Start of Negotiations (Twilight) - Revised V2 Part 3

Let me take a brief break from to explain just why that was so terrifying, and why it was one of the major reasons we’ve kept the contents of this meeting secret for so long.

If Morpheus had wanted, he could have run rampant with this spell across Equestria. For a while I was surprised that he hadn’t done just that instead of parleying for peace. Even after I realized he was cut from a different cloth than his mother, I couldn’t help but wonder for years if he realized just how much power he had given up by admitting he had that spell. He lost any advantage he had with it the minute he told us about it.

Given that I – with my extensive researching history – didn’t know about that particular spell, it was somewhat safe to assume that no pony except Discord, the princesses, and perhaps a select few ponies specializing in ancient magic would have any idea what that spell did. All it would have taken was disguising as a pony here or there and convincing certain citizens to sign such a spell to doom Equestria. It would not have been hard to convince the common pony that they were simply signing the newest advancement in keeping the law, and by the time those of us higher up on the chain realized something was wrong it would be too late.

No offense meant to us ponies, of course. It’s simply that we as a species are, by our very nature, very trusting of other ponies initially. It’s part of our evolutionary tract as herding creatures. We instinctively trust other ponies more than we should upon meeting them, and we instinctively distrust other species more on the off chance they’re predators. It’s actually led to some rather interesting theories on the development of our society.

I remember reading this one paper that argued the main reason we can maintain such a peaceful state of society is because we are – as the rather cynical author put it – ‘too trusting’. We have our ‘herd’, and everything within it runs far more smoothly than in other nations because of our stronger sense of mutual trust. Those within our ‘herd’ are trusted so thoroughly that it’s hard for us to even comprehend that we could betray that trust for our own benefit. Meanwhile – as we’re ‘passive herding creatures’ – our nation as a ‘herd’ is more likely to simply avoid conflict with other ‘predator’ nations. An attempt to explain our generally neutral stances on international politics, I suppose.

When we truly make peace with another ‘predator’ nation – the author’s example was our peace with the griffins – we come to think of and include them in our ‘herd’. That, he claimed, led to some of our more brutal and bloody wars between Equestria and other nations. It often takes time for our new ‘predator’ allies to fully mellow into the ‘herd’ mentality. If they did something to instigate a war with another nation in the meantime, Equestria got dragged in, and we protect our ‘herd’ very obsessively. In today’s day and age, the author asserted our international ‘herd’ had grown so large that warring with us is simply too detrimental for other nations to consider.

If you think that’s hogwash, it kind of is and isn’t. I usually assert that evolutionary theories on behaviour start to break down once you start discussing a species that’s reached the point of civilization. They do, however, still allow us interesting insights and different perspectives on situations. It was something I would come to appreciate greatly in the coming years. Many of my own misunderstandings about changelings would come from the differences in our evolutionary paths. There were some truly bizarre differences in our cultures caused by some even odder biological differences.

As much as I want to lecture on those right now, however, doing that would be getting ahead of the story. My point is that there is a lot of evidence for the average pony instinctively placing a significantly larger amount of trust in even a random passer-by provided they’re a pony. If the passer-by isn’t a pony, they are generally granted less trust than what other species tend to give in general. That’s part of what makes us so naturally paranoid of changelings.

They can easily gain our trust – for a while at least – simply by pretending to be a pony. When we discover they’re not a pony, we immediately flip from instinctively feeling we should trust them to feeling we should distrust them. The change is so fast and so sudden that it leaves us feeling significantly more confused and betrayed than a similar action from another ‘predator’ species would.

The invasion had shaken ponies trust in one another, but we had recovered fairly quickly with a few simple and relatively non-invasive security measures to test for changelings. We were shaken, but not paranoid.

If Prince Morpheus had decided to infiltrate the country and spread various versions of those contracts among the populace, the amount of panic and chaos that would ensue upon their discovery would have been staggering. Ponies would no longer be able to trust ponies, and I do not mean because of the changelings disguised as ponies. The populace would literally tear itself apart in a frenzy of paranoia as one of the basic instincts of pony society could no longer be trusted.

There was still a risk the populace would tear itself apart at the mere possibility of such a threat, whether or not it was true. That is one of the reasons Princess Celestia kept the contents of this meeting a secret for so long. She wanted the populace to at least accept the changelings enough that they wouldn’t blindly panic.

Regardless, the princess would end up spending the next several weeks making very discreet investigations to make sure the prince hadn’t done just that. And that is not even counting the measures we took in trying to get any possible sabotage directly from the horse’s mouth. I can assure you though. Despite what he could have done with that spell, he didn’t abuse it. He was, in fact, quite in agreement with the princesses that the spell should be as hidden as possible to prevent others from abusing it.

But I digress. Just telling you the prince is trustworthy defeats the entire purpose of these reports. It’s up to me – and him – to show you his goodwill.

A thousand logical reasons and many more paranoid ones quickly flashed through my brain at his statement. One could hear my eyebrow arching. It did so slowly, like a door creeping open. “And you think we’d even dare to trust any contract you might make with a spell you describe like that?”

The prince snorted. “When I drafted it so your party is getting all the benefits, I’m expecting you to at least give me a chance. Celestia and Luna were ancient when this spell was invented. They were experts at dealing with normal law long beforehand, and they quickly became experts in dealing with the legalities and traps such spells contained when it was invented. I am not expecting to pull a fast one on Equestria. Ve thought about it, but I am not that stupid.”

I was about to ask him to elaborate when Discord popped back in with Luna and Celestia. Luna was currently arguing with Discord, while Celestia watched on with a small grin at their antics.

The lunar princess stomped a hoof causing small cracks to appear in the floor. “And what, pray tell, is so important that you needed to interrupt my diplomatic meeting with the griffins?”

The draconequus scoffed. “Oh, please. Equestria’s been at peace with the griffins for centuries. All you would end up doing is drinking tea and eating scones while talking about the weather. I believe you’ll find my diplomatic meeting easily trumps yours.”

To be fair, Discord was kind of right about how important this was. He really should have been fairer to Luna though. Before she returned from the moon those meetings actually were just tea and crumpets with Celestia awkwardly talking about the weather, and the griffins always hated it but were too proud to say so.

Luna, with her somewhat antiquated manners, had soon found herself replacing Celestia in the griffin negotiations and taking to them with a shine. They would often hunt Mandraboara in the Everfree Forest before feasting merrily on mead and boar late into the night. Many a griffin would try to outdrink the princess, yet none ever succeeded.

It’s rather odd, actually. I know alicorns can get drunk – I found that out the hard way – but I went to one of those feasts once, and she clearly imbibed more than three times her body mass between all the individual drinking contests without batting an eye.

Astounding levels of tolerance or not, the princesses froze upon seeing Morpheus. Very slowly their eyes drifted from the changeling to me to the paper he was holding then back to me again. Celestia decided to go with her ‘Cold Fusion #2’ voice. It was cool and mostly dispassionate with just a hint of the sun’s fury laced behind it. It was just enough fury that a pony would know she would brook no argument or delays, but not enough fury to actually make the pony in question believe they were the source of her ire.

It had served a number of purposes over the years, but in this case it was an attempt to quickly establish control of the situation while pumping me for information. It was also supposed to prevent me from panicking. That was why she used ‘Cold Fusion #2’ and not ‘Cold Fusion #1’ which is not merciful enough to grant ponies the illusion that she’s not angry with them. Not that she had a real reason to be angry at me, but I had always had a tendency to panic whenever it came to even the idea of being the source of Celestia’s anger.

“Twilight, I am going to ask you politely whether or not you have signed anything, and you are going to calmly tell me the truth. In addition to that, you are going to give me a very detailed explanation on what is currently happening in this room, and, if I find out later you left anything out, you are going to find out there are actually worse things than magic kindergarten.”

I spilled my guts faster than Discord that one Nightmare Night when he was a sea cucumber, and you can trust me that that wasn’t pretty.

It was several hours later that we found ourselves laboriously going over every minute detail of the contract Prince Morpheus had drafted. At least that was what Celestia and Luna were doing with Morpheus clarifying something or other every so often. Despite knowing what many of the individual sigils in the contract meant, I was completely clueless about how their interactions translated to legalese. Thus I was stuck in the role of observation. Discord had simply floated away through the wall at some point, so I couldn’t be sure what he was doing.

“Found anything suspicious yet, Lulu?” Celestia had erected a small illusion of the spell matrix in front of her to get a better view of it. It would spin. It would flip. It would zoom. There were any and all sorts of tools to manipulate the contract she needed to scour, and she used them all vigorously.

“No, Sister, and I’m starting to think we’re not going to.” Luna scrunched her muzzle in confused frustration. It was rather adorable considering she was also wearing a pair of pointed glasses much like Rarity’s. “If anything, it seems he’s the one asking us to take advantage of him. Even if the princeling here did manage to sneak one or two clauses around us, this contract puts so many obligations and binds on him that I’d doubt he’d risk the fallout of taking advantage of anything he managed get past us.”

It was fascinating to watch the two sisters go back and forth. So many ponies forget that we princesses are still ponies underneath everything, and I could not help but question why as I watched them. They bantered casually back and forth as they worked. They used nicknames for each other. They told jokes, and laughed. There was even some gossiping about the stallions in their respective guards. In short, they were acting like I might expect any other pair of day to day lawyers to act in the office. The only thing that was missing were the satanic deals with Tirek.

“Morpheus, where did you say you put in the section on limitations to changeling magic?” Celestia had begun spinning through the various circles looking for what she needed.

“You’ll find it in circle seven, sub-circle eight, inscription seventeen.” The prince was lounging lazily on a pillow, and languidly waved a hoof at the illusion. “The syntax might be different than you’re used to. It took a good two months of travel down beneath the equator to dig up how to deal with creatures that contain more than one type of magic.”

My ears perked up at this. “Changelings have more than one type of magic?”

Morpheus nodded. “How do you think we imitate ponies? We have a moderately sized pool of our own unique changeling magic and three much smaller pools for each of the three main tribes of ponies. Our pony magic tends to manifest in different ways than most ponies use theirs though.”

I opened my mouth with more questions, but the princess cut me off. “Twilight, I know you’re curious, but now is not the time. Care to explain the difference in syntax, Morpheus?”

The prince complied. “Well, it’s pretty simple. The first sigil depicts that this inscription’s purpose is to bind a creature’s magic. The second sigil tells you how many types of magic the creature has total in addition to how many types of magic are going to be sealed. Next comes details on what types of magic are to be sealed, and, finally, comes details on how to release the creatures binds.”

He flashed his fangs in a grin. “Ve were quite detailed on that last part. I may be desperate enough to sign this, but I’m not leaving the changelings entirely defenseless. Don’t worry, though. Most of those stipulations are for cases of self-defense. The big one you’ll be interested in is that I can’t use most of my magic unless given express permission by one of you princesses or somepony you declare as a proper proxy to hand out those permissions.”

I could tell Celestia was unnerved that Prince Morpheus could talk so calmly about what could end up as him being permanently stripped of magic. I was pretty unnerved by it too.

“Tia, I think I finally found something!” The rest of us looked towards Luna. Morpheus seemed especially interested. He had simply been relaxing before, but at her statement his eyes snapped open. The speed with which he sat up was quite impressive.

“What?!” He seemed almost dumbfounded, and he began muttering to himself. In his irritation I could just barely make it out. “Ve could have sworn ve wrote everything perfectly. Did one of the lords try to sneak a change in? I swear to the hive. If whatever they found ruins this, I will personally destroy the one responsible…”

“Yes, Prince Morpheus, I have found something.” The lunar princess tilted her head to the side, scrunching her muzzle. “I am not, however, certain as to what it means. I didn’t really notice it at first. I was too busy looking for all the normal signs of hidden clauses and agendas, but going through the contract again I noticed a couple of items appeared to be omitted.

“First and foremost, there are no readily apparent obligations for Equestria written into the contract. There are clauses on things we can do, such as the clauses on how to release you from an obligation, but there is nothing we must do.” The princess shook her head. “Even the most amateur of con-ponies who used these contracts knew enough to at least appear to ask for something in return. I cannot help but be suspicious at your complete willingness to sign a contract that amounts to your enslavement for no price as far as I can tell.”

The prince cocked his head to the side. “Why would I demand anything out of Equestria from that monstrosity?” He pointed to the Unbreakable Contract.

There were several moments of silence as we all just stared at him, then I hesitantly broke it. “You were the one who insisted on using the ancient forbidden spell in peace negotiations, right?”

One could hear the gears whirring in the Morpheus’ brain. His head remained steadily cocked to the side. “I only brought that for my end of the deal. In what way would it be smart of me to make any demands in that contract? That would only encourage any lingering mistrust, and I don’t have time for dealing with that.”

He looked between all of us. “You heard that the hive is starving. You don’t know how badly though. Ve did the math, and – worst case scenario – I have half a year to convince you to let five thousand harvesters cross the border or we may well reach the point of no return.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from somepony – maybe me. That was a lot of changelings to keep track of.

The prince waited for a more proper response, but we all seemed a bit too flabbergasted. “They’ll need their own identities to avoid any of the issues that’d arise from replacing somepony, which means they’ll need even more time to establish a social network. It has to be large too. If it’s too small, I can’t ask them to collect anything in good conscience. There would be a risk of over collecting from an individual, and that would be nonideal for relations. Factoring that all together, ve only have a month to convince you that peace is at least possible.”

He glared at Luna. “Do not assume that means ve have no demands or proposals for Equestria. Ve will get to them in due time. The first step is for me to gain your trust.”

Morpheus gestured to the castle around them. “Personally, I figured the best place to do that is to stay here in Ponyville. You’ve already set quite the precedent by reforming Discord in this cozy little town after all.”

There were several moments of silence to process this before Luna continued. “Alright then… I-I suppose I should bring up your second omission.”

Her voice was shaking. I think it was starting to actually sink in for us. We’d all been denying the gravity of the situation in our heads until now to one degree or another. We’d thought of this talk as nothing but another changeling trap, but we couldn’t do it anymore. The prince was just so casual in discussing his death or any number of the other things that could go wrong with the Unbreakable Contract. He was actually committed to signing it in an effort for us to consider peace negotiations.

Luna gestured to the illusion, manipulating it in various ways. “I found various places that require the signature of my sister and I. However, it always seemed that the slot for your own signature was absent.”

Morpheus smiled morbidly at Luna. “You’ll find it’s there. We just already signed. If you want to know what to look for, look at the very centre of the contract. That’s where the final signatures for consent go, right?”

Celestia zoomed in on the place in question. “That’s a magical sigil, not a signature.” Her eyes narrowed at Morpheus. “What does it do?”

Morpheus opened his mouth to answer when a familiar draconequus’ dark chuckles filled the room. “Why isn’t it obvious, Tia?” Discord rose from the floor, displacing and distorting it as if it were a viscous liquid. Small waves of stone lazily slid across the room as the floor slowly settled in his wake. He floated towards the illusion, drawing it into the palm of his paw. “You just need to look at it another way.” He crushed it within his fist and let go. Suddenly, the illusion expanded. What had once been a two-dimensional drawing of a spell matrix was now a three-dimensional exploded view.

This didn’t actually change much at first glance.

Then we noticed the sigil Morpheus called his signature.

The prince sighed. “Oh, great... That was the one thing I was hoping you wouldn’t find.”

“Why?” Celestia asked, starting to examine the twisted knot of inscriptions that was the sigil. There were thousands of intricate layers to the sigil. “Is it a trap?”

Morpheus sat in silence for a few seconds. His face was set in a contemplative frown, and his stare bored into the ground. Finally, he responded flatly. “It is a mercy. It is the only mercy ve can provide if I fail. I see a chance for success, but ve think coming here was the most foolish thing I have ever done, and I must beg that you do not ask what it does. If you find out, I fear it will only make things that much harder for both our respective nations during the talks. If there is just one thing I say that I ask you accept in blind faith, let it be when I say that signature will bring no harm to the pony race.”

Celestia and Luna looked at each other briefly and nodded. No words needed to be said between them. Looking back at Morpheus they spoke as one. “We cannot allow the question to go unanswered. What does it do? Answer honestly and we promise to withhold judgment to the best of our abilities.”

The changeling’s stare continued to bore into the stone for several seconds as if it might uncover some way out of the situation. Finally, he looked up and stared deep into Celestia’s eyes. His gaze was cold and unflinching, daring the princess to go back on that statement.

His wings buzzed with harsh ferocity. They vibrated fast enough to create an illusion of wings twice as large, and filled the air with a menacing drone.

His voice shifted down several pitches. Like before it fractured and split to create an almost chorus-like effect, but that was where the similarity ended. Before the echo had simply created the effect of more than one creature talking at once. Here each echo was modulated and morphed. It filled the room as if we were surrounded by others, and each echo waxed and waned so we could never quite tell the location it came from.

“Zoom in far enough and I’m sure you’ll understand when you see it.”

A chill ran down my spine when he said that. As I’d mentioned before, I was mostly observing this part of the meeting. So far I had done so with a mix of excitement and anxiety. Even if most of my brain argued that this was all a changeling trap, I couldn’t help but be excited at the prospect of peace. That comment changed everything.

Something told me we would be much better off not knowing the one thing he actually had tried to slip past us, and I was filled with a sense of impending dread. There was no defensive element to this break in his facade.

It was too late to do anything though. I knew Celestia wouldn’t leave anything to chance with something like this.

The solar princess began zooming in at a relatively quick pace. Layer after layer of inscriptions flew by, but even after a minute their contents were not any clearer.

“You may wish to go faster, Princess. I assure you. The point at which it will become legible is quite small, and I only have so much time. My subjects are starving, you know.” The prince’s voice was taunting. “If you want to see the truth, then I suggest you do so quickly!”

Celestia let a low growl, but complied. It took at least another minute of zooming, but suddenly the inscriptions became legible.

Both princesses stared at the inscriptions for a second. Their eyes slowly trailed along each one, holding their breath as they looked for the trick. The inscriptions were nothing but that though. They were just plain old words as far as I could tell. If anything, it looked like one massive story.

“Tell me, Twilight Sparkle.” I jumped about a foot in the air as Discord spoke from directly behind me. “What do you think a signature in an Unbreakable Contract normally looks like?”

I wasn’t in the mood to play. “I don’t know Discord. Does it look like a normal signature?”

Discord chuckled. “It can, but most of the time it doesn’t. A signature for the Unbreakable Contract is much more unique and can never be forged. It can only be crafted willingly from your own magical energy as you sign the contract, and takes the form of that which defines you. Since you ponies are thankfully not boring or dull enough to only be defined by one thing, it often takes the appearance of a story.”

He waved at the illusion. “The little princeling did not lie about having signed the contract, but you have to ask if there’s more to his tale. I dare say that one of the princesses will get it in about 3…“

“It’s nothing but an extremely long signature.” Celestia tilted her head, zooming in to see if she’d missed something else. She walked around it to view it from another angle, yet she still could spot no discrepancies.

“2…“ The draconequus continued.

“There has to be something more,” Celestia murmured.

“1…”

Luna’s intake of breath was sharp and sudden. Her eyes had been slowly traveling from one inscription to the next, but now they traveled in leaps and bounds.

“Tia, it’s not just one signature…”

Celestia looked at her sister. “What?”

“It’s thousands- No, it’s tens of thousands of signatures.” The lunar princess lit her horn and highlighted each signature she could find with a different color.

“It is thirty-three thousand nine hundred and forty-seven signatures to be exact. In addition to me, it is every nymph, drone, lord, breeder, infiltrator, warrior, analyst and harvester we have left.” Prince Morpheus’ gaze had yet to leave Celestia. The dare still held.

Celestia held her anger in. Luna was not so subtle.

“If that is the case, then what you are proposing amounts to genocide if you fail, little prince.” Her voice was deathly quiet and yet remarkably more terrifying than the Royal Canterlot Voice ever was.

Morpheus still had his gaze locked on Celestia, who seemed to have frozen still in an attempt to divert all her control to managing the anger that one could literally see radiating off her. That did not stop him from snapping back at Luna. “It is genocide on my head either way if I fail. Does it matter if ve make it quick and painless compared to slow extinction from starvation?”

Luna flared her wings and stomped the ground. “You would dare to presume such a thing? Even if you are telling the truth about your species starvation, you would dare to presume that your own death would destroy any hope they had of finding another solution?”

The prince bared his fangs. “Yes, ve would dare such a thing! If ve die, one of the remaining lords will take our place. And they will not consider peace an option after ve fail. They will either be stupid enough to try another invasion, or the changelings will simply hide in the shadows as they’ve done for the past few centuries, slowly wasting away from not enough food. We’ve run out of nations to hide in! They always either lack enough food or find us faster than we can replace casualties. My subjects are as good as dead either way if I fail. Why shouldn’t ve spare them from facing a slow, agonizing death?”

“Genocide? I don’t think I’ve heard that word before.” I gave the discussion around me only a passing thought – my face scrunching as my brain tried to tease meaning from the new word. “I know ‘cide’ is the suffix used to describe crimes involving systematic killing, but ‘geno’ is a new prefix for me.”

Celestia’s head snapped up at my comment. As I’d said she’d been trying to hold her anger in. She had clenched her muscles tight to lock down any reaction, and she had been returning Morpheus’s stare in full.

Now she stared at me wide-eyed, and I cannot say for sure what she saw in me, but it made her livid.

Princess Celestia Solaris Invictus, Diarch of Equestria and Commander of the Rising Sun, turned to glare upon the our visitor with a baleful, burning gaze. For eons she had lead armies to battle, and she had seen nations rise and fall. It was she who had originally defeated Nightmare Moon. It was she who had faced the mad-god Discord and won – the princess who gave us the dawn, had slain tyrants, moved mountains, and even stopped time once.

Most would wilt under such a glare, yet the prince held his ground.

The room was silent as Celestia put forth her judgment. She stood tall with her wings spread imperiously, and when she spoke I felt nothing but pity for the changeling as she used her ‘To the Sun’ voice.

“You have placed me in a very difficult position, Prince Morpheus. I was willing to give you a chance before this little discovery. If it had just been you bound by this travesty of a spell, I would have accepted it as the offer of good faith you clearly meant it to be. However, I cannot and will not condone what you’ve done here.”

Her horn flashed a brilliant gold before turning a blinding white. Her eyes filled with light, and her mane burst into flames.

“The only reason I have decided not to smite you where you stand is that I cannot, in good conscious, take the chance I am sentencing the rest of your species to an agonizingly slow death at the same time.”

The floor shook almost violently. My bones ached from the vibrations and the magic the princess radiated. I was terrified she would actually carry through with the voice’s namesake for once as I witnessed the first recorded surge Celestia had experienced in millenia.

The contract burned in her magical grip. The sigils and stories of the changeling race that surrounded us melted before our eyes into the baser magic behind them.

Circle after circle appeared behind the princess as she forged a spell of incredible strength. She gathered the molten slag of pure magic left behind from the contract and began to craft it anew. What had taken Morpheus months by his own admission took the princess less than a minute to complete, and as she finished the spell the contract blazed with the light of the night sky as thousands of miniature suns formed where her signatures were needed.

The surge ended, but the voice remained. A small sheet of paper hung before the prince.

“If you truly desire peace, you will accept this Unbreakable Contract and sign it in your name only. You will find all the stipulations you drafted before in place, but there are also several clauses to check and make sure you never try to abuse this spell again. It is a bit extreme and hypocritical. I know that, but it is also probably the quickest and most efficient way for me to make sure you have not done anything else this despicable in the brief time you’ve had access to the spell. I will give you your month to convince me that I can let other changelings into Equestria. Just know that if you fail now it is most likely because of this stunt you pulled. Take that as you will.”

With her ruling given, Celestia motioned to her sister. The soft light of the moon joined the light of a thousand suns upon the contract, and the sisters strode to the exit.

Celestia stopped there and spoke to me, refusing to look back in the room. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, you have heard my judgment. I humbly ask that you take Prince Morpheus into your home and let him stay in Ponyville for his month long trial run. If anypony has even the smallest chance of convincing me of his worth, it is you.

“However—” she paused, voice quivering as she struggled to maintain the little composure she had regained “—I must ask that you keep the specifics on this meeting a secret from everypony – even your friends. The Unbreakable Contract is a dangerous spell. I should have known it would eventually be rediscovered, but we cannot afford to let anypony know about it for the time being. If the wrong pony found out about it, they could easily manipulate events to force Morpheus – or any other changeling we may eventually use it on – into breaking it. You know what would happen then.”

The solar princess started to continue leaving, but she hesitated. Tentatively she spoke once more. “Twilight, I have one more thing to say. Actually, I want to ask you as a friend. As your mentor I know how curious you get. Please leave the subject of genocide alone. It has been so long since I’ve heard that word that I’m not even sure you will be able to find anything on it, but trust me when I say you do not want to look into it.”

And then she was gone.

That was the beginning, as best as I can recall. It was rather an abysmal beginning, but it was better than it could have been. The fact that Prince Morpheus was given a chance shows that. I have a feeling you’ll want to schedule Prince Morpheus for the next review though. His first real day living in Ponyville was rather unique, and I could tell you if pressed, but I believe he can convey those events much better than I can.