Twilight Sparkle couldn’t help but study Princess Celestia’s plate from across the table. She’d hardly taken a single bite from her salad and had left the rest clearly untouched. After setting down her fork, Celestia leaned back in her chair and relaxingly took only two sips from her tea.
Two. Two sips exactly!
Twilight knew because she’d been keeping count during their lunch together.
“Big breakfast, Princess?” Twilight asked casually.
Celestia shook her head. “No. Only the usual. Two green peas.”
Twilight couldn’t tell if the Princess was joking or not. Both tones were nearly the same. “Sure you don’t want another bite of something? Some dessert, maybe?”
Celestia chuckled at that. “Trying to butter me up, Twilight?”
“No, no…” Twilight struggled to find the correct words. “I’m just a little worried, is all. You don’t exactly eat all that much whenever I’m around. Or when anyone’s around, really. You or Princess Luna.”
Now Celestia added a warm smile to her expression. Playfully, she poked at her white round belly. “Think I’m getting too thin? Malnourished, perhaps? I don’t believe my stomach thinks so.”
“Well, obviously not,” Twilight admitted sheepishly. “You both still look healthy. Always have. I mean… it’s just…”
Thousands of years worth of pictures and stories had told Twilight plenty already; both Celestia and Luna had always appeared nimble while powerful, too. They’d never had a fat phase or skinny phase either, as far as Twilight knew. So, just what was happening here?
Finally, Twilight just let the question out.
“Is it a magic thing?” she blurted.
Celestia raised a brow. “Beg pardon?”
“How you both can eat so little yet still have enough energy to move both the Sun and the Moon? And never lose weight, either?”
Sighing, Celestia lowered her tea cup. Still only at two sips!
“You truly want to know?”
***
As per Celestia’s instructions, Twilight returned to Canterlot Castle precisely at eight that evening. By that point, the sun had lowered and the bright moon had taken its place. Twilight would’ve liked to say that she wasn’t creeped out by all of this, but that just wouldn’t be true.
“Knowledge,” Twilight told herself bluntly, steeling herself as she entered Celestia’s personal study again. “Because tonight I’m going to learn something new! Whether it be good or bad!”
A second later, another door to Celestia’s study banged open, causing Twilight to jolt. From the shadows first appeared Celestia and then Luna, both clad in heavy black robes. Neither smiled nor greeted Twilight as they entered.
Twilight gulped dryly.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Luna demanded.
“We’re trying to lower our candle usage,” Celestia answered. “Going green and all that.”
“Oh, right,” Luna recalled. “That.”
Then she stomped a single hoof, magically igniting a dozen or so candles laid about the room. Luna gasped when she finally took notice of Twilight awkwardly standing there.
“Twilight? What are you doing here?”
Celestia held a hoof to her sister. “I invited her here, Luna. She was… curious as to why ponies rarely see us eat much.”
“But it is so simple! Have you not told her? All we do is—”
But Luna was quickly silenced by Celestia’s hoof.
“I think it would be best to show her,” was Celestia’s answer.
At once, they both ditched the ominous robes; Celestia’s response being that the castle gets rather drafty at night. Then the pair backed away from the other and faced off.
Without taking her eyes off of her sister, Celestia asked Twilight, “Hold a hoof out for us, will you?”
Rather than ask the hundred or so questions currently on the mind, Twilight numbly did as she was told, raising an upturned hoof. “L-like this?”
Celestia did not respond; merely nodded towards her sister. A moment later, they illuminated their horns and shot out colorful beams of pure energy at the other. Both grunted from the strain. And with a loud BLAP! both sisters disappeared.
Twilight shrieked. “Both the Princesses destroyed themselves!”
Then she shrieked again. “And they left me with all their work!”
“Down here, Twilight,” said a voice slightly higher in pitch. “Careful not to crush us.”
Down near Twilight’s resting hooves stood both Celestia and Luna, staring upwards expectantly at her. They must’ve been six-inches tall at most now.
“Umm…” was Twilight studious reply.
Unfurling their wings, the alicorn sisters shot off the study room carpet and landed neatly on Twilight’s upturned hoof. The pair barely had enough room to stand side by side on there.
“Send in the Architect!” Celestia called.
Normally so loud, her voice was little more than a squeak.
The small Luna rolled her eyes. “Here, Tia. Let someone with a real set of lungs handle this.” Then she took in a deep breath. “Architect! Present yourself!”
From yet another doorway entered a male unicorn dressed in a grey suit. The bags under his eyes made it seem as if he hadn’t slept a day in his life; the permanent frown on his face indicated he probably never laughed or smiled, either.
Behind him, floating in his aura, was a long flat surface covered in a white cloth; several bumps and mounds dotted the flat expanse, which the Architect set at the very center of the room.
“May I present to you both,” the Architect said in a voice as lifeless as a corpse, “Tasty Town.”
Using his aura, he ripped off the cloth, revealing a giant model town underneath. Hesitantly, Twilight took a step closer to it and found she couldn’t recognize its rightful place in Equestria. She then quickly realized another startling fact.
“It’s all food,” she breathed out. “It’s a whole town made out of food.”
Indeed, it was. Every square inch of it was made from one type of food or another.
The schoolhouse. The mayor’s office. The public pool. The nearby mountains and lakes. The… pyramid? Honestly? What was an ancient pyramid doing in the center of some quiet normal town? And was that an active volcano near the post office?
But before Twilight could vent her geographical frustrations, Celestia and Luna hurriedly leapt off her hoof and down onto the model town. Now on the miniaturized set, their size seemed almost normal compared to everything else.
The very small Celestia took a moment to soak it all in. “What a wonderful little town.”
“To feast upon!” Luna concluded, lunging straight for a lamppost made out of candy cane parts. “Huzzah! Delicious!”
“Hello, Twilight.”
Twilight glanced back up and found the Architect standing next to her. She could somehow feel the gloom seeping off of him. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I am the Architect,” he answered dryly. “I created Tasty Town. I also created Appetizer Avenue, Spaghetti Springs, Cookie Canyon, Pizza Plaza… and thousands more edible creations like this one.”
Down in Tasty Town, Celestia and Luna happened upon a model chocolate store and galloped inside. “Look dear sister!” Twilight could hear Luna yell. “This store even has its own owner made of gingerbread! Let’s eat him, too!”
Although Twilight looked away, she could still hear the loud crunches of gingerbread down below.
“Most parents,” the Architect continued beside her dourly, “tell their children not to play with their food. Not my father. No. He insisted on it.”
Twilight asked him, “So, your dad was an Architect, too? Of… food?”
“Yes,” the Architect said, watching as Celestia and Luna ate their way up Mashed Potato Volcano before it erupted with rich, brown gravy. “As was his father. And his father. And so on and so forth. I come from a whole family of food architects, you see. Destined to create miniature food towns for as long as they serve the Princesses.”
Back in Tasty Town, the Princesses eventually made their way to the gaudy pyramid near the center of town made out of various cheese cubes; less than a minute after entering the ancient place, one of them screamed.
“It’s a snake, Luna! Run!” cried out Celestia.
“Impossible!” said Luna. “It is a gummy snake and nothing more. A snack snake, if you will. Here. I shall try it and… ack! Sour! Too sour! Run, Celestia, run!”
“Okay,” Twilight said, hopeful to swerve the conversation somewhere in the ballpark of normality. “Then what’s even the point of a food architect? Or a whole model town made out of food, for that matter?”
“It is simple,” the Architect replied. “You believe that Celestia and Luna eat little to sate themselves, yes? When the truth is that they need all the nourishment they can get in order to stay properly powered and effective. Ergo, they need a whole town to feast upon. Each and every night.”
“But why do they need to be so small to eat?” Twilight questioned.
“Could you even calculate the grocery bill of such voracious appetites? A whole town worth of food? Each and every day?”
Twilight clearly could, but decided against it. For now.
The sound of something smacking against something wet drew Twilight’s attention. Down in Tasty Town, Luna had dived headfirst into the public pool made of lime Jell-O. She made it halfway to the bottom before getting stuck. “I require assistance!” she managed to say in the thick of it all.
“Do you dare imagine, Twilight Sparkle?” the Architect began, eyes starting to shimmer. “The task of dreaming up beautiful, delicious worlds each day? Only to see them destroyed mere hours later? I fear a bit of my soul is bitten off and swallowed each time a creation of mine gets eaten whole.”
Munching her way through nearly half the Jell-O pool, Celestia finally managed to free her trapped sister and drag her back to the surface.
Once out, Luna sighed in relief. “Thanks for eating me out back there, Tia.”
Twilight watched the Architect crack not the slightest of smiles at that.
Perhaps he truly had lost most of his soul years ago.
***
Twilight glanced up from her tenth piece of unbuttered toast. Since the desolation of Tasty Town, she hadn’t felt like eating anything sweet or savory ever again. Not that Pinkie Pie cared; adding both butter and cinnamon to her single slice of bread.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about again, Twi?” she asked pleasantly.
Then Twilight explained exactly what a food architect was. And her immediate plans to retire the current one before he lost what remained of his soul.
By the time she’d finished her bizarre proposal, Pinkie Pie’s cheeks were coated in tears.
“You had me at ‘food’, Twilight.”
Author's Note
I once had the thought of Celestia only being allowed one slice of cake for dessert, so she decided to shrink herself in order to enjoy it more. And... here we are.
