Macedonian Sun

Canterlot Castle

Anno Domini 2014

September,6:30 A.M

I was tired of this shit.

        I had playing the “surprisingly intelligent beast” game for weeks now, and I was tired of it. the weeks of ‘entertaining the nobility as well as Celestia had taken a toll on me, and I most likely would have lost it by now if not for that certain encounter a few weeks ago. As that human walked off in the day to do god-knows-what at night, he actually undid a far bit of psychological scarring.

Speaking of nights, after meeting ‘Josh’ a few weeks ago, I had hypothesised that there had to be more people like him. There had to be, meeting him was proof enough. But, in order to gain an “outlet”, if you will, to the outside word; I needed a pony intermediary to relay me information and send information from myself.

So began my purposely slow and tentative process of revealing my intelligence.

        It turns out that I didn’t have to work very hard to find such a pony. One of my caretakers, Swift Protector, had been noticing my strange bouts of “Near-Sentience” that I accidentally let slip from time to time. I had approached him about a week ago, while no-one (or rather no-pony, as it were) was around, I crept up. Out of more bravado than brains, I quietly whispered four words into his ear that could change the course of this city’s, and nation’s histories.

“Can you help me?”

Then I realized the sheer stupidity of what I had done. Would he call the guard? Would he pretend to trust me and sell me out? Or worse, what if I was taken to the Royal Laboratories for ‘testing’? I had had my legs turned and I was ready to run like a bat out of hell at any given moment. Thank god I never needed to.

As it turned out, Swift never once became even slightly close to being a sellout. From the minute I first spoke to him, he acted like a kid in a candy store, wanting to know ever more about myself, where I was from, human cultures, and the interesting question of just how the hell I got here; which I happily regurgitated the answers to. I finally could talk to someone other than myself for a change.

        Which brings us to the present. Thanks to Swift’s having access to the local libraries, I’m able to have at least some Pony-made books; the one I’ve been nearly addicted to being Battered Spear’s new novel Capitulation, which I found to be eerily similar to Robert Conroy’s 1945, with both Celestia and Emperor Hirohito enduring a similar predicament forced upon them by similar groups of coup-perpetrators.

        As well as books on Equestrian history, which basically seemed to be what America would have developed like as an Absolute Monarchy.The very idea of which is ironic itself. The events were almost identical in some areas. The naming of their cities, the way the pushed westward further expanding their frontiers; the similarity was almost scary in a certain way. Swift had noticed it as well.

        Swift had also been making a Herculean effort to find and locate my aforementioned human guild member, who always managed to evade the public eye and well-known, reputable locations; which made finding him the ‘easy’ way nearly impossible.Then again, I shouldn't be surprised he would avoid such places. But we were both determined to do so, laws be damned.

        We were currently engaged playing a game of Poker. Swift though the idea of gambling in such a form was needless and rather stupid, so we bet favors in the place of material wealth. Which never ceased to make things interesting, especially when the bet was bat-crap insane.  But of course we always did them anyways, but the one I had right now was incredibly risky. As he would find out.

 “Swift, I got a rather large one that might jump the shark a little” I stated, not looking up from my cards, a 4 Of Hearts and Jack of Diamonds. Swift had learned only a few human idioms from me so far, but he understood the basic premise of what I meant. “Hit me with it, brother” he replied, not looking up from his own cards himself.

        I actually might have cracked a wide smile then and there. Not only did Swift learn Human customs and bits of language exceptionally fast, but he had quite a decent poker face. “I think I might need your assistance in making contact with a few more” I replied as I made yet another bluff-induced call in the hope of convincing him my cards weren't as crappy as I knew them to be.

        Swift dropped his cards, a One and a Seven of different pairs.

The cheeky bastard was bluffing too, I thought before Swift’s immediate rebuttal. “Are you insane?” He hissed, “You got lucky with me, I wouldn't be the same about the rest of the guard!” I knew his point all too well, but I could not and would not be cooped up in a small room as a pet for the rest of my life. “I know that full well, Swift, but I wasn't planning on meeting with any guards,” I countered; waiting for him to realize my intent.

        “Oh, I get it, those blasted court bureaucrats,” he slowly smiled back. “Precisely,” I too grinned, “so I’m counting on you to at least try this just once.” I almost near-pleaded. Swift playfully cocked an eyebrow and replied wittingly “You never won the game, but I’ll do it anyways, I’m so nice like that.” ‘But only after another game.”

        I let loose my first hearty laugh since captivity.

______________________________________________________________________________

Canterlot Castle

Anno Domini 2014

September 11:30 A.M

Celestia groaned for at least the 25th time that day.

        She knew It was useless doing so at this point, it was an everyday routine that she had kept up for nearly a millenium; but she still had the tendency. More and more Nobles came with more and more outrageous requests. Money, appointed and elected offices alike, one even requested a statue of him in the Canterlot Gardens for his ‘Valuable Contributions.’ Which, She thought, mostly include sitting on his plot, and making requests for those around him to kiss and wipe it.

She had been wanting to whip up a wonderful cake, but there was no time. Plus, she had drank two glasses of Chimay this morning. As a great mare once said while in such a situation “You should not drink.. and bake.” Which she had just exactly done a number of times, neither of them ending in anything resembling a success. She still remembered (and winced) at the time when Luna had drank a full case of Pintrot Noir and attempted to fix dinner for everyone.

        The end results had been 12,000 bits worth of damage to the Royal Kitchens, which had never truly healed since that unfortunate accident. It had inspired Celestia to pass a law stating that no-pony who is currently intoxicated should be allowed to handle a massive amount of sulphur, which had been almost unanimously passed by anyone who had heard or seen the blast, which was almost everyone. But she smiled at one thing.

At least her pet was always there.

        The pet human she had bought from the train, along with the strange toys he had been carrying with him, was stowed away in her Servant’s Quarters. He always managed to give her comfort at the end of the day, no matter the level of stress. Which I could use right now, she thought before returning to one of the many princess-like things princesses usually did on a day-to day basis.

        Princess-sized mounds of paperwork.

        The sheer workload to be completed in a day would have overwhelmed even the most talented of administrators, but Celestia had possessed experience with the skill for more than nine-hundred and fifty years now, 973 to be exact,  and developed as well as sharpened those skills over time. To her, this was simply an average day’s work. Ponies often scoffed when they saw it, believing that no pony, deity or otherwise, could handle to such a thing. And Celestia scoffed in response, always piling on even more papers to the piles the next day after the press published such a report.

        Then again, it was lucky they could, the Equestrian Newspapers and Media Front (ENMF) was a state-run governmental organization, with bureaucrats often ‘softening’ the more radical articles. Celestia disliked the practice, and Luna openly opposed it, always attempting to introduce new legislation to end the State Control of the media. These bills, even if Celestia intervened on her sister’s behalf, always mysteriously ‘disappeared’ after the shortest amount of time in the Kingdom's Diet.

        Most of the country’s heavy industry was state owned, a practice which sometimes often grew into an even bigger problem than the ownership of the public media. Cloudsdale and Baltimare were the only notable exceptions. Even they didn’t have much to offer, which had been most of the reason why the government had cut them some slack in the first place; there simply wasn’t enough to impact much of anything. But she had plans to spark a renaissance of the industry there,  and without state intervention.

But that could come later.

So she had decided to to take the day off today with Luna’s approval, and decided to take the day off today, preferring instead to visit her human. She felt rejuvenated as she climbed the cobblestone maze of hallways, towers and staircases up to the Servant’s Quarters. The air may have been dusty and a bit hazy, but she was happy nonetheless.

        The Old Stones actually provided a relaxing atmosphere, which she always had loved to slowly take in. She thought of the Human for a while. While a pet, he had some of the most strange mannerisms she had ever before encountered. For instance, he always slept on a bed.

It didn’t matter whether it was a cot or simply a mattress on the floor, he would take it before he would even dream of simply collapsing on the nearby rug. Of course, there were other things such as the human being seemingly a bit autistic, but the psychologist she had summoned had already determined it would be impossible for a human to have a variation of autism found in intelligent creatures, which she found doubly strange. She had thanked her for her findings, but privately doubted their legitimacy.

She took her thoughts off the Human and back to navigation. As Old as she was, the castle was much,much older. Even princesses got lost on rare occasion. She could see her Servant’s Quarters just near the end of the hall.  As she began to approach the Quarter’s however, she heard a conversation between her trusted staff aide Swift Protector. Normally, it would be nothing out of the ordinary, just giving her human some love and encouragement, but this time-

        -He was mentioning bureaucrats.

        Infuriated that one of her closest, most trustable aides would turn on and scheme against her, she quite literally burst through the frail antique lock on the doors, and charged in; ready to arrest the schemers. Normally she tried to tolerate such ponies, no matter how backstabbing and deceitful their actions were, but this time she could make an exception. However, the scheming coming from within the room was laughable, if scheming at all.

        The ‘Schemers’ were Swift and the human playing a simple game of-

        Wait a minute.

        Swift and the HUMAN?!

Her jaw slowly dropped open, and she slowly turned towards the human in more awe than rage.The Human had done some strange things before, but this was off the deep end! She didn’t know what to expect, neither from Swift nor her seemingly normal pet, until she heard her human speak some of the first words (and profanity) of his species.

        “Oh shit…”

        To which she promptly passed out.