Noblesse Oblige

Searching for the right word to describe my day in Ponyville, I find, presents me with something of a difficulty. Shall I use 'stultifying'? Too harsh. 'Unsatisfactory'? Too misleading. 'Surreal'? Too simplistic.

No. Instead, I shall characterize my stay as a thing of beauty and a joy till Tuesday, if I might rather aggressively misquote that insipid poet Jonquil. Every time I try to read one of his pieces, I'm left with nothing but an impression of words fitfully rhymed and spasmodically spattered across a page, so let's employ that image as a metaphor for my visit, shall we?

Discord escorted me with a flashing snap of his talons from the steps of Twilight's palace to a dirt path leading to a quaint and rodent-infested cottage tucked away in a bosky dell altogether too close to the fringe of the Everfree Forest for my citified tastes. "Is it safe?" I asked, the looming mass of brownish greenery inspiring more than a few shivers beneath my blazer.

"Tut, tut, young fellow." Discord polished his claws against the gray hide of his chest. "You're in the company of the most dangerous creature within several dozen square furlongs." He winked. "Or rather, you will be once I introduce you to Fluttershy!"

She actually turned out to be quite the charming young mare, a lip-smacking combination of the ethereal and the earthy. True, she stammered a bit when Discord invited the two of us in for an impromptu bout of tea, but once another of his oh-so-useful snaps summoned kettle and cups, scones and sandwiches, crumpets and crullers, treacle and tarts and all, she began displaying the sorts of amused and indulgent smiles that parents bestow upon their children on those rare occasions when said children are behaving in an extravagant but acceptable manner.

The three of us settled in for a nice bit of a nosh, but I couldn't help noticing that Fluttershy kept giving me sideways, wide-eyed glances. And not the good sort of sideways, wide-eyed glances, either. That my reputation preceded me went without saying, of course, but, well, this was a pony who'd befriended one of Equestria's greatest monsters and had played a major role in him becoming the tea-toting teetotaler now seated to my left. Surely I couldn't be more frightening to her than he was!

Discord had been prattling on about his plan to feed magically colored pellets to Fluttershy's chickens so that any pastries made with their eggs would naturally bear the sort of garish tones that the local baker apparently preferred when I caught yet another splinter of Fluttershy's worried gaze. She snapped her attention back to him almost immediately and said, "I don't think that's the sort of thing the chickens would be interested in, Discord, but I can ask them if you'd like."

"Speaking of asking," I said, always light on my hooves with a segue, "might I ask what I can do to make you feel more comfortable in my presence, Fluttershy?"

She winced almost as if I'd threatened to strike her, but it was Discord who replied. "Oh, our Fluttershy can be so sensitive when meeting strangers. Especially strangers who terribly insulted the pony who's perhaps her best non-draconequus friend in the whole wide world." His eyes half-closed, he sipped his cup.

I did not sip my cup. Instead, I stared at him and managed to stammer, "I'm sorry?"

He waved a half-eaten scone. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, young fellow."

Still entirely in the dark, I glanced from him to Fluttershy, her blush making her face almost the same color as the strands of hair covering half of it. "Rarity," she murmured, her gaze on the table in front of her. "You hurt her feelings very badly at the first Grand Galloping Gala we all attended. She hasn't talked about it in a while, so it might be that she's gotten over it. But still, I...I'm not sure I should really be having tea with you after the way you treated her." Gently and quietly, she set her cup down on its saucer.

As perhaps you can imagine, that made for a bit of silence. I'll be the first to admit that, having been tasked with creating at least two deplorable incidents a week for the past several years, I occasionally find the individual circumstances of those incidents running together a bit in my mind. But since it was my behavior toward Rarity at that year's Gala that had led directly to my involvement in pairing up Princess Luna with Captain Greaves, I maintained a very clear memory of that occurrence. And to find myself reminded of that very same incident here on the threshold of my involvement in finding a partner for Princess Twilight seemed somehow oracular.

Setting my own cup down, I nodded. "You are both absolutely correct. So I shall hereby ask your advice." I looked from Fluttershy's wide-eyed confusion to Discord's wide-eyed glee. "As I'm today sworn to act in as gentlecoltish a fashion as possible, what must I do to make things right with Miss Rarity?"

"Ritual abasement," Discord said without a second's hesitation. "Dressed in sackcloth and ashes while crawling upon your belly like the loathsome worm you are, you must wail your sorrow along the streets of Ponyville till you reach her front doorstep, imploring her forgiveness while flagellating yourself mercilessly." Another of his snaps conjured a cat-o-nine-tails to float in front of me. "In as gentlecoltish a fashion as possible, of course."

"Umm," Fluttershy said from behind her forehooves; she seemed to be attempting to cover her mouth, her eyes, and her nose simultaneously.

A similar reaction gripped my own limbs, but thinking quickly, I instead raised a hoof and an objection. "But recall, old fellow, that a gentlecolt always considers how his actions might affect those around him." Focusing back on Fluttershy, I asked, "Would such behavior on my part perhaps embarrass Miss Rarity? Especially if she were, let's say, with a customer at the time?"

"Yes." Fluttershy hesitated even less than Discord, and while the expression she turned upon him may have been meant to be a glare, it seemed much more a pout than anything else. "That's certainly the sort of thing that would make Rarity very uncomfortable."

"Of course." Discord tapped his snout. "Rarity prefers to conduct her ritual debasements behind closed doors." The grin he gave me absolutely dripped with implication. "Much like certain other white-hided ponies we could mention."

My first impulse—leaping up to drive a hoof into his grotesque face—I immediately squelched, clucking my tongue instead. "Really, sir. Does that strike you as the sort of thing a gentlecolt would say?"

His eyes narrowed. "You've obviously not known many gentlecolts." Then he brightened, and I mean that quite literally: a swarm of lightning bugs swept in the open window and swirled about his antlers. "How about this, then? The three of us will wend our gentle way to Rarity's boutique, and there, we shall present young Stewstud to her in all his penitent glory. She might, of course, boringly accepts his apology, but she could just as well create some scene of tooth-gnashing extravagance, couldn't she?" The lightning bugs formed into a heart shape, and Discord breathed a sigh. "She does that so very, very well..."

And the look that Fluttershy gave him then, well, 'glare' wasn't a glaring enough word for it. Everything about her sharpened and focused upon Discord like a beam of sunlight through a magnifying lens. The lightning bugs made a high-pitched squeaking noise and fled, the window's curtains whooshing outward in their wake. "Discord," was all she said, but honestly, had she said anything more, I likely would've followed the bugs.

Discord barely blanched. "I'm only speaking the truth, my dear. For you can't deny that Rarity knows how to properly react when the circumstances call for a proper reaction." He waved a claw or two at me as if to deflect her attention. "And surely you agree that this situation calls for the most proper reaction anypony's ever given."

Fortunately, Fluttershy reduced the intensity a bit before she swiveled her neck to bring her gaze to bear upon me. "Do you honestly mean to apologize, Prince Blueblood?"

At that point, I would've sworn any vow she asked of me simply in the hope that she would direct herself elsewhere. And here I'd thought Discord had been joking when he'd referred to her as the most dangerous creature within earshot. "Yes!" I more babbled than said. "I've made a good many questionable choices during the course of my life and have acted in ways both pickable and despicable, often to the detriment of those around me. If I can make amends in some small way to Miss Rarity by issuing her a formal apology—"

"Excellent!" Discord crowed, slamming a paw across my snout to stem the swelling tide of my blather, and Fluttershy's sudden smile transformed her instantly back from a glowering juggernaut into the pleasingly put-together young mare I'd been having tea with mere moments ago. "Then we're off on our cavalcade of regret!"

It took me several good-sized blinks to banish the colored specks that tingled about the edges of my vision, and by then I found myself marching over a rustic bridge toward the ever-so-slightly less rustic town, Discord on one side of me, Fluttershy on the other. "You'll tell her you're sorry," Fluttershy was saying, "Rarity will graciously forgive you, and everypony will live happily ever after!"

Slowly regaining my equilibrium between my two newest comrades, I traipsed along with them into the village streets—although using the plural seemed somewhat uncalled for the more I saw of the place—and realized that this could very well be a boon to my actual mission here in Ponyville. If I could gather more of Twilight's close friends at Rarity's to hear my apology, that would be a lovely icebreaker for me to subtly bring up the question of her romantic proclivities. But where would I find the rest of her cohorts on such short—?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" a sharp and scratchy voice called from above, and my view of what had to be that rural location known as 'the town square' was cut off by yet another glaring young mare's face, this one blue with narrowed violet eyes. "I know you! You're that hoity toity stallion from Canterlot!"

"Umm, actually?" Fluttershy murmured beside me. "This is Prince Blueblood, Rainbow Dash, not Hoity Toity."

"Like I said!" Rainbow Dash prodded a hoof into my chest, and it wasn't a friendly sort of a prod, either. "This guy kidnapping you or something, Fluttershy?"

My ears folded, but Fluttershy giggled. "Not at all!" she said, saving me, I can only assume, from something a bit more vigorous than a simple prodding. "His Highness has come to apologize to Rarity!"

I found a contrite expression and attempted to fit it into place. But instead of those violet eyes going wide in surprise, they narrowed even further. "Huh," Rainbow Dash said, then she drifted back about half a pace, her wings hovering her directly—and quite picturesquely, I have to admit, should one's taste in mares run toward the athletic—in our path. "Hey, Applejack!" she shouted then.

"What'cha got, Dash?" another voice responded from further ahead.

"Prince Blueblood!" Rainbow Dash folded her forelegs, her gaze never leaving mine. "Fluttershy says he's here to apologize to Rarity, but Discord's wearing a t-shirt that says 'hostage situation' on the front!"

Swinging my head, I caught Discord in the act of wadding something white and cottony between his lion paw and his eagle talons, his cheeks puffed out in an attempt at nonchalant whistling.

"That a fact?" An astonishingly sturdy mare of deep cidery hue sidled with panther-like grace around the corner from the town square, and I found myself suddenly wishing I'd grown up in these scenic parts. If Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy were at all indicative of Ponyville's female citizenry, and had I had the opportunity to become acquainted with them before the role of Blueblood had been thrust upon me, ah, what magic we all could've made...

Of course, the way they tended to glare at one could perhaps grow wearisome after a while. "I am here," I said, stretching the truth so slightly, it was hardly noticeable, "at the express invitation of the Princess of Friendship herself to mend a long-standing rift between the House of Blueblood and certain ponies whom I've wronged here in Ponyville." I swept a hoof around the circle to indicate them all. "I would be overjoyed should the leading lights of the town deign to witness my apology to Rarity as a first step toward clearing the air between—"

"He means," Discord said, popping an over-sized pacifier into my mouth, "that he wants you all to watch when he tells Rarity he's sorry." That much-too-toothy grin bristled across his snout again. "I'm imagining all sorts of wonderful ways she might react!"

Rainbow Dash and Applejack both blinked, then a grin almost as jagged as Discord's stretched itself over Rainbow's muzzle.

For her part, Applejack cocked her head and called, "Mac?"

"Eeyup?" came a basso rumble more like a landslide than anything equine.

"Watch the cart, will you?" Her grin also took on a ferocious edge. "Something's come up I gotta take a gander at!"

"Eeyup," the unseen avalanche replied.

Applejack doffed her hat in my general direction. "Lead on, folks."

An explosion that sounded vaguely like the word "Hooray!" struck me with gale force, and only the timely intervention of Discord's paws and claws against my shoulders kept me in a position that could reasonably be called upright. Colored specks flashed before my eyes, and I thought perhaps I was passing out before several of the flecks landed on my snout and revealed themselves to be confetti. "Let's have a parade!"

The voice this time rang out at a slightly less ear splitting volume, and a pink pony for whom the word 'voluptuous' could have been invented marched into our midst wearing a curve-hugging drum majorette's uniform that set my heart racing with a glee more marital than martial. A whistle appeared between her lips, and she blew it with such force and exuberance, my imagination began roaming among a variety of other uses to which such lips could be put.

Discord shaking me with unnecessary vim and/or vigor dislodged all such thoughts and brought me back to the band of absolutely gorgeous mares now surrounding me. "A wonderful idea, Pinkie Pie!" He shoved me forward, his own narrow torso suddenly wrapped in a red wool and brass buttoned outfit much like hers, a bass drum bulging out from the front. "And here's the Grand Marshal himself!"

"Hooray!" Pinkie Pie shouted again. She spun and started high-stepping up the street, Discord's drum somehow supplying squirts of music when he struck it, screeching flutes here, a blare of trombones there. I fell in behind him—or rather, the other three mares closed in upon me with sharpened gazes of varying degrees and gave me no choice but to fall in behind him—and Pinkie began chanting in a rhythmic and possibly melodic fashion:

"Prince of Snooty came to town
Just to say he's sorry!
Everything's gone upside-down,
The daytime sky all starry!"

Ponies around the entire square joined in, then, as if they'd been planning this moment for years:

"Prince of Snooty, that's the stuff!
Show us that you mean it!
Saying sorry can be tough,
But you've been strong: we've seen it!"

I'll spare you the other twelve verses that accompanied our progress.

For my part, I added it all to the list I'd begun keeping in order to fully answer the query I could already hear my beloved princess directing toward me, that lovely little half-smirk on her face. How did you enjoy your trip to Ponyville? she would ask, and I would proceed to give her what I envisioned to be a heated dissertation of several hours' duration.

The surprise wasn't that we found Rarity blinking at us from her front doorstep when we arrived at the Carousel Boutique. The surprise was that we only had half the town bellowing away behind us at that point, merely a single pair of uniformed ponies skipping along on either side of me, the poles in their mouths holding a banner aloft and stretched between them that bore the legend "Prince Blueblood Apology Tour" in large flashing letters.

My entourage wound up with one final run through the chorus, then gave a cheer and dispersed back to their lives leaving me facing Rarity with the four mares and Discord behind me.

That I'd forgotten how exceedingly lovely Rarity was I can only ascribe to early-onset dementia. In fact, with her eyes half-closed, the air of style and savoir-faire surrounding her pushed her beyond the realm of the merely lovely into the realm of the truly formidable. "Your Highness," she said, and her voice cut through me like a specially sharpened icicle.

I bowed, almost wishing I'd chosen Discord's original sackcloth and ashes plan. "Miss Rarity," I said, trying to find a tone that conveyed both sorrow and joviality, "I hope you can spare a moment for a foolish, foolish stallion who would like to offer some solid recompense for the serious wrong he's done you."

For a single brittle moment, her lip not quite curled in disdain, I thought perhaps Discord's promise of sturm und drang might indeed be in the offing. But then she stepped back, the glow of her horn pushing the door wide. "Won't you all come in?" she asked, and the neutrality behind the words was about all I could've realistically hoped for at that moment.

Truth to tell, however, once the whole group of us had gathered around a well-appointed tea table in Rarity's back parlor, the actual apology came out as a bit of an anticlimax. I told her that I'd been a boor to treat her as I had and that I would happily do what I could to recommend her clothing line to all the noble ladies with whom I came into contact during my wanderings about Canterlot. She nodded, assured me that it was all "water under the bridge at this point," and asked everyone how many lumps of sugar they wanted in their tea.

Discord and Rainbow Dash, I thought, seemed particularly disappointed with the sedateness of the affair's conclusion, though they allowed themselves to be mollified by a box of sugar cubes and a tankard of cider respectively. An offer of the same to Pinkie and Applejack secured their continued attendance while Fluttershy very nearly glowed behind her teacup as if she was happy simply being invited to the party.

Still, I felt that too much small talk might prove detrimental to my goal, so, after thanking Rarity once more for being so gracious, I continued with: "If only Princess Twilight could've been here to witness the outpouring of friendship you've all just bestowed upon me!" I sighed. "But I suppose her duties must keep her too busy for any but the most serious of social activities."

Rarity gave as ladylike a snort as it has ever been my privilege to hear. "Forgive me, sir, but it's clear you've not spent much time around our dear Twilight. She's always eager for a chance to get together with any or all of us."

"I'll say!" Pinkie had crunched her way through about a quarter of her sugar cubes and showed no sign of slowing. "Doesn't matter if it's silly or serious, Twilight's always up for fun!" She stopped then, a sugar cube balanced on the edge of one hoof above those delectable lips. "'Cept I'm not too sure how a pony has 'serious fun.'" She gave me a half-lidded look, slowly extended her tongue, wrapped it around that sugar cube, and pulled it into her mouth in a way that left me wondering if she perhaps knew more about 'serious fun' than I did.

Rainbow Dash burst out laughing. "Don't start, Pinkie! I mean, yeah, it's pretty much the cutest thing ever when you get Twilight blushing with that kinda talk, but I'm betting this jerk"—I'll give you three guess at whom she waved the hoof not wrapped around her cider mug—"hasn't blushed in, like, ever!"

"Hmmm..." Discord stroked his beard. "Knowing where the young fellow in question spends his free time, I might just take that bet." A line of red rapidly rose up his neck and across his face, steam shooting from his ears when it reached the tips of his horns. "As warm as the sun, some might say, up inside that particular piece of real estate."

Twin gasps sliced the air, Fluttershy covering her own blushing muzzle and Applejack slamming her mug onto the table. "Smear my ears with honey and tie me to an anthill!" she declared—and I don't have to specify which of the two let fly that particular colloquialism, do I? "Ain't no way in the sweet green hills of Equestria that you're saying what I think you're saying!"

Rarity had frozen, her teacup hovering in a cloud of silver magic and her enormous blue eyes fixed on me. "You and Princess Celestia?" she asked as if she were attempting to spit pins from her mouth.

Discord grinned at me, and I did my best not to scowl at him. Letting fall all my preconceptions about the provincial innocence of these Ponyvillians, I started to fabricate something from the fabric of my recent life. "I'll ask please that not a word of the following leave this room since Her Highness and I have yet to make the formal announcement."

I drew in a lungful of the ensuing silence. "It's in fact entirely due to my beloved's influence that I'm here today." Multiple years of having to hide my true feelings for Princess Celestia began bubbling like swamp gas at my innards, my throat tightening and my eyelashes dampening. "She looked upon me and saw a pony whose existence I would never have imagined. She wrapped me in her wings, touched her horn to mine, and showed me my true self, showed me the way to become a pony worthy of her, a pony worthy of the name Blueblood."

Five beautiful faces stared at me, but I would've traded every last beat of my heart if only the most beautiful face in all of Equestria had been there among them. "I fail her often," I said, unable to smooth the roughness in my voice, "but every time I do, she strokes my mane, bids me rise, and makes me even more determined to be the pony she knows I can be." Pulling back from the unaccustomed shore of truth, I focused on Rarity. "Which is why, Rarity, that when the time comes for our announcement, we're hoping that you might—"

"Yes!" she shouted with a force that rattled every piece of crockery in the room. Leaping to her hooves, she seemed to glow so intensely, I felt the need to squint. "The wedding of the century—the wedding of the millennium! And my designs at the very center?" She pulled in a breath, and I braced myself for another joyous shriek.

Instead, though, she bowed her head, then looked back up with a tiny smile. "I will say this for you, Your Highness: when you make an apology, you don't fool around." She took her seat once more and sipped her tea with more dignity than any half dozen Canterlot duchesses.

By that time, the others seemed to be recovering from my shocking non-announcement, so I held up a hoof to forestall any questions. "Don't look for this all to occur anytime soon, and I must once again ask you to keep the news under wraps even from—or perhaps I should say, most especially from—Twilight Sparkle."

"Oh, dear." Fluttershy set a partial scone onto her plate. "I'm not very good at secrets."

"Aw, c'mon, Eff!" Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "We keep stuff secret from Twilight all the time!" She turned toward me. "Don't get me wrong, Your Princeliness. Twilight Sparkle's the best thing that ever happened to this town, and spending time with her is like...like—" Her mouth went sideways, and she gave the table several taps. "Like the sweetest nap you ever had, y'know? A half hour, forty-five minutes just hanging out with her, and you're recharged better'n just about anything else." Raising her mug, she waved it at the other mares. "Back me up here, guys. Sex with Pinkie's a close number two, but there's nothing like palling around with Twilight, right?"

They all nodded, varying degrees of blush touching each of their faces. Struggling to keep the fine hairs along the base of my mane—and certain other parts of my anatomy—from standing up at the visions of them individually and collectively intertwined with Pinkie, I glanced her way.

She shrugged. "What can I say?" Her tongue unlimbered itself once more to entirely subsume another sugar cube, and watching her swallow made my own throat go dry. "I'm a giver," she murmured, her voice resounding with unstated promises.

"Steady, girl." Applejack gave a low chuckle. "Tonight's my night with you, and the prince here's got a sweetheart already. Don't reckon you wanna tangle with a mare who juggles the sun."

"I guess." Pinkie sighed, then her ears perked at me. "But if you and the princess ever want one of my special package deals, you just let me know!"

It took several glasses of water till my tongue felt damp enough to move. I assured Pinkie Pie that I would convey her kind offer to Princess Celestia, and the party broke up soon afterwards with many a 'thank you' and a 'lovely to have met you.' On Rarity's doorstep, Discord snapped his claws and popped us back to the steps in front of Twilight's castle, the purplish greenish spires rising into the early evening sky.

"So!" He clapped, a bellhop's red jacket wrapping itself around his torso, a little round hat appearing on his head, and his grin a thing of deep cracks and crevices. "I assume you'll be wanting to check out, sir?" A pile of luggage, none of which seemed to be any of the myriad bags I'd arrived with, crackled into place beside him like popcorn. "Do feel free to stay away much longer in the future, especially when my friends learn how many lies you've told them today."

My thoughts were doing their own sort of crackling, those familiar little tingles from my cutie mark guiding me to discard some conjectures while pursuing others. "Oh, don't worry," I told him, still not sure I had the entire picture but absolutely certain there was a picture here to be had. "Every word I told them was the purest undistilled truth. And for my part, well, the more I think about it, the less inclined I feel to tell them about your little scheme."

He froze for the tiniest sliver of an instant, but with a creature of constant motion like him, it stood out like a belch from the audience during a play's most dramatic pause. "Scheme?" he asked. He peeled his bellhop's jacket away like a banana skin to reveal a dark blue business coat beneath it. Reaching into this coat, he pulled out a small notebook, adjusted a sudden pair of spectacles, and started flipping through the notebook's pages. "I've got the cheese regatta down at the lake tomorrow afternoon, but other than that, my schedule's empty for the next several thousand years." He shook the book by the spine, and blank white pages fluttered out and away like a whole flock of butterflies.

Which caused yet another tingle from my cutie mark, yet another piece of the puzzle falling into place. "Certainly you don't think it'll take that long, do you? But of course you both have the time, so—"

"Enough." Everything about him—voice, expression, demeanor—darkened, and I saw before me the monster who two or three times in the past had done his best to make Equestria his own personal chew toy. "Perhaps you'd best go, Your Highness, before either of us does something he might regret."

And if he was that serious about all this... I delved back into my well of sincerity. "Discord, it's all right. I fully approve of what you're planning, and I'm certain Princess Celestia will as well as long as you continue pursuing your goal in the way you've been going about it."

A shiver ran through him, and I could almost hear the argument going on in his head. "I don't know what you mean," he finally said, but the words were flat, not an ounce of passion behind them.

I stepped forward, trusting the compass rose on my flanks to guide me safely to port. "Our young princess, Miss Twilight Sparkle," I said.

He remained still and silent, something I might've relished under other circumstances. But considering that he was very possibly about to resolve my quest and allow me to return in triumph to my beloved, I rather felt I needed a bit more of a confirming reaction on his part.

So I began laying out my thought processes. "It's quite the extraordinary thing." I gestured to the village behind and below us. "Meeting Twilight's compatriots in town, I found my thoughts straying along the lines to which they always stray when I meet a lovely mare. But meeting Twilight herself, while recognizing that she is very likely the third most powerful equine the world has ever known, I continue to find it almost impossible to contemplate the luscious curve of her haunch, the perfect depths of her eyes, the sweet jasmine and lilac aroma that wafts up from between her—"

"Stop it!" he hissed, then wrapped his paws and claws around his snout, his eyes bulging out and fixed on me. And for all that the various odors he gave off at seemingly random intervals didn't correspond remotely to the usual sorts of pony scents, I knew fear when I smelled it.

"It's all right," I said again. "Listening to her friends has shown that I'm not the only one unable to conceive of Twilight as a—" My voice caught, and I actually had to force myself to say it: "A sexual being. In fact, one might extrapolate from the evidence that, when she became the Princess of Friendship, either consciously or unconsciously, she put the entirety of Equestria into the 'friend zone,' and further that the entirety of Equestria seems to be just fine with that."

Again, he gave me no reaction. Under other circumstances, I'd likely have made a joke about him turning to stone once more, but perhaps all the day's talk of gentlecoltish behavior had actually rubbed off on me. "Except for you," I continued. "You seem to go rather out of your way to keep her 'on edge' when the two of you are together. You're aiming for something other than friendship, so you do all you can to keep her from lumping you in with the rest of the world."

"You won't tell her." His voice wavered so much, I couldn't tell if he meant it as a question or not. "She's not ready, not anywhere near ready. She's barely begun to sprout, and she needs good, true, nurturing soil around her for another few centuries before—"

With a loud choking sound, he spat out a ping-pong ball wearing a thatchy blonde wig. Catching it, he examined it, his mouth going sideways. "Every time I start getting too maudlin, I cough up a hair ball." He shook his head, tossed the thing over his shoulder, and looked down his snout at me, his eyes half closed. "I've turned ponies to pigeons for less provocation than you've shown me here, you know."

I waved a hoof. "Hardly gentlecoltish behavior, though, is it, old fellow?"

That got a curling wisp of a smile from him. "And you really think her Tighty Whiteness won't mind me playing the long game with her former student?"

"Ah." This time, my hoof came up in gentle reproach. "But you're not playing a game here: that's the part about which I'm going to have the most difficulty convincing my beloved. Whatever it is you feel for Princess Twilight, you're treating it with an unaccustomed amount of seriousness."

He produced the box of sugar cubes Rarity had given him earlier. "Do I need to replicate Pinkie's earlier demonstration of the concept behind 'serious fun'?" An altogether too reptilian tongue flickered from his lips.

Hiding my shutter seemed impossible, so I didn't even try. "Perhaps you could simply tell me the whys and wherefores?"

Things got quiet again, the evening breeze rustling the branches of the trees in the nearby woods. "She risked the whole world on me, did you know that?" Discord asked, his gaze unfocused. "After I'd betrayed her and the others and myself and everything everywhere, she would only give Tirek the power he wanted if he would give me back to her." One eyelid twitched. "I'd already proven that I was worthless, and she still made me the hinge that swung Equestria either further into darkness or back into the light. I haven't got— There simply aren't words to express how—"

His neck bulged, and retching, he vomited up a bowling ball wearing an elaborate beehive style hairpiece complete with bees.

We each took a step away from it. "Which," he said, his voice back to its usual dry baritone, "is more than enough of that. Although..." He snapped, and not only did the bowling ball lose its wig, but quite a variety of unbewigged balls clattered to the grass beside us. "Perhaps some lawn bowling while we await our hostess's return?"

Of course, with Discord involved, the experience became rather more three-dimensional than I was used to, balls drifting upward as often as they rolled along the greensward. But a gentlecolt is nothing if not adaptable: by the time Twilight came trotting up perhaps a half hour later, I was merely losing badly rather than abysmally.

Trotting along with Twilight was her constant companion Spike, and since I was still acting the gentlecolt, I didn't announce in a loud and braying voice that I'd forgotten entirely about his existence. Seeing Discord and I together seemed to bring an instant touch of suspicion to his already pinched little face, and I'm sad to say that said touch remained in place during the entirety of my visit.

On Twilight's other side trotted a slightly older but extremely striking mare of a more lavender hue and a more somber disposition. It surprised me, then, when she called a friendly greeting to Discord and received a friendlier reply than I'd certainly been expecting. He introduced her as Starlight Glimmer: "She and I saved Equestria during the second changeling invasion, you know," he said, polishing his claws on his chest.

Ms. Glimmer gave an actual, genuine smirk, a look few ponies can successfully carry off. "You and me and Trixie and Thorax, I think you mean." She poked him with a hoof. "Funny how their names seem to slip your memory so often."

"Well?" His waved his claws. "If they'd been here, I would've mentioned them! That's the only reason I mentioned you, after all!"

Twilight giggled. "Well, now that we're all here, what're your thoughts on dinner?" Her grin became more than a bit sheepish when she turned it toward me. "We're kind of informal as a rule, Blueblood, but if you'd like, we can put together—"

"A surprise party!" came a full-throated shriek from perhaps half an inch south of my left ear. The force of it sent me toppling sideways, but I found my temper quickly tempered when my topple was arrested by the most delectable batch of pink pony flesh it had ever been my pleasure to fall against. "Careful!" I heard Pinkie Pie exclaim as hooves seized me about the middle and set me upright. "Wouldn't wanna get whiplash before the party even starts, would you?"

I opened my mouth to ask what sort of events might be expected to give one whiplash at a Pinkie party, but she was spinning away without a single double entendre. "'Cause look!" she announced, waving to the hoards of Ponyvillians parading up from the town with baskets and blankets balanced upon their backs. "It's a special picnic dinner to say hooray for Prince Blueblood turning out to be a nice guy after all!"

Whether the crowd did indeed consist of the town's entire populace, I couldn't say, but it was certainly the largest picnic I'd ever attended. Twilight gushed her thanks as we all settled in at the head table—well, the head blanket—and even Discord stretched himself out alongside, a bemused expression on his face as he smeared strawberry jam over the ceramic potsherds Pinkie presented to him. The rest of us had sandwiches, and they were uniformly excellent.

The conversation that swirled around me held nothing unfit for a general audience, and I found myself feeling nostalgic for a childhood I'd never actually had. It was in fact the most pleasant time I'd ever spent sprawled in the dirt, and it wasn't until after the sun had set and the lightning bug lanterns had been unsheathed that it occurred to me to wonder why I'd not had a solitary lascivious thought about the lovely mares eating, chatting, and drinking all around me.

I rubbed my chin. My hostess was seated to my left and laughing at something Applejack had apparently just said, and by focusing an extreme act of will in her direction, I was just able to force myself to see the strong yet gentle curve of her oh-so-nuzzlable neck, her long and shapely legs tucked beneath her curvaceous body, her—

The images had barely begun draping themselves decorously across my mind, however, when Twilight's brow clouded and her head swung toward me like a weathervane coming around to face an oncoming storm. Her gaze met mine, and I felt something I hadn't felt in decades, something I would almost have been willing to bet money I had never felt before.

Shame.

The weird and awful sensation flooded me, and I found myself wondering without a trace of irony how I could be so horribly perverted, thinking such things about Twilight Sparkle.

Fortunately, my brain rejected the concept almost immediately—after everything I'd done, the wonder was that I wasn't more horribly perverted—but the experience put an emphatic end to my experimenting with the phenomenon. Whether Twilight was doing this purposefully or by sheer instinct posed an interesting question, but it wasn't the question I'd been charged with answering. My beloved's former student was in no way, shape, or form ready for anything more than platonic relationships, but she had in Discord a suitor ready, willing, and able to wait for her.

Pushing the matter from my thoughts, I helped myself to another slice of the wonderful chocolate cake. I slept that night in the castle's guest room like I hadn't a care in the world, and bidding farewell to Twilight in the morning while the porters from the station restacked my assembled luggage, I couldn't help but speak the truth: "I've had a simply marvelous visit, Twilight, and I look forward to the next time I can tear myself away from the hustle and bustle of dear old Canterlot and pop in for a longer stay."

She smiled. "Anytime, Blueblood. We'll love to have you."

A sudden stink of boiled cabbage curled my nostrils, and Discord appeared wearing a violently plaid cap, a long and even louder plaid bag slung over his shoulder. "Oh, no!" he cried in obviously mock dismay. "Leaving so soon, Slewslug? I'd been hoping we could shoot a few holes!" He pulled a small cannon from his bag and poked a flaming claw at the rear end of it. Something small, round, and black popped from the cannon's barrel, struck the side of a passing cloud, and with the raspberry sound of a balloon deflating, the cloud dwindled quickly away to nothing.

Twilight covered her eyes with a hoof. "Discord? Even for you, that was a terrible play on words."

He shrugged. "Well, I never really cared much for sports." Pressing his talons to his chest, he gave me a nod. "But I thought it would be gentlecoltish to offer."

"Indeed." I stuck a hoof out at him. "I'll happily take you up on it the next time I'm in town."

"Huh," Twilight said when Discord wrapped my hoof in his lion paw and gave me a firm-but-not-bone-rattling shake. "I was expecting a joy buzzer at the very least."

"'Expecting'?" Discord arched an eyebrow at her. "Since when do I ever do what ponies are expecting?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, then shrugged and turned a much sunnier expression toward me. "Well, now I'll have to insist that you come see us again!"

I once again promised that I would and somehow made my way through the town without attracting another musical number. Fortunately, the train wasn't scheduled to depart for another hour—it took them nearly that long to store all my bags—and it gave me time to begin composing a report for my beloved.

Had I been reporting to anypony else, I would've happily "winged it" as our pegasus cousins so charmingly say. But I'd found over the years that it took a great deal of practice to present the facts to Princess Celestia in a breezy yet erudite style, seemingly "off the cuff" but also wholly accurate in every detail, providing gaps in the narrative in order to elicit questions that would bring my audience of one into the telling of the tale. After all, the most demanding variety of musical piece to compose, I'd always suspected, would be the "impromptu," the way it's carefully crafted to sound as if it's being improvised on the spot.

Or perhaps I was just overthinking things...

Still, by the time the train had wound its way through the countryside and the morning to arrive at a lovely Canterlot evening, I felt myself to be completely prepared. I directed my luggage to be taken to my apartment in Canterlot Tower—though, as I believe I mentioned, I had literally no idea where Princess Celestia had found the bags she'd sent along with me—then made my way toward the palace itself. To judge by the gloaming going on in abundance, my beloved was concluding her daily duties, so perhaps she'd be in the mood to hear about my excursion over a bit of supper.

Rounding a corner, however, I found myself striding directly into the midst of a dozen royal guardsponies, each of them, I wouldn't've been surprised to learn, sturdier and more stalwart than the last. "Prince Blueblood!" one of the two I'd narrowly missed colliding with exclaimed in tones that would've made a herald trumpet proud. "Princess Celestia has commanded that we bring you to her at once!"

"Ah," I said, remembering that I was once again in Canterlot and that I was once again expected to play the role I'd taken on with the Blueblood name. "Have I time to stop off and buy Auntie a box of chocolates before we go?"

They seemed less than amused, herding me into the center of their phalanx and frogmarching me rather hastily the rest of the way to the castle. Two of them accompanied me the entire familiar distance to the hallway outside the princess's chambers, and upon their knock, the door swung open to reveal blackness beyond.

I will admit to a wee bit of trepidation at that point. I'd only been gone for two days, so I couldn't imagine Princess Celestia had reverted to our earliest relationship paradigm and the whole reward/punishment dichotomy we'd explored so thoroughly. And yet we'd definitely moved beyond this sort of "armed guards and darkened rooms" melodrama years ago. Had something untoward happened in my absence?

My outward expression remained carefully placid: I even managed to aim a smile at the glowering guards before stepping inside.

The door slammed shut behind me with a force that made me jump. Something caught me about the middle, and the room blossomed with a burnished golden light as soft and gentle as the setting sun reflecting off a marble wall. Princess Celestia stood before me, her eager and yearning expression like nothing I'd ever seen on her face before.

"Please forgive the dramatics," she said, her words all rushed and tumbled like river water over stones, "but lying here last night and realizing that, for the first time since you'd come into my life, you'd gone away from me in such a way that even I would've been hard-pressed to call you to my side without alarming a fair segment of the population, I fear I became slightly overwrought, especially at the thought that, if something unfortunate were to have happened to you, I would've gone the entire stretch of our relationship without ever treating my lips to the wonderful sensation of saying your actual name."

At this point, she took her first breath since I'd entered the room, but hanging there in front of her, I was fairly certain that I'd stopped breathing as the content of her speech had sunk in past the filmy veil of my confusion. "And so," she said, her voice suddenly wavering, "welcome home, Polaris."

Then her wings were wrapping around my barrel, my forelegs were wrapping around her neck, our lips were meeting in hungry desire, and, well, I didn't get to deliver my carefully prepared remarks.

And, yes, I suppose I could've gone into the whole spiel forty-five minutes later when we finally lay spent and sprawled upon the rumpled landscape of her coverlet, but I felt that the moment had rather passed. "You know," I said instead, my head pressed lazily into the perfect curve of her neck, "I think that's just about enough of that."

"Oh?" The relaxed liquid of her muscles stiffened somewhat. "You're breaking up with me?"

I snorted. "On the contrary, Madame. I'm proposing marriage."

She went completely still, but the way my cutie mark had begun sending fiery sparks throughout the entirety of my fine, ivory frame, I couldn't've stopped if I'd wanted to. "In fact," I plunged on, "I fear I must report that the matter's been taken out of our hooves: Rarity's already agreed to provide our habiliments, so we've no choice but to—"

"You don't know what you're saying," she whispered, though with my face against her throat, I heard her with a thundering clarity.

"On the contrary, Madame," I said again; I pulled away from her warmth and craned my head along the sheets till I met the white-rimmed widths of her eyes. "For you see, I happen to be madly in love with you and have been for quite some time now. I know you don't want to hear it, but you embody the concepts of beautiful, wonderful, flavorful, and most every other positive adjective that end with 'ful.' Which is to say that, no, Madame, you are not hateful or spiteful or vengeful, and if you ever were those things, you've long since purged them from your nature and become delightful and joyful and powerful."

That she hadn't leaped up and dumped my sorry carcass onto the floor, I took as a positive sign. And while her eyes still stared as wide and unblinking as before, they seemed to be shimmering, not the sort of thing that happened when she was descending toward the darker places of her psyche. Pressing on, therefore, I found my front hooves and crooked my pasterns around hers. "You tell me, My Lady, that you felt my absence most acutely last night. Know, then, that I have felt that very same way toward you for as long as it's been my pleasure to serve you."

"Pleasure?" A slight sharpening and narrowing began to occur about her exquisite features. "You can't seriously expect me to believe that the abuse I've heaped upon you—"

"Enough!" The word emerged somewhat more virulently than I'd expected, but I decided that was all for the good. I took an even firmer grip on her hooves. "Consider, if you will, that, with your sister happily at work here among us once again, with your niece happily tending her daughter and her husband and her empire to the north, with your former student happily spreading the actual magic of friendship everywhere she goes, you might very well find yourself also experiencing something that resembles happiness! Consider, perhaps, that my absence last night made you realize that you're happier when I'm around! And consider that you've made me the happiest stallion in Equestria for the last several years running!"

"Hmmm." The smile pulling at her muzzle looked extremely promising. "That's certainly a lot to consider..."

"And the pièce de résistance?" I drew myself up beside her on the bed, stuck out my chest, and gave her the most over-the-top rakish look I could muster. "Consider the ultimate reward anypony could desire after so many tireless centuries helping and serving Equestria!" With a little effort, I pushed the look ever further. "Being married to me!"

For a quarter of an instant, a silence as thick and frozen as a winter midnight filled the room, then she gave the tiniest little snort, and we both collapsed laughing uproariously into each other's embrace. This gave way to a mixture of kissing and giggling that went on for a long, luxuriant time until, cuddled together, we finally eased back into the languorous state we'd shared before all this evening's talking had begun.

Of course, she hadn't said 'yes' yet, but she'd not said 'no,' either. And experience had shown me repeatedly that my beloved was not at all shy about letting me know when I was performing incorrectly.

"So," she said after several moments during which I refused to allow any hint of tension to tighten my muscles. "You honestly think that I deserve you?"

The question had only one possible answer. "In the same way that I deserve you," I said.

She shook gently with a bit more laughter. "On one condition."

My heart wanted to leap singing into my throat, but I'd had a good deal of practice keeping that particular organ from performing that particular stunt. "And that is?"

Her body shifted, rolling her onto her back, her forelegs picking me up easily and settling me upon her chest. Eyes partially closed, she touched her snout to mine and murmured, "Say my name. No titles, no epithets, no terms of endearment. " She swallowed, and things got a little shimmery once again. "Just tell me you love me, Polaris, as much as I'm afraid I love you."

"My darling, my dearest, my joy, and my sweet flower," I said before I could stop myself.

A single arched eyebrow from below made me clear my throat. "Not," I went on, "that I would dare say any such thing as that at a moment like this." I did some swallowing of my own. "Not when I should be saying, 'Celestia, I love you.' Because I am in fact saying, 'Celestia, I love you.' And will, in fact, be saying, 'Celestia, I love you' until my tongue grows tired of forming the words and petitions the crown for redress of grievances. Which petition, I hope, the crown will summarily dismiss so that my tongue can get back to the work for which—"

The kiss that enveloped me then quickly mended any hurt feelings between myself and my tongue, and we both agreed instantly what its proper work was to be from now on.

And it's been that way ever since.

Of course, I eventually got around to telling Celestia about Discord's slow-motion courting of Twilight Sparkle. That she only glowered slightly rather than threatening to disembowel him, I think, showed that I'd been correct all along as to her reaction to the news.

We were married in the spring, though I believe my bachelor party is still going on in some parts of Equestria. And even though some of us seem unable to stop talking for any appreciable length of time, I do hate to overstay my welcome. So I shall bid you all have a lovely life and will bring this narrative to a close.