Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
I received a couriered letter at Drumbeat, the big music festival in Equidor, as I prepared to mount the stage for my last DJ gig of the autumn season.
Seeing the red wax seal, I touched a hoof to the two gold medallions I'd sewn into the stiff collar of my black jacket to resemble oversized button clasps. They looked like bits, but were medals of service to the pony nation I'd immigrated to. Numbers 107 and 109. Stamped above the royal seal. Princess Celestia had dubbed me a Hero of Equestria, twice—once for saving ten-thousand ponies from panicking in an area with insufficient egress. That was when the Changelings attacked during the Royal Canterlot Wedding. The second time was for saving the pegasus air force that tried to defeat Lord Tirek when he'd begun stealing their flight magic as they dived at him.
That I had practically succeeded in throwing the crazy centaur off Canterlot mountain subsequently didn't count.
The letter read, "PONY magazine states that you are finished with the music circuit until the holidays. I know you will be in Ponyville next week, so may we get together? I know at least one night that I will not be working dusk to dawn. I have fun things to share! Write back if no-can-do. —Your BPFF."
I chuckled as I heard the throbbing dance music ramp down for my transition to take over from the pegasus pony DJs Blank & Flank. Red and white lights strobed as I pocketed the letter with a smile and took up a pinkish red ribbon in my primary feathers of my right wing. I trotted up the stairs into the blinding lights, thinking it would be fun to get together again. We were professional mares who worked the night shift; it was hard sometimes to escape for a spa visit or breakfast, and to coordinate with our exhausting schedules.
I tied my signature bow into my mane as I approached the turntables, yelling, "Who wants to make some noise!?"
The batwing Equidoran audience stomped and made thunder with their leathery wings.
Meeting my friend would be fun, I thought.
I promptly forgot the letter...
A week later, I was flopped on the floor in my foal-hood room at Mum and Dad's house in Ponyville—once again doing homework. The late afternoon sun streamed through the eyebrow dormer window to illuminate the book I read. It was on creativity and lyric writing, and I was reading the chapter titled Reasons to Write. Soulful—the tutor Sapphire Shores paid to teach me—had assigned it. I'd been Valedictorian in school because the number one in our class had freaked out. I could write and give speeches, but lyrics, poetry, and music together confounded me.
I had a three-record deal, however. I had to come up with original songs for Eohippus Records. Singing covers wouldn't cut it.
My eyes crossed and the print went out of focus.
"Bloody Tartarus," I hissed, then looked at the open door.
My parents had seen me awarded 109 in the royal audience hall. They'd visited me in the hospital after my fight with Lord Tirek that had left me a bloody wreck. They knew I was no longer the sweet little filly they'd raised, but an incomprehensible hero who fought compulsively for other ponies when need be, and that it all had to do with meeting Princess Nightmare Moon when she had kidnapped (not murdered as it had looked to me) Princess Celestia, the morning of the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration.
Regardless, I didn't swear around them.
"Oh, Flopsy Mopsy, Luv?" I heard a call from downstairs. Mum.
Busted!
"Um, there's somepony at the door for you."
The nervous tone of her voice caused my ears to perk. In an instant, I stood fluttering on the banister looking downstairs. I heard the pencil and book hit the wall behind me and realized I'd kicked them. At the doorway, I saw an orange pegasus, Mum, dancing from hoof to hoof, her wing feathers fluffed, glancing up at me with wide green eyes.
As I motioned her to back up with a hoof, and she complied, Dad trotted up and said, "Who's here?" followed by a breathless, "Oh." He turned into a blue, purple-maned earth pony statue.
I dived down the stairway and flared just in time to stand protectively in the doorway between my parents and the outside. Wings out, knees bent, I looked up at the tall pony standing there, ready to pounce.
Instead we both squealed simultaneously, dancing on the tips of our horseshoes. We dived together and hugged one another.
"It's been too long!" I cried. I smelled her pachouli perfume and felt the coarseness of her midnight blue wool cloak that not only insulated her from the autumn chill, but would have been big on her sister. A glance right showed a nosy neighbor with a harp cutie mark looking quizzically at us.
"I concur! May I enter?" she asked as she glanced at Lyra.
Though the cloak hid her wings, I understood immediately. "Yes, quickly."
The wind shut the door with a bang behind us. That left us facing Mum and Dad, both open-mouthed statues.
"Mum, Dad, this is—"
They knelt as if sandbags had landed on their back. Their voices both squeaked as they cried, "Princess Luna, Your Royal Highness!"
Sotto voce, Luna asked, "You forgot to tell them about us, Dame Mop...?" Rhetorically, of course.
My body flooded with affectionate warmth as I took note of the title Dame. Equestria didn't have knights, but Luna had knighted me anyway for my service to Equestria and because we shared a special understanding about Princess Nightmare Moon.
I suspected she used the title to make a point.
I gave a toothy contrite grin. All the reasons.
The princess pulled back her hood and said, "Lord and Lady, please stand. You need not be so formal with me, especially in your home."
"But, Your—" Dad sputtered through his handlebar mustache. We were immigrants from Trottingham, accent and the full kit. In the old country, Queen Bliss More and the peerage would rather poke you with a pointy stick as address you if you were a commoner.
"Please."
They stood shakily. Dad said, "This is difficult."
"Nonsense. I have read a home is the owner's castle. In that we are peers. We both live in castles!"
My parents looked at one another and gave the barest of uncomfortable nods.
I giggled. Luna nudged me with her shoulder to stop.
"Well, then. Dame Mop has instructed me that in Trottingham I could not refer to her by the styling 'honorable' if her parents weren't—"
I said, "I did not!"
"I gleaned it."
My face heated up. "I just don't want everypony to know, you know, what hap—"
"That you are a Hero of Equestria? Twice? Good enough. But I need to correct the honorable issue for reasons of court. Spinfluff and Duster, you own your house and land? Correct?"
They nodded.
"Hold out your right hoof."
My lower lip snuck under my upper teeth as they did and Luna clacked her horseshoe with theirs. She was not wearing her black obsidian crown or her regalia, so it was a regular, albeit gold, horseshoe.
Luna said, "You are now Baron Duster and Baroness Spinfluff (I'll tell the parliamentarians to publish it in the register on the morrow). Welcome to the peerage. I'm told it's a fascinating hobby. It'll be even more interesting because it was Sister that elevated the rest of the snooty lot. You are my first."
As their eyes widened, Luna added, "You may now bow and curtsey—once."
I rolled my eyes as they did.
Luna said, "I came to visit with Flopsy Mopsy. May we go up to her room?"
Into the continuing silence, I said, "Luna and I are mates, just like Vinyl Scratch and—"
"Not exactly," Luna demurred.
"My Liege!" I said, snorting lowly, and Luna nudged me again, almost enough to knock me over. I gestured with both wings out and a shrug. "She's my friend."
Mum stood there, breathing rapidly, processing it all until she nodded. Luna's light blue magic placed her oversized cloak on the coat rack and a pair of what resembled crutches beside it as she proceeded upstairs.
In a halting voice, Mum added, "Dinner will be ready in an hour. I can set another plate..."
"Please do," Luna said.
I said, hiding my mouth from Mum with a wing for all the good it would do, "It's mostly fried."
"What's wrong with fried?" Luna asked as she made it to the landing.
I told Mum as I flew up, "Nothing fancy!"
As I closed the door behind us, I said, "Baron and Baroness? Are you crazy? They'll have me explaining what it means for weeks!"
My foal-hood room was a converted attic space that displayed the hips and angles of the peaked roof and sloped down to a dormer window. A bird chirped in the tree that rattled in the breeze outside. I had event posters from my DJ FM events around the world plastered to every available vertical surface. I was suddenly glad they featured the red bow I used, not my face—all except the one for the public event at the Royal Canterlot Wedding. The second go-round after Princess Cadance and her Prince Consort had vanquished the changeling queen, somepony, probably Princess Celestia, had gotten new ones printed and posted all around downtown Canterlot. It featured a candid of the Songbird snapped before the invasion, two headphones plastered to an ear with a hoof, wings out touching rotating the turntables, helming the decks with a confident smile. I rather liked that one.
Luna just grinned widely. She touched my nose with a hoof.
I sighed. "What does it mean, anyway?"
Luna shrugged. "Sister invented the peerage system pretty much, you know, from some fairytale—for all the sense it makes."
"After she sent you to the moon."
"Pretty much. They now have a title and are styled, Lord and Lady. They'll get tickets to the Gala, an introduction at court when they visit, and preference in the queues at any government office, museum, etc., etc., etc..." She sighed.
"Anyway..." she continued and I found myself looking around because a magical drumroll caught my attention. "I brought this!"
I hadn't seen that she'd been carrying something in her magic. She brought forward a brown paper-wrapped square. I noticed the Eohippus Records E in Pony Latin script. I started bouncing on my hooves. "That's..."
"That it is!" She started bouncing, too.
In unison, we cried, "Countess Coloratura's new album!"
"I received an advance copy!" She tore off the paper with maximum loudness, revealing a record album featuring colorful notes in a circular pattern, Coloratura's cutie mark. It read, I'm Just a Pony. I had live-mixed samples at the You-Rock music festival in Cans while Coloratura played piano and sang.
I'd performed the backup vocals and sung duet on the chorus.
We both looked at the song list, head side-by-side. There was the song—with "(Featuring Songbird Serenade)" beside the title. We both squealed again.
We looked each other in the eyes and grinned. Hers are deep blue, very much like mine. Luna said, "I am your most royal fan. Do you have a record player?"
"Do I?" My DJ equipment was in my travel wagon in Mum and Dad's newly built garage, but I dived under my bed to my withers and rummaged in my canvas wrapped foal-hood treasures. Coughing from the dust, I dragged out a flat package. I revealed my Silver Tongue Elite III with a snap of the cloth. "This was my primary deck the day you came back."
She leaned down to examine the heavily chromed beast. Black teeth around the platter let the DJ judge the BPM, while a muscular-looking balance beam held a hoof-like extension that placed the needle with zero pressure.
Luna eyed it. "You used this device before Nightmare Moon arrived?"
I looked at the suddenly sober alicorn. The strands of her hair lofted in a nebula of light blue magic and, deep with-in, little stars twinkled. After these many months together, meeting secretly around the world, in the castle, and sometimes in dreams, I knew her well enough to judge her expression: thoughtful, not angered.
We shared that day in common, and what it made of us. She had Nightmare Moon. I had...
I said, "The me that day is another filly. I sometimes call her Shy."
"Oh, Flopsy Mopsy!" Luna cried and I found myself in a tight tearful hug. Hers weren't the only tears. "Can you ever forgive me?"
"Maybe," I said.
We looked each other in the eye, then fell backward, laughing.
She turned her head on the floor to look where I lay. "The neither of us are the pony we were when we first met?"
"It feels like I have another pony's memories."
"Verily. The same. They are the memories of a horrific theatre play. I recognize the actress as myself, dressed sternly and in character. Even so, I understand my culpability. Twilight's friendship magic made me new again. Two ponies but the same pony, because I can remember through her eyes what happened and why I did what I did. All the anger. All the frustration and hurt. But I know she is not me anymore." She took a deep breath. "I hope."
"It's—" I could not meet her eyes and looked at the exposed rafters of my dormer attic room. "We learned something. Faced with the impotence of your anger to fix all the hurt you'd experienced, Twilight forced a choice upon you. Start over... or fight differently... You chose to start over."
"Choice? I could have held onto my resentment, but Sister had found her own faults, and I saw she'd punished herself in ways I had never realized. You are right. A choice. And you? Your choice?"
I needed to dust some cobwebs in my brain. I lay there, tapping my front teeth with a hoof, then it came to me. "I chose to discard fear. In that moment, when you sent Princess Celestia to the sun, I thought she was dead. You looked at me, and I thought maybe I was, too. I bowed, because ponies from Trottingham do that, but if I was to die, something in me chose to take something with me. Fear had no place. In the moment, it got in the way—became useless. So I looked up. And you met my eyes. They were... amazing. Molten, phosphorescent green and vertically slit. I took that moment. I remember your eyes as if minutes ago. So steady. So purposeful, and lacking all fear. Had I not looked, I would have missed that. Fear..."
Luna sat up. "You did not fear Nightmare Moon?"
"It's the difference between caution and panic. If you feel caution, you can act. Panic causes stampedes. Changed perception of fear let me stop one that night, after Nightmare Moon left the town hall. Too many ponies keyed up, and somepony—Mayor Mare, actually—said, 'Panic.' The Don't wasn't heard. Fear is debilitating. That's what Shy ceased to exist... It defined her."
"As did Nightmare Moon's anger and trampled feelings. They defined her. Which is why she is gone—and has remained gone despite my occasional self-flagellation."
I nodded and rolled back onto my stomach. The song had tracked to end, and neither of us had even listened. Peering with a practiced squint and a deft primary feather, I gently dropped the needle in the silence just before the song.
I said, "I like who I've become, but if this being a hero business never happens again I'll be just fine."
Luna pointed a hoof. "You may be a knight of Equestria, Dame Flopsy Mopsy, but being a hero is not your job. That you did it anyway says something about the pony you've become."
I chuckled. "Thanks, I think."
"It defines you. And that is that!" She clacked her hooves together. "I want to hear some music and enjoy my holiday, since it is my holiday. Sister manufactured it a few centuries ago when the Prophesy kept cropping up and she needed to obfuscate the fact. I get candy, it seems, and we get to dress up, and we get to have fun. But first, let there be music!"
We spent some time listening to the new tracks, and commenting on the production. Then I dragged out the other old players, and Luna floated some of my records through the dormer window from the garage. We mixed some stuff and danced a bit. Later, we lay there on our backs, reading album notes. She asked about this or that artist and I told anecdotes. She wanted to know why some ponies wrote ballads or rap songs, or no lyrics at all. It was something Sapphire Shores wanted me to learn about myself so I could become a songwriter myself. I blathered on.
We pretended to be two fan-fillies enjoying the afternoon after school. I liked that.
"Mopsy... Dinner!"
"Oh, dear," I said.
"Oh, dear?"
"Mum would fry water if there were a way. It's like she never left Trottingham. I can smell the peanut oil with the door closed."
"I like fried foods. I think it's wafting through the window." She sniffed that way.
"I like it, too. It's the indigestion that follows that I'm not fond of."
Luna led the way. "Tut, tut. I've been warned; cease your worries."
"Yes, Your Royal Highness."
That merited me an eye roll before we clattered down the stairs.
Mum's kitchen, like the rest of the house, was modest. We only had a single room that had stove, oven, sink, and icebox on one end, a table in the middle, and sofas and a fireplace on the other end. Mum and Dad's bedroom was the other half. I had a converted attic, because immigrants starting a janitorial business could only afford so much. Mum had made the lace drapes and Dad had reupholstered the red chairs at the square table, the top of which he had refinished so the golden oak gleamed. And so it had gone. I noticed the mismatched blue-lake-scene and yellow-daisy earthenware plates and mugs—and thought of our guest, but my parents had been adamant. They'd accepted my paying off their mortgage with the bits my success had brought, but in all else, it was their house.
As for the slightly tarnished brass lamp over the square dinner table, it was uniquely theirs.
"Mum! I told you not the fuss." There were platters with enough golden-brown food for five meals. There was a heap of wedge-cut chips seasoned with garlic and salt; purple carrot bangers, mash, with crispy peas; zucchini and acorn squash breaded cutlets; and bubble and squeak croquettes I knew were cooked from veg was left over from last night.
It all smelled delicious. Which wasn't the point. My mum had missed a calling as a short order cook.
Luna said, "Baroness Spinfluff. This looks marvelous."
Mum's green eyes glistened and she blinked a lot. She finally got out, "Um, would it be much to ask for you just to call us by our names?"
"Mum," I warned.
"Not too much," Luna said.
I noticed her blue eyes were glistening, too.
Luna continued, "I'm honored, really, that you should have me to dinner. I never knew my biological Mum and Dad. Sister adopted and raised me, and she was half an overly protective nanny-goat and half brat. Seeing you three as a family is actually new for me."
My Dad smiled and pushed back his purple mane. He kept himself from fully bowing, but stepped up and pulled out a chair for Luna. It squeaked against the yellowed linoleum. "Then let me say that I'm honored we can provide more than a meal. Please sit. Dinner is ready."
Mum had filled the mugs with warm oat milk and tea sweetened with honey. I had to explain using the malt vinegar on the cutlet and the mayonnaise on the chips, but Luna watched with a fascination I would have thought she reserved only for a new magical spell.
She may have looked skinny, delicate, and elegant, but she ate with gusto. It didn't take long to realize hostess Mum knew more about ensuring there was enough to eat than I gave her credit for.
It all worked out well until I explained to Luna how I ate mash and peas—like normal ponies, stirred together.
The mashed potatoes, mixed with crispy fried onions, proved rather viscus. Manipulating a spoon with feathers isn't that hard, but if you depended on perfect feathers for running precision decks like I do, you wouldn't push far enough to damage a primary. When I added a hoof, I over compensated.
The spoonful of potatoes catapulted into the air.
Luna caught it in the air a hoof-length from her neck. She looked down, non-plussed, then shocked. I could not read her changing expressions other than an eyebrow lift.
She said, "Is this...?"
"Sorry..." I tried tentatively.
"Is this a...?"
"I—"
"IS THIS A FOOD FIGHT?"
The potatoes shot at my nose. Lacking any magic and frozen in shock, the white glop speckled with crispy yellow pieces struck the flat soft part up front, broke apart, and spattered in my mane.
I'd been an only foal. Despite having no sister, I acted reflexively. I flicked crispy peas back at Luna with my wing.
She dodged, but I'm pretty sure one pea rattled into her ear. She caught some, and sent them along with some of her left over chips my direction.
I shielded with my wings, while grabbing the serving spoon in my lips to flick potato in an upward arc.
"Girls!" Mum said sternly, banging down a pot on the stove. She'd gotten up to prepare something else as we had pretty much ravished the initial offerings. "Foals!"
Luna and I looked at one another. My friend was shaking her head and probing her ear with her magic. My last volley had turned the tip of her horn into a snowcapped pinnacle. We froze. Her hoof went to her nose and she snorted.
We both broke into laughter, and almost simultaneously fell off our chairs to roll on the floor, chortling. I use the word, chortling, advisedly. A pair of idiots, us.
Mum asked, "They do grow up, right?"
I heard a splat and jumped up to look over the edge of the table.
Mum had a bit of mash on her orange nose. Dad said, "No."
I snorted and fell over again. Luna looked, too, and followed suit. Laughing, giggling, coughing, snorting...
It continued awhile.
Feeling giddy from hyperventilating, I had a big smile when I sat back down with my friend beside me. Mum had switched out our plates for bowls decorated with holly leaves and berries. She had been cooking something else—dessert.
With a gasp, Luna remarked, "You are right, Mop. She fries everything."
Mum snorted, mock insulted. "You don't like ice cream?"
My mother had deep fried hard-frozen strawberry ice-cream in chocolate-chip cake batter. The dark chocolate had melted, but the inside was only soft and still cold.
Luna had her eyes shut in pure bliss with the spoon in her mouth. She mumbled, "You must teach the palace dessert chef this recipe. Sister will go completely horse apples over this!"
Later, my parents had abandoned us for a game of Rummy on the sofa. We each had a little (mismatched) juice glass with cream apple sherry because Mum and Dad both recognized we really actually were adults, and I really didn't know how old Luna was. Who did? If she'd been rejuvenated to my age from Nightmare Moon, she was again an adult. The stripe liquid looked like apple juice that had be caramelized, and that did kind of describe the taste.
Luna sniffed it before sipping it again. "I could get to like this Trottingham tradition."
I could see out the window that Princess Celestia had put away the sun. I shrugged.
"It is new for me if not to you. I need to get out and be with regular ponies more, if I could just..."
"Get treated like plain folk?"
"Yes."
"It took me a while to keep you from fan-girling that first time you had me visit, so I guess I understand."
Her face reddened and she nodded. She pointed outside. "So, now, we must costume ourselves and participate in the Nightmare Night festivities. I want to say Huzzah! though I know nopony says that anymore, but huzzah! Let us prepare."
"I don't have a costume."
"You— You, what? You do not celebrate my night?"
I waved a hoof. "It's not that. The cleaning business was mostly at night, and I always helped out. Stores close at sunset. Restaurants later. You clean after they vacate. I'd nap in the afternoon after homework, then sleep after 2 AM. Yours wasn't a holiday in our household. Mum and Dad—and supposed to be me, too—worked all night preparing the Summer Sun Celebration."
"Well, more reasons to fix that!" She gulped the remaining drink and dragged me to the card players, literally causing my hooves to scuff on the floor. "Do you have make-up and maybe wigs?" she asked Mum.
I can't say I was ever a particularly girly mare. I wear make-up, but not everyday. Mostly for the stage. Never really had time for colt friends. I'd heard acquaintances in school talk about raiding their mother's stock of cosmetics and trying on their clothes. I liked music. Vinyl Scratch and I hung out at the music store, read the trades, and listened to and remixed the hits.
I wondered about Luna, though. Somehow Nightmare Moon had invaded the celebration fully made up. I remembered her midnight-blue eyeshadow. Beyond the electric green slit-irised eyes, it had been hard to miss, as was the touch up dark-crimson rouge on her sharp toothed face. Never, ever, had I seen Luna without metallic blue eyeshadow. Even freshly rejuvenated, dancing before my one-and-twos as I DJ'd the Welcome Back Princess Luna party had she lacked that detail.
Over the next half-hour, Luna had gone through my wardrobe, Mum's wardrobe, a trunk of old clothes, and all my Mum's hair dyes, powders, foundations, blushes, glosses, and mascaras. I hadn't even noticed my mother wore tail extensions.
We sat in the washroom, Luna fiddling with all manner of color scarves she'd collected, and a few dresses.
"You know," I said, "I could just go as a DJ. Not every pony in Ponyville knows my alter-ego beyond Pinkie and Vinyl."
"You could go as a Hero of Equestria—"
"Not happening."
Luna grumbled.
"I could just accompany you as myself."
"Where's the fun in that? I want your fun to be doubled. I've trademarked that catchphrase, I want you to know."
"Ooo-kay."
"Got it. A harlequine!"
"A Harley what now?"
"We pin the scarves to a blouse, then use the washout blonde hair dye. It ought to form a checkered pattern, but maybe half-and-half?" She brushed my fringe over my eyes and separated it down the center. "Blonde this side, your natural black that side. And your mother has an extension we can wash the color into so your tail matches. We'll powder over your cutie mark because blank is funnier. I shall cut a proper black harlequine mask out of paper. It will be perfect."
"What's a harlequine?"
She blinked at me. "Surely you have heard of a court jester. Even in Queen Platinum's court, her harlequine was the only pony who could talk up to her, interrupt her, or joke around her. Her jester even flirted with her consorts, a capital crime indeed! The Platinum queen Celi and I tilted with was, as they say in the current vernacular, 'a piece of work,' so that says something."
"And a crazy foal, I'm guessing."
Luna nodded, her lips compressed. "You could say that."
I looked down. "Kind of like me. Somewhat insane."
"Speaking up to Nightmare Moon... I would concede that. But—" she lifted my chin with a fluffy wing. "The encounter caused you to make something of yourself. You became a better pony, and—though you might think this made you 'insane' or that you became 'crazy' or that somehow fighting selflessly to save ponies turned you slightly 'evil'—this is one of those times you can and should compare yourself to other ponies."
Tears began streaming down my cheeks.
Luna continued relentlessly. "You took risks. You became better. You became somepony, and everypony is better for your actions and happier for your music. Most ponies play it safe. You make me proud to know you."
My face felt warm and I tried to look away, but the stiff steely feathers of Luna's wing would brook no argument. I looked into her blue glittering eyes and held her gaze without trouble. It was a skill I learned from locking gazes with Nightmare Moon.
Luna... Piece of cake.
"Thank you," I said.
"Yes, you are a harlequine. Now, I really want to try putting this dye in your mane, but we need something to tie half of it up..."
In the end, we went with the hair dye, but not the scarves. Too Saddle Arabian circusy. I ended up wearing my black performance jacket with the stiff upright collar, the two-tone mane and tail, and a powdered yellow and black checkerboard on my rear-quarters that also hid my cutie mark. Hair spray kept it all from smudging.
We learned that if the dye bottle didn't state "wash out," it means "permanent." Which is how I was wearing pretty much the same thing at my next performance the following Saturday.
At Club Hoofing It! On the Strand. In Canterlot.
At Luna's request.
I nixed the checkerboard, but kept the hair color. It was an audience hit. The hint of harlequine insanity felt right.
It matched Songbird Serenade's real life persona well.
Author's Note
Another tidbit. I am not committing to writing the next story, but like Flopsy Mopsy, I’m somewhat evil. Here’s a teaser:
Knight of Equestria VI: Rainbow Tears
When Princess Twilight Sparkle invited me to headline her Friendship Festival, she did so because Princess Luna, Songbird Serenade's most royal fan, asked her to. I told Twilight I would, free of charge, on one condition: Twilight tell Discord I would be there.
Discord told her to tell me he would be on vacation in another dimension. He and I had some bad blood, and... I kind of scared him.
Deservedly. Intentionally.
I scared myself, truthfully.
Sadly, the Friendship Festival, as it turned out, would have been a lot more friendly had he attended. Bad call on my part, and, for all you who suffered, "Sorry, mates."
But I get ahead of myself...
