Discourse on Fillies

Chapters

Etiquette
Power
Fear

Etiquette

Diamond Tiara had a very clear idea of what it would be like the first time she were invited to the Royal Palace to dine with the Princess.

She would be a young adult mare, maybe in her mid-twenties. By then she was going to be the name on everypony's lips. She was going to be the hot new investor-manager in Canterlot, known for grabbing young entrepreneurs that everypony else ignored and turning them into stars. She was going to catch failing businesses and make them rise again, with her name on the door. Ponies would learn to watch her every move, hang on her every word, because hers was the voice of the future.

Ponies would flock to her and beg her for her blessings. If she liked something, everypony would want it. If she ignored something, it was dead. She would make and break whole industries. Even the Princess would want her advice, and she'd get to push this relic of the middle ages into the modern world.

That's what was supposed to happen. This wasn't it.

“Well, there are three score different types of tea from everywhere in the world to choose from. I cannot make heads or tails of them myself, they all taste like hot water to me,” Luna said as she ran her eyes down the list the Royal Tea-Master had provided for her. “My sister swears by the things, and will not stop pushing them on me. You can have any of them. Or would you like something else? A soft drink, perhaps, or a juice?”

The Princess of the Night looked faintly ridiculous as she ducked and weaved her way around the overcrowded refreshments set up for their benefit. Diamond Tiara sniffed at the display, caught herself doing so, and winced.

I'm a good filly now. I don't watch for flaws.

She turned away before Luna could see the look on her face, put on a smile, and said, “a grape juice would be nice, if you have it.”

“Certainly,” Luna replied and grabbed a crystal carafe of purple liquid.

While she got everything ready, Diamond Tiara let her eyes run over the opulent decorations of the Princesses' dining hall.

Diamond Tiara knew what wealth looked like. She lived in a mansion, although its exterior didn't betray much of what lay inside. Her parents had servants, and a butler waiting on her whims. She had accompanied her mother on social visits to her network (“friends” never seemed appropriate, even though they were her old classmates from boarding school). She had been brought along to parties hosted by her father's business associates. She knew all the usual styles the wealthy used to display their status to those around them.

The Palace was very different. She doubted that Celestia had ever thought for even a moment about how best to impress other ponies with her home, and Luna had not been there to participate. The Palace was a gift, built over centuries, rather than a display. It was a type of richness no other pony Diamond Tiara knew could match.

It didn't follow the rules, and she felt somehow irritated at that.

“There we are,” Luna said, pouring a glass of juice for Diamond Tiara and a cup of tea for herself simultaneously. She put down the glass in front of the filly and then immediately sipped her tea, and began measuring out sugar. “I hope it's good.”

That's not how you treat a guest, Diamond Tiara thought as she smiled. You're supposed to have the same thing as your guest. You're supposed to serve them first – horsefeathers, a servant is supposed to serve them first. Then you're supposed to wait until they take a drink before you take one.

But I guess you don't have to follow those rules.

Diamond Tiara cringed inwardly at her thoughts. I'm having tea with a princess. Alone. In private. I should be grateful.

'Grateful' was not something that came easily to her.

She cast around for some niceties to play, but all the stock phrases she had heard her mother use – Is that new? Who designed that? How much did that cost? – all seemed woefully inappropriate. She cleared her throat. “Thanks for the invitation, Princess. I've never been inside the Palace before. It's… beautiful in here.”

“Please, call me Luna.” Luna didn't look up at Diamond Tiara while she carefully sugared her tea. She sipped it again, and grinned. “That's much better. But there's no need to thank me. Twilight Sparkle told me about recent events in Ponyville, and when I heard you were visiting Canterlot today I thought it would be nice to say hello. And besides,” Luna chuckled, “Us reformed fillies should stick together, don't you think?”

I was supposed to command respect. I was supposed to be invited because there was no way they could not invite somepony as important as me. I was supposed to be generously giving them my time, not the other way around.

I wasn't supposed to be invited because they felt sorry for me, or because I'm a friend of a friend, or because me and Princess Luna have something in common.

The last thought hung in her head: Me and Princess Luna have something in common.

A vision of herself as a mad cackling monster filled her thoughts.

Luna watched her and Diamond Tiara suddenly noticed she was drooping. She quickly corrected herself and smiled, but Luna frowned. “Is something the matter?”

Diamond shook her head. “No, highness, everything's fine.”

Luna stirred her cup slowly. “To tell the truth, it was my sister's idea. She was rather adamant about it, saying that I had been spending a lot of time indoors lately and could do with meeting some more new ponies.” She waved a hoof in circles. “Big sisters can be so… let's go with 'protective'.”

Princess Luna was joking with her, telling her gossip about Princess Celestia. Diamond Tiara had to remind herself to keep her mouth shut, lest it hang open in a completely undignified fashion.

Luna did not miss it, and gave her a curious glance. “You seem unsettled. Are you sure everything is alright?”

“I guess I wasn't expecting you to tell me gossip about Princess Celestia, your highness.”

“Please, there's no need to be so formal,” Luna said. “It is a hard habit to break, believe me. Better that you not let it set in to begin with.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Diamond Tiara said. “You're a princess. It doesn't matter what you do, you're still going to be a princess and everypony else will just have to deal with it. If I do something wrong I'll never be able to show my face in Canterlot again.”

Luna looked at her curiously. There was a moment of silence. “There are only us two here,” Luna said. “And nothing that happens here need leave the room.”

Diamond Tiara began silently counting loopholes in that statement. She was at seventeen when her thoughts were interrupted.

“How is the juice?”

Diamond Tiara realized she had yet to touch her glass.

That's another insult. You don't ask somepony how they like the thing you see they haven't touched.

Diamond Tiara sipped it. It was delicious, as fresh and rich and tangy as anything ever bought on the first day of the season in Ponyville.

“How are things in Ponyville?” Luna asked, taking Diamond's face as an answer. “I haven't had time to visit as I should have liked – not in waking life, anyway. How have you been since the student election?”

“It's fine,” Diamond Tiara said. “Well, mostly. Me and Silver Spoon are spending more time with the other ponies out of school. Somepony suggested that we should start an activity group for young ponies, and that I could run it.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.”

Diamond Tiara winced. “I don't think I could.”

“Of course you could,” Luna said. “I heard you did an excellent job leading the playground renovation.”

Diamond Tiara remembered going with her mother when she was a little foal to visit her mother's friends, or when they came to visit her mother. She remembered the rules her mother had made her carefully memorize for these visits: smile, look ponies in the eyes, mind her posture, and look for weakness. In the meantime her mother and the other mare or mares would discuss what they were doing, what their husbands were doing, and what their other friends and their husbands were doing.

Her father, meanwhile, would excuse himself whenever these visits came to the Rich house, and suddenly find some reason to head down to the store. Usually it was inventory.

The talk about other ponies in particular, Diamond Tiara gradually noticed, was generally polite but often sharp: gossip and vicious rumors, tales of mistakes, embarrassing moments, false paws, arguments overheard through closed doors. Her mother would lean in close to listen, share a story of her own in kind, the two would be close as sisters as they talked about how horrible some other pony was – and then a week later her mother would meet some other pony and talk about how horrible last week's pony was.

The act exhausted Diamond Tiara at first, and she didn't understand why it was so important that she behave so differently from how she was at home with Silver Spoon. It took her a while before she realized that these other mares with lovely homes who welcomed them so graciously and offered them tea and crumpets, mares her mother knew from when she was a foal, who had all been in school together, were not her mother's friends at all.

They were the competition, and these visits were their way of keeping tabs on each other.

So when Diamond Tiara herself began school that was how she knew her classmates.

“They don't trust me,” Diamond Tiara said quietly. “My classmates I mean. They say they do. But they don't. When I go to talk to somepony I can still see the fear in their eyes, and their smiles have that forced look for a split-second before they relax. Like they're still thinking about how I treated them all that time. I can't really blame them.”

“Nonsense,” Luna said cheerfully. “Just keep trying and it will come. If I could do it, so can you.”

You have no idea what you're talking about.

The Princess continued to drink her tea without a care in the world as Diamond Tiara felt her smile grow strained.

She wanted to say “If you say so, Princess.”

It came out as little more than a grunt.

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Is something the matter?”

Diamond Tiara sighed. “No, Princess.”

Luna halted the cup by her lips, and gently put it down on its porcelain holder. “You do not seem very happy with me,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“That's unfair,” Diamond Tiara said. “I can't say anything bad about a Princess. I can't refuse to answer your question either. So all I can say is 'no, your highness, nothing is wrong'. No, your highness. Nothing is wrong.”

“Do you keep your thoughts hidden often, Diamond Tiara?”

Diamond Tiara didn't answer. Luna looked at her curiously, thoughtfully. She rapped her hoof on the table three times. “Feelings are like muscles,” the Princess eventually said. “The ones you exercise will grow strong. The ones you neglect will wither. Even if the desire to do harm is burned away, the ability remains. The habit will make itself felt.”

Diamond Tiara waited for the princess to tell her this tea party was over and that she would never be welcome in the palace again. Luna spun her spoon in her tea cup as she watched the filly. “It does you credit that you do not want to hurt or insult anypony, but allow me to say it's not necessary. I swear that there will be no consequences: this is not the society pages, and I will not be offended.” She sat back in her chair. “How do you feel, Diamond Tiara?”

“You have no idea what the world is like,” Diamond Tiara blurted out. “You have everything anypony could hope for, and the only thing you ever have to worry about is that your sister is more popular than you. No matter what happens you'll still be one of the richest, most powerful creatures in Equestria. You've never had to work to get anything, and you don't have to worry that you'll ever lose it because of a mistake. You're talking to me like a friend but you don't have to worry about the consequences. You can't understand me at all.”

Luna sat as if frozen in her chair, her eyes blinking, her mouth slightly open but not saying a word. Diamond Tiara sighed, and looked down. “No need to call the guards. I'll be going now.”

She stood up and turned away, her head hung low as she made for the doorway.

“Wait,” There was a clatter of porcelain as Luna rushed to her hooves. “You don't need to go.”

“I don't need to stay either,” Diamond Tiara muttered.

She heard the hoofsteps of the princess, swift and heavy compared to her own, behind her. “I ask you to stay,” Luna said quickly. “I told you there are no consequences for speaking your mind to me.”

“Yeah, well. I don't believe that,” Diamond Tiara muttered as she walked. “There are always consequences.”

“You're not going to be kicked out,” Luna said. “Nopony else need ever know what we talked about here. What do you think will go wrong?”

“Good grief, where do I begin?” Diamond Tiara halted and raised her head, her voice now angry. “You can entertain me here today and let me go home with all your assurances afterward, but the next time I stop by Canterlot you're not going to invite the pony who called you a fool for a tea party. When I grow up and apply for business school it won't be on the Princess scholarship. When I have a nightmare I'm gonna be on the bottom of your list of things to do that night by default. When I'm trying to start my own business in a few years the Royal Palace isn't going to be interested in a contract. When I'm trying to raise my name in Canterlot somepony's going to notice that the Princesses are giving me less interest than everypony else and they're going to wonder why! And when you won't tell them they'll come up with their own ideas that will be even worse than what I just did!”

Her voice grew louder and stronger with each word, and Luna's eyes grew wider as she listened. “I can never come back to Canterlot again because everything in this town depends on you and your sister's whims and even if you tell me you're not offended you're not going to forget that I'm the girl who told you to your face that you're useless!”

There was no sound in the room but Diamond Tiara's heart pounding in her ears, and the heavy gulp of her breathing.

All the while Luna had only stood by listening, stunned, her eyes wide. “You don't believe I can forget that and treat you fairly?” There was sadness in that voice, and surprise, but mostly there was concern.

Diamond Tiara struggled to keep her voice under control as her stomach turned. She shook her head. “Not even if you wanted to. And why would you want to? You're a Princess! You're entitled to be treated with respect and I haven't.”

“Forgetting,” Luna said softly, with a smile, “comes easier with age. I promise you.”

“Okay, so you're treating me like a stupid kid,” Diamond Tiara replied. “That's not much better. I'll be the stupid kid who insulted the princess, instead of the stupid pony who insulted the princess. Great.”

“I don't think you're stupid,” Luna said.

“I'm not stupid. I'm top of my class.”

“I believe you.”

“Great.”

They were both standing still now, Diamond Tiara still facing away from Luna.

“...When was the last time anypony said something like that to you?”

“More than a thousand years,” Luna whispered. “Look, I – I'm sorry if you felt I was talking down to you. I did not mean to, and I did not mean to dismiss your feelings. I—” She broke off and turned around, took a step to the side, shook her head as she thought. She cleared her throat. “Diamond Tiara? Would you please stay, and have a biscuit? I fear I have been a bad host to you, and I would not feel fair if you left like this. I'd like to try to get to know you. And I'd like to try to show you that I don't mind those things you said.”

“Well, maybe you should mind,” Diamond Tiara said, her voice little more than a breath. “Maybe I don't deserve forgiveness. Maybe I should take responsibility for what I do for once. That's what a good pony is supposed to do, isn't it?”

“Well,” Luna said, “how about you take responsibility by talking it out, and helping me see where it came from? Would that be acceptable?”

“...I don't know,” Diamond Tiara admitted.

“You can try,” Luna replied. “That counts. Trying always counts.”

Diamond Tiara slowly shuffled around, and they returned to the table and sat down.

Power

The table was covered in royal porcelain, silverware, and crystal, piled high with cakes and fruits and candies, with juices and teas and bottles of wine that stood unopened. Diamond Tiara studied it closely to avoid meeting the Princess's eyes.

She traced the intricate floral patterns on the china plate in her mind. The vines branched and crossed and merged, occasionally erupting in an explosion of petals and leaves. Her crystal glass was similarly decorated with flawlessly cut geometric patterns, stars and rays of light.

There was a bowl of colorful candies which had once shattered, and had been repaired with veins of molten gold, and become more beautiful for it. There was the purr and glug of tea pouring into a cup, the clink of a pot being put down, and then silence.

Princess Luna sat across the table from her, watching the filly with worry. Diamond Tiara only looked down at the table, saying nothing.

“When I first came home to Canterlot after the Nightmare, my sister introduced me to the palace staff,” Luna began. “She told them this was a day of great celebration, that I was the pony dearest to her heart, and that they should all treat me as they would treat her. Well, they tried. But… There was so much to learn. So much time lost. So many changes. For the first months they all walked on eggshells around me, as if they thought I might explode into a rage or collapse into uncontrolled weeping at the slightest imagined injury. So I think I can understand.”

Diamond Tiara glanced cautiously up at the Princess, listened to the story as Luna made her memories come alive.

“I know what it's like to be dropped into a world and not know how to act, with everypony waiting for you to revert. I know how difficult it is to try to change yourself, and I'm sorry I did not respect that. Change takes time. Earning trust is a slow process, full of doubts, and doubt… hurts.”

Diamond Tiara nodded in recognition.

Luna stared into the distance, watching things only she could see. “After so long a time commanding the fear of my ponies, it takes work to earn their love instead.”

“It may be answered that one should wish to be both,” Diamond Tiara recited, “but because it is difficult to unite them in one pony, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”

“You've read Macavallo?” Luna asked, her face lighting up as Diamond Tiara nodded. “I have a fondness for the classics myself. Did you find it interesting?”

Diamond Tiara froze, staring at nothing, and when she spoke her voice was flat and dry. “It's the most important book there is.”

“It is heavy reading for a little filly,” Luna replied. “How did you come by it?”

“My mom gave me her old copy when I was little. She highlighted the important parts, but I read the whole thing.”

“Did she really…?” Luna asked slowly, gazing off to the side with a slight frown, thinking. “There is wisdom in The Princess… But it is clouded by history, and difficult to digest.”

“I thought it was pretty straight-forward.”

Luna halted her cup an inch from her mouth. She frowned. “Did you indeed?”

“Well, yeah. He's very direct. I mean, there's a lot of the history stuff I don't really know about, but he gives a lot of advice that's very clear. It's all about how you get your way with ponies.”

“I see,” Luna said. “I suppose I read him differently.”

Diamond Tiara scoffed. “How can you read him differently? That's all he talks about.”

Luna paused, and thought carefully before she spoke. “There are many reasons for us to read literature. One of them, it is true, is that it can help us understand the world around us, and give us new tools that we did not have before. But there is more to understanding than what's written on the surface. Are you fond of reading, Diamond Tiara?”

“Sure I am. I'm not stupid.”

Luna nodded. “I am sure you're not. Well, Macavallo liked to read as well. He was a historian, you know, and very fond of the classics. When he wrote his book he borrowed his form from a much older literary tradition. One which is still with us today… Do you know the 'books for helping the self'?”

Diamond Tiara's mouth fell open. “The Princess isn't a self-help book!”

“Oh, you'd be amazed,” Luna chuckled. “The principle is the same. In my youth they were called the 'mirrors of princes', and they were written since ancient times. The older ones stressed honor and virtuous behavior, to command the loyalty and admiration of ponies. They said that if you are just and fair then those around you will respect you, and you will prosper… Then came Macavallo, and wrote that if you are just and fair then you will be overthrown by someone who is not. That virtue is not rewarded. That ponies do not respect fairness, nor honor those who have honored them, but will flee from danger and seek safety under tyrants. Ponies were horrified, of course.”

Diamond Tiara scowled derisively at the thought. “They were stupid. He was right.”

“...I wonder.” The Princess shifted in her seat and thought for a moment, gazing off into the distance. “I have sometimes wondered… What would they do if the Nightmare had won? Would ponies stand together to oppose me, even if it meant their lives, to fight for the freedom they had lost? Or would they have done as Macavallo predicted, and pledged their loyalty to me in exchange for their survival and safety?”

Diamond Tiara listened intently, following the Princess's eyes. Luna shook her head, casting off the thought. “Thankfully we will never know.”

“They would have followed you,” Diamond Tiara said.

“You think so?” Luna asked, and the filly nodded. “What makes you so sure?”

Diamond Tiara's face hardened as she thought back to all the lessons of her foalhood. “Experience,” she said, and she began to tell the story.

She remembered kindergarten.

The colt was twice her size, the biggest in the playground, and a big bully. He could have pummeled her without a thought, as he had done to so many others who were bigger than her. As he threatened to do with his posture, his strut, the way he jumped and moved so he was always in front of her wherever she tried to run that time she had finally dared step out on the playground to play in his space…

She shook like a leaf in his shadow, and then she opened her mouth and began to speak, and by the time she was done he ran away crying, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the playground while all around the other foals watched her in silent awe.

She remembered her legs weak, shaking, and her heart racing. And the one pony who came up to her and asked if she wanted to play.

“Me and Silver Spoon were never apart after that,” she concluded. “We played together every day in kindergarten, and we visited each other all the time. We always got to play with the toys we wanted. Most ponies just gave them to us and went to play someplace else, if we wanted something. And if somepony didn't want to, I could send them off with just a few words. It didn't take long before nopony ever dared to stand against us at all.”

The filly felt herself sinking as the old knowledge came back as if it had never left. “Ponies are weak, and easy to scare. If you show them that you're stronger, they'll give you anything you want. I kept Silver Spoon by my side ever since then.”

“You used Macavallo to get a friend?” Luna asked. Diamond Tiara nodded. “I wonder what Twilight would say to that… I do not think that would occur to many ponies. Macavallo said very little about friendship. His descriptions of ponies were… unkind.”

“Well, I was a huge bully,” Diamond Tiara muttered. “And if I hadn't been, I wouldn't have anything. I would just be another nopony hiding out on the edge of the playground while the bullies played their games… and I would never have had Silver Spoon.” She shook her head. “Macavallo saw right through to the heart of ponies. We talk about friendship and kindness, but the truth is that you can't trust anypony. The world is full of traitors and deceivers, and when danger strikes they'll leave you to fend for yourself. If you don't want ponies to hurt you, you've got to have power to hurt them instead. But if you do, they'll follow you to the end.”

Luna listened silently to the filly as she gave her testimony. Her voice was flat, and heavy, and she spoke not with conviction but with resignation. “It's the same in politics, in business, even in the arts. Whatever you do, you've got to know the rules and use them better than your enemies. If you don't accept that you'll lose everything.”

Diamond Tiara stared down into her glass with that familiar feeling of being utterly unshakeable, her gaze of diamond. “Doing whatever it takes isn't just allowed. It's an obligation.”

“Hmm...” Luna sat deep in thought. “Tell me… Many have described the book as a manual for tyrants. Would you say that is a fair description?”

“Well, yeah,” Diamond Tiara said. “It's all about power. It's all about how you have to take power by being cunning, and hold on to it by dividing and destroying your enemies. Macavallo says that if you care about being good you'll lose your power and invite chaos and anarchy. That you mustn't let being good get in the way of reaching your goals.” As she spoke the words her muzzle scrunched up in distaste. “It's horrible. But it's also true. That's the way the world works. We can't get away from it, we just have to work with it.”

“There are some who say it is a satire,” Luna suggested.

“It's not very funny,” Diamond Tiara said.

“The best satire often isn't,” Luna replied with a smile. “The best satires can make you weep. But yes, some have said so. They argue that Macavallo was defying and attacking the rulers of his day by accurately describing their appalling behavior.”

Diamond Tiara scoffed. “He doesn't seem to be very upset at them. He cheers them on and calls them brilliant the worse they are.”

“Perhaps he was, but did not show it,” Luna suggested. “Remember that these ponies he talked about were not his friends. The ruler of his homeland, the Duchess of the City of Flowers, had overthrown the republican government Macavallo had served in, and had him arrested. He was falsely accused by his enemies, tortured, and exiled for life…” Luna raised her cup, paused, and glanced down at the filly opposite her. “Do we really think he would write glowing praise of their efforts?”

“But that's a weird idea,” Diamond Tiara said. “If he thought his rulers were so horrible, why would he give them advice on how to be worse?”

“Perhaps sometimes even great artists learn a harsh lesson,” Luna said. “Our arts have a life of their own, and they may betray us. I never meant for the Tantabus to hurt anypony but me... yet it did.” She sighed unhappily at the memory, and turned a mournful glance to the filly which sent a shiver down her spine.

“What you say is true,” Luna continued, speaking quietly, sadly. “There is much in The Princess that is horrible. And yes, amidst the horrors there is much that is undeniably true. That is Macavallo's mirror: he shows us our world and our selves, not as we want to be, but as we really are. What if it is not advice at all? Could it be that he is instead condemning us for our evils? If we take his book to heart and obey its commands – then who is the evil one? Him? Or us?”

There was silence for a minute. Luna turned to her all-but-forgotten tea and tried not to pressure the filly by her presence. Diamond Tiara sat, unhappy and unmoving for a long time before she whispered: “You shouldn't have to be stupid to be good.”

She looked up, her face flush with emotion, and continued. “You shouldn't have to choose between being kind and having a chance to get ahead in the world. But you do. I don't have to like that. I just have to accept it. If I treat everypony with kindness all the time they'll like me right up until it suits them to stop… and I'll lose Silver Spoon again.” She closed her eyes, her face scrunched up as she calmed her breath. “Kindness… Kindness and ten bits will buy you a cherry, my mother says.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Kindness? My sister holds kindness above all the other virtues. It was kindness that set me free from my prison,” she said softly. “I strive to follow her example, even when it is not easy. I think that Equestria stands upon a more solid ground.”

“Hmph,” Diamond Tiara grunted. “The frog was kind to the scorpion. The scorpion stung it, and killed them both. Ponies can sting you too, if you let them.”

“And therefore you must control them, and deal out the stings yourself to keep your fellows in their proper place,” Luna continued the thought, and Diamond Tiara nodded. “And I suppose if I say my sister shows kindness to all, even those who threaten her, you would say she never really has reason to fear them?”

“That sounds about right, yeah.”

Luna sighed. “Yes, I remember thinking these thoughts, Diamond Tiara. I have been there. Perhaps we are more alike than you realize. But I do not wish anypony to follow down that path.” She stirred her cup anxiously, deep in thought as she watched the girl. “What happened to you, little filly? What made you think this way?”

Diamond Tiara sat quite still, looking at nothing as she considered the question. She shook her head. “Nothing happened to me. That's just how the world is. I can see that, even if everypony else can't.”

“May I say what I think?” Luna asked. “I think the nature of kindness is courage.”

Diamond Tiara thought to the pegasus who was apparently the embodiment of kindness in Equestria, and saw a whimpering mass of feathers. “How do you figure that?”

“The frog was not ignorant of the scorpion's sting,” Luna began. “It allowed the scorpion to mount it, and carried it across the water, not because it did not know what the scorpion might do but because it was giving the scorpion a chance. The frog was willing to risk its life to show that kindness.”

Diamond Tiara listened skeptically as Luna continued. “To show kindness is to open yourself to others, even though they may harm you. Nopony, and no frog, is ignorant of danger. But to permit that danger to control your life… that is to succumb to fear. So where does kindness come from, then? Is it foolishness, for not seeing danger? Or is it courage, for going on in spite of it?”

“Are you calling me a coward?” Diamond Tiara demanded. “There's a difference between being afraid and being smart. Why should I just walk into danger and let myself get hurt? Nopony does that!” She shook her head. “Only a moron would pick up a scorpion just to be nice. If somepony could be dangerous you don't run up to them and say hi, even if you need them. You weigh the risks and wait for the right moment.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “You think that is what miss Fluttershy does?”

“She's an animal expert. She knows how to avoid danger.”

“Miss Fluttershy has had many scorpions in her home, and spiders, and wasps, and other things that others recoil from. Do you believe that she has never been stung?”

“Well, she can understand them,” Diamond Tiara said bluntly. “So she probably hasn't, at least not more than a few times.”

“Oh, but she has. She has been stung by every stinging creature that she has ever met, including ponies.” Luna smiled softly. “She does not let that stop her.”

“Good for her,” Diamond Tiara huffed. “Give me a magical necklace that says I'm an embodiment of a supreme force of nature and I'll stop acting like a real pony too! But normal life isn't like that! Nopony in their right mind would just pick up a scorpion and let it sting them!”

Luna sighed sadly. “These are treacherous thoughts, miss Rich. There is much fear in them. Every time a pony opens themselves to another there is a risk of being hurt. Yet ponies continue to do so, because that is what life is.” She gave an encouraging smile. “Can you imagine trying to see the world differently?”

“Differently from what it is, you mean?”

Luna sniffed. “My dear filly, you are far too young to think you know what the world is. Every day, you could see something different. Something new. If you dare.”

“Stop saying I'm afraid!” Diamond Tiara shouted, slamming the table with her hoof. “I'm not afraid! I dare anything!”

“Do you?” Luna asked. “Because you are describing the world from a place of fear. Everywhere you look, you see only things that can hurt you, not things that will bring you happiness. Macavallo taught you to see the world as something to control, rather than something to experience.” She was getting heated, her face lit up with conflicting emotions, anger and sadness and pity. “There is a price to be paid for taking his advice, isn't there? It takes its toll on the mind. When any change leads to war, chaos, uncertainty, then stability seems to be worth any cost. Peace, even if it means the peace of the graveyard… In a world like that there is no room for kindness anywhere, is there?”

And all of a sudden I wasn't allowed to speak.

Diamond Tiara whispered. “You don't understand me at all.”

“I want to understand.” Luna placed a hoof on Diamond Tiara's hoof. “Will you help me?”

Diamond Tiara felt a hole opening in the pit of her stomach as the words ran through her mind, and she remembered the day of the election.

Silver Spoon's face filled her memories, her most faithful companion, her loyal friend. Always there to follow her cues, always ready with a supporting laugh and a quick wit. She thought of the election, of how she had pulled out all the stops to win even though everything was stacked against her.

Diamond Tiara doesn't give up. Diamond Tiara never breaks, and never loses.

So what if the student pony president is the worst kind of popularity contest, where somepony like her, somepony who gets things done, could never stand a chance against some nopony who had never done anything at all? Somepony who had never had power, never had to make any decision of significance, who therefore inspired no resentment?

Somepony who didn't even have his cutie mark. Who could be anything.

She would run anyway, and she would win, and she would show them all.

She remembered how quickly and easily it had all come apart. How quickly she had lost everything, and been reduced to the mercy of her old victims.

Diamond Tiara felt herself shaking, her tiara sitting heavily on her head.

She thought of the look on Silver Spoon's face that she had never seen before, the contempt. She thought of that voice turned against her, abandoned.

She remembered walking home to face her mother, without her one supporter to back her up.

And then the Crusaders had approached her, and so quickly and painfully turned it all around.

The Crusaders, she thought. Her exact opposites, three nobodies who meant nothing and were going nowhere, who gave a chance to everything around them, who trusted everything, even when it would obviously lead to nothing good, who let themselves be hurt by everything they saw.

And for a day, she had been shown another world where everything was upside down, and she did not have to be afraid of loss, and a light would burn to show you the way and where anything was possible. A world bright and beautiful and full of love, where everything she had ever known was wrong and everything she wanted could be hers if she could just end herself and start anew.

So different from the world at large, where distrust was the norm, where different ponies would only work together if they were forced. Where outsiders only talked to you if they wanted something from you, and you had to get something from them instead just to show that you weren't weak – otherwise you'd be trampled underhoof. That's what the world is like, much as Diamond Tiara hated it.

She didn't have to enjoy it. She was only doing what anypony would, if they could – because she had to. That was the truth. Macavallo had understood that.

“I can't let go,” she whispered. “The Crusaders showed me that I can make ponies like me by being nice to them instead of making them fear me. But I still have to be in charge. Otherwise I'm nothing. I can never be on top if ponies don't think there's anything special about me at all. So I have to be smarter than the rest, wittier and sharper than everypony. I have to always know what's what, and be able to put everyone in their place with a few well-chosen words, or else nopony will care about me at all and I'll have nothing.”

“You doubt your own capacity for change,” Luna said.

“It's my nature,” Diamond Tiara recited. A tiny whimper escaped from her throat before the words could form. “Mom is right. One good day doesn't change how the world works.”

“They should never have taught you this,” Luna said softly. “These are not healthy thoughts for a foal to have. But it is not your fault, Diamond Tiara. You only did as you were taught to do, and you could not know otherwise.”

“It's me,” Diamond Tiara replied. “What does it matter who did it? That's what I believed my entire life. I had all of that. It took years to build up. Then I lost it all in one day and I have no idea what else I can hold on to. It was everything I knew, and if I can't hold on to that then I don't know anything.”

Her voice was weak as she asked her question: “Where can you find kindness in all of that?”

Diamond Tiara only sniffed, fighting back the tears as she looked at her reflection in the light on the surface of her drink.

“He was imprisoned, and tortured, you know,” Luna said quietly. “He watched helplessly while his state was overthrown. He was accused of a conspiracy he knew nothing about, and banished from the city, left in house arrest to die. That was where he wrote the book. He was trying to convince the Duchess of the City of Flowers to allow him to return to the city, and work for her.”

Diamond Tiara blinked. “Work for the Duchess? Wasn't she the one who put him in prison in the first place?”

Luna nodded. “Indeed, and had him tortured. He gave one of the first copies of his book to her, told her everything he had learned about how she could hold on to her power, imploring her to let him come back and serve her.”

Luna sat back, and looked up at the ceiling in thought. “I always wondered, what was he thinking as he sent her the book? Was it spite, his way of lashing out at his enemy? Or was it a higher call?”

She turned back to face the filly. “I wonder if the book might say more about him than about the nature of power,” she continued. “Macavallo had lived through war and destruction. He had seen his state overturned, he had seen monsters and tyrants rise to conquer his lands. He had seen his own life's work overthrown by callous fate. To me his book said that if you lose hope, if you no longer have faith in compassion, love, and kindness, then this is what the world will look like.”

Luna’s wings ruffled on her back as she lowered herself down in her chair, her dark eyes fixed on the filly across from her. “Here is the other side of cold calculation, Diamond Tiara: that perhaps you have to forget your own pain, and show kindness to those who have harmed you, in order to serve the peace. I wonder if Macavallo was the frog, and that even after he was stung he tried his best to carry the scorpion to land.”

Silence hung in the air as Diamond Tiara's thoughts raced through her mind.

No way. That can't be right. Ponies don't work that way.

“Diamond Tiara? Are you all right?” Luna asked cautiously, and the filly noticed that her hoof was shaking.

I can't have been that wrong all that time. I know that book. It’s about power and fear.

“Diamond Tiara?” Luna asked cautiously. “Is everything alright?”

And Diamond Tiara thought back to the day she found friendship, and began to speak.

There are few things more vast in the mind than a kindergarten playground to the foals who play there.

Even though they were only yards away, standing in a loose circle around her and the colt, Diamond Tiara felt more alone than she had ever been in her life.

She cast her sight to the circle of foals who watched her silently, waiting for the inevitable outcome of the fight.

Pinecone was the king of the playground, and nopony got away with taking what he wanted. He held their fear in the frog of his hoof.

Her legs were wobbly with fear, but she couldn't show it. Never show weakness, she remembered, and look for shows of weakness in others.

She knew what she had to do. She remembered her lessons. Now was the hour, and she hoped that the sick feeling would go away once it was done. She opened her mouth to speak, and in a few moments it was done.

And then she was alone again, in the silence, and they were watching her now as they had watched him, and she remembered from her lessons that this is how it was supposed to be, that showed it was working, and surely the sick feeling would start to fade soon.

And then just one of the ponies stepped forward, a gray filly with silver hair and big awkward glasses that Diamond Tiara knew had gotten her no end of vicious teasing, and she said “Hi,” and “do you wanna play?”

And Diamond Tiara knew that it was working just as she had learned it.

Diamond Tiara's face scrunched up as she tried to sort out the garble in her head.

“All the other foals ran away from me. Only Silver Spoon didn't, and without her… I used every trick I'd learned. I was afraid if I didn't she'd leave me. I needed to have just one filly to play with – I mean, to follow me.”

The words rushed out of her mouth. “Silver Spoon was my follower. All the other foals were useless to me, but Silver was… different. They were peasants. I was the leader, and Silver Spoon was my vassal. She was my follower. I knew I needed to have those – ponies who stayed close to me, because we could do more together, because she'd back me up when I needed it. And...”

“And you enjoyed her company,” Luna said.

Diamond Tiara fell silent. There was a lump in her throat.

“You can't hold on to a pony with love,” she whispered. “Ponies can stop loving you whenever it suits them. I needed Silver Spoon to fear me because otherwise she'd leave me.”

Diamond Tiara scrunched up her face as she thought back to her early foalhood lessons in spotting weakness and opportunity in her kindergarten fellows. Her mother had a board hung up on her bedroom wall listing benchmarks she had to meet, things like 'make a foal cry without touching them', or 'make two friends stop talking to each other'.

She had never stopped to think about it before (and why hadn't she?), but that didn't seem normal.

“Like at the school election – she was stepping on my hooves. I was trying to make everypony fear me, so they'd vote for me. She was trying to make them love me. She wasn't useful anymore so I had to stop her.” By now Diamond Tiara was shouting and heaving for breath. “I needed to get her to stop! But it didn't work! It only made things worse!”

A little filly standing alone on a playground, her legs shaking. One colt running away, crying, and many eyes watching her fearfully.

Only one filly dared step forward, and Diamond Tiara turned, expecting a challenge, an attack, because that's what you get, that's why you keep ponies in their place.

“Hi,” said the filly with the silver hair. “Do you wanna play?”

Diamond Tiara was shaking now, fighting back the tears. “I went out of my way to be awful to her,” Diamond Tiara said, more to herself than to the princess. “Sweet Celestia – I was horrible to her. Because that's how you know you're in control – you push their buttons but make sure they have more to fear from leaving than from staying. But all that time she must have been… She… she...” Her eyes widened. “She felt sorry for me. She stayed with me no matter what I did because she felt sorry for me. Because she thought I looked like I needed a friend.”

Diamond Tiara didn't notice that Luna had moved until she felt the hoof gently touching her back. “It is difficult to face up to our mistakes,” Luna said softly. “But you did. You reached out to her to make amends, and she forgave you. I think you did very well, Diamond Tiara.”

“Did I?” Diamond Tiara asked uncertainly. “I don't know what I did. I used to feel that I always knew where I was, and now I don't know anything anymore.”

“Shh.” Luna shook her head. “You know that you have friends. Ones who are not bound to you by fear, who will not leave you at the first sign of weakness. You know that.”

Diamond Tiara was fighting to keep back the tears now. Big girls don't cry. “Why are you being so nice to me? I've done nothing but sit here and whine and disagree with you about everything.”

“Because I want to understand you,” Luna said. “Because you are not a scorpion. Because you are a little filly who has grown up much too fast, and who needs kindness.”

Diamond Tiara raised her head and looked to the Princess with conflicted eyes. Her voice was weak and uncertain. “Do you really think the world can run on just kindness?”

The Princess smiled. “Not only that,” Luna said, “I think it is the only way the world can run.”

Fear

Diamond Tiara’s vision was blurry, and her snout was dribbling. She was going to wait it out in silence, but she was interrupted by Luna's voice asking, “Are you all right?” and passing her a tissue. She accepted it, dried her eyes, and loudly blew her muzzle.

“'m okay,” she said with a sniffle. “Just give me a moment.”

“Take your time.” Luna pushed a box of the soft paper tissues over to the filly. “Why don't we have a cup of tea? My sister tells me she finds this variety most calming.”

“Alright.”

Luna picked out one of the dozen pots from the tea table and poured two steaming cups while the filly composed herself.

Diamond Tiara gave a small laugh. “Funny. You know I'm not sure I've ever cried in front of anypony before. Not since I was a baby.” She picked up her glass, still half-full of juice, and spun it in her hooves.

Her reflection looked back at her. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she didn't look unhappy. “I guess because that would have been showing weakness.”

“I am glad that you feel safe enough here to show your feelings,” Luna said with a smile.

“I spent my whole life trying to seem unbreakable,” Diamond Tiara said. She put the glass to one side and picked up the tea-cup in her hooves. She smelled it gingerly, and took a small sip. “This is really good.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” Luna said. “I'll be sure to tell my sister that the next generation is carrying on her tastes. For my part, I always preferred sugary drinks that fizzed and bubbled, but my sister always hated them. I miss them so… I have not tasted any for over a thousand years. But alas, my sister tells me that such drinks have now faded from history entirely, and are no longer produced.”

Diamond Tiara paused mid-sip.

“I am joking, of course.”

“That was just mean,” Diamond Tiara said, shaking her head as she giggled at Luna's sly smirk. “I used to love soda. My mom would only let me have it for special occasions, though… Usually the special occasion was that I'd ask my dad instead. It's like having a little birthday party four times a week!”

“A birthday party!” Luna exclaimed happily. “Oh, I remember my birthdays when I was your age, in the old castle in the Everfree Forest. The castle was new back then. You should have seen it! A royal palace designed and built by two little fillies, limited only by our imaginations! Full of secret passages and traps...” Luna shook her head and sighed happily at the memory. “I read a lot of vampire stories back then. It kind of showed, in hindsight.”

Diamond Tiara nodded. “Of course, for my real birthday parties my dad would hire Pinkie Pie to put on one of her parties, and make sure it was the biggest in town that year. Or… almost the biggest. And there'd be enough cake to make everypony sick for the next week, in a dozen different varieties.”

“I used to get the royal chef to make me delicacies from distant lands,” Luna said with a laugh. “Quite a lot of different kinds of sweets were introduced to Equestria because I wanted something for my birthday that nopony had ever tasted before!”

Diamond Tiara giggled. “My dad used to let me have all the soda and candy I wanted. He'd ask what mom said, and I'd say she said it was fine,” she said. “Then she caught on to what I was doing, and she and dad had… a talk about it.”

She slowly drew a deep breath. “Dad wouldn't let me have it anymore after that. So then, when the other foals brought candy or soda to school I used to make them give it to me. It was easy, by then. They all knew me and Silver Spoon, and they knew what would happen if they said no.” Diamond Tiara spoke quietly, thinking at the memory and the emotions it provoked in her chest. “It wasn’t every day. But enough. Then, after a while, their parents caught on and they all stopped bringing any candy to school. Plus my mom got mad at me when I gained weight, and made me go on a diet.” She shuddered. “It was awful. So I stopped doing it.”

“…The ways of parents are mysterious, and often difficult for their children to understand,” Luna said. “As a rule they have your best interests at heart, even if it doesn't always seem like it.”

“It definitely doesn't seem like it when you're eating one small meal a day for a month because your mom wants you to go down two sizes in time for some party,” Diamond Tiara said flatly.

Luna grimaced, then forced her expression to go blank. There was a moment’s pause. “No, I imagine it doesn’t,” she said. “That’s… that does not sound very nice.”

“I heard them talking about it one night. I was awake in bed. I couldn't sleep because I was too hungry. Mom hadn't told dad about the diet. He doesn't bother about her party schedule anyway. So at dinner dad wanted me to eat more, but mom said no. And they were having… a discussion about it downstairs…” Diamond took a deep breath, mimicking something she had seen Princess Twilight do once, and carried on more steadily. “The dress was horrible. I hated it. After the party I never wore it again. And I made sure not to eat too much candy and ice cream again.”

“Have you tried the cupcakes?” Luna asked, proffering a platter. “Do have one, they're very good.” She put two on Diamond Tiara's plate with her magic, and took one for herself.

“Oh? Thanks.” Diamond Tiara picked it up and took a bite. “That's good… So I squeeze into that horrible dress for the party, I could barely breathe in it but apparently I looked just wonderful and my mom's friends were impressed. Or disappointed, because… you know.”

“…Because they were hoping to see weakness,” Luna finished.

Diamond Tiara stared at nothing directly in front of her. “The other foals just see the big house in the nicest part of town. You know?”

Princess Luna gave a slight, soft sigh, and turned her face slightly away, her eyes deepening as she looked back across a gulf of time. “Yes. I know.”

“My mom always said that we have to set a high standard, and be above those other ponies,” Diamond Tiara said. “She'd even get annoyed with dad when he went out to talk to the Apples about selling their apples in the store, because they're so dirty and common… He said you have to be able to talk to everypony comfortably to be a leader. Mom and I never understood that.” She sighed. “At least I never have to wear those stupid bunny ears again.”

Luna put down her cup with a click of porcelain. “Children of high standing are often envied, and resented, by their peers,” she said. “We can be bullies. We can be monsters. But children are – children. We are as confused and uncertain as everypony else. But much more is expected from us.”

Diamond Tiara nodded.

“I do not speak of my childhood much,” Luna said softly, her eyes focused on nothing, looking into the distant past. “I was the younger child of a great house, and my sister was as splendid as the sun. I had much to live up to. I tried hard, and… I did not always succeed.”

Princess Luna said nothing, but sat in her chair, looking like a statue if not for her mane which never stopped flowing of its own magical accord. Her eyes were unfocused, looking at nothing in particular while she thought.

“Princess?”

“What?” Luna asked, pulled from her reverie. “I'm sorry, I was distracted. What were you saying?”

Diamond Tiara looked up at the princess cautiously. “I was just asking if I could have more tea?”

“Oh! Of course.” Luna swiftly took the pot and poured another cup, the little filly not looking away from her the while.

“Thanks,” Diamond Tiara said. “This is nice. Just, sitting and talking. And this stuff.” She took the cup and brought it up to her muzzle, took a deep breath of the scent. “It's really good. Makes me think of… warm summer nights and clean bed-sheets for some reason.”

“That is a pleasant image,” Luna said.

“Yeah. A pleasant image.”

A few minutes passed in silence, Princess Luna enjoying her tea and cake, Diamond Tiara deep in thought, feeling her pulse quicken and slow.

“I can do this,” Diamond Tiara said quietly to herself, not caring that the Princess was listening. “I can be nice. I can…” A deep inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale. “...I can be around ponies without only caring about what I can get from them.”

“That must be difficult, with me,” Luna replied. “No, don't feel bad! Listen. I have ponies come to me every night only because they want things from me. I know how it is. You're not like them.”

Diamond Tiara grunted unhappily. “Princess Twilight might disagree. One time I got a whole bunch of ponies to hang out with her just because I thought we could get something from her.”

“Princess Twilight is very forgiving,” Luna said with a smile. “Do not worry: I know you're not doing that here. I can see that you're struggling. But you're doing just fine, I assure you.”

Diamond Tiara looked down in her cup to avoid meeting Luna’s eyes. “A lot of ponies thought I seemed nice the first time I talked to them.”

“The soul is rich, and ponies are not simple things.” Luna gave the filly an encouraging smile. “All of us form tangles in our minds, and it takes work to unravel them. We can try to take one strand, and follow it to see where it leads… and perhaps loosen the knot.”

The filly only looked away, eyes unfocused, staring into the distance at nothing in particular.

Luna shifted in her seat, peering down thoughtfully at the filly. “You know that I visit ponies' dreams?”

The filly nodded.

“It is not always easy. Often ponies do not want an intruder to peer into their most private thoughts. I do not pry, and go only where I think somepony needs a helping hoof to confront their hidden fears… and is willing to receive one. Tell me, do you recall the Tantabus?”

“Of course I do. I think everypony is going to remember that thing for the rest of their lives.”

Luna nodded. “Yes, I suppose they will… I hope that it will be a fun story to tell their grandfoals in the distant future, rather than a nightmare that will haunt them.” Luna said. “The Tantabus was an extremely dangerous creature, created to be the ultimate bad dream. And yet, it could not create anything by itself. Instead, it looked inside the mind of the dreamer to find what frightened her the most. The Tantabus would take that which was most dear to the dreamer's heart – her loves, her hopes, that which was most closely tied to her sense of self – and corrupt it, in order to use it against her. It was...” She coughed. “It was a skill I taught it, I am ashamed to admit, in order to make it more efficient at its task.”

“Well, it certainly did a good job at it,” Diamond Tiara muttered.

“It did. I learned a great deal from it about my own fears and weaknesses. It was a grim work, staring into my own wounds every night, teaching the Tantabus how to rip them open…” She grimaced at the memory, her voice heavy with regret. “So, when it escaped, it was well-prepared to do harm to others.”

A shadow of old pain had crept over Luna’s face as she spoke. “Here is the thing. I combined all of Ponyville's dreams into one, but I created nothing of that dream myself. Every wonder and every peril within that dream came from the dreamers of Ponyville. Tell me, if I may ask you… were you there that night, Diamond Tiara?”

Diamond Tiara froze up completely, her whole body suddenly tense. Luna nodded. “Yes. I thought so.”

“I… ran away and hid,” Diamond Tiara whispered. “I didn't stay to help.”

Luna waved the confession away with a hoof. “Don't feel bad. With the help of my friends, I drew the Tantabus back into myself, where it belonged, and took away its power. But there is something else. The Tantabus looked into the fears of every pony in Ponyville, and brought them to life…” She fell silent and waited to see the filly's response. “Would you like to talk about it?”

A great darkness waiting, unseen. Sitting on the street, unassuming, ponies walking by every day, not knowing what lurks within the walls. A monster waiting to rise up on creaking legs, doorways turned to gaping maws, trampling across the city and tearing ponies to pieces in its paws.

Diamond Tiara nodded, and shook her head, mouthed a yes and a no.

“I saw your father in that dream,” Luna continued, watching the filly closely, speaking slowly and cautiously. “He was in one of the first houses that came alive. He was the first pony it seized.” Luna knelt down so she was at Diamond Tiara's level. “What is it about that house that frightens you?”

She couldn’t sleep, so she lay awake and listened to the shouting.

It was hours after her bedtime, hours since she should have fallen asleep. The sound rose up through the floor, muffled but sharp, rising and falling. It had been going on for a long time, keeping her at the edge of sleep, unable to cross over.

She dropped out of her bed and down to the floor, careful not to make a sound, opened the door, and crept through the shadows to the top of the stairs and lingered there while her parents yelled bitter words back and forth.

In the end she heard the front door open, and slam shut.

She was still at the top of the stairs when she realized the hoofsteps were stomping up towards her, and her not being able to run back quickly and quietly enough to reach her room in time.

She was still outside her door when her mother reached the top, and their eyes met, and she knew.

“Go to sleep, Diamond Tiara,” her mother had said, but what Diamond Tiara heard was something quite different.

'There is nothing more important than maintaining your standing in society, Diamond Tiara. You know better than to say anything that would risk that, don't you?'

She answered both questions when she said “yes, mother.”

“That's the house my dad goes to, when he's not home or at work,” Diamond Tiara said quietly, her voice hollow. “That's the house that's going to ruin my family.”

Luna looked gravely at Diamond Tiara, even her mane growing darker and heavier in its movements. “Does your father know that you know?”

Diamond Tiara shook her head.

Luna nodded silently, and waited.

“Why would he do that?” Diamond Tiara asked softly, her voice trembling. She gulped. “If anypony finds out… If they… We’ll be…”

The facade, shattered. Social sanctions. Loss of prestige and privilege. Outcast. Mentioned in hushed tones at parties they could no longer attend, would never be invited to.

Trifling things that fell away, one by one, to reveal a frightened little filly crouching behind.

“Doesn't he love me?” Diamond Tiara asked weakly. “Doesn't my daddy love me anymore?”

“Oh child… of course he loves you,” Luna softly replied. “You must never doubt that.”

“Then why?” Diamond Tiara demanded. “Why does he go away? Why doesn't he stay with us?”

“Shh.” Luna was suddenly next to her, a wing draped across the filly’s back, a warm and soft presence ready to lend comfort. “Listen to me, Diamond Tiara… I have looked inside your parents' dreams. The minds of grownups are messy and foolish things, collections of contradictory ideas forced together over a lifetime of imperfect experience. There is no malice in them but what they were taught to carry by their own elders, and none for you. They want only what they believe is best for you.”

Diamond Tiara sat silently in her embrace, not pulling away, not saying anything.

“Your mother is driven by a fear that she will lose everything she has, if anything be less than perfect – and what she loses, you will lose as well. Your father… your father struggles with his own problems, and he finds comfort in another home because he believes that if he stayed he would shatter, and cut you on the shards. He feels so guilty… and so he tries to buy your love with bits, because he thinks bits are all he has to offer. They love you very much… But over time they have blinded themselves to their daughter's fears.”

Luna laid a gentle hoof on Diamond Tiara's withers.

“They did not see that you had placed the burden of their relationship on your shoulders,” Luna said. “That is a far greater weight than any child should bear.”

There was a lump in her throat, aching. Tears began trickling down her cheeks as her composure finally cracked. She sank in her chair, her shoulders sagging, sniffing and sobbing. “Here.” Luna passed her another hankie. She blew her nose loudly while Luna waited beside her.

“I,” she began, and choked. “I heard them fighting for – for years. A-about the business, about mom's plans, about me… And it scared me. So I tried to make them stop. I wore the stupid dress. I went on the stupid diet. I put on all the happy faces and made them stop fighting… but they'd always start again. There was always something new.”

“It was never your responsibility,” Luna said to her urgently. “It was their job to take care of you. Not the other way around.”

“I tried so hard to keep them happy,” Diamond Tiara whispered. “I did everything they wanted. I put on all the masks and wore the stupid itchy dresses, I went to the parties and looked for flaws and weaknesses in everypony I met, to learn how to use them and make them do what I wanted, just as they said. I've been trying to make them happy for years. But it never lasts! Nothing works and I'm running out of ideas!” She slammed her hoof on the table. “I know how to make ponies do what I want,” she growled. “I learned that from my mom. I learned a long time ago how to use ponies to get my way. So once I realized they weren’t going to stop arguing… I decided I had to keep them together by other means. I took everything they’d taught me, and I used it on them.”

“You used what you had learned from Macavallo to meddle in your parents' marriage,” Luna said, feeling the truth of it in her mouth as she spoke. She shook her head in sadness. “Oh, Diamond Tiara…”

Diamond Tiara hmph-ed and scowled at the table. “I tried to think of what I could do to stop them from breaking up. And I thought, there's always more than one side to the equation. Maybe if I can't hold them together, I can take away what's pulling them apart instead. And I thought of her...” Diamond Tiara's head tipped downward, her face obscured in shadow. “Maybe if she went away, they'd finally be happy.”

“...You would hurt this other pony?” Luna asked softly, her eyes wide with shock and worry. “This is a terrible road, Diamond Tiara. No good can come of following it.”

“...I just want my family to be happy,” Diamond Tiara replied. “But no matter what I do there's her… Some stupid mare who thinks she can just waltz into my life and destroy everything. She's a threat, and…” She was whispering, her eyes clenched shut. “Identify the obstacles to your goal, and get rid of them. That's the rule. I know where she works. I know what she does. She doesn't care about protecting herself at all, and if she hurts me any more…” Her breath was ragged and unsteady. “I could destroy her. It would be easy. If she hurts me any more… I can't let her take my daddy away from me. I'd stop her.”

“You don't want to do this,” Luna told her breathlessly. “Not after coming so far. Do not let fear pull you back down into your old evils.”

“She's a homewrecker!” Diamond Tiara snapped. “She has no right to come into my house and take my family away! SHE CAN'T HAVE MY DADDY! I WON'T LET HER!”

“This would destroy you, Diamond Tiara!” Luna cried, her own voice cracking. “This will not save your parents' happiness, it will destroy them! It will destroy you, and all your friends! It will not earn you your father's love, child, it would only hurt more ponies!”

Diamond Tiara gritted her teeth and looked up at the princess. “How can I keep them together?”

Luna hesitated. “Diamond Tiara...”

“Tell me!” she demanded. “You want to help me? You don’t want me to hurt her? Then tell me how I can fix it!”

Luna pulled back, shaking her head. “Diamond Tiara, please understand… ponies are not things that you can 'fix'. Your parents' marriage is not for you to maintain. You cannot solve their problems, and you must not think that you should. That way lies madness!”

“That's not helpful at all,” Diamond Tiara spat. “Are you just here to tell me that there's nothing to do? You're useless!”

“I want to help you,” Luna said. “But this cannot be helped, Diamond Tiara. You cannot hold a failing marriage together by force!”

There was silence.

“It's true, isn't it,” Diamond Tiara said. “They're going to leave each other, aren't they?”

Luna dipped her head in what might have been a nod. “Your parents sleep without rest this night,” she began. “Both of them fear what tomorrow will bring… In the morning your father will file the divorce papers.

The empty silence of the hall felt heavy on Diamond Tiara as she listened to the princess, a cold creeping into her bones.

“Everything you fear will come true. Your family will tear apart, and you will be in the middle of a vicious struggle between your mother and father as they fight to divide their property, and to have you. The gossip-mongers will have a field day, and the invitations to garden parties will be sparse. Your father's business will suffer, and your mother will find that doors which were once open are now shut. It will all happen as you feared.”

The silence was complete, for a very long time, as neither pony wanted to face the other.

“It's not fair,” Diamond Tiara whispered, glaring down at the table. “I did everything they wanted me to. For years. I did everything to make them happy! Everypony else hated me because of them. So long as I was telling them about all the stuff I did they wouldn't argue! And now that I'm finally good and I have friends and ponies like me they're going to leave me?!”

“Child...”

“No! I want my mommy and daddy to be happy! I want us to stay together! I want them to love each other and be happy!” Diamond Tiara didn't care that she felt the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “I did everything they wanted and everything just fell apart! IT'S NOT FAIR!”

“Calm yourself, child,” Luna said. “I know how you feel, but some things cannot be helped. What matters is how you choose to—”

“But you can fix it!” Diamond Tiara interrupted, leaning forward across the table with pleading eyes. “You can change their minds! You can talk to them, or you can get Princess Cadance to make them love each other again!”

“Diamond Tiara, stop,” Luna said firmly. “You cannot get away from this, you can't bargain your way out of it. What will be, will be, and none of us can change that.”

“You can!” Diamond Tiara shouted. “You can do anything you want – you can go inside ponies' minds and find out everything you need to know. You can probably just make them think what you want. You wanted to help me? I promise I'll be the best pony ever, for the rest of my life! I don't even care about the other stuff. Just give me this!”

“I can't do that, Diamond Tiara!” Luna yelled in response, edging back. “I cannot warp ponies to suit me, and even if I could I wouldn't. Don't you see? This kind of thinking is what makes monsters of us! This is what I wanted to stop!”

“Well you tried to change me!” Diamond Tiara accused, slamming the table with her hoof, setting everything on it to clatter. “You've been sitting there all this time trying to find my weak spots! Don't pretend you haven't – you just wanted me to listen and obey like a good little pony. Well, you can't! You can't just come up with the right words and make me somepony else…!” Her face was straining with anger, tears trickling down her cheeks.

Luna pulled away awkwardly, tensely, her teeth nervously clenched as she watched the filly with wide and troubled eyes. She drew a few rapid breaths to calm herself. “Diamond Tiara – Listen to me. I understand how you feel—”

“No you don't!” Diamond Tiara screamed. “You don't understand me at all! If you did you wouldn't be telling me to just get over it because there's nothing to be done! You wouldn't be telling me that you can't fix ponies with words when that's exactly what you're trying to do to me!” She sobbed, her face locked in a tear-stained snarl. “You—you—I have had enough of you!”

She took the teapot and threw it to the floor, where it smashed with a thunderclap and stained the floor. “I hate you! You can't do anything! Everything you've told me was useless! None of it means anything and I hate it!”

Luna gasped and sped around the table towards the filly as she yelled out, “Diamond Tiara, stop!”

As Luna turned the table the filly took a silver platter full of crumpets and threw it at her head, and as it made contact with her horn there was a flash of blue and everything went dark.

…

“Always smile, but smile wisely. Control your emotions. Never let anyone throw you off balance. If they do, never let them know. As a leader, you must seem strong and in control at all times, even if you are not.”

“Pay attention, Luna!” her mother snapped. “You will need to know the rules of trade negotiation when you speak with the yaks, or they will tear your head off and sell it back to you.”

Luna shuffled in her chair and sat up straight, her head foggy as she tried to keep the stream of numbers and factors straight in her thoughts. Her mother, vast and unapproachable, moved behind the filly.

“Smile as if you know more than them, and when they try to outwit you, smile like a mother proud that her foal has learned a new trick. Your sister has mastered this: you should try to learn from her.”

Luna read the proclamation, her father the king's watchful eyes behind her in the shadows as she presided over her first Night Court at the age of fourteen, wearing regalia that felt too large for her still-slight body, keenly aware that everypony attending felt his authority in her words rather than her own.

She yawned, exhausted, as her sister brought forth the sun, its rays weighing the younger sister down. Celestia's chipper face glowed as Equestria came to life beneath them.

She slumped away, nursing a secret darkness inside her, to retire until ponies stopped thinking about either of them once again.

…

The great diplomat looked up at her through the bars of his prison, his legs manacled even in his dreams, shivering from the cold he only thought he felt. She watched from afar, not knowing if there was anything to do, unable to tear her eyes away. In the distance was the creaking of the rack, and the screams.

“Your highness. Forgive me if I do not bow.”

The prison was years in the past. But he carried it with him. As he wrote down all that he had learned, not knowing what would come of it, the memory was always with him.

“I have looked into the deepest and most secret thoughts of all creatures that can dream,” Luna said, “and I do not understand this.”

“So have I,” said the diplomat with his thousand-yard stare. “And I don't understand it either. I only know that it is.”

“I don't know why you come back here,” she said. “You could leave this all behind. You would be welcomed in any court. Yet you stay here.”

“I don't know,” he said truthfully. “I can't stop being myself.”

…

“I can take care of everything, sister,” Luna said as she took a bite of her pastry, Celestia over-cautiously as always behind her. “I have done this many times since I returned,” words a fog filling a vast valley of time.

“Yes,” Celestia said. “I wonder at that. I cannot follow you where you go. I worry that you might be taking on more than you can handle. I don't want to lose sight of you again, Luna.”

“You won't.”

“Promise?”

“This is my realm. I am in control.”

…

Help others. That is how you will pay off your debt. Do not bother others with your own problems: keep them hidden, and strive instead to help others resolve their fears. Do that enough, and your own fears will fade away.

Once there was a night that would not end.

Once there was a homecoming full of pain and regret.

There was a dream that came each night to remind her of herself.

There was a child that needed help, warded behind walls of words.

Diamond Tiara fell back into her chair.

There was silence. Across the table Princess Luna sat staring at ghosts, shivering, her dark blue coat suddenly a shade paler. “I did not mean for you to see that,” she said, her voice little more than a breath.

Diamond Tiara’s tried to speak, but found her mouth was too dry. “Was that…?”

Luna nodded stiffly, just once. “I… Hold a moment, give me leave… No, I mean…” She broke off, and the two of them sat there and waited.

At long last Diamond Tiara broke the silence. “Is that it?” She asked softly. “Is that what it's like to be a Princess? You want to help ponies, but you’re as full of doubt and fear as anypony else.”

“That is what it is like to be a grownup,” Luna said. “I have a duty to uphold… Ever since my return I have striven to put my past behind me, and not let it interfere with my obligations as a Princess of Equestria. It is my role to be the guardian of dreams, a protector of children, to preserve the last bastion of the self. When a foal knows of no place to turn, there is me.”

“And you wanted to make up for everything you did,” Diamond Tiara said.

Luna seemed to shrink, a cosmic being turning into a mortal pony before her eyes.“I… wanted to help ponies handle things… better than I did.”

Diamond Tiara stared at the princess as she tried to wrap her head around the statement. “I don’t get it,” she said softly. “Even with all your princess powers, you’re just another confused pony. Like me. I thought you didn't take me seriously. But you were really trying your best, weren’t you?”

“I wanted to still the pain in your heart,” Luna whispered. “I wanted to find out what drives your anger, and show you a better way. I thought it would be simple, heavens forgive me. I did it many times, for many foals before you. But all the while the Tantabus was gnawing on my mind, and I could not even help myself. Perhaps I could not help anypony. I thought I had learned. It seems now that I was wrong.”

“You really can’t help me, can you,” Diamond Tiara said, feeling her eyes tearing up again. Her lip trembled. “So it’s really going to happen. My family… We’re not gonna be together anymore.”

She slumped forward across the table. She heard Luna's hoofsteps step around it, and felt soft wings cradle her.

Then her face was buried in the Princess' soft coat, growing wet with her tears, Luna’s arms holding her tight.

Diamond Tiara's voice was cracked, her words wet and uncertain. “I don't want to lose them...”

“I know,” Luna whispered, stroking the filly's mane. “I know.”

“It's not fair...”

“No. It's not. There is no fairness. There are no perfect answers. There are no promises. There are only ponies. There is only...” Luna sighed, and sat down on the floor. “I don't know, Diamond Tiara. I don't have all the answers, any more than your parents do.”

Diamond Tiara’s voice was only a sad whisper. “Then what are you good for?”

“Sometimes I ask that myself,” Luna said. “So does my sister. So do Cadance, and Twilight. There are so many things that can go wrong, so many ways for ponies to hurt each other… intentionally, and otherwise.” She sighed heavily, her hoof pressed against the filly’s mane. “I am sorry for all the ways I have failed you tonight. I thought I knew what you needed – to find another perspective. That all your problems would be swept away, if you only found the right point of view. I had forgotten that sometimes… a pony needs to hear that their feelings matter. That they are not getting upset over nothing, that the challenge is not only in their heads.” The Princess closed her eyes and whispered to herself. “I understand now, sister… You tried to warn me, and I did not heed you.”

Diamond Tiara listened, saying nothing. Luna's mane was growing darker, and the glittering lights of stars grew brighter within it.

“I don't know how to heal your pain, Diamond Tiara. I'm sorry.”

Luna glanced down at the filly's face, afraid of what condemnation she would find there.

Diamond Tiara wept, tears running down her face, but her mouth was curled in a small smile.

“Thank you,” the filly said in a cracked voice. “You listened. Finally, somepony listened.”

– – –

The table was filled with three dozen different desserts from all over the world. There was tea cake, crumb cake, krumkake, Saddle Arabian Delights, baklava, and pain de chocolat. There were eight different flavors of ice cream, and five flavors of pudding.

Diamond Tiara had taken a bowl of strawberry pudding swimming in caramel sauce, and another glass of grape juice, and enjoyed them immensely. Across the table Luna paced herself with a crème brulee and an Equestriano.

For a long time the only sound was the tinkling of silverware, and little moans of appreciation as the filly ate something delicious. Neither of them needed to speak.

Once the bowl was empty Diamond Tiara pushed it aside with a humble “thank you”, to which Luna gave a delighted matronly smile.

Diamond Tiara poured another cup of tea, dropped a sugarcube in it and stirred, deep in thought.

“All those things you said were gonna happen, once my parents break up…”

She looked at the Princess, leaving the question hanging invisible in the air.

Luna lowered her own cup, and considered for a moment, the filly watching her anxiously.

“I think,” Luna said, “that you will have to wait and see how much of the pain you imagine will actually come. I could tell you it won't be so, but you wouldn't believe me. I could lie to you, and swear it upright, just to try to make you feel better, just push the right buttons to make things feel all right for a time…” She shook her head. “But you and I both know it wouldn't last – that the world will break through, no matter how tall and how thick you build the walls in your mind. You would not thank me for that. Because after all we have said and done, we both want to face the truth, don't we? We have known enough of lies that even the sweetest of them taste bitter.”

Diamond Tiara nodded. “Yeah. I think we have.”

Luna leaned forward and looked the filly in the eyes. “Will you promise me something?”

Diamond Tiara blinked. “What?”

“Promise me that you won't blame yourself for your parents,” Luna said. “They made their own choices, and their feelings are their own. Not yours. Do you understand that? Because the thought can wheedle its way into your mind in a thousand ways, and it is never right.”

Diamond Tiara hesitated, then nodded.

“But more,” Luna continued, leaning down before the filly. “Promise me that when the thought comes, or any thought like it… if you feel surrender and despair closing in… do not stay silent. Speak to those who are close to you. You have friends, and no pony is unbreakable. Here is what Macavallo did not believe, what I did not believe: that when you are at your weakest, you can trust in your friends. Do you understand me?”

Diamond Tiara sniffed softly. “I don't know. I’ll try.”

Luna smiled softly. “Your schoolmates have many things to say about you, you know.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Diamond Tiara said, turning away.

“Indeed. But not all of it was bad. The school age… there is so much for a young foal to worry about. So many uncertainties, so many possible mistakes.” She leaned back in her chair. “It's true that your classmates often disliked you. But they also admired you. They thought that you alone in that classroom had it all figured out, and knew what it was all about. You were always so confident, and they were drawn to that.”

“Yeah, well… that was my mother. She taught me to do that. The truth is I'm not strong at all.”

Luna took hold of Diamond Tiara's chin and gently nudged it so the filly was no longer looking down at the floor. “I do not believe that is true.”

Diamond Tiara felt her stomach flutter as she realized she didn’t doubt it. Her eyes began to prick again as the tears came in. “Thank you.” She drew a long, slow breath. “…Is this a dream?”

Luna seemed to ponder the question for a second. “What do you think?”

“I think it is,” Diamond Tiara said. “How did I even get here? Why am I alone in Canterlot?”

“I have tried to catch up on modern life, but even I do not comprehend all the different trends in parenting techniques these days,” Luna said, and the filly chuckled.

Luna put her now-empty cup to one side. “Well, whichever it is, I only sent the invitation. I am glad you came.”

“I'm glad too,” Diamond Tiara said. “I think. I'm pretty sure. But it’s hard to be sure about anything right now.”

Luna nodded slowly. “What about this… Would you like to come back, sometimes, for more tea and biscuits, and talk to me about how you are doing?”

Diamond Tiara looked up at her. “You want me to come back? Why, so I can be rude to you some more?”

“No real reason,” Luna said. “I just thought we might have a nice time together. And besides…” She chuckled. “Us reformed fillies need to stick together, don’t you think?”

Diamond Tiara nodded, her stomach fluttering with unfamiliar emotions. She looked up at the princess with tears in her eyes. “Can… can I stay here for a bit longer? I'm… not sure I'm ready to go back yet.”

Luna smiled. “Of course. You can stay as long as you need to.”

“Thanks.”

The two ponies looked at each other, then leaned in for a hug.

Luna stroked the filly's brow. “Diamond Tiara? I need to go take care of a little thing… I'll be back in just a minute, do you mind?”

Diamond Tiara nodded and Luna stepped out the door.

Celestia dreamed of a picnic on a beautiful summer day she had once shared with her niece, when she was just a filly. Celestia lay contentedly and watched the pink alicorn chase after a butterfly.

Luna trotted up alongside her and wrapped her sister's neck in her arms, pulled her close and hugged her tightly.

“Luna?” Celestia asked, and noticed her sister's tears pressing against her fur. “Are you alright?”

“I'm fine,” Luna said. “I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”

“Young miss Rich got to you, didn't she?” Celestia asked softly. “I thought she might.”

“Oh shush. Just let me have this.”

Celestia chuckled, and wrapped her wings around her little sister and held her close.

“I love you too.”

Author's Note

Story notes here!

200 Follower Celebration Followup here!