“Welcome to the inaugural Grand Equestrian Morning Meal Matchup! This new addition to the Summer Sun Celebration is meant to help demonstrate the value of getting your day off on the right hoof with a healthy and nutritious breakfast—and to show off some wonderful meals from some of our nation’s finest chefs.” The voice echoed over the grounds from loudspeakers high above, causing many ponies to glance up expectantly. “All the contestants are here and ready to show their skills and wares at this exciting event. The judging will begin soon, so please make your way to the grandstand in the central field in twenty minutes when the first entry will be presented.”
The casual milling about on the grounds became more focused and the general flow all began to move in a single direction. There were exceptions of course, such as the blue unicorn mare and the pale green stallion who was following her.
“For the last time, I am not interested!” She shouted, emphasizing every word with every step.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said in a smooth, buttery voice. “You don’t know what you’re missing. This would be the best day of your life.”
“Well, it’s already pretty good. My sister and I are entered into today’s competition, and hopefully you’ll make a complete idiot of yourself right before we present our dish to the princesses,” she answered.
“Hey, Pabulum, c’mon! You know you love me!” He swaggered as he walked. Visibly.
Pabulum paused, putting her hoof to her forehead and squinting her eyes tight. Taking a deep breath, she slowly turned to face him. “Look, Cornball, you’ve been chasing my flank for years, ever since we were in cooking school together, and I have never—not once—given you any hint that I might be interested. How blunt do I have to be?”
The smile on his face never wavered. In fact, Pabulum would swear that it got slightly bigger. “Hey, this hard to get thing is cute, but you don’t have to continue with it, you know.”
The sound of Pabulum’s hoof hitting her face was loud enough to echo slightly. She spun on a single hoof and broke into a slight trot.
“Well, why don’t you just keep waiting for me to change my mind,” she glanced back to see Cornball still close by, “but do it SOMEWHERE ELSE!” Her eyes scanned back in front of her, spotting the blue tent that was her and her sister’s assigned station—and sudden haven. She sped up a little.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m good. My team has already got our meal prepared, so I’m just here for…dessert.”
Trot turned to gallop. “That’s great! Just…might want to go double check, right?”
“Have I ever told you that you’re beautiful when you run?” he shouted, gasping slightly.
Her hooves skid on the ground, bringing her to a sudden stop right outside her tent. “Okay! Well, I’m here. Going inside. You can’t come in. It’s the rules.” She nodded quickly in emphasis.
Cornball’s hooves were slightly buried in the dirt from his own sudden stop. “That’s so cute. The way you’re trying to compete in this, even though I’m already entered.”
Her eye twitched.
“In any case,” Cornball’s hoof swung around to his hip and returned with a bright red rose, “I want you to keep this,” he winked, “just to remember me.”
He flicked his hoof and the rose flew towards her face. Everything turned to slow motion as she watched it become larger and larger with every passing moment. Her eyes widened as her head slipped back, all while the rest of her face contorted in a strong grimace. A scream grew from deep inside her, welling slowly up until it found voice as the rose found its way to her body.
It hit her on the neck and fell to the ground.
“See you later, babe.” He winked at her. She stood there, staring blankly ahead.
“Did he just….” Pabulum looked down at the rose. “Seriously? Does that egomaniacal, idiotic, bad excuse for a chef think that he can buy me off with a…with a…” she spun around and walked into her tent, “…stupid flower?!”
“…blessed breakfast!” Her sister’s voice was a little higher pitched, but the resemblance was clear. Her head spun back with a huge smile. “Hey, Pabs! Did you get the cinnamon?”
“Sure. It was back at the room, just like you said.” Pabulum stepped closer, looking at the gathering of candles surrounding various ingredients arranged on the table in front of her. “And you were…?”
“Oh, just a simple blessing spell. It’s supposed to make the meal that much more magical.” She nodded enthusiastically.
“Yeah, well, I appreciate your enthusiasm, Cupboard, just so long as we get this together in the next forty minutes, we’ll be good.”
They smiled and moved to the work tables.
* * * * * * * * * *
“You’re next.” The stallion was direct, but polite, giving notice with a warm smile. “Good luck.”
Pabulum looked out from behind the curtain at the table. She felt her heart stop somewhere just shy of her mouth as it tried to leap out of her body. All four of Equestria’s princesses sat in a line, delicately tasting a parfait of exotic fruit resting in a bed of freshly prepared creme fraiche. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they all had smiles on their face. She glanced back at the cart her sister was pushing.
A huge stack of pancakes waiting, even as Cupboard cooked up a new fresh batch to give to the princesses. It was best to give them up right off the griddle, but if something happened…well, that’s why you have backups ready, right? The wells of warmed syrup and fruit compote waited to top their fluffy, dense meal. It was her and her sister’s secret recipe. She had always considered it the best breakfast that anypony could ever hope to eat.
And suddenly it seemed so…ordinary.
“What were we thinkng?” she mumbled. “Pancakes? Seriously? I mean there are ponies here with things that look more like sculptures than they do food, and we’re gonna serve the princesses some stupid pancakes?!”
“Not just pancakes,” Cupboard said with a lilt in her voice, “our pancakes! The best darn pancakes in Equestria!”
“I think that you’re missing the key word in this sentence, Cup! Pancake. It’s a pancake!” Pabulum insisted.
“Ah, c’mon! They’ll love ‘em!” Cupboard bobbed her head to a silent tune as she gently flipped one of the cakes over.
“Gotta admire your confidence, kid, but I think—”
“Go!” The stallion directing the show cued the sisters, motioning towards the stage repeatedly. “Go!”
Pabulum swallowed. Cupboard pushed the cart past her and walked out on the stage with her head high. More out of instinct to protect her younger sister, Pabulum followed. And in a few steps they were there. Staring across a table at the four most important ponies in all of Equestria.
Celestia, Luna, Mi Amore Cadenza, and Twilight Sparkle. Princesses.
“Good morning.” Celestia’s voice was like a heavy silk blanket, soft, warm, and comforting. “What is it that you have for us today?”
“Uh….” Words. Those were the things that Pabulum was looking for. Those things that let you talk to other ponies and communicate ideas. Now, if she could just remember how to use them.
“Good morning, Your Highnesses!” Cupboard burst out. “We have a very special treat for you!”
“Well, that sounds good,” Twilight Sparkle said. “I certainly like your enthusiasm.”
“Indeed! It is always refreshing to find a pony with passion,” Luna stated.
“Uh….” Pabulum was still working on those word things.
“Oh, I do not think that you will be disappointed at all!” Cupboard’s hooves moved quickly and smoothly over the surface of the cart, assembling the tempting display to present to the princesses.
Before she knew it, Pabulum was staring down at four plates with accompanying bowls of syrup and compote. She looked up at her sister, who smiled back politely—at first. After a moment or two more, Cupboard nodded her head down at the plates, and shot a quick look to the princesses.
Pabulum was certain she was telling her to do something.
“Are those plates for us?” Celestia asked softly.
“Yes!” Cupboard said abruptly. It was loud enough to stir something in Pabulum.
“Plates. Plates!” Her horn sprang to life, lifting the first set of dishes and moving them over to rest in front of Celestia. “Yes, Your Highnesses, these plates are for you.”
Luna twisted her head to one side as she looked at her sister’s plate. A few seconds later it shifted to the plate that was resting in front of her directly.
“Pancakes?” she asked. “Pray tell good mare, why have you given us pancakes on this morning?”
A large bead of sweat suddenly appeared on Pabulum—she was convinced that had to be true.
“Not just any pancakes, Your Highness,” for some reason, Cupboard put more batter on the griddle, “these are our special pancakes. Our own recipes. You’ve never tasted pancakes like these before.”
“Well, I think they look delicious,” Cadance said with a smile.
“Oh yeah, I love pancakes,” Twilight agreed as the last of the four plates was put into place.
“Now, I don’t want to tell you how to eat them,” Cupboard looked up from her cart long enough to smile at the princesses, “but you just HAVE to try them with both a bit of the fruit and a bit of the syrup. It brings out the flavors so amazingly well.”
“Well, far be it from me to deny an expert in this matter.” A magical field surrounded Celestia’s fork, carefully cutting a piece of small stack of pancakes from the plate before moving them over for a quick dip in first compote and then syrup. The other princesses followed suit, waiting for Celestia to move hers up towards her mouth before mimicking her actions.
“Mmmmm!” Twilight’s response was the most immediately audible. “These are delicious!”
“Thank you!” Cupboard beamed from her station.
“I must concur. These are pancakes of an exceptional degree,” Luna added.
Celestia said nothing. She simply took another, slightly larger, bite. And another.
“Gee, Auntie, you sure do like these!” Cadance giggled.
“Well, they are panCAKES,” Twilight laughed out loud.
Luna snickered. “Yeah. And Tia has to use magic to keep her flank from growing huge because of all the cake she eats.”
One of Pabulum’s eyebrows went up slowly. Granted she wasn’t used to being around princesses, but there was something about this conversation that seemed…off.
“More!” Pabulum looked over to see Celestia’s empty plate hovering for a moment, before the princess pushed it almost under her nose. “More!”
“I’m…glad you liked them, Your Highness, but…” Pabulum glanced over at the stallion who ushered them onto the stage, “aren’t we supposed to—”
“MOOOOORRRE!” Celestia mooed at her and then giggled.
“Comin’ right up!” Cupboard replied with a huge smile.
Gingerly, Pabulum took the plate from the princess and moved it over to her sister, who immediately placed two freshly grilled cakes down.
“Yay!” Celestia snatched the plate from Pabulum’s magical grip with her own and moved it back in front of her.
“These are really, really, really, really, really…really good,” Cadance stated. “I mean, I’ve had pancakes before, but these are just about the best pancakes ever. I mean it.”
“TIS TRUE!” Luna’s voice went a bit louder than normal, forcing Pabulum back a step and causing Cupboard to look up at last.
Twilight Sparkle had taken her pancake and was carefully cutting it into long strips, and then pulling the strips apart to examine the middle of the cake—and then eating what she pulled apart. “I gotta figure out what you put in these! If Spike could make these every day I’d just… OH! And Pinkie! Oh my gosh, Pinkie would just love these, don’t you think, Cadance?”
“Ha! Yeah, I bet. Though she’s not gonna get any of mine!” Cadance put a small bubble around the remaining vestige of her pancake and then looked over at Pabulum. “I want more, too. Give me more of these!”
“Uh, Pabs,” Cupboard began softly, “what’s going on?”
Cadance’s plate bypassed Pabulum entirely, moving directly over to Cupboard and hovering expectantly. Cupboard hesitated, which only made Cadance wave the plate in her face.
“Hello!” Cadance shouted. “I’m empty here! Fill ‘er up!”
Luna giggled. “Ha. Fill her up! Tis what you dreamt about last night, too!”
“Hey! That was private!” Cadance laughed. “But…yeah, I miss Shiney.”
“Too much information!” Twilight finished off the last bite on her plate at about the same time as Luna, and the pair both moved their plates towards Pabulum. “I mean, that IS my brother. Ick.”
Taking the plates, Pabulum turned to her sister with eyes almost the same size as the plates. “They want more, I think.”
“Uh, well, uh,” Cupboard glanced at the cart, “take some of the older ones. I’m cooking fresh but they aren’t ready.”
“Right,” Pabulum answered and moved two pancakes apiece to the plates before returning them.
“Okay, I’m gonna figure this out this time!” Twilight said as she flipped the pancake over to look at the other side.
“Thou cannot find what you look for on the backside of the pancake, Twilight Sparkle. It is the inside that makes these delights special!” Luna announced to…well, pretty much everyone in the area.
“MORE!!” Celestia’s empty plate returned, but this time it was accompanied by a wild stare and a slight bit of drool.
“Uh, well, actually, Princess, I think…uh, I think we need to be—” Pabulum’s words were cut short by a very insistent Celestia.
“I tell you to fill my plate with pancakes, or…or…or I’ll send you to the moon!” she said with some authority, though not enough to keep the other princesses at the table from giggling.
“Oh, Tia,” Luna answered in a much lower voice, “you cannot do that! Twas the power of the Elements of Harmony that allowed you to perform that feat!” And to add emphasis, Luna stuck her tongue out at her sister.
“You’re right!” Celestia looked over at Twilight instantly. “Twilight! Fetch the Elements! I have to send pancakes to the moon!”
“I can’t!” Twilight laughed. “We don’t have them any more, remember! We gave them to a tree.” She nodded.
“Then fetch the tree!” Celestia shouted.
Luna laughed so hard that a piece of pancake shot out of her nose.
“Pabs…” Cupboard’s voice wavered very near the fight or flight level.
“Give her the pancake!” Pabulum turned and whispered harshly. “We do NOT want to make the four most powerful ponies in Equestria mad. I want to walk off this thing.”
Nodding quickly, Cupboard put the pancakes on Celestia’s plate, which went right back over to the princess.
“Hey!” Cadance stood up and looked over at the cart. “She doesn’t get to have all of them! I want more, too! Give me more. Lots more!”
“Yes, I desire a larger stack of panned cakes, myself!” Luna stated.
Without hesitation, Pabulum grabbed a stack of several pancakes and floated them over to Luna’s plate. And then repeated the action for Cadance.
“That’s not enough!” Cadance yelled. “More! I want more! I can take them all!”
“Ha! That is what she said!” Luna laughed with a mouth full of food, spraying it across the table.
Pabulum started to move the remaining stacks of pancakes over to Cadance, but they the seemingly desperate princess grabbed them well before they got to her plate. One by one the rolled up into cylindrical shapes before she started to shove them into her mouth—again and again. And when her mouth could hold no more, she put two of them behind one ear.
Cupboard walked around from behind the cart to stand beside her sister. The two mares stared at the table seating the four rulers of their lands. Luna had a mouth so full of food that she couldn’t completely close it. Celestia’s food was gone and at this point she was simply moving her face back and forth across the empty plate looking for more scraps. Cadance—well, she couldn’t do anything but stare blankly with a mouth, and one ear, full of food. And Twilight Sparkle had gone from examining the pancake on her plate to simply impaling it on her horn and covering her eyes with it—which wasn’t preventing her from pouring syrup on top of that.
“Uh, Pabs,” Cupboard whispered, “what’s happening?”
All she could do was shake her head slowly. At least until Celestia finally looked up at her again.
“MOOORRRRE!” she bellowed. “PAMCAKES!!”
“Ha. Pamcakes,” Luna laughed.
Both mares turned around and looked at their cart. Their now-completely-devoid-of-any-food-at-all cart, and then they slowly looked at each other.
Finally, Pabulum looked back at the recognized ruler of Equestria. The single most powerful pony ever known to walk their green and gracious lands. The mare who stared at her with a wild expression that reminded Pabulum briefly of the decorations that some ponies put out to frighten foals on Nightmare Night—only this one was scary.
“I…uh…that is to say….” Pabulum swallowed, which felt a bit like the entirety of her throat decided to retreat down into her stomach for safety reasons. “We’re out.”
“WHAT?!” Celestia rose up like a phoenix. A halo not unlike fire surrounding her visage as she stared down at the sisters. Pabulum began to count the things that she never got to do in this life. “WHERE? ARE? THEY?”
That was a good question, Pabulum thought. She looked around, hoping to find an answer, and what she saw gave her pause. Somewhere, deep inside her mind she knew that what she was about to do was wrong. Very, very wrong. Yet, the other side of her—the self-preservation side—simply gave her an approving nod and a small pat on the back for reassurance.
She lifted up her hoof and pointed at Cornball.
“Him,” she said. “He took them.”
“WHAT?!” The ground trembled slightly as Celestia took to the air, moving like the wind towards the stallion who suddenly found himself with a warm puddle forming around his hooves.
Very unceremoniously, Pabulum grabbed her sister and ran the other direction.
* * * * * * * * * *
Well, if anything good came out of this, at least Pabulum was reasonably certain that Cornball was never going to bother her again. She even felt guilty enough to send the poor stallion some flowers to his hospital room.
“You do understand the severity of your actions, don’t you?” Celestia asked calmly, snapping Pabulum back to the moment.
“I…” She nodded. “Yes, Your Highness. It was bad. Very, very bad of us.”
“I didn’t mean anything!” Cupboard cried—with tears and everything. “It wasn’t supposed to work like that!”
“Well, I think what happened was an accident,” Twilight said. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, you weren’t doing anything wrong. There was just a slight…mistake.”
Pabulum’s mouth moved for a second before her words caught up to it. “Yeah. Um, yeah, well, Cupboard—that’s my sister—”
“I didn’t mean anything!” Cupboard was still crying.
“Yeah. Well, Cupboard was casting this spell, you see, and I kinda walked in at the end of it, and she and I are very close, and we kinda have the same tone to our voice and the same frequency to our magic, so when I said ‘stupid flower’ the spell took that as ‘stupid…flour.’”
“Which translated to the flour you used to prepare the pancakes,” Celestia’s voice was still calm, but firm, “yes, we know. The question remaining is what shall be done about this?”
“I didn’t mean anything!” Cupboard got one last one in before Pabulum put a magic gag in her mouth.
“Well, I—and that is to say, we—learned our lesson. Big time! So we'll never, ever do anything like that again,” Pabulum explained, followed by a smile more forced than the one she put on when her dad told her that she was getting to go work with him on a ‘Dude Ranch’ for a whole summer when she was a teenager.
“I’m not sure that’s enough,” Celestia said. “I put a stallion in the hospital. It’s a miracle that the guards arrived when they did.”
“Those are some great guard you’ve got, Your Highness!” Pabulum agreed.
“I think as a start,” Twilight stepped in, “you need to turn over any magical volumes you have that might deal with charms and enchantments. Also, you and your sister are going to have to attend a course on the effects and ramifications of misuse of magic.” She smiled. “I put it together myself.”
“Excellent suggestion, Princess,” Celestia agreed. “And in addition to that, I want the two of you to perform three-hundred hours of community service around Canterlot. And I do believe that you should be grateful that is all that is happening.”
Pabulum blinked. All? Did she say all? That typically meant that there was nothing else coming. As the words settled in, a genuine smile—one belonging to a mare that was going to live to see her next birthday—worked onto her face.
“Yes! Yes, thank you! Thank you both! Your Highnesses, you are so…. Thank you!” She began bowing repeatedly, the first one nearly putting her muzzle on the floor.
“Very well then,” Celestia bowed her head slighlty, “you are dismissed. Instructions on your classes and service will be sent to you by week’s end.”
“Thank you!” Pabulum noticed that Cupboard was bowing right beside her as they slowly backed out of the room. “You are so wise and wonderful and kind and generous and—”
“Don’t push it,” Celestia cautioned.
The bowing stopped immediately. “Yes, ma’am,” Pabulum answered and then turned and walked quickly to the exit, her sister tight on her heels. They hit the door and made it out into the hall without another word from either princess inside the hall, and for a moment she thought her heart was actually going to start beating again—until she saw Princess Luna and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza waiting in the hall.
She stopped cold, and her sister slammed into her flank coming to a sudden stop herself. These were not princesses on official duty. These two were here on personal matters, which brought that list of things undone back into Pabulum’s mind.
As they walked up, Pabulum realized just how tall both of these mares were. They weren’t Celestia sized, but they had no problems with the whole imposing look. Taking a deep breath, Pabulum prepared for the worst as they stepped up to her and her sister.
The princesses paused, taking a moment to look at each other. Some wordless communication went between them, and Luna gave a small nod to Cadance. The Princess of Love turned back to the mares and took a small breath before speaking.
“We want the recipe.”
THE END
