It was not the task of an impatient mare, to brave the forests of paper and swim the seas of ink which crossed the desk of a princess, and that on a good day. An impatient mare would, upon noting that the first nine hundred and ninety nine cases could be as good stamped as signed, and required no significant additions or subtractions, determine to invest in such a stamp, acquire a seat-filler with the cognitive powers required to raise and lower such a device, and take an early lunch.
But that hundredth piece...
A quasi-divine being, Luna knew herself to be imperfect. The ponies who served under her lacked her wealth of experience (which given the nature of that experience was on balance a good thing), and so she expected no more perfection from them than she would from herself. If the hundredth document contained a mere slip, as any pony might make, it was a good day.
Occasionally it wasn’t a mistake. There were changeling infiltrators, agents of foreign if nominally friendly powers, ambitious nobles and bureaucrats, and enough inter-departmental rivalry and bickering that if it could be reliably harnessed, Equestria’s energy problems would be solved indefinitely. Then, catching the slip was rather more important. Luna preferred to reward herself, upon catching such a malign piece of foolscap, with a piece of dark chocolate.
The week had been crisis free, by Equestrian standards. The deforestation of swaths of crown land in service to the bureaus of the capitol had nevertheless chugged on. And Luna’s strategic dark chocolate reserve was running dangerously low.
The thing was, in times of crisis, even the infiltrators and the mutton-headed status seekers tended to come on-side. Everypony wished to win the game, but nopony wanted to smash the board, so when the stakes were high enough, everyone served the same mixed metaphor. But peacetime? Ancestors spare her from peacetime. That was when people felt that the stars had aligned perfectly for their self-serving piece of foolery.
Even if you were centuries old, the way that Equestrian nature seemed immutable was enough to depress you.
Luna pushed back from her desk, groaning mahogany timbers under the towering buttresses of her in and out trays. Celestia had this down to an art. The real question was, just which art? Quickly doing up the day’s business, or letting enough crises foment in the background that she could rely on the unifying power of trouble when she simply could not or would not deal with the cold leavings of the ponies that watched the seats of power, in case they began to wobble?
But no, it was probably the former. It was easy to think of Celestia as a master chess player, if you hadn’t grown up with her. She could be one if she had to, mostly spared the effort through her heartfelt belief in the goodness of ponies, and their desire to live up to her expectations. She might have grown cunning in Luna’s time away, but it took more conspiracy thinking than the diarch had in her body to believe that her elder sister had grown that cynical, ruthless or manipulative.
Really, that was Luna’s job, and she guarded it jealously.
She ran a hoof down her face, looked at the piles of paperwork, and fumbled around under the empty paper coffee cups for the intercom that an enterprising palace worker had convinced her to have installed. There was a solution in search of a problem – sparing her a chance to stretch her legs and simply walk to the outer office. She depressed the ‘send’ button. “Paper? Could you bring in my social calendar?”
* * *
Paper Weight, at the same time, had been considering the mutable nature of adventure. She had experienced a few now in service to Princess Luna, some of which might have stretched the definition a trifle, but one thing and another, it had led her to develop a certain theory about the ways in which they arose.
Locally, they seemed to spring out of innocuous circumstances. Usually, they involved unlikely amounts of effort being required for what on their face appeared to be straightforward endeavours. They had a way of... boding. But they only really seemed to occur when least expected, and this had led the Night Princess’ social secretary to struggle with a certain degree of paradox seldom braced in her profession.
If adventure struck when one least expected, as a rule, then by a certain circuitous logic, it followed that adventures were most likely to occur when exciting things were happening, and action was called for this day! After all, that was when they would seem most intuitive, and therefore, would not occur, whereas slow times filled with nothing much of consequence were rife with unexpectedness, vis a vis adventure. This fed in on itself, very much a snake biting its own tail, with a circuitousness to it that would surely have driven the greymanes at the university mad enough to bite their slates in half. Perhaps it would be better, on balance, to abandon the notion.
But then, ‘adventures just happen’ was difficult to schedule for, and Paper Weight had an orderly mind. Certainly it was good to simply appear unflappable – the least requirement for a competent secretary and aide de camp – but how much better to actually have allotted an appropriate measure of time for adventure, excitement, and even allowing an extra fifteen minutes for shenanigans?
She had drawn up a tentative schedule. Adventure had failed to arrive in a timely manner. Now, she had returned to the drawing board.
The uninitiated might be (mistakenly) given to believe that there were better uses for her time. And, perhaps, if she were an undersecretary in charge of any of the bureaus for which Luna was the nominal head, or even Luna’s principal private secretary, that might have been different, but she was not. She was the social secretary to the most anti-social princess that Equestria possessed. She could schedule meetings for Luna, but only if the princess was in a mood to take them. She could ensure that Luna’s schedule had no conflicts, make sure that her employer and sovereign was in attendance for mandatory social occasions, but in truth, in absence of some spark of adventure, little stirred Luna from the imposing den of paper that she had made for herself. Luna was not a socialite, but an adventurer, and took social invitations only when the weight of bureaucracy overwhelmed her impressive patience.
The exact wording had been that she would ‘sip tea with the crusty uppers of Canterlot when literally everything else (was) worse’.
So she did her best to ensure her sovereign was presentable, and met her social obligations, and she waited for Luna’s tolerance to wear thin. And in the meantime, she whiled away the hours scheduling for the unschedulable. It wasn’t much, but it sufficed.
“Paper, could you bring in my social calendar?”
... Just when she had least expected it. Paper rolled her eyes. One of these days she was going to sit on one of those university ponies until they explained just what this ‘narrativium’ they kept messing around with actually did.
* * *
“I spent a thousand years on the moon, Paper.”
Paper Weight nodded to Luna. “You’re famous for it, Highness. There’s a holiday about it and everything.” Luna occasionally got into these moods, and it was best to play along.
“In that time, I was able to remain focused. Granted, upon revenge, and the occasional nap. But never was I idle.”
Paper Weight considered her response. If Luna was going to accept a sly joke from anyone it would be her, but that trust was given to her for a reason, and there was little in that regard that presented itself that would not be cruel, so she continued to humour the dark mare. “A testament to your willpower and steadfast endurance, Highness.”
“And yet, after a mere sixteen hours of paperwork, I find myself bored. Is it possible that boredom is some as yet undiscovered magical field, generated by the presence of other ponies?”
Paper’s lips quirked. “You could commission a royal study at the university, Your Highness. That would probably provide some brief amusement at least.”
Luna snorted, a genuine if unhandsome laugh. “Oh, aye. And while I’m at it, I might as well paint a research grant gold and declare that it’s ‘for the fairest’. If I want to see the University devolve into civil war and have Celestia be cross with me for fiddling while it burns like a modern-day Whinneyro, there’s something to be said about going the full measure with the classics.”
Paper chuckled. “Merely a suggestion, my princess. It could prove enlightening.” Admittedly, in the sense that it was quite easy to see by the light of burning buildings. She floated the social diary, dog-eared and well-papered with invitations before her. “You wanted to go out?”
Luna sighed. “I want to be freed from this Tartarus of paper that we have convinced ourselves is necessary for good governance, but yes, in absence of that, an evening on the city will just about do for me. Is there something on the calendar for this evening that it’s not too late to sneak in to? I’d rather not have bended knee and hoofkissing, but it’s a little late to respond, s’il je plais for any of the dos with those highly enough placed that they won’t feel obligated to spend the night doing so.” A smirk crossed her face. "Without gatecrashing, at least."
There was a pause, as Paper flipped through a variety of pages, cards, and forms, some gilt around the edges and some clearly written with crayon. “Well, let’s see. You’re invited to a meeting of the Canterlot poetry appreciation society.” Paper frowned. “Ah. No, I think not... there’s a two drink minimum.” Luna and liquor made for strange bedfellows. The stories of the origins of 'Moonshine' were not entirely unfounded.
Luna rolled her eyes. “Something a little classier perhaps.”
“Lady Trottingham is holding a soiree.” Luna made a rude noise, and Paper moved on seamlessly. “But I know that the Trottinghams aren’t your favourite noble house at the moment.”
“When they decide to stop speaking to scandal sheets and gossip rags in an effort to titillate and provoke, I’m sure that they’ll be ready to hold grown-up parties. And if they’re very good, I’m sure that they might be allowed to skip their nap times as well.”
“A bit foalish, indeed.” Paper agreed. Lord Trottingham had recently started some frankly unpleasant rumours about Luna’s personal hygiene, ‘leaked’ to the popular press, in response to the Night Princess’ opposition to one of his private bills in the House of Lords. The sovereign of the night had been less than amused. “So perhaps-”
“And then, after they graduate kindergarten...”
“Luna!” If it had been public, she wouldn’t have done it. But Paper was permitted to address Luna directly, and one of the side-effects of her lady’s unsociable hours was a tendency to stew, unless pulled out of a spiralling funk.
“Yes, yes. Trottinghams are out.” But the back and forth had invigorated Luna, apparently investing her more in her own interests in an evening out. “Perhaps something a bit more in the vein of entertainment. Any of those new ‘motion pictures’ playing?”
“No premieres.” Paper frowned, as she felt the back of her brain being kicked by a memory. “However...” There was a small amount of invitational carnage as a selection of invitations to dinners and cocktail parties were dismissed, and then she found it. A playbill, a letter of invitation, and two tickets. “Opening night at a new sort of murder mystery theatre. It’s supposed to be interactive.”
Luna’s eyebrows arched. “What, the audience gets to choose who dies? Perhaps I shall invite the Trottinghams.” Paper’s scolding look rebuked her. “A joke, a joke. I suppose this is the straight line where the beautiful but naive crown princess asks ‘interactive how’?”
Paper rolled her eyes. “The audience helps to solve the murder. The events up to the murder are scripted, and then there are clues given in scripted pieces of the next few acts. The audience is polled, and there are prizes for correctly deducting who did the deed.” Paper actually thought that the idea was somewhat intriguing; it sounded like a fun evening out. Maybe that cute mare at the press office would like to go to one sometime...
There was silence, and Paper looked up. Luna actually looked... thoughtful. “I think that this should be a grand time. I haven’t solved a murder in centuries.” She paused. “Directly, at least. What time should we be there?”
Paper blinked. “We?”
Luna nodded. “If memory serves me well, they do usually send two tickets? Unless you had something else planned.” Fat chance of that. She wouldn’t trade her job for the world, but being the Night Princess’ secretary meant unsociable hours.
She shook her head. “No, I was just going to be available while you worked.”
“Then get your coat, Paper. We’re going to solve a murder.”
And Paper Weight got the unsettling feeling that she had let her guard down and adventure had been least expected once again.
Author's Note
This one has been bouncing around on my brainpan for a little while yet; characters and story elements teased will be forthcoming as the story progresses.
Progress may be slow. My typing endurance is down due to a broken shoulder.
