The ink from her quill soaked upon the surface of soft white parchment as she feverishly wrote her message, curling every curly Q and dotting every dainty dot with utmost penmanship and writing quality. The soft glow of moonlight shone through her castle window, being ever-so-slightly tinted the color of the stained glass that filled it. A melting candle burned on the top of her fancy escritoire, providing a warming atmosphere for which to write in the mood that she desired.
As she finished writing the message, Princess Celestia signed her name at the bottom right corner of the parchment. She spent a few extra seconds than normal to make sure what she wanted to send was absolutely perfect. Then, her majestic horn glowed white for several moments and the scroll that contained the message burst into magical flames, vaporizing into thin air.
The message was sent, and now all she could do was wait.
"Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle," Spike read aloud, "what are you wearing?"
Twilight stood motionless for a moment, her mind catching up to what Spike read aloud before she replied rather simply. "What?"
Usually, she was used to much longer messages from the princess. Oftentimes they were filled with the endless minutiae of day-to-day issues that pertained to her role as the princess of friendship. So receiving such a simple, and informal, message from either Princess Celestia or Luna was quite an odd thing for her to experience. And yet, there it was.
"Are you sure that's what she wrote?" Twilight replied cautiously, craning her neck over the edge of the parchment to read the words herself. But, there they were -- clear as daylight -- What are you wearing?
"That's it," said Spike. He fumbled with the parchment in his claws and looked on the other side. "Maybe there's a secret message?"
"I don't think that's quite her style," Twilight replied, thinking for a moment. "Maybe? Maybe there's a code of some sort. What are you wearing...Hmm, let me grab my cryptology book."
Twilight returned moments later with a thick, dust covered book and began flipping through the pages. "Ugh, this isn't it...I have another idea. I'll grab some lemons. Meet me by the fireplace."
Twilight trotted off towards the kitchen of her castle, leaving Spike dumbfounded with what she said. "...Lemons?"
Celestia awaited with the patience of a yak. That is, with no patience whatsoever. Marching back and forth in her study, the stark white alicorn paced impatiently, pondering when she would receive the response to her post mail parchment. It had already been several minutes, and it was not as though the message was of an arduous nature. Could it have been lost in the inter-dimensional fabric? It had been a while since Discord had meddled with the mail, but she wondered if perhaps he was getting bored again.
Princess Luna entered in the doorway. "Sister, your hoofsteps can be heard echoing throughout this entire wing of the castle. What is the matter?"
"Oh, it's nothing," Celestia replied as her pacing came to a halt.
"I've been your sister for more than a millennia. There is nothing you can hide from me," Luna replied with sincerity.
Celestia sighed. "It's Twilight."
Luna smiled ever-so-slightly. The bond her sister and Twilight shared was quite strong. Before being bestowed with princess status, Twilight had been one of Celestia's only sources of actual friendship when Luna had been imprisoned on the moon. In a way, it was depressingly ironic that the highest ranking princess of the entire kingdom had only one real friend. And only a student of hers, at that. She had no one that could relate to herself and the duties she had obligations to fulfill. Of course, that changed when her sister Luna had been redeemed, but the special bond between Celestia and her student, Twilight Sparkle remained.
Luna came closer to her sister. "What about her?"
"I sent a message to her just a couple minutes ago."
"What did it say?"
"I still don't get how lemons are supposed to tell us anything about a secret message," said Spike. His arms were crossed and he watched with curiosity as Twilight knelt beside the parchment as she spread it in front of the roaring fireplace.
With a lemon levitated in the air, Twilight squeezed it.
"If there is a secret message, it'll probably be marked by a symbol in the upper right-hoof corner..." said Twilight as she gently spread the lemon juice and allowed it to soak into the parchment. She spread it out with a feather as the heat from the fire swept over the paper. As it did, the paper slowly crinkled and the lemon juice began to dry.
"I don't see anything," said Spike.
"Hmm..." Twilight pondered. "Aha! Spike, breathe fire onto the parchment."
"Do you mean actual fire, or magical fire?"
"Um, actual fire."
Spike filled his lungs with air and puffed out his cheeks, ready to blow a steady stream of fire onto the parchment. But just as he opened his mouth, Twilight stopped him.
"Wait!"
Spike burped, swallowing the fire into his stomach before letting out a cloud of smoke from his nostrils. "What?"
"Just in case I'm wrong, let me cast an Intention spell."
"Intention spell?"
"It's a spell that ensures whatever intention you have to do something, that will be the result."
"So, we're using it here...why?"
Twilight sighed. "I'm not sure if the secret message will be revealed with dragon's fire or dragon's magic. This way, we don't risk picking the wrong one. What we want to do is, say, cut our losses and eliminate any unnecessary dialog between us. We could spend hours bickering back and forth about this stuff, but what would be the point? Let's just make this simple and end things before they begin."
Spike shrugged. Twilight's horn glowed for a few seconds and a white aura briefly circled around the parchment until seeping into it like a wisp of smoke. "Now can I breathe fire?"
"Fire away."
Spike breathed magical fire onto the parchment, and in the moments that the scroll began to dissipate into the air as it always did when he used this magic, they briefly saw words and letters appear, but not the ones that they were expecting. In the last moments before the edge of the parchment vanished, Twilight shrieked in horror.
"You asked her what are you wearing?" Luna questioned. "What does that even mean?"
"I don't know..." Celestia replied, unsure of herself. "I thought about it for hours. It felt like it was the perfect message. Casual and innocent, yet also close and personal."
Luna sighed. She was used to being the pony out of touch, not her sister. "I know it must be tough, sister," she replied and sat next to Celestia on the bed.
"She's just grown so much! Before when she was my student, we would write back and forth all the time. Things were so much simpler then. Now it's friendship problem this, political hooplah that..."
"There, there..." Luna replied softly as she patted her back. Celestia was acting severely out of her usual character, but there were few other ponies than Luna whom she would ever allow to see her this way.
Suddenly, a roll of parchment appeared next to her in the air and dropped to the floor. Celestia looked at it and saw the signature reading Twilight Sparkle at the bottom. "Will you read it aloud, Luna? I can't bear to read it myself. I thought I would ask a simple question for once in hopes of opening up some regular dialogue with her once again but I'm worried she may find it off-putting."
"Absolutely," Luna replied as she brought the parchment up to herself. She squinted as she read aloud. "Dear Princess Celestia, I want to cut our losses and eliminate any unnecessary dialog between us. We could spend hours bickering back and forth about this stuff, but what would be the point? Let's just make this simple and end things before they begin."
The air was frozen in silence.
Luna's mouth remained agape for the several seconds that Celestia waited for the moment for her to say she had just pulled a simple joke on her sister. But no moment came.
Expecting to be a shoulder to cry on for several hours, Luna leaned towards her sister, but found herself falling onto an empty bed. Celestia had returned to her hooves and back to her writing desk. She wrote with the intensity of a thousand suns, ferocious emotions pouring out of her and channeling into the icy black ink that soaked the parchment. There were no fancy curls or dainty dots. There was only hatred and raw emotion conveyed with livid elegance and caustic vocabulary. In moments the message was complete. She spent one singular second contemplating whether or not the message was ready, and then used her magic to vaporize and send it away.
Once more, the air was frozen. This time with rage. After all those years, all those times they spent together in dialogue about friendship and magic and all the memories they shared. Every late night Twilight spent in the castle during her times of being a student. All of those memories felt pointless now, and Celestia stood in stern silence, her head lowered in rage as she waited for whatever pointless response she would receive.
Moments later, she did receive a response. So fast, in fact, that the surprise at its early arrival made her forget she was so angry for a brief moment. But it quickly subsided. At this point, Luna was still sitting on the bed, afraid to even say a word. Celestia levitated the message in front of her eyes and read it aloud.
"Oh my gosh I'm SO SORRY. You see, we thought there was a secret message and so we tried to use magic to uncover it but I used an Intention spell and it accidentally was applied to the words I said before casting it and -- oh forget it! Just send the message NOW SPIKE! GO, GO, GO!"
"Do you think she got it fast enough, Spike?" Twilight was hyperventilating on the floor next to the fireplace. A message appeared in front of them and Spike quickly read it aloud.
Twilight fainted.
~-~
Author's Note
Thank you for reading 
Likes and comments are very much appreciated. Inspired by this piece of artwork
