Draco's Journey

“I’ll be back once I’m done with court, Lethid. Try to stay out of trouble,” Mom says to me before leaning down and kissing me on the forehead.

My snout scrunching up as her royal multicolored mane brushes against it. I can still smell her strawberry scented shampoo in it, and although I like the smell, having a mane tickle my snout causes me to sneeze. Mom stands up in her bright and shiny red dress along with a gold necklace around her neck and gold horseshoes on her hooves. With her large pink wings framing her in the morning light she looks down as me waiting for a response.

“Don’t worry Mom, I will!” I tell her while jumping up and down on the orange rug in my room. She giggles before turning and walking out the large wooden doors to my room. I wave at the open doorway until I can’t hear her hoofsteps echoing in the halls before I stop jumping and run over to my dresser. My smile evolves into a grin as I open the middle drawer in the dresser and dig under the multiple shirts in it. A single sheet of paper lies at the very bottom and after looking over my shoulder to see if I am alone I quickly pull it out before running over to the brown desk against the right wall of my room. Climbing on the wooden chair I double check to make sure I am alone before turning my squinting eyes back to the seemingly blank paper. Focusing for a moment I inhale until I feel that peculiar feeling in the pit of my stomach before slowly exhaling.

A sliver of green fire trickles out of my mouth, gently heating up the air surrounding it. Words start appearing on the paper as I sway the tiny flame back and forth above it. I stop once I see the edges of the paper starting to curl in on themselves due to the heat, and I can’t stop the grin on my face once I see the fruits of my labor.

Operation Birthday

Give Mom the best Birthday EVER!

1. Make sure Mom is distracted.

2. Bake a cake with Chef Hazelnut.

3.Get some of the servants to help decorate Mom’s room.

4. Have the guards find that one clown Mom always says is in Court.

5. Make sure her friends are here.

6. Jump out and yell “Surprise!” when Mom comes in.

“Alright, so the first thing is done,” I say as I put a check by the first entry on my list. “Now I just need to go make a cake!”

“And a fine cake it’ll be,” A Feminine voice says from behind me.

I quickly slam my arms over the list before looking over my shoulder, only to pause and smile when I see who it is. “White Glove!”

The white unicorn mare with a red mane is wearing her usual black and white outfit. She looks at me with her bright green eyes with a smile on her face before opening her muzzle. “Stonewall’s making sure that the long-winded nobles are going to take up most of Princess Cadence’s day. We’ll have all the time we need to finish preparations,” The head maid says in a hushed tone.

“Great! Let’s get to the kitchen then.” I jump down from my chair and race towards the door, ducking around White Glove and taking off down the hall.

“No running in the halls, young drake!” I wince as White Glove’s voice carries down the hall and instinctively slow my pace to a brisk walk. The head maid quickly catches up and give me what I like to call, “The Eye of Shame.” It’s like the look Mom gives me when I break something really expensive except, like, one hundred times more effective. It’s the kind of look that could bring armies to their knees, begging for forgiveness, and leave gods crying in shame of their actions. Needless to say, I find the floor extremely interesting right now.

“Sorry, Mrs. White Glove.... I wanna get started, though,” I whined, not slowing my new pace. “I want this to be Mom’s best birthday ever!” I finish, throwing my claws in the air to emphasize how much this needs to be perfect. Looking up in defiance, my determined look immediately returns to the marble hallway once I realize she hasn’t stopped looking at me with “The Eye of Shame.”

We walk together in silence for a while before the mare beside me sighs, “I know what it’s like to be excited for something Lethid, but sometimes you need to slow down. We’re not on a time limit, and trying to rush things will only make problems, you want this party to be perfect don’t you?” I slowly look up at White Glove nodding my head when I see that she is no longer using “The Eye of Shame.”

She gives me a small smile and takes my claw in her hand before speeding up slightly, “Let’s go then, that cake isn’t going to make itself after all.”

I smile and speed up with her, skipping some as we go down the halls. It takes us far too long to reach the kitchens, but we finally make it to see Chef Hazelnut setting a tray of cookies down on a counter.

A row of shelves line the back wall of the kitchen with ingredients ranging from blueberries all the way to yeast with several crates stacked in the corners probably filled with other goods. On a counter in the middle of the kitchen were several bowls and what looked to be lots of other stuff in bags and boxes and jars. There is a large black stone box pushed up against the left wall that Hazelnut likes to call a oven.

“Right on time. Hello Lethid, White Glove,” Hazelnut says in a refined voice as he turns to us. The brown earth pony is wearing a red apron with flour smeared on it, and a pair of maroon pants, along with a large white hat on his head that is leaning to one side. “I have everything ready for us to make the cake.”

I smile at Hazelnut and hop in place some. He was a bit older than most of the ponies at the castle, but he could still catch me when I snuck into the kitchen to get a cookie. “It’s gonna be her favorite kind, right?”

“The strawberries are in the icebox to stay cool, but yes.”

“Then let’s get started.” White Glove states as she washes her hands in the bowl of water at the edge of the counter and sliding it over to me.

I reach for the edge of the bowl that’s just barely beyond my grasp, trying my hardest to grab it so I could pull it from the towering counter. “I got it, don’t worry.” Straining my legs and feeling my clawed feet slightly dig into the floor between the tiles, I reached for the bowl again and grabbed the edge.... Only to have some of the water spill onto the floor and make me slip and land on my scaley butt, the rest of the water and the bowl following right behind to land on my head. “.... I don’t got it,” I say, my voice echoing a little from the bowl.

I hear White Glove laugh as a soft hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me to my feet once again. “Here, I’ll help you with washing your claws.” A moist cloth falls over my arms as the head maid goes to work on my scaled claws.

My face heats up in embarrassment and I would’ve looked away had it not been for the bowl still on my head. “Thank you, White glove.”

The bowl is lifted off of my head and placed back on the counter as Hazelnut chuckles and says, “Well, looks like we’ll need a step ladder for you if you’re going to be helping.” I watch him as he heads to the pantry and pulls out a foldable, wooden ladder with only two steps on it. “Here we are. I use this to reach stuff on the shelves I can’t reach.”

With the height issue solved I mutter a quick thanks to Hazelnut and we get started. To start off we butter up the pan we’re using to make the cake making sure that the bottom and sides are nice and slippery. Next we bring out a large bowl and measure out three cups of flour, one tablespoon of baking powder, and half a tablespoon of salt and mix the ingredients very well in the bowl with a whisk. I hand the bowl off to Hazelnut once we add two sticks of butter since it was getting extremely hard to mix. I don’t know how, but he was mixing the ingredients in the bowl like the butter wasn’t even there, the whisk swirling the ingredients around like a force of nature. We added in the eggs next, it always feels special when I crack them open like Hazelnut showed me, it makes me feel like a professional cook. We beat the eggs in the bowl along with the other ingredients and add in some vanilla extract to add the flavor. Finally we measure out half a cup of water and add it to the batter, mixing it until Hazelnut said to stop. Pouring the sticky substance into the buttered pan we stick it in the oven, and after lighting the bottom of the metal box with a small fire, we close it.

The cake takes forever to cook, every time I think enough time passes for it to be done Hazelnut whacks my outstretched claw with a wooden spoon and says, “It’s not ready yet,” he does this about seven times before he suddenly gets up and opens the oven door with a pair of gloves. Bringing out our masterpiece a moment later in all of its fluffy glory and placing it on the counter.

“Woooow.... Can we put the icing on it now?” I ask, my eyes wide as I stare at the cake.

“It has to cool for a little before we can put the icing on it,” White Glove said as she stirred the icing. It was something Hazelnut called “buttermilk frosting” that they had put butter, powder sugar, and milk in.

“While we’re waiting for it to cool down a little, why don’t you start on your other jobs for this very special day?” Hazelnut suggests gesturing to the door, “Don’t worry, I won’t put the finishing touches on it without you.”

I smile at the chef and say, “Okay! Gotta get some servants to help put up the decorations! I’ll be back after they’re done.” I hop down from where I sat on the counter and rush towards the door, making sure to not actually run.

“No, that goes from the top of the bed to the mirror,” I said, pointing to the two places. “It has to be there, or it won’t be spread out all the way.” I was telling some maids who worked at the castle where the decorations went. The two pegasus mares shared a look before rolling their eyes and righting the banner where it is supposed to go. Once I’m sure that they’ve got it under control I turn back to the red and yellow bundles in my claws. The mostly pink room has been transformed with red and yellow streamers bridging the air between almost every piece of furniture, from the vanity pushed up against the left wall to the large fluffy bed against the right wall.

I hopped in place a little before tossing one of the bundles up, making sure to hold onto the unwrapped end to make it unroll as it flew through the air to accidentally wrap around the muzzle of one of the maids. I smiled sheepishly as she looked at me and said, “Sorry, I was aiming for the top of the bed.” I pointed at the bedpost near the headboard of the bed, quite a distance from the maid.

“I’ll tell you what Lethid,” I hear White Glove speak up from behind me before a pair of pale white hands take the streamers out of my claws. “You tell us where everything needs to go, and we’ll put the finishing touches on the room. Does that sound reasonable?”

I look up and smile at White Glove, nodding. “Okay! This way I don’t have to keep showing off my great throwing skills.” I rush over to the bed and hop up onto it, bouncing a few times before settling on the bed. “The red one goes across the room perpendu- penperdim- um....” I glance at White Glove for a bit of help.

“Perpendicular?” She offers while stringing party streamers between the bed posts.

“Yeah, that! Perpen-dicu-lar to the last yellow one. The rest of the streamers get hung on everything else.”

“Everywhere else?” White Glove asks in an amused voice.

I nod with a smile. “Yeah, everywhere else!”

White Glove titters shaking her head as she ties off the last of the streamers in her hands.

“Well,” a voice starts as chef Hazelnut walks into the room balancing the cake in one hand a bowl of strawberries in the other. “You might not want to put the streamers everywhere else, after all, you have to leave some room for the party goers and let’s not forget the food.”

I turn to face Hazelnut, my stomach growling a little at the sight of the cake. “Well of course! Can’t have a party without a cake and guests. Now....” I look around, trying to figure out where it would be best to place the cake. “Umm....”

Hazelnut chuckled before setting the cake and strawberries on the vanity, “Having trouble with something?”

“Yeah, that’s where the punch bowl will be. I’m trying to figure out where the cake will go.”

“Well while you’re trying to figure it out, why don’t we put the finishing touches on the cake?”

“Okay.” I hop down from the bed and go over towards the vanity, thinking about how great this party was going to be.