Those Who Live Forever

by Moose Mage

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Original Character
Length: 5131

A mother brings her daughter to Canterlot, for enrollment in Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

A mother brings her daughter to Canterlot, for enrollment in Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Together, they face the future.

Published 2015-01-21 05:20:04 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-21 05:20:04 UTC

Those Who Live Forever

When Delores was a young thing, years and years ago, she asked her father why only Princess Celestia could live forever.

Her father had smiled. “Everyone lives forever, little girl,” he said. “In big ways, in little ways. Everyone lives forever.”

Delores had wondered about that. She would have asked him more, once she built up the courage, but her father died abruptly, before he could grow as old and comfortable as he deserved. So Delores grew without him. Wrinkles came, and gray hairs. But she didn’t wear makeup, and she didn’t dye her mane. Her only armor was a pale blue knitted shawl. It was just enough.

Walking down the crowded street in the crowded city, Delores kept that shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Canterlot. The city was always too cold for her. The wind, she thought, waiting for a green light at a crosswalk, the buildings funnel in this awful wind. She usually kept away from cities.

The light flashed green, and Delores crossed the street with the rest of the mob.

But this visit was worth the wind. This visit was very important.

Soon Delores found the address she was looking for. The walls were white marble, adorned with decorative plates and slivers of gold. Above the door, in blindingly polished letters: Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.

Any quiet disdain Delores might have had for such extravagance was quickly smothered by the dragons flapping in her stomach. She gathered herself, straightened her shawl, and, with some difficulty, pushed open the heavy glass doors.

The silence inside was almost as cold as the wind. Delores stepped into the deserted, cavernous room, a cave hewn from an ivory cliff face. Plastic potted plants sat tastefully by waiting benches. And across the room was a desk, above which a sign declared “Registrar.”

Delores walked across the wide floor, the clack of each hoofstep bouncing off the walls, phantom gunshots. At the desk, no one. Delores lifted her hoof and rang the silver service bell. The crystalline ringing died slowly on the air, and she waited.

There was a clatter of hoofsteps from around the corner. A smiling face appeared – a white earth pony, her business suit as tasteful as the plastic plants.

“Hello there, ma’am!” said the earth pony, taking a seat behind her desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting. What can I do for you?”

Delores read the mare’s name-tag: Hello! My name is Miranda.

“Thank you,” said Delores. “I’m here to enroll my daughter April in your school.”

“Very good,” said Miranda, gathering some papers. “Do you have an application?”

“Right here,” said Delores, producing a manila folder containing all the necessary documents. She passed it to Miranda, who opened it and began a systematic evaluation of its contents.

“Application, birth records,” she muttered, “personal essay, previous schooling… Oh, I’m sorry ma’am, but I don’t see a recommendation here.”

“… Recommendation?”

“All applying students are required to submit at least one recommendation from a teacher or tutor – “

“Yes, yes, I know, it should be there, it’s written by a Mr. Cribbs, he was April’s personal magical instructor. I’m positive it’s there, I must have checked a dozen times this morning.”

Frowning, Miranda began examining each paper again. “Cribbs, Cribbs…” At last, her eyes lit up. “Ah, yes, right here! R. W. Cribbs. I’m sorry, ma’am, I must have missed it.”

“That’s all right,” said Delores, willing her heart beat slower. “Is there anything else?

“Just sign your name on this clipboard, ma’am, and I’ll enter your daughter into the system.”

Delores dutifully accepted the pen and paper offered her, and scratched out Delores Cloud on the empty line.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Miranda, taking back the pen and paper. “We’ll contact you with a date for April’s entrance exam in the next six to twelve weeks.”

Delores paled.

“You can expect your results,” Miranda went on, stowing the signed paper in a blue file, “at some point three to five weeks after the examination. Thank you, and have a good day.”

Delores cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I… I think there’s been a miscommunication. I’m here to sign up my daughter for the entrance exams at the end of this month. A week from tomorrow.”

Miranda gazed at Dolores, her plaster smile flaking.

“A week from tomorrow, ma’am?” she said. “I’m sorry, but there isn’t any – ” Suddenly, she seemed to have a realization. “Oh, I see. I’m sorry – those exams have been cancelled. You see, the school’s available spots filled up unusually quickly this year. Only one spot remains open. Our final entrance exams have been held across this week; the last one is tomorrow morning. I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s far too late to add in any new exams this year. But I’d be happy to sign you up for an exam in the next six to twelve weeks, for enrollment next year.”

Next year.

“Miss, uh… Miranda, is it? Miranda. Certainly, I would happily enroll my daughter in your school for next year. However, by next year, April will be eleven years old. And your school does not accept applicants over ten years of age. It’s very important that April is enrolled for this year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am, I truly am. But there’s nothing I can do.”

Delores stared at the mare behind the desk, her mouth dry, her nostrils flaring.

“My daughter and I,” she said, slow and deliberate, “are not from Canterlot. We’ve come a very long way to take your entrance exam. Tell me how, exactly, we could have known that the exam dates were changed, with over two hundred miles between us and your school? We most certainly could not have known. That in mind, you will please make an exception for my daughter, who is more than qualified to attend your distinguished school of magic.”

The desk pony had the audacity to offer a placating smile, and Delores’s stomach churned.

“Ms. Cloud,” said Miranda, in an attempt at a soothing tone, “I’m so sorry that you weren’t able to double check the exam schedules. But it really is too late to make an exception. We need at least a week to put the paperwork through. No pony is treated as a special case – ”

“Read the papers in that file I gave you. Tell me that you’ve seen a more accomplished little unicorn than April. Mr. Cribbs served as a professor at this school for six years. You know what he says about April? He’s ‘never seen anything like her.’ His words, not mine. Go on, read it yourself.”

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to be – ”

“Read it, go on, take a good look at the unicorn you’re turning away at the door.”

“Ma’am, as I told you, we can’t make exceptions, no matter how – ”

“Read it.”

The desk pony’s plaster smile was all dust in the wind by now. She sighed, looking down at the manila folder on the desk.

Finally, she looked back up at Delores. “How about this,” she said. “Mr. Cribbs and I were colleagues here for a time. I know that he isn’t exactly liberal with compliments. Tell you what. I’ll hand April’s application over to the admissions office, tell them about your mitigating circumstances. If they have time to review it and come to a decision, I’ll call you tonight and let you know. Where are you staying?”

“The Whiskers Hotel,” said Delores, her heart pounding like a drum under the pressure of hope. “Here, let me write down the number…”

Miranda produced a notepad and pencil, and Delores wrote the number.

“Thank you, Ms. Cloud,” said Miranda, smile re-sculpted. “I’ll contact you as soon as I get word back from admissions. Thank you, and have a good day.”

Delores nodded. “Yes, thank you…”

When Delores stepped back into the streets, the wind almost seemed warm. Almost.

While April Cloud waited in her hotel room for her mother to get back, she redecorated.

The wallpaper, once a placid beige, had been replaced by an expanse starry purple sky, so real you could almost feel the cool night breeze. Where once had been a firm brown carpet was now a sheet of glassy, translucent blue, the frozen surface of a silent sea. And the small window had been so greatly enlarged, it took up the entire wall, a sight beautiful and dangerous and exciting.

Delores opened the door and looked around. She smiled.

How does she do it? she thought. Where did this magic come from? Not from me, I can hardly lift up a phone book with this useless old horn of mine. Not her father.

April’s father was a pegasus. His work required travel; his bags were always half-packed. And on the day April was born, he packed up those bags and went travelling. And never came back.

Up, up, and away, thought Delores, the memory a razor-thin barb in her brain.

But one thing was absolutely clear to her. If April was allowed an entrance exam, she would pass.

At the foot of the queen-sized bed, Delores saw that her little interior decorator had built herself a pillow fort. She could see the flashlight shining inside. It’s bizarre, Delores thought. Magic enough to change the world, and when all is said and done, April can be found in a pillow fort.

Delores walked to the fort. “Sweetie,” she said, “I’m home.”

“Hi, Mom!” came a voice from deep inside the velvety labyrinth. “How’d it go?”

“Can I come in?”

“Yup, be careful.”

Delores, with some effort, got down on the floor and poked her head into the fort’s front entrance. Inside sat April, a flashlight in hoof, a stack of textbooks at her side, another open book in front of her.

Delores smiled at her daughter. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“I didn’t want to use magic. It was hard to get the ceiling right. I used a blanket from the closet.”

“I meant the hotel room, sweetie.”

“Huh? Oh, it was really brown and boring. Do I have to put it back?”

“… No, not yet, it can stay until we leave.”

April’s grin was brighter than her flashlight. “Thanks, Mom!” she said. “I’ve been studying, too, getting ready for next week. Well, just now I was reading Daring Do, but I was getting bored again… Mom?”

Delores realized her eyes were glazing, mind, drifting. She came back.

“April,” she said, “can you come out here for a second?”

April’s grin was immediately swallowed up. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Oh, no, no, just… Come on out, little girl, let’s talk.”

Delores removed her head from the fort entrance. She stood and sat on the edge of the bed. Slowly, April emerged after her. Delores patted the empty spot next to her. April sat. She looked up at her mother, eyes probing and cautious.

Delores swallowed and began. “April,” she said. “I want to talk to you about the exam.”

April was silent, unblinking.

“You see,” Delores went on, “I went to sign you up today, to drop off all those papers, just like we planned… and there were some problems.”

Still silence from April. Delores plunged ahead.

“The entrance exams next week have been cancelled, but. I spoke with the mare at the registrar, and they might be able to work out something special for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The exam might be a little sooner than we expected, sweetie.”

“When?”

Delores took a breath. There was no other way to say it, except to just say it.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said.

Delores saw the dawning fear in April’s eyes, and she quickly kneeled down on the floor in front of her daughter, taking April’s hooves in hers.

“And if the exam is tomorrow,” said Delores, “I know that you will absolutely blow those proctors out of the water. Everyone is going to see that my little girl is the best in the world.”

April’s lower lip began to quiver. “I was… I was going to use this week to study…”

“Oh, I know, I know, sweetie,” said Delores, stroking April’s hooves, trying to comfort her with eyes alone. “I’m so sorry, I am. You’re going to have to be very brave, and I know you can do it, no silly exam is going to keep you out of the school of your dreams.”

April’s eyes were liquid. She tried to speak, failed. She tried again. “Mommy, listen,” she said, her voice wavering, “if I… if I take it tomorrow, and I… I don’t get in… it’s all okay, I can go back with you to the diner, I can help you run it, just you and me, and you can teach me how to be a waitress, and… and…” The tears started flowing, the shoulders started shaking.

Delores was instantly beside her daughter, hugging her tightly as the crying began in earnest and the little filly drifted past the strength for words.

“Shh, shhh,” Delores crooned. “Oh, you’re such a good girl, you’re such a good, good girl, everything will be all right, you wait and see…”

They stayed like that for some time.

Finally, April was able to gently pull away from her mother. She sniffled and wiped her nose with a foreleg.

“You know,” she said, her voice a little stronger, “I think about that sometimes. About working at the diner. It would be nice. I like the diner. I like home. Don’t you think it would be nice, working together?”

Delores stared at April. Oh, no, please, don’t even think that, she thought, you’re too young to see it, but I’m getting old, I am old, I haven’t mattered for years, but you, little girl, you matter, you matter more than I ever could.

Delores carefully formed the words. “Of course it would be nice,” she said. “I love you, and I want to see you every day, and I want you to be my little girl forever. But do you know what I want even more? For you to follow your dreams, to do what you want to do, not just what you think you have to do. And I’ll do whatever I have to, to help you make those dreams come true. Okay?”

April started sniffling again. Delores smiled her most convincing smile.

“Okay?” she said again.

April nodded.

“Good, good. I know that this is hard… Hey, how about we order room service tonight? Anything you want. We can have dessert first.”

April wiped her eyes again. “Mommy, can you help me with something?”

“Of course, honey, anything at all.”

“Can… Can you help me study? I have flashcards… It’s easier with someone to help…”

“I’d love to. Where are they?”

“In the fort with my books.”

“You stay right here, I’ll get everything.”

Delores crawled back into the pillow fort, careful not to accidentally knock anything down, and found the flashcards tucked inside one of the books. She crawled out again, books and flashcards with her, silently damning Celestia for forcing an exam like this on such young little ponies.

She put the books and the flashcards up on the bed. April started sorting everything into neat piles. Delores waited to help.

And then the phone rang.

The next day was warmer. Sunny, cloudless blue. The violent Canterlot winds had turned gentle or vanished. On such a day, Delores could almost concede that the city was beautiful.

The Clouds left their hotel at ten in the morning, to bring April to her entrance exam.

It had been a challenge, getting April to bed at a reasonable hour – she’d been determined to spend every spare second practicing spells and memorizing formulas. But soon enough she was asleep, and now Delores led her by the hoof through the streets of Canterlot, both of them well-rested and marching headlong into the future.

Every now and then, Delores would feel a pull on her hoof as April slowed down, eyes washing over everything, the highest windows of the towers, the mail-ponies flashing through the air, the smells of fresh-baked pies from strategically unlatched bakery windows.

“What do you think?” asked Delores.

April’s face clouded for a moment, lost in deathly serious contemplation. Then she nodded. “I’d like to live here,” she concluded.

“Why’s that? The buildings? They’re something, aren’t they?”

“I like that there are lots of ponies.”

“Ah. Lots of friends to make, huh?”

“Mm-hm.”

They turned a corner, and over the crowd Delores could see the roof of the examination building – thatched gold, adorned with a decorative sun, shining like a beacon in the early morning light.

“Well,” said Delores, “you’ll get to start by living in one of the school dorms. Then, if you like it – who knows? Canterlot’s a great place, as cities go… After school, you can do anything you want.”

“You really think so?”

“My April, the most talented little unicorn in the world? Of course, sweetie.”

And I’ll get to watch, Delores thought. That’s the pleasure of a mother. To watch. To watch you do anything you want, and be happy, and have the life I never –

BOOM.

The ground shook. Windows rattled. Ponies screamed. April let out a shriek.

Unthinking, Delores scooped up her baby in her arms as the throngs rushed about her in a panic, her eyes darted, trying to master the confusion, see what was going on –

A stillness settled. All eyes were fixed on the roof of the examination building. Delores looked up.

Rising from a crater in the roof was the head of an enormous purple dragon. Shards of twisted gold littered the streets like so much used-up tinfoil. Dust muted the senses. The dragon’s catlike green eyes gazed dumb and lidless into the distance.

As a rainbow caught fire in the sky overhead, deep inside, Delores felt something go out.

Walking back to the hotel that day, April complained about the distractedness of the proctors during her examination. Muttering excitedly to one another, oblivious as April deftly cast invisibility spells, transmutation spells, amniopomorphic spells, all to no effect.

“I did well,” April said, bewildered. “Everything was perfect…”

“Of course you were perfect,” said Delores. “Of course you were perfect, little girl…”

As April and Delores Cloud reached their hotel, somewhere in the shades of their hearts, they both knew.

The day that the Clouds arrived back home, Delores found a babysitter for April and hired a coach.

Ten minutes later, it was parked in her driveway. The pegasus towing it, a charcoal-gray fellow with a near permanent snarl, chewed a cigarette as Delores burst from her front door and hurried down the drive.

“How much to get me to the castle ruins in Everfree Forest?” she called.

The driver looked stunned for an instant, then laughed. “Look, lady,” he said, “I mostly do local distances, and besides, I’m not about to risk my – ”

Delores reached into her purse and produced a sack of coins. “Seventy bits,” she said, offering the sack. “And more on the return trip. Can you get me back in twenty four hours?”

The driver blinked at the sack, the cigarette falling from his mouth.

The night was deep and dark by the time the coach arrived at what was left of the castle’s front gates. After a bumpy landing, Delores clambered out of the coach and made her way inside. Broken pillars loomed like sentinels. Delores tried to ignore them and succeeded.

“Hey, lady!” cried the driver. “How long you gonna be?”

“Not long,” she called back, voice bouncing off the pillars and crumbling walls. “Not longer than an hour. Wait for me if you want the other seventy.”

Delores ventured further in without waiting for a reply.

The night was moon bright, and the expansive holes in the roof were more than enough to light her way. She stumbled over rotted carpets and carefully maneuvered around loose rubble, well aware that if she sprained an ankle and got lost in this gothic maze, the driver outside would almost certainly lose his nerve and leave, if he had to wait for too long.

It wasn’t long before she found the books.

I’ll get April another exam. I don’t care how, I’ll get her another exam. And this time she won’t be ignored, just because someone else had a lucky morning.

Delores began reading book titles. Some were written in completely unfamiliar languages. Some left heaps of dust on the floor when she opened them, the pages ground down by the weight of the years. But some were promising. Books on obscure magical spells, essays on incantation, spell-casting technique. These, Delores stowed in her purse until she was panting with the effort of lugging it around.

She knew that her time was almost up. Was this enough? Would this help?

Suddenly, a glint of light caught her eye. Delores looked up and saw a handsomely bound brown leather tome, decorated with metal that gleamed like copper, or bronze. By far, it was the best preserved book she’d come across yet.

The book was three shelves up, and Delores couldn’t reach past the second, even standing on her hind legs. She searched for a ladder, a table to stand on, a chair, something, but there was nothing, only ruins and books.

Delores stood below the leather book, staring up, knowing that she would regret it forever if she didn’t bring it home.

She sighed, closed her eyes, and turned her thoughts to magic.

Her horn began to pulse with a faint, irregular, colorless light. The book remained still. Delores concentrated, eyes squeezing, breathing fast.

Come on, she thought, just this once, let it be easy, just this once, please, let me use magic, let me get this book…

She could feel her limbs beginning to tremble.

Fshh… The sound of scraping leather above her. An inch, maybe more.

Please… Please…

“Hello.”

Delores gasped, her eyes flew open, her horn winked out. She whirled around.

A figure stood atop a mound of rubble, framed by a hole in the gray stone wall. Tall as the sky, strong as the earth. Her coat, a white so pure, it might have been woven out of light. Her crown, gold, her gaze, silk. Princess Celestia.

Delores knew she ought to kneel, but she could only stare.

The princess didn’t notice Delores’s lapse in etiquette – or pretended not to – and descended from the rubble to meet the pony in the blue knitted shawl.

“I’m sorry to frighten you,” she said. “Truthfully, I’m a little surprised, too. May I know your name?”

Delores swallowed. “I, um… Ms. Cloud, Your Highness, Ms. Dolores Cloud.”

“A very lovely name, Ms. Cloud. What brings you to my old home?”

“I was… There were… For books, Your Highness.”

It occurred to Delores that taking books from Celestia’s abandoned home might be considered looting, or even outright theft. She held her breath.

“What a coincidence,” said the princess, her smile achingly beautiful. “So am I.”

Princess Celestia walked over to a bookshelf, her hoofsteps so soft that she seemed to glide over the stony floor. Her horn began to glow with the warm firelight of the sun, and a few volumes on the higher shelves flew down from their resting places and formed a neat stack in the air.

“So, Ms. Cloud,” said the princess, examining the books hovering before her, “what sorts of books are you looking for?”

Somehow, when Delores heard that question, she felt a sort of steel in her again.

“Books for my daughter, Princess.”

“Your daughter?” Princess Celestia turned to face Delores. “How wonderful! You’re here to find books for your daughter, and I’m here to find books for my student.”

“… Your student, Princess?”

“Oh, yes. I don’t suppose you’re from Canterlot, Ms. Cloud?”

“No, Your Highness.”

“Ah, then you couldn’t have seen… But the other day, a prospective student for my school of magical studies took her exam. And she is extraordinary, Ms. Cloud. Ponies will be telling tales of that dragon for years!”

Delores felt a stone in her belly. “How remarkable, Princess,” she said. “And no one else has come close to her?”

“This student, I shall tutor personally. Oh, I hope you don't mind me telling you this, Ms. Cloud, I don't mean to gush, but… let us just say that it’s difficult to overstate my excitement.”

Suddenly, the princess’s eyes lit up. “Ah!” she exclaimed, staring over Delores’s head. “There it is.”

Her horn glowed once again, and the leather, copper-studded volume on the third shelf drifted effortlessly through the air, and added itself to Princess Celestia’s stack.

“That seems to be all I need,” said the Princess.

Delores looked up at the empty spot on the shelf, watching the scene as if from another plane of reality.

“Do you need any help getting home, Ms. Cloud? I’d be happy to let you ride in my chariot.”

Delores looked back at the Princess. It took a moment for the question to pierce the haze. “No, thank you, Princess,” she said. “I have a coach waiting.”

“Then I’ll leave you to your business,” said Princess Celestia, turning back to the hole in the wall from whence she came. “Mind your steps, Ms. Cloud; it’s so easy to trip and fall around here.” She began to walk to the wall – and then, almost an afterthought, she turned to Delores again.

“We’ve met each other on a very special day, Ms. Cloud. You will know the name of my student one day. She will do very well, I think. Very well indeed.”

A white ghost, she climbed up the rubble and started to pass through the wall.

“Maybe not, Princess.”

The princess stopped. She turned and looked down, down at the little pony in the blue knitted shawl.

“Maybe things will go wrong. Things often do. Maybe you – and your student – will fall a little short of your dreams. Maybe, Princess, you’ll have to settle. But anyway. I wish you luck, Princess. I wish you luck with your dreams.”

The princess stared. Her eyes were unreadable glass. Silence gnawed at the air.

“Yes,” she finally said. “Thank you, Ms. Cloud.”

Princess Celestia turned again and was gone.

And then, for one broken moment, Delores let herself cry.

The world kept turning, and for the Clouds, the days became difficult to tell apart. The weeks. The years.

One morning, as Delores put up the “Open” sign in the diner window, April tied her apron and stared out over her mother’s shoulder.

“Can you see her?” said April, neck straining, eyes flitting across the pony-peppered street. “I swear I saw her this morning, but there were so many ponies around her, I couldn’t really see.”

“No, I don’t see her,” said Delores, “and if I do see her, my only concern would be whether or not she’s hungry enough to stop by.”

April laughed and returned to setting the booths. “Mom, I get it, you’re not impressed. But this is a big deal! Who knows? She might never set hoof in this town again after today.”

Delores watched her daughter. April was taller than her by now. She wouldn’t stop growing. Either that, or Delores wouldn’t stop shrinking.

“Mm.” Delores headed back to the kitchens. She did a lot of the cooking nowadays. Sometimes teenage ponies would apply for part time positions, but by and large, it was just Delores and April. And they made do.

Before she could push open the door, Delores heard a gasp and a clatter of silverware.

Instantly she was hurrying back to April. “What’s the matter?”

April was staring out the window, eyes wide, smile wider. “I see her,” she breathed, “she’s right there, she’s coming this way, she’s – oh, Mom, she’s coming to the door.”

Delores glanced out the window. Hm. So she was.

April turned to her mother, something dancing behind her eyes. “Mom,” she said, “I figured that maybe you might want to, but, do you think, maybe, that I could – you know, that I could serve her?”

Delores looked at her daughter.

“Are you nervous?” she asked.

April nodded. “A little.”

Delores smiled. “Good. That means you care. Of course you can serve her, sweetie. I’ll be right in the back, okay? Come get me if you need anything.”

“Okay… Here we go…” April smoothed her apron and took deep breaths as her mother disappeared back into the kitchen.

From the back, Delores watched the door with hawk-like intent through the serving window. Soon enough, the door swung open with a jangle of bells. In stepped a tall purple mare. An alicorn mare. Princess Twilight Sparkle.

The princess and April started speaking, but Delores couldn’t hear them from the back. She watched. April curtseyed. Princess Twilight laughed, a little nervously, and gestured for April to stand up again. They spoke for a moment – and then both were laughing. April led the princess to a booth.

Delores felt a string pulled taut in her chest. She sighed. She’d never told her daughter. About that night in the ruins. She couldn’t have done that. All she could do was be April’s mother. When the rejection letter came, she held on tight to her daughter, and her daughter held on tight to her. And neither of them ever let go.

Delores examined the face of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Everyone lives forever, she remembered. In big ways, in little ways. Yes. Twilight Sparkle will live forever. In big ways. Delores and April, they’ll live forever, too. In little ways. And that, Delores thought, a nameless ache in her heart, is that.

April conjured up a pitcher of water, a glass, and a menu from nothing and set them down on the table. The princess took the menu in her hooves, lifted it up to read – and the edge of the menu caught the rim of the pitcher, and the pitcher fell in an arc off the table.

Both horns flashed. The pitcher froze in the air, the water, already spilling in the air, suspended as if frozen.

Delores stared, holding her breath. The princess was apologizing, April was doubtless telling her that there was nothing to apologize for.

Then, they both realized who was holding the pitcher in the air. With a laugh from both of them, Princess Twilight’s horn went out. And April lifted the pitcher she’d caught back onto the table.

Delores smiled.

That’s my little girl, she thought. The best in the world.

The End