! Indeed it was. Invigorating! Thrilling we might say! We must have another!”

The Regent grumbled. “I would like that.” He fell silent for a time, placing his glass on the table. "If only there were time."

In a slow, deliberate gesture, he rose his head to gaze out at the barren grey lunar expanse before them. Luna knew this to be a formality, for her sake — their kind had not eyes with which to see. She turned to stare out at the desert of charcoal powder before her.

Three enormous claws, made of dust, extended from the ground, diligently sculpting yet another statue for her castle. Like a craftsmare giving form to a shapeless lump of clay, the moon pressed and shaved and dug, revealing the imposing figure of a grey alicorn mare. Ornate, curving plates of armor stretched across her chest and atop her head. It was a design she had seen him return to often.

Luna began hugging her long, frazzled, tangled mane, running her hoof through it mechanically. A long, heavy silence befell the conference room, a silence so pure and vacuous it could only exist here, hundreds of thousands of miles away from her home. Her eyes widened with each stroke of the mane, her smile collapsing into a gawking, horrified gape. She just stared at the Regent, trying her hardest to, once more, truly consider the beast. She did this for what seemed like a very long while.

There were times when she wondered how much of this was real, and how much of it was sheer delirium. She wondered if, perhaps, all dreams lasted this long, and if we just never remembered it all when we awoke. Where would she be when she awoke? On Equestria, back in her bed chambers? Or had she simply always been here, with him?

Luna shook her head violently, clearing her mind as best she could. No! No she would not feed those thoughts again. By the stars, she was a princess! She had an image to uphold! Her guest could not see her in such disgraceful aberration!

With a few hard, heavy thumps of her head against the table, Luna chased the thoughts away. “Question! The question! Thou shalt mind the terms of our agreement, you cur!” She thrust a hoof at the idle Regent. “If thou should win the war, we would answer a question of thine. If we win the war, thou would answer us.” She planted her hooves on the table, pulling herself very, very close to the Regent’s left eye. “Now, we will ask thee but once...” She spoke in a sharp whisper to the dust that lurked behind. “Where did you find that enchanting hat?”

After a moment’s consideration, the Regent turned to look at her. With two long, bony hands, it grasped its head, and lifted it off like a mask. Placing the skull at the center of the table, it turned to face her. For a moment, she was earnestly surprised to find that it wore Primrose’s face. Of course. His was the only face that remained, this many years in.

They had once all had different features, her ponies, each echoing those she had once known in the old kingdom. But, they had faded, as her memory had. Even her loyal hoofservant’s guise was a dull approximation of what it once was.

“You will find their remains everywhere, if you dig deep enough.”

Luna frowned, resting her head on her hooves. That was rather cryptic. Certainly not particularly entertaining. “We are... surprised, thou hast waited so long to show us such a thing.” She gazed into the empty skull’s eye sockets. “We have their kind on our world as well.”

The Regent was still. “I know.”

She sighed, letting her glass drift into the air for a moment before poking at the base, watching it spin lazily in the low gravity. “A dreadfully secretive bunch, the dragons. In all our years, in all our dealings, their kind has revealed nothing to us beyond the obvious.” She turned up her head in a huff. “At a point one simply ceases to wonder!”

The beast peered at her for a time, then stirred. “There was one story. In the forest. When the world was young.” The ashen face shifted and stretched into that of a vaguely familiar dragon. Thorin, of the Knotwood Forests. She had met the drake a long, long time ago. “Do you remember?”

Luna gave him a distant stare, rocking slightly in her throne. She had told the inscrutable growth every story she had, a thousand times over. In nine hundred and ninety-nine years they had discussed quite a bit. She couldn’t think of a single thing she might say that had not already been said.

She chewed on her mane as she thought on the matter. The moon was everywhere, and it was within everything. It was in her mind. It knew what she knew, and it saw what she thought.

She remembered how it had initially found the very act of conversation quite the novelty. The moon wasn’t used to talking, only knowing. Over the centuries, she had come to understand that it simply enjoyed hearing her stories, even if it already knew how they all ended.

She stared at the skull before her, blankly gazing at the jutting horns and jagged teeth. There was always something so... otherworldy, about the dragons. They seemed built for another, more savage time. She found it hard to imagine Harmony would have ever abided such an era, in her world of warmth and benevolence. It was a question to which Luna expected she would never find the answer. The dragons were the oldest living beings on Equestria — some older than even she — and they simply never talked about the old days. The most she or Tia had ever gotten from their kind had been a lone myth; a gift, as thanks, from Thorin of the Knotwood Forest, after they had vanquished Discord from the land.

A long, delighted grin crept across Luna’s face as the memory came back to her. Plucking her glass from the air, she raised an eyebrow. “Ah...” She leaned in, giving the expressionless phantom a piercing glance. “We cannot believe we had not told thee this one, yet.”

The Regent was still. “I believe you were saving it for last.”

She held a hoof to her chin. There certainly had been some reason she’d kept this one in her back pocket. She vaguely recalled deciding, in the early years of her banishment, that she would squirrel it away, somewhere deep down. The reason for this had been lost, as all her plans had, in a haze of pure, gallivanting insanity.

She shrugged. “It is a bit absurd, really, but... well, we believe thou might enjoy it.” She thrust a hoof into the air. “Gather close, my ponies! Your princess hast declared story time!”

The Regent settled in beside her, eager for the tale. By her side, Primrose turned to listen, flanked by the guards, who had also drawn close. All around her, ponies rose from the floor and molded out from the walls, surrounding the princess like fillies around a campfire.

With a loud, arresting clearing of the throat, Princess Luna sat straight, placing a hoof to her chest as she loudly wove the tale.

“The dragons of old speak of a distant, mystic realm that once floated in the heavens above Equestria. A world where their people once thrived, as a young race, learning much of the elements and of the unseen magic that guides them.” With a grin, she spun around the dragon skull, turning it toward her audience and planting her hooves atop its head. “But theirs was not magic as you or I know it. Neigh, the draconian element was governed by a will not of Harmony—” She shook her hooves menacingly above the crowd. “—but of another. One who rested idle in the wind and the rain and the soil of their world, as all magic does.”

Noting the rapt attention of her ponies, and of her guest, she beamed with pride, thrusting a hoof into the air as she boastfully chronicled the myth, her voice rising in volume and bravado with each word. “As with all new frontiers, these drakes of old set out to conquer, to harness and control the fantastic power of magic itself!” Her wings spread as she brought to bear the full dramatic tempest of the Royal Canterlot Voice. She loved story time.

“Onward and upward the fools soared, concocting new and exotic ways to bend the very elements to their will!” With a flick of the neck, she wrapped the horrid, untamed mass of her mane over her shoulder, the low gravity releasing errant strands of hair across her face and her snout. Luna’s eyes burned with a passion. “A maelstrom of greed festered from this new power, idle curiosity turning to ugly ambition, and ugly ambition turning to bilious war!” Her foreleg trembled in righteous fury for a moment as the words dissipated into the vacuous silence. She paused, then held a ponderous hoof to her mouth, considering the matter for a moment.

Her volume dropped several degrees of magnitude, settling to a curious pontification. “We believe it was for territory or gems or some such ridiculous thing... we can scarcely remember the reason.” Her eyes closed, she dismissed the question with a wave of her foreleg. “Hardly matters, we suppose. They have never needed much reason to fight. The dull beasts rather enjoy it.”

Her eyes crept open into a sly, menacing glance. “But, as the legend goes, their magic was not content to simply ignore this barbarism, as Harmony has done. It felt their squabbles grew fierce and bitter, their clashes burn ever more torrid...” She leaned in, casting an eerie Equestrian light about her muzzle. “... and it seethed with resentment.”

Jumping to her hooves, Luna began to walk between her subjects, her head low and her tone ghostly. “Will against will, magic pitted against magic, a god turned against itself... no sooner had one magister woven a spell, then another came to rend it asunder. Torn in a hundred different directions, the elemental force grew furious, its frustration mounting and boiling until, at long last...” She flashed a wicked smile. “...it awoke.”

She surveyed the blank faces of the crowd, trying to discern if her story had carried the desired effect. She chose to believe they were all quite petrified. With a satisfied grin, she held her head high and closed her eyes, waving a hoof about in feigned disinterest. “Their war became quite simple after that. Draconian magic poured itself into their strongest, largest warrior, and did as it wished, without hindrance, and without mercy.” Her eyes flew open in a fierce glare, cast upon the crowd. “The fools became but kindling for their own blasted fire.”

Her ponies seemed to stir, glancing at each other in a gesture she quite adored. It knew her all too well. She smiled, trotting back to her throne. “Some say the mad god is still up above the stars, hurtling through the ether, clinging to its dead world in wait. The dragons have many names for it, dramatic as they are...” She waved her hoof about as she rattled off their theatrical titles. “ ‘The Red Blight,’ ‘Suen The Harbinger,’ ‘The Nightmare Moon’... we lack the syrinx necessary to actually pronounce most of the others, but there was one we always particularly liked the bite of...”

The Regent rose its head, looking to the lifeless ash that stretched to the horizon, and the vibrant, lush world beyond. “Oni. The one within all.”

* * *

• • • •

Gilda snorted awake to find herself face-down in an enormous pile of white powder. Apparently it had been one of those parties.

Giving her brain a moment to register the full, unthinkable atrocity of her searing hangover, the young griffon planted two claws beside her head and shoved herself to a sitting position. A long trail of drool curved from the face-shaped indent left in her bed, slowly bending to pool against her chest. She teetered in place for a few moments, beak hanging open, eyes shut, gurgling a low, defeated croak. Her head absolutely killed. What in the blue kalla did she do last night?

With a lazy smack of her beak, Gilda cracked open an eye and slovenly rolled her neck from one side to the other, taking in her surroundings. She was in her apartment, by the looks of it. Her skylight was open to the cool night air, and a long trail of sugar wound from the window, over her desk, across her papers, and into her bed. Slowly, her other eye crept open as she gazed at the scene around her.

The narrow, pony-sized twin bed was utterly buried in opened bags of sugar, lemon candies, large clawfulls of cake, and what appeared to be the severed head of a chocolate fountain, encrusted with hardened fudge. Her beak clasped shut, drooping into a long, miserable frown. The landlord was going to murder her for this.

A dull click jolted her to full alertness, her hunter’s instinct exploding into high gear before she had time to register the fact that oh, right, it was just her stupid alarm clock. She watched as a tiny wooden rabbit clutching two tiny hammers wailed on two tiny bells, its sprightly jangle like sandpaper against her brain. With a harsh clasp of the claw, she silenced the alarm, lifting it before her wrathful eye to read the time. Six o’clock. Crap. Work.

Swinging her rear paws onto the hardwood floor, she stretched her wings to their full breadth, hearing a string of successive pops and cracks from the bones that ran within. Falling into all fours, she staggered over to her desk and attempted to wipe off as much of the powder as she could. Gods, it was over everything.

She rolled her eyes as she shook out her messenger bag, a clump of hard candies clattering to the floor. After batting the satchel against her chair a few times, she inspected the inside. Clean enough for now.

Setting the bag onto the chair, she started rolling up her scrolls and stuffing them into the satchel. She blinked, scanning the tops of the papers. Five. She was supposed to have six.

Grasping the sides of the desk, she dragged the unit away from the wall, peering over the back and hoping to Anzu that the missing scroll had just fallen into the crack. Nothing. She swallowed, feeling a pit in her stomach. Those things were enchanted with a courier excursion spell. They couldn’t make those. They had to go grovelling to some unicorn outfit in Manehatten and shell out the bits, and there was nothing the patriarchs loathed more than grovelling before ponies. You did not lose those scrolls.

Gilda cursed under her breath.

Scanning the desk once more, her eye passed over the slightest hint of a familiar green glow, peeking out from under an overturned pile of feather quills. She winced as she brushed the feathers aside, revealing a shard of gemstone flint for igniting the courier spell. It had been used. The scroll was gone. Grasping the flint between her talons, she slowly turned it around, staring in abject terror at the word that burned along the bottom. ‘Cloudsdale.’

Gilda facepalmed. She had fired off a first-class, emissarial drunk text to Rainbow.

Her butt hit the floor with a defeated thump, and her wings fell limp against her sides. With a deep, crushing sigh, she deflated into a listless heap on the ground. Gilda wrapped her claws around her head, and pictured the prismic mare combing her mane amongst a breeze of cherry blossoms, hearing a flutter at the window, and staring in awe as a scroll popped out of a coiling emerald wisp, falling gently to the foot of her bed. Rainbow would hold the scroll curiously in her hooves, unlatch the official seal, and unfurl the aged golden oaken paper to find a flurry of positively filthy intentions haphazardly strewn about the page. Very possibly, Gilda would have drawn pictures. They would have been quite inappropriate.

She burst into laughter, dropping her claws to grip her quivering stomach. She laughed harder than she had in months, her face burning with a mixture of morbid embarrassment and gallivanting hysterics. She probably would never be able to face Dash again, but by the gods, she could not get that image out of her head. Part of her couldn’t wait to tell Joe, after work. That doofus would absolutely love this.

She allowed herself a few minutes to bask in a perfect storm of shame before her splitting headache forced her onto her feet, and into the bathroom. Time for the other kind of magic. Drugs! Gilda slid open the medicine cabinet behind her mirror and grasped the bottle of Coltrin IB, tapping out a small pile of the pain relief capsules and shoveling them into her beak with a wash of water.

Closing the cabinet, she stared blankly at her reflection. Her eye was bloodshot, lined with thin, dark bags from the five or so hours of sleep she’d gotten. Eyedrops would probably be a good idea. She turned her head to inspect the other one. It was a dark, cloudy texture with a brilliant pink ring around the iris. She blinked a few times, gazing into the shimmering light. Huh.

Slowly, Gilda pulled away from the mirror, looking between the two eyes. One had the band of light, the other didn’t. That was... normal, right? She had a weighted moment where she just stared into the pink ring, trying to place whether or not something seemed off about it. Gods, she must be in worse shape than she thought. Of course her eye looked like that. Everyone's did.

She shook her head, breathing a deep sigh. Shower. She needed a shower. Creaking the tub’s porcelain handles and pressing the little lever with the back of a talon, she watched as the water from the showerhead sputtered on. Gilda’s feathers stood on end as she eyed the tiny bathtub. This whole apartment would probably have been considered small even by pony standards. Gilda wasn’t a great deal larger than most equines, but she was bigger, and just enough so to make everything irritatingly claustrophobic. She couldn’t lean on tables or desks without tipping them over, she couldn’t open her wings indoors because they were too long, her paws dangled well over the edge of her tiny bed, and on more than one occasion, she had almost gotten her ass wedged in a couple of their bathrooms. It had always been very clear that this country was not meant for her. She quite literally did not fit in.

Feeling that the water was hot enough, Gilda scrunched herself into the tub and began lazily preening her feathers. The water felt really, really good. She took a moment to close her eyes and just let the jet of warmth wash over her face, dwindling her headache from a pounding throb to a dull pang.

Grasping a bar of soap from the caddie, she went about trying to scrub off some of the glitter that still clung to her chest feathers. She scowled as it stubbornly fought with her. That stupid little brat and her stupid little drawing. She’d be sure Pinkie went out of her way to drive her crazy if she wasn’t equally sure that the shrieking gremlin was incapable of that kind of forethought.

Sliding the bar of soap onto the caddie, she ran her brush back and forth over her hindquarters and her paws, scrubbing the sugary gunk out from clawfulls of her fur. There was this image in her head that she could not seem chase away. Pinkie Pie and Princess Luna, sitting on the royal bed, their lips locked in a kiss. It was the most ridiculous thing. She knew it didn’t actually happen, because really, come on. The Equestrian diarchs were these weird, sexless goddess-spirits, more concerned with keeping the planet going than any kind of mortal affection. And Pinkie... she just seemed... well, retarded was a bit strong, but Gilda had never gotten the sense that she even knew what kissing was. The mare was like a living sock puppet, a three-year old doing a caricature of Siduri the party goddess. What bugged her was the naked fact that, if the kiss wasn't a memory, it had to be something the griffon had dreamed herself. And she really, really did not like the implications of that.

Putting aside the irrefutable fact that Pinkie was the most annoying living thing on the planet, there was something truly, fundamentally awful about fantasizing about a mare like her. It felt like she didn’t deserve it, strange as that sounded. Gilda didn’t buy for a second that the way she pranced about was anything more than some stupid act, and she hated to think that had made her somehow interesting. Maybe Pinkie was terrified of being boring, or maybe she needed everyone to like her. Who knows. She shouldn't care. And yet, evidently, she did.

Whatever her angle was, Pinkie’s lame, needy parade of sunshine and lollipops had managed to trick Dash into picking her over Gilda. She’d won and she didn’t even have the twisted decency to rub it in Gilda’s face.

She sighed, washing away the suds and turning off the shower. Her talon hung on the handle for a moment. Pinkie would be out of her life and back home to that dumb little town soon enough. Wasn’t worth thinking about.

She toweled off, did her eyes, fixed her hair feathers, flattened her fur, and brewed a cup of coffee from the small sack of Seaddle blend she’d bought off Joe. With one last look around the sugar-soaked apartment, she grasped her messenger bag and squeezed through her skylight, onto the roof above. She took a moment to take in the view with bland disinterest. Same old night sky along the horizon, same old freakishly enormous moon hanging overhead, same old red light, bathing the same old Canterlot in a light pink mixture of luminescent white moonlight and red ephemera.

Unfurling her wings, she took flight, drifting over the cobblestone streets of the residential quarter and past the Canterlot Archives. As she approached the castle, she saw a vast gathering of ponies ahead. After a moment’s consideration, she glided to the ground just outside of the crowd.

Something seemed kinda weird.

For one, it was like dead silent. All of the ponies were completely still, rigid in some sort of trance. Across their backs, in their mouths, and bundled between their forelegs were pastries, sweets, and bags of sugar. She started sweating. Was she supposed to bring some kind of offering? She tried to remember if she’d ever done something like that in the past, but her recollection was patchy. It was almost tiring to think about, like she had to drag her brain uphill to get it to thumb through her memory.

Gilda watched as an orderly line formed around an incredibly large pile of sweets, stacked at the bottom of the golden ramp leading up to the royal throne. She glanced about the castle for a moment, thinking it strange that the throne was visible from the outside. In fact, she’d somehow not noticed it before, but the entire front portion of the castle was missing. Everything before the throne room was just gone, excepting the checkered marble floor, and further, the throne room was completely open to the outside. The roof was sheared off, and the walls seemed to sink from their vaulted height to the floor, just after the golden platform.

Her eyes followed the long, ornate red carpet back up to the throne. Princess Luna sat idle, her legs tucked under her body and her eyes a lazy, clouded vacancy. She was probably still feeling crappy after being sick for a whole damn week. Chances were, Gilda would be meeting again with Princess... Princess uh...

Gilda held a talon to her chin. Princess something. The one with the... like... the wavy...

She stared at the marble floor, trying to recollect the mare she had talked to just yesterday. Her mind was completely blank. She could not recall a single clear memory of the living goddess around which her job had revolved for the past year.

Placing her coffee on the ground, she clasped her claws around her head, and just stood there for a minute, in a world of darkness, trying to build the image from scratch. She started with Luna. This big, gangly pony with a waving mane of stars. She concentrated on the mane. It was split into like eight different... strands? The mane in her mind separated into eight long tendrils. She wasn’t blue, either, she was much lighter. Like a brilliant, marble... bubblegum... pink...

She chewed on the thought for a moment. So... the princess of all of Equestria... was Pinkie Pie. That certainly felt... stupid. That meant she willingly worked with, and regularly paid respects to, someone she absolutely loathed. She must really, really hate her job then, right? She supposed that felt about right.

Gilda slowly pulled her claws away from her eyes, and looked to the pile of sugar. It surged and shifted, affected by a force deep within. Along the sides, she could see several wiggling tendrils of pink hair peeking out, wrapping themselves around cakes and popovers before retreating back into the pile. The ponies that surrounded her took one step forward, edging closer the heap of sugar.

Gilda scowled as she picked up her cup of coffee from the ground, taking a long, bitter sip. Okay, seriously, what was all this crap? This could take hours.

She glared at the pegasi and moori that crowded the airways above. This was probably another one of their happy-go-lucky harvest festivals or something. Knowing Canterlot, that probably meant she was going to have to white-knuckle it through a round of musical numbers today. Ohhh boy. If she'd known they were going to be clowning around with this malarkey, she would've spent another hour or two passed out in her junk food cocoon.

Screw this.

Spreading her wings wide, Gilda gave two heavy beats of the wing and hovered into the air. With flat irritation, she forced her way through the crowd, shooting challenging glares to those she pushed aside. They returned no emotion, or even acknowledgement. She frowned. What was with these people?

As she shoved her way through the gathering, she chewed on an idea. Winding up her claw, Gilda gave a spirited backhand swat upside some moori's head. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the stallion was simply hovering at a slightly downward angle now, the bag of sugar he clutched trickling out from the inclined top. That was... not normal.

Glancing ahead, she could see the sucrose stockpile fast approaching. Might as well try one more. She pulled back her claw and forcefully slapped some grey pegasus mare's flank with the palm of her hand. THAT would get a reaction. Gilda whirled around to drink in the pony’s abject shock. Nothing. This was officially freaking her out.

Holding a baffled look on the wall-eyed pegasus, she turned to gaze down at the vast mountain of sweets below her. The pink tendrils were now sticking out from all sides, waving about excitedly. Gilda narrowed her gaze, trying to make out what, exactly, the buck, they were. The pegasus to her rear lazily approached, emptying out a saddle bag filled with half-melted strawberry ice cream. Gilda watched as the clumps of cream dribbled to the front of the bag, clung to the buckle, then dropped.

The tendrils suddenly bolted out in all eight directions, rigid with alarm, before the sugar pile surged and a horrifically large, bubblegum pink, pony-faced monstrosity exploded out of the top of the pile to catch the glob of ice cream in her wide, fangy mouth. Gilda’s eyes went wide as she beheld at the enormous mare, watching as pegasi and moori dumped trays of sweets over Pinkie’s face like some kind of gumdrop and cupcake bukkake. With a spirited giggle, Pinkie Pie licked her lips with a long, forked, reptilian tongue, flashing her iridescent white fangs in delight. Her two wobbling antennae twitched in approval.

Every single instinct Gilda had screamed at her to get far, far away. Her eyes briefly darted around for an opening in the crowd through which to escape, but Gilda fiercely squashed the impulse. That was the princess, you idiot! You did not turn tail and run from some frilly pony princess, no matter how perfectly, nightmarishly terrifying she might be. If she knew one thing about diplomacy — and she knew exactly one single thing about diplomacy — it was that you never, ever showed fear. Gilda swallowed, lowering herself to eye level.

Pinkie’s eyes were huge, plate-sized things, draconian in shape but equine in color. Beyond the fangs, the antennae, and the lizard tongue, the rest of her seemed pretty normal. For a pony goddess. If you could get past all of the sharp and slithery bits, she was almost cute, in a terrifying sort of way.

She cleared her throat. “Hey, so uh...” Alarm bells went off in Gilda’s head as the razor cerulean irises locked on hers, pulling the princess’ full attention to the minute griffon. Pinkie’s smile was as big as she was. She tried not to think about those little cupcakes, shredded to bits in three short bites. “...is this some kind of holiday or something? I mean, that’s cool, if it is, but can I just... you know... just like...” She swallowed, dripping with sweat. Pinkie’s long, weightless ethereal mane had slowly begun to creep its eight waving tendrils of curly hair toward her. Gilda stiffened in panic.

“Whoaaaa...” Pinkie cooed, wrapping one of her tendrils around Gilda’s lioness midsection. With a sudden but smooth motion, she flipped Gilda upside down, then to the side, then upright again, inspecting her like a toy figure. Gilda’s world tumbled around her, pulling the coffee out of her cup and the air out of her lungs. With a sharp gasp, she pressed out with her wings, trying to break free. The hair only pulled tighter. “What kind of pony are you?”

Author's Note

If you've got questions, hang in there. Next chapter explains a lot.

This chapter, and the next one, were originally one giant chapter. I split it due to length.

Things get a teensy bit :pinkiecrazy:

Little White Lies

Little White Lies
• • • •

“Sunny! Sunny! For the love of Celestia, please—!” Joe desperately dangled from Sunny’s hind legs as she hoisted herself up the side of the towering castle walls, “...pleeaaassee don’t do this!”

Sunny Skies gave a few spirited bucks, trying her best to shake off the heavy stallion as she lurched over the top of the stone wall. By the stars, he was persistent.

She turned a deep shade of red as her struggles slid Joe lower and lower, his hooves wrapping around her lower belly and his head pressing against her flank in a scattered attempt to keep his grip. Sunny mentally reset the counter on the ol’ Centuries Since Last Open-Hoof Grope of the Royal Derriere signpost. This century’s winner: the local donut baker! Keep shooting for the stars there, Celestia. “J-Joe I have to! It’s my job! I’ll be fine!”

Joe squeezed tighter, his hind legs now braced against the stone wall as he tugged at her midsection, frantically trying to stop her from going over the top. His face was flush with strain. “Have you gone completely nuts?! Because I totally get that!” Joe pulled with everything he had, spurring Sunny to clamp down on her hooves with stubborn bluster. “But breaking into the bucking castle?!”

Sunny wiggled her hips from side to side, shimmying the stallion far enough down to pull up a hind leg and bring it down on his shoulder a couple of times. His grip slid, then gave, dropping Joe flank-first onto the ground. With a less-than-graceful fat-grunt, Sunny hoisted herself up onto the top of the wall, collapsing into a limp, heaving heap. Holy horseapples she was out of shape.

Joe scrambled to his hooves, quickly glancing around the area for any passing guards or royal staff. “L-look I know this is freaky! I’m freaking out too! But you’ve gone completely off the deep end here, Sunny!”

Sunny rolled onto her belly, still panting as she glanced down at the frantic unicorn. “Just… trust me on this... okay?” Sunny huffed between panting breaths. She put her head back, taking in a few deep breaths before looking back down to the baker. “I mean it! I’ll be fine! I have to check on the princess!”

Joe shook his head with stunned stupefaction, looking to Sunny with pleading eyes. “How can you possibly think about work right now?!” He scoffed, his voice cracking into hysterics as he gestured toward the moon. “I’m pretty certain you have the day off! Maybe spend it sobbing under the couch in the fetal position, like I plan to!”

Sunny sighed, turning to stare up at the seemingly endless lunar expanse above. The red aurora had only become lighter and brighter, now more of a white-pink than a dim crimson. Eerily, it was the brilliant moonlight behind the aurora that had grown stronger, not the red lights themselves. How, Sunny couldn't imagine.

Moonlight came from the sun, and reflected off the moon. She could feel the sun on the other side of the planet, stuck in place. It was unthinkable that the light could reach Canterlot from where it rested. Not with this intensity. It was almost like the moon itself was generating light, rather than reflecting it. But that was impossible.

Sunny turned, and lowered her gaze to look across the courtyard. Her ear twitched. She couldn’t see beyond the edge of the hedge maze, but she swore she heard the gentle hum of classical music, mixed with the murmur of polite conversation and the light clinking of glasses. It sounded like... a garden party. A garden party in the middle of the castle grounds. She involuntarily scoffed at the sheer blind absurdity of the idea. The moon itself hung mere miles overhead, the Element of Laughter had grown into some kind of Tartauran nightmare, and somepony was having a garden party on her lawn.

She ran a hoof through her mane, casting a wayward glance at Joe. The last thing she needed right now was to have to worry about him. “Listen, Joe, I appreciate your concern, I really do. But I’m going, and that’s that.” She crouched low, positioning herself to drop onto the top of the hedge bush below. Joe’s ears flattened against his head with broad displeasure. “Go home, stay safe, and just... wait this out.”

Silent as a mouse, Sunny pushed off with her hind legs and dropped atop the hedge bush. She gracefully balanced herself on the full, narrow bramble for a moment before scuttling to the edge and quietly leaping to the ground, just beside the maze entrance.

She’d become extraordinarily adept at sneaking into her own castle, in recent years. Gracefully ducking patrols, deftly darting between hidey holes, boldly stealthing about in silence — under normal, non-apocalyptic circumstances, it was all really quite fun. More than a little absurd, certainly, but... necessary, if she wanted to keep her social life separate from the pomp and fuss of the crown. ‘Sunny Skies’ was something she needed her subjects to know nothing about. They just... they wouldn't understand.

Celestia didn't like keeping secrets from her ponies, if she could help it. Truly, she didn’t. They deserved far more from her than that. For over two thousand years, her ponies had given her their undying loyalty, their heartfelt devotion, and their blessed, boundless love. That should have been enough. She wanted it to be. But... it wasn’t. At the end of the day, in every way that mattered, she was terribly, terribly alone.

Each passing generation regarded their beloved princess with ever greater awe, and ever deeper humility. They saw in her such vaulted eminence, such celestial grace, such impossible power, that she had become to them more goddess than guardian. With the dawn of each new century, their love and adoration would push her higher and higher above them. Farther and farther out of reach. Her ponies no longer thought of their princess as ‘down here,’ at their side. She was 'up there,' in the castle, or in the sky, holding aloft the sun and the moon like some heavenly spirit in an old pony’s tale. Distant and divine. A million miles away.

Sunny closed her eyes and took in a deep, calming breath, letting the rush of air carry away her troubles. She didn’t have time to dwell on such nonsense. Popping her head around the side of the hedge maze, she glanced toward the east wing entrance. Clear. Wherever her guards had run off to, it wasn’t here.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she briskly cantered out from the cover of bramble, toward the waiting doorway. As she passed across the open lawn, the commotion from earlier struck her once more. Only now, it came through quite a bit louder without the buffer of the hedge. She looked to the door, then to the open lawn just around the corner. She knew she shouldn’t bother, but... a garden party, here, of all places. Of all times. Sunny bit her lip, and hastily scurried around the corner to take in the sight.

Scores of Canterlot’s movers and shakers intermingled with palace staff, chatting and laughing with one another as a full classical ensemble filled the air with a dignified melodic drone. Rows of open firefly bulbs cast a warm orange glow over anything not flooded by moonlight, setting a calming radiance to the formal affair. Glasses of chardoneigh and white wine danced about as ponies boasted and chuckled with rehearsed candor. It was as if nothing at all were the matter.

Her eyes wandered to a breathtakingly ornate crystalline sculpture, evidently hoof-carved, facing out from the side of the hedge maze. She knew her lawn, and she knew her statues. She certainly didn’t have any that were made of... rock candy? Sunny squinted as she pawed at the smooth, semi-transparent substance. The details were utterly spectacular. She had never seen such stunningly minute hoofwork, from the immaculate detailing along the cornea of the reptilian eye to each individual hair follicle along its expansive coat. Unbelievable.

She took a step back, taking in the towering figure. Pinkie Pie. Rather, the creature Pinkie had become. Of the countless questions that swirled about her mind, the simple logistical ones confounded her the most. How had anypony gotten such a good a look at Pinkie, acquired a solid block of rock candy, and sculpted such an impossible likeness in so short a time?

Sunny slowly shook her head, looking at the fangy grin and wavy tendrils of supersaturated sugar. There was something strikingly familiar about some of the more reptilian bits. Stepping closer, she pressed a hoof against the sculpture’s chest, leaning forward to gaze into its smiling eyes. It was right on the tip of her tongue. Those eyes. Where had she seen them? Sometime recent, somewhere quite old. It... almost reminded her of—

The air buckled and tore with a sharp cracking sound.

Sunny startled as Joe’s side collapsed through the head of the sculpture, shattering the stunning display into a thousand pieces. She had time enough for her jaw to drop in shock before his back bounced off of the crumbling torso and came down on her like a wet sack of potatoes. She let out a muffled squeak of surprise as his considerable bulk planted her into the grass.

Joe flailed about for a moment before finding his bearings, and rolling back onto his hooves. Sunny gasped for air, her frazzled pink mane pulling up with his body, then flopping back down over her face. Sunny heard Joe’s breath catch in horror as he surveyed her flattened body.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorrysorrysorry!” She felt Joe’s powerful forelegs wrap around her shoulders, hoisting her out of the ground like a limp weed. "I-I just— you made all that tight-rope walking up there look so hoofing easy!"

Sunny rocked in place for a moment, eyes wide and bleary, before slowly moving a shaky hoof to her horn and pulling her mane away from the left side of her face. With a seething, deliberate blink, she glared at him with one eye, the other Fluttershyed behind her disheveled pink hair. Of all the times for Joe to go and do something spectacularly loud and stupid.

“What are you doing here?!” she hissed, her face burning red with anger. She swatted away his foreleg as he tried dusting her off, doubly irritated by the unwelcome touch. “I told you to go home, Joe! Go home and stay out of this!” Her teeth gritted together in frustration as she noticed ponies gathering around, gasping at the rubble of crystalline candy that was now spread across the lawn. “It’s a miracle we’re not flank-deep in guards right now!”

Joe gave an apologetic look. "Ye— I got that, yeah. Sorry. Sorry! Don’t freak out." He shooed the chattering onlookers away, sprinkling about flustered apologies for the clamor. He waited a moment for the last of them to move out of earshot before turning back to Sunny. "We’re probably fine."

Sunny glanced up and down the lawn. Clear, thank the stars. Joe might've been right. With a relieved sigh, she glanced overhead, catching sight of a single, oblivious moori guardsmare briskly floating past. Her swollen snout was wrapped with a bright pink bandaid, with her forelegs bundled around a tall, unwieldy stack of papers. Sunny frowned as she noted her scruffy, snow-white mane and lithe build. Joe’s sister.

Please don't look down please don't look down please don't look down please please please please please

A sudden gust lifted the top page off the stack of papers, sending it swooping erratically into the air. Sunny felt a wave of dread wash over her body as the mare made a frantic swipe for the paper and completely whiffed, spinning just far enough downward to see every horrid thing.

Seraph’s narrow draconian eyes bulged, darting from side to side as she took in the horrifying scene. “Whoa, what the?!"

Sunny facehoofed.

"HEY!”

• • • •

Seraph fluttered to the ground beside her brother with flat irritation. He offered nothing more than a shaky smile, wrapped in an adorable, pleading shrug. She knew that look. It was an old Joe standby, from when they were foals. One that the big lug trotted out for broken vases and oven fires, as if to say, ‘okay, I totally did this, but aren't these charcoal fritters punishment enough?’ It worked way more often than it had any right to.

Naturally, she’d tried the Joe Maneuver herself, growing up, but Mom was noticeably less taken by her glistening, razor-sharp fangs than she was with Joe’s cuddly, coltish charm. Seraph told herself it was just the braces, but... yeah. Mom made it pretty clear, in the looks she gave, and the distance she kept, that Seraph wasn’t cute, like her brother was. She was weird, and scary, and strange.

Seraph flopped her papers onto the lawn with a loud thwap, casting a suspicious look toward the small white mare quietly hiding behind her pink mane. She recognized her, of course: her brother’s nutso kind-of marefriend, Sunny Skies. Joe had a thing for those delicate, la de da Canterlot elites.

Her tufted ears flattened against her head as she surveyed the saccharine mess. Ugh, what a disaster. First, this morning’s spectacular screw-up with Fugitive Gilda’s escape, and now... family members vandalizing priceless works of art, on the castle lawn. She was gonna get turbo fired for this.

Seraph pressed her face against her foreleg in exasperation, before slowly pulling it away to reveal a heavy glare aimed at her brother. “Are you nuts?” she hissed. Joe’s smile evaporated as she pressed a firm hoof against his chest. “You know you’re not allowed near the castle, after what you did! If the princess sees you running around, bucking up her fancy-ass sculptures, she’s going to blow a gasket!” She lifted the candied bust of Pinkie Pie from the ground, staring into its eyes with awe. “This is like, an edible offense, Joe.”

“Oh... like.... they’ll make me eat the... eat the pieces, or something?”

“I mean like, Princess Pinkie will literally eat you!”

Joe’s eyes widened, glancing at Sunny for a moment, then back to his sister. “I... literally literally? Has... Pinkie really eaten anypony?”

She looked away, running a forked tongue against the back of her cheek. “Well... no, not really. Not yet, anyways.” Seraph stared straight ahead for a moment, mulling it over. Some part of her just flat-out knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that that was something Pinkie would totally do, if she got angry enough. “I... guess Luna wouldn’t allow that, right?”

Joe half-smiled, clearly more than a little flabbergasted. “Uh well, I mean, I’m guessing Celestia wouldn’t either, right? Aren’t the two of them doing something about this?” He gestured a hoof toward the beaming lunar ceiling above.

Seraph scratched her ear. “...Who?”

“Celestia.” Joe’s eyes glanced away, then back. Seraph seemed completely baffled. “Princess Celestia?”

“Heh, what?”

“The... our princess! THE princess!” He stood in stunned silence for a moment as his sister’s expression remained as nonplussed as ever. “...Princess Celestia!”

Nothing.

Joe began counting on his hoof. “Founder of Equestria? Mover of the sun? Ruler of our entire country, for like two thousand years?”

Seraph picked at the tip of her hoof with staggering disinterest. “Mm-hm? Anything else?”

“Yes! There are other things! There are infinity other things that she’s done!”

She rolled her eyes. “Is this from a book or something?”

• • • •

Joe stared at his sister for a moment, trying to figure out her game. She seemed completely serious. How in the hay could someone like her forget her princess? She lived to please those two! He gestured toward the candy head on the ground. “Okay so... you’re saying that Pinkie Pie was made into a princess, right? That’s like, what,” Joe tapped his hoof with the other a couple of times. “—Five princesses now?”

“Five pr— there’s two, Joe! Princess Pinkie and her sister, Princess Luna!”

Joe ran an exasperated hoof through his mane. Where to even start? “Okay... okay, who was the princess before Pinkie?”

She laughed. “What is this ‘before Pinkie’ malarkey?”

“She’s been a ‘princess’ for like six hours! Who was princess before her?”

She gave him a baffled look. “That is such a weird, ridiculous, philosophical question to ask.”

“How is that at all weird?”

“You’re asking what was there before the Pinkie Party started, right? That’s like asking what was there before the whole dang fool universe began!” She drew her hooves wide, in a pleading gesture. “Who in the hay knows any of that crap?”

Joe facehoofed. He took a deep, calming breath through his nose, opening his eyes. "What about the moon, then? Hrm? Hovering right above us? Doesn't that seem just the tiniest bit off?"

Seraph turned her head up, giving him a suspicious look. “...Are you joking?”

“Am I joking?!”

“No I mean, are you Joking.” She narrowed her eyes. “You been smoking Poison Joke again, big bro?”

Joe groaned, rolling a quick glance to Sunny. She still looked broadly mortified by the entire thing. He turned back to Seraph, lowering his voice to a sharp whisper. “That was one time! I was a colt!”

Seraph snickered. “So lemme get this straight. You’re high as a pegasus, running around the royal courtyard, bucking statues over.” She shook her head, like he was a cat with his head stuck in a tissue box. Her eyes widened slightly as her gaze passed over his cutie mark. “Weh!! And your freaking cutie mark isn’t covered?! Like the one place you should never have that thing out in the open is here, at the castle!”

Joe cringed. The bandages. They’d been pulled off at some point during the night’s surreal disaster, revealing his real cutie mark for all of Canterlot to see. Joe turned to stare at his flank. It hadn’t even occurred to him.

“Look, I’m sorry about the statue. It was an accident, and I’ll pay for it, I swear. I... I was just...” I was helping an insane friend I barely know break into the castle. “...Sunny and I need to see the princess.”

Seraph raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, about little miss sunshine, over there." Fluttering over to the stack of diplomatic papers, she slapped a hoof against the top of the pile. "They got every dang thing up there in the Archives, turns out. Files on diplomats, nobles, palace staff... even saw one on your marefriend here."

Sunny went pale.

Joe rolled his eyes. "Sissy, for sun's sake. You’re not supposed to read that stuff. You're gonna get yourself fired."

"Pffft it was ‘research,’ then. Call me paranoid, but when my brother's new squeeze goes around picking fights with royal guards over a couple donuts, it's probably worth lookin’ her up."

Joe flustered. "She's not my marefriend, we're friends. She's fine, Seraph."

"Yeah? Do you even know what she does for a living?"

"I didn't ask! Customers don’t usually talk about work." He glanced at Sunny with a shrug. "Some kind of administrator or something, for the castle."

Seraph made two little air quotes with her hooves. "She's the 'Superior Undersecretary Notary of theeee—’ “ She turned her foreleg around to read the tiny scribble of writing under her fur. “ ‘—Gravitonic Ordination Department.' Which is just, like, come on. That is a brave new world of phoney buzzword horsecrap."

Joe looked away. “Everypony’s got flowery, important-sounding job titles up there. It’s just how things work in the castle.”

Seraph hovered off the ground, spreading her hooves wide as she leaned forward. "Joe that is like... the fakest job name, I’ve ever heard. You know when she last showed up for work? Forty-six years ago."

“Okay, you obviously read that wrong.”

“I read it like seven times! There were old-timey, black-and-white file photos and everything! Same cutie mark, same mare.” She buzzed over to the nervously smiling Sunny Skies, pointing a hoof at her. “So what is it, huh? You a Changeling? Some kinda Mesmer? Hrm?” She narrowed her eyes, floating inches from her face. “Or are you just a white pony, with a pink mane, forging a cutie mark that isn’t hers?”

Sunny took in a deep breath. “It’s nothing like that." She looked away. "...It’s nothing sinister.”

Seraph scoffed, folding her forelegs. “Let’s hear it, then.”

She looked at Joe, then at Seraph, then at the ground. “You... would not believe me.”

“You're gonna have to do better than that, lady.”

• • • •

Sunny slowly lifted her gaze to meet Joe’s.

She could see it, pressed up against those pleading emerald eyes. Fear. Fear that maybe his sister was right, that maybe he'd been played a fool. Fear that maybe Sunny Skies was nothing more than one big, ugly lie.

She felt something deep and raw pull at her heart. It was as if all that she was — that thing that made her really her — was being wrung out like a wet rag. It was an old, unpleasant, sunken feeling, one she hadn’t felt in ages.

Sunny’s ears fell flat against her head. They would never believe her, she knew that. It was truly, unthinkably absurd, to imagine that the immortal princess of all Equestria — their lone, ageless constant, the very sun in their sky — might choose to live as they did, down here. Drinking coffee. Waiting in line. Laughing at stupid jokes. Talking just to talk. There was no way their tiny little lives could possibly hold a candle to the splendor, and the magic, their princess lived each day.

She knew they felt this way. She understood that. And yet, in a very real way, she was afraid.

What if he did believe her?

She could lose it all, in a single moment, with a single word. Joe would never look at her the same way, ever again. To be so close, one moment, and so very, very distant the next... it was a terribly cruel, terribly lonely thing. That would come, in time. It always did. But right now, she wanted this. For just a little while longer.

“I... can’t.”

Joe’s expression fell in the tiniest, most restrained, most devastating way. She looked away, to the ground, to her hooves.

“I just can’t.”

“Psh, thought so.” Seraph fluttered toward Sunny, menacingly rolling up a pair of imaginary sleeves. Quickly, and gently, Joe placed a foreleg in her path, halting her in place. He gave his sister an odd look, one that seemed to stop her in her tracks. She narrowed her eyes, like she was trying to read what he meant. Just to be sure. Then, with an annoyed sigh, she landed. Joe turned to Sunny, lowering his foreleg to the ground.

“That’s really you, in the file. In the photo.”

Sunny nodded.

“...How.”

Sunny looked away.

Joe pressed a hoof against his forehead, against the long, jagged crack down his horn. He was silent for a moment. “I know you’re not lying. It’s just...” He shook his head. His mouth opened, then closed. She looked at him with dread, into eyes that silently pleaded for honesty. Joe took a deep breath. “...Please don’t toy with me.”

Sunny gave a warm, tiny smile. “I would never.”

Joe’s expression softened. That feeling, around her heart, faded at the sight.

Turning to his sister, Joe opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated when he noticed a deep, furious blush across her face. Seraph’s eyes were glued to the sky. He blinked, confused, then followed her gaze. Sunny held a curious look on the besmitten moori for a moment, before looking skyward.

Barreling through the clouds above, flanked on all sides by jubilant moori pressing up against her sides, was the enormous beastly form of Pinkie Pie. She seemed to be excitedly chattering to her companions as she drifted in a slow, lazy spiral.

Below her, flocks of pegasi glided toward the castle, ready to resume their posts. Sunny felt a wash of dread as they drew closer. They would be here in moments.

“Joe, we have to go. Now.”

• • • •

Joe swallowed, then looked to his sister. She had a hoof against her cheek, burning red with infatuation. Slowly, she fluttered off the ground, leaving her papers in a pile on the lawn.

Joe took a step closer. “...Sis? You alright over there?”

Seraph turned to look at her brother, a large, goofy grin stretched across her face. “Wow... she is somethin’, huh?” She giggled behind her hoof. Joe’s brain broke a little trying to process the sound. Seraph... wasn’t a giggler.

“The uh... Pinkie?”

“Yeah...” She turned her gaze back to the sky, watching the titanic mare pull into a gentle spiral around a large cloud. “Don’t you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

Seraph began slowly flapping into the sky, toward Pinkie. Joe startled. “Whoa! Hey! W-what are you doing?!”

She waved a dismissive foreleg in his direction as she picked up speed. “I just gotta... wanna check the... see what....” She sort of trailed off as she picked up speed. Joe stared in shock for a moment before Sunny’s hoof grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Joe. We have moments.”

Joe cast one final glance over his shoulder at his rapidly-dwindling sister, silently praying to Celestia she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Seraph could take care of herself, Joe knew that. But she wasn’t quite herself right now. With a sharp, deep breath, he turned to follow Sunny.

As quickly as she could manage, Sunny shooed Joe around around the side of the building, facing the east wing entrance. As they rounded the corner, she stifled a yelp with both hooves as two bulky pegasi guards fluttered to the ground, on either side of the door. She stuttered in place for a moment, locked in a silent maelstrom of rampant irritation and blinding frustration. She was not pleased.

With a frustrated snort, Sunny jumped up onto her rear legs and spun around, shooting Joe a peeved glance over her shoulder as she started off toward the party. The Joe Maneuver was not a particularly effective counter. “Stay close.”

Joe nodded, with a frown. He had perhaps been the teensiest bit impulsive when he’d decided to follow Sunny on her insane, inexplicable quest. That much was... pretty much beyond question, at this point. He couldn’t just let her go alone, though. Sunny Skies put up a brave front, but Joe knew false confidence when he saw it. She was scared. It would be insane not to be. Maybe she’d be a little less scared with him here.

As quickly as they could, without generating any more attention, they rounded the corner and cantered through the bustling garden party, avoiding eye contact with the scores of highborn ponies glaring through half-lidded, pink-ringed eyes at their unkempt appearance and unsightly lack of formal dress. Blessedly, it was at this moment that the regal, bow-tied cellist to the side of the stage grumbled the first line of her next song, drowning the clatter of their frantic hooves under a eloquent classical consonance. He found a small swelling of confidence in that cocoon of music.

As the party disappeared behind them, Sunny gestured for Joe to follow her behind a tall bushel of bushes hugging the castle wall. Above them towered a gorgeous stained glass window, depicting the wicked Discord as he lorded over the helpless pony tribes of old, playing them like marionettes. Its beauty was stunning. Joe had never actually seen the piece outside of photos and drawings, but the distant history of the event seemed like nothing compared to the glass itself. The glass just seemed more real. A single moment of an age long past, captured, and given form.

Sunny gazed up at the window for a few moments, then to the left, then to the right. She turned to Joe, eyes still twitching with seething frustration. Joe returned a shaky smile, through clenched teeth.

“I need you to stand right here and boost me up, Joe. We don’t have long.”

Without a word, Joe took her place under the stained glass window, pushed his flank against the wall, standing firm as she pounced on his back. He could feel the pressure of her hooves as she rose up on two legs, doubtlessly trying to get a decent look through the colored glass.

“I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to see much of anything, Sunbeam. Those windows are as old as the city. I think the glass is a little mel—”

A heart-stopping shattering tore through the air.

Joe’s heart froze as he spun his head around, watching in shock as Sunny came down onto all fours, pulling back from a forceful buck. An enormous, gaping hole now ran along the bottom of the ancient window, shattering to pieces the breathtaking depiction of Discord’s sadistic puppeteering. They were just knocking ‘em down tonight.

Sunny spun around, and pushed off with her rear legs, pouncing through the window like a squirrel. Joe turned, watching as shards of colored glass dangled and fell from above. He briefly wondered if she would come back for him.

A small white hoof poked out from the hole, knocking away pieces of glass along the bottom and sides, widening the opening and making it just a little bit safer for Joe to fit through. It would probably be tight, but if he was careful, he might b—

Another white hoof bucked through the window pane, showering Joe’s flank with stained glass.

He shimmied his backside a bit, clattering the priceless trinklets to the grass. Alrighty then! He would probably fit now.

• • • •

Sunny quickly cleared the glass from her second buck off the thick stone windowpane and planted her flank on the edge, letting her long pink tail hang down the side of the wall. Joe looked away. “You uh... you sure about that? You’re not the biggest mare in—”

“For the love of Harmony!” She hissed, “Just get up here!”

Joe sighed, wrapping her tail around his forehoof and leaping off the ground. Sunny squeaked as his full weight pulled her off her rump and onto her belly. She scrambled to grasp the other side of the windowsill with her sliding hooves, clamping down as tightly as she could. She vibrated with strain as Joe’s hooves hoisted themselves around her midsection in a short upward hop. Alarm bells blared in Sunny’s brain at the sudden touch, rolling back ye olde butt-grope ticker from zero to... well, zero. Big day for art vandalism and touching butts, apparently.

She lowered her head with a deep blush as Joe’s elbow curled around her shoulder, bracing itself firmly against her chest. For a moment, she was completely surrounded by the stalwart stallion as he pulled himself higher. Lulu had been right about his smell. Just a little bit sweet.

With a grunt, Joe kicked off the wall with his hind leg, hoisting himself overhead. The dark brown hair of his tail brushed over Sunny’s muzzle as he gracelessly flopped over the windowsill and onto his back, slamming against the marble floor with a loud slap that echoed down the endless hallway. Sunny sighed, pulling herself to the lip of the windowsill and gently clacking to the floor. She rolled her eyes at Joe as he righted himself, peeking over his shoulder at the cracked marble indent his body had left behind.

“Heh. Whoops.”

Sunny stoically turned to face down the hall, desperately stifling a laugh. She really did not want to find that as funny as she absolutely did. Putting her head back for a moment, Sunny valiantly fought her smile back into a frown, then turned to glance over her shoulder. Joe theatrically bit his hoof, sending her an exaggerated, adorable ‘whoopsie daisy’ look through a barely-restrained grin. She laughed. It was a dorky, unrehearsed little snort-giggle that she immediately pushed back inside with the back of a flustered hoof.

Joe pointed a hoof at her with a smile. “Ahah! There it is!”

Sunny waved her hoof. “We s-should move...” She stammered through a chuckle, gesturing down the long, roofless hallway. “My— the guards. They’ll definitely have heard that.” Joe nodded, and moved beside her as they broke into a brisk gallop.

The halls were open and empty, eerily bright from the white-pink moonlight that poured in overhead. As they’d travelled from Joe’s apartment to the castle, earlier, Sunny had seen Pinkie giggling as she pulled off the roof with a strange, shimmering rainbow magic. The tiles and planks would float, free from gravity, before whittling into a white, dusty powder. Hers was a strange and surreal power, a power she seemed to have complete control over. It was one of many things that she shouldn’t have been able to do.

As they rounded the corner, Sunny held a hoof in front of Joe, slowing him to a trot. In the distance, she could see nobles and palace staff scurrying through the hallway. Moving boldly, with direction and purpose. She gazed at their energetic bustle with flat resignation. Evidently all it had taken to properly motivate them was the literal apocalypse.

Sunny turned to Joe. “Slow down, a little bit. We won’t draw much attention this far in, so long as we look like we belong.” They settled into a trot, seeing the throne room draw near, several hundred feet ahead. She swallowed, looking straight ahead. She could see Joe staring, out of the corner of her eye. He really, really wanted to ask her something. She could probably guess what that was.

She glanced over, catching his stare for a moment before he startled and locked his eyes forward. Joe stiffened. “Sorry.” He looked away. “...You look good for sixty.”

Sunny was silent. She noticed Joe glancing about, holding his gaze on certain doors and certain ponies as they passed by. It was like he was expecting somepony to call him out.

She hesitated for a moment, then looked in his direction. “Have you been to the castle before?”

Joe blinked, somewhat surprised, looking into her eyes. He quickly caught himself, turning to look ahead. “Oh, not uh... not since I was a colt.” He was quiet for a few moments. All that could be heard was the sound of their hooves clacking against the marble. “I kind of caused a big, awful...” He wound his foreleg for a moment, trying to think of the right word. “...thing, a long time ago.”

Sunny held a hoof to her mouth, thinking back to their argument with Joe’s sister. She had said something about Joe being banned from the castle grounds. “How... big, exactly?”

Joe went pale.

Sunny gave him a sympathetic look, bundled with a tiny, reserved little smile. She used it often, at work, and with her ponies, to let them know they could tell her anything. That they could trust in her.

“I hurt the princess.”

• • • •

Joe felt his heart sink as Sunny’s face fell. It was shock, and maybe a little disgust. It felt like he’d hurt her, a little. He could almost see her pulling away from him.

It was a stupid idea, to tell her. The last thing Joe wanted was to scare her away, and that’s exactly what he was doing. But he also felt like she had taken a huge chance on him, telling him what she did. She could’ve lied. She had every reason in the world to do so, but she didn’t. Maybe he could take a chance on her as well.

“...I was angry, and I was afraid, and I forced her to do something. I was too small and weak to do it myself.” He looked away. “If she knew I was still around... if she ever remembered... I don’t know what she’d do to me.” His ears flattened against his head as that old pit in his chest sunk just a little bit deeper. “I wish... I wish I could tell her I was sorry. That I was stupid and scared and desperate and young, but that would be for me. She doesn’t need that. She’s happier never knowing it happened.”

He chanced a look up at Sunny. She had her hoof around the back of her head, looking at the ground as she walked. Thinking. She looked utterly shaken. He should stop. This was a mistake.

“The eye.” She looked him in the eyes, then to his cutie mark. “...What is your special talent?”

“...Donuts.” That wasn’t a lie. It was what he was good at. What he wanted and wished to be meant for. “I’m really good at baking donuts.”

“I mean your real one!”

Joe was silent. He had told nopony since he lost his magic. It wasn’t him anymore. It never was. “I...” He looked away. “I could see lies. In the air, like they were real.” He slowly rose his gaze to the long, jagged crack down his horn. “It was like there was this whole other layer to everything, to the world, and I could see just this one, stupid, tiny, useless little part of it.”

He felt Sunny’s eyes on him.

“...I felt like maybe that little part wanted to be seen. I... I know...” He gave her a sullen look. “I know that sounds insane. I thought maybe I was, for a while. It absolutely sounds insane.”

Her expression was completely blank. She just listened. He had no idea if she was furious or sympathetic or morbidly curious or what. He could do nothing but trust she would believe him.

“When I got a little older, I realized I could... push them away, if I wanted. I could pull out the truth, and shoo away the lies, like they were parasprites. It felt like that was what the world... wanted to happen. Like that’s what the world needed to be. So I did it.” With a blink, Joe looked away. The end of the hallway was rapidly approaching. Beyond, there was just the vacant, open, moonlit throne room.

“It made things go very wrong.”

• • • •

Sunny could think of nothing to say. She didn’t remember anypony like the one he was describing. She certainly didn’t remember banning anypony from the castle, for hundreds of years. Then, she thought back to the framed photo on his coffee table, to that little amber colt with the starburst of burned fur. It occurred to her that she had imagined an incredibly, unusually vivid picture of the event. One that felt real enough that, perhaps, it hadn’t been her imagination at all. Perhaps it had happened, and she had seen it, and she had been there.

She thought of her signature on the back of the framed photo. Sunny didn’t remember how or why, but she had come to see him that day. She would do so for any little foal, in any such condition. Accidents of that severity were rare, but they did happen. She made an effort to visit each and every one, to remind them that no matter what happened, no matter their mistakes or their fortunes, they were loved, and they always would be.

Over the years, it was hard to remember them all. She did her best, to immortalize each and every pony in her mind, but one could only remember so much. It was different for timeless ones like herself, and her sister. If she did not think of them often, they would fade. She had to cling to the odd little details, the striking ones. The things that made the memory special, and unique, and real. The reason it had become a memory in the first place.

There had been one odd little detail about that amber colt, when she considered the photo. His little sister, clinging to him on the bed, tight as she could. It was not remotely common for families of another race to adopt a moori. It was notoriously difficult to raise them properly, and fairly, without being able to identify with their unusual needs and predatory inclinations. She found it unexpected, and impressive, that Parish had attempted to do so.

The thought of Joe’s father fluttered to her mind a smattering of other, tiny, forgotten moments. Speaking with Parish, beside his colt’s bed. She couldn’t see the little one’s cutie mark, under the hospital blanket, and she remembered little out of the ordinary about his abilities, as they were described to her. He had been talented in reading faces, in understanding body language. He was vaguely emotionally perceptive. ‘Donut Joe’ certainly didn’t seem to fit the colt she had in mind, but the similarity in appearance was obvious. The more she thought on it, piece by piece, the more clear the image became. She remembered looking into the colt’s wide, fearful green eyes. She had said something, to set him at ease. She’d asked him his name.

“White Lie.”

Joe’s head shot to the side, looking at Sunny with horrified surprise. “H-how did—” He looked up and down her body, as if trying to place, for the hundredth time, where he might have seen her before. “—where did you hear that name?”

She looked ahead. “I... I’m older than I look.”

Joe’s face fell, in a small, subtle way. He seemed to regard the answer with distant acceptance. “If... you heard about it, if you were there, did... do you know if anypony ever told her? Did the princess ever find out?”

Sunny looked into those wide, fearful green eyes. It was him, she had no doubt about that now. “...No. No she didn’t.”

There was a moment of absolute silence as Sunny and Joe darted behind the raised platform of the royal throne — empty, thank Harmony — to scamper across the ornate, ancient marble tile. The royal bedchambers were close.

As they reached the entryway to the long, towering hallway, Sunny stopped to look out at the unthinkably massive crowd of ponies that spread out across the castle grounds. They had caught hints of its size and scope on the way to the castle, but to see it... it was magnitudes larger than anything she might have envisioned. A Pinkie Party to end all Pinkie Parties.

Every conceivable type of celebration, every flavor of party, squeezed shoulder to shoulder across the city. The sound alone was overwhelming. Dubstep played over high classical played over folk rock played over numerous, numerous vocal-heavy musical numbers; the melodic clash filled the air to capacity. Just below was the hearty buzz of animate conversation, heated exclamation, high-falutin’ pontification, and riotous laughter. Sunny had never seen anything remotely like it. She gawked at the sheer, impossible scale of it all — stretching from the steps, up the main road, into the city, and across every street and neighborhood — and gazed, for a time, in sheer stupefied wonder. It was incredible and terrifying and delightful and absurd, all at once.

With a baffled shake of the head, Sunny jumped up on her hind legs and spun around, shooing Joe down the hallway. He trotted beside her in muted discomfort, eyes glued to the loose, flickering, unspooling mess that was once her sunlock. It still clung over the colossal entrance to the royal dining hall, appearing as a etherial wad of melted gum, its frayed edges wafting aimlessly around the sides. Without magic to sustain it, the lock would scrunch and warp, until it bunched and fell errant, unweaving into nothing.

She didn’t dare imagine what might happen if the lunar growth locked within managed to break out, with nopony to stop it. She knew that the arrival of the moon and Pinkie’s transformation had to be related, but how, and in what possible way, she simply had no idea. It all depended on time she was almost certain she didn’t have.

One step at a time. She needed to deal with Pinkie, and wrest back control of her castle. There was only one possible way to do that, circumstances being what they were.

As they rounded the corner, Sunny slowed Joe to a stop before the towering oak doorframe of Princess Luna’s bed chambers. Joe looked on with utter horror as Sunny retrieved a piece of chalk from her mane and gently pressed it against the base of the doorway. Swiftly and expertly, she drew a perfect circle, enclosing a series of strange, ornate markings, flanked by diligent ancient Equestrian wording. Sunny hoped against hope that there was enough of Harmony left in this castle to ignite a magic circle.

It was far from ideal. Hoof-drawn magic circles were dramatically less powerful or efficient than the direct, unspoken connection to the elements. Even the act of putting into language, then into writing, what one wanted the spell to do, diluted its strength. Magic could understand the intent of the spell, as you laid it out in the circle, but compared to knowing exactly what you wanted, in your mind, it was a shadow of the real thing. She hoped a shadow would be enough.

Stepping back, she watched as the markings slowly, glacially, crept to full luminance. Sunny exchanged a wary look with Joe. He clearly had no idea what she was thinking, and no idea what she was trying to do, but he didn’t say anything. He gone with her this far; evidently, he was trusting her on this too. The door clicked, and with a deep, calming, steeling breath of air, Sunny pressed her hoof against the door, and pushed it open.

• • • •

The bedchamber of Princess Luna was decidedly less draconian than Joe was hoping. No spikes, no cages, no skeletons, no spiked cages made of skeletons. For some reason, as a colt, he’d always imagined Nightmare Moon had this huge, twisted-looking telescope through which she plotted her sinister, midnight raids on naughty foals. In reality, there was a pretty sweet brass telescope jutting out of the side of her wall. Like everything else, it was tasteful, and lovely, and well-used.

In fact, that was the one thing he really liked about it. Everything she had, seemed to have some use. Nothing superfluous, or decorative. It was far more sparse than he ever would’ve imagined, considering she co-ruled the largest country on the planet. Sissy had explained this surreal normalcy to him once or twice, during her first week on the job, but he never really believed it until now. Joe wondered if the princess had ever expected anypony to just waltz into her room like this. Maybe she didn’t think about appearances in that way.

As he looked to the overfull trash bins, packed with snot-soaked tissues, and to the rows upon rows of fans haphazardly placed around her unkempt bed, he couldn’t shake how lived-in it was. Real. For the first time, probably ever, he thought about the princess as a mare. A withdrawn, introverted mare, with the weirdest, hardest, loneliest job in the world.

Sunny scurried toward the back of the room, where untold scores of books lined the oaken walls. It looked like a poorly-run, underfunded public library, with books stacked on top of others in random and obtuse angles. Others were face-down, or open, or both, and all were just stuffed with bookmarks. Luna had only been back from her exile for a couple of years. That was a lot of books to burn through in just a few years.

Joe watched with surprise as Sunny leapt straight up and swatted at a large, unremarkable tome, tucked between dozens of identical books. It jostled a bit, poking out onto the rim of the bookshelf and hanging precariously near the edge. Sunny scrunched low, and sprang into the air once more, clenching the spine of the book between her teeth and pulling it free. With a light hop, she dove onto Luna’s bed, and pawed open the dusty tome. Joe followed, sitting beside Sunny as she wound about a strange, metallic mechanism embedded into the hollowed-out book.

She looked up at the moon as she wove the circular ticker one way, then the other, then back. A tiny springlike lever popped up, which she batted a few times, at odd angles, then twisted, then pressed in. There was a short, quiet click, and Sunny stoically raised her hooves into the air, swatting the face of the mechanism with a brisk, forceful bop. With a snap, the compartment sprang open.

It was full of strange, varied, utterly unrelated items. A patch from a uniform, hundreds of years old, a sock, a hoof-carved likeness of Princess Celestia, shaped out of some kind of prismic rock Joe had never seen before, a pocket watch, a red pegasus feather, a bundle of yellowed letters, tied together with string. It was like ponies from dozens of different eras had filled the same time capsule. Sunny breathed a long, heavy sigh as she gently prodded through the items. Soon, she found what she was looking for.

Dangling from the back of her hoof, on two tiny, incredibly intricate necklaces, were two little gemstones. One orange, one blue. Each no bigger than a raspberry. She held a solemn look on the jewels for a moment, holding her other hoof against the back of her neck. Lost in thought. After a weighted moment, she carefully placed them both around her head, and pulled them down around her neck. As she reached to close the book, Joe’s hoof held her back. She glanced up at him, in surprise.

Joe’s eyes were glued to one particular object, one of the larger ones, buried near the bottom. He squinted, moving his head from one side, to the other, just to make sure.

“Sunny.” He reached in, as gently as he could, and removed a small, hidebound journal. Its cover was etched with beautifully precise, fiercely sharp, eerily alien markings. Without hesitation, he opened to the first page. He found it littered with similar text; filled, from page to page. He had never seen a language like this. He gazed at it with wonder, then glanced up at Sunny. “What is this?”

She took the journal in hoof, and touched her other gently over its cover. “It’s a cookbook. A friend of mine gave it to me, as a gift. A very long time ago.”

Joe stared at her warm, nostalgic smile. That was the truth. Or at least, she really thought it was. He rose his hoof just above the cover, gesturing around the booklet. “Do you see that?”

“...See what?”

Joe gazed in dubious fascination at the dim, winding ephemera that coiled about the journal. It looked kind of like a lie, but it wasn’t a lie. It was something else. It moved in a different way, felt a different way, and seemed, in ways he had no words to explain, truly, powerfully important.

“Nothing... I guess.” He reached for the journal, and carefully took it from her. She looked at him, quite unsure. “I... I think we need this. I can’t really explain how I know that.”

Sunny gave him a baffled look. “The cookbook?”

“I know. Just... trust me on this.” He could think of only one way to explain it, but it sounded utterly, utterly insane. It was like the world wanted him to have it. Joe knew better than anypony that the world didn’t know what it wanted, when you got down to it. The world wanted the impossible.

But with this? There was a kind of confidence there he had never quite seen before. A certainty. Joe trusted the world about as far as he could throw it, but this… this felt like it went beyond trust. Like it just needed to be.

Sunny held a curious look on the booklet for a moment more, flipping it around to inspect the rear face, then back. She took one last glance at Joe before sliding it into her mane, and closing shut the box.

Joe nervously glanced to the doorway, his ear twitching at a distant sound. He saw nothing. He turned to Sunny with an anxious look. “We should go. I have no idea what time it is, exactly, but it’s getting late. This is the last place we want to be once Princess—”

“My my, this is unexpected.”

Joe froze. The bite mark on his flank throbbed in terror at the bone-chilling sound of Princess Luna’s voice. It... was probably dawn, wasn’t it. Slowly, fearfully, he turned to the doorway. The towering alicorn held an odd, playful look up on him. He wasn’t sure if that made him more or less terrified.

Her voice was soft, and teasing, and... flirty.

“The handsome little baker.”

Definitely more.

Author's Note

Sorry this one's been later than usual. Was in the process of four interviews for a publishing job I really, really wanted. Got juuust close enough to taste it, then, well, I wasn't their guy, apparently. Sugarfree sort of fell by the wayside while I threw everything I had at that possibility.

This chapter, more than any other, is the result of Luminary, Eakin, and Brawny's merciless knifestorm of editorial wrath. I really, really did not like how this was coming together at the halfway point, and Lum gave me the kick in the pants I needed to pull it back to the beginning and redo the middle. It's not perfect, but I'm way, way, way happier with it than I was when I started. Eakin, Brawny, and Lum wailed on it with a sock of quarters after the rewrite, and it's drastically better for it.

Probably the most tortured goddamn thing I've written for a long time, but dang, definitely feel like I'm better for it. You guys are the greatest.

Comment! Comment, damn your eyes! Let me know what you liked, and what you didn't!

The Royal Snogging

The Royal Snogging
• • • •

Princess Luna let out an exasperated snort as she trotted down the cavernous hallway adjacent to the throne room, shaking bits of confetti and glitter from her frazzled mane. By the stars, she was tired. The night had been long, and it had been loud, and it had been thoroughly exhausting. And not in the fun way.

Her ears twitched at the echoing rancor of Oni’s birthday celebration, swiveling one way, then the other, as if trying to escape the unrelenting walla that coursed through the windows and the open ceiling above. Regal and deliberate, Luna strode forth, her head held high, her lips pursed tight, and her eyes ever-so-gently lain shut. Any passing noblemare or guardpony would be hard-pressed to find a single betraying hint that their princess was at all affected by the thundering commotion that flooded the air around her. Indeed, few knew what Princess Luna looked like when she was anxious, or uncomfortable, or strained. To anypony’s recollection, three years after her return, it had not happened yet. Perhaps she never felt that way. Perhaps their new, slightly creepy co-ruler didn’t feel, period. It was anypony’s guess. They certainly weren’t going to ask her.

Luna rounded the corner with a light flick of the mane, starting down the moonlit passage to the royal bedchambers. Several dozen hooffalls in, her eyes crept open, and she slowed. She took a slight, subtle look over her shoulder, then glanced about about the empty hallway, before silently drawing to a stop.

With a sigh, her face fell, and her side leaned against the wall. She lowered her head, letting her twinkling celestial mane fall around her face, enveloping the mare in a dark, empty world of shimmering stars. She could feel her heart beating out of her chest, her body weak with anxious fatigue. At last, in here, she had silence. At last she was alone. She pulled in a deep, calming breath, and felt herself relax.

Luna was never one for parties. The endless performance of polite conversation, the constant expectation of manner and poise, the bothersome, burdensome attention. The strange way in which silence seemed a sordid disrespect. She blinked, sensing a subtle drift in the stars about her. Drunk already. One glass seemed to fade into the other as she skirted conversation with every strategic sip. The wine helped loosen the tight knot that wound about her chest, but its comfort was an empty, artificial thing. She was a thousand years removed from every living soul in Equestria. No amount of loosening up was going to change the fact that she could not even begin to relate to them, on seemingly any level. It was like she was from another planet.

The night had been spent passively humoring Oni as he trolloped about the courtyard bloc party, ‘twerking’ with mortifying immodesty to the shrilling caterwaul of a feral, bespeckled songstress. Her only distraction from the pounding noise had been bouts of strained, overforward conversation put forth by scores of inebriated ponies gyrating around their table. She had been… surprised, to say the least, to find her subjects so very open with her all of the sudden. Luna was quite sure she had not been prior engaged in a single conversation with her ponies since her return. Nothing unrelated to the crown, at the least. A flutter or two perhaps with her new, delightfully unrefined moori hoofmaiden, but nary an unexpected word besides. The question of the night had been, consistently, repeatedly, 'what it was like on the moon?' As if a thousand years on a distant rock with an ancient dragon god could be summarized in a single response. “It was rather odd,” was all that had come to mind.

Three years it had been, since her return, and still she found herself regularly baffled by their odd ambitions and their absurd problems, by the arbitrary concerns they drew from a long history she only understood in the abstract. She found herself scrambling to cobble together some context for every tiny little thing they said, or did, or asked of her. She felt like a foal, wholly and hopelessly ignorant of the ways and workings of the world. It was spectacularly frustrating. She had not felt this out of her element since she and her sister had first taken the unified races under their wing, in the years of confusion following Discord’s defeat. She was overwhelmed, and underprepared, and… and if she was honest… in the most oddly marvelous way... hopelessly enthralled.

There was a brilliant wonder in it, she had found. A youth, a newness, a riveting cascade of discovery. Everything old was new again, as the saying went. New foods, new cities, new songs, and most blessed of all, a thousand-year backlog of freshly-penned books. A seemingly infinite number of thoughts and ideas and worlds stretched before her, waiting to be plunged into with foal-like delight.

Every night, and every morning, and every adoring moment between, Luna had voraciously devoured every tome and textbook she could get her hooves on. Locomotives! Transmutation! Audio recording! Weather control! Like a filly in a candy store, Luna’s appetite was insatiable, her mind always at work ruminating over the lives and the loves and the passions of her little ponies. Every little factoid was a piece of the dizzying puzzle that was the modern, and the now. A window through which she might see the world as they did.

It was work, certainly. It was an immense, exhausting amount of work. But it was not without its delights.

The novels — the fiction and the fantasy and the scandalous romance and deliciously absurd ‘science fiction’ — these were hearts and the souls of her ponies. Luna absolutely adored such stories. Unlike her studies into history or magical science, each novel could be savored, like the choicest cut of Molochi moon dust. She could take her time, nibble teensy, dainty little bites, and truly enjoy every last wonderful word. A good book was to be danced about the tongue, to be prodded and pulled and chewed into sets and phrases that stuck in your mind like the warm finish of a good wine. Her room, her library, was a place she delighted to return to every morning. It had been the greatest gift her sister had ever given her.

Luna closed her eyes as strangely distant memories began popping into place, coloring an odd emptiness within she only now began to notice. There was a curious lightness in her right eye, and in a blink, she could recall, with crystal clarity, the Elements casting Oni’s magic from her body, three years ago. Twilight Sparkle, and… and Pinkie Pie, and fair Applejack, and all the others. Her face tensed as she strained at the memory. There had been a blast of… heaviness, of seemingly empty weight, and then, immense loss. Oni’s magic, his power, driven apart, leaving her as frail and fragile as a foal. Her mind had became clear, and sharp, for the first time in centuries. In her sister’s embrace she had felt, quite powerfully, love, once more. Complete, unconditional love.

Tia had embraced her with such deep certainty. She had never once doubted they would become sisters again. Luna rose her head, looking to the oaken bedroom door before her. In this vast, sunning new city of Canterlot, her sister had built her a bedroom within a library. A silent oasis, stocked to the brim with every last book she could ever want. Everything new, everything exciting or fascinating or heartwarming, or some blessed combination of the three. When she had first walked through that doorway, on that very first day, Tia’s favorite novel of the last thousand years had sat, wrapped in paper, on her desk. The Sweetest Sound. For three years Luna had savored every blessed page. She neared its end only now.

Luna blinked. Tia. Of course, she should just talk to Tia. Where… where had…? She felt a dull, heavy warmth around her right eye, and the thought seemed to just… end. It was the oddest sensation. It was as if she passed over it, or through it, leaving the thought far behind. One moment, she would have it. She and her sister, embracing in the ruins of their old home. Then, like awakening from a dream, it became abstract, then it became nothing. It... must’ve been idle fantasy. She must’ve been mistaken. Tia was… gone. Defeated. Vanquished. Banished to the sun, for a thousand years. Just as she and Oni had planned, in those earlier, angrier years on the moon.

Without a thought, she slid a glass horseshoe to the toe of her forehoof and poised herself to spider-fling the ornate glassware on top of the bureau, as she had every morning. A flash of yellow caught her attention, halting her in place. Two unicorns, laying on her bed, side by side, reading a book. She gawked in surprise for a moment, rather disbelieving her eyes. Neither were moori, meaning neither were guards, or servants. They were just... two unicorns, off the street.

Luna turned back to the doorway, taking notice, for the first time, of the almost imperceptible scorchmarking of a magic circle along the ground. Such a spell was awfully advanced, and certainly not well-known beyond the palace staff. She returned her gaze to the bed, catching the side of the stallion’s face in the white-pink moonlight. Her heart stirred as a pang of vague familiarity crystallized into certainty. By the stars, it was him. The roguish purveyor of the local dining tavern, whose backside she had so callously begobbled not but a fortnight hence.

A slight blush settled across Luna’s muzzle as she eyed the red arc of teethmarks peppering the oblivious baker’s tight rear. Luna was not one to hide her affections, certainly, but something feral, and foalish, and oddly powerful, had taken hold of her that night. Perhaps it had been the fever, or the stresses of the crown. More likely, it had been the overwhelming urging of a raw, carnal lust. She could not deny that she felt such desire for the stallion.

Indeed, it had been a mixture of curiosity and outright guilt that had led her into his dreams, the night following the stallion’s Royal Snogging. She had found him paralyzed before a strange, surreal nightmare of her wicked sister, the Tyrant Celestia, and had freed him of the imagined tormentor. Luna well knew that he would likely awake to dismiss her presence as the muddling of an odd dream, but it was enough for Luna that the baker had passed through his fear, and his despair, into a softer, warmer realm that night.

And how warm it had been.

For longer than she should have, Luna had stayed, and watched as his dreams blossomed into the most delightfully absurd fantasy. She half believed it to be but riotous fancy before things took a most... erotic turn, in an odd, fun little scenario involving a promiscuous vision of herself, and the unkempt, sleep-starved white mare that now lay beside him. The memory of that fantasy had held fresh in Luna’s mind, throughout the day, and throughout the party, in the most doggedly tantalizing way. She had escaped to it often, as Oni’s exhausting, unremitting birthday celebration bore on.

The princess smiled, drawing her eye across the stallion’s broad backside, along the gentle hints of muscle that gripped around his shoulders and slightly bulged from his legs. There was a thin, loose strip of bandaging around the top of his hind leg. Like a bow tied around a present, waiting to be pulled free. She could not fathom why she had not pursued this delicious specimen previous. The whole unkempt streetpony look was doing it for her.

Holding a hoof to her mouth, she smiled, and wondered. Had he journeyed to his princess’ bedchambers this night, with his delicate companion in tow, in a show of presentation? It was a powerfully bold gesture. Perhaps he had remembered her presence, in his dreams. Perhaps he desired to enjoy her company once more.

"My my, what have we here?"

The scruffy stallion tensed up as she drew closer, his wide eyes locking forward with an adorably rigid skittishness. She felt a devious stir, at the sight. Still so nervous before his princess. There was an air of vulnerability to the baker she utterly adored — it wasn't the practiced subservience she saw with many of her guards, it was a true and unmetered fear of her power. There was most certainly a part of her that quite appreciated a healthy respect of one’s goddess. It felt… quite pleasing.

“The handsome little baker.”

Slowly and deliberately, Princess Luna rounded the side of the bed, never once taking her eyes from the stallion before her. There were a thousand and one things she might order of her subject, if he wished to play this game. He had given himself to her, laid himself bare across her bed in bold presentation. She decided to start slow, and small, and work her way up to the juicier indulgences. There was an art to such seduction, after all. Though a thousand years had passed since last she had braved the tempestuous waters of The Royal Canterlot Lust, such was no excuse for crass impropriety.

With a huff, she held her head high, and raised her forehoof before the strapping stallion with regal candor. His mouth fell open as he eyed her hoof, visibly flabbergasted.

Luna pursed her lips, allowing a teensy peek of the eye, “Thine swaggartly air hath enticed our favor, little one. We bequeath unto you the honor of disrobing thine princess.” She made a little wave with her hoof, gesturing her horseshoe toward the wide-eyed baker. “Let thine seduction commence!”

The trembling stallion reeled against the power of The Royal Canterlot Voice, glancing to her eyes for a weighted moment before immediately casting his gaze back down to her hoof. The quiet pink mare to his side startled, and reared to face her princess with blusterous intent, but quickly found herself pushed back into the bedding by her mortified consort. He looked to his princess with a nervous, toothy smile, “Iiiyyyahh... wo— yyeeaaoff course! Princess!! L-let me j-just...”

• • • •

Joe's hooves rattled with complete, unimpeachable terror as he brought his forelegs up to the waiting hoof of Princess Luna, gingerly lifting off her ornate glass horseshoe like it was made out of acid-coated fire-breathing lava snakes. Was this what she did? Did Nightmare Moon toy with her food like some vindictive manticub, before swallowing them whole?

He remembered this story Dive had told him once, when Joe’s family had gone camping with he and his wife. On nights such as these, when the moon was at its brightest, Nightmare Moon would stalk the forests, and the caves, and the dark places the moonlight wouldn’t dare touch. She would spring out from the shadows to pluck little colts and fillies from their tents, swift and silent as the wind. Scary ol’ Uncle Dive had always left it to young Joe’s imagination what the boogymare did with them once she had them in her hooves, but he’d felt it a safe bet that it was something spectacularly evil. The kind of evil you only imagine when you’re too young to know that there’s an upper limit to evil. Little Seraph had, of course, leapt upon the opportunity to relentlessly tease her older brother with sounds and whispers about their tent, as the night grew loud with the calls and cackles of hidden, fearsome nocturnal beasts. Her kind lived and thrived in the dark, after all. She found it all quite a bit funnier than he had.

Joe chanced a peek into his princess’ piercing eyes as he tapped loose her second shoe, surgically lifting it free and placing it neatly on the bed. She seemed to tower over him, like some celestial demoness from beyond the stars. She held a small, unsettling grin, and a devious stare through half-lidded eyes. Like his sister, and everypony they’d seen during the night, her left eye twinkled with a striking ring of brilliant pink. Joe’s breaths were shallow, and ragged. He kept telling himself that it was fine, that Celestia had made it clear her returning sister could be trusted, that she was one of them. Celestia didn’t often lie. Joe knew that. But old fears ran deep, and teethmarks… they ran deeper.

With a surging, dramatic flare of Luna’s wings, her cloak evaporated into a frigging cloud of bats, which frantically scampered about Joe’s mane before squeaking into the open skies above. Joe’s jaw clenched tight as he held in a foalish yelp, his body rigid as his mouth quivered with strain. He desperately gazed into Luna’s eyes as he held firm. She gave a subtle curl of the eyebrow, and a decidedly less-subtle curl of the lip. It was the oddest mixture of titillation and disappointment. He didn’t doubt that she’d been anticipating a scream, or a least a startle, but it was a simple point of fact that Joe had gotten every iota of bat-related fear out of his system that weekend he shared a tent with his sister. Seraph was an enormous, pony-sized bat monster with razor-sharp fangs and dragon eyes. She had set an unrealistic standard of hellborne creepiness that regular bats frankly could not hope to live up to.

Luna briskly turned, and matter-of-factly presented her hind leg. Joe’s gaze subconsciously darted to that godlike royal derriere as he shakily removed both horseshoes, an affixion that did not escape his princess' subtle eye. With a flick of the mane, she spun around once more, and thrust her chest at the quivering baker. Joe gazed at his pale expression in the reflection of her elegant chest plate, and audibly swallowed, before leaning forward to wrap his forelegs around the back of her neck, fumbling for the latch. He turned his head to the side with a deep blush as his cheek brushed against her chest. Her heart was racing, and by the stars, so was his.

Okay Joe. You can do this.

Clasp is on the back, just… there it is. Okay. Press innn… aaandd WOW there is a lot going on back there. A hook! Okay maybe ifff IIII twist like thiis it wiiillllnope no it is definitely not one of those.

He felt what seemed to be a coil of tiny, winding chainmail loops, around which even smaller hooks had intertwined themselves. At this point, at least three classic nightmares of Joe’s were conveniently swirling into one unholy incubus: He had moments to undo history’s most unfathomably intricate formalwear and probably satisfy the millennia-old living queen of darkness, or Nightmare Moon would likely finish what she had started in the diner.

With a ragged tug along the lip of the coil, Joe felt the first of three hooks come loose. His heart leapt at the sensation.

You got this, Joey Boy. Just gotta… gotta hold this claspy whatsit in place, and press this winding coil whajigger iinnn aaanndd…

“Art thou quite all right, down there?” Luna mused, leaning in to take a slow, satisfied sniff along the back of his mane.

Joe’s ear flicked at the touch of her snout, startling him to reality. “Ahah! J-ju— ha— d-doing just peachy! Your Ladyship! B-be done in a jiff!”

By Celestia what buckery is this WHO PUTS WOVEN CHAINMAIL STRAPPING ON A BRASSIERE?!

With a measured quarter twist, Joe felt the second and third latches give way. To his horror, the plate remained taut. His tongue ran along the bottom of his lip as he brought his full attention to the task. It barely registered that his face was half-sunk into her fur at this point, every ounce of conscious thought devoted to releasing this CELESTIA-DAMNED THIN—

With an almost inaudible ping!, the metallic strap fell loose, and the chest piece came free. Joe let out a breath of overwhelming relief, before almost immediately sucking it back in as he felt the chestplate jolt, and drop. His hooves were still around her back, and there was most certainly nothing holding up the priceless, ageless artefact as it unbuckled from her breast. Joe’s pupils turned to pinpricks as the stunning, gem-encrusted piece plummeted sharply to the floor, slamming into its side and skittering under the princess’ bed. His eyes shot to hers'.

Ohhh crap.

Luna turned up her head, casting upon the mortified baker a glare burning with white-hot infernal wrath. Joe braced himself against the bedpost, pulled in a steady, full-body breath, and brought to bear the single most desperate, weapons-grade Joe Maneuver he had ever attempted.

Luna’s expression held firm as Joe’s strained, cutesy smile curled ever-so-slightly, walking a perilous tightrope between roguish mischief and suicidal disrespect. Her eyes betrayed an almost imperceptible softening as they beheld Joe’s innocuous lift of the brow, centimeter by centimeter, inward and upward, ascending to a height of such heart-rending devilry that only the most callous heart in all of Equestria could possibly stand chilled before its charm.

Princess Luna held such a heart.

Oh my dear sweet Celestia it isn’t working how is this possible oh stars this is a nightmare wake up Joe wake up wake up wake uuaaaaaaahhhhh

With a lazy blink of the eye, Joe gave the slightest, most imperceptibly effortless of shrugs. His confident smile grew just a quarter-inch higher as he drew open his eyes with a piercing, puckish grin.

Luna lowered her head slightly. She blinked, as if suddenly free from a trance, her eyes no longer brilliant white. With a most subtle fluster, she glanced away. A deep blush grew across her dark blue muzzle, and continued to darken, with no end in sight. She batted a pink-ringed eye at Joe, and gave a relenting smile.

“Oh… very well then. Your princess shall continue whilst you… retrieve what you hath lost.”

• • • •

Sunny watched with detached horror as Joe snapped an awkward salute and scrambled under the bed to find her sister’s garment. Luna held a lingering moment’s glance upon his flank before turning to her desk, levitating away various medicine bottles and balled tissues, and retrieving a small container of sugar from a spent tea set. With casual disinterest, she took small mindfulls of the white crystals and spread them about the floor, then the bed. Overturning the container, she gently poured a large amount of the remaining sugar over Sunny’s head, then turned the rest along her own shimmering mane.

Sunny stammered, positively dumbfounded by the act. Her eyes crossed to stare at the pile of sugar atop her snout before turning back to her sister, and rising to her hooves.

"Lulu!" she whispered, sharply. "Lulu it's me!"

Luna gave her a surprised glance as she floated over a small cup of sugar cubes, crushing them with her magic. She held an odd look on Sunny, her left eye touched with a bright pink light. Just as with Joe’s sister, and the nobleponies loitering about her lawn. It seemed to fade, just a bit, as Luna thought, before returning in full between a blink. The expression quickly fell from Luna’s face, and she turned her attention back to her sugar cubes, "Our sister may encourage such casual address, little one, but we do not. Thou art to speak to thy princess properly."

Sunny's eyes widened, "Y-you don't understand! It’s me! It’s Tia!" Luna returned a baffled stare. Sunny flustered "Celly!” Nothing. “Your sister!”

Luna held a hoof to her chin for a moment, before shaking her head with a bewildered shrug. “That is... a truly absurd assertation, my subject.” She gave a concerned look. “Is this some manner of roleplay?”

“This is my unicorn form, remember? For the party?! For my..." She lowered her voice a little more, leaning inward with a blush, "F-for my 'hot, steamy date?' "

Luna was silent as she floated the now-powdered sugar into the air and shook it about the bed. Her brow curled as she considered Sunny’s words, "We most certainly remember thee, if that is thy question."

Sunny’s ears perked up, her expression beaming with hope. “Really?”

“Of course! We could scarcely attempt our stalwart companion’s fantasy without thee.”

Sunny wrapped a hoof behind the back of her neck. "F... fantasy?"

"Verily!" Luna gently floated the empty container to her desk, and turned toward Sunny, straightening her posture and placing a hoof against her chest. Sunny’s ears fell flat against her head as she braced herself against the sugar-dusted sheets. "Your princess has seen firsthoof the saccharine depravity thine baker hath envisioned for our ecstasy!" her eyes were cast skyward in confident delight as a cloud of magic stretched out from her horn, pooling into the air above her head to form a shimmering vision cloud. "Behold the sticky-sweet fate that is soon upon us!" she bellowed, casting Sunny’s eyes to the crystal-clear vision of Joe’s Diner that faded into being among the cloud.

It looked to be sundown, at the Diner, and both Sunny and Luna had taken stools at the front counter. They appeared to be… squabbling, over a lone donut, perched atop an ornate serving platter heavy with remnant crumbs and powdered sugar. The delicious pastry trembled in place, its tray shuddering in the air amid a heated tug-of-war between two competing magical auras.

Dream Luna licked her lips, targeting the crispy, powdered donut with eager eyes. Dream Sunny pulled tightly with her magic, a defiant look writ across her impeccable flowing mane and spotless fur. Her long eyelashes held a heated, combative, and... oddly seductive look. Indeed, almost every element of her figure seemed softened, and curved, and… not-so-subtly enhanced, in a strikingly erotic fashioooohhh horseapples this is one of those dreams, isn’t it.

Sunny's face grew dark with fluster as she took in her dreamworld likeness in all its impossible, indulgent beauty. Sunny was quite sure she had never been remotely so presentable at Joe’s Diner previous; always exhausted, and haggard, and ghastly with the stresses of the day. She supposed one took a few... liberties, in such flights of fancy. Still. Did her rump always look that large from behind?

Dream Sunny grasped at the tray with a greedy tug of her magic, jostling the donut ever-so-slightly closer toward her end. “Ohhhh no you don’t! Joey Buns made that creamy delight just for me! You keep those sexy, velvet-soft hooves to yourself!”

Dream Luna stuck out her tongue in foalish defiance, waving a dismissive hoof in Dream Sunny’s direction, “Pah! Such masterful culinary perfection is much too refined for the untrained tongue of the commonpony!”

“Uah!” Dream Sunny squeaked in rather exaggerated offense, curling her lip in an adorable gesture Sunny was quite sure she had never once implied she would ever make. “I could do more with this tongue than you could do with your whole body!”

With a flare of the eye, Dream Luna leapt toward the donut, spearing through the hole and coiling it around her horn. She moved her head one way, then the other, as Sunny leapt toward the prize like a kitten batting a toy. The platter, released of Sunny’s hold, rocketed into the air, dousing the two in a plume of powdered sugar.

Dream Sunny lowered herself to the ground with a sultry shake of the rear, and made one, last, valiant leap for the prized pastry. Her teeth clacked together as she missed her prize by inches, coming down hard on Dream Luna’s heaving chest. The two tumbled to the diner floor, into a cloud of pillow-soft sweetness. They locked eyes for a long, rapacious moment.

Dream Luna beckoned her mouth closer with an eager grin. “We shall see how talented thine tongue truly is...”

Sunny cringed with horror as their quivering lips pressed against each other with a hunger. In the throes of a desperate passion, their bodies intertwined amid the sugar, rolling about as they lost themselves in lust, their coats quickly saturated with a clinging candied sweetness. Sunny felt a bracing cascade of second-hoof shame and pale-faced nausea as Dream Sunny began a trail of eager kisses down her sister’s giggling body, lips puckered with powdered sugar. Sunny’s tongue involuntarily stuck out of her mouth in squeamish revolt, running against her upper teeth as if trying to rub clean a dreadful taste. She found herself utterly incapable of tearing her eyes away from the mortifying trainwreck that stretched before her. Here she was, foolishly thinking that two millennia of her ponies’ recurrent princess-on-princess fixation had helped steel her stomach against its extravagant shame. Truly, the fantasy would outlive them both.

With a triumphant “Hah!”, Joe appeared from under the bed, Luna’s chestplate clenched gently within a proud, confident grin.

“Found it! IIII found it, Your Highness, not to worry. And not a scratch on it!” He beamed, gazing expectantly at his princess. He stared for a moment, holding on Luna’s stoic expression, before his eyes were drawn upwards, to the shimmering cloud of magic above her head.

Never in her three thousand years of life had Sunny seen a face fall so quickly, so deeply. Joe made an indecipherable wheezing sound as his jaw fell open, Luna’s chest plate falling once more to the ground and clattering under the bed. He blinked, hard, in stuttered horror, before slowly, morbidly, turning to look at Sunny.

“Well well,” Dream Joe’s voice boomed as a muscular unicorn stallion with a flowing mane and a long, proud, unfractured horn sauntered onto the scene. In the grasp of his orange magic aura were two cups of coffee, in two featureless ceramic mugs. With a chuckle, he placed the two mugs on the counter, and stood over the writhing mares. "Looks like you two could do with a piping hot cup of Joe..."

Sunny turned an aghast look on the real Joe as he bounded onto the bed, scrambled onto his hind legs, and frantically attempted to wave away Luna’s cloud of magic. With a smile, Luna rose to stand, moving the cloud just out of Joe’s reach. Joe spun around, trying in vain to hold his body between Sunny and the spectacularly lewd vision above.

“Sunny?! Sunny... wh— I can explain!” His mouth contorted into a mixture of pale-faced terror and hysterical amusement. “Th— I was— this?” he gestured broadly to the vision cloud as Dream Joe leapt into the sugar-sweet wrestling ring, to the delighted giggles of the two awaiting mares. “This just happened in my brain, when I was sleeping! I didn’t— oh Celestia— I wasn’t planning this, Sunny, I swear, or anything! I just… this just popped in there—”

“Goodness gracious, Joey Buns, you’ve got sugar allll over!”

Sunny’s eyes widened as the last lingering munchkin of shame was promptly rolled in powdered sugar and seductively licked clean. Joe wheezed, the blood draining from his face as his eyes darted frantically between Sunny and the increasingly steamy vision above. She could tell, by the look on his face, that the worst was yet to come. He took in a sharp breath.

Swiveling to face his princess, Joe reared his hind legs, and leapt, tackling Luna to the bed. Her horn flickered, but remained active as an excited giggle escaped her lips at the perceived horseplay. The vision cloud held, but blessedly, faded, into another dream. One that seemed quite a bit clearer, and more vivid, and... real.

Sunny gasped as the image took shape. She held a hoof to her mouth, her eyes growing wide with shock. It was her. It was the real her.

It was Princess Celestia.

Author's Note

Split this chapter into two, due to length. Second part will go up in just a bit.

You can all thank djthomp for the proper use of the word "snogging." So good.

Ginormous thank-you to Luminary and Brawny for pre-reading and editing this ghastly thing. This chapter was a bit over 10,000 words, and I am mighty, mighty grateful to you both.

Party Foul

Party Foul
• • • •

Sunny gasped as the dream before her took shape. She held a hoof to her mouth, her eyes growing wide with shock. It was her. It was the real her.

It was Princess Celestia.

She lay slumped and unconscious before stubby, shivering amber hooves, a trickle of shimmering blood running from a small, cross-shaped cut at the base of her horn. The crimson-pink liquid magic dribbled in tiny, grasping droplets, pooling beneath her cheek and along the white marble floor of the castle. Sunny blinked, half expecting it to be gone when she opened her eyes once more, but there it was. At once deeply, impossibly surreal, and tangibly vivid.

Sunny’s trembling hoof rose, gently touching a small, cross-shaped scar buried beneath her fur. Parish had told her it had been from a fall. A misplaced hoof, perhaps, or a forgotten wound, from some ancient battle. Sunny had thought this quite impossible. She had never once bled, since she had become what she was. She hadn’t even thought she could.

She squinted as Luna’s vision grew lighter, steadily beginning to fade. All around Celestia’s body, there floated… wisps, without weight or form. Coiling clouds of light. One stood out from the rest, drifting lazily away from her horn, pulling apart into nothing. Words. Words she could read. You have a good heart.

She felt a small jostle on the bed, and her eyes fell onto Joe’s. He sat at Luna’s hooves, gazing at her with a look of profound shame. Not embarrassment, or the flustered shock from moments prior, but true, harrowed shame. His ears pressed against his head as he lowered his gaze, the vision above fading away as it settled back into Luna’s horn. The princess hesitantly rose to her hooves behind him.

Luna took a surprised glance at Sunny, then to Joe. She cleared her throat. “Ah, apologies. Our concentration... waned, for a moment.” Silence persisted as Joe looked away, and Sunny stared distantly at the bedding. “You... needn’t despair, little one. What you saw was but a nightmare. It was no more real than any such fantasy.”

Sunny glanced at Joe, watching his mouth open to protest a point, only to pause, and silently close shut. He couldn’t seem to look at Sunny. She was quite sure what Luna had just said was not entirely true.

Luna looked with concern to her subjects. In but moments, the air of the room had gone from libidinous delight to stifling and sombre. She turned her gaze upon the stalwart baker at her hooves, floating her horseshoes to his side.

“Take these to the dresser. We desire a moment.”

Joe nodded in hasty affirmation before clumsily bundling the glassware with his foreleg and pouncing off the bed. Luna waited a beat, then turned to Sunny.

“Art thee quite all right?” Luna spoke softly, in a firm, but calming tone. Her ears fell as she leveled a sympathetic look. “Please… do not be frightened. Such wanderings of the heart are prone to flares of the fearsome, but they are no more than fantasy. Thou art safe with thy princess.”

Sunny swallowed, leaning close as her voice dropped to a whisper. “Little sister, I-I… do you truly not recognize me?” She gazed into Luna’s eyes, to the bright ring of pink that trembled in place as she thought. Her silence was her answer. “I do not know what has affected our kingdom, or what seems to have affected you, but you must try and remember how it was. How we were.”

After a thought, Luna took a deep breath, and hesitantly gazed at Sunny. Her expression softened, and for a moment, she looked to her desk. "I..." She narrowed her eyes, and lowered her head for a moment, before turning back to her sister. "I am sorry. I do not understand." She gave a sympathetic look, the pink ring growing subtly brighter. “Our sister is gone. Imprisoned far, far away. She is most certainly not here, and you are most certainly not she.”

Sunny’s ears fell flat. There was an unshakable certainty in her sister’s tone. Whatever it was that bound her, had blinded her. With a pang of despair, Sunny followed her sister’s distant gaze, to her large, oaken desk. Her eyes locked on the small, well-worn book that sat atop an unkempt pile of papers and scrolls. She felt a stir of hope.

Leaping off the bed, Sunny trotted over to Luna’s desk and reared onto her hind legs. With a small forward hop, she clenched her teeth around the spine of the novel, and excitedly leapt back onto the bed, placing the book at her sister’s hooves. Luna blinked, with surprise, and gently held a hoof against its cover. The Sweetest Sound.

Sunny smiled, meeting her eyes. “I was hoping to wait until you’d finished, but… there is a note, between the last two pages. It is a letter I wrote for my little...” She caught herself as Joe returned to the bed. “...for somepony quite dear to me.”

Luna gave a skeptical curl of the cheek, but nevertheless, floated the book into the air. Fluttering through the pages, she flipped past her bookmark and arrived on the last two pages. As promised, both were quite subtly stuck together with a small paper fold. She furrowed her brow, gently unfolding the corner and pulling open both pages to find a small, sealed envelope stuck to the back of the paper.

Luna’s eyes widened. "How... how could..."

Holding a contemplative hoof to her mouth, Luna ran her magic across the lip of the envelope, and pulled it open. With an almost cartoonish sproing!, a puff of what appeared to be cotton candy sprouted out from within. Sunny gasped, looking to her sister in surprise. Luna met her gaze with a questioning glance, before returning her attention to the odd puff of pink, idly batting at it with her hoof. It wiggled, and... giggled, then drew to a stop.

Sunny leaned in, inspecting the tuft of cotton candy. “I… I am at a bit of a loss...” She narrowed her eyes, and gingerly sniffed the bright pink tuft. The sweetness was overpowering. It felt like snorting a Pixie Stick. She loosed a high-pitched sneeze, and shuddered a clearing shake of the head before leaning forward, and grasping the end of the tuft with her teeth. With a spirited tug, the cotton candy pulled out further, now extending the entire length of her foreleg. It seemed quite impossible that so much could fit into so small a space. She hopped forward, clasping the far end of the puff between her teeth. Bracing her rump against the bed, Sunny yanked with everything she had.

What came free was far too massive, far too heavy, and far too pink to possibly be real.

• • • •

Joe squeaked in horror as Sunny's final, valiant tug seemed to... pull into being, the vast entirety of Princess Pinkie. Sunny had time enough to gawk in overwhelming surprise before Pinkie’s colossal rear came down hard, planting the startled mare into the floor.

Pinkie blinked a few times, in a bit of a daze, while her antennae swiveled in a wide, winding sonar circle. With a high-pitched ping! ping! ping!, they locked in the direction of Princess Luna and went rigid with alarm. Pinkie’s face scrunched in apparent distaste as she darted, in a blur, to Luna’s side. Between this moment, and the last, she somehow wrapped herself in a tight blue uniform, adorned with a silver sheriff's badge ('Party Police'), wide, mirrored aviator sunglasses, and a 40-gallon cowpony hat. Against her cutie mark, rigid as a statue, hung a white-haired moori holding a vaguely gunlike pose with her body. Joe felt a wash of dread as he caught a glimpse of her face as she dangled off of Pinkie’s belt with a wide, lazy grin across her face. Seraph.

As Pinkie plopped herself beside Princess Luna and began digging through her poofy pink mane, Joe scampered over to Sunny and hoisted her out of the marble floor. As before, she held a trembling hoof against her horn, and pulled away half of her pink mane. Her eye twitched, wide with alarm. She was rattled, and a bit dazed, but she seemed fine.

Pinkie’s hoof emerged from her mane with a small notebook in tow, flanked by a long tentacle of curly hair wrapped around a small pencil. With a flick of the wrist, she flipped open to a blank page and cricked her neck, holding a suspicious look on the princess. “Alright Missy McMagic Pants! My Pinkie Sense has been going bonkers tonight and it is seriously gumming up my game out there! I’m dropping rumbly tummies and flip-floppin’ tails on the dance floor and they all think I’m just good at dancin’ but it’s not even a dance it’s my brain yelling at me that somepony’s throwing freaky-deaky space magic around like that’s a totally okay and not completely illegal thing for a pony to do!!” She spun around, waving her limp tail wildly about while holding a wildly panicked look over her shoulder. “How am I gonna get any twerk done with my badonk all donked up?!”

Luna crossed her hooves with an impatience. “You cannot simply barge into my bedroom for every ridiculous bushel of the mane, Oni. Perhaps thee should make proper use of the dozens of servants thou hath so impulsively corralled for thine frivolous flights of fancy.” With a dim light of the horn, she levitated the stiff moori from Pinkie’s belt, and gently bent her limbs into a standing position, before setting her down beside the enormous mare. “They do have jobs, I remind thee.”

Pinkie’s tail immediately shot straight into the air, rigid with alarm, before flopping back down to the bed. She grasped a tuft of her stomach fat and thrust it at Luna as an audible grumbling sound could be heard. “There it is! It’s your weirdo nutsy-butt alien magic!!” She thrust a hoof at Luna’s horn, stuffing her notebook back into her mane with a free tendril of hair. “I am so so so not cool with you trolloping about with another planetary life force, Loony Pants!” She leaned in closer, lifting her aviator sunglasses up against her forehead. “I-it makes everything go all… all...” She spun her tendrils around wildly, coiling some together and darting others between, until they’d all wrapped into one big wad of coiled hair. She shook the tangled mess in Luna’s direction. "...all wrong!"

Luna turned up her head with a huff. "We will not stop using our magic simply because it makes thee uncomfortable. We have duties to attend to, and we rather doubt thou cannot simply work around another flavor of magic.” With a gentle hum of the horn, Luna floated a thin pair of glasses from the desk drawer and delicately placed them upon her muzzle. It gave her an oddly motherly air. “You must learn that one cannot always get thy way. Even a princess must learn to adapt."

Pinkie pouted, "B-b-but if you'd just eat some more cake! Or some donuts! You could use my magic instead! It’s a million billion jillion times better!!"

Luna stuck out her tongue. "I believe I have made it quite clear how repellant I find thy 'baked goods’ to the royal tongue, my friend." She flicked her mane. “Our memory is a touch spotty on the matter, but we recall attempting to do so previous left us quite unwell. We are not in any haste to repeat the experience.”

Pinkie frowned, “But those tasty treats are made out of me!” She took a large chomp out of her tendril of hair, shifting it to fresh cotton candy as it met her tongue. She smiled as she chewed, and swallowed with delight. "I taste super-good!"

Luna rolled her eyes. “I realize this is all quite new to you, Oni, but saying there is a bit of ‘you’ inside one’s baked goods is rarely an effective means of enticement.”

“But Loooooooooonneeeyyy~” As Pinkie began a rather lengthy whining campaign against the princess, Joe prodded Seraph in the wing. She just sat there, staring drunkenly into the middle distance with a wide, self-satisfied grin across her muzzle. Taking one last look at Pinkie, Joe grasped his sister by the shoulders and pulled her to the side of the bed, between he and Sunny.

“Seraph! Snap out of it!” Joe clopped his hooves in front of her face a few times, but she returned no reaction. He frowned, glancing at Sunny. Her eyes were locked upon Princess Pinkie, drinking in her surreal immensity and strikingly draconian features. She had other things on her mind.

"Sissy!" he hissed, shaking her shoulders like a ragdoll. Nothing. After a moment's thought, Joe licked his hoof and stuck it into Seraph's tufted ear.

She squirmed against the wet whinny, her yellow eyes crossing with a shiver of disgust. "Gah! Holy heebies, what the heck?!” She batted her ear for a moment, trying to shake the sensation, before turning her gaze to her brother.

Joe gestured in the direction of Pinke. "What was that all about? Pinkie’s using you for prop gags now?”

Seraph rubbed the last of Joe’s spit out of her ear with the back of her hoof, flicking her ear a few times for good measure. “Yeah well... I do what the princesses ask. That’s kind of my job.”

“Aren’t you assigned to Luna? Why the buck is Pinkie using Night Guard?”

She looked away. “Well, okay… I guess I got distracted. She kind of...” Seraph looked at Joe with an unsure look about her. “...You probably wouldn’t understand.”

Joe gave a pleading shrug.

“She didn’t exactly ask me anything, but like, I… kind of knew, in my head, what she wanted. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

Joe gave her a look.

“Hey, I wouldn’t expect you to know, considering you’re… you know, banned for life, but being around Princess Pinkie is just… it’s the greatest, Joe. It’s like you know exactly what you’re supposed to do, all the time. You don't even have’ta think! And the feeling of actually touching her is nuts. It’s like—” She halted as her face fell in horror. “Wait a s— you’re banned for life, Joe! What’re you doing in Luna’s bucking bedroom?!”

Joe turned red. “Heh, she uh… we were just...”

Seraph’s eyes widened as she glanced about the ruffled sheets and powdered sugar across the floor, noting the royal chestplate peeking out from under the bed. “No way.”

“Look, that… we can get into that later. This?” He pointed a hoof at Pinkie as leapt up and down on the bed, in the throes of a foalish temper tantrum. “Seraph, Pinkie’s like a… she’s like something right out of the gates of Tartaurus. You really think you should be around her all day? Look at those frigging eyes!”

Seraph gave her brother a blank stare through slitted eyes.

“Er, uh… heh, rather her… her fangs! She’s got horrible, gnashing, razor-sharp—”

Seraph leaned back her head and made a mock chomping gesture with her gnashing, razor-sharp teeth.

Joe held his breath for a moment while his eyes scanned over Pinkie’s body. He turned back to his sister as he let out the breath. “...The… those tendrils? The tendrils are kind of freaky, you have to admit.”

Seraph scratched her cheek as she thought. “They’re weird, I guess, yeah, but I am not kidding about how amazing she feels. It’s like a freaking mindgasm, Joe.” Before Joe could object, she fluttered into the air and gently grasped the end of one of Pinkie’s hair tendrils, shivering as she brought it to the ground. “Ohhoho yeahh… that’s the stuff...” With a crooked grin, she offered the bushy poof of curly pink hair to her brother.

Joe looked away, then looked at his sister. She gave him a pleading gesture. With no small measure of hesitation, Joe walked up to the poofy mane and brushed his cheek against the hair. Nothing. He took a step back and pressed his hoof into the mane.

“It feels like hair.”

Seraph gave Joe a surprised look. “Seriously?” She batted the poof with her hoof, barely able to contain the giddy smile that erupted across her face. “Hooh! Hoochi mama that’s good...” With a delighted shake of the head, she let the tendril free, sending Joe a shrug. “Maybe it’s a moori thing.”

“So, what, you’re just going let her play around with you like a filly with her toys? Foals break their toys, sissy. How long till sheeyaaahh!—”Joe was cut off when the tendril suddenly shot around his midsection and hoisted him into the air. Joe stuttered in shock as he was brought before Pinkie’s enormous face in a blur of motion. A moment’s glance about the bed told him that she and Luna were still in the middle of their argument.

“—I'm not the gross one here! Your weirdo dumb-butt horsie magic is! It probably tastes like donkey dirt!” Joe’s body flailed about in overwhelming horror as Pinkie’s mouth drew open and a tongue the size of his body licked up the side of his face, leaving his fur and his mane jutting upwards with cowlicked rigidity. With a snap, Pinkie’s mouth closed before him, and she mushed her tongue about her mouth as she considered the taste.

Joe’s wide eyes crept over to Sunny as Pinkie smacked her lips and curled her cheek in thought. Sunny’s ears fell, and a look of fierce anger bore across her face. He’d never seen her genuinely angry, before. It was somehow more surreal than the freakish, reality-bending draconian party pony dangling him by her hair.

“Okay, it’s not horrible...” Pinkie relented with a small tilt of the head. “B-but these ponies are probably chock-full of crispity crunchity moonie magic right now!” She gestured the stallion toward an alarmed Luna with a shake of the tendril. “Betcha there’s a gooey, chewy nougat center of me at the center of every hoofsie pop! ” She brought Joe dead center, grasping his body with two tendrils and raising him before her wide, hungry grin like a lollipop. “Wanna guess how many licks it’ll take to get there?”

Luna rose to a stand, raising a hoof to hold against Pinkie’s tendril. “That will be quite enough, Oni! We will not abide you terrorizing our subjects every time you feel like throwing a tantrum.”

“B-b-b—”

“At once!”

“W-why don’t you just… just...” Pinkie trembled in frustration, an audible kettle-whistle screeching from nowhere as she turned redder and redder. “Stop pooting on my Pinkie Party!!” her eyes shot open in a piercing, swirling, hypnotic glare. A faint crackling sound could be heard as the pink ring around Luna’s eye burned bright, and her expression fell into a blank slack-jawed daze.

• • • •

Sunny leapt. She had no options, no plan of attack, no conceivable way she might subdue the colossal pony that held her sister and her friend helpless, but it was something. She had to do something.

With every ounce of strength she could gather, she bit down on Pinkie's perky pink ear, and held tight. Pinkie screeched, breaking her gaze on Luna and dropping Joe to the bed as she frantically shook her mane and hopped about the bed.

Sunny clenched her eyes shut and held fast as she flopped about the air, ragged against Pinkie's efforts.

"Owie owie owie offa offa offa meeee!" Pinkie plopped her rump on the ground and began scratching her ear with her hind leg, like a giant dog. Sunny caught one or two light bats to the side, but held on. With a rigid straightening of the back, Pinkie’s tendrils spun around her head and wrapped Sunny into a bundle of bubblegum hair.

Sunny’s eyes clenched shut. She was out of options. Her chest tingled with a steady, weighted heat as her horn sputtered and shorted. She pictured the pendants around her neck, reaching within them with immaterial hooves and guiding their power out from within. There was almost nothing left, after all these years, but there was enough.

Her eyes shot open with a brilliant white fury, her horn flickering with an ancient, elemental magic. It had been centuries. She had not dared use it since she had cast her sister into exile.

Pinkie’s face contorted into strained confusion at the building heat within her tendrils. With a wayward glance, she leaned close, and peeked through the coils of her mane. She saw only light. Sunny released her hold, and freed her magic of its binding.

With a flash, Pinkie’s tendrils exploded into sugar, scattering into the air like snowflakes. Sunny landed on the bed with an elegant twist of the flank.

“Yyyyeowie flip-fffffff—” Pinkie danced about the bed on two legs, like she’d just stubbed her hoof. “—ffflippin’-zowie!” She shrieked, waving her severed band of hair like it was on fire. She curled her lip, glaring at her sugary stump, then to Sunny. “Party foul, sister.”

Sunny watched with shock as her tendril reformed with a winding flash of pink light, the sugar seemingly sucking itself back into place from the bed. She briefly tested the appendage before thrusting it at the retreating mare, grasping her by the tail. Pinkie’s eight tendrils melded into the one, stretching further and further away, as if clutching the tail of a writhing snake.

Sunny’s breath caught in her throat. She rose her gaze, just ahead, and looked into Joe’s eyes for a single, horrid heartbeat. She felt Pinkie’s tendril pull taut, the ground rushing out from under her. Her world spun.

And then she was gone.

• • • •

Joe didn’t blink. He was sure of that. One second she was there, and the next, she just wasn't.

He followed Pinkie’s poofy tendril into the air, where it spun in a little voilà! gesture before splitting back into eight smaller ropes of hair and tucking into Pinkie’s mane. Joe frantically looked about the bedroom. Seraph seemed just as baffled. Gone.

His eyes darted to Pinkie’s. “Where—” He stopped as he noticed her left eye twitching, her head subtly tilting one way, then the other, like her left eye was fighting her right. He saw her antennae waving. Out, then in. Out, then in. Frantically, and desperately. It was an unmistakably panicked gesture. Like a pony on a deserted island, trying to flag down a passing pegasus.

Joe stared as their movements changed. They pointed directly at him, then thrust straight up. Him, then up. Him, then up. He blinked, and looked skyward, following their frantic movements. His eyes scanned the open night sky that stretched above, through the yawning opening that was once the castle roof. That was when he heard it. The faintest wailing, very far away. He narrowed his eyes.

There it was. A speck of white and pink against the brilliant grey moon above.

Falling fast.

No.

• • • •

Sunny screamed.

There had been a heaving force, and a fierce wind at her back, and then nothing below her hooves. Her breath was sucked out of her lungs as the open castle shrank below her, to little more than a sugar cube. There was nothing but terror. Her speed slowed as her body slowly spun completely around, leaving her facing the overwhelming immensity of the moon. She pulled in a sharp gasp as she stopped, in mid-air, just inches away from its powerfully radiant grey-white surface.

Without a thought, she thrust out her hooves in the blind, impossible gesture of grasping tight the ground above. There was a barely perceptible tug from the moon, a flutter of an impossible hope that possessed her to grasp at the ashen surface with open arms. Her hooves passed right through the fine powder, leaving a faint line in the charcoal dust. With a wash of heart-stopping dread, she felt a much stronger, much greedier force pull her away, and back toward the sprawling kingdom below.

Her voice sputtered as her breath left her. As all thought left her. She was picking up speed, hurtling back toward the impassive enormity of Equestria below. She tried flapping the wings she no longer had. She tried weaving a spell with the magic she could no longer feel. She tried simply willing the world to let her live, to let her survive. She couldn’t just die like this! Not here! Not now! She couldn’t!

Sunny’s eyes widened as the deepest of fears surged from within, grasping her by the horn and staring her in the eyes. She might actually die. Right here, right now. She could not recall the last time she had even remotely felt a sensation so savagely immediate. So real. She had not been faced with true, life-threatening danger since… since…

Ever.

Sunny’s hooves pressed against her cheeks as the castle grew clearer, as individual rooms and wings became visible through the excised roof. As the sputtering, shimmering square that once was the roof of the Royal Dining Hall set itself squarely below her, its thin magic barrier the only thing containing the thriving void within.

She had failed them, hadn’t she. She was about to leave them all alone.

Sunny closed her eyes.

• • • •

Joe ripped his eyes from the sky and turned them to his sister. She blinked. He opened his mouth. She was gone.

He turned to the speck and clenched his teeth, driving every shred of willpower he had into the singular need that pulsed through every fiber of his body. Seraph was giving it everything she had, but she would never reach her in time. He felt an impossible pain vibrate down his horn, coiling in random and jagged movements to his head and to his heart. He didn’t give it the time it needed to mean ‘pain.’ There was no time. There was just no time.

His breath shuddered as the feral orange spark of magic streaked along the crack of bone, filling the base with a violent flickering etherium that felt like magma on his brain. He had felt this pain only once. He pressed harder. Anything and everything.

For a fraction of a second, there was a sickly hum. His eyes were red and wide and for a time he didn’t feel like he was even there, like there was anything to him but the pain and the thought and the need for this one thing to become true. Please make it true. Please.

I’m begging you.

• • • •

A tug. Sunny’s eyes shot open to see a dim whisp of amber magic run across her hind leg and cling against her hoof, and then disappear. It was almost nothing, but for a moment, it was there. She saw another, then three at at time, then none, then another two. They came and went so quickly. She felt herself slow, just a bit. She turned her gaze to the ground. She was just above the Dining Hall, above a wall of solid cobalt magic that formed the ceiling of the containment spell she’d wrapped in place with an impenetrable sunlock. Beyond, there was just black. A pure, hungry emptiness.

She shut her eyes, feeling the fleeting touch of Joe’s magic on her leg. Her pounding heart settled, a bit. She pulled in a deep breath, and felt her mind grow quiet. She could feel his need, his desperate desire and fear. His love. She held it close, feeling his grasp grow and strengthen at her embrace. Against the whipping winds and the tearing air about her, it was the most wonderful blanket of warmth.

The wind slowed. She opened her eyes, gazing with a solemn serenity at the wall of hard light barreling toward her muzzle. Somehow, even as she stared her death in the face, the fear had gone from her.

“Gotcha!” Seraph’s body slammed against Sunny’s as she snapped all four legs around her midsection and thrust her wings skyward with everything she had. One beat. Two. They were slowing. Three. They'd never make it. Five. Six. She struggled to break free, to push the mare away before she too was splattered against the barrier below. Seraph pulled tighter. Sunny clenched shut her eyes. They hit.

The magic stretched.

Her eyes shot open, watching with an ecstatic shock and joy as the weakened barrier bent inward with their weight, like a trampoline. She felt their momentum slow to a stop, and her heart flew.

She was alive. She hadn't left them. There was a chance.

Sunny felt a deep relief float through her body, glancing to the floor below as it stretched to a stop. For a moment, it flickered.

And then tore.

Sunny had time enough to suck in a horrified gasp before the magic dissolved beneath her hooves, plunging the mares into the deepest, darkest, hungriest black she had ever seen.

Author's Note

We'll be out of the castle soon. I meant to be a bit further along than I am, but... well.... what with the snogging, and all...

Ginormous thank-you to Luminary and Brawny for pre-reading and editing this ghastly thing. This chapter was a bit over 10,000 words, and I am mighty, mighty grateful to you both.

I am a machine that runs entirely on comments

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Seven Minutes in Heaven

Seven Minutes in Heaven
• • • •

Sunny fell.

The tearing of the barrier was sharp and sudden and just as quickly silenced as a hungry grey darkness poured across the fracture overhead, sucking dry the last flicker of moonlight. Sunny’s world was swallowed whole, every sight and sound silently vanishing into the void growth that surged along the walls of the Royal Dining Hall. She was left with nothing but the memory of the nightmare she had locked within the room but a week prior, and a million morbid imaginings of what it might have become.

Her eyes darted wildly, her ears swiveling in desperate and panicked motions as she searched for a single fleeting sight or sound of something, anything. But found nothing. So very much nothing. She should've hit the ground by now. She didn't even know what direction she was facing, or how long it had been, or where the black ended and she began. All she could sense was the thin, frigid air, coursing over and under her fur. She felt it spread, quite suddenly, and clenched shut her eyes the instant before a racking impact knocked the wind out of her body.

Sunny struggled to catch her breath and her bearings but there was nothing to catch onto, only an intangible weight against her hooves and her head and the whole of her body. She pushed back, pushed it away, but it was like moving underwater. There was something in the way, in every way. She tried to breathe, but nothing came in. No air, no light, no sound.

She was buried.

Sunny flailed and fought for the surface, feeling the impossibly fine powder around her body swirl and fall and give way without settling. She tried standing in it, but she sank into it like snow. Panic gripped her heart as she stretched into the air, searching for a single solid thing to hold on to. A hard mass brushed against her hoof. Then another. Quite suddenly, the two grasped her foreleg and pulled taut. The powder fell under her like a quicksand, heavy and unrelenting. She felt air against her muzzle, and gasped, coughing out an awful numb heaviness. The sugar. It tasted like that dreadful sugar.

Her frantic eyes darted around the pitch void, deaf and blind and desperate. Her breath caught as a flickering pink circle darted about the emptiness, quickly and erratically, before locking directly on her. Sunny screamed as the light threw itself at her with horrific speed. She felt something solid press against her shoulder as her eyes went wide, unblinking before the light.

"Whoa whoa! It’s me!"

Sunny stuttered in place as the voice bounced off her ear and vanished without echo. Raw and scratchy. Seraph's voice. It was just Seraph.

"I-I-I—"

The pink ring vanished as she moved. Sunny jolted as she felt a leathery wing hastily wrap around her back. Seraph pulled tight against her side. The sudden gesture startled the sense out of her, but on a very basic level, it was enormously comforting. It was absurd to think herself at all protected in a place like this, locked in a room with a being like the growth, but so she felt. Her heart settled a bit. She focused on the feeling, trying her best not to think her way away out of that small oasis of warmth. It was enough to free her from the grip of raw animal fear and grant a single thought.

"T-thank you."

"Lady, don't thank me yet. I was here when they locked this thing up. It's bad." She heard a shuddering fear on the young mare's voice. It was plainly unintended, but it was there and it was unguardedly real. Seraph was proud, but she wasn't stupid. "It’s really, really bucking bad."

Sunny felt a sudden tug as Seraph’s wing curled around her side and pulled her sharply to the right. She felt a fierce displacement of air, just feet away. Seraph muttered something harsh and heavy under her breath.

"You just count yourself lucky you can't see in the dark. Whatever the hoof this thing is, it is not a pretty s—" Seraph’s voice choked as she spun herself into Sunny’s back and hoisted her into the air at an awkward backward angle. Sunny yelped as a frigid, stabbing pain lashed across her lower foreleg. Real pain. She had forgotten how fierce it could be.

"—jaaayyyiimminy crickets!!" Seraph squeezed Sunny against her chest like a ragged teddy bear, pulling back for a few heavy beats before hovering in place, then lightly loosening her grip. Her hooves wrapped around Sunny's shoulders as she hung in the air, catching her breath. "Holy frickin’ horseapples that was close."

An almost invisibly dim pink light flickered across Sunny’s foreleg as Seraph looked her over. The fur was white and black against the pink glow. It was wet.

Seraph’s eye darted away, tracking something fast and huge and unseen. "It just nicked your leg. You're fine." Sunny felt herself pulled higher as a rush of air pulsed from just below. "You’ll be fine.” Her voice wavered. She hovered in silence for a moment. “...Sorry. It's so frickin’ fast.”

Sunny swallowed, staring down into the black. Already the wetness on her fur had gone cold and stiff against the frigid air. Seraph’s breathing was labored, her forelegs readjusting at closer and closer intervals. Her hold was weakening. "You have to drop me."

Seraph’s eye darted to hers for a moment, then back into the darkness. “You don’t get it. There isn’t anywhere it isn’t.”

“I know.” Sunny looked below. She closed her eyes, then opened them. It was impossible to tell the difference. If there was any magic left at all in the two tiny necklaces that hung from her neck, there would at least be a flicker. There was only black. “The only chance you have is to break through the fracture in the ceiling. The way we came in.”

“It’s covered.”

“With enough speed... I know you can make it through.”

“You’ll die.”

“We both will. Please. You have to.”

“I don’t have to do jack, lady.”

"You have to!"

"No deal."

“That’s an order.”

Seraph’s chest quaked with chittering laughter. Her grip wavered for a fraction of a second before tightening with a will. “Okay you almost got me to drop you there.” She chuckled, pulling sharply to the right and falling a few beats as another rush of air bore through the spot they were just idling. “Tricky tricky.”

Sunny felt a wash of dread. Seraph couldn’t keep this up for long. She was small, and she was young. She would slow, and the growth would consume them both. It was the only thing Sunny could see with crystal clarity. “I don’t want you to die for me.”

Seraph’s eyes widened as they tracked upwards, beading on something morbid and massive. “That’s what guards do.”

• • • •

Joe was jolted awake by the pealing kazoo of Pinkie Pie’s party cannon, his body rigid with alarm as a rainbow whirlwind of streamers and confetti tumbled over his head. He blinked, watching the twinkling paper breeze to the hardwood floor of a dimly-familiar small-town bakery. The Cakes' place, down in Ponyville. Of all the places in the world, Sugercube Corner.

He briefly tried to imagine some way in which this could possibly be real, but found his thoughts fast flooded by an unthinkably deep, unbelievably intense headache. All along the length of his horn it ran, coiling and burning down the bone, all the way into his skull, where it raged with the fury of a caged storm. Reason frazzled under the torrential distraction, shallowing his thoughts to the point of feral nothing. He held a hoof against his horn, trying to ease the pain. He felt a small weight press against his chest.

Joe looked to his hooves, to a bright blue present, wrapped tightly with an iridescent sun-colored ribbon. There was a little pink tag against the top, adorned with huge, happy, bubbly lettering.

To: Snugglebug <3
From: Donut Joe :)

“OoooOOoo!! Joe’s got another one!”

The voice was sweet and spritely and wholly unmistakable. Joe locked eyes with the bouncy bubblegum pony beaming at him from across the large, decorative Sugercube Corner tabletop he was evidently sitting at. Pinkie Pie. Regular, old, happy-go-lucky fun-size Pinkie Pie. No fangs, no tendrils, no shadow of a hint of menace, just that big, friendly grin of hers.

Pinkie bounced onto the tabletop and in front of Joe, grasping the box from his hooves and holding it up to her ear. She gave the gift a little shake. “Sounds mysterious! Wonder what he got you, Snugglebug!” She spun around and batted her tail against Joe’s muzzle. He felt something hard bounce off his snout and out of her poofy pink hair as she trotted away. On the table, just before him, was a colorful birthday card.

Joe stared at the face of the card.

Everypony likes to feel special...

He hesitantly pulled open the card with his mouth, taking a moment to spit out the tongueful of glitter that stuck to the inside of his lip.

And today you are the mane event!!

Below was an enormous crayon drawing of a small moori colt, grinning as his shimmering black mane waved in the wind. Joe’s eyes were drawn to the increasingly small writing below.

Happy 3000th Birthday, Snugglebug!!

Your Bestest Bud in the Whole Wide World,
Pinkie Pie

P.S. Open your present!! It’s probably something really really amazing!!

P.P.S. I’ll wait! Don’t wait on me!! Hop to it, mister!!! Go go go go go go okay I think he’s gone oh my gosh Joe I am SO SORRY!! You passed out and I couldn’t wake you up so I pulled you in here thinking I could wake up your body while maybe your mind helped me prepare a super-special surprise for this huge birthday bash I've been throwing right here in my brain!! It’s for a kind-of friend of mine who’s new in town and also secretly a crazy-old moon ghost who sort of just showed up in my head right before your party and was like, “Hello there, Pinkie Pie! This looks like a nice brain to move into, why don’t I just snuggle in right here!!” and I was like, “Ummm!! I’m not so sure about that!!” but he got really really snuggled in really really fast and so I really politely asked him how long he maybe planned on staying and he was all like, “what’s time?” and I told him the time was quarter-past five but it turns out he didn’t mean “what time is it now?” he actually meant, “what is time as a concept?” and that got me the teeeeensiest tiniest bit f r e a k e d o u t that maybe he didn't plan on ever leaving and maybe this is just how things were gonna be now forever and hooooo nelly deep breaths deep breaths whoooaaaaaaponyfeathers HERE IT COMES!! PINKIE’S LOSING IT EVERYPONY!!! UuuuaaaaahhhhhNO NOPE NOOOO NO NOPE gotta KEEP IT TOGETHER there Pinks KEFP IT TOGKTHWAJ

The words frazzled into a feral mess of untamed scribbling, continuing in erratic and random directions until a spiralling loopy mark sputtered out the side, rolling into a long series of “O”s. These continued on for about a line and a half, before:

OoooOooOOoookay I am GOOD now!! Those come and go, sorry! I call ‘em craze-nados!! Phewwie! That was a doozy! Sooo if you want to take a looksie across the table, Snugglebug’s right there (he’s playing with a toy Gummy I dreamed up for him!!) (take a peek!!)

Joe slowly peeked over the top of the card, to the small moori colt happily chewing on a squeaky toy alligator. He was young — maybe seven or eight — had moon-yellow eyes, feral ash-grey fur, pitch black hair and… and a big, cutesy bumblebee costume, complete with little buzzing bee wings that would flutter about whenever he got excited. Commodore Snugglebug.

Joe noted the bumblebee-antennae headband of his costume was missing, and was instead resting on Pinkie's noggin, bobbing about as she bounced around the room. Joe’s thoughts briefly wandered to the desperate gestures Princess Pinkie’s feelers had been sending him, out there in the castle. He couldn’t pretend to understand how the two of them controlled a single body, but he supposed, at the very least, it made a bizarre kind of sense that whoever wore the headband in here controlled the antennae out there.

Or maybe that made no sense whatsoever.

Wow his head hurt right now.

Joe continued.

So so, I um, full disclosure? I don’t entirely know what the super-secret birthday surprise is, 'cause the second I think about the super-secret birthday surprise it wouldn't be a super-secret anymore 'cause Snugglebug (the ghost) (in my head) (right there) kind of has the same brain as I do and he does a whole heapin’ ton of peepin' around, all watchin’ me think and then thinkin’ about me thinkin’ about how he’s thinkin’ about me thinkin’ and sometimes he thinks about super scary dragons while—

Joe turned the card on its back as the message hit the bottom of the page, watching with stunned silence as a tiny string of text wrote itself further and further down the paper, as if being penned by an invisible quill. He wrapped his foreleg around his head, closing his left eye and pressing it into his elbow in a futile attempt to dull the sawing headache. It was fading, thank Celestia. Very, very slowly.

The card was not helping.

—he drives around our body like a super big and super freaky Pinkie Party-drawn carriage that runs on secrets and stories and sometimes sugar (which is kind of normal actually) making it crazy hard for me to keep anything hidden!! In fact, I don’t even know if there is anything inside the super-secret birthday present! Maybe I never even came up with a present and this box is just a metaphor for a real box that’s out there in the castle and once Commodore Snugglebug opens the box he’ll actually be opening that big scary door to the big scary room that he flung that poor little pony intOH NO OHHH NO THAT’S THE PLAN ISN’T IT OH POOPSIES CHANGE TOPIC CHANGE TOPIC PRETTY HORSES BRIGHT BALLOONS COTTON CANDY RAIN CLOUDS

“What door?” Joe heard a young voice chirp from behind the large blue present.

Pinkie turned pale, chuckling nervously as she turned to face Snugglebug. “Eheh, the um! Theee uh… that… big, ginormous door? In the hallway? The one I moved us in front of?”

Joe jolted upright, dropping the card to the floor as it clicked in his head, as the memory slammed against the front of his brain in a flood of horror. The door. The room.

“Sunny.”

Pinkie shook her head and scrunched her snout in an unmistakable ‘Noooo no no no!’ gesture. Joe returned a desperate look.

“What’s a Sunny?” The Snugglebug pondered, more amused than interested. Pinkie looked to the ground, silent as her ears drooped. She thought for a moment, and gave the colt a solemn look.

Snugglebug’s eyes widened, as if Pinkie had just held up a photograph. “Oh, that.” With a wave his stubby little hoof, Snugglebug floated together the spent wrapping paper from around the table, pressing and twisting into an impossibly detailed mannequin of Sunny Skies. The hollow paper doll stared at Joe with lifeless eyes, eerily identical to Sunny’s. He even got that tiny little scar at the base of her horn right. “You guys have names for everything!”

“Her.” Joe propped his hooves on the table, standing tall as he looked down on the confused colt. “She’s a her, not a ‘that.’ ” He trust a hoof at the mannequin. “That is a ‘that.’ ”

Snugglebug’s ears fell. He turned to Pinkie with a baffled look. “B-but I just made you one! What’s wrong with it?”

Pinkie looked him in the eye with a small smile. “Nothing at all! It’s super duper special! You’re real good at making things, Snugglebug!” She tied a small ribbon around the paper horn of the gift-wrapped mare, padding it playfully on the head. Snugglebug’s face lit up, his ears perking upwards and his bumblebee wings buzzing about. “But Joe’s looking for a friend, not a thing! You can’t be friends with a thing, silly!”

“Isn’t everything a thing?”

Pinkie scratched her chin with the tip of her hoof. “Um! Kind of! Ponies are made of things, like your eeeears…” She grasped the moori’s perky ears between her hooves and danced them about. “...and your snoooouuutt...” She bopped him lightly on the muzzle, eliciting a gleeful giggle from the enraptured colt. “...and your hoofsies!!” Pinkie danced Snugglebug’s forelegs around as he pealed with laughter. “Ponies are kind of like birthday cakes! They’re a million jillion times better than all the ingredients that make them up!”

Snugglebug chittered, giving Pinkie a spirited 'oh you...' look. “No they’re nooot! They’re just all mixed together!” He glanced at the towering birthday cake that dominated the front foyer and waved his hoof at it. Like a sandcastle dissolving in the water, the cake collapsed into a neat stack of uncracked eggs, a pile of sugar and flour, a few sticks of unmelted butter, and a smattering of other odd ingredients. He started separating out the components of the frosting before losing interest, sending the hovering ball of icing to the floor with a wet splat.

Joe’s eyes widened. He glanced at Pinkie, who returned an unsure look, then looked to the floor with a shaky expression. Joe gently slid Snugglebug’s 'gift' to her side, sending her an encouraging look. She smiled, turning back to Snugglebug and presenting the box with a wide, toothy grin.

“Maybe you’re right, Snugglebug…” She placed her hoof on top of the present, turning it a bit, so the light from the window shimmered off the reflective paper. Snugglebug was practically drooling as he stared at his reflection in the gift. “Too bad birthday presents are only for birthday ponies, and not birthday things. I guess I’ll just have to forget all about it!”

Snugglebug’s expression fell into a gawk of horror as Pinkie pulled the gift away quite suddenly, a devious grin on her face.

Snugglebug’s eyes widened as he tracked the present into the air. “W-w-w-wait wait! Hold on! I-I-I was wrong! Ponies aren’t things! I’m not a thing! I’m a birthday colt!!” He gave Pinkie his best puppy-dog eyes as the wad of frosting on the ground re-formed into a floating ball and sucked back onto the towering birthday cake that had just baked itself to life behind him. A coil of icing hastily re-wrote ‘Harpie 300tn!!’ atop of cake as Snugglebug beamed an eager smile.

Pinkie giggled, putting a hoof on her hip. “Well… when you put it like that...” She pulled the present out from its hiding place in her mane, and plopped it in front of him. “Happy Birthday, Snuggles!”

Snugglebug took in the glorious gift for a delighted moment before batting the end of the sun-colored ribbon. He stared at his hoof for a moment before turning the present to the side, and gazing at a huge, complicated, messy knot the ribbon had been wrapped into. “Whoa.” He narrowed his eyes, looking intently at the knot. “That feels weird.”

Joe’s eyes drifted to the two ovular windows that towered behind Snugglebug’s seat, on either side of the front door. Eyes. They were shaped a bit like eyes. It was night, through these windows, and it was indoors. It was the castle, in the real world.

He saw his body laying on the ground, unconscious, clutching his hooves over his head with a tendril of hair wrapped around his midsection. Behind his body, there was the frayed and knotted sunlock he and Sunny had passed on the way to Luna’s bedchambers. He noticed a pair of tendrils off to the side, slowly approaching the winding magical seal with foal-like eagerness.

Joe turned his eyes to Commodore Snugglebug, watching as the colt picked and pulled at the knot before him. He could only hope this thing wanted that knot undone half as much as he did.

• • • •

Pinkie swallowed. This had to be the single most insane, half-hooved rescue plan in Equestrian history. What was inside the box? She had no idea. What was her reason for imagining the box? Not a clue. There was a plan there, somewhere, but she couldn’t think about the plan or Snugglebug would immediately see the plan as it was being planned and the whole thing would fall apart in her hooves. It certainly felt like a good plan, whatever it was. Did that mean it was actually a great plan? She… tried not to overthink it. Overthinking it was bad.

Pinkie stared as Snugglebug moved his foreleg about the air, pulling at the ribbon with unseen, immaterial hooves. She felt his attention drift away from her thoughts as he bit down on a wide loop and levitated the box in strange and elaborate motions, unspooling the tangle into a floppy floating mass. He tilted his head a bit as eight black tendrils formed from his mane and started working at the knot in eight dizzyingly complex, independent motions. His attention was wholly and completely consumed by the singular purpose of undoing that knot, and opening that present.

Pinkie felt a swell of confidence at the sight, darting to Joe’s side and shooing him to the front door. She glanced over her shoulder, watching as Snugglebug hovered the coiling wad of loose ribbon into the air and darted the box through each one in an erratic, chaotic orbit.

Oh please oh please oh please oh please!!

• • • •

Pinkie hoisted herself onto her hind legs as she grasped the handle of the front door to her mind, pulling it wide open. Joe stared at the bright pink nothing that stretched beyond the open doorframe. Pinkie fell back onto all fours, looking hesitantly into his eyes. “I-I can remember bits and pieces of what Luna saw, when she went into that room. I don't understand it at all, but... it scared her.” She frowned. "Please please please, don't get hurt in there, Joe."

Joe turned, and gave her a concerned look. She looked away. He stepped forward, wrapping his foreleg around the back of her head and pulling her against his chest in a tight hug. “Don't you worry about that." He rested his chin on her head. "I'll find the Princess, or talk some sense into Luna, or get a hold of Twilight, or something, and I'll get you out of this.” He stroked her back with his hoof, feeling her relax at the touch. "You aren't alone on this. You got that, gumdrop?" He felt Pinkie turn her head, pressing her wet cheek against his chest. "You just hold tight."

She was quiet as she gently pulled away from the hug. "Me and Snugglebug… with the sugar, we can feel everypony in Equestria.” She looked to the ground. “But I can't feel the Princess any more. I can feel Luna and Twilight and everypony else but you or her or... o-or Gilda." She looked up a Joe, her ears flat against her head. Her voice choked into a whisper. "I really really hope they're okay."

Joe smiled, wiping away a budding tear from her wobbling eyes. "Gilda and the Princess can take care of themselves. They're tough, and they're smart." He held his hoof against Pinkie’s cheek as a loud clack echoed through her mind. The lock was undone. Time to move. He turned toward the doorway. "When this is over, we're gonna have a good laugh about this at the Diner. Just you and me, and a fresh batch of those chili-powdered donuts of yours."

She laughed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hoof. "You promise?"

"Hope to fly."

• • • •

The sky fell.

Seraph could only barely make out the writhing sea of claws and tendrils and fluttering feelers of dust that grasped from the ground below, but there was enough to sense their movement. She knew they were there. It was something. But when the ceiling came down, there was nothing to see. Just the thinning air rushing against her back and the wrenching impact. Sunny was jolted from her hooves and swallowed into the emptiness with a scream, a scream that was silenced so suddenly and so completely she could still hear it in her head, as there was nothing left to replace it.

Impossibly fine powder surged over her body, pressing down on her back like a stack of mattresses and pinning her wings to her side. She lowered her head to the floor, taking a deep breath from the small pocket of air as the dust poured around her hooves and reached her underbelly. With a twist, she turned herself upside down and let gravity pull her wings free. Free enough for a heavy push. She swam, just like dad taught her that summer they’d gone camping. Push forward, left hoof first, spread the wings, thrust. Forward, hoof out, spread the wings, thrust. The darkness defied direction, but she remembered where Sunny had been. It was burned into her memory. She closed her eyes and pressed ahead, through the empty vacuum, blind as bat, until she felt it. Something solid and soft, thrashing wildly in the sea of powder.

Seraph wrapped her hooves around Sunny’s chest and pulled. The dust pooled under them, swirling around Sunny’s hind legs and towing her deeper. It swallowed with unwavering force, but Seraph wouldn’t let go. She put her head down, taking another breath from the pocket of air between her underbelly and Sunny’s head, looking into the mare’s terrified, pleading eyes, and filled deep her lungs. She braced her wings against the powder, and lifted, with every little thing she had. She felt something cold against the top of her head.

Air.

Her wings and her hooves and her lungs burned from strain, fighting against an unremitting force. She pulled Sunny to her chest, to that tiny pocket of air, watching with horror as it rapidly filled with black.

Then, it all went white.

• • • •

Joe’s horn burned a molten red as he dragged the towering slab of solid marble from the Dining Hall doorframe, inching it from the wall and toward its groove in the floor, one centimeter at a time. The sunlock had melted to the tile at Snugglebug’s release, pulled free from its knot and left to fizzle into nothing. In its place stood a thick white wall of flooring, evidently carved from the ground and set deep against the doorframe. Joe hadn’t indulged in a fleeting moment’s despair before grasping at its enormity with his sputtering magic and pulling with what little he could muster. His only conscious thought through the blinding pain was a desperate mantra, echoing without end: Do not pass out, do not pass out, do not pass out.

The slab teetered as it slid to the outcropping of the floor from whence it had been cut. He stepped back, breaking his magic tether and bracing himself as the onslaught of pain flooded his senses. The feeling was beyond measure, which helped, in a way. It didn’t even seem real, like it was so far off the scale that he’d broken it. He took in a sharp breath of air as the slab of marble toppled forward, crashing into its groove with a rattling voomph. Joe gazed into the yawning doorframe as his senses came back to him. He stepped toward the harrowing pitch black.

“Coooool…” Princess Pinkie cooed, stepping forward and tilting her head as she peered at the growth along the floor. Joe broke into a sprint, galloping into the cold void and calling for those he loved. He frantically looked about the black but there was nothing to see. He called again and again, but nothing could be heard. The frigid air bit at his fur, pulling the heat from his body with a ferocious hunger.

Then, light.

There was a single instant of sight before the light overwhelmed his eyes and forced them shut. He could see it against the back of his eyelids. The last thing he saw before the brilliance had blinded him. Pinkie’s hoof, touching the ground. The black turned to sugary white before her touch, in less than a blink. Joe cracked open his eye, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the sudden change. He swivelled his head, but it all looked the same. Blinding white, in all directions, on every wall and floor and surface in the room.

Then he saw the red.

Joe’s heart froze as his eyes focused on the small trail of red liquid leading up a hill of white. He ran, feeling his hooves sink into the powder like a deep snow. Blood, it was her blood.

No no no no.

There was something small and a little less white than the rest, just at the end of the trail. Joe buried his hooves into the dust without a second thought, feeling something squirm at his touch. He sank deeper, digging furiously with his legs as he cleared himself shoulder-deep, and began shoving it away. It was a mare, coated with white powder, still breathing, wrapped tightly over another. Joe gave another forceful push, clearing the last of the powder and freeing them from the white.

“Sissy!” Joe shook her shoulder, falling on his rear as he spoke into her ear. “Sissy, it’s me! It’s me, oh goddess, it’s me.”

She jolted, pulling up her head and sending a feral look in his direction. She blinked, her eyes wide and her breathing heavy. She stared at him, unbelieving, for a weighted moment, before shakily rising to all fours and staring down, to the mare that was curled up underbelly. Fine sugar poured off of her shoulders and her backside as she tracked along Sunny’s body, from tip to tail. She was still, with a small, striking pool of red around her hoof.

Joe was on her in an instant, burying his foreleg to the shoulder and wrapping it around Sunny’s stomach. He pulled, fighting the tow of the swirling dust until her hind legs were out and her limp body came loose. With a lunge, she was free, falling to her knees and coughing ragged mouthfuls of the powder to the floor. She coughed until she couldn’t, pulling in deep, desperate breaths. Her chest heaved as she frantically scanned the room. Her eyes locked onto Joe’s. Her ears fell, and without a moment’s hesitation, she threw her arms around his neck in desperate relief. Joe held her tight, hearing her soft sobs.

“I’m here. I gotcha. I gotcha.” He stroked her back, feeling her heart pounding against his, her tears against his neck. “I gotcha.”

Joe’s eyes drifted to Seraph. Her head was craned upwards, gazing with a tension at the frozen tendrils that reached into the night sky above. Lifeless and yielding. Quite suddenly, they shrank to the floor as the white powder of the room swirled together and pulled itself to the hooves of Princess Pinkie.

Seraph’s eyes darted to her brother’s. They shared a single look and turned for the door. Joe shifted Sunny onto his back as they broke into a run. The ground swelled beneath their hooves, rushing toward the doorframe like water down a river. Pinkie giggled as the sweet powder surrounded her, coiling at her hooves like a saccharine whirlpool. She grabbed hold of the sugar with her mind, kneading it in the air like a wad of dough.

“I remember this! It's the bestest present of all!” She bobbed her head as she pranced through the doorway, a torrent of sugar flowing underhoof. "More me!"

Joe and Seraph fought through the river of white, plunging chest-deep into the surging powder as they struggled to pass the doorframe. Seraph was quick to take wing as the sugar rose to her underbelly, grasping Joe’s hooves with her own and pulling the stallion as he broke through the side of the whirlpool and into the hallway. The powder flooded along the ground, pulling the floor out from under Joe’s hooves and dropping he and Sunny sharply to the ground. Pinkie floated overhead, gazing with delight at the endless stream of sugar that snaked its way out of the open doorway and down the hallway to pool at her hooves.

“I zapped it right in a while back with the help of my ooooold moon buddy Mr. Harbie! He was my very very favorite before I met you ponies!” She whirled her hoof in the air, forming a mindful of sugar into an impeccably-detailed statue of an excessively large dragon. Joe heard a sharp gasp from Sunny’s mouth as the figure took shape.

Joe felt a chill run down his spine at the sight of the statue's horridly familiar face. Dragons were pretty hard to tell apart, especially without their coloring. Joe could think of maybe two, total, he actually knew the names of: one was a hatchling, living in Ponyville, and the other was dead, slain in the rout that left Seraph an orphan. But this one? There was no mistaking this one. Every pony in Equestria knew that face.

Discord.

Wings, legs, claws, a body. A normal body. A massive, ancient, unholy dragon, wearing the face of the most ridiculous and surreal monster in Equestrian history. Joe stared at it for a moment, drinking its strange ferocity, before turning to face Princess Pinkie. She hovered beside the statue, making a series of imperceptably minute tweaks to the sculpture with her eight busy tendrils, cheerfully humming to herself. Joe cleared his throat.

“W-well then! Happy… happy birthday there, slugger! Um—!” Joe’s voice shook as Pinkie’s razor irises locked on him for a single, heart-stopping moment. She paused her tendrilwork, unblinking as she waited on his words. “I’m uh! It’s— phew, it sure is late, huh?! Me and Sunny and sis should probably just, you know, be hittin' the old dusty trai—” His voice trailed off as a tendril slowly stretched toward his head. Joe’s breathing halted dead as it paused mere inches from his snout, curving over his horn and, ever-so-gently, ever-so-slightly, patting him on the head.

“Ooooookie dokie! Thanks Joe!”

Joe rose a trembling hoof to his horn and gave a friendly salute, before stoically turning toward his sister.

"Home."

She put a hoof behind her head, looking away. "In a bit. I'm gonna check on Luna, see if she's alright. We just left her there."

Joe raised a hoof in protest, but she waved him off. "Yeah yeah, don't worry, I... I just gotta know." She glanced over to Luna’s bedchambers as she unfurled her sugar-dusted wings. "I should've been there, for her. I wasn't."

She gagged as Joe pulled her into an unbearably tight bear hug. He spoke over her shoulder as he squeezed her close. "Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you, so bucking much."

Seraph flustered, "J-just doin' my job..."

Joe pulled away, looking her in the eye. "You saved her life, sis. You saved Sunny’s life.”

"Heh, yeahh..." She cricked her neck with a wide, self-satisfied grin. “Pretty amazing, no two ways about that.” She put her hooves on her hips, striking a heroic pose that wafted a clingy cloud of sugar into the air. “All in day’s work.”

“Seriously. Anything you want, I’ll make it. Anything."

Seraph flashed a hungry smile as she lifted off the ground. "Guess I wouldn’t mind a batch of Thorin Cakes. Couple of those eel-stuffed peppers, too, with that freaking amazing cheesy stuff..."

"You got it." He nodded in the direction of Princess Pinkie, who was now deep into the act of sculpting an ever-growing lollipop obelisk from her endless reservoir of sugar. It stretched, inch by inch, into the greying skies above. A storm. A storm with no weather team to divert it. Joe followed his sister at a brisk pace as she started for Luna's bedchambers. "Breakfast."

Seraph nodded, sending her brother a half-wave as he split off toward the throne room. "Breakfast it is."

Joe picked up speed as he rounded the corner and galloped past the empty throne of the diarchy. He bore down the small set of stairs at the foot of the entryway, his fur growing heavy against the damp drizzle that drifted in sheets from the clouds above. The sky had taken a strange and unnatural hue as grey storm clouds drifted over the white-pink aurora, backed by the intense light of the moon. It fell somewhere between apocalyptic and beautiful, a striking sight that was quite unlike anything he had ever seen.

Joe felt Sunny pull tight against his back as he pressed through the writhing sea of ponies that filled the open courtyard ahead, past a hundred different groups in a hundred little worlds of their own. Past pockets of delighted chatter and heated debate, bursts of rollicking laughter and excited bluster. Somepony spilled a chilled drink against Joe’s leg, but he barely noticed it against the rain. Another fell hard against his side, pushed playfully back by an chuckling stallion, but Joe just righted himself and pushed forward. His mind was elsewhere. He glanced through the crowd and about the courtyard for a single solitary spot.

His head throbbed as the burning ache from earlier eased at the pleasant wind of light rain against his horn. The crowd thinned. He passed along the wide, busy intersection at the entrance of the Residential District, weaving his way over the bridge and drawing to a hurried stop at the foot of an ornate, ancient water fountain at the heart of the commons. They were surrounded still by a rainbow sea of ponies, chattering and laughing as they passed all around, on their way to a hundred different gatherings. Here, at the very least, there was room to move. Here there was room to breathe.

• • • •

Joe lowered himself to the ground, shifting his weight gently to the side as Sunny stepped from his back to lean against the siding of the fountain. Her hooves rattled, her legs weak from exhaustion and fear. She couldn’t seem to stop the trembling that coursed through her limbs, to find the strength to settle. She hated that she was helpless to control even that; her own body. She felt a well of aggravation batter against her chest. This stupid, tiny, useless little body.

Her senses were jolted awake as Joe’s shoulder touched softly into hers, pressing a calming weight to her side. The wash of startled alarm melted fast into its warmth, into the inviting comfort of his hold and his hooves. She pressed herself against his fur, feeling his forearm hold lightly against her side as they slowly fell to their knees, laying against the cool, rain-wet cobblestone. She watched as he lifted her hoof to the tip of his muzzle, inspecting the cut. Sunny pressed shut her eyes, fighting off the old instinct to pull away, the invading sense that this was too close, that this wasn’t for somepony like her. That she didn’t deserve it.

She felt the warmth of her tears as they passed over her cheeks and pooled under her chin. The sense of helplessness was beyond frustration. She was utterly at the mercy of the cold and the strain and the rattling fade of adrenaline, unable to stop the trembling of her hooves or the chill of her fur. She wanted nothing more than to be whole again, to feel her body radiate with the limitless strength of the sun. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there wasn’t a single living thing in the world that could rend her beloved ponies from the safety of her care.

How could she have been so foolish? So selfish as to abandon them, even for a night? Even for one little drink and one little laugh with the cute, friendly baker of her favorite coffee shop. She was all they had. She was all they had and she hadn't been there when they needed her. She had almost been killed tonight. She had almost been gone, forever.

There was a soft, firm pressure on her wrist, snapping her from her thoughts.

Joe’s hooves worked with a firm diligence as he wrapped tight her gash with the length of bandage previously tied around his leg. She hadn’t even noticed his movements, so swift and cautious they had been. Only daring to touch her fur when he had no other choice. He grasped the end of the bandage with his teeth, and wove a simple knot between his hoof and his snout. His eyes rose to meet hers and he pulled the knot tight.

She swallowed, feeling her heart sink at the expectant look. She felt a raw and inchoate shame force her gaze to the ground, to the white lines of sugar that beaded off her fur and swirled in the percolating rainwater of the street. In his eyes there was nothing but a pure and unguarded hope. A strength and a steadiness she wished to a million stars she could find in herself, in that moment. But it just wasn't there.

“I couldn’t do a thing for them, Joe.” Sunny’s ears sank with her heart, pressing against her head as she looked to the crowd. To the rows of pink-ringed eyes that danced and darted about in oblivious delight, blissfully ignorant that they were slaves. That they were the playthings of a formless and unfeeling monster. “They needed me to be strong, to be there for them when there was nopony else.” Her tears came freely, mixing with the rain and the sugar as they ran down her ragged fur and fell from her trembling chin. She felt as if there was nothing more to her but the hollow sound of a false name. As if the princess of the sun was well and truly gone, a silly story none could remember. “They needed me so completely and so deeply and I couldn’t do a single thing.”

Joe held her hoof between his, gazing at the wrapping with a distance. His amber coat was streaked with lines of white as the steady rainfall pulled away the tainted sugar like a fading nightmare. Water fell from the corners of his unwavering smile. “What you did was so unbelievably insane and so unbelievably courageous that you have to be one or the other. There just isn’t enough room in a mare for so much of both.” He met her uneasy gaze, gently pushing her wet mane clear of her eyes. “And you aren’t crazy, Sunny. Not even a little bit.”

She looked away, pulling her hoof quietly to her side as her tears welled and fell without end. She felt his hoof touch her cheek, and startled in retreat. Her mane fell back over her left eye as she stared at the ground, her heart racing. She wanted to apologize, for her ridiculous fear, for the harrowing night, for the lie of her name she couldn’t bear letting go. Without the lie of Sunny Skies, she would be nothing. She would be very much alone.

“Please don’t cry.”

She looked into his eyes, then to his hoof, watching as he gently pulled it away. She moved without a thought, both hooves reaching out to grasp his foreleg and guide it back to her cheek. She held his hoof against her wet fur, closing her eyes as she pressed her cheek into the wonderful warmth of his touch.

Joe leaned close, blocking the rain with his muzzle as he turned her face and pressed his lips against hers. The commotion of the crowd faded. Her world shrank, leaving only the touch and the heat and the desperate relief. The trembling was gone, steadied by a safety and a comfort she hadn’t felt in ages. All it had taken was one little touch.

A dim light glimmered from the orange gemstone that hung from her neck, safe and warm between their embrace.

Author's Note

Was a biiiit late for Halloween on this one. Kissin' scenes are hard.

If you're wondering about the necklace, at the very end, it was the one Sunny took from her keepsake book, in Luna's room.

Next chapter: A meal, a talk, Gilda and Pinkie, and breakfast.

Ginormous thank you to Brawny and Luminary on this one. This was a dense, loopy chapter, and it needed a some clearing up. So much love.

Your comments are THE BLOOD IN MY VEINS. Tell me what you liked, and what you didn't!

Last One Out

Last One Out
• • • •

The skies over Canterlot split with a crack of pink, flickering to light a frenzied retreat of moori and pegasi as they fled for the safety of the castle. The billowing stormfront above had only grown stronger and stranger as the night had gone on, blotting out the lunar surface as it spread across the city with spectacular speed. Nobody in their right mind would fly skies like these. It was as if nature herself had gone mad.

Black clouds roiled with streaks of light, each bolt lingering in the sky for a beat before melting toward the ground with an odd, ephemeral weight. Rain drifted and coiled about the air in waves, buzzing with a faint and familiar hum — the unmistakable sound of magic. As if a million unicorns with a million auras were guiding each and every droplet to the ground.

It was an impossible storm, pulsing with bolts that frizzled like fire crackers and drooped like molasses. It didn't look or sound real, or right. It felt broken, or unfinished, or overdone, or something. There wasn’t a really a word for what was wrong with it.

Another bolt. Closer, this time.

Gilda could feel the cobblestones rattling beneath her paws as the city filled with light. She stayed her forward glare, never wavering, never blinking. She felt the vibration and the sound pass through her body and down her bones, to the quivering trenches of rainwater that coursed along the gaps in the street. The light bounded off the water in a way that lit up the entire roadway, for just a second, before fading right back into the night. That light took with it any lingering hope Gilda held that there might still be somewhere left to flee. She could see it clearly now. She had run herself down a dead-end alley, and the only way out was the way she’d come in.

She was an idiot for letting herself get trapped like this. If she’d walked her route to work even once, she’d probably have a better idea of what roads went where. But no. No, she flew every morning, because she was late every morning, because she was lazy and sedentary and had let this ridiculous city dull her into comfort. Back home, she used to intentionally get herself lost in the vast Knotwood Forest that bordered her hometown, just to see if she could find her way out. Here, she couldn’t even navigate her way to a coffee shop. It was embarrassing, more than anything.

Gilda scowled at the hulking silhouette that stood at the entrance of the alleyway; a mountain of wet fur and metal and muscle. Gilda was clean out of options. She’d used them up and she’d done it wrong and here she was, staring down the largest gods-damned mare she had ever seen, in a dead-end alley under the kind of storm nightmares were made of. She'd had dreams like this, on more than one occasion. Weird, absurd nightmares where the city would turn against her, and chase her down down like some foreign invader. It was stupid, but it was there in her head and she couldn’t seem to think it away. She had to focus. She had to close it all out.

For hours, the armor-clad sentries of the Royal Guard had hounded Gilda through crowds and buildings and winding, labyrinthine roadways, stabbing at her with spears and shooting at her with weird, multicolored magic bolts. The fliers and the unicorns had broken off for the castle as the storm really started to get nasty, but the earth ponies were harder to shake. They didn’t seem to mind the rain or the cold, they just cared about doing their duty. Gilda had no idea how much of it was dogged devotion to the crown and how much of it was freakish demon-monster mind control, but she liked to believe it was the latter. Made this all a bit simpler, somehow. Like it was a hunt, and all that really mattered was who was the predator and who was the prey. She needed simple, right now.

Gilda was bigger than the average earth pony, and a bit bulkier, and had hunted pretty much every other day of her life, so she’d done alright when things had gotten ugly. She had a spear through her wing, a swollen-over left eye, a clawful of shattered talons and two gods-awful gashes across her chest, but all told, her limbs worked and she could kind of see, and that was all you needed. You just needed to hang in there long enough to take your chance, when it came. And it always came.

The alley was flooded with pink as another bolt shattered overhead. The sound hit alongside the light and it took everything Gilda had not break her gaze and recoil from the unthinkable wrath that exploded across the sky, but that was how you won. You stayed in control and you didn’t do a gods-damned thing but wait, and watch, until you saw it.

And Gilda saw it.

There was one fraction of a second when the hulking guardsmare jolted at the blast of sound. One instant when her eye darted to the sky as light filled the city and the heavens. Gilda didn’t think, she just closed the gap and thrust her claw against the pony’s neck, pinning her against the wall. She pressed a fractured talon against the thrashing neck of her prey, feeling it sink through the wet fur and against the soft pulse of throat. A cragged, predatory grin crept across her beak as the white mare's armored hooves scraped against the wet cobblestone, desperate and frantic. She was trying to flee.

Gilda pressed a little deeper, forcing the neck to the side as the mare tried to pull away. Gilda turned her head and looked deep into her quivering eye. There was a raw, raptorial part of the young griffin that stirred to life when she held this kind of unassailable dominance over another. This ownership over them, over their life. The simplicity of it was this ugly mixture of hate and relief that was profoundly thrilling.

She eased the pressure of her hold, just a bit. She didn’t think to do it, she just did it. Gilda had long learned never to resist those odd little decisions one made without making them, those things you knew you should do well before you could imagine why. Before you indulged in a thought, and realized, oh, right.

Of course.

Her body and her talon quivered with rage at the hesitation, eager to finish what she’d started, just like any other hunt. She’d done this countless times in the wilderness, with deer and elk and rabbits and whatever she needed to kill to live. Gilda knew she should finish this mare. It was what she needed to do to survive. She felt this weird distance from her own thoughts as she watched her brain crank out every possible reason to press into that throat and end it, right then and there. She had her pick of the litter.

She’ll kill you if you don’t.

She’ll tell them where you are.

You are not this weak.

She’s given you her life.

Take what you’ve earned.

Gilda sneered, turning the mare’s head to look into the other eye, the one bright with pink. Fear. That’s all that was in there. Just fear, and that freakish, alien light. She saw her eye in the bathroom mirror, back when it all made a completely different, completely certain, completely false kind of sense.

Gilda drew back her free claw and closed it into a fist, feeling the grind of her shattered talon and the cool rain pattering against the keratin scales of her hand. With a swift, heavy motion, she brought the back of her fist across the mare’s jaw, as hard as she could manage, and watched her drop to the ground like a heap of metal. Bracing her arm against the stone wall, she delivered a swift kick to the mare’s stomach, then another. She didn’t move as much as she should’ve, if she was conscious. Gilda’s eye tracked her body, seeing her chest rise and fall with breath.

Gilda was a fool, of course. Mercy always came back to bite you. You got one good shot in every fight, and she was giving it up. She was a fool.

She grasped the mare by the neck and dragged her down the alleyway, to the street, under a vendor tent. Out of the frigid rain. She narrowed her gaze as the mare groaned, cracking open her eye. She wouldn't stay down for long. Gilda needed to be gone.

She turned to bolt down the street, and bumped into something warm and tall and soft. A rather dimwitted stallion stood at the front of a wide wall of partygoing ponies, gathering close to watch the fight like it was a damn game. Gilda shoved him aside, and flashed a challenging glare to the audience before her. They were so weirdly entertained by the ugly display they had just watched, like it was a play or something. Like none of it was real to them. Gilda leapt forward, landing on all fours as she drove the crowd back. "Screw off!"

The crowd shrieked with excitement as they clopped their hooves in applause, laughing to each other as they raised their drinks. Gods, that was creepy. She pressed into the crowd, shoving ponies out of her way in a straight, unwavering line, through to the next street. She knew this part of the city a little better than the rest. She stopped here after work every day.

Talons and claws clacked against wet stone as Gilda plowed her way through the thinning sea of ponies. The rain was driving them into the houses, leaving nothing on the open streets but the only griffon in the entire city. She was running out of time.

Gilda quickened her pace, across the four-way intersection at the heart of the residential district. There was another flash of pink, and she saw them, at the far end of the main street. Two sentries, turning to face her. She dove into an adjoining street, her muscles burning as she sprinted around the far corner. She had no idea if they saw her. It was possible they hadn’t. Maybe they hadn’t.

Of course they had.

Joe’s Diner sat at the end of a long, winding road lined with apartments. It was a bit out of the way from the district center, but not too far. Gilda wasted no time as she hurtled down the sloped road and against the door. Her claw grasped the door handle and she pulled, jostling the door violently and shaking the pulled shades opposite the little window. The CLOSED sign rocked in place. Locked, of course. She gritted her teeth, glancing behind her, and to her sides. She heard hooves in gallop, barrelling down the side street. She stepped back, braced her paws against the stone, and launched her shoulder at the door, with everything she had.

The door opened.

Gilda’s eyes went wide as she fell forward, beak-first, onto the cold diner floor. The door slammed shut behind her, the sound of the blinds batting against the windowpane clacking with a rhythm. Gilda scrambled to her feet, her wet paws slipping on the tile as she turned a desperate, feral look to the entryway. Joe stood with his back against the door, holding it shut as he craned his neck and gazed through a slit in the blinds. Heavy hoofsteps thundered past the doorway and down the street. Out of earshot. Gilda deflated onto the floor, gasping and coughing, struggling for breath.

• • • •

Sunny gasped as her eyes followed the trail of red and rainwater from the doorway to the panting griffon that slumped across the diner floor. She moved briskly to Gilda’s side from her perch in the booth, just beside the door, and held a hoof to the gaping hole in the young griffon’s wing. Gilda jolted at the touch, turning her wide eyes onto the mare with an animal glare before grasping Sunny’s neck with her claw.

“Hkk—!”

Gilda moved Sunny’s head left, then right, gazing into each eye with intensity before releasing her hold and shoving her away, onto her back, onto the diner floor. The battered griffon brought her gaze to meet Joe’s. Joe dropped onto all fours and pushed himself between them with an ugly look, watching Sunny climb to her hooves before turning back to Gilda.

“You need to calm down.” Joe’s voice was tinged with anger, his glare challenging. Gilda was a friend, but he didn’t much trust her to control herself when she was like this. Control was not Gilda’s strong suit. His expression softened into a mixture of concern and horror as his eyes tracked across her wing and the reddened plumage of her chest. “Sweet Celestia, y-you’re bleeding!”

Gilda’s feathers stood on end. “You think I don’t know that?! I’ve had your sister’s buddies trying to gut me in the streets while you two were cozying it up in here, with your frigging...” Her eyes darted to the two steaming plates on the booth tabletop. Her claws quivered with anger. “...omelettes? Omelettes?!” She stood up, thundering over Sunny and up to the table before grasping the limp cucumber omelette between her shattered talons and shaking it in their direction. “You’re eating a gods-damned omelette while I’m out there fighting for my life?!” She tossed the expertly-folded eggy delight against Joe’s flank, sending it splattering in all directions. Her eyes shut with rage as she fell onto all fours with a roar, “Go talk to your bucking princess!”

Joe took a step forward, staying between her and Sunny. He took a deep breath, then let it out, turning his head slightly to the side to glance at Sunny. “We tried. She’s… Luna’s under some kind of spell. Everypony is.” He turned back to the seething griffon. “Celestia is gone.”

Gilda spat out something between a chortle and hiss, “The kalla do you mean, ‘gone?!’”

“She’s just—” He shook his head, “I have no idea. She’s just gone.”

Gilda’s claws balled into tight, trembling fists. “How can she be gone?! Have you seen that thing out there?! It’s a gods-damned nightmare!”

“I know. Gilda, I know.” Joe moved toward the back room, pushing open the small swinging door on the side of the counter and poking his head under the register. When he emerged, he held a dangling First Aid box between his teeth.

“You’ve gotta calm down.”

• • • •

Gilda’s breathing was heavy and ragged as she turned her unswollen eye to the hole in her left wing, then spun her head around to peck at the torn, dangling feathers that had been pushed in through the gash. She loosed a string of filthy and exotic curses as she missed again and again, blind through her swollen left eye and increasingly enraged as her beak bit only air.

“Ffraghh!!” She gritted her teeth and pulled in a sharp breath through her nostrils as she flexed her wing to move it closer. Her body flinched and curled under the sharp pain, her paws scraping at the diner floor like an animal caught in a trap. “I’m gonna murder those frigging prancy-ass meatheaded buckwitted hooflicking—!” Her breath caught as she felt something firm and heavy press into her wing, just below the gash.

“Gilda.”

She startled to attention, dropping her paws and claws to the floor and sitting perfectly still. She didn't mean to do that, or think to do that, she just did. She sat there, dumbfounded, blank, on the diner floor, as if waiting for someone to pick up her thoughts and pour them back into her head.

That voice. That tone.

It just cut right through you.

Gilda craned her head sharply to the side, as if expecting a stranger. She couldn’t see much through the swelling, but she saw the curl of a pink tail sticking out of a small white flank. She saw that dumb little sun stamped onto Sunny’s ass, peeking out from behind a big fluffy cloud. Right, of course. It was just Sunny.

Gilda.

She closed her eyes, trying to place the sobering familiarity of it. She knew it was stupidly recent, like last week or last Friday or, gods, even yesterday. Yesterday, and the day before that, and about twice a workday, every workday, for the past year. It was obvious. It was so bucking obvious she hadn’t bothered considering it. Princess Celestia.

Whenever ol' Sunbutt wanted to shut her up, she’d say Gilda’s name in exactly the same way. It made you feel like your mom was a god, and that god had just pulled open the heavens to find you stashing a Playcolt under your mattress. It was a tone heavy with implication; an aggressively honest thing that made you feel like an idiot for forcing it into the open. Like you'd only been tolerated, up until that moment. Like you were a balking fledgling being coddled, and had been too stupid to even notice.

“It’s okay.” She felt Sunny’s hoof run along the length of her gash, to the base of a stabbing point of pain. “You’re okay now.” Her voice had lost its bite, tempering that piercing honesty with a gentle warmth. The sound was like white noise, washing over you like sunlight. It was a very simple sort of good.

"Just breathe."

Gilda felt Sunny press in on the jutting feather, then tug to the left. There was a weight as the small mare stepped closer, on top of the wing, moving her mouth over the end and biting down. Gilda clenched her teeth, bracing for the pain, but felt only a… a pluck. Not even a prick; a pluck. It slid out with just the smallest bit of pressure.

She felt it again, on the next feather over. A similar but slightly different motion. The itch and the jabbing pain eased, feather by feather, as the mare cleared the gash of everything torn and tattered.

Quite reluctantly, and quite slowly, Gilda relaxed, lowering her head to the cool diner floor. Sunny’s hooves massaged the base of Gilda’s wing as her mouth lined the gash with alcohol, dulling the bite of the sting with distraction. It was an odd sensation, enjoying one pleasure enough to forget another pain. By the time the burn had grasped her attention, it was well on its way out.

There was a light coolness, then a warmth as Sunny gently wove the bandage between two primaries, over the gash and around the front. The next loop went around the next two primaries, so as not to irritate the wing. She heard a soft hum as Sunny sang to herself; a pleasant and foreign sort of melody she had never heard before. Gilda closed her eyes, quite contented, hearing only the hum and the swift of fabric.

And... a chuckle.

Gilda’s eyes shot open, her head perking upward as she quickly scanned the diner. Joe was staring at her with a wide, bemused smirk, like he was watching a fat fledgeling try to flap her wings. Gilda’s feathers ruffled with irritation.

“What? What is it?”

He held a hoof over his mouth hiding his smile. “N-nothing! It’s nothing.”

Gilda narrowed her gaze, and moved to get up. She felt Sunny’s hoof against the back of her neck. “Joe, don’t tense her up.”

Gilda narrowed her eyes. “Something funny about all this?”

Joe gave Sunny a grin, then glanced back at Gilda. “...You were purring.”

Gilda’s beak fell open, her eyes darting fearfully between Joe and the floor. She gave an awkward scoff, burning with embarrassment, "I— wh—" She quickly and clumsily bolted to her feet, sending Sunny tumbling onto the floor. "I was not! I don't purr, dude!"

Joe tried and failed to hold in a laugh. "An adorable little kitten purr!"

"I don't purr!"

"Alright, alright!" He shook his head with a whimsy, "—it was cute, is all!"

Gilda’s teeth ground in seething anger as she swiftly pulled her bandaged wing into her side with a wince. She grasped the First Aid box with her left claw, yanking it roughly from the floor. "Oh I got your ‘cute’ right here, hornhead." Gilda thrust her right claw before the grinning baker, her middle talon extended with bitter vehemence. Joe’s smile fell quickly into an oddly piteous gape. It was not the look Gilda was expecting.

It took a single, dread-filled moment for Gilda to notice that her talon wasn’t there any more. Her beak hung with flabbergasted horror as she turned her claw around to stare at the shattered stub where keratin became broken nail. Her middle talon was gone. Snapped far enough into the base that it would never really grow back.

“Oh, gods.”

Gilda blinked, hard, trying to process the sight. She would never give another blessed soul the middle finger, ever again. It was like she’d just lost a wing.

Joe swallowed, forcing a shaky smile back onto his face. “Hey… it’s not so bad! We’ll get Pixie to throw a healing spell on you.” He gestured with his hoof. “Good as new!”

Gilda turned a deep, violent shade of red as she slowly and intensely squeezed her fist shut, trembling with blind rage. “Healing spells don’t work on griffons, you stupid jackass!”

“Oh, I uh… I didn’t—”

Gilda looked sick. She put up her claw in a gesture that said, in so many words, ‘shut up,’ and turned sharply to storm toward the booth beside the doorway.

There was a small white mare in the way.

Gilda pushed her claw against Sunny’s side, trying to shove her out of the way, but the determined pony held firm. Sunny’s legs wobbled with strain at the effort, her cheeks puffing as she held a defiant look on the furious griffon. Gilda scowled.

"You wanna get the piss outta my way, cream puff?!"

Sunny’s eyes clenched shut as she desperately stood her ground, now pressing against both of Gilda’s powerful arms. "Y-you need help, Gilda!"

Gilda was in no mood. She stood back on her hind paws, pulling in a deep breath as she reeled her head for a harrowing lion roar. Sunny's ears fell against her head as she braced herself against the diner floor. The storm beat Gilda to the punch.

The room filled with pink as a bolt of lightning blasted overhead, loosing a deafening crack of thunder that rattled the windows. Sunny’s eyes were pulled to the blinds as the streak of pink ephemera fell against the side of Joe’s Diner, crackling as it clung to the glass. It frazzled for a moment before fading into nothing, leaving no sign of heat or damage. As if it had never been there at all. Gilda slowly deflated, unable to take her eyes from the surreal sight.

Sunny swallowed, turning her gaze toward the awestruck Joe. “Joe… I can’t help her when she’s like this.”

Joe blinked, taking his eyes from the pattering windowpane to level a slightly puzzled look at Sunny.

“She’s worked up enough as it is. You’re… not helping, right now.”

Joe’s eyebrows jumped. “Oh. Oh! Right.” He gathered the clump of omelette from the floor with his hoof, sliding both plates from the table and onto his head in an impressive feat of balance. “Yeah, right, sorry. Lemme whip us up something else to eat.” He cantered off toward the kitchen, gracefully rolling his flank against the small swinging door of the counter and disappearing into the back room.

• • • •

Sunny pressed her hoof against Gilda’s collar, easing the young griffon against the side of the booth. Gilda’s eyes widened as she turned away from the window, her claw instinctively grasping Sunny by the shoulder to keep her at arm’s length. Sunny jolted at the touch, pulling away swiftly and returning an alarmed look. Gilda slowly withdrew her claw as she tracked Sunny’s recoiling body with surprise. “Yeesh. Touchy.”

Sunny collected herself as best she could, closing her eyes as she waited for her heart to stop beating out of her chest. Several long moments passed before she opened them again. “I… I'm sorry." She felt a calm gradually settle across her body. "I’m still not used to that.” She lowered herself onto her flank and placed the First Aid box to her side, staring with concern at the stitching needle that lay at the bottom of the case.

“...What, touching people? You some kinda germophobe?”

Sunny was silent as she gently pressed her hoof against Gilda’s reddened chest feathers, pushing them to the side as she leaned in to inspect the twin gashes. “No no, it's... I’m just a bit out of practice, I suppose.” She frowned as she pulled away, glancing back to the needle in the box.

Gilda shook her head a bit, rather baffled by the response.

“These wounds..." Sunny spoke quietly, as much to herself as to her patient. She was silent as she turned her gaze from the box to meet Gilda’s. "They were truly trying to kill you, weren't they?"

Gilda glanced away. "Yeah. Yeah they were." She lifted her cragged talon to the blinds and parted a gap, staring through to the empty streets beyond. "I saw it, right there in their eyes." She released her hold with as small shake of the head, moved her claw to absently rub her upper arm. "Like it was personal."

Sunny’s heart sank. She looked up at the griffon with a guilty look. “The spear cut deep, Gilda, but you're lucky. I’m only going to need to stitch the wounds shut.” Her ears fell with her voice. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any anesthetic.”

Gilda put her head back with a long, crooked scowl, trying to process the very concept.

“It will be quite painful.”

Gilda’s feathers stood on end as her head came back down with a fierce glare. “Ya think?!”

“I’m sorry.”

Gilda rubbed her forehead with her claw for a weighted moment. She pulled in a long, deep breath through her nostrils, then slowly let it out. “Just shut up and do it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Gilda whined in a mocking, high-pitched tone, waving her claw about the air. “I don’t give a flying buck how you feel about my crappy situation!” She grasped the box from Sunny’s side and shoved it into her hooves. “Just get it over with!”

Sunny could see Gilda’s claws shivering as she pulled her arm to her side. Anger and fear wracked her body, her chest heaving with blind frustration and sinking dread at what was to come. She was afraid. She was quite spectacularly afraid.

Sunny felt tears well in her eyes as she looked into the First Aid box. Her own guards had done this. They had hunted and skewered an innocent griffon in the streets because their princess had wished it so. Sunny well knew that the Guard would do anything for their princess. Even this.

“Oh gods, you gonna cry now?”

Sunny looked back into Gilda’s eyes, to the ragged feathers and swollen skin that battered her face. She was practically a child. A terrified young griffon fleeing from trained soldiers twice her age. All she had ever wanted was to be left alone. She didn’t deserve this.

Gilda’s expression softened as she stared into Sunny’s eyes. A long, silent moment passed before Gilda turned her head away, looking back out the window, her swollen eye facing outward. Her breathing slowed, the anger and tension easing from her body.

Quite slowly, she turned back, her eye drifting downward to gaze at Sunny’s chest. Her claw rose from her side, reaching toward her fur. Sunny lowered her eyes, watching as Gilda’s shattered talon wrapped around the two small necklaces that hung from her neck, and lifted them to eye level. Sunny pulled in a sharp and sudden gasp as she focused on the dim glow of orange and blue, truly astonished.

Swiftly and delicately, Sunny brought her hooves under the gemstones, watching with awestruck silence as Gilda dropped them into Sunny’s hold. With a blink, she looked back into Gilda’s eyes, a wide, beaming smile fast growing across her muzzle. “I-I can scarcely believe it!” She held in a giddy laugh with the back of her hoof, unable to contain her glee as she hastily wiped her tears away. “Goodness… it's magic! We have magic, Gilda!”

Gilda gave a puzzled look. "Yeah, so? That's all you unicorns do all day. Sit on your butts and magic things."

“Everypony has been quite unable to use magic, since... last night.” She glanced out the window as another bolt of lightning lit up the clouds, farther away. “I had a little squirreled away in these pendants, but I... I was quite positive I'd used them up in our escape.” She glanced back at Gilda, motioning toward her chest. “But now I can use a healing spell! No stitching at all!”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Griffons aren't ponies. It won't work right. I just said that.”

“Oh, it will! Don’t worry! It’s… well, admittedly, very, very tricky... but I’ve done it many times before! I’m quite good at it.” She gently shut the First Aid box, moving her hoof against her chest and pressing both gemstones to her fur.

"Shyah... think I'll take my chances with the needle."

Sunny gaped in shock.

Gilda held up her claws in mock defense. "Hey, I’m sure you think you can work an unprecedented miracle of magic, cream puff, but there is no way I’m going to let some starry-eyed desk-jockey accidentally detonate my eyeballs.” She turned the First Aid box to face Sunny, jostling the needle at the bottom. “I’m not an idiot.”

No response. Gilda chanced a look, briefly locking eyes with Sunny as she held an adorable, pleading frown on the young griffon. Gilda stared back for a moment before glancing away, a faint blush creeping across her face. “D-don't give me that! There’s like, what, a dozen recorded instances of someone actually healing a griffon? All of them by Princess Sunbutt herself?” She scoffed, flicking her hair feathers dismissively. “You don’t look like a goddess to me, doll.”

Sunny placed a gentle hoof on Gilda’s claw. “I would never suggest it if I wasn’t positive. Please, you have to trust me.” Her voice was soft and serious, carrying nothing but simple certainty. She felt her eyes well with tears as she looked downward, to the young griffon’s reddened feathers. “I would never hurt you.”

Gilda’s beak opened to spit back something vile and condescending, but nothing came out. A moment passed in silence, neither breaking their stare. Quite suddenly, Gilda reached out to grasp Sunny by the chin, pulling her close. She turned her head to the side as she stared, intensely, into Sunny’s sleep-starved, tear-stained eye. Gilda’s face contorted in frustration, before roughly releasing her hold. She placed her arms by her side.

“Crimony.” She shook her head, looking to the ground. “Alright, fine. Fine.”

Sunny beamed with excitement. Gilda pulled back a bit, giving a subtle ‘take it down a notch’ gesture with her claw. “You stop the second something goes wrong, you got that? The second.” She pointed a stubby finger at Sunny, giving her a serious look. “Do not kill me.”

“O-of course! I would never! Truly, you have nothing to fear, my little p—”

Gilda gave Sunny a flat stare.

Sunny turned a bit red. “—poahah! Ahem..." She gave an embarrassed chuckle. “...Sorry. J-just relax.”

Gilda took in a deep breath, closing her eyes as she laid her back against the side of the booth. She was still quite tense, as was her way, but it would have to do.

Sunny held the tiny gemstones close as she focused on the familiar flow of elements swirling excitedly within. Her horn shimmered with an almost invisibly-thin golden aura, orange and blue light weaving its way up the chain of each necklace to coil around her hooves. She felt it pass through her veins and through her body, filling her core with a warm and familiar power. For one, fleeting moment, she felt whole again.

With a smile, Sunny quietly hummed an ancient song she and Luna had dreamt up as foals. It might very well have been the song, almost three thousand years old, from before they had even imagined what music could be. A song from a time when music was just the sound of life being lived; a wonderful story the world delighted to hear.

That was all music was, when you got down to it. A story without words to get in the way.

Magic tickled Sunny’s throat and warmed her muzzle as it followed her voice, upward and outward, past her mouth and through her mind and around the coil of her horn. It spun with a lazy and impatient desire, dimly clamoring for a path to follow and a purpose to fill. Sunny lowered her head, feeling the elements pass across the air and into her waiting patient. This was always the easy part.

Now things got messy.

Sunny could feel the elements fray and bristle as they came against the strange, stubborn nothing within Gilda’s body. It took such concentrated effort to navigate the dizzying turmoil of the griffon, their essence spotted with immaterial voids that magic refused to enter. It was an impossible tangle of well-ordered chaos, functioning with an inexplicable harmony that seemed in almost every way like discord. That they could live and fly among the clouds, just as healthy as pegasi, was as baffling as it was beautiful.

It had taken Sunny many, many years to understand that these empty patches within the griffin body weren’t an absence of magic, but rather, the presence of a different sort. A something so purely opposite, it couldn’t be touched, or sensed, or seen. Magic could barely stand to be around it, so Sunny had learned to guide a spell down the winding pathways that encircled each blind spot. It was spectacularly difficult, but in the wake of... past troubles with their people, Sunny had swiftly grown expert at the technique.

She felt her hooves tremble as she focused every thought she had on visualizing a safe and easy path for her magic. The tricky stretch was at the intersection of feline and avian, the points where both halves of the griffon met. Those were always off-limits, magically speaking, lined with impenetrable swathes of immateria. She started low. In through the side, circle across the spine, up through the wing, down through the bone, ride along the rib, sweep between the lungs, and…

“There...” Sunny heard herself speak, quiet as a mouse, as the precious stream of spell set to work. She heard Gilda’s breath pull in, quite sharply, as a faint golden aura grew from within to spread across her chest. At last, the tension began to ease out of her body.

“Holy... crap...” Gilda shuddered, leaning her head against the seat of the booth. A wide, satisfied grin crept at the edges of her beak as her twin gashes closed and sealed. “That feels frigging incredible.”

Sunny couldn’t help but smile as she drew the last bit of magic from her pendant, letting her first spell finish up before readying in the next one. She moved close to the purring griffon, pushing her head gently against her feathery neck. “This next one might feel a bit... strange, but the feeling will pass.” She closed her eyes as the spell began to coil around her horn. “I’ll… need to be close, so I don’t lose any magic as it passes between us.” She cleared her throat. “I-if that’s okay.”

Gilda gave a low chuckle, her eyes closed as she basked in the warm sensation of the spell. “Cream puff, you can get as close as you want.” Much to Sunny’s surprise, Gilda wrapped her arm around Sunny and pulled her against her chest. Sunny let out of slow breath, staying her attention on her spell and doing her best to ignore the unexpected contact. She concentrated on the warmth of her powerful body, on the memory of Joe’s hold just an hour before, letting the calming thought settle her heart. She closed her eyes, setting her spell in motion.

The spell flowed swiftly, curving across Gilda’s beak and around her eye, shrinking the swelling and soothing her skin. Cuts sealed and bruises faded as Sunny trembled in place, straining to keep hold of the spell for just a few moments more. Already the magic had grown frustrated, whittling down to a trickle as it coursed through Gilda’s veins. Sunny felt beads of sweat dot her fur as she guided magic down Gilda’s neck and to her heart, swirling about for a momentous moment before sending it coursing down her arm. The spell halved, and halved again as it continued its journey to the outermost tip of her claw.

She felt Gilda’s claw against her side, the stubby talon stretching and regenerating as the last of the spell poured against the fracture. Gilda’s purring had only grown more contented at the sensation, her claw easing off Sunny’s fur as the sharp nail took form. Sunny felt the last of the spell sputter, then scatter. She let the aura fade, falling against Gilda’s feathers as she gasped for breath. It was done.

Sunny laid still for a little while, letting her body recover. Gilda’s breathing was steady, her chest rising and falling as twin lines of fresh, soft white feathers brushed against Sunny’s cheek. Gently and deliberately, Sunny stepped away, inspecting the griffon’s plumage and face with no small measure of relief. She felt a talon lift a length of her mane, and brought her gaze swiftly upward, watching with surprise as Gilda cautiously inspected a cerulean strand of her mane.

...Cerulean?

“You’re her, aren’t you?”

Sunny gave a shaky half-smile. “I-I w-well—”

Gilda held the strand up to Sunny’s eyes, her stare sinking into a glare as the color faded back to pink. “Zu almighty, you’re Princess Celestia, aren’t you?!”

“Gilda, there’s a reason—”

Gilda flicked away the strand of hair, gesturing her claw sharply to the window, to the long, lollipop obelisks that reached into the sky from the distant Canterlot palace. “What in the name of Siris are you doing screwing around at Donut Joe’s bucking breakfast diner?!” She stepped to her paws and claws, looming over Sunny with furious intent. “You should be out there raining down fire and rainbows on that demon out there! That thing owns your city!”

Sunny glanced toward the front counter, hearing the distant sizzle of the grill. She turned a stern glare upon the griffon. “Of course I should be. If there was anything I could do, I would be doing it.” She stared down at the swirls of her mane as the extra colors faded away. “I’m… stuck like this, Gilda.”

Gilda gave a flat look. “You’re stuck.”

“Since the party. Since magic... fled the city, when the moon arrived. I have no power without it." She stared at her hooves with solemn resignation. “I tried everything I could, tonight.” She looked away. “I almost got everypony killed.”

Gilda rubbed her temples with her claw, staring at the floor. She was silent for a time, just thinking. She moved her claw away from her head, staring intently at her talons. “Look… I don’t mean… I’m not...” She turned red, fumbling for words. “...the Guard wants me dead. I would’ve bled out, without you here.” She looked Sunny in the eyes. “I’m not saying I’m not grateful.”

Sunny was silent, rather unbelieving her eyes.

Gilda looked away. “Thank you.”

Sunny smiled. “...You’re very welcome.”

• • • •

Gilda looked to the kitchen as two hefty plates clattered onto the front countertop. Joe gave a little salute from the far end of the room, to which Gilda returned a proud middle finger, waving it about the air like a kid with a pinwheel. Joe laughed, shaking his head as he turned to busy himself by the coffee maker.

Gilda placed her claw by her side, clacking against the diner floor. “So...” She turned to watch as Sunny gathered up Joe’s medical supplies and placed them back into the First Aid box. “...when are you gonna tell him?”

Sunny was silent as she closed shut the box, gazing forward with a saddened look. "It's... complicated, Gilda. He has history with the princess. He doesn't with Sunny."

"...What does that matter?"

Sunny blushed, staring at the floor. "I... we..." She stammered a bit, searching for the words.

Gilda’s eyes widened. "Whoa whoa... you and Joe?!"

She smiled, unable to look Gilda in the eye as she absently drew circles on the floor with her hoof. "We kissed, just as the storm began..." Her voice dropped, her blush deepening. "I know, I should tell him. It's just..." She sighed. "...i-it would change everything."

Gilda gave an aloof shrug. "You're only gonna make it worse, the longer you drag this out."

Sunny’s ears fell. "I know."

Gilda chuckled to herself, shaking her head. “Gods… he is going to have a heart attack.” She turned a smile on Sunny, one that evaporated as she took in the mare’s unsettled expression. “Aw, come on. It’s Joe! He’s not gonna care.”

Sunny rubbed the back of her head with her hoof, looking to the floor.

Gilda rolled her eyes, grasping the First Aid box from Sunny’s hooves as she started for the front. “The sooner the better, is all I’m sayin’.”

Sunny sighed, following the young griffon to the front counter. Gilda took her usual seat, making a strained grabbing motion toward the coffee mugs as Joe picked one off the rack with the top of his hoof.

Sunny sat one seat closer to Gilda than usual.

• • • •

Joe poured three half-cups of coffee, sliding one over toward Gilda and dashing his own with a splash of cream. He frowned as he stared into the small tin of maple syrup he kept under the counter. Empty.

With no small measure of lofty finesse, Joe poured Sunny’s coffee into the tin, swirling it around for a bit before pouring it back into the mug. He placed it beside her plate with a small frown. “That’s all she wrote, Sunbeam.”

Sunny smiled, taking a small sip. “That’s quite alright. I’m growing to like it with a little bite.”

Gilda’s plate clacked against the countertop as she tore into her meal with feral abandon. Joe nodded with broad satisfaction at the sight, leaning in to take a bite out of his warm omelette. He hadn’t realized how spectacularly famished he’d been. It was true what they said about hunger being the best spice; the light, fresh crunch of cucumber and tomato brought a wide, delighted grin across his face. By Celestia, he’d needed that.

Joe’s eye caught Sunny’s hesitation as she moved her head at different angles around her plate, plainly unsure how and where to take a bite. Joe grinned, placing his coffee on the counter. Sunny turned a little red at his glance.

“...You’ve never eaten without your magic, have you?”

“Oh, I um...” Sunny opened her mouth, motioning toward the side of the omelette before slowing to a stop, closing her mouth with a pouty frown. She placed a hoof on her cheek with an embarrassed smile. “...goodness. I've seen it done so many times, I never imagined it would feel so strange in practice.”

Joe gave an exaggerated little ‘what are we going to do with you?’ look as he pushed his plate aside. “It’s all in the lips, Sunbeam. You gotta kinda rest your chin along the inside of the plate, and put your upper lip a little ahead of the lower.”

Sunny’s muzzle scrunched at the thought.

“It’s not exactly, you know...” He gestured his hoof in the air, searching for the word, “...fancy, granted. Took me a while to get used to it myself.”

Sunny gave an unsure look as she moved her head closer to the plate.

“It’s kinda nice, actually! You don’t taste that little tingle of magic this way.”

She attempted a small, somewhat messy nibble along the corner of the omelette, turning red as she wiped her mouth with a napkin.

Joe moved a bit closer, putting his head down on the opposite side of her plate. “Right up close, like this.”

Sunny reluctantly followed his lead.

“A bit more, so you’re in striking distance.” Joe made a dorky mock-chomp, his head lifting off the table a bit. He failed to hold back a wide grin.

Sunny moved inward, hovering over the plate, then turned her gaze up at Joe. Joe looked back, expectantly, waiting for her to try a bite. She placed her hoof gently on the counter, and brought a swift and soft kiss to Joe’s lips. His eyes widened in surprise for a moment before he relaxed, and leaned inward. Sunny drew him back, quite slowly, before breaking the kiss with a warm smile. Joe caught himself before he fell onto Sunny’s plate, giving a laugh as he leaned back behind the counter. He stared into her unsightly, bloodshot, sleep-starved, beautiful eyes, feeling a giddy excitement he hadn’t enjoyed for quite some time.

Joe glanced in Gilda’s direction, seeing her sticking out her tongue in mild disgust, bits of food stuck around her beak. “Geeeaah.” She turned to face forward, taking a long sip of her coffee. “You two are disgustingly cute.”

There was a flicker of pink as another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, closer to the castle than before. Joe glanced over his shoulder, watching in silence as it slowly melted toward the ground.

“By the stars, that is creepy.” He glanced between Sunny and Gilda. “Anypony want to hazard a guess as to what in Tartaurus is going on out there?”

Gilda swallowed another bite, pointing a talon at Joe. “My money’s on ‘actual demon.’ There's a couple in the First Texts that got banished to the pits of Irkalla like two thousand years ago. Maybe some pissed-off demigod wormed their way free." She glanced over at Sunny. "Didn’t that three-headed guard dog just wander off a year or so back?"

Sunny finished chewing her bite, and shook her head. "Every being in Tartaurus resides there by choice, as a sort of penance. I don't imagine it was any of them."

Gilda balked. "Yeah? What about the demon who killed Anzu? Pretty sure Siris the God-Slayer didn’t go gentle into that good night."

Sunny took a strategic sip of her coffee. "I… I am quite sure it wasn't Siris who did this."

"How in kalla could you know?"

"I... well..." She look guiltily at Joe, meeting his eyes. "I met her. She wasn't quite the monster the legends made her out to be."

Gilda’s threw her claws into the air, like it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. "She killed our god!"

Sunny gave Gilda a sympathetic look. "The Age of Discord was a very... complicated time. Things did not happen quite the way they are remembered."

Joe held up a hoof, giving Sunny a baffled look. "Whoa whoa, the Age of Discord was, what, two thousand years ago?"

Sunny gave a sheepish nod.

“You’re two thousand years old?!”

Sunny looked into her coffee. She spoke quietly. "I'm older than I look."

Joe ran a hoof through his mane, trying to wrap his head around the very idea. His eyes darted from her eyes to her hooves to her ears, and a half-dozen other tells. By all appearances, she was telling the truth. "And... you still can't tell me how."

Sunny was silent, staring into her coffee with palpable guilt.

Joe held a hoof against his horn for a moment before giving a soft shake of the head. “Look… it’s fine. I’m just a little, you know...”

“...surprised?”

Joe gave her a slightly annoyed look that said ‘that is the understatement of the bucking millennia.’ He cleared his throat, leaning back a bit. "So, it’s not a demon, but it can control minds, and move the moon, and…” He looked down at his plate as he recalled the memory from earlier that night. “...turn dust into statues and lollipops.” He glanced between Sunny and Gilda, at a loss.

Gilda pointed to the shaker of sugar on the other side of the counter. “You mean sugar, right? It uses sugar.”

Joe nodded. “Well… we saw it turn charcoal dust into sugar, back there in the castle. I couldn’t tell you how, but it happened. A lot of what it could do doesn't even seem possible.” He prodded at his omelette with a distant look. “At one point it wrapped me in its tendrils and pulled me into its mind.” He gave a baffled shrug. “I was in its head, Gilda.”

Sunny gasped, holding a hoof in front of her mouth.

“Pinkie is still in there, just… trying to keep it all together. I-I talked with her.”

Sunny dropped her hoof to her chest, a relieved smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Pinkie’s okay?”

Joe nodded, glancing over at Gilda. There was a clack and Gilda put her cup of coffee down, staring back out the window. “Yeah. I saw her too. That thing was one chomp away from devouring me whole, and Pinkie reigned it in with a...” Gilda rubbed her cheek with an odd look. "...a uh..." She turned to look Joe in the eyes. “...well, she reigned it in. Pinkie’s scared as hell in there, Joe.”

Joe ran a hoof through his mane. “I… honestly, any other mare would’ve gone insane by now.” He couldn’t help but scoff as he thought back to the birthday gift. “Pinkie’s throwing it a birthday party.”

Sunny placed her hoof on Joe’s. “She’s throwing what a party?”

Joe swallowed. “It looked like a kid. A little moori kid, with the power to do whatever he could imagine.” He looked into Sunny’s eyes. “The only reason I got that door open was because Pinkie tricked it into undoing the lock.”

Sunny’s ears fell, likely recalling the harrowing ordeal. “Moori have always been the children of the moon. They share a close connection to the lunar that is quite unlike any other race.”

“Well, it called Discord its ‘moon buddy,’ whatever the buck that means.” Joe gestured toward the window, to the filtering moonlight that poured through the gaps of cloud. “And I mean, obviously, it brought the moon here for some reason.”

Gilda swirled her coffee. “Come to think of it, this does reek of Discord, doesn’t it? Neverending party? Candy furniture? Brainwashing ponies?” She gave a broad, ‘wanna fill in the blanks here, doll?’ gesture to Sunny.

Sunny stared into her coffee. “That was my first thought, but I don’t believe it was him. He fled the dining hall in a hurry, and that… growth, we saw, just didn’t fit his style.” She took a small sip, mulling over the thought. “I believe it’s rather more complicated than that.” She glanced at Joe. “Do you remember the name Luna spoke, when she was chastising it in the bedroom?”

Joe slowly chewed another bite of his omelette. “ ‘Only?’ I thought she said?”

“ ‘Oni.’ It’s from an old dragon’s tale about a mad god.”

Gilda scraped some food off the inside of her beak with a talon. “It’s got dragon teeth, I can tell you that much.” She pulled away her talon and rubbed the back of her beak with her tongue. “And eyes, and ears, and that creepy-ass lizard tongue.” She shuddered. “Didn’t even know the dragons had gods.”

Sunny sighed. “Nobody really knows much about them, unfortunately. Even the most docile of their kind are far from forthcoming.” She looked between Gilda and Joe. “The story spoke of another world, where war and strife had caused their magic to ‘awaken,’ and turn against them.” She shook her head. “It had always seemed far too absurd to be anything more than a fairy tale.”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. ‘Evil magic?’ Come on.” She crossed her arms. “I liked my explanation better.”

Joe stared at Sunny with dread. “That’s… uh… something like that could never actually happen, right?”

Sunny’s ears drooped. “When the moon fell, and that being appeared, I saw a… a vision, from a very long time ago. Dragons fleeing a world that was reaching out for them, as if to pull them back.” She looked to her hooves. “It didn’t seem real at the time, but… I suppose it’s possible.”

Joe held a hoof against his horn, moving it around the back of his head as he processed the thought. “Isn’t magic just... one entity? Like, I dunno, gravity? Or heat?”

“I thought so as well.” Sunny looked into Joe’s eyes, then into Gilda’s. “I have felt the subtle will of magic, in every spell I have ever woven. There is a life to it, certainly, but it is a long way from anything approaching self-awareness.” She fiddled with the handle of her coffee mug. “The thought alone is… deeply unsettling.”

Joe swallowed. “How in Equestria can we possibly fight something like that?”

Sunny looked down to the two tiny pendants that hung from her neck. “These pendants collect and focus certain forms of magic. They aren’t nearly as strong as the Elements of Harmony, but with Pinkie as she is, and the Elements where they are… it’s all we have to work with.” She moved her hoof under the two gems, lifting the empty crystals into the air. “They haven’t seen use since the Age of Discord, before the Elements were first discovered. Sadly, they are almost entirely empty now.”

Joe gave a dejected nod, glancing at Gilda. “She gave Princess Pinkie a fairly decent blast from those pendants, back in the castle. The light caused her tendrils to evaporate into sugar.”

Gilda grinned. “Now we’re talking!” She gestured toward Sunny with her mug. “We’ll just charge those pretty little bastards back up to full strength, lure that monster out with a kiddy pool of cotton candy, and kill it!” She slammed her fist on the countertop, rattling all three plates. Her eyes darted between Joe and Sunny’s startled expressions. “...Pinkie would survive that, right?”

Sunny’s eyes stared forward for a moment before looking back into Gilda’s eyes. “I truly couldn’t say. If our magic disperses its magic, then… maybe?”

“Maybe.” Gilda sighed, rubbing her temples.

Joe gestured toward the dangling necklaces. “What would it take to get those pendants back to full strength?”

Sunny frowned. “They collect life, being lived.” She placed both gemstones on the counter, between the three of them. “Joy, companionship, fear, anger, comfort, thrill...” She sighed. “...love, loss.” She looked into Joe’s eyes. “It would take years to experience that much genuine emotion.”

Gilda smirked. “Pshh, I can probably scare plenty of fear and anger out of those lame-brained party ponies out there.” She grasped the blue pendant with her talon, and pushed the orange one between Joe and Sunny. “In the meanwhile, you two could lock yourselves in a room and get to ‘filling the love gem,’ if you catch my drift.”

Sunny’s jaw fell open. “Uggh! Gilda!”

Joe blurted out a laugh. “Hey, I kinda like that plan!”

Sunny’s beet-red cheeks puffed in frustration. “T-that wouldn’t even work! You would never be able to produce true love, or true anger, or any of that, if your driving desire was ‘gaming’ the pendant.”

Gilda shrugged. “Well, that’s what we gotta do. Any bright ideas, Sunbutt?”

Sunny’s mouth drew into a long, flat line as she gazed out the pattering diner window. “It would have to be real. We would need to just... live in the moment, embracing every hint of drama we could find.”

The diner fell silent as each strained to imagine some way to cram as much life into as short a time as possible. All that could be heard was the pattering of rain on the diner windows, the distant rumble of thunder, and the steady, pulsing beat of music from the unending bloc party that dominated the nearby apartment building. Even a storm like this had not been enough to stop the vast celebration that consumed the city.

Joe blinked, turning his eyes on Gilda. Gilda smiled, looking over at Sunny. Sunny placed her hooves on the countertop, rising to a stand as she surveyed her friends like warriors before a siege. Her face was solemn and serious, her posture radiating a strength and dignity one could scarcely imagine a mare as small as she was capable.

Sunny’s voice was firm and resolute, spoken with an unwavering certainty that filled the heart with courage, and purpose.

“We are going to party our asses off.”

Author's Note

:facehoof:

I'm putting off that Pinkie/Gilda scene until next chapter, where it'll fit a little better.

Uh so sorry for not updating in three frigging months! Heh! Whoops! There was a perfect storm of job search stuff, Christmas family stuff, writer's block, Magfest (hung out with UberUrza and played the hell out of this bafflingly amazing Japanese tandem drum game), and a whole heapin' helpin' of other I R L shenannigans. Been a bit hectic. Plus, I rewrote the intro to this chapter like four times, because it never seemed to come out right.

Future chapters should be back on my once-a-month schedule, hopefully.

Also: If you didn't already see, I got some freaking FAN ART.

High-resolution version here.

Rikmach commissioned this magnificent masterwork from Inkwell. I am just... I am beside myself with giddiness. A THING I WROTE GOT FANART FJAKFDJALF

Huuuuge thanks to Luminary, as ever, for pre-reading this ghastly thing. Eakin too! Though I kinda pushed this one out the door before he could really get his hands dirty.

Comment! Tell me what you liked, and what you didn't! Or anything! A lone :facehoof: ! Comments are what keep this ol' train a-chuggin'

Safe

Previously, on Sugarfree...

Safe
• • • •

White lines swirled in the bathroom sink as Joe scrubbed his mane clear of the last lingering streaks of sugar. He let the faucet run for a bit as he placed his brush aside, basking in the warmth of the steam as it curled across his muzzle and wrapped around his horn. A long, indulgent moment passed before Joe pressed shut the lever with the back of his hoof, staring distantly into the cloudy whirlpool of the sink. It felt good. It felt very, very good.

Quite slowly, Joe brought his gaze to his reflection in the mirror, and the long, jagged crack that ran the length of his horn. The fracture had grown another half-inch since the ordeal in the castle, winding further down the bone to disappear under his fur. He kept waiting for the throbbing pain to finally fade. It had been hours now.

Only once had Joe had felt pain as deep and bracing as that he'd endured in the royal palace that night. He’d been a colt, bandaged from hoof to horn in an overlarge hospital bed, staring at the wall as the throbbing headache consumed him like a storm. It colored every thought and want and feeling he had for weeks, letting nothing through. Long, pounding, miserable weeks.

A younger, angrier part of Joe stirred at the memory. Even after all this time, he was still forced to suffer for the tiniest, most pathetic sputter of magic. It wasn’t fair. He wanted to feel cheated for what the world had done to him. He wanted to resent the very elements for driving him mad, and leaving him broken. The thought took him someplace old, and ugly.

Joe met his eyes in the mirror, catching the faintest wisp of light drift along his peripherals. It was a small, invisibly dim little thing, but it was there, hanging listlessly in the air without weight or reflection. Words. Tiny little words, written flat across the face of reality. Joe blinked, half-expecting them to vanish, but there they stayed, patiently waiting for his attention.

Wasn’t fair.

Joe’s ears fell flat against his head. It couldn’t be. It had to be a trick of the light, or some exhaustion-fueled hallucination, or… or naked insanity, brought on by his superconscious frolic through Princess Pinkie's mind-bakery. Anything else. A dozen frenzied explanations ran through Joe’s head, and a dozen coiling words wound themselves to life before his eyes.

Trick of the light.

Imagining things.

Going nuts.

Joe's jaw clenched as a wave of dread washed across his stomach. The words were real. He wasn’t imaging that. He could literally see his own self-delusion stamped across the air, plain as Celestia’s sun. Just like in the old days. Just like little White Lie used to see.

Joe dipped his head, staring at the floor as he struggled to process the very possibility. There was no precedent for what White Lie had gone through. You weren’t supposed to survive a shattered horn, much less live with one. He shouldn’t have made it a day, but he’d made it a life, holding on to that little flicker until it was a flame, until he’d built something real and wonderful with ponies he trusted and cared for. He couldn’t lose that. He couldn’t go back to how it was.

The frazzled stallion glanced back into the mirror, then to the words, watching as each unraveled at his attention. Little White Lie had learned early that self-delusion wouldn't last when you could see it for what it was. It needed you blind, and ignorant. He watched with heart-wrenching clarity as the words faded, one after the other, washed away by the truth. Only the first remained.

Wasn’t fair.

Joe sighed, staring back into the sink. There was a will behind those words, he had learned. An impossible, invisible something that could pluck ideas out of the air and make them real. It ran through the dirt and the magic and the sky, beneath every one and every thing. Little White Lie had seen one, tiny, useless, insignificant little sliver of that living Harmony, every minute of every day. It had wants. It needed things done, and the world would tie itself in knots to make those wants a reality.

Joe stared at the words that hung in the air before him, feeling an old, familiar helplessness. The world wanted one thing from him, and he was built to give it up.

The truth.

The truth was that Joe didn’t feel cheated, or angry, or wronged by the world, he felt relieved. He felt blessed. He felt unbelievably, overwhelmingly, infuriatingly grateful toward the elemental will he'd spent his entire adult life resenting.

Sunny would have died if magic had not set aside the impossible to answer his desperate plea, back there in the castle. She would have fallen to her death, and Joe wouldn't have been able to do a single thing about it. For all the baker prided himself on living free of the guiding hoof of Harmony, he’d needed a miracle back in that castle. And he’d been given one.

Joe wiped his mane dry with a large dish towel and hung it over the doorknob, stepping quietly out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. He turned to climb a small set of stairs beside the trot-in freezer, hearing the loud saw of Gilda’s snoring as he popped his head into the tiny attic that sat atop the building. The cramped little space was more of a decorative touch to the Canterlot skyline than a proper room, but it was quiet, and warm, and just about the only part of the diner that didn’t smell of grease and donuts. With his apartment in spell-singed tatters, it would have to do for a place to sleep.

Across the floor lay every blanket and towel Joe had been able scare up from the storage basement, each set across the other in a muddled patchwork of bedding. Gilda lay just beyond the top of the staircase, draped in a tablecloth as her sizable body rose and fell with each heavy breath. Just opposite was Sunny, her side pressed tight against a rain-cooled window that ran the length of the inclined roof. There was room enough for one more, just between the two.

As quietly and delicately as the lumbering stallion could manage, Joe stepped between Gilda’s wing and her head, briefly rearing onto his forehooves to swivel his bulk over her body. He gently dropped his hind legs to the ground with nothing but a slight creak of the floorboard, turning an uneasy look to the slim space beneath his barrel. It would be tight.

With the grace of a blind, exhausted horse, Joe lowered himself onto his knees and dropped his big begobbled flank to the warm, inviting bedding below. He felt the soft blankets pull close against his chest, chasing away the chill of his fur in the most wonderful way. He reveled in the heavenly sensation with a wide grin, letting himself relax.

He felt his right hip press ever-so-slightly into Gilda’s side. With a lazy bat from her bushy lion tail, Gilda rolled from her side to flop onto her stomach, closing shut her beak with a loud smack. Joe held his breath and his gaze as she settled, her snoring grumbling into a low, rhythmic purring. He sighed with relief, turning his head forward and quietly lowering his chin to the floor.

Joe closed his eyes, letting his attention drift and wander until it stuck on the persistent discomfort of his side. If he had just the slightest bit of room between his flank and Gilda’s rump, he'd actually be comfortable. Joe scooched a half-hoof to the left.

Right into Sunny’s hip.

• • • •

Sunny’s eyes flew open with a sharp and sudden gasp, a flood of alarm washing across her body. For a single, heart-stopping moment, she was back in that frigid room, buried deep in a void of black. Something had her. Something was right here and it had her leg.

She jolted away from the sensation as quickly as she could, slamming her flank into the wall and banging her horn against the glass of the window. Her breath caught in her throat as she tried and failed to retreat further, finding only wood and glass and blinding black. There was nowhere else to go!

Panic gripped the minute mare’s heart as she frantically scanned the dark, her tail locking with tension and her fur standing on end. There was nothing, all around her. Then that nothing moved.

Sunny yelped as a large, looming figure drifted to life just beside her. It raised a limb, quite suddenly. Sunny tensed, frozen with shock.

“Oh goddess, Sunny, I’m sorry.”

She held her breath, not daring to blink as sharp panic crashed into scattered confusion. There was something familiar in that rough, weary voice. Something simple, and strong, and safe.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t think.”

She felt it come back to her, bit by bit. The party, the moon, the sealed room. This tiny little body.

His hold. His kiss.

Joe.

Sunny let out her breath, feeling her heart pound as she lowered herself onto her flank. She laid her cheek against the glass, feeling the push and pull of air steady her racing pulse. Her eyes began to adjust to the dim moonlight, bringing his features into view.

It’s just Joe.

The looming stallion put down his hoof, a mortified look set across his face. “I… look, I-I’m going to sleep downstairs. I thought I could squeeze between everypony and...” He turned to place a strategic step between Gilda’s wing and her head. “...I-I just forgot.”

Sunny moved as he rose his left leg, grasping his tail between her teeth to hold him in place. Joe jostled as a firm resistance halted his forward motion. He turned his head, hoof still in the air, bringing a confused look to Sunny. She let his tail fall from her mouth, looking to the floor. “Joe, I… didn’t mean anything by it. I was just startled. Really.” Her mane fell over her left eye, curling against the soft bedding below. “It’s just… I...” She looked away. “...It’s been a very long time since I’ve let somepony quite this close.”

Joe placed his hoof to the floor, cautiously backing into the middle of the room to sit beside Sunny. A healthy distance stood between them as he slowly offered his foreleg. She smiled, reaching out to grasp it with her own, and guide it to her cheek. Just as she had in the rain. She felt him stroke her fur, as gently as he could.

"Very very?"

She closed her eyes, pressing back against his soft touch. "Very very."

Joe made a quiet sound. An abrupt end to an abrupt start to a question he couldn't bring himself to ask. He broke his gaze, falling silent.

Sunny's ears fell flat against her head. She knew she should be smart, and watch what she said, but it felt a lie. Joe had taken more on faith than she had any right to ask, and still he refused to push. How she must seem to him; a mess of nerves and fears and secrets.

“...Longer than I ever meant.” She felt the words tumble out of her mouth without a thought, but made no effort to stop them. “A century, at first. Then two." She drifted away, just the tiniest bit, breaking the touch. “I just… I didn’t feel like I had it in me to start it all over again. It didn't feel like I could make it new again.” She looked away. “There were days I wondered if I'd loved it all away, a thousand times over.”

Joe said nothing.

Sunny fixed her eyes on her hooves, not daring to sneak a glance. “...I don’t believe I’d ever felt quite so alone.”

Joe’s voice was almost a whisper. “What changed?”

She closed her eyes and smiled, calling to mind the beaming eyes of a small, eager purple unicorn. “A friend. A little filly.” Her eyes drifted open. “She needed guidance, from somepony strong and warm and kind. Somepony far better than I had become.” She distantly rubbed her bandage with her hoof. “I don’t believe she realizes what a wonderful thing that was for me.”

She saw Joe’s hoof edge beside her own. “I’d like to meet that little filly, one day.”

Sunny felt a knot in her throat. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t make a sound. How many nights had her little student spent at Donut Joe’s Diner, sharing dandelions and donuts with her little baby brother? How many cups of coffee had she brought to the rising of a new dawn, eager to share a grown-up drink with a grown-up friend?

Sunny brought her gaze slowly to Joe’s hoof, then to his leg, then to his chest. Her resolve wavered at his jaw. “Joe… please believe that I want to tell you everything, and… a-and I will, I promise I will. It’s just…” She pressed shut her eyes. “...There would be such a dreadful distance between us.”

Her voice faltered as she felt his fur brush along her jaw, light as a breeze. His touch trailed to the tip of her chin, gently lifting her head with the tip of his hoof. She felt his warm breath against her lips. He lingered, for a moment, breathing in, and out. In, and out. Letting her know he was there. Showing her where he wanted to be.

She heard the blankets rustle as he leaned forward, in rhythm of his breathing, to press his lips against hers. That scared, startled part of her mind was silent as she lost herself in a soft and expected touch. She opened her eyes, watching as he gently broke the kiss and lowered her chin. He grinned, staring at her with those big, smiling, emerald eyes. “Hundreds of years to choose, and you pick the shlub who runs the donut shop.” He shook his head. “You’ve gotta get out more, Sunbeam.”

She smiled, brushing her mane behind her ear as she lowered her gaze. “...They’re very good donuts.”

Joe’s grin grew wider, and wider. Sunny couldn’t help but do the same. She watched with growing calm as the rough-hewn stallion wiggled his flank against the back wall and laid on his side, facing the window. He glanced up at Sunny. “I’ll be careful, don’t worry.”

She looked to her hooves, feeling more than a little guilty for the trouble.

“I wasn’t thinking before.” He gently leaned his back against Gilda’s side, pushing up the blankets with his hooves to form a small barrier of bunched cloth between his spot and Sunny’s.

She stepped away from the window, looking to the blankets, then to Joe. She watched in silence as he tucked his legs under his barrel and let out a long, booming yawn. He laid his head to the ground, closed his eyes, and relaxed. Sunny wondered if he was always so still when he laid to rest, or if this was for her sake.

Sunny quietly settled into the bedding, turning her head to watch the rain patter against the glass. She listened for a time, letting the soft hum of white noise ease the tension from her body. There was one thing she wanted more than the world, at that moment. One thing she feared and needed with equal intensity. Experience told her that such things were rare, and precious, but she was afraid.

Sunny turned to look at Joe. His face was slack with the exhausted resignation of a long and trying day at an end. She watched his powerful chest rise and fall with a steady rhythm, his brown mane tussled over his horn and his cheek. She could feel the slightest hint of warm air against her ear with each breath he took.

She scooched to the right.

Her side pressed lightly against Joe's chest, rousing him from near sleep. The rugged stallion opened his eyes a bit, looking down at her with surprise, then, slowly, contented delight. He didn’t budge. He just watched.

Sunny closed her eyes, leaning against the firm muscle of his chest. She felt the warmth of his soft fur flush across her body, chasing away the chill of the night and drawing her closer. She was smiling. She hadn’t noticed that until now. She was smiling ear to ear, more at peace than she’d been for a very long time.

She felt Joe’s jaw brush slightly against the base of her horn. That small, cross-shaped scar buzzed with sensitivity as his fur tickled across the tender skin. Her thoughts drifted as she watched the rain sleek down the glass, water gleaming against the moonlight. It brought to mind an image she'd been avoiding since first she saw it: shimmering blood, trickling slowly across the palace floor.

The strange, unsettling dream from Luna’s bedroom stuck in Sunny’s mind. It had been the first time in a thousand years she had seen her own blood. On any other day, she would have thought it some senseless abstraction of the mind. On any other day it would have been impossible. Today she’d learned to be cautious of that word.

“That dream, back in Luna’s room…” Sunny kept her eyes forward, staring through the window to the distant Canterlot castle. A thin arcing barrier of rainbow magic shimmered against the rainfall, keeping dry the roofless castle. She glanced upward, to the amber muzzle resting above her horn. “...have you had it before?”

Joe’s mouth flattened, then curved into a shaky smile. She felt him heat with a blush. “Hah… i-it was just the one time, I swear. I don’t... you know, think about you and the princess, like that, all the time...”

Sunny turned a little red as the mortifying scene flickered across her mind. “...Not that one.”

Joe’s smile faded, very slowly. He met her eyes, but couldn’t hold the look for long before glancing away. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened once more. “...Every now and again.” A little too quickly, his smile redoubled with a disarming look. “It’s just a dream, Sunny.”

Sunny’s ears flattened at the sight. She knew a practised smile when she saw one. Joe was far better at putting on a face than most, but the eyes gave him away. She felt a tinge of disappointment at the deception. “You’re a good liar.”

Joe’s smile dropped, inch by inch, until it was well and truly gone. He was quiet for a time, just laying still, listening to the rain. Long moments passed in silence before he spoke again. “Dad told me nopony had ever seen the princess bleed, before that night. Not ever.” His gaze set forward, staring through the window. She could see his eyes tracking streaks of glimmering rainwater as they wound down the glass. “I’m the first to ever really hurt her, in all the history there is. In all the wars she’s won and all the monsters she's fought, I’m the one that hurt her.” He turned his cheek into the blanket, covering his eye with stands of his mane. “When I’m dead and gone and nopony can remember a thing about me, she'll still have the scar I gave her.” His voice was steady, like he’d said it a thousand times before. "It's all she'll have to show for everything she’s given us.”

Sunny gently reached her hoof up to brush back his hair. His eyes were heavy and wet. She closed her eyes, nuzzling his jaw with her nose. "That was a long time ago. You would never hurt somepony like that." Her voice was almost a whisper. “Things change.”

She felt him take in a deep, steeling breath, pulling away just a bit. “Not her.”

She lowered her head against his neck, closing the distance once more. Not letting him retreat. “You think her so delicate.”

Joe was silent.

“Do you pity her?”

Joe’s chest rumbled with a low sigh. “Of course not. She’s a goddess.” His eyes closed. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Sunny could feel the warmth radiating from his fur. “You matter.” She pressed her cheek against his neck. “You matter very much.”

Joe said nothing.

“Hold me.”

She felt a steady warmth against her shoulder as he exhaled, drawing his leg gently against her side. The touch was slow and expected, replacing the heat of his breath with the brush of his fur. She brought her hoof to lay atop his, hugging it snugly against her chest.

He drew her in, surrounding her tiny body completely. She could scarcely remember the last time she’d been held like this. When she was whole, there wasn’t a stallion in Equestria large enough to so envelop her. She wanted to stay there forever, wrapped tight in the safety of his strength.

It was the most ridiculous thing. She was as fragile and mortal as she’d ever been, run from her home and her city by an impossible god she couldn’t hope to defeat. In a single day, she’d faced true death twice. It had been the single most harrowing and vulnerable day of her three thousand year life, with the worst yet to come.

And she felt safe.

Author's Note

I'M ALIVE. Been busy as sin. Details here.

This was actually the first portion of a much larger chapter, but it just kept getting longer and longer, so I split them in two. Chapter 15's already 6,330 words in, so hopefully, it won't take another thousand years to come out.

Huge, ginormous thank you to Luminary for pre-reading this chapter after I disappeared for twelve thousand years. If you haven't checked it out yet, Lum and Jake the Ginger have been working together on Unbound Skies, aaaaand it's completely amazing.

Comment! Comments are the WIND AT MY SAILS.

Gildaville

Previously, on Sugarfree...

Gildaville
• • • •

Gilda was home.

She wasn’t sure why that seemed so strange and exciting, but it was. A smile pulled at the edge of the young griffon's beak as she filled her lungs with crisp mountain air, basking in the open silence of the remote mining town she called home. No galloping hooves, no giggling fillies, no tooth-grinding musical numbers; just the empty quiet of the dawn. For the first time in what felt like ages, Gilda was happy.

With a satisfied crick of the neck, the roosting catbird brought her gaze to the well-worn sketchbook wrapped in her claws. She rose her feather quill to line in the next little detail, but found her pen slowing to a stop as ink touched paper. Gilda stared vacantly at the page for a long, baffled moment, turning the pad on its side, then upside-down, then rightside-up, trying to discern the image that stretched across its face. There was something there, certainly, but she couldn’t quite seem to grasp it. It had a shape that was no shape, lined with slippery detailing that drove the eye off the page. Gilda had the oddest sense that the drawing didn't know what it was any more than she did.

With a scowl, the young griffon glared over the top of her sketchbook, scanning the town below for whatever elusive whatsit she might have thought to put to paper. From her perch atop the crumbling temple bell tower, she could see the whole of her hometown of Tarsus — the yawning entrance to the gem mine, the half-collapsed jailhouse, the sun-bleached butchery, the picked-over general store — everything in its rightful place, same as always. Same as it would ever, forever be.

Gilda’s quill drooped as she rested her head on her claw, her gaze drifting steadily upward to follow the winding road from the base of the tower to the outskirts of town. The dusty street was lined with long-abandoned, weather-worn cottages, each growing darker and greener as brick became moss, and moss became thick, tangled overgrowth. A scant few years had passed since Gilda had flown the coop for Canterlot, and already the vast Knotwood wilds at town’s edge had grown into the streets with brazen impunity. Empty neighborhoods sank deep into the mossy forest floor, slowly splintering apart as Knotwood's strangling vines grew tighter and thicker by the day. Someday soon the whole town would be swallowed by those woods, and the only home she’d ever known would vanish into the green.

Gilda looked away, her beak clenching with impotent rage. There was a time when she used to cut those vines, and pull up those roots, and stomp out the little budding saplings that dug into the soil like ticks, but she wasn’t around to do that anymore. Gilda was someone's wife now. Gilda had responsibilities. Gilda von Godric was a duchess of the Grand Griffon Confederacy whether she liked it or not, and royalty wasn’t the sort of gig you could just quit. Those blathering, ancient buzzards on the elder council were watching her every move, and they’d been more than willing to shackle her to some dim-witted duke if it meant keeping her close.

Gilda’s claw tightened around the feather quill as she thought back to the arranged wedding, and all the infuriating, mind-numbing posturing she’d been forced to endure for the sake of ceremony. All that back-patting and fake-ass congratulatory BS, piled on by high-society suck-ups whose names she couldn’t pretend to recall. It made her want to gag. They kept saying how beautiful she looked and how proud they were and how happy she simply must be to marry him. The Godric. Oh, what wonderful father he’ll be!

OoooOOooo, you know what I heard from Rainbow? Grumpy Gilda thinks dukes are icky! She’d much rather marry a duchess!

Gilda’s eye twitched as the memory of Pinkie’s shrill voice bounced around her head. She couldn’t recall when or where the aggravating party pony had blared out those words, but they filled Gilda with an inexplicable shame and anger. She felt like a fool for caring what that pudgy dork had to say, but she cared all the same. Her words were stuck in Gilda’s brain like a wad of taffy, stretching further the more she tried to pry it loose. Why couldn’t that dweeb just mind her own damn beeswax?!

With a scowl, Gilda flicked her quill off the edge of the tower, rising from the stone to a stand on all fours. She moved to lob her sketch book aside, eager to take wing and work away the mounting frustration that boiled at her chest. She cast one final glance across the face of the drawing as the pad passed between her claws.

A row of glistening dragon teeth met her gaze.

Gilda’s eagle eyes widened in shock as she stared deep into the razor gaze of Princess Pinkie, the monstrous mare’s fangy grin stretching from one end of the page to the other. That heart-stopping moment in the Canterlot bazaar flashed across Gilda’s mind, so fresh it seemed like yesterday. In a flash, she was bundled tight in those tendrils once more, hopeless and helpless as that hungry, fangy abyss drew her in, inch by horrifying inch.

Gilda dropped the sketchpad like it was on fire, watching with shock as the paper flared against the wind to wind erratically down the side of the tower. She fled, digging her talons into the curved stone ledge and shoving off into the sky, pumping her wings hard and heavy until she’d left the tower far, far behind. She pulled in deep, shuddering breaths of brisk mountain air, feeling her anxiety settle a bit as she sailed over the stretch of writhing overgrowth below. She pushed that ugly moment out of her head with the familiar distraction of flight, losing herself to the sky. It was just a stupid memory. It wasn’t real.

Gilda’s wings locked into a steady glide as she scanned the vine-strangled streets of her town, searching for something — anything — to take her mind off that unholy thing. She wasn’t hungry, but she could eat. It was something to do. She could find something strange and savory from deep within those ancient woods and run it to the ground, gorging herself on self-satisfaction.

A gleam.

Gilda’s eye met another as she focused on a flicker of green light off the cornea of a distant elk. She dipped her wing, turning sharply and swiftly to line up a strike. The dull animal watched with unnatural interest before springing to life and barrelling into the waiting forest as fast as its hooves could carry it. Gilda’s mouth watered as two other elk bolted into view, following close.

Her claws twitched with excitement as she hurled herself toward the looming Knotwood entrance, flexing her wing to cut her speed by half as she neared the ground. The woods were far too thick for flight, but she was rather glad of the challenge. She’d grown soft in those cramped Canterlot streets, surrounded on all sides by safety and sugar-sweet smiles.

Her claws sank shallow into the spongy overgrowth as she hit the forest floor, hind legs pumping as she fought to keep up her speed. She had a good thirty seconds of solid sprint in her before the elk would pull ahead and away, built far better for the long distance than she. This was the moment to pick her mark, and make her play. Her head was clear, her heart was racing, and for the first time all day, she felt wholly and completely awake.

It’s just a dream, Sunny.

Gilda’s eyes darted swiftly between the three galloping beasts, weighing the condition of each by the definition of their muscle and the sheen of their fur. Almost immediately, she ruled out the beast on the far right; its coat battered and its build sickly. With a burst of energy, she closed upon the leader, feeling her tail flick wildly in anticipation.

Gilda had a thought.

Her speed dipped as the young griffon pulled sharply to the right, putting her inches from the gaunt, battered elk at the far end. It seemed to pick up considerable speed at her attention, weaving between branches and under downed trees with trained ability. Gilda grinned, pressing her wings tight against her side as she cleared an overturned log with a lunge, hitting the ground hard and moving with reckless momentum at her mark. Her shoulder landed square against the hard chitin flank of the elk, sending a wave of green flame across its body as the the changeling reared its head with a desperate hiss, revealed for what it was.

Gilda’s claw lashed out in reflex, grasping the bug’s lower jaw to pull it to the ground. The changeling stumbled, losing it footing and its rhythm as Gilda unfurled her wings to hover. She watched it skitter and fall, hard, sliding below her with a screech. The griffon’s paws and claws dropped heavy against the forest floor as she loomed over its barrel, grasping the creature by its side and swiftly rolling it onto its back so that she might look into its freakish compound eyes as she did the deed.

Teeth.

That fangy grin from the bazaar flashed across Gilda’s mind as the drone beamed a creepy, toothy smile in her direction. She stumbled backward, falling hard on her rear as instinct barked at her to turn and flee. Her talons clenched as she fought the memory away, picking herself up off the ground in time to see her prey scamper toward the vine-strangled doors of a mossy tavern. Frustration welled in Gilda's chest as the changeling shifted into a pudgy little lizard thing and squeaked under the doorframe with a cartoonish plock!

With a slash of the talon, Gilda severed the mass of overhanging foliage and shoved the door in with her shoulder. It moved, then stuck. She gritted her teeth as she hurled herself against the wood and roots again and again, breaking apart the entryway just enough to wind her bulk through the break and onto the hardwood floor beyond. Vines strained and snapped against her shoulders as she pulled herself to a stand, cursing to the gods in ways too venomous and blasphemous to recant. She was through, thank the pit.

She stood, breathing heavy as she scanned the sunlit room with hawklike intensity. A shadowy figure dropped from the ceiling with perfect silence, hugging low to the ground as braced for a shift. Gilda tensed, her breath catching as she braced her rear paws against the floor. This was it. The creature would swell into a minotaur or manticore or some gods-forsaken mass of muscle and teeth and it would strike, with desperate abandon.

The room lit green as flames coursed up the changeling’s body, higher and higher, until all that remained was a wide, cylindrical tube of metal. Gilda’s beak fell open in stunned surprise as her prey turned itself into a fricking cannon, its barrel dropping to point directly at her as its fuse burned swiftly into the base. A sound somewhere between a yelp and a squawk escaped Gilda’s beak as the metal buckled and the cannon fired, filling her view with pink.

“Surprise!!”

Light flooded the room with a blast of glitter and confetti, knocking the startled griffon flat on her back in stiff-legged shock. She stared straight ahead for several bewildered moments as her senses dribbled back into her head, blinking with surprise. Impossibly, incredibly, she wasn’t dead.

Gilda craned her neck swiftly downward to survey the damage. She half-expected there to be a gaping hole where her chest used to be, but found instead a thick, fluffy cloud of bubblegum-pink hair, tussling this way and that as its owner nuzzled against her plumage like some attention-starved puppy. Gilda balked, scarcely believing her eyes. There was no mistaking that mane. “P-Pinkie?!”

The hug tightened. “I-I just had to find you! I had to know for sure!!” Pinkie Pie wrapped all four of her legs around Gilda’s bulk, locking into an immovable death grip as she turned two wobbling, tear-stained, ultra-apologetic eyes up to meet Gilda’s. “I’m so sorry about before! I’m so so so so so so so so sorry!!”

Gilda moved her claws to the floor, pulling herself to a slouch. Her claws still shaking from the rush of adrenaline, the young griffon hesitantly wound her talons around Pinkie’s forelegs and pulled, trying to extricate herself the clinging party pony. Pinkie wouldn’t budge, holding tight her hooves with visible strain. “How did you…?” Gilda sighed, letting go as she placed her claws to the floor. She stared with baffled disbelief at the mare buried in her feathers, her gaze drifting from hair to hoof to pudgy little flank. No tendrils, no slitted eyes, no nothing, just regular, dweeby old Pinkie Pie. Only visible difference was a pair of bobbing bumblebee antennae poking out of her poofy mane on two wobbly springs.

Gilda ran her claw through her hair feathers as she tried to wrap her head around the sight. She briefly entertained the notion that this was some really, really top-notch changeling trickery, but that didn't feel true. This felt like Pinkie, and the only thing that felt like Pinkie was Pinkie.

Gilda slid her palm to her forehead in exasperation, each of her long hair feathers jutting at odd angles through her spread talons. “How could you possibly—”

“Oh! Oh oh, right right!!” Pinkie perked up, craning her head to glance about the sunlit tavern before turning back to the griffon in her hooves. “We’re in a dream! We’re in your dream! Grumpy Gilda’s Griffitastic Dreamatorium!!”

Gilda scoffed, folding her arms. “Chyeah, I dream about you aaaall the time, Pinks.”

Pinkie gasped with delight. “Me too!! We’re like sleep sisters, Gilda!“ Pinkie grinned, holding her smile on Gilda’s flat stare for a few moments before giggling. “Buuuuut I’m not part of your dream this time, silly, I’m just visiting!”

Gilda craned her head back with a confused frown. “So… so what, I’m the dream then?” She stared at her claw for a long, contemplative moment before clenching it shut and glaring back at Pinkie, her feathers puffing with embarassed irritation. “T-that’s stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

Pinkie briefly held back a wide, trembling smile before erupting in genuine laughter, her grip loosening enough for the flustered griffon to stand against the wall and awkwardly step out of her hug like a pair of pants. She grasped the mare by the base of the tail, holding her off the ground with one claw while futilely attempting to brush away the glitter with the other. Pinkie grinned, her legs tucked against her body as she slowly rotated in Gilda’s hold. “Well, um, it’s a teeeeny bit complicated but basically I slipped out of the front door of my brain bakery when Snugglebug nodded off during our Super Special Snugtastic Slumber ‘Stravaganza!! I’m out of my mind right now, Gilda!”

Gilda gave a flat stare. “You don’t say.”

Pinkie giggled. “For realsies! My big dragony dragon-faced dragonbody is snuggled up in bed right now, but my mind-ghost is out here! Floating around!! Pinkie projectededed!!! I remembered exactly how to do it from what Snugglebug knew about what Luna knew about hopping around ponies’ dreams! Luna does it all the time! It’s like her super power.”

“Your queen… visits... your dreams?” Gilda leveled an incredulous look at the giddy pony. “You serious?”

“You betcha!! She shoos away all our nightmares and saves our hay-bacon when things get way too real!” She punctuated the last bit with a spooky waggle of her hooves.

Gilda briefly recalled a particularly odd dream she’d had during her first week in Canterlot where she got in a shouting match with Luna when the overbearing windbag apparently mistook her seedy dream about Rainbow for a nightmare that Rainbow was having about her. Gilda had blown the whole thing off as nonsense when she awoke, but it probably explained a thing or two about how poorly the two of them got along at work.

“That’s uh… creepy.” Gilda scratched her cheek with her talon, trying to hide a slight blush. “So we’re both asleep right now?”

“Mm-hm! Which is a big relief because I was maybe a liiittle tiny bit worried that Snugglebug wouldn’t ever go to sleep? Because I’m pretty sure moon ghosts don’t take nappies? But it turns out they do if you really give them the full Pinkie-party slumber funtime experience! We did each other’s hoooooves and told each other secreeeets and talked about our favorite dreeeeeams and Snugglebug said he’d never ever even ever had a dream before! He was so so sad about it!! So I tucked him right in and got him a nice tall glass of warm chocolate milk and read him one of Pound and Pumpkin’s favorite books which I totally knew by heart from the million jillion kerzillion times they wanted me to read it to them to put them to sleep so I knew it would totally work for Snuggles, which it did!! He started nodding off and then I started nodding off cause we both nod with the same noggin so when one of us nods off it actually nods—”

Gilda held her claw over Pinkie’s mouth as she continued her story, muffling her chirping long enough to glance away and mull over the dizzying tale. If this was a dream, and Pinkie was just some a random figment of Gilda’s imagination, there was no guarantee that any of this would make a lick of sense. Dreams were like that. But, if Pinkie was telling the truth, and she was somehow projecting herself into Gilda’s head with some ridiculous dreamwalking magic of Luna’s, then she supposed that was no less absurd than the moon falling from the sky to party down with a bunch of dweeby horses.

Gilda turned her gaze back at the muffled mare, watching her ramble unabated as she recanted the tale with ever-increasing excitement. With an annoyed scowl, Gilda shook the pink pony about by the tail in a doomed effort to shut her up, “Okay just… stop. Stop talking.” Pinkie froze mid-sentence, stiff as a board. Somehow, she stopped rotating as well. “Who the kalla is 'Snugglebug?' ”

“MphmrummphMMMphmr—” Gilda pulled away her hand with a roll of the eyes. “—uper huge and crazy scary with all these tentacles and teeth and crazy rainbow moon magic that makes everypony go party-craz—” Gilda put her hand back over Pinkie’s mouth with a frown.

“Okay, so, the demon.”

Pinkie’s rambling slowed, then came to a gradual muffled stop. Her eyes sank as she slowly and subtly looked away.

Gilda paused, a bit taken aback by the sombre turn. She carried Pinkie to the front of the tavern and placed her onto one of the bar stools, head-first, leaving her in a perfect headstand. The moody catbird took the stool just beside, reaching over the barfront to grasp a bottle, along with two glasses. With a pinch of the beak, she bit off the cork and poured two drinks. “A demon named 'Snugglebug.' ” She shook her head. “Why do I get the feeling that name was your idea?”

Pinkie looked away, still perfectly balanced atop her head. “Well… I don’t know if 'demon’ is the right word for him...”

Gilda’s feathers ruffled. “ 'Unholy pitspawn?' 'Cackling abomination?' ”

Pinkie frowned a frown that should’ve looked like a smile. “He’s… he’s my friend, Gilda.”

Gilda beak opened slightly in a sneer of disgust. She looked as if she was about to launch into a vitriolic tirade, but held her tongue, glancing subtly about the room. “Is that thing here, making you say that?”

Pinkie looked away. “He’s asleep. It’s just me. Really.”

Gilda turned her head a bit, glaring intensely into Pinkie’s eyes. “Then tell me this is a trick. Tell me you’re luring it in with all this lovey-dovey pony crap so you can—”

“—It’s not.” Pinkie gazed into Gilda’s eyes with a look that was at once sympathetic and strikingly serious. “He’s… well, he’s never had a real friend before, Gilda. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get why Luna tried to forget about him when we drove the Nightmare away.”

Gilda slammed her fist down on the countertop, jostling their glasses and sending the bottle toppling to the floor. “That thing imprisoned you in your own idiot head, Stinks!” She jutted her thumb over her shoulder, to the wall at her back where the terrifying sketch of Princess Pinkie inexplicably hung front and center. “That is a real, no-BS, soul-sucking demon, not one of your starry-eyed Ponyville simps! No amount of cupcakes and kisses is going to change the fact that we’re all dead the second that thing gets bored with us!”

Pinkie tucked her head against her chest, rolling slowly onto her back, then onto her rump as she pulled herself upright. She glanced at Gilda with a defeated look. “I know.” She reached for her glass and pulled it close, fiddling with the rim. Her mouth furrowed into a shaky line. “I did everything I could to stop him, back when he… I… had you wrapped up.” Her voice fell quiet. “It almost wasn’t enough.” She looked away. “That poor white pony he tossed into the sky, back in the castle… if it wasn’t for Joe… she would’ve...” Pinkie swallowed, her gaze rising slowly to meet Gilda’s glare. “I know we’ve been super lucky, and I know he might not listen, but I have to try this my way, Gilda.” She looked into her drink. “I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”

Gilda’s expression softened as she watched Pinkie deflate. There was something so purely, arrestingly wrong about a genuine frown on that face. She swallowed, lowering her gaze into her own drink. “...Whatever. Do what you want.” She looked to her claw, clenching shut her fist slowly and tightly. “We’re going to blast that gods-damned thing to dust, Pinks, and I’m going to drag you out of whatever’s left. If getting all buddy-buddy in there keeps you sane until that happens, go nuts.”

Pinkie gave Gilda a startled look.

“I mean, you know...” She flustered, looking into Pinkie’s eye with a tiny, shaky smirk. “...don’t go nuts go nuts, I just mean...”

Pinkie’s eyes widened a bit, her cheeks rising as her mouth closed into a straight line. It was decidedly better than a frown.

“...Stay as bonkers as you are right now, I guess.” Gilda turned visibly red, playing around with her glass with an uncharacteristic nervousness that did not escape Pinkie’s smiling eye. “I like you the way you are.”

Pinkie blinked, mouth slightly agape, before exploding into a wide, beaming smile. Her muzzle bumped against Gilda’s beak. “You like me?!”

Gilda reeled back, her feathery face growing redder and redder as she stammered for words. “A-as if! I don’t— with such a—” She stamped her hind paw, balling her claws into trembling fists. “You know exactly what I mean you dweeb!”

Pinkie pealed with laughter, rolling onto her back to rock about the tabletop as Gilda crossed her arms with a huff. The fuming catbird stole a sideways glance at the perky pony as she chittered with delight, fighting back a relieved smile at the sight. Gilda fixed her hair feathers with practiced disinterest. “So... how long’ve we got in here?”

Pinkie wiped a happy tear from her eye as she laid on the tabletop, staring at the vine-strangled ceiling above with a wide grin. “Um! I dunno! Time gets really wonky in dreams.” She grabbed her hind hooves with her forehooves and started rocking back and forth, eyes trained on a line of drawings that ran the length of the back wall. With one fluid motion, Pinkie rolled all the way into a headstand, facing away from Gilda as she inspected the sketches with perfect balance. “These are really, really good, Gilda!”

Gilda rounded the table and stood on her hind legs, putting her back to the wall as she folded her arms and surveyed the yellowing pages. “Chyeah, they’re pretty awesome, no question ‘bout that. Used to kill a lot of time scratching out these bad boys.” She nodded in the direction of one of the more intricate sketches, depicting a howling timberwolf as its eyes bled green with ephemeral light. “Sometimes I’d see something out there I couldn’t really, like,” She gestured against her forehead with a claw, “Get outta my head, you know? So I’d put it to paper.” Her eyes met the vacant green embers of the timberwolf’s gaze. “Makes you stare at every little detail, over and over, until there’s nothing left to scare you.”

Pinkie flopped her rear over her head, pulling herself upright and forward-facing with a twist. She leaned inward, squinting as she took in each snarling monster and screeching spirit. “Some of these I’ve never ever even ever heard of!” She thrust a hoof at a vaporous creature that fell somewhere between a dragonfly and a porcupine. “What’s that thing?”

Gilda glanced at the sketch, then shrugged. “The kall if I know. It shows up if you get too close to a certain swamp in the forest.” She picked at the tip of her talon with theatrical boredom. “Tried to kill it once, but you get all wrapped up in the mist like a spiderweb. Takes like twenty minutes to unw—”

“Whoa!!” Pinkie pressed her face against the next drawing over, eyes darting from one end of the page to the other before she pulled back with a gape. “Is that some kind of bird monster? Its face is all melty!”

Gilda’s feathers stood on end. “Wh— that’s my husband, you dink!”

Pinkie turned red, chuckling nervously as she looked back at the drawing. “Oh! Uhuhm! Eheh, whoopsie!!” She swallowed as her eyes drifted over the puckish grin of a griffon slightly older than Gilda. The left side of his face was wash with long, unsightly burn marks, wholly absent of feathers from his upper shoulder to his forehead. His skin and plumage ran far darker than Gilda’s, falling somewhere between orange-brown and grey, and his left eye was absent of all color but white. “H-he seems nice!” Pinkie’s shaky smile fell, ever-so-slowly, as her eyes drifted to a beak that seemed have been fused shut on the left side, and cut back open in an unnaturally straight line. “...Is he nice?”

Gilda scoffed. “He’s a frickin’ buffoon, is what he is.”

Pinkie glanced at Gilda with a worried look, her ears flat against her head.

The griffon glanced away. “He’s fine, Pinks. I sure as sin wouldn’t marry the guy if I had any choice in the matter, but he’s not, like...” She sighed, chancing a look at Pinkie. The pink pony didn’t seem particularly reassured. Gilda looked at the floor. “He pulled some strings to get me that job in Canterlot, right after the wedding. He didn’t have to do that.” She looked Pinkie dead in the eye. “It’s fine.”

Pinkie scratched the back of her head with her hoof. “What um… what happened with his...”

Gilda gave a bored gesture with her claw. “Some dragon melted off half his face in a botched rout on the Equestrian border, like waay back.”

Pinkie gaped in horror.

Gilda chuckled with a shrug. “I mean that I thought was kinda cool, actually.” She pointed at the sketch. “You ask me, that’s his good side.”

Pinkie let out a short and sudden laugh. She clearly wasn’t expecting it, holding her hooves over her mouth with mortified embarrassment. She looked up at Gilda’s gaze with a start, “Omigosh! I’m sorry! Sorry sorry!!”

“Dude, I don’t care. I barely know the guy.” Gilda folded her arms, glancing away.

Pinkie looked at the floor, then away through the open door, fidgeting in awkward silence. She trotted through the doorway, glancing about the vine-strangled buildings before turning back to the door. “Is this like the crazy dream-version of your hometown?”

Gilda followed through the doorway, taking an appraising look at the distant temple tower. “Nah. I mean, it’s different than it was when I left, but I guess this is more or less how I imagined it’d end up.” She flicked a butterfly away from her beak and casually stomped it into the dirt. Her eyes fell on the face of the tavern, and the tight knot of interweaving vines that threatened to bury it. “I am so not ready to see it go.”

Pinkie frowned, moving to stand beside the sizable griffon. “Where is everypony?”

Gilda's teeth ground in an odd mixture of irritation and resignation. “They got old.” She nodded in the direction of a collapsed cottage further down the road, its walls matted with moss. “Wasn’t anyone to take their place.”

Pinkie galloped onto the porch of the cottage and peered in through the window. “Did the mine run out?”

Gilda flapped onto the roof and sat on her haunches, leaning forward to watch as the mare poked about the yard. “No, Pinks, the mine didn’t run out.” Gilda glanced away as Pinkie turned her gaze to meet hers, leaning forward to lay on her stomach. “There’s a reason the elders flew all the way out to the bucking frontier to drag a chick like me back to the capital.” She rested her beak on her claw, absently flicking acorns to the ground. “You seriously have no idea?”

Pinkie gave a nervous smile. “Um! I’ve got a book on griffon history somewhere, honest! It’s on my reading list after The Herbivore’s Lemma and Twilight’s book on constellations!”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Chyeah, take your time there, dweeb. No rush.”

“Yep! That’s what I said!” Pinkie chirped, bouncing in place with a rhythmic sproing! sproing! sproing! “I might even just wait for the next edition! You know, to keep up on all the new stuff?”

Gilda’s claws wrapped around the ledge of the roof, squeezing tight. Her eyes narrowed as she watched Pinkie jump about with oblivious delight. “Dude.” She hesitated as Pinkie met her stare. She considered stopping there. “There’s not... gonna be too many more of those.” She swallowed. “You get me?”

“...No?”

“We’re… like...” She gestured sharply to the barren town, her talons audibly scraping as they absently tore at the roofing. “...Running out.”

“You can’t run out of history, dummy! It happens every time somepony does anything!”

“No crap, Pinks!” Her feathers stood on end. “There ain’t gonna be somebody left!”

Pinkie gave Gilda baffled frown.

“Gods...” Gilda sighed. “Look, we don’t really talk about it, but people aren’t… you know... having kids, like they used to.” She gestured dismissively in the air. “Gets worse every year.”

Pinkie’s expression went from neutral to shakey. “W-well there’s… um… books for that...”

Gilda gave a pissed-off sneer. “Ha ha Stinks, you’re crackin’ me up!”

Pinkie’s mane deflated a bit as she leveled an apologetic look at the irritated griffon. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mean.”

Gilda’s beak opened sharply, then closed without a sound. She glanced away with a shake of the head. “Nobody knows what’s causing it, or how to stop it, or how to fix it.” She sighed, her eyes trained on the distant temple bell tower. “All they know is how to test for it.” She looked at her claw. “And how to pair off the few that don’t have it.”

Pinkie was quiet. She watched with palpable pity as Gilda stood, stretched, and dropped to the ground. The griffon seemed to look everywhere but at her. Gilda started down the road leading into the sprawling Knotwood forest. Pinkie was quick to follow.

“Look, it is what it is, Pinks, and whatever it is, it sucks.” She stepped over a mossy log, gesturing for Pinkie to follow through a maze of vast, moss-covered roots. “Believe me, the last thing I want is to sit on my ass with a litter of screaming gremlins coughing up hairballs and crapping everywhere. That ain’t how I pictured my future.”

Pinkie frowned. “Can’t you just stay in Canterlot? At your job?”

Gilda stared forward, her wings shuffling with restless energy. She hadn’t talked about this with anyone. “Not to burst that little bubble of yours, but I am really frigging terrible at diplomacy. Assuming there’s still a Canterlot when this is over and done with, I ain’t gonna be able to hold down that gig for long. They’ll want me back with Godric.”

Pinkie stared at the ground, likely recalling Gilda’s venomous accusation in court the previous day.

Gilda stole a glance over her shoulder, feeling more than a little guilty at the sight of that frown creeping back. She cleared her throat as she held up a mass of vines, letting Pinkie’s pudgy flank squeeze through the narrow opening. “So yeah, look. If that’s the way it’s gotta be, there’s at least one thing I’d like to get off the bucket list while I can.”

Pinkie craned her neck upward with a smile as she shimmied on through to the other end of the gap. “Something fun?”

Gilda smirked, planting her hind paw on Pinkie’s cutie mark and pushing the mare the rest of the way through. “Yeah. Something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kitt.”

With a heavy flap of her wings, Gilda hovered over the opening and swooped to the ground at the end of the colossal root, standing before a vast overgrown valley dotted with towering, impossibly large trees. Pinkie trotted to a perch high above the forested enclave, just beside Gilda, gazing down at what looked to be a thick stream of black smoke pouring from the base of one of the oldest and largest such trees. It was not the first time she’d seen such a sight.

“No way!” She gasped, spinning to look at Gilda with giddy delight. “A dragon? Way out here?” She started vibrating in place, a wide grin growing across her muzzle.

Gilda chuckled, placing her left claw against her forehead feathers and waving her right talons at Pinkie. “Alright alright, sit tight for a sec. Gonna see if I can dream us down there.” She closed her eyes and fell still as the forest around them shifted and spun. The world pulled itself together as Gilda’s eyes came open, solidifying someplace dim and cool and distant. Before them lay the single largest dragon Pinkie had ever seen, its body rife with broken scales and scarred-over markings of ancient squabbles. Its tired eyes were lined with dark bags, as if hundreds of years of rest had not begun to smooth its exhaustion. The mare had the distinct sense Gilda had come here often, intimately familiar with every little knick and scratch as she scribbled its face across her sketchbook.

Gilda held a claw against the jaw of the snoring beast, watching as every breath painted the ground with black soot. “Been hearing ol' Smoke Stacks snore up a storm out here since I was a fledgling. Pretty sure he was around when they first built the town. Nobody has a clue how old he is.”

Pinkie’s eyes drifted over the titanic body of the dragon as it rose and fell with each heavy breath, its enormity splayed belly-down under the thick branching roots of the colossal tree above. Each plate-sized scale was a dim crimson, flanked by salmon-pink spines that ran from its head to its tail. The dirt and the leaves shuddered with every heavy snore it pulled in through its titanic snout.

Gilda leaned against the wall of scales with a self-satisfied smirk, her arms crossed as she stood on her paws. “First time seeing a real, live dragon, Stinks?”

Pinkie trounced into the air with a smile. “Nope! Twilight lives with one!”

Gilda gave the mare a flat look. “I mean a real dragon. A full-blown, like, incinerate-your-bones-in-one-breath monstrosity.”

Pinkie nodded vigorously. “Tons of times! One time Rainbow and Rarity and Twilight dressed up as one and liiived amongst their kind in a volcano!!” She gestured her hoof in a grandiose, far-away wave.

Gilda blurted out a laugh, holding her claw over her beak.

“For serious! Another time, we all climbed a mountain to face down a sleeping dragon and we got him to leave!!”

Gilda waved a mocking claw about the air. “So, what, you and your teen girl squad of like five mares took down a dragon? That what you’re saying?”

“You betcha!” She thrust her hoof directly at Gilda with a sudden intensity. “Although!! It was mostly Fluttershy.”

“Whattershy?”

“Fluttershy!”

Nothing.

“Remember? My friend from Ponyville? The one with the poor little ducklings?”

Gilda cleaned her ear with a talon, half paying attention. “Hrm?”

“The yellow pegasus you were super mean to!!”

Gilda scrunched her beak. “Yeah, doesn’t really narrow it down, Pinks.” She flicked away a bit of earwax with her talon. “She some kind of badass dragon hunter or something?”

Pinkie squealed with laughter.

“What?”

The pink pony clutched her sides, quaking as she giggled.

Gilda scowled. “You’re a weirdo, Pinks.”

Pinkie wiped away a tear, rolling back onto her hooves with a chuckle before casually bouncing her way atop the towering reptile’s snout. She glanced about for a moment before prodding at one of its eyes with the tip of her hoof. “Well, I’ve never seen a dragon this big before, so that’s a first.” She pulled up its thick eyelid, staring into her reflection with a smile. “Wonder what he’s dreaming about...”

Gilda grinned. “The kalla you think I dragged you here for? Let’s check it out!”

Pinkie closed the eyelid, holding a hoof to her mouth in thought. “I dunno… Luna never tried dream-hopping into a dragon, I don’t think...”

“Dude.” Gilda hovered beside the perky pink pony, sending her a semi-serious look. “It’ll be awesome. Trust me.”

Pinkie’s eyes glanced back to the dragon, then to Gilda, then back to the dragon. She smiled, looking back into Gilda’s eyes. “...It would be pretty funnn…”

“Damn right it would!” She gave Pinkie a shove on the shoulder. “C’mon! Let’s blow this joint!”

“Weeeeeell…” Pinkie turned away, seeming deep in thought as she mulled over the proposition. That ponderous state lasted all of three seconds before, “...lllllokay!” In a blur, Pinkie’s tail wrapped around Gilda’s claw, tethering the griffon to the spritely mare as she whipped open the dragon’s eye like a window blind and somehow leapt beyond its splitted iris. Gilda was soon dragged through as the mare’s tail pulled taut around her claw, and in a blink, the world around her fell like molasses. Shapes and colors drifted apart at the seams, as if the glue that held the world together had come unstuck.

Gilda knew it was coming, but there were some things you couldn’t prepare yourself for. The ground and the air and the sky sank into true and absolute nothingness; into the absence of an idea. It didn’t feel like she had a body. It didn’t feel like anything.

Then there was something.

The first thing Gilda noticed was the taste. Another creature’s dream tasted different than yours, in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with your tongue. It was a sense Gilda didn’t have a name for — one that was more similar to taste than smell or touch, but nothing really like any of them. It was as if reality itself could come in a whole host of different flavors, and she’d only known one her entire life.

Smokey the Dragon tasted like raw yams, kinda. Sorta. It was all dull and earthy and lumpy; the kind of taste you knew couldn’t or wouldn’t be spiced up, no matter how you tried. Simple and strong but stubborn. She didn’t dislike it, exactly, but there was nothing there to like.

Reality ran like wet paint around her paws, colors sliding into each other until every vibrant tone had mixed into an samey ugly brown. It was the color you got when you kept washing your brush clean in the same cup of water; all the good mixing with all the bad into this muck of undecided, unspectacular blah.

Her eyes squinted and her beak hung open, sliding into an expression that danced around distaste. Shapes started taking hold. They were in some kind staggeringly massive cave, its ceiling towering leagues above them. The corners were cut with unnatural form, at intentionally asymmetrical angles. The young griffon felt like a cockroach on a countertop, gazing up at the world of giants with dull, uncomprehending eyes.

The floor fell together with the consistency of an odd greenish wood, stretching for what seemed like a mile in every direction. Its grain was honeycombed, odd as that seemed, in a way that seemed both intentional and natural, like a bee’s nest. As if a changeling and a timberwolf got busy and birthed some sort of weird hybrid bug tree, then made it into a giant table.

Nearby she could see odd glassy structures vaguely similar to thin books, and blue-brass constructs akin to metal trees with vast lenses along each branch. Further along, she saw something slightly transparent and utterly alien floating above a wagon-sized gemstone. It wasn’t alive, nor was it a spirit or phantom or whatever, but it was certainly as ‘intentional’ as life. The construct reminded her of the images unicorns would sometimes project with their magic, only more… meaty. Hard.

Gilda brought her gaze to the equally dumbstruck mare at her side. Pinkie’s tongue was hanging out, like she’d tasted something dreadful. Gilda scratched her cheek with a talon. “You taste that too?”

Pinkie shook her head a bit. “Yeah.”

“Not gonna lie. It’s a bit unsettling.”

Pinkie gave a resigned, sideways nod. “Mmhmm… I’m still really not used to that.”

A rather unpleasant thought wormed its way through Gilda’s head. She looked into the mare's half-lidded eyes. “I don’t taste like that, do I?”

Pinkie’s eyebrows waggled. “Izzat an invitation?”

Gilda’s eyes widened with a restrained smirk, more than a little surprised. She held the look on Pinkie for a beat before gesturing at her head with her talons. “I mean like, are pony brains all sugary and griffon brains all salty or whatever?”

Pinkie smacked her tongue in absent thought, pondering the matter with great theatricality. “Umm! You taste weird, I guess.” She met Gilda’s falling expression with a beaming smile. “But in a good way! Like the kind of weird that makes you want to try it more, just to figure it out! Because you know there’s something really interesting and tasty there, you just don’t have a word for it yet!”

Gilda turned a deep, burning red.

“Aww! I mean it! It’s really co—” She pulled in an enormous, full-body gasp, literally lifting five feet into the air. “COOL! That’s what you taste like! Grumpy Gilda’s dreams taste really cool!”

Gilda folded her arms as she diligently waited for her blush to fade. “Yeesh, you take a class on schmoozing up to foreigners or something?”

“Nope!! It’s the truth!” She made a rather complicated gesture with her hooves. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my—” She promptly faceplanted onto the wooden floor as the ground shuddered with a low, rhythmic rumble. Her head plocked up from the ground as she glanced about the area with bewildered confusion, her face slowly reshaping from stump-snouted flatness. “—eye?”

Gilda quickly scanned the room for the source of the powerful vibration. She did not have to look far.

Smokey the Dragon thundered through the entrance of the cave on all fours, a large pile of blackened rocks curled within his claw. Gilda wasn’t great at reading reptiles, but his expression stuck her as one of profound boredom — his jaw locked into that sort of effortless flat semi-frown one takes on in absolute solitude. The face you wear when there's nobody around to waste a smile on.

Gilda grabbed Pinkie’s tail with her claw and swiftly dragged the awestruck mare behind the pile of towering glass books. She put up a single talon in a sign of silence before turning back to peek around the edge of the glass wall.

“Zu frickin' almighty that thing is huge.” She shook her head slightly in amazement, watching as the colossal reptile unceremoniously dumped the pile of black stones across what she now realized was a vast countertop. With a thundering screech, Smokey dragged an unseen work chair into place and plopped his enormity to rest a few hundred feet away, swivelling to inspect the rocks before him. Gilda’s eagle eyes narrowed, trying to make out the subtle movements of his claws as he determinedly futzed about with the rocks. “Didn’t think something that big could move like that.”

Pinkie bounced off of Gilda’s back with a subdued sproing! and silently landed atop of the first glass book, peeking around the corner of the second. She glanced down at the annoyed griffon. “What’s he doin’?!”

Gilda squinted, watching with baffled interested as Smokey scraped off a small pile of dust from the black rocks and slid the metal tree overhead, positioning himself to stare through one of the branching lenses. A thin rainbow glow appeared between each lens and he aligned each above the other with the tip of his claw.

Gilda gave Pinkie a shrug. “Microscope, I guess?”

“Whatcroscope?”

Gilda waved off the mare with a claw, not breaking her gaze. “It’s like a reverse-telescope. Pretty sure you magic types don’t use ‘em all that much.”

"What's it do?"

Gilda’s feathers ruffled as she snapped back a short answer. "I ain't explaining how a gods-damned microscope works, Stinks! It’d probably make your tiny little head explode!"

Pinkie fell quiet as Gilda continued to watch. The metal tree creaked loudly with each slight adjustment the lumbering beast made, its light growing brighter and more intense as each fell into alignment. Smokey put his thumb and his forefinger against his forehead, grumbling out a low, irritated growl as he narrowed his slitted eyes into the lens.

Gilda glanced back to Pinkie, her expression falling with a wash of guilt as she took in the mare’s wobbling, exaggerated frown. Gilda swallowed, glancing away. Freaking ponies. “Okay look… it’s like, you know how you see stars and planets and crap just by lining up a buncha curved glass a certain way? It’s the same thing, only you’re looking in. Like at really tiny things.”

Pinkie’s ears perked up. “Like bugs?”

Gilda threw back her head with a groan. “Like fricking germs!”

“What’s a germ?”

“You don’t know what g—” Gilda’s feathers stood on end. “They’re like bugs to bugs to bugs, Stinks!” She gestured sharply with her claw, her voice growing angrier and louder by the word. “Really crazy tiny little bugs!”

“Oh!” Pinkie mulled over the thought for a moment. “So when they look through a telescope, they see us looking back down at them!”

Gilda’s face went red with rage. “They don’t do jack! They just—” She pointed a talon at her palm, her wings fidgeting with building frustration,. “—They don’t even think at all! Okay?! They’re germs! There is nothing going on in their oblivious, dumbass little jelly-bean heamph—!” Gilda found her beak suddenly plugged by a pink hoof as Pinkie shot Gilda a terrified look, her free leg motioning swiftly above. Gilda’s eyes crept skyward to watch as a claw the size of her body curled around the top of the second book, gripping the edge. With a blur of motion, Pinkie bounded to the ground just beside Gilda and pressed the stunned griffon against the glass wall with her head. They flattened themselves against the side of the book, watching with morbid anticipation as Smokey’s colossal head drifted into view, intensely scanning the spot where they’d just been standing.

Absolute silence persisted for several long seconds before the creature pulled back with a dismissive grunt, the top book effortlessly lifting into the sky as Smokey lazily dragged it beside the metal tree. Gilda watched as he drew an odd design onto the cover with his claw, igniting the face of the tome with rainbow magic. He silently resumed to his observation, one claw absently tapping away at the shimmering symbols like a typewriter.

Gilda turned to Pinkie with a flustered frown. “I’m a dumbass. Thanks.”

Pinkie returned a flat, snunched-mussle nod that seemed to say, “yyyyep,” before moving quietly to peek over the top of the book. She watched the beast fritter about for a silent minute before giving a small sigh of disappointment. “Dragons have really weird dreams.”

Gilda shook her head a bit, still watching him plug away with one hand while adjusting the lenses with the other. “Who the kall does work while they’re asleep?” She glanced up at Pinkie’s dangling flank. “Maybe we’re in some kind of lame-ass nightmare.”

Pinkie peered over her shoulder. “We could be in a memory maybe! Sometimes ponies get bits of memories mixed into their dreams.” She turned to stare at Smokey as he tittered away on his glass tome. “He must work a lot!”

Gilda scoffed. “Gods. Talk about a disappointment.”

Pinkie dropped back to the ground with three short bounces, glancing about the room once more. In the distance, along the far wall of the cave, stretched a long, curved window to the outside. With a blink, her doe eyes went wide with wonder. “Whoa...”

Gilda followed the mare’s gaze to the wall, then squinted as she looked beyond the glass. It was the outside. Alien foliage stretched well into the distance, an otherworldly mixture of purples, blues, and oranges. The honeycomb design of the wood grain appeared often, with leaves and ferns growing in odd, curved six-point shapes. Gilda leaned forward with stunned interest. “Holy bucknuts.”

Pinkie turned to Gilda with a delighted, excited grin. “Now that is cool.”

“Shyeah...” The young griffon’s beak hung open a bit as she took a few more steps forward, trying to make out the far-off vista. “You seeing that glowy bit?”

Pinkie shook her head. “I can’t really see that far.” She took a quick glance at Smokey, then turned back to Gilda. “Luna could change other ponies’ dreams all she wanted, but I don’t really… um… get, how she did it, exactly. I just remember her doing it a few times.”

Gilda held her talon up to her head, closing one eye as she tried to envision the two of them appearing on the windowsill. She gave an annoyed sneer as the world remained as it was. “How come I can’t just dream us over there?”

Pinkie shrugged. “It’s really hard to do if it’s not your dream, I think.” She sat on her haunches, staring back at the window. “What’s it look like?”

“The glowy thing?” Gilda’s eagle eyes narrowed as she scanned the far distance. “Fire. Just a wall of white fire.”

“That’s a lotta fire...”

“Yeah.” Gilda’s head shook a bit as she watched the lapping flames stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. “Biggest gods-damned forest fire I’ve ever seen.” She turned to Pinkie. “Guess dreams are weird like that.”

Pinkie nodded with a wide grin. “Hehe, you betcha!” She waved her hoof in the direction of the glass book. “Maybe he reads a lot of sci-fi!”

“A dweeby dragon, huh?” Gilda chuckled, gesturing at the window with a circular motion. “This kinda feels like a dweeb’s dream, you know?”

Pinkie giggled. “I’ve never met a dweeby dragon before! Maybe they’re nicer!!”

“Oooh maybe!” Gilda fluttered her claws about with sarcastic excitement. “Wanna run over and ask him if he plays Oubliettes & Ogres?”

Pinkie put her snout in the air with faux haughtiness. “Some dragons are friendly! Twilight’s little brother is really really polite!” She made a little ‘tut tut’ gesture at the dubious griffon with her hoof. “He made us all pancakes last time I stopped by Twilight’s huge crystal library!”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “The little purple guy? Give him like ten years, you’ll see.” She picked at her talon for a moment before glancing back at Pinkie with narrowing eyes. “Didn’t he like… morph into a giant monster and terrorize Ponyville two years back?”

Pinkie looked upward with a smile. “Weeeeell yeahhhh, but he was really sorry about it! Sometimes puberty is awkward like that.”

Gilda blurted out a laugh. “They had to call in the Wonderbolts! It was a damn disaster!”

Pinkie giggled. “A little bit, yup!! It was really exciting!” She held a hoof to her chin, trying and failing to hold back her smile. “Some damn disasters are all a matter of perspective, you know?”

Gilda held her claw over her beak as she shared a laugh with with the grinning mare, shaking her head at the mental image. “You are so stupidly positive sometimes, Pinks.”

“All the time!”

Gilda took a moment to watch as Pinkie bounced about with oblivious delight before turning back to check on their big dweeby buddy. Or at least, she tried to; there was a wall there now. Gilda blinked, then craned her neck swiftly upward, looking for the top. Further and further and further she leaned, until she was staring at the sky, and the massive slitted eye that utterly filled it. The scaley skin of Smokey’s eyelid audibly crinkled as the unthinkable beast narrowed its gaze, staring straight back into her soul.

They’d been had.

• • • •

He must be going mad.

Lakagigari ik Thorin, scourge of the luminous hemisphere, champion-king of the great pan-continental everwar, was flat-out stupefied. There was something alive in his mind, and it wasn’t him. The thought alone was terrifying.

“Frigging ruuuun!”

The big, feathery bird-creature wrapped its arm around the small, marshmellowy equine and lifted her off the ground as it bolted for the cavern wall. Thorin’s eye tracked the creature with stunned surprise, trying to piece together what, exactly, the avian was. Little bastard could really move.

With one fluid motion, the hulking dragon slammed his claw in front of the scampering feline, curling his palm upward as the creature unfurled a pair of eagle wings and furiously flapped its way over his fingers. It was faster than Thorin expected, but he had size on his side. Size trumped speed.

With a flick of the wrist, Thorin caught both creatures in his claw, lifting them clear into the air to get a better look. The bird pushed and strained against his grip with admirable tenacity, spurring him to clench tighter. Their limbs fell to their sides as their prison closed in, leaving only their wide-eyed heads exposed. He narrowed his gaze at the avian. One of Discord’s monstrosities, no doubt.

“You can... talk.”

The strange beast shot him a panicked look. “Y-yeah dude! Just… figments of your imagination, yabbering away!” She glanced at the pink one. “Right Pinks?!”

The equine nodded vigorously.

Thorin held his finger against the side of the avian’s face, turning it to the side as he inspected her dyed hair feathers with baffled interest. “Since when can your kind talk?”

“The kall kinda question is that?! Of course I can talk!”

Thorin returned an annoyed grumble, tightening his grip a bit more. “You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here.” He brought the creatures a few feet from his towering iris, staring deep. “Did he send you?”

The equine squeaked under the pressure. “W-w-w-w-we dream jumped, mister Smokey sir!! Gilda and I!”

“Why.”

“Just for fun!! Nothing bad! Promise! We’re just trying to take a break from the moonpocalypse!!”

His grip wavered for a beat. “...What?”

The bird struggled furiously to escape his hold, spitting from her beak as she yelled.“The moon, lizard breath! The gods-damned moon that fell from the sky!”

Thorin’s eyes widened, his mouth creeping open in a baffled sneer. “...The moon is dead.”

Her tiny arms trembled and she pushed against his palm with everything she had. Her face went red with strain. “Tell that to the living moon out there you ash-spewing freak!”

Thorin growled as he redoubled the pressure, eliciting a pained yelp from both. The pink one planted all four hooves on his index finger as she pushed against his palm with her back. “Gilda!! S-stop insulting him!”

“I wasn’t—” The avian assumed the reverse pose, with her back flat against his palm and her paws pressing into his finger. “—I-I’m just kinda freaking out here Pinks!” Her knees wobbled as their sides pressed together, his grip unwavering against their efforts. “W-what happens if we die in here, huh?! Anyone ever die in a dream?!”

Thorin smiled, watching their heads disappear into the black of his palm as he closed them in. “Let’s find out.”

• • • •

Gilda’s muscles burned as the wall of scales closed tighter and tighter, her knees bending and her elbows buckling against the unrelenting force. Her eyes darted to meet Pinkie’s as the last hint of light went out above, plunging them both into the dark. She felt Pinkie’s fur press tight against her own, and felt a sickening certainly that she was going to die here. They were going to die in a dream, side by side.

“I’m such an idiot, Pinks.”

Pinkie didn’t respond. She just kept saying something, over and over and over, almost under her breath. Their heads were forced together by the pressure, plastering Gilda’s ear just beside Pinkie’s mouth as their world grew smaller and tighter. Her breath caught as she focused, trying to make out the words.

Please wake up, please wake up, please please oh please oh please wake up...

Gilda clenched shut her eyes and screamed, throwing her shoulder against one wall and her hind paws against the other, pounding at the scales with desperate abandon. It was as futile as beating against a stone wall. She tried to break the scales with her claws, to dig deep enough to hurt him back, but she could do nothing. She could do absolutely nothing but wait in morbid anticipation for—

Gilda heard a sharp gasp to her side. Her heart froze dead.

“Pinkie?”

Nothing.

“Pinkie?!”

Pinkie stepped out.

The words bounded in her head, everywhere and nowhere at once. As if it had come from air itself. And the air didn’t sound like Pinkie.

A pair of brilliant white eyes flew open inches from Gilda’s face, bathing the cavity with light. Gilda stared into the shuddering pink rings around each razor iris, feeling a jolt of instinctive terror at the sight. She knew at once, beyond a shadow of a doubt, whose eyes those were. That thing was awake. That thing was here.

Pinkie’s hair split into eight thick tendrils with a sharp wave of red light, bolting in eight different directions to curl around the creature’s crushing digits like tentacles across the mast of a ship. A long, coursing, unending wave of curls poured from her mane as her hair grew longer and fuller with each pulse of red. The rules of the dream were meaningless to one who could bend reality into knots.

Gilda felt the surreal sensation of hair coiling around her waist and her wings, travelling up her body to bundle her body tight, just like that heart-stopping moment in the Canterlot bazaar. Memories of Princess Pinkie’s gaping maw flashed through her mind, screaming at her to fight and flee, but her body refused to budge.

Pinkie’s eyes stared deep into her own, never blinking or wavering for an instant. Gilda didn’t doubt the demon neither needed or understood eyes, capable of ‘seeing’ her in every way there was, every second it chose to do so. A wide smile of razor-sharp rock-candy teeth fast grew across her muzzle as she stroked her chin with a thin tendril of mane, plainly excited to speak to the young griffon once again.

“I had the weirdest dream about you, Grumpy Gilda...” The walls strained and pushed against the tightening bundles of her mane, already elastic enough to fully resist the force of Smokey’s grip. Light poured in through quivering gaps in Smokey’s fingers, forced open by surging waves of hair that coiled endlessly around each digit. The demon scarcely seemed to notice, its attention focused entirely on the terror-wracked catbird in her mane. “I dreamt you yelled at me, and ran far, far away...” The hair crept up to Gilda’s neck before slowing to a stop. She was utterly and completely helpless. “...And I just couldn’t find you, no matter how hard I looked.”

Gilda’s breathing swelled into a hyperventilated flurry of panic as her her limbs went limp with a creeping numbness. Her beak opened, but nothing came out. She could barely think through the fear.

“I guess dreams are weird like that, huh? I looked and I looked and I looked, all night long...” Pinkie’s body flickered with red as her fur and her mane began melting into an elastic texture Gilda could only assume was bubblegum. The mare’s body lost all form but for her head, which grew with the rest of her unimpeded. “...And you were right here all along!” Her eyes and her teeth held form as the mass of gum effortlessly pried open Smokey’s palm, coating his entire hand with bubblegum. “Just a hop, skip, and a dream-jump away, the whole time!”

• • • •

Thorin was well beyond words when the last of his feeling drained from his hand. It wasn’t numb, it just wasn’t his anymore. The wave of curling pink hair and surging, elastic growth crept up his forearm without slowing for a single moment. He wanted very much to believe this was some unseen spirit of the Equestrian wilds, or some absurd abstraction of the dream, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. He felt the truth.

His hand wasn’t his. Nothing would ever be his, so long as the One Within All was within all. For a dragon, there was something so unthinkably terrifying about being owned, and never owning.

“By Siris, you live.”

Oni’s head swivelled with perfect precision to meet his eyes with two unblinking pools of trembling magic. Its face swelled to tower over him like a bubble blown of gum, four ever-thickening tendrils whipping around his wings and along his chest with a cartoonish stretching sound. Its eyes widened in a moment of sickening recognition, its mouth shifting from an intrigued ‘o,’ to a wide, giddy smile. “Heyyy...” He felt the growth cross his elbow, losing all feeling from his forearm down. “I remember you!”

His heart stopped dead at the words. He had no doubt The One Within All spoke the truth. The eyes of a world were on him, and it could see everything he ever was.

“La la-la la-la la-Lakagigari ickie Thornybutt!” It… giggled, bobbing its rubbery head about. “I told you I’d find you, one day!! Took a liiiiittle longer than expected, but I sucked a buncha moon magic from Mr. Harbie and now I’m back! Better than ever!!” The growth wrapped around his shoulder at a sharp angle, meeting the tendrils along his chest to slowly swallow over his entire body. “Can’t wait to get back into that busy little noggin of yours! You always used to come up with the craziest spells!”

Thorin tore at the growth with his free claw, feeling his legs lose sensation as his lower torso was consumed by the Blight. His fingers became stuck in the elastic goop, pink creeping up his nails to surge across his claw. He fell hard against the stone floor, trapped tight in a living straight jacket.

Oni’s head grew out of his chest, staring down upon him as each tendril grew fuller and thicker by the second. It tapped its chin with a thin wisp of hair, its eyes glancing away in an overly-rehearsed gesture of thought. “What was that line Mr. Harbie said, right before the end?” Her face swelled into a perfect likeness of Discord, yellow eyes and all. It spoke with his voice, in exactly the same way he had over three thousand years ago. “There’s not enough world to go around, I’m afraid.”

Thorin tried to scream, but his mouth wasn’t his anymore.

• • • •

Gilda watched with wide-eye horror as bubblegum poured across the cavern floor, flowing right up the walls of Smokey’s mind without a thought for weight or gravity. She felt the gum spread over the top of her head and between her hair feathers, creeping down her forehead like hot rubber. Her eyes darted back to the entombed dragon, watching the outline of his vast body sink into the flood like sugar into water. It started with his feet, then his wings, then his neck, then… there was a tremor.

It went through reality with a wide, gaping crack; a fissure that hung there in the air, empty, through which there was only black. Piece by piece, the world around her broke and fell through the gum and the floor, into nothing. The ceiling collapsed, and there was nothing beyond it.

She felt it again; the sensation of the world falling around her like molasses. She was blinded as the gum fell over her eyes and across her beak, threatening to swallow her whole as it had the dragon. She fought against the bindings, she kicked and she tore and it would only stretch.

Gilda.

Her breathing was ragged as she struggled and jabbed with her paws, hind claws extended. She felt a tear. Her bundled forearms strained as she pushed out with her claws and her wings in tandem, giving it everything she could.

Gilda!

She felt her body fall into the black, somewhere infinite, without an end or a beginning. She felt something hard slap across her cheek, and somehow, as if flipping a switch, that abyss became everything again.

“You’re having a nightmare, kiddo!”

Gilda jolted awake with a sharp gasp, halting her struggle dead as she locked her panicked gaze to the worried eyes above. She blinked, frantically scanning the familiar face against the bright white-pink light of the moon. Joe.

It was just Joe.

The bed-headed stallion had his hoof on her shoulder, holding a concerned look as he undid her bundle of blankets with his free foreleg. “It’s alright. It wasn’t real. You’re right here with me, back at the Diner.”

Gilda felt the tension ease as Joe gripped the end of a tablecloth with his mouth and gently pulled it free, unbundling the young griffon from the blanket burrito she’d worked herself into. She let out the breath she’d been holding in, putting a claw against her forehead as relief washed over her. “...Gods.” She met Joe’s eyes with a small shake of the head. “I… is it morning?”

Joe nudged a towel at her side, then nodded toward the small window at the far end of the room. “Supposed to be, if the clocks are right.” He glanced at the tear in the fabric of the tablecloth, left from Gilda’s struggles. “That sounded like a bad one.”

Gilda sat up, staring at her claw as she absently opened and closed her fist. Sunny’s blue pendant was still wrapped around her wrist, glowing noticeably brighter than the night before. “Yeah. Yeah it was.” She plopped herself onto her side, staring through the window, and the distant Canterlot castle beyond. The rain had turned to a light flurry overnight, gently drifting from the clouds to powder the bustling city with sugary snow. “Really good before it went bad, though.”

Joe gave her a small smile. “Well at least there’s that.” He turned for the stairs, glancing over his shoulder as he stepped over Gilda’s tail. “There’s a tub in the storage basement, when you’re ready. I’ll have a cup ready for you in the Diner.”

Gilda said nothing, listening in silence as Joe’s hooves clunk-clunked down the staircase. Her talon lightly wove along the hardwood floor, drawing Pinkie’s face as it was in her mind: Wide, beaming smile. No fangs, no tendrils, no nothing.

Just regular, dweeby old Pinkie Pie.

Author's Note

Yeeeepp I'm still here. Work has been destroying me. But! I'm doing well at the new job, and now that I have an income again, I managed to get my next apartment. Feels good to have life back on track.

This chapter was agony, every step of the way. Definitely way more ambitious than I realized when I started, but I'm happy with how it came together. I don't even want to think about how much I cut out, rewrote, and slimmed down to get to where it is.

Cannot thank my pre-readers enough for this one, considering it's brutal length (12,000 freaking words!). Luminary and Brawny tore through this thing in a matter of days, which is incredible, tightening up a lot of the rambley bits. Writing Gilda in a romantic context is as tricky as it is delightful, and they definitely helped me keep her in-character.

Brawny has been doing some awesome work on his YouTube channel, and you should all take a sec to check it out. He is a man of many talents.

Shoutout to the SpaceBattles FiM crew for helping me come up with a good, dignity-free nickname for Thorin, as well as an overly-grandiose, clumsy-to-pronounce real name. Much love.

Before I forget: I did a little skit between Joe and Sunny for the Character Roleplay Meme a while back, in case anyone missed it.

Next chapter will be very soon, as it's a small "Meanwhile" segment detailing what became of Thorin. After that, we'll be headlong into Joe, Sunny, Seraph, and Gilda taking their first plunge into the everparty.

And I am definitely looking forward to writing that.

The Regulars

The Regulars

Donut Joe gave a playful little salute as the last of the sunset rush filed out of his doors, still rubbing the sleep from their half-lidded draconian eyes. It was at this ungodly sun-touched hour that the moori pegasi of Luna's Midnight Guard started their shift, and a good cup of fresh-brewed coffee was mighty hard to come by. Celestia knows how many times his batty sister had moaned about Canterlot's shameful after-dinner breakfast scene, most places either closed or wholly unwilling to cater to a minority as picky as they. Really, it was for her sake that Joe had decided to even stay open past sundown. It wasn't until later that he started building an entirely separate night menu, one free of his world-famous breakfast sweets and pastries. Moori had... different tastes. Weird, complicated, morbidly fascinating tastes.

The fierce smell of Mareoccan spices filled the air as Joe delicately stir fried a number of seitan patties in his iron flapjack pan. With surgical precision, he slid his spatula around the lip of a sizzling golden-brown disc and popped it into the air with a swift flick of the hoof. Joe briefly admired the rolling ridges he'd woven evenly across around the bottom as he gingerly shimmied the patty across the pan's bubbling olive oil. Perfect.

Joe had never considered himself a particularly fancy cook, but he fancied himself a pretty good one, and a cook was only as good as the meals he made. Moori dishes demanded no small measure of adaptive finesse to get quite right. Too much time marinating, or too little time in the pan, and the whole meal was a disaster. There was a razor sharp edge between Just Right and Horribly, Horribly Wrong, and every one of their bizarre meals walked it like a tightrope. Joe found this profoundly thrilling. There was something about crafting a dish so delicate, so skittish, so fragile, that anything short of perfection resulted in an unholy, inedible mess. He hesitated to call it 'dangerous,' because... well, it was food. But what the hay. Dangerous.

In all honesty, the most challenging aspect of it all was the fact that Joe didn't really know how moori cuisine was supposed to taste. It revolved entirely around the idea of mimicking, as closely and as accurately as possible, the texture and feel of meat. Joe had never even considered eating meat. The idea of devouring another animal's flesh was... it was more than a little horrifying. As a colt, he'd found the way his sister's little fanged mouth watered at the thought of a juicy slab of quarry eel really, really freaky. These days, it was a little heartbreaking, seeing how much she craved it, how much she adored the smell and the texture and the taste of something she could never actually enjoy.

Moori couldn't stomach real meat, it turned out. No matter how much they might wish it otherwise, indulging in the real deal left them with what amounted to a nasty case of food poisoning. His sister had tried and failed to explain this contrariety to Joe dozens of times over the years, how she could lust after something so profoundly bad for her. There wasn't a good reason for it, it just was. The moori were full of odd little contradictions like that.

Nevertheless, they were still at least half-pony, and could get by with the usual oats and grains and whatnot if they must. They liked it just fine, but it never quite seemed to satisfy. And an unsatisfied customer at Joe's Diner... that would not stand. Joe knew better than anypony the difference between breakfast and A Great Breakfast, and by Celestia, you couldn't have a great day without a great breakfast. He wanted the moori to have at least one place in this city they could go to for a decent, affordable meal before scurrying off to the night shift. If that meant mastering the most notoriously difficult cuisine known to ponykind, well, that's what he had to do. There wasn't much that could stop Donut Joe, once he knew what he wanted.

Joe popped a piece of a patty into his mouth, tasting the hem and haw of the seitan. Felt about right. With another flick of the hoof, he shuffled the caramelized onions over the meatless discs, layering them onto a plate with a light dusting of cayenneigh pepper. He took a moment to admire his hoofdiwork before sliding the plate beside his lone customer.

Gilda was not in one of her better moods. She was never in one of her better moods, really, but today in particular, she looked at her wit's end. He gave her an appraising look, noting her unkempt feathers, reddened eyes, frustrated, tooth-grinding grimace, and malignant regard for the sea of scrolls and papers in which she was buried. Considering the time, she should've been off of work by now. Evidently work followed her here.

Joe had no idea what the young griffon did for a living, but she did seem to pop by every night for a few weeks or so, then disappear for a couple more. It was as if she only lived here most the time, travelling perhaps, yet always ending up back in Canterlot. He idly pondered on the matter while she continued etching details into a drawing that spread across the large, unwieldy tome. Her free claw pressed lightly between her eyes in a gesture that silently muttered, 'for all that is good and holy, kill me now.' After about a minute of furious, angry scribbling, she dropped the feather pen and stretched, long and hard, beak to tail, before pinching the edge of her plate between her claws and pulling it close.

She tore into the meal like it was a freshly-killed stag, holding one piece down with a flat talon and pulling off a chunk with her beak. She visibly savored the taste as she chewed, eyes closed in a haze of delight. She swallowed, pausing a moment to swim in the feeling, a wide, satisfied smile creeping across her face. Now there was a rare sight. Joe couldn't help but beam with pride.

Caught in a moment of culinary vulnerability, Gilda's eye met his with a challenging glare, one which instantly evaporated with a flustered blush as she caught herself. "What? What is it?"

Joe took a long sip from his mug, sliding his flapjack pan into the sink with his free hoof. "So... not bad, huh?"

Gilda's tongue ran around the inside of her beak for a moment as she seemed to consider the taste. " 'Bout as close to actual food as you're gonna get around here, I guess."

Joe's face fell, his warm grin drooping into crushing disappointment. Gilda's mouth opened in surprise. "Daaaiii meann..." Her face contorted into a strained, shakey smile. "It's good, Joe, really good, just... like... different?" She desperately held the awkward smile through clenched teeth, her cheeks trembling with exertion. Joe's ears perked up, "Really?"

Gilda looked at the plate, noting the unusually precise presentation — the balanced positioning and size of each patty, the light dusting for flavor, the meticulously even frying. It was almost off-putting, how well crafted it was. "I'm kinda not used to it all being so... like..." She gestured her claw at the plate, searching for the word. Back home, when you made a kill, you brought it back, drained it, and cooked it on a fire. You didn't play with it like this, dressing it up and fretting about with onions and spices. If this was real meat, and not some sort of tofu or whatever, it would actually be kind of disrespectful. The thing gave its life so you could eat it. You didn't make a little game of dress-up out of something like that.

She swallowed, looking back up at Joe's expectant gaze. For some Zu-forsaken reason, part of her really wanted to just say that to him, to berate him for something that he, clearly, had no clue might be abstractly offensive. She wasn't sure why. She liked Joe. The thought should've been unappealing, not tempting. She idly separated the onions from the patties, moving them to opposite sides of the plate with the back of her claw. "...So uh... busy? Has a lotta flavors, going on. I think I like that." She pressed into a patty with her talon, watching it slide through to the plate with minimal resistance. "I suppose it could stand to be tougher. The whole point of meat is that it fights back, when you're eating it."

Joe nodded slightly, seeming reasonably pleased with the appraisal. "Couple of the moori said that too. Been thinking of adding mushrooms or something, to give it a little more umph."

Gilda dropped the strained smile with a relieved shift of the beak, making a grabbing motion with her claws at the cabinet of coffee mugs along the back wall. In Gilda's vernacular this meant 'give me coffee,' as Joe well understood. He slid a cup from the bottom shelf and poured a cup, black, as she usually took it. The first time he'd added sugar and cream to her coffee, she'd looked at him like he was a madmare. Gilda wasn't big on mixing things, apparently.

She popped another piece into her mouth as she glanced back at the mess of papers, giving them a long, distant stare. Anything but work, right now. Anything. She sipped her coffee, turning back to Joe. "You had a big, dorky grin up the whole time you were playing around on that stove, you know. I'm beginning to think this meatless meat thing doesn't gross you out as much as you say it does."

Joe's smile faded, just a bit. "I never said it was gross, just weird." He swirled his coffee absently, watching the grains at the bottom dance about. "Was just remembering. I used to cook my sister something really similar, growing up. First time I ever saw her crack an actual, genuine smile was after she ate that dish." He shook his head, the image still fresh in his mind. "Big, terrifying, razor-sharp shark teeth, all wrapped up inside the most adorable little grin. Must've been the first time I wasn't afraid of her."

The plate dragged around a bit as Gilda wrestled with one of the patties, trying to tear it in half. She spoke with tenuous interest, through a full mouth. "Guessing she's adopted?"

Joe nodded, stirring some cream and sugar into a fresh cup. "Didn't get along, really. She took to my dad like a hydra hatchling to water, but I dunno. The two of us didn't see eye to eye on anything." He took a long, deliberate sip. "Fought quite a bit."

She turned her head slightly to the side, in the way that she did when she was trying to look 'into' you. As if all the things you weren't saying were hiding just behind your eyes. Joe knew that feeling better than most. She chewed for a bit, then swallowed, reaching for the fresh mug of coffee he had laid out for her.

"That how your horn broke?"

Joe's eyes widened for a moment, his gaze briefly settling on the long, deep, jagged crack that ran down the length of his horn. He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped himself dead. Why did he even think about answering that? "No... no, that was something else."

Gilda frowned, staring blankly at her plate. Crap. Her talons balled tightly as she reddened, silently chastising herself. Why in kalla did she just say that? Her mouth twitched, eyes darting to his, then back to her plate. "...Okay.”

Joe nodded, stirring his coffee again. He couldn't seem to get the sugar to mix quite right. It kept settling out, like he was mixing fine sand with water.

"Anyways, she couldn't stand anything our mom cooked up. So I ended up meeting this coworker of my dad's, one of the Night Watch guys." He furrowed his brow, using the spoon to scoop out the unmixed sugar and taste it. Seemed... fine. "Huge, horrifying monster of a pony. All the usual stuff — fangs, leathery wings, those piercing reptile eyes..."

Gilda subtly shifted her gaze, widening and focusing her pupil in a practiced hunter's glare. It was a look she no doubt shot all of her prey before she swooped in for the kill. Joe swallowed. "That's the one. Course, he only had the left eye," He placed a hoof over his right eye for effect, "Never found out what happened to the other one. My dad used to make up a different story every year, just to scare me."

Gilda scoffed, happy for the relief. It was hard to tell with her, but she seemed to want him to keep going.

"I ended up staying with his family for a couple days. Think my dad hoped some of that Night Watch royal-guard brass might rub off on me if I hung around him a bit."

She tilted her head forward, bemused, but willing to play the part. "Shyah, how'd that work out for ya?"

"You tell me!" Joe puffed out his chest, curling his free foreleg to show off a couple of reasonably well-defined muscles.

Gilda gave a sideways, almost piteous look. One of several variations she had on the classic standby, 'oh you poor, delusional dingus.'

He sighed, deflating slightly. "I hid in their kitchen, literally under his wife's hooves. She felt bad and ended up showing me how to cook those Thorin Cakes you love so much."

Gilda covered her beak with her claws, stifling a sharp snerk as she valiantly attempted to hold in her laugh. Her watering eyes looked into his with almost giggling delight.

Joe held a hoof over his eyes and let out a loud, rapacious laugh. "Wonder if that's what dad had in mind."

Between barely-suppressed giggles, she moved her hand from her beak, squeaking out apologies. "Sorry, sorry!" She buried her face into an unfurled wing like it was a blanket, visibly quaking with laughter as the scene played out in her head.

Joe shook his head wistfully. "Go ahead! I swear to Celestia, I thought he was a vampony or something. The man was enormous!" His forelegs flew into the air, gesturing to an imagined Tartaurian monstrosity. "Sissy wasn't happy about it, mind you. Absolutely furious for embarrassing her like that in front of the vaunted captain Blind Dive." He gave a shaky smile at the memory. "You cannot imagine what it was like to see her morph from this infernal red-faced scowl to just..." He drew a little smile arc in the air with one hoof. "...complete, unfettered happiness, when she tried the meal we made. She'd never had anything like it." Joe leveled a satisfied look at his griffon friend as he picked up his mug. "That's the power of good cookin', featherbrain. Rights all wrongs."

He noticed Gilda's eagle eye instinctively dart behind him for a moment while she wiped her eyes, chuckling. Turning to meet her glance, he caught a warm shade of pink as one of his regulars rounded the corner. Like clockwork, just after moonrise, Sunny Skies silently trudged toward the door, her pink mane and white coat an unsightly mess. Well, 'unsightly' was a bit strong. She was always a sight. But as usual, she looked like she'd just been trampled by a bramble of timberwolves.

He flashed Gilda an impish grin as he turned to grind up a fresh pot of Marelaysian blend. "How do I look?"

Gilda turned her head to the side and looked him over. "Uhg, don't wear that lame little hat, Joe."

Joe reeled in shock. "Wh—! It's my baker's hat!"

"Dude you look like a schoolyard fledgling in that dorky thing." She flicked her hair feathers with practiced disinterest. "Let that roguish mane go free."

Donut Joe stared blankly into his reflection in the transparent glass pastry case, seeing Sunny push open the door with a limp hoof and slink in.

"It draws the eye away from my horn!" He whispered, desperately.

Gilda rolled her eyes. "Nobody cares about your damn horn, man!" With a lunge, she hovered into the air and snatched his hat, plunging it into her mug of coffee with a devious grin.

Joe's eyes darted back and forth in panic, before settling on the sad, sorry, adorable sight of Sunny slouching up to the counter and plopping herself down a few seats away from Gilda. Her head hit the counter with a concerning wham as her pink mane engulfed her face. She didn't move after that, prompting a brief exchange of worried looks between the griffon and the baker.

Gilda's posture stiffened as her eye alarmingly tracked the limp body, flank to horn, relaxing only once she was satisfied that the mare still seemed to be breathing. Joe numbly worked his coffee press between both hooves as he inched his way closer. She seemed more beat than usual, today. It felt like she was sucking the energy out of the room, just by being there. Like she was an abyss of exasperation and defeat. He knew the feeling. He'd felt it before. But... not for a very long time.

With a click, the press' handle became rigid, and Joe poured the mixture into a mug. He reached for the sugar, but thought better of it. As Gilda began gently prodding Sunny's side with the dull side of a talon, Joe popped open a tin of maple syrup he'd boiled down the other day. Fresh. Sweet Celestia, he loved that smell. He added a couple spoonfuls to the coffee, stirred it up, watched it dissolve, and slid it next to the beautiful, ragged shell of a pony sitting across from him.

"Up and at 'em, Sunshine." Joe gently shook Sunny's shoulder. "Got you some piping hot joe, right here."

Gilda again barely stifled a chortle as she turned to face him, claws over her beak and eyes wide with impish delight at his impossibly poor choice of words. She silently vibrated with laughter, as Joe reddened. Every iota of his being prayed that Sunny was actually still asleep, and that Gilda wasn't just laughing so hard that she hadn't yet hit that second, audible volley of laughter that came from the deepest, most uncontrolled hysterics. No such luck. Sunny rolled her head to her side, a wide, unrestrained closed smile stretching up and down her face. "Oh my, such service."

"W-well," Joe's eyes darted away, hoof pulling at his collar. "That costs extra, I'm afraid."

Sunny giggled, wearily looking up at him with sleep-starved, baggy eyes. She drew in a long, deep breath, and took a sip from her coffee. She seemed, for a moment, to forget whatever was bugging her, gently closing her eyes, relaxing her face, and feeling the smooth taste warm her from the inside. He couldn't help but stare as her face hovered over the mug, nuzzling the steam as it rose.

It was strange to feel so proud of something so ordinary, but Joe truly loved the way his customers apparently felt no need to make themselves even remotely presentable. You went to Joe's Diner to take a break from presentable. Celestia knows, Canterlot demanded one put on airs. In the capital city of the diarchy itself, a certain level of performance was expected — one carried oneself with dignity, like they were in front of an invisible camera, watched by thousands. Silly, yes, but that's what was normal.

In that way, few were more silly than Sunny Skies. Even here, she had trouble dropping that unreadable, finely-crafted public face. He never really got a straight answer as to what she did for a living, but he knew it was 'in government', and evidently crazy stressful. It had certainly put her through the wringer today.

"When was the last time you ate somethin', sunbeam?" Joe grumbled as he moved Gilda's empty plate to the sink. Sunny's eyes remained vacantly staring into her coffee, her mouth a straight, furrowed line that said she didn't even feel like remembering.

"How's about a cucumber omelette? Hm?" He nudged her foreleg with a soft flick of his hoof. "Little spicy dandelion hash on the side?"

Sunny pulled in her leg in reflex, not expecting the touch. Joe's eyes widened a little in mild alarm, taking note of the way Sunny's ears subconsciously flattened against her head. Okay, no touching. She caught herself rather quickly, and her neutral expression took the stage. She gave him a slight nod. "Um... yes. Yes, that'd be lovely." She put her head back down.

Gilda scribbled into a notebook while Joe washed and diced a cucumber, only briefly glancing off the page to take in the scene. "Yeesh, what do they gotcha doing up there? Thought government work was supposed to be a cushy gig, what with the princesses." She flipped a couple pages, pen in beak, while she spoke. "You look like you just tried to lift the freaking moon."

Sunny tensed, her ears flattening right back down. "I did just lift the freaking moon! That stupid, stubborn brat of a planetoi—" Her head shot up, naked terror writ wide across her face. Why in Harmony's name would she say that out loud? She looked directly into Joe's eyes for a quarter of a second before she turned back to Gilda, her ears popping back around and her expression hurried into a shaky smile. "I... metaphorically, I mean. One of my co-workers is sick, and the other just..." She sighed, dismissively gesturing into the air. "...upped and left, to who knows where. So I've been picking up the slack. It's..."

Sunny chanced a look at Joe, who was carrying on over his stove. His eyes were trained forward as he gingerly folded the omelette with a light toss of the pan. She couldn't tell if he was listening. Gilda held a skeptical look on her from a few seats over, taking a long, deliberate sip from her coffee. She stared back down at her hooves. The mare seriously considered stopping her story there, but the idea was weirdly tiring. She wasn't sure how to explain it. Like she would have to slow to a stop, like it took effort to end the train of thought. She knew this was silly, but it felt that way. She felt too tired to stop, so she kept going.

"...harder? It seems? To do my job. I don't mean like it's too complicated or I'm overwhelmed or anything, I mean... it's literally harder to do things. Have any of you noticed..." She stole a mousy look as Joe lightly roasted the dandelion mix, cutting in some diced hay. "...like magic just... isn't cooperating? It feels, I dunno, heavy? Confused? I have no idea how to explain it."

Gilda scoffed, rolling her eyes, "Uh, pretty sure magic doesn't get confused or sad or happy or anything." She unfurled her wings for effect. "It's like the wind, doll — doesn't think, just does." Her feathers fluttered in a wave, mimicking a gust of wind before tucking back against her sides. "Course, I'm no magician."

Sunny's plate slid before her, Joe's hoof against the back. Looking up, she caught a saddened distance in his gaze, just for a second, before he turned to Gilda, "Not necessarily, featherhead. It's been a while, but I remember it having a kind of sense to it. Magic doesn't think, really, but if you cast a spell to find water, it'll know what water is, and where to look for it."

Sunny blinked at Joe with a puzzled look while Gilda mulled the thought over. "Do... do you not use your magic?" She put a hoof to her chin. "I'm sure you at least use levitation or sorting spells when you're baking..."

Gilda's train of idle thought derailed quickly and violently as she snapped Sunny a glare that would make a cockatrice detonate. Joe deflated, turning back to clean the grill. A deep, wide blush grew across his face as he wiped down the metal surface with a rag. "I uh..."

Sunny's eyes widened as she finally noticed.

"Oh."

Oh my. It was incredibly rare to see a shattered horn in this day and age. She could recall having seen exactly one in the last few hundred years, and it was an absolute miracle that little colt had survived. There were a handful of other cases over the ages, but it was almost always self-inflicted for one reason or other, and frankly, they never made it more than a few days. Wonder what he would've done with his life if he still had his magic? She had an uncomfortably strong urge to ask him, despite it being perhaps the most insensitive thing she could possibly imagine doing. It was all she could do to push the thought out of her head. What was wrong with her today?

"I-I hadn't noticed, sorry." She sheepishly leveled an apologetic look at Joe, but his back was turned as he worked on the grill. She silently mouthed 'sorry' to the furious griffon to her side.

Gilda shook her head in disbelief, her eyes still fierce, and turned back to her coffee. "Hey Joe, good thing you cleaned the floors earlier."

He wrung out the grill rag and slung it over his shoulder, surveying the pristine face of the grill. "Yeah? Why's that?"

She smiled. "Cause you're going to be kissing them in a minute."

Joe gave her a baffled look. What? He walked back to the counter. "What are you on ab—"

The diner doors flew open with an otherworldly blast of frigid, howling wind, a maelstrom of napkins and menus plastering the walls as an invisible gale force billowed through the building. Joe's eyes flew wide open and his jaw hit the floor as he tried to process the sight before him. Ethereal waves of star-soaked hair cascaded in the wind as the monolithic living goddess of the night, Princess Luna herself, marched into Joe's Diner, her eyes closed and her head held high in regal dignity.

Joe flew around the counter, skittering against the tile floor to a stop in front of Her Highness. "Puh- Princess! What an... an unexpected and... and wonderful surprise!" He bent at the foreleg into a deep bow, beads of cold sweat dotting his head. He held the pose for a couple of seconds, but heard no answer or dismissal. He peeked ever-so-slightly upward from the ground, seeing that she hadn't moved in the slightest.

A chill of terror ran down his spine as he shot a look over at Gilda, still perched on her stool, nonchalantly sipping coffee as she took in the scene. His eyes widened in panic, "Gilda!" He hissed, in the sharpest whisper he could manage, "Gilda for Sun's sake bow to the princess!"

She cocked an eyebrow. "Wh— she's not one of my gods! No way I'm bowing to some ridiculous pon—"

"Gilda!" Joe seethed, narrowing a rage-drenched glare at her, a glare that was magnitudes more unsettling than she had thought him capable of. His body was literally vibrating with anger as he stayed locked in a bow.

"Alright alright! Don't blow a gasket!" Coffee mug still in claw, Gilda fluttered to the ground beside Joe. With her free claw, she gripped the tip of her wing and executed the single most sarcastic, half-flanked curtsy in Equestrian history. It was everything Joe could do not to wring her buzzard neck, right then and there.

To his left, the gentle figure of Sunny Skies quietly laid into perhaps the most beautiful, graceful bow Joe had ever seen. It was like the heavens had poured her from the sun in one big velvet sheet, gliding exquisitely to the tile floor like cloth bending in the wind. His frustration evaporated in an instant. Maybe they might break even here.

He swallowed, turning his eyes up to the lunar princess, who seemed wholly disinterested in the whole display, merely vacantly staring forward with half-lidded eyes. "I-if your majesty would care for a cup of Coltenhagen Espresso, I can have one brewed up in just under a jiff! Best c-cup of joe in C-Canterlot!" He held a pained, expectant, toothy grin on her for several seconds. Her continued silence felt like the moon itself was crushing down on him. He had no idea what to do. He opened his mouth to speak again, but nothing came out but an inaudible squeak.

Suddenly, her muzzle lowered, sharply and alarmingly, to rest on Joe's. He froze rigid in shock as she gently brushed the side of his snout with hers, bringing in long breaths through the nose, and letting out shorter bursts of warm air down his neck. His eyes were trained forward in terror-struck confusion as she seemed to... sniff him. Over and over. He turned a dark, unholy shade of crimson as her nose buried itself into his mane, taking deep, indulgent, starved whiffs. It was the weirdest, most nightmarishly nerve-wracking thing Joe could imagine. Maybe he'd suffered a heart attack when Gilda had done that terrible curtsy and was actually adrift in Tartaurus?

His wide, unblinking, panic-wracked eyes glacially crept to look at Gilda, who herself seemed at an utter loss. Her beak hung open as her eyes trained on every movement the alicorn made as Luna began working her way down his back, towards his flank. The movement was completely outside of Joe's range of vision, leaving only the bizarre feeling working its way down his back. In one long, impossibly slow motion, he brought his eyes forward, then to the left, to look at Sunny. She too was shocked, but it was more a barely-suppressed outrage than dumbstruck bafflement. He saw her shoulders twitch slightly, as if she was about to leap at the princess. Their eyes momentarily met, and as intensely and distinctly as he could manage, Joe mouthed the words "Do. Not." Sunny returned a helpless, pleading gesture with her hooves. Her eyes widened as Joe felt Luna hovering around his flank. That wasn't a good sign.

Sunny stared in horror as her sister licked her lips, bared her teeth, and bit down into Donut Joe's cutie mark like an ripe apple.

Author's Note

Public Enemy Number Fun

Public Enemy Number Fun
• • • •

Commodore Snugglebug could feel the bizarre creature’s heart pounding. He remembered that sensation from the old days. First they would be afraid, then they would fight, then they would end. He tightened the tendril of hair slightly, to properly bind the wings.

There was something quite odd about this one. He could feel a very familiar, very curious magic within the beast. It tasted a bit like the old stuff, but it was mixed with Equestrian magic as well. The two somehow got along. With a fascinated tilt of the head, he peered closely into its eyes. One eye was bound, the other was clear. His magic was only partially working.

That’s Grumpy Gilda! She’s a friend!

“What’s a ‘Grumpy Gilda?’ ” Snugglebug wondered aloud, in Pinkie’s voice.

His captive just stared with wide, mortified eyes. “Wh-what?”

That’s her name, silly! Grumpy Gilda’s a griffon! Half bird, half lion, all meanie pants!! They’re super duper rare.

Snugglebug scratched his chin with one of his tendrils, smiling at the thought. “Grumpy Gilda the Griffon!” He patted Gilda’s head with another of the tendrils. “She’s a cutie patootie!”

You betcha!

Commodore Snugglebug closed one eye, looking deep into Gilda’s unbound one. “Gosh, it sure is a shame we’ll have to gobble her up!” Gilda’s beak fell open. She redoubled her efforts to break free. Snugglebug pulled tight, turning to the vast sea of silent ponies before him. “She might ruin the big birthday bash!”

Ooh! Um! We could maybe do that, but we could also try not doing that!! Gilda is really fun at parties! Remember last night?!

Snugglebug considered the memories Pinkie brought across their mind. The griffon had been rather fun, hadn’t she? He really quite liked fun. It was kind of like eradicating the entire population of a planet, but instead of infernal annihilation, there were giggles!

Hehe! You got that right, Commodore! Ponies are way more fun when they’re not extra crispy!

He felt Pinkie’s laugh bounce around their head. It was a warm, delightful sensation. Maybe she was right.

It hadn’t even been a full day since he had jumped into this strange, energetic pony’s body, and already the good Commodore was learning all sorts of interesting things. Luna had been full of interesting things too, but after a thousand years of being super best buds forever, there wasn't a single thing they didn't know about each other. This past week with Luna had been fun, catching up on what he’d missed, but he had a whole new world to explore now! He'd always dreamed of what it would be like to live in a world jam-packed with Lunas, a world overflowing with life, and furry, cuddly little behooved friends.

He wanted very much to share that with Luna. That had been the original plan, really — that they would be one, that they would rule as one. Now that he was here, though? Well, it was different. A scant few years he had been apart from his beloved princess, only to return to find the poor mare positively overflowing of that awful Equestrian magic. No matter how much moon-touched sugar he had gotten her to eat, Snugglebug just could not seem to shoo it away. Why, she was worse now than she’d been when she first arrived on the moon, and that had taken centuries to cast out! Simply dreadful!

Pinkie was a much, much better vessel. No magic, tons of fun, and she’d eaten more sugar than anyone in Equestria! She was the winner! The mare practically had half of the moon’s magic swimming through her body by the time he'd set up shop. Really, that was the big difference between she and Luna: here, in Pinkie’s tummy, it was just cozier.

Commodore Snugglebug’s attention drifted back to the wiggling griffon in his grasp. Taking a deep breath, he reached into her mind, quieting her struggle and sculpting her into a more manageable state of mind. The ring across her eye burned bright, and slowly, she relaxed.

Snuggles absently juggled the enervated griffon between his tendrils, replaying memories of Joe’s party. It had certainly been a more lively gathering than this. Glancing off to the crowd before him, Snugglebug waved his hoof about. A group of ponies standing before the gesture sprang to life, bobbing around like marionettes. Centuries of running Luna’s night court had made him rather good at mimicking life, and he felt he could do it pretty well. It had certainly kept the princess entertained — and reasonably sane — during her later, less collected years. He took that as a compliment.

Even so, he felt nothing from his puppets’ empty motions. At Joe’s party, there had been waves of spontaneous excitement, spirited delight, beguiled revelations, and laughter. Lots of genuine laughter. For something so simple, it defied intention. True delight required a measure of surprise, and try though one might, it was really quite impossible to earnestly surprise oneself. Snugglebug found this utterly fascinating, and utterly frustrating.

Hey! You know what might work? If you let everypony go free! Then they’d be really happy!

Snugglebug nodded. That might liven things up!

With a shake of their bushy tail, and a big, adorable wink, Snugglebug released his hold on every pony on the castle grounds. He looked down at a tiny teal mare before him, waiting for her to begin conversing with another. She blinked a few times, then her gaze slowly drifted upwards, falling upon Pinkie’s enormous, fangy smile. Her face fell into a gawk of unimaginable horror. He heard the audible inhalation of hundreds upon hundreds of gasps, and then, the screaming began.

Chaos erupted across the crowd, ponies bolting for the rear gates as fast as their hooves could carry them. Snugglebug panned over the multitude of ponies that had not yet moved, either too paralyzed by terror or too busy screaming and sobbing to imagine escape. Gilda struggled with ballistic fervor, tearing at the ropes of hair with her beak.

Commodore Snugglebug huffed in disappointment, shook his tail, and gave another spirited wink. The screaming stopped in an instant, as did the screamers, and everypony silently marched back onto the grounds.

This was no good at all! How are you supposed to run a party like this? Pinkie Pie, your idea was terrible!

Sorry Commodore! Sometimes ponies get a teensy bit frightened when they meet somepony they don’t know. Or when everything they know and hold dear is cast into a living, waking lunar hellscape!

Snugglebug chewed on the thought. He was beginning to think this ‘birthday party’ idea of Pinkie’s would never work. Maybe he should start one of those war games, like he and Luna used to enjoy! Except instead of using moon dust, he could use real live ponies!

H-hey! Um! Don’t get discouraged! We can still have a splendifferous, off-the-hoofsie, capital-C Cray-Cray birthday bonanza! Let me take over, and I’ll do all of the work!

Snugglebug did rather like it when he didn’t have to do any of the thinking, and could just enjoy himself. That’s pretty much all he did, back in the good old days. Ever since he had awoken — some 3,000 years ago today! — it had been one hassle after another.

Closing his eyes, Snugglebug faded to the back of their mind, letting Pinkie take over.

Pinkie gently placed Gilda onto the pile of sugar before them, and spread her tendrils wide. Snugglebug could see what she had in mind: a spell. It had been quite some time since somebody had given him a nice, juicy spell to cast. Taking hold of the draconian magic that now resided within each and every pony in Canterlot, he followed her want, and lessened thier hold by half, to match Gilda.

Nothing scary or unusual here! Just Princess Pinkie and her sister Luna, rulers of the moon, the stars, and everything below.

She watched as one of the pink rings in each of their eyes faded, then disappeared. All around, her ponies perked up, a little confused at first, but soon, excitedly talking amongst themselves. Pinkie held her eyes closed as she concentrated on memories of countless parties past, how fun it was to be among friends, how exciting it was to meet new ponies, how satisfying it was to learn new things about each other.

Opening her eyes, she watched as ponies began grouping together around street corners, benches, water fountains, and stair cases, chattering and laughing. It was amazing. All she had to do was change a few little details, and make them used to a few new ones, and they were happy. And if they were happy, Snugglebug was happy. And if Snugglebug was happy, then she was happy!

It’s working! Can you feel them, Pinkie? The party is going well!

Pinkie could indeed feel them! She really could! There was a flow of magic, all around her ponies, all the time. She’d always heard about it, from Twilight, and from unicorns of all kinds, but she had never had quite understood what they meant. Now, she could see it, and feel it. It was the momentum that Snugglebug so adored! The forward motion of conversation and storytelling, of new ideas and tangents coming together from a dozen disparate pieces.

Pinkie knew better than anypony the fun little narratives that wound themselves together during a good party. They were magical bundles of expectation and enthusiasm, of genuine passion and heartfelt curiosity. You never knew what your friends would build together, once you got them talking. They created something new, something special, every time.

With a giggle, she reached deep and commanded the pile of sugar and sweets to shift about, then disperse into the crowd. Like the moon dust of old, the sugar formed itself into gingerbread tables and peppermint-twist stools, sugar wafer bar fronts and graham cracker stages, rock candy dance floors and rows of party cannons, intermittently shooting out balls of gummy worms into the crowd. Snugglebug was quite happy to have something more versatile to work with than ash, and Pinkie was just full of fun ideas. Within a few short minutes, they had themselves one doozy of a Pinkie Party.

Pinkie felt Snugglebug’s intent pull her attention toward the young griffon at her hooves, who had begun dusting herself off with an arid disinterest. Her heart sank as she felt the good Commodore thumbing through her book of memories, and taking a long look at her... colorful history with Gilda.

Hey, we should have some fun with her! Remember how funny she gets when she’s mad?

Pinkie swallowed. She didn’t quite want to think about it, lest she give Snugglebug any ideas, but there had always been a part of her that loved watching Gilda fume about. She was just so adorable when she got all flustered and defensive. Pinkie hadn’t really noticed at first, but ever since Gilda had stormed out of Ponyville, she occasionally found herself thinking back on it with a strange, detached fondness. She hesitated to say that she enjoyed torturing the egotistical griffon, but... teasing, in her own playful way, had been a bit of a guilty pleasure. It was not something she was particularly proud of, but it was there.

Granted, there had always been a razor thin line with Gilda between obnoxiously off-putting and heart-meltingly cute. Pinkie often wondered if it was even worth the effort of trying to coax out the latter, considering how profoundly miserable the griffon could often be. Most ponies would not have bothered. But, Pinkie was not most ponies.

Whoa, you’re totally right! She’s the best when she’s all huffy-puffy fluster-faced!

Crud.

Pinkie’s ears drooped as she felt Snugglebug will two moori guards to retrieve Celestia’s diplomatic papers on Gilda. Going by the memories Snugglebug had gleaned off of Luna, these were papers that Princess Celestia wrote for her sister, to help acclimate Luna to the modern political dynamic. They were... often quite brutal. She believed it had started as a light-hearted jab at Luna about her unreserved, overly forward candor. They had since evolved into a series of scathingly over-the-top takedowns, chock-full of all manner of embarrassing factoids and cynical conclusions. Luna seemed to adore them, but... Pinkie cringed at the thought of what Gilda’s might contain. It would not be good. Subject change! Subject change!

Turning around, she caught sight of Princess Luna, who was gliding to the bottom of the raised platform in a wide-eyed daze. The ethereal mare silently took in the roaring party that stretched before her, from the foot of the royal throne all the way through the city streets.

“Princess!” Pinkie felt her mouth chirp with delight. Snugglebug immediately pushed his way into the driver’s seat, floating Pinkie toward the back of their mind. “How do you like the party? Isn’t it wonderful?!”

• • • •

Luna gave several long, deliberate blinks as she processed the massive figure before her. Princess Pinkie was many times larger than she was, more akin to a small dragon than an alicorn. She held a hoof over her open mouth, narrowing her eyes as she intensely scrutinized the creature. Oddly familiar.

Craning her neck upwards, Princess Luna took in the full breadth of the towering beast. “P... Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie giggled, her tendrils of hair waving excitedly about, like a bundle of snakes with their tails tied together. “That’s not the half of it!”

After a moment’s hesitation, Luna hovered into the air, drifting right beside the mare’s enormous, reptilian eye. She couldn’t imagine how, but... she knew, exactly who it was. She felt it. It could only be him. It’s just... that was impossible.

“This...” She drifted away, trying to wrap her mind around the immense mare. “This must be a dream.”

Pinkie just laughed, drifting into a lazy roll as she hovered off the ground. “I know! I can’t believe it either! All that time we spent up there, dreaming about it, and now it’s here!!” She pointed eight tendrils up at the sky-ceiling of lunar expanse above them, vibrating with giddiness.

Luna’s mouth fell open. Her eyes were wide with shock. “O... Oni?!”

Pinkie squealed, her tendrils shooting out to wrap around Luna. In one, blisteringly fast motion, she squeezed the bundled-up princess into the biggest, softest hug Luna had ever experienced, drifting upside-down in a lazy, vertical spin. “The one and only!”

Luna could scarcely believe it. She had been... positive, that what she had seen had been nothing more than a long, terrible fever dream. A strange and ridiculous nightmare she had passed through during a thousand-year sleep. She held a hoof against her head, staring off into space as Pinkie placed her back on the ground.

Pinkie paused for a moment, then, with a gentle hoof, raised Luna’s chin. Luna looked into her sister’s eyes. They were a wobbling reservoir of barely-contained tears, her mouth puckered into a tight, cute little frown, and her antennae drooping with devastated sadness. Luna swallowed, then gave a tiny, sympathetic smile.

“It... it is good to see you, old friend.” She placed a hoof onto Pinkie’s. “We apologize, but, if you might remind us... how, pray tell, did you... ‘get down?’ ”

Pinkie shook her head with an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “I knew you’d forget, with that kooky dooky noggin of yours!” She tussled Luna’s mane with an enormous hoof. “Your helmet, remember?! I made it for you! Out of me! Well, parts of me. I can’t believe you just left me on the shelf like that! I had to wait months and months and months to get out!”

Luna facehoofed. Of course. Her helm, the only thing that remained of Nightmare Moon. It had been the armor Oni had sculpted for her, up there on the lunar surface. The only reason she had even kept it after the Elements freed her from her lunacy was... as a reminder. A reminder of how truly mad she had gone, and how far she had fallen.

The princess ran her hoof through her mane as she recalled the mortifying burlesque fashion show Discord had put on through her night court a couple of weeks back, his pride and joy being the lingerie number he had cobbled together from her more... risque frippery. Balanced atop his head had been the helm of Nightmare Moon, the emblematic ‘cherry on top’ of his shameless ensemble. It seemed dreadfully obvious to her now that Oni had eagerly leapt at the opportunity to snuggle into the greatest living embodiment of draconian magic in existence. She rubbed the back of her neck, looking up at Pinkie as the mare giggled and pranced in place, sending minor tremors through the marble floor. She supposed it worked out fine, in the end. Everypony seemed to adore her.

She began to wonder, exactly, how and when Oni had come to share a body with the Element of Laughter, and... exactly... how and when Oni had declared him... er... herself, to be her sister. But, well, the more she thought on the matter, the more difficult it became. Utterly exhausting, in fact. With a shake of her head, she dismissed the thought.

It had been a very long, very tiring week, and she would very much like a drink.

• • • •

“Here’s your papers, princess!”

Commodore Snugglebug turned to grasp the small stack of diplomatic papers from a familiar duo of moori guards, spreading the documents across all eight curly tendrils. He couldn’t be bothered to glean the one-eyed stallion’s name, but Pinkie had a rather encyclopedic recollection of names to draw from, and he recognized the other mare as Joe’s sister, Seraph. She was beaming with a smile, her right eye held down by a pink ring of light. The other moori was missing an eye, and had just a bold pink glow creeping out from under his eye patch. The two stood idle, between she and Luna, in case either imagined some other use for them.

With a scrunch of the snout, Snugglebug took a mindful of sugar and formed a large, round lollipop table, detailed with a minutiae of elegant lunar flourish. As the Commodore settled in, cloud-soft cotton candy cushions rose under Luna and Gilda. Snugglebug pushed Pinkie’s objections well out of mind as he eagerly skimmed the documents, drinking in their scandal like cherry cola.

Gilda’s eyes darted around the table for a few short moments before she warily settled down on the cushion like a roosting chicken. Digging through her satchel, the griffon pushed aside a few courier scrolls and withdrew a small, hidebound booklet. Closing shut the buckle, she flipped to a page containing a small sketch of the red lights, surrounded on all sides by haphazard, scribbled notes.

Gilda stopped for a moment, re-reading some of her notes. She furrowed her brow, then glanced up at Pinkie. “Huh. I’m not... one hundred percent on why the patriarchs told me to ask you about the aurora.” Gilda gave a dismissive shrug, gesturing up at the sky. “Looks fine to me.”

Snugglebug giggled, slapping eight papers and eight tendrils down. “You got that right, missy! Never looked better!” Reaching into his mane, Snuggles retrieved a pair of green, spiral swirl gag sunglasses and delicately placed them atop his muzzle with practised regality. “Now, onto more pressing matters!”

Snugglebug, please! She’s going to get really, really mad!

The Commodore felt a rush of devious excitement. He could tell Pinkie felt it as well, despite her objections.

“AaachEM!” Snugglebug bellowed out a clearing hack, raising one of the documents before his face. “‘Gilda von Godric: An objective assessment, by Princess Celes—’ ” Snugglebug froze, rattling his spiral sunglasses to the tip of his nose. He glanced over at Luna, who was oblivious, holding her wine glass in hoof while Seraph poured from a bottle held tenuously in her mouth. “...By me! Princess Pinkie!”

Wh— Hey!! I didn’t write this!!

Gilda stared at the towering princess with a flabbergasted dread. “...is this like a performance review or something? I swear, nobody told me I was supposed to bring candy today.” She began digging through her satchel again. “I think I’ve got some hard candies still stuck in here somewhere, if you want them.”

Snugglebug pushed his glasses back up his snout and resumed. “ ‘Abrasive, boorish, and embarrassingly unprofessional, Ambassador Gilda radiates an ignorance of diplomatic decorum and basic Equestrian history that borders on high-concept farce.’ ”

Snugglebug squealed with laughter, rolling onto her back.

Gilda’s beak flattened into a sour grimace. “Oh ha ha, Princess. Hilaaarious.” She folded her arms in a huff. “Laugh it up.”

Wiping a tear from her eye with a wobbling tendril, Snuggles rolled back onto her rear, pulling another document from the table. Gilda gritted her teeth, her eye beginning to twitch.

Snugglebug fixed his glasses, holding the paper close as he continued reading. “ ‘Doubtless, Gilda’s distressingly prominent position within Equestrian politics is the unholy Tartaurian lovechild of the rampant nepotism that continues to plague griffon high society. As the sixth and most recent wife of Duke Godric von Garickson, Gilda has been granted a wide variety of—’ ” Snugglebug took in a deep, delighted gasp. “—You’re MARRIED?!”

No no no no oh no oh no!

Gilda exploded into a deep, dark shade of red, furiously waving her arms about in an effort to quiet the princess. “Would you keep it down?!” She pressed herself flat against the table, as if she might somehow blend into it like a chameleon. “Yes! Okay?! They paired me off with some duke!” She burned with embarrassment, seeing Seraph and Blind Dive grinning to themselves with detached amusement. “It’s just a stupid thing the elders threw at me!”

Luna chuckled, swirling her wine as she looked over one of the papers. “Oh, come now, it’s hardly something to be ashamed of. It’s quite normal for a griffon of your age to pair off and have a fledgling or three. Good for the population.” She took a sip of her wine, glancing at the mortified griffon as Gilda clasped her claws over her eyes, glaring across the table through the space between fingers. “It was quite the problem, a thousand years ago. We half expected to return and find your people long gone.” She shook her head. “But, such is the power of love, we suppose.”

“Yeah. ‘Love.’ ” Gilda sneered, staring at her clenched claw. “That’s the word for it.”

Snugglebug pressed into Luna’s mind, ever so gently. Just say what you think. Just say it.

The princess placed her glass on the table, casting a knowing glance toward the griffon. "What is particularly curious is why somepony so profoundly ill-suited for their job would choose Canterlot, over the comforts of royalty and an eager mate." Placing the document on the table, she slid it away with half-lidded interest. “Really, Gilda. Playing politics, of all things.”

Gilda trembled with rage, glaring at Luna with mounting distaste. The pink ring in her eye now burned a brilliant white-pink, shimmering as it trembled about. “Yeah?! How many little brats have you squeezed out so far, bat brain?!”

Snugglebug, stop them! This isn’t how friends should treat each other!

Luna scoffed, looking out to the crowd. “Many. All were as precious to me as the stars themselves.” She placed her glass on the table, glancing at the seething griffon. “Motherhood can be a wonderful thing, if you are willing. It is trying, and it is vulnerable, but it is certainly nothing to be afrai—”

“I’m not AFRAID!” Gilda’s fist slammed against the tabletop, cracking the sucrose. The ring in her eye flickered, now an erratic, searing white. She boiled with rage.

The Commodore could barely contain his delight. Now this was fun! Wasn’t this fun, Pinkie?

Please please pretty pretty please, don’t do it, Snugglebug! Don’t do it!

Snugglebug stroked his chin with an errant tentacle, gleaming a wide, fangy smile as he dipped into Pinkie’s memories. Pinkie Promises were always the juiciest morsels, he had come to find. “OoooOOooo, you know what I heard from Rainbow? Grumpy Gilda thinks dukes are icky! She’d much rather marry a duchess!”

Gilda bolted to a stand, spreading her wings wide as she thrust an enraged talon at the princess. “MIND YOUR OWN BUCKING BUSINESS, STINKY PIE!” She shrieked, seeing red.

A stunned silence fell over the table as Gilda’s arm held firm, then began to tremble, then, slowly, lowered. Snugglebug met her eyes. The pink ring. It was gone.

Oh, poopsies.

Gilda’s face transitioned from ballistic rage to stunned stupefaction, then, as she finally tore her eyes off of Pinkie and frantically looked around her surroundings, to pure, primal terror.

• • • •

Oh gods.

Gilda began staggering backwards, gawking as she took in the full, unthinkable, living nightmare that was Princess Pinkie.

“Oh... gods...”

She hung her claw off of her gaping beak, casting her eyes to the sky. She blinked hard. It couldn’t be real. This couldn’t actually be happening.

“Oh... GODS...”

Princess Luna lowered her glass with a baffled expression. “...What ever is the matter?”

Gilda didn’t hear her. She couldn’t hear anyone right now. She was still clawing her way free from the numbing grasp of an overpowering, mind-shattering horror.

Where were the stars?! WHERE WAS THE SKY?!

A cracking sound drew her eyes back from the moon, falling on Pinkie as the hulking eldritch pony took a single step forward, crushing the lollipop table beneath the weight of her hoof. “Hey! You know what you need?” Pinkie’s hair tendrils whipped out in eight different directions, each clutching a different flavor of milkshake. “Something sweet!”

Gilda’s back hit something hard. She darted her head from side to side, seeing the dark hooves of Seraph and Blind Dive as they wrapped around her arms, holding firm. She pulled and struggled and raged, but they barely budged.

She felt a warm, sugary-sweet breath wash over her. Slowly, Gilda rose her gaze to look into the wide, fangy smile of Princess Pinkie. The next thing she knew, a tall strawberry milkshake was being poured into her mouth. She felt the muscular foreleg of Blind Dive holding her head still as the creamy treat filled her beak.

Gilda felt a rush of several blunt realizations hit her, all at once. It was like she had skipped over every stage of all-consuming panic but the last: resignation to the very real possibility that she might not make it out of this one. She just knew. No matter what she might try, it was very, very likely that she wouldn’t live through whatever was coming next. Somehow, that made things sublimely simple.

The last of the milkshake dribbled into Gilda’s mouth through a narrow crack held open by Blind Dive. She wobbled in place for a moment, then, swallowed. The tension left her body, and she stopped resisting. She closed her eyes.

Pinkie grinned. “Feeling better?”

Gilda took a deep, calming breath through the nose, turned her head to the side, and spat out the strawberry milkshake she had been holding in her beak, right into Blind Dive’s lone remaining eye. With a yelp, his grip weakened, and not missing a beat, Gilda pulled out her left arm and cracked it across Seraph’s face.

As the mare staggered back, clutching her nose, Dive wiped away the thick ice cream with an armored hoof, just in time to feel Gilda’s head bash against his. He fell onto his back, with the griffon delivering a swift, debilitating stomp between his legs before thrusting open her wings and screaming to the air.

Gilda didn’t need to look behind her to know that the worst possible thing in all possible worlds was barrelling after her. She could feel the air pulling away. It was like being chased by a flying, rabid whale. She pushed her wings harder than she had ever pushed them before, bolting past rows and rows of royal guards and Night Watch moori as they poured out of the crowd in pursuit.

She was so bucked.

Feeling the licks of Pinkie’s bubblegum tendrils at her paws, inches away, she pulled into a sharp dive, loosing a piercing eagle scream on a handful of pegasi arcing to head her off. She could see one on the end jostle in surprise at the earsplitting sound, and she knew, that was her target.

With a sharp, heavy push of the wing, Gilda twisted to her side and came at the stallion with open claws. For an instant, as her eyes locked on his, he froze, giving Gilda the fraction of a second she needed to bury her talons into his chestplate, throw her weight to her side, and hurl the pony at his comrades. She watched as they tumbled like bowling pins, catching sight of the giggling pink goddess as she bore past them, coming down on Gilda like the demon Siris herself.

Gilda drew her wings as wide as she could and thrust ahead, screaming over the crowded city streets. A vast, endless celebration sprawled across every district, every street corner, and every building — a raucous tapestry of aimless indulgence, with high society galas pouring into outdoor jam festivals pouring into fancy dinner parties pouring into writhing outdoor raves. Every street was alive with some kind of festivity, every pony partying however best they knew how. Above, Gilda could see moori and pegasi filling the skies, working their way toward the city limits in a concerted effort to cut her off. She cursed, and cut her wing to pull a sharp turn around a street corner. It was conceivable she might be able to lose Pinkie through the crowded market district. That was literally the only option she could think of.

Tucking her wings close to her side, she sailed through a narrow alleyway and into the bazaar. As she furiously beat her wings to build up her speed, she chanced a glance behind her. Pinkie had dropped out of the sky, and was now barrelling down the street like some overexcited mammoth kitten. Ponies seemed to somehow know their princess was coming before they even saw her, and gingerly moved to make way. It was like a race to them, some absurd festivity.

Coming up on the narrow alley, Pinkie leapt, clearing a two-story building in a single bound and coming down hard on a collection of fruit stands. The wood, the fruit, and the ground beneath her was instantly pulverized into vapor. Pinkie laughed at the sensation, taking a fleeting moment to prance up and down in a circle before leaping into the air and taking flight again.

Gilda cursed, leaning to her side and bolting down a narrow row of wooden vendor booths. Pies and popovers and ice cream cones and bundles of cookies flew from their display cases, swirling to form a strange, multicolored pastry claw, whipping toward her with staggering speed. She dodged, missing its grasp by inches, but plowed right into a waiting watermelon cart. Covered in wet chunks of fruit, Gilda slid against the ground, tumbling to a stop at the base of the residential quarter.

She coughed, scrambling to get to her feet, but it was too late. A thick, saccharine tendril whipped itself around her leg, and lifted the griffon helplessly into the air. Pinkie loomed overhead, touching to the ground and holding Gilda at eye level. She licked her lips.

“Wonder if you’ll taste like chicken.” She cooed, bundling the young griffon tight and holding her up to her drooling maw. Gilda’s heart beat out of her chest as the fangy void drew closer and closer. Her breathing became a rapid, hyperventilated panic, watching as a line of cotton-candy scented saliva slid over her beak. This was it. This was how it ended. Devoured by freaking Pinkie Pie.

“Hey!”

In a sharp, sudden twist of motion, Gilda was pulled out Pinkie’s mouth and held in front of her beaming smile. “I’ve got an even better idea, Snugglebug!”

Pinkie seemed to zone out for a moment, her eye twitching occasionally.

“Oooh, but it’s really really fun!!”

Gilda just stared, her breathing still a flurry of raw hysterics.

Pinkie’s head seemed to bob up and down, as if in an animated conversation.

“You’ll love it! Just watch!” The tendril suddenly pulled taught again, and Gilda found herself hurtling toward Pinkie’s mouth once more. She clenched her teeth, and pressed shut her eyes, cringing at what was to come.

A warm, syrupy-sweet sensation overtook the entirely of her face as Princess Pinkie planted a deep, gooey kiss over her beak. Gilda froze, eyes wide, her body rigid, as an indescribably bizarre sensation poured into her.

It lasted for an instant — only one, fleeting instant — but she could see into Pinkie’s mind. Like peeking into a room through an open door, she caught just the tiniest glimpse into her head. It was Sugarcube Corner, beset with dozens of streamers, decorations, goodie bags and presents. An enormous cake stood at the center of the room, reading “Happy 3000th!” in chubby, goofy letters. Gilda felt something small and soft grasp her body. She looked down to see a familiar, curly raspberry mane, pressing up against her. Pinkie Pie — the real one, that dopey, bubbly little brat — held a tight, trembling hug to Gilda’s chest.

Gilda could hear her voice. It wasn’t anxious or pained or desperate, just... straight. Honest. She couldn’t recall ever having heard quite that tone from Pinkie before.

I’m really scared.

Gilda took a deep, slow breath. It was what she did when she needed to steel herself, when she needed to be strong. She knew Pinkie could feel it too. She paused, for a moment, then wrapped her arm around the mare. Gilda held her close.

With a loud plock!, it was gone. Gilda felt her body jostle as the towering goddess pulled out of the kiss with a lazy, goofy smile. “Wowie zowie! Those are fun...”

Gilda blinked, then glanced to the entrance of the residential quarter. Guard ponies and moori surrounded her, in position beside, above, and around the fugitive griffon. On each and every one of their faces, Gilda saw the same doofy grin, and the same distant, half-lidded eyes. She took a step away from the princess. Nothing. They were all as lost in the same dumbstruck haze as Pinkie.

She shot one final glance at the bubblegum goddess, and bolted down a nearby alleyway. They would snap out of it soon, and their hunt would resume.

She could think of only one place she could hide.

Author's Note

Wasn't quite expecting this chapter to run on as long as it did. Promise, we'll be getting back to Joe and Sunny, first thing next chapter.

Let me know what you liked, and what you didn't. Any comments about typos or fixes are also mighty appreciated, but let me know if you enjoyed the chapter or not. Can't tell sometimes.

Huge honkin' thanks to Luminary, who was on this chapter like greased Christmas, and Eakin, who is the reason we have the Discord burlesque show.

If you're still confused, take a look in this chapter's comments (just search for Wade), I went over everything that's happened so far. If that doesn't do the trick, send me a mail, or comment, and I'll let you know what's going on.