In which I use all 5 character tags correctly for once
The fall weather season was in full swing. Many trees were now red or yellow or brown or combinations of the colors, nature seemingly bursting forth in its own fireworks in the middle of autumn. The ponies of Canterlot relished in showing off their own stylish fall weather accessories, scarves being the most popular item to wear this year.
Some scarves were hoof made with 5,000 threads of colored dye silk, the finest money could buy. Other scarves were factory made and had few designs on them, sometimes customized by the pony’s choice. Five of these custom scarves hanged down five ponies, with each having a symbol of recognized cutie marks to show who’s scarf was whose.
One was a white scarf and had a bright yellow sun.
One was a dark blue scarf and had a white moon with a couple of black splotches behind the moon.
One was a pink scarf with a blue, almost crystallized heart.
One was a purple scarf and had a bright pink star with little white stars scattered around the main star.
One was a light blue scarf with a shield.
The owners, however, were looking up, not focusing on their scarves like most of the Canterlot ponies. Instead, they focused on an entirely different object.
“WHICH PRINCESS HAS THE BEST FLANKS!?” The sign blared the message in bold white chalk letters on the red brick wall. On the wall below the message, there were four names. Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, Princess Cadence, and Princess Twilight.
Princess Luna and Princess Celestia were both tied with 14 tally marks between each other. Twilight trailed behind with 9 tally marks, and Cadence came up to only 4 marks.
Some messages were scrawled alongside some of the tallies. For Luna, messages like “Moon horse best horse!”, “Dark meat is better anyway.” and “I can make her night last forever” appeared below the tally marks. For Celestia, there were messages like “Praise the sun!” and “Her thighs makes my world go round!” underneath her marks. For Twilight, the only message was “She’s the most approachable, y’all are idiots for not going for the easy mare!” while Cadence also had one message saying “Shining’s a lucky guy, I bet the love princess is a freak in the sheets!”
Needless to say, all the ponies involved were very much confused and uncomfortable. None more so then the prince in the group.
The first to react was Shining Armor. He quickly trotted up to Cadence’s side, ready to confront the moment in a marriage when the wife sees that other ponies don’t think she’s beautiful as much as other ponies. The former captain pulled the love princess into a tight hug, telling her that she is the most beautiful mare in the world and she had nice flanks and that all the other stallions are just stupid and dumb not to realize it and-
“Oh honey, you don’t have to worry about me,” Cadence assured. “The wall is wrong anyway. I’m the lucky one for getting a handsome stud such as you. Little Flurry Heart is proof of that!”
They both nuzzled into each other for a brief moment before hearing a small squeak from the lavender princess next to them. Twilight stared at her tally’s message, slightly disappointed.
“Easy?” she half pondered, half whined at the one part of the message that irked her. Easy? Was this implying that she was a catch but also a pony that would just throw herself at some random stallion? Did being “easy” mean she wasn’t that hard to woo, and maybe because she was so “easy” that other stallions might have thought she wasn’t worth their time?
“Oh, Twilight, don’t be so down,” Cadence comforted Twilight. “Just because you’re related to Shining doesn’t mean you’re easy to flirt with.”
“What?”
“But…” a question danced in the purple alicorn’s head, but she couldn’t put it into words.
“Look at it this way, Twilight. You have a couple stallions out there that know you and do like you! If only for your body, yes, but I’d consider that a compliment!”
Twilight stared at Cadence, unsure of what to say at all, even forgetting the question that was on her mind. Seeing as there really was nothing to take away from the graffiti other than that some stallions were apparently interested in her, she decided to accept it. She took a glance at the main princesses of day and night.
Both were not looking at the wall but instead at each other, with hardened glares.
“Praise the sun, hmm? Rather easy to praise such a big, fat being, wouldn’t you say dearest sister?”
“I don’t know, sister, I suppose somepony like you would say it is easy to make a stallion’s night last forever.”
“At least their nights would be filled with joy and bliss with a figure such as mine.”
“And a pony would certainly love more of my figure to snuggle with in bed as well.”
Both princesses glared at each other until a small smirk adorned the lunar princess’s muzzle. With each passing second, the smirk grew wider, and Luna gave way to laughter, her sister also laughing with her as well.
“’More to snuggle with’? Was that the best you could say?” Luna asked between chuckles.
“Oh, hush!” Celestia playfully chided between her laughs. “You and I have both justified with worse reasons.”
Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that there wasn’t any actual animosity between the two sisters. She looked back at Cadence, who was inspecting the chalk that Twilight supposed had been the utensil used to write the tallies. Shining stared behind Twilight at the diarchs with an unreadable expression, before making eye contact with his sister. He shrugged, showing off how confused he was at the level of rivalry the royal sisters had with each other.
“I’ll inform some guards to take down the graffiti. It shouldn’t be too hard to wash chalk off,” he said.
“Well, with that out of the way, let’s all head back to the castle before dark. This vacation has been fun, and I wanna see what the chefs can come up with tonight,” Cadence remarked. She dropped the chalk near the wall and walked back to the group before turning and started walking ahead of the princesses and prince escort towards the castle in the fading sunlight of Canterlot’s horizon. The princesses quickly followed, letting Twilight continue whatever conversation she was talking before the interruption.
Late in the night of Canterlot, Luna’s moon high in the sky, and the autumn air chilled down to see the breaths of ponies, Shining Armor trotted with a hood down the familiar streets of Canterlot. He turned and looked to finally find the wall he was looking for. With a guilty smile, he levitated the chalk at the wall with his own magic and added one tally mark to Princess Luna’s section of the wall.
He turned around however to the face of a very unamused Princess Cadence right behind him. He yelped and flinched back, not expecting his wife to follow him. He tried to speak, but the love princess’s hoof shut up his mouth and her magic took away the chalk from his telekinetic grasp.
With a happy smile of her own, she put a tally on Princess Twilight’s section of the wall, and set the chalk down at the base again. She turned around to see a completely flummoxed Shining, raising his hoof in question with his mouth open.
“What? She has some nice cheeks,” Cadence casually stated, before trotting with a happy gait back up the street towards the castle.
Shining Armor, brain melted, sat down in front of the graffiti wall. His two front legs crossed over each other, and his eyes looked in different directions. He stayed that way for a couple hours.
Author's Note
This took about, maybe, 5 hours to make in total?
And to think that this was one of several one shots I started but never finished.
And yeah, that's my handwriting (or, tablet pen handwriting, anyway) for the cover art. You may proceed to laugh at me.
Thanks to Goldenwing for some needed help! Check the guy out, he has some good ideas and is a WAY better author than me.
